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June 19, 2021 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
02:54:14
REJECTED BY YOUR FATHER? IMPOSSIBLE! Freedomain Call In
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Good evening, everybody.
Hope you're doing well. This is Stefan Molyneux from Freedomain.
And how's your evening going?
How is your life in lockdown going?
How is your lock-home syndrome going?
Hopefully philosophy is helping you a little bit, and this show helped you to prepare just a little bit.
And, well, I know we've got a two-hour hard limit.
We're going through a particular...
App at the moment. So we'll get to the listener in a sec, but boy, oh boy.
The secret sex life of women and the writer who exposed it.
Says this woman, her name is Lisa Taddeo.
And she wrote a book in 2019 called Three Women.
It interrogated female desire.
Female desire.
And yeah, she's a mess, right?
She's a mess, this woman, right?
She says, my entire 20s were just swallowed whole by black death.
Grief.
She was raised pretty much an only child.
She's got a 14-year-old older brother.
And she said it was easier to just suffer alone.
Quote, stay in hotels, order room service, just sit, take an Ambien, pass out.
Though she liked friends to be close by, since as a serious hypochondriac, she constantly fears dying.
Eventually, with the proceeds from her parents' house, her parents died young.
She moved to Manhattan, where, quote, I was just so massively, wildly depressed, I would walk the whole city up and down every block for hours.
It was a very dark, dark, painful time.
Dating was hopeless, and she craved someone, quote, who had great parents and just brought me into this family construct.
I had lost her place. Everything?
Not a fun proposition for guys her age.
Older men sniffed out and exploited her neediness and lack of a father.
I got really angry.
I would wonder why complete assholes were walking around.
Me and my dad, who was legitimately a good guy, was dead.
Why did my life have to get effed up in this way?
So she mooted a book exploring the secret desires of women.
She planned to include many stories.
But then it coalesced into a deeper project where she'd embed herself in a few women's lives, share their thoughts, diaries, enter their communities, walk in their shoes.
For eight years she drove back and forth across America looking for suitable candidates.
Sometimes a woman who'd opened her heart would abruptly drop out, wasting months of work.
How did she keep going?
Eventually, she narrowed it down to three women who were willing to tell me the truth without worrying about ego.
In other words, without boundaries, without any sense of pride or privacy or anything like that.
So anyway, I've not read this book.
Apparently, it was all the talk among women two years ago, last year.
But here we go. What kind of women do you think this nutjob ended up telling the stories of?
I mean, what kind of women are going to want to talk to kind of a stranger about their most intimate, personal, sexual lives?
Well, unstable women.
So what have we got here?
These three women. There's Maggie, who'd had a teenage relationship with a teacher.
Lena, married to a man who won't even kiss her now in a sizzling affair with an old boyfriend.
And Sloane, a beautiful restaurateur whose husband wants to watch her having sex with other people.
Oh my gosh.
What are you supposed to do?
Anyway, the three women hung in there.
Ted Ayo's book became an extraordinary piece of writing.
For instance, when Lena met her lover for sex in a forest clearing, Tadeo followed so she could accurately describe the view, the type of trees.
So, in other words, Lena, this is the woman whose husband won't kiss her?
Let's see here. I can't remember which one of these messes.
Married to a man who won't kiss her now and is listening to an affair with an old boyfriend.
So she opened up to this writer, this Tadeo, and basically said, yeah, I'm going to go and meet my old boyfriend in the woods for sex.
So here's where we're going to be.
Here's when we're going to be. Be sure you follow us and watch.
Oh my God.
Oh my God.
And, yeah, just horrifying stuff.
This is the kind of people, this is the kind of art, this is the kind of writing, this is the kind of, quote, literature that infests our society at the moment.
Adjust. Just horrifying.
So anyway, I just want to sort of point that out, that ladies, please try and stay away from this kind of stuff.
Gentlemen, it may not be a bad idea to ask a potential girlfriend if she's read this book and what she thinks.
Yeah, yeah, that's totally normal.
It's totally normal to have an affair and invite a writer to come to the woods and watch you have sex.
My God, where are we as a culture?
Well, It's Titanic with half an inch above the waterline and about to snap in two.
Just wanted to mention that kind of stuff is just floating around the culture like mosquitoes around the corpse of what used to be.
All right, so to get to the caller this evening, let's just see here.
Jimmy James O. Von Bobbyhead, are you with me, brother?
All right, so tonight our caller writes...
My name is Louis. I'm 24 years old, and for my whole adult life, I've had cycles of anxiety which have manifested in relationship anxiety, work anxiety, insomnia, and various phantom or fake health issues for which there is no physical evidence.
Most of the time, the anxiety is mild and manageable, and I'm generally a happy, positive person who enjoys his life.
I have a wonderful girlfriend whom I've been seeing for three months, And we have long-term plans for marriage and having a family.
My work pays pretty well and has decent future prospects.
And overall, I'm happy with my life.
However, every so often, I'll have a wave of major anxiety, which will make everyday life very difficult.
And all I'll really be able to manage is the basics of going to work, exercising, etc.
This will then go away again for months or even years and I'll feel fine before returning in another form for weeks or months then once again going away.
I'm going through one of these ways right now.
In the past, I've always considered calling in but haven't, maybe because I'm scared on some level of what the conversation could uncover.
Instead, I just tried to manage the symptoms until they went away.
However, I've realized now this is holding my life back.
Whenever I think of the big plans for my life, like having kids, owning a business, or getting a higher paying job, I know in the back of my mind that another wave of anxiety could come sooner or later and ruin my plans.
I also don't think it's fair to my girlfriend or future kids to not deal with this issue, for obvious reasons.
Well, thank you.
That's very kind. I appreciate those words.
Is there anything that you want?
I'm sure there is, like, stuff that you wanted to add to what you wrote.
Yeah, it's basically just seems like this issue sort of is holding my life back in a way because...
But there's lots of things that I want to do, like certifications that I want to get, more studying and that sort of thing.
But it's just difficult when I'll have one of these waves of anxiety and it interferes with...
It kind of interferes with everything, you know, like it makes it hard to, you know, to plan stuff out and do stuff and commit to stuff like that.
So, yeah, I mean, in the last one it was, you know, I had quite bad insomnia and so, you know, that just kind of made everything pretty difficult.
Right, right. I'm just going to ask one tiny favor.
We all have our verbal tics.
Do you know what your one is?
The phrase that you overuse the most?
What's that?
You know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know.
I'm just going to ask you to tap back on that just a little bit, and I will work on my and-er and write-write.
So those are my verbal tics.
Now you said that, so it doesn't...
Like the anxiety, you said, is sometimes just not really there other than maybe like a low-grade end-of-civilization anxiety that I guess most of us are carrying.
But you're saying that the deep pit, it bypasses you for years.
Is that right sometimes? Yeah, so like months or years, I can pretty much be fine.
I can, you know, feel like I can kind of do anything and, you know...
I can, you know...
No, no.
You've got to watch those. I need you to focus, man.
I need you to focus on those.
I had like three or four right after I asked you to not.
So I'm sorry. I hate to do it, but I just got to remind you because I can't edit all of those out and it will drive the audience completely mad as it drives me a little batty too.
Because with the reason that you're throwing in the verbal tics, I mean, obviously you're nervous.
This is not your job. It's mine.
So I get all of that.
But yeah, just try and focus back on them and all of that.
So... Yeah, so it does go away for months or years and I can do pretty much anything.
And then for seemingly no reason, it'll just come back and, you know, kind of interferes with everything.
Right. Well, it's the seemingly no reason, right?
So do you remember the longest time that it was away, the anxiety?
Sure. It has been quite a while since the last time, so it's been about a good year or so.
Okay. And, I mean, obviously you've thought about this and you haven't noticed any particular patterns as to when it comes or goes?
Not really. No, not really.
I haven't noticed any particular patterns.
It's just seemingly, seemingly random.
Everything can be going perfectly fine, and that's what makes it quite annoying and quite frustrating, is that it seems like, you know, everything will be going great, and I'll have, you know, lots of, you know, future plans and everything, and then I'll just get hit with it, and it kind of, you know, puts everything on hold, kind of.
And how are you feeling at the moment?
You sound quite distant from the conversation emotionally.
Are you feeling really wound up and tense, or how is it going for you?
Well, I'm just a bit nervous at the moment because I haven't called into anything like this before.
Yeah, but you've listened to a bunch of these, right?
Like, you know how this rolls, right?
Yeah, yeah. Okay, so let's talk about the fear that you have of this conversation because if you're this guarded and distant, it's going to be really tough to have a conversation about depth and you're going to end up feeling cheated and frustrated that it didn't go the way that you wanted it to go.
And again, it's not a criticism at all.
I'm just sort of pointing it out. Something that we need, you know, got to open the garage door before we back out, right?
So what's your worst case scenario for this conversation?
Like what is just going to be, oh man, was that ever a mistake to call in?
What does that look like for you?
Okay, let me think.
Because usually it's not succeeding at all or succeeding way too well, where it's like, oh, I have the answer to my anxiety, but the answer is going to cause even more anxiety and be even more of a problem.
Yeah, well, in terms of the anxiety, I guess it sort of started when I was about 17, and the root cause of it pretty much has been a fear of Okay,
dude, you are killing me with this conversational style of, well, you know, but it's, you know, I'm really, again, I hate to nag you, but if we're going to have this convo, you got to lean into it, man.
You got to just grab that mic with both hands and just lean into it.
Because if you're this distant from, you know, we simply can't have the convo, right?
Because it's just, you're committed to not having the convo.
So just understand, the part of you that doesn't want to have the convo is kind of strangling you in the conversation, if that makes sense.
So just be aware of that and put that to one side and just dive in.
Okay, okay. So when I was growing up, we had a lot of sort of financial instability and sort of like we had a lot of up and down financial instability and When I started working when I was 17,
I did have a lot of anxiety that if my anxiety itself prevented me from being able to work, I could end up homeless or something like that.
It was just the fear of And that was just a fear of that sort of… Okay, sorry to interrupt, but that seems a bit circular.
You said your anxiety came when you were 17 because of financial instability, but then you said that when you were 17 and started working, it was the fear that your anxiety would undo your work progress?
Yeah, yeah. The fear that anxiety… Go ahead.
Yeah, so it was the fear that anxiety would stop me from being able to function, sort of, and stop me from being able to work.
No, no, that's circular, though. Sorry to interrupt.
That's circular, which means there's something I'm just missing here in this, right?
Because if you say, well, my anxiety started because I was anxious about something, that's like a tautological, right?
Because if you say, well, I'm worried about not succeeding at my job, okay, but then you're worried about not succeeding at your job.
But if you're worried that your anxiety is going to cause you to stop succeeding at your job and your anxiety is that your anxiety might cause you to stop, then it's self-referential, if that makes sense.
And so the anxiety had to be about something else and then you were afraid that that something else was going to cause enough anxiety to cause you to fail at your job, if that makes sense.
Well, yeah, but that's the only, like, that's the only thing, like, the anxiety is, like, the only thing that would stop me from being able to work and support myself, right?
So... Okay, but you had to have, so what's your anxiety that you were just going to fail at your job?
Yeah. Okay, so that's different from the anxiety being that your anxiety will cause you to fail at the job.
Okay, okay. Okay, I just needed to, that's sort of inception anxiety, if that's sort of Mobius strip, self-referential, snake-eating-its-own-tail anxiety.
Okay, so you were anxious, and how long in your family had you had financial instability before?
Well, it had been pretty much on and off for my whole life.
So my dad made Good money, but they weren't good at managing the money, and so there'd be periods of having plenty of money, then there'd be periods of not having any money and being quite Quite stressful and having a lot of, you know, debt and all that sort of thing.
And so that was kind of quite stressful.
Although, you know, my parents, they always sort of managed to sort of just sort of pull through.
It was quite stressful.
And so then when I, you know, So do you have a thesis?
I'm just going to start interrupting you every time you say you know now.
I'm afraid I'm just going to have to train you out of it.
So do you have a thesis as to why your parents were in and out of the money?
Like that's an old song.
I'm going to love you like nobody's love you.
Come rain or come shine. And there's a line in the song where they say, days may be cloudy or sunny.
We're in or we're out of the money.
Just like the tide comes in, tide goes out, and money comes and goes.
Do you have any theories as to why your parents were so bad with money?
Because, you know, money's coming in.
You should save some, right? You should invest some.
You should hang on to it so that, you know, you don't end up with the feast or famine thing.
Yeah, so he made good money and basically it wasn't like a regular paycheck, like you get paid every fortnight or every month.
It was more that he would have contracts and he would get paid maybe a huge chunk of money and then not get anything for six months, kind of like that.
So he would have a lot of money, but he wouldn't just save it No, no, I get that.
I get that. But that doesn't have anything to do as to why you'd be out of money.
Because if he knows it's feast or famine, then he's going to put money aside and spend wisely and save and hang on to his money and all that.
So it has to be something else that would cause them to be so bad with hanging on to cash.
Yeah. I'm not 100% sure.
Do you want to know what it was?
Yes, I do. Okay, so a lot of people are very anxious around success.
This is one of the reasons why so few people succeed.
If people start to do well, they start to make money, and they get anxious about doing well.
In other words, if they break through the ceiling of their own parents' success, if they do a lot better than their parents, their family, their extended family, the kids they grew up with, whoever, right, the social circle they started in, Then what happens is they start to get this high altitude sickness, right? I mean, basically we are our own oxygen.
Like if we start to do well, we start to become successful.
Yes. Then we should be able to carry our own oxygen up the mountain, so to speak.
It'd be fine. But for a lot of people, they get this high altitude sickness.
They get, oh man, I can't breathe up here.
I can't breathe. It's too stressful.
And then what happens is they feel they need to descend back down to base camp.
So they can get their oxygen.
And you see this with people who quit drinking.
They get anxious because they're doing much better than their alcoholic friends.
And then they're like, oh, I've got to have another drink.
Just one. And then they just fall off the wagon.
They tumble right back down.
So making your home in high altitude is pretty tough.
There's one reason why famous actors and musicians, they have all these agents and all these people around them who coach them through the problems of doing well.
I mean, look at Justin Bieber, look at Billie Eilish and all that sort of stuff.
All a big mess, right? I mean, Billie Eilish wore all this baggy clothing for a long time.
Now she's 19 and she's just got, you know, tits out brigade going on like the prow of a battleship coming off a bed, right?
And so to survive success is very hard because we're not really designed to vastly outstrip our origins because for most of human history, you were either born into wealth and power, like you were a king or a prince or a viscount or something.
Or what happened was you did well, educationally speaking, like you'd become a monk or a priest, but then you took a vow of poverty, so you never became that wealthy.
And so we're not designed to break out of our origin story.
Now we've got a free market, at least some of it, a meritocracy, at least some of it.
And so now the possibility exists to break out of our origin story.
But it's tough.
A lot of people climb up, get dizzy, and then just jump down again.
They do well, and then they start to feel, oh, man, I'm doing well.
That's bad, man.
I mean, I can't be proud of it to my friends because they'll get resentful.
I can't really talk about it with my family.
So they end up sealed off by their own success.
And then what happens is they're like, okay, well, if I just get rid of all of this stuff, it's all unconscious, right?
I get rid of all of this stuff, then I can just go back to where I started and still have good topics of conversation, which is why the people who win the lottery often become very lonely and blow the money, and it's just their way of going back to where they started and feel like they still have things in common with a lot of the losers that they began life around.
So yeah, you said that makes sense, but go ahead.
I'd just like to add as well that the anxiety seems to run mostly on my dad's side as well.
So my dad was prone to anxiety and also his dad as well.
So they didn't cope with it too well, but they also had that anxiety that I sort of see in myself as well.
So, yeah, prone to anxiety, I just want to make sure you don't think that that's some sort of baseline thing or genetic thing or something like that, because I don't think that's… Well, that's what I don't know, and that's what I was calling in.
Well, did your father come from a poor background?
Not really. It was sort of a middle class background.
His dad, I don't know the details about it, but his dad had some kind of mental breakdown and he ended up in a mental hospital and they gave him electroshock therapy and all that stuff that they did back then.
And yeah, he was never the same after that.
Well, no, that stuff literally fries your brain, right?
Oh yeah, it's pretty...
And you don't know what the history was with all...
I'm not very close with my dad, so I don't really know the deep history there.
Are you close to your dad?
No, not really.
And what's the story with that?
Well... Yeah.
it was my choice or anything but he was never he was always quite absent quite distant right so it's your dad who's kind of running the beginning part of our conversation where you're kind of guarded and distant yeah maybe no no without a doubt i mean i'm like the You're very good at this.
And again, I don't mean this in any critical way.
It's just an observation, right?
So if you're a young man, right?
And although I know it feels odd to me, but of course I know there are a lot of people out there who look at me as kind of a father figure.
So if I'm sort of...
Oh yeah, I actually do as well.
Right, right. Well, I appreciate that and I'll try to live up to that as best I can.
But it means that if you've got a history of a distant dad...
Then the conversation with your web dad or internet dad or whatever is going to have that aspect of it to it, right?
Which is just like guarded and all of that.
Yep. And do you know why your dad decided to forego the pleasure of your intimate company for his life?
Well, he...
Honestly, I don't even know if he has the capability because he doesn't have really close personal relationships with anyone, sort of.
He spreads himself thin, right?
So he's really good at socialising on the outside with people at parties and dinners and...
Oh, King of the Empty Headed Small Talk stuff and jokes and entertaining people and good stories but no personal revelations.
Yeah, good times and stuff like that.
Is he in sales? Really?
What? Is he in sales or marketing?
No. Okay, just wondering.
Yeah. No, but he's good with that sort of stuff, but he doesn't have any really close personal relationships, right?
So it's the same with the other members of my family.
None of them were ever close to him either.
So it's not just me. All right.
I'm so sorry. I think you're touching your microphone or something.
I'm getting this odd crackle from time to time.
So just, you know, hands off the mic, man, please.
Okay. So what's the story with your mom?
They were still together. Is that right?
No. Oh, when did they divorce?
When I was 17.
Dude, why are you taking me on this kind of ride, man?
Why are you doing this to me? Do you know what kind of ride I'm talking about here?
Yeah, it started when?
When I was 17, I got strangely anxious about my job performance.
Oh, well, that was the year that my parents separated too, but come on, man.
What are you running me around the garden here for?
Sorry. No, no, I'm not mad.
I'm just like, I'm genuinely curious.
Like, what are you doing?
Remember I said that there's something else that had to cause the anxiety?
You were just self-referential.
There had to be something else, right?
Yeah. Right.
Now, did you think at the time that I asked that a couple of minutes ago, did you think, huh, well, I guess I'd better be honest with Steph about the divorce thing, or did it not even cross your mind?
It didn't actually cross my mind.
Really? But you've listened to a bunch of call-in shows, right?
The year that your parents get divorced, you get anxious and you're like, doesn't even cross your mind?
Is that right? Yeah. Yeah, it actually didn't really cross my mind.
Again, I know I sound naggy, and I'm not trying to be.
I'm just trying to sort of gauge where we're coming from here, right?
So how long have their marriage been bad, and who initiated the divorce, and what happened?
Yeah, so my mum initiated the divorce.
My dad seemed like he would be fine to just continue along with birth.
Things how they were forever.
But yeah, at the time where they eventually broke up or she eventually said that she was leaving him, there wasn't really any relationship left anyway.
So it's kind of like gradually over time just, you know, Yeah, so there wasn't really any relationship left at that point anyway, and it wasn't really a surprise that they were going to be breaking up.
And yeah, that's what happened.
So sorry, I just want to make sure I understand.
So there was just this general drift apart, like they just had less and less conversation, less and less time together, that kind of thing?
Pretty much, pretty much.
So they would get closer again gradually over time.
And then they would have a fight, like my dad would snap over something small and my mum would sort of blow back and they'd have a big fight and then my dad just wouldn't talk to anyone for A while, and then they would gradually, gradually sort of start talking and get closer together again, and then it would happen again.
Oh, so it's the same shit as the finances, right?
Yeah. Right. Finances get better, and then they crater, and then they get better, and then they crater.
And it's the same thing with the closeness, right?
I mean, things would get better, then he'd...
And the same thing about anxiety, I guess, right?
Well, yeah. I'm going to be really skeptical about your self-pronouncements about your anxiety at the moment, if that makes sense, just because I did happen to accidentally come across the cause of it when you were 17.
So let's hold off on your insights about your anxiety, if you don't mind, and we'll get there.
But I'm going to have to clearly do a bit of a wider sweep and scan of your history to get the circumstances.
Yeah, sure. Do you have siblings?
Yes. Yes.
Okay, okay. And where are you in the birth order?
I'm the oldest, so I have one sister that's younger.
Okay, I got it. Now, was your father somebody who was tense a lot and you didn't know when he would, and you kind of got the sense like, okay, I'm walking across a minefield, it could go off? Or was he the kind of guy who was Relaxed, but then would slowly get tense over time and then blow up?
Or was he relaxed, but then it would blow up out of nowhere?
Or what was the level of his...
It could just be out of nowhere, yeah.
Right, okay. So he was generally kind of relaxed and gregarious, and it sounds like good conversationalists, and then boom, you say out of nowhere, then he'd just blow up about something?
Oh yeah, he could just blow up about just some little thing.
Can you remember an example?
I mean, how little are we talking?
Let me think.
um I remember one time, and this didn't end up being a big fight or anything, but it still sort of stuck with me.
We were on a boat and I asked him, we were talking and I asked him, Oh, is that the whatever island over there?
So I was pointed to an island over there and he just snapped at me like, oh, what do you think?
Like it was just like really vicious and I was just like really kind of humiliating, I guess.
Oh, so do you experience anything similar if I'm kind of nagging you a little bit over the course of this conversation?
Does it seem similar or not the same?
Not so much because I know that you're You're trying to help and you're trying to get to the cause of it and sort of dig the truth out.
So I understand that.
Yeah, and I'm not critical.
I just want to make sure we connect over the course of this conversation.
Yeah, that's fine.
It's a little bit like trying to get a squirrel to feed out of your hand, but we'll get there.
We will absolutely get there.
I promise you. Just trust me in the process and we'll get there.
Okay. Sorry, is there something else that you wanted to mention at the moment?
I've got more questions, but I don't want to interrupt.
Yeah, sorry, so it could just be some things like that that would happen and, you know, so that, yeah, was kind of humiliating.
It would cause a fight with my mum if she was around because then she'd, you know, say to him, like, oh, you can't talk to him like that, da-da-da, and then he would start yelling at her and they would just have a fight.
Oh, so yelling at her, so he would escalate pretty hard, right?
Well, they would end up, I remember this a whole bunch of times when I was little, and they would end up yelling at each other, and then my dad would eventually just leave.
He would storm out and go and stay the night in a motel or something, and come back the next day and just not talk to anyone for a while.
For a while. No, a while.
So that's very vague. What do you mean a while?
Like, I don't know, like a couple days or something and then they would, you know, just talk about the essential stuff they needed to talk about, but there was no, like, warmness or anything.
And then over the coming weeks they would gradually sort of, you know, get closer again where, you know, they would sort of joke around and sort of be a bit more...
Warm towards each other, I guess.
And then, yeah, then it was just...
And was there any kind of rhythm to this stuff?
Are we talking a three-month cycle, six months, one month, one week, one year?
Like, as far as, like, explosions and then...
There was good parts and good cycles and bad cycles.
Yes, I know. That's why I'm calling it a cycle.
I'm just curious what the rhythm was here.
Yeah, I'd say probably months, yeah.
Like three months? Probably a month.
Oh, one month? Something like that would...
I was pretty young, so I don't know exactly, but probably...
Yeah, probably months, I'd say.
So, like, a few months. And then it would...
Things would get better, and then, you know, you just snap all over some stupid little...
Do you know if your dad had any kind of secret life?
Because that kind of blow-up to me often is associated with...
Obviously not perfectly, but it's often associated with, like, a secret life, like...
An affair or gambling debts or like I said this in a show I published on Locals the other day that I had a friend who he got fired from his job because he was working on a book over lunch and found it easier to write while he was...
Drinking and he basically would get drunk and show up to work in the afternoon.
He ended up getting fired. He didn't tell his wife and he just like pretend to go to work and then just come back home for the day.
But he took money out of their retirement plan to pretend he had a paycheck.
They had separate accounts or whatever.
And so he is pretty tense during that whole time because he had this whole secret life thing going on.
And I'm just, I don't know, did you ever get any indication of that from your dad?
He had a lot of, he did have a lot of debt.
And he ended up having a lot of tax debt because as a self-employed person, you have to pay your own taxes at tax time.
You don't just get it withheld from your paycheck.
So what ended up happening is he would be...
He would go way in debt to the internal revenue department.
Oh, yeah. So he did the entrepreneur thing where it's like, wow, look at all the money I have.
I've got so much money.
And then the tax bill comes and it's like, oh, dear.
Spend all the money and then...
Yeah, yeah, go ahead. Yeah. But one time, it's all resolved now.
There's nothing outstanding now.
But he did almost go to prison one time because...
IRD got to the point where they basically said, okay, you either have to pay us like 20 grand right now, or we're sending you to prison.
Because he delayed it so much.
Do you not have...
I mean, this may be a technical question.
You don't have to answer anything, but I always say to entrepreneurs, man, just get a good accountant and make sure that you pay your taxes.
Yeah, he didn't have an accountant.
But this is the thing that was so stupid is that all of the fines and all of the stuff that he paid, like tax fines and stuff like that, probably wasn't that much different to what...
He could have written off if he actually had a proper accountant and he could have written off all of his business expenses and got tax refunds for this and that.
Oh, yeah. Listen, you get an accountant and a good accountant because you don't want to be doing your own taxes, especially if you're incorporated or you're an entrepreneur with this kind of stuff and LLC or something.
It's ridiculously complicated.
You don't know what right or wrong.
And the rules are always changing.
And every time you're doing your taxes, you're not doing your business.
So, of course, you outsource it to someone else.
In the same way, it's like you don't figure out how to scrape your own gums with that weird scratch that they have at the dentist.
You go to a dentist or a dental hygienist and have them do it for you, right?
So, yeah, okay. That's just a general bit of advice out there.
Yeah, I'm just employed normally, and I go to a tax agent just, you know, because they know everything.
And if anything goes wrong, then you can just point to them, right?
Right. I mean, way back in the day, I used to be able to get programs and do it, and I used to do my taxes back in the 80s and 90s that way.
But yeah, the moment things got complicated, especially if you're deducting stuff and you get a good accountant who knows what he's doing.
Okay. So why do you think your dad didn't – I mean, this must have been suggested by your mom or you or someone, right?
So why do you think your dad didn't get an accountant?
Right. I'm not too sure.
I don't know if there's anything else.
There could be stuff that even I don't know about, or even maybe my mum might not know about to this day.
But maybe there was other stuff that I didn't know about, but he was kind of a bit secretive.
In that way, he didn't want anyone to know about his finances, and even he didn't want people to know to be able to reach him at any time.
He always refused to just carry a mobile phone or whatever.
He would refuse to have one, or when he did have one, he'd always have it turned off.
But that's pretty common with people who don't pay their bills, though.
I remember way back in the day.
Can I just ask you for a quick favor in this convo?
I hate to be a nag.
There's something that's just driving me crazy.
I keep talking and then you keep talking over me.
Sorry. Okay. And I know I do that sometimes as well, but it seems like just about every time I open my mouth, you start talking right in the middle of my sentence.
And I don't know if you have something that you need to add, and it's really just throwing me off as far as that goes.
So if you could just wait till I'm finished by thought and then say stuff.
But, you know, if I started saying stuff, whenever you started saying stuff, we just couldn't have a confo.
Like, if you could hold off on that, I'd appreciate it.
Yeah, like, so back in the day, way back in the day, I used to sometimes be like a movie extra.
Like, it's a pretty decent way to make some money, and it was kind of fun in a way.
And I met a guy.
And we really hit it off as friends, and we were friends for a little while, and he was really in debt.
And he had this whole system, which is like you had to call, let it ring twice, call it, let it ring once, then call again, and he'd pick up, just so he didn't end up picking up from the people who were trying to get his money.
So yeah, if you've ever been around people who are heavily in debt, they usually have this whole moat system of, you know, this may have been why he was...
And this would be probably, maybe it was just the tax authorities, but...
I would imagine if he was taking money to pay the tax authorities there were other bills that he wasn't paying so he was probably pretty stressed about This debt stuff.
And as you say, it sounds a little bit unnecessary because he was making pretty good money and if he just managed it properly or got an accountant or planned in a basic manner or turned it all over to his wife, because oftentimes if you've got a wife who's good with money, she's not a bad person to hand your money over to and you just focus on the business side.
But did your mom take any involvement in his business that you know of?
Not really. She did help him with some sort of Filing and management and paperwork and stuff from time to time, but generally not.
She didn't have to work when I was younger, and so she was sort of the primary caregiver, and she stayed home and raised me and my sister, and she sort of started working part-time when we were a bit older.
She wasn't really too involved with the business side of it.
What was the industry or business sector that he was in?
It was law. Now, was he himself a lawyer?
He's not a lawyer himself.
However, he's not a lawyer himself.
He doesn't have a law degree or anything like that.
So he can't practice law himself, but he works closely with a high-level lawyer.
Got it. Okay, so just one other thing.
You explain things usually three times.
And I'm, you know, we're both smart people, right?
So you say, my mom was a stay-at-home mom.
She stayed home and she took care of my sister and I and she didn't have to work.
It's like, no, I know what a stay-at-home mom is, right?
And we can just dispense with the rest.
So you say, like, my dad's not a lawyer.
He didn't have a law degree.
It's like, I know. I know what not a lawyer is.
So again, just in the interest of sanity and time, just assume that you're dealing with a smart guy who gets it the first time around.
And I'm also an excellent listener, so I'll get that.
And this is just part of the slow, hypnotic way of trying to keep us at a distance in the conversation.
So, you know, just if you could help me out a little bit that way, I'd appreciate it.
And what's your age range?
Mid-20s. Mid-20s.
Okay, okay. And so your father is still plugging away, is that right?
Yep. We live in different countries now.
Right, okay. Yeah.
Do you remember...
I'm sorry, go ahead. Yeah.
He's also been diagnosed with leukemia now, so he probably doesn't have that long.
Oh gosh, when did that happen?
A few years ago, I'd say, but he's got a new partner now as well.
So, yeah, so she's taking care of him as well.
Wow. Do you know, if anything, about his prognosis?
It's in remission, so it's not too bad at the moment.
He hasn't had to start any chemo or anything yet, but he will have to at some point soon, so...
Wait, he got leukemia.
They didn't treat him.
It went into remission and they're going to treat him later?
That seems odd to me.
Well, the count, I don't know the specifics, but the white blood cell count is low enough that they don't need to do chemo yet.
They're going to wait until it gets high and then do chemo because of the bad effects of chemo as well.
I do. All right.
Okay. Now, Do you remember, you know, your dad was your dad in the house for 17 years.
I probably can't remember the first couple of years.
If you think about sort of the arc of your dad's life, how did it...
I mean, you think of a movie like Citizen Kane, I don't know if you've ever seen it, but there's like a big arc of the character, you know, where he starts and where he ends.
It's usually quite different.
And this is true for a lot of people's lives, right?
I mean, my mom was like this vivacious, attractive, you know, bombshell who could command attention, and then she just kind of ended up this weird, skinny old woman, right?
So there's this character arc that goes off in people's lives.
And I guess I'm just wondering...
What, if you sort of notice the big sort of patterns or arc of your dad's life for better and for worse?
Well, he's pretty much, you know, winding down now as he gets older and also because he's got leukemia as well.
He actually seems, from what I can see, he seems to be fairly happy.
Just, you know, with his socialising with his friends and, you know, going about his business and stuff over there.
It doesn't really seem to bother him that he's not close with his children and that they live in a different country and he doesn't, you know, really see them anymore.
Well, then even the mortality scare didn't seem to do that much, right?
Like, I guess if you get that diagnosis, it wasn't like he's like, oh my god, I could die, I've got to make peace with my kids.
That didn't seem to happen, right?
No, it didn't. And, well, actually, because I have been back to see him a couple times, or a few times, since he got diagnosed, and I did think, oh, maybe, you know, he'd have like a You know, a moment, you know, since he's been diagnosed with a terminal illness, so he might realise what's important or something like that.
But no, he did snap again at me over some stupid thing the last time I was there, and I just haven't been back since.
I have no interest in going back anymore now.
I'm really sorry about that.
I really am. That's so fundamentally and horrifyingly sad.
I really am. I'm very sorry about that.
I mean, there's a lot of, you know, wisdom that you could get from your dad and hopefully some good things as well.
And it's such a desperate shame that that's not available.
And I'm just really, really sorry.
I mean, as a father myself, it's just – it's a really, really sad and – And silly and kind of pitiful state of affairs.
Not anything to do with you or what you've done wrong.
I don't think you've done anything wrong.
But it's just sad, these kinds of decisions.
So what happened after your parents separated?
And how did you end up living in different countries?
So when I was 17, after they separated, we lived in the country.
We had to move to a city in order to be able to...
Get jobs and stuff like that because you lived in the country where there's not much opportunity.
We decided to move to Australia from New Zealand where we had some other family, like some extended family living there.
And yeah, so we moved over there when I was 17 and my family, like my sister and my mum and me have sort of all been together here in Australia since then.
And did your dad stay in New Zealand?
He stayed in New Zealand, and this is the thing, is that he has never bothered to come over and see us.
I went back to see him a few times, as I mentioned, and he never bothered to come over at all.
Wow. And it's short.
I've done that flight, right?
I mean, it's a short flight.
It's three hours, yeah.
Yeah, it's easier to get from Australia to New Zealand than to get from the middle of Canada to either end, you know?
Okay. Yeah, and here's the other thing is that, which was kind of like pretty sad, we all thought, is that he actually did go on holiday to Australia, to a different part of Australia a couple years back, but didn't bother to come and see us.
Wow. Like he went to a different state in Australia.
I guess it's kind of like my dad, too.
Like, I mean, my dad, I believe he died in hospital last year.
So usually when you die in hospital, you've got some warning.
It's not like you get hit by a bus or something.
And yeah, there was never any reach out, never any connection, never anything like that.
No. Okay, so...
What's your mom's story about your dad?
Have you ever talked to her and said, like, what's the deal with dad?
Yeah, I have.
So she pretty much didn't Didn't have any interest in having kids until she was in her, until she kind of hit 30 or early 30s.
And then she, I guess, suddenly got like the baby rabies or whatever happens at that age when you hadn't thought about it.
And then suddenly you...
You get the urge or you really want to have children.
And because she hadn't sort of planned for it beforehand, she basically grabbed on to the first sort of half decent sort of looking guy in order to have a family.
So it was quite rushed.
And I think I was born like I need maybe a year or less after they got together.
Well, that's a very brief explanation of things.
Has she ever said about your dad, I mean, yeah, he was cold to me too, or he's just a cold person, or he's got no attachment?
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely.
She did realize quite early on, but she just continued anyway with it.
For the kids kind of thing?
Yeah. Yeah yeah so like when we were growing up when I was little she wanted to to be with us sort of more than anything she didn't want to have to go out and get a full-time job and put us in daycare and after school care so she just stuck with him for that reason which I am glad about because I'm really glad I didn't have to get put in daycare or after school care because I saw that happen with other other kids and Yeah,
seemed pretty bad.
Yeah, no, I agree.
Yeah, good for her.
And I guess he was at least a good enough provider that he could give that, right?
Oh, yeah. So we did, for the most part, like, my childhood was quite happy.
We had a lot of fun and, you know, did a lot of things, especially with my mum.
Like, she would just take us and, you know, go on trips and do things during the day and A lot of the time while I was little, they didn't even live in the same house, so we lived in the country.
Oh, he worked in the city?
Worked in the city. Yeah, I was going to ask about that.
Like, you're living in the country, but he helps lawyers.
Not a lot of lawyers in the country, right?
So, okay. No, and he would stay in the city, and he would basically live with one of his mates during the week and live flat in the city.
And, yeah, basically lived kind of like a bachelor during the week, going to bars and stuff after work, and kind of living like a bachelor during the week, and then just coming home on the weekend.
Ah, interesting.
How much like a bachelor do you think he lived?
I don't believe he had any affair, because he just wasn't like...
I think he just wasn't like that...
Passionate enough about, like, women and stuff to, like, you know, go and have an affair.
Like, my mum never said that she never thought that he ever had an affair, you know, for that reason.
She said he didn't think that he would be bothered to have one.
So, I mean, I don't know, like, it's possible, I guess, that he may have, but we don't think so.
Well, I mean, it would be entirely theoretical.
We've got no evidence either way other than your mum, I'm sure, has said that your mum said that she didn't think he did something.
We could take that if he's found out.
No, there's no evidence whatsoever. She said that he did have an affair.
Right, right, okay. But he would just want to hang out with his friends and just hang out with people in a sort of very surface-level socialisation.
He prefers that than being with his family.
Yeah, yeah. Beer, cricket, rugby.
Yeah, I get it. I get it.
Yeah. So do you know, I mean, how long did he do the live in the city during the week thing?
That was while we were younger.
When we got a bit older, it became sort of possible for him to work from home.
And so he did mostly just work from home and he would go into the city when he had to go into court and stuff like that.
So, but he spent a lot of time working at home doing, like, research and, you know, teleconferences and things like that.
And, yeah, just sort of, yeah, socialising in the small town that we lived in, you know.
He would be very involved in the community on the outside, but not very involved with the family on the inside, sort of.
Yeah, that's a lot more common than people think.
It's a lot more common. I mean, you can be close to the community or close to your family.
It doesn't seem that the two are pretty easy.
It doesn't seem like the two are very easy to achieve, but that's probably a topic for another time.
And do you know, with the divorce, with the separation, your mom initiated, is that right?
Yeah, they weren't actually married.
Okay, separation, yeah. But they'd be common-law married, like, many times.
Oh, yeah, yeah. Well, it was a de facto kind of thing.
And, yeah, my mum initiated it because, yeah, she just didn't want to be with him anymore.
We were sort of 15 and 17, respectively, so there was no reason that she had to just stay with him, like, for the kids because we were kind of, you know...
Well, I mean, but another couple of years would have been less...
I mean, your sister's 15, so she's still got another two years of high school.
So it must have been something that hit the gas on that because she was probably like, well, I'm going to wait till your sister is out of high school at least, right?
Then you go to uni or something, right?
So, I mean, was there any particular big blow up or a reason why she couldn't make that final sprint?
There wasn't any big particular thing, but I think she just got...
I think she just got...
She was just really tired of it, of being with him, and she just kind of couldn't stand it anymore, I guess.
I don't know. But there was no particular thing that happened.
Okay, okay.
And yeah, my sister has had...
My sister's had issues as well.
Go on. Yeah, so she's...
She had really, and still does, really severe OCD. And she was actually admitted to a mental hospital here in Australia for a while.
And that was sort of happened when, I guess I probably would have been about, I would have been about sort of 19 maybe at that stage.
18, 19. And was it the OCD or something else that got her into the mental hospital?
It was the OCD. So basically what happened is her OCD got worse and worse and she stopped eating and then we called the ambulance because we didn't know what to do and they checked her out and said that they have to They have to take her to the hospital because she was in danger of dying.
Wow. And so they took her to the hospital and they had like the, you know, pull the tube down the throat and that kind of thing.
Now, the OCD, I mean, because that's almost like an eating disorder that strikes me.
How did the OCD manifest?
It's sort of manifested and it's kind of like Kind of like rituals or like I can't do this until I've done all of these like stupid sort of like silly kind of rituals and then it sort of just got worse and worse and spiraled to the point that she couldn't actually function.
And do you remember how old she was when these first manifested these symptoms?
First manifested? It had kind of been there a bit in the background, just low level.
Sort of all our life, but just sort of very low level.
Again, like sort of my anxiety, I guess it kind of really flared up at about the same sort of time.
So like after moving country, that was when it really flared up for her.
So you got some, I guess, moderate to maybe severe anxiety and she got OCD after the separation, right?
Yeah, although for her especially, there was traces of it beforehand.
Yeah, but it really escalated, right?
But that's when it really escalated.
Yeah, yeah. Okay, okay.
So, the nature of the divorce is the key, or rather, what the...
And I know they weren't married, but just separation just sounds kind of lame, because it basically was a divorce as far as the kids went, right?
I mean, whether you're formally married...
Effectively, yeah. Yeah, but just say divorce, if you don't mind.
So, the divorce...
So, how... I mean, did you move countries pretty quickly after the separation or the divorce?
Yeah, pretty much straight away.
We sold the house first, so we sold the house and...
Yeah, we sold the house, took the money from there and then moved.
Right, okay. And so...
What were the conversations with your dad about you leaving the country?
Because obviously he said, well, I'm not coming, right?
Yeah. Well, he basically said, okay, well, I'm going to go and move in with my sister until, you know, whatever.
He went and moved in with her for a while.
And he actually...
He sat me down and he was like, oh, you're going to be annoyed I didn't tell you this earlier, I guess.
Anyway. Hey, good. At least the inner staff is keeping you informed, so go ahead.
Yeah, no, I just think so.
So he was kind of really sort of nice and friendly, sort of all the way up to leaving.
Like he was just sort of quite mild and sort of just, you know, like, oh, well, you know, at least you're going to have good opportunities in the big city and everything like that.
It's probably for the best or whatever.
And then he sat me down sort of right before we left and he was like, oh, yeah, You think you're going to just go over there and you're just going to walk into a job?
Well, you won't, blah, blah, blah.
And he's giving me this advice and basically kind of like...
Yeah, but he was really quite aggressive, like saying, like, you think you're just going to go over there and you're just going to walk into a job and things like that?
Well, it's not going to happen and stuff like this.
Wait, that's not advice.
That's a goddamn curse.
That's like a voodoo spell of disaster, isn't it?
Yeah. That's sabotage.
That's not advice. Where's this coming from?
Yeah. But the thing is that that exact thing did actually happen.
So when I did move to Australia and after a few months of settling in, I did look for a job and I did get the first job that I applied for.
Yeah, of course you did because you're a smart guy.
Yeah. So you say that you have anxiety about your job performance without telling me that your dad cursed you for unemployment, right?
Yeah, that's what I said. So what was he doing?
What was his motive? That I would out-succeed him.
Maybe. Maybe.
Anything else?
I'm not 100% sure.
I'm not 100% sure.
What do you think? Well, my guess would be more that he was trying to hurt your mom by cursing you.
Because it doesn't sound like he cared that much about you, but he would certainly care about, I assume, about hurting your mom, right?
Yeah, he...
You think this family can be successful without me?
Let me tell you something.
I'm going to make sure these kids are really screwed up.
And that way...
Well, it could be like a vanity thing, yeah.
A what? Like a vanity thing, like, you know, that we can be successful without him.
Well, no, because if he was truly vain, right?
If he was truly vain and truly thought that, then he would just let it play out, right?
You know, like if you've got a friend who doesn't brush his teeth, you don't need to curse them.
You should brush your teeth.
No, I'm not going to. Okay. Well, I really think you should.
No, don't tell me what to do.
My teeth are fine, right?
Okay. And then you just let it play out, right?
So your dad, by stepping in to actively sabotage The kids.
And who knows what he said to your mom.
He probably said to your mom, you know, you're never going to find another guy like me.
You know, you're over the hill.
You're past your prime.
You know, you've lost your spark, your appeal, whatever, right?
He probably cursed her into solitude.
Maybe that's how it played out. Maybe she's with someone again.
And then, you know, God knows what unbelievable things he said to your sister to trigger all this OCD escalation, right?
Yeah. Do you know what he said to your sister?
I'm not actually sure what he said at the time of leaving.
I don't recall anything.
Well, you wouldn't be there, right?
Yeah, but I'm not too sure what he said at that point, but...
Yeah. You should ask your sister if she had a tidy little sit-down with her dad before leaving New Zealand.
And this was obviously years later, but after he...
Remember I told you that he snapped at me the last time and then I haven't been back since.
She was in New Zealand after that one more time and she did see him and then she did mention...
She brought that up, and they had a big fight about that because she got really angry at him for him having said that to me.
And then he basically said, well, if you guys can't handle it, then you can get effed, you know?
If you guys can't handle, what, me snapping at you or me whatever being who I am, you can get fucked?
Is that what he said? Did he swear at or around the kids?
Sorry, go ahead. Yeah, and then she just like stormed out and just, yeah, she's, yeah, said that she was done with him and just left.
And has your mom intervened at all to try and save or rescue the relationship between your sister and you and your dad?
I'm not saying she should have, I'm just curious if she has.
Um... Earlier on, she did say, because when I was seeing him and going over to see him when he had leukemia and stuff and before he snapped again, she did say that, oh, it's good that you are at least having some sort of relationship with him or whatever.
It's good that you're getting along with him and stuff like that.
So she was happy about that.
Then, yeah, after this thing with my sister, she's kind of acknowledged that it's kind of all over because, I mean, what can you expect after that, right? I mean, you say snapping, but telling one of your kids to get fucked is really brutal and harsh and vicious.
I mean, that's straight-up core attachment-breaking verbal abuse.
Yeah, and that's why it's good to talk to you about this, because you're...
Yeah, just to sort of get that...
I mean, if he was Australian, it would obviously be completely normal.
But New Zealand? New Zealand is a whole...
No, I'm just kidding. Is he Maori?
No, we're what?
So, yeah, I mean, so the snapping bit?
I don't know, man.
I don't think snapping is quite the right word.
No, yeah, that was on a higher level, yeah.
That was on a higher level.
And what did he say to you when you last experienced the snapping?
Yeah, it was like...
Basically, he was at a restaurant, and he...
It was just about like...
I can't remember exactly what it was, but it was just about like table etiquette or something stupid like that.
Oh, like elbows on the table, that sort of shit.
It wasn't that exactly, but something like that.
Just some sort of table etiquette.
You're using the wrong fork for your prawns.
Okay, all right. Yeah.
He just, like, completely just went off, just all of a sudden.
It wasn't, like, a reasonable person that might say, like, oh, could you not do that, or could you do it like this instead or something, you know?
So how did he phrase it?
What did he say?
Oh, he's just like, oh, I don't know what you guys think is acceptable over there in Australia, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And just went off sort of from there.
Now, okay, so help me understand.
I mean, you know, I've been doing this like 15 years plus, right?
I've heard some pretty harsh things from parents to kids, you know, like nagging at you about table manners, and that does sound in the nagging category.
It seems like not as much as I've heard to break relations with your father, if that makes sense.
So I'm not saying you should or shouldn't.
I'm just saying that as far as the scales of offenses on this show goes, this barely registers as a two.
And so no criticism or anything.
I'm just sort of trying to sort of flesh out why it would be so different for you as opposed to others or whether there's something else or some other provocation that is occurring.
So you're saying – sorry, you're saying that – It's pretty mild.
It's pretty mild to say, I don't know what you guys do in Australia, but here in New Zealand, we don't do that.
I mean, it's certainly a little harsh and all of that, but it's not like torrents of verbal abuse or, you know, he's not, you know, flinging hot soup at your face or, you know, I mean, I don't know.
I'm just sort of trying to fathom the...
You know, that he's nagging at you harshly about table manners.
I mean, you've listened to this show.
I mean, I've had, you know, fathers who beat the hell out of their kids regularly and the kids are still sticking around as adults.
And so I'm just trying to figure out, given the unusualness, and there's no criticism.
I mean, you could be entirely in the right.
But as far as the scale goes, what he said to you was not super harsh compared to other things I've heard, if that makes sense.
Well, yeah, and I mean, he basically, it was kind of humiliating, I guess, because it was in front of, you know, it was kind of like a scene, sort of.
Oh, so it wasn't just you and he at the table?
It was kind of, it was him and me and his partner, but he was kind of like...
You mean his romantic, sorry to interrupt, you mean his romantic partner?
Yes. Okay. But it was loud, like he was kind of like yelling, right?
I can't remember what, but he was like effing this and effing that and whatever.
Oh, so he swore as well?
Yeah. Okay, so dude, my God, please stop having me run around in circles here.
Tell me what he said and how he said it.
Just pretend I was at the table.
I'm you. What did he say and how did he say it?
I can't remember the exact words, but he did yell and he was like, oh, you think...
You think you can fucking do this or that?
I don't know what you fucking guys do in Australia.
It's not fucking acceptable here.
Like that sort of. And he was yelling as well.
So that swearing about what you're doing, did he swear at you?
Like you can take these and just fuck off or you can take these manners and shove them up your ass?
No, he didn't swear at me at that time.
And where was this relative to his leukemia diagnosis?
Well, this was the last time I went there, so that was sort of just before COVID. Yeah, so I'm not sure where that is relative to his leukemia diagnosis.
Sorry, a couple of years ago. Oh no, it was well after it.
Well after it, okay, okay.
And what did his partner do?
Um... She basically was like, because he didn't apologize or anything afterwards, right?
And she was like, oh, you know, it was a bit harsh, but that's just how he is or whatever.
She basically is just like, you know, she doesn't stand up to him at all.
Good lord. Right.
So, I mean, I guess he, I mean, your mom must have been a bit of a dishrag as far as all of that went too.
I mean, I know she fought back at times, but yeah.
So, you know, and here, so, okay.
My mom always fought back against him and that's why, yeah, that's why I escalated.
Well, but she must have held back in order to keep the marriage going for 17 or 18 years, right?
Or keep the relationship going, right?
Yeah. Well, yeah.
I mean, she didn't leave him or anything.
Right. Well, he didn't change and she didn't leave him.
So she had to back down in order to maintain the relationship for the sake of the kids, I assume.
And then when she wouldn't back down anymore, it all ended, right?
Pretty much, yeah. Okay.
So she must have folded.
And I'm not criticizing her for this.
I'm just saying that the mechanics of it, like when you have a verbally abusive bully like that, then if you don't fold, usually it's over, right?
When they fought, they would basically fight and escalate until my dad would just storm out.
Right, but your mom never laid down the law and says, you know, you pull this shit again, we're done.
Like, one more time.
Oh, no, yeah. Yeah, well, yeah, she doesn't do that until the end, yeah.
That's right. Well, but then she was done, right?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So she must have known, I assume, that if she tried to lay down the law with him and say, no, this is bad for the kids, this is bad for us, this is going to wreck our relationship, you go to anger management, you go to a therapist, you do whatever the hell you count to 100, I don't care, but you are not pulling the stuff with me.
Yeah, well, I mean, after he would come back the next day or whatever, she wouldn't insist on confronting it again.
She would just leave it until we kind of, yeah.
Right, so your mother...
Well, your mother, I guess, understood that he would always choose his temper over his family, right?
So if somebody tried to lay down the law, then he'd just be like, fuck off, right?
And he'd just storm out and wouldn't come back, right?
Which is what he did with my sister when she confronted him about it and she wouldn't back down.
And she kept, you know, she kept on at it.
And that's when he's like, oh, if you can't handle it, you guys can all F off or get F or whatever.
Right. Right.
So, yeah, I mean, that's...
Did he want kids? I mean, I guess when he got together with your mom, she didn't want kids and then she did, right?
Oh, no, no. Sorry. She already wanted the kids.
Oh, no, she did. Yeah, yeah. Sorry. I forgot about that.
That's why she wanted them. So she got the baby rabies.
She grabs him out of the lineup.
And do you think he ever – I mean, did he take pleasure in being a father?
Did he take pleasure in having kids?
Did he take pleasure in instructing or playing?
or I mean what was that like Graham?
He did seem excited like at first before I was born or when I was just born but I think there was kind of a vanity thing as well.
He sort of enjoyed the vanity, I guess, that it gave him or whatever.
But yeah, he pretty quickly kind of lost interest.
Right. Now, did you ever see him escalate his temper against anyone in authority or strangers or waiters?
Like, did he yell at people outside the family?
Did he tell people to fuck off or whatever, or fucking this or fucking that?
Yeah, but not people that would be in high positions of power, right?
So, he could really be an asshole, you know, like, for example...
At a shop trying to get some product and they didn't have it in stock or whatever and he'd like yell and make a scene and make the cashier girl cry or whatever.
Oh my god. I remember that when I was like a little kid and it was like, yeah.
But yeah, not to anyone in authority, like not obviously wouldn't do that.
When the tax man came coming, he wasn't telling them to fuck off or anything.
Yeah, or a policeman or, you know, other lawyers or legal people with, you know, clout or, you know, high...
Status and authority or whatever.
So he had no problem keeping his temper when other people had some authority over him, right?
Oh yeah, like he wouldn't have shown it to them or the guy, the high-level lawyer that he worked for or whatever wouldn't have seen any of that in that way.
Okay, so let's just reiterate this because I'm not sure that sunk in yet or maybe this is something you processed years ago.
So your dad had no problem containing his temper.
Yes. Do you know what that means?
I mean, in general?
Yeah. It means that he chose to lose his temper because he knows that he could get away with it.
He's a coward and a bully.
Yeah. That's important to understand.
Because people say, oh, my father had a bad temper or my father was ill-tempered or he blew up.
And it's like, none of that's true.
None of that's true. If he had a bad temper, then the bad temper is like a demon that possesses him against his will, and then you can at least fault someone.
It's almost like epilepsy, like they just have a bad temper, but he could be sweet as sugar, right?
And even when facing, I'm sure, in his job and all of that at court, if the judge would rule against his suggestion or the case would go badly, I mean, I'm sure he'd be all, well, please and thank you and all of that, and fine, but the judge or the lawyers or his customers or whatever, he was probably sweet as sugar and reasonable and mature, at least to some degree.
Oh, yeah. Yeah, but then when it comes to his wife, his kids, like the people who are dependent upon him and who can't fight back, you know, he's Mr.
fucking Rambo, right? He's Mr.
Tough Guy, right? Yeah, yeah.
Or again, like low-level cashiers or people that don't have any authority and can't...
He made a cashier cry.
I've never seen that in my life, man.
I've seen some pretty bad behavior, and I worked retail for a number of years.
I worked in a shelving store, I worked in a couple of hardware stores and so on, right?
And, you know, we had some jerky customers, to put it mildly.
But, I mean, really, it made a cashier cry?
Yeah, and look, I've seen it like, yeah.
Go ahead. Sorry, I just was going to say, like, I've seen it happen through work and, like, fast food and stuff like that, you know, where there's been arsehole customers.
But, yeah, I mean, yeah, basically just yell and make a scene and stuff.
And, yeah, basically, yeah, I think at least one time.
What would he say to the cashier?
Sorry to interrupt. What would he say to the cashier?
Honestly, I can't actually remember.
I was pretty young at the time.
He took me somewhere to some shop.
I was pretty young at the time, so I can't remember what he said, but I just remember him just yelling at me.
Wow. Yeah, that is such an abusive power, right?
Oh, yeah. Yeah.
And then, of course, he puts himself in a position, right?
This is the psychology of it as far as I'm concerned.
So he bullies those weaker and dependent upon him.
And then he puts himself in a situation where he is being bullied by the tax collectors and creditors, I assume, right?
Yeah, yeah.
So the indebtedness, the not hiring the accountant, is specifically to put himself in a position where he's bullied and rejected and chased, right?
It's the balance for his bullying.
Okay, so like he hits down and then he's also got someone on top of him as well.
Right, right, right.
Did he ever admit to having a bad temper or it's a problem he needs to deal with or he shouldn't do what he did or anything like that?
Oh, yeah, like, he would, you know, like, joke about, like, having, you know, like, how he has, oh, he has an Irish temper or whatever, like, in a jokey way, but, yeah, it's not, it's not, it's not funny, though.
Oh, so, but he never really admitted he had a problem, he would just joke about it.
No, no, there's, like, he doesn't admit that he, like, had an actual, like, serious problem he needs to deal with or anything.
Did he view it as a virtue?
In other words... You know, I guess I just have too high a set of standards and you just don't match up.
And I guess I just get frustrated at the incompetence of people.
Like, does he have it, like, as a glory thing?
Like, does this make him a tough man and he has high standards and other people better measure up?
Or, you know, is it like that sergeant major stuff that goes on that people have about their own temper?
Like, somehow it's a virtue?
Yeah, I guess it is kind of like he...
He has high standards. And, you know, like when he said to my sister, like, oh, if you guys can't handle it, you can get F'd.
It's kind of like...
It kind of seems to me like, well, you know, if we have a problem with measuring up to his standards, then we can F off, you know?
Right.
And did you, as a kid, did you feel that you did not measure up to his lofty standards?
Well, that's the...
He never really took any interest in anything that I was interested in.
Well, that means you're not measuring up to his lofty standards, right?
You're not interested. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
He'd be interested in the things that he was interested in, not the things that I was interested in.
So if he was interested in something or he wanted to do something, then he would do it.
But he wouldn't actually make any effort to get involved or taking interest in anything that I was interested in, like if I You know, like you mentioned, you know, like you play Among Us with your daughter and everything and you kind of like get involved with the, you know, things that she...
Oh, yeah. She's teaching me how to animate and, you know, she likes Dungeons and Dragons.
So we've been playing that off and on for years and she likes Among Us.
So I'll play a couple hours a week with her because I want to understand.
And I also, I mean, she's better at it than I am.
So I enjoy watching her skill manifest and her social skills and her leadership skills.
So, yeah, it's a great pleasure.
Yeah, but with things like that, you know, like, you know, if I, you know, had some game or whatever that I was interested in, like, I would have, you know, loved for him to have, you know, just, you know, come and, like, played it with me or whatever, but, yeah, he never did.
Like, he wasn't interested.
He just wanted to do the things that he wanted to do, so it's not that hard to do.
Like, it's not that hard to do.
You just have to You just have to engage with them about it.
You mean it's not that hard to do things with your kids?
No, it's not. I mean, I don't think it's...
I don't mean to criticize at all.
I mean, from an involved dad standpoint, that's an odd thing.
It's an odd perspective, and I'm just going to try and denormalize it for you, because I think we're really getting to the anxiety stuff here.
I know this has felt like a walkabout, as they say, in Australia, you know, but it's not.
I mean, I've been mapping this whole thing out, right?
So... Right.
Do you think it's hard for me to play?
Like, it's not that... Do you think I would say to myself, well, it's not that hard to play a game with my daughter?
No, well, you like doing it.
Yeah, it's great fun.
It's great fun. And that's what I think as well, like, because, you know, like, I want to have a family, me and my girlfriend want to have a family, and I'm looking forward to, I'm looking forward to, like, you know, doing things like that with my kids and playing with them and getting involved in the things I'm interested in, like, Yeah, again, I want to do that.
I'm looking forward to doing that.
Right. Okay, so here's where we get to the core, I think.
I think we're at the core, whether we feel the air pulsing or not.
I think we're at the core. So the core, my friend, is this.
What is your experience...
Of being rejected by your father?
Of your father scorning you, holding you in contempt, holding you as uninteresting, holding you as unworthy of attention?
What is your relationship to fundamental rejection by your father?
Yeah, well, he did...
I suppose, and it feels, yeah, it feels bad.
Sorry, he did what you? What was that, sorry?
You said he did something, you, and it seems like an important word for me to get.
No, no, I just was confirming, yeah, he did.
He did reject me. Okay, so here's where I need you to grab yourself by your ball sack and get in touch with your feelings, okay?
Because you sound like you're reading a cricket score from a game 12 years ago.
Okay, so what is your experience?
And you and I share this, right?
You and I share this. What is your experience of being rejected by your father?
What does that mean that you're rejected by your father?
What does that mean to you, about you, about manhood, about him?
Masculinity? Um...
Yeah, I mean, it means that, like, I'm not interesting, or the things that I'm interested in are, like, not, you know, they can't be interesting to other people and things like that, like that and trying to find the words.
I guess that's kind of fueled insecurity in me as well because...
Like, his rejection and his disinterest in me is kind of...
I guess I kind of projected that on the world.
You did... Sorry, you did what to the world?
I kind of projected that onto the world as well.
That the world finds you uninteresting or...
Yeah...
Yeah, to a degree. That's always kind of been an insecurity, and I guess I can see why now, because it's just like his rejection and his disinterest sort of just projected, right?
In conflicts, are you pushed over fairly easily?
Do you have to withdraw quite a bit?
In conflicts... With my dad.
No, no, no, no, not with your dad.
I know your dad's impossible to stand up to except by walking away, but in life as a whole, at work or wherever this may occur.
Look, I have managed to stand up for myself, but it does sort of trigger quite a...
It does sort of trigger quite a lot of anxiety, sort of more than it should, I think.
More than it should? Oh, come on, man.
Be nice to yourself. I think it triggers more than it should.
Like, for example, you know, for example, like a difficult boss or a difficult customer, you know, getting upset about something.
I do, you know, manage to, you know, I come back to them and, you know, say, like, you know, this isn't correct, this is actually the case, or whatever it may be, like, to correct them.
But it does, it is very anxiety-inducing for me.
And... Whereas with a lot of other people, you know, they just are like, they sort of take it with not much trouble at all.
Like, they don't seem to be bothered by it.
They're just like, oh, yeah, they're upset, you know, whatever.
You know, they'll calm down or just, you know, tell them what the go is and, you know, they're not really not bothered by it.
But with me, it's kind of like quite anxiety-inducing, those sort of confrontations.
Right. Yeah. It's a funny thing.
I remember in theater school, near the end, I didn't stay.
I got really sick of it.
They didn't like me and I didn't like them back.
Very considerably very Marxist, in my opinion.
But I remember one of the actors, who has actually become quite a successful actor, he was trying to get someone's attention.
He was just drumming away on some bongos and he was trying to get someone's attention.
And he just kept repeating that person's name and he didn't escalate.
It wasn't like, so-and-so.
Hey, so-and-so. Hey, so-and-so.
So-and-so. Like, he didn't escalate.
He's just like, uh-huh, uh-huh, so-and-so, so-and-so.
Hey, so-and-so. It didn't, it didn't.
And I was just looking at that, like, quite fascinated.
Like, here's somebody who wasn't getting what he wanted.
And he didn't escalate and he didn't bully or anything like that.
He's actually a pretty nice guy about it, right?
And I just remember thinking kind of weird.
And that was the same, I think that was the same month that my father visited me.
Well, actually, he was visiting someone else, but he came with me.
And he tried to...
I mean, he was a geologist, right?
So he went to the university and he gave a big lecture on, I guess, the geology of South Africa.
And it was a fairly well-attended lecture and he was up there.
And I guess he had me come and...
I guess he wanted me to look up to him or be impressed by him because he had me come and sit while he gave this lecture.
And he seemed quite proud of the fact that he was there giving a lecture and people were listening to him.
And I'm like, you do understand that by promoting yourself when you rejected me, you're just making it worse, right?
Yeah. Like, he was the big man on campus and he didn't achieve a huge amount of professional success, but he did lecture and he did.
He was in charge of a mine in South America at one point where he tried putting, he told me this once, he said, I tried putting all of the workers on piecework to try and increase productivity, but they just achieved what they achieved when they were doing hourly.
They just went home. You know, like if we pay you 10 bucks per units, right, they'd make their 50 bucks and they just head home.
They just had no interest in getting more.
It's just kind of an interesting cultural thing.
And then that night, we went out for dinner and I was a totally broke student.
And I mean, obviously, I thought he was pretty wealthy because he was lecturing at the university and all of that.
And yeah, a guy stiffed me on my restaurant meal.
Like he stiffed me on the bill.
I couldn't believe it.
I didn't have my wallet.
I'll get it to you later.
And he never gave it back to me.
And I'm like, I can't believe my dad lectured at a university and then stiffed his broke son on the bill.
For, you know, where he'd had a drink or two and a pretty nice meal.
A meal I never, like, I never would have gone if it wasn't for my dad.
And I'm just like, okay, I get that you're not giving me a lot of money for my college, if any.
But, you know, come and stiff me on the bill.
Might have undone some of the good work you wanted to have me be impressed by you lecturing at a university or something.
But... So with your dad...
Who is the man, right?
Because you're an adult now, right?
So who is the man, right?
Because if you look at him and he's your dad, you can't help but have this big burning branding imprint of that is a man, that is masculinity, that is what it is to be a man, right?
So when you're a kid, if you don't measure up to his standards, he's not interested in you, he doesn't care or anything like that, And, I mean, I read my father's entire biography.
I showed up, I think, twice in passing, and this thing went on for quite a long while, right?
So I just, I didn't show up for him in his life.
I didn't impact on his consciousness.
Now, my dad was on the other side of the world for most of my childhood, so it's sort of a different matter with him being under the same roof.
But who is the man?
Because if you're quite different from your father...
And in my mind, a vast improvement.
But if you're quite different from your father, then who's the man?
And what is masculinity? And what is manhood?
Because if the big, towering man-god in your life rejects you, you've got a problem.
You've got a problem and you have an opportunity.
But it's like, okay, so with my father and I, okay, which one is the man?
Who's the man? I know that sounds kind of like, who the man?
But it's an important question, right?
Because if he's masculine, if he's the man...
Then what the hell are you, right?
Oh, well, I can only be myself by being less masculine.
And this is where you get a lot of this, oh, toxic masculinity.
And it's like, well, there's just a lot of asshole dads out there whose sons have to say, well, I have to have a different kind of masculinity.
But fundamentally, unless you deal with it psychologically, you just end up feeling less masculine.
It's where the soy boy – I'm not putting you in this category, obviously.
I'm just saying that as a cultural phenomenon in general – It's where those big gap-tooth, low-T soy boys come from.
It's like, well, my dad was this way and I don't want to be this way, so I'll just be more sensitive, more of a feminist, less masculine and so on.
If you haven't solved the problem, who is the man?
Is my father the man or am I the man?
What is masculinity?
Right. And these are very, very big and deep questions.
And the fact that they're coming up for you when you're considering being a father is not accidental by opinion.
So what is a man?
Was your father a man?
Was he masculine?
Was he masculinity? Who were you relative to that?
These are very, very important questions for men, particularly young men, to answer.
So was he the man?
Were you rejected by masculinity?
What does masculinity or manhood mean to you, both then and now?
I know these are big questions, but, you know, just tell me what you think of this line of approach.
Well, yeah, I mean, that is the case as well, where, like, I pretty much sort of want to be, like, the opposite of him.
Like, I I pretty much want to be everything that he's not, you know, when I become a father.
Okay, so, but the opposite is not a thing, right?
No, I know, I know, I know, but like I... It's a reaction.
Yeah, like I want to sort of feel like I want to give them all of the things that I didn't get from my dad.
Okay, so...
So then you have...
Okay, no, we'll get...
Sorry, I'll bookmark that in my head because there's a lot in what you said.
So you want to provide the opposite, right?
Well, I just want to provide what he didn't provide to me.
So give me the major things that he didn't provide to you.
Well, the major thing, obviously, is just being engaged and interested in them and, you know, enjoying their company.
And also the other major thing is stability in terms of, you know, like just, you know, financial responsibility and stability so they don't have to care or worry about, you know, About just the basic, you know, the basic financial stuff when they're younger, like it's all sort of just, you know, it's taken care of when they're younger.
They, you know, their parents will have, will be financially stable and have, you know, savings and everything like that so that they won't have to have any Fares or anxiety about that.
So those are kind of the two major things.
And also, obviously, as well, having a strong relationship and a strong connection to my partner as well, so that they can see a happy and healthy and functional relationship when they grow up, so that's something to model for them as well, because I didn't see that.
And so... It's been quite difficult for a while for me to find out what a relationship should be like.
Oh, you mean like a romantic relationship?
A romantic relationship. Well, yeah, because the thing that I had modeled wasn't good at all, right?
Oh, no, no, I get all of that.
Yeah, no, I'm with you. You want something different than your parents' relationship.
In fact, in some ways, the opposite, right?
Yeah, and also for the kids as well, so that they have...
You know, something, they're like a good model to kind of go off, you know?
Okay, so three things are missing here for me.
It doesn't mean they're missing objectively.
I'm just telling you my subjective what's missing for me.
What's missing for me? Hurt, anger, and judgment.
Right. Because it's sort of like, well, you know, my father took a left on this street.
It turned out it didn't kind of get us where we wanted to go.
So next time I do that journey, I'm just going to take a right.
That's the level of emotional depth in what you're saying here.
And again, not a criticism.
I'm just saying that if you really do want to change direction from your father, you're going to need a little bit more weight in your assessment.
There's no moral judgment here at all.
Right? So we need to look at that.
And I can tell you why there's no moral judgment.
Because your assessment of your father is messed up, man.
Do you know what you said to me about your father and his current state of mind with his new partner?
What did I say? You said, my father is happy.
He seems happy from the outside.
Well, okay.
You said your father seems happy or is happy.
Now, reason equals virtue equals happiness, right?
Your father is not rational.
He was not virtuous.
And again, I'm open to hearing this argument.
If you ignore your children, if you Yell verbal abuse at your children.
If you drive your wife away and you end up with a woman who can watch you verbally abuse his son and not say anything to anyone and not stand up and not push back a fucking dishrag of a non-entity human being, you tell me how the accumulation of all of that intergalactic assholery results in someone being happy.
Because, you see, if you define your father as happy and you're going to do the opposite of your father, where are you going to end up?
Are you going to end up happy? No.
And that's where your anxiety is coming from.
You say, well, Dad, you know, he is who he is and he did these things, but he's pretty happy.
So what you're saying is, yeah, you can be...
I don't know. I mean, I'll be frank, right?
You've listened to the show for a while. And me telling you what I think is not what is.
I'm just telling you what I think, so I could be totally wrong.
Okay. Okay. So, not paying attention to your children is abusive.
Neglecting your children is abusive.
Verbally cursing, abusing, and swearing around your children is abusive.
Telling your son you're not going to be able to find a job, it's not going to be that easy, son, is abusive.
Telling your kids you either do it my way or you can fuck right off is totally abusive.
Effing this and effing that in a restaurant, in public, and yelling at your kids is abusive.
Making a cashier cry is abusive.
And it's cowardly because, again, he didn't do it policemen, he didn't do it to teachers of yours, he didn't do it to the tax authorities, he didn't do it to anybody who had power over him, he didn't do it to the lawyers or his customers.
So your father is not a man.
Your father is not a man.
Your father is an infant.
Your father is an overgrown infant and it's kind of an insult to infants because infants are supposed to be the way they are.
He's having temper tantrums.
Infants are profoundly selfish, right?
If you catch them playing with something, I mean, you know, can you imagine if my daughter's like six months old and I say, hey, I'm working on this new book called On Truth, The Tyrion Evolution.
I'm going to read you some. I'd really like it if you could give me your feedback and she's absorbed playing with some blocks or something like that.
She's not going to look up, right?
So that level of self-absorption, and I'm only interested in my own thing, that's a toddler.
The level of rage and the lack of inhibition, this is all a toddler.
A toddler cries and gets angry, and they don't have inhibitions.
So to me, your father is a toddler, not a man, not masculine, not masculinity.
And I don't take it personally when a toddler is not interested in what I'm doing because they're a toddler.
And so I would never expect them to be interested in what I'm doing.
Now, if what I'm doing is engaging and entertaining them, they'll be interested, right?
Like if I'm making funny faces or telling a big story or, you know, dancing around to make them laugh or whatever or helping build blocks with them or carrying something for them or bringing them food when they're hungry.
Then they'll be interested because it overlaps significantly with their preferences.
But the idea that they would jump out of themselves and be interested in me for me's sake – I mean, my daughter's 12. She's not even there yet, right?
And that's fine. You know, she's getting there, being interested in me for my sake.
When I play a song for her, she's still at the phase where she figures, she tries to say, she says to herself, do I like this song or do I not like this song?
She doesn't say to herself, I wonder why my father likes this song or tell me, like, and that's fine.
She's 12. She's not supposed to be there yet.
She's still 10 years away from brain maturity, right?
Right. So your father's self-absorption is a toddler.
It's a toddler. Now, unfortunately, he's a toddler with great authority over you.
He's a toddler in a man's body.
I assume he's not the smallest guy in the world if he's throwing his weight around like this.
He's a toddler with a big, loud voice, and he's a toddler who holds the financial reins of the family.
So a toddler also...
Consumes now and doesn't save for the future, right?
You give a kid, you know, say, here are your two cupcakes.
A toddler eats how many cupcakes?
You give him two, how many is he going to eat?
Two. Yeah. Is he going to sit there and say, well, I might want a cupcake tomorrow.
No, he's going to be like, right?
Oh, yeah. And one thing I just wanted to...
Another thing I wanted to mention is that I remember one other time as well when I was in high school and the school was having some sort of event or whatever and they, you know, needed some parents to volunteer and to help with something to do with it.
I can't remember exactly what.
And my mum asked my dad if he could help as well.
And he's just like, Just like, oh, nah.
And she's like, why not? And he said, oh, I'm not interested.
Like, it's...
He can only frame it in terms of himself, right?
Yeah, like, he wouldn't ever think, like, it's not just about himself.
Like, maybe, you know, there's things you need to do that aren't just about yourself.
Right. Or there's things that you should do that aren't just about yourself.
He would never think to do something...
That's not about himself, right?
Right. So that's a toddler.
Yeah. Yeah.
Okay, so, and listen, your lack of emotion here, again, I just want to sort of point it out.
I'm not expecting you to magically be able to summon it, but it is something I'm noting, right?
Like, you're very analytical, because you probably have associated emotions with your father.
Like, my father gets really angry, he gets really upset, and those are emotions, and emotions are bad, and emotions are dangerous, and I have to keep a tight control over my emotions, otherwise I'm going to end up like my dad.
It's like, no, no. No, that's not it.
That's not it. That's not it.
That's not it at all. So, you're...
Sorry, go ahead. Oh, sorry.
Yeah, like I never really characterized him specifically as abusive, but yeah, now that I think about it, he was.
He was abusive, and it's perfectly...
Well, and the abuse, sorry to interrupt, but the abuse that you're identifying is like the verbal abuse and stuff like that, but the far more impactful abuse is the neglect.
Yeah, yeah, that is.
And so, yeah, I mean, I think it is perfectly justified that I don't want to, you know, I don't want to have anything to do with them.
Well, and that's, but that's not the issue that you're facing, right?
That's not the issue that you're facing.
The issue that you're facing is the anxiety, right?
Right. Right.
Right. So...
Do you know where...
I mean, now that we've ranged over this whole thing, do you know where that's coming from?
Um... Not entirely.
Right. Not entirely.
So you need to redefine manhood, masculinity, fatherhood, and all of that stuff.
You can't be bouncing off.
You can't be reacting. You have to redefine it from the ground up.
And it has to be along moral lines.
Your father owed you attention.
You're not supposed to win his attention.
You're not supposed to engage him.
And it's like, well, you know, he just wasn't that interested in what I had to say or what it is that I had to do.
It's like... That's...
Okay, so if you have a dog, right?
And you don't like dog food, does that mean that you don't have to feed the dog?
No. Well, of course parents aren't interested in what their kids are doing because those kids are doing.
I wouldn't be playing a couple of hours of Among Us.
I wouldn't be going to the park to sit on swings and chat and jump around the monkey bars and go down slides and race and play.
You know, we throw these...
I wouldn't be doing any of these things.
Why? Because I'm 55 years old, almost, and I wouldn't be doing any of these things.
Of course I wouldn't be doing any of these things.
I wouldn't be sitting there playing with blocks when my daughter is two.
No. I wouldn't be drawing outlines of coins on paper.
I wouldn't be doing any of this stuff because I'm an adult.
But you don't do it because you care about the stuff itself.
You do it because it's a way of engaging with your child.
And that's what you want to do. And that's what you deserve.
That's what the child needs and the child deserves.
So it'd be like a dog owner.
Well, you haven't fed your dog in a week.
It's like, yeah, but I don't eat dog food.
And be like, what are you talking about?
Of course we know you don't eat dog food, but you've got a dog.
You've kept it in your house. You owe the dog some dog food.
So for your father, there was not an option for him to say, well, I'm just not that interested.
I mean, of course he can do it in the same way you can say, well...
I don't...
I don't have to feed my dog because I don't like dog food.
Right? Or...
You know...
It'd be like me saying my daughter couldn't read at the age of 12.
It'd be like me saying, well, of course I didn't teach my daughter to read.
I already know how to read. Of course I didn't go to a pediatrician.
I'm not a child. It's like, but you have a child and you owe the child that.
You owe the child that.
Absolutely, completely and totally, you owe the child that.
It is a solemn, foundational obligation.
You must be interested in what your child is doing.
You must find a way to be interested because your primary interest is not the activity.
The primary interest is your child.
But you have to be not a selfish asshole in order to understand that, right?
My primary interest is not playing among us.
My primary interest is my daughter, right?
And it's what she likes to do and what she's good at.
And it also gives her something she can teach me about.
Because a lot of times, if you have interests different from your parent, your parent won't get interested because they're not the authority.
And they like to stay in charge and they like to be the one teaching you things.
Whereas my daughter... She has sat down and taught me quite a lot about Among Us because she's better at it than I am.
She's got a great instinct and knack for it.
So she's teaching me. So I get to learn from her, which gives her the experience of equalizing and leveling up and knowing that she has information that I don't have and that she can be of value to me as well as me being of value to her.
I owe her that.
In the same way that I owe her food and shelter.
You owe your children some kind of financial stability because you're not a fucking toddler.
Who just spends...
Oh, oh, wait, there are taxes?
Oh my God!
Oh my... Really?
Holy crap!
I mean, who could have guessed?
Who could have known? It's not possible to know!
So, your father is a toddler.
And he has to be around absent people because...
He has the narcissism of a toddler.
And again, narcissism can't really be applied to a toddler.
It's like calling a baby short or big-headed.
It's just the developmental phase, right?
Now, for whatever reason, your father chose not to get out of that developmental phase.
He found it more comfortable to stay there.
Again, I have no idea why I'm not talking to him.
I'm talking to you. But the moral thing is not, well, I just want to spend time and I want to be invested in my kids in the way that my father wasn't.
I want to provide what wasn't provided.
No! I don't want to be a selfish infant like my father.
I don't want to be somebody who supplies chaos and uncertainty and stress to my family because I can't walk three feet to take a shit in the toilet so I take a shit in the hallway.
Because I just, you know, like toddlers do, right?
When you're toilet training them, right?
This is like your father with finances.
I don't want to subject my family to me going to jail so I won't blow all of my stupid money but I'm going to hang on to it for the tax man because I'm not a fucking toddler.
I'm not an infant.
I'm not ridiculous.
So the passion that you lack I think is because passion is morality.
Morality and passion are two sides of the same coin.
And so if you can't morally judge your father, you can't be passionate about it, passionate about your change.
And it'll always be like, well, he chose to go left.
I would rather choose to go right.
That's not going to give you enough energy to make the transition.
Because I'm here for your future kids.
I'm here for you now. I'm here for your future kids.
And your future kids are going to need you to completely commit to the change that you want to achieve.
And that change cannot be committed to if you don't have the passion and you won't have the passion if it's simply a matter of aesthetics.
Well, my father raised his voice.
I don't want to raise my voice.
My father used this language.
I don't want to use this language. My father didn't pay me much attention.
I want to pay more attention. This is not a matter of aesthetics.
This is not a matter of personal choice or habit or, yeah, my father was a bit of a bully.
I don't want to be as much of a bully.
But I don't want to be selfish.
And I don't want to be selfish because Because I owe my children that, and because I want to have a good relationship with my children so that I end up happy.
But if you've given the happiness award to your father, despite his behavior, then the whole process becomes incomprehensible.
You say, well, why would I want to give interest to my kids?
Well, I didn't like it when my father didn't pay attention to me, so I want to give that to my kids.
But that's... That's hedonistic.
Well, I didn't like it, so I'm going to provide it to my kids, as opposed to, no, no, no, it's the wrong thing to do, to withhold attention from your kids.
And if you say, well, I didn't like it when my father didn't pay attention to me, so I'm going to pay attention to my kids, you're still basing it off emotion rather than moral judgment.
And simply playing it off emotion, you're going to be like your dad.
Your dad just, well, you know, I don't like it when I pay attention to my kids, so I won't do it.
I find it boring when I pay it.
And you say, well, I didn't like it, so I will do it.
It's the same mechanism.
It's just emotions. It's still hedonistic.
It's not moral. Your father did the wrong thing.
Your father did very bad things.
He was abusive. He was neglectful.
He was unstable. He almost got himself thrown in jail while he was the primary provider for the family.
How well do you think he'd be able to continue working in law if he got himself thrown in jail?
He almost wrecked his entire career.
Why? Because he wanted to buy a laptop or whatever the hell he spent his money on that he owed to the tax department?
That's an infant. You don't want to be an infant.
You want to be a grown-up man.
You don't want to be a toddler.
You don't want to be a fool, an idiot.
You want to be a grown-up man who provides for his family and And is capable of adult love.
Your father is a selfish, self-absorbed, bullying toddler.
He's not a man. He's not masculine.
He's not a man. He barely made it out of diapers, as far as I'm concerned.
And he's not happy.
Sorry, go ahead. I'm sorry.
Yeah, I always held back on, like...
I always sort of held back on defining him as abusive, but yeah, I mean, he...
By all accounts, he was, so yeah, like...
Well, and is, and is, and is, and is.
Yeah, it is. Because every day, every day, he doesn't call you and say, oh man, oh son, I have been...
Oh, I can't sleep.
I've just been tossing and turning, and I... I just feel so bad about what I said to your sister, like the F-bombs.
I feel so bad about what I said to you in the restaurant.
It was so wrong of me to do that.
Especially, you know, you were in the country.
You flew out in part to see me.
I feel bad that I flew to Australia and didn't even bother to check in with you guys face-to-face.
I just... I don't know if it's getting older.
I mean, it's a terrible thing because now, oh my God, my dad has a conscience and he's feeling bad, but I am.
I'm sorry it didn't strike me before.
I'm so sorry beyond words that it didn't strike me before.
Every single day he doesn't make that call to you.
He's continuing to abuse you.
It's not in the past, you understand?
It's in the present and for the next 20 or 30 years probably.
Yeah, I don't think of it like that.
But it's true, right? The calls that don't come are the ones that hurt the most.
Yeah. And it's never going to come.
That call is never going to come from him.
You know what? We're going to have to take a short pause and start again because this stupid app gives me two hours.
So could you hang tight?
We'll be back. We've got another 10 minutes or so to go, if that's right with you.
So can you just give me a second and come back?
Yeah, yeah, I'll come back in one minute.
Yeah, okay, hang on. I'll just end this, and sorry to everyone here.
I'll end, and we'll just have to start again.
And normally I can do it in two, but I did a few minutes at the beginning, so hang tight.
All right, so hang tight.
We're just coming back in here.
And we'll just wait for him to come back in.
Finish up here. Yeah, it's really, really important to define things.
I view myself as a realized, fully realized, or at least fairly fully realized adult male.
And I view my father who raised me as a toddler.
As kind of selfish, as kind of random, as somebody who just never quite got around to growing up and did not end up, he did not end up happy.
And it's a real shame.
I think it's very sad that he didn't, but I can't force people to grow up.
I can't force people to take responsibility or to become mature or to be honest or anything like that, right?
So, yeah, I just wanted to sort of point that out, that how you deal with being rejected is really, really important.
See, you don't take it personally when a toddler rejects you.
I mean, a sane person, right?
A mature person doesn't take it personally when a toddler rejects.
When a toddler rejects you, right?
Now, when you start to take it a little bit more personally when you get rejected, that's when your child is growing up and you have a reasonable responsibility to provide them decent standards and reasonable behavior and being polite and all of that, right?
But I remember, oh gosh, when my daughter was little, I guess it wasn't even that long ago, I played to her A movie that I liked when I was younger called The Princess Bride with Carrie Elwes and Mandy Patinkin and, oh gosh, that woman from the Kevin Spacey political drama.
I can't remember her name.
And Carrie Elwes had magnificent hair.
It's one of the things I remember about that show.
And what happened was my daughter...
I really did not like the movie.
In fact, we played, I don't know, 20 minutes or whatever, and she wasn't really enjoying it.
I said, well, yeah, we'll take a break. We'll try tomorrow.
And the next day, I tried to put the movie on.
She literally burst into tears.
She just didn't like the movie to that point, right?
And did I sit there and say, oh, my God, I'm so rejected.
It's like, no, she doesn't like the movie, right?
She's allowed to have her own opinion. She's allowed to have differences of aesthetic tastes and all of that.
So if a toddler rejects you and you're a reasonably mature person, you know, Their brain is too young to process that, you know, maybe give it a little bit more time and it's important to expose yourself to new things and so on, right?
So, the reason I'm saying is how do you overcome being rejected by your father?
If he was a good father, he wouldn't have rejected you.
If he was a man, then he would have protected his children, right?
Now, protecting your children means that you show an interest in them, that you take care of them, that you build their self-esteem, that you help them understand that they're of value and that they're interesting and that they're cool and that they're fun.
Is so fun. And so much fun.
And she's just cool.
She's really, really cool.
And she's very funny and caustic at times, but just in the right way that's enjoyable, not like in that way that leaves you like, oh, whoa, what was that, right?
And she's just really cool.
And the things that she's interested, the things that she's into are just fantastic.
And I just relish her company.
I love this phase.
I've loved all the phases of parenthood and this phase in particular.
I just really adore it.
So as a man, as a father, as an adult, you take care of the people who depend upon you.
You protect them and you take care of them.
Whereas if you are a selfish toddler in a man's body, then you only care about your own thoughts, your own feelings, and you view them as kind of inanimate objects that you just thump if they don't give you what you want.
So... My father and I never saw eye to eye.
We never were in sync.
We never, even a tiny bit.
He was always super awkward around me.
He wasn't that way with other family members, my brother really, but around me, just super awkward.
I mean, just felt very self-conscious.
And we just were never in.
Actually, I've had the thoughts over the years that I'm not actually his son.
To be honest, I've had the thoughts over the years occasionally.
It's like, I wonder who my mom did sleep with.
Because we really couldn't be further apart in looks or temperament or anything like that.
But... Of course, it was his job to try and find a way to bridge that gap and blah, blah, blah, right?
So, having been rejected by my father...
And my father was not harsh in this kind of way.
He didn't like yell at me.
I mean, as I said before, when I went to visit him when I was 15 or so, he would, he sent me up to scrape his roof to sand down his roof and paint the roof of his garage in the blinding hot African sun for day after day after day, which was not, I mean, he did give me a radio up there.
I remember listening to Joan Jett's Crimson and Clover up there and really liking the song quite a bit.
Just as I remember being, oh, I just thought of this today for some reason.
I remember listening to Brian Ferry's More Than This, or I guess Roxy Music's More Than This.
Great, great album, Avalon.
I'd Do Anything to Turn You On is a great song.
I love that line. Is it raining in New York down Fifth Avenue?
Out on Broadway after dark, love the lights, don't you?
He sings it beautifully and it's really, really well done.
But I remember listening to that in a planter shop.
Oh, and also, actually, I just played this to my daughter today.
The opening, Alan Parsons' project, it usually is the opening to Eye in the Sky, but the song is actually called Sirius.
It's like two minutes, S-I-R-I-U-S. You can find it on YouTube or YouTube Music or Amazon Music or whatever you listen to.
Honestly, just put it on headphones.
It's really hypnotic. And I remember hearing that in a supermarket, that song in a supermarket in Africa when I was 15.
I was like, oh, man, what an amazing piece of music.
Mike Batts' Tarot Suite is also great.
It's in the same sort of genre. But anyway, so how do you get over being rejected by your father?
Well, if you look up to him as masculine and manly and an authority figure and so on, that being rejected makes you feel like crap.
And that's what his narcissism and his vanity wants you to do, right?
Because you look up to him and he feels like the big man on campus, right?
But for me, it was just like, well, you know, my dad just never grew up.
And he never did. For me, maybe he did it for others, but he never did for me what a man is supposed to do, which is to keep his children safe.
I mean, he never did with me, right?
I mean, he certainly didn't keep me safe with regards to leaving me and going to the other side of the world, leaving me with a violent mother and so on, right?
He just didn't keep me safe. So these are some basic questions, right?
Did my father keep me safe?
Well, no. He didn't keep me safe from others and he didn't keep me safe from himself.
Okay, so he failed at the basic job of a man.
And not even of a father, right?
But just the basic job of a man is to protect the people you care about.
And you don't have to be a father to do this.
It could be your girlfriend. It could be your Alzheimer-ridden father who might be bullied in an old-age home.
It could be kids in the neighborhood.
It could be some cashier being bullied by some infant in a man's body.
But the primary job of a man is to take care and to protect those he cares about.
And part of that protection is just keeping them safe and part of that protection is some financial stability or some stability of mood and so on.
So... You have to define what masculinity and manhood is, adulthood is, for a man.
What is it? It has to be protected because it's what we do.
That's why we're bigger. It's why we have 40% more body strength.
It's why we're not debilitated by childbirth.
It's so we can be there to guard the perimeter and protect those we care about.
That's what we do. That's our job, right?
So when you're a kid, did you have...
A father who was a man?
Did you have a father who was masculine?
Well, first thing is, did you feel safe, respected, and protected?
Did he prepare you for adulthood by bringing a strong foundation of security for you to go out into the world and have that inestimable benefit, right?
What's real privilege?
Real privilege is just being loved and respected and protected as a child.
That's what it's all about, right?
So Was your father a man?
Did he provide stability and protection for those he cared about?
Well, no. Your mother didn't feel protected around him.
You didn't feel protected around him.
He protected your sister so little that she developed OCD in particular after he may have verbally eviscerated her before you guys left to go to Australia from New Zealand, right?
So, were you rejected by your father?
No. See, my father did not think about me enough to reject me.
He avoided me because he felt awkward around me, and bad people or immature people or childish people, they do feel nervous around me because I kind of tell it how it is.
I kind of tell it how it is, at least for me.
I don't make any claims to omniscient truth, but I'll certainly be honest, as I have in this conversation, about my thoughts and feelings.
So, because I was going to be honest, because I was going to be direct, I was like a random bomb to my dad, right?
Because I could make him, I guess, feel bad by being honest with him at any particular time, and he had a great susceptibility to feeling bad and all of that, so...
So, of course, he's going to feel awkward around me because I kind of held his happiness in my hands.
And if I chose to speak up, his happiness could be, you know, tsunamied like a sandcastle on the beach, just tsunamied out of existence.
So, of course, he's going to be kind of tense around me, right?
Because I hold the balm of truth and it could go off at any time as it's been going off for 16 years here on the internet and before that even in my private life, right?
So... My father didn't know me enough to reject me, right?
In the same way that when I showed The Princess Bride to my daughter when she was younger, she didn't reject me because the only thing she could process was, do I like this movie or not?
Not like, well, I don't particularly like it, but my father really seems to like it, so I really need to step out of myself and figure out what's important to him, right?
Because that's an adult. If she could do that, I wouldn't be her father in the same way anymore, and so that's part of the education, and she will do that over time, and she's starting to do it now because she knows that I jump out of what I want to do in the moment to make sure that she's happy, happy and I'm fulfilling my obligations and responsibilities as a man, as a father.
And one of the reasons why fatherhood is in such crisis in the West is that the government is continually importing dangerous people and withdrawing police protection to the point where – and then actually, I mean, in England, men, I think white men and Sikh men whose children had been kidnapped by these – the Muslim Pakistani immigrants had been kidnapped and were being used as sex objects as children.
The police would come and arrest the fathers trying to rescue their own children, right?
So you can't – like you actually go to jail for trying to protect your family is one of the reasons why – Why masculinity is facing such a crisis?
How well are we allowed to protect our own families these days?
Well, we can actually be arrested for trying to do so, right?
For the men who have skepticism about the efficacy and safety of the COVID vaccines and they're out there trying to protect their families and protect other people's families by telling the truth, well...
You can get, I mean, Brett Weinstein got a strike, a one out of three YouTube strike for one of his videos.
It goes against community standards. Like, you can't even protect.
Yeah, you can't protect. What if you think, oh, it's not necessarily great.
I'm going to wait for the COVID vaccine.
You know, more data wasn't really tested on kids or anything like that.
Nope. You can get in real trouble for that, right?
If you want to travel or whatever, right?
So, yeah, it's how well are we able to protect our own kids, our own society, our own families?
It's kind of what we do, right?
It's what we do as men. It's what we do as fathers.
So the fact that Your sister ended up in a mental hospital.
The fact that you have this intermittent, pretty significant and severe anxiety is because your father was not a father.
Your father was not a man.
Your father was a toddler.
He was a selfish infant.
And you actually want to be a father.
Saying, I want to be a different father implies that your father was a father.
I know, it's kind of a brain-twisty, language-twisty way to do it.
Saying, I want to be...
I mean, if your father was a murderer, let's take a really extreme example.
If you say, well, my father was a murderer, but I want to be a different murderer.
I want to be a different kind of murderer.
That wouldn't make any sense.
You don't want to be a different kind of father.
You just want to be a father, which your dad was not.
Your sperm donor was not, in the way that I sort of view it.
So it's not like he went left and...
You want to go right.
It wasn't, well, you know, he didn't pay us enough attention.
I want to pay my kids more attention.
It's like, no, I actually want to be a father.
My father was not my father.
And I remember this in boarding school.
Saturday mornings, I would get a haircut and then they would sit down and I would have to write to my mother and I would write to my father.
And to my mother, I would write dear mother, and I used her, so became mother.
To my father, I would write dear, and I would use his first name.
And they were like, no, you have to write dear father.
And I said, but he's not my father.
And he's like, no, he is your father.
It's like, he's in Africa.
No, no, but he is your father.
I'm like, no, he's not.
Like, I genuinely was like, I don't understand what this means.
Right? Parent is a verb, not a noun.
Right? He's not fathering me, so he's not my father.
He's not parenting me, so he's not my parent.
I mean, he's some guy who impregnated my mom.
I understood that enough.
But I would write to him, dear, and I would just use his first name.
And they, we can't mail this because you're not referring to him as your father.
But he's not fathering me.
He's not parenting me. So how can he be my parent?
And your father did not parent you, as far as I can tell.
He ignored you. Maybe when your interests would coincide on those rare occasions, he would.
But that's not parenting.
So, you don't want to parent differently.
You want to be a parent.
You don't want to be a different kind of father.
You want to be a father, which your sperm donor was not.
So I hope that makes, you know, so you're not rejected by an adult who assessed you.
You're rejected by a child, a toddler who couldn't possibly, I mean, at this point, right, I mean, a toddler genuinely can't.
Obviously, your father could have if he'd wanted to.
So you're not rejected.
You're not scorned.
Were you abused? Yeah.
And the first job of the father, don't abuse your kids.
Don't neglect your kids. Raise them to be strong, healthy, independent.
Think for themselves. Having a secure sense of their own value.
Be there for them because that's going to make you happy and it's the right thing to do, which really is the same thing.
Doing the right thing and being happy is the same thing.
And I say this to all the people out there, all the listeners out there.
You're rejected by your father.
You're rejected by your mother.
Then they are not, in any moral sense, your mother or your father, because their first job is to accept you and to love you and to take interest in you and to help you understand yourself and to model good behavior.
That's parenting. Just being in the same room and feeding you, who gives a shit about that?
That's like saying, well, my prison guard was actually my father because he put a roof over my head and he fed me food and gave me health care.
So my prison guard is my father.
No, just parenting is an active moral process of the transfer of values and a value itself to the child.
And if that's not going on, it's not any kind of parenting as far as any philosophical definition would occur.
So, that's, I think, the level that you need to operate at.
Because right now, I think that there's tension.
Because there is a moral gap between what you want to become and what your father did.
But I don't think you're aware of that.
And because you're not aware of it, you're not going to make enough of a change and therefore you're anxious about fatherhood to come.
Because you're not rooted deeply in, I want to be a father.
I was not parented.
I was not fathered.
And I want to provide that.
Because you're like, you got these details.
Like, well, I want to provide more attention to my kids than I got for myself.
I want to provide more security than I got myself.
It's like, no, no, no. I actually want to provide fatherhood and parenting to my children, which my father did not do.
I want to father as a noun, not just as a sperm donor and a verb and a guy under the same house and a guy who pays the bills and And if you have that gap analysis and you have that goal, then you have...
And listen, I've made this journey, right?
I've made this journey. So this is like bitter, hard-won knowledge.
Doesn't mean I'm right, right?
But it is bitter, hard-won knowledge from how much it takes to turn this around.
I'm not just, well, I want to parent differently than my parents did.
It's like my parents weren't parents.
They were toddlers in charge of me.
They weren't parents.
The only time they ever took any interest was when their preferences overlapped with mine.
Which is like saying some guy you're in the same tennis club with is your brother.
It's like, no, you both like to play tennis, right?
So my mom liked to play tennis, I liked to play tennis, so sometimes we'd play tennis together.
That's about it.
I like to write novels.
My grandfather was a novel writer and My mom took some interest in that because it overlapped with her ambitions as well.
She wanted to write books. But there was never any interest in anything that I was interested in because I was interested in it.
Because it didn't interest them, they had no interest in it, which meant that they weren't interested in me, which meant they didn't care about me, which meant they weren't my parents.
Because the category of parent can't include me and my father.
It just can't. Because it's complete opposites.
It's like including the category murderer people who kill people and people who save people.
Parenting is something you do.
It's not something you squirt into and pay for.
Parenting is the continual action of raising your children As strong, healthy, independent, clear-thinking human beings.
And that's a huge time investment.
And it pays off in spades, in joy, in love, in connection, in attachment.
And you want to provide that to your kids?
Fantastic. I think that's the greatest thing in the universe to do.
You want to provide that to your kids.
But your gap analysis is like 1% of where it needs to be.
In my humble opinion, your gap analysis is 1% of what it needs to be.
You've got to widen that.
Otherwise, you'll say, well, my father went left.
I'm going to try and go left.
Maybe I'll just go left-ish because I kind of want to make a few tweaks along the way.
And I'm diminishing a little what you're saying.
I know you're not just talking about tweaks.
But if you have an understanding that you're actually going to try and be a man, you're going to try and be a father, and you will achieve it.
I have no doubt of it. If you have the right amount of gap analysis, if you know you've got to go in the opposite direction, you can actually achieve there.
If you think you've got to tweak what came before, you're just going to go in the same direction but just make your own mistakes where your father made his.
But you're probably the first man in several generations or many generations or maybe forever who's actually going to be a father.
And that is going to bring you to happiness, to closeness with your kids, to a sense of satisfaction and self-respect at the job you're doing.
And if you think your father can get one iota of happiness over having half wrecked the lives of two brilliant children, man, I'm telling you, you're wrong.
You're wrong about that. There's no way he's happy.
He probably puts on some bullshit.
But you look at the woman he's with.
He had to take an empty sock puppet who can't even stand up for an abused child.
No, that's not happiness.
That's not happiness. That's just the weird, saggy contentment that comes from not being challenged.
Sorry, go ahead. Sorry.
Yeah, and I haven't actually really been...
Just sort of straight up and honest to them about any of this as well.
So, yeah, that's something else that I kind of know in the back of my mind is necessary, but I haven't done up to this point.
Well, and this is sort of why I do say, and you don't have to do anything, right?
I mean, the joy of philosophy is if you have enough self-knowledge, you can do whatever the hell you want, and it's going to be fun.
If you're honest enough with yourself and with others, it's fine, right?
it's important is if you try to make yourself real to your father like if you go up and you say honestly your experience of him as a dad and growing up and all of that and what's happened since right if you go up and you're just honest you say okay can I can I actually be in the same Can I actually be in the same room as my father?
That's a big-ass question, man.
Can I actually be present?
Can my father have two people in the same room?
Or is it like him and his sock puppets?
Is it just him and his narcissistic projections?
Can he actually have someone else in the same room?
And you know how you know that someone else in the same room is that they disagree with you a lot of times, right?
I mean, you think of a conversation, a conversation is two people disagreeing all the time, in a way, right?
Otherwise, it would be you and I saying exactly the same words at the same time, right?
So we have to both listen and speak, and there's disagreement, and that's exactly what a conversation and relationship is, right?
Not moral disagreement, but at least disagreement in syntax and speaking.
So you go and talk to your dad about these things, or you do it on the phone or however it works, right?
And you see, okay... You actually experience being rejected by your father probably for the first time since you were a toddler, right?
So you go, okay, what's it like for me to actually show up in a relationship with my parent or whoever you're having difficulties with in your relationships?
What is it like for me to show up in this relationship to just be myself and be in this conversation?
Now then, if your father, and I assume it would happen, that he would viciously reject, swear at you, slam the phone down and say, ah, okay, okay, So, my father had the opportunity to learn something about who I am, and he ran away. Why?
Because he's a toddler and a coward.
He's like a fucking puppy with a vacuum cleaner.
You turn it on, the puppy runs away.
Right? I'm serious about that.
I know he's a big imposing guy, I'm sure.
It certainly was when you were a kid, right?
But he's... Yeah, that's a good way of putting it.
He's a toddler. He's a puppy.
He's a kitten. He's an infant.
Listen, this is a tip in life as a whole, and then I'll shut up in a sec, so I appreciate your patience with this, but this is a tip in life as a whole.
Scan the people around you, and you can scan yourself too, and say, okay, where did they get stuck?
Where did they stop growing?
Where did they stop growing?
I had a conversation, I can't even remember if I published it yet, but it was some guy who got involved with a girl who was an adult, but she'd started drinking when she was like 12 or 13.
Like heavily, right? And I said, okay, so she must have the emotional development of like a 12-year-old.
And he's like, holy crap, that's right.
I'm like, well, yeah. Because when you find some convenient way of avoiding growth and avoiding self-confrontation and avoiding pain, you stop growing.
So your dad stopped when he was a toddler.
He stopped growing when he was a toddler.
And you can see this All over the place.
You can have a look at everyone in your life.
And it would be so convenient if we'd see two numbers on people's foreheads, right?
Number one, IQ. That would just make things so easy, right?
You see all the people rioting and you see 85 IQ. Okay, well, that helps, right?
That's why they're rioting, right?
So you see the IQ on the left-hand side of the forehead and on the right-hand side of the forehead, here's where my emotional development stopped.
Those would be two very helpful numbers to have.
And you can do this in your own mind with the people in your life and you can do it with yourself as well.
I mean, they're not the IQ thing, but you can certainly look around your life and say, okay, well, where did their emotional life stop?
Where did their emotional growth stop?
Where are they right now?
My mom was about three.
My dad was maybe six or seven.
That's where it stopped. And with your dad, yeah.
Probably two to three years old because that's the toddler blow-up tantrum phase, right?
And whatever happened to him and whatever choices he made afterwards, that's where he got stuck.
But you tell me that somebody who hasn't had emotional growth in half a century and is still using the same bullshit tactics of a toddler when he's in his 50s, you tell me how that person could be happy, I'll tell you someone's not right and that would be you.
But sorry, go ahead. I'll shut up now.
So tell me what you think. Thanks.
Yeah, I mean, for me, I guess it feels like mine would have...
Probably been sort of stunted or at least slowed down or stopped when I was a teenager because I still sort of feel at that not quite adult sort of phase when it comes to the anxiety and stuff like that.
And yeah, that's sort of where I feel I'm at.
And this means that, yeah, so if you stay stuck there, it means that the anxiety is going to increase because there's that rubber band that stretches, right?
So if you get stuck sort of 15, 16, 17 as your parents' marriage was disintegrating or whatever, right?
So you get stuck there, now you're 10 years past that, and if you can't get yourself to catch up, then it's going to get progressively tougher going forward, and that may be where some of the anxiety is coming from.
Yeah, and it tends to sort of trigger when I'm having...
Like increasing success, sort of.
Like your dad, right?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So because the more successful I become, it kind of triggers that anxiety because there is a fear of what's ahead, sort of. Yeah.
Okay. So, I mean, this is kind of where you started from.
So, if you have time, could we just spend another 10 minutes on something?
Yeah, sure. Because we're back to sort of success anxiety, which is kind of where we started, but I've spent a lot of stuff.
I've said a lot of stuff since then.
So, I think your dad is blocking, your inner dad is blocking this conversation about him and turning us back to the origin story of the conversation, which had less to do with him.
Does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Okay, so let's try this with your indulgence.
So you just pretend to be your dad, if you don't mind.
You know these role plays, right? So you just pretend to be your dad.
Yeah. Call you up, right?
And I say, I won't do your accent, right?
Even though I'm a bit of an accent whore, but I won't do your accent.
I say, dad, dad, dad. So dad, you know, like the way things left with us, that restaurant, that, you know, ugly restaurant scene, it's been bothering me.
I've been thinking about it a lot since then.
And to me, it's like, It's kind of part of a bigger pattern with us.
Like, you know, you would raise your voice, there's swearing, you swore at this, you know, like your daughter, and said, you know, if you guys can't handle it, you can all just fuck off, you know?
And that bothers me.
That's not right.
And I'm thinking also, like, when I was a kid, You really didn't take any interest in what I did.
We didn't really do much together.
Like, there's something not right in all of this.
And it just feels like, you know, you came to visit Australia.
You didn't even come to see us.
I mean, I know you got your issues with mom and all of that, but, you know, we're still your kids, right?
Sis and me. Like, That's not right, is it?
I mean, what do you think?
I mean, the swelling, the yelling and swearing, and I remember you telling me when I was going to Australia, oh, you're not going to find a job, son.
I mean, this just doesn't seem right.
This doesn't seem good. What do you think?
Oh, well, you know, I tried to engage you, but, you know, we just weren't interested in we just weren't interested in the same things.
And your mother was too overbearing.
So, you know, I didn't really get a chance or an opportunity.
And then she, you know, she took you guys away to another country.
Well, hang on, Dad, Dad. Look, I'm sorry to interrupt because I just asked you a question, but cut the shit, Dad.
Seriously. Are you going to sit there, go all rubber bones on me and say that for 17 years you never had the opportunity to try and figure out what I was interested in and meet me there?
Because, you know, saying, well, we just didn't overlap in our interests, like, you're the father, right?
You're not just supposed to, hey, I hope my kids and I are all interested in the same thing so we can get along.
Like, that doesn't make any sense.
your job as a dad to get interested in the stuff that I'm interested in?
Yeah, look, I haven't actually had this conversation with him, so I don't actually have a good I don't have an answer.
Well, I could tell you what his strategies would be.
His strategy, so most people, if they're kind of selfish or narcissistic, when they get confronted, they jump out of the conversation.
Where is this coming from? Who have you been talking to?
What books have you been reading?
Is it that podcast? Is that that Canadian guy?
Like, where is all this?
Is this coming from your mom?
Where is this coming? What are you talking about?
Yeah, what's all this all of a sudden?
Where's this all coming from? I had my stressors.
I had my problems. Yeah, you and I, you know, I had to work.
I had to go and live in the town.
I can't spend my entire life staring at some kid's Lego and pretending to be fascinated.
I had my own troubles.
I had my troubles with the government.
I had troubles with the tax agency.
I was threatened with jail.
And now you're saying, well, but Dad, you didn't play Minecraft with me enough.
It's like, hello, I'm putting food on the table and trying to stay out of prison.
Through no fault of my own, I might add, I tried to obey the law.
And yeah, there were some challenges.
Guess what, kid? Life is tough.
Life is tough. And you saw me handle it.
I expect you to handle it too.
I don't know. Just stuff like that, right?
He would always sort of try to put everything on my mom, sort of.
Like, oh, well, she must have...
She must have been saying things to you.
She must have set you against me, blah, blah, blah.
Well, and so I can try both sides here, right?
Okay, so he would try and frame it to jump out of the conversation and try and say, because he'd need to know the origin story of the conversation as a way of avoiding the actual content, right?
And say, oh, did your mom put you up to this?
It's like, Dad, can you just answer my question?
No, I'm not going to answer your question until I know where the hell this is coming from.
Why would it matter? What would it matter if mom told me or a hand puppet told me or space aliens told me or I saw it written on a fucking wall?
These are honest questions that I have about you as a parent and criticisms, to be honest, about it, right?
Well, I just need to know where this is going.
No, you don't need to know where this is coming from because now you're trying to distract me or drag me away from these actual questions into some weird origin story.
It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter.
What I do expect and what you owe me as my father is some honesty and some answers to the questions that I have.
Fine! He'd say, fine, go ahead.
Ask your questions. I'll answer.
That's indicating that he's totally folding his arms and he's not going to push back.
He's not going to give you the answers that you want.
He'd say, okay, what were your issues?
What were your questions again then?
That's indicating it doesn't matter to him and he's listened so little that you have to repeat them, which is a form of humiliation.
So this would be the kind of stuff.
So then you would patiently repeat the question and say, well...
So, for instance, what were you doing swearing at me in the restaurant?
Well, cry, son. I'm here with my new girlfriend.
You know, I was sick.
I had lymphoma. I could still be sick.
I've got chemo going ahead.
And this is her first introduction to my family.
And you're just sitting there stuffing your face.
You got fucking butter all over your face.
Lips and your chin and basically I might as well be sitting across from a bonobo.
I might as well be sitting across from a monkey.
You can't even show me the basic respect of having some decent table manners when you're meeting my girlfriend for the first time.
So, yeah, I told you pretty bluntly and pretty directly how unhappy I was with all of that.
Oh, but I thought you were all about expressing feelings.
Isn't that what this conversation is all about?
That I'm just supposed to... We're supposed to express our feelings.
Well, there I was expressing my feelings, and now I'm a bad guy.
So, which is it? Do you want people to express their feelings or not?
I don't know. There's probably not anything close, but something like that, right?
Yeah, that's...
Yeah, that seemed like it could.
Okay, so then you'd say, okay, so dad...
You know, you swore at me, right?
In public. I mean, you just F-bombed.
Well, I was frustrated.
It's like, but that's not an excuse.
I mean, you're a grown-ass man.
If you're trying to say to me, Dad, oh, well, I was frustrated, therefore I lobbed F-bombs around.
Quick question, oh, Father.
Quick question. Why didn't you lob F-bombs around?
At the government, when they threaten to throw you in jail over the 20,000.
Well, that's a totally different situation.
Yes, you're right. It is a situation where someone had power over you and therefore you were perfectly polite, but you as my father have a lot of power over me, so if I don't do something that you want, you launch F-bombs at me.
Do you know, I remember when I was a little kid, I remember you made a cashier, this woman, a girl, I think it was, a young woman, you made her cry because they didn't have something in stock.
Oh, Christ! What?
Are we going back... What, was that 20 years now?
Is this, are they we marching? Oh, you sound just like your mother.
Oh, I remember this thing that happened 20 years.
First of all, you were a kid, you don't remember it that well.
You don't remember it that well.
I don't even remember it that well.
It's such an unimportant, but you've, you've, this is something you've held onto, you've held onto this for like 20 years now, 20 years.
You know, I got mad at some cashier and she's burst into tears because she was on her period and you're just sitting here like you're bringing the dread, this is this where we are, you're dredging this up, that's older than the Titanic for God's sakes.
That's all you got?
20 years ago, some woman got upset because I got bad customer service and didn't sit for it?
Come on. Are you on medication?
Did you hit your head? What is going on?
I don't know. Something like that, right?
Yeah, yeah. To which you say, okay, let me give you a challenge, Dad.
Tell me... A time that you remember where you weren't interested in something that I was doing, but you sat down and tried to learn it anyway.
Oh, Christ, I can't be expected to remember every single detail of parenting that happened over the last 25 years, for God's sakes.
I mean, it happened, but you can't expect me to dredge up every little thing.
It's like, Dad, I'm not asking you to dredge up every little thing.
I'm just asking you for one example where I was interested in something that didn't appeal to you immediately and You know, because when I was a kid, right, I didn't like new food, right?
I was better than sis because she hated new food, but I didn't like new food.
I liked the familiar stuff, right?
And what did you all say to me?
Try something new, for Christ's sake.
Stop being so fussy, right?
And so, by that logic, you should have wanted to try things I was interested in just because, you know, try something new, don't be so fussy.
But I'm racking my brain, and I don't want to be unfair to you, right?
But I'm racking my brain. I can't honestly remember a single time.
Where you said to me, well, I don't understand this, but show me, son.
Teach me. Help me understand so that we can do it together, right?
I can't remember a time.
Well, I was busy. I was working.
Your mother wasn't working.
I was the one putting food on the table.
It's like, yeah, I get that.
But we still had a lot of time together.
You had vacations. There were weekends.
I was home for 17 years.
And I can't remember one time over those 17 years.
When you sat down and tried to learn something I was interested in just because I was interested in it.
Oh, Christ, where's all this coming from?
Who put you up to the... Let's get all this stuff, right?
And then I would say, so, Dad, when I would bring home a report card, let's say that the report card wasn't that great.
I got like a B minus or a C or something like that, right?
And you said, what the hell's been going?
Why are you getting a B? Why are you getting a C? If I had sat there and said, Dad, where the hell is this coming from?
Where is this? Did the teacher put you up to this?
Did mom put you up to this?
You'd look at me and say, this has got nothing to do.
I demand to know what's been going on in this class, why you've gotten a C. I say, look, I can't remember everything that I did in this class.
It's been a bloody year. It's like, no, son, that is not a good enough answer.
Like, here's the thing. You wouldn't give me the excuses you're pulling out now when I'm asking you about your parenting.
You would never give me these excuses when I was eight bloody years old.
You would never let me have these excuses when I was eight years old.
You would demand to know and you wouldn't let me gaslight you and you wouldn't let me dodge and you wouldn't let me fog and you wouldn't let me try and frame it.
You'd just answer the damn question, son.
So if I didn't get these excuses when I was eight, how the hell do you get these excuses when you're 55 years old, dad?
Come on. Man up.
Grow up a little, I would say.
Just answer the questions.
I mean, they're not that complicated.
I get that they might be a little emotionally difficult to answer, but you always told me to tough it up, right?
What did you say to sis?
You said, hey, if you can't handle it, then fuck off, right?
Okay, well, here's something which you appear to be unable to handle, but you're a tough guy, right?
Because you get to mouth off at me, your kid.
You get to mouth off at your daughter because you're such a tough guy, right?
You didn't mouth off to the tax authorities, as I already mentioned.
So, I guess if you're finding this difficult, you've just got to show me that manliness and that courage that you've always encouraged in me and just answer these questions.
I don't have any time for this.
I have no patience for this.
I've given you enough time. I've given you all the answers that I have.
You've got to take this up with some therapist or whatever the hell has got this bee in your bonnet.
I don't care. Click, right?
Because the more persistent you are, it escalates to when he disconnects, right?
Yeah, and I think that's what happened with my sister when she was over there, because she just kept escalating and wouldn't back down, and so then he just blew up.
Well, not escalating.
Escalating is when you insult and you scale something.
Just being persistent, right? Maybe she did escalate.
Yeah, yeah. So if he couldn't manipulate you, then he would simply disconnect, right?
Right.
Right. Yep, yep.
I wasn't calling him an asshole.
I wasn't calling him a terrible father.
I wasn't saying you rejected me and you abandoned me and you're a jerk and you're an asshole and you made that one.
I was simply being persistent in, no, no, give me an answer.
Don't give me these bullshit excuses, which you wouldn't give to me when I was a kid.
So, you know, live by your own rules, right?
That's all we do in these situations.
Live by your own rules, right? Just live by your own rules.
So then he would disconnect, right?
And then it would be like, okay, so...
He can't handle an honest conversation.
He can't handle me being inconvenient to him.
He can't handle anything.
Why? Because he's a toddler.
He manipulates, he bullies, he threatens, and then he runs away.
Because hanging up is just running away, right?
He just runs away because he's a toddler.
Yeah, and if I think about it, the reason that I probably haven't been honest with him so far is I always kind of thought like, oh, it would be good to have him as sort of like a backup, you know, if I ever needed support or anything like that or ever got into or ever, you know, had any
But yeah, I do need to be, I do just need to be honest with him because That sort of holding back of honesty is probably like reflecting in other parts of my life as well.
you will have far more professional success if you can master this than anything your father could ever provide to you.
Because whatever your father will provide to you will come at such an emotional cost that it will never be worth it.
Yeah, that's true as well.
And since this is the root of it as well, not holding back from being completely honest with him would help in all the other parts of life as well.
Because it's probably projected onto other parts of my life as well, if I think about it.
Yeah. No, it's not worth it.
It's absolutely not worth it. Absolutely not worth it.
In terms of avoiding the confrontation with him, then that makes me uncomfortable having confrontations with other people as well, right?
Well, yeah. If you can handle that confrontation, right, then you gain the superpower, right?
Because nothing else, like everything you want is on the other side of fear, right?
The cave you're most afraid of is the one that has the greatest treasure.
So I've been put in ridiculously uncomfortable situations over the course of this show.
Still doing my thing.
Still enjoying what I'm doing. So no, you gain the superpower.
And I don't think there's any other way to gain it.
Confronting the father. It's the Darth Vader thing.
Confronting the father gives you the force.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And obviously, yeah, you're right.
If I... I'm able to deal with this, then, yeah, like, the professional success I could have, well, yeah, I'll be able to get way more resources than any...
Yeah, I was offered some resources from my father's estate, and I just said, nope.
No, they should go. They should go to his kid, not me.
Not even tempting. Oh, yeah, and that's the other thing as well.
Yeah, like, there's going to be, like, there's an inheritance from him as well, right?
That's the other... That's the other thing as well.
But again, I can't see it being worth it.
Oh, gosh, no. No, because it's...
I mean, first of all, he's got probably 20, 30 years left on the planet, right?
I know, listen, I mean, I had illness like your dad and it's like eight years in the past.
Now my health is great, right?
So he could last 20 or 30 years more.
No, no, no. And listen, you know, would you want anyone in your life Hanging around you just for money?
No. Let's say you get married, right?
And your wife takes out a life insurance policy.
You take out a million-dollar life insurance policy or a half-million-dollar life insurance policy, and your wife openly says to you, oh, you know, I don't like you at all, but I'm just sticking around to get the money after you're dead.
What would you say? Yeah.
Well, that would be the relationship, hopefully, wouldn't it?
Well, I mean, it's gross, right?
You just hang around people for money, right?
And look, I know that you know that.
It's just probably never been put quite as starkly.
But don't be for sale, right?
If you're not for sale, you'll end up making a lot more than if you are for sale.
Because whenever you're for sale, you think you're getting something for nothing, but you're not.
Or it's another way of saying, well, my father didn't give me attention, but maybe he can at least give me money.
But if the only way you can get that money is to continue to not be paid attention for the next 20 years, it's not worth it, right?
Yeah, yeah, that's true.
And that's the thing as well, is that, I mean, it doesn't matter either way, but when he passes away, then there'll still be his partner who will get the money first anyway, right?
So it'll probably come so late anyway that it's like, Well, he'll know.
He'll know while you're sticking around, and he'll stick it to you.
He won't live your penny. I mean, if you had a wife who was only sticking around for the insurance company, sorry, for the insurance money, you'd make sure the insurance money never went to her, right?
Yeah, that's true. That's true.
No, I think the real thing you've got to talk to before your dad is your sister.
That's the real conversation, I think, right now.
Find out what he said to her when you were teenagers, what her experience of his parenting was like, and get more details about what happened when she went to see him in New Zealand.
Yep. Sorry, go ahead.
We have talked about it to some degree, but I didn't inquire as much as I should have, I guess.
Again, you should, sir.
You inquired quite a bit, but it's what I said to a listener the other day.
I made a mistake. I didn't know better.
I'm going to learn better. That's all we say in life.
I made a mistake. I didn't know better.
I'm going to learn better. That way you don't have to, I should have done more.
I'm deficient or whatever.
I just made a mistake.
Didn't know better. Going to learn better.
All right. So that's the major outlines of how the conversation go for you.
How are you doing? Yeah, that definitely makes lots of sense.
I can kind of see now in my life how I've sort of held back from being honest with him.
And so that means that I've also held back from being honest just in general sort of as well.
For the same reasons.
It's basically whenever I talk to him, I don't really exist anyway because it's just sort of repeating back to him what he wants to hear and not actually being genuine or honest at all.
Sorry, go ahead. And that fear of confrontation then also manifests itself in all the other parts of my life as well in terms of work or just other things in general as well, because I haven't had that core confrontation.
Yeah, and that way you can be successful and you don't have to sacrifice anything for it, right?
I mean, if you look at people like, what is that old meme?
Well, it's not that old meme now where people say, so the two richest men in the world couldn't keep their wives happy.
What chance do you have, right?
Like Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos, right?
Both got dumped by their wives, right?
And it's like, okay, so they got their financial success and it cost them their relationships.
Like, what if you could just have it all?
Well, to have it all, though, you've got to work philosophically and you've got to be very clear in your moral delineations and very clear in your moral outrage, right?
Because these guys, you know, they traded their families for money in many ways, right?
And it's a bad deal, man.
I can't imagine how depressing it would be to get divorced in your 60s.
For Bill Gates, I guess, I don't know, Jeff Bezos, he's in his 50s, he's got this weird Robocop thing going on.
I don't know how the hell old he is, but yeah, it's very sad stuff.
It's very sad stuff. What if you could have it all, right?
What if you could have success in your career and you could have love with your wife, love with your kids, and you didn't have to sacrifice anything?
Well, in my case, my reputation, but that's all right.
My reputation is still good among good people and that's really what counts.
Alright, so keep me posted if you could about how it's going, and I really appreciate the call today.
Very, very good stuff. I also appreciate that you hung in there through the coaching, which I hope wasn't too naggy, but I just wanted to make sure we got to a very productive place, if that makes sense.
No, no, that was very helpful.
Thanks a lot for all that, and I'll let you know later on how it all went.
How it all goes. All right.
Well, thanks everyone so much.
Freedomain.com forward slash donate to help out the show.
Should you be so inclined, and I would certainly be happy if you inclined that way, freedomain.locals.com.
You can check that out for premium shows, a community that you can chit-chat with as much as you feel, as much as you see fit.
It's also a great way to message me, freedomain.locals.com.
Thanks to James, as always, the Magnificent.
Please check out FDRpodcast.com.
It's amazing stuff. We've got a brilliant new coder there who's just making easily shareable, lightning-fast searches, and you can find all of the videos there as well.
FDRpodcast.com, a new revamped search engine that is really of the gods.
It's so psychic, it will actually tell you what the price of Bitcoin is in 12 seconds from now, which I think is all we need these days.
Thanks, everyone, so much.
Have a great evening.
Lots of love from up here.
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