3989 Decoding Newspeak - Call In Show - January 31st, 2018
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Hey everybody, Stefan Molyneux.
Hope you're doing well. Hey, you know what I'm thrilled about?
Ooh, let me tell you, I am thrilled to announce that I will be speaking and meeting and greeting.
At hashtag a night for freedom in Washington, D.C. on February 24th.
Yes, that's 2018. If it's past that, you missed it.
It's too late. Hope to see you at the next one.
I will be there. I guarantee you for hours to meet and chat and back and forth with all of you.
I absolutely love meeting all of you.
So tickets are now available. I look forward to seeing you there.
That is a night for freedom, D.C., Come on out.
You'll remember it forever.
Did we ever have a great set of synchronous conversations tonight?
Two calls only, but real patterns that go very deep into the core of our own personal relationships.
It was two women who wanted to talk about family and children and future and love and history and trauma and And it just wove together so perfectly.
I'm not even going to tell you more other than, of course, to please remind you to go to freedomainradio.com slash donate to help out the show.
Very, very important. Listen hard.
Listen deep. This is powerful stuff.
Alright, well up for us today we have Taylor.
Taylor wrote in and said, I used to beat myself up emotionally for wanting that.
I even so much wanted to be a boy so that I could be looked at as strong, that I could take care of myself.
Or, to make myself feel better, I would be like the woman who has her man taking care of her, can't get the money, and is ditzy or is manipulating men because they turn on the stupid when men are around.
It's a torrent of thoughts and emotions like I'm not pretty enough or I don't take care of myself enough.
I always have dirt under my fingernails.
At times when I embrace my femininity, I feel in alignment with the truest part of myself.
But I worry because work in my mind takes the back burner.
I lose my work ethic and all I want is babies and a peaceful, tidy home.
How do I be so great he can't say no?
I'm a 29-year-old woman who has grown up in the wreckage of third-wave feminism.
I wish to be more feminine, but I despise and am jealous of the women who are.
I have been made to carry heavy burdens.
If I fully embrace my femininity, will I lose my drive, logic, reason, and motivation?
And how do I become more feminine?
That's from Taylor. Taylor, Taylor, Taylor, how are you doing tonight?
I'm doing great. Thank you so much for taking my call.
I really appreciate it.
I thought your voice was going to be more manly.
It's quite delightful. I just wanted to mention that.
Now, I have had the chance to have a look at a picture, and you're lovely physically.
I just, you know, very open, very positive, very pretty.
So I just sort of wanted to point that out, because that would be, I guess, some people's first question.
And is there anything that you wanted to add to what you had written in about it?
Well, I've just been thinking a lot about it and asking other friends about what they think femininity is, and a lot of them don't even understand the question.
So I think there's a general consciousness that we don't know what it is.
They want to talk about feminism as opposed to femininity.
Right. Right. Right.
So, I'll just give you the first thought that popped into my head, which was kind of interesting for me, hopefully it will be interesting to you as well, was, let me just see here, you say, I lose my work ethic and all I want is babies and a peaceful, tidy home. Now, Taylor, quick question.
Do you think babies are A, work, or B, not work?
Right. Work.
Okay, so the idea that your work ethic is somehow to be devoted to sitting in a veal-fattening cubicle under fluorescent lights working for the man or the woman, that is not a work ethic.
The work ethic is...
Being at home, raising children, having a peaceful and tidy home, that is a work ethic.
And it's actually a work ethic that pays off with just a little bit more than money in the old bank account and taxes in the treasury, right?
I mean, that is a lot of work and very rewarding work as well.
Yes, agreed. All right.
So tell me what has come out of third wave feminism for you.
I feel like that the...
Masculine traits are put above the feminine traits.
You have to be a doer, and you have to have drive, and you can't receive.
It's almost more valued and more precious than being feminine.
So I feel like it's more of the eradication of femininity.
More pantsuits and less dresses.
More pink, less Britney.
Yeah, exactly.
Exactly. Like the tougher, the men are into bitches, kind of.
Like you have to be mean, you can't be nice to men.
Right, right, right.
Right. Now, this question of femininity versus masculinity, I mean, we could take this six different ways from Sunday, so to speak, but I'd like to just start with the biology, because, you know, I'm really into the science stuff and all of that.
And the biology is pretty simple.
That women are sexy so that men make babies with them, and then women become a whole lot less sexy because they're raising babies, right?
Right. And the aspect of femininity is, to me, a very productive and useful and utilitarian thing, just as it is for men as well.
And there is something about modern women that they seek to either be masculine or ornamental.
Now, they can't be masculine because they're women, just as men can't be feminine, and I'm not saying there's not some overlap and blah, blah, blah, but fundamentally a woman can't be a man and a man can't be a woman in terms of reproduction and even the brain differences and so on.
So, women either want to become just like men or they wish to remain in that quicksilver moment of hypersexuality and ornamentation.
A woman cannot run a household in a wedding dress.
Right? I mean, the wedding dress, you know, originally it was supposed to be my beautiful bride and she's a virgin and we're going to go off and have fun on our honeymoon and so on.
And she looks beautiful that day.
And women dream of it and do look lovely for the most part that day.
But you can't live with that many hair clips.
You can't wake up every day and have two hours of hair and makeup and stuff yourself into a top of a wedding cake style dress.
So as far as femininity goes, the question is to me, well, what is it fundamentally about?
I've been thinking about this all day, so hopefully it will make some sense.
So it is about being beautiful because to be beautiful and to be physically attractive is to attract the most productive mate, the most productive male that you can find.
You know, your daddy's rich, your mama's good looking, that kind of stuff.
So being pretty, being ornamental is a display to show two things, to show that you have good genes and also to show that you understand that there's a game that's played between men and women.
And for the man, it's, I'm bringing resources.
And for the woman, it's, I'm bringing sexuality.
And I'm bringing post-sexuality, right?
Because remember, the honeymoon, prior to birth control, the honeymoon was like, okay, you go off, you run like rabbits, and you get pregnant.
So the ornamental phase is pretty short, right?
I mean, you meet, you date, you get engaged, you get married, you get pregnant, and then you spend a whole lot of time raising children, not getting a lot of sleep, not having much time for exquisite personal grooming, and you become a functional...
Child creator and raiser.
And household runner. And these are essential, important, wonderful, powerful things that women do.
The idea that you give up your power in the world by leaving work and merely raising the next generation.
It's like, man, you want to have power in society?
You raise the next generation.
That's the real power in society, not out there.
Punching the clock in some union shop.
So as far as femininity goes...
This idea that it's ditzy and it's manipulative and so on.
I mean, there is that aspect, but I think that kind of comes from women who want to stay in the ornamental phase, who want to stay in the Quicksilver phase of being as sexually attractive as humanly possible and stretching that out, stretching that out as long as possible.
And that, I think, is one of the reasons why femininity has become kind of strange.
These days. Masculinity has as well.
And, you know, when we have a man calling in to talk about this, I'll talk about more of that side of things.
But think of your friends, and I assume that some of your friends or the women that you know are in what you were talking about.
How many of them at your age have settled down, got married, and have a couple of kids under the belt?
I can't think of one.
Yeah, zero, right? I don't have one.
It's zero. Actually, I have one friend, but she married younger and it was a military marriage.
Ah, okay. Okay. Right.
So, we'll just say none.
I mean, we can include that one.
I mean, but it's unusual, right?
It's unusual. And the question is, well, because there's this thing, well, you know, men just refuse to grow up.
You know, men just grow up, man up, and so on.
And I think that's a fair criticism.
We may, in fact, be leveling that criticism against a caller tonight on this very show.
But it's also true for women, I think, in the West as well, particularly white women, which is, yeah, you need to grow up.
And one of the ways that you grow up is you get married and you have kids.
It's a very important... You can't be a kid and have a kid.
You can't be immature and be a parent.
It doesn't mean you can't have fun and you can't release your inner child like a crack and play thing, but you can't be a child and raise a child.
And it's a pretty certain way to grow up.
You know, like the boys... To me, a woman who just continues to date is like a guy who just continues to have Starbucks jobs.
And is a waiter and then is a bartender and then is a courier.
And it's like, can you ever get a career going that has a future, that has a pattern, a growth to it?
No! Because I need my freedom.
And to me, a man who doesn't get a career started is like a woman who doesn't get a family started.
Now, again, there's women who can't do it.
And I mean, all of the exceptions.
And I hate that I have to keep saying this, but forget about the exceptions right now.
We're just talking about the bell curve, the center, right?
The middle, a couple of standard deviations.
And you do have this yearning, right?
To have kids.
And you're like 15 years past when biology would first prime you for that.
And 10 years past when you could do it, right?
It certainly feels like it.
So when you think back on your last 10 years, Taylor, what sort of shape do they have in your mind?
What do they seem like?
Well, a lot of growth.
And a lot of...
Are you talking about relationship-wise, or are you talking about just like my life in general?
I mean, you've been an adult for over a decade.
And what's it been like?
Do you feel like an adult? Do you feel your life has shape and purpose and meaning?
No, because I'm in the film industry, so I don't think I'm an adult.
No. I mean, yes, maturity-wise, but fiscally...
And the fact of is that I've never had that pushback with a mature man.
So it's like, how can I grow?
So in the film industry, of course, you have like crazy hours, and it's really tough to have any kind of regular life, right?
Yeah. And also, they're really effeminate men.
They're really like Artistic.
They're not thinking about you at all.
And I'm sorry I'm really emotional.
It just cuts to Like, what I've been feeling pent up over a long time.
So I do apologize.
No, don't apologize for your feelings.
They're welcome here.
I mean, they're as welcome as thoughts in this conversation.
So when you started thinking about the effeminate men, the artistic men, as you say, what was it that came into your heart?
That they're like my dad.
And that I have to, like, take care of them.
And I think that that's why I despise women who I have to take care of also.
Because it's just like, I have to give and put myself out there before someone asks me how I am and cares for me.
Right. Right, so to be a woman is to be protected and to be taken care of, if you want to have kids.
And even if you don't want to have kids, given that women are shorter and frailer and have only 40% or the upper body strength of men and so on, the society needs to take care of women as a whole.
It can be a husband or it can be a cop or it can be a security guard or it can be just men around.
But to be a woman is to need to be taken care of.
Because they have the great treasure of sexuality and they have the great risk of unkind men and brutal men.
And if women get pregnant, then women are to be shielded and provided for and given comfort and...
Security. Because it is a massive amount of energy, as you can imagine.
I know directly, though not as directly as my wife.
It's a massive amount of energy. Just raising one child, you get two or three.
It's a lot of work. In the short run, I think certainly with more kids, it gets easier in the long run.
And so when you look at women who are being taken care of by their men, is that something that is, when you look at the men who are in your industry, the idea that they would take care of you, that they would be the secure rock that you could be protected by, the cave that they would be the secure rock that you could be protected by, the cave that you could curl up and raise your children in, does No.
And that's why I've stopped dating in those circles.
Like, I won't even entertain it because I've realized that by pursuing men or being interested in men in this sort of shallow pool of insecurities and, oh, I gotta get this gig and, oh, I gotta get that gig and, oh, I hope the audition came in alright.
Do I look okay? You know, I'm feeling...
When I do date them, I feel like the power has shifted where they're the ones that I have to comfort instead of me being the emotional one.
I'm like, well, let's think logically about this.
Or no, I'm trying to encourage them.
So I've...
I've gone polar opposite and I've had better results like dating lawyers and like engineers.
Right, right, right.
And the taking care of, I mean, that's, you know, we all want people in our life who love us and who will take care of us.
But Taylor, what's the taking care of with the feminine men that is different from that?
Um, they don't feel the...
It is the certain...
I feel like the ideal man's DNA is to be the protector, be the provider.
That's, like, who I look up to.
Be like, oh, wow, like, that's someone who's, like, an ideal that, like, other men can look up to.
And I'm not saying that all artists are like this, but the more emotionally unstable men that I've dated who've been actors or things like that, they're self-absorbed and emotionally tipsy-turvy.
Yeah, kind of needy.
I mean, I've spent a little time around actress and relentlessly ambitious, kind of needy, insecure, and they need a lot of propping up, right?
Yeah, yeah. And I was kind of perfect for them in that way because, you know, I'd be very supportive of them and, you know, and of their, like, aspirations and their careers and They would never, like, really ask me about mine or, like, my needs at all.
Right, right, right.
And the idea of them as fathers and providers and protectors is...
It's hard to make that leap, isn't it?
Yeah. I mean, it fills me with such...
Anxiety. Dread.
Yeah, tread.
That's a lot more accurate.
And I think my mom has had that because she's been like this silent rock to my dad who's been more emotionally volatile and definitely more emotional than my mom.
So, this feeling of like, that I'm sort of scared that I would have the same relationship in that model, in that type of model.
Yeah, it doesn't work, right?
No, it doesn't. You can survive, you can get through, but it doesn't bring the kind of love that women are yearning to feel towards men and that men are yearning to feel towards women.
Yeah. Right.
And so, just an example of when I was younger, my sister had this terrible boyfriend and She, like, got a restraining order from him, and he was,
like, threatening us, and so it would be me who was, like, staying up all night just to, like, check and, like, walk around the house just to, like, make sure everything was okay.
And I was, like, super young.
I was still, like, maybe a sophomore in high school.
So it's like, what the hell could I do?
Right. Let's talk a little bit about where we have an adverse childhood experience score of five, and I'm sorry about that, of course.
We've got verbal abuse threats, molestation, sex, rape, neglect, not enough food, dirty clothes, no protection or medical treatment, live with alcoholic or drug user, household member, depressed, mentally ill, or suicide attempt.
And since we're talking about femininity, let's talk about the molestation or sex or rape checkbox that you had.
Yeah, so it was, uh, well, it wasn't rape.
It was, uh, so, uh, so my sister, um, molested me when I was a kid.
Uh, just one time, but it just, like, really affected me.
Um, because I was, like, um, I must have been, like, four years.
Or like, less.
I feel like.
And I was like, really confused and conflicted.
And she didn't do that again to me.
And I asked her about it a couple years back.
And I was like, were you like, molested?
Like, who showed you that?
She was like, no, it felt good, so I just did it to you.
I remember right after, there was this picture that I have that happened right after that fact.
I was looking down, and I had a really depressed look on my face.
Um, so I think that that, like, being close to femininity, being close to other women could be, like, potentially dangerous.
Right. And how old was your sister?
Uh, she's five years older, so maybe she was, like, ten at the time.
So, certainly old enough to know better.
Yeah. And what did she do?
Um, she just kind of, like, uh, Rubbed herself on me and like I did the same.
I don't even know how it like came about.
Right. And how old was she when she had this crazy boyfriend?
It was a long, long period and Of time.
She was probably 18, 19?
To like 25.
Are you kidding me?
She was dangerous lunatic for like six or seven years?
Yeah, it was terrible. I remember putting the restraining order at my middle school and then going to high school and then putting a restraining order there too to just make sure it was on file.
So that's where the violence, the suicide attempt, her suicide attempt, that's that score.
Oh, so he basically hounded her to suicide?
Yeah, it was meth.
It was meth? He was a meth addict or she was as well or both?
Both of them, yeah.
And so, like, being around them, like, I've had a shotgun put in my face and, like, been on accidental, like, I rode along on, like, accidental drug deals when I was, like, barely in high school.
So it was, like, What is an accidental drug deal?
Oh, where you're just thinking that you're hanging out with your sister and you pull up in the back of the mall and someone drives in and they talk to them and then that person leaves and I was like, I realized later, I was like, oh my gosh, I went on a drug deal.
Right. What happened with the shotgun?
Um, we were, she always like wanted me around.
Um, so I came over to his house.
He lived with his parents and we were watching a movie and then all of a sudden they were like, what, what, what is that?
And they, like, turned off the movie, turned off all the lights, and then got guns out, and then put, like, the floodlights out in front.
And I was like, whoa, whoa, what's going on?
And they're like, we heard a sound.
I was just, uh...
And so I was like, okay, well, I'm gonna go in the kitchen and, like, get something to eat.
And so I went in the kitchen...
And spend a few minutes in there just so they could, like, calm down or something.
And then I came back, I opened the door, and there was a shotgun.
He put a shotgun in my face.
And he was like, oh, oh, I thought you were somebody else.
Oh, my God.
Yeah. Wow.
That's a hell of a story. What?
Where were your parents in all of this?
Taylor, where?
Um... I'm sure at their house, like, I'm sure...
No, no, I understand. But the bigger picture, like, why?
Okay, so she's got this loony boyfriend.
Why are you even in the same town?
Like, why didn't, like, move across, move to Japan, right?
Like, I don't... Where were your parents in all of this?
I don't know. I don't know.
Because that's their job, right?
Make sure that, you know, job one in parenting, no shotguns in the face of your kids.
You know, that's just, it's a kind of 101 thing.
If you can move up from there, fantastic.
That's kind of a minimum. If you're doing good, if you don't have shotguns in your kid's face.
I think they were in their own...
In their own stuff.
And I know that they tried to...
My dad tried to talk to him because he was being abusive, but she...
Your dad tried to talk to the meth addict?
Like that's the plan? Yeah.
Yeah. Jeez. Yeah, and he was like, well, you got to take the car out before you...
Something about test driving or...
His daughter, you know?
And so he said, I don't really know.
Yeah, I don't know.
And I don't know if they knew how to handle that.
Yeah. Well, I think it's clear that they didn't, right?
Right. I think that's an understatement, yeah.
So, what was your dad like that this was kind of any template for your sister?
He is incredibly smart.
He is really like a kind-hearted man with the...
He's gotten so much better with his temper.
It used to be really bad, but he's...
He's a really, like...
He is a good man, for sure.
He doesn't drink.
He's really kind.
He's a tentative. - Kind.
You realize why you kind of trailed off there, right?
No. Is there anyone on the planet, do you think, Taylor, who would listen to this tale of your childhood and think that your father was a kind person?
Or a good person?
Well, I think a lot of it was done behind his back.
And I don't think I told him what was going on, and that was my fault.
No, no, no, no. Listen, I'm not going to let you do that on this show.
I hope you don't do that at all, but I hope that you're...
I mean, I can't let you do that, right?
I can't let you blame yourself as a child for what happened, right?
He's the father. It's his job.
Yeah. It's his job to make his children safe.
It's his job to make sure he knows what the hell is going on in his children's life.
And it's his job to move heaven and earth to keep his children safe and secure.
Did he succeed in that job?
No. He did not.
I hope that you will never take responsibility again for that.
Because that's his job, not your job.
At all. At all.
And the idea that the only problem with your father's parenting was that you didn't tell him about things is not even in the ballpark of an accurate assessment of the situation, in my opinion.
Hmm. Right?
Mm-hmm. I agree.
Okay. I just, I get, you know, it's always the same because we're all such individuals and I did the same as well.
Which is glowing, completely horrifying stories of family life followed by glowing descriptions of parent.
Right. I mean, I don't want to paint it like it's all bad.
No, no, no. I'm not taking this false dichotomy either.
Okay, okay. You know, because that is...
Another defense. And it's black and white thinking, right?
So if you say, oh, no, it was all white.
He's a great guy. Well, there were these problems.
Well, he's not all black.
And it's like, neither of those is a rational response, right?
Right. Correct. Hitler was nice to dogs.
Come on. I mean, the all white, all black stuff is just a way of avoiding the feelings, right?
Right. And I'm good at that, so...
Your mom. Yeah.
My grandma, her mom died when she was two.
My grandpa was a Holocaust survivor.
He remarried to basically a Psychotic child psychologist who pitted my mom and my aunt against each other and basically did the most horrible mangala type things to her.
Like, every time she would have a bath, it would be ice cold and She would hold her under waterboarding.
So that was her childhood.
So any emotion, she had a very hard time expressing it.
Right. And the child psychologist, that was her mother?
That was her stepmom.
Right. Yeah.
So after my grandpa survived the Holocaust, my mom had her own type of Holocaust.
Right.
And what were your mother's thoughts about her stepmom?
Oh, she hated her.
And my aunt has this Stockholm Syndrome, even to this day, surrounding her stepmom.
Like, she'll still defend her.
And I was like, she was the worst human being.
And she would say, like, oh, she wasn't that bad.
And I was like, you didn't have an orange.
Like, my mom didn't have an orange until she was, like...
Sixteen when she snuck it in a cupboard.
Like, it was this...
She had two stepsisters, and they were all dressed up and pretty, and they made her two stepdaughters, my mom and my aunt, like, their hair chopped and, like, tried to...
Tried to isolate them.
And if my mom was invited to a birthday party, she would say, don't you like ever hang out with that person again type thing.
Right. Yeah.
And what was the neglect aspect of your childhood?
Well, I was always worried about money.
My parents had their thing going on.
and my brother had his, and my sister had hers, so I just spent, like, a lot of time, like, By myself or, like, giving counsel to, like, my parents.
How old were you when you started that?
Do you remember? Oh.
Started what?
Giving counsel to your parents.
Oh. I don't know.
Maybe... Maybe 12.
Right. And would they come to you for advice or would you just find them in emotional trouble and try and help them?
Uh... Kind of both.
Um... Because, like, we'd have family meetings, um...
But it would just be like trying to like deal with my sister.
And so I'd be in these meetings where we would just like discuss her and yeah.
Right. And how did your brother turn out?
Um...
He's such a jerk.
Um...
So...
When...
So we used to be close.
Um...
Not close as in...
Emotionally close or fulfilling.
Just more like...
Playing and...
Games and...
You know...
Watching TV together.
Um... But we've always been competitive towards each other, which is crazy to me when I think about it.
Like, it's insane to me when I think about it.
Because he is eight years older than I am.
And so, he always, like, wanted a brother, I guess.
And so, he, like, made me one.
Because my middle sister...
Like, she didn't really, like, play along or be as, like, rough as he wanted to be.
So, he...
He has...
He's married and has three kids.
And we don't talk at all.
Because I won't take that type of abuse, ever.
Right. And what was your first boyfriend like?
He was an engineer.
My first, like, serious relationship, first, like, real boyfriend was an engineer.
Would think about himself before he thought about me.
Would go to Disney World and take his family and then come back and then bring me nothing.
Just kind of Like, having him be like, oh, I had such a tough day.
Like, can you meet me here?
Instead of, like, him coming and picking me up.
Yeah, because, of course, you're used to being of service to others, right?
Yes. I mean, for you to have...
Needs and preferences of your own is not really part of the equation that you grew up with, right?
Or for people to take into account your thoughts and feelings and focus on them.
Right, yeah, totally.
Or they can listen attentively to my thoughts, but it's always about their situation or their Their needs.
Because a lot of people come to me for counsel.
Right. Right, right.
And have you expressed to others your frustration at not having your thoughts and feelings explored?
Oh, yeah. Yeah.
And what do they say? Well, my mom will say,
you know, she'll listen, and sometimes she'll say, like, well, you know, when I look into the past...
And say, like, I didn't have, I couldn't express, and then she'll say, like, well, we did the best we could, and I'm sorry that you felt that way, and I'm sorry that you felt alone, but we did the best we could.
And I was like, but you're not taking your ownership of the part you played in it.
Well, and she's saying that your experiences are subjective.
You know, I'm sorry you feel that way is what's called a BNAP. It's a bullshit non-apology.
I'm sorry you were offended by what...
I'm sorry that you're upset.
It's not you had a reason to be upset and I'm sorry for what I did.
It's placing all the subjectivity on your own emotions.
Yeah, totally. And with her, what will happen if I'm mad or angry?
At her for something that she did.
She'll withdraw.
And she'll cry.
And then I'll have to, like...
I don't do this anymore, but in the past, like...
You have to take care of her. I would have to go and comfort her.
Yeah. No, I know this tragic interaction.
You're angry at someone.
Their big defense is to dissolve and be upset.
Yeah. And then you have to put your own anger aside.
And if, I mean, you could or you couldn't, right?
I mean, you can call them out for their manipulation, but that can get pretty hysterical pretty quickly.
And then you got to end up taking care of this person who's done you wrong.
Yeah, but I've stopped that now.
And I have, when she's done that, I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no.
I'm the one upset.
I was like, no, I'm not doing that.
And what was your mom doing when your sister was hanging out with the meth heads and when you were getting shotguns stuck in your face?
I don't know.
She's very quiet.
Um... I'm sure she would be...
listening to my dad talk about it.
I just...
I mean, I just... To me, it's driving me crazy, Taylor, because it's like, why wasn't anything done?
How do things get to this extremity?
In a family, you got restraining orders, shotguns in people's faces, drug addictions...
Yeah. I mean, he did...
He was like, okay, well, we gotta, you know, get her sober.
Get her out of this situation.
So he did, like, have her go to another state and live with some relatives just to, like, get her away from this.
Because she...
She had some...
Some physical abuse as well as much mental abuse.
Sure. So it was like, no, that's it.
You're going.
But it was...
yeah how's your sister now?
Oh, she's good.
Yeah. She's married to a pretty solid guy.
And yeah, she's good.
How did that happen?
God? I mean, I don't really know how that happened, but she just put her focus in her In her career and she just met someone who she liked and just like decided to be...
like decided she was over it.
I mean it was amazing how much drugs she was doing and she was just like, no I'm gonna stop.
And does he know about her history of shotguns and suicide attempts and drug addiction and so on?
She's told him a little bit about it.
I don't know to the extent of all of it.
I mean, and it's much more sordid than what I've been saying.
Much more sordid?
Mm-hmm. Oh, there's like...
I assume that there's no amount of degradation or cruelty that didn't manifest in that kind of life.
Yeah. Right. Yeah, totally.
Like hitting her and having her teeth be broken.
And, you know, she was a stripper for a while.
I mean, it was just...
It was like no amount of...
Like...
Did she prostitute, do you think?
I wouldn't put it past that situation and where she was at.
So, I mean, possibly.
But now you think she's fine and she's got a good guy.
I mean, I don't think she's fine.
I think she...
Is dealing with a lot of resentment.
She was really angry at my parents.
But then again, I feel like we're just talking all about her.
No, no, no, no. I'm not talking about her.
I'm sorry if this is confusing.
I'm not talking about her, and I'm not actually that interested in her, Taylor.
I'm interested in your thoughts about her.
Because your thoughts about her are very important to me, just as your thoughts are about your mother and your father.
I'm not trying to distract from you.
I'm trying to figure out where your values are relative to your relatives.
Ah, gotcha. Okay.
Because that just, like, triggered in me, like...
Oh, I heard it. Here we go again.
I'm talking about her again.
I heard it. I'm never going to get any attention because I'm the functional one.
Oh, my God.
Yep, that's true.
Right. Um...
well, or is that subjective?
Let's see.
So, so she is a slightly No, I'm sorry.
She's not slightly. She's narcissistic.
So, if you catch her in a lie...
She'll squirm and say that it's not, and everything is up and down, and then you'll be like, but you told me this.
Like, you said this, and I said, and you lied about it.
And she goes, yeah, I guess I did.
And I was like, well, why do you lie about that?
And she was like, I don't know why.
I just do.
But you said that your sister was doing good, was doing well.
And now you're saying, hang on, hang on.
No, see, here's the thing, Taylor.
If you want attention, you'll get my attention.
You just may not like it the whole way through, that's all.
I mean, but I'll give you my attention, right?
Because, you know, you said your dad's a good guy and your sister's doing well.
Except she's a narcissist and she had her teeth broken out with physical violence.
She tried to commit suicide.
She was a stripper, possibly prostitute.
But she's good.
Come on. Oh, and she justified molesting her sister.
that would be you.
Because that's the part, Your sister, I mean, it's a tragic tale and she's welcome to call in, but my focus here is you and where your values are.
Now, why do you think I'm asking you about your values regarding your family and being annoyingly persistent in unpacking them?
Because you want to see how I interact and how I relate and the needs that...
I have deeply suppressed because of the necessity of the situation taking precedence over my needs.
Yeah. That's part of it.
That's part of it.
Because you're 29, You gotta move quick if you want the kids and family thing, right?
Absolutely. Now, if you gotta start moving quick, because I'm telling you, man, if you and I went on a date, Taylor, this is exactly what I would be asking you.
Yeah. Why would I be asking you this if I was putting the moves on?
If I was doing the play a game, why would I be asking you this if we were on a date?
Because you would want to know what you're getting yourself into.
I would want to know how safe I am giving you my heart.
Right. In other words, I would feel enormous sympathy for the tragedies of your history and the horrors and the evils of your history, Taylor.
But I would really want to know whether you got how bad it was and how bad the people were.
And if you started selling me this little fucking Disney World pamphlet of she's fine and he's good and my mom's just quiet, right?
I would be like, whoa.
This is not processed.
Right. You are still selling me a commercial of your family, which is utterly, completely and totally at odds with the empirical facts of your family.
Yeah, I agree.
The empirical facts are this is a clusterfrak of Old Testament proportions.
Yeah, I agree.
Like, I can't think of anything bad other than a direct meteor strike that could have happened that didn't happen.
Right? Right.
So, you cannot get a good man...
By trying to sell some bullshit story, and I'm not saying that you're lying.
I mean, you're genuinely responding in an authentic way.
It's just that it's not your voice that I'm hearing.
Because when I'm asking people about their history, Taylor, I'm listening to their experience, and then I'm listening to the propaganda.
In other words, I'm listening to your lived experience, and then I'm listening to the people who are saying, Shut up, Taylor!
I'm taking over because he's getting close to something that affects me, whether it's your inner sister, your inner mom, your inner dad.
And you should hear this, man.
When you listen back to this conversation, as I hope people do, and as the people now are listening to this, everyone heard it but you, which is you're sad, you're emotional, you're crying.
I ask about your dad and you say, he's a good guy.
Boom. Changes like that.
No emotional transition.
It shifts like flipping a card over.
Talk about your sister.
She's good. She's good.
She's married. She's with a good guy.
Solid guy. Changes like that.
And that means that your experience of your childhood is subject to severe intervention and For the sake of others.
And you know what that tells me? Because what you told me, Taylor, very clearly at the beginning of this, was you said, people don't focus on me.
I take care of other people.
I take care of other people.
Now, in this conversation, Taylor, you're taking care of your sister and your mother and your father.
You're making sure that their propaganda is put front and center.
And your truth, your reality, your lived experience is buried under the pamphlets of they're fine.
They're good. Now, I want to keep talking to Taylor, this inner mom, this inner dad, this inner sister.
I don't want to talk to them.
I don't want to talk to them either.
No, but you talked as them to me in this conversation.
Well, I don't wish to put on a bad light.
Like, I don't want to put them in a bad light.
Well, the horrors that you told me about, were they true or false?
Oh, they're 100% true.
Okay. So, empirically, they're in a bad light.
Ten-year-old molesting a four-year-old.
Sorry, that's a bad light.
Your family requiring you to patrol the house because some psycho who beats half the teeth out of your sister's mouth is circling the house.
You being in a situation where you're not safe, you're not secure.
You being in any situation where a shotgun is pointed at you.
Those are the facts. And then you say, well, I don't want to paint them in a bad light.
The facts have done that already.
Seriously. This is a mindfuck of astonishing proportions, and I'm sure you've pulled it unconsciously.
I'm not impugning any negative motive to you at all.
But this is a mindfuck of intergalactic proportions to say, well, here's all this horror, but they're good people.
My mom's quiet. My dad, he's a good guy.
My sister's doing well.
She's married to a solid guy, good guy.
No. Your father had a temper.
Your mother is manipulative as shit.
Well, I'm sorry you feel that way, but we did the best that we could.
That's just not an honest statement.
That's propaganda.
Yeah. And...
Your sister, I assume, was beaten half to death, was a drug addict, a stripper, possible prostitute, tried to kill herself and molested her sister.
Okay, so the idea that you don't want to paint them in a bad light?
Come on. Yeah.
If you were listening to this story from anyone else, there's no asterisk at the end of those stories that has me looking anywhere down on the page and finding good things in the footnotes.
You understand? Yes.
I do. If I had said about my mother to a woman, a date, she did this, she did this, she did this, but she's a good person.
You understand that that will drive any decent, emotionally self-aware person as far away from me, as quickly as if I were holding a hand grenade.
Because I want you, Taylor, to get what you want.
To get what you want.
And right now, The inner propaganda coming from your immediate family, I believe, is going to keep good men away from you.
Because when you tell these horrible tales, I'm sorry, that's not right, when you report these horrible facts, and then you make excuses or whitewash the people who committed them, it says, I can be manipulated.
I do not hold on to my own experience, and I can't get angry because it threatens bad people.
Now, what does that say to bad people, to manipulative people?
It says, she's going to be good for me.
Right? Yeah.
And that's why you keep ending up with people who use you.
Because you're used even in this narrative, in this story, in this conversation tonight, Taylor.
You're being used by your family.
It's not you who's afraid of painting them in a bad light.
It's them who's afraid of people seeing the facts.
Yeah. And I'm afraid of people seeing me in a bad light.
Because I allow this to go on.
Okay, what did you allow to go on?
Presently? No, what did you allow this?
You said, I allowed this to go on past tense.
What was it that you allowed to go on in the past, or did you mean the present?
I meant people using me.
It's like, it's so rote.
It's hard for me to...
And I'm getting better at it.
But it's hard for me to...
Like, it's like a song that you know, and it gets stuck in your head.
It's like the path is so well-worn.
Yeah, sorry, you said it's so...
I thought the word was rote, but I'm not sure what you said.
It's so... Just earlier.
Just like 10 seconds ago. It's so...
The path is so rote.
Like, it's so...
Already written, like it's preordained kind of thing?
Yeah. Sure. It is.
It is. It is because you're still making excuses for people in the past and then that means people will exploit those excuses in the present for themselves.
Yeah. And I see that.
I see that.
I mean, I don't see it when I'm, like, speaking propaganda because I don't want anyone to get too close, you know?
Wait, wait, what do you mean? So...
Oh, I know.
No, no, I know. Oh, man, that's good.
Good job, family.
Oh, I got it. All right, tell me if this makes sense.
All right. Your family doesn't want you having conversations like this with me.
And so what they do is they say, well, tell people the facts, Taylor, tell people the facts, then make excuses.
Because that keeps good people who could support you out of your life.
Which means that no one's going to be there to support your history and the anger that you feel.
Nobody's going to be there to challenge your ownership of what happened.
Well, and nobody's going to be there to support them.
Like, they're more concerned about...
Oh, they want you to stay there to support them.
Yeah. And if you get a true ally in your corner, that exploitation of you might be threatened.
Oh, yeah. Isolation.
Right. Okay. Yeah.
Because then I'll be gone, and then they won't have someone who they can, like, talk to and, you know, like, have someone who they can get counsel from or...
And what did your family tell you about the people who invited you to their birthday parties?
Um, like, oh, great.
Like, I would go.
You said something earlier about birthday party callback.
Oh, that was my mom.
So what did your mom say? That was my mom's stepmom would say, don't ever talk to that person again.
Right. Because if your mom had allies outside the home, then the craziness inside the home would become visible.
Yeah, totally.
Right. Totally. I mean, and they met in a cult, so I can tell you something.
And my dad comes from divorced parents and my grandpa like tried to kill himself after he left.
And my grandma's a terrible person and super manipulative and like wanted to make my dad a girl.
So it was like I hate her and she knows it.
And she's still around, right?
Oh, yeah. I mean, but I never see her.
I mean, rarely.
Like, I mean, here's our quintessential relationship.
I'll come in the house.
I'll say like, oh, hey, grandma.
And she'll go like, where are the plates?
And I was like, well, hello, too.
Well, hang on. Now, this is odd to me.
Why would you go into the house with your grandmother?
Oh, no. Like, she was coming to...
Sorry, I just jumped right into a memory.
I didn't let you... Oh, so this is in the past.
Yeah, yeah. So, she was coming to visit, and she brought food, and I was taking a walk, and I came into the house, and I hadn't seen her for maybe, like, three years.
And I was like, oh, hey, Grandma.
This must have been, like, six or seven...
Oh, wow. Maybe, like, Maybe like eight years ago.
A long time ago.
Wow. I haven't seen her for like nine years.
But I did see her this summer for my sister's wedding.
She came to your sister's wedding?
Yeah. Of course you would.
Well, they're super close.
Oh my God. Are you going to step out of propaganda land here, Taylor?
Oh, no, no, no, no.
They're not close. I'm being accurate.
No, no, no. My sister and my grandma are close.
They use each other. No, they're not.
Close is a positive thing.
Right? They may be codependent.
They may be manipulative. They may be using each other.
Close is not positive to me.
Right. And that's what's been programmed into you, that close is bad.
Which is why you give these horrifying data dumps of personal history and then skate off as if nothing happened and it ain't nothing.
Right? They're not close!
Right? Right.
Your sister and her husband are not close because he knows jack shit about her history.
Right? Yeah. That's not close.
No. You and your mother, I believe, not close.
Because you try to talk to her about the horrors of your childhood and she cries or she manipulates or she minimizes or she avoids or she dodges or she makes you feel crazy.
That's not close. Close is when you can talk and get feedback that's honest without manipulation.
Without trying to create some effect.
Without trying to get something.
Yeah. And when I confront my mom, she gives me the propaganda about my dad.
And I was like, no, no, no, no, no.
Like, I want to hear something.
Like, I dig.
I'm like, no, no, no, no.
Like, that takes no ownership over what you did.
What? I dig?
Yeah, because she'll give me these, like, bullshit blanket answers.
And like, like exactly what I told you, like, well, we did the best we could, but he's gotten better.
You know, yeah, I mean, I guess talking to you, I realized how fucked up I am.
No, no, no.
See, that's, you're missing it again.
That's propaganda. So what happened?
What did you just do? I made it my issue?
You made it your issue. Shit!
We're talking about your family, and you make it, well, I'm fucked up, right?
Oh my god, yeah.
No, you are a victim.
You are a victim. I was just talking about this with a friend of mine.
A poison container for an entire dysfunctional family.
Mommy's little fucking therapist at 12 years old?
Or younger. Younger, I bet.
I bet. Yeah. I bet.
They're vampires. Dad's therapist.
Right. My brother would just, you know, I'd come back to, like, his room or, like, his back house just for some peace.
And then he...
He went on low with a shit ton on me.
No, you realize we're talking about you and what are you doing?
Giving you more examples?
You're giving me more of a data dump and you're trying to distract me into thinking about your sister.
I'm trying to talk about you. Okay.
Right? Stay with you.
Yeah. Because you've got these strategies to feel isolated, to end up being isolated, right?
The data dump of terrible stuff.
They're fine. They're doing great.
If that's penetrated, self-attack, right?
Yeah, totally. Right.
Don't attack yourself for what you had to survive.
Ooh, yeah.
Okay, what's that? What did that hit for you?
Don't attack yourself for what you had to survive.
Yeah. There's something that...
Survivor's guilt, right? I don't know if you've heard this, right?
Mm-hmm, I have. And I've never really followed it myself.
I mean, particularly when it comes to childhood.
If you just have a fucked up family, all you're trying to do is survive, just to make it to the next day.
Yeah. And if you grow up and you survive and you make it, the idea that The idea that your cause lended, or you should have done something different or you should have done something better.
No.
I feel like I should have, though.
No, no, no. You did everything right.
How is being...
Being, um...
Like, the counselor and...
And trying to keep the dam from breaking all right.
No, you did everything right in the circumstances.
I wish you hadn't had to do that.
But you did everything right under the circumstances.
You had to prop up the family.
I'm gonna...
How old was your sister when she tried to kill herself?
Maybe 21, 22, maybe.
Maybe less. Okay, so you're like 15 there, right?
Yeah. Okay.
That sounds right. Family's falling apart.
Parents are falling apart.
And what do we do? What do we do with our parents when they need something?
We provide it. Hold the ship together.
We provide it. I know this from my infant daughter.
When my infant daughter...
Was learning how to feed, she would try to feed me.
Because when our parents need things, we provide.
Because most parents throughout history were psychos, right?
I mean, just read the origins of war and child abuse for a history of parenting.
It's on freedomainradio.com.
And... If you didn't provide utility to your parents, you wouldn't get any fucking food.
If your parents need something as a child, you provide it.
Because abandonment or scarce food...
Remember, most kids, well, half the kids didn't make it to age five.
And food was scarce.
And there were way too many hungry eaters around.
So we're all clamoring.
We've all evolved to clamor to give value to our parents so that they give us food and protection and shelter and all the things we need.
So the idea of saying no to needy parents as a child is incomprehensible.
That's been bred right out of us.
Because kids who did that, those genes, trust me, they didn't make it.
It was a game of food favoritism.
Food and shelter favoritism.
Or you get lost, you know, they have to like you to come looking for you, right?
So you have to provide utility to your parents.
That's the fundamental power that parents have.
Which I kind of got before I became a parent, but I really get it now that I've been a parent for more than nine years.
If I need something, my daughter wants to provide it.
I didn't train that in her.
It's just an instinct.
And you did exactly what was necessary to survive, because you can't survive without your parents.
Children cannot survive without their parents.
So if parents need something, the children are serving her own survival to serve the parents, right?
Right. And if threatened, or if you present your need, they'll, like, threaten to kick you out.
The whole system, the whole dysfunctional system, requires, desperately needs, and if you talk to families that are dysfunctional, I believe, in my experience, you'll see this over and over again, Taylor, You have maximum fuck-ups minus one.
That's the equation for a dysfunctional family.
Maximum fuck-ups minus one.
And that means everybody can be selfish and weird and needy and creepy and exploitive and raging, but one person cannot be.
That's the keystone that keeps the whole arch up.
One person has to not act out.
One person has to be the absorption person.
The quicksand for all of these bodies.
One person has to suck it up, swallow, and support.
Otherwise it doesn't work.
And usually it's the youngest sibling.
It doesn't always have to be, but usually it's the youngest sibling.
Everyone else is allowed to have their crazy needs, but one person in the family is not allowed to have any needs at all.
Can I ask you a question?
Yeah. Then...
Then why do younger, or like the younger sibling, why is it always like, oh, they're spoiled?
No, but that's a way of making sure that they don't have the self-esteem to have needs.
The best way to destroy someone's self-esteem is to make them feel extraneous, to make them feel useless, to make them feel like they're more trouble than they're worth and their status in the family is hanging by a thread.
I never felt like that.
Yes, you did. I'm sorry, I hate to tell you your own experience, Taylor.
But yes, you did, because we're all born with needs.
We're all born, you know, we cry when we're hungry, and we laugh when we're happy, and like as babies, we have needs.
And we wake up and we cry, and we don't stop crying until we get what we want.
And so if you ended up not being able to express any needs...
That's because you did not feel you would have any love or support or resources if you had any needs.
So you had to surrender, submerge and bury your own needs, which you had authentically as an infant and as a toddler.
You had to surrender and strip your own needs from your soul.
And why would we do that?
We don't do that because we loved and supported.
We don't do that because people say, no, no, no, I really want to know what you need.
Taylor, I really want to know what your preference is.
Let's see if we can work that into what it is we're trying to decide.
You had to have failed to have...
Because destroying one's own needs is a form of half suicide.
It's a form of half not being there.
It's kind of becoming a walking ghost.
Just there propping up everything, supporting everyone.
And we have to feel under a kind of existential threat to surrender our own preferences and needs in a dysfunctional family.
we have to feel that there's a significant risk that we will not survive or the family will not survive if we don't submerge our own needs and simply be there for others.
What happens if everyone is selfish?
I'll see you next time.
What happens if there's no one who's the buffer?
If there's no one that everyone can pour all that shit into.
The family blows up.
up and that's how much those who ignore you desperately need you yeah i won't even tell you how old i was taylor when i finally i remember this very clearly
I finally was sitting there thinking well, wait a second. What am I getting out of my relationships?
I was older than you.
And I said, wait, what's in this for me?
What's in this for me? This is a universal Western problem.
People say, ah, mass migration from the third world is great.
People aren't even sitting there saying, well, wait, wait, what's in this for me again?
What's the benefit?
What's the value? How does my life become better with tons of people from fairly hostile cultures siphoning off the contents of my bank account and driving me out of neighborhoods?
Like, what's in it for me? How is this beneficial to me?
It's the same thing with the DACA kids in the United States.
They have twice the crime rate of the domestic population.
Massive amounts of unemployment, single motherhood, massive voting for the left and bigger government programs, massive welfare consumption, two to three times the domestic population.
People should sit there and say, well, I get what's in it for them, but what's in it for me?
This is why your issues, that's why I'm spending so much time on them.
Because I care about you, but also because this is a big Western whitey problem.
What's in this for me?
And I was older than you, which is why I think I'm passionate about this subject for you in particular.
What's in it for you?
What's in these relationships for you?
How do they benefit you?
How do they make you a better person?
And how do they serve the future that you want?
You want to have a good guy, a stable guy, a happy guy, a rational guy, a guy with self-knowledge, a guy who's secure, who's intelligent, who's ambitious, who's successful.
How are these people helping you achieve that?
Or are they in the way between you and what you want?
Because if you're my daughter, great thing is I'm old enough now.
It could be true. If you're my daughter, Taylor.
No, wait, 29.
Yeah. Yeah, it could be 22.
If you're my daughter, first of all, I would know what you wanted.
And secondly, I'd move heaven and earth to try and help you get it.
Does your family know what you wrote to me to say that you want it?
If they don't, it means they don't care.
And if they do, and they're not doing everything they can to help you get it, they don't care.
They know that I want that.
They know that I want that.
And what are they doing to help you get it?
What are they doing to help me?
who Yeah. So you go to your mom and you say, Mom, I've got some issues with my childhood.
Now, if she wants you to have a happy relationship...
With the man, with the husband, with the father of your children, then she needs to model listening to you and caring about what you think and feel.
Does she? No.
She basically gives you a bullshit non-apology and says that you're crazy.
Is she helping you get what you want?
No, she doesn't say I'm crazy.
I'm sorry that you're upset.
Not that there's any objective reason to be upset.
You just have this subjective feeling of being upset for no objective reason whatsoever.
You're having an irrational response, Taylor, to your history.
Oh, and also you're mean because you're blaming us even though we did the very best that we could.
Right. Right. So, sorry to read between the lines, but yeah, I think she kind of is.
Nice try, though.
Good job, Mom.
Well, and they'll, like, defend each other.
Of course. Look, I understand.
You don't have to tell me one more damn thing about these people.
I got it. Sorry. I got it.
I got it. No, and you want to, because you want them to become visible to you.
They're visible to me. The important thing is that they need to become visible to you.
Mm-hmm. See, you have a choice, and you're at a tipping point in your life.
And I know that. So many people are.
And the tipping point is, are you going to live to defend the past or to build the future?
To build the future. Well, then you gotta get straight about what happened in the past.
And you gotta stop making excuses, and you gotta stop running the propaganda machine.
Because it's driving away good people from your life.
If you're defending bad people, if you defend bad people, Taylor, you invite bad people.
If you defend people, you say, well, if you're a bad person, I'm available for your exploitation.
That's the signal you give out.
That's the signal you give out.
Or rather, that's the signal that your family wants you to give out so that you don't end up with any allies and you remain a solitary agent of utility for the rest of your days.
Yeah, I don't want that.
I don't think they particularly care about whether you get what you want in life.
If your mother's a narcissist, then I don't sort of pick up my tablet and say, well, do you want to make a call?
Or do you want to look at Twitter?
Or, hey, what do you feel like doing?
Let's negotiate, right? I pick up my tablet and do what I want to do.
Don't ask. It's just a thing to me that I use for my own utility, right?
Nobody sits there and asks Siri how she's doing today.
I mean, if they do, it's just kind of a joke, right?
Because it's a utility. It's a robot.
It's an object. It's a thing.
I mean, the farmer might care how the cows are doing, but only if they're not doing well, maybe they don't give them as much meat and milk.
It's about it.
It doesn't care about their lives.
You say, "Alexa, how are you feeling today?" And you say, well, I'm feeling about not telling you.
you.
I'm feeling like not telling you about Jesus.
Don't be a robot.
Don't be an object.
Don't be livestock. Don't be a utility for selfish people.
Oh, you'll never have a life without being run ragged for selfish people.
They've had their life.
They've made their choices.
Your life, in some ways, is yet to be your life as a sovereign, independent entity, as a self-generated, self-sustaining soul of individuation.
I get what's in it for them, Taylor.
I get it. I get it.
You are a utility.
Not only what's in it for you, but what's it costing you?
To drop these horror bombs and then make sunshiny excuses for everyone.
What's it costing you in your life?
In terms of the people who are around.
It's costing me energy that I could be putting towards building my new life.
And it's costing you the inhabitants of that new life.
Yeah. I say, I say my mother did great evil to me.
My mother did great evil to me and I have nothing to do with her.
Nothing. What does that say to bad people?
What does that tell them about me?
It tells them that you better not use Steph or else he's going to have nothing to do with you.
If I can do it to my mom, right?
I can do it to other people probably a little easier.
You blocked me on Twitter!
If I can do it to my mom, right?
I did it to my grandma.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Now, I mean, objectively, of course, my mom did it for herself, but many people make up all of these excuses, right?
Okay, so you did it to your grandma, which is why we didn't hear too much about her in terms of the history.
But if you say, I have seen evil, and I do not have evil in my life, that means that good people can feel safe around you.
If you say, well, I've seen evil and I make excuses for evil and invited into my life on a repetitive basis, feel like joining me in making excuses for evil and inviting evil into my life?
I don't think that breeds a lot of security for good people because this is the point I wanted to get to, Taylor.
You say you want security.
I will tell you how you get security.
Are you ready? To get security, you give security.
And right now, you are not giving security.
Because you're speaking of horrors and making excuses that is not giving security to people who might want to come into your life.
Because here's all this horror.
I have no boundaries, no borders.
It's never going away. It'll be a part of our lives forever.
And want to raise kids in this environment with me?
And you say that you want security, but you're not willing to give security.
And it's terrible because you didn't get security when you were a kid, so you have this thirst for security.
And of course, when you're a kid, you shouldn't give security.
You should just get security. You shouldn't have to give love.
You should get love. Right?
You don't trade.
You don't earn.
You don't, right? You don't face the fundamental indifference of a busy world where everyone's trying to figure out and do their own thing, right?
As a kid, you should get this stuff like a conveyor belt, like a mudslide, like a waterfall.
The resources should just come to you when you're a baby, when you're a toddler.
Now, it's got to change when you get older.
You want to get to that tipping point where...
A child learns that you must exchange value for value because you don't just want to give everything to your kids and then at 18 say, off you go!
Right? Off you go.
Now go exchange value for value even though I've never asked or required of that.
18 years. So you should not have to provide security in order to get security when you're a kid but the problem is of course you're not a kid anymore.
You're, you know, you're within a pebble's throw of early middle age.
I hate to tell you, but you know, it's okay to be alarmed.
It's a fact, right? And so, once we recognize, Taylor, once we truly understand that we will never get what we should have gotten as children, you will never receive the security and the love There's a safety that you should have received as a child.
You will never, ever receive that.
To receive that now is actually not that good for you.
Because you're an adult, not a child.
Now, once we say, okay, I can't look at the world to just give me what I didn't get as a child, then we can start to think of reciprocity rather than being needy.
Because when we're needy, we're often exploited.
So, the mourning process, for me, and I think this is relatively objective, but of course let me know what you think.
The mourning process occurs when we say, I will never get what I should have gotten as a child.
I need to mourn that.
I need to... Recognize that that injustice and that wrong was incredibly painful, has had significant effects, and I need to recognize that I will never, ever get what I should have gotten as a child.
That's a terrible, sad thing to deal with.
And then, when you've dealt with it, you stand up, you dust yourself off, and you say, okay, now I can begin to approach the world as an equal to an equal.
I can begin to approach people as equal.
Not as, well, I provide you what you didn't get as a child or maybe I can manipulate you into providing what I didn't get as a child and we'll just trade loss and vacuum and manipulation and we'll try and juggle and pretend to be adults while we're secretly trying to suck at a giant imaginary tit of resolution that will never come.
When you mourn your childhood, you say, okay, I can't get what I should have gotten as a child.
I won't get it, ever!
That loss is in the deep rear view.
It's gone history.
Prehistory. Then you stop trying to get or provide or repeat things.
Because you think, when you were a kid, you think, well, if I take care of my parents enough, then there'll be security, there'll be love, there'll be stability, there'll be happiness, and I'll feel safe.
But it never happened. So now you get into relationships, yeah, well, I'll take care of this person, then I'll get security, I'll get it, and it doesn't work.
It doesn't work. You will never get the security you should have gotten as a child.
When you learn to mourn that and move past that, then...
I believe, and only then, Taylor, you can begin to approach people as a trader rather than a beggar.
Because that's what you want, is equality and the trading of value for value.
And men do it with status and women do it with sex.
What can I throw at people to get them to need me so that I can feel secure?
cure, but it never works.
It never lasts.
Hello?
Yes, I was, uh, just giving you some space to chat.
Yeah.
I like that traitor instead of a beggar.
And it's true now for women in particular because the divorce laws are so nuts that a man has to feel really secure to marry.
Bye.
I mean, I remember I talked about this with my wife before we got married.
She said if we ever get divorced, we're walking out with everything we walked in, nothing more, nothing less.
But we're never getting divorced.
And she was right. But it's tough.
You know, you have to be way above the norm in terms of trustworthiness to get Married these days to invite a man into marriage.
That's risky for men.
Especially if they're successful and have accumulated resources, right?
Yeah. So, like, I guess it's...
It's the mourning of...
of the needs...
that I didn't get.
And it's the...
it's the separation...
of those relationships...
Well, just recognize, I mean, what happens, you can go talk more to your family with stronger needs, I don't know, and I would certainly recommend therapy for that kind of stuff, but to me, just to give you an analogy so that it makes sense, I remember once helping a woman I knew, she'd lost her cat, we spent the whole afternoon going all over the neighborhood with pictures of her cat and knocking on doors and so on, it turns out the cat had wandered into somebody's basement and they'd closed the door without knowing it and we found the cat and so on, right?
So, If you think the cat's alive, when you know the cat's alive, or you believe the cat's alive, then you keep looking, right?
And you need things from people.
And you'll keep knocking on doors because you want to get your cat back.
If you find the cat dead, you stop knocking on doors, right?
And you mourn the cat. And now you can approach people without needing to get your cat back, so to speak.
Because your cat died and it's very sad and you mourn it.
And then you can have a different relationship with your neighbors.
It's not needy.
It's just something else.
Love is heavily involved with moral clarity, because it is moral clarity that brings us safety and security.
Thank you.
And by me not being clear and disconnected from the atrocities of my past, there's a disconnect between that.
So a good man is going to see that and is going to be like, whoa, you haven't connected With that and you haven't realized that you haven't processed that and that you continue to be used in such manner.
And he's going to have to share you with crazy people.
See men don't like that kind of competition in the house.
The competition is in the dating world and it's maybe a little bit in the engagement world but it sure as hell isn't after the marriage world.
And so, if you have crazy people in your life that you're defending and wound up with and codependent with and so on, they're going to be taking resources from his family!
It's a fierce, protective thing that men have around their family.
I don't want to share my bride with crazy people.
I don't want to share the mother of my children with crazy people, because she's going to be raising kids, she's going to be running a household, she's going to be doing the most essential work of the species.
And I don't want her manipulated by crazy people crying half the time and not sleeping and upset and angry and taking it out on the kids.
No! Environmental hazard called crazy people not around my family.
Borders, boundaries, right?
Men don't want, a good man doesn't want his wife to be randomly pillaged by selfish people because that's fewer resources for his family.
Because if he's earning, if he's out there busting his butt, bringing home the bacon, he needs his wife to be there, emotionally available, and there to support him in what he's doing, just as he supports her in what she's doing.
And if her resources are continually being drained by crazy people manipulating and using and setting her against him, there's another thing too, right?
If you have...
If you and I got married, your family would not like me.
I guarantee it.
And I'm good with that.
I'm really, really fine with that.
But it would mean that if they felt that I might interfere with their capacity to exploit you, they would try to break us up.
Right? I don't want that.
You need people around you who are 100% supported and committed to your marriage.
Divorce is a socially transmitted disease.
I mean, if your sister or brother gets divorced, your odds of getting divorced go way up.
Friends, it's a little bit less.
Close friends and so on. You need people who are committed to marriage, who are committed to your marriage, who are committed to their marriages, who take their vows seriously.
Because misery loves company.
And the more a man loves you, Taylor, the more it's going to tear his heart in two to watch you mistreated by people.
Right? Yes.
I mean, it hurts me.
Right. But you get the secondary gains of compliance and approval.
He doesn't get those secondary gains.
It's pure pain for that.
Because I'm like suffering for the family.
He's like, no, no, no, you're hurting our family.
Yeah, men would rather take the bullet themselves than have the bullet hit their family.
Men would rather be hurt themselves than have their wives hurt.
It's just a guy thing.
But why would a man want to be around you if you're going to be exploited and controlled and manipulated by bad people and defend them?
And they might try and break up the marriage and he's got to see you hurt and crying and upset and angry and it's going to be tough for you to be available for him and tough to support him and tough to be a good mom.
And I mean, why? Why would he want that?
I wouldn't want that.
No, you would not, which is why you've not got married to these needy guys.
Is it a defense mechanism to always be choosing?
I mean, in the past to choose?
No, you're not choosing your boyfriends, Taylor.
Your family is. Hmm.
They're making sure, directly or indirectly, they're making sure that you don't end up in a relationship that threatens their exploitation of you.
Oh, wow.
You're not choosing them.
They are. Wow.
Which is why you're alone. For now.
Right? For now. Wow.
I'm able to see that with other people, but the way you said it, now I'm able to see it with me.
If you love someone, you want them to be safe and happy.
You do. And if you're in a situation of risk, upset, exploitation, Anyone who loves you is going to say, this has to stop.
Now, whether it stops because you don't see your family or whether it stops because you can turn things around, I don't know.
I mean, that's a question that you have to explore in therapy or explore in therapy and in conversations with your family.
But I'll tell you this, I mean, there's no decent man in the world, Taylor, who will put up with you being exploited in this way.
And will put up with you defending yourself.
Some pretty bad actions in this way.
He won't do it. That's love.
He won't do it. Yeah.
He won't do it. And if he did, I would hate it.
If you did, you wouldn't respect him.
Now, if he doesn't, you'll hate him too for a while because he'll be putting you in an uncomfortable position of having to stand up for yourself and stop this exploitation.
But if you continue, at some point he's going to be like, like I love you so much.
I cannot watch this. I cannot watch you do this.
I cannot watch you go through this over and over and over again.
It is literally like watching you pounding your hand with a hammer.
I can't do it. It's too painful for me.
And a smart guy will see that coming up front.
That makes me feel so terrible.
Why is that? Because it's something that I'm doing.
Oh, look, we've hit defense number three, which is where you attack and blame yourself.
I thought it had been a while.
Good job. Well played, Taylor.
You know there's more than three cards in that deck.
I'm doing it.
I, I... No. See, and this is like, you want to know what femininity is?
It's getting sad rather than mad.
Whereas for men, it's often getting mad rather than sad, right?
Right. Now I'm thinking about Canadian philosophers.
Anyway, so...
So you feel sad and then you self-attack because it's easier than getting angry.
Safer, right? Right. Yeah.
Yeah. Healthy anger is very important.
Healthy anger.
Not destructive anger. Not murderous rage.
Healthy anger. Do not want.
Will not accept.
And can't be tricked or bullied or manipulated into accepting it.
What do you mean?
It's what you say to people in your life.
You say, I will not accept being manipulated.
I will not accept exploitation.
And I will not substitute other people's needs for my own needs.
Because that just leads to paralysis and resentment and strips me of my own future.
Right? So people call me, called me like before I sorted out my relationships.
People call me and say, you want to go out?
Or let's go out, or I want to do this, or I want to do that, right?
And I would say, I just sit there and say, you know what?
I'm going to have to figure that out.
Let me just see if I want to. I'll call you back, right?
20 minutes. I really like that.
Do I want to? Do I actually want to?
What's in it for me? Is this going to build my life?
Does this help me get what I want in my life as a whole?
And so on, right? Well...
If the answer is no, then no thanks.
This does not fit into my larger plan.
This does not... I don't want to.
Oh, come on, man!
Don't be such a hat. No, sorry, I don't want to.
And if they keep bullying, it's like, no!
I said no! Stop it!
Let me have my own damn preferences.
Or don't! But either way, I'm not coming.
Right? No. I'm not going to bully you into letting me, but I'm just telling you these are my preferences and if you keep wranging me about it, I'm just going to hang up on you.
And maybe people deal with that in a good way and it's freeing for them too because then they don't, or maybe they just explode and the whole thing goes to hell in a handbasket.
It doesn't really matter. As far as your own needs go, you need to build your house for your family, Taylor, and that's your house before you have kids.
You know, like there are birds.
The male spends a ridiculous amount of time and energy building the perfect nest to lure the female bird.
It's like an IQ test for birds to make sure smart birds are born.
Lots of mating displays.
And I think you need to build your house.
You need to build the house that you want to raise kids in, and you need to figure out who's there and what standards of behavior need to be expressed.
Because if it's inviting enough, you'll have your pick of men.
But if it's not, You're inviting a man in for heartbreak and having his marriage undermined.
No, we won't do it.
And I don't want that.
No, you don't. See, ah, good.
See, now we have a preference of yours, right?
Yeah. You don't want that.
So then the question is, why is it happening?
And the reason why it's happening when you don't want it is your family wants it.
To keep me around for them.
Yeah. Farmers build fences around the cows, right?
Of course. Now it's that I'm free.
Oh, wow. Yeah.
No, I mean, why let go of your therapist?
Right. Except, of course, you're not a therapist.
You're just a dumping ground.
Yeah. Right?
They dump on you. You dump on me.
I don't accept it.
Right. I break the loop.
I'm the youngest sibling with needs.
The most powerful around.
Is that enough to start working with?
Yes. Absolutely.
Will you think about therapy?
Yes. I... I'll sign up tomorrow.
Good, good. Well, keep us posted about how it goes.
And was the conversation helpful?
Yes, extremely.
Thank you so much, Steph.
All right. All right. Well, thank you very much.
You're changing lives. I appreciate that.
And thank you so much for your very open-hearted and open-minded participation in this conversation.
It was fantastic. Thank you.
All right. Thanks. All right.
Bye. Bye. Alright, up next we have Lindsay.
Lindsay wrote in and said, I'm a 27-year-old female and my partner of four years wants to have children in the next few years.
I'm committed to them and have no plans to jump ship, but have a deep misgiving about the idea of having children.
I was raised in a very isolated and dysfunctional environment by a chronically ill single mother who herself was severely abused and neglected in her youth.
I am deeply aware that I am not cut out to be a mother.
I am utterly terrified.
I will unintentionally or unexpectedly behave the way my mom did.
I couldn't live with myself if I screwed up a child.
Through listening to the show, I do take seriously what you have said about committed women approaching their 30s needing to think seriously about children, but every time I do, I go cold with terror.
Please help, even if for my partner's sake, as I do not want him to waste his life or be put in a terrible position if I turn out to be unfit for motherhood.
That's from Lindsay. Hey, Lindsay, how are you doing tonight?
Pretty good. How are you? Good.
I'm just going to assume that the last conversation has everything that you need to know.
No, I'm just kidding. Yeah, and then, well, I'll see you.
Thanks. Great chatting.
Great chatting. All right.
All right. So, you've got a...
ACE score, adverse childhood experience score of four, verbal abuse threats, no family love or support, parents divorced, household member depressed, mentally ill or suicide attempt.
I wonder if you could run through those for me.
So there's only really one family member of note.
My mom has pretty much just been me and her.
So a lot of those pertain to her.
She's always had a bunch of chronic illnesses.
She had MS from the age of 20 on and a bunch of ailments that come and go and stuff.
So obviously, since I was unplanned and the usual, and she was on her own, she didn't really have the mental or physical resources.
So she's the one that was depressed and Tried different things to get through it that just made it worse, like benzo addiction and stuff, which is incredibly easy to make that happen by accident and stuff.
I'm not in judgment or anything.
My biological father left when I was born, in his defense.
I've never met him, by the way.
In his defense, I don't think that at any point he said he was On board with having a kid and stuff like that.
That's one of your favorite types of stories.
Why did she not put you up for adoption to a nuclear family?
Yeah.
Well, the way she tells the story...
She had spent her whole life in service to her parents.
I mean, they were quite neglectful to her and kind of viewed her as a utilitarian thing.
And then right before I was born, her dad died after a long battle with bowel cancer.
So she was pretty much his caretaker in every way.
She had to translate like she...
She took him to Germany to get special care and stuff like that, and German's her first language, so she was translating for him and all this stuff.
She found out she was pregnant.
She had endometriosis, so she had no way of expecting it, I guess.
When she found out, she said, this will be the one time that I finally get to be my own person, have something that's mine.
Make a decision that wasn't mandated by my parents because everyone in her family, or I guess I should say my family, told her to abort.
Well, that's interesting, I suppose, but how was it beneficial to you?
I don't think that was one of the...
I think she just envisioned it was going to be something really unrealistically like I guess she thought it would be like a little her in every way and then it turned out I wasn't and I think she kind of and she had postpartum depression and the whole nine yards so so yeah it wasn't wasn't what she envisioned.
And when you say it was isolated, how so?
Was it physically or just emotionally?
Yeah, physically.
How so? So, she's never had any friends and she's very isolated from her biological family.
And then she had the postpartum and all that and decided she really wasn't up for it and whatever, so she gave me to my grandma, who was in a different country.
So I went there at the age of three, and I didn't really...
She stayed where she was until my grandma started to have serious heart problems that ultimately killed her when I was 12.
So my mom was in and out, and then finally, continually in that other country, like from the age of eight or nine onwards until my grandma finally died.
But while I was there, I didn't attend school or any, it was a, I won't say what country, but like a non-white, non-primarily English-speaking country.
So that's a big part of the isolation, just not being part of the culture and the outside world and so on.
Okay, so you were given up shortly after birth by your mother to be raised by your grandmother, and you were there until what age?
Your grandmother died when you were eight?
Oh, no, no. She died when I was 12.
My mom sort of moved to the country more permanently around when I was eight.
Okay. So for the first eight years, your mom didn't really raise you?
No. So she kind of did give you up half for adoption, right?
Sort of. Right.
And what was the country? It's fine if you say that.
I'd rather not. I can type it to you on Skype.
Oh, yeah. That's fine. Okay. Yeah, if you can do that.
I'm just for my own sort of reference.
Yep, yep. - Okay, all right. - Ah.
Okay. Middle Earth is not a...
No, I'm just kidding. All right. Um...
So then, your mother came over more when you were eight, and your grandmother died when you were 12, and then what happened?
And then I was...
So at that point, I was in grade school, like I was in elementary school, and I was taken out at that point because, yeah, my grandma was kind of floating the whole thing.
She was the reason I was able to attend school.
I had learning difficulties and the whole rest of it, so I wasn't one of those kids that just got their homework done and wasn't a pain in the ass.
I guess, according to my mom, if I wasn't overseen, I would just draw pictures on my homework.
I don't strictly remember, but I know I wasn't Doing well in school and stuff.
So we just took me out.
And from then to about 19, I didn't go to school.
And there isn't really much more to say about that.
I didn't do anything in its place.
Were you educated at all?
I mean, did you get tutors or did your mother...
I wish I would have.
I begged for tutors.
So she didn't educate you?
And she didn't arrange for any particular social life?
No, I mean, she was completely isolated in that country in every single way.
I mean, they're very religious.
They're very, you know, they, like I said, I mean, even though many people would speak English, I mean, it wasn't like the norm.
And yeah, she had no part in the, she just stayed home.
I mean, yeah, it wasn't part of it.
Also never learned to drive and stuff like that, so it was a long time until I could even move around freely and stuff.
Right, right. And what did you do all day?
Different people have asked me, and I still don't know what to say.
I would try to read...
Because over in that region, they would be following the UK system.
So I'd try to read GCSE books, and I hadn't learned to learn, if that makes any sense.
And I would fail miserably and give up.
In all honesty, pretty soon.
I'd probably barely get through chapter one of each subject or something.
Well, you have to keep going back until you've got something you knew about, and that's kind of humiliating, right?
Yeah, pretty horrible. And I heard the call.
I think the guy's name was Mark.
You were talking to an English guy, and his 15-year-old had been out of school for three years, and he just decided it would be totally humane to try to drop her back in school.
Oh, yeah, yeah. Oh, that's a while ago.
Yeah, I remember that guy. Yeah, yeah.
And I was... Yeah, that hit home.
I was like, okay, I don't want to say, oh, I hate that guy, but I just...
It's that type of passiveness or whatever that...
Yeah, that's definitely familiar to me.
Right, right, right.
Now, did your mother or has she at all talked about that this was not, this was a terrible way to raise a child?
Yes and no. So in recent years, she's been, I feel, I guess she matured a lot because she has less to lose.
I mean, she's She's 60, so she had me kind of late.
She's not as entrenched in some ways, so she was able to talk about it a little bit and kind of apologize, but it is similar to a lot of the other people that appear on your show.
It's always wrapped up in, you know, oh, but you didn't make it easy, and you weren't that great of a kid, and I didn't have...
She had an awful, awful upbringing.
Very, very abusive and neglectful parents.
So that was her yardstick unfortunately, I feel like.
But she knew that, right?
Yeah, she did. Yeah.
I mean, so she knows what it's like to be neglected.
I always find this kind of a weird thing, Lindsay, when it comes to parents.
You call them out on bad parenting and say, well, I had a terrible child that is like, so you know what it's like.
So you shouldn't have done that.
Right? Right. You know, it's sort of like, well, why didn't you make me brush my teeth when I was a kid?
Well, I have terrible tooth pain.
I have terrible teeth.
Well, so, so that's why you should have made me, like, you know what I mean?
Like, I don't know how it's an excuse.
To me, it's like, that it's put forward like it's an excuse, but it's not an excuse.
Why was I so neglected while I was raised in a neglected way?
It's like, that's not an excuse.
That's even more damning.
She didn't know how to do anything different.
What? Like, she said she wouldn't have had a frame of reference for...
No, she had a frame of reference.
She had a child begging for a tutor.
Yeah. Right? She had a frame of reference, which is, it's really painful to be isolated.
Now, parents can say, they can say, well, I did the best I could with the knowledge that I had, and I had a bad childhood, so I shouldn't be blamed for anything.
Okay, well, that's one theoretical possibility.
But they lose that moral high ground, or they lose that moral argument the moment that, when you were a child, they demanded that you do better.
Right, so if your mom as a child said, well, You shouldn't be selfish.
You should be this. You should be that.
Then she's saying, you need to surmount your environment.
You need to be better than your environment.
You need to be better than your impulses.
So if she's got to do better, and you don't get to sit there and say, well, I'm doing the best I can with the knowledge I have, they'd say, no, no, no, you need to do better.
That's not an excuse, right?
And so the moment that parents say to children...
That they need to do better than their environment, they need to do better than their current standards, they need to do better than their current knowledge, which all parents do, then they can't claim that rationally as an excuse later.
In other words, a 35-year-old or a 40-year-old parent can't have infinitely lower moral standards than the moral standards they imposed on their 5- or 6-year-old.
Makes sense. I mean, I had a bad childhood.
I know I had a bad childhood.
I know what it's like, so I don't want to do it.
But it's not an excuse.
Well, I was raised speaking Japanese, so I don't know anything about Japanese.
You kind of do. And she knew.
There's no... There's no parenting book that says take your kid to a foreign country with a different religion, Don't have a tutor.
Don't have any plan for their education whatsoever.
Don't instruct them on anything.
And that's great parenting.
There's not one single parenting book in the world that does that.
And this, oh, well, I did the best I could with the knowledge I had.
I mean, that's ridiculous. Imagine, I don't know how to fly a plane, really.
I've done a couple of flight simulators, but I don't know how to fly a plane, really.
So if I get into a plane and I push a button and thrust the throttle up and I go roaring off into the air and I crash into a barn...
And I say, well, I did the best I could with the knowledge I had.
What would people say? They'd throw you in jail.
Well, they'd say, you can't get into a plane without knowing how to fly a plane.
And your mother had...
Three decades, right?
She had you when she was 33, I assume.
So she had three decades to figure out, or let's say a decade, to figure out how to be a mom.
She had nine months of pregnancy, and then she had a year or two before you really needed a lot of instruction.
So she had time to read a few books on parenting.
She had time to figure out the best way to be a parent.
I mean, I must have read, I don't know, 15 books before I became...
A dad. And lots of books afterwards, and I've had parenting experts on this show, and I've consumed their material, read their books.
It's an important job, really.
It's the most important job.
And you don't parent stupid.
You don't parent ignorant and then say, well, I did the best I could with the knowledge I had.
If you wouldn't accept that from somebody getting into a car or an airplane, you sure as hell don't accept that from someone who's a parent.
What do you mean you did the best you could with the knowledge you had?
Why the hell didn't you read about it?
Why didn't you learn about it?
You're a parent, for God's sakes.
Pick up a fucking book and read.
While I was gestating, her father was dying, so I think she was wrapped up in that, understandably.
I mean, yeah, she had to do all the translations.
I'm sorry, while she was pregnant with you?
Yes, yeah. Her father was dying?
Yeah, he died, I think, four months before he was born, so she was traveling.
Yeah, okay, fine, fine.
So then you say, I'm having a really tough time with my father dying, and a good way to escape that is to plan to be a good mom.
You know, if life is ending, I can really dedicate myself to the life that's growing.
And also, she decided to become pregnant when her father was ill.
So, I don't know how you get to have that as an excuse when you chose to take the necessary actions to become big with child.
It's like, well, I was depressed because my father was dying.
It's like, well, why didn't you wait till after your father died and you'd had some grieving before you decided to get knocked up?
Because I think she knew my biological father was kind of already in and out of the picture and might not have hung around and stuff.
I mean, it turned out that way anyway, but I think that may have been part of the plan.
Yeah, okay. Well, but she doesn't get to say, well, because of this, right?
No, I guess not.
I mean, welcome to the wonderful world of trying to assign women responsibility and parents' responsibility and moms' responsibility, right?
Yeah. And it's...
I worry. It's ridiculous, of course, because...
Exactly the... I'm sorry, go ahead.
I know, but that's exactly the point of this call.
I am worried about...
I don't have the greatest view of women, not because of her, I mean just in general and myself and people and stuff, so when it comes to raising my own child, yeah, like Mike's read so emphatically, like I literally do go cold with terror.
Well, okay, so I mean that's a...
When people say I, I'm never sure exactly who they're talking about.
You know, with the last caller, there was her, and then there was all of her internalized family alter egos, right?
So when you say you grow cold with Tara, okay, how's your relationship with your mom at the moment?
Not bad. You know, I left the region of the planet where she's at last year, and it was huge.
I mean, she finally let go of a lot of stuff, and I think the distance helps as well because I'm not there.
I'm not a sitting duck for the different moods and stuff like that.
So if we do talk or have some logistics to work out or something, it's a bit more business mode and a bit more detached.
So it's good. All right.
Did you listen to the last call?
Yeah, I did. Do you see a pattern at all here?
I do. I do. What's the pattern, Lindsay?
Save me some time here.
Save me some aneurysm. What's the pattern here?
I'm sorry. Like, I'm defending...
Like, I'm...
Yeah. And so easily and so quickly, too.
Right? Sorry.
But that's why you're scared.
Yep.
Because you're defending this.
Your mom was terrible.
I'm sorry, like I just, in my opinion, flat out, that's terrible stuff.
I'm so paranoid that she'll find this, which is crazy, and she never will.
She doesn't listen to this type of thing at all, but that's the whole thing I was thinking before the call started, which I know is kind of crazy.
No, it's not crazy at all.
It's not crazy at all. I completely and perfectly understand it.
Because what you've made for your mom is a whole series of excuses, right?
Yeah. She wasn't responsible for getting addicted to drugs.
She wasn't responsible for having unprotected sex.
The father wasn't responsible for having unprotected sex while your grandfather was dying.
And she is responsible.
If you're An adult enough to have children, you are fully responsible.
Now, let me give you an analogy since the last call didn't quite get it through to you, which I understand.
These are defenses, right? But let me give you an analogy, Lindsay.
Let's say that your parents died because your mother was a drunk driver.
And you said, you know, I respect the fact that she drank and drove.
You know, she was a spirited individualist.
She just didn't conform to these petty, silly rules.
I respect the fact that she drank alcohol and drove a car.
And yeah, it was just bad luck.
You know, it was snowing.
There was a truck. It was just bad luck.
Now, if...
I heard that from you.
What would I think your relationship would be to drinking and driving?
Just really flippant.
Would I think that you were at risk for being a drunk driver?
Sure. Why?
Because I would...
If I was saying that, it means I haven't really understood that when people end up in that situation, they were responsible for it.
And I'll just think, oh, if I get into a car, like...
It won't happen. Or like, you know, drunk and everything.
It won't happen. It's cool, you know.
It's kind of hip. It's kind of, right?
So if you're defending drunk driving, and if you have a good memory of your mother, you're much more likely to be a drunk driver.
Yeah, I understand the analogy.
Let's say that your mother...
Through drunk driving, killed your beloved father.
She survived, he died.
And I say, well, what do you think of her being a drunk driver?
What's your relationship like with her now?
You say, it's good. It's good.
It's good. That would be kind of odd, right?
And if I said, well, what's your opinion about her drunk driving?
And you say, well, she certainly didn't mean to have the accident and it was some bad luck involved.
It was raining and, you know, who knows, right?
But it wasn't.
She drove the best she could with the reflexes she had.
And we have a good relationship now.
What would that sound like to you?
Absurd. And I see that.
Right. So, that's the challenge.
that's the challenge that you face as a mother yep because if I excuse it in her then I'm excusing it in myself Even if not consciously, I'm like making space for it to just happen.
Well, that is one excellent analysis, but I'm going to drag you down one level deeper.
Like it or not. With my words.
So, Lindsay, this is the one level deeper.
This is what I think. It's just a hypothesis that may have no truth in it whatsoever, but I'll just tell you what I think.
You can tell me if it makes any sense or not.
Lindsay, I think that it's your mom who doesn't want you to become a mom.
Oh, for sure. Wait, what?
I'm right? Oh, yeah, completely.
All right, good. Okay, on the right track.
This could be a lot faster than I thought.
So why doesn't your mom want you to become a mom?
She said... It's horrible.
She said, please don't ever get pregnant.
It's such a devastating thing.
I mean, like, it's disappointing. It's this and it's that.
But other than that, the world's becoming complicated.
And who knows how many years we'll all have chips in our arms.
Have one in our arms?
Oh, like microchips and stuff like that.
Microchips. Yeah, like basically surveillance and stuff like that.
Like a 1984 kind of thing is coming true.
Jesus Christ. And 5G and all this stuff.
Wait, 5G now? That's the new 1984?
Is FOSTA data on your cell phone?
No, no, no. Apparently there's a...
She was explaining how it sort of creates a grid of information like you'll never not be...
Perfectly geolocated and no matter what, just stuff like that.
What do you mean? I mean, I don't quite understand.
Oh, I haven't looked it up.
Just turn it off and take the damn battery out if you don't want to be geolocated.
It's not that hard, right? She was just using that as an example.
Okay, we can say that.
She's nuts, right? She's fucking crazy.
There's legitimate things to worry about.
Anyway, so it's stuff like that.
Well, I don't know. If she's really worried about things, she didn't seem to be that worried about you, say, having a social life and getting an education.
Yeah. And she doesn't seem to have a whole lot of regret about all of that.
So, excuse me if I don't have a lot of sympathy for the mom who says that being pregnant and being a mother is disappointing and she says that to her own daughter.
Yeah. That you, Lindsay, are a disappointment to me.
She's not worried about that, but boy, that geolocation, that's really bad.
Okay, that was just a recent example, but yeah, that gist of things.
Okay, stop laughing, please.
I'm begging you. I'm on my knees.
You gotta, because you're very charming.
I'm sorry. And you've got a great laugh.
I'm not trying to be charming.
I know, but you are, nonetheless.
That's my cover. I know, I know.
Because it's a horrible thing to hear from your own mother, right?
I guess it's only after listening to people like you and others.
Okay. Okay. You guess?
That I've started to think of it differently.
But until recently, I've been like, oh yeah, for sure.
Stop talking. Stop. Stop.
Please. Again, I'm not asking.
I beg it. You guess?
That's a terrible thing to say to your own daughter?
That being a mother is disappointing and motherhood is disappointing and pregnancy was terrible and No, you're right.
Is it a terrible thing?
Is that in the list of things you might say to your own daughter?
No way. Okay, okay.
See, there's the I guess.
That's the danger. No clear, fiery line of that's a terrible thing to say to your child.
That is a God forsaken, God awful, monstrously horrible thing to say to your child.
I had.
I had a dream when I was, you know, I had a.
I had a friend.
Who got married to a woman who had a little bit of a temper.
And they were having a fight a couple of months after they were married, and she said, I wish I'd never married you.
And it took probably about 20 years for that to play out in their marriage.
Because she didn't immediately say, I've just said the worst thing ever.
I can't believe I would pull that trigger on this marriage.
That is a threat to our entire bond.
I'm going to get therapy. I need to deal with my temper.
I'm so sorry. Let me make amends.
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right? Well, you pissed me off, right?
I don't know what happened exactly, but he remembered it very, very clearly.
And it took about 20 years for that to unravel things.
But he got her back.
That is, you know, there's stuff, I'm telling you, Lindsay, there's stuff you simply cannot say.
You cannot say to your children, basically, I wish you'd never been born.
You cannot say to loved ones, I hate you.
You cannot say to your spouse, I wish we never got married.
You can't do it.
You can't do it. It's either true, in which case the relationship is over, or it's not true, in which case whoever's doing it is a really ghastly manipulator who can't be trusted in any way, shape, or form, and the relationship is kind of over.
It's a grenade rolled into a bathroom.
So, I guess, doesn't come close to cutting it in terms of where your standards need to be.
And I'm not saying this to rail at you, because you there were caught between outraged Lindsay and defensive mom, and that's why you diluted it, right?
Yep. Can you imagine any circumstances or situation under which you would say that to your own daughter?
No. Right.
Why not? Why would you never say that?
Because that's me curtailing their...
First of all, it's me not trusting that they can even make their own decisions, that they're going to make good decisions, and it's not my right to say, I forbid you to do whatever, like, yeah, see your life going the way that you want it to be.
Sorry, I thought we were talking about being disappointed at being a mother and being disappointed in your daughter and all that stuff.
Yeah, I bundled it all up.
Don't bundle. Don't bundle.
Because you're just trying to distract me there.
Okay. Why would you never say to your daughter that you're completely disappointed or you're disappointed being a mom?
Or being a mom is a big disappointment or whatever it was.
I mean, if you decide you're going to have a kid, they might come out disabled in some way or another.
They might, whatever. But that's still your choice to have a kid.
And if they're not a copy of you, then tough.
I mean, you still... You still afford them the...
I mean, they didn't...
Whatever they do, they're not really a...
I mean, if you say they're a disappointment, that says more about what you were expecting than their actual, you know, behaviors.
Okay, so Lindsay, you are a wonderfully intellectual person.
Crap, that's never a good thing.
I'm going to try and, you know, avatar...
Style, I'm going to try and grab your hair and plug it into the horse of your feelings, alright?
Okay. Alright. You don't say that because it literally will break your daughter's heart.
Yeah. It is a horribly abusive thing to say that your daughter will never forget and will harm your bond from now until the end of time.
It's an emotional thing.
I mean, you can say, well, you know, you're expecting her to be a copy.
No, no, no, no, no. Right, this is where you need to get to, I think, to be safe and secure in being a mom.
It's because your daughter's heart will break and never, ever repair itself in the way that it would have been if you'd never said that.
It would destroy the bond you have with your daughter to say being a mother is a big disappointment.
Which is, especially if you don't take ownership, it's a passive-aggressive way of saying my daughter is a big disappointment, right?
Yeah. It's a bullshit cowardly way of saying that you, Lindsay, are a big disappointment.
You can't say that to your kids.
Like, that is horrendous.
Horrendous. It is a bond-breaking set of syllables.
And those bond-breaking set of syllables, people really need to understand them.
Like you cannot throw those verbal bombs around without shattering the connection.
Can you imagine having a daughter and refusing to educate her though she begs you for tutoring?
No.
Thank you.
I never do that.
If your daughter wants to be educated and children need to be educated and can't teach themselves, I think, that would be The first thing you would think of in the morning, right?
Okay, this is the plan.
We've got to get her educated, right?
Got to deal with that. Yeah.
Challenge. And can you conceive of the mindset where you just kind of drift along day after day, not dealing with it?
No, not at all.
While your child is desperate for knowledge.
What does she say, Lindsay, when you would beg for a tutor?
I should say that...
Going off of past experience, like, I go out of my way to ignore and just kind of, like, that I play with people's patience in a way that nobody can tutor and that it would be a waste of time and money.
Also, like I said, you know, because it was not really a primarily English-speaking country.
So it's your fault.
It's you're a bad student, and no one will tutor you because you test everyone's patience.
It's your fault, right, Lindsay?
Yeah, I hear it. Is that what she said?
Pretty much, yeah. This is not the ideal parenting show, ladies and gentlemen, because there's people all over the world jumping up and down, shouting at the top of their lungs at the moment, Lindsay.
I just invite you to be one of them over time.
So, you're a disappointing daughter, and I'm not going to get you a tutor because you're a bad student, right?
Yeah. Anything else that I missed in terms of the lovely Hallmark cards of tenderness that your mother regularly displayed in front of you?
Uh, no, not relating to education.
Well, okay. I went and got my GED at, like, 19, I think.
And, uh... She was like, okay, I'll pay for the flight, because believe it or not, I couldn't.
That's how backwards the country is.
She's like, I'll pay for the flight, but, you know, don't come cry to me when you fail.
And I passed. So, even way later into life, yeah, it was very tough to try and go get educated and stuff.
So, it wasn't just the childlike obstinance and stuff.
What is wrong with her?
Well, I don't think she likes herself very much, and unfortunately that's kind of how she viewed me, like sort of similar to her.
Yeah, but that's the working theory I have.
She didn't like herself?
Jesus, if I acted like that, I wouldn't like myself either, but I don't think it would be causal.
No. Turns out if you're a shitty person, you end up not liking yourself.
But I'm not sure that you're a shitty person because you didn't like yourself to begin with.
We are, as Aristotle said, what we repeatedly do.
Okay, let's try another one, because that doesn't explain anything.
And also, you used the word unfortunately, which is a very morally neutral, wishy-washy word.
It sounds nice, but we're trying to deal with your abject terror of becoming a mother, so nice ain't going to help us.
Anything that is nice is not getting us to the depth that we need, right?
I agree. Okay, so let's try another hypothesis as to why your mother would abandon you to a grandmother, Not give you up for adoption to a stable family, have you while her father was dying, put you in a foreign country, not educate you, say that you're a disappointing daughter, and say that you're not even smart enough to pass a GED. Why would she do that?
Well, kind of like the caller before, I suppose, keeping me in a position where I'm useful.
Yeah. You said she doesn't have other friends, right?
Yeah. Can't imagine why.
Such a lovely, lovely lady.
So she doesn't have any other friends.
And so, like a lot of single moms and single kids, I know it more, the sort of female single mom, male single son situation.
But she got to break you so that you stick around.
Yeah. What do you do with the slaves?
You hobble them, right?
You cut through their Achilles tendon so they can't run.
You said, I was raised in a very isolated and dysfunctional environment by a chronically ill single mother who herself was severely abused and neglected in her youth.
Right?
Bye.
Yep. No moral agency in that at all.
I was raised, passive, Very isolated and dysfunctional environment.
That's blaming the environment.
Before you talk about your mother, you give three words, chronically ill, single, which are excuses.
And then you make sure that I understand that, that she has no agency, because then you immediately say, who herself was severely abused and neglected in her youth.
Do you see how much is packed into that one sentence?
Yeah, I never saw it that way.
Not my mother raised me. I was raised.
Passive. Very isolated and dysfunctional.
Environment. Just the environment.
Not where my mother chose me to be.
Chronically ill single mother who herself was severely abused and neglected in her youth.
Who wrote me this letter, Lindsay?
You and your mom. Yeah, you're right.
Yeah, that's the power of guilt.
And to inflict guilt as a parent is sadistic.
What I get is that she's really cruel.
Cruel. If not downright vicious.
but in kind of a vaguely oblique, passive-aggressive kind of way.
And maybe, see, the question of agency and moral responsibility is foundational, and you called into this show knowing that I believe that the entire purpose of philosophy is morality, and that I, and you called into this show knowing that I believe that the entire purpose of philosophy is morality, and that I, you know this, that I am not a sexist, in that I assign as much you're going to be able to do it again.
I'm not going to do this soft bigotry or soft sexism of low expectations.
So your mother is responsible for everything she said.
You were not raised by an environment.
The fact that your mother was chronically ill does not give her license to be abusive and sadistic at all.
Some people who are chronically ill are very tender-hearted and sympathetic because they know how vulnerable their life is.
Ah, well, she was severely abused and neglected in her youth.
Again, that's terrible stuff.
But Lindsay, for about 150 years, at least, the knowledge of the unconscious and the knowledge that a bad childhood can lead to a bad adulthood, that being abused as a child can lead one to be abusive as an adult, this has been common knowledge for over a century in the West.
And before that, it was talked about in poetry and in plays and in novels and so on.
And so the idea, well, you know, she was mean because she was neglected as a child, but that's like saying, well, he died because he smoked, but it was the smoking that killed him.
It's like, didn't he know that smoking was bad for him?
Nobody can answer that question because, of course, it's printed on every cigarette packet.
You know, when you have Dr.
Phil in the daytime, when you have half the damn bookstore taken up with self-help books, When you have John Cleese writing books with his therapist, when you have the pursuit of self-knowledge, or at least the pursuit of breaking the cycle of history, as a foundational and central thrust of Western civilization for the past century and a half, or century at least, for someone to say, well, my excuse is I had a bad childhood.
It's like, no, sorry, that excuse was put to rest over a hundred years ago.
Everybody knows. You pick, let's say, your average non-Somalian Minnesotan.
Just average person.
Just go to a mall. Pick your average person.
And say, do you think that having a bad childhood, do you think that being abused as a child puts you at higher risk for being an abusive adult?
And every single person will say yes.
Now, they may get the degrees wrong, but everybody knows that association.
Everybody knows. So people who say, well, I did the best I could with the knowledge I had.
Okay, well, you knew that because you were raised badly, you had the chance to repeat that behavior.
So what did you do about it?
Did you get therapy? Did you read books?
Did you talk to anyone? Did you talk to your priest?
Did you... anyone?
Did you go to parenting classes?
No. But I just wanted to point out, Lindsay...
The reason you're terrified of agency is because you're not granting your mother agency.
The reason you're terrified of your behavior being out of your control as a mother is because you place your mother's own behavior as outside of her control.
Or, to be more precise, your mother desperately wants you to do that so you don't judge her.
Completely true. I'm sorry?
Yeah, completely true.
Right. So if you become a mother, Lindsay, your own mother will become progressively incomprehensible to you because you are a smart woman and you have self-knowledge and you care, you're open-hearted,
and you will feel a bond and a love and a connection for your child that would be so strong and so inviolate and so you will feel nothing but the desire to protect and nurture that child.
And it is through that process, my friend, that you will truly begin to understand your mother.
Does that make any sense?
It does a ton of sense.
I wrote that down.
Basically, don't excuse her behavior and stop placing her agency outside of herself because then I'll see myself like that and not course-correct along the way and then wonder why everything went wrong.
Yeah. And you will...
You will remember what your mother did to you, and you will look at your daughter, and you will feel some very strong emotions towards your mother, which she does not want you to feel.
Which is why she's trying to talk you out of being a mother.
Both for the fact that it will take resources away from her, that I'm sure she wants, but also because if you're a good mom, and I think you will be, Lindsay, if you're a good mom, You will get really pissed at your mom.
Because you, you had a bad childhood.
If you're able to be a good mom while having a bad childhood, what the hell's her excuse?
I cannot...
I genuinely cannot comprehend my own mother.
How you could do such things to your children.
I mean, children are so much fun, and they're so funny, and they're so engaging, and they're so joyful.
My daughter skips everywhere.
She is...
We were just talking about this the other day, and I couldn't remember the last time she was angry, and I couldn't remember the last time she was sad.
Oh, no, I could remember the last time she was sad.
It had nothing to do with anything inside the family, but it lasted about 20 minutes, and then she was perfectly fine again.
and we talked about it and worked through it and all.
And the idea that you would scream and hit and beat and, I mean, I've never felt further from the past than when I bred a different future.
My mother strikes me now as like a different species.
There's a difference between a pleasant cat and a raging tiger.
It's a difference. Okay. Both cats, I guess.
Diversity. It's diversity.
I know. Let's take a dog, a wolf, a hyena, and a jackal.
Put them in a room and see how they get along.
Because they're all dogs, right? So...
If you...
A tender-hearted mother.
I think you will be.
You want to deal with that question of moral judgment before you are holding that child in your hand.
In your hands. Because it's going to be pretty destabilizing to realize that your mother had a choice.
Your mother had a choice.
And your mother is what she repeatedly did.
And you're going to be kind of pissed.
Because if you can do it, she could have done it.
Sorry, go ahead. No, to even get to this point, it's only really been the last few years, like I'd say four years, that I've been able to think like this at all.
So I hope that I do get more pissed, and I hope that I do...
Yeah, stop putting it on myself.
If only I had been like an A student.
Yeah, so I can hear it.
Yeah, children should not have to earn the love of their parents, certainly when they're very young.
Of course, right? That's conditional love.
Unconditional love is perfectly necessary and moral for infants and toddlers.
It's not conditional love, but it's love with standards.
As they get older, because you need to prepare them for adulthood where people aren't going to be massively invested in making their life wonderful.
People are going to be trying to do their own lives and people are going to look to each other for utility and value rather than the automatic connection of family.
So, if you're terrified that you will unintentionally and unexpectedly behave the way that your mom did, I just need you to read.
I'm going to read these sentences to you back.
I know I did the first one.
But I need you to understand how these dominoes fall one after another.
I was raised in a very isolated and dysfunctional environment by a chronically ill single mother who herself was severely abused and neglected in her youth.
Right?
No moral agency, no responsibility.
I am deeply aware that I am not cut out to be a mother.
I am utterly terrified I will unintentionally and unexpectedly behave the way that my mom did.
Do you see how these two sentences are tightly related?
Thank you.
Yeah. Her past was responsible for who she became and what she did, and therefore your past will also take you over like a demon and make you do things you will regret.
With the difference being that your mother does not seem to regret much, but continues to inflict crazy stuff on your thinking.
I mean, it's funny because there's this funny depopulation thing going on among the White West.
You see this everywhere. Don't have kids, don't have kids.
A lot of it is because the boomers were very selfish and the younger generation has some of that as well.
And I think that there is some concern in our culture as a whole for the older generation.
If the younger generation has learned enough to not put their kids in daycare and to be there and to not...
Have nannies, but instead raise their own children.
That's going to cause problems for the elder generation, because the younger generation who has connected parenting, peaceful parenting, I think they're going to go through that experience and look at their parents and say, what the hell were you thinking?
Why was I in daycare?
Why was I in another country for eight years?
You know, it's funny because, it's not funny of course, but your mom says parenting was a big disappointment, but I can't really see that she did a whole lot of it for the first eight years.
And I think you have a hell of a lot more reason to be disappointed than your mom did.
I think she thought it would be like a...
Like a shrinky dink or something, like just bake me for a few years and I'll sort of pop out as a helpful adult.
And I obviously will never do that to my own kids or kid or whatever.
And this idea, well, you're a disappointing daughter.
It's like, well, seems to me she was kind of a disappointing mom, but only one of you had a choice.
You know, we look back.
We look back at doctors like, I don't know, 200 years ago.
They didn't even know the blood circulated around the body.
They didn't really know the purpose of the internal organs.
They thought that bleeding people out was really great for disease.
They had believed in the humors and leeches.
We look back and we say, God, that was barbaric.
What the hell were they thinking? Well, I think we're going to look back at parenting in the future, if there's a future to be worth having.
We'll look back at parenting and say, man, from the 60s onward, what the hell were they thinking?
Yeah, that'd be great.
So, if she has responsibility, if she has moral agency, Lindsay, then so do you.
We can't claim more free will than we're willing to grant to our parents.
It's one of these sad, real, emotional truths.
I mean, there are all these intellectual arguments.
I'm working on a book at the moment.
It's all these intellectual arguments of free will, but the big question is why do people resist it so much?
Well, If your parents want to make excuses for themselves, then they will claim that they were a mere product of their environment, they did the best they could with the knowledge they had, and they're not responsible or to blame at all.
Well, that helps them, but it hurts you.
Because we are integrating machines in our brains.
Every principle, every excuse, every objective argument we make, we absorb.
We internalize. My parents had a bad childhood.
They acted out. They're not responsible.
Of course you're going to be terrified having children.
Because you've just said, through those dominoes, you're going to be a bad parent.
Of course you're afraid of having children.
That's the price of not giving your mother moral agency, is you're afraid of becoming a mom.
Because she didn't have...
She had no desire to be a bad mom.
She did the best she could with the knowledge she had.
She's no moral agency, no responsibility.
It just happened because she had a bad childhood.
Well, of course, if you say all human beings who have bad childhoods become bad mothers, well, you had a bad childhood, so what are you going to become?
By that logic, a bad mother.
Right. And that's how forgiveness enslaves us.
False forgiveness. See, there's a forgiveness that's earned.
There's a forgiveness that comes because people say, I did wrong.
I'm sorry. Here's my restitution.
Right? And then we forgive if we feel it.
Right? Because it has to be earned.
Forgiveness has to be earned. Like everything.
As an adult. Maybe not as a, you know, your toddler pees on you by accident.
Okay? You forgive that because it's a toddler.
But as an adult, everything has to be earned.
As an adult, everything has to be earned.
I have to earn your attention in this conversation.
I have to try and provide value for my amateur ping-pong ball of self-knowledge.
And so the price of false forgiveness is self-mistrust.
The price of saying others are not responsible is you lose control over your own life.
The price of forgiving genuine wrongs in the past without people earning it.
The price of artificially forgiving deep wrongs in the past is fearing personal deep wrongs in the future.
If we falsely forgive our parents for being part of the cycle of violence, we genuinely fear ourselves being part of that same cycle.
That's amazing, yeah.
Right? And that's why those two sentences had to come one after the other.
My mother had no agency.
I'm terrified of repeating her behavior.
Well, sure. If she had no agency and her bad childhood just moved her like a big puppet master, well, you had a bad childhood, same puppet master is going to make you do terrible things, right?
Yeah, I really don't want that.
She actually calls me a self-help addict because of the past four years.
Yeah, trying different things, been to a couple of seminars.
I mean, a lot of it is kind of lame, but I am learning along the way.
And do you know why she calls you a self-help addict?
You know this one, right? I can guess because it's threatening to her.
Because she's desperately afraid.
Desperately afraid that someone is going to point her out for who she is.
Yeah. And trust me, there are a lot of people who won't.
But you call into the show.
that's about morality and responsibility, particularly female agency.
Yep.
Is the audio going...
No, I know I sometimes speak a lot, so I want to make sure there's room if you wanted to add anything.
Does this help in terms of looking into the future and choosing a different path?
Yeah, that had never clicked for me before that by continually excusing her, it's like, then I think that I don't have Agency when I'm raising my own kid and then I'm like, oh, this awful stuff happened.
It must be because of demons and spirits.
Wait, demons and spirits?
No, it's just an analogy like that I'm putting agency outside of myself.
So it must be something esoteric or whatever guiding me to, well, like instead of course correcting and changing my behavior, if I If I'm doing something that's not right to my kid that I would then follow what she does and say it's out of my control.
So yeah, it's awesome.
It has never clicked for me like that before.
Good. Good.
I think you'll be a great mom. I worry that I won't be able to to support my kids having fun.
Like I myself seem to be unable to have fun.
I'm sure I was better at it when I was younger.
But these days, I pretty much have no hobbies.
And it's a huge point of contention with my partner who's all about fun.
And I know you'll kind of like him right off the bat because he plays a lot of D&D.
And he's really into it.
He talks about if we have a kid, he can't wait to teach him to play D&D and other things like that.
Like how to be interested in engineering and different video games and stuff like that.
But I also noticed every time he identifies the kid, he says, I'm so into teaching him.
I'm like, what if it's a girl?
And he was silent. And I get it.
We're not as...
We're not as fun. We're not...
I mean, largely, like, obviously...
I'm sorry, what now? Girls aren't as fun?
Like, uh...
Yeah. No, no, no, no.
Like he was... You know I have a daughter, right?
I do, I do. I meant largely like we're not the ones that are sitting there playing sort of RTS games for 18 hours and kind of the stuff that he's into doing.
Yeah, well, he can kiss all that goodbye when he becomes a dad, so enjoy it while you can, my friend.
Enjoy it while you can. It'll come back later, but...
Well, look, I mean, Lindsay, you've got to know this, right?
I mean, your mom's disappointed in you when you think girls aren't fun, right?
Yeah, I can see there must be some...
You think there may be a smidge of a connection there?
Your mom didn't take pleasure in you, and therefore, you know, children rise to your expectations in many ways, or don't.
And the other thing, too, is that...
It's interesting because you've been quite merry at times.
I know it's been a bit odd, but you've been quite merry at times.
You say you don't have any fun in this conversation.
But the reason, if it's true, right, if your partner's right, if it's true that you can't have the kind of fun that you want, it's because you're angry and you haven't expressed the anger.
And the reason that you're angry is because you were raised badly and you haven't given your mom ownership for it, which means to get angry at her.
That doesn't mean end the relationship.
It just means be honest, right?
Yeah. I feel fearful about fun.
I'm sorry? I feel more fearful about having fun.
Right, right. Okay, so, yeah, fearful about having fun.
Because if you're raised by a cruel person, fun is annoying to them, right?
Yeah, and also being in charge of a lot of stuff...
financially.
Oh, no, keep doing that.
No, that's running a household.
No, that's called maybe you started too early, but that's called running a household.
That's good stuff.
But if you're raised by a miserable self-hating mom who's kind of cruel, then your happiness is going to be annoying to her, right?
Obviously, because happy people are an affront to miserable people.
And they wish to squelch that happiness, which is why she keeps dropping these soul-destroying bombs into your general vicinity, right?
So that's number one, that happiness is going to invite abuse.
Happiness is going to invite pain.
So you've got that fuse, right?
Yeah. That's number one.
And number two, it's tough to have...
It's funny. So...
I've talked about how angry I was with my mom and other things when I was younger.
And then people say, wow, you know, you were really angry.
And they imagine that you get angry and then you just stay there.
Like you're angry and you express that anger and you talk about that anger and you deal with that anger and you just get stuck there.
You never get it. No, that's not the way it works.
It's not the way it works. You know, you hurt your leg, you go through the pain of rehab and...
Then you don't go back for rehab because your legs fixed, right?
I mean, and if you have anger towards your mom, and I'm going to go out on a limb here and say, at least I think you do, but you're unable to express it because you're scared of her, or rather not because you're scared of her, but because she's scared of your anger.
Because anger is responsibility.
We get angry with people when we assign them responsibility, which is why people don't like anger.
Healthy anger is saying, no, no, no, you were responsible for this.
And you did do a bad job, and it hurt me, and it harmed me, and you were responsible for this.
And people don't like anger.
Well, they don't like anger from white people.
It's always white supremacy for a white person to be angry.
That's because we're the tax livestock.
But anyway, if you get angry, On the other side is freedom and fun.
Because the anger is there to protect you.
Fight or flight, right?
Why do we get angry? Because we're being threatened.
Because something is undermining us or harming our interests, either overtly or covertly, either now or in the future.
Why do we get angry? So that we can protect ourselves.
And then, after we're protected, we can have fun again.
But if we don't get angry...
I'm sorry?
Yeah, exactly. Oh, no, it's just agreeing that I'm always in fight or flight, so I never get through the anger.
I, like, approach it.
Because you're not safe. And I don't go all the way through.
Because you're not safe. Right?
So when you get angry, it means that you can be honest with the people in your life.
And you can get safe. You can improve your relationship with your mom or you can get away from your relationship with your mom if it can't be improved.
Either way or whatever, right?
Either way you could end up where you're not in a situation where crazy mom is going to be dropping her paranoia bombs and other forms of verbal abuse on you on a regular basis.
You're not safe. So you get angry, then you get safe.
Now when you're safe, then you can have fun.
So on the other side of anger, It's fun.
But if you don't, use your anger to get you safe, to get you out.
Like the verbal abuse, Lindsay, it's got to stop.
It has to stop.
Your mom telling you you shouldn't have children because of Wi-Fi or 5G or whatever, like that's got to stop.
No, I'm like, I know it's kind of funny, but that shit has to stop.
One way or another.
It has to stop. I think also she needs to take some damn ownership for how she raised you, because that was terrible.
Terrible stuff. I really honestly wish, not for my sake, but for hers, that she would see a therapist and that her boyfriend would see a therapist.
But they're both very, very, like I said before, and for obvious reasons, very against that type of thing.
They think it's a wishy-washy, Jewish, New York-y kind of thing.
Nobody else needs to get therapy.
People just get on with it.
So, yeah.
Well, and the other thing, too, is that if they get everything they want without going to therapy...
Yeah, that's true.
That's why I moved countries.
I moved pretty much as far away as...
I mean, not for that reason. It was to be with my partner, but happens to be several thousand miles away as well.
Right. Right.
Yeah. So, I'm sure your partner, and this is the same thing that I said to the last caller, but your partner doesn't want to see you hurt.
Your partner doesn't want to see you upset.
Your partner doesn't want to see you verbally abused.
Your partner doesn't want to see you put down or traumatized or anything like that.
And, you know, he also needs to maybe spend a little bit less time building towers in real-time strategy games and building a little bit more protection for his damn family.
It's just a thought. That's another worry.
I have faith in him for the future.
The plan isn't to have kids right this second, in like two or three years or something.
And I have faith.
It's just... Why two or three years?
He's significantly younger than me.
And why does that mean?
So he can be provided?
Is that right? Yeah.
And also, he's not 100% ready yet, but he's 100% sure he wants kids kind of in two years.
Just, you know, talk to a doctor and get your FSH levels checked because you're already on a slight downward slide of fertility.
So just be aware that it may happen sooner than you think.
Yep. All right.
Will you keep us posted? Yeah, we'll do.
Thanks so much. I really, really appreciate it.
Yeah, super useful. I mean, I'm a huge fan of And I was like, okay, even if Stefan rips me to shreds, I'm up for it.
Let's do it. I'm so nice, though.
That's the funny thing. Everyone's like, oh, what's Stefan?
I'm so nice. That's the funny thing.
Anyway, I mean, sometimes a little firm, but I think that's actually nice.
That's, you know, the tough love thing is love, right?
Totally appreciate it.
I've always hated when people kind of smile in your face and then go behind, you know, and sort of cuss you out.
Or why is he or she so weird?
So I way, way, way appreciate being told.
Yeah. I mean, I don't tell people what to do, as you know, but I don't want everyone – I don't want anyone leaving a conversation with me without at least knowing where I'm coming from.
And then, you know, that's just – it's a factor.
It's a variable in the equation of decision.
So, all right. Well, thanks very much for the call.
And thanks, of course, to both the lovely ladies for – The call tonight, calls tonight, very important.
I know that they were long, but deep and meaty.
And now I've got that, the who, meaty, beaty, big and bouncy.
I think it's the who? Anyway. So don't forget to check out freedomainradio.com slash donate to help out the show.
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