2856 The Danger of Being a Drug Dealer - Wednesday Call In Show December 3rd, 2014
I have been a black market marijuana dealer for eight years. Is my behavior immoral? Must I sacrifice my marijuana dealing to find a virtuous romantic relationship partner? My girlfriend and I are expecting a baby from an unplanned pregnancy – what do we do? I was raised in a society that strips men of their ability of showing emotion and am now going into the military – how can I make it through this situation? The girl I've fallen for is being manipulated into hating me by someone who I used to think was a friend. How do I get her to see the real me and not his made-up version?Includes: dissociating through marijuana, making assumptions about your future, avoiding negative emotions, building a productive future, avoiding daycare, families are made for each other, sexual Russian roulette, avoiding false rape allegations, self-protection and breaking destructive patterns.
Howdy everyone, and welcome to the December 3rd Wednesday Night Call-In Show Show Show.
We're going to get right to the first caller, and the first gentleman up today is Adam.
He wrote in and said, I've been a black market marijuana dealer for eight years.
It has helped me achieve a slightly better lifestyle, but has also held me back from other things, like relationships, i.e.
most girls can't date a weed dealer for a long time.
Two questions.
Is my behavior immoral?
And must I sacrifice my marijuana dealing to find a virtuous partner?
Hi.
Sorry, what was your name?
Hey, Adam.
How's it going?
Good.
How are you doing?
Good to speak with you.
I'm great.
So, Adam, you said a slightly better lifestyle.
Better than what?
It's just like another source of income.
So, better than I would be without it, I think.
How do you know?
I guess I don't.
I don't.
Beware assumptions, right?
I don't know either, but assumptions are...
Assumptions are fences, right?
It's like, oh, I assume I can't fly, so I don't try, right?
I assume that I can't become the lead ballerina in the Bolshoi Ballet, so I don't go to audition.
Assumptions are limits.
And if you say, well, I have...
A better life because I'm a drug dealer.
You know, that's not verifiable, right?
Right.
Really only money.
There's other things about it that are not as, you know, a better life.
No, even the money.
Even the money.
So, okay.
I'm assuming you make some good coin as a dealer?
I try to be moral so I don't take advantage of people.
I make coin but not a lot, believe it or not.
Right.
And so...
Your maximum coin as a dealer may be less than the growth in income you'd have had if you'd taken another path.
Right.
And I assume that it's hard to grow your business.
That's probably the wrong thing to say to a weed dealer.
It's hard to grow up your opportunities.
But it's hard to increase your income, right?
Yeah.
There's been good times and bad times.
With the whole...
The legalization that's happened, it's killed the price, and it's not as good as it once was.
It's not even profitable for many people to grow anymore.
That's why I stopped growing, and now it's like I'm trying to decide if I even continue with this or what.
Okay, so your question was around the ethics of it?
Yeah, I mean, I've heard you speak before saying that, you know, it's wrong to throw someone in jail for a long time over it.
I agree with that.
Or a short time.
At all, yeah, in my opinion.
But, I mean, I've had many, you know, people shun it.
Some people praise it.
You mean shun it or shun you?
Shun it.
They don't shun me.
Because, you know, I'm a good person to the people around me.
Sorry, what is the it then?
Shun what?
Shun that I'm in that business.
They just wish I were doing something else.
Whether it be girls or family, they always wish it was, you know.
So they're not shunning, they're just disapproving, is that right?
They disapprove, yeah.
Okay.
Yeah.
How smart do you think you are?
Where do you think you are on the IQ bell curve?
I've never taken an IQ test, but my roommate just told me the other night she thinks that I have a higher than average IQ, definitely.
All right.
So what do you think?
I think I'm smarter than the average bear, yeah.
I mean, I taught myself how to grow and do everything.
I've been able to provide for myself without marijuana and with, but I think I'm smarter than the average bear, yes.
And how much smarter do you think?
I would say I'm in the top.
If you had 10 people, I'd be in the top two.
Okay.
Okay, good.
And if you don't do this, do you have any other thoughts or ideas of what you might want to do?
Yeah, I was doing something in the renewable energy business, but I gave it all I could and it ended up being a bit of a scam.
And I got Screwed.
And so now the only way I've been able to sustain my living, food and rent and stuff, is getting back into restaurants and dealing.
Well, see, now you've got an assumption there, right?
Do you remember what it was?
Yeah, the assumption is that that's all I could do.
The only way that I can make money is to deal.
Right.
And that's not true.
It's not true.
Of course, right?
It's not true.
If you could wave a wand and be or do whatever you wanted for a living, what would you do?
Really, just for the next 10 years, travel and be documented traveling.
I'd love to work for...
I love Vice, the things they do.
I make videos sometimes, so I'd love to travel.
Sorry, you love Vice?
What is that?
It's a news...
Independent news type of thing.
They do the little mini documentaries and stuff.
But something like, you know, even traveling, anything where I would make a living outside of traveling, being in different places.
Yeah, traveling isn't making a living, right?
No, but I've been to South America and I have opportunities where I could have free food and free housing and perfect another language and still, you know, See part of the world.
On my tombstone, I wanted to say that I saw most of the world, or a lot of it.
So if I could do that...
The thing is, I'd get to middle age, and I'd have seen a lot of places, but unless I got paid to do it, I'm going to be broke.
So that's my dilemma.
Well, and even if you do get paid to do it, that's your skill set.
Do you want to get married and have a family?
Yeah, yeah, eventually.
Not now, but eventually, yes.
What does eventually mean?
Like in your 30s or 40s?
Yeah, late 30s to late mid 30s, maybe early 40s would be okay.
Is that a long way away for you?
I'm 27, almost 28, so it's like seven.
So not that long?
Mm-mm, not that long.
And certainly, I mean, if you want to start having kids, like if you want a woman who's kind of your own age, which I think there's some real benefits to, Because then you're not rolling your eyes and you're also not picking up the geritol on the way home.
Then you want a woman who's going to be in her mid-30s, which is, you know, right on the edge of a good, like the last good time to start having a fairly decent sized family.
So you kind of got to start looking relatively soon, right?
Right.
And there are other opportunities at my fingertips.
And I've thought about this, you know, I've thought I want to have like A huge savings before I decide to have a child because I know how much it costs.
I want to have pretty much almost retirement so that I can give the kid everything that they're going to need and all the time that I can afford.
I don't want to have to leave my kid with a daycare so I can bust my balls.
So in seven or so years, you want to be able to retire?
You know, it's like...
You want to.
I'm not saying you want to, but that's what you want.
I've been saving.
Do you have much saving yet?
Yeah, I have several.
I have different investments I've put.
I've always saved.
I've got, you know, about 20 grand in assets.
A little more.
So a little bit shy of retirement, right?
Yeah.
A little bit.
I mean, even if you can get 10% a year, right?
You're talking about two grand a year.
And I won't like.
Currently living in the outskirts of Cairo.
It's kind of tricky, right?
My goal is a quarter million before a baby.
A quarter million in savings, at least before a family.
Right.
Okay.
Now, have you ever had a job?
Oh, yeah.
I mean, I've hardly been unemployed.
Since I was 13, I've been working under the table.
Even in high school, they were trying to promote me to management at my different juice places and stuff, restaurants.
So, yeah, I've had...
Food service, retail.
The food service is what's kept me because it's, you know, you make quick cash tips in four or five hours, you make 30 bucks an hour.
And it's hard to pull away from that when you get used to it.
Right.
Yeah, I mean, I dare say it's a quick hit rather than slow and steady wins the race, right?
Mm-hmm.
Okay.
So as far as the ethics of it go...
Because you're not initiating force or fraud against anyone from a moral standpoint, yeah, I mean, it seems to me you're in the clear, but from a practical standpoint, being on the wrong side of the law, now marijuana has been legalized, but I assume that that's just for small amounts of possession, not for more amounts of dealing, right?
Right, but I've been in this for like nine years, and I've got a set of rules I play by basically protect myself from As good as I really could.
It would have to be me getting someone upset and them knowing everything about me and turning me in, which is very...
The only one who could do it is probably a woman that I would be dating.
But other than that, nobody has that kind of...
So if your customers were faced with a large sentence and they were threatened with a long sentence and they could reduce that in exchange for turning you over, they wouldn't be able to?
It's California.
It's pretty...
Relaxed here.
Even if a cop finds a bit of, you know, like under an ounce of weed in the car, they don't even take it away.
A lot of the times they'll put it back in the car where they found it.
So yeah, that's the thing.
It's not fully legal here in California.
The gray area is just so, like, the risk is actually bigger if you open a shop and get your licensing and pay taxes.
Then you risk getting SWAT teams and gangsters and All sorts of nasty taxation.
Right.
And given that you're kind of like an outlaw, what are the female pickings in that neck of the woods?
I mean, are there other female outlaws out there who, you know, are down with what you do?
I mean, most of the ones I've met are hippie ladies that are older, and they've already got their hippie husband or...
But the young ones, a lot of them will kind of find it as a turn-on, like a bad boy type of thing at first.
But if they stick around, either it's not for long because it's a hard thing to deal with.
You can never tell your parents what he does.
You know, like, oh, he's just a restaurant manager, but you guys went to Las Vegas?
It doesn't make sense.
So eventually, you know, they can't tell their family, they can't introduce you, or they can't deal with it, you know.
Maybe they, most of the girls I've dated have smoked weed, but if they stop, then it starts to become like, all right, well, he's like a stoner.
Why do you smoke as well as deal?
Yeah, that's how I got into it.
It was like, I think I paid for my own weed like maybe two or three times.
And then I thought like, well, you know, why do that if you can make a little money and it's not really immoral from what I saw.
Why do you self-medicating then?
With weed?
Yeah.
What happened to you as a kid?
I mean, as far as weed goes, I can go with or without it.
It's more of a habit.
It's like smoking cigarettes almost, but it's just a common...
Did you hear the question?
Yeah, what am I trying to smooth over with the weed smoking?
It's like when I'm bored, I don't know, you know?
I don't think there's a specific...
Did you hear the second part of the question?
The self-medicating?
What happened in your childhood that may have contributed to a desire to self-medicate?
No.
I took the ACE test that, you know, I got a three.
What were they?
It was divorce, which happened when I was 13, and then it was...
The suicide attempt, which had happened before a couple times.
And remind me, who was the suicider?
My mother basically acted as if she was going to commit suicide at one point.
And on a couple times, on a regular basis, she would lock herself in a room with a sharp object and cry and we wouldn't know what's going on.
And would she make threats to kill herself?
She wouldn't make very, no, not too, she would make a, not literal threats, but she would say stuff like that.
Yeah, she would say, I might, you know, I'm going crazy, I'm going to have a nervous breakdown, I might lose it, you know, stuff like that.
And that's intense, right?
Yeah, that was one of the big ones on the questionnaire.
And terrifying.
Mm-hmm.
What was your mother going to have a nervous breakdown about?
What was her stressors?
The stress of divorce and money, which was running low, and her work that she was trying to do at the same time as dealing with the two kids, which she was really not doing a good job at.
I think that's what it was.
She had issues with depression She was on antidepressants and trying to get off them, which is a really dangerous thing I hear.
And what phase in your development was this suicide attempt?
14.
That's when it started?
Yeah.
Yeah.
How old were you when your parents divorced?
Like 12, 13.
They moved, sold the house, separated.
What was their marriage like before that?
The first...
The first eight, nine years of my life were smooth.
And then after that, there began a love affair.
And then there was some violence in the house on my dad's side.
What does that mean?
He hit your mom?
Yeah, there was one Christmas Eve, which, because it's Christmas time, this is kind of messed up.
There was one Christmas Eve that they got in an altercation, and he He pushed her up against the wall and he put his hand on her mouth or her jaw or her throat or something.
So, I mean, that's pretty...
I wouldn't do that to a girl.
That's pretty messed up, in my opinion.
And she grabbed us, put us in the car, and drove us to somewhere else for the night.
That was the third point on the survey.
Right.
Witness violence against your mother.
Yeah.
And did that happen more than once?
Yeah, it was probably three or four times with her, and then there was two or three incidents, maybe more with me.
And what did he do with you?
A couple different ones.
There was the most memorable.
I was like, I was on, I don't know if I was pushed to the ground, if I was already on the ground, but he actually kicked me in the ribs or area while I was Down, like while I was on the ground, which is, I was about 12 or 13.
And it was while he and my mom had been in a fight.
I don't know how I was intervolved, but somehow like maybe it was over me.
But yeah, he got, he did a kick to the ribs while I was already on the ground.
Like, I don't know why, but that was the most memorable, the kick to the ribs.
So, but there's a few.
Adam, when you talk about this stuff with me, do you feel anything?
Yeah, I'm trying to relax.
Why are you trying to cover it up?
Why are you trying to cover it up?
I have a little bit of chest pain from stress.
I try to keep myself from getting stressed over this stuff because it physically hurts.
I'm not sure what that means when you say you have chest pains over stress.
When I start to get stressed, I literally feel like...
I understand what it means in terms of the language.
I just don't know what it means in terms of the causality.
Do you know if it's like, is it a hard problem?
Any form of stress.
I had a kind of a rough year with about a year, almost two years ago, but several family members died.
A dog died.
I got not evicted, but my apartment rent just got, I got evicted by raising rents.
You know, a lot of stuff happened.
And at that point, I was also kind of mindlessly self-indulging on stuff like just cigarettes and alcohol.
And the stress plus the cigarettes and a poor diet, I would get these pains and now they kind of persist.
Have you had that checked out?
No, I just try to contain my anxiety, but I haven't seen it.
So you have chest pains that you've never seen a doctor before?
It's only stress-related though.
Okay.
I know.
Will you go and see a doctor for me, please?
Yeah, yeah.
Would you mind, honestly?
I mean, I'm not a doctor, but I'm fairly aware that chest pains probably shouldn't be ignored.
No, no.
I'm not saying there's anything wrong with you.
I'm saying that probably shouldn't be ignored.
Now, so you are self-medicating off and on.
With alcohol, cigarettes, and marijuana?
I've kicked cigarettes and 90% kicked alcohol, which means I'll only have one beverage maybe twice a month.
Okay.
But marijuana is like a regular, yeah.
I self-medicate with weed on four to, yeah, like four to eight times a day.
I mean, I used to grow this stuff.
It's like everywhere.
A day?
Yeah, that's what I'm saying.
I smoke it almost as much as cigarettes.
It's like a normal thing.
Wow, that's a lot, right?
Yeah, I mean...
I thought you were going to say a week.
I'm like, wow, that's quite a bit.
And it's like a day.
Well, that would be seven times quite a bit, right?
Yeah, I mean, if you ever hung out with a weed dealer, we smoke a lot.
It's just...
And they're all different reasons, but I mean, I smoke a lot, yeah.
No, it's pretty much the same reason.
It is probably.
We're all self-medicating in a way.
Sorry, I'm just trying to remember my question.
I think I must have got some secondhand smoke here.
Have you ever been to therapy?
No.
I've always wanted to, but no one's ever sent me.
I don't know what that means.
No, I haven't.
Many times in my life I would love to have someone to just talk to.
I mean, you're making decent coins.
It's a phone call away.
It's a phone call away.
I don't know what it means.
You know, it'd be like me sitting there crossing my legs 19 times in your presence saying, man, I really got to get to the bathroom.
It's like, it's right over there.
Go.
I mean, I've always just either talked to a friend or self-medicated.
It was video games a lot of the time, too.
Weed and video games are a killer combination for self-medication.
You're outside yourself, right?
You're gone.
Oh, you smoke a bowl and you are in your halo suit.
You are our master chief out there.
And time doesn't exist.
And how good is your playing when you're stunned?
The same, if not better.
Yeah.
So...
When I was asking you questions about your childhood, Adam, and I asked you if you were feeling anything, you were trying to contain your feelings or your emotions because you were experiencing stress.
Is that right?
Yes, stress that leads to physical...
So negative emotions or uncomfortable emotions breed stress for you.
And because you're concerned about the heart or the chest pains, you may then, I guess, marijuana or video games or something is a way of taking that pain away.
The chest pains or the stress away, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
So you got it set up in your life where uncomfortable emotions are life-threatening and need to be medicated.
It's like insulin for diabetes at this point, right?
It's actually health positive for you to de-stress, in other words, to avoid negative emotions through marijuana, right?
Right.
And now tell me if I'm wrong.
I don't mean to be telling you what your life's about and I'm just trying to sort of piece it together in my head.
No, I mean, it's true.
For me, I've seen the medical benefits of it in a lot of ways.
Like, even there's been times when I couldn't sleep, and I'd eat a little marijuana cookie, and I'd knock out.
I don't know that that's the same as a medical benefit.
Well, it's a benefit, because instead of me staying up all night stressing, I just go to bed and have a nice, dreamless sleep and wake up.
Yeah, but as I've said before, it's sort of like heroin for a toothache, right?
I mean, it takes away the discomfort, but the underlying problems still remain, right?
It's a Band-Aid on a chest wound, right?
Yeah.
I think, right?
I'm just an amateur telling you what I think.
None of this is even remotely diagnostic or conclusive.
I'm just telling you what I think.
Yeah.
No, I've seen the medical benefits, but there's, like, a self-medication act to it that is definitely not healthy, you know?
Yeah.
At least to be, like, controlling.
Yeah.
Like, to be able to control, you know, because you actually want to smoke weed quite frequently when you have it abundantly.
When you don't, you don't have some crazy craving, like it's heroin or something like that.
Not that I've tried it, but you don't have this crazy draw to the drug like other drugs have.
But you still have this, like, I would love to get high.
I would love to smoke.
And if it's there, it's hard not to, you know?
Okay, so what happens if you don't?
If it's there and you don't.
I can still function just fine.
I can go to work or I can go to do whatever I want to do and basically just as good.
Okay, you know that you're not opening up any of your inner life to me, right?
Yeah.
I ask you what it's like if you don't smoke and you say, well, I can still go to work.
That's the view from outside.
I don't care about the view from outside.
I care about the view from inside, Adam.
I felt good, actually.
There were times of traveling, good and bad.
One thing that marijuana has done for me, at least, is get rid of dreams.
So when I do stop smoking for a while, I have dreams.
And they're about 30% good, 30% sexual, 30% bad.
So it's almost, you know, like...
I guess marijuana is not really enhancing your math skills there, but I get what you're saying.
Yeah, you know, there's a 10% whatever.
Okay.
10% filler.
10% dream text.
Got it.
Okay.
Yeah.
So you don't dream when you have marijuana.
Yeah, and that's a good thing.
You can't date when you're a dealer or you can't get into a steady relationship.
Your business is suffering because it's being incrementally quasi-legalized, right?
Exactly, yeah.
So there's not a lot of future in this, right?
No.
Unless you move to Colorado and have connections, which I don't.
Isn't it legal in Colorado, too?
It's fully legal in Colorado.
You can open up a recreational store.
Here, you need to get licensing, and most of the people do.
No, but why would you possibly imagine that you could make it as a recreational store owner in Colorado?
No, you're right.
It should be even harder.
I mean, your skill set is in the Gray area, to put it as nicely as possible, right?
Yeah.
Well, I have many skills, but yeah.
I'm not saying you couldn't.
I'm just saying I'm not sure how...
I mean, I guess if you pick locks, you can be a locksmith, but I don't know exactly how operating in the gray area of marijuana drug dealing makes you competent to...
Open a store and pay rent and pay taxes and hire employees and know the regulations and know the laws and do your profit and loss and run your spreadsheets and, you know, get investors and do advertising and marketing and, you know, whatever, right?
These aren't skills that you've developed in your area, right?
Yeah, I did though.
I was like a supervisor at different retail stores and I did manage a collective for a while here in California.
Sorry, so you do have some experience in store running?
Yeah, but we were shut down.
Everyone in California, you basically have a time bomb.
You've got a year at best before the feds come or something.
Oh, you mean so you ran a drugstore in California?
Yeah, I did a collective.
I helped manage one.
Alright, so sorry, you do have some experience.
I apologize for that.
That was an assumption.
Hey!
Well, I can tell you what I think.
And I obviously can't tell you what to do.
Obviously, you know that, right?
You know the drill.
Exactly.
You had some horrible stuff go down in your childhood, Adam.
Horrible, horrible stuff.
I know it's an ACE of three, but there's different levels even within the ACE categories.
And my major concern when you tell me about your childhood, as you said, for the first seven or eight years, things were smooth sailing.
That is not true.
That is not true.
Because if you have a mother who threatens suicide, if you have a father who is violent towards your mother and violent towards you, this wasn't just because they both got hit with simultaneous railway spikes in the neofrontal cortex one day.
These are personality problems that don't just appear when you hit puberty.
So you've got this giant, in my opinion, you have this giant whitewash of the first near decade of your, oh, that was smooth sailing.
That was great.
I can't imagine that that's even remotely true.
That's exactly the same as you saying when you're 10, oh yeah, I was born this tall.
Right?
If your parents had a horrible divorce, there were affairs, there's suicidality, there's physical abuse and so on.
That's not something that just pops up after a Mary Poppins story.
Home movie fest for the first seven or eight or nine years.
There was dysfunction earlier on.
There had to be.
People don't just suddenly go crazy without significant underlying biological causes, in my humble opinion.
And most people generally get a little less crazy over time.
And so if this is how crazy they were when you were in your early teens, you go back ten years You know, I just can't see that the cup runneth over with functionality.
And I think that's probably where your self-medication is landing most squarely.
Because you have obvious stuff when you got older.
At least when you're talking to me, you don't have any emotional connection to it.
But that's because I would assume the self-medication.
But when you go back further...
There just seems to be this giant whitewash.
And I would imagine that there is a tendency for the Garden of Eden to be broken, you know?
Like at some point in our past, there was this great time, this wonderful time, and then it all went to hell, you know?
The snake came along, ate the apple, and next thing you know, you're thrown out, cursed with work and childbirth, and there's a flaming sword guiding your way back.
But I don't imagine that this was true.
I don't know.
I wasn't there.
I'm not you.
I'm just telling you what I think from the outside.
And so I think that therapy would be a great idea for you.
Like an absolutely great idea.
You don't have to talk about your work.
Just talk about your childhood and talk about what went on.
Mother, suicide, when she's your primary caregiver, that is some seriously screwed up stuff.
You don't need me to tell you that, right?
No, I knew it at the time.
Right.
And I don't know that you feel it now.
Because you've got this fear that feelings will make your heart explode or something, right?
Crawl out of your chest like some alien out of John Herb's abdomen, right?
And so I think therapy would be a great idea.
I think that going legit, in my humble opinion, would be a great idea.
This, you know, you've got to think of being 40 or 45, right?
I'm pretty sure you don't want to be where you are in 20 years, right?
Exactly.
That's my whole...
You don't want to be eking this shit out and maybe it's been legalized and you're just getting by and your lungs are...
God, I mean, can't imagine what they look like smoking eight or four, eight times a day.
You just...
You don't want to be there.
You need to start building for the second three quarters of your life, right?
And that means letting go of the...
Gravy train.
Letting go of the easy stuff.
I mean, if you had a trust fund, I'd be saying kind of the same thing.
Give it away!
And work, baby!
You know, we...
Our moral fiber is like a muscle.
It grows with resistance.
Strengthens with resistance.
And I think because you're managing a lot of early childhood stress, you are trying to minimize that by taking a bit of an easy route in some ways with this source of income.
And I think it's going to cost you quite a bit.
You know, there's nothing that's more difficult than a shortcut in many ways, right?
And so I think, you know, get to therapy and if you're able to transition to legit, you get a number of benefits, right?
Which is you can date and say to people what you did.
You may need to skate over a few things like the last 10 years, but you can kind of enter into the muggle world, right?
And Have a legitimate relationship with in-laws, girlfriends, and so on, right?
So I think that's beneficial.
You say if you're not around weed, you don't really want to smoke it as much.
Hey, that's a pretty good idea, right?
So if you're not dealing, and if it's not bursting out of your attic, then, you know, it's a lot more work to go and get.
Like, I have weaknesses for certain foods.
My genius solution is Right?
Because if they're there, I'm more tempted to eat them.
If they're not there, I'm not driving to the grocery store to get them.
So it would be great for your physical and mental health to not be inhaling all this crap for the next 20 years.
And so I think it's good for your financial health.
It clears your mind up a little bit.
I don't know if you drive.
I hope you don't drive when you're high.
But you'll be able to drive around more.
Or if you get a car, be able to drive around more.
Be able to have a relationship.
And be able to build for the second...
Well, for the second major phase in your life, right?
I mean, you've got youth.
You've got middle-aged marriage family.
And you've got old age.
You're kind of pushing the youth thing and you don't have much of a foundation for the next part, but you can get that, right?
Yeah, easily.
I know that I can do other things.
I've had other opportunities come that if I really put 100% of effort into it, they can grow into six-figure jobs.
I'm sure of that.
And you will also be able to deal...
With your history and incorporate your history into your present and deal with the difficulties, which means that your heart can be open.
You don't want a woman who wants you as you are now.
This is foundational.
This was, I mean, I'm telling you from experience, before I went into therapy, I didn't want or shouldn't have wanted any of the women who wanted me prior to self-knowledge.
I don't just mean prior, like therapy wasn't the only thing.
I've been working on it for a long time beforehand, but therapy was the big thing.
Breakthrough time.
Never had a better investment.
That's why I keep pumping it in this show, like every single show.
Go to therapy, go to therapy, go to therapy, get the right therapist and do it!
Because there's no better investment.
I spent a small fortune on therapy, but it more than paid off.
Just financially, it's a huge, great investment.
And so, if you go legit, mental health benefits, physical health benefits, dating, marriage, children benefits, and...
I don't see a particular downside other than change of habits, right?
Yeah.
Yeah, just change habits.
Smoke.
Don't smoke.
For God's sakes, don't try and get off the marijuana without therapy.
You were just talking about your mom.
I'm not saying marijuana is the same as SSRIs.
Of course not, right?
But you may be surprised at how much is under that smoke.
Right.
I mean...
I agree with what you're saying.
I've wanted therapy before, so I'm going to definitely find somebody.
And go see a doctor about your heart.
It's probably just stress, right?
And so on, but if you find that out, or if for whatever reason you can't afford that right now, then if you go to a therapist right away, you can mention the heart problem, and the therapist can give you some stress management techniques.
When was the last time you got checked out by a doctor?
Uh, I was in a, like probably three, three and a half years ago, four years ago.
And it wasn't a, it wasn't a, it was like, um, it was a physical, like they did STD tests, blood, blood work, physical, but, um, there were no, there were no stress, chest pains back then.
Yeah.
I mean, obviously, um, the heart, I'm no doctor, but I believe that the heart is kind of central.
To, like, not being dead.
And I'm not saying you have any problem with the heart.
What do I know?
But it's worth checking out, right?
Because it must be worrying you.
Well, both things.
One, physical condition of my heart.
And two, the stress is like, I know if I'm stressed the next 20 years, I'm going to end up, you know, with a heart attack at 50 or something.
So, it's both things.
You know, therapy for the mind and a doctor for the body.
Would you let us know how it goes, Adam?
Definitely I'll send Mike an email.
You'll expect to hear from me for sure.
All right.
Appreciate that.
Thank you so much for the call and the very best in your life, man.
You've got a lot of stuff to offer the world.
I can smell the intelligence in your syllables.
So I'm really looking forward to hearing what happens.
Okay.
Thanks, Stefan.
You'll hear from me in the future.
Thanks, man.
Take care.
Bye.
Alright, thanks Adam.
Up next is Rob.
Rob wrote in and said, Me and my girlfriend are expecting a baby from an unplanned pregnancy.
I don't have anyone whose advice I feel I can trust in this situation.
Can you please help me work through what's going on in my mind and offer any advice you think would be appropriate?
Unplanned, you say?
Hello, can you hear me?
Yeah, go ahead.
Hi.
It's a pleasure to talk to you.
I've been listening to you a lot recently, and you've helped me more than I can describe.
So thank you.
Thank you very much.
Hopefully we'll put a stop to that now, but we'll see.
I actually wish I had...
I started listening to your more political and anarchist podcasts.
The Gateway Drugs!
Yeah, that's right.
About a year ago, and then I think maybe just a couple weeks before I found out I was having a baby, I started listening to your call-in show.
And then my mind just started changing.
I just started opening up.
And then I found out that, and I was like, shit, I should have listened just a little bit sooner.
And then everything that you were saying was everything I needed to hear, but like...
Just a little bit too late, you know?
So...
I'm sorry about that.
I'm sorry about that.
Time travel we can't do.
We're still working on that.
So, okay.
Unplant?
What do you...
Unplant?
What does that mean?
I should specify.
She was on...
She was on birth control and...
I didn't really know too much about it, about birth control or like really how it worked.
And I was just naive and just kind of trusting the situation.
And it's not to say they don't trust her, but it was her first time using it too.
And she wasn't using it.
You mean the pill?
Yes.
It wasn't her.
It wasn't her first time.
Sorry.
It wasn't.
I'm sorry.
I'm a little nervous.
It wasn't her.
The point wasn't to not get pregnant.
It was to help with the hormones in her period.
But she was prescribed the pill, I assume, by a doctor, right?
Correct, yes.
And I assume that the doctor told her when to take it.
Correct, yes.
So what we think happened is that she got sick one day and she threw up.
And then that day or a couple days around there, we had sex.
And that's what we're thinking.
Huh.
Did she not read instructions about what to do and all that?
Like if you're sick, if you throw up, right?
I mean...
You know what?
I think it was just not thinking.
And I hate to say that, but I think that's just all it was.
It was just in the situation, not thinking.
How long have you been going out with a girl?
Since last September.
I've known her for like five or six years, and we've been friends, but we started dating about September.
You sound like a young man.
I'm 26.
Then how old is she?
She's 26 as well.
And what do you do?
Right now I work at a warehouse.
I just graduated from school.
I've been in and out of college and trying to figure out what I wanted to do.
I moved down to where she lives and I just got a job wherever I could.
So for those who want to work in a warehouse, what degree should they pursue that you can provide them feedback on?
I have an audio engineering degree.
All right!
Audio.
So if you like lifting stuff, then study audacity.
Okay, got it.
Okay.
So it's just something for right now.
No, I got it.
I got it.
Hey, we've all been there.
Don't sweat it.
All right.
And how far along is she?
She's due at the beginning of February.
And what are your plans as parents?
How are you going to swing this?
As parents-to-be?
Well, I'm not really sure.
I think that's part of the reason why I called.
I mean, it's just kind of...
I'm not really sure exactly, but I just...
So the idea is we're living with her parents right now.
And her parents are really great and supportive.
And get married and then...
I'm honestly not sure where we're going to go and all that right now, but...
Well, I mean, are you getting married?
That's...
I guess the other reason that I called is because I've been kind of dragging my feet in terms of that.
I haven't proposed, and she's, I think, been frustrated that I haven't.
I just wanted to get to a place where I was...
I didn't want to just get engaged because she was pregnant.
You know, like...
I say shotgun!
Yeah, right, right.
So, yeah, when I get nervous or anxious, I tend to lose my train of thought.
No, I get it.
Of course.
Right, okay.
Are you ready to commit to this woman?
I mean, forget the marriage thing for a moment, right?
Because you're making a ball of joy that's going to have you bound hip to waist for, you know, probably close on a quarter century, right?
So you'd be 52 when this kid's heading off to college, right?
Or whatever, right?
Coming back from college.
I mean, that's what you're setting up for, right?
You are having a child with a woman, which means you guys are now bound together.
It doesn't matter if I have the ring on her finger.
I mean, you've got the umbilical cord going around both of you, right?
Nice and tight.
I mean, it's crazy.
I mean, you kind of get it in your head.
You become a parent, right?
So Der Stingel, Sting, ex of the police, has got a musical on Broadway.
It's not doing that well.
So he's stepping into the leading role.
He's going to be singing.
I'd love to see Sting in New York on Broadway.
Okay, it's kind of expensive, but let's say we got the money.
How are we going to go?
My wife would like to go.
Okay, that's even more expensive.
How are we going to go?
I mean, we can bring my daughter.
How's she going to do at a Broadway show?
I'm bored.
You're enjoying this song?
I'm going to try and put my finger up your nose and call you a noogie head.
I mean, that's just how it's going to work.
Can't take a kid to New York and can't pull a Bill Cosby and leave the kid in the hotel room because that's not right.
What are we going to do?
I mean, you're home.
You can't get out.
Shawshank Redemption time, baby.
There's no Rita Hayworth poster you can burrow through and somehow magically put on the wall after you leave on the inside.
You're home.
And you're with the other person.
And I think I may have mentioned that you're home a lot.
So that's the reality.
I mean, and you're home and you're co-parenting, right?
So the complexities of your adult-to-adult relationship are multiplied by issues that you may have with each other's parenting choices and styles.
Are you going to spank?
Are you going to punish?
Are you going to take away toys?
Are you not going to punish?
Are you going to do timeouts?
I mean, how are you going to deal with With the stuff where, you know, one private school, private school, homeschooling, like what are the plans?
You don't even know where you're going to live yet, right?
Yes.
I mean, we've...
I'm not trying to nag you and say you should.
I'm just sort of the lay of the land, right?
No, and this is why I call them because this is exactly what I need.
So I appreciate it.
This is the great part about my girlfriend is that between us is because we agree with a lot of things like there's no hitting, there's no yelling.
We've already talked about this even before she got pregnant.
She doesn't really know peaceful parenting as an idea, but she's decently far along that road anyway.
I would like to do homeschooling and she wants to do private schooling, which I'm not against.
She doesn't want to do public schooling because she had that experience and she doesn't want to do that.
So those kind of foundational things, specifically those things, I'm not too worried about because we agree on those things.
I think the problem that I run into, well, is...
Working the job I have is kind of a mindless job, and so I have a lot of time to think.
And so I'm not really sure the fears that I have or things that bother me about our relationship or the situation I'm in.
It's hard for me to pick out what is rational and what is just anxiety.
And so I think that's part of the reason why I'm on the show is just to get some sort of, I guess...
You're on the show so that I can tell you to stop being so abstract.
There's this cloud of discontent that roams around me, and it's like a unicorn, but with only a wing and a half.
And it's got a rainbow tail.
It's like, no, no, no, what's troubling you?
Okay, so what specifically is on your mind at work that's troubling you about the relationship?
Um...
I think a big thing for me is that when we're communicating well, it's the best communication we've ever had.
And it's like, we're listening and it's fantastic, but when...
And maybe just from my perspective, but when she's not open, there's not really much communication.
What does that mean, not open?
It doesn't seem interested in...
Communicating on a deep level or...
I'm trying to not be abstract and I'm having difficulty doing that.
It seems to be like this kind of...
The way that I just try to describe it to her was like this emotional nausea.
I felt like this kind of back and forth where it's...
We'll be of like these really deep, great conversations about kids and about like the future and everything.
And then if I come home from work, she like...
Won't look at me while she's watching TV. Okay, so she's like zones out, spaces out?
Yeah, she does, yeah.
And I'm trying to think of a better example, but I'm kind of blanking at the moment.
No, no, I get it.
I get it.
I get it.
Okay, so the spacing out is tough.
And what does she do?
She works at a car dealership in the office.
She does customer relations.
So your job is mostly use your muscles in your head, think what you want, and her job is dealing with people all day.
Otherwise known as...
Yes.
You know, I see dead people.
No, I see customers.
So she may want to zone out a little bit.
She's a different kind of job, right?
That's actually a really great point because I have so much in my head and at the end of the day I just want to talk and I think it's the opposite for her.
Oh yeah, no.
She's been talking all day.
Now, I would imagine this is a car dealership that also does repairs and maintenance?
Correct.
So basically, other than being a thoracic heart surgeon, her job is giving people the worst news they're going to receive, right?
It's a lot of both, but yeah, there is a lot of that.
Yeah, no, most people would rather know, oh, you're going to have open heart surgery rather than, here's a list of everything that's wrong with your car.
I mean, literally, I put on a crash helmet.
I don't, like, put on a crash helmet when I go to the car dealership.
It's like, okay, I'm now in a fetal position.
I'm sucking my thumb.
I have my crash helmet on and I have a hockey cup over my nads.
Okay, tell me what's happening with my car.
Right?
And they're all doing this like happy dance and shooting off flares and naming college wings after me because they're just able to extract so much money out through my belly button that that's just the kind of wealth they're going to be enjoying.
I mean, basically when I come in and they just go ka-ching, like that gesture, that is not usually a good sign.
And I just, I mean, I just, I want to drop the car off and not go back.
Basically, keep the car.
I'll just take the bus because I don't have to maintain the bus.
And, um, it's, uh, it's, it's horrible.
Especially as your cars age.
Um, you know, I mean, part of you just wants to take out back and shoot him like a horse.
But then you'd have to dispose of the body.
So, um, so her job is telling people usually exceedingly bad news all day.
And people being like, what?
You told me it was regular maintenance and blah, blah, blah, right?
I didn't even know that was that part of the car that needed replacing.
Of course, my car is so old, at least.
I don't know.
We've got to get the Chinese guy with the abacus to interface with your car's computer because it's QBasic 1 or something.
Anyway, so she's got a lot of crap eating all day and you've got a lot of getting in your head charged up with thoughts that you want to blech on her when you get home, right?
Correct.
And I think the other thing, too, is that listening to your show, Like on to and from work, I'm like, I'm charged up because I'm like, you know, real-time relationships and like deep communication.
And then like I get home and she's tired and I get frustrated, but I had, I, you know, I don't, I don't really feel right being frustrated, but I am.
Yeah.
No, I mean, expectations is one of the great challenges in relationships, right?
To knowing what are reasonable expectations and what are unreasonable expectations.
Yeah.
Like, I have an unreasonable expectation that we can get donors up to, say, 5% of total listeners.
Madness!
Madness, I know, but that is my expectation!
FDRURL.com slash donate.
5%?
My goodness.
I'm sorry?
5%?
My goodness.
I know.
It's mad.
It's mad.
Capital percent?
Yeah.
That's business plan B. Business plan A is a giant unicorn full of gold in its ass.
It's going to fly over my house, and I'm going to shoot it down with a harpoon.
That is business plan A. Business plan B, if that doesn't work out statistically, is getting phenomenal.
75%.
1 out of 20 people to donate for the show.
50 cents a show, as we ask.
Anyway, not you, though, because you're working in a warehouse and you've got a kid on the way.
So if you haven't given any money, don't.
And if you have, please stop.
So yeah, expectations are important.
And I think it's fine to have good expectations, but it usually has to be a negotiation, right?
Oh, hello.
I'm here.
Sorry.
Oh, you are?
Okay.
Okay.
So she may need a bit of sort of decompression time coming out of customer service, also known as zombies on cocaine management.
So, I mean, there can be some discrepancies just based on your job.
Now, is she going to stay home with the kid?
That's another problem is that she can't because we both have student loans.
So she's going to have maternity leave, and then after that, she'll be going back to work.
Can't you get a better job?
I'm looking currently.
Right now, it's not so good, but I'm looking currently.
Okay.
Try to get a better job.
Because she's going to breastfeed, right?
And how long is her mat leave?
It's eight weeks.
Yeah, I mean, recommended is I think 18 months breastfeeding.
So, unless she's going to have a one lopsided giant moving boob on under her blouse, it's going to be a little tricky if she's back at work, right?
Plus, if she tries to breastfeed off a customer service job all day at a car dealership, she might as well be injecting stress hormones directly up your baby's nose, right?
So, yeah, I would say that for you, job one is, and, you know, I hate to say it, but, you know, you...
Men take a big, giant leap in their careers and incomes, A, when they get married, and B, when they have kids.
Now, you're kind of rolling the two in some ways together, whether you get married or not.
The commitment comes with the kid.
And your job, you know, go get the cheddar, right?
Go get the bananas.
Because, you know, the monkey family be growing.
And I think that the big urgency for you would be to go out and try and get a better paying job.
Because if you can keep...
Your wife home with the kid and, you know, after you've got, would it be her parents that would take care of the kid?
No, her parents, both her parents work, so...
Where are you going to put the kid?
Take care.
Okay, so have you done that math?
Like, she goes back to work.
I don't know, what is she earning, $24,000, $26,000 at the place?
It's $35,000.
Oh, that's good.
Okay, $35,000.
All right, so...
I guess I get some sense of where you are relative to the city center.
So she's making $35,000.
After taxes with daycare, I mean, if you've gone through the spreadsheet to figure out what her take-home is going to be?
Well, right now, she makes a take-home with the sizable insurance.
I think she brings home like $2.60 or something.
I think that's going to change once she has the baby.
I'm not sure to what extent, but the daycare is $80 a week.
80 bucks a week?
Yeah.
What are they, duct taping them to the bottom of 18 wheelers?
How the hell do you get daycare for 80 bucks a week?
I'm not sure.
I don't know.
Well, you might want to check out why.
Is it like Abdul's House of White Child Abduction?
I don't know.
Just check.
That seems mighty low for daycare.
So check that out.
Putting a kid in daycare at 8 weeks...
It's bad, man, in my opinion.
And it's not just my opinion, but it's pretty bad.
Because the kid will be in 9 to 5, right?
Yeah.
Or 8 to 6?
Yes, I think it's 6.
I think that's the thing beyond everything that kills me the most.
And I just want to avoid it.
Okay, but you've got something you can do about that, right?
So...
You can't be making that much in the warehouse, right?
You're not even making 35, right?
No.
What are you making, 10, 12 an hour?
Yeah.
Yeah.
So that's 20, 24K a year.
I don't imagine you're exactly bathing in benefits, right?
No, no, I'm not.
Right, right.
Okay, so, you know, if she works, I can't imagine that you're...
Like, if you stay home and she works...
Then she's got the benefits.
She's got the healthcare.
I assume she's got, you know, all kinds of good cheddar coming out of the grater.
And she can pump and you can stay home and you can feed the kid breast milk and do all that kind of cool stuff, right?
Because I can't imagine that, I guess at 80 bucks a week, is that, what's a government daycare, right?
That's got to be.
Yeah, I think so.
Yeah, so heavily subsidized government daycare.
In other words, crap.
You know, to use a technical term.
So, if you can stay home and she can pump her milk, then you can at least breastfeed the baby and give the baby, you know, the eye contact, the regular changes, the play, the stimulation, and so on.
I mean, what goes on in daycares is lunatic.
I mean, if you just break down the math, there's no conceivable way that even a daycare worker with a 1 to 5 ratio has virtually no time for play.
And also the germs that are spread are horrendous, right?
So, you know, if she can be the breadwinner and you can stay home, I mean, that's what I did.
And it worked out pretty well.
And the kid can still get breastfed and still have a constant presence during the day.
And then you get the joys of the night shift because, you know, you're not the one that's working.
But I think that could work out.
And then, you know, you can spend the time while the kid's napping and so on to upgrade your skills, to start networking, to start to work your contacts and to study and, you know, maybe take a course or two on the side if you can afford it so that when the kid is old enough and whatever you're going to do at that time, you then can maybe see if you can switch with your wife if you can get a better paying job.
That's actually not a bad idea because the place she's working, there's a possibility for changing position to substantially more money.
So that's definitely a good possibility.
Oh, you mean for your wife?
Or your fiancé?
Or your girlfriend?
Your baby mama?
Correct, yes.
Yes.
Yeah, I mean, don't be shy about staying home.
I mean, definitely, you know, Mother Nature...
She connects the plumbing to the taps on the woman's boobs, not so much on the man's.
But, you know, it's better that your kid have you at home than going to a daycare.
And right now, given your income, you know, I don't see how it's particularly productive.
You know, if you've got a place, if you can live with parents and, you know, reduced or no rent...
And she can go to work and you know, maybe you need what you guess you need one less car and All that so there can be lots of good stuff that can happen If you stay home and I would hugely hugely recommend that studies show that kids in daycare for 30 hours or more a week experience exactly the same symptoms as As children abandoned by their mothers like just left by the side of the road and picked up by strangers Kids,
you know, you know what it's like when you're a kid when you're a kid Like a day is an eternity, particularly when you're very young.
It's an eternity.
Like the kids don't know that it ends and they're not very good at pattern recognition when they're six months old about when mommy's there and daddy's there and when they're not.
And I think it does kind of fundamentally break people's hearts to hand over an eight-week-old baby to strangers and head off to work.
Stefan, I was actually listening to one of your podcasts where you had mentioned that before.
And I mentioned that to my girlfriend and she didn't...
She wasn't sure about that, and I couldn't find the statistics that you were mentioning.
Is there any way that Mike emailed to me or something like that?
Because I want to share that with her.
Yeah, it's in William Gerdner's book.
Mike, you can look it up.
I can't remember the name of it.
It's something about the family.
And there's a whole chapter in there on daycare.
And if I remember rightly, the statistic is in there, but you gotta read up, right?
I mean, because if your kid grows up with an attachment disorder, it's apparently 40% of American kids do.
If your kid grows up with an attachment disorder, you know, with parenting, it's pay me now or pay me later, right?
And if you end up With a kid that's not attached to you, particularly when they hit their teenage years, I think your life gets incredibly complicated and difficult very quickly.
And so I would strongly recommend really looking into some of the developmental stuff around kids in daycare.
It's pretty bad, particularly at eight weeks of age.
It's incredibly rough.
And, I mean, obviously you guys want to do the best by your kid.
And, I mean, I would rather live...
I'd rather live in a bachelor apartment in a small town than hand my daughter over at that age.
When you have a baby and you're learning about the baby and you're interacting with the baby and you're having all the joys of fatherhood, You don't need a lot of stuff.
I mean, you don't need a lot of toys.
You got a baby.
Best toy ever.
Best toy ever.
And so, you know, I mean, I know you got your student loans and all that, but I think that the wisest decision in the long run is to be securely attached to your kid.
Parenting, when you've got a very strong attachment, parenting is very easy.
Very easy.
I mean, I spend hours and hours and hours and hours with my daughter, and we have a huge amount of fun.
And we have very few conflicts, and it's just an enormous amount of fun.
And, you know, you get these incredibly moving bits.
Dinner with my family tonight, and we were talking about how to become a good conversationalist, because she'd like to chat more, and she'd So we're talking about how to become a good conversation.
Oh, you can ask kids, you know, what's your happiest memory?
And I said, so what's your happiest memory?
And she said, well, having you and mommy as parents.
I'm like, okay, daddy's going to take a little break.
Sobbed gently into his t-shirt.
So when you have that kind of connection, you have that kind of trust, and you have that kind of intimacy, it's pretty conflict-free in general.
And that is irreplaceable.
If that makes sense.
And I've looked at your ACE score and there's some challenges for you, right?
For you as a kid.
Right.
And I think that the closer you can get to your son or daughter after birth and the closer you can stay, the more you can break that cycle that you are unfortunately exposed to quite a bit, right?
Right.
Yeah, that's true.
But don't put them in daycare if there's any way around it.
And it sounds to me like they could be.
You know, you've got to move.
I don't know how, you know, obviously you don't need any details about where you're living.
But, you know, you've got to move to a tiny place, 500 bucks a month on the outskirts of town.
I mean, if you can't stay where you are, I mean, I hope you can.
I mean, a couple of years, yeah, fine.
You know, I've lived in one room.
I've actually lived...
Sharing a room as an adult.
I'm still friends with the guy I shared the room with.
Lord be.
So you don't need a lot of space.
You just need a lot of connection.
And I look back with some fondness at the places I lived that were pretty down by law.
And, you know, if you've got to downsize, you've got to downsize.
You sell a car, get an older car.
Sell one car because you'll be staying home.
You'll look back with fondness, you know?
Today's tragedy is almost always tomorrow's comedy.
You'll look back with fondness at those times, and you won't remember your environment.
You'll remember your son, your daughter, your connection.
Okay.
Thank you.
So many times people in life, they...
They make decisions based upon the momentum of history without having any real sense of what is going to be important to them later in life.
You know, you've got to build your life for what's going to be important to you later, not what's important to you now.
Do I miss writing books?
I do.
I really, really do.
I used to write a lot of books.
I miss writing books.
But I was pretty clear when my daughter was born that I could have another couple of books on a bookshelf.
Hey, look at that, another couple of spines with my name on them.
Yeah, I could have another couple of books on a bookshelf.
But instead, my consolation prize is almost six years of great memories with my daughter.
I can tell you which is more important to me.
But you've got to look in the future and say, what do I want to look back with?
Your kid at some point is going to be getting into that car or getting into that cab for the last time under your roof.
They'll be going off to college.
They'll be going off to travel.
They'll be going off to who knows where.
Some job somewhere.
It could even be five blocks away.
But they're still out.
They're gone.
You're done.
And that's it.
You've got an empty nest.
Now, are you going to look back?
Two decades or more and say, well, you know, it's really great that we had that extra bedroom.
It's too bad I had to go to work 40 hours a week and not spend time with my kid.
But it was really nice to have a newer car and an extra bedroom.
I guarantee you that is not going to be what's on your mind.
What's going to be on your mind is all the missed opportunities.
And then wondering, is my daughter going to call?
Is my daughter going to...
Do we have that connection?
Do we have that?
Or am I just people that she lived with?
And who weren't around very much.
You don't want that, right?
No.
Not at all.
The War...
Sorry, War Against the Family, A Parent Speaks Out.
That's the name of the book.
And I don't know if you can get it online.
I think I've quoted that statistic before.
Or if we have it in a presentation we prepared but not produced called The Truth About Daycare, but...
Given that the guy's earning 10, 12 bills an hour, Mike, maybe we can send him a reference, because I don't need to buy the book just for that.
But figure out, you know, try and live like, what kind of body do you want to be giving your 50-year-old self, right?
See, that's a long way away for you, but for me, it's like, so do you want to give a 50-year-old self some creaky body with a fatty liver and joint pain and, you know, 100 pounds of extra fat?
No.
That's not what your 50-year-old self wants to inherit.
He wants to inherit something relatively healthy and exercised and lean and all that.
And the same thing too, your 50-year-old self, what kind of memories do you want to bequeath your 50-year-old self?
What do you want to be firing down the tube of time to your 50-year-old self?
When you're 50, look back at your life and say, what memories do I want?
Do I want memories of being bored in a warehouse or Well, someone ignores my baby.
I don't want those memories.
I don't want those memories.
I want to give the memories of three o'clock in the morning when my baby was up and we looked out at the moon together and I taught her how to say the word moon and I could see it ignite behind her eyes as the word and the light of the moon hit her brain simultaneously.
That is what you want.
That is what you want, in my humble opinion.
Wow.
My mom was gone all the time.
And when she was home, she was busy.
And we never bonded.
And all those hallmark cards about your mother, or people would say, but she's your mother with this special emphasis.
We never bonded.
My father left when I was a...
Before I remember anything, and I remember being 10 months old, my father left When I was newborn, newly born.
And we never bonded.
And it's as awkward now as it was 40 years ago, or 42 years ago when I was six, went to Africa.
When I was in boarding school, we had to write a letter to our parents.
Every Saturday after our haircuts, we had to write a letter to our parents.
I didn't know what to say.
I'd write to my father and I'd say, Dear First name.
I've mentioned this on the show before.
Dear first name, I would say to him.
People were appalled.
You've got to call him your father.
He's your father, dammit.
And I used to refer to him as my ex-dad.
Why?
Because my mother referred to him as my ex-husband.
This is my ex-husband.
So, he's my ex-dad.
People say, no, he's still your father.
It's like, isn't that like calling him My mother's husband?
He's gone.
He's her ex-husband.
He's gone.
He's my ex-father.
And people, I remember, I mean, people just baffled and amused and slightly mocking about the way that I referred to these things, but I was speaking honestly.
And I believe more now than even when I was a kid, I'm speaking accurately.
Parenting is not something you screw.
Parenting is not something where you pour half your blood into somebody else and wander off or wander off to work.
Parenting is a verb, not a noun.
Parent is a verb, not a noun.
You parent.
You aren't a parent.
You parent.
And parenting means being there and interacting and connecting and listening and asking and teaching and learning.
And Don't be the family that, you know, everyone's in the family picture.
And you look at it, maybe even at the time, certainly later, you look at it and say, oh, what's everyone doing there?
What are we all hanging around for?
It's just an accident of birth.
No, you never want that to be a question in your kids' minds, in your mice' minds, in your mind.
You never want that to be a question.
We are made For each other, men and women, parents and children, we are made for each other.
With children, you actually make them.
Not only do you make them biologically, you make them through your interactions.
You mold them like a potter and a clay.
You mold them.
You actually make a human being.
You are made for your son and your daughter.
They are made for you because they also have huge influences on you.
Like married couples, you make each other, you shape each other.
Your hearts, minds and souls are made and shaped and formed as a couple by your interactions with each other.
Families are literally made for each other.
But that needs time, commitment and proximity.
And peace.
Commitment to peace.
So that would be my pitch to you, my friend.
Well, thank you very much.
I think that's exactly what I needed to hear.
You are very welcome.
I hope you'll drop us a line and let us know how it goes.
And Rob, I'm going to send you a copy of that book.
I'll get your address off air and I'll send out a copy of that book for you.
We'll comp it, right?
Yeah.
Yeah, we'll comp you that book.
It's definitely worth reading, particularly the stuff on daycare.
He's been on the show twice.
He's a very smart man.
Oh, thank you very much.
You're very welcome, man.
Alright, who do we have next?
Alright, up next is Alex.
Alex wrote in and said, I was raised in a society that strips men of their ability of showing emotion.
The job I'm taking is being a nuclear engineer in the Navy.
So it's not a job where I'd be exposed to combat scenarios, but the military as a whole reflects a lot of those same double standards that society pushes onto males.
I joined the military as a means to get my life together and escape an overwhelmingly negative environment.
Oh.
And pretty much his question is around not having an ability to show an emotion yet joining the military and how to make that work.
Okay.
Hello, Steph.
Hi.
Okay, yeah.
Brave man calling into an anarchist show talking about being a nuclear engineer for the government military.
I appreciate that.
Well, you know, it's what I'm doing just to get my life back together.
I mean...
Which is not much of an answer.
You know that, right?
Yeah.
That doesn't really explain anything.
I know.
I'm not going to be a dick to you.
I'm not.
I'm not.
I just want to be honest.
Yeah, I know what you mean.
It was the best opportunity that I had at the time, considering how during my early high school years, I didn't really do too well, like my first couple of high school years.
I think a lot of it was out of spite.
Me and my mother were always fighting.
Spite?
Yeah.
You mean you were spiteful towards your mother?
Yeah.
I must, I'm afraid.
And I hate to do this right at the beginning.
I must stop you there.
Okay.
You know I got your ACE score, right?
Yeah.
Do you really think that the problem was your spite?
Honestly, a lot of my motivation was because I knew that it got a negative reaction out of her.
I felt like I was getting back at her out of the way when I was only harming myself there.
Looking back at it, I probably would have done better because...
Having better grades would have set me up to perhaps go to college and have a better route that way.
But, you know, the military right now is really the best option for me in a way because of the amount of compensation they're willing to pay to me and give me a decent job, a decent career, give me good training.
So, you know, it's the best route for me as of right now.
So that's the reason why I'm going there.
Well, I mean, you are part of a machinery of Death, right?
I suppose.
I mean, it's great that you're getting nice pay, right?
Yeah.
But your pay is coercively forced from others.
Yes.
And you are...
Look, I'm not saying in a free society, of course, there have been nuclear engineers, right?
Maybe there can be nuclear engineers who work on nuclear weapons.
I don't know.
But as it stands right now, I mean, military-industrial complex, imperialism, blah-de-blah, right?
Yeah.
And I understand that completely.
And trust me when I say if I had a better option, then...
But, you know...
Well, you don't now, right?
I mean, I assume you're locked in, right?
Yeah.
I'm locked into my contract.
I get shipped out in August, so...
All right.
Okay, so not much point talking about decisions about that now.
Yeah.
ACE score of seven.
Verbal abuse threats.
Physical abuse, non-spanking.
No family love or support.
Neglect.
Not enough food, dirty clothes.
No protection or medical treatment.
Parents divorced.
Physical abuse towards female adults lived with an alcoholic or drug user.
For which I am unbelievably sorry for all of that.
It wasn't really alcohol or drugs.
It was more gambling.
And it was my mother's fiancé for a few years that was a really bad gambler.
And those were some rough years.
I was sort of withdrawn a lot of those years.
I didn't really socialize that much.
Alex, you've got this habit, which is very common, but I want to point it out.
You have this habit of internalizing your abuse.
I was spiteful.
I was withdrawn.
Weren't you traumatized?
A little bit.
I mean, if some guy punches me in the face, do I say, well, I guess I just bruise easily for some reason?
No.
I mean, I internalized some of it because I feel like it is partially my fault for some of the stuff that did happen.
Okay, help me understand that.
So make the case for me that it was your fault.
I feel as if that, you know, it was immediately following the divorce.
Looking back on it, I feel as if I was a little bit rough on my mother, because it was like right after that divorce.
And I don't know if there was an affair beforehand, but it was almost like he was immediately...
An affair on whose part?
On my mother's part, because he was pretty much immediately into the picture, like as soon as the divorce happened.
Oh yeah, so then there was an affair.
I mean, almost certainly, right?
Yeah.
So your mother had an affair.
Is that what drove your father away, do you think?
Perhaps.
I mean, my dad won't give me a lot of- Oh, come on.
Come on.
Come on.
Hang on.
Hang on.
Don't fog me, bro.
I mean, if you're going to fog me, then we can't have a conversation, right?
And by fog me, I don't mean don't disagree with me.
Disagree with me all you want.
Yeah.
But if you're giving me a scenario where it's almost for certain that your mother had an affair prior to the end of your parents' marriage, the idea that that would have a factor in the end of your parents' marriage is more than perhaps, right?
Yes, more than likely.
She either wanted to trade in your dad and get the new guy, and therefore acted in such a way that precipitated the end of the marriage, or your father found out that your mom was screwing around.
Well, see, here's where things get a little bit shady, because I don't understand what she saw in this guy.
I don't know if it was just lust or what it was, but, you know, he was a...
Did he have more money?
No, not necessarily.
I mean, he was a union worker.
Like, he didn't really have a lot of money.
He was, you know, a heavy gambler.
Was he handsome?
I wouldn't say that he was, but I'm sure somebody would find him attractive.
I mean, he's not ugly.
Well, I mean, I obviously can't say what your mother found in him.
But see, that's even worse.
So if there was nothing particularly redeeming about this guy, in fact, if he had qualities worse than your father, and I don't imagine your father was also a gambling addict, then the idea that your mom would fuck up the marriage with your dad in order to shack up with this traumatic-inducing loser is enough reason to be pissed when you say, well, I may have been a bit rough on my mom.
It's like, wasn't she a little bit rough on you?
I mean, didn't she just drive a truck through the store window of the marriage?
Yeah.
And you're saying, well, you know, I might have cursed at her after she drove the truck through the plate glass window, so I guess it was partly my fault.
Nope!
Your mom detonated the marriage.
Through the affair, the supposed affair, right?
Yeah, and his wife...
So how were you at fault in that?
Did you show nude pictures of this guy?
I mean, how were you at fault there?
I mean, like, I was...
Very against the whole situation, like every single step.
I even expressed to my mother, like, if you marry this man and he moves in, I'm not going to live here anymore.
I'm going to go live with my dad.
Which was really an empty threat, because if I went to go live with my dad, I mean, I love my dad.
He's a good man, but he's just a very distant person.
If I were to live with him, then I would never actually, even then, I don't think I'd have a relationship with him either.
Do you feel that you're distant too, or...?
People have told me that I am, but I genuinely care about people, you know?
Well, what's your experience of talking to me right now?
So far, we're digging into repressed memories that I don't remember a great deal of details about, but, you know...
That's not a feeling.
I feel kind of nervous revisiting a lot of these thoughts, because, you know...
Why?
It's been so long.
I sort of just...
I don't really talk about this stuff with other people.
I sort of just sort of forget about it.
And, you know, whenever I talk to other people, it's more about, you know, in the now.
I don't base very much off previous experiences.
And, you know, I just don't revisit these thoughts very much.
I really don't.
I try to avoid it because if it just brings up more sorrow, then I'd rather avoid it, you know.
Okay.
And how's that been working out for you in your life?
For the most part, it's through repression.
I've talked to my mom about it a little bit, but I feel like we rebuilt our relationship over the past couple of years.
We're in a good shape there.
We're to the point where, you know, it's almost like a mother-son relationship again, only she treats me more like a peer than a son.
Like, it's kind of strange.
It's kind of strange to have your mother treat you like a peer rather than, you know, a subordinate.
Is the gambling guy still around?
No, she actually, thank goodness, Tain, she quits saying them because...
We did still fight a little bit afterwards, but not nearly as much.
Because when she got rid of him, things got a lot better.
She started seeing another man.
He's now my stepfather.
He's a really good guy.
He has his own issues, but they're not...
It's nothing serious, you know.
It's just the standard hard-headedness that, you know, we bash heads a little bit, but not too much.
All right.
So what question did you have in particular that you might like help with today?
Well, what I was really looking to talk to you about was, you know, like...
What advice would you give to me going forward from this point?
Because, you know, it's not like I've had very many role models in the past and...
I mean, after...
Like, I'm going into the military.
I don't know if I'm going to re-enlist.
I'm probably not.
I'm probably going to enter the workforce immediately after.
I mean, I have worked a couple jobs, but, you know, it's...
I honestly don't know what I'm going to do with myself.
I really don't, because I'm going to be transitioning from, you know, basically being in the environment of, you know...
I just don't...
I just don't know what I want to do.
I really don't.
Because I'm not good at building relationships with other people as well.
It's kind of...
Sorry to interrupt, but how long are you signed up for?
I'm signed up for six years because I have two years of training.
And then they got me for my four years of enlistment following that training.
Yeah, so the next six years kind of sealed up, right?
Yeah.
Yeah, so my suggestion would be perhaps give a call back in five or six years about when you're ready to transition back into civil life if that's what you choose to do.
And we can talk then, but as far as getting advice from an anarchist about the next six years in the military, I think that at every conceivable level I would be the wrong person to ask.
Because you, you know, from my perspective, kind of go into the belly of the beast for six years.
But when it comes time for you to transition out, if you choose to To leave the military after six years, then I think that would probably be a more profitable conversation because as far as life choices go now, I mean, you're kind of in a command and control situation for the next more than half decade, right?
Yeah, and it's definitely, like, I'm kind of nervous about doing this route, but, you know, at the same time, it's one of the few opportunities that I have because, like I said, I kind of screwed myself over in the past with, you know, my choices.
Well, see, again, you're not looking at the trauma that you experienced as a child.
You're, again, saying that it's all your choices and you screwed yourself over and so on, but you had a very difficult childhood.
Yeah.
And, I mean, it's just...
Even though it was my childhood, I feel like, ultimately, at the end of the day, I could have buckled down and done better to push myself forward as a person, even though...
Well, I don't know.
I mean, you can say that about anything, right?
Yeah.
I mean, I'll give you a tiny thing that I thought about just the other day.
So in America, there's this hellish federal-based airstrike on the brains of children called the Common Core.
Yeah.
And parents are so horrified at this that they're becoming sort of more activist and they're also getting more involved in their children's homework because children find it kind of incomprehensible, as do parents who And it struck me that it seems completely and totally unfair to me that children of single moms are graded at the same rate as children of two parent
households.
That is absolutely unfair.
My mother, to my memory...
My mother never helped me with homework.
My brother did occasionally, but my mother never helped me with homework.
She had no time.
Busy, busy, busy, busy, busy.
Now, if you have parents who care about your homework, I'm not saying my mom didn't, although she didn't even know what grade I was in when it came time to get notes home from school about trips and stuff, but if you have a single mom Or a single dad, mostly single mom.
If you have a single mom, how the hell can you be graded relative to other kids who have two parents, you know, one of whom's cooking dinner, the other of whom is hopefully looking over and helping you out a bit with your homework?
So unfair.
It's so unfair.
I almost never did homework when I was in school.
I would read books for English because I like reading.
But as far as math homework goes, I've been through the same rigmarole for years.
Carry the books home.
Put the books by the bed.
Pick the books up in the morning.
Go back to school.
Because you can't...
Luckily, I've never...
You're just holding it together at home.
You're just...
You know, it's like saying, well, you know, that guy didn't really learn tennis when he was holding up a beam from falling in a mine.
Well, no, you're holding up the beam from falling in the mine.
You're not learning how to improve your forehand or how to tip over your Roscoe Tanner serve.
So, I mean...
I remember wanting to study for a test, and the whole bookshelf collapsed, and everyone went hysterical, and it was just mental, and you couldn't get any...
I would go to the library, for sure.
I'd go to the library a lot.
But then I'd just read, sometimes nap.
Just home life was exhausting.
Yes, and I mean, something that you said, and I think it was the Bill Cosby thing that you just put out on YouTube, the truth about Bill Cosby, and it struck me kind of deep, because...
It was a similar situation that I was in during those years.
You were talking about how generally whenever there's a divorce, one of the older boys takes on the role as a pseudo-husband.
My mom had her boyfriend, but I took care of my little brother.
My mother would be cooking or doing whatever.
I would help my little brother with homework.
I would make sure that There was food for him to eat if we were a little bit low, or I would make sure that he was taken care of before I take care of myself.
That's something that I don't feel like everybody has to do, but I felt like I was in that position for a number of years.
Yeah.
It's not necessarily fair, like you said, but, you know, luckily I never had issues with homework or any of that stuff.
I was always one of the smarter kids, so I was able to take care of myself in that manner.
But, you know, it was definitely a different home environment than, like, say, if I went over to a friend's house or something.
Oh, yeah.
Like, I had a friend whose parents were still together and dad was a professional.
His mom was a very nice homemaker.
I go over to their house and, like, you could think.
There wasn't this cloud of lightning-struck hysterical imminent disaster madness floating through the air at all times.
You could actually think.
We were in their basement.
They had a cold room.
And you opened the door and there were, like, cases of pop.
I mean, that was amazing to me.
I would almost never have pop at home.
Look, I'm not saying that pop is the best thing in the world, right?
But whatever.
It's nice to have once in a while.
But, and when I had friends over and I had pop, I had to put so much ice in the, because I never had enough.
And people, hey man, why is there so much ice?
Cheap skate.
It's like, well, it's all right.
Yeah.
Got nothing.
Got water, right?
They had cases of pop.
Just there.
You could just go and get a pop.
And it's amazing.
Food.
Open up the fridge.
Just food.
You couldn't even see the back of the fridge.
Just food.
Hungry, go eat something.
Crap.
I mean, I open the fridge at home.
Hey, anything in here?
In here?
In here?
Echo, echo, echo.
And it is fundamentally, I mean, it's ridiculously unfair.
And I don't know what the solution is.
I just like society to acknowledge that it's ridiculously unfair.
Do you have a home you can concentrate in?
Okay, there's your automatic 20 point up in your test scores.
Yeah, I mean...
Do you have like two parents?
Okay, well then one parent...
I'm not saying all two-parent households are happy, of course, but then at least you have the capacity for one parent to help you with your homework.
Do you have the capacity to...
To concentrate at home.
Well, that's good, too.
Like, I got so sick and tired.
Like, all the stuff which didn't need homework, I did really well in.
I was always getting by like 55, 60 maybe in math.
I got so sick of it that I think for grade 11 math, I was just so tired of never being prepared for the next year that I took summer school.
I was working jobs, I took summer school, and I did...
That math over and I got like 75 or 77 or something.
And that made grade 12 math a lot easier.
I didn't do grade 13 math because I just, back then you had grade 13.
And I didn't want to go to U of T. I think, York, you didn't have to have the math credit.
I think U of T, you did.
And, you know, I, but by the time that I was in grade 13, grade 12 and grade 13, I think maybe grade 11 too.
I can't remember the exact dates.
But by the time I was in grade 12 for sure, grade 13, my mom was gone.
And so I actually had some capacity to concentrate, so I did better in school and was able to get my marks up to the point where getting into college was fairly easy.
But it was a ridiculously unfair situation.
And what has always pissed me off is that the teachers always dump on the kids like it's, oh, well, you just don't like doing your homework, do you, Mr.
Molyneux?
Kind of lazy there, aren't you?
Yeah.
Well, no.
You know, go over to a friend's place.
His father was a doctor.
His mom was a stay-at-home.
His father had his doctor's office in the house.
And again, they got food in the fridge.
They got milk.
They had, like, granola bars back when it was not common to have granola.
Like, they just had stuff.
Had stuff.
Wanted to break in that house at night and go home with a sack full of stuff.
And then you go into school and it's like, well, you did your homework there, Paul, and Steph, you just didn't do your homework.
And then you're like somehow equal and you're worse.
Well, you know, with the school and the homework and all that, that's something I've always struggled with.
I mean, sometimes I would do the homework, I just would lose it or lose track of it because I never really had someone staying on top of me 24-7 about it like some kids did, you know?
Well, 24-7 is another defensive exaggeration, but go ahead.
Yeah, but you get what I'm saying.
I was sort of self-managing there.
And, um, and that's not, some kids actually have parents that stay on them and then, like, I mean, I'd get punished for grades and stuff, but they wouldn't stay, they wouldn't help, you know, with the management of their children, you know, and I feel like that when I,
like, for example, when I went over to my friend's house, his mom would always, you know, be like, this was back during, you know, early middle school, so you're still at that age where You sort of still have to tell your kid, hey, you know, it's time to do homework, you need help, you know, let me do this with you.
No, at my house it was like, okay, I'd sit down with my little brother and we'd do our homework together, but, you know.
Well, and homework is such total bullshit.
There's no study that I'm aware of that shows that doing extra homework or any homework has any effect on learning.
All it is is another goddamn way for the progressives to reach with the arm of the state and disrupt family life and make it more discontented and more fractious and more problematic.
And the parents are now, did you do your homework?
And the kids are like, I don't want to do my homework.
Fight, fight, fight, nag, nag, nag.
And that's sort of, I mean, it's just another goddamn way for the communists to go in and destroy the nuclear family unit by causing endless conflict even when they're not around.
So I think that...
Homework is total bullshit.
And it's all such complete uselessness.
I mean, the whole point of the government schools is to teach you to do useless shit because otherwise you'll get in trouble.
And that makes you fundamentally afraid of the powers that be of those in authority, which makes you a nice, good little fucking soldier and a nice, good little worker.
And I just have nothing but a bottomless contempt and rage for the years of my life that was stripped from me.
A man who loves learning, who loves thinking, who loves reasoning, who loves...
The amount of administrivia that was blown like dust, a shotgun worth of dust up my nose, replacing any vital human thought in these gulags of bullshit known as government schools.
I'll never get those years back.
I'll never be the person I could have been if I had been educated either by myself or by people I respected.
And I just think it's all pretty horrible.
So anyway, listen, I got to move on to the next caller.
But listen, feel free to give a call in a half decade should I still be around.
And we'll talk more about transitioning.
Will do.
All right.
Thanks, man.
Thank you.
All right.
Up next is Nick.
Nick wrote in and said, the girl I've fallen for is being manipulated into hating me by someone who I used to think was a friend.
Even though just about a month ago, I knew we had some romantic potential.
How do I get her to see the real me and not this made-up version of me?
Nick, there's only one standard I'm going to need for this call.
Are you there?
Yes, I'm here.
All right, Nick, you cannot have a monotone.
Do you understand what I'm saying?
Yeah, I mean, because tonight has been the...
The land of the one-note monotone male callers.
So I need a little animation.
I don't care if you fake it.
I don't care if you sing it Wagner style.
But I just need a little bit of animation in your voice.
That's all I'm asking for.
I hope it won't be too much.
Sure.
Why do you want this woman at all?
I really don't know.
Okay.
Let's start with that.
What's she got that you gotta have?
Well, just the way she made me feel to start with.
Okay, so you have hormones, but what does she have?
You mean like, how does she look?
Well, I mean...
Okay, no, no, if that's where you go, let's go with that.
Okay, how does she look?
One to ten, what do we got?
Well, I'd say probably a nine, but...
A nine, okay.
And you, where would you put yourself at?
Six or seven.
Okay, so already your brain has shut down in her presence, right?
Biologically speaking.
Okay, so you have a challenge, and I've had this challenge before, and I, you know, when I was in my early 30s, I was picking up Dinner from a Japanese restaurant.
I've told this story before.
I was picking up dinner from a Japanese restaurant and there was a woman, knockout woman, who was sitting there alone.
And I was single, lived alone, and I picked up my food.
I went over and I said, hey, you're eating alone.
I'm going to eat alone.
Should we eat alone together?
And she smiled.
I sat down and we started chatting.
We ended up having a relationship.
And I couldn't think.
I couldn't think.
It's like, you know, just two boobs slap my frontal lobes into submission.
And I basically became a fairly eloquent reptile with a penis.
And that's what happens to men's brains in the presence of physically gorgeous women.
So there is, you know, there is an intoxication.
There are Endorphins, there is an intoxication around physical beauty that men are incredibly susceptible to.
And of course, if you get sex as well, then there's a significant, I would say, I would argue, and there's some backing behind this, but of course I'm no expert, I would argue some significant addictive qualities to female beauty.
Yeah.
So, how long have you been going out?
I mean, we haven't really gone out at all.
I mean, we've been hanging out because we're in the same club.
So she's not your girlfriend?
No.
I wish she was.
And you've never gone on a date?
Not really.
I mean, we spent a night drinking together, but there was somebody else with us.
But we were talking together alone.
So that's not a date, right?
No.
Okay, so not really is no, right?
Right.
Okay, so you can save my time and my sanity by giving me the most accurate version you can, right?
Okay.
Okay, so why is...
Sorry, I shouldn't laugh.
Why do you think this girl is being manipulated into hating you?
I assume it's by another man?
Yeah, there's this other guy.
I know he told her to stay away from you.
Why do you think he told her to stay away from you?
Because he thinks of me and her sister.
He thinks what?
And there's not.
He thinks what?
He thinks there was something going on between me and her sister.
Because we all used to be, we did this Japanese fencing, and Kendo, if you know it, and I knew her sister.
I knew her sister before, and I asked her sister out on a date.
I don't think her sister's not as cute as her, though.
But there's nothing going on between me and her sister.
But her sister was lied to by somebody who made a false rape accusation against me these years ago.
Why, why, why, why, why.
Slow down.
Hang on, hang on, hang on.
Go over that again, but slow down.
Okay.
Okay.
I start with this.
Years ago I was up drinking with some friends and this girl took me home to my apartment and I was blackout drunk.
I couldn't even walk or stand or anything and I woke up and she was molesting me.
And then this girl the next day apparently even though after I had become sort of I'm lucid enough.
Actually, our university has a thing where you can order a ride from the university police.
So I wasn't thinking anything of this at all.
What do you mean you weren't thinking of anything of being molested while you were drunk?
I wasn't thinking that I had been taken advantage of or anything.
So, I put her on the, I get her the cops home because it's, you know, I don't want, she's kind of, she was kind of tipsy, but she wasn't blackout drunk puking on the bus like I was.
And, you know, the next day she decides to start telling everybody that I raped her.
Even though everybody, like, At the parties that we were at, said that I was the one who was blackout and throwing up all over the place and stuff.
And there was no legal hearing, but the school had an inquiry, and they determined that I was not guilty of anything.
And they basically told her to shut the hell up.
But she didn't.
She went around and started telling my friends that I was a rapist.
And several of my friends stopped talking to me after that.
And I couldn't really do anything about it because I didn't know how to approach them and tell them the truth.
And one of those friends includes the older sister of the girl who I'm clearly infatuated with now.
So she believes that the rape accusation had validity, right?
Right.
Even though it doesn't make sense because, I mean, school after that, but only because of the stress of having to deal with all that stuff.
And I was really depressed.
Sorry, you just cut out for a second.
You left school after that because of the stress of dealing with that, which of course I can understand.
I wasn't kicked out or anything.
I just, I voluntarily left school so I could spend some time relaxing.
And then I met the sister.
Or the younger sister, right?
And I started talking to her and I really liked her and I wanted to come back and...
Alright, so the younger sister pretty much inspired me to come back to school and try to get my life back together instead of just sitting outside of school and doing a dead-end job.
And, uh...
We're at this tournament.
I started doing Japanese fencing again with her.
And we're at the...
Hello?
So, we're at the tournament.
And everybody else in the club is goofing off except for me.
I'm doing what she told me.
And with everybody else, that she comes up to me and she's just bawling her eyes out.
And I just didn't know what to do.
Now, this is the girl you were infatuated with.
She was pulling her eyes out at the Kendo place?
Okay.
Because everybody else was, nothing was going right.
And I couldn't explain, but I just wanted to hug her.
But I know I couldn't because I knew her sister had come back even though she had left town because she got a job somewhere else.
Came back and was there watching and And I knew I couldn't do anything.
She'd try to go at me or something.
Who tried to go at you?
The older sister.
Who tried to go at you?
Oh, you thought she might, if you hugged her sister.
Yeah, I thought she would.
And the guy who I know now is manipulating her was also there watching.
He was also screwing around and not doing She asked him to.
But according to the hierarchy, he's supposed to be her subordinate, basically.
It's like her and her parents are the top people in the club, based on the Black Belt ranking.
And, uh...
I don't know.
I wanted to talk to her sister, and I wanted to...
Fix the trouble between us.
Because I really like the younger sister.
And I couldn't bring myself to do it.
And...
And I just dropped it after that, over the summer.
But then she stopped.
Then the younger sister stopped talking to me.
And I thought that the older sister had come back and told her something about me and Kept perpetuating the lies.
And it turned out that she just wasn't even, like, with it.
She was just kind of aloof the whole time when she hadn't been talking to me.
But during that time, it seemed like she was, like, watching over me.
Who was watching over me?
The younger sister.
The one you're interested in?
Yeah.
It seemed like she kept coming back and, like, Watching me from the...
There's like a mezzanine.
And I was working in this bagel shop there.
And it seemed like she would come up there and stay on the mezzanine and watch me work.
Nick, I've got to interrupt you for a second.
I really apologize for this.
But there's some larger issues before we get into the details of how this younger sister might like you.
There's some larger issues that I'd like to talk about first.
I don't want to get into the details...
Without talking about the larger stuff, if that's alright?
Yeah.
What's your relationship like with your father?
We talk about once a week, maybe.
And was he around growing up?
Your parents were together and he was there?
Yeah, my parents were together.
I mean, up until I was about, I don't know, nine maybe?
He didn't I mean most when I was about until I was about nine I spent most of my time With my grandparents on either side because my parents both had day jobs And in your ACE or adverse childhood experience score Where does number three molestation sex rape?
Oh that when I was 14 I When I was 14, I was in this bar with my dad, and we had been playing a hockey game, because I'm like 6'3", I'm big enough to play.
I was 6'3 when I was like 12, so I was big enough to play adult ice hockey with other adults.
And nobody questioned it when I went into the sports bar with the guys after the games.
So, we're there at the bar, and this drunk chick comes up and starts talking to us, and then later in the night she starts, you know, flashing us and stuff, and then she sticks her hands on my pants.
Like flashing her boobs?
Yeah.
And her vagina, too.
Eee.
Yeah, she pulled on her pants.
Oh!
It wasn't bad to look at, but, you know, it was still rape.
Because she stuck her hand down my pants and started jacking me off.
So your father is with you in the bar when the woman is flashing you her vagina and masturbating you?
Yeah.
Does this strike you as...
mental?
Where was your father?
I'm not sure he was paying attention to the molestation part.
Well, you know, you bring a 14-year-old to a bar, you might want to be paying attention.
Yeah.
Where was he?
He was down the bar with some of the other guys.
So he's drinking away, and you're being molested by this drunk woman.
Yeah.
Which then happened again in college.
Yeah.
You see the pattern there, right?
Yeah.
Was there any other...
So what happened in the bar that night?
That was about it.
Later on, the girl's boyfriend came up to collect her, basically, and just drag her off by her arm.
I don't think he noticed much of what was going on around with us up there.
And did you tell your father that you'd just been preyed on?
Yeah.
What were his thoughts?
He didn't really seem to have a problem with it.
So your father brings you to a bar where you're molested by a drunk woman and he's like, yeah, alright.
Pretty much.
Right.
And the other guys on the hockey team were kind of the same way.
You're 14 years old.
Yeah.
Were they, like, good for you?
Yeah.
I mean, picture some guy at a bar pulling his dick out in front of a 14-year-old girl and fingering her.
Yeah.
I mean, he would not see the light of day until after the Armageddon, right?
Yeah, really.
I think he'd probably just, you know, drag him into the streets and set him on fire or something.
And did your father ever talk about it with you again?
Did this topic ever come up?
Not really, no.
Is there any other sexual dysfunction that you're aware of in your family?
Not really.
What does not really mean?
Not that I can think of.
I can't think of anything like that in my family.
Okay.
Was that your first sexual experience?
Yeah.
And I hate to say sexual, because it was predatory, in my opinion, but...
Right.
Right.
So yeah, that was my first sexual experience.
And, you know, I'm not...
I don't know.
I mean, that's pretty gross, right?
Yeah.
In fact, it's downright vile that this drunken woman is flashing her vagina at you, grabbing your penis.
I mean, yuck.
Like, ew.
Like, extremely ew.
Like, illegal ew, right?
Yeah.
I'm incredibly sorry.
At every level.
Yeah.
So your father doesn't seem to have a goddamn clue about the dangers of women, right?
Yeah.
Look, women...
This is a general rant.
But I think you need it more than most, Nick.
This is what dads should be telling their sons.
Women can be incredibly wonderful and women can be unbelievably dangerous.
No, you're mm-hmming me like you know this.
I don't think you know this.
Because you're putting yourself in another dangerous situation now.
So don't mm-hmm me like you know this.
You don't know this yet.
Women...
Can be incredibly dangerous, even in and of themselves.
But when combined with the power of the state, women can be an airstrike on your testicles from here to eternity.
You were both incredibly unlucky and incredibly lucky with regards to this rape accusation.
And you are failing...
And I think I understand why, given the story of your father in the bar and hockey mates, you are failing at elemental or basic self-protection as a man.
You do not get blackout drunk.
You do not do that, Nick.
Do you understand me?
You cannot do that.
No, you can't do that.
You can't put yourself in those situations.
You cannot go home alone with a woman you do not know.
I mean, that's literally playing Russian roulette with your penis.
You got a barrel cold cocked against your cock and you're just spinning the chambers and pulling the trigger.
You cannot go home or bring home women you do not know.
They are dangerous.
I did know her, though.
You did not know her well enough to know how disturbed she was and how dangerous she was.
Do you understand?
Yeah, I see.
And this is true for women with men.
I'm just talking to Nick right now.
Until you really get to know a woman, do not be alone in a room with her.
Have friends around, or as they're colloquially called, witnesses.
There are disturbed women out there who will falsely accuse you of rape.
I'm not saying they're common, but they're there.
Lions aren't common on the Serengeti either, but nobody strolls at night unless they have to.
It is a dangerous environment for people, young people on campuses these days.
I don't know where you are, don't tell me.
In California, I think on campuses now, they've got this, you've got to get verbal assent for every step of the interaction.
Sexual interactions, although you're not allowed to record anything, so Lord knows what the hell that means.
It's just another he said, she said thing.
But elemental self-protection.
You do not go home intoxicated, even if you're not blackout drunk.
You do not go home with women you don't know.
There is physical risk in terms of getting STDs.
There is emotional risk.
There is predatory risk.
There is false allegation risk.
There is just steal your laptop risk.
You don't know these people.
You know, I'm not going to lie face down and let some people I don't know stick a broomstick up my ass and wiggle it around.
I'm not going to do that no matter what.
But that's the kind of vulnerable position you're putting yourself in when you invite a woman, especially if either of you are intoxicated, back to your room.
Don't do it.
This woman that you're intoxicated with now has a sister who thinks you're a rapist.
You cannot have this woman.
You should not have this woman.
You need to not pursue this woman, in my opinion.
Because her sister thinks you're a rapist, according to what you know.
Yeah.
Right?
Now, is she going to date you over her own sister thinking you're a rapist?
If she is, she's really screwed up.
Because it means she trusts you, who she's been told is a rapist, over her own sister, who she grew up with.
Which means she has no family bond.
Which means she's dangerous.
So if she does believe her sister that you're a rapist, she's not going to go out with you.
If she chooses to go out with you when it's a nine, she can have most guys...
If she chooses to go out with you, it means she's got no bond with her sister, which tells you everything you need to know about a really dysfunctional family environment.
Do you see what I'm saying?
Yeah.
You can't win here.
She's either not going to go out with you, or she is going to go out with you, which means she's crazy.
Not because you're a bad guy or anything, but it means she trusts some guy over her own sister.
This is what I mean when I say you're not...
Fulfilling basic self-protection, your infatuation, lack of boundaries, lack of self-protection.
You know, if you just missed a bullet, don't go back into the war.
If a bullet just...
With this last accusation, it could have gone a lot worse, infinitely worse, right?
Yeah.
And now you want to go back into this environment with people who have opinions and know about all this history?
No way.
I don't think you can.
How can you?
I told her.
I told the younger sister about what happened before her sister told her anything.
Because I'm pretty sure her sister hasn't told her anything yet at all.
Okay, now listen.
This is what I mean to...
You think you've told her and that solves the problem.
It doesn't.
Because if a woman comes up to me...
Now, let's say I'm a woman.
A man comes up to me and says...
I invited this woman I didn't know very well or barely at all as it turns out because you never would have invited her back.
Although you don't know because you were black.
I got blackout drunk.
I didn't really invite her back.
Okay.
I got blackout drunk.
A woman dragged me home, molested me, and then accused me of rape.
Want to go out?
What am I going to say?
No.
Hell to the no.
Not because I think you're a rapist, but because you got blackout drunk and And got molested by a woman, which doesn't mean you're a bad person at all.
I mean, you're a victim.
I get that.
But it speaks to such judgment problems and functional problems.
But again, I'm not saying a fundamental to who you are.
You can fix that stuff.
But that's not a big sales pitch, right?
Right.
Do you sort of see what I'm saying?
You're not at fault like you did something wrong.
I mean, if everything you tell me is true, and I'm going to just accept that it is, then you were...
A victim in this situation.
But you put yourself in a very compromised position, right?
Blackout drunk.
Do you honestly remember nothing of that evening other than the early part and the molestation part?
I mean, I remember up until about maybe an hour before that.
And then it was just kind of patchy.
So you weren't blackout drunk.
You remember some of it, right?
I remember some of it, but it was just kind of fading in and out.
Had you drunk enough to be that drunk or do you think you might have been drugged?
I think I just drank too much on an empty stomach.
Right.
I had been opening fresh beers.
It wasn't like I was drinking somebody's pre-mixed stuff or letting my drink sit down.
Yeah, you get involved in details that are not relevant.
I don't care how you got that drunk.
You should never get that drunk.
I know.
You might wake up in a jail cell.
I might not wake up.
You might not wake up, that's right.
I probably wasn't going to wake up.
You can't do that.
Now, I know you say you're not going to and so on, but there's something fundamental that you're kind of missing, and I've looked at your adverse childhood experience score, I'm going to get into it now, but I understand that.
But there's something fundamental that you're missing, which is that you are not looking at the decisions that other people are making based upon The information you're giving them.
Because you think that there's a way of getting a quality woman to go out with you if you explain the story that you were blackout, drunk, and molested and accused of rape.
Like that's somehow going to get squared away or tidied up or become a non-issue.
Does that make sense?
Yeah.
That's not going to become a non-issue.
And again, I'm not saying you did something bad or wrong or anything like that.
You were the victim here.
Mm-hmm.
But an intelligent woman is going to look at that and is going to question your stability and judgment at this particular point in your life.
I don't mean forever, right?
Yeah.
Well, this was three years ago.
So, therapy, therapy, therapy, therapy.
I don't think you get how incredibly screwed up this evening with your father and the hockey buddies was.
Like, that's insane.
That is sick.
That is awesome.
So dysfunctional, I barely have the language for it.
You do not abandon a 14-year-old in a bar.
And what kind of bar is this where women are flashing tits and pussies?
At 14-year-old, I know you were six foot and four and blah, blah, blah, but I'm guessing you didn't have a full-on Duck Dynasty beard going on or anything, right?
There had to be some indication.
No.
I mean, I had told people there that I was a College student, even when I was like 13.
Nobody carded me.
You look older than you were.
I get it.
But this is, I mean, this is a dive, right?
Well, not really.
It's a sports bar.
Wow.
No sports bar I've ever seen as women doing that kind of stuff.
No, it didn't happen after that.
Right.
So what I'm saying is that Your father knew that you were 14.
Did your hockey buddies know that you were 14?
Yeah.
Okay, let me say this to men out there as a whole.
First of all, don't take a 14-year-old to a bar, particularly if he looks a lot older.
Not only is it illegal, oh no, sports bar, right?
You can go to a sports bar if you're eating, right?
Yeah.
Okay, don't take a 14-year-old to what is functionally a bar and abandon him.
Stay close.
Stay with him.
Look out for him a little bit.
There's a good rule for men around the world.
Don't put a 14-year-old kid in a bar where he's going to end up being molested by some hell-spawn skankhead.
Because that's traumatic.
That's dysfunctional.
And tragically, that's imprinting.
First sexual experiences are imprinting.
They have a fundamental and powerful effect on sexual violence.
Life.
So that speaks to me about a significant amount of dysfunction in your family, in my amateur, idiot, humble internet opinion, which I don't think you're that aware of.
I mean, you've done the ACE, so you're aware of some things.
Therapy, therapy, therapy, I think is important to you.
Did your mom ever tell you that women can be dangerous?
Not really.
What does not really mean?
Is there a yes or a no in the brother there?
Hinted at it just to stay away from certain people, you know, that I've told her about.
And she didn't say that women on a whole are dangerous, though.
Neither did I. Right?
That would be a lot easier.
I mean, like, to be just suspicious of everybody.
No, not suspicious of everybody.
Paranoia is not the answer to vulnerability.
But there are particular signs that you can look for around functionality versus non-functionality.
So, the woman who accused you of rape, you say that you'd known her for a while beforehand.
Yeah.
Was there any indication that she was not functioning at 100% as a human being prior to this incident?
No, not really.
I mean...
together and we were fairly good friends.
Okay.
Did you know anything about her childhood?
Not really.
Okay.
So then don't tell me that you knew her.
Because if you don't know where people come from, you don't know who they are.
So if you want to stay somewhat safe around people...
Then ask them about their childhoods.
You know, what was it like for you growing up?
What's your family like?
What's your mom like?
What's your dad like?
You've got time in college to ask questions about people's history.
You've got time in life to ask people about their history.
I mean, if you'd known something about her history, then you would have known this is not a person to get that drunk around.
Yeah.
And then you wouldn't have dropped out of college for the time that you did, right?
Not left college, right?
Not dropped out.
Yeah.
So take the time to ask people about their histories.
What was your childhood like?
What was it like for you growing up?
Do you have conflicts with your sisters?
How were you disciplined?
What's your mom like?
What's your dad like?
What are your memories of your childhood, best, worst, in between?
You can have a conversation like that half an hour, 20 minutes, or about 20 seconds.
If the person is even remotely honest, you can come to some kind of conclusions about what is going on, right?
Yeah.
So ask questions, both in your male friends and your female friends, about their childhood.
So the woman that you're infatuated with, the nine, what's her childhood been like?
Do you know?
I know she's traveled a fair amount.
I know both of her parents.
I mean, they're pretty nice people from what I can tell.
They're kind of fairly handsome.
I mean, actually, they're really handsome.
Sorry, hands off or hands on?
Hands off.
Like, when she was crying, her mother wouldn't even hug her or anything.
Well, would that be considered a clue?
Hmm?
Would that be considered a clue?
Yeah.
I think her family's just kind of detached.
So once you get out of adjectives, like, well, her family seems pretty nice, and then you start to get into actual facts, people tell you everything you need to know about them in the first five minutes.
If you know what to look for.
And if the woman was crying and her mother was there and didn't even ask her what she was upset about, that's a cry.
Her mom asked her what she was upset about.
But didn't hug her, no intimacy, no particular comfort?
Not really.
What does not really mean?
I mean, she just like patted her on the shoulder and told her to, you know, settle down.
Told her to settle down.
That's comfort.
Yeah, it's going to be alright.
Right.
So given that you have some limited emotional skill sets because of your history and lack of therapy, and given that this woman may have some limited emotional skill sets based upon her history, and I'm going to assume lack of therapy, it's not going to work!
Not going to work.
I've been to therapy, though, before.
And when did you go to therapy?
Uh...
During the time that I was off, up until about a year and a half ago.
And did you tell your therapist about what happened in the bar with your father and the whore?
Yeah.
And what did your therapist say?
He mostly just listened to what I was saying.
He didn't really give me much of the feedback on anything.
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, good thing I'm not a therapist, if that's what therapy is.
Not that that's been my experience.
But look, I mean, I think denormalizing this stuff is really important.
I mean, if you think that stuff's even remotely normal, then it's probably going to recur in your life.
So anyway, I mean, if you can, I know through school you can usually, you know, just keep getting a therapist until you get someone who actually gives you feedback.
I mean, anyone can be a sponge, right?
It's different to be able to play tennis with someone.
So my suggestion is get a therapist.
First session, tell them the story.
And if they're like, interesting, tell me more, blah, blah, blah, blah, right?
Then I particularly would move on.
I think that you need some guidance and you need some feedback.
You know, if you're an athlete and you have a coach and you try things a bunch of different ways and the coach gives you no feedback but says, well, it's interesting that you tried it that way.
How do you feel about trying it that way?
It's like, no, tell me, am I doing it right or not?
Am I doing it right or am I doing it wrong?
You're the coach.
You're supposed to help me get better, which means telling me some stuff rather than just being a sort of goatee-rubbing blank slate.
So that's my particular view about therapy that works.
What do I know?
I'm just an amateur.
But I think a little more therapy wouldn't hurt.
I also think that talking to your dad about what happened in that bar might be a pretty good idea because that seems kind of like an important moment in your childhood and in your young adulthood.
And that was something that your father got you into.
And I think that would be a worthwhile thing to chat about.
Okay.
And you don't get drunk anymore, right?
No.
And you're not going home with women you don't know the childhoods of?
No, I rarely drink at all.
Good.
Not for anything.
Fantastic.
All right.
Well, that's my advice to you.
I hope you'll drop us a line and let us know how it goes.
I'm certainly glad to hear you're back in school, but I would definitely drop the nine.
That seems highly unlikely to work.
I think the sister thinking you're a rapist, pretty much a deal breaker.
So thank you so much, everyone, for calling in.
As always, it's hugely appreciated.
And FDRURL.com slash donate.
We need your support.
We can't, can't, can't do it without you.
This show is your show.
In terms of its scope and reach and survivability.
So thank you everyone so much for watching and listening.
This is Stefan Molyneux saying goodnight everybody.
