3096 Sexual Betrayal and Revenge! - Call In Show - October 7th, 2015
Question 1: [1:35] - At what point is a relationship irreparable and what are the warning signs to indicate so? Are things like cheating, deceit, abandonment, shaming, and manipulation deal breakers? I did all of these to my ex-husband and I feel so much regret over everything I put him through. My goal is to understand if my relationship with my ex-husband was and is now irreparable romantic-wise. I think it was repairable, but I didn't focus on him and avoided contact and was very reactive. I continued fantasizing about other guys and trying to get closer to them through talking and flirting. After stopping that behavior, not the fantasies, but acting on them, I began to be able to feel the love I had for my husband more. It makes me think of how Stefan says love is an involuntary response to virtue, but only if you're virtuous.Question 2: [1:41:03] - I'm an economics graduate currently managing a personal finance company. I have several female employees that are taking every attempt of mine to coach and improve their production personally, as if I am insulting them. I have also been lenient with them regarding their mistakes, dress code, and family responsibilities due to our success, as a reward for good service. But here lately, their attitudes have changed drastically. I can tell that they dread coming to work, and do not enjoy me being their manager. Having noticed this, I have tried everything I can think of to improve their attitudes; including branch contests, buying lunches, positive feedback when they do something good, not having to work overtime, etc. and nothing has helped. What am I doing wrong?Question 3: [2:16:43] - Recent news regarding Mars has made the possibility of extraterrestrial life, sentient or microbial, a more likely reality. How far should the right to life extend for forms of alien life?Question 4: [2:27:49] - Will an objective methodology resolve disputes that are holding back world peace?
Hi everybody, it's Stefan Mullen from Free Domain Radio.
Hope you're doing well.
So the call-in show that we had, a great call-in show, had a long chat with a woman who was wracked with guilt about cheating on her now ex-husband and the problems in their relationship.
How do you know when a relationship is done?
What can you do to fix it if you're feeling toxic levels of guilt for having done wrong to someone?
It's a great conversation.
I appreciate her honesty and openness in this area, so I hope you'll check that out.
Number two is a manager at a financial company who's having trouble managing two female employees.
And we talk about the degree to which boys and girls grow up with differing levels of criticism, the ability to handle criticism, and provide some, I think, pretty good advice on how to heal and deal with that.
Third caller was concerned or curious about the degree to which extraterrestrial life, A, could have or should have rights.
And B, should we, if we go to Mars and find that there's life on Mars, should we take steps and how many steps should we take to protect the life on Mars?
The fourth caller, what is an objective methodology that will help to resolve world disputes?
And we talk about diversity and multiculturalism and the degree to which incompatible views can be made compatible through reason and the degree to which they're just going to end up butting heads, of course, given the situation around the world and in Europe.
A pretty relevant topic and very interesting questions, some very practical, some very theoretical.
Without further ado, here is The Calling Show.
Alright, well up first is Michelle.
She wrote in and said, I think it was repairable,
but I didn't focus on him and avoided contact and was very reactive.
I continued fantasizing about other guys and trying to get close to them through talking and flirting.
After stopping that behavior, not the fantasies, but stopping acting on them, I began to feel the love I had for my husband more.
It makes me think of how Stefan says, love is an involuntary response to virtue, but only if you're virtuous.
That's from Michelle.
Well, hi Michelle, how are you doing?
Hey Stefan, I'm doing good.
I don't know if you remember me, but I called in, it was for like respecter elders kind of calls like a year ago.
I do, I do, I do.
I'm going to assume that your husband is not older than you, otherwise this behavior might fall into that category.
No, he's younger actually, or he was.
I mean, he's my ex now.
How long have you...
So give me the brief timeline of when you met.
And the ages and stuff.
Yeah.
Well, you don't have to give me ages.
I've got your picture, but...
Oh, okay.
Just, you know, when you met and how long you dated and how long you were married and what happened.
Sure.
Okay.
We met when we were in ninth grade together.
We were friends for...
A year on and off, and then we started dating after we became best friends at the time.
So that was 2009 when we got together, and then 2012 is when we got married, end of 2012.
And then we initiated the divorce two months ago.
I hate how I can't just say we got divorced, but we initiated it.
Yeah, it's a long process, right?
Yeah.
Now, when you were...
So how long were you dating before you got engaged?
So 2009 to 2012, three years.
Okay, and were you faithful to him during the dating period?
No.
Was it a monogamous relationship, ostensibly?
I mean, had you guys agreed to keep it open loosey-goosey, or was it mostly...
No, it was monotonous.
Sorry, monogamous.
I know.
For some people, those two words are the same.
I would like a monotony wood table, please.
So you were unfaithful to him, and did he know that you were unfaithful to him before you got married?
Yes.
It was just some background.
We got together, and then I think...
A year, a year into our relationship, I had made out with his two best friends.
So that was the cheating.
I'm sorry, I just lost my earphone for a sec there.
Not necessarily in shock, just from stretching.
So can you just give go of that last bit again?
Yeah, so we were together for like a year.
We had like a long-distance relationship for like a year, and then he came back to the same school.
And so after that, I had made out with his best friend, and then I think like two months later I made out with another best friend of his, but he knew about those.
And the first one Like, we had broken up for a week, but then we got back together, and it was like, okay, we're going to work on this.
We're going to be, like, together no matter what, so let's work on it, and yeah.
That was when, yeah.
Okay, just in a bit of a bro-code moment here.
Guys, if your best friend is willing to make out with your fiancé or your girlfriend, He may not be the very top tier of best friends that you have.
Like, if this is the best you can do, hey, your girlfriend wants to kiss me.
I'm all over that.
But...
Yeah.
Yeah.
So that's not great.
So he wasn't surrounded by the very best quality or highest quality people at the time either, right?
No.
Right.
Right.
And what was your level of sexual attraction to him...
Through this period that you were flirting with other men?
I was attracted to him sexually.
He's a very attractive person physically, looks-wise.
And I don't mean to distinguish he's a very good person overall.
It was just at the time I felt some tension with him.
And I didn't.
Yeah.
Sorry.
What's going on?
Are you okay?
No, I'm fine.
I'm sorry.
I need a little robot drone forehead massage or like temple massager and so on.
And look, I appreciate that you say that he's a good person.
But good people don't tend to marry women who make out with their best friends.
Huh.
Okay.
Okay.
So, let's just say he's got some issues, right?
And to be fair, because I can hear the collective windstorm of frustrated male rage rolling across the free-domain radio landscape as we speak.
It's like a storm on Mars that pushes over a spaceship.
And, you know, for those who don't know, Michelle, we don't have to go into the details if you don't want to, but she has an adverse childhood experience score of 10.
That would be two fives.
That's the maximum bad childhood you can have and not be dead.
So I just really wanted to be clear about that coming up front, that there really wasn't anything bad that could have happened to you as a kid that didn't happen.
Is that fair to say?
Yeah.
I mean...
Well, no.
I mean, there's...
I didn't experience, like, everything that could go wrong, but...
Well, it's true.
Asteroids didn't slam into the house, but those aren't actually captured in the adversarial experience.
Yeah, I wasn't, like, strapped down and tortured, but the main thing, I was really neglected, and when there was contact, I was really negative and shaming, so...
I've been processing that in therapy for the past year.
Just the parts of myself that are very enveloped in shame.
Right.
Now, I don't obviously want to probe about anything you're not comfortable talking about.
The decision is yours to make.
Oh, I'm fine.
Yeah, given that we're talking about sexual dysfunction to some degree or lack of boundaries in adult relationships, I wonder if you could tell me a little bit about sexual dysfunctions that occurred in your childhood.
Yeah, definitely.
Just so you know, I'm open to talking about it.
Part of this is to heal and to process and to grow and learn, so I don't mind being open.
But in terms of sexual dysfunction, just a brief summary.
My earliest memories when I was a kid, I remember being shown by the adults in my family a really violent, horrible, rape movie.
Of a woman just being raped and it was very graphic and I was like three or five I've also I remember being in the same bed as my mom and my dad and seeing them have sex It's just the top part, but still it gave me like the imagination also my cousin who is two years older than me.
She's a girl She had Like, we started touching me and stuff, and so we did that as kids for, like, a couple years, when I was, like, seven.
And then probably the most traumatic thing though was when I, right before seventh grade, and I kind of attribute, I'm not 100% sure, but attribute this incident leading to like severe depression that I had like afterwards, starting in seventh grade.
But my uncle had touched me prior to this.
He touched my leg.
But for this day, two incidents.
One, he had come down to my room in the morning and I was sleeping.
He just started fondling my breast, kissing my neck.
And I remember running away.
My grandma was home.
Actually, I honestly don't remember now, actually.
But there was another incident where he was picking up his son who we were babysitting.
He's four years older, younger than me, so my little cousin.
When he was saying goodbye, he put his mouth on mine and he sucked all the spit out.
And I was appalled and outraged and I said, what are you doing?
And he just gave me this look like I didn't do anything, is what he said in Chinese.
And that was traumatic because I remember telling my mom that night, like crying to her and asking if she could call the cops and told her what happened.
And her response was, why do you always do that?
And she was literally screaming like, why do you want to call the cops?
Why do you always want to call the cops?
And she says always because I had called the cops once and my brother.
Yeah, so those are the sexual, the most prominent.
Wow, and I'm sorry to hear her.
About all of that.
I mean, it wasn't anywhere in the ballpark, but, you know, for those who...
I stayed at a friend's place when I was like five or six, and the kids were upstairs and they watched a...
A vampire movie.
And I still remember just how graphic it was.
This was on a little black and white television and all that.
I still remember them pounding the stake into the vampire's heart and the vampire spewing up this sort of gray, viscous blood and stuff.
And I can't imagine seeing graphic sexual rape at that age.
I mean, I can't even watch that stuff as an adult, let alone as a little kid.
So I just am really sorry about...
Yeah, thanks.
That definitely stuck in my mind.
It's always been kind of just like, whoa, what is that weird memory that I have?
But yeah, it's shocking.
And your ex-husband's childhood?
Dare I poke a stick in that?
I'm sure a hornet's nest.
Right.
It's a totally different family dynamic.
But are you wondering specifically about the sexual, any sexual stuff?
Well, not necessarily, because he would be on the receiving end of sexual dysfunction coming out of your life.
I'm just curious about his childhood as a whole.
Okay.
Well, I totally understand that I'm not...
I may not say everything about it, not because I don't want to, but not just because it's hard to summarize a childhood.
But the main things I noticed was, well, what he told me was for the first five or six years of his life, his mom Um, stayed at home and was with him a lot.
She was very touching and affectionate, um, really like building and like validating, you know, talking very different than from what I'd had.
But then, um, him, uh, his mom and his dad got divorced.
Um, and so they were separated and that's kind of when, uh, I'm sorry.
How old was he when that happened?
Seven, I believe seven or eight.
Okay.
Yeah.
And They got separated, and he's the oldest child.
He has two younger brothers, and apparently he was in the middle of them before they were getting divorced.
And he's kind of...
He's kind of had always been on one side or the other, unable to see both...
You know, for what they were, but kind of like either one's good or one's bad.
And I think that was influenced because his parents would do that to him.
You know, pull him aside and say, your mom's like this, or pull him aside and say, your dad's like this.
And kind of pin him against the other parent.
And he was also...
Like, his dad had been really...
Abusive, sometimes partly physically, but the main thing was he would tell me before him and his mom got divorced, his dad would lock him in a room with him, just him and his dad, and have long conversations about Mormonism and other things, trying to get my ex to accept it.
And if my ex didn't want to, his dad would No matter what, not let him go or threaten to take his stuff.
So it was very psychologically abusing, I think.
Yeah.
And really sophisticated, too, compared to what I had.
It was more like obviously dysfunctional, you know, the violence and the stuff.
On his side, it was very hidden because they could present to others that they're fine and they're very smart and successful.
But with him, it was very controlling.
And, um, dominating, uh, but in an intellectual way, if that makes sense.
It does.
Yeah, it does.
Yeah.
Do you know, I'm just asking an obvious question based upon your initial question.
Do you know if Michelle, his parents had any affairs that led to the breakup or, or was that involved in it at all?
Oh, um, um, I don't think his mom ever had an affair, but I remember recalling something about her wanting to talk to other men, but I'm not sure.
I'm not sure.
And they may not have revealed it.
We don't want to imagine stuff to fulfill a thesis, but it's possible.
Yeah, I don't know.
And then, so yeah, he had a bit of a claustrophobic, encase you with Jesus kind of dad.
And then, what happened then as he got older in his childhood with this fractious family situation?
With him, I think, for one, I think they had, so after his parents got divorced, and here's where it gets fuzzy, so I might be Like, mixing years up.
But there was one point where his mom, and this was after they were separated, put him on depression medication for, I think he was 14 when he was put on depression medication.
And his lifestyle was kind of moving from school to school, so he'd moved from Like moved through three or four different schools by the time I met him in high school.
And actually the reason we had a long-term relationship is because his dad had, he was kicked out of his house.
So he had to move really far away to live with actually the best friend I had first cheated on him with.
Wait, sorry, your boyfriend when he was in high school was kicked out of the house?
Yeah, he was kicked out of both of his parents' house.
Oh, both?
So he was kicked out of his mom's, went to live with his dad, and then his dad kicked him out too?
No, he was at his mom's, and then both his mom and his dad kicked him out of their houses together because...
His younger brother, who has very slight VCFS, they got into it, and he's like two years younger than us.
VCFS, Velocardiofacial Syndrome.
I believe it's like a form of Down syndrome, but he had it very mild.
So that was...
And he's like two years younger, but they got into a fight, or not really a fight, like an argument, but my ex-husband at the time had hit him, like punched him, and then that's what started it.
And so he was kicked out and forced to go live really like an hour away with his friend.
And it's his friend that that friend was the best friend I first cheated on him with, made out with.
So.
Yeah.
And you said that you were friends with him before you got together as boyfriend girlfriend.
Yeah, that's right.
We were friends for a while, um, before we started dating and I knew a little bit about his family situation.
He wasn't kicked out yet.
He was kicked out after we started dating, um, like three months after we started dating.
So, yeah.
Right.
Right.
Um, and you said that he was very physically attractive?
Yeah, it was, except, um, He is much larger.
He was a little fatter than me.
He has a very gorgeous face, but I wasn't attracted to his body.
Sometimes I was, but it was a lot bigger than mine.
Wait, but I mean, forgive me for the stereotype, but I don't associate being overweight with Chinese, particularly Chinese women.
Were you overweight as a teenager?
No, I've always been really thin.
Yeah.
Chinese people, they can't gain weight.
You can fire buckets of lard down their gullet.
Just oozes out their armpits or something.
There's some genetic thing where it's just as hard for Chinese people to gain weight.
I feel like when I'm at 30, I'll just blow up when my metabolism pops.
No, that doesn't happen either.
Don't worry.
Well, good.
Genetically, you're shielded as far as I understand it, right?
Okay.
And who initiated the romance between you?
It was me.
I pursued him.
I mean, he was, I was the first one to, like, we were friends and we were talking and, you know, becoming closer as best friends.
And I was the one who first started saying, I really like you.
And he was like, you know, I really care about you too.
And I like you, but I want to date these other girls before you, these two other girls.
And I still want to be friends with you because I know if we get together, we're just going to be together forever.
Wait a minute.
Wait a minute.
You got friend zoned?
I did.
You did?
You were like kept on deck?
The guy is like, wow, that's kind of studly.
So he's like, okay, you'll be the main course, but I'm going to go get a couple of what?
Wasp appetizers?
A little bee salad?
Yeah.
I remember my friends at the time being like, really?
Like, that's kind of shitty.
And I was like, nah, I get it.
What do you get?
Like, oh, I thought I got his reasoning.
Like, oh, he actually really likes me.
He cares about me more than those girls.
And it makes sense.
We're super young and in high school.
So it makes sense that if we got together, we'd be together forever.
So I get that he wants to date these two other girls first.
Was he a virgin before he went to go and date these two other girls?
Yeah, we were each other's first.
So...
Wait, wait, hang on, hang on, hang on.
Oh, sorry.
So, he went to go and date these two other girls, but he didn't have sex with them.
He had sex then with you afterwards.
After we started dating is when we had sex.
And he was a virgin before you guys started dating, is that right?
Yeah, that's right.
Although, like the oral, or I mean the actual virgin stuff, he did some sexual stuff, but Yeah, you Clintoned it up.
I understand.
That's been the norm ever since those dark days in the 90s.
Okay.
Yeah, I read that.
It's not sex.
The president said so.
Oh, that's weird.
Yeah.
And all the feminists agree with him.
All right.
So, I mean, it's interesting that he said he basically wanted to go and date to Other girls.
And then you ended up cheating on him with two boys.
Yeah.
Well, so there was those two guys, right?
But we stayed together.
And then I still liked other guys.
And there were two more incidents after that.
Another time, I didn't cheat on him, but I went to this guy's house every night.
And had slept in the same bed.
We didn't do anything, but that's...
We did.
We really didn't.
No, no, no.
I'm fine that you didn't do anything like in terms of what could get you pregnant or make your hair look funny.
But what I'm saying is that if you're going over to it, like if you're married or you're dating a guy and you're in a monogamous relationship, you're hanging around with another guy and just...
sleeping in his bed.
Then what you're having is you're having proximity sex, which is sex that you can fantasize about later, sex you can masturbate to.
It's proximity sex.
Yeah, no, I totally agree.
Is that a fair way to put it?
Yeah, no, I completely agree.
I like this person too.
So totally legitimate that he found it wrong.
And I find it wrong.
I was just being clear.
Well, we'll get into the moralizing later.
I think you get all of that, so I don't want to get into the naughty girl stuff, right?
So we'll talk about that in a bit, and I don't think it's anything that would be too surprising for you.
And so when your then-boyfriend found out that you had Made out with his friends.
What happened from there?
Okay, so the first best friend that I had made out with, what happened was he actually didn't know about it.
I didn't tell him for a long time.
I didn't tell him for six months.
Then I had made out with His second best friend, he only had two at the time, so his second best friend, and his second best friend had told my...
Well, can we call him Bob?
Because, you know, the guy, these guys and all that.
Yeah.
You're kind of like a combine harvester on a penis farm at this point, right?
So it's kind of hard to...
Let's just call him Bob, okay?
Sure.
All right.
So the best friend, did he tell Bob that he made out with you?
Yeah.
Okay.
And what happened then?
Then my ex called me and he was like, hey, I heard something happened with Bob.
Can you tell me about it?
And stuff like that.
Or no, actually, sorry.
Before that, he was trying to get me to just admit it by just saying, is there anything you want to tell me?
And I wouldn't tell him.
So then eventually he revealed that his best friend told him that I made out with Bob.
And so he, so during that conversation, I was like super defensive and I was like, whatever, stop talking about it.
It was nothing.
Leave it alone.
And I was very mean, just trying to shut him down.
You acted as the hurt party here, right?
Like, so you'd made out with his best friend and you'd lied to him about it when he asked you more directly.
But then when he said, I have proof, you got angry at him as if you were the wounded party.
Is that right?
Yep, exactly.
Okay.
Okay.
Yeah.
And how did he respond to that?
Oh.
You getting aggressive when caught cheating on him?
Oh, angry and...
Not angry enough, but alright.
You mean like angry enough to leave, I see.
But he was definitely, yeah, but he was definitely angry and, you know, outraged that I would act that way.
And he was open about that and honest, like, hey, this is ridiculous that you are, you know, telling me.
He's always talked me through it.
Like, even though he stayed, he's always been upfront with how he feels about me.
And so...
Wait, wait, hang on.
Oh, sorry.
He stays and he's upfront about how he feels about you.
But what does that mean?
What does he feel about you?
Oh, that he feels a lot of resent towards me, but he still cares about me and wants it to work out.
But he feels a lot of resent and doesn't trust me.
And it's going to take a long time to rebuild trust.
That's kind of what I mean.
Like he was upfront with what his position was.
And what did you do to attempt to rebuild trust after you got angry at him for catching you cheating on him?
I didn't do it.
I just wanted to avoid it.
I'm guessing not if you were angry, right?
Yeah, no, I didn't.
And at the end of that same phone call, he said, well, I'm really angry.
Is it okay if I slap you?
What?
Yeah, so I was like, what?
Yeah, he was like, well, I'm just really angry.
I don't know how to handle, like, you cheating on me with my best friend.
Like, how, you know, and so I had actually driven over there that night, and I went into the door, and he slapped me immediately across my face.
Or, no, wait, he asked one more time if it's okay, and I said yes, and then he slapped me.
And then I was like, Oh my god, I can't believe you slapped me.
So even though I said he could, I didn't like that he did.
You guys are sort of into a bit of the drama here, right?
It was, yeah.
I mean, that's a lot of shocked and appalled.
I mean, that's like, I don't mean to diminish it, because obviously it's very painful and all that, but it's kind of soapy, like soap opera-y.
Like, I want to slap you.
Is it alright if I slap you?
Yes.
Whack!
I can't believe you slapped!
Like, you know what I mean?
Like, it's...
It arises, obviously, out of, you know, childhood trauma and history of lack of connection and so on.
Yeah.
But...
Yeah.
That...
Yeah.
No, I agree.
It was very emotional and, like, both of us were, like...
Just yelling and expressing our emotions, like, not in a vulnerable way, kind of attacking.
But after he slapped me, he said, oh my god, I don't know what to do.
I'm sorry for doing that.
And the rest of the night was really bad because I was like, okay, just leave.
You shouldn't be with me.
And then he was like, I don't know what to do.
And at one point, he had kind of thrown himself down the stairs.
He kind of like...
He threw himself down the stairs.
Not that he, like...
I don't know how to explain it.
Like, he kind of rolled down the stairs a little.
It doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter.
Because there's no way you can explain it that gets my jaw off the floor.
Sorry.
So, he threw himself down the stairs.
So, he hit you.
You got outraged.
You're screaming at each other, which is not the same as expressing your emotions.
He's throwing himself down the stairs.
And this is before you get married.
Yep.
Okay.
Okay.
Did you end up having, like, hot makeup sex?
Is that, like, did this all lead up, like, this grim, horrible foreplay?
I mean, or did you, like, what happened at the end of this night?
At the end of this night, oh, man.
I think we decided, like, okay, we need to take a break.
And so, like, I just went home.
I'm sorry, it's kind of fuzzy.
No, that's all right.
So it's a while ago, right?
I get it.
Yeah, but...
Yeah, but we took a break for a week, but I remember during that week he would call, or I would call and be like, hey, I'm sorry, and we still hung out.
You took a break for a week by calling each other?
Oh, sorry.
I'm so sorry.
I mean, it wasn't like a break.
We weren't saying, let's take a break.
It was like, let's break up.
But then we kept hanging out as friends, and then during that time hanging out, we're like, Why not?
Let's get back together.
I think I'm going to just make one tiny request, Michelle, in this conversation.
Sure.
Can you please stop using the word friends for things that have nothing to do with friendship?
Right?
Hey, I just made out with your two best friends.
You slapped me.
I'm outraged.
You threw yourself down the stairs.
But we're going to hang out this week like friends.
No, that is not a friend situation.
Just as it's not a friend situation when you have your...
Guy pals making out with your girlfriend, right?
It's not friendship, right?
Codependence, neediness, fusion, whatever you want to call it, but that's not friendship.
Codependence, exactly.
No, I agree, and thanks.
Got to use the right words in philosophy.
I think so, yeah, because, you know, I have friends, and there's been a, you know, now that I think about it, a disturbing absence of throwing anybody downstairs, so, all right.
Yeah.
Okay, so then you're hanging out as friends, and then does lust take over?
I mean, what got you guys back together, right?
You went right to the edge of the volcano, and then you're like, yeah, let's go in.
Oh, it's like, I think it was like hanging out together.
It just felt good to be in each other's company, and we'd joke around.
So it wasn't like friends.
I totally agree with you.
It was just like...
We get along by making jokes and talking about stuff.
And that, of course, comes from having to have a weird kind of intimacy with very difficult family members growing up, right?
It's just something you're used to, right?
This horrible trauma happens, and then you just kind of click into nothing happened mode, which I assume comes out of the family.
Yeah, exactly.
Kind of just disengage from...
What has happened prior in that particular relationship with that person?
And because as a child you bonded with trauma, which is a very complicated and contradictory but necessary for survival thing to do, you bonded with trauma.
Trauma can't break a bond because you spent your childhood bonding with trauma.
And so trauma can't break that bond.
It actually just kind of makes it stronger in a horrible way, right?
Yeah, that's really interesting you pointed that out because I've kind of noticed within myself that, not anymore, because I've been working on it for the past year.
I've been in therapy and still working on it.
I don't think I'll ever get there.
But one thing I noticed within myself was I felt oddly just comforted when things were distressed, when there was a problem going on.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's weird.
Well, managing stress and trauma and dysfunction was your skill set as a child.
And we're drawn to that which we're good at, right?
Which is why I'm not a ballet dancer, but can I do this?
Because I'm better at this than ballet.
So we're drawn to that which we're good at.
And if your childhood is spent managing feelings of anxiety and horror and dissociation and aggression and Hostility and dependence and all of that, then if you let that go, you're letting go of something that you're really good at and trying to survive in a world with no skill sets that make sense to you.
In other words, functional relationships, right?
Yeah, exactly.
And it's interesting how, you know, you, like, I felt this way but wasn't consciously aware of it.
It's just interesting.
Like, we're all like that.
Yeah.
Okay, so how long after all of this did you guys get married?
So, okay, so 2009.
So we were together like a year, and then I cheated on him.
I was two best friends, and then 2012 is when we got, end of 2012 is when we got married.
Now, can I ask you a question?
Yeah.
You asked rhetorically.
All right.
I hate to put myself in Bob's shoes, Michelle, but let me ask you this.
So from 09 to 2012, you were with this guy.
Is it, and you've talked about three unfaithful incidents so far.
One with the best friend, one with the other best friend, and one with the guy you kind of did the cuddle non-sex stuff with.
Right, yep.
Was that the only three that occurred during those three or four year period?
Yeah, it was.
But I had liked...
So, actually happened with guys.
Yeah, those were the three before we got married.
And I cheated on him like two months after.
Not cheat on him, but the emotional cheating.
Like talking with a new guy two months after we got married.
Sorry, I lost my train of thought.
You said two months after you got married.
Oh, so the two best friends were before you got married, and the cuddle guy was after you got married.
No, before we got married, too.
Okay, so those are the three, and then you said there was something...
Two months after you got married?
Yeah, exactly.
Then there was a guy that I started talking to and hanging out with two months after we got married.
And did this guy know you were married?
Yeah, he did.
He knew.
I actually met him through my ex.
And it was a work co-worker.
And did he know that you were two months married?
Maybe not specifically, but...
But new marriage, right?
Yeah, I mean, actually, I'm not sure.
Probably.
I think he knew that we just got married.
Right.
So he's flirting away with a newlywed, right?
Yeah, but, well, I do want to say that I more initiated it.
Like, I talked to him before.
No, no, no, no, no.
Come on, come on.
I get that.
But what I'm pointing out is he's a scumbag.
Oh, yes.
Okay.
And you were flirting with him and so on.
And I don't know the world that you live in, right?
I mean, hey, he's my best friend, but I'm going to make out with his girlfriend.
Hey, he's in a relationship, but this woman is going to sleep in my bed and blah, blah, blah.
And hey, she's a newlywed, so I'm going to start flirting with her and hanging out with her a lot.
It's like, these guys are scumbags.
Oh, I see where you're going with it.
Yeah.
Go on.
Yeah, I was...
I liked all the...
So, the four guys...
Oh, yeah, I remember what my point was.
So, even though those are the four guys I did stuff with, like, actually was talking to them and stuff, there were other guys I just fantasized about.
Like, I saw them around and thought they just looked cool or something, and I fantasized about them.
But each of those guys, like, that I either fantasized about or did something with was like a scumbag.
Like...
I don't mean to just put that label, but very shallow.
I'm fine with that label.
Guys out there, do not flirt with newlyweds.
There's another guy involved.
It shows such a crippling insecurity and lack of empathy to you or to your husband, right?
And I've said this before.
That I picked up a woman in the gym.
We met for a coffee and it was a nice chat.
And halfway through coffee, she mentions her husband.
And I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa.
Hang on.
Hold the phone.
Hold the phone.
Back up a little.
I think we hit something on the road.
I want to circle back and see what we hit.
Husband now.
And she's like, yeah, you know, but we don't really have sex anymore.
I think I remember you telling the story.
Bye-bye.
No thanks.
No thanks.
Because you are married and I'm not, you know.
I know, but she should have just been open about it from the get-go.
Well, of course, yeah.
Of course, you wear a ring, you know.
And, you know, she's like, well, we could just have sex, you and I. And I'm like, no, because if I really like you, that makes the sex good, but that makes my heart broken because you're married.
And if I don't really like you, then the sex is going to be bad, and I've just, you know, helped you cheat on your husband.
Ew, yuck!
Yeah.
And, you know, plus, what if your husband is, like, six foot four?
Anyway, who knows, right?
So, just bad, bad scene all around.
Yeah.
Oh, just to be fair, because I can't help it, but, like, because I have, like, the issue of, like, all or none thinking, I think, from my childhood.
Like, someone's either all good or all bad or acts in, like...
You know, just an all-or-nothing fashion, but to be fair, I don't think the guys were just scumbags, or maybe we could talk about it more.
I'm sure they were, like, dysfunctional in some way.
Like, I'm sure they had, like, we are the way we are for reasons, to an extent.
No, I get that.
And obviously it's more complex than two syllables.
I get all of that.
Okay, sorry.
But I need you to see the glaring lack of quality in these guys.
Yeah.
And the reason that I need you to see that, Michelle, is if you see the scumbaggery that floats around these guys, it may not be their center, but it's the biggest planet orbiting them is the scumbaggery.
Then what will happen is it takes some of the sexiness out of it, some of the flirtiness out of it.
Like I'm sure, I mean, you're a very attractive woman.
I'm sure these guys were all good looking and, you know, charismatic and, you know, all of that.
But if you get the scumbaggery, then it's no longer like it takes the fun out of things.
It takes the flirtiness or the sexiness out of it to realize that these are just low-quality guys.
Very low-quality guys who lack empathy, who are kind of predatory, who are thinking with their dicks, if they're even thinking at all.
And they are allowing flirtation with a married woman.
And that is greedy, that is selfish, that is destructive.
That's what I mean.
Like, if you look beyond the pretty face or the ab or whatever it is, the abs or whatever, like, to recognize that these are low-rent people, that you're, you know, you're hurling your vagina at a canyon of male crap.
Yeah.
You know, this is a grand canyon filled with trashy penises that you're circling around.
It takes some of the sexiness and excitement out of it, if that makes sense?
No, definitely.
It definitely does.
Yeah.
I've been learning a lot lately.
I could go into that, but I remember my ex actually One of the conversations we had, we've had multiple about staying together and what we need to do to fix it and stuff like that.
But one conversation I remember was he was telling me, particularly that guy who we were co-workers with, the guy I hung out with two months after we got married, he was telling me, why do you like that guy?
He's so...
Like, all he talks about is sex with other girls and brags to us and, you know, me and his other friends that, okay, sorry, quote, friends.
Me and his other dudes, I guess, about girls that he had sex with, so why do you like this guy?
And I remember being like, Like, acknowledging all of that, acknowledging that he wasn't, you know, emotionally receptive like my ex was.
Didn't talk to me about my feelings like my ex was.
I recognized it was all attraction.
It was all, like...
This guy's just so hot, and I felt it.
It was more the emotions.
And one key thing, sorry, I'll stop, but one key thing that I remember is all of these guys, I felt the strongest urge to be with them when they would look into my eyes.
And, um, I think that I've said this to my ex too throughout our relationship.
I think that's attributed to, um, my, uh, memories that I had of my dad, uh, that were precious to me.
He was at least in comparison to my child, like it during my childhood, he was Kind of the most precious to me in that he was the only one who had carried me before.
Granted, he only carried me whenever we were going out somewhere.
He otherwise...
Sorry, what do you mean by carried you?
Picked me up, like held me in his arms.
But it was only in transit to a restaurant or something.
When we're in public, otherwise when we're at home, he ignored me or told me to throw away his beer can or something.
But I have like...
Like vivid memories of my dad like looking into my eyes and I felt this kind of love and attention that I think after my dad lived when I was like seven It was, like, devastating for me when he left, and I kind of always had crushes since then, and I don't know if partly it's normal, you know, as all people have crushes younger, but part of it was kind of like, I feel like looking for my dad again, someone to just look into my eyes and just take care of me.
So that's just something I've noticed is a common thing with all these guys is if they would just look at me physically into my eyes, I felt this They'll take care of me.
So just something I've noticed.
Right.
And of course, the physical hunger that children have for being held, for having their hair stroked.
I mean, it's very powerful.
And it is a drug, right?
It releases oxytocin.
It releases all of these happy joy-joy chemicals in the brain.
Obviously, non-sexual physical intimacy is something that we...
We all like.
I mean, there's this great stuff, right?
Hugs and all that.
And so, to me, it makes sense.
But I don't know if you've watched any of the Gene Wars presentations or if I can dip into that with your knowledge or not.
Have you seen any of those?
I've seen the follow-ups because you've released like several.
Even just the first one.
Yeah, it was the first one.
I saw that one.
Okay.
Okay.
So, if all of this is true, people gotta watch the gene war stuff, I'm not gonna keep going over it, but if all of this stuff is true, then it would seem to me, Michelle, that your childhood would have primed you for elevated sexuality and a neediness for men, right?
Because that's our thing, right?
Early childhood...
dysfunction combined with fatherlessness would lead you into more the R camp.
It doesn't mean you have to stay there, but this is sort of where things are.
And so you would not have the pair bonding, the K loyalty to your man.
And your boyfriend/husband also came from less sexual dysfunction, but more relational Our parents got divorced and all that.
And so he himself would also have been thrown more into the R pile, so to speak.
And so for you, your biology is saying that the way that you grew up, children were sexually exploited.
What that means is that there's not a protective father around.
Now if there's not a protective father around, which is only exacerbated by your father leaving when you were seven, then it means that you cannot rely And what that means is that you are going to go for shallow physical characteristics and hold your nose over these scumbag stench emanating from their private parts.
Because that's what your optimum reproductive strategy is in a male-deficient, male-provider-deficient environment.
Right?
You've become a rabbit, so you just look for physical qualities.
And you have probably a more sexual response, a higher sexual response and more consistent thoughts about sexuality than somebody raised in a more stable environment would have, if that makes any sense.
I would agree with you.
I've been masturbating since I was a kid and kind of been kind of just like preoccupied with sex from a very young age.
So yeah, I agree with you.
Well, and it's not like this just happened to you out of nowhere, right?
I mean, that's because you had early exposure to, you know, one of the most R things is rape.
R for rape, right?
Because in terms of fatherlessness, a rapist certainly doesn't stay around.
And rape in general usually happened throughout human history.
Rape would happen after fatherlessness.
destroyed in some sort of war or combat and the prize was the rape of the women right and so if you were exposed early to rape that would have programmed you in a sense for attachment a highly sexually responsive attachment to base physical characteristics of men regardless of any kind of quality and not having any standard called what would this
how would this person be like as a long-term father to stay with me to raise children with to last me through to old age you know forget that i mean the our sexuality is sort of like uh uh hey you know we're trapped In the bowels of the Titanic, we have no chance to get to safety, so let's have sex.
Forget about protection, forget about...
I'm just going to pick the hottest person and have sex with them before I drown in Kate Winslet.
Which, you know, is something we've all thought of from time to time.
Oh yeah, me too.
So this...
Our sort of sexual panic does not look for long-term stability.
It looks for short-term sexual excitement.
And that almost always comes at the expense of...
Long term stability.
So I think that there's a lot of pain, obviously, in your childhood to process and a lot of low quality men of whom, you know, it sounds like your father was one, you know, the fact that he picked you up.
Briefly, when it was more convenient than you walking, does not exactly make him a great dad.
And the fact that you can mostly remember him telling you to throw beer cans in the garbage doesn't mean that he was a great dad.
So I think that's a...
Okay, so delving into the marriage, you are always going to have...
Oh, sorry, that sounds very deterministic.
You are more likely, in my opinion, to have your sexual radar out there Yeah, totally.
Yeah, the craving for variety, which I talk about in the Gene Wars presentation, occurs at a very biochemical level.
So there's a craving for variety.
So once you've got To some degree, our nature is going to have you lose interest and start looking for the new man because that's your hit.
That's your dopamine.
That's your oxytocin.
That's where you get your hit.
You don't get your hit from deepening and lengthening intimacy with a monogamous partner.
You get your hit from the sexual frisson that comes from new meat, right?
Yeah.
Is it okay if I add two things?
It's your conversation, whatever you like.
Okay.
Well...
Well, and you too.
I want to respect where you want to go with the show.
But two things is, one, so the RK selection, that's really interesting, but, or not but, just another factor I'm sure contributed to it is it didn't help that my The adults in my family, they were all female, except for the exception of my uncle, my brother.
Basically, the male role models were not there, or they were abusive in some way.
But all the adult women treated men like they were disposable.
I heard repeatedly throughout my childhood, Like, oh, when you get married, make sure you have the man's money.
You take his paycheck.
You keep it because, um, no, if you don't have money, that means you don't have a honey.
Like, just random shit like that.
Like, if you don't have money, that means you don't have a honey?
Yeah.
I don't, I don't, like, you've got to take the man's, oh, you take the man's money, so he has to stay with you because he doesn't have any money?
Uh, that, and also, like, if you yourself, like, basically trying to say a guy won't be with you unless you have, unless you have money.
That's what my mom was saying.
She would tell me that the only reason my dad or my current stepdad was and is with her is because of her money.
And the day that she doesn't work, they'll leave.
I never heard anything about having a relationship with a man.
It was like, gotta be careful.
Like, you never know, you can marry a guy and you could never know what he could do.
So you got to take his paychecks to protect yourself.
It was like, never shown to me that, oh, can't you get to know a guy before you marry him and figure the shit out?
Like, so that was one thing.
And then the second thing was...
Well, of course, I'm just, yeah, I didn't.
If only we take the advice we have so roundly given to others, but all right.
Yeah, but...
So, and I just want to point out, first of all, your family is not helping the Asians or slightly more K-theory, but that's all right.
There are headlines in every trend.
But also growing up in a matriarchy, which is basically what happens to boys in the West now, programs you to be art.
Because where men are absent...
We assume that we're in, our genes assume we're in our environment and our hormones assume we're in our environment because the men are absent.
So they're either dead because of violence, in which case there's lots of predation, so you better pump out as many kids as quickly as possible, or they're around, but they don't stick around.
And that, of course, results in earlier puberty for girls and more thoughts of sexuality and so on.
And so the fact that you grew up in a female-dominated or largely female environment is natural that this would be the outcome.
I see.
That makes sense.
It's really interesting because, I mean, we evolved, so it makes sense that our genes...
They're not, like, necessarily smart or they don't know for sure what's really going on, but they just, like, based on what the environment is, if there's a lack of guys, then your genes will, like, respond as they had evolved to.
Yeah.
Yeah, and it also has to do with the general society and its praise.
So I think that you can grow up in a female-dominated environment and But if society condemns that as wrong and bad, then I don't think you go K. Like, so for instance, let's say you grow up with a bunch of racists, right?
Yeah.
Well, at least you see that society roundly condemns racism, and so it's far less likely that you're going to grow up as a racist, particularly if your peers condemn it.
But if you grow up in a society where, say, there's lots of single moms around, but no one is condemning it, It's praised and it's accepted.
Then, for sure, you're in R. You're in an R environment.
Because you might just be an outlier, like, you know, my crappy single mom, you know, ditched my dad because he wouldn't take out the garbage one night and so on.
But because our genes are not modeling themselves on what our parents do, our genes are modeling themselves on what our society accepts and our peers accept in particular.
Because you don't mate with your parents, you mate with your peers.
Right.
And this is why when parents have a very strong accent, it doesn't transfer to their children.
The children grow up speaking the accent of their peers, not the accent of their parents.
But that's exactly right.
You don't mate with your parents, you mate with your peers, and therefore you want to be as compatible with your peers as humanly possible.
So even though your parents teach you how to speak English if they come from Greece or wherever, if they have a strong accent, you end up modeling your peers' accent, which makes perfect sense.
And so...
When I criticize single mothers, I am helping to reprogram the genes of the world to K. Because if there's no criticism of single mothers, the genes assume that the entire tribe is pure R. If there is criticisms of single mothers, then it begins to reprogram people's genetics to the K model.
Because they then say, oh, so the R is an outlier.
Society criticizes the R and promotes the K, and your genes will immediately just start reconvening themselves in a K formation.
So that's partly why I do it.
Yeah, no.
Growing up, just to give some background, I heard single mothers were praised.
They're so hardworking, and I'm so glad that the The woman left the man.
Like, he was terrible for her.
Like, good for her.
She's such a trooper.
She's really...
Yep.
Yeah.
That's how the R gene set replicates, is praise for K behavior cock blocks the R gene set.
And this is why these wars occur at a cultural level.
And so every time single mothers are criticized, that is a promotion of the K gene set.
And this is why the R gene set, as it expresses itself, not just in single mothers but elsewhere, the R gene set will use almost any tactic, any Saul Alinsky-style tactic will be used to condemn and criticize anybody who promotes K behavior.
You see this with Ann Coulter, with Donald Trump, with Margaret Thatcher, with Ann Coulter, with Phyllis Schlafly, with all of these people who promote K. K-behavior are attacked by R-selected feminists who wish to create a matriarchy so that they can continue the R reproduction.
They need to keep men away from children so that the R gene set has a chance to reproduce.
Feminists are just used by the R gene set to keep men at bay so that the R gene set flourishes the most.
It's got nothing to do with any ideology at all, so...
All right, sorry.
You said that there were two things, and we did one, if you can remember the other one.
Oh, that's okay.
That is interesting.
Oh, just to comment, like, it's interesting that that whole dynamic is happening with, like, these feminists, but it's not...
Like I was saying earlier, it's, like, weird.
I was, like, acting, but not even, like, conscious to why I was acting.
So it's just interesting.
But the second thing was just that...
I just want to say that with my ex, I gave you a little bit of background.
Based on that, he would be more primed for our reproduction.
He tried so hard to be self-aware and always thought to himself.
That's one thing I really admired about him.
He was super focused and he was very K-behavior.
But that was through his own assessment of what his value should be.
So I just want to throw that in there.
I'm curious, and I'm certainly open to what you have to say, Michelle, but I'm curious how you would say his K behavior manifests itself.
Like he, when we got together, he had never, well, he did cheat on me once.
He cheated on me once after I had, like, cheated on him with his two best friends, but other than that, he was faithful and didn't flirt with other girls.
Maybe that could be because he was really self-conscious, but I'm not sure.
Hang on, hang on.
So he was unfaithful with you.
Was he unfaithful all the way, in a biblical sense, or did he make out with another girl, or what happened there?
Oh, made out and the Bill Clinton stuff.
Oh, so he did oral sex with the girl?
Yeah, like he touched her and then like down there and then she touched him too.
Yeah.
Right.
She went a bobbin for man meat.
And so that was far more than you had done, which was just make out and sleep in the bed with another guy, right?
Yeah, but, well, make out dry humping.
That's...
Wait, wait, wait!
We didn't get to dry humping!
I always remember a good dry hump story, and I do not remember any camels making it into this conversation.
Yeah, sorry.
The first guy, like, we made out in, like, a car, like, for, like, three hours, and we dry humped, like...
Holy blue balls, Batman.
You're terrible at having affairs.
That's good.
That's a good thing.
What do you mean?
I mean, I don't know.
If you're going to have an affair, at least have some screening Mimi rollercoaster sex or something like that.
Oh, that's hilarious.
Three hours of making out followed by a dry hump.
It's like, no, thanks.
I think I'll just hit my penis with a mallet instead because that's a lot more fun.
That's hilarious that you bring that up because I had a friend the other day when I was first telling him about it.
I was like, yeah, I cheated on him.
He's like, what do you mean you cheat on him?
You had sex?
I was like, no, this is what I did.
And he's like, what?
And same thing.
Same reaction.
Well, not same.
I mean, that's just math.
Let's make out for three hours of dry hump.
That's just math.
Plus, as a guy, you either have an orgasm, in which case it's like, eee, sticky, clammy underpants for the drive home, or you don't, in which case it's like, oh my god.
Right.
I'm just blowing up a balloon that can't explode.
Right.
Yeah.
Oh, and at the end, the guy, because he was like, can we have sex?
And I was like, no, I just don't want to have sex.
Like, I just don't want to.
And then he was like, okay, I'll just jack off.
So he did.
Oh, he did?
That was his solution?
Yes, he jacked off.
And then we went home.
So yeah.
So he jacked off and you're just like, what?
Putting your makeup back on or something?
No, I mean...
When you're done with that, can you take me home?
No, I was, like, being, like, kind of seductive.
Like, I had my shirt off, but my bra on still, but I was just, like, trying to be, you know, like...
So you were, like, 3D porn for him to jack off to me.
Yes.
Okay, I got it, I got it.
Wow.
All right.
God, stop.
All right.
All right, here, I'll go down on the stick shift while you masturbate.
This is like the worst affair I've ever had in my life.
I just pointed that out.
I mean, if you're not having the kind of car sex that sets off an airbag and car alarms three cars over, it's just not worth it.
I'm not worth it either way, but you know what I mean.
But to put it in perspective, in our minds at the time, like, being each other's, like, first, you know, like, Really serious relationship that was like, oh my god, you know.
No, it's terrible.
Don't get me wrong.
Yeah, it was.
It's terrible.
I just, I get that.
But it's terrible on every level, just what you want to point out.
Like, that's terrible sex to have an affair with.
But anyway, that's neither here nor there at the moment.
Okay, so you just, you know, dropped that he had an oral sex affair with some woman, right?
Yeah, I did.
Right.
And how did you find out about that?
He told me the day after, and he came to me crying and saying he's so sorry.
I said I was angry, and he's like, I know you're angry, and he held me while I was angry.
Wait, shouldn't he have been angry?
Because when you had an affair, you got to be angry at him.
So shouldn't he have had an affair and got to be angry at you?
How beta is this guy?
No, he did it.
And then afterwards, he was like, he pointed that out.
Like, hey, I comforted you.
And this is how I reacted.
I was so sorry.
But look at how you've reacted to me.
Like, you attacked me.
And he would bring up again how I was reacting and how I wasn't doing what he was doing and feeling really bad.
Like, one of the main things he pointed out was like, you don't even feel bad about Like, what you did.
Like, you don't...
You're not, like, sorry.
Oh, no.
He leveled up, right?
He's like, you know, I did the right thing when I had an affair, and you were mean when you had your affair, so I'm morally superior.
Oh, my God.
I need, like, some acid sandblasting shower here.
You know, actually, now that you point that out, I don't know if I've just been crazy or what.
But I've kind of felt, like kind of thought throughout a relationship or had a problem with how he would say that he's very moral.
Like he always had this moral standpoint, like, you know, kind of comparing me and him and Yeah, and I remember having a problem with that, but at the same time, he was correct.
You know what I mean?
Like, he had the logic correct.
No, he's not correct.
No!
He is not correct that he's better than you.
Morally, like...
No!
He's not...
Look, if I'm in a criminal gang, and I lecture everyone else about how bad it is to be in a criminal gang, Am I really a paragon of moral virtue?
No, but he...
But, well, how would you translate that?
You were in a gang of betrayal!
And lust, and hurting, and drama, and people falling down stairs and getting slapped.
You were in a nightmare relationship.
Yeah.
And he's like, well, I'm staying in this nightmare relationship because I'm morally superior.
Hmm.
I mean, come on.
He kept you around to feel morally superior.
But if he genuinely was morally superior, he wouldn't have been married to you in the first place.
Yeah.
Oh, wow.
Right?
So he keeps you around to feel morally superior, but he's such a shitty person that you're the person he has to feel morally superior to.
He married you to feel superior.
Oh, man.
Wow.
That's like really...
Like, uncomfortable to kind of think about.
It is!
Because you look up for this guy.
Yeah, I really idealized him.
I did!
I'll tell you what.
I'll tell you what, Michelle.
Let's have a cooking contest.
I'll cook shit and you cook vomit so I can call you a terrible cook because your food tastes bad.
Yeah.
That's so interesting to me because like, there were times like where Man, like, because, like, so he would make a mistake, he'd say something hurtful, but because he handled it in this way, in the way where, I'm so sorry that I made that mistake, I won't do that again.
And honestly, sometimes it kind of felt fake.
Yeah, yeah, because he's like, well, you see, I screwed around on you, but I'm going to handle it in such a superior way.
A mature way.
Even smaller.
Yeah, wow.
I'm a mature man whore.
So I win the moral contest of mankind.
And I go, oh my god.
I need you.
This is a cold water of reality.
Oh my god.
That's so...
Wow.
Yuck.
Yeah, I had...
These past couple years have been very difficult.
Something that I've been working on...
He had called me evil.
Said that I'm evil.
And...
Different things that I have.
I could be a psychopath, a sociopath, a narcissist, an evil, just evil, and also dead inside.
Many different things he'd bring up, but one of them was he'd always compare me and him, and I always felt just so Like, like, not, like, on his level.
And he would say how he, as a kid, thought a ton and focused on himself so much versus I didn't do that.
I dissociated.
And he had a hard childhood, too.
Okay, I'm sorry.
I'm sorry to stop you because...
I'm sorry to interrupt you.
We'll get back to the torrent of hideous verbal abuse that he poured on you.
But he knew about your childhood, I would assume, right?
Yeah, totally.
He knew about your, I mean, he probably didn't know the specific details in terms of the adverse childhood experience score of 10.
No.
But he knew that you had been severely abused as a child, right?
Yeah, he knew that.
And so, I don't...
I'm not a psychologist.
I'm not a therapist.
But I think I'm on fairly safe ground in saying that if you know someone who was horribly abused as a child, calling them psychotic and evil and sociopathic and narcissistic and dead inside, that's not a healing conversation, right?
No.
Because what troubled me the most about...
The letter that you sent in was that it seemed to spell yearning for reconciliation to me.
Me?
Yeah, at the time.
This was written September 9th, to be fair.
Since then, I've been talking.
I have like this friend that I met.
No, no, no.
Don't give me everything's reversed in less than a month.
Come on.
Don't know.
It can't all have changed unless the patterns of a quarter century, you know, oh, it's okay.
I've completely reversed my hurtling trajectory towards doom and dysfunction.
Okay.
Good catch.
Yeah, you had a yearning and the best way to counteract yearning for dysfunction is to see it clearly for what it is.
So you have within you the mental image or the mental voice of this guy Who is, you know, this tall paladin of virtue while you are some, I don't know, scum-sucking whore or whatever the hell he would call you, which is not my words.
I don't think I've said anything mean to you.
Is that fair to say?
Just kidding, yeah.
Right.
But I think I have, you know, tried to deal with...
I'm not moralized at you.
I've not called you bad or anything like that.
And so we're talking about this stuff as dysfunction.
And I've not...
I've not made any moralizing.
I don't think I've made any particular moralizing about this.
So we can have a conversation about this stuff which is not shaming you, right?
It's not casting you down into the pit of moral horror and calling you evil and all that kind of stuff.
I think I've been pretty frank about the stuff that it's not exactly functional, but this is not necessary to pour this level of soul-defining verbal abuse.
This isn't like, oh, you just did something really mean or you have a bit of a mean streak.
Worst and most malicious in humankind.
That is not a healing conversation, and that does not come from a morally superior human being.
I will tell you that for sure.
You know, I'm not saying you were.
If you were just some, I don't know, kitten-strangling, stone-evil human being, you know what a good person would do?
Not marry you, right?
Mm-hmm.
Or not stay with me.
Right, right.
And certainly not pour upon your very harmed inner child more crippling and crushing moral verbal abuse upon you.
I mean, what was the theory behind that?
Is that supposed to make you a better person to be called evil?
It would just be like He was feeling really strongly.
But then again, he honestly is not sure if I am or not.
No, no, forget all of that.
Don't you talk to me about what this guy honestly is or honestly isn't.
Right?
Because I'll tell you exactly what is going on with this guy, in my humble opinion.
Are you ready?
Are you sitting down?
This might blow your mind.
Oh, God.
Yeah, I'm sitting.
Are you ready?
I need you to assume a crash position of some kind.
Okay.
Okay.
So, we'll call this guy John.
Yeah.
So, John, through his moral condemnation and verbal abuse of you, is doing to you, Michelle, exactly what was done to him in that locked room by his father.
Yes!
I'm sorry.
Yeah.
Sorry.
I had this Same thought because I've met his dad and I've heard the stories like It made total sense to me for him to you know take that position Like because he was like taught that His dad had this air of like I'm right no matter what and I'm virtuous he had the same and and it's common around Mormons not well just from the videos I've seen they have this like Especially
if you're a guy, you have the priesthood or whatever, you have this moral authority over everyone.
A lot of moralizing is an exquisite form of verbal sadism.
I see.
Very sophisticated.
Very sophisticated.
Something that I could not notice.
It's moralizing as verbal sadism slash concern trawl.
I'm very concerned that you're not getting into heaven because you're not obeying me.
So I'm concerned that you're evil, right?
I want to help you be better.
I want to...
whatever, right?
And so there's this concern troll slash verbal sadism, which is I am the archangel of moral instruction who has been assigned to save your soul from your own immorality.
God, it's a head trip and a half.
I'm telling you, man.
That shit gets right inside your head.
Like, it's a brain virus.
And this is why you're like, oh, he's a great guy.
I'm so sorry for all the terrible things I did to him.
I wonder if we can repair things.
Like, oh my God, Stockholm Syndrome much?
Yeah.
Stefan, can I say something?
I just so well thinking about this, you know, coming to this realization about him.
At the same time, I feel sorry for him.
You know, he's not All right, let me ask you a couple of questions because we can examine this from a Socratic standpoint.
Are you ready?
All right, sounds good.
Still staying in that good old crash position?
Got your FDR helmet on?
All right.
Actually, no, because I got excited.
Okay, that's fine.
All right.
So...
Did John talk about the virtue and value of self-knowledge?
Yeah, he did.
You already answered this for me two or three times.
Yeah, he did.
So, he talked about the virtue and value of self-knowledge.
Now, what steps did he take on any regular basis to criticize himself, to evaluate himself, to compare himself to moral standards that he was subject to?
Did he go to therapy?
Did he read self-help books?
Did he keep with you and share a journal?
Did he talk to you about dreams?
Or what did he do as an active goal of pursuing self-knowledge that was not self-congratulatory but includes self-critical elements?
Oh, actually, the thing he always did was think to himself.
He would say, I've been thinking and I realize.
So, unverifiable stuff.
Now, the thinking that he pursued, did it ever result in him genuinely criticizing himself?
Yeah, it did.
Okay, so give me an example of his self-criticism.
And not bullshit self-criticism like, I just let you push me around too much.
Right.
Which is basically just failed criticism of you.
Genuine self-criticism, followed by a commitment to change, to figure out the source, followed by actual change.
So give me...
Okay, not the followed up by commitment to change, but a genuine self-reflection in that...
Self-criticism.
Give me a self-criticism that he was able to achieve.
That...
He came back once after, like, we had an argument and he had called me some names and I said it really hurt and he didn't, he, like, justified himself in that moment.
But then he, like, later, he, like, said he thought about it and said, you know, I realized, I said I justified it, but I was actually completely wrong and that probably really hurt you, didn't it?
And I was just trying to hurt you.
I recognized I was trying to just hurt your feelings and Yeah.
So he recognized a cruel element within himself, a sadistic or brutal element within himself, verbally abusive element within himself.
And what commitment did he make to understand its source?
Did he go to therapy to get help?
Did he go to anger management?
Did he read books on anger management?
Did he make the commitment to never do that again and follow through on it?
No, because the source was me because I cheated because I didn't care about him when I cheated.
I didn't Oh, so his self-criticism was, I said things that were mean, but it was your fault?
Yeah, it would come back to that.
Okay, so this is not self-criticism in any way.
Self-criticism is when you say, I did something wrong and I am 100% responsible for it.
I am not going to take the out of blaming you.
And it is my job to fix.
I came into the relationship with this.
It's not your fault.
And I am going to go all the way back to the source.
I'm going to sit down with a therapist.
I'm going to do whatever it takes to find out the source and to deal with this.
I commit to never doing it again.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I feel bad because like maybe it's from idealizing him.
I'm still processing it.
And so far, you know, it's from him idealizing him.
No.
Michelle, it's from him idealizing him.
I assume that given how dysfunctional your family was when you grew up, that these were not people who really criticized themselves either, right?
No.
They were always right.
Right.
Yeah.
An inability to admit error is a promise of repetition.
The reason we take ownership and we refuse to blame others is the degree to which we blame others is the degree to which we're promising to do it again.
It's your fault I got angry means that anytime you do something that makes me angry, I don't have to stop myself because you're the one who's really doing it.
Yeah, I've definitely done that too.
Yeah, if a ventriloquist uses his dummy to club a homeless guy to death, we don't blame the dummy because the dummy was just doing what the ventriloquist did with his hand up his ass, right?
So we take ownership and we apologize and we commit to change because that says the future is going to be different from the past.
When we don't take responsibility or we blame other people for our emotional state, we are promising it's just going to happen again and again and again.
Yeah, I completely agree.
All right.
Like, if you run a restaurant and the waiter says, well, I spat in his soup because he looked at me funny, and it was his fault that the spittle ended up in the soup, what's going to happen the next time?
Well, he's got no...
Blaming other people is scouring ourselves of any vestige of free will.
It's a momentary relief when we look at our own capacity to do wrong.
It's a momentary relief to blame others because we don't have to look at what Jung called the shadow or our dark side of our own nature, our capacity to do harm.
Unjust harm.
So we can blame other people for sure, but that simply means that we have no control over the behavior in the future because it's other people who are causing it.
Right.
Like if someone straps me down and shines a sunlamp in my face and I get a sunburn, well, clearly that's someone else's fault, right?
So I can't, you know.
But when we take ownership for ourselves, it's painful and the only thing that we get out of it is free will and choice and virtue, right?
So it's well worth it, but a lot of people don't see it.
So that was sort of my concern that you had acted in ways that were obviously wrong and bad and wouldn't work in a functional relationship.
But my concern is that you are looking at yourself as a self-critical person.
You're looking at yourself.
And, you know, to your credit, you have an excuse to stuff.
You didn't say, well, he didn't bring me flowers, so I had to go play tonsil hockey with his best friend or whatever, right?
That's actually true.
I'm sorry?
That is true.
One more flower and I wouldn't have been, you know, dry humping the most sexually frustrated man in the history of the universe.
Yeah.
It's the best movie ever.
I wish you weren't blind.
So you haven't tried to justify.
You have taken ownership.
You haven't tried to defend your actions.
You haven't tried to minimize what you've done.
So it seems to me that you're taking responsibility.
And I can't, for the life of me, see where John is doing the same.
Well, to his credit, we've had some conversations after.
It's kind of like...
Like, he's told me, like, so after he said that, he said some really horrible things to me, and that he shouldn't have, and that I'm not evil, I'm not messed up, and he had his own things.
He made mistakes, too.
So that's what he said.
He made mistakes?
No, no, no, no.
If you call someone evil unjustly, you've been verbally abusive.
Yeah.
That's not a...
I can't remember where I put my keys.
Oh, here they are in a big pile of my wife's evil.
Oops!
Right?
I feel like he's so...
I kind of...
I feel bad for his childhood.
I don't know what it was like.
Like the psychological abuse?
Oh, stop!
Stop!
Stop, stop, stop, stop!
I've got to stop you.
Do it.
An excess of empathy is a sin and a crime.
Ah!
You do not show people more empathy than they show you.
Okay.
Where's his empathy for your childhood when he's calling you evil and psychopathic and sociopathic and narcissistic and dead inside?
What a horrible...
That's an unbelievably horrible thing to say to someone.
Not even dead spots, you know?
Not even chillblains of the soul, but spiritually dead.
Like, where was his empathy for you?
Stop showing him more empathy than he has shown you.
Okay, I'm sure it's, yeah, yeah.
That's codependence.
Wow.
Preoccupation with another person.
Yeah.
Well, no, it's having these rules which are non-reciprocal.
Mm-hmm.
I mean, it's having a rule which says, well, I just have to treat people well no matter what they do, and I guess they'll just come around somehow, and it'll all be lovely.
And if it doesn't, it's my fault, so I've got to try harder, whatever, right?
A rational approach is, I'm not saying hate the guy.
But, you know, reaching out in empathy to his childhood and, I mean, look, you both did wrong in the relationship.
This does not sound like a very healthy relationship to my amateur ears, but this idea that you've got to now focus on feeling tender for his inner child, no, no, no, because he did not feel tender towards your inner child.
And he seems to me pretty manipulative and pretty leveling and one-upmanship and verbally abusive and so on.
And look, I'm sure you gave as good as you got at times.
And so I'm not, you know, you're the helpless victim and he's the monster ogre or whatever.
But you've got to start focusing on you.
Okay.
On you.
You've got to start focusing on not gaining value or identity out of how you bounce off other people.
You've got to have value for yourself based upon who you are.
Not if a guy is attracted to you.
Not if a guy is paying attention to you.
Not if a guy wants to slap you.
Not if you can so upset a guy he'll throw himself down a set of stairs.
That's all having an identity based upon your impact on other people.
And you only have two choices.
You can impact men sexually or you can...
Impact them in a traumatic way.
And these two are obviously tied together because if you're in a monogamous relationship, an impact with another guy sexually also impacts the guy you're with in a negative way.
But it's all about having impact rather than having an identity.
Does that...
Yeah.
That's actually something...
When we separated, I thought to myself, like, okay, I'm on my own now.
Like...
And I have been thinking this.
I read this book, Healing the Child Within.
I'm trying to learn to love and accept myself because I get that that comes first.
And that if I don't love and accept myself, anything I'm doing is not real or genuine.
I'm not really giving love.
I'm being codependent.
I'm more needing them to be with me instead of having that...
Just, you know, kind of just accepting myself for who I am.
I've kind of always needed, like, external validation.
I've always been like a class clown, needing a ton of friends to validate that I'm funny or pretty or whatever.
So definitely something I've been working on.
And I'm actually reading this book, too, called Codependence.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah, there's another one, I think, called Codependent No More and so on.
So, I mean, that's all.
You're in therapy, you're working out with this kind of stuff.
But I would really nag you to be annoying, Michelle.
I'd really nag you to focus not on, well, I have this need, or I was a class clown, because that sounds like that's just who you are and your personality and so on.
These are very specific survival strategies for an extremely dangerous environment.
You grew up in an extremely dangerous environment.
Like, deep of the jungle...
Tigers in the undergrowth, malaria in the air, and spiders the size of saucers crawling up your back.
You grew up in an exceedingly dangerous environment.
And that had a conditioning, not irreversible, but it had a strong conditioning effect on your personality.
And these aren't just your happenstance characteristics.
These aren't choices that you made.
These are specific adaptations to survive an extremely dangerous environment.
Where...
Death, abandonment, rape, being beaten up, all of this, right, can be...
I mean, I was reading about Michael Hutchins, the singer for InXS, and one night, I think he was in Paris, and he was eating some Indian food, and he was wandering around or standing around the middle of the street.
And a cab driver stopped and got into it with him.
He'd get out of the way, I've got to go pick up a fare, and Michael Hutchins, in his inimitable way...
He always had that sort of metrosexual douchebag aura around him, although a great singer and good songwriter and all that.
But the cab driver got out and got so angry, he pushed Michael Hutchins.
And now it's a cobblestone street.
Maybe he'd had something to drink.
I don't know.
But he...
Michael Hutchins stumbled and fell backwards.
And he hit his head on a sidewalk curb.
And...
Clearly, I think he had a concussion or something like that, but he didn't go and get any medical attention for a week or two.
And what had happened was he'd received some sort of damage to his brain where he could no longer taste or smell anything.
And he was a wine connoisseur and all this kind of stuff.
So this was a very sensual guy.
And, you know, mop-haired man-whore.
But anyway, that's a topic for another time.
So...
And the reason I'm sort of bringing this story up, Michelle, is that when you grow up in a situation where there's violence in the household, you can die every day, or you can end up with some crippling injury, or you can end up with a concussion where your speech slurs for the rest of your life, or you lose the ability to take...
He got crushingly depressed after this, right?
Well, you can't smell or taste anything.
Everything tastes like Cram or space food or whatever it is, right?
It's just terrible.
Here, you get to eat toothpaste for the rest of your life.
Nothing tastes like anything.
And that's, you know, food is a great pleasure and smells are a great pleasure and all that.
Wine is a great pleasure.
And so the reason, like, when you grow up in a violent household, every day you can die.
Every day you can receive an injury that changes your life permanently.
And, you know, for the worse.
And I remember that when I was a kid, as I mentioned this story before.
I was a kid in boarding school, and this little kid jumped into a pool and tried to do a flip and jumped into the pool, bumped his head, and nobody noticed for a minute or two.
When they got him out, he was brain damaged for the rest of his life.
It can happen like that.
And that's at a pool.
And that's, you know, at least you can say to kids, don't do flips on the edge of the pool when you're seven years old.
But...
When you grow up in a violent household, it conditions who you are.
And it necessarily has to...
You grow up in a war zone.
You had an adverse childhood experience score of 10, my sister.
You have grown up in a hellscape of violence, abandonment, degradation, exploitation, aggression, manipulation, emptiness, and danger.
And there's a lot of grieving that...
I would say needs to occur for that because here's the great danger.
I'll tell you what I've really loved about this conversation is how quick your brain is.
This isn't to diss any of the other callers I've had, but you're not stereotyping on Chinese reflexes.
You're not breaking that stereotype, right?
And so your brain is incredibly rapid.
Your emotional openness is there, muted but there.
And You have a lot to offer a quality man in the future, but here's the problem.
I would say, I don't mean to tell you your experience, so your judgment means a lot more than my ramblings in terms of your life, but as I see it from the outside, Michelle, this is what I see.
I see a little girl who grew up paralyzed by helplessness, paralyzed by an inability to will and Any changes, any concessions, any negotiation, any empathy in the environment.
Yeah.
And when I play with my daughter, from the very beginning, because I'm bigger and stronger and faster, the way that she deals with me is she shoots a frost ray at me that freezes me.
And I have to stay frozen until she breathes out hot air to thaw me out, right?
So if I suddenly make a go for her food at the table, she has to freeze me.
And I have to stay frozen until she unfreezes me.
And that's fun.
But what it does is it gives her control over somebody who's four times her size, right?
Because I really want in our play for her to have a sense of control.
Like, I can pick her up.
I can, you know, I can do whatever because I'm so much bigger.
But she has this frost ray.
She developed it, right?
She developed the frost ray and the heat ray to freeze and thaw me so that she has control despite her small size.
And it is, of course, my goal to continue to give her as much control as is responsible as a parent within her.
Because...
The alternative to control is manipulation.
The opposite of control is manipulation.
And so my concern is this.
You grew up helpless, and now nature, God, and the devil have all conspired to give you great sexual power.
You now have, as a young, attractive woman, and as far as I understand it, Asian women are pretty much at the top of the pecking order of who people want to have dates with, right?
No, no, it's true.
The studies have been done, at least according to dating profiles and dating sites.
Interesting.
Asian women get the most responses and get the most interest.
Hey, who doesn't like Asian girls?
There's some video around, right?
Gosh.
You know, very smart and not wildly feminist.
So anyway, there's a lot to be said.
So you, as somebody who's at the top of the pecking order of sexual appeal, now have a lot of power when you grew up without learning how to handle power in a slowly growing manner, in an incremental manner.
So you've kind of gone from zero power to megawatt power.
Relatively quickly.
Yeah, definitely.
I felt that power, honestly.
I get it.
I mean, a guy will make out with you for three hours and then beg for sex.
I mean, that's a lot of power.
Right.
Yeah.
I mean, imagine me sitting in a parking lot with a guy saying, all right, I'm going to play you three hours of my podcast at a very low volume.
Yeah.
I mean, you'd be like, no.
Right?
You can't quite hear it.
It's more annoying than knowledgeable, but occasionally you might catch a scrap or two.
Right.
And then I'm going to give you some cardboard earphones to dry hump your head with.
But anyway.
Yeah.
Was it you who had this analogy?
I can't remember, but I heard it somewhere.
Like, being a girl is kind of like being a baby with a million dollars.
Yeah.
I don't think I said that one, but particularly for girls who grew up in an environment of helplessness, the sexual power that nature gives to any reasonably attractive young woman, and you're more than reasonably attractive, well, that's a lot of power.
And from being unable to affect your environment as a child, you now can snap your fingers and have guys that you're back and call, and guys are showing lots of interest in you, and it feels like it's filling up a hole called childhood, but it's not.
It's not.
I hate it.
It's gross.
I mean, yeah.
I've experienced, I mean, in the relationship with my ex, it was just, it was empty.
It was not a real relationship.
It was a momentary high.
But at night, when I go home, it's nothing real to hold on to.
And you have enough quality that you don't need to.
There's nothing wrong with being sexy, nothing wrong with being attractive and all that, but...
You have enough qualities as a person that the sexiness that you have or the physical attractiveness that you have, it should be like the icing on the cake.
It shouldn't be like all icing, right?
Because there's no food there, right?
Yes, exactly.
Yeah.
I agree.
The icing part.
All right.
So...
I guess keep on with your therapy and so on.
That's all I had to say.
How was the conversation for you?
Fluctuations of different emotions.
Very enlightening.
Also really enjoyable.
A lot to process and think about.
It was really good.
Thanks so much for your time.
It's been almost two hours.
Oh, listen, you're welcome.
And yeah, stay single until you can find a guy who cheating on would be like, you know, it's what Paul Newman said about his wife, Joanne Woodward, because, you know, he was very attractive, one of the most handsome guys along with Redford back in the day in Hollywood.
And people said, well, aren't these women all throwing themselves at you?
And he's like, yeah, but why go out for a hamburger when you've got steak at home?
You might go out for fast food when you've got a buffet at home.
Yeah, exactly.
When you have a man in your life where it's like, well, why would I want to float with anyone else?
Because this guy is the best there is.
That's where you've got, I think, the real connection and you can get there for sure.
Yeah.
All right.
Thank you.
I agree.
Thank you very much.
Keep us posted and we'll move on to the next caller.
All right.
Thanks, Stefan.
Thanks, Mike.
Take care, guys.
You're welcome.
Thanks, Michelle.
Alright, well up next is Corey.
Corey wrote in and said, I'm an economics graduate currently managing a personal finance company.
I have two female employees that for the past three months are taking every attempt of mine to coach and improve their production personally, as if I'm insulting them.
I would understand this behavior if we weren't as successful as a branch and I was rude and obnoxious to them, but I'm not.
However, we're the branch of the year, that was last year, under my supervision, and up until three months ago we got along rather well.
Also, I've been lenient with them regarding their mistakes, dress code, family responsibilities due to our success as a reward for their good service.
But here lately, their attitudes have changed drastically.
I can tell that they dread coming to work.
They do not enjoy me being their manager.
Having noticed this, I've tried everything I can think of to improve their attitudes, including branch contests, buying lunches, positive feedback when they do something good, not having to work overtime, etc.
And nothing has helped.
I would greatly appreciate if Steph could discuss this with me and see if we can figure out what is going wrong.
This topic is important to me because I am currently trying to take over one of the largest branches we have, and I cannot allow a repeat of this scenario or I will fail spectacularly.
That's from Corey.
Has anything changed since you sent in the email?
Yeah, I'm actually, they gave me that branch.
Oh yeah, okay, so stakes are higher.
Excellent.
Yeah, absolutely.
All right.
And so, are you out of the orbit of these three women, or are they still under your custody, so to speak?
No, I have a whole new group of employees.
Right.
I have four women now.
Right.
And have you had trouble with other women, or was it mostly these three that were the issue?
No, I've been in two other branches as kind of a As what we call a branch manager trainee, where you kind of apprenticeship under other branch managers and learn what to do, how to pass audits, that kind of stuff.
And predominantly the employees I've worked with have been women.
And this is the first time it's kind of came at me and I have no idea what to do.
Right, right.
So you've had success in providing feedback and coaching to other women, right?
Yes.
What are your theories as to what's different in this situation?
I think it's a little bit of my age, and that I came in from another company.
When I took over the branch, I was 25, and one's 50-something, and the other one's in her late 30s.
And you were promoted over them, is that right?
Well, yeah, you could say that.
I mean, one of them's been working there for, you know, five years.
The other one's been there seven or eight.
So, I mean...
So in what way were you not promoted over them?
You said kind of.
Well, it was an acquisition where we took over.
We bought their company out.
And so I think they brought me in because I was...
Can you give me a sort of example?
Let's say that I'm one of these women and you're bringing me up...
Bringing me in for some coaching.
What sort of stuff would you say?
Well, usually I have to review paperwork a lot.
And so if I find mistakes, I'll say, hey, come over here.
Come to my desk for a second.
I'll say, okay.
I'll show what happened.
I'll give a specific example.
We have to write up our accounts.
And so...
I was hearing that it was taking her a long time to do it.
And I have a pretty much typed out script that you can just copy and paste that has all the information on it.
It takes about five seconds to do it.
It takes no time at all, versus having to type out, you know, three, four hundred characters.
And so I was like, hey, you know, look at this.
See what I do here.
I'll just copy and paste it into the application.
And you don't have to worry about typing it all out.
And so she took that as I was, you know, demeaning her and saying she didn't know how to do it.
And I was like, why are you mad at me about this?
I'm just trying to make it easier on you.
She's like, well, you talk to me like I'm a child.
It's like, okay.
I'm sorry.
Well, that thesis is confirmed by the fact that you're upset because I'm trying to help you.
I didn't want to say that, but yeah.
Now, did you have firing and firing over these women?
Could you have fired them?
No, it's not that easy.
Why were you?
I thought you were the manager.
I am, but I'd have to go through HR and stuff, and there's protocols for, like, you have to have so many, like a verbal warning and then a written warning.
Is that company policy?
Yes.
Because there's some states where you can fire without cause.
Right.
Where the state I'm in, you can, but with, and that's sort of like a, we need you gone now because you're a bad, you're a problem, a major problem.
Right.
It's just kind of funny how, not to generalize, but women in general want the ability to leave marriages.
And I don't think guys get written warnings and verbal warnings.
She can just wake up and say, hey, this family is done and there's nothing you can do to stop me.
Which is a little, you know, arguably more important than firing someone from some position.
Absolutely.
So women want, as a whole, the right to be able to end marriages at will, but God forbid you fire them at will, that's just horrendous, right?
That's bad, right?
And I've talked to them, when they say this, I'm like, look, if you could hear the way that my boss talks to me, I mean, you would understand, because my bosses are men.
And you're a man!
Yeah, and so they don't sugarcoat it and be nice and coddle me with it.
When they ask me, they're like, Are you stupid?
Like, why did you do that?
I mean, it's not nice.
I've been in the business world.
I've had bosses who were men and I've managed women and so on.
And yeah, I mean, I get it.
It's a different thing.
So is it fair to say that you don't think that there's anything that you did that could have been misinterpreted?
And I'll trust you on this.
I have no reason to disbelieve you.
I just wanted to double check on that if you had any sort of second thoughts about the way you approached it.
Yeah, I always try to analyze my behavior and try to see what I've done.
I'm pretty self-critical.
And I do think sometimes I can be a little bit of a smartass.
I don't like giving them answers.
I like to help them get the answer themselves so they learn instead of just me feeding them answers.
Are you showing weakness?
Because you said, well, I'm sorry, but I think it's a good rule to not apologize when you haven't done anything wrong.
Like an apology shouldn't be one of these automatic someone sneezes to say, bless you.
Someone's upset with you, say, well, I'm sorry.
Because I think that does show a kind of weakness that can encourage more resistance.
No, I don't.
Normally, that was more of like a sarcastic sorry.
I don't apologize.
Yeah, exactly.
Sorry, you're mad, but I'm totally fine.
Right, okay.
Well, let me go out on a limb here and guess that you played sports when you were younger.
Yeah, a lot.
Right.
How did I know that?
I don't know.
How did you know that, Steph?
Because, Corey, you can take criticism.
Oh, yeah.
And one thing that sports teaches you is you better learn how to take criticism or ain't nobody going to want to play with you, right?
Absolutely.
Did you, when you were a kid, were most of your activities structured?
Like, in other words, you've got a class you've got to go to, or did you have a fair amount of unstructured, go out and play, find some friends, figure out what to do kind of stuff?
I had a lot of that.
Tons of...
My parents were very hands-off.
And, like, they were just...
Friends would come over that weekend and spend the night or two.
We would be out in the woods running around playing for hours and hours.
Right.
So there you've got to do a lot of negotiation.
And if you try to come up with something that other people want to do that your friends didn't want to do, like if you brought out a big box of Barbies or something, what would they say?
Yeah, a lot of...
Let's get some firecrackers.
Let's blow them up.
But you can't make your friends do stuff, so you've got to learn how to provide value.
And if you don't provide good value, then your friends are going to tell you right away, hey, that idea sucks.
They'll put that in your head, right?
Yeah.
So you grew up with sports, you grew up with unstructured playtime, which means that you get that nobody owes you massive sensitivity to your feelings if you're not providing value.
I mean, even if you are providing value, they're not there to coddle you, they're, you know, the coaches and sit there and say, well, how did you feel about that last pass that went into the bleachers?
Because I feel that may have been somewhat negative for the team's capacity to win the game!
Right?
Yeah, they were definitely...
That calm about it.
They're throwing helmets on the ground.
You suck!
I mean, there's a lot of that kind of stuff.
And your bosses, your male bosses, are comfortable saying, well, that was stupid.
What the hell were you thinking, right?
Yes, exactly.
Right.
I'm also going to go out on a limb, and I'm going to guess, whether you know or not, that these women not so much play a lot of sports.
No, neither one of them.
One of them, she was always in a bad mood, and I was like, you know...
Why don't you, you know, if you feel bad and you're, why don't you go exercise and do you exercise?
Well, I didn't say just out of the bat, go exercise.
I was like, well, do you, you know, what do you do after work?
She's like, oh, I'll just go home and watch Judge Judy.
And I was like, well, you know, what if you took your dogs out and walked them around or did stuff to kind of, you know, get some exercise going?
That, you know, that was offensive.
Oh, yeah.
Are you saying I'm fat?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Right, so people who grow up, sports is a very, very helpful thing.
To talk about and to understand.
It has a great value in terms of it's a great training for the free market, especially sports where not everyone has to play, not everyone gets a medal, right?
So when you go out and play in the woods with your friends, I don't know if you ever had some whiny Urkel-type kid who nobody wanted around, but it usually doesn't take long for everyone to not have that kid around, right?
Right, yeah.
Oh, he's the whiny one.
Anytime there's a problem, he goes and gets his mom and, you know, he cries and whatever it is, right?
I mean, and so if you can't compete in the free market of free play, you get ostracized and ditched pretty quickly, right?
Yeah.
Yeah, that happens a lot with people.
They'd be there for one and then they never showed up again.
Yeah, or you just arrange it so that they're not around.
Yeah.
So that wherever you go, or, you know, you can pull the classic one of saying, we're going to meet over here tomorrow, come play with us, and then you just go somewhere else, right?
Exactly.
Or the old famous, let's take off on him, right?
Yeah, done that before.
Oh yeah, of course, right?
And, you know, I remember this and I see this.
I saw this in the daycare I worked in, of course.
I was, you know, I was a pretty popular kid.
People wanted to play with me and I never...
I think once kids took off on me, but, you know, I... It's kind of a shit test, right?
Like, if you don't get that bothered.
But if you're like, guys, you're wailing away in the forest.
They're all laughing.
And it's like, I'm not saying it's necessarily the most emotionally healthy thing, but it does, you know, give you some thicker skin that's sort of important.
But yeah, for the most part, I just go out and, you know, we had no money.
And I lived with a whole bunch of kids around.
And we'd just go out and find something to do.
And you had to negotiate.
And you had to be the kid that other people wanted to play with.
And you get used to the criticism of coming up with ideas that other people say suck, you know?
Okay, well, what are you going to do, right?
Yeah, the honesty of children will blow your mind.
They'll tell you really quick what they think about something.
Well, and particularly, did you guys play a lot with girls, or was it mostly boys?
It was mostly boys.
And were there any girls around?
Every once in a while, I had a friend, her parents would bring her over, but for the majority of the time, no, it was mostly just boys.
Right, right.
So...
That, I think, is important to understand.
And it doesn't have anything to do with male-female fundamentally, but I think more boys do that kind of unstructured play and more boys participate.
Now, organized sports is not quite the same because, you know, since women took over early childhood education, you know, everybody gets a prize, everybody has to play, and there's no competition, right?
Everybody's got to feel good about what they're doing and so on, right?
And...
I remember, you know, when I was a kid, there was some whiny kid that we didn't want to play with.
And I think we gave it a shot a couple of times.
You know, oh, you know, he's new to the school or whatever.
Some whiny kid we didn't want to play with.
And we, after a while, just sorry, it's not fun.
You know, I'm sorry you are the way you are, but it's not fun when you play with us.
And we're here to have fun.
You've got to snatch your fun where you can, particularly when you're in crappy schools.
But I remember the teachers were all like, oh, include so-and-so.
Make him feel wanted.
Make him feel included.
And it's like, yeah.
That's a very girl versus boy thing.
And so what I think the outcome of this, and again, we're talking very generally, is that I think more boys are comfortable with With criticism.
And, yeah, like, I went to go and see the Martian movie, the movie called The Martian yesterday.
And I won't get into any details.
We've got a whole spoiler reel about to come out.
But, yeah, the way the guys talk to each other is, yeah, you know, nobody liked you anyway.
A lot of that kind of jokey talk, that jokey put-down talk.
And...
That is a way of saying, I'm comfortable enough with you, and I have enough respect for you to know that you're not going to take this kind of joke personally.
Like, you're a strong enough person to know that my affection is buried in all of this, right?
Right, yeah.
There's a lot of that in sports, right?
But it does condition men to be able to accept a lot of criticism and to be sensitive, and it results in a lot of improvement.
now or you cannot spare people's feelings now and they'll be better people for it, right?
So, Yeah, if you've got some friend who thinks he's a good singer and, you know, sounds like, you know, a cat being variously hit with bolts of lightning, you know, it's kind of important to say that before they go start a band or something and waste their lives.
Yeah, exactly.
I mean, with competition, too, just myself, if I'm doing something wrong, I would like you to tell me about it.
I don't want to be doing the same thing and thinking I'm doing it right and then I'm doing it wrong, like watching film.
Oh, yeah.
No, I mean, I... Yeah, I mean, I agree with you.
Don't let me develop bad habits I'm going to have to undo later, but stop me at the beginning, right?
Exactly.
And the other thing, too, with sports, there is a score.
And the score don't care about your feelings, right?
Exactly.
It doesn't care.
You might really want to win, but you're either going to win or you're not.
And...
And of course, learning how to work as a team, to be a valued teammate, you don't want to be overly team-based, in which case you kind of fade into the woodwork, you're just there to facilitate everyone else's glory.
But you also don't want to be the guy, you know, racing down the middle of the field, you know, who then gets tackled and loses, right?
Right.
So it's a real balance, working within a team while also being committed to your own personal glory is, it's a very complex.
So what I'm sort of pointing out is that You've had thousands and thousands and thousands of hours of training on taking criticism, on improving, on teamwork, on providing value to other people, on ostracism, on pursuing an objective goal called winning and all that.
And that is something that you don't want to imagine everyone has had the same level of experience with.
Because that's going to be fundamentally confusing for you, right?
Right.
So, I guess I... Sorry, let me just ask one other question before we go on to the next one.
So, do you know women, not just professionally, but even in your personal life, do you know women who actively seek out criticism or feedback and are really, really willing to do whatever it takes to improve and say, you know, don't spare my feelings, just give me the facts?
No. Right.
I'm drawing a blank.
Maybe my niece is with their music, but they haven't come to me asking me for, because they play shows in our band and stuff, and the only thing I can think of is maybe they do that with the people that...
I don't want to get into theory.
Yeah, that's nothing.
I got nothing.
Just the facts, just the facts, right?
Yeah, I got nothing.
Because this is what, you know, I think women could achieve a huge amount more, but they've got to submit themselves to the rough and tumble of lots of criticism and objective measures of value.
Because, you know, I mean, you know, I don't know if you've ever seen this.
You're a young guy, so it's a pretty old film.
But there's a very famous bit in a movie called The League of Their Own.
Yes.
With Tom Hanks.
You remember the scene, right?
Yes.
Are you crying?
Yeah.
There's no crying in baseball!
Right?
And the girl yelled at me kind of thing, right?
Right.
And the second half of that movie sucks.
But the first half, I think, is fantastic.
Despite the fact that Madonna is acting-ish.
But anyway.
But it's...
John Lovitz, well, this would be more then.
Just the way he says that's fantastic.
But there's no crying in baseball is kind of, that's the male-female thing in a lot of ways.
I don't think it used to be that bad.
I think it's really bad now.
Like, I think this is just getting worse and worse now because you've got such a girl-centric educational system that is so focused around all the strengths of girls and so hostile to all the strengths of boys that...
The girls basically can go through their entire education receiving virtually no criticism.
You sat very nicely today while the boys in the back punched each other with binders, you know?
Like, whatever, right?
And so, I think that this sort of putting women in the greenhouse and, you know, and so on, you've got to be able to submit yourself to very rigid and sometimes...
Difficult to take criticism if you want to be good at something.
And so women are like, well, I want you to focus on the feels, and then they complain that they don't get to the top of various professions.
Well, if you want to get to the top of various professions, what do you got to do?
Well, you've got to be able to take the criticism that is necessary.
And I'll just sort of put this very briefly.
2012 study by Christopher Cornwell.
The head of the econ department at University of Georgia found that boys on average scored 15% lower on an assessment of non-cognitive skills, engagement in class, ability to sit calmly into personal skills than girls.
Primary school teachers graded boys lower than girls even though the boys scored similarly or better than the girls on standardized tests.
So there's a very anti-boy prejudice.
In a lot of schools.
In a lot of schools.
The data showed that although boys outperform girls on math and science test scores, girls are assigned to higher grades by their teachers.
Yep.
I saw that study.
Right?
Right.
So girls are not doing as well, but they receive higher scores.
That is so unfair and unjust to both boys and girls.
So learning styles vary.
Girls absorb academic lessons by listening and looking.
Many boys rely on kinesthetic learning, movement and touch, to master new information.
The typical classroom these days rarely involves moving around.
Students are expected to sit still in rows of desks while the teacher delivers a lesson.
Oh my god, that stuff is so ridiculous.
I could feel the dust settling on my brain when that shit was going down in school.
And it's even worse for, you know, your generation than it was for mine because a lot of outdoor activities are gone.
A lot of gym classes are gone.
Even art or stuff where you're doing something visceral, not just sitting there absorbing stuff like a brain-dead sponge.
So it's even worse now across schools these days.
Of course, female teachers instinctively reinforce...
Female behavior.
Fail to acknowledge or they even punish the gender-specific behaviors of boys.
You know, I remember when I worked in a daycare, the female teachers would be like, are those boys fighting?
And I said, no, they're playing.
But it looks like they're fighting.
No, they're playing.
They're boys.
It looks like fighting because you're a girl.
But to boys, we know that they're playing.
And they were all like, you've got to stop that.
Look at these girls.
They're playing pick-up sticks very nicely.
It's like, because they're girls.
Anyway, more boys get spanked than girls.
And not only do boys get hit more than girls, they get hit a lot more often than girls.
And so boys receive a lot of negative feedback in school.
It's unfair and it's unjust, but it does make the boys stronger in a lot of ways.
And childcare workers, like over 94% of them are women, they treat boys more poorly just because they're boys.
They're incredibly sexist towards boys.
And even at two years of age, prior to the age at which boys and girls differ significantly in their play behavior...
And they're being treated worse by childcare workers.
And there is a negative, and of course this is a lot of, you know, general male hostility towards men in society as a whole.
But, so boys go through a lot of criticism, a lot of negative feedback, a lot, and it's too much and it's too harsh and so on, but one of the outcomes is that you end up running A branch office at the age of 25, whereas these women in their 30s and 50s are not.
And that hypersensitivity towards criticism, women are constantly told when they're growing up how wonderful they are, how good they are, how wonderful, how well they behave, how nicely they are.
Why can't you boys sit nicely like those girls?
And we've got this whole the truth about male privilege presentation, which people should, we go into this in more detail.
All the sources are available.
The truth about male privilege.
Go check it out.
But so when you were a male managing women, and again, there are exceptions, these are generalities, but when you're in this kind of situation, I think what you're seeing is the long-term effects of girls who've probably grown up with everyone saying the sun shines out of their butt, and they're wonderful, and they're great, and they're nice, and they, you know, they're not Huck Finn with a slingshot, and they're like Wonderful and so on.
And so this women are wonderful, the fact which it's all pervasive in society.
I mean, you see this in movies, in sitcoms, you know, the women are always smarter, the guys are always idiots, and that and the other.
And so there's a lot of unreality around women.
And, you know, like men are nagged for sitting with their legs too wide on a subway or for mansplaining, which is over-explaining things, because that's the kind of horror that women have to go through.
Whereas the fact that women hit children a hell of a lot more than men do, well, that's – you can't talk about that because that doesn't fit the narrative.
Did you say mansplaining?
Mansplaining is when a woman is knowledgeable in a subject but a man continues to explain it as if she doesn't know as much about it as he thinks she does.
Apparently this is mansplaining because the woman can't interrupt and say, yeah, I know all this stuff.
You can move on to another topic.
They just have to sit there and smile because testicle proximity kills spine.
I don't know.
Third testicle.
Yeah, so I don't think you can negotiate with, you know, hypersensitive, emotionally defensive, and immature people.
You can't negotiate with them.
Because all they'll do is slide back into manipulation.
And if you go any further in terms of being assertive, they'll generally turn around and try and make your life a living hell in some way or another, right?
And so I think that my solution when you're in these kinds of situations, if you're in an environment where you can't just fire people, which is, I think, what, you know, outside of contract, that's how kind of it should be.
But I think what you need to do is say, look, I'm not going to be these people's bosses unless I have the power to hire and fire them.
And, you know, that's got to be pretty clear.
And then you also need to get, if there's an HR department, get HR to come in and sit with you while you're giving any kind of disciplinary action or any kind of negative feedback.
Get someone from HR to come in and sit with you.
And that way you're covered if something comes up later that's untrue.
Okay.
Luckily, I have Bob.
My regional boss will come in and visit.
And so I can kind of show him this is how I'll handle myself in these situations if there's a mistake or something.
Because he'll come in and review my stuff and then point out things.
And I have to correct him.
And he'll see me do that.
And so he knows how I'm doing it.
He helped me get the job.
So I think he has my back.
And it's also important to remember that these sticky wickets...
Oh, sorry.
That's a bit of a...
It's a bit of a Britishism for my young friend.
But these, I don't know what you'd call them, toad in the holes, like the people who are just like, I've been working the same job for 30 years and you can't tell me anything about what I need to do.
I don't know.
What do you call people like that?
They just kind of, they take a job, they sit in it and they become increasingly entitled and resentful at anyone who tells them anything different.
Knots on a log.
That's the southern way.
Knots on a log?
Yeah.
Okay, yeah.
Yeah, a knot on a log, like you're trying to cut something, it's like...
Yeah.
Like the sword bites or something, right?
Yeah.
And, um, those people are a necessary evil in all reasonably sized organizations.
Because they do know a lot about what they're doing.
Yes, they're resistant to change, but anybody with any brains has left them in the dust long ago.
And so, there is some tertiary leftover fossilized value in these things, you know?
New trees are nice.
Really old trees give you oil.
So, all I can say is that there is some organizational value to these, uh, Knots in the log.
And so finding a way to...
And also you can just give up, right?
I mean, if they're doing a reasonably okay job and they're really resistant to change and they're not worth firing.
And, you know, the other thing too, who are you going to get to replace them?
That can be a challenge as well because, you know...
Quality people are hard to come by, so sometimes it's worth getting 70% out of someone than rolling the dice with someone new, because if that person is really good, then they're going to move out of that job within a year or two, and then you're going to find someone else, and so there's a bird in the hand with two in the bush, hard to say, but I think there is organizational value to these toads in the hole, but they definitely are a challenge to manage.
So, I'm going to get you to evaluate what I've done so far.
I kind of Came in and I kind of had a meeting with him.
If you've ever watched a video of what a head football coach would do when he comes and takes over a team, kind of pulls them together and just says, hey, here's what I want to do.
Here's where we're at.
Here's where I want to go.
Here's how we're going to get there.
That kind of thing.
And I had interviews with him individually behind closed doors to kind of ask him what they thought about it so far.
How they felt about the branch, because there were some issues with the previous leadership, but I tried to get them in just so that I cared about them and cared about their growth, but I also told them that I was going to be correcting them a lot and fixing stuff, and that they didn't need to take it personally, and that I was doing it to help them.
So, is that something that, I mean, what do you think about that?
Well, you certainly need the support of senior management.
No matter what you do.
So if you can get senior management on your side, and you can sit down frankly and say, look, I would like for these people to do something more efficient, but they're really resistant, and they take it very personally whenever I suggest doing something better.
What are your suggestions?
Get a mentor, get someone who knows the organization, because everybody who's risen up, if they're not the son of the owner, put in the CEO position out of nepotism, then...
But what generally happens is they've had to deal with people like this before.
They may have some good advice and so on.
I certainly wouldn't hold back or lower your standards when it comes to people.
I mean, I've had significant confrontations with difficult employees throughout my career.
Like mine.
Yeah, and like big scary people who are yelling at me and stuff and you just have to, that's why you get the big bucks, right?
That's why you get the authority is because you can do productive things and things that are for the good of the company as a whole with difficult people.
If everybody was easy to manage, managers wouldn't get paid very much, right?
It's got to be difficult in order for people to do it.
And so I certainly wouldn't want to back down from confrontations.
So make suggestions.
If they're ever rude, particularly if they're ever rude to you in public, that needs to be dealt with right away.
Because as soon as you let someone get away with disrespecting you, particularly in front of other people, it's going to erode the cohesion of the whole team.
You know, it's like, again, to take the football analogy, if someone tells the coach to go screw himself, well, what does the coach do?
Yeah, you're getting benched.
Well, yeah, you're in a world of hurt, right?
Because the coach can't just say, okay, well, I'll go cry in the coach room, right?
And so you definitely don't want to let people get away with stuff.
Because when they get away with stuff, it lowers the morale of the whole team.
And then not just one person...
It's showing you disrespect, but eventually everyone's going to show that.
And if the refs let stuff go, the play generally gets rougher.
You need those kind of constraints and those kind of feedback mechanisms.
But with difficult people, it's always good to have somebody else in the room when you're giving them this kind of feedback.
Because what you're saying is no plotting, right?
Because when you have difficult people in your life, the moment you give them negative feedback, their general tendency is to stop plotting.
And because you're busy and they're single-minded, they can be a challenge that way.
So when you have other people in the room, someone from HR in the room, when you give them negative feedback, what you're saying is, I got backup, they're with me, they understand, and you can't lie about this meeting later.
Okay.
Yeah, that's good advice.
All right.
That's it.
Yeah, I'm trying to think if there's anything.
Because I came to you because sometimes the guys, they like me a lot.
I'm kind of like their little...
I've spent a lot of time with them, and they kind of talk to me.
I don't know how to explain it.
It's kind of like a good old boy talk where you're not really going to get quality advice, objective advice.
So that's why I was like, I want to see what...
Do what you feel is right!
Yeah, exactly.
They just tell me to suck it up and fix it.
Yeah.
So, no, and...
I hope, I mean, again, this is just me throwing stuff over a wall, hoping I hit something useful, but yeah, I have found that as a manager, you particularly disrespect.
That is one of the most toxic things that can happen.
If people lose respect for you as a manager, you're done.
I mean, it might be a long and slow, painful done, but you're done.
Like, you can't be the coach if everybody rolls their eyes when the coach starts talking.
And whether you do that through inspiration or fear, one or the other.
But yeah, so don't back out and don't back down, but don't engage and escalate.
Just give people the feedback, have somebody there in the room, and let everyone know.
Because look, the other co-workers are pretty much as annoyed as you are at these people, I'm sure.
And if they see you handling them in a positive and decisive manner, their respect for you will only increase.
Never show fear as a manager.
And if somebody challenges you, you have to escalate until they comply or they're gone.
Okay.
Yeah, that's happened today in the individual meetings.
I said, well, you know, you got anything you need to tell me about what's going on in the branch?
And that was one of the things was one of the other employees.
Okay.
All right.
Well, listen, keep us posted.
If there's anything else that I can do that might be helpful, I'm certainly happy to help.
And I really appreciate the trust that you are showing by calling in.
And, you know, hopefully this doesn't end up with you living in a cardboard box cursing my name with every waking breath.
I'll let you know.
I don't.
All right.
Thanks, man.
Keep us posted.
Thanks.
Appreciate it.
Alright, who do we have next?
Alright, up next is Paul.
Paul wrote in and said, recent news concerning Mars has made the possibility of extraterrestrial life, sedient or microbial, a more likely reality.
How far will or should the human race extend the right to life for alien life?
That's from Paul.
I just hope they extend the right to life to us.
Because as far as all the science fiction movies I've seen, we're extraordinarily tasty addition to the galactic menu of consumption.
Are you there?
Excellent.
Now just in a room talking to myself.
Are you there, Paul?
Well, I don't need him to, I can just give a very brief answer to this.
So, the right to life, you don't have to think about space aliens because there's a broad continuum.
In human life, right?
People with an IQ of 50 and people with an IQ of 150.
People with an IQ of 150 as a proxy for intelligence clearly are morally responsible and so on.
The people who at some point when you go down in terms of non-functionality of the brain, at some point people can no longer live on their own and they need to surrender their independence for the sake of having people cook for them or having people take them to the doctor and so on.
And when you surrender your independence, then you surrender some of what are generally called your rights, right?
So if you're not smart enough to live on your own, you have to live in an assisted living facility, then you may not have the right to go and roam about at will with fistfuls of cash and so on.
So I would say that we would generally want to extend to all organisms who show the capacity to Engage in a social contract, right?
Who understand concepts, who understand virtue, and microbes wouldn't count, obviously, but where aliens would have the capacity to understand law, to understand morality, to understand a social contract, then we would assume that they would be as competent as reasonably intelligent people and then would give them full rights.
And again, we don't usually have to worry.
I mean, the way that space aliens are going to show up is with them all, right?
We don't have to worry about that because it's the traders who are going to get here.
And they're going to get here in order to trade.
And it's only the free market that is going to produce the kinds of technological advances that will result in interplanetary or interstellar space travel.
We'd need interstellar.
I don't think there's much useful stuff going on on Uranus or anything like that.
Can you hear me now?
But...
Yeah, so they're going to show up as traders.
It's going to be this giant flashy mall, and we're going to get the coolest stuff in the known universe in exchange for putting our children in a giant cooking pot.
Right.
My question is a little bit less on the sentient side.
That was more just for play and enjoyable conversation.
I think a more realistic approach is that when we start exploring Mars a lot more than we are right now, we are going to find microbial life.
You know, little, tiny, crappy little things eating at dirt.
So my question is more of how much right to life or how much effort do we go to to ensure that life exists?
What do you mean that life exists?
Well, for instance, like, black mold is very harmful to us.
If we find it in our house, we instantly go and, you know, clean it.
Oh, no, listen, man.
No one, listen, listen, listen.
Like, this isn't that complicated.
Then no one is going to bring alien microbes back to Earth in anything but like a giant space vault, right?
Because gene incompatibility is a very serious issue in human life.
You know, so people who've evolved resistance to malaria can survive in Africa, and people who haven't tend to die like dogs.
And...
In Europe, because Europe is a squalid sex fucking mess of gene horror, Europeans have very tough immune systems.
Whereas in the New World, right, they didn't have the same levels of resistance to things like smallpox, tuberculosis, and so on.
And so there was this huge exchange, you know, Westerners come over and infect the locals with all kinds of god-awful diseases, and 90 to 95% of the natives died because of stuff which Europeans did.
Didn't get killed by, went and killed them.
It's insane.
And of course, because they'd run away, oh my gosh, they're sick, let's run away and let's go to some new place.
Hey, great, now you're an agent of spreading death.
And this happened, you know, Cortez and his crew of 500 took out most of the Incan civilization and they didn't do that because they were really good with a crossbow.
They did that because they came across mostly dead bodies from European diseases.
And the same thing has happened, you know, on a regular basis with a wide variety of contacts between civilizations.
So, you know, nobody is going to be like, hey, I'm bringing home a whole bunch of Martian mold and a Ziploc.
Let's just open it in my basement and see what's going to happen.
There's simply no way that that's going to happen.
So I don't think we need to worry about wiping out.
Like, we're going to leave it there.
I mean, it's not going to bring it home and kill it.
Right.
But then there's also the reverse situation.
We go there.
We bring a ton of different organisms with us, whether we want to or not.
And this is actually something called forward contamination.
Where something we actually bring could alter and or destroy them because they can't compete.
Sure.
And that's sort of where I thought the basis of the coming, you know, maybe in a century or so, when we actually discover it and we're colonizing Mars maybe, you know, all of a sudden they go, wait, stop.
All our microorganisms are killing Mars.
Backtrack, we can't colonize Mars anymore.
It's like, well...
Oh, I, you know, I mean, I... You know, it's a very abstract and complicated question, and it's not something that's likely to be part of human conversation for decades.
So it's not very high on my list of priorities.
But what I will say is that I'd like to go to Mars.
And the good thing is that you've got to stay in a spacesuit or at least some sort of protective device in Mars.
The air is too thin and so on, and not breathable by people.
people.
So there's going to be a fair amount of contamination containment just because you've got to stay in this stuff.
You know, maybe open and close the airlock.
The few things will come in and out.
But, you know, sorry, Martian spores, but human beings like to explore.
I'd like it if it was a free market environment, then all that, because I don't know what economic value there is in going to Mars and back other than tourism, which is going to take a little while, given that it's like 12 light minutes away from Earth.
But But, you know, sorry, human beings are going to explore.
And, you know, sorry to the Native Americans, but Europeans like to explore.
Sorry to the Europeans, but there's god-awful stuff in Africa.
Africa is just this hotbed of demonic stuff.
These bees in Africa are insane.
The bees in Africa, you walk past their hive and they will chase you for upwards of two miles and try and sting you to death.
Africa is such a hotbed of violent vegetation and insect activity and microbe activity.
That even the fucking honeybees are homicidal.
I mean, it's just a monstrous, monstrous environment for that.
And because there's so many resources, so much sunshine, that only the fiercest generally survive.
So, you know, even the gentle honeybees, which just buzz around prettily in English gardens, are like part of a gang culture in Africa.
Fuck you up, man.
You look at me funny.
And so, yeah, like, you know, human beings like to explore and they bring with them microbes and shit goes down.
And, you know, throughout history, this has happened pretty continuously, you know, like, hey, let's go trade with India and China.
And then with the rats on the ship, come back the Black Plague, the Black Death.
And, you know, half of Europe gets wiped out in successive waves over 100 years.
Obviously, people will try and be cautious.
They'll try and take as many precautions as possible, but we are a restless species.
There's a reason why we won the race to live in heated houses.
We are going to keep exploring, and I think people will do their very best.
Stuff is going to happen, and it could happen both ways.
It could wipe out people, or people could wipe out local.
We explore, and I don't know what else to say.
Well, I tried to do some research to see if there was any precedent for anything that could happen like this, and about the closest I could come to was endangered species protection, where, you know, if it's not really a pest or anything, species are, you know, reviewed to see if they deserve protections, and then from that point on, you cannot take action that injures them.
But it seemed like anything that was remotely insect or microbial, it never applied to.
It was, you know, cute fluffy puppies and horses.
Yeah, this stuff happens and shit survives, right?
So there was this, in the 19...
In the 1950s, in Australia, there was this sugar crop and the sugar crop had this grub and this grub was attacking the sugar crop and causing a lot of damage to farmers.
So the government decided to step in and help.
And what they did was they went to Hawaii and they got a bunch of cane toad frogs, I think they're called now or something like that.
And they brought these toads over and the toads were supposed to eat the grubs that were eating the sugar cane crops.
And what happened?
Well, exactly what you would imagine happened.
These frogs apparently breed about 40,000 eggs a day.
And they just, they took over.
They took over completely.
They're everywhere.
And, you know, people have found a way to survive it and all that.
But yeah, and the sad thing is they didn't even end up eating any of the grubs that were eating the sugar cane.
And cause a lot more damage to other kinds of crops.
The same things happen with Australia when they introduced rabbits and without natural predators.
And so it just went insane and the rabbits bred like, well, as they do, like rabbits.
And, you know, everything's still standing and we're all still alive, or at least a lot of us are.
So, yeah, stuff's going to happen.
I think reasonable precautions will be made.
But, you know, we are a restless and exploratory species and...
At some point, our Captain Kirk's are going to want to get with the chicks with nine tentacles coming out of their boobs, and nothing's going to stop us.
All right, going to move on to the next caller.
Thank you very much for the question.
Let's get the last one in for the night.
Thank you.
All right, Devin is up, and he wrote in and said, Will an objective methodology resolve disputes that are holding back world peace?
That's from Devin.
Yeah, I don't quite understand the question, but it sounds like an interesting one.
Hi.
Hi.
Yeah, so I'm just wondering, like, about, like, world peace.
You know, I was listening to some other call-in show, and some guy was talking about world peace, and then, you know, you were saying, you mentioned about objective methodology.
Like, may you please elaborate on that?
Well, yeah.
So, I mean, the question is around diversity, right?
Diversity is, multiculturalism, one of these weird things, because if everyone's the same, then there's no such thing as multiculturalism.
There's no such thing as diversity.
However, if you judge another group as being different from yourself, then you're a racist or a bigot or something like that, right?
It's just one of these stupid paradoxes that the left generally sets up to trap decent people.
And so...
If you have an accepted methodology for resolving disputes, like in the scientific community in general, at least in a free market scientific community, there's an objective methodology called the scientific method.
In free trade, there's an objective methodology for resolving the ownership of goods and services and it's called price.
If I think I'm worth X and other people don't want to pay for it, then I get to keep whatever it is.
If I make a bunch of ashtrays and I think they're worth a million dollars, I guess I'm going to end up keeping a whole bunch of ashtrays.
Whereas if I make a bunch of Maseratis and sell them for $8, then I'm going to end up with no Maseratis and...
You know, a whole fistful of $8 bills.
And so you have a price, you have reason in philosophy is supposed to be what dominates logic in math, structural integrity in engineering and empiricism.
and the scientific method.
These are all objective methodologies.
And then it's like, hey, if we all agree to be scientists, I don't care where you come from, come and contribute, right?
You can be black, white, African, Icelandic, it doesn't matter.
As long as we all agree on this methodology, let's have as much diversity as humanly possible.
On the other hand, if people don't agree on a methodology, then diversity is just a recipe for disaster.
It's a recipe for endless conflict, endless war, endless attempts to grab the state to impose your will on others.
Diversity in the absence of objectivity, Is a fragmentary and then people pick up those fragments and cut each other with them repeatedly.
And so diversity of thought, great.
Diversity of superstition, disaster.
And so I think if we can get people to act and think and behave in a more rational manner or at least accept...
The authority of reason, then we can have as much diversity as we want, but where there is not an objective methodology for resolving disputes, diversity is disaster.
Politics is definitely holding back world peace, like all these politicians.
Let them do something more productive instead of just dominating other people.
Yeah, but politics is really just an effect.
Yeah.
But politics is just an effect of...
It's really all about the parenting, right?
If parents raise children to respect reason and evidence, then politicians will lose their power, which is why the politicians want kids in government schools.
So certainly politics are a big problem, but politics...
We require nationalism and usually require people to believe in the superstitions of statism or religion.
And those superstitions are not implanted by politicians.
They're generally implanted by parents.
And this is why I keep nagging parents as the key to making the world a better place.
So the way it manifests itself is in politics, but the origin of it is, you know, you don't want to mistake the tumor for the smoking, right?
I mean, because you can cut out the tumor, but if the person keeps smoking this, they're probably going to sick again.
Yeah, that's what it boils down to, parenting.
There needs to be better parenting out there, and it's getting better.
I consider myself an optimist and think it's getting better slowly.
I heard you're writing your book on parenting, right?
Yeah, we've got the first half done, and we're just waiting for a break in news.
Thank you.
science and the studies and all of these statistical crunching and the verification of all that so yeah the first part in terms of theory has been done but the actual data to make the case is uh on its way at the moment uh i've just veered off and have started writing another book at the moment um advice your dad should have given you kind of stuff and uh So I'll be working on that because that's a little bit faster.
But yeah, we'll get back to the parenting thing probably over the long, bleak winter.
Oh, excellent.
I look forward to reading that book and the book you're currently writing right now.
All right.
Well, thanks very much.
I appreciate that.
I'm sorry to be a little short.
Feel free to call back in.
I'm just running a little low on energy.
I had a pretty early morning for a variety of reasons to get a bunch of stuff done.
So I'm going to close the showdown for tonight.
I just wanted to say thank you so much, everyone, for calling in.
It is an incredible pleasure, honor.
And privileged to be able to speak so openly about stuff that's important to all of you.
And I hope that everyone else finds it as useful as I do.
I also hope that people appreciate how tough it is to call in and talk about difficult personal stuff in such a public forum.
So thank you so much, everyone, for calling in.
Freedomainradio.com slash donate to help out the show.
And have yourselves a wonderful, wonderful night, everyone.
