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Nov. 28, 2020 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

02:58:55

'My Husband Wants to Pay for my Lover's Son!' Part 1 Freedomain Call In

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	Good evening, Stefan Molyneux from Free Domain.
	Hope you're doing well. It is the 20th of November, really 17 days since the coup, sorry, election in America, and I hope you're keeping track of things.
	I think it's really a pretty wild story, a pretty wild ride, and I guess it's down to the courts, not the philosophers, to figure out which way goes forward.
	I'm not happy that the job has gone over to them, but at the same time, It's funny how little I miss doing politics.
	But the one thing I wanted to mention just here at the beginning, we've got a bunch of callers in for the show tonight, but I just wanted to mention this as well.
	It's sort of a fundamental question that you need to ask when it comes to when people have opinions about politics or they think things should be done this way or that way or the other.
	And it sort of popped into my mind based upon Coronavirus, right?
	Because there are these politicians out there and these pundits and so on, and the politicians in particular, the government workers, they, oh, we've got to have a lockdown, we've got to have this or that.
	So a fundamental question that you need to ask people, and this is around politics as a whole, around government action as a whole, it's a fundamental question.
	What does it cost you if you're wrong?
	What does it cost you if you're wrong?
	So you know that kid in your school when you were growing up?
	Probably in primary school.
	This kid who...
	Sometimes a little aggressive.
	Sometimes a little larger physically than the norm.
	And that kid who just...
	Just didn't quite get things, didn't quite absorb them, got kind of distracted, got kind of angry at intellectual topics because of that helplessness that comes from just not having a brain that can kick into gear to get you the things that you need in life.
	Get understanding, get conciliation, get negotiation.
	You may have had someone like that in your family.
	You may have had parents who fought senselessly, pointlessly, endlessly.
	Now, for that kid...
	And I still remember the guy in my primary school, and I still remember his name all these years later.
	So that kid, if he was kind of aggressive and all that, you didn't actually have to worry about him for too, too long.
	And we all know why.
	Because, at least back in the day when this could happen, he would just get left behind.
	And he'd end up as a bigger and bigger kid in a smaller and smaller classroom.
	And, you know, like that line from Dazed and Confused, Matthew Broderick's like, I love high school girls.
	I keep getting older and they just keep staying the same age.
	So that was the kid.
	I love grade four.
	I keep getting older, but my classmates keep staying the same age.
	So that kid, and I sympathize a lot more because, you know, when I was younger, there was this whole myth of everyone's kind of the same and the people who succeed do one of two things.
	It depends if you're on the left or on the right, right?
	So everyone's kind of the same.
	We're all just this big Star Trek unitard blob of sameness.
	And some people do better than others.
	It's hard to argue, right?
	Some people do better than others.
	And if you were on the right, It's because the people who did better than others, they just worked harder.
	They got up early.
	They ate their apples.
	They did their homework.
	They praised the teacher.
	They just did work harder, and as a result, they did better.
	That's if you were on the right.
	Now, if you were on the left, Then some people did better because they were privileged, they were advantaged, their parents were wealthier, they had access to libraries, which apparently the poor kids don't have access to, even though they're free.
	And so people end up doing better and they end up doing worse.
	And the right answer is personal responsibility and grit and effort and willpower and work ethic.
	And it's cruel. It's one of the issues that I have with the rest.
	It's kind of cruel. It's like Luciano Pavarotti.
	Great singer, right?
	Did he just work harder at his singing?
	No. He was born with a glorious voice.
	Now, of course, being born with a glorious voice means that it really pays off.
	To work at your singing, to get singing training.
	And, you know, he had the social distancing thing down long before COVID because, you know, if he got a cold, he might lose $100,000 by not being able to do a concert.
	So if you wanted to interview Luciano Pavarotti, you stayed at a healthy distance away from the guy because he just didn't want to get a cold.
	So, yeah, you say, well, Luciano Pavarotti took a lot of singing lessons, man.
	So, of course, he ended up as a great singer.
	It's like, nope. That's not how it worked at all.
	Because he had a great voice, he got the very best singing teachers, and he got the singing lessons, or he took the singing lessons because of his already great voice, and it made it better and more sustainable and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right?
	Other people like Freddie Mercury famously avoided singing lessons of any kind because he wanted to keep his voice raw and authentic and earthy and rocky and all that kind of stuff, so...
	It's sort of like saying, you know, very, very pretty people.
	Models, you know, they spend a lot of time dieting and working out, and so if you diet and work out, you too can be a model.
	It's like, nope. It's not how it works, right?
	They do the dieting and the working out because they're already very pretty, and that allows them to make a huge amount more money, right?
	The punishment, so to speak, or the reality of limitations is pretty important, right?
	And so that kid, if he did badly on the tests, If he just couldn't grasp the material, he would end up being left behind.
	And he'd have to do over.
	And I did this thing, as is a minor bit of my sort of school history, not particularly important, but somewhat relevant to this, which is, I was always kind of scraping by in math class, like, I can do math if I'm motivated to do it, like I did math for my Computer programming, when I was a computer programmer and so on, I did math and it was interesting, but I had a reason to do it.
	I'm really, really not good at all at learning things where I don't have a purpose or a point or I fear that I'm going to forget how to do it by the time I actually use it.
	And so for me, math was like, what's the point?
	Who cares? I know enough to get around.
	I know the basics. I know enough.
	For me, going on to vector calculus.
	I had a friend in high school who was taking vector calculus, and he used to sometimes pretend to be a Bond villain, or pretend to be describing a Bond villain.
	Vector calculus. I used to know a man named Vector calculus.
	Cheesy jokes from many years past.
	And so one year, it was grade 11, I think, I decided, you know, I'm tired of sort of scraping by in math.
	Because the problem is, when you scrape by in math, the next year, which builds on the previous year's knowledge, was just kind of a drag.
	So I actually voluntarily took extra math courses in the summer to get myself up to speed, and I did well, and it helped a lot.
	I couldn't see the purpose.
	I couldn't see the point. I couldn't see the utility.
	I couldn't see the applicability.
	Whereas computer programming, I love doing that, even though I only released a program or two to friends.
	But I love doing that, and that I could see having value in the future.
	And it has actually served me very well, not just professionally, but even my post-computer career.
	I still had to do programming and stuff like that.
	The kid who was not getting the material would get left behind.
	There were consequences. And that's what we inflict upon children.
	If you don't study for the test or you're not good at the test or you study but you still don't get the marks, then you fail the test.
	Again, I don't know what it is these days.
	It's probably gone all kinds of goopy because now it's all the environment, the environment, and there's no free will whatsoever.
	And you've got to have a balance between the two.
	You've got to recognize the importance of the environment.
	It matters. It does matter.
	And at the same time, You also have to respect that there is such a thing as free will and grit and determination and the work ethic and all of these things actually matter, right?
	But it's complicated. And the right, because of the Christian influence, And the idea really in the background called the soul.
	Because, you know, why would God make a soul with an IQ of 150 and another soul with an IQ of 80, right?
	That's kind of mean, right, in a way, right?
	So, and of course, would one person be allowed to go to heaven and the other person wouldn't, even though, you know, the sweet spot for criminality is IQ 85?
	And... That seems kind of unfair.
	Are you punishing someone for having a smaller brain or a less efficient brain or, you know, just having an IQ? Are you punishing them for something that's kind of beyond their control, which is their level of intelligence?
	And are you rewarding people, in a sense, for something beyond their control, which is you happen to be born very smart or, you know, even good-looking people, even taller people?
	You know, you haven't had a bald U.S. president since Eisenhower post-Second World War, right?
	And that's because, you know, since the television came in, you've got to be tall, you've got to be slender-ish, and you've got to have at least a reasonably full head of hair, even if it's Joe Biden's magical, n-dimensional hair plugs from hell.
	That's, you know, 90% of men lose their hair by old, lose at least some of their hair by old age, but, you know, they've got these Reagan haircuts and all that, right?
	It's just the way, it's just a reality, right?
	That, you know, bald is not a choice.
	Bald is just something that happens.
	So people are being rewarded with, you know, you see this in the business world all the time.
	Sometimes it seems like it's the same cutout of the same picture over and over again in the promoted business pages of the newspapers, if they still have them anymore.
	So yeah, you happen to be tall, you happen to have a good head of hair, and look at that, you get to be CEO. Again, some exceptions, Jeff Bezos and so on, but it's different if you create the company rather than if you're hired in.
	Steve Ballmer, too, but again, he was second round, Bill Gates still got his hair.
	Anyway, so, consequences.
	Consequences matter. And we inflict negative consequences on kids.
	As I said before, I always used to get this, you know, the teachers recognized that I was very smart, and I used to be annoyed that I wouldn't fit into school, but then, of course, you can't really, you can't design a school system for people like me.
	That doesn't make any sense, really.
	I'm too much of an outlier.
	For some people on the high end, for some people on the low end, but an outlier, I certainly am.
	And... Sorry, just wanted to make sure I pushed my hardware recorder too.
	If people don't have...
	Oh, they always used to say to me, if effort matched ability, you'd be an A+. And the teachers would always say that to me.
	Like, you're just not into the class, man.
	I had teachers yell at me.
	I had teachers, you know, just get frustrated.
	I fell asleep in class.
	I was so bored. It was like, no, there's no point.
	It was like the worst thing of the worst thing.
	It was just that boredom and fear are the two things you don't want to have go hand in hand.
	And boredom and fear were kind of characteristic to a lot of people's experience of school.
	Mine's certainly the case. But they never said, well, if effort matched ability, you'd be an A +, so I guess I'm not motivating you much, or I guess there's something wrong.
	And teachers would recognize, again, my intelligence.
	They put me off. When I was in grade 8, I did a grade 13 writing course.
	I was put to one side, even in England, with another guy named Bruce, and we would read these really advanced novels and give book reports because everybody recognized that we were very smart and we just got bored in the regular classes and all of that.
	So we inflict negative consequences on kids.
	And the reason I'm saying all of this, and you know, you understand this, right?
	We inflict negative consequences on addicts, right?
	We throw them out of their houses, we throw them in jail, people cut them off from their family.
	Although being an addict to political violence, apparently, it's a cult if you suggest people remove themselves from the orbit of those who have an addiction to political violence, even though it's the most murderous thing in the world, far more so than war.
	So my question is, The question I suggest you ask people is, if they come up with an opinion, or they say, we should do this, or we should do that, or the government should do this, my question is always, what happens if you're wrong?
	What happens to you if you're wrong?
	So when I'm edgelording the Overton window of philosophy, If I, you know, and I make predictions and I make comments and I say what is true, I say what is false, I put out arguments at the very core of philosophy in the realm of ethics.
	I put out arguments regarding epistemology and metaphysics.
	You can read the metaphysics one in Essential Philosophy.
	You can find that at EssentialPhilosophy.com, available for free.
	So... I'm making predictions.
	Now, if I'm wrong, I lose credibility.
	I lose income.
	Actually, the funny thing is, I gained credibility but lost income considerably by being right about things because now you see what's happening with the U.S. election.
	I hope that you can skate backwards in your mind a couple of months and know why I had to be deplatformed.
	I hope everybody at least understands that aspect of my deplatforming, that it was all incredibly tied into the...
	suppressed for quite some time on YouTube and other places, but because I was still had a voice there and was still having an effect and all of that, I had to be taken out of the picture because of how good I would be at explaining all these issues around the US election and pushing back against falsehoods and all that kind of I had to be taken out of the picture because of So the negative consequences.
	So if somebody is like, well, we should have universal basic income, or we should, the government should do this, or coronavirus should, that's okay, well, lockdowns work, masks do, don't work, whatever.
	Okay, what are your consequences if you're wrong?
	What negative consequences accrue to you if you're wrong?
	Politicians, they obviously still get paid, right?
	They still get paid. The teachers still get paid.
	The government workers still get paid.
	The bureaucrats still get paid.
	So when the Fed says, well, I think that we should...
	We're not concerned about inflation, what we want is growth, and we're going to...
	Okay, so what happened?
	Do you lose your house if you're wrong?
	Do you lose your house if you're wrong?
	And again, if that's not the case, I tune out.
	I don't care. I don't care.
	This is true, you know, you've got some government worker sitting at your dinner table at Thanksgiving, opining about how the lockdowns and the masks and this and the that and the coat.
	It's like, okay, but you're getting paid either way, right?
	If there's a lockdown, you still get paid.
	So why the hell should I care what you say?
	Tying in people's opinions to consequences Beautifully eliminates 19 out of 20 blowhards from the conversation.
	And I'm just putting this out to you as a great efficiency metric in your society.
	Somebody says, well, Biden's going to do this, so Trump should have done that.
	It's like, okay, what if you're wrong?
	What happens if you're wrong? Uh, nothing.
	So why do I care? I don't care.
	I don't care what you're saying because you've got no stake in the game.
	You've got no skin in the game. So you listen to people who have a medium amount of skin in the game.
	Because there are some people, if they're wrong, they will collapse in on themselves, they will self-attack, they will self-flagellate, they will hate themselves, they will get aggressive and volatile.
	You don't want to debate with those people either because there's too much at stake.
	There's too much at stake.
	And it's, you know, do you want to listen to the value of a stock with a guy who's got every single penny of his savings in that stock?
	Well, the stakes are too high for him to be objective.
	So if the stakes are too high, probably not objective.
	It's called the conflict of interest. And if the stakes are too low, in other words, no negative consequences accrue for you being wrong.
	And here's the funny thing about the media too, right?
	Because the media, you say, well, if the media is wrong, then negative consequences will accrue to the media.
	They'll lose listenership, they'll lose viewership and so on.
	It's currently happening to Fox right now.
	Even Tucker Carlson, who's bagging on Sidney Powell for reasons that pass understanding.
	Where's the evidence?
	Have you never been a court reporter?
	Do you not understand how the legal system works?
	You are not going to spring your evidence out on a fucking cable show.
	You're going to wait until a court of law.
	Because otherwise you're signaling everything that you're going to be doing.
	And you're giving your opponents massive amounts of time to come up with every conceivable shred of counter evidence, of counter proof, of made up stuff.
	And of course, the moment Sidney Powell says, here's my evidence, the media is going to go into full-tilt boogie to intimidate, to threaten, to dox, to attack, to deplatform, and she's going to end up with smoking craters where her affidavits used to be, or at least the people behind them, right?
	So, of course, she's not.
	Jesus. Where is the evidence?
	Well, of course, affidavits are evidence.
	But anyway, it's not really politics.
	It's just media, right? I don't know what the hell Tucker Carlson is thinking.
	Maybe he's just kind of reached the end of the rope of his leash, of his masters.
	I don't know. I don't know. I like the guy in general, but this was just ridiculous.
	So just in your life, when you're having conversations with people, okay, what happens to you if you're wrong?
	I know what happens to me if I'm either wrong or right, which is the great thing about being a philosopher.
	If you're wrong a lot, well, you get to be an academic, right?
	So if I'm right, I'm going to get attacked.
	If I'm wrong, I'm going to get ignored.
	And that's just great.
	I love this tightrope. That's one of the reasons it's good to be off politics is that tightrope becomes abusive basically for a while.
	So, yeah, do people have any stake in the game?
	Do they have anything to lose if they're wrong?
	You say, but the media, of course, the media has a giant audience of people who are captive to a shared delusion, right?
	The media has an audience like drug dealers have customers.
	Well, they're just addicts. And so what's happened is by infusing people, by displacing people's personalities with vacuous and dangerous lies, they've made people addicted upon those lies.
	Like if you hollow out your natural capacity to produce endorphins or happy joy juices in your brain and you end up dependent upon cocaine or uppers or whatever it is going to be, To make you feel happier or opiates or whatever it's going to be.
	Okay, then you've lost your actual natural personality or natural opiates and so on.
	Have you now replaced it with a drug and you're dependent upon the dealer?
	We only have personalities when we're actually speaking the truth.
	We only have personalities when we're actually thinking for ourselves.
	Otherwise, we're automatons of addiction.
	And so the media, by pushing aside...
	And people have participated in this too.
	The devil doesn't rip your soul out with a fishhook.
	He's got to make you an offer you can't...
	Well, you can refuse, but you feel like you can't, right?
	So the media says, only good people...
	Believe what we say. Bad people think of the opposite of what we say.
	And they train people to attack other people who question the media narrative and all of that.
	And it's all a very devilish and satanic bargain fundamentally.
	But people, they don't exist.
	They don't exist fundamentally when they are addicted to delusion.
	That's just the MPC thing, the meme, right?
	Like, oh, capitalists just want to exploit workers by paying them so little.
	It's like, do you think that has anything to do with inviting people?
	Millions and millions and millions of millions of people into an economy where they'll work for far less than the natives.
	Do you think that might? Right?
	So when it comes to people, you don't have to ask them directly.
	And this is true. YouTube comments, Twitter comments, you get into the debates online.
	Okay, what happens if you're wrong?
	An entrepreneur, I know what happens if he's wrong because I've been an entrepreneur.
	And I remember having to sign massive loans to a bank that I was personally guaranteeing, not the corporation.
	I was personally guaranteeing these massive loans just to make payroll a couple of times when we were waiting for a big check that didn't come, or at least didn't come in time.
	And, you know, cash flow is king in business, man.
	Your income goes up and down, but, you know, payroll is a metronome, so you've got to do it all the time.
	So I know entrepreneurs, I know if somebody opens up a restaurant, they want that restaurant to succeed.
	Obviously, because I know what happens if it doesn't.
	They've got to go bankrupt, right?
	They go bankrupt. It can get really, really bad.
	No credit card for seven years, whatever it is, right?
	So there are people who actually have a stake in the game.
	They're putting their reputation out there.
	They're putting their income out there.
	And what happens if they're wrong?
	Well, for 19 times out of 20, nothing happens to people if they're wrong.
	Nothing happens to people if they're wrong.
	In which case, just say, well, it's nice that you're moving air around with your mouth noises, but I don't care.
	I don't care what people say if they have no stake in success or failure.
	All right. Well, thank you, everyone, for indulging me in that.
	I usually think they're going to be brief.
	I end up being somewhat incorrect at times.
	But James, do you want to give us the cues for the people?
	Yes. So first up tonight, we have a question the listener writes in, and I have misplaced it.
	Oh, it's in our text here.
	Do you want me to do it? As I've gotten older...
	Oh, wait, wait. How do we stay sane in these crazy times?
	What do you do to have peace of mind?
	Is it that one? Yep.
	That's the first question up tonight.
	Okay. So...
	The important thing is to recognize the tectonic shifts in human activity.
	Right? So, and I talked about this briefly with regards to politics.
	So, it looks like there's been just crazy stuff going on in the election.
	I mean, I think there's crazy stuff that goes on in every election, but this one seems to be particularly egregious in the U.S. So how's it going to be resolved?
	Is it going to be resolved by debates and arguments and PowerPoint slides and compelling?
	No, it's going to be resolved one way or the other.
	And the court thing doesn't really matter hugely.
	They've got a bunch of throwaway cases that are getting thrown away and so on.
	But it's going to come down to the state's Either saying they do or don't accept the outcome of the election.
	And if the majority don't, then they just vote on who's the president and the majority of the states are Republican, and it may go that way.
	That's probably the strategy, right?
	So it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter because it doesn't come down.
	Before an election, you say, oh, I'm going to convince a whole bunch of people to vote for ABC, XYZ, whoever you like or whatever.
	I'm going to go out and make a case.
	So the allegation right now, for those of you who don't know, it's pretty stunning, is that Venezuela and Cuba cooked up This software which can apply different weights to different votes.
	Biden could get 1.25.
	Trump could get 0.75.
	The votes are stored as double numbers.
	And what that means is integers are like minus 32767 to plus 32767.
	And longs are like, can go into the billions.
	And singles are a small number of decimals relative to doubles or a huge number of decimals.
	Why on earth would you store votes as the decimals?
	Right? That's like saying, well, we got to store the number of children With fractions.
	It's like, no, you really don't.
	You can calculate the average as fractions.
	But it makes about as much sense as going to a bank and saying, well, when people log into their bank account, you want them to see their money up to 16 decibel places.
	No, you don't. You may calculate that in the back for interest, but you've got to show them dollars and cents, right?
	So why on earth would they store votes which are one, no decimal places, one vote for one person, one vote for the other person?
	Why would they store them double so it can be manipulated, right?
	You understand all this. And the allegation is that the votes flowed out of America to places in Europe like Spain and Germany, but processed and flowed.
	I mean, just stuff that's...
	Completely outlandish. And, you know, if you proposed it as a movie, people would say it's not possible.
	Now, there are hundreds of affidavits, which are certainly evidence, but has it been proved beyond a reasonable shadow of a doubt in a court of law?
	No. Of course not, because it hasn't started yet.
	And they're trying to compress well over a year's worth of legal work into a week or two, which is, you know, good more power to them.
	I hope they get some rest when this is all done.
	So, the way that you stay sane in general is...
	You focus on the things that you can control, and you may inform yourself about the things that you can't control, but once you recognize that it's something you can't control, you back the fuck off.
	Okay? That's what you do.
	I mean, think of a dysfunctional person in your family, if you have one, right?
	Dysfunctional person, that is not family.
	Some, I don't know, some drunken uncle, right?
	He shows up, he drinks like crazy, he ruins family dinners, he's belligerent, he's weird, you know, and all that, right?
	Okay. So I think it's worth sitting down with the guy and saying, you know, you drink too much when he's sober.
	You drink too much, that's bad, and I want you to stop, right?
	Okay. So he's an addict, so he's focusing on consequences, not on morality.
	And so then he may just tell you to F off and, you know, stop being such a square and learn to loosen up, right?
	You have standards and boundaries and reason.
	I don't like it, man. I want you to be amorphous brain goo like me.
	Okay, so then what you do is you maybe escalate and you say, okay, well, I don't like what you're doing and I'm not pleased with it.
	And if you keep doing it, I'm not going to have anything to do with you.
	Who needs you, man? I've got my Jack Daniels right here.
	And then you may go further to the family and say, you know, I don't want this guy at family gatherings.
	He frightens my kids.
	He's belligerent. He's weird. I don't like it.
	And I don't want my kids exposed to it.
	I don't want to be exposed to it. It's pretty painful.
	So you've got to make a choice, him or me, right?
	Now, if they choose you and they ostracize him, it's for the best, right?
	He will hopefully change based upon that.
	You want people to hit rock bottom before their liver comes out of their ass, right?
	So, and if they choose the drunken, weird, destructive, abusive, creepy uncle over you, okay.
	How do you stay sane? You lay things on the line, you stand up for your values, and if you get rejected, then you say, okay, that's now beyond my control.
	That's now beyond my control.
	Knowing how to distinguish.
	So in politics, I think for a lot of times, and I talked about this on my Wednesday livestream, which you should check out.
	It's, well, it's not Wednesday anymore, but it's up there on Rumble.
	Rumble's a really, really good platform, by the way.
	Rumble.com is a really good platform.
	It's really good.
	It's high quality.
	It's fast. It's not seeded.
	And listen, Library, BitChute, also great.
	Brighteon, Streamanity, also great platforms.
	But, you know, I've talked about them before.
	Rumble.com is pretty good, too.
	And you can follow me there.
	I'll be uploading everything there as well.
	So there was a long time where, half a decade or more, where you could have political conversations.
	And you could change people's minds and you could get them to vote for your preferred candidate or to not vote at all if that's your preferred approach or whatever it is.
	You could make a case and it would have an effect.
	Now, if what's going on at the moment, which seems to be happening, and we'll find out in the next week or two, if this ungodly massive coup slash fraud is occurring, and even if it's only occurring at, like, what are they saying? Seven million votes got shifted?
	Okay, so it doesn't matter who you convince.
	You understand? Like, when it comes to politics, it doesn't matter who you talk to.
	It doesn't matter how much you read.
	It doesn't matter how much you inform yourself.
	If the allegations are true and it turns out that seven million votes switched from one candidate to another, the time for political debates is just not a reasonable place.
	It's not a reasonable place to have political debates because if that system isn't cleaned up, again, if the allegations are true, and if the system is not cleaned up, then votes don't matter.
	They matter about as much as they do in Cuba.
	The argument is that Hugo Chavez lost a constitutional vote and didn't want that to ever happen again, so he started developing these machines that could switch and change elections and all.
	We'll find out. But you've got to cool your jets and you've got to not keep going over to the drunken uncle's house if he keeps shooting guns at you, calling the cops and trying to have you arrested.
	Like, come on. You've got to know when.
	Know when to hold him, know when to fold him, right?
	So, yeah, the times are going to get kind of crazy and it has shifted from us to the courts.
	It has shifted from words to enforcement.
	It has shifted from language to To the law.
	You understand? It's no longer in our arena.
	The ball is no longer on our side of the court.
	We're not in this game.
	This is not our wheelhouse.
	Pick your metaphor. We got yeeted out of the conversation because the conversation is no longer...
	About reason and evidence.
	You say, ah, but the reason and evidence regarding the blah, blah, blah, and the fraud.
	Okay, but that's for the lawyers to do.
	You and I can't go out and get affidavits and subpoenas and all this kind of crap, right?
	We can't go and force a million executives to come and talk to people.
	Apparently, neither can Congress.
	Kind of optional, I hear. So, it's not...
	We're not in that game anymore.
	Now, maybe it will come back.
	Maybe. Maybe. I don't know what the odds are of that right now.
	It's hard to tell how much has been compromised in the entire legal system in America.
	Maybe it will return to us if the voting rolls are cleaned up and if some of the mail-in stuff is cleaned up and if it turns out that there is this big...
	What did Biden refer to?
	He's got the best election fraud team in the world.
	Maybe that's why he didn't bother going out and...
	Campaigning. Why would you?
	Why would you study if you already bought the answers, right?
	So, yeah. This is not me talking about politics.
	This is me talking about how to stay sane, right?
	Which is, there's no longer...
	We're not even politics adjacent at the moment.
	You understand? There's not a reason and evidence situation.
	You can't sway people's minds and have an impact until...
	If the election fraud turns out to be totally false...
	Okay. Well, then people don't listen to reason anyway, because you have the least campaigning, least charismatic guy in the history of American politics who won the most votes of anyone in the history of American politics.
	Okay, then you're in a situation where people would rather listen to the media and be fed the steady sophist pablum of lies and obfuscations, and they've also been trained to hate.
	You get trained to hate Trump supporters, you get trained to hate Christians or conservatives.
	The reason that...
	One of the main reasons why people are taught to hate is so that they don't feel any obligation to tell the truth that they're potential victims.
	I tweeted this or parlored this today.
	So, yeah, now you're in a situation where, okay, things are getting dangerous and force is emerging from its medieval swamp and the way to stay sane is to recognize where things have gone insane and stay away from those areas that Where force is now ruling and reason and evidence have no sway.
	So that's my suggestion.
	What does that mean in terms of practicalities?
	Don't get involved in these political discussions until politics is cleaned up.
	There's no point. You know, in my novel, Almost, which I hope you will check out, And there's a...
	So, freedomain.com forward slash almost.
	I write about the Night of the Long Knives by Nazi Germany, right?
	Where violence was used to cement the last...
	Well, to seal off or destroy the last vestiges of potential resistance, even allied resistance against the new Nazi rule.
	And there was no reasoning on that night.
	There was no... But I have a PowerPoint.
	My stormtrooper friend, right?
	So, wait for...
	If the US election system is as corrupt as some alleged, then there's no place for reason and evidence.
	If it's cleaned up, maybe then.
	If it's not cleaned up, then there's no politics that exists in the way that philosophers would talk about it.
	Hopefully that helps.
	Let's make sure we get to other callers as well.
	And I'm all ears.
	Alright, so the second question tonight is, as I've gotten older, my relationships have gotten shorter, and my standards have gotten higher.
	Many of the women I have met or dated in the past don't seem to know what they are looking for.
	Since I have been able to achieve decent career success, it has been very difficult for me to be attracted to women who cannot be assertive.
	Part of life is asking for what you want, after all.
	Am I being unrealistic to expect a late 20s or early 30s woman to be upfront about things they want, that is kids, and be able to communicate that, such as kids?
	What might I need to change to attract the women that could be assertive about these important things?
	Any advice for an early 30s man looking for a partner?
	And is this caller on the line?
	I am. How you doing, man?
	Nice to chat with you. Thanks for dropping by tonight.
	So give me an example of a conversation that you have that you find unsatisfying with regards to a potential partner.
	I mean, I guess, you know, it's like I can have fun on a date and I can do that sort of thing.
	But at the end of the day, I'm not going to get into a relationship with someone that's not going to say like, hey, this is what I'm looking for in the relationship.
	Right. And why wouldn't you get into a relationship with someone like that?
	Because either they don't know what they want, in which case I agree with you, or they know what they want, but they're ladylike and don't want to impose.
	It could be either one of those things.
	And I would prefer that they are capable of like, you know, imposing as it were.
	So you basically want to date a man with a vagina, if I understand this correctly, because you want the same assertiveness that comes out of male testosterone and directness, but you want it coming out of a woman.
	Well, when you put it like that...
	No, I'm wrong. I'm wrong. I'm just telling you what I think.
	I think you could be right there, but that's why the second part of that question is, do you think it's realistic to expect to never find that?
	No, no, I don't think it is.
	I don't think it is. Look, it's one of the great insights of my early married life, and I'm coming on for 20 years, so I hope I have a little credibility with regards to this.
	Because, you know, I would want my wife to be a little bit more like me sometimes.
	We all do, right? There's nothing I would like the whole world to be a lot more like me and so on, right?
	But I just kind of realized something is like, no, she's fundamentally different from me.
	And that's good because I don't want to be a gay guy with a vagina in the house, if that makes sense, right?
	And that's just not how I swing, so to speak, right?
	And so I would sit there and, as I've said before, women as a whole, they're delightfully incomprehensible.
	I would sit there and say, well, you know, you should do it this way or it should be more, because this is how I would do it.
	And again, I just kind of got it pretty early on because she doesn't budge me.
	She doesn't budge at all.
	And she's not aggressive about it or anything, just doesn't budge.
	It's like, nope, this is the way I want it.
	This is the way I want to do it.
	And, you know, we'd have conversations about it and so on.
	And she, you know, wasn't like, well, you just want me to be like you or anything like that.
	Because it wasn't quite that.
	But are you looking for male virtues in a female form?
	And again, there's lots of overlap and blah, blah, blah, right?
	But I would argue that that's not good.
	That's not a good thing to look for. And in fact, if you got what you wanted, you wouldn't be attracted because you'd be like, wait a minute.
	This is kind of too much like a man with a vagina.
	This doesn't work for me, right?
	Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, maybe that's what I've been looking for.
	Maybe that's why that hasn't worked out.
	Okay, if I'm not searching for a man, basically, fundamentally, the male virtues, What would be the equivalent of that in a female, like a good partner?
	See, you're thinking about, primarily you're thinking about what you want.
	And that's not why love exists.
	That's not why pair bonding exists.
	That's not why marriage exists.
	That's not why relationships exist in this way.
	So why are we drawn to pair bond?
	Why are we drawn to relationships with the opposite sex?
	I mean, I don't want to date another man.
	There's a lot of things I really like about women.
	Like, you know, there's a sensitivity.
	There's just, like, the genuine femininity.
	Obviously, there's the sexual attraction.
	You know, it's a number of different things.
	And I feel like, you know, there's been some relationships that have been in that have been, like, I think are going down in the right direction.
	But they don't last, right? As you said, they get shocked.
	Yeah. Do you know why they don't last?
	It's either myself or them.
	No, nothing to do with either of those parties.
	And listen, I'm sure you know this deep down, so I'm not trying to trap you, but when I tell you you are going to kick yourself, but I'm just asking, put on some slippers or some extra pair of socks so you don't kick yourself too hard.
	Okay, you're only thinking about a woman in terms of yourself, right?
	But that's not why men and women exist, and that's not why romantic relationships exist.
	Romantic relationships exist For children.
	Because you're sitting there saying, well, what's going to serve me in a woman?
	It's like, that's not what it's about.
	It's about what serves your children.
	Now, of course, she's got to please you.
	I get that you've got to like her.
	I'm not saying that's irrelevant, but it's about the kids.
	It's about how she's going to handle Your children.
	How is she going to be a good mom?
	Is she going to be patient? Is she going to be nurturing?
	Is she going to be giving?
	So we want women to be assertive.
	Have you ever tried being assertive around a baby?
	You can't. Can you imagine such a thing?
	Nope, it doesn't work. Look, you've already been crying twice tonight.
	I need some sleep.
	I'm going to put my foot down and you're not going to get any food and you're going to die in your crib.
	Why aren't women as assertive as men?
	It's because we're out there hunting buffalo and they're up for the third time that night because the baby's got colic and they can't be assertive because the baby's got needs and too bad for you, honey.
	So this is why men and women are different.
	We're out there carving off a slab of reality to bring it home to feed our family and they're trying to figure out why the baby doesn't want to breastfeed from the left breast and keeps chewing on the right like a little piranha.
	I mean, I remember a friend of mine's wife trying to breast...
	She was really committed to breastfeeding because I was nagging her about it, I'll be honest, right?
	She was really committed to breastfeeding and she would sit there for eight fucking hours.
	And she'd be completely hysterical.
	Just latch on, take the damn milk, for God's sakes!
	Her boobs were bursting like, you know, Michael Flatley's nutsack, right?
	And I don't know what that means.
	Maybe like Michael Jordan's basketball bounce or something like that.
	And dripping, and the baby just was like, nope.
	No thanks. I'm not going to latch, right?
	So you can't negotiate with babies.
	You can't negotiate with your period.
	You can't negotiate with pregnancy.
	Can't negotiate with any of that stuff.
	And of course, throughout history, women couldn't negotiate with invaders, right?
	Other than by, you know, women survive invasions by throwing themselves on their back, right?
	So this is how, like, men chose women.
	And you've got to love everything about women.
	Everything. Because they only exist because...
	of what men chose in the past.
	The female personality, the female nature is entirely the sum total of the last four billion years of dudes choosing chicks.
	And so you can say, well, I don't like this about women or women should be this.
	Okay, well, then all you're saying is you don't like men either because women only exist because men chose them.
	And it's the same thing for women, right?
	Women say, well, I don't like this and the patriarchy.
	This is like, you're just disrespecting all of the women in history who chose The men.
	Because we are as women chose us.
	If women didn't want us to have 40% upper body strength improvement over women, to be 40% stronger in our upper bodies than women, we wouldn't be.
	If women didn't want us to be more assertive and sometimes more aggressive, we wouldn't be.
	If women didn't want us to have deeper voices, we wouldn't.
	And of course, everybody knows why men have deeper voices.
	Men have deeper voices so nobody bothers to save them in a crisis.
	And women have higher voices like children, so they get saved with the children and the men get left to die.
	We have deeper voices to signal our disposability, just so everybody...
	Because higher voices are easier to hear from a distance and all like...
	Somebody's like, help, help, help!
	Some little kid or some woman, they go and help them.
	Help, help, help! Good luck, good luck, dude.
	Right, so... Why do we have beards?
	Because we've been...
	Wanted men with beards.
	Or at least, you know, men didn't want women with beards.
	So... You got to love everything.
	I mean, to not love everything about women or men is, I don't know, to disrespect the choices of the entirety of humanity and bipeds throughout evolutionary history is sort of, okay, what's the point of that, right?
	It's like getting mad at gravity.
	I should be different. It's like, well, if it was heavier, life probably wouldn't have formed.
	If it was lighter, we'd have no atmosphere and life wouldn't have formed.
	It's kind of, you know, we're in the Goldilocks zone, right?
	Yeah. So you can't want a woman, you can want a woman to be just like you, but then you're going to get that Thai surprise, right?
	So no, just like I had this t-shirt when I was a kid.
	It's like two, it's a little creepy thinking back in it, but it was two little kids looking down in their nappies and underneath it said, right?
	Celebrate the difference. Women are not like you.
	They're not like me. They're delightfully incomprehensible, right?
	Because they're not about pleasing us.
	They're about raising babies.
	Now, we can say, well, we're the women who don't want to raise babies.
	We're talking evolutionarily speaking, right?
	All the genes that came down came down because women were successful at choosing the right mates and raising their babies to adulthood or at least to sexual maturity, right?
	So you go and embrace the woman for who she is, because if you're sitting back saying, yeah, well, you could be a little bit more abstract.
	You could be a little bit more philosophical.
	You could be a little bit more intellectual.
	You could be a little bit more into politics or economics.
	It's like, so you just want a dude without the dude part.
	That's not going to happen.
	That's not going to happen. He's not going to satisfy.
	And if you got it, you'd feel like you were kissing your brother.
	Yeah.
	Well, when you put it that way, that makes sense.
	My wife will spend an entire, like three quarters of a day every two weeks cleaning the house top to bottom.
	Quick question. Do you do that?
	Maybe every six months.
	Right before the dust bunnies grow into a sentient life form that can take you out in your sleep, right?
	I'll tell you a funny story.
	When I was a bachelor, I lived on the 18th floor of an apartment building.
	I actually got so devoted to an R&D project that when the company that I co-founded got an apartment to do the R&D project in, I just lived there.
	I moved in there and then I just stayed there after the R&D project was done.
	And so one morning I awaken to light scratches on my chest.
	And you know how you wake up?
	I'm a deep morning sleeper, right?
	So I wake up like a rays in the Titanic.
	You know, I like booed up from what am I? Carbon-based?
	I think so. Mammal?
	Yeah, probably. Got some hair.
	Biped? I think so.
	Non-ape? Okay. Western?
	Sure. White? Yeah.
	Okay, I boot up all the way through evolution.
	I start single-celled and end up as myself.
	It can take like 15 minutes, right?
	So I wake up real slow and, of course, what else do I hear?
	I feel the scratches on my chest and I hear this.
	So a pigeon had made its way into my room and was sitting on my chest.
	And that's how I woke up.
	And one of the reasons the pigeon had made its way into my room was that I'd left the balcony door open.
	And I had a balcony which had a plug in it for rainwater, but I just never got around to emptying it.
	So it basically turned into a form of...
	Florida swamp water.
	I think there were gator eggs in there, probably a couple of mafia bodies and all that.
	And so pigeons were kind of making a little nest in the corner.
	And like, that's my life as a bachelor.
	I remember having a female employee come over and she kept, and she was pregnant and she kept leaving the office.
	And I said, why do you keep leaving the office?
	And she said, oh, I had to go to the washroom.
	I'm pregnant, got to pee a lot. And I'm like, I have a bathroom right there.
	Why don't you use it? She's like, are you kidding me?
	You're a bachelor. I'd rather go to the homeless, haunted coffee shop on the corner.
	Then use your bathroom.
	Now, again, I don't think it was that gross, but she was East Asian.
	She may have had slightly different standards, right?
	Now, I live in paradise.
	You know, girly world is complete paradise.
	Like, the bed is made. Like, it's been ironed.
	My wife makes a bed like a marine.
	You know, it's like you bounce quarters off it, you know?
	And everything's just, you know, open the fridge.
	There's stuff there. Stuff gets replaced.
	It's amazing.
	It's a beautiful thing.
	And I can sit there and say, well, I wish she was more like me.
	It's like, yeah, but if she was more like me, I'd have died of scurvy some time ago or something like that, right?
	I mean, she's the one who's like, you know, hey, it's four months.
	Got to get your dentist appointment in.
	And, oh, it's your annual checkup.
	And don't forget, we've got to go see the optometrist.
	It's like, you're keeping me alive, you goddess, right?
	Now, that's not me.
	I am extraordinarily organized in my thinking.
	And man, if I ever panned this camera around this studio, people would scream and anal retentive people would throw themselves off a building.
	So, yeah.
	Yeah, it's a beautiful thing.
	It's not me. I can't do it.
	I won't do it. And she can't do some of the things that I do.
	But, you know, you can't put a jigsaw puzzle together if all the pieces are the same shape, right?
	So you've got to think about, okay, does she have my particular virtues?
	Because if she had your particular virtues, my friend, she'd suck as a mother.
	Yeah, it'd be terrible. Are you going to get up four times a night to breastfeed for month after month after month?
	I don't think so. And you shouldn't because that's our deal, right?
	And you'll be out there wrestling in the marketplace to bring home bacon for the family and all that kind of stuff, right?
	So you got to stop thinking about you and start remembering why this is even an issue in your life or why you even care about it or why you want it at all.
	It's for the sake of having kids.
	Well, even in that case, like, you know, you obviously didn't go from, like, you know, bachelor to married.
	Like, you didn't, like, organize all your stuff so that she would come into your life.
	So how do you, like...
	What do you mean, organize all my stuff?
	What do you mean? Well, like, how do you find that person where she's going to be like, this is what I can provide for you?
	Oh, yeah, that's easy.
	Yeah, you just surrender. Yeah, you just surrender.
	You just surrender. So the way that marriage works is...
	There's some stuff you're good at and some stuff your wife is good at.
	And when she's good at stuff, you shut up and do what she says.
	And when you're good at stuff, she should shut up and do what you say.
	Like, I can't even tell you the number of microphones I've bought over the years.
	That's unbelievable. And my wife has never once said, oh, come on, do you really need another microphone?
	Not once. Do you really need another computer?
	Do you really need this? No, she's like, hey, this is your thing.
	That's your show. You know what you're doing.
	Go for it, right? And if she says we need to flip the mattress, what do I say?
	Sure. Sure.
	Apparently you do need to flip the mattress.
	And if she says that we need different colored bath towels in the guest bathroom, what do I say?
	Sure. You know, I don't know if I'll go and pick him out.
	But yeah. If she says we need a new carpet, okay.
	I'm just, you know, I may not look and see.
	Well, I don't know. I don't think it's a new carpet.
	I don't know if we really need it. If she says that I need to wear this set of clothes to go to the mall rather than this set of clothes to go to the gym when I went to a gym, yeah.
	I'm like, nobody cares if I'm in track pants at the mall.
	She says, I care. Okay, well, then I won't wear track pants at the mall, right?
	It's just... You let her have her area of expertise and you let her rule that part.
	And she lets you have your area of expertise.
	She lets you rule that part.
	It just makes everything so much easier.
	Division of labor, baby. And just a lack of conflict, you know?
	Do we need a dining room?
	Okay. I guess we'll go get an expensive table or something, right?
	Is that my particular...
	What, did I ever have a dining room?
	I never did.
	Not once before I got married, right?
	So just let her have her area of expertise and bow to her as the goddess of competence in those areas.
	It could be any number of areas, right?
	Now, don't subjugate yourself to her completely because then she won't just have pride in what she does.
	She'll lose respect for you. So, you know, I don't say fight for your area of expertise, but be assertive about those, right?
	And that's great.
	So how do you find that kind of person?
	Well, if she makes a suggestion and it doesn't matter that much to you and it matters a lot to her, go for it.
	You know, fold like a napkin.
	Be Joe's spineless jellyfish guy.
	Just follow her lead.
	Let her be in charge of what she's good at and what matters to her.
	But a lot of people, like guys in particular, it's like, I feel like I'm surrendering to the enemy.
	It's like, no, you're not. You're not surrendering to the enemy.
	You are respecting her areas of competence, which are different from yours on average, right?
	And yeah, just heaven's sakes.
	It's so much more... I'm not going to get into a fight about whether I need a new belt.
	I wear a belt, you know, like most things.
	I wear a belt until it's like hanging on by two little threads, you know?
	If I can sit down and it doesn't break, I don't need a new belt, right?
	But, you know, when I used to go out and give speeches sometimes in more formal areas, she'd be like, you need a new jacket.
	I'm like, I have this jacket. She's like, yes, that was from 1987, and you need a new jacket.
	Now, do I sit there and say, well, I don't need a new jacket, and my jacket's fine.
	No, I don't. She's good at this stuff.
	Okay, dum-da-dum-da-dum, I'm let off by the nose, and we can go get a new jacket, right?
	Do I think we need it? See, the good thing is I don't have a clue.
	I don't know whether we need it or not any more than she knows whether I need a new microphone, right?
	I mean, I think when I say assertive, I think that's what I mean, right?
	Like, it sounds like she's assertive about things.
	That's her area of expertise.
	But she's not going to be assertive if I put up a fight, and that's why I'm saying that the key is in the surrender.
	So women are generally quite conflict avoidant in many ways.
	And if you push down their conflict avoidance, it becomes combat obsessive.
	So where does nagging come from?
	Nagging comes from two places. One is that the woman misses the sexual power she had when she was younger, where she got resources and attention and her way.
	Through the positives of men being attracted to her, when she passes a certain age and her face dries up and her body sags and she can't pull that glorious youthful fertility trick anymore, then she goes from a positive economics, which is I'm providing a value, to a negative economics, which is I'm going to nag you until I get what I want.
	And so if you simply accede to what a woman is good at, then she's not going to need To nag you, right?
	So when I got my first more formal job after I left the company I'd co-founded, I had some of the clothes left over from when I was, because I took a year and a half off to write books.
	And I had some clothes left over from when I was an entrepreneur.
	And my wife said, you're not going to your new job in those old clothes.
	I'm like, they're not bad. She's like, yeah, but they're old and they're out of date.
	And it's different when you co-found the company.
	You can be a slob, so to speak, right?
	I wasn't a slob, but, you know, it wasn't quite as formal.
	But if you're going to work for someone else, you need to show them more respect than that, because you don't have the same cachet as if you're the founder, right?
	You know, Steve Jobs can be a slob.
	Bill Gates can have dandruff, but it's different if you're going to work for someone else.
	And yeah, I will say I put up a little bit of resistance, but then it was like, okay, it's fine.
	In fact, even one of my employees took me out to buy clothes.
	If I'm warm and I'm comfortable, I don't care.
	I could be wearing a bedspread.
	I don't care. I don't care.
	But I also understand that there are signals that you have to give off and formal stuff that you need to Show and all of that.
	So she's going to be assertive if you don't fight with her.
	And if you fight with her, she will not be assertive and she'll end up being naggy, right?
	And the way that you preempt the naggy is continue to find her attractive even after past middle age, A. And B, if she wants you to do something, just do it.
	I mean, if you don't trust her enough...
	To tell you what to wear, so to speak, then why would you trust her with your heart, your finances, your children, or anything like that?
	You have to respect what it is that she's bringing to the table.
	Now, I'm not saying every woman, you have to respect what they're bringing to the table, but if it's someone that you're interested in, just obey.
	Just obey. In the same way that you obey everyone in your life who's got a particular competence that you lack.
	Do I obey my dentist?
	I certainly do. Right?
	Do I obey whatever my accountant?
	Yes, I certainly do. So, yeah.
	I just... She's probably sensing that you're a bit of a punchy guy and maybe not being assertive because of that.
	And remember that she's not there for you, she's there for the babies.
	And you're a key part of that, don't get me wrong.
	You matter, but it's not primarily about you.
	Okay. Does that help?
	That helps a lot. Good, good.
	Something else you wanted to add or should I move on?
	No. Thanks. Thanks so much.
	Look at you not being assertive.
	Just kidding. Just kidding. All right.
	James, who else do we have? All right.
	So we have another question tonight.
	Two more if you want to go through.
	No, this is great. I think the last one.
	The last one, we'll see. We'll see where we are.
	Okay. So the third one we have tonight.
	Hi, Steph. I recently made the decision to move across the country to join a small group of friends that I met through the show.
	I'm very excited to make the move and the prospect of having a community of like-minded individuals around me.
	But I've also spent the last couple of days feeling overwhelmed about how to tell my younger brother about my decision without hurting him.
	He has been one of the central points of our life for the past seven years, and I've done my best to show him what a loving, caring, connected, and non-abusive relationship is like.
	I'm terrified of leaving him alone with my abusive parents, but I also feel like I cannot put off my life any longer.
	How do I tell my brother that I'm moving without making him feel like I'm abandoning him to my parents?
	And how do I stop feeling so guilty about starting my own life journey?
	And you're on the line too, is that right?
	I am, yes. Great, great.
	Well, I guess congratulations.
	I'm very glad that you're moving to be with like-minded people.
	And you don't have to give me specifics, but what kind of age range are we talking about with you and your brother?
	I'm 26. Yeah, I'm in my 20s, and he's 12.
	What about? He's 12 years old.
	Got it. Wow.
	Any other siblings?
	Yeah, I'm the youngest.
	I've got two other siblings right in between.
	So they really spread out that butter a little bit, didn't they?
	Yeah, they did. He was quite a surprise when my parents told me about him.
	That is really rough.
	And first of all, I appreciate the sensitivity of your question, and I deeply, deeply sympathize with the dilemma that you find yourself in.
	What are the major issues that you have with your parents?
	Well, my childhood was just brutal.
	that were incredibly physically and verbally abusive.
	And I think that fall and it's like a never ending list with the stuff I went through in my childhood.
	I'm so sorry about that as well.
	Was this the case with all of your siblings or were you singled out for special treatment?
	The feeling I've gotten is I was kind of singled out because I was the oldest.
	And my other two siblings are sisters, so they got a lot less of it.
	And you also might have been the example to say, here's what happens if you don't step in line.
	Yeah, I think that's spot on.
	I'm so sorry. That's so unjust, so unfair.
	And of course, the other thing too, singling out a brother...
	For abuse also creates...
	Well, it destroys the possibility of solidarity between the siblings, right?
	Because you then resent them for being treated better and you all can't get together and, in a sense, band together against the common enemy, right?
	Yeah, that was spot on in my childhood as well.
	Divide and conquer, man.
	Divide and conquer. Yeah.
	Right. So, what's your current relationship like with your brother?
	I think it's been really great, and it is great.
	We hang out really often, probably like every week or every other week or so.
	We spend time together in person, and we play games online, and we chat over text and over phone, and just kind of connected and just enjoyable experience.
	Right, okay. So it's almost like the question of, my brother and I are in prison, my sentence is at an end, do I stay?
	Yeah, that's really spot on.
	That's a hell of a thing. It's a hell of a decision to have to make.
	And again, I can't give you, you know that, right?
	I can't give you any kind of magic answer.
	I think I can give you a perspective that helps.
	And I'm sorry, because you were just about to say something else.
	So go ahead. Yeah, I was going to say, when I moved out of my parents' house, I think it's been about three years ago now, the only reason I stayed in the same city, the same vicinity, was because of my little brother.
	If it wasn't for him, I probably would have moved states away, maybe across the country already.
	And I've had this kind of mental goal in my head.
	Once he turns kind of big enough to stand up to my parents, that's when my...
	I'm kind of released.
	I can kind of move on with my life.
	And that's kind of what I've been...
	These last probably like seven years or so, that's been kind of the back of my mind.
	Just like I'm...
	I'll hang in. I'll stay there and support you until you get big enough to support yourself.
	But that lets your parents continue to dominate your life.
	And their abusive tendencies continue to dominate your life, right?
	So what are you teaching him at the moment?
	Who wins? The good guys or the bad guys?
	Who controls who? My parents.
	My parents, for sure.
	Is that the lesson you want him to get out of life?
	That the bad people run things, the bad people are in control, and the good people become slaves to the bad actions of bad people?
	Yeah, definitely not.
	Because there's two ways that we influence people.
	One is... By staying with them, and the other is by standing up to our values.
	Now, this is probably coming because he's puberty-ish, right?
	So, he's going from child to early adulthood, right?
	Very early adulthood in this case, right?
	Yeah, he's hit his...
	Sorry. He's hit his stride, he's hit his...
	Yeah, he's actually hit his growth spurt, and he's gotten up like half a foot in the last couple of months, last six months or so.
	Right. So...
	What path do you want him most to take when he gets older?
	What would be the best for you?
	Probably the same path that I've kind of taken.
	No, you don't. No, you don't.
	No, you don't. Because you're not free yet, right?
	for sure yeah you're not free yeah and there will be always some excuse or some reason to stay and now i'm not saying that he's a bad reason and he's the best reason and i you know it's wonderful for that you're doing this and i don't mean to show any disrespect to what you've done which sounds to me completely wonderful and you should be proud of that for the rest of your life but so the one way that we we influence people is we're there with them and we talk to them and we interact with them and all of that right
	but the other way that we influence people is by example Now, I think that what's happening with you, my friend, is that the pivot is changing from interaction to example.
	And an example of this is, let's say that you and your brother are both overweight, right?
	And you sit there and you talk about weight and issues and body and nutrition and blah, blah, blah, right?
	And that's all very helpful and it's very important.
	But at some point, the way that you're going to get him to lose weight is do what?
	I look good myself and lose weight myself.
	Yeah, just lose weight yourself.
	And that way, he can see what it looks like.
	And if you simply hang around, so to speak, without losing the weight, he's not going to lose the weight.
	And so if you hang around and say, well, my life choices are determined by people who were abusive to me, who last had control over me 10 years ago, you may do something to get him out of your parents' orbit, but I can tell you, man, all he's going to do is fall into some other bad person's orbit later.
	Because he looks up to you the most.
	And you're like, well, I can't change my parents.
	Good people are kind of helpless in the face of parents.
	Good people should stay around for the victims of bad people.
	So then what's going to happen is some woman is going to play victim, right?
	And she's going to say, oh, you know.
	And I remember many years ago, A woman who was a publisher who was interested in my books.
	It's going to sound completely unbelievable, but I tell you it's true.
	She said that she had just moved to town.
	She was living with her father. Her father turned out to be abusive.
	And she's like, I need to stay with you just, you know, for a couple of days to get myself together to find some new place, right?
	Now, as it turned out, she was attracted to me and this kind of came out and blah, blah, blah, right?
	And this is one of the, you know, basically I'll publish your novels if you'll be my boyfriend kind of thing, right?
	But she was playing the victim in order to gain access to where I slept, right?
	Now, if what you model is You sacrifice your life for the sake of the victims.
	And please understand, I think what you did was perfectly noble up to now, but if he's in his growth spurt and he's not in the same physical danger that he used to be and all of that, right?
	Then I think what you want to show him is, here's the way out of the maze.
	Here's me not surrendering to the control of bad people.
	Because that's what you want for him in the future, not just your parents.
	Because the parents, the problem is, you know, if you think about a big pile of wax, and you think about, you know how they used to have these seals, right?
	They would have a ring, the king would put his ring, and you'd drive this big seal into the wax, right?
	Now, when it rains, where does the water go?
	Into the seal. And so this is the problem.
	Your brother's problem is not so much your parents, which is going to be diminishing over time.
	He's getting older. He's getting bigger.
	He could spend more time away from home and he can carve his own destiny increasingly, especially with your example, which you didn't have.
	You didn't have an example of someone who did that, but you had that example for him.
	Good for you. But there's a stamp that brutal people put into our very souls.
	And it's raining out there, man, and that's where the bad people recognize and collect power over us, right?
	Our parents install these subjugation buttons in us, and people are just out there thumping it like crazy, right?
	Trying to gain control over us.
	And, you know, if they don't gain control over you, they'll just deplatform you, right?
	But what you want to do is you want to show, here's how to deactivate those buttons.
	Here's how to pop out that seal.
	And so if you say, you know, something like, listen, I have been sticking around for you because you were a little kid and you needed me around.
	I hate to go, but there's something I hate even more, which is the idea that I'm transmitting to you that you can't have a life if someone around you is unhappy.
	Because mom and dad will do that to you.
	As they get older, right?
	There's two peak powers of parental control if they're abusive, right?
	Two peak times of parental control.
	Number one is when you're very little, and number two is when they get older.
	Now, in number one, they're the bullies.
	In number two, they're the victims.
	And these two flip sides of the same coin are very hard to resist.
	It's impossible to resist when they're the bullies and you're little.
	And it's incredibly hard to resist when They're old and need you.
	And you don't want him to be susceptible to that kind of control.
	You need to show him what it looks like to get out of prison.
	Otherwise, you'll stay there for him.
	He'll stay there for someone else.
	Maybe it'll be a sister.
	Maybe your sisters will have a kid and there'll be problems there.
	There's always some reason to stay in prison.
	Yeah, it's... Yeah.
	It's actually kind of funny.
	My first sister has three kids, and he's kind of voluntold to babysit four of those kids.
	My sister just drops them off at my parents' house, and he's pretty much forced to babysit them.
	Right. Right.
	And you know what's going to happen, man?
	He's going to develop a relationship with those kids, and then those kids are going to be used to keep him.
	Well, he already has a relationship with those kids, right?
	And he's going to be like, well, I can't get out of prison because those kids there are still here.
	And nobody ever gets out. Yeah.
	You need to build a clearing for him to land, right?
	Yeah, yeah, yeah. So moving from instruction by intimacy to moving to instruction by example is kind of tough.
	But my guess is that's what he most needs at the moment is an example.
	And listen, as you said, you can still play the online games with him.
	You can still chat with him.
	It's just your physical presence won't be there.
	But that's really important because your absence is the fucking doorway he's going to need to get out.
	You know, if somebody's walked through a wall, then you can go second that it's okay, right?
	Right, right. Yeah, oh, man, that's...
	You want to show him what a totally functional life looks like.
	And as long as you're still in the orbit and making...
	Oh, another thought just struck me now.
	So, as long as you're in the orbit and making decisions based upon the bad actions of bad people, he's not going to see what a functional life really looks like, number one.
	Number two, it may actually improve your parents' treatment of him.
	Yeah, yeah. That's actually what I was...
	I've been thinking a lot about that.
	Tell me what you think. Yeah.
	And I just kind of remembered from, I think it was about two years ago or so, a couple months after I moved out, I remember he gave me a call, and he was like, Mom's being really mean to me.
	Can you come pick me up? And I just got in my car right at the moment, and I drove over there and I picked him up.
	I parked in the driveway and I just comped.
	He ran out to the car and we just drove away to my house.
	And And you know, after that, I've never got a single call after that moment from him about, like, a situation.
	Right. So there are two reasons why their behavior will probably improve.
	Number one, if you leave, they know your influence over him.
	And so if you're out, they know that if they continue to behave badly, he's going to be out too.
	That's number one. Number two is that if their mistreatment of him is one of the reasons you stick around, then they have an incentive to mistreat him, which is to keep you around.
	Yeah, I never thought about that.
	You may very well be, through no intention, and again, I think what you've done so far has been a huge net positive for your brother, but...
	Anytime you give evil people power over you, it just makes them worse.
	People think it's cruel to withdraw your interactions from evil people.
	It is really the very kindest thing that you can possibly do.
	Because evil people...
	Especially parents. And I'm sorry, I know I'm characterizing your parents in sort of like very Old Testament simplistic ways, but just for the sake of example, evil people, let's say it's not your parents directly, but just evil people as a whole, because I'm sure there are good qualities to your parents as well, somewhere in there maybe.
	So evil people, we are...
	We are the drug they feed on.
	And to withdraw ourselves from the abuse of evil people gives them a respite from the temptation to abuse us and gives them a possibility of change.
	Certainly while they continue to abuse us and do bad things and hurt themselves and hurt others and addicted in that death-style vortex of negativity, then we're basically bringing them drinks when they're alcoholics.
	Our presence makes them worse.
	And I'm not saying you should blame yourself at all for that.
	I'm just saying that's a factual transactional analysis of the situation, that you being around is making your parents behave in a worse manner, partly because of guilt and repetition and all of that.
	And I don't think my mother has been nearly as mean since I'm not in her life, because I'm not constantly provoking guilt and turmoil and rage within her.
	It's better for the world that I'm not in her life.
	It's an improvement and a kindness to the planet as a whole.
	I think she's stuck suing everyone.
	That's my guess. No, actually, more than my guess.
	I know that. I know that for a fact.
	So, it may be entirely for the best.
	And I think that there's good arguments to believe or good reasons to believe that it is.
	Yeah.
	Thank you so much for that clarity.
	I just kind of felt like this burden was kind of lifted off my shoulders there.
	Good. Good. When you act in a moral manner, You cannot predict the values and virtues that will come out of that.
	And this is why we can't base our decisions upon consequences.
	You don't know. When you change something as foundational as an alteration of this kind, because it's not just that you're running away from a bad family situation, you're also running towards good people who share your values, right?
	People you've met through this show who are going to be reasonable, RTR-based, philosophical life forms and so on.
	So you can't possibly tell The consequences of that ripple effect in the people around you.
	And this is why we can't make decisions based upon consequences, because we can make good or bad consequences out of just about anything.
	All right, so I'm going to move on to the last caller, but please drop me a line.
	This is, of course, true for everyone on the call, but please drop me a line and let me know how it's going as it goes forward.
	But I think to be an inspiration to your brother is probably the best thing you can do for him right now.
	Yeah, thank you very much for that.
	You are very, very welcome.
	I appreciate it.
	All right.
	Our last question for the evening.
	I This is like, sorry to interrupt, James.
	This is like old school call-in show.
	So I just really wanted to thank the people who are coming in.
	This is a nice, not necessarily doing two hours with one person, but more of a dip in and bob and weave.
	It's really great. So I just wanted to appreciate you, James, and also for the listeners for calling in in this way.
	Yes, yes. And also thank them very much for coming up with their questions as they did.
	All right. So last question tonight.
	And she writes, Am I evil?
	You said, in a recent call-in, that true evil is when you have wronged someone beyond redemption.
	I may have done exactly that.
	I spent nearly nine years with my husband growing together into better versions of ourselves.
	We both listened to your podcasts, watched your videos, and read real-time relationships together.
	We talked values, parenting, and had a golden ticket to a happy future.
	Long story short, we corrupted our sanctity during a prolonged and dirty estate battle after his father passed.
	Fighting became more important to us than RTR, and we reluctantly split up last year after we had both committed emotional infidelity and had enough.
	Then, very soon afterwards, I had irresponsible sex with a man I didn't even really like and conceived my son.
	I came back to my husband, at 34 weeks pregnant, who accepted me with open arms.
	Naturally, that didn't last.
	Now I'm feeling stuck in a house with a man who couldn't care less if I never came home, and all my bridges are burned behind me.
	It's really just me and my two-month-old son, who may never live to...
	Excuse me.
	It's really just me and my two-month-old son.
	Who may never look up to his name if I can't get myself together.
	It's a very sort of positive and biblical name.
	So anyway, go on. Yes, yes.
	Obviously, there are pages of details that I'm leaving out, but I think you get the picture.
	So the natural question is, how has this happened?
	I've listened to you since 2014 or so.
	No better. I've been digging and digging for months, and I'm thinking that self-erasure is part of my problem.
	I have no identity, so I go where the wind blows.
	I'm the chameleon that you frequently describe.
	I'm whoever I need to be for others, and I don't even know what my favorite color is because I've done such a thorough job of being a non-person.
	Is that what evil looks like from the inside?
	I feel an urgent need to answer these questions and be the person my son needs me to be.
	Well, that's a hell of a story and a hell of a question.
	And you're on the line now, right?
	Yes, I am. Well, okay.
	So let me just sort of be clear.
	So evil is not you've wronged someone like you've upset someone or hurt someone emotionally.
	It is if you violated the non-aggression principle.
	In other words, you've sworn someone's arm off.
	You've killed someone or whatever it is.
	And you haven't done any of that, right?
	So that is not evil.
	Evil is not, you know, you've hurt your husband and it hasn't worked out and that's, you know, obviously what you did was not good, but that's not what I would call evil because your husband was there by choice.
	You did not use violence against him.
	You did not steal from him.
	You didn't sell his kidney on the black market.
	So, you know, evil being the four-letter word, I don't want to sort of spray it around like I'm playing Unreal Tournament and I've got spider bombs.
	Sorry, that's a very specific reference.
	So, you know, if what you've got out of what I've said is that true evil would require violations of the non-aggression principle, which you have not done.
	Is that fair to say? Hello?
	He would argue and...
	I'm sorry, you're going to need to go a little closer to your microphone.
	I can barely hear you. Okay, can you hear me better now?
	That's better, yeah, thanks. Okay.
	I would say that I haven't committed violence against my husband, certainly, but he would argue and I do agree with him that I have stolen from him in a sense.
	I've stolen our firstborn together and I've stolen the nine years that we spent together No, no, no, no, no, no.
	So if your husband was here, and I'm sorry to interrupt, if your husband was here, he was there, he made choices, he chose you, he chose to stay with you, that's not the same as stealing.
	Stealing is, you know, you park your car in a pretty safe place and someone comes and takes it and you have no control over it.
	This is not the case, right?
	No. Now, did you behave badly?
	Yeah. Did he behave badly?
	I'm sure that he did, right? You said you both committed emotional infidelity, right?
	Yes, we did. And you had, you conceived your son when you were, I hate to say this, old friends things, we were on a break, right?
	But you'd split up, right?
	I've thought so many times, but yes.
	Okay. So you had decided to split up and you weren't, was it a trial separation or were you like, this is done or how was that playing out?
	There were, we were processing a divorce.
	So... What the hell is your husband saying that you stole things from him when he agreed to divorce you?
	Well, I think that on both our sides, we do have a lot of regret and hurt that our relationship happened the way that it did.
	I understand all of that.
	I understand all of that. But I think that this, you know, you stole to say, well, you stole my baby when you guys were processing a divorce.
	And obviously, this was not good that you got, you conceived a child with a man you didn't even like.
	Now, let me just make sure I understand something.
	And again, if you can get closer to the mic, I'd appreciate it.
	It's really hard to hear. And I know it's not just me because the recorder thing is showing you quiet as well.
	So you say, now I'm feeling stuck in a house with a man who couldn't care less if I never came home.
	And is that your husband?
	Not your ex yet. You guys didn't finalize the divorce.
	Is that right? No, I'm still living with my husband.
	I came back when I was pregnant and I've been here with my son since having him.
	We had intentions of repairing our relationship, and I'm still trying, but there's only so much I can do on my end.
	He's made up his mind that we're never going to work out.
	He can never get over... He can never look at my son and be okay with that.
	Right. And what happened with the father of your son?
	What's the story there? Well, that's another wrong that I have done.
	He would very much like to be involved in my son's life.
	However, I removed myself while I was pregnant because my son has an older half-brother.
	This is hard for me.
	It was a very hard decision.
	The boy He's 11 years old, but he is severely disabled and violent.
	And I was trying to come into that relationship and do the right thing.
	I didn't want a relationship with the father, but when I became pregnant, the right answer became obvious.
	And I was trying to have a relationship with him, but as As time went on, I realized I really had no ability to positively influence his son's life.
	The son's mother, anything that I said was wrong, we'll put it that way.
	So I had no influence, and this boy needs some serious help so that He's not so violent.
	I was just thinking, what's going to happen when I have a baby in this house, you know?
	And I'd already been kicked in the abdomen a couple times by the boy, and I had to leave.
	I spent a couple of months by myself contemplating where to go, what to do, and I called my husband for the first time.
	Months and he was happy to hear from me.
	We talked for a while before I moved to where I am now with my husband.
	Tell me about the estate battle.
	His mother was recently decently well-to-do.
	He had Over 100 acres of land with quite a bit of money as well.
	And when he passed, he left everything to my husband.
	But he had a younger sister, a grandmother, and an uncle in the state, of course, who all wanted a piece of the estate.
	It was ripped from him.
	His sister took him to court.
	It was all ripped from him, and he was able to retain a small portion of it, but he lost his entire family over it.
	It was split up.
	And what was, I mean, assuming that the will was clear, I mean, I'm not sure how the courts, I'm no lawyer, obviously, I don't know how the courts just get to overturn, you know, the of sound mind and body kind of clear will.
	That's a very good question, yes.
	Very small town.
	The judge was a, I hate to be stereotypical, but the judge was a woman and she was partial to, you know, the female plea and she thought that His sister was very deserving.
	Sorry, it was very what?
	She thought, the judge, thought that his sister deserved some of the property, whether it was in the will or not.
	But what does that have to do with what the judge wants?
	I mean, I assume the will was fairly clear, right?
	Yes, yes, the will was very clear.
	But she threw it out saying that we could not contact the witnesses who signed the will.
	Wait, you could not or you weren't allowed to?
	No, the judge said that she could not contact or the courts could not contact the witnesses who signed the will and therefore the will was invalid.
	Wow. Yeah.
	So it wasn't notarized by a lawyer, is that right?
	Yes, yes, it was notarized.
	There were two witnesses that signed it.
	It was a fully legitimate will.
	Wow. It's not important, though.
	It created a whole battle.
	Because his family was fighting dirty, he got down in the mud.
	With them and lost his integrity.
	I was supporting him 100%.
	I lost my integrity and we haven't been able to climb out of that hole.
	Just out of curiosity.
	Yes. Did you ever think about calling me before deciding to fight dirty?
	I've had a call-in show for 15 years, right?
	This would seem like a pretty important one.
	I have thought about calling you at least a dozen times over the last few years.
	No, no, but back then.
	No, not about that one.
	Why not? Because now you're asking me to fix a problem and it's like, I'm way better at prevention than cure.
	I know. I'm sorry.
	No, no, don't apologize to me.
	I mean, my life goes on either way.
	I'm just curious, genuinely curious.
	This guy, he's got a call-in show.
	He wrote this book we really care about.
	We've got a real moral quandary.
	Maybe talk to a moralist.
	Yeah. That would have been a very good choice that perhaps could have prevented the cascading events thereafter.
	How did your... And again, I don't want you to get into any uncomfortable details, so feel free to gloss over or just say you don't want to talk about it, but...
	When you say that your husband fought dirty and lost his integrity, and we corrupted our sanctity, I mean, this all sounds pretty biblical and pretty horrendous.
	I mean, you were kind of in a low-down, dirty fight to honor your dead father-in-law's wishes and your husband to honor his father's wishes.
	I mean, if they're fighting dirty, I'm not sure how fighting dirty yourself corrupts your sanctity.
	But again, I don't know the details, so feel free to tell me if I've gone wrong.
	Well, we held truth and honesty above all else in our relationship.
	There was nothing more important to us.
	But during the state battle, there were some things that we we outright.
	And when we when everything was done and over with, we I guess we we couldn't look at each other, look at ourselves.
	We didn't like who we were.
	And it didn't work anyway, right?
	Well, no, don't answer that.
	That's fine, don't answer that.
	But it didn't work for you emotionally, right?
	No. No, absolutely not.
	I think that's really where everything started to degrade in our marriage.
	Yeah, so look, and in hindsight, again, hindsight of course being pretty obvious in 2020, but in hindsight, it would have been much better to give up the property and keep the marriage, right? Yeah, we've discussed that several times.
	Now, why isn't that a fascinating lesson that you guys could have learned together and grown from?
	To say, okay, look, we got dragged down into the mud, we did things we're not particularly proud of, we didn't end up working that well anyway, so what did we learn about the nature of greed?
	Because people who will try and take your stuff are greedy.
	Now, I don't mind fighting fire with fire.
	I don't mind self-defense, blah, blah, blah, right?
	But if it's getting to the point where you are not proud or happy of the decisions you're making, my question is, what's wrong with just saying, take it?
	Take it and be damned.
	We are not going to go down this route and spend years and tens of thousands of dollars and whatever other ugly things that we have to do Take the damn property and be damned.
	Because, you know, money doesn't buy happiness.
	I mean, you obviously need enough to live, but it's not like the extra money would have made you both happy.
	And, you know, this is almost like that story of everybody's like, oh, I want to win the lottery.
	As soon as I win the lottery, my life will be perfect.
	And then they win the lottery and everything goes to shit, right?
	Right. So the question is around greed.
	Or maybe it was around to hell with my sister-in-law or screw them or the justice system is unfair or like there was something in there where you couldn't say take it.
	Take it. You won't get pleasure out of taking it and I will keep my pride in not fighting you down in the mud.
	Right? I mean obviously you guys had talked about that or thought about that but there was some reason why You, in a sense, wrecked this part of your life through this fight.
	And the fight was not necessary.
	And obviously, in hindsight, if somebody had said, okay, this is what happens if you fight.
	You're going to lose your marriage. And if you don't fight, you'll lose some property.
	Well, look, the marriage is more important than property, right?
	You can always make more property.
	You can always, like, you can live with less or whatever it is, right?
	So what was it that had you guys fight this hard in this way that harmed your marriage?
	Before his father died, while he was alive we'll say, his father had repeatedly throughout his adulthood asked him, you know, when I died, will you take this property and will you keep it?
	Will you keep it up?
	Because it was very important to his father, to my father-in-law.
	It was, he worked very hard for it and he didn't want it to rot as he knew the rest of the family would allow to happen.
	No, wouldn't they just sell it?
	No, no, they wanted to keep it just to have it.
	Oh, but not work it or keep it up?
	No, no, absolutely not.
	Now, your father-in-law If the Christians are right and he's looking down upon you from heaven, hopefully, would he be happy with how things played out with regards to you and your husband?
	Absolutely not.
	Okay, so don't spin me a story that it's to please him.
	Because he's not pleased, right?
	He would not have wanted his land to wreck your marriage, right?
	Right. So it wasn't for him.
	That was our justification at the time.
	No, I get that. I get that.
	But listen, it's the course correction that matters, right?
	And this is really fascinating to me, right?
	And I don't mean fascinating like you're some specimens or whatever, but it's a very, very deep and powerful moral question.
	When to fight and when not to fight is a very foundational question.
	Trust me, I've had opportunities over the past 15 years to To mull this stuff over.
	And there have been times when I have fought, and I have called lawyers, and there have been times where I haven't.
	And this is a very big and delicate question.
	A very big and delicate question.
	Now, first of all, I'm not sure how much you owe to a man who raised the sister who sued your husband, right?
	I mean, how much honor do you owe to a man who raised his daughter to be like that or had influence over to end up like that, right?
	Yes. So that's sort of one thing.
	If the court system turns against you, I mean, the fight is kind of done, isn't it?
	I mean, again, I'm no lawyer, and I wasn't there, and you don't have to give me any details.
	But if it's like, okay, there's a biased judge and this and that and the other, it's like, okay, well, you know, we put up a decent fight, we did the honorable thing, but we're not in a situation.
	It kind of ties back to the first thing I was talking about.
	It's like, okay, when is philosophy no longer applicable to the situation, right?
	Now, if you have the sister who's, you know, and as you say, the judge is not being fair, okay, well, what are you going to do?
	Become a judge and fix it?
	Well, that's going to take you about 15 years, right?
	So that's not really an option.
	So then the question is, why not stop, right?
	And of course, you've asked yourself this a million times, both during and after, but I guess that's my question is, what's the answer to that question?
	Why didn't you stop?
	And say, our relationship is more important It's not even than this piece of land.
	Our relationship is more important than fighting a fight we can't win.
	I really thought that I was doing the right thing by supporting my husband in what he thought needed to be done.
	Ah, but you weren't.
	Because blind support of people who are doing the wrong thing is enabling a kind of addiction, right?
	I was supporting my mother who really, really wanted a drink.
	She's an alcoholic. You shouldn't get her a drink.
	I know that's an extreme example.
	And this goes to the thing that you were saying at the end about self-erasure.
	There must have been a time, and probably many times, where you were like, we've got to stop, right?
	This is dragging us down.
	So saying that you support your husband, you were not there in this particular part of the equation.
	Because if you've got an out called, well, I'm just supporting my husband, but not if he's making the wrong decision, you don't want to support him, right?
	No, I don't.
	So there must have been times where you thought, we've got to pull out, we've got to get out of this, right?
	And then I didn't. Okay, so why didn't you...
	Because my guess is your husband is probably more mad at you about that than anything, right?
	So why didn't you stand up and say...
	Right, because you say, oh, real-time relationships.
	Well, real-time relationships is a book about being honest about what you think and feel in the moment, right?
	And you don't get to pull the card call, well, I thought I was supporting, blah, blah, blah, right?
	Because what that means is that you're putting the entire decision...
	And it's a series of decisions on your husband's shoulders like you weren't even there.
	Like you've withdrawn from the situation that you had pretty powerful authority over as the wife.
	And you've said, it's all on him.
	His obsession with this lawsuit, him getting down and dirty, blah, blah, blah.
	It's all on him. Because I was just being supportive and he was making the decisions, right?
	But certainly that's not RTR, right?
	That's not real-time relationships, which is being honest in the moment about what you think and feel.
	And you must have had doubts.
	And if you weren't voicing those, then you weren't doing real-time relationships.
	No, I threw it to the wind.
	So why did he want to fight his sister so much?
	I think that he could answer that best.
	But he's not here, and you know anyway.
	Right. If I had to answer for him, I would say that he felt like it was justified and right.
	He was standing up for the right thing.
	But he was not in control of the situation, because the judge was in control of the situation, right?
	She was to an extent.
	However, in the end, he was able to retain half of the property.
	Yeah, but he lost his marriage.
	So that's a bad bargain, right?
	That's a bad deal.
	I agree, and I think he would too.
	So, why did the marriage end when you guys were in a fight together?
	In other words, why did, in a sense, you turn on each other when you were facing a common enemy?
	Like, why weren't you Frodo and Samwise in Mordor, or whatever it is?
	Like, how was it that you...
	How was it that the sister broke up the marriage?
	We started off as Frodo and Samwise.
	Of course, you know, you always go into these things fresh.
	And... As the months dragged on, he started to feel like the world was turning against him, and naturally so.
	Everyone was an enemy, and it became me as well.
	No, but why? Why did it become you as well?
	Well, see, this is something that him and I argue about.
	He thinks that I turned on him.
	I think that he turned on me.
	But I feel like when he started seeing the walls close in around him he started lashing out against me and I held my ground with him as long as I could but eventually I burned myself out.
	What do you mean? Did you say you earned yourself out?
	What does that mean? I mean that I was during this time I was being as supportive for him as I could.
	I was managing all the paperwork for the estate.
	I did His father's corporate taxes because he couldn't take them to an account.
	So I did them myself.
	I learned how to do taxes and I did his father's corporate taxes.
	And I just doing all these above and beyond superhero things, I feel like I just burned myself out.
	I couldn't sustain it while Well, I was also during his lashings because he was starting to get really frustrated and he was starting to take it out on me as well.
	But what would he say to you about the situation?
	You say he's lashing out, but what would he say?
	Okay. I won't be able to tell you any specifics.
	was a few years ago.
	But he would say things like you never helped me You're just like them.
	He would belittle me.
	Calling me stupid.
	Things that didn't matter.
	Things that weren't relevant.
	But he just felt like he had to vent on somebody and We weren't doing real-time relationships anymore, so everything was fair game.
	Right. Do you think, because you said again that you were supporting him, do you really think that you were supporting him by just agreeing with him about the value of continuing this path?
	Now that you've pointed out to me, I feel More enlightened.
	One of the things that I've noticed when I'm thinking back and trying to figure out my life and why I've done the things that I've done is I don't take responsibility.
	People keep telling me that over and over that I don't take responsibility and this is a problem.
	I'm an example of exactly how I've shrugged responsibility and put it all on him.
	So, no. No, I wasn't.
	I say funny in a very loose way, of course, but you said, well, you know, honesty and truthfulness and directness were fundamental values to us, but you didn't express to him your doubts about the value of the course you were taking, right?
	So I don't think that it really was as high a value as you think it was.
	Because, funny, you guys are condemning yourself for fighting dirty, not being totally honest or whatever it is, but you weren't being honest about your thoughts and feelings about the quicksand you were, in a sense, being, I wouldn't say being dragged into, but that you were marching towards, right?
	Yeah. So you can't condemn yourself for a lack of honesty, right?
	Which resulted from a lack of honesty.
	Like it's one step removed, right?
	You can't say, well, we fought dirty, that's bad.
	Okay, well, I don't know that it always is bad, but even putting that aside, the issue resulted from a lack of honesty.
	I would say. I mean, did he have doubts?
	Did he say, oh, you know, I think we should just let it go.
	Sometimes I just want to let it go.
	Or, you know, this is doing too much harm to us.
	Maybe we should stop. I mean, did he express those things?
	He did. He did.
	And when he did things like those, I encouraged him to keep going because I thought that he would regret it if he didn't.
	Wait a minute. We just had a huge reversal.
	Are you aware of it? No.
	No. So you said you supported him.
	What did I do? When he said he wanted to quit, you told him to keep going.
	You can't have it both ways.
	Why weren't you supportive of his desire to quit?
	Well, like I said...
	I thought that he was saying those things in moments of weakness and tiredness.
	No, you're already deciding that those things were bad for him to say.
	It's just weakness and tiredness.
	Why wasn't that something you could support?
	Because you thought it was bad?
	So then my question is, why is it bad for him to want to quit something that turned out to be destructive anyway?
	You know, like if you were in some cult, and he's like, I don't know, man, I don't know if this is the right thing.
	No! We're committed to the cult, you know.
	Okay, why?
	Because you say supportive, right?
	So supportive generally means agreeing to some degree with what people are saying, right?
	So you're not being supportive of him if he's saying, I'm obviously simplifying a bit, but if he says, I want to quit, and you're like, that would be weak and bad.
	Right? Then you're not helpless in that situation.
	And I'm trying to give you power, right?
	Because if you don't have power, you can't change anything, right?
	So why did you want him to keep going even when he wanted to quit?
	Well, I want to push back on what you're saying a little bit.
	Yeah, please do. Just...
	I know that what you do is very difficult and...
	Don't you ever have days when you just, you have to question yourself?
	Is this really the right thing?
	Especially, I mean, obviously now you're in for the long haul, but especially when you were just getting started and you were getting a lot of pushback from media and, you know, everyone who doesn't want the truth.
	Didn't you have moments of doubt?
	Of course. Of course.
	And you brought those to your wife?
	Well, I don't want to get into details about that if you don't mind, but I certainly brought it to friends of mine, right?
	I know I dragged my wife in earlier.
	Let's leave her out of this particular part.
	So I would go to friends of mine, right?
	Okay, sure. And I would go to friends of mine and say, you know, this is kind of rough and this and that, right?
	Now... They wouldn't say to me, though, that it's weak to have doubt and the only moral thing to do is to go on.
	And they would say, tell me more.
	Okay. I do want to be clear.
	Because I was the one in the line of fire here, right?
	So my friends were, you know, tell me more and let's discuss it more and I don't know what the right thing to do is and it's a tough thing and it's kind of surprising and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
	Because it was kind of surprising, right?
	Oh, society cares about the children and child abuse is really bad.
	Oh, I'm protecting adult children and getting them into therapy because they were victims of child abuse.
	Oh, you're an evil cult leader. It was a bit of a mind frack, to put it mildly, right?
	Yeah. And so the right thing to do is a big, long conversation.
	And there's nothing wrong with you saying, you know, it strikes me as this, right?
	Because the real-time relationships is, it bothers me that you want to quit.
	It doesn't mean that you shouldn't quit.
	Maybe you're totally right to quit, but it bothers me that you want to quit, and I'm not sure why.
	But if you say, I mean, maybe you didn't say it this harshly, but if you basically say, Only a coward would quit.
	Or the right thing to do is to fight and to get what your father wanted and she's in the wrong and you need to do the right thing.
	That's not being curious.
	That's certainly not real-time relationships.
	That's jumping to a conclusion and enforcing it in a kind of brutal way, if that makes sense.
	Yes, and I want to clarify that that's not how our conversation went.
	It was a conversation and I asked him, is that really what he wanted to do?
	And I reminded him of his resolve when we got started.
	Now, that's kind of manipulative.
	Hang on, hang on. That's kind of manipulative, right?
	Because you're saying, hey, this is what you started with and you're failing that resolve.
	What's wrong with changing his mind?
	When he started it, he thought it was going to be an open-shut case, I'm sure, because you had a clear, notarized legal document, right?
	Well, yeah. But if events change, you can change your mind.
	You know, if I think it's a cat in the bushes and it turns out to be a tiger, I'm not going to pick it up and pet it because something changed, right?
	Resolve isn't just something you have regardless of what happens, right?
	You know, like people are like, well, why did you pull back from certain topics?
	It's like because everybody else was avoiding those topics like the plague and I'm not fighting alone, thank you very much.
	Courage is to some degree a social thing.
	Otherwise, you're a sole target and you're easily wrecked, right?
	So when you get new information, obviously you have to make different decisions, right?
	If you're driving down the road and the GPS says, oh, you missed your turn, turn around, you don't just sit there and say, no, no, no, I'm committed to this road.
	And new information came up around...
	How the judge was and female in-group preference or whatever else you say was happening, what's wrong with changing that?
	I don't understand.
	You have integrity when you think you have control over the situation or you have a commitment to a course of action when you think it can work.
	when you find out it can't work or it's very unlikely to work or it's going to be incredibly costly why wouldn't you reevaluate i wish we had i well i mean we had but i wish we'd made different choices No, you've just abstracted yourself out of the conversation, right?
	Because of course you wish you made different choices.
	No, I'm talking about something very specific.
	No, I was about to continue on to say that I do wish that I had actually been supportive of the right thing to stand up and been present in that part of our relationship.
	Or in our relationship as a whole.
	I'm starting to question everything.
	No, but see, again, you're doing exactly what I said.
	You're just abstracting yourself out of the conversation.
	Because the question is, and I'm not trying to condemn you at all in any way, shape or form.
	You guys were in a very, very difficult situation.
	Very difficult situation. My question is, why did you want him to continue?
	What would it have meant to you emotionally if he'd have said, no, I'm dropping this.
	They can have the property. They can have it.
	We're going to move on with our lives.
	I'm not... I'm not running myself ragged in this...
	I'm not dying on this hill I can't win.
	If she wants the property that bad and if the judge is not doing the right thing, I'm not in a situation where my moral courage is going to amount to much other than heartache.
	So if he had said, I'm going to quit, you have an emotional reaction to that?
	And that's what I'm curious about because that's where the solution to the future is.
	What would it mean to you if he'd acquit?
	Okay.
	Yeah, I've thought about that too.
	to Maybe not exactly that way.
	That's why you've had to ask me so many times.
	But my husband is a fighter.
	He's a very aggressive and strong, assertive man, and that's how I view him.
	And yeah, I guess if he had quit, then I would have...
	I felt like he had lost, and I didn't think he could.
	You didn't think he could lose?
	Right, I didn't think that he could lose, for one, but I also didn't want him to.
	I didn't want to see him fail.
	Okay, so that's great.
	I appreciate that frankness and that honesty.
	What does it mean for you emotionally if he says, I can't win this fight and I need to adjust my relationships accordingly?
	Right? So, I mean, back in the day, way back, like 15 years ago, I would actually talk to reporters.
	Why? Because I didn't know what the hell I was doing and I thought the world was a better place than it was, right?
	Because I grew up with reporters that are just ferreting out the truth and they're like Woodward and Bernstein and they want to get to the facts and they're fair-minded, tough-minded people and blah, blah, blah.
	I didn't realize that they were like Marxist robots for the most part, right?
	So I would talk to reporters.
	And then, after a particularly brutal interaction with a reporter who completely broke his word to me and a very serious commitment, I'm like, oh, that's it, I'm done.
	I've never talked to a reporter since, and never will.
	People said, hey, I want to make a documentary.
	Nope. I want you to be in my documentary.
	Nope. Unless I know the person ahead of time, of course, right?
	So... Lots of invitations, lots of options.
	It could be much bigger than I am, right?
	But no. Right now, does that mean I've lost?
	Or does that mean I've realistically assessed the environment and made the best decision for myself and my family?
	The latter.
	I think so. So to choose not to engage in a no-win situation is wise.
	It's smart. You don't run at a machine gun nest, right?
	That's not bravery.
	That's suicide. That stems out of a desire to not live, not out of a desire to win the war.
	Better to fight and run away and live to fight another day, right?
	So, I can tell you this as a man.
	If he felt that you would lose respect for him, And lose love for him and lose desire for him.
	If he gave up the fight, he has no practical choice to give up the fight.
	That's how much power you have.
	That's how much power women have as a whole.
	So if he sensed that you would lose respect for him, if he gave up a fight that he couldn't win, He has no practical choice to give up on that fight.
	Now, does he have free will? Yeah, I get all of that.
	But I'm talking about in the stress at the moment, he doesn't have the practical choice.
	You control that lever. I hadn't considered that.
	That's because you're a female. No, seriously.
	So you know what it's like to be on the giving end of that power.
	You don't know what it's like to be on the receiving end of that power because you're a female, right?
	Yeah. Shaming from a female, threat of a loss of respect from a female, removes free will to a large degree from a man.
	The court case continued.
	The battle continued because you wanted it to continue.
	Because, I believe, you unconsciously threatened a loss of respect if it didn't.
	And then we lost each other's respect anyway.
	Well, here's the no-win situation for your husband, just to lay it out really clearly, right?
	The no-win situation for your husband is you can't stop fighting or I'll lose respect for you.
	Oh, you've kept fighting?
	Oh, I'm sorry, I've lost respect for you because you had to fight.
	You fought dirty. He can't win.
	You understand? He can't win.
	And that's in particular because you don't want to see him dominated by two females, the judge and his sister, right?
	But it's not his fault. It's not his fault that the judge was this way.
	It's not his fault his sister was this way.
	He didn't raise her. It was his dad's fault if it was anyone's, right?
	He didn't create the government.
	He didn't create the court system.
	He didn't create female in-group preference.
	He didn't create blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
	It's not his doing, right?
	So you tell me how he could have retained your respect.
	Well, it couldn't be by not fighting because not fighting meant you lost his respect.
	It couldn't be by fighting clean because then he would have lost and he would have lost your respect.
	And it couldn't be by fighting dirty because then you're like, oh, you're not being totally honorable.
	You've lost my respect. You tell me how he could have retained your respect once this began.
	I know I'm sounding harsh.
	I'm genuinely curious. Maybe that's something I'm missing.
	how could he have kept your respect?
	Well, I don't know if there really was a way.
	Now that's what I call RTR. So he's in a no-win situation with his sister.
	He's in a no-win situation with his father's ghost and he's in a no-win situation with his wife.
	And this just goes on and on.
	He's in a no-win situation with the judge.
	Can't win. So there really were enemies all around and I really was one of them.
	Now, he didn't say, I'm terrified of losing your respect and I feel helpless even though I don't want to continue, right?
	That would be RTR, right?
	Whatever. He didn't make it.
	And that's on him. Because when I say he doesn't have any free will, it means he can't continue to feel desirable if you lose respect for him.
	And that's going to give you a lot of power over him.
	He still could have chosen to tell the truth because you've read RTR, which is about being honest about your feelings in the moment, right?
	Or he could have just said, I'm terrified that you want me to continue and I don't know why and you guys could have explored that and probably come to this pretty quickly, right?
	Yeah. So you see him being, you see your big strong strapping man being dominated and ground down by two women, sister and judge, right?
	And then you lose respect and he resents you for this.
	He resents you for driving him off a cliff, so to speak.
	For driving him to fight in a situation he can't win.
	He can't win.
	He can't make the judge honest.
	He can't make the system better.
	He can't make his sister reasonable.
	And he can't bring his father back to life.
	So that's probably where some of the resentment comes from, right?
	Well, yeah. I never even considered this.
	That's because as a woman, you've been trained to think that you're powerless or helpless or dependent or...
	No, you guys have so much power.
	It's absolutely awe-inspiring.
	You guys' perspectives and opinions are the very physics by which men navigate their entire lives.
	You guys have so much power.
	It's truly terrifying.
	And this is why you take this kind of female power and unite it with the power of the state and men are just completely overwhelmed, right?
	So then what happens is you lose respect for him and then you start hypergamy, right?
	You start looking for another man, right?
	This is the emotional infidelity part that you were talking about, right?
	And he feels, oh my gosh, my wife has left respect for me, and because I'm a man, I'm going to need to find some other woman who's going to look up to me.
	And so he goes to find some emotional infidelity, right?
	Well, you've got it a little out of order.
	He went off before me, and then I tried to stick it out and found somebody a year later.
	Okay, that's totally, I appreciate that correction.
	So he feels that you don't respect him anymore, so he's got to go out because he's kind of addicted to the female respect, which is why he can't be honest and say, I don't want to continue with this fight, so then he goes to find somebody else who's going to look up to him, right?
	And then eventually you go that way, right?
	I have had that conversation with him, and I've apologized for not being a good wife and driving him to feel like he had to go somewhere else.
	So then the question is, you split up, and you have unprotected sex, right?
	Yeah, I did.
	Now, you're an intelligent woman, right?
	There are 18 different forms of birth control that you can have.
	So what was going on there?
	Okay, um...
	I... You're not going to like what I'm about to say, but I'll let you decide.
	I haven't taken birth control in a couple of years.
	I monitor my fertility, and then I took a risk that I should not have.
	No, no, I get all of that.
	I'm sorry. I'm not talking about the physics of it or the biology of it.
	I'm talking about the psychology of it.
	Why would you roll the dice with a man you don't like who's got a dangerous child?
	Male attention.
	I was scared and lonely and my whole world had just been turned Upside down.
	But you can get male attention with a condom.
	No, you can get male attention with a condom.
	You can get male attention with oral sex or whatever the hell else you could do that just involve pregnancy, right?
	So you can get male attention without coitus, right?
	without risking a baby.
	So the question is, why the baby risk?
	risk.
	Why roll the dice with the baby?
	Was it because I bet you this was it.
	I bet you knew that he would take you back if you were this desperate.
	Your husband, that is. And it worked, right?
	Well, I hadn't considered that.
	Actually, when I left, this is something that I left out of my letter.
	Well... I never thought that I was going back.
	He was violent with me.
	Your husband? Actually, yes.
	He strangled me and then I left.
	Oh my God.
	How did that come about?
	Well, this was just a couple of weeks after I started flirting with the other guy and my husband was going through my text messages.
	Oh, so he found your emotional infidelity with the other guy?
	Well, for qualification, I had come to him when I first realized my feelings, and I tried to talk to my husband about it, and I begged him for us to get into therapy, and it just never was a good time for him, and then I guess he didn't He didn't realize how serious it was.
	He didn't want to believe how serious it was.
	But regardless, yes, he found him and that's when it became real to him.
	And then he strangled you?
	While I was trying to get my phone back from him, yes.
	You were physically violent, I assume, in grabbing and all of that as well, right?
	Yes. So you had a physical fight?
	Yes. Grappling, I would call it, before he strangled me.
	And I think that he would argue, though I do disagree, that he was just trying to restrain me.
	Oh, so he wouldn't say that he was strangling you.
	He would say he was just trying to restrain you from attacking him or something like that, right?
	Yeah.
	He had a very violent childhood, and he says that he had a flashback.
	So you gave me your side of the story with the strangling bit, although that's not his side of the story, right?
	Yes, there's two very different stories and...
	Honestly, I'm so turned around.
	I don't know what the truth is.
	Well, no. You know what the truth is because you said he strangled me.
	So is it that you don't know that he strangled me?
	Sorry, go ahead. It's definitely true.
	There's no doubt about that, that he strangled me.
	But the events leading up to it, he thinks that I hit him.
	I really don't think that I did.
	Wait, wait, sorry. No, but he said he was restraining you, not strangling you.
	Oh no, no. He agrees that he strangled me, but he would argue that it was a method of restraint.
	Because he says you were hitting him?
	Yes. Right.
	And you don't agree that you were hitting him?
	No. I don't think that I was.
	What do you mean you don't think that you were?
	If you remember the strangling, wouldn't you remember the hitting?
	Well, yeah, I would think that I would, but he's so sure that I did, so it makes me question whether or not I do remember clearly.
	Right. So you left as a result of this fight, choking, whatever happened, right?
	Yes. And how long was it between you leaving and the irresponsible sex?
	I'm cringing. Two months.
	And where did you go when you left?
	I went back to his father's farm.
	So you didn't go to the man you were having the emotional affair with, right?
	No, I didn't. But was that the man that you had sex with?
	No. Nope, not somebody else.
	So the emotional infidelity was not the man that two months after you left your husband you had sex with and got pregnant with?
	Yes, how many times are you going to make me say this?
	No, no, I'm just trying to...
	Listen, this is just the first time I found out that the emotional infidelity was not the man you got pregnant with, so I'm not asking you to say it over and over again.
	This is the first time I'm making those connections.
	Yeah, I'm sorry, I guess it wasn't clear in the letter.
	No, I obviously wasn't, but yes, that's true.
	And where did you meet the man that you had the baby with?
	He was a colleague of sorts when I went to work.
	And did you know about his violent son when you started dating him?
	I didn't know that he was violent.
	I knew that he was disabled.
	Right, okay. And what would be your ideal solution going forward?
	And sorry, just out of curiosity, when it came to being pregnant, did you think of abortion?
	Did you think of giving up the child for adoption?
	Did you think of the morning-after pill?
	I'm not recommending any of these things.
	I'm just curious what crossed your mind.
	The morning-after pill never occurred to me.
	Sorry, it never worked? The morning-after pill never occurred to me.
	I had considered abortion, but I didn't think that I could live with myself if I followed through with it.
	The idea was just, it's murder.
	I can't.
	As far as adoption went, my son's father really wants to be involved.
	And adoption would not have been an option.
	It would have been abandonment to his father.
	And what about giving up the child to his father?
	That was something that I thought long and hard about during pregnancy.
	And there's a few reasons why I decided not to.
	One was because he has a violent brother.
	Another is I've seen his father's interactions with his brother, and he's negligent at best.
	So he's not just a guy you didn't like that well, but is someone that you don't think is a good father anyway?
	He's an absolutely terrible father, yes.
	Man.
	So why do you think...
	This is the big question as far as unlocking how to change, right?
	Why did you have unprotected sex with a man you didn't like who is a terrible father?
	I...
	I really think that it was...
	A coping mechanism, some way in the chaos of my life to make me feel better in the moment.
	It was instant gratification.
	Well, I mean, certainly without a doubt it's instant gratification, but I don't think that's enough of an answer.
	So, for instance, if somebody's a drug addict, it usually goes back to them having been abused as a child.
	And if you say, well, I took cocaine because it made me feel better in the moment, it's like, well, of course, right?
	But the question is, why is that the method that you use to make yourself feel better in the moment?
	Again, outside of consequences, right?
	Because if you say, well, I'm not going to give a kid up for adoption, I'm not going to take a morning after pill, I'm not going to have an abortion, then...
	The rolling of the dice becomes particularly more problematic, right?
	Because then it's like, okay, well, if you make a mistake, you, in a sense, have to live with that mistake for the rest of your life, if that makes sense.
	Yeah. Well, so does he, my son.
	I've agonized over that.
	Okay, so... Why is it fair to say that this is kind of a disastrous situation?
	It doesn't mean that your life is a disaster and unrecoverable, but this in particular, where you've had a child by a bad dad, your husband doesn't really care if you're there or not.
	This is a pretty bad situation, right?
	Yeah, I'd say so.
	So then the question becomes, what part of you Deep down, believes that you deserve this.
	What are you punishing yourself for?
	Because if you can't figure that out, then things probably aren't going to get better.
	Things get better when you say, okay.
	Is it because, like earlier on, you were saying, am I evil?
	Like if you feel that you're evil, are you punishing yourself for that?
	What is it in your mind that says, I deserve this?
	If anything.
	Are you still with me?
	Are you still with me?
	Oh, I can't hear her.
	Is she gone?
	Is she gone?
	No, she just dropped.
	Ah, that's a shame. I mean, that's an important question.
	That's an important question.
	Can you hear me now? Yes.
	Okay. I'm sorry.
	I lost you. But I can hear you now.
	I think. Yeah, I can hear you.
	Did you hear the last question?
	Is there a part of you that thinks...
	No, I didn't. Yeah, so my question is, is there any part of you, I suppose, any part of you that thinks that you deserve this disaster, that you're not worth better than this disaster?
	Somebody who doesn't believe that they deserve to have any money will keep gambling until they lose it.
	Somebody who doesn't believe that they're worthy of being loved will keep harassing a partner until that partner leaves.
	It's a self-fulfilling prophecy, right?
	And so if you're in a situation where your life has become a disaster, and I was asking, is it because you're true evil, you've wronged someone beyond redemption?
	If you feel that you're evil, then you may be punishing yourself.
	If you feel that you Have done wrong in a sort of foundational way.
	You may be punishing yourself, and it's a very dangerous situation to be in.
	Because if you've done wrong, then punishing yourself is selfish, because it actually hurts the people around you more.
	And you're not solving the problem of doing wrong by punishing yourself, because that just means other people end up suffering because of your selfish desire for self-flagellation, for punishing yourself, for beating up on yourself, right?
	So, is there a part of you that thinks that you have to punish yourself for wrongs that you perceive you've done?
	Yeah. Okay, well, stop that.
	Seriously, stop that shit right now.
	Okay. Yeah, stop that shit right now.
	No, seriously, you can't.
	Look, if you want to punish yourself, you do it before you become a mother.
	You can't do it anymore. If you feel, oh, I'm such a bad person, okay, go live on a desert island and chant at the coconut trees what a bad person you are.
	And even that's going to harm people because they'll be like, she just left, where did she go?
	Is she dead? Right? When you're enmeshed in relationships, you can't just go around punishing yourself.
	It's like strapping a bomb to yourself, blowing yourself up in a...
	Maul and say, well, I'm just punishing myself.
	It's like, nope. You're also really harming other people.
	So if you feel like you've wronged people, then punishing yourself, you're just making it worse.
	And if you have acted wrongly in a state of ignorance, you must have compassion for yourself.
	We cannot know before we know.
	It's like blaming a child for not being six feet tall.
	If you were in a state of unconsciousness...
	Okay, you had a book.
	Yay. Books don't solve everything.
	You had a podcast. That doesn't solve everything.
	Having a diet book doesn't make you lose weight.
	You were in a state of ignorance with regard to the right course of action.
	Um... If you are simply going to punish yourself for that, other people are going to take the brunt of it, particularly your son.
	And that's unfair. Then you're just adding insult.
	You're adding wrong to wrong.
	Two wrongs don't make it right.
	And you are harming people if you are punishing yourself.
	You're harming people.
	And if you're punishing yourself for harming people and the punishment involves harming them more, you understand this is a very dangerous spiral to be in.
	Sorry, you were going to say? Um...
	Well, you're arguing that I was in a state of ignorance and I can't allow that for myself because when I left my husband, I left with a plan.
	I was going back to the farm and I was going to work and saving my money and I wasn't going to look for anybody.
	That's why I didn't go to the guy that I had the emotional affair with.
	I had a plan.
	And... And you don't know why you broke that plan.
	You don't know why. That's what I mean.
	I'm not saying... Of course you knew that unprotected sex could lead to pregnancy, and that was going to lead to childbirth, assuming there was no miscarriage, because you're not going to have an abortion, you're not going to give it up for adoption, blah, blah, blah, right?
	Of course. But the question is, why did you make such a bad decision?
	Now, you can just sit there and say, well, I made a bad decision.
	I'm going to punch myself in the face for the rest of time.
	It's too bad you can't do that because you've got a son.
	And once you have a kid, you don't have the choice for self-indulgence and self-punishment because you've got to be there for your child.
	So the question is, why?
	Like, I am not a judge here.
	I'm not going to sit there and hand out punishments.
	My sole focus is curiosity.
	You don't need me to say that was a bad decision.
	Of course not. You don't need me to say that.
	Everybody knows that. Everybody who's listening to this knows that.
	You know that. So what?
	That doesn't solve anything.
	The question is, why did you make a bad decision?
	If you can be curious to yourself and say, okay, that was a really bad decision, why did I make it?
	Because if you don't know the why, you can't trust yourself going forward, right?
	Well, what I've been able to figure out so far was that I felt pain and Fear and chaos was around me, and I just felt like blowing something up.
	Okay, but isn't that the self-punishment?
	Because if you feel that there's chaos and fear and happiness around you, and then you go and get pregnant with a bad father's kid, it's not like you've solved that problem, right?
	It's not like you've escaped that. That chaos and fear and anxiety, right?
	So it can't be, I did this because I felt this.
	It's like saying, well, my hand was burning and it was really painful, so I decided to jump into the fire.
	Right? So if you've got chaos and pain, and then you go have unprotected sex with a guy you don't like, who's a bad dad, You're not doing that because of the chaos and the pain, because that's just making it worse.
	There's something else. There's something else that is driving this.
	And if you can't figure that out, I think it's going to be kind of tough to figure out how to solve things, right?
	So, why?
	Why did you do it? Not, why did you do it?
	Like yelling at you. Just general, blank, open curiosity.
	Why did you do it?
	Did you want a child and you were concerned that if you didn't, maybe you're at that time of life where it's now and ever?
	Did you want to get back together with your husband and you knew if you were 34 weeks pregnant that he'd take you back and maybe you could work on it from there?
	There's some reasons.
	Behind all of this stuff, and you're not a random actor.
	None of us are random actors.
	Okay, maybe the son of your baby daddy is a random actor, but he's disabled, right?
	But if you're listening to this show, you're not a random actor.
	I'm not a random actor. The question is, why?
	Why did you do it? And again, that sounds like accusatory, but it's genuinely an open question.
	Why? Sorry, you were going to say?
	Well, I was going to say that yes, my husband and I were trying for a while to get pregnant and I wanted a baby more than anything, but I also believe that I didn't want a baby this way.
	I wanted a family, not just a child.
	Well, but you can say what you wanted in the abstract, but I'm an empiricist and I can only judge you by what you did, right?
	And that's why I'm considering that maybe there was a subconscious part of me that wanted a baby at all costs.
	Did you ever figure out why you couldn't get pregnant with your husband?
	I thought I was infertile.
	Turns out I wasn't...
	No, no, but come on. Did you talk to a doctor?
	Did you get tested?
	Anything? I was speaking with a doctor.
	I had elevated blood sugar.
	That was all that we could figure out.
	Our next step was to go to a fertility doctor.
	What's the best thing for your husband?
	What's the best thing you could do for your husband?
	Does he want children? He does.
	Okay. What's the best thing you could do for your husband?
	Personal preferences aside, personal convenience aside.
	To really bow out and let him go on with his life.
	Can he attract a quality woman if...
	Did you guys get divorced or not?
	I can't remember. No, that's hanging over my head.
	So, I guess you're in your 30s, right?
	Close, yeah.
	Can your husband get a quality woman if his soon-to-be ex-wife is hanging around his house with a child by another man?
	No. Do you think that after the history of violence and lack of respect and bad decisions and all of that, Do you think that your husband can have a nice, happy life with you?
	I have a hard time letting go of that hope.
	I know. I'm not asking for hope.
	I'm asking for a realistic assessment of the facts.
	You know, I got to tell you, after physical fights and possible strangulations and having a baby by another man that you don't even like, it does not seem like something I'd put a lot of money on, to put it mildly. it does not seem like something I'd put a lot Thank you.
	And it's not working anyway, right?
	When was the last time you two were genuinely happy together?
	Oh, did I lose you again?
	Oh, did I lose you again?
	Alright, we'll give her another sec, see if she can come back.
	I know, it sounds like some pretty far out internet.
	She was warbling and yorbling a little bit here and there.
	We'll give her another sec, otherwise I'll just give the sort of final thought thing.
	Hey, I can check in on the call and feedback.
	What do you guys think?
	Just wait.
	Give her a last second here.
	Ooh, people are typing.
	Yeah, it is heartbreaking. It is very sad.
	It's very sad. It's very sad indeed.
	Okay, I don't know if she's coming back, so I'll just finish up with this.
	It's a tragic story.
	It really is. You know, when it comes to what is best for other people, I mean, I know that this whole objectivist thing, that love is selfishness, and I get all of that.
	And, you know, you do have to get some pleasure, obviously, out of the people who love you and the people that you love.
	But as far as what is best...
	Okay, can you hear me now? Oh, are you there?
	Yeah, I'm sorry.
	That was my internet.
	It cut out. Yeah, no, I know.
	You've been kind of a little bit wobbly all night.
	Okay, so... What is the best thing for your husband going forward?
	If he wants to have a happy life and a family, and the question I just asked when you dropped was, when was the last time that you two were genuinely and in an uncomplicated fashion happy with each other or happy together?
	2016? Yeah, so, you know, pushing half a decade depending on whether that was, right?
	So generally you need about seven times more positive times than bad times, which means that if you guys have 35 perfect years, you're just breaking even going forward from here, right?
	Or 28, right?
	So that may be a bit of a high hill to overcome.
	And I don't know about, you know, I can't speak for your husband, of course, right?
	But I just got to tell you, I mean, if a woman I was involved with, even my wife, you know, came pregnant with another man's kid, I'd be like, wow, like, I'm really sorry that you made that choice.
	And I wish you the best of luck going forward.
	But no. No, I'm not raising another man's child.
	Come on. Especially a guy you don't like, because I also know that this means inviting the dad into my life, right?
	So it's from your husband's perspective, right?
	So from your husband's perspective, this is how it looks.
	So he now has two kids that he's responsible for.
	One, of course, is this man's, we'll call him Bob, right?
	Bob's son, the guy you slept with.
	And also Bob's other son.
	Right? Because if Bob gets hit by a bus, then that other kid, the violent kid, is going to come and live with you guys.
	Or if Bob decides he doesn't want to be a dad anymore, where's that kid?
	So he's now taking on responsibility for two kids, neither of which are his, one of whom is violent and developmentally delayed.
	No, it's just this son that I have.
	No, I understand that.
	I understand that. But what I said is if Bob gets hit by a bus, where's his son going to end up?
	With his mother. Are you sure about that?
	We're halfway across the country and we have no involvement.
	Okay, it could be. Yes, absolutely.
	I'm happy to be corrected on that.
	I'm happy to... Okay, so he's now got the one son.
	Okay. Although it's not his son, right?
	So, but this means that...
	The violent boy is going to be over, right?
	Because the dad is going to come over.
	The biological dad is going to come over.
	And this is going to be a constant reminder for your husband of the man who knocked up his wife.
	I mean, that's incredibly painful, right?
	And it's not like an affair can come and go, right?
	And I don't know.
	Marriages survive affairs. I don't know how, but they do, right?
	But an affair will come and go.
	And you never have to see the guy your wife had an affair with again and maybe just distance, time, heels, blah, blah, blah, right?
	But this is constant because the bad dad wants to be involved in the child's life, which is one reason why you didn't want to put him up for adoption, right?
	Bad dad, Bob, is going to come over with his violent son and hang out with you guys on a pretty regular basis.
	And he's going to see, oh look, they're the parents of the child I'm raising.
	That's messed up.
	Seriously messed up.
	You're right about my husband's point of view, but you're wrong about The extent of the involvement.
	You told me that Bob wants to be involved.
	That's why you couldn't give him up for adoption, right?
	Yes, but there's no foreseeable reason why he would enter my husband's home, especially not with his child.
	There's no foreseeable reason why the father of your son would spend time with your son in your home?
	Yes. Okay, good.
	So then what happens is he sees you heading off to go and hang out with the father of the child.
	Okay, yeah. That's not a whole lot better, you understand, right?
	Off you go to your baby daddy.
	I'll be here.
	How's this going to work for him?
	Is he going to have another child with you?
	Well, you guys tried, and maybe there's some incompatibility, right?
	But how's he going to have a child of his own, if that's what he wants?
	How's he going to have...
	like who's going to be in his life.
	And given that there's no aspect of personality that doesn't involve genetics, if you don't like...
	He obviously doesn't like the man who had sex with his wife.
	I know. You were on a break.
	I get all of it. And did Bob know you were still married when he was having sex with you?
	Yeah. Oh, God.
	Oh, God. Everybody's just making such terrible decisions.
	But yeah, how does this work out?
	What's the plus?
	I get the plus for you having your husband around and all of that, but taking out your own interest and just thinking of what's best for him, how does this work for him? - Ideally, my intention, my hope, my how does this work for him? - Ideally, my intention, my hope, my dream is that we find a way to overcome the pain
	And I think that when I'm healthy and sane, I do have a lot to offer.
	I was an excellent wife until I wasn't.
	Well, you know, that's like the guy who strangles a hobo saying, well, I wasn't a murderer until I was.
	I'm sorry to put it so harshly, but, you know.
	No, no, I know.
	Yeah, four or five years is a long time.
	And that's why I added that last part. Well, and so now I, so you can put things in the past unless they're still in the present, right?
	So, you know, I got sick, I had cancer, I don't have cancer anymore, so that's in the past, right?
	If I get cancer again, it'll be in the present, right?
	So, you can put the affair in the past, except the baby's in the house.
	Which means the affair can't be in the past.
	Because the dad's...
	Bob is going to be around.
	The baby's going to be around.
	It's going to grow into a toddler.
	And what are you going to do? What are you going to say to the baby?
	What is your husband going to have to say to the baby when he gets older?
	I'm not your dad. Your mom had a one-night stand with this guy.
	Who you think is an uncle or a friend?
	How does this work for him?
	Not from a magical standpoint, but from a sort of practical standpoint.
	How does this work for him to get what he wants in his life?
	Well, Bob has threatened me with custody cases over my son and We have talked about hiring a lawyer to get sole custody.
	Oh my god, so he could go back into court?
	Yeah, because it worked out so great last time.
	Oh my god, so your plan is to bring your husband back into a court situation?
	That's... That's terrible.
	I'm sorry, that's like the worst conceivable thing.
	Full circle, huh?
	How did that work out with you guys before?
	When it was his father's property, not Bob's kid.
	Yeah. Because this stuff can go on.
	How it works out for your husband is he gets pulled into family court.
	And who's going to pay for it?
	My husband offered to pay for it.
	Oh my god. Please have him call me.
	Please have him call me.
	I asked him if he would join me for a phone call.
	Oh man, dude. Call me.
	I'm serious. You stepping up to pay?
	To get custody of your wife's one night stands kid?
	Dude. Oh my god.
	Because, you know, if respect is something that's important to you for a relationship, which I think it is, and I think it is for everyone, I may have misused it a little bit in the past, but...
	Come on.
	Are you going to respect that?
	I mean, I get that you need it, and it's useful.
	Are you going to respect that deep down?
	Him shoveling over money, getting dragged back into a court case to guarantee access to his wife's lover's kid?
	My God! Can you respect that from him as a man?
	I get the convenience of it, but in terms of just respect for him.
	Well, I have to be honest and say no, but I don't want to consider that.
	Why don't you want to consider that?
	I mean, if that's how you feel, aren't we RTRing here?
	Yeah, well, that's fun being honest with you.
	I'm appalled. If you want my honest, obviously, I want to be honest with you.
	I'm shocked and appalled that he's like, oh, are you pregnant with another man's baby?
	Woman who's about to become my ex?
	Sure! Move in!
	Oh, do you want money for a court case to go and get custody of this kid?
	Sure! I'll pay!
	What the fuck? What kind of mother did he have?
	Jesus, you think you're non-existent in this situation?
	Where the hell is your husband?
	Where's his spine?
	Where's his balls? Where's his presence?
	Where's his preferences? Jesus.
	His justification is that he doesn't want to see me struggle.
	He doesn't want to see me out on my ass.
	He just wants to be supportive.
	Yes. Yeah.
	Well, that's not being supportive.
	You chose to have the baby.
	You chose to have the sex.
	He had nothing to do with it, right?
	Yeah. So why is he paying for something he had nothing to do and deep down very much opposes?
	Where is his responsibility?
	Aren't you kind of exploiting him?
	Like you're kind of pillaging him here, right?
	Oh, he'll pay! Great! Come on.
	That's not fair. That's not right.
	And what's that going to teach your son about women and men?
	Just because he's willing to pay.
	Just because he's willing to pay doesn't mean you should take the money.
	I mean, if he was raised so badly that he just can't say no to anyone with tits, or maybe anyone as a whole, right?
	That's not right. That's not right.
	You know, a guy contacted me a little while ago.
	I said, oh, I'll pay you this amount of money for an interview.
	And people contact me.
	They say, I will pay you this amount of money for a private call.
	And do you know what I say? No.
	No. I may do the interview, and if I do the interview and he wants to spend the money, I'll tell him to give it to a charity that I like or whatever, right?
	I'm not going to take money for that.
	People will offer it.
	No. The reason I don't do private calls is because the amount of good that comes out of these calls for the world as a whole is not something I want to give up.
	I'm here not to just cash in.
	I'm not here. I'm here to try and do what's best for the world as a whole.
	And the amount of value that comes out of these calls to people as a whole can't be calculated.
	It can't be calculated.
	And I admire your courage and your bravery and your integrity in having this call.
	It's incredible. Good for you, man.
	Good for you. Do you think you should take your husband's money to pay for a court that he's going to get dragged into?
	Because if you're going for sole custody, they're going to say, who's he living with?
	And they're going to go ask him questions and examine your household.
	And he's going to have to hire experts to figure out which household is better.
	And it could drag on for years and cost $50,000, $75,000, $100,000 or more.
	Is it fair to ask your husband to pay for Bob's child?
	No. I would say not.
	Because you want a quality man, and I'm not saying your husband is not a quality man.
	I think he may be a little bit on the lack of assertiveness side, but I can talk to him if he wants about that.
	But you've got to think down the road for your son.
	Down the road for your son.
	I'm not using his name, of course, not because I don't remember it, but because he didn't consent to be part of this conversation, right?
	So your son is going to need to have a man around him who is going to model the kind of assertiveness that he's going to need in life, right?
	And the kind of upright masculinity that your son is going to need in this life, right?
	That ain't, at the moment, your husband.
	It's just not him. I mean, the amount of cucking and simping and mangina-ing that your husband is doing staggers the imagination, and I beg him to never read the comments on this video.
	Never! Right?
	So you're going to need a quality man in your son's life so that he grows up to be a quality man.
	Right now, that's not your husband, in my opinion.
	It doesn't sound like it's Bob either because you think he's a bad father, right?
	So then you've got to figure out, okay, how can I possibly get the best possible man to help me raise my son?
	If it's not my husband and it's not Bob, who's it going to be?
	I don't know. But as long as those two, particularly your husband, is in the picture, he ain't showing up.
	Whoever is going to be the guy to raise your son in a positive way, maybe you can have kids with him, you say you're not even 30 yet, so you've got time.
	That's who you need to think of.
	Right now, you're short-term thinking.
	Oh, great, I've got someone who's going to pay for these legal bills, and I got someone, I assume that he's paying for the roof over your head too, right?
	Your husband? Yes.
	Okay, so he's paying your bills, he's paying the medical stuff, he's doing the roof over your mouth, the internet.
	I hate the fact that he's paying for this internet too.
	So it's convenient for you in the moment, but it comes at the expense.
	What is the cost? What is the cost?
	What is going to be the cost?
	The cost is going to be increasing resentment.
	The cost is going to be potential future violence as your husband...
	He's going to come back from this mad generosity, you understand?
	He can't stay here forever.
	And the blowback might not be insignificant.
	I'm not trying to scare you or anything, like he might just yell at you or something, but he's going to get mad.
	Especially if he's like, oh my god, I've got dragged into another death grip legal action that's incredibly expensive, right?
	And at least on the other side of the legal action regarding the property, there was some property.
	What's on the other side of the legal action regarding this is, hey, I get to spend more time with my wife's lover's child.
	Yay. So, the question is, what does it look like to take responsibility in this situation?
	Is it sponging off your husband and taking his money to fight for custody?
	No.
	No, it's not.
	And that's why I'm a big one on prevention rather than cure, because there's no particularly good cure here, right?
	And No, there's not. Do you think that it's exploitive?
	And you can tell me no.
	I mean, I've just met you guys, so I don't know, right?
	But do you think that it's exploitive to take your husband's money?
	If he doesn't really have much of a power to say no to you, is it right to take his money?
	Especially not considering that he really thinks that our marriage is over.
	I thought when we came to this agreement that we were going to be okay and we'd have just a son that was mine and not his and then we could have a family between us too and it would all be okay.
	If you want a future with your husband, you cannot exploit him.
	Because if you exploit him, you will not have respect for him and you will not have desire for him.
	You will end up with contempt for him.
	If there's any future with your husband, it has to be you stop exploiting him.
	Because right now, in my humble opinion, it's a bad direction.
	Sorry, go ahead. Well, I'm saying that I think I know that Right.
	Oh, I think I got kicked here.
	He decides that...
	I'm sorry, can you just... I got kicked for a second here.
	If you could just repeat that, please.
	Sure. I was saying that...
	I think I know that and I have been considering...
	Well, taking steps, anyway, to start a career that will support me and my son and stand on my own, live alone and see if he wants me then.
	And if not, then I need to find a father for my son or some sort of positive influence, male influence.
	Yeah. I certainly think dragging him back into the court environment is going to be pretty bad for him.
	Especially given all...
	It would be tough enough even if it was his son.
	And I've talked to fathers who've gone through this court process.
	It's pretty brutal. It would be tough enough even if it was his son, but given that it's his wife's lover's son, that's pretty bad.
	Yeah. No, you're right.
	I feel blind for not seeing that before you pointed it out to me.
	But that's what I mean. Like, to be gentle with yourself if you don't see things before they're pointed out, right?
	Yeah. You can't know before you know.
	Again, we don't sort of sit there and say to an 18th century doctor, oh, he was a terrible doctor because he didn't prescribe antibiotics because there weren't antibiotics back then, right?
	But to go back to your very, and I'll stop here because it's been a long chat, but to go back to your very original point here, right?
	Wronging someone beyond redemption, I may have done exactly that.
	Now, you were talking about the past here, right?
	And again, I know your baby is very young and all of that, right?
	But as far as wronging your husband, if you've made the decision to have a one-night stand, to have unprotected sex, to keep the baby, that's your choice.
	That's not your husband's choice.
	Now, the fact that he's willing to, quote, step up and, you know, I hope that he'll call and I'd really love to talk to him about this because this is not going to be...
	If he goes forward and he wants to have a family, he's going to need to model some slightly more positive behaviors for his sons, in my humble opinion.
	But... The wrong that's going on here, to me, is not fundamentally in the past.
	The wrong that's going on here is fundamentally in the present, that you have a cash cow who can't say no to you, and you're kind of milking him till he falls over, so to speak, right?
	And I know that's a harsh way to put it, and I'm not saying you're doing it consciously, and I'm sure a lot of it is motivated by what's best for your son, but I don't think it is best for your son.
	I don't think that he wants to see this is how women behave, because then he's going to grow up and he's not going to want to have much to do with women, in my humble opinion.
	You don't want that for him. That's not right for him, right?
	No.
	He needs to see a strong, responsible mother who takes care of her own business, right?
	Yeah.
	I also want to add about the wronging people beyond redemption.
	I'm also talking about my son.
	I feel like I've got him on such a false start and...
	I'm looking at the future and I don't know how I'm ever going to make it up to him.
	Yes. Well, I think that the way you start to make it up with him is to really take ownership of your own choices.
	And I don't know.
	I don't know, of course, the motivation behind Bob's threat of family court and legal action and so on.
	And that may be just he wants you, but he can't have you.
	And he just wants to wreck your life with your husband because you won't be with him.
	I mean, who knows? Who knows, right?
	What's going on? If he doesn't, if he's not a good dad, I don't know why he wants another kid around more.
	I don't know. It could just be damaged stuff and all of that.
	But yeah, this is...
	He takes his world's number one dad.
	I'm sorry? He thinks he's world's number one dad.
	Right, right. So it's another guy you can't respect, right?
	Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I think that doing the right thing is hard, right?
	I mean, I've had to say no to a lot of things in this show that would have been very tempting in the moment in terms of, like, lots of, you know, money opportunities and this and that and the other.
	But I really do have to kind of stick to the straight and narrow because the whole point is...
	Is not to end up in a situation where I'm compromised and controlled by others because my responsibility is to the audience.
	And I'm sorry, I don't mean to lecture you like, oh, I'm perfect.
	I've made my mistakes.
	Lord knows. Lord knows I've made my mistakes.
	But I do sort of try and guide myself by that.
	And I do think that...
	If you really care about your husband, I do think that you need to figure out what is the situation that's going to bring him the greatest happiness.
	I really can't imagine that funding court action to make sure he has more time with his wife's lover's son, I really can't imagine that that is what's going to bring him happiness in the long run.
	And if you want love, then you do have to start thinking of what's best for other people.
	And I'm not saying you never have and all of that, but...
	Earlier on, you had a preference for him to keep working on the lawsuit because you would think he was a loser if he didn't, or he was a failure if he didn't.
	And that was about putting your needs in front of his happiness, and that didn't work out well.
	And I think if you keep doing the same thing, it's going to continue to not work out well, and the not working out well could just get worse and worse.
	All right? Yeah.
	How are you doing, by the way? I mean, I've had a fair amount of bladder.
	How are you doing? You've given me a lot to chew on.
	And this is why I called.
	All right. Call back.
	Keep me posted or at least send me an email.
	Keep me posted. Please, you know, if your husband listens to this, call.
	Call, please, my friend.
	You're a really great guy, but there may be a few tweaks under the hood that might be helpful.
	So thanks, everyone, so much for sort of a long show.
	Well, we'll split this one up, I'm sure.
	But thanks, everyone, so much for your time and attention this evening.
	Let's go have a game of Among Us, because I could use a break from depth, and that's a lot of fun.
	All right. Take care, everyone.
	Lots of love from up here. Freedomain.com forward slash donate to help out with the show.
	You know, there's nothing else like this out there, and it's absolutely necessary, as you can see.
	James has got to eat. Then he'll join us for a game.
	All right. Lots of love, everyone.
	Freedomain.com forward slash donate.
	Take care.
	Steph out.
	Well, thank you so much for enjoying this latest free domain show on philosophy.
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