Feb. 26, 2019 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
02:16:03
4307 Thou Shalt Not Bear False Witness - Against Thy Mother! Freedomain Call In
My name is [name] and I am 52 years old. My sister is hosting an 80th birthday party for my mom and I don’t want to go. My mother has never made it a priority to attend any significant family milestone events in my life, including my oldest daughter’s wedding last week. We lived within 50 minutes of each other for 18 years as I raised my five children and she never attended one of their baby blessings, baptisms, concerts, performances, and even some of her own birthday parties that I planned and had at my house. She would often cancel coming over for our family Christmas or Easter parties an hour before the event. My children would get so excited to see Grandma and then be totally disappointed when she wouldn’t show. I have good, well behaved kids. It has nothing to do with behavior on their part. I have never been able to be open and honest with my mom about things she has done that has hurt me or my kids. I was never allowed to “talk back” or act sad or go against her ideas when I was growing up. To this day I can’t say, “you hurt my feelings when you didn’t show up for your birthday party.” Or “I don’t want to come because you don’t ever support me or any of my siblings when we have important milestones” because if I do, she will hang up on me or fall apart and then gossip about me to other family members. She has never ever said she was wrong about something. I always act very kind and respectful to my mom, even when she has done really bad things to me or my husband. When I look back on my life, it seems that she always acted on her best interests instead of her 5 children’s or husbands. (She has had 5 husbands) She has hurt me so many times on so many levels and I feel like at this point in my life, I just can’t take it anymore. I have Zero courage at all to call her out on ANYTHING. I think it is important to be a supportive family member and having an 80th birthday is a big deal, but I just feel really resentful and don’t want to make the 1,100 mile trip to attend the party and if I did go, it would be out of total guilt. Am I obligated to go? I have listened to your show for a few years now and respect your insight on family matters. I have many childhood hangups and have mastered the art of doing the opposite of what my mother has done with her life, but I am so surprised at how she still has such a pull on me.Thank you so much for your consideration, I would love to talk to you if you have the time.▶️ 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/stefanmolyneuxSoundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/stefan-molyneux/thou-shalt-not-bear-false-witness-against-thy-mother-freedomain-call-in
So I'm here with Julie and you sent me an email and I'm wondering if you can just give it a read so people know what we're going to be dealing with tonight.
Okay.
So my sister, I'm, my name's Julie.
I'm 52.
My sister is hosting an 80th birthday party for my mom and I don't want to go.
I would have to buy a plane ticket to go since it's 1100 miles away and
My mother has never made it a priority to attend any significant family milestone events in my life, including last week, my daughter got married, and we used to live within 50 minutes of each other for about 18 years, and she never attended any of my children's religious events like
when they were blessed as a baby, their baptisms, any of their musical concerts or performances.
And she even would skip out on birthday parties that I would throw for her and that I would have at my house.
And then she would often cancel coming over for Christmas dinner or Easter dinner.
About an hour before the event, I'd get a call, oh, I'm not coming.
And my children would get really sad because they wanted to see Grandma, and they'd be disappointed when she didn't show up.
I'm sorry, let me just interrupt for a sec.
And I hate to interrupt this bit, but I just, for the bachelors out there who invite people over and then remember to call for pizza an hour after they get there, I've seen Julie's picture.
I'm gonna go out on a limb here.
And you are, I assume, an excellent hostess, an excellent homemaker.
And so when you have someone over, it's a huge deal.
You've got to go out, do the groceries, you've got to cook, you've got to get everything ready.
I bet you the napkins are folded into little swans.
Like, it's five-star stuff.
So just, you know, just so people understand, you know, if you're having some party and some guy doesn't show up, it's like, eh, more beer for us, you know?
But for Julie, it's a huge deal.
Even outside the mom stuff, right?
It's a huge amount of preparation and it literally is heartbreaking.
When someone doesn't show up because, not just because of the emotional stuff, but also just the staggering amount of planning and work.
Like, it's easy to spend four or five days planning for one of these things, and it's just a massive amount.
I just want to sort of point that, like, now I'm married to an excellent homemaker and a great hostess, so I really didn't appreciate this kind of stuff before I got married, and I just want people to understand that aspect of things as well.
Thank you.
You're very perceptive.
Because yeah, I get off the cloth napkins.
It's a full-on beautiful thing with flower arrangements and stuff.
Can I tell you a ghastly secret?
Sure.
I'm not allowed to use the downstairs washroom for the day before guests come over.
I think my wife would prefer I use the lawn if necessary.
That's for guests.
I think your wife and I would be fast friends.
I think so.
I'm not saying she's wrong.
I'm just saying it's a pretty strict rule.
But anyway, go on.
Okay.
And so one time I had her stay with my kids.
This was, this was a long time ago.
So my oldest was probably, she was probably maybe a 10th grader.
And then, and then 12, there's 12 years between my, my youngest and my oldest.
So five kids and she, we went on this cruise to Hawaii and she left early.
She left two days before we got home.
And so my kids were taking care of themselves.
And I don't think my oldest daughter had her driver's license yet.
And the reason she left, she said she broke her foot.
But my second daughter, who was probably 12 at the time, she said she and grandma got into it because my daughter was upset that my mom wasn't helping around the house and that she was doing everything.
And anyway, so that was kind of weird.
Okay, just parent to parent.
So you go on vacation and your mom's there taking care of your kids, but she leaves two days early.
Yes.
And she claims it was a foot injury.
Your daughter says, no, it wasn't a foot injury.
It's just your daughter.
So you left your mother in charge of your children and she left two days and she didn't tell you.
Is that right?
Yeah, yeah, she didn't tell me, because on the... Okay, I'm okay.
I'm gonna breathe through this, but all right, go ahead.
And I think that was... No, we had a cell phone then, but it was before texting.
So yeah, she didn't send a text, have a cell phone, and I don't think she called.
But anyway, so that was kind of a weird deal.
And anyway, so I...
Can't read the rest of my letter, but I'll just tell you what is on my mind.
So this birthday party, it just seems like she does not, she doesn't care about supporting me or my children or, and it's not just, uh, my children, it's my siblings, kids too.
So, and my kids are very well behaved.
They're good kids.
It's not like, oh, I can't stand going to her house because her kids drive me crazy.
And my kids are adults now, most of them are, and so it's not that.
But I just feel so underappreciated.
And my oldest child getting married last week, her not coming to that, not calling, not saying, how did it go?
How was it?
It's just so, I just think it's so insensitive.
So if I don't go to the party, it would be, it's, I just, I don't want to go not, not to spite her, but it's just, I feel like there's not even a relationship there anymore.
And I just don't want to, and I don't want to fly out there and spend the money.
And I don't know.
I just feel like it's just not that the love.
back and forth isn't happening.
There's no love going back and forth.
It's always one-sided.
But I will feel so guilty if I don't go, because she'll probably say something behind my back, or the next time I talk to her, she won't be very friendly.
She'll be cold, right?
Distant.
Yeah.
I have been afraid my whole life to talk to say the truth to my mom.
Like I would never I was never allowed to talk back ever.
And she was very, very strict.
And I appreciate how she was strict, because we were very well behaved, behaved children.
But to the point where I am 52 years old, and I can't even say, Mom, why didn't you come to your birthday party?
It's just like, Oh, you can't come.
Okay, that's all right.
And I cannot just say, you hurt my feelings.
That made me feel bad that you didn't come.
Or for today, I really don't want to come to your party because it doesn't seem like it's that important for you to go to family events.
I'm going to throw something in there that just kills me.
I have a famous cousin.
He's world famous.
And my mom will fly out to see her sister.
So it's my mom's nephew who's famous.
She will fly out to a different state because she'll know that her famous nephew is going to be there, and she'll go to his event.
And within the same week, my daughter has a huge life event, and she won't go to that, but she'll go to her nephew's event that he has.
And this has happened multiple times.
And then another situation was my sister's son, his best friend is a baseball player, major league baseball player.
And my mom has gone to a different state to watch him play baseball games.
But she won't go to her own children or grandchildren's important life events.
Julie, clearly that's your fault for not making them famous.
If they were famous, if you had done your job and made your children world-famous, your mom, hey, I'm with your mom.
No, just kidding.
All right.
Now, let's just touch briefly on how this call almost didn't happen.
Okay.
Yeah, what happened?
Because we'd set this up a couple days ago.
Yeah.
And you had a We case at cold feet, is that right?
Yes.
And I'll tell you exactly what was going on in my mind.
First of all, I really think it's important to forgive someone and not hold grudges.
And then I felt kind of gossipy.
Like, I don't want to go out in public and say... Dirty laundry!
Yeah.
And so I told my two kids that listened to you, and they were saying, Mom, it's okay.
You don't have to worry about that because it's not... My daughter said, whenever you tell a therapist things, that's not gossiping because they're there to help you.
And I said, that's true.
A little less public, though, and I'm not a therapist, but I know what you mean.
Yeah, I know you're not a therapist, but you help people, and I've listened to many of your talks with people, and you've actually helped my son a ton, and so I look at you as someone that could help, and they helped remind me of that, so that was good.
Well, I appreciate that.
And then my daughter, she's so smart.
Is this the one who got married?
Congratulations, by the way.
I'm sorry your mom wasn't there.
If it helps at all, I'm perfectly thrilled for you and your family.
Obviously, my invitation got lost in the mail, but that's okay.
I'll passive-aggressively punish you for that for the rest of this call, but my congratulations are definitely with your family.
Thank you.
It was probably one of the most happiest days of my life.
Because I'm an older father, I'm working on my daughter, like, get married young, get married young!
She's not going to have a whole lot of granddaddy action when I'm 80.
Well, she's 30 and just got married, and I've been chomping at the bit before we got married.
But, you know, she just found the right guy recently.
But anyway, so after I told her, you know, I don't like to hold a grudge, and she said, and I was saying, and I want to forgive, and she said, You clearly have not forgiven your mom for a lifetime of wrong because it still bothers you." And she said, part of forgiving is understanding your hurts.
And anyway, so they were totally right.
It's funny when your kids get to nag you when they're right, isn't it?
I mean, it happens to me and my daughter at 10.
And it's just an odd thing because, you know, when they're very young, you spend a lot of time guiding them.
And then when they get older, the baton passes back and forth more evenly.
And it's really kind of cool.
It's what you want, right?
It's for your kids to have the wisdom to help you in life as well.
I wasn't expecting it at 10, but it's an interesting phase of parenting.
It is.
It's so interesting.
I was bawling, actually.
I was almost on the floor bawling, because I also just felt so guilty.
And then all the things from my childhood, they just kind of bombarded me yesterday.
And it was just really weird to have that, because I try to keep it together, and I don't like to complain about my past.
You know, put your best foot forward, and it just kind of flooded my brain yesterday, and it was weird.
And you know that's what you're fundamentally avoiding, is not your mom, but yourself.
No.
Yeah, okay, well, just so you know, that it's your feelings that you're avoiding, not your mom.
Like, by avoiding your mom, you get to avoid your feelings.
It's not that you have a problem with your feelings.
We generally don't.
We have a problem with where the feelings will lead and the decisions they may engender within us.
And that's usually what we're avoiding, is the conclusions of our feelings.
And if we don't go down that path, then we don't find out where it leads, because deep down we think it might lead to a place that's very difficult.
Oh.
Wow.
Alright, guess we're done!
Woo!
Personal best.
Well, and you know, and part of just the insecurity of my whole life was it It's weird how it plays a part in who I am today.
You know, all the different husbands that she had.
How many was it again?
Five.
Five husbands!
So she's like this Elizabeth Taylor Black Widow lady, right?
Did any of them die?
I grew up and seemed so mean to call her Black Widow.
No, Black Widows finished them off.
This one probably just dragged them through court for a while.
Yeah.
Sorry, so I have a couple of comments, but I don't think I have enough information as yet.
So if you could just tell me a little bit about, like you started kind of as an adult, you know, like we live 50 minutes apart for, was it 18 years or something like that?
And you didn't spend much time with her grandkids.
And like you, I'm chomping at the bit for grandkids, so that's always incomprehensible to me.
When you were a child, tell me a little bit about did she cycle through more than one husband while you were a kid or how did that work and what was her mothering like or your relationship like when you were a kid with her?
Yes, so I only experienced four of her husbands.
That is the saddest thing I've heard in a long time.
I only experienced four of her husbands.
Yeah, and It's so interesting.
My earliest childhood memory is her second husband.
Wait, were you fighting back emotion for a moment there?
Yeah, sorry.
Wait, sorry for having the emotion or for fighting it back?
Um, for probably having it, you know, what's wrong with having the emotion?
I mean, we were talking about very important stuff here.
I mean, the emotions tell you it's important, right?
Yeah.
Thanks.
Thanks for validating me.
That that's really nice.
Um, yeah, it's okay to feel the emotions.
So, uh, after my, my mom and dad were divorced when I was 18 months old, that's kind of what I figured out.
And my earliest childhood memory is My first stepdad molesting me.
And I was probably two to three years old.
That's my very first childhood memory.
And I realized that about five years ago.
And I, I just thought, Oh, that's so terrible.
And, but my whole life, I have never wanted to play the victim part.
And I, and I never have.
And I. Wait, wait.
Play the victim part.
You were a victim.
So you need to feel sorry for me.
No, no, no.
That's your mom talking.
That's not you.
That's your mom having no pity for you and you supposed to having no sympathy for yourself so that she doesn't have to bear any consequences for bringing a damn pedophile into her children's home.
No, this don't feel sympathy for yourself.
That is a cold hearted monstrous thing implanted in you by your mother so she doesn't get any blowback for the horror that she brought into your life.
We're allowed to say his name.
No, don't.
Yeah, don't say his name.
We can just call him husband number one.
Number two.
Sorry.
Right.
Oh, yeah, I would I would not say his name.
No, no way.
He he actually was husband number three.
But when we were little, we were never allowed to say his name around her.
And I mean, it's like a Voldemort kind of a thing.
And she never said, she never talked to us about it ever.
And never said she was sorry or anything like that.
Okay, so I'm sorry, we're just skipping around a little bit.
So your biological father, your parents separated when you were 18 months and there was another guy in between, between the third or was your biological father the second?
So my biological father was her second husband.
Okay.
And then I don't remember living with my dad ever.
And my first memory through childhood is with my first stepdad, which was her third husband.
And do you think that he married her to get access to her children?
I have no idea.
Seems likely.
And this having non-biologically related guys around kids is very dangerous.
Just so you know, and I'm sure everybody out there who's seen my presentations, you're more than 30 times more likely to be abused by a male who's not related to you.
And this whole stepdad stuff, you know, there are some great stepdads, I've had them on the show, but it is a huge risk factor.
And I don't think people appreciate that.
As much because, look, if you're a healthy, normal guy, you don't want to raise someone else's kids.
Like, I hate to put it this bluntly, but it's kind of been blown by the wayside because now society wants all men to serve single moms and all that, right?
But why would you want to pour your resources into someone else's children?
There's a reason that you want to be around those kids.
And yeah, okay, sometimes it's because you just love them and you're a great guy and maybe you're infertile.
There can be an alignment of the planets.
that makes it productive, but a lot of times that ain't the case.
You know, I have never thought about that, and I believe you.
I have three sisters.
He didn't mess around with my oldest sister, but he did my other two.
They're older than me.
Well, they're all older than me.
And yeah, I believe you.
Maybe he did to have access to To all of us girls, he hooked up with my mom, because a single woman with five kids?
Yeah, why do you want to be around that many kids?
Yeah, and he did have, I know, from what I can remember, he had two kids of his own, but I don't think he had custody of them.
I remember seeing them on occasion.
Wait, your mom married a guy who'd lost custody of his own children?
Damn.
Yeah.
I mean, that's not even a red flag.
That's a whole Chinese commie parade.
God almighty.
Now, what sort of molestation was this guy into that you recall?
Like, what did he do?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Oh.
Oh.
He would...
I really don't want to say...
No, don't say if you're not comfortable.
I was, I was just curious because at three, I mean, obviously there's no coitus or anything like that.
It doesn't hugely matter.
I was just kind of curious.
I think he was, he was working up my, my sisters that are older than me, they just cannot talk about it at all.
And, and I think he was grooming me.
So he was doing beginner stuff with me.
Just breaking down resistance and personal boundaries and normalizing this kind of creepy stuff, right?
Yes, sticking his hands in my pants and doing weird things and I remember just as a little girl being so terrified and just I remember thinking he was such a gross man and at that young of an age I knew that that was wrong and it kind of haunted me as I was growing up.
It just kind of Really, really freaked me out a little bit, but luckily she wasn't married to him very long when she found out about it.
Boy, that's a real stretch of the word, luckily, Julie, but I kind of get where you're coming from.
It's like, luckily the pedophile was out of the house after a while, but it's like, it's not a whole lot of luck to begin with, but I can see what you mean.
Well, and because I know that other women, they keep the guy around and they don't believe the kids.
I think it was my sister who's four years older than me.
I think she ratted him out and my mother went haywire.
Oh, she ratted him out to your mom or to someone else?
Yeah, to my mom.
And my mom about lost it and she actually took him to court to try to get him arrested.
I don't know the exact details, but my oldest sister was telling me about it.
And my mom didn't win and he never got arrested.
Your mom didn't win?
Yeah.
And I just, I don't know why.
I remember my sister having to testify.
She told me she had to testify in court.
And so it's, it was all, the reason why I don't know very many details is because we weren't allowed to talk about it as we were growing up.
And so, The information I have is really sketchy.
So, your mother brings this giant, traumatic, malevolent pedophile into your lives.
Then you go through the trauma, or your sister does, or sisters, of a court trial, and then the vaults are sealed and you can never talk about it again.
Is that right?
Right.
Right.
Okay.
All right.
Yeah, and then she shipped us off.
I'm sorry?
And then she shipped us off to a different state because she had a nervous breakdown.
And so... What is a nervous breakdown?
My mom used to talk about that kind of stuff.
What does that even really mean?
It's one of these terms that I don't know what it means.
It's not like a medical thing, is it?
Like, what does that mean, a nervous breakdown?
That's a good question.
That's just what I always heard when I was younger.
And so, OK, so she sent us off to a different state to live with Different aunts and cousins.
And I remember just missing my mom so bad.
It was so hard to be not with my mom and not with my siblings.
Oh, you were stripped off separately?
Yeah.
At first we went to my one aunt's house, but she had five kids of her own and she couldn't handle all of us because that would be 10 kids.
So then she farmed us out to different relatives.
Wow.
And were you all split up?
Did you go five different households?
I think a couple of them were paired together, but do you want to hear a really nutty way how we got out there to that different state that was halfway across the country?
I must admit, Julie, I'm half and half, but okay, yes, I will hear the nutty way you got out to the different states.
This is like the family joke that I tell my kids about and they just are dumbfounded.
My oldest sister was 11.
And I was four, so between those ages, 11 and four, there were five of us, my mom stuck us on a Greyhound bus from the middle of the United States to the West Coast.
And you guys were how old?
The oldest was 11 years old and I was four years old on a Greyhound bus.
Wow.
Boy, you probably couldn't get away with that anymore.
I mean, I remember going on a plane when I was six without an adult.
I had my brother there to Africa, but that's a little different.
It's a little bit more of a secure environment.
Yeah, I remember sitting on my sister's lap, just terrified.
My mom packed us a lunch.
It took two days to get there and it was scary because the people that ride buses are Scary-ish.
No, I get it.
You can meet some lovely halitosis and BO on the bus sometimes.
Crack a window, please!
All right.
That's wild.
And how long were you guys scattered for?
It was several months because I remember she sent us there in the summertime and I remember starting school and going to kindergarten there.
Right.
So it was It was really, it was terrible.
And I remember one time I got together with my sister who's two years older.
My cousin and my aunt got us together so that we could have a play date.
And I remember seeing my sister and just hugging her and crying and so happy to see my sister.
Right.
Right.
And so your mom spent a couple of months having this nervous breakdown, whatever that means, and then you guys kind of got pulled back together?
Yeah, I can't remember the circumstances or how we got back home.
I think we flew home or something like that and then there was a new dad.
What happened to your bio dad though?
He was remarried and Yeah, that's a good question.
I don't know why he... Well, he was married, too.
I mean, he seemed like a bit of an obvious choice, wouldn't it?
Yeah, yeah, but he was remarried, too.
I used to call her my step-monster.
Well, he married your mom, so he's not going to have the greatest taste in women without a lot of self-work, right?
That's true.
She was the meanest lady, just a terribly mean person, and we were never allowed to go to their house.
And she had three kids that lived with them, so You know, there would have been no room for us and and And like I said, we weren't allowed to go over there.
So he he couldn't take us Wait, that's uh, we weren't allowed he couldn't What it means is that he didn't fight for you enough, right?
Yeah, you weren't worth crossing his wife for right Yeah, I For which I'm sorry, that's a terrible statement.
He could have, come on.
I mean, he's got custody.
And certainly when your mom had the nervous breakdown, whatever it was, right?
When she had the, you know, self-drama.
Because of course, you know, splitting up your kids, if they've been attacked by a pedophile, Then sending them across country unattended to new households is only adding to the trauma, right?
So this is not about what's best for her kids.
This is just, you know, the Victorian fainting couch bullshit drama stuff.
If your bio dad knew about all of this, which he should, because he should know what the hell's going on with his kid's life, then of course he should have you come to his house, right?
But it's like, oh, my wife's gonna get mad, okay, fine, send her off on the greyhound.
It's like, come on, man, go.
Sorry for the mild cussing, but I mean, it's like, this is quite a story.
I can't, I never even thought about my dad.
Why didn't he take us?
Well, I think you have deep down, which is why you're feeling strongly about it now, right?
So why didn't he take you?
Was he the bio of your other, like, how many of your other siblings?
Yeah, all five of us are from one dad, amazingly enough.
Yeah, and I never asked him that.
He passed away a couple of years ago.
I never asked him, why didn't you take us?
Because that, shipping us off to the other state was, A very traumatic thing.
Well, you don't know how long it's going to be.
You don't know when you're coming back.
Adults have all of these plans that they almost never communicate to kids.
And the kids are just kind of stumbling along day by day.
And I'm trying not to make this about me, but I can't help but notice some overlap, like my parents split up.
When I was very young, my mom was in hospital after I was born with depression for months.
And then I had kindergarten at my aunt's.
I was enrolled in kindergarten.
I went to kindergarten with my cousin at my aunt's place for reasons I have no idea about.
I assume she'd just fallen apart in some dramatic way again.
But I just I can kind of track some of this stuff and in terms of just being stuck on buses and go here and go there and never having any clue what the hell was going on, you know, it's like that old song, you know, like, wherever I lay my hat, that's my home.
And it's like, that's your life.
You're just like a nomad from couch to couch.
Oh, and you you have no idea.
Just that was my life.
So when we got back from when we got back, from there and went back home, there was the new dad.
And that dad was my dad for nine years.
And we moved all over.
I went to three different schools a year until I was... A year?
Yes.
And I'm not exaggerating.
We moved so Well, also, when you have a terrible family secret like this, Julie, like, when the children, you guys are like live grenades in the minds of your mom, because you have the secret of having been molested.
Your mother, I assume, given how much she's into famous people, is obsessed with status, and this is often the case with this type of personality.
They don't have connections with actual human beings, they only have connections to social status, which is quite the opposite.
And what happens is, there's this constant terror and anxiety that You kids are gonna get friends, and you're gonna see normal families, and you're gonna have connections, and you're gonna talk, and you might spill the beans about what went on.
And then, the whole status evaporates.
You gotta be kept in motion so you don't form the kind of attachments that will give you The capacity to share your secrets, which is, you know, to some, I mean, this is what you and I are doing right now.
I mean, but I'm saying things I've never talked about on the show before you were talking about.
So we are having, and this is probably why it was emotional for you to even consider this call because you have a lot of bombs in your brain saying, don't talk, don't talk, don't talk.
You must take the secret with you to the grave because it harms your mother's status.
Yeah.
Oh, so interesting.
Yeah.
Oh.
That, you know, I think that very well could be it.
And also the fact that, so my stepdad that raised me mostly for the nine years, he was 21 years old when my mom married him.
She was 32 with five kids.
And he, he, it was, it was very challenging for him to To make a living and to support us.
You think?
He's 21.
That's a lot of night shifts at the Esso station.
I'll tell you that right now.
Oh my God.
How pretty was he?
How pretty was she?
Come on, let's start with this.
My mom is beautiful.
Yeah, you can.
I mean, I've seen your picture.
You're very attractive yourself, of course, but your mom was a looker and a half, right?
Yes.
Yeah, but she was chunky, though.
She got chunky.
I mean, when she was a teenager, I look at her pictures and I think, whoa, she was beautiful.
But she got a little porky after my dad, I think.
And so, you know, it wasn't like she was this total 10 when she married the fourth guy.
Okay, so the fourth guy is a 21-year-old?
Yes.
Okay, so there's Bio-Dad, there's Pedo-Step, there's Mystery-Guy, and then 21-year-old.
Sorry if I missed the Mystery-Guy.
No.
Okay, no Mystery-Guy.
Nope.
The fifth guy is on the end, so... No, but I'm just trying to get the sequence, so Bio-Dad, Pedo, Step, X, I don't remember him, if you mentioned him, and then 21-year-old, and then Guy-5.
So who's three?
Three is actually the pedophile.
Oh, okay, sorry.
Guy, bio-dad, pedo-dad, 21-year-old, and then a guy we'll get to.
Right, right.
Okay, sorry about that.
I just want to make sure I get this dominoes in my brain.
All right.
Yeah, yeah.
And he was around for nine years?
Yes, yeah.
So, I say my formidable years.
Formative.
I like what you said, though.
Formidable years.
Because it probably was quite true as well.
Five years old, and then he left.
He went to change the tires when I was in ninth grade, and he never came back.
What?
Yeah.
You ever hear that song, Hungry Heart?
Yes.
Got a wife and kids in Baltimore, Jack.
I went out for a ride and I never went back.
That's like, boom, right there.
That's always been a haunting line for me, that song.
Oh, wow.
I never, I never...
I haven't thought about that.
I don't listen to lyrics.
Oh, no, you've got to listen to that song.
Bruce Springsteen has spent his entire life being vaguely depressed about the American Dream, and the way he sings that, he just took a wrong turn.
He said, I got a wife and kids in Baltimore, Jack.
I went out for a ride, and I never went back.
Like a river that don't know where it's going, I took a wrong turn.
Like a river that don't know where it's flowing, I took a wrong turn, and I just kept going.
Just boom.
Just drive right out of your life.
Yeah, that was him.
Yeah, that was terrible.
When he left, we just fell apart.
It was so terrible, because we really loved him.
He was actually a very nice man.
Right.
And so, so many people talk to my siblings and I, and they go, how did you guys turn out so well?
And my oldest sister is convinced it's because of him, because he was actually a really nice man.
He just couldn't take my mom anymore.
Well, you got some great lessons from him, but you didn't get the greatest lesson from him.
Yeah.
What was the greatest lesson you needed to get from him?
Don't leave your family high and dry.
No, no, no, no, no.
What was the greatest lesson that I got from him or I should have gotten?
No, so you got a lot of great lessons from him because he was a nice guy, I assume, reasonable guy, treated you well and all of that.
So you got a lot of great lessons from him.
But if you'd gotten the greatest lesson from him, well, I'm happy you're having this call, but you wouldn't need this call if you'd gotten the greatest lesson from him.
Oh.
Because what did he do?
He got out.
Yeah.
That was the greatest lesson.
Oh.
Nice people get away from her.
Oh, wow.
See what I'm saying?
Yeah.
That's his greatest lesson.
Now, he couldn't articulate that to you because you were still kids, and I guess he never did since.
I assume he's still alive, but that's the greatest lesson.
I couldn't take it.
Yeah.
Wow.
Yeah, I haven't spoken to him.
It was... I heard through the grapevine that it was too hard for him.
He thought we would be better off without him and that's why he just disappeared.
Yeah, yeah.
Try and get in touch with him if you have the opportunity or you can find a way to trace him.
It would be quite fascinating.
Yeah, I... I can't... I just... I can't talk to him.
Huh?
What do you mean?
Oh, I don't, I just don't want to.
I, I just think what he did was so hurtful, so low.
I, I don't, I don't want to talk to him.
Well, I know what you mean, but he may have his reasons that may be helpful to you.
Yeah.
Yeah.
She might've had an affair.
She might have lied about something horrendous.
I mean, it may be that, but if he was a nice guy and he got out and he was bonded with you guys over nine years.
Now, I guess if he'd been a really, really nice guy, he would have found you and explained himself when he got older.
That's an important thing, right?
But I think anyway, I don't want to obviously tell you how to live your life, but I'm rapidly curious about childhood stuff.
And I spent a lot of time excavating it in my twenties and early thirties.
But, um, All right, so then I assume your mom was not exactly single for a long time.
She just gets the next fix, right?
No.
Yeah, so then she got married the week that I turned 16.
So maybe two years she was single?
Let's see.
No, no, like a year and a half probably.
Well, and that just means not married.
It doesn't necessarily mean single, right?
Well, she didn't date in between.
Actually, no, she dated one other person in between my nine-year stepdad and then my stepdad, the latest, the one that she ended up being married to for 30 years.
Yeah, she just jumped right into that marriage.
She dated him for a week and they got married.
Wait, is this number five?
Yeah, number five, yep.
And this is the one that took, right?
Yes.
And how old was she or what decade was she in when she married the last guy?
She was in her forties.
Right.
Okay.
So she hit the wall.
She can't turn the trick as much anymore.
And so she's got to stick to the last guy, right?
Yeah.
And not, not without leaving him many times until it got to the point where she was desperate and she stayed.
So for the first 20 years, Of that marriage, it was a joke.
It was a total joke.
Just her backstabbing him, talking about him behind his back, trying to leave him.
One time she charged $15,000 worth of, this is back in the 80s, $15,000 worth of household goods so that she could start all over.
And she bought this stuff on his credit card, secretively, got a U-Haul, put all the new stuff in the U-Haul, and then just Vanished and and took off and he didn't know where she went.
And of course he tracked her down Flew out where she was and drove her back home So she tried to leave him Many times Well, no, I mean if you want to leave someone you just leave them now she was bullying him She wanted something or wanted control or wanted to establish that she didn't need him as much as me He needed her because she has no capacity to negotiate.
So all she can do is dominate, right?
Yeah, well and They they shouldn't have gotten married.
Like I said, they dated for a week.
And then it was long distance.
And then they got back together when they got married.
And so they should never have gotten married.
But he was the kind of guy that took it seriously.
And so he made it work.
And and by the end, that the last eight years, she was totally dependent on him because she became addicted to painkillers.
And he was an enabler, and so then she loved him.
Well, no, she loved the pills.
He was the methodology by which she got them, or got sustained through her addiction.
Well, I meant to put the little air quotes around love.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Wow.
So, I just have a lot of resentment, and just, oh, just, I've got so many stories.
And it just so much hurt and just disregard.
You know, the 18 years that we lived in the same state, less than an hour away from each other, or the time when I was raising my five children, just total disregard with my family.
And it was unbelievable to me, because I have really, I have wonderful children, and They are worth spending time with.
Right.
Oh yeah, no, I get that.
Anyone who's not interested in my child, sorry.
I got no interest in you.
Like, sorry.
That's my life, right?
I mean, they can even not be that interested in philosophy, that's fine.
But if they're not interested in my kid, eh, sorry.
I got no time for you.
But she says, she's like, oh, I love my grandchildren.
And she'll talk, you know, her sister that has the famous son, she brags about us all, brags about her grandchildren, and it's like, seriously?
You haven't seen them in years!
Well, and that's the terrible thing, is she knows exactly how to be a good person and what a good person does.
She just won't do it.
Like, she's not insane insofar as, oh yes, a good grandmother cares about her grandchildren.
I know that's what the earthly people with the flesh suits do.
I just can't get around to doing it, but I know that that's what they do.
Oh, totally.
Yeah, you're so right.
That's her, to a T. Oh yeah, no, my mother knows exactly how to imitate a decent human being.
She's very good at, I mean, she has the same relationship to a decent human being as one of those little Dark shadows you could make on the wall, as to an actual canine, but she knows exactly what they look like, because when we're out in public, you know, she's very charismatic, she's very charming, it's just, you know, in private, you know, comes out, you know, the Jekyll and Hyde shit comes out.
So no, she's very good at simulating a decent human being, just can't maintain it when the outside eyeballs are turned off.
Yeah, but what's so weird, Steph, is I love my mom so much, and... I'm sorry, you what now?
I love my mom so much.
Wait, was that in the present tense?
No, I mean, yes, yes, it is.
Okay, what?
I do.
I love my mom.
Oh, you just dropped that like it was no thing at all.
Well, okay.
She invited a pedophile into my house.
Oh yeah, she did have a nervous breakdown and wasn't there for me and subjected me to additional trauma.
And she's taken no interest in my kids whatsoever.
And she's selfish and she's destructive and she's mean and she breaks men's backbones and balls on a regular basis.
But I love her.
You just drop that in like, well, of course, I love her.
I, I, like, when she's hurting, I hurt.
I, so... No, no, no.
Codependent, I get.
Fusion, I get.
Lack of identity, lack of separation, lack of boundaries, I get all of that.
But you're gonna have to walk me through the whole love argument here.
I don't get that at all.
Really?
Well, you know, I don't know if you've read any of my stuff, but Love is our involuntary relationship to virtue.
It's our involuntary response to virtue, if we're virtuous, right?
Now you're a virtuous woman, you've raised great kids, you care, you're thoughtful.
So tell me the virtues that you're responding to in your mom, That you use the same, you know, there's this old thing where somebody says some horrible swear word, you know, like Anthony Robbins in your African seminar.
He just, like some horrible swear word, right?
And then people say, you kiss your mom, but that mouth, right?
So to me, I'm always like, wait, you love your kids, right, Julie?
So you use that same word with your mom?
Like that same word with your kids and your mom?
Like what are you, what?
You can't use the same word.
Well, let me tell you what my mom used to say when my brother was a teenager.
I only have one brother, and he was being a stinky teenager, and she'd say, I love him, but I don't like him.
And so... Yeah, I've heard that before too.
Okay.
I love you, I'm just not in love.
Okay, yeah, I get it.
So, I don't...
No, just tell me the virtues that you love in her.
What are the positives?
What are the pluses that bring this feeling of love?
Well, when I was a kid and went through all the crap that I went through... That she put you through?
Yeah.
When I first met my husband, I was only 19 years old, and we'd talk about it and I'd say, You know, even though my life was so chaotic and really, really unpredictable, I always felt loved.
So I think my mom, she would hug me.
She, she was never, um, you know, she didn't abuse me.
She spanked me of course, cause that's, that's what people did back in those days.
Um, but she'd never hit me anywhere except on my bottom.
And, um, so I, I, I don't think she was abusive or anything.
And she always told me she loved me.
She hugged me, and I felt love from her, even though I was a stressed out little kid, because I was always worried about if we were going to move in the middle of the night again, or just the stability.
Trying to, oh, we moved somewhere else.
I've got to make friends.
I've got to try and be happy.
Did she ever ask you what you wanted out of your childhood?
Or whether you were happy with the decisions that she was making?
No.
Oh, she made me so sad so many times.
My sister and I, we were into cheerleading.
We'd make it on the team and go to the camp.
You'd have to go to the summer camp to get trained for the new school year.
And then we would leave.
We'd move before we'd even get to Be on the squad.
Did she ever run stepdads past you to get your thoughts and perspectives on whether you wanted them in the house?
No, no.
When she married the last stepdad, the week after I turned 16, I was so afraid of him.
Wait, wait, why were you afraid of him, Julie?
Because, so remember how I said they dated for a week?
And it was out of state.
And then when she came back to where we lived, they broke up for a time, long distance broke up.
And she told me why.
And she said, because he had had an affair with his niece, who was my age.
And then all of a sudden, a couple months later, she married him.
So she basically was saying that she was going to marry another pedophile.
Yes.
And she didn't She didn't explain to me, like, oh, it wasn't true or anything.
It's just... Wait, did you ever find out if it was or wasn't true?
I... It was never made clear to me.
I think my mom kind of tap-danced around it when I asked about it.
But she knew you'd already been attacked by a pedophile when you were two or three years old, right?
Yes.
Okay, I'm trying to figure this out.
How the hell do you end up feeling loved from this sort of stuff?
Where she's dropping another pedo bomb on you.
Oh yeah, I'm going to bring another pedophile into the house when she gets back together with the guy, even though she knows your history.
With the last pedophile she brought into the house.
Where is all the, okay, she hugs, so yeah, fine.
You can pay a robot to hug you if you want.
You can get a hug from a massage parlor.
Where's the actual concern and thought and care and curiosity for you as an individual and what your preferences are?
I know.
I mean, when you spell it out like that, it totally makes sense.
Why would I love that?
And to be honest, it's hurt me so bad.
And that's why I'm like, I don't want to go to her birthday party.
She has hurt me and hurt me and hurt me so... for so many years.
Yes.
And I don't want to go to the stupid birthday party for her.
Well, not only do you not want to go, in my opinion, Julie, you damn well shouldn't.
Because it's a sin to go.
It's a sin to go.
You're a Christian, right?
I am, and I'm very devout.
Okay, and listen, I'm going to put on, I was raised a Christian, and I am going to talk to you Christian to Christian here for a moment, alright?
Okay, I appreciate that.
Alright, listen up.
My favorite, absolute favorite commandment, the one I live every day by, It's not thou shalt not kill, because I'm not itching to go kill a lot of people.
It's not thou shalt not steal, because I don't feel like knocking over a bank or a convenience store at any particular time of the day.
My favorite commandment, and the toughest commandment, is this.
Thou shalt not bear false witness.
Yes.
You tell me you love your mother, that's a sin.
Because you are bearing false witness.
You go to that birthday party, in my opinion, that's a sin!
Because you are bearing false witness.
You are giving aid and succor to unrepentant immorality.
You want to forgive?
Great!
Forgiveness has to be earned.
Jesus requires that you earn forgiveness.
Yeah.
If you don't earn forgiveness, I think you and I both know where you end up.
Yeah.
It is bearing false witness to have experienced such horrendous levels of abuse and maltreatment.
You tell me your mother didn't abuse you.
Are you kidding me?
Are you kidding me?
Of course she did!
She neglected.
She yanked you around.
She brought pedophiles into the house.
She did not ask you what you wanted.
She lived selfishly.
She sent you off on a Greyhound bus to live with strangers.
She didn't keep a relationship open with you.
She didn't fight for you with your biological dad to make sure he kept his relationship with you alive.
She threatened you with bringing another pedophile into the house, saying that he had an affair with a relation the same age as you.
She neglected your children?
She lies?
Constantly?
Yeah.
Are you kidding me?
A hug?
And I love you with no actual manifestation?
Anyone can say I love you.
Actors say it very convincingly straight to a camera and make people cry all the time.
Anyone can say those words.
The words are easy.
It's as easy as saying I'm a Christian.
But it's a little bit different to actually walk the walk, right?
Yeah.
And what has she done that is loving towards you?
So that is my biggest and most important commandment.
And it is the one that I still commit to every day.
Thou shalt not bear false witness.
Now, when you're a child, it is very dangerous to avoid bearing false witness because you can be enormously punished And put in danger, sometimes physical, sometimes psychological, sometimes both, for the simple act of telling the truth.
It is very risky and very dangerous.
And when you become an adult, though, it becomes more tricky, but there are a lot of people who want you to maintain the falsehood for their own particular purposes and reasons.
So, this is the great challenge, I think, of morality, which is What does it mean to not bear false witness?
Well, obviously it means to tell the truth.
But it's very hard to tell the truth when a lot of people will punish you for it.
And a lot of people, sometimes siblings, other family members will take over from the abusive parent and punish you for telling the truth because they don't want to face the truth in themselves.
And then what happens is, if you wait too long, and you haven't waited too long, but if you wait too long, what happens is your mother gets old.
You know, she's 80.
And so it becomes tougher and tougher to tell the truth because it's like, well, you know, she's in her declining years and what's the point now?
And, you know, she's not going to live forever and all of that.
But I do think that it is pretty essential.
And it seems to me that a lot of the impetus, Julie, for you telling the truth, for not succumbing to the sin of bearing false witness, is coming from your kids.
Nope, I'll be back.
I think I lost you there for a sec.
Are you back?
The pads were not working.
Oh, they're not working?
Yeah, they're not working.
Do you want to switch back?
Yeah, I put my other headset back on.
Oh, okay.
Okay.
All right.
All right.
It's fine.
It's fine.
Just try not to move around too much.
Do you want me to repeat what I said?
No, I heard what you said.
Okay.
I... I don't... Should I tell her that I don't love her?
I mean, that just seems like a terrible thing to say to her.
Well, let me ask you this.
What do you get from thou shalt not bear false witness?
With regards to this.
You know, one of the virtues that my mother Always.
Well, one of the most important things that my mom taught me was, don't ever lie.
And that was her big deal.
And it was so funny.
Me and my sister always crack up about it because she'd always have us lie.
Like if a bill collector would call, she would say, and if we answered the phone, tell them I'm not here.
And we'd have to lie about other things to cover her tracks, but she always taught us, you know, don't ever lie.
No, she just means don't ever lie to me.
Not, not, don't ever lie as a universal value, right?
Oh.
Because, you know, it's complicated raising kids if they're lying to you and following your own behavior.
See, this is the thing.
You can either model, you know this as a parent, right?
You model great behavior with your kids.
You're honest and you're forthright and you're courageous and all of that.
If you model good behavior with your kids, then you don't need to nag them to be good.
Like, if you just speak English to your kids, guess they're going to grow up speaking English.
It's not that complicated, right?
But if you model terrible behavior to your children, it's really inconvenient if they model that behavior back to you.
In other words, if they do what you do rather than what you say, it's really, really complicated, so you have to tell them to...
Obey the virtues that make it easier for you as a parent without actually having to become a better person.
That's typical for abusive parents, right?
Do as I say, not as I do.
Not as I do.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So, I mean, of course she doesn't want you to tell the truth because...
I don't know.
Like, I don't want to say you don't love your mom.
I mean, I can't comprehend how you can love someone like that, but I'm, you know, maybe you're like Mother Teresa, you love the Jesus in the poor, and you love the soul in your mom, or you love the better mom in your mom, or something like that.
But as far as her actual behavior, I mean, let me ask you this, just to sort of put this in context, right?
Okay.
So you have a son.
He's not married, right?
Right.
Is he dating someone at the moment?
Yes.
Okay.
So imagine this.
Imagine your son is dating a woman just like your mom.
No, no, no.
Seriously.
And then he says to you, but mom, I love her.
What would you say?
I would tell him everything.
I would tell him, no, you cannot.
And I would lay out everything in front of him.
This, this, and this, and this are wrong.
You can't do this.
You have to stop this relationship.
No, no, but he says, I love her.
What would you say?
How can you argue with love?
Mom, I love her!
Then you're going to have a long road ahead of you, buddy.
That's what I'd say.
No, but that's not clear enough, right?
Right.
Right, that's not clear enough.
What would you have to say if he said?
That's not love.
Right.
And I'd have to explain what love is and what infatuation is.
Right.
Now, you and I both know that a lot of people mistake sexual desire for love, right?
Yeah.
If she's really good in bed, that can turn a man's head, so to speak, right?
Oh, I love her.
It's like, no, no, you just, she's good in bed.
Like, I hate to be sort of coarse, and I hate to talk about this stuff with regards to your son, but the reason I'm saying this is that if we understand that men and women can get an artificial kind of hysterical bonding through sexuality, in the same way we get a dependence bond with our parents,
Now, a sexual bond, if it's really powerful, eclipses immorality on the part of the other person, right?
In the same way that physical beauty can do it, or great wealth, or great fame can do it.
And we all know your mom has susceptibility to great fame, right?
To people who are famous.
So, with our parents, we have this absolute biological commandment to please them, and to get along with them, and perhaps even to worship them, to do whatever they need us to do.
Because if we lose that bond, remember, I mean, throughout most of our history as a species, there wasn't a whole lot of food.
And there was a lot of danger out there from wild animals and other tribes and war.
And if you displeased your parents...
You know, you probably wouldn't make it.
Yeah, you'd die.
Well, yeah.
I mean, they might abandon you.
They might just not take much care of you.
They might just not make sure they know where you are at all.
Like, it's just carelessness.
You know, even if it increases your odds of not making it by 10 or 20 percent, boy, that's enough.
That's enough.
The people, the kids who didn't care about pleasing their parents, yeah, they didn't.
Let's just say they didn't pass a lot of those not caring genes along, right?
So we all desperately want to please our parents and we're constantly scanning them and trying to figure out what they want, what's going to make them happy, what's going to make us valuable to them in some manner.
Now for you, it was compliance and enabling and lying and not Complaining and just going with things.
Like you didn't put up... I mean, I tell you this, I tried to put my daughter on a bus for two days.
She's gonna claw her way out of that bus.
Like she'll not have it.
She would not have it.
It would not happen.
Ever.
Yeah.
Right?
Yeah.
Right.
Yeah.
Ever.
Now you... And I know this because it was me too, right?
It was me too.
My mom's like, we're gonna move to Canada.
I'm like, okay.
I don't know why the hell we're going to Canada.
I mean, I know now that I had to be moved to Canada because I was getting dangerously close to talking about the abuse at home, so I had to get to a whole new country and whole new people and disoriented and have to make new friends and have to start from scratch and don't want to be the guy who complains about his family to the new friends, right?
So, I get it all now.
Yeah.
And this fantasy that if you just go someplace new, somehow you are not there.
You're a different person, you know, like this.
And so you had a particular requirement on the part of your mother that you suspend all judgment with her.
You do not ever criticize her.
You do not ever, ever show up in an honest emotional fashion and give her genuine feedback about your experience of her as a mother.
Yeah, yeah, totally, totally.
Right.
Now, being honest with your mother.
Now, not bearing false witness, to me, does not mean that you go and blarp your truth into everyone's face, right?
I mean, to me, that's like, the not bearing false witness is not your relationship to others.
It is your relationship to the truth.
And you can hold the truth.
Without telling others.
But the important thing is that you know what the truth is.
Then you can make that decision or however it works with others, right?
I haven't talked to my mom in like 15 years.
I don't call her up and say, here's another thing I'm mad about, or here's another thing I thought about yesterday, or here's something I've forgiven you about.
I know the truth about my history.
I know the truth about my history.
I tell you, let me tell you something.
So I went just the other day, I went to a fun fair with my daughter.
Now she's pretty fearless when it comes to these, you know, these rides that throw you around like you're like the end of a fishing lure and you're just whipping all over the place and stuff like that, right?
I don't mind them too much, but it's easy for me to get kind of overwhelmed with the sense of physical danger, right?
Where's my daughter?
Hands up!
Hands up, Daddy!
He's like, no, no, I'll be on the ride, but I'm not putting my hands up.
And we were on our way back to the car and we were talking about the rides and she said, you know, I'm really glad you came on the ride with me and all that, but you know, you didn't put your hands up and said, look, you know, like, I love the fact that you're real comfortable with these rides and that you love them and all.
I think it's wonderful.
But I said, you know, like, I don't talk about this stuff too much, but when I was a kid, I was in grave physical danger.
Like I was worried about being hurt physically by my mother, right?
So for me, I can't just throw myself into situations that remind me of physical danger and just have a great time.
Oh, wow.
Okay.
You know, now you, I'm not in physical danger.
You've never had anyone say a harsh word to you as far as I can tell.
And so, You can throw yourself into this because it's foreign and it's cool and it's exciting and it's fun, whereas for me it evokes memories of physical danger when I was a child, so there's only a certain amount of fun I can get out of it, and after that it just starts to feel kind of vaguely threatening, if that makes any sense.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Right, so I'm not going to sit there and detail her, with her, like everything that happened or anything like that, but I'm also, like, I know the truth about why these rides are challenging for me and, you know, some of them it's fun, you know, but it's not something I would really pursue outside of being a dad.
Right, okay.
And so I'm, I'm, but I'm not calling up with my mom and saying, you're the reason I can't enjoy a roller coaster, you know, like, I know the truth about it.
I'm not, I'm not bearing false witness to myself.
I'm not bearing false witness to myself, and that's the important aspect.
Because what we do so often is we paralyze ourselves with consequentialism.
Now, I'm here to tell you, straight up Julie, when you know the truth about your mom, it does not command you to do anything.
Right?
Thou shalt not bear false witness does not mean that you've got to hire skywriters over your town to write the truth about your history.
It doesn't mean you have to do a podcast.
It doesn't mean you have to paint pictures or write a blog or anything like that.
Thou shalt not bear false witness means just tell the truth.
Now, you have to know the truth in order to tell the truth, which means you have to tell the truth to yourself first.
But what we do is we say, well, I can't tell the truth to myself, because if I tell the truth to myself, I have to do this, and then I have to do this, and then this is going to happen, and this is going to happen, right?
Well, if I go to my mom, oh, if I learn the truth about my relationship with my mom, or if I learn that I don't love my mom, or whatever happens, then I have to go and tell my mom, and then what's going to happen is my siblings are going to get upset, and there's going to be all this chaos, and there's going to be all this mess, and it's going to be really stressful, and I won't be able to sleep.
And we scare ourselves away from the truth because we imagine the truth is flicking one domino that leads to, like, entire cities falling over.
But that's not...
What the commandment says.
The commandment doesn't say, thou shalt not bear false witness, and this means you have to tell this person, and this person, and even if they're... It just means tell the truth.
Yeah.
To yourself, right?
So you... Yeah.
If the truth led nowhere, like if you, knowing the truth, did not command any action on your behalf, it did not command you to do anything, then the truth would be a lot easier to approach, right?
Yeah.
Like if the truth meant you could go to your mother's 80th birthday party while knowing the absolute truth about your relationship with your mother.
What's traumatic is not knowing the truth, not whether you go to the birthday party or not.
I kind of don't know what you mean just there.
Sure, sure.
When you were a child, knowing the truth would have made your life unbearable.
Because it would have meant that you would get no protection from your mother and you would also know consciously that you couldn't tell the truth because your mother would attack you or you would fear would abandon you or she might...
Have another nervous breakdown, whatever that is, and then you shift off to some other place.
So you couldn't tell the truth to your mom.
You couldn't say, I hate your husbands, or I hate my stepdads, or I hate the way that we're just dragged around from place to place, or I hate the way that you make me lie to bill collectors.
And it's so ridiculously hypocritical that you demand I tell the truth and then command me to lie.
Yeah.
You couldn't say that, right?
Now, why couldn't you say that?
Oh, yeah.
Oh, we'd get...
in trouble.
Like, how dare you talk to me that way?
You're supposed to be respectful because we had to say yes, ma'am and no, ma'am.
And, um, you know, you don't talk to your, your mother that way and never facing the truth.
It's just, you're being disrespectful.
Now, would she actually say it that way?
Sorry to interrupt after I just asked you a question.
Because it's really, really important the way that people talk.
Did she say you don't talk to your mother that way?
Yes.
Right.
Now, why didn't she say you don't talk to me that way?
I don't know.
I can tell you why.
Because she's invoking the category of mother rather than her own personal manifestation of that category.
Oh, wow.
Dads do this all the time, too, right?
You don't talk to your mother that way, as opposed to, you don't talk to my wife, or her, or, like, they always invoke this category called mother, and that's a way to evoke that response, which is, if someone says to you, you don't talk to your mother that way, what they're really saying to you is, I won't be your mother if you talk to me that way.
Oh, wow.
It's a direct threat of breaking the bond, which is a death threat against the child, fundamentally.
And I'm not saying this is conscious, but any time a parent says, continue in this way and the bond is broken, it's a death threat against the child.
That's how we experience it fundamentally, because that's what historically it always was, or generally was.
So she says, you don't talk to your mother that way.
And also, she can't say, you don't talk to me that way, because then you could say, well, you talk to me that way.
She has to say, you don't talk to your mother that way, because you can't say, well, I'm a mother too.
Like, you know what I mean?
Like, she's got a category called mother that you have to respect and not talk to a certain way.
And then she says, well, I mean, I'm in that category, and you're not.
So it's a clear hypocrisy.
I would never say to my daughter, well, you can't talk to me that way, or you can't talk to your father that way.
She would look at me like, what are you talking about?
There's not a category called father.
There's a person there.
Well, to me, it kind of feels like when you say it that way, don't talk to your mother that way.
It's like, this is the rule book.
In life, this is what a child is not supposed to do, so it seems more authoritarian.
Do you know what I mean?
Yeah, for sure.
But she's not appealing to virtue.
She's appealing to authority.
Oh, right.
Because the virtue is, I don't know, would the virtue be something like, don't talk to people in a way That hurts them, or upsets them, or makes them angry, or something.
But what would the rule be that you would create around that sort of statement?
So what is the rule, right?
I mean, say, don't talk to your mother that way.
What is the abstract moral rule that she might be invoking there?
Maybe... I don't know!
But it's important, right?
Yeah, it is important.
So, I'm trying to put myself in her mind.
Is it, don't be disrespectful?
Yeah, probably so.
Okay, so that means you have to treat everyone in the family with respect.
Is she treating you with respect?
No, never!
Right.
So, this is the question.
What is the moral rule that the parental statements contain?
And why is it never made explicit?
Well, it's never made explicit because then they can't be hypocritical, right?
Well, yeah.
And well, and she never, she never ever says that she's wrong about stuff.
And so for her, it's like, I can never be proven wrong.
I never, I don't want anyone to tell me that you're not doing this right, or what you're doing is bad.
I have to be right all the time.
And so that's why I'm enforced.
That's why I enforce this.
I mean, just in her subconscious mind, I'm sure that's what's going on.
Right.
Now, of course, the counter-argument to that is five husbands.
No, really!
You know, it's pretty important whether you choose someone you can stand to live with or not, or whether you can choose someone who's going to be good to your kids.
So, if your mom wants to say explicitly or implicitly, well I'm always right, the counter argument to that is, yeah.
Five husbands.
Yeah.
How good were you at choosing?
Oh, and one who was a pedophile, the other one seems to be a pedophile, because he talked about having an affair with his 15-year-old niece.
Yeah.
Incestuous and a pedophile, that's the one-two punch of, God help me if this guy gets in the house, right?
Oh, it's so awful.
It is.
It is beyond awful.
And the fact that she would tell you that.
And she probably, you know what the funny thing is, and I say this, it's not at all funny, The strange thing, Judy, is that your mother probably did not even make that connection consciously about how terrifying that would be for you.
Oh, I know!
Like she doesn't even care about you enough to know that that would be terrifying for you.
I have thought that myself, and since I have children, I've raised my kids, and I remember thinking, I cannot fathom bringing home a strange man to my home that my kids were told, Oh, he did this to his niece.
Yeah.
And then just bringing them into my home.
Oh, here's, here's your new dad.
It just, it sickens me thinking about that.
I would never do that.
And, and that's why I was earlier saying the disregard that she has had for me and what's so weird is, you know, she's like, Oh, I love you.
This and that.
You're wonderful.
I just love my grandkids." And it's like, really?
You love me?
You care about me?
Because I haven't really seen that.
Right.
And the thing is, this is what's weird, is I have never, ever had an argument with my mom.
I've never Have you been able to discuss anything with her?
Any friction, like, oh, this thing happened, and I need to talk about this with you, because she'll just hang up on the phone, or if we're in person, she'll walk out of the room, and like, what did I ever do to deserve this?
Oh, there's a question!
Do you want to hear that scenario?
Okay, mom, we're taking volume one down from the bookcase of infinity.
Right.
So I am terrified of, like, if she says, why aren't you coming to my party?
I would, the old Julie, hopefully I can now, but I would say, I would, I would tell her, um, I don't know what I would say with, I don't know what I would say.
I'm terrified, I would never say out loud.
But this is where the consequentialism comes into play.
And this is how you paralyze yourself.
Why do you even need to have that conversation with your mom?
You don't owe her.
That... Yeah, I don't want to have that conversation, but what... I was playing in my mind.
What if she asked me, why aren't you coming?
No, no, but why would you even need to talk to her?
Like, I'm just... I'm just... Theoretically, you could just not go.
And then if she calls, just don't pick up.
Like, why do you need to have any of that conversation with her?
That's true.
Because what happens is you say, oh my gosh, you know, I'm going to say this and then she's, oh, it's just easier to go.
Yeah.
And that's how you end up bearing false witness is you say, well, like, because you cannot, listen, you cannot successfully confront a narcissistic parent.
You cannot.
True.
I can't do it.
Like there's a reason I don't talk to my mom.
It's because I can't ever win.
And why would I want to put myself in a situation where I'm continually compromised, where I continually re-expose myself to that kind of abuse, to that kind of toxicity, when I can never, ever possibly win?
Yes.
I'll tell you, this is the last time that I saw my mom.
So, we were at a relative's place, and she was telling me all about how she was suing the doctors, and this has been going on for decades.
And I listened for, I don't know, for about, I don't know, 40 or 45 minutes.
And then I said this.
I said, Mom, I know this court case is really, really important to you.
This has been going on for a long time.
But I don't really, to be honest, I've had a tough time following it.
And let me tell you, here's the issue I have.
The issue I have is that it feels like this is kind of all we talk about.
And I'd like to know other things that might be happening in your life.
I'd like to have the opportunity to have conversations that aren't just about this.
Not me saying, listen, you crazy bat, you know, like I'm not, you know, that's a reasonable thing to say.
I have a mild preference that we talk about some other things from time to time.
That's all, right?
And she just hit the roof, right?
She just like, she was screaming.
She was throwing cushions around.
She was throwing herself on the couch.
And now I'm an enemy and I'm in league with the insurance companies and I'm taking their side and I don't care.
Like, and it's just like, okay, I get it now.
I finally get it.
I finally get it.
I can't even have 1% of a preference with this woman.
Yeah.
Wow.
I can't even have a mild preference that goes against what she bloody well wants to do when she's with me.
I appreciate you telling me that story so much because I have had almost the same thing.
One time I did have a little courage to say, mom, Can we not talk about that?
Because she likes to talk about her past when she was a teenager, and how everybody was mean to her, and bad-mouthing my uncle who was killed in Vietnam.
No, not him.
Somebody else.
And just like you, say it in a kind way.
Can we talk about something else?
Perfectly reasonable.
Yeah, and then hit the fan, and yeah.
Like, what you want in the conversation doesn't matter.
No.
It's all one-sided.
So yeah.
She has the same relationship to me as a cat has with a scratching post.
I know, but the cat doesn't say to the scratching post, oh am I hurting you?
I'm just an object to be used.
Oh my word.
I'm a consciousness for her to pour her craziness into so she gets some tiny bit of relief.
Yeah.
And it's like, no, like, I mean, I had to do that when I was a kid.
I don't have to do that as an adult.
And if even the mildest statement of a personal preference causes this kind of explosion.
Yeah.
Okay.
Well, I'm sorry.
Like, why would I want this?
Why?
It's harming me.
Yeah.
Wow.
Same.
Okay.
Wow.
That's so interesting.
No, I'm perplexed, though.
I mean, when you were talking about the love thing, I'm sitting there going, do I love her, or do I, am I, I think I'm wanting, I'm missing the love that I didn't have.
That's what it is.
Like when I say, I love my mom, it's... No, that's, come on, Julie, Julie, no.
That's exactly the same as your mom saying, I love my grandkids.
Yeah, well, I'm just saying, I would have loved to love my mom.
That's how I feel about it.
Yeah, but you can't, I mean, you're scared of her, right?
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, the only reason, as far as I can see, that you'd go to the birthday party is you'd be scared.
You said you'd be scared of her bad-mouthing you, and that means you're also scared of your family, in terms of, like, will her bad-mouthing work, right?
Yeah.
Yeah, no, I get it.
I get it.
My mom was also mad with praise towards me.
Oh my gosh!
It's the same!
She used to say to me, like, oh, you're such a great person, and you did it all by yourself.
You raised yourself.
I was, you know, barely functional, and you did it all by... She had this praise, and oh, you know, when I was first working on my novels, oh, this is great writing, you have a lot of talent, and this praise.
All the time.
You know, when I took a writing course that was five or six years ahead of where I was in grade school, oh, she told all her friends.
When I took an adult computer science course when I was like 13, and she was like, oh, she told, like, this praise was over.
I was the golden boy.
I used to drive my other family members nuts, saying, oh, I'm the golden boy, because I reminded her of her dad.
And there was all this praise.
Absolutely.
But it didn't have anything to do with me.
Fundamentally, it's just that I was something that gave her status, that gave her, oh, she could talk about how her son was doing all these great things and this, that and the other.
And so I get all the praise and the I love you's and all of that, but it's like, well, I love you until and unless you have any preference that goes against my narcissistic needs in the moment, and then I'm willing to take an emotional flamethrower and burn you down to your fucking ankles.
Yeah.
Oh, my mom brags and brags about me and my kids and my husband.
And then she always comes back to, I did a pretty good job raising my kids because all my siblings are doing a lot better than what she did.
Right.
And always talks about how she takes the glory.
Always.
Right.
Right.
And of course, She never asks you for your experience of her.
Oh, no.
No.
And that's really, really important.
You know, I mean, I ask the people in my life, how's the relationship?
You know, you hear me in the call.
Is the call useful to you?
Was it helpful?
You know, what did you, you know, it's important to know what people's experience of you is.
It is.
What do your kids think of her?
Oh, they roll their eyes.
It's like, Oh, Grandma, you know, they, they, they have distanced themselves from her.
And, um, they take her with a grain of salt.
And, but they, they, they also resent her too, because they know how bad she's hurt me.
And, and so they're, they're at the point now, now that they're all adults.
And, um, you know, my youngest is going to be an adult soon.
They, they get a little bit, Uh, defensive and sometimes they're not that warm and fuzzy with her because it's like, uh, I don't really know you and, and you, what have you really done?
What, what did this call in your history, Julie, if they listened to this, what would they be most surprised at if they don't know already?
Uh, probably about, uh, my last stepdad.
Right.
I've never told anybody that.
And he actually, um, he never did anything that was bad to me.
He was a very good man.
I don't know what, what the drama was before he married my mom, but he, he, um, I felt like he put up with her for so many years and had every right to dump her.
But he was an honorable man.
- Can my but a good man marry your mom? - Obligation?
Why would he be obligated?
Well, maybe... Obligated to stay with her.
He married her because he thought she was something else, but he stayed with her out of obligation.
Why would a good man marry a woman he'd known a week?
week?
Because he didn't want to be alone, probably.
I don't know.
Why would a good man marry a woman with five children without finding out whether those children liked him?
Well, at that point in time, there were only two of us left at home.
Well, the two is still two!
- Well, the two is still two.
- Yeah.
- No, and even for the, you know what it's like.
I mean, you married, right?
And you marry into a whole gene pool.
You marry into a whole family system that just goes on and on and on, right?
Yeah.
Second cousins, third cousins, great uncles.
You know, like, it's a whole thing that just goes on and on.
You marry into a continent of people, right?
So, why would you marry a woman you've known for a week without vetting her family, without finding out whether you get along with them, without winning them over to you as a person?
It's beyond me.
I have no idea.
I honestly don't know.
I have no idea why he married her.
She's a trainwreck.
No, she's not a trainwreck.
I feel so bad saying that.
No, she's not a trainwreck because a trainwreck is kind of accidental.
Oh, oh.
Right.
I mean, she's malevolent, right?
I mean, she's destructive.
She destroys people.
Yeah.
Right?
Yeah.
Yep.
You know, she married a pedophile and then complained about another one.
Mm-hmm.
She never takes any responsibility.
Everything is everyone else's fault.
Yep.
She pities herself while victimizing others.
She's a cry bully.
Narcissistic, vainglorious, perhaps even sociopathic, what do I know, but definitely does not consult other people about their feelings.
is so terrifying at the age of 80 that you at the age of 52 have virtual panic attacks when thinking about telling her 1% of the truth you feel.
Yeah.
That is a terrifying human being.
A terrifying human being.
And I sympathize.
Listen, I really, really do.
The fact that she's 80 And you're still this scared of her.
Can you imagine if you ever had a sense, Julie, if you ever had a sense that your children were scared of you?
Can you imagine how that would feel?
Like, how would you feel if your kid sat down with you and said, Mom, I can't tell you the truth about anything because you terrify me.
I would, I would just I would die if my kids felt that way about me.
Couldn't stand that.
And I would do everything I could to get to the bottom of it and go, okay, let's fix this.
Tell me what I need to do.
Right.
How did this come about?
And what did I do to bring this about?
And I'm so sorry.
And you know, like whatever.
I mean, but, but because you, you would do that, it's never going to happen.
Yeah.
What does your husband think of her?
Oh, he, she, she drives him crazy and he, he's just, he feels so bad because he has a wonderful mother and he knows what it's like to have a good mother and what a good mother should be.
And so he's just very sympathetic with me and, um, he, He was wanting me to call you because he doesn't want me to go to the party.
He's just thinking, oh, do not go.
And I'm just like, oh, I'll feel so terrible.
My mom will feel so sad if I don't go.
But yeah, he's not crazy about her, that's for sure.
So let me ask you this.
Remembering that Jesus whipped the money changers, What would Jesus do?
Would he go and reward and support and pretend that that which had been immoral was moral?
Would he lie and cover up and bear false witness about the truth of his experience?
Wow.
Yeah.
I mean, he called those money changers out.
He called them out.
Yes, he did.
He didn't turn the other cheek on that, because he caught him in the act and told him what for.
To me, the turn the other cheek is, no, turn the other cheek is, was it an accident?
Right.
Right?
So if somebody hits you on the cheek, it could have been an accident.
Maybe they were trying to brush off a fly and you turned your head at the wrong time, or maybe they were trying to make a joke, or something like that, right?
But if you turn the other cheek and they hit the other cheek, it's like, okay, this is not an accident.
This is willful, this is intentional.
Or if somebody does something, they realize their mistake, they sincerely apologize, then you turn the other cheek for that.
But yeah, yeah, you don't just ignore the sin and just, oh yeah, it's fine that you did that.
It's fine that you just did that terrible thing.
Well, Christians tried that with the endless Muslims' invasions and taking of slaves, and then they finally had to fight crusades, which is the only reason there is still Christianity in Europe.
Wow.
Interesting. Thou shalt not bear false witness.
You don't lie to yourself about these things.
And to me, it doesn't mean that you have to go and confront people, but it does mean that through your actions, right?
What does Jesus say?
By your actions shall you know them.
Yeah.
Which means virtue.
Virtue is action.
But to know what to do, you have to first know the truth.
If you do want to sit down with your mother, you certainly have that choice.
But I don't believe that philosophy gives you commandments in this sense.
It gives you some rules, but it doesn't ever tell you what to do.
Because then philosophy would be, and this is the free will argument with Christianity, right?
God says, here is the good, but it's your choice.
I'm not going to compel you because there's no virtue if I compel you.
I'm not going to force you because there's no virtue if I force you.
It's the same thing with philosophy.
Philosophy is not going to say, well, Julie, now that you told me this, here's the list of things you have to do or you're immoral.
Because that's like, you know, that's just taking orders.
That's not being free.
That's not being sovereign.
Right.
And there's no virtue in it.
So the truth is, as far as I can see it, that your mother both was and is a selfish monster, an epitome of Narcissism and coldness and manipulation and bullying.
Can you imagine, the thing that struck me, can you imagine bullying your children into lying to people you owed money to so that you would not have to face them yourself?
Manipulating and putting your children in a situation where they have to lie because you have been irresponsible with money?
No.
I can't even wrap my brain around that.
It's terrible.
It's like the worst teaching that you can possibly do.
Right.
Raising your children.
And what is the Christian's relationship to unrepentant immorality?
Well, you excommunicate, I mean.
You don't have anything to do with that.
You cannot, at the very least, you cannot pretend that that which is immoral is moral.
Right.
I mean, you can, don't get me wrong, that's free will, you can do anything you want, but there are consequences.
Yeah.
Yeah, there's, oh yeah.
I would assume also that the bearing false witness, and I feel quite strongly about this, so I'm sorry if I get emotional this time, but Here's what I have concern about with the bearing of false witness is that you put on a brave front, right?
Right?
So your letter did not indicate the depths of the suffering your mother had put you through.
Right.
And I think that you have encouraged people, like when I asked about your kids, I was very, very curious.
As I always am about your response, Julian.
You said that your kids rolled their eyes and like, oh, she's just this harmless, cranky, bit of an eccentric, blah, blah, blah.
It's like, no.
She's the reason that you got molested as a child.
Well, they don't know that.
I'm not saying you dump this on your kids when they're kids or whatever, but if you bear false witness like, oh, my mom's just kind of a nutty eccentric who's had five husbands and, you know, she's kind of selfish but, you know, what can you do kind of thing, as opposed to the genuine suffering that this monstrous person has put you through and your siblings through and continues to put you through.
Then what happens is you don't get allies because people don't know how horribly painful this has been for you.
So people can't protect you because you don't expose them to the danger that this has exposed you to and the peace and security and serenity and love, as you say, you're desperate for.
You know, I remember when I was a kid, I grew up without a dad, and I was like, oh, you can't ever miss what you never had.
Of course you can.
In fact, you miss what you've never had the most, because you don't even mourn.
There's nothing to mourn.
It's like there's no coffin.
It's just not people.
Yeah.
So your mother has swallowed up your vulnerability with your family, and then they can't protect you.
Mm-hmm.
Man.
You're, you are, you listen so well.
I, that is so interesting because, yeah, they roll their eyes just like what you, the reason why.
They don't know the depth of it because I haven't told them and... And you're fighting it with me because I'm not saying that you, but when you got emotional, you, right?
You'll hear it back when you listen to this convo, Julie.
You get emotional and you're like, phew, gotta seal that shit off.
Okay, I'm better now.
Yeah.
I killed that little crying baby, but fine, we're fine, right?
Uh-huh, yeah.
But this is the central heartbreak of your life, is it not?
Oh, it totally is.
Right.
And yet, when you genuinely feel sad, you apologize, you're covered up, you move on.
Because you have such a positive Essence to your to your soul and it's a beautiful thing.
It's a beautiful thing to see it really is and and the strength with which you have navigated your mother and raising your children and Surviving what you survived which would break many many many people This amount of courage and foundation and stalwartness, stoicness, is truly a force of nature and it's very, very impressive.
But it's also really exhausting.
Oh, wow.
Thank you.
You do want some security, you want some protection.
Yeah.
In your life, but you can't get it.
If you're bearing false witness about what this mother has taught you.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And how much you've had to work to survive this onslaught of selfish, manipulative, bullying craziness in your life.
Yeah.
Well, I, Steph, I do feel extremely blessed, though.
I had such an amazing husband, and it's always been that way.
I met him when I was 19 years old.
We got married a year later, and we've been married 32 years, and I think having the love of a spouse who is your equal and And who wants to make you feel better.
He makes me want to be a better person, and I think that he could say that about me.
And when you find a partner like that, you can conquer so much.
And I just think it's really important.
And then, of course, my strong faith, I think, has been my sanity and my saving grace.
And I appreciate that and I don't want to dismiss what you're saying, but I'm very aware that when I started talking about feelings, you started talking about strength.
What's wrong with that?
Because you don't want to feel the feelings.
Right, so you're saying all the reasons that you conquered the past.
Listen, it's wonderful.
I'm thrilled about your marriage and I'm thrilled about your faith and the strength that it gave you, but I am also very aware that I started talking about vulnerability and you started talking about strength.
That's to ward me away from your vulnerability, and that's your mom talking.
Oh.
I just don't want to be whiny and whiny.
Like, oh, everything was bad, and I want to be strong.
That's a virtue, in my opinion.
How is this theory of strength, having you racked with guilt at the age of 52 about a birthday party, how is this theory of strength ending you in this situation?
Because that does not seem massively strong to me.
Oh my gosh.
Okay, touche.
Yeah, I'm not strong.
I'm a ding.
No, let me ask you this.
Let's go back in time just a little bit.
Okay, a couple of decades.
So come back in time to when your eldest daughter was three or four years old.
Okay.
Let's say there's someone in the neighborhood you think would be a great babysitter, and you head out for the evening with your husband.
Okay.
And you come back and things are very strange in the house.
I won't even get into the details but let's just say at some point your daughter tells you that the babysitter had a boyfriend over who molested her.
Now that's your mom.
And so when you talk to me about not wanting to whine, I cannot respect that.
Because that's your mother talking.
That's your mother minimizing your pain.
You understand?
That's your mother.
Except it wasn't one night.
And it wasn't one child.
It went on and on and hit multiple children.
And then she sent them on a bus for two days, unattended, unsupervised, unprocessed, uncared for, and separated the children.
So when you talk to me about not whining, I know that's not your genuine lived experience.
That's your mother saying, shut up and don't talk and don't tell and damn well don't feel.
Oh wow.
And why should it be worse that it happened to you and not your daughter?
Why are you less important than your daughter?
Why is your childhood experience less important than your daughter?
And you know, and I know, the anger that you would feel towards a babysitter who invited a pedophile into your house who molested your daughter.
Why do you matter less than your daughter?
Oh, wow.
I do matter as much as my daughter.
You really do.
And the fact that it happened to you and not your daughter is to your credit.
But don't let your mother get away with it and don't let her call you whining for talking about a desperate pain that she inflicted upon you with the band she brought into the house.
- Yeah. - That's not bearing false witness.
Bearing false witness is, oh, well, you know, I don't want to whine and she's a little nutty and, you know, roll your eyes and she's eccentric and it's like, no, no, come on.
Come on.
Yeah.
She brought this man into your life and into your sister's lives.
Yeah.
And then she sent you on a bus.
And she's never apologized, she's never admitted fault, she's never disgusted.
And then she has the nerve to whine about how she was badly treated as a teenager.
Yeah.
Like, this is insane.
It's not insane, it's evil.
It's evil.
Yeah.
And then she manipulated a guy so that he'd provide her with drugs and she bullied him and she threatened him and she broke his spirit and she destroyed his life.
She's a monster.
She's like a soul eater.
She's demonic in a way.
So when you say that, it just kills me.
It's like, oh.
If I'm wrong, tell me.
I'm just going with the evidence that you've given me.
I mean, this is my thoughts about it.
I'm happy to be corrected, but I can't see how.
I mean, it's true.
It just seems so horrible.
It's harsh, but it's true.
Justice.
Justice is justice.
Justice is not bearing false witness to the moral nature of people's choices and actions.
Yeah.
Well, you've really, really shed light on so much and just looking at it in a different That perspective is really eye-opening.
No one has ever just laid out the truth so plain to me and so honestly.
That's amazing.
I really appreciate your insight.
Thank you.
What does your mother think of your husband?
She thinks he's Mr. Wonderful.
He's never confronted her, has he?
Oh, no.
He's a non-confrontational person, and I would probably tell him, don't you dare.
Like, no, no, you don't confront my mom.
So we just put on the smiling face.
Oh, hi.
And, you know, do the kind of the surface conversations.
We've never had Deep conversations, because, you know, it's always her talking about this bad thing that happened to her, and this person that screwed her over, and... So, yeah.
Do you think that God is unjust to punish sinners?
No.
Then why is it unjust for you?
To refrain from enabling sinners.
Nobody's saying go over and torture your mom.
Right.
You don't put pins through her tongue or something.
That's God's job, right?
I understand that.
Yeah.
But if it is moral for God to punish sinners, then is it moral for you to pretend that they're not sinners?
Yeah, it's not right.
It's like she gets rewarded no matter what she does.
She gets rewarded.
If I go, then, oh yay, mom gets her way again.
And the cost is some level of respect from your children.
Oh, wow.
Wow.
Yeah.
And I, ooh, I I do not want my kids to pay for anything that I do or that my mom has done.
Yeah, they know deep down what your mom did to you.
They know a few things, yep.
Yeah, but deep down, right?
I mean, but to see the appeasement.
See, here's how I think it works, right?
So your mother was evil, maybe still is.
You survived evil, but you want your children to do more than survive evil.
You need your children to actually fight evil.
Yes.
And to do that, you don't have to go out and have a big confrontation with your mom or something like that, but you at least have to stop enabling it.
Yeah, yep.
100%.
Yeah, you're right.
Yeah. - Oh.
See, and one thing I worried about before, you know, I was wanting to chicken out of this call was thinking, Oh, he's going to tell me I need to confront my mom.
But yeah, I don't need to confront her.
You're right.
My, my actions and me not enabling her is all that needs to be done.
And quit putting on the phony face.
And if anyone does end up confronting your mother, it probably would be the very best spiritual thing for you, Julie, if it wasn't you.
Because you really need someone to stand up for you and take on your mom.
Yeah.
I mean, I'll call her if you want.
No, seriously.
She wants to talk.
She gets mad at this call.
She wants to talk to me.
I'll talk with her for hours if she wants.
We'll record that and put... I'll stand up for you.
Okay, Steph.
That would be like, okay, Steph, do you want to talk to your mom?
Oh, listen, I mean, I've worked through all this stuff for years.
I, you know, I'm on Twitter.
So I know what's going on with the crazy people of the world and all my wonderful followers.
But no, listen, I mean, It may be that what you need the most is for someone to see it and say it if confrontation is to happen.
You know, maybe it's your kids, maybe it's your husband, maybe it's, I don't know, maybe it's one of your sisters.
Who knows, right?
I don't know.
But I don't think you need to muscle your way through another thing.
I think you've carried a hell of a burden a hell of a long time.
And I think that for you to feel secure And protect it is really important.
And I don't think that you're going to get that myself from going to have a confrontation with your mom, because you can't win.
She'll just escalate until you comply or flee.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yep.
And you need someone like, here's something else.
I never said this before on the show, but before I got married, someone I knew, let's be nice and generic.
So before I got married, someone I knew, said, you know, I haven't really got to know your fiance that well, but the reason is, I mean, you're just going to get divorced anyway, so really what's the point in getting to know her?
Oh.
Wow.
Then I never really had much to do with that person ever again, because I don't want someone around who's invested in my failure.
Right.
Because if they're not right, they're going to sabotage.
Do you want someone in your life who's not fully invested in your strength and honesty and power and clarity and virtue?
No way.
No way.
Yeah.
It's a good perspective on that.
It's a good, yeah.
Man.
Who weakens you, who undermines you, who sets you at odds with yourself, who forces you to minimize your own suffering and be dishonest with what you went through as a child and to put on a brave face and to falsify.
And just make me so sad.
Yeah.
And everyone else then around.
To have a bully at the center of a family is a small circle of hell itself, isn't it?
Oh, it is!
My sisters and I, we cannot have a conversation where one of us is just complaining about our mom.
It's like we are our own therapists.
It would be so nice to have just a conversation with any of my sisters where we can just talk about things that don't even matter, but it always centers back on our mom and what she's done and what she did or what she will do.
It's like she is the center of our relationship and it's it's negative.
It's like a like when you see a sci-fi movie and there's this negative force and it's swirling around and get sucked into it.
We have that constantly.
And I know what you mean about, like, she's old.
I'm so sorry, you were about to say something else.
I can hold my thought.
What was that?
Oh, no, it's okay.
It's okay.
My mother is old.
And my mother is alone.
And I'm, I'm like, I'm sorry for that.
I wish, I wish things had been different.
I wish that she had made different choices.
I wish that she made different choices now.
I don't think she has any capacity to make new choices.
Free will is not something that you get forever in the way that I view things.
And any more than, you know, if you smoke a little bit when you're younger, maybe you can be a long distance runner or a ballerina or something or whatever, right?
But, you know, if you smoke for 30 years, well, you know, sorry, that choice is no longer available to you.
And I think that free will is kind of like a muscle.
And if you just constantly defend and react and explode and manipulate and never have any commitment to honesty other than Demanding other people be honest to you.
So you have to work less hard to get their secrets.
I Don't like I have no expectation.
I'm always gonna call up tomorrow and say, you know I've really been thinking about things and and you know, like I'm sorry We haven't talked for so long But I'm getting older and I've had chance to reflect and you know some of the things that you talked about because I sat down with her multiple times to try and talk about childhood and history and and issues because I was just like I was so sick and tired of not just not telling the truth not not Living the truth, not like this cone of non-existence that bore through me like that old Meryl Streep movie where she's got a hole in the middle.
Death becomes her, right?
And it's like, I was so sick and tired.
It's like, I don't have forever in this world to tell the truth because I'm going to die.
And when I'm dead, I have no capacity to tell the truth anymore.
My number of days to tell the truth is getting shorter and shorter every single day.
I was so tired of having these relationships that were so much the opposite.
Like you have with your kids and you have with your husband versus the one you have with your mother.
It's like I can't stand these opposites.
I can't stand these opposites that I have this wonderful thing here and then I have this thing where I... It's not only like I don't exist, I negative exist.
I'm the opposite.
It's not like I'm not me, I'm the opposite of me.
When I'm in this world.
I'm the opposite of me.
I'm a kid who never got to grow up.
I'm a kid who never got to tell the truth.
I'm a kid who never got to express anything.
I'm a kid who had to lie and hide and appease because I had no power.
And do I want to spend the rest of my life never getting out of that crappy little apartment where I had to lie to survive?
Yeah.
Why?
Why?
What respect is that to the adult strength and size and independence and power that I have now that I'm great?
Why would I ever want to stay in that little crib cage of a prison where I have to say the exact opposite of what I truly think and feel?
Why?
Because I'm terrified of being attacked.
I'm terrified of being abused.
Why?
Why would I want that for the rest of my life?
How is that honoring the good people in my life if I appease the evil people?
Yeah.
Wow.
Yeah.
So you came to that conclusion 15 years ago, huh?
Yeah, but I had a bit more of an extremity than you.
I hadn't slept much in 16 months, so it wasn't like some big virtuous transformation, like, oh, I've hit this peak of enlightenment.
I'm like, I either come to some truth, like I couldn't figure out what the hell was going on and why I wasn't sleeping.
And the reason I wasn't sleeping was because I was sleepwalking through my life.
I was appeasing.
I was not there.
I was scared.
And letting that go, letting that relationship go, has that been better?
It wasn't a relationship.
It wasn't a relationship, and it's not a relationship with your mother.
You can't have a relationship with someone you're that scared of.
You can't.
It's not a relationship.
It wasn't a relationship.
And for me, when you grow up appeasing other people, and you grow up having to placate violent and dangerous people, and people who will abandon you or abuse you, when you grow up like that, you know this as well as I do, when you grow up like that, you never ever ask, what's in it for me?
Because you can't, because there's nothing in it for you.
Yeah.
And so for me, I just sort of asked that, okay, so what's in it for, like, how is this benefiting me?
What's in it for me?
Like, I get when I was a kid I had to do this to survive, but now that I'm an adult, what's in this for me?
What do I want?
What do, I remember this, I was dating some girl and it was okay, but it was not like, I just remember sitting there thinking, okay, well, I get she wants to date me, and I like the first little bit of the relationship, but it's kind of gotten boring.
Like, okay, what's in this for me?
What's in this for me?
How am I?
And you never get to ask that question when you're raised by a narcissist.
Like, what's in it for me?
Because what's in it for me is not getting attacked by the narcissist and surviving.
That's my big payoff is like breathing tomorrow.
Wow.
Right?
And so just asking like, okay, it's not a relationship because when I bring anything to the table that the other person doesn't want, I just get attacked.
Or shut out, or manipulated, or bullied, or screamed at, or intimidated.
Like, that's not a relationship.
That's the same relationship a store owner has with the local mafia.
Like, please don't burn down my store.
Here's $500.
It's like, please don't burn down my emotional life.
Here's some compliance and pretend affection.
Wow.
It's not a relationship.
It's like a hostage situation, that's all it is.
I know.
So I'm like, I'm just not going to lie and pretend there's a relationship when there's no relationship.
It's not, oh, I give up this relationship.
It's like, no.
It's like if you have a dream of eating food and you wake up and there's no food, you say, well, I guess I'll stop eating.
It's like you weren't eating.
You were asleep.
It was a dream or a nightmare.
There's nothing there.
There's no person.
There's just an empty shell of electrical stimulation, taser-brained manipulation.
There's no relationship.
There's no back and forth.
There's no honesty.
There's no truth.
There's no love.
And once you know what the hell love is, why would you want this saccharine plastic fruit substitute for food?
Yeah.
Such a good point.
Wow.
And that's what it meant to me to finally get what it actually means to not bear false witness.
To not pretend there's a relationship when there's no relationship.
Yeah.
Wow.
A light bulb just went on in my brain.
It's unreal.
Totally unbelievable.
Good.
Hey, how was the convo for you?
That's most of what I wanted to say, so I hope that's helpful.
Uh, yeah.
I really appreciate it.
And with you, with your experience, with your mom, I think you, you above anyone else, um, could help me more.
Right.
Right.
Because you can relate and you have similar, a similar past.
Yeah.
And I mean, like you, I mean, my mom's older and part of me is like, okay.
Cause you know, there's always this curse that's put on people, you know, well, When they're dead, you'll have all this regret.
You know, it's this terrible curse that's put on you to try and bully you and control you, you know?
Like, oh, you're gonna regret it.
You don't go to that 80th birthday party, you're gonna regret it when she's dead and you'll never... Voodoo, voodoo, evil.
It's like, come on.
I mean, I thought about that.
I mean, I'm going to get the call, right?
Probably not too long from now.
Mom was never... I mean, she was slender, but she smoked.
So, I'm going to get the call and, you know, be like, well, your mom's dead, or your mom's in hospital, or she's dying, or whatever it is, right?
I mean, that's something, you know, we're mid-century people, so you kind of have to Get yourself ready.
But it's like, it's not like, you know, if someone's 20 and they die, you know, but if they're 80, I mean, you know, so you kind of have to gear yourself up for that kind of stuff.
And I have to look back and say, this is going to sound horrible to you because, but you know, I mean, I've not seen my mom for 15 years.
I'm glad that she's lived this long.
Because that means that's 15 years of good decisions.
If she died the day after I decided to stop seeing her, I would regret that because it'd be like, I only got one day of a good decision.
Now I've got 15 years of not having to see a horrible human being.
That's hugely valuable.
It's 10 years of my mom not impacting my daughter.
That makes the decision so much more valuable.
Interesting.
Yeah, wow.
But no, no, there's... And, you know, you find out if you matter to people.
You know, like, my mom doesn't, like, it's not like, oh, I can't live without you, I gotta, anything I can do, what do I need to do?
Like, I mean, I mean, she can get free therapy if she wants, I mean, she's, like, I mean, she doesn't, doesn't call, doesn't, right, doesn't care.
I mean, we were both just participating in a charade.
Wow.
I'm sorry that you went through that.
I appreciate that.
I appreciate that.
That's very kind of you to say.
I'm sorry about that too, especially seeing with my wife what a great mom looks like, like what a really great mom looks like and talking to people like you.
I mean, you're a great mom.
You've raised five great kids.
I mean, when you see the difference, yeah, it's harsh.
It's harsh for sure.
I appreciate you saying that.
Yeah, you're welcome.
I appreciate what you do and it's amazing.
You're putting out content like crazy.
Your brain must be just like constantly.
How do you sleep at night?
You didn't sleep before, but how do you sleep at night?
Sleep is pretty good.
I find if I exercise my brain a lot during the day, then I sleep really, really well.
If for whatever reason I don't, but I appreciate that.
Well, listen, I'm going to close it off now.
We've had a good old jawbone.
What was that?
Oh, it's over two hours.
Look at that.
Time flies.
When you're digging through garbage.
When you're doing at least one of the Ten Commandments.
Alright.
Well, just wanted your feedback last.
You mentioned good useful combo and helpful and all that.
Did it kind of go the way you expected or was there a lot of twists and turns?
I was expecting it to be scarier.
But then I thought, nah, cause I've listened to you enough.
I thought he's going to get to the bottom of things and everything's going to be fine.
So I was actually really hopeful.
And so it's, it's actually been way better than what I thought.
I thought it would be therapeutic and good, but this is just totally enlightening.
I really appreciate it.
And I, I, I, I just want to tell you, my kids will listen, my, my older kids, and they will be very, very pleased.
They've been texting me.
As this conversation has rolled on, and I haven't read the text, but I'm sure they're probably saying, Mom, how's it going?
Because they were all just, oh, we're so excited for you to get to the bottom of this.
Because they see my hurt, and they don't want me to be hurt.
And so it'll be nice to hear their response.
Okay, then this last little bit is for them and for your husband.
Okay.
Okay, just pretend I hung up on you, right?
Okay.
When people minimize their pain, it's kind of like a challenge and an invitation.
So when people minimize their pain, they're asking you, will you go along with this charade that I wasn't really that hurt?
Even though they'll drop fact bombs about how much they really were hurt.
And it's kind of like a dance.
They're trying to find out whether or not you will push through with them to find out how much they were hurt.
And I knew when I asked Julie how she would react to her little girl being molested by a babysitter's boyfriend, I knew that that was going to be shocking and revelatory and painful and illuminating and all of that.
And that's because I, you know, I'm not saying you guys haven't, but because in the hurly-burly of family life it's easy to let things kind of blur or let things, you know, go by the wayside.
Everyone's so busy and I get all of that.
But when people do try to minimize their pain, They kind of want you to dig deeper.
And the reason they want you to dig deeper is that they are facing a beast beyond their capacity to manage.
They're facing a beast too large for them to take down alone.
And they need allies.
And now that you have heard how much Julie's mother caused her pain and Invited men in who violated her in truly unholy ways.
Or a man.
And the selfishness, the narcissism, the coldness, the horribleness.
You've heard it all.
I don't need to repeat it all.
My belief, it's your family and it's just my thoughts, but I think she certainly needs a breather.
She needs some space to find out what she's like without this fear in her life.
And if you guys have grown up, like the husband, you grew up with a great mom, as Julie says, and your kids, you know, Julie's kids, you've grown up with Julie, who's a great mom.
So, you don't know.
I mean, you don't know, but you get a sense of it from this call, right?
So, I think she needs some protection.
I think she needs some security.
And if you want to understand how scary Julie's mom is, then you can go and confront Julie's mom, right?
And see how that goes, right?
And if you're really, really scared to do that, then that will really understand.
You will really understand what Julie went through as a child.
And if you are not so scared to do that, and you end up doing it, then it's going to go like Krakatoa thermonuclear on you.
And then you'll have some sense of what Julie was up against.
And I think that will give you some real sympathy.
And we, I wouldn't say walking wounded, but we strengthened through combat people need to see that other people need to see what we went through.
Because there is this great divide, right, of the people who are really, really hurt, and the people who had it pretty good or decently, like that old line from As Good As It Gets, you know, there are people with wonderful stories, great stories, with friends, and by the lake, with noodle salad, and you know, just nobody in this car, right?
And the people, those of us who have been really hurt by this kind of stuff, I mean, we have strength and we have a deep and sometimes bitterly acquired wisdom and knowledge.
And we need to be seen by people who aren't wounded.
Because to be seen by the other wounded, it has value and that's great.
But we also need to be seen by the people who aren't wounded.
And not to tend our wounds, but to just understand what we went through.
Because sometimes if we look scared or we look nervous or we look uncertain or we have anxieties and so on, we don't want to be seen as weak.
We want to be seen as those are the things that we've overcome and sometimes are still in the process of overcoming and having visibility to that is important, I think, for us.
And that's where we, I think, get our genuine healing and connection from.
So, I think she needs a moat.
The mother is too large a beast to take down and also there is some collusion among the sisters as far as I understand it.
So, it may be worth talking to them as well.
But I think some fierce protection of Julie's heart given what has happened in her past is well worth it and I think it will give her a kind of security and sense that somebody finally has stepped into this hellish house of her childhood or houses of her childhood three times every year moving schools every school year that somebody has finally stepped in and drawn a sand between her and the beasts and said
None shall pass.
And I really think she needs that.
And I think you'll see a flowering and deepening of her self-knowledge and her emotional accessibility, which is already very impressive and would be well worth the investment.
So I really appreciate you handing her over to me for this amount of time.
And I really appreciate your conversation, Julie and Jules.
And I hope that you will let me know how it goes.
I will.
Thank you so much.
All right.
All the best.
Take care.
You too.
Okay, bye.
Well, thank you so much for enjoying this latest free domain show on philosophy.
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