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Aug. 7, 2019 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:27:07
"How Do I Stop Dating Hot Crazy Women?" Freedomain Call In
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Hi everybody here with Bob and Bob is going to read us his email to get started.
Dear Stefan, I'm 23 years old and I still live with my mother, younger brother who's 15 and stepfather.
I'm trying my hardest to move out as I quit uni and started an internship so I can get money and leave as soon as possible.
I've never met my father.
He left when I was three months old.
I had a few Skype conversations with him until I was 15 which was when he started to say terrible things about my mother so I told him to swivel on it My ACE score is 6, so not that bad.
I also live in a country where neither of my parents are from, which I think plays into what I feel in the coming paragraphs.
My brother is my half-brother, however I would never call him that because I love him dearly.
This makes it all the worse that it seems like he has absolutely no interest in spending time with me, which is why I've stopped trying.
He definitely has a social media phone addiction, which I attribute to other things which I might touch upon later, or if you decide My story is worthy.
We can talk about it on the show.
I don't believe I've had any dodgy sexual experiences when I was younger, but I got beat up and bullied on a daily basis in school, hit with belts, stripped, and then locked out of the locker room, etc.
I didn't mention this to my mother until later, and she never took it seriously and asked, well, if you had told me, I would have stepped in.
I do believe she would have, but from listening to your shows, this is also a form of disconnection.
I asked myself, how did you not know?
She did, however, go out guns blazing when the teachers were making fun of me for being dyslexic, among other things.
My mother can be very fierce.
My stepfather was a functional alcoholic.
He made a lot of money and worked for a huge finance company where I live, where everyone thought he was a great guy, which he was when he isn't drunk.
But, as you say, that doesn't change that he is a complete scumbag of a human being.
He would come home and that's when the shitstorm would commence.
The reason I put stepfather in quotation marks It's that my mother and he are not really together anymore and they've had separate bedrooms since I can remember.
I don't really understand how they ever started living together.
I've never asked, now I'm thinking about it.
He didn't hit me when I was very young, but I remember when I was 16 I was in the garage with some friends and he came out absolutely pissed drunk and said I had been smoking in the garage.
I did smoke at the time, but not in the garage.
He then threw a bottle at me and grabbed me by my arm.
I took a beer bottle off the shelf and smashed it on his head and then ran.
I stayed up all night that night.
My mother did try to contact me, but I ignored her.
I don't know why I've elaborated on this specific event, but it's something that has stuck with me.
I love my brother and my mother, but I don't feel like we have much of a real connection at all.
My stepfather, I don't mind when he's not drunk, but since he's now retired, he's drunk all the time.
When I go to work at 6am, I can already see him looking for alcohol in the fridge.
When I come home, he wakes up on over and shouts at me because apparently I opened the door too noisily.
Anyway, I wouldn't give a shit if he kneeled over and died.
This actually almost happened when he passed out of nowhere and had some sort of epileptic attack.
This was maybe when I was 21 and my mother was screaming to call an ambulance and for a brief second I considered lying and saying that I had called the ambulance and letting him die.
I did eventually call an ambulance, but I hate the fact that I even thought of doing that.
I mentioned not living in a country where my parents are from.
I did grow up in this country, and in many ways, I should be glad.
I used to see my family members in my country of origin regularly.
I used to think I had a great connection with them when I was younger, but as I grew older, I realized they didn't give a shit about me at all, as every time I've tried to meet them since I've been a grown-up, they have always found excuses not to.
I used to look up to them a lot, but now I see how broken they are.
Single dads, drug addicts, violent to their kids.
It didn't have a great youth either, which doesn't excuse it, but it does give an explanation.
My dream or my goal in life is to have a family and to be the greatest dad my father never was because he is a pathetic loser and I wouldn't want my children to go through what I did, not having a father who even gave half a shit about them.
I guess in a way I want to stick it to my inner dad.
I don't know. My point is I've dated women and every time It's the same story.
I feel like I don't know them at all.
I feel like I can't build any kind of connection with anyone, to be honest.
Again, the disconnection in my life I feel with people in general.
Friendships usually just die out and the worst thing is I somehow don't care.
I care because I know this isn't good for me, but I don't feel sad when it happens.
I have one friend from my childhood, and even with him, I don't feel much of a connection.
I could go on with the childhood experiences with my family, friends, and romantic relationships, but I guess my question is, how can I build emotional connections with people so I can build a healthy family?
Because I stated earlier I want to be the best dad possible, which entails also having the best mom for my children.
And how can I be the greatest father, find the best woman, and not to speak of having a happy, healthy family when I can't build emotional connections to anyone?
I don't think I've had the sincere connection to anyone that was mutual since the age of about 15.
So I found police helped me figure out how to build strong emotional connections to people around me that are worthy of it because I will not have kids with a woman I am not 100% certain I will spend the rest of my life with and possibly how to build a connection with my mother and brother because I do dearly love them but I don't feel they have a connection with me the way I would like.
Even if you don't consider this worthy enough, I'd really appreciate if you let me know whether you've read this or not.
Best regards and thank you for your shows.
They've helped me immensely and as soon as I finish my internship and I've moved out, I plan on donating to you regularly.
Keep doing what you do. I think you know how many people's lives you're changing and saving every day.
Well, thanks, Bob. That's very kind.
And how do you feel reading this?
It seems like you were trying to rush through it as fast as humanly possible and without any emotion.
Like, you can't even connect to your own story.
Do you feel, like, pretty nervous talking about this?
Yeah, I struggle a lot in general.
I don't like emotions.
I don't like showing them.
But it was more like, because we've already started a bit late, and it's a big, big text.
Oh yeah, no, listen. Well, I'll just tell you something.
I mean, in some ways, the longer the text, the slower you need to go.
Because if people... Like, if you're not connected to it, then people start to tune out.
I was fine. I was listening to it.
I'm just sort of pointing that out. It's just a little tip I learned in theater school, that if you have a long speech and you rush it, it just seems longer to everyone.
Otherwise, slow down and take your time.
I'll try to remember that. You said you had Skype conversations with your biological dad until about the age of 15, but he started saying things about your mom.
And what was it that he said about your mom that you found so unpleasant?
Well... Well, you see, it's all so confusing to me because I've spoken to my uncles and all that, and they tell me a different story to what my mum tells me, but I don't think my mum would ever lie to me, and she's never given me a reason to feel that way.
So I believe what she's told me, and she's never said horrible things about him or anything, and she's always been supportive of me being able to meet him in real life.
What he said was stuff like, she was taking you away from me, and she made me leave, she did this, and I can't remember specifics, but that was just really irritating to me, because to me, you know, maybe she picked a twat of her dad, but at least she was there for me when you weren't.
Alright, so Bob...
You know, sometimes we have, like, I have these long conversations.
And this could be a lengthy conversation, but sometimes I have a long conversation with people.
And, you know, sometimes for the first hour or even longer, the conversation is me gathering information, right?
Because I'm trying to figure out what the lay of the landscape is.
And in particular, what I'm looking for is contradictions.
And by that, I don't mean anyone lying to me.
I'm just looking. Because, you know, if you say to me, you know, my mom is seven feet tall, right?
Like you, Bob, your mom is seven feet tall.
I don't think you could be, right?
Could be physically true, right?
I have no way to know claims that occur that are empirical outside the conversation.
However, what I'm really, really good at, like scary good at, is noting contradictions within what someone is saying.
And that's where... The greatest treasure is in these conversations, right?
Because if you say, my mother is seven foot tall, and then you say, my mom is really short, well, I don't know whether she's seven foot tall or really short, but I know she can't be both.
Does that make sense? Absolutely.
All right. So you said a number of times in your initial letter that you love your mom, and now you say, well, my mom wouldn't lie to me, and my mom was there for me, right?
So you have a very positive view of your mom in some ways, right?
Yeah. Except she married a man and gave a child to a man who abandoned his family when you were three months old.
And then, and then you see, she got involved with a violent alcoholic.
And kept him around her children for many years, even to the point where you broke a beer bottle over his head.
Now you don't have any say As a child, over who your mom brings into your life, right?
She chose to bring a guy who you say slandered her, a guy who abandoned his family, a guy who only had Skype calls with you and didn't even listen to you when you said, stop talking trash about mom.
And then she brought in a functional alcoholic who was violent and abusive to your environment.
And how old were you when your stepdad came into the picture?
Well, I don't even know.
I can't remember a time when he wasn't around.
Just give me a rough idea.
I'm not asking for the date. I cannot remember a time when he was not around.
Okay, so very young, right?
So she kind of jumped from your dad to the stepdad, right?
I suppose so, yeah.
And you've already told me why.
I'm just wondering if you know why she kept a violent, abusive, alcoholic around her children when they were young.
Because he's got money?
Yeah, you already told me, right?
Because he's wealthy, right? Well, can I say something?
If I'm off base, man, you push back fiercely.
Because I did confront her about it multiple times.
And we had a big cry about it.
But she said she's afraid that She doesn't want the same thing to happen again.
And I called her stupid.
You know, because my brother's my half-brother.
What same thing? What do you mean?
My brother's my half-brother.
So this guy is his dad.
No, no, I understand that.
But what doesn't she want to have happen again?
She doesn't want to have another broken family kind of thing, you know?
Well, hang on, hang on, hang on.
So if you don't want another broken family, do you know what you do?
Or rather, what you don't do?
You don't get involved with a functional, violent, abusive alcoholic who drinks in the morning.
You know, that's a great way to not have another broken family, right?
That's only started since...
No, no, I get it.
So you said, and I was listening, right?
So you said earlier that he worked for a finance company and he was an alcoholic, but since he retired, he's drinking in the morning, right?
Yep, yep, yep. Now, of course, you don't know.
As a kid, he might have been drinking in the morning before.
That is true. I mean, probably not to the same extent as he is now, right?
But you don't know.
Anyway, I'm certainly willing to accept that his drinking has escalated since he retired, right?
But, yeah, if you don't want a broken home, then you don't get involved with a violent, abusive alcoholic, right?
How old were you when you smashed the beer bottle on your stepdad's head?
Fifteen, approximately.
Yeah, I see. I don't know, man.
I have, maybe I'm just way too much of a tight ass, right?
Maybe. Just maybe my standards are ridiculously high.
But I'm telling you this, man.
I'm telling you this.
Imagine, just picture, you want to be a good dad, right?
I can't tell you how much I admire.
That's fantastic. You want to be a good dad.
Now imagine you have a son, right?
And your son has a babysitter.
And you go out for an evening with your wife.
You come home and you find out that the babysitter attacked your son and he had to defend himself by smashing the babysitter with a beer bottle.
Would you continue to hire that babysitter?
No, fuck. I don't want a failed relationship with the babysitter.
Yeah, motherfucker. No, but seriously, right?
I mean, we're kind of laughing, but...
Let's say that for some reason she didn't know how dysfunctional your stepdad was.
Her boyfriend, right? That's pretty clear.
You hit him on the head. You could have really harmed him, right?
You could have cracked his skull. And then you flee all night, right?
And then you come back home, right?
Yeah, the next day sometime in the morning.
Right. When he's at work?
I don't remember, but I think it must have been a weekend.
Okay, so you come back home, and of course your mother knows that you got into a fight with your stepdad, and you ended up hitting him on the head with a beer bottle.
I don't actually remember.
No, I'm not saying you remember what happened, but I'll tell you why you didn't remember.
I can tell you exactly why you don't remember.
You know, have you ever been on a long train trip?
Yeah, multiple times.
Yeah, yeah, okay. So you know what happens in a train trip, right?
So, you know, mostly, you know, I'm guessing from the accent, you're not from Nairobi, right?
So, you know, British countryside, right?
It's fields, it's little townhouses, you know, occasionally you whistle through a little town.
That's where it was.
But as I said, I live in a different country.
Okay, okay. But, because I remember when I was six, I used to get on the train, you know, Hogwarts style, and I used to go...
To boarding school. And I remember we used to leave in the afternoon and we'd get to the boarding school at night.
It was a slow train, had a lot of stops and all that.
And I remember sitting there with my little freckled head stuck up against the dusty glass of the British Rail train.
And it's kind of hypnotic, right?
And you just see these fields swinging by, like the background of an old Popeye cartoon, and it kind of blurs together, right?
Oh, field, field, field, field, little bit of woods, field, farmhouse, cow, field, field.
It just all blurs together.
But then every now and then you see this big beautiful river or you see a city or something and that change, right?
So you don't remember most of what blurs by because it's all the same, but you remember the exceptions, right?
The different things that you see, right?
Like occasionally you'll go over some big bridge and there'll be a beautiful river and there'd be little birds flying down there and stuff.
Really, you know, the sunlight glittering on the river waters are peaceful in there.
Peaceful people in their hip waders fishing, fly fishing, and it's cool.
You remember those little flashes because they're different.
The reason I'm saying all of this is that I can tell you why you don't remember what happened when you came home after you hit your stepfather in the head with a beer bottle.
It's because absolutely nothing different happened.
Your mother didn't say, okay, listen, before someone ends up in the hospital or in jail, I'm pulling the plug on this bullshit.
Right? You, my son, are my primary loyalty and responsibility, so I'm afraid my drunken boyfriend, you have to move out Until and unless you get therapy,
you start going to AA or something, like you get this drinking not only under control but stopped completely, you figure out how to apologize because you're a grown-ass man and if you're in a physical confrontation with a 15-year-old, you're an asshole.
And the son, the 15-year-old, is not responsible because he's 15, he can't even drive yet.
So you my boyfriend are 100% responsible for getting into a physical dangerous fight where someone could have been seriously hurt and so you got to move out because my primary loyalty here is to my son who should not be exposed to this level of violence and certainly as hell should not be enacting it.
So if your mother had said something like that you would have remembered it until your dying day.
Indeed. So you had the same, squish down the conflicts, everything's fine, we're just going to move on, it's all pretending like nothing happened, and all this garbage, right?
To be fair, she did, when we ever had any confrontations, she did shout, but it was just meaningless, retarded jokes.
Dumb shit shouting.
What you said is like a solution to the problem, but it was just, how can you do this?
How can you do this? And then the next day...
Okay, so to be fair to your mom, she was worse than useless.
Okay, I'm willing to go with that.
If that's your standard of fairness, then she was worse than useless.
Okay. Now, did your biological father make a lot of money?
I don't think he did, but his dad did.
But I must say as well, my mom makes...
Quite a bit of dough as well.
Like, she's not rich, rich, but she's not...
Oh, I get it. So she got rid of the guy who didn't make a lot of money, and she kept the guy who made a lot of money.
Tell me if I'm wrong. I'm happy to be corrected, man.
I just... Because hypergamy, it's not just a village in Wales, right?
No, it's more...
It's never been...
Money's never been a talking point, something that's been important.
Money's never been important?
Money's not important to women with children?
You know what I mean? It's more...
I mean, she's always been working and she's always...
She's paid for herself.
It's not like...
No, she hasn't.
No, she has. No, she hasn't.
How not? Well, she was with a guy who made a lot of money.
I mean, what if he was a poor guy and he was doing this shit?
What if he was a what? A poor guy.
You mean like your biological dad who she let go and kicked down?
No, no, no. He's not poor.
He's just not loaded.
Yeah, he's not as rich, right?
Yeah, I guess, yeah. Okay, so how is it possible that your mom is paying her own way, right?
Let's say, I mean, just for the sake of argument, right?
Let's look at the numbers, right? Let's say that both your parents, well, sorry, that your mom and her boyfriend both make $100,000 a year.
So combined, pounds, 100,000 pounds a year, right?
Let's go crazy, right? So they make £200,000 a year.
Now, I mean, just pretend there's no taxes, whatever, right?
So now they have a combined income of $200,000 a year.
So what they do is they get a lifestyle that costs $200,000 a year, right?
So that's a lot more money to spend than if it was just your mom, right?
Fair enough. Right, so if your mom didn't have a boyfriend, she wouldn't be able to afford £200,000 a year.
She'd only be able to afford £50,000.
Sorry, she'd only be able to afford £100,000 a year, right?
Mm-hmm. Did he make more than your mom?
Who did? Your stepdad.
Oh, yeah, yeah. Okay, so let's say he makes £200,000 a year and she only makes £100,000 a year.
So that's £300,000 a year they're both living on, so she's getting subsidized at least £50,000.
Okay, so I get that you're saying she's staying because she needs these extra 200,000.
But I can agree with that.
But I can't imagine it being the original reason for the get-together.
Do you know what I mean? Why?
Was he not wealthy when they met?
Or had a big job or a big career or a big potential?
Not as wealthy, no.
Yeah, but he's in an industry where he can make some serious coin, right?
Yeah, yeah, definitely. Okay.
So she dumped your dad and stayed with...
Because look, I mean, look, we can both understand that being a violent, abusive alcoholic is three significant minuses, right?
Definitely. Right?
And her children pay the price for the most part.
So given that there are these big significant minuses, The question always becomes, what are the pluses that make up for that?
So you've probably heard this phrase, and maybe you've even met women like this, or maybe you've even dated women like this.
They're called a hot mess, right? Oh, yeah, definitely.
Yeah, yeah, the high-strung, they're neurotic, they're unstable, they're like, who's going to drive you home?
Cars video weeping in the middle of the night.
They binge eat in the middle of the night.
They occasionally cut themselves for funsies on weekends.
But they're pretty, right?
Hot! Fit birds, as they would say, in the old country, right?
Now, so we get the minuses, right?
The minuses are that they're kind of insane, right?
But the pluses, so there's big minuses, right?
They're accusatory, they're erotic, they're jealous, they're unstable, they're constantly looking to monkey branch up and so on.
But the pluses, they're pretty!
So we get the minuses, which is the significant pathological personality defects, but the plus is, you know, they're built like Sofia Vergara or whatever works for younger people or whatever, right?
You know, like the kind of Katy Perry rack you can set a champagne glass on, right?
Or whatever it is that works for you, right?
So we've got the minus personality, but we've got the plus, which is hotness.
So, this guy, your stepdad, has massive minuses, because I'm not just talking like, oh, he drinks too much, oh, he's abusive, oh, he's violent, but all of the personality traits that come along, massive minuses, right?
Now, what are the pluses?
It can't be personality, because he's a violent, abusive alcoholic.
It's not personality. It can't be that he's a great conversationalist, because drunks are really boring.
Oh yes. As conversation.
I remember one ghastly night.
Yeah, I remember one ghastly night in my early 20s when I was over at my mom's place and she had some drunken friend over who just wouldn't let anyone go to bed.
Just was like lonely and pathetic and just kept talking and talking and talking and telling the most horrible stories and just a drunken woman who would not let anyone go to bed.
And it's really intrusive and it's annoying and it's unpleasant.
That is exactly how it is, man.
It is horrible, right? It's like they're so intrusive.
Alcohol dissolves any personal boundaries that any sane human being can have.
Sorry, go ahead. Meanwhile, it's just everyone sticks to their room because they just can't be arsed listening to his dodgy conspiracy theories about UFOs and all that shit.
It's like, man, no one cares, man.
I really like listening to people.
I used to love listening to my granddad when he was talking about the army and things like that.
I loved listening to my uncle when he used to be in the army.
Things like that.
Stuff that happened, history.
But I just do not care much for UFOs and weird Jewish conspiracy theories and blah.
Wait, Jews pilot UFO? Okay, no, I gave a chance.
Yeah, yeah, no. And the boring stories of addicts are really designed to just hollow you out.
I mean, it's an exercise of power.
I don't have to be interesting because I'm scary, right?
And I remember my mom telling me one story about some, I think it was some woman, it may have been the same woman who was over drunk.
Some woman was dating some guy and my mom was over at their place and they wanted to leave and he held them at gunpoint for hours.
That's the kind of life that she had.
And it's, yeah, no, there's a horrible, horrible, horrible underworld out there of addicts and alcoholics.
I mean, everyone focuses on opioid crisis.
That's terrible stuff.
But alcoholism is such a curse and a plague.
Definitely. I'm glad that at least my little brother says he's never going to drink at all.
I have the occasional drink, but I always...
Well, he's not your stepdad, right?
So you don't have the genetics that may lead you.
Not that it's all safe, but you know, you don't have the genetics that lead you down that road that may lead you or may make it more of a slippery slope.
Yeah, definitely. I mean, I guess...
So what are the pluses, right?
Is he very handsome? I don't know.
Maybe a tad over average?
Okay, so he's like a six or whatever, right?
Yeah. Okay, so he's a violent, drunken, plain, abusive, alcoholic.
So, what are the pluses that make him worth keeping around for 20 plus years when he's abusing her kids?
What's the plus? There's only one plus.
We know there's only one plus, right?
What's the plus? Ka-ching.
Ka-ching. So, tell me, tell me, how the fuck do you love a woman who sold out your childhood for money?
I don't know, man. She's just always been there for me.
Hang on, hang on.
That's just a clichéd phrase.
I don't know what that means in this context.
And again, I'm perfectly happy to be corrected, but you sound like a guy who could take some blunt talk.
Maybe it's the accent that throws me off, but you sound like a lot of guys I grew up with who were pretty down with blunt talk even as kids, right?
How do you love a woman who seems to have sold out your childhood for money?
I'm happy to hear about her virtues.
I really am. But being there for me, that's not being there for you.
That's bringing a violent alcoholic into your life who's dangerous to your self-esteem, your physical safety.
Listen, man, if you'd hit...
Let's say you went to hit this guy.
With a beer bottle, and you did some serious damage.
Let's say that he jerked back and you hit him in the eye, and he lost an eye.
Let's say that he jerked back, tripped, and fell on a lawnmower or something where he could have got seriously hurt, or fell on some shears, or fell on a shovel, or banged his head on a concrete wall.
Like, you understand, this could have kind of destroyed your life.
Just this moment when you were 15, right?
And I'm sure that there were more.
And she's like, no, we're going to keep them around.
Now, she doesn't even sleep with them. As you say, they sleep in separate bedrooms.
But the one thing she ain't kicking out is the cash.
So tell me the virtues.
I see a lot of minuses with your mom.
But saying that she's always been there for me, I don't know what that means.
I need something a bit more specific, if that's all right.
Well, when I was younger, I was a lot more...
Emotionally open and I was able to elaborate and talk to my mum about how I was feeling and all that stuff.
She'd always sit there, listen, try and give me advice.
I used to feel a really good connection, but it's just recently, well recently, last couple of years, and I guess it has to do with the stepdad where We all just fuck off into our own rooms because no one wants to listen to them.
Okay, so hang on. And I appreciate you telling me that.
I'm very happy to hear that. What age were you when you were having these chats with your mum?
Roughly. Early teens, mid-teens?
Early teens. Early teens, alright.
Now did you ever bring up and maybe you felt or thought this at the time?
Maybe you didn't but did you ever bring up any issues that you had with her boyfriend?
Yeah, yeah, okay, okay And do you remember the kind of things that you used to say to her?
Well, it was...
I can't tell you the specifics, but I sort of remember this one theme I kept bringing up.
I'm like, why is he still here?
You wanted him gone. You wanted him gone.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or why are we still here, I suppose.
Because you were living in his house?
Well, no, at the time...
Oh, yeah, actually we were. We were living...
Well, no, they bought the house together.
And I'd always ask, and it was always, yeah, I don't want your brother to have the same experience with his dad as you had with your dad leaving.
And that sort of always was the end of the conversation.
I can't remember it going any further.
I can't remember inquiring about, but isn't this worse than if he was just gone, sort of thing.
So you wanted... Your violent, drunken abusist, mom's boyfriend, out of your life, right?
Mm-hmm. Right.
I still do. No, I get that.
I get that. So how the hell is she there for you when you continually express your desire for safety and security, and she doesn't?
I mean, can you imagine this, right?
Let's say you've got some ailment.
You go to the doctor. And the doctor says, hey man, I'm totally happy to sit down and tell me what your symptoms are.
And you go through the list of what's going on for you, this, that, and the other.
And he listens and says, oh man, tell me more.
Tell me more. Right?
And he's like, oh yeah, yeah, that's really, that's great, man.
I'm glad you told me. That's really interesting stuff.
All right. Okay, well, I'm going to see my next patient now.
So thanks for coming in and telling me what's going on for you, but I'm going to go see my next patient.
So just head out through the waiting list and get lost, right?
What would you think? Bell end.
Yeah, bell end, right?
Why? He listened, man.
He listened to all your symptoms.
Okay, so this is the only time...
I've felt that she hasn't reacted to stuff.
I remember...
Well, she didn't know you were being bullied, right?
I did tell her once, and she did cause a shitstorm.
But then it stopped for a while, and then it carried on, and I just felt like...
You mean at school, right? Yeah, at school.
And what were you being bullied for, do you know?
Well, of course you don't, sorry.
But what were you being bullied for?
My name, because I was a skinny kid.
I was a bit of a weirdo, to be honest, I guess.
I just didn't care much for football, well, soccer.
And stuff like that.
I prefer to, I don't know, ant keeping and stuff like that.
And people just thought I was weird.
Well, okay. First of all, you're more intelligent than the average.
And that's just something I give to my listeners because reality, right?
And no, listen, I remember...
I mean, I grew up in the UK, right?
I grew up in London. Crystal Palace!
It's like they never made it out of the third division my entire childhood, but I'm supposed to cheer for all these guys from Jamaica.
But anyway... And I went, I remember once, some friend's dad took me to a soccer game, football, right?
I'm going to see football, right? And I think the game was over two hours, and the end score was 0-0.
And I'm like, my God.
This is worse than dentistry.
Like, I would pay good money to not ever go near a football pitch ever, ever again.
The funny thing is it's actually quite like playing soccer.
It's like an action-packed game as opposed to, like, godforsaken football, like American football, where in three hours the ball is in play for, like, two and a half minutes and it's just enough to make you want to chew your own head off with the aforementioned garage.
So, yeah, watching sports is...
It's weird to me.
And I love playing sports.
I love playing sports. Squash, tennis, you name it.
Only a couple of sports I've never played.
I've played just about every sport. I don't think I've ever really played basketball.
But I've just played just about every other sport.
And it's just weird.
And I don't think it's actually that healthy.
Like, I watched recently the Toronto Raptors were in the finals.
And I watched some of the games.
I think two of the games.
And, you know, you kind of get into it, but you're not doing anything.
So you get this, like, stress or cortisol or excitement, but you're just kind of sitting there in your own stew, right?
As opposed to if you're actually playing a game, you're kind of working off all that energy.
I think it just pools in and eventually gives you a heart attack.
That's just some nonsense theory, but I think watching sports… I guess it's a bit like porn, isn't it?
Yeah, well, I don't know.
Yeah, I suppose so, right?
I mean... I'm making that, you know, connection.
But anyone who can watch porn for the length of the average American football game, it's like, I'd say I'd shake their hand, but I probably wouldn't want to.
But, yeah, it's so delicious.
Yeah, sports is...
Yeah, and the...
I remember the late Harry Brown used to say, he's a libertarian podcaster, he used to say, you know...
Don't anyone tell me what the basketball game was.
And it's like, who cares who puts what ball in what hoop?
You know, unless you're actually playing the game, I just...
It's like watching someone build a house and thinking you're a handyman.
It's a weird thing. Just go and play some sports.
Don't just watch it. Anyway, that's my particular perspective.
And so, yeah, you weren't that interested in that stuff.
I wouldn't say, listen, don't say you're a weirdo, man.
No, seriously, the language that we use to portray ourselves is very important.
And I say this, I nag my daughter about this from time to time.
You know, you have to be very precise and careful.
Language becomes personality.
Like the words that you use about yourself sink down into your soul and form to some degree the foundation of the substructure of who you are.
Right? You weren't weird.
You were smart and you were traumatized.
Right? Your dad left.
You got an abusive, violent, drunk in the house that you're desperate to get rid of.
And your mom just smiles and nods and doesn't ever do anything to keep you safe or protected.
Right? You're not weird. You're smart and you're traumatized.
It's not a weirdo.
Not a weirdo at all. It's really, really important.
And I really want to, if there's only one thing you take away from this conversation, do not, do not use other people's labels on yourself.
Because that's why, that's why people call other people names.
It's in the hopes that people internalize.
Like if we want to, if we really want to stop the problem of verbal abuse, Then we have to stop internalizing negative labels given by others.
It's the foundational way you stop verbal abuse, right?
So somebody just posted on Twitter about my Wikipedia page, which is garbage and just ridiculous and false and all that.
Now it's been locked to prevent vandalism.
Now it is vandalism.
The whole damn page is vandalism.
And so if...
If I were to internalize the language that is used about me in certain circles, that would be to give those people the power to define me that they damn well haven't earned by any process of integrity or virtue or honesty.
Judge people.
Don't judge yourself, first and foremost.
Judge people. And you have to have, you know, like the spam filter or...
The filters that are on your router to make sure that malicious hackers don't get into your network or whatever.
You have to have very, very strict filters on who you let describe you.
Sorry? I only just bagged my whole group of friends like two years ago.
I just bagged them. I told them to fuck off.
I've never spoken since then.
Was that because of language issues?
Yeah, yeah. They were all sheep.
There was this one guy, and I'm absolutely convinced he's a narcissist, and he just had control over everyone.
And for a while, I think he had some control over me.
You know, he'd say this, and I'd just agree.
And then at some point, my mind just clicked, and I went like, why the fuck am I saying this?
I don't even believe this.
Why am I doing this? And then I just said, yo, guys, Sayonara, I'm out.
Yeah, yeah. No, listen.
I mean, there are people in your life who are going to make you feel powerful and strong.
And that doesn't mean that they're pumping up your ego or telling you everything you do is great.
Those are just manipulators. But there are people who can see the greatness within you and you can see the greatness within them.
And in each other's presence, you become greater, right?
Greater than the sum of the parts. And there are other people who just diminish you.
They just try and put you at a mocking distance To yourself, they try to implant a diminishing third eye that shrinks you down to nothing.
And there's a variety of reasons.
We don't have to get into as to why they do that.
But especially if you want to achieve something great in your life, and if you want to be a great parent, you want to achieve something great in your life, you have the choice.
You can either achieve something great in your life, or you can have people around you who diminish you, but you can't have both.
You know, the success in life It's almost exclusively at the beginning a matter of some serious pruning.
If you want to succeed in this life, you have to jettison people who diminish you.
Now, of course, you can say ahead of time, hey man, you know, I really feel kind of diminished by all this kind of stuff.
I really feel kind of diminished by all of this stuff.
I'd really rather you didn't talk about this kind of stuff.
Don't approach me this way.
Don't describe me this way. It's just a waste of time and energy.
No, it's worse than a waste of time.
It whittles you down to nothing.
Yeah, a waste of time and energy.
Yeah. So, I mean, when I started to do what I'm doing, I'm like, you know what, if I'm going to be a philosopher, I'm going to, like, if I'm going to do this, I'm going to go all the way.
Like, I'm not going to just, oh, a little bit here, a little bit there.
It's like, I'm going to go. I mean, I don't like to do anything half measures.
To me, like, you know, I picked up the guitar, I played it, I learned a couple of songs, and I'm like, you know what, I'm never going to be a great guitarist.
Recently, I was working on piano, which I had learned a little bit when I was younger, and I was doing okay, and I was like, you know what, but compare it to philosophy?
See, I've got to compare everything to philosophy, right?
That's the problem with me, right?
I've got to compare everything to philosophy.
And so I'm like, you know what, yeah, I could be okay at piano, but not particularly great.
Now, there's other things which I'm willing to be okay at, like I'm sort of an average tennis player, maybe slightly above average.
I competed when I was younger.
But, you know, I'm never going to win any tournaments.
But it's good exercise, right?
And it's fun to do with my daughter, right?
So that's sort of a different category, right?
But it's not like piano or guitar is good exercise or anything.
So with regards to music, like I did 10 years of violin, and I was an okay violinist, but, you know, nothing special.
And I didn't really want to put the time and effort in because I'm always comparing it to the other things that I can do where I get huge traction and huge growth, right?
So when I was back in the day, when I was starting to look into doing what I'm doing now, I was very aware that, You can't do a high wire act if people are throwing stuff at you.
Like, you simply can't, right?
I mean, people don't have to be a gnat, but they sure as hell can't be throwing shit at you when you're trying to do the high wire act, right?
And so, yeah, there were people in my life Who were not behind me in what it is that I was doing.
And it was very clear to me that if I wanted to do it, I couldn't split myself up to the point where I want to live this great, powerful life in the world, but I'm willing to be just some inconsequential goofball in...
My social life. I can't split myself up that way.
I just can't do it. And you know, you talk to anyone who's successful and if they're really honest, they'll say that a lot of their early success had to do with just pruning out people who don't believe in them.
And I don't mean it's one way.
You know, I mean, it's two ways.
There are other people in my life who've wanted to achieve great things.
I've been 100% behind them as well.
And you know, my friend Mike Cernovich wanted to create A great documentary, and he's created a bunch.
My favorite is the one, Hoaxed.
You can get it at hoaxedmovie.com, right?
So Mike Cernovich was creating this movie about the media and I was very interested in it.
And he said, do you have any time?
I'm like, I'm coming down.
It's not about taking, right?
I mean, I want to help other people succeed in their endeavors as well.
So yeah, I just on my own dime flew down and shot for a day or two and did endless takes of the cave scene and had an idea of what it is that I was going to say.
And it worked out well enough that I've got the closing line.
The closing lines of the movie.
And I'm very proud of that.
People should just go watch hoax2movie.com.
It's a great, great movie. So it's not just about like, oh, you've got to support me.
I'm absolutely 150% behind supporting other people.
You know, friends of mine have books out.
I'm like, I'll get all over promoting their book and helping them with their book.
And they got causes and all of that.
And I'll get behind their causes.
And, you know, this is not always on my show.
There's just other ways that I can do things, other things that I can do.
And so just believe in people and have people who believe in you.
And if you can't manage that, you simply can't.
Success is impossible.
It's impossible because you can't split yourself up that way.
You need to have your whole being behind whatever it is that you want to achieve in life.
And if people are slicing and dicing you up to the point where you say, well, when I face the world, I'm powerful, but in my social circle, I'm just some...
Goofball who trips over things.
You know, you can't have both.
So I just, yeah, people who didn't believe in me, who weren't willing to believe that I could do it, who weren't willing to support me as I wanted to support them.
No, sorry, man. Sorry.
I got my life to live and I cannot shrink myself down to other people's petty perceptions of me.
So I know that's a long thing to bounce off, just, you know, your use of the word weirdo.
But don't do it, man. Do not do it.
You'd be very fierce. With the language.
You know, imagine, you have a son, right?
You have a son, and you're going to have a son, and you know what's going to be the case with your son, man?
Your son is going to be smart, and your son is going to be different, because he's raised by a good dad and a good mom, who are reasonable, and maybe he'll be homeschooled.
I hope he will. Certainly, he won't have government schools and all that, right?
So, you're going to have a son, right?
Now, would you ever call your son, if your son was into ant farms, rather than watch overpaid foreigners kick a football around?
If your son was into And farms, rather than watching footy on the TV, would you call him a weirdo?
No. God, I hope not.
I'd help him. Right, so don't call your son a weirdo, even though he wouldn't be traumatized like you were.
So please, don't.
Don't do it, man. Don't do it.
You had trouble fitting in. Good.
Good! In the modern world, having trouble fitting in is your only fucking chance.
Your only chance.
That's funny, because I only just had this conversation with a friend of mine.
And she said never to say something like that ever again.
It's a bit of a deja vu.
Okay, well given that her conversation wasn't recorded and this one is, we've now amplified it to a couple million people over time.
Alright. No worries.
Alright. Okay, now.
With regards to...
You said your dating life kind of goes the same way.
Give me a bit of a... I know you went over it real briefly, but just give me a bit more of an overview of how it goes.
Well, I'll tell you the last one.
We started chatting ages ago, and then we just stopped.
And then maybe a year later, she suddenly messaged me again.
And then she told me all this...
Wait, did Bitcoin go up?
No, I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding.
I don't know if you've seen that meme with like this girl from 2013.
It's like, I'm leaving you.
You're like the worst boyfriend in the world.
All you ever do is talk about Bitcoin and it's so boring, right?
And then like, you know, it's 2019.
It's like, hi! Yeah, pretty much, yeah.
I don't know. Long story short, she's fit like nine and a half, ten.
She agreed with me on a lot of things about how to bring up children.
I watched her recently, well not recently, it was a while ago, but I remember you saying, Just be straight up and just tell the person who you're seeing what your plans are, what you want in life and if they don't agree with those things Well, you know, give them a little bit, right?
Sometimes people can be kind of shocked.
And, you know, it doesn't have to be like, wait, you disagree with me?
Bye! You can finish the meal.
It's kind of what I'm saying, right?
But, you know, if you really like the person, then I'd say give them a bit of time.
I mean, people can earn a bit of time before you pull the plug.
I'm sure you get that.
I just want to point that out for other people.
But go ahead. No, it's not like, hi, my name's Bob, and I want to have children.
No. Where was I? Hi, my name's Bob.
I want to have children. Hey, I think you dropped something.
Anyway, go ahead. Where was I? Sorry, I was just asking.
It's been my fault for interrupting. Sorry about that.
But I was just asking.
You said there was this very fit bird, nine and a half.
She did a lot of things, and then what?
Oh yeah, and she was jealous.
As you said, loads of negatives.
I later found out, and I'll get to this point in a minute, but I later found out she had the borderline...
Wait, she had borderline personality disorder?
Yep. Holy shit.
Yep. Yeah, and that's about as bad as it can get, right?
And that's like grab your nads, you know, put an atomic cap on and flee in the middle of the night, right?
But as soon as I heard that, I was like, I'm out.
Wait, did she say that? No, well, okay, let me finish.
Okay, so she was jealous and shit, and then...
And you know, I have colleagues at work and she'd always be like, who's this?
Who's this? Who's this?
Texting. Not texting, sorry.
When I'd tell her about something I talked about at lunch, she'd ask, so who was this?
And I'd say the girl's name because she's a colleague and I go to lunch with people at work.
And then she'd be like, oh, are you cheating on me with air and all that shit?
And then this one time she was staying over at my place and I don't have a pin code on my phone.
I just leave it open because I don't really have anything to hide.
You can call me stupid.
I fell asleep and she went through my phone in the night and she saw how I was talking to this girl from work.
We were just talking about lunch and what we talked about during lunch.
And then she wakes me up in the middle of the night and she starts screaming at me, are you fucking cheating on me?
And blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Who's this whore? Why are you chatting to her?
And I'm like, fucking hell, calm down.
What have you read that's bothering you?
And she starts just reading it.
Wait, wait, hang on. Wait, I'm so sorry.
You tried to engage in a rational conversation at this point?
Yeah, I know. Wow, she must have been super pretty, man.
Never send me a photo with like a siren.
Yeah, man, honestly.
Anyway, and then she's calling her whore and everything and then she starts hitting me and then I'm just up there.
One hit, two hit, three hit.
I grab her hand and I'm just like, you're going to stop now or you're going to fucking leave.
And then she hits me with the other hand.
I'm like, right, you're out. So I Drags her out the house.
Drag all her shit out the house.
Throw it out. Locked the door and fucked up.
Back inside. Didn't contact her anymore.
You were lucky, man.
Holy crap. I hate to say you were lucky.
But, you know, she could have really messed up your shit there.
Oh, yeah, yeah, definitely. You know, right?
You know what she could have done? Oh, yeah, definitely, man.
She could have run to the police. Really?
And she could have said, oh yeah, she could have said, man, she could have punched herself in the head.
Listen, some people are really committed to their story, right?
No, listen, man, she could have run to the cops and she could have said, he hit me.
I mean, if you grabbed her hard enough to stop her from hitting you, you might have left some marks on her, right?
So she could have said, man, he hit me.
He grabbed me. He assaulted me.
And then the cops come over, and I don't know where you are now, but in a lot of places in the West, the guy's pretty much automatically at fault.
And then you could say, well, look, man, she bruised my face.
And she could say, yeah, but I only did that after he hit me.
He grabbed me first.
He grabbed me so hard, the moment I got a hand free, I hit him just to defend myself.
And then you start ditch-sliding into a whole world of hell, man.
No, I'm telling you, I'm trying to scare the pants on you, right?
I'm trying to warn you from stories that I have heard, not just on this show, but even in people I have known in my life.
Where they get into any kind of physical altercation with a woman?
Man. And if she'd gone over to some girlfriend's house, some girlfriend had been some feminist or someone who was like, oh man, you got into a fight with him?
You got to call the cops. He's going to do this to someone else.
He's a violent abuser.
You got to call the cops. You got to protect the sisterhood.
And next thing you know, man, you're literally spending the next year or two fighting charges.
Well, I guess I was pretty lucky.
That's what I'm saying, man.
No, no, but you'll understand now why she definitely couldn't do that anymore because she'd gone home.
Okay, so I wait today.
I didn't talk to her because I was like, fuck this, man.
I'm never speaking to this bird again.
And then I get to call two days later off her mother.
I've never spoken to this woman.
And she's like, what the fuck have you done?
And I'm like, what do you mean?
And she's like, why did she react like that?
I'm like, well, this is what happened.
And then she said, oh, she only hit you.
I'm like, what do you mean?
She said, well, she started throwing pans and knives at me.
And then we had to call the police and she got put into a psychiatric ward.
Now, I'm going to try and skate right past the giggle you had at the end of that story.
Because that's some serious shit there, right?
Yeah, I know. It's how I cope, man.
It's terrible, I know.
I get it a lot. Okay, okay, dude.
Dude. What are you doing?
You are really throwing some serious dice here.
No, listen, I'm telling you.
this is the kind of woman she can cry rape and yeah good luck just proving that right Thank you.
Thank you.
Well, this was one or one and a half years ago.
No, I get it.
I get it. I get it.
But I think that I understand that the humor, right?
I do. I do, right?
It's like, woo, you know, dodge that bullet and so on.
It's like, what are you doing on the firing range to begin with?
Okay, how long did you date this woman?
Six months? Yeah.
Way too long. What were the signs that she was unstable early on?
Oh, you know what?
I'm not even going to lie.
It was blatantly obvious.
And my mates were telling me, and I was just an idiot.
I was just cuckoo because she was hot.
I'm not even going to lie. Okay, so what were the signs when you looked back before you slept with her?
Constant crying about shit.
I'm just... Did you know much about her childhood?
Oh, yeah, yeah. It was pretty bad.
Pretty bad. Do you want any info on that?
No, that's fine. I can assume it's just the usual hellscape that produces this kind of tortured personality, which can't be fixed, right?
You understand? You cannot love a woman like that into sanity.
You can't do it. I agree.
I mean, again, I'm no psychiatrist.
This is my amateur opinions.
I'm no psychologist. This is my amateur opinions, right?
But it's called character logic.
It means there's not a personality with a problem.
It is the personality is the problem.
Yeah, she thinks that everyone else is the problem and she can't be fixed.
You can't support her into sanity.
You can't screw her into sanity.
You can't love her into sanity.
You can't pay her into sanity.
You just, you can't do it.
The only thing that can happen is that for borderlines, my understanding is they will mellow out a little bit in 20 to 30 to 40 years.
And in particular, because she's got the power of sexuality, right?
So some of the worst things that can ever happen, To dysfunctional personalities is like they win the lottery or they're super talented or super attractive or super smart or like in some way they get to live a life.
That removes restraints.
And you see this with your stepdad, right?
So your stepdad, when he retires, he gets to drink more because he doesn't have to get up and go to work.
So the worst thing that ever happened to her was hotness.
Worst thing. Worst thing ever.
And it's only going to get better when she loses her attractiveness, and that's going to be in 20, 30 years, right?
So, yeah.
Okay, so since then...
So she was nuts, and you're like, yep, let's date, right?
And you were bloody lucky to get out of there without legal trouble.
And then what? Have you dated since?
No, no. I've said I'm not touching another woman until I'm sure this is, you know, I'll get to know them.
And how pretty is your mom?
Or wise? Maybe he's slightly over average.
She's not like him.
And how good looking are you? Me?
I think I'm pretty attractive.
I've got a weird hairstyle, but other than that...
Count yourself lucky.
It's still a choice, brother. Exactly.
Best thing to me, best thing for my life ever was losing my hair.
I'm telling you, I was way too hot as a teenager.
I was way too attractive as a teenager.
If I'd kept my hair, oh man, it would have been just absolutely...
God was kind. The God of evolution was kind to give me an eight head.
Anyway. Okay, so if you're willing to date a crazy woman, this ties back to your mom.
This ties back to your mom.
Tell me the virtues which involuntarily summon the emotion of love in you regarding your mom.
What does she do that is virtuous that you kind of love her I would say despite yourself, but you love her because she does.
Like, you know, if I'm going to list off the virtues of my wife, I won't bore you with, like, the hours or two hours or ten hours I could go on and on about.
I love her. It's, like, involuntary.
I don't have to remind myself.
I admire her and respect her so enormously.
And I won't bore you with all of her virtues, but they are considerable, and she is virtually without flaw.
And I feel the same way with my daughter as well.
But the difference is my daughter was raised in this household, so has earned it a little bit less.
But... So, you know, it certainly is possible to identify the virtues in our loved ones, right?
You say you love your mother, and you understand that empirically what you've told me about your mother, there's not only nothing to love there that I can see, but But there's quite a lot to feel contempt and disgust and anger and fear towards.
But again, we've just looked at one side of the statue, which is the shadow, and maybe there's another side that's really bright and glittery regarding Irma.
Don't you think this ties into this disconnectivity as well?
I just can't...
It's funny, you just refused to answer my question and then talked about this connectivity.
Way to manifest what you're talking about.
I was trying not to rub a bone.
I'm sorry, man. No, you're just trying to draft me off.
Listen, it's very tempting for me to be dragged off into abstract land because that's my natural abode.
That's my, like... Demon fire dimension zone of comfort, right?
But no, I'm going to stick with the feelings because your problem is not that you have an intellect and you're intellectual, right?
The problem is your feelings and your connections.
So I will resist the drag off to intellectual and it will stay on the feelings, right?
So tell me about the virtues that your mom manifests that cause you to love her.
Yeah. Why is this so hard, man?
Because there aren't any. Because your mom...
Was she married to your biological dad?
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so your mom married a guy who was either so trashy that he left or she was a decent guy and she drove him away.
And then she immediately hooked up with a rich alcoholic who abused her children and stayed with him for the money.
I don't know any virtues that would overshadow those basic facts.
And if you want to choose a better woman than your mom, you better damn well map out her flaws.
Because if you don't map out the flaws of your mom, you will be blind to the dysfunctions of your girlfriends.
In other words, your future child is demanding that you map out the vices of your mother. your future child is demanding that you map out the Thank you.
Thank you.
Because you need to know what to avoid.
And if you say that you love your mother while your mother is dysfunctional, of course you're going to end up with dysfunctional women.
I'm a bit speechless.
I'm a bit speechless.
Good. That's called connection.
Okay, so where is it that...
We can talk about your brother.
Again, you want to refer to him as your brother.
I'm perfectly fine with that. You guys grew up together, right?
So you say that you love your brother, but your brother doesn't want to have much to do with you.
Yeah, and I blame myself in some ways for that, I suppose.
I guess by...
because I was being picked on when I was younger, I suppose I picked on him a little bit.
You picked on him how much?
Too much. Okay, I would say no, but when you say a little bit, maybe you're right, but when I first get a qualifier that diminishes the action, but it's the first thing that you brought up, in other words...
The first thing that you brought up with regards to alienation from your brother was that you teased or picked on him, but then the first thing you said was a little bit.
So if it's a little bit, then it would be lower on the list of possible dysfunctions.
If it's first on the list, it probably ain't a little bit, right?
I see. I don't know if that is why.
Because we did have our moments, and then as I grew older and he grew older, we really did connect.
But then... At some point it just stopped.
Did you apologize?
Did you know it was wrong at the time that you were picking on him?
I knew he didn't like it.
I don't think I ever thought about whether it was right or wrong, to be honest.
Oh, come on. No, no, no, no.
You were doing something that your brother really didn't like.
Did he cry from it?
Did he withdraw from you?
Did he hide? No, he'd usually run to my mum and then she'd shout at me.
And what would you do that would cause him to run to your mum?
I don't know, steal his hat and stuff.
You've got to stop laughing about all this stuff, man.
I've been kind of patient with it, but you've got to.
Because you're trying to invite me into a world where this is just kind of goofy and funny, but it may have contributed or may be the cause of the destruction of your relationship with your brother, right?
If it's something to giggle about, let's move on to another topic.
If it's not something to giggle about, let's not giggle, okay?
Because it could be serious stuff, right?
Okay, so you would take his hat, you would poke him, you would just kind of annoy him?
Yeah, pretty much, yeah.
And how much older are you?
Quite a bit. Just give me a rough half a decade, a decade.
Between half a decade and a decade.
Okay, so you're way older, so it wasn't even close to fair, right?
No, of course not. All right.
Now, you could have...
You could have been his teacher or you could have been his mentor.
You could have been his wise elder brother who strengthened him up and built him up.
You could have done all of that, right?
And how long did this teasing or annoying him, how long did that go on for?
It was more when he was...
Pretty young. And then as I grew older, I stopped because I realized, what am I doing?
Why am I doing this to him?
But I suppose it was too late then.
At some point, I was like, yeah, why aren't I his mentor?
Why isn't he looking up to me?
I wanted him to look up to me, but he didn't.
And then that's pretty much when I stopped.
When was that? I suppose it must have been around the Fifteen mark as well, when I was fifteen.
Right. Did you do this for like five years, eight years, ten years?
Two or three, I'd say.
Two or three? Yeah, not that long.
Well, I know it's long, but, you know, you were saying five or ten years.
Hang on. I just, again, you're probably right, but, okay, so if he's, I'm just making something up here.
You said between five and ten. So let's be conservative.
Say he's seven years younger, right?
So if you see it went on for, let's say, three years, right?
So, you know, 15 down to 12, right?
So 12, right, minus seven.
So when you were 12 and he was five, you started and you didn't do it before then.
No, I think it was earlier, and it must have stopped earlier.
Okay, so did it start when he was a toddler, like two, three, four?
No, he was walking.
So kids usually walk 14 months, 16 months?
No, but properly, not the sort of diddle around.
Okay, so maybe two, right?
Yeah, probably, yeah.
Okay, so you started... Teasing him or whatever we want to call it when he was two.
I'd say so, approximately.
It might have been three. And so you would have been like nine or ten or whatever, right?
Yep. Okay.
And then when did you stop at 15?
So I was trying to do some, to do the calculations.
It must have been earlier then because I changed schools then.
So it can't have been then...
No, it must have been 14.
Okay, so 14, all right.
So five years.
Five years, yeah. Okay.
Five years. And those are five very early and very formative years, right?
So from two to seven. Mental torture is probably too strong a phrase, but he had a negative experience with you a lot of times for half a decade of formative years, right?
How many times a day, on average, do you think that you would find yourself messing with him in this way?
I wouldn't even say it was daily.
I'd say maybe every other day.
I'd just have like a couple of minutes where I'd just nag him a bit.
Yeah, you're not diminishing this again, are you?
Where I'd nag him. No, no, but you're saying a couple of minutes every other day?
Because, you know, if you have positive interactions a bunch of times, and then a couple of minutes, look, all kids fight a couple of minutes every other day.
All siblings, all kids, right?
So I'm not sure. And again, maybe he's more sensitive, maybe whatever, right?
But that seems like, to me, just based upon my instincts, that seems like not enough to cause that much of a rift or that big a rift, especially if the other times are more fun, right?
You sit down with any kids who are playing, you know, and they're going to...
You know, my daughter's friends are around and we say, hey, what should we do?
Like all the kids want to do different stuff and it's 150%.
You know, it's just that age, right?
And so it's not like there's conflict, conflict, but you know, we got to kind of reason it out and figure out what we're going to do and in what order and all that kind of stuff because everybody wants to do their thing now, right?
It's natural, right? So there's a lot of disagreement with kids, right?
And that's natural.
It's healthy, right? I think.
So a couple of minutes every other day.
I don't know, man. It doesn't fit right with what you've said.
But again, I don't want to tell you your experience.
No, no. It's more...
All I know is that my mum's told me that I used to Bug him a lot.
Okay, but what does a lot mean?
Because a couple of minutes every other day is not a lot.
I know, exactly. But I never felt like it was that much.
But you were there, man. You were there.
You did it. You must have had some idea.
You must have some idea how often it went.
Yeah, and I never felt like it was that much.
Have you ever talked to him about it?
No. Why not?
I can't say I have. Because I don't think he'd be interested to talk about it.
Oh, so you're making that decision for him.
Not giving him the choice to talk about it.
if you bring the topic up.
I guess you're right about that.
How do you feel now we're talking about this?
Oh man, it's not even just this conversation.
I just feel horrible. Horrible about the fact that I'm not that close with my brother.
I feel horrible about it too, which is why I'm asking these questions.
I'd love for you to be close to your brother.
Mm-hmm.
How does your brother get along with your mom?
Better than with his dad.
Better than with his dad? Yeah.
Have you sat down and talked with your brother about how tough it was with his dad, your mom's boyfriend, in your lives?
Nope. So what have you been talking about?
Nothing, man.
That's the point.
And when did that start to happen?
This disconnect? The complete disconnect?
Probably... When I was...
I'd say...
17 or 18.
Oh, so kind of when he hit puberty kind of thing.
Yeah, yeah. And I thought, well, yeah, yeah, exactly.
So that's been going on for like half a decade or so, right?
Definitely, yeah. And if you were to make the case, right, let's say that I'm your brother, right, and I'm on the phone with you right now.
And you were saying, I want to be closer, right?
Then I would say, or I could say, and this is where you can make the case, right?
And I would say, well, why?
Well, what do you have to bring to the table?
table, what do you have to offer me?
What would you say?
I want to be someone that can Because I know he's not had...
Any male figures?
I know I'm not perfect.
No, no. You're one of his male figures.
Pardon? You're one of his male figures.
Yeah, and I want to be a more positive and a more influential male figure to him so he doesn't have to go through all the shit I've gone through and not have to take away this learning progress but sort of give him a guiding hand Whereas I've had nothing, and he's had nothing so far.
Not nothing, negative. Yeah, even that.
Okay, so then if I were your brother, I would say, well, yeah, but you made some of my childhood kind of crappy, right?
Like, why would I trust you?
Well, it's not an excuse, but it is.
It's a reason. I... I didn't have a great Childhood as such.
Hey, you're really disconnected from your feelings here, right?
Yeah, man. Okay, if you want people to trust you, you have to connect with your feelings.
We trust feelings, not intellect.
Intellect can change all the time.
Feelings keep us stable and steady.
They're like the fin under the yacht or the ballast that keeps the submarine stable, right?
So if you're disconnected emotionally, you want to make a case to your brother, and I want you to make that case to your brother.
If you're disconnected emotionally, he's not going to trust you.
Let's try that again.
If he says, you kind of made my life as a kid tough sometimes, why would I trust you?
Look, bro, I feel really shit about, and I've thought about this very often, about what I've done to you.
I don't feel, I'm not proud of it at all.
And if I could, I'd take it back.
And I feel like I've grown until you, and I feel like I could contribute to your life.
You're disconnected again, right?
You got it for a bit there, then it vanished, right?
How do you feel about the things that you did to your brother?
Because listen, it was tougher on your brother than you in many ways because you had the vent of dumping on your brother.
He didn't have anyone to dump on, right?
Mm-hmm. So all the shit that rolled downhill from your bullies, from your dad, from your mom, down to you, down to him, they all ended with him.
He had to absorb all of it, right?
Yep. And...
In some ways, and I'm not putting you in the same category because you say it was only a couple of minutes every other day, but as the bullies were to you, you were to him, right?
Exactly. I'm not even going to lie.
Okay, so as the bullies were to you, you were to him.
Now you know how bad the bullying made you feel, right?
Mm-hmm. How it made you kind of dread going to school sometimes, how it made it hard to concentrate sometimes.
How it made it hard to feel secure, how it made it hard to feel supported.
If you produce that in your brother, the apology of the emotional connection better be pretty big and deep if you want to rekindle something with it.
Right? Mm-hmm.
So if you were a bully...
I mean, what would you like to hear?
Or what would be healing for you to hear from the kids who bullied you in school?
Let's say that you run into one.
One day. And he takes you aside and he says, Oh man, I messed up so bad.
I messed up so bad when I was a kid and you took the brunt of it.
And you probably internalized a lot of the shit that I was talking about with you and the bullying that I did.
And I gave...
You, who was having a hard time, so much of a heavy additional burden when you were two years old.
I mean, I just did the worst stuff in the world.
And I can't take it back.
It shaped, to some degree, you into who you are.
And I didn't have the right to scratch those words on the surface of your being.
And to make a kid who was growing up in a messed up household make that life even worse, man, we should have stuck together.
We should have stuck together like Frodo and Samwise.
We were all dragging our asses through Mordor.
We should have stuck together, not turned on each other.
I should have been your brother.
I should have been there for you.
I should have been teaching you.
I should have been giving you hugs.
I should have been telling you it was going to be alright.
I should have been taking your side.
You know? I shouldn't have made your life tougher.
Because it sure as hell didn't make my life any easier.
And now I've got this additional guilt of how I treated you as a child in addition to everything else that is going on for me.
I got all that too.
That is horrible. And it's horrible because I don't want to make this about me.
This is about you. It's about you and it's about all the burdens I put on you that I had no right to lay you with.
I was always so much older and you looked up to me so much because, you know, I was like the big older brother.
And now, like in the family, I had one toxic masculinity thing to look at, which was your dad.
But you had two. This is your dad and me.
And now I look in the mirror and I see another bit of toxic masculinity staring back at me, which is how I treated you as a child.
And I hate the idea that you've taken anything that I did or anything that I said and put it inside you and made it come alive.
And that you ran to mom all the time when I was mean to you.
Mom didn't do much of anything because mom was part of the whole messed up system we were stuck in.
It all rolled downhill to you.
And I hate the idea, my brother, I hate the idea that we got another 60 or 70 years on this planet.
And for the sake of me doing some shitty things when you were a kid, I might have no brother.
For the next 60 or 70 years because of shitty things I did when you were a kid.
I might lose out of my only brother's company.
Because I don't have a relationship with you.
You don't have a relationship with me.
You know, when our parents die...
There's going to be nothing from our childhood.
Like, we were witnesses to each other's childhoods.
We could be the only people who go through from beginning to end of our lives.
And because I was a bad brother, I was a shitty brother, I don't get a brother for 70 years because of the stupid shit I did for 5 years 10 years ago.
And I'm not blaming you for that.
I mean, if I was in your shoes, I can completely understand why you'd sit there and say, look, I want this guy in my life.
When he had power over me, when I really needed support, he kind of dumped on me, he kind of messed on me, kind of tortured me a little, kind of made my life harder when my life was already pretty bloody hard.
So I completely understand why you wouldn't want to have anything to do with me.
And I'm not asking you for you to trust me because that's absolutely unfair.
I can't just have treated you like that for so long.
And now I've spent seven years not talking about it.
And five years we've barely been talking to each other and that's five years that went by where I didn't bring up a damn thing about the way I treated you.
There's even more reason not to trust me.
But if I can get on my knees and beg you not to trust me but to give me Five minutes conversation a week.
That's all I'm asking. Five minutes conversation a week.
And if I've got to order HelloFresh to deliver food to you every day so it's easier for you to get those five minutes a week to talk to me, just talk to me for five minutes a week and see if you like it.
Just try it for ten weeks. Try it for five weeks.
Hell, try it for one week. That's all I'm asking.
One week, man.
One week. Five minutes.
Because I am desperate to have a brother.
I am so sorry for what I did.
I am so desperate to have a brother.
And I just, five minutes, you can set time, whatever's convenient for you, just five minutes a week, and try it for a couple of weeks.
Try it for a couple of weeks.
And if after those couple of weeks you don't want anything, that's fine.
That's fine. But what if we could find some way to build a bridge back to each other?
What if I could just apologize?
And what if I could somehow earn your forgiveness?
And what if we could have a positive relationship and you could have a brother again for the next 60 years of your life?
You could have an uncle for your children.
You could have, you know, we could be in the vicinity of each other when we get old.
And we could remember all the way back through the tunnel of time to the beginning of our existence.
And we could I have linked arms all the way through the decades.
I mean, I think that's worth something.
I want to try for that.
I want to try for that. Just a tiny bit.
Just a tiny bit. And you have every reason to not want to do it, and I completely understand that, which is why I'm absolutely at your mercy.
Man, you think you were at my mercy when you were two?
And I was 10. I am completely at your mercy.
And if you want to take a month to think about it, that's fine.
And, you know, I'll ping you again and just, you know, five minutes a week and if there's anything I can do.
And then, you know, if you can beg him to give you just that little bit of time and you can figure out the best way to make things positive for him, you know, send him some shit.
I'm telling you, like, it matters a little bit.
Like, send him tickets to his favorite concert.
Send him... A gift basket of his favorite foods.
Like, whatever! You know, just that you're thinking about him and that it matters to you.
And that's how you start rebuilding things.
You just work.
And you just be willing to submit to what the other person wants and you try and find something to offer.
And that's how you try to undo damage.
Because the damage isn't just when you were a kid.
Look, I have sympathy for what you did.
When you were 9 or 10 or 11, I mean, you were just struggling to survive and it sounds like you were a bit of a jerk, but, you know, you were under a lot of pressure and you were being bullied too.
So that's different, right? But not having talked about it with him for half a decade now that you're an adult, that's a whole different matter, right?
Now that's all on you.
That's all on you, right?
And that's why you don't let things go that long in a relationship without talking about stuff.
You just don't. Because people scar over, right?
They get shields up.
They get like an exoskeleton.
They harden, right?
Mm-hmm. So tell me what you think.
What do you think about what I'm saying?
I think I have to speak to my brother as soon as possible.
Yeah, yeah. What the hell are you talking to me still for?
What are you, crazy? I swear that's what I was thinking.
Okay, good. So, go talk to your brother, man.
He's real. Now, how are you feeling?
How are you feeling? See, now you're feeling, right?
I feel horrible, but at the same time, sort of like I've gotten the kick up the ass, you know, like you were saying at the start.
You need someone to...
I need someone to...
I feel sad and at the same time a bit of hope that I can still fix things.
Good. Which is something I really, really want to do.
Yeah, listen, I mean, I think that you have a lot to offer him.
I think it's going to take a while to convince, but I think you have a lot.
You're a big-hearted guy, right?
Like, Amanda just pulled off this little imaginary speech, and it hits you like a hammer, and that's big-hearted, man.
That is deep, and that is heartfelt, and that is noble.
And he'd be lucky to have a smart, committed, compassionate guy in his life.
Is there anything else you wanted to mention now or are you just thinking of your brother right now?
Yeah, yeah, honestly, yeah.
Alright, will you let me know how it goes?
Yeah, definitely. Will you accept my thanks for a really great conversation and great listening?
Yeah, of course, and I'd like to thank you for taking the time.
Anytime, brother. Definitely, definitely, you know, maybe Do you have some more time or do you need to go straight away?
Well, I mean, it's been an hour and a half, and so what I would say, sorry, we did end up losing connection for some reason or another, but I really wanted to thank Bob for his conversation, and I hope people will take this message, you know, if you've wronged people, do your best to reach out to them, do your best to apologize, and you can get some wonderful things out of that.
You can get a greater trust than if the wrong had not even occurred in the first place.
So again, thanks everyone so much for listening and for watching.
And please help out the show if you can at freedomainradio.com forward slash donate.
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