Nov. 14, 2017 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
03:39:43
3895 Conveyor Belt Bangathon - Call In Show - November 8th, 2017
Question 1: [2:00] - “My son is eleven and the inevitable instability from my decision to split up with his dad about 8-9 years ago has caused a lot of suffering for him. Do you think there is anything that I can do to repair at least some of the emotional damage that I have caused him? I'm in another relationship now and we have a daughter who is three; what can I do to ensure that I don't make the same horrible decisions?”Question 2: [1:33:54] - “Why am I still single I’m a traditional girl from the south and since moving to Los Angeles, I can’t seem to find a guy who’s on the same page. I’m sure a lot of it has to do with me being African American and wanting to marry an African American man as well. The eligible pool is just so small here, with many of them being from bad families, too liberal or unambitious dreamers. I am being told that I am making myself too available and that I need to play hard to get. This is tough for me because I am naturally affirming and accommodating. My being nice and wanting to make a guy feel good doesn’t mean I’m in love with him just that I think he’s a nice guy. The idea that I’m supposed to date a guy but not like him or make it known that I’d like to settle down in the near future and just be some big ball of fun while going dutch or footing the bill on dates AND having sex with these men with no promise of a future together sounds absolutely crazy to me but I can’t for the life of me figure out what I’m doing wrong, maybe I’m the dreamer?”Question 3: [2:15:33] – “Recently, I listened to your segment ‘Why I rejected religion’ and was particularly taken in by your personal testimony of what you considered to be reasons for why religion failed you, and why you propose that God may not be good enough. Given your current scope of influence in motivating people to think and reason more effectively, with a view to preserve freedom in the western civilization and even mankind, could it be that your seemingly unhappy and even tortured childhood be something that God put you through as a means to build your character up to serve Him, only if you desire to do so? Would that possibly even offer comfort and sense to the childhood that God had you endure, so you can be what you are today? And could reconciliation with Him therefore grant you even more blessings when you are right with Him?"Question 4: [2:43:37] - “I am 22 years old and I am in a committed relationship with a man that I love very Much. We started our own online business together this year and so far it is going great! My grandma doesn't seem to understand that just because I now work from, that doesn't mean that I can drop everything and go spend all of my time with her. Every since I was a little girl, I have always wanted my grandmas love and attention but I rarely received it. If I am too busy to go spend an entire day with her, she holds it against me and passively threatens to not call me anymore. My relationship with my grandma means a lot to me and I don't want to lose her, but how can I establish boundaries with her so that I don't have to feel pressured and obligated to spend all of my time with her and neglect my business?”Your support is essential to Freedomain Radio, which is 100% funded by viewers like you. Please support the show by making a one time donation or signing up for a monthly recurring donation at: http://www.freedomainradio.com/donate
Please don't forget to help out the show at freedomainradio.com slash donate.
Four Crackerjack callers tonight.
The first is a single mom, and she's concerned that her son is dysfunctional, is damaged, perhaps by separation from his father, perhaps by other factors that we went into, and what a deep dive we had.
Truly admire this woman for her courage in the conversation.
The second caller is a black woman who would like to find a nice black man to settle down with and is having trouble understanding why or why she could remain single.
Hint, she's in Los Angeles.
She's also not a leftist and again that does create a bit of a filter when it comes to these statistical odds.
So we had a great conversation about how you do find people in difficult situations if you are not a run-of-the-mill kind of person.
The third caller wanted to know if I thought there was any possibility That my unhappy childhood was God's gift to me to give me the courage and strength to stand up for what I stand up for in my public life and private life too.
Interesting question. I could have been offended.
Wasn't. Was kind of curious where he was going with this and we talked about that.
The fourth caller is a woman who's started a business, she's an entrepreneur, and her grandmother constantly guilts her into spending time with her.
And it's really becoming intrusive and invasive.
And we began pulling apart the threads in these kinds of complex family situations.
As is so often the case, we got to someplace enormously helpful and productive.
So thanks everyone so much for having these great conversations with me.
It's a true honor to be part of this most grounded and essential conversation in the world.
So please don't forget, freedomainradio.com slash donate.
You can also check out The Art of the Argument at theartoftheargument.com.
You can follow me on Twitter at Stefan Molyneux.
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Alright, well up for us today we have Jennifer.
Jennifer wrote in and said, That's from Jennifer.
Hey Jennifer, how are you doing tonight?
I'm doing well. How are you?
I'm certainly better now that I hear that lovely voice with a lovely microphone.
That is caressing to my inner ear.
Very nice. So how does the suffering manifest in your son?
How do you know that he's suffering? Anxiety, for one.
He doesn't handle stress very well.
I know that there was, my ex and I, we had a lot of animosity between us and it affected our son.
And just, I'm just trying to think, sorry.
I don't know.
In the sense that it wasn't pleasant for him to be around us arguing and me mostly yelling at his dad and being very unpleasant.
My son is very intelligent.
I mean, I'm his mom, I'm saying that, but I do think he is, and he's very funny, and I think things are more stable now, but he's having trouble.
He's having trouble with discipline, disciplining himself, and I mean, no wonder.
And like I said, anxiety, sometimes he has negative thoughts, and it's Yeah.
Well, I appreciate you mentioning all that.
And I can sort of feel you fighting the emotion.
Feel free not to. If I'm balding sometimes on camera, feel free.
This is a place of emotional friendliness, so that's fine.
Give me a history of the dad.
When you met him, what drew you to him, how long you were together, and the decision to have a son and what happened after him.
Well, that's pretty interesting.
What happened was when I first met him, we got to know each other, and we were working at the same place we were actually working at Walmart.
And I was in school full-time while I was working, and he told me that he was too.
And one thing that appealed to me was the fact that he was working full-time and in school full-time, and he told me that he was studying to be a doctor.
Which, based on a lot of your other videos, I mean, it makes sense to me that that would appeal to me at the time, right?
Sure, yeah. No, I get it.
I mean, just for those who don't know that, you know, hypergamy and the woman is looking to use the man to get resources for the offspring.
This sounds all predatory and mean and so on, but that's only the case if you think that love is some sort of fairy dust as opposed to a biochemical reaction designed to help us bond.
To better raise our children.
Sex and romance and love, this is all about the begetting of genes.
It doesn't mean that there's no virtue involved or you can't have a noble kind of love, but that's the basic element of it.
And I'm going to go out on a limb here, Jennifer, and I'm going to guess that he was not, in fact, studying to be a doctor in the real world.
That's right. You're right.
Yes, exactly.
And this, you know, this kind of lying is pretty terrible.
Men do it a lot of times, lie about their income.
There's a move, I can't remember what it's called, there's a move where you kind of go through the garbage.
It's ridiculous. You go through the garbage of some ATM until you find some enormous deposit slip.
And then you try and pick some girl up, or you try and chat up some girl, and at some point you flash out a money clip, which has a hundred on the outside and then just ones on the inside, but you can't tell.
And then you offer to give her your number, and you say, I've got a piece of paper here somewhere.
You pull it out, you write down your number on the back of this giant deposit slip with like $200,000 in your bank account or whatever.
You hand this over, and this is all supposed to tweak her resource-seeking ability.
Ovary missiles, so to speak.
And it's pretty terrible stuff.
On the other hand, women wear makeup, get nose jobs and boob jobs and liposuction, and thus are concealing the genetic realities of what you're breeding with.
So there is falsehood on both sides.
Like, you know, you marry some woman because she's got, you know, got a lovely nose.
It's not why you marry her, but it's part of it.
Turns out she, you know, has this big giant schnoz.
Your nose was on time, but you were five minutes late.
And then, of course, you get that with the kid and you're like, hey, I wonder where this came from.
And you find, oh, she had a nose job.
And so, yeah, there's there's falseness on on both sides.
Spanx, for instance, can be a bit a bit false.
Push up bras. Hey, you take away the support and the leaning tower of pieces don't stand.
But so, OK, so he how long did you know him before you found out this was not the case?
Not very long, and I have a tendency of jumping into relationships very quickly and things moving forward very fast.
And in this particular situation, I was very lonely due to a breakup the year before, and I was living on my own.
And I just pretty much went with the first guy who seemed appealing, who seemed like he had a future plan for himself.
Yeah, I mean, there certainly could be guys who are going to be doctors who are working at Walmarts, but it's not the first place that I would look.
So how long did you know him before you got pregnant?
A year and two months, I think.
All right. And how long did you know him before you got involved?
About two months. Right.
And how long before you got involved, after you got involved, before you had sex?
It was not very long after, probably on the second deed.
Right. So you're hoping to, in a sense, hook him through attachment, through sexuality, right?
Or there's the feeling, it's the horrible choice that women face, that they didn't used to face nearly as much, which is, if I put out, he won't respect me.
If I don't put out, the next woman will, and I'll lose him.
Yes. Right. Yes.
No, it's terrible. Terrible. This sort of brinksmanship Russian roulette stuff that goes on with regards to sexuality, it's just horrible.
And it seems like there's no way to win in this.
Now, how long after you met him or started chatting with him, Jennifer, did you find out he was lying about wanting to become a doctor or taking steps?
I believe it was probably not very long into the relationship, maybe two months or so.
And I still stayed with him anyway.
Right. Why?
He lied about almost every aspect of his life.
And I stayed with him anyway because I wanted that baby.
Oh, because, okay, so wait, wait, wait, sorry.
When you said it was a year and a bit, was that when you got pregnant?
That's right, yes. Okay, so you wanted a baby from him.
But I didn't want him, and I knew from the beginning.
What do you like, the inspiration for that Ace of Base song, you know?
All that she wants is another baby.
Yeah. So you wanted a baby.
But not the husband. Now, help me explain, help me sort of understand that.
What's the thought process behind that?
Well, I first of all grew up hearing from my mother that, you know, well, my mother is the kind of person who thinks that her husband is just kind of like a secondary figure and is not that important or essential.
My mom kind of instilled in me this whole, yeah, you know, I'm I'm going to be the best that I can be.
And this whole feminist notion that men don't really matter, aren't really important, they're not needed, they can be discarded.
And I had that belief and that notion for a long time.
Yeah, I mean, we're just inconvenient sperm donors who happen to keep the sewage running.
Yeah, that's wretched and incredibly sexist and bigoted, but that's where you were, and not just you, but the culture in many ways as a whole.
So you were raised with, you can do it on your own.
Sisters are doing it for themselves.
Is that the sort of idea?
Kind of. It was just...
It wasn't super empowering, necessarily.
It was just degrading of men more so, I think, if that makes any sense.
Yeah, no, I get it.
I get it. And what about your father?
Your father? My dad, well, my parents are married.
He... I'm sorry.
What kind of broken down, beanbag, spineless jellyfish of a man stays married to a woman like that?
I don't mean to judge, but I'm going to judge.
Oh, my dad is...
It's very sad.
I actually used to get into a lot of fights with him, either verbally or even physically.
We used to really go at each other.
It sounds awful too, but that's just my reality, right?
So they weren't married until I think I was about 10, and then they got married then.
And yeah, my dad, he's been unemployed for a very long time.
And I'm not sure how deep you want me to go into the family history.
Well, I know it's difficult, but I'm going to be a nag anyway and ask you to stop laughing so much about terrible, sad stuff.
I know everyone is like, oh, they hear the callers.
They hear me chastising people.
And I bet you everyone says, man, when I call in, I'm not going to fall into that trap.
And then everyone does. So I understand.
I was just thinking that today.
Yeah, no, I get it.
And when you listen back, you'll be like, oh yeah.
Because you're inviting me to, and it's unconscious, and it comes more from your parents than from you, but you're inviting me to not think of this stuff as serious and difficult and dangerous.
But I do know, I do know, Jennifer, that you have an adverse childhood experience score of seven, which is extraordinarily high, and I am very sad.
And just want to extend massive sympathies for the kind of childhood that you had.
That's very kind of you.
Thank you. And I would invite people, because every time we do these videos, people are like, the ace?
What? Okay, it's called the Adverse Childhood Experiences Study.
Dr. Vincent Felitti and you can find it online and you should take the test and everyone around you should take the test and everyone you meet should take the test and anyone you're considering dating in the long run should take the test and you should discuss the results.
It's not a perfect test. It's not what I would design.
But it's pretty good. And so, you have an adverse childhood experience score of 7, which includes verbal abuse and threats, physical abuse, non-spanking, molestation, sex and rape, or rape, no family love or support, lived with alcoholic or drug user, household member depressed, mentally ill, or suicide attempt, household member in prison.
So, it was a madhouse of a war zone, is that a fair way to put it?
Yeah, I think so.
And when I was growing up in it, I thought everything was just fine.
And my parents acted like everything was just fine.
But I always had this feeling that I don't fit in here, and this is not where I'm supposed to be.
And I got into a lot of arguments and fights with my dad, which I think were actually kind of orchestrated by my mom.
And me and my siblings as well.
It was just very contentious in the house.
It still is actually. I don't visit as much.
But it wasn't easy at all.
Right. So as far as the skills of negotiation and compromise, that growing up in a healthy functioning family with parents who disagree but don't rage against each other, you kind of get spat out of that mess into the dating scene, severely, not crippled, but Crippled.
Sorry, I'm trying to think of a nicer way to put it, but it's not.
I mean, as far as being able to negotiate with a healthy person in the dating scene, you don't have those skills.
Not at all. Not at all.
And I've actually expressed that recently with my current partner that I grew up and I don't know how to talk to people when I get angry.
I just kind of shut down and isolate myself because I... I'm not really allowed to...
Well, I wasn't allowed to express emotion, but it was all I saw around me.
It was just a lot of negative emotion and people just yelling all the time and, you know, F this and F you that and you F-ing B and all these awful things.
And my dad wasn't the person who...
He sexually abused me, thank goodness.
But he walked around the house with very sexually inappropriate comments here and there, which always made me feel very uncomfortable.
And my dad drank a lot.
My dad's actually half Mohawk and German.
And I live in Montreal.
And he had a really bad childhood, and you see it in him and his family, and I'm getting very emotional here.
I'm sorry. Don't apologize.
Don't apologize for your feelings.
I much prefer that to the laughter.
Yeah, I think it's better, actually.
Yeah, it is. So, it was just very unpleasant, and I always Thought that my mom was actually the better of the two until I started listening to you, actually. And I started picking up on things in my family and just realizing that it's just everyone.
It's both my parents.
It's not just my dad.
Yeah, there's a system.
There's a system, and I've talked about this before, that generally...
In our constellation or pantheon of parental authority or parental morality, there's a parent who gets away.
There's a parent who, usually the mom, but not always, the parent who successfully portrays herself as a victim, who successfully dislodges the blame for the dysfunction almost completely onto the husband or the partner.
Oh, yes. And you have to go along with that story.
Whoever is the weakest, or whoever is, in a sense, slightly more reasonable, ends up taking the blame from the crazier person.
And you have to go along with that, because if you counter that, if you try to counter that narrative of, he's the bad guy, woe is me, if you try and counter that narrative, you will be viciously attacked.
Yes, or basically told to shut up and mind my own business.
I'm not allowed to talk.
In the past year, when my parents were visiting, my mom, she's the only one who works and she has her driver's license.
My dad doesn't. Basically, she was complaining about having to drive my siblings around.
She does that often.
She She makes herself out to be the victim.
And I just tell her, well, who told you to have six kids?
Right. How does that go down?
Not well. My dad told me, hey, that's enough.
And it's often...
Because I would assume that your mom, if contradicted, she makes life uncomfortable, not just in the moment, but for the next couple of hours or a couple of days.
I totally clued into that.
So there's this appeasement.
And all the appeasement has done is train her to raise the stakes and raise the aggression to get what she wants.
That's right. Yeah, no, that is pretty brutal stuff.
And where did the molestation come from?
It was my older half-brother by my dad.
Oh, gosh.
And he's about five and a half years older than me.
And I believe that at the time I just really liked the attention and I don't think I got very much attention.
My mom got pregnant with my sister.
I'm the eldest, if you don't include my half-brother.
And my mom got pregnant with my sister a month after she gave birth to me.
There wasn't a lot of resources or energy, I guess, on the part of my mother.
Or breastfeeding, maybe.
She refused to breastfeed all six of us.
Why? She would not do it. I don't know.
She had me. Is it some of the feminist, I'm not a cow, I'm not a milk machine?
Is it anything like that, or...?
I think she said she tried with me once and it didn't work and she just gave up.
Wow. But I was born when she was 18 actually.
Right. So I would imagine that she was still in her very self-absorbed phase.
So your father must be older if I'm doing this mental math correctly.
Yes, he is nine years older than her.
Right, okay. Well, go on.
Okay, so I don't know exactly how, but a lot of the times my parents never really checked in on what me and my sister and my brother were doing.
My older half-brother, that is.
And it was like no one was home, and I don't understand how.
Some of my earliest memories were of these sex acts.
And I just don't understand how no one noticed at the time.
With my two children, I know what they're doing.
Every 10 minutes or so, I check in on them to see what they're up to.
And no one really did that with us.
I don't understand how.
We are the greatest...
I know we're distant to some degree.
It's almost two decades between us, Jennifer.
But we are the great... Unparented generation, we are the great example of what happens when parents just give up on being parents.
Yeah. And just, it's Lord of the Flies, it's raise yourself, it's best of luck to you.
It is the boomers, right?
The lazy, selfish, don't get involved, don't try and find out what's going on, don't talk to your kids, barely play with them, and just have them and neglect them.
Yeah. And all of my siblings and I, I believe we're all affected by this.
We all have that notion of we're emotionally neglected because there's something missing in all of us, I find.
Yeah, or there's something present which is a knowledge and a wisdom that has come from bitter experience that is hard for other people to attain.
Yes. I think so.
Right. Yeah. So, you were with Dr.
Lyre, we'll call him, or you were with Dr.
Lyre for a month or two.
You found out that he lied about everything.
You stayed with him because you wanted the baby.
And you had, if I understand this right, Jennifer, you had kind of been indoctrinated by your feminist mom to think that single moms are Fine.
The boys and girls don't need fatherists and all that.
That's right. Right.
So then, did you choose to get pregnant and you said it was a year and two months?
Yes, I did. Right.
And did the man know?
No. You sperm jacked the guy?
He believed I was still on the pill and I stopped taking it.
You stopped taking the pill, but you told him you were still on the pill?
Well, it never really came up as, oh, are you still on the pill?
Oh, come on. Jennifer. Jennifer.
Jennifer. You know, that's like, I take my car in for servicing and they cut the brake line and I crash and they say, well, you didn't specifically ask me if I'd cut the brake line or not.
It's like, that's kind of a sin of omission, right?
Oh, it is. Right.
Right. I didn't outright lie.
No, you did. Come on.
I mean, I'm not damning you.
I'm just, the facts are, you sperm jacked the guy.
You didn't tell him you went off birth control.
Then, when you got pregnant, did you say, well, that's strange.
I was on birth control.
I probably did.
Oh, no, no. Come on.
Don't tell me you don't remember.
Don't even try that.
Don't even try that. Look, it's a long time ago.
We can be frank, right? Yeah.
Okay. I'll take it for granted that It happened the way you're saying.
Oh, you are really slippery.
And not in a good way.
But no, as far as this goes, I don't know if you don't want to take ownership publicly or if you don't want to take ownership at all.
But every bit of evasiveness you apply to yourself will impact your children.
Because you asked me, how do I ensure I don't make the same horrible decisions, right?
So, you sperm-jacked him, and then you told him that the birth control failed.
And you are about the 12 billionth woman in the history of the planet to do that.
You are in good company.
It is not as rare as people think.
Oops! Well, I thought we were being careful, but next thing you know, bundle of joy arrives.
You're right. Okay.
I can't deny it.
Good. And I'm sorry to corner you on it, but you did ask me to in your letter.
No, please do. You did.
And I'm not like, oh, you're a terrible person.
It's a long time ago. A human life came out of it.
But the interesting thing is that, Jennifer, you talked about him being a liar.
But his lies were inconsequential relative to yours.
That's right. Is that fair to say?
It's absolutely fair to say.
Did you get him for alimony, child support?
No. No.
All right. So what happened after you got pregnant?
Well, we stayed together for a little while.
I didn't decide to leave him until about three years later.
And why did you leave him?
I rationalized it to myself as being fed up with his lies and his idiocies, but I'm going to be completely honest with you and say that I had been cheating on him.
And I liked the other person more.
Right. Yeah.
Right. And where did you meet?
Was the other person, did you meet the other person at work or somewhere else?
It was another job that I had afterwards.
Right. And as your heart began to do the big fork, right, the big why?
You're kind of with the person but you're thinking about the other person and the relationship of course degrades because your heart is pointing somewhere else and the other person if they have any sense at all notices that you are not emotionally present or not as emotionally present as you were And they start to, you know, what's wrong? Nothing.
You feel like you're not even here.
No, I'm here. You start to make the other person feel paranoid, which makes them alienated, and it all just starts to unravel from there, right?
That's right. And not to mention what you said earlier was that I didn't grow up in an environment with a healthy way of dealing with conflict or negotiation, so whenever I got angry with him, it was just another reason why I shouldn't be with him.
It was just another excuse, that is.
And... When you have a car and you're driving it into the ground, like you're not changing the oil, you're not taking it in for servicing and so on, and the car just really gets crappy, then of course a lot of people think, well, the solution here, get a new car. Yeah.
And it'll be fine. This new car won't need any maintenance.
It's like... Right?
So there is this fantasy when you're in a relationship which has played out your emotional damage.
There is this fantasy, you know, the grass is greener and all.
There's this fantasy that there's this other...
Person, this other relationship that's going to make it all better.
Now, that having been said, if you've done the self-work, that can in fact be true.
I mean, I had lots of girlfriends with lots of problems.
More girlfriends, more problems.
Met the woman who's going to become my wife, and it's been easy-peasy smooth sailing.
Now, I had done two years of three hours a week therapy and a lot of self-work over the years, so I was kind of ready for that.
But... This was not the case with you, I suppose, right?
So this other guy, what did he think of?
Did you monkey branch?
Did you get to this guy? Did you, you know, there is this belief or this idea that women don't leave a relationship unless they have someone in the wings.
Yeah, exactly. I've heard that too.
I think it's true based on my own personal experience.
Especially if you have kids. Your instinct is you can't just make it on your own.
I'm going to go farm myself with three children.
It's not you have to find a new provider, right?
That's right. The other guy, he was a lot older than me, and he was just interested in basically drinking and having sex.
So that didn't go very far.
So you kind of used him to lever this guy out because it wasn't like the new guy was some great, virtuous, wonderful guy that compared to which Dr.
Lyra was pretty bad. Yes.
Okay. All right. And then?
Well, I had a few short-term relationships here and there.
And of course, I was very close to hitting my 30s.
And after several years in and out of school, And post-secondary, various colleges and programs and whatnot.
I just wanted to have a family so badly.
I wanted babies.
Right. Well, and of course, you're hitting the wall, right?
That's right. Right.
That's right. So your bonding hormones are cranked up.
And this is, of course, a very dangerous time because it's when women make the most compromises.
Yes. And then is this when you got involved with the guy you have the three-year-old with?
Yes. Yes.
I was, I think, about maybe 27 when I met him.
It was actually in 2011 that we met.
We met through a politics group.
And we started hanging out together and he proved to be a really decent person and he helped me in a really bad situation.
What was the bad situation?
I had nearly died actually.
Took a lot of medication and drank quite a bit of alcohol, and it was a terrible experience.
Why did you do that?
I felt hopeless.
I was in a really bad situation.
Like a bad relationship, or financial, or what?
No. Financial.
I had felt myself falling down into a depression about the year before due to something with one of my siblings and a terrible time that she was going through.
And it was just really affecting me.
And I was in school part-time.
I was working for a notary part-time.
And I just...
Things felt hopeless.
I was in a bad situation. I couldn't pay my bills.
I was alone. My son, I would bring him to school in the morning, pick him up after school.
It was just always a fight with him, and it was so stressful.
One day, when he was with his dad, I just took a bunch of antidepressants and drank some hard liquor.
And what happened then? I had texted my ex, the one with whom I have a child, just to say, I can't meet you tomorrow morning to get our son because I just can't.
And he was texting me.
He knew that I was in a really emotional situation.
And I think he was afraid for me.
I don't remember exactly because I was so distraught and I got home.
But it communicated that experience of those feelings communicated themselves through your text in some way, right?
Oh, definitely. Yes.
Yes. And then he, what did he do?
He called an ambulance and he called my family.
Right. And I do vaguely remember the ambulance.
Men helping me and getting me up and into the ambulance itself.
And last thing I remembered, I woke up in the hospital.
What does your son think happened?
He knows that I was in the hospital.
I don't know if he knows the specifics.
I haven't spoken to him about it.
What do you mean you don't know?
If he knows the specifics.
Does he know that you tried to kill yourself?
I don't think so.
I'm not sure. How would he know?
I mean, if you didn't tell him, and I would assume that you would talk about your, the father and say, don't tell him, because that's a lot for, well, he was eight at the time, is that right?
I think he was six.
Oh, six. Okay. Yes.
So, yes, he was young and He knew I was in the hospital.
He had told his mother, who was helping him with our son while he was with the father, he had told his mother that I was in the hospital.
My son obviously overheard, and he was worried about me, but I'm pretty sure that he doesn't know the specifics.
So there's no one who knew who might have told him?
I don't think so. All right.
All right. And have you had those impulses or thoughts since?
Yes. When?
Well, after my daughter was born, I had those thoughts.
And there were some days I couldn't even get out of bed.
I just wanted to.
I stayed there in bed all day.
And there were one or two days that I did do that.
And it was really awful.
I was a mess.
I was not in a good place at all.
But I didn't...
Why do you want to keep having kids if you're suicidal?
That's an excellent question.
I'm not saying you shouldn't. I mean, I'm just trying to understand.
It's like you've got a heavy burden, right?
Yes. And I ask myself that sometimes, too.
I tell myself, because I'm 33 right now, and I'm just like, well, I'm on antidepressants right now.
Why would I do this?
Why would I bring another child into the world to have a mother who's depressed and doesn't have energy to take care of that child?
And who's emotionally all over the place and moody, I ask myself that too.
Now listen, I mean, what you're dropping here is pretty heavy.
So I'm happy to have the conversation, but you need to promise me something.
Sure. That you will.
Get help with this.
And that if you feel suicidal, you will absolutely call a hotline.
You will call the cops.
You will call a mental health professional.
That's what I need from you because, listen, I'm just a podcaster, right?
And I'm happy to talk about this, but only if you'll make that commitment to me.
I promise you on both parts.
Okay, good. And if you don't have money for therapy, Jennifer, let us know.
We will pay. That's wonderful of you, thank you.
Okay, no problem, no problem.
At the moment, I have been actually using the public system, which I'm not too impressed with, but I do have psychological services and every Thursday in the afternoon I have like an interpersonal skills group that I go to and then kind of talk about How to deal with emotions.
It's a bit like DBT, in a way, for people with borderline personality disorder.
Have you been diagnosed by anyone?
Well, depression and ADD, actually.
What's ADD? Attention deficit disorder.
Oh, ADD. Yes.
Okay, sorry, sorry. Okay, got it.
Now, I'll tell you some thoughts about what you're saying, and you can tell me if they make any sense.
And I've seen this.
Like, I mean, the reason why I'm willing to have this very difficult conversation is because I've seen this.
When my mother turned, and I didn't realize this till later, but when my mother turned 40, she stopped getting out of bed.
I didn't realize that it was that anniversary, because I guess when she turned 40, she was a single mom, and I guess she hit the second wave.
The first wall is 30s, right?
The second wave. 30s is decline, significant decline of sexual market value.
40s is end of fertility, and so it's the second wave wall.
It's the one-two for women.
Oh, yes. And I would wake up in the morning, and I would make her some tea.
And I would try to get her to talk.
She sort of turned towards the wall.
And then I would go to school.
And I would go through my day with this floating in my head.
I would come home at lunch.
I would clear away the untouched tea.
I would make her some more tea.
I'd make her some toast. I'd try to get her to talk.
I'd put the toast by her bed.
And then I would go back to school.
And it's weird. But you know this.
When you have a secret.
When you have somebody falling apart at home.
When you have... Emote of silence and secrecy around you.
It is very strange to move through the world in that context.
My parents would actually tell us what happens in this house stays in this house.
So anything that was happening, if they got into a fight or if my brother did something to us, we weren't supposed to talk about it with people.
So we just were silent through everything.
Yeah. Yeah, because that isolates you.
I mean, it is astonishingly isolating to have a secret of that magnitude while moving through the world.
Yes. And then you get, and I don't, I used to get more mad at this.
I don't blame people now, but you get the people when you're carrying that kind of fucking log.
You're just, you're carrying it.
I mean, you literally are carrying a body with you.
Yes. And checking its pulse in your mind every 30 seconds.
And you're just walking through it.
And I had this odd feeling, you know, like in another world, like I'm walking down the corridor and it feels almost like there's no gravity or I'm like an anthropologist from the future.
I'm kind of moving through, but I'm not part of it.
Yes. I've felt like that all my life.
Right. And I can still do this.
I can still do this in my mind.
It's an ability, for want of a better word, it's an ability I've had all my life, which is I can progressively make myself feel stranger and stranger.
I can progressively make myself feel more and more alien to To the point where I almost have to shake my head and return back to myself.
Like, you know, I can sort of get that feeling of being a wet brain in a skull prison and part of a simulation and part of an alien.
Like, you can really go down that rabbit hole and you can end up really feeling strange.
Like, everything that's around me is strange.
And I will still occasionally do that just to see if I still can.
It's not particularly alarming, but it's an odd thing.
But I do remember that in school.
In particular, I would be, you know, walking down the hallway or sitting in class or whatever, and it's shell-shock.
I mean, you're having stress disorders in the moment that are basically around paralysis.
And then someone comes up and grabs your shoulders and say, Hey, man!
Why so serious? Cheer up!
It ain't that bad! Smile!
And... I always see people around me laughing and I mean nowadays it's a bit less but I remember being in high school and everyone's laughing and having a great time and in college and university and I just felt like I was very out of place like I don't understand what I'm doing here but I've always felt out of place with my family in school with my friends In relationships.
Because nobody asks, right?
Nobody asks.
Not really. Yeah, no, they just assume that whatever you're going through is just some little interpersonal blip that a little bit of cheering up should be able to fix.
A little bit of, you know, smile, it's not that bad, you know, that kind of stuff, right?
Or a bit of self-confidence.
Yeah, yeah. That'll cheer you up.
That'll make you feel better.
Yeah. And...
And then I would come home at the end of the day and I'd put away the toast and I'd make some more toast and I'd refill the teacup.
And I would want to check for her pulse because sometimes she hadn't moved.
That's absolutely horrifying for a child to have to go through that.
It is. It is.
And this went on for quite a long time.
I mean, my memory is...
Ten days to two weeks, but I know how memory can be tricky going back that far.
So when you say, like, couldn't get out of bed and so on, I've seen that.
It's a desperate place to be.
But here's the thing.
If you listen back to this, Jennifer, and I hope that you will.
The one thing that you will notice is you say things like, I was in a bad situation.
I ended up in this situation.
I just didn't have any money.
Oh, I put myself in those situations.
Well, you see, that's the difference, is that if you victimize yourself, if in your mental portrayal of your past, you are like a leaf in a whirlwind...
That's right.
No, I didn't mean to make it seem like that.
I put myself in these situations.
I had no guidance.
I'm not even going to...
It's true I had no guidance, but I didn't know what I was doing.
And I thought I knew at the time, but I didn't know how life was supposed to work.
No, no. Now see, you're saying, well, I didn't mean to portray myself as helpless, but I had no idea how life should work.
Do you see how you gravitate back right away to default helplessness?
That's true. If you have no effect on your life, why bother getting out of bed?
If you can't change anything, why bother being here?
If you have no free will, no responsibility, and no capacity to avert an endless cycle of inevitable disasters, why bother?
Exactly. But what if you do?
I believe I do.
Good. And that's why you're calling in, right?
How can I stop these disasters?
And my speech doesn't accurately...
I really do believe that I have the capacity to change things for myself and my kids and to have a functioning relationship with my current partner, which will last a lot longer than hopefully until the end.
But Jennifer, this is the challenge.
This is why I asked how you met.
Yes. You said that he helped you out of a very bad situation.
Yes. And what that means is the value that you provide to him is being in desperate need of salvation.
Yes. Which means that helplessness has high sexual market value for you in this relationship.
Oh, okay.
Do you see what I mean? Could you explain a bit?
Sure, sure. Did he know that you were in hospital for what amounts to, I think, a suicide attempt?
Yes. Right.
And he wanted to be with you romantically?
Yes. Why?
He said it was that we had a lot in common and he found our conversations and interactions interesting.
And he didn't understand why I was depressed and why I had tried to kill myself.
Do you think, if you were hearing this story from someone else, Jennifer, that hearing a man really wanting to get romantically involved with a single mother who just tried to kill herself, that that might not be the wisest decision?
If this happened to my son, I would tell him, that's a big red flag, don't do it.
I'm trying to think of a bigger red flag, other than setting fire to someone in the moment.
That's right. Yes.
Oh my God. So, go ahead, what you thought?
Well, I'm guessing...
He likes a helpless woman.
Is that possible? Well, I don't think...
That sounds very negative.
But I would say that he needs to be needed.
And a good way of feeling needed is finding someone who really needs you.
Like, you can be needed.
Like, I need my wife. She needs me because we love and respect each other.
And we're bound together.
And we have a wonderful family life and a wonderful child together.
But we need each other for positive things, for the positive things we can get back.
Now, if you find someone who's kind of tottering around and in need of – then they need you, but not like a man wants a yacht, but like a drowning man needs a log.
Yeah. And so he has value because he can save you.
But the problem is, if that, and this doesn't mean that the relationship can't work or you can't love each other or whatever, but the problem is that the founding moment of the relationship is about you being in desperate need and him rushing in, white knighting and saving you from that need.
And what that means is that what happens to your relationship if you become strong and self-sufficient and no longer in need of help?
What happens to your relationships as a whole?
That's an excellent question.
One of the psychologists that I was consulting with, I actually stopped with her in June because she had referred me to someone else, but she did say that as I get stronger, but she did say that as I get stronger, he might start to feel a bit more intimidated.
Right. And I always saw him as a strong person.
I never thought that that was one of his characteristics.
Well, a strong person can be in the helping profession, but not as a hobbyist.
And not as a choice for a life partner, right?
Well, I think that's another question.
Because the other thing, too, is that if...
Do you know anything about his adverse childhood experience score or his childhood?
It would definitely be lower than mine.
And from what I gather, his parents are divorced.
They stayed, apparently, on good terms.
And they co-parented, although until he was in high school, he only visited with his father every Two weekends out of the month type of thing.
And he was an only child, so I'm not sure, actually.
I'm not really sure.
The decision point, which is a challenge for me to understand, Jennifer, is so he meets you.
You're in hospital.
And you've had such self-destructive thoughts since.
Yes. And he chooses you, who has these thoughts from time to time, to be the mother of his child.
Yes.
Why?
In other words, he may, I mean, should you, and please God above don't, but if you ever did kill yourself or seriously harm yourself, because, you know, this could be a wake, you're in but if you ever did kill yourself or seriously harm yourself, because, you know, this could be a wake, you're in a Then that's going to be the mother of his child, and that's what his child's going to go through, right?
Exactly. So why would this be his choice?
I don't know. But you understand the question, right?
Yes. And you know, you know this, deep down, that, and this is why you texted your ex, you know that you don't have the option to check out because you have children.
Yes. You have no, that's not on the table.
That is not a possibility because it would be so unbelievably destructive to the children.
Yes. Beyond anything that could be conceived of.
You don't have that choice.
I'm sorry to tell you, I don't mean to be a boss, and I don't like telling people what to do, but I'm just giving you the basic reality.
You don't have that choice.
That is not on the table.
You are correct.
It's what is keeping me here.
I don't want to do that to my kids.
I don't want to leave my daughter with just a vague memory of me.
And she's very affectionate and she just always wants to be with me.
And it's always, mama, mama, mommy this and mommy that.
And so my son, he's not with me all the time.
He's with me, he's with us on the weekends, every weekend.
And he's with his father, is that right?
During the week, yes.
And what's his father's situation at the moment?
Well, he lives with his mother, even though he won't admit it.
And he works full time.
He brings him to school in the morning.
And if he can't pick him up after school, he'll have either his mother or his aunt go pick him up too, so that he's not going home alone.
And this is the mother, his mother, who raised him in part to be a pathological liar?
Oh yes. And he still lies?
Yes. Yes.
And what's the relationship like between your son and his father?
They very much love each other.
They have interests in common.
They bond over a lot of things.
They get along well.
So you're trying to tell me that it's possible to love a pathological liar.
Oh, I know.
I know. And while I don't want to talk badly about his dad to him, to his face, I just tell him sometimes that, you know, your dad, sometimes he says things that are not true.
And he says, oh, yeah, well...
I know. But, and then sometimes he makes excuses for him and that makes me feel uncomfortable.
Well, he has to go there during the week, right?
That's right. What's he supposed to do? Yeah.
Yeah. Can't call him out.
No, he can't.
No. I mean, he's 11.
That's right. Helpless.
Yes. And do you think that somebody who's a pathological liar is really capable of significant love or attachment?
No, I don't, actually.
But I've always thought that, you know, he did love our son, but what you're saying is true.
Pathological liars, they lie about everything.
They lie about loving people.
They lie about...
Every little thing that they do.
Right. So your son has one parent who lies a lot and another parent who's depressed and sometimes has self-destructive thoughts.
That's right. That's hard.
It is. Don't get me wrong.
It's better than what you had, Jennifer.
Yes. I mean, this is going to be surprising to my audience, but kudos for the upgrade.
Thank you. Right?
I mean, he's not going through what you went through.
No. In bloody hope, anyway.
No. Although, while I've, over the years, distanced myself from my family, and I visit them on—actually, I visit with them on my own time, on my own turf— I'll let my parents come over and visit with my kids and just chat with them a little bit and then they leave.
My ex is friends with my sister who's very attached to my family.
And this is the sister of mine that I'm very close in age with.
So my ex will go with our son to visit my family.
Like for Christmas, they went to the United States together on trips.
It's very strange.
So, I'll tell you what I think.
I don't have any answers for you.
Just so you know, I don't.
I can't tell you what to do.
I'm just going to give you my idiot amateur thoughts over the wire, okay?
So do with it what you will.
But it is out of genuine care.
I appreciate that.
I've really dug myself into quite the hole and my son too.
And I'm just standing around, looking around, thinking, how do I get out of here?
Well, you can't. No.
And you don't need to get out of here.
You need to show up where you are.
Okay. Right?
You need to be where you are in life, not fantasize about escape of one kind or another.
Okay.
So what I found helpful when facing this kind of confusion was to get a clear map of my environment.
I'm not sure, Jennifer, that you know why your current partner is with you.
No. And I think you need to know that.
And this doesn't mean ending anything.
I mean, he's the father of your three-year-old, but here's the thing.
Let's say that He loves to save you.
But if he loves to save you, what role does he have if you're not in need of saving?
Yes. He's like in a doctor in an empty ER. Nothing to do.
That's right. So if he is there to save you, and that certainly seems to me the genesis of what's going on, or how it started.
If he's there to save you, then he may unconsciously resist You're strengthening.
You're no longer needing to be saved.
And because, you know, there's this crap that floats around a lot of feminist circles, you know, like, so-and-so doesn't like strong women.
Oh, yeah. You've heard this crap.
I don't believe that drivel.
Well, yeah, there are.
There are people who don't like strong women, and often it's women who've used helplessness to gain a bond in a relationship.
And then the women want to change the deal by suddenly being empowered.
It's like, well, you kind of got the relationship.
You won the guy by being, ooh, oops, helpless.
You know, like there's this cliche in romantic movies.
You can see it even in somewhat less romantic movies like Fifty Shades of Grey, where the woman...
It's physically ridiculous.
You know, she's very pretty, but she stumbles and she trips and she walks into things and so on, right?
Like in my big fat Greek wedding, the woman, she like gets up to talk to the guy and she's still attached.
To the phone, like the phone cord, she falls over and Fifty Shades of Grey, she trips coming into the room.
So there's this, oops, you know, this idiot, giddy awkwardness that is supposed to be really attractive, right?
So these women portray themselves as kids with tits and helpless and goofy and so on.
And then they say, well, men just don't like strong women.
It's like, well, then why did you play a weak woman to get their attention and to get their bonding, right?
So, if you start to show up more solidly in your own life, and that is with all of the good and the bad, because when I started to map the people around me, which meant giving up on having empty conversations or gossipy conversations or Analysis conversations or whatever.
When I actually, okay, well, who are you and why are you in my life?
Who am I that you're in my life?
What value do I bring to you?
What value do you bring to me?
Like a cold, capitalistic glare, a robot eye of mutual benefit.
What is going on?
What is the undercurrent currency of our relationship?
Why are we with...
What should the answer to that be?
Virtue! Virtue!
Nobility! Courage!
Strength! Admiration!
Respect! Ennoblement!
Encouragement! Inspiration!
And...
The question is...
What are the gains that you have from helplessness, Jennifer?
How does helplessness serve you in the moment?
I don't have to do anything to help myself.
And I have other people take care of me.
So you're trying to fix your childhood as an adult.
You're trying to get people to care for you as you should have been cared for as a child, except you're no longer a child.
Exactly. I'm looking for that person who's going to nurture me and be that mother, that emotional mother that I didn't have.
That's exactly right.
I feel it.
I feel it sometimes that I need a hug so desperately and I want it so badly to make me feel better and There's no hug that can do that at all.
Well, it's worse than that because the pursuit of that traps you in your childhood.
Yes. So we'll get to that in a second, but that need to be hugged, that need to be held, is that not why you wanted the babies?
Yes. That here is a being who can't leave me.
Here is a being who will always need me.
Here is a being who will always look up to me.
Here is a being who will always love me.
That's right. It's that unconditional love.
Right. But now that your son is 11, he's puberty bound or puberty in, and now there's no more unconditional.
What happened is when you become a teenager, This is why people fight a lot when they're a teenager.
There's a latency period. They fight a lot when they're toddlers, and they fight a lot as teenagers.
And it's because puberty means no more unconditional.
Right. So here's the problem, in my view.
You really deserved these things when you were a baby and you were a child.
And it was incredibly wrong that you did not receive them.
And I massively sympathize with that.
But Jennifer, you will never fix that.
There is no possibility to go back to being a toddler and getting what you needed.
And if you try, hang on, if you try to do it as an adult, you are actually recreating your childhood.
Because as a child, you could not get what you wanted because your parents did not provide it.
But as an adult, if you try to fix your childhood as an adult, you will also not get what you want.
Because what you want is impossible.
Which is time travel and different parents.
You want to have not been molested.
You want to have not been yelled at.
You want it to have not been abused.
But you can't get that as an adult because you're an adult and now you're a mother and you have been for 11 years.
So you can't regress to toddlerhood and get what you want.
And you have that fantasy out there so you can avoid the mourning process.
But the problem is that you end up in a perpetual life of not getting what you need, not getting what you want.
Doesn't it feel like a curse?
Like no matter what you want, it's not going to happen.
In the end, I end up just believing that I'm just not good enough and that's why I can't have it.
Well, and I bet you that's exactly what you said to yourself when you were a kid too, as we all did.
Yes. You know, my parents don't love me, my parents don't do the right thing, because I'm not a good kid.
Because that gives us a semblance of control.
Now, as an adult, because you keep trying to get what you didn't get as a child, but can't as an adult, you'll never escape your childhood if you keep trying to fix it as an adult.
It puts you in a perpetual state of needing and wanting and then getting very angry when it doesn't materialize.
That's right. And this is This is like the door slamming stuff, the slamming plates that women, and sometimes men, do.
It's that rage.
Because you couldn't rage against your parents when you were a kid, but you can sure as hell rage against a partner when you're an adult.
Oh, yes. Which then further drives that person away, meaning you won't get what you want.
Yes. The avoidance of legitimate suffering is the root of many, many dysfunctions in life.
And you have a legitimate reason to grieve and a legitimate reason to be angry at what happened to you as a child.
But you cannot...
Here's the point.
Ah, look, I knew I'd get to it.
Here's the point. The point is that you can either be with people or you can use people.
You can't do both. There is no intimacy with people you are using as objects, as bandages, as emotional morphine.
Right? You can either walk hand in hand with someone or you can jam them under your armpit and use them as a crutch, but you can't do both.
And if you need people, if they must fix what happened to you in the past, if they must help you avoid the pain of what happened to you as a child, you are in a constant state, albeit unconsciously, you're in a constant state of manipulation.
That's how I feel. That's right.
And that is so isolating.
Because you can't just be with someone because you're so vulnerable to what they do that you must control what they do.
You must manage what they do.
And every turn away or anything is perceived as rejection.
Yeah. Yeah. Because I'm not good enough.
Exactly. Right.
So then what happens is you try to control them and punish them and bully them and reward them.
Right? You yell at them. You withhold.
You withdraw. You apply sexual favorites if they do what...
You're managing them. You're controlling them.
You're in this endless state of trying to train them to serve your needs.
But you're not treating them as a sovereign individual.
You know, if I'm bleeding and I put on a Band-Aid, I don't think about whether the Band-Aid would rather stay in the drawer.
It's a thing that I use.
To heal myself. And the isolation that occurs...
Sorry, go ahead. And then you throw it away after.
Great. Well, what happens is, yeah, what happens is, you have a need to be saved, and he has a need to save.
And you're, at the moment, I think, to some degree, this is not absolute, and please don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.
He could be a great guy. You could have a great future.
But this is just where I think that the isolation is coming from, which is where I think the self-destruction is coming from.
Because if we're not with people, why be here?
Aristotle said, the only people who can live alone are beasts and gods, and man is neither, nor is women.
I'm realizing that based on Dr.
Peterson's work that I have just been diving into that how important that is for us and how much we don't have that nowadays and some people it's even worse than just not having it.
They have the negative experiences to go along with it.
So the isolation that occurs when we are so needy That we must control people.
The isolation that occurs is without end.
And if we look towards the future with only isolation ahead of us, isn't that where the self-destructive impulse comes from?
I could spend the rest of my life never getting what I want.
I could spend the rest of my life managing and controlling and manipulating and never healing a goddamn thing.
I can be a raw walking wound of self-management for the rest of my natural born days.
Who wants that?
I've been living like I want it, but I don't want it.
Right. We are not here to serve each other's needs.
We are not here To act as a solve and an archileptic and a drug for each other.
We are not here as tools of self-management.
We can't be. You are a sovereign individual.
Your parents are sovereign individuals.
Your boyfriend is a sovereign individual.
And your son is growing into one.
And you're bound up together in this claustrophobic, tight spiderweb tentacle mess.
Of hypersensitivity and reaction and control, I think.
Yes. That is fundamentally so isolating.
He can do something that displeases you, and he's perfectly free to do so, but I'm guessing, Jennifer, that your impulse is when he does something that is really displeasing to you to either punish him for doing it or reward him for stopping.
I suppose I do.
I end up isolating myself.
I just can't deal with it.
I don't... Throw a tantrum or throw things around.
But you withdraw. I do. Which is the punishment.
That's the punishment. That's right.
Because he hates that.
Of course. Because he's using you for some need of his own.
And when you withdraw, I mean, you think you're punishing yourself, which you are.
But you're punishing him.
And you're attempting to train him into not doing anything that displeases you.
But why should...
Why should we...
Why should we live in a world where others cannot displease us?
Isn't that tyrannical?
Isn't that what your parents were like?
Definitely. So why not just let people displease you?
It's so liberating.
It's so no longer having to control the very atoms that make up the air and the bodies, flesh, tongues, mouth, and words of those around us.
Let them be free to displease you.
Be free to displease them.
Do not control, do not train, do not have a lifetime of two conveyor belts of punishment and rewards to control everyone and to treat everyone in your life from your birthday to your dying day as tiny idiot puppies you need to train forever.
And yourself. Don't you do this to yourself, too?
Oh, I did a good thing.
I'll give myself a reward. Oh, I did a bad thing.
I'll punish myself. Yes.
Can I tell you a stupid story?
I'll tell you a stupid story. I'm asking.
Go for it. If you don't want to hear it, I'm going to tell you anyway, because I just said it doesn't matter if I displease you.
Okay. I like good stories anyway.
All right. So, yeah, at least you don't have to worry about responding for a minute or two.
So, I've set up this little sitting thing where I can do shows where I just sort of fire up a little...
Computer and I can just record a show without the big studio setup and without having to transfer things from SD cards and it just takes forever.
So when I first did it, I used an old chair which poked up over my shoulders, right?
Okay. And I'm like, that's terrible!
It looked like I have a wooden backpack on, you know, because I'm very fussy about how things look, right?
And so I take my daughter and we go to, there's a Sears store in Canada.
And it's going out of business.
Yes. So I go down to see a store.
And first of all, we play hide-and-go-seek there for like an hour because that's what we have to do every time we go anywhere.
And it was really, really fun. And then I find a really nice chair.
It's pretty comfortable. It's low down on the back so it doesn't stick over my shoulders.
Really nice. Everything else is like 40% off, 50% off.
This one, no discount.
And let me tell you, Jennifer...
It was $70. Okay.
Now, I don't buy chairs. Why?
Because I'm a guy. If I bought anything, it's going to be a beanbag and a hot tub.
Preferably the two together would be great because sometimes sitting up in a hot tub is kind of hard.
So I'm sitting there and I'm like, oh, I don't know.
That's 70 bucks. You know me.
I'm legendarily cheap. It takes, you know, four men and a crowbar to get a quarter out of my cold, dead hand.
Anyway, so I don't buy it.
I don't And I like, I drive home.
And then I'm like, oh man, I look around the house.
I'm like, I'm pretty sure we had an old chair around here somewhere that I could use.
And I'm like, this makes no sense.
I should be doing a video.
I should be working on my new book.
I should, anything other than trying to find some old chair.
Anyway, so I talked about it with some friends.
I talked, okay, I'll be honest. I talked about it with my wife.
I talked about it with Mike. And they basically slapped, both slapped me upside the head.
Are you crazy? And we went through the whole thing about, like, I hate to spend money and, you know, grow up poor and...
And so anyway, I talked about it with my daughter.
And anyway, so I slapped on it and I realized what I had to do.
I had to punish myself.
I had to punish myself.
And the way that I punished myself was I made myself drive back and buy the chair, which is completely inefficient.
The only thing that bothers me more than spending money is being inefficient.
Great. So the fact that I was out there and should have bought the chair and I drove back and like, oh, I'm going to drive.
I can't tell you that bothers me so much, right?
Yeah. I have to go out and buy the chair.
I was just there yesterday.
So I go out and I buy the chair.
Now, the real punishment would be if it was gone, but it was still there.
And you know why it was still there?
Because it wasn't on sale.
Anyway, so when I was going out there, I said to my daughter, I said, Izzy, there are three words that I need you to say to me more often.
And she said... What do you mean?
I said, you know, just there's three words I really, really need to hear.
And she's like, you are right?
No. Although that's not bad.
I love you? No. Although, don't get me wrong, that's not bad.
Want a hug? She just couldn't get it, right?
And I said, okay, here's the words.
I said, you know, we're going back to buy this chair and buy yesterday.
Punishment. And she said, oh.
I know. And I said, I think you do.
And she said, I know, Daddy.
I know the words, the three words that you need to hear more often.
And I said, tell me.
And she said, just buy it.
And she's absolutely right.
Just buy it.
And then she said, it puts the lotion on its skin until it buys the chair again.
No, it doesn't say anything like that. She didn't say anything like that.
But see, that's my punishment.
And I was mad at myself for not buying the damn chair, but thinking somehow I was going to sit on some rickety old ass chair, which is ridiculous.
You know, like I'm relatively successful.
I'm past a half century.
I can buy a $70 chair.
That's right. But I actually, this was like I punished myself.
Like, you have to get in that car.
You have to drive down here to buy the chair.
You were just there yesterday. So inefficient.
And it's going to cost you gas money now, too.
And I'm like, ah, no! Yeah.
Wear and tear on the car!
The fees might break.
But this is, you know, and that's not common for me, but I was just so mad at myself.
And I think legitimately so, because that's like a childhood thing, right?
Like, oh, there's too many books for a chair.
But that's me. And I'm not too bad with myself that way.
I will occasionally do the, you know, well, I worked really hard today.
Maybe I should have a little bite of chocolate.
You know, like a reward.
But I don't like to do the punishment and kibble, like the paddle and kibble with myself.
Okay. And that's my concern, is that if you have the paddle and kibble, like the punishment and reward system, and if you are trying to fill...
Devoid in your childhood.
I'll give you a very, very quick analogy and then I'll shut up for once.
So the quick analogy is this.
If you didn't get enough food to eat because you were neglected, people didn't care about you as a child, then you end up short, shorter, a couple inches shorter because you were malnourished.
Does it make any sense to eat more now?
Well, you should nourish yourself properly.
No, but eat more to make up for the food you didn't get as a child.
No. Why not? Well, because you can't.
It's not going to change anything.
Oh, you can, and it certainly will change something.
What will it change? Well, it'll make you healthy for the future.
Eating too much to make up for a starving childhood will make you what?
I'm not getting it. I'm sorry.
It'll make you fat. Yes.
Right. Now, if you didn't get enough food as a child and you eat extra food as an adult, you actually end up recreating your childhood.
Because when you were a child, people didn't care about you enough.
Let's just pretend that you were not in the killing fields in Cambodia or something.
But people didn't care about you enough to get you enough foods.
You were isolated. You were alienated.
You were neglected. You were lonely, right?
But then, if you get fat as an adult, most likely you're going to end up isolated and lonely.
So do you see, trying to overcompensate for what happened to you as a child recreates the emotional environment of your childhood.
Oh, that is so brilliant.
Yes. That is so accurate.
It is. And it's hard to let go of that need.
I don't know how to feel otherwise.
Right. I never have.
So it is very hard.
What if you didn't need things from people?
That sounds isolating, but it's the exact opposite of isolation.
If you don't need things from people, you can be with people.
I could appreciate them more.
Like if you're a drug addict and you have no money and you go to your drug dealer's house, you're pretending to like him.
You're pretending to care about him.
Why? So you can get the drug. That's right.
Right? So you can't be with the person because you have an agenda.
You can't just relax and enjoy the person's company because it's always like, does he like me enough to give me drugs?
Does he like me enough to give me drugs?
And the drug dealer probably knows exactly why you're there.
Neither of you is really with each other for anything other than he likes the control over you and you need the drugs.
Yes. So you have to stop drugging yourself with other people so you can treat them as people, not as drugs, not as Mood management objects, not as pills. Right.
Because I think that love is a want, not a need.
A need, to me need and love, opposite ends of the spectrum.
Okay. And I think you want to be free of that god-awful adverse childhood experience score of seven.
And that means doing everything opposite.
It means doing, like, you cannot have anything related.
Like, I'm used to managing the emotions of people who have control over me when I was a kid, right?
When I was a kid. Yeah.
And when I realized all of that, and I mean, I kind of knew, you kind of know, but there's knowing and then there's really knowing, right?
Yes. Yes. So for me, it's like, okay, I either need to transfer those relationships so that they're different, or I need to not have those relationships in my life.
Because when you have need rather than want, everyone who's around you is part of that need fabric, that need ecosystem, if that makes sense.
Yes, it does.
And you need salvation, which means that you constantly need to put yourself in danger, so that people can save you, so that you know that they care.
so that, in a sense, you provide value to them.
You know, if nothing ever gets set on fire, what's the point of there being firemen?
If you're never... In danger?
How the hell can people save you?
How do you know if they really care? I don't.
Right. But here's the problem is that putting yourself in danger can get progressively more dangerous.
It's ruinous. It is.
It is. And the last thing that I'll say And this is where the tipping point in your life is, I think, Jennifer, is that as an adult, it was selfish of your parents to use you.
But as an adult, it is selfish of you to use others.
Other people are not morally responsible for what your parents did to you and to use them as a way of absolving them and of attempting to...
It all comes out of the bond with the parent, right?
The dysfunctional parent. Because if you need some way to continue things with your family or to not get mad at your parents, so it's like, okay, well, I'll just get what I need from other people.
But once you go through the morning and you recognize what you needed as a child you did not get, and you will never be the person who got what she needed as a child, and you will never fix that problem.
Once you accept that, you get kind of angry.
And then you get, with anger, healthy anger, with anger, you get free will.
With anger, you get responsibility.
With anger, you get control over your own life.
Because when you're trying to control other people, you have no control over yourself because you're just reacting.
Yes. You know, like occasionally I'll go and play dodgeball at a trampoline place with my daughter.
And when I'm playing dodgeball in a trampoline place, I'm not really in control of my movements because there are teenage boys attempting to dislocate their shoulders by blowing my head off with a ball.
So I'm dodging and I'm moving like I'm not in control because I'm reacting all the time to what's flying around me.
And if those are your needs and wants and avoidances and manipulations and controls and so on, right?
It's really hard to be free.
You can't have a sovereign will.
You can't be independent. You can't be free until you give up controlling others.
But to give up controlling others means you have to accept the pain that controlling them is designed to avert the loss.
Yeah. That's...
That's very good advice.
Did you get any kind of sense of a different life you could have?
I fantasize about it, I suppose.
No, but I mean out of what we're talking about here, a life where you don't need to control people.
Yeah. And it seems really nice.
It is. It's very relaxing.
To not have that negative reaction every time someone does something I don't like, it seems exactly what you said, so liberating.
I know for women too as well, this can feel like a punch to the gut, right?
Yes. And with a punch to the gut, you get scared, you get compliant, but it also builds resentment, right?
It does. Yes.
And all of that works to build isolation.
So those are the thoughts that I have.
And you say, what can I do to ensure that I don't make the same horrible decisions?
My half page of notes includes all of that.
To stop manipulating, to stop controlling, to ask questions of people, you know, talk to your boyfriend, say, okay, step me through when we met, what happened for you?
And really, you know, he may be suspicious, he may be, you know, but just ask, and this can be a wonderful breakthrough in your relationship, because if you both get it, if this is what's going on, and you can both let go of that need or desire to control each other, to control everyone around you, because your son, I did tell you this, I'm going to tell you this, he is going to start pushing back against Any control that you have over him ferociously, like he's fighting for his life.
Yes, I see it.
And, you know, he's getting bigger and you're not.
No. Now would be a good time.
No matter how often I train, I won't be.
Yeah, I'm sorry. It's guys and gals.
You can't really do it.
That's right. But now is the time, because if you – And your son growing up, you know, he's going to start reminding you of your ex at times.
He's going to start reminding you of other people in your childhood.
And you're going to try and control him as well.
And it's going to be very distancing.
I don't want to do that.
Right. Right.
So that's my major thoughts.
I just wanted to reiterate that if you want...
If you want help with therapy, send an email.
We'll set it up.
We'll pay for a bunch of sessions because I want that for you and I want that for your family.
That's so kind of you.
Wow. Will you think about it?
I will, definitely.
And you remember your promise, right?
Yes. We're going to pinky shake virtually, all right?
Just hold up your pinky. Yeah.
Pretend we're locking pinkies and we're shaking.
You know, I'd spit, but that's gross.
And we're not doing anything that involves cutting, right?
So there's a pinkie shake, virtual pinkie shake.
That's the most powerful thing that there is, all right?
Yes. All right. You'll keep us posted?
I will. Thank you so much.
You guys are wonderful. Thank you for your work.
I love what you guys do.
You're one of the best. Well, thank you.
And is there anything that you wanted to add?
That's about it.
Beautiful. Well, thanks very much.
Thank you. For your call.
I appreciate it. Have a great evening.
You too. Alright, up next we have Shakila.
She wrote in and said, Why am I still single?
I've been watching your videos a lot lately and you all make it seem like it's usually women who have two great expectations, but it seems to be the opposite for me.
I'm a traditional girl from the South and since moving to Los Angeles, I just can't seem to find a guy who's on the same page.
I'm sure a lot of it has to do with me being African American and wanting to marry an African American man as well.
The eligible pool is just so small here, with many of them being from bad families to liberal or unambitious dreamers.
Even so, I try my best not to overestimate myself.
I'm not perfect, so I don't expect them to be, and yet I keep getting ghosted by men who in my humble opinion would be lucky to even have a woman like me.
I am being told that I am making myself too available and that I need to play hard to get.
This is tough for me because I am naturally affirming and accommodating.
My being nice and wanting to make a guy feel good doesn't mean I'm in love with him, just that I think he's a nice guy.
The idea I'm supposed to date a guy but not like him or make it known that I'd like to settle down in the near future – I'll be 26 in two weeks – And just be some big ball of fun while going Dutch or footing the bill on dates and having sex with men with no promise of a future together sounds absolutely crazy to me, but I can't for the life of me figure out what I'm doing wrong.
Maybe I'm the dreamer. That's from Shakila.
Shakila, how you doing tonight?
Wait, Shakila or Shakila?
How white do I sound at the moment?
I'm so used to it.
Shakila. Shakila!
Okay, okay. Yes.
Got it, got it. Well, thanks for calling in.
It's a great question.
Is there anything you wanted to add to what you wrote?
No, it sounds kind of pretentious when I hear someone else say it out loud.
No, no, listen, I'm a big fan of romantic self-confidence.
You know, like, there's an old saying, you know, like, the people who don't live in New York, they're like, they're kidding, right?
Like, they're not serious about it.
And I, you know, when I was younger, and I probably would still feel this way if I was single now, it's like, well, you could date other men.
But people who date men other than me, like, you're kidding, right?
You're not serious, right?
Because, you know, I think it's good to have that kind of...
Confidence. And, you know, intelligent woman and all that and have self-knowledge.
Listen to this show. Massive sexual market value upgrade.
So, no, I don't find that.
You know, false modesty is just another kind of hypocrisy and I've got no reason to disbelieve what you're saying.
So, I got no problem with that.
Why are you in LA, girl?
Tell me why LA. Are you currently calling from someone's trunk?
Are you locked in a cave?
No, no, no. I was born here, and I grew up between here and Florida.
And as a child, I think I'm a millennial, I think I felt like California was where I needed to be.
It was very liberal, very progressive, and the weather's perfect here, if I can be honest.
So I just, I gravitated towards it, and I moved back maybe about five years ago.
And I don't know, I just, I still like it.
It just seems like it's difficult to find like-minded people.
Or just minded people.
Even if they're not like-minded, but if they're minded, that's...
No, and it is one of the great curses of the world, just by the by.
The better the weather, the worse the politics.
That's just, you know, because the demand and the supply and all of that.
But, and LA is, you know, I was just there for a couple of days.
It's really nice. Especially in November, coming back to Canada.
Freezing my tits off walking down the street and LA was, you know, brisk, but...
But nice. So the first thing I want to say is, you know, this is all opinion, but I'll say it anyway.
So I don't believe in all of this crap like, well, you got to play hard to get and you shouldn't text closer than 48 hours and don't appear too eager.
I just think that's ridiculous.
I really do. Because if someone's that much work to get on a second date, I don't have enough energy in 12 lifetimes to have a relationship with that person.
When you got a second guess yourself and you got like, I think it's I don't know.
I just think that's ridiculous.
I mean, if you like someone, you say you like someone and you try to have a relationship and, you know, hopefully it works out.
But this thing, well, things aren't working, you see, because you're not doing this technical thing that, I mean, you know, you can't sustain a lifetime together with someone you have to manipulate like that, you know?
Right. That's how it feels.
And I feel like it can't be how it works for everyone.
Right.
Now, I'm just curious.
It's just an interesting divergence, right?
So you want to date a black guy, right?
You want to date an African-American guy and marry him as well, right?
Yeah.
And it's so interesting because this is just one of these – we don't have to pause here much, but it's just kind of one of these interesting differences that if a white guy called and said, well, I really want to marry a white girl.
Yeah.
You're racist.
But, you know.
I know. I think it's crazy.
It sucks. Yeah, no.
And I just, I respect.
I respect and I think in many ways it's a great decision because, you know, biracial is a challenge.
Like, where do you fit in and all that kind of stuff.
So, it makes sense to me and I got no problem with it.
I just wanted to point out that, you know, annoying double standard because it's there.
So, yeah. Sure.
All right. How are you finding these men?
What's your process?
Tinder. I'm sorry. What is your process for finding these men?
Please tell me my cough is wrong.
I haven't been on Tinder, but I've been pretty close.
I was on OkCupid, which is another online dating site.
But it's not like the conveyor belt bang-a-thon that Tinder seems to be, right?
No, no, no. Okay, good. No, you set up a profile and you kind of, you know, you screen through people or, you know, message them and all those things.
All right. So how do you screen these guys?
For me, I don't know.
I think I, in a way, I guess I was kind of shallow.
I mean, I was looking for a certain height.
I was looking for a job, someone with a job.
Like I said, I was looking for someone who was African-American.
I wasn't closed on that, but that was something that I wanted.
Just someone who seemed smart, honestly.
Someone who had interests and was into politics.
That was something that was important to me, too.
Someone that wasn't too left, I guess you could say.
Right. Height was the very first thing you mentioned.
You know, I don't know if it was your video or someone else's, but I learned that there's not many men over six feet.
It's true. I mean, I don't know.
A black's taller? You know...
I may have the NBA lens on and, you know, may not be the most accurate, but...
That's the thing. I feel like I'm not being too ambitious by saying that that's what I'm looking for, but, you know, who knows?
But why height? How tall are you?
I'm 5'6".
Okay, so you want heels on, so you want a guy, what, like 5'9", 5'10", and above?
Right, right. Right.
So not too tall, but, you know.
Not too tall. Yeah, you don't want to, like, be chatting with a belly button the whole time, right?
Right. And have you done the math on how much your height requirement is cutting down?
Your... Right?
Right. Recently, yeah, I have.
I've been doing a lot of math, just looking at how small that I'm making a pool for myself.
All right. So percentage of men, hang on, sorry.
A percentage of men over six feet.
What do you think it is?
I believe it's like two point something.
Yeah. No, it's not that bad.
It's not that bad. I think it's about 15%.
Okay, there we go.
Yeah. Listen, if that's a tall guy, you can take the call.
It's totally fine. So, yeah, I mean, it's not, but, you know, that's pretty rough, right?
So, I mean, the average male height is 5'9", or whatever it is, right?
So, that's, you know, you're not completely outlawing, but, you know, you're certainly limiting, right?
Right. So, and of course, tall, like, height is a big thing.
It's a big thing. And, you know, height is for women like boobs are for men.
And, you know, I tell you, like, I mean, if a guy was calling in saying, you know, I'm looking for a great girl and virtue and maturity, but if the first thing he said were big boobs, I'd be like, ah!
So if the first thing you've got going is height, you know, tall guys die sooner, right?
I don't know if you knew that.
Yeah, well, it's a lot of work, a lot of work to pump.
And there are knee problems and back problems.
I mean, height is, it looks good in a suit, don't get me wrong.
You know, you bundle that up in a nice tuxedo, it looks pretty damn fine.
But yeah, it's a lot of work to, it's hard, right?
A lot of work to pump all that blood around that giant Sasquatch frame.
So height, have you tried casting about a little bit to see if, like what happens if you lower your height requirements?
Um... I mean, I have.
The last guy I dated, I think he said he was 5'10".
He seemed a lot closer to my height than 5'10".
Oh, you know, guys, we add an inch to everything.
It's just... Yeah. And I didn't mind it.
At first, it was kind of...
Because it's kind of subconscious that you're just like, oh, he's very close to my height.
But I don't even like wearing heels, so I don't really care that much.
Right. So I try not to let it be too...
I don't know. I try not to think about it.
I guess it's a fantasy thing.
Like, you know, my perfect guy would be this high, but I don't expect a perfect guy.
I don't know. I just, I can't spend my, I can't imagine spending my life chatting with a set of nostrils.
That's just my, you know, especially, you know, when a man gets older and the stalagmites of nose hair start to grow.
Anyway. So ghosting, is it when you go on a date or is it the guy doesn't even show up?
You go on a date, he just vanishes offline for you?
No, for me it's been, and this has been the last three guys that I've dated, where everything has pretty much been going great.
And we've gone on multiple dates and I think that we're, you know, we're fight, we're gelling and all this stuff and then all of a sudden he disappears.
And it's been very, very confusing.
Huh. And how long has some of, like you said, a couple of dates?
What's the longest one where the ghostings happened?
Longest one? We went on maybe four or five dates.
We'd known each other. We had been speaking for a while online and then we eventually met up.
So I could say we knew each other for a couple months.
Wow. And he just like, you call him and you text him and it's like, no response.
Does he block or just no response?
No. With this guy in particular, he just got kind of cold.
And I would text him.
I remember it was his birthday and he was just very dry.
And then he would only, he started texting me specifically at like very, very late, like on a Saturday, like, oh, hey, I'm going to this place.
You should come hang out.
And I'll be like, you know, I'm sleeping or something.
And then he texted me the next a few days later and he just was kind of rude.
And it was, I don't know, it was weird.
Hmm. I mean, isn't, this may be like my perspective, but isn't sort of like the late night, let's get together, is that the booty call request?
I mean, like, I don't want to have a full date, not a whole evening with you, but, you know, the tail end would be.
That's exactly the perception that it gives me.
And I don't, I haven't had sex with any of them.
So I would think you would have to have sex with someone first in order to establish that you could call them at two in the morning.
You have to make one bad decision before you can make more in order to do that.
Right, right. Really not that girl.
And do you think that in your age group, culturally, do you think that not having sex is one of the issues?
That the guys are just like, eh, you know, I can get sex elsewhere and that's maybe where some of the ghosting might come from?
You know, at this point, because I get to the point where I over, I won't say overthink, but I've been analyzing and I'm like, maybe that's what's missing.
That after a certain number of days, you're like, okay, maybe she doesn't like me because she doesn't want to have sex with me.
And then they move on to someone else.
And I've heard that online, that's kind of where a lot of guys' heads are.
Particularly, you know, in my age group and such.
So, I mean, that's the only thing I could think of.
And don't you wish people would just tell you the truth?
Doesn't it drive you crazy? I do, because...
Otherwise, you're going to puzzle things out.
If I don't know, then yeah, then I'm thinking maybe he'll come back.
Maybe, you know, I don't like not knowing.
Oh, it's crazy. I hate, you know, it's like, I have this tablet of Egyptian hieroglyphics.
I just, I must figure this out because people just say, oh, you know, you don't put out, so I'm not going to, you know, like, I mean, it's harsh, but at least you wouldn't have to puzzle this stuff out, right?
Exactly. Right, right.
Now, when you get together with these guys, are you...
I don't know.
That's the best way to put this.
Are you frank and straight with what it is that you're looking for?
Are you looking to settle down, get married, have kids, I guess, relatively soon?
The thing is, I don't say that because I've been advised kind of not to say that, which is why I'm wondering if I should.
Who is giving you this advice?
I mean, co-workers.
Oh no. I was even on an article online and they were saying, oh, you should be having sex within two to three weeks, but you can't say I love you until like six months in.
And that's when I'm starting to question if these things even...
Are helpful to anyone.
I don't know who they're helpful to, but...
So basically what recommendation is, people are saying, here's what you gotta do, right?
First you lie, then you manipulate, then you have sex, and then you magically get a great relationship out of that.
Right. Fun, fun, fun, fun, fun, trap the guy.
Ah, good lord.
No, this is terrible advice.
I'll be straight with you.
This is terrible advice. Now, again, I can't speak for everyone, but my wife, when we first went out, we were in my car, end of the date, it was a great evening, and she said, you know, you strike me as a bit of a player.
And I'm like, why would you say that?
Here I am just dressed in PVC for a comfortable evening out.
And she said, but, you know, I don't want to fling.
You know, I want to settle down.
You know, at some point, I want to get married, want to have kids and so on.
So if that's not where your head's at, if that's not what you're looking for, you know, tell me now.
Now, that is a great compliment.
To me. Like, you'd have to be an idiot to not see that as a great compliment.
Because she's saying it's vaguely possible that you might fit the bill.
I mean, what a great compliment that is.
It's like when my daughter doesn't want to go to bed.
It's a compliment because she's having fun in the day.
If she was like, ah, it's 8 o'clock, I'm so bored, I want to go to bed.
Yeah, it would be terrible. So if that's what you want, why not?
What's the negative of saying that?
It's funny because you think...
Either way, they're going to walk away, so you should probably be honest, but you think that if you bring it up, that's what I'm told is that it scares them away, is that they don't want to hear the commitment.
Good! What's wrong with scaring someone away?
Tell me that. If you like a guy, you want it to work.
I've noticed I do that.
I try to mold myself, or try to mold them too.
I'm like, this is the guy.
I'm tired of looking.
Let's just, you know, make it work.
So whatever I have to do to get him to, you know, to trap him to be my boyfriend, then that's what I'm going to do.
Right. Well, and of course, a lot of women will do this is that they will attempt to, you know, V-bomb the guy through sex into creating some sort of attachment.
But, you know, often that backfires.
And I'm not sure that I really like the idea of You know, men being this kind of deer that you have to put out, this vagina bear trap to catch.
I mean, it just seems like, what's wrong with just saying what you want and finding out if the other person...
Look, men...
See, this is the thing, too. Men want to settle down.
Men want to get married.
Men want to have children. This idea of the eternal player is...
I mean, it's there for sure.
I mean, you can be some, you know, creepy old Hugh Hefner character watching ungodly things happen in your squalid mansion or whatever.
But for the most part, men want to, and historically they have, settle down, get married, and have babies.
And so, you know, what you want and what the man wants could be very much a part of it.
But a man who wants to settle down is going to want someone who's direct.
Because you know how you don't want to guess what the man is thinking or doing?
You do, because when we're single and we're trying to figure out what works, we obsess about what's going on and read tea leaves and consult chicken entrails to try and figure out what the hell's going on.
But a man who...
Wants to settle down, wants to settle down with someone he's not going to spend the rest of his life trying to tie himself in mental knots trying to figure out.
So if you're direct and upfront with him about what you want, the man's going to be like, okay.
She's not going to be some mystery.
Because there's this weird thing, like if you're a mystery, you're attractive.
It's like, no. If you're a mystery, you're annoying.
Because now I have to be a crazy psychic guy to figure out what the hell you want.
Don't be enigmatic.
Enigmatic is just weird.
I'm not going to tell you what I want.
It's like you go into a grocery store and they say, can I help you?
Maybe. Would you want some food?
I don't know. Are you hungry?
No. No, no. It's a grocery store.
Would you like me to help you find something?
I don't know. Have you lost something?
It's like... Yeah, that's exactly what it feels like.
No. Take me to the crab cakes.
I want three to go. That's it.
And I'm paying with cash.
So... No, you know, that's the kind of thing.
You just be direct. Okay.
You know, like, I mean, when I do a donation pitch, right, saying support the show at freedomainradio.com slash donate...
I'm pretty direct. It's easy.
Ask for what you want. It's simple.
People say yes. They say no.
But you don't waste a lot of time.
Right? Because if a man senses you being manipulative or avoidant or, well, I guess just not plain direct, then he's going to be like, okay, well, a life with this woman is going to be really complicated.
Yeah. Whereas you come and you say, hey, this is what I'm looking for.
I'm willing to compromise on, you know, maybe height.
I'm willing to compromise on this, that, and the other.
But, you know, if you're some cue ball player who doesn't want to settle down and you're going to be chasing tails until you fall off the cliff of eternity, then no thanks, right?
And that's how you stand out.
Everyone can be avoidant.
Everyone can pretend to be something other than they are.
It is a rare skill to be direct in who you are with people.
And you want a guy like that, too.
Like, you don't want a guy around who you have to guess.
You know this old cliche.
This is more male than female, right?
Yeah, the woman's storming around the house and the guy's like, what's wrong?
Nothing. Yeah.
Oh, great. Welcome to my long weekend of psychic failure.
So, just be direct.
And the guy, you will draw direct people to you if you're direct.
And you will repel. Manipulators and fakers, which is great because you want to be efficient in this process.
If you're looking for a needle in a haystack, you got to figure out where is your metal detector, right?
How are you going to narrow things down?
Does it make any sense? Yeah, it makes a lot of sense.
So, okay. So let's pretend I'm black.
Let's pretend. So no, let's pretend that we're meeting on a date.
And I sort of say, so, okay, Shakila, what are you looking for?
What would you say? If we take this sort of as an approach.
Okay, this is so difficult.
I don't know why it's so hard.
Okay. Would you like something to drink?
No, I'm kidding. Will alcohol help you be authentic?
Probably not. No, what would you say?
I want, I don't know, what do I say?
I want, well, I'm looking for a partner.
I'd eventually like to get married.
And so I'm looking for a husband, a like-minded person.
No, that's good.
That's good for a first run.
But first of all, a partner, okay, you don't want to play tennis with someone.
Okay, maybe in the news, right?
But partner, it just sounds so, you know?
And so, but what is in your heart?
What is it that you want?
Because you really care about this topic, right?
I mean, you could call in about anything.
And I assume, like, when people bring me a topic, it's like number one on the list.
So, What would be the best thing to happen to you tomorrow night?
Like, let's say that you meet a guy and he's asking you, now you don't know what he wants, and we don't like to be vulnerable.
Like, we don't like to say, I want you, and then the other person says, eh.
You know, because that's horrible.
But, you know, that's just something to get over, right?
Okay, so let's try it again.
We're out there, all kinds of hunky man meat sitting right there across from you, some romantic place.
I'm pretending that the taco dip isn't as spicy as it really is, so I'm just looking emotional even though I'm just crying from hot spice.
And I say, so, what are you looking for?
Okay. I want love.
I want a husband.
I want a good father.
I want kids. I want the whole...
I want everything.
Not everything, but I want, you know...
A family. Hmm.
And what do you bring into the table?
Because those are a lot of wants, so what are you providing?
Well, I'm a great person.
I'm a great partner. I come from a great family, so I'm really stable.
I'm smart.
I'm attractive. I'm funny.
I don't know. Am I going in the right direction?
I think that's fine for dating, but you're bringing up the M-bomb, right?
You're bringing up the, you know, put a ring on it stuff.
Right. And I have no reason to disbelieve anything that you're saying.
In fact, I believe it all. But if you're asking a guy for marriage and for family, you're probably going to have him be the provider.
So the question is, what are you going to give for him in return for him going out to work 50 hours a week?
Right. And don't say sex, because that doesn't count.
Oh, no. I mean, I'm a great cook.
Okay. I'm not even going to lie.
I don't enjoy cleaning a lot, but I will do it.
Nobody enjoys cleaning.
It's just that the alternative is even worse.
Yeah. I'm great.
I'm very supportive. I'm a great think tank.
I'm affirming. I like to make people feel good.
I make...
I think funny is important.
Funny is important. What else?
I think I would make a great parent just because I'm not an idiot.
I know the way things should work and I see the way things are going now and I know what's up, I guess.
Yeah. Good, good.
Now, did you see the difference there?
Warmer. Yeah. Okay, I'm going to kick it up a notch.
You ready? Okay.
Okay, so you be the hunky stalk of blackness sitting across the table, and I'll be you.
And why don't you ask me the question?
Okay, Shakila.
What are you looking for?
What do you want? Well, there's two things.
There's what I want, and then there's what I have to offer.
Let's start with what I have to offer, which will bind in with what I want.
I am very loyal, very affectionate, very smart.
I'm brave. I'm intelligent.
And I'm going to be someone's fantastic wife.
Whoever I marry is going to be so successful, they won't even know what to do with it because I'm a great sounding board.
I'm really helpful at figuring out how to get people to where they want to get to professionally.
I'm a great cook.
I'm great in bed, but that doesn't really count because everyone who cares about that stuff is great in bed.
And I'll be a great mom.
And I'm going to run a household that the man is going to go off to work whistling and come back from work singing at the top of his lungs.
Because the kids are going to be running to meet him in the doorway.
They're going to be happy.
They're going to be well fed.
They're going to be well taken care of.
His bills are going to be paid.
His household is going to run like a well-oiled machine.
And he is going to be as successful as he possibly can, given my support.
His household is going to be a beautiful and wonderful and peaceful and happy place for him to be.
So, yeah, I need a provider.
I want a man who is going to stand by his family.
I have an enormous amount to offer.
And I guess I'm going to turn the question back on you.
What do you want?
Hmm.
Hmm.
Okay.
What?
What?
What's so tough?
It's not like I'm asking you to give your own root canal with a stick.
It's hard being, like you said, it's hard to be vulnerable.
I know that what I have to do, I'm just...
Well, so what did you think of what I said in terms of like, what would a man who might want to settle down think of that?
No, I mean, it sounds great to me.
What more could you ask for? Exactly.
Yeah. Anyone who doesn't want that is a man-child, right?
Yeah, I think so.
And I'm sure that you can offer all of that.
And a lot of men, you know, so a lot of men...
That I have talked to, and people that I listen to occasionally online, have this thing where it's like, well, the man, he goes out and he works, and he hands over all of his money to the family, and he gets nothing for himself, and no man cave.
This is ridiculous, because if you marry the right woman, you'll make far more money than if you were single.
I mean, the idea that wives cost money?
No. If you marry the right woman, you will be far more successful than if you're single, and you'll end up with more money.
Yeah, I agree. So, what a great team member you could be.
I mean, who wouldn't want to be on your team?
Right. That's how I feel.
That's why I'm like, what's going on?
But I get it. I'm not being honest.
But you're not selling yourself.
Yeah. Right?
You're not selling. You're hiding your light under a bushel and wondering why no one sees it, right?
Right. Yeah.
So why is it tough for you to sell yourself to a man?
I mean, that sounds terrible.
I'm sorry. Let me rephrase that.
It sounds like for 80 bucks.
No, I'm sorry. It's like you're a godforsaken teenager in Venezuela.
How is it tough for you to...
I don't know.
To sing your own praises, I guess.
Never... I've never...
Well, I've always been very modest, I guess.
And I kind of like to let my actions speak for themselves.
Which is fine if...
Sorry to interrupt, because I just asked you a question.
That's fine if other people can sell you.
Because, you know, the way I used to work, you know this, right?
You grew up...
You were a Christian, is that right? Religious?
Kind of, Baptist. Okay.
So, you know how it works, is that people will say, oh, Shekayla, she's like fantastic.
She's, you know, she's this. She's loyal.
She's smart. She's hardworking.
She's incredibly smart.
She's very encouraging and supportive and so on.
So, other people would sell you and then you just glide in the room with this halo and glow around you, right?
But the problem is, is that when we're not in a community, when we're not part of a church, when we're not in that environment, people won't sell anything.
Us. For us.
We have to sell ourselves. Does that make sense?
Yeah, that's probably exactly what it is.
It's very different from what I'm used to.
Right. And it's weird, because there's a reason why writers and actors have agents, because it's really tough to sell yourself.
An agent can go and haggle like crazy, but an actor has a tough time, because...
It's hard to sell yourself.
So when you get the freedom, in a sense, from community, oh, you get to move to where the weather is nice, and you get the freedom from community, that's a plus.
But the minus is you now have to sell yourself because there aren't interested parties out there trying to find you and selling you third-hand, if that makes sense.
Yeah. Yeah.
You're on your own. Yeah.
So you don't have a lot of filter at the moment because it doesn't sound like you're being particularly open and honest about what you want from the beginning, right?
Right. So you're hoping that the charm of your personality is going to allow you to increase your demands over time?
Basically. Yeah. I don't know that that works.
It clearly doesn't.
No, I've not heard of that working.
For me, at least. Yeah.
No, the stuff that I've heard that works is when just people are really frank and honest up front, right?
And, you know, I don't mean to get all kicky-talky on you, but, you know, I mean, you're going Is that right? Yes, I actually just turned 26 this Saturday.
Last Saturday. Happy birthday to you.
Thank you. So, I mean, if you want a couple of kids, you don't want to spend a lot of time on this if you can do it sooner rather than later.
So much the better, right? Yeah, that's why I'm trying to figure it out.
Yeah, so you can, of course, try writing something out.
I mean, not what I said, but something which is, you know, confident in saying what you want and see what happens.
Because then the thing is, too, if you're, you know, if you're honest and open about what you want, then you're not going to get the guys hanging around for sex, right?
Because, you know, any woman who says, you know, I want to settle down and get married in his, I want to run someone's household and I want to be a...
A mom to his kids and support him in his career or whatever it is.
I mean, this is not going to be a pump and dump situation for guys, right?
So you're automatically going to ward those doofuses off, right?
Yeah. Okay.
Yeah, I guess I don't know.
Because I feel like that sounds like...
I don't want to say it sounds like a lot of work, but I'd probably be going on a lot more dates.
You mean if you are more honest up front?
Yeah. I mean, maybe.
I would think. No.
No. You'll be going on fewer dates, but with a much higher likelihood of getting what you want.
If I blindfold myself and just randomly throw basketballs around town, eventually I'm going to get one through the hoop, but that doesn't make me a basketball player.
You want to have your eyes open and really narrow the field for what it is.
You don't want a player, and you don't want some guy who's grinding his way through some god-awful divorce.
And you probably don't want some guy who's owing four grand a month in child support payments and alimony.
There's a lot of things that you just Need to clear the deck and be ready for the one.
Be ready for the one person that's going to fit you like a key in a lock, right?
Yeah. So, to me, dating is a lot more about elimination than pursuit.
It's a lot more about, I'd rather go on three job interviews that really match rather than 20 job interviews where there's not much of a match at all.
Right. Where would you suggest I look?
Free Domain Radio or not? Even though she'd go back online.
Well, I mean, certainly if you join groups that, you know, it's tricky as well because you want an African-American guy, right?
Yeah. You know, I don't know, brother maggot groups.
I don't know. But I mean, maybe if there's, you know, something politically.
And again, it doesn't have to be the group where the guy is.
It just has to be the group where someone who knows the guy is.
Right, yeah, yeah, exactly.
Because personal introductions, when people know what you want, can have a lot more value.
You know, like in business, if you get a recommendation, you get to the top of the pile of the resumes and so on.
So I think joining groups is pretty important so that people can get a sense of who you are.
Online, you know, it's like that old New Yorker cartoon, like on the internet, just did a dog typing, talking to another dog, saying on the internet, nobody knows you're a dog.
And there's so much capacity for falseness and misdirection online.
That I would say whatever you can do, you know, the body language in person and eye contact and, you know, all of that kind of stuff.
Hell, the body odor, if such should be around.
Whatever you can do in person, I think is worth a lot more than you can do online.
So, you know, joining groups with people who have similar interests and, you know, just putting the ask out is a very important thing.
You know, if I were more mystical, I'd say, well, the universe will give you what you want, but you have to get on your knees first.
Wait, that sounds bad, too.
The universe will give you what you want, but you have to beg.
You have to really ask for it.
And I think that's true as a whole.
You really do have to ask for what you want when you are making your own way in the world.
And the more you do that, the more likely you are.
It doesn't guarantee, but I think it gets you a hell of a lot closer.
Okay. Can we try it one more time?
What do I want? Shikala, thank you for coming out on a date with me.
Do you like the jazz?
Pretty good band. Now, before we suggestively work the guacamole dip, what is it you're looking for?
Well, I'm looking for a husband.
Should I say it? I'm sorry.
I think I just heard the clack as your tongue was bitten by your own teeth.
What are you? You are, right?
Yeah. I mean, yeah.
Yeah. I am. Okay.
Yes. So, there you go.
All right. I'm looking for a husband.
I'm looking for a provider.
I want a family.
I want to be a mother.
I want to be in the home. I want to be with my kids.
And I can offer a lot for him, for that kind of guy.
I can cook.
I can cook. I mean, I can clean.
I'm very supportive.
I'm really smart, but I don't always want to be the lead.
So I'm really good at helping people You know, realize their dreams and, you know, get further and whatever in their, you know, interests or whatever it is really.
And I'm just, you know, I'm a good, a good, good kid.
I'm a good kid?
Okay, unless you're around Charlie Sheen.
No, that's good. No, see, but this is the kind of thing I think that you need to practice.
Because it's weird, right? It's hard to sell yourself and so on.
But, you know, if you were going for a job interview and you really wanted the job, you'd be like all over that, right?
And I had to do the same thing.
I had to write it out and practice and all that stuff.
Exactly. So that would be my suggestion.
Practice it to the point where it's a fine line.
Confidence and arrogance is a little bit of a fine line.
And remember, of course, that you're selling what you want, but the way that you get what you want is what you provide.
Like you go to buy a car, the salesman wants your money, but the way he gets your money is by giving you the car at a good price that you want.
So you can start with what you want, but I think once you establish what you have to offer, Then it's a little easier to ask for what you want.
Right? Like, I mean, so when I'm asking for donations, I don't start with, please donate.
Like, I start with, you know, here's where we're doing.
Here's how the show's doing. Here's the effect that we're having.
You know, here's all the numbers and so on.
And having established the value that I provide, then I feel it's a reasonable thing to ask for value in return.
Right. Maybe that's probably what's...
It's holding me up. If I could switch it a bit, I wouldn't feel like I'm asking for a lot.
Yeah. So, I mean, if you, I think when I was playing you, I was saying, you know, there's two things.
It's what I want and what I can provide, what I can offer.
And so you start with what you can offer and say, oh, you get the guy, oh, I want that, right?
Yeah. And then you can say, you know, and so I, you know, I want a marriage, I want a husband, I want a provider, a father, a great father for my children so that we can have a wonderful life together.
Yeah. Yeah. And you do have a lot to offer a man, not least of which is the solid Southern upbringing that You know, it doesn't have you spread your legs like a peanut butter on toast, right?
So no, this is like, this is really, you have a lot of, you know, self-respect and intelligence and great values to offer.
So be confident.
Be confident in what you have to offer.
Most people won't be able to judge you, certainly when they first meet you, right?
They won't be able to judge you because they don't know you, but they will judge how you judge you.
Yeah. Because you know yourself better.
This is with me. I see people, they're down on themselves, and I feel sympathetic.
But I believe them.
Because they know themselves a lot better than I do.
And if they're down on themselves, I mean, I just have to go with that, right?
And so if you've sold yourself to yourself, then it's a lot easier to negotiate for what you want in the world.
But if you haven't sold yourself to yourself, You can always hire me because I need to eat, and that's never very inspiring.
Right, right, right, right.
Yeah, okay.
Thank you. And I'm sorry you have to do it.
Yes. But this is the price of freedom that we have, right?
Yeah, this is where we are. Will you let us know how it goes?
For sure. For sure.
Was this helpful, useful?
No, it was. I have no one to talk to about these things, and you give it in a way that I can understand it.
Was it fun trying to pick yourself up online?
Just kidding. Well, yeah, let us know how it goes.
And if we put this out, I'm curious what people think.
And I genuinely think this is going to work out well, and hopefully I'm right.
I think I'm right. Look at me selling myself like crazy.
We're being positive. Yeah, yeah.
I really think it will.
There's a guy out there who wants what you have to offer, and he'll be damn lucky to get it.
So thanks a lot.
Let us know how it goes, and let's move on to the next caller.
Thank you. You're welcome. Alright, up next we have Brian.
Brian wrote in and said, Given your current scope of influence and motivating people to think and reason more effectively,
with a view to preserve freedom in Western civilization and even mankind, could it be that your seemingly unhappy and even tortured childhood was something that God put you through as a means to build your character up to serve him only if you desired to do so?
You've spoken of courage being the highest virtue, although you're also open to accepting that love may be even higher—I heard this after a discussion with a Christian caller— What is there to say that you could have only developed this through adversity, resilience, and endurance?
Would that possibly even offer comfort and sense to the childhood that God had you endure so you can be what you are today?
And could reconciliation with Him therefore grant you even more blessings when you are right with Him?
That's from Brian. Hey Brian, how are you doing?
Hi, Stefan.
Hello from Sydney.
Australia? Australia, mate.
Fantastic. All right.
That is a very interesting question, and I've given it quite some thought today.
And is there anything that you wanted to add to this?
I was going to think of exploring it from, firstly, a perspective where we can actually Feel because like what we've observed with the world and then we'll go into something probably moving from the observed to maybe more theological and of course I'd like to hear from you from a philosophical point of view.
So Stefan, the first thing I want to ask is would you believe would a counterfeit $2 bill exist in Canada or America?
Would a counterfeit dollar bill, was that the question?
Two dollar bill. Two dollar bill, no.
Yes, no, no. No, there's a two dollar coin, but not a two dollar bill, yeah.
Right, okay.
And in terms of equality, would you consider equality of opportunity to be a genuine form of equality and equality of outcomes, at least in human society, to be a counterfeit version of it?
I would agree with that. Okay.
Because what I'm actually trying to lead to is, as you're aware, you probably have seen how Satanism, like it's embraced and it's now coming out in the open through music TVs, half-time shows in the Super Bowl and, you know, TV shows.
Would you agree with that?
I would need a bit more of a definition of Satanism, but I certainly think that, you know, for me, the Satanism has a lot to do with this relativism and subjectivism and postmodernism, so if we can put it in that ballpark, I'm certainly with you.
Okay, let's put it in terms of, yes, you've got the relativism, so there is no absolute of standards and morals.
You also have the occult, basically the whole very overt showing of...
Symbolisms and like talking about demons, you've got that type of stuff.
Yeah. No, for sure.
And there is, you know, some of this creepy spirit cooking and all that sort of stuff that has sort of simmered down a little bit, but still seems to be erupting from time to time.
Yeah, because the reason why I brought this up is it makes me wonder, you can't, to have a counterfeit, what has to exist?
The true thing. The true thing, okay.
So, that's the thing, because while many would say that God doesn't exist, and they are trying to find ways to explain a way that God does not exist, how can there be a counterfeit God, which is Satan, at least in the Western world and in many circles, there seems to be there has to be a The good and the anti-good or evil, and Satan is genuinely accepted in at least our so-called society to be the evil one.
How could there be a Satan if there's no God?
Well, I certainly think that if you believe in the devil, it becomes a whole lot harder to disbelieve in God.
But, okay, so let's just step...
Because I was trying to understand this earlier, and I'm sure you can illuminate me on this.
So, I do...
Really understand the sort of C.S. Lewis point, that suffering is not always a punishment, but it is in fact an illumination.
It is a way to wake up.
It is a way to develop empathy.
It is a way to become stronger and harder and...
More noble through suffering.
Yeah, it's like pain is not something that we avoid because pain is actually a signal to our body that something's wrong and we either remove ourselves or if we subject ourselves whether it causes even further harm.
Or another way to put it is how on earth can you fight evil unless you have suffered from evil?
I mean, how on earth can you believe in evil if you have not suffered from evil?
And I both believe in evil and in the value of fighting evil.
If I had not been directly exposed to evil as a child, if I had not been under the control of evildoers to one degree or another, then how could I believe in evil and fight evil?
And that, I mean, so again, I follow all of this, and I don't disagree with some of it.
But there is a part where we probably part ways.
So step me through the process.
So my mom is standing over me and she's trying to decide whether to hit me or not.
What does God tell her to do?
Well, there are two ways that you do anything wrong.
Sorry?
Because if you did, did you do anything wrong to warrant her hitting you?
You can't do anything wrong as a child to warrant being hit.
It's like saying, did your wife do anything wrong to justify you beating her?
You can't, right?
The law does not recognize...
I mean, I know with children it's still legal, but as far as moral goes, no, I did not do anything to deserve being hit.
Okay, because...
You are aware that in the book of Proverbs, it does say, if you spare the rod, you spoil the child.
But the rod is not...
No, the rod is not...
The rod is instruction.
It's like the rod is the stuff that the shepherd uses to guide the sheep.
The rod is not beating children.
The rod is not hitting.
It is moral instruction.
And of course, I completely agree with that.
If you spare moral instruction to your children, if you spare them of consequences...
If you spare them of rationality, if you spare them of the need to develop empathy, of course you will spoil them completely.
This is the unparenting stuff that I really disagree with strongly.
Okay. And so I completely agree with that, but it doesn't mean, you know, take a bat and hit your children.
It means provide to them strong moral leadership and guidance.
Okay. In that case, God would probably say to the mother, why do you feel the need to hit the child?
Do you think that Would it be pleasing to me?
No, but sorry to interrupt, Brian.
I'm not talking about in an abstract sense.
I'm talking about in the scenario that God may have given me a bad childhood to strengthen my character, to serve virtue.
In which case, God, would he not have encouraged my mother to hit me?
No, definitely not.
Would he then have discouraged my mother to hit me?
That's a funny thing.
We always think that there is just God and there's not Satan acting on people.
So therefore, you know, as you have talked about, I think in some other talks, when you're exposing people, it's like you shine a light and the cockroach scurries away.
What is there to say that we keep seeing things that happen and then we place a tab on God.
And yet, Satan's basically dancing around, prancing around and going, well, I'm causing all this trouble.
I'm actually whispering into people's ears and telling them what to do, telling them they should do it, but I'm not doing it.
So, that's actually the thing.
We place the tab on God for anything that happens, whereas Satan is also an acting force that is whispering into people's ears and getting them to act.
We're not shining a light on you.
Hang on, hang on. Now, but you're saying, and I'm not trying to catch you out here, I'm just genuinely seeking to understand.
You said, could it be that you're seemingly unhappy and even tortured childhood?
Again, seemingly is, anyway.
Could it be that you're seemingly unhappy and even tortured childhood be something that God put you through as a means to build your character up to serve him?
So God put me through it, but now you're bringing the devil into it.
Yeah. But if God put me through it, where does the devil come in?
Well, if we look at the Book of Job, you actually see that God actually allows Satan to do what he likes, but he sets a very clear limit, and Satan can only act on that.
But Satan can screw things over, but God is able to clear it up.
That's actually what makes him much more powerful.
If he actually makes everything right, and he can't allow anything to be wrong, How could that be perfection?
Because that's a limiting form of perfection.
There's no free will. There would be a control of the outcome.
And isn't that something which we have considered to actually be undesirable and shows to be suboptimal?
But we don't say to somebody who's robbed a bank, your punishment is to hit your children.
If somebody does wrong, the punishment should accrue to the wrongdoer.
Wouldn't you agree? Yes, but we are operating on different time horizons, right?
And this is, I guess, where people have trouble understanding and I have trouble understanding having gone through my own life where certain things are not made right and it hasn't been fixed and I'm sitting there going, well, in God's good timing.
It sounds like a cop-out, but the thing is, That's what faith is part of, is to recognize that sometimes we do have to wait, and He doesn't operate at our time.
It doesn't mean that He doesn't care.
And what is there to say that sometimes we have to go through that.
God would actually, I'm sure Jesus Christ, His tears and His blood has been shed for your suffering.
For what your mother has done to you, for any wrong that other people have done to you, and for any wrong that anyone has done to anyone in society.
Right. Yes, and of course, the argument being that if people do evil, then they are separated from God in the afterlife, whether that's the mere separation or act of hell itself is a matter of differing theological opinions.
And in the time horizon of eternity, then...
That will be the case, that the wrongdoers will be punished in the afterlife.
Is that a way to put it?
Well, yes. And the thing is, we are to recognize that we are broken beings.
So the thing is, for example, I'm sure your mother, what she has done to you, she is not unaware, is that she might not be able to show you her remorse, or she has not been able to make amends to it.
But the conscience would speak to her to realize that what she has done is wrong.
I have no doubt.
I have no doubt that the punishments that accrue even before death by those who have any vestige of a conscience, I mean, to complete sociopaths, I mean, no conscience is there.
But I have no doubt whatsoever that The punishment that accrues to people who end up doing wrong, I've seen it.
I've seen it play out in people's life, and it is a horrible thing to see.
It's horrible because there's helplessness involved as well, because it can't be undone.
Because theoretically, I suppose it could be undone if there was significant remorse, if there was a seeking for forgiveness, if there were promises of change, the absolution that is possible for the conscience to provide if the person genuinely seeks contrition, which is part of the Christian tradition, that you can't be forgiven unless you seek forgiveness.
And theoretically, that's possible, but I'd never see it happen.
You know, like, I've taken a lot of flights in my life.
I've never seen someone run through the airport trying to catch someone who's going to get on a plane to say that they love, you know, like, you see this all the time in movies and TV shows, but it never shows up in real life.
And, you know, theoretically, there are people who, you know, they...
I don't know.
it's one of these theoretical things that I never actually see playing out.
And that's, I curse secularism to some degree for that as well, because this idea that we have a conscience that judges us regardless of what we say on the surface, that we have a deeper element within ourself that is immune to sophistry, that is deeply empirical and that we have a deeper element within ourself that is immune to sophistry, that is deeply empirical and judges what we have done and refuses to be
That we have within us deeply a philosopher who cannot be moved by mere language.
That is a very Christian idea.
And that is not something.
Relativism and subjectivism, I think, have primarily been designed to fool people as to the deep empiricism of their own conscience to the point where they do enough wrong that their conscience and virtue itself becomes their enemy.
It is a satanic force.
In that way. Because Satan doesn't say, do evil.
Satan says, have fun.
Satan doesn't say, do these terrible things and I will own your soul for eternity.
He's like, eh, who's to say what's right, what's wrong?
Enjoy the flesh.
Everything's relative. Don't be such a bore.
Don't be so stuck up. Don't be such a Puritan.
Don't be such a Victorian. Go out and have fun.
And, you know, indulge yourself.
And Satan also says that status is so important, that anybody who disrespects you must be punished and attacked, and you need power to get security, and you need money by any means necessary to gain power, and you need to control people, because otherwise they're going to control you.
He gives you this Darwinian universe of win and lose, unlike the free market and virtuous universe of win-win.
And he tempts you with...
The material. He tempts you with evolution.
He tempts you with dominate or be dominated and throws in a good sprinkle of it's no fun to be good and it's great fun to indulge yourself.
And don't worry, we'll be good later and we'll indulge ourselves now, but the later never comes and the soul decays no matter what.
So I do think that the way that Christians have talked about the conscience, the need for contrition, the need To seek forgiveness and the need to make amends to those who have wronged have really fallen away to the point now where people view those things as an imposition on their angry Darwinian will and it's to the great shame of everyone.
So I will say this that I have sometimes believed that There's something called philosophy that I serve.
It is almost like an entity, not quite a consciousness, but a set of principles that, you know, like a physicist might say, the universe teases me with its mysteries, with its enigmas, with its contradictions.
And I do sometimes feel that Not only was I, in a sense, born to serve philosophy, but so many events in my life have combined to give me the unique capacity to do so.
Now, where I put philosophy, you would probably put the word God, and in some ways we might not be that far off in our conception.
In the same way that Socrates would talk about His daemon, his, we would call it, I guess, a conscience or a sense of deviating from philosophy that if the daemon did not nag him for what he was doing, he assumed that all was right in his relationship with philosophy.
And philosophy has made me powerful.
Philosophy has made me frightened.
Philosophy has made me enthusiastic.
Philosophy has also made me despair from time to time.
But fundamentally, philosophy has just made me.
And I can't think of anything better to serve in my life, because through the service to philosophy, I gain all other good things in the world.
So I can understand, really understand, Brian, the impulse, the desire to personify that which we serve.
I do it from time to time.
In the projection or embodiment or the anthropomorphization of certain principles and call it philosophy.
I don't believe that the abuse or difficulties I experienced as a child...
We're themselves in service of philosophy, but I do believe that I can get the greatest goods and the greatest good out of the evil that I have suffered by turning the suffering into a power in the service of philosophy.
And that does not make the evil good, but it makes the best good out of the evil that can be done, I think.
Yeah, I see the parallels in what you're saying and what a Bible-believing Christian would also think and the only you could say in that sense then the key difference would be that a Bible-believing Christian would say that they found peace within themselves through God and Jesus Christ and in your case you would say that it's found in the philosophical concepts and the Ideas that you hold on to,
which you're going to implement.
Extending to that, seeing that you do have almost 700,000 subscribers, so you have a huge influence.
Let's say, hypothetically, you are going to influence a huge amount of people to a point where, let's say, you could even form a nation.
In that case, how would you run the society with philosophy and how could you Use that to ensure that the society is going to behave in an order which would be desirable under what you would call universal preferable behavior.
You are taking quite the role of the devil here, my friend.
Offering up to me, no, I'm out 40 days in the desert.
And here Brian emerges in a flash of sulfur and says, Stephbot, let us give thee the world for thy dominion.
And how should you use the power of owning the world or a significant portion therein?
And how would you run things?
And how would you control people?
And how would you make your paradise?
If I give you enough power and I say, get thee behind me, Satan Brian!
I will not fall for such a temptation.
All I offer is reason, freedom, and truth.
I do not succumb to the lure of power.
No, I know that, but the thing is, because your show seeks to educate people to think along that principle, but from there, how can they function as a human being, or is there going to be someone who's going to be The authority to tell them, actually, you've interpreted this wrong and you can't behave this way because you're actually not...
That's not the universal preparable behavior that...
No, but you're asking me, do I want to be king of science or ruler of the free market?
No, no. There are basic principles.
First of all, the idea that I would be any kind of arbiter of philosophy as a whole would be...
Repulsive to philosophy.
I am one guy making arguments, and I think I make some pretty damn good ones, but I'm one guy making arguments.
I am fallible, and it is a process, a social process of continual refinement and improvement that drives philosophy, just as it drives science.
There's not some science king that you would bring your...
I would not have any thirst or desire for political power unless it were somehow magically able to reduce or eliminate political power over people.
As steadfast in my convictions about The only virtuous society in the long run being the voluntary society, the peaceful society, the stateless society.
And for more on that, I have written two books, Everyday Anarchy and Practical Anarchy, about how a moral society genuinely functions.
And if humanity is to have a future, that is where it must get to.
So the only chains I would accept would be the chains I could use to undo chains, the only power I would accept.
It's the power to undo power, and I'm not sure that could ever be done.
You know, I think the ring that I talked about with Dr.
Duke Pesta recently from Lord of the Rings, sophistry, can sophistry be used to undo sophistry?
No. I think that philosophy, using some tricks of sophistry, can spread and gain power.
But a free society is a voluntary society.
A free society does not have At its center, an agency of violence known as the state.
A free society is one where ostracism and consequences and rewards naturally accrue from not forcing people to associate with each other, with not forcing people to pay for each other, with not forcing people to be subjugated to the Often merely aesthetic whims of others.
A free society is one that places at its very heart and center the non-aggression principle.
Thou shalt not initiate force against thy fellow man.
That is exactly where society needs to go.
And that is, in fact, the only thing that can genuinely be called society.
Everything else is kind of an eternal prison of illusion.
Yeah, what you're saying there is like, I mean, I can actually think about the way God initially wanted society to be, and at least to my understanding of the Bible, the only reason why things, there were rules set up, but the rules were only supposed to be Ten Commandments, which then became Deuteronomy and Leviticus.
You had to interpret it because God knew people being people.
They were not actually going to stay above the line.
They're basically towing the line.
They're going, well, how far can I go to break this commandment before it's not?
So there's this combination of all these laws which then made people think Christianity is very suffocating.
It's only because of human nature.
And I think that thereby what you're saying with philosophy In running society, or not running society, sorry, people who live in society and they interact with each other using the principles that you have talked about, that can only assume people have that nature of not wanting to control other people, not wanting to infringe on other people's boundaries for their own pleasure.
But we've already been tainted, at least from my understanding, my belief, that We have already listened to the devil, and he has much more power than us.
Right, and because of original sin, we have no capacity to handle power, and therefore we cannot organize society around a centralized system.
Structure called the state with the capacity to initiate force, with the capacity to print money, with the capacity to borrow against the collateral of the next generation's labor, without the capacity to enslave everyone through their thirst for the unearned.
Because we are a fallen species, because the devil continually and often successfully whispers in our ear, we cannot allow it.
We cannot allow for the accruing of centralized coercive power in society, and this is why whether you are Christian or not, whether if you're a Darwinian, Then giving, that there is such resource accruing power behind a centralized state, such a capacity to gain resources without the risk of direct theft.
You know, you go up and rob someone in an alley, that person can fight back or run, it might not work out too well for you, but you pass a law to increase taxes, just about everyone's going to pay, and it's going to be a peaceful, quote, peaceful, unquote, civilized state.
Experience. So you can't have that power.
If you're a Darwinian, you recognize how much it allows you to accumulate resources, and therefore our genes will seek to control the state.
Or if you're a Christian, you recognize the fallen nature of the world, and human beings cannot be trusted with political power, and therefore we need a voluntary society.
So either way, you have to come to that conclusion if you're going to follow the principles.
Well, thanks a lot for your call, Brian.
I really, really appreciate it. But let's move on to the next caller.
Alright, thank you. Thank you.
Okay, up next we have Amber.
Amber wrote in and said, I'm 22 years old and I'm in a committed relationship with a man that I love very much.
We started our own online business together this year and so far it's going great.
My grandma doesn't seem to understand that just because I now work from home and my boyfriend drives a logging truck and works 18 hour days, that it doesn't mean I can drop everything and go spend all my time with her.
Ever since I was a little girl, I've always wanted my grandma's love and attention, but rarely received it.
My grandparents are really the only close family I have since my dad died and I quit talking to my mom due to the anger and resentment I have from all the trauma and abuse she put my dad and I through.
My grandma and I have become a lot closer over the last few years, and it's been great until Ben, my husband, and I started our business.
If I am too busy to go spend the entire day with her, she holds it against me and passively threatens to not call me anymore.
My relationship with my grandma means a lot to me, and I don't want to lose her, but how can I establish boundaries with her so that I don't have to feel pressured and obligated to spend all my time with her and neglect my business?
That's from Amber. Hey, Amber.
How you doing tonight? I'm doing good.
How are you? I'm well, thanks.
Thanks for calling in. That's a great and complicated question that's been putting my brain through Gordian nuts all day.
So, first question I have is, Granny on which side?
My mom's side.
Your mom's side?
Yeah. All right. Well, that makes things considered even more simple and complicated at the same time.
So, what...
What's been going on with your mom?
You said the anger and resentments.
Trauma and abuse, you put your dad and you through.
What are we talking here?
Well, so when I was two, my dad got cancer.
And my mom kind of was just, I don't know, she was crazy pretty much.
My whole life, she repeatedly did a lot of things like She wouldn't let my dad have his own license or money or, you know, like he made the money in the household, but he couldn't carry any of it.
He didn't have house keys. Wait, wait, his own license?
A driving license? Yeah.
She carried his wallet.
She carried his cell phone.
He wasn't allowed to go anywhere without her.
He couldn't even call his own mom without it being on speakerphone and her being right there.
What is he like? She's like a Middle Eastern husband or something?
I mean, that's, that's wild.
Yeah. I know.
It was rough, and it was normal for me, you know, because I grew up with my mom controlling every aspect of our lives, and so I just thought it was normal.
So he couldn't have his own money, and he couldn't have his own driver's license?
Nope. She controlled literally everything that we did, everything.
And the only reason he didn't leave is because he was diagnosed with cancer when I was two and wasn't expected to live more than a year.
So he couldn't get custody of me and he didn't want to leave me with her.
And how long did he live?
He actually lived 16 years.
He passed away when I was 17.
Wow. Was he cancer free that whole time?
No. The first time they removed half of his lung but it came back in his brain and then they removed that and it went back to his lungs and they couldn't operate because he had multiple tumors.
And then it went back to his brain again.
When he passed away, he had 45 lung tumors and a brain tumor and cancer cells all through his body.
But he lived, like, I think seven years with all of those tumors, and he was happy.
She sold all of his pain medicine, so he couldn't even take his own medicine.
She sold his pain medicine?
Yeah, all of it.
You don't mind if I swear for a moment, do you, Amber?
No, I don't mind. Your boyfriend is a logging truck driver, so I assume that that's okay?
What is she, a fucking vampire?
Professional? What does she, like, drain his blood as well at night while he tried to sleep?
He sold his pain meds?
Yeah. Good lord, that woman doesn't need a therapist but a priest!
I know. I'm convinced that she's a sociopath or a psychopath.
And this? Okay, okay.
Is there anything else?
Just tell me.
Just before... Go ahead.
From a very young age, I was about 12.
She would never let me go anywhere.
I was the only child, pretty much.
Wait, wait, but you were the only child, pretty much?
Well, I have a half-brother that my grandma adopted right after he was born.
And he's never known that he's my brother.
And I was never allowed to tell him, but I've known since elementary school.
Do you want to give me a little backstory on that?
Yeah, he was born and he has a mental disorder.
I'm not sure what it is, but he's pretty normal other than he's just a lot younger than his age, mentally.
And she, my grandma, the story I got is that my grandma said that he needed good health insurance.
So, she convinced my mom to give her custody of him, and he would always know who his real mom was, and she would give him back, you know, he just needed good health insurance, and then she just never let any of us tell him who his real mom was or anything, and if we did tell him, we'd be disowned. That's the story I got from my mom, so I don't know how factual it is, but...
Wow.
Yeah. How pretty was your mom?
She, I think she was pretty when she was younger.
She's always been overweight. But as far as I know, she was normal until I was about two and then she started becoming more controlling.
My dad got cancer and she would make us, every time we came home, we had to strip our clothes off on the rug, put them straight in the washer and go take a shower and then put new clothes on before we could even go into the house.
Because germs? Yeah.
Yeah, she said it was to protect my dad, but it was humiliating.
Just a quick question, if she's very much into protecting your dad, why would she be selling his pain meds?
I don't know. She had reasons for all of her actions that never meant that she was being bad or anything.
She was very justified in all of her actions, and she still thinks that to this day.
Right, right. Sorry, you were just about to say, when I said rudely interrupted, sorry for that, you were just about to say when you were 12?
Yeah, so I was never allowed to have friends or go places, but when I turned 12, she started pressuring me to have sex so that she could have a grandchild, and that she could take care of a grandchild.
No, okay, Amber, Amber, come on, you're trawling me here.
No, I'm serious. No, really, come on.
I'm serious. Oh, you understand why I might be just a little skeptical.
Okay, but really?
12? Yeah.
Make me some grandkids?
Yeah, she said it was because my dad, you know, she didn't want my dad to die before having grandkids.
I never had sex or anything like that.
But I would go hang out with boys and make her think that I was going to, you know, just so I could get out of the house.
Oh my god.
Amber, I... I'm not often speechless.
I think you know that if you listen to the show for a while, but holy crap on a popsicle stick.
That is all kinds of I don't know what to say.
I don't know.
Oh, I do know what to say.
I am so sorry.
What a supernatural freak in nature.
Oh, my God. I know.
And I didn't realize until I was about 16 or so how messed up my mom was.
Like, all of this was normal for me because I didn't have experience being around other people's parents.
There's a reason why she didn't want you to have any friends.
Yeah. No comparisons allowed.
This is like, you know, when a guy gets married or even if he gets a girlfriend, but particularly if he gets married to a crazy woman, she just goes about dismantling his male support structure.
No more friends. She makes it so difficult for him to go out and have friends because she doesn't want anyone reflecting her craziness back into his- That's what she did to my dad.
Just separated him from everyone else?
Yeah, like my dad's adopted parents live in Spokane, and his sisters and brothers and everything, they all live in Spokane.
And the only time he could see them is when they came to visit, and my mom always had to be around to make sure that he never said anything bad about her.
And if he talked to her on the phone, it had to be on speakerphone so she could hear everything.
She controlled everything.
Wow.
Do you really think that she was fine until you were two?
Thank you.
I don't know. I really don't know.
Like, I have good memories of my, like, well, not really memories.
I have home videos of, you know, like, going ice skating lessons and swimming lessons and stuff like that.
And, you know, my dad always playing with me, like, with, you know, roller skates and teaching me how to ride my bike and stuff.
But, you know, like, my earliest memories that I can remember myself were, you know, looking back, my mom controlled everything and it was, like, I see a lot of, you know, I don't know.
She's just a bad person.
I am. I'm so sorry.
I'm so sorry. So, the grandma.
If I understand this correctly, Amber, this is the grandma who raised your mom, right?
Yeah. This is the weird thing, though.
My mom has brothers. And they're great people.
Her older brother, he works at...
Sorry, just a few less details.
You've given me a lot of geographical and place details.
He works at a place is the better way to put it.
He's very successful, has a really nice family.
And then her other brother is also really successful and they're just great people all together.
My mom is the only one that turned out so messed up.
Does anyone know why? Is this like a family topic?
Is this something that people know needs to be fixed or what?
Yeah, everyone knows that she's crazy.
Like, my uncles don't have anything to do with her.
And they are mainly mad at her because my grandma owned the house that I grew up in.
And we lived there until I was 17, rent free.
And, like, my mom would always borrow money from them and, you know, never said thank you, never paid them back.
Just always mooched off of them.
And so that's the main reason my uncles dislike her.
Do they know stuff about, like, she sold your dad's pain meds?
Yeah, they know now.
Because someone died that she had sold her pain medicine to two years ago.
And so it kind of came out that she's been selling my dad's pain medicine and her pain medicine since I was 12.
Yeah, I mean, I would, I guess, hope ideally that the fact that your mom made your childhood kind of hellish would have a little bit more to do with why they disliked her than they lent her money.
They didn't know a lot. I didn't get to see my, you know, uncles or family a lot growing up either because they never had anything really to do with her my whole life, or me, because, or my dad.
And so... They didn't know a lot, but my grandma, I would tell her everything.
And then she would swear she wouldn't say anything to my mom about what I told her that she was doing.
And then she would get mad at my mom and tell her, like, oh, Amber told me that you're doing this, and Amber told me this.
And so I would always get in trouble.
So I just kind of quit talking to my grandma about it and kept it all in.
Well, and I guess since your father was...
Unwell or potentially unwell, his level of independence was not easy to get to, right?
No, not at all.
And did he live with your mom this whole time?
Yeah. So the story is, I guess, that your father married your mom when she was not crazy and then she went crazy.
Yeah. Does anyone else in the family support that theory?
Nobody really knows.
I still get asked today why my dad married my mom and stuff.
Wait, what do you mean nobody really knows?
I don't understand. They grew up with her.
Yeah. They always say she was reckless and she didn't have any respect for my grandparents and stuff, but they didn't know the depth of the things that she did on a daily basis and stuff.
Wow. Now, you said ever since I was a little girl, I've always wanted my grandma's limited attention, but I rarely received him.
Why do you think that was? Well, I don't know exactly.
I just remember always going to my grandma's house and wanting to spend time with her, and she would tell me to go home, and she'd call me when I could come over, and I'd wait by the phone all night, all day, all night, and she would never call, and that happened for a really long time.
And then finally I realized that she was just never going to call.
It wasn't until I got older that she started wanting me to spend time with her and stuff.
What about your granddad on this side?
I've always been kind of intimidated by my grandpa.
He has always been a really quiet person, but really intelligent and successful.
And I just never knew what to talk about with him.
So I kind of just always wanted to, you know, spend time with my grandma because she didn't like scare me or anything.
I don't know. It's really dumb.
No, no, I wouldn't say that.
And what's going on with your grandmother in terms of her social life?
I mean, is she close to her husband?
Does she have a church or a community or friends or hobbies or other things that occupy her socially?
Her life revolves around, like, my uncle's and my cousin just moved into a house right next to her pretty much.
So it was my grandma's old house, and she sold it to my cousin without talking to my grandpa first.
And so now they're separated.
My grandpa's living with my cousin.
Wait, your grandmother and your grandfather are separated?
Just now, yeah.
She sold the house that they lived in for 50 years the past couple months.
Right. Okay.
And it's over the fact that your grandmother sold the house without consulting with your grandfather?
Yeah. That and she's always treated him poorly.
She always, you know, would talk down on him, always say that he, you know, is worthless even though he made all the money to support her, you know, so she could have a great life and own all these houses and stuff.
She's never appreciated any of it and she's always treated him like crap and then she went and sold the house they lived in for 50 years without even talking to him about it.
How is that even possible?
I mean, doesn't he have signature? Yeah, after the papers had been drafted and everything, he had to sign on it.
But my grandma had already promised it to my cousin and her new husband.
So I thought he just felt pressured and he did it.
And now he's looking for his own place.
So she was verbally abusive?
Yeah. I mean, saying he's worthless, what, piece of crap and lazy?
What were the kind of stuff that she would say to your grandfather?
Well, she would say that he's worthless pretty much, that he always expects her to wait on him hand and foot, even though he's 85 years old and is still running his own electrician business and working every single day to give her the money that she wants to build new kitchens and remodel her house and stuff.
But she just always calls him an ass and says just horrible things about him, and she treats him horribly.
Is she a feminist?
So my boyfriend thinks so.
I never really thought about it that way, but I kind of am now seeing that she is probably a feminist.
I mean, the reason why that popped into my mind is I saw a comment on one of my videos recently.
The guy said, yeah, so I brought my South Korean girlfriend over to America because she was great.
You know, like I did the working and she'd keep the house clean, pay the bills.
She'd iron my shirt.
She was a great cook and, you know, we had a great time.
So I brought her over to the States and, yeah, it took about a month.
Less than 30 days of her hanging around with the neighborhood American wives.
And she became resentful.
She became feeling that she was just being taken advantage of.
And I came home from work and she said, I know you're a slave.
Get your own beer. And he said, I put her on the plane back to Korea the next day.
That's pretty much how my grandma is.
Right. Yeah, my grandpa works all day, makes a lot of money.
Like my grandma, they've owned six houses and all on the same road and then two in another town.
Has your grandmother ever had a job?
When she was young, she worked in packing sheds, you know, for food.
No, no, but I mean...
No. Right, so she doesn't have a job.
He's 85 and still running his own electrician's business, but he's a worthless and lazy and an ass.
Yeah. I thought you said that your grandmother was...
In no way responsible for how badly your mother turned out.
I know, and I'm just starting to realize this recently, that my grandma has a lot of narcissistic qualities.
She's not as severe as my mom, but she has a lot of things that I think could have contributed to my mom, I guess.
I don't know. I've always idolized my grandma and put her on this pedestal, and I never wanted to...
And what do you think now that we're talking?
Sorry to interrupt, is there someone moving around or banging things around in the background there?
Yeah, sorry. Okay, sorry.
So now that we're talking, what do you think?
I think that she did have a lot to do with how my mom turned out.
And she has a lot of qualities that aren't very good.
I was really struck, Amber, when you were talking about how when you were a kid, your grandmother would say, go home, I'll call you to come back.
And then you'd wait, you said sometimes all afternoon, all night, and she never calls.
Yeah. Does she remember that?
Have you talked about it? Has she apologized?
I brought it up earlier this year.
You know, how much it hurt me that I would sit by the phone for hours and always think that she was going to call me, but she never did.
And it just, every single day, it was the same thing.
She said that she was just so busy raising her that she just didn't have time.
No, but she made the commitment.
Yeah. She asked for it.
What do you mean? Well, she asked my mom to give up to her and stuff, and so...
I don't know, she asked for the responsibility of taking care of her.
Well, and it's not like you coming over.
I mean, it's not like you would have been completely averse to helping her out from time to time with him, right?
Yeah. Yeah.
Right. So, you would wait by the phone for your grandmother to call.
And now your grandmother is waiting by the phone.
For you to call. Yeah. Yep.
What do you think? It's ironic, but I don't know.
She literally calls me every morning at 7 in the morning and guilt trips me because I don't call her enough or go over and spend time with her enough.
No, no, but you see, she was busy with the kid.
I'm not going to use his name.
She was busy.
Was he your half-brother, right?
Yeah. Yeah, she was busy with your half-brother, so she just didn't have time.
And now, Amber, you see, you're busy with your online business, and you just don't have the time.
It may not just be that payback's a bitch here.
I know. Like, by her own standards, by her own standards, you don't owe her a single damn phone call, right?
Right. By her own behavior.
Right. When she was much older than you are, you sat and waited by the phone as a kid when she'd made a commitment to you.
And she knew how difficult your mom was, and she knew how important it was for you to be out of that house from time to time, right?
So, I'm not sure how, when you were a kid, and she never bothered to phone you and rescue you from your environment, I'm not sure how she gets to demand things of you now.
Like, maybe I'm missing something, but I just, I can't see it.
Yeah, I know. It's just...
I feel like I owe her a lot now.
Why? Well, she helped me get out of my mom's house.
I went through a three-month period where I used drugs and I got in trouble and got put on probation.
And they released me to go back to my mom's house.
And my mom was abusing her prescription pain medicine.
And so it was just an impossible environment to, you know, stay sober.
And... I ended up having to have a cry for help where I cut my wrist a little bit, not enough to do anything, but enough to get put in the mental hospital for a little while.
And to avoid going to jail or having to go to a sober living house.
And then my grandma let me move in with her.
And she would take me to all my appointments for the drug counseling and drove me to work and stuff.
And, um, she had to give up, you know, she had to get all the alcohol out of her house and, um, lock away all of the guns and everything.
And so I feel like she gave up a lot to help.
How long did that go on for?
Um, so about three months, four months.
How long ago was that? It was the beginning of, uh, it was 2015, January, 2015.
All right. Do you think that...
I don't want to be overly cynical, so tell me if I'm way off base here, Amber, but do you think she might have done that partly to avoid the family name being dragged through the mud?
Probably. Because, you know, if she really cared and was willing to take you in, I'm sure there are times in your childhood when you would have been very keen for that, right?
Yeah, I know.
I always wanted to spend the night over at her house and stuff, and she never...
Right, so why not then? It probably would have done you a hell of a lot more good back then, and may have helped avoid the situation with drugs and so on, right?
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Was your half-brother still living with her?
Yeah, he still lives with her.
So how the hell did she...
Not have time for you when you were a child because she was so busy with your half-brother, but then could take you in for three months when the half-brother was still there.
I don't know. It's a good question, though, wouldn't you say?
Yeah. He's really not that much work.
He's really like a normal person, just acts a lot younger than he really is.
But was he more when you were younger?
Was he more work when you were younger?
Yeah. She homeschooled him for a year or two.
Yeah. So, you know, that was a bit of work, but, you know, there's no excuse for after she put him back in normal school.
Right. Just out of curiosity, when do you think your debt is paid off?
Let's say that there is a debt for this three months from years ago.
When do you think that the debt is paid off?
When are you even? I really don't know.
But to have self-respect, you should know.
Because you don't want this to be an open-ended check, like an open-ended withdrawal slip on the bank account of your relationship, because that's not setting your time at any value, right?
Yeah. Does she use this?
Does she say, well, but I took you in?
Or is this something that's implicit?
Yeah, she has used like the things that she's done for me as guilt trips and ways to, you know, get me to...
I'll tell you what I think about that, Amber, and I'm really sorry to interrupt you, but I'll tell you what I think about that.
I think the moment you use something, it's no longer good.
I only accept obligations from people for kind things they've done if they never use it to extract an obligation from me for the kind things they've done.
Because the moment they use it to extract an obligation, it's no longer a kind thing that they've done.
I do not.
I feel a lot of obligation for people who've helped me out.
But if they call me up and try and bully me by saying, well, I did this for you, and it's like, well, now you've just destroyed that.
The whole value of that is gone.
I am now completely even with you.
Because the moment you try and use your kindness to me to control me, it's bullshit.
It's nothing to do with kindness anymore.
Yeah. She's really very manipulative, and I didn't realize this until this year, the last few months.
Well, and I would assume that her calls to you have increased since her husband moved out.
Yeah. Right.
So she's lonely. Yeah.
And they've definitely increased, um, started his job, you know, about, um, my boyfriend just started his job about a month ago.
And, um, So, as soon as he started his new job, she just figured that she could call me every single morning and try to get me to go to her doctor's appointments and go spend days with her to make cookies.
I told her that I couldn't go make cookies with her and she told everyone in my family that she wasn't going to call me anymore and piss on me because I ruined her whole day and all this stuff.
Yeah. Yeah.
And let's say she didn't call you tomorrow.
How would you feel? I would feel like she was mad at me.
No, no, that's all a thought and a conclusion.
How would you feel? I don't know.
I probably wouldn't feel bad about it.
I wouldn't mind not having that hour or two hour long phone call getting in the way of my productivity or anything.
Right. And when was the last time that you had a very positive experience of your grandmother, where it was just great fun and you were glad you talked or glad you did something?
Last Christmas, we went shopping together a lot to pick out presents for the family members and stuff, and it was just a lot of fun, like bonding time.
Like a year ago, almost?
Yeah. Yeah. Ever since then, it's just been her calling me and pressuring me and going to spend time with her.
It's been a year, almost, since you had any fun with this woman or enjoyed your interactions, but she's been, like, what, calling you every day?
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
I feel, Amber, like only one of us is emotionally engaged in this conversation.
It seems to me like you're sort of reciting a laundry list or a grocery list or something.
I'm not sure why I care more about this stuff than you do, or seem to.
I'm not trying to criticize. I'm just sort of pointing out that you give me a lot of, hmm, hmm, yeah, hmm.
I really do care about it a lot, and I'm sorry.
I'm kind of nervous. Again, I don't need you to apologize, but I just want to be honest that I'm tearing the remains of my armpit hair out and...
Only one of us really seems engaged in this conversation.
Well, I really am engaged.
Okay. I'm just, I'm really, yeah.
All right. Well, I'll tell you the way that I approach these things and maybe it'll be helpful.
Okay. I don't do things...
Out of guilt. I don't do things out of obligation.
I don't do things out of fear.
I don't do things because I fear negative consequences from people.
I simply won't do those things.
And I won't even do them like, I'm never gonna, like, I just won't.
Because I don't want to feed, and I don't have anyone in my life who does that, right?
But I don't want to feed that kind of manipulation.
Every time you succumb to manipulation, you reinforce it.
You reward it. You know, it's like the old cliche of the kid who has a tantrum and gets a candy bar.
Well, you're just paying him a candy bar to have a tantrum.
This appeasement doesn't work.
Everyone's been trying it with your grandmother for decades, right?
And trying it with your mom for decades.
Oh, just let's just buy five minutes of peace.
Let's just buy an evenings of peace.
Let's just write. And what is that? What happens?
It just continues. It just continues.
And why would your grandmother do anything different?
Because it works. It's true.
It works. And I don't...
I don't do that.
Now, I am eternally dedicated to people who I take pleasure out of helping and who earn my good respect and my loyalty and my love.
But if people try pulling this manipulative shit, no.
I can't. Because I want to have a good relationship with people so I can't indulge their manipulations.
Because you can't have a good relationship with people who are manipulating you.
It's all just control and management and guilt and obligation.
It's all negative economics, right?
So there are people I'll move heaven and earth for.
Because I love those people.
Not because I'm afraid of them, right?
Yeah. And I don't do the negative economics of I'm going to do something to avoid a negative.
I will do something because of a positive, but I won't do something.
I'm completely inert when it comes to avoiding negatives because I can't have that in my life.
And I will end up having so little respect for the people if I let them manipulate me and for myself that I know that that just goes nowhere fast.
Sorry, go ahead. I really enjoy my time with her when she's not, you know, when she doesn't call me and tell me I need to come over and spend time with her.
If I, you know, there's times that I want to go spend time with her, but she never lets me get to that point where I want to go hang out with her.
She always calls me and tells me I need to go hang out with her and then that just ruins it.
So you've had fun with her since last Christmas because you said last Christmas.
Now you're saying that you do enjoy some time with her.
Well, this whole year, she hasn't let enough time go by.
She'll call all the time.
She expects me to come over multiple times a week.
She's only focusing on her own needs.
She has no consideration for your needs whatsoever.
In fact, any time I assume that you bring up your needs, she gets sucky or pouty or aggressive.
Yeah, exactly. So why doesn't she have any respect for your needs?
Why doesn't she understand that you have a business to run?
I think it's because she still sees me as a kid or something and just thinks that her needs are more important.
Really? So if she sees you as a kid, why on earth would you want to, like, why would she ask you to accompany her to her doctor's appointments?
Because that's not something you would ask a kid to do, is it?
No. So that's not it.
Why else? What are some other possibilities as to why she doesn't have any respect for your preferences or needs or time constraints?
Because it's all about her.
She just wants what she wants.
Yeah, that's right. Yeah, she's got the Amberbot, right?
The Amber robot. And if it doesn't give her what she wants, she just thumps the guilt button until it obeys.
Yeah. And it works.
Well, it works because you let it work.
I know. It works because you let it work.
It works because, well, I'll tell you why it works.
I'm sorry to have to say this, but I'll say it anyway.
Amber, it works because when you were a kid, you were so desperate for any kind of positive interaction.
And I say this because I know this.
You were so desperate for any kind of positive interaction that anyone who showed you the slightest kindness or the slightest niceness owned your heart and mind forever.
That's so true. It is.
It's completely true.
And this woman gave you a couple of gaps in the nightmarish, dark clouds of your history.
And because you're used to surviving on virtually nothing, anyone who throws you a scrap of food, you'll feed them forever.
When you were a kid, right?
Anyone who gave you anything owned you forever.
Yeah. That's exactly true.
I still have this weakness as an adult.
It's hard.
I have people around me who remind me of the past, who remind me to not forget.
I'm terrible at holding grudges.
I should be better at holding grudges, but I'm not very good at holding grudges.
But it's okay, because I have the memory squad around me.
Thank heavens.
Thanks, Zeus, for the memory squad of grudginess.
Yeah.
So, yeah, go ahead.
I would have a way harder time staying away from my mom and not letting her, you know, repeat past behaviors if it wasn't for my boyfriend.
What does he think of all of this?
He thinks my mom is completely insane and toxic in my life at all.
He thinks that she's a narcissist and has a lot of bad traits and I should not succumb to her manipulation.
And he...
Pretty much every, you know, he just thinks that, you know, if I want to spend time with her, I should spend time with her, but not be forced to spend time with her.
And he thinks that I need to put my priorities first.
And work on our business and continue to grow, you know, my life, because for once I have control of my own life.
Well, except you're spending an hour or two of the day on the phone with someone you don't want to.
Yeah. Right. It's like part-time phone jail, right?
Yeah. It's true.
So as far as practical things to do, I don't know.
Do you think you can change someone who's, I assume, pretty old?
I don't think so.
I don't know. I don't think that it's possible to change her.
Well, yeah, I mean... She's always been a very stubborn person, like, set in her ways.
No, no, no, that's too nice.
Stubborn is fine if you're in the right.
No, she's, um...
She's selfish, right?
It's all about what she wants and to help with what you want.
And if what you want doesn't coincide with what she wants, she'll just turn up the emotional heat and punishment until she gets...
She's a bully, right? Yeah.
And you're rewarding the bully.
Yeah. So, the only way to establish boundaries is to tell people, not ask them.
Not ask them.
Tell them what's going to happen and enforce it.
There's no magic.
It's a matter of will, and it's a matter of continual retraining of the other person until they respect your boundaries.
Or not. You can't fundamentally control.
So, you can say to her, I will, if this is what you want to do, I don't know what you want to do, but if it's something like this, you can say, this is not working for me.
I'm not happy. I want to enjoy my time with you.
I want to look forward to your phone call, and right now, that's not happening.
So... This is what I'm going to do.
This is not what I want.
This is what's going to happen.
I will talk to you once a week for an hour.
I'm sorry that your husband left you, but maybe you shouldn't have sold the house out from under him and called him a worthless ass for 60 years.
Maybe. Right?
Your husband left you. I'm sorry about that.
That's your fault, not mine.
You wrecked your marriage, not me.
So the fact that you're lonely because you drove your husband away...
Not my fault. Not my problem.
Falls into the big pile of things in the world called not my responsibility.
So I will chat with you once a week for an hour.
We'll do it, you know, Saturdays at 2 p.m.
or whenever, right? Or, you know, maybe she can negotiate a time or suggest a time.
And that's what we're going to do.
Now, if I find that too annoying, I'm going to scale it back to once every two weeks.
And if I find that too annoying, it's going to go back to once a month.
If I'm not finding that, I'm looking forward to it.
And if you're, you know, manipulative or whatever on the call, I'll have my appropriate emotional response.
Now, if I find out that I miss talking to you, I will ask you, because I can only tell you what I want.
I can ask you for what you can provide.
I will ask you if we can do it twice a week.
But right now, every day, it's not working for me.
Like, your number comes up.
I don't... I'm not happy.
And it will give you the opportunity to expand your social horizons into other directions.
So you can...
Yeah, we can set up a time or chat.
Once a week. For an hour.
See how I feel about it. Maybe I want more.
Maybe I want less. Maybe you want less.
Maybe you want more. Well, I know you want more, but it's not going to happen right now.
And then she will test the boundaries, right?
Well, first of all, she'll guilt you into it as a whole, and she'll play the helpless old lady, or she'll play the bully, or she'll play like a whatever, right?
And you can say, well, that's the deal.
Take it or leave it. I mean, if you don't want to talk to me, then I can't, you know, this is not working for me.
If once a week doesn't work for you and you want to take a break from the relationship, that's your choice.
But I'm not continuing the way things are.
So then she may agree with it after a certain amount of kvetching, as they say.
And then she will test the boundaries.
I know it's not the weekend.
I know I'm not allowed to call, but it's an emergency!
Or something. Like, there'll be some...
There's a mouse in the house. That'd be something, right?
Yeah. So she'll test the boundaries, as immature people do, as toddlers do.
And then you say, okay, I will block your number until Saturday at 2 p.m.
You will not be able to call me.
Then she'll call from a friend's house, or she'll borrow a friend's cell phone, and she'll just try and see whether you're resolute in what it is that you want and your willingness to enforce it.
And she'll escalate and she'll get other people to talk to you.
And, you know, there's these spider plotters, I call them, the people who sit at the center of their webs and they plot all of these little maneuvers and all these little, I'm going to get the little chess pieces of social enforcement and ostracism and attack.
And they move everyone around like pieces on a chess board.
I'm going to get so-and-so to talk to so-and-so who's going to call you and say, your grandmother's so lonely and how come you don't call her?
And she's going to just, you're going to move all these pieces because this is what...
Bored, unlikable people do in order to get what they want.
They can't offer anyone anything positive, really, so they end up just inflicting negatives from a wide variety of angles and people and directions and And then maybe she'll get your mom involved and, you know, get your uncles involved.
Like, who knows, right? Maybe your grandfather will.
Yeah, she'll definitely do that.
Yeah, so knowing all of this, right, doesn't necessarily make it easy, but it makes it easier to know that she's going to, you know, you put a lid over a wild animal, it's going to get kind of nuts for a little while, right?
Eventually it'll calm down, you know, you get on the horse that's wild, it'll try and throw you, and then after a while you can tame it and so on.
And you may say to her, I don't appreciate these gossipy reach-arounds.
Like, I don't appreciate you getting people to talk to me.
Oh, I never did that.
They did that, right? Okay, well, now we're down to once every two weeks.
Because, like, you have to train people who don't have their own inner compass, who don't have their own inner restraint.
You've got to train them like puppies.
If you want to do that, if you think that's worthwhile.
Yeah. And you can see how you feel through that process.
But you say, how do you establish boundaries with her?
Well, you establish it the way you would train any animal, is you simply provide positive incentives for compliance and negative incentives for non-compliance.
And you don't negotiate.
You don't negotiate.
Because negotiation is automatically you not getting what you want.
Now, don't get me wrong.
I'm not saying don't negotiate with your boyfriend.
I'm not saying don't negotiate with your friends.
Negotiate with people in good faith, but when people are acting in bad faith, you don't negotiate.
Okay. Yeah.
Yeah, I think that's been my problem with trying to establish boundaries with her is I easily give in to her.
And then it just starts it all over again.
Well, you're giving her all the power, right?
Yeah. Because if you say, well, I'm not going to call you anymore.
Okay. Okay.
You know, it's your choice. I'm not going to force you to call me.
Right?
And then she'd be like, "Oh, I don't have that power," to get her to comply by threatening ostracism.
Because right now, if it's been almost a year since you've had any fun with the old bitty, "Oh, no!" You know?
It's like, I don't know, like the tax department calls and says, "Oh, yeah, you don't pay your taxes.
We're never going to call you again." It's like, "Really?" Is that potentially the deal?
I know it's not. But you know what I mean?
Like your stalker. Oh, yeah, you don't answer my 10,000th email.
I'm never going to contact you again.
Really? Can we put that in writing and take it to a judge?
So you have to, you know, when you give people power over you, I'm not saying you're responsible for this, Amber, but you corrupt them.
She obviously can't resist the power of pushing the guilt button and pushing the obligation button.
But as long as you allow that button to be pushed and have it change your behavior, you're simply, in a sense, you're giving her...
She's an addict and you're giving her a drug.
Yeah, it's true.
And what you should do, of course, is take that drug and sell it on the open...
No, I'm just kidding. That was your...
That was not you.
That's my mom's thing. Right.
And I would also meditate just a little bit on...
Where your mom might have actually come from.
Yeah. I know.
That's been the hard part to accept as I've become more aware of my grandma's behaviors.
Yeah, you know, everyone, oh, you know, she's the exception to the rule.
And yeah, sure. I mean, there are different degrees of susceptibility.
And, oh, maybe she was just born this way.
But, you know, I've been doing this a long time.
And I am now going to occasionally claim the experience card.
Why? Because I've been doing this a long time.
I have had, gosh, I don't know, I did two shows for a while, two call-in shows.
I mean, I've talked to thousands and thousands of people.
Over the course of this show and more over the course of my life.
I've never found no cause for dysfunction.
You're like, oh, you know, I don't know, my grandma, she's pretty good.
My uncles are all fine.
But then, you know, but they're guys.
And guys, we don't get to push the guilt button.
It's the great weakness. It's why democracy is so unfair.
What guilt button?
What guilt button?
We don't get to push those.
Well, it's a pride thing and nobody would take it seriously anyway.
But women, it's like they're playing these big Chinese typewriters of guilt and obligation and shame and ostracism and punishment and Rumors and spread bad stories about you if you don't do X or whatever, right?
I mean, whether it's explicit or implicit.
Exactly. Women get to play the social organs like nobody's business.
But men, what do we have?
You can't even ostracize your wife financially because the government would just take your money and just give it to her anyway.
And this will set up a good...
This will set up a good situation because, you know, this woman's old, right?
But who knows how long she's got.
But Amber, this will set a few.
Do you want to have kids? Yes, I do.
Good, good. Okay. So this will set up a very good situation for you.
Because if you're good at setting boundaries with your grandmother, you won't have any problem with your kids.
But if you can't set boundaries with your grandmother, do you know what's going to happen?
Well, I'll tell you. I will tell you.
I will tell you what's going to happen.
What's going to happen is, there'll be a little baby in a crib.
And you'll think that baby is sleeping, but she's not.
Do you know what she's doing? She's listening.
Like this little, cute, baby-powdered NSA module in your house.
She's listening to you, Amber.
Do you know what she's listening? She's listening to you having all your guilt and shame buttons being pushed by your grandma.
And that little baby is gonna be soaking that all in.
And she's gonna be saying, as an amoral little baby, she's gonna be saying, Well, I know how to get Mama to do things.
I know how to do it.
Because she's showing me.
She's on the phone. Or maybe the person's in person.
And I could hear how to make Mom do the things that I want.
And as a baby, I just want what I want.
And I don't have any moral qualms about how to get it.
I'm a little amoral Lord of the Flies ball of cuteness.
And she's going to be listening.
She's going to be absorbing everything.
And then she's going to use those exact tactics on you because you have just revealed to the baby how to control you like a drone.
How to control you and swing you like a tennis racket.
And then you're going to be really surprised at how similar your baby is to your grandmother.
And it's going to be really, really frustrating and it's going to make you really angry and all the anger you have at being manipulated by your grandmother is going to get dumped on that baby.
That's not fair. It's not the baby's fault that you have trained the baby on how to control you because the baby's heard your grandmother's interactions with you, whether it's even on just one side of the phone.
And then you'll get so frustrated because you'll be like, everybody wants to control me.
Everybody's manipulating me.
Oh, so mad.
And you won't get mad at your Grandma, well, you really are, but you won't because your grandma can make you feel bad.
Grandma has got control, got power, got a history, got obligation, got authority, got elder state-ness.
But your baby won't.
And when your baby reminds you of your grandmother or your mother, which the baby will, maybe there's some genetics involved, but certainly there's the imprinting of how you Bow under.
To your grandmother. And your baby will, toddler will stop pulling the same tactics.
And I'm telling you, Amber, it will be freaky.
It will be eerie. It will be like, how do you know?
And you'll be like, did grandma suddenly die and her soul is inhabiting my toddler?
What is going on?
How could this be?
Oh, it be. Oh, it be.
And you don't want that transmission.
You really, really don't want that transition because it will be maddening for you.
We think we can contain crazy, right?
This is the great fantasy that we have.
We think, okay, just that relationship there, totally fucking nuts.
But every other one of my relationships is going to be completely sane and normal and healthy.
Nope! That's not how it's going to work.
Okay, I'm only going to have one leper in my house sneezing into the vents.
But the rest of my house is going to be completely healthy.
Nope. You can't have a better relationship.
I just said this on Dave Rubin's show.
I just did a show with Dave Rubin.
You can't have a better relationship than your least functional relationship.
Because the least functional relationship will transmit, defect, spread.
To all of your other relationships.
That's been my experience.
I'm not saying this is some scientifically proven fact, but it's what I've seen, it's what I've heard, it's what I've experienced, and it's what I've listened to for a long time, many, many years now.
And it's a working hypothesis for me.
It's a little bit more than mere conjecture because there's a lot of data.
So you need to have boundaries because you want to love your children.
You need to have boundaries.
Because you don't want to end up feeling manipulated by young and old alike.
You don't want to end up like the vacuous bologna manipulated sandwich with the top-heavy ancient bread and the diaper rash baby bread on either side of you, right?
Because it's going to drive you crazy. And you're going to lose self-respect.
And it's going to drive your boyfriend or your husband crazy as well.
Because he's going to see you basically turning into this big reactive button-pushing robot of appeasement and compliance.
And it's going to be tough for him to respect you.
And what's going to happen is your kids, who will be able to push your buttons because they learned how to do it from the button-pushers around you, they're going to try and push your boyfriend's buttons.
Or they're going to try and push their daddy's buttons.
Amber, how's that going to go? It probably won't work.
It won't work. It won't work.
So who are they going to respect more?
The dad, my boyfriend.
That's right. They're going to respect their father because he's not letting them push their buttons and he's not overreacting, you know?
They're going to try and push his buttons.
You know, he's not going to get mad at them.
He's just like, nah, it's not going to work.
Nice try. Excellent try.
I've occasionally given my daughter applause for things like, well, oof, fantastic.
You know, as far as the Oscar in manipulation goes to.
And she's not that way inclined particularly, but, you know, every now and then we're all tempted.
And what's going to happen is then you're going to feel out of control, helpless, disrespected, frustrated, and why the kids gravitate towards...
Their father. And then you're going to start to feel resentful and you're going to start to feel like you're a slave taking care and cooking for and cleaning so that everyone else can have fun.
And your kid's going to walk all over you and your grandma's going to walk all over you and your life is going to be...
To use a technical Latin phrase.
You don't want that at all, let me tell you.
You just don't.
Am I right? Yeah, you're right.
Right. It's boundaries or doom.
I'm really not trying to fear porn you into a corner here, but I'm pretty sure that's how it's going to play out.
That makes sense. All right.
Yeah. All right.
Good! Well, please let us know how it goes.
And while I didn't mention this as much as I should have, I wanted to mention it anyway.
Your AC score is six.
And I am incredibly sorry about all of that.
And it does give you some great challenges.
It does give you some great opportunities.
You know, the thing is, when you're a victim of child abuse, you either in general end up worse off or better off than the general population.
I feel like in a lot of ways I'm better off.
Right. Keep going down that path.
You don't end up in the middle when you've been a victim of abuse.
And of course, it is my goal and what I strive mightily to achieve, I think successfully, is given that you're probably going to end up either worse or better than the general population, I'm always focused on trying to help you end up better off.
Not so that you can be grateful for being abused.
But because it is the biggest F you to the abuse.
You know, I hate to put it that way.
It's like, okay, partly it's, you know, the best revenge is a better life.
And it's like, yep, thought you'd break me.
Thought you'd break me? Nope, you didn't break me.
I just broke the mold and stopped the cycle of abuse.
So thanks everyone so much for listening.
Thank you so much for calling in tonight and these nights that we have the great honor and privilege to chat together.
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Last but not least, the most magnificent tome, The Art of the Argument, Western Civilization's Last Stand.
