July 18, 2018 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
02:41:26
4146 'My Wife Married Her Rapist' - Call In Show - July 18th, 2018
Question 1: [1:26] – “I have been monogamously (stopped the meaningless, casual stuff for 9 months now) dating a college educated, liberal, slightly feminist, Hispanic woman, well raised by her two married parents, for 6 months now and I am slowly attempting to open and stretch her mind to a different point of view. I believe I am making progress, but I don't want her to change her views just because I think a certain way. I am seriously considering her to be my wife and would like her to lead the same values I have acquired and raise my children with the morals of a responsible citizen and child of God. Fortunately, she is not someone who is opposed to listening. Can a catholic die-hard liberal/feminist be suitable for marriage and raising morally responsible children? If so, what’s the best way to approach stretching her mind with logic and reason?”Question 2: [1:08:39] – “I have recently had my 12-year-old stepson swallow a fistful of Advil, then when nothing obvious happened he doubled the dose the following day. Fortunately, he got nervous and came clean and I spent the evening with him in the ER and then overnight in the City's children's clinic. The doctors tell us he is very fortunate to be alive and not have any long term kidney damage. He seems like he is back to normal but I of course thought things where pretty good when he did it. How do I keep something like this from happening again?”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
Hey, hey, everybody. Stefan Molyneux from Free Domain Radio.
Hope you're doing magnificently, my friends.
Some very, very detailed and interesting stuff can truly help you change your life.
Much, much for the better.
So the first caller is dating a feminist, liberal, well-educated woman, and he's trying to figure out whether she'd be a good wife or not.
And there's a whole bunch of questions that are important to ask when it comes to figuring out if you want to keep dating someone, let alone settle down with her.
And I'm sure that's a big plan for most people.
So that's another conversation well worth listening to.
Now, the second caller, wow, so his stepson recently seems to have tried to kill himself twice.
And he wants to know why this may have come about.
And some things in life are deep and abiding mysteries.
This one and the lessons to be learned.
Not... One of them.
And so I hope you will listen to that with great attention.
There are so many issues involved in that conversation that you need to understand.
So, great callers.
Thanks, of course, to everyone who calls in and everyone who supports the show.
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Please, please help us out.
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Alright, up next we have Giorgio.
Giorgio wrote in and said, I am seriously considering her to be my wife and would like her to lead the same values I have acquired and raise my children with the morals of a responsible citizen and child of God.
Fortunately, she is not someone who is opposed to listening.
Can a Catholic diehard, liberal feminist be suitable for marriage and raising morally responsible children?
If so, what's the best way to approach stretching her mind with logic and reason?
That's from Giorgio. Hey Giorgio, how you doing?
Hey, how are you?
It's a real honor to hear you, and I just gotta thank you for all that you're doing, man.
You're really straightening some people out here.
Sure, sure, thank you. And are you a white male?
I am, no, I'm half Spanish, half Colombian.
I was born in the United States and raised about 10 years in South America.
Right, okay. So I'm kind of half and half, yeah.
No, I'm just, because when you say Hispanic woman, generally Hispanic men don't say Hispanic woman, because, you know, it's just kind of the same thing.
Yeah, I figured that.
Okay, yeah, I figured it'd just kind of give you a better perspective on the identity.
What was her college degree in?
When we say college educated, did she graduate?
Yeah, yeah, she graduated.
And what does she study? She studied marketing, and now she's attempting to pursue her master's in child behavior.
Now she works with autistic children.
What? How does she go from marketing to child behavior?
Well, first, I think it's more that she realized she was kind of battling whether she wanted a corporate safe job or actually followed what she wanted to do.
And when she got into the corporate job, she...
You know, she realized that she really missed out on following her dreams.
So now she's attempting to do so.
Oh, so she did do marketing for some time in the business world?
Yeah. Yeah, she did that.
She lived in New York for about a year.
And she just got back from...
And I was still working for a corporate position as an account executive.
But she's working two jobs.
After that, she goes out and she helps the autistic children.
Works two jobs, what do you mean?
Yeah, so she does a corporate job and then she goes and she takes care of the autistic children that need help.
Wow, and how does she get into taking care of these kids?
She has about two friends she grew up with in high school, two of which actually went that direction.
And so, after being in the corporate world, she decided to, hey, you know, I'm going to go out and do what I actually love doing.
And how long has she been working in the marketing job?
She's been doing that for, I think, about...
Well, now, it's not so much marketing that she's doing.
She's more kind of in the back end of a corporate building that sells metals, precious metals.
I don't know what back end means.
Like, she's an account executive.
You know, so she deals, she pays all these salespeople who do that, who sell, you know, the precious metals and she just deals with the accounting side of the, but not really the accounting for the corporation, if that makes sense.
Wait, the accounting? The accounting for, she basically is in payroll, I guess.
I'm not too keen on exactly what her description is.
She studied marketing in university and now she's ended up running payroll?
More or less, yeah.
Her official title is an account executive.
I'm not too keen exactly on what her responsibilities are.
Everyone's a vice president, right?
But does she do marketing or what?
Actually, that's what's very curious because she hasn't.
According to what she's told me, she has very little experience with actual marketing.
Well, it's a good thing she got educated.
I'm really glad that society spent those social resources educating her in marketing so she could run payroll.
Did she end up in debt out of her degree?
No, she's debt free.
Then how did she do that? There was financial aid that was able to help her.
She got great marks on her education.
She made some right financial decisions.
She really went off on a tangent on her credit cards or anything like that.
Now, education-wise, she's debt-free.
She's making a few payments here or there.
With her, let's say, her car and bills in general, credit cards and such.
But that's about it.
Did her parents chip in too?
No, actually. I mean, well, yeah, as far as getting her a roof over her head and, you know, and some...
Oh, sure, she lived at home while she was going to school?
Yeah, yeah. Did her parents know that she wasn't that much into marketing and wanted to work with autistic kids?
She's the first generation out of her parents to have a bachelor's degree.
Her parents weren't really coaching her on exactly what I mean, I get that they didn't go to college and all that, but as parents, shouldn't you kind of know what your kids are good at and what they like and where their abilities lie?
I mean, if my daughter said, you know, I want to go into X, whatever that would be, and I kind of knew that, you know, I think that I'd kind of know what Would work or not.
And I'm just sort of trying to plumb the family stuff a little bit here.
Now, she's going back to a master's degree, and that's going to be in this child behavior, right?
So, as of late, she recently just decided to actually, apparently in about a few weeks or so, she's going to quit her corporate job and she's going to dedicate herself to the child behavior.
And if she really, because she's not 100% sure she can do that for the rest of her life.
What does she want to have kids?
She'll actually enjoy. Yeah.
Yeah, she really does. And how old is she?
She just turned 27 on the 6th of this month.
Wait, she just turned 27 and she wants to go get a master's and she wants kids?
She wants kids, but later on...
How is she with math, Giorgio?
No, after...
Actually, no, what I meant is that she wants to do her master's first before eventually she wants to have kids, just not now.
What do you mean eventually? She's 27.
I know. Well, what do you think?
I think that I can't tell her what to do.
I didn't ask you whether you should tell her what to do.
I asked her what you think. Well, okay, so I can't really exactly blame her too much.
I get it that, you know, the biological clock is kind of running against her.
And that's what I'm trying to tell her.
How about just don't do stupid stuff?
Like, don't we all need people in our life to say, hey, man, don't do stupid stuff?
Don't go and get a, what is it, a two-year master's degree when you're 27 and say, I'm going to work with kids, but I want to have kids, and then quit in your early 30s to have kids, because that's a huge waste of social resources.
It's kind of selfish, right?
Because she's taking the position of somebody who might be younger, who might be male, who might not want to have kids, and who could actually work.
Like, this does not help the autistic children, you understand, right?
Because she's going to interrupt her career in taking care of autistic children to have her own children.
And maybe she'll have two. Maybe she'll have three, right?
Catholic, maybe you'll have 12.
I don't know. And so it's not...
Helpful to the autistic children to go and take somebody else's spot who could actually give them more continuous care.
So, just...
I think we all need to be in this tribe called Don't Do Stupid Shit.
I mean, you tell each other that.
Don't do stupid stuff.
Yeah, I think it's mostly, you know, she was...
Again, she's been educated here in the West.
She wants to be...
I guess, fully autonomous, you know, I depend on a man.
I went in and actually asked, you know, got to know her mom and her dad.
And the mom, apparently, according, I mean, based on what I've observed, is kind of wears the pants in the family.
Oh, you're scared of her?
No, of who?
Well, the mom? The girlfriend.
No, I'm not scared of her.
A little bit. No.
Come on, man. When I said, what do you think?
You're like, well, I don't want to tell her what to do.
Like, that wasn't what I asked.
And why haven't you told her?
I mean, you've listened to this show for a while.
Is that fair to say? Yeah.
Yeah. So why haven't you told her?
What do you go and get a master's for?
If you want to have kids, don't be ridiculous.
Like, what's the plan here?
You're going to go take a master's.
You're going to go get trained in a placement.
And the kids are going to become dependent on you.
And your employers are going to become dependent on you.
And then you're going to quit to have kids for 10 years.
Like, that's not a plan. Right.
Yeah. So why haven't you told her that?
What I've done is I've waited for her.
Apparently, what she wants to do is just finish her master's and then maybe get into having kids while she's in her 30s.
And yeah, I've told her, yeah, you know, it's not exactly them.
If you want to have kids, you got to choose one or the other.
What does she say? She doesn't feel like she feels she can have her cake, I guess, and eat it too.
Oh, so she's a little crazy when it comes to remotely realistic expectations.
Yeah, because she knows a lot of, I guess, friends and co-workers that are happy in her, either childless or happy with children and still doing their own jobs.
Tell me more about how she wants to be independent.
She doesn't want to depend off a man, just like her mom kind of raised her.
Wait, her mom doesn't depend on her husband?
It's a 50-50 thing, according to her.
So did her mom not stay home with her when she was young?
Yeah, yeah. She would stay there.
Oh, her mom did stay home with her.
Oh, yeah, absolutely. Well, wait a minute.
Jesus, this is confusing to navigate.
It's not your fault, Giorgio. I'm just like, I don't know where we are in this foggy woods of feminist delusion now.
But if her mom stayed home with her, wasn't her mom dependent on a man?
Yeah. Yeah, but in her eyes, I get it.
I want to be independent just like my mom was who wasn't.
I look at it the same way.
No, no. You don't look at it the same way.
That's what it is. No, no. I agree with you.
I agree with what I'm saying. Okay.
So, have you told her that her mom was not independent?
She was dependent on a man and that's one of the reasons, I assume, why she had a pretty good childhood.
Yeah, she did.
Have you told her that?
I have. And what does she say?
She says it was more of a, you know, it was a 50-50 thing.
Okay, so we've got a magic phrase, 50-50, that replaces reality?
Well, to her, she looks at it as a shared responsibility.
Well, of course it's a shared responsibility.
He's making the money and she's raising the kids.
That's 50-50. I get that.
But she was dependent on his income, just as he was dependent on her being a mom.
Right. So she's not independent.
If someone else is paying your bills, you're not independent.
You're right. I don't know why they have this fear of, in case something goes wrong, make sure that you can take care of yourself.
Well, that's called insurance.
Yeah. You can get pretty good insurance policies.
I've had one for I don't even know how long.
But you can get pretty good insurance policies.
They're really not that expensive if you get them when you're young.
And if something happens to your husband, you get money.
It's been around for half a millennia or so.
Yeah. Since they're Catholic, they don't believe in divorce or at least not for a reason.
No, no. But I'm just saying if something happens to the husband, right?
Yeah, and that's something that, if something happens to the husband, sure.
But if, let's say, yeah, I guess.
No, let's say the husband leaves you, right?
Yeah, let's say the husband leaves you.
Right. Well, just be a great enough partner that your husband ain't going to leave you.
Be the best thing that there is for him.
I mean, you can get fired from a job too, but not if your business is making money and you're making money for your business.
That's right. Yeah.
So, how do I look at this in a...
Okay, hang on, hang on. We've just gone through college-educated and liberal.
Slightly feminist, what does that mean?
Okay. Well, I kind of understated these slightly a bit.
Lately, I've been noticing more feminism.
I know you did. As soon as you say, I don't need no man, I gotta be independent of a man.
Hey, where are the male taxpayers at?
I need their money. Yeah, you're right.
And slightly was, I thought I was getting through to her.
Actually, I still do, because she does agree on most of the issues that I present to her.
In regards to feminism.
But there are things that she can't agree with.
What do you mean she can't agree with?
I don't know what that means. Agreement isn't something you just will.
If you say to me, hey Steph, two and two make four, I'm like, hey man, I can't agree with that.
It's not an emotional thing, you know, for rational people.
It's something like, the world is a sphere.
I don't think I can agree with that.
It's like, it's not really up to you.
You can deny facts, but you can't choose whether to agree with something or not.
Yeah. Yeah, so that's a problem that I'm having with her, is that I want her to see logical reason.
And it seems like she sees it, but she's choosing...
To take the emotional side.
So how is she feminist?
Well, it goes back to the wage gap between men and women.
Oh, she believes that there's some mysterious wage gap, even though she trained herself in marketing, barely worked in it.
Ended up running payroll and now wants to go back to school and then is going to quit to have children.
But there's this mysterious wage gap.
Yeah. And have you given her the data that women choose different occupations, that they choose to take time off to have kids, that they choose to have more of a work-family balance, that they choose to travel more?
Have you given that they choose to work part-time more?
Have you given her all of that?
And what does she say? Yeah, we've talked about that.
And she agrees.
She's like, yeah, okay. And when it comes to that, I agree.
But when, let's say...
That, you know, the woman and the man are both in the same boat, right?
Same education. It got to the same place, but with their own merit and effort.
Why? And she knows apparently someone, I guess it's in her own job.
Wait, she knows someone?
That's her argument?
I know someone?
She knows people that have actually had the same responsibilities and have not been getting paid.
That's what I'm saying.
So we've gone into a lot of arguments with that.
Does she understand that her knowing people is not an argument?
That's what I'm trying to...
The plural of anecdote is not data.
The plural of personal experience is not fact.
I know a tall Chinese guy.
Come on. And also, no people are exactly the same.
And also, if the woman has just got married, the employer may be somewhat concerned about her going off to have kids.
And also, women score higher in the trait agreeableness, one of the big five personality traits, which is great if you're dealing with little kids, but it's a problem if you're trying to negotiate for salary.
Okay.
So maybe the women are just kind of conflict avoidant and they negotiate harder for what they want.
Yep, yep. I've told her.
I think she avoids...
The relationship is in a rocky boat right now because she's...
I told her straight up, she's been avoiding conflict her whole life.
And because of that, every time I confront her and I challenge her, She avoids the topic altogether.
Wait, so when you confront her, she's conflict avoidant?
Yeah, she tends to...
And then she wonders why there might be a wage gap.
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it makes perfect sense to me.
And so I'm wondering, you know, I guess this is a big red flag.
Because she's not, you know, in all, in her defense, not that I'm afraid of her.
In her defense, I guess it's, I'm trying to listen, you know, I'm trying to be reciprocative and trying to actually make her feel like, okay, you know what, what's the problem?
I don't understand what that last couple of sentences mean.
So I've been trying to level with her.
What do you mean trying to level with her?
I've been trying to make her believe that, you know, I'm listening to her quote-unquote, you know, arguments.
You've been patronizing her.
I've been trying to, yeah, I guess that's what it comes down to.
Okay, so you pretend that she has sensible things to say when she doesn't.
Is that what you mean? Right, because at this point, I'm thinking if I don't do that, she's going to put up a big wall.
Oh, no. Come on.
You know I've got to ask. The land whales don't get the balls.
Yeah. I mean, I think I consider her an eight.
And where are you? I don't know.
I think I'm in the seven or eight range.
And does she find you very attractive?
Does she consider you an eight as well?
I don't know, we haven't really talked about it.
She thinks I'm good-looking, but look, it's not about, you know, I know that's what this leads to about attraction, but, you know, I've dated some my fair share of attractive women, but the difference, what differentiates her from the rest of the bunch, especially is that she's family-oriented.
But if she's family-oriented, why does she want to get a master's degree?
If she's got a boyfriend that could lead to marriage, why is she talking about getting a master's degree and then basically, eh, to hell with the autistic kids.
I want to go have some babies.
I mean, if she was family-oriented, wouldn't she be saying to you, hey, listen, is this going to lead to marriage?
Do you want to have kids? Where are we at in this relationship?
Doesn't mean you've got to get married tomorrow, but you've got to know where things are and where they're going.
Wouldn't she then say, well, you know, man, if we get married, I want to have kids.
I want to raise kids.
So, yeah, I mean, I'll drop the whole master's degree fantasy.
Yeah. So you're saying that she has to choose, you know, what she wants to do now.
Well, I just, I don't know how family-oriented she is if she says, I want to be independent.
These are just stupid talking points that feminists feed women so that men don't trust them.
Yeah. Yeah, I'm starting to see that.
So then would you say that a feminist woman is not, per se, capable of raising proper children?
Well, you know, these are kind of generalities that I'll have a tough time with, but I will say this, that if you value rationality in a partner, if you don't have rationality in a partner, you've got a problem.
Okay. Yeah.
Look, there are people who are told lies, and the lies make them resentful and uncomfortable, right?
So let me give you a silly example, right?
So let's say tomorrow you go to the doctor and the doctor says, I'm sorry you have some horrible disease, right?
And you're like, oh man, that's terrible.
And you go home and you're like racking your brain and you're going to figure out your will.
And then the doctor calls and says, man, I am so sorry.
There's another Giorgio here who has a terrible disease.
You're fine. Please don't sue me.
What would you feel? What would you think?
Well, yeah.
I feel like you're being toyed with.
Well, no. You'd feel a huge amount of relief.
Obviously, you'd feel anger, right?
But you'd feel a huge amount of relief that you were facing a potential death sentence from a medical diagnosis and then you found out that it was incorrect.
Right? Yeah. You'd feel a huge amount of relief, right?
Yeah, I've had experience with that, yeah.
Right, right. So, this is the same thing with feminist stuff.
So, there are a bunch of people who talk to women and say, there's a patriarchy, it's rape culture, there's a wage gap, you're being exploited, it's terrible, blah, blah, blah, never be dependent on a man, they're horrible, they're mean, they're whatever, right?
Yeah. And that's getting a diagnosis of male-female relationships that is god-awful, right?
Yeah. Yeah.
And then someone like you, Giorgio, comes along and says, no, no, no, there's no such thing as the wage gap.
No, there's no such thing as a patriarchy.
No, there's no such thing as rape culture.
And they've got the data, they've got the facts, they've got the reason, they've got the, you name it, right?
Then it's like, oh man, I thought I was never going to get along with a man.
I thought I was going to be banned and barred from having love and trust and support and a great father for my children and a great partner for my female heart.
I thought, man, that's it.
Can't ever have love.
Can't ever have trust.
Can't ever love my society.
And now, Georgia has come along and said, oh, no, that was totally misdiagnosed.
You're just being jerked around. Wouldn't that be a huge amount of relief?
Oh, man, I can give up the fantasy and the resentful fiction of the wage gap.
Thank goodness. Now I don't have to look at men as horrible exploiters who just want to pay women.
Three quarters of what they pay men.
Because that's the funny thing from the left is they say capitalists will exploit everyone and they just want money, money, money, but they underpay women.
Well, why? I mean, if women are being underpaid, it means that you can pay them more and still make a fortune.
So why don't the greedy capitalists swoop in and bid up women?
Well, because they can't, because women aren't worth more than in general what they're paid in the marketplace.
There's no such thing as abstract value.
Value is always a relationship. It's not embedded in a person.
So if you're telling her that all the lies she was told about men, that all the lies she was told about her society and its imaginary patriarchy are all false, wouldn't she feel a huge amount of relief and be like, throw herself into your arms and say, thank you, Giorgio.
You have saved me from a loveless life of resentment and futility.
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.
She's holding on to it.
Why? Why?
I think... Okay.
Let me give you one other example, and I'm sorry to interrupt you, but it just popped into my head.
So let's say someone came to me tomorrow and said, the racial IQ differences are false.
Do you know, I would be like...
And they proved it, and it was true.
The data had been slipped.
There'd been something. I don't know what, right?
Okay, it's 100 years have been replicated in all over the world.
But let's just say tomorrow, somebody came to me and said, it's false.
And they proved that it was false.
I would be so relieved I couldn't even tell you.
I would be so relieved I couldn't even tell you.
So, when something you think is a huge problem turns out to not be a problem, aren't you hugely relieved?
If you think that there's this horrible sexism and patriarchy that manifests in a wage gap, and someone proves to you that there is no wage gap, aren't you enormously relieved?
Absolutely. Why?
I'm starting to think that maybe I'm not approaching it in the right way.
Nope. I mean... No.
No, no, no. You're not giving her agency, man.
Okay. You can't marry a woman if you're constantly stripping her of agency because you'll have no respect for her.
Yeah.
Why does she not take your disproof of bigotry, your disproof of resentment, your disproof of exploitation as a huge relief?
I guess that's something I got to...
No, listen. So when I was a kid, there were a lot of Marxists around and socialists.
And you know what they told me, directly and indirectly, Giorgio?
They said, hey man, if you're born into the proletariat, you're stuck there.
If you're born in the poor, you're stuck there.
Because there's this class system.
And your relationship to the means of production defines everything about you.
You have class consciousness.
Which means you'll never be able to break out.
Of your class.
You're stuck here in the underworld with the dregs and the losers and the drunks and the drug addicts and the physical abusers and the emotional abusers and the sadists and the cowards and the vainglorious and the foolish.
You're stuck down here in this Dantian underworld forever.
That's what the left has said to me directly or indirectly.
And you know you're going to be much more likely to end up as a criminal because you grew up poor.
Now, that's what the left has told me.
Now, the free market people, do you know what they said to me?
Man, you can be anything you want within the scope of your abilities.
You can break out of this like it ain't no thing.
You can walk through these seeming socialist class walls like it's just tissue paper.
They're just cobwebs, not even.
They're illusions. And so you can rise out of this underworld of poverty and degradation and abuse.
You can rise up.
It's a helium balloon through a cloud.
It looks like it's going to bump and stay, but it just goes through.
You can be your own rocket and get to as high a stratosphere as you want, because the market doesn't care where you came from.
It only cares what value you bring now.
What value you bring. Gérard Depardieu, the French actor, stole cars in his youth.
But he can play a greasy cook in a movie about a tiger.
And next thing you know, he's getting paid.
Mark Wahlberg. Marky Mark, right?
Yeah. Some guy, what did he put his eye out or something?
I mean, just some god-awful thing.
It's like, yeah, but the guy, I'm not justifying any of this stuff, you understand?
I'm just saying that now he brings value, can open a movie, and is very charismatic and successful, and he's pretty good at comedy.
And obviously, he still does his sit-ups.
And so it doesn't matter where you came from.
It matters the value that you can bring into here and now.
And what that meant, you see, when I first started to learn about computers, when I first started learning about economics, when I first started learning about business and value and customers and satisfaction, when I started learning all that stuff, if I listened to the fucking socialists, I would have stayed down there in the shit pit of my origins.
If I listened to those assholes, I never would have walked through those walls because who bothers walking through walls?
Just hurts yourself. But because the capitalists came to me and the free market people came to me and said, you can be anything you want to be.
You don't have to be stuck here. Learn stuff.
Add value. Be courageous.
Face your fears.
Do right. Do good.
Be of use, service, and value to people in this world and you can have anything you want.
So I was told I should be resentful because I'm stuck and I had no chance to get out.
That I was stuck in my class or classlessness.
And when people came along to me and said, you can be whatever you want to be if you're willing to work for it.
If you're willing to do what other people won't do.
What a success! It's just doing what other people won't do.
It's saying what other people are too scared or cowardly to say.
It is taking a stand where other people won't even crawl.
And that's how you bring value.
Speak the truth though the skies fall.
What a huge relief it was for me, Giorgio, not to have to resent every aspect of society I was born into.
Not to look forward to a life of grim dysfunctional repetition of all the crap that surrounded me as a child.
The reason I'm saying all this, Giorgio, is I was told you don't have to resent.
You don't have to hate.
You don't have to be trapped.
You don't have to be paralyzed.
You don't have to be useless.
You don't have to be a photocopy of everything that came before.
You can forge your own path.
You can be your own man.
You can bring all the value you can imagine to the world.
And the world is fairer than you think it is.
The world is far more fair than you think it is.
The free market world, the government world is a shit pit, but the free market world is far more fair than you think it is.
So when I first started reading about the free market, I felt that feeling of chains and being trapped and stuck, boxed in to a stiggy and abyss and underworld dysfunction and brutality, that I could just will myself out.
I could turn my feet into a jetpack and rise.
And I was like, oh, this is fantastic!
Thank the Lord above that I came across those free market thinkers back in the day who said, provide value and you get value.
Learn and you can transcend.
Be courageous and you can be greater.
They uncorked my possibility.
So when your girlfriend hears that she doesn't have to resent, that there's no big giant patriarchy that's striving to keep her down, that if she provides value, she'll get value, why wouldn't she feel this enormous sense of relief and uncorked potential?
Or even if she doesn't want to go and be Margaret Thatcher or some entrepreneurial CEO, maybe she just wants to be a great mom.
But she doesn't have to resent everything.
She doesn't have to resent masculinity.
She doesn't have to resent being a woman.
She doesn't have to think everyone's trying to exploit her.
She doesn't think that everyone's trying to keep her down.
What a relief! Why wouldn't you grab at that?
like the last floating stick off the Titanic.
That's fascinating.
Well, Stefan, I give you your great motivator.
laughter laughter Thank you.
And I'll tell you why she doesn't want to take that.
Because happiness is not a great enough motivation for her to let go of resentment.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Wow. Everyone who was in my underworld that I grew up in, everyone was trapped, not by class, but by resentment.
And with resentment comes vanity.
Because when you resent the world and you say, well, I can't rise, I can't grow, I can't succeed, I can't achieve because there are all these forces arrayed against me.
There's racism, sexism, patriarchy, whatever.
Well, then you never have to put your true abilities to the test.
And there's no... Greater sandblasting of vanity than putting yourself out there in the free market and seeing what?
Value. You know, if you think you're this great actor, go audition.
If you think you're this great singer, go audition.
If you think you're a great painter, go display your work.
But if you say, well, the art world will never let me in and you keep working on your painting, you can imagine you're this great painter.
You never put it to a market test!
And so you can think you're all that And a six-pack and a baguette.
You can think you're fantastic because your resentment keeps you from putting your glories to the market test.
So with resentment comes vanity, and the vanity then...
It means that the resentment becomes a shield to the vanity.
So originally you resent and then you become vain because you don't put your capacities to the market test because there's no point because everyone's out to get you and oppress you and so on.
But then what happens is you become vain.
That I am great, it's just that the world doesn't see me.
I am woman, hear me roar.
It's just the patriarchy won't pay me what I deserve.
I am black and I should be great, but racism and the white man are keeping me down.
And that vanity then means you can't let go of the resentment.
Because if you let go of the resentment, you actually have to put yourself out there and see what you're worth.
And trust me, when you start, it ain't much.
It ain't much.
When I first started the show, I took no donations.
When I first started taking donations, well, I think you can imagine.
Right? So, it ain't much.
And you've got to work to build value.
You've got to work. Every single show, I say something where I'm like, ooh, well, that's good for now, isn't it?
But I have committed to being as honest as I can be and as courageous as can be sensibly achieved in what it is that I do.
And so, for her, there's a happiness that she can have if she wants to let go of her resentment.
But the happiness is not enough.
For me to let go of my resentment of a class system that I was told about, of a caste system in England, it's almost like a caste system depending on the accent that you have and so on.
The single mother, when I was a kid, being the child of a single mother was a big stigma.
Big stigma. It's not so much anymore.
But back, am I talking 50 years ago, it was a big deal to be the kid of a single mom.
And... I had to let go of all of that.
Why? Because I wanted to be happy.
And the happiness was enough for me to let go of the resentment and to work to begin to climb that staircase to providing value to the world.
So the question is, you are saying to her, hey, honey, you don't have to resent.
You don't have to hate. You don't have to be trapped.
You don't have to feel exploited.
You don't have to feel that men is bad and there's a patriarch that's keeping down all women.
And she should be like...
I'm pissed that I was lied to about all of this stuff, but now I can really be happy.
So the question is, why is the happiness not enough for her to let go of her resentment?
Not her, it's not even her, it's her programmed resentment, it's a propagandized resentment.
Yeah, yeah.
The only conclusion I came from that is that she's afraid of being wrong.
She's afraid of giving in to...
We're all afraid of giving in, but we do it because we want to be happy.
Why is happiness not enough for her to change her mind?
I guess she doesn't see it.
She doesn't see that light in the tunnel.
Yeah, that's a deepity that doesn't explain anything, right?
Yeah. Well, it's because of her mom.
Yeah. Right?
So, do I even attempt to talk to her mom about this?
Well, you could talk to the two of them together.
That's what I would do.
Okay. And I would say to the mom...
So, your daughter says that she wants to be independent like you, but help me sort of, I'm just a little confused here, you know, pull the Columbo, I'm confused, right?
And just say, how long did you stay home for?
Five years or ten years? Well, who was paying the bills?
My husband? Okay, so you're at least financially dependent on him, right?
Well, when I was raising his children, hey, you know, I didn't say you weren't.
Of course, it was great that you were.
He was dependent upon you to raise his children.
So he was familiarly dependent upon you, but you were financially dependent on him, right?
Because I think your daughter's got this idea that she should never be financially dependent on a man.
I'm just wondering if I can understand that.
Like, help me sort of puzzle this one out.
Yeah. How happy is her mother?
Well... She's the oldest of, I think it's four siblings.
She married the first man, her first boyfriend, right?
She immigrated from Chile to both of them.
They got married, they had my girlfriend, and then they had her little brother.
Which, that's another story that...
That might take another show.
I'm seeing the brother kind of...
Give me the very short version of the brother.
Well, the brother is about 20, 25 years old, working kind of a dead-end job.
He let himself gain some ways dating this girl that's trying to get him out of it, out of the laziness.
But what I've...
Attempted to figure out is that since there's no strong patriarchal authority in that house, he undermines his mother.
Wait, she undermines his mother?
Who's she? No, he undermines his mother.
The son? Yeah.
Okay, what does that mean? Yeah, I'm sorry if I'm laughing.
So, because he doesn't respect it, I think...
Or his dad, then he just thinks he can go ahead and do whatever he wants.
And his mom has been letting him get away with that.
She's admitted that, at least.
I'm sorry, is he living at home?
Yeah. Oh, so they're enabling his laziness.
The mom is enabling and the father...
Or enabling his laziness.
Right. And the father has tried to, like, get him out of it.
But the mother is just, you know, he's his...
Sorry, I don't understand what you mean.
He's her little baby. They're trying to get him out of it.
I mean, don't you just say, end of the month, you've got to move out?
I don't understand. No, no.
They don't want him.
The mom doesn't want him.
To let him move out.
He doesn't want to either. There's no point.
They're still paying bills.
Well, the son doesn't want to move out.
For sure, he's getting free rent. But what about the mom and dad?
Mom and dad are happy having him there.
So they don't really care that they're crippling and undermining his work ethic?
They see it happening, but I guess the love is blind.
I don't agree with that at all.
She knows that he's not doing it at him.
How's the relationship between your girlfriend's parents?
Because if there was some deadbeat kid on the couch sucking the life and energy out of the house, I'd be like, you got to go.
I want to spend time with your mom.
Like, get out, right? Yeah.
So, if you really love your wife slash husband, and of course, if you really love your son, you wouldn't be enabling this kind of behavior.
But oftentimes, a dysfunctional married couple keep particularly the last child at home as a buffer to fill up the empty space between them.
Yeah. That makes a lot of sense.
So they can't get rid of him because then they have to face the emptiness if it's there or not there in their marriage.
Yeah. Yeah, I told my girlfriend about this.
It's like, hey, it's a topic that it's hard to breach.
Is she one of these, the fridge door slams where the topic she doesn't like comes up?
Yeah, it makes her uncomfortable.
No, no, hang on, hang on.
She thinks her parents are happy and everything.
Oh, sorry, Giorgio. Again, this is the agency thing.
It makes her uncomfortable.
Okay, so what?
Does that mean that you then don't ever get – you can't talk about it just because it makes her uncomfortable?
No, I love talking about it.
No, but what happens with her when you bring this topic up?
If there is so much as an ounce of doubt that their parents or her mom might be a slight bit unhappy, then she's like, no, no, no.
She's just kidding. They're happy together.
And you've met the parents, right?
They love each other. Yeah.
And what do you think? Okay, so the dad loves to cook.
The dad does the cooking.
The dad... They both work on separate occasions.
Sometimes he goes out of town and he works there and he comes home and the mom works.
They split up the chores around the house and when he comes home, he's dedicated to his family.
I love him, man.
He's a great man.
He has a great heart and everything, but I don't really see them reacting.
I've never really seen the mom and the dad, actually.
Because the mom is very defensive.
Wait, what do you mean the mom is defensive and what?
She doesn't...
She has a short temper.
She's a smart woman, but she has a very short temper.
How does that manifest? How do you know?
Because... How does what manifest?
I'm sorry. The short temper.
Oh, okay. So, specifically, I recall an example of we were all in the car, right?
She decided to drive.
And she was merging onto another lane.
And the dad, I hear the dad very calmly, very peacefully tell her, hey, be careful.
There's a car about to hit her.
And immediately she blows up.
She's like, hey, don't even, you know, don't yell at me, you know, don't, don't, don't interrupt me.
And I just start laughing.
Like, to me, it was very comical.
But I was the only one laughing.
And I look around the car and I'm like, okay, is this, I thought she was just being funny.
And the dad immediately just, you know, just, he just, you know, be quiet.
He was quiet the entire ride home.
So she snapped her husband in front of the whole family and her daughter's boyfriend.
Yeah. But that's very humiliating for him, right?
Yeah, a little bit.
And I did talk to her about, we came up across this topic about kids losing respect with their parents.
And I asked her, like, hey, did your parents ever do something, you know, that kind of made you laugh?
Or, you know, either at them or with them, whatever it may be.
And she's like, yeah, actually, you know, my dad was...
My dad would...
His dad, again, was very active, right?
He'd go out and ride bikes.
He loved to run. He loved to stay active, not to stay fit.
So when he would do that, he would often get hurt.
Sometimes in, you know, embarrassing ways.
No, he was looking for it.
He was just even falling in a ditch somewhere or something.
That was one of the stories. And so now the whole family kind of, you know, laughs every time he does get hurt because, you know, it's like, oh, you know, there he is again going out and getting hurt.
Right? Kind of a bunch of bullbusters, aren't they?
Yeah. Yeah. And he laughs at it, too.
It's like, yeah, it happens and the relationship continues there.
I still see a lot of love in the household.
The daughter is very appreciative of him and my girlfriend.
But that's about it, really.
And how, you said that the dad is a great man, but how can he be a great man if his son is failing so catastrophically in life?
Yeah, I guess that's what he's lacking, is taking charge of the household.
He's basically, and I hate to, I mean, I know what you think about this, but he's taking up the role of the wife, right?
Right, who has to say that?
The husband. Her dad.
The cooking? Like what?
Well, he does a lot of cooking.
He does mostly the cleaning, the organizing around.
Basically, he's not lazy to get his hands dirty.
And when it comes to the two of them doing the chores, the dad automatically takes over.
It's like, no, I'll do it. It's okay.
You rest. I'll do it.
I've seen her cook too.
She doesn't like it. She doesn't like to cook too much.
The kids and the mom don't have proper nutritional habits.
They don't like veggies.
They don't like that kind of stuff.
Your girlfriend doesn't like to eat well?
She has a bit of a sweet tooth.
Yeah. Is the mom overweight?
No. No, not obese.
She's in her probably 50s.
There's a bit of love handles there, but who doesn't have it at that age, right?
But I've never seen her really exercise.
Yeah, but she mocks the guy who's active, sure.
Yeah. So, do you see respect for the I don't.
For the husband? For the father?
Not on her. Not on their mom.
Right. So that's going to be your life.
Oh, wow. That's going to be your life.
I mean, you can bring it up with the family and say, listen, I don't think you're treating the father that respectfully or whatever.
But you did try sort of taking his side, not explicitly, in the car when the mom snapped at him for trying to, I don't know, when the father tried to not get them killed.
If, you know. Yeah. Right?
So, yeah.
So, they've never talked about it as an issue.
And so, yeah, that's...
That's going to be your life. Because if your girlfriend said, you know, I think my mom could treat him with a bit more respect, then there can be a change.
But the problem is, if the daughter is really bonded with the mom and can't really criticize her or find anything to improve on, then that's going to be all of it.
Yeah, nobody likes to challenge her.
Nobody likes to get her mad at all.
Right, so she's kind of a bully.
In a sense.
The only reason why you don't challenge people is because you're scared of them, right?
Yeah. So why would you be scared of someone who wasn't dangerous?
It would make no sense, right?
Like you could run from a bear, running from a rabbit is a little less, unless you're a bipedal carrot, it doesn't make quite as much sense, right?
Yeah. When I look at my girlfriend, she doesn't have her mom's attitude or personality.
She takes up after her dad.
She's more like very calm, very submissive.
We've never gotten into fights where we're yelling at each other.
It's more like a cold war.
What do you mean? Like we disagree.
And I'll keep touching the topic and she just, you know, mooters away.
She doesn't want to talk about it.
And so, I've gotten to a point where, okay, if you don't want to talk about it, because I've even asked her to come on a show with me.
And she saw a couple of your shows and she's like, oh my god, I can't believe he treats people like that, you know?
He's like, what? He's being honest.
He's being straightforward. The truth hurts.
Wait, she's fine with her mom snapping and yelling at her father when her father's trying to help, but she thinks that I treat people badly?
Okay. Yeah, that makes all kinds of nonsense.
I know it's another thing.
I think she looks at more kind of a demeanor.
It's another reason why she doesn't, let's say, love Trump, because mostly women I've seen around here now, mostly women are like that.
It doesn't matter that Trump is doing such a great job with the finance of the country, but the way he's talking to people...
Sorry to interrupt. Has she ever asked you what you like about this show?
Um... No, actually.
I mean, I assume this show is somewhat important.
I mean, you're calling up and courageously spilling your guts about your life, which I hugely appreciate.
But why do you think she's never asked you what you like about this show and what I do?
I mean, shouldn't you care about what someone you claim to love cares about?
Yeah. In her eyes, it's like, well, I don't have to like it, but I'll support you.
No, but doesn't she want to know what you like?
Yeah. And I've told her, I'm very blunt about it.
And I've told her, hey, you know, like I've had her even watch, she's watched actually two of your shows that I've shared with her.
And she's watched through the entire hours of it all.
And she comes to me, she's like, actually, he does point out some really great points.
But, you know, and then she lays out her arguments.
I'm like, okay, well, let's talk about it.
And then we never get to it.
Right. So, yeah.
Yeah, listen, let me tell you something, man.
I mean, I've been married, I don't know, 16 years.
I know my wife for 17 years.
Congratulations. Well, thank you, but you always got to have the conversation.
You have a disagreement, you have a difference of opinion, you always have to have the conversation.
My wife and I, we don't get into a lot of conflicts, but you know, if we do have a disagreement, we talk it till it's done.
There's none of this white-lipped storming around, stalking out, slamming doors, slamming cupboards.
I don't want to talk about it.
I mean, that's not an option.
Marriage is a conversation.
It's a conversation.
That's most of what it is.
And if you're not in the conversation, you're not in the marriage.
If you're not in the conversation, you're not in the relationship.
And this censorship stuff where it's like, well, I don't like to talk about this and we can't bring up that and I'll talk about this once but never again.
It's like, no, no, no.
Putting these massive boundaries about what you can and can't talk about in a marriage, that's not a marriage as far as I can see.
It's not even a relationship. Because you have to be honest in a relationship.
And you can't dominate in a relationship.
You have to negotiate in a relationship.
And there can't be all these massive, off-topic landmines in a relationship.
Because they grow over time, trust me.
I mean, you're in a relationship long enough.
If you start to seed ground and you start to say, well, okay, we don't talk about your mom.
And, okay, we don't talk about your dad.
And we don't talk about their marriage.
And now we don't talk about your brother.
And now we don't talk about this.
And now I can't tell you they're going to get a master's degree when you want to have kids.
It's ridiculous. And now we can't talk about...
The fuck are you going to talk about eventually?
You're just going to stare at each other and feel angry.
Because nobody likes that level of censorship in a relationship that's supposed to be about conversation.
And it's cowardly and bullying to say, I'm just not going to talk about this.
You don't have to talk about it, but I'm not going to pretend we have a relationship if you don't.
So you're trying to fix her like your sister's, like your girlfriend's brother's girlfriend is trying to fix him.
Yeah. Yeah, so I shouldn't have to fix it.
And you can ask her to map it up.
Say, listen, okay, there's a bunch of stuff I just need to know.
Just get out a big piece of paper.
You know, because people don't notice the details, but when you write it all down, you get a big piece of paper, and you say, okay...
What are the topics I'm not allowed to bring up with you?
Okay, I can't bring up Freedom and Radio.
Okay, at least not much. And I can't bring up your mom.
I can't bring up your brother. I can't bring up your parents' marriage.
I can't bring up what's going on.
Between your parents and your brother.
I can't talk about your career, really.
I can't talk about getting married and how it might interfere with your education.
I can't talk about how ridiculous it might be to get a master's at this time in your life.
I can't talk about the wage gap.
I can't talk about the lack of a patriarchy.
I can't talk about that there's no rape culture.
Like, I just need a map of what I can talk about.
And eventually, it's going to be like the weather.
Okay, we can talk about the weather, as long as it's not raining trumpets.
Yeah. Yeah, I know.
And I shouldn't have to be trying to engage in these conversations if she just keeps trying to avoid it.
Like, if she's trying to avoid it, well, okay, then I guess we can't do something to talk about.
And as life accumulates, you get more and more topics you can't talk about, not fewer.
You know, she's going to have some problem with her friend, and then you're going to think it's your girlfriend or your wife's fault, or more her fault than her friend's.
You're going to sit down and talk about it. She's like, I don't want to talk about it.
Okay, so now we can't talk about this problem you had with your friend.
And then something's going to happen with her mom and your kids.
And then you're going to say, well, I think your mom was kind of, oh, we can't talk about that.
Like, you get more and more stuff you can't talk about.
This is why people end up getting divorced.
Because there's nothing left to talk about.
Because so many things are off limits.
And this is a trigger. And this is a landmine.
And we can't talk about this.
And this gets the person upset.
And eventually it's just like, oh, I'm just going to tie my tongue into a bow and shut the hell up.
And then people, they can stagger on for a while discussing nothing and being resentful.
And then eventually they just wake up one day and they say, I really can't spend the rest of my life not having a conversation about anything that matters.
Because it's not like she's saying shut it down because it's boring.
She's saying shut it down because it's upsetting.
She needs a safe space from her boyfriend.
And you're not screaming at her.
You're not saying, let's go join a cult, right?
You're like, let's talk about things that I find interesting.
Yeah. She, I see that, you know, her, to her, I think it's, it's as if she gets into my ways of thinking or, you know, what I like to listen to or would like to, what I'm involved in. She thinks that, it's like, okay, then I'm just turning into you.
Well, yeah, that's a chameleon aspect, right?
So, a woman who wants to get married will often mirror the man until she gets the ring, right?
Yeah. Yeah, I don't want that.
Oh yeah, no. She's the quiet one.
She's the chameleon. She's accommodating.
But even at this point when she's being accommodating, there's a whole bunch of things you can't talk about.
I literally cannot stand being in relationships where there are all these landmines.
I can't take it.
I can't take it because I hate that.
It's self-censorship that she's demanding of you.
And she's punishing you for coming up with topics she doesn't like.
Well, who wants that?
She's still only at eight.
Yeah. And I mean, that's, I mean, as a whole, you talk about, hey, I'll offend you if you talk about anything that you can just, that's taboo.
Well, what happens if she starts telling your daughter about the wage gap?
Well, if you have kids, you get married, you have kids, she starts telling your daughter that she lives in a rape culture, there's a patriarchy, and there's a wage gap.
And that men are trying to oppress her and she's going to face a huge glass ceiling for her ambitions because men just don't like women or are scared of women.
Is this what you want for your daughter?
No. So do you think this is not just a simple phase that she'll get over with?
Because even she said at one point, she's like, you know what, this is just the way I think.
You know, I may grow out of it.
This is just how it is.
I may grow out of it.
So what she's doing there, Giorgio, is she's saying, you should give up any thought of changing me.
Because if I'm going to change my mind, it's going to have nothing to do with you.
It's just going to be an organic process that I'm just going to grow out of.
In other words, I'm not going to listen to you.
I don't respect what you say.
I don't care what you say.
But maybe I'll just grow out of it on my own.
No, no, no, no, no. What's the point of having conversations with someone if...
their alterations just happen organically without your input.
And the thing is, too, she should have some humility regarding her own decisions, because she's been mistaken on her education, right?
Bye.
I mean, she studied this marketing stuff.
Now she wants child behavior.
She worked in two jobs.
She studied marketing now is doing some back-end accounting crap or whatever.
She wants to take care of autistic kids, but she's not going to be able to follow through because she wants to have kids.
I mean, I don't know.
I think if I'd made a bunch of those kinds of decisions, I'd be pretty humble and not so arrogant about what should and shouldn't be talked about.
Yeah. You know, I bet you she said, well, I'm going to go to marketing.
Now, her dad, probably her dad, would be like, I don't know.
What do you think? How's that going to play out?
And mom's like, if she wants to do marketing, she can do marketing.
End of topic. Whatever, right?
And it's like, okay, well, how helpful was that?
That that wasn't discussed more.
Yeah. Yeah.
And it kind of...
So, in regards to religion, right?
That's one thing, you know, I was raised in a Christian household, and I kind of veered away from that for a while, and now I'm starting to come back to it by, you know, getting into some research, right?
And one of the things that the Bible says is, you know, hey, you can't, you shall not unite in an unequal belief.
I can't quote the exact...
Well, you need to share values.
Yeah. Whether you're religious or not, you need to share values.
And the values is not the content of the values that is most important.
This is really, really important.
It is not the content of the values that matters.
You can start in different places.
It's the methodology of how you resolve disputes that matters.
That's what matters. Got it.
So if you have reason and evidence as your methodology for resolving disputes, if you have a commitment to honesty and openness and exploration in your conversations, then where you start from is far less important.
Because you'll be on the journey, on the same boat, using the same methodology, and it will be a constant opportunity for growth and exploration because you're using the same methodology.
But if you're using a methodology called, well, if I don't like it, I just get cold and shut him down.
Well, I think you understand that's not going to go very far.
Yeah. Okay.
So, my suggestion is this, Giorgio.
Yes. Don't ever, ever stop a conversation just because someone's uncomfortable.
Now, this doesn't mean if she's like completely freaking out, okay, well, you can take a pause or whatever until she composes herself.
But don't ever let somebody shut down important aspects of a conversation because they're shutting you down.
It's a rejection. If you're interested in something and someone else shuts you down, they are rejecting you, significant parts of you.
It is a huge rejection.
And try not to be in relationships, if at all possible, with people who reject significant portions of who you are.
So you can sit there and say, you know...
You can sit her down and never change stuff in a relationship without making it explicit.
You say, listen, I've kind of got into this bad habit that if you don't want to talk about something, we kind of end up not talking about it.
I'm telling you that's going to change.
Because I care about you.
I want to have an open and honest relationship with you, right?
And, you know, you can get her agreement.
I'm sure she doesn't want you to lie or fake or pretend to be something other than who you are.
So you say, I want to have a very honest and open relationship with you.
So I'm not... Going to pull back if a topic makes you uncomfortable.
And you should not pull back if a topic makes me uncomfortable because we want to have full frankness in our conversations.
That's called love. Love is not manipulation.
It's not control. It's not punishment or bullying or withdrawal or censoring people.
It's being fully open and curious about the other person's thoughts and feelings.
And just say, I want to take us to the next level, which is real honesty.
And you're going to have criticisms of me or thoughts about me that I might find uncomfortable or about my family.
I'm going to have the same thing with you.
And we're either going to find a way to have these conversations or we're not.
But I'm not going to live in this limbo of half and half.
That's right. Okay.
All right. Let me know how it goes, man.
And thank you very much for the conversation.
I appreciate you, Stephen. Thank you.
Thank you, man. Take care. Bye-bye.
Okay, up next we have Benjamin.
Benjamin wrote in and said, The doctors tell us he is very fortunate to be alive and not have any long-term kidney damage.
He seems like he was back to normal, but I, of course, thought things were pretty good when he did it.
How do I keep something like this from happening again?
That's from Benjamin. Benjamin, how are you doing, man?
I'm alright, given the circumstances.
When did this happen? It's been about two or three weeks now.
Maybe four weeks.
Wow. Wow.
Okay. How are you doing?
I'm nervous.
I'm... Obviously, talking about this isn't the easiest thing in the world, but...
No, no. Good for you, man.
That's hard.
And well done.
At this point, like, it's...
When I say things were fine, like, he seemed like a happy enough kid.
We've had behavioral troubles for a long time and, like, trying to decide what to do.
And just got to a point where we're just, like, Don't have any clue.
We've got in a waiting line about five different counselors trying to get someone to see him, talk to him and stuff.
But... I don't...
Yeah.
And how's your heart?
How's your soul at the moment?
It's... It's...
It's heavy that he felt like he had to do something like that.
Or... And then I don't feel like I understand because we asked him, like, what were you trying to do?
And he's like, I didn't want to kill myself.
We're like, did you know that the pills were toxic?
We knew that you knew that.
We've told you. Because we don't let him take Advil.
We give him children's Tylenol.
He's had some issues with his braces hurting and stuff.
So we're like, no, Advil's for adults.
There could be problems.
It's dangerous for kids repeatedly.
So he knew that, but then he just repeated it.
And then we're like, "Well, then why'd you do it the second time?" I don't know.
Now, the first time he didn't tell you, is that right?
Yeah, he didn't tell us at all.
He just asked to stay behind at the house.
He's 12 years old.
We walked two blocks down the street to the playground with our younger kids.
We have an eight-month-old and a three-year-old.
We just went to the park for a little bit, for like an hour.
And we came back and he was angry, upset.
But we just thought it was because he had lost Xbox privileges.
He had... Stolen passwords from our account to try and get into stuff he wasn't supposed to on the internet.
Wait, he stole passwords from your social media accounts or Xbox accounts?
All of our passwords?
We have a password manager and he got in there and Wrote down a bunch of important passwords so that he could get into Xbox and social media and stuff like that.
Was it also to buy things online?
We don't know.
I guess we caught him before he bought things.
I knew that he wanted some Fortnite expansion pack or something.
But he had some money that we were holding for him from Christmas that he wanted to spend and I don't think that he liked that we've been trying to teach him to be responsible with money and trying to explain to him before purchases were made, like, how much money should be saved and explained to him to, I don't know, just trying to teach him some financial responsibility before he just goes and blows it all.
And what are the other behavioral problems that you've seen?
I guess maybe some background is good here.
He was born in Eritrea.
I don't know if you know that country.
It was split off of Ethiopia during a civil war when my wife was little.
When he came, he was stabbing kids in kindergarten with pencils and scissors.
He basically had to be isolated by himself the whole first year at a separate table.
How did he get from Eritrea to your house?
So I met my wife in graduate school.
We were both getting our master's in molecular biology.
And she had left him there with her mother until she could get planted.
And then after we got engaged, she went back to get him and came to live with us.
Wait, sorry. So that was a little bit rapid.
So you met your wife in graduate school.
Is she Ethiopian or Eritrean?
Yes. And she's black, is that right?
She's light... Yeah, she's black.
She's a little lighter. I mean, I know that there's gradations and all of that, but ethnically, would she be considered black?
Yes. Okay, okay.
So she was in grad school, and she had your stepson at some, I guess, what, 12 years ago, right?
Yeah. And did she have him...
She had him when she was in Eritrea, right?
Correct. And...
Was she herself born in Eritrea?
Yeah, she was born and grew up during a civil war there.
She spent some time over in Ethiopia away from family to get away from the bombings and stuff.
Where's the father of her child?
She was raped.
The child was the product of that.
He He caused a little bit of trouble at first getting the child out, but then he married somebody else and then left that person too.
And I think right now, last we heard, he was arrested for domestic abuse in California somewhere.
And how did he get into America?
Yeah. I guess his parents were government officials in Eritrea.
They had some kind of diplomatic status.
I mean, I think, aren't rapists not number one in immigrant possibilities?
She never turned him in for that.
Like, so... She has a lot of shame associated with that, and so he actually...
Oh, so she let the rape...
Well, because she didn't report it, the rapist got into America where he's now serving time for domestic violence?
I don't know if he's serving time for it at this time.
I assume there...
I don't know what the outcome of that trial was, just that he got arrested within the last year or so.
Right. Do you know much about the father?
I know that he also, he got kicked out or expelled from US schools because when he was young, they brought him over here for school.
He was adopted. He was adopted from a conflict zone somewhere else in Africa by these people, these government people who couldn't have their own kids.
And he was kicked out for biting and kicking and committing violence against these other kids at school.
Right. And then he dropped out of high school, I guess, in Eritrea to join the military when he was 16 or 17.
Do you know if he raped or was alleged to have raped more than one person?
No, I don't know.
If anyone else... He could have, for all we know, afterwards.
And are you white? I am.
I mean, I guess Benjamin...
I mean...
I guess my question is, like, what are you doing?
Why are you getting, I mean, involved with a woman from Ethiopia who has a child through rape?
Is there no one else around?
I don't know.
I guess I had my own rough childhood and I lacked a lot of self-confidence and My wife, now wife, really admired my intelligence, which was a prideful thing for me, I guess. Well, she comes from a region.
I don't know if you know this, the Ethiopian average.
I know it's not exactly the same as Eritrea, but it's probably not wildly after the average IQ in Ethiopia.
Do you know what that is? 67.
Well, I got 69, but you may know better than I do.
No, her country is 67.
67. Yeah, I know there's two points difference between Ethiopia and Eritrea.
Yeah. It may be a distinction without much of a difference.
She scored higher than me on the GRE. I mean, she's smart.
Well, but there's regression to the mean.
Yeah, I know.
And as you know, it's not like there's determinism, but there is a lot of personality traits.
Well, all personality traits have genetic inheritance to some degree or another.
Right. And how old was your stepson when you met his mother?
He was four, but he was still over at Eritrea.
He came over when he was five.
Oh, so he was separated from his mom?
Yeah. And why was that?
The country is kind of like North Korea.
They don't really let people out.
And when they do, they like to hold collateral.
So, part of her visa to come visit the United States was given because they held him and they assumed that she would not leave.
If he was the, quote, hostage, right?
Then why would they let him go?
So, it's always in flux.
They change laws to allow people they want to get out to get out.
And so, the laws will change for a week or two or a month and then they'll go back and forth.
So, there was a period there where they thought it was going to be okay.
And then also, she had...
Her father was a businessman who owned a fairly, like, as far as the country is concerned, like the biggest they had.
And her mother ran the business and she stood to inherit quite a bit as far as their country was concerned.
How long did you know before you started dating her that she had a baby from rape who was going to rejoin the family?
I didn't find out that it was rape until after we were married.
Actually, a lot of this stuff came out very slowly over a long period of time.
She didn't tell you that The boy who was going to be your stepson, who you were going to be legally and financially and morally responsible for, she did not tell you that he was the product of rape?
That's correct. And how long after you were married?
Well, how long did you date before you got married?
It's about two years.
We got married right after graduate school, so it was...
Yeah, about two years.
And how long after you got married did you find out that the boy was the product of a rape?
Maybe four years.
Four years after you were married?
Yeah. And how did that come up?
It was just...
It was a conversation about...
It just...
I kept asking...
She kept just saying that we did this and this happened.
And I was like, what do you mean it happened?
Eventually, as the trust grew between us, I guess, she just opened up more about the circumstances surrounding her son being born and what happened before.
As the trust grew?
Yeah. From where?
She's keeping a massive secret about the origin story of your stepson.
Right. Where is the trust to begin with?
I don't know. Part of it was she didn't really see it as rape because...
She told him no, I guess, but she didn't fight back.
And it wasn't the same as...
So when she was 17, she was tied to a bed by a significantly older friend of the family who was planning to rape her, but then didn't because he thought he heard her father coming home.
So then he untied her real quick and then got out of there before he came in the house.
And so that's like...
That was what she thought of as rape.
So then it was like...
Well...
This guy she was dating and planned to break up with decided that before she broke up with him, he was going to take what he wanted.
She felt like it was her fault partly because she had been dating him and put herself alone in a room with him.
Her parents had been telling her not to date this guy.
So, was it rape or not?
By my...
Yeah, absolutely. I mean...
Is that what she says it was?
At this point, yes.
Sorry, I don't mean to laugh.
It's like... At this point, we both agree and accept that what happened wasn't consensual and shouldn't have happened.
And that actually helped her, I guess...
To... Did you ask her before?
Obviously, I assume you did before you dated or before you...
Okay, how long after you started dating or before you started dating did you know that she had a son?
Within about two months after we started dating.
What?! She didn't tell you for two months that she's a mom?
Right. Dude!
What the fuck?!
No, it's...
Like, what? Are you a gargoyle?
Are you Quasimodo?
Do you have a foot coming out of your forehead?
What the hell? She was really scared to chase me away.
I'm actually a really pretty, really handsome guy.
And she thought so too.
And she just really...
Said that she had a lot of insecurity about dating me that she didn't want to lose me.
So she was always afraid to let me know that one next thing.
And did you have sex before she told you?
Yes, we did. Right.
So she throws the V-bomb at you and then she tells you after you're already bonded sexually, right?
Right. Right. And was there anyone in your life that you were keeping apprised of what's going on with this woman?
My family.
And what did they say?
I think at one point my brother told me to watch out because he didn't trust her, but That kind of passed.
So nobody in your life said to you, this is a woman who lied to you about being a mom until you were in a relationship with her for two months.
How long did you know her before you started dating her?
About two months.
Right. So she did not tell you.
And that is a lie.
I don't care about this lying by omission.
That's a straight up lie.
Yeah. That is a straight up foundational lie.
And that should be it, right?
My dad just told me you need to make her, it means you're not making her feel safe enough that she doesn't feel comfortable telling you.
So it was your fault that she lied to you about being a mom.
Right. Good job, dad.
Way to help your son. Is your father like a female slave as well?
Is he just like, well, whatever women need, that's what our job is to provide?
Yeah, I've seen that more recently.
I mean, I guess it's always been that way.
Everything revolves around making sure my mom doesn't cry or get upset.
Ah, right.
So your mother rules through emotional manipulation and bullying.
And your dad then says to you, well, son, it's really, really important that you appease this woman because it's your fault.
She's even remotely upset.
Great. All right.
So how long after you got married, did the son show up?
He showed up...
Eight months before we got married.
So during our last year of graduate school, he was there.
So you knew this boy for almost five years before finding out that he was the product of a rape?
Yeah. All right, so the boy shows up eight months before you get married.
And how did he seem at the time?
Impulsive, a little bit.
Scared and frustrated.
I don't know. He was five years old.
He didn't speak the language.
He was thrown into public school.
Wait, why was he thrown into public school?
I mean, you don't take a traumatized kid who doesn't speak the language and throw him in public school, right?
I know. No, what do you mean?
You were the father at this point.
I wasn't at that point.
Oh, sorry. You were eight months away from being the stepfather, right?
Correct. So, did you say to your fiancé, like, no, you can't do that?
Yeah. Well, I told her it wasn't a good idea, but, I mean...
And did she listen to you?
No. No, I begged her to homeschool for a couple of years, and I guess recently, so...
Two years ago, she started homeschooling him after listening to you and discussing things.
And there's been tremendous growth, Stefan.
I can say that our marriage right now has been really wonderful for the last two years.
Honesty has become a virtue that we both share.
Yeah, I'm gonna have to hold off on the sales job for just a moment, because trying to sell me on the wonderfulness of the marriage at the moment is a bit of an uphill battle.
So I just being honest with you about where I am, Benjamin.
So just be patient with me as I process this stuff.
Now, you did say that in kindergarten, wasn't he biting kids and stuff like that?
Yeah. So, what happened with him?
This is when he was five and he went to kindergarten, is that right?
Right. So, you took a kid who was an illiterate and English rape baby, dumped him in government schools, and it didn't work out, right?
Right. And what was he doing in kindergarten?
Uh, he was just frustrated, like, attacking other kids that touched his side of the desk, I guess, and he, uh, Making outbursts, trying to get attention all the time.
What right did you as a family have to put the other kids through this?
None, Stefan. What we did is just survival, I guess.
No, no, no, no, no.
No, don't give me that. This was not survival.
You had choices. Like, can you imagine the other kids facing this kid?
Right. What it was like for them, what it was like for the other parents?
I told her that too.
I told, explained to her that that's, that he should come home, that he should be homeschooled.
And why did she want to?
To try and reestablish some kind of bond?
So that he's not further traumatized.
Right. She felt like that American schools were going to give him the edge he needed to succeed in the United States.
Like he needed to learn English and he needed to go through the program.
Why is it the taxpayer's job to...
She did extensively educate him after school and during the summers.
She spent a lot of time with him like that.
And what happened to his behaviors?
They continued...
Nothing. Really got resolved.
And now he's bigger and stronger, right?
Is he still getting into fights and stuff?
Uh, yeah. And what kind of fights is he getting into?
Like, are they big fist fights?
Are they beatings? What is he doing?
He got in a fist fight, uh, was it, within the last two months at school, he got in school suspension for three days for, uh, I guess the other kid was the aggressor.
He kind of provoked it by flipping him off and, I guess, being belligerent to him.
And then they fought in the hallway, I guess.
Some other kids ragging him on.
And has his English?
Oh, his English is perfect now.
Very good. And has he had any kind of intelligence testing?
Yeah, the school tests.
I mean, he has an IQ of 120.
And is that tested by the school or independent?
That was tested by a school psychologist, I guess.
And what other behavioral problems does he have other than fighting?
Talking out in class, I guess, off-topic conversations.
Things aren't as bad, I guess, as they used to be, but...
It's mostly just inattentiveness to his schoolwork.
He's a super social person.
He just wants to be the center of attention.
My dad said if he was born in a different...
I shouldn't even say different.
My dad always said he'd make a good politician.
He likes to talk and have people look up to him.
Right. And how's his bond with his mom?
That's... It's not good.
We did try and homeschool him the last two years and a week before this pill incident he was begging to go back to public school and we finally did it and he went for a week and then this incident occurred during spring break a couple days after his first week back at school but we sent him back because he was He really wanted to go back,
be with the other kids, and he couldn't stand being home with his mom.
It was just so miserable for her to be home with him that she just asked me, can we send him back to school?
I just can't handle it with the other two kids at home.
And what couldn't she handle?
The screaming. They yell at each other.
Just... Are you telling me that you're in a wonderful marriage where your wife is screaming at your stepson?
Yeah, I love my relationship with her.
It's hard to see how she treats him, but she treats her other two kids very lovingly.
I wonder sometimes if there's jealousy there.
You think? You got a three-year-old, you got an eight-month-old who weren't being raised in Eritrea.
Who was taking care of your stepson before he came over to America?
My wife's mother.
And what's she like as a parent?
She's raised a liar! She's a mess.
She came to live with us for a couple of years.
She came to live with you for a couple of years?
Yeah. Was it a friend of your wife's mother who tried to rape your wife?
A friend of my wife's mother?
Oh, no, no. It was a friend of my wife's brother.
Ah, okay. Yeah.
Okay. But still given access to the household.
Yeah. Man, you're like just this one big immigration soup here.
She came to live with you for a couple of years.
Yep. How was that?
It's terrible. My wife was stressed out all the time.
They got in fights constantly, and I never understood what she was saying.
But it's a great marriage, right?
Dig the needles in.
Well, mostly it's been better since she left.
She stormed out. They got in a huge fight one day, and she stormed out and said she wanted to go back to Africa.
So she wanted to live with my wife's sister.
Oh, she didn't actually go back to Africa?
No. No, no, of course not.
And does she work, your wife's mother?
No. No.
What does she live on? Her daughter.
Her daughter, she works at a retail store.
I guess she has a one-bedroom apartment.
I guess she sleeps on the couch, one of them does.
It's not a wonderful life, but she's got two other sons that live in the United States.
One's an MD and the other's got a PhD in chemistry and neither one of them want to have her live with them.
I mean, is she a legal immigrant?
Yeah, yeah. She's sponsored.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. She's...
Putting the chain in chain migration.
All right.
So... Your wife screams at her mom.
She screams at her son.
But she's great with you and the other kids.
Although your other kids have also grown up with a wife screaming at the mom and screaming at her son, right?
And then the son screaming and the mom.
So a lot of screaming for your eight-month-old and three-year-old.
I mean, I don't know when your step-grandmother left, but a lot of screaming, right?
She left before the second one was born.
Okay, so the three-year-old experienced a lot of...
Grandmom screaming, and they both experienced the mom screaming at the son.
Great. And what do you do when this screaming is going on?
I try my best to just calm her down.
I've been able to try and reason with both of them a little bit.
Explain to her that she's setting a bad example.
How do you expect him not to yell at you when you're yelling at him?
Then some of the mirror behavior we saw show up in the three-year-old, and that really shocked her into changing her behavior significantly in the last year.
Oh, so the fact that it bothered you was not as important as the fact that it was imprinting on the three-year-old?
Well, yeah. But it's a great marriage.
No, come on. If it bothers you, she should reflect and alter the behavior, right?
I couldn't be judgmental because I was...
I guess I was raised in a household where my mom would scream at me and then my dad would...
I mean...
My mom would scream at me until...
And I would scream back at her.
And then my dad would beat me with a belt because I screamed at my mom.
And I just was like...
Yeah, but you know that's bad behavior, right?
I've learned to...
I mean... Wait, have you done the screaming at home too?
Well, so I've...
I've done the screaming and I've done the belt.
I've read some Christian parenting books.
Wait, wait. What do you mean you've done the belt?
So, there's probably a dozen times.
So, when we were first having trouble with my stepson, I read a Christian parenting book on how to sit down with your child and explain to him why he's getting spanked and there's going to be a certain number of swats and like I tried not to do it the same way my dad did in just a rage of just slaling hands and belts and stuff, but I still, I did spank him.
I did yell. I tried everything I could think of to get him to stop hitting other kids and stop lying to us.
But you beat him with a belt, is that right?
That's right. How many times?
It's less than 12, more than 5-ish.
And what about spanking as a whole?
I mean, those were the only times.
It was with a bell each time because you're not supposed to use your hand because then they associate...
I don't know.
The books is probably...
It was bullshit, but...
It directed you to use an implement, not your hand, because it's something about associating the hand as being you.
Yeah, somehow the kid doesn't know that it's your hand wielding the implement.
It's magic. Yeah, it was always associated with him either lying or hitting another child.
Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Lying?
Oh, yeah. So lying is a big, big problem, right?
Right. Unless it happens to be, I don't know, concealing the fact that you have a rape baby.
Right. You have no problem with that.
In fact, you marry that.
Right. Right?
Concealing the fact that you're a mom at all.
Right. So, you have a great relationship with your wife, who's lied to you enormously, but you beat your stepson for lying, right?
Right. And these are just your wife's lies that you know about, right?
Right. The ones she has confessed.
Could be untold more.
I think I've got all of them out of her.
Did you think after the first lie that you'd got them all?
No. Yeah, so your knowledge of when you've got the last lie out of your wife is not particularly consistent, right?
Right. So is your son in with the general population of kids?
Or is he in some sort of special class?
So he's in the general population of kids right now.
And so he's got, he's lying and getting involved in fights.
Is there anything else? Has there been shoplifting or anything like that?
No shoplifting.
No. Well, that you know of, but I'm not trying to make you paranoid, but.
Right. Yeah, no, that I know of.
No, it's just, and even the, I don't know, the fights have settled down.
I guess there was the one that they said the other kid It was the one that kind of provoked or started the fight.
And I guess is he just going through puberty at the moment?
Yeah. Right. Yeah, definitely.
So he's going to start getting all that testosterone and adrenaline and cortisol and, you know, all of these kinds of hormones that can start running through his system, right?
Right. And how do you think that's going to go?
Oh, and he's going to get big, right?
Yeah. Me and him seem to get along pretty well.
I wish that I could be the one to stay home with him, honestly.
Thanks to you, honestly, I found...
I mean, he's a really reasonable guy as far as...
If I can argue him into a position, it's so much better.
I diffused breakfast the other morning when he was telling his mom how he hates that food.
Like, I don't want to eat that. Why do you make this for me?
And I asked him, I said, do you think that I'm in shape?
And he's like, well, yeah.
And he's like, do you think that has something to do with what mom feeds me?
And he says, yeah. I said, well, maybe if you eat what I eat, then...
You'll also get into better shape.
And he was like, ah, you're right.
Thanks, Mom. And it was just...
It was pretty simple.
It's been pretty simple, at least with me.
He seems to listen and respond to understand the argument and reason why we do things a certain way.
And I really think that there's some underlying...
He doesn't...
I've apologized to him extensively for yelling at him every time that I beat him.
I won't even use the word spanked.
I beat him. Even just yesterday, I remembered that I had done it and I asked forgiveness again specifically to him.
He has forgiven me.
I think seeing somebody admit their wrongdoing and ask for forgiveness And be willing to back down in an argument when he says, well, you did this, and I can say, well, yeah, but I'm incredibly sorry that I did this.
It's not okay.
Fortunately, I've been able to have, I can tell, a good influence on him, and he doesn't yell and scream at me.
But Benjamin, if your relationship with him is so good, why did he try to kill himself twice?
That's what is so baffling.
That's why I think maybe it's not enough.
I'm not home most of the time.
I go to work in the morning.
I don't get home until 6 or 7 after I work out.
So then I spend like two hours with the kids before it's bedtime and then go to work the next day.
I got weekends. But I think part of it is...
He's a little emotionally unstable.
He gets super happy and exuberant, and then he'll disappoint me or his mom, and then they'll just be like, oh, life is terrible.
I hate everything.
I'm going to go play Xbox in my room for 20 hours or something.
Does he say very harsh things in the family?
Yeah, he told our three-year-old, I hate you.
I wish I never had a brother.
That was this week.
That was pretty hard.
How did the three-year-old react?
He's... I don't know.
He cries.
He'll be upset. He wants to play with them.
He looks up to them. He wants to be around them.
Not for long. Yeah.
What else has he said? Your stepson?
Why didn't you just abort me?
That's probably the worst.
I'm just going to run away.
I hate you why I had to be part of this family and why does he why did he say why didn't you just abort me Do you know what was happening at the time?
Just vaguely that it was a big fight with his mom again.
If you're so disappointed in me, basically, why did you even want to have me if you're just going to treat me like you don't want me around?
What is your wife's perception of her son?
That he has a lot of potential, but unless he gets some emotional control over himself, he's not going to be able to be a good husband or father, have a good life.
And does she enjoy his company in any circumstance or any situation?
In other words, do they have a relationship that has some good times and some bad times, or is it mostly negative?
Or something else? I think it's mostly negative.
I don't know. I mean, we go out When we go out as a family, she mostly has the baby that she's still breastfeeding and the three-year-old that she pays attention to.
I've told her it'd be good maybe if they went to counseling together, just the two of them.
Do they do stuff for just the two of them?
No. Why?
Well, rather, why not?
I guess they don't have any common interests.
What do you mean they don't have any common interests?
She's the mom. That's her job is to find common interests and common ground with her son.
I mean, if they don't go out together, who does he have a singular relationship with in the family?
Me. No, you're gone.
As you say, you're at work and then you're working out, right?
So who does he go out with one-on-one?
Let me ask you that. Obviously not your kids, but not his mom, but you?
Yeah, I've taken him out to the movie theater.
I take him out to...
I mean, we take him to basketball practice.
No, no, no, no. But when you're going out and having a conversation, not a movie and...
Oh, yeah. No, me.
Me. Do you go out and have conversations about things that matter on a regular basis?
Yeah, yeah. And how often does that happen?
I'll go to his room a couple times a week.
I'll just talk to him and say, how are things going?
Talk to him about his mom and if he has concerns or like...
So your job is to fix the relationship with the mom, I think.
Right. Please understand, I'm no psychologist, it's just my particular perspective.
Right. But the mom is the birth mom.
Right. And I'm pretty sure he needs to have a good relationship with his mom.
And if he's saying to his mom, why didn't you just kill me in the womb?
Again, I'm no psychologist, but that does not seem to me like a good part of the relationship.
And that is, understand, I mean, you understand, that is a level of nihilism and a thirst for non-existence that is probably not unrelated to him swallowing a bunch of pills.
In other words, I can abort myself right now.
Right. I didn't even think of that.
Why didn't you just abort me is a suicidal wish, isn't it?
A wish for non-existence.
You pointed out.
Well, how long before he took the pills did he say that?
Maybe a week or two.
Yeah. Yeah.
He doesn't say that to you.
I mean, obviously, the abort thing, but I assume he doesn't express that wish for non-existence to you.
He expresses it to his mom.
Right. Thanks.
And let's be brutally honest here, which is, let me ask you this, Benjamin.
Do you think... That your wife would miss her son if he was gone.
Let's just say he went back to Eritrea.
Yeah. Do you think that she would view that as a bad thing?
Or it would be like, yeah, I can get used to this.
Obviously.
out, brutal honesty time, no sentimentality.
Yeah, no, I-- there was definitely-- I would have definitely said no when he first got here.
But the relationship has degraded steadily since then to the point where I think at least if he got sent to boarding school, she would be fine with it.
What do you mean fine?
Like relieved or would it be a good thing or what?
I think it'd be relief, yeah.
Because you know, if she wants him gone, he may be getting that.
Right. You understand?
Yeah. Yeah, no, I guess if subliminally she just would be relieved of not having to deal with him, like she could be sending signals, I guess.
What did your wife say when your stepson said, why didn't you just abort me?
I wasn't there for that.
Did she report what she said or you don't know?
Yeah, she reported what she...
She told me that he said that and that was a bad thing, that he shouldn't have said that and that I should do something about it.
You should do something about it.
Like, go talk to him.
And remind me, so he said to the three-year-old, I hate you, I wish you were never born?
I wish I never had a brother.
Right, which is kind of like, I hate you and I wish you were never born, right?
Right, right. Where do you think your stepson may have heard language like, I hate you and I wish you'd never been born?
Or sentiments like that?
This is why I called you Stefan.
Yes, I guess she never said it to him.
What do you mean she never said it to him?
You don't know!
She's a liar! She never said it to my knowledge.
Well, that's quite a different thing now, isn't it?
I would assume that our son would have told me if she would have said something like that.
Because I do have a relationship with him where I believe he would tell me if she was that blatant.
Right. But if you have a relationship with your son, your stepson, where he tells you difficult things, Benjamin, then why did he try and kill himself twice without talking to you?
He did finally tell me.
That's... I mean...
You understand what I'm saying.
Please don't start hedging this.
I believe it's because it was an impulsive thing.
He wasn't planning on it, and then I wasn't there when he just decided to do it.
But he did it twice.
Well, that's true.
No, come on, man. Are you trying to work with me here or just fog me?
Yeah, yeah. No, no.
The relationship must not be as close as...
As I thought it was. He's stealing passwords from your password manager, man.
Right. What do you mean you're close?
You're close like he might be committing identity theft.
I don't know. Right.
I mean, I just feel like I kind of need to put a grappling hook in your brain and pull you back down to the world that you're actually in.
Right. No, I feel like when I talk to him and I just ask him directly, he opens up to me.
But there's conflict there, clearly.
What do you mean there's conflict there, clearly?
So, I talked to a counselor once about this.
Funny story.
I bet she's not.
She heard my story and she said, you're going to need pharmaceuticals for this.
I'm going to refer you to a psychiatrist.
She said to you?
Yeah. That you need to take what?
Antidepressants or something? Uh, they put me on methylphenidate just to deal with like stress in my life and to perform at kind of a higher level.
I was like, I don't know.
I told him that I had been on him as a child and, uh, For ADHD. And they were like, well, maybe you'll be better able to deal with all these stressful things if you're a little medicated.
I mean, what is your...
She told me that as long as I had a relationship with one parent, that it was going to be, that he'd probably be okay.
And that if I fostered this relationship, that I could help him out.
Right. Do you think that your wife wants to put in the work to have a halfway decent relationship with her son?
She's expressed that she doesn't multiple times.
Sorry, she does or doesn't?
She doesn't.
Oh, she doesn't want to try and fix the relationship with her son?
Every time I suggest ways that she could, she doesn't want to put forth that effort, whether it's...
And why is that what you think? I don't know.
I think part of it is because there's something in her, something in our son that reminds her of his father.
And... That's kind of a trigger for her.
That is one of the problems with children of rape, right?
Right. Particularly sons.
Right. He'll do things.
Why do you think she brought him from Eritrea?
Well, at the time, she believed that it was all...
She had this in her head that Genetics had nothing to do with the outcome and it was all that she was a good mother and that she was going to raise him right and turn him into a good man.
But she wasn't even remotely a good mother.
She dumped an illiterate rape baby into a government school.
Right. I mean, tell me what I'm missing.
No, you're right.
She didn't believe that that was the wrong thing to do.
But she's a very intelligent woman, right?
Right. You guys met in graduate school.
Raised in government school in Eritrea, brainwashed by the state.
Oh, so she couldn't make that kind of adaptation to even remotely Western values.
She has adapted over time, but it wasn't an instantaneous thing like magic dirt.
Okay, let me ask you this.
Benjamin. Yes.
Your stepson took fistfuls of pills two days in a row.
Right. What is your wife doing about this?
Trying to get him connected with a counselor.
So she's basically putting him on someone else again.
Right. I'm going to assume it's not the first counselor.
Would be for him.
Yeah. Oh, who else?
She saw a counselor for a while when our second son was born.
Then why is that?
She's stressed out.
We put him into daycare and she was working full time.
Which did you put into daycare?
The second son for about three months, I guess, after.
When he was a baby? Yeah.
How old was he? Three months old until six months old.
And he was in daycare like eight hours a day?
Yep. Yep.
How did she breastfeed?
She pumped into bottles and left them with the daycare people.
Did she stay home with the three-year-old?
Well, that's the three-year-old.
He was the one. Oh, when the three-year-old was a baby?
Yeah. Okay.
And that's when she went... Did she have postpartum depression or why did she put the...
She wanted to work.
She had a master's degree and she was working at a big company near the East Coast as a microbiologist.
Oh, so she had a baby and she wanted to work, so she put the baby in a daycare.
Right. And why did she take the baby out of a daycare?
That's when her mom came to live with us.
Oh, and the mom then took over the raising of your three-year-old.
Right. The mom who screams at her daughter.
Right. And did your mom use corporal punishment?
She didn't, no.
She did not, that you know of.
Correct. All right. He was still a baby.
Oh, yeah. Well, no. Babies got hit, too.
Right. And how does your life seem these days, Benjamin?
This can't be what you imagine family life to be, is it?
It still feels way better than when I grew up.
Oh, come on. Are you saying that a double suicide attempt is better?
This is a step up?
Oh, no. No, I guess not that.
What do you mean, not that?
That's what you're calling in about!
Right. No, I... Yeah.
I don't know. Things seem...
Yeah.
I'm not sure how to deal with that.
That seems like the one isolated thing in this whole thing that Well, that's a stupid thing to say.
It's not... Wait, wait, wait.
Hang on. Isolated thing.
That is a very interesting phrase.
Isolated thing. Like your stepson.
an isolated thing.
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, he probably feels pretty isolated in his own home.
He yearns for connection.
and that's probably why he wants so badly to be at school to make friends away from us well yeah i mean i my suggestion would be to you mean you just sit down with your wife and tell her she's got to step up right Right? Right.
She's got to step up and she's got to connect with her son.
Yeah. Does he know that he's the product of rape?
He does.
How does he know?
That came up within the last month, I guess.
No, no, no. Nothing comes up. Sorry.
Who told him? His mom, right?
I think so.
Oh, come on, man.
What are you doing? Yes, yes, yes, his mom.
Of course it was his mom. I mean, I hope your other kids don't know.
No, they don't. So why did your wife tell her son that he was the product of rape when he's 11 or 12 years old?
You know what? I don't think she did.
I think I did.
What do you mean you think you did?
That's something you remember. It is.
I remember the conversation.
I was trying to explain to him why she screams at him so much.
And that there was something bad that happened and that this could affect the way she...
Some of her response could be Remind her of your father and what happened.
Well, what do you mean something bad?
Did you tell him that he was a product of rape?
Yes, that it was not...
Yes. Yes, I did.
And how long ago did that happen, Benjamin?
It's in the last three or four weeks.
It was... Are you kidding me?
No, this was after the incident, but yeah.
Oh, this was after? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
He took the... There was some deep conversations about...
What was going on. And does your wife know that you told her son that he was the product of rape?
Yes. And what does she think of you telling him?
She was fine with it.
And what do you think of you telling him?
Well, right now I'm feeling a lot of shame that that shouldn't have been done.
At the time, I felt like he's something he should know at some point in his life.
Maybe, like...
Radical honesty that there shouldn't be any secrets.
You can't deal with something that's hidden.
He's a child, for God's sakes.
Right. I mean, parents have sex.
You don't have sex in front of the kid.
Well, being honest! No.
Everybody knows that everybody craps, but you don't crap on the street.
Right.
And he's a child.
And it's again trying to rescue your wife.
Right.
Right. Rather than her upping her game and becoming a better mother, this kid now has to live with this burden.
When did he say, why didn't you just abort me?
Was it after you told him that he was the product of rape?
No, that was before.
Unless, of course, because that's, why didn't you just abort me, to me, is a statement that comes from a child who knows he's the product of rape.
Right. So maybe the grandmother told him, maybe some other family member told him, maybe your wife, I don't trust a thing she says, to be honest with you, so maybe your wife told him.
It just seems like that's an odd thing to say.
Like you could say, I wish I'd never been born or something, but saying, why didn't you just abort me?
Would seem to me to come from knowledge, but what do I know?
I'm just telling you what I think. At that point, he would have thought that he was an accident with the guy she was dating.
Right. I mean, he knew that it wasn't on purpose that she decided to have a child in Eritrea with some guy who took off right away.
I assume he's never met his dad, right?
He would have met him before the age of three.
He doesn't remember him. Now, just remind me of the timeline here, Benjamin.
Did you know that your stepson was the product of rape before you decided to have two more kids with his mom?
No. Did you know before the eight-month-olds, right?
No. Okay, sorry, I've lost the timeline.
Wait, no, maybe that's right.
I did know before the eight-month-old.
But not before the three-year-old.
Correct. So it's more recent than, I guess, three years and nine months that you have known that your stepson was a product of rape.
Right.
Right.
And tell me what you love about your wife.
Wow.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Her willingness to grow.
I've seen growth.
She never rejects a good argument.
There's been a lot of...
She's changed her mind a lot of times.
A lot of things. And...
She respects my honesty.
I have...
Not honesty as a general principle, but yours.
My honesty.
Yeah. I've I've been nothing but honest with her ever since I've met her.
I've been told I've been too honest since I was a kid.
I had a strong incident where my brother lied and I got beat for it.
My brother ended up being a liar and I ended up being a pathological need to tell the truth because someone might get hurt.
You just had an early pattern of covering up for bad people.
Yeah. So she's willing to grow.
She respects your honesty, although not honesty as a principle.
And what else? Well, she's become...
My honesty has led her to be more honest with me, I guess, to volunteer to tell me when she has lied in the past.
She's very intelligent.
She shares my moral values as far as knowing that The Ten Commandments, I guess.
We're both raised in a Christian household.
We both go to church together.
Finds it important. Thou shalt not bear false witness.
Right. Yeah.
So, not that Christian.
It was more of a knowledge that it was wrong what she was doing and she felt guilt for it and was willing to change.
So... Well, willing to change after she was married, willing to change after she had sex with you before marriage, which is also not wildly Christian.
Right, right.
No, that's right.
So she, over time, I guess she was willing to agree to homeschool, even though he's, I guess he's back now, but...
She also quit her job now to move with me to a location outside of the city where I can provide for the whole family and she can stay home with our kids.
She's a full-time stay-at-home mom now.
But your stepson's going to go to a new school, right?
We've been trying him out in the public school.
There was about Eight weeks left in the semester.
And if he finishes up, then he can do the online homeschool curriculum if it doesn't work out.
But how's the homeschooling going to work if he's screaming at his mom all the time?
Well, we told her if he got straight A's that he could stay in school next year.
So, she's really hoping that he does.
But I don't know.
She feels like things were getting better when he was homeschooling, at least as far as the screaming and everything and his behavior was getting better.
The relationship was building.
And she feels like now when he gets home from school, he's worse than he was all day when he was homeschooling.
There's just...
I don't know.
Hmm.
And remind me, when did he take these pills?
It was about between four and six weeks.
I think four weeks ago.
I thought it was two to three at the beginning, but I... Yeah, I'm trying to remember back.
It was right before spring break.
It would have been...
About four weeks.
I was thinking it was more recent than it was.
Okay. I'm not trying to catch you.
I'm just trying to make sure I get the timeline somewhat straight.
Well, Benjamin, you got a mess.
Yeah. You got a mess because you didn't follow your Christian values.
Right. Right?
You got involved with a woman.
Before marriage. Right.
You got involved with a woman and found out two months after you started sleeping with her or dating her that she was a mother and hadn't even told you.
Right. Now, that should have been enough for you to say, well, you have borne a pretty significant false witness to me, honey.
I hate to say it, but...
Good luck. I'm going to go find me a nice unattached woman with a child I can raise who's not been raised in a freaking war zone and is the child of a rapist.
Right. So, it was a lack of integrity on your part and a lack of integrity on her part.
Because you say, well, I'm a real honest person, right?
Yeah. But you weren't honest with regards to your values.
Were you appalled when you found out she was a mom and had lied to you about it?
Yeah. And what did you say?
I... You better not lie to me again!
We had a big fight and I told her, yeah, basically...
And then she did. And what were the consequences of her lying to you again?
We broke up a couple of times.
No, you were already married by then, right?
When you found out he was a rape baby.
Well, there's a couple more lies in between.
And what were those lies? Uh...
So she, after she got pregnant, in order to avoid shame, she married the guy.
So she didn't tell me that she had gotten married.
Wait, what? Yeah.
She married the rapist?
Yep. Well, that's news to me.
Not in the church, but at the court, so that the child would be legitimate for purposes of, like...
I don't know, birth certificate and stuff.
I couldn't really understand why she did it.
Like, that was really confusing to me.
Did? She filed for divorce within three months after they got married, or immediately after they got married.
The most finalized, I guess, three months after they got married.
So, a sham marriage.
Yeah. Right. So, not only was she a single mother who didn't tell you she was a divorcee, and when did you find that out?
Right after I proposed to her.
So you weren't married yet?
And you found out she'd lied to you about being a mom and lied to you about being married?
Right. And what were you thinking?
I don't know. At that point I was like fuzzed out.
She was a very beautiful woman.
Ah, that was my next question.
So how pretty is she? She was a 10.
Okay. So she's gorgeous, and she can get away with murder.
Yeah. And this is the price you pay for not being a Christian, Benjamin.
What does the Christian say about the pleasures of the flesh?
What does Christianity say about the body versus the soul?
What does Christianity say about the flesh versus the virtue?
Pursuits of the flesh lead to fire, I guess.
Well, yeah, and you are in a kind of hell.
Right. You are in a kind of hell.
And this is what happens when you marry a continually lying, single mom, divorcee, who's hiding fundamentals of her life from you.
When you allow yourself to be drawn in by vanity, the pleasures of the flesh, and you ignore foundational virtues that are required for a healthy relationship.
Yeah. And she saw her ticket.
Yeah. So, please don't tell me about all the Christian values that you share, okay?
All right. No.
Do you go to church?
You have a priest? Did you talk to anyone about any of this?
We go to church, Baptist, but I don't know.
I've been thinking about going to a men's group on Sunday night.
Oh man, you go to a men's group, you're going to get some words, my friend.
May not be the worst thing in the world, it may be just what you need, but you're going to get some words.
Yeah. I think I'll go.
I think I need the support from somebody.
So why did she want to marry you?
What did you have to offer her other than citizenship?
Nothing at the time.
I was broke. When we first got married I worked in a factory for nine bucks an hour.
So why did she want to marry you?
She said, well, on her part, I was a very attractive guy, too.
She said I looked like a movie star.
That stroked my vanity a little bit, that she thought I was very attractive as well.
I was a tall guy, 6'3", I was 185 pounds, did karate, I was really fit, had a six-pack.
Yeah. So vanity meets vanity and society pays the price.
Yeah, I guess.
It's also smart, I guess.
Oh, no, I have no doubt about that.
I have no doubt about that. I mean, I'm sure you're both brilliant.
Yeah. It's amazing how dumb, smart people can be.
Like, you think...
Think whatever it is, you can handle it because, like, all the problems have been thrown at you.
You can solve them. Well, you know, there's intelligence and then there's wisdom, right?
And wisdom tends to be more of a social situation.
Intelligence is something you can do on your own.
Wisdom requires community.
It requires a tribe. It requires society.
It requires a family. It requires people giving you feedback and sharing.
And you got terrible feedback.
You got, your father should have damn well known better.
Yeah. Either you didn't share stuff with your father.
You know, like if you'd gone to your father and said, hey, I just proposed to my wife and she told me that she married her rapist.
I mean, come on.
Your son comes to you in 20 years and tells you that exact same thing.
What do you say, Benjamin?
Oh, get out of there.
I told him everything.
I told my dad everything along the line.
And what did he say? He said, yeah, go for it.
He loves my wife.
He's like, you treat her right.
She's a good woman. She's good for you.
Okay, so why would you say to your son, get out, if he meets someone like your wife?
Ugh. That's going to be a really hard thing to tell him, to say.
No, no. It was very instinctive.
It came from your gut. It came from your balls, man.
Where did that come from? Why would you tell him that?
Forget about how difficult it is, but what is it that you want to tell to your son?
If you said, I met this really hot woman, and we had a lot of sex, and then, by the way, she told me she had a kid that she hadn't told me about before, And then we had a lot more sex.
And then I proposed to her. And then she told me, oh, I married the guy who was the father of my child.
And I guess this wasn't known that she was a rapist.
He was a rapist back then, right?
That came after the marriage, right?
Right. Yeah, yeah. Right.
So, okay. So, and then she told me she was married and divorced.
I didn't even know that before. Like, what would you say to your son?
Get out. But why?
Tell me why. Because you say you have a great relationship with your wife.
It's going to be hard to get to a great relationship.
Like, It would be better if you found somebody who already was a whole person to start things.
It's just struggle.
Oh, man. You still don't get it.
No. It's hard to have a relationship with someone who lies all the time.
Oh, right. No, of course.
I mean, you have to get them to stop lying before you can have the relationship.
But they're liars. So how the fuck do you know when they stop lying?
Hmm. Once you stop catching them lying, I guess.
Once you stop catching them lying.
Well, she kept a lie from you about your steps on being a rape baby.
She kept that lie from you for what, half a decade?
I think she kept that from herself for longer than that.
The admission to herself.
Oh, so she has no agency here because she was lying to herself.
Come on, man. Come on.
You don't think she knew?
Yeah, I guess. How can you not know?
How can you not know? She married her rapist.
You don't think she'd remember that?
Right, right. That's not like what was my phone number 20 years ago.
Right. Yeah.
Oh, maybe she's lying about it being a rape so she can excuse treating her stepson or her son badly.
I don't know. Who knows?
Problem is, when you got a liar, who knows?
Yeah. Maybe she said it was rape because she had consensual sex outside of marriage, which is really frowned upon.
And you know what happens to some women when they're caught having a relationship they shouldn't be having?
They, oh, he raped me! Well, if it was that, she would have said it sooner, like, Her mom didn't know, never knew until...
I don't even think she still knows.
Well, her mom wouldn't know if it wasn't rape.
So her mom just shamed her, like told her that she was basically an evil person for having sex outside of marriage.
She never used that to excuse her mother's shame from her.
Well, you know, I see your situation different than you do, and that's perfectly fine.
Perfectly fine. I mean, I'm not right.
I understand. I just see it differently than you do.
And I don't know.
Maybe you're right, or maybe you have to see it that way.
I don't know. At this point, I feel like I have two kids together.
Yeah. I mean, you have to make it work.
I'm never going to abandon my children.
No, but you have a violent child in the house who's not going to be a child for very long.
You have a child who's verbally abusing your three-year-old.
It's not as simple as, well, I've got to be there for my kids.
Because you've got a 12-year-old who's saying to your three-year-old, I hate you, I wish you'd never been born.
That was really scary for me too, Stefan, when I had to take him to the emergency room and the three-year-old was old enough to know something was wrong.
Yeah. And he wanted to come along.
He was crying and I feel like we took him to the emergency room then with us and everything seemed calm.
We didn't really tell him what was going on.
He was sick. Yeah, please stop using that name.
Sorry. Well, of course.
So, I mean, maybe the situation is get your biological kids out of the situation with the violent 12 year old, the violent, potentially suicidal 12 year old.
I don't know. I don't know what the solution is, but this I don't know about this just grim plotting on crossing your finger stuff.
What that got you to was to your stepson who swallowed pills twice in two days.
Yeah. So, I mean, I think I kind of, that's why I want to sort of put the cold water on your head saying, I don't know what the solution is.
But it seems to me that you do have a very dangerous stepson on your hands.
You know, in my mind, this is just my particular opinion, Benjamin, but murder and suicidality are not that far apart.
Yeah. The guy who shot up the school in Broward County, he was also suicidal before he was murderous.
I don't know that your biological children are safe in this environment.
I don't know.
I've been sleeping in the same room as the three-year-old, and my wife sleeps with the other one in our room.
And why is that? Three-year-old doesn't want to sleep by himself.
He's scared, too. I don't know.
The other one wakes up at night to breastfeed.
Oh, yeah, yeah. Okay. And so you and your wife aren't sleeping in the same room?
That's right. But you have a great relationship.
No, and that's a little unfair.
I apologize for that because it's, you know, you've got an eight-month-old who's still breastfeeding, so it's a complicated situation.
Right, right. Yeah, I mean, I would think that the connection with the mom is pretty key, but it's just a hard thing to fix, you know, and he's 12.
And personality is largely set by the age of five or so, right?
I mean, there's really, I don't know, I don't know what can be done at this point.
Again, I'm no expert, but I don't think that much can be done in any foundational way.
He's not going to become a different kind of person fundamentally, right?
Yeah, I was hoping there was a different answer than that.
I was hoping there was some way to fix this.
I guess I appreciate you pointing out to me how important the relationship with the mother is.
Try and get them both to talk together with the counselor.
That would probably be the minimum we should do.
Yeah, maybe. The problem with the counselor thing, though, Benjamin, is that the son...
Is going to view the counselor as the mom saying, I can't handle you without a professional.
Okay. I don't want to spend time with you without a professional.
Now, again, I'm a big fan of counseling, don't get me wrong.
But if there's a way that you're Wife could find a way to take pleasure in your stepson's company or his existence.
When was the last time she was happy he came home?
I don't know.
I mean, you laugh, right?
Yeah. But that's essential.
So he comes home and his mother is unhappy that he's home.
Right? In other words, she wishes he wasn't there.
And for a child, a young man, it's not impossible, I think, that if your mother is happy when you don't come home, that you'll please her by not coming home at all.
Yeah. Which is why he may be taking pills, going to an ER, and then not coming home.
Or why he talks about running away and not coming home.
Right. You may not be the only person appeasing your wife to the point of potential self-destruction.
Yeah. But, yeah, to me this is a kind of nightmare.
And it's so far from my conception of family life that I have experienced as an adult.
Yeah, people need to hear it though.
That's part of the reason I wanted to talk to you about this at the very least.
Yeah, you know, big cross-cultural stuff is a challenge.
Biracial kids face particular challenges in terms of psychological health and sometimes physical health and where they fit.
And you've got a single mom and you've got a rape baby who was abandoned, as he would experience, by his mother early so she could go to the States.
And then he was brought over to the States, didn't speak the language.
He was dumped in schools.
He was violent.
His stepfather beats him with a belt.
I mean, that's a mess.
No, it is a terrible mess.
Thank you.
Thank you.
And I don't know, I mean, I know you say that you're close to your stepson and so on, but if he's stealing your passwords...
Yeah.
It may not be a very real closeness.
He also gave me back my password, so I only found out because he told me what he did.
He could have kept it a secret, but I talked to him about what he was feeling and stuff because he seemed upset and he calmed down and came clean and told me about the passwords.
Otherwise, kept them.
Go ahead. Yeah.
I mean, having professionals involved, I'm always a big fan.
But just be aware that I would do it also at the same – I mean, take the advice of the professionals, of course, right?
The therapists and psychologists and so on.
But, you know, my sort of outside amateur view is you need to sit down with your wife and you need to say, you've got to fix this thing with your son.
You know, he's home for another five or six years or more.
You know, I'm not going through this every day.
Like, is he counting the pills?
And is he yelling or screaming at the children?
Is he getting into a fight?
I mean, I can't take it. I mean, seriously, man, this is going to shorten your lifespan.
Oh, absolutely. Like, I don't care how often you go to the gym, this shit will cut down your longevity significantly, I think.
And you need to be responsible for your eight-month-old and your three-year-old as well.
It's affected my work, too.
Of course. It's always with you, right?
Phone calls and stuff, like, he did this or he did that.
And then, yeah.
No, it's definitely...
Oh, every time the phone rings, right?
It's terrifying. Yeah.
Terrifying. I had to have a talk with my boss this last week because other employees were saying stuff about me.
Just... It's becoming an issue.
What do you mean? Like you're being distracted or not being productive?
I'm very productive.
I'm very hardworking.
I mean, all of the upper management loves me, but the fellow associates, I guess, would overhear conversations, I guess.
And basically, I would get agitated.
Tell my wife not to call me at work and get upset.
So then they got a perception that I was a misogynist.
Your wife is calling you at work and what's she saying?
Oh, that our son was like yelling at her or that he did this to the other child.
Wait, so she's calling you up when you're at work trying to earn money?
Bread and housing for your family and complaining about parents' parental problems at home.
Yep, yep. And asking me to talk to them.
While you're at work?
Yeah. And what do you think of that?
Well... After this last conversation with my boss, I told her, he's like, no way.
I won't answer the phone anymore.
Just don't call me.
There's just no way we have a future in our family if this is going to continue to escalate and affect all portions of our lives.
And you know, as a parent, You know this as well as I do, Benjamin.
As a parent, we owe society as a whole functional adults coming out of our household.
Yeah. You know, like she might be like, well, it's tough to talk to him.
It's like, hey, parenting is a catch and release program.
It's a breed and release program.
You know, if you mistreat your dog but keep your dog home all the time, that's bad.
But you mistreat your dog and then it roams around the neighborhood biting children, that's a whole different planet.
And your stepson is going to get big and strong and he's smart and he's going to go out in the world.
And what's he going to be like?
And you guys don't have the right to turn him loose as a dysfunctional, half-broken human being.
I mean, she has to fix this.
This is not a maybe. This is not a be nice to.
She must fix this. She brought the child into the country from Eritrea.
She put him in school.
She screamed at him.
And she must now do everything in her power to fix as much as she can before he inevitably escapes from your family household.
And goes out into the world.
Society should not have to pay the price for you guys.
You made the decision to marry the woman.
You made the decision to help her bring her son over.
Yes. You must do everything in your power to heal him as much as humanly possible for him, for the right, for the good.
But he's gonna go out into society.
And why should everyone else have to deal with your choices and your mistakes?
And pay, and pay, and pay.
It's not just about you guys.
It's about all of us in the world.
Absolutely. I really appreciate you taking the time.
I need friends in my life that can speak to me like this.
Everyone needs someone who can speak truth into their lives from an outside perspective.
Sooner rather than later.
And I really sympathize with the situation.
You know, cross-cultural dating is a big challenge.
Continent dating is a big challenge.
Single moms, rape babies, divorcees.
I mean, almost like there was no red flag that could be present that wasn't present.
And I'm very sorry that as a young man, you know, as they say to use the coarse phrase, young and dumb and full of cum, right?
Yeah. That there wasn't somebody out there to punch you in the nuts and say, dude, Dude, this is not the direction to go in.
This is not where you want to be expending your life and your energies.
This is not your mess to fix.
Yeah. But focus on what is going to be most secure for your eight-month-old and your three-year-old.
They're not responsible. Not for this either.
They are not here by choice.
They're not with you guys by choice.
And you must do everything in your power to protect them from emotional and physical abuse.
Yeah. And if your son is dangerous, well, I don't have to say any more, I'm sure.
All right. Well, thanks.
Do let me know how it goes, and please accept my sympathies for where you've chosen to be, but I certainly wish you the very best as a family.
And thanks everyone so much for calling in, for sharing your stories.
It's a call that'll take a little while to shake off, but you can help me out at freedomainradio.com slash donate.
