4139 Vag!na F!reworks - Call In Show - July 4th, 2018
Question 1: [2:07] – “I fall into a minority group of fathers that have full custody of their child. I've struggled with the concept that my daughter not having a mother in her life, will have some traumatic effects to her lifestyle choices as she gets older. How can I improve as a father to help her understand the values she should hold as a woman, and where should I draw the line with discipline in regards to her step mother, as I feel she needs a strong mother figure in her life to compensate for her lack of maternal mother.”Question 2: [29:57] – “I am a white male, 38, and my former boss, a Chinese woman I joined the company with, verbalized, at least once, her agenda to “fix” the department by bringing in more Chinese people, another comment was that I don’t fit the stereotype of a white person, because I am smart. She slowly started taking action in the department to replace non-Chinese people with Chinese people, and soon I too was in the cross hairs. She was initially successful, 50% of the hires were Chinese, replacing all non-Chinese, until I took some measured strategic actions and now she is no longer at our company. The questions is can these strategies be generalized for others to use and to be used in other scenarios?”Question 3: [1:04:05] – “My mother had a very unexpected death after her birthday due to a heart attack. My parents had just celebrated their 32 anniversary and were high school sweethearts. Weeks after my mom’s death, a woman contacted my dad (separated, but still married), and they started dating. Next thing you know, she’s living with my dad, on unemployment, and they’re getting married. My mom had promised me a lot before she passed and now it’s all gone down the drain and this random woman gets to benefit from the life my parents worked so hard for. No prenup, or anything. We need your help because my dad won’t listen to anyone and is slowly cutting out family.”Question 4: [2:42:19] – “I have lived in London for nearly 17 years. You would be hard-pressed to find a bigger fan of what was the greatest city in the world! In recent years especially since in investment of Sadiq Khan as the most ineffectual and ideologically demented Mayor of this city, I am now refusing to pay council tax. I voted for Brexit and proudly proclaimed that amongst my peers, I support Trump and I am fed up of the socialistic dictatorship that this country has become particularly under the even more disastrous stewardship of Theresa May. I am calling in to find out how I can stand up to the authorities and argue my case that I do not need to pay council tax when my culture is being stolen from me right under my eyes.”Your support is essential to Freedomain Radio, which is 100% funded by viewers like you. Please support the show by making a one time donation or signing up for a monthly recurring donation at: http://www.freedomainradio.com/donate
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You know, nothing is free. Four.
Count them four great callers tonight.
The first, well, a guy had a baby with a woman who came from a meth family, and then the mom got addicted to drugs.
You know what? I'll just let the story play out as it surprises me, I'm sure, as much as it's going to surprise me.
You, and this is a very concerned father who wants to know how can he best provide his daughter a strong female role model.
It's a very, very interesting conversation.
Now the second, this is, I guess, career Machiavellianism.
This guy had a Chinese boss, a woman who was a Chinese boss, and she wanted to hire Chinese only and eliminate non-Chinese from the environment.
What he did with this situation was pretty wild, and it's worth hearing to hear how it played out, but boy, if you've ever had one of those kinds of pointy-haired bosses, this is the conversation for you.
Now the third caller, this is a pair.
This is a husband and wife.
The mother of the wife died and the father has remarried.
And boy, is it ever not going well.
And the story, it's layers and layers of onions with the associated eye-watering.
And it's well worth digging into because there's lots of people going to face inheritance and boomer selfishness.
Well, I think I've mentioned that before once or twice.
And it's worth listening to for that.
And the fourth caller, well, he called up, he didn't really know it, but he called up to have me talk him out of doing something illegal.
Alright, well up for us today we have David.
David wrote in and said, That's from David.
Hi, David. How are you doing tonight?
I'm good. How about you?
I'm well. What happened to the birth mom there, my friend?
Well, short story.
I bet it's not.
Well, yeah. It's really long, but the gist of it was after we split up, she got real bad on drugs, and she ended up in prison for it, so I got full custody.
What the...
Yeah. You drove her to drugs in prison, you heartless bastard.
No, what were the warning signs there before?
Help step people through the avoidance of the landmine of vagina that David stepped on.
Right, right. Well, I met her, I was 18 when I met her.
We were 19 when we had my daughter.
Her family had a history of drug use, meth specifically.
Her aunt had gotten arrested for a meth lab, and we moved away from that situation.
We moved up here to...
Yeah, if you could keep geographical references to a minimum, that would be excellent.
No problem. Yeah, so we moved and got away from that situation.
She had an issue being sort of a liar.
She lied about everything. A lot of people told me about it prior to us being together, but I was too caught up in everything to listen.
How pretty was she? Or is she?
I'd say a six.
A five or a six, yeah.
Dare I ask, oh hunchback, where you are on the scale here?
That you're willing to give it all up for a lying, drug addicted six?
I would say a seven or an eight.
I'm not sure. I think I can view your picture.
You're a good looking guy. Yeah. So what the hell?
I don't know. Suck a golf ball through a garden hose?
I mean, what are we talking here? Yeah, well, I feel like because I've been talking to my therapist lately, I feel like a lot of my issues back then were feeling because I didn't have a mother in my life.
She moved away when I was 14.
So I didn't have her around.
So I feel like maybe I was constantly trying to compensate.
So what happened to your mom, David?
She moved to better her life and find a better job.
And I stayed with my dad after that.
So she took my sister and moved, and then I stayed with my dad because she didn't want me to have to leave my school.
So she divorced your dad, is that right?
Yeah. And was it to get a better job?
Why do you give up your family for a better job?
Yeah, she says they fought a lot.
Yeah, people say that like, we fought a lot like it just happened.
You know, this third party called fighting moved in and we just couldn't evict.
It was terrible. You went to the courts.
We tried to get the sheriff to throw out this third party demon called fighting.
You know, they're helpless. We got kidnapped.
What can we do? Yeah, they got married.
Nobody ever says, I fought with your father a lot.
You know, it's almost like, well, we just, we ended up fighting a lot.
Like, it just happened. You know how you age and you fight a lot.
They got married because I was born.
That was the reason she said that they got married to begin with.
So, she told you that they didn't love each other, but they only got married because she was pregnant with you.
Correct. Right. So, technically, they didn't get married because you were born, David.
They got married because they weren't using birth control, which is on them, not on you as a baby.
Right. Right. So, their marriage lasted for about 10 years.
My dad and my dad...
Wait, you were 14? Yeah, I was 14.
10 years? They got married because of you?
I was 14 when she moved.
I was 10 when they divorced.
Oh, okay, okay, got it.
Yeah, yeah. Sorry, just wanted to make sure I take off my shoes to count there for good reason.
All right. Yeah, so...
And did you keep a relationship with your mom after she moved with your sister?
Oh, yeah, yeah. We talked a lot.
We talked a couple times a week, mostly.
So, your dad must be really good at figuring out who's not a suitable mother for your children, right?
No. No, he's not?
No. Why? I only stayed with him for a little less than a year, I believe, before my grandmother came and got me because he just couldn't deal with raising me.
Why not? That was what he said.
Oh, does that mean he got a new girlfriend who didn't like you?
Yeah. Yeah, okay.
All right. Yeah. She was 17 at the time, the girl he was with, and he was 34.
So let's just say their relationship was pretty tight.
Yeah. Right.
Having driven a Greyhound bus for their children through that canyon, I think I'm moving in.
holy crap so how long did you go out with your ex um two years I believe it was Did you have unprotected sex?
That's why she got pregnant? Yes.
And why did you have unprotected sex with a woman who was a compulsive liar from a meth addict family?
Right. We couldn't find a condom that worked that day.
Wait, that was a terrifying sentence to hear the ending of.
Yes. We couldn't find a condom that wasn't currently occupied, currently in use, full of I don't even know what, that wasn't being turned into a kid's balloon, that wasn't on the head of Howie Mandel doing a comedy routine.
Like, you couldn't find a condom that what?
Yeah, the one we had found was Glow in the Dark, and it had been opened.
And the closest store was about 45 minutes away.
But the closest blowjob was right there.
Yeah. Alright.
That was my bad.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Were you shocked when she got pregnant?
I wouldn't say shocked.
We obviously got the test because we...
We were concerned. But...
Yeah, I wouldn't say I was shocked.
I was hoping, but I wasn't shocked.
You were hoping that she wasn't?
Correct. Was it at least good sex?
Yeah. Yeah, that day was, for sure.
Now, so you knocked her up, and then what happened from there?
Um... Was she off drugs during the pregnancy?
She was not taking drugs at this point, is that right?
She was just from the drug addict family?
Correct, yeah. From what I could tell, she seemed to be a pretty decent person at the time.
We got along. It wasn't until after the pregnancy that she started to get aggressive and we would fight a lot.
Now, do you know why that is?
She had a real hard time dealing with having the kid.
I was going to work and she was staying at home and she didn't know how to take care of her.
And I I'm not sure if that may have caused some issues.
Right. So, David, you need to grab your balls, put on the crash helmet, and stare into the dark heart of certain aspects of femininity here, my friend, because you are a bit of an excuse machine.
Yeah. Right? So, why?
See, not all women put this caveat right up, a happily married guy, but, you know, I still got eyes.
So, a lot of women are pretty adept at hiding their crazy stuff.
Until the magic bridge is crossed.
And that magic bridge is called, well, now I have power over you.
Oh, yeah. Right?
Because once she has your kid, she has power over you.
And of course, if you want to find out what people are really like, give them some power.
Right? Right.
So while you could break up with her before you were the father to her children, well, she contained the crazy, right?
But then... You know, this happens to women, right?
Some women, they get married and it's like, off comes the mask.
And it's like, hey, you were nice like 12 minutes ago before we got to the church.
And now it's like, right?
Yeah. It's like there's this old joke.
Guy's getting a great blowjob before he gets married.
And he's like, man, I can't wait to get married.
It's going to be like this every day.
And the woman's like, man, I can't wait to get married.
So I never have to do this again.
Yeah, that's marriage pretty much, from my experience.
Not all marriages, I'll tell you that for sure, but it certainly happens, right?
So she had some power, right?
And when you say she didn't know how to take care of your daughter, what does that mean?
I mean, she can read, right?
I mean, I get her family doesn't really give her much value, valuable lesson in this way, but why did she not read or research or prepare or get ready or...
Yeah, I don't think she did any of that.
I didn't either, but I could still, you know, what would happen was she would call the neighbors during the day and say, I just can't deal with her.
And the neighbor would come in and pick up the baby.
So why did you guys, I mean, you knew that you didn't have a lot of great experiences growing up.
So I'm just kind of figure out why you wouldn't, you know, it's a library, it's free stuff on the internet, like just pick up some books on parenting.
Yeah. I thought it would be an innate thing, you know?
I never thought of...
No, it is an innate thing if you just want to do unto others what was done unto you.
Because we all taught how to parent by our parents.
It's just if you want to move the ship's direction a little bit, you know?
Right. Yeah, I totally get that now.
Back then... And I guess your parents didn't say, David, you've got to get up to speed on parenting because, you know, reproducing what we did may not be the very best idea.
Right, yeah. I can't recall having that conversation ever.
Did anyone suggest that you didn't nut in her or get married to her?
Did you guys get married? No.
No, okay. Thankfully. So, did anyone suggest – I mean, you'd mentioned that a few people tried to warn you off her.
Did people basically try to say, don't do it?
Yeah, prior – There were two or three people that kept warning me that she was a compulsive liar and to run.
But you're like, yeah, but she is a six from a meth addict family, so balance is out.
Right. Okay, so how long did it last before she – did she start taking drugs while she was the major caregiver?
No, no. It wasn't until – We moved together to get away from because we were staying with my grandmother and we wanted to kind of start our own lives.
So we moved away closer to my mother and at that point, her and my mother had gotten into it.
My mother sent her back down because we were staying with her at the time.
She sent her back to my daughter.
And somewhere along the lines in there, she called me and said, Hey, I can't take care of her.
Can you come get her? So I went and got her.
And then I want to say eight months later, she wanted to see her.
I talked to a lawyer and the lawyer said, there's nothing you can do.
You should let her see her, which was bad advice.
I let her go with my daughter to North Carolina and then she didn't come back.
And I found out that she had signed over temporary guardianship to my stepmother.
Wait, she could sign over temporary guardianship of your daughter without your permission?
Not legally, but...
Oh, right. But then legally, she shouldn't be taking drugs either, so...
Right, right, right. Yeah, so she did, and the only way I could fight that in court is...
The lawyer said, I might as well fight for custody.
There's no point in fighting against that because there was...
Only one signature on the sheet.
It was just hers. And my signature was supposed to be on there as well.
So if I was going to go to court, he said, you might as well just go to court for custody because it's technically a waste of money to go to court for one and not the other.
So yeah, I went down there to try to get her.
My stepmother wouldn't let me get her because they had got word from my mother that one of my girlfriends was abusing my daughter.
Which was inaccurate.
Wait, inaccurate or false?
False. Okay. False.
Well, inaccurate being...
She wasn't hitting her or anything.
She was crying.
I went outside to go smoke a cigarette and my daughter was crying and she was kind of just holding her while she was...
Because she was kind of throwing a temper tantrum.
So she was just holding her to prevent her from, you know, falling out of her lap.
And my mom just... Kind of went nuts about it.
So, yeah, they thought that that was the case, so they wouldn't let me get her.
And then, you know, my mother got together and decided we're going to get full custody.
So she helped pay the $5,000 to...
For us to get custody, but I want to say a couple of months before she had signed over temporary guardianship to my stepmother was about the time that she started doing drugs.
I'm not sure how or what and why, but she definitely did.
Right. And how long ago was that?
My daughter is almost 11, so that would have been 8 or 9 years ago.
And how's she doing, your daughter? She's doing well.
No mental issues, no aggression.
She's in homeschool.
She wasn't doing too well in school.
She was in special ed classes and they weren't Giving her the one-on-one time she needed, so I started to do the whole stay-at-home dad thing and homeschool her.
Other than that, I haven't noticed any huge issues.
Right. Right.
Okay. And tell me about your new wife?
We've been together about two and a half years.
We've known each other for probably three or four.
Where did you first meet?
We met at a friend's house.
She was actually dating one of my friend's friends at the time when we met.
And she had been around my daughter for a bit and I felt comfortable with the way she was with her.
So yeah, we dated for like a year and a half, two years before we got married.
And we now have a son as well.
Oh, you have a son together as well?
Correct. How old is your son?
He's two. And what's the relationship between your daughter and your son?
Great. Phenomenal.
Now, does your daughter have any issues with your wife?
No. No, not on the surface.
What does that mean? Well, I don't know internally if she has any issues.
It might come out in her teenage years.
Right now, she's seeming to be okay with the situation.
And are you married to your girlfriend or your wife?
Yes. Okay. Yeah.
And so I'm not sure what your question is then, because you have a daughter who has a stepmother and she has a good relationship with her stepmother.
And if her stepmother is a quality person, then wouldn't a stepmother be the one to teach your daughter about femininity?
Right, right. Yeah.
Well, I was more concerned about leading up to now, you know, that was Eight years of her life of not having a mother figure.
And if there's any effects, that and a mother always talks to me about step parents not disciplining children.
So I was thinking about that as well.
Yeah, I mean, there's something I've heard, which says that if you're not around a kid before the age of five or so, Uh-huh.
Then you really can't be...
Certainly you can't be the primary, quote, disciplinarian.
But I mean, to me, I don't...
I have no idea what disciplinarian even means with regards to children.
I mean, I've never had to discipline my daughter.
The idea to me is ridiculous.
But... All right.
So... I'm still not sure what your question is.
Well, there's a lot of research on the effects of...
Effects of children being without their fathers, but I couldn't find a whole lot about not having a mother around, because even now her mother doesn't call that often.
So I'm just concerned what to look forward to ahead with regards to her relationship.
Well, no, the problem she's going to have is not primarily with her mother, her biological mother, David.
The primary problem she's going to have is with you.
Because you chose that woman to be her mother.
Right. Right. So, I got to tell you, I got to think that's where the challenge is.
And did she approve of your marriage to your girlfriend?
Yes. Okay. Yeah, I actually asked her first.
Right. Right.
So, I don't think like parental mistakes aren't a problem as long as parents know.
Why those mistakes happen and can transfer the lessons to the kids, right?
So if you know why you ended up with the fairly homely meth addict and it's not that funny, dude.
The fairly plain, let's just say, meth addict and decided to make her pregnant because you couldn't find a condom that wasn't already opened and glowing.
Well, if you have an answer for that, then that probably is not as much of a problem, but you don't seem to have an answer for that.
And guaranteed in her teenage years, she's going to be wondering about that.
She can't blame the father.
She can't really blame the mom who's not there.
I mean, she can, I guess, logically, but the way that teenagers work is what's in front of them is what's most vivid, right?
So you're going to be the person that she's going to be more upset about if she's missing having a biological mother around.
Right. So, what is your answer as to how you ended up with a drug-addicted mother of your child?
I don't know. Well, that's the problem then, right?
Yeah. Okay. Yeah.
Now that you've been asked the question, we've had a little bit of time to talk about it.
Do you have any theories?
The only theory that I had was what I mentioned earlier, was just not having my mother around it It's always seemed like I've always had that need to have some female companion in my life.
I was constantly in and out of relationships.
So... Well, look, we all have a need for female companionship if we're straight.
We also have a need for food, but that doesn't mean that you eat something that fell off the back of a truck by the side of the road, right?
That doesn't mean that you go and grill up some dead skunk that was hit by a van, right?
So, the fact that we have a need for things, we all have a need for water, that doesn't mean that we drink out of moose tracks, right?
So I don't really think that is much of an answer.
Well, I mean, like my, I don't know, I was, I, Compulsively, I was never really single for long, more than a couple of weeks.
I actually forced myself at one point to be single for eight or nine months just to clear my head.
Was that before or after this relationship with the girl's mom?
After. After.
After. Yeah.
So, yeah, I'm not sure.
Does she have anyone in her life, David, who she's going to go to and say, didn't you tell dad to find a better woman?
And that person is going to say, well, yes, right?
Right. And so then she's going to learn that you just don't listen to good advice, right?
And then you're going to try and give her good advice.
How do you think that's going to go?
Yeah, it's going to go hard because she's going to say, well, why the hell should I listen to you?
You didn't listen to anyone and you were damn well older than me and the stakes were way higher.
Right. So now you need to have an answer for that, right?
Yeah. I feel like I'm doing all the work here.
What? Right.
Yeah, I don't know.
Well, I'll tell you what.
I'll tell you what. Like, I've given you some questions and, you know, I don't mind pedaling the bike if it's a bicycle built for two some of the time, but I'm not going to be able to.
And maybe you feel self-conscious because your daughter's around.
But these are the questions that I would try to get answers to before she becomes a teenager and the sooner the better.
You need to figure out how you ended up making these disastrous choices and why you didn't listen.
To good advice. Because if you can answer those questions, it's fine to ask your children to do better than you did, but you have to know why you did badly.
Because otherwise, it just looks like an exercise in power.
And you look like, you know, the parent who's smoking saying don't smoke without even saying why smoking is bad.
So that would be my suggestion.
Try and sort of figure out how you ended up in the situation where you had...
A child with a truly disastrous mother and if you can figure out why you did what you did and trying to figure out, you know, you'll be tempted to try and figure out why the mother of your daughter did all these terrible things and that is a grave temptation but it is a terrible temptation.
You have to resist it because we have to figure out not why bad people do bad things but why the hell we were even involved with bad people to begin with.
That's the only power. We have no power.
To change bad people into good people, we have no power directly, maybe even indirectly, to change drug addicts into good people or to change compulsive liars into honest people.
No power to do any of that.
And once we recognize that we don't have the power really to change other people, we can change the only variable that brings bad people around us, which is our behavior.
So, that's the really, really important question to ask.
And I get we're not going to get there this conversation, but, you know, you can certainly, you know, just talk about that with the people who warned you about this and try and figure out what went on and have conversations with your wife, right?
She probably is going to have some insights into your character or your personality or anyone who was around when you were younger and just try and figure out why you ended up making these bad decisions.
And that way, you can very honestly and with humility say to your daughter, like, you know, So it's kind of a weird paradox because if you'd chosen better, your daughter wouldn't be around to complain that you didn't choose better, right?
So I get all of that, right?
This is all complicated stuff.
But that's not the way people's psychology generally works, right?
Because she wants a mom around, probably a biological mom around.
And she doesn't have one. And she can't blame the mom in particular.
I mean, she could, but she can't talk to the mom.
So she's going to take it out on you.
And that's fair, right?
Because she didn't make choices to be where she is.
You did make choices to have her where she is.
So she's going to have some hard questions of you.
And I can guarantee you, if you respond to her like you're responding to me, it's just going to get worse.
Because if you just kind of go rubber bones and other people make all the effort, then that's going to be really annoying.
And maybe this rubber bones has something to do with why you ended up with such a bad mom for your daughter.
But that would be my suggestion to, you know, if you can talk to a therapist, that'd be great.
Or even just do the workbooks that are available online.
Jordan Peterson has some good stuff.
Esther's John Bradshaw and Nathaniel Brandon has some good stuff.
Just try and figure out why you ended up in this situation.
And once you figure that out, then you can honestly say, To your daughter, here are the mistakes that I made.
With all due humility, you know, I'm going to beg you to make better choices, you know, because I can't go back in time and make better choices, but I can at least try and help you not make the bad decisions that I made.
And people will respond to that, but I don't think they'll respond to, you know, do something different without any self-knowledge on your part.
So, I appreciate the call.
Thank you very much. Let's move on to the next one.
Alright, up next we have Gabe.
Gabe wrote in and said, I'm a white male, 38, and my former boss, a Chinese woman I joined the company with, verbalized at least once her agenda to fix the department by bringing in more Chinese people.
Another comment was that I don't fit the stereotype of a white person because I am smart.
She slowly started taking action in the department to replace non-Chinese people with Chinese people, and soon I too was in the crosshairs.
She was initially successful, 50% of the hires were Chinese, replacing all non-Chinese, until I took some measured strategic action, and now she is no longer at our company.
My question is, can my strategy be generalized for others to use in similar situations?
That's from Gabe.
Gabe, how you doing?
Doing great. How are you?
I'm well. Did the company have anything to do with spatial reasoning and or mathematics?
Yes. How did I know that, my friend?
I'm psychic! Yes, they did.
It was a Japanese financial institution.
Right. Okay. So I heard about your show back, heard a show back in late 2017, and there was a gentleman who called who had mentioned that he was, I guess, fired because of discrimination.
I think he was in sales, fired because of diversity.
And I felt really bad for him.
And I'm like, well, if I have something to offer, you know, maybe I could help.
I mean, I think about James Damore, and I feel like, I mean, he was a brilliant guy, and I really applaud him.
Still is, I dare say.
He is. But he lacked strategy in how he approached the situation, and that he didn't think Let's not, you know, the guy did an amazingly brave thing and has raised awareness of a lot of issues.
So why don't we get to your story rather than talking about James Damore?
Of course. Of course.
Okay. So, yeah, I joined the company and actually I can thank my ex-boss for finding you, oddly enough.
Wait, the Chinese woman?
Yes. All right.
More because I was just researching things online.
Oh, not because of any influence.
She's like, go listen to this white guy who also breaks the stereotypes by being somewhat smart.
Right, exactly.
I was looking into empathy and I stumbled across one of your shows.
Because initially I was like, what the heck is going on here?
Why am I being treated so poorly by this person?
And I thought she was a narcissist, which I still think she was, is.
So yeah, we joined the company.
I came in with 10 years of prior experience.
I was up and coming at my old company, but left because the hours are too crazy to this company.
Initially, things were great with my boss.
I had no idea, besides some of those comments, we got along great.
We used to take walks together.
She had me take a lot of pictures of her, which I didn't think anything of.
I was like, okay, that's just her personality, but hey, I'm getting along great with my boss.
I'm doing a great job. She had you take a lot of pictures of her?
Yeah. Probably in the course of a year, probably like 500.
Wait, are you saying that there's an East Asian person who's into photography?
Yeah. And selfies?
Whatever next? Yeah.
Yeah. So we would take walks, take pictures of her, and just talk.
And everything seems great.
Her boss liked our work, talking about promoting both of us, sending us to Japan to teach them about some of the good work we're doing.
And then we brought in another person, besides making some of those comments, which I guess she had made to me when she still trusted me.
Sorry, which comments?
Oh, the racial comments.
Like you're pretty smart for a white guy?
Yeah. And also, you know, after some people left, she said to another guy in the department who's Chinese, she said to him something in Chinese, and then I didn't obviously understand it, but when we were leaving together, I asked her what she said, and she told me, she said that to him, the way to fix this department is to hire more Chinese people.
And I was like, okay, that's strange.
And that was when I presume she trusted me or whatnot.
And, you know, after that, she got...
And not in like that, you know, particularly positive way.
But can you imagine, you know, because all you ever hear about is this white privilege, right?
But can you imagine having that conversation and saying what she said, but regarding white people?
No. No, you can't, right?
Because, you know, if you're a white person, in-group preference is the same as being Genghis Khan.
No, it's actually worse than being Genghis Khan because Genghis Khan is not continually hated.
Yeah. In fact, didn't they just erect a statue about the guy who killed 10% of the world's population or something like that?
Anyway. Yeah, so they hired another person to join us, and my ex-boss didn't like her very much, and she told me what her strategy was, was to go after one person at a time, and she did a lot of really kind of nasty things that she eventually did to me, too, as a similar strategy, was showing me the work she did, try to trash her reputation, and say, oh, look how bad this is, and mock it.
I'll say one thing she had was, she was very charismatic.
And she would spread rumors about her and talk to everyone about her and never say anything nice to her boss about it.
It's easy to concern troll your way into getting people evicted from an organization.
Yeah. And, I mean, the girl eventually was, like, crying in the bathroom every day and...
And then she left without another job.
Luckily, her old company took her back because it was within five months or so.
And she's doing very well there, so that's a good story for her.
But yeah, she was really, really bad experience.
And then a bunch of other people left, and then she made that comment about hiring Chinese people.
And then she brought in one guy that she used to work with who is Chinese.
And then after that, I started to notice like an attitude switch in her.
You know, she had like her buddy from her old company.
They were both Chinese and they were talking Chinese a little bit to each other.
So as the minority becomes a majority, the white people get treated worse.
If only Lauren Southerner had made a documentary somewhere along these lines.
Go check it out, by the way. It's called Farmlands, just in case people haven't.
Huh. All right. So go on.
So yeah, she started to treat me worse over that period.
And my prior performance evaluation was good.
The next one I got to give them every six months was mediocre.
And there's some stuff in there that I thought was really questionable.
But I was like, I'm not going to make a big deal.
It was still in the successful category.
And then she started to really amp it up for when she hired...
A Chinese woman to replace the white girl she harassed out of the company.
And then she really started to amp it up at me.
She was doing all sorts of things like setting me up to fail, uncertain projects, the same type of strategies she did with the other girl, spreading rumors about me, CCing her boss and all the emails.
It was... And I felt really isolated and alone.
They were all talking in...
I'm not sure which dialect of Chinese they were talking, but all three of them were talking together.
And we're in an open office floor plan.
And she actually, one time, screamed at me in public.
She used to talk to me and treat me poorly before.
Nasty. But one time she was just...
I guess she felt very confident in herself.
She started screaming at me in public.
And a whole bunch of people saw it.
And I had to leave.
I went to HR and complained.
And I was listening to...
That's when I started to look into podcasts about narcissists and all that other...
Because that was when I first concluded.
The racial comments were still in the back of my head, obviously.
And she... I talked to HR, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And she was just like, okay, you guys need to get along.
I told them about the racial comments.
I'm like, hey, I think there's something going on here with that.
But you guys should need to look into that.
Oh, yeah. I'm sure they'd be right on that.
Yeah. The lady from HR, when I told her that, put the pen down and stopped taking notes.
Yeah, of course. Of course.
So... Yeah, they made her make an apology to me, but it was kind of like, what is that, a fake apology?
There's a certain word for it, where I'm sorry, and it's all your fault.
Sorry, no, sorry. Or I call it the BNAP. It's a bullshit non-apology.
I'm sorry that my stern, authoritarian style of leadership offends you and upsets you so much.
Yeah. Luckily, I was, you know, you know, Doing good work and I was talking with her boss on occasion and also paying attention and also making other connections and relationships so that people knew who I was and knew I was doing good work and knew that I was contributing a lot to the department.
My next performance, in that period after I reported her to HR and the next performance evaluation, I would say it was the most I ever contributed to the department in that period.
I did a lot of great things for them.
I guess it's how Jordan Peterson says it is really mean.
You make the person feel bad for how good they're doing.
The punishment of the good for the good.
I got my worst performance evaluation I've ever received.
I mean, it was like in like the bottom right again.
It was terrible. And I was feeling really bad and they had hired another Chinese guy and they were all talking together in Chinese.
And my boss said, hey, my boss's boss said to both of us, you guys need to get along or otherwise I'm going to fire one or both of you.
And that's when I was like, okay, I need to do something here because, you know, he'll...
This isn't going to work out.
And I did talk to him one-on-one later, and he said, look, I didn't agree with what was in that performance evaluation either, but I don't want to override my manager, you know, the person who's working for me.
What? That's why I told him.
What a spineless douchebag.
I don't want to disagree with someone who's my employee.
It's like, no, no, that's kind of your job.
If your employee is going awry, you've got to sort it out.
Yeah, and he was touching it. He had his hands over his keyboards, and he was wrinkling his fingers.
He's like, I wanted to change it, because he has the rights to override it on the performance evaluation system.
But he's like, no, he didn't.
And I told him, that's exactly why they give you the ability to override the performance evaluation, is for these exact situations.
Well, the other thing, too, is you can't just suddenly get a bad performance evaluation in a rational company.
Because there should be like a verbal, oh, you know, you're not meeting this objective or you're not meeting this quota or you're not doing this right, you know, let's get it corrected.
The performance evaluation should be the result of you failing, like a bad performance evaluation should be the result of you failing to adjust your course based upon feedback for months before the performance evaluation, right?
Yes. I mean, I remember when I was in theater school, the first term, they loved me.
They loved me. They were like – because I was in acting and I was going to go into the playwriting.
They're like, no, no, no, man. You should stay in the acting.
You're great. You know, fantastic.
And then I guess they got wind of my political beliefs or – Whatever it was.
But then second term, everything seemed to be going fine.
And then, you know, I just got the most terrible evaluations.
And nobody gave me any feedback between the first and the second term.
But second term, they just took a massive dump all over me.
And I was like, but why didn't you guys tell me this during the course of the term if you thought there were problems?
It's like, it's not our job to micromanage you.
It's like... No, that's not how.
And I remembered that when I became a boss, I would never let a problem fester and then just hit someone with a bad performance review because that's kind of abusive, right?
It's your job to get the best out of people and it's your job to give them course corrections as they go.
Now, if they don't take those course corrections or they fight back or they get worse, then eventually they'll get a bad performance review, but it's not supposed to drop on you like a ton of bricks after not getting feedback for months.
Right. Well, it was worse than that.
I mean, our desks were like five feet away from each other.
But after I complained to HR, she literally stopped talking to me for months.
And she would only communicate an email with me pretty much.
Oh, man. Yeah.
Passive-aggressive, non-confrontational.
Boy, I'm trying to think of all the stereotypes.
Anyway, okay, go on. She changed her strategy, I'll say.
Instead of being overtly abusive publicly, she would do it.
But the good side of that was I had a lot of things documented in emails then.
And you're right. It was just like, if I did something wrong, she should have been able to just talk to her.
I mean, some of the things were so silly.
No one's perfect. Obviously, I... Let's keep moving on with the story because the minutiae of stuff is not going to be particularly fascinating to people.
So then what happened? You're right.
So, yeah.
So, she stopped talking to me, and then we went on to a...
I just started researching things.
Like, you know, I had some OneNote notebooks where I was just documenting everything about racial discrimination because I was like, you know, this is my strongest.
This is what's going on here.
I think she was a narcissist and had other problems, too.
But this stuff is serious.
And I actually did talk to some attorneys and they said I had a very good case, but I didn't want to go that route.
You know, that wasn't I mean, I looked at the possible outcomes, what could happen there.
It wasn't necessary.
If I sued them, I would have left.
I would have had to leave. They would have had to circle the wagons.
But they did say I had a good case.
I remember it was December, and I had a week off.
I was listening to your podcast about Bitcoin.
This was right before it took off.
I was like, you know what? This is really fascinating, but I think I had better pay attention to this More.
And I calculated how much I would have gained if I'd actually listened and bought some, knowing my own risk level.
It was about, you know, $50,000.
But I think the net outcome, with her being gone, was much better value.
Right. And much better use of my time.
Right. Okay.
So then, how did you get her out?
So I went to HR. Well, no.
So I asked for my seat to be moved because I used them for Four of them talking Chinese around me.
It was too much.
And this other guy was starting to bully me too, a Chinese guy.
And my boss didn't want that.
So I wrote a long letter to HR basically describing everything that's been happening, the comments, the disparate treatment, everything I'd learned, the terms of employment, the conditions of employment, the lies.
Things of that nature and basically this is my second conversation that I second time I've complained about this and I'd like them to do an investigation.
So the end result was they hired an investigator to come in, a lawyer, and I went over to the lawyer's office because they didn't want to do it inside and they interviewed me for probably close to eight hours.
And then they also interviewed...
Well, not in a row, I hope.
No, two four-hour meetings.
Right. Yeah.
And she was good, and her and I got along great.
But she did grill me.
And I assume she did the rest.
I had a lot of conversations with a bunch of other people, too.
It's so sad, too, when they need to hire outside people.
It's like, just do your jobs.
You're the boss. Go sort it out.
Like, why you need to hire all these outside people to do your basic management functions, like resolving disputes, just seems kind of sad to me.
But I'm sure that maybe there are legal reasons for it.
I don't know. Yeah.
And... You know, it's like you've got a job as a typist in an organization and then someone asks you to do typing and it's like, well, we've got to bring in an outside typist for this.
Why do we have... Okay.
The end result of that was that, I mean, they said that there was no racial discrimination there.
I presume that they told me that just because they didn't want to admit fault, because then they'd basically have to do something, you know, to be admitting they had a liability from the legal perspective.
But two months later, she was gone, you know.
So it wasn't on friendly terms.
Oh, so she was scant.
I don't know exactly what happened between them.
All I know is, you know, after all that, She was let go.
It was stressful for me because the legal department sent out, after I met with the attorney, they sent out a letter to our entire department and a bunch of other higher-ups in the company saying, you know, what had happened.
I filed a claim, not with anybody with them, that I've been racially harassed and whatnot and things of that nature.
And she...
You know, and that was, oh my gosh, I felt so, like, every eye in their apartment was on me when I saw that email, because I was CC'd on it, and that was pretty...
Did you know that the conversations you were having might be disseminated through the company?
I... Well, they have a policy that said complaints shouldn't be told to anybody.
You know, so, oh, privacy will be handled in...
But then they also told me, I said, well, we'll try to keep it private.
No, I didn't think that they would take it to that level unless I... What do you mean they'd try to keep it private, but here's a public email to the entire company about your complaints?
Well, it wasn't the entire company, but it was enough.
It doesn't matter. I mean, that kind of stuff is going to be talked about by everyone, right?
Yeah. So your company is terrible.
They made... I think that was a bad decision, but they did eventually do the right thing.
I mean, arguably, they could have just...
Used all those prior performance evaluations to just fire me.
Or they could have just offered me money to leave or a lot of things.
But I think they tried to do the right thing.
It was surprising to me how long it lasted with my ex-boss because she wasn't stupid.
She wasn't as smart as I am.
But she did do a lot of things that were I would say fraudulent.
But not really directly.
Like, other things.
Like, she would take extra vacation and no one was tracking it.
And eventually she got caught on that, but they didn't fire for that.
I would have fired her for that.
She took, like, three times as much vacation as she was supposed to.
Taking extra trainings when she was supposed to...
Wait, she took three times the vacation she was supposed to take?
Yeah, they made her work to, without pay, make it up.
Wait, because, you know, normally people get, like, at that level, they'll get, like, three weeks, right?
Our company is very generous, so we get much more.
So you get, like, four weeks.
So she took, what, she took an extra two months off and nobody noticed?
Well, she had done it the year before, and my boss picked up, my ex's boss picked up, my old, my boss's boss picked up on it.
What do you mean he picked up on it?
She's gone for two months?
Well, that's great. I don't know.
I didn't even notice. Well, if you don't notice, you shouldn't be working there at all, right?
I think if I was missing for two months from this show, people might notice a little bit.
She didn't do it straight.
She'd be like, I'm working from home.
I'm not working.
I'm taking off on Friday.
There's a day here or there.
Is this a company that has a lot of relationship to government contracts?
I don't think so.
All right. Mostly giant companies in Japan.
But they are...
My boss, I would say...
I don't know if it was because she was messing with his head too, his narcissistic aspect.
His memory at the time was absolutely terrible.
He couldn't keep things straight in his head.
It was like he had the memory proof by the head of the department.
You mean your boss's boss?
Yeah, he's better now.
After she left, but while she was there, it was pretty wild.
Was your boss's boss a white guy?
Mexican. Mexican, okay.
I think he's gay.
Not that that matters. All right.
Not that that's relevant, but all right.
So, yeah. It just reminds me, I've wanted to mention this story just because I'm trying to discharge all of my stories over the course of my life.
But I remember a friend of mine when I was younger, a really great guy.
I loved him to death. And he got a job.
One of his first jobs out of college was he had a really mean, negative job.
Bitchy feminist boss, you know, with that vaguely bowl-shaped swinging down past the cheeks hairdo and just, you know, cold-eyed, all of that.
And she would like stay late and everyone had to stay late.
And she's like, we got to work, you know, quality is important.
And it's just basically because she had no life.
And I think she was kind of – he thought that she was kind of terrified that nobody – like somebody else might accidentally have a life and make – And make her feel bad.
Anyway, so then what happened, and I remember my friend, I won't tell it, he was one of the best storytellers I've ever heard in my life.
And he said, and then came the glorious day of hallelujah time when my boss got a boyfriend.
Oh my word, what is a beautiful time.
It was beautiful.
It was beautiful. It was like when that great boss in A Christmas Carol comes in and it's like, free turkeys for everyone.
She's coming in late on Mondays because she had a great weekend.
She's on long lunches, phone calls or lunches with her boyfriend.
She wants to get out of there at 4.59 so she can go and be with her boyfriend.
And it was paradise and everybody was happier and the productivity was up and It was a great time.
I've never had a better and worse or worse and then better working experience in the span of like three days when this woman got this boyfriend.
And then we all began to be terrified, you see, because there was trouble in paradise.
The boyfriend and the boss were not getting along.
And she'd come in kind of grumpy and mean.
And then she'd be like, everybody's got to work through lunch, you know, and just like throwing away this acidic weight because she's unhappy.
And The women in particular were sitting down with her for these long tearful sessions and they were desperately, desperately trying to hold this relationship together between the boss and the boyfriend because they knew that if the boss and the boyfriend broke up, it would be even worse than it was before and they just managed to prop this up desperately like a man trying to keep a mining tunnel from caving in on his only children.
I mean, they tried their very best but eventually they could not hold it together and the relationship fell apart.
And the hell returned.
But it was even worse, too, because anybody who had a happy relationship was given especially horrible tasks and it was just monstrous.
And then what happened was all the women were like, okay, she's a horrible human being, but okay, who can we hook her up with?
Like, I don't care. Is there any male friend that we're willing to throw?
On this woman so that we can get a better working environment.
And people were like, okay, family is right out.
I'm not putting a brother in to that mess.
Maybe a third cousin I don't like, but family is out.
And the consensus was, well, the problem is that...
The male friends that we have who are single, we like.
And we don't want to subject them to them.
And everyone was like, come on!
Men can take a bullet.
They go to war! Surely they can jump on some horrible woman so we can have a half-decent working environment.
And anyway, it was a really great story.
I can't honestly remember.
I think he ended up just quitting because it was just like she did not get another boyfriend.
And the work environment just got worse and worse.
And of course, because she wasn't particularly attractive, she was also gunning for some of the more attractive women in the office and just a whole mess.
And now, I'm not saying that's common with female bosses, but I've heard it.
I've heard it once or twice.
All right. Thank you for indulging me.
Let's finish up.
So then you ended up, this woman got canned and they didn't admit fault, which is not that unusual given that, you know, they probably had some idea that you might be talking to lawyers.
And then what happened?
Things got great for me, actually.
I started working directly with my ex, my boss's boss, directly.
And, you know, I went from, like, a performance rating of, like, fairly successfully.
Please tell me, did you go from racial harassment to sexual harassment?
Anyway, go ahead. No, I mean, I went from, I think the category was partially successful, it was terrible.
Maybe need significant improvement to the second highest category, which is, like, exemplary.
You know, right away.
Like, after I worked directly with him.
And he's, you know, he gives me glowing reviews, tells me how much he appreciates working with me.
The only thing he said was, don't ever mention to me what happened before.
Because I don't want to think about that. Which I never have.
So, things have been awesome.
Actually, on her last day, I remember when she walked out.
I walked down to the lobby and I jumped in the air.
Yeah! Right, right.
The point is, I just don't want, you know, I felt bad about what happened to that guy.
And I just, I want to see, I don't want to see.
Wait, you felt bad about what happened to which guy?
Oh, the guy who called in December.
Oh, my caller, right, right, okay.
Yeah, your caller. And I didn't want that people to not, you know, to not think that they can use the laws that we have available to prevent these things from happening to them.
And I don't want people to not get pushed around, not thinking that it's a one-way street and that they can, you know, if you pay attention and things are well documented and you have a good case, you know, you can get justice.
And I think that's true.
And I want people to be able to push back so that we can, you know, not get pushed around.
Like, I think, you know, Scott Adams recently talked about how, you know, God Well, it wasn't going to get promoted twice within, like, two jobs.
Oh, the diversity ceiling, yeah.
Yeah. So, that's my hope here, is that I want to know, you know, I want people to be aware of that, and I'm hoping that I can do something to help the conversation.
Why do you think you didn't leave?
I'm not saying you should have, I'm just curious.
I mean, I'm sure it crossed your mind, but why didn't you?
I was looking. I mean, I'm not going to...
Well, I had...
A decent job. Let me spend time with my kids.
And I was looking for...
If I'm going to leave, I want to leave for as good of a situation as I was in.
And that I was able to spend time with my family.
The hours weren't bad. I mean, I had an offer at one point from someplace that was offering four times what I was making there.
But I didn't go after it because, you know, it would require insane hours and I love my family.
You know, I didn't have to spend time with them.
I was looking around, and if something had come that was what I wanted, I probably would have left, but I was looking for something very specific.
Okay, I get it.
I get it. We don't need the full backstory, but you couldn't get as good a situation with regards to work-family balance, right?
Yeah. I certainly would not recommend that people stay passive in your career.
Just because you're an employee doesn't mean that you're powerless.
The best way to have leverage in a company is to be very productive.
Eventually, a sane company, if there's a conflict between a boss and an employee, If the boss is negative, then the boss is negatively impacting the productivity of 5 or 10 or 15 or 20 or 100 employees.
So the best way to have leverage if you're going to take on a boss is to be as productive as humanly possible so that they can't just get rid of you.
Because remember, most people, and I'm sure you know this as well as I do, but most people have no principles whatsoever.
They're not willing to go to the wall for anything abstract.
What happens with conflict is that most people work between the poles of fear and greed.
Fear and greed.
That's kind of the way it works in human conflict.
And so you need to be able to appeal to that.
So you need to be able to push back hard and that appeals to people's fear.
And then they'll want to appease you.
Now, your boss has some leverage to push back harder, but if you're very productive and very positive, then the greed that the company has to retain your services might be enough for them to keep you and to listen.
So in any negotiation, particularly when you're trying to, what they used to call, you know, pissing up the rope, like trying to make something happen, the chain of command above, Just be as productive as possible and, you know, document everything, be as reasonable as possible.
And it is the way to go.
And I mean, I've had bosses fired in the past just because I've known.
I remember at one place I worked, it's funny, you know, how people say, well, you got to make sure that people get more money for their pay and so on and raise people into the middle class.
Yeah, I was told by employees of mine that they felt underpaid, and so I ordered a survey salary sample and so on, and we looked at general salaries, and we looked at general skill sets, and we looked at this, that, and the other, and the cost of retraining.
I made a business case to a board and got people's salary up 20% to 30% on average.
So, you know, the fact that I was the first boss they'd ever had that was willing to go to the wall for them helped a lot, of course, right?
So then you have credibility. So then when I got in conflict with the boss, everybody knew that I was able to ask extraordinary things of the development team, A, because I was willing to come in and do the work too, and B, because they knew that I had really valued what it is.
That they were doing.
And so when it came to a conflict between me and a boss, well, I came with the whole development team and it was that kind of company.
So just make sure that you are liked, that you're productive, that you're part of a larger unit as a whole.
And you make your case horizontally to some degree as well.
Because if you're bringing up problems with your boss, for sure, a competent boss of your boss is going to canvas the team horizontally that's under the boss you have a problem with.
And if they all have similar stories, Then, you know, it's not like they have any principles in particular, but their fear of people quitting and their greed for the continued productivity of the team may have them do something to get rid of the bad boss.
But yeah, don't feel helpless about it.
You become a boss by acting like a boss.
You don't become a boss because you're just kind of down there doing your job and you get plucked out of obscurity and promoted.
You act like a boss.
You just act like you're in charge of the company, not in an arrogant way, but just in a proactive way.
And you end up being a boss because You act like a boss, right?
As the old saying from Aristotle goes, we are what we repeatedly do.
And if you repeatedly act like a boss sooner or later, people would just be like, well, we might as well promote him because, you know, he's doing the job anyway.
Right. Agreed.
All right. Is there anything you wanted to add to that to give people the oomph to start managing upwards, which is a tricky and exciting thing to do?
I would say doing great work was the number one thing that I did.
I don't really have much to add.
I think you summarized it very nicely as far as the strategy.
Just be conscious of these things because most people aren't going to be as overt in their comments.
If you see things that look strange, pay attention.
I think my ex-boss was really stupid in making those comments.
And most people won't, and it'll be harder to detect.
Right, right. Well, thanks for your call.
Very, very important to remember that.
It's easy to feel helpless when you're an employee, but that's when your cunning can come into play for the good of everyone.
So, yeah, thanks a lot for that. I appreciate it.
Let's move on to the next call. Thank you, Steph.
Alright, up next we have Ashley and her husband Michael.
Ashley wrote in and said, Next thing you know, she's living with my dad, on unemployment, and they're getting married!
My mother had promised me a lot before she passed and now it's all gone down the drain and this random woman gets to benefit from the life my parents worked so hard for.
No prenup or anything.
We need your help because my dad won't listen to anyone and is slowly cutting out the family.
That's from Ashley and she's on the call with her husband Michael.
Hey, how you guys doing?
Doing well. How are you?
Good. Yeah, the funeral vulture women are a bit of an underexplored phenomenon, which is one of the reasons why, you know, I was keen to talk to you guys about this.
You know, there are some women who are like, they're just waiting around.
You know, they've got their eye on a guy, and they're just waiting around.
And yeah, they'll move in pretty quickly.
You know, I mean, I'm certainly sorry to hear about your mother's Death, but, you know, 32 years, couple of weeks, you know, the body is still cooling, so to speak.
And she's like, hi, how you doing?
I brought you over a cheesecake in my negligee.
And she can really kind of, they can get their hooks in pretty quick, right?
Oh, yeah. Definitely. Yeah, actually, she had messaged him.
They actually all went to high school together, which is the ironic part.
Just the fact that this new woman, she did not even speak to my mom or dad in high school.
Which is kind of the weird part about it.
However, she did mention to my dad at first that she knew exactly what he was going through and how bad she felt and how to love him was to love my mom and it was just really sappy and over the top.
You can see her like reading these syrupy Hallmark cards over the phone and thinking that there's some kind of authenticity, right?
Exactly. Yeah, no, seriously, that was it.
So, I'm going to go out on a limb here, Ashley, and guess that your father made a couple of bucks over the course of his life.
My parents both worked with the state for 30 years, so they retired fairly young at 49 and 50.
So, I would say they weren't well off.
They retired younger than I am.
I've never felt happier as a taxpayer.
Anyway, go on. So he had some money.
He had a good pension. He had solid health care, like all this kind of stuff, right?
Correct. Yeah. I mean, they weren't like over the top wealthy or anything, but they were definitely comfortable and happy with where they were.
Well, I mean, there's wealthy and then there's stable, right?
True. So that's middle to upper middle class and at least until the economy completely craters, stable, right?
Yeah. True. Guaranteed, you know, so from 49 to, I don't know, 89, right?
So, you know, work for 20, 30 years, get a fantastic retirement for 40 years, right?
Yep. Yeah.
And this other woman, the woman who moved into the situation, again, going out on a limb here, but you mentioned that she was on unemployment, not quite so financially secure as your father, right?
Well, here's the thing.
So she had been married twice previously.
She also was in the military for a very long time.
And I was told at one point she only had about two or three years left in the military and she could have retired.
Yeah, it's like I think 20 years or so, but it depends on where you are.
Like 20 years in the military, you're set for life, right?
Exactly.
Yep.
And so she met my dad and then all of a sudden that went out the window.
So basically everything that she said, like she was going to buy a condo and then instead she moved in with my dad and then she was going to retire from the military.
And so all these things that she said never ended up happening.
Well, why would you want to retire?
Like, why would you want another couple of years in the military when you're getting kind of old and creaky when you can just attach yourself to a man with resources, right?
Mm-hmm. I mean, from a horrible amoral standpoint, it's like, yeah.
I can see that. And that's what I worry about.
Sorry, was she still married?
Or had her marriage ended recently before she contacted your dad?
She was separated, but still technically married.
However, they did not live together.
Right. And how long had they been separated, do you know?
I'm not 100% sure, but I know it had been at least a couple of months.
Right. Right. Okay.
And do you know how she managed to find out about...
Your dad, like in his situation?
Because they weren't friends before, right?
I mean, certainly not since high school.
No, you said she didn't talk to them in high school.
That's correct. Yeah, no, neither.
So my mom's sister had actually asked one of my mom's high school best friends if she had ever heard of this name before.
And my mom's best friend from high school said, no, we never hung out with her.
We didn't know her name.
So, basically, she came out of nowhere.
And what I think might have happened since she contacted my dad through Facebook is maybe she had seen something through mutual friends, like high school people.
That would be my assumption. Oh, about your mother's death?
Correct. And how long ago did your mother die?
August 2014.
Right. And was it sudden, like, absolutely unexpected kind of thing?
Was it an accident or was it some hidden medical issue?
No, so she actually had a heart attack at the end of July and they were working on getting...
This woman wasn't over for tea, was she?
No. Okay, just checking because, you know.
No, my dad was always at the hospital and so was I. And actually, my husband and I had just had a baby in May.
So, it was a lot of stress going on and we actually lived an hour away.
So, it was very stressful.
So, she had a heart attack.
Did she recover from that or did she die...
So what happened is she got put like on an LVAD machine and those are more or less like a temporary kind of fix.
They went to go put in like something into her heart to keep it going and they were unable to do the surgery because she got a urinary tract infection.
So they were going to put like an inside pump into her heart.
And with the LVAD, which is basically a machine that works from the outside to help your heart keep flowing.
Circulates the blood. Yeah, it helps the blood circulate.
That was actually helping the other side of her heart get stronger.
So it was sort of, she was actually getting a little bit better, which is why they had opted for that surgery.
But since she had gotten the UTI, they were no longer able to perform it.
Yeah, they have to clear that out, right?
Exactly. Because they didn't want an infection spreading throughout her body.
Because I guess the operation, like if they crack your chest, it must do a pretty horrible number on your immune system for a while.
So I guess it's the fear that then the infection is going to spread as a result of the surgery?
Okay. Yep.
So she actually recovered from the UTI. And then that's just kind of when everything went downhill.
And so it was about like a month after she had been admitted to the hospital.
Was when she passed.
And did the heart just gave out?
Sorry to interrupt, her heart just gave out one night, unexpectedly?
Or was she in decline? The LVAD actually came apart.
Yeah, the device failed.
It was actually really tragic.
The device failed? Yeah, she was scheduled for the replacement surgery.
I think it was on a Friday, but they discovered the UTI, so they decided to push the surgery off until the following week.
And over the weekend...
It's, you know, it was basically the LVAD was keeping, was acting as her heart, you know, circulating the blood through her body.
And the tube that was attached to her heart somehow detached and basically pumped her dry in the hospital room.
And I mean, we could only imagine what that looks like to see that pump.
Wait, the tube fell out?
Yeah, it detached from her heart and it kept pumping.
And so I would imagine she probably lost consciousness pretty quickly.
But wait, I'm sorry. Again, I'm no doctor, but that seems like kind of an important thing for them to notice.
Don't they have alarms or anything like that?
They do. The nurse actually was not even in the room.
And as I mentioned previously, the LVADs are supposed to be temporary.
So it really should only be used for two weeks at a time.
And she was going on, what was it, like week four?
I think it was three or four weeks.
Yeah, three or four. So really...
In all reality, I mean, the machine, you know, it's a machine after all.
And machines fail over time, right?
So it was just...
I think if they're keeping her on the machine, it's their responsibility that the machine keep working.
I agree. And then also the fact that the nurse wasn't in the room when it happened.
She just heard the alarm going off and ran in there.
Oh, so the alarm did go off when the tube fell out, but they couldn't get it back in time?
Correct. Yeah, because she was in the next room over talking with the other nurse.
Was she supposed to be in the room?
Of course, yes. Well, I don't know.
I mean, I don't know how these things work, so she's supposed to be in the room, but she was off having a nice little chit-chat with another nurse.
Yes. Yes, my mother was monitored 24-7.
There was a nurse, or should have been a nurse in there at all times.
Did you guys now own half the hospital, or how did that work?
We looked into it, and through the paperwork that her father signed in admitting her to the hospital, they basically have a no-fault clause.
But yeah, we've looked into the legality of the whole situation.
Wait, they have a no-fault clause? Pretty much.
You sign away, like, if you're accepting treatment, like, It was at a university hospital that she was at, so there was some paperwork that they signed and that stated basically they're going to do the best they can because she did suffer.
It was a massive heart attack.
I mean, she was... Two. Yeah, she had two heart attacks.
She was transferred from several different hospitals.
They revived her, brought her back.
She had actually passed away for quite some time, and it was really a...
A crazy case that she actually was coming back and healing because the one doctor, her first doctor that saw her at the original hospital she was at, Said, you know, this woman is a lost cause.
Well, no, no. Look, again, I don't know anything about the legalities, but just sort of like from a rational outside standpoint, I can understand if they say, look, she's crazy high risk.
Like, so the odds of something bad happening here are very high.
And so if in the normal course of events she dies, don't sue us, right?
Okay, I can understand that.
However, they also said, we're keeping a nurse in here all the time.
So if the nurse isn't in there, that's not in the normal course of events, right?
And I also don't know if that would have been, although she did admit to it, I don't know if it would have been a situation where it just would have been our word against her word, even though she did admit to it.
Well, no, they have security cameras, and they have another nurse she was talking to, and they subpoenaed the shit out of these people, and if you lie, you're in big trouble.
Yeah, that's true. Yeah, that could be.
I think we were just at such a place where we were just devastated that something like that didn't come to mind.
We were, you know, trying to plan a funeral.
We don't even know how it happened.
I'm asking the question that I'm curious about, and I also know that the audience is going to be curious about.
We did have a lawyer look at it.
I'm sorry? We had a lawyer look at the case, and he had all the medical records and the logs from the hospital.
And that was his recommendation was not to pursue legal action because that would ultimately he thought that the case would not be a successful one.
Well, certainly take the lawyers advice over my questions.
I just it's something which I'm sure you thought of as you pointed out you talk to a lawyer my audience will will Will be curious about it, but alright so So this woman is sympathetic and caring and knows exactly what he's going through.
And then how long did it take between her contacting your father and moving in with him?
I would say about three or four months.
It wasn't long. I mean, she had her own house.
And the next thing you know, they're fixing up her house.
They put it in the market. She sold her house.
And like Ashley said... She'd be like, oh, we're not ever moving in together.
This is just, you know, she's going to get a condo.
And then, you know, the next thing we know, all her stuff is in Ashley's father's house and she's moving in.
So they must have decided to move in.
I mean, sooner than when she actually did move in, right?
Yeah. I mean, unless they're just not being honest with us and upfront because Ashley's, you know, very emotional.
She's an only child and her mom, she was very close to her mom.
And maybe they were trying to protect Ashley from the feelings that she's having now and has been having since her mother passed.
So maybe they were trying to, I don't know, shield her in some weird way.
What do you sense? So she moved in, say, three months after...
Your mother died, Ashley, and they must have gone through at least some planning or preparation, as you say, fix up the house and put the house on the market.
What's your thought about when they may have started talking about it?
So I knew about her renovating the house.
Even my dad's neighbor was involved in helping with that.
It was ridiculous how many people were involved in helping with that.
I would say it was probably around two or three months if I had to guess.
Three months you said or three to four that she moved in, right?
And that takes some planning, right?
I think it was a very quick decision because she had the option of either buying a new place or moving into one of her mom's rentals, which I know she didn't really want to do due to the area of these rentals.
So it just seemed...
Logical that she would just move in with him.
So I think she played the game.
Sorry to interrupt. Did your mother have a life insurance payout as well?
I... We don't know.
I don't know that. My dad has not been clear with me on hardly anything, actually.
Interesting, huh? Yeah, Ashley hasn't seen a single dime or in any sort of...
Will or, you know, any sort of inheritance or anything like that.
I think everything has just gone to her father and he's not really...
He's not managing it well.
But did your mother have a will that you know of?
She did. And do you know what the content was of that will relative to you?
I do not know specifics.
However, knowing my mom, I would assume that she would have...
Wait, wait. Can't you see the will? I'm never over there.
I saw it one time probably five or six years ago, so that's why I don't know exactly.
No, but you could...
I mean, if you're named in the will or it's your mother, can't you see the will?
I could ask.
Well, you could go to the lawyer.
You don't have to go through your father, right?
You can go to the lawyer and say, am I named in the will?
And if you are named in the will, well, you get to see it, right?
I assume. I would assume so, too.
Yep, I honestly hadn't thought to do that.
Can I suggest you do that?
I will, actually. Please do.
Thank you for bringing that up.
Yeah. Because people can't put you in a contract and then say, you can't see the contract, right?
That's true, yes.
But one of the things I was thinking, too, is just I know I would have known what my mom would have wanted to do, obviously.
I'm pretty sure she wouldn't want the tot from high school getting it all.
Exactly. And then also, one thing, too, is that I feel like she would have trusted my dad, and maybe that was a mistake on her part.
Okay, well, we'll get to that in a sec.
So, within a month or two, your father and...
The Black Widow woman or whatever we want to call her.
Lilith. Let's call her Lilith.
Lilith. So, your dad and Lilith start planning a life together.
And did your dad talk to you about any of this?
I wouldn't say he talked with me about it.
I would say he told me about it.
Right. And he told you about it when she moved in or before she moved in?
I want to say it was before.
But not long before, is that right?
Correct. Because it did happen awfully quickly.
She didn't have a say in the situation.
It was, this is what's happening.
And, you know...
I'm just supposed to roll with it.
Accept it for what it is, basically.
All right. Now let me ask you a difficult question.
And please feel free to tell me to be quiet and go away.
But I'm just going to... I'm going to ask the question.
Because I'm a guy.
And I think I do have some insight into this.
But I could be completely wrong. So I'm just going to ask the question.
And you can let me know what you think.
When I see men acting crazy, I just think sex.
That's definitely part of it.
So I guess my question is, did your father and your mother, do you know if they had, you know, this is actually quite common, like I think 15% or sometimes even 20% of marriages are like sexless.
Like, you know, like 50 sitcoms, separate beds kind of stuff or separate rooms sometimes.
Because when I see kind of stuff like this happening, what I generally assume is a man hasn't had sex for a while and then, you know, somebody drops the V-bomb on him and he loses his mind.
Do you think that may have any kind of factor?
I don't think that was a factor, no.
I think after the fact, you know, after my mom's passing, you know, obviously that's on his mind and he did...
Mention something after their first date.
How he said he could never sleep with her.
He could never sleep with this woman?
Because of the way she looked.
Okay. I will bite.
Why did he say that?
I don't know.
I guess... It was said in a comparison.
He was comparing Ashley's mother to this new woman and said she's no Ashley's mother.
Well, to the point where he won't sleep with her at all.
So, is she obese?
No, no, no. What is it?
I think, again, he was just saying that To Ashley.
I mean, because the lady that he is with now, Lilith, I guess we're calling her, she's very small, very petite, very frail and fragile.
Doesn't seem that fragile to me, but all right.
Well, she's, I guess, very, very sneaky.
And I guess you could call her a monkey branching hypergamous.
Right. I just, I don't know.
We've had different situations where we've gone over there.
Ashley's mother was kind of the social glue in that family where she was putting together the events for, like, the Thanksgiving and Christmas parties.
Okay, okay. Sorry to interrupt. I just, I have to get to the point where, like, I mean, heaven above forgive.
Forbid even the thought, but, you know, if my wife died, like, I can't conceive of a relationship.
I mean, I can't conceive of a relationship ever, let alone a month or two.
So, that's what I can't figure out, is the lack of bond to the point where, you know, it's like, I'm going to set my stopwatch to like eight minutes for the morning and then I'm out being Joe Playa, right?
Yeah. So, what is going on where this is happening?
I think since she reached out to him and he was in a vulnerable state, I think he just went with it.
No, that's not enough.
That's not enough. That's not giving anybody any agency.
And that's terrifying. The idea that you could be married to, you know, what I assume he would describe as the love of his life for 32 years and then like Hamlet style, the funeral meets did coldly furnish forth the marriage table.
You know, like you took the deli from the funeral and said, yeah, this is good enough for the marriage.
Pretty much. So no, it's not enough to say, well, he was vulnerable and therefore, right?
I think she was rather...
Pushing. Yeah, she kind of was the one leading the conversation and taking charge of the situation.
And he was just kind of along with her.
He's a very laid back individual.
And if someone's really pushing him...
I could see where if she's the one, oh, we need to get married.
We need to sell my house. I'm moving in here.
He would just be like, oh, okay, whatever.
Okay, okay. I can see that happening.
No, no, that's – I'm sorry.
Like, I hate to be annoying, but I'm going to be.
That's not enough of an answer either because if he's just going along to get along, he knows this is putting him on a direct collision course with his daughter, right?
I don't think he did.
So if he's such a, well, I just want everyone to get along and I don't want to cause any trouble and I'm just going to go with the flow.
Well, he ain't going with the flow because he's got a woman who's putting him in direct collision with his daughter, right?
I don't think he saw it that way because he always had said to me, I need, you need to get over it.
I'm moving forward.
I'm moving on. Yeah, so he was throwing you under the bus.
So don't tell me about how easygoing and get along with it he is.
He definitely has changed.
I will say that. Like most people do.
Oh, no. Come on.
You guys, you're not trying to tell me he changed in the six weeks since your mom died to a totally different person.
I can't. People don't change really that much.
Come on. I just, I can't, I can't put my finger on what exactly it is.
Right. But that's the problem.
Because if you can't put your finger on that, then that's going to, it's really going to be tough to process this, right?
Because when people say, well, I want to process this and I want to get closure, a lot of people think it just means like sitting with things or crying about it on some therapist's couch.
But closure is when you understand stuff.
Right? And the idea that your dad would go from like loving, devoted husband to shacking up with crazy Lilith in the space of, you know, A month or two is not, you know, that's something that we need to understand, right? And no matter what happens, it's going to be less pretty for your dad than you want it to be, right?
We'll end up down that road, that's for sure.
Sorry, go ahead. Say again. We'll end up down that road, that's for sure.
All right. So, let's go to somebody who might just be a tad more objective in this, Michael.
What are your thoughts on it?
Because, I mean, Ashley, it's tough, right?
It's tough to look at your own parents objectively, but what do you see?
I think, I don't know, I'm of two minds of it.
Okay, let's take the mind that is upset to talk about this while Ashley's here.
Throw that out the window and pretend she's not here, just for a moment.
I mean, if I put myself in the situation that her father's in, I would, you know, would want to move on and be with someone who makes me happy and, you know, live the rest.
Like, he's not an old man.
I mean, he's in his early 50s.
Oh, my God. Dude.
Okay, I'm going to need someone else.
Do you know why? Because how on earth can a woman make him happy if the woman puts him in a direct collision course with his daughter?
Well, his daughter is out of the house and...
No, no, no, no. Come on. Come on.
Do you think that if, you know, I have a daughter, I have a wife, and if my wife died and some woman came in and put me on a collision course with my daughter, how could that be someone who makes me happy?
Like, who the fuck is some new person when you've got a daughter?
I mean, my daughter is nine, right?
I mean, you were...
28 years, whatever.
25 years, whatever. Quarter century with your father?
And he's like, yeah, you know, I got some new floozy, so to hell with you.
How is it possible for this woman to make him happy by putting him on a massive collision course with his only daughter?
Well, I would say to that point, the relationship between Ashley and her father may not have been as close as the relationship with her mother.
And that, you know, maybe in this point of view, maybe he really doesn't care that much about the relationship if he's willing just to like let it slide.
I'm willing to be pulled along behind this pickup truck.
Okay. But I'm going to try and wrestle the wheel anyway because I'll tell you this.
If my daughter was not getting along with her mother or was not as close to her mother as she was with me, what would I do?
You would have a conversation with them.
Yes! I would figure out what the barrier was and make sure that my daughter's relationship with her mother was as good as her relationship with me.
Because you can't ever win if one parent is less loved than the other.
Nobody can be happy.
Nobody can win, right? Yes.
But we've tried that.
We've tried to have conversations with him and he's just very dismissive of it.
No, no, no, no, no. Sorry to keep interrupting.
Back up. Because if you say that maybe the relationship between Ashley and her father was not as good as the relationship between Ashley and her mother, then it was Ashley's mother's job to help improve the relationship with the father to the point where something like this just couldn't happen.
I don't think that's true.
I think my mother and I, I think I had good relationships with both parents.
It was just a different kind of relationship, obviously, because one's my mother, one's my father.
One thing that I've noticed with my dad when I do meet up with him, have conversations with him, he tends to turn everything back around on me.
So it's almost like he's blaming me for the situation because...
I'm the one that needs to either get over it and accept it or I need to start going to all of her family's functions because he's there and it's at his house.
And so I'm just supposed to go along for the ride.
So it's my fault for having ill or negative thoughts or feelings.
So you do not have a good relationship with your father?
Currently... It's pretty bad stuff.
Okay, so I accept that and I appreciate the honesty of that.
But when was it good, if ever?
Because you don't just suddenly have a bad relationship with someone, right?
It definitely had to do when she came along.
Really? So she was able to somehow step over the quarter century you had with your father and totally change him.
I believe so because one of the reasons why I say that is because like he was never available anymore.
They were always doing something together.
One Father's Day, I didn't even get a chance to make plans with him before they were already had plans to go out of town that day and bought tickets to something.
So why is he going out with his new girlfriend on Father's Day rather than spending time with you?
That's a great question.
I have no idea.
You certainly have an idea.
Of course you have an idea. You've known the man for 32...
Well, I don't know. Let's just go with a quarter century, but whatever it is, right?
27, yeah. Okay. So you've known the man for over a quarter century.
So what was it that's in him that has him go with his new girlfriend rather than his daughter on Father's Day without even telling you?
Is that right? Correct, yes.
I did not know about it until I asked him...
You know, what he wanted to do, and then he had told me that they had already made plans.
Right. So, what's wrong with the relationship historically that that's where it ends up?
It's not her. She's a symptom, but she's not a cause.
Like I'm telling you this, as a father, there's no, again, this is so hard for me to even conceive of, there's no relationship that could come between me And my daughter.
Some woman comes along and says, well, I want you to spend Father's Day with me rather than your daughter.
I'd be like, good luck enjoying Father's Day alone because I'm spending it with my daughter because it's Father's Day.
Right? So where's the connection?
Where's the loyalty? Where is that?
And how is that missing in the past?
It doesn't just suddenly... You don't just have a bond with someone and some new person comes along and that bond just gets eclipsed, right?
Yeah. One thing I... I do know that he assumes a lot.
Now that we're a family, we have kids, he thinks that we're busy all the time.
Because my husband comes from a big family, so I guess my dad assumes we don't have time for him.
But that's not really the case.
Does he live far away?
About 15 minutes.
It's not far at all. So he's retired.
You guys have kids.
Is he over? Very rarely.
Maybe once or twice a year.
He's retired, but he still works.
No, come on. No, no, no, no, no.
You guys are trolling me now, right?
He lives 15 minutes away.
He's retired, and he comes over to see his grandchildren once or twice a year?
That's correct. And he does work, though, even though he has retired.
He works with her family's business.
I don't care. Once or twice.
He's got weekends off, right?
Yes. So what the hell...
This is a terrible relationship, guys.
Yeah. Terrible. And how old are your kids?
Four and a year and a half.
Oh, yes, of course. Four because you were pregnant when your mother died.
Mm-hmm. Now, before...
Well, I guess because there were no grandkids then.
So he's got virtually no bond with his grandkids, right?
Well, no. Actually, our daughter was born in May of 2014 and my mom passed in August.
So she was three months old.
And so we had lived an hour away.
We actually ended up moving in with my dad because Michael had gotten a job down here.
So we actually lived with him for a few months before we bought a house.
But he has no current particular relationship or bond with his grandkids, right?
Yes, that's correct.
Only when our youngest or our oldest was younger.
But no, currently there's no relationship, right?
And why is there no relationship with the grandkids, do you think?
He has replacement grandkids through Willis' family.
They have small children through grandchildren.
And I think he spends a lot more time with those kids.
You guys have to help me understand.
I don't understand.
Ashley, what is going on with your dad and you that he is gone, baby, gone?
Like, he's basically separated from you to all intents and purposes, hasn't he?
You could say not.
Well, once or twice a year, right?
Yeah, one of the issues that I had that I brought up to him was every time I had invited him to do something, she was always there.
Okay, no, no, no.
I can't get into the details, and I appreciate that.
And we'll get back to those.
I don't want to abandon them completely, but I'm just trying to understand the bigger picture.
How is it possible for you to vanish from his life because he's got some new family, some new girlfriend, and has basically abandoned you, abandoned his son-in-law, abandoned his grandchildren?
What evidence was there beforehand that he lacked this bond?
Because you don't have a counterexample, but I'm looking in the mirror, seeing myself, guys, and trying to understand.
I'm trying to figure out, like, how could I end up in a situation where I would abandon my daughter and her children For the sake of some crazy new woman's family.
And the reason why I keep interrupting, and I do apologize for that, is like I literally can't picture any situation, even remotely, where that could happen.
So because you guys, it's like kind of normal in a way, and I'm trying to dislodge that normalcy from you.
This is freaky shit.
I'll tell you this right now.
This is like way, way off the charts.
Lack of bonding. And it can't just have happened since your mom died.
This has to go all the way back.
Well, one thing that I think of, too, is that he knows that I don't like what he's doing.
He knows that I don't like what he's done with my mom's money.
He knows that I don't like this woman because I've told him face-to-face that I thought he could do a lot better than her.
Right. So that, I think, is part of it.
Why would you want to be around somebody if they don't agree with your lifestyle and who you're with?
Because they're your daughter.
Because they're your blood.
If you disagreeing with his girlfriend means that he's going to have nothing to do with you, basically, that's a lack of bond.
My daughter can disagree with me about just about anything.
There's nothing that's going to break that bond.
Because you guys don't...
I don't think you get what actually having a bond is.
And that's why it's hard for you to piece this one out or puzzle this one out.
Yeah, definitely. Obviously, we were really close when my mom was in the hospital.
Yeah. Because we were dealing with it together.
Oh, that's proximate stuff though.
That's like being close. That's like having an emotional connection with people you all think you're going to die in a plane crash, right?
That's not the same as actually having a bond.
Yeah, and Steph, I think this might go back to childhood.
Okay, good. Let's go back and try and find the roots of this, because you guys have children, and that's my major concern.
But go ahead. Not the concern for you as a parent, but I just need you to get this bond thing, because, you know, I want you to have it and really connect with it with your kids.
But sorry, go ahead. Yeah, I was going to say, like, with both of her parents working full-time, Ashley was, you know, an Alaska kid, and...
Was in public schooling and private schooling in high school and maybe that there wasn't, you know, that early bonding period.
I know you talk about that and it's very important to take time, you know, with your small children.
Okay, so Ashley, with your childhood, infancy and childhood, I mean, you obviously probably don't remember much of any of your infancy, but there are stories, there are pictures and so on.
Did your mother stay home with you?
Did she breastfeed you for a year to a year and a half?
I mean, how did that work for you as a baby?
No, she went back to work when I was, I think, six weeks old.
Why? Why? Because she had to.
That's what her job gave her.
So that's what she took. And maybe she had some vacation time in there too.
I'm not 100% sure. Wait, are you saying that there was no possibility of negotiating any kind of mat leave 27 years ago?
I don't know the whole answer to that, to be honest.
I don't want to say anything that I'm not 100% sure.
So why did they need both paychecks?
Why didn't your mom just quit and then get a job later when you got older?
She was raised in the mindset, like, don't rely.
Like, you know, you create your own future.
Like, don't rely on other people.
Don't rely on a man. Yeah, my grandma kind of instilled that in all of her girls.
And, I mean, my mom was just a working woman.
I don't think she could have handled being at home.
She would have... Was your mom a feminist?
No, she just would have missed her purpose.
She would have felt like she wasn't contributing to society as much as she could have, maybe.
She wasn't contributing to society.
So where did you go as a baby?
I actually stayed with my grandma until I was two years old.
So I was with family.
And then I went to a babysitter's house after that.
Wait, at the age of two, you went to a babysitter's house?
Yes. Like, she was an older Italian lady who babysat, like, four kids, I think.
Do you remember much about that?
I just remember that I fell off the top bunk there, and they thought I broke my nose, but I didn't.
That's the only thing I remember.
Oh, is that for nap time? I was wondering the same thing.
Like, why are you in a bunk bed?
A two-and-a-half-year-old is on a top bunk, exactly.
I'm not sure. So, that's really the only...
I don't remember that a lot.
And then I did start preschool when I was four.
So, I wasn't at the babysitters very long.
Wait, two years. Two to four, right?
Maybe not even that long.
Well, where else would you have been?
Your mom was working, right?
I may have started preschool earlier.
I'm just not sure exactly how old I was.
But at least a year, you were at this Italian woman's place.
Correct. Do you remember much about her?
No. I remember her name was Tony, and that's it.
Did you ever meet her later in life?
No. Was she not in the neighborhood anymore?
Had you guys moved? You know, I'm not really sure what happened to her.
I do remember my mom saying something about her, but I don't recall what it was.
What was your mom's job when she was working?
She was an external auditor for the state.
Auditor of what? Liquor.
Both her parents worked in the liquor department for the state.
Because in our state, the liquor is state mandated.
So you have to have a license to serve liquor.
Exactly. So she was a petty regulatory enforcer trying to catch people serving liquor without a license so she could find them or throw them in jail.
No, she wasn't doing that.
She was more or less like setting up stores and moving stores and counting inventory to making sure they weren't stealing from the state, that sort of thing.
Wait, what do you mean stealing from the state?
The people that owned the businesses.
Like if they were getting, let's say they, like someone may have miscounted a case and they decided to take it and so my mom would basically verify with the truck drivers, check the inventory based on the sales, you know, making sure everything added up.
Right. So she left her children to contribute to society for that.
It's not like she was a brain surgeon and it's like, well, if I stay home with my kids, people's brains are going to leak out all over the floor.
They're going to die. I know.
It's like, well, I have to make sure beer doesn't get stolen and I got to make sure liquor licenses are up to date.
Yeah. I mean, I just don't think she had the personality to stay at home.
I think she would have...
Why did she have a child then?
Well, that'll be a whole...
Longer story. No, no.
This is the story.
She never wanted children.
I don't think she really wanted kids that much.
Okay. You guys have kids.
There's really only one way to get them.
Yeah. And that's unprotected sex, right?
I don't mean to shock you guys, but that's how it rolls.
So, you know, if you don't want to have children, it's really not that complicated, right?
Yeah. Yeah, I think she just went back and forth a lot.
I don't want to know how it happened.
Oh, wait. No, I see what you mean. I see what you mean.
I see what you mean. So, she kind of half committed to having kids or what?
From my understanding, from what my father has told me, it's like she did want to, but then at the same time, she didn't, I guess.
I don't know how to put it. So, one month she was like, Yeah, let's do it.
And then maybe the next she's like, well, you know, I really like my free time.
Because they used to do a lot of like sports and activities together.
They didn't have me until they were 29 and 30.
Wait, they used to do a lot of sports and activities together.
Did they keep doing that after you were born?
Not all of them.
Of course, not all of them.
I'm not going to nightclubs that much anymore either.
Well, my mom, she was the one that mostly quit doing them to stay home with me while my dad went and did stuff.
Oh, so your dad worked and then had hobbies that took him away from the family when he wasn't working, right?
It was usually on the weekend or maybe like one weeknight, if I remember correctly.
And do you remember a lot of one-on-one times with your father where you were having fun?
I do, actually. I played t-ball and softball, and he was my t-ball and softball coach.
And so we did spend a lot of time together playing sports.
And when I got a little bit older, I actually went to watch him play sports.
Anything where it was just you guys having a conversation?
Not specifically.
It was usually an active conversation.
Sort of hang out, I guess.
Is there any time that you do recall your father and yourself having a quality conversation about something meaningful when you were a child?
Not that I can think of right off the top of my head, no.
So, no. Because if there was one, you would remember it as the exception to the rule, right?
Yeah, that was something that my mom and I would do.
Not necessarily Me and my dad.
And did you ever have any issues?
I'm not saying you should, I'm just curious.
Did you ever have any issues with your mom about her not spending time with you really as a baby?
Or as much time? I don't really think so.
And do you spend time with your, did you take off time when your babies were born?
I tried to take off as much time as I could.
I saved up all my vacation time.
And then obviously I had some maternity leave and one of the companies I was with let me take an extra few weeks.
So that was nice.
So how much time did you have after your first baby was born before you went back to work?
Oh, my first one I actually wasn't working.
I was still in college. So that was a very busy year.
You were still in college when you had a baby so you were still trying to finish your college work?
Yeah, and I just worked in an internship.
Wait, you worked in an internship?
You were in college?
And you were a new mom? Yes.
Did that give you much?
I mean, how did that work with the baby?
Well, I could work from home.
In my internship, I only had to do like two hours a day.
And since I was about to graduate, a lot of my classes were finished with.
I was only taking about, I think, three classes.
Were you breastfeeding? I pumped and then I fed her because she wouldn't attach very well.
Oh, the lashing was an issue.
So it was actually more time consuming with the pumping and then the feeding.
How long did you rest leave for?
I did that about two months.
And why did you think about taking time off just to focus on being a new mom?
No, I really wanted to graduate.
To be honest. And why is that, do you think?
Well, I think because my parents never graduated college and that was something like my mom had always wanted me to do.
And just the fact that, you know, she had just passed and I was like, I really need to just get this done.
You know, almost for, well, obviously for me, of course, but for her too.
Well, I mean, given that your mom didn't stay home with you, I'm not sure that Not staying home with your baby as much.
I know that you were home and all that, but not having that kind of attention, I don't know that that was really the best thing.
The best lesson to learn from your mom's life was to repeat that stuff.
Yeah, I mean, I was taking online.
I was just going to say, I was taking online classes, so it wasn't like I was physically gone a lot.
Right. Yeah, but I mean, there's time and mindshare and all of that, right?
Mm-hmm. And of course, babies are very inconvenient, right?
I mean, if you try to have any kind of schedule, then I don't know how your baby was, but mine certainly was not like, you know, oh, do you have something you need to do?
Now I really want your attention, right?
Yeah, the sleeping was an issue, for sure.
So then you did graduate, right?
Yes. And then what happened?
Then I was actually home with her for seven months.
And then? Then I got a job.
And how old was she at this time?
She was a year and a couple months.
And did you enjoy the time home with her for the seven months?
We were actually living with my dad for part of it.
I think it was kind of a weird transition time.
But if you're referring to just my quality time with her, I did.
Yes, but I think we just really needed...
I really wanted to have like two incomes and get stuff paid off.
Why did you want two incomes?
Because we both have student loan debt and I was thinking about that.
Well, you wouldn't have as much if you hadn't borrowed more to finish college after becoming a mom, right?
Yeah, and honestly, I didn't borrow all that much, but still.
So not a big student debt, right? It's there, yeah.
Right. And so you wanted the two incomes to pay off, to some degree, the student loans, right?
Correct. Right. Would it have been possible?
But also, I mean, you were saving money by living with your dad, right?
We were, but that was around the time, you know, he was talking to her and he kind of was like, you guys should buy a house.
Sort of like kicking us out.
He was dropping a lot of hints about us getting our own place and kind of, oh, here's a house, here's a house.
Right. Well, that's, I guess, was that because the girlfriend wanted to move in or what?
We think so.
Right. Okay, so then you got a job.
And is it fair to say, Michael, that you were working this whole time too?
Yeah, I've been working, you know, since I've had the same job for the last four and a half years.
It's third shift, so it's not ideal.
That's overnight stuff, you mean?
Yeah, I go in around midnight and it's in the medical field.
And then I get done in the morning, you know, whenever we're done.
Running things so it's and I come home and Ashley she actually just started a new job but she's been home with the kids for the last maybe six or seven months and that's been It's been nice to come home too, but it's also exhausting after you get done working, you know, 10, 11 hours and come home and be mobbed by children.
And, you know, we have to go to the zoo and, you know, go do fun stuff and go to the park and play.
And they, you know, they see me for the first time as they're waking up.
And so they think, you know, I've been asleep all night.
So I get, you know, some days I get like two, three hours of sleep and it's just not the best situation.
Is there any chance to shift the schedule?
Yeah, I actually have my own business that I started last year and it's kind of really starting to grow some legs here.
So hopefully I'll be done.
I'm just kind of saving this job and working just to cover the mortgage and all the bills and student loans and stuff like that.
But I don't see myself being in that position really all that much longer.
Okay, okay. Now, can you guys imagine a situation wherein you would end up not seeing your children or having very little to do with them when they get older?
No, not at all. Okay, so this is the kind of thing I'm trying to denormalize here because it's like you couldn't imagine it, but you're kind of defending it on the part of your parents, Ashley, right?
I wouldn't say I'm going as far as to defending it.
I mean, that's part of the reason why we call him here.
Yeah, I'm making up excuses for him because I'm trying to think like him.
Yeah, into her, I guess.
It's not like she had some big, earth-shaking career that human civilization depended on that was worth abandoning her children for, right?
Or her child. Yeah, and to be honest and fair, I really don't know back then what their financial situation was.
I know that my parents, they started out at the bottom of the ladder.
You can find a way to make it work.
If you have the commitment, look, if you have the commitment, if you have to move, if you have to downsize, if you have to cut back on your cell phone plan, you know what I mean?
You can find a way.
Yeah, and one thing that they did do for me is they made sure that I always went to private schools because they both went to public schools and They just wanted to make sure I had a good education, so I know...
But why wouldn't one of them just stay home and homeschool you then?
About the same price, right?
After taxes? No, I'm not laughing at what you're saying.
I'm laughing at the fact of, like, picturing my mom homeschooling with her lack of patience.
Yeah, her parents would not have been a good candidate for homeschooling.
Why is that? They're kind of impulsive and her dad...
I just don't see. He's not the teaching type.
He's kind of, I don't know, to be stereotypical, more kind of like the Homer Simpson, I guess.
I don't know why. I'm not sure what that means, though.
Kind of like, I don't know.
He's not, just not very intelligent, I guess.
Ah, okay. Okay.
Well, good to know that he was able to retire at 50 then.
Yeah, exactly. Right.
Okay. All right. Well, I think I have enough.
If there's anything you guys wanted to add, I can certainly give you some thoughts about where you're at.
Sure, go ahead. All right.
You sound sad.
Particularly you, Ashley.
You sound kind of heartbroken.
And I think it's more than just what's going on with your dad.
I think that there is sadness there.
And when you... Hear back your conversation with me, I think you'll hear it too.
Sort of a depressed way of speaking.
Depressed just in terms of energy and all of that.
And as far as your dad goes, If your dad is this way, where he basically has no bond that I can see.
I mean, I hate to be this blunt, but I'm just, you know, people come to me to hear the truth, at least as I see it.
And this doesn't mean anything I'm saying is true.
I'm just telling you what I think.
There's no bond to speak of.
And he's in it for himself.
And I don't think that you show up in his calculations at all, Ashley.
I don't think you show up at all. And so, that is a fact that you have to accept.
It's not going to change. It's not going to change.
Now, this is something...
You said that your mom was like the social glue, right?
Yes, she was. Right.
So, your mom should have fixed this before you were 27 years old or before you were 24 years...
23 years old when she died, right?
Right. So she didn't fix it, right?
She either didn't know this about your father or she knew about it but didn't care that it was important or didn't care about how it might affect things in the future, right?
So she made a will and so obviously she planned for, as everybody reasonable should, her own death.
Correct. And so she should have tried to fix this relationship with your dad.
But she didn't. And...
You're paying the price for that.
Now, I'm not trying to say your dad has no responsibility and this and that, but if this is just the way he is and your mom was the social glue, then she should have made sure that things were okay.
Now, she obviously, you said she had, what, like a month in the hospital?
Yes. So that's the time where you get everyone the hell together and sort stuff out, right?
Yes. It wasn't like she was hit by a meteor or a bus or something like that, right?
She didn't get between, like, Michael Moore and a buffet, right?
So, she had time to try and make sure she had, like, a month of people saying, yeah, it's not looking good, right?
Yes. She was also on a lot of medication, though, too.
So, it's not really like she...
Had a month. She wasn't always in the right state of mind.
She had some coherence, I would assume, right?
It wasn't like she was on...
It was here and there.
Okay. Was she coming in and out of consciousness kind of thing?
Yes. And it was just also the type of medication she was on.
She was like hallucinating and just saying really off the wall stuff.
Wow. Wow.
Okay. All right. So maybe that was a little bit less likely.
Yeah. But the fact is that...
She still had almost a quarter century to work on the relationship between you and your dad, right?
To improve it. And now that you say that, it's like I don't think that she really thought there was a problem or maybe either couldn't see it or was ignoring it, you know?
Well, but I can tell you why, Ashley, because the problem would have led to her as well.
Yeah, that could be. No, no.
It's not that it could be.
It is, because of what you told me, that she was with you for six weeks, and then she basically worked.
I just have a hard time, like, finding the correlation from that to now.
Like, talking about...
I don't know, it sounds as if, like, I never saw her as a baby.
I never said that. But you were in care...
For, I assume, 40 to 50 hours a week.
Because she's got a 9 to 5 job plus commute, right?
Not really, because she can actually go into work whenever she wanted as long as she got her job done.
So, I would say 6 hours.
And that includes commute and her getting ready and all of that?
Well, my grandma only lived like 5 minutes away.
Okay, so let's say six hours a week, right?
So that's, right, 30 hours a week, Monday to Friday?
Yep. So children who are in care for more than 20 hours a week experience the same symptoms as children who are abandoned by their mothers.
I can't say I agree with that, though.
No, of course. I mean, this is the study, and you may have felt differently.
And of course, sometimes it was your grandmother, and then sometimes it was this Italian woman with a bunch of other kids where you fell off the top of the bunk bed.
But I'm just telling you what some studies have said.
I mean, whether this is certainly not a replacement for your own personal experience.
But did you have any sense that you did not have a very strong bond with your father?
No. You had no sense of that?
So your mother didn't know that you had very little bond with your father and your father doesn't seem to know and you didn't seem to know.
And that tells me that your family doesn't have much of a clue what a strong bond is.
Now you have a stronger sense of it because when I asked you and Michael what circumstances you think would conspire to have you have almost nothing to do with your children when they grow up, you said you couldn't imagine such a thing, right?
Correct. All right. So you have your lived experience as parents of a stronger bond, right?
Yes. But you have no comprehension, I think, of how little of a bond you had with your father.
And this is why what's happening is deeply shocking, right?
Yes. And it's deeply shocking because you didn't see it coming.
Now, whenever we don't see something coming...
But it's there. We have to really look back and see where it came from.
Yes, I agree completely.
Now, I think that we can look back and see that your parents chose additional money over time with their children.
Now, they may have had good reasons for that in their minds at the time.
I'm not trying to sort of say terrible, terrible parents or anything.
But that's the reality, right?
Yeah, I mean, I also did ballet five days a week, too.
So, like, I wouldn't say it was just them.
Like, I don't know.
Like, I was gone a lot, too, in the evening.
So, I guess we just weren't really spending that.
Do you know why you were gone a lot in the evenings?
Because you didn't have a strong bond with your parents.
Because if you had a strong bond with your parents, it seems likely that you would want to spend more time with them.
But if you can't remember having a meaningful conversation your entire childhood with your father, then you might as well go do ballet, right?
In the same way that your father might as well shack up with his new girlfriend because there's no bond!
Yeah, I guess so.
My daughter enjoys spending time...
With us so much, I'm like, you want to go here?
You want to go there? No, I just want to stay home and let's chat and play.
You know? Doesn't want to go places.
That's great. Now me, I was sent to summer camp for like sometimes a month in a row or sometimes longer in the summer.
And I'm like, sure, I'll go.
Why? Wasn't that much fun being home with my mom.
No bond. So, what's happened with the girlfriend is only possible if there's virtually no bond with you.
He's picking sides.
He's not even picking sides.
He's already chosen his side and it doesn't seem like there was even any struggle.
So, he wanted to go and play sports when you were a baby or a child or whatever.
So, he went to go play sports and your mother wanted more money rather than more time with her kids.
So, that's what she did. Nobody ever asked you.
So they did what they did and they didn't consult their children.
And now what's happening with his new girlfriend?
He's doing what he's doing and he's not consulting you.
It's the same thing.
Yeah, that's true.
So I guess where do I go from here then?
Well, he's gone, right?
He's gone, right? In a sense, yeah.
He's gone. You know, he's gone.
And the money is gone.
And she's got him, right?
Yep. And that is a result of choices that were made before you were even born.
Now, that's...
The good news for that is...
Well, the bad news for that, it means it's not going to change.
The good news for that is it's not your fault.
It's nothing you could do about it, right?
Well, that's how I feel anyway, yeah.
Yeah. So, you've got to say goodbye to the money, and you've got to say goodbye to any semblance of a bonded relationship with your dad.
Because, I mean, he's made his priorities very clear, right?
Yeah, and you know what? He's not, like, an emotional type of person either, so it's not like...
Or confrontational, so it's not like he would...
Even really tell me how he's feeling, even when I flat out asked him before.
So, it's frustrating.
Hang on. Have you told him?
I mean, I can't even picture, Ashley, how painful this is for you.
Like, I'm pretty good at figuring out what other people feel.
This is probably a little bit of a bridge too far for me to picture just how wrenching and painful and disappointing and hurtful this is for you.
Coming on the heels, as it did so quickly, of your mother's death.
So, I mean, am I wrong?
I mean, this seems agonizing.
And I can completely understand why, but am I wrong in that perspective?
No, you're right. It's just, it's so hard to just, you know, wrap my head around like everything.
I guess that's happened in four years, even in two years, because a lot of stuff happened.
But he's spending more time with his wife's grandkids than his own grandkids, right?
Yeah, and that's because she invites them over to the house a lot because they do a lot of holiday functions together.
Yeah, it's not because of any of that.
Come on. You keep looking for these external becauses.
It's not because of any of that.
So I'm going to tell you guys what it means to have a no-bond relationship.
Because this is the major issue, and this is where I think the major solution could be.
No bond means no honesty, in general.
Because when you have a very fragile bond with someone, particularly if it's a parent, what that means is that you're too terrified to be really honest with that person.
Because you're afraid that honesty is going to trigger rejection, right?
Have you told him...
And this is going to sound like a nag.
I really don't mean it that way.
Like, have you told him...
I don't mean it that way.
This is just for informational purposes.
But have you told him, Ashley, how painful, how deeply painful what he's doing is to you in an open and vulnerable way?
I have brought it up to him a few times.
No, no, no. Not brought it up.
Really lifted the lid and let him see...
Just how painful it is to you.
So, the last time I talked to him, like, really in-depth about that, it was, like, the subject kept getting changed.
And so... Wait, he kept changing the subject, you mean?
Yes. He deflects a lot.
Okay. Okay.
So, what did you do then?
So, we were actually at a restaurant.
And so, at one point, I noticed...
Because I started raising my voice at him because...
I was like, Dad, that's not what I'm asking you.
I asked you this. And I noticed people were starting to turn around and look at me.
And so I just felt overwhelmed with anger at that point that I almost didn't want to have that conversation because I felt like I wasn't in a good mental state because now I'm angry.
Well, and you did it in a restaurant, which can be a challenge, right?
And I did it at a restaurant.
Yes. And Michael, were you there for that too?
He told me not to do it.
Not the restaurant, anyway. He told you to do it, like, someplace other than a restaurant, right?
He sure did, yes.
So, he will love that you just said that.
Yeah. Yeah.
But there's a, look, there's a reason, and Michael, you know this reason as well as I do, there's a reason you chose to do it in a restaurant, right?
I didn't know where else to go.
What do you mean you didn't know where else to go?
Would he not come to your house?
Yeah, that's what I told her.
Did you have him sit down on the couch?
I could take the kids to my parents.
You don't have big emotional conversations with somebody saying, is your coffee still warm enough?
Do you want a refill, hun? Yeah, and honestly, it was a last minute decision too.
So you set yourself up for failure, right?
I kind of was, yes.
Yeah. And there's a reason you did that.
And again, I'm not criticizing anything because, you know, when we know the reasons why we do things, we get a lot of peace, right?
Peace of mind. Yes. Right.
So why did you choose to do it in a bad environment and blow off your husband's advice?
Because my dad had told me it was up to me to decide where to do it.
And I was just like going back and forth.
And I don't know, it just, I couldn't make up my mind.
I don't really have a good answer for that.
You did it so you had an excuse to back out of the conversation.
I don't think I was trying to back out of a conversation.
I mean, I really was trying to have a conversation.
No, but you had it in... Come on, Ashley.
You had it in a restaurant.
Which meant that if it got uncomfortable, you would be in the weaker position, right?
Because it would mean that you couldn't push it because other people would get upset.
Or you'd feel self-conscious.
So you gave... The advantage to your father, because you didn't want to get to the end of the conversation, because the end of the conversation, you fear, is that he's basically like, well, I'm going to do what I want to do, and if you want to get along with it, fine, and if you don't, well, too bad, right?
Yeah, that's what he says every other time.
Right. So, to accept that is to accept that there's no real relationship.
Because a relationship is where you can be honest with someone.
And I know this because I have strong bonds with people in my life, which means we can be honest with each other.
And who cares if it's inconvenient or if it's awkward or whatever, right?
Tell the truth, right? You can't have a relationship if you can't tell the truth, right?
Yeah.
Right.
So you can't really be honest, right, with him?
About how horrible this is for you.
I think I can, but maybe I'm also scared of hurting his feelings in a way too.
Because, I mean, obviously he's happy.
I do want him to be happy.
I also want him to see the big picture.
But how can he be happy if you're miserable?
Again, I don't think you understand what it is to have a bond.
To have a bond means that you can't be happy if it is the huge expense of someone in your life.
Do you understand? I don't know how to get it across any more clearly.
No, I get what you're saying.
I just think it's selfishness.
Okay, so then his happiness doesn't have anything to do with your happiness.
Your happiness is irrelevant, fundamentally, right?
Because he's doing stuff that's incredibly painful to you.
And he's saying, well, if you have a problem with it, it's your fault.
Yes. Right? Mm-hmm.
So he doesn't really care about your feelings.
That's pretty much what we've brought it down to, yeah.
Right. So you can tell him more clearly about all of that.
And the fact that you're calling in here means that you don't have closure.
And closure doesn't mean the end of a relationship.
Closure just means... Knowledge.
Conclusions, right? So if you have an honest conversation with him, not in a restaurant, but in some place where you actually have privacy and continuity to have the conversation, and if you tell him everything that is painful to you about what he's doing, now if he basically says, well, I don't care, I'm going to do what I want, okay, well, that's your answer.
There can't ever be a relationship.
It's just going to be painful, right?
Now, if he's like, you know, well, I didn't know how strongly you felt and blah, blah, blah, and, you know, maybe there's some breakthrough or maybe he realizes that he is...
Not making sensible decisions regarding his relationship with you.
Well, then there's some certainty, at least, that if he knows how upset you are, that he's going to change his behavior.
But if you don't tell him the truth in your experience and thoughts and feelings regarding him, Ashley, then you're going to be stuck in this null zone of, like, you can't get close.
You can't get free.
You're just kind of in this decaying orbit, if this makes sense.
Yep, that's exactly what's happening.
Right. So the way to solve that is with honesty.
Is with honesty.
Real honesty. Not honesty in a restaurant where, you know, social problems can yank the cord from conversation anytime, right?
Yeah, and I mean, that wasn't the only conversation we've had either.
You know, since obviously it's been...
Almost four years that they've been together.
So it's not the only conversation he and I have had, but that was just the most recent.
He's done things also in the past where they've tried, you know, over the phone, been on the phone call, and Ashley said, I want to have this private conversation, and she's not around, right?
And her dad would confirm that, oh yeah, she's not around.
And, you know, they would continue the conversation, and then Ashley said something...
About one of her grandchildren, I guess, that she didn't approve of.
And it turns out, I guess, Ashley was on speakerphone and then this woman started swearing at Ashley and her dad fumbled for the phone and ended the call really quickly and then wouldn't pick up when she tried to call him back and said, I thought we were, you know, speaking privately.
Why am I on speakerphone? And this woman is, you know, verbally abusing me.
So you're asking for the private call.
Your dad says, yes, it's a private call.
It turns you're on speakerphone with the new wife.
Yeah, exactly. Fuck that.
That is ridiculous. That is terrible.
That is absolutely terrible.
I agree. And the thing that was most frustrating to me with that is like if roles were reversed, let's say I did that to her.
Imagine the fury that would have come out of him.
Okay. Instead of vice versa.
No, I get it. I get it. Look, I get it.
That's the last straw for me.
Okay, I'm going to tell you what the reality is.
The reality is that you're looking at the end result of a pretty horrible series of events that started before you were born.
Now, can't fix your dad.
This level of betrayal is beyond words.
I can't even fathom how a father would betray his daughter in that kind of way.
And what you guys can do is say, okay, well, this is what happens when you don't have a strong bond with people.
When you can betray your daughter for the sake of some new word I will not use who's in your life, right?
So you can say, okay, can't fix that.
But what we can do is commit to having the strongest possible bond with our own children.
Yeah, we try.
Okay. I mean, I think we do a good job with what I meant.
Do you still have some belief that things can be fixed with your father?
I think it will almost take him waking up and maybe wondering why I don't have family around, why aren't my friends around, you know?
I would not hold my breath.
I'm not. Okay.
That's for sure. Then if you've got closure, if we've got closure, why are we talking?
There's something you don't have closure about.
Is it the money? I guess it's just I feel like I'm not included in anything.
I want to know, prepare me for when you die, basically.
What am I going to be in charge of and what's she in charge of?
And it's like, I'll ask him questions like that and I just don't get...
A straight or clear answer.
Wait, from your dad? Yeah, and I don't get why.
Well, no, just talk to the lawyer.
Call up the lawyer and say, am I involved in the will, right?
And if you are, then say, okay, well, I need to see the will.
But I guarantee you, I guarantee you that if you are in the will, that you're not going to get anything without a huge fight.
Because if you are in the will and your father has not given you the money that he was supposed to give you because you were in the will, then the money has likely gone up this woman's whatever, right?
And there were things said to Ashley by her mother to her.
She had a car that was very special to her and she said, oh, when I pass, you're going to get this car.
And it turns out her dad...
Ended up selling the car to go buy a new large SUV once her mother had passed.
Did the father know about this promise?
Yes. She said when I got married I could have it.
So she married a pretty horrible guy.
If he takes what your mother had promised you after she died and sells it to buy something for himself without telling you or consulting with you, I assume.
Yeah, because he, like, his famous line is, it's mine now.
It's mine now. Very possessive sounding.
Yeah. Okay. So, this is who he is.
I guess so, yeah.
He's not going to change. I mean, I would be curious, I mean, if I were in your shoes, I would be curious just to find out what was in the will.
Now, if I'm not named anywhere in the will, well, then that tells me something about my mother.
Because if my mother didn't name me in the will and let my father handle all of this stuff and my father did what he did, then my mother was completely clueless with regards to my father.
Does that make sense? Yes.
But if I am named in the will and my father never told me or gave me the money, well, that tells me about both of them, right?
Absolutely, yeah. So, and I think that is what they would call closure.
I mean, you have closure whether or not you find out anything to do with the will.
But, yeah, these are the people who work for the government.
Oh my gosh. And listen, listen, okay, hang on, now it's time for me to say a little something to Michael.
Yes. Yeah, Michael. This is a man thing, right?
Husband to husband, father to father.
You got to build some boundaries here, man.
I'm trying. No, no.
No. Stop trying.
Just make it happen. This is damaging your family.
Agreed. Right. So, if there's wolves in the backyard, what do you do?
Chase them off. Shoot them.
Chase them off. Chase them off.
Right. This is pretty monstrous.
To be around your wife, right?
I know your wife, Ashley, you know, great woman, but she's not going to be able to do it with her dad because she doesn't even have the bond for the honesty and he has betrayed her six different ways from Sunday.
Yeah. Right? So this is for the fathers out there, the husbands out there.
If someone's hurting your wife, what, doesn't this do something to you?
Doesn't this make you say, no, this is the woman I love.
You treat her badly, fuck off.
Yeah, we don't have a very good relationship with him.
Michael, Michael, Michael, stop it.
No, this is you need to guard your family, man.
She's not going to be able to do it.
She's a very nice young woman.
She's thoughtful. She's caring.
She's intelligent. And she's got this weird half ghost tentacle bond with a abusive guy, right?
He is a predator in your household.
You understand? Guard your family.
She's not going to be able to do it.
I'm talking to the man of Europe too.
Guard your tribe.
Guard your family. This is a destructive guy to be around your wife.
He ripped her off from what her mom promised.
He's betrayed her by pretending conversations are private.
He's not seeing his grandchildren.
This is a desperately terrible guy to be around your family or to be in your wife's thoughts, right?
She is begging for you to free her from this.
This is like when women tell you repeatedly terrible stories about their relationships, you know what they're begging you to do?
Get them free. And you have to put your foot down and say, no, I've heard enough.
This guy's out of our lives.
Maybe if there's some massive reform down the road and we feel maybe okay, but no.
We know everything we need to know.
This guy is bad for you.
He's bad for our kids.
He's bad for our relationship.
No. I mean, think of how many hundreds, if not thousands of hours over the past four years you've ended up talking or thinking or working on this problem, right?
Wasted time. Oh, so much.
Wasted time, right? You draw a big, fiery moat around your family.
None shall pass!
Who treat people badly?
Yeah, but at the same time, Steph, I can't control Ashley in every step of the way.
And if she wants to do something, I can't physically stop her from doing that.
Like, if she wants to text her dad, I can't yank the phone out of her hand.
I mean, I think we've taken some great strides in this conversation, but if she chooses to reach out and try to start another conversation with him, I mean, I can't stop that.
All right. It is essential that Ashley continue to respect you, Michael.
You know what hypergamy is, right?
You used the term monkey branching earlier, right?
So when you fold like this and say, well, there's nothing I can do.
What do you think happens to Ashley's view of you?
Well, I mean, if it's kind of like a shit test, I know you kind of throw that out there.
No, no. Don't give me more slogans.
I'm asking you, man-to-man, what do you think happens to Ashley's view of you when you're like, mine can't do anything to me?
Well, Ashley is the type of person, if you tell her to do something, she doesn't want to do it.
She wants to kind of do the opposite.
So it's like the more I push her to do something, like with the whole meeting situation, I said, don't go to the restaurant.
You need to meet in a private setting.
Did you go to the restaurant? No.
Ashley did. Why?
I did not. No, you did not go, right?
No, I did not. All right.
Yeah, I was watching the children so she could go and have her talk with her dad.
Okay, Ashley, you know it's bad for your children when you're thinking about your father, right?
Yes. Okay, it's bad for your children when you're thinking about your father.
Do you know why? Well, because I'm kind of subjecting them to the same thing that he's done to me.
You're emotionally unavailable. Yeah.
You're not there in the room with them, right?
So Ashley, you don't have the right to obsess about your father because you're a mother.
You don't have the right. You have children who are dependent upon you for their emotional connection with you, right?
You are their primary caregiver.
You are the mom. I mean, don't get me wrong.
Michael's responsible and I'm just talking to you right now, right?
So you don't have the right to continue to fuss and obsess about this relationship with your father because you have children who depend upon you for just about everything, right?
Yeah, and to be honest, I don't even really talk to him that much.
No, no, no, stop it.
Don't minimize. I just said thousands of hours over the last four years and you said, oh yeah, right?
So don't try and give me this crap about while I barely talk to him and talking about thinking about it, right?
Yeah. Okay, it's been thousands of hours of you being less emotionally available to your children and your husband because you're obsessing about your dad, right?
You don't have the right to do that.
Hey, if you're single, sure.
But did you have anything to do in your vows, like there will be no other person above you or before you?
Something like that. Forsaking all others, is that right?
Mm-hmm. Do you remember that?
Yes. So you understand that you're breaking that vow.
Because you're putting someone above your relationship between your husband and your relationship with your children.
Which is this terrible father who lies and betrays and steals, right?
Does not honor the heartfelt wishes of his dying wife, your mother, right?
So you're putting someone above your children and above your husband.
No. That is not what you promised when you got married, is it?
No. Now, do you have the right to obsess about a relationship at the expense of your children?
Absolutely not, no.
You understand that's being unfaithful to your children?
In the same way that if Michael was constantly thinking about some other woman all the time, would he be being unfaithful to you?
Yes. Of course he would be, right?
So... Given that it's wrong, that it's bad for your family, it's bad for your children, it's bad for your relationship with your husband, right?
Yep. You can't do it.
Do you agree? I do agree, yes.
See, now, Michael and all the other fathers out there, and husbands, now that Ashley has agreed that what she's doing, she does not have the right to do, and she has agreed to that, Then she can't text her father.
Not because you're bullying her, but because she understands how bad it is for her and for her children who have no choice in the matter.
Yeah, I agree.
This whole – That's how you get people to do things, not by saying, well, if I'm going to do something, appeal to her grief.
She wants a great relationship with her children.
She wants a great relationship with her husband, right, Michael?
I would hope, yeah. Right, Ashley?
I mean, I'm not trying to take something from you here, right?
I'm trying to give you what you want, which is a great relationship with your husband and your children primarily, right?
Yeah, of course. Right.
So once you get someone to accept what they're doing, like you're not trying to impose your will on her and make her do something and order her around.
Of course not, because it's called love, not the army, right?
But what you want to do is get her to understand that it's bad for her family what she's doing.
So she needs to accept that her father is a terrible father.
And he will never be a better father.
And he's made his choices.
She's got her family and her kids need her 150%.
Right? So she got to apologize to her children and say, I've really been obsessing about this other relationship at the expense of my relationship with you.
I've made a commitment. She needs to make promises.
She needs to make commitments. I'm going to not text.
I'm going to not call. I'm not going to do this.
I'm not going to do that. Or I'm going to go over this weekend and I'm going to tell him everything that I think and feel to make sure I can either break out or break through or something, right?
So then if she starts texting with her dad, you say, you promised not to.
If I was obsessing over some woman and I was then texting her, what would you say, Ashley?
Yeah, well, obviously, that would be a problem.
It would be more than a problem, I think, right?
Yeah. It would be absolutely unacceptable.
Mm-hmm. Right? And so, if you understand what it's costing you in your personal relationships, then you agree to not do it or, you know, go and break through or whatever it is.
Like, I mean, then he's not making you do something.
You have agreed to do something for the betterment of your family, which is your highest priority, right?
Yes. Because you are engaged mentally with your father by choice, but your children have nowhere to go.
Your children have nowhere to go.
They didn't choose you as parents.
They didn't choose the grandfather as the grandfather.
They can't go anywhere.
They can't get out. They can't leave, which means their needs come first.
And you understand that your father's lack of bond with you is stripping away and interfering with your bond with your own children, Ashley.
Because you're thinking about him rather than connecting with your children.
That's how the infection flows down the generations.
Do you understand? Worrying about him is interfering with your bond with your children.
So his lack of bond with you is transferring to you and interfering with your bond with your own children.
Need to break the cycle. Need to break the cycle.
The reason, one of the many reasons I do not see my mother is because seeing my mother would interfere with my capacity to bond with my family.
My family is my number one priority.
Anything that gets in the way, sorry, can't help you.
It makes life very simple.
It makes life so elegant and so simple.
Because you don't have to try and juggle everything, right?
Because as a woman, you want everyone to be happy, right?
But you can't have that at the moment.
And you want your father to act better, but you can't make him act better.
Right? So, you feel helpless, Ashley, with regards to your father, and Michael feels helpless with regards to you, and your children feel helpless with regards to you both, because you're so constantly distracted, right?
Yeah, wow. How many times, don't answer this, it's just a rhetorical question, but it's important.
How many times have you not even had sex because of problems with the dad?
Don't answer. Don't answer.
That's private. But it's important, right?
You cannot give control over your heart and mind to cold, crazy people.
You can't. I mean, you know what's going to happen, right?
It's like giving a drunk the car with your kids in it.
Go drive them somewhere!
Good luck, kids! And I'm sorry, Ashley.
I really, I mean, it's heartbreaking.
It is heartbreaking beyond words, this kind of betrayal.
Especially, I mean, the thing with the phone hit me particularly hard, as I'm sure it did with you guys too, and I'm sure there are other things that would hit me.
Yeah, she never ceases to amaze me, that's for sure.
He does? And there was no apology or anything after that situation also, so that just kind of salt in the wound.
Right. Michael, do not be afraid.
To really require Ashley to meet reasonable needs of yours.
How much fun is it to talk about her dad again, Michael?
Oh, it's tiring.
It's exhausting. I try to be there and support her every step of the way and as much as I can.
No, no, you're not supporting her though.
You're enabling her. Because you're getting a couple of hours sleep at night and hearing some chunks of the day, Ashley, her problems with her father, right?
Right. So, you got to say to her, I'm done with your dad.
I don't want to hear any more about it.
That's my need, right?
Now, she's going to try, as a lot of women do, to say, well, if you're not listening to me complain, you're not being supportive, right?
Exactly. Well, I want to be supportive and I don't have any testosterone, right?
But no, you're not being supportive.
That's like somebody who's a drunk.
Saying, well, you got to go and get me beer.
And you're like, no, I'm not going to go get you beer because you're a drunk.
Well, you're not being supportive, right?
Yeah. No. You don't enable this kind of bad behavior.
And you don't enable having her beat her heart against the wall.
Yeah. What's that great line from Pink Floyd's The Wall?
After all, it's not easy banging your heart against some mad buggers wall.
It's not good for your family.
And Ashley can't stop it.
And I understand why Ashley can't stop it, which is why you need to get her to commit to stopping it because it's bad for the family.
Because if this goes on, what might happen to your marriage?
Yeah, it's taking a toll.
It takes a toll. And Michael, you have got to guard your wife's respect for you.
Fiercely. Fiercely, that is your great prized procession, is your wife's respect for you.
If anything is endangering your family, you need to deal with that like a predator in the house.
Well, we got to live with it.
Well, I don't want to... No.
Get that shit out. Yeah, I agree.
That's why we don't have borders at the West anymore, right?
Sorry? Does that turn into an issue?
Say if there were more than one family member, if there's an issue with that, does it ever become a point where it's isolating, where it's like, oh, you don't want me to have any friends that are a bad influence, or you're just trying to keep me to yourself, or you don't want me to, like,
I don't know, I could see that argument happening, where if I say, okay, well, we need to stop having this person as an influence because you get on the phone with This person and you gossip for hours endlessly and you guys go round and round and round and feed off of each other and, you know, it's not healthy in my opinion.
Well, I would say if you're on the phone gossiping with someone for hour after hour, is that time you could be spending with your children?
Well, they're in bed when this happens.
Is that time you could be spending with your husband?
Well, I'm sleeping. I'm trying to get a few hours of sleeping before work.
Well, you know, if it's not negative to the family, who cares, right?
I think emotionally though, it's not healthy to dwell and dwell and dwell and dwell on the sorrow and injustice and just negative energy.
Okay, so if it is having a negative effect on the family, then appeal to Ashley's desire to be positive and have a positive effect on her family.
If it has a negative effect on the kids, if it has like, whatever, right?
Let's say your wife is binge watching The Crown or something and she's too tired to get up in the morning and help you with the kids.
It's like, honey, this crown thing, it's not really helping, right?
I mean, I know that guy's got really great hair and she looks very perky, but this is not helping.
And plus, I'm never going to dress like that, right?
So, I mean, whatever it is, whatever it is, could be any number of things.
It could be that you're playing too many video games, Michael, right?
And then it's interfering with your time with the family, in which case, you know, gently and nicely say, okay, you know, this has been fun, but you got to pull back because, right?
Forsaking all others, including the demons in Doom 2016, right?
So, whatever, we all need these little course corrections, right?
There are times when I'm working too much.
My wife sits there and says, well, you got to pull back a little, whatever, right?
It's important to save the world, but you have a whole world here too, right?
Exactly. So I, you know, we just, we need these course corrections.
This one has kind of got out of hand, right?
I would say so, yes.
So Ashley wants a great relationship.
Like, Ashley, wouldn't it be a terrible thing?
Wouldn't it be a terrible thing to harm your relationship with your children and not fix anything with your dad?
Like, wouldn't that just be a catastrophic loss?
It would be, yes. Because then it's like, okay, so I've harmed my relationship with my children, and I haven't even gotten anything positive out of my dad.
What a huge net loss that would be, right?
So, that's your answer, right?
Your kids come first.
Yep. But you don't have any template for that from your parents, right?
It's debatable. Yeah, I don't know.
There's a lot more to it, obviously.
Well, that's a bit of verbal filler that I have no interest in.
Well, of course, there's a lot more to it.
We've been talking for an hour or whatever, but focus on your kids.
Just ask yourself, what do my kids want?
Do my kids want me to obsess about things I can't change about my dad, or do my kids want me to Put on a princess outfit and play castle dragons with them, right?
All right. But yeah, Michael, it's not about imposing your will on someone.
It's about helping her to get what she wants.
And it's seeing down the tunnel of time to see what the outcome is of this continued mess.
Because the guy's in his early 50s.
You know how long he's going to live for?
30 or 40 more years.
Do you know how long he's going to betray you for?
30 or 40 more years.
Do you know how long he's going to hurt you?
30 or 40 more years?
Do you know how long he's going to take your heart and rub it up and down like a piece of cheddar on a cheese grater?
30 or 40 more years?
Are you going to let him do that to your wife?
Yeah, absolutely not.
Absolutely not.
God.
That sounds miserable.
Well, you guys won't make it that long.
Thank you.
Yeah, sure. Right, because, I mean, you're burning out as it stands from this topic, right?
30 or 40 more years? No way.
Yeah. No, this is, it's a young, it's a young, it's the younger male standing up against the silverback gorilla.
Like, it's tough. I understand all of that.
But, sorry, the world has to improve.
Things have to get better. And this guy's hurting your wife.
And he's hurting your kids.
And fix it.
Just fucking fix it. All right?
I will do my best, sir.
Thank you. All right. Well, thanks for the call, guys.
I really, really appreciate it.
All right, thank you. Let me know how it goes, all right?
We will. Thanks, Steph. Take care.
Bye. Okay, up next we have Martin.
Martin wrote in and said, I've lived in London for nearly 17 years.
You'd be hard-pressed to find a bigger fan of what was the greatest city in the world.
In recent years, especially since the investment of Sadiq Khan as the most ineffectual and ideologically demented mayor of the city, I am now refusing to pay council tax.
I voted for Brexit and proudly proclaimed that amongst my peers I support Trump, and I'm fed up with the socialist dictatorship that this country has become, particularly under the even more disastrous stewardship of Theresa May.
I'm calling in to find out how I can stand up to the authorities and argue my case that I do not need to pay council tax when my culture is being stolen from me right under my eyes.
That's from Martin. So, Martin, how's it going?
Pretty rough decade for the old UK, right?
Oh, hello. You might need to unmute, my friend.
Can't hear you, Martin. Can you hear me now?
There we go. All right. All set.
Is the sound okay?
Yeah, it's all right. It's all right.
Great. It's been a rough 15 years.
Yeah, it has. It has.
I mean, I wasn't kidding when I was talking about Sadiq Khan, what was it, two years ago, and said, well, can't go home again.
I actually, I'm in a really difficult position to speak right now because I've just, I don't know how many callers do this, but just listening to the last caller, I'm just actually, I'm completely baffled.
You can talk about the last caller, that's fine with me, because if it's on your mind, I don't want to interfere with our conversation.
I was completely blown away.
It was actually such a privilege to be able to hear you talking to those two people.
Great people. They are great people, but fuck.
I'm not going to disagree with that syllable, my friend.
Am I allowed to swear?
You certainly are. Yeah, good.
Okay. But why did that call hit you so much?
Because how can people, how can parents be, I'm sorry, how can parents be so horrible to their children?
Jesus, I mean, you're in the UK. What have they done to you guys in terms of debt?
In terms of unfunded liabilities, in terms of untrammeled, unlimited third world immigration.
I mean, this is nothing compared to the boomers as a whole, right?
I don't know what's happened to this city, Steph.
I don't even recognize it.
It's a third world country.
Sure. Yes, it is.
And what a glorious city.
For those who don't know, for those who are young, there was an old saying that if you're tired of London, you're tired of life.
It was considered the greatest city in the world.
And it was when I moved here.
It was...
When was that? I've been in London...
It will be 18 years in September.
The first year...
I was in halls of residence for a university in South East London.
And I've lived in my current building for, yeah, it'll be 17 years in the beginning of September.
So I moved in three days before September 11th.
And what have you seen over those 17 years?
What's changed? I don't even know where to begin.
The amount of people.
I mean, it was crowded when I was a kid.
I can't even imagine it now.
No, you can't walk anywhere.
I remember when I first came here, and the thing is, this call is about so much more than the stupid council tax.
It's I used to be able to walk down the street past the British Museum.
I live about five minutes in the British Museum.
Even at the weekend, I used to be able to walk down the street and it wouldn't be busy and you'd be able to go into the British Museum and You'd just be able to be a free person.
Love that museum.
Natural History Museum was one of my favorite places to go as a kid.
They had this giant life-size statue of a blue whale.
I loved that place. Yes, yes.
And the War Museum in Hendon was fantastic too.
The thing is, London has the absolute best stuff ever.
In the world. It has the best stuff.
It has the best exhibitions, the best museums, and now you can't even get into them because you have to go through 5,000 miles of security because they're terrified of Muslims bombing them.
That's what's happened to this city.
I mean, Sadiq Khan, I'm not going to say anything libelous on the call, but What the fuck?
Why? Why is this man allowed to destroy the city?
People love him.
London is a communist state.
There's no doubt.
London is a communist state.
You can't have conversations with anybody anymore.
Why is that? It's just, it's a disgrace.
Oh, is it because you're like some racist Islamophobe or whatever?
Oh, completely, yeah. I mean, you know, gay, gay white supremacist.
Gay? I don't quite like that connection.
What's that? Well, the thing is, everybody, everybody gay in London, Sadiq Khan.
Really? Everybody. Yeah.
They love him. They absolutely love him.
I think I'm the only gay, white, conservative left in London.
You mean now that Milo left, right?
Yeah. I'm the last one, Seth.
Yeah, yeah. Thank God for Katie Hopkins.
Thank God for her.
Right. The thing is, I'm going to leave London.
Yeah, okay. So tell me about this.
I don't get the council tax thing.
So how much is it?
And you're planning on not paying?
I'm trying to understand. What's that going to do?
I mean, other than get you into a crap load of trouble, right?
At the moment, as it stands, I'm about five days over the due date.
I've already had two letters.
I expect in maybe three or four days I'll have a court summons.
No, but why?
Help me understand what's the point of this.
Well, there is no point.
No, no, come on. You're putting yourself in the path.
Of a government.
Now, the government, of course, doesn't really want to enforce immigration law that much.
They don't want to enforce the Dublin Agreement throughout the EU. They don't.
But, you know, trust me, man, they're going to enforce their tax laws because that's what pays for the whole shit show, right?
Yeah. So why are you doing this?
Because... This isn't my country anymore.
Okay, well then you can pay your taxes and leave the country and then they get nothing.
But I voted for Brexit and they're not enforcing it.
I know. Every single politician that's in control in London, they all want to overturn democracy.
Sure. All of them.
Of course. Because democracy is going to be difficult.
Because if they want to start controlling immigration, which everybody needs to understand, that's all that Brexit was about, was an attempt to gain control over immigration.
Well, if they try to gain control over immigration, they're going to get riots, and they're going to get death threats, and it's going to be very difficult for them, right?
And they don't want that difficulty.
They don't personally pay for immigration, right?
And if things go from bad to worse, well, they can always move as most celebrities or rich people do.
They can move to an all-white neighborhood.
They can move overseas. They've got lots of choices and options.
So why would they want all of those riots and bad publicity and death threats?
And I mean, why? Because they're completely out of it.
Well, no, they're not out.
I mean, I think you have this idea that the state is something about doing the right thing and being moral and enforcing laws and doing rights, and it's not.
The state is an agency of power for people to be able to do things that would be completely legal in the private sector and get well paid for it.
You can counterfeit.
You can put other people into debt.
You can bribe people with free stuff in return for votes.
All of this would be completely illegal in the private sector, but the state exists as this alternate dimension of well-funded immorality.
And so you say, well, the state isn't doing anything to protect us.
It's like that never was the state's job.
The state's job is to allow evil people to gain power and get free stuff.
And it's doing a wonderful job of that, right?
Oh, it's doing a sterling job.
It's doing a sterling job of that.
And how do you think it's going to be played?
Let's say, so there's two possibilities.
So let's say, I don't agree with you not paying your taxes.
I'm going to be upfront about that, but I'll make the case and you can let me know what you think.
There's one or two possibilities, my friend.
Either A, nobody ever finds out about it and you just go to jail and it was completely pointless, right?
Yeah. Or people do find out about it and you don't have control over how it's spun, right?
Yeah. So if people do find out about it, let's say you become some core celebre or something like that, people do find out about it.
Well, the British newspapers are going to be the ones who spin it, and how are they going to spin it?
Crazed right-winger doesn't want to pay his fair share.
Whatever, right? Yeah.
You know, Nazi doesn't want to help people get healthcare who are sick and dying.
Like, you understand that you'll in no way, shape, or form be in control of how this is spun, and it will do more harm to any movement that you respect than good, because people won't have any context, they won't have any understanding, and you'll just be portrayed and painted in the worst conceivable light, right? Yeah.
Well, the thing is, Steph, this is why This is why I called in.
Oh, good. You're hoping to be talked out of this.
Yeah. Okay, good, good.
Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, one of the letters, it basically, rather than, you know, eight installments, it said, okay, so next month, you can pay, you know, 10 quid extra a month or whatever.
But the reason I called in was because, frankly, I just need to leave London.
Yeah, the reason you have a show to call into is because I pay my taxes.
And the reason why I'm able to put great ideas out into the world, half a billion plus and counting, is because I pay my taxes.
So it's kind of, you know, like you'd have no one to call into because I'd be in jail otherwise.
And how is that helping?
Yeah. It's one thing to be Nelson Mandela and to be in jail when everyone in the whole universe, ridiculously and wrongly, champions your cause because they overlook the fact that you're a communist terrorist whose wife has people regularly murdered, it seems.
So it's one thing to be Nelson Mandela, right?
And to be lionized and celebrated.
You're a symbol of resistance and all this kind of stuff, right?
But it's quite another thing When not one in 10,000 people is going to have a clue what you're doing.
And when you either suffer in obscurity or you suffer in slander, but you're never going to suffer and illuminate the cause of people because you're not going to be in control of the narrative, right?
Like, I once talked to a guy.
I won't give you his name.
I'm sure you can pretty much figure out if you want, but I won't give you his name.
And he... Just didn't want to pay his taxes.
Didn't think he needed to. Thought he had a good legal case.
And so he ended up in court.
And what he did was, he had this whole case.
He'd studied the law.
He had everything ready.
He was going to have this big speech.
He was going to... Because he thought that the magic words on the dusty books in the background were somehow spells that forced people to obey them.
And do you know what happened? They didn't even let him talk.
His initials weren't WS, were they?
No. I don't believe that they were, but I think I know who you're talking about.
But yeah, I mean, you didn't even talk.
Off you go to jail, right?
Guy had a kid. Did anything change?
Has there been some big illumination about the nature of taxation and the nature of the state as the result of his sacrifice?
No. It's just that people think that is crazy.
Why? Because it's crazy.
Because we are nowhere near the place where any kind of self-sacrifice is going to be anything other than woefully misinterpreted to the expense of the movement.
Yeah. Look, genuine revolutions, like genuine changes in society, for the better or for the worse, are preceded by decades of ideological change.
At least. At least.
I mean, look at the end of slavery, right?
I mean, it took... Well, 60 to 80 to 100 years.
It took about 50 to 60 years to end it in the empire, and then it took another, well, you count the Civil War in the US, right?
So it's decades and decades of intensive ideological argument before any particular change can even be seen in a rational context.
I mean, if you look at the founding of America, it was preceded by at least 150 years of classical liberal thinking, right?
Of people like John Locke and someone, right?
Yeah. So we're just starting.
You know, it's always earlier than you think.
Because, you know, when you're into this kind of thinking or just thinking as a whole and, you know, everyone around you has similar, maybe not you, but a lot of people have similar ideas and you read a lot of things.
So you feel like you're...
Somewhere that you're not, which is in the general society, right?
So, you know, you can read your Mises, you can read your Hayek, you can read your Rand, you can read like all these people, right?
Yeah. And you're like, wow, I'm surrounded with this stuff.
And then you go to meetings or you meet with people, you're online and you follow people on Twitter and then you go to Facebook groups and it's like, wow, you know, yay, you know?
And then you like step out of the bubble and it's like nobody knows who the hell you are or what you're talking about and have never heard of it.
Yeah. Right? And then they listen to Adam Kokesh and think, what the fuck?
Yeah. No comment.
But maybe. Maybe.
Right? So, or they look at, they look at, yeah, they look at libertarian parties and what's going on there.
They look at, you know, Reason.com, which has had some pretty kucky articles lately and all that.
So, they don't know.
They don't have any context for this stuff at all.
So, You know, the martyrdom is worse than useless.
It actually works against the spread of rational ideas because people do not have any context for why you're making these decisions.
Therefore, you just look crazy.
And remember, when it comes to the non-payment of taxes, every single major institution in the Western world is utterly dedicated to To destroying the idea that taxation is theft, right?
Of course, right? The mainstream media doesn't want it because they get their fat paychecks with their government contacts and so on.
The public schools don't want to hear it because they're funded by taxation.
And Hollywood doesn't want to hear about it because they've got all these government unions and they like their tax breaks and they're all a bunch of lefties.
I mean, it just goes into the big corporations don't want to hear about it because they get lots of fat, juicy contracts from From the government.
You know, I mean, try going to Jeff Bezos and talking to him about taxation being theft when he gets $600 million from the CIA for their servers, which I'm sure means that the Washington Post, his own personal blog, is going to be really, really critical of the CIA. There's no conflict of interest there, right?
So you have no particular outlet.
It's really early in this kind of stuff.
I mean, I wish it wasn't, and we certainly have a big boost up from the internet, but the argument that taxation is theft has been around for Hundreds of years and almost no one has heard of it.
So what is your protest going to do?
Well, it's going to get you in a huge amount of trouble.
It's going to drain your finances and it's going to achieve the opposite of what you want in that it's going to discredit a movement that nobody can fathom intellectually.
No. Yeah.
Yes. The single mom's going to say, wow, I'm really glad he's not paying his taxes.
I mean, they live on taxes, right?
I mean, it's like you're stoning their husband to death, right?
Yeah. Yeah, that's why I said this call isn't really about...
Just pay. Yeah, pay the bill and say, well...
Fuck you. Well, no, just pay the bill and, okay, now I'm free to make my case.
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I'm much more useful.
Bunch of people have gone to jail for this stuff, man.
Has no impact. A negative impact in my opinion.
We've got to make the case.
We've got to make the case.
Right now, people think that taxes are the price you pay for a civilized society.
People think that taxes go to pay for healthcare for sick people, for keeping people who are poor from starving.
And if you're not paying, then you're like the asshole who wants to eat the pizza but doesn't want to pay one thin dime for a slice.
You know, I mean, sorry, like we just, we don't own the narrative.
And how could we? When you've got Hollywood, the media, television, government schools, like everyone and their dog constantly braying and prattling about how essential taxation is for a civilized society and how without the government, there'd be anarchy.
And of course, even that word, right?
Without the government, there'd be anarchy.
There would be freedom.
That's true. And there would actually be sustainable civilizations unlike the stupid cycle of history bullshit we've got going on now for the past 10,000 years.
But no, pay your taxes and figure out where you want to live.
If you hate London, get out of London.
I can certainly understand that. If you hate the UK, get out of the UK. You're a young, free gay man.
The world is at your... It doesn't matter if you're gay, but the world is your oyster.
And go make the case. Go improve your speaking skills.
Go improve your writing skills.
Go improve your persuasion skills.
And make the case to the world.
But just because your country is acting in a self-destructive manner doesn't mean you have to.
Quite. Yeah, quite.
That's why I called in today.
That's it? You're in agreement?
I am. Good, good.
I mean, I get where your frustration is coming from, and I really understand it.
I've followed you for a really, really long time, and I can't actually put into words, as hard as I might try, how grateful I am.
I am for finding you.
My life would be a lot worse.
It would be in a much worse position if I hadn't found you.
So it's just a real privilege to be able to speak to you.
Well, I appreciate that.
Hopefully you enjoyed the conversation and bonus points keep you out of jail, which is good too.
All right. Well, Martin, I appreciate that.
Do let me know how it goes.
And I really do appreciate absolutely everyone who calls in and has these amazingly wonderful conversations with me.
It's a real honor, a real privilege.
Please don't forget to help out the show.
It's important. I really, really need your help and your support, which you can do at freedomainradio.com slash donate.
That's freedomainradio.com slash donate.
I'm sure you'll feel better afterwards.
I know I will. And it's very, very important.
It's kind of a Now or never scenario for philosophy.
And also check out the Swedish presentation called The Truth About Sweden.
That's three hours of tasty postmodern goodness that will have you shocked, appalled, laughing and crying.
It's a roller coaster, well worth taking.
So that you can find on YouTube.
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Don't forget to pick up The Art of the Argument.
Got a new book coming out, just working on the fourth draft, which I'm really looking forward to getting out.
