3584 Mindf@!ked – Call In Show – February 1st, 2017
Question 1: [2:06] - “Your definition of forgiveness resonated very strongly with me and made more sense than any other definition I’ve heard, but it doesn’t relieve the pain and damage that was done. It seems to only give relief to the perpetrator. How does forgiveness provide relief to the person doing the forgiving?”Question 2: [1:01:27] - ”I am getting divorced. Years ago, I married a woman who had betrayed me once, and recently I discovered she betrayed me again. During that betrayal, I was also quite sick. I want to explore with you, and understand, why I would commit the mistake of falling in love, and then marrying, an unfaithful person and what I can do in the future to secure the loyal love and happiness I want for myself?”Question 3: [2:43:50] - "With the recent events of the 2016 presidential election and it's results I find myself as a former Marxist completely shifted on most issues I use to have a firmer stance on. Went from a militant anarcho-communist to a principled anarcho-capitalist and now find myself leaning towards concepts of nationalism and Americanism. I do not believe in nationalized healthcare, believe in the unregulated free market and I supported Donald Trump's bid for the Presidency just to name a few, how can I engage with and still respect friends and loved ones when met with a surprising amount of hostility and hate concerning my new positions?”Freedomain Radio is 100% funded by viewers like you. Please support the show by signing up for a monthly subscription or making a one time donation at: http://www.freedomainradio.com/donate
You know, it's always fascinating for me when I hear people repeat back to me what they think I've said at some point.
And the first caller is an example of that.
He wants to talk about the question of forgiveness.
And he has an interpretation of what I've said about forgiveness, which I had to correct.
But the issue that he was facing is that his wife, well, he discovered that his wife was having an emotional affair with his best friend.
Some time in the past and it still tortures him to this day and we had a really really great conversation about forgiveness and time and how easy it is to get wedded to negativity, to hostility.
Now the second This caller is tragically getting divorced.
These are actually people I met in the flesh.
And years before, he'd married a woman who had already betrayed him once with another man, and then kind of happened again.
And he wanted to know how, why, how did he end up in this situation where he was betrayed again at the cost of his marriage.
And again, the best predictor of future behavior is relevant past behavior, and it's something we often forget.
And the reasons why I think became pretty clear during the course of this call.
Now the third caller is stuck in an arts community that is stuffed to the gills with lefties.
And he's afraid to talk about his political beliefs.
He's afraid to talk about his philosophical beliefs.
Positions because he's afraid of repercussions or blowback from leftists.
Not something which we can ignore these days.
Or if we ignore it, we ignore it at our potential peril.
And I have advice for him.
Oh, I was there.
I was there for many a year.
And I have some advice for him that whether you're an artist or not, you really, really need to listen to.
So thanks so much for listening.
Please don't forget, come out and support the show.
We need you so much, so much, so much.
at freedomainradio.com slash donate.
Don't forget to follow me on Twitter at Stefan Molyneux.
And use our affiliate link at fdrurl.com slash Amazon.
Alright, well up for us today we have Darren.
Darren wrote in and said, How does forgiveness provide relief to the person doing the forgiving?
Your definition of forgiveness resonated very strongly with me and made more sense than any other definition I've heard.
To paraphrase my understanding of what you said, quote, receiving restitution to the extent that you can give the same level of trust you gave before, end quote.
But it doesn't relieve the pain and damage that was done.
It seems only to give relief to the perpetrator.
The background to this question is that 15 years ago my wife told me that she had been having an emotional affair with my then best friend, and that it had been going on and off for three years prior.
It never got physical, and I do believe that.
I was devastated emotionally for quite some time after that.
Instinctively, I knew that I needed her to really understand the damage that she had done to me if we were going to have any future.
It took a long time, but we eventually worked through the issues to the point where she understood how her choices had impacted me.
It was very hard work for both of us, and if I had known beforehand that the road was going to be so difficult, I'd have just cut my losses and moved on at the time.
So I'm at the point where my wife has worked hard to provide me with the restitution I required, and I do trust her again.
But even after all this time, it still cuts me very deeply.
That's from Darren.
Oh, hey Darren, how you doing?
Hi Stefan, how are you?
I'm well, thank you.
Let me just clarify before we sort of dive into the personal stuff.
Yep.
It's always interesting to me when I hear people say back what I said, so I'm going to just give the lowdown on forgiveness as I see it, and then we'll talk about your situation if that's alright.
Yep.
Forgiveness is something that is not willed by the victim but earned by the transgressor.
So you wrong someone and you owe them not just an apology but a commitment to not do the wrong again.
You owe them a deep examination of yourself and your psyche and your history to figure out why you did something that was so wrong.
And we're talking about big wrongs here not sort of you know oops I spilled my coffee on your Pretty white sundress or something.
We're talking about sort of big, important issues.
And to me, the...
Being on the receiving end of wrongdoing is a passive.
You can say to the person, what you did has really hurt me, what you did has really upset me and then you sit there passively like a big giant resentful beanbag and you wait for the other person to make you feel better because that's how you know if they get it.
That's how you know if they really understand what they've done to hurt you.
So it is a very passive thing to be on the receiving end of wrongdoing.
You sit there and you wait for the other person to make you feel better.
Restitution works like this.
Restitution is when you are okay with the thing that happened.
You're not glad that it happened.
You're not still really upset that it happened.
That's what restitution is.
So the simple example is if I ride my scooter into your car and And it costs you 500 bucks to get your dings fixed and it costs you another couple of hours of time and so on.
Let's say we value your time at 50 bucks an hour and then I pay you 650 bucks like 500 bucks to repair and 50 bucks an hour for the three hours that you spend getting it repaired.
Now if I paid you five million dollars you'd be really happy that I ran my scooter into your car.
If I didn't pay anything, you'd be really unhappy.
So you don't want to overpay and you don't want to underpay.
You want to pay to the point where the person says, okay, I'm okay with it.
I didn't make a lot of money of it or I didn't make a lot of...
I'm not really happy that it happened, but I'm also not sad that it happened.
And that's what restitution is.
Now, restitution means, of course, restoring something to its prior state.
With things like infidelity, betrayal, and so on, there can be enormous value Out of these kinds of transgressions in a relationship.
You can figure out why I'm in the relationship, why the other person didn't recognize my needs and preferences enough to the point where they were going to betray me to that extent.
You can get a lot of self-knowledge.
You can end up with greater knowledge of the other person and of your relationship.
So that to me...
is uh is important and so you can actually be better off after you have been betrayed and that doesn't mean the relationship continues that just means that you gain a great deal of self-knowledge from these kinds of catastrophes or these kinds of disasters or betrayals so I think that's important now the other thing is that forgiveness does not mean necessarily a continuation of the relationship because the important thing In philosophy is the truth.
It's not forgiveness or restitution.
I mean, the truth is important.
The truth may be that someone has betrayed you to the point where you are willing to forgive them but not willing to trust them again.
In other words, I forgive you for the past, but I'd rather start clean slate with a new person if it's a romantic relationship without all this baggage and so on.
So forgiveness doesn't necessarily mean continuation.
And also to let go of hurt and anger.
This seems to be a big thing which we'll get into with regards to you, Darren, but to let go of hurt and anger seems to be the important thing.
I think Mark Twain said that rage or resentment or anger is kind of like an acid that does more damage to the vessel that holds it than the object it's poured on.
I think I have some issues with that.
I have a great deal of respect and praise for the emotion of anger.
Not rage, right?
Not destruction, but anger is very, very healthy.
It's the immune system of the psyche and keeps you safe or is designed to keep you safe and protected.
So there are people who wronged me in my life and I don't really think about them anymore, but neither do I continue a relationship with those people.
You know, maybe once every week or two they'll cross my mind.
So I don't sort of hold on to all this anger and resentment and so on because I have accepted, right?
The purpose of anger is to say your self, your values, your identity has been violated and you need to be safe.
Now, if you're in proximity with someone who has violated your values or your person, Then either they need to never do that again, or you need to not be around that person.
So you can gain peace of mind by removing yourself from situations where your values are going to be fairly repetitively and maybe even relentlessly violated.
So I would sort of put forgiveness as, yeah, it's something that needs to be active on the part of the person who wronged you.
And the reason for that is that they need to work hard to figure out why they did the wrong to you how it got that way and they really really need to work and the way and the degree they work is the way in which you end up being able to feel more at peace with them if they can get you to a place where you're like okay I'm okay that this happened I'm okay that you had this emotional affair with another man we're closer we're deeper we understand more about why we're together we understand more about love and trust and in a weird way I'm kind of glad it happened I'm not super happy that
it happened you know like some massive cock fest in a It's a 70s porn video or something, but I am okay that it happened.
I can see some real benefits.
I wouldn't want it to happen again, but I'm okay that it did happen.
You know, in the same way if I run into your car with my scooter, you're okay that it happened, but you don't really want to have it happen again.
So I just really wanted to point that out.
And this idea that you will forgive us.
And that makes you feel better and you then stay in a relationship is something that could not be more invented by people who want to abuse you.
This whole idea, well, you're going to be eaten up and you're going to be upset and you're going to be sad and you're going to be angry.
You're going to be stressed.
It's going to eat you alive.
So you've got to forgive the person and then continue to hang out with them regardless of what they do.
That is a recipe for abuse and that's invented by people, I think, who just want to keep on crapping on your cornflakes.
So I just really wanted to point that out.
At the beginning and just does that sort of accord with what you've heard or what you think?
Yeah, very much so.
It's one of those things where I don't forgive people.
I never really have.
I've always, as you sort of pointed out, I protect myself, I guess.
And so all the way through my life, if somebody consciously went out of their way to hurt me, that was the end of that relationship, no matter what that relationship was.
And that was what was so hard with this one.
When you've got young children and a marriage, it was the first time that I ever really sort of I tried to sort of work it through, I guess, and it was extremely difficult.
It was something, as I say, the process of going through the, like, well, as you say, it's not really restitution, but it was the navel-gazing.
I guess the one thing that I'm pretty righteous, I guess, in my outlook to life, and it was just one of these things where I never, ever thought I'd have to face that.
It was sort of probably the one thing I never thought that I would ever have to face.
And it just absolutely blew me away.
Sorry to interrupt, but do you mind telling me a little bit more about this affair with your best friend?
I mean, that's a double betrayal too, right?
I mean, your wife and your best friend, that's like the bookshelf of spiky pain, right?
Bookends.
Oh, yeah.
It was extremely difficult because I don't...
Well, back then, I didn't sort of really mix much.
I'm quite introverted, so I'm sort of happy to be on my own.
So it sort of meant that the person that was closest to me, as in my wife, and the person I would have gone and spoke to about it, were both basically involved in doing this to me.
How long did that go on for?
Well, I didn't know at all about it until basically it was...
It was funny because my wife and I started a business and the best friend actually came in and we met him actually.
He worked for us for quite some years.
Oh, man.
Wife, friend, business.
Oh, my God.
Did he run off with your kidney too in one of your children?
It was really bad.
And it was funny because one of my other staff members actually in the end said, look, you've got to, you know, there's something wrong there.
You better look at it.
And I laughed it off because my trust was so complete in my wife, not in the friend.
I actually knew what his nature was, and she did too, which surprised me.
You mean that he was a bit of a hound dog?
Yes.
Yeah, very much so.
And how long did they have this affair for?
I wrote down three years, but I actually talked to my wife about it again just this week.
It was only...
Well, not only.
It was 15 months, which for me was...
When I was first told about it, I was told that it was, I actually asked after the staff member sort of said it to me, I went home and after about a week of plucking up the courage to actually sort of ask the question, because it's quite a hard question to ask, I said, is there anything going on?
And my wife said no at the start, and then About an hour or so later, basically, I came and said, actually, no, I do have a, you know, I've had an attraction.
And so my response was, oh, attraction's okay.
I mean, that's pretty natural.
As long as you don't act on it, then, you know, that's, I wouldn't, you know, I don't think there's anything wrong with that.
And then it was sort of like a, it might have been hours or days later, or a day later or something that, you Things just didn't start to make sense.
So I asked again and basically then it was, you know, we've actually expressed our admiration for each other and so on and so forth.
And I thought it was like...
Sorry to interrupt.
But it was a staff member at your business who told you and then you went and asked.
It wasn't anything volunteered by either your wife or your best friend?
No, no.
And why didn't they act on the affair?
Because of me, which is sort of, which also pissed me right off, I've got to say, because what actually happened, it sort of sounds funny to say that, but the reason that they went into the affair is because I am pretty, I guess, I come across as fairly unemotional.
And so my wife sort of felt bored, whatever, and basically she With talking to this other guy, and she was trying to help him through his issues as well, which I think is also, you know, one of those sort of things where things can get a bit dangerous, but I didn't see the danger at that stage.
And so, yeah, they...
Sorry, I forgot where you were going with that question, but...
Why didn't they act on their affair?
Can you say out of concern for you, but out of concern for you, they shouldn't have pursued and shared and blah, blah, blah, right?
Exactly right.
And what actually happened with that was my wife convinced herself that as long as it didn't get physical, it wasn't an affair.
So she deluded herself to that extent.
He also acted as though I'm protecting...
Somehow in his head, he thought he was doing the right thing by not letting it get physical, because with other women that he'd done this to, it had gotten physical.
And, you know, like people afterwards, you know, and actually before...
Wait, sorry, he'd...
He'd busted up marriages before by having affairs with married women?
No, I don't know about any married women, but certainly we had clients and things where I'd sort of start to hear things that he'd actually led on, like it might be a secretary at their business or something like that.
So it wasn't ever...
I don't know, led on what, he'd slept with clients or what?
Oh, I don't even know if he slept with them.
I think he used to get his kick out of actually just leading women on and then feeling really, really good about how much they appreciated him.
I think that was actually what his payback was.
So I don't think it was even that physical for him.
It just seemed as though these women, we had women that seemed to fall in love with him and then he'd get out of it as fast as he could and then move on to the next one.
Was he very good looking?
No, not at all.
No, it's...
No, no, not at all.
It doesn't make sense.
Fit, intelligent?
I guess if he's just unavailable, then it's supply and demand, right?
Okay.
Well, I think he was intelligent, but he was also troubled.
And I think the women who tended to fall for him were women who liked to fix things, if that makes sense.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, it's the inverse of Captain Save-A-Ho.
It's like, oh, this guy, he's so sad, he's broken, but I can wrap him in my boobs, tie the knot behind his head and bring him fresh mother's milk of kindness and make him all whole again.
And so, definitely with my wife, she thought that she was helping him through childhood issues that he had had.
And that's how it sort of had started.
And so...
So they would actually share poetry and thoughts and all sorts of things, which my wife then stopped sharing with me, of course.
And so for that 15 months, well, and whenever they would get together, like it never even got to the point of holding hands, you know, like it was literally just she was emotionally unavailable to me and emotionally available to him.
But she might have been fantasizing about having sex with him while having sex with you, right?
We don't know Right?
This is all a big gray area, right?
I mean, for sure, not acting on it is better than acting on it.
Of course, right?
But there's still a very gray area, which is the damage that you do to your relationship by having an emotional affair with someone else is huge.
As you know, right?
I mean, it's like diverting nine-tenths of a river to someone else's farm.
I mean, your own crops just kind of wither because they're not getting the...
And you get to bypass dealing with problems in your relationship by having this constant low-grade sexual hum background going on in your brain.
You don't actually end up dealing with issues in your own marriage because you're kind of distracted and this and that and the other.
Yeah, look, we had great times in amongst those 15 months.
It wasn't like it was ongoing all the time.
I think what happened with them was that they would actually get together, start talking about it, and then they would think, oh, we can't let me down.
And so they would then say, okay, let's just be friends.
And then I think it would get to the point where...
I call it drama, but I just feel that it's out of boredom, wanting something different, wanting something to do.
I don't know what it is.
That's the sorts of things I don't understand.
They'd be back together telling each other how great each other was.
These kinds of affairs, whether direct or indirect, arise out of signals that your wife is giving off.
It doesn't just come out of nowhere.
It's not like, well, I'm bored, so I think I'll...
I mean, women give off signals.
I mean, I used to get lots of female attention.
I got married, very happily married, and it all stopped.
And it's because I don't give out any signals.
I don't really flirt.
I don't do any of that stuff, so I don't get any...
You have to be putting the signals out in order for this stuff to happen.
And the other guy did, and I didn't think my wife did.
Did you fire him?
Oh, yeah.
Well, actually, I fired him before that from the business, but still considered him a good, close friend.
I just couldn't afford to keep him in the business anymore.
He was starting to take liberties in the business.
What do you mean?
I can't even think of what it was.
Just little things like it might have been spending.
Well, the one thing that really hurt me after I found out was that I was He would go off, and I wouldn't see him for the afternoon, and he was off meeting up with my wife.
Okay, hang on, hang on.
Is this laughing about stuff?
I mean, sorry, this is painful stuff.
Don't send me a message about how painful it is and then laugh about it, right?
That's just kind of disconcerting.
So you're paying this guy to flirt like hell with your wife, and he's off in the afternoon when he's supposed to be working for you, so you're actually paying him to flirt like hell with your wife.
Yep, yep.
What the fuck?
How the hell did this guy end up in your life?
Well, that's why I'm laughing, because I felt like such a clown and an idiot when I found out.
That was actually one of the biggest things.
I just felt like such an idiot that I didn't see it and that I could be so blind to it.
And it took a staff member who wasn't even that close to it to actually point it out to me.
Like, that was just...
I felt like such an idiot.
That part of it as well was really, really hard to deal with.
They would use me as the excuse.
My wife would use me as the excuse for Getting into the...
Like, to actually go across into the...
And make contact again because I wasn't paying her attention.
And then they would use the excuse of not hurting me as to when to finish it.
So I became, I guess, the patsy, which also really, really annoyed me.
Like, I thought...
The thing that really bothered me with this whole thing...
And, look, from him, I didn't...
I wouldn't have expected any different.
And so, basically, I've...
Like, I... I hate him with an absolute loathing now.
Even after all these years, I was at a point where I didn't know what I'd do if I ever saw him again.
I didn't know how I'd actually respond.
Now I think I could see him, but I don't know what I'd say, whereas I didn't know what I would do previously.
Once again, I'm laughing, but it's just the Yeah, that side of things was extremely difficult.
But with my wife, the thing that really hurt me was that someone that makes a mistake, I think I could actually rationalise a mistake.
And this is where I really get stuck with the whole forgiveness thing.
I think I could actually do the definition of forgiveness like an actual...
Where you can understand a mistake and think that's not a problem.
But a mistake is a one-off thing.
After that, it becomes a choice.
Yeah, 15 months is not a mistake.
No, no.
So for me to deal with it, I was dealing with...
The only thing that really made sense to me is that my wife was deluding herself to the point where she was...
Making up excuses for why it wasn't an affair.
And that was, once again, when we started to work through it, it was a very difficult process to actually get her to even start to see that it was actually an affair.
She could see that it was inappropriate, and she saw that pretty early on, but she would not see it as an affair for some weeks, I guess.
It did take quite some time.
So because she was so delusional about Yeah, I get it.
So she didn't tell you about it.
She lied about it when you first told her that you had some suspicions and then she lied about it until you confronted her and then she minimized it for quite some time, right?
She minimised it for about a week, I guess, where every day I would...
Well, I started looking then.
I started looking for the little clues.
And it's sort of a bit like that movie, The Sixth Sense, you know, like how at the end of the movie, he's been dead the whole time.
And it was a bit like that, where you start to sort of think, I wonder what happened on that day?
Why the response to something happening was so off-kilter?
And then I'd go and check emails and things like that.
And then I'd find, you know, correspondence where...
Yeah, couldn't get me out of the house fast enough so that she could then sort of go and start to communicate electronically with the other guy.
Wait, she wanted, she would like send you, I'm sorry to interrupt, but I just, I feel like you could just keep talking about this stuff and I need to kind of understand what's going on.
So she would send you out of the house so she could float with this guy electronically?
Look, the one that sort of really hurt me was on my birthday.
I had to go to work, and so the work was sort of away from the house.
But she was very noncommittal on this particular birthday.
It sort of stuck with me because she's not normally like that.
And so she couldn't get me out of the house fast enough on my birthday.
And then when I looked in hindsight back at it, and this is a few months later that I actually had then found out by that stage, I then looked at the times.
And within...
20 minutes, there was poetry going back and forwards on the emails.
So what did she say to get you out of the house on your birthday?
Oh, nothing.
It was just not a welcome environment.
So for me, it was okay.
She didn't actually say anything.
It was just that instead of actually making me feel good or anything like that, it was...
I think from memory she sort of acted a bit grumpy, but I do remember it because normally birthdays are a big deal for her.
And they're not so much for me, but I do remember that that was a very, very different response.
And you have kids, young kids at the time?
Yes, at that stage all our kids were younger than teens.
And what did she do to earn your trust back?
Well, it took two years, and I think that this is, and it took two years of very hard work from her side.
She, well, after the first week where she could see that she didn't want to hurt me.
And that's why she was not giving me all the information.
And then she'd also, well, she said.
Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Darren, Darren, Darren, Darren, Darren.
Ah, I can tell you, man to man, that is not why she didn't give you all the information.
information.
See, here's the thing.
If she didn't want to hurt you, you know what you do?
You don't have an emotional affair for a year and a half.
Yes.
So the idea that she just didn't give you all the facts because she didn't want to hurt you?
No.
No, she didn't want you to have leverage, right?
Yep, yep.
Well, at that stage, she really didn't think that our relationship was going to finish.
Wait, what do you mean was going to finish?
I don't know what that means.
It was over?
Yeah.
Well, she didn't think it was...
No, no.
Oh, she didn't think that you were going to leave her?
No, because she didn't see it as that big a deal at the time.
She'd actually convinced herself that it was a little bit worse than just a friendship.
Did she call you crazy for being upset?
No, no, not at all.
She was heartbroken at what had actually happened, and she was very, very remorseful right from the first day.
What makes you think it didn't get physical?
I really do believe that it was me.
What do you mean it was you?
I guess her loyalty to the marriage in that sort of sense, she could convince herself that it wasn't As bad as it was unless it got physical and if it got physical I don't think she's actually deep down an honest person and it's sort of that's why the self-deception has to have played a big role in this and so she had a set of rules that were fine to continue on as long and for her an affair was black and white you either slept with somebody and that was
an affair or you didn't and that wasn't an affair and So a lot of the discussions and arguments that we had were that inappropriate conduct is a grey area, not a black and white area.
And it took a long, long time for her to accept that it was an affair and that the damage that she had done to my trust was as bad as if she had slept with somebody.
Did she work at the company too?
Oh, look, maybe sort of like one day every week.
Couple of weeks, so hardly at all.
So she knew when she was meeting with your best friend that he was supposed to be at work and you were paying him to be at work, but she's like, no, no, come and meet with me.
I can't recall, to be honest.
I can't recall those sorts of...
I don't think there was much of that, to be honest.
I think a lot of it was after attack.
No, no, no.
You brought this up.
I'm repeating back to you what you said to me.
Yeah, yeah.
That, I don't think there's much of that.
That's not because you're giving her the self-deception out.
Yeah, yeah.
This is not self-deception.
Self-deception is, I guess I haven't gained any weight, maybe I look fine in these pants when you're muffin topping all over the place, right?
Yeah.
But if you're saying to your husband's employee, come and meet me while he's paying you to work, I don't know how this falls into self-deception.
Yeah, that's true.
That's very proactive and very active things that harm you, not just emotionally, but financially.
The provider of resources for your family.
Was she working at the time?
No.
Okay, so the provider of the resources to your family, I assume your best friend was fairly key to your business, and so you're saying, oh yeah, okay, well the important thing is that my emotional needs get satisfied, my selfish needs get satisfied, so it might break my husband's heart and destroy his business, but mommy needs some affection.
This is not in the realm of self-deception.
You understand?
No, that's very, very true.
You've hit the nail on the head with that.
The selfishness of the act blew me away.
And children!
And children!
I'm going to engage in an emotional affair that's going to harm my husband's business and, and, and, Darren, cause a massive schism Between my husband, who doesn't have many friends, is kind of an introvert, between my husband and his best friend.
Harm his business.
Harm his best friendship.
Harm my family.
Harm my children.
For what?
For what?
That's what I never...
I still...
I think the one thing I really cannot understand is why so much was at risk on the table for such a small...
Like, he wasn't somebody that was ever going to stick around.
So why risk?
No, it's attention, right?
Look, there are things that we need to all grow the hell up when it comes to.
And one of them is sexual attention from the opposite sex.
That's just something that's there for dating.
That's there for flirting.
That's there for boyfriend and girlfriend.
You know, when you get engaged and you get married, you put that shit behind you.
Yes.
You know, when I was a baby, I'd take a shit in the street.
Now I'm an adult.
I don't really do that so much anymore.
And when, you know, when I was younger, oh, your female attention was fantastic.
It was a high.
Now I'm an adult.
I'm a married man.
I'm a father.
You put that shit behind you, right?
Yes.
Because the consequences of acting like a spoiled brat with a vagina are so astonishingly grave, are so astonishingly destructive, that you just don't do it.
Yes, yeah.
And so she was a child in charge of children, I would argue.
I mean, and that's sort of an insult to children, right?
Well, she would agree with you on that.
We met when she was 18, and I was 20, and I was her second boyfriend, and the first boyfriend really wasn't around for very long.
So she had quite a sheltered childhood, really.
And even though she was You know late 20s when all this started and I don't I struggle seeing how can you be immature about that at that age, but You know, she's sorry.
She was how old when they started?
Late 20s late 20s.
Yeah, so again, you're giving you're giving circumstances Well, you know, she only had one boyfriend before me.
She wasn't that experiences see the moment I start giving her 100% ownership and You understand, you start fencing her around with defensive excuses.
I thought I would too, to be honest.
And of course, of course you do.
I mean, this was the price you had to pay to stay in the marriage, right?
Yeah, yeah.
Right.
Yeah, so, yeah.
But stop.
Just stop.
Just stop it.
And the reason I want you to stop it is not only is it obvious and annoying, but more annoying for you than it is for me, but I want you to find a way to get closure because it still hurts, right?
Yeah.
You know, you could have called in to talk to me about anything, but this is what you wanted to talk about.
So I assume you didn't come with issue number 12, right?
This is the big thing for you.
That's right, yeah.
What was your relationship with your mom like?
My mom was very close.
She died when I was 23.
So after I met my wife, she died of cancer.
But it was a very close relationship with my mother.
She sort of really did raise me and my sister largely, I guess.
My father was a shift worker and really wasn't present much.
And so, yeah, it was a...
She actually...
I've looked at this as well because...
She had cancer also when I was about eight or nine, and we lived in the country, and so she had to go to the city to get the treatment.
So she was gone for an extended period, which is when my father then looked after us.
And when she came back, she was so scared about what was going to happen that she then decided to instill in us, I guess, a sense of not needing to rely on anybody to survive.
And so she came back a different person at that stage.
Which was very confusing as a child.
Right.
And your mother knew your girlfriend for five years before she died?
No, only three years.
Three years, sorry.
And what did your mother think of your girlfriend at the time?
She loved her.
Absolutely loved her.
Why?
My wife is a really sweet person.
She really is.
And she's got very strong family values.
She comes from a very strong...
She comes from an ethnic family where the family values were very, very strong.
Which ethnicity?
Central European, like German and Hungarian.
And so she came from a very, very tight family.
And my mum, yeah, absolutely...
Absolutely loved her.
And what would your mother have said, do you think, if your mother had lived and had heard what your wife had done?
I think that she would have basically sort of got us both to sort of look at what our roles were in it and then just try to sort of work through it.
So I don't think that she would have Asked us to do much more than what we did.
I don't think there would have been any insights.
Wait, wait, wait.
Oh my God.
Oh my God.
This is the answer.
I don't know if you're hearing what you're saying, but this is the answer.
This is the answer.
You have a daughter?
Yeah.
You have a son?
No, just daughters.
Okay.
A man hurts your daughter the way that your wife hurt you.
She threatens his business, threatens his friendships, threatens the marriage.
She drives him out of the home by being bitchy on his birthday so that she can exchange sweet nothings with his best friend.
And what would you say and who would you say it to?
Yeah, I've thought of this too.
So what would you say and who would you say it to?
I would be telling both of them that they need to do an awful lot of work and that they've got to be 100% honest.
No, no, no, that's terrible.
It just comes from your mom.
No, that's terrible.
That's terrible.
The person who's lying and the person who's cheating and the person who's destabilizing the marriage and threatening the business and threatening one of her husband's few friends, that is the person who needs to be taken out of the metaphorical woodshed, right?
That's the person who is doing wrong.
It's not a both of you.
Oh, yeah.
No, no.
I didn't wear any of the any of the problems.
It's like I didn't.
No, no, no.
Stop.
I need you to slow down because you're just jumping right back in with more avoidance.
Yeah.
All right.
And there's the laugh.
That's the avoidance again.
Right.
The person who lied, the person who threatened the business, the person who threatened the friendships, the person who threatened the marriage.
The person who was minimizing, the person who never fessed up, never owned up.
Look, she could have done so many things to make this better.
She could have sat down with you and talked about it.
She could even have said, I'm upset about something and I need to go and see a therapist.
And she could have gone to a therapist to work it out.
The therapist could have supported her in telling you what the hell was going on, right?
Your friend could have come to you.
I mean, you were very isolated.
The two closest people in your life were mind-fucking each other behind your back on your dime.
Right?
So you were extremely isolated by this.
Yes, yeah.
And that is catastrophic.
The person who's at fault is your wife and your friend.
Now, yes, you have some tertiary responsibility.
They're in your life.
You chose them.
They weren't your family.
Family of origin is not chosen.
Friendships and marriages are.
But the idea that you would sit both people down and give them both a lecture?
Come on!
Oh, no, no, sorry.
No, no, this is what you said you would do, and this is what you said your mother would do.
Which is why you would do this, right?
She would have told me.
She would have...
Well, if I was the perpetrator, she would have told me to be honest and truthful.
And if she had told me with what happened, I think she would have said, To make sure that I'm 100% on top of it, I guess.
Okay, I don't know what you're talking about, so I'm going to just keep moving.
This is just a bunch of syllables designed to throw me off the scent.
You're like the getaway criminal who's wading upriver in the hopes that the dogs lose the scent.
So I don't even know what that's all about, but let's just put it behind us.
Is it fair to say that your wife has grown up since then?
Absolutely.
So let's move from 15 years ago to now.
Because now, my criticism is actually of you, not of your wife, in terms of the present.
I think I've made my judgment of your wife in the past pretty clear, but my issue is with you.
Tell me this, Darren.
When does your wife get out of jail?
When is your wife truly forgiven for what happened 15 years ago?
Holding on to this to the point where it still cuts you very deeply after 15 years, is it 20?
Is it 25?
Is it after you're both reincarnated as dung beetles?
I mean, when does this statute of limitations run out for the wrongs that she did?
I can't answer that.
That's the million dollar question.
I think it's forever.
Well, I think that that is a bad answer and I think that's a very controlling answer.
I think that's a resentful answer and I also think that that's kind of a bullying answer.
See, here's the thing about forgiveness, right?
If the person, and you said she worked hard for two years, she's grown up a lot since then, if the person has legitimately earned forgiveness and you don't pay it, you're kind of a dick.
If she hasn't earned the forgiveness, that's on you as well because it's been 15 years.
But if she has grown and if she's admitted fault and if she has legitimately worked hard and honestly and justly to earn your forgiveness and you're still holding on to this upset, what it means is that most likely, I think, what it means, Darren, is that you're striving to have power and effect in the relationship and you're holding this over her.
As a power play.
Yeah, her friends have said the same.
I know that that's not true.
That doesn't ring true at all.
Ring true?
You're laughing about things and you're telling me what emotionally rings true?
I'm laughing as a mask.
Who says that this ringing true thing can't get through the mask?
But anyway, tell me why you think it's not true.
Because if it was a thing to control, it would never be a true relationship.
And I knew that pretty much from the first week.
It would never be a what?
It wouldn't be an honest relationship.
It wouldn't be an honest relationship.
The woman who lied about stepping out with your best friend and harming your business for 15 months, you're telling me that it wouldn't be an honest relationship?
Well, it would always be something where I then have to look over my back.
No, no, no, you know, this has nothing to do with what I'm asking.
We can talk about that in a sec, but I need to get this stuff dealt with first.
When someone has done us wrong, and they've admitted that they've done wrong, and this is why a lot of people don't admit when they've done wrong in a relationship, is it swings the balance of power to the other person.
Because now you're in the possession of having been wronged.
And I'm not saying this is true of you.
I'm just saying that I've known a lot of relationships in my life where people, they almost welcome the other person being a jerk.
They almost welcome the other person behaving badly.
Because then they get the power.
It's like the seesaws when you were a kid.
Think of a bowling ball on a seesaw, right?
It's kind of in the middle.
One person does wrong, rolls down, oh, I got the power now!
I can tell this other person they've done wrong and they now have to do what I say and dance to my tune and make restitution and apologize.
And that kind of power can become a habit.
It can become, I think, addictive.
And my question is, if...
She's better.
If she's earned your forgiveness and you're still holding on to the pain of this, then you're the one who's now being unjust.
You're the one who's now harming the relationship.
Yes, I am.
Yeah, I am.
I'm not holding...
I don't want to hold on to it.
I don't know what that means.
It's...
I mean, I know what the words mean.
But you've heard of the phrase secondary gains, right?
Secondary gains are the unconscious or subconscious benefits that we get out of things that we claim are negative, right?
So, you know, like somebody who's, oh, I've got a bad back, I've got a bad back, you know, maybe it's not quite as bad as the person says it is, but they get lots of sympathy, and then they don't have to do any chores, and people bring them food, and somebody offers to mow their lawn, and so these are called secondary benefits, right?
Secondary gains.
So you may be getting some secondary gains out of having this moral authority and elevation and power in the marriage.
Does this ever come up with your wife, this history?
As in, does she raise it?
No, no.
I didn't ask who raised it.
I said, does it ever come up?
Either one of you.
Very rarely now.
It did for some years.
How often would it come up for some years?
Let's say after the two years that you said she worked to earn your forgiveness.
Yeah okay then it would come up probably about once a week for the probably the next year and then every two weeks and then sort of it's dwindled off now where it's it might be well it really is a number of months before it comes up and I think about it, but I don't ever speak about it.
Nowadays, anyway.
Okay, so why do you think about this event from 15 years ago?
I can't answer that.
I don't know.
Give me a context in which this event from 15 years ago comes up.
Because I'll tell you this.
I'm sorry to ask you a question and then interrupt you immediately.
I apologize for that.
I just want to get this across before I forget.
People have wronged me far more egregiously than your wife did 15 years ago.
I barely think about it.
Yep.
And that's For a wide variety of reasons, but mostly out of a desire for happiness, right?
So my question is, under what situations or in what context does this come up with your wife now, 15 years later?
You said a couple of times a year.
Yeah, look, it comes up.
If somebody betrays me, no matter what it is, like if someone lies to me or if there's a betrayal over a job that we're doing or something like that, I feel it.
I feel it much more raw than what I should.
And my wife picks up on that.
And so she'll actually ask at that point what I'm thinking.
And I'll say, I'm hurt again by the betrayal.
Not from her, but from whatever the situation might be.
Who in your life helps you to vet people so that you don't get betrayed?
My wife.
And so your wife gives her seal of approval to these people or says that they're trustworthy and then sometimes they will betray you.
Is that right?
Yes, but she's right much more often than wrong in that regard.
So she's shielding you from a lot of people who will betray you, but occasionally both of you miss your guess and you get betrayed.
Yes, yeah.
So how many people does she save you from versus how many people get through?
Is it like 9 to 1, 10 to 1, 5 to 1?
Not very many.
When she was working actively in the business, her gut feel about clients was something that I relied on an awful lot.
So she's actually saving you from being betrayed?
Yes.
And your way of...
Rewarding her for saving you from being betrayed is to bring up her betrayal from 15 years ago.
I don't bring it up anymore.
No, you just told me it still comes up.
Yeah, it comes up.
She'll ask the question.
No, but emotionally.
Oh, well, I'm just being honest.
But the question is, why is it there?
If she's protecting you, she's never had another affair.
She's never had another emotional affair.
I'm going to go with that assumption, since you're talking about 15 years ago.
She protects you from people who might betray you, and she saves you from the experience of betrayal.
Occasionally, you know, I guess a puck gets through the goalie or whatever.
But rather than say, wow, you know, I'm...
I'm thrilled that the nine people you prevented me from being betrayed by now, this one person, you know, kind of betrayed me, but man, am I ever glad that it wasn't nine times worse, right?
Yes, yeah.
That's a completely valid statistical perspective, right?
Yeah, yeah.
And why is it not part of your thinking then?
I do appreciate that.
But not enough to have it change your feelings.
Because you don't get it.
If she is the goalie keeping bad people from betraying you, and she's saving you from massive amounts of betrayal, I don't know where the hell you live, Betrayal Canyon, I don't know, but then she's providing a significant benefit to you.
and she by by she betrayed you in the past 15 years ago but now she's saving you from being betrayed by others yep but that doesn't strike you emotionally because you're still upset about what happened 15 years ago Yeah, it's...
See, here's the thing.
I'm sorry, let me just break it down for you.
I don't know how much honesty I'm getting from you.
And by that, I don't mean that you're being dishonest.
I just, none of this makes sense.
Right?
I mean, none of this makes sense to me.
I'm just going to be frank with you.
It doesn't mean it doesn't make sense at all.
I'm just telling maybe I'm too biased or idiotic or whatever it is to put all of these puzzle pieces together.
But what she did was horrendous, egregious, horrifying.
And, you know, if she's better now, then you're the unjust person, right?
And if she's not particularly better now, then your feelings are saying it's not solved.
No, it's solved.
Okay, so if it's solved, if she's better now and she's working to help keep you safe from a betrayal she enacted 15 years ago and she's doing a good job, then you are the unjust one.
You are the one who is now harming the marriage and you are the one who is now betraying her by not paying her the respect and peace of mind that she has earned.
Over the past 13 years, right?
After the two years that you found out or 12 years or whatever it is going to be, right?
So then you have become her.
In other words, the betrayal that she had, the emotional distance that she retained, the lack of commitment to respect for you that she enacted 15 years ago, you're enacting now.
You are doing as much harm to your marriage as she did 15 years ago by holding on to resentment and upset when she has done Everything conceivable, I think, to restore your trust in her.
Yes.
Now you're just being a jerk.
Now you're just being a jerk.
And you're betraying her.
And you're having an emotional affair with your own resentment.
Do you understand?
Your resentment has become the best friend that you're mind-fucking now in the marriage.
You're having an affair with your resentment at the expense of your intimacy with your wife.
You have mirrored her behavior.
That's deep.
That's where we go.
That's what we do.
But you understand, right?
Yeah, yeah.
You're having an affair with power.
You're having an affair with self-righteousness.
You're having an affair with being right rather than being happy.
You're keeping yourself distant from her in the same way she kept herself distant from you.
There's a third party in the marriage called gripped history.
You got that history in your fist and you won't let it go.
Now, the pain of letting that go, I understand.
I'm not saying you're crazy.
I mean, it makes perfect sense to me.
Your mother got sick.
It was terrifying.
Your mother died.
It was ugly and horrible.
You said you were very close with her.
And I'm sorry for all of that.
I really am.
Really am.
But here's the thing.
Life is risk.
You may open your heart and you may get it shredded.
You might throw your arms wide to your wife or to the world and unreservedly love and be enthusiastic and be passionate and be positive.
And the world might fire up a chainsaw and carve out your innards.
And the world might fire up a lawnmower and ride over your nads.
It might happen.
And what's the alternative?
We hold ourselves close.
We hold on to resentments.
We don't give ourselves body and soul to the people in our lives.
We hold back.
We hold on.
We sit in the past.
We dwell in the past.
We withhold ourselves to keep her safe.
For what?
What are you keeping yourself safe for, Darren?
You're going to die either way.
Yeah, yeah.
You mean you're in your 50s, right?
Yeah.
You've got another 30 years to go.
Do you want this to be a half century?
You want to call me back when you're 85?
No, no.
And say, wow, 31 years later, I've really managed to hang on to that resentment.
Do you want to become the Middle East?
I don't think you do.
Yeah.
I don't think you do.
No, no, I want to go on.
You've given me a lot to think about.
Stop mind-fucking your resentment and open your heart to your wife and apologize.
Now you have something to apologize for, which is she's worked hard to keep you safe and apologize and made restitution, and you're like, nope!
Nope!
I'm holding myself back for 15 years!
Now, first couple of years, okay, it's a long time, but I can understand it, but man alive, I think it's fair now to let it go.
And to apologize for holding on for so long because it is interfering with your marriage.
Look, let me give you my last piece of advice, then I'll shut up and let you talk.
Thank you very much for that, right?
Have you ever heard the phrase, you're an entrepreneur, right?
You run a business, so you probably have.
Have you ever heard the phrase, go big or go home?
Yeah, yeah.
What does that mean to you?
Basically, you've got to put a big risk in to get the big rewards.
Otherwise, don't bother trying.
You're in or you're out.
Yeah.
Don't be one foot on the pier, one foot on the boat kind of guy.
If you're gonna stay with your wife, and I'm guessing 15 years after the emotional affair, you're in for the long haul.
If you're gonna stay with your wife, then be with your wife.
Be open-hearted with your wife.
Let it go.
Stop having an affair with the cyst of your history.
Yeah, yeah.
Right.
Open your heart.
to her because at some point if you continue this is this this is the tragic thing there if you continue to withhold part of who you are if you continue to hold things in backup in case of emergency break real Daryl well that has already broken real Daryl Darren sorry and so here's the concern that I have is that sooner or later she's going to get so frustrated by you not being as emotionally available to her Yeah,
It's all over then.
She's going to go have another affair, whether it's Old Testament or New Testament.
I don't you know, it's still going to be something.
It's going to be you can only withhold water from people for so long before they'll start sucking out of a moose track with rainwater with a straw.
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So you kind of in a self-fulfilling prophecy thing.
You're not giving her your whole heart.
You're not just opening the bomb base and letting all of who you are rain down on her city.
That's probably not a great metaphor, but you know what I mean.
So open your heart to her and be with her 150%.
And then she's not going to go looking elsewhere.
Because you're setting yourself up for...
Repeat, repeat, repeat.
I'm telling you this.
You're setting yourself up.
Women need intimacy.
Women need intimacy.
They need to know that their fingers are right there in the pockets of your heart, as deep as they can go.
You know, men need sex, women need intimacy, right?
And, you know, this is the tragedy of sometimes the relations that men say, well, I'll feel intimate after we have sex, and the women say, well, we can have sex after I feel intimate.
It's like...
Anyway, but...
This, it's meat and drink for women.
And by withholding this, you are punishing her.
And you are setting yourself up for a repetition.
And you are doing for 15 years what she did for 15 months.
And it's interesting to me that the number 15 shows up both times.
Yeah, yeah.
And that after 15 months, she stopped.
And after 15 years, you're calling for help, saying, help me stop.
So you're 12 times worse.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
Did you ever make a new best friend?
Look, I've made, I sort of found groups of friends then after that.
Yeah, so I've got a number of friends that are closer than he ever was.
So yeah, it's good.
It's all good.
Don't on your deathbed, Darren, look back and say, well, that was 30 years of withholding myself.
And for what?
For what?
I'm going to be thrown down a six-foot hole in a pine box and there's going to be dirt thrown on my new home as the worms get closer.
And what did I do?
I withheld myself.
I withdrew myself.
I stayed self-righteous.
I stayed distant.
And for what?
What are you hoarding for?
Love is like money.
You can't take it with you.
Spend everything while you're here.
Spend all your passions while you're here.
You know this as an educated man that the possibility of everything coming together to make you who you are is so astonishingly and infinitesimally small that this is an unbelievably Almost God-like gift that we have been given in the universe.
We alone know what it's like to think.
We alone know what it's like to resent, to withhold.
We alone know what it is like to reason.
We alone know what it is like to love based on values.
And you have this incredible gift.
And it's given you a gift of pain with your mother, which I sympathize, and pain with your wife.
Don't pay back that gift of pain with more pain.
Don't be the echo chamber of agony.
Don't escalate.
Give your heart.
Overcome history.
Defy the universe that kind of wants to drag you back down to inertia.
Defy it and throw your heart high.
I don't care if it gets sliced up by a ceiling fan, fruit ninja style.
I just don't care.
Just throw your heart high.
Put your heart out there.
You know, every time I do a video where I'm really, really passionate Do you know what half the comments are?
I don't really check them, but if I do sort of brush by the comments, the comment is like, oh, you're such a ham.
Oh, that's a bad acting.
Oh, I don't like this emotion.
Oh, I don't like this feeling.
Oh, I don't like this passion.
Oh, were you auditioning for something?
It's like, oh, look, the fact that other people can't feel is not my issue.
I am genuinely passionate about what I talk about, and I hold nothing back.
I hold nothing in reserve.
There is nothing after the war but death, so spend every goddamn piece of ammo you have in this incredible weaponry called living.
And I just don't want you to trudge and sludge and hide and slither your way to the grave that waits you either way.
Go open your heart up to people.
Forgive.
Forget.
She's earned it.
Stop having an affair while blaming her for having an affair.
Let go, the mistress of resentment, and embrace your wife and your life.
Yeah, yeah.
Actually, when you said affair with my own self-righteousness, that really hit home, actually.
Well, then I should stop talking because I don't want to oversell what I've sold.
But listen, I hope this was helpful.
I'm glad it sounds like it was.
And I really, really appreciate your honesty on this.
And thank you very much for that insight.
Absolutely.
You're welcome.
Drop us a line.
Let us know how it goes.
Yeah, will do.
Thank you very much.
All right.
Thanks.
Alright, up next we have Bob.
Bob wrote into the show and said, I want to explore with you and understand why I would commit the mistake of falling in love and then marrying an unfaithful person and what I can do in the future to secure the loyal love and happiness that I want for myself.
That's from Bob.
Hello, Bob.
How you doing?
Hello, Steph.
Hello, Steph.
How are you doing?
How's everybody doing?
I'm alright.
Is your health better?
Miraculously, yes.
Not all the way there, but every day I'm stronger, I have more energy.
I am doing more things and my life is slowly putting itself together again.
Is this your first big brush with illness?
Yes, this would be my first time I've ever had to worry about a problem that's not mental.
I've had depression in the past when I was much, much younger.
Yeah, it's weird when, like, I mean, my whole life never broke a bone, never went to hospital, never sick, and then suddenly, like, boom!
Hey, you're really, really sick and could die.
Oh, well, that's new.
Hey, it's a novel life experience called The End of the Novel.
But anyway, so I'm glad that you're...
It makes me, you know, both your experience and my experience make me want to exchange either of those for a broken bone.
It would have been so much easier.
Right.
Right.
What's that?
There's a great, uh, the bucket list with, um, Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman.
Um, I think it's Jack Nicholson who's going through cancer treatment or, and he's basically like, you know, somewhere, some lucky assholes just having a fatal heart attack, you know, boom, dead, you know, none of this drag out stuff.
Uh, and, uh, so I'm just wanted to express sympathy for that.
And I'm sorry, uh, about, um, About what's happened.
And betrayed, do you mean sexually or emotionally or financially or what do you mean?
First time it was...
Look, I'm going to tell you a quick story.
It will take about six minutes.
I can compress everything.
Wow.
That's very specific.
It's almost like you've told this before and timed it.
Yeah, I timed myself.
I've shared this story with a few other friends over the past month and a half or so.
Because it's been very useful to talk to my friends about what's going on.
I've relied on them to give me insights.
Because, you know, people see in you stuff that you can't see in yourself.
And so that's been super useful.
Now, without further ado, I'll tell you what's going on.
So in 2011, I met this woman who had problems of her own.
I'm not sure how much I should say about that, but suffice it to say, she was sort of like in the process of recovery herself, of illness, of abuse, and of certain set of confusions.
And I found her intriguing.
And soon enough, we began going out.
I slowly fell in love with her.
Took me about a few months, but I was...
After a few months, I was in love with her.
I was mesmerized by her intelligence because she's...
I mean, man, I'm super intelligent.
She is far more intelligent than I am, right?
And so, with her, never a boring conversation.
Why would she be interested in you if she's far more...
I mean, just statistically, IQ tends to match with IQ, right?
So what did you have?
Are you extremely well hung, very rich?
Are you double-jointed?
Are you a gymnast?
I mean, what did you have to offer this giant of intellect if you were just kind of trudging along with the muggle brain?
Well, not muggle brain.
I have 140 IQ, so...
No, no, but if she's like 180...
Well, I had experience.
I've seen far more in the world than she had.
I'm 10 years older than her, of course.
I had a good job and I had an amazing prospect of a career in the future.
And mostly, I think it is that I listened to her and I helped her overcome several problems that she had.
And I truly did.
This never escapes me that she...
I tried to leave people better off than they were before I met them.
Yeah.
I got to tell you...
Sorry to interrupt, Bob.
I mean, I don't know about this sort of clingy, fix-each-other mutual therapy relationships.
Usually don't work out in my experience, but...
I'm concerned that you talked about how brilliant she was, not how virtuous she was.
Now I know that you know enough about the show that intelligence is not a virtue.
It is important and it's necessary but not sufficient for intelligent people to fall in love with.
But you talked about her intelligence more, not her virtues.
And that is a, you know, I know if I'm dealing with somebody with 140 IQ, I gotta be alert.
I gotta be this fast!
And so, when I sort of, you said, you've listened to the show before, I assume, right?
I've been listening to your show since 2007.
Beautiful!
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
And so, here's the thing.
When someone says, I fell in love with person X, what do I always ask next?
Usually you ask Y. Right!
And you knew that question was coming.
And you didn't want me to ask that question, so you thought you'd talk about how intelligent she was, so maybe I wouldn't ask how virtuous she was.
I didn't mind that you asked it, and I'm happy that you did.
And yes, my right foot was to tell you how intelligent she was.
I wasn't going to say that she was virtuous, because in retrospective, She had plenty of virtues, but she lacked...
And what were those?
Because all I know about her is that she betrayed you twice.
So you may have a bit of an uphill climb when it comes to selling me on her virtues, but I'm very happy to hear.
I will.
She was very gentle, kind...
Super, super thoughtful.
She was also very helpful.
Whenever I had problems, she would never hesitate to help me in the most selfless manner.
And in no small part, thanks to her, my career developed into a far, far better thing than it was.
And it was already pretty good.
But Through her contacts and through her ability to connect and put me in touch with the right people, I essentially quadrupled my income, which is damn good.
I mean, I can't really complain.
She was also...
So you got well paid for the betrayals, I guess, but okay, go on.
Not anymore.
I'll tell you why in a few minutes, but I'll continue.
We moved in together in 2012, about midway 2012.
And at this point, I was fairly certain that this person I could trust, and I trusted her with...
Things that I never told anyone, right?
I really trusted her with everything that was on my mind.
Down to my family troubles, which is not something I speak freely of.
Of course, you'll get to ask the family questions.
Those are very important.
I had to renew my visa, so we went to my home country.
I'm not going to tell where it is, but it's a shithole.
We stayed there for a month, and when we came back, something was off.
After a few days or a few weeks, I started noticing a few things about her behavior changed, right?
She started dressing sexy for work, and I'm like, well, cool, that's nice, because I'd never seen her do that before.
Little did I know that it had nothing to do with me, right?
Oh dear.
Yeah.
And she became a little cold with me.
And, of course, a couple of things suffered in the process.
And I'm sure you understand, so I don't have to spell it out.
Sex life.
Thank you, Steph.
No, no, it's fine.
Listen, you know, just, you know, remember, we can't assume that the entire audience is as smart as you.
No, I mean, so, yeah, so she's dressed and sexy for work, and she's colder to you, and her heart is realigning.
Like, I don't know if you've had a model train set when...
You were a kid.
I did.
I slept under my model train set.
And I think I had one briefly that I borrowed.
But there was like this thing.
It's like a junction.
The train, you would drive and then it would turn.
Like the dials of a clock.
And it would turn and it would go to someplace new.
And like the hard...
You could...
I'd never had one.
But you could get them where they even mechanized.
You'd hit a switch and they...
Right?
The train would turn.
And it's sort of like she's turning from one train into a tunnel.
To another turning over.
The tracks are switching in these situations.
Yeah, exactly.
I was worried.
At the beginning, I thought it was just totally fine.
A week later, I started experiencing nightmares.
And the nightmares had a recurring theme.
She was being dragged away by someone else.
And I was in a different platform, so to speak.
And the platform was parting from the platform she was.
And she had somebody else pulling her away.
And I stretched my hand.
And I tried to grab the hand and I couldn't.
And this kept happening.
And one day, the dream was so intense.
This is in December now.
December 2012.
Beginning of December.
It usually is.
Oh, man.
And...
I woke up and I sat up in bed and I called my work and I said, I'm sorry, I'm sick today.
I can't come in.
And then I called her immediately.
We need to talk.
And it's a very serious matter.
And there's a situation here.
And she says, sure, come by the office and then we just have lunch and then talk.
So I went by the office and we had lunch and of course I couldn't eat anything because I was nauseous.
So I told her, let's go home.
I need to tell you something and I can't do it here and I also am not hungry.
So I went home, sat down on the couches, ironically the same couches that I'm sitting on right now.
And I told her, so, this is happening.
You're dressing sexually.
You're spending a lot of time chatting on Facebook with I don't know who, but I'm not one to like spy or anything.
And you're also, well, at least I guess I wasn't, so to speak.
It'll become clear soon.
And you're not paying attention to me.
And you know our life is suffering, right?
So what's going on?
And at this point, she was very sincere.
And she blurted out, I'm in love with someone else.
Oh, God.
Holy mule kick of horror to the chest, right?
Yeah, it's the kind of thing that you don't want to hear.
And if I hadn't done it, if my intuition hadn't told me, you know what?
You need to begin mate guarding.
You need to begin doing the right thing and figuring out what the hell is going on because otherwise you're going to be in trouble.
And so I told her, I'm going to go for a walk.
I'm going to be back in half an hour and I'll come with a solution for this problem.
So I ran.
I actually walked out of the apartment, but as soon as I hit the road, I just began running and began running throughout the whole city.
Half an hour later, I came back.
I opened the door and told her, I know what we're going to do now.
First of all, do you want to stay with me?
Oh, this is all serious matter of fact.
I'm not angry.
I'm just super shaken and also basically emotionless, right?
And I... She says yes.
Why would you give her the option to stay with you?
Well, we'll explore that.
It's one of the questions that I... I'm not saying you shouldn't.
I'm just...
Why?
Okay, you're in love with someone else and you've been lying to me about it and withholding information from me, so ball's in your court.
Why is the ball in her court?
Because I was in love with her and I didn't want to lose her.
You know, one of the ways that you can cure being in love with someone is if they're off fucking some other guy.
I hate to put it that boldly, but that can be a bit of a cure to that, but go on.
That's true.
So she said yes, and I sat down and I asked her, okay, so what's happened?
She says, nothing has happened.
It's just an intern from my job, and he's gone back to a country you are familiar with, and he's not coming back, and so nothing is happening.
An intern?
Yes, an intern.
That's right.
I thought women had hypergamy.
I mean, I thought they were supposed to trade up.
I mean, you quadrupled your income.
I know a little bit about your business, so I know you're not poor.
And holy crap.
I mean, how good looking was this guy?
Did you ever find out?
He was pretty good looking, but the only thing he had really had over me is, in my opinion at least, but you know what?
Everybody thinks great of themselves, right?
Is that he was taller.
That's about it.
He was obviously much poorer and obviously far less experienced in every sense of the word.
So he was, you know, this is not an excuse, but it's probably just...
It's a factor probably, right?
It's a factor, right?
So there was a time, I'm gonna guess, that there was a time in her life, roughly around this boy's age, that she had very low sexual market value and was not able to attract a boy like this.
And now she's trying to go back and rescue that lonely younger self by backfilling, so to speak, a level of male attraction that she was not able to achieve when she was his age.
I had also determined that on my own, and you're completely correct.
You know, I sent you a picture.
I'm not sure if you saw it.
I did.
I was happy we took that picture.
You're looking very smiley there.
I like it.
Yeah, just for those who don't know, I met these fine people in person at a conference.
Sorry, go ahead.
I'm not sure what you think of her, but at this point, at the point of the picture, she was the best she had ever looked.
Right?
And she was substantially worse looking before.
I'm not going to tell you how badly it was, but I didn't fall in love with her because she was good looking.
I'll tell you that for sure.
Incredibly, that was a break from my patterns because my patterns have always been to fall in love with a beautiful woman.
And in this case, nope.
I looked for something deeper and I thought I'd found it.
So, when she told me that what had happened, it never even touched, never kissed, nothing.
And I had good reason to believe that that was the case because, I mean, basically going to from work, not really going out or anything.
And then I said, okay, I need to really certify or verify that right now I don't trust you.
So I'm going to need you to do several things for me.
The first thing is, I'm going to need you to show me your conversations with him, right?
Through every medium.
And she was very angry.
He said, how could you violate my privacy?
That's incredible.
Oh, what?
And I'm like, wait, wait, wait, wait.
No, no, no, no.
Oh, my God.
I was very, very stern.
She's caught having an emotional affair with an intern.
Hiding it from you to the point where you're having nightmares, lying about it to you, withholding information from you, and then she plays the moral outrage card.
Oh, I gotta tell you, I weirdly admire the chutzpah of that, right?
Because she's saying, no, nothing happened.
And it's like, you're like, well, you've just been lying to me for weeks, weeks about something absolutely essential.
So I'm afraid I'm going to need a little bit of verification.
And she's like, oh, what do you mean?
Verification.
What an invasion of my privacy.
I can't believe you wouldn't trust me after I've just been lying to you for weeks.
Oh, wow.
That's impressive.
I mean, that is...
I don't know if that's rare, but that's...
One of a kind in my experience.
I mean, after you've just revealed that you're basically having an emotional affair, it's kind of tough to play the moral outrage card if you want verification after you've been lying for weeks.
Steph, it's quite common.
It's a normal thing that everybody who's being betrayed comments on every infidelity forum there is.
No, she's telling the truth.
Yes.
If she's telling the truth, it's like, here, I'm an open book.
Have a look at all the messages.
You'll see it was just a flirtation.
We never met.
We never did anything.
I'm an open book.
Yeah, but that's the moral response, not the person.
What happened?
I'm not trying to excuse her.
No, but what happened after this?
You said, I'm going to need to see the Facebook messages.
Quite reasonable.
Conversations that were...
She gave you the Facebook messages?
No, no, no, no, no.
I said, in front of me, open it all up.
I want to see it all.
Right, and so she did do that, right?
Yeah, it took about two minutes for her to get over the moral outrage.
And sort of like at least understand or maybe just relent.
I have no idea.
It may become clear a little bit later.
And sure indeed, I found evidence of like flirty conversation.
And I think there was an I love you or something like, or I really like you or something like that.
Wait, wait, wait.
Those two are two very different things.
Yes, I know they're different things.
Don't tell me it's not burned into your brain somewhere.
Brand it on your gonads.
Was it an I love you or I like you?
My gonads.
That's funny.
I'll tell you why in a few minutes.
I don't remember, honestly.
I am not lying to you.
I just don't remember.
I'm afraid I'm going to need to see your Facebook conversations.
No, I'm just kidding.
Go ahead.
I'm sorry.
I'm really speaking close to the microphone because it's really low.
I hope it's not super loud.
Sure enough, there was an emotional affair.
I said, you've been having an emotional affair.
So here's what we're going to do to fix it.
First of all, I need you to write him a letter of no contact.
I'll dictate and you write.
See, the moral outreach stuff, that was like two minutes.
This took a lot longer For her to accept that that's one of the conditions to continue together.
A lot longer.
I had to reason with her.
I had to tell her, I know how these emotional affairs things go.
I'm aware of this.
You are right now in love with him.
I am an obstacle for you to continue with him.
Right?
And so you don't want to do this because then the hope for your affair is gone.
And then you're stuck back basically zero.
Well, here's the thing, right?
I don't know if you got to this and I just want to ask you this before I forget.
The question for me in these situations is always this.
Honey, did the affair remain only emotional because he wouldn't fuck you?
Oh.
In other words, if he had come and said, let's get it on, right, if he had come with wine and chocolates and Barry White and if he'd have said, yeah, I'm ready, let's do it, would it have stayed an emotional affair or was she kind of circling looking for landing in the jungle?
And, you know, I just couldn't find a place to land, so it's like, no, I never landed!
But was it a choice that she made, even with opportunity, or was it in the absence of opportunity, in which case, from my perspective, if the only reason the affair remained non-physical is because he wouldn't fuck her, then it's exactly the same as a physical affair.
I appreciate the insight.
I considered that before as well.
And I can't really tell you what would be the case, but I'm not discarding the possibility that that's the case, actually.
Because I never asked that.
Because my concern at this point was, well, we have a broken relationship.
We can split.
I told her, you know, we can split if you want.
That's totally fine.
We can go our own marriage.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
I know you guys lived together.
How long did you live together for?
At this point, we were living together for about six...
No, five...
No, August...
Less than four months.
We traveled together.
But when were you married?
We married in 2013.
And were you living together before you got married?
After?
Before, of course.
Before.
Before?
So I'm just like four months.
So this happened years ago?
This happened years ago, man.
Okay.
I'm just trying to...
I'm just trying to get my time frame here.
Do you need to ask any questions to orient yourself?
Yeah, yeah.
No, I just need to orient myself.
Make sure I know where I am in time.
Okay.
Alright, so this is 2013.
2012.
Sorry, 2012.
And you're giving her all of the choices.
I'm giving her the option to stay or to go.
At this point, I've decided that...
Why is it her choice?
Because I wanted to stay.
Why did you want to stay?
I'm not saying you shouldn't have.
I don't know.
I just want to know what the reasons are.
We just come back from a trip.
A month long trip, right?
This month long trip was quite the experience.
And we were away from basically our home.
And she was supportive and she was loving.
And the day that we were supposed to come back, but the visa was not through, she had to come back.
She had to go back to work.
And we went to the airport.
And this is like one of those things that seared in my mind.
And as she approached the counter and the lady asked for her name and her passport, the check-in counter, right?
She just fainted.
She couldn't go away without me.
And indeed, she missed her flight.
We had to go.
She fainted?
She fainted, yes.
She fainted.
She just dropped on the floor.
I grabbed her as she was falling.
I called for a doctor.
A doctor came.
We went to the little ER room that is in the airport.
And then they gave her an IV. And I slept next to her for six hours while she was recovering there.
And then we went back to the hotel.
She fainted because she had to get a plane on her own?
She fainted in my...
I never asked her, why did you faint?
Because it's a stupid question to ask, right?
No, no, no!
Very good question to ask!
Very good question to ask!
You took this as a compliment!
Yes, of course!
Absolutely!
No, no, no!
I did!
But I did, right?
No!
No!
That's hysterical!
She faints because she has to get on a plane without you?
Not a compliment.
I don't think.
It seems like a confession of codependent nuttiness, in my humble opinion.
Maybe you had the same feeling.
Maybe it's mutual or something like that.
But, you know, there are people in my life who absolutely love me.
I just, none of them have ever fainted because they have to get on a plane without me.
Yep, that's right.
Then again, she was...
Never mind, it's fine.
I'll take what you're saying.
I'm just pointing this out that this may not be exactly what you think it is.
I am just telling you what I thought at the time.
I'm not saying I think the same way now.
Just for the record, right?
All right, all right.
I'm just checking here.
Okay, go ahead.
Going back to this, like, no contact letter, I told her, you know, you need to write...
I had learned about this from a side of...
I think, talk about marriage, something like that.
I don't remember exactly.
And this is intended to...
What you're going to do is that crush that's developing, you're going to smother it in the crib so it doesn't continue, right?
She wrote a no-contact letter.
Please do not contact me.
I am in a happy relationship with my boyfriend and I don't want to talk to you anymore.
Goodbye.
She blocked the guy on all social media and everything.
And then I asked her, I need to, from here on now, I need to have access to your stuff.
But it's not the access that I care about.
What I want is full honesty.
I need you to be fully honest with me.
I need you to tell me the truth about what's going on.
If you have a crush or something like that, you need to tell me before it becomes a problem.
You need to learn how to nip those things in the bud.
Because it's an adult thing, right?
Since I was 24, I have never let...
Any sort of crush that I have interfere with a relationship I have because it would be irresponsible.
It would be terrible.
It would be a betrayal.
So I don't let them develop.
And this is something that everybody needs to learn at some point in their lives when they're adults, right?
Oh, you have a crush.
Okay, that's fine.
Everybody gets crushes, right?
Yeah, sex is like candy.
Like you grow up and you just stop stuffing your face, right?
Yes, yes.
Yeah, I'll tell you something a little later, but that's correct, yes.
That's how it's supposed to be, at least.
That's my understanding of it.
I'm on the north side of 35, not quite 40.
I have a lot of experience in life and not always pleasant, but it's been useful.
And yes, indeed, you're right.
So continuing with what I was saying, I said some norms.
I thought perfectly reasonable norms.
If you go out with friends and everything, just let me know.
You don't have to come home by at night or anything.
You can come anytime.
But just let me know who you are and where you're going so I know where you are, right?
Just do that for me.
You cannot go out with another man, especially alone with another man, or you cannot bring a man to my house.
Not that she ever did, but I'm spelling it out.
Because if you're going out with another man, if it's going to be like a date, if it would be something that you would hide from me, Don't do it.
Right?
I won't like that.
And I'm not going to prohibit you from doing that, but I can tell you that I'm going to love you less if you do that.
And things kind of patch up rather quickly.
She was angry for me.
She was angry at me for about two or three weeks, but in December 24th, on Christmas Eve.
Wait, she was angry at you?
Why?
Why?
Well, I thought we'd revisit that already.
I was no longer, at this point, during these three weeks, no longer her boyfriend, but rather the obstacle for her to get the guy that she wanted.
So, she was angry at me because of that.
She was angry at you because you blocked her from having an affair?
Yes, that's exactly why most couples who are having an affair, Eventually, the other side, the guy or the girl who's having the affair sees the current partner as an obstacle, right?
I mean, you just had a caller right now who mentioned that the wife really wanted him out of the house, out of the way, so she could continue her affair, right?
That's a normal thing.
I'm not justifying it.
I'm just saying it's kind of like almost biological.
No, no, no, but she has no right to be.
Yes, I know that.
I'm not talking morals here.
You and I understand this moral situation very, very clearly.
You're completely correct.
And you're right.
And I agree with you.
But she was angry.
Well, that just means she's going to do it again, right?
Ah, Steph.
No, no, because you're asking me how do I not have this happen again?
And I'll tell you, Bob, the way that you have this not happen again is you recognize that when people get angry at you after they've hurt you, it's a promise to do it again.
If they're not horrified at what they did, appalled at their actions, morally devastated at the harm they've done, and sit down and Obsess about how to never have it happen again and get therapy and get help and examine their history and apologize and are in tears with this level of hurt.
If they're angry at you for blocking the consummation of an affair with a fucking loser intern who's going to leave anyway.
Ooh, an intern!
Way to shoot high, honey.
Way to shoot high.
Then, I've said this before.
I've said this before.
Avoidance of apology is promise of repetition.
Avoidance of apology is promise of repetition.
That's probably going to be the biggest lesson in this hall that I will draw.
But, I don't know, you can still blow my mind later.
Again, yes, avoidance of apology is promise of repetition.
Damn.
Or another way, you know, anger at being caught is promise of repetition, right?
Yeah, it's the same thing in different angles, different perspectives, right?
Okay, so you decided to set yourself up as like the King Jong Il of your electronic frontier and treating her like a child and childproofing her vagina by constantly monitoring her electronic conversations and so on.
And how did that work?
I'm going to be very, very honest with what I remember happened.
I'd like to assume that that's just what we're doing.
You don't have to keep telling me because if you keep telling me you're going to stop being honest, I'm like, well, what have we been doing so far?
I just listened to a show a couple days ago that was recorded years ago.
You were saying the same.
Sorry, this is just a I know.
And just, please, it always unnerves you if you say, okay, Steph, now I'm going to stop being honest with you.
It's like, uh...
No, please just...
I'm going to assume that you're being honest with me.
You don't need to tell me.
Go ahead.
From this point on, Eva checked her email in Facebook, I guess, three or four more times over the next few months.
And I didn't find anything objectionable, and I didn't have any complaints.
We had this location sharing...
Okay, but what was she doing with this mangled piece of ground beef that used to be your heart?
What was she doing to reassure you, to make you feel better about being in a relationship with her?
Because you weren't married yet, right?
December 24.
Right, so how was she providing you restitution for what she had done?
How was she earning your forgiveness?
December 24 is the day that I think she began to understand That what she was doing before was wrong.
I gave her...
We were exchanging Christmas gifts.
I prepared this really elaborate search through the house and the parking garage and everything for a gift.
And how long after...
Sorry to interrupt.
How long after the affair was this?
December 6th to December 24th.
18 days.
Okay.
I'm sorry, man.
You've got to just bear with me here.
The questions are there for a reason.
Okay, I'm just going to give you my possibly incomprehensible incomprehension.
Well, let me finish.
Let me tell you what happened.
So hang on, hang on, hang on.
No, no, I've not said anything yet.
If you could just be patient, just be patient.
I know you got that 194, 140 jetpack going on, but just let's slow things down a little bit because I don't think rapidity of intellect is the challenge here.
So 18 days after you caught her Trying to fuck another guy, you set up elaborate, positive, wonderful treasure hunts for Christmas for her.
Yes, I did.
Does this seem...
...sane to you?
In retrospect, it does not seem very sane.
It does seem like what I should have done is pack my bags and leave.
Well, I'm just trying to figure this out.
18 days.
You heard the last guy, 15 years, he's still pissed, right?
18 days, you're like, hey, you know, it'd be great fun, a treasure hunt for your wonderful array of Christmas gifts, harlot.
You know what I mean?
Like, oh my God, that's like an eerily fast turnaround.
Um, I mean, I don't hold grudges that much.
Please hold some grudges.
Please, dear God, this is not a virtue.
This is like unbelievable lack of self-protection.
Thank you.
Unbelievable lack of self-protection.
You know, you don't have to be paranoid to put a lock on your front door and not leave it wide open with your iPad sitting right there in the hallway all night.
Just basic self-protection.
Lock your car in the city.
Basic self-protection.
Why are you trying to earn her love when she should be working night and day, Cinderella-style, to earn your forgiveness?
She was.
She was having trouble, but half the time she was very nice, and half of the time she was angry.
No, no, no.
Now, Bob, you said you were going to be honest with me.
And you said for weeks afterwards she was angry at you, and we're talking less than three weeks between the betrayal, you discovering the betrayal, and Christmas.
And you said for weeks afterwards she was angry with you.
So you need to keep your story straight, and don't bullshit me.
This is too important.
If you want me to help you, I'm happy too.
But don't give me this crap.
Don't give me this, oh no, well, you know, no.
You said for weeks afterwards she was angry at you because you blocked her having the affair.
You talked 18 days.
Right?
Between the 24th, I assume the 6th or whatever it was in early December.
So we're talking less than three weeks.
Let's clarify.
Two and a half weeks later, you're trying to woo her over with elaborate Christmas setup, gift things.
And you said for weeks afterwards, she was pissed at you for blocking the affair.
First of all, I need to clarify something.
She was pissed at me for 18 days, for sure.
Not because I was blocking her affair.
That's a conclusion of mine.
That's not a fact.
Right?
So, that's a conclusion, but it is a fact that she was faced with me.
Oh, you didn't know why she was angry at you?
Evidently, I mean, evidently, she wanted to continue the affair.
My conclusion points to the fact that, well, that she wanted to continue the affair, right?
That's...
Wait, how do you know she wanted to continue the affair?
Have you ever had a crush when you were much younger and you couldn't, you didn't have the experience to No, but crushing guilt and being exposed and having a relationship threatened might kill the boner just a little bit.
You know what I mean?
I don't know.
You have to go back to 22-year-old Steph or something like that around that age.
But the important thing, though, is that, yeah, you're actually raising a good point here.
Maybe she's angry at me because I pointed out a mistake that she made, right?
A thing that she shouldn't have done.
And because I represented...
No, no, not a mistake.
Okay, let's not put a mistake.
A mistake is, I was sending something to your mom and I put the wrong postal code on by accident and it went to Argentina, right?
I mean, that's betrayal, right?
You've got to stay with the word that you gave to me in your initial contact.
Betrayal, not a mistake.
Don't stop minimizing.
I'm not trying to minimize the thing that she did.
Betrayal.
Yes, you are.
No, seriously, you want to be honest with me.
Mistake can be entirely innocent.
Betrayal is not.
Yes.
Because I represented, whenever she saw me, she remembered that she had betrayed me.
That could be a very good reason.
No, you don't know that, though.
You don't know, no.
I thought she told you I'm angry at you because I wanted to continue the affair.
No, no, no.
This is a conclusion that I... Okay, because I don't know what's verified and what's your hypothesis.
I'm going to try to be specific about what I hypothesize.
From this point on, I'm going to try to be specific about what I hypothesize and what I have seen verified.
So there's no confusion.
Okay.
Okay, so we don't know why she was angry at you.
We just know she has absolutely no right to be angry at you.
Yes, correct.
Okay, okay.
So she's still angry at you, and then you set up this elaborate set of Christmas presents for her.
Why?
Because we've been doing it since the previous year.
We had this habit of like...
Yes, but she did an affair!
But I wanted...
Because I wanted to stay, I wanted her Christmas to be as happy as possible.
And I thought maybe...
So you're trying to – she tries to have an affair, maybe, and fails.
And maybe she even continued to try to have the affair.
I don't know.
The fact that you have her passwords doesn't mean a whole lot because she knows you have them.
So she's going to use some other method to stay in touch with the guy.
She's still going to work where she sees him every day, I assume.
So who knows what the hell happened.
But the reality is that she has an affair on you and you are trying to woo her and get her to stay?
And no, he wasn't going to work anymore because he was on only a three-month internship.
And I found out when he was already gone from the country.
Okay, okay.
If there's going to be any further affair there, it's going to be something that doesn't actually go into the physical realm.
But, yes, that's a possibility, of course.
Yeah, that's a possibility.
Yeah, you can create more than one Facebook account.
Okay, got it.
Okay, so she betrays you, and you work like crazy while she's still angry at you after she betrayed you to try and woo her.
Her.
Now, my question is, was there anyone in your life who, when you were doing all of this, was giving you a good old metaphorical ice bat to the penis and saying, why are you trying to woo her?
Because I was ashamed of telling my friends, my true friends, I didn't tell them anything.
I kept it all secret to myself because I didn't want to be criticized and probably didn't want to hear, you know what, you need to break off that thing, however difficult it is.
Well, at least not make a magical Christmas for the woman who's upset at you after you found her cheating on you.
Yeah, you're right.
You're right.
And so this conversation is really tough, right?
Because you didn't even want to tell your close friends.
And I appreciate you bringing it up.
I really do.
And I admire you enormously for the courage in having this conversation.
And it will be enormously helpful to other people as well as hopefully helpful to you as well.
I had many, many happy times with this woman.
And I also had many sad times.
In the sad times that would have reflected badly upon her, I always swallowed like shit.
I never told anyone about anything because I considered that it would be a betrayal of her trust.
To tell people about stuff.
I no longer feel that way.
But I did feel that way.
And I kept it all.
I did tell one person.
Well, I don't know that she'd have much of a moral leg to stand on if she's talking about betrayal of trust.
That's how I am.
It doesn't matter what she thinks.
That's what I think.
Right?
And we can explore that if you want.
Okay, so let's go past Christmas 2013.
Sorry, Christmas 2012.
And then you got married 2013, right?
Right.
That day she dropped to her knees.
Christmas Day?
That Christmas Day, she dropped to her knees and cried, bawled her eyes out and told me, you know, you are the best thing that has ever happened to me in my whole life.
I can't live without you.
Please stay with me.
And I said yes.
And I forgave her.
A few months passed and she proposed to me.
She proposed to me, man.
Like complete with breakfast and lovely things.
It was fantastic.
I mean, romance-wise, it was great.
There were still things that were a little problematic.
Wait, sorry, when you say romance-wise, I'm not trying to cheapen it, but do you mean sexuality?
No, I'm talking about romance.
Sexuality wasn't actually much better than before.
That kind of sort of like took a permanent hit.
So that sucked, but I was confident that in time it would get better.
I now realize that having experience is not enough just to make such a thing happen.
But anyway, I'm digressing.
Okay, so she proposed to you a couple of months into 2013?
Close to when I was going.
And you still hadn't told anyone, not friends, not family, you hadn't told anyone about her betrayal?
I told one friend who actually was my best friend in the U.S. who became the best man of the wedding.
He was the best man of my wedding.
So you told your friend that she had betrayed you and was angry at you when you caught her And he was...
Did you tell him before she proposed to you or after?
Before.
And what did he have to say?
He said that it was very sad that this has happened and that he was hoping that I could patch things up and everything would be okay for me.
He didn't give me advice.
He didn't give me the bat to the balls that you mentioned.
Oh, no.
He gave you advice.
He said, I hope you can patch things up.
I hope you can stay with her.
Yep.
That's advice, isn't it?
Yes, but not the advice that would have been required in the moment.
Remember?
Bad to the balls?
Well, no.
He may have given you bad advice, but he did give you advice.
And do you wish that in hindsight he had given you different advice?
I wish that in hindsight I'd talk not just to him.
I trust him, actually.
He normally gives good advice.
But also to my best friends from my home country.
But this was kind of an important one.
You're going to get married.
Which means she can get half your stuff.
Kind of important.
Why didn't you call me?
I don't know.
I never understand this.
Why don't people call me?
I mean, I can't tell you what to do, but I might be able to give you some useful perspectives.
She's not bringing me breakfast in bed.
I can see things like that.
Go ahead.
Oh, man.
I wish I had called you, actually.
We did call once.
Please, people out there, if you're facing these kinds of problems, it's free!
And it's helpful.
Not free.
You can be anonymous.
Anyway, go on.
I know, but it's free in the moment to call.
But I'm just saying, people should donate.
I accepted the proposal.
It was really lovely, and I was mesmerized, and I was quite happy.
But at this time, I'm beginning to deal with problems, like stress that I have.
And I'm beginning to deal with this...
Sorry to interrupt, but why do you think she proposed when she did?
I think she realized...
Okay, I'm going to flatter myself.
This is just a conclusion again, a hypothesis.
But I think she realized that I was a good person, and I was good for her.
That...
If she sought the entire universe, she might find quite a few people like me.
But finding someone like me again would have been very difficult.
And had she been working to restore your trust in her during the time period from December through the couple of months into 2013 when she proposed?
Yes, absolutely.
Whenever she went out, she sent me messages, I'm gonna go out with so-and-so and so-and-so.
No, I know, but why it happened in the first place?
Sorry, maybe I didn't understand the question very well.
I definitely would like to get more information.
No, I mean, in terms of trying to figure out what it was in herself, That led her to betray you in this way in the first place.
What weakness, what susceptibility, what issues she had that led her to be capable of betraying you in this way in the first place.
Self-knowledge, right?
Knowing why you did something is the first step to not having it happen again.
Was she flighty?
No.
No, why she betrayed you?
Flighty is not the word.
Flight is the word you use to refer to people who want to go out of whatever it is that they're doing, and they're doing it multiple times.
And it'll become obvious that, yeah, betrayal is involved.
It's implied.
Or at least in my mind.
So what you're saying, I think I'm going to cut through this here, and no, she hadn't done that kind of self-knowledge work to figure out why she betrayed you in the first place.
Okay.
See, that's because you're asking me how to have this not happen again.
This is the second thing.
Merely conforming to your request that she keep you informed about her whereabouts, you know, the text-based GPS is not going to solve the problem.
What is going to solve the problem is her digging really deep into her history and saying, okay, how did I end up in this situation where I ended up betraying a man I claim that I love and then getting angry at him when he caught me?
You need people in your life who are going to figure out why they do things that hurt you.
Because if they don't have that knowledge, they'll do it again.
And a lack of self-examination is another promise of repetition.
Lack of self-examination is another promise of repetition.
That's true.
That is true, man.
It's a true fact.
All right.
So how long did it take for you guys to get married after she got married in November 2013?
November.
And then?
At this point, I sort of moved on.
Actually, problems with me begin at this point.
Well, I guess not.
They don't begin there, but I begin to have a drinking problem.
I was drinking socially before, but now I was bringing home beer.
And I was unhappy about that.
So I sought treatment.
Because, you know, Well, hang on, hang on.
When did you start drinking at home?
Around 2012.
No, 2013 would be the date, yes.
To the extent that I remember.
So, when you didn't break up with this girl, you started drinking?
No, I was drinking socially before.
No, no, no, I understand.
You already told me that.
I get that.
But it started becoming a problem after she betrayed you when you didn't break up with her, you began to drink to excess.
Exactly.
I apologize for the cuss word, but yes.
No, don't worry.
That is the least offensive thing that's happening for me, so don't worry about that.
You can go full tilt.
You can go like, you know, sailor had his leg bitten off by a shark cursing if you want.
I don't care about that.
So I saw treatment for it.
So, but this is important, right?
So you're self-medicating.
I can't go to sleep.
I can't go to sleep every night.
Through alcohol.
Sure, because you're in danger!
That's why.
Because you've got a predator.
Man, I can't go to sleep.
A jungle pussy.
Sorry.
You've got a predator in the room, in the house.
Listen, I know what insomnia is like.
I had it for 18 months.
That's a lot of time.
Many years ago.
18 months.
And I sleep like a baby now.
Not this Colin Powell wake up every three hours screaming stuff.
But no, I know it's when you are surrounded.
By friendless betrayers.
Why then?
You can't sleep.
Because you're not safe.
It's your body's way of saying...
It's a good hypothesis.
And it definitely is supported by biology.
But I was just going to go with a far simpler hypothesis, which is what's going on in my mind.
My mind is racing, and I'm thinking of all these kinds of things at 1, 2 a.m.
And the best way to get them to shut up is to just numb my brain, to get it to stop.
Or, or, or get into a safe environment.
Well, I think...
This is why self-medication is not the answer and it didn't turn out to be the answer because if you dug into why you were unable to sleep right so you you don't just what this woman betrays you she's angry at you you run after her like some demented poodle trying to keep her without her going through the necessary steps of restitution and apology and all that kind of the crying hysterical stuff that's not what I'm talking about I'm talking about actually knowing why you hurt someone And so then you can't sleep.
And rather than try and figure that out, you start drinking.
And then you end up getting married.
And then you end up getting betrayed again.
And so what I did was instead of pursuing self-knowledge, I went the medical route.
I got the prescription, which would kill the feedback loop, the reward loop of, you know, endorphins that alcohol releases.
The problem with that...
Wait, do you mean sleeping pills or psychotropics?
You don't have to say, I'm just curious.
You take it with your drinking, and then it blocks the euphoria that alcohol produces, leaving you just dizzy.
So it feels bad.
The problem with it is that it blocks the euphoria of everything.
You can't enjoy sex.
You can't enjoy a fucking meal.
You're trying to eat something, and it's like, oh, this steak!
I know I've had the steak before, and it's incredibly delicious, but I can't enjoy it.
It's like I'm eating cardboard.
So I stopped using it, and I went back to drinking.
That sucks.
And none of this, the insomnia, the mind-altering medications, the drinking, none of this gave you any sense that your life might be on the wrong path?
I did consider that a few times, but I quickly brushed it away.
Because it was too painful to consider.
Why?
Right.
Right.
Do you think any of these led to your health problems?
I'm sure alcohol must have something to do with it.
But I'm also sure that there's probably another cause.
But it's for the doctors to find out.
I'm going to the doctors, I'm seeing urologists, thousands and thousands of dollars.
Fortunately, the whole thing is covered by insurance, so I like it.
Not fortunately for everyone else who pays for that insurance, but all right.
This is private insurance.
Did she?
Well, no, but no, I don't mean that.
I mean, everyone else on the plan, even if it's private.
The costs aren't, you know, it's not free.
Anyway, so when you were going through these issues of insomnia and...
Needing pills and alcohol and so on.
What was your fiance doing?
What was she up to?
What was she thinking?
What advice was she giving you?
Worried that I was drinking too much, trying to help me figure this out.
Trying to give me solutions that could counteract this problem.
During the day, it was never a problem.
The problem was at night.
And I always started drinking after she went to sleep.
Not because I was hiding it from her.
I was very honest about what I was doing.
But because...
Well, I had insomnia, right?
She went to sleep at 12.
I went to sleep much later.
So when the time came to shut up my brain, I just drank.
Right?
Yes, indeed.
So she did try to help me, but I don't think she had the knowledge or experience to do so effectively.
Well, if she was the problem, she's not going to be the solution.
Well, if she's the problem, then she's not going to be the solution.
That's right.
Do you think she wasn't the problem?
I don't know.
I don't know.
I think I have to consider the possibility that she was the problem.
I really do think I have to sit down and consider that.
Well, when did you start drinking?
I've always drank with friends.
No, stop the social bullshit.
I got it.
I got it.
Third time you're telling me.
Stop it.
Let's be direct.
You started drinking to excess when you couldn't sleep, and you couldn't sleep after she betrayed you, but you didn't break up with her, and instead you were trying desperately to get her to stay with you, thus giving her permission to do it again.
I started drinking heavily way back in 2008 when I was unhappy about my life.
I thought you were telling me you were a social drinker before this problem.
I'm going to give you more background.
I was a social drinker.
During 2008, I was unhappy about my life.
In 2009, I got the big break of going to just a much better job, and I moved away to a different country.
I stopped.
I had a bad relationship.
Ah, okay.
So hang on, hang on.
Sorry to interrupt.
So you know that drinking is a sign of being very unhappy with your life.
Well, now I know.
Well...
Oh, you didn't know that until now.
So in 2008, you were drinking because you were unhappy, but it didn't strike you until much more recently that you were unhappy because you were drinking, and that's your pattern.
Right now, I am unhappy, though certainly less unhappy than before, and I'm not drinking.
So I guess it's a certain kind of unhappiness.
Well, you're getting divorced.
So you're unhappy...
But if the relationship is the problem, that's why you're not drinking.
I tied it back to when I began treatment for the illness that I have.
The desire, the cravings went away almost immediately.
Yeah, okay.
Alright, so you got married in November 2013 and then you said that she betrayed you again?
Yeah, we had a In all accounts, we were sort of the perfect couple.
People will tell us, I wish we could have a relationship so loving and affectionate, and we're publicly and privately very affectionate and loving.
And we had good communication, but we could talk about many, many subjects, and we could talk at length about things.
Or so I thought, apparently my soon-to-be ex-wife doesn't think that anymore.
She's been rewriting history in her head, or that's how it looks like to me.
Oh, hang on, hang on.
No, no, don't.
What does she say?
Today she said that there were things that she couldn't talk to me about because she felt like she was afraid of me.
That's what she says today.
Do you think the fact that you'd hidden the fact that she had betrayed you that may have contributed to people's perception that you were the perfect couple?
Isn't that the kind of price you pay for hiding?
People's flaws?
Is that other people around you can't accurately assess them and give you good advice?
Yep, that's quite possible.
Not to say 100% true, but yeah, I'm considering it now.
You're onto something here.
All right, so how did she betray you again?
We moved to a different country.
I had to bear the brunt of the house because she couldn't work because she had to get a degree.
In this country, she can't work without a degree.
So she went to college remotely.
She finished her degree.
She actually didn't finish college when we were back.
We were a country virgin.
And you paid for all of this?
But I did pay for most of the...
So we continued to...
Because she had large savings, like I did.
She continued to pay for half of most of the household costs, but anything outside of it, like going to restaurants, going to trips or something like that, and most of the rent was on me.
And I said, you know, this is going to be difficult.
Wait, she paid half the household costs, but most of the rent was on you?
Isn't that most of the household costs?
Internet.
All the recurring costs except for the house.
This country is very expensive, where I'm living.
Okay, so you would pay 80% of your living expenses, is that right?
Yes.
Really?
That can't be that expensive to have.
Anyway, it doesn't matter.
Okay, so you paid more but not an overwhelming majority of the expenses.
The stress for me got much worse.
I was already very stressed in the United States.
I was concerned with a bunch of things, including the political situation.
And we were starting to look for an option, an out from the US, just in case, you know.
And we came to visit in 2015 and we liked it a lot.
This country is really a sight to behold.
It's a great place.
And I decided when we came back, we mutually decided, yeah, we have to move there.
So we had the opportunity to move there.
We made it happen.
And we moved here.
I had a better job than before.
I was even being paid more, which is great.
But the stress of trying to sort of Now I'm really responsible for making sure that the household stays put together, because if I lose my job for whatever reason, then we get deported.
And so our life falls apart.
Not only do we get deported, we probably get separated too, because at this point I can't come back to the original country because I no longer have a visa to stay there, right?
Damn it, man.
And the stress started getting to me.
I started drinking more and more and more.
And there were days where I was...
But you stopped taking the medication, right?
Because it made you feel numb?
Okay, so you're drinking more and more.
And what's she doing?
I'm trying to stop.
So what I do is I manage to get to one day clean.
And then the next day, I feel the indomitable urge to continue drinking.
And shit starts going down the drain.
Now, at this point, I become obsessed with this social justice stuff that's happening at work.
Yes, it's a thing at work.
I no longer care about it anymore since I began treatment for whatever I have.
But at the time, I was really obsessed about it and started getting into arguments with people at work.
And I'm starting to feel, I hate my job.
I really don't want to work here anymore.
I can't wait for my wife to begin working so I can stop and look for another job.
Right?
Well, it turns out that the job was...
And why do you think you got involved in these arguments at work?
It might have been, I don't know, a proxy fight.
My wife sort of supports some of that stuff.
Because, I mean, that's, you know, if you're dependent on your job...
And you can't get fired.
And then you start engaging in, I assume, pretty useless but very stressful political or philosophical debates at work.
Yeah.
That's kind of self-sabotaging, right?
That's correct.
Right.
So you're saying, your body is saying, I don't want the life I've gotten.
I don't like the job that I have.
But rather than make any...
See, your body will make decisions for you if you don't.
And that's what getting sick sometimes is.
Not always.
I'll tell you right now.
I hope your callers find it useful.
You can't treat your brain like a thing that controls your body.
Because your body is literally a part of your brain, and your brain is literally a part of your body, and they're more together than you think, yeah.
Yeah, your body will have a say.
If you're not assertive and you keep putting your body in punishing situations or your mind in stressful situations, at some point your body's going to check you out.
And it seems to me that the motive of you getting involved in these pointless but Very escalating kinds of political debates at work is you want to get fired and you want to not be in the life that you're in.
I quit on my own.
I did quit.
I stated that I was unhappy with things that were not okay.
I'm not going to go into details, but I stated that I was unhappy for this and this and that reason.
All related to this relationship.
Okay, now we do have six callers tonight, so I've asked you a bunch of times, where does the betrayal show up?
That's the important part.
Two months after that, my wife sort of started acting funny again, and I knew it.
Wait, two months after what?
Sorry, no, a little bit later.
Around November.
Oh, wait a minute.
You're no longer the provider, and she starts getting interested in other men.
And she goes out with a co-worker in another city at night to the extent that I know nothing happened there because she ended up video calling me at like 1am.
I was not happy about that, but I didn't say anything.
And she began chatting on Facebook with some guy.
How do you know that nothing happened?
But it doesn't matter.
Who cares?
Well, you said you knew.
So, I start seeing her chatting on Facebook with someone else.
I know it's someone else because that someone else is in the same time zone I am, right?
And she's smiling when she's chatting with him.
And I am...
I look, and then when she notices that I'm looking at her, her smile wipes away, and she locks her phone.
And...
Things are like really crappy at home.
She's snippy and I am a mess.
I am literally a mess.
Quitting my job was the worst thing I could have done because that was like the one thing supporting me in making sure that I don't fall into a complete disaster.
Now I'm waking up every morning.
Sorry, bullshit.
I'm waking up every afternoon at 1.30pm and I am hungry.
I'm going to go to the fridge.
Oh, there's nothing because I didn't buy anything to eat.
So I'm just going to crack the beer that I, the last beer that I left over.
Wait, your wife is working at this point, right?
Okay, so it's your job to do the groceries and all that.
I'm not doing anything, Steph.
I'm not even showering, right?
I was just sitting on the couch doing nothing.
Sleeping on the couch.
I don't even want to go sleep on my bed.
So I sleep on the couch.
So you're really falling apart here, right?
Yeah, sure enough.
You know, December 4th arrives, and I sit on the same couch.
I'm sitting on the same couch right now.
Oh, the anniversary.
Yeah, four years, man.
Incredible.
Four years, right?
And I sit here and say, okay.
This is happening.
You're chatting on Facebook with this guy.
I have no idea who he is.
But you're smiling when you're chatting with him.
And then when I show up, you lock your phone.
And you're, so what's going on?
And she says, no, the thing is, we've been having problems.
And I've been telling my friends about the problems that we have.
And I'm like, that doesn't explain why you're smiling when you're chatting on the phone.
If you're talking about problems, the last thing you would do is smile.
And then she blurts it out, matter of factly.
A few days ago, I kissed another man.
And at this point, man, I do, I say, I just floored again.
And images rushing through my mind.
And the only thing I actually managed to say and very calmly say, okay, I know now what we have to do.
We're going to break up and you are going to leave.
She screamed, why should I be the one that leaves?
And I'm like, because I am not the person who kissed another man.
Packed her bags, left.
Straight to that house of that guy.
Yeah.
I know that because she left her tablet.
Straight to his house.
She closed the door.
And I saw a notification from this guy.
And she's not hiding it.
I don't understand how you know that means she went to his house.
Well, I do know that she went to his house because a couple of co-workers, friends of mine, have confirmed it for me that she's staying there.
I'm not sure if she's staying there still, but I can tell you for a fact that she did go there for that week at the very least.
And people also...
People offered.
So she couldn't even stand one night without a guy.
Why don't you come stay in our place?
You don't have to stay at that guy's house because the friend of mine who made that kind of offer, he has a girlfriend and everything.
Now, let me just stop you here for a second just to mention something, which is that, look, your wife, soon to be ex-wife, may hear this and I just wanted to let her know I'm aware I'm only getting one side of the story.
I'm aware of that.
I know.
I mean, I'm just aware of that.
And she would have different takes on a whole bunch of this stuff.
I'm not saying who's right or who's wrong.
I just want everyone to be aware that I'm only getting and you're only getting one side of the story.
I'm not doubting what you're telling me.
I'm just, you know, the emphasis that what's being said and motives and so on would be Opened a question by the other person.
So I just wanted to mention that before we go on.
But she went straight to this other guy's house.
To my understanding, to what people have confirmed me, yes.
She did.
No, I mean, seriously, a week after that, she was holding hands with me in the office.
I know that because I came by the office, friends invited me to just have fun.
So this is a guy...
This is the guy, this is the kind of quality of the guy that she's just broken up with her husband and he's like, yeah, come on over.
Let's hold hands a week later because that's going to just work out so well.
There's a probability that's not going to work out, and it's going to be so bad for her.
All right.
Right.
Right.
I mean, I'm not justifying anything she did, but you weren't exactly the most appealing guy to be around over this time period either, right?
No, but this is your body saying, leave me, leave me, leave me.
What?
Oh, God.
I'm not even going to shower until you go.
this is the price of being passive is your body takes over for god's sakes I'm turning into an old gym sock bean bag of a husband You must leave me.
You must not have sex with me.
For God's sakes, did you even brush your teeth?
Don't kiss me!
I'm going to eat all the legumes I can get my hands on, and I'm going to fart around like a little jetpack's been tied to my ass.
Don't come close to me.
It's over, but I can't tell you, so I'm going to tell you with body odor.
I am completely unconscious of that, but it does sound like a plausible thing.
So it makes sense, actually.
No, it's not.
Well, you know, it's not appealing.
Dude, I gained 15 pounds over the course of last year.
I was carrying around a watermelon on my stomach.
It's as if I had just gone into a store, stole a watermelon by swallowing it whole, and then snuck out of the back door without me not paying for the watermelon.
Love, love is keeping, yeah, there's something very fundamental about love.
Love means staying appealing to your partner.
You know, I don't work out so much and do all these sit-ups because I think I'm going to be modeling some Calvin Klein underwear.
I do it because I wish my wife to continue to find me attractive and I'm fighting time.
Time is pulling me down, turning me into a tent.
Yeah.
And so one of the things that happens when people fall out of love is they stop taking care of themselves.
They get fat.
They don't exercise.
They don't eat well.
Their sleep becomes disordered because they're not happy and they're not working to keep themselves appealing to their partner.
You must stay appealing to your partner.
And if you love your partner, you want to stay appealing to your partner because that's kind of what marriage is all about.
You know, your partner should find you attractive.
That's kind of important.
So, when people let themselves go, they are preparing for a split, in my experience.
It might be the case.
I gotta tell you this, though.
I do feel extremely guilty about that.
Because I know, I consciously know, and I am aware of the fact that part of the promise that I made when I got married is to love and honor and respect her.
And that includes taking care of myself.
She kissed another guy.
You know, she kissed another guy.
Sorry.
It doesn't mean that you're entirely without agency in the matter, Bob, but you were falling apart and she went and she didn't help you, right?
She didn't try and sit down with you night and day and figure out what the hell was.
I'm still talking.
She didn't sit down and figure out night and day what the hell was going on with you and how she could make things better.
Kate, please, go to therapy.
No, I know, but you do it until it works.
You do it until it works.
Well, I tried.
Do or don't do, right?
As the old saying goes.
It's not that old, I guess.
There is no try, right?
So, no, you say, well, I asked a couple of times.
So what?
So what?
You keep, if you love someone and they're falling apart, you do whatever you need to do until it works.
Right?
Well, so good.
Then you don't need to feel guilty.
Now, you may need to feel like there's some lessons to be learned, which is why we're talking.
But as far as guilt goes, you know, if she kind of gave up on you and ended up stepping out and kissing another guy and then running over to his bed the moment you booted her ass out, well, I don't think guilt is the appropriate motion.
frustration at your own passivity is kind of what I'm angling for.
After that, I woke up suddenly again, super late, woke up, sit up.
And I'm like, this is not me.
What the fuck am I doing with my life?
There's gotta be something wrong.
I started thinking about this.
There's gotta be something.
There's gotta be some medical issue.
I can't continue like this.
I'm gonna drink myself to death.
So I went to the doctor.
I actually made an appointment.
The next day, I went to the doctor, and I sat down, and I told the doctor, I have no energy, literally no energy.
Man, I couldn't walk 50 meters without getting winded.
I'm not 40, right?
Couldn't walk 50 meters without getting winded.
I caught up with...
Dude, dude, I'm 50.
I can do 25,000 steps in a day and I'm fine.
So don't give me the advice.
What doesn't happen at 40?
Anyway, go on.
I go to the doctor's office.
It's 150 meters away with the last ounce of energy I have.
And in the waiting room, I fall asleep because I was so tired.
And the doctor, like, say, let's do this.
Check my heart.
Check my kidneys.
Check my liver.
And for God's sake, check all the hormones, please.
And a full blood panel.
And sure enough, Friday, 23rd, December.
The best Christmas gift anyone has ever given me.
A blood panel showing elevated liver enzymes, ketosis, not being eaten for two days, right?
For two weeks, just not eating.
I actually lost the belly in December.
And sure enough, testosterone.
Half the testosterone of a 90-year-old man Yes.
You know, Steph, no, I'm not Swedish.
What are you, Swedish?
No, no, no, no.
But I could have been.
You know what they say, you know, this expression, it takes balls to do this, right?
To do this kind of thing.
It takes balls, right?
I know that people speak about that metaphorically, but in my case, it was literally true.
No, testosterone is associated with assertiveness, if not downright aggression, and it is a big go-getter for men, right?
And it's an environmental hormone, as far as I understand it.
I'm no doctor, but it responds to environmental cues.
So if you had a testicle vampire, a Testosterone vampire in your midst, then yeah, it's going to go down.
And that thing could have progressed very, very slowly over the course of one year or more, easily.
So there might be a physical cost for it.
Then again, it might be environmental.
You're right.
So we have to rule everything out.
That's the job for the doctors.
And for me to be patient and be stuck with needles and shit like that that I hate, but I have to do it.
I understand now.
It's 2017.
I can't Go about my life not taking care of myself, right?
And honestly, it was a sea change because as soon as I got the treatment, man, my cravings for drinking stopped.
I still have triggers, particular situations that will make me want to drink, but I don't want to bring beer home.
I don't care.
I don't smoke anymore.
I quit smoking again.
I've taken up smoking again.
Yeah.
Yes, I was smoking too.
Oh man, you were smoking too?
Not eating, drinking, smoking, like that's the full-on leaving Las Vegas in a pine box diet, right?
I was probably going to leave it in a plexiglass box because pine would have been too expensive.
In the...
Oh, yeah.
Damn it.
That's difficult to say.
I'm sorry.
But, you know, I ended up joining the gym.
Now I'm doing gym regularly, exercising.
I've doubled my strength in a month, which I'm very proud of, very happy.
In the...
Lost a lot of weight and I'm looking better every day.
This is a slow slog because I'm not young anymore, but I have to do it.
I have to do it.
And ultimately, I have had the impulse to contact my wife and tell her, you know, let's make things work.
Let's make things happen.
And I have done that.
I have done that.
I have done that.
I'm telling you.
Yes, yes I have.
Wait, you have done that.
You have contacted her and said...
But this conversation is putting a new light in my mind that I didn't have before.
Because ultimately, what I want is for my life.
Do you think that...
Listen, this is not about just blaming your wife and she's the...
Do you think that you're good for each other?
Do you...
Do you help each other be better and healthier and happier people?
Not in moments, but in the arc.
I will tell you...
In the trajectory.
In the trajectory of the five years that we've known each other, I have undoubtedly helped her be a better person.
And she has unresolved issues.
And she has helped me...
Oh, my God.
Wait a second.
Oh, no, no, no, no, no.
Are you saying that betraying your husband for the second time and going straight over to some lover's house after he kicks you out?
This is the upgraded her?
This is the better her?
As soon as I was gone.
Because the upgraded me was also gone.
2016 was a disaster.
The only good thing about that is that I made a bet on Donald Trump, and it paid off like 16x, so I made a couple of thousands of dollars that way.
That's the only thing that's good about 2016.
Everything else is crap.
Okay, so no, don't tell me about how...
I mean, fuck, man.
You almost died!
This relationship, you almost died!
Do you get that?
Half the testosterone of a 90-year-old man could barely make it 150 meters, weren't sleeping, drinking, smoking, putting on weight.
You hadn't had a meal in two weeks.
Your only calories were coffee, alcohol, and nicotine.
Okay, Coca-Cola.
Fuck!
You almost died!
Do you get what your body is telling you?
This is not a vagina.
This is quicksand.
Vagina dentata.
You are not good for each other, in my outside humble opinion.
You almost died.
And you want to go back?
Thank you.
Well, I've got one more leg.
Maybe the sharks are still hungry.
I'm going back for a swim right off the Great Barrier Reef where they're throwing all that chum into the water.
I'm going to step over all of the bodies that are there before.
And then I go, Cage, no!
What, don't you care whether the sharks get something to eat?
Got a good leg right here.
Anderson Cooper, move out of the way.
I'm going to go hug me a great white.
Come on, man.
Come on.
Snap out of it.
Thank you.
Yeah.
Snap out of it.
Snap out of it.
It's gonna kill you.
Okay, now for the question that I asked you, which is the important thing.
The background was necessary for you to give me a good answer, I guess.
It's going to be a good answer, I think.
How the fuck do I prevent myself from falling into something like this ever again?
How do I find...
I'm 37 now.
I'm not 31.
I wasted, what?
Six years of my life.
No, no, no, no.
Worse than wasted.
See, if you waste your time, let's say you spent the whole time playing video games, you wouldn't be heartbroken and almost dead at this point.
Well, it's been two months.
I'm no longer almost dead.
I can hike up a mountain and I did it and I go to the gym and I'm going to get therapy.
So, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Okay, okay.
But you almost died.
Okay, so if you just wasted...
See, you've got to escalate this to DEF CON 6000.
You don't get the urgency of the close call that you just had.
You don't, you're not freaking out enough.
You almost died.
Arguably from the stress of a relationship, from an unconstant woman who betrayed you repeatedly, who did not help you, and from friends who didn't intervene to help you.
Listen, if someone I love, Bob, Is going through what you're going through?
Do you know what I'm going to do?
What do you think I would do if you were my close friend?
What would I do?
I don't know.
I don't know if I'd comment it that aggressively.
But I tell you what I would do is I would go to your house With a sleeping bag and I would stay until we figured out what the fuck was going on.
I would not rest.
I would not stop.
I would not sleep.
I would sit up all night and we would talk and we would figure out what the fuck was going on with your life.
That to me is caring for someone.
It's not letting them just slide down into the pit of death.
What do you think of this friend who say, well, I hope you can fix it.
And I hope you can work it out with her and I think you should stay with her.
At the moment of crisis that I had in 2016, I really didn't have very many friends that could come over.
Probably none that would do that.
Because I am in this country.
Okay, so this is the issue.
This is the issue is you've got to stop going it alone.
You hid what your girlfriend did.
From your family and from most of your friends.
Stop doing that.
Stop flying solo.
Stop trying to go it alone.
We are a tribal species.
We all gotta sleep and other people have gotta watch to make sure some fucking lion doesn't chew our face off in the night.
I already posted it to my friends on Facebook.
I already contacted numerous friends of them to ask them for advice.
They almost, every single one of them has told me, you know, what you need to do is stop worrying about that.
Say, thank your lucky stars that you're no longer in this relationship that was destroying you.
They've said that.
My friends have said that, right?
Right.
But why don't you do it before you almost die?
Okay.
I know, and I'm telling you, stop doing that.
Stop hiding everything like you've got some guilty secret.
Lean on people.
Ask for help.
Connect.
This is the old E.M. Forster line, one of my favorite novelists.
Only connect.
Well, just for one book, A Room with a View.
The rest aren't that great.
But anyway, only connect.
Connect, connect.
What about your family?
Parents?
Anyone?
Anyone?
My father was unavailable because my father had mistreated her while we were in our home country.
And I told them, you can't disrespect my girlfriend like that.
And that's not cool.
And you need to apologize.
He yelled at her.
What do you mean he mistreated her?
My dad has a dysfunctional relationship with one of her sisters.
It had.
No longer.
And that sister put ideas in my dad's head, saying, she's horrible, she's a bad person, blah, blah, blah, and she doesn't help in the house.
Of course she didn't have to help in the house.
We were guests.
So my dad yelled at her, said, you know, you don't do the dishes, you don't do laundry and everything.
It's like, my wife doesn't have to do that.
We're guests here.
We'll do our laundry, but we don't have to do dishes.
No, we were there for a week.
But you were there for a while, right?
Oh, I thought it was a month.
Okay, sorry.
I thought you said you went back home for a month.
Because I told my dad, you can't disrespect my girlfriend this way.
And you need to apologize to her.
And he said he wouldn't apologize.
Oh, so you're very assertive with your father.
And you demand apologies from your father.
But you make extra special Christmas presents.
Fun hunting for the woman who had an affair on you.
Very assertive with your father, but he's got to apologize.
But if your girlfriend is angry at you for catching at her having an affair, well, she gets extra special Christmas treatment, right?
My father is backing my life since then.
And yes, yes.
I understand.
No, no, but you understand what I'm saying.
Yes, I understand that.
It's...
There is no good explanation for that.
There's no virtuous explanation for that.
No, there's a good explanation for it.
No virtuous explanation for that.
Yeah.
Because she's giving you sex.
I guess that's the case, yeah.
And you got dicknapped.
Thank you.
Yeah, I understand.
Which means kidnapped by your penis.
Dicknaped.
I don't really want to...
I'm still trying to make it a thing.
It really should be.
I don't really want to...
No, just for others.
I knew you didn't.
It's easy discussing any sexual details, but I wasn't exactly sexually happy with her in any case.
But yeah, I mean, I'm open to the possibility that...
No, I understand that.
I mean, I understand that.
No, sex is the last thing.
To go, usually.
Well, after the sex goes, it's usually done.
But actually, he did apologize.
And he came to visit us.
And since then, I've had a pretty good relationship with my dad.
And my dad has given me very good advice lately.
But he was right.
The things that he said were absolutely wrong.
The instinct...
No, but he was right about her.
When?
Well, he had a problem with her, right?
He didn't like her.
His sister didn't like her.
She had a problem with him.
And my dad tends to do whatever the sister says.
Yeah.
Oh, so what?
He yelled at her, right?
This is the dysfunction in my father's family.
I understand.
Okay, I don't want to get...
No, I can't do that.
I can't open up that kettle.
I can't.
No, I appreciate that.
And I'm sorry that I went that direction.
I cannot go into your family history because, again, we got four more callers.
But here's the thing.
Your father didn't like her because he yelled at her.
Now, you could say, well, he was motivated by someone, but he's the one who did it, right?
And this is important because there are people around you who can watch your back.
When I couldn't sleep, I was in a relationship that was not good for me.
In what sense?
Not good for me.
But that was only a symptom of the real problem, which is that I was surrounded by people who weren't telling me the relationship wasn't good for me.
Now, why weren't they telling me my relationship wasn't good for me?
They weren't telling me my relationship was bad for me.
Because the same principles apply to them.
Because if they were to be able to see and say Why my relationship was bad, it would have exposed the negative qualities in my relationships with everyone around me at that time.
Everything is a structure.
Everything is a house of cards.
Like attracts like.
You can't usually just have one bad relationship.
It's all.
It's all bad.
If you're stuck in one dysfunctional relationship in general, it's because all your relationships are dysfunctional.
It's a symptom, right?
The problems in the romantic relationship mirror the problems in all your relationships.
Because if you have good, strong, healthy relationships with people and someone comes along who's bad for you, they'll sit down and work you through it until you get it.
Okay.
And people who don't care about you enough to fly over and sit with you for a week if that's what it takes to save you.
That's the challenge.
That's what you need.
And the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior.
Without massive, significant, enormous, brain-busting efforts, people mostly photocopy yesterday and pretend it's tomorrow.
What people will do to you in the future is almost always composed of pretty much exactly what they've done to you in the past.
There are exceptions and the exceptions are when people really dig in and burrow down and go deep and understand and this takes a long time.
This takes a long time.
I was in therapy for almost two years, three hours a week and another 10 hours a week of journaling and thinking and writing and looking at my dreams.
It is a big giant effort.
It is easier to get a PhD Then get a high school education in self-knowledge.
So if you want to know how people are going to treat you tomorrow, look at how they treated you yesterday.
It's really not terribly complicated.
Things are a lot simpler than we think.
The empiricism of the everyday is almost certainly the train track of where today goes in the future.
People aren't helicopters.
They aren't Brownian motion.
They aren't dancers.
They aren't ice skaters on an infinite lake.
They're train tracks.
They're trains on tracks.
They don't even have the flexibility of cars.
They're trains on tracks.
In the absence of significant self-knowledge, you can't jump the track.
You just go where you go with very little choice, with very little option.
People are self-managing.
They're self-medicating.
They're running away from anxiety.
They'll do almost anything to avoid the panic of their own non-existence if they're stuffed full of cliches and Dependence and illusions and neediness, right?
The neediness that comes from emptiness.
Many people will rather die than face their own emptiness, and that's where you came close to.
Because the question is, the question is, Bob, why was this the best that you could do?
Why was this the best that you could do?
The insecurity that you must have regarding your own sexual market value Meant that you had to take a woman who clearly was not reliable, was not trustworthy, and you had to pump her full of so many imagined virtues to justify your dependence on her that you were blind to the dangers of your mutual interdependence.
And you had to pretend that you were skating on thick ice when you were skating on thin ice.
You had to imagine that she had all of these wonderful qualities in order to maintain her Your dependence on her, and I believe, it's just my theory, but I believe in what you've told me, Bob, is that you were white knighting her the whole time.
When she fainted in that airport, she owned you.
You understand?
She needed you so much you couldn't leave because you're there to serve her needs.
As men are raised, raised to serve the needs of women.
Oh, do you like migrants?
Here you go.
Oh, do you want a giant welfare state?
Here you go.
Oh, do you need national debt because you don't want taxes to go up, but you want all this free stuff?
Here you go.
Let's sell off the next 12 generations to Chinese banksters.
What do you need, honey?
What do you need, honey?
Can I get some eggs?
Can I get access to some eggs?
What do you need?
What do you need?
need let me serve you let me serve you let me serve you muslims bow to mecca We bow to Vagina.
And you knew how much she needed you, which is why you gave her all the choice and said nothing and asserted nothing.
She needed you.
She needed you.
She fainted when she had to get on a plane without you.
Why?
Better stay with her because she really needs me.
Oh, my father has a problem with her.
Well, that's it.
Dad, we're leaving.
I'm defending her.
Cecil the White Knight rides in on his white horse.
You know what happens to balls when you ride a horse too long?
They go from outies to innies.
And then they stop giving you a testosterone as you found out.
You are there.
You were raised to serve women.
This is the great challenge of men.
This is the great challenge of men.
Women will tell you they want you to serve them, but they don't want you to serve them.
That's...
Nonsense.
That's about as real as four pounds of Kleenex and a padded bra.
Women will say, serve me.
They don't want you to serve them.
That's how they weed out the cucks from the men they really want to have sex with.
Oh, I'm going to drop my handkerchief and see how many cucks come to race and pick it up.
Well, I'm not fucking any of those.
Saw a comment on YouTube today.
It was a guy talking about Sweden.
And I've heard these kinds of comments before.
I passed them along with all due advisement that I don't know for sure whether it's true or not.
But I'm going to see if I can find it.
These are usually a little tricky to find after the fact.
And YouTube does not seem to do searches all too well in this kind of stuff.
It's hard to find for these kinds of things.
So anyway, so what he said was he said, yeah, I knew Sweden was finished in the 1970s when I was there.
Because there'd be all these guys at parties and they'd all be so nice and conciliatory and friendly.
Oh, can I get you a drink and so on?
Why?
Because they wanted to have sex with the Swedish women.
But it never worked.
He said every single time.
The women would end up going home with the assholes who kept yelling at them to show them their tits.
It's not that.
No, it's not about that.
Women saying they want you to serve them and defer to them It's a test of worthiness, and it's a way of weeding out weak men.
I tell you this from the very bottom of my spine, where it meets the dangly bits.
So you served her.
You paid for things.
You made lovely little Christmas hunteroos for her.
You served her.
You defended her.
And what happened?
She wanted to fuck other men.
Stop it.
Stop it.
It's not good for you, and it's not good for women.
I say this not just to you, but to other men out there.
Stop it.
And they'll get mad, and they'll get mad.
All you're supposed to do, you've got to be a gentleman.
Come on.
We have the entire example of what's going on around the Western world right now!
Right now!
Gone.
Let me finish.
This isn't just about you.
Although it's very important for you.
Stop serving women.
Stop it.
It is going to be the end of all of us.
And women aren't going to be happier either.
If men bend themselves into emasculated pretzels trying to serve every possible need and whim of women, say no!
They're actually big girls.
They can handle it.
They'll be fine.
They'll be absolutely fine.
Just say no.
Just say no.
And this whole thing, oh, let's make sure more women are comfortable.
Let's make sure that women are never upset or inconvenienced or unhappy.
Let's give them welfare state and free health care.
And let's make sure that they get alimony and child support and totally friendly courts.
And let's not send them to jail.
And even if they accuse prominent Canadian broadcasters falsely of doing all this sort of stuff, let's never prosecute them for perjury because they're girls and we've got to keep them safe and warm and happy.
And that's how we lose civilization.
And that's how women lose the basic self-protection of good Western men.
So, this is really, really important.
If women need to be coddled and protected and kept safe and can never be upset and are so needy and so desperate and so pathetic that we've got to ring them all with giant government programs and free money invented by bullshit artists, then we have no respect for women.
No respect for women.
I don't want my daughter to grow up and go out in a world where everybody paves for every step with silk slippers and rose petals and gold and God!
They're human beings.
It's okay to say no to women.
In fact, it's really, really important to do that.
Want another giant social program?
No.
Oh, do you think you should live in style to which you've become accustomed in your old age because you didn't really pay that much into a pension and you live like undead crypt keepers who can't be killed with asteroids?
It's not enough money.
Stop robbing from the poor.
You don't have enough.
You gave your money to the government.
The government spent it all.
Now there's none left.
Sorry, ladies.
It sucks.
But that's the price called adulthood and responsibility.
Can we stop treating women like infants?
Can we stop it?
For God's sakes!
She fainted at an airport.
She must love me.
No!
That's hysteria.
And maybe even manipulation.
Because then she owns you.
And she controls you.
And she can want to fuck another man.
And in less than three weeks, you're building her nice little ornaments of lovey-dovey bullshit at Christmas.
And then your balls say, well, fuck it, if we're going to behave like a eunuch, why bother producing testosterone?
It's kind of a waste at this point.
If you're not going to use the balls, why bother fueling them?
Stop serving women.
Everyone, for God's sakes, please, please, I beg of you, stop serving women.
Yes, there might be some upset and there might be things, oh, we're going to...
So what?
So what?
You know who gets upset?
Men who are drafted and have to go to fucking war.
And I don't see anyone going too insane about all of that.
That only stopped because the army fell apart in Vietnam and it wasn't productive to draft people anymore, men.
And if it was productive to draft men, it sure as hell would still be happening.
Say no to women, everybody.
Learn to say no to women.
If you can't say no to women, evolution will say no to your entire fucking civilization.
You are completely and absolutely correct about everything you said, except for one thing.
I did not pay for things for her.
She was always independent, and the only moment where I took the responsibility or partial responsibility for the household was Uh, was when she wasn't working.
But I do have to confess that if I had to have taken full responsibility of the household, yes, because that's the pattern that was impacted on me while I was growing up, primarily by my mother, right?
My father and mother's relationship.
So yes.
Probably would have done that.
But I didn't, and she always prided herself for herself being independent, and I respected that.
But yes, about everything else you said, I agree.
All right.
Well, I hope that this was helpful.
I really, really appreciate your honesty and thank you for letting me get my rant on.
And I hope that you'll let us know how things go.
And thanks, of course, for all of your interest in the show over the years.
I'm very, very, very glad and honored that you called in.
I'm very, very happy that I had the chance to talk to you.
It's very rare the opportunity to sit down and have a conversation that really blows your mind.
And this has been one of those.
I hope that you do really well.
Continue to make the show successful and help people.
You've helped me a lot.
I told you already in 2013 and I'll tell you again.
I'm very glad.
Have a good day.
I listen to the rest of the show.
Thank you very much and let's move on to the next call.
Alright, up next we have Adam.
Adam wrote in and said, I do not believe in nationalized healthcare,
believe in unregulated free market, and I supported Donald Trump's bid for the presidency just to name a few.
How can I engage with and still respect friends and loved ones when met with a surprising amount of hostility and hate concerning my new positions?
That's from Adam.
It's actually Stefan.
Oh, sorry, Stefan.
No problem.
I really should stop keeping my name such a secret to everyone because it is quite a challenge.
You know, five letters, all of which are easy to...
Anyway.
Yeah, it's kind of funny, you know, and I just wanted to start off with a little bit of story.
So back in the day, Ron Paul...
Yeah, I'm sure you've heard of Ron Paul.
So Ron Paul was running for office and was like getting barely in the single digits in terms of support.
And...
I was not a huge fan you know I can count was not a huge fan of it but you know I said to people go for it if you believe uh that you want to then um then go for it just you know put put it all out there and so it's funny and I got a lot of criticism for libertarians because um because I wasn't supporting Ron Paul and and then when I became quite keen and interested in some of Donald Trump's uh ideas I got a lot of criticism from who?
Yes, from libertarians.
And libertarians said, I can't believe you're supporting Donald Trump.
You didn't support Ron Paul right now.
So Donald Trump is promising to cut massive amounts of regulations, up to 75%.
And he actually has passed an executive order saying that for every regulation that's passed, two have to be cut.
Yeah, huge fan of that one.
Yeah, I mean, that's significant.
He's put in no lobbying bullshit, right?
That seems important, although that might...
Yeah, and...
But here's the important thing.
So he's putting in some...
There seems to be some orders coming down regarding welfare and limiting welfare for illegal immigrants and possibly even for immigrants for the first little while and so on.
Now, a lot of these ideas come directly out of Ron Paul.
So what's funny about libertarians...
I just, you know, I hate to laugh because I kind of understand that until you get this perspective, it's easy to be all prissy and fussy and bullshit and outraged.
But it's like, wow, you didn't support Ron Paul and his policies when he had no chance of winning.
And now the guy that you supported is implementing Ron Paul's policies and you're still an asshole, Steph.
Ah, so you are like a hyper-kinetic, neurotic woman.
You just can't be pleased, people, can you?
I didn't support him when it was impossible for him to get his policies passed, and now the guy I support it is implementing a lot of Ron Paul's policies, but apparently I'm still betraying the movement.
I just think that's pretty funny.
Sorry, I just, I mean, I get in the moment it's kind of easy to get swept up in that mob mentality, but it's just kind of funny.
Hey, what are you doing actually getting Ron Paul's Policies implemented, you traitor!
Yeah, it's a little bit like people who went for a lot of libertarians who rallied behind Gary Johnson.
It's like, what are you doing?
Like, I was on board for a little while in the beginning.
I was like, okay, let's see how this goes.
And then all of a sudden, I'm also Canadian, by the way, so I obviously couldn't vote.
I don't know that it's a great marketing strategy to refer to yourself as the stupidest person this reporter is ever going to meet.
Oh my god.
Oh, dang, yeah.
Or sticking your tongue out.
I don't even know.
What was he doing?
What was he doing?
I don't even know what he was.
Did he lose a bet or something?
No, no.
He was saying that I could talk like this.
And I thought, I mean, I just I think that you just, you know, it's basic optics.
Now, I can I can play the fool because I'm not running for office.
But I mean, come on, you know that that's going to be.
I thought it would have been a lot more interesting for libertarians to, or at least the American Libertarian Party, to choose, sorry, what was his name?
McAfee.
If McAfee had been their candidate, not that I would have supported him, but it would have been a lot more interesting, because the man's backstory is like, wow!
I think there was something involved.
He's got an exciting history, but it certainly would have been fun to watch that expert in security Talk about the hacks and the emails and the Hillary Clinton server.
I mean, he would have just wiped everyone with his technical knowledge and it would have been a pretty sight to watch.
Help me understand this anarcho-communism thing.
And just for the record, I've talked about this before, that people who are into the Venus Project and into anarcho-communism, do you want your Marxist mommy big tit robot cities?
That's fine.
You can have all of that.
You want to commune together, you want to buy some land, and you want to set up a place where you've got no ownership of anything and no money, and it's all owned in common, and you can, you know, spread your STDs as much as you want, but I just don't want to have to pay for them.
So you can have all of these experiments in how to be in a free society and Problem is, once you get a state, you can't have any experiments that are not state-based or at least state-compliant.
So a free society allows for anarcho-communism.
It allows for the Venus Project.
It allows for socialism, if you want.
It allows for all of these wonderful experiments.
And if you're really trusted in these things, you'd be happy with that.
But generally, most people are like, well, I've got this great idea.
How's it going to be implemented?
Guns!
Oh, well, then you don't really think it's a great idea, do you?
So tell me a little bit more about this anarcho-communism thing just to make sure I have the down low of how it works.
Well, if I can just sort of explain to it, it really starts with a lot of anarcho-communism starts with Peter Kropotkin, and he's sort of an evolutionary biologist, if I can remember correctly.
It's been a while since I've really delved into a lot of his teachings.
He wrote the book on Mutual Aid, A Factor of Evolution, Conquest of Bread, Fields and Factories and Workshops, and he was a He was an advocate of, I think, volunteerism, but he was also anti-capital, right?
He didn't believe in money, so there's...
What do you mean he didn't believe?
Oh, he just thought money was bad, like a tool of...
Yeah, just completely limited capital.
Yeah, yeah, collectivized.
But he didn't think you needed a big, giant state to ban money, did he?
Well, you see, that's the weird thing.
That's why I kind of...
Or did that remain somewhat undefined in his...
That seems to me kind of an important part.
Do you need a big giant terror apparatus to force people not to use conch shells for money like they did in Africa up until about 100 years ago?
Because that seems kind of important.
You know, like the Marxist thing?
Oh, don't worry.
We'll have this big giant totalitarian dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, but at some point it's all just going to wither away.
It's like, you know, that last part seems like...
Something you should kind of work on a little bit, because if you just end up with this big totalitarian state, I don't really think how this withering away thing is going to be that great.
Well, the revolution in Spain, there was anarcho-commonists involved in there, and they had a very similar sort of localized production, that things would be localized and they would evenly be distributed locally.
That was the more anarchistic principle of that.
But trying to understand how that's implemented, it's just a little confusing.
And that's kind of why I decided to kind of reinterpret my sort of feelings about anarchism.
Because at the end of the day, what happened was for me, this is a little backstory on me, when I was younger, and I went to theater school, which in a liberal arts college, so the indoctrination was pretty thick.
And on me growing up in sort of this sort of fine arts, you know, hippy-dippy arts culture.
Let's get in touch with everyone's emotions and not have a rational argument.
And I used to have a copy of the Communist Manifesto by my bedside.
It was almost like my own little personal Bible growing up.
Worst porn ever.
Actually, there is that bit about capitalists being able to bang the wives of their workers, which was never true anyway, but yeah, okay.
Yeah, exactly.
And then, yeah, so I had many ideas about sort of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
It's sort of a big, it's a big factor involved in that kind of train of thought.
And so when I found out that there was another train of thought called anarcho-communism, or as it's referred to, and a lot of these black and red anarchists don't like to use the The term communist when being associated, so they use the term syndicalist, and from what I can tell, it's the same thing.
Then you end up in a Monty Python movie, right?
We're an anarcho-syndicalist commune!
We take turns to act as sort of ratifying officer!
Anyway, it's kind of funny.
Yeah, it's really funny because I actually did that.
I'm an actor, and I actually did that scene.
Ha ha!
Those guys, those guys, you know, sorry to interrupt.
Those guys were actually pretty good actors.
This is something that's underrated with Monty Python.
I mean, nihilistic writing, occasionally brilliant, sometimes frustrating.
I like traffic lights.
Yeah, that's comic genius, guys.
But when they were good, they were very good.
And their acting abilities and their commitment to embodying things.
It's Michael Palin when he was playing the...
Spare a shekel for an old ex-lepper in Life of Brian.
I mean, he really inhabited that role.
And if you see A Fish Called Wanda, I never saw the sequel.
I heard it sucked.
But John Cleese is actually quite powerful in that role.
So this is one of the things, like the acting talent of the Monty Python gang, I think, was considerably understated, even the lead for the Life of Brian guy.
What, did he drink himself to death pretty quickly?
I can't remember, but...
Oh, that's actually really funny about The Life of Brian.
I can't remember his name at the top of my head either.
But we did a tribute show back in my hometown.
It was a community arts project and I was playing.
And the guy who played The Life of Brian was also...
He was a fairly heavy drinker himself.
And I think that the last scene we did...
I know we're going off on a little tangent here, but he had to get himself on top of a pretty tall cross.
For one scene, and he was like community theater.
I'll never work in community theater again because, oh my god, they just drank through the whole production.
And it was very...
You have to, because you're in community theater.
I shouldn't say that.
I was going to be a star!
And here I am.
I was in Stratford.
I don't even know if the first 18 rows of blue-haired ladies can even hear my eloquence.
Stop that train!
Anyway, sorry, go on.
To be fair, I'm from Newfoundland, actually, so that's not an unaccurate statement.
No, when I was in theater school, there was a pretty talented guy who was there from Newfoundland who did this fantastic imitation of somebody coming into a Newfoundland fish market and asking if there are any herring left.
And the fishmonger saying, no, we don't have any herring, but thank you so much for asking.
Would you like to hear how it went?
Are you ready?
Are you ready?
I'm going to reincarnate his reincarnation on exchange regarding herring in Newfoundland.
You ready?
Here we go.
Scene!
Aaron!
Naren!
Done.
I'm all done.
That's it.
Aaron!
Naren!
Do you have any herring?
No, we don't have any herring.
That's the whole thing.
He was great at it.
That's funny.
I kind of miss it sometimes, actually, because I'm not living there anymore, so...
Yeah, anytime I get what you refer to as domain landers imitating Newfoundlanders, I'm like, oh, please do it.
Because people are so surprised when they meet me.
They're like, you're not from Newfoundland.
You don't sound anything like it.
And I'm like, well...
Why are you sober?
Because I left.
See, I had to leave because the air has tiny alcohol.
Well, Newfoundland as well, for those who don't know, we'll get back to you.
But Newfoundland is...
I think it was in Newfoundland.
I don't know if this is still the law, but in the past, if you worked 10 weeks...
Of the year, you could get unemployment insurance for the other 42 weeks of the year.
And that's partly because seasonal and all this kind of crap, right?
And there was a lottery.
And a beer company ran this sort of competition where they said, basically, you'll live free for a year.
And the way it worked is you'd come and work in their factory at some nonsense job for 10 weeks, and then you could apply for...
For unemployment insurance for the remaining 42 weeks, they called it Lotto 1042 because there's a lot of 642 in Canada and so on.
And I just thought, and then people got really upset because it became like a joke.
Graham Chapman.
Graham Chapman is the guy.
Yeah, died of tonsil and spinal cancer.
He was a pretty short life, 1941 to 1989.
And yeah, he played the lead role in two Monty Python films, Holy Grail and Life of Brian, and yes, was quite...
A drinker.
It was tragic because he was a fine comedian.
It was pretty sad.
I think growing up, for me and my father, it was Monty Python and Genesis.
That was kind of a bonding moment.
We would watch Monty Python and then he'd show me his old Genesis records.
How old?
Are we talking back to Selling England by the Pound or pre-Habacab days?
Or is it when Peter Gabriel was still?
I mean, how old?
Peter Gabriel.
We're talking Peter Gabriel days.
Right.
Before he sold out with that bald bastard.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I think I saw a meme the other day.
I'm sorry.
Yeah, they're getting really off topic.
Anarcho-communism too, Genesis and Phil Collins.
Why not?
But there was a meme and it was a picture of Phil Collins.
It had a picture of Phil Collins on a man and then a woman and it said prog music.
And then there's a hotter woman passing by that says pop music and Phil Collins is obviously checking out the pop music instead of paying attention to his true girlfriend in the Prague.
And I sent it to my dad.
He thought it was funny.
Because I always bust his ball.
He loves Phil Collins.
I always bust his balls about Phil Collins selling it out.
Yeah, well, I mean, I actually think that Abacab Except for that whodunit god-awful song.
Abacab is actually, the first song is actually cool.
It's called Abacab because that's the rhyming scheme, A-B, A-C, A-B. But yeah, there's some really, really great songs.
Yeah, Lonely Man on the Corner and Abacab and some really great songs.
But yeah, the idea that it was, and I'm not a huge fan of that really, really early stuff.
Like Peter Gabriel, like, and I liked, though I don't particularly listen to Peter, sorry, to Phil Collins that much.
Anymore, but when I was younger I used to enjoy a roof is leaking and stuff like that is some really good songs and some kind of creepy songs like mother And whatever that got my glass up next to the wall and stuff like that But yeah home by the sea is a really really really like that song and it's one of the few songs that I can actually kind of belt along with with my own voice so But yeah, it's been forever since he did anything.
I think he got hearing problems, as usually is the case with drummers and stuff like that.
And I think after his 400th marriage, he kind of gave up on that sort of stuff.
And I think he's been working on an autobiography, as far as I know.
I haven't checked into that.
Again, I'm a little bit more post-Phil Collins, Peter Gabriel, although Lamb Lies Down on Broadway is probably one of my dad's favorite albums.
But yeah, I know Peter Gabriel is just continuously, continuously doing stuff.
I mean, he's like, what, approaching?
I think he is 70 now, and he's still touring every few years.
I think he's approaching 70.
He's touring with Sting at the moment, right?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And he just continuously pumps out work.
It's insane.
I remember watching him, I think he was 60 at the time, but his Growing Up tour.
Oh, that's a great song.
Looking for a place to live, growing up.
Yeah, that's good.
That's so good.
1950.
Yeah, he's 67, right?
Yeah.
Yep.
And he was going around on the stage, and it was a circular stage surrounded by Friggin thousands of people.
And he was in a hamster ball.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
I was like a 69.
I was like, how the heck at that age?
And he's still singing along at the same time.
So I thought it was just like, holy crap, that's amazing.
If I had that kind of energy at that age, I'd be like, all right, I'm pretty set on that regard.
But he's always struck me as, I mean, a very sad human being.
Yeah, if you read some of his autobiographies, he hasn't had an easy life, to say the least.
What happened with him, do you know?
Like when he was young, because he's very charismatic and very creative, like the Sledgehammer video.
My daughter loved that when she was younger.
Oh, that's cute.
And it's very creative.
And I mean, the amount of patience he had to go through to produce that video is ridiculous.
But what is it that has made him so sad?
Why?
I mean, it's like Rhythm of the Heat.
I mean, it's a great song, but I mean, it's a primal howl of misery, as is so many of his songs.
Yeah, I think it has a lot to do.
And my dad would know more about this, but he had a weird relationship with his daughter for a few years.
I think they didn't talk.
I don't know the exact, but they didn't talk for a long, long time.
Why?
Was she into Donald Trump?
I'm tying back to what we're going to talk about in a sec.
Yeah, I know.
Good transition.
But I don't know what...
No, this was way before Trump or anything like that.
But yeah, they didn't talk for 10 years, but then they got back together, or they patched things up, and then they ended up being...
She's a musician as well, and she ended up going on tour with him.
That's how they patched it up.
So I guess through music in a way, I guess it was a music.
So I don't know what the actual, again, I could call my dad, but it's in Newfoundland.
Come back on.
And I just wanted to point out, and I sometimes will put this on repeat when I'm writing.
The Secret World Tour, in your eyes, with Paula Cole as the backup singer, is like chillingly great.
And you can find it on YouTube.
It's a secret world tour.
In your eyes.
Paula Cole is the backup singer who just is wonderful.
You yodel warble at the beginning of the song.
And I think she obviously became a solo artist in her own right.
But it's just beautiful.
He was a bit of an asshole about South Africa as a whole.
And he has been a very...
It's challenging for me philosophically, ideologically, but as a musician and as a president.
And he's also one of these guys, too.
I don't know if he was out of the public life for a while, or I just didn't notice him.
But I remember being down at the Rogers Center, which is a big sort of concert area in Toronto.
And it was like, Peter Gabriel coming soon.
I'm like, wow, I'd really love to see that.
And it was like, whoa, I guess I hadn't seen him in a while.
And it's like, man, he aged like...
Like fast because he's one of these guys who had hair and then like boom like the Billy Joel thing or like Sting has managed to hang on to his hair for like I don't know if he's had plugs or something but it's just ridiculous it's like hanging on like grim death it's the hair that can't be killed it's zombie hair But yeah, he gained a lot of weight.
And I think he gained the weight because he was on antidepressants.
And that apparently works with your system or whatever.
But yeah, he lost hair, gained a lot of weight.
And it really was a rather surprising transition that happened.
And it was one of these kind of...
And time flash moments where you go, oh, I guess the heroes of my youth are getting older.
And that is a real challenge.
Sorry to cut you off, but it's kind of funny because when he was with Genesis, he used to have this long, kind of like very rock star-y looking, long, little boy hair.
But he shaved the center part out.
You can find you can find videos of this because when he was with Genesis he was like the the stage shows he would produce some of the the live stuff and these are like 30 minute long instrumental crazy like progressive rock music and he would shave his head in through the center part but keep the flow on the side he dressed up like a woman and wear a fox mask and then for him later on in life to Kind of lose it on top is a little bit ironic.
Maybe you shouldn't have shaved it when you were younger.
No, it's just what happens.
I haven't listened to his songs in a while, but I'm working on this new book, The Art of the Argument.
I'm sort of back to really enjoying and reminding myself just how many unbelievably fantastic songs he has written and what an oddly compelling voice he has.
It's kind of like this high, kind of whiny, but very powerful in its upper registers.
It's a very interesting, and Phil Collins has that same kind of thing too, you know, like he sounds like kind of adenoidal, but it's a very powerful voice, particularly his life.
You know, because you could say Mike Rutherford had sort of the more classical, useful voice.
And so he's the guy who did Living Years, if I remember rightly, and sang with, you know, sort of typical pop voice.
But yeah, all just a bunch of fantastically talented guys.
And Peter Gabriel, I mean, what astounding music he created.
I mean, the music, he did, I think the only soundtrack he did, well, maybe he did more than one, but The Last Temptation of Christ, I was actually just listening to that while walking in the woods during a snowstorm.
Amazing, amazing infusion of Arabic music and the most incredible Arabic singers that he got for that album, if you can check it out.
I think it's also on YouTube, the soundtrack he did for The Last Temptation of Christ.
Just amazing, amazing stuff.
And yeah, a couple of...
Yeah, Kiss the Frog, not my favorite.
But anyway, just amazing, an amazing variety, you know, all the way from Wallflower to Rhythm of the Heat to Sledgehammer to...
Salisbury Hill and just wonderful, wonderful stuff.
Alright, music geek time shall return to the show as it occasionally does and I wobble on incessantly about the music that I love, but let us get to what the hell's happening in your personal life, right?
So your fandom of the Trumpster is causing you some challenges.
So what's happening when you – how does it come up?
Is it you bringing stuff up?
Is it other people?
How's it going?
I'll give an example.
I was at a – and it's not necessarily him.
It's necessarily just how I – The opinions I have that are related to him, I suppose.
And it has a lot to do with not even Republican or conservative opinions, but just basic libertarian opinions.
I was in a club.
I live in Vancouver.
And some of the funner things to do in Vancouver is to go to one of these leisure arts clubs.
like they're not actually arts clubs, they're bars that you know kind of are not necessarily legal.
So I would I would I went to this one one night and they had us they had a you know I'm young and I'm not necessarily trying to quit smoking at this moment in time and so I was they had a they had a room where you could smoke indoors so I spent most the night in that.
Yeah, in Vancouver, yeah.
I thought you were legally allowed to be shot on sight if you were caught smoking in Vancouver, but I mean, unless it's joints, in which case, apparently, the police will light one for you, but all right, go on.
No, actually, I don't actually, never developed a taste, but I, yeah, I developed, yeah, so I was in this room just, and I met some people, friends of friends, and I was a little bit intoxicated, and I, like, started oversharing, as I tend to do, with this.
You lowered inhibitions.
Your inhibitions were lowered.
Were you a little drunk?
Yeah, I was.
And you forgot where you were.
And you were infused with optimism about the rationality and listenability of the human race.
Yes.
Yeah, I was.
So I was with this girl.
She was fairly attractive.
And we were just talking.
And I was talking about my life experience and trauma I've had in the past.
Just base stuff.
I mean, I think I've lived fairly sheltered and And safe life, to be fair.
And then she started holding my hand and being very, very connected.
And obviously, if someone's going to connect to you that way, you're going to want to continually, continually share.
So I kept into it and I went into it.
And all of a sudden, she starts poking me for a political statement.
She wants to know what my political, my view on life and stuff like this.
And I was like, are you sure about that?
Even as intoxicated as I was at the time, I was still like, maybe we'll wait a little before we get to this.
And then she pressed and she's like, okay, well, I don't believe in free education.
That's the statement I said.
I just don't think that the government should pay for my education.
And she let go of my hand and got out of there faster than a hooker in church.
Wow.
And it was just so hypocritical because here was this huge emotional sympathy that she was giving me, and then all of a sudden, because I obviously disagreed, she was a little younger, I think maybe 21, she just went, gone out of there.
And it was sort of a shock to me that that would happen.
It's supposed to shock you out of having opinions that don't benefit a certain type of woman.
Yeah, exactly.
So you were saved.
You were saved from a very risky situation in my humble opinion, but sorry, go on.
And recently I've run into, you know, I am 24 and single and kind of happy that it's that way currently.
But I am seeing someone else and she is...
Wait, wait, you're single but you're seeing someone?
I know my baby a little older than you but I still can't quite parse that one out.
Okay, it's just like, we've gone on a few dates, but nothing has been so sedimented.
I shouldn't say seeing, I should say, yeah, we've been on a few dates.
And she's very, she has very opposing opinions to mine, but she's also, oh, she doesn't, nothing offends her.
I can say pretty much anything I want, and she'll just, we'll just talk it through.
And she'll still be, she'll still want to go on a date with me the next day.
And that's the kind of person that I think is Good to build a relationship with instead of someone who's just going to, as soon as you say something that breaks their eco-chamber, they're going to just scurry off.
So this is what I'm saying is how do I... And it's also been recent because, and this is something that kind of frightened me, I saw like a hit list by Antifa and it listed anarcho-capitalists on On a list of fascists.
And then Richard Spencer gets hit in the face.
And I'm like, I don't want to get hit in the face.
You know what I mean?
If you're going to claim that anarcho-capitalists and voluntarists are fascists, and then you're saying it's okay to hit fascists, I'm going to get hit in the face.
I'm sorry, but people don't understand that...
Being not on the left is hazardous, can be very hazardous for your health.
I mean, Richard Spencer had his eardrum burst by that punch, as far as I understand it.
I mean, that could have harmed or even killed him.
It's horrible, horrible stuff.
It is risky.
It is risky.
The number of people who commented to me over the election cycle is like, yeah, I can't put a Trump sticker on my car.
I can't wear a Trump hat.
I mean, I could get beaten up.
I could get chased.
I could get stuff thrown at me.
It is grim times out there in America.
You know, we're just doing the show.
Yeah, Milo has posted...
I have been evacuated from the UC Berkeley campus after violent left-wing protesters tore down barricades, lit fires, threw rocks and Roman candles at the windows and breached to the ground floor of the building.
My team and I are safe, but the event has been cancelled.
I'll let you know more when the facts become clear.
One thing we do know for sure, the left is absolutely terrified of free speech and will do literally anything to shut it down.
And that is Milo's comment.
It is...
It is medieval.
It is hellish out there.
Yeah, no, and this is one of the legacies of Reagan, right?
I mean, let's legalize a whole bunch of Hispanics and let's see how that works out.
Although I'm sure that this is also a lot of people who aren't Hispanic at all, but are, of course, bust in by some of the more reactionary elements that are funding some of this stuff.
But it is...
You know, people need to see the left for what it is.
People need to see the left for what it is.
But you're right.
We don't know how many people are making safety decisions and are unable to speak out.
Which is, you know, to me, when you get these marches of women all crying out about their oppression and so on, it's like, well, no one's setting you people on fire.
Nobody's smashing you guys up.
Nobody's throwing stuff at you.
I mean, so...
When they have sympathy for people on the right who are being beaten up and smashed up and things being set fire to and receiving death threats every day, when they have sympathy for what's going on for the people on the right, then I'll have a little bit more sympathy for what's going on with them.
But right now, it seems to be a very, very selective set of outrage.
I don't agree with Richard Spencer on most things.
That's not the point!
No, it's not the point.
Sorry to interrupt.
It doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter whether you agree with him or not.
The man has a right to make his arguments.
Yeah, yeah.
But it's just like, the more you attack somebody, or a side, the more they're going to want to puff up.
And the more of us specifically are going to get a little bit more...
Like, I don't want to get hit in the face, so maybe I should hit you first.
Like...
And I'm not condoning that, but you see, if you punch someone on the opposite side in the face or you attack them violently, they will react.
Oh, the right is going to attack back at some point.
I mean, I hate to say it, and I sure wish it wasn't going to be the case, but this kind of escalation, the right is not going away and the right is not going to back down.
Those days were done.
Those days were done.
And people saw what happened over the last 50 years with the right trying to make compromises and trying to keep the peace.
And the right is going to start hitting back and I know where my money would be.
Yeah, there's a woman here who says my friend was giving an interview when some coward pepper sprayed her.
There are tweets from people who are...
They've been maced by the leftists and they're hiding and trapped in bathrooms and...
Yeah, this is a full-on intellectual terrorism.
This is all of the violence that everybody knew was coming and the right tried to appease for decades and just made it worse.
And if it wasn't this round, it would be the next round when it would be even worse.
This is the kind of thing that needs to be dealt with and needs to be looked at for what it is right now because it only gets worse from here unless this is either de-escalated by the left or responded to by the right.
But there's no other option at this point.
This level of violence that people on the right are facing for peaceable assembly and the exchange of ideas.
We're also finding out who has any kind of moral backbone, who has any kind of interest in the greatest treasure of the world and of the West in particular, which is free speech.
Which is free speech.
The people who aren't willing to defend free speech are betraying civilization and betraying everything that our ancestors fought to try and create and preserve.
And we are descending into a new form of barbarism without a significant amount of pushback that's going to be necessary.
I hope peaceful, as peaceful as humanly possible.
But it is a brutal environment that has been left to fester for entirely too long.
And what might have been dealt with much more peacefully in the past may not be as peaceful as we might wish in the present.
And it is brutal what is being done at the moment.
It's scary seeing...
what was his name?
I am actually a unionized actor.
I know that's a little bit...
being an anarcho-capitalist and also being...
You gotta live.
You gotta live.
It's not the world you made.
So I am part with...
I am unionized under Actra.
And I saw the SAG Actra message from the guys who were doing the, what's that show?
I never watched it yet.
The kids, Stranger Things.
And he did the acceptance speech and he talked about how we will punch people in the face who we disagree with and stuff like this.
And everyone cheered.
And everyone cheered.
And the media is not saying like, oh my god, boycott this show.
This guy's talking about, you know, political attacks upon people exercising free speech.
No, everyone's like, yeah, we can see that.
It just scared me a little bit because I'm in that, I'm trying my best.
The reason I'm in Vancouver is to try, you know, I thought, you know, you were saying about with Darren earlier, you know, go bigger, go home.
Well, that's exactly what I'm doing.
I'm just in Vancouver trying my best to get in this industry and do what I love doing.
It's been ups and downs, but then I sort of got in, you know, saw that video.
I was like, these are the kind of people I have to I mean, there's a lot of people I know in this industry who I think agree with that.
And I'm like, this is a bit scary.
And this is where I'm kind of in this dualism, where I believe very hardly on what I believe.
I believe in volunteerism and I believe in free speech.
But to what point do I want that value to affect my career?
I hope you understand what I'm saying in some way.
Of course.
Lo, you don't have to tell me about it.
I mean, I went to the National Theatre School.
And people seem to be polarized by my acting style.
Some people think it's the greatest thing since Shakespeare and others think I'm overacting.
Fine.
But the reality is that I couldn't take the leftist environment in the arts.
I just, I couldn't.
I can't tell you what to do.
I mean, don't do things.
Mike Cernovich is saying that there are reports of Antifa threatening to rape female Trump supporters.
Huh.
Rape is a political weapon.
Why does that seem familiar?
Anyway, I'm sure it'll come to me at some point.
But...
It is a difficult and can be a dangerous situation.
You know, if you're going to do anything public, particularly where people know you're going to be and you're not on the left, you need to be aware of the danger.
And, you know, if you get security or, you know, it's something that needs, you just need to be street smart and cautious and careful.
Feral left is Has been goaded into this kind of stuff and justified into this kind of stuff by the media.
The real problem.
If the media were leading the charge against this stuff, if the media were standing out for the principle of free speech and peaceable assembly, then these guys wouldn't have anything to...
You know, it's funny how the media...
Oh, we don't want to...
Some guy was a serial killer.
Well, we want to publish his name because it only gives him fame and so on.
It's like, okay, how about you take this with these rioters?
With these people who are attacking people for wanting to exchange ideas in a peaceable venue.
But, of course, the media secretly loves this stuff in many ways, I think.
I mean, it gets them ratings, of course.
But imagine, you know, if what was happening to Milo's event right now, right now as we speak in California, imagine that this was Black Lives Matter and it was a bunch of white people smashing and setting things on fire and so on.
The media would be going insane.
Yeah, as I think it was Churchill who said, the fascists of the future will claim that they're anti-fascists.
And it is absolutely brutal.
And of course, the whole point of this is to prevent this kind of assembly in the future.
It's not so much to do with this right now, although that is terrifying and intrusive and violent enough.
But it's designed to send a message.
Don't, hey, you feel like getting Milo at your campus?
Well, this is the kind of stuff you can expect.
This is, of course, the attempt to shut down political dialogue and political discourse, and we either come together as a society and condemn this enormously, and that these people need the full effect of the law on them, or There's nothing left to defend.
Literally, okay, just let the thugs take over.
Let whoever has the biggest bat determine what the hell is going to happen in the society.
We give up on reason.
We give up on debate.
We give up on discussion.
We put away our words and we take out our swords.
Because if that's how it's going to be, we might as well find out sooner rather than later.
But I still have hope that it is not going to go that way.
And I think at that point you will see true fascists.
They're calling people fascists now.
Oh yeah, they're trying to make fascists, of course.
They're itching for a fight.
They're itching for a fight.
And they're trying to make the very fascists that they claim are there that aren't.
And when you get enough communists and anarchists in the sort of communist sense, you get enough of those people together, yeah, you're going to start producing right-ring squads.
And you're going to, of course, because People can only be beaten up and humiliated and attacked and controlled and brutalized and silenced for so long and you get blowback.
This is of course one, I mean, given that I knew this was coming sooner or later, it is better to have somebody like Donald Trump and Jeff Sessions and so on in these situations because there is a way to prevent this through proactive action rather than waiting for it to escalate and then trying to stitch up the bodies that are broken.
Thank you for the...
I might have swallowed a little blue pill when I heard Jeff Sessions was being appointed, and I kind of fell for the lie of the media, and then you posted the video on him, and I was like, oh, okay, it's actually still all lies.
Good.
And this gets to kind of my other point in the question.
I propose that I've been sort of a little bit more attracted to Americanism and sort of nationalism in some ways.
Reading, you know, brushing up on the Constitution a little bit and trying to figure out what the Founding Fathers were actually trying to get at.
And, you know, it's kind of correlation by funny.
My younger sister, she's really into that Hamlet musical.
Which has like almost zero historical context.
So as she's been talking about these characters, I've been informing her on like what the actual historical context of Hamilton was and him versus Washington on increased, you know, bigger governments and stuff like this.
And kind of Interpreting that the original founding fathers wanted a fairly minimal government.
They wanted almost a minor-kiss state, in many ways, run by the people.
They believed in free markets.
They believed in the right to bear arms and stuff like this.
Right.
So, yeah, I mean, I don't know what to say.
It is a...
My guess would be that it's going to be very difficult for you to fit into an existing structure within the Canadian art scene, which is very lefty.
I mean, it makes Justin Trudeau look like Donald Trump.
You know, I mean, it's really challenging and very, very lefty.
I couldn't find a way to make it work, so I created a new thing to get out what I thought was important.
So I would say that if you can work your creative bellows to the maximum, see if you can come up with something great and new, there could be some possibility for that.
Keep an eye on the art scene in the United States, which I think is going to go through a significant revolution over the next couple of years.
People on the right are going to be very emboldened and empowered by what's happening politically, and we may see a shift away from this virulent leftism in the art world, particularly as the major studios collapse and as NPR and PBS lose their funding if that's what goes down.
A lot of transition points are opening up For artists who have something more important to say other than exploitation, bad whitey, and blah, blah, blah, blah, right?
So keep your eyes peeled on that, and you can, I think, maybe mine some new possibilities that weren't there in the past.
Yeah, and I think I got some really bad advice, or bad good advice, I guess you could call it, from a friend of mine.
And he was like, it comes from that kind of go big or go home kind of attitude where he was like, Adam, just get a bunch of credit and just screw it.
Go to LA. Go to the States.
Just do it.
Just pull it all through.
Screw your credit.
You need to screw your credit before you're 30.
And I was like, okay, that's not exactly sound advice, but I understand what you're saying is if I'm going to do this, I might as well just go for gold.
And that's kind of where I am right now.
I'm kind of thinking, you know what, you know, if I save up a little bit more money and I get things on the go, I currently do background in the film industry and it pays all right.
And, you know, if I keep going and maybe I'll be able to make something.
Listen.
Being a great actor is like being a great singer.
You need someone like...
This is someone I know from the music industry who I respect who said, you know, great singers are a dime a dozen, but get someone who can write a catchy song.
That's rare.
So my position is if you want to be in the art world and you have any particular values of your own that aren't just like photocopied leftist nonsense...
Then you need to be a creator.
You can't just be an echo chamber.
You can't let other people put words in your mouth because you may get a great role and the writer might ask you to, or basically compel you in a sense, to say things that you really, really disagree with.
Like, A Series of Unfortunate Events is a show that's on Netflix at the moment.
I watched, dipped in a little bit here and there.
And...
You know, I got to one and the villain was like, well, I support a school voucher program.
And it's like, well, it's got nothing to do with the plot, but it's a way of programming people, particularly when they're young, right?
It's a way of programming people so that they associate nasty people with school vouchers.
And then there was another one about socialized healthcare, like they just slip these little things in, big budgets and they just, little shiv in, you know, like this little, it's like the mosquito wants to draw blood from you without you noticing, so it dissolves part of your skin with its proboscis and its saliva or whatever the hell it does, and then you get the itch later.
And that's tough, you know, if you get to, you have to say that line.
Maybe it goes again.
Maybe you offer school choice.
Maybe you offer school voucher programs.
Maybe you're not a big fan of socialized medicine.
I know you're not, but maybe you're going to get a job where you have to say that and it's going to be slipped in there into the consciousness of children and program them, right?
This is not fair.
This is not fair.
This is not an argument to just have a bad person Be a big fan of school vouchers.
It's got nothing to do with the story, nothing to do with the plot.
It is just a way of programming the children to associate school vouchers with a negative experience or a negative character.
In the same way, you know, the factory is full of people who they get paid in gum and coupons and, you know, evil people are controlling them and there's a boss who does absolutely nothing but exploit the workers and it's all this Marxist bullshit that they just...
Don't know how to do anything different anymore, it seems.
And this reality of what passes for art in the world these days, which is all just a bunch of communist programming for the large part, If you're not creating stuff, you're going to be owned by other people.
You're going to be controlled by other people.
You're going to turn into the mouthpiece for other people.
And the better you are and you aren't, the better you will be at programming people into leftist clichés.
I think you need to sit down and say okay well if I want to be an artist and I don't agree with the values in significant portions of the art community I better start creating stuff I better start writing screenplays or songs or movies or anything coming up with a one-man show coming up with something that's surprising that's going to be challenging for people that's going to shake them out of some of their complacency not another Hamilton right and so this to me Is where you would need to go if I would sort of give you that quasi-fatherly advice.
I would say, you know, a little less trying to pick up lefty chicks and a little bit more sit down and grind your pen to a fine point coming up with something fantastic that is going to be so great that people will swallow the politics just to get a hold of the quality.
All right.
Well, I'm going to close off the call, but I really, really appreciate you calling in and I wish you the very best of luck.
And, you know, these kinds of challenges can really provoke you into excellence as an artist.
So don't give up.
Just view it as something that builds character.
It's something else out of the TV show, the Netflix show.
But you may look back and say that...
Being backed into this corner gives you a way out that may make you far greater than you ever would have been.
For me, my original goal, you know, be an artist or be an entrepreneur, be a writer or whatever.
I did those things.
Mostly the entrepreneur was where I gained my real traction, but it all led me to what I'm doing now.
And so these culture wars are what I'm best at and what give me the most satisfaction and pleasure.
And so don't view it as being cornered.
View it as...
being liberated to be your very greatest self so thanks very much everyone so much for listening for calling in for supporting the show please please please go to freedomainradio.com slash donate to help keep this wonderful work going and growing freedomainradio.com slash donate and also you can follow us uh follow me on twitter at stefan molyneux and you can use the affiliate link if you've got some shopping to do at fdrurl.com slash amazon and uh I'm done with Starbucks.
