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Nov. 29, 2020 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:51:29

"I Want to Pay for My Wife's Lover's Son!" Part 2 Freedomain Call In

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Time	Text
	Good morning, everybody.
	Sidhan Molyneux from Freedom, Maine.
	It is Sunday, the 29th of November 2020.
	Hope you guys are doing well.
	Yes, that's right.
	It's the last bit of my rough-voiced shows, my smoky Tom Waits down in the Delta, guttural, whiskey-breath, chewing-on-glass voice.
	Why? Because yesterday I doth finished the audiobook of Almost.
	Well, It's almost completely finished.
	Of course, there'll probably be a couple of hiccups here and there that need to be fixed.
	It's over 20 hours, I believe.
	And wow, what a journey.
	I spent over a year on this book full-time back in the day.
	So after I left my software career, I was a software entrepreneur for like 15 years.
	And after I left my software career, I wanted to become A novelist, well of course I've wanted to become a novelist or a writer.
	A fiction for many years and I was accepted to the National Theatre School for Acting and playwriting.
	I was going to do the first year of acting and the second and third year were going to be playwriting but I didn't really like my writing teacher and to be fair he didn't really like me either and I basically was just spending a lot of time writing stuff that they didn't like and it just seemed sort of pointless so I left before the end of the second year and went back to finish my degree in history.
	But a variety of circumstances came about.
	So I took the Humber School for Writers course, which is a pretty prestigious top-tier writing course up here in Canada.
	And I had...
	I think my first teacher was D.M. Thomas, who really didn't like my work.
	My second teacher was Elizabeth Harver, who did.
	And we actually had a pretty good relationship.
	And she helped me sort of with my writing and was a good teacher, I think.
	And... My novel, The God of Atheists, which was a sort of bitter comedy novel set in the software world and in the world of music around corruption and the innocence of children crashing into the greed of adults.
	I did that and that book got a stellar review.
	I got an agent and I was sitting in my office and In the software world, and every time the phone rang, I thought it was going to be, oh, you know, we got a publishing contract because literally the reviewer of the novel of The God of Atheists, which was a guy who has a PhD in literature, he said, finally, finally, finally, we have the great Canadian novel, the novel that's going to put Canada on the map from a literary standpoint.
	And so, you know, that's fairly high praise, I think it's fair to say.
	And he was, in fact, a Christian, which was a bit of a tiff-off for me.
	And I didn't realize, of course, just how much communists and socialists had infiltrated the art world.
	It's pretty clear now, of course, in hindsight, but there's no way that anything critical of collectivism and anything that promotes individualism or free market thinking was ever going to get published.
	It's not going to happen. Art is not about the human condition anymore.
	Art is not a deep exploration of what it is to be human and how to make difficult choices and how to wrestle with your conscience.
	Like all of the training manual for a good life that art really is supposed to be, art is just propaganda now.
	It's just, well, which pressure group could inflict the most pain on us?
	Okay, but let's produce wonderful characters for those pressure groups and everyone else, i.e. white males or Christians or whatever.
	We'll just dump everything on them and make them the bad guys and all that.
	I mean, it used to be the case that you could even get people from the Middle East to be your bad guys.
	Not anymore, because that has become problematic and dangerous.
	You can't ever have a gay character who's compulsively sexual, who is bringing about his own issues, or one of the saddest things that I've ever seen, which is the life of an elderly gay man after he's passed any kind of sexual market value.
	He's got no kids.
	It's a really, really pretty tragic existence, and you can't ever talk about that altogether.
	All the gay characters have to be, you know, wonderful and charming and, you know, like the, I guess like the, what's it, the cross-dressers in A Star is Born, the recent remake with Bradley Cooper.
	You just have, they all just have to be positive and wonderful and, and We're good to go.
	Anymore, because it's all just navigating.
	It's like, I read this quote on Facebook the other day, which says that sociopaths, psychopaths, and narcissists, they don't have relationships.
	They have prisoners.
	And it's kind of true of the art world these days.
	If you try to say anything true or honest or even statistical, you're toast.
	You won't last. Three minutes.
	Actually, Ben Shapiro talked about this in one of his books about how he wrote some scripts for a show, gosh, The Good Wife, because he's a lawyer and he wrote some scripts and they were well-received and he might have got them made, but then they looked him up and said, oh, sorry, we can't have anything to do with you.
	I mean, gosh, that's crazy, right?
	And so, anyway, so I started working on this book after I listened to a very long An audiobook from Audible.com.
	Tell them StephBot sent you.
	But I listened to this long audiobook about Churchill and I found it just incredibly moving.
	So I started putting together notes.
	And of course, I've got family history on the German side and the British side and the Irish side.
	And so I wanted to just do a big epic.
	I sort of missed historical epics, like really big, cool, deep, meaty, character-centric historical epics that show...
	How the tiniest decisions in one's personal life can have absolutely, you know, butterfly effect, ripple effects on the world stage.
	And so I started to construct a story and I found characters that just moved me immensely and I could really understand and sympathize with all of them.
	I could understand and sympathize with all of them, which I think you kind of have to do to create compelling characters, even the bad guys, so to speak.
	I just found them enormously compelling and engaging and witty and interesting.
	And, you know, even bad guys have their moments of conscience.
	And I really try to be true to that, to be honest to that and to create negative characters that we could sympathize with.
	And because, you know, if you can't empathize with bad characters, you can't protect yourself in the real world.
	And we want our immune system to identify hostile bacteria and viruses or whatever and move to eliminate or neutralize them.
	So in a sense our immune system has to empathize with things that are dangerous for us.
	It has to know them intimately and be able to counter them.
	So I wanted to write evil characters from the inside out or bad or characters that go through a story arc.
	You know, any character that's the same at the end as they are at the beginning is not a character but rather a prop that is anti-human.
	Propaganda reduces us to stereotypes and stereotypes eliminate the vitality.
	So I spent a year doing the research and constructing the story and writing and I would go to Starbucks.
	This was back when I wasn't broke, but I knew it could be a while until I got any income from writing.
	And so I would go to Starbucks and I would get...
	I didn't do ghetto lattes, which is kind of a phrase you should think.
	It's kind of funny. But I would have an Americano which I could nurse and also just ask them to fill in some hot water when it got low.
	And I put my headphones on and I sat in a corner and I just ground out, you know, six, seven, eight thousand words a day.
	It was really quite a, it's like a fever dream that went on for like a year, how vivid everything was for me.
	Then, of course, but the novel is highly critical of Marxism and highly critical of collectivism, and I'm sure that's not a shock to anyone, but that's sort of the reality of it.
	And so, basically, it sat in a drawer.
	I won't get into the long story of how it was.
	It wasn't published or the interest it had and what happened and so on, but it was kind of brutal.
	I mean, if you think about it, back in the day, back in the early 50s, it took, I think, 16 or 17 publishers passed on Atlas Shrugged, Oh no, was that The Fountainhead?
	A lot of publishers passed on The Fountainhead, and it was a real battle even to get Out of Shrugged published because they said it was too long and needed to be edited and so on, and Ayn Rand was like, you can't cut a single word.
	And she's kind of right in that as a whole.
	I mean, it really is a jigsaw puzzle piece, which any piece missing would be an incomplete picture in that novel.
	So, anyway, so after I stopped doing politics...
	I was like, okay, I want to bring something beautiful into the world.
	And it is, to me, it is a beautiful book.
	It's a rough book, man. I remember writing it.
	It was during the time that I first met the woman who became my wife.
	And man, it was rough, man.
	This was a real quicksand pulling me under.
	And because the novel is to some degree about the limits of being able to reason with people in a world of increasing danger.
	So it's very kind of relevant to today.
	And so I started reading it.
	And, you know, audiobooks are a real challenge.
	This is why I'm glad to be...
	I'm sad to have finished it because it's been two and a half months, close to three months, really, of working on this audiobook.
	It's rough on the voice because so many different characters.
	And it's one thing to raise your voice yourself and your natural voice, but it's another thing to raise your voice when you're imitating somebody else's accent and tone and rhythm of speech and all of that.
	It's still tough on the voice, right?
	And when I'm doing an audiobook, because the book is very emotional, it's a very, very emotional book.
	Characters, they weep, they laugh, they yell, they're fearful.
	And it's funny too, because if you were doing this on stage, you know, if I was playing any of these characters on the stage or in a movie, I would pour myself full-throated, full-hearted into the emotion.
	I mean, you really have to, right?
	But it's different with an audiobook because you're reading a story and you have to dip in and out of the character's emotions because you have the narrator's voice.
	You know, somebody cries out something agonized and then you go back to he cried out something agonized, which you can't do in a cried out agonized voice because the narrator is supposed to be a neutral describer, right?
	So I decided, I sort of made a decision, which is to go halfway into the emotion and let The listener of the audiobook complete the other half.
	It's something I learned in theater school many years ago where they said it's not important whether you cry, you know, whether you can cry.
	It's supposed to be the big test of whether you're a good actor or not, which is not really the case.
	I mean, if crying on cue was the mark of being a good actor, my mom would have had about 4,000 Oscars under her belt by now.
	But they said it's not important whether you cry.
	It's important whether the audience cries.
	And that's important.
	That's really important.
	It's not important, I mean, if you think of doing a comedy or a sitcom or whatever, right?
	It's not important whether You laugh as the character.
	It's important whether the audience laughs.
	And sometimes the more you laugh, the less the audience does laugh.
	It's called breaking, right?
	When you laugh as part of the...
	You laugh outside the story about what's happening in the story.
	And I remember when I did comedy on stage, it was very interesting to kind of play with the audience and find out what they found to be funny and milk that a little bit and pull back on the stuff they didn't find as funny.
	And whether I... Found it funny didn't really matter as much, but the audience has a particular collective consciousness for laughter.
	And of course, laughter is one of these things like if you're doing a dramatic scene and the audience is dead silent, you can imagine that they're really into what you're doing.
	It is great. You've got them by the emotional short and curly, so to speak.
	But of course, if you're trying to be funny and the audience doesn't laugh, oh, well, you kind of noticed that, right?
	So anyway, I finally finished the audiobook and For the last couple of nights, I've been going back and listening to some of the more passionate scenes because if you have a very passionate scene but the emotion is obviously faked, you know, like it's badly done, then it destroys the scene, right?
	But if it's too much, you know, if I'm playing a character who's crying and then I burst into tears, people are then distracted from the story and the character and they're worrying about the stability or emotionality of the narrator, right?
	And so I've been back listening to the audiobook, just checking these scenes, seeing if I was too far in the emotion, not enough in the emotion and all that.
	But I cleverly wait until I'm going to sleep to do this and it's been a pretty bad idea because my sleep ends up really broken.
	But nonetheless, I'm satisfied.
	And it's funny too because you listen back to yourself, right?
	You listen back to yourself.
	You never sound quite the way that you do in your head, of course, right?
	It's not particularly important or relevant insight.
	But going back and listening to...
	Acting, so to speak, right?
	In a different voice, sometimes in a different accent and all of that.
	Listening to that and saying, okay, is this the right level of emotion for the audience to meet me halfway?
	And will they complete the emotion and thus will the character inhabit them for a brief time?
	That's a really delicate balancing act and I just wanted to say that I mean, I can obviously hear a couple of places over 20 hours where my accent slips here or there.
	That's not if I'm playing somebody from a different accent.
	But I'm really, really pleased with the way that it came out.
	I'm also pleased with the fact that I can let my voice get back to normal because it has been quite...
	I can do an hour or two sometimes of this audiobook after a certain amount of prep and notes and all of that.
	But I'm pleased with it.
	And I hope that you will check it out.
	It's... FreeDomain.com forward slash almost.
	You can start reading it along if you want in the first couple of chapters there.
	And there's also of course a link to a feed and you can copy and paste that feed into whatever you use.
	Podcatcher, iTunes, Podcast Addict, whatever it is that you use and it will get you Now, I decided to release it in pretty high quality because I bought a very expensive microphone and a very expensive, no, a medium expensive, I don't need a hugely expensive mixer and all of that, but I set up a separate environment completely for my studio.
	Because in the studio everything changes.
	Every time you touch anything, any application you open up just changes everything.
	So I wanted to have a completely dedicated setup just for the audiobook.
	So it's really, really high quality and I decided to throw it out at high quality.
	I hope that you will forgive me.
	You can stream it, of course, if you don't want to download it all.
	But it's, I guess, a fairly bulky download at this point.
	But yeah, I hope that you will check it out.
	And please let me know what you think of it at, I guess you can email me at newsletter at freedomain.com, newsletter at freedomain.com.
	Now, that having been said, we have a caller who's in here whose partner, wife slash ex-wife slash, hard to say, at the moment she talked about some of her issues in the marriage.
	The show is called My Husband Wants to Pay for My Lover's Son, I think it is.
	A son, yeah. And I was curious about his thinking and I'm always happy to hear somebody's perspective.
	I kind of bungee into these things hearing one side of the story and there's another side of the story that is usually very interesting and enlightening to get a hold of.
	And so I said to her, if he wants to call in, please have him call in.
	And I'm very, very pleased to have him here with us to enlighten me and you and all of us, I suppose.
	about his sort of thought process through this whole thing and, you know, possibly to call me a complete jerk for characterizing his relationship in this way.
	Perfectly fair, if he's right.
	I'm happy to hear about that too.
	So, James, if you could unmute him, I'm ready to chat and let's get this going.
	Are you with us, my friend?
	Yeah, I'm here. Can you hear me?
	I sure can. I sure can.
	I sure can. Thank you for joining us.
	Do you want to give me a name that I can refer to you as?
	Because otherwise it just feels like I'm talking to a neutral guy.
	How about Bob?
	That'll work. Bob. Alright, that's easy to remember because I can also say it backwards and still get it fairly correct.
	Also, it's not tough on the pronunciation.
	Alright, so did you get a chance to listen to the chat that I had?
	We call it your wife, right?
	I wanted to come into this without forming pre-arguments.
	I figured it would be unfair to do that otherwise and you wouldn't get the same Openness for me, honestly.
	Yeah, yeah. That's so fresh I could just slap you.
	So, that's great.
	So, okay.
	So, tell me a little bit about your side of sort of the major pendulum of this relationship, which you guys are together.
	And then you're going to split up and get a divorce.
	She goes out and she has unprotected sex with a guy she doesn't even really like that much who's got a violent son.
	And then I think it was like 30 or 40 weeks of pregnancy, she comes back to you.
	Tell me from your side, what's been going on in that whole arc?
	Because it really is quite something. So, where to start?
	We'll just start where you started.
	Her and I were having problems for a while.
	Which is fine. We were married.
	I was under the understanding that, cool, we're married, whatever.
	We're going to figure it out. It doesn't matter.
	We're going to get through it. And honestly, she kind of blindsided me.
	She said a lot of things.
	She's really good at saying a lot of things and then not following through with them.
	I didn't realize that until now.
	She told me she would never leave me.
	She told me she would never cheat on me.
	She told me she would never, if she did decide to leave me, she would never do it.
	She would never go with another man until she had left me.
	All of these things she broke.
	We got into a fight, put it that way.
	I got sent to jail.
	And she hid behind the government, stayed on my property, didn't actually leave me, wouldn't talk to me, didn't give a damn about what was happening to me on my side, was screwing the neighbor in my house that I inherited from my father.
	Oh, sorry. So the guy she had the affair with was your neighbor?
	Was my neighbor. It's pathetic, yes.
	Like neighbor, like not just in the neighborhood?
	Like at the end of the road.
	I live in a very rural community.
	Okay, sorry. I don't mean to interrupt.
	I just wanted to clarify that.
	Sorry, go ahead. You know, I'm in the military, so I'm in a different location of the world.
	We had bought a house out here.
	We had actually picked out the room that was going to be for our child four weeks before she left, something like that.
	So I, you know, I went through some pretty dark times.
	I cried my eyes out staring at that room.
	I found out she was pregnant.
	Luckily, I had very good friends here that, well, they allowed me to drink and I shouldn't have, but it is what it is.
	And they kind of protected me through that.
	And then she called.
	Oh, so sorry. You found out that she was pregnant before she called you, right?
	Correct. Yes, sir. Okay.
	Sorry about that. And, you know, I still love her.
	I'll always love her. But I can't stand what she's done.
	Just the way it is. I can't stay here with her.
	But I can set her up on her feet and let her go in a meaningful good manner.
	I figure there's enough darkness in the world.
	Why add to it? Even if it's been done to me.
	That's not a What is the old saying?
	An eye for an eye leaves the world blind.
	Why do that? Well, I mean, if you're a military man, you're not a turn-the-other-cheek kind of guy in your job, right?
	It's a balance, honestly.
	Well, of course, and the military is to a large degree instituted to protect women and children, right?
	Those who generally can't defend themselves, at least historically, right?
	So the fact that you are a female protector is part of the whole gig and part of the whole marriage, and I assume it's part of your character from pretty early on.
	Yes, sir.
	It's always cool when a military man refers to me as sir.
	It makes me feel so young.
	So young and so not civilian.
	Alright, alright. So, can you tell me a little bit about the deep backstory?
	How you guys met and your early courting and what your marriage was like before it began to go sour?
	Yes, sir. I should have known better to begin with, honestly.
	I was going to school and so was she.
	We hung out for For a bit.
	We ended up having sex the first weekend we hung out.
	I stayed there the whole time.
	And then through the night, you know, she had panic attacks.
	I woke up and protected her.
	I like being a protector. And I walked her through that, got her to the point where she didn't have panic attacks and any of that stuff anymore.
	And, you know, we traveled a lot.
	We fought every once in a while, but we both needed each other going through.
	And It's terrible, but it is what it is.
	And we had a lot of fun too along the way.
	I think for me what happened is we went and we lived at her mother's for six or eight months because I was going back to school for engineering and when she's with her mother she was a completely different person and she Her reality and mine tend to not line up.
	A good example of this is we had this conversation a few weeks ago with me and her.
	She thought when we were down at her mother's, we went and did a couple of things, you know, just to maintain our relationship.
	And I had to...
	I'm sorry. I'm following you so far.
	We went down to do a couple of things to maintain our relationship.
	I don't know what's inside that black box.
	If you could just pop the lid for me, please.
	Oh, of course. Um...
	The instance in specific was we were going to go get some tacos at a hole-in-the-wall restaurant that's supposed to be really good.
	Just to take time to be with each other and talk and enjoy an experience together.
	The experience idea came up from her, but she never followed through with actually going to it.
	But in her mind, we had actually done it.
	That is a...
	I'm not very good with instance.
	I'm sorry. No, listen, you're doing perfect.
	Sit rep is A-OK, soldier.
	So far, I really appreciate this great detail.
	So please, go ahead. So that is something that happened fairly constantly.
	It's just, you know, and then we got out of that and I said, fine, cool.
	You know, her mother changes who she is.
	We can come back from that.
	And then my dad passed away right after that.
	And I'm fairly certain you've probably heard that part of it.
	I didn't want to deal with courts because, well, I don't like government, as I'm a military guy, but I don't like government.
	They're a pain in the butt, and they always tend to take whatever they can, and they destroy you.
	You know that you're defending the government in the case of the military, right?
	Yes, sir. Yes, it's a terrible conundrum.
	So, yes, it's done.
	I do my best for voting.
	But yeah, I didn't want to deal with quartz.
	And she's like, oh no, you'll regret it.
	We need this farm.
	I really like it. Alright, cool.
	And it just spiraled from there.
	She... I begged for her attention for months.
	And I ended up having a friend that was a girl.
	And we ended up talking.
	And she became an emotional crutch.
	Which was stupid on my part, and I recognize that now.
	But... I did lean on that.
	Sorry to interrupt.
	Sorry if you're going to get to this, but I just want to make sure.
	So emotional crash. So the emotional affair is generally...
	Tell me if I go astray, of course, but the emotional affair is when you...
	Start unpacking or unburdening your heart, mind and soul to somebody not in the marriage, particularly as a result of not being able to talk within the marriage and you start to, the pair bonding tentacles start to creep towards someone else.
	It doesn't necessarily involve kissing or sex or anything like that.
	Was there sort of sexual contact or kissing with this other woman or was it really straight up emotional affair?
	Purely emotional. Okay.
	In hindsight, this is a terrible thing to say, but I should have.
	I've gotten blamed for so much anyway.
	But that would have stained my soul, and that's not what I want.
	So that's irritation talking.
	So, I mean, there was a potential for a sexual relationship, but you said, and, you know, you've had your vows and all of that, and, you know, the vows basically say, I'm not going to have sex with other people, but it doesn't say or mean I can't have significant emotional contact with people.
	Then the marriage becomes a cult, right?
	You can't talk to anyone outside the marriage in any emotional way.
	Well, I guess I'd have had about 1,500 affairs with my call-in shows or something like that, right?
	So, you know, the emotional affair thing, I mean, is that how you would characterize it?
	Do you think it was a sort of wife-substitute relationship?
	Or was it like a port in any storm, I need someone to talk to and I can't talk to my wife at the moment?
	It started out as a port in any storm and then it started to become more creeped towards an interest in sexual, but I, both of us actually in that relationship, Intimate relationship did not instigate the sexual because we thought it was wrong.
	Right, right, okay.
	And that, just for those of you who aren't married or who sort of don't follow this kind of stuff this way, and this is my strong opinion, I'm not going to say it's some fact like physics, but to me, it is all recoverable until the sex happens, right? Because it's marriage, really, the sexual exclusivity is around...
	What's best for the children? Marriage is, as you know, designed for children.
	It's, you know, good for adults, for sure, and I think it's a great institution, but fundamentally it's designed for the fact that our children take forever to raise.
	My God. I mean, I've been a dad now for close on 12 years.
	It's like, it's great. I love it.
	But I really do get a sense of, like, dear Lord, it's, like, faster sometimes to watch a mountain erode than to watch a child grow.
	Because it just...
	And there's new stuff all the time, and it's cool, and I love it, but...
	Man, until you get into it, we take a hell of a long time to grow up as a species.
	And the pair bonding really is designed around securing male commitment.
	This is sort of why what's going on with you guys is fascinating to me and caring about you as just a fellow human being.
	But the whole point of marriage is to ensure that the male, the father, He stays and commits to his children with a reasonably certain knowledge that they are, in fact, his children.
	I mean, there's lots of studies that show that women will not entirely rarely pass off a lover's child as the husband's child.
	You know, it's the old saying, mama's baby, daddy's maybe.
	And so this is sort of the commitment to...
	Sexual exclusivity is designed...
	I mean, the mom's going to commit to her baby because it came out of her and she has no doubt as to her maternity, right?
	There's no such thing as a maternity test, right?
	I mean, it's a maternity test for sure because you're never quite sure.
	And, you know, for better or for worse, I guess mostly for worse, there's no such thing as chastity belts anymore.
	And so the whole point of marriage is to keep the sexual exclusivity so that the father will provide for the children that he knows are his.
	And so emotional affairs that don't lead to sexual activity, it's not great for the marriage, but until the sexual exclusivity is broken, my particular perspective, and again, I'm not saying this is a fact, and I'd really like to hear yours as well, It's repairable until the sexual exclusivity is broken, until you actually have sex with somebody outside the marriage.
	Then it's an indication of a problem, but not a cause for divorce.
	And it's all repairable because the foundation of marriage is the sexual exclusivity that secures the male commitment.
	So as far as, I don't see how what you did would necessarily lead to the breakup of the marriage.
	Me either. And I fully agree with you.
	She actually had...
	When I was in tech school, she had a guy that actually came to my house.
	I fed him. I thought he was a good friend.
	And she was having an emotional affair with him.
	She flirted with him. Nothing physical, but again, started that.
	And she told me, I said, alright, cool.
	We can fix it. I get it.
	What am I doing wrong?
	What can we do to fix it?
	What's got to change? No big deal.
	And... Well, medium, big deal.
	But, you know, I appreciate your problem-solving attitude.
	But an emotional affair is, you know, medium to large, big deal.
	But again, not something that I think would crack the foundation.
	Right. You know, we were married.
	I figured that was it.
	I don't like dating. It's a pain.
	And I liked her very much.
	I still like her. But I figured we could come around from that.
	But she told me she was giving me a chance, but she kept fighting...
	She kept fighting me rather than fighting for us.
	So... And do you think that's because...
	Sorry, that's a huge question and I don't mean...
	Hey, why?
	That's the biggest question that there is.
	So what are your thoughts about...
	Because it seems... Like, I want to back up a little bit.
	It seems that the really important part is the law case.
	And again, I don't want you to get into the details of it because I understand that some of that stuff is private and all that, but...
	And legally private, right?
	So, but... How do you think that the law case affected the marriage?
	I mean, I have some thoughts about that, but it's your marriage, not mine, right?
	So I wanted to get your thoughts first.
	Fair. It allowed her to...
	Okay, so we all know about how women are protected and how it's, oh, poor little thing, and you have no responsibility in this, and he's a big mean man, and it was a big echo chamber with her family, and this is another thing I should have known.
	Her family has never really liked me that much.
	Her family doesn't like me because I'm so brash.
	What did they call me?
	They called me whatever the masculine thing is.
	I'm losing my words. I'm sorry.
	That's exactly what it is.
	Her mother was a single mother with two separate fathers.
	It's just... Yeah, it...
	Oh. Her and I don't get along, and I... Well, at least that pattern got broken.
	See the logic, and...
	He said sarcastically.
	Oh, man, that's brutal.
	Okay, and so that's the thing, too.
	It's really important if you don't get along with your...
	Sorry, not to you.
	You get this more than most, but if you don't get along with your in-laws in a fundamental way, it's either because they're good people and you're a bad person.
	You're both bad people, but with different interests, or you're...
	A good person and they're bad people.
	So don't ever, ever, ever, ever, ever overlook or brush under the rug or skate past any significant problems with your in-laws.
	It is a very, very big deal because guess what?
	You're new to the party, man.
	You're new to the party.
	She's had a relationship with her parents.
	It's gone on for 20 or 30 or 40 years or more before you even show up to the party.
	And if you think you can just skate past their negative view of you, well, you're going to find out in a pretty bitter way that that's almost never the case.
	I'm sorry, I don't know where we're at at this point.
	My apologies. I completely broke your flow.
	So what you were talking about was that she had an emotional affair and you were like, okay, well, we can...
	And was it about the same time with each other?
	We talked about that and you were like, okay, we can get past that.
	And then We were talking about the court case and how she was, it was your sister, right, who was sort of playing the victim and trying to break the will of your father, like the, not the will, like the willpower because he was dead, but the legal will.
	Yes, my sister and my grandmother and my uncle.
	My uncle actually told me to kill myself.
	Family's wonderful. Wait, sorry, your uncle told you to kill yourself?
	If I didn't want to give him money, which he worded it as helping people out, but yes.
	Fuck. I'm sorry.
	I know this is a military man.
	You've never heard a swear word, so I apologize for your tender ears ahead of time, but the fuck?
	Yeah. Family's fun.
	He told you to kill yourself if you didn't want to give him money.
	That's... I'm so sorry, man.
	Oh, that's brutal. I don't know what it is with money and family.
	Oh, my God. I don't know what it is with money and family.
	Why on earth would people put money above family?
	I just...
	I don't understand it.
	I fundamentally don't get it.
	You know, you can almost go and find some money, make some money or whatever it is, but you can't go manufacture a new family.
	Like, why people would burn blood relations...
	Over mere cash is something I've never, ever been able to understand.
	He has no excuse either.
	He's an electrical engineer for 30 years.
	He's got money. So, it is what it is.
	Do you think it was coming from his wife?
	Possibly. Because I'll just tell you this, brother.
	Every single time I hear of significant conflict between men who are in relationships, it may be prejudicial on my part, but after, you know...
	I guess 35 years of being an adult.
	First place I look is, okay, what are the women doing?
	Are the men hand puppets for the women's disagreements?
	Because women fighting by proxy of men is a tale as old as time.
	And that's just my...
	Because if he's got money and he's being incredibly brutal towards you when he doesn't need the money, I just assume it's something coming from his wife.
	Again, I could be wrong about that, but that's just my...
	You know, it's like if there's a murder, first place you look is the spouse.
	Doesn't mean it will be the spouse, but that's pretty much the first place you look.
	Honestly, you're probably right. My grandmother is a great instigator, so...
	Oh, so was she, like, charging up the cable, so to speak, so that everyone could get saved?
	Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, without a doubt.
	It's the whisperers, you know, like, oh, yeah, and another thing.
	You know, these guys are whipping people up into a frenzy.
	She's like a modern reporter.
	Okay. Sorry, you were going to say something else?
	I'm sorry. But back to my wife, ex-wife, whatever she is at this point.
	She tried to stay with me in that as long as possible, but I didn't need...
	I didn't need the farm.
	I didn't need the money. I can make money.
	What I needed was somebody to be like, cool, look, it don't matter.
	I'm here with you regardless.
	She tried, but she couldn't make that bridge.
	Why do you think that was?
	I don't know. I've always been told that I don't count.
	I have great stamina in My ability to focus and do things.
	I was beat as a child.
	We'll say that. Again, my father was an idiot and was an engineer and left during the week and came home on the weekends and didn't see it.
	But I was beat as a child.
	I don't have...
	I'm not violent.
	I'm not stupid.
	I don't have drug addictions.
	I don't have all these things that everybody says, oh, well, I had a hard childhood.
	That's not an excuse to me.
	You're an adult. But I've always been told that I'm an exception.
	I don't count. Wait, so you're an exception to the rule of a harsh childhood leading to adult dysfunction.
	But what does that mean when you say you don't count?
	That part I can't get.
	Oh, well, I don't count the statistics because I don't want to give people sympathy for saying...
	Oh, I see. So if people say, I had a hard childhood, and you say, well, so did I, and I'm okay, but that doesn't count.
	You're like off the stats.
	You're off the statistics, right?
	Okay, got it, got it. But I'm sorry about your dad and the beatings.
	I really am. That's a hell of a way to get an introduction to life.
	And I get it gives you some harsh skills, but soda's being dropped into freezing water.
	It doesn't mean necessarily you want it every day, right?
	So I'm sorry. I'm really sorry about all that.
	It is what it is.
	It's no one's fault at this point.
	Let's get it. Maybe we'll do free will later, but okay.
	Okay, okay. So anyway, so the effect.
	I mean, so one of the things I talked about when I was talking with your wife was that the question is why did the court case contribute so much to busting up your marriage, right?
	I mean, I get it. It's stressful and you're fighting family and it's pretty brutal and you're starting to see, you know, the feral side of people, like the mask of civilization slips when resources are at play.
	And of course, a lot of...
	I mean, parents' wills are so emotionally complicated because they're around who loved who more and who got more attention and who cared about who more and why and all of this.
	And there's so much early childhood, if not downright toddler stuff that comes up when...
	A parent dies and things aren't split.
	You know, a friend of mine who has two daughters once said that, God forbid, they get something and split it.
	You know, when he would go to, you know, if they buy some frozen yogurt, and he'd say, well, we get a small, but we can put it in two cups.
	And he would say, by the way, do you have an atomic weigh scale to make sure that one doesn't get more atom?
	Like one atom more frozen yogurt than the other?
	Because if they do, this place is going to get burnt to the ground.
	And this sort of sibling competition stuff is pretty intense.
	And then that early childhood stuff then landing into a will where, if I remember rightly, you got most, if not everything, of certainly the land and stuff like that.
	I mean, that's just...
	It's like rolling a grenade into the tent, right?
	The best thing I can say is...
	Say it again.
	I'm sorry. She could not...
	She couldn't withstand that.
	She is fantastic.
	She's a fantastic woman when everything is good.
	She falls apart very quickly when things are not done just so.
	Yeah, she's like a soldier who's really fantastic in training, but then in combat, he shoots you.
	Exactly. Yeah, that's not a good soldier, by the way.
	You know that, right? That's the opposite of a good soldier.
	I should have known better. This is my mistake.
	Well, you know, the sex up front plus panic attacks, first time you're together that weekend?
	Should have known. I mean, that's more than a red flag.
	That's like a whole communist parade, right?
	Okay, but so back to the case.
	So she, when things got stressful, which they do in a court case, right?
	So she...
	How did it play out?
	You said she was just not talking to you or you couldn't talk to her?
	Like, what would happen? I couldn't talk to her about, you know, my fears, my frustrations.
	She wasn't a safe harbor for me to talk about things.
	And when she got frustrated, she would take it out on me.
	She would get mad.
	She would get mean and angry.
	Do you mean like sort of picking on you for unrelated things, that kind of stuff?
	Yes. Or just not having a conversation, a listen, and a speak, back and forth conversation.
	Even if it's something that we disagree on, we can still talk about things.
	That's how a conversation works to me.
	But she would throw red herrings in.
	She would throw in emotional pleas.
	And at some points, I get mad, but I don't get physical.
	Typically, until you hit me.
	She hit me a couple times, and I've stopped her, but I've never hit her before.
	Well, she had a pretty lurid tale about that night, and when I confronted her about details, it did seem like things were shifting around quite a bit.
	Yes, and that's the problem I have.
	So, I can't allow myself to...
	I can't do that again. That would be dumb for me.
	Plus, it's not my kid.
	I'm not gonna do that.
	The dude's worthless. Kid's cute.
	It's not the kid's fault. And I guess that's realistically why I'm doing this is because it's not the kid's fault.
	I would like the kid to have a chance.
	I still love her and I want her to have a chance.
	Go forth and do better.
	You know better. But she knew better before she left me as well.
	She'd been listening to your show for five years?
	So she knew she had all the information.
	She just doesn't utilize it.
	Right, right.
	No, it's kind of, I mean, I always feel embarrassed, like, hey, sorry, man, but, you know, I mean, you see these people, I'm not any kind of therapist or psychiatrist, but, of course, you see people coming on Dr.
	Phil, oh, Dr. Phil, I've watched you every day for 10 years, and then you look at their lives, and it's like, what?
	How could that possibly be?
	It's like, well, I guess you can watch a whole bunch of diet shows without ever losing any weight, right, and change what you actually do, right?
	Exactly. So, yeah, I mean, so one of the theories that I was cooking around with your wife was that, you know, it's kind of tough for women to see men get humiliated, right?
	Because, you know, they're looking for the alpha protector and so on.
	And when you throw yourself into an environment where you're being dominated and treated, you know, by all accounts somewhat unjustly by women, right?
	By grandmother, by sister, by female judge, and so on.
	If a woman doesn't have any particular degree of self-knowledge or commitment to honesty, then you just lose status in her eyes, and it's just an unfortunate, although you could say unfortunate, it's just it is what it is, to use your phrase, right?
	It's the female nature, is that if a man significantly loses status, then a woman will often start casting her eyes elsewhere, right?
	Which is why one of the The character attacks that occur on people like me and others are a way of trying to drive a wedge into the marital or the romantic relationship, right, by sort of lowering status.
	In the eyes of others, it's an attempt to, I mean, it's really an attempt to destroy genetic transmission and destroy pair bonding and so on.
	So it's possible, I suppose, that one of the things that was going on was that watching you get kind of ground into powder by this Female-centric system you were involved in might have...
	You know, but that's kind of what love is for.
	It's kind of like, as you said, you know, she's fine when things are going well.
	It's like, but that's not what any virtue is for.
	You know, I don't need courage when I'm, you know, watching TV. I need courage when I'm in a situation of risk or danger.
	I don't need integrity if I'm not being tempted by anything in particular.
	I need integrity when I am being tempted.
	Like, you needed integrity to not have sex with the emotional affair woman, right?
	And you passed that test, which is good for you, right?
	And so saying she's fine when things are fine is basically saying she's not fine because, as you know, in life, a lot of times things aren't fine.
	In fact, they're kind of the opposite of fine, and that's when you need.
	You don't need vows, right, to love, to respect, to honor, for better or for worse, sickness and health, to death to your part.
	You don't need those vows if everything's going to be smooth sailing, which it never is in life, right?
	So... Just remembering the good times and how fun things were, you know.
	Everybody's in love on their honeymoon, at least I hope so.
	But it's not a sprint, it's a marathon, right?
	So... Did you, if I remember rightly, she was talking, I was sort of saying, well, to her, why did you keep going with a court case that was going badly, right, that you didn't feel you were getting sort of just her objective treatment on?
	And there was a little bit of humming and hawing back and forth about that because I don't think she wanted to say, well, I was encouraging him to keep going even when he wanted to quit.
	What was, from your perspective, why did you guys plow on when things weren't looking good?
	That's exactly what happened. She...
	has a tendency to, when she sets a goal or a path, that path shall not be broken for no reason whatsoever.
	And that is Well, it's dangerous.
	Well, I'm sorry to interrupt you when you've just started talking, but that's not...
	I mean, she made marriage vows, right?
	She shouldn't have changed the shit out of those.
	So she's perfectly capable of changing a set course, right?
	So I can't give you that.
	I've given you... I mean, you've been very frank and honest.
	I'm not saying you're not being frank and honest right now, but when you say, well, the woman who went and had unprotected sex with another guy, but we weren't even...
	Divorced yet after she promised not to and all of that.
	But once she sets a course, she's stuck to it.
	It's like, that's not a valid principle for what you've told me.
	I don't know.
	Honestly, I was done.
	I wanted out. And she just wanted to go forth with it.
	And it drove me insane.
	I was ready to cut and run, cut my losses, and it's fine.
	You mean with the court case?
	With their co-crace, yes. And what language would she use?
	How did she maneuver you into keeping going when you were like, no, no, I can smell which way the corditis is coming from and we're kind of unarmed and in the open here?
	We're already so far into it.
	Your dad would be so disappointed.
	Everything's going to get lost.
	It would be really nice to have this for our kids.
	I really like it here.
	And I can do a lot, but I guess I overstretched myself.
	Well, there's stuff you can will, and there's stuff you can't will.
	You know, if I go into a debate with someone, I can will how much I'm going to prepare.
	I can will how assertive I'm going to be.
	I can, you know, I can talk over them if they keep interrupting and all that.
	I mean, there's lots of things I can do for that.
	You know, If a guy, you know, if I'm unarmed and a guy pulls a gun on me in an alley, well, I'm low on options, I guess you could say, right?
	I mean, you can't will your way into achieving justice in a coercive and unjust environment.
	You just can't. Any more than you could will your dad stop hitting you when you were a kid, right?
	Oh, it was not my father.
	I will state that. My father was a lovely man.
	Stepmother. Holy Grimm's fairy tale, Batman.
	Reinforcing the stereotype once more of step-parents and evil.
	Oh, man. Okay. Okay.
	Well, he was a lovely man, except that he brought a child abuser into your environment and let her beat you, right?
	Yeah. Very naive.
	Little asterisk there on the, he was a great man, asterisk, look at the footnotes.
	Ah, yes, but then there was this, right?
	That's fair. And again, I'm not trying to dump on your dad, but I'm always going to strive for as much clarity as humanly possible.
	And, you know, for better or for worse.
	I told him when I was 15, he couldn't make me do anything.
	He could ask me, and I could suffer the consequences, but he could not make me do anything.
	That took a couple years for him to get figured out.
	And what happened with your stepmom over the long run?
	Oh, she's still in the same hometown.
	She's... Kind of just piddling around.
	My sister, her biological mother, doesn't even want to talk to her because she's crazy.
	She should be crazy, honestly.
	Wait, so this is your half-sister?
	Yes. Okay.
	And it's funny, but that's not inconsequential.
	Because a sister-in-law, I heard, of course, but if it's your half-sister and the sister born of the mother who beat you, who was your stepmother, right?
	Yes. Right.
	Because then you also throw in the mix of, you know, there's some biological warfare almost here, like whose genes are going to win.
	That can sort of add a lot of fuel to the...
	Fire, so to speak. And your long term, did you end up or had or have, I guess not, much of a relationship with your stepmother?
	Stepmother, no. I would rather not.
	I just pretend she doesn't exist.
	And that works great for me.
	Last time I talked to her, I was at a gas station.
	She drove by and screamed at me the whole time to the red light and then had to go because there were people.
	That's it. A lot of nutty estrogen in your environment, my friend.
	You're not wrong. And what happened with your bio mom?
	Biological mother. Her father was a drug lord.
	She went and had two twins and a daughter.
	They took the daughter out because her boyfriend at the time wanted to go home and do drugs.
	The girl died. And now she is on welfare.
	Yeah. Wait, her daughter died?
	Mm-hmm. I gotta tell you, man, your lovely father may have just taken another slight dip in my estimation.
	He was a child. He was not an adult.
	He... Oh, wait.
	So you have responsibility, but your dad doesn't?
	Correct. Yes.
	Dude. Oh, my God.
	Dude. I mean, if you're going to hand out these get-out-of-jail-free cards to people, of course you're going to end up in this kind of environment.
	Because they're going to flock to you knowing that you're going to give them a free pass.
	You're probably right. I mean, if you've got these high standards for yourself, but you lower the shit out of your standards for everyone else, you're like a goldmine of resources and forgiveness, right?
	That is correct, yes.
	So that's, you know, and that's the price for sentimentality.
	And we all have it. We all, we all, we all have it.
	Sentimentality being taking only the, like trying to measure the height of an entire kingdom By a couple of peak mountains, right?
	It's not going to get an accurate measure.
	You can't go with the valleys either, but you've got to get the average, right?
	And sentimentality is when we only measure things by the couple of bright spots.
	You know, we look at the...
	We focus our telescope only on the full moon, zoomed right in.
	We go, wow, the sky is bright.
	It's like, nope, it's really not.
	You're just looking at the one bright spot.
	And so... With your dad, I understand the sentimentality, I really do.
	I have good memories of my mom, but we do have to kind of zoom out and judge the whole thing, right?
	And if you chose a woman, your biological mother, who has this kind of incredible history, and then he chose another woman, your stepmother, who beat his children and still screams at you when she drives past at a gas station.
	Yeah, he's... He is responsible for those decisions, man.
	He is. He is. He is.
	Because if you've got, in your heart, love and attachment for people who treated you enormously badly, you understand how that's playing out in your life now, right?
	I do. The problem then becomes, how do I find people that live up to my standards?
	Because I have yet to meet people that come to that standard.
	I've got some people that are closer where I work now, but they still...
	Have some fallacies that I don't like.
	Are you ready to start disliking me yet?
	Because I'm about to help.
	I'm about to help you really start disliking me.
	Okay, so if you want to know why you can't find people who live up to your standards, it's because you don't.
	And I say this with sympathy and I say this with respect.
	You do not live up to your own standards.
	Because if your standards are people have responsibility in their life no matter how bad their childhood is, but you hand out free passes to everyone around you out of sentimentality, then you're not living up to your standards.
	Because you're saying human beings have free will in the present and they can't use their pass as an excuse for shitty behavior in the here and now.
	And you're human beings like they are.
	But then what you do is you say, this is the nature of humanity, is moral responsibility, regardless of origins.
	And we have the right to say that now because the relationship between child abuse and adult dysfunction, I get it.
	You know, in the 14th century they'd say, oh, she's demonically possessed.
	And there are certainly some times where that seems to be the case even now.
	But now we don't say with somebody who's got epilepsy, well, it's demonic possession.
	We need a priest in here. We say, no, this has got epilepsy.
	We need to get a doctor in here and they need to get on some meds or whatever, right?
	We have the knowledge now, and we have had for...
	Well over a hundred years.
	Well over a hundred years, we have now very deeply understood, and the data is all there, the statistics are all there, we have very deeply understood that child abuse, if unconfronted, if untreated, if not understood, will almost inevitably result in significant adult dysfunction.
	That is, you know, we've had antibiotics in Less time than we've had the knowledge of child abuse and adult dysfunction.
	And if a doctor refused to prescribe antibiotics, he wouldn't say, I think nobody would say, well, I didn't know.
	Right? And your wife, having listened to this show for five years, and this is a topic that we have talked about quite a bit on this show, I have, and listeners and I have, I've got a whole series called The Bomb and the Brain detailing all of the scientific evidence about what happens to people's lives if they were abused as children and particularly if they don't deal with it.
	So she had...
	Your wife has more knowledge, much more knowledge, much more intimate and deep knowledge about these things than even your father and your father had more knowledge about it than your grandfather and your great-grandfather or your great-great-grandfather probably didn't have much knowledge of it at all.
	And so this fact, this basic reality, everybody knows if you had a bad childhood, you need to deal with it.
	Everybody knows that.
	Everybody knows.
	There's nobody who doesn't. And if you've got two categories of human beings, you, the Superman, the man of steel, Whose only kryptonite appears to be women, but if you are the man of steel, but you categorize yourself as just another human being, then you've got a contradiction, right?
	If you're Superman, then you're not a human being, because the only reason you are Superman is because you're not a human being.
	But if you say human beings are responsible for their adult decisions, but then you try and sell me the story that your dad was just a lovely man, then you've got a massive contradiction, and the contradiction can't be resolved.
	Because then you have to say, well, I'm a different species.
	Well, you're not. You're a human being like your dad, your mom, your stepmom, all human beings, right?
	So you can't wriggle out of that universal statement about people having responsibility.
	Now, it's not, see, here's the thing.
	It's not that human beings have responsibility despite their bad childhoods.
	They have a responsibility specifically and particularly because of their bad childhoods.
	Like somebody who's raised by an alcoholic has a specific responsibility to not become an alcoholic for two reasons.
	Number one, they may have a genetic predisposition.
	And number two, They know exactly how terrible it is to be an alcoholic and how much horror and destruction and abuse it piles onto a family structure.
	So you don't sit there and say, well, you know, everybody has a responsibility to not become an alcoholic, just like in general.
	Okay, sure, I think that's fair.
	It'd be great not to have alcoholism in the world.
	But people who are raised by alcoholics, they have a very special...
	Because they know how bad it is.
	They know how bad it is.
	Like, you know, if your dad dies of lung cancer because he smoked, you don't have a neutral responsibility to not be a smoker because you've actually seen the effects and how brutal it is and how destructive it is to the family, the emotions, the finances, everything, right?
	And so people who've had bad childhoods, given how common the knowledge is that bad childhoods lead to bad adult situations...
	They have a special responsibility to process things in a direct and honest manner.
	Now, you've got this big wand called sentimentality where you get to say, well, my father was a lovely man.
	Well, no. Because, not only because of the things that happened before he died, i.e.
	marrying these brutal women, one of whom beat you senseless, and he let that happen and continued to let that happen, and other...
	Your biological mother ended up with one of her children dying, I assume, through some neglect or indifference or maybe abuse.
	I don't know, right? But that's who he chose.
	Now, let me ask you this question, and here's where the annoying insect in your ear lecture stops, and I want to get your thoughts again.
	But when your father made the will and left you most, if not all, of the property, When your father made the will, do you think it's possible, or was he responsible, to know the problems this would cause?
	Yes, he was responsible, and he failed miserably on his job to set this up in a proper manner.
	Why do you think he did it that way?
	He was lazy, didn't want to deal with the headache, just wanted to enjoy the life that he had.
	Well, I'm trying to figure...
	So, he left you most, if not all, of the farm, right?
	Correct. Okay.
	So, why was it easier for him to do that than just, you know, split the kingdom three ways, so to speak?
	Because, well, he didn't really care about the money or the property or anything.
	And he died...
	Early, 56, because he didn't take care of his health, because, again, he just lived.
	He didn't care that much. But also, I did say he was a bit of a child when it came to paperwork and stuff.
	He didn't measure things out and set things aside, do things the right way.
	But he knew that I was responsible and my sister was not.
	So it kind of fell on me.
	Were the contents of the will communicated to you and your sister before your father died?
	They were not. Oh, my God.
	Now, he was notarized, right?
	I remember that from what your wife was saying.
	So, I mean, he sat down with a lawyer.
	He went through the whole thing. He got it notarized.
	So he knew that he was creating a potential for massive conflict in the uneven distribution of his property, right?
	He knew that. This was done...
	When my sister was a very young child too.
	So he had neglected it for 20 years.
	Did he die suddenly or was it an ailment that gave him some time?
	He knew that he was sick, but we did not expect him to die quite so suddenly.
	And what were the health habits or lack of health habits that you think contributed to his illness?
	Um... Fast food all the time, cigarettes.
	The week before, we had had a blizzard, and we were outside in 20-degree weather rewiring something.
	He had pneumonia, and he would not go sit in his car and let me do it.
	He wanted to get out and do it in flip-flops.
	Yeah. Wow.
	That's kind of an insult to children, because they wouldn't do that.
	Yes. Man, I'm so sorry.
	This is just a brutal set of examples for you.
	It really is, man.
	It's not funny, but yes. That's brutal.
	Oh my god. I mean, I'm a dad, right?
	It's not how you should be.
	It's not the kind of position that you would put your kids into.
	Was it the pneumonia that took him off or something else?
	He had already had pre-hypertension in his lungs, which is high blood pressure in his lungs.
	I'm smoking. And then he had pneumonia on top of that.
	And yes, he couldn't breathe.
	And then he had heart failure.
	And for how long couldn't he breathe before he had the heart failure?
	My sister took him into the hospital that night.
	So I want to say it was like three minutes or so.
	And he died in the car.
	And then they brought him back and had him on life support for 12 hours.
	Man, if he'd stayed in the car, maybe he wouldn't have died in the car.
	Like I mean when you guys were doing the wiring.
	Correct. Exactly.
	Oh my god. So he set up this will when your half-sister was very little and just never updated it.
	Correct. I don't think he thought about it or thought it needed to be updated based on the circumstances.
	Oh, because she didn't exactly mount up the mountain of responsibility in any particular way?
	Correct. Now, when you...
	I mean, did you know the contents of the will?
	Before it was read?
	I had a gist of the idea.
	My dad made sure to tell me, look, this stuff is here.
	Your sister doesn't know how to get into the safe.
	Here's how you get into it.
	Don't let her into it, please.
	Please take care of this.
	Don't let her have her motorcycle when I die.
	Okay. Because she's dangerous.
	Stuff like that. Um...
	Sorry, go ahead. I'm sorry, say that again?
	The courts took that option away from me to be able to help her out on that, which honestly is probably better.
	It's not good for me to enable people, which is what I end up doing, I suppose.
	You suppose? Well, don't worry.
	That's on the list of things to chat about.
	We'll get to that. So, okay, so this makes sense to me now because your wife was talking about how the judge couldn't find the people who notarized it.
	And I was like, because I assumed that your father had, you know, I mean, it seems like if you're unwell and you live a very unhealthy lifestyle, it seems pretty reasonable to have a chat about the will or have a review of the will and get it re-notarized.
	So that's why she couldn't. That's why the judge couldn't find the people who notarized because it was like 20 plus years ago, right?
	Correct. Oh, my God.
	I'm so sorry. Now, when you found out the contents of the will that you got the property, Was there a part of you that was like, you know what, that is pretty rough.
	Maybe I can give her some money or maybe I can set up a payment plan or maybe I can mortgage bits of it and give her some cash or whatever it was.
	Or was it just like throwing money down a well to give your half-sister resources in your thoughts?
	What I tried to do, what I wanted to do was set up a, with her part of the money, I wanted to set up a trust fund so she could only have so much out of it a year and that would set her up so she wouldn't starve.
	The property I was going to keep, and if she proved herself to be better, I would give it to her at a later date.
	I didn't want the property anyway.
	But I'm not going to give it away to the government either.
	Wait, wait, what? You didn't want the property at all?
	No, I didn't want it.
	I told her that from the get-go.
	All right, let's keep the names off this, but yeah, okay.
	Yes, I told her from the get-go. It's fine, it's fine, we'll take it out.
	So, you didn't...
	I'm sorry, I thought this was at least a fight over something you wanted.
	No. Oh my god.
	Why? Why didn't you want the property?
	Help me understand. This is kind of mind-blowing to me, so step me through this.
	It's a memory of where I got beat constantly.
	I'm not really a farmer.
	I would have rather had something of my own.
	And set up on my own because I have the means and the will to do that.
	And it's just...
	It wasn't worth the headache for me.
	You know, I'll tell you a creepy thought I just had.
	You ready for a little bit of a horror show?
	Your father... Wait, I didn't even wait for your response.
	I can pass by it if you don't. There was a long pause there and I didn't even listen.
	Should I go ahead? Yes, please.
	So, even after he was dead...
	Your dad brought an abusive, two abusive, three abusive women into your life.
	Because he brought your stepmom in who beat you.
	And then even after he was dead, he made sure that women would abuse you.
	Sounds fairly accurate.
	His will did reach beyond the grave in this instance.
	Yeah. Holy crap.
	So you didn't even want the property.
	And... Then you got talked, bullied, manipulated, whatever it is, by your wife into this doomed-go-down-with-the-ship-without-even-the-comfort-of-a-watery-death battle, right? Or someone to stand by my side and fight the battle with me.
	No, but it was a battle for something you didn't even want.
	It's true. And you were right to not want it.
	Well, yeah, sorry. Let me amend that statement.
	I mean, you were right to not want it in that it cost you your marriage.
	On the other hand, if the marriage was that weak, it was better to cost the marriage before kids.
	Correct, which is actually one of the reasons why we didn't have kids up to that point.
	I couldn't quite explain it.
	You're much more eloquent than I am in speech, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it.
	She kind of scares me.
	Because she is...
	I can deal with it.
	I do not expect children to be able to deal with the change in emotional stability sometimes.
	You mean her moodiness?
	Correct. The switch from a very logical understanding person to an emotional plea, you hurt my feelings, you owe me an apology.
	Huh. Huh.
	So, I guess then the question becomes, why?
	Because, I mean, it's not about the past.
	It's about the future, right? Because it'd be good if you got a stable woman, settled down, had a family with someone who was a great mom and all that.
	So, I guess the big question is, why did you marry her?
	I thought she could be better.
	She has that glimmer of possibility in her, but I guess, realistically, this was her test, and she failed it miserably.
	So now, at this point, it is not necessarily my responsibility, but I would like to set her up to go forth and do better.
	Well, okay, so, sorry to interrupt, but okay, because you keep talking about this being her test, right?
	And I'm not sure why it wasn't your test, right?
	Because, I mean, listen, when we're hurt by someone, the focus is and the tendency is, and I've done it and everyone does it, and it's perfectly natural, and it's kind of healthy in a way.
	The, you know, if you get mauled, you know, you live in the jungle, you get mauled by a tiger, right?
	You get mauled by a tiger. The first thing you do is you focus on the tiger.
	Of course, right? Because you just got mauled and you want to make sure that you focus on the, quote, predator, right?
	I don't want to characterize your wife as a predator, but I'm just, you know, let me stretch the analogy, hopefully not to the breaking point.
	So when we get hurt, you know, the first thing we do is we say, oh, crap, I better really check out what hurt me and understand it and figure out its motives and all that.
	And that's the first thing, right?
	And let's say we live in the jungle, there's a watering hole.
	We go to the watering hole, we get mauled by a tiger, right?
	And we're like, well, that's bad.
	You heal up and all that.
	And then like, man, I'm thirsty.
	I'm going back to the water hole. You go back to the water hole and get mauled by the tiger, right?
	Then there's sort of...
	And you keep doing this. Every time you go to the water hole, you get jumped by a tiger.
	So there's kind of three layers of solving the problem.
	The first is... The problem is the tiger.
	And the second is, the problem is the watering hole.
	And the third is, the problem is my thirst.
	Right? So the first, it's what attacks you.
	The second is the environment. And the third, it's your desire.
	Now, thirst, of course, being a dual-use word, both for water and for female attention, sexuality, and all that kind of stuff, right?
	So, I'm not sure where we are, but I think you're on the blame the tiger.
	And then what, so some men blame the tiger, like, oh, problem with my ex-wife or my wife or whatever.
	And then the second they do, second thing they do is they say, well, I'm going to blame the watering hole, which is getting mad at marriage, right?
	And then, you know, maybe at some point they say, well, at some point they say, well, the problem is my desire for women, so I'm going to kill that, make MGTOW style and not have any desire for women.
	That doesn't, okay, that doesn't really solve the problem that, We as men want to become fathers and providers and husbands, and that's the role nature intended us for.
	It doesn't mean everyone has to do it, but it's, you know, it's the only reason any of us are here, that people chose to do that sort of thing in the past.
	So I think got to honor that, but because I'm not sure where you are in your assessment of the danger that you're in or where the problems came from.
	Sorry, that's a very open-ended statement, so go for it.
	There's no question there.
	Go ahead. I recognize that I am at fault due to my poor choices and lack of seeing red flags.
	I also recognize that, quite frankly, I am in danger of making the same mistake if I allow myself to just accept this and go on with her.
	I also... From my perspective, I still believe she has a part in this as to she could have had better.
	She could have chosen better. And she did not.
	Wait, what choices do you mean?
	It's pretty open-ended.
	As far as chosen a better father for her children, gone about it in a better way, even if it wasn't me, she could have taken the time and chose a better father.
	Instead, she's not.
	Do you know why she didn't choose a better father?
	I do not. I can tell you.
	It's because of you. It's because of you.
	Because if she had chosen a better father, she wouldn't be getting free stuff from you.
	This is true. Now, I'm not saying you're responsible for it.
	She's an adult.
	I'm not going to give anybody the get out of jail free card unless they're the kind of person who would never call into the show.
	Like unless they have some brain damage or they're in some institution or they're genuinely insane or like, okay, fine.
	Yeah, you get your get out of jail free card, but then you also don't get to get out of the asylum card or whatever.
	So everybody who's out there, who's making money, who's making choices, who's living independently, nobody gets the get out of jail free card.
	Anybody.
	So I'm not saying that you caused this because you are a guy who scoops up responsibility.
	You were a guy who was raised by such incompetent people that you had to grow up way too fast and take on way too much responsibility.
	You had to parent your own parents.
	You had to become the only adult in a sea of dangerous adult children.
	So you're a guy who scoops up way too much responsibility at the expense of others.
	But you understand that scooping up responsibility from other people, taking responsibility from other people, assigning them as children, It cripples them.
	It harms them.
	I mean, it gives them a drug called no responsibility, which we all want from time to time, for sure.
	But it's a drug. It gives you an immediate benefit at the cost of just about everything down the road.
	And for you, I would imagine...
	And listen, I don't want to tell you your life, so if I get anything wrong, you set me straight.
	This is just my impression, so it's completely meaningless relative to what you think and your experience.
	But I think that you manage your anxiety by taking free will from other people, because then you feel in control, which you didn't have as a kid.
	That's fairly accurate, yes.
	Yeah, I mean, you didn't have any control as a kid, right?
	You had a dad who not only didn't protect you, but put you in danger.
	You had a rampaging psycho stepmom who beat the crap out of you.
	You didn't have any control as a kid.
	And listen, I'm with you there, man.
	I mean, we all have it bad.
	A lot of us have it bad in different ways, and I didn't have any control as a kid.
	So what do we do when we don't have any control?
	Well, we make up control.
	We pretend we have control. And the only way we can do that is to say other people are not responsible for what they're doing.
	Now, if other people are not responsible for what they're doing, then they're not morally accountable for what they're doing to us.
	And the tiger analogy is actually pretty apt.
	If a tiger mauls us, we don't sit there and take the tiger to court and cross-examine it, whether it's first or second or third-degree mauling or...
	Manslaughter, mauling. There's no court for tigers because they don't have moral free will.
	They can't compare proposed actions to ideal standards or anything like that.
	They don't have remorse.
	I mean, the tiger doesn't sit there and say, oh man, I feel...
	I mean, it was good to eat that baby pig, but man, I feel bad about it.
	That cute little guy. Oh, I feel...
	Yeah, that was tasty.
	Let's go find another one. And so you turn the people around you...
	You call it children, I would call it an animal.
	You turn the people around you into animals so that you don't have to face the horror of what they did to you of their own moral choice.
	And what that means is that anyone who plays the victim, anyone who pretends that they don't have free will, anybody who pretends that they don't have moral responsibility, well, it's like a plug in a socket.
	They fit right into your life.
	And that's why I say... If you have moral responsibility, give that to everyone.
	Listen, you're a soldier, so it makes perfect sense that you'd sit there and say, well, I would defend the citizenry because I'm trained and I'm armed and I have a squadron and I have airstrikes and I have all these cool things.
	So, of course, I have martial responsibility that the general population doesn't have.
	And that makes sense. I don't do my own dentistry.
	I don't do my own medical analysis and I don't create my own prescriptions or...
	You defer to the experts who are different in their capabilities.
	But we're talking about moral responsibility here.
	That's a birthright of everybody.
	It's a birthright of everybody.
	And what if everybody who wronged you was 100% responsible?
	Oh man, that's a killer notion.
	And in fact, everyone who hurt you as a child Was infinity percent responsible?
	Like, you go into a bar fight, right?
	You go into a bar. Someone's talking trash.
	You're talking trash. They take a swing at you.
	Okay, so legally, they're responsible because you can talk trash.
	It's not illegal, but you can't take a swing at someone.
	So legally, they're responsible. But you had some say in the matter.
	You went into the bar. You engaged in the trash talk.
	Maybe you got too much to drink or whatever, right?
	So legally, that person's responsible.
	But, you know, in terms of preventing the situation, there's stuff you can do.
	To not have that happen again, right?
	So morally, there's like some, maybe it's 90-10, maybe it's 80-20, but there's something where you can make it.
	But that's never the case with a child.
	Never, ever, ever is that the case when you were a child.
	So when it comes to being a child, you didn't choose where you were born.
	You didn't choose your sex.
	You didn't choose your height.
	You didn't choose your level of physical attractiveness.
	You didn't choose your eye color.
	You didn't choose your parents. You did not choose your parents.
	So, there's not even a 1% responsibility that you have for the people who hurt you as a child.
	Now, you can say to me, my dad was great, he was like a child, blah, blah, blah.
	Okay, well, then you've inverted things, right?
	Your dad was not a child.
	Your dad was a full-grown man.
	And I bet you that your dad and your stepmom, when you were a child, had moral excuses for harming you, for mistreating you.
	In other words, your dad probably said something like, well, she's your mom.
	You've got to show respect, blah, blah, blah, right?
	Okay, so that's giving you a moral injunction.
	And your stepmom probably hit you because you did things morally wrong.
	You lied, you cheated, you stole, you didn't respect her, you didn't obey, you talked about whatever it was, right?
	So they're using...
	Morality. Like a ninja uses a scimitar.
	It's like fruit ninja-ing all of your moral resistance and they are using morality to get what they want, to inflict the harm that they want to inflict for reasons unknown.
	And then, after they've expertly carved up your childhood, like a ninja, Then you say, well, they didn't know anything about swords.
	After they used morality as the excuse to inflict harm upon you as a child, you then say, well, they were children, didn't have any moral understanding.
	It's like, nope. Once you use morality, you're responsible for morality.
	It's like the old thing, you're not crazy if you hide the body, right?
	So, that's, I think, the challenge.
	Is how painful it is for you.
	Like, let's say that you go to your wife and you say something like this.
	I'm not saying anything you should say.
	I'm just bullshitting here, right?
	So you go to your wife and you say, you know what?
	I have treated you badly because I have enabled your lack of responsibility.
	I'm keeping you a child so that I don't face the pain of mistreatment I faced as a child.
	Because I have this defense mechanism called taking free will away from people so I don't experience the moral horror of what they did to me.
	And so I have this switch.
	People treat me badly and I just take away their free will.
	I categorize them as children and then I work to save them.
	And that is a perfectly understandable defense mechanism as a child but it's destroying me as an adult and, by the way, it's destroying you.
	My dear, because I do care about you.
	You know, we had a lot of good years together.
	It was up and down for sure, but I can't...
	I mean, you've got a son, right?
	So here's my big concern, my dear.
	Here's my big concern. My big concern is that if I'm wallpapering over the cracks in your decisions, your decisions, you chose to leave, you chose to have unprotected sex, you chose to keep the baby, you chose to raise the baby.
	So this is all your decisions, not my decisions at all.
	So here's my concern, that if you hang around and your son grows up with me in his life as a primary caregiver, as somebody who pays the bills, you know, I've even talked about paying the bills for your court case against the boy's father, or potential court case, which is going to put us right back into the court system, which is, God, no, right?
	Not what I want. Right.
	But you've made the offer, right?
	I have, absolutely.
	Right, right. So then you say, okay, because my concern...
	is for your son.
	He's not my son, but he's a human being.
	He's a child. He's in my emotional orbit.
	My concern is for him. Now, if he grows up with a child-ish, childlike mother who just runs to men to fix all of her mistakes, he's going to grow up to have an aversion to women.
	He's going to view them as poisonous, as predatory, as children, And he's going to view men, through me, as a weird combination of lover and daddy.
	Because he's going to see me not having kids of my own, not having a quality girlfriend of my own, not having a quality marriage of my own, but running around throwing money at my mom's lover, my bad biological father.
	So my concern, obviously, is for you as my wife, as my, I guess, ex-wife at some point, who I care for.
	My primary concern, though, is the impression that this weird thing where I'm paying for my wife's lover's kid, that that is going to give such a distorted view of human relationships to your son.
	I can't have that on my conscience.
	I just can't.
	You need to grow up and in a goddamn hurry.
	Because you now have a kid. And running and crying to me.
	You know, we didn't like it.
	When my half-sister ran crying to the judge, we found that horrible, unjust, manipulative.
	So you coming crying to me is just going to keep you a child.
	But you can't be a child now because you have a child.
	And when you have a child, you've got to grow the fuck up.
	Like, and quick. And so for me paying your bills, me covering up all this stuff, no.
	This is bad for you.
	It's bad for me. And most importantly, it's absolutely terrible for your son.
	Sure, he'll get some material comfort in the short run, but he's going to grow up with such a distorted view.
	Do you think he's going to want to get involved with women, seeing how all of this is?
	I mean, yeah, so he'll have his lust, right?
	He'll have his sex drive when he gets older.
	I know that's kind of a weird thing to talk about when we're talking about a little kid, but, you know, grow up, get hormones, right?
	So he's going to have an aversion to a quality relationship while at the same time having a very high sex drive.
	What's that going to do? Well, it's going to reproduce exactly what happened with us.
	Because you and I slept together the first weekend.
	You had panic attacks. There were red flags all over the place, but I had lust.
	And through lust came attachment.
	And through attachment came betrayal.
	And through betrayal came disaster.
	So we've got to break the cycle.
	And breaking the cycle means...
	You've got to stand on your own two feet.
	That's what you need to model for your son.
	If you stand on your own two feet, you can get a quality man.
	If I put you out to stand on your own two feet, I can get a quality woman because right now I can't.
	Can you imagine? Imagine you go out on some dating site and you meet some woman and she's like, oh yeah, tell me.
	It's like, oh yeah, no, I've got, my ex-wife is living with me and I'm paying for her lover's son.
	Oh, come on, man. What's a quality woman going to say about that situation?
	Yeah, exactly. Holy Appalachians, Batman!
	I'm out of here, right?
	It's true. Right, so it's crippling you.
	It's crippling your wife.
	And I believe it's going to do enormous harm to her son.
	Because he needs to see a grown-up.
	And by treating your wife as a child...
	By not holding her accountable, as reality does, to the consequences of her own choices.
	You're keeping her an infant, which means she's going to be an infant raising a child.
	That's going to be a disaster, because you already had that, right?
	You've got to break that cycle.
	I mean, if you look back at your dad's relationship with your stepmom, isn't it the case?
	Yes. That she was a wreck and he tried to save her?
	Yes, it is. Right.
	Did it work? It did not.
	Did it harm you? Yes.
	So think of the boy.
	I know his name, I'm not going to repeat it here, but think of the boy.
	What's the best thing for him?
	Why she doesn't want to go after the biological father for any sort of child support, because it is a continuation of his genes.
	She has provided a service, if you want to get cold and factual about it.
	But why would she?
	She's getting resources from you.
	That's an excellent point.
	I mean, come on. Is it easier to go to court or cry to you?
	You know what court's like, right?
	Yes. It's a lot easier to cry to you.
	And listen, I get where you're coming from.
	I really do. I mean, this is a harsh thing where, you know, morality is not easy, right?
	Integrity is not easy. But of course she's not going to go for him.
	She does a calculation, and the calculation is, what is the path of least resistance?
	Of course she knows that she should stand on her own two feet, that she should maybe get the man to pay, she should get a job, whatever she needs to do to become an adult and stop whining and crying to people, right? And it's funny too.
	Let me guess something here.
	I'm probably wrong, but let me guess. I'll go out on a limb and let me guess something here, right?
	Did she ever say to you in the court case, my friend, did she ever say, well, you can't let your sister win?
	I honestly can't recall.
	I can't give you an honest answer on that one.
	Okay, that's fair. Because if she did, I mean, the reason I would say that is if she did, she basically would be saying, you cannot let whining, crying, and manipulation win.
	I would hazard a guess that you are correct.
	Now, if she said that, then the same principle applies here.
	You cannot let whining, crying, and manipulating win.
	We don't do any service to women who By pretending that they're not responsible.
	We harm them.
	We harm them. Look, we're men here.
	We can speak frankly, right?
	Sorry for the women here, but this is just two guys.
	Welcome to the locker room. This is just two guys talking, right?
	For a variety of biological reasons and psychological reasons and sociological reasons and blah, blah, blah, women usually on average don't have the same commitment to forthrightness and integrity as men do.
	Why? Because men...
	If they screwed things up from a moral standpoint, we would get into some serious fucking trouble.
	You know, there's nobody we can go crying to that's going to put us up for a blowjob, to put it very blankly, right?
	It's by the homeless guys who are dudes, right?
	Not any homeless women, because homeless women can always trade sex for...
	Right? There's an old show, gosh, it's pretty old now, right, called Friends, right?
	And there are two women...
	Want something from the two men.
	Want something, I think it was an apartment or something like that.
	They want something big from the men.
	Now, they can't give them money because they're broke.
	They don't want to work and say, well, we'll clean your house or do your laundry.
	They don't want to do any of that. So do you know what they offer to these men to get something they want?
	What is that? They say, and they're both attractive women, right?
	They say, we will kiss each other for two minutes and you can watch.
	Now, can you imagine that? As a man, going to a woman, you want something, or going to a couple of women, you want something, and say, me and Joe will kiss for two minutes and you can watch.
	And then getting a free apartment.
	Incomprehensible. Incomprehensible.
	And it does so much harm to women.
	And look, I am the father of a daughter, and the idea that she's going to go out into the world And people are just gonna give her stuff for sniveling is repulsive to me.
	And it's true that I grew up with a mother who was whiny, manipulative, sniveling, brutal, violent, all that kind of stuff, right?
	But, but, I had aunts.
	And my father had three sisters.
	And they were all stout, strong, deep-hearted, responsible, mature adults.
	I don't know what the hell happened to my father.
	Maybe something in boarding school. I don't know, right?
	And that view of femininity that my mother gave me as a sort of twisted, half-demonic, sexual-offering, manipulative, creepy, tentacle-weirdness...
	That was enormously offset by some pretty wonderful aunts that I had, not just in the family, but I also would go and stay with them.
	I would stay with one of my aunts in Ireland, sometimes for an entire summer.
	I would stay with another one of my aunts in her house in...
	it doesn't really matter where, but yeah, I mean, I would go and stay with these people, and I got exposure to some very solid, very sensible...
	Women. And, you know, this fainting spell Disney princess bullshit.
	Like I looked at... So I saw these two poles.
	I saw these opposite poles.
	I saw my mom, who was neurotic and hypersexualized and manipulative, and everything she did was to achieve some end that she couldn't achieve directly.
	So you never got an honest word out of her.
	50 or 40 years that I knew her, I just never got an honest word out of her.
	It was always to some effect, to some goal.
	And... That was on the one pole, and on the other pole were these, I never even talked about them before, were these aunts.
	My father's sisters, who were very, no-nonsense, competent, strong, affectionate, decent, honorable women.
	Well, they went to church and my mom didn't.
	Probably had something to do with it.
	And that exposure Helped me to get to my wife.
	Now, if you'd have gone to any of these women, my aunts, and you'd have said to them, well, you should get what you want by crying and offering up sex, they would have just laughed in your face.
	It would have been completely incomprehensible to them.
	That that's, I mean, you know, no, the way you get what you want is you provide value, you stand by your man, you run a good household, You do something which contributes to your community.
	You serve God.
	The idea that you flash TNA, like tits and asses mergers and acquisitions, you flash TNA to get M&A. I mean, that would be degrading and gross and ridiculous and horrible and disgusting and really demonic to them.
	That's a demonic offer. Because the offer of sexuality, the offer of I'm going to cry or I'm going to bully or I'm going to slam cupboards and make your life miserable and I'm going to withhold sex and I'm going to be cold and I'm just going to control you like a puppet master through positive and negative stimuli, that would have been repulsive to them.
	Repulsive to them. Now, don't get me wrong.
	They had their flaws. I don't want to idealize them because idealization is just a way of saying something's impossible, right?
	And can't be achieved. No, they had their flaws.
	They didn't protect me from my mother.
	They didn't step in. They didn't ask me how I was doing.
	They didn't, right? And they knew she was dangerous.
	They knew all of that. And even later, they didn't get in touch with me and offer sympathy, even when I was an adult and it was safe for them to do so, right?
	They didn't. Although maybe they didn't know it was safe.
	Maybe they thought I would run to my mom and tell my mom, and then my mom would make their life difficult.
	I don't know, right? You've got these predatory people in your life.
	Everybody's like, whoa, sticklier.
	The only way I can try and save that child from being mauled is to lose an arm myself.
	And, you know, sorry, kid, but I got my own to take care of, right?
	So I want you to have a responsible adult woman in your life.
	But right now, she can't get around your wife.
	Your wife is barring the door.
	And I want your wife...
	I think I said this to her as well.
	The great gift of responsibility.
	I mean, I know it hurts. I know it hurts.
	It's the great gift of responsibility.
	Not too, too long ago, I went...
	I guess it would have to be last year, right?
	So I went... I went to an affair with another family we know, and the mom had to get on a scale for a ride.
	And, I mean, she was a little heavy, and she was a little shocked at what the scale said, right?
	And to her credit, she solved the problem, she's lost the weight and all that, right?
	I get that, right? And that's important.
	Getting that kind of objective feedback.
	Now, it would have been better if the people in her life had said it.
	Maybe I should have said it too. I don't know.
	But when we withhold the truth and responsibility from people around us, when we don't put them on the weight scale and say, look at these numbers, we are buying time.
	We are burning the future for the sake of comfort in the present.
	It is a kind of addiction. And you're...
	Wife's son deserves to be raised by an adult.
	But if he sees that the way you get resources is to whine and cry and play the victim, and if you do that, everybody will rush in and save you like you're a toddler wandering towards a staircase, then he's going to absorb this fundamental lesson that you either exploit Or you are exploited.
	You either get stuff for free or you give stuff because you're bullied.
	Those are the only two choices.
	There's no negotiation, there's no equal, there's no both adding value.
	That human relations are defined in predator-prey, parasite-host ways.
	And you never, ever have to grow up.
	In fact, If you want to be exploited, just become an adult.
	But if you want to get stuff for free, just stay a child.
	Whine, complain. Except you'll be a child with all the legal rights of adulthood, and you'll be a child, if you're a female, of course, who's going to be able to offer sexual access in return for stuff.
	Except you won't even have to do that, right?
	Because he'll see his mother not having sex with you, but getting Thousands and thousands and thousands and tens of thousands of dollars of free stuff simply by refusing to grow up.
	That in this life, when you get older, people will pay you $100,000 for your free will.
	People will pay you $100,000 to never grow up.
	People will pay you $100,000 to take zero responsibility for your life.
	And that's what you're paying for.
	You're paying for creating that impression in this woman's son.
	And it's the same thing with the welfare state.
	It's the same thing with, you know, this crazy, like, what percentage of the world's richest women got that way by banging and divorcing a guy?
	Well, pretty high percentage.
	And, I mean, it's really tragic, but that's what happens, is the system, and in this case the system is you, Pays women to never grow up.
	Now, you know economics. You're a smart guy, right?
	You know that people respond to incentives.
	And whatever you pay for, you generally get.
	So if you pay for your wife to never grow up, what's she never going to do?
	Grow up. She's never going to grow up.
	And... Nobody likes that band-aid of childhood coming off, right?
	Of course, right? Particularly now she's become a mom, right?
	And, you know, she made these calculations while you were still in a seriously cucked state, and hopefully the uncucking of you is at least a potential part of this conversation.
	But I'm not saying this, oh, you know, you've got to stand up for yourself.
	You've got to withhold your resources, save your money for your own children, your own family.
	That's all part of it. And I get that.
	But if I ask you to stand up for yourself and put your own interests first, that's going to collide with kind of your life's mission, which is to help people, right?
	And I understand that.
	And look, my life's mission is to help people too.
	I mean, that's why I do this, right?
	I'm not charging you anything for this convo.
	I want to help people. But the question is, how the hell do we help people?
	Well, we help children. We help children by treating them as children.
	You treat children as adults.
	It's bad, right? I mean, you and I had to grow up way too quickly and it's not good.
	So how do you help people?
	You help people, not by holding them accountable like it's your job.
	You've got to, like you're a judge.
	You've got to hold them accountable. No, you're not a judge.
	But we help people by simply refusing, by simply refusing to wallpaper over the consequences of their choices.
	The choices exist, right?
	Your wife had unprotected sex with a guy, and she chose to have that.
	She chose not to take a morning-after pill.
	When he asked her, she said, I didn't know.
	It's like, no, no, no, come on. There's one thing women know, it's reproductive choice, right?
	So she chose not to take the morning-after pill.
	She chose to have the unprotected sex, chose not to take the morning-after pill, chose to carry the child to term, chose not to give the child up for adoption, chose all of these things.
	These all are realities.
	Now, you can stand between her and reality and pretend that these choices don't have consequences she needs to deal with.
	But that's just adding unreality.
	You know, why does she have panic attacks?
	She has panic attacks. I don't know why.
	Obviously, I'm not a psychiatrist.
	But in my view, people have panic attacks because they drift too far from reality.
	Now, it's kind of impossible for human beings to drift too far from reality without the collusion of other human beings.
	To create a dream world where she gets to live, where you are the slave, and she is the queen of Of a really weird, distorted and foggy kingdom maintained only by the efforts of you, the slave.
	That's not healthy. That's not good for her.
	It's not good for you. It's not good for the kid.
	So I am asking you to help her.
	I don't want to interfere with that.
	It's a great part of your personality.
	It really is. But helping her is helping her into reality.
	Into choices and consequences if she's ever going to have a chance to grow up and be an adult.
	It's now. It's now and ever.
	Because even if you somehow find a way to dislodge her and you still have these habits, you'll just get another one.
	And then eventually your heart will just be broken, or your finances will be broken, or you will end up in jail and not get out.
	So, yeah, help people.
	Of course you should help yourself, and that's an important part, but I know that's not what's keeping you ticking at the moment, is you genuinely believe that That by giving her $100,000 or more over time, that you're helping her.
	And I'm telling you that you're not.
	You're doing the opposite of helping her.
	And it comes out of a need to protect your own childhood experiences.
	Everybody who hurt you is 100% responsible.
	Your dad and your stepmom, 1,000, infinity percent responsible.
	And she's 100% responsible for having this child.
	And you are not at all responsible for having this child.
	Oh, yes, but I drove her out.
	No, no, no. You didn't put a gun to her head and say, have unprotected sex with this man and carry this baby to term.
	Right? She's 100% responsible.
	And we either give people responsibility or we literally lose civilization.
	I don't want to raise the stakes too high for you, but you're a soldier.
	You defend the good.
	You defend the civilization.
	Okay, well, I'm telling you, you defend the civilization, not with a gun, but with a closed wallet.
	Because if we end up And, you know, we're pretty damn close to it right now, this tipping point where half the population has zero responsibility and the other half work like slaves to keep reality away from them.
	We're going to lose everything. We're going to lose everything.
	And you wanted the judge, last thing I'll say here, this is important, right?
	You wanted the judge in the court case to not give your sister resources because your sister was crying and Not being responsible and not owning up to the facts that your sister didn't ask your dad about the will.
	Your sister knew that your dad was unwell, that he was unhealthy, that he could die, and she didn't.
	She didn't ask him about it.
	She didn't get things sorted out.
	She didn't take responsibility.
	So when you were facing that judge, and the judge basically, I don't know what was happening, but it's the story I've gotten.
	It's something like, you know, your sister's whining and crying and begging and being helpless and a victim and all that.
	And you're like, no, judge, don't!
	Don't give her the resources! Don't reward this whining.
	Don't reward this crying.
	Don't do it, judge.
	And what did the judge do? Rewarded it.
	And what are you doing? The same.
	You're absolutely correct. You have become the corrupt judge.
	Now, I'm not saying you're a corrupt person because this is prior to knowledge, but the same frustration that you had with the judge, I, to a much lesser degree, have with you.
	And again, it's not frustration because you're doing something wrong.
	I mean, I think this is prior to knowledge, so to me, it's a total blank slate and all clean.
	But now that you have the knowledge...
	Because you could see through your sister's manipulations and you could see the judge falling for it, right?
	And I can see that with you and your ex or your wife or whatever, right?
	Correct. And that's why I say that you can't have people around you with integrity Until you have the integrity of your values and you recognize that everyone around you is just as responsible as you.
	And if you put yourself between them and reality, it's kind of like a poison.
	It's really kind of a poison.
	But in this case, the poison is going to go more into the mind of the boy rather than you or your ex or your wife who have some choices.
	He's got no choice. I would prefer our society to be better.
	And it starts with you. It starts with me, right?
	Correct. So, sorry, long speech and hopefully a couple of nuggets in there that were worthwhile, but I want to sort of finish up with your thoughts and what you think of what we've been talking about and all of that.
	You've brought a lot of clarity to some situations that I did not analyze in a matter that I prefer.
	It's one thing to look at it and see it when it's not your own, but it's one when you're in the thick of it.
	I'm very grateful for your perspective on this and your time.
	I'm not really sure how to go into it beyond that.
	That's totally fine.
	Listen, I really, really appreciate your frankness and openness to the conversation you did fantastically.
	I'll measure the quality of this conversation by the angry email I get from your ex.
	We'll see about that going forward.
	But will you keep me posted about how things go?
	Yes, absolutely. I will have to subscribe.
	Listen, you don't have to. You don't have to pay me for these convos.
	And so I appreciate that.
	Certainly, that's a wonderful idea.
	And I'm not going to say no, but I never charge.
	I've never charged for any of this stuff.
	So if you want to, great.
	But you certainly don't have to. You're not obligated.
	But you will keep me posted about how things go?
	Yes, I will. All right.
	All right. Fantastic. Well, thank you so, so much for a great conversation.
	Thank you. Everyone for giving me the distinct honor of being able to have these conversations in the world.
	It is an incredible privilege, and it is because of you, because of the callers, and of course notably because of the supporters, right?
	So I poured three months into an audiobook.
	Enjoy the audiobook! And I guess, yeah, the last one will probably go out today, last chapter, maybe today or tomorrow.
	FreeDomain.com forward slash donate.
	Appreciate everyone's time.
	Appreciate you, James. Thank you so much for setting all this stuff up.
	Thank you to the fine, fine listeners.
	Love you guys so much.
	Have a great, great afternoon.
	I will talk to you soon. Well, thank you so much for enjoying this latest Free Domain show on philosophy.
	And I'm going to be frank and ask you for your help, your support, your encouragement and your resources.
	Please like, subscribe and share and all of that good stuff to get philosophy out into the world.
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