Feb. 22, 2019 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:57:14
4304 'MY HUSBAND GETS OUT OF JAIL! What Do I Do?' Freedomain Call In
A desperate women with 4 kids by 2 men calls into the Freedomain philosophy to ask how she should deal with the fact that her husband is getting out of jail soon - what should she do?▶️ Donate Now: http://www.freedomainradio.com/donate▶️ Sign Up For Our Newsletter: http://www.fdrurl.com/newsletterYour 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▶️ 1. Donate: http://www.freedomainradio.com/donate▶️ 2. Newsletter Sign-Up: http://www.fdrurl.com/newsletter▶️ 3. On YouTube: Subscribe, Click Notification Bell▶️ 4. Subscribe to the Freedomain Podcast: http://www.fdrpodcasts.com▶️ 5. Follow Freedomain on Alternative Platforms🔴 Bitchute: http://bitchute.com/stefanmolyneux🔴 Minds: http://minds.com/stefanmolyneux🔴 Steemit: http://steemit.com/@stefan.molyneux🔴 Gab: http://gab.ai/stefanmolyneux🔴 Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/stefanmolyneux🔴 Facebook: http://facebook.com/stefan.molyneux🔴 Instagram: http://instagram.com/stefanmolyneux
You seemed to have some considerable urgency to your call.
I wonder if you can tell me what's going on.
Well, yeah, I'm going to try not to ramble, so please stop me.
If I do, I'm kind of bad about that.
My main thing is that I kind of made a series of life choices that have resulted in A series of bad situations to get me to where I am now, where I'm a single mother.
I have four children, two different fathers.
My oldest one, his dad was married to him for a brief time when we were very young, 18, 19 years old.
And then my other three children is with my current sort of spouse, I guess, who is in prison right now.
Over the last couple of years, I've done a lot of learning and growing and realizing how royally I have messed up in making choices for my life, which is fine.
That's reasonable if my life is rough because I made bad choices.
What I'm not okay with is that I know I've now saddled my kids with some really rough stuff.
I'm really concerned about wanting to know what somebody can do, a parent can do in a situation where the bad stuff's already happened.
I've already got kids that are growing up without a dad.
Whatever happens when he gets out of prison next year is to be determined.
I just, I want to salvage whatever I can to give them a better life going forward than what they would have had if I hadn't learned how bad I messed up.
Doesn't that make sense?
Yeah, yeah.
No, it does.
And I appreciate the call.
There's a lot of people in the situation who wouldn't try and change course.
So, you know, I appreciate that.
Now, let's start with the most recent.
How did Your latest husband, boyfriend?
Um, I guess he's just, I mean, he's not, he's not technically a husband.
We were never officially married.
Uh, but we've been together for about 14 years.
So.
Oh, you were together 14 years.
Now, how did he end up in prison?
Uh, well, he has always struggled with substance abuse issues.
And then right before he ended up in this situation, he had been, we had kind of, we were going through this really rough thing because he would, he would, he wasn't like abusing drugs that I knew of, but he was drinking to excess he wasn't like abusing drugs that I knew of, but he was That had become a problem.
It was causing a lot of issues in the house, but he had realized it, stopped drinking.
He had been sober for about a year and a half.
And then one night he used to work graveyard shifts.
And so one night he came home on his lunch break, which was at like three in the morning and got in a, got irritated with me, left the house.
And then that night after work, instead of coming home or that morning, instead of coming home after work, he went with a buddy to his house and started drinking and taking some sort of pills.
And possibly doing other stuff too, I don't know, because I don't really believe or trust anything that comes out of his mouth at this point, so I don't really know.
But I do know that he got himself into a state where he was so inebriated that he was just completely out of his mind.
And according to him, he doesn't even remember anything that happened after he got wasted at his friend's house.
What we have put together happened is that he left Went to a gas station, milled around in there for a minute, made the clerk feel very uncomfortable.
I live in a state where it's legal to carry a firearm if it's not concealed anywhere that you go.
So he had his firearm on him, and because he was stumbling around and acting very strange and clearly messed up, the clerk at the gas station felt very uncomfortable and did call the police.
But he left the gas station.
The next thing that we know, a 15-year-old girl that was walking to the high school along the same road that the gas station was at, shows up in the office at the high school and says that some guy tried to kidnap her.
And it's kind of hard to know what happened with that too, because that story changed several times during the course of what was his initial incarceration and the trial.
Like I said, he claims not to be able to remember anything that happened, but there was some situation where he never touched her, he never physically assaulted her or anything like that, but she said that he was inebriated, he wasn't making sense, he was being weird, and he was on the side of the road telling her to get into the car.
And she got scared.
And then, you know, ran to the office to get help.
So once they pinned down that it was him, which is a whole big long story about how that happened, that was a nightmare because they ended up pulling me over that morning in the car because they had the description of the car.
I had no idea any of this had happened.
And from a surveillance photo at the gas station that they showed me and I'm like, yes, that's, you know, that's him.
They took me down to the police station.
They held me there for 10 hours.
It was horrible.
It was scary.
They eventually ended up getting him, arresting him.
And then, you know, it was a really long time before we even got to the point where there could be any kind of trial at all.
It was like almost two years, I believe.
And when it finally came down to it, he switched lawyers like four or five times.
Within that period, when it finally came down to it, the public defender that he was with at that time basically came to him and said that he could take it to trial.
And if he wins, then he, you know, would not, he'd be let out immediately, but that there was a chance that he wouldn't.
And if he lost, he would be serving a 25 to life sentence.
But if he took this plea deal from the prosecution, Then it would be a, uh, three to 30 year sentence and he could possibly be out in five or six years.
And so that's what he ended up doing.
He ended up taking his plea bargain, pleading guilty.
And, uh, and now we're about, I think, I think he's been in for about four years at this point and he's due to be, he got a parole hearing and got approved just recently, uh, that he'll be released in February of 2020.
So in, Wow, that's a story.
I feel like it's like a TV show, like it feels like I'm talking about something that's not even, you know what I mean?
It's just so insane.
I feel like this really happened to people.
I don't know.
Was he a substance abuser when you first met him?
Sort of.
using anything when we initially met, but I did know, he did tell me, he was honest, that he had had a severe substance abuse problem prior to us meeting.
He had been sober for, I don't know, six, seven months at the time that we met, and my mother had a pretty severe
Yeah, I had a drug problem for a little while when I was a teenager, same drug actually that he, which is methamphetamine, and so when he told me that, like when we first were kind of dating I guess, I let him know that like I'm, because of the childhood and the stuff that I have with my mom, I have absolutely no tolerance for any kind of drugs at all.
In my life, in my vicinity, I'm not friends with people that do it.
I would never date somebody that did it.
I was very, you know... Yeah, but I mean, as it kind of turned out, you had a lot of tolerance.
You were there for 14 years.
I did.
Oh, yeah.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
I think that happened over time, to be honest with you, because when we first had got together, if he had used drugs during that time, and I'm pretty darn sure that that was never the case.
I absolutely would have ended that relationship immediately.
Wait, so you trusted him in the past, or you trust him in the past, but not in the present?
Yeah, I guess so.
All right.
So how long after you started dating him did you get any indications of substance abuse issues in the present rather than the ones claimed in the past?
It was after our second child was born.
She's nine now.
She was a few months old, and he went to the doctor.
We were living in California at the time.
We don't live there now.
Yeah, don't give me geographical details, please.
Okay.
I didn't know if it was because it was in the past, though.
But okay, so we were living somewhere else, and he went to the doctor.
The doctor that he saw ended up prescribing him an opiate painkiller.
And when he started taking that for shoulder and back problems, not for anything.
Like they could never pinpoint anything other than he says he's in pain.
He says he's uncomfortable.
He could have been lying as drug addicts do about chronic pain so that he can get opiates from a prescription, right?
That's very possible.
Very possible.
Okay, so they prescribed him opiates, and I assume that they prescribed him opiates in part because he didn't tell them about his history of substance abuse.
No, he did.
He was always very open about that.
He never lied to anybody about that.
I don't know if it's different now.
This was obviously many years ago, almost nine years ago.
But where we lived at that time, it just wasn't that uncommon for people to Get those prescriptions and for whatever reason the doctors in the area that we lived were not shy about prescribing them.
Okay, so he gets these painkillers and does he start abusing them right away, do you think?
Not right away, but like within three months, I'd say.
Three or four months.
Okay.
At least within three or four months, I started seeing that there was a problem.
Right.
And I started saying, there's a problem here.
I don't, I don't like what's going on here.
And, and I didn't even know anything about this, this medication at the time.
And when I started seeing the problem, then I start going and doing some research and looking into it and finding out what exactly this stuff is.
And I find out that it's, you know, basically just a pharmaceutical type of heroin, uh, which terrified me.
And I immediately was going to him saying, this is not okay.
This is not okay.
But he just had this, Lovely, convenient response at the time back to me, which is, I'm just taking a medication that my doctor gives me.
I'm not going out and buying drugs on the street.
And I just, I never knew where to go from there at the time.
What were the signs that had you believe that there was a problem?
The very first time I thought that there was a problem, like I said, it was probably three or four months in, I was with him.
We went to the pharmacy to pick up a refill.
The pharmacist told him that it was too soon.
He couldn't get the refill yet.
And he had an absolute fit in the pharmacy, screaming and yelling at this guy, embarrassing me, embarrassing himself, acting like a fool.
And I don't know how or why, but eventually the pharmacist filled the prescription and he left with it.
And the whole time he was telling me, no, it's because he was wrong.
Like, I'm mad because he was wrong.
It wasn't early.
But I just had my doubts.
I just felt like if I went to the pharmacy to fill an antibiotic and they couldn't do it for some reason, I wouldn't react like that.
That seemed very over-the-top and weird.
Do you think that for the four or five years before this, that he had not been abusing drugs or alcohol?
I think he had been abusing alcohol.
But not drugs.
You think he had or you know he had?
I'm sorry, I know he had.
Sorry.
And how did you know that he was abusing alcohol?
And what was the time frame for that?
That was pretty much right away.
And I was definitely complicit in that in the beginning.
When we first met and got together, I drank quite a bit as well.
And so that was something that we did together for, I don't know, the first Six months, maybe, that we were together.
Maybe seven, eight months.
And what sort of alcohol consumption are we talking about here?
Drinking every single day.
Well, or almost every day, at least.
And I'd say four to five days out of the week, drinking to where, like, you're drunk.
Like, you mean blackout drunk?
Or just smashed, like, you got the spins on the bed kind of drunk?
Yeah, like that.
Yeah, not blackout.
Now, just out of curiosity, how do people, because how do you, how did you afford that?
Alcohol is quite expensive.
And how did you pay for all that?
When I was, back then, when I was young, I had a very, very good job.
A hard worker, very smart with my money.
My father kind of taught me well in that area.
And, you know, at the time, I just had one child and was just supporting myself, my child, and eventually him.
But at this time, him and I were both working.
And so money just wasn't, you know, we didn't lead extravagant lifestyles.
I wasn't the kind of person that was spending a lot of money on nice cars or fancy You know what I mean?
Stuff like that.
I always had.
It would be better to spend money on that.
But no, and it's a funny thing.
It's just person to person.
No, you're right.
You're right.
Yeah, just person to person.
I mean, one of the reasons I don't really drink is that I find it very hard, and I haven't gotten drunk probably in 30 years.
But I find it really hard to function the next day.
Like, I have a strong hangover, you know, the headache, the bleariness, the eye ache, the nausea.
But did you not have that so much?
I mean, could you still function well in your job?
Yeah, no, I never had a hangover.
I don't, I've never had one.
So, I don't, I'm sure that that would be very difficult and it definitely would encourage somebody to not Drink much if that was something that they had to deal with.
I've never had that.
I have an insanely high metabolism.
I'm assuming that that might have something to do with it.
And I just never, I never would get sick or feel sick.
But it was a pretty short period of time in my life too for me.
You know, I drank heavily like that for maybe, maybe six months, six or seven months at the most.
And I actually haven't touched one drop of alcohol since I got pregnant with my second son, who's almost 13 now.
So, it was just a very short period of time for me.
So maybe if I had continued doing it, I would have ended up feeling sick and having those kind of problems.
I don't know.
No, for me it was right away.
But let me ask you this.
This is a big question, right?
So, do you think That he tried to grab this girl?
No.
You think it was a mistaken identity or a mistaken what?
I don't, I don't know.
I don't, there's nothing that's ever happened in the years and years that I've known him and been with him that makes me believe that he is at all violent or dangerous in that way.
I've just never seen that in him, ever.
No, you just told me he's screaming at a pharmacist because he can't get drugs.
Yeah, he was yelling, but he wasn't... That's dangerous, isn't it?
I mean, I don't mean he's strangling the guy, but that's... Yeah, no, it didn't seem dangerous to me, I guess.
Because no, because I don't remember thinking like, oh my gosh, he's going to go over that counter and grab him and beat him or something.
You know what I mean?
It wasn't a physical thing.
It was verbal.
I don't think the pharmacist gave him the drugs because the pharmacist felt overly safe, right?
I couldn't say.
I don't know what that guy was feeling.
I know that I worked in a pharmacy years later after that and saw Similar type situations happen and most of the time it was just to stop a scene from being made when somebody would get, and that's what I would think was happening, but I don't know.
You may be right.
You may be right.
He's very well made.
It's threatening, right?
What's that?
It is threatening behavior, right?
Screaming at people.
Um, I don't know.
I mean, in some situations, yeah.
I don't know if I would say that it's threatening in every... I don't know.
You know, because if I was... Let me be clear.
I don't... Hang on.
I don't mean that he was threatening like, I'm gonna kill you.
But what I mean is, it's a kind of emotional bullying, and it is threatening for people, like, to be yelled at.
It is threatening for people to experience that, right?
Maybe, yeah.
If I understand what you're saying, then yes.
Emotional bullying, yes.
I definitely agree with that.
I guess I'm just, what's hanging me up maybe is just romantics.
Like when you say threatening, I feel like the other person is feeling like they're in danger of physical harm.
And so I wouldn't say that in every situation being yelled at makes you feel like you're in danger of physical harm, if that makes sense.
Right, okay.
So let's talk about your first husband, boyfriend, the father of your first two children.
Yeah.
The father of my first child.
Yeah.
The father of my oldest and then the other three are with the second.
Okay.
Um, what do you want to know?
You just want to know kind of a little bit about him.
Um, I knew him in high school.
Uh, we got together right after I graduated high school.
He was a year older than me.
Um, he was, He was, he is, he's still alive.
He is a nice man in many ways.
He's got a lot of really great qualities.
One bad, bad quality that he does have is that he is just a very intense liar.
He lies about everything, all the time.
Ridiculous things that you don't need to lie about.
So he goes from telling big, outrageous stories that are lies to, you know, lying about what he ate for lunch kind of stuff.
It's just constant.
That's his big bad quality.
What you say is nice, right?
If you're lying to people, it's not nice, right?
I mean, it's messing with their sense of reality, undermining their self-esteem.
So what are the nice qualities that he had?
I guess when I say nice, what I mean is he's calm would be a better word to use than nice.
He's calm.
He's not intimidating.
He's not trying to think of other adjectives that describe it better than nice.
But he's not calm if you confront him on his lying, right?
Oh yeah, he is.
Yeah, he wouldn't get mad.
He just twists.
He just continues to lie.
He just basically makes you feel like you're crazy if you confront him.
Because he'll start twisting and weaving a story where he's putting in things that are true and things that did happen and arguing and confusing you and kind of you start feeling like unsure whether, you know, what's going on and that's kind of how he gets out of that.
But he doesn't get mad if he gets confronted on his lives at all.
I've never seen him get mad about it.
Now what was it that attracted you to him in the first place?
Well, I don't know what I would have said then, but I definitely know that looking back on it now, it was that I had this intense need to just get married and have children.
I wanted a family.
I'm so sorry.
I told myself I wasn't going to do that.
Why?
That's fine.
You've got some stuff to cry about.
I got no problem with that.
Okay.
It's really important to explain that.
My father died when I was 15 years old.
And before that, I had this really wonderful childhood with these two amazing parents who loved me and took good care of me.
At least that's what I thought.
And then he died and my mom like turned into this person that I didn't recognize.
At least that's what it felt like to me at the time.
And she just kind of went out the deep end.
She developed that stupid drug addiction.
She announced that she was done raising kids when I was 17 and my little sister was 8.
So I moved out of the house.
My sister moved in with me.
I had to get away from her.
Bad things were happening in that house anyway with her boyfriend.
But so for a long time after my dad died, it felt like my life just fell apart and the happy moments were just gone.
And I think when I got to be about 18, something in my head was just making this connection with I had a family and it was good and safe and happy.
So if I can just recreate that, it can be good and safe and happy again.
And this guy was my best friend in high school.
He just kind of followed me around like a puppy dog.
And my mom started telling me all the time that I should marry him because she married her best friend and my dad was her best friend.
And she married him and it worked out so good.
And so I just I did.
And I think it was a really rotten thing for me to do because I don't.
Did your mother know that he was a liar?
I know I wasn't ever attracted to the way that I was supposed to be.
And it was just kind of doomed from the start.
And not only did I do that to him, but I brought an instant kid into the mix. - Did your mother know that he was a liar?
Or when did you first figure out that he was a liar? - I think I, I mean, I knew, because like I said, we were really good friends in high school.
So I knew that he was a liar.
I always knew, because everybody knew that about him.
It was like something that everybody knew, and my mom knew too, yeah.
I mean, for the most part.
She, I don't know.
I don't know why I listened to anything that she said then or since, to be honest with you, but she hasn't always given me very good advice.
Right, right.
When you look back earlier in your childhood, and I'm sorry about your father for sure, I mean, but when you look back earlier in your childhood, do you think that the story that you had at the time that you had a great childhood until your father died when you were 15, when you look back, does that still seem to be the case?
Or have you revised that at all?
I have revised that actually.
I mean, I think that I think there were a lot of things going on that I didn't know about because I was young and I wouldn't have been able to know those things, you know.
I think that my mom, I don't think my mom is really, like how I say that I felt like after he died that she became this totally different person.
I don't think that's actually true.
I think she's always been that person.
I just think that for a long time when I was young, my dad ran interference.
And I think he helped to obfuscate those things so that once he was gone, there was nobody blocking me from seeing who she really was anymore.
But there were signs, when I think back to my childhood, that it wasn't perfect by any means, you know?
I just, for a long time, I had this narrative that said, That it was perfect, because I had two parents that were married, that cared about each other, they didn't hurt or beat or hit me or each other.
I was fed, I was clothed, I was safe, I felt loved, I was happy, but there were, you know, it wasn't perfect.
Like, one of the things I know, the first thing I realized about my mom was that even then, during my childhood, when she would get mad, she always had this temper.
When she'd get mad, she would just scream at me.
And then I'd scream back at her, you know, and there it would just be us having this huge screaming match in the house when I was little, you know, six, seven, eight, nine.
She didn't scream obscenities at me, like call me names, but she still would just like, I realized how weird that was recently, actually, is in the last like five years.
I realized that that's really weird because I have one day I just kind of stopped and thought about it and thought, wait a minute.
That doesn't happen in my house.
I don't dance in his house and scream at my children and have them scream back at me, but yet that was a pretty regular occurrence when I was growing up.
So that must not be normal because I don't do that now, you know, and that's when I first started kind of seeing like something.
I have painted the wrong picture here, but to be fair, It definitely was better in my childhood when my father was alive than it was after.
Like, it got monumentally worse after he died because it went from, you know, then she was screaming horrible, hateful things at me, calling me names, calling me a little whore and a bitch and she would come into my room on these weird drug rages and just
Start trashing my room and breaking my things, screaming I hate you, I hate you, I hate you at me.
She dated these nasty, weird men that made me very uncomfortable and treated her horribly.
Some of them beat her, some of them yelled at her, screamed at her, called her names.
She was constantly It's like I used to say, she changed men like she changed her underwear after my dad died.
And because it just seemed like it was, you know, like month to month it was some new guy, you know.
And then this jerk come into the house and try and like play daddy to me.
And I remember being 16 years old and looking at this one guy one time who was trying to, I don't know, sternly tell me to do something.
And I turned around and looked at him and said, I'm not even going to know your name next week, dude.
You're not even going to be here.
So, why don't you just back off?
But, yeah.
What was the worst thing that you, or the worst few things that you recall her saying to you?
Because I don't think people know this too much, Amanda.
When you say things, you hurl those verbal bombs at people.
It leaves craters.
You can't take it back and it leaves craters in their heart like a mile wide.
Absolutely.
You never forget.
You never forget.
It's just in your mind like, yeah, it's just like scarred into your brain, I guess.
The very worst thing I remember was the situation where she was screaming, I hate you, I hate you, I hate you, I hate you.
I've tried to talk to her about that since I've been an adult actually.
I've brought it up several times and she just denies that it happened.
Sure.
Which is really devastating because all I would want is some acknowledgement that it was destroying for me.
I just think that's the meanest thing that she's ever said to me.
And you know, there's a part of me that just doesn't believe or can't believe that she actually does love or care about me ever since that day.
Right.
Because I just can't imagine it.
I would never, ever utter those words to one of my children because I would never feel that.
I've been mad at my kids.
I've been frustrated.
I've never looked at one of them and thought, I hate you.
not even thought it, much less to stand in front of them and scream it over and over and over again. - Well, and you know, I'm sure, as well as I do, as well as everyone who may eventually listen to this, Amanda, that you knew who she was really hating, as well as everyone who may eventually listen to this, Amanda, You knew who she really hated.
No, I guess I never thought about that.
I figured she hated me.
Yeah, maybe.
I mean, not maybe.
Yeah, she does hate herself.
Nothing to do with you.
Nothing to do with you, Amanda.
Nothing to do with you at all.
She hated herself.
And she hated that you were a better person than she was.
Yeah, maybe.
I mean, not maybe.
Yeah, she does hate herself.
She says it all the time.
That's why I can't have a conversation with her about anything that's ever happened in the past to try to resolve it.
Because she uses this, what I would call emotional manipulation tactic.
That's what it seems like to me.
If I try to bring something up like this happened when I was a kid and it's really disturbing and I want to talk about it, she just starts like sobbing and weeping.
I'm such a horrible, horrible mother.
I just don't even know how you could have survived having such a piece of crap mom like me.
I'm sorry.
And yeah, she's saying I'm sorry, but it don't feel like I'm sorry because what happens is when she starts doing that, the whole thing gets turned around and I end up saying, it's okay, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to upset you.
Listen, this is a mark of dealing with a truly, deeply, horribly selfish person.
Hang on, you come to them with a complaint?
And you end up comforting them.
It's all about them.
Your perspective, your view, your vision, your pain never gets addressed because it's always about them.
And they turn up the emotional heat until they distract you from your own experience so they never actually have to deal with you at all.
Yep, that's exactly right.
Poignant that you use that particular word too, because if you ask me to give you one word that fits my mother, I would say the word selfish.
Yeah.
That is exactly the word I would use.
The fact that she's dragging around these garbage men around a young, attractive girl is very dangerous.
Oh yeah, I'm what?
I don't know how I got out of it without being assaulted by one of them.
The only thing I can say that was probably is because I'm not going to try to make myself look like some sort of angel.
I was a very angry little girl when this was going on after my dad died.
Very angry and I was mean and mouthy and kind of pushy and even though I was little, like I was kind of psycho scary in a way, like the way that I I held myself.
I think I just freaked them out.
I think they just didn't think they'd get away with it.
That's the only reason I think none of them ever messed with me.
Right, right.
I just didn't get about that vibe.
Like, that could happen?
No, I think.
Let me wander on dangerous emotional Amanda, sorry, Amanda Minefields, and ask why your father would marry such a woman.
Yeah, I don't know.
I don't know.
I wish he was here to ask.
Was she very pretty?
Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah.
Okay.
Well, there's something to do with it, right?
Sorry.
I always forget that that's a thing.
Yeah.
Come on.
No woman ever truly forgets that that's a thing.
No, I mean, like, I forget to think of that as a reason sometimes.
But, yeah.
Yeah, she was very beautiful.
And very manipulative.
I think she was always that way.
Yeah, there's something about very pretty women.
This is not true for all, of course.
Lots of exceptions.
But in my experience, there's something that fails to grow, some part of the heart that fails to grow for very attractive women, physically attractive women.
Because they're always on the defensive, because guys are always trying to hit on them and pick them up or get their numbers or whatever.
So they got to get the resting bitch face, they got to kind of Yeah.
the extra empathy.
It's like when you're very rich or you're very famous, you have to kind of crush the empathy because everybody wants something from you.
Yeah.
And you can't satisfy everyone.
So you have to just kind of kill your empathy and something fails to grow in a lot of very attractive women.
men and it is a big problem.
I now view considerably good looks in general as a huge warning flag.
Not always, not always, but certainly it's a good place to start to be careful.
Especially, you have to have those warning flags for men in particular because you get dicknapped and you stop thinking with your brain, right?
Absolutely.
Yeah.
So she could have treated all of these men and so she felt wanted and she felt needed, but that was at the expense of her relationship with her children.
And this is the stupid stuff that people do that drives me crazy, which is, where are all these guys now?
They're long gone.
They probably don't even remember.
Just some weekend lay from 20 years ago or whatever, right?
30 years ago.
So she really harmed her relationship with you.
For the sake of riding the carousel of these snaggletooth degenerates, right?
And it's like they're all gone, and now what does she want?
She wants things from you.
She wants a relationship with you.
She wants comfort from you.
And it's like, nah, sorry.
Sorry, you made your choice.
She doesn't want a relationship or comfort from me.
She just wants to live in my house.
Yeah, that's kind of how it is.
She wants things from you, and as she gets older and more infirm, she's going to want more and more from you.
And it's like, yeah, sorry, you can call up any of these trailer park carny trash that you used to bang like a gong.
You can call them up and see if they want to come over and help out your sagging ass.
Yeah, that's kind of how it is.
She definitely got what she wanted from them at the time.
You know, she used them for what she needed at the time.
That's all it was, and I agree.
She can't do that as easily anymore.
Not that she can't do it at all.
I'm shocked, because she's nearing her 60s, and she can still attract a guy and get him to do what she wants.
Sure.
She just doesn't want to put the effort out most of the time anymore.
Yeah.
No, I get it.
I get it.
Now, it's different when you need doctors than you need guys to take you out for dinner.
That's a little tougher to manipulate.
Yeah, it is.
Right.
Now, the guy who's in jail, what were his dysfunctions as a father prior to him?
I mean, obviously he was stoned or on these opiates or maybe he was drinking still.
So there was some emotional unavailability there simply because he was addicted, right?
What else happened?
I can actually kind of explain it very well because we did just talk about my mother a little bit.
I married my mother.
I mean, I didn't marry her, but he is my mother.
He is a male version of my mother.
I have come to that horrifying realization in the last year.
I've just started looking at all these behaviors and looking back and forth and going, oh my goodness, you are her.
What the fuck?
How did I do that?
I thought girls were supposed to end up with guys like their dad.
But I would have been lucky if I had.
I did not.
He's her.
He's just like her.
He's selfish, he's inconsiderate, he's so childish.
I'm kind of wondering now if like the bad drugs that he did before I knew him like damaged his brain and stunted his maturity and growth, because he always just kind of acted like a 16-year-old.
A lot of times that was the biggest arguments and problems that we would have is when I would be saying, you know, grow up.
You know, quit acting like you're a child.
You're not.
And stop being entitled.
I'm sorry, but when did he first start taking drugs, to your knowledge?
Well, as far to my knowledge, the only thing I have any proof of is just those stupid painkillers.
No, no, no.
But he said he was taking drugs before.
Oh, back when he first, yeah.
Before I knew him, he started when he was 18, and he had a pretty severe problem.
Okay, so that's why he never grows up.
Right.
So drugs, you know, you have to go down to the beach, right?
And you see, you can see where all the seaweed is, or where the waves all came in, because there's these lines of seaweed, right?
Where the tops of the waves were.
But that's the case.
So the water's coming in, and then drugs are the undertow.
And people stop growing.
They stop maturing.
They get stuck.
Drugs will give you alleviation from immediate discomfort, emotional discomfort, or whatever, maybe physical, but it comes at the cost of emotional progress.
It comes at the cost of growth.
So yeah, if somebody starts doing a lot of drugs, and I assume he started drinking even before that, so if he started drinking when he was 15 or 16, well boom!
You get to live with that 15 or 16 year old for the rest of your natural days.
And then what happens is I think if you go on for long enough dealing with life or not dealing with life by taking a lot of drugs or drinking a lot or it can be workaholism, it can be a gambling addiction or a sex addiction or whatever it is going to be that distracts you from yourself, then what happens is you lose the ability to progress because there's too much of a hole in your history.
You know, like, if you don't learn language by the time you're like eight or nine, you never learn it that way.
It's like a window of learning.
And I think if you spend 10 or 20 years living the same stupid groundhog day over and over again because you're taking drugs rather than dealing with trauma, then it becomes impossible.
Then it's like asking a kid, okay, if you could do me a favor and go from Five years old to just after puberty in a week.
The kid's gonna say, well, no, I can't do that, right?
But if you miss that whole window, you're asking someone, in a sense, to go from the age of five to puberty in a week or a day.
And so they get stuck and they don't progress.
And I think after a while, they can't.
Hello?
Yeah, go ahead.
Oh, sorry.
I thought you cut out.
No, I think that that is correct.
That's the part that I didn't realize.
So I did realize early on that he was very immature and I did, you know, once I started kind of informing myself and learning about the way that drugs can affect people and I developed that theory that he kind of stunted himself in teenage years when he started using them.
What I didn't know, I mean, I just assumed though That when you stop using them, then you start maturing again.
I didn't know that there's that window of opportunity, like you were talking about.
I think you can grow, but you really have to dive into therapy, and you've got to keep a journal, and it's going to have to be your all-consuming focus to kind of catch up, and it's going to take years.
But if people don't do that, they just stay stuck.
Yes, and that's what I have seen now.
that I've experienced it, I absolutely agree with that.
Because I just thought, just living life, he would, you know, grow and mature, and that never happened.
Because he was never any more mature when he went in to prison four years ago than he was when I met him when he was 29, you know.
Right.
And that was very powerful.
No, I was just going to say that was just really hard for me because I'm like this obnoxiously... I'm just not fun, you know?
Like, I think I've been like this old woman in a small person's body since I was two.
I'm just... I'm very rigid and a type A kind of personality and maturity is very important to me.
Being responsible is very important to me.
No, no, no, no, no.
Come on, Amanda.
You cannot try and sell me that story about maturity and responsibility being important to you when you give one child to a pathological liar and another to a guy who spent years in prison for trying to abduct a child.
I apologize.
I'm not verbalizing.
No, no, I appreciate that.
There's lots of people that you...
I'm not verbalizing, though.
Right, but that's not what I meant.
Like, I think that I'm not verbalizing what I meant very well.
When it comes to day-to-day life is what I'm talking about.
I guess I'm not trying to say that I'm that way in an overall sense, but I'm trying to explain the way my personality is with the way that I approach things and do things just on a day-to-day.
You lived 14 years day to day with this guy, right?
Right.
That's what I was saying, was that there was a lot of conflict that happened because I was so much this way and he was so much this other way and it just felt like trying to constantly stick a square peg in a round hole.
Okay, so let me ask you this.
This is the big question.
It's a huge question, and it's asking a lot for you to answer it, but you can certainly answer it for your life.
Because there are going to be guys listening to this who are nice guys, responsible guys, warm-hearted, tender, funny, good guys, right?
Now, you are an attractive woman, right?
I mean, just for those who don't know, right?
See the picture?
Attractive woman.
You take after your mom, I'm sure.
So, here's what's confusing.
Weren't there any nice guys around when you were growing up?
Any?
Any guys?
Are there any guys... You know, we all have this... It's like that old Paul Simon song, Slip Sliding Away.
I know a woman became a wife.
These are the very words she uses to describe her life.
She said, a good day ain't got no rain.
A bad day is when I lie in bed and think of things that might have been.
Do you ever have...
The one that got away, or the guy you should have said yes to, or some nice guy who's gone on to have a regular old life without addiction and screaming and laws and courts and jail sentences.
I don't know.
Why do attractive women go for these losers?
It's a massive question for me.
Yeah, I've actually spent a lot of time thinking about that very thing.
I felt like I needed to understand, like you said, why did I choose... because it's not just... these are the two men that I had children with, so they're the ones we're talking about, but I had other boyfriends other than these two.
I had two other long-term relationships with horrible guys.
They were both horrible, so I've spent a lot of time thinking about that.
I think that...
It's a two-fold answer.
So when I was young and first married my first husband and before that, the guy that I dated before that, or the two guys I dated before that, I wasn't a super attractive young woman.
I didn't... I kind of blossomed late, I guess.
I was very awkward and nerdy and strange-looking.
I had a lot of weird problems with my appearance, because I just didn't really know how to be a girl, I guess.
Like, I think that even back then, if someone could have shown me how, I could have been a pretty girl, but at that time I wasn't, because I didn't know how.
And so, when I was young, it wasn't about nice guy, bad guy.
It was just about any guy that was at all interested in me.
No nice guys were interested in you?
Well, my first boyfriend was the very first guy that ever showed any interest in me.
The next guy after that was kind of a predatory situation.
I was 17, he was 28.
And then my husband was like the next guy that asked me out, and I ended up with him.
Were there any nice guys in the environment, in the school, in the neighborhood?
Were there any nice guys that you were interested in?
That I was interested in?
Oh yeah.
Yeah, absolutely.
I like kind of shy, smart, nerdy type guys.
So, did you ever think of asking one of those guys out or just going to hang out together and having him ask you out?
I mean, if you like these kinds of guys.
I did have a couple of friends that I was interested in like that, but they just didn't feel that way about me.
So, are you saying that no nice guy has ever been interested in you to your knowledge?
No, I'm saying that it's kind of a two-fold answer, so that's first, that's when I was younger, right?
And then when I got older, the only person that I've been with since I've been older is my current, the current guy, and at that time, there wasn't, he was the only other guy that came into my environment when I got, when I met him and we got together.
This was a situation being that I was in a relationship with somebody.
Who had, I had gotten into the relationship with right after my husband and I got divorced, like immediately after.
I wasn't even on the market at all before I was in a relationship with this guy, it seemed like.
You kind of were on the market if you ended up in a relationship.
No, I mean like I didn't spend any time being single, really.
Like I, my husband and I got divorced.
I was alone for a month and just concentrating on my son and I met The guy that I dated after him, and we immediately got into a relationship together.
It was very fast.
Why?
Why did you do that so quickly?
Because I thought I was so stupid.
I was so worried about my son not having a dad.
And I just got really focused on thinking I just needed to get together with somebody who could be a father figure for him.
I showed up and was very interested in that right away, and it just moved so fast.
I was alone, I was scared.
I had a really big problem when I was younger with being alone.
It always made me, I don't know, I just never did it.
I moved from one relationship to the next very fast.
What is the issue do you think with being alone?
I love time with my family on the rare occasions where I'm sort of home for the afternoon.
It's very nice as well and it's kind of the best of both worlds.
It's great when you're with people.
It's fine if not great sometimes when you're not.
I mean, what is the issue with being alone?
What does it do for you?
I don't mind being physically alone.
I just had a hard time when I was younger not being in a relationship.
I don't know.
I was just afraid.
Afraid of what?
I don't know.
Sure you do.
Sure you do.
I don't know.
Let me think about it.
Maybe I never even thought about that, to be honest with you.
Okay, let's do it now.
Let's do it now.
So what is it that made you afraid of not being in a relationship, of not being wanted when you were younger?
What did it mean if you weren't in a relationship?
What did it say about you, or what did it say about your future, or what was your worst fear if you didn't get into a relationship?
That I'd be one of those weird ladies, old with cats and no one.
You know, I had it in my mind when I was young that if I wasn't, like, married and in family life by the time I was 20, there was something very wrong with me and that it might not happen.
Like, to me, that was... it has to happen before this time.
And I think part of it was, like I said, wanting to recreate what I remembered as happiness and security inside of a family.
Okay, but what about when you got older?
Like you said, after you split up, you got into a relationship right away.
I did.
So what's that time frame?
What was the fear there?
Sorry, what?
I'm sorry.
What was the fear when you got into a relationship?
You said you were scared of being alone.
After you split up, what was that fear?
After I split up with my husband?
Are you talking about Dan?
After my husband and I split up?
Well, like I said, during that time, I just was really, really focused and worried on my son not having, like, a father figure, a male role model.
At that point, after him and I got divorced, you know, I had, I thought I had made a decision that I wasn't going to have any more kids ever, because I didn't want to have kids, half-siblings and all that stuff.
So in my mind at that time it was always just going to be like me and him, but I knew that I couldn't raise him, I couldn't teach him to be a man because I'm not one.
And I knew that we needed a male role model in his life and his dad wasn't that at all.
No, I'm sorry.
What?
Okay, so tell me what precipitated the divorce with your first husband.
My son was 18 months old and we had had a lot of conversation about the fact that neither one of us were happy.
I guess, like, he would always come to me and tell me that he just felt like I was miserable, and I would always say, like, I don't feel like I'm miserable.
You act like you're miserable.
Okay, well, I don't know, you know.
Anyway, so after many, many conversations over a three, four-month period of time, we finally just came to the conclusion that maybe we jumped into getting married too soon, maybe we weren't right for each other.
Maybe we should try being apart for a little while.
So initially, that's what it was.
I just agreed that we'd try separation.
Was he happy, but what was going on?
I don't know.
I don't remember being miserable at all.
We had problems.
We had issues.
I definitely had issues.
A bunch of unresolved issues from a crappy childhood.
And the death of a parent that I didn't realize were unresolved issues at the time.
He just thought that I was super unhappy.
That's what he used to tell me all the time.
That he felt like I was.
And I didn't feel that way, but... I don't know.
But why wouldn't you... I mean, if you're so desperate to have a father for your son, why wouldn't you fight harder for that relationship and try and figure out how to make it work?
I think that I...
I remember one of the talks that we had that he told me that he felt like I didn't... Okay, honey.
Thank you.
Sorry.
One of the talks that we had, he told me that he felt like there was something better out there for both of us, and he said, wouldn't you... like, he basically was explaining to me, wouldn't I be sad if I could have this Great of the ages love and romance in my life, but I missed out on it because I'm hanging on to him and hanging on to something that was never going to be that and wasn't right.
You have a child together.
I don't know what you mean about some great romance that's out there.
You have a child together.
Isn't that the guy saying, I want you to love me more.
I want you to be happier.
I want you to fight for me.
I want you to fight for this relationship.
He's kind of like testing you in a way to see if you want to go.
Yeah, maybe.
Maybe.
I mean, I don't think it was... I don't know.
Maybe.
So he wasn't abusive or anything like that.
You were just satisfied?
No, he wasn't abusive or anything like that.
He just, like, no matter what I said, I remember during these conversations, like, I pushed a lot for us to go to marriage counseling.
I said, you know, if there's problems, if something's not right, let's try to get some help working through it.
If you feel like I'm not good enough, then I'll try. - Was there more you wanted to say about that? - I'm sure that I should then I'll try. - Was there more you wanted to say about that? - I'm sure Well I know that now.
But I think you're misunderstanding.
versus two in the bush, right?
So you've got, because if there's a great love that's out there, if there's a great guy out there, do you know what he's not going to want?
It's a single mom with an 18-month-old kid.
Well, I know that now, but I think you're misunderstanding.
I didn't need that.
That wasn't me, like, I wasn't looking for some great love out there.
I I thought that he was telling me that he needed that.
And you're right.
It didn't occur to me that maybe he was asking me to do something different.
I don't know.
You've probably heard of this from women, like the shit test, which is the woman needs to check whether the man is assertive on a regular basis because she needs that in order to feel secure.
The man will sometimes want to check whether the woman loves him.
And a mature way to do that is different than what he did.
He wasn't doing that.
He wasn't dangling a guy for me.
there, this fantasy Fabio character, to dangle some other guy out there and say, hey, don't you want this guy?
And you'd be like, no, I want the father of my son.
I mean, you are the love of Fabio.
No, I think you're misunderstanding.
Like, he wasn't doing that.
He wasn't dangling a guy for me.
He was expressing to me that he wanted this and then trying to tell me, won't you be sad if you don't get that? - I, I did say that.
I did say, I just want to be with my son's dad.
I just want my family to be together.
Do you think he was right about you being unhappy?
Yeah.
But I don't think that he was right about it being because of him.
Sorry, can you say that again?
Yes, but I don't think that it was because of him or because of our relationship.
I think that I was a very broken young girl and I didn't know.
I think I had a lot of traumatized stuff going on in my mind.
A lot of stuff that happened with my mom and my dad dying and a lot of stuff that I never dealt with or processed or got any kind of help to heal from and I know that for sure because I was 32 years old before I went for the first time and tried to get help healing from my dad dying and everything that happened after that.
So I know I was hanging on to that for a long, long time, and I know that it made me unhappy.
It made me angry.
It made me difficult.
So I do think I was unhappy, but I don't think it was because of him, and I think he thought it was.
But I don't know.
Like, I know that I agreed to do the separation, finally.
It was within two weeks after we separated that he was with somebody else and had her living in the house.
So I'm not sure.
I don't know.
I don't know.
It's like he already knew that he wanted that before.
I don't know.
Oh, so the scenario that is the most likely.
Is something like this, that he had a side piece, right, that he had a woman on the side who was bugging him for more commitment so then he starts dangling this great love in front of both of you so that you'll agree to a separation so he can satisfy her.
Yeah.
I mean, I don't know if he was involved with her.
I think that he knew her and was definitely, like, wanting to be involved with her.
Whether there actually was anything that happened before we separated, I don't know.
He says no.
I guess the only consolation you can take is that she's a real piece of shit.
If she shacks up with a guy who's doing a trial separation from his wife and child, if she shacks up within a week or two of that, then she's just a complete homewrecker and a piece of garbage.
Yeah, she turned out to be.
He had a kid with her right after, before our divorce was final.
They had a kid, a little girl.
She has Down syndrome.
She took off.
She's a drug addict and she lives somewhere else.
The little girl lives with him.
So both of you would have been better off if you just stayed together.
Absolutely.
Yes.
How tragic.
You wouldn't have the father of your children in jail.
You may have had more kids.
Your son would have grown up with his father.
That wouldn't be the down step-sister or half-sister or whatever the hell it is, right?
I mean, it would have been just so much better if you guys had stayed together and found some way to work it out.
Absolutely, absolutely. - Because, listen. - Oh, to have a time machine and be able to do things over that you realize later, you really, You know, like I said when I contacted you, like I've made a lot of really stupid mistakes and I definitely, definitely agree that that was, as far as, you know, my kids are concerned.
Oh yeah, they paid the price, of course.
Now, but here's the big challenge now, right?
So you had this big concern about, I guess, being of low sexual market value.
When you were younger, it's one of the reasons you're saying that you wanted to be in relationships, right?
It doesn't sound like you've spent any time being single since you were in your teens, right?
I didn't, no.
The only time I've been single since I was 15 years old has been this past four years that he's been incarcerated.
I mean, I'm pretty much, you know, single.
I live by myself with my kids.
You're not single.
I mean, like, uh, I'm not living with a guy.
You're not single.
Physically I'm on my own, I guess, is what I mean.
This is the horrible self-fulfilling prophecy, right?
So you're fearful of ending up alone, but unfortunately at the moment that seems like the most likely scenario.
The reason basically being, as you know this as well as I do, if you don't stay together with the father of your kids, the three kids, Uh-huh.
Then you're going to have to try and find a guy who's a great guy who wants to marry the single mom with the ex-con husband.
Yeah, no, I'm not interested in that at all.
I have absolutely no fear of being alone now.
Good.
I just don't.
I am perfectly happy To be alone if it doesn't work out with their dad, which I'm not sure it should.
I'm kind of confused about that right now.
I don't know what to do with that.
But yeah, if he's not the one that is still in my life going forward, then there isn't going to be somebody else.
I have no desire for that to be the case at all.
Okay, so he gets out in a year, right?
Yeah.
His job prospects, his career prospects, I mean, what's going to happen?
Yeah, it's just, to me, like, I don't know, I have to try to think about it from two different angles, and this is kind of why I'm unsure and confused about what to do with that.
Clearly, our relationship was bad, because here we are.
But he's their dad, and just because I made a mistake in the beginning, like, basically what I'm saying is, I'm not of the mindset where I'm willing to just go, you messed up, and you did bad things, and this didn't work out, so bye, because he's their dad, and if it's a benefit to them for him to be in our lives still, then I, it's kind of like me saying, like we were just talking about what I should have done when my first marriage fell apart.
And I look back at that and I see what it was.
And if that's what I need to do now, I'm absolutely willing to hold on kicking and screaming and do everything I can.
Look, Amanda, you have to stop using the passive voice in your life.
What's the passive voice?
The passive voice is where, you know, things happened.
I'm just sitting at home, there's an earthquake, and I just try and deal with it.
What did I say that about?
Sorry.
You've said this a bunch of times, and I've been meaning to mention it, but we might as well talk about it just briefly now.
You say, my marriage fell apart.
No, your marriage didn't fall apart.
You made specific choices that ended your marriage.
Yes, I agree.
Because when you say things like, my marriage fell apart, you're excluding your own actions.
Oh yeah, no, I don't mean to do that at all.
No, absolutely.
100% responsibility.
Buck stops right here.
Totally agree with that.
Absolutely.
So, okay, so after, you know, of course he has responsibility too, but, I mean, you can basically talk about yourself.
And the marriage may have ended otherwise.
If he was just having some affair, he may have left you either way, but there were specific choices that you made.
And I'm not trying to blame you for the affair, because the man is responsible for having the affair, but affairs will often take root where the ground is fertile.
And the ground is fertile where the affection is missing, where there's lots of fights, lots of problems, where there's little to no sexual activity.
I mean, this is fertile ground for people to scoop in and make a downs baby or something, right?
Oh yeah.
Definitely.
If he was having an affair, and I don't know that he was, but if he was, then I can look at that now and I can say that we both bore responsibility in that being the case.
Absolutely agree with that.
100%.
I can definitely see my part in that if that's what was happening, but I don't want to accuse because, you know, Is he going to have to register as a sex offender?
No.
Really?
He tries to kidnap a girl, doesn't have to register as a sex offender?
Okay, I guess that's good.
I don't really understand how that works.
No, I don't know.
I don't even know.
I'm very confused with how the whole thing played out, I guess.
Like I said, I don't know what happened.
Maybe the female had something to do with that.
Yeah, maybe.
I don't know.
Because I don't even know what happened.
Do you suspect that he's been abusing any substances in prison?
No, I don't.
I guess maybe I should have thought about that more.
I know you can get drugs in prison.
I think it would be kind of difficult for him just because the only reason that he's even eligible for parole so soon is because of the types of programs that he enrolled in and has been taking part in since he went, which are like these specific therapy intensive drugs and substance abuse programs.
And so the people that are in those programs or housed in a certain part of the prison They're a lot more strict.
They're watched a lot closer because it's considered a privilege, I guess, to be in the program.
Okay, okay.
Got it.
Got it.
Yeah.
Your kids are 13, 9, and what?
My oldest just turned 18.
My second one's about to be 13.
My daughter's 9, and then The one that I worry about probably the most, the baby.
He's three and a half.
I was about four months pregnant with him when his dad got arrested.
So he's only met his dad once in person.
He was a year, just over a year old.
Yeah, so he effectively has never met his dad because he wouldn't really remember that.
Yeah, he has no idea.
How have the four years been?
Between your boyfriend and his kids?
Yeah, I mean, have they visited?
Are they right?
Do they keep up?
Is it falling apart?
Or how does that work?
Yeah, well, he calls regularly, once a week, sometimes more, to talk to them on the phone.
We have visited one time, which was when the little one, when he saw the little one when he was a year old.
But it's not where he's in prison at.
It's not close to where we live.
It's about a five-hour drive.
Sorry, one time in four years?
Yeah.
Does that seem kind of low?
Maybe.
No, I don't know.
Maybe.
How often could, let's say he lived next door, how often could you visit?
A week?
Twice a week?
A month?
If he lived next door?
Like if he was close to us, how often could we visit?
Yeah.
Yeah, I think twice a week.
And when he was, because for a while he was in a facility that was in the town next to And when he was in that facility, I used to go down there, at that particular facility he was allowed to have visitors four times a week and we went down, you know, we went down four times a week on those days while he was there.
I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
So it's not like you've just visited him once, you mean since he was moved you visited him once?
Okay, yeah, yeah.
Since he was moved.
So like he got arrested after the incident and then he was in the jail in the town over from here for 18, between 18 months and two years.
I can't remember the exact timeframe, but around there awaiting trial.
So when he was in that jail awaiting trial where we could pop, go over there, we visited a lot.
Um, but in the jail you're not allowed to like visit, Somebody, like, see them?
Like, you get to go to the jail and sit in front of a computer, and then they sit in front of a computer wherever they're at in the jail, and you have, like, a video visit.
Okay.
That's all you're allowed to do there.
So we did that when he was there.
Then after the plea deal and he was convicted, that's when he was moved to the prison.
The prison is about five hours away, and we've gone down there one time since then.
So that would have been probably about two years ago.
A little over two years ago.
And can you sit in a room face-to-face or is that still, it's not computer anymore is it?
Yeah, we were allowed to do that when we went that time.
Yeah, we were able to see him in person.
It was the first time that we had seen him physically in person in over two years when he got moved there and we went.
Did you ever think of moving closer to the prison?
I didn't.
I wouldn't have had The ability to do that at first, it was, so when he first went into prison and I was pregnant and I was having some very, very major medical issues that I had exasperated with the pregnancy.
The pregnancy was high risk, major issues throughout that pregnancy, partly because of the stress, I'm sure, but so I didn't work at all, just totally relying on our family to help take care of me and the kids.
Until after the baby was born, and he was a few months old, and then I was able to kind of recover from the pregnancy, get my health back in order, and I went back to work then.
And so, since then, it's just really been kind of a paycheck-to-paycheck, hand-to-mouth situation, you know, with one incoming poor kid.
And who's been taking care of you?
I can't even imagine how I would afford to do that, to be honest with you.
And who was taking care of your kids when you went back to work?
My oldest.
Like I said, he just turned 18.
So he was taking care of your kids?
He watches the kids when I'm at work.
He watches the younger ones when I'm at work.
How does he feel about that?
I think that he feels frustrated and he feels angry that he's in a situation where he has to do more than he should have to do as a brother.
As of yet, I just don't know.
I'm not sure how to...
No, you've got no choice, right?
I mean, unfortunately, he has to lose his teenage years because of the situation, right?
Yeah.
Basically, all we could do was, you know, he definitely helped out and watched the kids when I was at work.
And then the only thing that I knew to do is just I tried really hard to keep an open line of communication with him and work with him and give him as much freedom when I wasn't working as I possibly could.
And we just often, we just try to talk about it a lot.
You know, like I said, sometimes I feel, I feel awful because he has these feelings.
He's frustrated.
He's angry.
He's worried about me because, you know, he, like I said, he's 18 and he's looking at, like, I want to go start my own life now, you know?
Yeah.
And I want him to do that.
And I keep encouraging him.
You got a three and a half year old, right?
I know.
I just keep telling him, like, I will figure it out.
Like, I will figure something out.
It'll happen because I'm not gonna have you feel like you can't have a life because of this.
Why do you think?
Let me ask you this.
So let's go back to four years ago.
You've got a four-month-old baby in the belly.
Was the pregnancy difficult before your boyfriend was arrested?
Yeah, okay.
So you got a four-month-old bun in the oven.
Why do you think he went and got that stone, that high, that whatever he did?
Like, why that night?
Did anything happen beforehand?
What got this all back in motion?
Yeah, so what I kind of touched on it very, very briefly, but what happened was he came home from work.
On a lunch break at like three in the morning, because he was a graveyard worker, like I said.
And when he came home from work, I was on, I was up, I was on the phone waiting for him to get there to have lunch.
I would be up, I'd make him lunch and he'd eat and then he'd go back to work and then I'd go to bed.
So I was on the phone with my cousin and I was making him lunch, he came in and then I was getting ready to hang up and he says, tell your sister I said hi.
And I said, oh, I'm not talking to my sister, I'm talking to my cousin.
And I hung up the phone.
And he just, and this had happened before, he just, like, started questioning me and it was very intense, you know, because my cousin I was talking to was a male, a guy, and he had these really intense, Jealousy things that he's always had and all the time that we've been together.
Well, it's not weird if you're a shitty husband or a shitty father or a shitty boyfriend.
You're gonna be... Like if you're a shitty employee, you're always afraid of getting fired and your only option is to be a better employee or go start your own business, right?
So if he's bad at being a husband and a boyfriend, then of course he's gonna be paranoid that you're gonna find something better.
That makes sense.
I never thought of it like that, I guess.
I thought it was weird because there's never been any incidents or problems with me.
And he would always just say it because of prior issues in relationships that he's like that because all these other women cheated on him.
And then I would always say, I'm tired of being punished for somebody else's mistake.
That's not who I am.
I've never done that.
So anyway, that's why I always thought this is really weird, especially as time went on.
I mean, when this happened, this incident happened, we had been together for 12 years.
There had never been any kind of cheating or impropriety or any... even the appearance of that.
And so for him to just still, like, have these moments where he'd, like, wig out and be very accusatory over nothing was very confusing to me.
I just didn't understand, like, when am I gonna...
When are you going to be over something that happened with some girl 12 years ago when we've been together?
Yeah, he was still a bad boyfriend.
I never thought of it like that.
But yeah, so he was mad.
He's mad about that.
I answered all of his questions.
I offered to call my cousin back up, let him talk to him, verify that he was on the phone with him.
And he just kept getting more and more and more agitated, and so this would happen sometimes when he was like this.
It's like he was like a dog with a bone.
He'd get on one like this, and there just wasn't an answer that was right.
Like, he just wanted to be upset and accusatory, and there would be nothing I could do about it.
And once it got to that point where I realized, oh, this is where we're going with this, I said, I'm not doing this.
I have no desire to do this at all.
It's absolutely ridiculous.
I've done nothing wrong.
You're being insane, so you need to just get over it, and I walked out of the room and into the bedroom, shut the door, laid down in bed.
He left.
He left mad at me, and he said that that's why he went and got drunk after work that morning, using whatever he was using.
One of the problems that I have talking to him, even to this day, is that he still wants me to say that I feel partially responsible for him being in prison.
And I don't.
I don't feel partially responsible for that at all.
So he was drinking and doing drugs maybe all night, and then was it the next morning that he was accused of trying to grab this girl on her way to school?
Yeah.
7.30 in the morning.
At what time?
7.30 in the morning.
Wow.
Wow.
Okay.
Right.
Yeah.
Then he pulled over the car.
So he's still not taking responsibility I feel like that, yeah.
That's how I feel.
Right.
Yes.
That's right.
that yeah that's how i feel we can be empirical right if he's saying it's still partially your fault why i'm in jail right and he's not taking responsibility right yes okay that's right right it's just hard when i talk to him because he he's very manipulative like my mother and he does this talking out of both sides of his mouth thing and sometimes he really can trip me up when he's doing that so he'll say he'll say no
i realize that this is a hundred percent my fault i realize that but i'm saying yeah if you hadn't done i just think that you need to be honest enough to accept your So, to me, that's like talking out both sides of your mouth, saying, I'm fully responsible, but I'm not fully responsible.
Yeah, it's a well-known belief.
Like, when everybody says something and then they say, but, you can just get, just discard everything they say before but, and that's what they really mean is everything after that.
Right, it's kind of like, okay, now tell me what you really feel.
So your oldest son still has some strong memories of his father, the younger kid not so much, especially if she hasn't seen him face-to-face other than one time in four years, and then the younger and younger virtually nothing, right?
Younger for sure nothing, and the nine-year-old even will have barely any memory.
So how is this not going to be ridiculously awkward if he comes back into the household?
Yeah, I have made a choice that that is not going to happen when he gets out of prison.
I have made that decision.
Maybe it's wrong, but after a lot of thinking and soul-searching and talking to my therapist about it, I did absolutely feel as though it would be the worst possible idea to have him leave prison and move into our home immediately after leaving prison.
Well, especially because Especially because if he blames you in part for him being in prison, you know what he's going to be?
Really, really angry.
Yep.
Right?
He's going to be really angry at you, you know, I know I did stuff, but you also put me there, like, holy crap, that is a powder keg, right?
Yeah, I didn't think about that, but that's a very good point.
People tell you exactly how they're going to treat you.
So if he says, listen, you're partially responsible for me being in jail, and if you say no, he's going to escalate.
And then what?
Then he's going to get really mad at you.
And then you're going to push back hard, you might leave, he's going to be really stressed, he's going to be really anxious, and what's he going to do?
Exactly.
He's going to dive into some substance, I would assume.
I don't know for sure, but that would be my first guess.
And that is how I do feel that way.
That is part of the reason why I made that decision that you can't just get out of prison and just come home and pick up where we left off.
Like, we're not playing that game.
Well, you can't.
I mean, you spent five years in prison.
You can't just pick up where you left off, right?
And I don't think it would be good for the kids.
Like I said, I've even discussed this with my therapist.
Like, I think that, like you said, Especially the two littler ones.
He's a virtual stranger to my daughter, and he is a stranger to the youngest, and I'm not going to bring a strange man into their home, into their safe space.
It doesn't seem like that would be a very kind thing for me to do.
Well, it's one thing if he genuinely was a stranger, but it's so complicated by the fact that he's their father, he's been in jail, he still partly blames you, and That's right.
Well, what I was going to say was, so I, I'm not, because I'm saying, I'm not saying that I'm, I mean, that's why I haven't been like, oh, I'm writing this relationship off.
We're done.
That's not what I'm trying to do.
What I'm trying to do, for however it does or does not work, was to say, you get out of prison.
You have to get into some therapy too.
I'm in therapy.
We have some major things that have to be worked out.
Before we can even think about putting this family together to where it can be healthy.
And I feel like if we're not together healthy, it's not good for the kids to just see toxicity over and over and over again.
We've got to be really, really clear about what's going on here.
So, I can't imagine you love this guy.
Look what he put you through.
Look what he put your Oh, absolutely.
Youngest child through, in particular when he was in a fetus in your womb being bathed with all these crazy stress hormones and so on, right?
So, look what he did.
Hang on, let me finish.
Hang on, let me finish, alright?
So, yeah, where's the love?
Where's the virtue that would summon this kind of love for you?
So the only reason that I can imagine, and listen, this is just my thoughts.
If I'm wrong, you're perfectly free to tell me, of course, and I want you to tell me if I'm wrong.
But it looks to me something like this.
You really need resources to raise these kids.
You need somebody else to be around you.
A second source of income would not hurt.
You need something that's going to be able to free your 18-year-old and also for, I think it was your 14-year-old, so he's not then graduated into endless babysitter.
And then your nine-year-old is graduated and you've got three kids who've got no teenage lives.
It's going to have all this dysfunction.
So you need someone who's going to help you with raising these Well, I guess mostly three kids, a little bit of four kids.
So you need someone, and given that you have a pretty, sounds like a fairly unstable father for three of the children.
I don't know what the deal with the with the first dad, but I mean he's got a dance kid, so he's not going to be around very much.
So you need resources, you need someone to help out, and who else But their father is even applying for the job, right?
So is this not... It's not some great love that you want to rescue or some great, wonderful family life you want to put back together.
You're just kind of desperate for resources and he's the only guy, as far as I can see, who'd even be remotely around to provide them.
I mean, tell me if I'm wrong, but that's the way I see it.
I do feel like you're wrong.
I may be wrong.
No, no, you tell me.
It's your life.
I'm just bungeeing in here, so I will follow your expertise in your life every day.
I may be thinking about this all messed up, but I do feel like that's wrong because, first of all, I'm not at all saying that I'm looking for some kind of great love happening here to bring this back together.
Not at all.
I very much am struggling with not having feelings of love for him at all.
I don't trust him.
I'm angry with him.
All kinds of bad things and love is definitely not an emotion that I am feeling toward him at all.
I am feeling love for my kids.
You're right about that.
As far as resources go in this last few months, I recently switched jobs and the job that I'm working at now offers me a little bit of flexibility and it offers me a decent living wage to where I am for the first time able to like support us financially so I'm not looking for help I mean it would be nice to have help with that don't get me wrong it would be better for them to have more I'm not saying that it wouldn't no
I mean time I'm not in a situation financially where I feel like a desperation to have somebody pick up the slack there with with that as far as putting their family back together my motivation for wanting to do that if I should do that is solely for what's best for the kids
That's the only thing I'm thinking about, the only thing I care about right now.
Okay, so let's look at that.
What is best for the kids?
What is best for the kids, in my humble opinion?
I agree.
You can mess up this badly and things can go on.
I agree.
Oh, okay.
No, that's it.
I mean, if you agree, then I think we're on the same page as far as that goes.
Because, look, I mean, having the dad around is great if the dad is a good dad, right?
But if they see, oh yeah, you know, you can be immature, you can get together while drinking heavily, you can be an intermittent addict, you can mess up, you can go to jail, and yeah, you know, the woman will still Welcome you back into her home and her bed and all of that.
I think that is not a great lesson to give to the kids because it's going to lower their standards of behavior to the point where they'll look at that kind of stuff and say, yeah, well, you know, you can fix it later.
Right.
And I agree with that.
The only thing that I was unsure about, I do agree with that, which was one of the big reasons why I was never, that I was saying, you're not going to come out of prison and hop back in here and let's just pretend like the last five years didn't happen.
What I wasn't sure about was if it was... if what I should be doing in order to do everything I can for what's best for them is allowing him space and me space to be better than it has been before.
Like if he... all I know is that I've personally grown a lot in the last few years because of going to therapy and learning and reading and I'm informing myself and I know I have a long way to go still, but I know that it's possible for someone who's motivated to learn how to be better.
Right.
We've been going for like over an hour and forty so I need to get some conclusions in here.
At least for me.
These are all your life so it's your final choice of course, right?
So your major concern is the relationship that he has with his children.
Now obviously you can't bar that or ban that.
I don't believe.
I don't know what you can or can't do but let's just assume you can't.
So, if he wants to spend some time with his children and they want to spend some time with him, obviously that's something which you should allow and facilitate and so on, and let that be the gauge of what kind of relationship he has with the family.
I can't imagine that there's much love left for you, with you, for him, but if he wants to spend time with his kids, that's a fairly decent way to figure out Whether he's grown, how much he's grown, or God help him if he's grown in the wrong direction, right?
Which, you know, this is a traumatic time.
Five years in a government cage is a hell of a traumatic thing.
So it may not be finally your decision, right?
So if I were you, I would step out of the equation and say, well no, you can't come back and live in my house because I'm not in love with you anymore.
That's all burned out years ago.
And so, if you want to live nearby, I will absolutely facilitate.
If the kids want it, I will absolutely facilitate and deliver the kids for you to spend time with them.
And, you know, maybe once in a blue moon we can have a family dinner and so on, and we can basically all have a heartbreak over everything that was missed and broken.
But if you want to have and work on a relationship with your kids, I'm not going to stand in the way.
If the kids don't want a relationship with you, I'm not going to force them.
If you want to spend some time around winning back their trust, helping them to understand your life, but I will demand that you be honest with the kids, right?
So you can't be sitting there with the kids saying, well, it's partly your mom's fault that I went to prison.
Like that bullshit, I will not stand for.
You will not lie to my children and put me in a situation of blame that I then have to undo Later on, right?
So if I find out that you've been lying to my kids about anything important, right?
I mean, you know, if they say how was prison and you say it wasn't too bad, I don't mind it if you tell that kind of falsehood because they're still kind of young.
But you can't lie to my kids about anything important.
If you can have a relationship of frankness and honesty and positivity with your kids, I think that's wonderful.
And then you're out of the equation.
It then becomes whether he can, so to speak, woo your children into having a relationship.
Because they're going to be suspicious.
They're concerned.
And you also need to sit down and prepare your kids and say, yeah, well, you know, this is what he said.
He said that I'm partly responsible.
You know, maybe not the three and a half year old, maybe the nine year old.
I don't know how.
Mature she is, but you've got to watch out for this kind of stuff.
But he is your father, which to me doesn't mean that much because the father can be as abstract and ridiculous as a sperm donor all the way to an involved stay-at-home dad.
So it's not about you.
It's about whether he is able to establish a positive relationship with his children.
And you can facilitate that, but it's not fundamentally your decision.
It's not something that you can fundamentally affect.
It's up to him whether he's learned any wisdom and maturity to the point where the kids are going to want to spend time with him.
If they do and he's not lying to them about important things or trashing you or anything like that, then I would say facilitate that.
But he really kind of needs to know that that's the deal.
But if you don't feel any love for him, having him move back in to facilitate things with the kids, I think, sends entirely the wrong message.
Oh yeah, no.
Absolutely not.
No, I wasn't... The idea of him moving back in, that would have been... I guess when I talk about that, what I'm talking about is Just that, just leaving a space open that down the road, should things improve and get better and be at a point where we could be together again, that I'm not, I wouldn't write that off I guess.
Oh, come on.
I mean, look, I mean, the data seems to be roughly this, that you need ten positive things for every one negative thing that happens in a relationship.
You need ten positive things.
So if, you know, if you have a fight that's an evening, you need ten great evenings just to kind of break even.
Oh, wow.
And so if you've got five, well, five years in prison, Right?
So, what's that?
50 years of him being perfect?
We'll even things out?
I mean, come on.
You'll be pushing up daisies by then.
Yeah, definitely.
I had no idea that it would possibly take that long to undo, I guess.
Well, and it wasn't like things were perfect for the previous seven or nine years before he went to prison, right?
So, I mean, it seems to me that I don't know.
I mean, maybe he's had some wonderful Dostoevsky notes from the House of the Dead revelations in prison, but I don't think so, because if he's still blaming you for ending up there, then he's not learned a huge amount, right?
Yeah, it doesn't seem like he's changed at all.
Yeah, well then I mean if he hasn't changed at all, then what's going to happen is he's going to get out of jail, he's going to be mad at you, and he's going to face a much more difficult life than he ever did when you were simply talking to a male cousin, you understand?
Because he's going to have a tough time getting a job.
He's going to have a tough time keeping a job.
He's going to have a tough time getting friends.
He's going to have a tough time adjusting.
And it's a whole lot more difficult for him now than it ever was when you were simply talking to a male cousin, right?
So if he couldn't handle you talking to a male cousin prior to all this trauma and difficulty, what are the odds that he's going to be successful getting out of prison?
Well, I don't know, but I'm not sure I'd put a lot of money on it.
So if he sweeps you off your feet and he's a wonderfully changed guy and all that, which I don't see any evidence of, then that's one thing.
But if what the evidence appears to be is the case, then I think he's burned out any capacity in you to love and commit and trust him.
And if he can have some sort of positive relationship with his kids, Again, I wouldn't even put a high odd on that, because if he's blaming you for stuff, then he's probably going to spill that to the kids, and then you're going to have a big repair job to do, because you obviously haven't sit there and said, well, you know, the reason your dad's in prison is because I was on the phone talking to some guy, and it's my fault, partly, and blah, blah, blah.
Of course you haven't told him any of that, right?
So if he's out there telling that kind of stuff, I mean, he could throw a real grenade into the tent of your family, you know, in like 10 seconds of saying stuff.
And if he doesn't have the restraint to hold his tongue and keep his counsel, then you could have months or years of repair damage for him, what he could say in 10 seconds.
Yeah, that's true.
That is very concerning.
So I would take it easy but the good news is you can take yourself out of the equation because if you don't want him to come back and live with you and be in your bed and all that if you don't want him there then it's just about whether his and you know you gotta be neutral with the kids right you know yeah I think it's if you can have a good relationship with your dad great you know you don't have to and you know you'd have good reasons not to.
I'm glad that you said that because that was something I was wondering about Because the kids have kind of, they react differently, there's some polarization there and I wasn't sure, I have not forced any of them to talk to him when they don't want to.
Right.
I told them I'm not going to make them see him if they don't want to.
I wasn't sure if that was right or wrong.
No, no, no.
You can't make the kids.
And he's going to want you to make the kids want to see him.
Because that's easier than him wooing the kids himself with being a positive, a great person to hang out with.
So he's going to put pressure on you to have the kids come and see him.
And if the kids don't want to come and see him, he probably is going to accuse you of poisoning them against him.
And it's going to be all this stupid, shitty Mexican soap opera drama that leads nowhere.
And it's so pointless and so boring.
And so that is all a big, no, but you can't say to the kids, you have to go see your dad.
Good Lord, no.
I mean, you can't order their emotions or allegiance around.
That's going to teach them to have no identity or preferences. - Yeah.
That's exactly what I was thinking, so that helps to know that my mind was at least on the right track with that.
Right.
That's exactly how I felt about that.
I guess my question then, because this is all really great information, I really appreciate you taking the time to run down all this with me, and that makes sense.
I agree with you.
I think that's a very good way to approach it when it comes to him and his relationship with them.
Is there anything that I can do?
Whether he does or does not make it right with them, I can't control.
Is there anything specifically going forward that I can do?
Yeah, you have to listen.
When they go and see him... I mean, I'd hate to, you know... So when they go and see him, then what you need to do is spend hours, if not days, Getting information from them about what happened when they saw him.
Because they're going to need to process.
It's a lot to deal with, whether they go see him alone or whether they go and see him all together.
What did he say?
How did you feel?
What happened?
From a neutral standpoint, right?
But they're going to need a lot of help if they go and see him processing what happened, what he said, what he might have meant, what, you know, because I mean he's been radically de-socialized in a sense with a half decade in the government cage, right?
So it's really gonna be up to you to help them process and you also need to do that to look for warning signs, right?
Right, absolutely, yeah.
Yeah, I got it, yeah.
I'm kind of wondering, I've thought about it back and forth because I'm in therapy and my oldest son is in therapy, but I haven't put the younger kids in that.
I've thought about it.
I've wondered if I should be doing that.
I'm a little concerned.
I guess there's something about it that just makes me feel a little weirded out or concerned at the idea of putting them somewhere with a stranger.
I know it's a therapist, but I hope that you would agree that not all therapists are created equal.
If you have a therapist that you trust, I would trust that therapist's opinion about that.
And it also may well be worthwhile, and probably is a very good idea, for you to be around for the first half dozen or a dozen meetings, for it to be in a public place, for you to observe the interactions.
That's what I was kind of wondering about, maybe, since I'm not 100% comfortable with them doing it alone when they're so young.
If it would be okay for me to do it together.
I think you should because you need to see how he is with them and how they are with him.
I wouldn't put a three-and-a-half or I guess four-and-a-half by then and ten-year-old in with him without being there.
And the more, like, if he fights you on that, it's like, no, I want private time with them alone.
It's like, you know, I need to see how things are playing out first, right?
Right.
Exactly.
Definitely.
Definitely.
Is that a reasonable plan going forward?
I think it really does.
Is there any, this is just kind of a little thought, I guess, that I didn't end up going over in the conversation, but clearly, I have not demonstrated for my children any kind of workable way to create a happy normal relationship.
And I've demonstrated the opposite their whole lives.
Is there something, is there a way that I can go about trying to teach them not to do what I did somehow?
Other than just talking openly with him about my mistakes.
It's a tough call.
I mean, that is a very, very tough call.
We bond on sexually successful strategies.
It's just what we do.
It's what we do as a species because, you know, human beings are varied all over the world and what works in terms of, I don't mean having sex, but in terms of reproduction.
So, you know, for better or for worse, I mean, your eldest two boys have already bonded on that and they have said to themselves deep down that, well, this is what you do to be sexually successful, to reproduce in this society, is you be like dad.
And you can't undo that, right?
You gave children... It's kind of happening on a level that they're not even conscious of.
It's happening on two levels.
First, it's happening on a psychological level, which is just imprinting.
Okay, well, Dad is the most sexually successful man around, so your genes just say, be like Dad, because it worked for him, right?
He got to reproduce, right?
And so that's happened, and whether you can talk about that or not, I don't know.
It's an odd thing for a mom to talk about, but maybe someone or something can.
But the second thing is that they will have inherited some of the characteristics of their father, right?
Because personality is, to some degree, Genetic, right?
So, they may have predilections towards addiction, they may have predilections towards impulsiveness, they may have predilections towards immaturity, they may have predilections towards you name it, right?
Yeah, oddly enough, I think I have more in my daughter than the boys, which is weird, but yeah.
Yeah, so that is something that you can't blame them for, and like if you have, if you Give children to a guy who's 5'2", right?
And then your son grows up to be 5'4".
You don't blame him for being 5'4".
It's like, well, I made you 5'4", because I had, as your father, a guy who was 5'2", right?
So if you have chosen Irresponsible, impulsive, immature guys who maybe have streaks of paranoia.
Now, some of that is drug use and some of that is childhood trauma and some of that is whatever, whatever, right?
But some of that may be genetic.
So, if you keep an eye out for manifestations of their father's behavior in your children, then you own that more than they do because of who you chose to have children with, right?
And so just try not to get mad.
My mom did this, right, which was bad.
That's why I'm sort of talking about this because she She chose the father of her children and then she railed against characteristics that reminded her of the father of her children.
And it's like, hello?
You know, like, I mean, that's kind of how it works.
You know, this is kind of how it works.
We're also white, like he was, right?
So, I mean, you know, if you have a kid with a black guy, you can't blame the kid for being half black.
I mean, you can, but it's kind of ridiculous, right?
I definitely see that.
I don't, I've never felt angry with them when I see that they're doing things like him, because I have always had that thought, like, to whatever level it's genetic or learned, I would participate in that, and that's me, not on them.
So I've never been angry with them, more so when I see it sometimes, especially if it's one of the more The bad characteristics, per se, I'm just worried.
It just makes me concerned.
Sure, sure.
And then I just ask myself, like, how do I, what do I do about that?
Well, I mean, being a sounding board and just listening.
But here's the other thing, which may seem a bit counterintuitive if you want your kids to not do what you do, is don't hide your sadness and the regret, right?
Because your family is I mean, your marital or your mom-dad relationship is about as disastrous as can be imagined, right?
Yes.
And that's sad for you, right?
I mean, you should be enjoying the love of a good man.
You should have a secure and happy family life.
You should be, you know, your son, your eldest son should have had a more carefree adolescence and so on, right?
So it's really sad.
It's really tragic.
And a lot of moms want to put on a brave face.
You know, like, I've got it together.
You know, I get these messages from single moms.
Like, we never do a show about single moms, right?
I know it's complex with you, but what they say, oh, my mom, she worked two jobs and took school courses, and she was always there for us, and it was always great.
It's like, no she wasn't.
I bet you she cried into her pillow at two o'clock in the morning from exhaustion and stress on a regular basis.
Yeah.
And hiding all of that from your kids gives them a false sense of what you can survive and still flourish, right?
I mean, there are times where it's a desperately horrible, tragic, and terrible situation.
Now, you don't want to be clinging to your kids, sobbing like Jessica Lange, but at the same time, you don't want to put up this false front like, you know, we'll make it as a family.
Well, you know, you'll make it for sure, right?
I mean, your kids will get out in the world and all that, but This is not what you dreamed of.
This is not what you wanted.
This is quite the opposite.
What a disaster and a mess.
And don't hide how difficult that is for you.
Because when they see the negative consequences, then they will be warned off from the rocks of your unhappiness.
But if you put up this false front, it's like there's no there's no lighthouse where the rocks are and they just smash into them.
That's really good.
I definitely have been guilty of doing that.
It never even occurred to me.
That makes so much sense.
I don't know why that never occurred to me.
All I saw was I didn't want to burden them and I didn't want them to be afraid.
They need to be afraid.
They really, really, really need to be afraid of some of the choices that you've made.
Absolutely.
That makes so much sense.
And as parents, we want authority through invulnerability, but that blinds children to the consequences of our choices.
I've made some bad choices in my life, and if they come up in conversation, I'm frank about them.
And my authority comes from honesty.
It doesn't come from invulnerability because that's a lie.
Yeah.
I guess that is.
That is really dishonest.
I didn't realize that.
Thank you for pointing that out.
Yeah.
And with that honesty, I think that's going to give your kids the best chance.
Okay.
All right.
Okay.
All right.
Well, listen, will you let me know how it goes?
Yeah, absolutely.
I will.
And was it useful and helpful to you?
It was unbelievably helpful.
There aren't even words to tell you how grateful I am that you took the time.
My kids will be grateful, too.
It is my pleasure.
And I did want to say, Amanda, though, I mean, I know you had it tough as a child, and you are stepping up to responsibility here in a way that I really admire.
And, you know, you're going to get some negative comments, and that's understandable.
I mean, you have negative comments for yourself as well.
But for those who just want to lord it over and be superior, There are millions of women in Manda's position who aren't stepping up and trying to do the right thing and
I disagree with those comments because you are working a lot harder than just about anyone I knew growing up to take ownership of these issues and work to break the cycle and you're in therapy, you're thinking deeply, you're listening to this show, you're enduring this kind of conversation and I really do admire that and you should be proud of that in the extreme.
Well, thank you.
How could I do anything else?
Well, a lot of people do, do everything else, like your mom, right?
So I'm glad that you do.
So keep in touch, let me know how it goes, and I really do appreciate the chat today.
Thank you very much.
I think just to say on the end here, my hope is also that clearly I can't go back and undo some of the rotten stuff that I've already done.
I can only go forward.
And so I just hope that there's somebody out there that listening that's more like where I was when I was 20 or 19 or 18 that maybe they can avoid some of what I've done.
Well, that's the generosity too.
You're putting your mistakes out in a public sphere and other people will learn from them.
That is a very generous and kind thing to do and I think the world appreciates that as well.
Thank you very much.
I hope you have a good night.
I appreciate it.
Take care.
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