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July 11, 2021 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
03:51:23
I SLEPT WITH HUNDREDS OF WOMEN AND I'M MISERABLE... Freedomain Call In
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Time Text
Aloha! Hey, how's it going?
It's going beautifully.
Thank you. You can leave your video off.
I'm just doing audio for this.
Okay, that's what I figured.
How do I turn that off?
I think you just did.
Cool. How are you?
I'm well, thanks. How are you doing? I'm talking to Mr.
Stefan Molyneux. I fucking love this.
Are you kidding me? This is awesome.
Good, good. Well, hopefully we'll rise to the expectations.
Do you want to start off by reading your Yeah, I have to go back and see where that is.
That's right in the Skype thing there, right?
Yeah, sure. Hey Steph, I know you like to keep this short and I will try.
I was hoping to find out if there was a way to speak with you a few times about peaceful parenting.
I'm more than happy to donate for your time.
You deserve to be paid for all the hard work that you do.
My daughter who was 13 was abused mentally quite heavily for years and now she has just been kicked out of her mother's house for the third time which I feel will be absolutely permanent.
I really need help in learning how to communicate with her and also maybe having her join us.
There's a lot of challenges coming our way and I just want to make sure this is as painless as possible for my daughter.
I do sincerely hope You consider my request.
Well, yeah, nice to meet you.
I'm sorry to hear about all of this.
And just for those of you who don't know, I don't really do sort of private or paid calls.
But, you know, we said we'd make this a convo for the world.
So, yeah, I mean, I guess there's quite a bit of backstory.
And feel free to go into as much detail as you need for this history.
Oh, it's crazy. I don't even know where to start.
I guess... I guess some backstory is pretty important.
I'll give you a little history about myself.
I'm an entrepreneur.
I've been an entrepreneur for a better part of my life.
Fairly successful, extremely talented, and good at what I do.
On a side note from that, I was also, let's just say, relatively popular in the men's dating world, where I acquired quite a bit of fame and notoriety.
Wait, sorry. Do you mean like the pickup artistry world or just being sort of dating privately?
I mean, pickup artistry, if that's what you want to call it, yes.
Well, no, no. Don't let me mislabel your life's work.
I mean, what would you call it?
I mean, pickup artist sums it up fantastically.
I just hate the negative connotations that sometimes come with it.
You're a player, you're a manipulator, you're this, you're that.
It's just teaching men how to become more attractive.
Nothing wrong with that. I think that plays into a lot of things that happened with her mom on some level because that fact is still being brought up on a regular basis.
13 years later, and I'm not even doing it anymore.
Okay, so hang on.
Sorry. Give me the slow burn backstory to the ex-wife before we get there.
If we could start even earlier than your hairy-chested pickup days and get to childhood, parents, discipline, that kind of stuff.
Like my childhood?
Yeah. You know.
Come on. I always do the childhood stuff.
I know, and I'm more than happy to go there.
You know, I didn't have a father.
He left when I was two years old.
I was told a story that he didn't ever want kids.
He, I guess, got my mom pregnant and decided, okay, maybe I will give one a shot.
She got pregnant again and he said, I'm out.
And that's the story I was told.
Later on in life, I did some deep digging with my mom and kind of found out the true happenings of what was going on, cheating on what seemed to be both of their ends and just a very unhealthy relationship.
I grew up just with a mother who, from what I can recall, dated, I don't want to say excessively, but There was just always a guy around.
You know, one she was married to, then that was short-lived.
That was when I was very young.
He was an alcoholic.
Definitely a little crazy.
I do remember that.
She wound up leaving him for somebody else while cheating on him for somebody else who then became a sort of live-in boyfriend.
So from what I can recall, a lot of her tension wasn't really...
Directed towards myself and my sister too much.
Like, it's interesting because I never thought of this, but me and my sister had a conversation one day.
This is years ago.
She said, you know, Glenn, you know, mom, she never hugged me.
Right? And I said, you know, that's weird.
I don't think I was ever hugged either.
And that really got me thinking because I was like, all right, well, what type of Mother was she?
What type of role did she play in my life?
And yeah, she was there for me whenever I needed something at Little League, whenever I got in trouble and I needed money, or if I ever did have a problem, she was there immediately.
But I don't recall any deep conversations, any sort of intimate sharing of feelings and ideas back and forth.
You know, I was a very disruptive child, for sure.
There's no doubt.
I think I took a lot of my anger out on the world around me.
Not to people I know, but to strangers, mostly.
What do you mean by disruptive?
Oh, breaking windows, breaking into cars, throwing eggs at people's houses, like, you know, just starting trouble.
A lot of it.
I was always in some kind of trouble, always seeking some kind of attention from somewhere, for sure.
Absolutely. Well, it's not really seeking attention.
I would imagine it's more you were angry, right?
Well, looking back now, I could say, yeah, I was angry as hell.
At the time, I didn't view it as anger.
I viewed it as like Well, that's what I was curious about, right?
Like you say, you say disruptive, right?
Okay. What does that mean?
Well, in this case, maybe it means angry.
And I mean, if that's accurate, I listen, last thing I want to do is tell you what your experience was, right?
So if it's not anything I say, as usual, if it's not accurate, you know, you are the expert on your life, not me.
But if it was angry, what were the top couple of things that you might be angry about?
It's a great question.
It could have just been maybe not having a father.
I think there were times where playing sports and school events, I think there were times where I was a little jealous of other kids for not having a father.
I would say I was definitely a little angry for not having The types of relationships with family that other friends had.
You know, when it came to being like popularity and material things, that wasn't too much of an issue ever.
Maybe I was just angry at myself because of my overall situation.
Maybe I was angry at My mom for bringing these dudes into the house that me and my sister couldn't give a shit about and couldn't care about and who didn't seem to really care about us.
Did they fake it at all?
Yeah, well, like I said, there was like a stepdad.
They were married and the next guy was around for a few years.
And then there was like multiple boyfriends.
But by that time, I was like...
We're a young teen, mid-teens, driving almost.
But yeah, I think he tried to fake it.
Sure. I mean, I don't believe any of it was sincere.
Like, no way. No, I remember a couple of mom's boyfriends, you know, pretending to take some interest in me.
And it's like, it's really fucking humiliating, frankly.
Really? Because, you know, she lures him in with a vagina and points him at her son for some masculine presence, and it's like, you know, neither of us want to be in the conversation.
It's not so much the absence of a father.
I don't want to speak for you, but for me, it wasn't so much the absence of a father that bugged me.
It was like just the presence of all the lies about it.
Like, no one could just say, yeah, you know, I chose someone for entirely the wrong reasons.
I... I chose for status, I chose for looks, I chose there was no virtue involved and you're paying the price and I'm sorry.
There was no just frank ownership of the issues and of course if there was any kind of frank ownership of the issues then it seems to me quite likely that the issues never materialized because the marriage would have worked out.
But you've got to sit there and just listen to all this mealy-mouthed bullshit and justifications and lies and obfuscations and projection.
And it's just like, oh, God, can you all just divorce and take ownership or just this endless, petty justification for stupid decisions just have to go to the grave?
And, you know, I can tell you this for one of my parents, probably the other one, too.
The answer to that is yes, yes.
Yes, it does have to go to the grave because they make it all the way through to the end and never tell the truth about anything.
Exactly. Later on in life, there was a little bit of ownership on my mom's part, especially with what she did.
She even said to me, I guess it would be the first stepfather after my dad left.
She said, the only reason why I was with him is for money, to help provide for you and your daughter.
I didn't love him. I didn't even like him.
I don't even think I liked having sex with him.
I just wanted to survive.
Which was probably...
It was one of the most honest things I think I ever heard her say.
But... I've never gotten much more honest.
Well, but hang on, hang on. It's just before we start pinning medals on your mom's chest.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Look, it's not entirely unknown for women to criticize their sexual power, their misuse of sexual power after they've lost it, right?
After they're too old to milk that train, so to speak, right?
After they're too old to misuse sexual power because the sexual power is gone, then they can say, you know, I... I may have misused my sexual power.
I don't know that that's, it's just an acknowledgement of that it's gone, you know, so you might as well criticize it because you can't use it anymore.
Sure, sure.
I can understand that.
And did it come with apologies?
I think there was definitely some feelings at that time, some sympathy and some I don't remember an outright apology, but it was the type of conversation where I think she just genuinely felt bad and guilty.
It sounds like she said it was for you guys.
Well, I think she felt bad and guilty about what she did.
No, no, but she said, I slept with this guy to get you guys money.
Yeah, essentially. Put food on the table, yeah.
So... There's not really regret there, because it was for the kids, right?
I mean, do I miss something?
No, I guess you don't.
No. I mean, she basically pimped herself out for cash to feed her kids.
Sorry, I don't know. What is that background noise, man?
Yeah, you know, I jumped into the car because my daughter's home, and I didn't want to hear in the whole conversation, and randomly, it just started like...
A downpour and there's no clouds.
I would imagine it's going to pass in like one second.
Oh yeah, no problem. I'm just wondering if there's something under your control.
No, that's fine. Yeah, there's literally like...
I think we're just under one big cloud for a second.
I'm sorry about that. No, it's not your fault at all.
So she was...
I mean, was she broke that much that she had to get a guy to pay her bills?
I don't know. Apparently so.
She made it sound that way.
I mean, I don't know.
Like, I don't think I ever asked her, well, why don't you just get a fucking job instead of, like, whoring yourself out?
Well, but if there's two kids, right?
I mean, they're young. It's pretty tough to arrange childcare that pays for anything, right?
Yeah, but there were grandparents in the immediate vicinity that would have taken both of us and watched us all day, every day.
There was family there, no questions asked.
Like, I can almost 100% guarantee they would have taken us At a moment's notice, if my mom would have said, hey, you know what?
I need to go get a job, take care of my kids.
Can you watch them a few hours a day or during the day?
I'm sure that they could have made something happen.
You know, you and I, I mean, maybe you, but certainly not me, I don't think I ever was really offered the possibility of, hey, you could go to work for 50 hours a week.
Or, here's another thought, I could pay you the same amount of money For half hour of sex a week.
Like, I never got that offer, but I gotta tell you, it probably is a good thing I never got that offer, because it'd be pretty bloody tempting, let me tell you.
You know, 40-50 hours of work, stress, boss, customers, taxes, or...
Have sex with a guy a couple of times a week and he'll pay all your bills.
I mean, it's a pretty wild offer that, you know, 99% of men will never receive.
But I could see it being tempting, you know, in your mom's part, right?
The sort of why don't you get a job kind of thing.
It's like, well, it's hard for us to understand, I think, because we don't get those kinds of offers on a regular basis.
Sure, sure, sure.
And I agree with that.
Totally. All right.
Right. Okay. Just the phrase sex work came into my mind, but that's probably a bit harsh.
And how long was she with... So hang on.
So what happened with your dad after he bailed, like your bio dad?
Did he stick around?
He was gone completely.
He paid child support.
My mom always made sure that me and my sister knew that he was good on his payments.
He sent it every week, but We had zero communication, nothing.
The only time I did get to speak to him was when my sister turned 18.
She got married and decided that she wanted to invite him to the wedding.
So he came into town for a couple of days.
I got to meet him. It was pretty uneventful, to say the least.
Uneventful? What do you mean? How old are you?
How old are you? I don't know if your sister's older or younger.
Oh, she's younger. So I was like 19, 20.
I mean, he shows up at the house and I was like, hey, how are you?
You know, I try to make it, you know, as cordial as possible.
He's like, good. You know, he comes in and, you know, my sister's there.
My mom's there. You know, maybe we talk a little bit.
You know, not a lot to say.
Then I remember, you know, him taking me out to the movie one night.
He took you to a movie?
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Okay, that's really weird, man.
I'm sorry to say, but hey, I haven't seen you for 20 years.
Let's go sit in a dark room and not talk to each other.
Yeah, I mean, you know, when you present it like that, it makes perfect sense.
You know, at the time, I was just like, you know, he's probably just trying to I don't know what, do something.
But, you know, I remember telling him, like, I don't know if we'll ever have a relationship.
I don't know if there's anything for us to reconcile or to know about each other.
I said, but if you go back, you know, home after this and you decide you want to stay in my life, give me a call.
Say hello and we'll see.
We'll see what happens.
Spoiler, nothing happened.
Well, yeah, basically, I mean, sort of, I found out exactly who he was on a certain level.
I mean, so I had just gotten like a used car and, you know, something went horribly wrong with it.
You know, my mom was like, maybe she did this on purpose.
She was like, you know, go ask your dad for a couple of bucks.
So I remember asking him and he was like, and it wasn't even much.
It was literally like probably under a hundred bucks or something like that.
Symbolic money, right? Yeah, yeah, exactly.
And, you know, he just said, you know, I paid to child support all those years, always on time, and, you know, I'm not going to give you any money.
And I was like, wow, all right.
Did he remarry?
Did he have other kids? He remarried, as far as I know, no kids.
No kids. Right.
So... Yeah.
Okay, okay.
And give me, if you don't mind, the sort of story arc of your mom and her dating and how that all played out.
Yeah, well, you know, at the time, I knew my mom was sort of lonely because, you know, the second guy, not my stepfather, the other guy that live-in boyfriend, It turned out that that guy had a whole other family on the side.
Like, as ours, right?
And it was like this whole crazy thing where my mom found out and What are you talking about?
He had a whole...
I'm sorry to be the laugh, but I've heard this kind of shit, and I can't...
I mean, family life is so...
You know what it's like. Family life is so consuming.
It's like a guy had three full-time jobs.
It's like, how do you pull that off?
I've always wondered about the logistics of that shit.
I don't know. I have no idea how or what.
I really don't know, but I remember...
You know, my mom found out and she disappeared for a few days.
Oh, and by the way, my mom was...
I don't want to say...
She was an alcoholic.
But I didn't find this out until, you know, after...
I guess the way to say it is after this next guy disappeared.
You didn't find it out, didn't you?
Yeah, but I didn't know.
Me and my sister, I had no idea.
Because what happened was she got into a car accident where somebody swerved lanes and hit her.
And when I went to the hospital and they were telling us about everything, the one doctor said to me and my sister, he said, well, you know, how long has your mom been an alcoholic?
And We both looked at each other and said, what are you talking about?
And then he proceeded to tell us how he knew from certain x-rays and what was going on that she was definitely an alcoholic.
Like her first husband, right?
Yeah, exactly. Like her first husband, yeah.
But she'd been keeping it going all that time, right?
Yes. Yes.
Very hidden. Like I said, I honestly...
It was such a shock because I was like, I know every once in a while she'll take a few sips of vodka before she goes to bed, but I never...
And I don't think it was naivety.
I just think it was amazingly concealed.
I do. Well, the other thing too, if I understand this correctly, you never met her sober.
Like, what the hell would you compare it to?
I mean, she's been an alcoholic since before you were born, right?
I don't know if before I'm born, but that's a very...
You know, my daughter never knew me with hair, right?
My wife never knew me with hair, right?
In fact, she'd be horrified if I showed up back with hair, right?
She'd be like, no, that's not you.
That's not the look that works.
It's not what I like. So, yeah, you know, I mean, you never met her sober.
You're right. I never thought about that till right now.
You're absolutely right. Well, that's why people call, man.
That kind of flash of light, right?
But yeah, so you wouldn't have a comparison.
No, I wouldn't.
I wouldn't. And of course, she would in part drink out of the humiliation of having to use her sexual abilities and access in order to get money, right?
That's a pretty horrible way to live.
And yeah, there would be some, I mean, deep shame involved in that.
Sure. Sure.
I agree. I agree.
Huh. Sorry, just remind me, how old were you when your dad left?
I was about two years old, maybe two and a half.
Oh, so you don't even really remember him being there, right?
No, I don't have any recollection of him at all, I don't believe.
Do you know, I guess you only have your mom's version, do you know why he left?
Like, was there any particular circumstance or a big blow-up?
Well, I don't know of any particular circumstance, no.
Not at all. You know, I tried to sort of get answers from my grandparents because they were around at the time.
And, you know, everybody sort of has a different story, so I'm like...
I don't know what story to believe, so I'm not going to believe any of them.
I'm not going to try to piece this together.
To be honest, I really don't think about it much.
I kind of went down that road at one time when I was really trying to do some self-exploration and some healing and some personal work and tried to have some very raw and vulnerable conversations with my mother because that's something that we never shared before.
I got as much as I can out of it.
Like I said, I got her side.
Who knows if that's the truth?
Do you know if your father had any substance abuse issues?
I don't believe so, because my mom would have told me now.
Oh, yeah, yeah. She would have said, oh, yeah, by the way, your fucking father was doing crack or cocaine.
But no, she never mentioned anything of that.
I don't think he was abusive in any way, because my grandfather...
He's like an old Marine guy.
He would have shot that dude dead in the street if he abused my mom.
I don't think he was abusive physically.
Like I said, I tried to put together some of the pieces of the different stories from what my mom's brother has said.
It's just a mishmash that doesn't really give me any answers.
Well, he might have just got tired of living with an alcoholic.
You can't have a relationship with an alcoholic because all you have is a relationship with the alcohol, right?
Yeah, well, yeah, you might be right, but then that leads me down the road.
Well, why didn't he want to be in our life?
Like, if it was just an alcohol problem, then, you know, he would have maybe stayed around for me and my sister, but he stayed away for sure, like, by choice, so...
Well, I mean, it can't be because of the kids, because the kids are just the kids, right?
So it can't be because of that.
So the only answer is that it was because of your mom.
Yeah, maybe. She's difficult.
I'm not going to lie. She is difficult.
Well, she wasn't difficult for your dad.
Well, yeah. Because she just left, right?
That's one way to solve the problem of difficulty.
You know, you ever have this thing where it's like you're trying to undo some knot and it's like, wow, this is really difficult.
Then you just cut it. You know, you do this with fishing, right?
You get the fishing snarl and yeah, I'll spend a minute or two trying to undo the fishing snarl, but you know what comes out next?
It's the pocket knife and just hack, hack, retie, right?
I mean, so yeah, she is difficult until she's not, right?
And then you're just gone. Sure.
Sure. Yeah, you're absolutely right.
And how long was she with the guy with the second family?
If I had to guess, I would say that was a little long-lasting, like maybe five years or so?
Five or six years?
But he's, of course, cheating on her the whole time, pretty much, right?
Well, yeah.
I mean... How do you have another family and not cheat?
That is cheating, I guess, in the worst way, right?
Yeah, right? Whether it's mentally or sexually, it's still cheating.
Was he some traveling salesman?
Is that how he pulled this off?
Do you have any knowledge about how he did this?
I don't have any knowledge, but he owned a couple of gas stations, you know, where you go to buy your gas.
Yeah, I know what a gas station is.
Well, I'm here in Canada, so I'm like, maybe they call it something different there.
You know I'm in Canada too, right?
Yeah, I do. Let's just assume that colloquial is fine.
It's not petrol or something.
He was definitely successful because he drove a couple nice cars and he wound up paying for my mother to go learn a trade and for her to open up a business and get that all started.
Financially, he was very well off.
He could afford The two families, no doubt.
You know, I never asked my mom the real story, what happened, because I really didn't give a crap.
And I still don't. Like, I don't really care what happened with that relationship.
Like, I didn't really like the guy.
You know, my sister didn't like him.
What did you not like him? You know, that he tried to be my father.
You know? Or that he would try to control me.
You know? It just...
It never felt right.
Like, maybe it was...
Sorry, and how old were you...
Sorry, how old were you when he came into your life?
If I had to guess, I would say...
Ten?
Oh, yeah, that's too late.
Yeah, yeah. I mean, after five, if some guy comes into your life after five, he can't ever be the primary disciplinarian or, you know, he's just...
He'll forever be the stepdad.
It just can't work.
And he was. And he wasn't even like...
He had a Middle Eastern name and I remember hating that.
I don't know why I hated it.
Was he Middle Eastern?
Yeah, he was Turkish.
Turkish polygamy.
God, I've never heard of a Turk with a harem before.
Boy, this is unprecedented in human history.
Anyway, go on. That's why I'm talking to you because you connect dots that I can't connect.
No, seriously, that's really, really awesome.
But yeah, I don't know why.
I'm not prejudiced.
I'm not racist at all.
But when I was younger, I was always embarrassed of his name.
I didn't want to tell people his name because I thought they would laugh at me.
I don't know what that was about.
Right. And also, like, I mean, for the people who grew up with dads, you know, this is just two guys without dads talking.
It's like, it's really, it's low status to be without a dad.
Like, if you're, I don't know, I'm sure it's the same for girls too, but it's low status as hell.
If you're, like, in the playground or you're with your friends and they're talking about their dads and you don't have a dad, you feel like shit.
You feel like shit because it's just...
Your dad didn't want to stick around.
Your mom made a bad choice or your mom drove him away and your dad didn't stick around and he doesn't show any interest in you.
It's really humiliating in terms of status.
At least it was for me.
Maybe the same thing was for you.
Maybe it wasn't, but that's pretty rough.
I didn't know a single guy without a dad who managed to get out of the bottom 20% of the pecking order in school.
Mm-hmm. Yeah, and maybe it was humiliating.
You know, I can't recall any specific instances, but I think I kind of alluded to that fact a little bit about being angry that maybe I didn't have that type of relationship, that boy-to-father relationship when I was younger.
Maybe that's some of the reasons why I was angry at the world and acting out.
Right. Well, I mean, I don't know if you've seen the Gene Ward's presentations, but father absence is associated with that, our selected behavior.
You know, it is tendencies towards promiscuity, low impulse control, short time horizon for planning, and so on.
So, you know, some petty shoplifting, some property destruction, some, you know, attempts, because you can't gain status in the normal way.
Because you don't have a dad. So how do you gain status?
You don't go for status, you go for notoriety, right?
Which is, I'll be dangerous, I'll be on the edge, I'll be, you know, edgelord or punky or whatever it is, right?
You go for notoriety rather than status because you can't get status because you've got no dad.
Yeah, and you hit the nail on the head.
You're absolutely right. All of that.
It's exactly what I was.
And what was your date?
So this guy was with you, the second dad or the stepdad, like from age 10 to 15 or so.
And then did your mom dump him because of the second family?
Is that how it played? Yeah, yeah.
I mean, that's exactly how it played out.
Like, you know, she disappeared for a few days.
Well, what's funny is...
I snuck out of my house to go, you know, be with this girl that I was hanging out with.
And, you know, I never got in trouble for really anything.
You know, my mom was always pretty lenient on the punishments.
And so anyway, I snuck out of my house to be with this girl.
And I'm coming back on my bike at like, you know, 530 in the morning.
It's a school night or school morning.
I got to go to school in a few hours.
And I see my mom storm out of the house from the direction I was coming.
And I could tell she was storming.
She got on her car and peeled away.
And I remember getting into the house.
I'm like, that's so weird.
I guess she's mad at me that I snuck out of the house.
I guess like most alcoholics, she wasn't exactly a morning person.
Yeah, exactly. But I was just like...
I can't believe she's going to make a big deal out of this.
This doesn't, this didn't seem right.
But then I come to learn, you know, when my mom doesn't come home and my grandparents are like, hey, you know, your mom's going to spend a few days away from the house.
She needs to take care of some things.
Something happened with her and, you know, Mr.
Turkey over there. And, you know, she's going to let you know when she's ready to come home and she's going to tell you everything.
And, uh, So we spent a few days waiting for my mother to come back home.
And when she came home, she pretty much came straight out with it.
Said exactly what she found out, how she needed a few days.
She probably, I don't know, just needed to drink herself into oblivion.
Did she say how she found out?
She did, but I don't remember.
It was a mistake on his part.
That I... That I do remember, but I don't know what it was.
He screwed up somewhere.
Maybe it was a phone call or a bill or a receipt.
She must have had a feeling about something because she put a lot of things together very quick.
Back then, you didn't have Google.
You didn't have text messages.
You didn't have beepers. It was a lot more difficult to find information.
She probably had a feeling for a little while.
And then whatever happened, you know, just sent her to the truth.
Right, okay. And so when did you start dating?
Before 15, is that right? Oh, yeah.
He said with some pride.
So how old were you when you started dating?
I was a very, you know, horny, promiscuous little kid.
Oh, that's our selection too, right?
I mean... Yes, I agree.
So, you know, probably 13.
I mean, chasing girls, like interested in them at 12.
But, you know, I think the first girl I was feeling up and kissing was like 12 or 13.
Wow. Although I didn't have sex until I was about 16.
But everything else before that with, you know, not a ton of girls.
Wait, you mean like sex, like intercourse?
Yeah. Yeah, like actual in-tours, yeah.
Oh yeah, but you did like other stuff.
Okay, got it. Yeah, yeah, for sure.
And what were the kinds of girls and what were their kinds of families?
You mean back then?
I don't even remember.
I don't even think it was...
You know, I always had a thing for the popular girls.
I'm just trying to think, like you're coming out of a girl's house at 5.30 in the morning.
That's not a functional family structure that's letting that go on, right?
Yeah. Well, she was like, that was like at 15, 16.
That was like when I lost my virginity.
That was the girl I love. Still.
Yeah. You know, there's no good dad in a 15 or 16 year old girl who's like, yeah, sure.
Let the, you know, the broken home kid sleep over.
Yeah. Well, like I would sneak into her house through the window and climb up and, you know, we do our thing and we do that pretty much every single night.
Or as often as we could.
Still an uninvolved dad, though, right?
I mean, you'd notice these things.
You'd notice something.
There's definitely a lack of surveillance there, right?
Possibly. Possibly.
You know, it's a long time ago, so I can't really speculate or remember much about her dad or what their relationship was like, that girl.
But, no.
I don't know. A house or an apartment that she lived in?
It was a house. Yeah, so footprints in the snow.
It's not impossible, right?
Especially in Canada to figure out if somebody's been to the house at night.
It was a far bike ride, so I don't think I would have gone there in the dead of winter, but maybe I would have for sure.
If you're 15 and are selected, you would have, right?
Yeah. And so, tell me a little bit about your dating history between that and then your ex.
You mean the ex with my baby mama?
So, my dating history is interesting.
I've always...
I've never had trouble with women or getting women.
Not to my own accord.
Usually it was the way I would dress, my style, my hobbies, my social circle.
Sorry, I hate to interrupt you right at the beginning of your story, but just for the point of clarity and illumination, you never had trouble getting certain kinds of women.
Yeah, exactly. Right, that's important because they're never in trouble getting women.
You know, there's women and there's women, right?
And so you didn't have much trouble, I guess, getting hold of dysfunctional women, maybe broken women, desperate women, you know, women for bad homes, women with self-esteem issues, that kind of stuff, right?
Yes. Hot, crazy, broken.
I get them all day, every day.
But, you know, what that was leading to is, you know, I couldn't, you know, get the girls that I really wanted.
So, like, you know, and these are.
That's a big statement.
That's a big statement.
What do you mean?
So the analogy I sometimes would use is like, yeah, you know what?
I'm at a bar.
Girls are going to present themselves to me and they're going to be hot or they'll be attractive, but there'll always be a girl who's just a little better looking and Who's a little bit more my type and somebody maybe a little bit more interesting that did it.
And I always wanted to learn how to meet that woman.
I'm sorry, do you mean in terms of better looking or just a woman of substance and morals and quality and that kind of stuff?
All of that, yes.
And I was always very aware of that.
So you were stuck on a kind of substrata of woman that you couldn't get above, so to speak?
I was stuck on a substrata of woman that I couldn't get above.
Yeah, I guess I was, to a certain degree, yeah.
No, no, if I'm wrong, like again, I guess, don't agree with me with anything that's astray, but you couldn't get beyond a certain level of quality, is that right?
Quality, yes, that is correct, yes.
That is correct. And you may not even know where to meet that kind of woman, right?
They're not hanging out in bars waiting to be picked on, you know, at midnight, right?
Or picked up at midnight, right?
So it may be tough to even, you know, find where those women be at, so to speak.
Yeah, and you're absolutely right.
And, you know, the bar was sort of like an analogy that I would use, but it isn't necessarily...
They weren't all at bars, right?
Yeah, exactly. But, yeah, I mean, you know, like dysfunctional women with daddy issues and, you know, problems, yeah, I'd get them and I'd usually wind up dating them, you know, all very...
Oh, so you weren't just like a wham, bam, thank you, ma'am, pumper dump, you would like try and make girlfriends out of them?
Well, yes, because I didn't know how to go out and continually replenish the well.
I don't know what that means.
So, yeah, I would fall into relationships with these women out of need and not necessarily want.
But need for what?
Because you could get sex from more women or different women, right?
Yeah, it was the need for sex, for validation, for companionship.
Yeah. It wasn't necessarily that I wanted to be in the relationships with them because they were very dysfunctional.
They made my life a living hell.
Like, what are we talking? What level of naziness are we on?
It could go from, like, five to literally level 12.
Like, the crazy of crazy, borderline, narcissistic, like, I've had it.
Like, screaming on the lawn, phoning you 20 times, like, texting Oblivion?
Like, what are we talking here?
Yeah, like, stalker, like, crazy, like, yeah.
I mean, I had one that I was in a relationship for a year and a half, and, you know, it took me a long time.
I don't know about a long time, but by the time I realized just how dysfunctional her thinking was, I was...
Very, very emotionally invested in the relationship.
And, you know, I wound up spending a vast majority of my time trying to manage her emotions and fix her in the relationship rather than just like running for what little bit of sanity I had left.
Was she someone who managed to hide the crazy or sort of looking back, it was right up front?
No, it was right up front.
Like what? Okay, give me the red flags if you remember them.
So the biggest red flag was like we spent a long time getting to know each other on the phone due to a certain circumstance where I wasn't in the town I was in and I met her online.
So we spent an extremely long amount of time getting to know each other on the phone, which was something very new for me.
Like, well, I'm going to spend five hours a night talking to some chick before I sleep with her.
And, you know, we're talking like eight nights in a row, like talking 40 hours, 50 hours on the phone.
Like, that's a lot for me.
That's a lot for anyone. Yeah, it is.
And it was really awesome.
I mean, I'm not going to knock that experience.
It was really nice. And...
You know, the first time we saw each other, she said, what if it's really awkward?
And what if it's weird? And I was like, well, I don't know.
I think I'm just going to walk in and grab you by the back of your hair and start kissing you.
This way we don't have that awkward moment.
And she's like, really?
And I'm like, yeah. And that's exactly what I did, right?
And it wasn't awkward.
It was pretty nice. It seemed romantic and cool and really sexy and really hot.
And... You know, after a little while, she made some dinner, we ate, and we wound up, you know, having some sex.
And I remember just, like, afterwards, she kept saying, like, how was it?
Was it okay? Did you like it?
Did it feel good? Was it tight?
And I was like...
Was it tight? Yeah!
Wow. I was like...
She's like, no, I don't act like this, but I'm so nervous.
We spent so much time getting to know each other.
Girlfriend's asking if it's tight, or it's tight.
Anyway, go ahead. Yeah, you know, I was like, all right, well, you know, maybe there's some truth to this, and maybe there's some not to what she was saying.
Sorry, some truth to what?
To what she was saying about why she was asking so many questions, right?
Oh, and why was she asking so many questions?
Yeah, and then I remember, you know, she was like, well, why are you looking to be weird?
I said, well... I don't know, you're asking a lot of crazy questions right now that no girl has ever asked me after sex.
And I said, and not only that, I'm like, what I'm seeing right now doesn't seem like the person I talked to for like 80 hours.
And I said, I'm just trying to sort of mesh this picture together because nothing is making sense right now.
And she's like, well, what's that supposed to mean?
And You know, you're making me feel weird.
You know, like, just even that first night, like, the little bit of psychosis.
Sorry, why was she asking all those questions?
Was she sexually abused as a child or something like that?
Oh, yeah, she was fucked up from her dad.
Like, God. Like, well, I don't know if she was sexually abused because I don't think she ever said that to me, but, like, physically, mentally, like, yeah, he used to beat her and beat the mom and at one point I think tried, like, Throwing her out of a moving car and would lock her in closets.
She was pretty heavily mentally abused, for sure.
And you're like, hey, let's have sex the moment we first meet in the flesh.
I didn't know this.
What do you mean? What the hell were you talking about for 80 hours?
I don't know. Weather?
I have no idea. Food?
I don't know. We didn't...
I don't think we got into any of that.
Well, that's a conscious avoidance, right?
Then you're not asking those questions because you're attracted to it.
Yeah, probably. You don't want to vet her, right?
Or rather, your bulls don't want to vet her.
You probably do, but your bulls don't.
Yeah, definitely. She was pretty smoking.
So, you know, when you ask about, like, from what type of levels of crazy, I mean, this one turned into a stalker who would literally drive around my house 30, 40 times a day for months after I dumped her.
Like, months. Calling me for years afterwards.
And, you know, when you're trying to heal, because it was difficult for me.
I did go through a lot. How long did you go out for?
A year and a half, you said, right?
About a year and a half, yeah.
But the level of mental and emotional energy I put into that relationship, It trumps anything I've ever done in my life.
I've never felt so...
Sorry, what were you...
First of all, what's that supposed to mean is a very dangerous phrase.
The moment I hear anybody say, well, what's that supposed to mean?
I'm like, uh-oh. Strap yourself in, buddy.
We're going for the crazy train.
But what were you trying to do or achieve with her that was so exhausting?
Normalcy. Oh.
Baseline fucking normalcy.
Just, like, you know, trying to fix her and bring her to conclusions and teach her about, like, meditation and letting go and, you know, working through her problems and listening and being there and the demands.
And it was crazy.
Crazy. Like, absolutely crazy.
To the point where I literally was just like, we're done.
That's it. Goodbye.
What was the final straw? What I believe was one of two things.
It was either a faked pregnancy or a real pregnancy with somebody else.
Go on.
Yeah, exactly. Now you're asking me to go back and remember all this.
She always was begging me for a kick.
Like, and I mean begging, like nonstop.
And she'd always say things like, I have the perfect way I'm going to tell you.
It's going to be so awesome if it ever happens.
And I would always tell her, like, listen, I have one.
Like, I don't know if I want another one.
Oh, this is after your ex?
Yes, yes. Oh, I'm trying to give you a dating history before your ex.
That's fine. We'll finish this and go back, but go ahead.
Oh, yeah. Oh, okay.
I'm sorry. Yes. No, I asked.
It was my fault because I asked you, like, what were the levels of crazy?
So we jumped time frame, but that's fine.
Go ahead. Yeah, so I was like, you know, I have one, and I don't know if I'm ready.
And, you know, I don't know how our relationship is.
Like, we have a lot of problems.
And she's like, oh, we're going to be fine, you know, one day when you're ready.
And, you know, she always had this dream of having a baby.
Like, it was constantly rammed down my throat.
Like, was it a way to keep me?
Was it a way to, like...
What? Are we still there?
Are we still there? Hey, Steph.
Hello, hello. Can you hear me?
Yes, sorry about that. I just had a loose connection.
So you're saying that it was a way to keep you and stuff like that?
Yeah, like, you know, maybe she wanted to have a baby with me just to keep me because, you know, I was Mr.
Popular with the women.
I was, you know, the...
You know, the dating coach, the pickup artist, like, I think she felt very threatened by a lot of those things, for sure.
Well, and you have some money, and of course, how's she going to keep a hold of you?
Because there's the bridge, right?
So you get a lot of sex, she's very pretty, she can hold on to you by hormones, then the hormones wear off, and then how's she going to hold you then?
Well, the next step is a kid, right?
Exactly, exactly.
So... So, we go out to dinner one night, and, you know, the relationship was getting pretty fucking bad.
Like, I was already really on my way out.
And, you know, she would say things like, you know, I could tell you're checking out, you're leaving.
And I'm like, well, you know, yeah, on some level, for sure.
Right? So, and I was always very careful about, I don't know, I don't want to say too careful.
I mean, we had sex unprotected, but I would never...
I would never go inside her, but I don't know if you consider that careful, but I was as careful as I could be with her.
It's careful-ish. Yeah, it's careful-ish.
We go out to dinner one night, and everything is just kind of normal.
On the way to dinner, we're in her car, and she starts asking me these questions about would I do the same things with a new kid that I did with my old kid?
I'm like, I'm like, I don't want to talk about kids right now.
We're going out to dinner. I don't want to talk about having a baby.
She'd ask a few more questions.
I'd answer. Then we get to this restaurant and we sit down and she goes, here, I got you a card.
I was like, oh, that's really sweet.
It was like this fucking lame, cheesy card that said I was going to be a dad.
I remember reading it And I swear to God, I just started getting fucking sick to my stomach.
Like, this is not gonna be good.
The walls are closing in!
I'm like, it ain't fucking mine.
I'm like, I fucking know it's not.
I was like, there's no way it's mine.
I have a funny feeling that she went out and fucked this dude the night that I fucking broke up with her, like a few, you know, about a month ago or so.
Um... Because I did.
I was like, I'm fucking done.
Go do your thing.
And it doesn't matter.
But I'm pretty sure she went out and banged some guy that night.
Although I couldn't prove it.
So I get this card and I just look at her.
And she's like, what?
And I was like, well, let me give you a hug.
Because I'm not going to go into this now.
Plus, I need time to figure this out.
I need time to sort of put together...
You gotta check on the status of your second passport.
I'm just kidding. Yeah, but you know what I mean?
Like, I wanted to put pieces together.
Like, I didn't want to jump to any conclusions right now.
I was very emotional. I was like, you know, let me just, you know, be cordial.
If it is mine, then cool.
You know, let me just play this part right now.
And so I give her a hug and she's like, thank you.
That means a lot to me.
And And, you know, I don't want you to...
What did she say?
She said something like, you know...
She said something about, like, I don't want you to question whether this is yours or not.
Whoa. I was like, all right, well, you know, thanks for the conversation.
Now I am questioning. Yeah, okay.
Yeah, well, because what had happened was a few months before there was a potential pregnancy scare...
Where she took a pregnancy test and she said it was positive.
And I was like, okay, well, then it's 100% not mine.
And she's like, well, what do you mean?
And I said, because I was fucking in another state.
Okay? I was out of town for those two and a half weeks.
There is no possible way.
If you're pregnant today, it could be mine.
Oh, and then magically the pregnancy did not occur, right?
Yeah, I guess, magically.
So, yeah, exactly.
So, that's why she said it this time, right?
And I was like, alright. So, we go to my house and, you know, she's going to sleep over and all of a sudden she just starts telling me that I need to make more money and she doesn't need to work anymore and I'm going to have to take care of her and I don't want to live in this house.
It just went from zero to 10,000 with the demands.
It went fucking crazy.
I'm sitting there and I'm like, I can't even handle this right now.
This is just crazy.
I look at her and I say, if you're going to go down this road right now, then you need to leave.
I said, because I can't deal with this or listen to this tonight.
So she leaves, okay?
Goes home. The next morning, she starts calling me again with like all of this crazy crap.
I mean, same demand, same thing, same yelling.
And at one point, I'm just like, why are we having this conversation right now?
I was like, it's the day after you told me.
I was like, you're telling me I need to go out and make all this extra money That I'm going to need to spend more time with you and stop seeing my daughter.
I'm like, these are all like crazy things.
Oh, she wanted you to stop seeing your daughter or just stop seeing your daughter as much?
Stop seeing my daughter as much.
Okay? And I don't know exactly what she said or what I had said to really set this off, but all of a sudden she just starts saying, I'm going to fucking move Across the country, I'm going to make sure that you never see our kid.
Okay? I'm going to make sure that you never even know the name of our kid.
I will do, like saying all this crazy stuff, knowing that during my divorce, my ex-wife tried to do that to me with my daughter.
Oh, so you've given self-knowledge then, or a confession of your weaknesses is giving ammunition to an enemy.
Excellent. Oh, Lord.
Yeah, maybe. And, you know, once she said these things, there was no coming back.
For me, I was done.
That was it. And I just said, I will never allow you the luxury of hearing my voice again.
And I hung up the phone.
Those were the exact words I said to her.
I hung up the phone, and she never heard my voice again.
Ever. Ever. She called, texted, screamed, cried, drove by my house hundreds and hundreds of times.
Some days I'd think she was even sleeping up the street in her fucking car, like literally.
But I knew that if I didn't leave that relationship, my sanity would be totally lost because the things that I went through in that relationship were the most challenging things And emotional situations that I've ever gone through or that I can recall.
They were almost more challenging than going through the divorce and fighting for my daughter.
I mean, it was crazy.
And you say this kind of stalking went on for years?
The stalking went on for a good eight months.
The calling? Years.
Like, the calling and then, you know...
Then she did happen to call me from a random number one day that I did pick up.
And I said, you have two minutes.
And I gave her two minutes.
And I said, all right, goodbye.
And that was it. And what did she say in the two minutes?
You're the best.
And you were right.
And I just want you to know you were amazing.
And you were, you know, you were so good.
And I was like, yeah, I know.
You know, that's all I kept saying.
I was like, yeah, I know. I know.
And she's like, well, you know, maybe we can meet for coffee.
And I'm like, no, we can't meet for coffee.
Well, I was like, no.
I was like, are you done? And she's like, well, I just want you to know that I think about you all day long and every day.
And I said, all right, you know, two minutes are up.
That's it. And literally hung up on her.
And then she kept calling.
She kept calling, leaving messages, texting.
And no kid, right? No, no.
It was a total fucking lie.
Or it wasn't mine.
There's no way it was mine.
So it was either somebody else's, okay?
Because she did send me an email saying that she wound up having a miscarriage later.
And I was like, yeah, fucking liar.
Okay. What was her age range over the relationship?
Her age was maybe like mid-30s, young 30s.
Yeah, that's mid-30s kind of crazy.
That's mid-30s baby rabies kind of crazy.
That's a whole other level, like for the younger men out there.
If you've not encountered baby rabies, mid-30s women, and what they can escalate to, you know, strap in and avoid because it's, you know, because you're probably the last chance, right?
Last chance for her to have this dream of a baby.
And of course, you know, for a lot of women who aren't particularly stable, the baby is like winning the lottery, right?
Because that's what she said. Bigger house, more money, I'll never have to work again.
I mean, it's just winning the lottery.
I mean, she's got this beautiful hallmark card life of kissing baby toes and never having to have a boss or a punch clock ever again, never having to have a commute.
And you take that away from a woman in the full flush of last grasp hormones, and yeah, it's pretty destabilizing.
Mm-hmm.
I agree. I agree.
See, that was the crazier of crazy.
Yeah, so let's go leading up to...
Okay, so you obviously dated a lot of women, right?
As a sort of pickup artist player guy.
I mean, you dated a lot of women.
And was it generally short-term relationships?
When I got very good at seducing women, it was genuinely short-term.
Like weekend, week, month?
Like that day...
You know, that hour?
Oh, like just so that, like a real one-time thing, right?
Yeah, it was very rare that I wanted to see women more than one time or have sex with them more than once or twice.
I tried to figure out what made me want to have sex with women more than a few times and I've never, I don't know if I've ever truly gotten an answer to that.
Now, hang on. So, I don't know much about the pickup thing.
Is the pickup thing, I just want you for sex and I'm leaving afterwards?
Or is there any kind of implicit, let's make a go of it?
Or how does that play with the women?
I think it depends on the guy and what he wants and his desires.
Sorry, I mean for you. So, for me, when I did acquire this new skill, it was very...
One and done, and I was very upfront and honest with women about that.
There was no alluding to, you know, something more.
I used only my sexual energy in that regard.
So the women went into having sex with you knowing that it was just one and done, like just sex and gone?
Yes. I mean, you know, I mean, obviously there is...
There's openness to the possibility of more, but I would never give that impression ever.
No, definitely not.
So these are women without much of a sense of self-protection, right?
And I'm not saying because you're a dangerous guy.
I mean, maybe emotionally, we'll get to that, right?
But as far as, like, you're not a physically dangerous guy, but for a woman to go with a guy she's just met, Who's physically bigger and stronger and be pinned down in some fairly remote and private location?
I mean, these are women without a single fucking shred of self-protection, right?
I mean, you could have been a bad guy, right?
And they're just like, yeah, yeah, sure, you're twice my size, yeah, come and pin me down in a remote location, that sounds great.
Yeah, I mean, you're absolutely right, sure.
I could have been a bad guy, definitely.
They wouldn't have known.
Well, they'd have known at the end.
Well, yeah, I mean...
I do sort of have a lot of, I guess, social value in certain ways.
Oh no, I just meant like if you'd been some psycho killer, right?
They'd have known at the end when you brought up Axe or something and started talking about Phil Collins.
Yeah, they could have.
I was pretty easy to locate and Google and find, especially through my businesses, that Oh, so this wasn't like a woman you just meet in a bar and you just go and have sex with her someplace?
No, sometimes it was, and sometimes it was girls I'd meet in the park and take home, for sure.
But then there were a lot of other women that definitely had chances to Google me and look into things.
Okay, right. And how many women have you ever done the count?
How many women would you say you've slept with?
A lot. I have no idea.
Hundreds? It's fair to say, yeah.
And let's just say, I don't know, pick a number 300, right?
So of the 300, what number of those women would have been a woman that you would have considered having a long-term relationship with?
Well, it would have depended on what time of life it was.
So You know, I had many long-term relationships before I got good.
Well, you kind of had that many because, you know, we're not immortal, right?
Unless you're a vampire-less dad or something, right?
You know, like one was four years, one was two, one was three, you know, maybe another one for one.
It's like before I got good, I was always dating.
Like I would typically date these girls.
I really wasn't a one-and-done guy until I, you know, started to learn, you know, I guess that skill set.
Once I learned it, then it was like, you know, off to the races, like hardcore.
But, you know, what I discovered is that, you know, it's all about this conquest that doesn't make me happy.
You know, so at first it was like, oh, I just want to get the girls that I can't get or that I didn't have access to, whether they be good girls or different looks girls.
And then I would attract these women into my life and then I'd still feel empty.
I'd say, okay, well, maybe I need to just go sleep with some more or try to sleep with them quicker.
Let me see how that makes me feel.
And I would feel empty. Then I'd be like, all right, maybe I need to do a couple threesomes.
Let me see how that makes me feel.
I just found myself chasing something that never made me feel good.
At the end of the day, I didn't feel good about who I was, about what I had become.
It didn't feel genuine to me.
That's something that I really wanted in my life.
At that stage, that's when I really gave all of that up.
It was chasing an endless dream that didn't mean anything to me anymore.
How long was this phase?
Probably a few years.
It was a while.
It took a while to get decent.
Then it took a while to Get to that next level, then that next level.
So maybe three, four, five years, if I had to guess.
You know, and I would talk to my friends and tell them this, and they're like, yeah, you're crazy.
And I'm like, no, I'm really not.
You're like, dude, you have the best life.
And I'd be like, well, yeah, but I'm not happy.
Like, this isn't...
Like, I want companionship.
Like, I love conversation.
I love intimacy on a level.
Like, I love... That sharing of energy when you connect and you bond with somebody emotionally.
I said, I haven't been giving this to myself for years.
I haven't allowed myself to experience this.
I'm done. I don't want to do it anymore.
Well, and you're not viewing the women as full human beings, right?
I mean, to use them and yourself as a full human being, right?
To use just this animal rutting, that kind of stuff, right?
You're absolutely right.
I can't imagine that in five years when your daughter is 18 and some guy comes creeping around her using the mind Jedi shit tricks of the pickup artistry that you'd be like, oh, this is going to be great for her.
Yeah. Exactly.
A guy like me today, yes.
A guy like me then, no.
Right, right.
And so that's what I'm talking about is that you didn't see the women as sort of full human beings with histories and childhoods and dysfunctions and loves and hopes and possibilities and like it was just like, hey, there's a pretty hole, I'll use it and move on, like a urinal or like a burger.
I mean, you know, it's interesting you say that because I've actually explored what you just said on how I used to view, you know, women and You know, I don't think I... I mean, maybe on some level I did view them the way you just described, but I think on another level I always did Have respect for that?
No, no, no.
No, seriously.
Come on. If these women hadn't been sexually available, if they had exactly the same personality but they were an elderly Japanese gentleman, you wouldn't be giving them the time of day.
I mean, let's be honest with each other here.
I'm not saying you're being dishonest, but let's be frank.
You were there for the sex.
And if the women hadn't been attractive to you sexually and hadn't been available sexually, you wouldn't have spent any time with them.
You're right. You're right.
And I would say that, and maybe you have a thought on this, I would say I wasn't there for the sex.
I was there for the validation more.
No, because you can get validation in six million different ways in the world, right?
Yeah, but something about validation from women, maybe it was something that I didn't get from my mom.
No, but you weren't being validated by the women.
Because they didn't like you that much as a person because they didn't sit there and say, hey, you know, you're a really interesting guy.
You have really fascinating ideas.
You're a great conversationalist.
Let's not just go and have sex.
Let's keep talking. They wanted to shut you up as much as you wanted to shut them up, right?
I mean, they weren't validating you.
They were saying, okay, I'm here.
I guess I'll do the sex thing, but I'd rather have sex than a conversation.
Oh, no. No, not at all.
Yeah. I mean, some, yes, but the majority, they wanted to stick around.
They wanted to see me more.
Ah, I see. Now, hang on.
Now we're back a little bit, right?
Because I was asking you that earlier.
I'm not trying to cross-examine you.
I'm just trying to puzzle this whole story together myself, right?
Please, please. Because if you had said, like, that's my big question, right?
Do men... Offer the potential of a long-term relationship that the woman then has sex with them with some reasonable expectation of a long-term relationship.
But if you're in your full threesome, six girls in five days, whatever the hell was going on.
There's no possibility, really, of a longer-term relationship.
And, of course, a longer-term relationship can't start with sex.
Like, it just can't. Like, absolutely no way can a long-term relationship start with sex because it comes out of such a place of insecurity and anger and need and desperation.
Like, it just can't, right?
And so if the women wanted to stick around, then they might have been using the sex as a lever to try and get a longer-term relationship, in which case, you know, you broke some hearts, right?
Yes. Yes.
And that's what I mean by doing harm to the women, you know, because if they're like, oh, maybe he likes me for me, and then you're like, you come and you leave, because you're done with them, right?
Like a Kleenex, right?
You don't frame it. You throw it out, right?
And so, you know, that would be kind of humiliating for them, right?
That's what I mean by like, not seeing the sort of full humanity thing.
Yeah, yeah. Okay, I understand what you're saying now, definitely.
I mean, if your sister, who I assume you care for, do you?
To a certain degree, yeah.
I mean, yeah. Okay, well, I mean, if she had a guy who just, you know, like, maybe we can have a relationship, he has sex with her, and then he totally ghosts her, I assume you wouldn't think that's a good guy, right?
I would want to hear both sides of the story before I made a decision.
I mean, so if you're asking me to take whatever she says on face value, I would say he's a horrible guy.
Well, but wasn't that you a bit?
Yeah, I guess it was me a little bit.
Well, more than a little bit.
I'm not saying completely, but more than a little bit, right?
Yeah. All right. So I'll admit to that.
Sure. Sure.
And this is not to make you feel bad at all, right?
I mean, the whole purpose of this conversation is to get you to connect with your daughter better, right?
Yes. And so I've not forgotten that in everything that we're talking about.
I don't get distracted that way.
So I'm like laser focused on this, right?
Cool. Okay. Just so you know, that's everything to do with what I'm kind of asking about.
So, okay.
So, yeah, if you can tell me.
So you did this three, four, five years.
You're doing this Dan Juan thing.
And then was it in this phase that you met the woman...
Can we just call her, I don't know, Sally, like your ex?
Yes. Yeah, we can call her Sally.
It was the exiting phase, yes, that I met her.
And what's the story there?
So the story is, you know, I met her and she was absolutely awesome and fun.
Like, when I met her, we got along, we clicked.
We didn't have sex right away.
What's right away? Well, it kind of like, you know, we talked a lot and we couldn't meet up.
And then she went away for a while and then came back into the town where I was living and got in touch.
And I was like, oh, OK, cool.
You're back. Let's let's hang out.
And then that's when it happened.
So, I mean, yeah, the sex was on the first night that we had a date, but we had sort of seen each other and talked, you know, a little bit before.
Okay, so that's your warning sign right there, right?
Yeah. Because the same thing happened with the other crazy woman, that you were on the phone 80 hours and then you have sex the first time you meet, right?
Yeah. Listen, I didn't say I wasn't still choosing crazy women.
Oh no, I get that. I get that.
But just in terms of like, I asked, you know, how long is a long time?
And you give me this sort of bit of a runaround, right?
And then it's like, oh yeah, well the first time we met in the flesh we had sex.
Yeah, okay. So yeah, it was...
And do you know why you do that?
Or why the woman does that?
Has sex with me the first time?
Yeah. Do I know why the woman has sex with me the first time?
I'd love to hear your thoughts.
I'd love to hear your thoughts.
You're the one who's doing it, so what do you think?
I think, aside from the amount of desire that I seem to be able to create in women when I'm in their presence, I don't know if I have...
Much more of an answer as to why they do it the first time.
Okay, I can tell you why women have sex with you when they first meet you.
It's to provide a value they have not earned.
Okay, yes. That I understand.
Tell me what I mean.
Make sure we're on the same page. Well, exactly.
They haven't worked for my attention, my validation for anything.
God gave us hormones and them holes, right?
So neither of us earned these things.
So I'm hot, here's my vagina, and hopefully that's enough to make you like me, rather than having to show you who I am and potentially have you not being attracted to me, correct?
Yeah, so a woman with self-respect would not do that in a million years.
Because she'd sit there and say, look, I want you to like me for me.
I mean, the sex will be great for sure, but I want to know that you're here for me and not the sex because there's no way to form a stable relationship based on sex because, I mean, you know this, when you're in a relationship and you have kids and it's tax time and, you know, whatever it is, like, you can spend some time not having sex.
And if you don't like the person, really enjoy their company, if they're not a good friend and a good companion and a great plus to your life...
If the primary value that they provided is sexual access, there's just no way.
You're building your house on sand.
It just can't last. And so the woman is like, I will throw the V-bomb at you as a flashbang so you don't see the absence of my personality.
I completely agree.
And, and, and, and, and.
You do it too. I do do it.
You're absolutely right. Then you're going to want to go for the sex so that you avoid the emptiness, right? Because you're saying this had come off like close to a half decade of empty, meaningless, use someone else sex.
So you're empty when you come into this relationship.
So you haven't filled up, right?
You haven't got to the root of the issues.
You haven't reformed, so to speak.
And... If you just spent half a decade emptying yourself out, I guess literally and physically and balls-wise and emotionally on nothing burgers of sexual flybys, then you don't have much emotional depth or resonance or strength or security or self-regard to bring to a relationship, so you both just crash into each other physically.
Because that's value that you can provide to each other that you haven't earned.
It's like the rich kid whose daddy leaves him $5 million and he just flies around on a private jet and lavishes money on his friends because he doesn't feel like he's worth much without daddy's money, right?
But every time he does that, he just makes it worse.
He just is reaffirming that core belief in his heart.
Yeah, you're absolutely right.
All right. So you crash together and then what happens?
Well, I liken it to a dating reality show where I'd see her once a week and every week she kind of made it back to the next episode.
Which was unusual for me because, like I said, I'm not used to always seeing women pass one, two, maybe three times at the most.
Yeah. It just kind of seemed like every time we hung out, things were just fun.
They were easy. They were interesting.
They were extremely enjoyable.
She didn't complain.
She just kind of understood the guy I was and let me do my thing, and I let her do her thing.
Ah, the good old chameleon.
Yeah. I'm so easygoing.
I'm just... I'm not like any other woman you've ever met before.
I'm not going to nag.
I'm going to accept you for who you are.
Things are going to be just hunky-dory.
I have a good sense of humor.
Right? Oh, yeah. It's all keeping the lid on the cauldron, right?
Oh, yeah. She was good at that for about 10 months.
And then, you know, the cauldron bubbled over.
That's longer than most.
Most people, most women or men will only make it six months on that stuff.
So, all right. Yeah. Go ahead.
And, you know, for me, I did say...
It's difficult. It's a while ago, but I do remember saying that I'm going to take my time getting into a relationship because all the relationships I've jumped into in the past went horribly bad.
Maybe if I take my time and I take things slower, there's more chances.
Okay, what the fuck, man? I'm sorry.
You have sex on the first date.
And you're going to take things slow?
What threat am I missing here?
You're not missing anything.
I was doing the best that I could at that time in my life.
And that's really all I can say.
I mean, I guess anybody could say that about anything, and I'm not disputing you or anything, but when you tell me I had sex with her on the first date, but I was taking it real slow, I'm like, no, I'm sorry, you're going to have to pick a lane here.
I meant slow emotionally.
Yeah. No, I didn't mean slow sexually.
I meant slow emotionally.
Ah, so you have the classic or the big sex emotion dichotomy, right?
Like you can have sex without emotion and you're like, well, okay, I'll share bodily fluids with you, but not my heart.
No, not always.
Not always for me. Sometimes the two intertwine.
But probably not after a half decade of being a player, right?
Well, no, because it did start happening with her.
I felt the feelings coming on that were familiar to me from earlier days in my life.
I genuinely found myself wanting to be around this person.
I thought at the time, okay, this is good.
This feels good, but let me just give it a little time.
Let me not rush... I'm sorry, so what does rushing into things mean?
Because again, for me that means sexual, but I want to make sure I get it from your perspective.
Okay, cool. For me, it means about rushing into a committed relationship, rushing into seeing each other four or five nights a week, from seeing each other one or two nights a week, rushing into always having to be available to somebody if they need you.
Anything that comes along with A potential relationship.
Like you've become the entire church, congregation, priest and mother of the person, right?
What do you mean? Well, like everything that they'd normally rely on a community for, they come to you for.
Like any issue that they have, it's like you've got to spend three hours on the phone.
Yes, yes. And I wanted to assess my feelings.
I wanted to... At that time, I do remember wanting to make sure that my feelings were true and that if I was going to be with this person, that if I was going to commit, I was going to commit and not cheat.
I wanted to make sure that this person just didn't...
When I was with her, I wouldn't be thinking of other women.
And sorry, had you cheated much in previous relationships?
No, not really, no.
No. As a matter of fact, I don't know if I ever did in the relationships that I've ever had.
You know, I don't think I ever have.
I've been in a few, like maybe five or six, like more than a year, but I don't think I ever did.
And what was you and Sally's age ranges here?
Oh, yes. Yeah, this is horrible.
I was 21 and I was 34.
Right. Why is that horrible?
I mean, just from your perspective?
Well, I mean, because I could look back at things now and see just how immature and I guess...
Well, she wasn't immature.
I mean, that's like calling a baby short.
I mean, she was perfectly fine for 21, right?
She just wasn't 34. Yes.
Okay, yeah, you're absolutely right.
I mean, you could say less mature, but I mean, again, that's not an even yardstick, right?
She was perfectly mature for 21, just immature for where I was.
And have you kept all of your head hair?
Yeah, thank God.
Well, I wouldn't thank God, man.
Because, no, that might have perpetuated the eternal childhood stuff, right?
The eternal adolescence stuff?
I have no idea where you're going with this.
Okay. I mean, it's just a little theory here, right?
So, just by the by.
You're like, oh, thank God I kept my hair.
It's like, well, if you hadn't kept your hair, let's say you'd started going bald in your early 30s or whatever, then the 21-year-old probably wouldn't have dated you, right?
Yeah. No, seriously, right?
So you'd have to look for a woman more your own age, right?
So the question is, why do men go bald?
There's lots of different reasons, maybe to do with physical combat.
You know, you can't grab a bald guy's lack of hair in physical combat.
But part of it is to make sure that there's not too much of an age gap, because age gaps are destabilizing for relationships and therefore for the children.
I mean, I get the vanity aspect of it.
Thank God I kept my hair.
But whenever an older guy is dating a younger woman in particular, I know for a fact the guy kept his hair.
That's kind of why I asked it. And one of the evolutionary advantages of losing hair...
It keeps the age gap down of who you can date, thus making sure the relationships are more stable, which is generally better for the kids.
I just wanted to mention that.
I know it's a lot of things to say, oh, I wish I'd lost my hair.
I get all of that. But there's a reason why it happens, and I think there's pretty good evolutionary reasons why.
I've studied and looked into a lot of evolutionary psychiatry And this is the first time that I've ever heard this connection.
Oh, listen. I mean, like all men, I've had my eye on younger women when I was younger.
But because I started losing my hair in my 20s, it was pretty clear.
I mean, if maybe you've had to shave my head completely, that's a whole different kind of look or feel or whatever.
But I've always found I just have way too dramatic a face.
To shave my head without terrifying Polish people.
So, yeah, it's something I guess I just wanted to sort of pass along.
It's not particularly important.
It was an interesting non sequitur.
So she's 13 years younger, right?
And where did you meet her? Through my business that I owned.
Okay, yeah, that's fine.
That's fine. Customer. Oh, customer.
Okay, okay. All right.
Yeah. Okay, so you date, and then how does your daughter come along?
So, we date, things go great, and around month 7th or 8th, she kind of...
You know, she's asked a bunch of times, like, what are we?
My friends are asking me.
I don't know what to tell them.
Are we a thing? Are we an item?
Are we a relationship? Okay, so you're emotionally unavailable, right?
Because she doesn't know where the relationship is.
Yeah, well, I wasn't unavailable.
I was just, like I said, trying to make a wise decision, which I don't think I succeeded in.
So then I finally agree.
I say, you know what? Like, cool, let's do this.
Let's be in a relationship like...
You know what? I'm totally into you.
I love spending time with you.
It's fun.
It's never stressful.
The sex is fantastic.
I'm like, you know, you kind of are into a lot of the same things that I'm into.
This is good. Let's do it.
So we do it. And we wind up moving in together relatively, I guess, soon, I suppose.
And what was she doing?
Sorry to interrupt. What was she doing in her life at the time?
Oh, she was in college? And what was she studying?
Something with fashion.
Are you just trying to keep it vague for purposes of identification or you're not sure?
No, I know exactly what it is.
So fashion design. Okay, got it.
No, I'm not trying to be vague.
I'm just, yeah, fashion design.
And was this like a community college thing or like a university thing or what's that?
No, this was like real deal college.
And I assume she was, you know, people into fashion tend to be quite pretty, so she's got the looks, she's got the figures, she's in college, that kind of stuff?
Yeah, she was crazy hot.
Right, okay. Like, super.
Do you know much about her family background?
I didn't, but I do now.
Holy shit, do I now.
But I didn't have much of an insight.
The only insight I got was, you know, she had went home to visit her family and, you know, she said, you know, if I buy you a ticket, will you come out here and meet my family?
And I was like, yeah, sure, why not?
Why not? Yeah.
Why not? Oh my god.
Okay, so let's say that it's in eight years when your daughter's 21, she brings home a 34-year-old guy.
What do you think? Well, I'm going to be like, all right, what the fuck is going on here?
So that's why not, because any decent dad is going to be like, okay, dude, let's sit down and have Amanda Man talk about why you're interested in my daughter.
Is it because of her wonderful, deep wisdom and personality and life experiences that match yours, or is it because she's young and pretty, in which case you're going to break her heart to back the fuck off?
Well, exactly. But we were already living together, and...
I was like, sure.
I mean, this is the right thing to do.
I'm living with this guy's daughter.
No, no, but did you think about sitting across from the father with a 13-year age gap?
Yes. Hell yes.
Because you've got this blasé shit going on with a lot of this conversation, which is like, yeah, why not?
And I'm like, I got no depth from you in this, and I don't really understand.
Like, you seem less mature than the 21-year-old sometimes, if you don't mind me saying.
I asked a thousand questions.
I was like, who else is going to be there?
What... You know, is he going to want to talk to me?
Does he want to see me? Like, believe me, I thought, you know, I'm so much older and I'm more successful and, you know, I kind of have a...
It doesn't matter, but...
You know, there was a lot of that going through my mind.
Wait, you kind of have a what? What was that?
What was that sentence? I just have a way of presenting myself that is very...
Let's just say I'm very fashion conscious.
Okay? So, in a way, that's done very nice.
It's not like I'm weird, but I've noticed that when you're around a normal, where people aren't so interested in their appearances or how they dress, sometimes they kind of like to pass judgment on you.
You mean like foppish?
I don't know what you mean.
No, I just look like...
I'd be in a band, but very put together.
I don't have tattoos.
I'm very clean. No facial hair.
You mean like Russell Brand kind of stuff?
No. Who's the Blink-182 guy?
What's his name? Adam Levine type of thing.
Oh, that's Maroon 5, I think.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know.
I almost never see that guy with his shirt on.
I don't know what the hell, but okay.
Do you have long hair and...
It was a little bit longish, but I present myself very well to the world.
And I've noticed that when you go to very conservative areas of the United States, like in Tennessee or the South...
Yeah, you get that easy rider treatment, right?
Yeah, exactly.
Okay, now, sorry. Just so I can gauge, right?
So in the conversation that you're having with me, Are you doing that?
Like, is this sort of natural thing?
Like, you're presenting yourself well, that kind of thing?
I don't... Run that by me again.
So, in the conversation with the dad, I mean, do you have...
You'd be concerned that you would...
Because you say you present yourself well, you come across well.
And I'm just curious if that skill set is automatic to the point where you feel that you're presenting yourself well in this conversation or coming across well in this conversation, like with me.
No, it's not automatic because I've learned to sort of take a step back and check that.
Okay. Okay, so did you go and visit the parents?
I did, yes.
And he was very, the dad was very, you know, the way he shook my hand was the way a man shakes another man's hand.
It was a lot of eye contact, a lot of mutual sort of respect between us.
Her family was very warm.
I'm sorry, respect for what? It just seemed like there was a sort of respect for who we both were.
It was sort of like this understood, sub-communicated thing between us, where it was just like, Okay, but sorry, what did he respect you for?
And I'm not saying there's nothing to respect you for.
I'm just kind of curious. You don't just hand it out like candy, right?
So what was it that he saw about you or that he respected you for in terms of what you've done in life or whatever?
Yeah, well, definitely for my accomplishments, my business, because I remember she had told me, my dad definitely wants to ask you some questions about your business because he sounds very...
He's always asking me, and he sounds very curious about it, but I also think it was the fact that I flew out there and came there just to meet them, right?
But after you moved in with the daughter, right?
Yes, it was after, but I did talk to her dad before we moved in together and discussed that with him.
And did he say, are they Christians?
They are, but they don't follow hardcore Christians.
Well, not even softcore, right?
Because it's like, yeah, you can move in.
Did he say, with regards to his daughter, like, are you going to marry her?
Like, is the moving in a precursor to marriage?
Or like, are you settling down?
Are you going to have kids? Like, what are your intentions?
I think he wanted to understand the situation.
And the situation was, you know, we're into each other.
We've been dating for a while.
My lease... Is up on the place that I was renting.
And, you know, essentially, she was coming out of her dorms and had to find an apartment anyway.
So it kind of made sense at that time.
Oh, no, no. Come on. You don't.
You don't.
Who can live as cheaply as one stuff, right?
I mean, did the dad ask you, like, basically, are you going to make an honest woman out of my daughter?
I mean, did she want kids at the time?
Or did she talk about having kids at all?
She did, yes. Okay, so she wants kids.
I assume she wanted to be married or whatever, and you're moving in together.
So did the dad, because she's 21 and you're 34, right?
So someone's got to be looking out for her because she's 21.
And was it the dad? He did ask me my intentions.
You know, I don't remember how exactly he presented it because this is a while ago, but I remember him, you know, what's going on?
You know, what are you doing with my daughter?
And, you know, talk to me a little bit.
Yeah. Like, he did want some answers, for sure.
Like, I do remember that.
And what did you say? I don't recall.
I remember just trying to reassure him as best as I could for...
No, but what were your intentions?
I mean, I know I asked what you said, but I mean, what were your intentions, in fact?
My intentions then were to be in the relationship, to do whatever I could to have a good, healthy relationship with this woman.
That's what my intentions were.
Like, that's what I wanted.
No, but she wants to get married and have kids, right?
Yeah, and so did I, but not that minute.
No, no, I get it. So your intentions were, if it worked out, to marry and have kids, right?
Oh, yeah. A thousand percent.
Got it. Okay. So you move in, was it 10 months into the relationship?
Did I get that right? Yeah, it's got to be around that time marker.
That sounds about right.
And then what happened? So we moved in and things were really great and then they started going bad.
Like fast.
What happened?
What started happening was I started to realize that this woman doesn't want a boyfriend or a husband.
She wants a fucking father.
And Wait, the woman who's dating an older guy has daddy issues?
You don't say.
Stop the presses! You don't say.
I mean, you know, in hindsight, you know, in hindsight, maybe I was blissfully ignorant or purposefully avoiding that.
So what was the issue with the family structure that she was left with this daddy stuff?
That's a really good question, and even to today, I don't think I have the answer to that.
I've tried to figure that out and see what's really happened there.
What do you know about her childhood?
Sorry to interrupt. What I do know is her dad is the biggest yes-man, beta-man on Earth.
Like... And I'll explain why.
So her mother was a drug addict.
I didn't find this out until much, much, much later.
Wait, did you meet the mom?
The mother I did meet, but she's not on drugs anymore.
But she was a drug addict during their youth.
Oh my God.
Yes. Like what drugs do you know?
I don't know.
The husband, her father, is insanely successful.
Multiple, multiple, millions and millions.
Uber successful.
Company, everything. Has this woman who is a drug addict who I think is not around very often.
He works a lot.
I know that She had a lot of freedom to go about.
Wait, but who raised her? I think mostly their grandparents.
Okay. From what I can gather, I would say probably 80% of it was the grandparents.
On the mom's side?
On the dad's side.
The mom's side, the grandparents I don't think were in their life too often.
So the mom, I assume, was just another hot mess, right?
Like a pretty mess?
I mean, I didn't find her attractive, but, you know, I'm sure some...
From where she was, she was probably a good seven or eight.
But put her in a big city and no one's going to look twice.
She just vanishes, right? Oh, yeah, for sure.
And I know at one point she had left him for another guy.
Okay? Like...
Completely left him.
And she would actually call him, her father, for money.
Wait, sorry.
Your girlfriend would call her mother's lover?
No. Her mother would call her husband.
Oh, call your girlfriend's dad for money.
Yeah, even though she just left him for another dude and was living with another dude.
And he would give her money.
He used to pay for their rent to go live in some house together.
They wanted to open up a bakery shop.
He gave them money to open up this bakery shop together.
This is like your wife.
Yeah. Dude, what the fuck did you...
Sorry, I just need to back up here because you're like, he shook me.
He shook my hand the way a man shakes another man's hand.
He looked at me with respect and it's like, you gave me this impression that you met The Rock or something.
And this is like spineless beta give money to the lovers of my wife shit.
I mean, sorry, you just gave me a 180 right there.
How do you think I felt?
When I started seeing this and learning all these things.
But hey, you know, the important thing is you had a lot of sex and moved in together before you found out about the family history.
That's the important thing, right?
That was the most important thing, yes.
So you're not paying anything for that decision.
Okay, go ahead. Oh yeah, I've been paying for it ever since.
So am I going on about them or am I going on about what?
Well, yeah, so when you said you wanted a dad, what do you mean?
Yeah, it was just...
It wasn't the same as, like, you know, as, like, a boyfriend.
It was like I needed to, like, completely take the role of her father, like, in terms of, you know, even paying for the school, paying for the rent, and...
Oh, so she went from her dad to you in terms of bill payment, right?
Yes, but I didn't go down that road.
I said, absolutely not.
No, I'm not doing it.
I said, I'm not your dad.
You're not my financial responsibility yet.
We're not married.
We don't have a kid, so no, not yet.
I'm sorry, does she have a job?
Oh, no. No, no way.
Wait, so did her dad say to her, Now you've got a boyfriend that you're living with.
He should pay your bills? He must have.
He must have, for sure.
Hey, look, he grew a spine. Yeah, maybe.
I don't know. I don't know.
I'm sure it was equal parts him and equal parts her.
And, you know, and so that was going really bad.
We were kind of like...
Fighting a little bit.
I'd go to work for 10-12 hours.
I'd come home and the apartment's a goddamn mess.
The dogs haven't been let out for a walk.
I'm like, what the fuck are you doing?
You wouldn't actually swear at her, right?
Or would you? I don't think I was swearing at that time.
I don't think I was.
I think... Because even my arguments, I try not to say things out of anger, because I always wind up regretting.
So what I'll usually do is say, hey, I need some time to go process my emotions.
Yeah, cool down or whatever, right? And figure out, and I'll come back when I have a better idea.
So I'm pretty cool-headed in that regard.
Although it's not perfect, but I do...
I try my best. Sorry, let me just try and understand the mechanics here.
If her dad stopped paying for her school and you weren't paying for her school, how was she paying for school?
Well, he didn't stop, but they wanted me to start doing it.
The conversations were like, well, you're living together.
That's what you should be doing.
I was like, well, we're not living in rural Tennessee.
Yeah, that might happen there, but it's not happening here.
No. I'm not taking on that financial responsibility yet.
And I said it to her, and I know she said that to her father.
For sure. And, I mean, how much money were we talking here a year?
Like $20,000, $30,000, $10,000?
Oh, I don't know how much her school costs.
I don't know. I mean, you know, our apartment was like, was it like $4,000 a month?
So that alone, you know?
Was she contributing anything to that rent?
Oh, yeah. Well, her dad was.
Yes, absolutely.
So from paying for his wife's lover, he's now paying for his daughter's lover.
There's another one of those brilliant connect-the-dot moments.
Yes. All right.
So she's getting mad about what?
That you have expectations?
Did she want her to keep the place clean?
Did she cook? I mean, obviously she was working less at her school than you were at your job, right?
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I was doing 13 hours a day some days, like easy, you know?
Okay, so you have expectations and she's like, I'm not going to be a housewife.
I'm not going to run your household.
Like, is it that kind of stuff? Yeah, it just seemed like she wanted to be like Kim Kardashian or something, and I was like...
I want to be Kim Kardashian.
Like, no, that's not how it works.
And then, you know, I was out doing my thing at work one day, and I got a little phone call that said, I think I'm pregnant.
And I... The same feeling I had with the psycho woman we were talking about, I had with this woman.
And this was before the psycho woman, but I literally just...
I felt sick to my stomach.
My first thought was abortion.
And I'm vehemently against it.
Like, I don't believe in it at all.
Okay, hang on. Sorry. I want to get to the abortion stuff.
I just, I don't want to forget this particular moment, right?
So, do you believe that the pregnancy was accidental?
No. Okay, so what do you think happened?
What was going on that she decided to take this approach?
What do you mean, what do I think was going on?
Well, if the pregnancy was not accidental, in other words, if she, whoopsie, forgot to take a pill or something even more overt or whatever, so if the pregnancy was not accidental, then she made the choice to get pregnant, and why did she make that choice?
To keep me.
100%. Well, you weren't leaving her at this point, were you?
You just weren't paying for her.
It was pretty obvious I was on the way out.
Oh, okay. So, because you just said you'd had some conflicts or whatever, but so the relationship was on its last legs?
It was. And, you know, I think that, you know, I didn't take my normal precautions either.
Dude, you were like, you sleepwalked into this one, right?
Yeah, I don't know if I sleepwalked or sleepfucked or sleepsexted.
No, no, but I mean, look, I mean, if a relationship is winding down, that is a particular risk factor for oopsie pregnancy, right?
Yes. Or did you just spend all your time studying how to get into women's pants, not what might happen after you're in there, right?
No, you're right. I understand.
Okay. So the relationship is winding down and she's panicking a little, right?
And so she gets pregnant and then what happens?
So you think abortion, though, you're against it.
Obviously you didn't have it. And how did it play from there?
Yeah. Well, I don't remember the exact course of events, but there were a few and we found ourselves flying out to see her family.
After we told them the news, because, you know, they wanted to see us, they wanted to see her, see if everything was alright, you know.
I think they were all very worried and disappointed.
Oh, it's horrible. I mean, you've got a relationship that's breaking up, and you've got a baby.
I mean, that's just about the worst situation around, right?
Yeah, and you've got a guy who's not financially taken care of, you know, the The baby mama, either.
And you're not married. And we're not married.
So she has no legal rights, really, because you hadn't even lived together for common law, right?
Exactly. You know, we came home and we tried to...
So the dad was wrong to look at you with respect?
Yeah. And you were wrong to look at him with respect, and he was wrong to...
Because you gave me this man the moment, and I just want to deconstruct it a little bit, right?
Because you knocked up his daughter and you won't pay, right?
Well... That changed after she was pregnant.
Then, you know, my responsibilities, you know, I took on, for sure.
Was there any chance that you were going to try and make a go of things?
Yes. One thousand fucking percent.
Yeah. I was not giving up.
I'm like, alright, if we're having this baby, then we're going to fucking do it.
We're going to learn to figure each other out.
We're going to learn to be a team.
I went all in.
I was like, alright, well, you know, Because the thing is, I was still very attracted to her.
I was still... Well, no, but that's just lust, right?
Not her personality, right?
I was going to say no, because I still enjoyed a lot of conversations we had.
I still enjoyed just her presence and walking around together, like going out shopping.
No, no, I don't mean all the...
Come on, that's all bullshit stuff. I mean, like sitting face-to-face across a table and having a real conversation.
Yeah, we did that.
That was fun. That was good.
That was good. I still enjoyed that when it did happen.
So I did want to give it a go as best as I could.
And I did, you know, I remember trying as hard as I could.
What do you mean, like you guys went to couples therapy and stuff?
We didn't do couples therapy.
I forget the name of it, but I called somebody.
It's about how to communicate.
There's a I forget the name of the method.
It doesn't matter.
Did you think of couples therapy or anything like that?
No, but we did go see this counselor to learn how to communicate with each other better.
Because I thought there was a lack of genuine communication between us and dialogue about certain things that needed to take place that weren't.
So I thought if we got some help, maybe that would help Ease the tensions in the relationship a little bit, maybe.
Okay? And were those tensions coming from a lack of communication?
Or were there, like, the age gap?
Plus, she must have been a little bit frustrated about wanting a career in fashion and now being pregnant, right?
No, because that turned out to be total bullshit.
Like, something she wasn't even interested in.
And we can...
What, the schooling thing? She just didn't care about it?
No, I mean, no, not one bit.
Because she... After the baby came, she immediately changed tunes and wanted to be a school teacher.
Gave it up, didn't even care about it.
I don't care about fashion. I don't really like it.
Now, did you guys think you'd get married or did you talk about that?
Yeah, of course we did.
Of course we did. And we did get engaged.
And I was willing to, like I said, really put everything I have into it to make it work.
You know, especially for, you know, a daughter that's coming into this world.
I believe, you know, that two parents should be in a kid's life as long as it's healthy.
Yeah, you didn't want to be like your dad, right?
No, no. Absolutely not.
So I did whatever I could to, you know, help the relationship and make it work.
Absolutely. All right.
And what happened? Well, my daughter was born and...
I guess what had happened then was it seemed as though my expectations of her changed when my daughter was born.
And the way I view it is like, you know, when you date somebody or you have a girlfriend, you have certain expectations.
But when they're the mother of your child, you have a whole different set of expectations that also need to be met.
And a lot of those things didn't really seem to be being met.
So I did take on the financial responsibility of where we lived.
I didn't take school on yet, but that's also because school was pretty much coming to an end and it was already paid for.
So I did all of the food, all of the clothes, you know, spending...
Yeah, okay, you paid, yeah. And she was home and getting up all night and breastfeeding and all that, right?
Yeah, yeah, and she was, you know, I think, okay at all that stuff.
But she's going to hit some issues because her mom was a drug addict, right?
So she's going to have some flashbacks and PTSD, some, like, whatever might be happening with all that, right?
Yeah, yeah, maybe, for sure.
And... You know, I just remember after a few months, it just...
Everything just got really difficult with her.
Like, it was just...
Nothing was good enough.
She wasn't taken care of enough.
I wasn't doing enough.
Were you working still like 12, 13 hours a day?
Yeah, and especially trying to find more work because I wanted to bring in more money.
Oh, so hang on.
Is she isolated? At times, but the thing is, I worked close to where we lived, so I would run home during the day and take breaks.
No, I get that. I get that for sure.
But I mean, you're still working, you know, those are pretty crazy hours, right?
And did she have, you know, like having a baby?
I mean, it's unbelievably draining and, you know, it's like you cease to exist almost because you're just sitting there focusing on the baby's needs, which is totally fine and appropriate.
But did she have anyone...
Yeah, and I did used to bring her to work, and everybody at work would You know, spend time with the baby and her to try to, you know, improve her social life.
But yeah, I did understand that.
Yeah, I mean, it should have been a time for cutting back and relying on savings, at least for the first year.
But all right. Things just were getting bad.
The only way to describe it is it just all the problems we had before she was pregnant came back like 30 fold.
Right. Like, insane.
And, you know, there were times where we would get into, like, arguments, like yelling back and forth.
With the baby, of course, in the house, right?
Yeah, I would think, yeah.
What do you mean you would think? Where was the baby?
I mean, it's in the house, right? Well, the way the house was set up, I was trying to think if we ever argued in front of the baby, but we must have.
No, but if you're yelling, right?
If you're yelling, and you said it was an apartment, right?
Yeah, but it was like a duplex and it had another separate little wing where the baby's room was.
I'm sure we argued in front of the baby.
Like, there's no doubt.
And do you remember what you argued about?
Yeah, like, one of the things we argued about, like, I came home to surprise her during the middle of the day.
Okay? And As I'm putting the key into the door, I hear her screaming and yelling at the dogs.
Like, they're my dogs.
And when I say screaming and yelling, I don't mean like average screaming and yelling.
I mean like... Shrieking stuff, right?
Like banshee stuff. Satan.
And I never heard this from her before.
And I come in and I'm like, what the hell is going on here?
I was like, why are you yelling at them?
I was like, why is there poop on the wee-wee pads?
Like, why are you letting them out?
Like, what are you doing here?
Wait, what are the wee-wee pads? I don't know what that is.
They're like little pee and poop pads that tiny dogs can go on if they don't go on outside.
Okay. But they were like filled with poop, which means she didn't take them out at all.
And I was like, like, what are you doing in here?
Like, I don't understand what's going on.
Everything is a mess.
I'm working my ass off.
I asked you to go to the store, pick up some things from Whole Foods.
You didn't grab anything from Whole Foods, and it turned into this giant...
It was a pretty big deal, a pretty big fight.
And what was her side, since you don't know, but what did she say?
I don't even remember. It'd just be like excuses, or I don't have time, or I have a baby and I can't, and you should do this, and you should be doing this, and you could bring it on the way home, and Things like that.
We were arguing a lot.
Like, a lot. And this is where things are going to get a little crazy.
So, you know, the relationship's bad.
Okay? I desperately don't want to be involved in it anymore.
It's just... It's not healthy.
It's not healthy for me, for her, for the baby, for nothing.
And listen, just so you know, I'm sure you figured all this stuff out, but I just sort of want to mention it as a whole.
Did you feel used for money a little?
Like she had the baby and she...
Yeah. Did I feel used?
I don't know if I felt used.
I felt... I'm underappreciated and taken advantage of, yes.
Yeah, but I mean, if she has the baby, like, so, and the reason I'm saying is that if she didn't have the baby, you'd have broken up with her and you wouldn't have any of these bills.
She has the baby and you've got to pay all these bills, right?
So you're kind of getting used for money through the baby in a way, right?
Yes, absolutely, yes.
And do you know why that came about?
This is karma, right? Okay, go ahead.
Enlighten me. Well, you used women for sex.
A woman uses you for money.
Okay. That makes sense.
Right. And that's why you weren't able to see the danger, right?
Because you weren't – that's why I was probing this earlier, right?
So you're still a little bit blind as to some of the damage you did to women in terms of, you know, you slept with 300 women or whatever, right?
I mean, that's not good. That's not healthy for the women.
It's not healthy for you. It's not healthy for society as a whole.
Right? Because it doesn't promote pair bonding and the good stable families are the basis of our civilization, all that sort of shit, right?
I'm not saying you're bringing down Western civilization single-handedly.
I'm just saying, well, actually, if you had been single-handed, it might not have happened.
But it's not great.
And listen, I mean... We've all done it, right?
Men of reasonable levels of attraction.
I'm not saying 300, right?
But, you know, we've all been guilty of this, and it's just something we have to recognize in ourself, and we're trained badly.
We don't have God, and we don't have morals, and we don't have any of that stuff.
So, you know, we are all being pushed in our selected direction.
But the price of you using women for sex is that you open yourself up to being used for money.
Because you can't recognize the pattern because you're kind of denying it in yourself, if that makes sense.
It makes perfect sense.
Absolutely. It does.
Yes. Everything we take, we pay for.
For better or for worse, right?
I agree. You took a lot of sensual pleasure.
I did. Everything we take, everything we want, everything we take, we pay for one way or another.
I know. I know.
That's karma. Yeah, and just the price, right?
The price of using women for sex is being naive to being used for money, right?
You're absolutely right. Because it sounds to me that's kind of the way.
She's like, oh my God, my dad's not paying my bills.
My boyfriend's not paying my bills.
I want my bills to be paid.
The best way to do it is to have a baby, right?
Yeah. I mean, it was almost like an obsession to get me to pay.
I mean, it was like, I remember being like, What are you guys so fucking crazy about?
Why is this so important to your dad and to you?
I've never seen anything like this.
Maybe dating is different where you grew up.
The water tastes different, but this is just...
It was crazy.
No, but she was like a...
I don't just mean the age difference, but she's like a child.
Insofar as she didn't, you know, I've got to pay my own way.
I've got to be an adult. I've got to be mature.
You know, she's just like, oh, I've got to get someone to pay for me.
That's what children think, right?
Children go to a candy store.
They don't have their own money.
What do they do? I've got to get someone to buy me candy, right?
I don't have my own money.
I can't get my own money. I'm a child.
I've got to get someone to pay for me. That's the same thing your mom was doing, right?
I'll sleep with this guy.
I don't even like him because I got to get someone to pay for me.
Yeah.
And what do I have to bring to the table?
Am I a great artist? Can I earn money that way?
No. Am I a great writer?
Can I make money that way? No.
Am I a great business person?
Can I make money that way? No.
But I could do a blowjob.
Yeah, you're right.
You're absolutely right. And this is what I mean.
Like, both your mom and...
You know this.
I mean, because you're an entrepreneur.
You make your own money. You work hard.
You know how difficult it is, how challenging it is.
And... This cradle-robbing aspect, and it's not fundamentally an age thing, because I would imagine your mom is still the same way, right?
Because then the women will run to a boyfriend to pay for things, and then they'll have a husband to pay for things, and if that doesn't work out, they'll go to alimony to pay for things, and if that doesn't work out, they'll go to welfare to pay for things, and then if they've never made any money their whole damn life, they'll go to the Social Security old-age pension benefit to pay for things, and they never have to grow up.
They never have to grow up and actually earn their own way.
And so, being drawn to these attractive, hot women and so on.
Well, of course, I mean, men are constantly showering resources at women.
And look, I don't mind doing that.
I mean, I think it's perfectly fine.
But not for sex.
Not for sex. Only, only for running a household and raising children.
That's the job that women should do.
Get paid for. But not for sex.
Not for companionship.
I mean, that's cheapening the whole thing, right?
The transfer of resources is for the productive and effective raising of children.
And the transfer of your resources was not for that because she couldn't even clean the fucking dog's pee-pee, whatever that thing was, right?
So she's not doing a good job of running your household and raising your children.
No, definitely not.
And that was very evident with the fact that she was constantly looking for a man to pay your bills when you're not providing him.
I mean, this is why there's marriage, right?
You're married, you have that commitment, you start having kids, and that way the man's happy to pay because the woman is providing an essential service, right?
The having of children, the raising of children, which makes all our life worthwhile.
It's why we're all alive. But if you're paying for the woman...
And I know you were avoiding that, right?
But her dad was paying for her and all that.
If the woman is not earning her own money, earning her own bills, I mean, have you ever dated someone like you who works hard and has made a lot of money?
I have a few women, yes, I have.
Right. I mean, it's a different mindset, right?
Rather than... It's completely different.
How can I get money from men, which is...
How can I get money from the authority figures in my life is a child's perspective.
Who can I manipulate? Who can I... And of course, children, what do they do?
They whine, they complain, they make everyone's life difficult until they get what they want, right?
And women will start off with the sex, but they will very quickly change to the whining and complaining and nagging to go from the positive reinforcement to the negative reinforcement, from the carrot to the stick, right, to just get what they want.
And you're not really dealing with what I would consider a functional adult.
It's a toddler sort of mentality.
I 100% agree.
Absolutely. Okay, so if you're screaming at the dogs, you have this big blow-up, and what happens then?
Yeah, so, you know, and this was just becoming a daily occurrence, and so what happens is I go to work...
Oh, you mean the sort of daily big fights kind of thing?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally, and what happens is I go to work one day, and, you know, everything's cool, and, you know, we talk on the phone a few times, and everything's fun and great, and...
She's like, what time are you going to be home?
I tell her. And so work is done.
Oh, she's gone.
Yeah. Oh, she's gone.
Oh, she's good. Man, she knows how to slip out and camouflage.
Anyway, go on. Well, I walked in and what was interesting, I was like, she finally fucking cleaned.
Like, that's the first thought.
Oh, man. I said, she cleaned and I was like, wow, she moved stuff around.
This looks great.
And then I was like, you gotta be fucking kidding me.
Like, there's no way.
And like, you know, I went through the house and I was like, she's gone.
And like, you know, her family drove like 700 miles.
Like, you know, in the middle of the night or whatever it is to come, you know, take her and my kid away from me without anybody talking to me.
Without anything.
And you know, I called her dad when I realized what was going on and he answered the phone and all I said was like, how fucking dare you?
How dare you come into my house, our house, and take away my baby, our baby, and all of our stuff?
Without even having the decency to have a conversation with me?
Like, I was fucking disgusted.
Disgusted. You know, I called my family and everybody came to where I was.
Wait, what did...
Did you talk to her dad?
Or just leave a message? Yeah, I spoke to him.
And what did he say? I just remember him saying, well, if you want to come out and talk...
And if you need to see your daughter, then, you know, you could come to where we are.
And that was really the extent of the conversation.
That was it. And, you know, my family came running in and, you know, they were all talking to her all the time before this and they said, well, yeah, you guys were fighting, but we didn't think anything like this and this is crazy and this is kidnapping and Who does this?
I'm like, I don't know.
It's not like I was a threat.
It's not like I was verbally abusive or physically abusive.
This is how you treat a monster.
I'm not a monster. Nothing even close to that.
That was pretty devastating.
I didn't know what to do.
I didn't know whether I should chase or whether I should just play cool.
It was I was like, but you have my daughter, and now she's going to be 700 miles away from me?
I'm just getting to know this girl.
She's only like six months old.
Was there any physical violence in the relationship?
No. Zero.
Never. Nothing even close.
Do you know if she communicated anything like that to her family?
In later years, the impression I got is they thought she was in danger.
And in later years, I have gotten some very serious apologies about that saying we were wrong and we should have spoken to you and we don't know what we were doing.
They've tried to apologize for that to me many times.
Okay, now, and this is totally my fault, so I apologize for this, but we have to hit the gas here to make sure we get to the daughter, because it's been a couple hours.
And it's totally my fault, and nothing to do with you.
I appreciate all that information.
I think it's very important. So, I guess this was 13 years ago, and I hate to ask for the truncated version of what went down with the mom, but if you could give me that, I'd appreciate it.
Oh, wow. So, you know, my daughter has essentially been You know, mentally abused, and I think physically.
So, you know, she remarried a person that has just been an absolute nightmare towards my daughter in every single way.
You know, he's pulled her hair, yanked her by the arms, locked her in the rooms.
Grabbed her by the neck once or twice.
Talks horribly about me.
He's a little abusive towards her mother.
I don't think physically towards the mother, although I know it's become very close a few times.
Like, he's thrown things at her and stuff like that.
What had happened was...
I think the first time I realized...
Something was going on that was pretty bad was when my daughter showed up at my...
So we had like an almost 50-50 parenting schedule, okay?
She was with her mother slightly more than me, but, you know...
But this is 700 mile thing, right?
How is that navigated? Yeah, okay.
So what happened was I... Grabbed a house.
Okay, so I'm skipping far ahead because you told me to.
So to fill in that gap, I wound up grabbing another house out back home.
And what I did is I started to commute back and forth a few times a month to come out and see my daughter and to also try to get the relationship to work.
Okay? So...
We did that for a while.
We wound up getting married.
Okay? That went horribly bad.
Very fast. Okay?
I wound up filing for a divorce six months after.
I'm so sorry. I just completely gapped out on who you got married to.
Yeah. So, yeah, because you asked me to speed things up.
Yeah, no, and I just, sorry, fill in one gap if you could.
Yeah. So, essentially what happened, you know, she...
Got rescued by her family, right?
They brought her back to where they're from.
I grabbed a house out in that part of America.
Oh, you married the mom of your daughter, your girlfriend?
Yes. Okay, sorry, sorry.
I'm with you now. Okay, sorry.
Go ahead. Yeah. And then I was commuting back and forth a few times a month because my business was in one place and they were in another place.
So that was just my life for a while.
Okay? So we did get married.
That Just went horribly bad pretty fast.
I filed for a divorce after about six months later for the exact same reasons, you know, that we just weren't getting along.
Well, hang on. Was she any better at running the house or being a mom?
No, no.
And how long did the marriage last?
Six months. But then, of course, you have legal responsibilities now, right?
Yeah, uh-huh.
Legal responsibility to my daughter.
I mean, you know, I didn't have to pay any alimony or anything like that.
So I had child support, but that was it.
That was the extent of my legal responsibilities.
So I guess to help speed things along, I was doing a commute for a few years.
She was living alone.
For, you know, maybe about a year or so.
Got involved with some guy.
Wound up marrying him.
Actually, he wound up moving in after about one or two months into the relationship.
They wound up getting married very soon after.
Okay? One of the first...
I guess...
Signals to me, you know, my daughter still wasn't talking perfectly at that time.
You know, she's probably about like three, three and a half.
I think one of the, you know, I mean, she was talking, but, you know, nothing like the way we are is what I'm saying.
But, you know, she started telling me things that like, you know, things that he would say to her and she would sort of Tell me about that and ask me.
And I would just say, well, you know, that's not the way I would say things.
Or, you know, I don't yell at you.
Do I do things like this to you?
And I was listening, but it's very difficult because you can't really do much.
So I would email her mother and just say, hey, you know, like, This is what our daughter's telling me.
Like, you know, what's going on?
Like, you know, and the responses I would get is, you know, oh, nothing.
It's none of your business. And, you know, he would never be mean to your daughter.
And, you know, that's a lie.
And she's exaggerating and just things like that.
Okay. And I guess, was he making decent coin?
Was that the Prater? Was he?
Yeah. I don't think so.
I don't think so.
I mean, I think decent enough, but nothing like...
I don't think he was making as much as I do, but no.
I don't think... No.
I don't know, but I don't think so.
Okay. But what started happening was my daughter started becoming...
She went from being, from what I could tell, was like a very, you know, happy, outgoing person, like extremely...
Outgoing and happy to very angry, very secluded, very shy.
And I knew that was a result of what was happening in that house because it doesn't happen with me, right?
It wasn't happening when she was spending with me.
You know, I'd get her back from her mom and I would notice, like, things are off again and again and again.
And again. And, you know, no matter how much I tried to communicate with her mom, I just either wouldn't get emails back or she'd tell me I'm making things up and I just want to make her look bad for the courts and all this crap like that because we went through a horrible divorce.
But that's neither here nor there.
And then one day I get my daughter and, you know, from her mother, you know, we're sitting down watching some TV and I'm like, hello?
Hello? Can you hear me?
Yeah. Okay, cool.
So, we're watching TV and I'm like, what the hell is going on with my daughter's eyes?
And I'm like, this is crazy.
Like, she's having these, like, twitches and her eyes are doing these weird beady motions.
And I'm like, I'm like, you're fucking kidding me.
Like, I remember that's exactly the words that came out In my head.
Not to my daughter, but in my head.
You're fucking kidding me.
She's got my daughter on goddamn drugs?
I knew it.
I knew it in that moment.
Because, like I said, I could see her attitude changing.
She was telling me all these things.
And I remember saying something to her mom through an email about that.
And said, I want to know exactly what's going on with our daughter.
What type of medication is she on?
Okay? I didn't receive any response.
Nothing. Okay?
I had to use my lawyers to get a response to find out that here she is at three and a half or four diagnosed with like ADD. And I'm like, this is insane!
Like, there's nothing wrong!
Like, this is crazy!
So, This was a huge thing for me because I am vehemently against psychotropic drugs unless you desperately need them and I don't think any 3 or 4 year old desperately needs them at that age.
There's just no way. So I try to fight this thing in court.
They're like, well, she was diagnosed so there's really nothing I could do.
So And this medication thing plays into something pretty important, okay?
So when she's with me, I don't give it to her, okay?
So she'd be with me five days, sometimes ten days, some days five days.
So I wouldn't give her this stuff.
And, you know, her twitching or whatever would get better.
Then she'd go home to mom and come back to me the same way.
And this went on for about like a year or so, okay?
Then what happens is...
I get a...
I don't remember if it was a text message or an email, but I got one of those things from the ex-wife saying that I am bringing our daughter to your house.
She is not allowed to live in our house anymore.
She purposely put the lives of my other children in danger and we think she tried to kill her.
One of our kids.
So, you know, I get this message and I'm like, alright, this is the most fucking crazy thing I've ever heard.
How old was your daughter at this point?
I think this is probably when she's like six, maybe seven now.
Six or seven, I'm thinking.
So, you know, when I do get her, I hear the full story.
And the story is this.
My daughter was getting made fun of in either kindergarten or preschool about the twitching of the eyes.
And she knew that it was the pills that were making her do it.
And what she did is rather than take them when her mother was making her take them, She would pretend to swallow it and then hide it.
And I guess something happened where one of these pills wound up in an area where the other babies crawl and walk back and forth.
And they found one of the pills there and basically said that my daughter purposely left it out for them to To eat or to kill themselves or to kill them.
And, you know, my thought is, oh, you put my daughter on these beds.
You make her take it.
But now she's trying to kill your kids because, like, with the same pill that you're feeding my daughter?
Like, this doesn't fucking make sense.
Like, this is absolutely crazy town.
So she comes and lives with me for about six, seven months.
I take her mother to court.
Because I want full custody because she kicked her out.
There's been some potential abuse issues.
We get a guardian at Leiden who comes into the case to assess his situation.
He doesn't really take the word of a seven-year-old, I guess, at that time.
So he kind of says, well, I think it's in the kid's best interest to spend 50-50 with parents, not really one more than the other.
And I want a new psychological evaluation and all of this stuff.
So I was like, all right, well, let's do it.
And so we get this new psych exam, okay, from a totally independent person who literally finds nothing wrong with my daughter.
He's like, and when I spoke to him, he just said, he looked at me, he said, there's literally like, I can't detect anything wrong.
Any, any little bit of ADHD or any other developmental issue in your daughter.
He's like, I, I really don't understand who, whoever would have put her on the medication or recommend it.
And I was like, well, thank you.
Okay. So she came off the medication from a legal standpoint.
Okay. Then there was always issues in the house, always fighting every time I was with my daughter.
It was just nonstop.
My mom this, you know, they were fighting.
Here's what he said.
And he said this about you, Dad.
And this time, you know, they wouldn't let me call you.
I kept asking to call you to say goodnight.
And they kept saying no.
And then I'd hear them laugh about it.
You know, it was always an issue.
And then what happened was, I guess, her and her husband have just the worst relationship Ever.
Like, I think it's extremely toxic between them two.
And I get a text message again saying, are you going to be home?
And I say, yeah. And this is a couple of years later.
And I say, yeah. And she goes, OK, well, I'm bringing her to your house and, you know, I want her to live with you from now on.
And I'm like, OK. So she brings her to my house and then I start talking to her.
I say, listen, This is twice now.
You're kicking her out of the house.
I'm like, to be honest with you, I've gotten very used to a lifestyle without my daughter.
I have to make some very strong changes to accommodate full-time, both with work and personal.
I said, I need child support.
If you're kicking her out again and she's going to live with me, I need child support.
Because the first time, she didn't give me a dime.
So they said, yeah, that's fine.
We agreed to him out. Cool.
Okay. That lasted for not very long.
Okay. I think they just didn't want to pay the child support.
Then eventually said, okay, well, we'll start taking her back.
And they took her back.
And now just again.
Okay. So here's what happens.
Here's like the big blow off top.
So In our parenting agreement, it specifically says that our daughter is allowed to call either of us at any time she wants and cannot be refused.
No matter how many times she wants, she is allowed to have access to either parent whenever she wants through the phones.
For years, I have been fighting and struggling for this provision to be You know, adhere to.
Because what will happen is most times my daughter's with her mom for like five days and I don't hear from her for five days.
Nothing. Okay?
But yet when she's at my house, she has unrestricted access to her mother.
She can call as much as she wants.
She can text her mother whenever she wants.
She could FaceTime with her mom.
Like, I don't care.
So this has always been a big point of contention between us.
So, what had happened was, a couple of weeks ago, I say to her, actually, she said to me over a text message saying, you know, can she bring her phone to my house, you know? And this way she has something to use while she's at my house.
And I said to her, I said, well, you know, I'm not opposed to letting her take, you know, her iPhone to your house, but You use the phone as punishment.
And the only reason why I'd be letting her take the phone to your house is so she can keep calling me.
So she can call me to say goodnight or call me during the afternoon if she needs someone to talk to.
I said, but you know, you're going to use that as punishment so I don't feel comfortable sending that phone there.
I said, but here's what I will do.
I will buy a flip phone.
Okay? Something that only makes phone calls.
Something with no internet. And I will send it to your house.
This way, she has something that will never be used for punishment purposes.
A phone that she could always call you from and always call me from.
And she says, okay, you know what?
That sounds like a great idea.
I say, alright, awesome.
So, a week goes by, I buy the phone.
I shoot her a text. I say, hey, listen, I got the flip phone.
Would it be cool if I dropped it off at the house tonight?
I have a little bit of free time.
She goes, no, I'll send her out to the car to come get it.
I say, okay, great. So I get to the house.
She comes running out.
I say, hey, get in the car.
Let me show you how this phone works.
Because it's a flip phone.
It's very different than an iPhone, right?
They're actually pretty confusing.
But... So as soon as my daughter gets in the car, she says to me, I'm not allowed to call you.
And I said to her, I was like, well, what do you mean you're not allowed to call me?
And she goes, yeah.
Mom said, I'm punished.
I'm not allowed to have the phone.
And I said, this is crazy.
I was like, I literally just texted your mom.
It says that this phone is not to be used for punishment.
It's so you could call either of us 100% of the time whenever you want.
And she goes, yeah, she's not letting me use it.
And I'm like, are you serious right now?
And she's like, yeah, I'm punished.
I gave her an attitude. So I say, I'm going to call your mom and maybe try to work this out.
So I call her and she picks up the phone and I was like, hey, you know, We have to cut that out, by the way.
I say...
Yeah, go ahead.
She tells me that she's being punished and she's not allowed to call me.
And she goes, yeah, that's right.
And I said...
I was like, then why did I bring this phone here?
And she goes, I was wondering the same thing.
And I said, I literally just...
She texted you, like yesterday, saying this phone is not to be used for punishment, and it's something she can bring back and forth, and you said that was a good idea.
And she goes, stop telling me how to run my house, and you're always trying to make up rules.
Now, the husband comes running up to my side of the car, out of the house, like psychotic.
Screaming, yelling, you fucking pussy!
You motherfucker! You're gonna talk to my fucking wife like that?
Meanwhile, I'm talking to her the way I have the last 13 years.
Like, with utter respect for my daughter.
Like, never call her name.
Never. And he's yelling at me, get out of the car!
I'm gonna kick your ass, you pussy!
You think you're so tough?
Huh? Huh? You think you're tough?
Get out of the car! And my daughter's screaming, crying.
And, you know, I'm just like, I rolled down my window, and I'm just like, I'm like, why are you trying to fight me?
He's like, yeah, yeah, come on, tough guy.
Get the fuck out of the car.
Get out of the car. And I'm like, I'm not getting out of the car.
I'm not going to fight you.
And I say to my daughter, I say, you know what?
Here's the phone. Just go in the house.
He goes, that fucking phone ain't coming in my house.
That phone ain't coming in my fucking house.
So he starts running back to the house, and my daughter says to me, Dad, he's got a gun by the door.
He's going to get a gun.
And I'm like, alright, I don't know if there's a gun by the door.
Maybe there is. Maybe there isn't.
But he's definitely running back to the house.
He's definitely mad.
I'm not going to stick around and see what happens.
Okay? So as I'm getting ready to start the car back up, her mother comes running out of the house to the side of the door my daughter is.
Starts trying to freaking pull her pretty much out of the window of my car.
He comes back around to my side of the car, trying to open my door, right?
And I'm, like, rolling up the windows and, like, you know, trying to back up in the driveway.
As I'm backing up in the driveway, the police show up.
And I'm like, well, how convenient, right?
Like, I didn't call him.
So, like, what the hell is going on here?
So, the police show up, and my daughter is literally, I mean, screaming at the top of her lungs at At them, at her mother and her stepfather, whatever you want to call them. And being like, you told my dad you were going to beat him up.
You were threatening him.
I was scared.
We thought you were going to get a gun.
And you were telling him you were going to kick his ass.
And she's like, I don't feel safe in this house.
I don't want to be in this house.
Please don't make me go back in the house.
It was pretty dramatic.
I was sitting in my car in the street because they made me pull out to the street.
And I was listening to everything that was being said.
And so the cops come up to me and they ask me my side of the story.
And, you know, they kind of seem like they're on my side from what they're saying and from what, you know, obviously what my daughter was saying.
So I tell them that I want to press charges.
I said, because I don't feel safe.
I was like, I have to come to this house to get my daughter.
He was threatening me, trying to get me to come out of the car.
It was like this big, crazy thing.
Um, So, I file the charges against them.
The next morning, at like 5 o'clock in the morning, I'm sitting in my house, drinking some coffee.
Luckily, I was up. The door opens up.
It's my daughter. Okay?
And she's like, you know, Dad, I'm kicked out of the house again.
Okay? They don't want me back.
They said it's permanent.
I'm not allowed to go back.
So... What had happened was she stayed with me that day.
Later on that afternoon, we needed to go to the post office to mail out a couple of things that I had to.
And on the way to the post office, her mother and her husband are driving down my street.
And I was like, okay, well, this is weird.
Maybe they just want They just want her back.
Okay, so I pull over to the side of the road.
It's kind of like a stop sign.
It's a little bit of a busy street.
And I rolled down my window and, you know, I was like, hey, you know, why are you guys down here?
And they both just start yelling at me and my daughter.
She starts saying, you always undermine me.
You always try to go behind my back and you're doing this and you're doing that.
And, you know, at one point, you know, and she was doing this for about 30 seconds.
And then we had about four cars behind us because we're at this stop sign.
And I look over and I say, hey, can we pull over somewhere else to finish this conversation?
And he's like, you're going to sit here and listen to every word we say.
And I just like...
Drive off. I was like, I'm not going to sit here getting yelled at again.
Like, you're down my street.
This is crazy. And then about 15 minutes later, I get a text message that says, You have 100% rights to your daughter.
100% of the time.
We are terrified of you guys.
Have your lawyers send the paperwork and we will sign.
Both your numbers are blocked from our phones for our safety.
We have a restraining order being filed against you.
I am blocking your number.
Okay? My daughter is off our insurance.
As of this morning, she is out of our public schools.
You got what you wanted.
And then here I am with my daughter, which seems full-time.
Yeah, that's crazy town, because this is never what I wanted.
Like, not even close.
Wow. I mean, that's crazy.
That's literally crazy.
So the restraining order was against you, not your daughter, right?
Yeah, it was against me, but there is no restraining order, because you know what?
When the prosecutor called me about the police report, he said, listen, I'm not going to follow through with this.
He goes, you know, you're saying one thing, they're saying one thing, and they're like, you know, let's just drop this.
And I was like, okay, that sounds fine.
There is no restraining order.
There is none. No, that's a bunch of bullshit.
It's crazy. It's all him.
Because the last time she also got kicked out of the house, I forgot to tell you this, my daughter told me that he heard him say to her mother, it's either her or me.
You choose. And there are two other kids.
Is it one of two other kids in the house?
There's now three other kids.
Three. Oh, okay. So they've had three kids together.
All right. Yes, yes.
Yes. And, you know, my daughter is hurt.
She's scarred by this.
And, you know, I just want to be able to do my best to be able to ease her pain and make things easy for her and You know,
but also without feeding into the negative energy, you know, because there's a lot of, there's a lot of that about my mother and about him and, you know, I try my best to not let her go down that road too hard or help perpetuate those feelings because I don't think that's fair.
Those are her feelings and I don't want to, I don't want to influence them.
And I just find it to be a balance that seems to be a lot of challenging.
I mean, my daughter's very, she's very angry.
This is the third time now, okay?
And, you know, like in her words is, you know, they lost me.
Like, I don't, I can't say anything else.
I don't want to go back.
I don't want to I don't want to try to explain myself.
My mom doesn't listen.
She just thinks of herself.
She doesn't hear me. She doesn't listen to me.
She doesn't respect how I feel.
Everything just is blame on me, blame on me, blame on me.
You know, and I'm not saying I'm the perfect parent, because I'm not.
But, you know, there's...
I don't know.
Like, I think this is why I'm really calling, is because I... And I'm glad we talked about everything, but my daughter's well-being and emotional stability is what's most important to me right now.
Helping her get through this as best I can.
Right. And how do you think I can best help?
Well, you know, I just hear your relationship with your daughter and how she's able to freely express things in a way that, you know, I think other kids can't with their parents.
Like, you know, I've listened to some of the Interactions you and your daughter have, and I think it's really beautiful, and it's really uplifting, and it paints a positive picture in your daughter's mind about what healthy relationships would look like or should look like.
And, you know, I want to give that to my daughter.
I don't think she has a good reference point right now.
I'm single. Made some very conscious decisions not to, you know, date as much or bring women around her ever, unless it was going to be somebody very serious or something that I thought was going to manifest into something more.
So I don't think she's been able to see me necessarily interact with women to get a baseline of You know what a healthy relationship might be like and she definitely doesn't have it in her house now.
So I'm just kind of like trying to figure out what to do or what the right steps would be.
And I value what you say and your opinions.
Right. No, I mean, I appreciate that and that's good to hear, but in terms of what specifically we should focus on in the remainder of the call, is there anything urgent or practical that's going on?
I mean, are you on the road to full custody?
Do you have full custody? I mean, is that a done deal?
Yeah, it will be.
I mean, yeah, I already have my lawyers working on a new parenting plan and I have very little doubt that she'll sign it and if she doesn't sign it, then I'll take her to court and I'll get it anyway.
You can't kick a daughter out of your house at these ages three times and expect to just keep being allowed to have her back.
That's just not the way the courts work.
How much do you think you spent on lawyers since the divorce?
Since the divorce, maybe.
Well, including the divorce, I suppose.
Yeah, $40,000, $50,000 maybe.
That's a lot of money. It is, in fact.
It is, in fact, a lot of money, yeah, for sure.
Okay, so you've got your daughter, it seems.
She's 13, right? Yes.
And how much have you heard about what her life was like with your ex?
I've heard everything. Like, so what do you mean?
Like, what her life is like with her mother?
I've heard everything. Every story.
Well, what about the stepdad?
So, as far as how he treats her?
Yeah, yeah. He treats her horribly.
Like, disgusting.
He's very verbally abusive.
He's very mean, condescending.
He doesn't listen.
He's also on a bunch of medications.
Is that getting too loud?
No, no, don't worry about it. Just keep going.
Yeah. You know, he's on a lot of medications.
There's constant fighting in the house.
I don't think there's...
From the sounds of it, it doesn't sound like there's many peaceful moments.
So my daughter said to me once, she goes, you know, I feel bad for my mom.
And I was like, well, why?
She goes, because every time I look at her, she just looks sad.
Like whenever I see her in the house, she just looks sad.
So, I know the house is very unstable.
Right, okay, okay.
Do you know what brought them together, this new husband of hers?
Thank you.
I really don't know.
I don't have that answer.
We didn't talk about that with each other.
I have no idea.
Okay, well, I mean, if you just look at it at a sort of very primitive level, the...
Like, the new husband has managed to get the kid of the previous guy out of the house, right?
Like, from a sort of resource standpoint, that's what you'd want to do, right?
Because you don't want to invest resources into another man's kid, right?
Sure. I mean, we're talking at the level of lions and primates and stuff like that, right?
Absolutely. Yep.
We are. Right.
And I agree. I'm very aware of that, that, like, you know...
Get rid of my kid and, you know, he could have her concentrate on his.
Yeah, yeah. Or theirs together.
Yeah, yeah. So he's achieved that and you said that this has all hurt your daughter.
Now, do you mean it hurts her that she feels rejected by her mother or it hurts her that she was in this situation to begin with?
I think the rejection of her mother is the main thing.
She feels very betrayed, very hurt and very alone.
Like, she has me But, you know, she doesn't really have anybody else.
I mean, she has a couple friends, but, you know, like my family, they don't live nearby, but they'll call once in a while.
But, you know, everyone on her side, like, you know, the great-grandfather that we had so much respect for, you know, he's not in her life.
You know, he took her away from me and tried to keep me away from her, but yet, you know, where is he now?
Like, he's not in her life at all.
Her great-grandparents, they're not really in her life.
I appreciate what you're telling me, but we've got to stop focusing on the negatives and see what we can drag out that's positive.
I'm going to go with the assumption that you get full custody and that her contact with her mom is not going to be a lot.
Is that fair to say?
Yes, that is extremely fair to say yes.
Okay, so... What are the three biggest mistakes in your life that you would really want your daughter not to reproduce?
Wow.
The three biggest mistakes.
I'd have to figure out what mistakes.
I'm.
Choosing the wrong person to have a child with.
Definitely. Well, to be fair, you didn't exactly choose to have a child, right?
Other than through blindness. Well...
Subconsciously, I chose to have this child.
No, no, you can't choose subconsciously.
You can only choose to avoid self-knowledge, and then the unconscious becomes destiny.
But you did not... Now, listen, the fact that she's in your life, right?
I mean, these are things that you don't have to tell her, obviously, now.
Oh, by the way, I never even chose you, right?
I mean, I'm not suggesting anything like that.
I'm just, in terms of, like, scolding self-knowledge stuff, because this is where...
If you can prevent her from making the same mistakes that you've made, then you've succeeded as a parent.
Okay. But the first thing you've got to do is map what you don't want her to end up with so that you can begin to figure out how to get her to avoid that stuff.
Right? So you want to learn how to judge people by the content of their character rather than the size of their tits is job one, right?
Yes. And because...
I assume you're a bit of a himbo, right?
A good-looking guy and all of that.
You kept your hair, right?
So you've had a chance to be the player and you've had a sort of material, pretty shallow existence.
And this is hell, right?
I mean, this is kind of hell, right?
It starts off like the devil, right?
It starts off with all this promise, all this beauty.
I got this hot 21-year-old.
She's smoking. And this is where it ends up, right?
Yeah. Which is your child's eyelids twitching and guys maybe pulling guns on you in the fucking car, right?
Right. So you're in a story arc as old as humanity, which is, hey, what if I just go for the shallow stuff?
Hey, what if I don't look for virtue?
Hey, what if I, you know, she looks really great on my arm and she's really great in bed and she's really pretty, right?
Like what if I just don't judge any morals?
What if I act like an animal?
You know, like the size of the peacock's feathers.
And listen, I'm not speaking from any situation of great wisdom or knowledge here, right?
Because we're all tempted to do this, and we've all done it at one time or another, right?
So I'm not judging.
I'm not, like, trying to put you down or lecturing you from some lofty standard.
Like, I'm down here in the simian muck with you, my friend, just so you know that.
I mean, I don't want you to feel like I'm lecturing.
But, you know, this is the deal, right?
And this is what's pumped into us, right?
I mean, do you know what it takes?
Do you know what it takes? For human beings to stop being shallow, it takes an eternity of hellfire.
If you do this shit, you're going to hell forever, and then maybe 10% of people will stop doing this shit, but that may be enough to...
Keep a civilization going.
I don't know, right? So we are so mired in looks, in appearance, in shallowness, in mammal stuff, right?
Mating displays and all of that, vanity and insecurity.
We're so mired in that stuff that the devil gives us exactly what we want and then we pay for it, right?
And you had, as modeled to you, a...
A transactional relationship.
A transactional relationship, I mean, obviously, you go to the store, you want a packet of chips, you go and you give two bucks, you get your packet of chips, and that's your transactional relationship, right?
Now, transactional relationships, in romantic terms, are, okay, what are you bringing to the table?
Well, you're bringing to the table some looks and some money.
And what's she bringing to the table?
Youth and physical beauty, right?
That's a transactional relationship, and that's really what...
Is being judged.
Now, transactional relationships are totally fine.
If what you want is a package of chips and you would rather have the chips than the two bucks, you go into the store and you give your money, right?
That's fine. And then you try transactional relationships with your, not to put it too bluntly, your man-whore face, right?
Sort of three to five years that you were talking about with a couple of hundred women that you slept with.
Well, you just try to transact a relationship.
I don't care about your childhood.
I don't care about the quality of your personality.
I don't care about your virtues.
I just care that we can bang together like two rocks, so to speak, right?
And so you do all this transactional stuff, right?
And transactional stuff, again, totally fine for the economics, totally fine for whatever, right?
It's not good for friendship and it's really terrible for love.
So a transactional relationship is the opposite of love.
Because you're using each other.
Now, again, using each other sounds bad.
It's not bad. If the guy wants your two bucks and you want the packet of chips, you're using each other to get what you want.
You don't care about each other's childhoods.
You don't care about your hopes and dreams.
You don't care about any... But when it comes to love, when it comes to families, when it comes to raising children, you cannot found it on a transactional relationship.
It has to be founded on a relationship of morality, of virtue, of honor.
Of courage, of integrity, of self-knowledge.
That is the only thing that can found a relationship, right?
You don't want your daughter to choose the wrong guy because her mother chose the wrong guy.
Because her mother chose a guy who was willing to choose her based upon a transaction.
I have money and you have sex appeal.
So it's like human slavery, haggling for people in a marketplace, right?
And that's a strong way to put it, but I kind of want to shock you out of the complacency here, right?
And the transactional relationships, if you try to raise...
If you try to have romantic relationships or friendships based upon transactional relationships, they will crater, self-destruct, turn to hell, turn to ruin.
In the same way that if you try to...
Fall in love with the guy who mows your lawn or the woman who sells you the packet of chips or whatever.
It's just not appropriate to the relationship.
And you grew up with a mother who did what?
She had transactional relationships.
I don't even like this guy.
I don't even like having sex with him.
But I'll have sex with him in order to get money.
You understand? That's like bald-ass, fucking baboon in a zoo.
Transactional relationship right there.
Right. And so, that's what you're raised with.
And that's why I was asking about probing these sort of relationships that you had.
It's all transactional.
Yes. I agree.
So, you've got to break that cycle.
So, how do I break it?
I haven't brought her around a relationship.
She hasn't seen that on my end at all.
So... Okay, what value did you bring to your mother?
What value do I bring to my mother?
Did you or do you bring to your mother?
When you were a kid, what value did you bring to your mother?
Did she take delight in your personality?
Did she take delight in your sense of humor or your abilities or your athletic abilities or your artistic abilities or your conversation?
What value? I don't know.
See, here's the thing. What about your relationship with your mother was not transactional?
I don't know if we had anything that wasn't transactional.
Right. So you've got to learn a whole new language.
Okay. What relationships have you seen that are not Transactional.
Because transactional is...
I'll give up something, but I want to get something that I want more.
I'll give up the two bucks because I want the packet of chips more.
Okay. And, you know, it's interesting you're going down this road because I was thinking something similar, but I wasn't necessarily coining it as the word necessarily transactional, but I could see how what I was thinking is relating to you and...
What you're saying. I've tried to look into things and I try to be very careful with what I present to my daughter.
I try to be careful on not influencing her how to necessarily think and what to actually believe.
I try to encourage long conversations When it gets to transactional, I don't know if I do anything transactional with my daughter.
But maybe I do, and I'm not aware.
No, no. So hang on, hang on.
I don't want to get to your daughter just yet, because we've still got to figure out.
Have you seen in your life...
I mean, maybe if you sort of listen to me chatting away with my daughter or whatever, right?
Have you seen in your life a relationship...
That is not transactional.
That's not people saying, well, I'll give up something, but I want something back that I want more.
There's always a little bit of manipulation in transactional relationships as a whole.
And again, I'm not saying that's the end of the world.
We've got to get our food somehow and we trade for it and all of that.
But if you're heckling to buy a car or a house or Or you're gambling.
I mean, there's a little bit of poker face.
There's a little bit of, you know, keeping your cards close to your chest and all of that sort of stuff.
So again, I'm not saying that's a particularly bad thing.
But have you seen...
Because, you know, in your business relationships, they're all transactional.
That's totally fine. Again, it's totally fine.
You know, the person who fixes my cell phone or whatever, I mean, I don't care about their childhood that much, right?
There's nothing wrong with it, right?
So what relationships have you seen that aren't transactional?
Would you even know what to look for?
I don't know if I have ever seen one that's non-transactional.
The closest thing I'm coming to is maybe some more spiritual people that I sort of listen to once in a while.
There seems to be a relationship with that person and its listeners or followers that Isn't necessarily transactional.
But as far as in my personal life, I don't think so.
I don't know if I've ever seen that.
And I don't know if I would know what to look for.
Right. So do you remember how you described your early relationship with your ex, with Sally?
Yes. Yes. She was hot.
It was easy.
She was easygoing. She accepted me.
See, that's all I, me, me, I. It's good for me, good for me.
I feel good. I feel good. It was fun.
You used that word repeatedly.
It was driving me up the fucking wall.
No offense, right? It was fun.
We did so much fun.
Everything was fun, right?
So that's all.
It's good for you, right?
Yes.
And you never told me the characteristics that she had independent of you that you took pleasure in.
In fact, in none of the relationships, did you tell me about the characteristics that you had that you found in the women that you admired independent of you?
Independent of, like, she did something for me, she was hot, she turned me on, we had sex, she was easygoing, she didn't nag, right?
Yeah, I mean, there were things, but in that moment, I didn't think to go there, so that must say something.
I'm not saying there was nothing. I'm not saying there was nothing.
But the way that you frame relationships is, what is the benefit to me?
So how do I frame it the other way?
What do I admire? What is inspiring to me?
What's going to bring out something better in me?
What can I look up to? What is going to ennoble me?
What is going to raise my standards?
What is going to pull me out of myself?
Instead of looking at a relationship, like you look like a toddler looking for a nipple, right?
Which is, okay, what's going to benefit me?
It's the kind of thing where you look at a relationship and you say, holy shit, if I get together with this person, we could start a giant charity.
We could make the world a better place.
We could offer this service. We could help disadvantaged children.
We could contribute to our local school.
Whatever. Something where the person is inspiring you to do better in the world rather than nice tits, good blowjob.
Which is a very, you know, I understand it.
It's why we're here and there's nothing wrong with good tits and a blowjob.
I'm just saying that as far as where to operate to found a relationship, it's very primitive.
Whereas this person and I could be a team that would do amazing things in the world, that would really inspire the people around us.
You see what I mean? Then it's not just all about the I, me, me, I. Yes.
I see exactly what you mean.
Yes. That's not transactional.
So rather than what's in it for me, it is what inspires me.
What do I admire? What makes me forget my own needs out of pleasure in the contemplation?
Have you ever looked at a piece of art or listened to a piece of music and you completely fucking forget yourself?
Yes, all the time.
That's what I'm talking about.
Taking pleasure in the other person's being and virtues and courage and integrity and good humor and buoyancy and whatever.
I'm just coming up with a bunch of words here.
It could be anything that's positive.
Where you just admire that person and you forget yourself.
I find myself doing that with my daughter oftenly.
Good, good, good.
I do. Because if you had looked at yourself when you're 34 and at Sally when she's 21, you would not have looked at her and said, my God, what an amazing team we will make to bring virtue to the world.
Right. It's kind of funny to even think about it, right?
Yes. It's like, wow, she's young and hot and easygoing.
Right. Yeah.
Which is all about what is going to please you in the moment, right?
Yes. And the shorter the appetite, the worse the outcome.
Like, the more immediate the appetite, the worse the outcome.
The more it satisfies you just in the moment, the worse the outcome.
That's a basic life principle, right?
It's like exercise, right?
How many people want to get up and do a bunch of exercise?
Well, not many, right? Right.
And so if all you do is say, well, I don't want to exercise right now, that's a very short time horizon, right?
I just want to please myself right now.
Sure. Okay, well, what happens if people don't exercise?
Well, the long-term outcome is disastrous.
Their bones soften, their joints weaken, their obesity grows, they can't do anything.
It's a horrible life, right?
Encased in this giant flesh prison of wobbliness, right?
There are times when your job sucks.
There are times when my job sucks.
But we have a longer-term time horizon.
We don't just sit there and say, well, my job sucks.
I'm just not going to do it. It's like, okay, I'll power through or whatever, right?
Right. So if you look at the things where you succeed, you have a longer-term time horizon.
Whereas if you look at things in your life that aren't working, it's that really short time horizon, which is transactional-based.
Which, again, is fine if you're just going to buy a slice of pizza, right?
Right. But it's not fine if you want to build a family.
And we've all, like, the R selected is the short time frame, the K selected is the long time frame, and we just, you know, we all, you know, turned on by this, or want to grab that, or I don't want a salad, I want a cheesecake, or whatever, right?
And we kind of got to grit our teeth and pull ourselves back up to the divine, in a sense, or to the universal, or to the philosophical, and away from that sort of grunting, sweating, semen-splashing mammal, monkey boy inside of all of us that just wants to drain his nuts and move on, right?
Right. And your daughter has been exposed to a whole bunch of people with very short time horizons, with very transactional analysis, right?
Yes. You wanted your wife.
You did not admire her.
She was convenient to you.
She fed your vanity. She was good in bed.
She looked good on your arm.
She was easygoing. So you wanted her, but you didn't admire her.
You wanted her body.
And you wanted, in a sense, an absence of what you'd had before, which was nagging or complaining or whatever it was, right?
Oh, yeah. Absolutely right.
And so, yeah, of course she's not going to want to take care of your house because you're not taking care of her heart.
Of course she's going to have a very short, like, a short time horizon.
I don't feel like doing the groceries right now.
I don't feel like cleaning up the dark shit right now.
Because... You, as the leader in the family, have got a very short time horizon.
And so she's going to have... Like, you understand, you're two sides of the same coin, in a way.
She's not doing what's good for her in the long run, which would be to take care of the household and take care of the dogs and all that, right?
And you're not doing what's good for you in the long run, which is to choose someone you genuinely admire rather than someone who looks good and feels good in the moment.
You're both doing... What feels good in the moment that leads to a bad outcome.
In the same way her mother was a drug addict.
What is a drug addict? Somebody who does what feels good in the moment and leads to a bad outcome.
It's a very short time window.
Satisfy the addiction, right?
Yes. As your mother did with the alcohol and thus was emotionally absent from your childhood.
And you never actually knew your mother in a way because she chose the alcohol over you.
And you don't know what it's like to be on the receiving end Of love.
Of a non-transactional relationship.
I mean, your mother was very explicit about it.
I slept with the guy for money. That's a crushingly honest assessment, right?
Yes. And your ex-wife's husband, I mean, he's threatening you, he's screaming at you, just as she screamed at the dogs.
This is all like I'm satisfying my temper in the moment.
I don't care what the consequences are, right?
Oh, right. I mean...
You could have shot him. I could have, yes.
I mean, if you had a gun and he's trying to get into your car, you could...
I don't know what the law is. I have no idea.
But it seems to me somewhat likely that you could have shot him in self-defense.
It was 100%.
And I thought that.
And, you know, I usually do carry, but I didn't.
And, you know, it was scary.
Terrifying. Yeah, and he tried to apologize to my daughter that night.
My daughter was like, no, get away from it.
Yeah, so he feels regret.
And you said this earlier too, that you would act impulsively, you'd feel regret, and that if you had a bad tempo, you raised your voice or whatever, you'd feel regret.
So you take your time. So you've got a whole bunch of people here who just short-term time preferences, everything's transactional, everything's what's in it for me.
And if they don't, like they never grow up.
If they don't get what they want, they have tantrums.
There's a bunch of infants around, right?
But big, scary, possibly armed infants, right?
Which is a whole different thing, right?
It does seem that way, yes.
It does. So, you make an iron rule for yourself, and you say this in the mirror, in the morning, when you shave, whenever you have to.
I will not have people in my life that I don't genuinely admire.
I will not have people in my life who I do not genuinely admire and are inspired by.
And that's why I'm not dating anyone, because I've made myself that promise after the last relationship, like no more.
Right. Ever. Like the woman who's driving around your house 30 to 40 times?
Yeah. And the thing is, I won't even, you know, even though sex presents itself to me, I don't act on it anymore.
Right. That stage of my life is completely done.
Well, you're in monk mode because you realize that if you stick your dick in one more crazy, you could get a full-on bunny boiler who could kill you.
Well, that's true.
That as well. But yeah, I mean, I made a lot of mistakes and I want to make sure not to make the same ones that I have made, especially now that my daughter's older.
And if I do potentially bring somebody into her life...
I just want it to be as good as I can possibly make it so she can see that.
Okay, so that's good.
The rule is I will not have people in my life that I do not genuinely admire, starting with who?
With myself. That's right.
In other words, to break out of the transactional analysis, what do you bring to the table for a woman?
Well, you're smooth, you're charismatic, you're charming, great verbal skills, you've got some money, you're a good-looking guy, right?
And that's all bullshit.
I know you take a lot of pride in it, and that's fine, but it's bullshit.
Because nobody is going to admire someone for a facial structure they did not earn.
Nobody's going to admire someone.
Oh, you kept your hair.
You didn't earn that. It wasn't like you did something right and I did something wrong.
I lost my hair and you kept your hair.
It's not a moral thing or anything like that, right?
And the fact that you've made some money, yeah, okay, that's good.
That's not a moral thing. Lots of people make money in ways that aren't particularly moral.
I'm not saying you're in that category.
I'm just saying it's not fundamentally a moral thing that you made some money.
So the real challenge, if you want to bring the people in your life That you will genuinely look up to and admire.
Then the question is, how can you be that person for others?
How can you be inspiring to others?
Look, you know my history.
Yes. Do you admire the fact that I've turned into a great dad?
Yes. Okay, do you admire the fact that I've got a great marriage?
Yes. I mean, do you admire some aspects of my moral courage when facing a very dangerous and violent world that sometimes really wants to blow me up?
I do, and I've thought about that many times, yes.
Bomb threats, death threats, all this kind of stuff.
You keep going, right? So, that is a non-transactional analysis.
I'm not doing this show like...
And that's why I don't take money for it, right?
So you said, and you were very kind, and I appreciate the offer.
Can I pay you for your time? I'm like, no, because that turns it into a transactional analysis.
And that's not what we're going to get, right?
All right. Okay. And listen, you're totally honorable to offer me that, and I really appreciate that.
It was very, very kind, and I think it's a wonderful thing that you did, and you don't know any of this stuff, right, in particular, in the way that I'm explaining it.
So, no, I can't make it a transactional analysis.
What am I going to do? Have an egg timer?
Ding! Oh, that's 55 minutes, man.
We're going two and a half hours here.
We're not done, right? So, a non-transactional analysis to be inspiring to other people.
For no immediate personal benefit.
Whoa. It's a little mind-blowing because, you know, you've got to get something out of it.
Okay, well, what I'm getting out of this is...
Help for your daughter, right?
Your daughter's the innocent party in all of this.
You had responsibility.
Your ex had responsibility.
Your mother had responsibility.
Her violent husband has responsibility.
Your daughter is the one person who has no responsibility in this matter.
She did not choose her parents.
She did not choose to get drugged when she was four.
She did not choose an eye twitch.
She did not choose any of this stuff.
So she is the innocent party in all of this.
And what does it benefit me to help her?
Well, I don't know her. I'll never meet her.
with all likelihood.
Maybe she'll come in 10 years if I'm ever allowed out of my cage into the world again, right?
But it is simply something that helps the world and that I can do something with some of the pain that I went through and make the world a better place thereby.
It's a bit of a fuck you to the people who hurt me and a bit of a go world and get to a better place to what's going out there.
But I don't think, and I think this is why people want to call me, this is not a transactional interaction, right?
I'm not trying to figure out what I can get out of this.
And you are, and that's good.
That's good, because what you want to get out of this is what's best for your daughter, which I think is fantastic, right?
But to start to think about How you can be inspiring to other people, inspiring to yourself, because if you can start to think about that, and I don't know exactly what is going to be inspiring for you.
I don't know what is going to make you inspiring to others.
Maybe it's taking some of your wealth and putting it to some particularly good cause.
Maybe it's doing, you know, quote, selfless stuff out there in the world, or maybe it's donating to A charity or some hospital is doing good.
I don't know. It could be any number of things, right?
But whatever it's going to be, what you need to do is you need to start modeling non-transactional interactions to your daughter so that you break the cycle of, okay, well, what's in it for me, right?
So, could you give me one or two examples of how to model that for my daughter?
I mean, yeah, I was talking about this a little bit in the show last night.
So, one of the ways that you can do it, of course, is for everyone, every time you meet someone, go above and beyond to make their life a little better.
You know, leave a great tip and then don't expect to be thanked.
If somebody's having a tough time, help them, right?
I was, you know, I was in a store today, and I was buying some equipment, and the guy was selling me a, you know, these extended warranties.
And normally I don't take them, but for reasons that aren't important right now, I decided to take them.
So I bought two things, and he was...
Trying to give me both of the extended warranties, but I'd noticed that the document he brought up, the code, was for, you know, one item, right?
And so he was trying to click his way through.
And he's one of these people.
They drive me kind of crazy, by the way.
The people who like, you know, they're doing something on the computer.
They look at the keyboard.
They look over at the mouse.
They look at the screen.
They move the mouse.
They look at the screen again.
They check the keyboard.
They click.
And it's just so slow because I'm like I'm all over the place like a master pianist on a computer because I'm just blurring.
I've been using them for so long.
And it was really slow.
And it was really painful.
And he couldn't figure it out.
And I said, oh, well, I think if you scroll down on the document, the second page is like for two items.
And I have two items.
So and then he's like, oh, I think you're right.
Right.
So then what he does is he tries to edit it, but he can't edit it.
And he keeps clicking on grayed-out checkboxes, and it's like, they're grayed-out!
You can't click on them! It's what computers mean.
That's what they're saying when it's grayed-out.
He kept kind of clicking to, like, a box that was grayed-out and trying typing into it.
And I'm like, you know, this is going on for, like, 15 minutes, and I got someplace to be.
And this is a situation that, you know, would try the patience of Job, right?
Yeah. And so then he calls someone else over to help, and that person, you know, can't figure it out.
And they call someone else, and it's just like, oh, my God.
I said, look, can you just cancel?
Just cancel the extended warranty.
And then, of course, they couldn't figure out how to cancel it.
And anyway, it was just...
And, you know, it's normally a situation where I go a little crazy, right?
But, of course, I'm sitting there thinking, okay, look.
And I'm just like, you know, this must be incredibly frustrating to...
I'm in no rush. Take your time.
It's not a big deal. I'm very happy with the service I've got here.
I don't want to barge in and tell someone how to do their job, because as an outsider, I think that might just be kind of humiliating.
But I did design computer software, and I do know how these things work in general.
So I'm like, you know what, just delete the whole thing and let's just start again and we'll choose the column where the two extended them.
But anyway, so I won't get into the whole details of it, but we got through the transaction and we parted on the best of terms, right?
Now, of course, I could have been like, dude, I mean, I just cancel it all.
I'm going somewhere else.
I could have been, you know, and again, this is a store, you know, everybody's had a tough time.
Well, most of the people have had a tough time in retail during the pandemic and all of that.
And I would have been, quote, within my rights to get upset and frustrated and all of that.
And I was feeling upset and frustrated because just that kind of slowness really drives me mad, right?
My brain just works so fast that I feel like most people that are around me, it's like in slow motion.
I feel like everyone's underwater a lot of times.
But no, I'm like, I'm going to make this guy's interaction with me positive, right?
And so while we were waiting, you know, I asked him about his life a little bit.
How you doing? And how's the pandemic been for you?
And all just little things.
And so at the end of it, he's like, you know, thank you for your patience.
I know that was frustrating. And I'm like, hey, you know what?
In the big picture of life, it's not important.
And you learn something and all that, right?
And so I'm not saying this makes me any kind of moral hero or anything like that, but just if you want to start small, you just say, okay, everybody who interacts with me goes away with a smile on their face.
That's not transactional, right?
I mean, I had to grit my teeth quite a bit today and just deal with this and be positive about it and have the guy enjoy having me as a customer, even though I wasn't enjoying having him as a salesperson, right?
Just enjoy... And, you know, he was an older guy and he clearly wasn't very computer literate and, you know, anyway.
So, as far as non-transactional analysis or non-transactional relationships go above and beyond what's necessary to get through the day.
And give somebody a compliment, you know?
Somebody's got a nice hat on.
Say, ah, that's a fantastic hat.
Or, you know, hey, where did you get this great haircut in the middle of a pandemic?
It looks fantastic. Whatever you like about someone, whatever you think is positive about someone, I've told people they have great teeth.
What a wonderful smile, you know?
I mean, little things where it doesn't benefit you.
It's not because you want anything.
It's just a positive thing in the world that you can start small and then you can look back on your day and you can say, everyone who interacted with me had a better time because of it.
Or certainly a better time than if they had interacted with someone else.
And then what you're doing is you're modeling to your daughter.
Now, how big this goes with regards to your ex, and I don't know, because that's a whole other situation.
But if you start small, and you can do this in business, you can do this with your daughter, whatever you do that goes above and beyond, that is non-transactional, you know how we were talking about karma earlier?
It comes back to you in ways you can't even imagine.
It really does.
And you don't do it for that because you can never predict it and you may never see it.
And it may be something else, right?
Maybe the guy I was dealing with today was having a really terrible day.
Maybe he had a grandbaby in the house and he hadn't had any sleep.
And if I had humiliated him, maybe it would have trickled down and he would have snapped at his daughter and his daughter would have snapped at the baby.
It's just a positive thing in the world that changes people's perceptions.
And to restrain yourself from legitimately humiliating someone if they're doing a bad job and just trying to be encouraging and positive, all of these kinds of things, you start with the relatively small things and so on.
And you are showing your daughter that people are better off for interacting with you, and you're not doing it to get anything.
And that gives her a sense of, okay, that's kind of admirable, because she's not probably seen a lot of that.
That's a positive thing.
My dad is leaving smiles in his wake.
You know, like a ship goes, you get the wake.
My dad leaves smiles or positive things in his wake.
And that is going to give her something to admire and is going to give her an idea that that's what she should start looking for is people who go above and beyond and leave positivity in their wake that she can admire you.
She'll then be able to admire a guy who does that kind of stuff.
Because it sounds like, at least this is why I was asking you all these questions earlier, it sounds like everything that you have done has been calculated for your immediate benefit at the expense often of other people.
And again, not some big criticism or condemnation, I'm just sort of pointing out the transactional nature of these things, which is perfectly natural, because you grew up with naked transactional crap, you know, just mutual, dry calculations of mutual utility, right?
Well, you know, she's young and fertile and I like to have sex, so I'll pay her bills with regards to your mom and all of that.
And, you know, with your ex-wife's husband, he's like, well, I don't like this kid in the house, so I'm going to figure out a way to get the kid out because that's to my benefit and to my kid's benefit.
It doesn't really think about the devastation that might unleash on your daughter.
It's just I, me, me, I, right?
In the same way that your promiscuity had harmful effects on some women, Sure.
But for you, it was like, but I want to have sex.
Like, what other calculation could there be, right?
Absolutely. You're right.
So thinking about things larger in the world, which you have not had modeled to you, and I don't blame you one tiny bit for not knowing it any more than, you know, if I'd never even heard of Japanese, I could never be expected to speak it, right?
But instead of figuring out what you want and how to get it and moving people around like a chess piece to get what you want, which they'll hate you for, I mean, if you want to sort of figure out the rage that your ex-wife has towards you, I don't know what it is specifically, of course, but in general, it's because you were using her because you did not admire the quality of her character because she does not have a good quality of character given, you know, how her life is ending up and the harm that she...
She's drugging a three-and-a-half-year-old, right?
I mean, or allowing it to happen or whatever, right?
And she's kicking the kid out and she's got a violent husband, right?
So she did not have qualities of character that made you admire her.
Like, wow, look at all the great good she's doing in the world.
Look at the wonderful – she teaches me about responsibility in ways that I never even thought, and I can inspire her in my way.
And that's a love relationship.
That's a love relationship.
But this – she's young.
She's hot.
She doesn't cause me any trouble.
I mean, that's like a pet.
That's not like a goddess you can be inspired by.
And so because you chose her for things she did not earn – but had to pretend that you liked her, You lied to her.
And you fundamentally lied to her.
And you were lying to yourself probably as well.
And again, I know this sounds like a moral criticism.
I don't mean it in that way at all.
It's that you had to pretend that you liked her because you wanted her sexually and you wanted her from reasons of status and vanity and whatever it was, right?
But you had to pretend that you liked her in order to be with her.
And Because you lied to her and pretended that you liked her, she ended up hating you.
Because she couldn't resist using the drug of her sexual market value to gain your attention and your resources, and you were probably high status for her as well because you're an older guy and you've got money and she can live in a much nicer place than she possibly could as a student or whatever, right?
So you had to pretend...
If you'd have gone up to the women, the couple of hundred women that you slept with in your promiscuous phase, and you'd have said, I'm not interested in you, I don't like you, but let's have sex.
No, seriously, because that would be the most honest thing that you could say, right?
I want sex and I'm willing to use you for that, but I don't like you or have any interest in you whatsoever.
I don't want to get to know you, I just want to use your flesh, right?
Right. Like that would have been the most honest thing.
That's why I asked you about the pickup artistry and all of that, right?
Which is, it is lying. It is lying.
Because you're being cool and charming and nagging and all the shit that goes on.
But you're not saying the true honest statement, which is, I want to use you for sex.
I have no interest in you as a person.
I don't care what's in the brain.
I only want what's between the legs.
And so because you lied to and used women, and again, I'm not saying it was consciously, You thought it was like a cool thing and it was, you know, you get a lot of praise for this stuff.
Your friends are all like, oh my God, you lived the best life and blah, blah, blah, right?
But you lied to and you used women and then you got a woman who lied to you and used you, right?
That's inevitable.
That's the grave we dig, right?
for ourselves when we bury a lot of bodies in that way right or in your case bury yourself in a lot of bodies and listen i i know i can't see you know what so i i hope that this sort of makes some sense and i also hope that you know that i'm not oh you're a bad guy you were i'm just pointing out that these are the patterns that you kind of want to i think really break in in your daughter because you don't want your daughter uh you know i assume because she's got a pretty mom that she's an attractive uh a young woman
and and so you don't want her using her physical attractiveness or i'm sure she's inherited some charisma some some language abilities. You don't want her to use her attractiveness in a transactional analysis because that will lead down exactly the same disastrous path that you and your wife traveled.
Does this make sense? I agree.
It makes perfect sense.
That's why I called.
I wanted to talk to you because I wanted to hear some of these things and hear your insight.
I don't take it as criticism at all.
I'm not trying to do that at all.
Believe me, I appreciate everything you're saying.
You've definitely given me some interesting things to think about.
Maybe some things That I really did know deep down and were maybe just trying to avoid or cover up, but...
You know, the transactional relationship thing, that's something that...
I think you just really hit a chord with that.
I didn't really...
View it as much.
And, you know, as you're talking, I can't help but daydream and start thinking like, well, am I teaching my daughter that?
Have I been transactional with my daughter?
In what ways am I trying to show her selflessness and abundance in a way that's not all about yourself?
This is why your wife got depressed, I would imagine, after she had a baby.
And this is why there's so much postpartum depression, and this is why a lot of new parents find it so hard.
Babies, there's no transactional analysis that works in any way, shape, or form with babies.
Not a single tiny shred, which is why it sounds to me, it's why she kind of fell apart.
Because she's so used to manipulating the world to get what she wants, but you can't manipulate a baby.
A baby doesn't care how pretty you are or how hot you are or how big the house is or how your hair is.
A baby doesn't care about any of that stuff.
A baby cares that you're present and emotionally available and you have to put all your needs aside and be there just for the baby.
And because she was used to a transactional analysis, she and her baby were speaking completely different languages.
She could not connect, like your daughter, right?
Because parents try to impose this transactional analysis all the time on kids.
Now, you can't do it with babies, which is, again, why a lot of people, particularly the prettier people and the people who are used to getting what they want for whatever reason.
Like, I'm a very verbally adroit guy.
I could manipulate the hell out of people if I wanted, but I couldn't manipulate a baby.
Baby doesn't care how many syllables I've got stuffed in my gizzard.
Baby cares. Am I smiling?
Do I have eye contact? Am I there for the baby?
Do I want to play? Do I want to interact?
Do I want to... Like all this stuff, right?
Right. But there's no transactional analysis with babies.
No, there isn't. And so the people who were used to the transactional analysis stuff...
Remember, I tell you, this is exactly back to...
Your sister said what about your mom?
And hugging. Yeah, I don't ever remember.
Right. Mom giving us a hug.
Right. Now, that's a transactional analysis thing.
Which means your mom said, I don't feel like giving a hug, so I'm just not going to give a hug.
And that's totally fine for a lot of things.
I don't feel like buying a Maserati.
You know what I'm not going to do? Buy a Maserati.
So you understand, with your mom, it was like, I don't feel like giving these kids a hug.
So clearly, I'm not going to give these kids a hug.
without thinking what's best for the kids independent of what I want in the moment.
And that's why I asked, what pleasure did your mom take just in you?
Thank you.
No. If somebody can't answer that, that's a transactional relationship.
Like, if I go to a hot dog vendor and pay five bucks for a hot dog and the hot dog vendor says, well, what value do you have in me other than a hot dog?
I'd be like, the only value I have in you is a hot dog because you're a hot dog vendor and I want a hot dog.
That's it, right? Right.
Right. And that's why I asked, what did you like about the women or what did you promise of the women?
I was trying to figure out the transactional side of your promiscuity, right?
And she's 21.
And you said she's immature.
What was the What value did you...
What pleasure did you take in your then-girlfriend's existence other than what she could do for you?
Right. I don't know if there was much.
Well, there wasn't, right?
And the previous girlfriend, right?
She was very manipulative, right?
Yes. And you destabilized her, my friend.
She was not better off after she knew you than before.
I'm not saying you're totally responsible.
She's an adult and all that.
But the question is, is this person better off after they've known me than before?
That's one of your big measures for a non-transactional analysis, right?
Because in the transactional analysis, you say, well, am I better off?
And the other person is like, I don't know.
I guess they could try to figure that out for themselves.
But I've got to figure out if I'm better off, right?
Yeah. But she was not better off.
She was heartbroken. She was obsessive.
She was stalking. And look, I'm not saying you broke her.
I'm just saying that she was not better off after she knew you.
Oh, no. Definitely not.
I mean, something about you and her broke her, right?
Yes. And you did kind of mess around with a woman in her 30s who wanted children.
And you burned up, what, a year and a half of her fertility window?
Yeah, about that.
Well, and then whatever heartbreak it took her afterwards, right?
Which was considerable. So, you know, maybe two or three years of her...
Because she knew you, she lost two or three years and may have lost her capacity to have children.
Now, again, I'm not saying it's 100% you, but I find in general, it's better in life if we just say, it is 100% me, it's 100% you.
Sure. Right? So...
Because you found her physically attractive and because she was convenient to you at the time, she may not have ever become a mom.
Potentially, yes. And that's very destabilizing for her, right?
Yes. Now, whatever percentage you choose to take of ownership for that, I would suggest just go take it straight to the max.
Because the people who take the most responsibility for everything are the most inspiring.
That's just a basic fact of life.
I watched this interview with James Cameron, the director, and he made no money from Titanic, which is one of the biggest grossing films of all time, because he said, I gave up my percentage of the movie.
Why? Because I went over budget, and I'm the kind of guy, I take responsibility for everything.
100% me. I went over budget.
I'm giving up my percentage of the movie.
I want to spend more money on the movie.
And he ended up, he makes no money from that movie.
One of the biggest movies of all time.
Now you could say, well, you know, but the costs went up.
He couldn't be predicted and things were slow and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
But if he just says, look, I'm just going to take 100% responsibility for going over budget.
I mean, it's an amazing thing.
100% responsibility.
That the quality of how people interact with you and if they're better afterwards...
But you did that woman some harm because you had time and she didn't.
Because as a man, you can have kids into your 50s, 60s, 70s, I guess, right?
So you had time and she didn't.
And yet... When you listen back to this, what you would hear is a guy being a victim.
And when you listen back to this as a whole, you will hear a guy straining his every muscle to convince me that he's a victim.
And I would say that is not true.
Or at least it's no longer true if you have the knowledge, if you have the insight.
Yeah, you're right.
You were a victim as a child, 100%.
As an adult though, you did victimize others.
Were you always just the victimizer?
Yeah, you were a victim at times, but you victimized others.
I did.
I agree.
But you haven't said any of that to me.
You've been, oh, when she went crazy and then she did this and then she did that and she's yelling at the dogs and she wouldn't do the groceries and like all the hard-done-by stories, right?
She was nice and then I moved in and then she kind of went crazy.
She wanted a father figure.
And I asked you, did you talk about any of this?
Did you know anything about her childhood?
And she's like, no.
Then you're no longer a victim.
If you studiously avoided learning about her because you wanted to bang her and then she turns out to be crazy, you're not a victim.
Yeah, I don't know if I was trying to give you the impression that I was being a victim because I don't feel victimized.
You got to listen. I mean, this is not a debatey point and not because I'm certain that I'm right.
I'm just saying listen back to it.
And if you listen back to it really critically, okay, how much did I take ownership?
How much did I say, well, you know, Steph, I've been listening.
How long have you been listening to this show?
I've been listening to you for a while.
Okay. So, I mean...
Forever. Right.
So, you know, if you'd said, hey, you know, Steph, I've listened to your show.
I studiously avoided learning about this woman's childhood because she was so hot, I didn't want to break the illusion.
So, I took what I want and then I paid for it.
I reached into the fire, I got my hand burnt.
It was completely predictable.
You didn't say any of that to me.
Nothing. Nothing. No, I didn't.
Because you need to say, you know, hey, she was great and then she just mysteriously wasn't.
Yeah. No, you're right.
And it might have been lurking in the back of my mind and yet I still chose to avoid it and say it.
You're not a victim. I mean, you tell a very good story about being a victim.
You really do. Yeah.
Yeah. And as a child, absolutely.
100%. As an adult, no.
No. 100% responsibility.
And especially because you had access to this show for years and other people didn't.
So I think this show helps people in terms of knowledge and patterns and sexual market value and ultimate responsibility and virtue.
Love is in voluntary response to virtue.
I don't know if you've ever read Real-Time Relationships or anything like that.
You had access to some pretty advanced knowledge about all of this stuff and you're still like, you know, and just things happened to me.
You know, people went crazy on me.
I don't know. She turned into a stalker.
I'm sorry, I don't mean to laugh, but you'll see how funny it is in time, which is, no, absolutely not.
And that's a refusal to just look at it as being transactional.
The transactional thing is, you took what you want and you paid for it.
The transactional thing is, hey, you can buy the candy bar, you put down your two bucks on the counter, you take what you want and you pay for it.
Or you steal the candy bar and you get arrested.
You take what you want and you pay for it.
And you took all of these hot girls and you banged all of these hundreds of women and this and that.
Do you think there was never going to be a price for that?
Come on. Of course there is.
Oh, I'm paying for it.
You are paying for it, but you feel like a victim.
I don't think I feel like a victim.
You communicate as a victim does.
Maybe I present it that way, but...
To the guy who opposes victimhood like the plague?
Because you were taunting me the whole conversation, man, by playing the victim card.
You really were. And I'm like, okay, hey, if I can deal with the guy today clicking like one click a minute on a grayed-out box on a Windows computer, I can listen to you be a victim for two hours and I can roll with it.
Yeah, and I'm curious.
I'm going to listen back to it and see how I sound because I... No, not just how you sound, but where you say, I created this mess.
I chose a woman for the wrong reasons.
I avoided knowledge of her.
That was my choice, and I am responsible for that.
You grudgingly admitted when I pointed it out, but you never once came up with it yourself.
Fair enough. This woman...
My ex-wife, who grew up with a drug addict mother, is drugging her daughter.
Yeah, it was my...
No, but you understand the pattern there.
Oh, wow. Yeah.
I do. Okay.
She may be on drugs herself in terms of psychotropics.
I don't know, right? But here's the thing, right?
The woman who grew up with the drug addict mother is drugging her daughter.
And you say this to me like, oh my God, this terrible woman is drugging my daughter.
Appalling, right? I can't believe it, right?
And it's like, well, of course you can believe it.
Because you studiously avoided finding out about this woman's childhood.
You told me very clearly you did not find out until much later that the mother was a drug addict.
You're right. I didn't know.
You're right. I did avoid it.
Because she was hot and you wanted to just get what you wanted.
Yeah. You're absolutely right.
And that's what I mean about self-ownership.
And you've been taunting me with, oh my god, this terrible woman drugged my daughter.
It's like, hello? You dated a woman who had unprocessed childhood trauma whose mother was a drug addict.
And the only reason you dated her was because she was pretty.
And now you've got a pretty daughter and other men are going to want to give your daughter a free pass because she's pretty.
And other people are going to want to say to your daughter, you're not responsible for anything.
I'll take care of you.
You don't ever have to grow up and it's all going to be transactional because they want from your daughter when she's of age or maybe younger, God help you, right?
Because she's pretty. And she grew up with a mother and a grandmother who got away with everything because they were pretty.
And she's going to have that power growing over the next couple of years.
How is she going to resist it?
Especially when she only exists because her father succumbed to pretty.
And not virtue.
She only is alive because you chose looks over virtue.
And then other men are going to come along with the boys and men.
Same offer. And you've got to break that cycle.
You've got to start choosing people in your life for virtue.
And you've got to start being someone who can inspire and be admired.
And you have to say, your mother is in your life because I chose her.
Thank you.
Your mother broke your heart because I chose her.
I am responsible for your mother breaking your heart.
I am responsible for your mother drugging you.
I am responsible for you being kicked out of your home.
I am responsible for what you saw in the car with the guy you thought was going to get a gun and shoot your father.
I am 100% responsible for all of this, and I am so sorry.
And I can say I didn't know, but that's kind of a lie, because I've been listening to this crazy Canadian guy on the internet who gave me all of the tools I needed, and I just chose not to use them.
I mean, that's a conversation I could easily have with my daughter.
No, if it's an easy conversation, you've got it wrong.
It is not an easy conversation.
Don't be glib. Don't underestimate how tough it is to take this kind of ownership.
If it was this easy, you would have done it already.
Because if you're glib, because the glibness is like...
You're a bit maddening with the glibness.
I apologize. I sound like I'm coming down hard.
You're kind of annoying with the glibness.
Oh, it's easy. Oh, it was really nice.
Oh, it was great. I said this a bit earlier.
I can't remember what context. I was pushing back on the nice and easy and great stuff and all that.
Oh, yeah, yeah. When you were going to visit your girlfriend's dad and she said, do you want to come visit my parents?
And you're like, yeah, sure. Why not?
You were very glib about it, right?
Yeah. I know this sounds like three days ago at this point, right?
But you were very clear about it and I said, well, what do you mean?
Why not? I can tell you, you kind of skate over these things and I don't want you to think that this conversation with your daughter is just going to be easy because it's not.
You're going to go into it unprepared.
Oh, I got this. It's easy.
No, it's not easy.
It's not easy to look your daughter in the eye and say, a good proportion of the pain you're suffering is 100% my fault.
You think that's an easy conversation to have with your kid?
I'm responsible for a lot of the pain in your life.
Yeah, you can't tell me that's easy.
I'll have...
I know you'll have it, and I think that's great, and I admire you for it.
But please, please, just don't think you can just slide into this like you're, you know, picking up someone in Margaritaville.
No, and I understand that.
I... I don't know if I pictured it in my head like, hey, sit down.
I got something to tell you. It wouldn't be like that, obviously.
It's my job's feelings.
Why couldn't it be something?
I'm not saying it should be. I'm not curious why it could be something like that.
Well, because I would want to think about it beforehand and think about exactly what I have to say.
I don't want to just go into something like that and say, hey, you know what?
Let's have a little chat.
That's something I would approach with a little more sensitivity and thoughtfulness, for sure.
Yeah, but if it doesn't kind of half break your heart to have the conversation, you're probably not digging deep enough.
No, of course. Any revealing conversation that I have with my daughter, you know, things about that, it hurts.
Right, and I'm simply saying that because in this conversation, you haven't really Oh, I've experienced tons of pain.
I've cried. I've doubted myself.
What? You mean in this conversation?
No, in life.
Oh, okay. No, I'm just talking about in this conversation.
Yeah, and you know, even with my daughter, sometimes I'm like, well, I hope I'm not manipulating her the way I used to manipulate some women.
And I'm genuinely trying to watch my actions and where they're coming from and what my intentions are.
I'm Maybe I try to put off a smug little, hey, nonchalant attitude, because that's just what I'm used to, maybe the way I dress, but deep down, that's kind of not who I am, or it's not who I am anymore, for sure. It strikes me that you might have put more thought into your outfits than the choice of you, the mother of your children.
Yeah, and I'm paying for that mistake, for sure.
There was a time where vanity and projection was all that I knew and all that I cared about.
But like I said, I don't date anymore.
That's not who I am. I don't care about how I dress anymore.
I don't care about how You know, long or cute my hair looks.
It's more about being real and figuring out who I am and how to provide the best and most secure life for my daughter.
Like, nothing else matters.
Like, nothing.
She's everything.
All right. Listen, it's midnight here, so I'm going to wind this up.
But first of all, I really, really appreciate your patience in the chat.
I'm sure it's not comfortable sitting in the car that long.
I'm very glad your daughter was not around because we're cussing like a bunch of old stub-toed sailors.
And will you keep me posted about how things are going?
I absolutely will, and I appreciate your time and all your insight.
I appreciate it, man. Best of luck to you, and thank you for the chat again.
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