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Sept. 27, 2021 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

02:31:41

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	Stefan, tonight I surprised myself.
	To put things mildly, my relationship with my father was difficult.
	He was the kind of father for whom I could climb to the metaphoric peak of Everest in achievement, and his response would be, is that it?
	When he died in 2016, I was left a self-destructive wreck, but listening to the content of you and similar producers...
	Helped me slowly come to terms with what the reality is that his dissatisfaction was really with himself and projected outward onto me.
	I wasn't the flawed one.
	This realization helped me regain stability and proceed forward, but I've still been a bit off.
	While I have achieved a decent degree of success in the material sense, I still have a great difficulty to connect with others in means, Plutonic or Romantic.
	Though I have some internet friends, I've largely been isolated other than my connections with my mother, with whom I have what I could best describe as a cautiously close relationship.
	I've recently helped her move and I'm staying with her until I can finalize the visa process.
	I plan to move to East Europe in a few months.
	And we were planning on taking a trip to Colorado tomorrow, tomorrow being multiple weeks ago.
	She asked me to put some heavy things in the trailer.
	I told her I had every intention to do so.
	I had a few beers tonight and was taking a nap on the couch, planning to put them in the early morning.
	And she woke me up to tell me she did it already and asked me why I could never be relied on.
	In my semi-intoxicated state, I asked, do you just want me to be dead?
	To which she responded, no, but I wish I could rely on you.
	I stood on that. I wish I could what?
	I wish I could rely on you.
	Oh, okay. I awkwardly explained to her what set me off about her words and she offered an apology.
	But what's standing out to me is that clearly I have demons that I only buried rather than properly exercised.
	I was hoping you might be able to help me figure out what the actual root cause of such anger is and how it can be constructively overcome.
	Thank you. Right, right.
	How did the trip to Colorado go?
	Oh, it is gorgeous up there.
	It's up in the mountains in an area that's referred to as the Switzerland of America, and the name sticks for a good cause.
	You know, always in the high 60s, low 70s, and it's genuinely God's country, and I'm very much a person that's kind of in tune with nature in a sense, and so very much like just being able to go out and just from your doorstep hike a mountain.
	And with your mom, how did it go with your mom out there?
	She kept it herself.
	Her brother came up and they just did a lot of projects around the house.
	And I actually had a friend from California and his, I guess, technically wife now, they're kind of in one of those gray area states, come out and we hung out around town for a little bit there.
	And just...
	It was definitely relaxing, kind of being away from the stress of things, and it's a genuinely more compatible place with my kind of mindset than where I am.
	I'm sorry, just to clarify, I mean, you smashed your lamp on the ground and then you went on vacation?
	Yeah. No, it's actually two days later.
	Wow. And you're living together the whole time, right?
	Yeah, I mean, we're in the same house.
	She's more occupied in the upstairs.
	I was more in the downstairs, but yes, in the same building.
	Right. Okay.
	Okay, okay, okay. I mean, I've obviously thought about what you've said in your email.
	I'm sorry it took so long, but is there a place you wanted to start or anything else you wanted to add?
	Because I certainly have some thoughts, but I want to make sure that they're not, if anything's happened since or anything else you wanted to add.
	No, I mean, well, I mean, I guess there is a place where it starts.
	I mean, I kind of realize a lot of it just kind of boiling over from just the nature of the relationship I had with my father that was left unresolved.
	He was very much the kind of...
	To put it mildly, he was just not appreciative of anything that I ever did, and I always just felt unwanted and unreliable.
	It's kind of like the phrase, maybe not unreliable, but just...
	That is the kind of operative thing that set me off, the relied upon, the kind of the sense of being made to feel worthless, and that's kind of what set me to boil over.
	That's the rage that came back, because that very much was how he would beat me down when I was younger.
	You mean when your mom said, I just wish I could rely on you?
	Yeah, exactly. Right.
	And so that's what I, you know, explained to her, and once things calmed down a bit, like, you know, that harkened back to that.
	I'm not saying it justifies it, but it did harken back to that, and Such biting language did set me to kind of boil over, and I obviously need to figure out how to do that more constructively, but at the time, that's just kind of where it came from.
	Here's the thing. Sorry, just to interrupt.
	Just so you understand how this kind of aggression works.
	You smashed a lamp because it was better than saying what was really there to say.
	See, the violence is a distraction from the truth.
	Because you smash the lamp and then you all get to talk about, oh, smash the lamp.
	But the real reason why you smash the lamp was so you'd have something to talk about other than what you really wanted to say.
	No, I absolutely agree with you there.
	And I have a guess as to what you really wanted to say.
	I think I may know the direction you're going, but shoot.
	Listen, if you have something that you wanted to say, you should say it, not me, if there's something that you figured out that you wanted to say.
	What was the deepest response that you could have given to your mom when she said, well, I just wish I could rely on you?
	It was basically what I would have in the back of my mind at any given time is, why weren't you there standing up for me when I was a kid?
	Yeah. Any chance I could rely on you ever to have chosen a father who would have been helpful to me rather than murderously destructive to my self-esteem?
	Right. No, absolutely. And actually, I did sort of say it in a less constructive way.
	And then we calmed down and kind of dealt with the lamp situation, as you mentioned.
	Right. I mean, there are words that are held back that if they are let out, it's the end of the relationship.
	And because we're terrified of the end of the relationship, as it stands, maybe there's some new relationship that can come out of it.
	Violence is the avoidance of truth.
	Violence is the avoidance of language.
	Sure. Violence is a cheap way to distract from what really needs to be said.
	Sure. Yeah, absolutely.
	Right. Just so you know, so you don't sit there and say, my God, I'm so violent, right?
	I mean, I know this from just, you know, deplatforming me and the violence that was given to me when I would go out and give speeches.
	It's just a way of avoiding a truth that people consider to be world-changing, right?
	Violence is a way to distract people from the truth that is being said.
	Then people end up talking about the violence and all that kind of stuff, right?
	Yeah. Yeah, so I'm sorry about that.
	Now, is there anything else? What did your dad die of?
	It's a little bit of a weird situation.
	He had a heart attack officially on paper, though when kind of digging through his closet, he was very much the kind of guy that thought he was smarter than everybody else, never saw a doctor, but self-prescribed and self-medicine that he bought from Russia or whatever.
	He was taking diabetes medicine.
	That, to my knowledge, never diagnosed with diabetes.
	Nobody in my family has diabetes or anything like that.
	I certainly don't. And I'm not really a risk factor for it, so it seems.
	So I think he just must have convinced himself he had that was taking heart medicine and then is actually kind of a little bit of a dark reasoning for it was he was being verbally abusive to my mom and she finally had enough and told him she wanted a divorce and he had a heart attack on the spot.
	And so that's Caused a lot of the spillover at the time.
	That's quite a package of information you just delivered to me there.
	So he was ordering and self-prescribing his own powerful medications online?
	Yes, absolutely.
	So he had a doctor that he got a plastic surgeon for his face.
	He had some Wait, I'm sorry.
	So the surgery was for What, like a deviative septum or something to do with his nose?
	But that wasn't cosmetic surgery, right?
	It wasn't just like to look prettier or better.
	It was because he had an issue from athletics.
	Now, sorry, so was it the doctor who was giving the prescription for whatever he wanted or what?
	Not for these particular medicines, but I know whenever he felt that he wanted...
	I have to be careful in my words because I'm not sure if I'm getting into any kind of potentially legally questionable territory involving the doctor or whatever.
	Not that I have any relationship with him, but I'm not aware of anything like controlled or anything like that, but it seemed like the doctor, like anytime he wanted an antibiotic or anything like that, would just sign it off for him.
	Right. Okay. Okay. Got it.
	Got it. But so the stuff that he was taking, like the diabetes and heart stuff, that was his own doing as far as you can tell, right?
	As far as I can tell, it was either Russian or Indonesian or, you know, one of those things that you can get without needing a prescription if you go through the right shady websites and who knows what's actually in them.
	Right. And do you have any idea how long you've been doing this?
	Like, did he keep old bottles or how long did it go back?
	Do you know? My mom, when she was digging through his things, found a very big stack of it, clearly for more than a year's worth of dosing.
	Who knows how long he'd been prior, though.
	Oh, the current stuff was for more than a year, and he had been doing for whatever, right?
	Yeah, could have been one day, could have been two years, you know.
	Wow. Did he, like, was he insane?
	In my non-medical opinion, he was a clinical narcissist, and both of his siblings are, and that stemmed from kind of their childhood and whatever.
	That's another thing I've had to dig into a lot with therapists and so on.
	He was, particularly when he got involved with using substances, he was a very heavy drinker, and it would unlock that kind of inner dark triad within him.
	Right, okay. So, what's the story with the self-medication, though?
	I mean, that's not necessarily a characteristic of narcissism.
	I would say it's in the sense that he thought he was smarter than literally everybody.
	And, you know, IQ is something that he very much congratulated himself on, even though I don't necessarily think he was particularly a paragon of IQ. I think he's certainly high, but not like a genius level.
	And I think he just decided he's smarter than doctors.
	If they're not going to give him what he wants, he'll figure out the other way to get it.
	Oh, so do you think or do you have any evidence that he went to doctors, said, I'm diabetic?
	And they're like, no, you're not.
	Or I have these heart issues.
	He refused to go to doctors. He apparently hadn't gone to a doctor in 10 years.
	Right. Okay. Okay.
	So he just self-diagnosed and self-medicated.
	And was there anything in the autopsy or the cause of death that had anything to do with these substances that you're aware of?
	They just basically said it was whatever the medical term for a heart failure, not caused by any kind of clogged artery or anything like that.
	Told me something that could be something to do with the electrical system in there or whatever.
	I'm not an expert by any means, but they did not have anything conclusive.
	And did they test him for any of these?
	You didn't find these substances until afterwards, right?
	No, not until well afterward, too.
	They tested him for kind of the usual suspects, you know, various drugs and things, and that came up pretty much clean other than alcohol.
	But, you know, nothing like that was tested for.
	And what was his age range when he died?
	He was almost 60.
	So, I mean, that's young.
	Was he obese, no exercise, that kind of stuff?
	Yeah, for about the last 15 years of his life, he was just very lethargic, drank a lot, ate a lot.
	He was very fit when he was young, and then he just, you know, it caught up with him very quickly and very largely.
	Isn't that funny, right?
	Isn't that funny? I mean...
	The weight thing has always surprised me, just how many people are paranoid about their health who were also like 100 pounds overweight or whatever.
	I mean, it's just wild to me.
	It's like I remember having a girlfriend whose mother was obese and she was constantly nagging everyone to wash their hands.
	And it's like, I don't think that a virus is the big problem in your life.
	I think the problem is you're 100 pounds overweight.
	It's just odd to me.
	And people, oh, I'm so scared of COVID. It's like, okay, did you gain 30 pounds?
	Yeah. Okay. Well, now you're more at risk for problems from COVID. Oh, and you're going to spread it more.
	But, you know, it's just kind of odd to me that...
	And he was very much a hypochondriac when it came to disease, too.
	I mean, I remember back in the...
	If you remember that bird flu thing back way back in the day, that was kind of the original warming up of the pandemic.
	And, you know, there's a whole question on how much of that was being prepared or whatever.
	But he was convinced end of the world coming, Tamiflu, you know, with every meal, have it on hand and be prepared for society to collapse and everybody to die kind of stuff.
	And he very much had fantasies about end of the world scenarios, like I'm very into that Walking Dead TV show, which I couldn't stand myself.
	But the whole death by disease and destruction of society, something about that really drew him in.
	The Walking Dead is just this giant repetition compulsion show.
	We have to get something from the other side of town.
	There are zombies between us and them.
	We'll do the same thing next week.
	But it'll be something different, and it'll be another side.
	Just the holding pattern, and then there's zombies.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay.
	Alright, so...
	What did he do for a living?
	He worked...
	It was a bit shady in the sense that I never really quite knew, but I don't know how much about that is him being kind of just secretive by nature, not really sharing much with the family in really any sense of his life, but I know he worked for a prominent aerospace company, and he was a...
	Kind of an off-the-books executive, meaning he was billed as a consultant, but I know he was sitting at the meeting with the CEOs and stuff like that.
	He was a fixer. Yeah.
	So I don't know exactly what he did.
	I know it had something to do with environmental regulations when they set up factories and were trying to have international deals.
	We're going to travel to various countries and deal with the factories there, making sure that Up to some kind of international code so that it can be sold in America.
	Things like that. Yeah, I know.
	I know the world fairly well.
	I was in that world as an entrepreneur for quite some time.
	So, I mean, he's pretty skilled, right?
	I mean, he's pretty good at what he did if he's doing it at that level.
	Oh, he had a Harvard MBA. So, smart guy, for sure.
	As you say, maybe not at the genius level, but smart guy for sure.
	And what do you know of his childhood?
	I know that both his sisters as well as him are I think his mom was a very heavy drinker.
	They both died before I was born.
	His mother died, I want to say, of breast cancer.
	No, maybe it was lung cancer, but I don't know for sure.
	And then the father died of a heart attack, both before I was born.
	I just got a general feeling when he would recount things about his childhood of a constant sense of Not being accepted by his own parents, like them not really appreciating him, not really caring about what he did and that kind of stuff.
	If you're smarter than your family, it can be pretty stressful.
	I mean, I'm sure there was a lot more to it than that, right?
	Okay, so you have like a death wish gene pool on that side of your family, right?
	Just like smoking and drinking. It's like the Christopher Hitchens stuff, right?
	Where he's like, yeah, another kind of suicide.
	And I've got these, I think he got genes for like this really dangerous cancer, which if you smoke and drink is much worse.
	And so he smoked and drank and it's like, yep, there you go.
	There's a kind of death wish thing that goes on.
	I would say that I have a My relationship with alcohol is not what it should be, but I wouldn't say it's like my father's was.
	But I've been very, very, very careful not to touch anything else because I know addictive genes are in my gene pool.
	Oh, yeah. Yeah, no, for sure.
	For sure. Okay. All right.
	And I guess you said that your father was verbally abusing your mom.
	Was that constant from your childhood?
	Yeah, and he was the kind of verbal abusive that I think at the beginning, I don't know if it's a clinical term or if it's something else, but the vulnerable narcissists, the ones that, oh, woe is me.
	If only I had a better son.
	If only I had a better wife.
	If only you cared. That kind of bullshit.
	I blame myself for your failures.
	It's like, yeah, okay, so I'm a failure.
	Got it. One of the very first things I remember, because he didn't really take much interest in my life until I was about Oh, 11, 12, until I started actually being a human and rather than just kind of a preformed superego, he didn't really care other than occasionally maybe take me to Disneyland or something like that.
	So he wasn't neglectful when I was young.
	It was really the view started when I was like a preteen.
	Wait, he wasn't neglectful? You said he didn't take any interest in you.
	Okay, I should say he wasn't...
	He did not have a negative conception that he imprinted on me when I was preformed, I should say.
	That is false, my friend.
	Look, I know you want to divide this into, well, there was times when he wasn't abusive and times when he was abusive, but neglect is the worst form of abuse in many ways.
	Fair, yeah. Because your evaluation of yourself as a child is almost entirely dependent upon your parents' level of interest in you.
	And if your father is like, well, you're not worth crossing the room for and I don't really care much about what you do and I'd rather drink than play with you or whatever it is, right?
	I mean, it's giving you a very clear sense of your lack of worth to him and that's going to leave a footprint, right?
	Yeah, touche. Fair enough.
	I stand corrected. I mean, we always like to think there's a nice part of our parents somewhere or a nicer part of our parents somewhere.
	Generally, assholes are assholes in three dimensions all throughout time, you know, from very early on.
	So that's sort of my thought on that.
	But you're saying that he got more interested and then more abusive.
	Is that right, in your teens? It was really when school started becoming a thing.
	And, you know, he didn't take any interest in me in the beginning.
	And my mom, you know, God bless her for what her attributes are that are positive, but she's not a particularly smart woman, and she was not really able to help me with schoolwork and stuff like that.
	And it wasn't until really...
	Well, I'm sorry. How do you...
	I mean, obviously, you know her infinitely better than I do, but is it possible that she just played dumb because she didn't want to do it?
	Maybe. Maybe.
	I do actually recall times of her actually trying to, and she just...
	I wasn't really up to snuff.
	And then my father, some eventually kind of coming in, going, all right, I'll do this job right, because somebody asked me that kind of bullshit.
	But sorry, I keep swearing. I shouldn't swear.
	I don't care. Honestly, I don't care.
	If that's what's in your heart and in your mind and in your throat, don't.
	Because if you censor yourself, it kind of goes across the board.
	So I really don't care.
	Just go for it. Yeah, I can remember in fourth grade, this is pre my dad taking any interest, having a little bit of trouble figuring out algebra and Just like some distributive property or something like that.
	And she just couldn't understand it.
	It was too much for fractions, things like that.
	Just too difficult for her to pull up the calculator kind of thing.
	And that just kind of bled over to...
	In junior high, I wasn't really prepared for school.
	And so that's when he really started taking interest because, hey, your grades aren't perfect.
	You're just, you know, wow, what an awful son you are.
	Why was I cursed with such a son with shitty grades?
	Yeah. Now, is that a paraphrase, or is that the way he would talk?
	That is a paraphrase, but it very much contains the essence of how he would talk.
	So how would he put it?
	I mean, I remember Colin saying basically things like, you know, if I didn't have to put up with all the stress, if you're having trouble in school, I wouldn't have to drink so much kind of crap.
	Oh, man.
	Oh, man.
	He's good. Yeah, I remember there being one time when we had some kind of report in seventh grade, and, you know, something, I don't even remember what it was on.
	It was just some typical writing report, and I think I got like a B on it, so not great, not bad, not great.
	And just looking at it, seeing it, and he was drunk at the time, his face scrunching up, and then he lifted it up, and I felt like he was about to hit me with it, and so he just threw it on the ground in kind of a tantrum and stormed off.
	Yeah. It was very much his parenting was the stick but never the carrot, if that makes sense.
	But once I got into high school, I somehow, I think maybe his bullying broke through because I ended up graduating top of my class at a pretty well-renowned school.
	So that's where I talk about the climbing of the peaks of Everest, of achievement, and my university.
	That is a toxic conclusion, my friend.
	Yeah. Now, do you know why?
	Yeah. Because, sorry to me to laugh, but because his bullying, if I understand your formulation correctly, his bullying worked.
	Seems to have, yes.
	Yeah. Well, that is a very bad principle to hold in your head.
	Have you ever seen the movie Fight Club where they take the guy out back at the convenience store and force him to go back to school and do something better with his life or whatever, right?
	Yeah, right. So, yeah, you have in it there that the bullying works.
	And maybe, I doubt it, I doubt the bullying works.
	So the question is, what might have happened?
	That you changed? It's very much that I recall multiple cases up until my 20s and stuff like that.
	Just monumental academic success.
	I mean, I went to a highly prestigious school, double major in economics, biochemistry, doubling up 30 units, getting near straight A's, things like that.
	And then his response has become, so?
	And then I've Other similar things of him always being hands-off, but me still achieving, and him not being impressed.
	And so I guess...
	I guess, I mean...
	Okay, but what changed that you began to really apply yourself in school?
	And when did it happen? That would have been starting ninth grade.
	A little bit in eighth grade, it kind of started going that direction in eighth grade, but really ninth grade.
	And maybe part of it was just because...
	School, at least back then, comes a little bit more real in ninth grade than it does in the hand-holding years of junior high and so on.
	And once I saw it, it was actually something that I was particularly good at.
	It became something to gain validation from because if I could succeed at that, well, then I'm certainly not failing.
	But it can't have been that the bullying worked, I would say, because...
	If you did it to get your father's approval, well, you didn't get that, but you kept going, right?
	I would not say that I did it solely for that.
	I would say I did it just kind of for feeling a self-validation, knowing that I could do it, but then also going to him and say, hey, you know, here's some proof of me doing something that's not, you know, just effing up.
	Can you acknowledge at least in this case?
	No. So it changed grade 9, you're what, like, I don't know, 13 years old or something like that, right?
	14. Okay, so, but this has been continual since, right?
	So if you were just doing it to gain his approval, then when you didn't get his approval, a lot of people just collapsed back into, you know, just not doing well.
	So it had to be something more internalized if you've kept it going.
	Sure, fair enough. If you're going to have the bullying works thing in your head, it's going to be tricky, to put it mildly.
	I absolutely understand.
	So tell me a bit about your parents' relationship.
	Do you have any idea why they got married?
	Yeah. How it worked, my mom is...
	How would I describe her?
	She's very...
	There you go.
	But very emotionally frail, very dependent, and does not have a whole lot of sense that her own opinions matter.
	I actually do think that comes from her own childhood, knowing about her parents.
	But very much the typical victim for an emotional narcissist kind of thing.
	The emotionally battered housewife, if you will.
	And she was the kind that would be kind of behind the scenes saying, hey, I understand he's being unfair to you when my dad was in the other room, but just staying there quietly or even kind of side with him when he was going off.
	And as for why they got married, they met in college.
	They met in college, and I guess I can go kind of personal on it because this is something I had to deal with that very much is, I think, relevant.
	I know that when they started dating about 20 or something like that, he was still a virgin.
	She had been with a couple partners.
	I don't know how many. I haven't cried about that exactly.
	He was very resentful of that.
	Starting a few years later or something like that, he cheated on her, basically saying, well, it's only fair because you've not saved yourself for me.
	Then she wanted him to marry him as kind of payback for that.
	Okay, so he was a virgin.
	She cheated on... Sorry, she had partners.
	He was a virgin. And then he cheated on her while they were boyfriend, girlfriend, saying, well, you had men before me, as if that equals something.
	I mean, he's really brilliantly evil at justifications, right?
	It's your fault I'm drinking.
	It's your fault I cheated, right?
	And then she said, you have to marry me to make up for the cheating?
	Yes. And shockingly, the marriage didn't turn out to be happy.
	Oh, my God. Yeah, and I mean, her words are that she said, I'm a strong woman, but something about him, you know, just he could control me.
	And it's like, well, you're kind of contradicting the first part, but I didn't say that verbatim.
	And that's not the only time that happened.
	What do you mean? The reason I'm in this world was because then when he went off to Harvard MBA, he cheated on her again, and the payment was she wanted a kid.
	Wow. Good thing he couldn't keep it in his pants, so otherwise I'd just be talking to myself right now.
	There you go. But definitely I think that played into his acting resentful towards me because I was kind of a biological anchor in his eyes probably.
	Are you an only child?
	I am. I don't think he couldn't keep cheating?
	Yeah, there you go.
	Or he just covered it up better.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah. He took a lot of...
	A lot of private trips to, you know, business trips for months at a time.
	Months? Maybe not months, but it's called three weeks.
	Okay. Going to Thailand for another three weeks.
	Big, big environmental issue there.
	Yeah, yeah. Okay. And how old?
	Oh, I guess it was, what was it, 2017 you said that she wanted a divorce and he had a heart attack, right?
	Correct. And do you know what it was that drove her to want to divorce?
	I'm sorry? It was actually Trump's inauguration day, which was kind of weird.
	Oh, your graduation day from what?
	No, it was Trump's inauguration day.
	Oh, Trump's inauguration day.
	Right, right. Okay. And what made her want to divorce?
	I think she just got to her and just beaten.
	I know that she had started talking to a prior boyfriend.
	I could probably just reach out to her on social media or something like that.
	Some period of time before this incident.
	I don't believe they'd ever met again or anything like that.
	I think they're still talking, but I think it's kind of...
	He's having a little bit of a midlife crisis and playing the e-girlfriend with her, and she's just falling into it.
	But I think that maybe gave her a little bit...
	Wait, he's playing the e-girlfriend? I don't understand that.
	He's playing...
	The prior boyfriend is a married man and has kids and stuff like that, but he's not In any way physically in her life or anything like that.
	And I think he's just living out some kind of fantasy of having an e-girlfriend with her.
	Oh, okay, okay. I got it.
	I don't know if they've met at all.
	If they have, it's been sparingly.
	Not that I've, you know, kept track on everything she's done.
	But I think that maybe just gave her just a little bit of leverage to spring forward.
	Though I will say it was not enough for her not to also throw it on me because apparently she told him I was encouraging her to get divorced as well, which means, basically, if he hadn't died, I probably would have been put through hell.
	Wow. So she's still betraying you into adulthood.
	You're adulthood. Yeah.
	And, you know, that's happened again.
	A few other times and other cases or whatever, to the point where, why, say, I think I use the phrase cautious or hands distant or whatever, is I just can't cross anything personal with her.
	I can't really... I can't really involve her in my own personal things because I just don't think that she has the internal fortitude to not spill over if it would in some way or another relieve some kind of fear in her life or something like that.
	You can't trust her because she'll betray you, right?
	Right. Okay, yeah, I get that.
	I understand that. And that seems entirely wise.
	So they were married for like 20 years or so?
	Let's see. Yeah, around there.
	I mean, I don't remember exact dates, but yeah, I think they got married around 23, and then he died when he was 59, so it's 25, 26 years.
	Right, okay. Did they ever say why they didn't have another kids?
	The excuses were, you know, the usual suspects for coming up with excuses.
	The economy, uncertainty, too busy with work.
	Well, do you really want to share Christmas presents with another kid?
	That kind of crap. And did you want siblings when you were growing up?
	I think I had an innate sense of feeling that I did.
	But I didn't have it materially in my mind.
	Because I very much bonded with animals.
	We had dogs. And that was kind of the reprieve I could have for my father's unrelenting...
	Or whatever, was a dog that you can pretty much rely on as long as it's well-trained and you treat it right, that it's not going to do anything negative to you, really.
	Worst thing, it might, you know, crap on your rug, but it's not going to put emotional scars that come up 20 years later in you.
	Oh, yeah, no, I mean, there's a lot of ways in which dogs are much more reliable than people as a whole, right?
	Okay. But yeah, and then also that kind of just gets into, you know, me talking about how I've had trouble...
	Connecting with people. And it's not so much that I don't get along with people or that I'm not very much...
	I wouldn't say I'm shy. It's more that I have just an intense...
	Or not intense, but an underlying kind of distrust of people because in addition to my parents, I've run into multiple people that have turned out to be wolves in sheep's clothing and things like that.
	And so just the defense mechanism to keep everybody at arm's length.
	And so very few people get Oh no, your ability to suss out people is fantastic.
	It's just pointed in the wrong direction, right?
	I mean, if you have this consistent pattern of betrayal, it means you're very good at figuring out who will betray you.
	You just walk into the wrong direction, that's all.
	Right. You should be walking away, and you get it.
	Okay. So what are the major issues that you're facing at the moment that prompted the email?
	Well, I mean, just the spilling over the rage, but just in general, I am sure that an underlying thing is not having a firm foundation upon which I can kind of ground myself better.
	I mean, there's obviously building on yourself and improving yourself and self-knowledge, but feeling isolated is a very common theme throughout my life.
	And right now, since the move and before the future move and that kind of stuff, I kind of feel like I'm in the boonies with no idea how to meet people, no idea how to suss out people that I should meet.
	Yeah. And it very much feels like kind of I'm in a holding pattern, like sitting in a waiting room where I have no idea when the number is going to be called because it just seems to be a random order and it's getting very frustrating.
	You are one abstract guy, man.
	I'm sitting in the waiting room for something, something.
	Okay, so give me something a little more concrete because I can't really work with that level of analogy.
	I mean, I know I use analogies myself, so I'm not trying to I would very much like some closer friends and definitely in the path of marriage, but marriage with a compatible partner.
	And I do hope to one day have kids and hopefully raise them completely different from how I was raised, learning from experience.
	Okay. And what's your dating history been?
	I've just not had much luck.
	I've been told I'm a good-looking guy.
	I know I'm obviously well-educated and things like that.
	Being in Southern California, I think I was kind of looking in the wrong nest for people that would be compatible with names.
	So running into a lot of people that were narcissistic in nature just kind of...
	Just looking for the hookup culture sort of thing, which has never been really anything that I've been into.
	And then after starting about COVID lockdowns, I just kind of detached from all of that.
	I guess maybe I kept kicking the can down the road and then thinking about future prospects of moving and other things to do.
	But last time I was on a date was February of, I want to say, yeah, February 2020.
	Right, okay. Okay.
	And longest relationship you've had with a woman?
	If you can even count it as that, it's more of being manipulated by an absolute narcissist, but only a couple months.
	Tell me a little about that.
	She was a performing arts person.
	I won't give too many details, but very much kind of the worst of the stereotypes of those sorts.
	I know she herself came from a troubled background.
	In fact, her father shared a lot of similarities to me, it sounded like.
	And very much the kind of BPD opening up with high praise and high feelings of charm and just having that draw in.
	And then once she got me to where she wanted, just completely cutting that off and just ghosting all the time and gaslighting and things like that.
	And eventually I just I had to say, you're treating me like trash, and she threw a little tantrum and then just cut off contact.
	Right. I'm sorry about that.
	And before that?
	Before that, nothing ever really stuck.
	I mean, I would go on dates, and I'm not a virgin.
	I've been with girls, and usually I would hope that it could lead into a relationship, and they're looking more for just a short-term fling, so it kind of roles reversed in the stereotype sense.
	Well, that's actually not as uncommon as you think.
	A lot of men do want a longer-term relationship, but a lot of women, they can't settle down because they have too many options, right?
	Right. I think that very much came up quite a bit.
	You know, going on dates, having seemingly a good connection, the girl being the one to actually pressure to go back to her place, and at the time, me thinking that might be a pathway.
	Nowadays, I would just shut that down at the first date or something like that, certainly.
	And then, of course... For whatever reason, they just jumped on elsewhere.
	Right. I remember I had a conversation with a woman many years ago who was talking about how terrible it was that the women in a lot of Islamic countries, that the women have to cover themselves up.
	And I said, yeah, I mean, I understand that.
	It's not free, right?
	It's not liberty. But I said, in the West, The women can dress, you know, they do have usually short shorts and they bury their bellies and all that kind of stuff.
	And I said, I don't have any particular objection to that from a moral standpoint.
	But the problem is that by advertising themselves in such a sexual manner, they generally will have trashy guys interested in them.
	They can't settle down.
	And, you know, the phrase alpha widows, right?
	These women, a woman can have sex with a guy who's a couple of notches above her in the market value, but she can't lock him down.
	She can't get him. Like women control access to sex, men control access to marriage, right?
	And so I said, you know, you can get as mad at it as you want, but, you know, those cultures are having, you know, four kids and we're having one.
	Right? Four kids are family.
	We're having one. So it really doesn't matter what you think of it.
	What matters is what is sustainable from an evolutionary standpoint.
	And, of course, you got entirely offended.
	Oh, you're in support of us. Like, no, I'm just talking about the facts of what's going on.
	I mean, there's no way they're going to look at our system and say, yeah, that's the way to go, man.
	It's really working out for them, right?
	It's certainly not sustainable.
	There's something to say about output being less than input.
	It's going to catch up with you. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	So... I grew up in a very wealthy Southern California town, so very much, you know, you're kind of Paris Hilton, Kim Kardashian wannabe types, a lot of those galore, and that's why I say kind of one of the worst places to be looking for a more traditional person.
	Well, and in Southern California, you decided to hook up with a performance artist, for which the sympathy may not be massive, but of course, you know, you're a young man, and it's not like you got well-trained in how to have a relationship, right?
	Well, I mean... There's a saying that, you know, there's nobody more evil than an actress, not that she was an actress.
	Right, right. I've never heard that saying, but I don't think I've ever dated an actress.
	I dated a woman who wanted to be an actress.
	It's something in the Hollywood thing, like date an axe murderer before you date an actress.
	Right, right, right. Okay, so you have no functional or practical experience in relationships, right?
	No, not in any long terms.
	Well, I mean, if all you've done is dodged a psycho-narcissist BPD chick, then, you know, you have a...
	It's not like you've trained to be a runner if you've fled a predator, right?
	Fair enough. Okay, so...
	And don't tell me your actual age, but what is your range?
	I'm in, I guess, late 20s to early 30s.
	Yeah, so, I mean, you're kind of hosed if you don't do it quick, right?
	So why has it taken you a decade of adulthood to, I guess, really try and solve this problem?
	Well, I think part of it was when I was letting myself be under the thumb of my father, and I didn't really want to bring anybody else into that.
	I remember very much when he was still alive thinking, I never want to get married, I never want to have kids.
	And so I think I very much had a kind of an awakening.
	No, that's an effect though. That's not the cause.
	No, that's an effect.
	Because if you want marriage enough, then you would find a way to deal with that, right?
	You'd either stop seeing your dad or you explain to your girlfriend-to-be that your dad is mean or you'd have minimal contact.
	So that's not like saying, well, it's because of my dad.
	That just says that there's not enough of a desire.
	And I guess that's my question, right?
	No, I don't think I wanted it then.
	I don't think I really started wanting it until after Reid passed.
	And so that means, I guess, I allowed myself to kind of Look, let's be frank, right? So we're dudes, right? So you probably start and push back hard at the age of 13 or 14.
	I mean, in your mind, right? Because you've got the hormones, you've got the physical size, you recognize at some point, as we all do, that you're getting...
	Older and stronger, and he's getting older and weaker, right?
	So you've got that going on, right?
	So probably 13 or 14, right?
	And part of your, you know, F.U. was, you know, to hell with you.
	I am going to do well in school.
	You had this rebellion streak going like a decade and a half ago, right?
	So what I need to understand, and I would suggest you do too, what I need to understand is Okay, so it's 15 years.
	Where was the rebellion going on there?
	Because you say you've got a problem with your temper and all of that, which I would agree, but I would think it's on the other side, like you're not angry enough.
	Because somewhere in your head, you're circling this planet of a decade and a half, of like 15 years of not rebelling, right?
	Right. Right.
	And that's what we've got to figure out.
	Because there's no point in me giving you whatever sort of thoughts or feedback if we can't deal with whatever the hell kept you stalled for 15 years.
	Sure. Now, saying it's because of my dad, it's like, no, no, no.
	Your dad would be an excuse at that point.
	Certainly after you become an adult.
	So what was it that kept you stalled, do you think?
	Well, I know for a long time I... And it's something I had to deal with in therapy.
	I had to resent for women in general, and I do think it stemmed from my mom, a feeling that they're very weak and that they don't stand up for you, or not even stand up for you, but even stand up for themselves.
	I didn't go into the whole The direction some people go is the whole, like, pick-up artist, like, predator way.
	Mine was more of just almost just not wanting anything to do with them, not really seeing the value, if that makes sense.
	That's something I really had to start recognizing and dealing with it probably when I was about 21 was when I started going to a therapist.
	No, this is also an effect.
	I'm sorry to be annoying. I really do apologize for this, but that's also an effect.
	Okay. Right, so...
	You wanted to avoid something, and therefore you said, all women are like my mom.
	Now, clearly, clearly, not all women are like your mom, right?
	Like, you were aware of that, right?
	Right. Okay. So, saying, well, I just thought all women were like my mom, the question is, no, no, no, why?
	Why did you think that all women were like your mom, which is clearly false, and you're an intelligent guy, right?
	So, why did you elevate women to the category of, they're all like my mom?
	That's the real reason.
	The real cause.
	Like, why did you stand your dad's thumb?
	Why did you imagine or fantasize that all women are like your mom, which is so counter-rational and counter-factual, that it's got to be serving some other need or preference.
	And if we can't figure that out, I don't know what progress we can make, if that makes sense.
	Okay. Um...
	I can give you an example of what I mean if I'm being way too obscure.
	Because, you know, I asked you for examples earlier, right?
	That might help. Sure, sure.
	Okay. So for myself, since, you know, I can talk about myself at least with some reasonable level of authority, I hope.
	So for myself, I could say, well, you know, but I didn't really know any quality, quality women.
	And I would improve. Every girlfriend of mine would get better and better.
	But it was still incremental rather than the huge leaps that I needed.
	And I could say, well, you know, but I had grown up and I didn't have any instruction from my father and I had other family, male family members who were giving me bad instruction and I didn't notice a lot of great marriages and blah, blah, blah, right?
	Now, all of those could be, they're like half answers and half answers are the worst kind, right?
	And I lived with those half answers for a long time.
	But... The reality, the sort of real reality was, okay, so maybe I was sort of in your camp.
	I think I was a little bit in your camp, like, you know, women, the major value that women bring is sex and then you just sort of put up with the rest or something like that.
	I mean, and that's, I could say, well, that's because the only thing that my mother brought to the table was her physical attractiveness and all that.
	And I could say all of that, but none of that is particularly rational.
	Emotionally, we understand, okay, well, she's your mother and she's going to be a template and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
	But for me, it's like the rotary dial phone.
	I grew up with rotary dial phones, which you probably read about in history books or whatever, right?
	But when it comes to upgrading, yeah, we went from rotary dial, we went from rotary dial to push button, and then we went from push button to wireless, and then we went from wireless to car phones, and car phones, I had a BlackBerry for business at one point that was just text only, and, you know, I'm constantly upgrading, right? I don't say, well, I grew up with rotary dial phones, so that's my template, and the reason I never upgraded my phone from rotary dial is because that's what I grew up with, like, we don't live like that, right?
	I mean, you're going to Eastern Europe, right?
	So you're like, well, it's not Southern California.
	So you can make changes.
	You can upgrade. You can change things, right?
	Sort of like saying, well, I have to get into my ACDC schoolboy pants because that's what I grew up with.
	It's like, no, no, you outgrow that stuff and we outgrow a lot of stuff and we're perfectly happy to upgrade.
	And yet when it comes to this stuff, We're like, well, you know, but that's what I grew up with, and then everything changes, and then we don't upgrade, and we don't challenge the irrationality of it.
	So for me, the answer was actually, I mean, embarrassingly simple once I realized it, is that other people, other people in my life needed me to have low standards.
	That was the tension. That was the battle.
	I desperately needed to have higher standards, but other people in my life desperately needed me to have lower standards, and I conformed to what they wanted and imagined that the idea somehow came from me.
	So, the trashy women or the trashy people in my life desperately needed me to think that my mother was all women.
	You know, and so that I wouldn't raise my standards.
	And so it was clearly, it would have been to my benefit, to my massive benefit, to raise my standards.
	But it would have been to the people around me who wanted to exploit me, and I don't just mean emotionally, but also financially.
	The people who wanted to exploit me desperately needed me to extrapolate from individual shitty people to everyone's shitty, right?
	And that way I wouldn't Wouldn't get away, right?
	I mean, if you were in a prison and you knew that if you went through that wall, you'd be free forever, well, you're going to dig out from that wall, right?
	But if you believe or you accept or you know that outside that wall is just another prison and outside that wall is just another prison and it goes on forever, then you would never bother trying to escape, right?
	So if you can universalize, so the world is a prison, it's a prison planet, right?
	Then you'd never try and break out.
	And so... People had very concrete needs to keep me around because I'm entertaining, I'm economically productive, and they don't have to raise their own standards of behavior as long as they can keep getting things from me.
	So it wasn't me who came up with this idea that everyone's like my mom.
	It was my entire family and social structure, like everyone, everyone, everyone, in business, in friendships, in my family, in dating, everyone around me was massively invested in me extrapolating from individuals to everyone.
	In other words, the prison guards desperately needed me to believe that out there was just another prison and out there was just another prison, right?
	And... You will hear this kind of stuff.
	You know, the only common denominator in all your bad relationships is you.
	And there's no...
	I mean... So, it wasn't me who came up with the idea that, let's say, all women are like my mom.
	It was my mom who came up with that idea and gave it to me.
	And I was just used to obeying her because of violence.
	So it benefited her.
	You don't need to worry about being a good guard if you can convince the prisoner that there's no such thing as a not prison.
	Everything is a prison and you break out of this prison.
	There's just another prison. And so, I mean, there's entire industries out there that, you know, basically human beings are dysfunctional.
	Marriage is hard. Relationships are tough.
	It's like, no, they're not.
	They're supposed to be. You already have a job.
	Your relationship, your marriage, your love is supposed to be where you recharge and end up in a much better place from your job, right?
	It's like going to work on your vacation and saying, well, vacations are tough.
	It's like they're not supposed to be. It's supposed to be kind of relaxing, right?
	So you're giving me the story at the level of, well, you know, I was ground down by my dad.
	And it's like, well, yeah, so you knew you were ground down by your dad, so why the hell didn't you get out?
	Or, well, I guess I kind of thought that women were kind of like my mom.
	You were destroyed to some degree, at least in the past, by that idea, right?
	That idea that all women are like your mom was incredibly toxic for you.
	Now, we don't just wake up in the morning and say, I wonder what I can do that's really toxic for myself.
	Maybe your dad when he's ordering drugs from fucking Russia or something, right?
	But we don't wake up in the morning when we're young and say, oh, what's a belief system that I could put together in my head that's really going to fuck me?
	That's really going to wreck me.
	That's really going to harm me and screw me up.
	We don't do that. It's for the benefit of other people.
	So you say, well, I extrapolated from my mom.
	It's like, I bet you didn't.
	I bet you didn't. But if you take ownership for that, then I think you're missing the real sinister criminals in the equation, if that makes sense.
	Okay. I guess that probably opens the end to a question.
	I mean, I guess that I understand that certainly in the abstract, I understand the concept.
	I guess maybe I'm not connecting all the pieces together or at least seeing the path forward actionable from my end.
	Okay. So now you've gone from Mr.
	Abstract to now I need concrete.
	That's a defense, right? Just so you know, you've probably heard a million times in these calls, just pointing it out.
	It's totally fine. I'm just pointing it out.
	Okay. So here's the question.
	Who benefits from you imagining that all women are like your mom?
	I'm not certain I see – I mean, I think the angle that...
	If you have an answer in your mind, the angle would probably be you're thinking my mom.
	That's the only one I could think of as the common denominator of what we've talked about, but I don't necessarily see that, but maybe I'm just not seeing it.
	Sorry, that was quite a lot of language there that didn't convey a huge amount of meaning to me, if you could take another run at it.
	I'm not concretely seeing the answer to that question at this time.
	However, maybe I've got a blind spot.
	Okay, so if your mom is all women, then there's no point upgrading from your mom, right?
	You know, if all cars break down every 50 miles, all cars break down every 50 miles, there's no point selling a car that breaks down 50 miles to get a new one, right?
	Right. So if you raise the standards, who is harmed by that in your life?
	Yeah, I mean, I guess is the question of my mom feeling worried I'm going to, you know, finger quote, abandon her?
	Is that kind of the angle that you're pushing?
	Or that you're suggesting, I should say.
	Oh my! I'm sorry.
	I think I'm meeting a little bit of your dad here, if you don't mind me saying so.
	I mean this with all affection and respect, but that was kind of passive-aggressive that I'm somehow pushing you somewhere.
	I'm just putting forward a theory, right?
	I'm sorry. I misworded that.
	I apologize. No, no. Listen, I'm glad that you're punchy.
	I really am. That's totally fine.
	And you should be punchy, because this is a landmine here for you, for everyone.
	This is a landmine, right? Sure.
	Who else is in your life, right?
	Let's take a breather from your mom.
	Who else would you consider close who's in your life?
	I have a couple close friends that I don't really see very often.
	They live in different states.
	One is still in California.
	Another lives in another state. And I talk to them regularly.
	They're both married guys.
	Well, one is the kind of quasi-married.
	One is for sure married.
	I don't know if I necessarily cross streams on any kind of relationship talks with them much, though.
	Okay. Who cares about you enough to confront you on this stuff and help?
	So far, I think, of the people in my life, I'm the only one that's self-critical to a fault many times, but I'm the only one that has to look in the mirror and figure out This ain't working how I want it to work.
	Let's try to fix it somehow.
	So you don't have people in your life who are close to you to the point where they would challenge you on these issues, right?
	I think they would challenge me if I were to manifest self-destructive behavior in the form of doing drugs or doing other sorts of things that they see as a path of whatever.
	If I were to start...
	I was chasing particularly nasty women that are going to take me for all my money and that kind of stuff.
	They would warn me about that kind of stuff.
	Hang on, hang on. Didn't you already chase a nasty woman?
	Yeah, and I was being warned by one of them.
	And, you know, of course, I was being the naive, oh, I know better kind of thing, and I didn't.
	Okay. Okay.
	That was the one that's married.
	I kind of told him about the situation and I mean, he basically said, this sounds like my ex-girlfriend run.
	And I said, oh, I know better.
	You know, it's not like her, which, yeah, it was.
	She just happened to be prettier and smarter, but not morally better.
	Okay, got it. Got it.
	But as far as talking about kind of deep, abstract things, well, I wouldn't necessarily say the people I talk to really are interested in those kinds of concepts very much either.
	I think they're kind of more working class sorts of guys.
	Got it. Okay.
	What about your mother?
	Who does she have in her life who is willing to tell her the truth, even if it's uncomfortable?
	As far as I'm aware, it would be only me.
	I know that she and her brothers are kind of living in a state of self-delusion about their upbringing.
	And I don't really know anything about her relationship with that guy that she talks to, other than that it's only through electronic means, so I hardly count that as a close relationship.
	But for all I know, it could be very deep.
	And does she work?
	She's retired now.
	But she's in her 60s, right?
	Late 50s, early 60s?
	Early 60s. Early to mid.
	Okay, so does she have any friends, or really?
	No, I mean... Part of it is, to be fair, we just moved.
	She did have friends back in California, and I don't think that they were particularly good friends with her because she worked in a public school.
	I won't say exactly whatever, but...
	And, you know, SoCal public school, that's just leftist central, and I think that they were really making her feel bad about herself for being a conservative Christian, and that's part of the reason I pushed her to move.
	She pushed herself to move, but I very much encouraged it, and...
	That's why I helped her in the process.
	I'm here currently as a temporary thing, just as I get my affairs in order, but I'm also planning on being out of here by the end of the year.
	Okay. So if your mom doesn't have you, who does she have?
	Currently, not much.
	And that's why I do pressure her to...
	Pressure, that's not the wrong word.
	But I do suggest that she would be happy if she started going to church again.
	Sorry, why isn't she going to church?
	She's a Christian, right? She just kind of stopped.
	When I was a kid, my dad bullied her for being a Christian, so she just stopped.
	And then she just kind of had never picked it up again.
	And I've been saying for a while that I think she'd be happier if she started going to a local Methodist church or something like that.
	I've even offered to go with her the first couple times in case she's shy or whatever.
	But obviously, long-term, it would be for her to be there and not me.
	Right. Okay. So for your living memory, she's had very little to do with the church, right?
	She did when I was very young, and it cut off at about 10 or 11 for me.
	I used to go to church twice a week, and then we all just kind of collectively stopped.
	My relationship with religion soured, but I think that was more me projecting my father's image onto my conception of God.
	No, I've come around on that in various ways.
	That's a whole deeper talk, but...
	Well, it may be a deeper cut, but not deeper than what we're talking about.
	Yeah, fair enough.
	Okay, so your mother has done the classic single son of a mother thing, right?
	Which she's got you, and so she's not working as hard to have other people, right?
	Right. Okay, now that is an unbearable and horrible amount of pressure to put on a son.
	Mm-hmm. How much has she expressed frustration or concern or anxiety over you being in your late 20s, early 30s, and undating?
	I've even brought it up multiple times.
	No, no. How much has she brought it up?
	Oh, none.
	Okay, so do you know why?
	Yeah, I think I know the direction you're going.
	You're saying she doesn't want me to find a replacement.
	You're a mama's boy. Mm-hmm.
	And I don't mean this like it's some judgment or choice that you made, but I mean, I wrote about this in my novel many years ago, you know, like this depressing decline.
	You know, like six kids, five kids, four kids, three kids.
	Now you're the one kid, and for you, it looks like zero at the moment, right?
	Right. So she would rather burn up your future than raise her standards in the present.
	No, I do think that's a fair assessment.
	Oh, I know it's a fair assessment.
	I would say that very much is part of my inner drive to, you know, F off to the other side of the planet is I've noticed that I have lived abroad before.
	When I'm distant, things start kind of going a lot better in many ways.
	And so there's clearly some kind of subconscious whatever link there.
	Do you want to know why?
	You haven't been snapped up.
	You're an attractive guy. You're well educated.
	You're successful, right? Do you want to know why women aren't dating you?
	Sure. Because women scan the living shit out of you to look for the maternal claw.
	A woman desperately needs you to be loyal to her.
	And not your mother. Now, if she gets a sense from you, and women are incredibly good at this, it's part of the general wild psychic Ouija board ability of the female heart.
	Right. So women are scanning you, you know, yeah, wow, wow, he is attractive.
	Wow, wow, wow, blah, blah, blah, blah, right?
	And then they say, well, he is single.
	Boy, that's kind of unusual.
	I wonder why he's single. Right?
	And then something in your demeanor Something in your turn of phrase, something in your presentation, something in your approach, something in your aura, whatever it is.
	And they're like, oh, mama's boy.
	Now, do you know why they can't get involved with you then?
	They're not wanting to have to play tug-of-war or have somebody pointing attention elsewhere?
	Well, they're not lesbians.
	And because they're not lesbians, they want to marry a man, not a woman.
	woman.
	But if you're a mother's boy, then you are going to be more dominated by a woman than your own masculinity, and they want a man.
	Right.
	And again, I say this with all sympathy, and it's not like some fault of yours, right?
	This is just the way Sure. A woman is like, okay, well, if there's a conflict between his mother and me, he's going to choose his mother, right?
	Or rather, his mother is going to run him, and I'm going to be in this weird relationship with a guy who's supposed to be a guy, but it's a sock puppet for his mom.
	Okay, fair. And so women don't want to have anything to do with that.
	Mm-hmm. You can understand why, right?
	Sure. No, that makes sense.
	I mean, if you met a daddy's girl, right?
	If you met a girl who had a father like your dad and he dominated her completely, what would you think?
	Would you be like, yeah, let's get married.
	I can't wait to have someone like my dad back in my life.
	Well, I already have in a sense, but yeah, we saw how that turned out.
	So yeah, you're right now. Oh, you mean with the performance girl from Southern California?
	Exactly. Yeah, you should have a dad like your dad.
	Okay, so you understand, right?
	Yeah, and so, I mean, I was obviously more naive then, but I would turn and run.
	In fact, I have turned and run for girls I've talked to that showed those exact signs since then.
	Sometimes you just have to be burnt once to see it.
	Yeah, see, we want to date the people themselves.
	Like, we want to date Sally, right?
	We want to date Sally, not Sally as long as her dad doesn't disagree with anything.
	Right. Sally, until the parental alter ego is activated.
	And this is particularly true for the cross-gender parent.
	Right? Because you've heard me do the role plays with people and they play their moms or whatever, right?
	So if you sense that there's a very strong male alter ego in Sally...
	If it comes out in the relationship quite a bit, it's going to be really tough to stay attracted to her because you're not gay.
	Sure. Right? So you want Sally the female, not Sally the male.
	If that makes sense.
	Oh, no. I follow. Sorry.
	Silence didn't necessarily mean I wasn't following.
	No, no. No sweat. No sweat.
	So... I don't think that you can offer enough independent masculinity for a woman to stay attracted to you.
	Because a man who's, in a sense, being dragged around by the apron strings of his mother is not something that a woman can, I think, feel comfortable with and trust, if that makes sense.
	I follow, yeah. And like I said, while maybe I haven't come to terms with all of it and whatever, this definitely is what is, at least partially, what has put the fire under my feet to get to a completely different frame of mind, different part of the world, that sort of thing.
	Well, sure. And if you don't understand these patterns, then you will gain some relief from this.
	Sure. But it won't solve the problem.
	And that's, I guess, why you're calling, right?
	Yep. No, I mean, I wouldn't be calling if I wasn't hoping to somehow, you know, push the needle forward.
	Now, I find myself mildly annoyed, which doesn't mean you're being annoying.
	I'm just telling you sort of my experience.
	Because it feels like we're discussing a fucking grocery list here, not your life.
	And I feel more passionate about your life than you are.
	Because I'm getting very much, yeah, uh-huh, yeah, yeah, no, well, you know, right?
	It's very surface level.
	Now, you say you've got a temper, right?
	I don't want to keep provoking you.
	But I'd like to see this imaginary temper of yours.
	Because you understand that you've got 15 years of being kind of screwed over here by your father and your mother.
	And that's just since you were...
	In your teens, right? And your mother being perfectly content with you having no life.
	No romantic life, no particular future, no purpose for living over time.
	Totally fine with that. No issues with that at all.
	And I guess I'm just a little curious where this famous temper is.
	You know, you smashed a lamp when your mom said something mean, right?
	I'm pointing out how you've been kind of pillaged, exploited, and it's very much like...
	And again, I'm not trying to insult you or anything.
	I'm just sort of pointing out that I can't be more...
	I can't be more passionate about your life than you can.
	I mean, I can be, but it would be pointless, right?
	Oh, yeah, and you're absolutely right that...
	That's something other people have noticed about me, too.
	I can only ascribe that this is not me in any way discounting what you're saying or in any way disagreeing with you, but I can only say that very much I just kind of embodied the take a very kind of neutral emotional tone when talking to people all the time sort of thing to the point where people sometimes interpret it as coming across aloof when I don't internally think of myself as being aloof, and that's Some disconnect, and that very well could be...
	I'm sure it very much is related to something about what we're discussing now.
	As far as the temper, it very much is the sort of thing, like I described, where I'm pretty mellow, pretty...
	I don't know if Zen's quite the right word, but certainly don't emote largely until a few little cases like that that just cause a boil over, and that's kind of where...
	You've got something that's been compacted, that powder keg that comes over the edge of that.
	My God, you're an intellectual through and through.
	Dear Lord. I mean, listen, you're obviously a very smart guy.
	Your verbal skills are off the charts.
	I get all of that. But here's the thing, man.
	If you understand all this about yourself, where's the passion?
	Like, you're giving me these big explanations about why this and maybe I come across as aloof and some people have said this, but it's because of this and it doesn't happen because of that.
	It's like, okay, well, if you know all that shit, why are you so passionless about your own life?
	If you know this, right?
	If you know... I think it's just a bunch of words, to be honest.
	And I'm not saying this in any negative or hostile way.
	Honestly, I think it's just a bunch of words.
	I'll know when you feel passionate about your life, not when you give me some abstract explanation that clearly hasn't helped you very much, but when you actually get passionate about your life.
	Sure. I guess what I'm curious is, and I'm not throwing this back at you, I'm just kind of genuinely curious, how would that manifest itself in kind of a more healthy way, would you envision?
	You mean how would emotions manifest themselves?
	Is it more like the verbal tone?
	Okay, tell me, what do you feel at the moment?
	Very much what I was describing.
	I think it is a little bit like the defense mechanism as you described of shutting down Negative emotions into neutrality.
	That's a whole bunch of bullshit explanation.
	I asked you what you feel, and you're like, well, I got these defenses to shutting down my emotions.
	So you're telling me what you're not feeling.
	I'm asking you, what do you feel?
	Not what's your explanation as to why your feelings may be deficient in some abstract philosophical or psychological sense, which is completely disconnected, by the way, and disconnecting from me.
	My question is, what do you feel at the moment?
	A mild, like very mild sense of kind of.
	Maybe despair is not quite the right word, but a little bit of a depression.
	But just kind of very slight.
	Okay. Anything else? Nothing really stands out.
	If I were to dig, I could probably find a little bit of some kind of resentment at something.
	Probably me at the moment, but that's totally fine.
	So tell me a little bit about the depression.
	Was it from the beginning of the call?
	Did it come up more recently? When did it start to arise?
	It probably started, you know, midway through.
	Probably is not an answer.
	Probably is a statement that you don't have to stand behind.
	Okay, so if you give me probably, I'll just say that is not an answer.
	Now, if you don't know, When the feeling started, you can say I don't know, but probably is nothing that can be worked with, if that makes sense.
	If I could pinpoint it, it would be when we started identifying that I was taking evasive verbal You know, cues, and I agreed with that within myself, and I saw, yes, I was dodging things, and that it wasn't an intentional thing, And part of it made me a little disappointed in myself that I was doing that because sometimes I like to think that I can speak forward.
	Sorry, are you still there?
	I'm sorry, I didn't get the end of that sentence.
	It sounded like you cut off, so if you could just repeat it.
	Oh, yeah, just basically...
	That, I guess, I kind of, when you pointed out that I was indeed kind of being evasive in my language, I agreed with that internally, and I guess it caused a little bit of disappointment in myself that I wasn't speaking as off the cuff and, you know, straight and narrow as I had hoped to from the get-go.
	Yeah, I mean, my actual comment was not that you were being evasive, but that you were being aggressive when you sort of said that I was pushing some kind of agenda or something like that, which would be a...
	An aggressive thing to say.
	And there's nothing wrong with being aggressive at all, right?
	And if I was pushing some kind of agenda, it'd be perfectly fine to point that out.
	But putting it out in a sort of oblique manner is passive-aggressive, right?
	Sure. And so you're not overweight, right?
	But do you know the people who lose weight?
	The people who lose weight just can't fucking stand being fat anymore.
	They're so horrified and disgusted by it, they just cannot stand being fat anymore.
	Right? Sure.
	No, I follow.
	So what I listen for is people who are desperate to change.
	change.
	Do you think you sound desperate to change or do you sound resigned?
	I, well, I'm certainly not coming.
	I'm not being passionate.
	So that would imply resigned.
	Yeah, so what is the opposite of passion for you, or the opposite of this kind of emotional connection?
	What is the opposite of the enthusiasm that emotions represent?
	I mean, just this sort of neutrality.
	lacking of the force to cause the change.
	Wait, is that a question?
	I'm not sure if you're asking or saying...
	That might have been as much of a question as it was a statement.
	Okay, so this is why your intellectualism is a great deal.
	It's a great strength for you, and I'm not trying to criticize it at all.
	I mean, Lord knows I've got an intellectual streak myself, so I'm not trying to say in any negative sense that you are an intellectual in this way.
	Okay, do you know what the opposite of passion is?
	Death. Okay.
	It's death.
	It's death.
	To be passionless is about as close to the grave as you can be.
	And in fact, it's worse than death in a way, because at least when you're dead, you don't have the expectation or, in a sense, the responsibility to be passionate about something.
	Right. Now, so it's not just death in the spiritual sense or the emotional sense, I suppose, but it's death in the physical sense.
	Because if you go and get passionate, you won't be attractive.
	If you can't be attractive, you can't have kids.
	Right. So it is death.
	I guess that's my question.
	Why are you choosing death?
	What is so horrible about passion that you'd rather sail off to a genetic grave leaving no footprint of yourself on the world?
	What is so terrible about passion that you choose death?
	And not just death like you go out and drive a motorcycle into a brick wall.
	But death, like you get to die for the next 50 years.
	Because you're in your late 20s, early 30s, you've got 50 years to go.
	It's a half century of not really caring about life, of not really having any passion.
	That's a prison sentence that's just about worse than anything I could ever imagine.
	So what is your relationship to passion?
	That you choose this solitary confinement, almost literally, right?
	Very alone, right? Why would you choose this solitary confinement over passion?
	why is this preferable to feeling the only speculation I would have would be and it gets back to I think it's not the root cause it's It's more of the surface symptom, as you mentioned about something else.
	But just kind of...
	I guess just never really...
	Having developed many passionate things because...
	I guess in many ways conditioned to not be passionate about anything because being passionate about something was a target that could be bullied on.
	And I'm not saying that's an excuse.
	I'm saying I think I've let that carry on into my adulthood.
	Okay, give me an example when you were a kid, please, of when you were passionate and got attacked for it.
	I was really into karate when I was a little kid.
	Got up to, I want to say, I was in Taekwondo.
	I don't remember what dealt. Fairly high up.
	I wasn't the best. I was just kind of okay.
	I started going to competitions and my dad...
	I remember once, I think I got like 5th place out of 10, so hardly stellar, but it really wasn't meant to be a competition in my mind.
	It was just for fun. And my dad saying, yeah, whatever.
	He didn't even attend the thing, and you didn't win, so what do I care?
	And then I just remember just losing interest in it and stopped going probably when I was about 10.
	That would be just an example.
	I wouldn't say, I don't know if that's a passion, but maybe as a kid it was a passion, but...
	That's just a very early one I can remember.
	But then just the things about, you know, being passionate about trying to succeed in school.
	And then I didn't, I guess I didn't let it stop me, but just no, it was no positive or no, like, praise when there was success.
	However, in the slightest bit of failure, you know, say with looking like maybe I would get a B in a class or something, it's like, oh, well, see, I knew it.
	I knew it. You couldn't keep it up.
	Okay, so that answers a question which I appreciate and raises another question, which you will appreciate, although probably not right now.
	Sure. You have as the dominoes, right, you have as your dominoes that your father didn't show interest in your stuff, so you gave up showing interest in it, right?
	That seems to be the case in a lot of places, yes.
	Why is that causal?
	See, you have these dominoes, right?
	Well, my father did this, and therefore I'm like that.
	That's not true, though. I mean, there's this old story, right?
	The old story of the twins, right?
	The twins who grew up, their father was an alcoholic, right?
	And one of them became a teetotaler.
	He wouldn't drink at all, right? Because he said, oh my God, I saw my dad, and what that does.
	And, you know, to hell with that, right?
	Like, I'm not touching alcohol, right?
	Now, the other twin said, oh, yeah, I became an alcoholic because my father was an alcoholic and it's genetic, right?
	And you said this earlier.
	You said, man, I have a prone to genetic addiction, so I don't touch anything, right?
	Except you drink a bit too much, right?
	Yeah. Right. So you are ascribing causality of your personality to your environment.
	Why? That gives you no choice.
	No power. No possibility for change because the past is irrevocable.
	No time machines, no alternate paths, no quantum leaps, no doorway to another dimension where something is different, right?
	So if the past is just written on you and you're just like, hey man, it's like when I write on a book.
	If I write on my notebook and I come back 10 years later, the words are still there.
	Nothing's changed because the notebook is a passive thing that I write on.
	And if you're just like a passive thing, That history writes on, why would you choose that?
	Why wouldn't you sit there and say, oh my god, I know how painful it is when people don't care about what I care about.
	I know how painful that is, so I'm never going to do that.
	Oh, sorry.
	No, I absolutely agree with you.
	It's a betrayal to myself that I shouldn't be doing to myself.
	That it's not on him, it's on me.
	And obviously I have the ability to break the mold of what dominoes he wanted to lay out or subconsciously wanted to lay out, whatever, in some regards.
	But others, I'm letting them fall the way that they were placed.
	And so clearly that doesn't mean I have no ability to...
	Yeah. You are afraid, not of your father's disapproval, But of your abdication of free will.
	Right. In other words, you've taken the shit that happened to you as a child, which I hugely sympathized with and was terrible.
	Terrible stuff. And you've said, well, you know what?
	That gives me great fucking excuses.
	And I'll tell you exactly why I'm pursuing this very focused line of questioning.
	It's from something you said right at the beginning.
	What did you say when your mother said, I just wish I could rely on you?
	What was your impulse?
	What did you think? What did you want to do?
	Something to the effect of, do you just wish I was dead?
	And then the kind of the dark fantasy about kind of living it out, though, you know, obviously no attempt.
	Now, do you understand?
	Do you understand that this is not a fantasy at all?
	That you are kind of living like you're not alive.
	Right. No, see, you don't just get to say right.
	I mean, you can if you want. Come on, that's an MOAB, right?
	On your life. And you just give me, yeah, interesting, huh?
	Okay, yeah, I think I see where you're coming from.
	That's interesting, right?
	And I'm trying to shake you out of the grave here.
	Your father gave himself...
	What you inherited from your father is excuses.
	That's what you don't see.
	That's what you inherited from your father is excuses.
	Because you say, well, I can't be enthusiastic because my father would attack me for my enthusiasm.
	Okay, let's say that that's true.
	It seems true at the time.
	If you know that, why haven't you changed it?
	But no, what you do is you say, well, I'm like this because of my father, and therefore I don't have to change.
	I don't have to confront it.
	I don't have to alter it. And the funny thing is you say of all your friends, you know, I'm the only self-critical one.
	Really? I would say that self-criticism is something that remains rather abstract in your life.
	Oh, I wouldn't say that I'm the only self-critical one.
	I'd say I'm the one that's more interested in abstract concepts.
	No, you did say that you were the only real self-critical one among your friends.
	Okay, then I misspoke.
	I was wrong then. That's fine.
	I'm not going to quibble about what was said half an hour ago.
	But here's the thing, man.
	I can tell you also why you haven't become a father yet.
	What are you doing in the face of my enthusiasm for the conversation?
	I guess I'm detaching a bit.
	I mean, I'm sure I come across as that.
	You are attempting to crush my enthusiasm.
	You are attempting to squelch my enthusiasm.
	I am very enthusiastic for this conversation.
	I'm very enthusiastic for your future.
	I'm very enthusiastic for you to become a father and a husband.
	And you are trying to piss all over my enthusiasm by giving me dead voice responses.
	And I say this not as a criticism.
	I'm not trying to put you down in any way, shape, or form at all, just so you understand that.
	I'm identifying this. Yeah, I do recognize exactly what you're saying.
	Obviously, it's not a conscious thing.
	No, no, of course. Yeah, listen.
	You're trying to stay reasonable and focused and listen attentively, right?
	I mean, to your conscious mind, right?
	But you understand... For me, this conversation is Taekwondo.
	And you are your dad saying, yeah, okay.
	So what? Interesting, but who cares?
	Now, I'm an adult, so it's not a huge thing for me.
	But here's the problem, man.
	Do you know how enthusiastic children are?
	Oh, sure. Yeah.
	And you can't exactly come back at them with blandness because they'll just view that as being cold.
	But you will. Right.
	that you will.
	You will.
	And you give yourself...
	Big convoluted intellectual explanations as to why you're doing that, or maybe you won't.
	But you see, this is the price.
	The price of you not having free will is you're going to replicate your father's behavior to some degree or another.
	Now, listen, obviously, I'm not saying you're your father, right?
	You're not insulting me.
	You're just some incompetent hack on the internet and all that, right?
	But you are squelching enthusiasm in me because it is a threat to you.
	Now, the free will response to your father squelching enthusiasm in you as a child is to say, well, Jesus, if he's squelching enthusiasm, enthusiasm must be the greatest thing ever because he's one of the worst dads on the planet.
	So whatever...
	I'll give you an example, right?
	My mother, did she like rational empirical philosophy?
	No. Well, my guess would be absolutely not.
	Oh, she hated it.
	She hated it.
	She hated it.
	So I could sit there and say, well, you know, my crazy mother doesn't like rational empirical philosophy, so I guess I won't pursue it.
	Because she hates it.
	Or I could say, I found sunlight for the vampire, right?
	I found the holy cross that keeps these undead at bay, right?
	Right. So definitely.
	If my mother is evil, as she was, then what she hates must be good.
	Or at least probably, right?
	Right. If you're raised in a criminal family, do they like the cops?
	No. If you're raised by counterfeiters, do they like excellent counterfeit detection machines?
	They do not. So that's my question.
	If you didn't like your father and you knew that as a child, why would you side with him against yourself Yeah, you're absolutely right.
	And it is strange that there are definitely aspects of my life where people would not describe me as unenthusiastic at all.
	Now, those are less personal sort of things.
	We're talking about... Or even sort of philosophical things or things to do with, certainly, cryptocurrencies, things like that.
	I mean, I could talk people's ears off about that and often have, but obviously...
	Does that get you a lot of dates?
	No. Right.
	You're calling me for help with crypto?
	No. It wouldn't get me dates with the kind of women that I would want to anyway.
	They'd be chasing something other than what's within.
	It would, though, but anyway...
	But, no, you're...
	You're right when it does come to, and this is something that's happened to me when I've talked to therapists in the past too, is they do kind of note that I do seem very almost aloof, almost uninterested.
	It's not, and it's not that I, you know, when I do give actionable advice that I never take it or anything like that.
	It's just that I don't emote how they would expect, and certainly that is something that has carried over.
	Oh my God, man.
	You are tough not to crack. You are tough not to crack.
	You don't emote how they expect?
	When talking about, you know, what's going on in my life and things like that.
	Oh, my God. You don't emote how they expect?
	I guess with a passion that they would expect.
	No, you don't emote. Period.
	Not that last bit, that's your dad.
	Okay. Well, they have these expectations about how I'm going to emote.
	I guess I don't satisfy their expectations, so it's mostly them.
	Uh-huh. And you can't be loved if you're not accessible.
	And love is a feeling.
	Love is a passion. And you can't love or be loved if you can't feel or won't express those feelings or won't connect to those feelings.
	And what's at the root of this lack of feelings is your anger.
	Just so you know. That is what I would expect, yeah.
	So whenever you say to me, like, I'll drop you some important thing, right?
	And you'll say to me, mm-hmm.
	Do you know what you're saying?
	Fuck you.
	You see if you can catch me, man.
	You see if you can catch me.
	You see if you can make me feel a goddamn thing.
	I'm going to keep myself pure.
	I'm going to keep myself aloof.
	I am not going to surrender. I am not going to give you one fucking inch.
	I'm not going to give you any part of myself until you get exhausted and you wander off and I'm fine again.
	And you can do that. It's a free world, right?
	At least in our hearts. You can do all of that.
	And you will go the next 50 years and be alone.
	How do people know that you care?
	If you care.
	Yeah.
	Is that a returnal question, or are you wanting me to answer it?
	If you want to answer it, I'm happy to hear.
	Well, I'd say obviously it's through showing that you care, displaying it, and that does involve emoting.
	It can't just be physical gestures.
	Right. I'm absolutely certain, well certainly not all the cases, there definitely are cases I can point to of coming across as too aloof and that being something that probably caused women to lose interest, things like that, or just other people.
	See, your issue is that you couldn't trust your mother, you couldn't trust your father, they betrayed you, right?
	Yep.
	Do you know why people need you to care?
	Go ahead.
	I don't quite know how to vocalize what I'm thinking.
	Well, good. I'm glad you didn't actually intellectualize it anyway.
	So people need you to care so you can be trusted.
	Right. And sorry, I don't mean to keep saying right, but I understand what you're saying.
	If you can't be passionate, you can't be trusted.
	Now, do you think your parents...
	We're emotional people.
	My father only when he drank.
	Otherwise, no to both.
	And when he was drunk, how would his emotions come out?
	What would happen? Only negative.
	Very, very, very rarely positive.
	Negative is not an emotion.
	How would his emotions come out?
	What would they be?
	Would he be angry? Would he be sentimental?
	What would he be? Woe is me, vulnerability.
	Mixed with condescending anger towards the outside world, you know, my mother and myself.
	Okay. The error that you've made, and I completely understand it, and I completely sympathize with it, and it's perfectly natural and understandable that you would make this error.
	The error that you've made is you think manipulations are emotions, and because you don't want to be manipulative, you won't allow yourself to become emotional.
	Actually... That verbalizes exactly what I think, yeah.
	Your father, and I said to him, how did his emotions come out?
	Well, manipulative self-pity and aggression towards other people and scorn and self-praise and, you know, whatever it is, feeling more superior to you and blah, blah, blah, right?
	None of those are emotions. Yeah, emotions have always been used, well, not always, but often been used manipulatively both by parents and other people.
	You know, talk about the BPD girlfriend, that's kind of the nightmare case study of You said emotions have always been used to manipulate you.
	Emotions are the opposite of manipulation.
	Now, fake emotions and the fact that you end up with a woman in the performing arts, not too shocking, I guess, right?
	But fake emotions, self-pity, this, that, and the other, right?
	Yep. Is there not real emotions?
	Is there manipulative or feigned emotions?
	Right. So feigned emotions like, you know, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, you know, sobbing about the January 6th.
	It's all just manipulative, right?
	All just manipulative.
	They're not emotions. They're not emotions at all.
	They're not genuine. They're not spontaneous.
	They don't connect. They're controlling, self-pitying bullshit.
	They're not emotions.
	They're the denial of emotion and the manipulation is the pretense of emotion in order to control other people's behavior.
	The pretense of emotion.
	And do you know how you know the emotions are pretense?
	They switch like that.
	So your mother's crying and then you disagree with her about something.
	She immediately gets angry. Right?
	Or someone's angry at you, you appease them, and they immediately give you a big hug at their anger.
	So if the emotion has no continuity, no throughput, no depth, if it just changes on a dime, you get what you want, right?
	Then they're toddlers.
	I call them BFPs, barely formed people.
	So babies do not experience genuine emotions for the most part.
	A baby cries to tell you the baby is hungry, not because the baby is having a deep emotional experience of the world.
	And then when you give the baby food, the baby stops crying because the baby has got what it wants.
	The emotions of babies...
	Our manipulations, and this is not a negative thing.
	It's really good that they can tell us when they're hungry.
	But it's when people, like babies, they don't have the ability to get what they want by saying words.
	And because they don't have the ability to get what they want by using language, they have to use fake emotions.
	And again, I'm not saying that babies are fake and manipulative in the way that adults are.
	But you know that a baby's emotion, when it's really deep and heartfelt, it can't change.
	Like, on a dime, right?
	But if the baby is hungry and you give the baby food, the baby is happy.
	So the emotion, so to speak, it's an affect, you could say, right?
	Yeah. And so when you've these BFPs, these barely formed people, they have no...
	Belief that they can get what they want through language, just like a baby.
	So what do they do?
	They manipulate, just like a baby.
	And so you were raised by toddlers at best.
	Sorry, go ahead. Oh, that's actually something I kind of, when I'm mulling over this conversation in advance, kind of things to talk about.
	One of the things I've noticed in my mom Since moving, and I do very much think it's the whole reliance on me or whatever, is she seems to be devolving into a more infantile state to the point of doing little tantrums over.
	You put the picture frame in a different wall than I wanted, that kind of stuff, when I'm just trying to be helpful or whatever.
	That's definitely put a fire under my feet to get the hell out of there fast.
	I'm even looking into...
	Probably doing like a month Airbnb in town.
	I have to be around just to be near her to get some signatures from her for some things.
	But definitely I'm seeing that more and more come out in her than it was in the past.
	But I too definitely see that throughout the lifetime.
	Particularly my father too. The whole BFP being emotionally manipulative, but not having really genuine emotions.
	Because in one conversation...
	He could be talking up how proud he is of his valedictorian son to his co-worker or something like that.
	And then 30, 40 minutes later, your co-worker's gone.
	You piece of shit. Why don't you ever do anything right?
	Not that verbatim, but that sort of sentiment.
	Right. And your dark fantasy of I'll kill myself and then you'll feel bad, that's a manipulation.
	Right. No, I... I'm sure that, especially me vocalizing the just wish I was dead or whatever I said exactly, that definitely is something that's manipulative in a sense because it's not like I was actually threatening to kill myself or anything like that.
	No, but, and look, I remember being, I don't know, six or seven years old and my mother getting insanely angry at me for not having tidied my room or something like that, right?
	And I was doing a lot of painting and a lot of art back then.
	And I actually dragged home a whole door, believe it, like there was this house that was being torn down.
	There was a whole door. I dragged the whole door home so I could paint a landscape on the door.
	And I had chalk and I was working with chalk and all that.
	And I remember saying, oh, that's it.
	My mom is going to want to talk and I'm going to say, oh, I'm sorry, I need to check that my room is tidy.
	And my mom's going to want to go somewhere and I'm going to say, oh, I can't go because I have to tidy my room.
	And I'm just going to make her pay.
	For being violent towards me, for having an untidy room.
	And I'm not going to do my painting anymore.
	And then someone's going to come over one day and they're going to say, wow, that kid had real talent as a painter.
	It's too bad he never manifested it.
	And then my mom will feel bad.
	You know, there's this scene in an old movie called The Christmas Story where...
	The kid is blind and his parents are so sorry that they did whatever it was that made him blind.
	He just dominates them through his self-pity.
	It's kind of a comedy scene and all of that.
	But we've all had that, you know, I'll withdraw my gifts and then you'll be sorry.
	And then you'll be sorry is the barely formed person thing.
	And then you'll be sorry, right? No, I definitely saw that sort of behavior in myself when I was in my late teens and early 20s as well.
	Not anywhere near as bad as my father, by any means, but definitely doing the...
	I can't really even think of any specific examples.
	is maybe kind of repressing right now a little bit, but definitely coming across as like kind of the woe is me, like you'll appreciate me when I'm gone sort of stuff to people that at best, or I mean, at best, at worst, slightly like mistreated me or slightly, you know, treat me slightly like mistreated me or slightly, you know, treat me with disrespect or whatever.
	And just letting that kind of go out of them.
	And that's obviously something I had to work on in therapy for a few years to get over with that.
	So I don't think I act like that anymore, at least to, I mean, I guess you could say that what I described that night was certainly to an extent that way, but that's not a habitual thing.
	But so, yeah, I mean, there.
	Yeah, we know that.
	I've built up from where I was.
	I mean, I guess you have to say that shows that I can change, too, is that if I can improve from there to here, then I can improve from here to somewhere else.
	Yeah, of course you can change.
	I mean, the reason I'm being kind of hard on you is because I obviously know that you can handle it and all of that, and that's what's necessary for you.
	And you need someone to stand out for what you sacrificed out of a mistake, right?
	Your parents did not believe that they could get what they want through words, right?
	So let's look at this interaction with your mom, right?
	You were supposed to load up a car, right?
	You had a couple of beers, and then you napped on the couch, right?
	Right. Right. So your mother was upset and annoyed, and now she could have just waited for you to wake up and said, hey, you know, like, you said you were going to load up the car, and you didn't load up the car.
	What's going on? I feel kind of annoyed, right?
	Now, that's the conversation you can have that's perfectly reasonable and positive and helpful in the world, right?
	That's a decent thing to be able to do, right?
	Yep, and yeah, that would have been a reasonable back and forth, and I could have said, you know, I'm waiting for the morning.
	I'll do it then, that sort of thing.
	But obviously she came to me with...
	Well, no, but then she would say, but you said you would do it, right?
	And my thing, just by the by, my thing is do it or tell me you won't.
	Right? That's just all the way back to my business days, right?
	It's like if somebody would say, I'm going to do X, right?
	Then do it or tell me you're not going to do it.
	But don't not do it and not tell me you're not going to do it.
	Because then I'm really stuck, right?
	Sure. Right? So if somebody had the document they had to prepare for me by Friday, and they'd say, I'm going to do it by Friday, I don't want to hear on Friday that they didn't do it.
	Right? So with your mother, she could have said, like, I don't know if it was going to be done, and you did say you were going to do it, and so on, right?
	But instead... She, because she doesn't believe she can, I'm sorry, you're just moving around a lot and get a lot of background noise from you.
	It really, really chews up my day afterwards when I have to clean this stuff up.
	So if you could just hold still or whatever it is you're rustling around.
	I'm actually not moving. I'm sitting still.
	Are you rubbing your mouth or face?
	I'm rubbing the back of my head.
	Okay. I hate to be annoying, but your mic's just picking up a lot and it drives me nuts trying to clean this stuff up afterwards.
	Anyway, so your mother couldn't express her frustration.
	Or her mild annoyance or whatever it is, right?
	And so she, in order to get you to change your behavior, she did not believe that she could appeal to your caring for her, right?
	Because if she said to you, you know, I mean, I thought you were going to do it.
	I wasn't sure if you were going to do it.
	I'm concerned that if I try and do it, I'm going to put my back at whatever it is, right?
	And, you know, it just kind of puts my day on hold.
	And, you know, you just kind of pass out on the couch.
	I don't know what's going on. Look, you did make a commitment and you didn't follow through on your commitment.
	It's very mildly annoying, right?
	I think you can understand that, right?
	Yeah, I understand. But, you know, not a big thing, right?
	So she didn't want you to do that again, right?
	Now, if you don't want someone to do something again, you have two choices.
	Well, three choices. Number one, you can never see them again, right?
	So, you know, you say to your girlfriend, oh, you're treating me like crap.
	She just goes to you, right? So that's number one.
	Number two... You can express your needs and preferences knowing that they care for you and will want to adjust things, right?
	Right. Or number three, you can bribe and or punish them.
	I guess nagging would fall into that category.
	Oh yeah, nagging is punishment, right?
	Okay. Now when she says to you, why can't I rely on you?
	knowing the damage that she facilitated your father inflicting on you, in fact, empowered your father to do it by giving him children and then failing to protect them, right?
	So she knew exactly where the greatest wound was in your personality, and she hit it with a hammer, right?
	Yeah, and she's done this somewhat recently, once before in another way, where...
	To bolster that point.
	And I do think it's kind of the path that her mentality seems to be going on right now in terms of becoming more childlike.
	I forget what it was that I did.
	Maybe it was just because I was drinking too much or something like that.
	And she was just associating that with my dad, which to be fair, I need to cut back on drinking.
	And I go through kind of waves sometimes.
	I don't drink at all. Sometimes I drink too much.
	I've been kind of in a too much phase lately.
	But saying, you're starting to remind me a lot of your father.
	And that one I actually pushed back on, not with any kind of temper tantrums or anything like that.
	I said, do not compare me negatively to my father ever again.
	And I'm sorry I didn't know.
	I said, no, you knew exactly what you're doing.
	Do not do that again. That is very disrespectful to me and unfair.
	I'm not treating you like he treated either of us.
	And that one actually shut that one down.
	I never heard from that one again.
	Well, okay, but hang on.
	See... But you're doing a similar thing.
	And I'm not saying you shouldn't stand up for yourself if people say outrageous things or anything.
	I'm not saying that. What I am saying, though, is that you gave her negative language, right?
	It's disrespectful. It's this.
	As opposed to, that really hurt me and terrified me.
	Both that you would do it and that it might be true.
	Because obviously, if something's not true at all, then it's not going to hurt you, right?
	If somebody says to me, your pronunciation of Japanese is atrocious, I'm like, well, I guess I'll find a way to live with it, because I don't speak Japanese.
	She certainly knows that not wanting to be a reflection of my father is a big concern of mine that has been the case for a while, and I've said this explicitly.
	No, I get all of that, but what you did was you said to her that you gave her a lot of negative language, a lot of punishing language, in order to have her not do it again.
	Now, people of self-respect don't want to be trained like fucking puppies, right?
	We don't want to be around people who just use shaming language.
	Because it's a...
	Yeah, I guess I didn't see it that way, but you are correct.
	No criticism. Again, I'm not trying to make you feel bad or anything like that.
	What I'm saying, though, is that people really, really don't want to be around that kind of shaming language.
	Because it's not being treated like a human being.
	It's not being treated like you...
	How else to put it?
	It's not being treated like, well, look, of course I don't want to hurt you.
	Like I said something that was really hurtful to you, of course I don't want to hurt you.
	And so I have to figure out why I use this big weapon on you and I have to figure out...
	That's a mature way of solving or trying to deal with a problem as opposed to How come I can never rely on you?
	Well, you're being disrespectful to me.
	These are just taking giant language clubs at each other in an attempt to change behavior.
	That's exactly what babies do.
	Babies will be like, I'm going to cry in a really annoying fashion until I get what I want.
	Because I don't have words.
	I'm not an adult. I have no language for it.
	Because I have no language for it, But I desperately want you to change your behavior.
	I'll just punish you. Now, babies do it with crying or screaming.
	And your mom does it with, why can't I rely on you?
	And you do it with that disrespect like you're just punching to try and train the other person to change behavior based upon hurting them.
	Right. And then also me, you know, breaking the lap, that's also acting like that as well, because I'm creating a negative, you know, I've broken something of hers, it wasn't anything particularly valuable, and it just made a mess that I swept up.
	But, I mean, that's definitely, that is definitely in line with exactly what you're describing.
	Yeah, if I can't get my way, I will escalate until you obey.
	And then people wonder where the state comes from, the government, right?
	Right. Now, I mean, the fact that you smashed a lamp, a source of light, we're going to stay in the dark, Mom.
	You and I are going to stay in the dark.
	How do you get what you want in a relationship without punishing or rewarding the other person?
	I was reading this story in the newspaper the other day about some, I don't even know, I don't have any freaking clue who these celebrities are these days, which is great.
	But it was some woman, she got three kids, toddlers, and she basically, I guess this provoked a bit of a debate online, but she was like, she said to her husband, hey, if you put the kids to bed, I'll have sex with you.
	Right. The classic, you know, rewarding with sex or withholding sex dichotomy of a toxic relationship.
	Right. And your father attempted to control and bully you by withholding, not obviously sex, but withholding approval.
	That sounds about right, yep.
	So, it's the big question.
	How do you get what you want in a relationship without...
	Rewarding or punishing?
	Now, if you don't have an answer to that, you can't have a functional relationship.
	Sorry, go ahead. I guess the only way is reasoning through it in an open and honest way that addresses concerns of both parties.
	That's me intellectualizing it, I understand.
	You're not wrong, but the more simple way is just through love, right?
	So when you love someone, you don't want to hurt them.
	So if you love someone, you don't want to punish them.
	Because that's to hurt them.
	Love and punishment are opposites.
	And so is love and reward.
	Because when you reward someone, you're saying, you don't love me.
	Well, that's the dog treat mentality.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course, right?
	So if this woman is, like, this woman should say, listen, I'm really desperate to get to bed early, and I would really hugely appreciate if you could put the kids down.
	I'm kind of frazzled. I'm really, I'm just, I'm just done today, whatever.
	It's like, okay, I love you, and I will be happy to, to, to get that, right?
	I'd be happy to, listen, love to, you know, I want you to be happy, um, It's obviously a completely reasonable thing that you're asking, so yes.
	But the moment she says, I will bribe you with sex, she's saying, you don't love me enough to do it without a reward.
	Rewarding people is an act of low self-esteem.
	It's an act of self-content.
	because you're not relying on them loving you and wanting you to be happy.
	Now, you don't, you grew up in a family with punishments, and really the only rewards were a withdrawal of punishment for a short amount of time.
	Thank you.
	Only rewards I ever got that were any kind of actual positive were sometimes just, oh, congratulations on straight A's.
	Here's 100 bucks. But that was just kind of a surface-level thing.
	Right. Right.
	And that is a reward...
	For complying with your parents' preferences, not for something that you necessarily valued intrinsically.
	Good doggy, here's a treat, right?
	No, that did definitely carry through with me to college because I didn't Though I do find this subject interesting to an extent.
	I never had any intention of working in the biochem field, but I studied at the pressure of my father, who at the time was really pushing the whole biochem-biotech bubble at the time that really popped when I was in school.
	So great advice, Dad.
	But I had to circle around to what I actually wanted to study in grad school, so really delayed on that.
	And that was following the, exactly as you say, the least disapproval and not really much approval.
	I guess he occasionally said, you know, hey, congrats on being at a good school and studying real things and stuff like that.
	A little bit backhanded, mind you, because it's more of like at least you do something right.
	Right.
	And so free will is when you no longer process your behavior based upon punishment and reward.
	Thank you.
	Thank you.
	Yep, and I would agree that I did not – you could certainly argue that I'm very much under the thumb of some things right now, but I did not let myself have much conception of free will until after my dad died.
	I very much let myself too much be led by him and his approval.
	And even though I was never getting it, climbing the metaphoric Everest, as I said in my email, and not really making time for myself or really conceptualizing what I wanted to do or what my interests were.
	Right.
	And we can see this in society, right?
	So society, you know, obviously, there's a lot of people who want others to take the vaccine, right?
	There's a modern COVID thing, right?
	Okay.
	Well, so I mean, so how do you well now it's punishment and reward, right?
	So in Alberta they gave you $100 and now you can't do X, Y, or Z. We're just going to punish you and reward you to get you to do what we want as opposed to...
	Genuine free speech, open data, debates, you know, let's get this all hashed out because the people who are saying it's dangerous and the people who are saying it's safe, they're not even talking to each other and there's not a lot of access to the source data and debates are not allowed.
	So, I mean, look, this is a social problem as a whole.
	This is not like something that you have or I have or anything.
	This is like a social problem we have as a whole.
	But for yourself...
	If you associate emotions with punishments, contempt as a punishment, disgust or I don't know what exactly your...
	It is almost like contempt.
	Like your mother saying to you, why can't I rely on you?
	Or what was it you say exactly?
	I think that was more or less it.
	Like I wish you could be relied on or I wish I could rely on you or something like that.
	Right. Right. Now, of course, she's not talking to you.
	She's talking to her own parents.
	She's talking to herself with regards to who she chose to get married to.
	Her own parents were in themselves not particularly great people.
	So I understand the pathway that led from her, particularly her mother, to her husband.
	And then that obviously came to me.
	And that's actually something I've talked to my mom about a little bit before, just Kind of like, why is the cycle continuing?
	But she's just not receptive to it.
	So it's something I just can't really get through.
	Well, yeah. So the problem is, of course, that when you enter into the manipulation world, there's almost no exit.
	Yep. Because you've corrupted your emotions.
	You've corrupted your emotions.
	Like, you know how a country will say, loyalty to virtue is loyalty to the government.
	Loyalty to virtue is loyalty to the government, right?
	Now, that's corrupting.
	Loyalty to virtue to turn it into enslavement to the state, right?
	And if you go down the road where you use your emotions to get what you want by rewarding and punishing other people, Well, with regards to women, you'll always end up, unless she's actually your girlfriend or wife, you'll always end up at the ugly side of the equation because obviously your mother is not going to be able to reward you with sex or romance or anything like that.
	So all she can do is punish you with disapproval, right?
	Yep, pretty much. And so once you go down that road, and my guess is that your mother, for reasons we can probably have some sympathy with regards to her childhood, but your mother...
	Never evolved past, this is why I call them barely formed people, she never evolved past the toddler phase of cry and scream, inflict negative stimuli on people until they give you what you want and then reward them with some happiness.
	Like, so what do kids do? Babies, right?
	They'll cry until you give them what they want and then they'll giggle and burble and they'll smile at you and they'll give you the positive stuff, right?
	Because they're training you.
	And again, perfectly reasonable for toddlers, not so much when you're 60, but perfectly reasonable for toddlers, right?
	No, and very much in line with, you know, why she's got married and why she had a kid.
	That very much sounds like relieving the negative.
	It's like, well, you did something bad, now I'm going to hit you back.
	And it's in the form of a punishment, which then carries forward to resentment towards that punishment, be it the marriage or the child.
	Right, right.
	At least that's... Well, and she's like, I'm going to nag you until you give me a child, right?
	Yep. Nag you, make you feel bad about yourself.
	Okay, so the problem is that I think you've allowed your parents to own the word emotion.
	And you view their emotions as distinct from toddler manipulation.
	Emotions are not for babies.
	Emotions are not really for toddlers.
	Emotions are For older kids and older people, where you have actually the capacity.
	Because emotions do require some level of freedom, right?
	I'll give you a silly example, right?
	So let's say you're a drug addict and you're over at some drug dealer's house and he's got lots of drugs, but you have no money.
	And you're desperate for the drug.
	Well, everything you do is going to be not authentic and genuine and natural.
	It's going to be with one goal and one goal only.
	To what? Right, to get the dopamine hit the drug.
	Right, so if he makes a joke, you're going to laugh.
	And it's the same thing with guys trying to pick up girls or whatever.
	The goal is to get the girl in the bed.
	It's not to be authentic or genuine or real in any way, shape or form.
	I've definitely seen that coming across in some of my worst friends at the time, finger quote friends, and some of the worst girls that I've gone on dates with, I guess.
	I've been able to pick it up in people at times, but maybe it's just I'm not picking up whatever.
	The performer that you said very clearly, her goal was to get you to like her, to be super charming, super positive, super enthusiastic, and then once you like her, to reject you, right?
	Right. To reel you in and then carve you up, right?
	So none of that is genuine, right?
	Yeah, no, absolutely not.
	So here's my case, right?
	I'll sort of end here, but here's my case, right?
	Your emotions, your genuine emotions are the only things that can protect you.
	Now, the fact that pretend emotions were used to harm you is really important.
	But pretend emotions are the opposite of real emotions.
	Real emotions connect you to people.
	Real emotions generate safety in you because they only will bring people in your life and keep people in your life who also have access to genuine emotions.
	Yeah.
	Like when you were doing your taekwondo every now and then, you'd get a foot to the head, right?
	But it wasn't somebody trying to kick you in the head.
	It was just an accident, right?
	So you shake hands and you move on, right?
	So genuine emotions – Right now, your absence of emotionality is putting you at enormous risk.
	And this risk is only going to increase as you get into your 30s.
	Why? Because you are an attractive, well-educated, successful man.
	And there's going to be predatory women out of their first divorce, maybe single moms, whoever, who are going to want to just get their probisci into your Bitcoin address, right?
	Sure. So right now, your lack of genuine emotion...
	Which you think is keeping you safe and keeping other people safe around you because, man, when my parents were around, they just blasted me with their emotions and their passions were outrageous and their emotionality was incredibly dangerous and toxic.
	So I'm going to spark it up, man.
	I'm going to hold in all these emotions.
	I'm not going to be because emotions are toxic.
	It's like, no, no, no. That's the dangerous thought.
	Genuine emotions are incredibly protective because the people who are manipulative We'll run from genuine emotions.
	We'll run from genuine emotions.
	They will stay away from you if you are genuinely emotional.
	And even that term, emotional, we think of it as some crying woman or some toddler who's having a tantrum because he can't have a candy bar or something like that, right?
	It's become colloquially synonymous with hysterical.
	Yeah, yeah, manipulative and all.
	But your emotions, your genuine emotions, Because they are genuine.
	Good money drives out bad.
	Bad money drives out good.
	Genuine emotions drive out manipulations and manipulations drive out genuine emotions.
	So you're not dating because you're unprotected.
	Because you associate feelings with manipulation, which means through desire, through love, through lust, all of these emotions.
	You feel that you're going to be drawn into a world where everything's going to be manipulative, which is what happened with your BPDs in California girlfriend, right?
	I think that's absolutely right, considering that I'm kind of on the back of just being kind of used a couple times right before my last real date was in February of 2020.
	And then coronavirus hit.
	That also kind of wasn't a bit of an excuse because everything was locked down and all that.
	But that just caused me to detach because it's kind of like I'm tired of these people that I'm trying to get attached to, and then somehow they can act all very interested and caring and all that, and then they get whatever they want.
	Usually it was just a one-night stand, and then just, see ya.
	And it's kind of like, well, if that's the ropes, then I just kind of don't want to play the game.
	Right, right.
	Whereas if you have genuine emotions, if you have genuine connection, you will not get entangled with manipulative people because they avoid you like the plague.
	Like if you're really, really good at knowing what a counterfeit dollar bill is and the counterfeit guys know this about you, they'll never hand you one.
	What is it, if I may ask a question, what is it that kind of manifests when a person is, as you say, genuine emotions, that is so off-putting to the fake people?
	What are they reading in that is the kryptonite to them?
	Well, the kryptonite to them...
	Now, the kryptonite to them is...
	Because they're barely formed people, but they think that they're genuine human beings.
	If you point out the shallow manipulative aspect to their emotionality, it terrifies them.
	So you mean if you outright point it out?
	No, no. It doesn't have to be anything you say.
	Okay. It's the way you look at them.
	It's the pause. Somebody tries to charm you.
	And you just don't respond.
	Because it's a manipulation, right?
	So if they try to manipulate you and you don't respond, manipulation, understand, manipulation comes out of a deep-seated belief in sheer fucking helplessness.
	Just like babies.
	Babies are helpless to get their own food.
	Manipulation emerges out of a genuine sense of helplessness, but it's designed to cover up that helplessness.
	Look, your mother was helpless to get a quality man.
	She's helpless to get quality friends.
	She's helpless to keep her son around.
	She's helpless. Yep.
	Now, that's how manipulation plays out in the long run, right?
	And she's definitely a mark.
	When my dad died, leaving money behind, I definitely had to get involved quickly because she was the kind that would buy magic beans.
	To a smooth-talking salesman.
	Thankfully, I was able to just get in a Money Magic account, just let them deal with it.
	So, because manipulation arises from such a deep-seated sense of helplessness, if manipulation doesn't work, they run because it reminds them of what the manipulation is for, which is to cover up their helplessness.
	So when manipulation doesn't work, They're feeling helpless.
	They get close to that sense of helplessness, which is the cause of their manipulation and the basic agony of their existence.
	People who have a genuine capacity to get what they want aren't enraged when people look at them skeptically or it's too much or whatever.
	But the reason why you're safe if you're genuine in your emotions is It's that you can't be manipulated, and manipulators never want to fail.
	Because manipulation comes from failure to begin with, which is the failure to believe that you can get what you want.
	This is probably a perfect example that I can think of a time when being propositioned by a girl and just saying, no, I don't really want to go for that.
	Never talk to me again. That's probably a case of that.
	You know, she's doing the manipulating.
	Well, she could have just been horny, right?
	Yeah, fair enough. I mean, she obviously doesn't...
	Rejection is not the same as...
	But if she wants...
	Let's say that she wants to make her boyfriend jealous, right?
	Here's a perfect example, right?
	So you're in a bar back when you could go to bars.
	You're in a bar and there's some girl she wants to make her boyfriend jealous, right?
	Now, if a girl wants to make her boyfriend jealous, will she ask a guy who will reject her?
	Or will she approach a guy who will reject her?
	I would think that that would not be, yeah.
	That would be the last thing she wants to do.
	Because she can only make her boyfriend jealous if guys want to, if guys respond to her positively.
	If she wants to make her boyfriend jealous, she goes up to some guy in a bar, he laughs at her and turns away, her boyfriend is going to be like, yeah, good job making me jealous, right?
	So if she's approaching you because she wants to make her boyfriend jealous, she will very much figure out ahead of time whether you will look away from her or not.
	And she will only approach the guys who will respond positively so that she can make her boyfriend jealous.
	Does that make sense? Yeah, that makes sense.
	I mean, I'm not really playing out the scenario in my head, but maybe it's just I've not really seen that too much.
	You understand, though, that she can only make her boyfriend jealous if she's not rejected by the man she approaches, right?
	No, absolutely, yeah. So she has to make sure...
	So she's not going to approach some six-foot-tall guy with a supermodel on his arm, right?
	Because he will reject her.
	I get what you're saying.
	So that's what I mean. If her manipulation is going to fail, she can't afford that.
	So she's going to pick some guy who's attractive enough that it's going to make her boyfriend jealous but not so attractive that he's going to reject her and thus her manipulation will fail.
	And so if...
	I follow and that exposes her to the real pit that she was trying to fill because it's kind of like...
	I mean, is it kind of like an addict that is seeking their fix and how if they're very close to getting it, they get so much more voracious than if it's been weeks or something like that?
	If it's more imminent.
	The knives come out.
	Yeah.
	Like I'll give you an example, right?
	Yeah. And I said, you know, I've got a lot of people around me, had a therapist, you know, a lot of people around me pretty skilled in these kinds of areas.
	And they've never obviously said that or whatever, right?
	So then he was like, ah, yes, but that's because you can go for decades and nobody will ever know that you're actually a narcissist, right?
	It's like... You're the Emperor Palpatine of narcissists?
	Well, I don't know, some sort of like weird shapeshifter or something like that.
	And so apparently, you know, the people who've been in my life for decades have absolutely no idea, even though they're skilled in the area.
	who's just some stranger on the internet is totally certain right so but basically he's saying i want to be able to call people narcissists but if they claim evidence of the counter i need to be able to dismiss any of that evidence because if i actually have to provide evidence i can't randomly call people narcissists in order to insult and control them right i think i remember uh hearing you talk about that the whole like well if you deny your narcissist and that proves you're actually super It's like, I need to be able to label people as narcissists.
	I want to have that power, which means there can never be any evidence against what I say, because the moment I have to provide evidence, I lose my power, right?
	The whole, you know, you being upset is proof I was right.
	Yeah, yeah. So...
	So he took a run at the manipulation side of things, right?
	And it didn't work, right?
	It didn't work. So people who manipulate can never be in a position where their manipulation fails because it reveals their helplessness, which is the whole point of...
	The whole manipulation is to avoid the helplessness.
	If they were genuinely honest with themselves, they would say...
	Oh my God, I feel like I can't get anything I want without bribing or bullying people.
	That's a terrible state of mind to be in.
	That's going to cost me all the happiness in my life.
	I'm never going to fall in love.
	I'm never going to be a good parent.
	I'm just going to rage and bribe people.
	And it's basically saying, I can't ever have anyone in my life who cares for me enough to give me something I want because they love me.
	And because I'm manipulative, good people will never want to be around me.
	I'm entombing myself in this dungeon of manipulation from here to eternity.
	It's a terrible existence.
	And so I have to figure out why I genuinely feel if I ask people honestly for what I want, that they won't give me anything.
	That I'll never get anything if I'm not manipulative.
	Well, that's a real question.
	That's a real question. And you see, you withholding your emotions is also manipulative.
	You withholding genuine feelings from me, from others, is also manipulative.
	Because you're trying to achieve an effect rather than live in the moment, rather than have an experience in the moment.
	You're trying to achieve an effect.
	Now, in this case, the effect is, well, obviously emotions are toxic and dangerous because I was beaten over the head with big bagfuls of ugly emotions when I was a kid.
	So I'm going to be reasonable.
	I'm going to be safe.
	I'm going to be not abusive.
	And I'm going to do that by not having any feelings.
	Right. So you're trying to achieve an effect.
	And here's the thing.
	Because when you had a feeling, like you got darkly angry at your mom and you had this dark fantasy of self-destruction and this, that, so you say, well, that's a feeling.
	Well, I feel, I'm mad at myself about that.
	I feel bad about that.
	I'm going to punish myself with a negative judgment so that I don't have those feelings anymore.
	The result being that I have to fly halfway around the world to get any sense of independence.
	Now, whether you go or you don't go, it sounds like you're going.
	So I'm not sort of saying whether there's a good or bad thing to you going.
	It's obviously your decision. No, I see what you're saying.
	Absolutely. But when you go, like you're going to go someplace new, right?
	And you go someplace new.
	Nature gave you feelings to keep you safe.
	If you can't be passionate, you can't be safe.
	And then the only safety that you have is isolation.
	Your intellectualization in this conversation is a form of isolating yourself from my passion, right?
	Right. I recognize that.
	Now, but do you see that in this...
	And that's what you said. Earlier you said, and listen, I'm not pointing this out in a negative or critical way.
	I'm just pointing out the transactional nature of it.
	Earlier you said, well, you know, this agenda that you're pushing or something like that, right?
	Which is, again, I'm not offended.
	I'm just pointing it out as a sort of transactional thing, right?
	Now that we're getting to the end of the conversation, and this, you know, you may, I'm not trying to give you a leading question here.
	Do you think that my passions in the conversation had a goal other than connection and illumination?
	No, and if I said agenda, I did not mean it to come across that way.
	And then I guess more I was thinking what kind of path I thought you might be going down in terms of...
	No, but that's not being genuine in the moment, which is, okay, wait, wait, what's he trying to do here?
	Where's he trying to get me? What's his goal?
	Where's this going to end up? That's not being honest in the moment.
	That's another form of manipulation, right?
	Well, if I say this, it's going to get me closer to something I may not want to agree.
	Then you're like being cross-examined in court and trying not to, you know, end up in jail.
	Like it's not a genuine interaction in the moment.
	And that's why you also said, okay, well, what am I supposed to do with all of this?
	This is what people do. It's a way of jumping out of the, right?
	But I'm not sure.
	Yeah, sorry, go ahead. To answer your question, no, definitely.
	I recognize I see the passion as being a way of drawing the conversation along and getting to the actual meat of it rather than surface level stuff.
	Well, I care about you. I want you to get what you want in life, right?
	I'm not trying to, you're not paying me.
	I'm not trying to get something from you.
	I'm not trying to get you to obey me or do something that I want to do.
	I'm genuinely focused on being in your corner saying, okay, how can philosophy best get you what you want in life?
	And I think if you can begin to revisit this question of what are emotions.
	If emotions are barely formed people, toddler, petty manipulations and controls, well, I mean, you're going to have to robot yourself into genetic non-existence.
	Or, let's say you become a dad, then your kids are going to be wildly enthusiastic.
	And do you know how many parents think that their kids are just manipulative?
	They don't listen to their kids' emotions.
	They don't care. Now, I know I said babies are manipulative, although it's a bit of an anachronistic phase because they have no other choice, right?
	But there's a number of times it's like, oh, he just wants this or he's just blah, blah, blah.
	And it's like, well, no, maybe he does have a genuine emotion about something.
	Maybe he's really frustrated about something.
	It's like, oh, well, he's just not getting what he wants.
	Oh, I absolutely recognize that from my own childhood.
	Yeah, every time you get emotional, your parents have to put it in some kind of light that it's manipulative, right?
	Yeah, I mean, well, I mean, one case was I remember in first grade, I started pulling my hair out out of probably stress or something like that.
	And there's, you know, they wanted to blame it on my teacher being too tough.
	I mean, to be fair, she was kind of a crappy teacher, but never, never inward.
	And then they also wanted to put me and they actually did put me on antidepressants when I was 18.
	And, you know, those that cause side effects.
	Make your own choice at 18. Well, I mean, it was kind of one of those things, if you want us to keep supporting you financially.
	Oh, wow. That was more my dad saying that sort of thing.
	But those definitely caused very horrific side effects for me.
	I got off them after about two years because they were setting me on a path of just complete craziness because they were not for me because my problem wasn't any kind of chemical imbalance.
	It was obviously a life imbalance.
	Well, and of course, when you're a kid, you're pulling your hair out because you can't get what you want.
	Right. The attention of some sort, which, I mean, I guess it is to agree a form of manipulation, but it's not...
	No, it is. It is. But, I mean, you're a kid trapped in a dysfunctional family, so we can give you lots of forgiveness for all of that, right?
	But, no, you're pulling your hair out because you need some attention to distress, and you're acting out the distress, so you will get attention for the distress.
	In the same way a baby's hungry, they act it out so they get their food, right?
	Right. But I would say that for you...
	Your parents own the definition of emotions for you.
	And if you go to the other side of the world, if they still own that definition of what emotions are, you might as well never leave the basement.
	Emotions have been used, as you see, to attack and bully and humiliate and degrade you and insult you.
	And those aren't real emotions, but if you let the abusers own the word emotion, then they'll take what's most important from you.
	And when you said to your mother, do you want me dead?
	Remember I said that the opposite of passion is death, right?
	Do you want me dead?
	Right? So what you're saying to her is, mom, if you're just going to punish and reward me like a dog, I'm not alive.
	I'm not someone who can be reasoned with.
	I'm not someone you believe is capable of love.
	You're confessing you're not capable of loving me, because if you loved someone, you would never say something like that.
	Never, ever say something like that.
	I mean, I've known my wife 20 years.
	We've never said anything in that vicinity to each other, and I could never, ever dream of saying that.
	Right? So, do you want me dead?
	Well... If genuine emotions would drive her away from you, then she would, yes, she would rather you be without passion, without feeling.
	And to your credit, like, you haven't become a manipulative person, really.
	And that's wonderful.
	Like, I mean, you should be incredibly proud of that.
	That's a hell of an achievement. It really is.
	It was a path I saw myself going down that I managed to break from.
	Yeah, yeah. Yeah, like me with shoplifting.
	Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, I just want to express massive admiration.
	I mean, great job in the call.
	And I hope it wasn't too tough.
	I think it was fine. But yeah, I... Residual, you know, whatever as I'm coming to terms with it.
	But it's not bad pain.
	It's muscle pain from a workout sort of thing.
	Right. And was it helpful to you?
	I also want to double check on that before.
	Oh, no, I absolutely believe so.
	I guess I don't know how much...
	I've heard of you in the past giving action items or anything like that, but do you have any suggestions on how I could better conceptualize and learn true emotions and being true to my own emotions and not just kind of thinking about it?
	Obviously, I have a very academic mindset of things.
	Yeah, so I mean, look, the thing to do is when the emotions come up, just don't wish them away.
	Just don't push them down. So, gosh, okay, like tiny story time before we close.
	When I was walking up north, I was at a nightclub and I chatted with a woman and I wanted to get her number.
	This was in Thunder Bay 35 years ago or whatever, right?
	So, 36 years ago.
	So I was in Thunder Bay and we were dancing to a band.
	They did a really great cover of Everybody Wants to Rule the World.
	I remember that very vividly for some reason.
	And anyway, we were chatting and all of that, and I didn't get her number.
	I gave her my number, which is never a great sign.
	But anyway, so the next day, the phone rang.
	Twice. I'm sorry?
	I said work for me like twice.
	Yeah, yeah. And so the next day, the phone rang, and it was somebody else, right?
	And I felt disappointed that it wasn't the girl from the bar.
	Now, I had just read The Psychology of Self-Esteem.
	I was... 18, I think.
	And I just read The Psychology of Self-Esteem about, you know, have your feelings and enjoy your feelings and the feelings are there to help you and so on, right?
	And I felt a stab of disappointment because the phone rang and it wasn't this girl from the bar.
	And I just said, oh, normally I would just push that away.
	And I was like, you know, I just read this book and let me let the disappointment happen.
	And I really felt the disappointment.
	And that's sort of the big... So you'll have the feelings come up and you have this habit of like you just push them away or I don't have time or it's unimportant or, you know, they're bad or negative or mean, whatever.
	And just say, okay, let's let the feelings, let them come up.
	Let the feelings come up.
	And I mean, Psychology of Self-Esteem is a pretty good book, by the way, Nathaniel Brandon.
	But I would say in general, just let the emotions come up.
	And if you have this habit, which I'm sure you do, Of pushing the emotions down, just try and really work on that habit.
	And then as your emotions are like, oh, we can come out now?
	Wait, we're out of house arrest?
	Then they'll start coming out more, I think.
	And so when you say come up, I mean, obviously you don't mean over-emote and be that kind of beta guy that starts crying.
	I'm not saying that. I'm putting my words in that.
	Being the beta guy that over-emotes about everything.
	So how does that manifest as...
	You know, in this said situation or whatever, do you just let yourself feel it or do you actually express it?
	Well, no, you have to feel it.
	Who knows how it manifests?
	That's not important. Okay.
	It doesn't. You know, it's like if you're doing a gym exercise, like just weights or whatever, you say, okay, well, what do I do with this?
	It's like, well, anything you want.
	I can't tell you what to do with it, but whatever you're going to do physically, it's better to be stronger than weaker, right?
	So you just let the emotions come up.
	It doesn't mean that you, you know, go sobbing down the streets with your shirt on fire or anything like that.
	It just means that—and that's the sort of fear.
	Oh, my God. Because the emotions will feel like insanity to you because it was—emotional manipulation was used as abuse against you.
	So when your emotions come up, it will feel destabilizing like you're going mad, right?
	And that's the fear, right?
	That's, you know—and it's not just you.
	It's a societal thing, too. If we have genuine emotions— Then we don't really need the state.
	But that's a topic for another time.
	It's a whole power structure that relies on us being manipulative so that we're susceptible to manipulation.
	You can't propagandize people who feel deeply.
	You can only propagandize people who manipulate because when you manipulate, you're susceptible to manipulation and this is why they need everyone to remain shallow.
	But no, you have the feelings.
	It doesn't matter what you do with them.
	You don't have to do anything with them.
	Just experience them.
	All right. I will definitely try to incorporate that going forward.
	Will you keep me posted about how things are going?
	Yeah, sure.
	Just in terms of emotional things?
	Just how your life is.
	You're going to set up in a new place.
	Just drop me a line. Let me know how things are going.
	Yeah, sure. I'll drop you a line from time to time whenever something comes up that I think might be of interest.
	Appreciate it. Well, thanks for the call.
	Really, really appreciate it. Thanks for taking damn near three hours with me.
	You're welcome, man. My pleasure.
	It was a great chat. Take care. Take care.

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