All Episodes
Previous Next
Jan. 6, 2022 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:13:23
MY BROTHER IS DESTROYING HIMSELF... Freedomain Call In
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Hi everybody, I'm here with Will.
What's on your mind?
Well, maybe I should just start by reading what I wrote.
My brother is 10 years younger than I. When I was 12 and he too, our parents split up.
The breakup was tumultuous and left us in primary care of our mother.
Now I'm 35 and although My life isn't really where I'd want it to be.
I feel mostly content and stable.
My brother, on the other hand, has recently graduated college and is working at his first job.
He's prone to pessimism and intense bouts of depression.
He seems to expect failure and rejection at every turn.
He gives up on most things that he sets out to do.
He can turn frighteningly dark and distant, and I see a deep anger in his attitudes towards the world.
While I don't believe he'd hurt another person, it terrifies me that he's voiced suicidal thoughts to his friends and my family.
It's like he's built an impenetrable wall that has been calcifying since childhood, and there's a stubborn self-certainty that wards off any attempts to find common cause with him against his inner struggle.
I know that I am part of the reason he's developed this disposition.
I wasn't a very dependable brother or positive role model for him in childhood.
Back then, our father was gone and I was very hurt and angry, but for me, he was still always present in a way.
My brother, however, growing up in the middle of a rocky divorce, was far more estranged from our father.
I believe my brother developed his stubborn, stony exterior in life as a way to protect himself from the turmoil and disappointments of our family life.
I want him to find happiness and purpose in his life.
I'll help him however I can and my hope is you may be able to see our situation from a different perspective.
I feel that there's a deeply rooted resentment in him that needs to be unburdened.
I love my brother and I don't want to see him suffer in solitude.
How do I best help him?
That's a hell of an email and I hugely appreciate your care for your brother.
It's a lovely thing to see or to hear I guess in this case.
Did your parents split when you were how old?
I was 12 and he was 2.
How bad was the marriage before they split?
To me, it wasn't terribly noticeable on the surface.
My dad did a lot of working back in those days.
There was a remodel happening on the house that we lived in that was kind of Taking up a lot of space and time for everybody involved.
So it was sort of something that was kind of behind closed doors as far as I recall until it finally kind of erupted onto the surface and then things turned pretty bad.
And do you know what the major issues were?
That led up to it?
Yeah.
Primarily there was an affair on my dad's part that Just coincided with all the expenses being put on the house and stuff, and it just obviously put a lot of strain on my mom and the family.
And that's an admitted affair, is that right?
Yes.
And did your father keep up with the woman he had the affair with, or did that end with the divorce?
It continued for a time.
There was, I think, a lot of kind of attempts to find a way to make it piece together harmoniously.
Wait, I don't know what that means.
In terms of like he would try, he was, my dad was trying to find a way to sort of make the two disparate parts of his life, the affair and the home life kind of mesh together or, you know, work in some way.
But it was just, my mom was too upset and too, you know, too hurt.
Yeah.
The Frankenstitch, the harem together doesn't, doesn't usually work out.
At least not if you're like not in the Middle East, but all right.
All right.
Um, and how bad did it get with the divorce?
Um, Well, the divorce itself wasn't finalized for a long time, so there was kind of a lot of just sort of drifting along, and I think my mom was trying to do things to sort of... I don't know if she wanted him to come back, but there was just too much of a rift there.
I can't say that I know specifically, but for me... No, no, but you said it got pretty bad, right?
So what do you mean?
Just well, I mean, there wasn't really violence or anything like that, but definitely just like explosive arguments and stuff happening either in person or over the phone.
And my mom was just I mean, she was.
She she turned into a kind of a different person as far as I you know, as far as I'm concerned, and she just sort of went deep into a kind of depression that made it just a very oppressive place to be at the house where we were.
And how long did that last?
About two or three years.
She just wouldn't come out of it.
Wow.
Do you know why your father had the affair?
Well, I've spoken to him about it and, uh, you know, according to him, uh, he was just kind of becoming successful at, at what he did for work and, uh, and, and feeling, but also feeling a lot of pressure and with, uh, you know, with the stuff, the remodel happening at the house.
And, uh, he, I, according to him, uh, he just didn't feel like my mom was, uh, Was behind him on that, or supportive?
I mean, there's more to it, but that's sort of what he defines it as.
Well, listen, and the reason I'm asking all this, and these are all just my opinions, you know, but I'll be forceful about them because they're my strong opinions, but, you know, don't let me, or anyone, of course, tell you your own experience.
But, Will, I have found in my experience that people become angry when things are incomprehensible.
And the reason for that, so a disaster happens in our life, and if we cannot find the cause, then we cannot trust ourselves to avert the next one.
And if we cannot trust ourselves to avert the next disaster, we're in a state of constant fight or flight, which it sounds like where your brother is at.
Yes.
So this giant freaking disaster happened in your family, right?
An affair, a protracted divorce, years of depression on the part of your mother, not even shared custody with regards to your dad, right?
Right.
There was a few attempts to do that that were never very long lived.
Okay.
So did they try legally to join custody or what happened?
I don't know that there was much legality involved with it.
It was just that – Okay.
But how did it break down then?
What happened?
Well, for instance, they said, well, we're going to try to send you over.
He, he, he got another house that was, you know, in close proximity to where we were living.
And so, you know, I was, would be, I've been in middle school.
And so they try, they kind of experimented with just sending my brother and I over there for a few days a week.
There was no hard, hard, fast, you know, legality.
And then, and then what happened?
Like, so you'd go over to your dad's place a couple of days a week and what would happen?
Like, how, why did that not last?
It was just, well to me it was just kind of depressing.
It was a sad place to be and I don't think, you know, I was going through a real kind of rebellious phase and I just didn't I think I just resisted it, and I know in his own way my brother did too.
I don't, you know, I haven't spoken with him about how he felt about those times.
So your father's place was depressing.
Your mom was depressed, and your father's place was depressing, right?
Yeah.
So what was depressing?
There was nothing going on, nothing to do, everyone staring at the TV, or what?
Well, I think just the There was a lot of obscurity between, you know, as to what the deal was between my parents.
You know, I knew about the affair in some ways, but I just didn't really have a good understanding as to what, you know, what was keeping my mom so, so down.
And so there just wasn't a lot of anything there to, yeah, really.
feel positive about, and... But that's very abstract, right?
So, with regards to going to your father's place, though, what was it that made it so depressing?
Was it the emotional, lack of emotional energy, or initiative, or what?
What was it that made it so dark?
What made it so depressing?
Yeah, it was kind of dark, in a way, I mean, but Yeah, I just didn't feel like there was any kind of family connection there.
We were just doing it because, you know, he wanted us to be there, but I didn't really know what the deal was, I guess.
I don't know.
I don't know how to describe it.
Come on, man.
This is real vague.
Do you not know?
I didn't really know what the deal was?
Sorry to be... I've asked, like, three times now.
Like, what was it you said?
You're the one who said, my dad's place is depressing.
And you're getting all foggy on me when I'm asking you a question.
What was depressing about it?
With nobody talking?
I mean, just give me some practical stuff, not all this abstract stuff.
I wish I could get more detailed about it.
I'm trying.
No, but you were in your mid-teens at that point, right?
Right.
Right.
So, I mean, it's not that hard to remember stuff from 20 years ago, right?
Is it?
Yeah, some of it can be, yeah.
Okay, but you went over there for, you know, you tried this, or your parents tried this shared custody.
Yeah, okay, so for instance, you know, my brother would come along with us and he was just very stubborn, agitated about doing things like, you know, I don't know how to describe more than that without getting into certain details.
So your brother didn't want to go?
I don't think so.
Well, I mean, he kind of didn't remember your dad, right?
Right.
See, this is a terrible thing, right?
It's a terrible thing, and I mean, as you may or may not know, my parents split up when I was younger.
Your brother, which sounds like winning the worst competition in the world.
But my parents split up when I was... And JSD.
JSD, man.
JSD is the true heartbreak of divorce.
Which is... Dad?
No, that's just some dude.
Just some dude.
JSD.
Just.
Some.
Dude.
Now, you have all of this emotionally charged relationship with just some dude.
Now, for you, I mean, you remember, of course, your dad being there and you had the bond and all, but two is pretty young, right?
I mean, you're having trouble remembering from when you were 15, I'm pretty sure your brother wouldn't remember your dad much, if at all, from before the divorce.
And, of course, your dad would have been gone a lot before the divorce because he was having an affair, right?
So you have an affair, you've got two households to manage, so to speak, or at least 1.5.
So, the problem is that you hang out with your dad for your brother, you hang out with your dad, but to your brother he's just, your dad is just some dude.
Right, and more, I don't know, more than that, I also, he, I think he latched on to just refusing to do anything that was, you know, that we would have wanted him to do.
Uh, for instance, like, back in those... I mean, he was... Wait, wait, wait, hang on, hang on.
Sorry to interrupt.
You want to understand your brother, man?
Why the hell would he do what the family wants him to do?
The family wasn't doing anything that he wanted him to do.
How the hell is the family earned the right to say to your brother, you should do X, Y, and Z?
Because you know what he would have said?
Well, how about dad didn't have a fucking affair?
How about mom ain't depressed?
How about this just some dude Opens the fucking curtains when we go to his house once in a while.
Right, right.
Like, who the hell is his family to demand standards of behavior from your brother?
Maybe I'm missing something here, but that's sort of where I go.
I mean, you think he's stubborn?
Are you kidding me?
Who the hell was providing him what he desperately needed?
Right?
His dad, like your dad didn't just have an affair on your mom, right?
He had an affair on his own children.
Right.
Right.
He dick detonated the entire fucking household, right?
So for your brother, it's like, oh, well, yeah, you can be in your 30s or 40s.
I don't know how old your dad was.
You could be in your 30s and 40s, do whatever the fuck you want.
Who the hell is going to tell me to restrain my behavior?
That's interesting.
Again, tell me if I'm off the mark.
Of course, right?
But that's sort of my first thought.
I just, I mean, I find it interesting because, you know, as time went on and he got into school and, you know, he didn't really do any of the lashing out, you know, that, well, who are you to tell me?
I mean, there was some of that, as I recall.
But he did kind of keep his nose to the grindstone, even though I don't think he had a lot of satisfaction in it, or... Didn't do any lashing out.
Wait, what am I missing here?
Didn't you say he'd expressed suicidal thoughts?
That's... You mean back in the day, or now?
Yes, back in the day.
Back in the day.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Okay, so back in the day, he gave up on having respect for his parents and his family, I would assume.
And, you know, sublimated things and worked to get his own life going and so on, right?
But there's this, I think, pretty significant undertow.
Mm-hmm.
Um.
How do you mean? - Yeah.
Well, okay, so your brother sounds like he's in a constant state of fight or flight, as I mentioned earlier, right?
So why is he in a constant state of fight or flight?
Because he doesn't know what the hell happened to his family of origin.
He doesn't know who to trust, or how to trust, or what red flags to look out for.
And that just wears you down, right?
So let's just take a silly example, right?
So let's say that your mom had, like, sleeve tattoos, right?
You know, like those tutus that go all the way down the arm.
I think they're called sleeves or something like that, right?
So, hang on a sec.
So let's say that your mom has sleeves.
And let's say that there's like a 90% correlation between marrying a woman who has these sleeve tattoos and getting a divorce, right?
Hmm.
And let's say that your dad said, wow, you know, I was told about this, I was warned about this, I didn't listen, this happened, that happened, here are the mistakes that I made, here are the mistakes your mom made, and here's how we ended up in this disastrous situation.
100% ownership for both parties and 100% honesty about what fucked up, right?
Right.
So then he'd be like, Oh, okay.
So as long as I'm not dating a woman who's got sleeve tattoos, I'm, I'm probably doing okay.
Right.
Yeah.
I'd give him something to, to go off of.
Right.
But when I asked you, and this is not, I'm not like, they're just telling you, right.
I mean, this is, you're being honest.
Right.
But when I asked you what happened with your family, it got all kinds of vague.
Right.
Well, there was a remodeling going on at the house and my father was successful in business.
So does that mean success and ambition leads to affairs and divorces?
Right.
Like, what does that mean?
Like, what are the explanations given for the catastrophe that happened to your family, right?
And by that I don't just mean divorce.
Right.
I mean, the catastrophe as a whole, wherein, I mean, look, I can sort of picture, it's kind of weird, but you can sort of picture where, you know, people are just like, hey, you know, we're just not compatible, it was a huge mistake, no one's to blame, but, you know, we're going to move on, and, you know, you can stay relatively positive, and I can understand that kind of stuff, right?
But then, you see, if you get divorced or you have some kind of massive catastrophe hit your family, the first damn thing you need to do when your kids get to a reasonable age of maturity, by which I would assume early to mid-teens, like when they're going to start dating and all of that, is you sit them down and you chart them out like you're mapping out a D&D campaign or snakes and ladders.
You say, okay, this family had a giant colostomy bag of history burst all over the family table, right?
So what we gotta do, like what I want you kids to understand is exactly what went wrong and why and how.
So that you don't spend the rest of your life jumpy that it's gonna happen to you.
You understand?
Right.
That's what you need to do as a divorced parent.
You know, here's the mistakes I made.
And it's great if you can both sit down and do it together, but, you know, often that's not because people get all kinds of – they retreat into an infantile state when they're under threat and divorce is a multi-year threat to somebody's identity, right?
But instead what happens on is people march on like they ain't dragging any bodies behind them and then they try to have authority over their children.
When the children are like, what do you mean?
Who the hell are you to tell me how to live?
You could keep your family together, man, and you can't even tell me the truth about what happened.
So when I ask you what happened, ideally, you should have, you know, the index cards, right?
You should have, well, this, then this, then this, and my father's childhood, and this he ignored, and this warning sign, and my mother did this, and, right?
This should all be like, boom, boom, boom, right?
And that way, you can't make your family of origin whole again, but you can at least learn from the clusterfrack of catastrophe, so that you're warned off.
Repeating it.
And that gives you some security moving forward, right?
Yeah, right.
But the parents, so often, don't like doing that.
Right?
Because for some reason they think that that's going to lose them credibility or authority in the eyes of their children.
It's like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
That's already, like that ship has sailed.
That ship has sunk, man.
Like you, you get divorced.
The statue of God-like perfection that sits in the eyes, eyes, heart, mind and soul of your children, that's gone, man.
That's down like Saddam Hussein's statue, right?
That's done.
Like that, you know?
It's like trying to fly a plane that crashed three days ago, right?
It's like, no, no, no.
So then the question is for parents, okay, how the hell do I regain any kind of credibility?
Well, when my kids do something wrong, like it's the part of the other hypocrisy, right?
So when my kids do something wrong, parents say, whatever I want them to do.
Well, I want them to own up, right?
To take ownership for what they did wrong, to apologize, to make restitution if necessary, right?
I mean, some kid walks out of, and it usually happens to all kids at one time or another, right?
Little kids, little toddlers, they walk out of the store with a candy bar in their hand, right?
And, you know, assuming they're not babies or anything, maybe they're like, I don't know, four or five or six, and the parents are going to say, you can't take that, you've got to take it back in, you've got to give it back to the store owner, you've got to apologize, but you've got to take ownership, right?
To prevent it from happening again, right?
And so this is the standards that teachers and parents have for their children, right?
You do something wrong, you make a mistake, you hurt people, right?
Hurt people.
You gotta fess up, and you gotta take your lumps, and you gotta promise to never do it again, right?
All this stuff, right?
You push another kid in the playground, And that's far less important than detonating an entire family, and people's happiness and peace of mind.
Now, it's one thing for you, right?
You were 12, right?
So your personality is largely formed.
You're already into puberty, and the worst effects of it bypass you, right?
I'm not saying it was fun for you.
Of course not, right?
It was bad.
Well, I feel like, yeah, you described the statue crumbling.
I feel like that's what I saw.
I don't... No, it was even worse for him.
Because the statue crumbled for him right in the middle of his most formative period.
You know, it's like saying, hey man, you can go without two days of eating and you'll be fine, right?
You try that to a baby, they'll die.
So you knew a time before.
You have a Garden of Eden, right?
He doesn't.
That's right.
Because, you know, marriages crumble a long time before they split, right?
Yeah.
So, and again, your dad's having... Do you know how long the affair went on for?
Prior to finding out?
Yeah.
I don't know specifically, but it was probably a matter of a year, I would guess.
Right.
Okay, so your dad's unhappy, probably for at least a year.
Before he starts looking for an affair.
And then he has an affair for a year, so he's lying through his teeth every time he comes home, right?
Right.
So, your brother bonded with a liar and a cheater.
Right?
That sucks.
How the hell are you gonna trust yourself?
I can't.
Well, of course, as he was a kid, he's gonna bond to you, bond with a potted plant if he has to, right?
But your brother doesn't have a Garden of Eden.
There's no paradise before.
There's just weirdness and lying and falsehood and then as, you know, he gets older, there's like no memory of anything other than the long shadow of catastrophe.
That's definitely true.
I mean, I was there, you know, I loved him.
I played with him, you know.
Right, and you know, I'm glad you did, and that was a good thing for you to do.
And of course, it's not your job, right?
That's not your job.
No, no.
It's not your job to fix what your parents have broken.
No.
Bye.
But good for you.
Like, for doing your best as you could, right?
I mean, you got your own burden to carry at the age of 12 then, too, right?
Plus, you gotta look back and say, holy shit!
Dad was lying his ass off for a year?
Sitting there at the family table with a side piece?
Lying and chatting and playing?
Oh my god, right?
Yeah, I mean, I...
I actually had met her, unbeknownst to me, you know, going to the place of his work and spent time with her, and it was like finding out later was kind of a... And what kind of... Well, she was willing to be a homewrecker, right?
So she's a piece of garbage to begin with.
Oh yeah, you got two kids?
You got a two-year-old at home?
Yeah, let's jag, right?
It's a piece of human garbage, right?
Well, I mean, it's something for a long time.
Just knowing that they knew and pushed me up to her and said, oh, what do you think of her?
Wait, they knew?
You mean both your parents at that point?
No, I'm sorry.
This woman and my dad.
Right.
I came in, I spent, I essentially spent a day with her.
You know, unbeknownst to me.
Like a test drive with a stepmom kind of thing, right?
Yeah.
That's how it sort of, and it was just like finding out later, Well, I'm sorry about that, man.
And just going, oh, so that's kind of, that's what that was about.
I don't know.
Well, I'm sorry about that, man.
That's terrible.
And do you know, like when your father says, why the divorce or why the affair, right?
And there's this crap about like we were remodeling the house and I was doing well at work and I wasn't sure if my wife was fully supportive.
Therefore, I thought I'd bang the help like it was a woman who worked for him.
Well, the way he puts it, it was the worst mistake of his life.
It was his weakest moment and, you know... Please, please God, tell me he did not refer to it as a moment.
No, no, maybe I'm... Because moment is like a finger snap.
Moment is not a year plus, right?
Right, right.
He was weak and he, you know, there's before that time and after that time for him.
And for all of us, of course.
Well, and of course he's thrown over the mother of his children.
For a homewrecking piece of garbage.
Now, do I think that your mom had no say in the matter, no role in the matter?
No, I'm sure she did, right?
I mean, I'm sure she maybe she did the withholding sex thing, right?
And that drives a man mad after a while, right?
And maybe she withheld affection.
Maybe, I don't know, who knows, right?
Who knows, right?
I mean, it's not particularly clear.
But something was going on, right?
Well, there were two failed births that happened in the interim.
Between you and your brother?
Yeah, I was going to ask about that 10-year thing, but that was part of it.
Right.
So, you know, I think it's not like Things were all hunky-dory, you know, with the home icon.
You see, no, no, listen, listen, man.
I'm sorry to interrupt you, I really am, but that does not spell a fair.
That can bring couples closer together.
Like, shared adversity does not cause couples to jump out of each other's embrace like an overgripped piece of soap in a prison shower, right?
I mean, shared adversity can bring you closer together.
Hmm.
That sounds like a surprise to you.
Well, I don't know.
It can, right?
It makes sense.
Yeah, it can.
It can.
If you're not Newt Gingrich, but yeah, alright.
So how does your father, when he talks about it, just give me a sense of how he characterizes it?
Well, he characterizes it.
Well, when you say characterize it, how he feels about it?
No, so you said it was weakness, it was a moment, it was the worst mistake of my life, and all that kind of stuff, right?
Yeah, yeah.
Well, none of that is moral, right?
Mistake, well, you know, mistakes happen all the time, right?
They're not moral things, right?
You mistakenly put an east instead of west in your GPS, you end up on the wrong side of town, right?
It's a mistake.
Yeah.
I mean, he, he accepts the, the wrongness of it.
You know, I don't think he tries to put it in a way that, Oh, it was a mistake.
You know, I, people are fallible.
Therefore I fucked up.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Right.
You know, he has in my estimation, put in a lot of work since then to be still part of the family.
Maybe it's not, you know, it's not traditional, but he has been there in his own way.
Well, I'm not sure what any of that hormock, random words, stuff means.
But why is your brother carrying such a burden if other people have taken ownership?
Because I don't think that he's been as much a part of that ownership taking As I have.
I've... Wait, what?
Sorry, too many male pronouns there.
What do you mean?
He hasn't been part of that conversation of, as far as I know, as much as I have between my father and myself.
I don't know that that's been as much a part of his life where my father comes to him and says, hey, this is maybe what happened, how it happened.
He only recently, you know, just out of college, Found out the reason for the divorce.
Wait, your brother?
Yeah.
Holy fuck.
Tell me you're not kidding.
You're kidding, right?
I wish.
Your brother, in his early 20s, lived with early 20s, lived 20 years plus before he even found out why the family blew up.
Oh, man.
Oh, my God.
Oh, my God.
Oh, that's terrible.
Oh, that's terrible.
Why?
Why didn't anyone tell him?
It's a central catastrophe of his life.
No, I tell you, listen.
That's right.
One of the things that sucked about me getting cancer, I didn't know why.
I didn't know why.
It wasn't like, well, you know, I've been chain smoking and drinking and, you know, for 20 years, so yeah, I get some causality there, right?
For me, it was like, you know, no particular family history that I know of.
Don't smoke, barely drink, exercise a lot, healthy.
Oops, you know, just...
Well, it's like the Godfather in Generation Kill.
The guy had to have his voice box removed for throat cancer, and someone said, did you smoke?
Guy says, no.
Well, what happened?
Just lucky, I guess.
Right?
So, you know, I mean, I'll cut out more sugar.
Maintain my weight even more precisely.
I'll exercise a little harder.
I assume that will help, but I didn't do anything to cause it.
Whereas if it would be like, oh man, that red dye number nine combined with your blah blah blah, right?
Right.
So, you know, that's just a lack of causality that I gotta deal with.
I gotta live with, right?
It's okay.
It's okay.
But, so, on the plus side, I didn't do anything to bring it about.
On the minus side, I can't do anything to prevent recurrence.
You know, other than, you know, be generally healthy, which obviously was my plan anyway.
So, in the cancer that ate up your family, why the hell wouldn't anyone tell your brother what happened?
I don't know.
I mean... That includes you, my friend.
Yes, of course.
And, you know, maybe there...
It was some misguided protection, trying to protect him.
I don't know.
Yeah, how's that working out for everyone?
I mean, not well.
No, listen, so did you appreciate that your father lied to your face for a year about having an affair before it blew up the family?
No, of course not.
So withholding information about the affair wasn't so good for you, right?
No, it wasn't.
And that was one year.
How about 20?
Right.
Why didn't anyone tell him?
Thank you.
Thank you.
This protection thing?
I don't buy it.
Withholding crucial pieces of information from people about the greatest disaster of their life can't possibly be fantasized about as protecting someone.
It has to be something else.
Protecting your own ass?
I don't know.
Of course, of course.
And also, when you withhold information from people, you know what you're saying to them?
You're fucking weak.
You can't handle it.
You can't handle the truth, right?
You're weak.
I can handle it.
Dad can handle it.
Mom can handle it.
But you, my precious little brother, little brother, little sibling, you can't handle it.
Come on.
And then he's got to look at the family and say, you guys didn't tell me this shit for 20 years?
The fuck?
So why?
We need to know.
I mean, I think you should apologize, in my humble opinion, but there's no point apologizing if you don't know why you did something.
Why I didn't tell him.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, again, it should be primarily your dad's job and your mom's job to sit down and say, Remember that really terrible time that was most of your early childhood?
Here's what happened, so that you can learn from it, so that you don't carry that burden.
Have I told this story before?
The reason I'm saying this is that when I was, oh, maybe 19 or 20 years old, I sat on a bus from Toronto to Montreal for six hours with my father.
And my father, bless his heart, decided to tell me The story of his life.
Which I didn't know.
He was just some guy for the most part for me, because I don't remember him being around.
And he told me the story of his life.
And I won't get into all the details, but it sure as hell was pretty revelatory.
But when I went to visit him in my mid-teens in Africa, he barely talked to me.
And he told me, many years later, that the reason he didn't talk to me was he was so depressed he could barely get out of bed.
Now, you know, You ever carry, like you go hiking or something, you have a backpack on for so long you forget about it, and then you put the backpack down and it's like, giant steps, ah, watch your dick, walking on the moon, like you feel like you're floating, because you've got nothing?
Yeah.
Right?
Well, that's kind of funny, like, apparently, for like, I don't know, close to half a decade, I've been carrying this burden of why my just-some-guy dad didn't talk to me.
And then I found out, and it had nothing to do with me.
So, you don't even know sometimes what burden you're carrying until people take it from you.
So there's something about the family structure that people colluded with regards to your brother to keep.
his perspective from things because your brother would have something to say that you don't want to hear as a family if you tell him.
It also becomes a hole that's hard to get out of, right?
If you haven't told him for five years and ten years and fifteen years and twenty years, it gets a little fucking hard to tell him then, doesn't it?
I mean, yeah.
I was often in a different place by that point in terms of I wasn't really being a part of the family unit in those years.
So I guess in the interim, part of me just lazily assumed he must know.
Oh, come on.
That's a ten-second question.
Five seconds.
Hey, did you know about Dad's affair?
Oh, look at that.
Wasn't that less than two seconds?
Maybe it'd been just one.
Day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, the two-second question remains unasked.
Is it because it's not important?
No.
You know, I believe, this is an analogy or a metaphor, but I believe very deeply, Will, that truth is life.
And when you withhold truth from people, You withhold life from them and if you withhold enough truth from people they begin to die a little bit.
How is your brother supposed to trust you guys when you couldn't be bothered to ask if he knew the most important thing in his life?
That's the most important piece of information that he needs to have in his young life.
And everybody was colluding to keep it from him.
And he probably sat down for 10,000 hours of various dinners and outings and gatherings and picnics and walks and movies and you name it, right?
Okay.
And in that 10,000 hours, not one person could find two seconds to ask him if he knew.
Because, you know, it's really important to talk about the weather and sports and politics and all this other crap.
Yeah, no, it's...
Oh, we don't want to reopen old wounds, right?
That's what people say.
Yeah.
Well, here's the thing, man.
If you're afraid of reopening old wounds, you know what that means?
They have not healed.
Yeah.
And that means you better bloody lift that bandage and see what the hell's going on down there, right?
Right.
I got old wounds from history.
You hear me talk about them all the time.
I'm not afraid to lift that cast and see what's underneath.
I know.
So at this point, considering that, you know, obviously he does know, and where I'm at now obviously he does know, and where I'm at now is… How did he find out?
If you can tell me that, please.
I believe the way it happened was that my mother brought it up, but not in a... I don't know specifically, but from what I hear tell, it wasn't in a, you know, we need to sit down and talk about it.
It was more... Well, and of course, I mean, your dad did have that affair, and now let's get on to the Kardashians, right?
Like, kind of like, oops, or in passing, or... Or even as a way to, you know, as a weapon against my father.
I don't know.
As a what now?
Oh, but you know, like, did you know that your father had an affair?
Like, I don't know.
I don't know.
I guess I shouldn't say that for sure.
I don't know how it happened.
But it sounded like it was.
It wasn't.
You don't know.
So wait, your brother told you your brother sat down with you.
I'm sorry.
I know I'm sounding like a real jerk.
So I apologize for that.
But no.
Your brother sat down with you and said, Oh, I know.
I know about dad's affair.
And you don't have any clear idea of how it came up?
So it meant you didn't ask a whole bunch of questions either?
No.
No, it's worse than that.
I haven't spoken with him.
I haven't found a way to broach that subject.
Which subject?
Like how he found out or the affair itself?
Well, both.
Both things, I guess.
I heard through my father that my mother had told him, and he was just out of college, and he was very upset, and the way my father portrayed it to me was that she kind of did it as like, look at what your father did, which, you know, instead of
It being about him my brother instead of telling the real or or about you know, I mean a marriage is is I Don't want to blame your mom for your dad's affair No, but but Affairs don't come out of nowhere.
I also don't want to hold her 0% responsible Mm-hmm.
I Mean to take a silly example, right if you enjoy eating at one restaurant and then you just suddenly decide to go and start eating at another restaurant and Does the first restaurant have absolutely nothing to do with it?
I hope they have something to do- I mean, maybe just your taste changed, or... But, no.
I mean... Marriage is a sex provision, right?
It's companionship, uh, it's- it's house running, it's child racing, sexuality, and all these kind of things, and a man or a woman might go elsewhere.
They are primarily responsible for that, but let's not pretend the other person has nothing to do with it whatsoever.
Right.
And, you know, this is just for the women out there.
Try to denigrate the fathers of your children, particularly when they're the sons.
Come on.
I hate half of you, is all that children hear when the father is denigrated, or the mother is denigrated.
Right?
Because you're half your dad and half your mom.
And your mom says, I hate your dad.
You hear, what I hear, what everyone hears deep down, is I hate half of you.
And also what I hear is, If a woman is bitching at the dad, I hear, I take no responsibility for who I chose to be the father of my children.
I take no responsibility for the dissolution of a marriage.
I'm going to make myself a saint, a nun, and he's just the devil, inexplicably.
And I'm not saying it went that far or that strong.
It's not far off.
All right.
Well, that's terrible too.
That's terrible, too.
And it's funny, you know, how, like, there's this... people's emotions, like, they just don't... I've never understood this, man.
I mean, maybe you could help me.
They just don't change, right?
I said this... I told this story before, but it used to drive my mom crazy that my dad always had a cold.
And then when they met, after literally having not seen each other, I think, for, like, 20 years, he had a cold.
And she turned to me and she said, that's probably the same cold that he had when I was married to him!
I'm like, Jesus Christ woman, it's been 20 years!
It's like there's this weird subroutine, terminate and stay resident, run run run, or like a brain virus, it just doesn't stop.
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.
Because nothing has been learned.
Nothing has been learned about the keeping of secrets.
You know, if you're a husband and you're attracted to another woman, well, you fight it like crazy.
And if you can't fight it, you try and figure out how you can improve the marriage.
And if you can't figure that out, you sit down with your wife and you say, I'm in real trouble here.
I'm attracted to another woman and I don't know how to fix it.
What can we do?
Right?
It's called being honest.
It's a beautiful concept.
Well, then you can talk about things, right?
What's going wrong?
What's going on that my heart is wondering?
Is it being lured out of the house by the other woman?
Is it being driven out of the house by you?
Is it like, what's going on?
Is it me?
Is it like, is it the situation?
And you can have an incredible conversation out of all of that, and you can end up closer than ever.
But no, people just act out and blame.
Now let me ask you this.
What was your mom's dating life after she separated from your dad?
Non-existent.
Does it remain so?
Yes.
She never dated again?
No.
Not to my knowledge.
Wow.
That's a kind of commitment in a way.
So that's the funny thing.
I've never understood this too.
Like, why not just work hard to fix things?
Like, why do people keep taking this step down these roads?
They know where it's going to lead.
Disaster, loneliness, isolation, catastrophe, problems for the children.
Like, why not just say, oh, you know, even after the affair and all that, oh, you know, let's figure it out, let's go to counseling, whatever, right?
Let's just fix it.
Let's just fix it.
People that just keep taking these steps away from each other, one by one.
And it doesn't heal, it doesn't cure, it doesn't help, right?
Your mom's still blaming your dad and rolling her little grenades into the pup tent of your brother's heart.
You know, 23 years after the fact, right?
It's almost a quarter century.
Ah well, you know, everybody knows that some women can hold grudges till the grudges grow a beard, right?
Yeah, that's about right.
That's fine.
And your dad, what happened to his dating?
Well, I believe I never saw her again.
Oh, the homewrecker?
Right, correct.
They did try for a time to keep it together, but I think ultimately she wound up moving out of state.
I probably need to know a little bit more about that.
But it didn't last, right?
So he blew up his family for something that didn't even last.
It didn't last.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's pretty sad too, right?
Yes.
Blew up my family. - Thank you.
Exit vagina stage left.
Oh dear.
Alright.
Do you know if your brother is on meds?
Um, no, I believe he, he did, uh, after the, uh, the, uh, sort of suicide scare, uh, he did try to, uh, take some medications, was prescribed them.
And, uh, he said that they, uh, just didn't make him feel right.
And he came off of them and hasn't, uh, Hey, sorry about that.
My Skype just decided to crap out, but I'm sure we'll survive.
So, yeah, we were just talking about your brother.
Did he, like, his degree, was it useful or valuable?
Does it have economic value?
And how's his debt situation?
Just life as a whole.
Okay.
Yeah, his degree is in marketing and he has been able to get a decent entry-level job that's In property management, and he does have some debt.
I think, I believe it's like $40,000.
Wow, that's quite a bit though, right?
It is.
Right.
Okay, okay.
And his dating life?
So, fresh out of college, he did have a girlfriend.
They were, she had a job offer cross-country that was a very good job in... Just some other place, okay, it's fine.
Yeah, and so she wanted him to come with and he did initially, but he very, within a span of like a month, just didn't want to continue and he came back.
And in doing so, the relationship broke apart.
And that's kind of... Why did he come back?
He didn't know anybody.
He didn't have job prospects.
He was trying to find a job.
But I think a part of it was just feeling ill-equipped, whereas his girlfriend at the time was, you know, Just kind of slotting right into a profession and on our way and he just, I think he just got cold feet about it and felt more comfortable coming back.
Okay, so based on what we've talked about, Will, what do you think a good course of action would be?
Well, obviously to try to talk to him about the specifics of what happened in his childhood and how, you know, he doesn't have blame for the things that happened between our parents.
I don't know how well he'll even receive that now, but it's something I should at least try to do.
It might take a while to regain some of the quarter century of credibility lost, right?
Well, I asked him, you know, a while back, you know, I told him, you know, we really should try to talk about some of these things.
And he just flat out told me, you know, no, it's not, you know, it's not worth my time.
I don't want to do it.
Well, but you can say, do it for me, please.
Do it as a favor to me.
You don't have to force your, you know, just as a favor to me, will you do it? - Okay.
It would help me.
And it would, right?
Yeah.
So just ask him now.
If he won't even do it as a favor for you, well, then you've got a problem, right?
And, you know, then it has to be, you know, you can be persistent to the point where, you know, I mean, not to the point where he's, like, blocking your number or anything like that, but, you know, really would appreciate it, it would be a great favor to me or whatever, right?
And, you know, it depends on your level of commitment, right?
Here's, you know, something I learned kind of early on.
Your, um, your wife is mad at you or whatever, right?
She says she's mad at you and she stongs out of the room, right?
Well, what do you do?
Well, you get up and you follow her.
And then she says she doesn't want to talk to you and you say, well, I would really like to talk.
And she says, Get out.
Well, you get out and you go and buy the biggest bunch of roses you can find and you go back home.
You just don't take no.
Well, I'm not saying on a date, that's stalking, but if you're married, right?
So, here's the thing, right?
I mean, if I were in your shoes, right?
I would say, you know, I would get down to this.
I would say, okay, I will pay you $10,000 of your student debt to spend a weekend chatting with me about the past.
Wow.
No, that's commitment, right?
It is.
And that's how you get things done when people are being resistant.
I'm not saying you ride over their will or anything like that, but you just keep changing the incentives until they'll say yes.
Because I tell you this, man, even if you don't have the ten grand, I'm not saying you make the gesture emptily, and if he calls you on it, you follow through, right?
But I guarantee you, after the weekend of talking about history, when he feels a whole lot better, he ain't going to hit you for the ten grand.
Interesting.
Right?
And again, I'm not saying you lie to him.
Oh, I, you know, what do you mean you want the 10 grand?
I thought maybe he won't.
Maybe he'll hate you and want the 10 grand when you give him the 10 grand, right?
But this is what I mean in terms of like, you just, just making it happen.
You just, it's like the old Kool-Aid commercial, are you too young for this shit?
But you know, this old Kool-Aid commercial where the The Kool-Aid jug head just comes crashing through the wall, you know?
It's like, no, I want, like, in your head you say, I'm going to talk to my brother about these issues.
And what happens is we say, hey, I'd like to talk to you.
No, I don't want to.
Okay, right.
And what he's saying is, how committed are you to me?
I'm serious.
Do you really care?
Or is it just, you know, do you really care?
Do you really care?
And if you really care, you just... you keep changing what you do until you get what is necessary.
Right?
That's... that's commitment.
You say, I am going to talk about this stuff with my brother.
I'm gonna find a way to make it happen.
If I have to sit out front of his house all weekend in a hot car, that's what I will do.
Yeah.
If I have to say I'm going to be at a restaurant three doors from your house every Friday night at 8 p.m.
until you show up, then that's what I will do.
You just, you do it until you get it.
You show him how much you care.
Because we live these lives of like, just these frothy little, oh well I'll try, oh it didn't work, oh I'll, you know, whatever, right?
Mm-hmm.
Life goes to the persistent.
Because you show him, I mean, listen, you're calling me, you're bearing your heart, mind, and soul, you're like, and I appreciate that, it really does incredible honor for me that you would think of me as somebody helpful in this area and I hugely appreciate it and thank you so much.
So you're really committed to this, right?
Yes, I do.
I am.
So, show him that you're committed.
And again, I'm not talking about stalking him or hiding in his bathtub or anything like that or, you know, like showing up at his work and yelling.
I'm not talking about like screwing up his life, right?
I'm sure it wouldn't require that.
It's just finding, yeah, like you said, the right grease for the wheel to get things moving in that way.
It's a big thing, right?
It's a big thing in life.
Your brother, listen, let me give you a silly example, right?
Let's say your brother was sick and he needed $10,000 for medicine, what would you do?
Get him $10,000.
You get him $10,000, right?
Your brother has had bouts of suicidality, and I believe, and I think it's fairly obvious that talking about his past would help, right?
So if you're willing to spend $10,000 to save your brother's life, why not spend $10,000 to save your brother's life?
If he was sick and he needed medicine, it's $10,000, you wouldn't think about it twice, right?
That's right.
So get him into a conversation, and if it costs you $10,000 or $20,000, it's worth it.
It's worth it.
I mean, I spent, I don't know, this is back when, I mean, it's serious cash now, but it was even more serious cash like over 20 years ago.
I dropped like over $20,000 on therapy.
Best money I ever spent.
But you do it until you get what you want.
Now, if you sit there and you say, I'll give you $10,000 and I'm going to sit in this restaurant where you sit there for two months and he got nothing.
Right?
And if you've tried everything and it doesn't work and he's just flat out will not talk to you.
Well, then you haven't got what you want, but you've got what you need, which is closure.
Because if his life goes to shit and you did everything within reasonable to get him to talk about stuff and he refused, that's on him no more on you.
But the whole point of life, so much of life, is just have a clear conscience.
Right?
If you're like, oh, I'd really like to talk about it.
No.
Okay.
Right?
And let's say he throws himself off a bridge, I mean, you're going to feel like shit, right?
Of course.
Now if, and look, I don't think he's going to, but if you've literally tried everything that you can conceivably do, and you've offered him huge amounts of money, and you've sat eating meals waiting for him to show up, and you've done everything, right?
Then if he throws himself off a bridge, it's a horrible thing.
But at least you won't sit there and say, I should have done more.
It means he was already off the bridge by the time you started, right?
But you do everything.
You do everything you can.
With my mother, I did everything I could.
I sat down for repeated conversations.
I bared my heart.
I offered her this.
I offered her that.
I gave her money.
I tried everything and got nothing.
Well, I got abuse back, right?
It's terrible.
It is.
It is terrible.
Except, except, that I have no regrets.
I have closure.
I did everything a human being can do.
I have no regrets.
That's an important thing in life.
You're worried about your brother, and I respect you enormously for that.
Well, you are worried about your brother, which means hold nothing back to have that conversation.
If you have to beg, you have to cry, you have to plead, you have to say, uh, let's have this conversation and then you and I will fly to Costa Rica and hunt tiny frogs.
Sounds great.
Seriously.
You know, you can say to your brother, who's your favorite band?
Oh, are they playing in Japan?
Have this conversation with me, we're flying out and you'll go.
We'll go together.
No, I'm telling you, this is what you do.
I mean, to make my mother's life better, I won't even tell you how much money I gave her.
And all she did was give it to shystra lawyers for some bullshit law case.
I'm sorry, like, I can't help her.
I'm actually making the world a worse place by giving her money.
Law case never went anywhere.
It's just harassing people.
I can't enable that in her.
So you do whatever it takes?
It's a big life lesson.
It's not just about your brother's life.
You just do whatever it takes to make things right.
But how do you know you're not just digging in the wrong direction, I guess?
I don't know.
Well, you don't know that yet, do you?
Because you got one little no and you gave up, right?
So, trust me, you've got a ways to go, right?
I wanted an ex-girlfriend back many, many, many, many years ago.
I wanted an ex-girlfriend back.
I wrote her poetry, I sent her presents, we'd call on the phone from time to time, and I wanted her back, right?
Tried for a couple months, and eventually she's like, mmm, it's not gonna happen, right?
And I'm like, hey, well, have a great life, right?
Painful as hell.
But I've got no regrets.
Yeah.
I see what you mean.
I wasn't like, because, you know, if I'd gone further, I'd be harassing her, right?
If I didn't go and state my intentions clear, then I would sit there and say, oh, that was the one that got away.
That was the girl for me, blah, blah, blah, right?
Right.
How are you feeling?
I mean, it's, it makes sense what you said.
Um, I'll definitely, I will definitely work to, to do that, to reach out and, and just not, you know, not take no for an answer and give up like that.
Yeah.
Don't give up, man.
Don't give up.
And, and I mean, look at your parents, right?
They made vows to each other and they fucked those vows up.
They didn't stay committed.
They didn't do whatever it took to keep the marriage together.
Your dad had an affair and your mom's mad.
More than 20 years later.
You need to model something different for your brother.
Yeah.
And you need to find out what the hell happened with his girlfriend.
A month is not enough time to figure out whether you can get a new job.
So you guys need to open up your lines of communication.
Because, you know, here's the thing, man.
You know this as well as I do.
We all sit there and we talk to ourselves all the time.
All the time.
And if all you do is talk to yourself, it's an echo chamber, right?
Like a little skull prison of mirrors, right?
We need other people to step into the conversation and interrupt this, you know, I remember when I was a kid, I loved model trains.
The HO scale.
I love model trains.
And I remember the very first one that I got was this sad little... it's just a circular track.
That was it.
And one little CN rail car and I think there were two little things like boxcars after it, right?
And it went round and round, that's it.
You could have it go round one way, or if you were feeling adventurous, the other way.
You could have it go slow, or fast and fall off.
Here's a funny thing, just a complete by-the-by, it's nothing to do with that conversation, but just because I like recording things that happen for no reason.
But I had one train when I was older, I guess I was like 12 or so, and it kept falling off the track.
You'd go fast and it would just jump off the track.
And my friend and I called it Jerk-Off, because it would just jerk itself off the track.
Of course.
And I had no idea.
I think it was when I read the novel Lucifer's Hammer.
I think there's a Russian guy in there called Yakov, or Jackoff, and so I didn't realize what the slang meant until much later, but it made for some odd conversations to be overheard, I'm sure.
But that's that little train.
It just went round and round.
That's all it did.
And you could either have it go slow, which was boring, or you could have it go fast.
It would fall off.
But there was nothing, right?
So, I mean, that was just the beginning.
Then I ended up with more stuff and all that.
But that's our life, right?
We just go round and round and round.
And then other people come along and they want to interrupt us.
And we're like, no man, this is my identity.
It's just going round and round.
It's like, nope, right?
I mean, I'm having this epic battle with the wine aunts on Twitter, right?
I mean, it's not really with the wine aunts.
It's with the younger women who still have a choice.
You know, people are like, oh, you know, women aren't just going to be broodmares.
It's like, well, was your mom just a broodmare?
That seems kind of rude, right?
I mean, women aren't just crapping out children.
Or what did someone call them?
Crotch fruit.
Children are crotch fruit.
And it's like, that's a nihilistically horrible thing to say, right?
Or women have these fantasies that, you know, when they're 70, they're going to be skydiving and curing cancer and, you know, running art camps.
And it's like, come on.
Come on, it's all just high status stuff, right?
There's this one old professor who's like, well, I'm an old professor and I'm 80 and I'm still doing this.
It's like, yeah, okay, so you're a very high IQ guy.
Do you think a waitress should keep working until he's 80, you douchebag?
I mean, get out of your elitist little bubble there.
There's a whole lot of women out there who, you know, don't even like their jobs.
Like only 13% of people like going to work at all.
What about the other 87% of people?
Do they just keep working until they're dead?
I mean, God, it's terrible.
Anyway, but I'm just trying to interrupt this train going round and round and round, right?
No kids is good.
No kids is good.
People are like, well, you know, it's bad for the environment if there are too many kids.
It's like, nope, not if there are too many smart kids, right?
Because you've got a limit.
In Africa, the birth rate is five or six Kids per woman in some places, right?
And who's going to feed those?
We don't have any smart people.
Those kids are going to starve.
So it's, you know, I don't know.
I'm just trying to get these people to jump the tracks and start exploring rather than being led around by their noses and so on, right?
And, you know, people are coming back with the most absolutely appalling insults and body shaming and penis shaming and, oh, apparently I'm bald.
You know this thing, too.
I mean, if you're making bold jokes to a bald guy, trust me, we've heard them all before.
Everybody thinks they're so individual and so clever.
Anyway, so it's just about jumping the tracks.
Like, I'm committed to opening up choice for women who are being programmed to not have kids, right?
So, you know, I would say so shoot me, but that might be tempting to some, right?
But it's just, you know, I'm just committed to that.
And people always say, oh, you're so mad, you're so mad, right?
It's like, well, I'm not mad, I'm not mad.
I mean, it's perfectly understandable why people are doing what they're doing.
But I did the calculation that if even only like 1% of women who are reading this change their minds, that's 2,000 new beautiful babies in the world for the sake of a day or two's tweeting.
That's a pretty good, it's a pretty good way to spend a couple hours, right?
Absolutely.
But that's just to be committed, right?
Just be committed.
Your brother's in a circle, right?
And that circle is self-destructive.
And the only way to get someone out of a self-destructive circle is to willfully impose themselves on that train going round and round, right?
And, you know, you can't be tentative when it comes to something like this.
I mean, you can be, but you're going to regret the living hell out of it, right?
You've just got to be like, no, I'm going to... And don't, you know, what is it going to take for you to talk to me like that's putting the onus on the other person, right?
And then just, you can just sit there.
I don't know if you've got a significant other or a good friend or whatever.
You know what your brother likes.
There's going to be something that's going to tempt him.
There's going to be something that's going to tempt him.
Maybe it's a favorite restaurant.
Maybe it is going to Osaka to see his favorite band.
Maybe it's whatever, right?
Maybe he wants to go skydiving.
Maybe he wants to go scuba diving in the Great Barrier Reef.
There's going to be something.
And it's like, just dangle that in front of him.
Oh, that's bribing people.
Yeah, yeah, that's how the world works.
Come on, man.
I mean, how many people go to work because they love it?
No, they're bribed.
Right?
Come on.
I mean, so, incentives is key.
Just, you know, you are there for him, you're going to have this conversation, and you just find a way to make it happen.
But it's an incredibly powerful thing when people are really committed to you.
And it's an incredibly powerful thing when you really commit to something.
And you just find a way to make it happen.
I know that sounds like stupid and obvious, but if someone walks out, you walk after them.
Somebody hangs up, you drive over.
Somebody closes the door on you, you sit on the doorstep.
If they won't let you sit on the doorstep, you sit on the sidewalk.
If they won't let you sit on the sidewalk, you sit in your car until they come out and talk to you.
It's like, oh, it's harassing people.
It's like, well, you don't do this to strangers, and you don't, I mean, if you already have an existing relationship and so on, that's what you do.
Because you care.
And you know the alternative if something goes wrong, if you don't do that kind of stuff, is literally a lifetime of soul-eating regret.
What your parents should have done to save the damn marriage, too, by the way, which is probably one of the reasons why it's going to be hard to do.
And Because whenever we surmount our parents, It's kind of like a death.
It feels like a death.
Does that make any sense?
I think I follow what you're saying, yeah.
All right.
All right.
Will you let me know how it goes?
Absolutely.
How is this a useful convo, do you think?
Very much.
It's really a privilege to have a chance to speak to you.
I appreciate it very much.
All right.
Thanks, man.
I really appreciate it.
Keep me posted, all right?
All right.
▲
Export Selection