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Dec. 28, 2021 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
02:07:49
MY 15 YEAR OLD METIS DAUGHTER WANTS TO MOVE IN WITH AN EX-DRUG ADDICT WITH 5 KIDS BY 3 DIFFERENT MEN
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Time Text
Hello, Stefan. I need your help.
My daughter is a different kid entirely and I can't help her.
She has evolved beyond my capacity to understand her.
I've been an edible mother and she talked herself through conduct disorder but is stuck on social isolation.
Does that make sense? Yeah, but there was more to it if I remember rightly.
I don't think so.
Okay, well, can you tell me a little bit about your history with your daughter and her dad and all that kind of stuff?
Okay, so my ex-husband, or okay, we're separated, and he's 16 years older than me.
We met when I was 25.
He had three children from previous marriages.
He was an addict, and...
That's all I got about that.
I feel there's more to that.
Let's talk a bit about the history of your relationship with him.
How did you meet and I guess how long did it take you to figure out he was an addict?
Well, I think quite a while.
Probably six or eight months.
So the way we met is through a family member and so I was in the process of moving to a different province and my family member was like, come and enjoy an evening out.
And so we went to shoot pool and he was there and he asked me what I wanted from life and I had a pretty simple explanation and it was just basically That I wanted to have children that could meet my father before he died, because my dad's been really sick with cancer for over half my life.
And at the time, this was like pre-listening to your show, obviously.
I idolized my father.
So yeah, I basically wanted a family.
I wanted to have a family and start a family.
And so he's like, oh yeah, I can make all that happen.
So first night or soon thereafter?
No, very first night.
So first night, he's figuring out...
So he's asking you what you want out of life so that he can figure out what to offer you to get control over you, right?
You sort of... I guess you get that by now, right?
I get that. And I knew you would.
So yeah, definitely. So we ended up drinking and then...
There was a conversation about not driving and so I ended up leaving my car at the at the bar and we headed back to his place and the family members and I and everybody went to his house and I spent the evening on his couch and I woke up the next day we had a cup of coffee and I met his son who he was raising he was three at the time and I was,
yeah, I had previously been in the midst of moving provinces, but that sort of ended up delayed.
And we ended up, you know, spending time.
Well, what I guess had happened was that I had to work the following day and he said, don't worry about getting in your car, I'll drive you.
So then he picked me up and then this went on for a few days.
The entire time I was on his couch and I was sort of...
But why weren't you at home?
I mean, you had a home, right? I did.
I wasn't at home because...
Man of your dreams, right?
No, because it was a better alternative to home.
My father married a woman who did not like his children, especially...
I mean, and I might just be biased, but I think really, really didn't like me, especially because I looked like my mother.
And I had been in...
A previous relationship from the age of 15 with another addict who, in fact, actually ended up killing himself with his addiction.
And what was he addicted?
Heroin. Okay.
So, after our relationship dissolved, I was staying at my parents'.
I went to college.
And that's basically why I was there, but I worked full-time.
Sorry, how old were you at this point?
Well, at the time I met my ex-husband, I was 24.
Okay. So, in any case, I was stopping in at my parents, basically, in order to make the school thing work.
Right. Is that making sense?
Yep. Okay.
So... And my stepmother did everything she could possibly do to make it difficult.
And my dad was, you know, in the midst of his own depression and so on and so forth and whatever.
So, yeah, my intention was to move to and pursue my education.
You can keep the place names out of it, but anyway.
Oh, sorry. Oh, shoot.
Thank you for reminding me. Okay, so the story goes basically that when I was 15, I was pushed out of the house into an abusive relationship with a heroin addict.
I ended up Traveling across to another province and growing as a substance that was contraband to pay off a debt that had been acquired from my family.
And lots of bad stuff, obviously.
Like, certainly, you know, not a very healthier, relaxing environment.
In any case, We ended up separating.
I moved back to my parents' house, went to school, met my ex-husband.
We were together. Like I said, I probably spent six months at his house, on his couch.
But in the process of that time, I ended up meeting my stepson, who was three at the time.
And he was, I guess, desperately in need of Parenting.
Of some sort. And I was desperately in need of a purpose.
And so this is the son of the drug addict?
Yeah. Okay, got it.
So I ended up attaching myself to him.
And as a consequence, ended up sleeping with his father.
And then we pursued a relationship.
I bought a house shortly after We were together.
I started a business and we conceived a child.
So the child we conceived caught meningitis at birth.
And they said they couldn't tell me if she would be deaf, blind or have learning disabilities.
And she ended up in ICU. Sorry, do you know how did the meningitis come about?
I mean, it can be just bad luck.
Was that what happened? Yeah, that's what they told me.
They swabbed for it before I gave birth.
And then I went to a public pool, which in hindsight, yeah, it was probably the stupidest thing to do.
And I didn't really have any female influences that could have...
Kind of helped me out with that. She was born in the summer.
It was really hot. I just went down to the public pool, which is a complete cesspool, and don't do that if you're days away from birth.
So anyway, that's where they think maybe I had picked it up.
Right, okay. Yeah, so she was in ICU for 10 days.
And when she got out of the hospital, like, and during this time, my stepson ended up going to stay with his mother, who was having a complete freakout.
And my ex-husband was, like, really upset, trying to get me to leave the hospital and telling me that I needed to be looked after and that our lives still had to go on.
And it was, you know, it was a bad situation.
And I just said, like, I don't know.
How long her daughter's going to be here and I'm going to be with her every second I can.
And then she eventually ended up coming home and I was completely freaked out.
And I wouldn't leave her aside.
And sorry, so she had the meningitis, but it was still unknown how that was going to affect her, right?
Yeah, it was unknown, but it turns out that they caught it before she ended up with the fever.
She had two spinal taps when she was two days old.
The first one, they couldn't get any fluid because she was too dehydrated, and the second one, they were able to.
So what happened was, I gave birth to her, and they said that she was in distress so that they had to induce labor, which they did, and she was born, and they said, oh, she's beautiful.
They had the pediatrician look her over and said she could be a Gerber baby.
She was eight pounds, almost nine pounds.
She was Fully formed, beautiful, you know, so on and so forth.
So when I was in the hospital, I started breastfeeding her and they keep you there for 24 hours for observation.
And the nurse checked her blood sugar and said that it was low and it was probably because my milk hadn't come in.
So she's like, how long did you breastfeed her?
And I told her how long. And she said, yeah, that's an abnormal amount for breastfeeding for her blood sugar to be so low.
So she gave her a bottle and then we ended up going home and we were at home and Uh, with, and I'm completely terrified, right?
Like I, I have, like I said, nobody, you're like given a small child.
You know what I mean? Like it's, it's a pretty scary thing, especially like I said, when you have nobody around that can tell you anything about having kids.
My, my mother wasn't in the province and there was no other women in my life.
So, She ended up having this really funny look on her face and I called an ambulance and the ambulance was at like the EMS station was at the end of my block so my house got swarmed like there was 10 EMS in my house right now and they're like what's wrong and I'm like I didn't know what to tell them the kid looks funny so I said she I think she choked right and so they brought her into the ambulance and they looked her over and they checked her blood sugar and it was low So they said that's very abnormal and we'll take her into the hospital.
So they loaded us up and we headed in there.
And when we got there, there happened to be a doctor that was from SickKids in Toronto that was visiting some patients.
And she looked at my daughter and said, you know, they gave her glucose in the van.
And so her blood sugar should be around this point and it's really low.
And so just transporting her from your house to the hospital, you know, so we're going to...
We're going to take her down to ICU, and that's what they did.
And then she got hooked up to all these monitors, and her heart rate was constantly dropping, and they were trying to basically find out what was wrong with her for several days.
And at two days old, one of the things they did was give her a spinal tap.
Her blood sugar was low because she was fighting an infection.
It wasn't because it wasn't breastfeeding her.
It wasn't because she wasn't getting fluid.
It was because she had an infection.
Or, yeah, yeah.
So in any case, after about 10 days, well, so they gave her the two spinal taps because the first one didn't work.
And then they said they were just going to put her on a broad spectrum antibiotic.
And that's what they did. And because these subtleties were caught in advance of her developing a fever, they believe that, you know, this is why she didn't end up sustaining any damage from the meningitis.
Are you still following me?
Hello?
Can you hear me?
Oh, I can.
Yeah.
Yeah, sorry about that. My cord must have gotten loose.
Yeah, I'm following, so go ahead. Okay, so I closed my business, basically, and I stayed at home with my daughter, and I was smothering her, and I was...
Basically, she was just it.
Her and my son, there was nothing else that really concerned me.
Well, for quite a while.
But going forward, I was actually really consumed with this idea that she could potentially die all the time.
So I was checking on her.
And I was panicking at every cold and flu, like not to a normal degree, like to an excessive degree.
Like it was...
I couldn't calm down.
And then when she was two years old, she went to my stepmother's and she very, very rarely had babysitters, but I... Everybody was basically pressuring me saying, you need some mommy time.
And so I asked my dad if he would watch my daughter and I brought her over there and I... I was obsessed with making sure that she wasn't exposed to toxins.
And at that time, there was the whole thing from China where all the dollhouses had lead paint in them and whatever.
So she was using like wood toys and I was home making Play-Doh.
And anyway, I made her this Play-Doh and I brought it to my stepmother's house with her and she let me eat it and she thought it was funny.
So Avana got the rotavirus, which is an intestinal virus.
And at this time, there was no vaccinations for it.
And one in 10 children died.
We're talking way worse than COVID. Like, this is bad, bad, bad.
This intestinal virus, basically, like, your stool turns to water and you lose so much fluid that, you know, they...
Like dehydration doom, right?
Yeah, exactly. So...
I ended up going to the hospital and there was a doctor there who kind of flagged me for being a nutcase.
He'd actually already called social services on me because when my daughter came home after having meningitis, I brought her back to the hospital and he said, this woman's crazy.
So they called child family services and this woman came into this room and she had this conversation with me and she's like, okay, what's going on?
And I'm like, well, I, you know, My daughter had meningitis and blah, blah, blah, blah.
And they didn't really even explain to me what was going on or what was wrong.
And I'm like the type of person that really needs to know that.
So I'm thinking, how am I going to prevent there from being a problem in the future when I don't really understand?
Like, it was almost a full year before I understood that she had meningitis.
So I'm telling the doctor there's something wrong with my daughter.
And he's telling me, your daughter's perfectly fine.
He calls social services.
The lady comes down there and she's like, what's going on?
And I said like, I'm freaking out.
And she said, you know, almost all new moms bring their baby in to emerge once.
And those are moms whose daughters don't have meningitis or whose children don't have meningitis.
So she's like, as far as I can tell, you're perfectly normal.
Go home. Take your daughter. Leave.
So when I brought her back in for the rotavirus, that same doctor was there.
And he said, Said to the nurse that, you know, while he, the mood changed, right?
Obviously, with the nurse, who was helping me previously, she was kind of siding with the doctor that, yeah, like, I'm constantly overreacting.
And what are those women who always think their kids are sick?
I don't know. I mean, yeah, the Munchausen by proxy is where they actually make their kids sick.
But it's like a hypochondriac thing or where you but it's in the third person.
Yeah, I think that I may have developed into something very similar.
So in any case, we're in the room and Anna's laying down.
Her dad walks in. She jumps up.
She's playing. The doctor's like, there's nothing wrong with this kid.
And the woman says to me, you know, you're supposed to be hydrating your child if they're sick.
And I say to her, I've been trying.
I breastfeed her whenever she wants to.
I've been giving her Pedialyte popsicles, you know, like whatever she wants to drink.
I've been, you know, And so anyway, she said, okay, just keep doing that.
And then Avana let go some gas.
And so the nurse, I went to change her diaper and the nurse smelt it.
And she said, can I see inside your daughter's diaper?
And I said, yep, sure. And when we opened it, it was bright yellow.
It was a bright yellow fluid.
And she's like, don't go anywhere.
Don't leave. And she went and got the doctor.
The doctor came back. And next thing you know, we're getting transferred to a unit where like an isolation unit where everybody's wearing gowns and gear.
And within like five hours of taking her to the hospital, she laid on a hospital bed for two days.
And we're talking about a super active two-year-old.
She didn't even open her eyes.
So they hooked her up to an IV and they basically said, sit here in this room and wait.
She'll either wake up or she'll die.
And obviously they said what the issue was.
I think so.
I don't know. I don't even know if they could talk to me because I was probably too hysterical.
But yeah, eventually I did find out that, yes, it was the rotavirus.
And this came from the woman feeding your child or letting your child suckle on this Chinese toy?
Oh, yeah, no, the homemade Play-Doh.
Yeah, she let her eat the homemade Play-Doh.
Yeah, she totally would have given her a Chinese toy.
Believe me, this woman is that, definitely.
So, in any case, now that is two years old, she's almost died twice.
I'm in a super abusive relationship that I can't leave.
I mean, obviously, there's the chaos of the drug addict as a whole, but what was abusive about it outside of that?
Well, he would throw screaming and yelling tantrums, like to the point where people were calling the police, and not once, but we're talking like several times a week at the end of our marriage.
In the beginning, when, you know, when he still didn't have, I guess, when I was still surrounded by people who were supporting me, he wasn't as blatant about it, right?
So, but the more I became isolated, the temper tantrums, you know, increased.
So, Yeah, and I guess as far as abuse in the relationship goes, that was just it.
I mean...
Sorry, but let's go back a little further because, I mean, that's obviously the effect of whatever happened in your childhood.
So, I mean, you say you worshipped your dad, but maybe that's been revised a little bit.
But what happened in your childhood that put you on this trajectory, do you think?
Well... I think that the only thing I can do basically is just explain my childhood.
So I was born.
My parents divorced when I was two.
Our house burnt down shortly before...
Sorry, what was your parents' relationship like and why did they divorce?
Well... It took me a really, really long time to get a straight answer from either of them.
And from what I've gathered, my mother was home alone a lot.
So my dad worked in a certain profession that took him on the road a lot.
He had a grade five education, but he was extremely successful at his job.
I mean, he was making $100,000 a year in the late 80s.
Like, he was...
He was given all kinds of awards and gratitude.
People just genuinely liked him.
He was employed in this particular field.
Given the fact that he had a grade 5 education, he wasn't comfortable changing.
He wasn't comfortable giving it up.
My mom said to him, As a consequence of their marriage, and my dad having two previous children from another marriage, the ex-wife dropped off my half-siblings to my mother to care for, and they had medical conditions at the time.
And so she ended up being 19 with two kids, a husband who was on the road all the time, and then those two kids became four kids, and then two of those kids burned the house down, one of which Well, was me indirectly.
So... Okay, you may find this funny.
I'm going to invite you to not find it.
Like, I know you're trying to invite me.
Like, oh, wasn't it kind of funny that the kids burnt the house down?
But, of course, that's a complete nightmare.
So, what happened?
It really was a nightmare. My brother and I went downstairs into a fort that we had built.
And he brought some cigarettes.
And he decided...
How old did you get? Well, I... I was two, so he would have been maybe four.
Almost five. Four?
So he's got cigarettes and lighters at the age of four?
Yes. And who was the smoker?
Was it your dad? It was my mother.
Oh, your mother was a smoker in a house with a bunch of kids.
Okay. Well, yes.
And that was kind of common for the day.
So she was upstairs napping with my sister.
But giving your kids access to the cigarettes and lighters unsupervised?
No. Not so common for the day.
Right. Right. Anyway, sorry, go ahead.
Okay, so...
Yeah, so she was upstairs napping, and you know those old blankets, those polyester blankets that almost have like plastic that kind of comes off them?
I think they were polyester.
I don't know. Maybe they were wool.
Might have been wool. So he ended up putting out the cigarette when he was coughing and lit the entire Forton fire in minutes.
Like, it just went, like, might as well have been gasping.
Yeah, not a lot of flame proving when we were kids, yeah.
Right, so he ended up grabbing me and pulling me up the stairs, and when we got up to the top of the stairs, he woke up my mother, and by this point, the fire, I don't know, actually, because obviously I'm two, but I do know that the only exit was a balcony, and I know that my mom grabbed all four children and got us out that way.
So, it was wintertime.
There was snow. All the other exits were not an option.
So, yeah. And no cell phones, so it's kind of hard to get the fire department from that vantage point.
Right. So, yeah.
So, somehow she managed to get four children off of a second-story balcony.
And everybody lived.
We went to the neighbors.
My mom phoned my dad. He drove back from where he was working.
And he...
And at this point, you know, my dad walked in and she's screaming and crying and she's got saliva flying from her face.
And my dad just laughed and said, lady, it's only stuff.
Everybody's alive. We can replace it.
Everything is going to be fine. And that's not the way my mom saw it.
I mean, the two children from the previous marriage were more than my mom could handle.
And so... Were there medical issues?
Well... Their medical issues were due to...
I'm not 100% certain.
I know that they were...
Yeah, I'm not 100% certain.
But I know that, yeah, they were there because social services was intervening.
So, I don't know exactly.
So, you're... Dad's first wife was not taking care of the kids.
That's right. So they had obviously any sort of behavioral issues you're going to have if you're in that situation.
And they were just too much for my mom.
She couldn't handle it. And the thing about my mom is that...
How old were these kids when your mom took the mother?
Well, the oldest would have been seven.
Okay, got it. Or maybe six, six, seven, something like that.
So, and my mom herself has an ACE score of 10, or 10 at least, right?
Like, she grew up in one of these provinces in this country.
In, you know, both of her childhood homes were condemned and torn down.
Her early family life is just absolutely atrocious, like, really bad.
Like, she was raised with...
My grandmother, her husband, a couple of her boyfriends.
And, you know, she was the only white child in a family full of Aboriginals.
All of her brothers and sisters of nine children are all Aboriginal.
Her mom's Aboriginal. Her dad is basically just this white guy that, you know, she's still looking for now in her 60s.
And she, you know, she just doesn't understand why she doesn't have a dad.
No, I'm not laughing.
I'm just, you know, it's, I'm not laughing.
It's not funny. It's actually, anyway, so she ended up being raised by a pedophile who is the only reason that she ever got dressed or was fed or sent to school because, you know, if he didn't show any interest in her, nobody really would have ever cared.
She said she got on her bike one time when she was seven years old and meant to go around the block and got lost and it took her all day until the evening to come home and nobody even noticed she had left.
And was the pedophile, was he Aboriginal?
I don't know.
Yes, he was. I mean, as you know, it's tragically, horrifyingly common in that community.
Yeah, he was because he's actually her sister's father.
So, yeah, her mother had mental illness, obviously, and she had diabetes and epilepsy, and she ended up...
You know, she would run through the streets naked and she, you know, would have seizures and she was, yeah, not really good, right?
So, fast forward to my mom moving provinces, trying to start a new life.
She actually, she had a child previously and then that child ended up going up for adoption.
And that story is really bad.
Okay, but what the... I mean, what the hell happened with your dad that he's moving in these kinds of circles and having families and making babies with this kind of situation?
Well, not much better.
Like, my dad's family are...
Well, see, it's very, very strange because there's only so much I know about my dad's childhood, but from what I gathered...
My great-grandfather was an engineer on the New York City Railway.
And my dad's wife grew up...
Or my dad's mother grew up two blocks away from his...
My grandmother's family lived two blocks from my grandfather's family.
My grandfather's family were apparently...
They immigrated and they were originally well-to-do in the European country that they came from.
And so... That was my grandfather's parents, right?
So my grandfather grew up in New York, married my grandmother, and then his parents decided that they were going to retire to Canada and buy a cabin in Niagara.
And so they ended up doing that, and my grandfather followed and brought my grandmother, obviously.
And so she had children from a previous marriage, and The last two kids of their whole family, I think they're seven, are Canadian, and that one of them is my dad.
And so my grandfather apparently was, I would guess, something akin to a psychopath.
He was extremely violent, extremely abusive.
My dad, when he was younger, you know, would sleep with the dogs.
And his mother died of cancer when he was fairly young.
He... His stepfather told him when he was, you know, a young teenager that he married my grandmother and not him, and gave him $10 and dropped him off at Niagara Falls.
So my dad ended up living in a brothel.
At what age? Well, there's some discrepancy.
Like, if you ask my aunt, she said that my dad was 15, and if you ask my dad, he was 11.
And... Yeah, so...
I mean, his...
Primary parent didn't really fight much for him, right?
His primary parent was dying.
My grandmother...
Right. Yeah. And his father was...
Yeah, I mean, he was...
I don't really know, but I do know that I've kind of spoken to my uncles and to my aunts and lots of beatings, lots of physical torture.
I'm sure there was sexual abuse, although it's not something my father would ever talk about.
And... I know that he despised it and hated it beyond measure.
Anybody that had an inclination that way was in my dad's crosshairs.
You know what I mean? He did not go for that kind of stuff.
You know what I mean? Well, except he married a woman who was a victim of that.
So it's still in his orbit as far as that goes, right?
She comes with a whole family that enabled and enacted this abuse upon your mother, right?
That's right. That's right.
Yeah. So, um, yeah, exactly.
Um, in any case, my parents divorced because yeah, my dad refuses to quit his job and my mom can't handle four children on her own.
So she leaves and we end up getting left with a bunch of babysitters because my dad has to work.
So, um, they're, I don't remember exactly, but I know that it was pretty bad.
I remember hiding certain places, and I remember being exposed to a bunch of people that were totally not in their right minds.
My mom eventually came back five or six months later after she'd gotten a house and a place for us to live and came to collect us.
And when she got there, there was two lesbian babysitters having sex on the couch while we were watching TV. Oh, God.
Yeah, so she was Obviously upset about that.
And we ended up going to live with her.
And then she remarried my brother's father.
And he was a very horribly controlling person.
I think that's where my relationship stemmed from because I was so comfortable around somebody that was, you know, I mean, He had that sort of trigger temper, although he didn't go into temper tantrums very often.
He really just had to look at you, you know, but that look was pretty common if you crossed a line or did anything that displeased him and stuff.
And so he kind of bounced in and out of our lives and he just preyed on my mother who was like, you know, surviving on the social welfare system.
And yeah, it was not very good.
He ended up having a sex change.
Not long before he died.
And, you know, he said quite clearly that it was by the grace of God that he wasn't a psychopath.
Well, assuming he wasn't, but all right.
Right. Yeah. Or maybe he said serial killer.
I'm not sure. But in any case, yeah.
So I was just, yeah, really comfortable in that environment, I guess.
And so when I met my ex-husband, it was kind of like I just...
You know, there were no red flags there because, you know, you talk about this all the time.
Like, you know, you need to have some sort of system built in that makes it so that you can't speak that language.
Well, this guy knew I spoke the language.
Like, he knew I'd been trained up from a young age.
Like, he was obviously 16 years older than me.
He knew a lot about women.
Well, he asked you directly, right?
Like, what is it that you want?
And, oh, I can give that to you and come live on my couch, right?
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, so.
So, where would you like to go from here?
Well, I mean, your daughter survived, and this is the daughter that we're talking about, right?
Yeah. So, what was her childhood like?
How did it play? It was not great.
So, yeah. So, after she got the rotavirus, I had already had bad anxiety, and then she again almost died, and You know, Darren's temper tantrums were getting worse and so what ended up happening was I became completely obsessed that she was ill.
I was bringing her to doctors constantly.
I was waking her up in the middle of the night just to make sure she was still breathing.
She was getting no rest.
She wasn't getting proper sleep.
The rotavirus and the meningitis, the broad spectrum of antibiotics and the rotavirus had just done so much trouble Or damage, I guess, to her intestines that she stopped pooping.
And I started trying, after the doctor thing, you know, I would bring her for stomach pains and they basically chalked it up to anxiety and said that, you know, I was nuts.
And not directly, obviously, but at some point they were pretty annoyed with me.
So in any case, this sort of went on and because, I guess because I wasn't getting any help, You know, after they had subjected her to blood tests and x-rays.
And the x-rays did find that she had impacted bowel, like where the poop was like so solid, they could see it through the x-ray.
And yeah, she just wasn't pooping.
And that's because what the antibiotics had wrecked her gut bacteria?
I assume so, yeah.
So we went on like all these sort of like crazy diets where there was no sugar, no flour, no this, no that.
And at this point in time, I'm trying to run a business with my ex-husband Which is, like, very successful.
Like, you know, number one in Canada for years.
And I've got my stepson who is in a completely different language.
So I'm Googling his homework because, you know, his mother was a Francophone and wanted him to get a Francophone education.
So we decided to pursue that.
And We ended up paying for a bunch of tutoring and then I ended up finding tutors for him.
And when there wasn't a tutor available, I was Googling things and we were just doing it, whatever we could to try to make it work.
I mean, and, and we did like, you know, I think one of the things I didn't really appreciate is that life comes with cost benefits, right?
So my, obviously my mental health is completely spiraling.
My daughter Is not behaving very well.
Like what? What are we talking about?
I'm overwhelmed. And so I'm trying to talk to my ex-husband about this.
And he says to put her daughter in daycare.
Sorry, can you hear me? Well, trying to run the company.
Cook the meals. Work on a special diet.
Deal with my anxiety and mental health.
Raise two kids. Then he went and got two dogs.
Wait, sorry. Can you hear me?
Oh. Yeah, I can hear you.
Oh, you can. Okay, sorry. I was just asking what, you said your behavior, your daughter's behavior was not great.
What was going on? Well, she started like throwing things all over her room, like ruining her room, dumping everything.
At what age? She would have been three.
Was she in a fair bit of pain from the impacted bowels and so on?
I think she was. Yep.
I think she was. And yep, I think it was definitely bugging her.
No, it definitely was.
Can you imagine? Like not being able to poop.
And yeah, so we did all kinds of every sort of diet you could think of.
And then I ended up getting a hold of a holistic practitioner.
And then she had everything we could try to get to do.
You know, she was taking enzymes and probiotics and all this stuff.
And, you know, and I just, my anxiety was getting worse and worse and worse.
And she just went through a lot.
She went through a lot, you know, and on top of The fact that she can't sleep because her mother won't stop bugging her.
She can't take a poop because her bowels are impacted.
She can't get any rest. She can't relax because her parents are screaming at each other.
Like, I'm telling you, this kid had it really hard.
Right. And I'm sorry, did she have half-sisters and brothers?
I'm sorry if I missed that. Yeah, she did.
She had three. Right, okay.
From your husband's first marriage, right?
Well, no, he'd been married three times before me.
Three times? Yes.
And you knew that before you got married?
Yeah. But he always made the story sound like he was some kind of hero.
I honestly thought that he was just some dad with a kid.
Like, he was raising his son.
And that was like, for me, I thought, geez, this is a super great guy.
Like, my dad obviously couldn't be in my life very much, so...
Sorry, what do you mean he couldn't be in your life?
Well, we lived in different provinces because my stepfather ended up breaking the law.
And so we moved provinces so he didn't go to jail.
And I ended up spending, you know, six years in a completely different province from my father.
But he did fly me to where he was.
I did spend summers with him.
He did, you know, on occasion send me gifts at Christmas.
He wouldn't call me though because I just cried.
Right, okay. So you had to flee the province?
Yeah. Wow.
And who was it who broke the law?
Step? Yeah.
Sorry, who was it?
I'm not sure. Your husband?
No, my stepfather, when I was young.
I see, I see.
Okay, okay. All right.
So, what I was trying to relate this to was the fact that I see my ex-husband parenting his child.
And I seen a little kid who needed me and that attracted me to the situation and, you know, how I sort of ended up there.
Okay, got it. Okay, so let's move on with your daughter's childhood.
Okay, so I'm trying to find solutions to solve the problem.
And one of the things I decide is that we should move to a community fairly far north of us because I'm Métis.
And so we could join a Métis community and my kids are avid fisher people, obviously.
Fishermen. I don't really care.
Whatever. But my daughter fishes and she's really good at it.
And they like hunting and, you know, shooting grouse and shooting 22s and camping and building and just, they love that stuff, right?
So we are working up in this northern community and I end up meeting this lady who's like, oh, you know what?
Métis people can live in this community for free.
So we'll give you a free house and you can come and stay and it'll be great.
And I'm like, okay, well, this solves part of our problem, right?
Because then my ex-husband Doesn't have to work as much.
He can be home helping me with the two dogs and the two kids.
And, you know, like it removes some of our financial burden and, you know, and this entire time basically like everything is falling on me because I'm having all these insane panic attacks and I'm overly emotional.
So I'm, you know, searching through everything I can find to solve this problem.
I joined Al-Anon. I go to see a counselor.
Wait, Al-Anon? Well, you didn't talk about the drinking, did you?
What do you mean, sorry? I just don't remember you mentioning that you had a drinking problem.
Well, I guess I did, but no, I went to Al-Anon, not AA. I'm so sorry.
I got that. So what's Al-Anon?
It's a support group for people that are in relationships with alcoholics or drug addicts.
My apologies. Okay, sorry.
Got it. That's okay.
No, I eventually did have a drinking problem for sure.
That's coming. And I'm not laughing.
Okay, so full shadow. Okay.
Sorry, I'm laughing. Right.
Okay. So in any case, yeah, this is going to be a great idea.
We're going to take our kids out there and we're going to...
This is my idea of problem solving.
And I grew up in...
I know we're not supposed to say locations, but in a particular province in Canada that is very similar to a reserve.
Right? In a certain part of town.
Yeah. So, I had, like, all my cousins were Native.
All my mom's sisters and brothers were Native.
And, you know, some of them I really liked.
And I wasn't prejudiced.
I wasn't, you know, I didn't have sort of this idea that, you know, they were really any different than we were.
And, you know, I still don't think they're different.
I just think that they're Okay, I don't know exactly where I'm going with that, but this is what I will tell you.
Yeah, let's stay on the family stuff rather than the sort of more philosophical tribal stuff.
I think that's where your major issue is.
Yeah, so we end up moving out there and it goes really bad.
So we get inundated with head lice.
There's a lot of scabies going around the community.
There's a lot of child abuse, sexual abuse.
You know, children are sexually abusing other children.
You know, parents are blah, blah, blah, blah.
Like, it was bad. It was really bad.
And like, if I had panic attacks before, they were just like, yeah.
You've like never paid more for something that's free in your life, right?
Right. Exactly.
That's an understatement for sure.
And so we're kind of living in this community and my ex-husband and I are fighting over money.
The point of us moving out there was to sort of, you know, but he was off spending money, bought himself a new truck and, you know, spend, spend, spend, spend, spend.
So all we've done was we just, you know.
So you get the free house and he's like, woohoo, free stuff, right?
Exactly. Are you there?
Yes. Okay.
Okay. So, anyway, I say, okay, well, how are we going to solve this problem?
Why don't you pay me a salary? Because I'm doing your bookkeeping and, you know, answering your calls and creating your accounts and doing all this stuff, right?
So, I'm your administrator. So, pay me $2,000 a month.
And he says to me, because he wants to take on this new business partner and this new business partner and him are going to split the money.
So I'm like, oh, okay.
So here I'm thinking the whole time I'm your business partner, but apparently the business is yours and you're just going to take on another partner and we're already financially drowning in debt.
I've done everything I can possibly think of.
Like, I'm not buying myself clothes.
I'm not, you know...
I mean, you're living with scabies.
Well, I know. Yeah.
No, we didn't get scabies.
Not that that's much of a consolation.
But anyway, so yeah, basically...
I said to, you know, how about there could be a wage for me?
And so he said, you can have room and board.
Wait, but that was free, right?
Right, that's a good point, yeah.
But at this point, just to kind of put things into context, I have probably read six or eight different parenting books.
I'm just starting to watch your show.
Or listen to your show, pardon me.
And I'm kind of like, you know, my...
I don't know. I'm kind of getting in touch with reality to some degree, right?
So our conflicts were escalating and I'm trying to bring him along with me.
And, you know, he's maintaining the fact that I'm the problem.
And during this period, both of his parents...
Or one of his parents dies.
So, you know, how that can happen when somebody dies.
Like, things get... Pretty tumultuous for an individual.
Well, I haven't hit that yet, but I'm sure I will at some point.
So anyway, yeah, I ended up, my son ended up moving because he couldn't stand the fighting and he left.
And then after that, I was like, at 12.
Where did he go? He went to live with his mother, which is not a good situation.
Like, if that situation looks better than the one that I'm providing, that was like a real eye-opener for me as to how bad things actually were.
Like, if you would prefer to go and live in a basement with no windows beside a washing machine that's leaking, then be with your father and I? Like, it just, it was, it was heartbreaking.
Not the biggest compliment I've ever heard.
Right? Right?
I mean, and, um, yeah.
Yeah. But on the positive side, I don't know.
I don't know.
Okay, let's move on with your daughter.
Okay, so my daughter is making friends with people where we're living in this Indigenous community and things are not going well.
She started smoking cigarettes.
I know that's not funny, but if you...
At what age? She was seven.
She's seven, and she's starting to smoke cigarettes.
Yeah. Okay.
She didn't keep smoking, though.
though I told her she had to buy her own.
And yeah, I'm less and less able to control the environment.
And really, I'm checking on her every 15 minutes.
She's barely out of my sight. I'm almost in the room with her all the time.
And just previous to this whole thing where my ex-husband and I separate, my son leaves, and so on and so forth, we ended up homeschooling, which was not ideal.
But what happened was my son was put in a precarious position in school, and This kid who normally woke up every morning and packed our stuff and was harassing me to get out of the door decided he didn't want to go to school anymore.
So he was being bullied?
What do you mean? Yeah, he was being bullied.
And in hindsight now, it's because we moved to an indigenous community.
And because, you know, I mean, we were, like, he didn't ever end up getting any head lice, but...
You know, his sister went to the school and she had it and she was giving it to the kids in the other class.
And they were not happy about it.
You know, the other parents were saying, stay away from this kid, stay away from this kid.
And then it ended up, you know, going through the whole school and then he ended up getting bullied.
But I didn't really notice it with my daughter because, you know, this is grade one.
So she doesn't want to go to school.
Yeah, nobody in grade one wants to go to school.
So anyway...
I'm like, okay, well, I went and talked to the teachers.
I talked to the principal.
I tried everything I could do to get to the bottom of what was going on.
I said, can my son raise his voice in class if they start to pick on him?
And just to kind of draw attention to the fact that he's not going to be putting up with it.
Meeting after meeting and I ended up finding out from from people indirectly as specifically the teachers that you know the kids that were bullying him had been bullying other students for a long time and that you know they don't ever have any accountability because they're from the more affluent families and that this particular kid that my son has a problem with his mother is head of the PTA and his father is the local policeman so I decide like I'm not going to continue to send my son here who like I said you know He went to school every day.
Fast forward, this kid graduated from a Francophone school with two English-speaking parents with six awards, four bursaries, one of which was for maintaining an above-80 average.
This is an intelligent, capable, smart kid.
When he starts telling me that he has a stomach ache, I'm like, no, something's wrong here.
We end up going through all this mess, and then it's like, try homeschooling.
And because I was running a business, had two dogs, was living in an indigenous community with panic attacks, and no idea how to homeschool children, I ended up blowing the entire thing up, making a huge mess of everything.
It was a complete disaster.
Wait, what happened? I just terrorized my daughter, and I couldn't help my son.
So, what does it mean you terrorized your daughter?
I stormed up and down the hallway trying to make her...
Okay, so when you sign up for homeschooling through the province's educational system, would you mind holding the line one second?
I just have to... I need to let my dog out.
Sure. Okay, thanks.
Hello? Yes, go ahead.
Okay. So...
Terrorizing your daughter. Yeah.
So they send you this package, this stack, and it's literally one of the thickest binders you've ever seen.
And I'm phoning them and trying to get help with understanding, you know, what she's supposed to be doing.
And they're basically threatening me, saying that she needs to do every single workbook in all of this material that they gave her, and that she needs to hand in all this homework.
And I can't get her to do it.
I can't get her. I didn't understand the concept of win-wins.
There was a lot of things I did not understand.
And I'm thinking that, you know, they're going to come and take her away, right?
Or, you know, send her back to school.
Because I cannot produce these documents.
Like, I can't get my daughter to cooperate one iota.
And, in fact, that's actually the entire curriculum for the entire year.
And sometimes kids do the work and sometimes they play.
You know? Like, they made it seem like that she had to complete every single one of these tasks.
And In fact, if she was in regular school with an actual teacher, she would have been partially exposed to these concepts in a way that would have been gradual.
I didn't learn anything about homeschooling before, and lots of mistakes were made.
I was like pounding on her door and crying and just having a complete fit.
And she was, you know, she'd cooperate for a couple of minutes, but then I would try to get her to sit there for an entire hour so we could hand in all this homework.
And she was five. Right.
Okay. Okay. Okay.
And so my son, who's very astute and who's very academically inclined, he is insistent on, you know, completing all of his work and there's things he doesn't understand.
I don't have the time to help him.
In the process of all of this, my stepdaughter ends up coming to live with us and brings four of her children.
So my ex-husband's daughter, her four kids, my daughter, my son, and yeah, I ended up harassing her kids.
I mean, sorry, I guess she asked if she would come and why say yes?
She didn't say yes.
I went to get her. Okay.
Why would you go and get her? Because I have a very, I guess, twisted savior complex that ends up just ruining everything.
I really couldn't tell you. Well, it was at the expense of your kids, right?
Yeah. But, you know, in my mind, she was still his child.
And she... She's seven years younger than I am, and she ended up having a baby before me.
And then we have daughters who are two weeks apart.
And, you know, when I very first met her, she was living on a reserve.
No, but it was at the expense of your own children.
It was at the expense of my own children.
Yeah, definitely.
Okay, so, I mean, because, I mean, the reason I'm focusing on that is you have issues with your daughter, right?
Yeah, I have a lot of issues with my daughter.
Yeah. And I would guess your daughter says, okay, mom can barely keep it together with me, and now she's gone and picked up another messed up woman with her four kids.
Mm-hmm. So you're bringing this kind of...
I mean, it's already chaotic and messy, and you're bringing almost infinitely more chaos and mess into the house of your own choice, right?
Yep, that's right. Okay.
All right. Okay, so then what happened?
So then... Uh, so then my grandchildren ended up living with us for a period of time and then they ended up moving so their mom could go to school and she got her grade 12 and she ended up pursuing a trade and, you know, she struggled a little bit.
She had addictions. She went in and out of them a few times.
What was she addicted to?
Drugs. So you brought a drug addict into the house?
Yes, I did. And I married one.
Oh, yeah, we're talking. I really, really messed this up.
There's no two ways about that.
But this time, I mean, this time, hadn't you sort of read the books on parenting or started this sort of journey of self-knowledge and stuff like that?
At this point, I had done Al-Anon.
And I had read several parenting books, which, by the way, don't tell you that parenting actually starts with the parent.
You mean your parent? Yeah.
No, me. Oh, yeah, of course.
Yeah. So, wait.
So, in Al-Anon, I assume that, I mean, I don't know much about it, but I assume it's like, hi, I'm so-and-so, and this is my story, and this is what's going on in my life.
I mean, did you talk about bringing the drug addict and her kids into your house?
And what did they say?
I don't know if there are counselors there or your peers or whatever, but what was the feedback you got from them?
Well, Al-Anon is more about just teaching you that certain behaviors or coping mechanisms, because you lived with addicts, So, you know, I definitely started to understand them more, but...
Wait, so sorry, you don't talk about, like, current life decisions or choices?
Oh, you do, you do, but, you know, it's...
Okay, so what did people say when you talked about bringing the drug addict and her four kids into your home?
Right. No, I realize I screwed up.
I get it. No, no, I'm just, I'm asking, I mean, I'm just curious what kind of feedback you had, right?
Right. So when you brought up an Al-Anon that you were considering bringing a drug addict and her four kids into your house, what feedback did you get from the people there?
I didn't bring it up an Al-Anon and everybody around me is like cheering me on.
Oh my god, you're such a good mom.
You're so selfless. My ex-husband was perfectly fine with it because he was...
I wanted his daughter to be cared for and his grandchildren to be looked after.
It wasn't ideal for him that they were going to be raised on a reserve.
And I was the one who was doing all the work.
So yeah, people were just getting out of my way.
I think you were getting a lot of praise for this.
Yes, I was. Yes, I was.
And I was thinking in my mind that I was doing the right thing.
She didn't have a parent. That was her father.
I married him. And so, indirectly, this woman becomes somewhat my responsibility and definitely my daughter's family.
And, you know, I was raised by really abusive step-parents who did not see me as...
Sorry, can you hear me? Yeah, but if family is so important, the family that's closest to you is the most important, and that would be your kids, right?
Yeah, when you're ready. Yeah, can you hear me?
Hello? Hi, I'm here.
Oh, sorry. But if family is so important, and of course it is, then the family that's closest to you would be the most important, and that would be your own children, right?
Yeah, and I'm not saying that family isn't important.
What I guess I'm saying is that...
No, family isn't important.
I was pushed out of my father's life by his current wife, and...
I was really adamant that that would not happen to my stepchildren.
So I brought them in.
I did the opposite of the things that were done to me.
I'm not sure that that's really opposite.
Because you've had a massive amount of chaos in your life.
And bringing a drug addict and her four children into an already chaotic and dysfunctional environment That's not doing the opposite of what happened when you were younger.
That's more chaos, more dysfunction, more abuse, more addiction in your life, right?
I mean, I would say you probably had your fill of it by then.
I don't see that doing much of the opposite, bringing more, you know, you were married to an addict, had a kid with an addict, and then, oh, let's bring in more addicts.
Isn't that a continuation of the pattern rather than breaking it?
Well, I guess from my perspective, where they were living and the conditions they were living in was, you know, unacceptable to, you know, I mean, it was an unacceptable situation, something that I felt, you know, in my mind that my ex-husband should have been doing something about.
And I was 100% down to help, you know, whatever could be done to make things better.
And no, I failed.
I was not... Well, it was to some degree, because if you think about it, my stepdaughter has said on numerous occasions that, you know, she would have died if I hadn't made the choices that I made, and they came at the expense of my daughter, and I do feel guilty about that.
And same with my son. I mean, my stepdaughter's mother committed suicide when she was seven, and my stepson's mother is an addict and an exotic dancer.
And wasn't fit to care for him.
So, I mean, you were hoping that your sort of love and care and attention could sort of undo this damage.
Is that right? Well, I was hoping that if anything, I at least didn't do more.
Right. Or at least, I guess, roof over their head kind of thing.
They're not living. I mean, I'm not an expert, but I mean, there are social services and all of this stuff.
Which we pay a lot of taxes for these kinds of situations, right?
Yeah, but, you know, I mean, even on your show yourself, you said they don't actually do any good.
I mean, financially supporting people through times of crisis is not the same as the work that the church does, you know?
I mean, like, I could have.
I could have said, yeah, absolutely.
No, no, I'm sorry. Just to be clear, I've never said they never do any good.
I'm just saying that they don't take as much care as people who know would.
No, I get what you're saying. Yeah, well, it's a complicated thing, right?
To try to stop family patterns.
Yeah, but if you're already having anxiety attacks and panic attacks and fighting tooth and nail with your daughter and there's scabies and head lice and your son's being bullied and it's a dysfunctional environment full of child abuse and child rape and pedophiles and so on, that's... I mean, where's your...
Where's your breaking point? Where's your limit where you say, my knees are buckling, my back is killing me, I can't take on another load?
Well, it was about three or four years later.
And in my house, these things were not happening.
There were no pedophiles in my home.
No, no, no, I understand.
I'm not trying to say there was, but you said that it was in the community, right?
Yeah, they were in the community.
That's right. And so we were being very alienated.
You're worried about your kids in this environment, right?
Oh, yeah. They couldn't go out.
They couldn't play at other people's houses.
You know, they had to stay.
And, you know, they would occasionally have friends over.
Actually, they constantly had friends over.
And those friends were around me.
And I was obsessively supervising them.
You know, to the point where, like, I know you've probably heard of Jordan Peterson, where he says, never interrupt kids when they're skateboarding.
My daughter never got that opportunity.
I interrupted every single day and all the time, constantly.
And we had money.
We had finances, right?
So we had food in our fridge and we had games and toys to play with.
And we had, you know...
You were a refuge for the other kids.
Exactly. And for my stepdaughter.
And yeah, I... Yeah.
So, anyway.
So... I finally looked around, mostly just coming to the realization of the situation that getting in touch with reality led me to believe that this was not a very good environment for my daughter.
Like I said, my son left, so I was like, okay, we're out of here.
So I took my daughter. I ended up moving.
I went to stay with some family.
That didn't work out. So I ended up back with my ex-husband.
And, you know, he charmed me and said, you know, I'm going to do all this wonderful stuff.
To be a father to our daughter.
And the truth is, I don't even think he could have if he wanted to.
Because I wouldn't let him.
Sorry, what was his living situation?
Was he working? Was he still on drugs?
Or how was that? Well, when him and I first met, he ended up getting his drug addiction considerably under control.
You know, he ended up going on the methadone program.
And it subsidized.
Because you don't... Well, actually, on your show, The Bomb in the Brain...
No, sorry. Gabor Matate says that it's a dopamine in your brain that ends up like it's a physiological thing, obviously from trauma and so on and so forth.
But it supplemented the dopamine that he needed to function as a normal adult, with exception to the temper tantrums, which, you know, I really still can't even to this day explain them.
But anyway...
Yeah, he's always worked.
The thing about my ex-husband is, and I know that this is, I don't know what you think of this, but he has like an off-the-charts IQ. But he's made a lot of mistakes.
You know, four ex-wives, four children, all with different women.
You know, like, his financial success comes and goes.
I mean, almost three separate times in his life, you know, he was making a million dollars.
Like a year? He's a brilliant man.
Yeah, like when, what he did was he went down to the, as an example, one example, he went down to the States and bought a whole bunch of satellite dishes and then he hooked them up all over one of the northern provinces.
And this was before you could get Bell.
So technically, it wasn't stealing the service.
But he knew the guy who hacked the cards.
Yeah. So every time the card went down, he made 50 bucks and he could sell.
He's a salesman like you wouldn't believe.
Obviously, he's got four wives. And you know what?
None of us are ugly. He's brilliant.
It's really odd. It's the craziest thing.
When we started the business that we started, we were number one in Canada for almost five years.
And that's the thing I'm telling you about my daughter is that I worry because she can talk circles around counselors.
She can talk circles around therapists.
I mean, she's, you know, definitely above average.
And having a conversation with her is, you know, sometimes she, like, she challenges me.
And I've got, like, I've got 25 years on her, right?
And I listen to your show. We spar over all kinds of things.
But I guess the one thing that I'm really most concerned about is that she's planning to leave.
She wants to move.
So she's saving up her money and she plans to leave when she's 16.
How old is she now?
15. And how's her life?
Her life is, you know, not good, right?
I mean, she doesn't have any education.
She's not gone to school.
She doesn't have anything that would be a sense of accomplishment.
I can't talk to her because I've blown all my credibility.
Her dad is no better.
And what are her major, if she was on the line here, what are her issues?
What would she complain about the most?
What would she complain about?
I don't think she would.
I don't think she would. She doesn't really complain.
She's not... But if she were to say, right?
I mean, I'm not saying like we drag her on the phone right now.
I'm just saying that if she were to talk as honestly as she possibly could about what her situation was and what her major complaints were, what would she say?
I think she would say her major complaints are that I smother her and I need to get a life of my own.
I need to, you know, that would be a big one.
I don't think she would complain about the fact that she doesn't have any formal education.
But to me, that's, like, scary because, you know, she hasn't tested her skills against...
Anything that can give her a sense of self-esteem.
You know what I'm saying? And like the grandchildren that I raised are like her siblings.
And so she spends time with them.
And what she does is when they have schoolwork, she tries to help them with their schoolwork and she nails it.
She nails it. Like she, for having zero formal education at all, Because, like I said, I mean, she wouldn't do anything with me.
I've given her workbooks. I've paid for tutoring.
At one point, I paid $300 a month for her to learn this reading program that she would only do maybe 50% of the time.
Like, she was supposed to do it, like, five days a week or whatever, and she might have done it two solid times.
And through just doing that, she picked up, you know, how to read.
She taught herself to spell.
She reads all kinds of articles.
She... Looks at all different sorts of things that most children don't.
She's very interested in understanding things like the political system, the transgender movement, feminism.
These concepts and ideas, she wants to solve the problems.
You know? She's a brilliant kid, for sure.
And what would her complaints be?
That I don't give her enough space.
But I can't get to her.
You see what I'm saying? She shut me out a long time ago.
Okay, now we're getting to you.
We've done you. We've done an hour, right?
An hour and a 15.
So I'm just trying to figure out what's going on with her.
Yeah, and I'm trying to tell you, she doesn't share her personal thoughts with me.
But you know her.
I mean, you're her mother, right?
Right. 15 years, right?
So what are her major issues?
I'm not saying whether you agree with them or not, but what would she say her major issues are?
No, and I'm really trying to find the answer for you.
I'm thinking about it, and I'm racking my brain, and I'm saying that as a consequence of the last hour of the discussions we've had, she stopped talking to me.
She doesn't open up to me.
She doesn't...
You know, she...
Locks her door and sometimes I don't see her for days.
You know, she sometimes avoids me completely and will only come out at night.
Like... But then when she does come out, like I said, we have these conversations and she gets on my case about things like, you know, the political system or whatever and, you know, wants to know my perspective and then leaves and I don't know if she's just...
I think she's just...
She likes to play devil's advocate for me because I seem like a little bit of an outrageous right-wing person compared to...
I mean, now, obviously.
A lot of the things I did were very...
are...
motivated.
Right.
So before she stopped, hang on, but so before she stopped talking to you and you had some idea what her issues were, what were the last issues that you knew about that you could confirm?
Okay, before.
Well... She said, you know, I'm too hysterical and too emotional and she just basically wants to get away from me.
That's, you know, we ended up having an argument one night and she said I put an enormous amount of pressure on her and it wasn't fair and I'm still doing it and I'm, you know, I don't know how to stop.
Like, mostly I would be like, what are you going to do about school?
What are you going to do about school? What are you going to do about school, right?
And so I'm like, you've got to be able to get a job.
You need to have some kind of skills and...
It was freaking me out, and I was thinking that I was abusing my child because she was getting no education.
But she's on par.
She went to school after having not been in school for five years, and she ended up with 90s.
Okay, so if you don't know her issues, I can't do anything, just so you know.
Okay. I'm just, then it's like, because you're basically, I mean, to take a silly example, it's like going to a doctor.
My child's in pain. Where do they hurt?
I have no idea. Okay, what's the doctor supposed to do?
Yeah, I guess I was thinking we could maybe glean something from the fact that she totally is avoiding me and is plotting to leave.
Well, I think we can glean from that that she's very unhappy.
But if you don't know her specific, I mean, you know this, right?
I know that you know.
You do know. I mean, you may not know consciously.
But if anybody knows, you know.
You've heard this a million times in these shows, right?
People say, why did your parent get divorced?
I don't know. Well, of course you know.
And that's just kid to parent, right?
You're parent to kid. You held her in your belly.
You nursed her through her meningitis.
You nursed her through her impacted colon and all of that.
So you do know.
Yeah, but didn't I just say what I thought her issues were?
Well, no, you're too emotional.
I don't know what that means.
That's kind of neutral, right?
There's nothing wrong with emotions, and I don't know what too emotional is, but that's not specific enough.
Okay, well, when I was discussing me basically scaring her off of any formal education.
And bringing all the chaos into her life.
Isn't that...
Hang on.
So now we're starting to get somewhere, right?
So has she said that she resents you for bringing all the chaos into her life?
Well, see, one of the things that I tend to do, probably why she hides in a room, is because I go and try to beg for her forgiveness.
Because the more I recognize and realize...
The damage I've done, the more I feel guilt and shame, and I end up putting it on her indirectly by telling her, like, look, these are the things I did that are really bad.
You should be super mad at me.
And then she says things like, Mom, you know, go get your own life, basically.
Okay, so let's look at that interaction.
Okay, that's probably quite important.
You feel bad about the things that happened in the past, and so you go in and you want her forgiveness, right?
Well, yes, and I also want her to avoid repeating the mistakes that I made, so I bring up...
No, no, I appreciate that.
Here's the part where I just need shorter answers, because again, I think we've got a lot of information across.
Okay. You feel bad, you feel guilty, and you want to go in and get her forgiveness, right?
Yes. Why? Why?
How does it benefit her to forgive you?
I understand how it benefits you because you feel bad, you feel guilty, and then you go in and you sort of claw at your daughter saying, you've got to forgive me.
But she gets that you want her to forgive you so that you feel better.
Never thought of that. It's got nothing to do with her, does it?
Well, I don't know. I mean, you tell me.
It's a good point. Well, I guess...
That's the same as before.
You'd have to go and interrupt her sleep to manage your own anxiety.
Now you're going in and demanding forgiveness so that you can manage your...
You don't feel guilty. Wow.
That's using her, right? Yeah, yeah.
As an external... I mean, this is what a drug addict would do.
It would feel bad, would rush to a particular drug, a heroin or whatever to feel better, and you experience a negative emotional stimuli and you rush to your daughter to give you the dopamine to recover from it.
Oh my God, that's pretty gross.
Well, we could jump into judgment if we want, but I think the first thing we need to be is curious.
I think that the curiosity and understanding what's going on is much more important than the judgment because you're doing the judgment To punish yourself, right?
Oh, I've done a bad thing.
I've judged myself harshly.
But all that's going to do is rush you back to more dopamine hits.
So your negative judgment, because this is what happens.
You have a negative judgment. You say, I feel guilty.
And you go, I've got to get my daughter to apologize for me.
And so if you then judge yourself as really bad for that, the next thing you're going to do is you're going to go and apologize to your daughter.
So that you feel better from your self-criticism, but you're using her again.
So I would try and avoid the self-judgment, the self-criticism, the self-attack, because it's just going to lead you down the same path, if that makes sense.
Yeah, that makes perfect sense, and it's definitely where I'm going to start, for sure.
And then what?
Okay, so look, it bears saying, because it is really important.
I am so sorry.
For the childhood that you had.
My God. I mean, it's appalling almost beyond language.
I am so, so sorry for all of the childhood stuff that you went through and the exploitation of this man who was 16 years older than you and the lack of guidance.
And I mean, it's just, it's appalling and it's terrible.
And I'm so sorry, the drug addict chaos and the mess and your mother with the AC of 10.
And it's just... Horrendous.
I'm so sorry about all of that.
And I really want to make sure that that's really clear before we go any further because here's where a little bit the hammer comes down.
But I want to make sure that you're aware of just how much I sympathize and feel for your history.
And obviously, with all my heart, I wish it were different.
But we have to work with what we have to work with, right?
Yes. Okay. She's entering into the phase of life, right?
She's 15 years old. She's entering into the phase of life where she needs to figure out how she's going to live, what kind of life she's going to have.
And she's aware, just as you're aware and you were aware at that age to some degree, that the decisions you make, the decisions that she makes over the next five years will define her life for the most part.
It's not like there's no free will afterwards, but, you know, if she ends up getting pregnant by a drug addict, then her life is going to be a A mess for the next 20 years, right?
And then after that, it's going to be almost impossible to recover.
And if she herself, I'm not saying she would, but if she did get addicted to some sort of drug, that would mess up her life for, you know, pretty much ever.
And so, you know, she's on this cusp of like, okay, every decision I make now, massive effects down the road.
So what she's doing is she's looking at you with a very cold and critical eye because, you know, That's what teenagers do.
That's kind of their job, right?
And first thing she's going to do is she's going to say, Can my mom help me make good decisions?
And you can say anything you want, but she's not going to listen to much of what you say.
She's going to look directly at the life that you've led, right?
And she's going to say, Can my mom help me avoid the life my mom had?
So when she looks at your life today, this year of our Lord, October the 16th, 2021, at 9.25 p.m., when she looks at your life as it is right now, what evidence does she see that you are someone whose wisdom and advice can be trusted?
Do you want me to answer that? Yes, please.
And that's a real question.
I don't mean to like, well, I'm not trying to say there's nothing.
I'm just curious what there is.
Well, I would say that, you know, through the process of evolution, of personal evolution, listening to your show gives me some sense of credibility.
No, no. I said empirical evidence, not I listen to a podcast.
That's all theoretical, right? I'm talking about empirical evidence because teenagers are relentlessly empirical, right?
I mean, if you're 100 pounds overweight but you used to be 150 pounds overweight, they'll still call you fat, right?
Or if you're 100 pounds overweight and you say, well, I'm reading a whole bunch of diet books.
They only look.
They don't listen. And so when she looks at your life, as it is right now, what empirical evidence does she see that you are someone who can help her make really great decisions?
Well, I would say that I still have some sense of self-esteem because regardless of my childhood, I've never engaged in drug abuse.
I guess I did drink, so that's a bit of a problem.
Sorry, how long did you have a drinking problem for?
Well, for the entire time I was married.
Can you give me the ages of your daughter's life from that?
Well, I didn't really start drinking until she was probably about five.
And then I divorced or separated from my husband when she was 11.
Okay, so she's got a cozy six formative years there, right?
Yeah, but I was an extremely functioning alcoholic, if that helps at all.
No, because the functioning alcoholic, what that means is you can run a business while being an alcoholic, but it doesn't mean that you can be an open-hearted, connected, intimate parent figure.
Right. Right. Because the first thing alcohol does is it source connection in two, right?
That's kind of what it's for. So the connection to others.
Again, you can function in the business environment probably quite well.
But as far as being emotionally available to your kids and empathetic and sensitive, that would be the first to go, I think.
Well, that's definitely changes that I made.
My kids, I have made those changes, you know.
Okay, but that's four years ago for her, right?
Yeah. How old was she when you brought the drug addict and her four kids into the house?
She was five. And how long did they stay?
Well, they've been in and out her whole life.
They're more her siblings than they are her nieces.
Okay. And how does she get along with the mom and the four kids?
Her sister and her children.
She gets along with them really well.
In fact, actually, she basically said that she was going to live with them.
And wanted to move away from me.
I'm going to assume that the mother is off the drugs, right?
Yeah, she...
Yes, she was.
We did a lot of your podcasts and, you know, I shared a lot of things with her and I... Yeah, I mean, not that, like you said, there was a big sacrifice and that wasn't an ideal thing to do to my daughter.
Okay. Sorry, go ahead.
But yeah, I mean, she's sober and she's a...
You know, she's an...
She is a somewhat engaged parent.
Obviously, she's got quite the mess herself.
She's got to deal with different dads and things like that.
Of the four kids, how many different dads?
Three. Three different dads?
Or three kids from two different dads?
Five kids, three different dads.
Oh my God, five kids, three different dads.
And I'm sorry to drag you into the present as far as this goes, but what's your dating or romantic life at the present?
I have a boyfriend.
And what's his story?
His story is he...
Him and I were friends in childhood and we ended up connecting through social media and my daughter had moved and she basically told me when I left that I needed to get a relationship and stop obsessing with her and start finding some other people in my life.
And yeah, so...
We ended up dating and living together.
And how long did you date before you lived together?
Two minutes. I know, I know, I know, I know, I know.
Wait, I'm sorry, no really, how long?
Like, we started pretty much living together the first day.
The first date? Yeah.
So what have you learned in your daughter's eyes?
Well, I mean, he's not nearly as dysfunctional as my previous relationships.
How long have you lived together?
How long have you been going out?
A year and a half. Okay, but he's dysfunctional enough that he's going to move into a multiple stepson, stepdaughter, ex-husbands, drug addicts floating around and all of that.
He's just willing to jump straight into that, right?
We live with him. You and your daughter live with him?
Yes, and my stepdaughter.
I have children.
Wait, you're all living off this guy?
No, we don't live off him.
We all support ourselves, but we do share his home.
He lives in a...
I mean, I thought you were like number one successful in Canada.
Oh yeah, no. My ex-husband was really, really terrible with money.
So financially, we didn't...
We made $30,000 a month, but we kept, like, nothing.
How on earth do you spend $30,000 over this?
Bruce just millions? How the hell do you spend that much money?
Well, first of all, having six, seven kids is pretty expensive.
I mean, they all went for tutoring and to museums and for extracurriculars and to the zoo.
Well, those were all choices, right?
Absolutely. All choices, yes.
And we fought about that constantly.
And I indulged my children ridiculously.
New school clothes every year, all seven kids.
You know, like...
That was what I was doing that I thought was good.
I grew up very, very dirt poor and so a big part of me thought that those financial incentives...
The issue with your childhood had nothing to do with money.
You could be poor and have a great family life.
As you know, you can be rich and things can be terrible.
With your boyfriend, does he have kids of his own?
Does he have exes? What's the story there?
Yeah, he has an ex and a daughter, yeah.
And they live with him or is she an adult?
No, his daughter's not an adult.
She lives with her mother. Why the mother and not him?
Because he works on the road.
Oh, so he's gone like your dad was gone to some degree, right?
Yes, except for the last year.
He's been here pretty much the whole year.
Oh, because of COVID and stuff, right?
So is he now half and half with his wife?
No, it's Christmas and summers.
Why not half and half if he's home?
Well, he's home and he isn't.
He has a very specialized job and he has to leave when he gets a call on a moment's notice.
And he flies all over the country.
So, you know, he's...
Yeah, but I mean, there's you, right?
I mean, there's other people around who can take care of his daughter, right?
Yeah, but I think that he feels that she is best cared for with her mother.
I think that he gives her that credit and he feels that, you know, she's got her grandparents in a community where she lives and that given the fact that his marriage failed, you know, he wants to see her have...
Structure and happiness. And they're a very affluent family.
You know, they're into a lot of, you know, expensive hobbies, horses, all kinds of things.
And so he sees her when he can see her and he video chats with her regularly.
And he, yeah, I mean, she was here this summer and that's the consequence of divorce.
So I mean, yeah.
And how long ago was he divorced?
You know, I really hate telling you this.
No, no. Oh, was it close to when he got together with you?
Yeah. How close?
At the same time. Was he separated and going out with you or the divorce had come through or what?
Yeah, they were in the process of separating.
Wait, they were in the process?
Was he still living with her?
Yes. So he's still living with the woman who was thinking all in the process of separating.
Wait, are you a homebreaker?
I was wondering that myself, yeah.
But they had not engaged...
Oh my gosh.
Really? Well, they hadn't engaged in any relations for like four years.
No sex for four years?
Yeah. All right.
Yeah. So, you got involved and I assume that accelerated the separation, right?
No. The separation happened before we even had a discussion on social media.
He had basically said, you know, like, I'm killing myself.
I'm working ridiculous amounts of hours.
I'm trying to maintain a certain kind of lifestyle and, you know, I don't want to come home, basically.
Like, I don't like being here and I don't like being around you and We're not in an intimate relationship of any kind.
I'm just hanging out in my garage trying to find ways to entertain myself.
Is that what they're calling it these days?
Yeah, that's what they're calling it.
I don't know. Whatever you want to say.
He was pursuing phone conversations with other women because he wasn't having one at home.
Which is, I guess, kind of how he ended up having a conversation with me.
And then, you know, I just basically said, I'm not your girl, my friend, right?
Like, he was...
Yeah, and then we ended up having conversations.
And so he was in Texas and working.
And for two months, we basically were on the phone all day.
We were either texting or phoning outside of his work thing.
And then he got back and he was like, you know, I told you...
Basically several times this relationship was going to be ending and she had already known that or whatever the case may be.
She was making arrangements to move and he's like, I'm going to go see you.
Yeah. And then he saw you and you moved in together.
Well, yeah, he just stayed, right?
Because he wasn't going back to work. So he stayed with me for a few days and then he went and loaded up all of their stuff and said goodbye to his daughter and she took off and then he just came back and We spent time together and we were trying to decide where to live or what we were going to do and so on and so forth.
And at this point, I don't think my daughter's coming home.
At this point, she's made it adamantly clear that, you know, well, I think you pointed out that I was using my daughter as a crutch.
And I really am so grateful that you did that because the honest truth is I really, really need to understand what I'm doing wrong so that I can do something better.
Does she like your boyfriend?
Um, yeah, she's actually, this is, uh, yeah, she does like him and they, um, kind of laugh and joke and they have this, you know, he's taught her how to snowboard and he does, you know, make efforts and things like that.
There's a little bit of a conflict, um, because with respect to my daughter, I, um, I, Contribute less to our relationship and more to her well-being.
You know what I mean? Sometimes.
So it means that we don't get to...
I don't really know. My ex-husband set up a bank account for my daughter when we separated.
So he pays his child support directly to her.
And... Previous to us living together, I didn't make an exceptional amount of income on my own, right?
I grossed like $52,000 a year kind of thing, right?
So I got the benefit from the government, which I give directly to her.
And she uses that to, you know, manage...
I guess her own finances and that's where the whole I'm planning to move thing and yeah she can do it like she she's pretty frugal so I mean don't have to give me any particular figures but she's getting child support directly she's getting government benefits from you indirectly right mm-hmm so I mean she basically has a pretty if I understand this correctly a pretty significant income right yeah but she doesn't ever spend it and No, no, I get that. I get that.
But I mean, she has an income that she doesn't actually have to earn it, right?
Yes. No, she does not have to earn it.
No. She actually just went and applied for jobs today.
Yeah, yeah. Okay. But that was just because, you know, when you're standing in the store with your child and you say, do you want something?
They say they want everything because they don't understand where money comes from.
You know, so I started giving her a budget, like a financial budget and said, okay, this is what you get for the whole month.
And so when we would be in the store and I'd mentioned something or she'd mentioned something, I'd say, would you spend your own money on it?
And if she says no, it means she doesn't really want it.
Otherwise, I was like killing myself trying to give her things that she wouldn't even play with or use or eat, you know, because it was like there was no, you know, cost benefit for her.
So, yeah, that's how the whole her having her own money thing came in.
And because I was, I did buy her things like, you know, drums and, and tutor, like not tutoring, but course, online courses and other things like that.
And she wasn't really interested in any of them.
And so I was like, okay, well, what if you just had the money and then you decided what you found interesting?
And it, that's, That's, I guess, I don't know.
But that's a lot of money, right?
I mean, child support plus government benefits.
Yeah, and I pay for her cell phone and her health care and she eats with us but then buys quite a bit of her own groceries because she likes to eat food we don't and she likes to cook.
So this, you know, she buys her own clothes and she, you know, yeah.
So she, yeah.
Okay. You think that's a bad thing?
I don't know, good or bad.
When did she start getting this, like 14 or something like that?
Well, her dad's money, the child support he sends her from the beginning.
He just put it directly into her bank account.
And how old was she at that point?
She was 12. And so she's getting, what, $500, $700, $800, $400 or something like that every month at the age of 12?
No. My ex-husband and I, we wanted to keep things out of the court and we didn't want to make...
You know, I wasn't like...
Well, he basically said, if you need child support, then she should be living with me because I'll support her.
And I said to him, I can support her just fine.
Well, not just fine. You know, obviously, $52,000 a year with a kid is not a whole bunch of money.
But I just...
My argument was, you know...
We would keep it a simple number, $300, and...
It seemed fair and reasonable.
So we just went with that.
But then she gets the government benefits too, right?
Yeah, I've been giving her those.
Well, because she moved away, right?
But then she wasn't sure if she was going to go or if she was going to come back.
You know, because she was kind of like trying to, I guess, figure out where she wanted to be in the world.
She spent some time with her dad. I sent her the money.
She spent some time with her sister. I sent her the money.
She came home. I just was giving her the money.
You know, she was already getting the money.
So I was like, just keep the money, you know?
But these are the things that you've got to be responsible for.
And that was her clothing.
And if she, you know, I mean, if there's something financially I can provide for my daughter, I will do that.
But, you know, if I don't have the money, then she's, Can decide what's important to her.
Right. Okay. Okay. Yeah.
I mean, so she doesn't, I mean, she probably doesn't feel that she needs you in particular for that kind of survival, right?
If she goes and live with this woman, your, sorry, your ex-husband's stepdaughter.
Did I have that right? No, she's my stepdaughter.
She's my cousin's daughter. Sorry, yeah, your stepdaughter.
So she goes and lives with that person and the five kids by the three different guys.
Yes. So the question is, okay, so what does she need from you?
So if you want to look at it from her standpoint, okay, what value are you bringing?
What does she need? From you, right?
So, I mean, you know, if you were to ask my daughter, it would be like, you know, my dad, we do this kind of Dungeons and Dragons.
We're all playing stuff together. We play video games together.
We go hiking together.
We enjoy our chats.
We play ping pong. Like, whatever it is.
Like, there's things that I do that bring value to her.
And that's, you know, that's really our job as parents is to constantly aim at ways we can bring value to our children, right?
Because we can't just rest on our laurels And it's the same thing that's true in marriage, right?
You don't just get married and then say, well, that's it.
That's it for me bringing value to the relationship.
It's like you have to continue.
I mean, I do this in the show, right?
I'm trying to figure out ways to bring value to you in this conversation.
I'm trying to figure out ways to bring value to people in what I do as a whole, right?
So from your daughter's perspective, what value, what good and positive things are you bringing to her life at the moment?
Well, and that's the conundrum that I'm in.
Because of my complete lack of credibility, given all the choices that I'd made up until this point, I try to engage with her, but she doesn't really want to have very much to do with me.
Okay, so at the moment, do you guys do things together that she enjoys?
Do you... No, she won't come out of the room.
Okay, does she have hobbies that you can join in on?
Or, you know, my daughter likes Minecraft, which is a game that I find actually completely incomprehensible.
I have no idea why people like or play Minecraft, but I'll give it a shot because she really likes it and I want to sort of figure out what she likes about it and that kind of stuff, right?
So, I mean, as far as hobbies that she's had or things that she's done or, I don't know, sports that you could have joined in on or whatever it is, right?
Yeah. So, are there things that you can join together with your daughter that aren't just talking, right?
Because she's in the teenage phase, which means she's probably kind of sick of talking and wants to just do stuff together.
Well, I try to ask her what she does when she's by herself, and I don't get a lot of really straight answers.
She doesn't want... No, no.
It's your job to know. It's your job.
Hang on. It's your job to know that already.
I agree with you. I agree with you.
But See, the thing is, is that all the things that she would do before, I would dissect.
And because remember how I was making, remember how you said earlier that I am using my daughter as an emotional crutch?
Well, I also do that with anything that she does that's good.
I get really excited and I get overworked and I get, you know, I get, like, I start telling her that, you know, this is long into the future.
These are the prospects and possibilities when she just wants to do something small, like figure out how to play a couple of keys on a keyboard.
And I'm already...
I don't know.
I don't... If I knew, I wouldn't do it.
So I basically...
Like, I got to approach her with kid gloves because, you know, I'll try to engage with her for, you know, five minutes and then she gets annoyed.
I back off because I know that I've just dumped all this stuff on this poor kid.
And I need to approach things very, very delicately.
And I'm trying to get, you know...
A handle on something here.
And you've got a great idea. I know she loves Minecraft.
She watches the Minecraft competitions.
She has played video games in the past.
She's not an adamant video game player.
Really, I think the only thing the kid does is read.
Okay, and what books is she reading?
Well, she won't share with me and she won't tell me.
And, you know, I know that it's my job to know, but I also respect her privacy and I don't go through her things.
I don't go through her phone.
No, of course she shouldn't. Yeah, of course she shouldn't go through her things.
No, of course. I mean, she thinks she's doing drugs or something.
Of course she shouldn't go through her things.
Okay. No, I don't.
I don't think she's doing drugs. But, yeah, so I... Yeah, she won't reveal anything to me because, like I said, I blow all this stuff up and...
Okay, so let's say that she's doing some piano, right?
And then you descend upon her and you could be a professional concert pianist.
What is it that happens that's off-putting to her?
Well, I start saying things like, well, what you...
I try to basically...
I basically...
Puke on her all of the skills and tools that were never given to me as a child and then demand that she follow them to success.
You know what I mean? I'm like, you got to do this 10 minutes every day.
That's blah, blah, blah, blah. Set up a schedule.
And all sorts of things that become completely overwhelming.
And then I'm like, did you practice your piano?
Did you practice your piano? And she stops doing it.
She's like, leave me alone.
I really don't want to share anything with you.
So let's try and figure out why.
Why do you do that? It's not about her.
In fact, you're willing to destroy her pleasure in something.
For the sake of what?
What is it that you want?
What is it that you need? Well, I trace this back actually to one interaction I had with my mother when I was fairly young, trying to teach me the alphabet.
And she ended up completely losing her mind.
And, you know, then I went off to school and then there was like lots of, obviously, a Well, you know what public school is like and things like that, right?
So I tried to avoid it the best I could at any cost, right?
And it didn't actually dawn on me that I not only like school, but that I'm really smart.
And that took a really, really long time before I got any joy from that concept or whatever.
And even when I did have it, it was like, okay, well, I've got none of the skills and tools that a person actually needs to get anywhere.
I have no... Nobody in my home worked when I was younger.
And I didn't have any parents.
Like, my mom, you know...
Okay, so hang on. So you're worried about her future?
Overly worried, yeah. Okay.
So when you're worried about her future, the moment that she gets interested in something, you want that to be her future so that you can stop worrying about her future?
Yes. Okay, so...
And that wrecks her...
Pleasure in it, right? Yes.
Okay, so this is another example where you're trying to manipulate her to manage your own anxiety.
Like, I need you to get really into piano so that I know what you're doing with your future and I don't have to worry.
Right. So, same pattern, right?
Same pattern. And so, what can I do about that?
Just recognize it, I guess?
Right. And, you know, pause myself?
Or can I undo any of this?
No, see, I mean, you probably vowed to yourself, whenever you hear this, you know what happens.
People get an insight in these shows, and what do they immediately do?
Get smarter because of it?
I don't know. Your shows are great. I love them.
I appreciate that. But, no, what they always do, my friend, is they immediately try to jump to solutions.
Okay, now I understand this.
What do I do? Okay, yeah, that's right.
Right. Just sit with the understanding of it.
Because if I tell you what to do, you'll just go through the motions and it won't be genuine.
I trust you.
You'll know what to do. You've just got to sit with the knowledge, right?
Okay. But I can't tell you what to do.
No. Because then it would be me inhabiting you, right?
And then your daughter wouldn't get to know you.
You'd just get to know me through you, which wouldn't really do much good, right?
Right. So, what's your worst case scenario with your daughter?
What's the anxiety that you're managing?
What could go wrong that you need to kind of grab onto her with both lapels and pant into her face to as far as your anxiety?
She could die. She could leave me.
She could hate me. Okay.
Now, those things are bad.
The she could die I get from when she was younger, and of course she will die, but I'm sure it'll be long after you're dead and I'm dead.
As far as she could leave you, well, I mean, it seems to me that whatever behavior you're engaging in is guaranteeing that, right?
Yeah, and I guess the other thing would be that she could get hurt, that the world could hurt her.
Right. But you're hurting her, right?
Yes, I am. Right?
So, I mean, to take a silly example, it's like putting a paper bag over the head of your kid saying, I'm desperately terrified that the paper bag could end up over your head.
Right. Right. So you are, you know, I don't know if you've read the book Real-Time Relationships, but the Simon the Boxer thing, it's basically a repetition compulsion, right?
So you are replaying a sense of abandonment and rejection that I'm sure comes from your own history and past and parents, I mean, primarily, right?
Right. I mean, you felt abandoned and rejected and ignored.
And so you've kind of gone to the other extreme.
So when you were a kid, you were in pursuit of your parents and they were constantly dancing away or ignoring you or just out of sight or just out of reach.
Is that a fair way to put it? Absolutely.
Okay. So now you're doing exactly the same with your daughter.
Your daughter has become your parents and you're recreating this neediness that you had with your parents, but you're inflicting it upon your daughter who's not responsible for what your parents did.
Right. Right. So that just means that this neediness translates into I'm moving in the same day with a new boyfriend.
Right. And the neediness, look, I completely sympathize with.
I mean, the childhood you went through was wretched and horrible and all of that.
You know what I don't understand is why I did that and then spent the entire last year engaging in the idea of leaving him.
Of leaving who? My boyfriend.
My boyfriend. You didn't tell me that.
Well, I didn't really recognize it.
Well, I did recognize it, actually.
I knew that.
But I guess I, in my mind, I justified all the reasons.
Why would you leave him?
Well, I guess I think fundamentally what it comes down to is all my previously destroyed relationships.
I think I have a lot of anxiety about investing.
I don't I don't want to spend into my 50s with a man unless I'm 100% certain, you know, that he isn't going to reject me, I guess.
Oh, so is it like you reject them before they reject you?
Yeah. And on top of that, I mean, this is the only relationship that I've ever engaged in where we are somewhat equals.
I've always been, you know, a better quality person than the people.
Well, I don't know if you can say that if you're engaging in relationships with people that are poor quality.
But still, you know, two is higher than one, right?
Right, so yeah.
Okay, so let me ask you this basic question.
This is really the whole conversation.
It comes down to this question. Have you earned or are you worthy of being loved?
Do you feel that deep down or what do you feel about that question deep down?
Have you earned or are you worthy of being loved?
Well, I would say unequivocally yes, but I think...
Okay, no, that's fine. I have no problem with that answer.
And so give me the specific actions that you have taken in your life that have you earn being loved.
Well, I would say I have...
I've just mostly made my list by things I haven't done.
Because I mean, I think we discussed a little bit about our childhood.
I mean, my childhood, sorry.
No, avoiding disaster is not...
The same. Hang on.
So being loved is like running a marathon.
And if you say, hey, man, I don't smoke.
I don't drink.
So I should be able to run a marathon.
Well, no. Simply avoiding behaviors doesn't mean that you're trained to excellence.
You know, are you a good pianist?
Well, I've never broken all of my fingers.
And I don't faint when I see a piano.
But that doesn't make you a good pianist, right?
So simply avoiding negative behaviors, I don't think that's going to be quite enough to qualify you for the kind of respect and admiration of love.
Okay, well, I think that one of the things I find that is an example of my value is that I am in the pursuit of self-knowledge.
The way this situation could have gone and could have ended would have been drastically different than the way it is.
You know, I mean, my alcoholism, I'm sure, would have ended up taking over.
I would have been jobless. My daughter would have definitely left me.
Hang on. You're still back on avoiding a negative.
So what positives?
Avoidance of a negative is not the same as the achievement of a positive.
Okay, well, you talk about values.
So if I were to list them, you know, it used to be that I would never lie.
I was honest to a fault. I would tell people things that were none of their business.
The idea that, you know, you would be able to keep things close to the vest and to be able to see predators really released me from my panic attacks, which I worked very difficult to do in the pursuit of respect and admiration for my children.
You know, I wanted them to see somebody they could respect and love.
I wanted to do the, you know, I wanted to provide an example.
But I, again, was just avoiding being my parents.
So, and listen, I'm not saying that's unimportant.
Of course, I mean, I'm very glad that you're not an alcoholic or a drug addict or any of these sorts of things.
And that is necessary but not sufficient.
Like, you can't love a drug addict.
But somebody who's not a drug addict, it doesn't mean that you automatically...
I mean, let me give you a completely extreme example.
You can't love a murderer, but just because someone's not a murderer, it doesn't mean that you love them.
That's right. That's right.
Well, as far as...
I look up virtues all the time, and I read them, and I compare myself and my choices to those virtues, and I see myself in them, you know?
But maybe I don't know as well as I think I do.
I mean, so one of the consequences of being around people who are low quality is you feel better than without necessarily being good, if that makes sense?
Yep. That would be my story, for sure.
Right. So, and again, I understand where this comes from with regards to your history.
But I would say for the next phase of your life, you don't want to just be better than incredibly dysfunctional people.
Hey, look, I'm not an alcoholic anymore.
Okay? Hey, look, I never became a drug addict.
It's like, well, yeah, but you're comparing yourself to kind of the lowest of the low.
I don't mean just like evil people or anything like that, but it's like, you know, it would be like me saying, well, both my parents ended up in mental institutions.
That's never happened to me.
Therefore, I'm really a good person.
And it's like, well, no, I've just avoided a negative.
That doesn't mean I've achieved a positive.
That's true, but one of the things I can say that I have the capacity to do now, since I've been listening to your show, is engage with my grandchildren.
We have conversations, real-life conversations, about difficult topics and subjects.
That's going to be incredibly painful to your daughter, because we're focusing on your daughter, right?
Right. I do try to invite her.
I do try to, you know, have them...
You have to find a way to provide value to her.
And you say, oh, but she rejects me all the time.
It's like, okay, well, that's tough.
And that's based upon the history that you've had.
And look, again, with all sympathy to your history, I mean, you've made some really terrible decisions in your life.
And she sees that.
And look, again, I sympathize and I understand.
And I'm not trying to make you feel bad or anything like that.
But, you know, children are pretty blunt and pretty, I wouldn't say harsh, but, you know, they...
They're not going to give us a lot of points for childhood, like our childhood, because all they know is our adulthood and how it's impacted them, right?
Right, fair enough, yeah. But, you know, I mean, you've blown...
Huge amounts of money.
You brought your kids to an environment filled with pedophiles and sexual abuse and head lice and scabies.
I know that your kids didn't have them as much, or I think the daughter did, but you brought them to this terrible environment.
You invited a drug addict to come and live with them.
You married and had children with a raging drug addict, and then you basically went to go and live with some sort of manipulative, narcissistic sociopath, it sounds like, who probed you for what you wanted and promised to provide it.
Your relationships haven't worked out, and your daughter can probably sense your ambivalence about your boyfriend at the moment and so on, right?
So she's looking at all of that stuff and saying, because you say, the value that I have in my life is that I've avoided disaster, right?
Yeah. Now she looks at you and says, probably, well, your life's a bit of a disaster, so I have to avoid you because that's the rule you taught me.
Right. And I have never, I do not make excuses to my children.
I don't. I don't know if that's a virtue or any of the reasons why I could love myself, but I do take full accountability and responsibility for the things I've done.
Once I understand that I've done them, which is really what your show has helped me to do.
Like, I have apologized to my children and I have, you know, admitted what I've done wrong and I tried to I tried to explain how it is I came to those bad decisions, you know, I mean, but yeah.
Okay, so I'll tell you then, I'm not trying to tell you what to do, but I think it's, you know, maybe a little bit of priming the fluid or a jumpstart, whatever, right?
Okay, so your daughter plays Minecraft, right?
And so your goal, if you wanted to play Minecraft with her, would be to sit down with her and say, can you teach me Minecraft or something like that, right?
Okay. Is that right?
Yep. Okay.
That's a bad idea because that goes into the same pattern of I need resources from you.
I need you to forgive me.
I need to apologize to you so I'll feel better.
I need you to manage my anxiety so I'm going to wake you up every 15 minutes or whatever it is, right?
So there has to be a situation wherein you don't need something from her but you can provide something to her, if that makes sense.
Okay, and I think that she's determined the only thing that is right now is finances.
But I can do better.
Well, and you're not even providing the finances.
It's the government and her dad, right?
Well, that's, yes, but that's her disposable income.
I do provide, you know, a home and I provide shelter and Yeah, I mean, I hate to say it, but so does the prison.
That doesn't mean that the prisoner has to love the prison guard, right?
I mean, the fact that you provide these things would imply that she's sort of for sale or that she owes you love because you buy her things.
And that would be a form of emotional prostitution that I think would probably not be something you'd want to pursue, right?
Yeah, but I don't think it's fair not to give me any credit at all.
Oh, no, it's absolutely fair to give you no credit at all, because that's the job that you chose.
That's the job that you chose when you had children.
Yeah, but I'm not doing a terrible job at it.
Doesn't matter. You can't ever say to your kids, you owe me for providing you food and shelter when that's exactly the job that you chose when you chose to have and keep children, right?
No, I would never say that to them.
And I've never felt that way.
What I was saying is that you said that I'm not providing financial resources in any way.
I didn't know. Are you kidding me?
I said nothing of the kind.
I wasn't even talking about finances.
No, I didn't say in any way.
The only money that you've talked about that she gets into her bank account comes from the government.
I understand you pay bills.
I understand you made your 52K and you're contributing to the household and so on, although I assume that your boyfriend, who seems to be wealthy or comes from a wealthy family, is probably contributing a little bit more in terms of the general living standards, right?
Well, no, because that was never my intention when I entered this relationship.
Obviously, you made it very, very clear on numerous occasions that you cannot pursue relationships for financial gain if you're not doing things like providing children.
We are more financially independent than...
Are you saying that you both pay half the housing costs?
Yes. I appreciate that clarification.
With regards to your daughter, it has to be something that does not require her to lift a finger.
Because you're coming in and saying, what are you reading?
Okay, so then she has to pick up a book.
She has to explain what the book's about.
She has to explain the characters.
And it's a drain on her, so to speak, right?
Or if you say, I want to learn Minecraft.
Can you teach me? Then she's like, okay, well, now I've got to sit down and I've got to teach her Minecraft rather than playing Minecraft.
And it's kind of the same pattern that she probably remembers from her very earliest days, which is mom takes resources from me.
Yep. And again, I understand the finances and all of that, but mom needs things from me.
She needs apologies. She needs to apologize to me.
She needs me to really commit to piano.
She really needs me to teach her Minecraft.
So it has to be something which the resources, and I'm not talking financial, but the resources go from you to her.
Okay, I really like what you're saying.
That she is enriched in that particular interaction.
Does that make sense? Yes.
Sorry to interrupt you. Yes. Okay.
So with regards to Minecraft...
Your first instinct would be to go and have you teach her Minecraft, right?
Now, that's my first impulse too, but I've played a bunch of video games.
I've taught a bunch of video games to my daughter.
And so with Minecraft, I'm happy to have her...
I want her to teach me, and it's my job to make that as enjoyable as possible for her.
Make jokes and make mistakes and pretend to be better than I am and, you know, just make it enjoyable for her.
Now, for you, I would say that it would be...
If you could surprise her with your skill at Minecraft, in other words, you watch some videos or learn how to play or whatever it is, and then instead of saying, can you teach me Minecraft, just say, I'm playing Minecraft, do you want to join?
Or something where she can come in and she doesn't need to lose time, energy or resources to you in order for the interaction to occur.
I don't know if this makes any sense.
It does. It's absolutely brilliant.
And I... I think you're definitely on to something and we might be able to change some tides here.
Yeah, or if you can figure out to some degree what she's reading or maybe she's watching, I don't know, maybe she's watching a series on some streaming service, right?
And you find out about that.
So then you don't sit there and say, and I'm not saying you would, but you wouldn't sit there and say, okay, well, let's start watching this series from the beginning because then she's like, oh, okay, so...
I mean, I lose out on seeing the new stuff because I've got to watch it.
So then you would sit down and just watch the series yourself and then say, oh, I've been watching this series and then engage in a conversation and then there's nothing that she loses in that interaction.
In that sense, there's nothing that she gains in a sense, if that makes sense.
Yeah, and I definitely have some making up to do for sure.
And I got some pretty good ideas.
Oh, yeah, yeah. I'm sure you can get it from here.
You're a very smart woman.
So, yeah, that's the thing.
So, everything that you've said that you want from her is something that she has to take time and energy and invest in and, you know, she probably feels a bit exhausted from propping you up because you have, by your own admission.
Kind of needed her to manage or used her to manage her own anxiety.
She's kind of used to resources flowing from her to you.
Yeah. And so whatever you guys are going to do going forward, the resources have to flow from you to her.
Now, I get the money thing, but the money thing doesn't count because the moment you start saying to someone, the value I bring is financial, they're going to start to feel like a prostitute.
No, she said that.
She said that. Just give me money and leave me alone.
That was what she said.
I asked her. I have asked her this question and that's what she basically told me.
Just give me the money that you agreed to give me or whatever that I get and just leave me alone.
But that's why she's saying she wants space.
She wants space because every time you interact, resources or energy or psyche kind of flows from her to you.
Oh my god, this is crazy.
And so you've got to turn that tide, my friend, and you've got to have the resources.
And here's the thing, it weakens you every time you do that, and that's why it doesn't end.
Because it is kind of like an addiction.
An addiction is something that solves whatever we're dealing with in the short run, but makes it worse in the long run.
So every time you say, I need something from you, fill me up, fill me up, all you're doing is saying to yourself, I'm empty.
You're just reinforcing that I'm empty.
I need resources. I need my daughter to parent me.
I need my daughter to do things for me.
I need my daughter to be the parents I never had.
I mean, she's just going to recoil from that.
I mean, anybody would for the most part, but particularly a teenager who's hungry for independence.
And so there has to be something where she feels enriched and filled up and buoyed up and energized and like you're a jetpack on her energy level and so on.
And that's how you break the cycle and that's how you fix what you didn't.
Like, to provide what you were denied is the big thing, right?
And so your parents denied from you.
You try and get from your daughter.
She rejects you. But if you start providing to your daughter in a way that your parents never did, I think that would be the biggest healing thing that you could do, if that makes sense.
It does. It actually makes a lot of sense.
And... I was compulsive about it because I was like, you can't give up.
Because there's been times where I felt like, I just want to walk away from this entire situation.
Because she continually demands space and she obviously doesn't want to have anything to do with me and I need to just pack up and get away.
And like, well, not obviously we like pack up, but you know what I mean?
Yeah, okay. So, and the thing going on in my head is always like, you can't give up.
You don't give up. You, you know, you've really fucked.
Oh, excuse my language. You've really screwed up and you've got to find a way to make restitution for this because, you know, you've done the damage.
And so...
That's why I'm constantly poking at her, but not recognizing that the poking at her is what's doing the damage.
Yeah, yeah. You need to reassure me that you're going to be okay.
You need to reassure me that you're going to be successful.
You need to reassure me that you're not going to make bad mistakes.
You need to reassure me that you're still breathing 15 minutes after the last time.
It's all about reassuring you, and that is exhausting, right?
I mean, that is exhausting to just constantly have to reassure someone.
And your daughter senses this as a whole that can never be filled.
And in fact... Every time she fills up the hole, the hole gets deeper, and it's quicksand, right?
And this is probably why she's like, I've got to get away.
And once you stop needing to be filled up, man, and you can provide resources to others, that's when the childhood is over.
Right. Okay. Sound like a plan?
Yeah, sounds like a good plan.
All right, all right. Will you keep me posted about how things are going?
I sure can, yep.
Alright. A useful conversation.
I know we kind of skidded in at the end here with a couple of plans, but was it helpful for you?
Yes, it was very helpful and I feel very blessed and lucky.
I know you've got a lot of people to talk to.
Hey, parent-child relationships always go to the front of the line for me, so I'm glad that we were able to have this convo.
And do give my best to your daughter, and listen, big hug for you, my friend, about this childhood situation that you had to deal with.
I mean, it's really, really awful, and you've done a very good job relative to where you came from and You have avoided terrible mistakes and your kids are doing well.
And so take that.
Take that pride as well.
And please keep me posted about how things are going.
I will do that. Thank you.
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