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Dec. 23, 2021 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

02:10:54

Screw History, Love Your Wife!

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	Hi everybody, Stefan Molyneux from Free Domain.
	We're back to doing a little bit of video on the call-in shows.
	I hope you guys are all doing well.
	We have, I think, two sets of callers tonight.
	The first is a couple that we talked to a little while back ago.
	Vlad and Nicole, not their real names.
	And we dealt with some issues around history and, you know, past trauma overcoming the present, which is something we all have to deal with.
	I mean, the modern world as well.
	The world as a whole has always been pretty traumatic, but the modern world is traumatic without structure.
	So in the past, there was trauma, but it had structure.
	So, for instance, if you sort of look at the Christian worldview or the worldview of other religions, they say, well, yeah, there's a lot of suffering in the world, and that's because of original sin, and that's because human beings are fallible, and you have to overcome it in order to fight your way through to the path to heaven, and if you fail that journey, you may end up in hell. In the past, there was trauma, but that trauma had structure.
	And now, what we have is trauma without structure.
	And in many ways, that's worse.
	Because there's no recognition of suffering.
	And there's no path to redemption.
	And there's no better way to unleash abuse on the world than to fantasize about the perfectibility of human beings.
	If you believe that human beings are capable of what people call...
	Completely egalitarian.
	In other words, if you believe that it's possible for every single group, every single collective, every single gender to have exactly the same outcomes in the world, then what happens is you're setting yourself up for a pattern of torrents of verbal abuse because it's not going to be achievable.
	And because it's not achievable, the whole point of perfectionism is to set yourself up as A legitimate verbal abuser in your own mind, right?
	That's the whole point of perfectionism.
	And the perfectionism of the modern world is that we can have everyone with perfectly equal outcomes and no one will go hungry.
	Nobody will be without healthcare.
	Nobody will be without shelter and so on.
	And these things are all completely and totally impossible.
	There's nothing that creates hell faster than the pursuit of heaven in this world, which is fallible.
	And human beings are fallible.
	And we are prone to our mammalian pursuits for power and the Nietzschean will to power stuff that I've talked about before.
	And so now we have...
	With this fantasy of the perfectibility of society and the perfectibility of humanity, we have given ourselves massive permission to unleash torrents of verbal abuse and hostility and hatred.
	And everybody who's had dysfunctional perfectionist parents knows exactly how this works.
	That the house has to be pristine, that the homework always has to be done, that the handwriting has to be tidy, that everybody has to be on time.
	All of this perfectionism, which is the complete opposite of a messy and joyful family life.
	All of that perfectionism is simply there to unleash verbal abuse on people.
	Because, of course, if you're bullied into perfectionism, you resent the bullier and therefore you wage passive-aggressive war against the bullier and therefore they will escalate and therefore you dislike them even more and therefore they escalate and therefore you dislike them even more.
	And we don't have a path to redemption.
	Now, in the past, There was no possibility that humanity could be perfected under the Christian model because of original sin and our sinful nature and the temptations of the devil.
	There's no possibility of human perfectibility and therefore there was a path to redemption because there was no perfection.
	It's sort of like perfect health or, I don't know, like a perfect tennis game.
	You're just never going to have these things, right?
	So, we talked about the trauma and how it spills over into the present and into people's relationships.
	And you wanted to pursue a topic further, and we were on a platform that had a two-hour cutoff, so I'm sorry about that.
	And what's happening? Yeah, it's a call-in show.
	I'm just giving a bit of sort of background because the other show has not been published yet.
	So I wanted to welcome you back, of course, and thank you for pursuing more help if I can provide it or we can provide it because I will be taking comments from the audience as well here as well, just as I was in the last show.
	So I'm all ears if you wanted to tell me or if James wants to tell me your message about where to take it from here.
	All right. Well, I will read what Nicole wrote to me.
	And we can come from there.
	So she writes, I believe there's more to the conversation we've had with Steph on Friday.
	If Vlad married me, his domineering mom, to fix her and his dad, what am I trying to fix in the marriage?
	I'd like to address the part about my father we didn't talk about to understand this dynamic.
	Vlad also has a follow-up question.
	All right, well, I appreciate that.
	So... I guess, Nicole, do you want to give us a...
	I mean, you've had some chance to think about it, at least with the methodology that I approach these things with.
	And just for those who don't know, and I did have a question about this the other day.
	I'm sorry to interrupt, but we can go.
	We can go late tonight. My general methodology is that when people are suffering, it's because, like mentally, it's because they're being told to suffer by someone in their life, in their past.
	Usually it's a parent or it could be an older sibling or it could be a teacher or priest or something like that.
	So when somebody says, oh, I'm just not worthy or I'm stupid or I'm lazy, then you know that that's just an internalized voice from a verbal abuser in the past.
	And most of internalized human unhappiness comes from people telling us that we're bad or wrong or stupid or dumb or irrelevant or whatever it is, right?
	And if you want to solve unhappiness, to me, the first thing that you need to do is you need to find who profits from you being unhappy.
	Who profits from you being unhappy.
	So in my life and in my past, in my childhood and in my early to mid-teens, I chose the path of philosophy and reason and self-knowledge.
	And most of my friends kind of despised that path.
	Or they didn't quite despise it.
	They didn't even take it seriously enough to despise it.
	They just kind of mocked it and laughed at it and eye-rolled at it.
	And it was considered that I was...
	And this was said kind of explicitly at times, that I was...
	Falling apart in my personality and what I needed to do, what I had a desperate desire to do, rather than dealing with the chaos of life, is I needed to find some kind of structure to hold me together.
	If a tree is bending in the wind and so on, you might put some supports up to keep that tree supported.
	And so that I was drawn to philosophy as part of a pathology of personal disintegration, and I was clinging to it rather than deal with the chaos of life or whatever.
	I mean, there was a bunch of different ideas behind it, none of which, of course, were complementary to me and all of which were complementary to the people who rejected philosophy.
	And so I had to really fight that when I started the philosophy show and even just applying reason as a whole in my life, because this is a situation, and you'll face this in life, you know, you have someone in your life, could be a parent, and if you're right, they're wrong. And if they're wrong, you're right.
	And it's like, it's win-lose.
	It's not win-win, it's win-lose.
	Now when you have win-lose, if you have win-lose people in your life, If it wasn't because I had some sort of mental or emotional disintegration that was going on and I had to cling to philosophy as some desperate way to hold myself together and try and stay in one piece rather than just accepting the chaos of the world.
	Or if it was a form of emotional avoidance, you know, like I got into philosophy so I could reject my emotions and not deal with my passionate side or whatever it was, right?
	All of this stuff that people come up with.
	Now, if I'm right that philosophy and self-knowledge and reason is the way to move forward in life, then their approach is entirely wrong.
	And if they're right and emotional expression and a lack of structure is the way to go forward in life, then I'm wrong.
	And given that these things are foundational to happiness, One of us is going to end up happy and one of us is going to end up unhappy.
	You know, if you're going in opposite directions and you're trying to find a town, you're lost in the woods.
	If you go in opposite directions, only one of you can be right.
	And if the other person finds the town, And you've gone a huge number of miles in the opposite direction, then you're a lot further away and you've got a lot, right?
	So this zero, I mean, it's a win-lose situation.
	And when you continue to go forward, if you have those people still in your life and you continue to go forward, then their panic will escalate.
	Their panic will escalate usually in proportion to the hostility they've had to the path that you've chosen.
	If you choose the path of reason, fact, science, evidence, logic, virtue, integrity, honesty, all that kind of stuff, right?
	And they're in, you know, hedonism or drug experimentation.
	Don't be so square, man!
	Or, you know, they just pursue lust or they go for a shallow...
	Selfie Instagram travel bullshit or something like that then only one of you can be right.
	Only one of you is going to end up with regret and they sure as hell don't want you to succeed because if you succeed it means that they failed and it's not like they failed like oopsie they failed like their life has been a disaster and they're miserably unhappy.
	So the reason I'm saying all of this before we get into Nicole's issue is when somebody's unhappy usually it's because somebody's telling them to be unhappy because they've chosen a different path.
	They've chosen a different path or an opposite path from the people who raised them.
	Usually that's the case. I mean, I wasn't raised by my friends, but they had a big influence on me and, um, I did not have a proportionate influence on them.
	And, um, so when we look at your marriage, I guess, uh, we need to get a little bit more details about where you think Vlad, your husband might fit into this potential theory.
	Thank you, Stefan, for talking to us and taking your time.
	Sorry, too quiet. Too quiet.
	You need to lean in. Is it better now?
	Yeah, thank you. Okay, so thank you for taking your time and continuing conversation with us.
	Going back to my history, we addressed my mother's issues and I think it's relevant to talk about the situation with my father since, you know, I'm marrying a husband and he's a prototype of my father, so to speak.
	So I think there is more there to discover.
	So I'm going to tell you briefly that I grew up with an abusive husband.
	I'm sorry, I grew up with an abusive father who was physically and verbally abusive to me.
	There are countless examples that I can provide.
	So it was just up and down all the time, war and peace, hate and love, but nothing in between.
	So he also cheated on my mother.
	And the household was pretty unstable.
	So now I wonder what is it I'm trying to fix in my relationship with Vlad.
	When I'm choosing Vlad, he's not cheating on me.
	He's not beating me up like my father did.
	He could have some anger episodes if I take him there.
	And then he could express his anger after hours of fighting.
	And he could crash a couple of things here and there, like objects in the environment.
	But nothing is addressed.
	It's not directed at me.
	So he's not being, in that regard, my father necessarily.
	So maybe there is some similarity in the levels of anger and insult, but not quite to that extent.
	So I wonder, what's the connection here?
	Right. Okay, so tell me, if you would, How much energy and what were your strategies for managing your father's anger?
	So let's say you're home and your father is in a bad mood or is getting in a bad mood or something's bothering him.
	What were your strategies for managing that when you were a child?
	How did you deal with that? I did not really have any choice.
	I was just, I was helpless.
	I could not manage his anger in any way.
	He would just be beating me and I just had to take it.
	And then after that episode, he had to make peace with me and then he would be a nice guy and then I had to take that as well.
	So it was just, I didn't have any strategy.
	I'm, of course, I'm unbelievably appalled at how you were treated as a little girl.
	And I'm so sorry for that.
	It's just absolutely appalling.
	But usually, although you sort of went like he's beating me, right?
	But before he beat you, there would be some kind of sign.
	There would be some kind of escalation.
	He wouldn't usually just tear through the door out of nothing and just start beating on you.
	There usually is, because somebody who's an abuser, what they generally need to do is they need to build themselves up into a state of mind where they're somehow justified in what they're doing.
	And there's usually a series of steps involved in that.
	Sorry, go ahead. So I can give you examples.
	For example, once I bought a purse when I was like seven years old, which they didn't want me to spend money on, but I bought it anyway because I had my pocket money.
	He found out that I went against his will.
	He caught me with that purse and he just shook me and he hit me up.
	He beat me up tremendously.
	I had bruises all over my body.
	He beat me up with the belt.
	So I went against his will and he punished me physically for that.
	Then another episode was I cut my hair.
	I was just playing around and I cut my hair and I was punished for that.
	He told me to stretch my palms on my hands and he said that he's not going to do anything.
	It's okay that I need to do it.
	I stretched my hands and then he beat me with the belt across my hands.
	So he was punishing me for something that he thought I did wrong and I deserve that punishment.
	Another episode was he was on the couch laying down and he had a stomach ache and then I was like maybe three or four years old and I was getting close to him to crawl on the couch because I wanted to cuddle with him and hug him and then I was crawling, he was in pain and then instead of just reacting normal to me he just pushed me away and I flew away from that couch and just on the ground and I started crying.
	So that type of episodes that I had early on and then of course it progressed as I got bigger.
	Now you're probably going to dislike me in a moment.
	Which is totally fine.
	But you are giving me snapshots and I've asked you for a movie.
	So you're telling me about the ways in which by the time your father had escalated his aggression, the beatings and again, massive sympathies, but that's not actually what I'm asking for.
	There are always strategies that children deploy in order to try and deal with Anger or a temper.
	And it's, you know, often when they're younger, usually beyond the age of five and up until the age of puberty, sort of 11, 12, 13, whenever that sort of hit you.
	And then there's more aggression for the child because you're becoming a young woman or a young man.
	So while, you know, there's massive sympathy, I don't believe that there was never anything you could do to appease your father, to change your behavior, to try and Stop him from getting angry or somehow slow down the ascent of his anger or the escalation of his anger.
	Because people as a whole, they don't just go from zero to a hundred.
	Like don't just go from sitting on a couch Reading the newspaper to straight up just beating.
	Again, they have to talk themselves into a frame of mind wherein what they're doing is justified.
	And they also will often find a need to justify their abuse to the child.
	I hit because you stole.
	I hit because you interrupted me.
	I hit you because you're not listening.
	I hit you because you stole.
	I hit you because you looked at me funny.
	And there's usually a bad mood that precedes that.
	So again, if there's nothing, obviously there's nothing, but in general, I mean, I've never heard of a situation where somebody's anger is almost like an epileptic attack, where they just start hitting, like somebody's having an epileptic attack.
	And so again, when he would be in a bad mood, but before he would hit, Were there any strategies that you would take?
	Those strategies could be appeasing.
	They could be offering him something nice to eat.
	They could be leaving the house.
	They could be trying to make him laugh.
	They could be, you know, any number of things.
	And I'm just wondering if there were strategies that you took to try and deescalate.
	I can't hear you at the moment.
	Trying to de-escalate after the fact?
	No, no, before. Before he gets angry.
	No, I don't think I was trying to de-escalate.
	I was just proceeding with my behavior.
	Like, I wanted to hug you.
	I'm going to come to the couch and I'm going to keep bothering you because I want to hug you because I think I'm doing...
	I'm just being...
	I'm doing a right thing.
	I'm doing... Nice thing.
	I don't think I'm in the wrong, but he thinks I'm in the wrong because he doesn't want to be bothered and he tells me to leave him or go away because he's in pain.
	But I don't understand that and I'm just proceeding with my behavior.
	Wait, are you talking about when you were three or four?
	Yes. Okay, so let's go forward a little older.
	I said it was older than that.
	Let's go forward a little bit and you're home and you think your dad might be in a bad mood.
	What do you do? If he was in a bad mood, I was just avoiding him.
	But these situations would erupt all of a sudden.
	It was unpredictable. It's not like I can see, okay, he's in a bad mood.
	He's going to beat me up. He didn't beat me up because he was in a bad mood.
	He beat me up because of an event that would happen, like me buying a purse or me cutting my hair or me saying something to him.
	When I was older and he cheated on my mother, I said something to him about that mistress that he had and it was disrespectful.
	It was disrespectful to him and so he just lost it and then he chased me.
	He started hitting me to the point that I was on the ground and then he just hit me with his feet.
	He couldn't stop.
	My mother had to stop. So it was always an episode of that would unleash his anger.
	You don't. I mean, you said to me, he hit me because I bought a purse or some other reasons.
	I mean, you know that's not why he hit you.
	There's nothing causal in buying the purse.
	There's nothing causal in disobeying your parents.
	There's nothing causal in talking back to your parents or being angry with your parents or, quote, disobedient.
	There's nothing causal in that.
	That makes parents hit you, right?
	So I just sort of want to understand if you're using that as a kind of shorthand, like he used me buying the purse as an excuse to hit me, or is it something that you believe that you did something and therefore your father hit you?
	I disobeyed what he asked me to do and he hit me.
	So it was because of disobedience.
	Okay, so do you think that my daughter ever disobeys me?
	She may probably disagree with you at times.
	Do you think she's disobeyed me in the 12 and a half years we've known each other?
	I don't know. Probably she did.
	Well, of course she has. It would be completely awful if she hadn't.
	I would view myself as a terrible parent if my daughter never disobeyed me.
	It would mean that she had been broken, because you know what?
	Sometimes I'm wrong and she's right.
	I mean, when she was younger, I would say, please don't do this jump from the wall, and she would do the jump and she'd be fine.
	So, there are many times that my daughter has disobeyed me and she's been perfectly right.
	Now, there's times when she's disobeyed me and she's been wrong.
	So, if you're saying that your father hit you because you disobeyed him, then you have to explain the mystery of the fact that when my daughter disobeys me, I neither hit her nor yell at her nor raise my voice nor call her names.
	We have a discussion about it and we try and figure out what happened.
	I don't think that's right.
	I don't think he should have hit me for that reason.
	He did not hit you because you disobeyed him.
	That's his excuse, but that's not the reason.
	The reason probably because the same thing was done to him when he was a child, so he's just repeating what was done to him.
	He doesn't know the other way.
	Oh my god, you are a bit of a handful.
	That's fine. So you've gone from He hit me because I disobeyed him.
	And then I said, well, that's not causal because my daughter disobeys me.
	Two, he hit me because he was hit as a child.
	I mean, I'm sure you're fully aware that I was hit very violently as a child, right?
	Right. So if he hit you as a causal dominoes, just the way it is, man, like there's gravity and then there's hitting kids because you were hit as a child.
	But I don't hit my daughter.
	I was hit as a child.
	So that's not the reason either.
	So why did he hit you?
	Because he allowed himself to be aggressive to me.
	He allowed himself to indulge in the anger at my expense because I was weaker, he was stronger, and he could do whatever he wanted.
	Well, I hear what you're saying.
	That's a really, really good answer, but it's relatively early on in the explanation phase.
	Because if I say, why did someone do it?
	I say, well, he allowed himself to do it.
	It's like that still doesn't explain why he wanted to do it in the first place.
	Does that make sense? It does.
	I don't think I have an answer.
	I'm trying. I'm trying to think here, but I don't think I have.
	I'm kind of guessing here.
	No, listen. It's a horribly hard thing to do.
	I mean, it's a horribly hard thing to do to try and figure out why did someone abuse me?
	Because what that means is you have to have empathy with someone who did not have empathy for you.
	You have to try and get inside the mind of the abuser Which means to try and sympathize with their perspective, their perspective being that they did not have any sympathy for you, if that makes sense.
	So it's a really, it's a very important thing to do, I think, and I'll sort of tell you why.
	It's a really tough thing to do.
	To try and get into the mindset of somebody who was punching you when you were a child.
	Really, really tough.
	It's really, really tough to get into that mindset.
	It's really important to do it.
	Because if you get into that, here's the prize, right?
	The reason why you do it. So, Nicole, if you can get into the mindset of your father, and you understand why he did what he did, you can understand how completely removed from anything you did it is.
	How blameless you are in that situation.
	Because the moment you say, my father hit me because of something I did, then you are causal and therefore somewhat to blame.
	In other words, if I hadn't disobeyed my father ever, he never would have hit me.
	And I'm telling you, he would have.
	There's nothing that you could do or not do to avoid that abuse.
	But that means getting into the mindset of your father and thinking, why did he hit me?
	Now, for you as a child, this is why the relationship with Vlad is obviously worth talking about, because there's probably a continuation, right?
	So here's the way it works.
	As a child, I asked you for what strategies you used to try and appease his anger, and you didn't tell me, but you demonstrated to me.
	The strategies that you used to appease his anger, Nicole, were you felt that it was something you did or didn't do that caused the beating.
	Now, you may not blame yourself to some degree, but you certainly did say many times, well, I was a toddler, I walked up, he had a stomachache, I bought the purse, I cut my hair, it was something I did, and therefore the next thing that happened was the beating occurred,
	right? Now, The moment that you say that you somehow started the events that led to you being beaten, there's an onus upon you to change your behavior so that you don't get beaten, right? But I'm telling you, there's nothing that you can do to not get beaten when you're in the presence of a relentless child abuser.
	Now, the child abuser doesn't want to say, Nicole, I'm beating you because I'm a sad, pitiful, evil guy.
	I'm a coward and a piece of shit bully who likes picking on children because he feels that tiny and helpless in his own waste of a life.
	He's not going to sit there and say, you need to be the punching bag for all of the failures of growth and self-knowledge and virtue.
	You have to be the victim because I'm too lazy to get off my squalid fat ass and deal with my childhood.
	You have to suffer because of my own cowardice in the face of what was done to me as a child.
	That I would rather beat you senseless and bloody rather than question how the hell I was parented, grow a spine, And get some fucking virtue in my life, right?
	He's not going to say that to you.
	He's going to say, well, you cut your hair, you see, and you bought a purse, and you interrupted me when I had a stomachache, right?
	So, if you have anywhere in your mind the idea that you set any events in motion, That caused your father to hit you.
	You are entirely mistaken.
	I completely understand why you think that.
	Because when we're a kid, if we can't gain actual security, we try to gain magical security.
	If we can't get actual safety, we start to try and get fantasy safety.
	So when I was a kid...
	As a teenager, it was impossible for me to achieve any actual objective virtue because I was controlled and bullied and working three jobs and all that.
	So I had the Dungeons and Dragons character called Argoth, who was a paladin.
	I got to level 25 and he became a demigod and it was a fantastic thing and it gave me a sense of power in my life.
	And this is true of a lot of people who play fantasy games or these kinds of things that they're making up and preparing for hopefully a life of virtue by achieving in fantasy what they can't achieve in reality.
	And there's nothing wrong with it as long as you don't get stuck there.
	So when you're a kid, you can't do anything to prevent from being beaten.
	But you love to think that you can or you need to think that you can do something to prevent being beaten.
	Do you know why? Because there is no other way you can explain it?
	No, because there's no other way you can feel secure.
	There's no other way you can even feel a tiny shred of safety than by thinking, oh, okay, my dad hits me when I disobey him, so if I don't disobey him, I have a much better chance of not getting beaten.
	Oh, my dad beats me when I cut my hair.
	Okay, so if I avoid cutting my hair, then I'll have a better chance.
	Now, it's all a fantasy. But it's a necessary fantasy.
	It's what you need in order to survive.
	And it's a primitive state of mind, which just doesn't mean it's bad.
	It's just you're a kid, right? I mean, this happens all the time, right?
	So... How do most cultural customs develop?
	Through accident and association, right?
	So, hey, remember when we took up that new dance and then the plague came?
	Well, what that means is that the gods didn't like that new dance and they sent this plague You see, to punish us for that new dance.
	So let's not do that new dance anymore, right?
	And then they start singing some song that might be a little bit rude.
	And then they have a very cold winter.
	And then they say, oh, well, the gods clearly doesn't like that song.
	So they gave us a cold winter.
	And we'll just stop singing that song because that song obviously angers the gods.
	And so we got plagues. And this is how stuff...
	It grows in society.
	It's very primitive and it's helpless.
	And, you know, what you want to do is you want to have science and give up all of this bullshit and actually learn how to control your crops and get medicine and antibiotics and all that kind of stuff.
	But that's how most cultural stuff develops.
	Is that people just associate some random behavior with some big causal thing, and then they say, well, we can't control the weather, and we can't control the plague, but at least we can ban this dance, and we can ban this song, and you can't take the Lord's name in vain, and you can't say Voldemort, or whatever it is.
	Like, whatever they come up with, it's to manage their own anxiety.
	It doesn't actually solve any problems in the real world.
	It doesn't eliminate... Bad winters or plagues or anything like that, but it lets them get through the day, right?
	You understand, right? Yes.
	And so you had, you could not control your father's temper, and so he would tell you that you were the cause of his temper.
	Now, if you were to disbelieve that, and you were to turn to him and say, Dad, come on.
	You're a grown-ass man.
	Like, you're a grown adult.
	If you think that me cutting my hair has the power or the moral justification to have you beat the shit out of me, you're an even bigger and more pathetic loser than I could have possibly imagined, or something more gentle, right?
	If you had said, Dad, stop blaming me for your own pathetic lack of control over your own vicious bullying and cowardly temper, You know, ooh, big, big, strong guy beats up on little girls.
	Do you ever, you know, I remember when you got mad at that cop who pulled you over and you were like, oh, here's my license officer and here's my insurance and I really wasn't speeding and you didn't threaten to beat him up.
	Why? Because he's an officer and he can do bad things back to you in return.
	When you were at that restaurant and the waiter trot on your foot.
	Now, if I'd trot on your foot as a little girl at home, you'd have backhanded me across the face.
	The waiter trot on your foot.
	And said, sorry, no, no problem.
	I know that you can control your temper.
	I've seen you do it a million times in public.
	Because in public, you could suffer a negative consequence from being a bullying fucking asshole.
	But, but, when you're home with your little girl, well, then you can beat the shit out of her.
	Because you're that sad and pitiful.
	That cowardly, right?
	Now, if you were to say some combination of those things and take absolutely zero responsibility for your father's bad temper, what would have happened?
	He would kill me.
	Yes. You are bang on.
	Now, that is an answer from the heart, right?
	Yeah, he would escalate until...
	I mean, he would try and kill you.
	Right? Or make your life not worth living.
	Or injure you by, quote, accident or whatever.
	So you couldn't tell the truth.
	You had, in order to survive the situation, you had to take ownership of the cause of your father's anger.
	Right? Does that make sense? Right.
	I guess I'm just trying to understand how that affects my marriage.
	You know, you've probably listened to these shows a bunch, right?
	Yes, I did. Now, do you know what you just did?
	No. Okay, that's fine.
	Listen, I say this with all affection and love.
	It's not a negative thing. What you did was when you got close to an emotional truth, you tried to jump into solution land.
	So when people get to an emotional truth, what they do is they try and start to say, oh, how does this affect the present?
	Or what do I do with it? Or how do I solve it?
	Because they want to avoid just that connection.
	I mean, Sam Harris and Charles Murray were talking about race and IQ, and Sam Harris was saying, yeah, yeah, it's true.
	Yeah, it's real. But what do we do with it?
	How does it change anything?
	Well, what do we do with it, right? And I say this again, all affection.
	What happens is you're getting close to an emotional truth that you weren't at all to blame for your father's bullying and brutal and violent and vicious and cowardly and bullshit behavior.
	You had nothing to do with it.
	It was not causal to you.
	Any other human being could have been swapped into that situation and they would have suffered exactly the same fate.
	Right. I understand that he was not supposed to do that, and I worked through it, and I thought of it a lot, and I wrote about it a lot, and I wrote him letters, and I addressed it with him even directly in the conversation.
	So I've done the work.
	After listening to your show, I faced him basically because of this issue and other issues.
	So I've done the work.
	That's why I'm kind of like, okay, what, how, how does that affect my marriage?
	And what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what.
	Sorry.
	I sound like a Brazilian review dance here, but, but, but, but, but.
	But you still explained your father's behavior with reference to your actions.
	Now, you could say, he used me cutting my hair as an excuse to beat me.
	He used me walking up when he had a stomach ache and I was three or four years old as an excuse to throw me across the room.
	He used me buying a purse as an excuse to beat me, but he beat me because he was an evil asshole and he liked bullying children.
	Right, I didn't put it that way.
	I mean, it could be a language thing that I just...
	I was trying to give you a context of what was going on and how...
	It's more like how he would explain that rather than...
	Because I was told what happened.
	Like, it was not up to me to decide what happened.
	I just related to you the story as it was happening back then when I was three and I didn't really, you know, realize things then.
	It was just to give you a context.
	Do we have a big enough language barrier that you know what the word filibuster is?
	I don't know what that is.
	A filibuster is when somebody gives a long speech in order to delay the next part of the conversation or the legislation or something like that, right?
	And again, we were getting to some place pretty emotionally real, I think, and you wanted to bounce back from that, and you went immediately to, what's the story with this in my marriage, right?
	Right. Because if you had done all of the work, right, then you wouldn't be in a cycle of violence with your husband, right?
	Now you say, and correct me if I misunderstood this, of course, right?
	But you say, ah, but my husband doesn't hit me.
	He just breaks things in the environment, right?
	We had two incidents like that after hours and hours of fighting that I initiated.
	Yes, that happened. What do you mean that happened?
	Again, you've got the language.
	It's very specific here. Yes, we had fights.
	We had two occasions when my husband got angry to the point that he threw some objects in the apartment.
	Right, right, right, right.
	And that's happened, you said, twice, right?
	Yes, it did happen twice with the gap in the length of a year.
	And what about raising voices, intimidation, name calling and so on?
	Insults happened.
	Yes. And what are the insults?
	What are the terms? Just curses like bitch and motherfucker and fuck you and fuck off, stuff like that.
	Stupid. And what do you call him?
	I don't get to that point, I don't think.
	Okay, Vlad, do you want to jump in here and explain to me these words?
	Can't hear you, man. Can't hear you.
	Still can't hear you. No, can't hear your thing.
	Sorry, can't hear your thing.
	Um... I don't understand why this is so tough.
	Any better now? Yeah, there we go.
	All right. So yeah, help me understand these words.
	Okay, so let's see.
	The circumstances are like we talked about last time, where we'll have these, I mean, supernova yelling fights back and forth.
	Which are big fights, but the actual fights, the subject matter of the fights, are incredibly, incredibly small and, at least in my eyes, sort of meaningless flares that started off, right?
	So, example, I'll just give you a concrete example.
	I think I said the same example last time.
	I always keep a little pile of clothes on the couch out in the living room.
	We live in a one-bedroom apartment.
	I have a dog, and if I don't take my dog out late night, the dog will wake us both up at 4.
	So my wife will tend to go to bed earlier, and I'll take the dog out at, let's say, 1 in the morning, and so I don't have to go in the bedroom to turn all the lights on, find clothes, whatever.
	I always keep a little stash of clothes out in the living room.
	For whatever reason, this day she got upset about the pile of clothes.
	I said, you know, honey, this isn't that big a deal.
	We've talked about it before.
	I'm going to go outside, walk my dog.
	We'll talk about it, you know, maybe later.
	But, you know, let's not escalate right now.
	And I go for an hour walk the whole time.
	She's kind of rage texting about, you know, what a bad, you know, husband I am.
	Okay, sorry, man. I got to interrupt you because, A, I heard this story last time.
	And B, you're just running a script on me.
	And the script is, I'm the reasonable husband.
	She's the crazy wife, right?
	Not at all. Not at all. I'm giving you the context of...
	No, no, no. Because you're trying to do something nice and she's rage texting you and then it just goes up from there.
	So she's the instigator in this situation, right?
	I'd say, and I think she'd agree, 99% of the arguments, yes.
	That she instigates?
	She starts the arguments and goes on for a pretty extended time.
	And like I said last time, at a certain point...
	Yes, I do click.
	You know, stop. We can't argue about this.
	Okay, but, oh my god, man, dude. You are completely 100%.
	You completely and 100% own these arguments.
	Do you know why? I own the arguments?
	No, I know why. Because you're there.
	Because you're in a relationship.
	You chose her. So if you choose a woman who just blows up at you and rage, then you're completely responsible for these arguments happening in your life because you chose that woman.
	Because you're trying to sell me on a script where I'm the reasonable guy, and yes, after I get pushed a certain amount of time, well, what's a man going to do?
	I'm going to blow up, I'm going to call her names, I'm going to call her a bitch, I'm going to MF, I'm going to F you, right?
	So you're trying to sell me on the script where you're somehow a victim, or, you know, after you get pushed a certain amount of time, you're just going to blow up, right?
	I mean, you're only human, right?
	You can only have somebody flicking fingers in your face for so long before you've got to push their...
	There are a way, right? But you're 100% responsible for these...
	Let's say, I don't think it's true, but let's say she is the crazy wife or the crazy girlfriend and she just instigates and escalates and so on.
	Well, you invited that into your life, right?
	You pursued her.
	You dated her. You knew what she was like.
	You chose to live with her.
	You chose to get married to her.
	You're 100% responsible for these fights being in your life.
	Yeah, I'm not saying I'm not.
	I'm just... It's not...
	And it's...
	I'm giving the point where I cross that line.
	Okay, let me ask you guys something.
	Are you at all interested in listening to what I have to say?
	Because if you're just going to run your scripts on me, I've got a wonderful family here.
	I've got great listeners. I could go watch a movie.
	I could go for a walk with my wife.
	And I'm not saying you've got to agree with me.
	But if you're calling me up for my expertise in these areas, and, you know, your wife did this quite a bit, which is just, you know, disagree and gaslight and filibuster and so on.
	And now you try and tell me the story where you're the reasonable one, she's the victim, and then I'm giving you an insight here and you're just immediately avoiding it.
	That's totally, I mean... That's fine, but then I don't understand why you're calling me up.
	You know, it's like if you go to the doctor and the doctor says, well, you know, you're smoking too much.
	And you say, no, I'm not.
	I'm not smoking too much at all.
	I mean, I smoke much less than my cousin and I didn't bring that story up about how much I smoke for you.
	It's like, okay, well, then why are you going to the doctor?
	You know, if you're just going to disagree with every insight that I have, you know, I'm pretty good at this stuff.
	I've been doing this for 16 years and I've written books on it and, you know, people line up to talk to these things and I keep bringing these insights to the table and you just keep telling me I'm wrong about everything that I'm pointing out.
	And, you know, maybe I am. Maybe there's just no connection here.
	But if you've just both called me up to tell me that I'm wrong about everything that I'm saying or, you know, It's not relevant or I've mistaken things or whatever.
	Well, that's fine. Then I'm not sure why we're having the conversation, if that makes any sense.
	Yeah, no. At no point did I ever say I'm not responsible for being in the marriage.
	I never said that. What I said was, but me personally, and maybe I'm wrong.
	Maybe I'm 100% wrong, but in my mind...
	Okay, come on, man. Oh, come on.
	Listen, listen, listen, listen.
	You've got to understand. When you tell me a story...
	About how you're just a reasonable guy and a nice guy and she just rage texts you and there's an escalation there.
	Of course you're trying to tell me that you're the sane one and she's the crazy one.
	That you're the nice one and she just rages up and then eventually you blow up.
	Of course, come on, I'm not an idiot.
	Of course, of all the fights, of all the conflicts, you come up with the one and tell me the one twice, by the way, in two weeks, that you're just the most reasonable guy around and she just escalates and then eventually you blow.
	Right, come on. Are you seriously going to expect me, an intelligent guy, to think that that's just a coincidence?
	And you're not trying to pull a bit of a scam on me here?
	First off, Stefan, listen.
	What I'm saying is, is that in my mind at this stage of the conversation, and I'm a flawed human being or else I wouldn't be on the phone with you.
	I'm trying to gain insight.
	I'm not arguing with you. I'm not snowing you.
	I'm not coming up with a make-believe script.
	I'm a flawed human being who's trying to come to an understanding of what the relationship is.
	Okay, give me a story then where you instigate.
	There is literally zero...
	And she would agree with that.
	When I get in a bad mood, Stefan, I do not pick fights ever.
	I get quiet. I do not start fights.
	Ever. Literally ever.
	And we've been dating for three years.
	I don't think there's been a single argument that I started and I picked a fight.
	Are you aware how annoyed you are with me at the moment?
	Not at all. I don't know if you were watching the chat, right?
	Are you aware that you're pretty angry with me at the moment?
	It's fine. You can be angry with me.
	I could be totally wrong. Are you aware of that?
	Stefan, I'm not angry at you.
	I'm frustrated. That in my mind, again, this is the third time I've been trying to make this point.
	In my mind, and again, maybe I'm wrong.
	I'm not saying I'm right.
	But at this moment in the conversation, there is a difference in my mind as a flawed human being, that there is a difference.
	If I start fights with my wife, where my wife says something about, hey, can you clean up this pile of clothes?
	And I flip out on her, calling her a bitch, and what the fuck, and oh my god, and whatever.
	In my mind, at this point in the conversation, there's a difference between that person and a person who tries to de-escalate for an hour and a half.
	And at whatever point, I do click.
	In my mind, it could be wrong, but there is a difference between those two men.
	And I'm not making an argument that I'm not 100% responsible for choosing my wife.
	I've never made that assertion.
	But I do think there's a difference between a man who flips out in a minute and a man that tries to de-escalate for an hour and a half.
	Have you ever heard of the phrase passive aggression?
	I'm just curious.
	For sure, all day. Okay, so do you know what passive-aggressive people do?
	They're passive-aggressive?
	Yeah, how does that play out in a conflict?
	They're nice, nice, nice, and then they're aggressive.
	No, that's not how it plays out.
	So the way that passive aggression plays out in a conflict is you provoke the other person with a smile that you are angry and deny it.
	And the other person gets so frustrated at the gaslighting that they eventually get really angry.
	And then you get to feel like you're the reasonable one and you're the victim.
	But you have, in fact, been provoking the other person in a passive way throughout the course of the conversation.
	Okay.
	So are we talking about me with you or me with my wife or what's the context here?
	I'm just asking you if that may track with any of the things that you've done in conflicts.
	No, it doesn't.
	It doesn't strike a chord at the moment.
	But, you know, I'm not saying it's never happened.
	Maybe it has, but no, that doesn't seem to be, when I look at my conflict with my wife, that doesn't seem to be the pattern.
	Okay, so if I can just jump over to Nicole for a moment, and I appreciate that.
	So, Nicole, just let me know if and when our audio normalizes in some fashion.
	Yes, can you hear me? Yes, okay.
	So if you could tell me your side of the story that Vlad gave me about the clothes and the dog.
	I started that fight.
	I escalated it.
	He was trying to de-escalate it.
	And I didn't stop.
	So I agree with his account of the story.
	I mean, there is not much I can add.
	I picked on that pile of clothes and I wanted to be angry at my husband.
	I was mad at my husband and I picked that clothes as an excuse.
	I suppose by now that that was just an excuse for me to enrage.
	And then he was trying to de-escalate and to tell me to slow down and think about it.
	He left the house.
	And then, although he left, I started texting him and just went on and on and on with my rage and telling him these two things.
	And by the time that we met again, we were driving to a grocery store and so in the car, he just asked me a question if I knew what was it all about and why I got that way.
	And I didn't want to talk about it because we were in the car and I knew I don't want to be trapped in the car having this conversation.
	And I still was sort of mad.
	I just needed my time to not talking about the issue, but he brought it up again.
	And then from there, all the way driving, we continued having a fight.
	And he was just explaining to me how what I was doing was wrong.
	And that's the story.
	So why were you angry?
	You said I was angry at my husband and I picked on the pile of clothes as an excuse.
	Why were you angry with your husband to begin with?
	Well, as we established in our call, in our previous conversation with you, is that I just found an excuse to be back to him.
	That the clothes was not an issue.
	I just wanted to be back to him and I used the clothes as an excuse.
	No, no, I understand that.
	I understand that. I remember the last conversation.
	My question is, you said, I was angry at my husband and the clothes were an excuse, right?
	So what were you angry with your husband about?
	The reason of my anger for the past year is our financial situation.
	And again, that's an excuse that I used to be bad or mean to him, which I'm not supposed to be using.
	Okay, so with your husband, when he knew that you were angry and frustrated about the financial situation, what steps did he make to help you with that?
	He's making a lot of steps to fix the situation and he's made a lot of attempts and tried different paths of how to improve it.
	He's still doing it.
	It's just things taking time and one business was finished and then a new business hasn't kicked in yet and it's hard to start a new business and he's not working for anybody, he's working for himself.
	It takes time and it's risky and It's taking time.
	So the next business didn't kick in yet.
	So that's why we're in this sort of transition.
	It's a transition moment. Okay.
	Okay. So here's the thing.
	I hate to say sort of relationship 101, but you guys really, really need to hear this, okay?
	Almost every time that people get angry at a romantic partner, it's not the issue itself.
	Obviously, you guys know that, and I'm not telling you anything you don't know.
	So you weren't angry at the financial issues.
	You were angry at not being heard and understood about the financial issues.
	Right? So when we yell at people, it's because they're not listening.
	Right? So earlier, I raised the issue with you with regards to your father.
	And remember, I said this was a lot of work because You weren't hearing what it is that I have to say.
	Now, hearing what I have to say doesn't mean agreeing with me.
	You've listened to what I have to say.
	You've sort of mulled it through. And I got a lot of excuses and avoidance.
	And, you know, I said, like, you described your father as, well, he beat me because I did X, Y, and Z. And I gave you a long speech about how it had nothing to do with you.
	And you said, oh, no, no, no, I've done all the work.
	I've journaled. I've read books.
	I've, you know, I've dealt with it all.
	And it's like, okay. But if you dealt with it all, then why the hell are you telling me that you were causal in your father's anger, right?
	So... You weren't listening, right?
	And then with Vlad, Vlad, for the second time, gave me a well-rehearsed story about how he was the reasonable one and you were the crazy one, right?
	And that's just...
	Not valid, right? And he didn't say, well, you know, gosh, she's really been talking to me about this financial stuff, and I haven't really been listening.
	I've been uneasy about it.
	I've kind of been poo-pooing it or rejecting her ideas, and I find it very stressful.
	And, right, he just, as if there'd been no history, he just, well, it's just about the clothes, and then she went crazy and so on.
	And here's, I'll tell you this, too.
	I'll tell you this, too. I can tell you exactly why you fought in that car, right?
	Because he'd had the fight, and then it kind of all...
	Cooled down a little bit and then I guess he wasn't done fighting because then Vlad gets in the car with you and he says something like, if I understand what he said that you reported, he said something like, well, honey, do you have any idea why you got so crazy?
	Why you got so angry? Do you have any clue as to why you got so aggressive?
	Was it something like that? Yes, yes.
	Do you know why that's going to make you very angry?
	Why? Do you know why that got you so angry?
	Because I didn't know why I was acting the way...
	No, no, no, no, no.
	That wouldn't make you angry. Because that's the very definition of passive aggression.
	Because he didn't sit there and say, you know...
	I've been thinking about this fight and, you know, I want to take my ownership for it.
	And, you know, you've had these financial issues.
	We haven't really discussed them.
	We haven't resolved them to your satisfaction.
	I've just been kind of avoidant.
	And also when you start to get more angry, I just become hyper controlled, hyper, quote, rational.
	And I shut things down and I get avoidance and then I get very distant and I portray you as the crazy one, which makes you more angry.
	And, you know, like I'm really not helping this escalation situation.
	Right.
	He didn't say anything like that.
	He basically dumped the whole thing on you.
	Do you know why you got so crazy?
	Because I clearly have no idea, but he's known you for three years.
	How could he have no idea whatsoever about what triggers you, what makes you angry, what makes you upset?
	How could he have... I'm not saying he's responsible for it, but when he comes to you and he says...
	In the same way that he was justifying himself to me, right?
	And you could hear that when you listen back, Steph, Steph, you know, that tone of just anger and frustration and a little bit of dominance, a little bit of bullying, which is totally fine, right?
	I mean, I'm not a babe in the woods.
	It's totally fine. But when he comes to you and he says, well, you know, you just kind of went crazy there, honey.
	I have no idea why.
	And, you know, if you can give me any kind of insight, that would be just great.
	He's just totally distancing himself from the issue.
	He's dumping the entire problem upon you.
	And saying that either you're completely insane and there's no way to predict anything, or there's some predictability but he's no clue about it because he can't be bothered to figure out what's going on and none of those things are true, right?
	None of those things are true. So when he comes and says, after you've had this big blow up, he doesn't sit there and say, I've got causality in this.
	There's something that I'm doing, and let's talk about it.
	There's something that I'm doing that's pissing you off.
	I mean, he was pissing me off, and I just was talking to him for like five minutes, right?
	Again, that means I'm right or anything.
	I'm just telling you by sort of genuine emotional experience.
	And everything that I said to him was just plain wrong.
	Now... I have a happy 20-year marriage and you guys have been together three years and you're lecturing me about everything I'm wrong about.
	That's just annoying. I'm going to sleep fine tonight and all that.
	I'm not trying to say anything bad.
	I appreciate the bluntness.
	But, you know, he was just lecturing me.
	He comes to me for advice and feedback.
	And this is something I'm extraordinarily good at.
	And he's just lecturing me about how I've got everything wrong.
	And I'm, you know, I'm telling him the reasons why I have certain reservations about this particular story.
	And he doesn't have an input, right?
	Like when you were talking about your dad, you didn't really have an input.
	Like I gave you some thoughts and some feedback, some pretty carefully thought out stuff.
	And you were like, no, no, I've done all the work.
	I've dealt with it all. I don't need this, blah, blah, blah, right?
	And so, at this level, it's going to be very tough for you guys to find a way to get along.
	Because you've got this dynamic that comes out of the past.
	And the dynamic is...
	That, uh, he does things that are passive aggressive and you act out his anger and then he distances himself from that anger and blames it all on you.
	Uh, and then you probably crumble and feel bad about it, but then the resentment grows and the frustration and the anger grows back again and the whole cycle repeats.
	Does that match at all any kind of your experience?
	Well, I can relate to the part that I'm the one with a bad family history and I'm the dysfunctional one.
	So in all this, since I start the fights and I'm the one disrupting the peace, then, of course, after we're having this fight, then we're talking about it and we're trying to fix it and I'm still doing the same thing over and over and over again, then, of course, I feel like I'm the dysfunctional one and I don't know how to change that situation.
	Now, do you think that someone who loved you unreservedly would make you feel crazy and broken?
	Dysfunctional and damaged? I don't think necessarily he makes me feel that way.
	There are scars in me that are there, that happen.
	No, no, he does. He does.
	And I say this because that's the story that he gave to me twice, right?
	In two conversations, he gave me the story that you just were rage texting him and escalated and he was trying to calm things down and so on, right?
	And it happened. It happened that way.
	It did. Okay, but listen, no, no, my God, my God, you guys got to stop dealing with the surface stuff or we're not going to get anywhere, okay?
	Why was he unable to de-escalate?
	I mean, I was annoyed with him and all he did was lecture me.
	And tell me that I was wrong and get annoyed with me without saying, Steph, I'm finding this kind of annoying, right?
	I'm not angry. I'm just a little frustrated, right?
	So, why is he so bad at de-escalating, right?
	Because if you are just a complete insane aggressive person, then it would be just abusive to himself for him to be with you, right?
	Because you're just... I'm not saying you are, right?
	But if you were some crazy feral tiger rabbit crazy, right?
	So... Why is it that he works very hard to de-escalate things, but just makes you more angry?
	Do you think that's just a complete coincidence?
	That's the whole definition of passive aggression, is that they're just being so reasonable, but everything they're doing is just, hey, I'm the sane one, you're the crazy one, I'm the sane one, you're the crazy one, I'm the sensible one, you're the broken person, you've got too much rage, I can't handle it, it's all you, it's all you, it's all you. And of course that's going to make you Angry.
	It doesn't mean you've got to act it out or anything like that.
	But of course, of course he's going to make you angry.
	So if he's de-escalating, why doesn't it work?
	And I'm happy to hear Vlad's side of things too, but why doesn't it work?
	If you've had this anger for three years, and he just keeps trying to de-escalate, and what he's doing doesn't work, doesn't work, because for three years you've had these fights, You think that you start them.
	He tells you that you start them.
	I don't believe that's true, but he tells you you start them.
	And he says, hey, for three years I've been trying to de-escalate and you just keep getting more and more angry.
	You do understand that when somebody does something repetitively, they're getting a benefit.
	The benefit is either direct, investing in Bitcoin, or it's indirect, or it's called a secondary gain, right?
	So his secondary gain is he gets to manage a crazy woman just like he did with his mom.
	That's his sense of efficacy.
	His sense of control as a kid was managing his mom's aggression.
	Now, he needs aggression.
	He needs female aggression in his life so that he can feel a sense of control over his environment.
	And so, if for three years, 99% of the fights, he said, have been started by you, and he just tries to deescalate all the time, but always ends up with you getting more and more angry.
	Then he has not changed his behavior to try some other method of de-escalating or to try some other approach to the conflict.
	It's repetitive, which means that he's getting a secondary gain called, you're the crazy one, I'm the sane one, you're unstable, I'm stable, you're unreasonable, I'm reasonable.
	He gets to feel superior. Right?
	And so this...
	I don't believe the de-escalation thing for a moment.
	Because if he was actually interested in de-escalating your behavior, then when his de-escalation failed to work 100% of the time, he would change his behavior.
	Do you understand what I mean? I understand what you're saying.
	I think Vlad wants to address...
	Yeah, yeah. Please, go ahead. Okay.
	Look, when...
	There's been a jump here with one example, right?
	That that one example is a repeated pattern for the last year.
	We haven't been arguing for three years.
	We've been arguing for one year. The first year, we didn't have a single argument for the entire year.
	The last year is when we've been arguing.
	I have tried many, many...
	Everything that in my limited scope...
	I mean, I'm not a professional psychologist or psychologist.
	I've tried a number of different tactics...
	To try to be and we have talked about the finances until we're both blue in the face for hours upon hours upon hours And when I came back and that first the first thing I said When we got in the car together after this just one example, I give you ten different examples out of this one example I said exactly what you said to us, which is Ina I mean, we do not fight.
	We're not fighting over a pile of clothes We're fighting about something deeper than this.
	Let's try to figure this out.
	Because we're not, we're obviously, obviously you don't care necessarily about this pile of clothes.
	Neither do I. Let's figure out what we're really arguing about.
	That was, now if that's past the question.
	Okay, fantastic, fantastic. Okay, hang on.
	So what did you bring to the table then?
	Or did you leave it all on her lap?
	I literally thought about what we were arguing about for an hour while I was outside walking the house.
	Now, right now, this was a month ago.
	We've had a fight like this every day almost for a year.
	I do not remember the details of what I was suggesting we could both do.
	Okay, just give me the generals then.
	Just give me the generals.
	You said we've got to figure this out.
	You had a long time to think about it.
	And you don't have to give me the details, but what in general was your theory as to what you were fighting actually about?
	I wish I could tell you for this specific fight.
	Honestly, I do not remember.
	Oh, come on, man. That would be a huge insight about the nature of your relationship.
	Just be honest and say, I dumped it all on her.
	I said, we're not fighting about this.
	Now you've got to figure it out. You're just making up a narrative.
	I never, I never, that didn't happen.
	I never dumped it on her.
	I literally said, we need to figure this out.
	Okay, and then what did you, you were the one who came up with it?
	Right, so you're the one who came up with, we're not fighting about clothing, we're fighting about something deeper, and you had a long time to think about it.
	So what did you come to her with?
	Or did you just basically say, we've got to figure it all out, and then just sit there silently?
	Do you remember what I said to you?
	Yes, I remember what it was.
	She's got to get to the mic.
	She's got to get to the mic. Yes, I'm here.
	Can you hear me? Yeah. I remember what it was.
	So Vlad suggested that I'm not fighting, that I'm addicted to fighting, that I like to fight.
	I enjoy that I have orgasmic release when we fight.
	And after we finish fighting, I have this orgasmic release and then we're in peace for a couple of days until the next time.
	So his theory was that I'm...
	I'm getting something out of it and maybe repeating the pattern on my parents that they did it and so I'm continuing the same cycle.
	Okay, come on. Come on.
	Come on.
	You guys are trawling me at this point, right?
	Not at all. You guys got to stop talking.
	You guys got to stop talking.
	Oh my God. Oh my God.
	Okay, Vlad, you've got to stop bullshitting me or we just can't have a conversation.
	You have totally bullshitted me.
	You have lied to my fucking face.
	Okay, you have totally bullshitted me.
	Not even once. Absolutely, right now.
	And I'll tell you, I'll prove it to you 100%.
	And we either have the conversation or we don't, right?
	But I'm just telling you 100%.
	And listen, I get it.
	You're being defensive and this is your fixed way of being and I understand it.
	So I'm not trying to say, oh, you're a mean, bad, evil guy.
	I'm just, but you have totally lied to me.
	So I said, you dumped it on her, and you said, no, no, no, no.
	Absolutely not. Absolutely not.
	All I said was, she's addicted to fighting, and that's why we fight.
	No, what I said to you was, is I genuinely don't remember because we've had these conversations in different forms and different solutions.
	Oh my God, man, dude.
	Okay, are you going to drop the defensive?
	Do you just want to be right? Or do you actually want to fix any of these problems?
	Oh, I see. So you're going to tell me that I'm lying to you when I'm not.
	No, but you were. Okay, do you understand now?
	Do you understand now that you said, I wasn't dumping it on her, but as your girlfriend has now pointed out, you did in fact dump it on her.
	What I said exactly was, is that I don't remember what I was saying.
	saying okay but now that you've heard it do you understand that you did dump it on her um i i don't know i I mean, in my opinion, Come on, dude.
	Come on. Listen, we have to operate at a basic level of reality if we're going to have a conversation, right?
	Do you understand that when you go to your girlfriend and say, the reason we fight is you're addicted to fighting because of your terrible childhood, that that's dumping it all on her?
	Moment of truth, man.
	You're not going to have an opportunity like this again in your life where somebody is going to be this frank with you.
	I'm not mad at you. I'm not saying you're a bad guy.
	But it was a complete falsehood when you said, I never dumped it on her.
	And I just, I mean, maybe you did or maybe you didn't remember.
	I don't know. But you understand now that when she says that you told her it's 100% her, she's addicted to fighting because of her bad childhood, that that's putting it all on her, right?
	Well, that's not...
	Sure, sure. Let's go for it.
	Let's say that's true.
	No, no. Are you saying she's a liar now?
	No, what I'm saying...
	No, no, no. Hang on. You said if that's true.
	Is that true? That in that specific fight, I said, listen, I think there's an addiction to fighting at this point?
	Yes, 100% true.
	Okay, so you said that she was addicted to fighting.
	And I'm not trying to catch you.
	There's no jail sentence here.
	I'm just trying to, you know, let's be frank, right?
	Do you understand? So my prediction was that you dumped it all on her and that's your passive aggression and that's why you escalated, right?
	So if you want to de-escalate, you say you're not a psychologist, no problem, neither am I, right?
	But if you want to de-escalate, I don't know, the first thing you want to do when you have a big conflict is not dump it all on the other person.
	You understand that's not going to de-escalate.
	Anything's just going to make it a million times worse, right?
	Sure, sure. What do you mean, sure, sure?
	I don't know. That tone is very odd to me.
	Like, okay, fine. What do you mean?
	Well, okay, so if I push back, I'm not saying you're wrong.
	We need to establish sort of the rules of the conversation as well.
	If I push back against what you're saying, I'm not saying you're wrong, Stefan.
	I'm not saying I'm right.
	Okay, so when I'm trying to give you a little bit of responsibility here, how do you feel?
	Kind of mad at me. And you want to avoid it and you want to push it away.
	And I'm not saying you're entirely responsible.
	I'm just saying that it's pretty provocative when you have a big conflict to go to the woman and say it's 100% you because of your fucked up childhood, you're addicted to fighting and that's the only reason we fight.
	So you're giving her 100% responsibility.
	Now I'm asking you for empathy for her.
	Because when I'm trying to give you a little bit of responsibility here, you're fighting me like crazy because it's annoying and difficult to be given responsibility in this kind of conflict situation.
	So take what you feel when I'm trying to give you a little bit of responsibility, multiply it by, I don't know, 10,000, and then you're where your girlfriend is.
	You're where Nicole is. Right?
	Because I'm trying to give you a little bit of responsibility here and you're like fighting and upset and angry and dodging and gaslighting and ugh, right?
	And then you say, well, I don't know why the de-escalation tactics I have called giving her 100% responsibility don't work.
	You don't like this responsibility.
	Why the hell do you think she'd like 10 times more?
	Precisely. Yeah, yeah. We're both flawed.
	I agree. I'm as much as fault as her.
	I'm responsible for this relationship just as much as she is.
	I've said that from the first time we talked.
	I don't disagree with anything you're saying.
	Okay. I don't know where to go from here, man.
	You're not listening. I'm listening 100%.
	No, you're not. No, I have no idea where to go from here other than you guys can just welcome to the rest of your life fighting if you don't want to solve it.
	Because you just missed a great opportunity to empathize with someone there and you just want to be right and I don't know what the hell, right?
	Okay, so you can be right.
	How is he saying that we're both responsible and we both have agency for the fights and the escalation?
	How is that avoiding a situation?
	I'm focusing on your responsibility and the best you can come up with is saying, well, we're both at fault.
	I'm focusing on your responsibility here.
	Which is an accurate statement. Sure. Your responsibility.
	That when you go in to a high conflict situation and you blame the other person 100%, you are lighting a fire under a bomb immediately.
	And you know that.
	You know that exactly.
	Because when I try to point out your passive-aggressive responsibility, you fight me like hell.
	Which means you know exactly what you're doing to her because when you have it done to you one tenth of one percent, you hate it.
	So you know exactly what you're doing to her by giving her a hundred percent because when I give you one percent, you hate it.
	But when I push back, when I put the blame on her and responsibility, I'm being passive aggressive, right?
	So that's what I'm doing, right?
	But when you do it to me, Right?
	Because that's what you just said.
	You kind of did it to me at 1%.
	You're not being passive-aggressive.
	You're trying to work and solve the problem, right?
	But your conflict is not with me.
	I didn't have a screaming match with you for a day solid.
	I didn't fight with you solid for a year.
	You're coming to me and asking me for help, so don't put me in the same category as this dysfunctional, expletive-laden FU scream fest that you got going on here.
	It's not the same situation at all.
	Don't put me in the same category as your girlfriend.
	I don't even know. That's kind of gay.
	Sorry. We misunderstood.
	Then I wasn't putting you in the same category.
	What I was saying is, I was trying to say, if You give me advice in this conversation, right?
	And I'm getting defensive, and you're saying, well, that's sort of the same pattern that when you put the responsibility on your girlfriend, she's getting defensive and aggressive and escalates, right?
	So what I'm saying is, but I don't think you're right now being passive-aggressive.
	So what I'm saying is, I don't understand, apparently, what passive-aggressive is, because if I come in and And this is just one example.
	We have talked about a hundred different possibilities over the last year about what could be the base cause of all the fights.
	In my mind, and again, maybe I don't understand what passive aggressive is, but in my mind, I'm trying to do what you're doing with me, which is dig deeper and find what the hell's going on here after a year of this.
	And maybe I'm being passive-aggressive when I'm trying to post-fight sort of have a post-mortem.
	So are you really trying to sell me on the story, Vlad, that your honest, heartfelt, deep exploration of what's going wrong is it's 100% your girlfriend's fault?
	I have never said that ever.
	That's what she reported to me.
	She said that your contribution in the car, I don't know if you remember this or not, it's always tough to talk with people who are being defensive because they have no throughput of memory, but she said that your solution was that she's addicted to fighting because of her bad childhood, right? No, that's not what I said, and I don't think that's what she said.
	Okay, that's fine, that's fine.
	If I got something wrong, I'm certainly happy to have it clarified if you can pass it back to Nicole.
	So this is what I was saying.
	No, no, just pass it back to Nicole.
	Let's get this. If I got something wrong, I certainly don't want to be in error here.
	It's an orgasmic lead-up and a release-up.
	Like I said, for three days before we had the fight, that, hey, the tension's building.
	Let's de-escalate.
	I'm sorry, if you could just put her on, I can talk to her directly.
	I'm not sure what's going on now. Yes, I'm on.
	Yeah, yeah. So in the car, did he say that the conflicts were caused by like 99% of the fights are started by you because you're addicted to fighting because of a bad childhood or something like that?
	He mentioned to me on the multiple occasions that He thinks that I'm addicted to fighting and that I'm getting an orgasmic release out of it.
	Oh, like it's a sex thing for you?
	Like you like to fight and it's eternal?
	No, it's not a sex. The tension is building up for a couple of days.
	Then we erupt in this horrible fight.
	Then the tension erupts and at that point it's like an orgasmic release and then I'm exhaling and then we have a couple of days of peace until the next time.
	So that's sort of a dynamic as far as I understood.
	Okay, so it's you who have...
	I don't know what orgasmic means in this particular situation, but is it like great sex afterwards?
	Don't even tell me. I don't even want to know.
	So yeah, that's kind of what I got.
	The reason you guys fight is that because you, Nicole...
	Uh, had a bad childhood.
	You're addicted to fighting and you get what some kind of orgasmic relief from it or something like that.
	So, so yeah, it's, it's you, right?
	I mean, it's you.
	Yes. Okay.
	So, so I, I wasn't mistaken in, in what I had to say and, um, and Vlad wasn't listening.
	Uh, and, uh, I don't know what kind of whisper coaching was going on between there, but no, I mean, I was accurate in what it is that I said.
	And so, yeah, I stand by it.
	Well, I'm also the one who starts the fight, so that's why it's me.
	Well, hang on, hang on.
	How do you know that you're the one who starts the fights?
	Because I now have been in conflict with Vlad, right?
	So Vlad would doubtless say that I, Steph, started the conflict that I had with Vlad.
	And that I was being hypocritical because, you see, if I give someone else responsibility, apparently that's being passive-aggressive.
	And when Vlad gave Nicole responsibility, he was being passive-aggressive.
	But when I, Steph, gave Vlad responsibility, I wasn't being passive-aggressive.
	Like, he's got this whole thing going on in his head, right?
	This whole hamster wheel going on in his head.
	And, yeah, he's being pretty passive-aggressive.
	He's being pretty provocative. You can see it's not just me.
	It's a whole bunch of people in the chat.
	It doesn't mean that we're all right just because we happen to agree with each other.
	But in the chat, everyone is, yeah, oh, yeah, he's really difficult to deal with.
	He's very passive-aggressive.
	He's very annoying and so on.
	So I'm not entirely convinced.
	I think that there's a story that he's selling you, which I think is very damaging to you.
	And the story that he's selling you is that you're orgasmically benefiting from reenacting your childhood trauma by aggressing against him for no reason.
	I think that's very bad for you.
	I think it's a very unhealthy thing to do.
	Plus, of course, he's swearing at you and he's telling you to F off.
	He's calling you a bitch. These things are very destructive.
	And I think that, yeah, he's probably got this tooth-gritted, quote, reasonableness that's going on.
	But I certainly have not found him to be receptive or reasonable.
	This has been one of the more difficult, probably in the top 20 difficult conversations I've had in 16 years.
	And the difficulty of the conversation, Nicole, has not been with you.
	I mean, a little bit, but nothing major.
	But he is a very difficult person to have a frank conversation with because, yeah, he's not honest and direct.
	And even when he finds out that he's mistaken, he won't admit it.
	And all of that stuff is very passive-aggressive and I think kind of toxic, frankly.
	Well, I thought he agreed with you that he also is responsible, that we're both flawed and that, I mean, he was trying to agree with you as far as I could understand it.
	No, no, but you see, he just got this whole insight about passive aggression.
	And the best that he can come up with is the unspecified, we're both flawed, right?
	So if he's gone from 99% of the fights are started by you because of your screwed up childhood to we're both flawed...
	That's nothing real.
	The insight that matters is the insight where you're in control.
	These are the insights that matter.
	If you have an insight into someone else, it can be helpful, it can be interesting, it can be illuminating.
	But the insights that really matter are the insights where you say, here's what I'm doing to perpetuate this destructive cycle.
	Here's what I'm doing to perpetuate this difficult situation.
	And we've been talking for, what, close to two hours now?
	No, an hour and a half, hour and a half and a bit, right?
	And I think you've got a little bit of stuff going on, probably more than a little bit of stuff going on about sort of patterns and childhood and all of that.
	He's got nothing, as far as I can tell, other than this vague, we're both flawed human beings, which is kind of a pointless thing to say because it's, you know, it's like saying, well, we're both bipeds, we're both mammals.
	It's like, yeah, big contribution, right?
	So your insight in his regard is that he's putting all responsibility on me and he should not be doing that.
	So that's basically what you're proposing to him.
	And he's not sort of agreeing with that.
	Oh, no, no. So he's either saying that...
	So he said he couldn't remember the insight.
	I don't believe that. I just don't.
	Because that's such a key moment.
	And it would have been so important.
	Because if you sit down and say, here's the big insight I have...
	You know, we got to solve this problem.
	And he doesn't even remember this big insight.
	I just don't think that's true. I think that he said he didn't remember it because he didn't want to admit what it was.
	But then when you were there, and you said, oh, he said it's 100% me because of my crazy childhood, I'm addicted and orgasmic and blah, blah, blah, right?
	Well, then we come back and say, okay, well, you were putting 100% and it's like, well, we're both flawed and right.
	He just won't, uh, it's like these opposing magnets trying to get them together, right?
	Like he just won't have a, a direct Conversation where he can admit fault.
	Now, he probably had a hypercritical mom, like we talked about this kind of stuff before, right?
	So for him to admit fault is for him to be doomed in probably some context.
	But no, no, no, it's the insight for, and I'm happy to talk more, Vlad, but the insight for Vlad is, oh my gosh, I am part of this cycle of aggression because I can be really passive-aggressive.
	And yes, When I put 100% of the blame of these fights on some twisted sexual compulsion repetition trauma of my wife or my girlfriend, that's really a provocative thing to do.
	It's not taking any ownership myself, and of course that's going to...
	Roll a pin into the relationship.
	Take the pin out of the grenade and roll that into the relationship.
	And if he doesn't do that kind of stuff, then that will really help.
	It will actually really help to de-escalate.
	Because what he's doing right now, you know, he's like, I keep trying to, for the year you've been fighting, right?
	He says, I keep trying to de-escalate.
	And then I point out, well, no, that's not de-escalating at all.
	That, in fact, is truly an incitement to anger.
	And again, I mean, you're still responsible, Nicole, for not acting out that anger and all that, although it can be kind of tough in the face of a passive-aggressive person.
	But what I'm saying is you're both part of the cycle of aggression here.
	Now yours, Nicole, is more overt, Because you're rage texting and so on.
	But his passive aggressive stuff is also part of the cycle of violence.
	And I'm trying to empower him to, I mean, for you, Vlad, I'm trying to give you the insight and the power to truly de-escalate.
	And one of the ways that you do that is in the middle of a big heated argument, you don't sit there and say, well, it's 100% you and you get off on this sexually or whatever that orgasmic thing meant, right?
	I mean, that's not going to de-escalate anything.
	That's just going to throw things through the roof, right?
	So if you refrain from the desire to shove that knife in, so to speak, it's a sideways knife, not a front knife.
	But if you can restrain your desire to make it 100% her fault, Then you can actually de-escalate because what you're doing now isn't working.
	And I'm trying to give you something that works, but I'm not sure, Vlad, that you want something that works right now.
	I think you guys should try that again because we really need to get out of the situation.
	And this is our second conversation.
	We really need to fix this.
	We really need to figure it out and get over it because we...
	We need to fix this. I think you should try and talk to Vlad again.
	Vlad should try and talk to you again.
	I'm all ears. Yes, go ahead.
	So just to begin, this orgasmic thing has taken a life of its own here.
	When I'm saying orgasmic release, I mean, like they say that a sneeze is like an orgasm that kind of builds.
	Once you cross a certain point, there's a release and, you know, you get past it, right?
	I've never heard that before.
	I'll just be honest. People say this.
	I've never heard this before.
	And just get a curiosity, and I'm sure you're right, but if anyone in the audience has heard this before, I've never heard that before.
	Anyway, go ahead. It's a fact, right?
	So they say that a sneeze is similar to an orgasm, right?
	So, when I'm saying it's an orgasmic release, I just mean that, for example, we're just talking about this one thing.
	We could go... Sorry, you're clicking a lot on the microphone.
	I don't know if you're touching it or brushing it or something like that.
	Okay, I think this is better.
	So, again, I'm just using the one example just to keep it simple.
	I could give... Anyway, so the point is, is that before this fight, the big fight that we're talking about here, in the three days...
	Prior to the fight.
	I'm sorry, the clicking is driving me crazy and it's going to be impossible to fix in post-production.
	I don't know what the difference is, but it's clicking really painfully in my ear.
	Okay, maybe...
	Just back off a little, I'll fix the volume later, but go ahead.
	Okay, so what my idea was with the sort of orgasmic release, what I was just saying is that prior to one of our big fights, the energy in the house, there's...
	I don't know how to explain it, but there's a lot of, just sort of, what I would say, again, this is my perspective, and I could be totally wrong, but I'm just telling you what it feels like.
	There's a lot of, there's nagging, there's little comments, there's this, there's that.
	And in fact, before the last fight, I said, Nicole, we're kind of, I feel like we're kind of going in the wrong direction here.
	The tension's sort of building.
	Let's try to release the tension here.
	I don't know what's going on, but we're kind of having these little snippets at each other, if that's the right way.
	I don't know if that makes sense, right?
	And then, boom, the next day...
	Well, hang on, hang on, hang on.
	So that's the moment, right?
	So you've identified a problem, and what is your solution?
	That is something that we've talked about probably...
	50 hours over the last year.
	No, no, but hang on.
	So you've identified that there's a tension, and whoever identifies the problem, it's their onus to be at least the first to come up with a solution, right?
	Okay, so one of my solutions, I've thrown out a million different things.
	One of them is that, and again, I was a two-sport athlete in college, so sort of burning off that energy to me is important.
	It works for me, right?
	So one of my suggestions is that if this tension is building, go for a run, get on the bicycle, burn off energy, get on the rowing machine.
	But if we can kind of feel this sort of developing, right?
	Burn some of this aggression off.
	I do jujitsu and it's amazing how after you spar, for example, I mean, you feel great, or at least I do, right?
	You're just relaxed. Anything that was going wrong, it's almost like meditation.
	When you're sparring, you're done and you're just very relaxed.
	So one of my suggestions was that we're kind of getting in this sort of mentality to go for a long bike ride.
	Do something that burns off this sort of physical energy.
	Sorry, is that a suggestion for both of you or for Nicole?
	Well, I do it every day.
	I mean, I'm like a physical sort of junkie, if you will.
	I do that every day.
	Even if times are good, times are bad, I'm doing it.
	Okay, so your suggestion, again, it's her, right?
	Because if your theory about...
	What is it? Lack of physical activity leads to this aggression and this tension.
	Then you obviously are not sort of part of that problem because you exercise every day.
	So aren't we kind of back to it's 100% Nicole needs to go for a bike ride and that'll make everything better?
	No, I don't think it'll make...
	I don't know if it'll make... No, no, hang on, hang on.
	No, but logically, if exercise is one thing that will help and you're already doing it, then you've already solved the problem and the problem is her lack of exercise, right?
	If this theory is correct, right?
	Yes, I... As far as if that is a contributing factor, right?
	Okay, so you understand that you're back to...
	It's 100% you.
	You need to go for a bike ride or we're going to have a big fight, right?
	It's, first off, even how I got that idea was from a podcast you did years ago.
	No, no, no, forget about the podcast I did years ago.
	My God, just try and stay on the conversation.
	You've got a very good antennae for when you might be in the wrong and you don't like it, right?
	Which is ironic because you keep making your girlfriend in the wrong, right?
	So we are back to exactly the same situation as in the car.
	Which is, honey, we're tense because you're not going for a bike ride.
	It's 100% you.
	You go for the bike ride because I'm already exercising with jujitsu and stuff.
	You go for the bike ride and we'll be fine, right?
	So it's 100% her. I never said that.
	I said that after a year of arguing, I've run through 20 different ideas.
	Okay, give me a scenario where it's you who needs to change.
	Give me one if you've got 20, right?
	So give me one, because so far the two have been that it's 100% her.
	So give me one where it's you who has to change and what you've done about it.
	100% you. Because, you know, if it's 100% her for some of them, it obviously has to be 100% you for some of them, right?
	Because it can't just be 100% her for any of them, otherwise it would be terrible, right?
	So give me one of these 20 scenarios where it's 100% you and you've enacted a change.
	So... 100% me, alright, is the state of the finances in the house, right?
	So, and I've said that we've had, you know, 20 hour plus conversations about the finances, what we're doing, what direction, what we can do, everything else and above.
	I have no doubt that if the finances in the household were in a better state, That her anxiety, which is natural, she's about to give birth, she's, you know, we're married, all this good stuff, that if the finances were better, there'd be probably, there'd be much less tension in the house on her part, anxiety, on my part, the whole thing, right?
	So finances are a pretty big deal, right?
	So that is definitely something that is 100% on my shoulders.
	Okay, and what have you done about that?
	When we first met, there's going to have to be some background here, but I was in the airline business.
	I owned parts.
	I basically overhauled parts.
	What that means is that I bought parts for airplanes.
	Then the FAA would give a certain amount of landings on the specific part that I bought.
	And then they'd have to take the part off, do the overhaul, repair, microscopic cracks, repaint, all that good stuff.
	And every time the part was exchanged, I get paid, right?
	So I didn't do the work. I didn't do the overhaul.
	I own the parts, and I got paid off of what's called exchanges, okay?
	Now, the FAA, for each of the parts that I owned, there's, depending on the part, there's a 10 to 15-year window that I get paid for exchanges.
	So I was...
	Going through that process, and I had that business, and the window of time before those parts were basically scrapped.
	They're thrown away. There's no more money to gain off them.
	That was coming to an end almost exactly right when we started dating.
	And I said to her, you know, to get back in the game now, they've changed the parts, and it would be multi-millions to buy basically the equivalent now.
	They've been upgraded, right?
	So I'm out of that market.
	I can't do it. I can't just continue doing it.
	So I explained to her, listen, the finances are going to be unstable.
	I'm out of this business.
	This business I've been doing for 10, 15 years is coming to an end, a hard stop, okay?
	And, you know, so I started, my idea was, is I was going to open up a jiu-jitsu school, right?
	So I was training, training, training, eight hours a day.
	I mean, literally eight hours a day.
	I was going to open up a jiu-jitsu school.
	Boom, COVID hits.
	Everything, it was almost a blessing it didn't work out because, you know, all these schools run out of business, obviously, because of the COVID thing.
	And then, so in the meantime, COVID hit, so me and my business partner, we start buying websites.
	And That's been going on now for the last, let's say, nine months.
	I don't know if you're familiar with that process is, but you buy the websites, you have to establish credibility with Google.
	That's the first step. You can't monetize right off the bat.
	It becomes kind of trashy and traffic potential.
	You can get dinged by Google, right?
	So you're not looked at as a credible site.
	So this last year we've been building credibility with the sites and starting maybe six weeks ago or so, We just started moving into the monetization phase with the affiliation links, affiliate links, all that good stuff.
	So as of today, we're at the beginning stage of the monetization, and as we're building the credibility and traffic for the sites, The monetization is obviously related to all that good stuff.
	So we're in that phase right now of building up these sites, credibility with Google.
	We're ranking number one in some of these keywords.
	It's going well, but the money's not flowing in as of yet.
	Absolutely, on my part, on her part, this is stressful.
	She's five months pregnant.
	We gotta make something, it's gonna be real good if something happens here.
	And 100% that's on my shoulders.
	100%. So she's worried about making money and you haven't really made any money?
	Since we bought the websites, exactly.
	So you haven't solved that problem?
	Nope, it's being solved.
	It hasn't been solved.
	Okay, so...
	The major issue you haven't solved.
	Now, again, that doesn't mean that she's got the right to yell at you or anything, but tell me about something that's 100% you that you have solved.
	Because if you make something 100% her, then she has to solve it, right?
	And you're only telling her because she needs to solve it.
	Like if she's addicted to drama or addicted to fighting, then you expect her to solve that.
	If she's, I can't remember the other one, if she's 100% her for some other thing, then she has to solve it, right?
	So when you get 100% ownership of a problem in a relationship, you have to solve it, which is why you tell her when she's got 100% ownership of something.
	So give me 100% ownership Of a cause of fighting that's yours and that you've solved.
	I mean...
	I don't know what to say, because, and again, this can be like me giving you a script, but man, I'm telling you, I do not, okay, look, if I'm being passive-aggressive and circuitously getting her crazy and not, you know, aggressive or whatever, then I'm starting every fight, if that's the case.
	Well, I didn't say that, I didn't say that, but I'm saying, I said, I said, you're part of the cycle of aggression.
	Okay, so if I'm sort of aggravating her state of mind, if that's the right way to put it, through my lack of...
	I don't know, real effective de-escalation.
	And that could 100% be a fact.
	Oh, no, no. Listen, you've got to stare this straight in the face if you want to solve it.
	You're escalating. By making it 100% her, throwing up your hands and saying, hey, I'm the sane one, you're the crazy one, you're totally escalating.
	It's not that you're failing to de-escalate.
	That's like saying an arsonist is failing to put out a fire.
	No, you are massively escalating.
	And I'm not saying it's, again, I'm not saying that gives her the right to yell at you or call your names or anything like that.
	But if you really want to solve the problem, you have to identify what it is, that when you make it 100% her.
	But you've made very difficult problems 100% her, right?
	Very difficult problems, right?
	Solving her entire history and this addiction and this orgasmic sneeze thing, whatever the hell that was, right?
	So you've given her very, very difficult problems to solve.
	And I guess I'm just asking myself and you, what difficult problems have you solved?
	Now, you haven't solved the money problem, but what difficult problems have you taken ownership of that you've solved?
	Because if you haven't solved any problems, But you're asking her to solve all these really difficult problems, you're not going to have any credibility with her.
	Do you see what I mean? Like, you wouldn't hire a fat guy who didn't know jujitsu to be a jujitsu trainer, right?
	Because he wouldn't have any credibility, even if he'd read a bunch of books and knew some theory or whatever, because he'd need to actually demonstrate stuff, right?
	So if you want to lecture people on how to solve problems, or that they should take 100% ownership and solve these problems, okay, I think that's a reasonable thing to do.
	But you also have to have solved problems yourself.
	Now, if the only problem you've identified is the money problem and you failed to solve it, and you can't think of another problem that you solved, then telling her, well, here are all these difficult problems you need to solve when you can't solve any problems, you understand that's also just going to be really annoying to other people.
	Does that make sense? Sure, sure.
	Okay, so can you think of any issues that are yours that are a problem in the relationship that you've solved?
	I don't know. I'd have to ask her what she sees as problems in the relationship.
	No, no, no. Come on, man.
	You said you've had 20 solutions that have gone in your head, right?
	For fighting, yes. Okay.
	So of any of those 20 solutions, give me one that has to do with you that you've solved.
	See, this is...
	I'm going to... Again, up until this moment...
	Okay? My vision, what I thought was happening was, is she was starting the fights, and at a certain point I crossed the tipping point, and I escalated the fights with, you know, my return aggression, right?
	I didn't see that, if this is accurate, that I was passive-aggressive, and in that being passive-aggressive...
	Okay, no, no. Sorry, sorry, got to interrupt you, man.
	I got to interrupt you. You're filibustering, you're filibustering.
	Sorry to interrupt, but I have to, because this is not what I'm asking, right?
	Now, I know it's not exactly 20.
	I know that's a turn of phrase, right?
	But let's say that there's 10, right?
	You've had a year to think of why These fights are happening.
	Now, all of the solutions that you've said to me, or all of the causes of the fights are 100% her, right?
	She has to fix them. I'm asking, and I said, well, what's one of yours, right?
	And you said the finances, but you failed to fix it.
	And you know, I hear what you're saying, and maybe it's on the route to being fixed or something like that, which is kind of late in the game for five months pregnant, but what the hell, right?
	You are where you are. So of the 10 to 20 solutions that you've racked your brain with to come up with about solving these problems, Give me one that's yours that you've worked on and solved.
	That's 100% you.
	Okay, I have one. Like you actually said earlier today, these fights, these explosions don't just go from somebody lying on the couch to hyper-aggression.
	That's just not how it works. There's a pretty long progression where things start picking up speed.
	That's exactly what happens with us typically, right?
	She doesn't go from A to Z typically.
	I don't go to A to Z typically, right?
	So we talked about this pattern and recognizing this pattern, right?
	That there is a buildup of before we have the big fight moment, right?
	And when we do have the big fight moment, one of her best – well, she's very good when it does hit that – whatever that supernova point is, immediately she's able to disengage, she walks outside, and from the time she walks back in, it's over.
	It's over, right?
	So one of the things we talked about was – We both need to recognize what's happening as it's building up.
	And instead of waiting for it to get to level 5, so it starts at level 1 and builds up...
	Oh my God, Vlad, what was the question I asked?
	I have no idea what you're talking about with regards...
	You can choose not to answer my question, but don't just ignore it, man.
	That's totally rude. That's totally rude.
	It's totally rude to ignore my question.
	What was my question? No, just repeat back to me what the question was.
	What was my question? What have you done to try to lessen the fights?
	No, that wasn't my question at all.
	That's not my question. You didn't ask me what I'm 100% responsible for.
	I said, what are you 100% responsible for that you've solved, that you've fixed?
	Okay.
	So what I thought in this process of this buildup was that we came to an agreement that before it hits supernova, if either one of us says – either one says – But now you're 50-50.
	I'm asking for 100% you.
	Not the 50-50 we both got at this.
	I'm 100% you. No, we're not changing it.
	You're just trying to actually answer the question I've asked.
	And you don't have to answer anything.
	You can hang up on me right now.
	But if we're going to have a conversation, I do expect you to listen to me.
	Or you can tell me you don't want to answer the question, but you can't just gaslight and ignore.
	So when the process is building, we talked about that I would, before it hits supernova status, stall out the fight.
	Just be like, hey, listen, this is going in the wrong direction.
	Let's just stop here.
	This is escalating.
	Let's take a little break.
	We can talk about it later when we're not as amped up, right?
	We'll take a little break.
	And what I thought, and I started doing that, right?
	And it didn't work. It didn't work.
	But that's when I started, because I never would leave, right?
	Because my dad would always leave.
	So I'd always hated that when he'd leave in the middle of a fight.
	So I would say, I'm never going to do that.
	But At a certain point over the last year, I started, okay, we can't go to supernova status when it's at a level two.
	I'm going to leave, and I'm going to try, at least in my mind, I was trying to de-escalate and then maybe talk about it later after we've calmed down, right?
	And it hasn't worked.
	Again, so I guess that's another thing that I failed at, and I failed at that as well then.
	Well, did it not work because of something you did?
	Because I asked for something that was 100% you.
	So what did you do that caused the pause to fail, right?
	What was it that you did or didn't do that caused...
	Because I asked for something that was 100% you, and you saying, well, we had this agreement, but it just mysteriously didn't work out, is not taking any ownership, right?
	Well, I don't know if it's mysterious or not, it just didn't work out, all right?
	Okay, why didn't it work?
	Okay, I'll play. Why didn't it work out?
	So last example that we keep talking about, right?
	That fight. So I leave, go for an hour walk, I come back, and in hindsight, right, as she was rage texting me for the hour, it's not like it had stopped.
	Basically, the fight was still going.
	So in hindsight, it probably would have been more astute if I would have not, when we got in the car together to go to the grocery store, Started to talk at least again.
	Maybe I'm being passive-aggressive and I got it all riled up again.
	Okay, fine. But at the time, maybe it would have been more astute to let it everything cool down for another couple extra hours, maybe even wait till the next day instead of waiting, you know, going in diving again quickly and Going back into the issues and what was going on.
	No, no. See, this is how I know you're not listening.
	Because when you go back into a fight and you say to your girlfriend or your wife or the mother-to-be of your child, you say, well, the problem is you're addicted to fighting.
	It's 100% you and you had a bad childhood and you get orgasmic pleasure out of the fight.
	It doesn't matter when you say that.
	You can say that a week from now, a day from now.
	If that's what you come back in with, Right?
	It's like if the fire's out and you come in with hand grenades and gasoline, it doesn't matter how long the fire's been out for, you got a new fire.
	Right? So this idea that somehow if you'd stayed away longer, it would have cooled down means that you haven't heard a thing that I've been saying about how you reinstigated things when you went back.
	Okay. Alright, I'm pretty much done because I'm not sure we're getting anywhere here, but if there's anything that you guys wanted to add, I'm more than happy to hear.
	Okay, I have a question.
	So, that's very concrete and maybe I'm a simpleton or whatever this is, but At the moment, so this would be very, so the strategy, which is what we're talking about, we're talking about the meta picture, on the micro level, tactically, when, if we get to the point again, which for the last month we haven't reached that point of these supernova fights, right?
	It's disappeared largely over the last 30 days, but if we reach that point again, One of my big failings that I'll 100% say is 100% my fault, is that when it does reach the tipping point, and maybe I'm causing it to reach the tipping point, that I do flip, right?
	100%. In that moment, tactically, on the micro level, what do you do In a tactical sense, tools that I can use in the moment.
	What is the tool that I use to sort of not, to avoid that flip?
	You know, an escalation.
	Is there anything that you can recommend?
	So I'll tell you what I've been listening for for the last hour and a half.
	Very focused, very concentrated, right?
	So Vlad, when I was asking, what's 100% you?
	Swearing at your wife, calling her a bitch, calling her stupid, that's 100% you, man.
	There's no excuse for that in any universe whatsoever.
	And it's absolutely appalling.
	And look, I know she's got a viper tongue too and all of that, but I'm just talking to you, right?
	She grew up being verbally abused, right?
	You know that. Do you know what you're doing to her when you pull that shit on her?
	When you launch those language bombs at her, do you know when you say, oh my gosh, honey, you're addicted to your past, but then you verbally abuse her, right?
	Knowing exactly how much damage that has done to her in the past.
	Knowingly, consciously, deliberately, you reactivate all the trauma of her childhood where she has a big man Standing over her, yelling at her, swearing at her, and calling her names.
	You know that about her history.
	You know that that's the worst thing that you can do to her.
	And you do it.
	Now, if you want to start looking in the mirror and say, what's 100% me that I could change?
	That's a pretty obvious one, isn't it?
	Absolutely. But that wasn't the question.
	The question was, what have I done already?
	That's why we're on the phone.
	That's why we're talking. Wait, what do you mean that's not the question?
	What do you mean that's not the question?
	You're verbally abusing a victim of intense childhood verbal abuse.
	You are stepping in where her father was.
	And you wonder why things aren't working?
	Are you crazy? No, no.
	That's not what I meant. What I said...
	No, no. Do you own that you verbally abuse a victim of verbal abuse?
	Yep. Okay.
	Is that a terrible thing to do?
	Doesn't mean you're a terrible person, but is that a terrible thing to do?
	Absolutely. Okay.
	Why? Did that even cross your mind when I was saying what's 100% yours that you could change?
	That is the core essence of why I'm on the phone.
	I know that's my absolute thing that I need to fix.
	Where I reach that tipping point, and I go, Spanova.
	Why haven't you brought it up?
	I mentioned it in the first time we talked, and I mentioned it today.
	Oh, I definitely mentioned it the first time we talked.
	That was the essence of what I was saying.
	Dude, for an hour and a half, for an hour, I'm asking you what you do that's wrong.
	And you don't think that you could have mentioned it then?
	Well... That's literally what, from the first call to this, that's the absolute core essence of what I need to fix.
	I thought that I had said that, but if we're, you know, so that's, I thought I had said that.
	No, you didn't. I absolutely did.
	If we re-listen to the first one...
	No, no, but in this conversation, I was asking you, because she brought up the MF, the F-bombs, the stupid, the bitch, all that stuff, right?
	This was in this call tonight.
	These are the words that you lob at her, right?
	Knowing how unbelievably destructive that language is to her.
	There is absolutely no excuse for that under any circumstances, in any way, shape, or form.
	And you cannot bring a child into the environment where the father is verbally tearing down the mother.
	You cannot do that.
	It will wreck the child.
	It will wreck the marriage. I agree 100%.
	So why do you do it?
	Because you say, it's after I get pushed a certain amount, which is exactly back to what her father said.
	I hit you because you cut your hair, because you bought a purse, because you interrupted me when I had a stomachache.
	And now you're saying, well, I yell at her, but after I get tipped and after I push and after these fights, right?
	You understand that there's no excuse for that whatsoever.
	Like, it doesn't matter what she does.
	It doesn't matter what... You're the man.
	It's talking man to man. Husband to husband, father to be to father.
	You can't be verbally tearing down your wife.
	You can't do that.
	There's no excuse. I agree.
	I agree. So that's what you just, I mean, what do I do?
	You just don't do that.
	It's like someone calling me up and saying, well, I have this urge to go out and put cats into blenders.
	It's like, well, don't do that. I agree.
	That's just off the list of acceptable behaviors like robbing a fucking bank is off the list of respectable behaviors.
	You don't sit there and say, oh my god, my wife needs some money.
	I'm going to go out and steal a kidney from someone in an airport bathroom with a spoon.
	That's just not on the list of shit that you do.
	Right? It's not on the list.
	You don't sit there and say, I'll go steal a car and that's how I'm going to solve my money.
	It's just not on the list of things that you do.
	And if you have that same strictness with yourself that you have with yourself in public in front of a policeman, you wouldn't do that shit in public.
	You wouldn't do that in a mall.
	You wouldn't do that on a bus.
	You wouldn't do that on an airplane.
	So don't ask me how you don't do it or how you avoid.
	You know exactly how not to do that stuff.
	You just give yourself the out because you're alone and you're bigger and she's scared.
	And she's harmed by that stuff before so you can get away with it.
	You're working a wound that she has to win something.
	Now, I'm telling you, man, brother to brother, sympathy to sympathy, really sympathy.
	You will never, ever win anything that way.
	Whatever dominance you may get in the moment comes at the expense of everything you treasure, everything you hold dear, and everything that child deserves to grow up in.
	If you have to imagine that there's a policeman standing right behind you, if you have to imagine that you're in public, you just don't do that.
	You know how to not do it.
	I mean, you haven't called me an asshole the entire conversation.
	I've been kind of provocative and you've managed to control your temper, right?
	I've been pretty firm with you and you haven't blown up at me.
	And we've kind of been fighting for two hours in a way, right?
	We've been wrestling, right?
	I've been interrupting you.
	I've been talking over you. I've been insisting that my points get across.
	I've been pretty assertive, right?
	I haven't been abusive.
	I haven't called you any names. I haven't yelled at you.
	But you've managed to keep your temper with me.
	And then you say to me, well, how do I keep my temper with my wife?
	Who's more important, me or your wife?
	Swear at me. Don't swear at her.
	She's infinitely more important than I am.
	She's the person you've got to raise a child with.
	She's the person you want to get old with.
	She's the person who's going to bring you chicken soup when you're sick and take you to fucking chemo when you get old.
	If you can keep your temper with me, I'm just a flyby.
	I'm here and I'm gone.
	I'm like an ambulance going past in the night.
	Gone. She's there night and day.
	You already know exactly how not to abuse people, exactly how not to verbally tear them down.
	Because you spend the vast majority of your life not doing that.
	And then there's a devil in you, probably comes from one of your parents or both, that wants you and needs you.
	Remember at the very beginning of this entire evening's conversation, I was saying how when people are miserable, when people are failing, it's because there's people around them who desperately need them to fail.
	And there's someone in your life, my friend, who desperately needs you to fuck this marriage up.
	And if you can confront that, rather than fighting with me or fighting to be right, if you can confront whoever, if you have a flourishing, happy, successful marriage, it's gonna really destroy someone in your life, probably more than one person.
	They're just gonna feel like shit.
	And they are sabotaging in your brain and they're saying, hey man, you know, it's okay.
	We're alone. We're not at a mall.
	You can call your wife a bitch.
	You can do all of that because, you know, she's already got the wound.
	She's not going to fight back that much or you'll pay for it later, but you can do it now.
	You'll feel better. She's been provoking you for three hours.
	Do it! Do it! Right?
	And then you're like, okay, I will obey the people who want me to screw up my life And I will verbally abuse my wife.
	And listen, I get it.
	Look, I'm not just saying you're the only instigator.
	I'm sure that she's said things that would make a sailor's ears bleed, and this is going out to both of you.
	Do not let the people who've made bad decisions inflict those bad decisions on you unconsciously.
	Do not lower your standards because other people in life are fucked up.
	I'm the only person I know from my childhood and youth who has a happy marriage.
	I am the only person I know who has a happy marriage.
	Out of my friends' parents, out of my friends.
	I'm the only person I know.
	Do you think that's been a hell of a battle?
	It has. Because they don't want me to have a happy marriage.
	They don't want me to have a happy life.
	They want philosophy to have screwed me up because I offered them this gift when I was young.
	Almost 40 years ago I offered them this gift of philosophy and they didn't want to take it and they tried to give me the poison chalice of hedonism and nihilism.
	And there's been this battle and this battle is fierce and it's deep.
	And If you can't identify the people in your life who want you to fail, they'll win.
	You'll fail. And you won't even know how you got played by history.
	You won't even know. You'll think it's Nicole or Nicole will think it's Vlad.
	It's not. It's the puppets of history.
	It's all the people who fucked up who need you to fuck up so they don't feel alone, so they don't feel like they've made a mistake.
	You know, this is statistically true, man.
	Divorce is spread like viruses.
	I mean, somebody's getting divorced and you've got a happy marriage.
	Someone's getting divorced in your life.
	Cut them off, man. Cut them off.
	Because they spread.
	They'll worm their way in.
	Because I'm getting divorced now, nobody can have a happy marriage.
	And you need to identify the people in your life Who are desperately invested, desperately invested in your failure.
	Because you cannot succeed if you can't identify them.
	Because they'll pull you down from underneath.
	You won't even know where the hands are.
	You think it's the other person.
	You'll think it's something other than who it really is.
	And you look at all these people.
	Heath Ledger and like all these people, they're very successful and they just completely self-destruct.
	That's because someone in their life doesn't want them to succeed.
	You look at Jordan Peterson, one of the most spectacular acts of self-destruction that has occurred in modern intellectual times.
	There was someone in his life who couldn't stand his success.
	Someone in this life who felt overshadowed, and I mean, I don't know who it is, but it's been a consistent pattern with anyone I've ever talked to about this kind of stuff, and looking at it in myself, it's really, really important.
	There are people, if you're self-sabotaging, it's because there are people in your life who are desperate for you to fail.
	Because your success makes them feel like shit.
	And... Don't let them win.
	Don't let the sabotages and the terrorists of history destroy everything you have and all of your happiness.
	You guys are both people who got wounded by history.
	And the people who wounded you are having you fight like a cage match of chickens or puppies.
	And they're having you fight so that they don't feel like shit themselves.
	They don't feel bad. They're trying to chalk it up to the human condition or this is males and females or marriage is hard.
	You know, like this... This shitty Facebook group of moms who need wine.
	Hundreds of thousands of women all bitching there.
	Moms who need wine. I can't get through the day with my toddlers without a glass of wine.
	And all these sad, pathetic, codependent, needy, destructive, abusive alcoholics all leaning on each other to normalize their terrible, terrible behavior at the expense of their children's happiness.
	They're all leaning on each other. If you quit that group or you say to that group, huh, this is the Taylor Swift thing.
	I was talking about this when I was being interviewed today by the guy in New Zealand.
	Sorry, South Africa, guy in South Africa.
	When I was talking about, yeah, Taylor Swift, you know, she's 30, 90% of her eggs are gone, and I hope she becomes a mom, and why do people get so mad?
	Because there were lots of women who'd missed the boat.
	They felt really bad. They felt terrible.
	They felt angry. They felt frustrated.
	And they took it out on me rather than the people who'd lied to them about their fertility.
	The people around you are either invested in your success or they're invested in your failure.
	And you should be invested in their success.
	But if there are people around you who are invested in your failure, who let things go on like this, who give you those mealy-mouthed excuses That allow you to act in a terrible manner.
	You got to identify those people in your life, in your mind, in your unconscious.
	Oof! There are those people who want to take down your marriage.
	Don't let them win. Don't let them win and don't let them Don't let them hand you the excuses and the defenses, right?
	This was, I think, more true with Lad.
	That was just...
	Somebody was handing him all these excuses.
	Don't listen to Steph. Don't listen to Steph.
	If you listen to Steph, you'll be happy.
	If you listen to Steph, you'll solve the problems in your marriage.
	If you listen to Steph, you'll fall on your knees and beg your wife's forgiveness for speaking to her in such a manner.
	And then she being truly moved and motivated by your honesty and your humility.
	You can't survive in a marriage if you're not humble.
	You can't survive in your marriage if you're always right.
	You are unbelievably humiliating the other person.
	If they're just crazy, and they're always wrong, and they're always escalating, and 99% of the fights are their fault, and they're just going to feel humiliated, like you're there for some sort of sick charity to nurse their wounded psyche as a cross to bear for some curse or something like that.
	But Yeah, don't let those guys win.
	You fall to your knees and you apologize for re-inflicting your wife's childhood on her for the sake of scoring some bullshit points for the sake of past abusers who are cheering your destruction.
	And then she, seeing your heart melt, will apologize in turn.
	And you can walk away from that smoking crater pit of shit from history.
	And march someplace better, someplace fun, someplace trusting, someplace positive.
	No more excuses, no more avoidances, no more filibusters, no more blame, except on the people who are rooting for you to fail.
	Because right now they're winning and you're losing.
	And the reason why I'm having this conversation and letting it go on for so long is because You've got a child.
	You've got a child who's coming.
	And if you guys don't, you've got a couple of months, Max.
	You've got to sort this shit out.
	And you've got to say, Vlad, you've got to say to her, I am absolutely, completely and totally gutted and sorry that I swore at you and called you names, knowing exactly how painful that was to you.
	That was an unbelievably shitty thing to do, and I'm so, so sorry.
	I'm so sorry.
	And now you have to apologize to me.
	That's bullshit. If you've got something to apologize for, it's not conditional.
	It doesn't matter what she does or says.
	It only matters that you act with your own integrity and you apologize for the things that you've done wrong.
	And yeah, Nicole, you've been picking fights and you've been escalating and you've been letting the past drive you away from the father-to-be of your child or the father of your child as it is now.
	And... Being sorry to each other means being angry at the past.
	It's just the way it works. If you can't be angry at the past and the people who've really harmed you, you'll just be their puppets taking it out on each other so that your lives can be destroyed and then those people can say, well, you know, I guess I didn't fuck up so badly because everybody else has too, so it's just the human condition.
	It's not any mistake that I made.
	So... I hope that helps and I really do appreciate everyone's call in tonight.
	Thank you so much for listening.
	I hope that you guys will keep me posted about how things are going and please know that I part with you in love and sensitivity and care and encouragement and a little bit of sorrow because I understand.
	That this, of course, yeah, somebody pointed out, yeah, you can't be fighting like this.
	It's not good for the baby. It's got all these hormones and all this cortisol and all that.
	So I hope you guys will keep me posted about how it's going.
	And I hope that you understand that when I push back hard, it's not out of hostility.
	It's a little bit of frustration, but the frustration is not at you.
	It's at the hold that the people in your history have over you.
	And I'm fighting them, not you.
	You know, I hate the sin, not the sinner.
	And I hate the history. Not the current and actress.
	So I hope that that helps.
	And thanks everyone so much. Have a great, great evening.
	Lots of love, care, thoughts, good wishes and concern.
	If you'd like to help out the show, freedomain.com forward slash donate.
	You know there's nothing else like this out there.
	Have a great, great evening.
	Lots of love from up here. I'll talk to you soon.

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