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June 4, 2015 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

04:03:28

2991 Does Men’s Rights Ruin Relationships? - Call In Show - June 3rd, 2015

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	Good evening, everybody.
	Stefan Molyneux from Freedom Main Radio, and I hope you're doing very well.
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	Hope you have a, I hope we're going to have a wonderful show.
	I'm looking forward to it, as I always do.
	Two highlights of my week.
	So Mike, who do we have on first?
	Alright, up first today is Michael.
	He wrote in and said, That's from Michael.
	Now, sorry, Mike's, just before we jump in, because I was thinking about this since we got this question.
	I know it's been a little while ago, and thanks, Mike, on the line for your patience in this.
	But I really, you know, when I started this show, I knew SFA, which is to say not much at all, if anything, about men's rights.
	And it kind of popped into our radar maybe two years ago, something like that.
	And I've not found it has had any negative effects on my relationships with women.
	Now, I can certainly think of women in the past that it would have had negative effects on, to say the least.
	But I haven't found that to be the case with any of the women in my life currently.
	And I guess, Mike, from the show, what are your thoughts on that?
	Has delving into men's rights caused any frictions or fractions with you and women in your life?
	My wife actually gets more upset about some of the stuff we discover in the realm of feminism than I do.
	So, no.
	No, it hasn't.
	No, it hasn't.
	All right.
	Yeah, good to know.
	Good to know.
	I mean, it's been great topics of conversation.
	It's been very interesting, and I... I can't get to...
	I don't know.
	Maybe I'm just getting old.
	I don't know.
	Maybe my testosterone is continuing to plummet after my six-year being a stay-at-home dad.
	But I just can't get around to getting angry at all women.
	I'm not very good at getting angry at groups and collectives anyway.
	But I just can't get...
	They've been so propagandized, as has everyone.
	And I think that when you break through a particular mental barrier and you start to really grasp something in a very deep way, it's very easy to forget.
	What life was like before that and what life is like for the majority of people who are so heavily propagandized that it's hard to even think that they have moral responsibility and free will.
	And, I mean, really the purpose of, I think, a lot of the men's rights activists, the purpose of what we're doing here, is trying to expand or extend the sphere of choice that is available to people.
	You know, if you just live in an echo chamber, then you never actually really grow much intellectually.
	I certainly like to challenge the audience.
	Sometimes the audience likes to be challenged.
	And I like to challenge myself.
	And I think that's how we stay limber.
	That's how we stay alert.
	And that's how we make sure we're not falling into repetition.
	It's sort of like the creative destruction of the free market, where yesterday's standard is tomorrow's obsolescence, and the creative destruction of the scientific method or engineering in its prime.
	Where there's nothing ever that should be taken for granted as lasting for very long.
	I think those are really the exciting places to surf at the forefront of human knowledge.
	So for me, having my assumptions challenged, I can still think back to early shows I did years ago where I talked about how women were oppressed throughout history.
	I mean, it's all I had been taught and I'd never been exposed to a contrary viewpoint.
	And I didn't, you know, when there's a near unanimity in the world, just in terms of Occam's razor or the principle of parserimony or just keeping it simple, you know, it could be a giant conspiracy to convince me that the earth is round.
	I just don't really have the heart to go looking into it that much.
	And when there had been such a uniformity of opinion all the way around...
	For me, in terms of gender roles and the history of gender oppression.
	Not only was there a uniformity of opinion all the way around me, it sort of made sense.
	You know, men are bigger and stronger and so on.
	And I'd never heard a whisper of a contrary or counter viewpoint.
	Now, I mean, the same thing could be said for statism as well, but I did not invent...
	You know, the criticism of the state by myself, I've maybe extended it a little bit here and there, but that's a long inheritance.
	And so I just, I have a very tough time just getting mad at people.
	And please understand, I'm certainly not saying that this is true of men's rights or MGTOWs or that they're just mad at everyone and so on.
	But I view, I view the majority of the eras of the species to be largely innocent of malice, or rather I couldn't judge whether they're innocent.
	They're innocent of moral content.
	So the majority of people are going through their lives, they're dodging the bullets of everyday stressors, and they're trying to get what they want out of life.
	And there is a rational ignorance, which has been talked about by quite a number of people in terms of voting.
	Like, what's the point of trying to figure out all these candidates' positions and their histories and the right and the wrong if you're just going to cast one vote with some mouth breather who's going to do the same thing with no idea?
	Of what's going on.
	And there's a kind of rational ignorance to a lot of this stuff in life.
	So I view the vast majority of errors made by mankind to be largely devoid of moral content and the extension of philosophy and the extension of morality and the provision of counter-information to me is the carving out of a cave of choice out of a sheer rock face Of historically inertiaed ignorance.
	Now, once you give people information, once you give them better facts, once you make your case, when people receive information that is startling to their sensibilities or upsetting to their sensibilities, everyone has a choice.
	And the choice is...
	You know, you can, you know, storm off for, oh my god, this is so offensive, this is horrifying, this is terrible, bad guy, bad woman, bad this, bad that.
	And you can sort of pull a Victorian, get me my smelling salts, faint because I saw half an ankle in a drawing room, and pass out on an overstuffed couch.
	Or you can say, well, okay, so that's weird, and that's unusual, and that's upsetting.
	And, um...
	That's disconcerting, and that may be offensive, but I'm curious, right?
	I mean, because there's no one around who should ever be complacent in the knowledge that they have, right?
	I mean, you know, people get upset with what I do, and I, you know, sometimes, and I understand that.
	But the thing is, you know, I mean, men's rights activists, I mean, if I had responded in a sort of storm-off kind of way to men's rights issues, then I would never have done the work that I've done to help broadcast these issues.
	To countless people across the world.
	So I'm regularly, like I'm working on some stuff at the moment about genetics and biology and philosophy that is seriously rocking my world and seriously disorienting my world view to say the least.
	And I just used to gotta, it's like training for those astronaut programs, you know, where you're going round and round in a centrifuge.
	You just gotta hang onto your cheeks and hope that your face doesn't peel off or something.
	And so I just sort of wanted to put that out there, that in my experience, learning about men's rights has deepened and enriched my relationships with men and with women and with the world.
	And I really wanted to say thank you.
	Thank you, thank you, thank you so enormously to all of the people who did a huge amount of work to pull this information together and people that I've learned a lot from.
	I've been enormously excited and appalled and thrilled and horrified, and that's a wonderful experience.
	I'm thinking of Gilwright's What, I've listened to some Sandman, to some Barbar, to some Stardust, and to Warren Farrell, and to Paul Elam from VoiceForMen.com, and lots of people who I've just really had a very exciting and disorienting and cool intellectual experience getting acquainted with the arguments and the ideas that these guys, well, these men and women, have put forward.
	I mean, it's been a really exciting pleasure.
	And, yeah, there's times when it's been really startling, never boring, and at no point has it actually had any negative impact on...
	My relationships.
	Now, Mike, sorry, on the line, that all sounds like, well, my relationships are fine, right?
	So, I don't want to sound like a complete dick as far as that goes, and I'm sort of aware of that possibility, but I was sort of thinking about, with your question, what's happened to mine?
	So, did you, I think if I remember rightly, or I could be wrong, when you first sent in your question, were you in the midst of the breakup, or has it now completed, or was it completed before you sent in your question?
	Yes, it was an interesting situation.
	So basically, we've broken up officially on January this year.
	And then we had this back and forth conversation constantly throughout.
	I think it was something along the lines of...
	We need to go away.
	We need to both improve on each other and then we need to come back and see where we are.
	And that didn't really seem to work for me.
	I mean, it was just, you know, there was just extreme moments of loneliness matched with huge anxiety.
	I started reading Real Time Relationships again and looking into that, which obviously, thank you, Steph, for writing.
	But I was looking into that and it made me kind of think, I mean, You mentioned something which is essentially everything you need to know about a relationship is the emotion you get when you see their name appear on the call screen, for instance, which is just like it was a pretty strong kind of emotion and feeling.
	And it was the same concept at the idea of getting back with her.
	It was this slight dread, this slight anguish, but also this loneliness that made me want to continue that relationship.
	And I think that was quite negative, hence why we kind of come to the end of the line, so to speak, and had the Made my peace with it because I think when you get that feeling...
	No, hang on.
	Sorry, you're going too fast.
	I'm getting lost.
	Sorry.
	Okay, so just if you can go back.
	I just got a bit blurred out with that stuff.
	So you felt some anxiety and you also felt some loneliness.
	Yes.
	So the thing that was keeping me interested in continuing the relationship was this underlying feeling of loneliness and just kind of A low self-worth.
	But then...
	So that's...
	Sorry, technically that's not continuing the relationship.
	That's avoiding the loneliness, right?
	Exactly.
	That's the problem.
	And, however, inversely, I had constant anxiety at the concept of continuing the relationship.
	And every time I would think about doing this and entering back into it, I would get worried and just concerned.
	I think there was two different things playing against each other in that instance.
	And I just...
	Took time, took a little think about it and said, you know what, it's probably not worth it.
	Kind of take it on the chin with the loneliness and see what I can do, really.
	Alright.
	And so, that was January you took this temporary break.
	And then, when did you actually have the breakup?
	The breakup, the official breakup has probably been, you know, beginning of May this year, actually.
	So, not too far.
	It's been essentially, it's been Broken up, but the only issue is we've had conversations back and forth and been speaking in friendly terms.
	Somewhat friendly terms, essentially.
	Wait, wait, sorry.
	You broke up in March, but you're still talking?
	Yeah.
	Why?
	You broke up?
	We're not anymore.
	I quit my job.
	I'm still going.
	But I quit my job.
	It's like, well, which is it?
	If you're still going, then you quit your job.
	I'm not sure.
	It was in May, sorry.
	The official breakup was the beginning of May.
	But from January until May, we've been talking back and forth.
	Oh, sorry.
	So since May, you've not been doing that?
	Yes, exactly.
	Exactly.
	My apologies.
	My apologies.
	Okay.
	Since January, I've been kind of talking back and forth and it's not really been a break per se.
	It's definitely been a breakup with the potential of something coming back together later on but never actually written in stone.
	Right.
	Sure.
	Now, what were your issues with the woman?
	I think it came down to reflecting on the relationship and what happened within it.
	In many ways, and this is Potentially something that we touched on, you touched on in the beginning, but I did feel slightly manipulated, victimized in many ways.
	From what my perspective and my understanding of my experience in the relationship, I'd kind of gone in, deer in the headlights, quite innocent, kind of, oh, if I just throw love at this person nonstop, then I presume something positive is going to come from it.
	But sadly, she started to We're into these habits, and quite a few of them were quite painful.
	I didn't really register.
	Okay, so Mike, I need to ask you for a favor.
	Mike?
	Sure.
	I need to ask you for a favor.
	I still don't know what your issues are, right?
	So if you could not describe in abstract terms some potential principles of problems, but tell me the actual problems, I think we're going to have a much more efficient conversation.
	Sure, sure.
	So me and her I had a number of different arguments and it just led to anxiety that I didn't really place anywhere and I was quite sad about essentially throughout.
	Now, now, hang on.
	No, no.
	See, you're doing it again.
	See, I still don't know.
	You said we had a number of arguments that made me feel anxious.
	I still don't know what the problem was.
	Would you like the specific arguments?
	I'd like to know what the problems were that you had with her other than you had problems that made you anxious.
	You know, like if you go to the doctor, right?
	Then the doctor says, where does it hurt?
	And if you say, well, I'm not feeling comfortable, doctor.
	I'm feeling uncomfortable.
	And he's going to say, well, where?
	And he's like, well, discomfort is an interesting experience, which I'm not very happy with, and bloody, bloody, blah.
	It's like, well, just tell me where it hurts.
	Right, right, okay.
	Well, from her perspective, the characteristics she had were like, you know, anger bursts on a regular basis.
	Meaningless cruelty sometimes, just on random intervals.
	Under appreciation for many different things.
	Okay, slow down, slow down, slow down.
	So you said from her perspective, but this stuff isn't from her perspective, right?
	She probably wouldn't say, well, I think you said meaninglessly cruel, as if there can be meaningful cruelty or something.
	So she had anger outbursts.
	Okay, so let's just stop there for a sec.
	So anger outbursts, what does that mean?
	In other words, how would they manifest?
	How would someone know she was having an anger outburst?
	For instance, she would come home and she would immediately be stone-cold silent.
	I'd follow up by obviously asking her what's wrong, and then there'd be an explosion.
	An argument would happen completely.
	Okay, hang on, hang on, hang on.
	So, explosion, what does that mean?
	What would she say?
	Or what would she do?
	It would usually start with something along the lines of, I've just had a really bad day at work.
	Can you leave me alone?
	And then, obviously, I would do that.
	But then the response, of course, would be, you don't seem to care much when I do.
	Oh, nice!
	That is an elegant Bengal tiger trap.
	That is a great one.
	Yeah.
	Wow!
	She's like a testicle hunter, a huntress of the First Order.
	Because that's great, you know?
	Just leave me alone.
	Why are you leaving me alone?
	Yes, sir.
	Don't bother me.
	Wait, why aren't you talking to me?
	Don't talk to me.
	Why aren't you talking to me?
	Oh my goodness.
	Wow.
	No, exactly.
	A little portable man vice in the purse.
	Okay, okay.
	That's pretty rough.
	That's pretty rough.
	That's not really an explosion, so to speak.
	That's like the fuse.
	The explosion just ended up being delving into arguments about...
	Me being, as I mentioned, me being kind of unsupportive for whatever reason, me responding, I usually did respond with anger because I never really could control.
	If I felt like I was being wrong, I'd usually respond quite aggressively, just out of nature.
	The thing that she did, she had chronic fatigue syndrome at the time, which I'm not sure, do you know what chronic fatigue syndrome is, Steph?
	I've heard something to do with Epstein-Barr virus, fibromyalgia, a whole bunch of stuff which I don't have any particular clue about.
	But wait, you said she had chronic fatigue syndrome at the time?
	Isn't chronic mean that it's always there?
	Yes, exactly.
	So essentially she had chronic fatigue syndrome all the time.
	It was mild and then moderate, varying depending on seasonal changes of the moon or something.
	But There was this aspect of slight disability as well and so what I did a lot of the time was look after her when she came home from work she'd obviously be quite tired so I'd be making her food and things of this nature just because she had this illness and I was like look why not?
	I mean that's what love is right?
	But during one of these kind of explosions I think the thing that kind of clinched it for me and really, really, I think probably set the tone for my relationship and probably could have ruined it, was after having this huge argument with me, the last thing she said was, oh, and you know I'm too ill, so you're going to have to cook for me now.
	And it was just...
	Well, hang on a sec.
	Hang on, Mike.
	I just need to understand something here.
	So you said that she had this chronic fatigue syndrome.
	Yes.
	But don't huge arguments take quite a lot of energy?
	Yeah.
	I mean, was she ever too tired?
	Like, my daughter, you know, when she's unwell, you know, she sits on the couch and we cuddle and we chat or whatever.
	But man, I mean, I could put like a big bar of chocolate eight inches away from her fingertips and she'd be like, ugh, too tired, right?
	I mean, can't do it, right?
	And that's when she won't reach for chocolate.
	I know she's not faking it.
	Not that she does, right?
	So I'm sort of trying to figure this out.
	And the reason I've known someone in my life who claimed to have chronic fatigue syndrome.
	And I will also tell you, I'm certainly no doctor.
	Maybe it's all true.
	But I didn't really believe it.
	I didn't really believe it.
	And one of the reasons I didn't believe it was that this person never lacked energy for conflict.
	And that made me feel just a little bit of doubt about this chronic fatigue.
	And also because I've always had a problem with people who use ailments.
	For domination.
	I'm not saying your ex-girlfriend did this.
	I mean, I'm just saying I think I've known people who've done this.
	And what happens is they use it to win arguments.
	They use it to dominate.
	They use it to get resources, the ailment.
	And also, they mistake...
	And I think a lot of people do this.
	I think more women than men, just in my sort of personal opinion.
	But...
	They think that the word support means you erase yourself and conform to everything I wish in a purely narcissistic manner for me.
	And that's what I'm going to call support.
	And every time you give me some counter-opinion or are not perfectly convenient to my ailment, I'm going to call you unsupportive.
	In other words, support me.
	Means conform to my every whim and pleasure.
	Don't ever contradict me and don't ever disagree with me.
	And that's what I'm going to call support.
	And I think this magic word support is something that is like a giant button on men a lot of times where women say, I need you to support me.
	Why aren't you being more supportive?
	I need you to be supportive.
	Why don't you support me?
	And it's like, first of all, I'm not a brah.
	I'm not an undergarment.
	That's not what I'm here for.
	I'm not here to support you.
	I'm here to be myself and to tell you what I think and feel as honestly and as openly as I can.
	That's my job.
	My job is to be fully here for you.
	That doesn't mean don't have any opinions which bother you.
	Don't say anything that might upset you.
	And again, I'm just telling you sort of my experience, and I certainly don't mean to tell you yours, but I wish I had all the time back that I had spent, all the energy back, all the years back that I had spent thinking that I was supposed to do something called support a woman, or even support a male friend.
	And that this cry of support, which was like this weird, narcoleptic, narcissistic fog that was pumped up my ass and turned me into a sort of helium ghost bumping along the ceiling fog of other people's neediness.
	I wish I just had all that time back where somebody's saying, support me, support me, support me.
	It's like, okay, here's your bra.
	I'm gone.
	I can understand that in many ways.
	All right.
	Go on, and I'm sorry for interrupting.
	That's fine.
	Your thing on Chronic Fatigue would make a lot of sense, I think, if I look at it in retrospect, actually, because you're right, I mean, she did have time for conflict.
	I think the argument she always made was, I'm tired, therefore I'm angry.
	You know, that seemed to be what it was like, and it seemed a bit confusing to me at the time, but I mean, I hadn't really discovered any kind of self-knowledge at the point, so I was like, you know, I I don't know these things.
	I'm only 19.
	I don't know what I'm talking about.
	Just help me understand, because I always try not to look at people in isolation.
	And usually, if they've been in a really needy relationship, or if they've been with a real manipulator or something, people tend to get very isolated by that process.
	So, help me understand.
	I mean, you, I assume, were either born...
	Of woman, or from your mother's womb, untimely ripped, as Macbeth says in Macbeth.
	So you have a family.
	You have friends.
	Did nobody give this chicky-poo a flyby?
	Did they not vet her?
	Did they not give you, you know, I mean, you're 19, which means, you know, penis head, and you got probably dicknapped.
	But isn't there anyone around you who's trying to shake you out of the sex haze and say, you know, you might be dipping your wick in some pretty volatile oil here?
	Yes.
	I mean, I had my mother because I've come from a single parent family and she does that exactly.
	And that's that's one aspect, of course.
	And she was I don't know.
	We never really had that strong relationship.
	She kept my grandma around.
	My grandma was quite physically abusive.
	And I think that kind of had the thing that definitely affected me in terms of respect for her.
	Wait, your grandmother was physically abusive to your mother or to you?
	Both.
	So as an adult, your grandmother would physically abuse your mother?
	Oh no, a few pushes and shoves here and there, but beyond that she'd stopped actually hitting her, past the age of about 16.
	Okay, so the grandmother was physically abusive to you.
	Yeah, yeah, exactly.
	There's terrible stories from that, actually.
	I would like to hear one.
	Give me some perspective.
	Give me what I'm working with here.
	So, we would get in an argument of some kind, usually probably about religion, because I became atheist by the time I was 13.
	She would get really angry, and at one point, she...
	She was ironing clothes, and she chased me with a hot iron.
	So she had a scalding iron, and what was she going to do?
	Brand a triangular Jesus into your ass?
	I mean, what was the plan?
	I have no idea.
	I have no idea at all.
	I assumed she was going to try and hit me.
	My mother was in the room at the moment, at the time, and she kind of broke up the whole thing.
	I'm sorry, your mother did what, the whole thing?
	I just missed that.
	She stood in the way.
	She broke up the whole thing and stood in the way, essentially, and said, stop.
	I'd run to the kitchen, and this is kind of quite nervous to admit this, obviously, but I ran into the kitchen and defensively picked up a weapon, essentially, and held it, didn't do anything, held it, scared, and started crying at the age of 13.
	And then my grandma kind of stopped with a pursuit, really.
	Can I make a guess?
	Sure.
	That after attacking you with a red-hot iron, your grandmother and or your mother were absolutely appalled that you might have any kind of aggressive response.
	It's absolutely appalling.
	I mean, you're supposed to stand still, Mike, when I chase you with a red-hot iron.
	The fact that you might grab a weapon to defend yourself is absolutely appalling behavior.
	You're supposed to stand there when I cook your face with an iron.
	I am so sorry.
	Yeah.
	Thank you.
	I am so sorry, man.
	That is...
	That is wretched.
	That is so evil.
	I mean, my God.
	I know I'm probably sidetracking a little bit, but since real-time relationships, I've been speaking to her mother a bit more often and showing her how her grandmother is because she wilfully ignores it.
	So, you know, I've been saying, look, she's been beating both of us the whole of our lives, really, up until a certain point when we were big enough to defend ourselves.
	And beyond that, she's been emotionally manipulating everyone and just saying, you know, family is the most important thing.
	That's all we care about, you know.
	Look after me.
	Help me with this.
	Do you not love me?
	Fuck yeah.
	Absolutely.
	Fuck.
	I mean, family is the most important thing.
	You don't just run after strangers with a red-hot fucking iron.
	You only try and brand your own children with an iron.
	You wouldn't do that with strangers.
	Family is everything.
	Family is number one in who you abuse.
	I can certainly understand that reasoning.
	Exactly.
	And she's refusing to connect, but she can see the logic behind it, which is also quite infuriating at the same time.
	Because she refuses, like, my grandma's now got Alzheimer's and we're beginning to have to look after her.
	And I'm in the minds...
	Wait, wait, sorry, sorry, sorry.
	Hang on, hang on.
	Oh, sorry.
	Oh, man.
	Why did I stop you there?
	Do you have any idea?
	My grandma has Alzheimer's.
	What did you say after that?
	And we have to look after her.
	We are beginning to have to look after her.
	Right, yeah.
	What does that mean?
	Well, you know, helping her with all of her paperwork, ensuring that she gets...
	No, no, no.
	I know what helping her means.
	Right.
	What does you have to help her?
	What does that mean?
	I mean, we have to age or die.
	We have to stick to the planet because of gravity.
	We have to breathe if we want to live.
	But why do you have to help your grandmother?
	I'm not saying you should or shouldn't.
	You just toss this off like, well, I mean, it's gravity.
	You can't fly.
	I think I said that more from my mother's perspective, because I've been arguing together against that.
	But she's been saying, look, I mean, she's getting old now.
	The usual arguments of, you know, like, she didn't know in her time it was different then, she tried her best, all that kind of stuff.
	That nonsense.
	Wait, wait.
	It was different in her time, so obviously she would physically abuse you guys in public, because it's fine, right?
	That's...
	I don't know what to say, but yeah, apparently.
	But she wouldn't, right?
	She hid it.
	She did it only at home and only when she could get away with it, right?
	She wouldn't be chasing after you with a red-hot iron if there was a cop standing there, right?
	Because she'd go to fucking jail.
	Yeah.
	So she is perfectly capable of repressing her violence and her aggression and her abuse and her brutality.
	She just, when she could get away with it, And, you know, that's how the insanity defense doesn't work if you try to hide your crime.
	Right?
	The I didn't know it was illegal only works if you don't try and hide your crime.
	You understand?
	Right?
	So if I go to some place and it turns out, I don't know, some culture, and it turns out that scratching my nose is some horrible insult to people, And they say, oh, you know, you foreign big-nosed white devil, you've scratched your nose.
	And I'd be like, whoa, I really didn't know.
	Now, it could be said that I should probably try and find that out before I go someplace.
	You know, read up a little if I'm going to go someplace or whatever.
	But most people, if they genuinely understood that I didn't know about it, well, they'd forgive me the first time.
	Now, if I kept doing it after being told it was a horrible insult, well, I couldn't claim ignorance, right?
	That's number one.
	Now, if I say, oh, I don't know, someone, no, that's not me.
	Someone comes to the UK, to England, and they, I don't know, they steal something from a store, right?
	And...
	They come in, they grab a candy bar, and they just start whistling and saying, I'm just taking this, and off they walk out the store.
	And the candy store owner says, no, you can't take that.
	You're stealing, right?
	And the guy's like, oh, I thought this was like a garage sale, which was free.
	I thought this was like how people put stuff out in front of their house that they want you to take away on garbage day or whatever, right?
	And then once you explain it, whatever.
	But if the guy comes in to the candy store and he, you know, A friend of his creates a distraction and he quickly grabs the candy bar and jams it in a deep pocket and then pretends to shop for some other stuff and whatever and then walks out and then when stopped and they say, do you have the candy bar?
	He says, no, candy bar?
	What candy bar, right?
	Well, this person now knows that what he's doing is wrong because he's hiding the crime.
	Right?
	So this idea that, well, you're doing the best you could with the knowledge you had, it's like, no.
	Nope.
	The insanity defense, well, the ignorance defense only works if people are unaware that something is wrong.
	And how they know that something is wrong is they hide it.
	And child abuse, at least according to what you're saying, and correct me if I'm wrong, but the child abuse that you experienced was hid.
	The severe, the severe, yeah, exactly.
	Yes, the severe child abuse was hidden by your grandmother, so she knew that it was illegal, she knew that it was immoral, and she kept it hidden.
	So this idea that somehow then, well, she can claim the ignorance or insanity defense makes no sense.
	You can't say that you thought that the bank was giving away the money when you tunnel in through the wall in the dark of night.
	And it's so funny, too.
	It's funny but tragic and horrible, right?
	Let me tell you just how insane all of this is, because it's hard for men to see this.
	And I count myself as this as well, Mike, so let me just tell you just how insane this is.
	Um...
	The moment a woman says no with regards to sexual activity, right?
	The moment that a woman says no, I don't want you to touch my breast or I don't want you to continue with your sexual advances and so on.
	The moment a woman says no, what must a man do?
	You're afraid.
	Absolutely!
	And I think that's entirely right.
	Of course.
	I mean, the woman can say no at any time, and the man must immediately and instantly cease his sexual activity.
	And, you know, it doesn't matter.
	He could be five seconds from orgasm.
	He's got to stop, right?
	Because any time the woman says no, the man must stop his behavior, even if she has been encouraging him hitherto at any point when she says no, he must stop his behavior.
	And I agree with that.
	I mean, I get that it's a little tough to prove he said, she said after the fact, but just in terms of what a man should do, of course, you say, right?
	So the moment a woman says no, even if she's been encouraging him beforehand, the man must stop his sexual activity, right?
	Were you encouraging your grandmother to chase after you with a red-hot iron?
	It depends what you call encouraging.
	If you think anti-religious arguments are encouraging, then certainly.
	No, no, no.
	I don't mean the debate.
	I don't mean the debate that happened beforehand.
	No, this is serious, Ran.
	And the reason she was chasing you, and of course there is a sort of Benny Hill aspect to it, but the reality is that she is chasing you with something that if she trips and it lands on you, Can give you extremely dangerous burns.
	Yeah.
	Right?
	I mean, if it goes into an eye, it can blind you.
	It can burn half your face off.
	It could land on your genitals and it could cripple you.
	It could make you infertile.
	That's an unbelievably dangerous thing to do.
	It is close to murderous in my, obviously, amateur opinion.
	Now, I would assume that you would be saying, or somebody should have been saying, or your attitude of running away would be to say, I don't want this.
	Stop.
	Right?
	Yeah.
	Now, in the gender world that we currently, this gender funhouse that we currently live in, the moment that A woman says no, the man is supposed to stop.
	Now, when a child says no, who's much more helpless on an adult than a woman is with a man, right?
	The moment that a child says no, a male child, or a female, we're just talking about you as a male, the moment a male child says no, according to the logic of when someone says no, you immediately stop what you're doing, When a child says no to a parent, when you say no to a woman, what should the woman do?
	Stop.
	Immediately?
	Yeah.
	Immediately.
	Yeah.
	Now, I don't believe that if you continue to press your sexual advances against a woman who has told you to stop, and you say, well, you know, this is the culture that I grew up in, or I was doing the best I could with the knowledge I had, and so on, what would women say?
	I don't think women would be saying much.
	Oh, I think they'd be saying quite a lot, in fact.
	They'd be calling the police, I think.
	They'd be saying a lot to police.
	And then if you were to say to the women or the feminists or the judge, you know, well, I thought that, I thought no man, yes.
	You know, when I grew up, this was pretty commonplace, I suppose.
	I mean, I thought she was just pretending and so on, right?
	The judge would say, doesn't matter.
	You can say, I didn't know the law.
	And what would the judge say?
	Ignorance of the law is no excuse, right?
	Mm-hmm.
	Ignorance of the law is no excuse.
	And your grandmother and your mother were not even pretending to be ignorant of the law because they continually hid their abuses.
	You are not here to serve the needs of women, Mike.
	You are not put on God's green earth To serve the needs of women.
	You're not here to serve the needs of men too, but that's not the particular issue.
	You've got these three women, your ex-girlfriend, your mother, and your grandmother.
	You are not here to serve their needs.
	women are not here to serve the needs of men and men sure as shit are not here to serve the needs of women um i think is it your is it your inevitable job to wipe the ass of your grandmother as she ages - No.
	Good God.
	No, seriously, I don't see how.
	I don't see why.
	Again, I'm not saying whether you should or shouldn't, but Christ Almighty, don't take it as an absolute.
	Well, we just have to take care of her now because she's getting older.
	Yeah.
	I don't see that as an absolute.
	I can't...
	Until there's a law passed that says, okay, you married some...
	It says to women, you married some guy and then you divorced him.
	You didn't like him.
	He was abusive, let's say.
	He chased after you with red-hot irons and beat you up and threatened you and abused you and called you horrible names and so on.
	So you divorced him.
	Right?
	You just don't...
	You didn't want to stay married to him.
	Chose the wrong guy.
	It's not a wise choice, but, you know, that shit can happen.
	But when there's a law that then says, oh, oh, sorry, I'm sorry, your ex-husband is not well, so you're going to have to go and take care of him for the next ten years, what would women say about that?
	It'd be quite negative, I think.
	Not much...
	Well, they'd say, I'm sorry he's sick.
	I'm sorry that he's sick, but I don't see how I am somehow supposed to be compelled to take care of my abuser.
	In many ways, my mother should certainly listen to this call.
	She'd learn a hell of a lot.
	Well, look, I'm just putting forward an argument, right?
	Not even an argument, it's just a perspective.
	Which is, I mean, I would love to know, and if someone ever wants to call me and tell me, and, you know, if there's some argument that I've missed, I will apologize to the planet, standing upside down, blowing up balloons with my farts.
	I will apologize to the planet.
	I cannot, for the life of me, figure out why this all has to be.
	And they say, ah, but it's family.
	It's like, okay, then let's ban divorce.
	Because surely that which we choose is more morally binding upon us than that which we inherit.
	We say that a man who has worked for his money or a woman who has worked for her money is more honorable than somebody who's merely inherited their money.
	There's more moral responsibility When we choose something than when it simply happens to us.
	We say to a man who smoked for 30 years who gets lung cancer, I'm sorry that you're sick, but you know, you knew the risk, right?
	Whereas somebody like Andy Kaufman who gets lung cancer who never smoked, we say, oh man, that's terrible, right?
	Because it was not his choice.
	It just happened to him.
	If I go and voluntarily sign a contract, then I am responsible for fulfilling that contract or finding some way out of it in a way that's amenable to the contract holder should I be unable to fulfill my contract, right?
	However, I'm having a pretty fucking tough time thinking about why my daughter is responsible for the national debt.
	She never chose that.
	She never signed a goddamn thing.
	So, Clearly, we are far more morally responsible for the family that we choose than the family that we inherit.
	Because that is a contract we signed rather than a contract which is inflicted upon us with no choice.
	And so I cannot for the life of me, and again, I'm wildly wide open to arguments to the contrary.
	I cannot for the life of me.
	Figure out why men and women feel that it's perfectly alright to divorce a family that they chose, which is their husband or their wife, but somehow, when it comes to adults, children and their parents, that there's just this absolute obligation no matter what.
	Surely, the first obligation That we must honor is on our choices rather than the accidents of our environment.
	And the fact that women divorce men.
	Seven times out of ten women initiate divorce, not even for abuse.
	Not for abuse, not for infidelity.
	Well, dissatisfaction.
	You see, I'm just...
	I'm not that satisfied.
	And everyone's like, you go girl.
	You go girl.
	You go find your bliss.
	And these women can go marching around and smashing up families with the wrecking ball of their dissatisfaction and everyone's supposed to say, well, great.
	And I grew up in this environment.
	You grew up with a single mom, right?
	Yeah.
	I grew up with a single mom.
	And my mom Left my dad?
	She left my dad.
	Was that because of...
	Was he abusive?
	Not to my knowledge, no.
	Was he a great husband?
	I don't know.
	I doubt it.
	Was he unfaithful?
	Not to my knowledge.
	Again, I was a baby when they left, so I don't know.
	I've only heard some stories.
	But none of them point to abuse or infidelity.
	So my mom just didn't want to be married to him anymore.
	She chose him, chose to have two children with him.
	Then she just didn't want to be married to him anymore.
	And it just shows me...
	How little male privilege there is that men have not figured out the essence of this lesson.
	If you don't like the family that you chose, just leave them.
	Just leave them.
	But somehow the women, like your mother, Who decided to, I don't know, maybe she left your dad, maybe your dad left her.
	We'll talk about that in a sec.
	But let's say that she left him.
	Statistically, it's most likely.
	Let's say that your mom left your dad.
	Well, that was a family she chose.
	Nobody made her get married.
	Nobody made her have children.
	That's the family she chose.
	But somehow the family that you didn't choose is just this absolute obligation.
	This absolute obligation.
	No matter what.
	I'm probably not getting across just how absolutely insane this is.
	Now, Mike, please understand.
	I'm not saying see your family or don't see your family.
	All I'm trying to do, like I said at the beginning of this show, is I'm trying to point out that don't accept unchosen positive obligations as absolutes.
	Yeah.
	And women might say, or moms might say, or maybe dads too, but moms might say, oh, well, you see, but the difference is, is that I fed and clothed my son.
	Let's just go with, because you're a mom, son.
	The mom might say, well, you see, I fed and clothed my son for 20 years.
	Yeah, that is the obvious.
	And therefore, he owes me.
	Yes, yes.
	Again, it only takes a moment thought to realize just how completely deranged this is.
	Because let's say that a woman is married to me for 20 years.
	And then she says, I want to leave you.
	And let's say I've been supporting her for 20 years.
	I've been paying all her bills for 20 years.
	And then she says, Steph, you're a selfish son of a gun.
	I want to leave you.
	I'm going to divorce you, right?
	Would I then get to go to family court and say, you cannot grant her a divorce, judge, because I have been paying her To be my wife.
	I've been paying for her to be my wife for these last 20 years.
	She can't leave me.
	She owes me.
	What would the family judge say?
	He would say, yes, you can.
	Well, he would say a lot more than that.
	He would say...
	No, you know what he would say?
	He would say to me, oh, Mr.
	Molyneux, you naive fool.
	You think...
	That because you have paid for her for 20 years, that this creates an obligation from her to you?
	Let me inform you how the law works, Mr.
	Molyneux.
	The fact that you have supported your wife for 20 years will create an obligation and has already created an obligation, not from her to you, but from you to her.
	And in fact, because of 20 years, you must now keep her in the style to which she has become accustomed until the day she dies.
	She can leave you, and you must pay for her.
	So if you think that she can't leave you and that she owes you because you paid for her, you are sadly deluded about the reality of the law.
	And if we were to say to women, Well, you see, if your husband pays your bills, then you can never leave him because you owe him for all of the bills that he paid for you.
	what would women say?
	I could even go into it.
	It'd just be insane.
	People would go completely mental.
	People would go completely insane.
	Women and men, and rightly so.
	And we're talking about adults here.
	We're talking about adults who chose the relationship, who chose to stay married, and who had all the options in the world to do anything else with their time, energy, and resources for the previous 20 years, right?
	Are we really going to say that because someone bought diapers for you, that you owe them forever?
	Is that how it's going to work?
	Well, you see...
	I paid for her to be my slave because I bought her some dresses.
	And because I bought her some dresses, she is now my involuntary slave forever.
	And people would say, hey, man, no, no, no, no, no.
	No, no, no.
	Outside of H1 visas, involuntary servitude has been abolished.
	There are no serfs left in the world, at least not in the West.
	So you don't get to make that case, sir.
	But somehow moms can say, but I changed your diapers and I bought you applesauce, right?
	And medicine and fed you and so now you owe me forever.
	I just...
	Let's just take everything that parents say, that moms say to their sons, let's just take all of that and put it into a marriage environment and see how the principle works and if the principle does not work in the marriage environment then it sure as hell can in no moral way even remotely work in a family of origin environment and again You may find in conversations with your mother that you have great chats.
	You really get connected.
	You deal with history.
	You deal with your past.
	You might find some positive thing happens with your grandmother and you may want to take care of her.
	I'm not saying any...
	That's all what could happen.
	But for Christ's sake, man, do not take it as some absolute that you have to no matter what.
	They chose to have you.
	Your mother chose to have you.
	You did not choose your parents.
	That's all.
	All I'm saying is it needs to be a choice.
	Otherwise, your ex-girlfriend is the least of your problems.
	I think I have been looking into real-term relationships a hell of a lot and doing a lot of work on that.
	I have definitely come down on that side, of course.
	Like, I didn't choose the relationship.
	I didn't ask to be born.
	You know, that's kind of the concept.
	So, it's a bit strange that someone would tell you that you're enslaved because you didn't ask to be born.
	That's a bit unnecessary, to put it bluntly, lightly rather.
	Well, is your mother, this is my question, is your mother saying, what are your thoughts?
	About taking care of this woman, your grandmother, who did some real...
	Is she ever asking you?
	Is she ever saying, what are your thoughts about it?
	I mean, I know you had a pretty rough with her.
	She did chase after you with an iron and abused you and all that.
	So, is she asking?
	What are your preferences?
	Well, that's not right.
	I mean that's that's pretty rude I'm actually asking her why she's why she's still looking after this woman for so many years why she's been doing it for about five years now that she's been consecutively just looking after her in every way Thank you.
	And I think that's a fine question to ask.
	And I hope that you guys have lots of positive and illuminating conversations about that.
	But that's your mother's life.
	And you have your life to come, right?
	Because you're in your early 20s.
	I think you said that you went out with this woman for three years.
	And you talked about being 19.
	So you've got your whole life ahead of you.
	And, you know, I'm not saying your mom is a feminist or anything like that.
	So I'm just going to give you two more.
	Oh, she is a feminist.
	Oh, fantastic.
	Okay.
	Well, that's great.
	That's great.
	That's actually wonderful.
	Because the great thing about feminists, at least the ones that I knew growing up, the great thing about feminists is they don't care what came before.
	They don't care what came before.
	They do their own thing based on their own values and fuck history.
	They don't care what came before.
	They don't care that they made vows to love, honor, and obey their husbands, for better or for worse, in sickness and in health, until death do they part.
	I'll tell you this, man.
	When I spoke those words to my bride on her wedding day, I did not cross my fingers.
	Behind my back.
	There was no escape hatch called, well, you know, if it doesn't work out.
	That was my vow.
	That was my vow.
	And I will never stray from that vow.
	I will never waver.
	I will never look the other way.
	I will never finger an eject button.
	I will never Ever, ever stray from that vow.
	People are like, well, how can you know?
	Oh, I know.
	Oh, I know.
	I will never stray from that vow.
	Now, feminists, they made all of these promises to their husbands, right?
	I assume that when your mother got married, she made...
	Oh, that she didn't even get married?
	No, no.
	Okay.
	All right.
	But feminists as a whole, like the moms of my generation, they all made these vows to their husbands.
	And then they didn't like keeping those vows.
	And so these incredibly solemn vows that they made before gods and governments and extended family and friends and community and so on, they were like, no, no.
	No, I don't want to keep that.
	And these were voluntary, permanent vows to love, honor, obey until death do they part.
	And you didn't have to be a feminist to get divorced, but there certainly weren't any feminists saying, no, no, no, you made a commitment, you made a vow.
	All the feminists were saying, or a lot of the feminists were saying, well, you see, marriage is a kind of slavery, and it's an institutionalized rape, and it's, I mean, you know, people like Hillary Clinton say it's a kind of serfdom and all that, right?
	So get out!
	They didn't care.
	That marriage had developed for the benefit of children and society over thousands of years.
	Thousands of years!
	Right?
	The feminists were like, ah, fuck that.
	Get out. Get out. Get out. Get out.
	And they weren't even saying, you have the choice.
	Don't take it for granted.
	Right?
	They were literally saying, get out.
	They were homewreckers.
	Professional family breakers.
	Smashed up the family.
	Because, you know, that's what Marxists do.
	It's what leftists do.
	It's what socialists do.
	They smash up the family so that they can extend the state.
	They smash up the family and then they pretend that everyone is equal so that all inequalities must be the result of prejudice rather than freedom.
	That's what they do.
	And so, if your mother is a feminist, you never even made a vow.
	To take care of your abusive grandmother until the day that she dies or to help your mother out in that endeavor.
	You didn't even take a vow.
	You didn't sign a contract.
	contract, you didn't do anything.
	And so, feminists say to women who took vows to love, honor, or obey for better or for worse than sickness and health until death do they part to walk away.
	Get out.
	It was a false vow.
	The vow doesn't matter.
	It was patriarchy made you.
	Take that vow.
	Get out and get his money too.
	Well, I shouldn't say.
	Some feminists did and some feminists didn't say about get the money stuff.
	But there certainly was not a lot of organized opposition to alimony and child support from feminists.
	There was some, but it wasn't massive.
	And I have, I mean, I learned a lot.
	And you should learn a lot too from feminists.
	You're not, I mean, feminists didn't even try to hold women to vows that women had made.
	Thank you.
	They said, walk away if you want.
	You don't have to be there.
	In fact, you should leave.
	Now, I don't say that to people.
	I say, remember, there's a choice.
	Don't take anything for granted.
	There's a choice.
	Which is way nicer than feminists in general who were constantly hammering at the women that they were being enslaved and exploited and patriarchy and slavery and serfdom and all that.
	So feminists put out that even in the most sacred vows that you make for the benefit of children with someone you chose to get married to You can just walk away.
	And I listen to that.
	I'm like, oh, so even if you make an obligation for the rest of your life, you're not bound by it at all.
	Even if you've made a promise, the most important promise you will ever make in your life is to your spouse.
	It doesn't matter.
	You can just walk away.
	Even if you've made a formal commitment, You can just walk away.
	And not only will you not be censured as it used to, a woman who used to leave her husband for anything other than significant abuse and infidelity was ostracized.
	Now, no ostracism.
	Now they're brave, courageous, single moms, bloody, bloody, blah.
	And I'm sorry to be hammering this point so hard, but this is not just for you.
	This is for all the other men and women out there.
	Feminists led the way.
	You are bound by nothing in the family.
	Even if you chose the man, even if you had choices of other men, you are bound by nothing.
	Even if you made a vow, you are bound by nothing.
	Not even a spiderweb holds you together.
	Even if you vowed before God himself, You are bound by nothing.
	And thus the feminists and to a large degree the women undid the family.
	Undid the family.
	I remind people of the choices that were made clear to me when I was growing up.
	Family is everything?
	Are you kidding me?
	Feminists don't get to say family is everything.
	No, sir.
	That is a sick joke.
	Feminists of all people do not get to say that family is everything.
	Because They generally hated the family and said that the women had zero obligations and in fact should and must leave such an enslaving and horrifying institution.
	Do you hear what I'm saying?
	No feminist can ever tell you you do for family.
	No feminist can ever tell you family is everything.
	No feminist can ever tell you you are obligated to your family.
	Unless they're willing to ban divorce, they're talking out of their ass.
	And it's just another double standard manipulation.
	All freedom for me, all obligation for you.
	Just, you know, stay, take care of your grandmother, hover around, be around, don't be around, but for God's sakes, don't take it as an absolute.
	I mean, this woman...
	Tell me what happened with your parents' marriage, Mike.
	What happened?
	Sorry, your parents' relationship, but they weren't married.
	No, sure.
	So, my mom took the decision to go for a guy on the basis of charm.
	That didn't last very well.
	He was an arrogant Flash idiot, apparently, according to her, during the relationship.
	She still decided to have a child for some reason, but there you go.
	Sorry, just for the colonists, Flash?
	I know, but would you explain that for people?
	Cocky, showing off all the time, essentially, is the concept.
	An alpha player, right?
	Yeah, exactly.
	I mean, like, she told me stories of how, I think she was recently pregnant with me or something, and they were at a party, and my dad got behind her friend and kissed her on the neck in front of my mum.
	That kind of behaviour.
	That was something that was going on, but I'm not sure what was going on.
	Wait, was this before they got married?
	Oh, sorry, before they had you?
	I think it's before, but it's either before or early into her being pregnant with me.
	So yeah, exactly.
	And the whole relationship It just kind of got worse and worse and worse.
	You know, my dad was quite violent, aggressive.
	His childhood was absolutely terrible.
	He wasn't aggressive to her physically, but he was just physically aggressive to other men in the family.
	So, for instance, he had a physical fight, if I recall, with my grandfather at one point.
	And yeah, yeah, because basically I think that was at the point where towards Me actually being born.
	They'd had so many fights.
	They were thinking of breaking up.
	My dad's argument was, I don't want to be a sperm donor.
	I want to see the kid.
	And my mom was typically going to say, no, you're too crazy.
	And it went quite sour.
	And then they tried to fix the relationship when I was born.
	But my dad was, you know, he had schizophrenia.
	He was quite crazy in many ways.
	Wait, so your dad, what?
	Hang on.
	Your dad was like diagnosed schizophrenia?
	My mom's told me that.
	She said the police told her that, essentially.
	No, the police can't tell her that.
	That's a lie.
	The police cannot diagnose someone as schizophrenic.
	That takes a psychiatrist, as far as I understand it.
	That takes a professional, right?
	The police can't say, oh, your husband's a schizophrenic, any more than they can say, I think he has bone cancer.
	Hmm.
	Hmm.
	Did you ever see your father after this?
	I did, when I was 18.
	No, when I just turned 18.
	I think it was like a couple of days ago.
	Wait, wait, wait.
	Hang on, hang on.
	Sorry, sorry.
	Just a bit of a gap here.
	Did you see your father?
	Hang on.
	Did they split up when you were still very young?
	Basically, yes.
	They split up when I was two months old.
	And he went...
	I'm going to have to sidetrack a little bit to give you some backstory into my dad, just so you've got an understanding.
	My dad was a part-time drug dealer essentially and he had a history of arsony for burning people's houses down if they didn't pay debts.
	So this guy essentially had police on his tail and there was a time when He's got a lot of past relationships as well.
	And in one of those past relationships, he was so angry that when the mother and kids were out, he burned their house down, right?
	And then he moved into a relationship with my mum, essentially, after that.
	He was being tailed and chased for this crime, for these crimes, and my mother found out when I was like two months old and basically just went on the run into, you know, single-parent shelters and things of this nature.
	She's essentially been running for about 19 years, essentially, or I'd say about 16 years she was running place to place.
	She never stayed in one, more than one, we never stayed in more than one house for more than three years.
	We just kept on moving all the time.
	And that's because she was scared of the prospect of your father finding you guys?
	Exactly.
	That's what she told me, exactly.
	She was always scared of that prospect.
	Then he eventually found her because he's quite good at tracking people down.
	He sent her an email and said, look, I don't really care about what's happened with us.
	I just want to meet my son and just see what he's like.
	Sorry to interrupt, but this is when you were 18?
	This is when I was 18, yeah.
	We're skipping along a little bit because there's a few different aspects we wanted to clear up.
	But yes, when I was 18, she'd been sent a message a couple of months back.
	She told me about it because she said, look, if you want to meet him, you can meet him.
	And I said, cool, I'll meet him in a public place because, of course, I don't know what he's like.
	My mum's been telling me all these ghost stories essentially about him.
	So I was like, fair enough, I'm going to meet him in a public place.
	So I did.
	I met him.
	He was pretty much as described.
	He was very short, funny enough.
	Short, bald, horny.
	It was very strange.
	It wasn't a nice first meeting.
	You said, hang on, short, bald, and what?
	Horny.
	He was checking out women at this bar that we were at at the time, and he was nudging me in the side and pointing at women's asses and stuff whilst I was trying to have a meaningful conversation with him.
	He was a very weird guy.
	Very strange.
	Very, very strange.
	He was bragging a lot about his past.
	I think he thought I was impressed by the criminal stuff he did and talking about guns he'd hit in the wood and stuff.
	He was just really strange.
	Nothing just didn't really resonate with me, of course, at all.
	I was completely just lost for words.
	I was like, who is this guy?
	Why ever talk to him?
	I'm so sorry.
	Mike, I just want to say that's pretty heartbreaking.
	I mean, it's hard to imagine, unless he's actually trying to set fire to you in the bar, it's hard to imagine it going less satisfactorily, to put it as nicely as possible.
	Yeah.
	It was a pretty negative experience.
	There's also stories that I've heard about what he was like during the relationship that were pretty bad.
	I hear this is just something else...
	Sorry to interrupt, but your mother's basic idea is that it's not good to have relationships with people who've been violent towards you, right?
	Essentially.
	So, how on earth could she want you to have a relationship With your grandmother?
	Because it's on my mother's side, apparently that changes everything.
	Oh, right!
	I forgot the estrogen veil that we go through where up is down and black is white and that which is good for the gander is never good for the goose, right?
	Yeah.
	Because if your mother's principal was like, well, you see, your dad was violent.
	He wasn't violent towards me.
	I mean, he didn't chase me with a red-hot iron.
	You see, your father was violent, and so I just had to stay away from him.
	I just couldn't have anything to do with him.
	I mean, if you were to suggest to your mother that, oh, you know, you go and take care of dad if he gets ill or whatever, she'd say, no.
	Right?
	Because, you see, he was a violent guy.
	And he was abusive, so I don't want to have anything to do with him.
	Yeah, exactly.
	Right.
	So, listen.
	Yeah.
	Therapy?
	No, I haven't done it yet.
	Definitely need to do it.
	Dude, seriously.
	Oh my god.
	Oh my god.
	I mean...
	Look, the fact that you've got a positive outcome, sorry, the fact that you have a positive outlook, that you've retained a sense of humor, that you're obviously very verbally skilled, that you're able to listen to what I'm saying, that you haven't put too many giggles in, which is quite a common thing when people are talking about these kinds of tragedies.
	You know, Marx is a pretty noble-hearted human being.
	And, you know, what you've surmounted and what you've come through is...
	Heroic.
	And of course, you've kept some empathy for your mom and you've kept a relationship going with her and you're having some meaningful talks with her about stuff, which I think is great.
	And you're going to have a lot to offer someone.
	Someone who's not snippy and snappy and chronic fatigue and all that kind of crap, right?
	Because at some point, you're going to look back and you're going to say, what the hell happened to my self-esteem that this is the best I thought I could do, right?
	I mean, some woman who's crabby and snappy and always tired and it's like, oh god.
	Like, what the hell was I thinking that this is the best I thought I could do?
	I don't mean to briefly interject.
	No, no, go ahead.
	Sure, it's quite interesting.
	You should mention meeting someone new.
	I mean, you had someone recently on the show, didn't you?
	You had a girl called Katya on the show recently.
	Yes.
	Yes.
	On the original call that I was supposed to be joining, she was part of the Skype, we had a conversation and we've been having a really good chat basically and it's been going quite well.
	I think Freedom Aid Radio Dating certainly is a It's by far the toughest dating site in the known universe, but look, I certainly know some very long-term relationships, a couple of marriages have all come out of this conversation.
	But listen, I mean, therapy is, I think, something that would be incredibly helpful for you.
	It's just my opinion, right?
	I mean, although there's more than my opinion, therapy is...
	I think I've got a conversation with Gabriel Disher on this channel itself about the benefits of therapy, which is why I'm constantly advocating it.
	But I think definitely before you get involved in another relationship, you don't have to complete therapy, whatever that means.
	But I would strongly suggest getting into therapy because...
	You're going to have some habits that have come out.
	And also, you know, like, if somebody says, I grew up in a family, you know, neither of my parents know Japanese, I never spoke Japanese, but I want to move to Japan, you know, what's the first thing you'd say to someone?
	Learn Japanese.
	Yeah.
	Now, you, sadly, grew up...
	Without a functional male-female relationship, as your example.
	You know, I was just thinking about this the other day.
	So, having dinner with my wife and my daughter, and I was just thinking about, like, we were just really making some pretty funny jokes and just having a great meal.
	And it just struck me that, you know, my daughter gets to see, you know, functional, happy, productive, in love, adult women.
	An adult relationship every day.
	She's just absorbing that for hours a day.
	Yeah.
	And, you know, you want to speak Japanese, but you didn't grow up, so you got to go learn Japanese, right?
	You didn't grow up with that example.
	If you grew up speaking Japanese, not much point taking Japanese lessons, although I guess native English speakers take an English degree, but that's...
	So, learning where your blind spots are, learning about all the things you didn't learn and all the counter examples that you learned is really important.
	So that's my strong suggestion.
	I don't think that the issue of men's rights was foundational.
	Now, certainly if your ex-girlfriend, it doesn't sound like, you know, just man to man, it doesn't sound like she had a lot to offer.
	It just doesn't.
	It doesn't sound like she had a lot on the table.
	And when someone doesn't have a lot to offer, they don't want you gaining confidence, right?
	Yeah.
	Like if I'm some jerky employer who wants to pay someone three bucks an hour, I don't want them going to night school.
	I don't want them talking to other people.
	Like if I just don't have much to offer or don't want to offer much, Then I'm going to steadfastly resist gaining confidence, anything which helps the confidence of my victim, so to speak.
	If your ex-girlfriend was kind of exploitive, and it seems to me that she was, if you don't mind me saying so, Then, yeah, she's not going to be a big fan of anything which is going to empower you.
	And again, this is something I get from the feminists as well, which is that apparently men don't like that which empowers women, which is the only reason men have any problems with feminism.
	Isn't it great how feminism has overcome the manipulative tendencies of women?
	But yeah, so that which empowers women, apparently men don't like.
	Well, you know, Go both ways, honey, right?
	And so I would imagine that the men's rights stuff gave you a bit of a spine, which having two abusive women raise you did not help you grow initially, right?
	Yeah.
	And listen, when I was your age, I was pushed over by a whiff of ovaries as well.
	So I'm not speaking from some like ooga booga alpha male from the day I got my first short and curlies.
	No, I mean I was much of a boob breezes by and over I go.
	So it's just something that a woman can't raise you to be a man.
	A woman cannot raise you to be a man.
	And women can do wonderful things.
	But I cannot raise my daughter to be a woman.
	I can't do it.
	I can bring wonderful things to her and I can hopefully model some behaviors that she's going to find valuable when she gets older, but I can't.
	I can't raise her to be a woman.
	And single moms can't raise boys to be men.
	I mean, it's only in this weird plastic universe of infinite malleability that we somehow imagine that a woman can raise a boy to be a man.
	She can't.
	Especially if she's a single mom, because she couldn't even keep a man who was the father of her child.
	That's how bad she is with men.
	Not only is she not a man, but she chooses really terrible men to have children with.
	Yeah.
	So it's like...
	it's like me being, like me adopting a black kid plus being an incredible racist and somehow everyone thinking, oh, that's going to work out great.
	Yeah, yeah.
	I mean, not only am I not black, but in this scenario, I'm a terrible racist.
	And so, of course, that's not going to be a very positive experience, right?
	I'm sure your mom didn't have a whole lot of great stuff to say about men as a whole.
	You have no idea.
	So not only is she not a man, but I would imagine she's pretty anti-male.
	She's a horrible sexist.
	She's pretty sexist, actually, yeah.
	Right.
	So, of course, I mean, how on earth could she teach you anything about masculinity if she's not a man and anti-male to boot?
	That's one thing that I did, though.
	I researched years from 16 years old.
	All I did was research self-help all the time.
	Right.
	And it pays off.
	It really does.
	It really pays off.
	But it comes at a cost to people who like you the way you were.
	Or I should put it this way.
	It becomes a challenge for people you are less convenient to.
	Yeah.
	So, yeah, I would strongly suggest...
	I don't think that there's anything in the men's rights stuff that is going to be...
	I mean, are there some men's rights guys who are anti-female?
	To be honest, I don't think I've ever encountered any.
	I honestly haven't.
	Well, no, but the MGTOW guys, I haven't found them to be any kind of virulently anti-female.
	I mean, I think that they understand that, you know, modern women without self-knowledge combined with a ridiculously gynocentric legal system that shreds testicles like a French chef preparing a baguette.
	Yeah.
	That combination creates predators.
	But I can be aware of the danger of sharks.
	That doesn't mean I wake up every day and say, oh, I hate those sharks.
	I mean, I just may not go swimming with a bunch of marinade on me.
	You know, dressed up like a seal and making noises and balancing beach balls on my nose with giant fake whiskers and blubber.
	I mean, I just...
	I may not want to go and do that, but that doesn't mean...
	Like, which is, you know, for a lot of the MGTOW guys, like avoiding marriage.
	I just...
	I may not want to go and do...
	It doesn't mean I hate sharks.
	It just means I respect the danger that they represent.
	And I make my choices accordingly.
	But the idea that they just hate women, it's like, well, no, it's just...
	Women without self-knowledge combined with the family court system is too dangerous.
	It's too dangerous.
	Yeah, yeah.
	And so, but I just, I haven't, you know, and I've spoken at men's rights conferences and chatted, and I've not seen a single, oh, I hate women, right?
	I mean, that's just what women, that's just what some childish women say.
	Yeah.
	It's like, no, this sport is far too dangerous for me.
	Oh, you just hate this sport.
	It's like, no, actually, the only reason I'm even considering the sport is because I like the sport.
	Right?
	And so if I choose not to do skydiving, because the last eight people who fell out of the plane, like three of them died, you just hate skydiving.
	It's like, no, actually, I like skydiving.
	That's why I was even considering it, but I'm not going to do it.
	Like this exodus.
	It's like...
	They like women and they're attracted to women and they're not gay.
	So they like women.
	It's just, sorry, too dangerous.
	Too dangerous.
	There might be a really great view on the other side of that loose guillotine.
	Still not putting my head in there.
	Do you not imagine that you get hypercritical though?
	Do you not imagine that you start picking out lots of different things in the assumption, like say you would read anecdotes from MGTOWs and other people, like I mean I'm not against MGTOW, I'm not against the Men's Rights Movement in any way.
	I just read these anecdotes and I look at them and there seems to be a pattern of how it works.
	It starts off with a small manipulation and it's usually something very minor.
	And when I sense that, I get quite critical.
	Straight away, I kind of seize up and I kind of say, okay, well, this happened to all these other men.
	So now I'm worried.
	Well, good.
	No, I mean...
	I support being hypercritical because you're talking about getting involved with a woman and if you want to keep going you may talk about living with a woman and if you want to keep going you may talk about either getting formally married or informally married through common law or through cohabitation laws and if you want to raise kids then you're talking about 20 years plus together where the woman does have the power to shred you legally So yeah,
	I think caution is important.
	And the key thing, of course, is how does the woman deal with your concerns?
	Right?
	How does the woman deal with your concerns?
	See, con artists will always try and poo-poo your concerns, right?
	Ah, you've got nothing to worry about.
	Oh, most people are paranoid.
	They just attempt to talk you out of your legitimate concerns.
	But men have a lot to be scared of.
	In relationships these days, and we're not just talking about family court.
	You know, we're talking about a false rape, accusations, financial predation.
	It could be any number of things.
	I've even heard horror stories, and I don't know how common they are, but I've heard horror stories of men who date single moms, and then they decide to break up with a single mom because she's crazy, and next thing you know, a single mom says, oh, you touched one of my children.
	Well, that's not fun.
	Right?
	That's not good.
	And this, of course, sexual allegations in divorce is so common, it's got its own acronym, SAID. And it's staggeringly brutal.
	I've heard stories where the lawyer says, To the wife, you know, get your husband to come and say, oh, let's just talk.
	Let's talk.
	Just you and me.
	No lawyers.
	Let's just talk.
	Let's just talk.
	See if we can work some stuff out.
	You know, go to lunch with the guy, order him a beer or two, and chat and flirt a little or whatever and say, you know, be nice and so on, right?
	And then what you do is, when the husband leaves the restaurant, you call the cops and you say, some guy, I think he's drunk.
	He's driving erratically.
	Here's his license plate and here's where he is, right?
	And then the cops go and stop the guy and give him a breathalyzer.
	Now, if he's over the limit, which may be a beer or two, if he's over the limit, hey, how does the DUI go down in child custody cases?
	Not good.
	Now, he may be doing the same thing to her.
	I don't know.
	But some seriously scary shit can go down.
	I remember reading a book when I was, I think, 12 or 13 years old called Made in Heaven Settled in Court.
	And this is like a lot of years ago.
	About how crazy shit can get during a divorce.
	During a divorce.
	There's just examples of just how nutty and crazy things could get.
	So, yeah, I mean, if you want the joys of fatherhood without the $100,000 cost of surrogacy and without having to raise your kid as a single dad, if you want the joys of fatherhood, then, yeah, be as discriminating as shit.
	Because if the woman is upset because you're concerned about her manipulations...
	Like, ladies, let me tell you, guys are easily goosed these days.
	And it's not because they're not manly, it's because they know the facts, right?
	And, you know, if you're swimming in the ocean and you see a big giant fin heading your way, yeah, could be a dolphin.
	Could be.
	Because not all sharks are like that.
	Nash out.
	But...
	But it's, you know, your heart's going to pop a little until you find out.
	And I fully support, you know, I hate the idea that some men who want to be dads end up being single dads or give up fatherhood completely.
	So if that's something that's on your radar, I support.
	You know, we're working on some presentations about this to help guys out to choose women who are Less, the least likely to divorce or attack or whatever.
	But no, be discriminating.
	Absolutely.
	Absolutely be discriminating.
	And if the woman is upset or impatient with you being discriminating, then be gone.
	Yeah.
	I mean, you could explain it to her and you might say, look, as a woman, you don't see these things, right?
	As a woman, maybe you just don't understand what it's like being a man in the modern world.
	Maybe you just don't really get it, right?
	And I understand that.
	I mean, there's lots of...
	There's lots of forces in the world that keep the truth away from women.
	So I get that a woman may have no clue, and she's been propagandized and all that, so just sort of point out these things.
	That, you know, maybe you can send her the myth of male privilege or whatever and, you know, just so, you know, she can get a sense because, you know, women, I was told while growing up that women are just so delightfully, you know, empathetic, just wonderfully empathetic and really, really care about how other people feel.
	And so, take that at face value and say, well, these are my concerns.
	These are my fears.
	And it's not just me.
	Men are abandoning relationships and marriage in droves.
	And not a lot of women are...
	Asking why.
	I mean, a few are.
	Helen Smith, I think her name is.
	She's written a book, Phil Zimbardo's Demise of Guys.
	It's about this.
	Not a lot of women are asking why.
	And the last thing about sort of men's rights activists and women hating it, again, I've never seen it, is that when I spoke last summer at a conference in Detroit...
	The only hatred that was evidence were the bomb threats phoned in by feminists.
	So this, you know, when men can't get together with men and other women to talk about men's issues without bomb threats, and then everyone says there's women hating going on, again, that just shows you what an insane society we live in.
	Couldn't agree more, for sure.
	Definitely.
	I mean, it's like a bunch of blacks get together at a church, and the KKK phones in bomb threats, and then everyone says, oh, you see, the blacks are just anti-white.
	They just hate whites.
	Completely intolerant, apparently.
	Madness.
	But, you know, it's a madness that works, which is sort of the definition of culture as a whole.
	So does that, I mean, I know we sort of took a fairly wide tour around things, but does that sort of help with the initial question?
	It certainly does.
	I mean, as I said to you, I'm definitely going to be looking into being critical in the relationship.
	I think the only reason for the question mostly was around the fact that, you know, at the time that I wrote the question, I was still considering walking back into the whole thing.
	I suppose I kind of made my peace with the entire thing and closed it all off for myself.
	Sorry, the chronic fatigue woman?
	Yes, exactly.
	My personal opinion, I mean, that's one that over time you'll be increasingly happy that that's safely tucked in the rear view.
	Exactly.
	Interestingly enough, though, in the last year or so, as I started doing the Men's Rights thing and learning it, she was...
	She was trying to improve, but in very slow dribs and drabs along things that I'd said.
	So there seemed to be just an aspect of kind of giving me a little treat, shall we say, to keep me begging at the table, so to speak, if that makes sense.
	And that's what it seemed to be towards the last year, which was quite an annoying experience.
	Yeah, no, I get that.
	It's just enough food that you don't leave, but not enough so you have to get a full belly, right?
	Exactly, exactly.
	It's that wild horse thing that you were talking about in the book, trying to tame a wild horse, the same concept.
	Yeah, I mean, just to give you a roundabout answer, that's probably where I am with that all.
	I do think we've probably covered off everything here that I wanted to discuss, so if there's any questions you've got.
	No, no, that's great.
	We'll move on.
	Just let us know how it goes with...
	Our Danish friend.
	We'll see.
	We'll see.
	Always curious.
	Always curious.
	Yeah.
	The conversations are going quite deep.
	Yeah, thanks for calling in.
	I really appreciate that.
	And yes, stay in touch, man.
	It was a really great chat.
	No worries, buddy.
	Speak soon.
	All right, Mike, who do we have up next?
	Up next is Terry.
	Terry wrote in and said, my life feels like a ping pong game where one player is impatient and the other is boredom.
	Whenever I have something to do, like working or visiting family, I get impatient and find myself yearning for some alone time.
	Whenever I have some alone time, I find myself bored, unmotivated, and yearning for something to do.
	How can I break this cycle of dissatisfaction and enjoy each of life's situations for what they are worth?
	Are you asking, Terry, are you asking how you cannot be dissatisfied in this world?
	Yeah, well, I guess that would be nice if there was a magic answer to that, right?
	But it was more sort of in a general sense, how can I kind of pick myself up and learn to, you know, when these situations happen instead of just being the victim and then, you know, try to get up and do something about it, you know, just a sense of how to approach these things differently because I seem to always just be bracing against life, you know?
	I'm wondering, maybe I could give you a bit of context to that, if that can help?
	No, listen, I mean, if you've got a fruity accent than me, you're welcome to take the helm for a bit to speak on.
	Okay, thank you.
	Well, so I'm 30, right?
	And I've been dealing with anxiety.
	It hit me around eight years ago when I was 22.
	It was when I was beginning to get my life together, you know, stopped smoking weed and went back to school and So, and I began having really massive panic attacks.
	So, this kind of led me on a trail where I was trying to find some books and, you know, how to help myself and everything.
	And so now, after all these years, I've kind of dealt with the major panic, you know, all the panicky stuff.
	But I'm kind of left, I feel like my life is in this aftermath, you know, where the nervous system is like post-breakdown and I'm just trying to Oh my God, how can I feel joy again, you know?
	And I kind of create this over-focus, you know, while learning to deal with anxiety, like learning to see the signs and everything.
	And now I'm always like probing myself when everything should just be fine.
	And so I always find things that don't work and I'm still always kind of scared of going forward with all the opportunities that I get in life.
	Because I don't want to go back to eight years ago, you know?
	Does that make sense?
	Yes, I think so.
	Okay.
	So, yeah.
	The yearning is kind of this thing, and I'm trying to work through a book from Nathaniel Brandon right now with the sentence completion, you know, to try and find a root of these things.
	So far, it's certainly interesting, but I'm trying to get a sense of how can I sort of...
	It's like a daze, you know?
	Sometimes...
	It's like I have this...
	Did you want to go ahead?
	Sorry?
	No, go ahead.
	Yeah.
	So, you know, I'll be with my girlfriend, and I'm a stepdad, by the way.
	I do one of the Free Domain Radio, Mortal Sins.
	I'm dating a single mom.
	And so I'll be with them, you know, and we can have activities, but I can never really get into it.
	It's like I'm always calculating the alone time I could have that I'm not having at that moment, and I always want to rush things, you know?
	But then when I get this alone time, and I guess this goes back to my question, but when I do get this alone time, all I know is just play games all day, you know, and just not know what I should do at this time.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Oh yeah, I'm an addict to video games, and actually it's my work as well, so I'm a game programmer.
	So I'm really all over that.
	But it's like it's not satisfying anymore, you know?
	I'd like to have something more meaningful to do, but it's just like always on the tip of my tongue, you know?
	I feel like I'm always on the verge of having this epiphany, like should I change careers, or should I really be with my girlfriend, or what should I do with this day off that I have, you know?
	And I don't really know what it is, but I always feel like something's there, you know, like just tickling at the end of my brain that I can't grasp, you know?
	Right.
	Now, do you want to keep talking?
	You want me to ask some questions?
	What's your pleasure?
	Well, I mean, I can go on if you want, but I think it pretty much covers that...
	The thing globally, I think.
	Yeah, that's interesting.
	So I asked, what's your pleasure?
	And you said, I could go on if you want.
	Nice.
	Now, that's very interesting.
	Yeah.
	Right?
	Because I said, what do you want?
	And you said, well, I could do this if you want.
	I think you just gave me the answer, to be honest with you.
	Yeah, well, I think you're right.
	That's the thing.
	It was part of a longer question that Mike helped me boil down.
	I'm unable to identify or name my needs or wants.
	I just don't know.
	So I'm yearning for this alone time where I could take care of myself, but when I do have that time, it doesn't connect.
	I don't know what I need.
	I don't know what I want.
	Okay, so your expression of preferences is tough, right?
	Yeah.
	Why do you think that is?
	Because that's what just happened in a flash there, right?
	Yeah, no, you're right.
	Yeah, you're right.
	So why is it tough for you to express your preference?
	By the way, that's why you're dating a single mom, but we'll get back to that later.
	But why are your preferences so hard to express?
	Yeah, well, I mean, there have always been...
	I don't think I have the right English word for that, but it might be curved or built, but my parents would not always do that with my things.
	Whenever I would want to do something or my imagination would take me somewhere in an activity or whatever that didn't align with their expectation or what they hoped I would like, they would shut it off.
	And they would force me to try and enjoy the things that they would like me to enjoy, you know?
	Which never happened.
	Mainly like sports and stuff like that.
	Can you give me a more concrete example?
	Because everyone describes things to me and I'm like, I'm an empiricist!
	Give me something concrete so that I can write.
	Here's my story about my story about what happened.
	It's like, just tell me.
	So can you give me...
	You said you'd be daydreaming or you'd be thinking about something or working or maybe you'd want to read a book or something.
	And...
	Your parents would say, no, come do this, right?
	Or this will be better for you, or this will be more fun for you.
	Well, it's more that I don't approve of you liking that, or I thought it would be good, but then I'll give you a concrete example.
	When I was really young, I was into ninjas, and actually quite so still today.
	Because I was always playing video games, because it was the only place where I had control.
	And I can see that now after a couple of years in therapy and Introspection.
	So anyway, one day I told my mom, hey, I would like to start drawing a comic book.
	And I was maybe like seven, and she was like, wow, that's a great idea, blah, blah.
	And I actually thought of that this week as well.
	What a coincidence.
	And so she set me up in the basement, little desk, and I was super excited.
	I was the comic book guy.
	And I started doing a ninja story where he was getting captured and almost getting killed and then going out for revenge.
	And then I showed it to her, and then she's like, oh, it's a violent thing.
	It's about ninjas.
	Why is it violent?
	Wait a minute, wait a minute.
	Hang on, hang on, hang on.
	Terry, Terry.
	Yeah, okay, sorry.
	What's up?
	You showed your ninja story to your mom?
	Yeah, I mean, it wasn't good, right?
	It was a first draft of a thing.
	No, no, no, it's not that it's...
	Why didn't you show it to your dad?
	Oh, he just wasn't there.
	Like, when that little story arc happened, you know, the comic book thing, my dad just wasn't at home, I guess.
	But I never show him stuff anyway.
	Because he was always this interested.
	Well, I mean, it's a bit of a guy thing, you know?
	Like, I mean, I'm not a brony, but I've watched my share of My Little Ponies.
	Yes, I'm here.
	I don't recall a single ninja.
	Right.
	Right.
	Because that's girl stuff, right?
	Sure.
	And, you know, yes, there are tomboys, and yes, there are guys who like My Little Pony, but just in general.
	Like, I wrote space operas, right?
	So I would write scripts about very exciting battles and intrigues and romances in space, and I'd get my friends to act it out, and we'd record it, and you could make a great sound of explosions by blowing into a microphone, right?
	I mean, but I wouldn't I wouldn't show that to my mom, because my mom would be like, spaceships.
	Yeah.
	Right?
	I mean, it's just not much of a mom.
	Like, ninja's not much of a mom thing.
	You mean that at that age, you would have been at a place where you would know beforehand that you wouldn't care?
	Like, you had that understanding already?
	Because I... I can't...
	I don't know.
	I certainly knew that...
	There weren't a lot of girls playing cops and robbers, and there weren't a lot of girls playing cowboys and Indians, and there weren't a lot of girls playing Nazis and allies and all that stuff, right?
	Well, fair enough.
	Maybe there are now, I don't know.
	And I was pretty aware when I went into...
	The toy store, there's the wall of pink and the wall of camouflaged weapons.
	You know, like, I mean, it wasn't that hard.
	It's like, hey, I wonder if in the girls' section or not, it's like, I don't know, do things have giant, enormous eyeballs, ridiculously straight wasp girl blondie hair, and do they have legs that look like rubber man stretched between two charging horses?
	Right.
	Am I in the girl section?
	Is there light bulbs that bake stuff, right?
	Yes, there are light bulbs that bake things.
	Over here in the boys section, are there working bombers?
	Are there things that will basically take out an eye?
	Over here, there's stuff you can use to enhance your eyes.
	Over here, there's stuff that will cause your eyes to hang like a basketball on a string for your mirror eye socket if you don't hand them for the right...
	These things will teach you how to accessorize yourself when you go to the prom.
	On this side, should you wish to storm your prom with ninjas, these are the outfits you will need to take over your prom!
	You know how it goes, right?
	So I was fairly clear.
	And I mean, advertisers, they've all tried all of this cross-gender stuff.
	Like, I was reading the story of this dad who's like, I'm going to break this stereotype.
	I'm giving my daughter trucks.
	And what did the daughter do?
	There was a mommy truck and a baby truck, and she wrapped them in blankets and fed them bottles.
	And that's not all.
	My daughter doesn't care that much about dolls, and there's lots of variation and so on, but it's hard to avoid some of the hard wiring.
	That occurs in the world when you are around kids.
	So, I mean, maybe I grew up, you know, back in the day, a lot of this gender stuff hadn't really taken hold.
	Plus, I mean, when I went to boarding school, it was like the boys and girls, separate classrooms, separate buildings.
	I mean, we got to see each other.
	Very rarely.
	So I guess I was just in a pretty doody environment, but it was pretty clear to me that if you've got a great ninja story, you don't head to where the pigtails are hanging out.
	Yeah, yeah.
	No, and I can understand that, but it's more...
	I understand that for this specific one, it wasn't the best strategy to show it to a woman.
	But it's more that it shows well how every time I would go forward with an intent, it would be like, oh, I'm disappointed in how you used it.
	Because Seven Mortal Sins of Freedom in Radio, I'm a drummer.
	I've been for 17 years.
	I'm sorry, man.
	So you're pretty much calling from the plane of evil.
	Yeah, basically.
	Hang on a sec.
	Do you work for any form of tax collection agency?
	No, no, no.
	Okay, okay.
	So, you know, at first, for me to get this instrument at my parents' place was kind of a big deal, you know, when I was 13, I think.
	You know, it would mean that my friends would come over to practice and whatnot.
	And so, at first, my mom was like, okay, cool, you're going to do this thing, you know, it's more the artsy side, I can relate, so yeah, you do that.
	But when I started, you know, because I'm really into punk rock music, and so it was too fast, it was too loud, you know, for her, and she expressed many times that she was disappointed in how I ended up using this thing that she hoped I would, you know?
	Sorry, how old were you when you started drumming?
	I was 13.
	So did you think at the age of 13 you were going to do that skk?
	Yeah, I don't know.
	It's like backdrop to Sinatra in the sand.
	Fly me to the moon.
	Hey, I hear that drum in the background.
	Or did you think that basically you were going to be like that thumpy guy on Sesame Street?
	I can't remember.
	What was his name?
	I don't know.
	The drummer on Sesame Street?
	The drummer on Sesame Street?
	Wild Animal or something like that?
	That basically you were going to be like a triple with sticks coming out of your hair, beating madly on anything you could get your hands on, right?
	Oh, wait.
	That's something else.
	But anyway...
	But so yeah, and so it's more in this sense that, you know, in both instances, even with the comic book, she's like, oh, you didn't, like, at first she likes the idea that I would produce something, but then I don't produce what she expects, and so it's like shaming and shutting off and everything, you know, so with the drama I pulled through because I had my friends, my, you know, but...
	So I would think that in childhood a lot for me has been like belittled and cancelled because it's not right away the expectation from them, you know?
	But hang on, so why is your dad not showing up in these stories at all?
	I don't know.
	He was always really, I don't want to say busy, but always productive, but in a bad sense.
	He always needs to be doing something really actively.
	He was always either at work, or if he was home, he was either hardcore relaxing, don't talk to me, I'm doing something.
	Or he was taking us somewhere to a thing that we absolutely have to enjoy the way he expects us to and we have to learn at the pace he expects so that it's fun and blah blah.
	So there was more of a pressure toward him and I never really felt inclined to share with him, you know?
	So neither parent seemed to find out what interested you and why.
	Yeah, no, exactly.
	And even...
	That's important, right?
	I mean, my daughter's into stuff that is baffling to me.
	Right.
	But it's my job to figure out what makes it interesting for her and why.
	And, you know, when I open my mind and open my heart, it's pretty easy to figure out, you know.
	And...
	That's sort of the job of the parent is to get to know your kid and to figure out what's interesting to them and why.
	And yeah, you can show them some new stuff or whatever, but they gravitate back to whatever they're into.
	And that's how you get to know your kid, right?
	That's how you get to know that your kid is not just an extension of you, but is a sovereign human being with his or her own preferences and desires and all that.
	Oh man, that's never...
	Like, that has never come close to being something that's considered, you know.
	It was more like being yourself and having your own interests and wants was kind of, well, not a sin, but it was like, it's annoying, it's, can't you fall in line?
	And my brother did fall in line, so, you know, on top of that, I was sort of the odd one, and so, yeah.
	So, it's annoying.
	What does...
	So what does that mean?
	So if you wanted to do something or were interested in something that your parents didn't find interesting at the surface or didn't, like, it was annoying to them?
	Like, how would that show up?
	How would you see that?
	Well, they would sort of perceive it as, like, it's wrong, it's not okay that you enjoy that.
	And they were a lot into...
	Getting into your intimacy and judging it, you know, and bringing light to it, even if you don't want them to, and judging it and saying it's like there was a lot of ridicule and, you know, all kinds of interactions like that.
	So, yeah, I think inquisitive is the biggest word that comes to mind for me that they would always, like, if I was doing something, they just...
	I automatically assume that there's something either wrong or that they would not want me to do or whatever.
	I think what you're looking for is not inquisitive, which means curious, which I think would be better.
	Inquisitional?
	Like cross-examining?
	Sorry, I meant in the sense of the inquisition in the Middle Ages.
	Inquisitive just means curious, which I think would be more in line with what I think would be better.
	But inquisitional.
	Sorry, it's an annoying language.
	I get it, right?
	But inquisitional, I think, is what you mean.
	Okay, cool.
	Well, yeah, that's it then.
	Yeah, definitely.
	The evil one, yeah.
	Yeah, okay.
	All right, so when you were...
	So stuff that interested you bothered your parents, and stuff that interested your parents bored you.
	Is that right?
	Yeah, oh yeah, definitely.
	And expressions of freedom or of proactivity.
	We're taken as an insult.
	Kind of like, oh, you think you get to do this thing on your own, you know?
	Do you want a concrete example of that?
	Oh, you know I do.
	All right, no, because I don't want to go into story time, you know, sometimes it's...
	But yeah, okay, so my...
	Do you say Godfather?
	The guy who was on my name day, was named the guy I would go to if my parents died, you know?
	I think his Godfather...
	So this guy, who to me was just the uncle who gives me the biggest gift on my birthday, once got me a toy chemistry set, right?
	And so I got this, I brought it home, and I wanted to play with it, and my mom was like, oh, I don't know these chemicals and blah, blah, I'm not sure of that.
	So I just wanted to experiment with it in my room, right?
	And so I started roleplaying, and I just set myself up, and I tried to dress up, and I was like, ooh, I'm going to do this crazy experiment.
	Oh, you mean roleplaying like you were an alchemist or a wizard or something?
	Yeah, exactly.
	I was roleplaying.
	How old were you?
	I would say I was eight.
	Okay.
	Yeah.
	And so I was roleplaying the science.
	It sounds like a lot of fun, to be honest with you.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, and there were all these liquids and things that you can mix, and it would make like four or five.
	I wonder if I can summon a demon!
	Yeah.
	Exactly.
	And so at some point I thought I wanted my lab, you know, to be cooler.
	So I put a note on my door.
	I wrote on a note on my door that I'm an experiment in progress, you know, and so don't like, don't come in, please knock because I'm really busy, you know, and it was kind of in my role play.
	I would have liked for just for someone to knock, you know, to respect that I was busy with my thing and to take it seriously.
	But what happened is both my parents, you know, just slammed in, you know, they just, they just like blew the door open and like, That's not your room, that's one room in our house, and what's this, what's that?
	And, you know, they just really started, like, just angrily, they just got really angry at the thought that I could feel like I have my own space, you know?
	Like it was an insult to them that I would ask.
	For you having your own personality, which is inconvenient to other people of a certain mentality, right?
	Exactly, yeah.
	You were about to say something else?
	Well, I was just going to say that I don't necessarily understand why and know that that was about it.
	Understand why what?
	Well, why that would be the case for them or really how it did impact me.
	Like, I guess it did, but I mean, it would make sense if it did, but I can't like...
	Well, this kind of behavior, you know, because it's not necessarily all-out violence, you know, but this constant rebuking of intent and this being inquisitional must have had an effect, but I'm unable to quantify it or to kind of...
	Well, no, the effect is the constant erosion of identity, of preference.
	Right?
	Right.
	I mean, this is probably why you were into punk music, because you were angry.
	Yeah.
	Well, it also made me an anarchist, but...
	No, but yeah.
	Well, hopefully not just because you were angry, right?
	But...
	No, I mean, this, like...
	I will judge you relative to my preferences is the same as saying...
	You don't exist or must be opposed if you go against my preferences.
	The goal is to judge people relative to either objective standards, if we're talking about morality, which we're not talking about with regards to these situations, but empathy is getting to know people according to their preferences and what they want.
	Not about whether it's convenient to you.
	I mean, I don't know who thinks this otherwise.
	I'm going to pass out a great secret to the world here.
	I'm going to pass out a great secret to the world here.
	Children are wildly inconvenient.
	And we know that because if there's a guy hanging out at Chuck E. Cheese with no children around...
	He shouldn't be there because nobody would come to Chuck E. Cheese if you didn't have children.
	In other words, Chuck E. Cheese is inconvenient to adults.
	And Disney World is inconvenient to adults.
	And zoos, well, you know, there's some things about zoos that are cool and some things about Disney World, I guess, is cool.
	But the vast majority, the vast majority of things that you do when you're a parent, you wouldn't do if you weren't a parent.
	I'm not spending a lot of time hanging out at parks on a Sunday afternoon if I'm not with my daughter.
	Yeah.
	And we get that children are ridiculously inconvenient.
	Hey!
	I'd love to get up four times a night.
	Wouldn't that be great?
	I mean, who wants to sleep through?
	That's for other people.
	You know what's great?
	Wiping crap off squirmy legs.
	That literally crap off squirmy legs.
	That's delicious.
	That's delightful.
	You know what's great?
	Watching people Learn how to tap dance because that's a great spectator sport.
	I mean, tap lesson 101, that's what everybody...
	There's a whole channel devoted to that on TV, I think.
	Oh, you know what's great?
	You know what's really fun is teaching children racket sports because they just take to it like fish to water.
	It doesn't take them any time to get really good.
	You don't spend a lot of time running around and repeating the same things.
	Oh!
	Over and over and over again.
	That's so much fun.
	You know what else is really great?
	Teaching children how to read.
	Oh my goodness, that's so much fun.
	They love it.
	They love it.
	It's beautiful.
	And you know what else is really great?
	Is having...
	Tiny sugar addicts in the house that you're constantly saying no to, like some sort of saccharine Gestapo cop.
	That's just wonderful.
	And also, what's really great as well is having fights about bedtime every other night.
	That's wonderful.
	Also, great fun to bathe children who don't want to be bathed.
	Oh, delightful.
	Absolutely wonderful.
	And reading The Hobbit 400 times in a row.
	You don't get tired of that, now do you?
	What about when they start fixating on a movie?
	Let's watch WALL-E. Oh, I mean, children are ridiculous.
	They're delightful and wonderful.
	But the idea that children are convenient to parents, I mean, I don't know if people have just forgotten what it's like to be a kid.
	Half my childhood was trying to get my mom to do things I knew she didn't want to do.
	Let's go see Bugsy Malone.
	You promised, right?
	I mean, I knew she didn't want to go and see it.
	She's very clear she didn't want to go and see it.
	Still, she made a promise and we ended up...
	Going to go and see it.
	But yeah, children are ridiculously inconvenient.
	I mean, I get that.
	I was a kid.
	I didn't imagine that my mother wanted to do half the things that I wanted to do.
	But it's okay.
	I didn't really want to go clothes shopping either, but sometimes I did.
	Right.
	Yeah.
	No, I certainly see that with my stepdaughter here, you know.
	Some activities are...
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	They're not always thankful and patient when you're trying to bring them things that are important that you know they want to be good at, you know?
	I know, Mike!
	Let's play a kiddie game!
	Come on, Mike!
	You thought the first 140 times were fun!
	Think how much fun 141 is going to be!
	My bones ache.
	I'm only 31 years old.
	They're crying.
	You guys play kiddie games?
	Steph's daughter loves the kiddie games.
	Yeah, somebody wants to play kiddie games.
	Nice.
	Yeah, yeah.
	So, I mean, yeah, it's not convenient.
	But the wonderful thing is that it takes you out of what you're used to and gets you into other things.
	And, yeah, it can be a lot of fun.
	Mm-hmm.
	And, you know, I wouldn't have spent that much time in animal shelters if I hadn't.
	Anyway, so, yeah, it's just the way it goes.
	And so, yeah, but for some parents, I don't know if they have this feeling like it's somehow wrong for children to have preferences that are not the same as yours.
	I've never quite, I mean, I don't understand any relationship where that should be the case.
	I mean, I have hand puppets that have preferences that are opposed to mine.
	And the idea that you should be in a relationship and always get your way is to me the same as saying, I don't want to be in a relationship.
	I just want to be a dictator.
	And I just don't see how that's at all satisfying.
	Right.
	So I think that your combination of boredom Boredom on the one hand and impatience on the other, right?
	You said there's this ping pong game, right?
	Well, the impatience comes from your parents' relationship to you and your boredom comes out of your relationship to your parents, right?
	They're impatient at the things that you're interested in and you're bored at the things that they're interested in.
	And because these things were not negotiated, and they weren't resolved, and they wasn't a give and take and a win-lose and trying to find a way for there to be a win-win, these two perspectives remain at opposite ends for you, right?
	They're not negotiated.
	There's no way to resolve them.
	Because they weren't resolved within your family, am I right?
	Oh, I don't know.
	Actually, I took the first...
	When you say, oh, no, no, do you mean, oh, no, no, you weren't right, or no, no, no, you were right?
	I meant far from it, like, you were right.
	Nothing that's remotely uncomfortable has ever been discussed in my family at large, not just my parents, you know, with my brother, with my, you know, if someone's It starts getting emotional or talking about real stuff.
	Everyone's just like, whoa, what's wrong with you?
	Shut up.
	You're making everybody uncomfortable.
	I did take the first jab.
	Well, it's an image, but I was going to say I took the first jab at my mom two weeks ago.
	As far as conversations go, because I was alone with her in the car, and I was telling her about how I was going to have a week off soon in two weeks.
	She was like, what are you going to do?
	I said, well, I'm just going to take some alone time to think things through because my life is going really fast.
	She took the inquisitional face and she was like, Why do you need to think?
	Like, I was in the wrong...
	You know, already this pattern is still present.
	Why do you need to think?
	Oh, yeah.
	And she was like, did you do something wrong?
	You regret something?
	Is there something you need to...
	You know, she's like, okay, what's the info that I can get mad at you and you can confess?
	Like, she's always looking for what I need to confess, basically.
	And so...
	Well, no, no.
	She's...
	Oh, gosh.
	Can I tell you what my guess is?
	I don't know.
	But can I tell you what my first guess is?
	Yeah, yeah.
	She wants to keep you defensive so that you don't become aggressive.
	She wants to keep you off balance so that you don't become angry.
	Well, that's bullseye right there.
	And that's what happened, actually.
	Because for the first time ever in that conversation, I got the upper hand.
	And she gave me the foggiest bullshit I had ever heard.
	And I had never seen her or noticed that she did lie or manipulate or whatever.
	Because I do have this perfect image of them still.
	And so she said, what do you need to think about?
	And I touched on, well, I'm kind of, you know, in my situation with my girlfriend.
	I know that I should be happy in that.
	And I think I'll be able to make the case later that even though I'm dating a single mom, there's...
	Anyway, I guess we'll get to that.
	But so I told her, you know, even though I'm...
	I should feel good with her every time I have to put time and money, of which I put a lot in their relationship because she's in school and I'm working full time.
	And so...
	And we have a mortgage, you know?
	And I told her, you know, all these things are nice.
	Wait, wait, we have a mortgage?
	You and her?
	No, I get it, but don't you have the mortgage?
	I mean, as far as payment goes?
	Yeah, well, she kind of, because at first she had more money than me, and so she really helped with the down payment, and now she's studying hardcore full-time, and it's a thing that we planned out.
	She's studying what?
	To become a midwife, basically.
	She's done a lot of volunteer work over a thousand hours to kind of prove herself that she could do this.
	And now she's doing the thing.
	We'll get to the girlfriend in a sec, if you don't mind.
	But let's go back to your mom in the car.
	And so I just told her that every time I put time and money in, you know, a part of me is happy to do it.
	But another part of me is scared that I'm just kind of fattening the butt of the joke that I would be if she ever cheats on me or leaves me or whatever, you know?
	That I'm kind of putting all these resources and all these, the last few young years of my life, it's kind of going all in, you know, and I just hope that at the end, there's not like a big treason from her, because I'm really afraid of treason, because I've had many girlfriends who have cheated on me, and it's been a pattern.
	And so it's a thing I'm scared of that I need to work on, you know.
	And so she was like, why?
	You mean you need to work on it like it's a problem that you have?
	Yeah, it's a very deep fear.
	I wouldn't take that approach, but we'll come back to that.
	Keep going with you, Ma.
	Okay, cool.
	And her reply to that step of my story was like, well, why would she cheat on you?
	Why would she leave you?
	And she was meaning, what are you doing wrong?
	That you have that fear.
	Obviously, you deserve it.
	And you're hoping it won't happen.
	That's what she was saying.
	And sometimes she asks questions to my girlfriend and directly, my girlfriend has reported on that to me a couple of times, that she wants to make sure that I'm a good utility to her and everything.
	Wait, wait.
	Your mother wants...
	Hang on, slow down, slow down, man.
	Hey, I'm sorry, yeah.
	Your mother wants to ensure that you're a good utility to the girlfriend?
	Yeah.
	Yeah, she'll sometimes probe her, like, so, how's school?
	Oh, yeah, you're doing good.
	And, oh, is Terry Alping with everything?
	You sure he's up?
	And she starts pressing, and she's like, no, he's, yeah, he's perfect, you know?
	And she's like, hmm, all right, like, kind of almost like, he got away this time, you know?
	And she's always looking for...
	Hang on, so your mother...
	Is making sure that you are a good utility for your girlfriend.
	Otherwise, she will be upset with you.
	She will get angry with you?
	Yep.
	Because I think she has this lifelong grudge that I need to eventually fall in line or eventually answer to her expectation, if that makes sense.
	That's my understanding of it so far.
	But of course, your preferences or your anxieties or your concerns...
	Don't matter.
	The important thing is that you're there and useful to your girlfriend.
	Yeah, no, exactly.
	But that's what I did turn around on that conversation is that I then told her, I said, but anyway, mom, it's not about that.
	It's not about what I did wrong.
	It's about why I feel this way and there has to be a reason.
	It's either that I shouldn't be in this situation or it's either that I have something I need to understand.
	And then I tried to tell her how much I have dealt with anxiety these past years, which is a conversation she has always brushed off.
	And I told her this week I will be doing a heavy therapy basically for a week because I'm doing a weekly thing, but I want to do a heavy week basically.
	I told her, I'm going to take this time to really look in because this anxiety isn't normal and I need to find the key to unlocking all of that.
	I need to find my truth.
	And there's likely things that happened when my brain was still forming and blah, blah, blah.
	And on that moment, man, she became so defensive.
	She kind of just recoiled in the passenger seat.
	She was like, what do you mean?
	And I'm like, I don't know.
	There's probably a thing that I need to connect, that I need to understand, that I need to make peace with or see for what it is.
	And then she said...
	Well, what if you don't find it?
	And I said, oh, I'll find it, you know?
	And really confidently, you know?
	Even though she thought it was ridiculous that I was doing that for the first time, I stepped up and I was like, oh, I'll find it.
	And man, she put on her sunglasses.
	She didn't talk for one minute and I decided I wouldn't talk either to just let it sink in for her.
	Kind of like, now I'm the one who's going to get you, you know?
	And After one minute, she gave me the weakest thing I've ever heard in my life.
	She said, hey, you know, I'm just thinking, maybe we have ancestors who did things, you know, like murder, you know, that we don't know of.
	And yet it still could have put an imprint on our DNA or on our family memes or habits or ways of...
	And so in this sense, we're not responsible for anything.
	It's just because of that murder that we'll never know about.
	So can we really blame each other for that?
	And I was like, I just went like the French version of what the fuck.
	So your mom, your theory, your mom is saying to you, That the real influence on you may have been a crime committed by an ancestor that nobody...
	Your mom couldn't have had any influence on you, but maybe an ancestor's crime at some point had some influence in some way.
	But I saw it a bit differently.
	The way I saw it was she was already putting up a defense for when I would turn towards her.
	No, no, I get that.
	I get all of that.
	I agree with you, but man, you're right.
	That is some pretty weak nonsense.
	And no questions like, well, what are you learning in therapy, or anything I can do to help, or any feedback I can give you, or any questions you'd like to ask me that would be of value.
	Nothing like that, right?
	Nothing, no, no, nothing.
	Not even close.
	Yeah, yeah, of course.
	Because that would be inconvenient, right?
	Right, yeah.
	Right.
	Can we get to your girlfriend yet?
	For sure, yeah.
	How long have you been going out?
	Alright.
	We've been going out for 5 years, 11 years ago.
	And I ended up leaving her because I couldn't deal with my anxiety anymore.
	And my jealousy and paranoia and everything, it kicked into that next level.
	And so I couldn't deal with How I felt when she was away and doing things on her own or with her friends, you know?
	And I've never been one to control, you know, I never did the sort of, oh, you're wearing this, why are you going there, and blah, blah.
	I never did that.
	But hang on, where does your paranoia...
	You said you were 19, you were first together, right?
	Where did your paranoia come from when you were 19?
	My first...
	The first girlfriend I had, I was 15.
	We went out together for a year and a half.
	And she cheated on me every week.
	With two people, actually, at the same time.
	Wait, two people, like...
	Yeah, like threesomes.
	Yeah, her girlfriend...
	She had threesomes?
	Oh, yeah, wait, hang on.
	Yeah, she was...
	Okay, I feel like I'm dipping into, like, Caligula's fairy tales from hell here.
	So, you were dating this girl.
	You're 15.
	How old was she?
	She was my age.
	We were in the same...
	The same high school year.
	15-year-old girl?
	Yeah.
	And she's cheating with you having threesomes?
	She's 15?
	Yeah, with her best friend and a 19-year-old guy.
	And actually, I was in a school where we would get off at 2 p.m.
	Okay, slow down!
	Okay.
	Sorry, sorry.
	Slow down!
	Stop talking!
	All right.
	I'll shut up.
	Oh, my God.
	What?!
	So this girl, your girlfriend, she and another 15-year-old girl, is that right?
	Yes.
	Were being statutorily raped every weekend by a 19-year-old man?
	Yeah.
	You say this, yeah, like, yeah.
	Well, man, I mean, I've worked through that, you know, I mean, I've, well, I don't know that I've worked through that, but I mean, I thought about it a lot, and I've written...
	Maybe eight songs about that, you know, and I scream that on top of my lungs about all of that, you know.
	That's some pretty angry drumming going on there, right?
	Yeah, yeah.
	Pretty fast-paced, yeah.
	Yeah, tell you what, find that guy, put his nutsack on your drum machine, or on your drums, just go.
	That would be awesome, yeah.
	All right.
	Were there any indications that this unholy tryst was going on?
	Yeah, that's what I meant to add too soon to the thing.
	We would have Friday afternoons off at my high school and so every Friday afternoon I would go to her place and her friend was there and they would like put on makeup and everything and we'd smoke some weed and talk and they were preparing to go there every single Friday afternoon.
	To the guy's house.
	Yeah, and I knew that that's what it was.
	Did your parents know that you were smoking weed when you were 15?
	Oh no, they never knew.
	They don't even know to this day.
	I've done some pretty bad stuff.
	Nah, they don't know.
	So you went out with this girl for a year and a half?
	Yep.
	And then you found out?
	The thing is that I knew all along.
	That's the truth.
	I knew all along.
	I came into the relationship...
	You knew unconsciously or knew unconsciously?
	I was there while they were putting on makeup to go there.
	And sometimes sort of an inside joke of the last Friday would slip in a conversation, you know?
	And I knew that that's what it was.
	And so I just basically let that girl mop the floor with me, you know, for this year and a half.
	And you did that because of sexual activity, do you think?
	Yeah, that's what I think.
	Because I wasn't like that high-profile guy, at least before my first show.
	But, you know, I was kind of, I wouldn't say rejected, but like I clearly wouldn't be getting with girls, you know.
	Well, let's put it this way.
	You weren't exactly in the alpha category if you were getting these sloppy seconds, right?
	Yeah, yeah, no, exactly.
	Not at all.
	And I mean...
	And she was dreaming about the Alphas while I was with her, you know, and I knew and she would tell me about it and she would like change the way I sit and she was, I mean, dude, it was, yeah, she like, I've accepted...
	Wait, the 15-year-old girl would tell you to be more like some other guy?
	Yeah, yeah.
	Yeah, she would try to sort of arrange the way I, my stance, you know, and sort of like...
	Okay, so I get it, I get it.
	So Thierry, sorry, let me just interrupt.
	So this was your first girlfriend...
	And then it ended, not that it was ever really beginning, but it ended when you were 16 and a half.
	And did you have other girlfriends before you met your current girlfriend when you were 19?
	Oh, yeah, yeah.
	I've had after that.
	Because, see, when I broke up with this girl, I woke up one day and I decided to just step up, you know.
	And I was like...
	I don't want this anymore.
	I'm gonna be more upfront.
	I'm gonna have more and more personality, you know, because I was a really shy guy, you know?
	And I just changed all of that like overnight almost, you know?
	And so I left her and then I started more like getting into, ah, I'm this drummer guy.
	Yeah, I've been like the douchebag drummer for a good three years there.
	So I got with a lot of girls, you know?
	I was always having this pattern where I would get with a girl because I thought she was too hot for me.
	So at the beginning, I would be really jealous and I would be really scared that she would cheat on me.
	And for like three months, I would be this weak guy.
	And then at some point, I would become confident that she would never cheat on me.
	And at this point, I would lose interest and then set the next target.
	Oh, so for you, being cheated on was a turn-on.
	Because you'd lose interest if you felt that the girl was not going to cheat on you, right?
	Basically, I think it's I was addicted to the fear that I would be cheated on, you know?
	Well, it's more than just the fear because your sexual interest would wane if there was no possibility of being cheated on in your mind, right?
	But look, it makes sense because your sexual imprinting was on a girl who cheated on you.
	So sexual imprinting is very powerful in men and in women.
	So your first sexual relationship was with a woman who you knew was cheating on you.
	So to me, it makes sense that you would have some element of sexual excitement over the prospect of being cheated on because that was your first go-round, right?
	Yeah.
	I agree with your observation, but I don't...
	It's like it doesn't connect, but I don't know why, because it makes total sense, and I never really thought of that.
	Do your parents have any problems with infidelity?
	It's hard to tell, and I don't want to get into another story, but there's...
	There was a huge incident about sexuality in my childhood with them.
	I mean, yes, infidelity.
	Well, I mean, they never wanted me to be at home with my girlfriends.
	My mom told me when I was like nine years in that the best thing I could do is for my true love to announce to her that I waited.
	And I know that my mom did have an affair before marriage and that she's regretted it all her life.
	Wait, she had an affair before marriage?
	Well, I had an affair, sorry.
	A relationship?
	Yeah, yeah, I'm sorry.
	Yeah, like she had sexual intercourse before marriage.
	With your father or with someone else?
	No, no, yeah, with another guy.
	And then she married and then she's like, she comes from a, she's very Catholic.
	And so I think she has this kind of fear of judgment, you know, from the Lord.
	Right.
	Yeah.
	Alright, so you meet your girlfriend when you're 19, or you meet the woman, and you're with her for five years?
	She's, yeah.
	Yeah, I'm with her for five years, yes.
	That's correct.
	And then you said it ended because you were too anxious?
	Hey, you know what, dude?
	It's three years, actually.
	And I always thought it was five.
	Three, okay.
	Or it was from 18 to 22.
	Like, 22, I broke up.
	Okay, so three or four years.
	And you broke up with her because you were too anxious?
	I mean, these women, do you go for looks?
	Is that why you feel anxious about the women?
	Is it because they're so attractive that they're going to have lots of guys all over them?
	Maybe.
	Hang on, hang on.
	Do you have no idea how pretty the women are that you're going out with?
	Oh, yeah, yeah.
	No, no.
	I mean, that one was a total of 10.
	And the thing is, she was the prom queen.
	She was voted...
	And that's the thing that for me, I think it was payback, you know, because after all these things and what I went through in high school with not feeling the alpha or anything, I came out of that and I managed to sort of like made up until I found that one when I was like, whoa, she's way too hot.
	There's no way I can top that.
	You know, this Brad Pitt analogy you use sometimes.
	Like to me, that was her, you know?
	Yeah, so you basically became a slumber, which is a slut drummer together, right?
	And also slumming down there with the...
	Women who don't have a lot of self-respect, right?
	Yeah.
	And it's true that it was that way.
	And we look back on this together sometimes.
	And she was the prom queen.
	I was the slumber, I guess.
	And it was like, wow, look at that cool couple.
	We were the most beautiful couple in our France.
	And we would go out to parties.
	And it's like, oh, these guys, they're so perfect.
	And over these years that we went out together...
	I started smoking way too much pot.
	And I started gaming and really putting a shell around myself and just doing that.
	And she was more into traveling.
	And I was like, I don't want to travel.
	And she would travel without me.
	And while she was traveling, the anxiety, the fear of when she would come back, I was like, what did you do?
	What happened?
	Tell me.
	And she keeps telling me to this day that nothing ever happened because it's not what she was going to And she wasn't traveling to get that, you know?
	She just wanted to get out of the haze, probably.
	Like, there's this haze of pot smoke around you.
	No, and I can totally understand that.
	I was really slow, and I was, you know, and so it just didn't work out anymore.
	You should listen to a song called Scenes from an Italian Restaurant by Billy Joel.
	Oh, yeah?
	Yeah, you should listen to it.
	You'll recognize some parts of it.
	Anyway.
	Okay, thanks.
	I'll do that.
	So then you were apart for a couple of years.
	For five years.
	So five years.
	Did she get married?
	How did she end up with a kid?
	It was an accident.
	And she decided for very bad reasons to keep the child.
	Which is basically...
	It was an accident?
	What does that mean?
	Well, yeah, yeah.
	It's the usual...
	Yeah, of course you knew that it's a game that makes real people.
	But yeah, it wasn't...
	Okay, so I won't say it was an accident.
	I would say it wasn't...
	Not preemptive, but it wasn't...
	She didn't mean to have a child.
	It was not the intent.
	It was not the named intent that she had.
	Did she have unprotected sex by chance?
	She was on the pill and it's a thing about like the pill is 99% or whatever.
	Oh, she's one of the women who she's on the pill.
	This seems to happen quite a bit.
	She's on the pill.
	She didn't forget to take it or anything.
	She just got pregnant.
	Listen, I mean, I don't know.
	Honestly, I don't know.
	But the thing is that she kept the child for wrong reasons.
	She had a friend who was also pregnant, and she felt like it would give meaning to her life and everything.
	And since, because she had always remained attracted to me.
	And after a couple of years, I had been in another relationship for four years, which was the girl was very abusive, and I left her.
	Have you been alone at all since you were 15?
	No!
	Not for more than two weeks.
	Oh, God!
	Oh, God!
	Yeah, never.
	Oh, God!
	Yeah.
	All right.
	Okay, okay.
	Let's keep going.
	Push on!
	Yeah.
	All right.
	Thanks.
	I know I'm putting out a lot of info.
	No, no, it's fine.
	It's fine.
	So then you got back together with her.
	And how old was her daughter?
	She was almost three.
	She was almost three.
	Yeah.
	And you had, I guess, broke up and she was around and you started dating her again, right?
	Yes.
	She wrote me a very heartfelt letter describing how she missed me and how she felt that we had something that transcends.
	And I know this can easily sound cheesy, but it did connect with me.
	And we got back together.
	And what happens is now, through reading RTR, and actually, you know, last June I started listening to this show.
	Oh, okay.
	Which basically was the oasis, you know, in the desert.
	I kept seeing marriages like, oh, is that one?
	No, maybe this book will help.
	No, maybe that.
	And Freedom Rain Radio really did it for me.
	And I started connecting.
	I started connecting.
	Getting my stuff together in my head, you know?
	And I started telling her about it, and it connects with her.
	Like, she was lost as well, and she recognized...
	Okay, hang on, hang on.
	We've still got to do the sweep before we do the overview.
	Okay, sure.
	So, did she know when she wanted to get together with you that you had not been alone since you were 15, and that you had just broken up with another girl?
	Yes.
	And she thought that you would be a great addition to her family, despite the fact that you had just broken up with another girl and had not had a time where you'd been single for over 10 years, right?
	Yeah.
	It's not like she was very protective of her daughter at first.
	Like, I couldn't see her, I couldn't be alone with her.
	She was like, I just want to take things slowly.
	It wasn't like, hey, let's start dating, you know?
	It was just, no, let's start getting intimate because we both feel like it and why not?
	Wait, hang on, hang on.
	I'm sorry, I just want to make sure we're using the same words here.
	You said, we don't want to start dating, let's just start getting intimate.
	What does that mean?
	Well, fuck friends, you know?
	At first, I guess is what it was.
	So you were fuck buddies to begin with.
	Yeah.
	But she wanted to take it slowly?
	What?
	Because we had had...
	I want to take it slowly, like, maybe we'll have dinner in a couple of weeks.
	You can bang me like a Viking all afternoon, but I really want to take it slowly, and maybe we'll go for a walk hand-in-hand down by the beach in a month or two, but right now, if you could loop me up and spin me like a top, that'd be fantastic, because I want to take it slow.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, that's what it is.
	And I agree with everything you just said.
	But that's me with all the things I've discovered this last year, you know?
	But three years ago when we got back together again, I was like, I just want to be with someone.
	And she was like, I just want to be with someone.
	And so we're like, sure, let's have sex because we both feel the urge, you know?
	And we ended up dating just because it kind of naturally followed.
	It wasn't like a So much conscious.
	It was.
	It was really stupid.
	I agree.
	But the thing is, is that now we're on this path of discovery, and we made this commitment to one day fall in love, you know, because we're both committed to pursuing...
	Wait, hang on a second.
	You made this commitment to one day fall in love, like in the future, right?
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	Yeah, because we have this...
	And are you living together?
	Yes.
	Okay.
	Okay.
	And so, hang on a sec, so when you first got together, she had a job, is that right?
	Yeah.
	And who was taking care of her daughter?
	Oh, she was living with a girlfriend of hers, and she was sharing custody with the dad, so she would be either at work or parenting.
	And is she still sharing custody with the dad?
	Yes.
	And how does he feel about you?
	Well, at first he really hated it because I was the guy he was jealous about, you know?
	Because he knew that she had the man of her life but that he left her, you know, and that it was me and that I was sort of back in the picture and blah blah.
	So he really hated it.
	He actually threw a pretty bad tantrum at first.
	Now it's okay.
	And do you want more children?
	Or do you want a child of your own?
	Yes.
	And what does she think about that?
	Yeah, she's all in for it as well.
	But again, we're taking this one slowly for real.
	We both want to complete our introspections and self-knowledge work.
	And we want her as well to finish her studies so that we both have a fair income.
	Because I might quit my job basically once we have a kid.
	I'm considering being a stay-at-home.
	Oh, a stay-at-home dad?
	Yeah.
	And I don't know much about the midwife job.
	What can she expect to earn, and what kind of hours will she be required to work, do you think, when she graduates?
	Yeah, it's roughly 70k a year when she begins.
	$70,000 a year?
	Yeah, which is what I make coding, so it would be like one-to-one.
	And yes, the hours are crazy.
	It can ring at 3 a.m.
	and she has to go.
	It's pretty random, right?
	Yeah, it is.
	That's why I'm thinking if I don't work, I can be the one that's available at home and then she's responsible to bring the bacon.
	We both kind of like that because my job for me is not really my passion.
	It's more my default.
	But for her, she really found her passion.
	So it's like, cool.
	Yeah.
	And how long has she got to go for her education?
	Three years.
	Oh, three more years?
	Yeah, she's one year in.
	It's a pretty heavy university thing with anatomy and microbiology and everything.
	It's not just like, oh, do a circle of salt and kill a sheep.
	You know, there's a lot of prejudice about midwives, but it's, you know, I mean, yeah.
	Okay, I will certainly accept that it's not a circle of salt and kill a sheep.
	All right.
	And I guess she's not going to get pregnant while she's in school, right?
	It's things we're still discussing and again taking them slowly, but there's a scenario where we might do that halfway through her studies, if we're both mentally ready, you know?
	So halfway through her studies, she might get pregnant, and then she'll be able to breastfeed for the recommended year and a half, right?
	Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure.
	Okay, so she's got three years to go, so if she gets pregnant, say, next year, then she can get a lot of her breastfeeding done while she's still in school, right?
	Probably.
	Because, yeah, if you wait till after you're done, because then, I mean, if you wait till after she's finished her school, then she's going to be 33.
	Oh, sorry, no, I will be 33, but she would be 30.
	She's 27 right now.
	I'm 30.
	I thought you started, oh, so wait a minute, did you start dating her when you were 18?
	Yeah.
	And she was in high school.
	Like, she was the prom queen and I was there, but I was like...
	Wait, wait, hang on.
	You started dating her when you were 18 and she was 15?
	Yeah.
	Or I was...
	No, sorry.
	I was 19 and she was 16, I think.
	Oh, I thought you said 18 to 22.
	Okay.
	Just...
	No, I did say that, but to be honest, I'm kind of unsure.
	I'm sorry.
	I don't mean to...
	No, that's...
	To fuck you.
	I... No, but okay, so if she, yeah, because if you, I mean, just the sort of biology 101, which I'm sure you're all aware of, but if she wants to get pregnant after her school, then it's going to be pretty tough for her to get her career going, working night and day and all hours and 72 hours straight and so on.
	If she's pregnant and needs to breastfeed, it's going to be a mess, right?
	Mm-hmm.
	And I just, I don't have a sense on how that's going to work.
	Especially if you want more than one child, right?
	If you, I mean you, I don't mean like more than, like, if you yourself want more than one child, I don't know how that's going to work if she's just about to embark, like, this is going to be grueling school and then a very demanding start to her career.
	I don't know how kids are going to fit into that.
	Right.
	Yeah, no, and I mean, I agree with you.
	And these are all concerns that I also have and share with her.
	And we're still working through all of that, all the intricacies of that, you know, how it could work and could it work, actually, you know.
	And the answer, our answer so far is not that, yeah, it works.
	Like, we don't, we have yet to sort it out, you know.
	And maybe the conclusion will be that it doesn't work, you know.
	What doesn't work?
	You mean having kids or being together?
	Yeah, like maybe we just could not have kids ever.
	Maybe it just doesn't fit anywhere in the timeline, you know?
	No, but do you want children?
	That's what I'm asking.
	Not does it fit into her schedule.
	This is back to your mom, right?
	Do you want children?
	Yes.
	Right.
	So, being the boyfriend of a woman who's got a child...
	Who's in the middle of, well, really just beginning a very difficult series of schooling and who's then going to have a very demanding career.
	I just, I'm trying to sort of guard your potential sperm here, right?
	Yeah.
	I appreciate it.
	How is that going to work in a practical sense?
	Because right now you're going to spend years paying for her education and Then she's going to be embarking on this big career.
	Now, if she's going to be the breadwinner, how's she going to be breastfeeding?
	How's she going to be having babies?
	How's she going to be doing all that?
	Because whether you want to have children is the important thing.
	Now, if you want to have children, it doesn't seem to me like this is a very conducive relationship for that.
	Now, saying, well, it's complicated and we're going to work it out and someone, you can't work out things that are...
	Like, I'll tell you my suggestion.
	Like, if I was dating her and I wanted kids, I'd say, okay, well, you need to put your education on hold and we've got to have the kids now.
	Right?
	We have the kids now and then you can finish your education later and start your career when the kids are older, right?
	Because right now...
	Doing this education and starting this really demanding career as a midwife doesn't work because I want to have kids right now.
	Or at least I want to have kids in the near future.
	Does that make sense?
	It does make sense.
	And I'm kind of imagining that if she does finish...
	Like, I'll just say it and if it's ridiculous, call me out, please.
	As I know you will.
	What I'm thinking, the best case scenario right now is she finishes the whole thing.
	She works for like six months in a very understanding...
	It's a place about pregnancy and then she can get pregnant and she can get the time off for that and then she just goes back to her career when the kid is one and a half or two.
	Does that not work?
	What's the point of finishing her education taking a couple of years off from her career?
	Won't she have to recertify?
	No, she would have her job right after her diploma, work for a couple months, then get pregnant, and then she has her job already, right?
	But how nice is that for the employer?
	I mean, that's really shitty for the employer, isn't it?
	Well, she's actually going to work in an environment where it's really encouraged, you know?
	And while you're pregnant, you can bring to conversations, you can accompany people in their processes, and you can involve yourself through that.
	No, but you're talking about her taking a couple of years off.
	Let's say she has two children, right?
	And you maybe don't want them too far apart because she's going to be getting into her 30s by then, right?
	So you want two children...
	So basically, she's going to get a job knowing that she's going to quit in six months and then be off for a certain amount of time.
	And then she's maybe going to go back for a little bit and then she's going to get pregnant again and be off for another couple of years.
	I don't know about you, but I think employers kind of like to have people who are working.
	And you're right.
	Just for the record, I don't think I would want more than one, though.
	But that doesn't invalidate your point.
	I mean, yeah.
	Maybe I'm...
	Okay, and that's fine too, right?
	But then if you have only one, then I guess by the time...
	I'm just trying to do this in my head.
	So by the time you have that kid, then her daughter, who I think now is five?
	Yeah.
	Yeah, is going to be seven or eight.
	Right.
	By the time the new kid comes along.
	So not that much in common.
	Not that much of a playmate kind of thing.
	But I mean, if you'll be home, that's sort of another thing.
	But it might be nicer to have two closer together.
	But yeah, these are very sort of practical things that I think are important.
	I just, I don't quite get the point of...
	Going through this whole educational process when you're just about to quit and have kids.
	I mean, I just...
	Wouldn't it make more sense?
	And wouldn't it give you...
	I assume that you'd want to have kids sooner rather than later.
	Oh, for sure.
	And so, wouldn't it be your preference?
	And I'm just sort of trying to teach you because you grew up with parents who didn't respond to your preferences.
	But...
	I think you'd rather be spending the money on your kids than on her education, which is going to get interrupted for the kids anyway, right?
	And how on earth is she going to be the breadwinner if she's having all these kids?
	Or a kid or whatever, right?
	I mean, to breastfeed, you know, you kind of got to be around, ideally, because it's not just the milk.
	It's the skin contact.
	It's the eye contact.
	It's the cuddle.
	It's the familiarity of the smell and the touch and all that.
	It's more than just, you know...
	Pumping out stuff in an airport toilet or something.
	And so for her to be...
	Pregnant, giving birth, to be at home for breastfeeding for like a year and a half.
	I just don't see how it works for you.
	Like, let's just pretend we're only talking about your needs, right?
	Because remember at the very beginning, I said, what do you want?
	And you said, well, I can do this if you want, right?
	And that's what I'm really remembering and orbiting around, right?
	What are your needs?
	And your needs right now, I don't think, are, let's spend a whole bunch of money that we could otherwise use for raising children to get you educated so you can stop working for a couple of years.
	Like, that doesn't make any sense to me, and it doesn't make any sense, I think, in a practical way.
	She'd have the kids now, or have a kid now.
	Maybe she'll want more than one.
	Who knows, right?
	Because right now, she's only got a year in.
	She can pick that up later.
	She can resume that later.
	But right now, it seems to me that it makes the most sense to have kids sooner.
	And instead of putting, you know, what, $150,000 or $100,000 in lost income and expenses and all of that into her getting a degree that she's not really going to use for the foreseeable future after she graduates, spend that money on having the kids now and she can go back to...
	School later, if she wants.
	But that's the thing is, I feel that then we're kind of stuck in the sense that we have the kid right away, right?
	So then I can't stay at home because she can't have something that earns the same figures as I do.
	So then I just gotta keep working.
	Yeah, you can!
	You can!
	What do you mean?
	You can, because look, man, do you have any savings?
	Not really.
	Oh, really no savings?
	Okay.
	Yeah.
	So...
	You have, you know, if you decide to have the kid now, you might not have the kid for a year, a year and a half, right?
	So you can work hard and you can save some money during that time, right?
	You also get paternity leave.
	I think you're Canadian, right?
	Canadian?
	Yeah, yeah.
	Yeah, so you get a year of paternity leave, which you've been paying into, right?
	Might as well get it back out.
	Is it a year?
	Yeah, either spouse can take a year, as far as I understand it.
	Obviously, I'm no lawyer, so just check with the human resources.
	But you can take, I think you get a year, and you get some money back from the government that you've been paying in.
	So you can spend some time, work some overtime, get some bucks, get some coins in the pocket, and then you can be home.
	For a while.
	You know, can you be a permanent stay-at-home dad?
	Well, who knows?
	You've got a year to figure things out.
	Maybe you can work from home some part-time or whatever and just crush your expenses down, right?
	I mean, when you went to school, I'm sure you were pretty broke and it wasn't the end of the world, right?
	You just crush your expenses down and figure out what you can do to make some money while being at home because, you know, kids are going to be sleeping and, you know, you're going to have some time to get some stuff done.
	So these are possibilities that I think makes more sense for your needs.
	I don't think that you want to spend the next three years paying a huge amount of money to get your girlfriend educated so that she can then not use that education because she's going to be home having a kid.
	I think, you know, think about it now, have a kid sooner, and you can then still be home for the first year or two, and maybe through that process, you can find a way to stay home longer.
	Right.
	That's, yeah, that's awesome.
	That's very, very useful.
	Thank you.
	Thank you for all of that.
	There's one other thing, though, is that I'm still working through, like, I'm still doing therapy.
	I had a pretty bad therapist for, like, five years, and I just began and knew with another one.
	There are things that, until I have...
	Work through, you know, I don't want to have a kid because I don't know how I would react.
	I don't know that I would be ready or that I would be adequate, you know.
	And so that was the other thing is that her studying is kind of my deadline, you know, to kind of work through all of that, to be ready.
	Yeah, but you've got, you know, even if you start now, you might not have the kid for a year, year and a half, right?
	Right.
	Sometimes it takes a little while to to get the get one past the goalie.
	So you've still got you've still got time.
	And if you've been in therapy for five years, I'm sure it wasn't all terrible.
	I'm sure she wasn't trying to indoctrinate you into some satanic worshiping hellhole.
	And so you've got some time to prepare.
	Again, I'm just giving you some options, right?
	I mean, obviously it's your own choice and your own conscience that you have to follow.
	No, no.
	You make a lot of sense.
	Thank you.
	That's very valuable.
	I'll definitely think on it.
	I'm just concerned that...
	I mean, has your girlfriend sat down with you and said what would be ideal for you?
	What would be the very best possible situation and circumstance for you?
	Yes.
	Okay.
	And for you, you said, oh yeah, you should definitely...
	I'd like to pay for you to go to school and then be a stay-at-home dad.
	Yeah.
	I'm happy to...
	I'm doing it for now, and then I'm passing the puck, and then I get to be...
	I'll tell you what's going to happen, man.
	You're going to spend a lot of money getting your girlfriend educated, and then You're going to want a kid and maybe she's going to say, well, I've got to get my career started, but next year maybe or whatever, right?
	She gets her career started.
	She loves it.
	And you want a kid, but she's really enjoying her career.
	Yeah.
	And maybe then she at some point says, okay, we'll have a kid.
	And then she's going to quit her career and stay home.
	I don't know how you're going to end up being a stay-at-home dad after dropping a lot of money on her education and then having her quit her career at least for a couple of years while she's home early on.
	That's my thought.
	I think it's better to take that money and pour it into being home and raising the kid.
	Right.
	Sooner rather than later.
	Again, what you do obviously is completely up to you.
	I'm just trying to shake the tree and see what possibilities fall out.
	No, because I kind of have this fear too that I'm working through all of that and then it's my turn to get what I want.
	Let's have the kid and she's like, I want to get started with my career.
	And then we end up pushing back, pushing back and then it's too late, right?
	But there's no...
	It's my last shot.
	And that's the other thing.
	And that's my other fear if I consider leaving or changing my context.
	It's like I'm already 30.
	And I just feel like it's already too late.
	I feel like she's my last straw, basically.
	No, she's not.
	Look, she's not.
	Because you're a guy.
	And so you don't have the same biological clock as a woman does.
	And you can date a younger woman.
	You've done it before.
	You're doing it now.
	Right?
	So you can date another woman.
	Now, of course, sperm do age as well.
	And so it's not like, you know, your sperm at 50 is the same as your sperm at 30.
	But it's not the kind of drop off that happens with women.
	So I would not want you making a decision on it's this or nothing because there's no place to negotiate from there.
	You can not be in this relationship and you can still have children.
	And you can still get what you want.
	So I wouldn't want you to negotiate from that.
	But my concern, Thierry, is that I don't think you've got ironclad commitments here.
	Like you say, oh, we're still working things through and this and that.
	It's like, dude, you're already paying for her education.
	This should not be stuff that's still up in the air.
	You're putting a lot of resources into educating this woman.
	At the same time, as you want her to be a stay-at-home mom, at least for the first year or two, Of the kid's life so that she can breastfeed and do all of that kind of good stuff.
	I just don't see how that fits together.
	And I think you need some really ironclad commitments from this.
	And if, you know, if you trust her enough to keep those commitments, great.
	But yeah, if you end up putting off for another three years getting educated, sorry, having a kid, and then she turns out to really want her career, and she already has the kid, so maybe she doesn't feel the same urgency for another one, you're going to get, well, let's just You're going to have some angry drumming to do.
	I agree with you.
	I know that she will listen to this and she won't be insulted.
	She won't say that you're against her.
	She will accept the challenge.
	I have said nothing insulting to her whatsoever.
	I know what I meant is...
	If she was a toxic person, she would take all of that as an attack against her and her designs.
	And nothing that you said, I can picture her reaction.
	What I'm getting at is, at least I feel like I'm with someone who values truth.
	So I know that a lot of the points that you brought up are some of the things I didn't think of.
	And she'll be like, yeah, sure, let's analyze that.
	And yeah, maybe we need an ironclad commitment and we'll try to get that next week, you know?
	Well, good.
	And I certainly hope, if she wants to call in too, she's certainly welcome to chat.
	And if there's anything I can do to help, I'm happy to do that.
	And I certainly don't mean anything negative towards her.
	But I think that if you want to have a kid, I think you guys need a really clear game plan.
	And right now, I'm not sure that there's one in place.
	And...
	The last one came along by accident, as you say, but the next one, if there's going to be one, really needs to be part of a well-thought-out process.
	And I think that leaving it hanging as it is at the moment is not going to end up with the best.
	I never regret anything in life that I've chosen.
	The only thing I ever regret is when I didn't choose, when I let inertia take over and I drifted.
	And that's my concern.
	Right.
	Do you mean that I would be drifting right now?
	Well, yeah.
	Okay.
	All right.
	Okay.
	Okay.
	Will you keep us posted?
	Yeah, for sure.
	Well, thanks.
	It's been very helpful.
	I'm very glad.
	All right, Mike.
	How are you feeling?
	Should we do one more?
	Yeah, let's do one more.
	All right.
	Alright, Matthew is up next.
	Matthew wrote in and said, What is our responsibility to our elders as adults?
	My grandmother on my mother's side of the family is unbelievably nosy and tries to control every aspect of my life.
	Everything from where I go on vacation, who I date, what color to paint the walls of my house, my decision not to re-enlist in the National Guard, and if I should have started my own business or not.
	She also has this expectation for me to constantly bend over backwards for my mother while disowning my father.
	She will oftentimes use a guilt trip as a way to manipulate family members into doing what she wants.
	That's from Matthew.
	Well, Matthew, welcome to the conversation.
	Thank you.
	Thank you for having me.
	Disown your dad.
	That's the part that really stuck out for me there.
	Tell me a bit about that.
	Yeah, so I'm currently 24.
	And I guess my parents have been divorced.
	I think they got divorced when I was like maybe 10 months old.
	And, you know, so I didn't have, I guess, a ton of interaction with With my dad, you know, growing up, and...
	Wait, hang on, sorry.
	Why wouldn't you have interactions with your dad just because your parents got divorced?
	Well, I mean, I had, you know, weekend visitation and that kind of thing, but other than that, that was really it.
	So it wasn't shared custody?
	Did you get, like, every other weekend, or how did that work?
	Right, it was every other weekend, and, you know, so...
	I guess he was supposed to come pick me up at, you know, maybe like 5 o'clock in the afternoon and, you know, take me back home on, you know, he'd pick me up on Friday afternoon and then drop me back off on, I guess, Sunday.
	And, you know, that was kind of like every other weekend, so that was pretty much the only time, you know, I spent with him.
	And how was that time?
	Um...
	I guess it was good when it was with him, but I spent a lot of time with my stepmother, who I'm really not that fond of either.
	So when I was with her, you know, it wasn't that great.
	So.
	And how were you, um, were you turned negatively towards or against your father?
	I'm sorry, can you say that again?
	Well, sorry, just in the, you talked about disowning or being made to disown or being encouraged to disown your dad.
	Oh, from my grandmother?
	Yeah.
	I mean, it's just, you know, she'll say, you know, I guess things about how, you know, he's not really a father figure and this and that.
	I guess, like, you know, it says that he's I guess kind of like a deadbeat, really, and things of that nature.
	Why was he a deadbeat?
	This is your grandmother, right?
	Right.
	Well, I guess there was a few times where he fell behind on child support, that kind of thing.
	Because I think whenever they first got divorced, I guess those first couple of years, he was really struggling financially.
	Yeah, divorce is very expensive.
	Yeah, and then I guess later on he actually started making a lot more money.
	He's actually quite wealthy now, but even after that, I guess my stepmother didn't want him to pay.
	It was a lot of different things.
	Now, did your grandmother know about your father's character flaws before he got married to her daughter?
	I think so.
	I mean, I think to some degree, yeah.
	And did she discourage your daughter from marrying your father?
	Her daughter, sorry.
	My mother.
	Yeah.
	To be honest with you, I don't know.
	I mean, I know that she happened to...
	To discourage her from getting married to my stepfather, which they're actually still not married now, but at the time, you know, she did discourage her from getting married to my stepfather.
	Yeah, because, I mean, it's always tough to me how I'm just sort of trying to figure out, like, how your grandmother could complain about your father, because there's only a couple of logical possibilities.
	Either she knew that, like, let's just pretend he is.
	I'm not saying he is, but Either she knew that he was a deadbeat and a bum, in which case, why would her daughter be interested in him unless she'd been badly parented?
	Right?
	So I've never figured out how people get to say that their children's choices are bad, especially moms, and just remove themselves from the equation completely.
	So either she knew that he was a bum, in which case, Why the hell would her daughter be interested in marrying this guy?
	Now, either she then said to her daughter, you can't marry this guy.
	He's a complete bum.
	You're going to get divorced.
	It's going to be terrible.
	In which case, her daughter didn't listen to her or care about her opinions enough to do anything about it, in which case she didn't really have much authority as a mother, which again would not speak well to how she raised her daughter.
	Or she didn't know that your dad was a bum and a deadbeat or whatever.
	She didn't know any of those things.
	In which case, why not?
	I mean, if she's a know-it-all and almost all bossy people are know-it-alls, that would be kind of an important thing to know.
	You'd think that would give someone some humility about their expertise in the world if they didn't even know that the guy who was going to father their grandchildren was a deadbeat and a bum and all that, right?
	So, it just, there's no direction here, logically, that wouldn't lead to someone being kind of humbled about their own judgment or authority as a parent.
	Well, yeah, I mean, and, you know, when it comes to, I mean, she is kind of like a know-it-all in a lot of sense.
	Like, she'll come back and say, you know, I guess kind of like, I told you so, you know, when she talks about Larry that would Be my ex-stepfather, you know, basically saying, well, you know, I told you so.
	Hang on, sorry.
	You already mentioned a stepfather that didn't marry your mom.
	Is there another stepfather too?
	Oh, no, no.
	He did marry my mother.
	They just got divorced.
	Oh, so your mom just got divorced for the second time?
	I mean, I would say it was about six years ago, but yeah.
	So your mom's been divorced twice?
	Correct.
	And what about your grandmother?
	Is she still married to...
	Yeah, she's been married for like 53 years, like since she was 19.
	Right, okay.
	Does she have any idea why she raised a daughter who got divorced twice?
	Well, you know, she's always like talked about this because she actually has, I guess, three children.
	That would be my mother and then my two uncles who were actually twins.
	And, you know, all three of them have been married and divorced at some point.
	So, you know, she, I guess I've heard her talk about how she doesn't understand how, you know, she's been married for over 50 years, but then all three of her children have all been, you know, married and divorced.
	And she has, she genuinely, or at least she claims she genuinely has zero idea why her children have all been married and divorced multiple times.
	I mean, she says that, I mean, she thinks that it's obviously something that, you know, the parenting, I guess, between her and also, you know, my grandfather.
	But, you know, but she, I guess she sometimes thinks that maybe they didn't set a good example.
	I don't know.
	So it doesn't sound like she's got a lot of insight into anything like this, right?
	Exactly.
	Yeah, sometimes.
	Has she ever asked anyone in the family if anyone has anything that she could improve on?
	Like any feedback that she could improve on and be a better mother or grandmother to them?
	I don't know if she's actually asked anyone for feedback.
	I mean, I know that just from talking to my mother, And then also my uncle that, you know, I guess that it would have been better had, you know, they've been allowed to, I guess, live on their own.
	Or I wouldn't say live on their own, but, you know, make mistakes on their own and kind of learn instead of it being forced of one way to do things.
	Because, you know, my mother has told me that, you know, Before that she moved out, she had worked at this hospital in Atlanta, just a big hospital and everything.
	She worked the night shift, and she would come home and then sneak out after she got home.
	It would be like 1, 2, or midnight, 1 o'clock in the morning, and she'd stay out until 6 in the morning.
	But she had to do this...
	Sneak out even when she was like 20, 21 years old.
	And, you know, she felt like that she didn't even have any freedom, even as, I guess, an adult at that point, you know, still living there.
	So, um...
	So you've just taken me on a long journey away from my question.
	I'm sorry.
	Repeat your question?
	I'm sorry.
	I don't want to talk to Granny.
	I want to talk to you.
	Um...
	Has she ever said, is there anything about me as a grandmother or me as a mother that I could improve?
	What's everybody's experience of me?
	Is there anything I could do better to make my company more enjoyable for people?
	No.
	Okay, so that's kind of what I was looking for.
	You know, your mom's nightlife, fascinating, but no is the answer, right?
	Right, correct.
	And...
	Is that not something that's part of your family culture?
	I guess in some ways it is.
	I mean, my mom kind of has the same mindset in a way.
	I mean, she's not as, I guess, controlling as my grandmother, but, you know, expecting my mother to apologize for something is just not necessarily going to happen.
	So your mother doesn't admit false or apologize, is that right?
	For the most part, yeah.
	Okay.
	Can you think of how many apologies she has given you?
	Honestly, I can't ever think of a time my mother's apologized for anything, you know, Okay, so for the most part was just a little puff of fog there, right?
	I'm sorry?
	That was just a little puff of fog to have me off the scent, right?
	Right.
	Okay, that's fine.
	We both need to be aware of that, right?
	Right.
	Okay, so your mother doesn't apologize and your grandmother is really bossy, right?
	Correct, and my grandmother doesn't apologize either.
	Right, right, right.
	And does your mother recognize that your grandmother is over-controlling?
	She does and complains about it as well.
	Right, right.
	And what are the consequences of saying something like this?
	Well, Granny, I appreciate your feedback.
	I'll certainly take it into consideration when I make my decision.
	Well, she'll...
	I guess continue to say the same thing that she's continued to say, or, you know, said.
	Right, and then you say, or someone could say, Granny, I just told you.
	I already heard you.
	I appreciate your feedback.
	I will think about it when I make my decision.
	And now this is the part, Granny, where we move on to another topic.
	Oh, she would fly off the handle.
	Why?
	She's made her point.
	You're going to take it into consideration, and there's no point repeating things, right?
	From a logical standpoint, yes, but...
	But why, I mean, what would she say?
	I mean, that's pretty reasonable.
	It's not rude, right?
	right?
	I mean, what would she say?
	Um, I guess she would, she would just get mad and, you know, um, just be unpleasant to be around for, But that's not what she...
	You're still not telling me what she would say.
	What would she say to that?
	Honestly, I don't know.
	Because nobody's ever said that to her before?
	Correct.
	Right.
	And so when she gets unpleasant to be around, what does that look like?
	How is she unpleasant?
	She's just nagging.
	A lot of nagging.
	You know, it's kind of funny.
	It's I mean, my grandfather, you know, he just kind of lets her say whatever she's going to say and doesn't really respond.
	He's probably just praying for hearing loss, right?
	Well, he has hearing loss, so I guess it's kind of came true for him.
	Maybe not in all frequencies, right?
	Yeah.
	Okay, so nobody has cared about your grandmother enough to intervene in her neurotic nagging and get her to stop.
	I think people have cared, you know, and I think they've just kind of gotten worn out by it.
	I guess it just kind of broke down their longevity, I guess, towards it.
	So she just wins by outlasting people, is that right?
	Correct.
	Right.
	Well, I mean, how...
	How much do you feel like taking a leadership role in the family?
	I guess, I mean, I don't I don't have a problem with taking a leadership role.
	I mean, I would much rather be someone who makes their own decisions versus being told what to do.
	But at the same time, I guess I'm kind of like you, Steph, where I don't want to I don't necessarily force someone to do anything, I just kind of want to...
	Wait, sorry, what do you mean by force someone to do something?
	I mean, I guess I'm kind of like you where you...
	I'm not gonna tell someone to necessarily do something, I'm just going to try to use reason and evidence to...
	No, no, no, sorry, but you mean with regards to your grandmother's nagging?
	Right, exactly.
	Yeah, no, but you don't want to nag her back, you don't want to boss her back, right?
	Right, I don't.
	I mean, there's times to fight fire with fire.
	I don't think this is one of them.
	Right.
	But you can say what you will and will not participate in.
	Right, okay.
	Right, so you can say, I will not participate in being nagged.
	I will not be a receptacle for nagging.
	Right.
	I will not enable, as they say, nagging, right?
	So she says, you should paint your house this color, you should paint your house that color.
	We're like, well, you know, I appreciate your feedback.
	I know you really care what color my house is.
	I think you've got some great ideas, so I'll mull it over.
	And she's like, no, you've got to paint.
	She's like, no, I heard you, right?
	Now, I know that you want to keep telling me the same thing, I don't want you to keep telling me the same thing.
	I heard you.
	I will take what you said into consideration when I make my decision.
	But I don't want you to keep telling me the same thing.
	Well, you don't listen.
	No, I have to tell you this.
	This topic is done.
	I'm done with this topic.
	Now, if you want to continue this topic, you'll have to do it without me in the room.
	Right.
	Now, of course, she'll escalate, and she'll push, and she'll kick, and it would be great if the family was on board, but sometimes people just need to see someone do something sane, and it opens up like a trap door in their brain and lets the light in.
	You know, families, and we all do this, so families, they get stuck in habits, you know?
	Oh, it's just easier if or whatever, right?
	Just stuck in habits.
	And it just...
	Nobody's saying be mean.
	Nobody's saying call her names.
	Nobody's saying be abusive.
	Nobody's saying escalate or push back or whatever.
	It's just saying, I don't participate.
	I'm not going to participate in this.
	I will not participate in this.
	Doesn't mean I hate you.
	Doesn't mean I'm hostile.
	Doesn't mean I think you're a terrible person.
	I just won't participate in this.
	And...
	It can be startling to someone, and usually what they do is they double down, right?
	But you may be surprised at how quickly some of this stuff can change and how much of a relief it might be for your grandmother if she gets sort of not just jarred out of the habit, out of this fixed way of being, some people call it, you know?
	Like, this is just what I do.
	And a lot of times...
	People are over-controlling because they don't feel like they have anything to offer that other people want.
	So they just want to control people or tell them what to do because they feel that that's a contribution.
	I'm being as charitable as possible here, so I know the woman.
	But they'll tell you what to do because they want to contribute and they don't know any other way and they haven't developed the skills of having people want their feedback.
	And that's one.
	The other thing, too, is, you know, could just be a bully, in which case, well, you stand up to bullies, but you don't, you know, this is not coming at you with a red-hot iron, so you don't have to pull out a kitchen implement like the first caller.
	But if she's a bully, then you just don't participate, just don't play, right?
	The only way to win those games is not to play.
	And if she is...
	A lot of people who are nags are actually managing their own anxiety by trying to control other people.
	In other words, they don't feel in control of themselves.
	And a nag, by definition, is someone with a kind of compulsive repetition approach to communication.
	Like, just keep doing the same thing over and over again.
	Like, wash your hands 60 million times.
	So they're not in control of their own thoughts and feelings, of their own expressions.
	And so they try to control other people as a way of...
	Pretending that they have some control over themselves.
	And refusing to be controlled puts them, you know, right up against their own anxieties, which is obviously going to be healthy in the long run, right?
	Right.
	Helpful.
	Right.
	But I think it's just, to me, it's just a non-participation thing.
	You know, I mean, to give you an analogy, like if there's some...
	Some tackle bait shop where they keep selling you worms that are dead and dried up little sticks of nothing and you want to go fishing.
	You don't have to go in there and yell at them.
	Hey, I'm not going to buy from you until your worms are better.
	Right.
	I'm not participating until the quality of the service improves.
	I mean, you can tell them that if you care, if it's convenient for you and it's close to your home and it's where you want to get good worms, but you don't have to go in there and yell at everyone to say, I'm not going to buy the worms from here until the worms are good.
	And it's the same thing, like, I'm not going to participate in the nagging.
	I'm not going to participate until...
	The quality of the communication is something that I want to participate in.
	I'm not going to go yell at the restaurant that serves bad food.
	I'm just going to tell them I'm not coming back until I get good food.
	I hope you will get good food because it's close to my place and it used to be good, but right now I can't do it.
	I understand what you're saying and I guess the thing that makes it somewhat difficult is that I get this feeling of Of obligation in a sense because of a lot of the things that my grandparents have done for me, you know, growing up and I spent a lot of time with them, you know, with my mother being a single mom.
	And, you know, so I guess in some sense I feel somewhat obligated, I guess, to...
	Oh man, no, Matthew, sorry to interrupt you.
	But...
	You don't make them generous by pretending that they bought you.
	Do you understand what I'm saying?
	Yes, I do.
	It's only generous if they didn't buy you.
	Right.
	Right, like if I say to a woman, oh, I'm going to take you out for a great night on the town, right?
	But you better damn well have sex with me at the end of it.
	Right?
	It's not generous, what I'm doing.
	Right?
	Any more than buying a pizza is contributing to a charity, right?
	Right.
	So it was only a kind thing that they did if they didn't buy your allegiance to their irrationalities.
	Because if they did all that stuff for you, okay, I get that you feel an obligation.
	But that obligation is not to enable bad behavior on their part.
	Otherwise, they bought you.
	you, they weren't kind to you.
	Right.
	Now they bought, they So they've created an obligation, but that obligation is to be who you are and be honest with them, not to pretend you like something you don't.
	You know, I always want honesty.
	If I cook a meal for someone and they don't like it, I want them to tell me, otherwise we could spend the next 40 years having a meal they don't like.
	Right.
	But I don't get to say, well, you've got to like this meal because I cooked it.
	Right.
	That I'm just buying allegiance.
	I'm not offering food.
	That makes sense.
	You owe them who you are.
	You owe them the kindness of not enabling dysfunctional behavior.
	And that is a very kind thing to do for people.
	I mean, they may don't like it at the time sometimes, but it's all right.
	There's dentistry, it's the same damn thing.
	Don't like it at the time, feels better later, right?
	Or at least doesn't feel worse.
	Right, right.
	So your suggestion is just to basically not participate in that sort of rationale?
	Yeah, look, I mean, the reason I'm saying all of this is that Your grandmother, you know, correct me if I'm wrong, I mean, she's not a horribly abusive person.
	She's just got these annoying, know-it-all, bossy things going on, right?
	Right.
	Right.
	So, I mean, she's not setting fire to your pets or anything, right?
	She's just got this annoying habit of being overly bossy and controlling and know-it-all.
	And, you know, as you say, you know, I love you.
	I really do.
	And I love you so much that I got to back away from this bossy stuff because it's interfering.
	With my pleasure of your company.
	And I'm fierce in guarding my pleasure of your company.
	I love a lot of the things we do together.
	And I am like a pitbull guarding my young when it comes to protecting my happiness in your company.
	You know, I want to spend the rest of our time that we have together being as happy as possible.
	So anything that interferes with that I'm, you know, if I was talking to you on the phone and I couldn't hear you half the time, I'd get my phone fixed or go someplace where I could hear you better because that would be interfering with my enjoyment of the conversation.
	Some of the stuff that's going on, like the bossiness or whatever, it's really interfering with my happiness in your company.
	I want to fiercely guard that, so that's why I'm doing this because I want to make sure I enjoy your company as much as possible so that it's always genuine.
	Right, and I guess one of the things too that she does kind of What rubs me the wrong way is that she, in my opinion, has, I guess, kind of like the soft bigotry of low expectations towards my mother.
	Because, you know, she says stuff like, oh, you need to get over to your mother's house and...
	Cut her grass and trim her hedges and that sort of thing because she's doing all she can just to make it to work every day and take care of Joseph, which is my brother.
	He's actually my half-brother, but she says all these things of how she's just doing everything she can just to To make ends, not make ends meet, but get to work and provide as a single parent.
	But once again, it's one of those things, like you were talking before, that she chose to have children.
	She chose to get married twice.
	She chose to get divorced twice.
	And she's kind of chosen the other bad decisions that she's made in her life.
	And, you know, it's not necessarily my obligation to bail her out of her decisions.
	Does she get alimony child support from any of her exes?
	She does from my brother's father, yes.
	Right.
	So, shouldn't she use some of that money to pay someone to mow the lawn?
	I mean, it's pretty cheap, right?
	I think she does, yeah.
	She does.
	Oh, so as far as that goes, like the yard work and all of that, that's all taken care of by the ex-husband, right?
	And plus, I mean, shouldn't he also, I mean, even if she couldn't afford it, I mean, I assume he's still got a relationship with your half-brother, so he should be the one doing the yard work and stuff, right?
	Right.
	I mean, you know, that's the thing is, I mean, she's already doing that, that, you know, my grandmother will spin it like that.
	That instead of her having to pay someone to do that, that I should be going over there and taking care of that for her.
	Oh, so you should be working for free so that your mother doesn't have to spend the money.
	Right.
	And do you want to do that?
	I'm not saying whether you should or shouldn't.
	I'm just curious whether you want to do it or not.
	I mean...
	I do sometimes, and yes, I do.
	But at the same time, though, you know, I work full-time.
	I have my own business and that sort of thing as well.
	So, you know, I don't have the time commitment to do that all the time that she thinks that I should be over there doing that.
	Yeah, I mean, I'm trying not to fall into the resentment pit of women who want free male labor.
	Right.
	I mean, that's...
	This reminds me of the estrogen-based parasites call from a while back, where the guy's aunt was like, oh, you've got to go to work because I'm not getting money from this guy anymore.
	Where the hell did men become these testicular serfs for women?
	I don't know.
	Is your grandmother doing a bunch of your laundry?
	Is it two-way, male to female?
	No, I do my own laundry.
	So, are the women in your family doing any free work for you?
	No.
	They do your taxes or, I don't know, give you foot rubs?
	No, I mean, on occasion, you know, she'll maybe cook a meal, which would be like, you know, lunch or something like that, that I'd take to work.
	But, I mean, she's not doing my laundry or anything like that, coming and cleaning the inside of my house or doing my yard work or anything like that, no.
	Yeah, so I mean, my sort of perspective is, you know, hey, I mean, if I'm good at yard work, and you're not, you know, we're family, you know, we maybe it makes sense for us to cross pollinate some labor.
	So let's figure out what you're good at that I'm not that you can do for me.
	But if it's just one way, then it's just like, oh, men, free labor for women.
	It's like, you know, Does that really...
	That's not fair, right?
	I mean, I thought women wanted to be equal.
	I mean, what's with all this free male work that's going on here?
	Right.
	Right.
	You know, and I think, though, too...
	She's kind of had, like, this...
	Another thing that's really kind of rubbed me the wrong way, too, is where anytime I start to express any sort of anger or resentment towards my mother, you know, she almost says how it's wrong of me to feel that she almost says how it's wrong of me to feel that
	And, you know, that's always been kind of like a source of, you know, who are you to tell me what emotions to have or not to have, you know?
	Well, I mean, your mom got married and either to the wrong guy or couldn't keep the right guy around.
	So you had a pretty awkward go of it from a pretty young age with your biological dad, right?
	Right.
	And then she...
	I'm sorry?
	Oh, go ahead.
	Well, and then she, I don't know what the time frame was, but then she got remarried to another guy who's now also out of the family, right?
	Right, and I mean...
	You got some complaints.
	I think you've got some pretty reasonable reasons to have some negative thoughts about your mom.
	I mean...
	Yeah, and then plus...
	Why wouldn't you?
	You know, plus, you know, with my stepfather, you know, that was an abusive relationship to, I mean...
	From, you know, the time that they got married to the time they got divorced.
	Oh, what kind of abuse?
	Well, when they got married, I think I was like 10, almost 11.
	And, you know, it started off as, you know, just a lot of verbal abuse.
	And then as I got older, you know, I got to be more and more physical and, you know, physical intimidation, that kind of thing.
	Wait, but who were the victims?
	Me.
	It was really just me.
	I guess he used some verbal abuse towards my mother, but she had purposely picked the night shift of what shift she worked at, just so that way she could avoid being around him.
	So she basically left me there with him to fend for myself.
	You're the one that married this asshole, but yet I'm the one that's forced to live with him.
	How long after they got married, Matthew, did she end up working the night shift?
	I would say probably, let's see, probably about two years because she was on day shift and she got pregnant with my brother.
	And then I would say as soon as she went back to work after she was pregnant, or after my brother was born, she went on night shift.
	So did you also have a lot of work to do with your brother?
	Pardon me?
	Did you also end up having to do a lot of work to take care of your brother?
	Like changing diapers and stuff?
	To some degree, but not a whole lot, no.
	So your stepdad did that?
	Yeah, most of my grandparents too.
	Okay, okay.
	And how long did they stay married for?
	Almost eight years.
	Around eight years.
	And why did she stay married to him?
	Honestly, I just...
	I really don't know.
	I mean, you know, she...
	The thing that, you know, when I've talked to her about it is that...
	I guess from what she told me is that she had felt like she had deserved that because basically she had lied to him.
	What did she lie to him about?
	Well, my mother has always had an addiction to prescription pain medications.
	And so she had, from what she tells me, she had told Larry, stepfather, that she was off of him and that sort of thing.
	And apparently that was a lie and that she was secretly abusing pain medications, that sort of thing.
	Where was she getting them from?
	I'm sorry?
	Where was she getting them from?
	Well, she is a registered nurse, so it was pretty easy access to them.
	Wow.
	Nurse Jackie, right.
	She actually had a job, which was a Georgia poison center.
	You know where people would call in for you know different poisoning and she would give them advice or you know consultation or whatever and She actually lost that job because she had forged a prescription and took it to a pharmacy got got the medication or whatever and somehow She got caught and so you know she like faced like criminal charges and that sort of thing lost that job and you know she actually I I
	think she had probation, that kind of thing, but she's off of all of that now.
	She's lost jobs and that sort of thing because of it, yeah.
	Right.
	And do you know what prompted the divorce?
	You're talking about with my stepfather or with my father?
	Your stepfather.
	Honestly, I just think that she went through rehab and everything like that after that whole incident.
	I think I was 16 or 17.
	She was back working day shift with her new job and everything.
	I think that she just got to the point where she couldn't handle living with them.
	So when she had the kind of exposure to him that you did, she ended the marriage.
	Right.
	But you having exposure to him wasn't enough for her to end the marriage.
	Right.
	And, you know, if anything, it was more of like I was yelled at for...
	By her for, you know, I guess being disrespectful to him or, you know, whatever.
	Like, I remember one time, I believe I was 16 or 17, where he had held me up against the wall by my throat.
	And I ended up, you know, punching him in his nose.
	You know, more of, I mean, you know, he had me, he was choking me.
	No, no, I get it.
	Yeah.
	Self-defense.
	Yeah, so, you know, I get yelled at for punching him.
	You know, and I thought that was just absurd.
	Wait, who yelled at you for punching him?
	Yeah.
	No, who did?
	Who yelled at you?
	Oh, my mother did.
	Your mother yelled at you for punching the nice man who was choking you.
	right yeah I'm not sure I'd feel a huge amount of obligation for yard work Thank you.
	Thank you.
	Right.
	And I mean, she'll use things as if, you know, my grandmother will use the rationale for the obligation is, you know, oh, well, she kept a roof over your head and, you know, she paid for, you know, a lot of your tuition or some of your tuition for college and that sort of thing and, you know, this and that.
	But, I mean...
	I think it's such a huge insult to any relationship to say, well, I bought you.
	Right.
	The moment that all parents have to offer you in terms of value was, well, you didn't fucking starve, did you?
	You know, that's not really...
	A very lot to offer.
	I mean, that's the job.
	You know, that's the job.
	I mean, if I go rent a rental car and then I bring it back and I say, I'm not paying a damn thing because I didn't total it.
	It's like, you kind of expected to not total it.
	That's like the bare minimum.
	You don't get a bonus for not totaling the rental car.
	And...
	When people say, well, I gave you money.
	It's like, oh, does that mean you bought me?
	Does that mean I have no identity because I'm bought and paid for?
	Am I like some sort of family whore that I just owe you things because money?
	Because resources, which was your job anyway?
	I mean, I just, I don't understand how people can say, I mean, it's such a desperate, last-ditch thing to say, you owe me because, as a parent, I had a child and fed it.
	It's like, that's the bare minimum!
	How about keeping your child safe?
	How about not yelling at your child when he hits a guy who's choking him that you brought in the house and you can't stand to be around?
	But money!
	Holy crap.
	You tell me what woman would feel really happy about owing me because I bought her dinner.
	But I paid for dinner, so put out!
	That just turns the whole evening into an exercise in unnegotiated prostitution.
	What woman wouldn't slap me in the face for that?
	You think you bought me because you bought me dinner?
	You think I'm yours now?
	Whack!
	Right across that head of mine and she should just walk straight off into the night.
	And what person wouldn't cheer her exit?
	Right.
	Right?
	Don't bring money into it, for God's sakes!
	Now, I can see situations where money is reasonable if it's just about money, right?
	So, like, if I have some sister and I lent her $5,000 and she paid me back, and then I lent her $2,000 and she paid me back, and then I needed to borrow $1,000, and she said, well, no.
	I'd be like, well, you remember I lent you that money, but I'm not asking her for any kind of moral or emotional allegiance or love.
	It's just like, well, no, I mean, can you lend me some money because I've lent you some money.
	Clearly you have no objections to money being lent within the family.
	It's just very loosey-goosey stuff like that.
	But the idea that you owe your mom because, well, you know, she did take you to the dentist.
	It's like, well, yeah.
	But that's like me going to an office job and saying, all right, I need my non-arsen bonus.
	This year.
	Or else.
	It's like, actually that would just land me in prison, right?
	Because I think it's kind of taken for granted that when you go to your office job, or really any job for that matter, you don't set fire to the place, right?
	You don't pull an office space.
	That's kind of, you don't get a bonus for the bare minimum of decent behavior.
	Hey, I get a free candy bar because I didn't steal the candy bar.
	It's like, no, you don't steal candy bars and you don't get free candy bars for doing the bare minimum called not stealing a candy bar.
	Yes, they paid for you.
	I get it.
	That's the deal when you're a parent.
	You become a money sieve.
	That's the way it works.
	Everybody knows that.
	But your child didn't choose to be there.
	You chose to have the child.
	And if you want your child to value your company when you get older, be nice to the child.
	You know, if I want to stay married...
	How about I'm nice to my wife so that she enjoys being married to me?
	Rather than, I bought her some stuff, so now she can't leave me because I own her.
	It's like, oh my God.
	Oh my God.
	That's just such a last-ditch, horrible thing to pull on a kid.
	Mommy cares money.
	Right.
	And how much of it was hers and how much was the guy's who was choking you?
	Right.
	Yeah.
	Who you didn't even want to be around and you'd rather have probably lived in the car than...
	Right?
	Would have, yeah.
	Definitely.
	I mean, it was hell growing up with him.
	Yeah, and I'm sorry.
	I mean, I haven't stopped to acknowledge all of that, Matthew, but that's some pretty...
	Pretty horrible, deliverance-style stuff, and I'm just incredibly sorry that this was your exposure to male authority figures, or this one in particular.
	I'm so sorry.
	That's just horrible.
	I mean, this is your exposure.
	You got naggy, you got druggie, you got hitty, you got yelly.
	I mean, man, that was no peaceful, no fun, no consistently loving environment.
	And I'm just so sorry for all of that for you.
	That's just so the opposite of what it should have been.
	I mean, yeah, and I guess that's kind of the thing where I get the, I guess, resentment is when, you know, my grandmother will, I guess, try to make me feel obligated, you know, to do these sort of things, you know, based on...
	I guess, you know, she is what you could call a...
	A travel agent for guilt trips.
	So, you know.
	You know, it's very tough to have emotional integrity around manipulators.
	In fact, they're kind of counting on you to not have emotional integrity.
	But, I mean, I remember having conversations with, you know, the people, they try to set up these unchosen positive obligations, which is why I think philosophy should fight so hard against those unchosen positive obligations.
	It's no different from the national debt.
	I didn't choose it, so I don't own it.
	But, you know, the emotional authenticity of, I don't feel like doing this generous thing.
	And of course, when you say that, people will say, well, that's because you're ungrateful, and that's because you're just like, well, now I feel even less like doing it, because you're just insulting me.
	You're not asking me why I might not feel like doing this generous thing.
	Right?
	I mean, if you've lent money to some cousin and he never pays you back and he comes to you for another hundred bucks and you say, you know, I'm looking at my heart of hearts.
	I don't feel like lending this.
	I just, I don't feel like it.
	I don't want to do it.
	Oh, come on, man.
	It's like, no, I'm sorry.
	Like, the emotional authenticity of like, I don't feel like doing it and I'm going to have to be true to myself.
	You know, being true to yourself is...
	A wonderful shield against manipulators, you know?
	Well, you ought to feel that this...
	It's like, I don't though.
	You can tell me I ought to, but it's like telling me I ought to be seven feet tall.
	I'm still not seven feet tall.
	The fact that you say I ought to, right?
	Right.
	I just, I don't feel like it.
	Now, somebody who cares about you as a human being, Matthew, is going to say, okay, if I say, hey man, can you give me a hundred bucks?
	And you say, you know what?
	I really don't feel like it.
	I'd be like, oh...
	I wonder why.
	Let's talk about this.
	Have I been borrowing too much money?
	Are you out of money?
	Has other people borrowed money from you?
	Did I forget to pay you back?
	Like, tell me.
	Let's explore.
	Let's figure out why you feel this way.
	Not with the goal of getting my $100, but just like, this is something unexpected.
	I want to know more about your experience.
	But most people...
	I shouldn't say.
	A lot of people will instead just try to make you feel guilty or bad so that you'll give them the money, right?
	It's a priest thing, right?
	It's a priest skill.
	It's a Catholic skill, which is, I will make you feel bad until you give me money.
	And you are a bad person for not wanting to give me this money.
	Like, I know I ask for donations.
	I can hear all this in my head.
	Like, I know I ask for donations.
	It might provide a lot of value.
	I think it's reciprocal.
	And I've never told anyone they're a bad person for not donating.
	I try to give as many options for people who don't have money to donate to donate time or energy, sharing the videos or whatever instead.
	Right.
	I mean, yeah.
	I mean, I've heard you...
	I personally do donate, but I'm in a position financially where I can do that.
	But I've heard you say before, if you're unable to financially, there's other means that you can help the show grow.
	And I think it's I think it's beneficial to people if they think that I'm able to spread reason and peaceful parenting and virtue and critical thinking in a way that's positive and engaging for people, then we're all better off if the world gets more philosophical.
	I don't want to equate that with, you know, you're a bad person if you don't give me the unearned, right?
	I mean, I think I earn donations.
	I think I earn more donations than I get, but, you know, I'm waiting for the world to catch up.
	But I think that...
	And, of course, if somebody says to me, I don't want to donate to you, it's like, okay, well, don't donate to me.
	What am I going to do?
	Come to your house and take your chickens?
	No.
	So...
	This kind of emotional integrity of, you know, you're telling me to go and cut mom's grass.
	I don't feel like it.
	I don't want to.
	Ah, but you owe it to her.
	You should.
	It's bad to not want to.
	And it's like, now I feel even less like doing it.
	Like, it's just being honest about it, right?
	Because if somebody were to say to you, Matthew, that's really interesting to me.
	Like, I wonder why you don't feel like it.
	I'd like to come over, open-minded, open-hearted.
	I just want to know.
	You're not bad for not wanting it.
	You feel what you feel, but I want to make sure I know why you feel what you feel.
	Not with the goal of changing it, but just the way to see it for what it is.
	I don't think you'd say no to that kind of conversation, right?
	No, not at all.
	And what a great conversation and what a productive and amazing conversation that could be.
	And how much energy do families pour into not having those conversations?
	It's tragic, right?
	Right.
	But that integrity, the only opposition to manipulation is, well, A, philosophy, but B, more importantly, because it's hard to give a philosophical answer as to why you don't want to mow your mom's lawn, but just that, no, I don't, sorry, I don't feel like it.
	I don't feel like it, and I'm not sure exactly why I don't feel like it, but I have to be true to myself.
	Right, and I think one of the things, too, me and my mother have, I guess, made a lot of progress in the last year or so with these kind of issues, but one of the things that comes with my grandmother, though, is she will try to back you into making promises that you can't deliver on, and it's very frustrating to even try to explain to her that you cannot...
	Do this.
	And she's still trying to, you know, guilt trip you into making commitments that just can't be made and kept, you know?
	Yeah.
	Yeah, no, I get that too.
	And I just have to say, I'm sorry, I can't make those commitments.
	I can't.
	I've got a business to run.
	I've got huge amounts of time and energy in building this up.
	This is the foundation for my future.
	It's the foundation for my family to be.
	It's the foundation for my retirement eventually.
	Like, this is a big deal for me, and I really need to focus on that.
	And I can't make commitments like the ones you're asking me to.
	I wouldn't want to make a commitment, again, that comes down to integrity.
	I would not like to make a commitment that I did not feel I could fulfill.
	I'll say this to my daughter, you know, Dad, will you promise?
	I can't.
	I can't.
	I can't make a promise about something where there's some aspect of it that's outside of my control.
	And some things I can't promise, but some things I can't.
	I need to know.
	I need her to know, as I need everyone to know, that when I make a commitment, that's my commitment.
	And I really hate having to pull back on a commitment, so I can't.
	Like, I have to say no.
	It doesn't mean I can't do it.
	It just means I can't commit to do it.
	You can't be hooked in.
	Exactly, exactly.
	And, you know, well, you should commit.
	It's like, well, you know, I assume you don't want me to lie to you, right?
	I mean, who's going to say, yes, lie to me, right?
	So I have to say, well, I don't want to lie to you.
	And I genuinely believe that I can't make this commitment in good faith and be sure I'm going to keep it.
	So I'm not going to because I wouldn't want to lie to you and tell you I could do something I might not be able to do.
	Right.
	Right.
	And, I mean, do you think, like, with my grandmother, with, I guess, kind of the image that she tries to portray her as is kind of like what you've talked about before and what, you know, I guess kind of soft bigotry of low expectations of saying, you know, oh, your mother is doing everything that she can just to get by and this and that and, you know...
	Well, it's to appeal to your pity and to appeal to your white knighting.
	And it's very hard.
	It's very hard for a man to say no to a woman in need.
	We're just not programmed to do that.
	In fact, we're programmed to do quite the opposite, which is to, you know, spray male disposability resources at all women in need, right?
	Obamacare!
	Anyway, I mean, it's just the way that we're wired.
	And Women know this, and some women know that this is the way that men are wired.
	Literally, I believe it's wired, like it's just the way the male brain works.
	And some women know that, and they say, oh, well, you know, I know that men are incredibly susceptible to this, so I'm not going to do it, because that would be manipulative and controlling, right?
	Right.
	Right?
	Like, I mean, if you know that somebody, well, I guess you do, right?
	If you know somebody's an addict, then you try and keep them away from environments or situations that will trigger their addiction, right?
	I mean, if you know that somebody just came back from Iraq, you don't take them to go see Saving Private Ryan, right?
	Right.
	So you say, ah, I know that there's this sensitivity, so I'm going to make sure that I don't provoke it or trip it or use it, right?
	Right.
	There are these old things like, ah, the player, I found a hot girl with daddy issues, so I'm going to play this game, play this card, right?
	Right.
	And you can do that.
	It's not evil because you're not initiating the use of force, but it's a serious douchebag move to exploit people's vulnerabilities for your own gain is pretty horrible, right?
	Right.
	Right.
	You know, like if you, I don't know, if you're selling a diet pill and you say to every woman who walks by, you're fat.
	You really need this pill.
	That's pretty nasty, right?
	Right.
	I mean, you're not initiating force, but, you know, you're using, you're playing on someone's emotions to get what you want.
	Yeah, you're preying on vulnerabilities to get what you want.
	It's very manipulative.
	It's very dishonest.
	And it's pretty horrible.
	And so almost every woman on the planet knows that men have a very tough time saying no to a direct appeal from a woman.
	And I remember there was this girl in my junior high school.
	And she borrowed a pen from me.
	She sat right behind me sometimes.
	She borrowed a pen from me.
	This is back in the day when it was a big deal for me to have a pen because we were broke as hell, right?
	And she asked me for a pen.
	To say, can I borrow a pen, right?
	And I shouldn't laugh.
	Anyway, she uses the pen and I turn around and say, I need the pen back, right?
	And she's like, actually, can I just keep it?
	And what do you think I said?
	Yeah.
	Of course.
	Of course.
	Yeah.
	Would you like a little penis with that pen?
	Come on!
	It's only one letter away.
	I'll even bring the I. It'll be my penis.
	Anyway, so...
	What am I going to say?
	No, I really need that pen.
	Like, I couldn't even imagine what a ludicrous thing that would be to say.
	Like, it was not even...
	It crossed my mind, but it was impossible to think of actually saying, no, give me my pen back.
	Right?
	And she knew that, and she knew she was going to get a free pen, and...
	Right?
	I mean...
	Now, not every woman would do that, or girl, right?
	So other girls would say, you know, I've got to give this pen back, because I know for sure if I ask this guy...
	For his pen, he's going to give it to me no matter what, right?
	And given his clothes, he's got no money, right?
	So it's the level of empathy.
	It's a pretty good measure of who's worth spending time with.
	You know, when they see a vulnerable button that gets resources out of you, then...
	If they keep pushing that button, it's like, get the hell away from them, right?
	Because you're just a resource dispenser for them.
	Good utility.
	Good mail utility.
	It's like there was an experiment that was done recently where a psychologist, I think it was a psychologist, he set up a camera and he rigged a vending machine.
	With a big number saying, if there are any problems with the vending machine, call this number.
	The number went to his cell phone.
	And he set it up so that you'd put a buck in and your bag of chips or whatever would fall down and your buck would be returned to you.
	And if you tried to put the buck back in, it would just keep coming back to you, right?
	So basically, you were getting stuff for free.
	Right.
	Hundreds of people went through this scenario.
	How many of them phoned the number to say, I think there's a problem with the machine.
	It's giving away all this stuff for free.
	Nobody.
	Yes, that is entirely correct.
	Zero people.
	This is how much work we've got to do in the realm of philosophy.
	There was zero people who called the number.
	Now, people would keep taking stuff.
	Now, a lot of people would peek out after like five or six.
	They'd, you know, sort of slink off or whatever.
	A lot of people would say, hey man, They'd go get their friends.
	Hey man, free stuff!
	You know, free stuff in the vending machine.
	Come here.
	Use this.
	I don't know if a different coin will work, but use this coin you'll get.
	They cleaned the shit out of this stuff.
	Yeah, I can imagine.
	The coin is the vagina.
	I think you get the analogy.
	And this is the complete lack of internal conscience that people have.
	Oh, free resources.
	Great!
	Right?
	I mean, hey, good, you know.
	Let me ask you, too.
	Why do you think that she has such a dislike?
	She being who?
	Well, I guess you could say my mother or my grandmother.
	Why do you think that they have such a dislike for my dad?
	I mean, I know he can be, in a lot of ways, arrogant.
	But that's not really the reasons they give for not liking him, though.
	He's successful, right?
	Yeah, I mean, he's, like, multi-millionaire, yeah.
	Well, so, oops, right?
	Right, I mean, yeah, that makes sense.
	But, I mean, even before then, you know, my grandmother, she...
	You know, at the time he was probably making, I guess, you know, he was probably making $30,000 or something like that a year.
	No, but he had the potential.
	And you don't get to be a multimillionaire without any assertiveness whatsoever, right?
	Right.
	So they were probably concerned that he might end up making you, Mr.
	Free Resource vending machine, not put out, right?
	Right.
	So if you're around your dad, he might say, you know, have a spine.
	Just say no.
	Right.
	And, you know, the thing that she, my grandmother will talk about in terms of, like, him falling behind on child support and that kind of thing, I've tried to explain to her that back then that was, I mean, because he was paying, I think, like $500 a month.
	And, you know, this was back in the, you know, Early 90s, mid-90s, that sort of thing.
	And I tried to explain to her back then that was, you know, I mean, 500 bucks back then was quite a lot of money, you know, per month.
	For someone who is, you know, is single, that kind of thing, that's quite a lot of money, you know.
	And, you know, she says, oh, well, someone who works at McDonald's, you know, pays more money than that in child support, you know, which isn't exactly true, but...
	But she would give all these reasons as to why he's not a suitable father and that sort of thing.
	So she bullshits a lot, right?
	She just makes stuff up.
	Oh, people at McDonald's pay more.
	It's like, come on.
	So that bullshit stuff is not great.
	And what's your relationship like with your biological father?
	Do you guys have a relationship?
	What's my relationship with him?
	Yeah.
	I probably see him maybe once every month or two months or so.
	He got out, right?
	He got away from your mom who was addicted to pills and he got away from your grandmother who's like a nag and a control freak, right?
	Right.
	I mean, actually, it was my mother that divorced him, but I mean, yeah.
	And why did she divorce him?
	To be honest with you, I don't really know.
	Yeah, you should find out.
	Maybe she was trading up to some other guy.
	She's given some reasons why, but I mean, I don't really know.
	I mean, to my knowledge, he wasn't abusive, and to my knowledge, there was no infidelity or anything.
	Yeah, listen, I mean, I would guess, I don't know for sure, obviously, Matthew, but my guess would be this.
	I don't think that your biological dad is hanging out with people like your grandmother.
	I mean, can you explain that?
	Well, he's a very successful guy, right?
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	And...
	If you're a very successful guy, you get that way by having value, being assertive, and going out and conquering the world, at least the world that you have, right?
	And he's got good social skills because you can't be successful without having at least some social skills.
	He knows how to stand up for himself, otherwise somebody else would have taken those millions of dollars and would have exploited him, right?
	So he's got some skills that if he transfers those skills to you, will make you less compliant, will make you less convenient to the women who want to take stuff from you.
	Right.
	Yeah.
	So maybe you should ask your dad for a little bit of help here and say, Dad, give your son a hand here.
	I feel like I'm stuck in a bit of an underworld.
	Right?
	I mean...
	Right.
	You're out, and I'm not.
	And again, I'm not saying out like you can't ever see these people again.
	What the hell do I know, right?
	But what I'm saying is that your grandmother recognizes him as negative to her self-interest.
	I don't think she cares about you, otherwise she wouldn't be trying to turn you.
	And remember, that's the very first thing we talked about.
	So your grandmother recognizes your biological father as negative to her self-interest, as hostile to her self-interest in some manner.
	Right, exactly.
	So automatically, to me, he's a guy you should be talking to more and getting advice from.
	Right.
	You know, and I remember one time that, it's kind of funny, I I can't remember exactly what it was, but my grandmother had said something.
	This was a few years ago.
	My grandmother had said something, and I guess I kind of contradicted her or whatever.
	And so she got angry or whatever.
	And we happened to be in the car, and my grandfather was driving.
	And so my grandfather says, well, you know, whenever Granny says something, just let it be that.
	That was his response to it.
	And is your grandfather a multimillionaire?
	Did he achieve great success in his life?
	I mean, they've got quite a bit of money.
	But, I mean, it's just he'd never necessarily made a lot of money.
	He worked for...
	He was an auto worker.
	I mean, he worked for a Ford Motor Company in Atlanta.
	Oh, so he got the union to get his money for him, right?
	To some degree, yeah.
	But I mean, he did a good job of...
	So he was a good company man, but he was not...
	I guess your biological dad's more of an entrepreneur and all that, so...
	Yeah, exactly.
	Yeah, so...
	Yeah, I mean, it sounds to me like you're a lucky guy to have a biological dad who's very successful, who's in your life and so on.
	I'd spend a little bit more time with him and see what he's got to say and try and get some facts about the marriage and what happened.
	And yeah, anyone that your grandmother considers a dangerous influence, you might want to close orbit a little bit on.
	Right, exactly.
	All right.
	Listen, man, I got to finish up the show because it's been almost four hours.
	So keep us posted.
	It's always love to hear what happens.
	A real treat and a real pleasure to chat with you.
	Was the conversation helpful or useful to you at all?
	Oh, yeah, absolutely.
	I really appreciate your time.
	Okay, good.
	I always like to check.
	So, yeah, thanks everyone.
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	Have yourselves a great night.
	We will talk to you...
	Wait, what day is it?
	We'll talk to you Saturday.
	All right.
	Thanks, everyone.

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