2767 Testosterone Based Parasites - Wednesday Call In Show August 6th, 2014
I’m too angry, frustrated and selfish to be a good father to my children, how can I change my behavior and be the parent I want to be? My husband is a testosterone based parasite and we’re on the verge of divorce, how do I avoid lashing out and fix my marriage?Also includes: Will people change? A bad childhood isn’t an excuse, excuses are the promise of repetition, excuses as welfare state, addicted to helplessness, the courage to be inconvenient, your sexual abuse didn’t happen, testosterone based parasites and panic about the future.
Steph is here, but first I have a bit of an announcement.
Something I just want to say.
We are currently experiencing some issues with our podcast downloads.
It's happened three times in the last three weeks.
We go through a CDN service, which is servers distributed all over the place, so you can get your podcast downloads really fast.
We've been with these guys for a year, and the service has been immaculate until we come up for our renewal.
They send us a $7,000 bill and then stuff proceeds to start breaking and not work.
So this is the third time.
I just got a bunch of notices today from people saying that they couldn't download X, Y, or Z and looked in the service and there's a bunch of errors because it tracks every podcast download that doesn't go through.
So, we are aware of the issue.
We are working to resolve it.
We did get a $7,000 bill from them shortly.
Hopefully the problem gets resolved and they give us a bit of a price discount because of it.
But we shall see.
But we are aware of the problem.
We're working to resolve it.
And if you do want to chip in on our $7,000 upcoming bandwidth bill, that would be greatly, greatly, greatly appreciated.
And yeah, other than that, I think we're ready to start a show.
I'd like to sort of mention something just as we begin, if you don't mind.
Oh, go for it, Seth.
So, I'm taking a walk to do the show.
I'm not actually mowing the lawn.
It just sounds like that.
My mechanical leg is acting up.
Multitasking.
Weed whacking.
Yeah, so...
No, it's summer.
I mean, I just...
I'm going to be out.
So, I've seen a couple of comments, right?
I think people are making kind of a mistake about how the show is funded.
And that's not going to be a donation nag, right?
And it's partly just due to the fact that we use the word donation here.
And the reason we use the word donation is we can't compel people to pay, right?
I mean, this sort of goes way back to the beginning of the show when I was sort of thinking, oh, you know, it'd be great if we could charge people 50 cents a podcast and so on.
But I think it's worked out and I think it's a good idea to not have a paywall.
Lots of people do have a paywall.
Tom Likas has a paywall.
Peter Schiff has a paywall.
So we do put the show out for free.
Now, we do say donate to help the show.
And the word donation, of course, is a challenge because it makes people think of a charity.
But really, a donation is you're paying for my time, for Mike's time, for Stoyan's time, for the bandwidth servers, for...
The technology for all the books we have to read, for the technical equipment that we need, for the studio, for...
I mean, you name it.
It is not cheap to run an operation of this size.
As Mike said, we're just getting a bill for $7,000 because the show has been so successful.
Now, we do say donation simply because we can't make people pay.
I would love to make people pay.
That's sort of how things work generally in the free market.
But I think it's neither productive nor helpful to attempt that.
And the reason I say that I would like to have people pay is for two reasons.
One is that we then have more money to grow even further, and two, people who would be serious about philosophy would recognize the value.
But because we use the word donation, people immediately think a charity.
Now, I've never referred to this show as a charity, at least to my memory, because it's not a charity.
It's obviously not a registered charity, and it's just not a charity.
People something and you don't get anything in return, right?
I mean, you give to the homeless guy and you get a hand job.
That's not charity.
That's prostitution, right?
And so when you give to the Salvation Army, you don't say, well, great.
Now I want to see some breakdancing, right?
When you give to the Red Cross, you don't say, I'm a vampire.
Send me a couple of bags of blood, right?
Then it would no longer be charity but purchasing.
So...
It's a charity if you give money to something and to some group and in return you hope that they do some good with it and you get that nice good toasty oats heart-flavored feeling of happiness and so on.
If you are consuming these shows, if you are downloading, if you are watching, if you are consuming these shows, then it's not charity to pay for what you consume.
It's charity to give people stuff and you don't get anything in return other than You know, like we sponsor—my wife and I sponsor a couple of kids around the world.
We don't say, and send us their kidneys when they mature, right?
I mean, we don't expect anything other than we hope that this does them good in their life and so on, right?
So it's not a charity because if you're consuming the fruits of my 40,000 hours of philosophy and education and so on and all of the— Mike's expertise and all of Stoyan's expertise and all of the technical hardware and software and bandwidth costs and everything.
Then you're consuming a good.
You are consuming a good.
And when you consume a good, you should pay for it, obviously.
Because people are saying sort of strange things, see, floating around.
Like, well, I'll give you money if I know what you're spending it on.
It's like, no.
That's a charity.
I mean, if Coldplay puts an album out and says, listen to the album, we would like you to pay us five bucks for the album, I don't want to pay you five bucks if I know how many freaky meals you're buying Gwyneth Paltrow and you're his kids.
I need to see an accounting standpoint of what it is that you're doing before I give you any money.
It's like, that's not how things work.
Don't go to a Queen concert and say, yes, but I need to know how much perm exactly Brian May is using.
No.
You got to see the Queen concert, you got to pay to see the Queen concert, right?
And if you want to listen to this show, you really, of course, since this show is about...
It runs on the honor system, right?
Which is payment on the honor system.
50 cents a show.
And the price really hasn't gone up in eight years.
Although the price of just about everything else has gone up enormously over eight years.
It's 50 cents a show.
And some of the shows are four hours long.
So I think if you are paying less than some people pay...
Workers in the 19th century, you're getting a fair old shake and deal for philosophy.
But this idea that I need to tell you what I'm spending it on, that may be true for a charity, but it's not true.
You don't really get to ask that stuff when you're buying things from people or, you know, well, I think Steph has too much money.
It's like, well, that doesn't have anything to do with integrity, right?
I mean, you don't say, well, so-and-so has, even if it were true, so-and-so has so much money And therefore, I can take stuff without paying for it because there is a little bit of – honestly, there is a little bit of stealing going on.
If you're taking a whole bunch of time, resources, energy, and money and not contributing – and contributing, again, doesn't have to be financial.
It can be just go share the videos.
I don't even ask for money.
Money is great and money is necessary.
Without money, there's no show.
That's just the reality of us not living in Peter Joseph's adult fantasy land.
But we need money.
But, you know, you're kind of taking without just consuming, right?
There's no ads and we're pretty generous with everything we put out here.
And if you're consuming without contributing, it's not very honorable.
I mean, you know that, right?
And I'm not saying, you know, listen to one show, send me 50 cents, you know, store it up a little bit because otherwise with PayPal, I get like three cents and change or something.
But, you know, you need to do the right thing.
If you're listening to the show, you need to.
And you can put up these things like, well, what's he spending it on?
It doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter.
Right?
You don't go into a store and say, I'm going to steal something unless you give me an accounting of what you're going to spend the profits on.
It doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter.
I mean, I'm telling you, I'm not spending it on anything dishonorable, right?
And I'm not taking regular baths in liquid gold.
But it doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter what I do.
It doesn't matter what the income is.
It doesn't matter any of those things.
What matters is that you are consuming a resource that is expensive to produce.
And You should, in the long run, of course, when you keep a rough track of what it is you've listened to and cough up the money.
It's really not a lot.
Most of the shows are over an hour in length and 50 cents an hour of philosophy.
That's probably less than Socrates charged when he chatted with you and requested lunch.
So I hope that helps.
I hope that makes some kind of sense.
That having been said, let's move on to the core point And purpose of the show, chatting with you, the dear and gorgeous and front-lobally enlarged listeners.
Mike, who do we have on first?
All right.
Up first is Trevor and Sky.
They have some parenting questions.
Trevor wrote in and said, I have been trying to implement peaceful parenting, but mostly I can't seem to take control of my frustration, anger, and selfishness.
I have hurt my children and want to take control, but how do I process my own problems so I can be a great father?
Hmm.
Uh-huh.
Uh-huh.
Are you both on?
Is that right?
I am on.
I'm not sure if Skye is on at the moment.
She's sort of juggling taking care of the kids and will jump on.
I think she's listening, but I don't know if she's available per se.
You may jump on the call, not the kids.
Okay, that's important.
Yeah.
So what is it that you mean when you say – the word that jumped out for me there was selfishness.
You can't sort of control your own selfishness.
What does that mean?
Well, I guess I feel like...
I mean, we've got three kids, so ages one, three, and five.
And obviously that's a lot of work.
And we don't really have a lot of family.
Actually, we don't have any family that is really involved in raising them.
And so I just feel like we're doing it all.
We don't have any help.
And...
The kids are really demanding and I just get so frustrated sometimes.
I just feel like their demands are too much that I can't handle it and I just want to push them away and just...
I don't know.
I just want to tell them to just get out of here and just leave me alone sometimes.
Do you know what I mean?
Oh no, I know exactly what you mean and I don't think there's a parent alive who has not felt that.
At sometimes and sometimes there are times of course when it's more often I feel that with one and I can certainly imagine with three It's even more exciting.
So yeah, I can understand that right and so Yeah, so sometimes that that I mean, I understand that this is like a selfish, like, I want to take care of myself.
I want time for myself.
I want, you know, I want to socialize with other people.
I want to, you know, play a game once in a while or watch a show without being bothered.
And, of course, they're always there.
Yeah, like a video game or something like that.
Even a board game with my wife or something.
But they're just...
They're kids.
They're demanding.
I mean, I understand that their needs and desires have to come before my own, but...
Wait, wait, wait.
Hang on, hang on, hang on.
Hang on.
Hang on.
I mean, you're just blowing past all these highly contentious issues as if they're, you know, well, okay, I have to accept that the world is round and that the moon is made of blue cheese.
And hey, wait, wait, wait.
Right?
It's harder on the talking end than on the listening end for sure.
Yeah, yeah.
No, but I mean, tell me what you mean when you say that your needs always have to come, like their needs always have to come first.
What does that mean?
I mean, for the one-year-old, of course, right?
I mean, I understand that.
And for the three-year-old, to a large degree, but you've got a five-year-old, right?
Yeah.
But even the five-year-old, he needs, you know, he wants your attention quite often.
Did you see the, wait, wait, did you see those two different words you used?
What was the first one?
He wants?
No, the first one was he needs, right?
And the second one was he wants.
And those two things, you know, my daughter is constantly nagging me about this, and she's right.
You know, when I say, well, I need a bit of time for myself, she says, no, you want a little bit of time for yourself.
You need food.
You need air.
And she's right.
I mean, that's precise.
I have to be precise.
After nagging people for years on this show, to be precise, the boomerang has finally smacked me in the giant cranium forehead.
And she's right.
I do, in fact, want rather than need.
But those two things are very different, right?
So the one-year-old needs care and attention and supervision to go tumbling down the stairs or play with electrical sockets and stuff, right?
So they need – I mean, that's – They need, right?
Babies need to eat every six hours.
There's a need.
The wants is different though, right?
And helping kids to differentiate between needs and wants is, I think, one of the primary jobs of a parent.
Otherwise, everything's screaming high priority and you can't have any organization in what you do, right?
Right.
Why did you have three kids?
I'm not saying you shouldn't have.
I'm just...
Especially without family support, right?
Yeah.
In hindsight, knowing how much more work it is with three versus two, it's like, oh man, we probably should have waited.
But we love parenting.
We love our kids.
But I just – I have this – I just – Part of my question, I also said that sometimes I hurt my kids and that frustration and selfishness grows to the point where sometimes I get aggressive and I'll yell or scream at my kids on occasion or even get physical with them sometimes and then afterwards I just feel like such a piece of crap.
I'm sorry to interrupt you.
I'm getting some wind noise from my microphone.
I don't know if you're breathing on it or if you're walking or if there's any kind of breeze or wind.
Sorry, I had a fan on.
It's off now.
Okay, thanks.
So, the yelling and the screaming, I get, of course.
What do you mean when you say you get physical?
Do you mean do you spank or hit them?
Well, initially, we did.
I spanked.
Mostly, it was my first son, probably between the ages of two and four, roughly.
Maybe stopped a little before he was four, kind of around the time I discovered Free Domain Radio.
So there was that.
An eerie coincidence.
How often did you spank him?
Maybe...
I don't think it was daily, but maybe like every other day.
Oh, wow.
And was it bare-bottom spanking?
No.
Right.
Right.
So, I mean, 100, 200 times, right?
Probably.
Probably.
And was it hard enough or painful enough for him to tear us and all that?
Exactly.
And it didn't work, right?
Not at all.
Of course not.
I mean, anything you have to do every other day is something that's not working, right?
Right.
And I found that doing that, I felt this sort of darkness inside of me, like I was just becoming a monster and I didn't like that.
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Right.
Now, of course, you have your own personal history with that as a child, right?
That's correct.
And I wonder if you can tell us a little bit more about that.
Well, my parents, my dad came from an abusive family.
He was beaten physically.
My mom was emotionally abused and neglected mostly, I think.
And so as a child, I was spanked quite regularly.
I honestly, I don't know when it started and I don't even know when it ended.
For sure it ended by the time I was 10 or 12 or 13 years old maybe.
Probably shortly around the...
Roughly around the time my parents got divorced, which I think was around 11 years old or something like that.
Maybe 13.
Right around that time anyway.
So yeah, I was spanked.
Discipline was basically...
You do as you're told or there's going to be punishment.
And the punishment was whatever it was that I hated, that's what the punishment was, which was spanking or being screamed at or being forced into my room.
I remember one time— So it's this weird kind of anti-empathy, right?
It's like my parents understand my needs only insofar as they can use them against me.
Yeah, I think so, yeah.
Yeah, but at the same time, there was like this sort of affection that they would also give me.
So, I mean, as a child, you latch on to your parents and you crave the affection.
And so I did.
But then also there was that mean, nasty side.
Right.
Which is, I mean, not uncommon, right?
Yeah, yeah, sure.
I mean it's like saying, well, I was addicted to heroin and there were never any highs.
It's like, well, no.
I mean the whole part of the point of addiction is you're chasing the high and escaping the low, right?
It's the two things that you need.
And so parents who never have any warmth or affection tend not to be very good at creating those kinds of – not creating like consciously or willfully, but they tend not to be very good at abuse, if that makes any sense.
Sure.
Sure.
I mean, nobody gets addicted to baked soda, right?
Because I hear the high sucks.
Right?
So I sort of want to just point that out, that the idea that, well, there was this abuse, but on the other hand, there was all this, right, great stuff, right?
I mean, a lot of abusive marriages, that the makeup sex is mind-blowing, right?
I mean, that there's so much passion and so much storm and stress and all that, that a lot of times there's a, and you can see this in A streetcar named desire.
There's this sexual chemistry that goes along with aggression and abuse that is very primal, right?
It's obviously very simian in a lot of ways, but not to say it's not very powerful.
So, I mean, I just wanted to point out that it's not like, well, there was this stuff, but on the other hand, it's like, well, it's almost like the same hand, if that makes sense.
I mean, there has to be this positive stuff.
Otherwise, the abuse doesn't really work as well.
And I'm not saying the whole point of it was abuse or anything like that, but I think I... I get that.
I sort of understand that.
Okay.
Well, I also wanted to add another experience that I think is pretty important and I think it happened more than once.
I had done something, I don't even know what, something supposedly had misbehaved and my parents sent me to my room and I just remember crying and crying and crying and there was this rule I was 10 minutes in my room, but it had to be 10 minutes of silence.
And if I tried to open the door, the timer would reset.
If I asked how much time was left, the timer would reset.
If I cried, the timer would reset.
I'm sorry.
I'm just feeling...
No, go ahead.
It's all right.
It's all right.
And so now...
So there's sort of an impossible situation because you're put in a situation where your feelings are incredibly negative and incredibly strong, but at the same time...
You are not allowed to express those feelings, right?
Exactly.
It's like me basically putting a hot iron down on your forehead and saying, don't flinch.
Pretty much.
What were you feeling just then?
Some of the memories of that sort of impossible situation of feel and don't feel?
Yeah, I just remember at some point, fairly young, maybe five or six years old, just Just realizing in my head, like, oh, crying is stupid.
Crying doesn't accomplish anything, so I'm just not going to cry anymore.
And since then, I just never really cried about anything.
Right.
And I would look at other people who cried and just think, oh, wow, you're dumb, or that's just so illogical.
Why are you crying?
It doesn't solve anything.
Right.
Right.
And what was your experience when you started listening to this conversation about all that stuff?
You mean starting to listen to FDR in general?
Yeah.
Oh, I mean, it was an eye-opener for sure.
Yeah.
Listening to a lot of the different calls and sort of making connections in my mind.
And I think I've come a long way.
My wife and I decided...
That we would start seeing a parenting counselor, which has helped a lot.
But still, I feel like I've got these emotional issues that I haven't dealt with, and I don't know how to deal with them.
Would you like to talk about any of those in particular, or would you like to pick one to sort of try and flesh through?
I was hoping maybe you could give me a little bit of clarity, moral clarity, on where I should be with my parents because I've always focused on the affection side and never on the abuse side.
And I've always been chasing after them to try to be the parent that I need them.
Even now, my dad is never around.
He hasn't been around ever since my parents got divorced.
And I've just always been chasing after him to be there for me.
And even now, it's like, hey, when are you going to come down to spend some time with the kids?
When are you going to come hang out with us or help me build a deck or do whatever?
And so you said your parents got divorced when you were 11.
Is that right?
Yeah, maybe 12.
I think 12.
And how old are you now?
32.
Alright, dude.
What am I going to say next?
I don't know.
Yeah, you do.
It's been 20 years.
Right?
Yeah.
It's been 20 years and what evidence do you have of any kind of significant change?
None whatsoever.
I've even sat down with them.
We have a dedication to empiricism here, right?
Yeah, that's true.
In any conflict between theory and evidence, what wins?
Evidence.
Evidence, right?
And this is true of science, of engineering, mathematics, you name it, right?
If I say there are five coconuts, there are four, I'm wrong, right?
If I think helium balloons fall down, I'm wrong, right?
Yep.
Because you can test it, right?
So you have a theory called My Dad Will Change and you have 20 years, 20 years of accumulated evidence, right?
Yeah.
So, I mean, if I have a theory about something in physics or whatever, you know, balsa wood makes fantastic foundational material for giant houses and I spent 20 years trying to build these houses, they keep falling down, right?
Do I say, well, you know, 21st year, man, this shit's really going to turn around, right?
I feel it.
I feel it.
It's gathering.
There's momentum, right?
Somewhere, somehow, right?
I had this intense nervousness calling into the show, not because I was nervous of talking to you or being on, you know, broadcast on the internet, but I just, I guess I knew that you were going to say that.
Right.
Right.
Yeah, look, I mean, I was talking about this with my daughter the other day, just about, because she was asking me, basically, do you think people can change?
And I said, it's a great question.
And it really is one of the most important questions you will ever ask in your life.
Can people change?
Will people change?
Well, can they change?
Yeah, I think they can change.
Of course they can.
I wouldn't do a show on philosophy.
I didn't think people could change, right?
Except determinists.
They can't change, right?
Will people change is much more of an important question, right?
Can they change?
Sure.
Will they change is the most essential question I think that you can ask in your relationships.
And I won't sort of go into the details, but I said that, you know, there are a couple of things that you can tell whether someone's going to change or not, right?
So I said, like, imagine if I'm like 400 pounds.
I'm 400 pounds.
And what if I say I'm not fat?
Am I ever going to lose weight?
She said, well, no.
I said, okay, so the first thing to lose weight is I have to say, I have to look in the mirror, I have to step on the scale, I have to go to the doctor, I have to whatever, look it up, and put in my BMI index, which would be, I guess, approximately infinity.
And then I have to at least say, look, I'm seriously overweight, right?
I mean, this is old hat for people in the human change business, which is, you have to admit that you have a problem if you're going to change, right?
So I said, first of all, people have to say, That there's a problem and it's their problem and that they have the power to change it and that they're in a negative state or have negative habits or doing something negative overall.
Does your father admit that he has a problem or a challenge?
He does and I've expressed to him in the most honest way that I can how I feel about it and he's basically says yes okay and you know he's he's been to a lot of counseling and And therapy, I think, over the years.
And so he's got these, you know...
Wait, wait, wait.
What do you mean you think?
What do you mean you think?
Not therapy as in gaining self-knowledge and becoming a better person.
More like going to crappy couples counseling because he's got a shitty relationship with his girlfriend that he's been with for the last 20 years.
Right, okay.
So, you know, he's got these techniques...
So what are the...
Sorry, what are the specific faults if your brother...
Sorry, if your father was on the...
The call now.
What are the specific faults that he would say when I said, listen, what did you do wrong?
Like I get these emails from parents from time to time saying, you know, my son doesn't want to talk to me, right?
It's your fault, you bald bastard.
And my question back is, look, what are his issues?
And they won't tell me.
And it's like, well, that's probably why they're not talking to you rather than some podcast on the internet, right?
Which is they can – look, if they wrote me back and said, well, you know, I spanked him or I – You know, my stepdad raped him and I didn't do anything or whatever it is.
I don't know what it is.
I mean, these people never – but it's an important thing, right?
If someone has an issue with you, the first thing you can – you know, what are their issues?
What are the issues that they have with you?
And, you know, I mean, if – and I'm always happy to help if I can, right?
I'm not saying I can do much, but I'm happy to help.
But if people aren't even willing to say that there's – I'm not even saying are the issues correct, right?
Are they legitimate?
I'm just saying what are they?
So if your dad were to be asked what your issues with him were, what would he say?
He would probably acknowledge that he hasn't been there for me, that he's missed out on a lot, and that he's put me secondary to his girlfriend and his girlfriend's kids.
I think that he would acknowledge that.
Well, I mean, those are things that he's done, and you said the phrase, the interesting thing is that you said he missed out on a lot, which is not your issue, but that would be his self-pity, right?
Yeah.
Because there's nothing in there about how you feel.
I mean, they're just empty descriptions, really, right?
Good point.
Yeah, that's true.
I mean, that's like therapy speak, and I really, I mean, I don't want to get off on a rant here, right?
Right.
But I don't...
I hate therapy speak.
You know, and people...
You can see people who've gone to crappy counseling, you know?
Like, yeah, I just want to give you your space.
I want to give you your boundaries, right?
Yeah, that's...
I don't know what boundaries mean, right?
Yeah, he's all over that kind of crap.
Yeah, so it's like, you know, when I wasn't there for them, and blah, blah, blah.
It's like, well, none of those are actually...
Like, I want the meaty base of the brain, two balls in your hand, simian, emotion speak, right?
Right, the fact that you...
He's been, like...
A distant and unavailable father has broken your heart in significant ways, right?
Yeah, for sure.
It's hampered your capacity to be an effective parent in a lot of ways.
You were emotionally tortured.
Listen, I'm telling you, man.
Scaring and punishing a kid and then saying, I'm going to punish you further if you express unhappiness.
It's sheer emotional torture.
I'm not using that phrase metaphorically.
It is emotional torture.
It's one thing to hit someone.
It's another thing to hit someone and say, I'm going to hit you again if you get upset at me hitting you the first time.
The first is aggression, but the second is sadism, right?
It's a whole different kettle of fish.
Yeah.
Sorry, I'm just...
I think that my dad tortured me.
I mean, what an asshole.
Well, I... I'm not going to dispute that.
Now, see, that's a non-therapy talk phrase, right?
Which is, I think, important.
It is.
I'm going to reset the timer, right?
It's one thing to lash out.
I'm not defending lashing out.
And it's one thing to lash out and hit your kid.
I mean, that's terrible enough.
But then this cold-eyed, sadistic calculation of, oh yeah, now we're going to set a fucking timer.
And if you make a sound, and if you try and get out of your room, and if we hear you crying, that timer gets reset, right?
That's calculated.
That's not a crime of passion.
That is a premeditated crime.
That's not manslaughter.
That's first degree.
That's planning.
That's calculation.
There's a whole theory.
And that's not the heat of the moment, right?
The heat of the moment is bad enough.
And I say this because, you know, I mean, I have talked a lot about my mom and...
But the reality I've said before, vicious, cruel?
Absolutely.
Raging, crazy?
Absolutely.
Sadist?
No.
No.
She lashed out.
But she did not emotionally torture.
So...
I am sort of aware of the difference.
And this, I am going to turn the thumb screws on you, and I'm going to turn them tighter if you express or show any pain.
I mean, that's Nazi, right?
That's not Charles Manson.
That's Joseph Goebbels, in my opinion.
It's pretty screwed up.
It is, right?
But tell me what you're feeling at this point, if you don't mind.
Just trying to take in what you're saying and internalize.
I mean, I think that my dad...
That's not a feeling.
That's not a feeling.
You may be describing some obscure mental process, but that's not a feeling.
Sorry, I wasn't allowed to feel for most of my life.
No, I know.
I know.
It's awful.
I don't know what I'm feeling, but it hurts.
Right.
Well, I imagine that there's some anger in there, right?
Yeah.
Some of the anger that Victims of child abuse experience is to do with the lash out, the lashing out.
But at least in the moment of lashing out, we can say that the parent is not in control.
Right?
The parent is not in control.
Like when my mother was lashing out physically, violently, she was at that moment or in those times, she was not in control, in my opinion, of her faculties.
Now, she was not in control of her faculties In the same way that a drunk is not in control of a car, right?
We don't say, oh, well, that's fine, right?
We say, well, okay, we recognize that you weren't in control of the car when you were drunk, but we also recognize that you are responsible for getting behind the wheel of a car drunk, right?
But it's still quite...
If some guy gets blotto...
And runs over your dog.
That's terrible enough.
But if some guy is sober and aims at your dog with the car, isn't that just a different level of hell?
Yeah, for sure.
Right?
So the hitting, the lashing out, so that, I mean, is terrible enough.
And all parents who do that are fully responsible for For not being fully responsible, right?
Because they didn't do the work.
They chose to have kids.
But the after-the-fact, conscious, cold, calculated cruelty with timers, you cannot call that a crime of passion, right?
Because it's not.
That is a crime of willful thumbscrew turning soul destruction or attempted.
So why would they do that?
Thank you.
Thank you.
I don't understand.
I mean, I can tell you why I think they would do that, but I'm questioning why it matters.
I guess it doesn't matter.
Because my concern is, because also I was very conscious that when you, as I always am, I always listen to the very, very first thing.
Here's a clue, right?
I always listen to the very first thing.
That people told me.
And what's the very first thing you told me about your parents?
I'm not sure.
Why don't you remind me?
You said, you told me, before you told me anything they did, you said, my parents came from abusive childhoods, abusive backgrounds.
Right?
So I'm still making excuses for them.
My concern is that you're looking for causality in order to pretend that Not getting angry is maturity, right?
Because if I can say, well, your father was trying to do X, Y, and Z based upon his childhood, let's say that that was possible to formulate and be accurate about.
Well, then the great temptation of understanding is excessive sympathy, right?
So my concern is if you're looking for causal factors, you're looking to find a way to not be angry.
Speaking of causal factors, there's something else I should probably tell you.
The reason that my parents got divorced is because around the time I was eight or nine, somewhere in there, my mom was, in the most literal sense, she was brainwashed by a religious psychopath.
Into thinking that she was...
And this was all done in secret.
Nobody knew about it for quite some time.
I only just found out about it about two years ago.
So she was brainwashed into thinking that she was married to one of this psychopath guys' several wives.
And they would have sex all over the place, public parks and all these different places.
And who knows what other kinds of things they did.
I think this went on for about a year.
When my dad found out, he went over to his place, beat the shit out of him, got my mom into some kind of expert in deprogramming people that have been brainwashed.
She suffered from PTSD and was basically an even worse mother from that point on and kicked my dad out of the house.
They got divorced.
So from that point on, about 12 years of age until I left, I was raised mostly by my mom.
And, I mean, she was not the greatest mom in the world, but...
That's how it went.
So she's married to your dad, she meets some charismatic cult leader, and he indoctrinates her into basically becoming one of his wives and having sex all over the place?
Yeah.
And your dad was like not aware of this?
Nope.
But knew where the guy lived?
Yeah.
How did he know where the guy lived?
He had come over...
Before then, I don't know.
I guess he was a friend or something.
Somehow he knew him.
Wait, a friend of whose?
He was like a friend of the family.
I don't know how they met.
It was like...
Oh my god, are you kidding me?
Yeah.
The friend of whose family?
Of like my mom and dad.
Like they knew this guy and his wife and...
Oh, they knew one of his wives?
Yeah.
Yeah.
I don't know how many he had.
And was there...
To your knowledge, was there any kind of existential or metaphysical belief system around why the cult leader needed to spray his seed like a toad in a waterfall?
Was there like, this will bring about the second coming, or third, or fifth, or I don't know.
Honestly, I haven't.
I'm too scared to talk to my mom about it, because I don't know.
I just feel like if I talk to her...
It's gonna be ugly and so and I just haven't talked to my dad more about it to get more details out of him.
So yeah, I don't know what the crazy religious wacko beliefs were but...
Wow, that's some crazy stuff man, I'm telling you.
So your parents were friends with like a truly sexually predatory, hideous, manipulative, brain-destroying cult leader.
Yeah, and the way my dad tells it, he was, I mean, the most likable guy you've ever met.
So charismatic and polite and just such a people person.
And just everybody loved him and looked up to him and thought he was just so awesome.
And so, I mean, he was happy to have him as a friend, quote, friend, you know, have him over once a month or whatever.
So your dad has learned nothing.
He basically is making excuses for himself, which is why you want to make excuses for him too.
Tell me more.
Well, I don't know.
I mean, if it was revealed that a close family friend of mine turned out to be some monstrous, soul-destroying sexual predator or cult leader or whatever, I would be like, well, shit, how did I miss that?
Yeah.
As opposed to, well, he had everyone fooled and everyone thought he was great, right?
Sure, yeah.
Which is crap.
You can't hide that kind of stuff from sane people.
Yeah.
So, he's into making excuses, right?
Yeah.
I mean, he may have met the guy and introduced this guy to your mom, right?
Good job!
Right?
Yeah.
And he's a predator, and my mom, you know, with her emotional history, was easy prey.
Ah, look, there's another excuse for you.
Man, oh man.
I'm just full of them.
Come on.
You understand this, right?
This is why I called you Steph, because I need you to just tell me, cut through the crap for me.
Right, because the more excuse you give to your parents, the more excuse you would give to your own parenting.
There's not multi-dial, right?
Like, you know, equalizers?
You can move those dials up and down, right?
Individually.
Individually.
That's not how philosophy works.
There's no multi-dial.
There's no EQ band selectors in philosophy.
There's one giant dial, right?
Goes up and down.
Responsibility.
Because people want to screw around with these dials, right?
Like, no violence for private citizens.
Violence for state is fine.
No, no, no.
One dial.
That's called universality, right?
Or people want to say, well, you see, but my parents...
I want to take responsibility for my own parents.
It could be better.
But my parents had no choice and...
They came from bad childhoods and so on, right?
So I want to dial up responsibility for me and dial down responsibility for my parents, right?
Like there's just this infinite EQ band of nudge, whatever the shit you want out of things, and somehow that's called the truth, right?
But it doesn't work.
It doesn't work in any universal discipline.
You can't say, well, you know, gravity for blue rocks, well, that's a big deal.
Gravity for yellow rocks, let's dial that down a little bit, right?
It just doesn't work.
If you have a universal theory, you get one giant dial.
There's not all these little dials that you can change, right?
And this is probably what you're colliding into, right?
The collision is that you wish to raise responsibility for yourself as a parent, but at the same time, because of your history with your parents and because of their selfish needs, you must dial down responsibility for them, right?
And this is breaking things up in your hands, right?
I've put myself in the position of being the parent or the alpha, essentially.
As you take responsibility for your own parenting and realize your own capacity for change, you will get more angry at your parents, right?
The only way that you diffuse the necessary anger that you have towards your parents is by pretending that That they're not morally responsible for their parenting, right?
But at the same time, you are attempting to expand your moral responsibility as a parent, right?
You can't have it both ways.
This may sound like an abstract discussion to some people, but it's not.
It's absolutely not.
The processing of universals is the job of the unconscious, and if we feed it opposite, it breaks.
And when it breaks, we break.
And the people around us break.
Let's say, I mean, you had a terrible childhood, right?
An ACE score of five.
Six.
No, five, sorry.
Right?
So you had verbal abuse and threats, physical abuse, non-spanking, you had neglect, parents divorced, household member depressed, mentally ill, or suicide attempts, and of course, mom involved in sexually predatory cult leader activities, right?
Yeah.
So, you had a bad childhood, and I'm incredibly sorry about that.
I mean, there's not much that could go wrong that didn't go wrong, right?
But if you're able to overcome that and be a good parent, then you're feeding a universal into your unconscious.
And you can't do it without your unconscious, without your subconscious.
You can't do it.
Because change...
It's like saying, well, I can become a concert pianist by...
Having a light-up piano keyboard that tells me which keys to press, right?
Can't work.
It needs to be automated.
It needs to become automatic, right?
But for it to become automatic means that the principles have got to be deeply absorbed into the unconscious, right?
Have you ever liked a sport that you don't play and you watch it?
No, I hate watching sports.
All right.
Well...
So there's some sports that I like that I don't play.
I've never really watched sports as an adult, but I watched them as a kid.
Or sports that I wasn't good at.
And you'd feel, like you watch guys who are watching football, you know, and they've got like 50 pounds of beer guts spilling over their knees as they're leading forward in their lazy boys, you know, telling the guy to run.
And maybe their legs are doing these tiny little dances that look like footwork from the weeble-shaped people in WALL-E, right?
Yeah.
And they're like, ah!
Right?
But they don't have the experience of having done it.
They kind of get it because they've watched it a lot.
But they don't have the experience of doing it.
And so if you put them out on the field, they'll...
Well, they'll suck hard, right?
Yeah, for sure.
And so if you want to become an expert at something, it's got to become automated in the unconscious.
Right.
Which is why you can't just white-knuckle your way through stuff.
It's got to become automated in the unconscious, but for it to become automated in the unconscious, it has to be universal.
Like, imagine trying to become a really good catcher at a baseball game when some jerk is dialing up and down the gravity randomly.
Could you ever do it?
No.
No, you couldn't, right?
Simply, it would be impossible.
Because you wouldn't be able to universalize Air friction, ball weight, gravity, whatever, right?
And because of that, you would never become an expert at something because you couldn't universalize it.
Now, if you want to become an expert parent, what you're saying to yourself, what you must say to yourself is, screw history.
I'm going to do better, right?
My history is not an excuse for the future, right?
I don't get a get-out-of-jail-free card because Because I grew up in jail, right?
Now, that, when you absorb that, it creates a fundamental schism between you and your parents, if your parents were the abusive ones.
And the fundamental opposition or dichotomy or division is this.
If you can overcome your childhood and be a better parent, then your parents could have done it too, right?
Or you have to say...
My parents had no choice.
I am a parent who has choice.
Therefore, my parents and I must be fundamentally different animals.
Right?
You either alienate them in a quasi-biological sense or you alienate them in a moral sense.
So, if you accept that parents can improve and that bad childhoods are not the cause...
Bad childhoods are not the cause of bad parenting.
Bad childhoods can be the cause of excellent parenting, Trevor.
I speak with myself as an example.
It's like saying that a family history of heart disease must inevitably result in people weighing 300 pounds and dying of heart attacks at the age of 40, right?
No!
No, no, no, no.
If I know that I have a family history of heart disease, What am I going to do?
I'm going to live incredibly healthy, right?
Yeah, yeah, of course.
You can do everything you can to avoid it.
Right, so if my brother decides to, well, you know, I'm going to be dead of a heart attack anyway, so I might as well enjoy all the crap and no exercise and whatever, right?
Well, that's a self-fulfilling prophecy, and he gets a heart attack.
He says, well, I knew it, right?
Well, it happened because he knew it.
And...
The other brother may end up living longer because of the family history of heart disease, right?
Yeah, longer than even if he didn't have the family history of heart disease.
Right.
Right.
My family on both sides has a history of significant mental health problems like electroshock therapy in the asylum, you name it.
So, that's the legacy that was handed to me, right?
That's what's in the genes.
That's what's in the history, right?
So, what's my job?
Well, as an internet philosopher, your mind has got to be sharp, and it is.
Right.
But what's my job knowing my genetic or family history or I don't know whether it's genes or environment.
It doesn't really matter.
Right?
What is my job if I'm not stupid when I know that my family on both sides has significant histories of taking a one-way ticket to crazy town?
Yeah.
Well, you're going to do everything you can to avoid that, right?
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah.
You know, if we are born into Maseratis where the gas is pressed straight down to the metal and it's filled with jet fuel, you better become a pretty goddamn good driver pretty damn quick, right?
Otherwise, you're going to crash, right?
So knowing that you come from a bad history is cause...
Cause for good behavior, for the right thing to do, right?
My parents got divorced.
I'd better be really, really careful about who I get married to, right?
Yep.
A lot of my family ends up institutionalized.
I better be really focused on good and healthy thinking practices, right?
This is why – and I'm not saying this is you fundamentally because it's such a common idea and it's so fundamentally incorrect.
The idea that a bad environment leads to a bad outcome is bullshit.
It is bullshit.
Bad outcomes can lead to incredibly positive – sorry, bad origins can lead to incredibly positive outcomes.
Well, you know, my mom was on welfare, so I guess I just never learned any better.
Bullshit!
Your mom was on welfare, and therefore, you should have done everything you could to avoid that same situation, because you know intimately how badly it turns out, right?
Yeah, exactly.
My mom relied on her looks, and then when she hit 40, couldn't get out of bed, because she was so depressed at having failed to cash in.
Her Barbie doll.
For a Ken Bucket O'Cash, right?
So, I don't want you to focus.
You know, I was a damn fine looking young man.
Never wanted to focus on looks.
Always developed intellect, personality, ability.
So, when you say to me, the first thing that you do to introduce these nasty people is to say they had bad childhoods.
This is an appeal for terrible, terrible and misplaced sympathy.
No.
If you had a bad childhood, you are damn well a thousand times more responsible for not reproducing it because you know how bad it is, right?
Yeah, definitely.
The idea that coming from a bad environment gives you some excuse for being a bad parent is completely insane.
You have to have stopped it.
Because you know exactly how bad it is, right?
I can understand the average muggle who has had an averagely bad childhood and doesn't know the difference.
I can understand them not throwing themselves heart and soul into improvement.
But people who actually did have a bad childhood and know it, the idea that this gives them some kind of excuse is madness.
There's no excuse for people from a bad childhood reproducing it on their kids.
They know exactly how terrible and awful and horrible it is.
I'm not responsible for rebutting crazy stuff that's written in Arabic or Hebrew or something.
I don't speak those languages, right?
But if I do speak those languages intimately, my responsibility level has just gone up, right?
I may not have to do it, but it's certainly possible for me to do it now, right?
Now, as you...
Take more responsibility for yourself.
Your unconscious universalization engine will start granting more responsibility to your parents.
It's inevitable, right?
Yeah.
I mean it's like – otherwise, it's like saying, well, when I throw a ball to my dad, it's affected by gravity X. But when he throws it back to me, it's affected by gravity pi X, right?
It doesn't make any sense.
You're on the same planet.
You're throwing a ball back and forth, right?
Yeah.
So I just – I know that that was a long thing to talk about, but I think it's really essential to fundamentally understand that when you improve your parenting, you will run into the resistance of your parents never wanting you to know or to truly understand how much parenting can be improved, right?
Because if you can do it, they could have done it, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
We lost the emotion there, right?
Completely?
Was it too abstract what I was talking about?
Yeah.
I suppose.
Sorry, still...
No, I mean, it makes sense.
I'll go back through and listen to it again and try to really internalize the emotions, I guess, but...
Sorry, my wife passed me a note.
She wanted me to tell you that the other thing with my mom is...
I mean, even before the brainwashing, she wasn't very smart.
And since the brainwashing...
So it sounds like a mighty light load, right?
Well, and after...
Because she has PTSD from it, I guess there's some pretty nasty brain effects.
And she's even dumber now.
And so...
And she's so hypersensitive.
She cannot take any criticism.
This is why I haven't talked to her about any of these issues because I know it'll just be this huge, huge emotional ordeal and she won't sleep for weeks and she'll be...
I mean, it's just a total...
I just feel like I can't talk to her.
Because she has these hysterical overreactions?
Yep.
Yep.
And does she always have them when it comes to criticism?
Yeah.
Alright, so then she's not dumb, right?
Because she has these emotional overreactions exactly at the point where her self-interest is harmed in the moment, right?
Sure, yeah.
And she has PTSD, you say, from all of this manipulation and control, right?
But you know why she was susceptible to this manipulation and control, right?
Maybe.
Why don't you enlighten me?
Well, your first impulse will probably be to tell me that it's about her childhood, right?
No.
No.
She was susceptible to brainwashing and manipulation and control because in her parenting and in your father's parenting, they did that to you.
I mean, how is she supposed to fight some stranger using the same goddamn techniques on her that your father and mother used on you?
What's she going to say?
That shit's totally wrong?
That means how they're parenting.
Oh, wow.
Yeah, exactly.
It's not the childhood that did it.
It's the adulthood.
It's not what happened to her as a child that caused her to be susceptible to this stuff.
It's what she did to her children that caused her to be susceptible.
Huh.
And now, she's still manipulating, right?
Because she's still only focused on her own needs, right?
Well, something my son is saying is bothering me, so I'm going to just go screaming off into the other room, right?
Yeah.
All right, so it's just the same shit, right?
Different pile, same shit.
Her needs, her needs, her needs, right?
You say, well, that's because of her childhood.
Well, I assume that your mom is in her 50s or 60s.
You know, it's a little late in the goddamn day to be blaming shit on stuff that happened 50 years ago, right?
Yeah.
Like, at some point, there's a statute of limitations on childhood stuff, right?
Yeah, sure.
Come on.
I mean, I remember when I was younger, a friend of mine's mom was still having the same bitchy, shitty, empty conversations with her own mother when the mom was 60 and the mom was – one mom was 60 and the other mom was 85.
And they were still just back and forth over the same stupid shit, stuff that happened 50 years ago, 40 years ago.
I like it.
Oh my god.
And I remember thinking like, wow.
You don't, you know, nothing changes unless you change it.
This is fundamentally true about relationships, personality to the world.
Human personality, as Jung famously observed, is one of the most inert substances in the known universe.
It makes a black hole look like a gypsy moth aerobic dancer.
Right, so your mom is still doing the same stuff and you're not going to change, right?
I mean, it's just not going to happen.
No.
But the idea that, well, you see, there was this cult leader and now she has PTSD. Again, all you're doing is taking away her responsibility.
Yeah, I see that.
And you see, when you take away people's responsibility, then you get to call not getting angry at them wisdom and maturity, which it's not.
It's not.
It's not.
It's prudence as a child and cowardice as an adult.
To not get angry at those who had power over you.
Right?
As a child, yeah, okay, got it.
They can hit you, they can beat you, they can withhold your food, they can get you put on these horrible drugs, SSRIs and so on.
So yeah, I mean, you don't piss off the gods when you're in prison because they can do all kinds of unholy shit to you, right?
Yeah.
But as an adult, to not get angry at those who've done you wrong, it gets pretty close to cowardice after a while.
And I'm not calling you a coward, I'm just saying that If the trend continues and is not examined, because if you take away people's responsibility, then it actually becomes immature to get angry at them, right?
Like if someone is genuinely – like if someone is sleepwalking and hits me, I don't press charges, right?
Yeah, of course.
Because they're not responsible, right?
If they've been sleepwalking and hitting people for five years and have never gone to see a specialist, well, okay, now we're talking.
But let's say it's the very first time, right?
Someone has an epileptic attack for the very first time with no history, no warning, and they punch me in the stomach, right?
I'm not going to press charges because that person is a terrible accident.
I wish them the very best, right?
Yeah.
You know, if any adult had punched me in the groin as often as my daughter's elbow seemed to have it happen from time to time...
I mean, they'd be up on charges, right?
So if we take away people's responsibility, then we get to reframe our anger as immaturity, which is how the cycle repeats itself.
Well, I am...
I'm hellbent on becoming a great dad.
Like I say, I've been going to parenting, counseling, we've been reading books, we've been going to courses, and I keep coming up with this emotional issue, and that's why I wanted to call in and have you just give me the straight, straight honest cut through all the crap for me so I can see it so that I can internalize the anger.
All right.
Well, I'll tell you then that your parents were 100 percent responsible for what they did to you.
Thank you.
It was not their childhoods.
It was not a cult leader.
It was not any of that stuff.
They were 100% responsible for what they did to you.
And the reason that they did what they did to you was because, Trevor, they liked it.
Because they liked it.
And because their needs come first.
Because they got a rush, they got their dopamine hit, they got to exercise power, they got to exercise control, and that makes people, primitive people, feel really good.
They liked it.
It made them feel strong, it made them feel competent, it made them feel in control, which is what all organisms do.
Strive for control at the moment.
All organisms strive for control at the moment in the absence of self-knowledge, including human beings who are the only ones capable of self-knowledge.
So they did it because they liked it.
That's the only answer that you need to know.
Why did they like it?
Oh, who gives a shit?
Yeah.
You know, I mean, just like the zebra running from the lion.
Why is he chasing me?
No, no.
Just run.
The motives don't matter.
What matters is your flying hooves, right?
Flying hooves of safety matter.
Not trying to empathize with predators, right?
They did it because they liked it.
Because it was a positive emotional experience for them.
That's pretty sick.
It is.
And I'll tell you something else that's even worse.
They did it because not only did it make them feel good in the moment, but they gave excuses in the aftermath, right?
The great pickpocketing of the future conscience is the manufacturing of excuses.
Excuses are the quicksand of the future wherein we push an endless conveyor belt of empty-faced children.
I hate excuses.
I hate, hate, hate excuses.
They are the demon of my philosophical religion.
Excuses are promises of repetition.
It's all it is.
Whatever you excuse, you are just putting on auto-repeat.
We finally grow when we run out of excuses for ourselves and for other people.
Fuck excuses.
Excuses of the paralysis of the supposedly moving legs of mankind.
Excuses of ways of saying, I refuse to accept responsibility.
I am instead going to assign blame to factors outside myself which I cannot control.
Which I refuse to control.
And I don't mind people who make excuses as long as they also give excuses.
But your parents make excuses for their own behavior while giving you no excuses for your behavior as a child.
It's the hypocrisy of people who make excuses that is so repulsive.
And when you see somebody spouting excuses, my particular instinct is to run at roughly 12 light speeds in the opposite direction.
Because excuses are abuses.
Excuse justifies abuse, and excuses justify and promise, guarantee, I would argue, a repetition of abuses.
Whatever we excuse, we promise to reenact.
And excuses are much easier in the moment.
And the degree to which we allow excuses...
To live in the world is the degree to which we guarantee future dysfunction across the world.
Right?
So when you introduce your parents to me as, well, they had bad childhoods, I know what the score is.
And I also know that you have the nobility of mind and heart, Trevor, to not want to give yourself excuses anymore.
But if you won't take excuses, you have to find all the people in your life who exude guilty, horrible, hot Squitty ink excuses around them and clear all that muck away and say, no, no, no, no, my friends.
You are 100% responsible for what you did.
It was not the fault of a cult leader.
It was not the fault of your shitty parents.
It was not the fault of your genes or your stars or your history or your environment or your race or your gender or your socioeconomic class or your education or your lack of education.
It was you.
You made a sovereign choice to allow excuses in your life and you got the momentary relief from painful responsibility and you fucked yourself and everyone else for all the eternity that excuses generate in the repetition of dysfunction in the human condition.
People who make excuses make problems.
There are no excuses for excuses.
We stand in the light of knowledge and history and philosophy and we say, two excuses be gone.
I wish there was a way to call in an exorcist philosophy airstrike on all of the squid-like, squalling, ghostly, venom, vampiric fog excuse capacities of the human race.
Excuses are – I'm sorry I punched you.
It wasn't my fault.
Stand still.
I want to punch you again.
I'm sorry I punched you.
It wasn't my fault.
Stand still so I can punch you again.
I'm sorry I punched you.
It wasn't my fault.
Stand still so I can punch you again.
And when we get bored of that, and listen, you can literally play that for about 20 years and understand the relationship with your dad, when we get tired of that, we grow.
When we get tired of the excuses, we grow, and not until.
There was no excuse for you hitting your son.
You know that, right?
Absolutely.
Doesn't mean that you're some irretrievably bad person.
I'm not trying to tell you that, and don't slide into the self-pity of self-attack.
No.
Because self-attack is another form of excuse, right?
It's what your mom does, I assume, right?
Part of the hysteria is, oh, so now I'm just a terrible person.
Oh, absolutely.
Self-attack is, yeah, yeah, oh, so now I've done nothing right, right?
Yeah.
I mean, that's all horrific and boring stuff, too.
That's stupid.
It's so predictable.
Yeah, so self-attack is just another way of excusing yourself.
And it's a ridiculous ad hominem that actually kind of becomes true in the execution.
Oh, so you're bringing up any complaints, so you're saying I'm just a basically selfish and horrible person.
It's like, well, if you do this when I bring up complaints, you're certainly making the case for it, Mom, right?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So, no.
The degree to which we do not hold human beings accountable for their goddamn actions is the degree to which we ensure that those negative actions will repeat.
Right?
Because there are abusers and there are enablers.
And anybody who accepts Or provides excuses for abusers is an enabler.
So when you introduced your parents to me, who sound like they're in the top 100 shitty parents of this show, and that's not a good list to be in, with, but they had bad childhoods, but there was a cult leader, but, but, but, right?
No.
No, no, no.
No.
No excuses.
No excuses.
Fuck them.
They took the tender heart of a young boy and your heart is tender and your heart is open and your heart is admirable to me.
They took the tender heart of a young boy and turned it against itself and they took the desires of a young boy and turned them into punishments.
Therefore, to want is to hurt, right?
To need is to bleed, right?
To love Is to fear.
They turned all the good things in your heart against you and turned all the joys that you anticipated into fears that you knew would happen in the environment you were in.
Fuck that.
That is brutal.
That is evil.
And don't tell me about bad childhoods making bad people.
Fuck that.
You wouldn't be calling into this goddamn show if that was true because I had a bad enough childhood to turn me into Stalin if I needed to.
Bad childhoods do not make bad people.
Excuses make bad people.
And do not participate in excuses.
Do not support them.
Do not acknowledge them.
Do not respect them.
Do not listen to them without opposition.
Do not take out the sword of truth and cut excuses off at the knees if need be.
Do not call in airstrikes of demonic shitstorms from the high vantage point of philosophical truth on excuses if need be.
Do not participate in excuses.
Do not give them.
Excuses are the welfare state of moral philosophy.
They strip from the earned what is rightfully theirs and give as disgusted roadkill plunder to those who have not earned it.
No.
No excuses for your parents.
And no excuses for you.
And no excuses for me.
Yeah.
That feels right, Steph.
That's what I needed.
I was just full of excuses.
I think I probably still am.
But no, there were survival mechanisms.
Understand that you were forced to make excuses.
Right?
Because if you don't give excuses to evil, evil attacks you more.
So while you're still under the power of evil, you have to mouth excuses, of course.
Yeah.
I mean, it's like saying, well, you know, when I was in prison, I was really quite an early riser, and I liked walking around in little eight-foot circles.
It's like, no, that's just the cell you were in, right?
Seven o'clock, you got up, and you didn't get out of your cell, right?
Right.
Yeah, my dad is – it's perfectly natural.
He's been full of excuses.
I mean I remember trying to – as a kid just crying, Dad, why won't you play with me?
Why won't you come and play this game with me?
Or he'd start some project and then he'd never finish it.
I remember we were going to build this go-kart once and we got so far as to build a frame.
He's a carpenter.
He's a pretty handy guy.
And then it was just one excuse after another why we could never finish it.
And I had to internalize that, and everyone else was all, oh, you must be so sad, and I was like, no, I mean, it's okay, you know, this and this and this reason, so it's okay.
So my whole life, I've been internalizing all of these excuses for their shitty parenting.
Right.
But then, because you haven't got a rational and moral and angry view of the hell scene of your childhood, the hellscape of your childhood, now...
You've turned your children into your parents.
And this is so, so common.
And this is why people don't understand why they get so angry at their children.
They get so angry at their children because their children are like their parents.
And you've already told me this to me explicitly more than once.
And do you know what that is?
That they want my attention all the time?
No.
What is it?
Well, could you have any needs that contradicted your parents' needs?
Oh, of course.
No, of course not.
Could you have any needs that contradicted your parents' needs when you were a child?
Well, if I need food and shelter and stuff.
No, no, no.
Emotional needs.
Not the conceit.
Food and shelter doesn't count because if your parents don't meet those needs, they go to jail, which is not what your parents want, right?
So they're not meeting your needs.
They're meeting their needs to not go to jail, right?
Sure, yeah.
Okay, so you wanted to finish the go-kart.
Now, if you had really been demanding and pestering and so on and insistent with your needs with regards to your father and your go-kart, what would have happened?
It still wouldn't have got done.
No, but what would have happened?
What would have happened emotionally?
Oh, I'd be sad.
I'd be devastated.
I was so excited about that go-kart.
Okay.
What would he have done?
Let's say he made a promise.
I'm sure he did at some point.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I promise we'll finish it, right?
Yeah.
And if you said, Dad, you promised.
No more excuses.
Get out here and help me.
And be happy about it because you promised.
And I trusted you.
So do it.
What would he have done?
Probably made more excuses.
Alright.
And if you had been insistent?
Yeah, no excuses.
You promised.
I don't know.
I guess he might have eventually given in and said, okay, let's go do it.
Absolutely not.
You don't think so?
No.
Because if he had done that, you'd have had a go-kart.
That would have worked.
Yeah.
Right?
Because if insistence had worked with your father, then you would have been insistent.
Because children do what works, right?
Yeah.
Kids are smart.
They do what works.
And if insistence...
I mean, have you ever seen kids try to get candy?
Right?
Trying to get sugar?
They'll do what works.
You've got kids.
You know what it's like.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah.
You know, as I say to my daughter, hey, hey.
You got your plotting face on, haven't you?
When she's asking me the first of 20 questions that's going to lead me to giving her sugar, I know.
It's a question out of nowhere.
And originally I was like, oh, well, she's interested in this.
How cool, right?
And then after 20 questions, I find myself stuffing an O. Henry down her throat.
I mean, I'm like, you got your plotting face on, haven't you, right?
So kids do what works.
And if...
If nagging your dad had gotten you what you wanted, you would have nagged your dad.
Right?
So there's a reason why you didn't.
And you've already told me that reason, but you're in doublethink land, so you can't get to it now, right?
Help me, Steph.
Pull me out of doublethink land.
What would your dad have done if you had been insistent about your needs?
He probably would have gotten upset.
Right.
And then what?
And then I would get in trouble or get hit or get yelled at and sent away and...
And I can tell you, if I understand your dad correctly, and you can of course tell me, don't let my theories or thoughts trump your experience, but you already told me that your dad found out what you wanted in order to hurt you with it, right?
Yeah.
So, your dad, if you had expressed such a hungry desire for him to finish the go-kart and how much you wanted him to finish the go-kart, I can tell you what your dad would have done the next time he was really angry at you.
Said that we're not going to finish the go-kart because I did something that set him off.
Nope.
Not enough.
He would have taken his boot and smashed that go-kart to pieces.
Because as long as the go-kart's there, right, you can still have hope.
Or he would have given the go-kart away.
Or he would have done something to remove the go-kart and then say, that's what happens when you're bad.
Am I right?
Yeah, actually, you know what?
He kind of did that.
He took it out to a friend's house that had an acreage because it was, oh, well, they've got more room, so we're just going to leave it out at their place.
And then that's where it started to rust and eventually ended up in the dump.
Right.
Yeah, but, I mean, that's only because you weren't insistent, right?
But if you had been insistent, then he would have gone, oh, well, that's what Trevor was really interested in, so I can really – that's the best way to hurt him, right?
You know, a torturer does not study anatomy to make you feel better.
But to find out where your nerve centers are and how you can do the most damage, the most pain with the least physical damage, right?
Right.
So for you, to express needs, to express preferences is to be punished more exquisitely, right?
So with your parents, you cannot express a preference with them because it makes you vulnerable to being attacked, right?
To being further hurt.
And now, guess what?
You have children that you cannot express preferences towards, so they're kind of like your parents.
Oh, wow.
You're helpless now like you were helpless then, right?
Yeah.
Oh, geez.
Still, you don't have an identity.
Still, you can't have any preferences.
Still, you can't will anything.
Still, you're as helpless as the day you were born and the years you were raised, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's exactly right.
Which is why you get angry.
You're not hitting your son, you're hitting your dad.
Oh man.
And your dad was not hitting you, he was hitting his dad, right?
It's not the young innocent souls that we're hitting, it's the ancient evil ones.
It's got nothing to do with your son.
And your frustration and your anger and your helplessness is because you're 10 again and you're locked in your room.
Only now, the helpless – the people who make you feel helpless are your children rather than your parents.
And you say – because I asked you, why did you have more kids?
You're like, oh man, if we'd have known, right?
Like there's no way you could have known.
You couldn't have talked to people.
You couldn't have looked it up.
You couldn't have asked anyone, right?
Hey, what's it like with three rather than two?
Oh my god, it's so much more, right?
You were in hot pursuit of helplessness, my friend.
Helplessness is what I call your Simon the Boxer, and if you haven't read Real-Time Relationships, you can check out that chapter.
It's at freedommanradio.com slash free, but helplessness is your heroine, my friend.
It's how you were raised as a kid, and it's how you perceive your life as a parent.
So, I've experienced this.
Everyone does.
When my daughter was like a year or 18 months old or something like that, she was just, she was upset about something and she, you know, I think it was a year because she didn't really have any words yet, just a few.
She was upset about something.
She was screaming at me.
I swear to God, she looked almost identical to my mom.
Really?
Oh God, yeah.
I mean, who the hell screams at you but abusive parents and babies?
Right?
Yeah.
And I knew it.
I was aware.
It's like, holy crap.
Shouldn't you have a German accent in that yell there?
Shouldn't you be smoking and not eating?
Right?
Because your hips are more important than your lungs.
Right?
I mean, so, yeah.
I mean, it was, yeah, very clear.
Oh, man.
That makes so much sense.
Wow.
Our kids are our parents.
And it's not their fault.
Obviously, right?
It wasn't your fault that your dad had a shitty childhood.
And it's not your kid's fault that you had a shitty childhood.
It's not your fault either, right?
It's your fault.
It's your responsibility to change it now, right?
Yeah.
Yeah, definitely.
But that's, you know, who are the people in our lives?
Most often they're the hand puppets of historical abusers.
Right.
Now you have still no capacity to express preferences and, right?
Right.
Now it's selfish for you to have a self, right?
Why?
You've got to have a self.
What do you want to teach your children?
You want to teach your children that other people just self-erase around them so that they can do whatever they want?
No.
Yeah, like today, you know, I spent most of the morning playing with my daughter and then we spent the evening playing.
It was a huge amount of fun with some kids we met and it was just – it was a blast with the kids we met.
The parents were like, I don't think I've ever seen my children so well entertained.
I was just inventing game after game to play for about an hour and a half.
It was great fun.
But in between, the morning play and the evening play, I spent an hour reading.
Grinding my way through, literally, it is a grind at times.
Fifty Shades of Grey, because the movie is coming out and I want to do a review.
It's quite fascinating.
I won't get into it here and now other than to say I can't believe anybody has any problems with the sex scenes in Ayn Rand's novels when they've read this and it's been universally cheered by a lot of women.
But my daughter was like, well, I want you to play with me.
I'm like, yeah, I get that.
I recognize and understand that you want me to play with you.
But I want to read.
And I did.
And lo and behold, she...
Made some beautiful drawings.
And she's like, oh, I want you to play with me now.
Nope.
I want another 12 minutes.
I know I have to say 12 because I want 10, right?
She's going to whittle it down.
And so we did the 10 minutes and went out and played.
It was great.
But how am I servicing her if I become like this empty, automated clown robot designed to amuse her?
How is that giving her a realistic sense of expectations?
And she likes playing these verbal games, which I won't sort of get into here.
And I'll play them for a while.
And then I say, nope, I'd like a conversation.
I don't want to role play.
I don't want to like a conversation.
I said, I became a father.
I became a husband.
I became a father to have good conversations.
And she took her a little while because she said, well, don't you like playing?
I said, I love playing.
That's not all I love, right?
So when I have to go to a computer store because I have to get the endless conveyor belt of technical doodads this show requires, I might as well just build a Best Buy in the basement for God's sakes.
Anyway, but I said, when you come to the computer store, you like it for about 10 minutes, and then you're bored, right?
And she's like, yeah, yeah, that's right.
And I said, so you like something, and then you want to do something different, right?
And I said, so playing for me is fun, and I obviously like it for more than 10 minutes, but I want conversation, right?
I'm happy to play checkers.
She just learned checkers and she's actually pretty good.
But I like checkers.
But I like conversation as well.
And after some time of checkers or some time of...
I want conversation.
I want to talk about something that's important to you, that's important to me.
We'll find a good topic.
And we do.
But I don't see how I'm serving her at all by not having any needs of my own.
Your parents were selfish.
By you being selfless, aren't you just causing it to skip a generation?
You're going to raise your kids to be selfish and not think about other people's needs?
Why?
Why would they?
If you're not displaying any.
But they need to know that they have needs and you have needs.
Otherwise, how on earth are they going to have healthy relationships based on mutual empathy when they grow up?
I'm not talking about the one-year-old, right?
And the three-year-old, you can just start.
Oh, definitely the five-year-old, though.
Yeah.
Yeah, you know, I actually have… Have the courage to be inconvenient.
Sorry, go ahead.
I was just going to say I hadn't considered that.
That's an interesting point.
No, and you're absolutely right.
You must negotiate with your children.
I know, I don't like to tell people what to do, but I'm not negotiating with you.
You must negotiate, right?
But, I mean, life is all about negotiation, and you and I are having a negotiation in this call about history.
About ethics, about future.
And we really do have to teach our children how to negotiate because negotiation is a fundamental philosophical reality of self and other.
I have my needs, Trevor.
You have your needs.
I have my preferences.
You have your preferences.
And if we're not negotiating, then one of us isn't there.
And if one of us isn't there, it's not a relationship, right?
So you can be an absent father playing with your children for 14 hours a day.
And the way that you're an absent father is your needs and preferences are not part of the relationship and therefore there is no relationship.
It's like saying I have a relationship with the clown who comes and entertains my children at dinner.
I don't.
He's providing a service of entertainment and he has no needs of his own That I'm willing to meet, right?
It might as well be the TV. You might as well be the TV, yeah.
I mean, turning yourself into a fun, clown, empty, no-need stimulation bot is, yeah, you might as well be an iPad.
iPad doesn't have any needs.
You can no more teach empathy by not having needs than you can teach tennis by never hitting the ball back.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure.
And when parenting gets eye-rollingly boring, it's when you need to change something up.
It's when you're resisting the change to the next level in your parenting.
Obviously, you don't negotiate with babies, right?
You just give them what they need, right?
That's natural.
But you have to be sensitive to when things change, right?
And not hold on to prior patterns, but be flexible in your growth as a parent.
And a five-year-old, oh yeah, my god.
I mean, if you want to have a bad time as a teenager, don't teach her to respect other people's needs now, particularly yours, right?
What you're doing now is going to have a huge and direct impact on how she is as a teenager.
Sorry, I keep interrupting you just when you're about to say something.
Go ahead.
Sorry, I just, yeah, you know, I think we need to work on that because they don't, the five-year-old and the three-year-old, I mean, they play really well, but I mean, there's some aggressive tendencies too.
Obviously, that's my fault, but They don't have the negotiation thing and the empathy thing.
They don't do that very well.
Right.
And it takes coaching, but it mostly takes modeling, right?
Yeah.
And if you erase yourself, then you have no capacity for negotiation, right?
Yeah, right.
Because you're not there.
There's no one to negotiate with.
Children don't know about the existence of other people until you remind them, right?
Because they're coming out of toddlerhood and babyhood, which is all about malignant, selfish, evil narcissism.
No, I'm just kidding.
A baby doesn't care if you're sleeping, right?
Yeah, I mean they don't even really understand that their mom is a different person from themselves until eight months or whatever it is, right?
Right.
So, I mean, that's perfectly, right?
You can't negotiate with babies.
And people try to, which is why people end up hitting babies, God forbid, right?
But you must, you must, you must teach them about the existence of other people.
Other people are like ghosts to them.
Actually, not even ghosts.
Ghosts can change your behavior based on ghosts.
But people are tools to babies.
I don't...
I don't ask my socket wrench if it feels like going for a spin, right?
Hey, bike, where do you want to go today?
I mean, I don't do it because it's a tool for me to get somewhere, right?
And for babies and toddlers, parents are objects to...
Yeah, but they won't.
I've told the story before about how my mom – excuse me, my mom.
My daughter – but my daughter used to, like, fly me around, right?
She'd point at something.
I'd pick her up, and then she'd point something and reach for it, and she basically would be flying me to get something on a shelf that she wanted, like a pilot.
And she didn't care about whether I wanted to go there.
She's like, well, here's a big, giant, flesh robot that I can use to get what I want.
That's what baby – I mean, it's fine.
It's perfectly natural.
Yeah, we've done that.
It's fine.
But you've got to maneuver them out of that, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
So what you said earlier, like you said, helplessness is my heroine.
That really struck a nerve.
I think that's true.
It feels true.
So I put myself in this position where I'm doing everything that the kids want and then sort of at the same time building up this sort of resentment and frustration and Which you then lash out, right?
Yell and hit.
No, in the past, right?
And you had a third kid so that you could avoid negotiating with the first two.
You think so?
Well, because now you're in emergency mode again and you have no time and no resources, right?
Because I'm telling you, Trevor, when you start negotiating with these kids, it's going to be really painful.
It's when you start asserting your needs with kids, it's going to be really painful.
Because you're neither giving them authority over you, which is what they have now, or you're neither giving them power over you nor exercising power over them.
You're approaching them from a state of egalitarianism in the relationship.
Well, that's painful as hell.
Because all your unmet childhood needs will come rushing up and you'll get emotional and it'll be upsetting, right?
And you get angry at your parents.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You know, when you step out of line, that's when you need a map.
Sorry, go ahead.
Sorry, you mean it'll be painful for me to start doing that?
Oh, yeah.
Oh, yes.
You won't negotiate with your children in order to protect your parents.
Because if you exercise parental authority in a benevolent way...
And reject your own helplessness, then you can no longer pretend that your parents were helpless because of their bad childhood.
It's complicated, but basically it's all around protecting the parental bond.
Yeah, I understand.
And your question was, why did your dad do what he did?
I mean, if it helps your dad what he did to you because he couldn't do it to his own father.
All the thwarted anger that he had to his own father is then dumped on the child.
Because he could not exercise any control or influence over his own father.
He exercises brutal control over his own child.
Again, that's not causal.
That's the result of choices that he made about whether to process his feelings or not.
But that would be my best guess.
See, and I always thought that he had worked through his childhood and become a better dad than what he had.
Because the stories he would tell me about, you know...
He'd come home and covered in mud and his dad would beat him up.
And it wasn't just like a few spanks.
He'd be covered in bruises and be in really rough shape after getting a beating.
And this kind of stuff was all the time.
And he was a raging alcoholic and just a complete monster.
And so I thought, oh, well, I'm happy that my dad's worked through his issues and now I have a good dad.
So, basically, he gave you the script with which you were supposed to excuse him for the rest of his life, right?
Yeah, I guess so.
Yeah.
Yeah, this is not taking responsibility.
No.
I mean, I've told a little bit about my childhood to my daughter, but not as a form of self-praise or as a form of, well, and this is why I do shitty things.
I mean, or, you know, this is why you got to ignore the shitty things I do because my mom was much worse.
I mean, that's not...
Don't be letting my mom win, you know?
I mean, frankly, a lot of my life is driven by not letting my mom win.
Seriously.
I mean, I'm perfectly knowledgeable about all of that.
My mom was a mystic.
Okay, yeah, my mom was a mystic.
I'll be rational.
My mom was manipulative.
I will be direct, right?
My mom had a crazy temper.
Well, I will really attempt to really understand the roots of the fight and flight and freeze mechanism and all of that.
My mom...
Made excuses.
I hate excuses.
I get all of that.
And there's absolutely nothing wrong with that.
In fact, that can be just about the healthiest thing to do.
If my dad was really overweight, well, I'm really going to watch what I eat.
No, no, no.
I won't let my mom win.
Of course not.
It doesn't mean I sort of think about my mom every day.
I actually don't really think about her that much.
But I'm perfectly aware that my...
You could say extreme commitment to rationality is the result of seeing the results of someone's extreme commitment to irrationality.
Of course.
It doesn't mean that any of my arguments are true or false because of that but I certainly recognize the emotional motivation and I grew up around a lot of women who used base sexual appeal instead of any kind of personal equality or integrity To have value in relationships.
So yeah, I'm a little skeptical about the value of estrogen-based parasites.
Not that all women are like that.
I'm funny about that.
But yeah, I've seen it.
Oh, the poor are all victims.
No, they're not.
They're really, really not.
They'll try and sell you that tale.
They'll try and sell you that tale.
Yeah, and if you buy that bullshit, then all you do is create more poor and broken people.
Yeah, just subsidizing the excuses.
Exactly.
I really admire all the stuff that you just described, all the crap that your mom inflicted on you and you decided, no, this is not going to be me, and you did the opposite.
And the way that you talk about your relationship with your daughter and with your wife is just really inspiring.
I want to get me some of that.
Yeah, I'm sure you can.
You know, and one of your podcasts, you said that you surround your daughter with people who have been raised peacefully, like you won't let her play with other kids who are spanked and treated aggressively.
And that really kind of hit me because it was like, holy crap, that would preclude my children.
Yeah, I'm afraid, I mean, certainly the way that you're parenting right now, and you know, I hate to say it, but I mean, it's important to hear, right?
That...
If your five and your three-year-old don't have the empathy and negotiation thing going on, it wouldn't work, right?
Yeah.
Because my kids can't parent your kids, right?
Neither can I. No.
And it's something – like when people say, well, slavery destroyed the black family.
I mean this is the same thing as saying my parents were nasty because of their own childhood.
It's like, no.
I mean, since blacks went through the pain of family separation, there should be a hugely renewed commitment to keeping families intact, right?
I mean, just no excuses.
No excuses.
I don't give a shit who you are or where you're from or what the color of your skin is or whether you've got tits that hang to your knees or not.
It doesn't matter to me.
No excuses.
I mean, unless you're actually willing to fess up to a biological spot of brain damage that renders you incapable of signing contracts or voting.
No, you get the full-on responsibility upgrade.
There you go.
No downgrade.
Everybody gets one dial, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
All right.
Listen, we've got to move on to the next caller, but I really, really appreciate you calling in.
Okay.
Thanks so much, Steph.
Keep us posted if you can, right?
Yeah, I definitely will.
It really means a lot to me.
Thank you so much.
Take care.
All the best to your wife and to your kids.
Give them a hug for me if you can.
Okay.
Thanks.
Of course you can.
Thanks, man.
Bye.
Bye.
All right.
Caitlin is up next.
She wrote in and said, So,
in other words, yet another epistemological question.
No, I'm kidding.
So, what's going on, sister?
Oh, my gosh.
I don't even know where to start.
Do you want me to talk about my relationship with my husband or my childhood?
Well, I'm going to give the brief ACE, Adverse Childhood Experience of Five, Verbal Abuse Threats, Physical Abuse, Non-Smacking, I'm incredibly sorry.
Let's just stop on the molestation one, if you don't mind, because that can have a huge impact on our marriage, where, of course, there's sexuality, right?
That's good, because I think that's probably what I'm having the most difficult time working through, because Well, I think up until recently, actually, I haven't dealt with this at all.
I've been in counseling in I've been in therapy multiple times for a dysfunctional relationship with my mom or later on when I had the sexual abuse with the teacher when I was 18, I went through counseling for that.
But I never really admitted to myself the issues I had with my brother, not fully anyways.
Can you go into just a bit more detail about the issues with your brother?
Sure.
When I was about five or six, I think is what I was able to determine was the beginning or the first time I can remember anything happening.
And he just kind of asked me to look at some pornography with him.
And how old was he?
He's about four years older than me.
Wow.
And that happened a couple of different times, and that led to him wanting to do sort of mutual masturbation to this pornography, which led to him wanting to...
Look at my anatomy pretty intimately.
And this led to him eventually one night kissing me and making me lay on top of him.
And this happened over the course of a few years without going into too much detail.
The very last time that it happened, I was about 11 or so.
And he asked me to play, like, a truth-or-dare game.
And my dare, he wanted me to masturbate in front of him, and I wouldn't.
Being a little bit older, I had a little more guts, I guess, to tell him, like, no, I'm not doing that.
And so he said, well, just, you know, this is really gross, I'm sorry.
He said, just, you know, go do it and then let me, you know, smell your fingers after that.
Oh God, I'm so sorry.
So I didn't do it, I just pretended.
And then I said, I'm not doing this, and I left.
And I think that was kind of the last time that anything...
Can I just say something here?
yes that's how I feel that's how I feel Oh!
Like, goosebumpy, skin-crawly.
Oh, my God.
I mean, that creep factor is like a vine going up a...
Oh, my God.
That's just horrendous.
I'm so sorry.
It's really gross.
That is some seriously creepy shit, man.
Yeah.
And he's pretty mean, in addition.
Like, he was pretty mean to me.
Yeah, no, I get that.
I mean, if he wants you to give him the stinky fink, I mean, I get that the meanness is going to be there for sure, right?
Yeah, he's just...
It's not like he was a really good buddy of mine and then all of a sudden he would do this when nobody was looking.
He was just never nice.
I never said anything to anybody and I ended up telling my mother much later on in life when I was Why was it not possible that I
told anybody?
Yeah.
It's not that it wasn't possible.
I just never told anybody.
But why?
And I'm not blaming you for that, obviously, right?
But why do you think you didn't?
So that's, I think, one of the issues that I'm dealing with now.
And one of the things that has sort of come out in me trying to figure out why I'm having some of the emotional issues I'm having now and looking back at that, I remember specifically the very first time that that ever happened with my brother.
You mean with your brother?
Yes.
I completely just disconnected myself, like shut off.
I looked away, pretended like nothing was happening in order to, I think, emotionally deal with what was happening.
And so I think that that pattern just sort of continued.
Like when I wasn't around him, I just didn't think about it.
I just put it away and squashed it.
Well, okay, first of all, that's not emotionally dealing with what happened, right?
Right, right.
I mean, it's like saying, you know, I have chronic pain, so I'm just going to take heroin.
Right.
Dissociation is a form of self-medication, but it's not a healing form of self-medication, right?
It's what you do when you can't heal, right?
Exactly.
When you don't think that there's any healing possible, then you dissociate, at least in my opinion.
But sorry, go ahead.
I guess that was in my child brain.
That was the only thing I knew how to do.
I just didn't tell anybody.
Right.
But why?
Um...
What would happen?
Maybe I was afraid of sort of getting him in trouble or getting in trouble myself.
Right.
So the second part is important, right?
Mm-hmm.
I mean, like, basically having creepy spanky fingers for a brother is probably not something that was weighing heavily in your heart about whether he might get in trouble, right?
Right.
There would be two things that you would fear.
You would fear either that...
He would – because he's revealed himself to be like a serial creep-o-matic gross robot of like the highest order.
And so he obviously has no compassion for you, no empathy for you.
And if he has the capacity for boundary and physical violations of the degree that you're talking about, who knows what the – Fuck else he was capable of, right?
So either then, he would have been punished, and then you'd be like, well, he's going to get me alone at some point, and then what, right?
Right.
I think it was a shame.
I was ashamed, too.
What is it?
No, that's not...
But the second one is that you'll get punished, right?
Or that people will think badly of you.
But tell me about the shame thing.
Like, you're five, and you go and say, wait, you know, he...
I don't know what.
He told me to put two in the pink and one in the stink.
I don't know what the hell...
Gross stuff he was doing even at that age.
But you go to your mom and you say, this is what's going on.
I mean, how would you be ashamed of that?
I mean, it's not you who did anything.
You're just trying to survive this creepy octopus, right?
I guess it was just because it felt so disgusting and gross.
And I was kind of shy, as it was, like, anyways.
And I just didn't want...
I didn't trust my mom, I guess.
And I didn't want anybody to know that about me.
And, like, I just felt disgusting.
And I didn't want anybody else to know that.
Well, but...
That's kind of how I... No, but the question then would be, and again, I'm just trying to sort of figure out the lay of the land here, right?
The question then would be, if you feel bad or if you feel gross about something, then normally one goes to one's parent to feel better about that thing, right?
Usually.
So the question is, let's say that, I mean, obviously you did.
You felt gross and violated and disgusting and so on, which I all completely empathize with.
So you go to your mom and the goal, of course, as a parent is to make the child feel better, right?
Right.
But I didn't go to my mom.
Because?
Maybe I didn't think that she was going to make me feel better.
Well, and I think it's a third of kids have openly said that they don't go to their parents when they're upset because their parents make them feel worse, right?
Which is kind of what predators rely on, right?
Right.
The lack of bonding.
Right.
Right?
Right.
So, I can give you one clue as to why you didn't want to go to your mom.
Well...
She was the lady who did such a fine fine job of raising your brother.
Yeah.
She always kind of thought that there was, like, he was the squeaky wheel, okay?
Like, my cousins and I are all very close in age, and we all got to grow up around each other, and we all, you know, played together and stuff.
He was always the one that was getting sort of picked on and left out, because he's kind of weird, you know?
And nobody really liked him that much, and so...
Yeah, you know, I mean, I get the laughter thing, because you're laughing, because, yes, he's kind of weird, and you know, deep down, but obviously it's not...
It's not funny, right?
I use hammer sometimes in uncomfortable situations.
No, I get it.
I get it.
Yeah.
I get it.
But I mean, it's hard because it's hard on the listeners.
Like, I kind of get it, but it's hard because you're inviting your listeners to laugh at molestation.
Right.
Right.
And it's hard, particularly, of course, for people who've also gone through what you've gone through.
There is that temptation to make light, right?
Which, again, I understand.
But it's, you know, it's not where we want to be, I think, in this conversation, right?
Right.
Because I can't participate in that, obviously, right?
I mean, my daughter's five, right?
Of course.
And, I mean, even if I didn't have a daughter, I mean, right?
Yeah.
So, I would imagine, too, that when children experience these kinds of violations, and this is, I mean, this is a very, very powerful and fundamental and vile violation, Caitlin, that part of what you're doing when you don't tell is trying to figure out if anyone notices.
Right?
It's possible, yeah.
I've never thought about it like that, but that's possible.
Well, the way that we try and figure out whether it's safe to go to an authority figure with a problem is we wait and see if the authority figure notices that there's a problem, right?
I mean, this was a turning point in your childhood, right?
Right, which they didn't notice.
Yeah, you probably didn't remember much about the day before, but you sure remember that day, right?
That's true.
So, when you're scanning your environment as a child, and I mean you're barely out of toddlerhood at that age, right?
When you're scanning your environment as a child, you're trying to figure out, is the scarce unobtainium resource called empathy anywhere around the environment?
Can I rely on, you know, it's like when you're running low, running low on gas.
You're like Googling like crazy or trying to find a gas.
Is there any gas around here?
Is there any empathy in the environment?
Right.
Now, if there isn't empathy in the environment, then you will be punished for inconvenience.
If there's no empathy in the environment, then you will be punished for inconvenience.
And so the fact that you have a vile little goblin of a brother like this is a pretty strong indication that there's no empathy, right?
Correct.
Another one would be whether your mother noticed anything about any change in demeanor with you going through this shocking and appalling experience.
Number two.
Number three would be Does your mother have any idea how creepy your brother is?
Because if she does, then she should damn well not leave any child, particularly a girl, alone with him, right?
Right.
And now all of these things came back to you with the indication that no empathy was around.
And that's important.
To recognize that you didn't, like, saying, why didn't you tell your parents is like saying, well, why don't you stop to get gas from a cow field?
Right, exactly.
Because it's a cow field.
Right.
There's no gas, right?
It's empty.
It's empty.
There's nothing there to put in the tank, right?
Right.
All right.
All right.
Do you know, do you have any relationship with your brother as an adult?
No.
Yes.
It was just kind of a surface one, though.
I kind of avoided him at all costs, and we argued a lot.
I didn't, I don't know.
I was uncomfortable around him and didn't trust him, obviously.
Does he have any access to children?
No.
And he knows that there's something wrong with him, and he'll never admit what I just expressed to you, but he thinks he'll...
What, he would never admit what he did to you?
No, he'd never admit that.
How do you know he doesn't have access to children?
He's married, but they very much keep to themselves.
They don't have any friends.
They don't like to socialize with anybody in the family except for my parents.
They just are very kind of hermit type people.
All right.
As far as I know.
And he doesn't work in any field around kids and he doesn't obviously have kids of his own and he doesn't have friends that he might have access to and babysit.
I just really want to try and figure out how contained this tendency is.
He said he wants to have a vasectomy and he doesn't want any children and he works in a railroad.
So as far as I know.
Is there any chance that you could give the vasectomy to him?
That would be nice.
Say with a ball peen hammer or something like that.
Probably not.
Just something to consider.
Yes, I will.
I'll think about that.
You know, in the spirit of sisterly retaliation.
Sure.
And I'm sorry, did your parents know?
I did tell them...
And my, you're going to get really mad about this, I'm sure, in listening to you.
What my mom told me after I expressed to her everything that happened, and I didn't tell her every last detail, but I told her enough details.
And she said, oh, that didn't happen the way that you think it did.
That's just, you know, that's what kids do.
Sometimes they get curious about stuff, and she just completely denied it and rejected it.
So, she said that your experience didn't happen the way that your experience happened to you.
Right.
What is she, fucking Obi-Wan Kenobi?
Yeah.
This is not the molestation you're looking for?
I mean, these are not the droids?
I mean, that's amazing.
Yeah.
Your experience did not happen to you the way that your experience happened to you.
Right.
Jesus.
So, it was like she didn't want her picture of her world to get messed up or something.
I'm not sure why that...
Not really.
She would tell you that she's a spiritual person, but no, she's never been to church, and we never went to church.
A little too much structure for somebody who's spiritual.
A little too much, gotta get up early on Sundays.
She has to do whatever she wants to do.
My father, he doesn't know how to express emotion at all.
When I told him he hugged me, and he said, I love you, and he hugged me, but that was it.
What are you feeling now?
I hate not being able to see people, but I can hear, right?
I can hear.
What's your feeling?
I just don't feel all of that sadness.
And I don't want to feel that anymore.
I want to be done with this.
The sadness?
I want to just...
Yes, I'm tired of having this be such a huge part of my life.
Do you mean the molestation?
Yes.
Or your father's absence?
I guess all of it.
Right.
Well, sadness is not going to do that for you.
I don't mean to call you this, but the phrase popped into my mind, that sadness is the coward's anger.
Yes.
Tell me what you get from that.
The sadness is the coward's anger.
I guess it just would mean to me that instead of working through the emotions and Learning about them and about myself and coming out on the other side, I'm using it as an excuse and staying stuck in this place, maybe.
Yeah, I mean, if you cry over such a fundamental betrayal, which I understand, it is sad, but these people are supposed to damn well protect you.
Right.
Right?
And they raised a fairly short but extremely sinister sexual predator, left you...
In his company repeatedly as a child and refused to believe you when you told them as an adult.
So tell me where the sadness is coming from.
Is this not a massive and foundational betrayal on the part of your parents?
Yes, it is.
So where's your anger?
I never allowed myself to be angry at them.
No.
No, no, no, no.
They never allowed you to be angry at them.
Right?
I never went there.
I never went there.
I never blamed them.
I never...
Yeah.
I'm sorry to...
I understand that.
I mean, that's...
Right?
But...
Right?
So, what happens if you assert your needs at your parents' inconvenience?
Assuming you're not the kid or the last guy.
With your parents, what if you had pressed the issue and said, I don't need your goddamn hug.
I needed your protection when I was five.
What the fuck is wrong with you people?
I mean, you've raised a pedophile.
And you left him alone with me.
Didn't you know there was something wrong with him?
Oh, we didn't know.
We didn't know.
Right?
Yeah.
Bullshit.
Telling me there's a pedophile kid in the house and nobody has a clue.
That's bullshit.
Well, it is bullshit because my mother would always come to me and say that to me.
Like, you know, there was something that changed in you when you were a teenager and there was, I think somebody probably messed with you and she'd ask me over and over again and I would always tell her, like, you know, you're crazy or whatever.
And then when I finally told her, it wasn't the person she had in her mind or whatever.
So your mother was pestering you for, like, who molested you?
Yeah.
When you were a teenager?
Uh-huh.
And what symptoms were you showing that she finally seemed to notice?
I think I was withdrawing from them emotionally and I was kind of ornery and didn't invest in the family at all.
Didn't talk to them.
Didn't want to be around them.
Right.
Thank you.
And then when I was 18, I experienced the rape from my high school teacher.
Again, I didn't tell anybody.
And about a year after it happened, the school was doing an investigation on him because it had happened to multiple people, I guess.
Oh, God.
Are you kidding me?
No.
Oh man, that's hard.
Yeah.
Because there's massive regret in that too, right?
Right.
If you'd said something...
Yeah.
...then you would have prevented the subsequent rapes, right?
Well, yeah.
Wait, you're hesitating.
I don't want to say something that's out of line or incorrect.
No, it's not.
You're not incorrect there.
There's just more to the story.
Go on.
So when the investigation started...
There was, I think, about five girls that had come forward, and they were all older than me, so they'd been in school before me.
And as they grew up to be adult women, they found the strength to come back or whatever, and decided to tell the truth and tell their story.
So they started an investigation, and I got a call from the vice-principal one day.
Because I was his, you know, aide or whatever, one of his school aides, you know.
Yeah, yeah.
And they wanted to know if I had any information, and I hadn't spoken a word of it to anybody.
I said, as a matter of fact, I do, and I kind of spilled my guts.
And long story short, they asked if I would be willing to testify, and I said yes, and I gave my account of what happened and There was some lag time in between when I made my formal statement and when the court date was actually supposed to happen.
So by the time the court date came around and we were going to do the preliminary trial every single girl except for me had dropped out and I was the only one that was left to sort of be a witness and Nobody told me what that day was going to be like.
For some reason, I had it in my mind that it was going to be like a private session or a small room or something, but I don't know if you've ever been involved in anything where you had to go to court for anything, but it's not.
It's very public, and anybody that wants to be in there can be in there.
So there's reporters and people that I knew, and the I had to get up on the stand and tell this horrible story.
I didn't even know the prosecuting attorney.
She introduced herself five minutes before the court came into session.
There was no preparation or anything.
It was the most horrible experience.
Like I said, long story short, because I was the only person that was there and there had been a year of time that had passed and there was no physical evidence or anything like that, they essentially just dropped the case and the guy got off without even having to go to trial or anything.
And I justify that to myself.
It was a horrible experience, but at least he won't be a teacher anymore and he won't do that to anybody.
But, you know, teacher, friggin' tenure, they couldn't fire him.
So they just asked him to resign, which he did.
And then I heard a few years ago that it happened again to somebody.
He was, like, rehired up in the northern part of Michigan.
And I heard that it happened again.
So it was difficult to hear.
But I guess...
Again, I'm no lawyer, but what you were going through was a preliminary hearing to figure out if there was enough evidence to go to trial.
Right.
And because it was a he said, she said kind of situation, no physical evidence, and no, everyone else had bailed.
Right.
You were basically cross-examined, grilled, where you sort of put through the slut-shaming ringer of blame the victim or what?
Gosh, it was horrible.
Like, I was so mean.
Right.
This freaking attorney was like, I had no clue what kind of questions he was going to be asking me or anything.
And like I said, nobody prepared me for any of it, which is, as I look back, I'm really upset.
You know, my father was a police officer for like 20 years.
He's been to court.
Wait, your father was a police officer for 20 years, and he basically had a criminal child in the house molesting his daughter?
Yeah.
Oh, my God.
Oh, my God.
It's only an irony if you're a statist.
Anyway, go on.
Which I am not.
Right, right.
So, yeah.
So the betrayal then went social-wide, right?
Right, yeah.
It was then more than your brother and your parents, but the system as a whole, where you were punished for having been raped and having the courage to go on the stand.
Whereas if the other girls, other women, had decided to go forward, then he probably would have gone to trial, right?
Right.
Right.
Ah, God.
And now he's in a situation where he can keep doing this shit, right?
Probably.
I don't know where he is.
I'm so sorry.
What's going on with his life, but...
Right.
Well...
I'm sorry for all of that.
I mean...
Thank you.
Going to the government for justice is like going to an Eskimo for a tanning bed.
It just doesn't...
It doesn't fit in the ecosystem, but...
Right.
I think my dad, knowing the system as well as he probably did, would have told me, no, you're not doing that because there's no way that's going to turn out well.
Yeah.
You might have taken those bullets if it got a predator off the streets, right?
Sure.
But given that you went through this horrendous experience and it didn't even do any good, it's more of an institutional rape than a personal rape, but it probably didn't feel wildly dissimilar.
Right.
Exactly.
Exactly.
So now I have a lot of difficulty with disconnecting myself from my emotions and trust is difficult for me and all of that.
So I'm calling you to help me with that.
With the marriage, right?
Which I know we've not got to, but it's sort of important to figure some of this stuff out.
Yeah.
All right.
All right.
Well, listen, I mean, just before we move on, Caitlin, I'm incredibly sorry.
Thank you.
For all of this that you went through.
I mean, at every level and every facet that you can imagine, you know, it's a heartbreaking, heartbreaking story.
It's an enraging story.
It's a frustrating story.
And I'm just hearing it.
You lived it.
So I just really wanted to express how incredibly sorry I am that this was your experience of childhood, where basically you've got a predator in the house.
Can't get away from who is like...
I mean, obviously it could have been worse, but that's not exactly much comfort.
So I'm just incredibly sorry.
And then, of course, the rape at 18 and then the institutional rape as a result.
I mean, just horrendous.
And I'm so sorry for all of this.
So, did your husband know all this when he married you?
He knew everything.
He didn't know about my brother, but he knew everything else.
Well, that's kind of an important part, right?
Yeah.
I think I had sort of squashed all of that with my brother.
After I told my mom and she rejected me, I tried to Telling a couple other people in my family and kind of got the same reaction.
It was almost as if it was too nasty.
Like, they didn't want to know that.
They didn't want to mess up the family dynamic or whatever.
I don't know.
Well, I guess they, you know...
I mean, I fucking hate people like that.
I mean, Caitlin, I know that your relatives and all that.
I'm just telling you from the heart.
I fucking hate people like that.
It's hard.
No, it's like...
I'm sorry if it's inconvenient to you that I was molested by my brother.
I'm sorry if that makes you feel uncomfortable.
But you do get that your very silence is why he was able to do it, right?
Right.
The fact that you're willing to turn away from a victim is exactly why this shit continues, right?
Right, yes.
The victim's fear of a lack of sympathy and social support is exactly what these goddamn predators are counting on.
And rightly so, because it's what they so often receive.
Right, exactly.
It's the human shield of averted eyes from the sexual and emotional predation on children.
You know, predators exist in the shadows of averted eyes.
That's their natural layer, their natural habitat.
That's their camouflage.
It's the camouflage of closed eyes.
And he's a symptom of the adult clinging to comfort rather than virtue.
And this is after, oh, I don't know, about 5,000 or 10,000 years of religion trying to turn human beings into vaguely better people.
So, fuck that.
Failed.
Failed!
Time to move on.
Time to try something else.
If this is what we got after 10,000 years of religion, I say that ain't good enough.
No.
So, I'm sorry about that.
All right, so, what happens with your husband?
Oh.
It escalates to the point where you guys are thinking of splitting.
It really comes down to a communication issue.
I just feel like we're speaking two different languages sometimes and it'll start off with a small disagreement and escalate into this major argument.
I almost feel like sometimes I start it and if things are going really great and we're not arguing for a week or two, I kind of will, and I didn't realize I did this until I started sort of self-examining.
I sort of will pick something and create this chaos in the house, even though I say that I want the exact opposite.
And I'm not exactly sure why I do that, but I think it's...
I don't know if I just have a problem feeling closeness or feeling Love, because I don't really know what that is.
Or if I'm not sure that, like at my core, if I feel unworthy of love or something from all this bullshit or what.
I started reading that book that you recommended I heard one time, The Psychology of Self-Esteem.
It's taking me a while to get through it because I'm really trying to take it to heart.
It's a fabulous book.
It's been really helpful, though.
But I'm trying to be honest with myself.
It's a wonderful way of avoiding the content of what I asked about.
Can you give me an example of...
Don't give me the Coles notes.
I need the transcript.
Give me an example of a conflict that started and escalated.
What was the conflict about and how did it escalate?
It's hard to think of something on the spot.
Most recently, we were in a car ride together.
It was about a 12-hour car ride.
Things were going fine, and then all of a sudden, it was kind of silent for a while, and I asked him, so what are some long-term goals that you're thinking about?
What do you see for us and for yourself for long-term down the road?
What a lovely question.
It's a lovely question.
I mean, you've got 12 hours and might as well go deep, right?
Sure.
And in the past, sometimes when I've asked stuff like that, it'll turn into an argument.
Well, lots of stuff turns into an argument.
So sometimes he's a little bit, I guess, gun-shy with his answer.
Like, he's very mistrustful of me now.
He's always thinking I'm going to yell at him or, like, argue with him or something.
All right.
All right.
No, wait, wait, wait.
I'm sorry.
We're going into descripto land.
Right?
Unless you're actually armed, gun-shy is not a very helpful phrase, right?
But, all right.
Yeah.
Sorry, I didn't mean...
So what does he say about you asking about his long-term goals?
So he said, I don't know, what do you mean?
Like, you know, world peace would be nice, you know, kind of cheeky or whatever.
And I was like, well, that's never going to happen.
Like, that's just...
Well, hang on.
That's a, you know, with all due respect to your husband, that's kind of a dickish answer, right?
Right, right.
So why is he being a dick about long-term questions?
I'm not sure if the question itself was...
Is he an ambitionless toadstool?
Sometimes.
Wait, no, no.
See, we're all an ambitious toadstool sometimes, but where's his life going as a whole?
He's just not quite sure what he wants to do yet with his life.
How old is he?
He just turned 30.
Oh.
Oh.
He's had a lot of very ambitious things and he is very good at whatever he does and he enjoys a lot of things.
I think that's part of the problem.
He's having a hard time picking something.
I feel like he's most happy if he's able to do something like outside and horticulture or something like that.
Wait, wait.
Hang on.
He's 30 and he's narrowed it down to maybe something outside?
I'm not sure.
You know, he's aware that he's not in the Old Testament, right?
He's not going to get some Methuselah 980-year lifespan, right?
All right.
I'm almost halfway through my productive adult years.
I've narrowed it down to it involves non-ceilings.
Yes.
All right.
He may need to whittle a tiny bit faster.
As far as narrowing things down, right?
20, sure.
25, you know, 30, right?
Right.
That's been hard.
So what does he do now?
Nothing.
I'm sorry, right now?
Nothing right now.
He's in between jobs.
And how long has he been in between jobs?
About a year.
A year?
Mm-hmm.
And what was his last job?
He was working in landscaping.
Right.
What do you mean by working in landscaping?
He works with water.
I don't know.
Is he a janitor?
Is he a marine biologist?
I don't know, right?
Does he move rocks?
Does he mow lawns?
Did he run a landscaping company?
No, he worked for a landscaping company and they do everything from mowing lawns to, you know, Making, I don't know, brick paver patios and designing backyards, stuff like that.
He worked for one of those companies.
Right.
And did he do the design work or did he do the moving heavy things work?
Moving heavy things.
So pretty brain-dead stuff, right?
Mm-hmm.
And now is that because he's brain-dead or is that because of some other reason?
He's very smart.
No, he's very smart.
What is he like...
Casting for the next round of Five Easy Pieces.
You don't even know that film.
You're way too young.
Anyway.
So he's 30 and his last job was moving stuff, but he's been unemployed for a year.
So what's he living on?
We just live on my income.
Right.
Right.
And how much time is he spending every day looking for work?
Not very much.
So that kind of fallen by the wayside a little bit?
Yeah.
Right.
What do you think of the welfare state?
I don't know.
I mean, the political one, not the one that you're currently running.
I just mean the political one as a whole.
Oh, it's a scam.
Do you think it has negative motivations on people?
Do you think it maybe makes them more accustomed to less work and that kind of stuff?
Absolutely.
Right.
But just purely a political, theoretical problem in your life, right?
No, it's just one that I'm trying to be patient about.
Why?
Be a good wife.
So being a good wife is allowing a guy to be unemployed for a year and paying all his bills?
You know, it's not just estrogen-based parasites that the world has to watch out for.
I try to be egalitarian and non-sexist in whoever I happen to annoy and insult, right?
Yeah.
TBP? I've tried to talk with it.
Testicle-based parasite?
I'm just trying to think what we did, right?
Testicle-based parasite?
Mike, what do you think?
Got anything?
Testosterone-based parasite I liked, but...
Testosterone-based parasite?
It's kind of a mouthful.
And, you know, it's not like guys object to being a mouthful, but, I mean, it's just...
All right.
Okay.
Ah.
Alright, so you may have a TBP, but so you've got the good wife thing, right?
Like, don't stop paying his bills, right?
Even though he's not really looking for work and hasn't worked in a year.
I don't know how that would work if we're living together.
My bills are his bills.
Well, so basically you have no choice.
You just have to keep paying these bills, even though this guy is kind of like a deadbeat at the moment.
Yeah, but I don't know.
Yes, but I don't know.
How well is that going to fly in this show?
You don't really think that I'm going to let that go, right?
You're not wrong.
I'm just not sure.
I mean, I've told him how I feel, and I'm not going to leave for something like that.
Oh, so when you're asking about long-term plans, he's thinking like, whoa, whoa, whoa, sister.
We're not slowing down the gravy train, are we?
Right.
So I'll be a snarky asshole about world peace, right?
Right.
Probably.
Right.
So then we had huge arguments, and...
But what's his defense of the argument?
A job will fall into my lap at some point, even though I'm a rock mover who's been unemployed.
He's basically an abandoned truck.
Yeah.
But does he feel he's going up in value by not being in the workforce for a year?
Does he feel like, next stop, brain surgery?
Because that's what happens to people who don't work, right?
Well, I'm not sure what he thinks.
Well, you must have some idea.
You've had fights about it.
What's his plan?
How is this going to end?
I don't know.
What's the endgame here?
I don't know.
Well, what do you think?
You know the guy.
If you've never talked about it explicitly, what does he do all day?
It's always a mystery to me when people don't work.
What does he do all day?
He does a lot around the house, like the garden.
He works a lot outside, works in the garden.
The house is always clean.
He's kind of like a homemaker, you know?
And he's on the internet a lot.
He listens to your show a lot.
Okay, is he going to listen to this?
Probably.
Dude, get a job.
Get a job.
You are not Angela Lansbury.
Gardening...
It's not a fit vocation for a 30-year-old who's not suffering from some brain degeneracy disorder.
If you don't currently have Alzheimer's, drop the chrysanthemums and pick up the phone and get some job interviews.
The longer you stay out of the workforce, the harder it's going to be to get back in because potential employers are going to be like, hey, your last job was about a year ago.
What have you been doing then?
Internet and rhododendrons is not going to get you much traction in the employment market.
So, dude, every day you're out makes it harder to get back in.
Get a job.
money and pull your own weight.
That's just my little message to him.
And don't get upset when people say who are paying your bills get a job, right?
Right.
And don't get upset when people say what are your long-term goals when they're paying your You can get upset if you're paying their bills, but whoever's paying the bills, well, they have a right to ask you when you might be seeing fit to get your royal ass out of the rose bushes and into some paying occupation.
Do you guys want to have kids?
Not right now.
And how old are you?
I'm 32.
I'll be 32 in November.
So when you say not right now, do you also feel you may have the fertility of some Old Testament wife?
No, but it's not.
You know, it's dipping already, right?
I know.
I'm almost advanced maternal age, don't remind me.
No, no, I'm going to remind you.
I'm going to remind you because your eggs have got their hand up my ass and are telling me what to say.
I know.
Get me some sperm.
Hopefully sperm that has some money attached.
Might not be the end of the world, right?
Yeah.
I mean, look, I don't – I mean, if you guys want to have kids and he's like, well, I don't want to get a job because, I don't know, I'm developing portable man tits with milk or something or he wants to breastfeed the kids or, like, I mean, you could maybe work that out where you pump and he stays home and the kids still get the benefit of your breast milk or something if he wants to be the house husband.
I mean, I'm the stay-at-home dad.
It could work, right?
Yeah.
Right.
And that's what we would probably do, I think, because I'm under, so I'm already in my professional career and stuff like that.
Like, money financially, it makes more sense, even though...
Do you make some decent coin?
Yeah.
Right.
Six figures?
Not quite.
But close.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I just felt a great giant upsurge of testosterone-based paratism from people in this show.
It's like, hey man, I'll do more than he does.
You pay my bill, sister.
Six tickets.
All right.
So, kids.
It's not a good situation right now.
It would be a horrible time to try to do that.
Why?
Why?
Oh, because of all the emotional upset that's going on in this house right now.
Oh, because of the divorce thing, right?
Or the potential split-up thing, right?
Yeah, all the fighting and all that.
I don't feel like I'm emotionally in a good, balanced place to even think about doing that right now.
I feel like that would be really irresponsible.
Okay, so when do you think is the latest age that you could reasonably expect to have children?
Let's work backwards from there.
And I'm just going to do some practical stuff here, right?
Because sometimes we get a little lost in the day-to-day and we lose a bit of the big picture, right?
So at what age, Caitlin, do you think that you could reasonably expect to have kids without, I don't know, calling in for some divine airstrike of fertility or something?
I think much past 35 is, it gets kind of dangerous, so...
I think, yeah, I mean, I think the window's a little wider than that.
Obviously, talk about it with a doctor, but...
Right.
Okay, but let's say 35, right?
Okay, so 35.
So you've got three years to have kids, right?
Right.
So how long have you been married?
Just a year.
Wait.
Uh-oh.
Uh-oh.
My spider sense is tingling, young lady.
Oh, dear.
Why is my spider sense tingling?
Okay.
I don't know.
Are you going to ask me something about what it was like before we got married?
Nope.
I mean, I might, but not right now.
That's not why my spider sense is tingling.
Let me see if there's two time windows that seem to have been flowing their way through this little old conversation that we're having here.
One is, you got married about a year ago.
Another is, my husband last worked...
Oh, when was it?
I'm trying to remember.
Yeah.
Yeah.
No, no.
I'm trying to remember.
Was it a Venus year?
A Mars year?
Something in between that.
Earth year!
That's it.
So what was the proximity to your husband deciding he didn't want to move rocks to you getting married with a near six-figure income?
We moved.
Kind of a lot happened.
He had a plan to start going to school once we settled.
All right.
Let me try this again.
Let me try this again.
Because you're going off in a...
So, how close was it?
Okay, was it before or after you got married that he decided to stop working or didn't work or had his last job or whatever you want to call it?
Oh, he stopped about a month or so before we got married.
Okay, and was he fired or did he quit?
He quit.
So, he quit his job about a month before you were going to get married?
Mm-hmm.
Hmm.
Right.
Now, if, you know, again, I'm for gender equity, so if I heard this story from a man, what do you think I'd be saying about his wife?
Oh.
Gravy train!
I don't know.
There's such a double standard, usually.
I don't have a double standard.
I don't care if it's the eggs or the balls that are cashing in their chips.
Is he very pretty?
Yes.
Very good looking, right?
I think so.
One to ten, what do we got?
Nine and a half.
Oh, man!
Okay, does he have abs?
Yes.
Okay, the S is important.
I have ab, but he has more than one, which is, you know, which is cool.
So he does some sit-ups, right?
Yes.
A little working out of the old himbo muscles, right?
Mm-hmm.
So, he's a fantastic looking guy.
He is.
And you, where would you rate yourself?
And don't tell me you don't know.
Don't give me any false modesty.
Everybody knows.
Probably like an eight.
Right.
So, do you feel like you traded up in the looks department a little?
Sure.
We're probably pretty even, but yeah.
Wait, I don't know if your job involves numbers.
It does.
Eight is not the same as nine and a half.
I'll probably trade it up a little bit.
I'm sorry?
I probably trade it up a little bit.
A little bit.
All right.
So, given that you're a professional and he's like a forklift, how were you expecting this compatibility thing to work out in the long run?
Oh, he had a...
I mean, other than the abs, right?
Which I guess you like, but...
That's not why I married him.
I'm sorry?
That's not why I married him.
Okay, then why did you marry him?
Oh...
He's probably the most compassionate person I've ever met in my life.
He's got a very gentle...
Yeah.
So compassionate.
So compassionate that he's willing to have you pay his bills for a year...
Has no plans to get work, doesn't really look for work, and gets upset when you bring up the topic.
I'm not sure that that's really 150% compassion.
His compassion has no abs, is really what I'm trying to tell you.
Yeah.
Well, he's got some of his own issues that he needs to work out, too.
That's a generic statement that you could say about anyone, right?
He's a carbon-based life form who, you know, exhales carbon dioxide.
Yeah.
Okay.
Got it.
Duly noted, right?
Yeah.
I mean, I can't say what his problems are necessarily because they're his problems.
You know, I can't speak to them.
No, no, no, no, no.
Oh, dear.
Oh, Caitlin.
Oh, Caitlin.
Marriage 101.
Are they his problems?
No!
No, no, no!
Well...
Are your problems.
I mean...
Because you're married.
I can't say.
His childhood was this and that, blah, blah, blah, and like this is why he...
No, no, no, no.
I'm pointing out that you said, well, I can't tell you what his problems are because they're his problems.
No, no.
I said...
His problems are your problems.
No, no.
I understand that.
I said I can't speak to them is what I said, meaning I can't put myself exactly where he is and tell you that this is exactly how he's feeling and why he's stuck the way that he is.
Okay, so now you're just giving me a bunch of straw men.
I mean, what does the word exactly mean in this situation other than an impossible standard, which I'm not supposed to question?
Of course you can't exactly.
I can't even do that with myself, let alone someone else.
But that doesn't mean anything, right?
Well, I guess it just means I can't speak to why he has chosen to not participate financially in our marriage.
Oh no, I know exactly why he's chosen to not participate financially in the marriage.
I mean, if he wasn't married to you, would he currently be homeless?
No.
No, what would he have done if he wasn't married to you?
Either living with his parents or got a job and living somewhere on his own.
Yeah.
He'd most likely get a job.
He might lay up with his parents for a bit, but he'd get a job, right?
Right.
Right.
So, we can certainly say from a practical standpoint why he is doing what he's doing, right?
Right.
So...
As to the emotional reasons, I don't know.
Smart guy, no ambition, obviously a troubled childhood and so on, right?
Right.
Now, if nothing changes, what happens in terms of his general life trajectory, which at the moment is inert, right?
Other than, you know, helping out around the house, which unless you've got like a 12,000 square foot mansion that requires a full-time gig is not a huge amount, right?
Right.
What happens?
I mean, I don't mean to ask a leading question.
I mean, you already went through this crap in court, right?
But it would seem to me that respect follows competence, right?
Right.
I mean, what's going to happen to your level of respect in the long run if he's like an internet-surfing Doolittle House husband guy?
I'm sure it will dwindle.
Has it dwindled yet?
It's been a year.
A little.
Okay, so what was your respect when you married the guy?
I guess a month after.
Were you concerned that he quit his job a month before you got married?
Not really, because he had a solid plan of what he was going to do.
Has he acknowledged that that plan he's failed to deliver?
Like he made promises, basically he made commitments, right?
Yes.
About what he was going to do financially and career-wise.
Has he acknowledged that he has failed to fulfill on those commitments, which was kind of important?
Like if he had said to you before you got married, listen, I really don't really, you know, if this thing falls through, I don't really think I'm going to look for work.
What would you have said?
It would have been a problem.
What would you have said?
I would have said that that's not okay with me and I would want to know why.
So would you have married him if you'd have known this was the outcome?
No.
Right.
So he's putting you in a state of non-marriage.
I'm not saying just him and I get it's a relationship and all that, right?
But I'm sort of going with some basic stuff, right?
If you knew then what you know now, you wouldn't have married him.
Is that what I'm getting?
I don't know.
I don't know because, I mean, if he just would have flat out said, like, I'm not working and that's just how it's going to be and, you know, too bad about it, then probably no, I wouldn't have.
But that's what's happened.
Anytime somebody puts you in a situation where you would not have married them, they're putting you on the path to divorce.
Right?
You understand that, right?
Yeah.
Like, if an employer is saying to themselves, God, I wish I'd never hired that Caitlin.
Yeah.
What happens in the long run?
But I'm not saying that to myself now about the marriage.
Sorry, when you say now, what do you mean?
You just did.
You asked me, sorry, maybe I missed it, you asked me if we could go back in time and he had said all those things, would I have still married him?
But I don't feel like, now that we're married and we're together and I'm here, I'm not happy with the way that the situation is.
But I wouldn't say, I don't want to be married to him anymore.
No, I understand that.
I understand that.
I said, where does it lead?
Not, what do you feel right now?
If an employer regularly says, God, I wish I'd never hired that Caitlin woman.
She's a, you know, God.
Right?
Then eventually, he's going to fire you, right?
Right.
You either turn it around and make him happy to have hired you, or...
You're going to get fired, right?
Right.
When someone says, if I knew then what I know now, I never would have hired Caitlin, you know that that's not a long-term prospect for your employment, right?
Right.
But I'm happy that I married him.
I don't feel like that.
I'm not saying to myself here in this moment, if I knew then what I knew now, I wish I never would have married him.
I'm not saying that.
Actually, you did.
And I'm not trying to catch you.
I mean, you can certainly revise.
I'm just asking, right?
But if he just said, listen, I'm not...
Basically, you know, if this next job thing doesn't really work out, I mean, you're making a lot of money.
I basically can't make that much money because, you know, what do I make as a landscape guy, 20k a year, and you're making like 80 or 90.
I mean, it's really not worth it, right?
So I think I'll just not work.
If this next thing doesn't work out, because you're making more than enough for both of us, right?
You probably would have said, no, you're 30, right?
So you've got another, let's say, 35 years before you retire from not working.
So I don't know what the hell you're going to be doing for those 35 years, but sponging off me ain't going to be one of them, right?
Right.
But that's how it's played out, right?
Right.
And that's what I mean when I say, if...
It's not a question of honesty.
Maybe he didn't even know how comfortable he was going to get not working, right?
Right.
But if he had been as honest as events have played out, then you wouldn't have married him, if I understand what you're saying correctly.
Now, he needs to know that, clearly.
Clearly.
Like how things have played out would have been a non-marrying decision for me.
A non-marrying you decision for me.
Right?
Now he's going to get upset and he's going to get defensive and he's going to get manipulative and he's going to get aggressive and he's going to whatever, right?
Yeah, exactly.
But he's got to understand, right?
He's got to understand that he's 30 is his goal to never work again.
Now, if his goal is to never work again, then he needs to be honest about that so you can make your decision.
Because if he's never going to work again, you never get to be a breastfeeding stay-at-home mom.
Right.
Because you've got to go make the bacon, right?
Right.
Now, if he is going to work again, then he needs to get a job.
Not next month, but now.
And he's got to spend...
Eight hours a day looking for work.
Because looking for work is a full-time job.
Right?
Right.
Now, he's probably going to say, well, you know, it'd be great if I upgrade my education.
I'll go to school and stuff.
No, no, no, no.
Get a job.
You had a year.
You can't pull the education card now that I'm saying get a job now, right?
Right.
Because you had a year to get educated if you wanted and you didn't take it.
So you can't use it now, right?
Right.
That card expired, right?
Right.
And if you want to get educated, you can get educated on the side.
Now, if you want to have kids and he's making 20K or whatever he's making, which I guess is why the abs count, right?
But if he's making 20K as a landscaper, you're probably going to have a pretty tough time being a stay-at-home mom, right?
Right.
And so what was the plan with regards to that?
I guess he was going to make more money with some other business venture?
Oh, he was going to stay at home.
He was going to be the dad that stayed at home.
Oh, that's been the plan from the beginning?
Um, yeah.
Ah.
And that's fine with you?
That's fine with me.
I mean, as long as one of us is home, I do not, I would never put my...
It really should be the person with the milk bags, right?
It should be.
That's, right?
Yeah.
Ideally.
All right.
All right.
But, you know, I mean, still better than no parent being at home, so I got it.
Um...
And what is the status of the decisions about kids?
Is it all on hold because of the instability in the marriage?
I would say 50-50, the instability in the marriage, and then just I feel like I need to work through everything I just told you about before I can even think about being able to be emotionally available like that.
I feel like I need to...
I don't know what to do with all of this stuff that I'm feeling about this.
I've never dealt with it.
Right.
I'm trying to learn how to do that, I guess.
Wow.
I'm sorry that...
I mean, I guess if...
Had you guys decided or had any conversations before you got married about how long it might be before you had kids?
I think we had...
Initially just kind of had the understanding that we both wanted them and...
And that he was going to stay home.
Yeah.
Yeah, because I mean, look, if you're 32, he may sort of sit there and say, well, look, if I'm going to be a stay-at-home dad, there's not a whole lot of point in me getting some big business thing going.
Right.
Right?
Because you're going to have kids.
So what's the point of that, right?
Right.
So he can say also, I mean, I've done manual labor.
It sucks, right?
Yes.
Especially if you get over 30.
Your body's not quite as primed for it as it used to be.
Right.
And so he may be sort of sitting there saying, well, you know, what's the point of me getting—I could go and move rocks, but it's not going to contribute much to the income.
I don't have to quit when you have kids anyway, so— Right.
Is that—I don't know if that's where he's coming from, but— I'm not sure.
Yeah, see, this kind of stuff needs to be pretty explicit in a marriage.
And when I say pretty explicit, I mean completely explicit.
Right.
Well, we had a good plan going and that changed, so that's why I'm not sure now.
And it's difficult for us to have any type of conversation like that now because it just seems to always turn into an argument, however I'm presenting it.
Oh, wait, wait.
But if he's not going to work because he's waiting for you to have kids...
I don't know.
Sorry, go ahead.
I'm sorry.
I don't know that that's why he's not working now.
Right.
Yeah, because if you and I were married and we had a deal where you're going to work and I'm going to be the stay-at-home philosopher, parent, husband guy, and you said, well, what are your plans for the next 10 years?
I'd be like, well, like we talked about, my plan is to make the beast with two backs, fill your foot of my demon seed, and then have a spawn, raise a spawn, and do that kind of stuff, right?
But there wouldn't be conflict over it unless we chose to change the plans, right?
Right.
Well, the plan changed because he was going to go to school and had a goal in mind and then that changed.
And what was he going to go to school for?
He was all signed up to go for physical therapy assistant.
And?
And it got close to the time when the program was going to begin and he decided that he wasn't sure that that's what he wanted to do.
What?
Okay.
Now I'm confused.
Okay.
So was there a plan that he was going to be a stay-at-home husband and father?
Yes.
And you got married when you were 31.
So why would he be going to school and starting a new career if you're within four years of the last year you want to have kids?
Because it was only an 18-month program and it could be something that he could go back to later on after, you know, if he wanted to.
Oh, come on.
You're a professional woman.
You can't put this forward to me as a plan.
This can't be a project plan for you, right?
You don't work for the government, right?
No, I'm a nurse.
Okay, okay.
So this can't be a plan, right?
Which is, I'm going to go take a bunch of education...
That is fairly time-sensitive, right?
I mean physical therapy stuff changes.
There's new disciplines, new science, new medicine advances itself, right?
So I'm going to take a fairly time-sensitive discipline and then – I mean it's an 18-month course and then I'm going to raise kids for like 10 years and then I'm going to use that education from 10 years ago to go back to school rather than taking the education then when it would be more current, right?
That can't be a plan, right?
Oh, well – I'm not sure why it can't be a plan.
He could work one or two days a week.
I only work three days a week because I work 12-hour shifts.
So I'm not...
Oh, so he then would not be a househusband, but you would both be working and both taking care of the kids?
Well, I think one day a week is not really...
That's not like working, working.
That's not that big of a deal.
So he might work one day a week?
Yeah.
Right.
All right.
Okay.
It's not a great plan, but it's not the worst plan, I guess, in my humble opinion, sort of from the outside.
And the reason that I'm trying to sort of talk about all this stuff is that it seems to be a lot of nebulous stuff, right?
Like when you talk about future plans, it should be stuff that you've kind of all got in your head, right?
I mean, marriage is a business and biology partnership, right?
I mean, it's business because it involves money and it's biological generally because it involves kids, right?
It doesn't have to, but...
Right.
Right?
And you don't have a business plan or a biology plan, which is one of the reasons other than, right?
Like, I mean, I can't fix the awful stuff that happened with your brother and the betrayal of the teacher and the betrayal of the sister and the betrayal of your parents.
That's therapy and all that.
But in terms of marital communication, it shouldn't be like...
Well, what do you mean, what's my 10-year plan, right?
Or five-year plan or whatever, right?
Right.
I mean, it sounds like you don't have a clear idea.
And just remind me why he didn't go to do his education again?
Yeah, he just decided that's not what he wanted.
He wasn't sure he wanted to do that.
Right.
So it sounds like he's a little lost in limbo.
Yeah, that's what it seems like.
Right.
And is it a deal breaker for you that he's lost in limbo?
No.
In other words, let's say he doesn't get a job.
Is that going to be it for the marriage?
No.
Okay.
So that's why he's not getting a job, right?
And so if you're willing to pay for a guy to not work, Even though he's not a house husband.
I mean, I'm very hesitant to say what works and doesn't work in other people's relationships.
I mean, it's foreign to me, but if you're okay with that, then you should be explicit about that and say, listen, I'm going to take the work thing off the table because it's not hugely important to me.
I'm fine paying your bills for the next 50 years.
I'm not.
You're 32, right?
I'm sorry?
I'm not.
I'm sorry.
I didn't mean to interrupt you.
Go ahead.
No, no.
You go ahead.
This is your life.
Interrupt away.
I'm not okay with it, but I don't want to get a divorce.
I love him.
I don't want to not be with him.
I'm not okay with it.
Well, no.
Sorry.
That's the wrong way.
Sorry.
What I mean is you can say, listen, if you choose to do that, I'm not going to divorce you based on that.
I'm going to keep paying your bills for the next 50 years, even if you never darken the door of an employment office or garden office.
Ever again, even if we never have kids, I'm okay relatively with I'm not going to divorce you because you don't have a job.
I'm going to keep paying the bills.
And you can say, well, I'd rather you have a job, right?
Right.
But my guess is that the best predictor of future behavior is relevant past behavior.
If you've been paying the bills for the last year and he's not gotten a job, well...
He's now in a worse position to get a job, right?
Than he was a year ago.
Yeah.
So, unless he's going to take some huge effort, then...
So, I'm sorry.
I'm just trying to back off here.
I'm trying not to get overly suspicious about this guy, but I'm trying to be fair, right?
As far as what I think about with a woman.
So, I'm trying to think.
So, if a man called me up and said, my wife had this sort of menial labor job.
She's super hot.
physical therapist and that's why she quit her job.
Lo and behold, we get married.
I'm paying the bills.
She decided not to become a physical therapist.
Now she spends a lot of time on the internet and doing sit-ups.
I got to think I'd be pretty caustic about that, right?
Right.
Because the deal was he was going to go be a physical therapist and that's how he was going to get out of being a rock mover, right?
Right.
And then when did he break the physical therapist promise?
Was it after you got married?
Yes.
Yeah.
Yeah, see, that's shitty.
Yep, it is.
Right, so that's breaking a foundational promise.
Because he's like, because you probably didn't want to spend 40 years with a guy who moved rocks, right?
Well, I don't really care what he does as long as he's happy.
Well, come on.
I really don't.
Come on.
I mean, no, no, but come on.
Do you really think that a smart guy can be happy?
Moving rocks?
I mean, if he's happy, he's happy.
I really don't.
I really don't.
I'm honest.
No, if he's smart, he can't be happy doing manual labor in the long run.
He doesn't.
Because...
I'm sorry, go ahead.
I'm sorry.
He would much rather do something for himself.
Like, he would much rather, I think, be in business for himself.
And I think that that's where he's having a difficult time because he has all these great ideas, but he's not sure how to focus that and...
I'm not sure what he's waiting for, but he doesn't like...
Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no.
The I'm too full of good ideas to get anything done is bullshit.
I know.
I'm sorry.
I mean, I hate to be blunt, but I just got to tell you, honestly, I have so many great ideas.
I just can't narrow down and focus all the great ideas.
It's crap.
I sort of interjected that.
I'm sorry?
He hasn't said that to me.
I just sort of interjected that.
Yeah, I mean, and basically, I mean, if he's a smart guy, and you say he's a smart guy, then one of the definers of intelligence is knowing when you don't know something and knowing how to find out about it.
Right.
Right?
So we just did this video on Ebola.
What the hell do I know about Ebola?
Right?
Right.
I thought it was Spanish for bowler.
Right?
But, so, you know, you go look it up, you read a whole bunch of articles, and then you put together a presentation, and then you claim credit for other people's work.
I mean, as usual.
Right.
Usual thing we do.
But, right, so if he's like, well, I got these great ideas, but I don't know how to put them into practice.
Okay, well, then you go take a course on how to start a business.
You go read books on how to start a business.
You go, right, talk to people who, I mean, it's not.
Right.
It's not brain surgery.
You're figuring out how to start a business, not the end of the world, right?
He's a smart guy.
He knows how to do it, right?
He knows how to find out about it.
Right.
Especially with the internet.
He spends time on the internet.
His time on the internet being spent trying to figure out how to start a business.
Right.
Yeah.
I'm quitting my job as a landscaper so I can become a physical therapist.
Now that we're married, I don't think I really want to become a physical therapist.
I want to surf the web.
Come on.
Yeah.
That's not good, right?
No.
And that's not honest and that's not fair.
No, it's not.
Those are some expensive abs you got going there, sister.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And it's not helping him, right?
No, it's not.
I just don't really know what to do about it.
Well, you can't do anything about it.
Right.
I mean, you can stop paying his side of the bills, right?
Yeah, but that'd be kind of ridiculous.
Why?
Well, like I said, they're my bills too, and I don't know.
It's kind of childish, isn't it?
I'm not sure what you mean by childish.
If I said, here's your half of the water bill this month and we're married, I don't know.
That's not the kind of person that I am.
All right.
Okay.
Well, then that's not the kind of person that you want to do.
If that's what you want to do, then I guess you've got to live with what you've got.
Yeah.
All right.
So the marital stuff, it sounds like you've got some complaints, but you're fundamentally fairly satisfied with the way things are.
So don't push him to change, right?
I mean, so you either push people to change or you don't, right?
If you don't want to push him to change, then don't come up with like, well, what are your plans, you know?
Which is kind of like a roundabout way of saying, will you ever get a job, right?
I think the problem is when I try to do that is it turns into an argument and so I'm uncomfortable saying like, yeah, I need to go tell him to do this and that and No, no.
I said ask, right?
So look, just have a frank discussion, right?
I mean, the conflicts arise when people are maneuvering.
When people are frank with each other, conflicts evaporate incredibly quickly.
So when you're not being honest and you're trying to maneuver him into doing something, then people respond to that, to manipulation with aggression, right?
So that's probably why.
Okay.
Right.
So you could say, listen, I want you to get a job, but I'm not going to divorce you if you don't.
I want you to pay some of these damn bills, but I'm going to keep paying them even if you don't, right?
Right.
Then, okay.
Are you going to work to get a job?
Right?
If he says yes, then it's okay.
Well, you've got to work harder then, right?
Obviously.
I'm not telling you to work harder.
I'm saying if you mean that you want to get a job, then you have to actually work to get a job, right?
Right.
Yeah.
Does that make sense?
It does.
So you've got to work eight hours a day to get a job.
He's like, well, I don't know what I want to do, this and that and the other.
It's like, okay, then you get a job until you figure out what you want to do.
But you spent a year not working and you still don't know what to do, so that's not working, right?
Right.
And so it's just about being clear.
Yeah, I think that that's been my problem in the past is I'm afraid of getting a reaction, so I end up manipulating even though I should just be direct and Well, you do what women often do and men do it too, but it's a little bit more common, which is that you want something, but directness is alarming, right?
Right.
And obviously, I mean, you couldn't even tell your mom you were being abused by your brother, so directness is not in your history, right?
And again, I'm nothing but sympathy for that in six million different ways from Sunday, right?
Right.
Is this the first relationship you've had where you feel you're pulling more than your weight?
Yes.
Okay.
Right.
Damn, I'd like to see a picture of this guy.
Anyway, probably make me want to date him.
But yeah, I think directness is the key, right?
So people drift when nothing is defined, right?
When they're just kind of getting away with stuff.
I mean, I personally think that people who are drifting like that, they always strike me as kind of depressed, right?
Doesn't feel like he can contribute much.
Doesn't feel like he's worth much.
Obviously, nobody's beating down the door to get him a job or to offer him a job or to work with him or whatever, right?
So he's kind of drifting and he's kind of eroding his value.
His economic value is eroding as he's drifting.
And he's a young guy to be retired, right?
To live on the lap of nurse-generated financial luxuries.
So...
He's a young guy to be retired.
And my question is always, you know, panic about the future is, I think, foundational to life.
Yes, panic about the future.
There's a guy a couple of months ago who was living in a room over his brother's garage and he was like 50-something or other.
And it's like, yeah, you can panic now.
It's time for the panic.
Panic is good, right?
So panicking about the future is pretty important, right?
And what is...
The story of this guy's future.
I mean, he's only 30.
I'm old enough now.
I'm going to be 48 next month, right?
I'm old enough now.
30 is, man, when I was 30, I was chewing up the planet.
Right?
I was 30.
I was like, I'd finish my master's.
I started my business.
I mean, just getting out there and eating up the world.
Right.
And it was good.
Tasty.
Tastes like chicken.
And he's kind of hiding out from the world, right?
Right.
And you're creating this little shelter for him to hide out from the world in, right?
And you're afraid to assert your own needs because you're afraid that it's going to be hugely volatile.
But I'm telling you, the relationship has two ways forward, in my opinion.
The first is, I guess, three ways forward.
So the first is you assert your needs, and he listens, and there's conflict, but he basically changes, right?
He gets it, which is good.
I mean, that's ideal and maybe he does it in such a rapid fashion that you feel comfortable having kids or whatever it is, right?
That's one.
The second is that you assert your needs and your preferences and he basically weasels, right?
He promises, yes, I'll look for work.
Oh, nothing yet.
And then you get paranoid, check his browser history and it's all podcasts for me or whatever, right?
It's not actually looking for work stuff, right?
Mm-hmm.
In which case, the betrayals in your life tragically continue, right?
Right.
I mean, he knows you've been betrayed a lot in your history, right?
Yes.
And promising, like, I'm quitting my work to go become a professional in the field of physical therapy and so on, and then, oh, by the way, I'm not, is a betrayal, right?
And he knows you've been betrayed a lot in the past, and the fact that he'd be willing to betray you and not be honest about it and say, listen, I know I promised X and I failed to deliver, that's not good, right?
But he's just kind of skating by, right?
Right.
He knows you've been exploited and betrayed in the past, and this kind of exploitation and betrayal is not giving me a very warm and fuzzy feeling about the guy.
I'll just be perfectly honest, right?
Now, the other thing is that you just kind of drift on, right?
You're paying the bills, he's browsing the web, he's doing some gardening, and you're getting upset, but you're smothering it up, right?
Until at one point, like, you just club him to death in his sleep or something.
I mean, you know, I mean...
Kidding, right?
But at some point, you'll just be like, you'll wake up, and your unconscious will click, and you will feel revulsion towards the man.
Now, that may be past your kid's window, and that would be a true tragedy, right, if you want to have kids.
You're doing all this self-work.
You sound like a very warm-hearted and kind and conscientious young woman, and that would be pretty tragic, right?
She says, you can drift off.
You know, it's weird.
These marriages and people are married for 20 years.
I read stories about this marriage.
And then like the woman or the man, they wake up, they look over, they say, oh my god, I hate you.
Day before, celebrating the anniversary.
Next day, oh my god, I hate you.
No, it can happen.
And then you look at that person, you're like, how on earth could I have ever found you attractive?
And it doesn't matter how physically attractive they are.
You wake up and you're like, oh my god, right?
Now that is the result of so much avoidance.
Right.
That it takes your unconscious to plug everything together and that it's irrevocable.
Like I, you know, once I'm out, I guess with one or two exceptions, I'm out.
Right.
And that is the result of avoidance and that may strip you of your capacity to have children, right?
If you go on for another five years or so, like, or let's say, I mean, again, if your window is 35, I mean, you got three years.
I mean, you got two and a half years to get pregnant, right?
Right.
And you drift along for a couple more years and then it doesn't work out, then you're toast.
Yeah.
Your ex will die on the vine, right?
You're making me feel great.
No, no, I'm giving you the facts based upon what you've said.
Yeah, no, I'm just kidding.
Right?
You need, obviously you need this, you know, everybody needs this kind of bio-reality check, right?
Yeah, I know.
Because let's say you get divorced at 34 or 35, it takes a year to get divorced, right?
At least.
And it's expensive as hell.
And you may owe him alimony.
That would be hilarious.
If you've been the primary breadwinner, right?
And he's been taking care of the garden, then he may take you for half your income for who knows how long.
So then you've got to try and find a guy to be a father to your children.
You're emotionally broken from a divorce.
You're financially broken from a divorce.
And your clock is ticking so loud it's like living inside a Big Ben, right?
Mm-hmm.
How's that going to work out?
You're going to find a quality man in those situations, right?
I guess I just have to live with the choices that I made, you know, in life.
Well, yes, but I'm telling you, you don't have to passively wait for those choices to materialize, right?
I know, but I'm not...
I love him.
I don't want to not be with him.
That's just how it is.
All right.
All right.
Then I would just suggest try and be as clear about the future as you can be.
Yeah.
And if you're both on the same page and everyone's honest, as I said before, and I'll say again in this show, do what you will but be honest about everything.
Right.
All right?
And again, I'm incredibly sorry about what happened to you as a girl.
Heart-rending.
Absolutely heart-rending.
Horrendous and so horribly preventable.
Do you have any suggestions on how to sort of work through all of that?
Trauma.
Well, I mean, I think that a therapist who specializes in sexual abuse would be the way to go.
I think it's a complicated process, of course, right?
And I can't speak to it with any degree of competence because I'm certainly no therapist, but the level of anger...
At the exploitation and violation that you received is probably pretty ferocious, and rightly so.
I mean, a woman's vagina is a temple.
A woman's physical space, and a man's as well, right?
But we're just talking about you at the moment, right?
A woman's vagina is a temple.
A woman's physical space is inviolable.
It is sacred, if I may use that.
Non-secular phrase.
And the idea that the beauty of a woman's sexuality is reduced to a sniff-your-fingers creep-fest is such a violation of the beauty of sexuality and the health of sexuality that it takes what is a glowing gift of biological history and turns it into a creepy old rain-coated I'm so incredibly sorry.
I mean, what a hellish association to have with sexuality from early on.
So, you know, you've got some reason to be substantially angry.
And of course, like a lot of people who've been preyed upon, and I've known some nurses in my day, you know, the urge to take care of others and the capacity to deal with that stuff that goes on in nursing is not unrelated to your history, right?
You've Take care of your patients and you take care of your parents in terms of like, don't get them too upset.
You take care of your relatives, like don't get them too upset if you tell them about this hellacious stuff.
You take care of your husband, you take care of your patients, right?
And that's not an unknown correlation from people who've been extremely exploited as children, particularly sexually.
That makes sense.
So yeah, learn to take care of yourself.
A little more.
And I think that's going to be a hard process because there's going to be, I feel, a lot of very healthy anger that comes out of that process because lots of people are very comfortable exploiting victims.
And realizing how full the world is of those kinds of people is quite an angry experience, an angering experience, an embittering experience.
But I think I would really recommend, I mean, you probably get some through your union and all that, but get some...
Mental health dollars flowing towards a therapist who's got experience in what you've been dealing with these many years and just really throw yourself heart and soul.
You work three days a week, so you've got some time to really throw yourself heart and soul into this healing process.
It's been difficult to actually find a quality therapist.
I feel like I've been through multiple in the past couple as well when I was younger.
And then in the past year, I've been to just two different ones.
And I'll keep searching because I'm not really satisfied with the quality therapy that I'm getting.
But I don't know if you have a good resource for that or a way to...
I don't have a good source, but I've done a podcast on my thoughts about how to find a good therapist.
which is you can find it at find a therapist I'm sorry find a therapist I mean I'd love to get a network of approved therapists or whatever that might mean But I mean, that would be way too time consuming.
And I certainly wouldn't want to vouch for other people's therapy, given what a private business it is.
But yeah, I'm sorry that it hasn't worked out yet.
But, you know, keep looking.
There are some great therapists out there, but yeah, I mean, 90% of everything is crap, so, except this show.
Well, thank you for listening, and I appreciate it.
You're very welcome.
I hope that you will get a chance to drop us a line and let us know how it goes, and please get your husband to call in.
Okay.
All right?
All right, take care.
Thanks so much.
I appreciate that.
Okay, bye.
And, yeah, sorry, we only got through two calls tonight, but...
Some pretty deep and important topics.
And Mike, was there anything that you wanted to add?
Don, let the end of the show.
Just thank Trevor and Caitlin for both calling in today.
Really enjoyed both their calls.
And if you find folks enjoyed the show, have enjoyed the shows, if you could sign up for a subscription and support the show financially, that would be incredibly appreciated.
I'll just do the quick breakdown.
If you sign up for a $5 a month prescription...
Proscription.
Subscription.
What?
What?
It winds up being $0.16 a day.
$10 a month subscription is $0.32 a day.
$20 subscription is $0.64 a day.
$50 subscription is $1.61 a day.
And $100 subscription winds up being $3.22 per day.
How much is the show worth to you?
It's a question I asked myself, and the answer was more than what I was putting in the vending machine when I went to work on a daily basis.
So, just something to keep in mind.
Fantastic.
Well, thanks everyone so much, and we will talk to you on Saturday night.
