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June 15, 2020 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

02:25:47

"As a black woman in America, why do we take most sh!t from black men?" Call In with Stefan Molyne..

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	Epic Music Hi everybody, Stefan Molyneux from Freedomain.
	We are back to the video call-in show, so I've been doing a little bit of rambling.
	Roaming in the gloaming, as they say, but I wanted to do video for this one.
	Give a quick test out, and we're doing video for the actual live call-in that's occurring on the Discord server.
	Which you can get a hold of at freedomain.com forward slash donate.
	Just click on subscribe star and sign up.
	A couple bucks a month and you get access to a tidy wee community, call-in shows, private chats, and I use the whittle or whetstone of the collective Free Domain Borg Brain to help sharpen my arguments for debate.
	So all of that is greatly appreciated.
	And I guess we're going to start with our call-in show today, if you would like James to bring us with the intro.
	Absolutely. So today we have a caller that writes, My heart is broken.
	I love this man, and he disrespected me beyond anything I could have thought.
	I want to understand why I allow myself to be disrespected by men, which in turn means I don't respect myself.
	As a child, I was abused sexually, mentally, physically, in any other way you can think of.
	I have been working on these mental health issues I've been diagnosed with for 13 years now.
	I have been diagnosed with PTSD, depression, and anxiety.
	He came into my life, and I spoke to him about how to get his house out of foreclosure, how much character he has, and how that will be his currency in life.
	With good character, there's no money he can't obtain.
	I explained stocks, 401k, money markets, IRAs, and this list goes on, to try to speak life into this man.
	He knew everything I had been through in my last relationship of 10 years, and he still spit in my face and kicked me while I was down.
	Metaphorically, of course. It would be nice to speak with you about all of this.
	As a black woman in America, I don't get why we are the ones that have to be given the most shit from black men.
	My heart is so shattered right now, and I need a phone call like this to help me.
	I don't want to go to a dark place, but the hurt I have endured from men started with my father fucking me up.
	And I don't want to be bitter, and I don't want to take revenge.
	I just want someone to listen to me and possibly add something perceptive.
	Well, welcome to the conversation.
	I really, really appreciate you calling in.
	And I mean, obviously, just right off the bat, I am so, so sorry for everything that you endured as a child.
	That's monstrous.
	I mean, I had it kind of rough, but man, that's beyond the pale, so to speak.
	And I'm really, really sorry that that was your start in life.
	It's a really heavy burden to carry.
	And you say 13 years, it sort of feels almost sometimes, I mean, I have this with myself at times, like, That the dysfunctions that come from that kind of experience, it's like, okay, when does it end, so to speak?
	And especially now that you've got your heart broken or got involved with this guy who turned out to be a pretty bad dude, like I'm just, I'm really sorry.
	I mean, I hope that I can give you some thoughts that are helpful about all of this, but I just wanted to start off with that.
	I appreciate that.
	What happened as a child?
	And you said you were sexually abused, I assume.
	You know, to me, if there's sexual abuse, it's like there's almost no other kind of abuse that won't be present.
	But what happened to you when you were a kid?
	Yeah, sure. I've told this story so many times that I'm really fluent in it.
	So my mom and my father had me at 16 and 17.
	They were both young children.
	And my father was a Rolling Stone.
	So he had three children at the time.
	My mom, being a young woman, was hurt and she realized that I was being mistreated, so she wanted to take me away from that.
	In taking me away from that, I was born in the Midwest.
	However, she moved me and my one sister at the time to the West Coast.
	However, she never explained that to my father, so he was upset at that and that whole I guess, child napping issue.
	But he was still paying child support.
	And I want to say probably when I was about seven or eight, we moved from the West Coast to the East Coast.
	And we always traveled in this wolf pack.
	It was really weird. It was two families.
	And we were just always traveling together from the Midwest to the West Coast, from the West Coast to the East Coast.
	And then from there, that's when The molestation started.
	The physical abuse started because the family that we were living with, they had a lot of different abuse in their family too.
	And the husband would beat the wife.
	So the son naturally would beat up on me.
	And then the other son, he molested me.
	And these are all people that weren't my family, but my mom married into the family.
	And the whole time, I'm from the Midwest, so my mom works for an airline.
	So we're flying back and forth.
	However, I'm never really getting that I guess love from my family and then from there I don't meet my father for the first time until I am 12 and that was at my grandfather's funeral so that was really weird for him to put his hand on me and I looked up at a 6'2 man and he's like it's gonna be okay kid I'm like I don't even know who you are.
	And from there, we kind of started a relationship, but still him and my mom were on the outs.
	And then from there, we stopped talking.
	I was still reaching out to him, desperate for his affection.
	And I wrote him a letter, and he wrote me back, but then we stopped writing each other.
	And when I turned 17, my My mom ended up having an affair with another man that was doing a Pop Warner football for my brother.
	A what now? Pop Warner football?
	Don't know. Yeah, it's like...
	I'm sorry. This is where my British iceberg comes in and blocks the view of the conversation.
	I don't know what that means, but go ahead.
	Yeah, it's just like a travel team.
	And he basically graffitied my high school because my mom had four children with him and she had one child, me, with my dad.
	And he graffitied my school, I guess, trying to hurt her but in turn hurting me.
	And he put on there my first, my last name, and that my mom was a town slut and to become a traveling football coach and find out.
	And that was at 18.
	And then from there, I was very...
	I didn't understand depression.
	However, I really kind of...
	I was always very resilient.
	I was always an intellectual.
	So I kind of just bounced back and forth.
	Then from there, I was put up for sale by my mom.
	And... Wait, what?
	What? Yeah, so our house was under construction for about 15 years.
	What happened was my mom was very gung-ho about getting a construction done because she was given a house of four bedrooms and two bathrooms.
	However, she has five kids.
	So she was very ambitious about getting this seven-bedroom, four-bathroom house that she couldn't afford.
	And the Christian contractor...
	That she contracted ended up stealing the money from her.
	So we went about two winters with no roof.
	And then from there, we didn't have lights and then we didn't have drywall.
	So we all kind of had to sleep in the same room.
	And also this was around the time she was having the affair.
	And what she would do is we would have different, I guess, gatherings with my brother's coaches and things like that.
	And I'm not hard on the eyes.
	So they would make passes at me.
	And because she needed her house done, she would jokingly say things like, oh, yeah, you can have my daughter if you can put up the siding of the house or if you can do the electrical wiring in the house.
	So, that was still in high school for me.
	Okay, okay. I'm sorry. I'm sorry to interrupt.
	And, you know, forgive my whiteness.
	And, you know, like, but that's a joke, right?
	It's not a good joke.
	But tell me, give me the sliding scale of seriousness of this stuff.
	Because people were inebriated, I just feel like...
	There's some truth in there.
	And they were at a pool party.
	The guy who was making a pass on me, it was actually his engagement party.
	And he knew I had a crush on him, but I was very young and impressionable.
	He was probably 30.
	And he had said something to my mom saying, oh, about the siding.
	So he did siding, and my mom needed siding in the house because we were actually getting complaints with the tarp and the Tyvac.
	It would be windy and everything during the night.
	And it would disturb the neighbors.
	So she needed sighting on the house.
	We went probably about four or five years with no sighting.
	So he did that and she couldn't pay for that.
	So it was almost like a bartership of prostituting your daughter.
	Oh, man. And the thing is, too, even if we say now, oh, well, it was 50% joke or 20% joke, I guess what matters is what you felt at the time or what you thought at the time.
	And I guess at the time, for reasons I can completely understand, you'd be like, yeah, this is maybe only a 20% risk, but it's a pretty big risk, right?
	Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
	And it wasn't funny to me.
	It really sounded ridiculous and honestly disgusting.
	And I've always had issues with my mom because her sister, who spoke to me every day when I was about 15 until I was about a sophomore in college, she...
	She tried to help me but because of her bitterness all she did was really cause discord with me and my mom and then it really didn't help when I found out that she had an affair and I was beaten by her husband because of the affair and then She lied to me as well.
	So that was around the same time I was going to college and as well that was the same day of my SATs.
	So there was a lot of things that were going on before I even left high school to kind of just set me up for failure.
	But I'm 30 now so I don't think that I am a failure.
	It's just that you know sometimes I'm sorry about that.
	My little Discord program did a restart.
	But sorry, you were just saying that you're 30 and you certainly don't feel like a failure.
	So sorry. Please continue from there.
	Yeah, just because obstacles happen in life in general.
	And even though my obstacles were a lot, I really think that just kind of that surrendering to a higher power of the universe is really important to rise above those things.
	Because the only drug I've ever done was weed.
	And I didn't start doing that until...
	I want to say 19, 18 years old.
	And I recently did ecstasy with the guy because that's the only way I know who you are is through him.
	And that was the first time I ever did ecstasy.
	I'm petrified of drugs because of the addictive personality and I knew that they were going to be very dangerous for me when I did my graduation project on heroin and I knew that I couldn't do any drugs because I was definitely going to be addicted to them.
	Yeah, please continue to be terrified of drugs, if that helps.
	I mean, if it's any consolation, I'm the same way.
	I don't come from a family that has strong addictive issues, but I do come from a family with mental health issues, and it's one of the reasons why I'm so into truth, reality, objectivity, because...
	Man, when my family goes mystical, they go like right off the cliff mystical and right off the cliff subjective.
	So I'm hanging on to this raft in the stormy seas of the modern world because, you know, sanity and self kind of hang in the balance of these kinds of decisions.
	So yeah, please don't mess with that lovely brain of yours.
	It's very important to me at least and to the world and of course to you.
	Okay, so I appreciate that.
	How far did the molestation go?
	Because it's a pretty broad term, and you don't have to give me big details.
	I just wanted to sort of understand how far this molestation went when you were a kid.
	Well, there was no penetration, but what would happen is he would perform oral sex on me.
	And I probably performed oral sex on him maybe once or twice.
	And then there was also a time when we were living together, the two families.
	I was sitting on the dining room table, and it was around probably 2 o'clock in the morning, and my mom had came downstairs, and my underwear was around my ankles.
	And all she did was ask, What are you guys doing?
	And of course, me as an eight-year-old girl, I said nothing.
	And then she just went upstairs.
	So that was another thing that I kind of had to discover as an adult.
	And then as well, I thought it was my fault for...
	The majority of my life until I had general psychology in college.
	Or no, not general psychology.
	Adolescent psychology. And my psychology teacher told me that sometimes the child being molested comes on to the individual.
	So I always thought my whole life it was my fault.
	Since I came on to him, I had kissed his cheek and then that's when the molestation started.
	And it lasted from 8 to, I believe like 11, 12 years old.
	And it was just something that I always was ashamed of.
	Like, why would I do something like this?
	I must be like a slut or a whore.
	But then I had this psychology class and I was like, wow, that makes so much sense.
	Even though he was older than me because he was seven years older than me, but he was closer to being an adult than I was.
	And I finally kind of pulled that layer back when I was in college.
	Well, and it's your mom's responsibility, obviously, right?
	I mean, your mom brought you into the orbit of this predatory pedophile, and I assume that there's issues within the family.
	I don't think kids just sort of wake up one day and say, hey, let's just go molest other kids.
	He was a teenager, I guess, at this point.
	It doesn't just pop into kids' heads.
	I mean, I think that this is something that is learned behavior based upon whatever happened to that.
	Boy or young man, and that doesn't excuse him, it's just that these patterns tend to slosh back and forth in families.
	And of course, so your mom brought you into this orbit, and the real shame, the real horror, and I think the reason why it happened, of course, was because the predators always try and figure out how close you are to your mother.
	It could be your father, but obviously in this case your mother, right?
	Because if... If you are close to your mother, they will not, in general, molest you.
	Because if they molest you, first thing you're going to do is put up a fight.
	Second thing you're going to do is slap him in the head.
	Third thing you're going to do is go and say to your mom, this boy has molested me or tried to molest me or something like that.
	And then your mom... Might go to the cops.
	She might go to, she might just move you out.
	She might, whatever.
	She might go and talk to the boy and try and find out who molested him to give him this pattern of behavior, you know, like the way they take down drug cartels.
	Like they get some local dealer and then they work their way up the chain.
	It's the same thing with molestation.
	What you do is you find out if this is a 13-year-old boy, I think it was, who molested you.
	No, you said seven years older, right?
	He was 16. Yeah, I was 18.
	Yeah, so he's 16, so he's old enough to drive a car.
	He's old enough to know better.
	So you go and talk to him and you find out who molested him and then you go to the cops with the name of all of the predators in the family and they get investigated and maybe they go to jail and maybe they don't do well in jail as pedophiles tend not to do well in jail.
	So like they're taking a huge, huge risk when they pick a victim because if they pick wrong, it can be a death sentence for them and certainly a destruction of their family reputation.
	So this is the real – I'm sorry.
	He knew that my mom and I weren't close because my mom had five kids before the age of 24.
	So he knew that she was very busy with all of my other brothers and sisters and as well I was busy with them too because the youngest one, they're Gap would be four years, and then from four it goes six, and from six there's nine, and then from nine there's 11 years gap.
	So I always was very active with my brothers and sisters to do as much as I could with my mom because she also was...
	Taking care of her husband who didn't have a job the majority of their marriage.
	Sorry to interrupt you, but this is where you get your first excuse star, right?
	Because you're giving me an excuse for your mother that I simply will not accept.
	No, it doesn't mean I'm right. I'm just telling you I'm not going to accept it.
	No, but it's not the number of kids.
	Because your answer as to why he picked you is because, well, I wasn't close to my mom because my mom had four other kids.
	But that's not the answer.
	It's not the answer.
	It's not just because then it's like saying, well, the more kids you have, boy, the more likely they ought to be.
	Taken down by pedophiles, right?
	That's not the way it works, right?
	There's a fundamental lack of connection with the mother because you didn't go to your mom and say, hey, mom, you know, I got grabbed or got molested or this creepy kid wants me to do stuff.
	I don't like it. And so the question is, why didn't you go to your mom?
	And this is not in any way to put any blame on you.
	At all, at all. When I say, oh, why didn't you go to your mom?
	That's something to explore to give you relief from any kind of guilt.
	I don't want to say, well, you didn't go to your mom, it was your fault.
	But the question is, why, when this happened, obviously it was creepy, it was nasty, it was wrong, evil.
	So why wouldn't you go to your mom?
	So go ahead. She was just my everything.
	At one point in time, I thought that the house that we were living in was the world.
	And then when I realized that the state we were living in, I thought that was the world.
	So taking me away from my family really just confused me a lot.
	So I felt a lot of shame and I felt very unwanted because they were the affluent family and we were the poor family.
	So I always had that sense of shame luring over me.
	And I always felt like if I told my mom the truth, she would abandon me like my father did.
	But both kind of abandoned me.
	So it's just the abandonment issues of, I don't want anybody to leave me, so let me stay quiet and not tell anybody.
	Right. So that's your mom's fault.
	Oh, yeah. Okay, I just wanted to be clear.
	It's not the number of kids she had.
	Well, that's what's ingrained in my head.
	She would tell me all the time, you know, I have four other kids to worry about.
	So that's just something that I probably just say subconsciously because of it being put in my head.
	Right. But it is the parent's job, as you know, to protect children.
	And she brought you into the orbit of a pedophile.
	And she gave you a mindset such that you had to submit questions.
	To molestation to have a roof over your head.
	Look, I'm not saying you were right like she'd toss you out on the street, but it's a hell of a huge risk if you were to get abandoned or put into child protective services or some put up for adoption, whatever occurred in your mind, which I'm fully behind.
	I mean, kids don't just make up risks out of nowhere.
	Right? So whatever it was, this lack of...
	It's not even a lack of a bond.
	It's almost like a negative bond.
	Like, if you cause me any trouble, you're going to be put out on the street with the recycling bin, right?
	And if there's this feeling that you have, which is...
	Mom's kind of hanging by a thread.
	Mom doesn't have any resources.
	Mom is crazy stressed. If I put one more stressor on mom, she's going to abandon me.
	And of course, being molested is a huge stressor.
	The stuff that I'm talking about, where if you are going to take down the family one by one to find this pedophile nest in the family, if there is such a thing, and I would imagine there is...
	Then that's a huge thing to take on.
	It's a big thing to take on.
	And so you're just like, well, I better not stress mom out anymore.
	I better not make any demands or requests from mom.
	Or, I guess more specifically, I don't want to see the look in my mom's face when I tell her this creepy kid is jamming his hands down my pants, right?
	Because what would she have done, do you think, if you'd gone to her and told her?
	What would the reaction be?
	Oh, she would have been very angry.
	When she was actually eight months pregnant with my sister, she would beat my stepfather.
	And I was sitting at the top of the stairs in 1996, and she was taunting him to punch her stomach because she didn't care.
	So I already knew that my mom was very violent.
	Right. So she might have attacked you.
	She might have also said, perhaps, I don't want to put words in your mother's mouth, but my thought is, We need the money.
	We need the shelter.
	We need the roof over our head.
	Just find a way to stay away from him.
	Either that or she would have burned the whole house down.
	Little impulsive?
	Is that what we're getting here?
	She's very, very impulsive.
	They called her in elementary school and high school, whoop-ass her name.
	So she's very impulsive.
	She's very violent.
	And her first reaction to things is to act with violence.
	Right. Right. So then you might be in a whole other world of hurt.
	If she acts violently towards someone, then you telling her could set the dominoes in motion that could end up with her in prison, right?
	And then I feel like that's my fault because I told her that.
	And then where do you go if your mom's in prison, right?
	Exactly. Okay. Okay.
	Man, I am so sorry.
	This is a really heartbreaking way to...
	It's a heartbreaking conversation and I just really want you to remain aware just how incredibly...
	Terrifying and sad that this all is.
	And also, like, how incredibly well I think you've dealt with it, at least from what I can tell so far.
	I mean, this is...
	I mean, kids are... You kind of just make things up.
	Like, when we were homeless, I would, like, make adventures up when we were sleeping in cars.
	So kids are just so resilient.
	I think I've always been that type of resilient child.
	And then once I got to college and I realized just how much stuff I really went through, that's when the battle really began, at 17.
	Well, okay. I get what you're saying.
	But the truth is, statistically, my friend, kids are not that resilient.
	Most of them. Oh, really? Oh, no.
	Kids are not that resilient.
	So I've done a whole series. You might want to look at it called The Bomb in the Brain.
	And it traces the effects of child abuse across the general population.
	Most kids are not. See, being resilient is...
	I understand why people think that.
	So people say kids are resilient so that they don't have to take care of them as much, but kids are very easily broken.
	The kids who go through a lot of child abuse very often do end up as criminals.
	They often do end up as addicts of various kind.
	It can, and I'm not talking about you and I, because we do have this kind of bulletproof stuff with regards to childhood, but for the average person, yeah, child abuse takes about 20 years off the lifespan. - Yeah.
	It renders you more susceptible to various illnesses and dysfunctions and brutalities.
	And, you know, you think of all the homeless people.
	Like, you know, the homeless people just wandering around.
	I mean, none of them came from good households.
	You know, there was a doctor I've had on my show, Gabber Mate, who treated huge numbers of heroin addicts, particularly women.
	Every single one of them had been molested as a child.
	Every single one of them had been molested as a child.
	So heroin is just – it's like the ointment you put on the wound of childhood sexual abuse.
	And so children are not that resilient – Now, you and I, again, we're kind of the exceptions in that we bounce back from this kind of stuff, and you've had a lot better bouncing than I have from a lot deeper place.
	So, you know, all kudos to you.
	But it is also something we say so that we don't have to take too much pride in how we've handled things because we're so used to being beaten down and yelled down and put down and pushed down that if we start to take pride, it's almost like we're inviting attack because that's the way it was when we were growing up,
	that if you take pride and happiness in who you are, the I'll just leave the video off for now.
	Maybe it's causing a problem. So, yeah, so it's kind of tough for us to take this kind of pride We say,
	oh, well, all kids are resilient. I'm just like other kids. Just that kids are resilient.
	You have worked to climb out of this, but most kids don't.
	Most kids don't get out of it.
	I mean, look at your mom. Was she resilient, given the abuse she suffered as a child?
	Was your dad resilient? No, not at all.
	I mean, they succumbed to it all, didn't they?
	Yeah, that's true.
	I've always been very modest.
	I look at pride, even when I had recently done an outpatient in November and December, and people had looked at me as prideful.
	And I... I almost wept at that because I've always looked at pride as such a bad thing because my mom has always been very prideful to a fault.
	And I've always been modest.
	So when everybody had circled the word prideful for me, I took that as an insult.
	Right. No, and I completely understand that.
	When we see dysfunctional extremes hitting the middle, Is really tough, right?
	So, I mean, my mom had a big problem with anger.
	And so when I get angry, it's not always in my head, but I'm always sort of like, afterwards, I'm like, well, was that me or was that mom?
	You know, like I had this debate the other night where I told the guy to shut up because he'd insulted me.
	And I'm like, yeah, you know, actually, that was warranted.
	That was fair. That was reasonable.
	But when we've seen extremes of behavior, like if you've seen really pathological vanity, like the kind your mom might have, Then natural pride is like, well, it's halfway to dysfunction.
	And it's like, no, no, it's not.
	Like, healthy anger is the opposite of destructive rage.
	But it's hard to find that mean when you've seen the extremes, if that makes sense.
	Yeah, I agree.
	Okay, so your father, you said you met him at a funeral, and you wrote once back and forth, but he's not really been around much at all, right?
	Right. It's always been me reaching out to him.
	The one time when I was at his house in the Midwest, I remembered it so well because obviously he's my father.
	And when I became probably about 15 or 16 years old, I wept to my aunt, my mom's sister, and I told her that I really just want to see my dad.
	So she took me up and down the train tracks to Find him and I was able to identify the house.
	I only saw it once, but I was able to identify the house.
	So that's kind of been our life with our relationship together.
	Me reaching out to him, me chasing him, like the whole time.
	And he'll just basically lie and say, oh, well, you know, I've been in the same place and my phone number has been the same the whole time.
	Like making it seem like he has no fault in what my mom has done or what he has done in my life.
	Yeah, children can't run their relationship with their parents.
	It's not possible. It's completely impossible.
	The parent completely and totally defines the relationship with the child.
	And I was explaining this to my daughter the other day about how, like, if you've got a piece of string tied to something, you can pull it, but you can't push it.
	You push the string, nothing happens, right?
	Because it just folds up, right?
	It's the same thing. So the parent can pull the relationship with the child.
	The child cannot push the relationship with the parent.
	Because we're too vulnerable, right?
	We're too, like, we don't want to upset.
	We don't want to offend. Because, you know, we're all kind of programmed to not offend our parents too much because for most of our evolution, the unpopular kid didn't make it because there was never enough food for everyone.
	So if you were the unpopular kid, well, you know, it was really, really bad.
	It's a survival mechanism to do whatever is necessary to stay in the good graces of our parents.
	And if our parents don't have a lot of good graces, we'll do some pretty crazy stuff to try and make their lives easier, right?
	Yeah, and I've done both my mom and my dad.
	I developed a pretty bad cutting habit because I really don't like to hurt people, even though I'm angry inside.
	I was angry inside my whole 20s, and I want to say I was cutting myself from about 15 to maybe 24, 25, and it just was me trying to release an emotion that I didn't know how to deal with.
	Yeah, tell me a little bit, because most people who don't, I've certainly had conversations with that.
	I actually had a conversation with a woman a couple of months ago who actually carved her mother's gravest insult to her in her own leg, like branding herself almost.
	And I think a lot of people don't really follow that cutting or really understand it.
	So could you just, you know, I guess for my understanding and for the understanding of the audience, a little bit about what it is and what you think was motivating it?
	Well, I identify myself as very empathic.
	So I believe that because I cut myself was because I was so angry, but I didn't want to deal with those anger emotions towards anyone else.
	I didn't want to curse anybody.
	I didn't want to hurt anybody.
	I didn't want to, you know, do anything malicious to anybody.
	So it provided me an escape and release to focus on something physical as opposed to focusing on something That is intangible.
	It's such a toxic thing to do because you're focusing on a wound and you're not focusing on what's going on in your head, but life happens.
	You're just adding more gunk to your life because more things will happen off of that.
	It's a spiral down to darkness, really.
	Well, and it's also, I think, a way of continuing the self-punishment.
	It also gives you another shameful secret that you're very used to having, I guess, because of the family history and the molestation and so on.
	Yeah, and also it's like, well, you can't get naked with people because, you know, they'll see and it's another way of shielding yourself from...
	I think there's a lot that goes on to it, but I think that sense of isolation that comes from walling yourself into that little room of shame, I think is a lot of that stuff as well.
	But, you know, heaven's sakes, don't let me tell you what was going on, but that's sort of my thought about it.
	No, that definitely makes a lot of sense because I avoid a lot of things.
	So instead of dealing with it because of the emotions, I'm very emotional and sensitive.
	I just don't deal with them.
	I'll just remove myself from the situation.
	And I think from not cutting myself, that was just the other distraction I gave myself.
	So it's still going on.
	It's just going on in a different way.
	Right. Okay. Okay.
	And how do you think you got it to tail off, you said, sort of 24 or so, 23, 24?
	How did you get it to tail off?
	The end of its own was the particular work that you did?
	I didn't realize that people cared about me that much.
	So when people saw what I was doing to myself and I saw the fear in people's eyes, I more so did it for them for me because I didn't think that people cared and people would really be very concerned about me and my safety.
	It fell off then, when I was in that 10-year relationship, and he would be very scared because he's never gone through anything like this.
	And he would call my mom, he would call my dad, he would call my aunt, and I would get mad at him.
	But at some point in time, I had to sit myself down and ask myself, well, why is he calling?
	Is he calling because he cares and he's fearful, or is he calling because he's just a snitch?
	And then I finally put two and two together.
	I'm like, okay, people actually really do care about me.
	I need to stop hurting myself.
	Huh. So, I mean, it sounds kind of silly, but of course, love was the cure for this kind of self-assault, right?
	Love conquers all.
	Love conquers all. Let's put an amen to that.
	All right. Now, so you then, you said you got involved in a relationship with a guy, it was like 10 years, before the current guy, is that right?
	Yeah, it was horrible.
	Yeah, and what's the story with that?
	Well, we got together when I was 19, so it was the height of my anger, and I was obviously not seeing anything.
	It was just a dust storm, and he took advantage of that.
	He was three years older than me.
	He lied to me and told me that he was going to be a lawyer.
	He was a political science major, but He took about seven to eight years to not finish his degree.
	And then from there, I was just thinking all about status.
	I was a pre-med student as well as I had two minors in biochemistry and psychology.
	So I thought I was going to be like a doctor and lawyer type of relationship.
	And I want to say like two years into the relationship, he told me he wanted to be a rapper.
	And then from there, he always didn't have a place to stay.
	So he always moved in with me.
	And I quickly realized within a year of that relationship that I was doing exactly what my mom did with her husband, with this man.
	And I lost it.
	I lost it for about two, three years.
	I was hospitalized for a couple weeks.
	And I just, I didn't want to be my mom.
	So I just, that was when the cutting was the worst.
	And from there, he became very manipulative and isolated me from my family.
	And of course there was some good things, but I want to focus on the bad because he just came back after leaving me for, I have no kids, but he left me for a woman and her son when I was homeless, jobless, and he stole my TV, a bunch of my apartment things because I was evicted because I was taking care of him.
	And that was in 2018.
	And he recently came around on my 30th birthday of March of 2020.
	So I was already in a relationship.
	I had already healed and, you know, surrendered to just...
	Being better. So now that he's coming around, I don't want to speak well of him because thinking about the good could wind me in the same position and I don't want to go back there so I have to keep training my brain.
	That this was not good.
	This was toxic. And the good stuff is part of the bad stuff.
	So people who've not been in these kinds of relationships don't really see...
	Of course there was good stuff, because if there was no good stuff, you wouldn't be there at all.
	So the good stuff is like the bait on the hook.
	You know, if you throw a line into the water with no bait on, no fish is going to sit there and say, hey, look, a nasty-ass hook.
	I'm just going to... Jump onto that, right?
	So, of course, he's got a lot of charisma, probably a good sense of humor, engaging, and, you know, good looking.
	So, of course, there's good stuff, because that's the bait.
	The good stuff is why the bad stuff is there.
	Yeah. Now, you were saying that...
	Sorry, go ahead. So that's why I try to just not think about the good stuff.
	Yeah, yeah. No, it's just bait, man.
	It's going to get a hook through my lip, right?
	Now, you said that you got evicted because you were taking care of him.
	Now, do you mean just like paying his bills or were there other things that he needed that you were taking care of?
	Yeah, anything he needed, I always took care of it.
	So I've always been able to obtain means.
	I believe I get it from my mom and my dad, because my dad is a very successful construction.
	He has his own construction company, and my mom has always worked her back off for her five kids.
	So money...
	It comes and goes for me. It doesn't really matter.
	And he took advantage of that.
	So I would have my own place and he'd be like, oh, I have to wait until I get my refund check in because my mom can't send me money because she's sending money to my family in Haiti.
	And just all of these excuses.
	And out of the eight years we were together, he probably had a job for maybe one of them.
	So he was unemployed for the majority of the relationship.
	And where was he getting?
	That's always a fascinating thing to me because, I mean, like, I've been working since I was, like, 10 and, like, paying bills and, like, it's really...
	How do you not work for, like, seven years?
	Like, that's amazing to me.
	I mean, don't you have to eat?
	I think it's over-mothering, so his mom just completely fucked him up and made him just incapable of a lot of things.
	And he's not a bad person, it's just that, you know, I didn't raise you, so...
	I don't have anything to do with that.
	And she was very, very, like, just didn't like me.
	She thought that I was a bad influence on him.
	But he would lie to her.
	She never knew that he smoked weed.
	Honestly, my weed habit came from him.
	And he would always lie to her.
	Still to this day, he's 33.
	He still lies to her about smoking weed.
	So I don't mean to get overly stereotypical with regards to rappers or whatever, but...
	You know, I mean, you know, there's an old joke about drummers, like what do you call a drummer without a girlfriend?
	Homeless. You know, maybe that extends to aspiring rappers too, but, you know, it's not exactly a drug hostile culture.
	So, you know, his mom's got to be like not curious about this stuff, almost like a willed way.
	Well, she's a nurse and her life is very messed up too.
	She ended up not, well, I guess she was a mistress to his father because he never really wanted anything to do with his son.
	And then they were raised on the East Coast.
	He was raised on the East Coast and then From there, she met a guy from Haiti who they married, but then he moved to a different state.
	And after he moved her child and her to another state, and he never shows up to the house other than, I want to say, maybe two or three months out of the year.
	So it was very...
	Weird. I didn't understand it, and I didn't really want to understand it.
	So I think that also aided to his issues, too, and her issues, because she's a nurse, she makes good money, but why are you basically not raising your son properly?
	Sorry, the dad was from Haiti, right?
	Right, but his dad died at 14.
	She married another Haitian.
	No, but isn't it just for immigration purposes?
	I mean, maybe I'm being too naive here, but...
	I don't think for her it was immigration purposes because she had her son in America and she also completed her degree, her nursing degree in America too.
	So I think she ended up becoming a citizen in like the maybe 80s, early 90s.
	And maybe it was immigration for him.
	No, that's what I mean. Yeah, for him, right?
	Yeah, maybe. You know, their culture is just so secretive that it's hard to even get a word out without them looking at you as being disrespectful.
	Or just her family in general.
	I don't want to put that on the whole Haitian culture.
	But she looked at it as if her son isn't married with his own family, he shouldn't question any of her, anything that she does.
	Right. Okay. All right.
	Okay. And how did that relationship wind down?
	Or, like, I don't get much of a shape of the relationship.
	So, you know, you realize, of course, a couple of years in that you were doing what your mom did.
	You were hospitalized and, you know, give massive sympathies for all of that.
	Of course, it dragged on for a long time.
	And was there talk of marriage?
	Did you guys get close to it?
	Were there breakups in between?
	And how did it wind down?
	Yeah, there was two major breakups.
	And, of course, we would talk about marriage and children, unfortunately, because I don't really like when guys do that.
	Do what? Talk about marriage and children like they actually want to marry you.
	Oh, yeah, yeah. That's terrible behavior.
	I completely agree with you.
	And I've yelled at men. Well, not yelled.
	Been firm, I suppose, with men over the course of conversations, especially when the woman's getting into her later 20s.
	Do not dangle something in front of her that you're not prepared to commit to because you really are bleeding out her fertility window and it's really, really destructive.
	So, yeah, I'm with you there for sure.
	So, the major breakups, the first breakup was in 2011, our first year together.
	I just chased him, like I chased my father, and he obviously took the bait.
	He saw I didn't respect myself, so he was just like, if you want to stay around, then go ahead and stay around.
	That lasted for about till 2011 until 2015 because in 2011 I also lost my uncle to suicide at 26 years young.
	So it was a very vulnerable time for me.
	And then in 2012 I dropped out of school.
	I got a job as a teller at a bank.
	I was working there for a couple years.
	And in 2015, there was an issue with a college block party.
	And we had broken up for 11 months because of plans on him.
	Not like my mom does, but...
	I knocked his glasses off of his head and I pushed him like three times.
	Still no excuse.
	It was bad behavior. And we broke up from there for 11 months.
	And then we got back together.
	How did that happen? You get back together?
	Because I was doing well for myself.
	So he decided to weasel his head back in in a manipulative, subliminal way on Facebook.
	So he knew I was Facebook stalking him.
	And he put a Facebook status on there about how People claim that they care about you, but now that they're doing well, they don't care about you.
	And I was just like, what are you talking about?
	So I took the bait. Yeah, I took the bait.
	And then from there, we got back together.
	That was in 2016. We were together for two more years.
	And again, it was almost like the universe slash a higher power telling me this isn't going to work because every apartment I would get into, I would lose it for some reason.
	And it was probably like three or four apartments I lost.
	One was for eviction and the other three was just because they didn't want him there.
	And At the last apartment, I had asked him, you know, we've been together for X amount of years.
	Like, when are we going to move back in together?
	Like, you're always living with me.
	Like, when are we going to have a place of our own?
	And then he used the excuse of, oh, well, I just want to live with my business partners, aka my friends, and just all of this stuff.
	So I finally started opening my eyes.
	And once I started opening my eyes, that's when he started making his exit strategy.
	And he met this lady through Lyft.
	She has like a young son, two years old.
	And once I moved out of the apartment, he just stopped talking to me for a couple of days.
	I texted him. I said, are you mad at me?
	He's like, I just don't think we're meant to be together.
	So he met the woman through Lyft, did you say?
	Yeah. So she just had a lift thing.
	His business partners? I mean, if he wasn't employed, I'm almost afraid to ask what he means by business partners.
	Just his friends.
	You know, they wrapped together and then they had a meeting every Tuesday together.
	But I think when it comes to artistry...
	It has to be a hobby before it turns into a career.
	And I'm not saying that people aren't talented, but a lot of people are talented in music, so you can't really look at that as an end-all, be-all.
	And that's basically what he was doing because I was making it easy for him and convenient for him.
	Yes. No, I mean, it has to be something that you love and it has to be something that you do on the side, usually, and see what the response is.
	I mean, I was a writer for a long time before I started eventually just – I got published by one place and then I ended up just publishing myself.
	But I was doing that for like years and years and years before, just on the side while I had a job.
	And I mean, some of the people who do throw themselves into it, full tilt boogie, you know, like, I mean, the – MC Hammers and all of that.
	I always remember that story of him, like he wanted to be a rapper and he wanted to be a musician and all that.
	So, you know, he would borrow money, he would get his records printed and he'd go from club to club with his records in the back of his car and just press them into the hands of DJs and like, man, you got to play this stuff.
	It's really great. Like he hustled like crazy.
	To make it, then he blew all his money, but that's another story.
	But yeah, so it's either something part-time that you see, you test the waters.
	Like I didn't just say, I'm going to start this show, you know, quit my career.
	And I mean, I tried it on the side for a little while first to see what the demand is like.
	Because, you know, if nobody's interested, then it's probably not a good idea to quit.
	But yeah, this just floating around, I'm doing a bit of rapping and I'm, you know, I'm putting it out on SoundCloud or wherever he put it out.
	And, you know, did I get that about right?
	And then, but you've got to hustle to get it into people's Because, you know, everybody and their dog wants to do that kind of stuff and it's really tough to stand out.
	You've really got to work hard to do it and just producing the stuff is only like 10%.
	The rest of it is, for me, like I said this earlier, for me, I spent about 90% of my time in the early days just getting...
	getting my show in front of people, like posting it places and sending it to people and you got to listen to this and it's really, really good.
	And only about 10% of the time was actually producing stuff.
	But all the people who were like, well, I'm going to produce more whatever, right?
	And they don't actually spend much time getting it out into the world.
	It's like, yeah, well, you might as well just be setting fire to it in your basement because it's not, you know, it's not going anywhere.
	Yeah.
	And it's not to say that I didn't believe in his music because I ended up like investing in it in some type of way.
	But I still knew that it was unrealistic for you to try to put that in full time.
	Because one, you're getting high most of the time.
	So you're very unproductive.
	And two, your brain is so focused on your next meal that you're not even really able to come up with a solid business plan on how you're going to approach getting your name out there.
	So it was very unrealistic in my eyes, but I also didn't want to push too much because of that abandonment thing.
	And it ended up being...
	Years and years, you know?
	And then in 2018, that's when everything ended because I finally came to my senses for some reason at year eight.
	And then he was just like, yeah, I don't want to deal with you anymore.
	Yeah. I mean, I think also given how destructive a lot of rap is, not just to black community, but to youths as a whole, I almost sort of feel like if you're not destructive enough a person, you won't make it in that genre.
	Because again, a lot of it is just so toxic.
	And it's almost like a weapon being used against the young in the West.
	So anyway, that's perhaps a topic for another time.
	But that's just a thought that I had about that kind of stuff.
	So what was the moment of Where you're like, because there is a moment where your heart just kind of closes, you know, just like a vault door and it doesn't reopen, right?
	I guess it happened with this guy for 10 years, right?
	So was there a moment?
	Was there something he said or something he did or like, what was that realization where you're just like, sorry, we're now closed for business?
	Yeah, in 2018 when the landlord, because it got so bad that I went from an apartment to a room.
	So I was renting a room and the guy didn't really want him there.
	But so many things happened to me there.
	Like this one guy, so I had two roommates.
	I had a girl and a guy. They both were African American descent, but coming from different So, unfortunately, I didn't get along with the girl.
	And she had brought a guy home, and he called himself going to the bathroom.
	She lived on the third floor, I lived on the second floor.
	And the bathroom was on the second floor.
	He called himself going into the bathroom, and then he quote-unquote was too drunk to realize that he was going into someone else's room.
	And I don't sleep with many clothes on.
	He got into my bed and was trying to lay down with me.
	And I was petrified.
	And I kind of just kept going in my mind.
	I was just like, I'm not being protected.
	I'm not being protected. And then the landlord didn't like that he was staying there either because I didn't feel comfortable.
	Wait, wait, what happened with the guy in the bed?
	Oh, I called the cops and the cops said that he had to leave.
	Oh my God. So, and then the girl, she just was horrible.
	I'm guessing you're not down with the hashtag defund the cops at the moment?
	Defund the cops? Yeah, it's a whole new thing that's going on.
	Because, I mean, you want to call the cops because there's some guy in your bed that you don't want to be there, right?
	Oh, no, I don't think the cops protect and serve.
	I just wanted them to leave.
	Right, right. I didn't get along with the girl.
	And then from there, the landlord didn't want him staying there because, again, he's always living on me.
	Him being your boyfriend?
	Yeah. Yeah, yeah, okay. Because we can't use names.
	Yeah, yeah, no, that's fine. That's fine.
	I'm navigating the maze, I think, pretty well.
	I've got like all these chess pieces out here, like lines drawn between them.
	And we smoked weed in there once.
	And ironically, the landlord smokes weed, but he used that as an excuse to basically try to evict me.
	But he tried to illegally evict me.
	I do sewing on the side, and he tried to...
	Basically remove my stuff and I have six sisters and two brothers because my dad has five kids and my mom has five kids and I only had one meeting with them and one picture with all of them and that was on my 18th birthday and my dad made this beautiful picture mural thing of my graduation and that 18th birthday and he threw that outside.
	And was throwing my sewing machines outside.
	It was just a really horrible scene.
	And when my boyfriend at the time had came to...
	I don't know what he was trying to do.
	But the point is that I knew that he could not protect me.
	So I started pulling away because I knew that I had to protect myself.
	And I think that was the wake-up call for me, and that was the exit for him because he knew I was no longer going to take his shit because I don't have a place to stay.
	And he was just like, oh, what do you need from me?
	I need a place to stay.
	And he still didn't provide it.
	So that whole crazy stuff happened in April of 2018.
	And here we are in July of 2018, and you still can't produce a place to stay.
	That's a problem to me.
	Oh, there's no faster way to end a relationship with a selfish person than to ask for reciprocity?
	Like, just ask for them to pull their weight?
	Like, boom, you're done, right?
	Yeah. And that's exactly what happened.
	And he made it seem like, you know, I just...
	It was bad. It was so bad that I actually...
	I didn't eat for three days, but I was still going to work.
	And I was taking public transportation because I didn't have a car at the time.
	And the subways...
	Are underground. So I was underground and I was lightheaded.
	I ended up passing out and I had to take a Uber to work because I needed to eat.
	And then I also couldn't be under the train track in the subway because, you know, I could have fell on the train tracks.
	And he texted me.
	He asked me if I was okay. And I told him what happened.
	And he said, oh, well, if that happens again, you should just check yourself in the hospital.
	And I was just like, wow.
	So you put up with him and you fund him for 10 years, but when you need something, he's like, hey, just go to ER, man.
	Yeah, that week was very profound.
	It was very revolutionary.
	And I ended up on a bus going back to the Midwest because my father gave me an olive branch to live with him.
	And I was staying with a friend, so it wasn't like I was homeless, homeless, but I was very, very broken.
	And I've always wanted my dad.
	So him giving me that olive branch, of course, I took that bait.
	And I ended up going to the Midwest again.
	And I was detoured on the bus.
	And I was just scrolling through Facebook.
	It always starts with social media, I feel like.
	And I find this post that he made.
	He said, oh, what's my sexiest feature?
	And then this girl said, those sexy lips or something.
	And I was like, is she a groupie?
	Like, who is she? So I click on it.
	And she's talking about me.
	I don't even know her. She made like seven or nine posts about me.
	And it basically said like, to the ex-bitch from the next bitch, he's good now.
	You can let go. So basically he was pillow talking with this girl, telling her all the bad things that I did to him and woe is me.
	And she thought that she was going to be like this heroine in his life.
	And of course the relationship ended and they're not together anymore.
	But the point in it all was I'm finding all of that out not even 30 days after you broke up with me via text.
	Right. Oh, yeah. No, it's chilling just how unimportant we are to selfish people.
	You know, they're just like, oh, well, you know, it's like, well, I missed the bus.
	It's okay. There'll be another bus.
	Like, you don't care that much about the bus.
	And we're just like things to them.
	It's brutal. Yeah. What happened with the pre-med and you said you dropped out and went to work as a teller for a couple of years in a bank.
	What happened with that and why did you drop out?
	It was the guilt. I felt like because my mom moved her kids away from our family, we weren't able to really bond with our cousins.
	And my uncle was always like a brother because we were very close in age.
	And when he killed himself and I read some, he didn't have a suicide note, but he had like little notes that he was writing, planning and stuff.
	And when I kind of went through the series of events of his last days, I felt so, I felt like I had an obligation to take care of my family in a way that was more in presence than just, you know, calling them.
	So I was like, I need to be in s***.
	I need to be in s***. Oh, darn.
	That's fine. Don't worry about it.
	Sorry, go ahead. And that's why I dropped out.
	I just felt like whatever success I was going to do was never going to fulfill me the way that love of family would.
	And because earlier, and I decided not to pause you on this because I wanted to hear the next thing in the story, but earlier you were saying at the ripe old age of 27, I think it was, 26, 27, and I was like, okay, is that you?
	Is that him? But he's your uncle.
	And so just let me circle back and sort of clear that up.
	How old was he when he killed himself?
	26. Okay, so you were talking about him, not you.
	And how close were you guys in age?
	Pretty close, right? Yeah, he was born in 87.
	I was born in 90.
	So yeah, we were very close.
	And what did happen to him over the last couple of days?
	You know, my grandmother, his mom...
	She had her own issues.
	Just why my mom has her issues.
	You know, this generation, generation, generation.
	And I believe that, like he wrote down, he said that he was going to go through so much pain in 2013 that it was going to be unbearable.
	And I believe him now, especially seeing all of the crazy stuff going on in the world.
	And he was molested as a child by his uncle, his mom's brother.
	And He ended up molesting a boy, and he felt very bad for that.
	He did a couple robberies.
	My grandmother was very harsh, very mean.
	She ended up leaving his father, my grandfather, for his uncle.
	And, you know, that really didn't work well with him either.
	And then she ended up getting with this crackhead guy who she chose over her son too because he They got in a fight because he was disrespecting his mom, my grandmother, and she kicked him out as opposed to kicking the crackhead out.
	It was a lot of...
	He just... He really just had...
	You think I had it bad?
	My uncle had it a hundred times worse than me.
	I just, I crumbled at that moment.
	Like 2011, just like 2018, that was like a catalyst in my life.
	It just, it changed me forever.
	And that's kind of what I mean when I say that you're resilient, but not all kids are resilient.
	I mean, your uncle wasn't. Yeah, yeah, that's true.
	He wasn't. It was very sad what happened to him.
	It's just so much family secrecy.
	And I used to say all the time, secrets killed my uncle because there were so many things that we didn't know until after he died.
	And we were so mean to him.
	We were so judgmental to him.
	When he was alive, we'd be like, oh, he's weird.
	Or, oh, he has problems.
	We were just so mean to him.
	Not realizing that he was literally crying out for help.
	But now that he's gone, everybody's all boo-hoo-hoo.
	And I just was enraged with that.
	And I vowed to myself that his death was not going to be in vain.
	Listen, I get the sympathy, and I really do.
	But, I mean, he did also prey on a child.
	Yeah. Yeah, he ended up molesting another child.
	Yeah. So, I mean, you could say the same thing about the boy who molested you.
	And huge sympathy.
	It's kind of the weird thing that when you learn enough about somebody's history, a lot of it seems to make sense.
	But at the same time, we've got to have that moral responsibility stuff.
	So... I don't know.
	It's complicated. And we all wrestle with how much of people are responsible when they've gone through tough childhoods.
	But, you know, I mean, you didn't end up, you were molested, you didn't end up molesting anyone.
	And so you made a choice that was different.
	So you said there were notes or was it social media notes that he left or something in the house that he left over the last couple of days?
	Yeah, he would write on paper and he was also diagnosed with schizophrenia.
	So I was the only person that was able to understand his writing because my mom and my aunt would read it and they didn't understand it.
	But I was able to extract some words and actually get Out of it, since I knew my uncle, what he was trying to say.
	And it really just amounted to pain.
	That's really all that it was.
	And his guilt of what he had done and things like that.
	Because he actually went to a couple of different...
	And this is another reason why I have such a bad relationship with the police force.
	He went to each municipal to kind of just, I guess, cleanse himself of his sins.
	And they made a joke of him.
	They were just like, well, the Statue of Limitations has passed with this robbery.
	So you should probably check yourself in a hospital because it doesn't make any sense why you're trying to repent of your sins right now.
	It just enraged me because I was just like, you know, not only was he crying out for help with his own family, but he was crying out for help for other people in the world.
	And everybody just said, forget you.
	But isn't going to the police for forgiveness like going to a priest for personal protection?
	I mean, it's like, was there a church next door that he just didn't get to?
	Because, I mean, forgiveness for sins, that's on the church's doorstep, isn't it?
	Yeah, I never really understood that thought process.
	I just knew that I didn't like the way that they treated him.
	So I didn't really understand why he did it.
	I just didn't like the way that they treated him.
	Right, right. Okay. Yeah, I was just curious about that.
	And again, huge sympathies for this.
	And, you know, the pedophilia stuff.
	I mean, I have been posting about this on Twitter and other places that...
	Pedophilia is a big issue in the black community, it's a big issue in certain Jewish communities, and of course it's an issue in the white community as well, but I think it's kind of under-discussed.
	You know, I saw this survey that I've mentioned, somewhere between 40 and 60% of black girls report being sexually assaulted by a black man before they turn 18.
	And that's, I mean, that's horrible.
	I mean, it's horrible for there to be one, but 40 to 60% is astonishing.
	And it's something, I just, silence, right?
	This silence is violence kind of thing.
	Yeah, it really is, but not in the way that people think because I think until we can start to have more discussions about this kind of stuff, it's going to be really, really hard to solve the problems because that takes precedence, I think, over a lot of other things that people experience in their lives.
	Yeah, and I think subconsciously people don't understand.
	What do you mean? They don't understand that sometimes the things that they're doing is necessarily because of the events going on in their life.
	It's because of the previous events that had already taken place in their life.
	Right, right, right, yes.
	Yeah, and it's funny too because we don't want to sit there and say, well, who we are now is just dominoes from the past because then we lose that moral responsibility thing.
	So knowing the effects, I think, is really, really important because I don't think we really have free will until we know what forces have shaped us.
	Because then once we know what forces have shaped us, then we can start making choices.
	Like when you noticed, oh, my God, I'm doing what my mom did when you were propping up this aspiring rapper and so on.
	It's like, okay, well, now you have a choice because it's not just train tracks from the past that you just think you're walking but you're actually on a track.
	Yeah, I just think accountability and self-awareness is probably the most important thing.
	One of the most important things that we can really focus on because it's not saying that what happened to you doesn't justify why you feel the way that you feel.
	but it's still your responsibility to be a moral individual with humanity and society, period.
	Yeah, and I also think too, not specific to the black community, but I also think too, if there are this many predators on children in communities, in societies, then I think a lot of the conflict that is provoked and poured into society is basically just to cover up this stuff.
	Can you imagine like you and I, we start conversations in our communities, between our communities, and we start to talk about this kind of sexual predation on children and child abuse and so on.
	And the sexual predation on children to me is, I mean, it's just about the worst form of child abuse.
	And it's the one thing where you can go after people as adults.
	Like, I don't know, if you get beaten as a child, you probably can't do anything about it as an adult.
	But there is this, I don't know, it's a window.
	I don't know, it depends where you are.
	So I think that there's a lot of people who have really, really bad consciences regarding particularly sexual assault of children.
	And... When you start talking about this kind of stuff, they'll sick the media on you, they'll sick various advocacy groups on you and try and get you portrayed as a bad guy, because if your voice breaks through, if your conversation breaks through...
	And people actually start talking about this stuff and naming names.
	Like, I think there are millions of people who are really, really going to face some anxious and sleepless nights.
	And I just think that...
	I mean, I remember when I first started talking about child abuse, you know, that the media was sicked on me and various advocacy groups were sicked on me and my name was smeared and dirtied and all of that.
	And that's kind of continued. And I thought it had something to do with abstract philosophy.
	But I think it's actually a lot more to do fundamentally with there are a lot of people out there Who've committed the most horrifying, egregious crimes.
	They might still be liable to them.
	And even if it's past the statute of limitations, people can still talk on social media and reputations can get justly ruined.
	So I think a lot of it had to do with the fact that there are these predators out there and people who start to talk about this represent a really existential threat to their reputations, perhaps even to their freedom.
	And I think for them it's like, well, it's him or me and it ain't gonna be me.
	Yeah, because I think a lot of the sexual predators are not only very successful people, I think that they're also people that have their hands kind of deep in just power and influence.
	And it's kind of like you need to sweep it under the rug because I don't want to lose my status or my position.
	Yeah. Right, right.
	Okay, so let's get back to focusing on you.
	Fascinating though that topic is.
	I want to make sure that we get to the major issues that you called in about.
	So tell me a little bit about the new guy.
	I guess the new old guy or the new pre-guy.
	What's the story with him?
	Well, I was single and abstinent from 2018 until the end of 2019.
	And I wasn't dating, but I wasn't not dating.
	Wait, you've just given me a philosophical conundrum.
	What does that mean?
	I would go out with a guy, but I would realize that I'm still not over my ex, so I shouldn't play with this person because it's going to end badly.
	Well, and it's also just modern times.
	Like, it's hard to get over people because you can stalk them, right?
	So, like, back in the day, when I was young, you broke up with someone, man.
	You never saw them again.
	You never heard from them again.
	You know, like, that was just out of sight, out of mind, for the most part.
	Like, maybe it was someone in your university or whatever.
	But generally, it was like, gone, baby, gone, when it's over.
	But now, it's like, you can see who they're dating, and you can see what they're doing.
	And it's like, ugh, we're not really designed for this.
	Which is why I actually took myself off of social media that whole entire year.
	Good. Because I just didn't need that influence.
	And when I started working in a pharmaceutical company that I'm still working at now, he was actually working in the same company but a different department.
	And I was going through a lot of issues with my dad.
	So I was only able to live with my dad for 10 months until my stepmother...
	Oh man, she's a doozy.
	But I left because my face was...
	The anxiety was causing my face to have black blemishes.
	So I left, went to my grandmother's house, but...
	My grandmother and my aunt are very miserable.
	So I needed to get away from my aunt because I was carpooling with her because I still don't have a car.
	But I'm carpooling with her because she works probably about 15 minutes away from me.
	And I needed to get away from her.
	So I decided to do some overtime in his department before I even knew him.
	And it was nice.
	It was labor work.
	So sometimes you find solace in just using your hands.
	And, um, I ended up liking a guy.
	Not him, but just some random guy.
	And that was, like, really the first guy that I actually really liked since my ex.
	And he ended up being an asshole.
	And it really upset me.
	So then you have this guy.
	An asshole, how? He said that I was passive-aggressive, and I'm too old to be passive-aggressive because I'm about to be 30.
	It was so ignorant that I just...
	I just kind of broke down at that moment because I was just like, first of all, you're nowhere near professional with psychology or anything for you to be deeming something as passive-aggressive.
	And second of all, I'm just giving you the same energy that you're giving me and you need to leave me alone because I don't have time for you.
	So that had happened because I ended up Using the guy that I ended up being with.
	Can we call him F? Uh, F. In my mind, I'm just going to figure out what that might be short for, but we'll just say it's short for F. Okay, got it.
	I ended up using F to make M jealous, and that's why M had said the whole passive-aggressive thing.
	And then from there, F, he helped me pack the package, because we were just packing medications.
	And... From there, he asked for my phone number.
	And from there, we went to a bar.
	It was a very quiet bar so we could talk.
	And we talked for about four hours.
	And then the rest was just...
	Continuously talking, talking, talking.
	Very intellectual stimulation.
	He introduced me to you.
	So I didn't know who you were.
	He was telling me about you.
	And things escalated really quickly because he actually had a talk with you in January.
	And the talk was actually because of me.
	My defense mechanism sometimes is laughter.
	I'm feeling all of these threads coming together in my life.
	You know, like, hopefully it's not a net of some kind, but we'll figure it out.
	So, sorry, you were saying laughter is your defense?
	It's a defense mechanism for me.
	And he had told me about his childhood abuse.
	And I felt bad for him because it's like, you're a man and you're a straight man and a man took advantage of you.
	Like, I don't know how you even process that.
	And then he told me about his issues with women.
	And then I even felt even more horrible and sorry.
	So I accidentally kind of like made a joke.
	And he got really serious because I was the first person that he had ever told that.
	And he was very angry.
	He's like, you know what? I'm just gonna email Steph and I'm gonna talk to him.
	I was like, okay. I'm sorry, but okay.
	And then... So your joke was about what in particular?
	It was just kind of to lighten up the mood.
	It was so morbid. I don't even remember what the joke was, but it was just like, well, you know, look how great you're doing now.
	You know what I mean? And I guess he wanted me to be sad with him.
	But it's like, I don't want you to be sad because I think you're a great man.
	So I think you overcame that adversity.
	But I think I should have approached it differently because offense is given, it's not taken.
	Or maybe it is.
	I don't know. I haven't done too much research about that.
	Well, I mean, sorry, just at the beginning of our conversation, I mean...
	When I was saying, like, I'm so sorry for all of this, that's not because I think you're a weak person or you need it.
	It's just like, that's just, man, that's horrible stuff to go through.
	And I think, you know, if I'd have said, oh, well, yes, but you're doing well now and it's, you know, obviously you've overcome it.
	I think that would have been a kind of like, okay, I don't want everybody to just stare at my tragic childhood, but at the same time, I don't want people to ignore it.
	Like, they can just brush it off, if that makes sense.
	And I did. I kind of just brushed it off.
	So he ended up calling you.
	He talked to you.
	And you actually gave him some really good advice.
	You told him, like, I think you're on the right path.
	And, you know, you're one of the smartest.
	Funny. I'm sorry, you just cut out for a sec there.
	there could you repeat that you told him that he was one of the smartest drug dealers you've ever like came encounter with because of the way he uses drugs and sparingly and then um you also told him to get married and then from there our relationship wasn't horrible but it wasn't good because i found pictures of his ex in his phone And they weren't just pictures.
	They were also videos of him touching her butt and stuff like that.
	And I was just like, why do you still have these?
	You know what I mean? If you're over her and if she cheated on you and all this other stuff.
	And then...
	And what did he say?
	He used some bogus-ass excuse about memories.
	And I told him that I didn't feel comfortable with those pictures, but I wasn't going to pressure him to delete them because, one, we're just getting to know each other.
	I wasn't in that relationship, so you're going to have to do that on your own.
	And... We left it there for I want to say like a month or two and I also was by default kind of living with him.
	It wasn't that I didn't have a place to stay because I was staying with my grandmother and aunt.
	It was the fact that they didn't like the fact that we became sexually intimate.
	My aunt was very very pharisaical with You're a whore.
	You're not going to find a husband by just sleeping around and like all this stuff.
	And it was very toxic.
	So we kind of just ended up being up under each other.
	And then the pandemic happened.
	Kobe Bryant died.
	Just so many things were happening that we just ended up quarantining together.
	I mean, things were fine, but very bipolar in a way of like, in a drop of a dime, he would just flip and not aggression towards me, just he's all about this, like, your essential philosophy.
	He'll listen to that like three times a day.
	It's a good book. What can I tell you?
	Yeah, it's not that you're saying anything wrong.
	It's just to say, you know, sometimes...
	You have to just live your life and let things come to you as what may.
	You don't just say, oh, this is immoral.
	This is moral. You don't really know without context sometimes.
	Sometimes. And I cleaned up the house because when I walked into his house, he had no light bulbs.
	His house was very dark.
	And I didn't even realize how big the house was until I cleaned it up because it was just...
	In total disarray.
	And there was these two totes.
	I guess that's how you know he's listening to me and not Jordan Peterson, right?
	Jordan Peterson is a big clean-up-your-room guy.
	Anyway, go on. And there were two totes in the dining or the living room that I wanted to remove.
	But, of course, it's his house, so I wanted to ask him for permission.
	And from there, he was like, oh, no, those are my roommates who moved to Nebraska, so he's got to come back and get them.
	I was like, oh. So this past, like, around June 4th, June 5th, that's when we take Ecstasy together.
	And... I guess because I'm an intellectual and I'm like paying attention to him tripping, he starts to talk about the bad energy coming from the totes.
	And the totes ended up being clothes of his ex.
	And I didn't flip out at this moment.
	What is that? I'm sorry. What is it?
	A tote? Like a tote bag?
	Yeah, like that plastic thing.
	It's probably like 30 pounds or 30 gallons.
	You know, you just put like toys or clothes in it.
	Okay, got it. So clothes from his ex.
	So he was not exactly honest about that.
	Yes, but I didn't react.
	I did not react. I was just going through the motions because I was just like, okay, let's just see how this plays out.
	And we ended up making, because MDMA is a hell of a drug.
	It's a horrible comedown.
	So we ended up making like a trail to the trash can of like her clothes.
	But there was one tote still in there.
	And when we went to sleep on June 10th, We slept at the foot of the tote, but then he switched his head and slept at the head of her tote.
	And not that that meant anything, but...
	The woman intuition was starting to kick up.
	And then from there, we woke up.
	Everything was fine. It was actually a really nice morning.
	We have a dog.
	And we were, you know, kissing all over the dog.
	He was kissing all over me. He was telling me how much he loves me, how much I've changed his life, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
	And then from there, he starts talking about Affirmation.
	And I was like, a man is supposed to affirm not only his wife, but his kids.
	We need affirmation from you.
	He's like, no, a man's job is to spread his seed on the earth.
	And I was like, you sound dumb as fuck.
	And then from there, that's when his switch happened.
	And I showed him seven.
	He decided to show me eight, but he forgot that seven, eight, nine.
	So I... Finally reacted to her clothes.
	And I was just like, how about you get over this girl?
	And then he's like, those are my roommate stuff.
	And I was like, you're not going to win an argument with a woman.
	You should just now.
	And the TV we had in the house, I ended up destroying because it was a marriage gift from...
	A guy who had a limousine dispatching company, and his company was being downsized because of the coronavirus.
	And they ended up giving us, I want to say, like $7,000 worth of just items, like a big executive mahogany desk, a couch, a refrigerator, like these things.
	And one of them was a TV. So it was mutual property.
	And I destroyed the TV just because of the two instances of TV taken from me, from my mom and from my ex.
	And he just kept lying.
	Sorry, I'm sorry.
	You said the 789 thing, which is the escalation thing, right?
	So how did you go from...
	Your ex's clothes are still in this tote to bye-bye TV. There's a couple of steps there, at least for me.
	And how did you destroy it and what was going on?
	He told me to get the fuck out.
	This is the second time he kicked me out because he actually kicked me out in May.
	Because of dishes.
	Right now. That may be a complete thought for you, but I'm afraid I'm trailing a little behind the speed of the car here.
	So why were you kicked out?
	Because of dishes? I was working from home because the pharmacy that I work for, we're working from home because of the pandemic.
	And he came home.
	His dad is a really bad influence on his life, but obviously a guy with his dad, it's like Whatever.
	So he came home.
	His dad was kind of bitching at him about the mice in the house.
	And he was saying how because of me, the mice were in the house.
	But I was the one that actually came into his house and cleaned his house.
	So I was just like, yeah, we're not going to argue about this.
	I'm not even going to entertain it.
	He thought you're like the Pied Piper just whistling and bringing mice into the home.
	Exactly. Okay. All right.
	So, I told him, we're not going to argue about that right now, because I'm not going to even entertain it.
	He got mad, and he told me, oh, well, if you don't care about these dishes in the house, then you can get your things and get the fuck on.
	This was midnight, and it was raining on May 22nd.
	And I was like, okay, he knows that me and my family in the Midwest, we're not in the best situation.
	Knocking on their house at 1 o'clock in the morning is not ideal.
	So he helps me pack my things and I leave but I don't have anywhere to go so I drive because by now I have a car.
	I just got a car in March. I drive to the East Coast because to me that's the safest place that there is right now.
	So I drive to the East Coast.
	It was probably a 14-hour drive.
	And he texts me almost 12 hours after he kicks me out, talking about, oh, sorry, I can't believe I did all this, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
	Sorry, you just cut out there for a sec.
	He was sorry that he kicked you out?
	Yeah, just blah, blah, blee, blah, blah.
	And just gibberish.
	Just gibberish. Because obviously there's something going on with you.
	And from there, I kind of took the bait because I was asking for advice from other people.
	And I do love him, so it's not that I don't love him.
	It's just that I can't be disrespected like that anymore.
	Because I don't know what...
	I will do next.
	So he ended up flying me back out to the Midwest because he wanted to see me.
	And then that's when we took ecstasy.
	So within 30 days, he kicked me out of his house twice, actually.
	And then the last time when I destroyed the TV, I really under-destroyed the TV because I was like a woman scorned.
	And it was mutual property.
	And when I poured water on it, it was actually unplugged.
	Oh, that's how you destroyed it?
	Yeah, I put water on it.
	That is about the most gentle way to destroy.
	I'm thinking like a golf club or something, you know, or hurling it from a balcony.
	Maybe that's just a dude way of looking at it.
	But that's like putting a TV to sleep gently with an injection.
	I mean, that is a very gentle way to destroy the TV. We ended up doing like a tug of war thing because he didn't want me to destroy the mutual property of the TV. So I ended up breaking my middle finger on my left hand because of the tug of war.
	So we didn't actually hit each other, but the TV was that heavy that it broke my finger.
	And from there, when I was pouring water and dish detergent on the TV, he called the cops on me.
	So eight police officers showed up to his house to basically detain me, and he lied to them on the 911 call and said that I was beating him and destroying his property.
	And when the cops came, I told them my story.
	And I was just very emotional because I know how dark my dark can be.
	It's almost like a never-ending darkness.
	So... I don't want to go to those places.
	So I take responsibility for my actions, even though you lied.
	That doesn't excuse me to do what I did.
	So the cops, I don't have a car because when I flew back out to the Midwest, I left my car on the East Coast.
	So I need to go to the hospital.
	He's telling them that I'm crazy, I'm off my meds, and I need to be locked up because I'm crazy.
	And he watches me be driven away in an ambulance.
	And that's the last time I talked to him.
	Oh my god. Wow, what a mess.
	And incredibly dangerous too, insofar as, I mean, they could have arrested you, right?
	Honestly, when I asked them, because I asked the policeman two things.
	I said, sir, I've been working on my mental health issues for a very long time, so I don't want this to be counted against me.
	Am I able to have the police report so I can at least show this to my therapist and my psychiatrist?
	And he said there is no police report because there was no crime.
	Mutual property was damaged and nobody was actually physically hurt.
	So I was like, oh, so there's just eight officers standing here.
	Wait, don't they get mad at him for saying that you were beating on him when he wasn't even hurt?
	Well, you know, it's his property.
	No, no, but didn't he say he himself was being beaten?
	Right. He had no scratch on him.
	My finger was broken.
	So technically, I could have lied.
	And I could have said, yeah, he did that to me.
	But no, I'm not that type of person.
	Because he would have went to jail, for sure.
	But he's never been arrested before.
	So I'm just like, you know, I don't even want that type of, like, reaping and sowing on me.
	And from there, I also asked the cop, because he told the cops that he wanted a restraining order against me, because I'm crazy.
	And I asked him about that.
	I was like, he also said something about a restraining order.
	So how does that work? And he said, the cop said, well, he's going to have to get a court date and then the judge will hear both of your stories and then the judge will make the determination about the restraining order.
	And I was just like, oh, okay.
	So both questions on the scene were answered about what could have happened to me legally, which is nothing because nothing happened.
	No, he didn't go to get a restraining order, right?
	I don't know. I don't know.
	I don't know, to be honest.
	So then you were taken to hospital, right?
	I was taken to the hospital.
	They put a stent on my middle finger right next to my ring finger on my left hand.
	And the irony of all of this is just, it's not funny, but it has to be.
	Yeah, I, from there, I stay at a friend's house, and then I go to my grandmother's house, but, you know, my grandmother got mad at me for drinking a little bit of her half gallon of milk, so I left there, and I went back to the East Coast, which is where I'm at now.
	My mom still lives on the East Coast, but I don't stay with her because I don't feel comfortable staying with her, but she still tries sometimes, but right now I'm just staying with her.
	A friend until I can get my apartment on the East Coast, or no, my apartment on the Midwest, and then continue to work from home.
	Because right now, I'm just collecting short-term and long-term disability because the situations that have arose, I'm not actually able to work, but I still need some type of income to take care of myself.
	Do you mean the finger or other things?
	Yeah, the mental.
	Because when I took the outpatient, I was actually on FMLA when I took the outpatient last November and December.
	But the pandemic, I had actually had four family members tested positive and then one family member who actually passed away to COVID-19.
	So there's just been...
	Hell of stuff going on to the point where I realized that I do just need to get myself in my own space and just kind of get that solitude because everywhere around me is very chaotic right now.
	I hear that. I hear that.
	Wow. Now, has he contacted you since?
	Nope. He said before we, um, before he called the cops, he said, um, bye!
	And then he said my name. I'm done with you for real this time.
	Bye! Like, it was very taunting and daunting.
	It was horrible.
	Horrible. And you were mad at me too, right?
	Which is, I mean, fine. I can handle it.
	It's no problem. But your first email to me was, not exactly you bald bastard, but something along those lines.
	And I just wondered, no, listen, it's fine.
	It's fine.
	I know that I'm a controversial guy in a public space.
	People are going to get mad at me.
	And I just – I wanted to not ignore that.
	I mean it's fine.
	I'm not mad at you about it.
	It's perfectly fine for you to be mad at me because this guy listens to my show.
	And I would not say that that was exactly listening to my show and putting things I talk about into practice.
	But you have an association of me with this guy.
	And so yeah, you're mad at me.
	But I didn't want to ignore that.
	I mean, we don't have to talk about it a lot.
	If you want to, that's perfectly fine.
	But I didn't want to pretend like you hadn't sent that email to me.
	But I'm also not holding it over to you like it was a bad thing.
	I completely understand it.
	Because when I sent you the first email, it was the day after.
	So I was very angry and I was very emotional.
	But then the day when things actually sunk in, that's when the pain actually really hit.
	And I still knew that I wanted to speak to you and get a perspective that is not my own.
	So I was like, okay, obviously that was very rude.
	Let me try to rephrase what's going on because I'm operating from fear right now.
	I'm not operating from love.
	And that's why I had sent you the second email because it's like the first email was operating from fear, anger, resentment, everything.
	But the second email was just pure, just like, why don't I love myself?
	Like, why did this happen?
	And now... It's, again, a situation where a man lies and I'm stuck with picking up the pieces that you decided to even, you decided to try to enter my life anyway.
	Like, if you would have never have asked for my phone number, I wouldn't know you.
	Right. And listen, you have nothing to apologize to me for at all.
	I just, yeah, and I'm not bringing it up to, because I'm upset about it.
	I'm bringing it up because that was our first contact.
	And if there was, if you were still mad at me, I would be certainly happy to hear about it.
	But yeah, you have nothing to apologize.
	I can completely understand.
	And, you know, when we are hurt and we're angry, these things happen and, you know, you are a person far more sinned against than sinning.
	So that doesn't bother me, but it certainly did help me realize just how important this conversation could be for you, which is why we moved you up and scheduled you ahead of time.
	So I just wanted to...
	I'm glad you sent me the first email.
	I'm glad you sent me the next email.
	I'm very glad to be having this conversation.
	I hope we can... I hope it can be helpful.
	And so I just wanted to acknowledge that.
	In case there was anything else that you wanted to say to me that you were upset about me or with me, I would be certainly happy to hear it.
	But if we can focus more on the boyfriend thing, which I think is the main thing, right?
	Like this is really rough on your heart, right?
	Yeah, I am shattered right now.
	And it's not like a shattered of like the previous tenure relationship.
	It's more so like, I waited.
	I did the work.
	I healed myself.
	I expressed to you my past transgressions.
	I expressed to you what I would have done differently in that relationship.
	And we went through so many talks.
	Like, you know a lot of information.
	And for you to use that not only against me as a low blow, but to basically spit in my face, it's just...
	It's so confusing.
	And I know, obviously, he's confused.
	That's why I feel confused.
	But... Man, like, I'm really messed up off of this.
	I can't even lie. We've only been together for six months, but it's like I vowed to myself not to open up to another man because I never thought that I would feel the same way that I felt in my previous relationship.
	And then I feel these feelings again just for not the same thing to happen, but almost worse.
	Like, I've never broken a finger before.
	I've never taken ecstasy before.
	I've never had the cops call it off.
	nevers that I'm just like, wow, like what the hell is going on?
	Well, yeah, because I mean, you're not heading in the right direction for where you want to be.
	And, you know, it's one thing to not make progress, but it's another thing to feel like you're going the wrong way, right?
	Because this is, as you say, the big escalation from what came before.
	Yeah.
	Like the previous relationship, we've never, like he's never called the cops on me.
	Never. Well, you haven't been destroying expensive property and that kind of escalation, right?
	Yeah, nothing like that.
	Like, yeah, we've broken up for me pushing him and hitting his glasses off of his head, but nothing like that.
	So tell me, this is a sentence if you can tell me the most about, because it's the furthest from my experience.
	So you say, as a black woman in America, I don't get why we are the ones that have to be given the most shit from black men.
	Now, there's a whole layer of things I don't, not my experience, I don't live in America, but Not a woman and not black.
	So there's a triple layer of just bridging to your knowledge, your understanding.
	Tell me a little bit more, or a lot more if you want, about what that sentence means to you.
	You know, I just think it's bullshit.
	I think the fact that the slave master would not only rape the man in front of the woman, but he would hang the most strongest black man or rip him from his wife or rape his wife and make her bear his child.
	All of these things, it's like you're angry, but us as women, us as black women, we see that it's not just anger, it's pain.
	So we want to nurture you because that's what women do.
	It doesn't matter if you're black or white, we're nurturers.
	So we want to nurture you, but you're so shamed and prideful and just Whatever you are, that you just take it out on us because we're the closest people to you.
	And I think it's bullshit because Emmett Till and the Rowling guy with the Tulsa riots, they both relied on by white women.
	And you, as a Black man in America, lied on your Black woman.
	Like, it's just fucking me up in my head because I'm just like, the context and the meanings behind all of this is just saying so much.
	And it's just like, me as a person who literally just wants to love and to be loved, and for you to spew out so much hate, it not only enrages me, but it boggles my mind because I know that it's pain.
	But sometimes pain can escalate to anger.
	And that's where I'm at right now.
	Because it's not fair to the Black woman to basically be put down.
	And we already know what happens to women in general.
	It doesn't matter what race they are.
	We couldn't even vote until 1920.
	So at the end of the day, women have always been oppressed and put in this box of, oh, you can't run a country because you're too emotional.
	And here we are.
	Just trying to love you.
	And you're literally shitting on us and flushing the toilet.
	It just boggles my mind.
	Most Black women aren't like me.
	I've had the privilege to live a very affluent life and I've had the privilege of living a very poor life.
	So I understand both sides.
	But when you're in an impoverished neighborhood, I feel like there's more execution in those neighborhoods by the police.
	For me, it was more so the racism I faced was very undermining and subliminal.
	Like, the first time I encountered race was when a five-year-old girl, when I was five, told me she couldn't play with me because her mom said I was black.
	So it's like, those things affect all of us in different ways.
	But that doesn't give you an excuse not to be responsible for your own life.
	And it's like these men who are not raised by men because almost 70% of black women are single moms.
	And yeah, we see our moms, but that doesn't mean our moms aren't toxic.
	But you don't see your dads at all.
	And it's like streets are raising you and you go by the street code, which is preposterous to me.
	And from there, you...
	Lie and whine and dine a woman and try to manipulate her for you to make yourself feel better.
	And it's like, why waste someone's time?
	Like, out of everything that's going on in the world right now, like, you decide now to waste someone's time?
	And I'm just really hurt, and I don't want it to turn into a boiling pot of rage.
	So I feel like this video that I can listen back to, hopefully you can say something to me to give me a better perspective that I can analyze as opposed to analyzing it the way that I am in my head.
	Because all it's doing for me is just enraging me and I know that that is not where I need to be right now.
	You've mentioned, I guess we've circled, and I really, really appreciate what you're saying.
	It really helps me to understand where you're coming from.
	This dark place that you talk about, you've touched on a couple of times in the convo.
	I'm not trying to drag you towards some pit here, but if you could tell me a little bit more about don't want to be bitter, don't want to take revenge.
	What is the dark place for you?
	What would it mean in your life and to the life of the people around you?
	I feel like the dark place for me is, like, it's deeper than the ocean.
	Like, there's no...
	There's no...
	There's nothing I won't do when I don't give a fuck.
	Like, and I just...
	I need to make sure that I keep myself around positivity because, you know, I've jumped out of cars before.
	I obviously told you that I cut myself.
	Like... I've tried to jump into windows, beat women with pots and pans because of the previous relationship.
	There's some shit that I do that scares me, and I just don't want to summon that person.
	I feel like situations like that summons the evil inside of me, and that's what I'm scared of.
	I'm almost scared of myself because I don't know How far I will go.
	It's almost like a medieval 300 gladiator type of mind, and it's just not pretty.
	The devil inside, right?
	Which we all have to wrestle with.
	Yeah. Yeah. Right.
	Okay, so what do you want...
	In your life? I mean, obviously, professionally, you're doing fine and all that.
	You get your finances sorted out.
	But what is it that you want?
	What's your ideal? Like, you know, 10 years from now, if you've got it, you're like, man, that's what I wanted.
	Peace, prosperity, and abundance.
	That's very nice. I really love that language.
	Can we get a tad more specific?
	I mean, do you want to be married?
	Do you want to have kids? Do you not want to have kids?
	Do you want to travel? What is it that would be the most satisfying life looking forward?
	Oh, I want it all.
	So I want to be married.
	I want to have lots of children.
	I actually still want about like 12 kids.
	I want to have houses in multiple countries and in multiple states of the United States.
	I want to have multiple businesses and multiple streams of revenue.
	I also Several languages.
	Once I obtain my first bachelor's degree, I want to obtain other degrees.
	I want to be a master of public health.
	I have a master of public policy.
	I want to focus on getting America on the health care system because we keep fucking up.
	And I just, you know, I really want to use all of the negative that was given to me as a child and just put all of that positive in the world.
	And I feel like that's my purpose on this earth is to overcome the darkness, the light.
	Right. While that is a wonderful laundry list, do you realize it's completely deranged in terms of achievability?
	Yeah, I feel like it's very unrealistic on a time.
	No, no, no. Very unrealistic is me wanting to be a hair model.
	This is, like, absolutely impossible.
	Like, you can't get it all.
	Yeah. I mean, and the reason I'm saying that is the dark place to some degree comes from You know, like if I were to say, I want to be very successful as a philosopher, but I don't want to be controversial, it's like, you know, it's kind of a job, right? It's kind of, I want to be a boxer, but I don't ever want to get hit.
	You know, like there's some things which are just kind of, like if you want to be a good mom to 12 kids, the idea that you're going to, you know, have a bunch of successful businesses, learn a new language, get another couple of degrees, like you can't, it's not, you can't do that.
	If I had to prioritize it, it would be the husband and the kids first, if I had to prioritize it.
	Right.
	Okay.
	And I'm saying that not because, I mean, I'm sure you could achieve all of these things in individual approaches.
	I'm no doubt that you could get just about everything you want to get done, done.
	But, you know, number of hours in the day and the fact that if you have a bunch of kids, they're going to need you first and foremost.
	Because I'll tell you, I mean, if you and I went on a date and I would need this kind of questions you got to ask on dates, like, I mean, especially when you're not in your early 20s, like it's a job interview.
	Come on.
	It's not just funsy, funsy.
	Right.
	So I would ask you these things if you were and I want a date and I'd be like, whoa.
	So she's setting herself up to be really, really disappointed in someone and that someone is probably going to be me over time.
	Right.
	So I would say, again, I applaud the ambition.
	I really do. I'm an ambitious guy myself.
	But at the same time, if you're setting yourself up for, I failed because I'm not 12 people, that's not a recipe for future satisfaction, if that makes sense.
	Oh yeah, I kind of, for me, I don't want to get my hopes up with as many children as I want.
	I kind of want to just, I want to start with the seed and I want to just water the seed and I don't make it grow, you know, I just water it and I just want to be able to plant the seed and I feel like the first seed would be like the institution of marriage and then however me and my significant other would kind of Develop in our own world, in our own canvas in the world.
	And then from there, however many children we are blessed with, they're a blessing.
	So I wouldn't want to put too much pressure on my husband.
	Okay, we're on baby number five!
	Well, and yes, and I don't have my PhD yet.
	Someone's going to pay, right?
	I mean, that's... And listen, I mean, I've been a stay-at-home dad, and we have one child, right?
	So, I mean, this is...
	I mean, it's about the easiest parenting known to man, so to speak, right?
	Although, it's a little tougher when they get older, because especially, you know, being quarantined and all, like, I mean...
	There aren't like masses of other kids that you can kind of, hey, go play with the kids, honey, right?
	So it's a little easier when they're younger, but it's a little tougher when they get older because there is this, it's a constancy.
	Whereas, you know, I mean, I'm sure by the time you were 11 or I was 11, I know that for, I mean, my mom's parenting was mostly done.
	It was just a little bit of like, don't, you know, don't drink rat poison and we're good to go, right?
	Yeah. So, but I mean, it is, especially when they're young, man, I mean, it's 16 hours a day, you know, at least, right?
	I mean, because it's not even counting getting up at night.
	So I'm just saying, you know, if you want to have kids, I mean, even one plus, right?
	Especially if you want to breastfeed, which I would strongly suggest, of course, for reasons I've gone into before.
	The realistic thing is to say, okay, you know, so let's say you have three kids two years apart, right?
	So, you know, the oldest one is six, the oldest one is sort of four when the youngest one is born, and you want to get them to, you know, the age of five or whatever.
	I mean, we're really talking about, you know, 10 years of – that's your major investment.
	It's like you can't do anything else.
	But it's going to be kind of tough to have big ambitions for things outside of that, just for that 10-year phrase, which is going to take you into your early 40s, right?
	I mean, so I just sort of wanted to point that out.
	when it comes to future happiness, you have to have goals that take into account, you know, limited hours of the day.
	And also you want to spend time with your husband and, and just enjoying your life with him and, and all of that.
	So, uh, because if you set your sights too high, uh, almost for sure, it's like whatever you achieve is going to be disappointing.
	And, uh, you know, I really want to guard your future happiness as much as possible.
	And tempering those expectations.
	Again, I really, really appreciate and relish the ambition.
	I think it's a beautiful thing.
	And there's nothing that says you can't get this stuff done in your life as a whole.
	But I talked about the next 10 years.
	It's not like a total trap, but I was just kind of curious because I wasn't saying, like, by the time you, you know, you face your deathbed or you're lying on your deathbed, what will you want to achieve?
	Okay, well, maybe you could have achieved a whole bunch of these things.
	But over the next 10 years, that was a question more around, do you have a realistic view of...
	What it's going to be to be a mom, right?
	Because you want to be a great mom because you really have a lot of experience in what not to do, which means you're kind of well trained in what to do, if that makes sense.
	Yeah, and honestly, that's what Dude actually really brought to my life because I was very...
	I know I'm an extremist, but at the same time, very unrealistic with my extremities.
	So he said the same thing.
	And obviously, I'm assuming because of what he heard from you.
	And it balanced me out to the point where I said to myself, like, okay, like, what is first things first?
	And I said, the most important thing for me is to make sure that I am being a supportive wife to my husband and that I am governing the household on a harmony level with my husband.
	I've seen too many times where a woman is basically undermining the man, but he knows nothing about it because he's working all the time.
	It's just like I kind of got that perspective from him because when I told him all that, he asked me the question that you did and he was just like, okay, well, how do you expect to do all of this in X amount of years?
	And I sat myself down.
	I was like, realistically, what I want, first and foremost, is a healthy marriage and healthy children.
	Right. Okay, good. Yeah, I just wanted to remind you of that because you obviously have an enormous...
	Amount to offer the world, but not all at the same time, if that makes sense, right?
	It's going to just cause everything to not work well.
	Now, so, I mean, there's stuff that you're talking about here that I'm going to, you know, really step on the landmines and push back against and, you know, get mad at me, of course, if I go too far or I go astray, that's perfectly fine, or just push back, of course.
	I don't want to tell you your experience, particularly as a black woman in America.
	But here's the thing, so...
	If, because you talked about, I mean, a couple of major issues, right?
	I mean, do you call it slavery and the black experience and the predations and horrors that were inflicted upon the black community, in particular the black men and the black women through rape, through some of the slave owners?
	And listen, I mean, God, I mean, I hate slavery.
	It goes without saying, right?
	It's a violation of the non-aggression principle, a violation of property rights, violation of just about every moral norm known to mankind, right?
	But here's the thing. You talked about that and you talked about, you know, women, we didn't get the vote and we were oppressed throughout history and so on.
	So I'm going to give you two arguments against that stuff.
	Not because I don't think slavery was just about the worst institution in human life.
	I do. And not because I don't think women were never oppressed.
	But here's the problem.
	If you're caught up in historical movements that go back...
	I mean, God, you know, slavery goes back like 100,000 years, like every single race, every single continent, it's still going on in places in the Muslim world, in Africa, there's still slavery, right?
	So here's the problem.
	If you tie your capacity for happiness...
	To things you have no control over or things that are so large that they kind of sweep you over, it's kind of impossible to be happy.
	Like, you know, I mean, whites were enslaved by the Muslims.
	Two million, I think it was, which is like four times what, you know, and this competition of who suffered more, I get it.
	Like, nobody wins, right?
	But, you know, in particular, I'm from Ireland.
	My... Irish ancestors, you know, starved and tortured and the potato famine was largely engineered by the British and this is one of the reasons why they were fleeing, right?
	The large population of Irish in America and so on, right?
	So here's the thing.
	Like if I say, oh, you know, all these terrible things happened to my ancestors, which they did as they, you know, and you could well argue worse things happened to your ancestors more recently.
	So I'm really, you know, I'm not trying to equate the two.
	But if I get myself caught up in giant historical movements over which I have no control, then I can't get my happiness into my hands, if that makes sense.
	Because there's these big, giant historical tsunamis of mess and horror and rape and enslavement.
	And then it's like, oh, my God, how can I just find a way to be happy in the face of these large historical horrors, if that makes sense?
	And I'm not trying to deny the historical horrors.
	They're real.
	They're absolutely real.
	And the blacks in America have suffered enormously, particularly under government programs like slavery and segregation and Jim Crow and so on.
	But if it's like the only way that I could find a great black man to marry is if these historical things had not occurred, you're basically saying I can't find a black man to marry.
	If that makes sense, because because these historical things did occur.
	And if they define your capacity to find love, it becomes, I think, kind of impossible to find love.
	Does that make sense?
	Yeah, I definitely agree.
	I think sometimes when you think too negative, that's all you see is the negative.
	So I definitely agree with that.
	I think when I go on rants like that, it's not because I don't understand what you're saying.
	Like I said before, it's really operating from a place of fear.
	Like I am genuinely scared because I keep putting myself in situations that don't serve me well.
	So I'm always like pointing the finger, but four fingers are pointing back at me.
	Right. I know. And I get that.
	And I respect that as well.
	And I'm just being that annoying guy to say, you know, please don't put it all on historical things that you can't control because then there's just no way to end up being happy.
	And that's a big concern.
	Now, the other thing that you talked about as well that I want to, I don't know, nag you.
	Oh, look, I get to nag a woman.
	Oh, oh. No, but the other thing is, okay, like women oppressed throughout history and so on.
	Absolutely. But you all weren't drafted, right?
	So men had to vote for about 20 or 25 years before women did, right?
	So it wasn't like men throughout most of human history had any vote.
	We were just like chattel serfs or slaves sometimes as well.
	And we were dragged off to war where there was not exactly modern helicopter-based battlefield medicine.
	You get one infection and you're going to die a painful death over the next three weeks or whatever, right?
	And, um, so history sucked for just about everyone.
	I mean... Yeah, I totally agree with that, because I feel like with men having...
	I didn't even know until this previous relationship that on your, um, ID or voter card, it says that you are, like, if in the event that there is, like, a war and they need to be drafted, like, you will be drafted.
	Like, I didn't even know that.
	So I definitely agree with the whole, um...
	We are very barbaric as humans in general.
	Well, we have rulers and we still have rulers.
	You know, my daughter is born, as your children would be born, into half a million or a million dollars worth of debt slavery.
	And so for you and I to sit there and play the historical grievance game to some degree, it's real and it's valid for sure.
	But I think part of it is fomented to distract us from the people who are kind of still ruling over us.
	Like, I'm more concerned about the financial enslavement of my daughter than what happened in To my ancestors or your ancestors because that's a really vivid and current form of enslavement that's very real.
	It's very real. Slavery is when you take about 80% of the person's income and then just give them 20% left over for food and shelter and medicine and all of that.
	But, I mean, the amount of debt that kids are being born into now, that is a real form of financial enslavement.
	And just because we get to pick our own jobs doesn't mean that fundamentally we're not still putting the majority of our incomes into the pockets of predators who rule us.
	So I just, you know...
	As far as, you know, the black history, the slavery, you know, massive sympathies.
	But my concern is then you're saying, well, gosh, you know, black men are so broken by slavery and patriarchy and blah, blah, blah.
	Okay, well, then you can't get what you want.
	And I think you can because I know that there are, you know, good, honorable black men out there, just as there are good, honorable black women out there and women and men of every race.
	I think you can get what you want.
	But if we kind of stare into that Abyss of historical injustice and wrongdoings and all of that.
	I think it really does cut down our capacity to find happiness because, you know, everyone's so broken by history, we can't love each other.
	That's like letting history win and not the possibilities of the present and the future.
	The first thing that came to my mind when you were talking was the musical Rent.
	And when they were singing the song La Bi Boheme, they were saying the opposite of war isn't peace, it's creation.
	And I think it is.
	There is a peace that comes with, okay, this may have been bad, but what are we going to do from here?
	What are we going to create from here?
	And how are we going to move on in a positive way?
	As opposed to just wallowing and You know, self-pity or, you know, I guess, humanity pity.
	I don't know what to call it. Right, right.
	Okay. So that's just my annoying, obviously, hopefully helpful, but, you know, there are good people out there and we're not all plowed under by history.
	And I'm just, I'm always concerned that the plowed under by history argument is used to distract us from the current injustices and have us focus on the past to the point where we can't fight for the future.
	But... Yeah, I agree.
	Why I don't pay attention to the media too much.
	Right, right, right.
	But I don't want to be in the matrix.
	Right. Now, the question, I guess, that's most fundamental, because, you know, the heartbreaking aspect is the past to some degree, of course, but it's also a lot to do with...
	This feeling, the really vivid thing that I got, was so much vivid out of what you said, I really appreciate the sharing, is you said, when the guy got into your bed because he was drunk and then you called the cops and he was the boyfriend of the roommate you didn't get along with, the woman, you said, I'm not being protected, I'm not being protected, right?
	Yeah, I wasn't being protected at that moment.
	Every time I have encounters with cops, they let me know that my life does not matter.
	And it's not in a way where I always fear for my life, but it's very, very evident.
	Because when I called the cops, because they thought I was white, because sometimes when I speak, I guess I sound...
	I don't know. So they thought they were coming to rescue a damsel in distress who was...
	I'm Caucasian. When I got there, they realized it was a Caucasian man and a black woman.
	What they did was they walked him in a corner and tried to ask him, you know, like, why did you do what you did?
	And he was like, I'm not sure.
	And they were just like, oh, well, we don't want to arrest him because we don't believe your story.
	We're just going to ask him to leave.
	So it was almost like they were calling me a liar in conversation.
	And I was just like, Why would I call you at 4.30 in the morning just to lie on a white man?
	Right, right. Yeah, and I mean, I remember my mom calling the cops on me when I was a teenager, and they were useless as tits on a bull, too.
	And yeah, my life didn't matter.
	My experience didn't matter.
	They just told me to do what my mom told me, and there was obviously some kind of generation gap.
	That's all I got. Yeah, it could not be a race thing, so I'm not going to always pull the race card with it, but it was just very obvious that they didn't want to persecute him in any way, even though he completely violated my privacy.
	Right, right. Okay. So the lack of protection is, I think, it's alarming in particular, and why I think your heart remains broken, and why the dark place is calling, so to speak, is because How can you tell if a guy is a good guy or a bad guy before you get involved with him?
	Because if you have that knowledge, if You can trust yourself to make sure that when you give your heart, when you sleep with a guy, when you get involved, when you move in, when you get married, that it's not going to end up like it ended up before.
	Because, I mean, that would be a disaster.
	Can you imagine, of course, if at least you didn't have kids with these guys, right?
	You had a couple of kids with these guys.
	I mean, that's a real mess, right?
	And then that is a tragic recreation of what happened in the past, right?
	Yeah, I just, I don't know why I think they are good guys and then they turn out to be bad guys.
	Well, that's the question, right?
	So the question is, how can you find a guy you can trust?
	Now, if you have that knowledge...
	Because it's really around trusting yourself.
	Because you think these are good guys.
	You give them your heart. They turn out to be bad guys.
	And you say, oh, I don't trust them.
	But that's, you know, you can kick them out of your life.
	And then the fact that you don't trust them isn't as important as the fact that you can't trust yourself to pick the right guys.
	Because then you're stuck with that, right?
	You're stuck wherever we are.
	That's where we are. Like, welcome to wherever you are.
	And everywhere you go, you are there, right?
	So if you have a lack of trust in yourself and your ability to choose the right guys...
	Then that, to me, is where things become really challenging.
	Because if you can trust yourself to pick the right guys, then you can face the future with some confidence, right?
	Yeah, that makes a lot of sense because I think sometimes when I see those red flags in the beginning of a relationship, because I definitely saw red flags in the beginning of this previous relationship, but because of that low self-worth, that lack of trust within myself, I almost...
	I don't ignore them.
	I think, oh, well, maybe he was just hurt just like me.
	And in turn...
	It makes them like a project in a way.
	And then that's when I start projecting my own feelings onto someone else because I want to be loving.
	But that doesn't necessarily mean that that's what you want to be.
	That's right. No, that's right.
	That's quite wise. So this guy, like you got in, well, you met him and you went to his house and his house was like a pigsty, right?
	Oh, it was bad.
	Yeah, so that's a red flag right there.
	Exactly. He's got no respect for his environment.
	Now, you can say, okay, well, you know, Einstein's study was a mess or whatever.
	It's like, yeah, but if he's not producing the general theory of relativity, then that's probably a bit more of a red flag, right?
	So is he treating his environment as someplace that he wants to be in?
	And also, does he understand that even if you are a slob, you clean up before the woman comes over, right?
	Yeah. It was so bad that I cleaned it up.
	No, I get it. I get it.
	So he doesn't get that even if you are a slob, you're supposed to hide it.
	You're supposed to clean up before the woman.
	Yeah, just push it under the bed.
	Yeah, do something, man.
	I mean, I remember going on dates and I'd take my car to the car wash and clean it all out.
	I don't want some woman getting into a dust bunny with sticks on the floor, right?
	So... But it's like his father does the same thing.
	So does that make any difference?
	Yeah, it means that he's not processed his past and learned from it.
	So that's really, really important.
	If he's doing what his father did, he'll probably be a lot like his father was.
	And if you don't like his father, you're not going to end up liking him.
	Yeah, his father's still doing it, actually, and I don't like what he does to females, because actually, the things that he does to females, the way that they destroy his life, it's pretty bad.
	Like, one female scorched his face, another female cut off his cable lines, another female busts his son, the guy that I was with, his car windows and his house windows and tried to break into his house and stole his dog.
	Okay, so come on.
	It's almost like you're trolling me at this point because there are so many red flags in that family that get involved.
	I'm not sure that your major issue is that there was slavery 150 years ago, to be perfectly frank.
	I think it's the fact that you're not dealing with a family where the women take blowtorches to the guys' faces.
	I mean, listen, I sympathize with the Emmett Till situation.
	I really do. Not your major problem right now.
	Yeah, I totally agree.
	I think the severe issues...
	Because it wasn't always like that for him.
	His mom actually was able to...
	Find a better environment for her sons.
	And she moved to the southern Midwest, the south.
	And, you know, what happened with them was he didn't want to stop smoking weed, so he went back to his father's.
	And ever since he's been at his father's, that's where his life has been, in the dark.
	So I probably was trying to just lean towards the mom's side, but his mom does not have nearly as much influence as his dad has on his life.
	So I can't negate that.
	Right. So incredibly messy environment, drug addiction, incredibly violent family situation.
	Yeah. Yeah.
	Those aren't even clues.
	I mean, those are like air raid sirens or I don't know.
	Those are flares being shot straight into the night sky.
	It's the ambulance that I went to the hospital in.
	Right, right, right.
	Yeah, so with regards to the other guy, you know, the 10-year guy, okay, yeah, so there was a breakup, you know, pretty early on.
	When you kick someone out, it's an act of dominance, right?
	You kick someone out and you're saying...
	If you disagree with me, I will toss you out on the street and therefore don't disagree with me, right?
	I mean, it's an act of dominance.
	Everything is supposed to be negotiated in relationships, right?
	You don't negotiate with babies, right?
	When you start negotiating with toddlers and you kind of raise your kids up to an equal level over time.
	But if you have dominance-based relationships, in other words, the only way that things get resolved is through threats, right?
	Mm-hmm. So if you're in any kind of situation where issues...
	I mean, you don't resolve issues, but at least one person gets their way through dominance, violence, bullying, withdrawal, you name it.
	Emotional manipulation, all the stuff that seem to be characterizing your exes.
	If you're in that situation, you can't have a productive relationship.
	It's not a relationship. All there is is sex and bullying.
	Yeah, I agree. Okay, so if you see those things, the important thing is to discard people, right?
	I mean, that sounds kind of cold, you know, like throw them out of a car or something.
	But what I mean by that is, you are a unique individual, I'm a unique individual, which means that very few people are going to fit with us.
	Yeah. Right, so...
	If very few people are going to fit with us, the majority of finding love is discarding people.
	You know, like the old, if you're looking for a needle in a haystack, you throw away a whole lot of straw, right?
	That makes sense. So you got to be relentless in like, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope.
	And you got to be quick. You got to be quick to get to know.
	So that you can get to yes.
	Like I learned this, you know, you're in the business world to some degree as well, right?
	So when I would be on the phone trying to sell my software, I would literally have to go probably through 500 to 1000 people to get to a final sale.
	Okay. Now, what you want to do is you want to get to – if someone's going to say no or if you're going to say no to someone, you want to get to that no as quickly as humanly possible so you can get on to the 500th or 1,000th person.
	That's business. It won't be that many for you.
	But you've got to reject so many people so that you can finally get to the person who fits for you.
	And I think because I've been rejected so many times in my life, I just kind of, by default, I do the opposite.
	But that makes a lot of sense on finding that true truth in a person and being able to be your authentic self with that person and have a life when you're able to just say, yeah, that's not going to work for me because...
	Three months, it's just going to be too toxic for both of us.
	Right, right. And also, of course, you have to pick the family of the man, because that's where your kids are going to spend time, right?
	So you've got to pick that family.
	And if the family is composed of, you know, I take in the most vivid example, the guy who got his face torched, that's not going to be great for your kids, right?
	And I didn't even know he got his face torched until I saw a picture of him with his face normal.
	Because I thought it was... You know, sometimes people have the skin pigmentations where it's like lighter patches.
	I thought that was what was wrong with his face.
	But when I saw his face with a family picture, I was like, oh, he didn't always have that.
	And then the guy that I was in a relationship with, he said...
	Yeah, that was a crazy ass story.
	He never told me the story.
	I bet he didn't. I wouldn't.
	But yeah, so of course, now recognizing that you can't change people.
	Yeah. You know, I mean, we can be sort of coarse and call it the magic vagina, which is...
	This guy I sleep with, my magic vagina will heal him or cure him or whatever it is.
	That doesn't happen.
	So you go in and say, well, this guy's got problems, but I can fix him.
	I use this analogy in a book.
	A lot of people, this happens to men as women, I think women do it a little bit more, where they say, wow, I really need a mode of transportation, man.
	I really need to get from A to B. So I'm going to go out.
	Now, the closest store to my house is a boat store.
	So I'm going to go and buy a boat.
	I'm going to get it home, and I'm going to try and turn it into a car.
	Because, you know, it's another two blocks of the car store.
	So it's just easier for me to get a boat and try and turn it into a car.
	I'm like, I'm not sure that it is.
	In fact, easier to not go the extra two blocks to the car store because it's probably easier to turn a car into a boat than the other way around, right?
	Like the fairy godmother turning a pumpkin into a horse and heritage.
	Yeah, exactly, exactly, exactly.
	So, you know, just go to the car store.
	That's all I'm saying. Don't go to the boat store and try and turn it into a car.
	Just go to a guy who matches your values and then you don't have to change him at all.
	Yeah, and I definitely agree with that.
	I think talking to the previous guy for so many hours, I saw what he wanted, but what I didn't see was what he actually had.
	And I think that's also important to look at too, right?
	Because you know how your mom's vanity is creeping into you?
	It's your belief that you can change people.
	You know, he said your mom was like prideful.
	Yeah. So there's two things, two things I noted, right?
	Number one is, well, three things, in fact.
	Number one is your crazy laundry list of everything you want to achieve in the next two years.
	I mean, that's prideful to the point of like, not on this planet, right?
	So that's how I want to push back against that.
	The second is your belief that you can change people.
	And the third is the statement that shrinks the balls of every man who hears it, frankly, which is, don't ever get into an argument with a woman, you'll never win.
	Wait, what did I say wrong?
	You said that statement in the TV and water incident.
	You said, don't argue with a woman, you'll always lose.
	Or don't get into an argument with a woman, you'll always lose.
	Oh, so I shouldn't have, like, emasculated him like that?
	Well, no, you're not emasculating him.
	You're just basically saying, mama, don't negotiate.
	Oh! Well, I just feel like the truth needs no proof.
	Like, if you lied, you lied.
	No, I get that. I get that.
	But you're saying, don't ever, as a man, get into an argument with a woman, because you'll always lose.
	And now what that says to a man is, you're not going to negotiate.
	He's always going to be in the wrong, and you're always going to be in the right, because you're a woman and he's a man.
	Yeah, I think for me, there was a lot more context behind that.
	Because for me, I was just saying that if you lied, that's the truth.
	So I shouldn't have used the sex.
	I shouldn't have used a man. Yeah, that's not good.
	That's not going to get you what you want.
	Because a man is going to be like, well, I don't want to be in a relationship with a woman who always thinks she's right.
	That's no fun. Because that means they're just going to get ground down into nothing, right?
	And that's not true.
	Everybody makes mistakes and everybody can improve on themselves.
	So yeah, I get what you're saying.
	Yeah. I mean, you and I are having a bit of a negotiation here, right?
	And I'm not right because I'm a guy.
	You're not right because you're a woman.
	It's just, you know, we're both trying to get to a truth that will help you, right?
	Yeah, I agree. So if you can look for that stuff, take people as you find them.
	And it doesn't mean you can't change.
	Of course you can change, right?
	But you can't change people.
	You can be part of their growth.
	It's sort of like if you're really interested in, I don't know, Pokemon or whatever, right?
	If you're I don't know anything about it, but apparently it's some fighting game with Japanese anime.
	So if you're really, really interested in Pokemon and your boyfriend is really, really interested in Pokemon, you can both learn about Pokemon together and that's great.
	But if he hates Pokemon and you love Pokemon, you probably can't get him into it, right?
	So you can grow, but you also have to be facing the same direction to begin with, right?
	And so find a guy who's...
	Not a walking set of red flags.
	If a man is still embedded in a highly dysfunctional family, that is a red flag that I would not get involved in myself.
	Because the healthier you are, the more the family is going to try and drag him back and down, right?
	Because you've said this a couple of times that the...
	Family of the man that you're involved in don't like you, right?
	Think you're a problem. Yeah, I feel like because his mom has no problem with me.
	She was actually very excited to meet me and she was the one that had left his dad in his ruins.
	She's the healthy one. His dad actually always infiltrates his negativity.
	Now that you mention it, that does make a lot of sense because there would be times where it'd be like 3 o'clock in the morning.
	We'd just be laughing, you know, just having fun.
	And next thing you know is dad will text him saying, I need my vacuum cleaner and my tools out of your girlfriend's car.
	And it's like, what are you going to do with a vacuum cleaner and tools at 3 o'clock in the morning?
	Well, he's just there to sabotage, right?
	Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
	So the healthy people, I mean, we're kind of hunted by the unhealthy people, right?
	Because they got to keep us away from the people they're exploiting, because otherwise we're going to build up their character.
	We're like a predator to them, and so they become predators to us.
	Sorry, you were going to say? I said we're like stepping on their toes.
	Yeah, harming their interests and so on, right?
	So they recognize us as sort of natural enemies of their interests.
	And so if a man is still engaged, involved, and this is true for women as well, if they're highly embedded and enmeshed in a toxic family environment, they're not going to be emotionally available, they're not going to be productive, and you're going to be engaged in this completely underhanded battle for the soul of the person you care about, and almost for sure you're going to lose because they've got way more history and way more power over them.
	Yeah, I totally agree.
	Yeah, that makes a lot more sense because, you know, nobody has more influence in a man's life than his father, right?
	At one point in time in his life.
	Yeah, well, certainly the family structure as a whole.
	For the most part, we're programmed to choose family over lovers.
	Okay. Yeah. I mean, it's not going to be a good relationship.
	And why would you want to?
	You kind of got out of a toxic family.
	Why would you want to marry into another one?
	Like, you know that scene.
	Like, why on earth would you want to?
	You know, it's like, hey, I survived this war.
	I'm going to go enlist. Now I'm over 40.
	And it's like, why do you want to do that?
	I'm like trying to drive backwards.
	Like, yeah, that doesn't make sense.
	So if you take those couple of things, like that's, so yeah, a lot more saying no, way more saying no than yes.
	Just being completely ruthless about, you know, listen, we do, funny, you know, people choose houses more carefully than they choose boyfriends.
	They choose cell phones more carefully than they choose boyfriends and just have really high standards for what it is that you're looking for.
	And, you know, because look, I tell you, I mean, assuming that you want to marry a black guy, right?
	So there are black guys out there.
	And who are in your situation, because you've dated some not very healthy black guys and you're really frustrated with it at all, guess what?
	You know, they've dated some bunny boilers too, right?
	And they're looking for somebody, you know, sane and stable and healthy, and they're maybe on the verge of giving up and so on, and there's no reason why you can't find each other, but you've got to be.
	Like, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope.
	The rejection is worse later.
	I say, oh, well, it hurts to be rejected early on.
	Sure. Yeah, yeah. But it hurts a lot more to be rejected later on when you're already enmeshed and you've moved in and you're in love and you've had sex.
	And like, that's when the real rejection hurts.
	And so recognizing that you are looking for a rare guy.
	So the whole point of looking for a rare guy is just keep looking.
	Just keep looking and keep looking.
	And, you know, you burned up 10 years with one guy.
	you burned up six months with another guy, now is the time to guard your eggs and, you know, your capacity to have a child.
	You've just got to be like, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope.
	Been there, done that, not doing it again.
	Not getting involved in a crazy family, not getting involved with a dysfunctional guy, not getting involved with a guy who doesn't have a job for six out of seven years, not getting involved with a guy who does math, sorry, who does ecstasy, not getting involved with a guy who's got a gross crib, not getting involved with a guy who's got crazy violent family members hanging off his every word, Just no, no, no, no, no.
	And I know that that's hard, but that's self-respect, right?
	Self-respect is saying, I don't settle for what I know to be dangerous.
	Wow. Yeah, that's very profound.
	Yeah, I agree.
	Look at that. Came up with some useful stuff.
	Yeah, thank you. Sorry, go ahead.
	Way over it was supposed to.
	I'm so sorry. Oh, no, no, don't.
	Hey, you don't have to. It's my time, man.
	I'm honored by the conversation.
	This is a great and important chat, not just, you know, for you, but for, you know, there's lots of women out there of every race who are incredibly frustrated with man-childs or dysfunctional men or dysfunctional family situations, so...
	No, no, it's my time to manage.
	I'm incredibly pleased with the conversation.
	And, you know, for me, as is the case, you know, two hours of listening and 15 minutes of advice is usually the way it goes.
	I'm really happy about that.
	Yeah, I really appreciate you listening because I'm able to understand.
	I feel like what you just said with the whole ruthless high standards, it kind of just unlocked something in my brain of like, duh.
	Well, it's easy for me to say because I'm not you, right?
	Just as you'd look at my life and say, well, obviously it's this.
	I'm like, oh, wow, that is true.
	Yeah, so that makes a lot of sense.
	And I actually don't mind rejecting a lot of people.
	I think for me is more so thinking I can change people, which is extremely prideful.
	So in that event, like what I could do is maybe gently, something gentle along the lines of something gentle, but definitely gentle.
	Don't infiltrate my mental.
	And that is really where I'm at with it, of just protecting myself, protecting my energy, and allowing someone to come into my life, who is rare, that I can love as well as him loving me.
	Good, good. So, yeah, that's what I wanted to get across.
	Will you let me know how it goes?
	Yeah, I'm actually probably going to email you in about six months to let you know about the new apartment and what's going to happen because I feel like the universe is like, good job, girl.
	Good job. Great. Well, I'm going to be part of that universe and say, good job.
	So thanks for the conversation.
	I really appreciate it. And I'm very honored that you would open up your life to me in this way.
	I'm glad that we've got to some place that's useful.
	I really, really look forward to your feedback and letting me know how it's going.
	and yeah, to all the people out there.
	It's way better to reject people in the short run than to get involved and end up everyone's heart getting broken in the long run.
	Saying no is so important to getting to the ultimate yes that you can sustain for your life.
	So thanks everyone so much for listening.
	Thank you to this lovely caller for a great conversation and lots of love from up here, freedomain.com forward slash donate.
	Love you guys so much and I will talk to you soon.
	All right, bye.
	Bye.
	music Well, thank you so much for enjoying this latest Free Domain show on philosophy.
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