Dec. 19, 2020 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
02:00:38
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| Good evening, Stefan Molyneux from Freedom Inn. | |
| Hope you're doing well. Oh, strap yourselves in, ladies and gentlemen. | |
| I guess in particular, the ladies, we have a call tonight. | |
| And boy, we had a call last night with The Alcoholic. | |
| And we have a call tonight with... | |
| I'm not exactly sure how to characterize it, but let's just say it's going to be vivid, vivid, vivid, vivid. | |
| So without any further ado, James, is the young lady going to read her own email? | |
| Are you going to read it? How are we going to take this thing to town? | |
| Ah, we did not negotiate that ahead of time, so I'd like to ask the listener if she would like to read or if she would like me to read. | |
| Or the caller, even. And there you go. | |
| You can go ahead and read. | |
| Okay. Alright. | |
| So, our listener writes. | |
| Caller writes. Stefan, I have written previously about asking about how to save my marriage. | |
| My cowardice to speak with you was the main reason I haven't been on. | |
| I've been a listener since the beginning of 2019. | |
| From the beginning, I have behaved very poorly, immaturely, and irresponsibly with my husband. | |
| I have been needy and insecure. | |
| There are many things which I regret doing, some that I regretted even before I even did them. | |
| Specifically, I badgered and cajoled my husband about being an open couple until he relented. | |
| Then, I went on dates with men I didn't like, couldn't trust, and who were wholly repugnant. | |
| Intellectually, I knew these things were wrong, but somehow managed to justify it to myself, and he'd said yes, under duress, of course. | |
| I then tricked my husband into having our son, and I believe he secretly despises me for this. | |
| I ignored his preferences and only heard what I wanted to hear. | |
| As a backstory, when we got together almost 10 years ago, we were both on the same page about kids. | |
| We both never wanted them. | |
| Basically, I changed my mind and he didn't. | |
| I was ready to end our relationship unless he said he would have a child with me, which he did, but with some resentment about my blackmail. | |
| I am so happy as a mother. | |
| It's so much better than anything I could have dreamed of, yet I feel so much shame and guilt in relation to my husband, like our son is just my own guilty pleasure at his expense. | |
| Indeed, it is only because of my husband's hard work that I'm able to stay home with our son, and we even plan on homeschooling. | |
| Everything I've done was in self-interest without pausing to consider the needs of my husband. | |
| I only needed that guarantee of commitment and resources, and didn't care how he felt about it or what he wanted. | |
| I want to live up to philosophical ideals and virtues, but I fail so miserably at my life, my marriage, and my son's life that I don't know if true ideals are attainable anymore. | |
| I wonder if my husband can ever be happy with me after everything I've done to undermine him. | |
| I've brought up these things and apologized, and he says it's all water under the bridge. | |
| We've talked about how he's glad that we did have a son. | |
| Looking back, he said that he would have regretted not having a child. | |
| But to me, these are after-the-fact condolences, yet again serving my needs to be reassured. | |
| I know that strong feelings still swirl around these issues. | |
| I fear that I've eroded and damaged his trust in me to a point that it's unrecoverable. | |
| All I've done throughout our relationship is manipulate, blackmail, or do whatever works to get what I want. | |
| I don't know what to do to make it up to him. | |
| You are better at prevention than cure. | |
| I didn't know about your show back then, and in my defense, And in my defense, search engines do not show your resources. | |
| I am so sorry to bring this dumpster fire of a mess to you now. | |
| Well, I appreciate you making the call. | |
| I think it's an important topic to talk about. | |
| How are you feeling bringing this stuff up or hearing it echoed back to you? | |
| Pretty nervous. | |
| Right, right, okay. Was there an incident in particular that prompted you to want to call in, or is it just an accumulation of emotions over time? | |
| Yeah, I think it's mostly an accumulation. | |
| I'm so sorry, you just cut out there. | |
| Can you try that again? Sorry, I think it's mostly an accumulation, and nothing really comes to mind that prompted me. | |
| So tell me a little bit about how you and your current husband or your husband met, what the courtship was like, what the engagement was like, and how things worked back then. | |
| We've known each other basically forever, so it's hard to say exactly how we met, just childhood. | |
| His cousin was my best friend throughout grade school. | |
| You know, lots and lots of common acquaintances, lots and lots of mutual friends. | |
| And we didn't start dating until after or throughout college, I believe. | |
| So the courtship was really just... | |
| I remember, actually, I asked, like, a few months into, like, dating. | |
| And I mean dating loosely. | |
| Like, we hang out, we... | |
| Kind of go on walks, talk, and go do things together, like go swimming. | |
| And I kind of casually asked him, I said, are we going to be a couple now? | |
| And he's like, oh, I'm glad you said something because I really wasn't. | |
| So you said that you, he said, when you said, are we a couple yet? | |
| He said, I'm glad you asked that because then I lost the rest of it. | |
| So yeah, he said, I'm glad you asked that because I thought we were, but we had never really said anything explicitly. | |
| Okay, okay, okay. | |
| And what was it that attracted you to him back in the day? | |
| I'm not saying it doesn't still now, but you know, the initial stuff. | |
| I remember him being pretty, very kind. | |
| I mean, he is an attractive guy, so that's definitely a plus, but he's also a bigger guy, and he's very, very kind. | |
| Like, wouldn't hurt fly on a wall kind of person. | |
| And just steady, like a very steady, truthful, like a rock kind of person. | |
| Now tell me what you mean about, like you say, he wouldn't hurt a fly. | |
| Does that mean he wouldn't ever upset anyone? | |
| He wouldn't ever upset you? | |
| What does that mean when you say the sort of niceness or gentleness? | |
| Yeah, and I think it might be a gentleness to a fault because he's kind of the arbiter. | |
| So he'll go back and forth with people who are arguing and get everyone settled down and try and see everything from everybody's sides and be calm while everybody else is yelling. | |
| Is he the middle child in a high-conflict family? | |
| Well, he's the youngest, so he only has a brother. | |
| But yeah, he does tend to be the arbiter between his dad and his older brother. | |
| So, I mean, you knew him since he was a kid, so tell me a little bit about his family. | |
| Oh, his family is... | |
| They have a family business. | |
| They all work. | |
| A very loyal, very salt-of-the-earth kind of... | |
| I guess... | |
| I don't know, I'm sort of drawing a blank about what to say. | |
| You're drawing a blank about your in-laws? | |
| Yeah, I mean... | |
| You've got to be one of the first people I've ever met in my life who doesn't have at least some reasonably strong opinions about their in-laws. | |
| So, come on. Let's break the ice wall here a little. | |
| Let's tunnel through the glacier. | |
| What is his family like? | |
| What are his parents like? Catholic. | |
| A very devout Catholic. | |
| It's a big family. | |
| So, his dad is one of eight kids, six sisters. | |
| And... Yeah. | |
| Okay, I'm sorry, I'm not entirely sure you want to have this conversation at the moment. | |
| Is there something distracting you? | |
| Because I feel like you're, like, I don't know, are you scrolling through Twitter? | |
| I don't mean this to be insulting or anything. | |
| I just, I'm sort of at the point in my career, I'm not going to put more energy into a conversation than someone else's. | |
| And you know that, I said, does he come from a high-conflict family? | |
| And you've dropped that completely. | |
| You're giving me irrelevant details like they own a business and they're a Catholic, right? | |
| Yeah. Because the issues to do with your husband probably have to do with the fact that he grew up in a high conflict household where his needs were completely ignored or undermined or even attacked and destroyed. | |
| So you've listened to this show for a while, right? | |
| You know that I'm not interested in their family business, right? | |
| What I'm interested in, I think, is relevant to the conversation. | |
| Is what goes on in a sort of relationship-based way among his parents? | |
| Like, what did he grow up with? You knew him since he was a kid, so what did he grow up with? | |
| And you've known the guy for, what, 10 years? | |
| I mean, you've been together for how long? | |
| Yeah, we've been together 10. | |
| 10 years, okay. So you've been exposed to his family for, what, 20 years? | |
| More or less, yeah. Okay, so 20 years. | |
| So if you've been exposed to people for 20 years and someone asks you about them and you kind of draw a blank, it means you don't really want to be in the convo. | |
| And again, there's no force that's making you be here. | |
| You don't have to have this conversation, but I'm not going to chase you. | |
| You know, like, your husband may let you get away with this kind of stuff, and maybe this is kind of a test for me. | |
| I'm not going to chase you. | |
| I'm not going to try and encourage you to give me basic information. | |
| If you don't want to give me any information, it's totally fine. | |
| We don't have to have the conversation. | |
| But I'm not going to try and chase you down like I'm a... | |
| A dog after a rabbit to try and get information from you. | |
| Like, you're either going to volunteer it in a positive and productive way, or we move on to another caller. | |
| And I don't mean, again, this in any kind of negative, threatening way. | |
| I'm just telling you the standards that I need to have in order to have this conversation. | |
| Yeah, that's totally fair. | |
| Okay, so let's try this again. | |
| What are his parents like? | |
| Well, his dad is a very loud person. | |
| He's very yelly. And his mom is extremely passive. | |
| So, from what he has told me about them when he was a child, his mom would give him three warnings and then some sort of punishment or some sort of threat would Would ensue from there. | |
| But he's also said that he didn't get the brunt of it that his older brother did. | |
| And the yelling was very much a form of... | |
| in the household. | |
| Sorry, the yelling was much... | |
| what? The yelling was the main form of communication in the household. | |
| So is it fair to say that his father intimidates and his mother kind of... | |
| Agrees? Yeah, his mother's very passive and from what I've observed her, she's extremely just passive-aggressive, like very manipulative, very forthcoming. | |
| Right, but she's not overtly aggressive in the same way that his dad is, right? | |
| No, not as aggressive, but just kind of sits back and watches. | |
| Is he closer to his mother or his father or is it the same? | |
| I mean, to me it's the same, but I think he's closer to his mom emotionally. | |
| Because you know what's happened in your relationship, right? | |
| I'm sure this is pretty clear to you. | |
| So if he's got an aggressive father and a compliant mother in the relationship, you've become his father and he's become his mother. | |
| Because that's the dynamic, right? | |
| Someone's got to be aggressive and somebody's got to just give way and give up, right? | |
| He doesn't know how two people negotiate, because if I understand this correctly, and listen, I'm jumping to conclusions here. | |
| You tell me if I've got anything wrong. | |
| Please do me the kind, if I've got anything wrong, just correct me. | |
| But if he grew up with a yelling father and a compliant but passive-aggressive mother, and compliance and passive-aggression always go hand-in-hand for the most part. | |
| Then he doesn't know how two people interact and negotiate as equals to get their needs met or to get their perspective across, right? | |
| It's aggression and compliance, right? | |
| So that's how things work. | |
| Now, he probably, seeing the aggression that was ladled against or attacked against his elder brother, he probably didn't want to be that aggressive. | |
| And so in conflict... | |
| He complies, right? So when you say, I want an open marriage, eventually he'll be like, okay. | |
| I say, I don't want a kid, okay. | |
| I want a kid, okay. I feel bad about this. | |
| No, no, it's all in the past. I don't want to cause any problems. | |
| I don't want to have any conflict, right? Right. | |
| So you knew this about his history, right? | |
| That his father had been yelly. | |
| And is it fair to say a bit of a bully? | |
| Is that too strong? No, I don't think that's too strong. | |
| He's definitely... | |
| Yeah, he's definitely bullied. Was he bullied elsewhere in the family or the church or the school as a kid? | |
| Not that I can think of. | |
| I don't think so. He's a pretty upbeat guy. | |
| He's very good at getting people to laugh, so he's really good socially. | |
| Well, he should listen to the show I did last night with The Alcoholic, but that's a topic for another time, perhaps. | |
| Okay, but he was bullied by his father, right? | |
| Right. What's his relationship like with his elder brother? | |
| I mean, not as strange. | |
| They do talk and they work together, but he does not like his older brother very much. | |
| They've chosen very different ways to live their lives. | |
| You know, his older brother has very much gone down the other path of sort of doing drugs and partying and knocked up someone and has a kid with quote-unquote baby mama. | |
| And my husband has been very traditional-minded, just went with I'm sorry. | |
| I don't mean to laugh. | |
| You just described the guy who agreed to an open marriage as very traditional-minded. | |
| I don't mean to jump in what you're saying, but, you know, if my jaws hit the floor, because you can't see me, right? | |
| But if my jaws hit the floor, I just wanted to mention that. | |
| Help me square the circle a little bit. | |
| He's traditional-minded, but, yeah, you can go bang other guys. | |
| It does sound dumb. What am I missing? | |
| He didn't... I don't... | |
| He obviously didn't want to do... | |
| He definitely... | |
| He didn't want to share you with other men? | |
| Right. Right. | |
| Right. Okay. | |
| So he's traditional-minded, but he's not traditional-minded enforcement guy, right? | |
| Right. Okay. | |
| All right. And do you know how he was disciplined in the family? | |
| You said his mother was three warnings in a disciplinary, and I assume his father was too. | |
| Was he spanked, timeouts, bed without dinner, reasoned with? | |
| How did it work in terms of consequences and punishment? | |
| He hasn't been very open about it. | |
| As far as I know, there was spanking. | |
| I'm not sure as far as if there was anything else. | |
| Probably timeouts. I mean, it must have been pretty bad if his elder brother went on drugs and has his baby mama or baby mamas, right? | |
| That doesn't come out of nowhere, right? | |
| There's got to be some pretty bad stuff going on in the family for things to go that way. | |
| I'm sorry, can you hear me? | |
| That has crossed my mind. | |
| Yeah, sorry. That has crossed my mind and I've spoken with him about it and he just says that his brother's choices are his brother's choices. | |
| He doesn't like to give any sort of responsibility to his parents. | |
| To his parents, you said? | |
| Right. Why do you think he doesn't want to give responsibility to his parents? | |
| I mean, they were in charge, right? | |
| I mean, they're the ones who are saying three warnings and punishment, right? | |
| So they were in charge. | |
| Why wouldn't they have responsibility? | |
| I mean, it's like saying that a guy is in charge of sailing a ship or driving a truck, but he has no responsibility to where the ship or the truck goes. | |
| I know I'm asking you to step into his shoes, but what would his reasoning be as to why his parents have no responsibility in how their children turned out? | |
| Well, he just says that he doesn't have a problem with it, and he turned out fine. | |
| He doesn't resent how his- Wait, sorry. | |
| He doesn't have a problem with it being what? | |
| The punishment or the way his parents raised him. | |
| So he's got no issues about the way his parents raised him, though his brother got into drugs and his wife got him to agree to an open marriage, which he didn't want to do. | |
| Right. | |
| Sorry, I didn't ask a question there. | |
| I just wanted to make sure I was clear in my formulation. | |
| Oh, yes, yes, that's correct. | |
| Okay, do you have a problem with how he was raised? | |
| Yeah, I mean, now I do. | |
| Like I said, I've only been kind of listening to your show for a little over, well, almost two years now. | |
| To have gained just a massive amount of knowledge in this area, I had no idea what... | |
| I had no idea what effect childhood would have on it. | |
| Or even the effect of childhood. | |
| So, what do you think would be the major issues or deficiencies in how he was raised that have him turn out to some degree? | |
| That's still free will as adults, but to some degree have him turn out the way he's turned out? | |
| Well, like you said, I have noticed that he is very passive and... | |
| I'm sorry, can you ask the question again? | |
| What are the major issues you have with how he was raised? | |
| Well, number one, he was hit, so that's pretty bad. | |
| But he was also lots of verbal abuse. | |
| And that's one thing he has talked about, is the verbal abuse from... | |
| Father was pretty bad. | |
| Has he given you examples, like what was said? | |
| No. Huh. | |
| Why not? Have you asked what was said to you? | |
| What was said to him? Yeah, he just said it. | |
| He didn't want to talk about it. | |
| Huh. Oh, because he's defending his parents, so he doesn't want to color your view by giving you facts, right? | |
| Yeah, and he has said that before, that he doesn't want me to think badly of them. | |
| Okay. Has... | |
| I mean, I assume his parents have been around your son. | |
| I mean, how are they with your son? | |
| We actually have not been around them too much. | |
| They are a little older and they were pretty scared of the virus at first. | |
| He was born, like, right before the lockdown. | |
| So we have not been around them at all. | |
| But from what I have observed, they are kind of loud, and we've talked to them about that, like, yelling. | |
| But other than that, we... | |
| I'm sorry, other than that, what? | |
| We really have not been around them that much this year. | |
| Yeah, a tiny request just for the conversation. | |
| It's just a technology thing that if you kind of trail off at the end, then the computer stops picking up your voice. | |
| So give it a strong finish to your sentences so I don't have to sort of piece it together like Indiana Jones, what you said at the end there. | |
| That's just a technical thing. | |
| It's not your fault. But yeah, just don't trail off because then I can't hear the end. | |
| Okay. Thank you. | |
| So... Tell me your thoughts about the open marriage thing, right? | |
| So you were exclusive, monogamous, you got married. | |
| When you got married, was it like forsaking all others? | |
| Was it like a monogamy intended relationship? | |
| Yeah, I'm sorry. I wasn't really clear, but this was actually before the marriage. | |
| Oh, the open relationship was before the marriage? | |
| Yes. But you were monogamous for a time, right? | |
| That's true. Okay, so just give me the sandwich here. | |
| So you've been together 10 years. | |
| Your child is one? | |
| Do I have that right? He's nine months old. | |
| Nine months old, okay. So 10 years. | |
| What's the slice of open relationship, marriage, or monogamy, open relationship, marriage? | |
| What's our time slices there? | |
| So, we got together in 2011, and it wasn't until about 2016 that I decided that we should be in an open relationship. | |
| And I didn't really, I didn't really, I mean, I said quote-unquote date, but I don't even know if I could call it a date. | |
| It was coffee with one guy, I went to get a bagel with another guy, and I had a lemonade with another guy. | |
| Oh, so you didn't have sexual contact outside the relationship? | |
| No. So what do you mean by an open relationship? | |
| Because usually that means sexual access. | |
| I don't think open relationship generally includes lemonade, or if it is some sort of horrible golden shower scenario, probably in a Russian hotel room made up by the Clinton campaign. | |
| But when you said to him, give me the speech that you gave to him about what you wanted when you wanted to open things up. | |
| What did you what did you say to him? | |
| I just said that I didn't feel like my needs were being met and I was looking for attention and I felt like I could stay loyal and see other people and that if I found someone interesting we could bring them back just to like have a friend sort of unquote. | |
| Okay, don't quote me. | |
| We can be pretty frank here. We're all adults, right? | |
| A human being has come out of your body. | |
| We don't need to sugarcoat anything, right? | |
| So are you saying that your sexual needs, your attention needs weren't being met, so you wanted to stay with your boyfriend, then boyfriend, but you wanted to go out and explore potential sex with another guy, and if the other guy was cool or fun or maybe good in bed, that you would bring him back to the house to meet your boyfriend? | |
| Is that right? Right. | |
| Okay. And did you think about, like, maybe he would join you and your boyfriend in sexual activity? | |
| No, I didn't. | |
| No, I was more... | |
| Yeah, because that would be weird, right? | |
| Right. Right. | |
| I think I was more along the lines of I wanted everyone to be friends, know everybody, have sense, safe. | |
| Like, if everyone agrees, it's not like we're all adults, kind of a game. | |
| Okay. What needs of yours weren't being met in the relationship that you wanted to go outside of it? | |
| I just felt like I wanted more attention, more physical intimacy, more surprise and livelihood, I guess. | |
| I'm sorry, I got attention, sex, I missed the last two. | |
| Yeah, attention, sex, novelty. | |
| That's it, right? So those three? | |
| Right. And at the time, was there little to no sexual activity with your boyfriend? | |
| There was a little, but not enough that I felt really satisfied with. | |
| Were you dissatisfied in terms of quality or quantity or both? | |
| Just quantity. I just felt like I had talked to him so many times about it before, and I didn't feel like we were really communicating effectively on that. | |
| And how often were you having sex, say a month, during that time period? | |
| I'd say a week, but I know it could be less than once a week, so every month? | |
| Yeah, probably on a good month, like four times. | |
| And on a bad month, like one to two? | |
| On a bad month, like zero. | |
| Zero. And do you remember, was there a real desert patch that you went through, a real celibate phase in the relationship? | |
| For how long did that happen? | |
| Yeah, I mean, we definitely went like nine months with me. | |
| I'm sorry, say again? Like nine months. | |
| Oh, you went nine months without having sex, right? | |
| I'm sorry, is that right? Yes, that's correct. | |
| Oh gosh, I'm so sorry. That's brutal. | |
| And again, I'm sorry to be asking this stuff. | |
| I know it's really personal, but I think it's important. | |
| When you would talk to him and say, mom is getting a little itchy here, right? | |
| When you would talk to him about this stuff, did he say, yes, there's a problem, but I'll work on it? | |
| Or yes, there's a problem, but I'll sort it out? | |
| Or no, there's not even a problem. | |
| I'm just tired. I've been busy. | |
| What occurred in those conversations about your frustrations? | |
| Yeah, it was a mix of the both. | |
| He was like, yeah, it's a problem, but I've been busy. | |
| I mean, it was just kind of like, I've been tired, I've been busy, there's all these different things that are in the way, but he never would really, he would say, okay, let's work on it, and it would get better for maybe a week, and then it would go right back again. | |
| So there really was no, there was no commitment to improvement. | |
| And what, well, there was a brief commitment, but no particular follow through, right? | |
| And what was your theory, or maybe it's different now than it was back at the day, what was your theory as to what was going on? | |
| Or not going on? | |
| Well, I thought maybe it was health related. | |
| So we started a diet and I wanted to start working out together to start going running and all the health stuff. | |
| That helped a little bit, but it really didn't It really didn't fix the problem. | |
| And again, I guess, sorry to be so personal, but was it erectile dysfunction? | |
| Do you think that, because, you know, I think guys can shy away from sexual activity if they feel they can't perform. | |
| It's just easier to not. | |
| Was that anything that, was that some of the health issues that you were trying to deal with? | |
| Or was it him being overweight or something else? | |
| I have never, I mean, I haven't asked him and he probably would feel really embarrassed, but I don't think it's Edie. | |
| Well, you shouldn't have to ask him because, I mean, you could find out in the bed, right? | |
| Right. Because, you know, I mean, if guys are out there, if you're having erectile dysfunction issues, which, you know, does happen, you know, talk to a doctor. | |
| As far as I understand, it's a good thing to do. | |
| You know, don't just be avoidant. | |
| That's like, that's not a great way to deal with these things, I would imagine. | |
| So, okay. I just wanted to sort of figure that out. | |
| So the health thing, did the diet and exercise, did that last at all or did it kind of come and go? | |
| It definitely comes and goes. | |
| Yeah. He kind of fluctuates between being a little bit overweight to being more developed. | |
| And it's definitely a seasonal thing. | |
| In the summer, he's better. | |
| In the winter, he's usually a bit more weight back. | |
| And it's just been kind of a cyclical thing for, you know, however long I... Okay, so you basically then said... | |
| You're a good partner, but you're a bad sex partner, or whatever it is. | |
| And so I'd like to stay in a romantic relationship with you, but I'm going to need to get my sexual needs met elsewhere. | |
| Is that right? Yeah, I think that's what was going on in mine at the time. | |
| That's definitely the way I was thinking. | |
| All right, so what's the deeper story there, right? | |
| Because you listened to the show for two years now, right? | |
| Was the deeper story, I really need you to figure out how serious an issue this is for me? | |
| You know, couples, you can't give up sex. | |
| That's the whole point of being a couple. | |
| You know, that's what defines you as a couple. | |
| Other people can raise your kids. | |
| Other people can live with you. Other people can cook for you and clean your house. | |
| Other people can give you money, but it's your romantic and sexual partner. | |
| That's where the sex happens. | |
| That's the big differentiator. | |
| So you give up on that. I don't know what the hell you have, but it's not any kind of relationship that I would understand. | |
| Again, unless there's sort of medical issues or something like that. | |
| But, um... | |
| So... | |
| The goal was to stay in the relationship, but what was the end game? | |
| Was the end game to get him to realize how serious an issue it was so that he'd actually be really motivated to deal with it or what? | |
| Yeah, and I kind of have expected him also to realize how passive he kind of was. | |
| And I was trying to goad him, I think. | |
| Into saying no, absolutely not. | |
| Of course! It's called a shit test, right? | |
| You've probably heard of this, right? | |
| So you're saying, oh, I'm interested in other men and you want him to say, hell no! | |
| Right. Not my woman! | |
| No, no, no! And nail the door shut and, I don't know, nail you to the wall or something like that, right? | |
| But you kind of wanted him to growl and encircle you in beefy man arms or something like that, right? | |
| Yeah. Right. | |
| but he didn't quite make that right hello no sorry He didn't quite do that. | |
| So how long was this negotiation for the open relationship going on for before you decided to go out for lemonade, so to speak? | |
| And that sounds like it's a slang, but it's not, right? | |
| You just went out for lemonade. How long did you guys negotiate that before you finally went in? | |
| What did you, like, put an ad in a... | |
| Oh, not an ad. You went online to find someone? | |
| Yeah, it took quite a while. | |
| It took a year and a half or so. | |
| Oh, my God. That's a menage a trois, six months each. | |
| Anyway, so he eventually said okay? | |
| Yeah, he did. And so you put your picture or your profile or something, has skin, on some sort of dating site and then you got some interest and you went out a couple of times, right? | |
| But nothing emerged? | |
| Right. I mean, I was truthful when I talked to people, and so, I mean, I can't imagine who would walk out with someone who's already in a relationship, but you can imagine the type of people that showed up. | |
| Oh, so on your dating profile, you said, I'm in a relationship, but it's an open relationship. | |
| Is that right? Right. | |
| Yeah. I mean, that's an IQ test, right? | |
| Definitely. Early on in the relationship, I mean, I assume at the very beginning when you first started your sexual activities, there was a lot of it. | |
| Did it kind of taper off or did it kind of drop off a cliff? | |
| We actually were pretty, we were abstinent for a long time before we got together. | |
| And when we first got together, it was good and then slowly, slowly tapered. | |
| Now, he's not a very committed Catholic, right? | |
| Because he was having sex outside of wedlock? | |
| That's true. He doesn't pretend to be a Catholic, just his family. | |
| Wait, sorry. You mean just with his family? | |
| No, his family is Catholic, but he's told them that he's not a Catholic. | |
| So it's nothing like, well, sex is for procreation, we don't want to have kids, therefore I'm keeping the lion locked up, so to speak, right? | |
| Right. Okay. | |
| Do you know why, well, I'm sure you do, but why didn't he want kids, right? | |
| So you have the conversation, you say, well, neither of us want kids. | |
| I'll ask you about yours in a sec, but why didn't he want kids? | |
| He's got a big family on his dad's side so he's seen kids and I think he just sees how much work they are and how kind of like sometimes they can be gross and loud and problems and he didn't want to deal with all that. | |
| Would you say that you are somewhat high maintenance? | |
| Emotionally, yeah, for sure. | |
| Right. So it could be that he didn't have energy for you and kids. | |
| Kids are high-maintenance, and if you're high-maintenance too, then he's going to burn out, right? | |
| Yeah. | |
| So how are you high maintenance emotionally? | |
| Well, I think that I look for him to fulfill my need for acknowledgement and self-respect and to... | |
| I kind of don't feel attractive unless he's around telling me that I'm attractive. | |
| And so I think I kind of put that burden on him to keep doing that or else I just don't feel good about myself. | |
| Right, because you can be sexy or you can be needy, but you can't be both. | |
| Yes. Right. | |
| Sexy is when you have an abundance of sort of life energy and positivity and confidence and all of that. | |
| Whereas needy is you're hanging over a chasm and people got to keep propping you up with the waft of their words. | |
| And it's kind of exhausting. | |
| And eventually people just resent having to fill in the hole your parents made with their endless attention, right? | |
| Because it doesn't solve it, right? | |
| I mean, it's like, well, I need more attention. | |
| Then you go out with these other guys. | |
| It doesn't solve the problem of needing attention, right? | |
| Yes. And they were gross. | |
| Well, of course they were gross. They wanted to get involved in an open relationship. | |
| Of course they were gross. I mean, I hear what you're saying, but that goes without saying almost, right? | |
| Right. And how long ago did you abandon the open marriage experiment? | |
| Pretty quickly. So it was around... | |
| It went on for a year, so like 2017. | |
| So you tried it for a year, is that right, or less? | |
| Yeah, the negotiations went on and then I went on the dates and I was like, well, this is not going to work. | |
| And did anything get resolved sexually or is that still an issue? | |
| No, it's pretty much still an issue. | |
| Right, okay. I'm sure the addition of a kid has either given him an excuse or certainly not helped in that area, right? | |
| Right. Now, did, I mean, you're the one who said, if I understand this correctly, you're the one who said, I don't want the open relationship anymore because those guys are gross? | |
| Yeah, and I didn't explicitly say it's because they're gross, but I just, I kind of realized, well, this is just me and my problem going out here trying to put a Band-Aid on it without insulting my husband about our marriage issues. | |
| Well, I mean, to be fair, you didn't just go have an affair, right? | |
| You did consult him and talk to him about it. | |
| But you just didn't get what you wanted, so then it didn't seem like a good... | |
| It wasn't any big ethical issue as far as I can tell. | |
| It was, well, I'm not getting what I want out there, so I'm not going to bother, right? | |
| Yeah, it's just whatever works is what I was going to do. | |
| Now, why didn't you leave him or why haven't you left him, you know, prior to having the kid? | |
| Of course, a different situation once you have a kid. | |
| But why did you stay if, you know, you guys can go, I mean, three quarters of a year without having sex and this issue is never resolved? | |
| And again, I'm sure there's positive stuff. | |
| I just want to understand why, if you're dissatisfied to the point where you want to step out in the relationship, why you stayed? | |
| I think I really idealized our relationship at the beginning, and I kept trying to get back to that. | |
| It was great, like everything. | |
| And I thought, there's something that I can do to get back. | |
| I kept trying to get back. | |
| Are you talking like the first six months of your relationship? | |
| Yeah, the first five years was great. | |
| First five years? | |
| Yeah. | |
| Sorry, when did you get married? | |
| We got married in 2017. | |
| Sorry, when? Three years ago. | |
| Three years ago. So the first five years were great. | |
| And then... | |
| The sex tapered off? | |
| What other things happened? | |
| or what other things were going on? | |
| I can't really think of anything as... | |
| I mean, we moved into a house. | |
| Not anything particular that I can think of. | |
| Hmm. I'm just trying to sort this out in my head. | |
| This is a new one for me, right? | |
| You've got five years of a great relationship, then it kind of falls apart, right? | |
| Like, just something where you're like, I've got to go sleep with other guys, or at least that's what I want to do, right? | |
| Yeah, and I mean, it was, like I said, the sex thing was slowly sort of tapering off. | |
| You know, end of the fourth or fifth year that I was really starting to be kind of angsty about it. | |
| Oh, so it wasn't great for five years, then tapered off. | |
| The five years is when it had sort of gone through its tapering off process? | |
| Right. And again, you don't have any particular thoughts. | |
| Because there's a six-month high at the beginning of every relationship, and some people get really addicted to those endorphins, right? | |
| That's why they keep chasing new relationships. | |
| So there's kind of like a six-month oxytocin high, in a sense, in romantic relationships. | |
| And it could be a little more, a little less. | |
| There's an average around six months. But have you guys made it a couple of years? | |
| Because this is going to be deeply alarming to people in the audience, right? | |
| People who listen to this, because they're going to say, well, wait a minute, I've been in a relationship for a couple of years, what if it goes wrong? | |
| So there's got to be something. | |
| People don't behave randomly. It was great for a couple of years, four years or whatever. | |
| Salsa taper off. Something changed. | |
| Something changed. I don't know what that is, of course, because you got a report, but, you know, it didn't just... | |
| I mean, people don't just wake up in the morning and say, well, I've got a great relationship here. | |
| I really love this woman. We have a great sex life. | |
| We really get along. Great conversations. | |
| I think I'm just going to screw it up. | |
| I think I'm just going to withdraw. | |
| I'm not going to have sex. I'm just going to... | |
| I'm going to completely wreck this thing. | |
| Like, that's not how people work. | |
| There's got to be something that happens, something that changed, something that altered, something that... | |
| Were you fighting a lot? I mean, to go from perfect to sexless, again, outside of a medical issue, right? | |
| Yeah, I'm trying to think of what it might be. | |
| Yeah, don't make anything up. | |
| I mean, I could be completely wrong. | |
| So I'm just telling you what I think. | |
| And, you know, so if there's nothing, there's nothing. | |
| I just... | |
| I mean, if a man really enjoys having sex with a woman for four and a half years, it's hard to see how 4.6 years is like, nah. | |
| Do you know what I mean? Yeah. | |
| You know, if somebody said, oh, I used to work out, I worked out religiously for like five years, I would go to the gym four times a week. | |
| And then I just stopped or it tapered, like something would happen, right? | |
| You wouldn't just say, well, I'm going to just let myself get flabby now, right? | |
| Right. Well, I did have a job and right after we moved into the house, I had to work nights. | |
| And so we didn't see each other for like a year, basically. | |
| No, I'm sure that's not it. | |
| Really? | |
| You can't think of anything except for the fact that you didn't see each other for a year. | |
| So he was working days, you were working nights? | |
| Yeah. Yeah, for a while. | |
| What, a year, right? Yeah. | |
| Did it coincide with the deterioration? | |
| Yeah, now that I think of it, it really did. | |
| What do you mean now that you think of it? | |
| What are you talking about? | |
| You were there! Now that I think of it, I guess the fact that we barely saw each other for a year could have had something to do with the deterioration of the quality of a relationship. | |
| I mean, did you talk about this and say, well, you're working days, I'm working nights. | |
| We've got to figure this out. | |
| Maybe this isn't the right job to take. | |
| It's not worth the relationship. | |
| Maybe we don't need the money. Maybe I can get a different job. | |
| Maybe you can work nights. | |
| I was like... Did you just say, oh, you know, we'll be on a completely different schedule, opposite schedules, but I'm sure everything will be fine. | |
| I mean, what was the theory about how this is going to work out? | |
| Yeah, I think the theory was, well, we'll just meet in the middle, you know, I'll be home at, I'll get home from work at 11 a.m. | |
| And then he'll just go to work late days and sort of meet in the middle on the weekends and on a couple of days later. | |
| No, but you can't meet on the middle on the weekends because you can't flip your clock for two days. | |
| You can't just go to Australia, flip your clock for two days and then just come right back and be normal. | |
| That's not how it works, right? | |
| Yeah, it didn't work. | |
| Okay, okay. So you didn't have a plan about working these crazy opposite hours. | |
| And then when it wasn't working... | |
| What happened? This is my question, right? | |
| So, you're not having sex. | |
| You're barely seeing each other. | |
| You're tired all the time. | |
| You're resentful of everything. | |
| And this goes on for a year. | |
| Like, what happened over that time period when it wasn't working? | |
| Like, what did you do with the fact that it wasn't working? | |
| Yeah, I don't remember doing anything. | |
| I think I just internalized it and got really... | |
| I'm sorry, and got what? I just got really resentful. | |
| You resented him because you were working nights. | |
| Like, he had the day job, then you got the night job, right? | |
| Right. Why the hell didn't you quit? | |
| Get a normal job with him? | |
| Or with his schedule? | |
| I thought that the job that I had was going to be It was going to be big time and I didn't want to quit because I was in line to be part owner at this company and I really wanted the job. | |
| Okay, how did that work out for you? | |
| It didn't. It didn't work out at all. | |
| Why not? What happened? | |
| I helped start up this company and the owner He ended up being a crook, what he would do. | |
| I'm sorry, he ended up being what? | |
| He was a crook. | |
| Bad guy. He was a money wanderer. | |
| Oh boy. I hope you didn't get dragged into anything criminal. | |
| I almost did. | |
| Yeah, it was pretty bad. | |
| So, you gave up your sex life to almost go to jail. | |
| That doesn't seem like a good plan. | |
| man. | |
| No. Sorry, you still with me? | |
| Yeah, I'm still here. I just want to make sure I don't end up with another call where someone gets arrested halfway through. | |
| It's happened before. So, you shredded your relationship, you gave up your sex life, and you kind of wrecked things for the opportunity to almost go to jail. | |
| Do I have that right? No, you have that correct. | |
| Well, I'm sorry about that. I mean, I'm sorry about that. | |
| What did your boyfriend think of your boss? | |
| I mean, I assume he met him and all of that. | |
| What did he think of him? | |
| He thought that my boss was really like... | |
| He was kind of manipulative and a control freak. | |
| He did have some signs that were not good. | |
| So when your boyfriend would say to you, I don't know about this guy. | |
| I don't know about this guy, honey. | |
| I'm getting a bad feeling. | |
| I don't think this is worth it. | |
| What would you say? If he had said that, I would have been like, whoa, what do you mean? | |
| He's great. I mean, I thought he was great at this point. | |
| So he never expressed to you any reservations about the guy who turned out to be a crook who you were in business with? | |
| Not really. It was only kind of after the fact. | |
| Well, after the fact is easy. | |
| Hey, the guy who got arrested might not be a great guy because I've got this amazing intuition. | |
| Ooh, Nike. Yeah. Right? Yeah, I didn't have anybody that was willing to tell me, look, this guy doesn't seem right. | |
| Look at all those prior businesses and he's like, this is too weird to be true. | |
| Like there was nobody that could- Wait, so his prior businesses were also bad? | |
| Yeah, he had, like after I got out of the business, I looked him up because I thought there's no way that this dude has not done this before. | |
| And he's had like five other businesses that he's done this for. | |
| Okay, I need you to stop touching the mic. | |
| So, this guy, you worked nights, you poured heart and soul into this business, but you didn't look him up and check out his history before you went in this deep, right? | |
| Yeah, I sort of did. | |
| Like, very cursory, but not nearly what I should have done, I think. | |
| I was very... And your husband didn't... | |
| Sorry, your boyfriend didn't look him up. | |
| Your mom and dad didn't look him up. | |
| Like, nobody looked him up. Nobody checked out this business situation you were getting involved in. | |
| No, nobody did. | |
| And actually, my parents talked to him when I started working there. | |
| And my parents thought that he was just the bee's knees. | |
| They loved him. Now, in hindsight, sort of looking back, right? | |
| I mean, what were the warning signs? | |
| In other words, did you have a fantastic opportunity that was not in line with your experience or education? | |
| Did you get a lot of responsibility that was not in line with your resume or was there something that just didn't add up or didn't match in terms of what happened? | |
| The business went along the lines of what my degree was, so I didn't really suspect anything in that way, but the way that he hired people was really weird. | |
| He would only hire people that he had control over and what? | |
| In some way. So, for example, he hired a guy that was in prison and he knew that no one else would hire him. | |
| Wait, was in prison or had been in prison? | |
| Had been in prison. Okay, that's a bit of a difference there. | |
| Okay, so he hired a con. | |
| Okay, ex-con, right? All right. | |
| Yeah, and he actually hired a few ex-cons and just a few people I know that couldn't have gotten a job anywhere else except for this guy's quote-unquote second chances, good graces. | |
| What power did he have over you? | |
| Sorry, I'm not sure if you're answering me or not. | |
| No, I'm just thinking. | |
| I don't know. Well, your naivete with regards to business, right? | |
| So if you don't look up, if you're going to go into business with someone, particularly if there's going to be some ownership, you know, with ownership comes responsibility, comes legal liability, comes all of this stuff, right? | |
| You've really got to check people out. | |
| You've got to look people up. | |
| But beware! Because not every negative thing that's said about people on the internet is true, he says, pointing at himself. | |
| But you do... | |
| Need to look people up. | |
| You need to check their credit history. | |
| You need to talk to prior employers, employees. | |
| You need to talk to, check with the Better Business Bureau. | |
| You need to run the criminal history. | |
| Like, you need these things if you're going to get involved in business with someone, right? | |
| Because if they're, especially if they're dangling a lot in front of you, right? | |
| And I assume that he dangled a lot in front of you. | |
| So that you were like, well, I can't go and get another job because no other job is going to give me these kinds of opportunities, right? | |
| Yeah, that was exactly it. | |
| Yeah, yeah. So he's giving you responsibilities and opportunities far in excess of what you, quote, deserve based upon where you are in your career, right? | |
| Yeah. Oh, yeah. I was right out of college. | |
| Yeah. So you're right out of college and you could be the vice president of blah, blah, blah, right? | |
| Right. Right. Right. | |
| And you're like, hey, that sounds great. | |
| Boy, I can introduce myself as the vice president of blah, blah, blah, right? | |
| Yeah. Senior executive manager of blah, blah, blah, right? | |
| And so it seems pretty great. | |
| You don't want to do the slow and steady wins the race, work your way up kind of stuff. | |
| You want to start at the top. | |
| And he sees things in you that are great and powerful, and you're a younger version of him, and he's going to give you all this opportunity, and you're going to take it to the moon or the stars, and you get all swept up in the vanity and the... | |
| Status of it all, right? | |
| And, like, your friends who graduated is like, well, I'm an assistant copywriter. | |
| It's like, I'm executive vice president of Fantasyland, right? | |
| Yeah. It's kind of tempting, right? | |
| It's devilishly tempting, right? | |
| Now, when did you figure out he was hiring all these ex-cons? | |
| This wasn't until I had been working there for two years and... | |
| I just started talking to the other employees. | |
| I was like, hey, what's your story? | |
| And I just noticed a pattern. | |
| Like, what is with this? | |
| Huh. And was it a viable business, but he just wasn't good at running it? | |
| Or was it just not a viable business, in your opinion, at all? | |
| Oh, the business could have been extremely successful. | |
| And in fact... If I had been in charge of finances, I think it would have been fine. | |
| But yeah, he ran it into the ground. | |
| He had lots and lots of creditors, never paid them back. | |
| I believe he took all the profits for his personal income and just never paid off any of the business ever. | |
| And you worked there for, so you did a year of night work and then you worked there for another year. | |
| Was that day work or night work still or what? | |
| Yeah, when I started it was just days and then we were successful enough that we went to a second shift at night and I managed a second shift at night for a year. | |
| And did you have management training or experience? | |
| No, I didn't. | |
| See, now this is... | |
| Look, there are people out there, they can just walk into these roles and they can do well, and I get all of that. | |
| But, you know, come on. I mean, you're right out of school and you're being given a management job and you've no training or experience, right? | |
| Right. That's kind of a clue. | |
| Again, maybe you're a business genius and you can just figure it out, read books, step into the role. | |
| No problem with that. It's not like everyone's got to have these big accreditations, but... | |
| Or maybe you had been captain of every sports team in high school and therefore you have some leadership except anything, right? | |
| But yeah, if people are just willing to vault you into the top, it's usually to shut you up, right? | |
| Do you think that you were justly compensated for the time that you spent there? | |
| No, no, not at all. | |
| Why not? It wasn't worth it. | |
| No, no, sorry. I mean, so if you're executive vice president, you know, normally, I don't know, it's 80, 100 K or whatever it would be. | |
| I mean, did you have the title, but not the money? | |
| Yeah, it was basically a title, not the money kind of thing. | |
| That's another clue, right? Right. | |
| And I thought that I had ownership as well. | |
| So I was working towards start ownership. | |
| Wait, wait, hang on. You thought you had ownership. | |
| But you're also working towards part ownership. | |
| Those two don't fit together to me. | |
| Sorry, I thought I was working towards part ownership of this business. | |
| Why did you think that? | |
| Because that's what he said. | |
| He said that we were going to be, I forgot how he worded it, share operators, and that he would let employees invest in the business. | |
| But nothing in writing, right? | |
| No, not at that time. | |
| Wait, not at that time? | |
| Was there a time later where it was in writing? | |
| Yeah, he offered it and that was when I quit because I knew that the business was like... | |
| Oh, when it was going down and liable for all these terrible things. | |
| He's like, hey, you can be an owner. | |
| Now that we've hit the iceberg, I'm promoting you to vice captain. | |
| Right. Oh my God. | |
| I'm so sorry. What a disaster. | |
| Well, it could have been a whole lot worse, right? | |
| It could have been way worse, yeah. | |
| What happened to this dude? | |
| Did he end up getting napped or sailing on or what? | |
| He upped his family and moved to a different state and sold the business to someone who likewise did not research who he was. | |
| Yeah, I think he's still... | |
| I believe he's still doing what he's always been doing, which is just running businesses into the ground. | |
| Wow. Smooth operator. | |
| All right. Now, no one in your circle, your environment, your parents, your extended family, your boyfriend, his parents, nobody was like, if it seems too good to be true, it probably is. | |
| We've got to kick the tires, slam the doors on this thing a little bit. | |
| How did this go on for two years? | |
| Two years. I mean, are you that resistant to anyone telling you what you don't want to hear? | |
| You know, I asked my parents about the job, and my dad was all gung-ho for it. | |
| And my mom actually said, well, at least he got a house out of the deal because I was able to buy a house while I was working. | |
| Wait, but so your dad was... | |
| Does your dad have any business experience? | |
| Yeah, my dad has been a business owner for like 30 years. | |
| So your dad has been a business owner for 30 years, and you sailed into some very treacherous and legally dangerous waters with a guy who was pretty shady by what you describe, and your dad thought he was great sorry is that did I get that right Yes, that's correct. | |
| So, is your dad an idiot? | |
| No, but he's... | |
| A little bit? | |
| Yeah. I mean, come on, a little bit, right? | |
| I mean, if he's been a business owner for 30 years, he should be able to suss out... | |
| You know, you give someone executive vice president right out of college. | |
| I mean, that's... | |
| You know, unless the college is Harvard Business School, even then, right? | |
| So, what was deficient in your dad that, I mean, did he like the fact that you were doing so well, so to speak? | |
| Like, what had everyone ignore this? | |
| Yeah, I think it was pride, because he would tell everybody that I was this successful. | |
| And my boss, he would praise my parents' parenting to them, because I was such a great worker. | |
| You raised a fine daughter there, Mr. | |
| and Mrs. Right, right. | |
| Right, right. So he knew how to play the vanities of those around him, and it doesn't sound like there was any shortage of supply coming from your side, right? | |
| Right. Has your dad apologized to you for exposing you through his own vanity to this kind of extraordinary danger? | |
| Oh, no. No? | |
| No, I don't think he's capable of that much reflection. | |
| Okay, so we haven't talked much about your parents. | |
| Give me the 411 on the maternal and paternal units. | |
| My mom was horribly abused and abandoned, and my dad was an extremely verbally abusive kid, also physically abusive. | |
| They were both very emotional and neglectful. | |
| Well, it's the worst combo, right? | |
| It's abusive plus neglectful. | |
| Yeah. Right. | |
| I'm sorry about that. So what happened in terms of the verbal abuse, what was the kind of language that you would hear as a child? | |
| He would say things like, I'm not going to let a little kid talk to me like that. | |
| You're just a little swear word. | |
| No, you can swear. | |
| What would he say? | |
| He would say, oh, you're just a little shit and you need to get out of here. | |
| I don't want to hear from you. I'm not going to listen to you backtalk. | |
| Either he might smack me or he might just threaten me until I ran away. | |
| Sorry if you're talking, I can't hear. | |
| No, I stopped talking. Okay, sorry. | |
| It sounded like you were going to continue. | |
| So what else did you hear from your father when he would get angry or upset? | |
| He would say things like, I'm not telling you this for my own health. | |
| Just really silly things that I think back and I'm like, what the hell is that? | |
| No, that's a cliche. I mean, that's a cliche that dads have. | |
| It's a pretty boring one. | |
| Right. Okay, so, I mean, calling you a little shit is pretty abusive. | |
| The second one is just kind of tiresome, but what else did you... | |
| I'm not trying to pull things out of you, I just want to know what the scope was that he was talking about when he would be mean. | |
| Most of the time it was just very dismissive. | |
| So, I mean, he would just get loud and say, don't talk back, don't give me your shit, don't... | |
| Don't speak like that or something. | |
| No back talk. Right, no back talk. | |
| It's so weird to me how parents think that children who disagree with them are somehow being disrespectful. | |
| Right. I mean, children are not allowed to have their own thoughts and disagreements and questions and issues. | |
| I don't know. It's weird. I mean, of course they do. | |
| Of course they should. So you said he was physically abusive. | |
| What was the story there? | |
| I would just get hit or spanked or roughly just rough-housed when I didn't want to. | |
| And I think that was more of a problem when I was smaller, that my dad would kind of want to play fight or something, but he would get really rough. | |
| And I would say, no, I'm done. | |
| Like, I don't want to play fight anymore. | |
| But then he'd keep going, so I would feel scared and I would scratch him with my fingernail. | |
| And then he'd get all mad that I scratched him and he'd go... | |
| And I'd be like, I told him to stop. | |
| I'm sorry, he'd go what? He'd go to my mom and tell my mom what I had done to him because I had scratched him with my fingernail. | |
| And he said, look what your daughter did to me and I was just trying to play with her. | |
| Oh, that's good, man. | |
| Talk about an impossible situation, right? | |
| It's dangerous to roughhouse. | |
| I don't want to do it. The only way I can defend myself is to give you a scratch and then, I was just trying to play with her. | |
| Yeah, and he did that all the time. | |
| It wasn't rare. | |
| It became something of just a game to him, I think. | |
| Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, it puts you in an impossible situation. | |
| And, I mean, putting kids in impossible, putting anyone in an impossible situation is really, really nasty. | |
| And putting kids in it, I think, is downright abusive. | |
| So you can't win. You can't win. | |
| You can't win. I mean, my mom would do this stuff where she'd give you confusing, contradictory instructions. | |
| And if you got it wrong, she'd get really angry at you. | |
| And if you came to ask her for clarification, she'd say, I've already told you! | |
| It's like, okay, so I can't win. | |
| And I, you know, I would just basically go inert. | |
| I would just go through the motions and not do much. | |
| And then it would be like, we're not doing it fast enough. | |
| Okay, so I don't know what the hell you want me to do. | |
| I can't ask you for clarification. | |
| And if I don't do it, I'm in trouble. | |
| Great! What a wonderful Hallmark card to my future neurosis. | |
| It's going to be excellent. And so what else would he do physically? | |
| I mean, in terms of punishment? Oh, I mean, I would get spanked, but usually it was... | |
| When it was bad, it was bare-bottomed with a belt or a stick or thing. | |
| And how often would that happen? | |
| Probably like once or so. | |
| The bad ones, and then regular spankings weren't that bad, it was just... | |
| Or maybe a belt with the pants. | |
| That wasn't that bad, but... | |
| And your mom, what would she say and do that was an issue? | |
| My mom would just yell. | |
| She really wouldn't hit me too much, but she would use things, other things, like she'd make me write sentences, like thousands of sentences. | |
| The hand cramp punishment. | |
| Yeah. And when did the spankings or the hitings on the bare bottom with the belt, when did that begin to diminish? | |
| That actually went away when I went to school. | |
| And actually the school had to call my parents because they saw bruises on my back. | |
| They called my parents. | |
| And it stopped after that. | |
| Oh, so they were perfectly capable of stopping it. | |
| But they had to feel that their own interests would be impacted negatively. | |
| The fact that it hurt and scared you didn't matter, but the fact that it could have had negative consequences then, they're like, oh, we're going to stop this, right? | |
| Yeah, yeah. I mean, I'm thankful that the school called, but yeah. | |
| No, but it's pretty bad, right? | |
| That they stopped and found another way to do it. | |
| Not because of anything to do with you or anything to do with conscience or self-reflection, but just because, oh, we could be in trouble. | |
| Better stop. Right. | |
| Now, when your parents would have conflicts with each other, how would that play out? | |
| There was quite a bit of yelling, like if they didn't agree about something in about five minutes, one would start. | |
| Just a yelling match. | |
| And that would last for a little while, but there wasn't anything really physical that went down. | |
| And then eventually one of them would give up. | |
| Someone would just give up, like retreat in a huffy silence, and then things would just kind of slowly cool down? | |
| Is that right? Yeah, that's right. | |
| Now, what does your husband think of your parents? | |
| He thinks my mom is crazy, but he likes to talk to my dad because they're both sort of social in that way. | |
| I'm not sure what that means, social in that way. | |
| They're both just really chatty about whatever it is that they're talking about, you know, guns or cars or whatever. | |
| And does your husband know that this is the man who, I'm going to say beat you as a child, because a belt on a bare butt is, that's a straight up beating, right? | |
| So does he know that this is a man who beat his wife when she was a helpless child? | |
| He does now. | |
| But I had not told him about that. | |
| When did he find out? | |
| I started really talking more about what happened in my childhood probably about a year ago. | |
| Yeah, listening to this show, right? | |
| Yeah. Bring it up, right? | |
| And how has that changed, or has it changed, your husband's relationship with your father? | |
| I think it's changed his private attitude towards my dad, but yeah. | |
| So you told your husband shortly before your son was born about your own childhood, right? | |
| Yes. | |
| Now, do you know what the shit test was there? | |
| And that's a derogatory term. | |
| I don't mean it in any negative way. | |
| It's just a colloquial term for it. | |
| But do you know what you were testing with your husband there? | |
| No. You were testing, will you protect our son? | |
| If I tell you there's a man who raised me who beat me, will you protect our son from him? | |
| But he's a nice guy who doesn't want to cause trouble, and unfortunately that means he can't protect you. | |
| Right? Because what you want, I imagine, and tell me if I'm wrong, of course, right? | |
| But what you want is for your husband to call up your dad and say, you what? | |
| You beat my wife when she was a helpless little child? | |
| What the hell is wrong with you? You get down on your knees. | |
| You apologize to this goddess right now. | |
| Or you can get the fuck out of our lives. | |
| And you're sure as hell, if you're a child's beater, you cannot be around my son in this or any other goddamn universe. | |
| So you better start making amends. | |
| And you better start apologizing. | |
| And you better start doing it now. | |
| Because I just found this out. | |
| And I'm not having it. | |
| Not in my house. | |
| Not around my wonderful wife. | |
| Not around my beautiful son. | |
| No chance. | |
| No way, Jose. Isn't that kind of what you want to hear? | |
| Yeah. Exactly what I want to hear. | |
| Yeah, and he's a nice guy, doesn't want to cause any trouble, right? | |
| Yeah. What do you feel when I sort of said the speech? | |
| What was your feeling? Just sort of sadness. | |
| Hopefulness, but I'm sure that's possible. | |
| Because you chose him to disappoint you in this way, just so you know, right? | |
| Like you chose him in order to be disappointed in this way, in order to not be stood up for, in order to not have someone stand up for you. | |
| Look, all we want, really, those of us who went through these kinds of childhoods, all we want is for people to say, what happened was wrong. | |
| I'm really sorry. I don't like the people who did it to you unless they make amends. | |
| That's all it is. All we want to hear. | |
| I'm so sorry. It was wrong what happened to you. | |
| And I'm angry at the people who did it to you. | |
| And I don't want to support them unless they make amends. | |
| Am I wrong about that? Isn't that what we want to hear? | |
| No, you're not wrong. That's pretty much exactly it. | |
| It's exactly what we want to hear. | |
| And this is what I've been delivering for 15 years. | |
| It was wrong what happened to you. | |
| And it was wrong what happened to you. | |
| Your father hitting you with a belt, bare bottom, hitting you bare bottom, hitting you with a belt anywhere, hitting you period, calling you a little shit, was absolutely wrong. | |
| I'm so sorry it happened to you. | |
| And I wouldn't have anything to do with that guy unless he made some serious fucking amends. | |
| And I bet he wouldn't. | |
| I mean, it's nice if they do, and I've heard tale occasionally, but it's rare, right? | |
| It's rare. And that's what we do, is we look around for people who have a slight shred of moral spine around them, just a tiny little bit, to have some kind of sympathy for what happened to us as children, right? We're not asking for the world. | |
| We're not asking for people to hug us for three years straight. | |
| We're not asking for people to hunt and create vigilante packs and drag people to the police station. | |
| I'm so sorry about what happened to you. | |
| It was totally wrong. I don't like the people who did it to you unless they make amends. | |
| It's all we're looking for. | |
| And it's a fucking desert out there, man. | |
| It's a desert. Can't get that. | |
| Can't get those words. Can't get those words. | |
| I mean, can you imagine? | |
| Can you imagine? | |
| You've got a babysitter. | |
| You come home. Your son is crying. | |
| He's got bruises all over him because she beat him with a belt. | |
| I don't want to imagine. | |
| Well, you should. You should, because A, it can happen. | |
| I've actually known people. | |
| That this has happened to got tied to a chair, beaten and tortured by a babysitter. | |
| So it could conceivably happen, number one. | |
| Number two, if it did happen, can you imagine your husband saying about this brutalizing babysitter, ah, you know, still a pretty good girl. | |
| Let's take it to the movies on Saturday. | |
| Can you picture that? | |
| Thank you. | |
| I can't picture that. | |
| Well, that's kind of what he's doing though with regards to your father. | |
| Why is your son so much more important than you? | |
| It's the same thing I was saying to the guy last night. | |
| Why is your son and his protection so much more important? | |
| If your husband found out that someone had beaten his son with a belt, would he be angry? | |
| Yeah. Your husband finds out your father Beat the mother of his children with a belt! | |
| And what does he say? What did he say when he found out? | |
| He said that that's horrific and he's really sorry that it happened. | |
| Fantastic. That's 50% of the way there and what else did he say? | |
| That was it. | |
| Did he say he needed to have a chat with your dad? | |
| No, he didn't. | |
| Did he say, "I can't let a child beat her around my son?" Did he say this explains a lot about you? | |
| Did he say, I'm sorry I didn't ask you about this before? | |
| I'm sorry I knew you for 10 years and never found out that you were beaten with a belt half-bloody when you were a child? | |
| To the point where your parents were contacted because you went to school looking like some 16-year-old country club girl's nose job? | |
| Did he say, I can't believe I knew you for 10 years? | |
| I didn't know this about you. | |
| And I've now missed out on 10 years to comfort you and make it right as best I can. | |
| As someone who loves you and cares for you and needs to build a shelter around through which you can flourish and feel safe. | |
| Because it's really hard to negotiate when you've been beaten, right? | |
| Because deep down, we're all waiting for that beating to start up again if we cross the line with people, if we get them too angry, if we backtalk too much. | |
| It's really hard to negotiate. | |
| And if people don't know how you were broken, they're just going to break you more. | |
| It was wrong what happened to you. | |
| And the wrong wasn't like it was unfortunate. | |
| Like, wow, you know, you got hit by lightning out of a clear blue sky. | |
| A piece of an airplane fell on you out of nowhere. | |
| Like, that's really unfortunate. | |
| No, this was an action done to you, specifically, repeatedly, once a month, sometimes more, by your own father, who was sworn and charged with one job to protect you. | |
| Instead, he was the one who harmed you the most. | |
| And your mom let it happen. | |
| Right? Your mom didn't sit... | |
| The fucking authorities had to call your father, not your mom saying, no, no, no, no, no. | |
| What are you? She's got bruises. | |
| What's the matter with you? You bruised your child? | |
| What is the matter with you? | |
| You do that again. I'm going down and bringing a cop back here and your ass is going to jail, man. | |
| You do not bruise your children. | |
| What's the matter with you? Go take some fucking anger management. | |
| Go get some therapy. | |
| Go... Read some books, for God's sake. | |
| You don't bruise your children to the point where authorities are calling us. | |
| She colluded with him, right? | |
| Yeah. They saw the bruises. | |
| You were in the house. | |
| I bet you they tried to cover them up too. | |
| What had happened in gym class? | |
| You had to change or something? Yeah, it was just like outdoors and running around. | |
| I'm sure it came up a little bit. | |
| Right. Right. | |
| Right. What do you think about what I'm saying? | |
| I think it's correct. | |
| I mean, there's no accident. | |
| It was forethought and concrete action that me being beaten All right. | |
| Well, I am sorry. Like, I think of you like my daughter. | |
| Right? Anybody lays a finger on my daughter, I don't even want to talk about it. | |
| I don't even want to talk about it, because it could be used against me in the future. | |
| But no, nobody lays a hand on my daughter. | |
| And the idea that somebody would beat her with a belt. | |
| I mean, I think of you in that situation. | |
| Just how appalling that is. | |
| How unchristian that is. | |
| And, I mean, I cared about this stuff before I became a dad. | |
| But now I am a dad. And, you know, my daughter's happiness and protection is so important. | |
| It's one of the reasons I took on some of the really challenging topics. | |
| You know, it's not my daughter's fault that different races have different average IQ. It's not her fault. | |
| It's not her fault. No one can pin that on her, right? | |
| She's going to get blamed for it. | |
| It's not her fault. Sorry, it's just basic dad protection stuff, man. | |
| When you get right down to it, it's just basic dad protection stuff. | |
| stuff. | |
| Now, how are we doing relative to your goals in the conversation, relative to what you want to get out of the conversation? | |
| pretty good because we really uncovered the principal problem which was me valuing my work or whatever it was that I wanted out of that job over my relationship yes no it's the vanity right It's the something for nothing. | |
| It's the, I don't want to examine whether it's too good to be true, because that would be humiliating for me if... | |
| Like, if I have to quit. Because if you go and tell everyone, oh, look, I'm a big shot. | |
| I'm a vice president straight out of school. | |
| And then it turns out, it's like, oh, wait, this guy's pretty shady, man. | |
| Oops. I mean, that's really tough. | |
| And then do you know what happens? I'll tell you one of the reasons why you got stuck in this job. | |
| If you want to know, I'm sure you do, right? | |
| Here's one of the main reasons you got stuck in this job. | |
| Is that if you, my friend, had woken up, done the research, studied things, and backed out, Of this job, what would you hear for the next 50 years from those around you? | |
| Should have stayed in that job? | |
| No, sadly, because it would turn out that the guy was a crook, right? | |
| Right. What would you hear about your great job? | |
| What would you hear about for the next 50 years? | |
| Hey, remember that time you were the vice president of a crime gang? | |
| I'm not kidding. You would hear about this. | |
| Because this is what screwed up families do, is they take errors and they just fucking grind you into the dust with them. | |
| It becomes a running gag. | |
| It becomes a running joke. | |
| Your next job is, oh, did you get the job with Al Capone like you wanted? | |
| Are you going to... | |
| Hey, I bought you some clothes for your new job! | |
| And it's like a Halloween prison costume, right? | |
| Hey, I baked you a cake for your new job! | |
| And in the cake is a nail file, so you can, quote, get out of prison, right? | |
| I mean, it may not be that obvious, but there'll be jokes, and you will never, ever be able to live it down. | |
| Or it will be never spoken of again. | |
| And therefore a big problem and a big issue. | |
| This is how screwed up families deal with errors or problems. | |
| Is they just grind you down with it. | |
| Through silence or through passive aggressive humor or through eye rolling or through whatever, right? | |
| Because then they feel humiliated. | |
| Because then their friends come up to you. | |
| Your dad's friends come up. | |
| He's been bragging about his daughter, the vice president of whatever, whatever, right? | |
| And his friends come up and say, Oh, how's your daughter doing in that great new job of hers? | |
| And what's he got to say? Just changes the subject. | |
| Well, that's kind of obvious, though, right? | |
| But if Presti's like, oh yeah, she did manage to escape jail, and I'm quite pleased with that. | |
| Because that also is humiliating to him. | |
| It's like, why aren't you a businessman? | |
| Shouldn't you have been looking out for your daughter? | |
| Blah, blah, blah, right? So you've got to stay in this job so that they can get another five minutes of vanity. | |
| Dopamine, right? Sorry, you've got to take the bullet. | |
| Daddy needs to feel good about himself without actually earning it. | |
| My mom did this. | |
| Oh, gosh, when I was in grade 8, I was taking a first-year college computer science course. | |
| And it was disk I.O. reads on a five-and-a-quarter-inch floppy. | |
| And I was interested in making video games. | |
| I was interested in making Star Raiders games. | |
| In ASCII, that means nothing to you, but there are three people out there who know what the hell that means. | |
| And so I just didn't go. | |
| Or actually, no, I did go because I got to use computers for free and I sit in the back and I program my video games. | |
| I didn't care about disk reads and writes from a database to a five and a quarter inch floppy. | |
| I didn't care, right? But my mom was everywhere we went, everywhere we went. | |
| She was like, my son, he's 12 and he's taking an adult computer science course. | |
| Right? He's great! | |
| And, you know, this went on and this went on, I don't know, for like six months or whatever, right? | |
| How's that adult computer science of yours? | |
| I wasn't doing any of the work assigned there. | |
| I was just back there learning how to program computer games. | |
| I worked on a Zork adventure game. | |
| And, yeah, just a bunch of different things that I enjoyed doing. | |
| It served me quite well in terms of learning computer programming. | |
| And then eventually I had to say, because she would say, and he's graduated. | |
| She just makes things up. And he's graduated now. | |
| And at some point I had to say, I know, I just went there and programmed on my own. | |
| I didn't care about the disc read rights. | |
| I didn't care about the IO stuff. | |
| I didn't care about any of that stuff. | |
| But I really did enjoy learning how to make a computer game. | |
| Here's a computer game I made. | |
| And it was a galaxy exploration game. | |
| It was really cool, actually. So yeah, parental vanity, oh man, it's quicksand. | |
| This is how fortunes get destroyed. | |
| This is how lives get destroyed, is the parents who pump you into getting these great opportunities and won't hear anything negative about it and won't warn you and won't be careful and won't be cautious or anything like that. | |
| Great. And you're trapped. | |
| You kind of ride it out. | |
| You got to ride it out. | |
| And yeah, vanity, you know, vanity is very bad for the economy and very bad for people's personal liberty from time to time. | |
| So I just wanted to point that out. | |
| Like this is people out there, be skeptical, be skeptical about everything. | |
| Be skeptical about me, be skeptical about philosophy, be skeptical about business opportunities, be skeptical about new cryptos. | |
| Doesn't mean never invest in anything, never, but be skeptical, assume the worst. | |
| Assuming the worst is generally the only way to get the best out of life. | |
| Because 99% of everything, as Theodore Sturgeon said, 99% of everything is crap. | |
| It's true. 99% of everything is crap. | |
| And if you go into life with that assumption, you know, you pick up a book, 99% likely it's going to be crap. | |
| There's this show people are talking about with Hugh Grant and Nicole Kidman called, I think it's called The Undoing. | |
| And it's a murder mystery. | |
| It's a murder mystery. | |
| But you see, it's a post-woke murder mystery, so there's no mystery about it. | |
| There's no mystery. I can tell you. | |
| I can tell you. Spoiler here, so it's not a spoiler because I've watched it. | |
| It's a spoiler because it's so bloody obvious. | |
| The white male did it. | |
| Because if there's a multiracial situation and a crime has been committed, it's not even, like, you don't even have to guess. | |
| It's the white male who did it. | |
| It's never going to be the Hispanic guy. | |
| It's never going to be the black guy. It's the white male who did it. | |
| If there's a gay character, it's not the gay character. | |
| If there's a lesbian, it's not the lesbian. | |
| It's the straight white male who did it. | |
| Because you've always got to sow the seeds of male betrayal into the heads of white women. | |
| Anyway, this is so boring. | |
| So boring. So, let's go back to your marriage. | |
| My concern is that you're still following your own needs. | |
| Now you have a need to feel relieved of your guilt. | |
| Does that make sense? Yeah. | |
| So, you know, a cynical eye, cynical, cold-hearted eye would look at this and say, well, she had a need for this, so she had an open relationship. | |
| And then she had a need to not have children, so she had a guy who didn't want to have kids. | |
| And then she had a need to have kids, so now she has kids, and now she feels bad, and she has a need to be forgiven. | |
| So it's still about him serving your needs, right? | |
| So how do we break that cycle? | |
| Ask him what he wants. | |
| Well, here's the problem. | |
| He's kind of spineless, in a way. | |
| I'm sure he's got spine at work, but, you know, with you, you know, you kind of got him wrapped around your finger. | |
| So the problem is, if you ask him what he wants, what's he going to say? | |
| Whatever you want. Right. | |
| Oh, no, I'm happy. I'm fine. | |
| Everything's great. It's all water under the bridge. | |
| It's dust in the wind. Everything's fine, right? | |
| So that's not going to work. | |
| So what you need to do is you need to figure out what he wants and what he needs that he's not going to tell you. | |
| It's tricky, but you know, this is the kind of stuff you back into when you have these kinds of situations, right? | |
| So what does he most want in the world that he would never tell you? | |
| That he would never tell me? | |
| Yeah. Or that he would never be direct with you about. | |
| You know, the best presents are the ones that somebody hasn't asked for, but they're just right. | |
| That's when you really know someone, right? | |
| You can give them a gift. | |
| They've never asked for it, but it's perfect, right? | |
| Something they didn't even know they wanted or didn't even know they needed, but it's great, right? | |
| Well, I have tried to be a good gift giver, and I have surprised him several varying things that he didn't ask for, but which he loves. and I have surprised him several varying things that he Yes. | |
| So I think I'm kind of on the right track with... | |
| No, but I'm not talking about a present. | |
| I'm talking about a life thing. | |
| So what you wanted... | |
| Was for someone to stand up for you. | |
| Now, you probably never expressed that directly. | |
| I need you to acknowledge the abuse I happened and stand up for me and protect me, right? | |
| But that's what you needed, but it's not what you would have expressed if I understand it correctly. | |
| So he needs me to stand up to his parents. | |
| So, yeah, so he... | |
| Like, when you said, I want an open relationship, what you really wanted to say was, fight for me, damn it! | |
| Right? I've got to be worth fighting for. | |
| Don't share me. What's the matter with you? | |
| I should be your favorite sandwich. | |
| You hoard it. Joey doesn't share food. | |
| Right? Right. | |
| That's what you wanted, right? | |
| Now, you didn't express that. | |
| What you expressed was, I want to have sex with other guys, but what you actually meant was, for God's sakes... | |
| Have you not seen how teenage girls in the 60s reacted to the Beatles? | |
| Female sexuality is insane. | |
| It's great, but it's crazy. | |
| You know, there's no female singers where guys are screaming and ripping their bras off and throwing their underpants. | |
| You look at these teenage girls when the Beatles were touring or it happened with other bands like the Stones and stuff like that. | |
| I mean, you know, female desire, female sexuality, it's kind of mental. | |
| You know, I mean, from a male perspective, I mean, again, it's beautiful, it's wonderful, I've got no problems with it, but it's insane in a way, right? | |
| So you're saying, at the surface, you're saying, yeah, I just want to You know, I'm bored. | |
| I'm not getting enough attention. | |
| I need some variety, right? | |
| Like you can't crack the Kama Sutra and put on a space suit or something, right? | |
| But I need some variety. But that's not what you mean. | |
| What you mean is, for God's sakes, make me feel special, make me feel precious, make me feel so wanted that you'd kill any guy I looked at, so to speak, right? | |
| So he's got one of those. | |
| I guarantee you. He's got one of those somewhere which is kind of the opposite When you say, I want to sleep with other guys, what you're really saying is, I don't want to sleep with other guys, but this is how desperate I've become. | |
| Does that make sense? Yeah. | |
| So he's saying something to you, which is kind of the opposite. | |
| And you've got to figure out what that means. | |
| You've got to vault out of yourself. | |
| So that you have a need to satisfy in him that doesn't satisfy a need in yours. | |
| Because to regain trust, if you've been selfish, and I think you would agree with me that there's been some selfish stuff that's been going on. | |
| Actually, let me pause on that and not railroad you on that one. | |
| It sounds like some of the stuff that you've done on the surface level has seemed kind of selfish. | |
| Like, I want to sleep with other guys. | |
| I tricked him into or bullied him into having a kid. | |
| It's a little on the selfish side, right? | |
| Yeah. Okay, so if you have been behaving that way, how do you regain trust when you've been selfish with someone? | |
| Well, if you say, oh, I'm feeling really bad. | |
| I need you to make me feel better. | |
| Well, guess what? You understand it's still the same damn thing, right? | |
| Yeah. So you've got to figure out what he needs that he'd never ever say and give it to him. | |
| Now that, if you can do that, and I'm sure you can. | |
| I know you can. You're a smart woman, right? | |
| Listen to this show, top 1% of the 1%, in my humble opinion, right? | |
| So you've got to figure out what he needs that he's never said. | |
| And he probably has said the complete opposite. | |
| You've got to figure out what he needs that he's never said. | |
| And don't even ask him. | |
| Because if you ask him, he's going to say, no, no, no, no, I don't want to. | |
| Because if you say, oh, I want to go sleep with other guys, and your husband says, well, no, I think what you really want me to do is fight for you, that's kind of lame, right? | |
| You want him to actually fight for you, not to talk about his theoretical understanding of what you mean deep down, right? | |
| You want him to actually just beat his ape-like chest and fight for you, right? | |
| Don't talk about it. Just fight for me, right? | |
| So if you, and again, I'm not saying go wreck his life, obviously, right? | |
| And I don't know what the answer to that is. | |
| And if he wants to call in, I'm happy to talk to him. | |
| But this is how you regain trust, if you've been selfish, is figure out what the other person really needs. | |
| That they'd fight you on, that they'd never admit to, they'd count a signal to, but you know them well enough to know it's what they really need, and give it to them. | |
| Because that actually makes things more difficult for you in the short run, right? | |
| Yeah. Yeah, it makes a lot harder. | |
| And so if you're willing to make things harder for yourself in order to provide something that he needs, and you're willing to accept his disapproval, Right, so I don't know if confronting his parents about what they did to him, I don't know if that's the right thing to do or not. | |
| But if you were to do that, tell me what the fallout to that would be with regards to your husband and his family structure and everything. | |
| Well, I think he would be pissed at first, for sure. | |
| But as far as his family structure, I think everybody... | |
| I don't think anyone would really disown each other. | |
| They would just... | |
| You know, water under the bridge, and they would just kind of ignore it. | |
| Well, what if you didn't ignore it? | |
| Because breaking the cycle is tough, right? | |
| So breaking the cycle means telling the truth where you formerly had to lie, like, Mom, Dad, you abused me, or you hurt me, or you upset me, or you did this or that wrong. | |
| And listen, it happens. | |
| My daughter is going to say to me when she gets older, she is going to say to me, Dad, I didn't like what you did, but this, that, or the other. | |
| Because look, even if I was a perfect parent, the more perfect a parent I am, the tougher it's going to be with her in the world. | |
| You know, there's lots of people out there who aren't good parents. | |
| And she's got to find a way to exist in that universe, right, of hurt and broken and dangerous people, right? | |
| So she's going to be like, she could very easily come to me and say, Dad, you were too good a parent and I can't fit in. | |
| It's one of the reasons I'm trying to get peaceful parenting out there so my kid has someone to hang with, right? | |
| So, and she, you know, what am I going to say? | |
| Yeah, you know, maybe I was too good a parent and you can't fit. | |
| That's a real possibility. | |
| Maybe I should have been mean or maybe I should have been more distracted or dissociated or maybe I should have, you know, put you in daycare. | |
| Like, I don't know what I'm going to say to all of that, but she could have reasonable complaints regarding my quality as a parent. | |
| And there may be things that I'm doing that I'm not aware of that she's going to find later. | |
| She could even say, well, you gave me such a high standard of male interaction that I can't find a husband, right? | |
| I don't know, whatever it is, right? It could be any number of things that are going to be a problem for her down the road. | |
| And I got to listen to that stuff. | |
| She's got to tell me. I want to know, right? | |
| So, you just, you tell the truth. | |
| And that's one thing. So, to break the cycle, one, tell the truth, and two, don't stop telling the truth. | |
| Because, you know, telling the truth is one thing. | |
| But, to keep telling the truth is quite another. | |
| To tell the truth is one thing. | |
| Like, Jordan Peterson talked about the IQ stuff, and then he said, well, I'm not going to talk about it because people get killed for this stuff, right? | |
| I'll mention it here, but, blah, right? | |
| So to tell the truth is one thing. | |
| To keep telling the truth, as I did, that's quite another thing, right? | |
| And so if you bring things up, and again, I don't know what the right thing is. | |
| It could be any number of things, right? | |
| Maybe it's you in a catwoman outfit dripping with baby oil. | |
| I have no idea, right? But, sorry, I'm just, I'm back. | |
| Okay, so I don't know what it is, but it's something that has to be consistent. | |
| In other words, if you do confront his parents about their mistreatment of him, Then, of course, they're going to want to brush it under the rug, like nothing happened, but you can't let that happen. | |
| Because then you've kind of protected him and then failed to protect him, which is even worse, right? | |
| It's like putting a band-aid on, then ripping it off. | |
| Yeah. Letting them neglect it. | |
| Yes, because then you're saying that the truth is kind of like a submarine. | |
| It arises, you see it, you shoot it, it sinks and everyone dies. | |
| And it never comes back to the surface again, like it's like the Titanic, right? | |
| That's no good, right? | |
| There's no point telling the truth if you then allow it to get assassinated and buried, right? | |
| There's no point, right? | |
| You've just given people weapons then. | |
| Okay, distracto people on the chat. | |
| Okay. Those gifts are hypnotic. | |
| And I don't think that's Catwoman. | |
| In fact, I'm quite sure that's the exact polar opposite of Catwoman, although I think that guy has similar cleavage. | |
| Anyway, so that's, you know, you want to start healing the relationship, which I think is a noble goal, and I admire you for it and respect you for bringing that up. | |
| But that's the thing, man. | |
| And this is not just for you. It's for everyone, right? | |
| You know, if... People who'd wronged me in the past, it's not that complicated to figure out what I want. | |
| Listen to a couple of shows, you agree, you disagree, come tell me, apologize for thinking that what I did was frivolous or silly or unimportant or whatever. | |
| You can think it's dangerous, because to some people it certainly isn't why they react. | |
| But it's not that complicated to figure out If you've wronged me, you know how to make amends. | |
| And people have. You know, people have been like, hey, man, I trolled you really hard. | |
| I was going through a bad place. | |
| I was on drugs. I listened to your show. | |
| I got therapy. And I'm really sorry for what I did. | |
| And I'm like, hey, man, that's great. | |
| I'm thrilled. I'm thrilled that the show had the effect of getting you into therapy. | |
| And all is forgiven because it's genuine, you know, reform and contrition and all of that. | |
| And it's wonderful power to the... | |
| It's testament to the power of philosophy, right? | |
| Sorry, go ahead. I can't thank you enough for your show because it's turned my life and my family's life around. | |
| Well, I appreciate that. | |
| I appreciate that. And listen, I want you and your husband to be great parents and to have a wonderful relationship and so on. | |
| And I mean, this is going to take some mulling over, right? | |
| Trying to figure out what your husband needs. | |
| Maybe it's after you breastfeed, you go to work and he can stay home with his son for a year. | |
| Maybe you can give him that gift. | |
| I mean, there could be any number of things that, or maybe you secretly save up money or get money somehow, and then you present to him, hey, you get six months off from work or a year off from work, we can all hang out as a family together. | |
| Maybe that would be the greatest thing for him that he would never say. | |
| Because if you say to a guy, hey, do you feel like stop providing for your family when you've got a baby? | |
| He'd be like, hell no. I'm going to provide for my family. | |
| But if you find a way to facilitate that for him, Then that could be a great gift that he would never say he wanted, but which would be great for him. | |
| Again, I don't know what it is. | |
| It could be any number of things. | |
| But it's about thinking about what he needs that he wouldn't say that only you know because you know him so well. | |
| And providing it to him even though it might be difficult for you. | |
| I mean, it's kind of what I do in these conversations is I'm trying to provide what I think you need, even if it annoys you, and it certainly does, not necessarily you with this, but it does sometimes. | |
| You've heard this in conversations. | |
| But I'm trying to really get out of my own skin, get out of my own perspective, get out of my own head, vault over. | |
| On only the audio thread, like I'm doing this high wire across Niagara Dance Act, right, to get across to your perspective, try and figure out what's best for you, that's not only not relevant to me or irrelevant to me, but it's even, I'm perfectly willing to be irrelevant to my own Ideas or perspectives or arguments. | |
| You've heard me say this a million times where I say, this is my idea. | |
| It could be right. Tell me, correct me if I'm wrong. | |
| This is just my perspective. | |
| This is what I've seen. This is what I think. | |
| I don't know for sure, right? | |
| Because there's no point me railroading people with my theories or ideas or arguments or approaches. | |
| I've got to get out of my own skull prison and into your life and what's best for you. | |
| And that's why I do a lot of listening, ask a lot of questions before usually saying anything. | |
| And so modeling that, I think that's what you find helpful about the show and why you want to call in. | |
| Because I think, I think, you know, that I'm not going to try and run an agenda. | |
| I'm not going to try and get you to conform to what I think or what I want. | |
| I'm really striving with every fiber of my being to get out of my skull purse and get over to your side of the world and try and figure out what's best for you in a way, whether you like it or not. | |
| And that behavior, which I think works well in these shows, Is something that if you can achieve that, I mean, if you can give a gift to your husband that he would strongly disagree with you about, but then he's like, oh my God, you know, that was the greatest thing ever. | |
| Thank you. Then you're showing you know him. | |
| You're showing him that you can think outside your own perspective, that you can vault over and do what's best for him. | |
| And also what you're doing, my dear, is you are modeling for him. | |
| You are modeling for him. | |
| Productive assertiveness in the face of disagreement. | |
| And by God, does he need that, right? | |
| right? | |
| Is that fair to say? | |
| Yeah, 100%. | |
| Because your bullying of him, which I'm not making up, and again, correct me if you disagree, but that's what I think you used that word in the letter. | |
| So your bullying of him is mirrored by his, you see, his compliance is a form of bullying. | |
| Compliance, passive aggression, agreeing with people is a form of bullying. | |
| Do you know that your father couldn't punish you, was still angry at you, I'm sure, your father couldn't punish you As an adult, by beating your bare butt with a belt. | |
| So, what did he do? | |
| Well, he encouraged you to enter into a dangerous situation with a potential criminal. | |
| Agreement often is abuse. | |
| I need you to get this, right? | |
| And this is for everyone. Agreement very often is abuse. | |
| If you say to someone who's an alcoholic, I agree, I will go get you some booze. | |
| I mean, you hate that person because you're bringing them poison that they're addicted to. | |
| If someone says about their abusive parents, oh, I love them and they're wonderful, and you don't challenge them on it, that is a form of abuse in and of itself. | |
| Because you're withholding essential and honest and true information and feedback to them. | |
| So you understand you can bully him and he'll just bully you back by being over-compliant to the point where you're spinning in a void, right? | |
| You're frustrated. You're like, he'll get you back. | |
| You can't win. You can't win in intimate relationships by fighting this way. | |
| You can't win. All you can do is end up breaking the relationship, in which case usually you'll reproduce it somewhere else. | |
| But you can't win. Because if you come at someone hard and then they just comply, it's like that judo move, or most judo moves, where you use the momentum of your attacker to take him down. | |
| The people in your life who didn't... | |
| Like, if you've been aggressive or bullying towards people in your life, then they will... | |
| Not protect you when you get into a dangerous business deal. | |
| They're like, hey, man, this is what you wanted. | |
| You wanted this. You're a big, big, big shot. | |
| You're high and mighty. | |
| And you got this great job. | |
| And you couldn't say anything to you about it. | |
| And hey, good luck, right? | |
| That's just a way of saying, F you. | |
| I hope you fail. And so he's got his bullying side. | |
| And if he calls me up, I will call him out on this. | |
| He's got his bullying side. | |
| Which is, of course, you don't let your wife or your girlfriend go sleep with other guys. | |
| Or even explore? Of course you don't. | |
| Pride, protection, love, maintenance of the relationship, and at the very last but not least, how about you don't get exposed to a wide variety of scum-laced venereal diseases? | |
| How about you don't let the woman that you love go out to some skeevy guy Who wants to be in an open relationship. | |
| He's got like a porn stash and weird oil sticking out of his back pocket. | |
| And a phone with a speed dial, the Pornhub tech support. | |
| Jesus, you don't let your girlfriend go out and deal with this kind of scum what? | |
| Right? So he's angry at you, but he's going to let the other guys punish you. | |
| So there's bullying in compliance. | |
| Significant bullying in compliance. | |
| And so if he says... | |
| So earlier on, you said about your husband, you said he's a traditionally-minded person, right? | |
| And do you remember what I said? | |
| You just said you were confused, or that didn't make sense? | |
| Yeah, he's a traditionally-minded person who's okay with an open relationship, right? | |
| Now, I could have just let that go by, right? | |
| I could have just let you say, oh, he's a traditionally-minded person, right? | |
| Okay, well, I guess he's traditionally-minded, right? | |
| But I couldn't, genuinely couldn't square the circle of traditionally-minded plus open relationship, right? | |
| Also, traditionally-minded means the man has got to have some authority. | |
| It doesn't mean all authority, it just means some authority, right? | |
| But he doesn't even want that authority, right? | |
| I stopped you there. | |
| Now, you can tell me what you experienced at that, but did you experience me as being hostile or mean? | |
| No, just genuine. | |
| Yeah, I mean, like, hey, and, you know, when I say to people, tell me what I'm missing, hey, it could be. | |
| You know, hey, when I say traditional, I mean traditional based upon a hippie commune or some, oh gosh, um... | |
| Kibbutz somewhere where everybody trades body fluids, right? | |
| That's tradition to him. | |
| But I wasn't going to comply with something that didn't make sense to me or that I thought was wrong in terms of how you characterized him or at least was incomplete. | |
| But it's not because I'm mean. | |
| It would be mean for me. | |
| To not bring you my honest thoughts and experiences in the conversation. | |
| Because then you're just talking in a void without another person there who can, you know, it would be, you know, if I screamed, oh, bullshit, you told me this and now you're telling me this. | |
| Get your story straight, honey. Like, that would be mean, right? | |
| That would be, because that's not curious. | |
| That's not tell me more, right? Which is kind of the essence of honest and RTR communications, right? | |
| So... His compliance. | |
| See, if you look at him as just as a victim, I've just bullied him, right? | |
| Well, then you're going to feel bad and you're going to feel even more in power and even more in control. | |
| Trust me, he's got his power and his power is compliance. | |
| His power is compliance. | |
| He's got a bullying side too. | |
| But his bullying side is, yeah, hey, you want to go and see what other guys are out there? | |
| Yeah, be my guest. Oh, you're so high and mighty with this big new job? | |
| Okay. Yeah, you go ahead. | |
| You go ahead and see how this works out. | |
| I'm not going to look out for your back. | |
| I'm not going to look this guy up. | |
| One bit. You know, we're going to watch 19 seasons of The Crown before I'll type this guy's name into a duck-duck-go search for 30 seconds, right? | |
| He's got his bullying side. | |
| You're both kind of down in the weeds. | |
| But you're not the bully and he's not the victim. | |
| Please understand that. He was victimized as a child. | |
| But he has failed to protect you. | |
| And you have failed to protect him. | |
| But if you look at him, like the way your relationship is going to end, in my opinion, is if you're like, well, I'm the big, tough, mean woman, and he's the helpless, nice guy who doesn't say boo to a mouse and wouldn't hurt a fly. | |
| Bullshit! Through his inaction, through his inattention, you have been in significant danger with these skeevy guys, with this boss. | |
| You could have ended up in prison, right? | |
| So his compliance, his... | |
| His lack of honesty, his dishonesty. | |
| Of course your husband had some doubts about the guy you were working for. | |
| He's not an idiot. Of course your father did. | |
| But they're mad at you. Now why are they mad at you? | |
| Well, your dad's mad at you because of guilt and your husband's mad at you because he feels bullied. | |
| I don't know what it is. But he's there by choice. | |
| And he chose to withhold essential information from you. | |
| That his withholding could have got you into serious, serious legal trouble, criminal trouble, violent trouble. | |
| You could have gone with some guy who was really charismatic who turned out to be an axe murderer because he's like some woman who's got no boundaries because she's in an open relationship. | |
| She's got no man to protect her. | |
| She's not going to be missed. Who knows, right? | |
| So he's got his bullying. | |
| Don't look at the quiet, conforming people or the people who just agree and don't want to say boo to them. | |
| They're angry people and they're bullying too. | |
| They're bullying by withholding essential facts and information to keep you safe. | |
| Because if you look, oh, I'm the big, tough, mean, bitchy woman... | |
| And my husband, the father of my child, or children-to-be in the future, he is... | |
| So I just got a message here. | |
| He's just here as a helpless, frail little victim. | |
| No, that's not going to work. | |
| He's got his own power, and his own power is silence. | |
| His own power is withholding. | |
| I'll give you an example, right? | |
| So somebody's walking down a dock, right? | |
| It's nighttime in cottage country, Muskoka or something, Martha's Vineyard or whatever, right? | |
| So they're walking down a dock, and there's a little light at the end of the dock, and they want to go to the end of the dock. | |
| It's nighttime. It's dark. | |
| There's a little light at the end of the dock. | |
| They just want to go dangle their feet in the water, have a Baileys or something like that, right? | |
| Now, you know that there's a big hole in the middle of the dock. | |
| It's got splinters, it's broken, it's dangerous. | |
| Somebody went through there earlier today, right? | |
| And you say nothing to this person. | |
| Or this person says, or you start to say something and this person says, I don't want to hear from you. | |
| You bothered me earlier today. | |
| And you're like, okay, you can go walk down the dock. | |
| Go walk down the dock. | |
| I'm not going to say a thing, right? | |
| You understand that that's being very aggressive. | |
| That's being bullying. | |
| It's just you're letting the dock do the work for you. | |
| Does that make sense? I know you now have a loud baby, right? | |
| So I hope... Sorry, I don't mean to startle your baby. | |
| Go to sleep, go to sleep. | |
| So if you've got the baby, obviously parenting, first job. | |
| So yeah, just don't look at him as a victim. | |
| Don't look at him as passive. I'm not a victim. | |
| I'm not a victim from anything that happened this year. | |
| Go into that story another time. | |
| But he's got his own power. | |
| He's got his own bullying. | |
| And if you don't recognize that, you'll simply look at him as a victim. | |
| And for a woman to look at a man as a victim will kill the relationship because of hypergamy. | |
| And you understand all of this. You've got to look up to him in some way. | |
| And at least from this, you can say, yeah, he's been fighting his own fight. | |
| fight he's been fighting his own fight just through silence and compliance all right so i listen i don't want to keep startling your baby and i'm sure it's a little uh disconcerting and If you've got breastfeeding, I don't want to get free domain hormones and cortisol into your baby's mouth. | |
| So I'll close it off here. | |
| Look, I want to say, great call. | |
| I'm so sorry about what happened to you as a child. | |
| I'm incredibly sorry as well about what happened to your husband as a child. | |
| And I wish you both the very best. | |
| I wish you both the very best. | |
| You've come a long way. You've got a baby. | |
| You're together still after 10 years. | |
| I'm sure you can find a way forward. | |
| That will be a real breakthrough. If he wants to call in, he's absolutely welcome to call in. | |
| I'm happy to have a conversation with him. | |
| And I wish you both the very best. | |
| And I really do want to thank you for calling in and bringing this stuff to the surface because it is really important. | |
| For people not to feel alone in these kinds of issues. | |
| And I thank everyone so much for the opportunity for these kinds of conversations. | |
| It's a real blessing. | |
| And I do believe a godsend to the world. | |
| So freedomain.com forward slash donate to help out the show. | |
| Things are, of course, a little scant these days for reasons I'm sure you're very well aware. | |
| So if you could help out, I'd really, really appreciate it. | |
| Freedomain.com forward slash donate. | |
| Have a great evening, everyone. | |
| Lots of love from up here in Canada. | |
| 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. | |
| And also, equally importantly, go to freedomain.com forward slash donate. | |
| To help out the show, to give me the resources that I need to bring more and better philosophy to an increasingly desperate world. | |
| So thank you so much for your support, my friends. |
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