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Jan. 8, 2022 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:57:29
STOP BLAMING YOURSELF FOR SURVIVING! Freedomain Call In
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Time Text
Let's dive in.
Let's hear what's going on.
All right.
Did you want to start, Mark?
Yeah.
So, I mean, I think we contacted you about a month ago.
At the time, the main issue between Maddy and myself was kind of on different wavelengths with respect to having kids.
Maddy is kind of looking to have kids quite imminently.
I kind of don't feel like I I feel like it's a bit too much responsibility on me.
And we kind of had issues on that.
And yeah, situation got very bad four weeks ago when I was on holiday.
I did something very bad.
I cheated on Maddy with another girl.
And just to put it all out there, I also didn't tell her when I got back that I cheated.
I cheated on her and she found out when she saw some messages on my phone.
So the situation has got quite worse.
And that happened since you sent the email?
Yeah, exactly.
I wish I'd taken the call sooner!
It's my fault!
I cheated on Maddie!
That's not what I'm saying.
I feel it!
No, no, no, no.
It's all my fault.
Well, partly the other woman's fault, too.
But anyway, we won't quibble about the free will aspect of it.
Why don't you keep going and I'll keep listening.
So I found out ten days ago now.
Since then, Marco and I have been talking a lot, pretty much.
We're kind of at least on a trial separation.
I was just like, I can't work through this with him in the position of being his girlfriend.
So it hurt me, obviously, far too much.
And we also, maybe important for you to know, we live together, so we're in the same flock.
We're a bit stuck, yeah.
I mean, cheating is obviously extremely bad.
It's been quite amicable between us.
I mean, there have been a lot of strong emotions.
There's been a bit of violence as well.
We've kind of went through it.
I mean, I thought it was going to be worse.
But yeah, the problem is still there.
Yeah, what else can I say?
We've talked a lot about the potential issues behind it.
Actually, my father cheated and Marco's father was a big cheat and I think basically still cheats to this day.
He's surrounded by just not a very nice environment and when he came back, I was shocked because he was on holiday, and I obviously couldn't go because I had to work.
He was in between jobs, so I just couldn't join him.
And when he came back, he just turned.
He was a different person, and I was shocked.
The main person I talked to about these things is actually my uncle.
And I actually talked to my uncle and said, I'm going to have to split up with him.
He says he's a completely different person.
Just extremely cold.
Really, like, violently blaming me for all these inconsequential things, like not closing the drawers, or... Well, when somebody is chronically irritated, a lot of times they're looking for something... To blame.
Well, yeah, to vent, to... And also, if you feel terribly guilty, then you often want to make it the other person's fault as to why you're in a bad mood.
Anyway, we know all of this stuff, but go on.
Yeah, yeah, he was like texting me saying you're ruining, like because we have to deal with a bad ex-landlord and there's like complications around that and he was texting me saying you're ruining our reputation and It was insane.
I don't even understand exactly where it's coming from.
There's lots of things all at once.
When he came back, he thought he might have had melanoma because he's got mole issues and something came up and got that test.
He doesn't now, but I, at the time, thought it was just stress from potential cancer.
Yeah, that can be a little stressful.
He'll probably come down, and he did, and it got kind of better, and then of course, just after Christmas, I found out.
And what was the steps to finding out?
I just opened his phone, and there was a message from the girl.
that that was that was the message say um i was various like things like bent like oh um she wants to be in his arms again that kind of thing and It happened over three nights, Marco told me.
I confronted him right away.
I was like, what is this?
I was extremely angry, obviously.
And at first he was like, oh, yeah, it's bad.
We just kissed, kind of thing.
And I was like, really?
And he was like, oh, OK, we had sex.
And then I pushed it further.
And obviously they had sex three times over three nights.
And yeah, I was very emotional.
I threw lots of stuff around the house.
Yeah, I'm so sorry.
I mean, I'm so sorry about this.
This is truly heartbreaking.
It is a stain upon the man's character that is going to stick, right?
And of course, the relationship as a whole.
I'm really, really sorry.
Infidelity is such an entanglement, particularly, of course, if you're living together.
So I'm really, really sorry that this came to pass.
And one thing I did want to double check on is you had made mention of violence between you.
Could you tell me a bit about that?
I've hit Marco, I hit him on the arm a couple times and I threw a cold cup of tea at him.
That's... The contents or the cup?
No, not the cup!
No, no, I mean, there's a significant difference in terms of potential injury, so... Okay, so, I mean, it's not like you guys are dangling each other off bridges or anything like that?
No, I just punched, like, I didn't...
I probably did hurt you a little bit.
No, it was nothing too bad.
Okay, I just wanted to check that I'm not going to hear sirens in the background because I did have a guy arrested once during the course of a call.
I'd really prefer that not to happen again.
Now, tell me a little bit, if you could, about the circumstances of the vacation.
Yeah, so I think, as Maddy mentioned, it was between two jobs, had two weeks off, went A friend or maybe acquaintance is a better way to describe him.
We went to Thailand and Vietnam.
He's single himself.
I mean, yeah.
I mean, I'm not blaming anyone.
I actually don't like him though.
He encouraged Marco to basically cheat on me.
What?
It's all my fault.
It's all my fault.
No, no, no.
I get the mantle of blame thing.
You don't have to keep telling me that.
I get that.
But you're white, right?
Yeah, I'm white.
Okay, just you sound kind of white.
I don't like to prejudge.
It could be any number of things, right?
Also with the excessive self-blaming.
But your friend and you went to Vietnam and Thailand.
And as far as I understand it, white guys are somewhat prized there.
And he was encouraging you to have an affair, is that right?
Yeah, pretty much.
No, no, no, we have to be precise with these calls.
I don't know what pretty much means.
Yeah, I mean, well, he was going there for that reason.
I mean, you know, to meet girls and, you know, to have fun.
And, you know, yeah, when we went out for drinks, for example, he, you know, he would say, yeah, you should you should go up to that girl, speak to her and, you know, see what happens.
Yeah, he's aware about Madison.
What the hell?
Yeah.
I mean, seriously, what is his major malfunction that he's in there trying to destroy your life?
Knowing that you have a committed long-term relationship, a monogamous committed long-term relationship.
Well, A, why are you going on a sex tour of Vietnam and Thailand?
And B, why is he encouraging you to destroy your life?
Or at least potentially?
Yeah, I mean, no, I agree.
I mean, at the end of the day, I don't like blaming anyone because I'm, you know, I'm the sole responsible.
But, you know, that was what we talked about when I got back.
I've kind of realized that I'm surrounded by very bad people now.
Now that I kind of feel like I'm going to lose, you know, medicine, something very significant.
She's kind of made me realize that, you know... OK, first of all, if the relationship doesn't work, it's not that you've lost her, it's that you've thrown her away.
I mean, we've got to be precise in this.
Like, if I lose my keys and I don't know where they are, that's one thing.
If I knowingly throw my keys in the sewer, I know where they are, I just can't access them, right?
So, you wouldn't lose, you would have thrown the relationship away.
And that's, like, again, I'm not trying to be harsh, because I know you're harshing on yourself, but the precise term is that it would not be a lost relationship, because you knew exactly what you were doing, and the effects, right?
No, 100%.
Was alcohol involved?
There was a bit of alcohol involved, but to be honest, I don't think that was... Yeah, it wasn't as if I was super drunk, which probably makes matters worse.
I think... Yeah, I think I was really encouraged to kind of do it and I obviously had my own insecurities, my own issues at the time.
I wasn't thinking as I should have.
And I probably saw it more as like, um, as stupid as this sounds, but it's probably what it was is more like a challenge on the moment, uh, you know, to get with this girl.
And, and yeah, looking back, it's just ridiculous.
Um, and yeah, obviously something I don't want to do again.
It's something I need to... No, I get it.
You're a man and you're a hunter.
I mean, this is, this is kind of one of the weaknesses and I'm so sorry.
I missed your name at the beginning.
I should know this off by heart by now.
No, Marco and Maddie.
And Maddie I got, I just wanted to make sure I got the Marco.
Okay, got it, got it.
Okay, so this woman from Thailand, she's still... it was not a fling for her, she would like something to continue, right?
Yeah, I think so.
Yeah, I mean it was over three days, she... yeah, and you know, when I came back we still, you know, we still were in contact, you know, she sent me photos, I sent her some photos,
But obviously when Madison found out about it, Madison told me, rightly so, to tell her that, you know, because I hadn't told her I had a girlfriend, so to make things even worse, but then I told her that I do have a girlfriend and that I'm sorry for having, you know, maybe potentially misled her as well.
What do you mean intentionally misled her?
What do you mean?
In what way did you not mislead her?
Yeah, no, I know.
I misled her.
I didn't tell her about medicine, so I was dishonest.
What she was looking for, I assume she was looking for maybe a foreign boyfriend, maybe a way out of her environmental situation, and this is why she's still in contact with you and still flirting with you, because she wanted a more long-term, possibly marital-based relationship or something like that, right?
Probably what I wanted.
Yeah, yeah.
That's probably right, Stefan.
Yeah, that's right, I think.
Yeah, you mean that's certainly going to be quite embittering for her, right?
There's a lot of destruction to this trip, right?
Destruction from your friend to you, destruction of your relationship with Maddie, destruction of this other woman's hopes for some way out of her situation or something different than where she is or what she's got.
So that's, I mean, it's a lot of wreckage being strewn about.
And again, I'm not sort of saying this to sort of make you feel bad.
I'm just pointing out things that you know.
Mm-hmm.
Sort of deep down and you bring him to the surface and you deal with them and then you won't end up snapping at Matty and you won't end up repeating at him.
You dredge this stuff to the surface, you exhume the body so to speak, you lay them to rest, you have your funeral service and then you stop being haunted by ghosts, right?
Mm-hmm.
All right.
Has there been any infidelity before?
So with Matty not We were talking about my old girlfriends.
I previously had two kind of long-term relationships.
The first one I had was, you know, just out of, well, during university.
And at the time, yeah, she wanted marriage and kids.
She wanted to get more serious.
I think I also freaked out then and I cheated on her.
I cheated on her and told her that I cheated on her because I really... I am... Yeah, I mean, it was a bad way of doing things, but I just... Well, you wanted out and you didn't want to say anything, so you... Yeah.
You know, you didn't want to move out of the house, so you just burned it down, right?
Yeah, and I think... That way you've got to leave.
Yeah, that's essentially what happened.
Now Maddy, did you know that he'd been unfaithful in the past to previous girlfriends?
Yeah, what he told me, he didn't tell me the whole story.
I got this out of him after, obviously, as well.
He told me that basically, yeah, that he tried to leave many times and she wasn't kind of like, was clinging on to him.
So he kind of kissed a girl and then told her about it.
And then I was like, well, that's terrible, you shouldn't do that.
And he's like, yeah, I would never do that again.
Oh, I feel terrible.
And then like, I've gone through this whole transformation.
I was like, well, don't do stuff like that pretty much.
And then after this, I asked him about it again.
And he said, well, actually, on that incident, he was trying to sleep with the girl, but they couldn't find a hotel room.
So, like, obviously he was going to take it further with her, but was actually just thwarted in the act.
So, like, that's a completely different thing than what he told me as well.
But both I felt like, I mean, just doing what he did in the beginning, like, just kissing someone to break up with the girl, I found disgusting and, like, condemned him for it.
He basically told me that he was a different person.
I get it.
Marco is using women to punish himself.
I get all of that.
We'll jump back to that, but I also wanted to get a sense of where you guys were in the history of wanting or not wanting children.
So me, from the beginning, I've probably been quite clear that obviously this is what I want out of it.
And also, like, so Marco kind of freaked out about it.
He's been back and forth.
I've obviously got emotional about it too.
I'm so sorry, I'm just missing the origin story of this.
When you got together... Oh yeah?
So you find each other, you date each other, you move in together or whatever.
Where did the topic of kids come up and in what part of the process did the divergence occur?
I'd say pretty early on.
I think it was quite early on.
I'm unclear, but definitely within the first month, I'd say.
So before you moved in together, but after you dated, Maddy, you talked to Marco about wanting kids, and what was the conversation like?
So, basically, he saw himself having it later.
He kind of threw out a number as 14.
I was like, well, you know, I can't post because I'm the same age as Mark.
I can't do that.
Yeah, I'm going to get a job at the age of 64 is not much of a career.
I can't at all do that.
I was like, that is a deal breaker to me.
Well, I was like, do I need to go and find, say, an older man or something?
Or do you want to grow up faster and be with me?
That's pretty much what I said.
And he's like, oh no, we can probably work it out and negotiate.
Oh man, I gotta tell you, when you listen back to this, you will hear some of the contempt in your voice when you imitate Marko.
Yeah.
Like it's, no, you hear it, right, Marco?
Yeah, I'm angry, yeah.
No, no, I get all of that.
I get all of that, but that's, you know, I'm not saying you don't have some cause.
Don't get me wrong, but I'm just like, oh, Marco, you know, like, oh my God.
That's pretty harsh, man.
That's pretty harsh.
And again, I'm not saying you don't have cause.
I'm just pointing it out.
Yeah.
So you said to Marco, basically, It's a deal-breaker for me if you want to start having kids at 40, because I can count, right?
And Marco, what was your response to that?
I just want to hear it from you rather than Maddy's characterization, which might be not totally objective.
Yeah, I mean... What was my response to that?
I mean, to be honest, for me, we met after a month.
I was... You met after a month?
What does that mean?
Sorry, we were talking about this after a month, I mean... Well, of course you were!
And you bloody well should be!
I mean, because the whole point of dating and marriage and living together and sex is to have babies.
It doesn't mean everyone has to do it, but that's why it's there, right?
And so you should have talked about this before you started dating.
I mean, this is like working at a job for six months and then starting to negotiate salary.
It's like, no, no, this is what you do before you take the job, right?
You negotiate the terms and conditions of employment.
It's the same thing with dating.
But that's sort of by the by.
That's sort of more for the audience than for you.
So what was your response when she said, I want to have kids earlier or it's a deal breaker?
I mean, I think what I said was that I think I kind of freaked out on the moment and that's why I probably said something like, yeah, let's have kids at 40 just because I got that but she said I want kids earlier and then what happened?
I can't remember exactly but I must have said that I don't feel ready yet now for kids.
What I'm still telling her now is I first want to work on myself, succeed more in my career and be in a better position not only financially but also as a person to then be able to have kids.
How old are you guys now? 26.
26.
26, okay, got it.
And how long have you been going out?
Eleven months.
Eleven months.
OK.
All right.
OK.
So you wanted to work more on yourself and more on your career.
And what have you been doing to work on yourself?
Right.
So if that's the process.
Right.
So, you know, if my wife says, I want to take up marathon running and I say, yes, but I can't run a marathon yet.
I'm going to need to start to work on my running.
Then obviously I need to go out and start working on my running.
Right.
So if you say, well, I need to work on myself in order to be more ready to have kids, what work had you been doing on yourself that would move you in that direction, if any?
Yeah, so this is my main issue.
I was like, what are these steps to go forward?
And I was like, it doesn't seem you just want you to scale, you know?
Yeah, I think it probably might not have been the right word, but what I have been doing is more working like On the career side of things, developing myself there, and I think probably the focus hasn't been on the right things, obviously... Well, no, no, hang on.
Like, you made a commitment that you said, well, here's, and I think this is Matty's point, here's steps A, B and C that I need to do in order to get ready for kids.
Now, if, of course, you're not pursuing steps A, B and C, then you're really back to your earlier position of not wanting kids until basically it's too late.
Yeah.
I mean, I guess I was in the position of, let's get the career sorted, let's get good with the money and let's be in a good financial position.
So, you know... Sorry, what was the definition of a good financial position and when would you reach it?
I mean, you don't have to give me any numbers, but it's, you know, it's X amount of income per year or X amount of property or X amount of savings or something like that, right?
So, if you say, well, I'll start my business once I've saved up, whatever, right?
You can mark your progress towards that goal, or was it kind of ill-defined?
I was trying to put definitions on it.
I think the main thing is that Mark has been scared of facing a few things, particularly with his parents, and actually standing up to them in a big way.
Of course, in that state, I guess he couldn't be a father, if he can't stick up to his parents and all these things.
I feel like it was an excuse.
More than anything.
Sorry, Maddie, just to interrupt.
You really do seem to be distancing yourself from Marco and holding him in quite a bit of contempt.
And I'm going to warn you against that.
Not warning like scary, but just warning because every time you denigrate him, you're denigrating yourself, right?
Yeah.
Right?
So you can say, you know, he's a cheat, he's a coward, he's scared to stand up for himself, he doesn't want to grow up.
You can say all of this stuff.
Well, first of all, you're just ending the relationship because no man can live in that situation for very long.
No man can stand in the face of withering female contempt and sustain a relationship.
And if you guys want to end the relationship, that's fine.
I mean, I don't know.
I'm not you.
I'm just sort of pointing out the consequences.
But you are denigrating yourself as well.
Because what you're doing is you're deeply insulting your own capacity to choose a quality man.
And there is this, when you're hurt, I mean, I'm human too, I understand all of this, when you're hurt, what do we want to do?
We want to distance ourself and we want to criticize the other person.
So we want to say somehow, I'm not involved in this situation, he did things to me that are terrible, I did nothing to cause it, and so on.
But he's only in your life because you chose him to be there.
I think I do think I'm partially at fault as if I got very wound up and I probably have been quite pushy in all these things.
Yeah. - Yeah, and-- - No, look, there's something in him, There's something in him that you wanted despite the fact that he was clearly signaling that he didn't want the same things.
So if you want kids and he's like, well, maybe when I'm 40.
I mean, let's say you want kids in the next couple of years, right?
So you guys have, like, close to 15 years, or you have, like, more than a decade worth of difference on timing, and if you want more than one kid, I mean, starting to try and have kids when you're 40 is, like, come on.
I mean, this is just not going to go the way you want it to.
And all the money, see, this is the thing, Marco, all the money that you're saving up to have kids, you're going to spend on fertility treatments and IV, like, it's a huge Like, it's not sensible from a monetary standpoint.
I mean, the number of emails and conversations I have with women who are like, oh yeah, you know, we had to drop X amount of dollars or X amount of pounds or whatever on fertility treatments, on IVF, on cycles, on injections, on fertility doctors.
It's like, yeah, good thing you guys saved all that money for kids, because now it's not available for kids, because you spent it all trying to have kids.
So that's not like a sensible thing.
But now, if you guys have decided to break up, then I won't stop harassing you about the way in which you're talking about each other.
That's fine.
I mean, I don't think it's... But if you are trying to work things out, then I'm going to really strongly suggest that you stop lobbing the bombs at each other.
Yeah.
Because that's just mean you're going to be stuck together torturing each other, and that's terrible.
Like, that's terrible, right?
Don't be there just poking at each other and sticking hot forks at each other's arms or even worse than cold tea.
So that's – is this a call where we're trying to work things out?
Yeah.
Okay, then stop that.
Yeah, yeah.
And not just in this call.
You have to stop that.
There is a possibility that you guys have reached, through dysfunction, to the core of some very serious issues that can actually have both of you grow up.
Because, Maddy, if you think he's the one who won't grow up, you chose him against your values because, why?
Is he very good-looking?
Is he high status?
Is there some reason that you chose him that's as shallow as his reasons for having an affair, right?
Well, I just thought he would... Because I can see it's...
It seems like such a, it's not a minor issue, but it seems like such that he would grow out of it.
Um, and also cause, I mean, there are a lot, I, I, I, of course I, I really like love Marco.
But you overlooked warning signs.
Yeah.
Massive differences in values about having kids.
Yeah.
Massive differences in, uh, you hate infidelity.
He used infidelity to get out of a relationship, right?
Yeah.
I mean, if someone says, well, we only kissed, come on.
I mean, what are we, 12?
Right?
So he had tons of warning signs.
You overlooked those warning signs.
And the question is, why?
And look, I mean, maybe he's a wonderful guy in other ways, I'm sure, right?
Maybe he's very funny.
Is he because high status good looks or something?
There's some reason why you kind of held your nose and overlooked these very significant warning signs, right?
And my question is, what were those reasons.
So why did you get together with him, even though there were warning signs?
And Marco, I'm sorry to talk about you like you're not here.
I'm not trying to insult you, but you know, objectively speaking, there were differences in values, right?
Yeah.
Okay, so Maddy, why did you choose him?
What's the reason we're having this call?
I think, well part of it was, there's two prior reasons.
Part of it was, I could see that unlike That he was barely influenced by, say, his fears of his past.
Like, his parents went through a really bad breakup.
All these things, I just, I could see he just hadn't dealt with it.
And underneath, like, because even after that, he's like, yeah, we can probably have kids before 30.
He's just, like, scared.
He doesn't know what's going to happen.
OK, I'm sorry to interrupt you.
You're filibustering here.
You're not answering the question.
Yeah.
Right.
So, so you saying, well, you know, there's something underneath all this bad break.
That's still, like, why did you choose him?
Well, I think it's because also at the time maybe it was a sense of urgency because I was quite alone as well.
I just came to the country and Marko was quite a big refuge for me at the time and it has been very nice being with him.
Okay, so the fact that you're alone means you want to choose someone.
the question still remains, why did you choose Marco?
I think.
Marco, are you a player?
He's not, really.
I did ask him, if you don't mind.
Sorry, sorry.
Because if he doesn't tell you the truth, I'm going to ask him, because I think he'll tell me the truth, or at least, you know, I don't want to have babies with him, so it's a little easier for me to cross-examine.
But sorry, go ahead, Marco.
I wouldn't consider myself a player.
No, I don't think I am.
I think... Well, how many women have you romanced?
So Maddie is my first serious relationship, the first girl I'm living with.
Yeah, I get that.
But in total?
I mean, there are probably maybe eight other girls where things weren't very serious.
So eleven in total?
Something like that.
Okay, so you're eleven in total and you're twenty-six, right?
Yeah.
Okay, so you're kind of a player.
In other words, you don't have much difficulty attracting women, right?
Yeah, I think, yeah.
Okay, so why is it that you don't have much difficulty attracting women?
And it's not a criticism, of course, I mean, what is it that they're attracted to in you?
I mean, yeah, I guess I'm good-looking, I have a relatively good job, and yeah, I guess I can talk quite well, I can be funny.
So as far as looks go, how about you 1 to 8 yourself?
I'm sorry, 1 to 10 yourself?
I mean, I don't know, maybe 7.5.
Maddy's probably better.
What do you think, Maddy?
Yeah, like 8.7, 7.5, 8.
That's probably, yeah, 8.
That's because you're an 8.
Okay, that's solid, man.
That's solid, right?
And Maddy, where would you put yourself on the look spectrum?
I'd say, I'd actually say similar.
Similar, I think.
I probably present myself less well as than Marco, but I'd say, yeah, about the same.
Is that your sense too, Marco?
Again, I know that this is tough to talk about particularly with each other in the room, but I'm just, you know, is it roughly in the same ballpark?
Yeah, I think I would give him, yeah, I mean, it's always quite subjective.
I guess it would be seven for the reason that Maddy says that she's not I think she's been in a bit of a fight-and-flight mode.
I have been also this year.
She hasn't been taking care of herself physically, which is fine, by the way, you know, but she's not using makeup.
She's not using makeup.
She hasn't really been putting much effort into what she wears.
And funnily enough, in the past two weeks, she's been starting to do that, and she's far more, you know, she's far more attractive now.
Well, of course, I mean, you're Australian, so she's upping the stakes, so to speak, right?
Exactly.
And I think, yeah, when we did meet, we were kind of at, I mean, would it be fair to say that we were at quite low points of our life?
And I always, what I like about Maddy, right from the beginning, is that she kind of understood me very well, my situation, and was kind of, I mean, sometimes I joke with her and say that she's like healing, trying to heal me, or she's like a really good influence on me.
Well, wait, was it recent?
Was the breakup you've talked about, was that more recent?
Was that the situation you mean?
No, I mean just in general.
No, the breakout was a while ago.
I think just in general, you know, having like a weak father and a mom who was never really present when I grew up, you know, obviously makes things more difficult for me, I think.
And Maddy was kind of always able to... She's basically making me more aware of You know, what's happened with me in my childhood.
Okay, so let's, since the topic has come up and it's going to be, we're going to talk about it anyway, let's hear a little bit about your childhood, mom, dad, the bad divorce and so on.
Yeah, so my parents got divorced when I was 16.
I knew about the divorce before it was announced.
I knew that my father was cheating on my mom, probably from the age of 11 or 12.
And how long were they unhappy before they divorced?
I mean, this is the thing.
I can't remember much about my childhood.
This might sound very weird, but I can't remember much.
But I can remember that they had a very cold type of relationship.
They rarely kissed.
I mean, it's more common than you think.
I mean, I've had callers who say, I can't remember really anything before the age of 10 or even 12.
And that usually means it's just a grim, stressful repetition.
And there's nothing to demark the days and you might as well just flush them.
Exactly.
So that's probably what happened to me.
Maybe important things to know is that my mom, obviously, so she didn't work.
My dad earned all the money, so she stayed at home.
She took care of myself and my sister.
She cooked very well.
She made sure that we had good holidays and so on.
I guess she wasn't really there for me on an emotional level.
We didn't really talk much.
We didn't cuddle much.
So it was quite cold.
And yeah, my dad was never really present and I think it's fair to say that my dad's a bit of a weak man.
I think he's quite insecure and he's, like his father, like my grandfather, he's always been cheating on my mum.
I talked to him about it and yeah, he's been cheating right since I've been born.
Did he make decent money?
Yeah, at the time he was.
Yeah, he was making decent money.
Like upper middle class?
Middle class?
Rich?
What do you mean?
What do you mean?
I would say upper middle class.
So, I mean, you know what it's like out there in the marketplace trying to make some coin.
It's harsh and it's hard, right?
So, I guess I'm trying to sort of figure out where this sobriquet of weak man comes from if he's out there making good coin in often what is a tough economy.
It means he can't just be weak as a whole, right?
Because he's out there competing and making money and working hard and that's hard work.
It's like saying that somebody is not productive when they come home with enough meat for the family every single day, right?
In winter, so to speak, right?
So where does the, he's a weak man as a whole, come from if he's out there making good money for the family?
I mean, there are obviously other vices, inconstancy and so on, but I don't quite get the weakness thing, but I'm certainly happy to be enlightened.
Yeah, I mean, you know better than me.
I mean, I guess what I mean by weak is, he's not very honest and he's not direct, and that's probably why I'm I think I've changed a lot now, but he's not honest and direct.
Even, for example, I told him about the story between Maddy and me and he first told me that he's met Maddy.
At first he said that he was shocked that this happened and he's really sorry and that he hopes I can work it out with Maddy because Maddy's a great girl.
And then a week later I talked to him and told him that it's looking quite bad with me and Maddy.
Obviously, given the cheating, we're probably going to split up.
And then what he told me was that he's happy for me because he thinks that Maddy was a bit of a crazy girl and she's not the right girl for me.
And he completely said something completely different just a week later.
So I guess when I say I find him to be a weak man, what I'm saying is he's quite dishonest.
Well, I mean, that's very manipulative, right?
Exactly.
And I probably.
Yeah, that's something that's kind of That has kind of developed in me.
Now I'm trying to change it.
You're not really like that.
I'm not really like that, but that's, I think, why I say he's a bit of a weak man.
Sorry, what did Matt say?
I couldn't quite hear.
Well, you know, I mean, at least with me, you're not like that.
At least what I've seen of you.
Well, not when I cheated.
What about, no, I'm going to work on myself and maybe we'll have kids earlier and then he doesn't do anything to work on himself.
And he lied about the extent of the affair that busted up a previous relationship, and he lied about what happened in Thailand.
I mean, come on.
No, no, he definitely is.
He is, he is.
Now, listen, we could just sit here, obviously, and we could just throw Old Testament stones at you, Marco, and say, oh, he's just a liar, he's a weak guy.
And that's, you know, I mean, I guess we could, but that doesn't do much to change it.
It just shames you, right?
So, you know what, I'll shut up for once in my chatty life and I'll put a bookmark in that and go on please with what happened with your parents in your teens.
Yes, I think that's the main thing really.
I guess, what else can I say?
I can say that I only really saw this since I met Maddy.
She's kind of helped me see light in my parents.
Also, my mom, who, you know, is actually very cold.
I mean, even when I told her that, you know, what had happened with Maddy, she, you know, she didn't really say much.
She just said, oh, hope you can sort it out.
And, you know, didn't really take interest.
I mean, I understand I'm 26 years old, but what I'm trying to say is that, you know, it's always been like that.
There's never really been much emotional support.
Yeah.
I don't know.
So, did your father have affairs because he wasn't having sex at home?
Well, that's what I... So, I talked for the first time, honestly, with my father a few months ago and I asked him these questions and, yeah, he said apparently once my mom had her second baby, my sister, she changed as a woman and my dad told me that, yeah, since the second child she withdrew from sex and that's why According to him, he's been having affairs.
She broke the deal of marriage, right?
If that's true, yes.
We can't cross-examine and it's all hearsay, but let's just go with the fact that it's true.
So, the deal is the man provides the resources, the women raises the children, and on both sides, sexual activity is supposed to occur.
I mean, sex is the great adult playground of adulthood, and it's maybe compensation for having to pay taxes, who knows, right?
But that's the deal, right?
So if your dad had become unemployed, and was not providing any income to the family, Then, if your mother went to, let's say, a rich uncle and borrowed some money, would that be considered infidelity?
No.
Because he's got a deal to provide money, and if he's not providing money, well, she's got to get the money from somewhere, right?
Yeah, I get what you're saying.
Yeah.
Right.
So so the deal is and listen, there could be medical reasons.
There can be what I mean, I understand all of that.
But then you've got to go to the doctor and you've got to say, I've got to deal with this, right?
Because that's not good, right?
That's not good.
That's sort of the deal in the family, right?
The man provides the resources and the woman, you know, does the work and all that, but the woman has to be available for sex.
And listen, if the man decides not to have sex with the woman, that's equally kind of tortuous, right?
So that's one of the foundations of a relationship.
And so... And it's a trap, you understand, right?
Because the woman often is withdrawing from sex because she's angry about something.
And she's looking to dominate the man.
And then what happens, of course, is the man says, well, I've got to have some sex.
He tries with the wife, gets continually rejected.
And then what happens is his self-esteem goes down.
And this is why when you were talking about
your trip to Vietnam and so on that I was like hmm Thailand you felt unattractive I think to some degree and so you wanted to test how attractive you were with these foreign girls so then what happens is the man starts putting out flirty signals because he's not sure how attractive he is anymore if something's changed or if he's not attractive and then some other woman picks up on these signals they end up having an affair and then the rage of the woman and the frustration of the woman and the anger of the woman
His wife.
She can then lambaste him from here to eternity.
She now has an outlet for her anger.
Although she's maneuvered him to some degree into the situation.
Because she's presented to him an impossible situation.
In the same way that if the man stops providing money, and the woman still has bills to pay, well, she's now in an impossible situation, and she's got to find some way to get the money.
And if the woman stops having sex with the man, and doesn't talk about why, and won't talk about the issues, and won't get help, and won't see a doctor, or anything like that, then he's... I mean, the marriage at that point is over.
Yeah.
Now, you can drag that shit along forever, if you want.
But at that point, the marriage is done.
And it's just a matter of, you know, like this.
My daughter loves lizards, right?
So we've been watching this documentary about the Komodo dragon, right?
The Komodo dragon, the way that it hunts is, let's say there's some water buffalo around that it wants to eat.
Well, it can't go and kill the water buffalo because it's a Komodo dragon.
It can't climb up and bite its jugular.
So what it does is it just bites the leg.
Now, originally I think they thought that the Komodo dragon had a kind of poison in its teeth.
That's not true, actually, I think.
It's got... but it's got bacteria.
And so what happens is the water buffalo gets infected from the bite.
And it can take like two weeks for the water buffalo to get weak enough from the infection that it either dies or it can't fight off the Komodo dragon or dragons that come to eat it.
And the reason I'm getting all David Attenborough on you is that's kind of like, the bite is like, okay, we're not having sex in the marriage.
Okay, it takes a while for the marriage to die, but it's not getting better.
So if that's a pattern, I don't know if it applies to you and Maddie, but if that's a pattern, it's important to be aware of it, right?
So you have affairs to end relationships, maybe.
But your mother withholds sex to end a marriage.
You see, it's the same thing.
You're looking at your dad like your dad is the one that's got all the lessons for you.
But I believe that it's the case that your mother has more important lessons because they're less obvious.
So the woman stops having sex with the guy, the guy has an affair, and then everyone says, well, we broke up because I cheated.
And it's like, no, that's not the whole story. - Right.
Right?
If the woman is treating you with contempt, if the woman is pushing you away, if the woman isn't warm, if the woman isn't having sex, you know, in this case it was your mom, it could be the other way around, but we're talking about your mom.
Okay, then she's cheating.
She's ending the relationship because she's putting the man in an impossible situation, which is go and make money and give the vast majority of your money to the family, go out and bust your ass sixty hours a week, For a cold woman who won't have sex with you.
But that's an impossible situation for a man.
Now, how does he maintain his ambition in the face of that utterly and completely impossible situation?
Tease.
Well, sure.
But then the woman says, it ended because of you.
That's not true.
Now, your dad married a cold woman.
So again, these layers of complexity and so on, we always like to start the tape mid-reel and then say, aha!
That's how the movie ends.
But the movie ends at the beginning, right?
Yeah.
Hamlet ends the moment that his ghost of a father shows up, right?
So that's, I mean, this is the level, I think, of depth that you guys are approaching.
And sometimes we sort of wildly thrash around in dysfunction in order to find out these patterns.
And maybe that's what this call is about.
If we can find these patterns and help, then you can, I believe, look back and say, "Good Lord, did we ever screw up, but man alive, did it ever give us our power over our lives back because we know why the hell we're doing things now, right?" Okay, so sorry.
So what was the divorce you said?
It was a bad divorce.
Like, what happened? - Well, I guess to your point, and thanks for that, that's really useful for me too.
I think it actually all makes sense.
So I think what basically happened is that the only reason the parents stayed together, I mean, you probably know this, is just for the kids.
So that's why I think the marriage continued until it continued, and it kind of broke up when I left the household.
Sorry, just remind me of the question, Stefan.
No, no problem.
Listen, if you're thinking about something else, let's talk about that something else that you're thinking of.
You said that there's something that all becomes clear, and I think that you're focusing on all that has become clear over what we're talking about.
Let's talk about all that has become clear, because that will make more sense.
You can't tell what to tell next in the story if you're still thinking about the messages of the first part.
So you said all became clear.
What do you mean?
No, I mean, the fact that you, you know, that kind of, I probably thought that my father was the bad guy in the story.
And yeah, now it does make sense that, you know, if mom was withdrawing sex, you know, from the outskirts of having the second baby, I mean, she's definitely very guilty there.
And I've always kind of put the blame on my father.
I guess what I was, I was also thinking of was, yeah, when you ask about how bad the actual divorce was, I think it was bad because, you know, there was, I mean, as always with a divorce, there's, you know, the money involved, the house involved.
And I think I kind of feel bad also for my sister.
She's three years younger.
She kind of, I kind of escaped the divorce when it actually happened.
So I was aware I was in the UK, that they were in Brussels.
And, you know, my sister kind of, And still is under kind of, how can I say, she's trapped under my mother.
She just says and does as my mother says and does.
And I kind of also feel bad for her because she kind of had to go through, you know, when there was a divorce and we were quite well off, obviously dad didn't want to give any money to mom.
And mom, you know, threatened to commit suicide and those kind of things.
And obviously it was bad for me, but I wasn't really living it.
My sister was, you know, She was living with my mom, and my mom was in a really bad state at the time.
Yeah, so... Very tough for my sister, and I guess... Okay, let's drop your sister for the moment.
Let's go back to your mom.
Your mom dropped the S-bomb on the family, like I'm gonna kill myself.
Yeah.
Holy shit.
Yeah, so basically, what was happening was dad, obviously, they're getting divorced.
Mom wanted to keep the house.
We had a nice house in Belgium.
Obviously, dad wanted to sell it because, you know, he was going to go his way and mom was going to go her way and the two kids were going to, you know, me, university, my sister, boarding school.
And yeah, she just threatened to commit suicide to, I guess, keep the house or try and get more money from dad.
And obviously, yeah.
And here we were talking about your dad being the manipulative one, right?
Holy shit, man.
That's psychotic, in my humble and amateur opinion.
Like, the S-bomb is like, there's no more negotiations.
Everything's just a smoking wreck.
I'm going to kill myself if you sell the house.
I've seen a lot of those, and I was like, that's psychotic.
Well, apparently, I mean, I don't know if we need to go into details, but yeah, my sister told me that she was next to mom, and mom had these two bottles of water with tablets, and then threatened, and then my sister stopped her.
Yeah, that's what I was told.
Okay, so your mom is, like, enormously messed up, right?
Yeah.
I mean, not only would she threaten suicide over the sale of the house, but she would also threaten suicide with your sister staring right at her, right?
Yeah, that's kind of... because, obviously, my sister is kind of getting all this negative... yeah, she's the one that's really... yeah, it's really bad for my sister, right?
It's bad for you, too.
So, yeah, my mother, yeah, is not... maybe not the best mother.
No.
All right.
So we're not quite ready to touch that one yet.
Okay.
I get that.
I mean, you're sort of circling around that one, right?
And I'll just tell you a thought that popped into my head.
It's probably nonsense, but I always sort of look for these patterns and try and figure out how the jigsaw puzzle piece goes together, right?
Look for the corners, look for the sky, look for the edges, right?
So I would give you a brief theory.
And again, it's probably nonsense, but I just got to get it out of my head.
So we'll keep going.
When I hear about a woman who ceases having sex, I immediately think of, rightly or wrongly, childhood sexual abuse.
And furthermore, when you say it was when your sister was born, according to your dad, that the mother stopped having sex, well that would maybe be because it's the female who's being born which triggers your mother if she has experiences, horrible experiences that way.
When I hear about somebody who threatens suicide to get their way, I think enormous amounts of childhood trauma.
Now again, the childhood trauma, I'm sure it's there, but it could be non-sexual in nature.
But if the way that it manifests is anti-sexual attitudes, particularly when the birth of a daughter comes in and possibly re-triggers the memories, then that's, again, we'll probably never know.
It's probably nonsense, but I just wanted to sort of share that thought.
My grandmother, my mother's household was always very, very cold.
When you walk into a place and you feel bad energy, that was the house.
My uncles, I never really talked to, so my mother's brothers, they were there, but whenever I visited, they didn't say a word to me.
They were very quiet.
Did you just sit there and not talk?
Yes, so grandmother used to make lunch or dinner and they just came down, got their lunch and dinner and then took it upstairs into their room.
Okay, so that also goes in the idea that there's horrible secrets and no one can talk.
I think so, yeah.
I would think so, because the most I've ever said to my uncle is, how are you doing?
doing.
There's a bit of a line.
And why did your father, is she pretty?
I mean, why would your father marry such a dysfunctional, half suicidal ice block of a woman?
Honestly, I don't know.
My father is better looking than my mum, definitely.
I don't think it's looks.
They met traveling in Syria when they were still kind of students.
I really don't know.
I probably need to ask him the question.
Well, it could have been that they had a lot of early sex, so women who have issues with self-esteem or issues with sexual functioning or issues with healthy adult Sexuality, there's like a two-phase, right?
I mean, which is you get a lot of sex in the beginning and then you don't get sex later on.
Whereas women who are sort of healthy and mature about these things, they don't give up sex to attract a man because they know that that's a terrible bargain and it's an act of self-contempt.
So you don't get sex in the beginning, but then you get a lifelong great sex situation, right?
So it's sort of like cocaine versus happiness that you earn through being virtuous.
Like cocaine will give you the high and then a lot of misery.
Whereas a slow build is not much happiness at the beginning, but much more happiness later on.
It's the same thing with sexuality.
So maybe, if they met while traveling, he had a lot of great sex early on, right?
And then he's like, wow, we should get together!
This is going to be a life!
And it's like, it's not.
It's not a lifetime of that.
Because the more sex you have at the beginning, the less sex you have later.
Yeah, that I guess would make sense.
Yeah.
Okay, so you don't know why your parents got together, and we're sort of examining the causality as to why they ended up getting divorced, and what's happened to them since?
I guess 10 years since.
So I think my father went down south, so you know, as we talked about, he had that good job, Since the divorce he's had another child, so I have a half-brother, but then again he kind of left the woman to have another relationship, so he's basically had a kid who now sees the father once a quarter, once every three months.
And now he's on to another relationship.
I think this one's a bit better, but he definitely hasn't been stable and has lost his very good job.
And now he's just living with this girl.
Wait, how did he lose his job?
I don't really know, but I think at the time he was with this woman who was very bad for him.
She was very manipulative.
So she let off all of his professional energy on drama and crap?
I think that's what happened.
I think... Well, and to some degree, of course, Matty, I'm not putting you in this category, but as far as your professional focus goes, you know, you say, well, I've got to build my career, but, you know, this mess in your life over the last month or even before is not going to help with your professional energies, right?
No, no, no.
Anyway, so what's happened with your mom?
So my mom, obviously after divorce, she moved.
She's from Germany, so she moved back to Germany and she, you know, before having... A cold German woman.
No.
No!
Anyway.
I shocked you, maybe.
No, so she obviously, you know, she hadn't been working for, you know, 16 odd years because she took care of the kids.
Luckily she found, you know, a job as a nurse and now she's living by herself in a small apartment.
Yeah, she said she's happy, although I think she's quite lonely.
But yeah, at least she can pay the bills.
At least she can pay the bills.
And yeah, from time to time my sister and I visit her.
I think She might have a few friends there, but yeah, I think quite lonely, quite lonely at that age.
Yeah, to be alone.
Yeah.
Right.
And I assume, of course, that she's not gone back into any kind of dating situation.
No, no, no, no, no.
I don't think so either.
Not right.
Lonely, isolated, dysfunctional nurse boy.
Never heard that before either.
OK.
All right.
All right.
It's like everybody thinks there's such an individual, right?
A big book of cliches is like 99% of people's lives.
OK.
I'm sorry, I know we're taking some time, but what's your story?
Mine's very bad.
My parents divorced when I was one.
My dad actually committed suicide when I was 21.
Oh my God, I'm so sorry.
God, I hate those people.
You've heard that speech before, I'm sure, but I just hate those people.
Make it look like an accident, for God's sake, be a decent person.
Anyway, go on.
I don't speak to a lot of my family now.
My family was quite cultish.
My mother, particularly, just not a lot of freedom.
She's sabotaged lots of things for me.
Wait, what do you mean by cultish, then?
You could not think something my mother didn't agree with, pretty much.
Basically, she turned us very largely against my father.
There were aspects he deserved, and aspects he really didn't.
It's perpetual victimhood from her, and it just kind of sucks everyone in, and no one can challenge that, and I always did.
My father was a scapegoat, and then once my father died, I turned into the scapegoat of a lot of the family.
Do you know why he killed himself?
Lots of reasons, obviously.
This is just the trigger.
He was a very rich man, and his business went down very fast.
That was just the trigger, but of course that's not the real reason.
He remarried this extremely horrible woman.
He was still in love with my mother, stupidly.
Yeah, I mean, lots of reasons.
He was dead a long time before he did, obviously.
Yeah, and then the trigger was him losing his business.
Which, you know, we talked about how men lose professional focus in dysfunctional relationships, and it's, you know, it's tragic to think of all that work you put in to build something up.
You marry the wrong person, you get involved with the wrong person, they strip your focus, your will, your drive, your desire, your happiness, and then, you know, you can't really be successful when you're depressed.
And, you know, you spend your whole life building up this business, you get involved with the wrong person, then it all burns to the ground.
Yeah, I don't even think she was necessarily...
Yeah.
He didn't do what he loved.
He really wanted to be a sailor.
He was like a very extremely good sailor.
So he wanted to be a sailor and instead he went into finance.
He did very well, obviously, but yeah.
Like sailing on the wide accountancy.
Like that old Monty Python joke.
Anyway, that's before your time.
Sorry.
Okay.
And how's your mom doing these days?
So my mom, So she remarried.
I'll try and go chronologically.
She remarried, because I'm from New Zealand originally, so she married a Māori man there who's the natives.
She remarried.
Yes, I believe I was interviewed by one.
Yeah, there you go.
He was very violent.
I grew up around a lot of violence.
So I yelled at him.
You're violent Maori?
Oh my God.
Yeah, shocking, shocking.
Central casting.
Anyway, go on.
Yeah, so very, very violent.
I had to stick up for my mum a lot.
I basically had to fight my stepdad to stop him from yelling at her and all these things.
And then they divorced.
My mother and my father died, and my mum went a bit crazy.
She's never been responsible at all.
I have a half-brother who's much younger than me, and she just Abandoned him and and started driving around New Zealand Because she's actually not she's an artist.
So, you know, she thinks she can get away with these kind of It's kind of behavior and so she just she just drove around the country abandoned my little brother and my my actual my big I have Elder brother who had to raise him from like 15 So, yeah, and she is I don't know I don't really speak to her and I kind of try and avoid knowing.
I basically know she's got a roof over her head, and I know that.
Yeah, that's all I know.
She had a lot of inheritance from my grandmother, and she's wasted all that.
I could ask wasted how, but I guess it doesn't really matter.
Yeah, not really.
Not at this point.
No, she was trying to do a business and then it was just kind of self-indulgent.
She's actually quite a famous artist in New Zealand and she kind of just stopped working, started refusing commissions and all these kind of things.
Yeah.
No, I mean, it's not an uncommon thing, particularly for women in the sort of midlife aspect to try and reinvent themselves.
I'm going to write a book, I'm going to become a public speaker, I'm going to do all this kind of stuff.
Motivational coach, life, blah, blah, blah.
It's always kind of the same.
Yeah, it's always kind of the same deal, sadly.
That's god-awful and I'm really sorry.
I'm really sorry for all of that.
Very early on in my life, there was also sexual molestation as well, when I was about three to four, consistently.
By a family friend.
Oh my God, so that happened to you when you were three or four?
Yeah.
I hate to ask, and please don't answer if you don't want to, but was it all the way to penetration, or was it more... No, it didn't get to penetration, but it got pretty close.
No, not penetration.
And does your family of origin know about this?
Yes, what happened is, I was always very protective of my little brother, obviously, because of this, and I asked him one day, because he was always a family friend, I was always suspicious of, and I asked him one day, and nothing happened with this person.
He was shocked that I didn't ask, and then my family kind of asked me if something happened to me, and I was like, yes.
- And how old were you then? - I was 22, 22.
Oh my god.
So I hadn't told anyone then.
I thought I'd never say anything.
And at that point I was already assigned to not speak to my family and they were starting to say like I'm just being attention-seeking and all this kind of stuff.
I wonder if your dad ever found out?
I don't think so.
My sister was wondering, I have lots of siblings, my sister was wondering that because he cut ties with that family, then that's how it stopped.
It was like a teenage son of a family friend and so he cut off this family and that's when it stopped.
And that's what you were for, is that right?
Yeah, I think it was around four, like four and a half.
Yeah.
And obviously, I think... I mean, obviously that's affecting me.
Yeah, so... Well, no, I mean, I wonder if he cut things off because he had suspicions or he had some knowledge.
Yeah, I almost don't... It's sad, but I almost don't have enough faith in my... I have no idea and I almost...
At the time, I didn't want to put it down to that because I didn't have enough faith in my father to have been that self-aware or have known.
Also, around that time, my family was kind of hyper-sexual.
Oh, an artist!
Hyper-sexual!
Yeah, my mother nearly got raped a few times.
Nothing really happened to her.
She kind of escaped.
All that.
So she was just really strangely hypersexual and obviously at the time when I was very young, and that's the time when it kind of happened, both my parents weren't paying attention to me at all.
I was completely neglected and they were both kind of dating.
Oh, it was like an open marriage kind of thing?
Because yeah, that's my question.
What the hell is a three or four-year-old doing in a...
They were separated at that point.
They were separated at that point.
Sorry, sorry, you said one.
Yeah, one, you separated, sorry.
Yeah, so, that is, yeah, because that was my question, like, what the hell was, what the hell were you doing at the age of three or four in the unsupervised company of some teenage boy?
Yeah, yeah, because, I mean, and it was, I asked, my brother actually witnessed it one time, and he ran away.
This is my elder brother, and I asked him when I was older, when it was coming out, I asked him if he remembered that and he denied it.
But I know, like, it felt like to me when I was young, it felt like an open secret.
I felt like everyone knew.
Wow, that's chilling.
Yeah.
Right.
So, you know, the fact... So there's two patterns here.
Number one, that you would choose a man who betrayed you when you were betrayed by your father and this boy and your brother, right?
That's a pattern.
Yeah.
And the other, going back to my earlier hypothesis about, Marco, your mother's potential sexual abuse as a child, the fact that you chose a woman who had been sexually abused may not be entirely unrelated to that possibility.
Yeah.
That's what I was thinking too, yeah.
If that's the case, yeah.
So you guys have some odds stacked against you, but you also, based upon your frankness and integration of these histories, have an enormous potential to break this cycle.
Because, you know, we look back and we say, oh my gosh!
Like, we're wounded!
And that means we're doomed.
And it's like, no, you're wounded.
That means you have incredible opportunities to break the cycle, as long as you're aware of it and acting it out, right?
And that's sort of my goal in this conversation, is to try and translate it from acting out to self-knowledge.
yeah so that this doesn't happen again either within your relationship or if you don't decide to continue in in other relationships because your parents Both sides, I mean, the lack of self-knowledge is like a force of nature.
Maddy, were there any issues with drugs?
I'm sort of going with this hedonistic, artist-based lifestyle.
Yes, yes, yes there was.
And my father cheated a lot.
And I never gave that much... Well, cheated.
You mean before, because they split up when you were one, right?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But he cheated.
He obviously had lots of girlfriends while I was young, and he cheated on them.
I've been through therapy and things, and I never really looked at that, because it seems so far down the scale of offences.
He pursued hedonism straight off a cliff, right?
Yeah, and yes, my father did... everyone in my family did drugs, pretty much.
I was surrounded by drugs.
I remember my father hotboxed a room when I was little, like when I was about three, with his lawyer friends.
And I apologize for... well, I guess I don't really apologize for not knowing what the hell that means.
But what the hell does that mean?
That means, so it's marijuana and it means you just close, you close all the, all the, um, anywhere that could be events and then, and it builds in the room.
So I was sitting in a room full of marijuana smoke when I was about like, you know, three, four and all that.
Good God.
This is like, I know something out of train.
I, believe it or not, was at the world premiere of Once Were Warriors.
It's a long story, it doesn't really matter.
I watched Once Were Warriors.
That was kind of...
I, believe it or not, was that the world premiere of Once Were Warriors?
It's a long story.
It doesn't really matter.
But, yeah, no, I have seen that.
And it's horrifying.
It was horrifying.
Yeah.
So, yeah.
I was invited by a woman who then completely freaked out during the movie and then told me afterwards that she herself had been sexually abused.
And that, of course, is in the movie.
Yeah.
And, oh, my God.
So, the fact that you've managed to contain your dysfunction to this level is enormously positive.
Yes, probably.
No, seriously.
I mean, I assume you guys aren't hotboxing during this conversation, right?
No, seriously.
This is good stuff.
All you've done is cheat and throw some cold tea.
Like, that's progress, man!
I know, I'm very proud, very proud.
No, you should be, and I know that that sounds like an odd thing to hear, but it really matters.
Listen, weaknesses can become strengths.
Let me give you a stupid, stupid example, because I can't think of a better one, but you know, I gotta just go with what my brain kicks up, right?
So I was in St.
Louis to give a speech.
I was chasing my daughter down the hallway.
I had a new pair of sneakers on.
They hit the tile and squeaked and stopped and I fell and cracked and crunched my knee, right?
And so that was painful and difficult and it took forever to heal because, you know, it's knees and I'm over 50 and all that blah blah blah.
So what do I do?
You say, okay, well that really sucks, right?
And what I've done, though, is I have now incorporated a series of extraordinarily tricky and difficult knee exercises into my workout routine.
Right?
So that accident has made my knees far stronger.
Because, you know what?
Because screw accidents.
That's why.
Because to hell with happenstance.
Nature of fate, accident, blah, blah, blah, conspires to give me knee pain.
I'm going to make my knee, because screw accidents, I'm going to make my knee way stronger than it would have been otherwise.
Now, I'm sure you get the analogy, right?
You guys have seen so much ridiculous and horrifying and evil dysfunction up close that it should be scaring you, terrifying you, into the complete opposite direction, right?
And that's how you get gold out of shit.
It just terrifies you.
I saw subjectivism, mysticism and irrationality up close in the person of my mother and other people I knew as a child.
And it terrified me into the complete opposite direction.
I would be nowhere near as rational and focused on self-knowledge if I hadn't seen the effects of it and the disastrous consequences of avoiding it.
Early on, right?
Because, to hell with circumstances.
If you're put into a shitty position, you can turn that evil into the greatest good known to man.
But you gotta react to it.
You gotta be terrified of it, and you gotta react to it.
And you gotta run like hell in the opposite direction.
Now, you guys are circling this shit, right?
You're not committed to it, right?
You're not hotboxing, you're not having an open relationship, you're not...
Threatening suicide if you don't get your way.
So you're not there.
Fantastic.
Well, we wouldn't be having this call if you were, right?
But you're also not sprinting.
You're circling.
You're not sprinting in the opposite direction.
Right?
Now, I think you want to, which is probably why we're having this call.
Yeah.
Because this, you guys are through the bad decisions.
You guys have got to the core, I believe, of the issues and the patterns, right?
Now, if you can break that cycle... Then we're good.
You're great.
Yeah.
And then you can look back and, you know, when I get older and my knees are still incredibly strong, I'm going to say, I'm really glad I fell in St.
Louis, right?
Yeah, yeah.
No, I agree.
So when I had treatment for cancer, they said, hey man, you've got to stay out of the sun.
So I got this like ridiculous big umbrella style Tilly hat, which I wear every time I'm outside.
And so getting cancer could have prevented me, because you talked about melanoma earlier, that's what I sort of remembered from this, so getting cancer could prevent me from getting cancer.
Because screw cancer, right?
You want to give me a downside, I'll make it an upside.
It's like that judo thing, you use the momentum of your enemy to win the match, to win the fight.
So you guys got handed unbelievable piles of shit sandwiches.
And you're like, OK, so my choice is two.
I'm either going to eat shit sandwiches for the rest of my life, or I'm going to become a master chef and make the best food known to man.
And I think you guys are right in the middle of that.
You're looking at this dysfunction that still has some tentacles around your legs, and you're looking at breaking free and going in the complete opposite direction, like no holds barred, flying from the past to the stars, right?
Yeah, I think that's the plan.
So, the question is how?
It's quite a question.
Okay, bye!
Nice chatting with you guys.
Hope that was helpful.
Yeah, I mean, the question is how, right?
Well... Started trying to do therapy, hasn't he?
No, I think that's great, and I'm a big fan of talk therapy and all of that, but, you know, I'm a moralist, not a therapist, so...
I'm going to tell you how to do it.
You have to viscerally hate everything that points you in the wrong direction.
Everything and everyone.
And listen, it's not just your parents, it's not just your extended family, it's your society, it's your culture, it's everything these days that is pointing everyone in the wrong direction.
I agree.
Right?
If you had cultural signals to survive your childhood, that would help a lot.
But of course your childhood wouldn't have been as bad if it wasn't for all of these terrible cultural signals.
If it wasn't for your mom, say... Sorry, Madison.
If it wasn't for your mom, Being in this, you know, cool, hip, artistic community where it was all fun and games and, you know, don't be such a square and let loose and live free.
And if it wasn't for all of this bullshit, it's cool reinforcement stuff.
You know, if she'd grown up in the Amish town or, you know, to take it opposite extreme, I suppose, which certainly seems more healthy to me.
But she had a whole world Telling her how cool and rebellious and hip and free she was, right?
Yeah.
And with... That's almost... So with the kids thing, that's almost the stress I felt as well, because I didn't feel like I was just trying to convince Marko that it would be... I mean, obviously we sort things out, but that's like the road to fulfillment more than, you know, other things.
Like, it feels like a cultural battle as well, and I think that's also why I slightly I mean, it's not the main reason, obviously, but it's the reason why I accepted the fact that I need to convince them more.
Because I'm immersed in a culture where everyone's like, oh, I'm not going to have kids until I'm over 30, and all this kind of stuff.
So I felt so... I'm saving the planet!
I felt like I would have no backing, and I was the unreasonable one for wanting to have kids while I'm fertile, you know?
Yeah, as well.
That counts for anything.
Right, okay.
So, Marco, how do you earn love?
Now, maybe Maddie is the person for it.
I mean, I don't know, but I'm not sort of talking about in this relationship, but at the abstract level, right?
We all want to be loved.
And, you know, if you want food, well you know how to get it.
You grow it, you hunt it, you shop it, or whatever, right?
You have some idea how to get your food.
If you're thirsty, you get some water or whatever.
So, given that we do want to be loved, the question then becomes, how do we achieve it?
Now, I think that you've been achieving it through charm And youth and looks.
Guess what?
You guys have seen the credits on this movie.
You've seen how this shit plays out, right?
When you rely on charm and humor and charisma and looks and youth.
You've seen the downside of that by looking at your parents, right?
What happens when you rely on that to be attractive?
How does that play out?
Yeah, I guess not so well.
Well, you don't get what you want, right?
Yeah.
Because how do you keep love for your life?
Well, it can't be youth, right?
Because the best case scenario is you get older.
Can it be charm?
I don't think so.
Because charm is me plus.
I talked about this in my Robin Williams video from many years ago now.
It's like, I can't just be myself, I have to be myself and entertaining, and engaging, and funny, and insightful, whatever it is, right?
I can't just be me.
I have to be me plus a show, right?
And you guys have seen that reality, that you cannot keep that show going.
Yeah.
Because it's exhausting after a while.
It's like having to be constantly on.
Hey, it's fun to be on.
I mean, when I go give a speech, I'm on, baby.
But that can't be my life, right?
So, it can't be looks, because looks fade.
It can't be money, because money can attract the wrong kinds of women, and you've both seen this, where attracting the wrong kinds of partners screws up your capacity to make money, right?
Right, Marco, your dad lost His good job, and of course you saw, Maddie, how losing his money because of a bad partner, I assume, how that affected your dad, which is catastrophically, right?
Yeah.
So what does it mean to love?
How do we get and keep a lifelong love or a love that grows over time?
So it can't be youth, can't be beauty, can't be money, can't be charm, can't be charisma, it can't be sex.
Because sexuality that is used in an attempt to gain love destroys love.
Because he's saying, well, he's not going to love me for me, but maybe he'll love me for me plus hole, or me plus penis, or me plus orgasm.
But that's saying you can't be loved, because you have to bring one of the ultimate acts of human pleasure to the table.
So if we eliminate these from the equation, How do you get and keep a lifelong love?
Youth will fade.
Money is unstable.
Looks fade.
Charm wears out.
Sexuality can't sustain itself if that's the reason you're there.
So how do you do it?
Because that's the question you're facing, right?
Yeah, I mean, I guess what you're getting to, Stefan, is maybe having a family with kids.
Is that what you're...?
No, absolutely not.
Okay.
Hey, come on, man!
You've got to work harder than that.
You both just told me that your families had families and kids.
Come on!
Okay, no, no, no, no.
Are you getting to, like, trust?
Maddy, I completely sympathize with you.
He is enormously difficult.
Completely.
I'm on your side.
I've completely abandoned... No, I'm just kidding.
Go ahead.
Wait, I'm just cooling off some tea here.
So, anyway, go on.
Do you mean, like, trust and caring or...?
Being good, probably.
Being good.
Honest.
Well, you know, honest.
If you're confessing to a crime, you're being honest.
That doesn't necessarily mean you're going to be loved, right?
Yeah.
So, I mean, it's good that you don't know.
You know, yeah, you got to be a moral person.
Good acts, good deeds.
Fighting the good fight.
Standing up to evil.
Pursuing virtue.
And Maddy, you know this deep down, I think, because one of the first complaints that you had, of the more than one, I believe, about Marco, was that he did not stand up to his family.
Yeah.
Right?
So you would like him to have some moral courage, more moral courage, and stand up to his family, right?
Because you, if you're thinking about babies, you're in nest-cleaning mode, right?
Yes.
Nest-cleaning mode is... Wait, what?
I already told him, you have to clean up your life.
Oh yeah, absolutely.
Listen, when a friend of mine was having a baby years ago, we spent three days at his place cleaning it from top to bottom.
Like pulling the fridge out, pulling the stove out, like all the stuff you normally don't do till you move.
Like we just cleaned that place top to bottom and that's the nesting instinct.
Baby's coming home, things gotta be clean.
And it's the same thing with relationships as it is with germs, right?
Because relationships can be far more dangerous than germs.
There's medicine for germs, there's not medicines for relational dysfunctions necessarily, right?
So you would like him To be more brave is the way you see it.
Now, I think that he is brave.
He's having this conversation.
He's talking about this stuff.
It's difficult.
He's, you know, I mean, so I think that he is brave.
I think so too.
But I don't think that you're giving him quite enough motive to be brave.
Because if you want him to stand up to his family, like if I tell you, like let's say you're in the ocean, right?
And there's been a shipwreck and you're clinging to some piece of wood and it's kind of keeping you afloat and so on and it keeps you protected from the sharks and all that.
And then I say, hey man, just jump into my boat here.
But the boat is riding low in the water.
It's got giant holes in it, right?
And you're like, I don't know, man.
I'm not sure that that's a better place than this.
Right?
So if you want him to be brave for you, then you have to be worth that bravery.
And if you are putting him down or you do feel that he's not standing up or he's, you know, whatever, right?
And look, there's stuff to criticize.
I get all of that.
I get all of that.
And we'll talk about that sort of role of criticism stuff, but you also have to give him something worth fighting for.
Oh, we're getting a laugh out of Marco there.
What was that?
Right after I told him I was going to betray him, I take his side.
Hey, that's just how I play, man.
That's how I play.
I agree.
To be honest, he has been standing up.
Especially after this, at least.
Because you have, right?
You have dissociated yourself from this incredibly destructive family of origin, right?
Yeah.
I didn't see this coming.
Before it happened, he was already making he was kind of he was kind of doing the work if that makes sense yeah and um yeah and yeah Okay, so that's coming along.
There's one other question I need to ask, and I'm sorry to have to ask it.
You can, of course, tell me you don't want to answer it, and you don't have to answer it in any detail.
But given what happened with Marco's father and mother, like this coldness, this lack of sexuality, how was the sex... I mean, I know it's 11 months, so you're probably pretty rabbity and all that, but the sex life prior to the vacation?
I'm happy to say.
Yeah, go for it.
I know the answer.
Well, it hasn't been cold from my end.
It's For a while before, Marco made me up to something.
It was very cold from Marco's end.
I don't think he's used to Real intimacy, and I kind of always wanted much more depth, and I think almost Marco's made sex like a masturbatory act, if that makes sense.
Not hugely.
But I do appreciate the implicit criticism of Marco when we're talking about your sex life, because that way he's just not used to real intimacy like I am, you see.
No, I'm not either.
Like, it's just, I mean, for a while Marco withdrew.
for a while.
That's what I'm getting at.
Okay, and so let's hear from Marco, since it was his situation.
So Marco, first of all, do you agree?
And secondly, if so, why?
Yeah, I think I agree.
Why it's not going so well, is that the question?
Why did you withdraw, if you agree with Maddy?
Yeah, I think, so at the beginning, I think the sex was good.
Then we moved in together.
I think I started withdrawing when Maddie... I know this might sound weird, but when she kind of became aggressive on the family and kids... When she started saying that she wanted that very soon... Well, shit, you know why, right?
No, no, no, I know why and I'm not criticizing her.
No, no, no, but you know why you didn't want to have sex with a woman who says she wants babies now?
Um...
Wasn't right.
I mean, yeah, it's like a, it's like what?
Yeah.
Cognitive dissonance is like, no, no, no.
You guys are overthinking that, which, you know, I appreciate.
I'm a big one for overthinking.
Uh, but, uh, no, you were, you were afraid that she was going to get pregnant.
Yeah.
I mean, is it, is it more simple than, you know, all this other stuff?
Yeah.
I mean, Oh my gosh, Marco, I can't believe it!
I mean, I was taking the pill and everything, but I'm pregnant!
Oh, I don't think you are!
I'm not taking the pill!
No, no, I'm just saying that deep down, if you... Listen, I believe that there's probably about half the human population, it's not necessarily because both parties agreed to have kids, right?
Yeah.
Oh, that actually happened to my father as well.
He got sick in marriage, he got trapped.
And we don't know, I mean, this literally could be, I mean, it's called sperm jacking, and again, we don't know how far this would have gone, but it can be, hey, that oral sex was great, let me spit into my hand and put it in my hat, right?
So this can be any number of things, right?
I could say, yeah.
So, I mean, if the woman's baby-hungry and the man is ambivalent, then sex becomes... and it's not, to me, it's not like a conscious assessment of Maddie's personality and her capacity for subterfuge or anything like that.
I'm just saying that there's kind of an instinctual thing, that if the woman's baby-hungry and the man is ambivalent, he's, you know, he's got a An unconscious motivation to avoid.
Yeah.
To avoid sex, right?
That makes sense.
Yeah.
And again, it's not supposed to be some objective judgment.
Oh, she's gonna get pregnant on purpose, oops, right?
I mean, it's just, it's a risk, right?
Yep.
No, that, yeah, that makes sense.
Okay, good.
So again, again, there's times to quote, overthink things, and then there's times not, and I think that would be, right?
Yeah.
Okay.
Plus, because, you know, the man wants to be wanted for himself and not just as the mechanism for baby-making, right?
Yes.
Then you become eminently dispensable, at least psychologically.
Yes.
All right, all right.
Okay, so does that sort of help with regards to that?
Because it wasn't like you didn't want sex, right?
Because when you were on your trip, right, you wanted sex, you had sex, and so that's not the situation, but you had this connection like suddenly being made between sexuality and children, right?
You know, for like the loosey-goosey porn generation, that's kind of like a shock, right?
As I've said in the show before, you know, sex is a big person's game that makes real people.
Yeah.
It's a big responsibility, yeah.
Yeah, like having that suddenly rise in your brain, it's kind of an anti-aphrodisiac, if that makes any sense?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And so, Maddie, when you sit there and say, "Oh, he's just not that much into real intimacy like me and he's using sexuality as a masturbatory device," like that's dripping with contempt and hostility.
And I don't think it's accurate.
I think that you're kind of missing the point, right?
So that should be a moment of humbleness.
Where you can say, and you know, not with self-blame or anything, it's just a fact, like, I was being extremely caustic, I was insulting him to the core, and it turns out I was not correct.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Boy, she doesn't like that, does she?
Not a big fan of the oops, right?
Fine, I will say okay, but that's it.
That's all you're getting out of me is an okay.
No, but that's important.
And the reason I'm saying that is if you guys are going to be together, you have to find a way to appreciate and like each other's company.
And if you say to a man, You're incapable of real intimacy and you're using my body as a masturbatory device.
But I can't imagine why he doesn't want to have sex with me.
Yeah.
I mean, come on.
I mean, that is true, unfortunately, of the horrible, predatory teenage boy who molested you when you were a child.
But to put that on... And he understands that, right, deep down, that you're putting him in that category of the teenage boy, right?
Yeah.
And that's not... I mean, that can't possibly work.
work?
No.
Because everything you just said about his sexuality would have applied even more so to the teenage boy than to him, right?
Yeah.
And while my horror and rage at the teenage boy who molested you knows no bounds, if you think he's close to that category, lack of intimacy, using somebody else as a masturbation device or whatever, I don't see how the relationship can work.
If that association is anywhere in the vicinity, right?
I agree.
Please don't be like my molester is not any kind of mating cry, right?
No.
No, it's not.
I know it's a ridiculous subject to sort of laugh about, but when it's put that bluntly, you get how kind of crazy it is, right?
Yeah.
Okay, so, what other things that you could do... Now, if you guys aim at just fixing the relationship, you're going to just end up being manipulative.
You know, it's like those annoying people when you're in a conflict with them and they say, well, what do you want me to say?
So, if you guys are just changing your behavior to fix the relationship, it's going to be innately manipulative, but if you have
actions that you would like to pursue that are in the realm of sort of you know virtue and moral courage and all that kind of stuff then I think that your relationship can be healed or repaired and you can look at this as one of those near accidents that really compels you to drive better so to speak or maybe even a real accident that compels you to drive better so if you could sort of just give me like the top sort of three for both of you
Fantasy honourable behaviours, like old school Shogun stuff, whatever you want to associate with that.
Old school stuff, honourable behaviours that you could enact, that you think would give you the sort of maximum pride and respect for yourself.
For ourselves or for each other?
No, God no, not for each other.
Oh God no.
No, no, no.
No, no, please stop lecturing each other, because you're getting it wrong.
Yeah, yeah.
Right, you're getting it wrong.
So, no, for yourselves, independent of the relationship, like you say, okay, well, if the relationship works or the relationship doesn't work, you know, what can I do to act in a more noble way?
I mean, I'm not sure this answers the question, but I think something I've been thinking of recently.
You know, trying to improve is trying to be the same person I am, trying to be myself with everyone I'm around.
What I mean by that is, you know, me being the same person when I'm with Maddy, and the same person when I'm at work, the same person with my father, and trying to, yeah, just trying to be the same honest person with everyone and not always, you know... Well, you cannot use people at work as masturbatory devices.
No, I'm just kidding.
Alright, okay, so you're talking about like a kind of integrity, An authenticity and a refusal to manipulate, because every time we falsify our existence, it's either out of fear or out of a desire to manipulate, right?
Exactly, yeah.
Not trying to fit into all these different worlds, because they're all very different.
Just trying to be my own person, even when I know that I'm surrounded by people who are very different.
To my view.
And I guess what I've been doing is I've kind of been a bit of a coward.
I've just been kind of fitting in.
Because, you know, I got quite good social kind of... I can perceive things quite well.
So I tend to, you know, just fit in with who I am to make that, you know, relationship work.
Listen, I think what you're saying is wonderful.
I just wanted to put back the caveat.
Please don't call yourself a coward.
These are survival strategies that you adopted as a child that help you not die or be abandoned or starve or, you know, whatever, right?
So, you know, these adaptive strategies are not serving your adult life.
It's time to let them go.
But if you call yourself a coward, then you're saying you made irrational decisions to conform to crazy people for no reason whatsoever, which is not true.
Yeah, that's a good point.
Yeah, I guess what I'm saying is what you're saying is just, I want to kind of leave that behind.
Leave those habits behind and try and become, you know, my own person.
Yeah, it's like that annoying song from Englishman in New York, be yourself no matter what they say.
When of course Sting himself is the most ridiculous cliche of leftist claptrap that I've ever heard, but anyway.
Okay, so more authenticity and more security in yourself and saying, you know, here I am world, like, love me or hate me, this is what you get.
Exactly, and I think that will also help me because it will attract people who fit into that life view and it will push people that don't fit that view away, I think.
Well, of course, you're calling me and that's one of the things that I do is, you know, here I am, this is the truth that I'm making a case for, you know, love me or hate me, this is the way it is, right?
Exactly.
Got it.
And, you know, there will be times where you'll be like, oh shit, did I really do that?
That was a bad act, right?
I mean, there'll be times when you don't like it, which is why people don't do it, but for the most part it's bloody well worth it.
Okay, so Maddy?
I think I have two things for me.
One of them is actually kind of similar to Marco in a sense, is integrity.
Well, partly like, obviously, I overlooked key things with Marco, but in a different sense, like I hide in a way, like even Even the fact that I probably made myself less attractive than I am.
I hide a great deal because my mum was even jealous of my good looks.
Are you aware of why you made yourself less attractive?
I think part of it was, say, even Marco was going through, I put other people first.
Too much?
It's not me.
I act like a victim.
This is the overthinking stuff.
Sorry to be annoying.
I'm so sorry.
That's so rude.
I do apologize.
No, it's because you want babies.
And you're going to be unattractive after you have babies for a while.
So you want to test if he likes you for your looks.
Because if he likes you for your looks, and you have a baby with him, then when you're unattractive, he's going to stray.
So you make yourself unattractive to find if he's still committed to you, so that when you have the baby, you know how he's going to behave.
I appreciate the big analysis stuff and all of that, and I really do.
I mean, good Lord, right?
But at the same time, we're mammals, you know?
And we have basic things that happen with us, right?
So anyway, go on.
Well, that's a big reason why I liked Marco as well in the beginning, because he didn't even... He liked me for other things than my looks.
And you always said that I always like that when other people have always kind of liked me for my looks.
But yeah, like in a big way, I've diminished, but even beyond just looks, but I have definitely almost deliberately made myself look worse than I don't need to.
And, but also even say with certain like talents of mine or something, I hide a lot.
I hide a lot in this kind of way.
And also, I guess, anxiety level.
I think I act with too much of a sense of urgency, and that kind of makes me angry.
Yeah, and obviously act like the way I have been on this call, even.
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah, that's good.
Is there anything you can do about this son-of-a-bitch predator who might still be out there?
Maybe.
I don't know.
I'll have to look.
Well, obviously I know who he is.
Maybe he's already in jail.
Maybe somebody turned him in.
That's got to be sitting in your brain somewhere that he's still around kids, probably.
He's out, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
OK.
Yeah.
And yeah, I think, yeah, I think it might be, it could be even levels of shame to do with all that kind of stuff, obviously.
I mean, that could even be why I kind of... Oh, you mean, like, that you feel ashamed for having... I know I've had, like, I've kind of dealt with... I have before had a lot of, like, sexual shame.
I don't know what that means.
Or, like, kind of, I felt very ashamed of...
Even when I was a teenager, I couldn't openly like boys and all this kind of stuff.
I had a very overbearing mother and I felt very dirty in a weird way.
But yeah, I think that also might be a reason why... And do you know why that happened?
Why I felt ashamed?
- Yes. - Well, at the time it almost felt like too much pressure.
I felt like it was all just, like, the only reason someone would want that, especially a... Nope.
Oh, tell me.
I'm so sorry.
Oh my God.
I'm so sorry.
I really am, but I gotta be, gotta be frank with this.
Because we, you know, we kind of, and listen, I've done this too, and it's no disrespect for you at all, right?
But it's, it's much more simple than that.
Which is, you don't want to die as a child.
Okay, so it's not about internalization.
Okay, it's about internalization, but look, if you have a sexual predator around... You've got to make yourself look worse.
They don't want you or something.
No, no, no, no.
No, no, no.
That's true, absolutely, for sure.
But the question is, if a sexual predator is facing Almost certain death in jail if he goes to jail for pedophilia, right?
Because pedophiles, given how many people in jail, are there partly because they were preyed upon sexually as children.
Pedophiles, as you know, don't do well in prison at all, right?
No.
So if there's a pedophile around and he gets wind that someone is going to out him to the police, some child, what's he going to do?
He's going to get that child.
I don't know.
I'm sorry, he's going to what?
Get that child.
He's going to stop that.
I don't know.
I don't know.
Stop that child.
He's going to kill that child.
He certainly is.
Yeah.
I mean, I'm not saying it's as risky as testifying against, um, oh gosh, Kevin, the guy from, um, the usual suspects, Kevin Spacey.
I'm not going to say it's as risky as testifying against Kevin Spacey.
That's just a joke.
Or is it?
But, um, That as a child if you're facing a sexual predator If you say I'm going to go to the teacher I'm going to go to the police my family can't help me.
I'm going to tell the teacher right hmm Well as a child you have an instinctual sense of the danger that you're in if you try and cross a sexual predator, right?
Because, you know, the machinery of justice is slow.
The guy's going to get out.
He's going to get a tip-off.
He's going to get warned.
He's going to get a sense.
His spider sense is going to start tingling.
He might get out on bail.
There's endless opportunities for him to do you significant harm, right?
Now maybe what he'll do is he'll just kill you.
And again, I'm not saying this is objectively true in all situations, but this is the odds that we play as children.
And we know that children as young as 16 months can Do mathematical calculations, odds calculations, right?
Or, maybe he'll sit you down and he'll say, if you say anything, I'm gonna set fire to your house, I'm gonna kill your family, I'm gonna kill your pet, like whatever, right?
Because this guy's facing kind of a death sentence in prison, right?
And we already know he's a son of a bitch because he's molesting a kid, right?
So as a child, you have to perform this calculation.
Which is, am I going to be saved from this person, or am I going to be put in more risk and more danger?
Plus, of course, if your family gets angry at you for talking about this, then they have betrayed you in the worst possible way, and again, as a child As an infant, or as a toddler, parental rejection is a death sentence to us, right?
So now, your family would probably not have dealt with this well at all, and the legal system, for a variety of reasons, doesn't exactly protect kids in this situation.
So, if you put the blame where the blame belongs, and kids are perfectly capable of doing that.
I mean, you go snatch, you know, they say it's as easy as taking candy from a baby.
You try that sometime, right?
You know, if you go and take some kid's Halloween candy, they're going to jump up and down, they're going to scream blue murder, and they're going to say, that guy took my Halloween candy!
They have no problem assigning moral blame where moral blame is, right?
But there's this mysterious short circuit when it comes to this kind of predation, or I guess other kinds of abuse and so on, and the reason it happens is that if you internalize it and say, well, I am the one who's responsible, I am the one who was dirty, I did something, I must have done something, right?
And that short circuit is you outing the predator and thus ensures the greatest chance you have of survival.
So that internalization is, like when you say, I'm somehow to blame, I'm somehow responsible, it's a fight or flight mechanism designed to keep you alive.
Yeah.
It's not a big psychological blah blah blah, right?
I mean, it has effects that are deep and powerful and all that, but don't blame yourself for that.
That's as much as running from a tiger.
I'm such a coward, I ran from a tiger.
It's like, well, of course you ran from a tiger.
Of course you ran from the damn tiger.
Because, you know, especially when you're four.
Right?
Yeah, yeah.
So, and the reason, so, because we kind of get lost in this analysis stuff.
You know, that old ridiculous analysis paralysis, right?
There's a little bit of truth in it.
But it's just straight up survival mechanism.
That makes sense, yeah.
And listen, I say this as a guy who got in, you know, enormous trouble many years ago.
for standing up for children, particularly, you know, adult children of child abuse and so on.
And, you know, you're called a cult leader and all that kind of stuff.
So, society's incredibly hostile to people who stand up for children, and they're incredibly hostile in general towards children who stand up for themselves.
And this is more true twenty years ago, even, in some ways, than it is now.
And so, you were, like, you internalized this stuff So that you didn't get maimed, threatened, or killed.
And it's a perfectly sensible survival strategy.
And you would have been crazy to do anything else.
It was the healthiest thing to do.
It was the necessary thing to do.
I'm sorry that it was the healthiest thing to do, but I mean, if I'm wrong, tell me, but I can't see it any other way.
No, you're right.
And hopefully that lifts a bit of a burden from you, right?
Because if you internalize it, you're like, oh, why would I feel dirty?
I was stained.
I was besmirched.
I'm unclean.
I'm damaged.
It's like, no!
No!
It's like that guy who got trapped in some canyon when he was out biking and hiking, and he had to cut his own arm off.
It's like, oh, I guess I'm just a masochist.
It's like, no, you had to survive, right?
Mm-hmm.
I mean, don't internalize it now what you had to do in order to survive.
Yeah.
Okay, sorry about that annoying interruption, but I think it's important.
Take that burden off yourself.
Take that burden off yourself in the same way that I was saying to Marco, take the label of coward off yourself.
Take the label of dirty off myself.
Take the label, oh my god, no.
Don't, don't, look, I mean, that's, you had to internalize that stuff in order to survive.
Because resistance, you remember, when these instincts evolved, society was much more chaotic and dangerous than it is now.
Yeah.
Our instincts don't know that 10,000 years have passed.
Of course not, right?
This is why people like first-person shooters, right?
Or why people play Dragonvale, which is basically just icon management for no purpose, right?
Because we don't know.
We think we're farming.
We think we're shooting.
We think we're fighting.
So we think that we're still in a situation where a kid can be rubbed out with virtually no consequences.
Yeah.
Okay, so good, good.
Let's make sure that's the case, right?
Don't blame yourself for what you did to survive, but honor that, right?
Okay, so is there anything else that pops into mind about what could be done?
And I'm not looking for something.
I'm just genuinely curious.
It probably is.
I can't think.
I've gone blank now.
I'm just thinking about...
Do you see anything in there, too?
That could be an open-ended conversation from down the road.
Now the last thing that I wanted to mention is this, right?
Look, bad things have happened.
No doubt, right?
Now the most obvious bad thing that has happened is this infidelity, right?
And that's a big issue and I'm not going to downplay it in any way, shape or form.
But it comes out of a complex set of decisions that need to be understood.
Right?
So blame... Look, you have every right to be angry, Matty.
Every right to be angry.
And you shouldn't pretend that you don't.
And you shouldn't try and swallow it.
You've got to be authentic about that.
And yes, absolutely, Marco, you have reasons to feel guilty and ashamed and all of that.
And there's nothing wrong with those feelings at all.
But if you want to stay in the relationship, you have to find some way to turn those to good.
We've actually been surprisingly amicable about it.
I thought it might be an issue because I was thinking maybe I don't have enough boundaries about this.
No, you guys have come to the cliff edge of habit.
You've come to the cliff edge.
Now, you haven't gone over the cliff edge like your parents did, so good for you, but now you need to turn and run like hell in the opposite direction, right?
So let me ask you this.
Looking at each other, if you were to pick the top thing to apologize for, and apology doesn't mean that you're a bad person.
A lot of times if we apologize to our partner, Sometimes we feel like we're giving them a weapon to use against us in the future.
We're giving them power over us.
We're giving them, what, a control or whatever, right?
But that's not the case, right?
You can apologize for doing something wrong and not feel like you're a bad person.
Like fundamentally evil or something like that.
If you were, you wouldn't be calling, right?
So if you were to look at each other, and I don't care who goes first, but I think it's an important thing.
Just pick something to apologize for and apologize as honestly as you can.
And that usually does a lot to thaw distance and defenses.
Yeah, I mean, for me, I'd like to apologize for the cheating, obviously.
That was terrible.
Yeah, no, you're too clipped, man.
You're too clipped.
Maddy, am I right?
That was terrible.
Don't do that.
Don't be like, hey, man, I have my pocket lawyer who's going to read my apology for me.
Right?
Come on, you broke her heart, man.
And you betrayed a woman who's had more than her fill of betrayal.
I mean, you got to connect to it a little bit more than obviously, right?
Yeah, no, I feel really bad about it.
I feel bad because I see I see what I could lose with it.
I see all the bad feelings that come from it.
Seeing all the bad stuff that it did to you, to me and to us.
And I guess I just don't want to do that ever again.
You have a tough time being vulnerable in this, right?
What do you think she's going to do if you're heartfelt and apologetic?
Maybe be more understanding, I guess.
Yeah, but you have a fear that if you're really vulnerable and heartfelt about your apology, I think you fear that she's going to hurt you.
Maybe, yeah.
Does the apology touch you at all emotionally, Madison?
No.
No.
So that's the challenge, right?
Yeah.
Okay, why don't you show him how it's done?
What would you like to apologize to him for?
I'm really sorry for having made you into something you're not.
I'm sorry if I've made you think you're a coward and you're not because you're here on this call.
You've faced up greatly.
You've done a lot more than your father or your grandfather would have done.
You're here.
That's a big deal.
I'm sorry.
No, you're still not showing him how it's done.
And listen, you don't have to do this in this call.
But I think that's important.
Because if you really want to heal this kind of stuff, like really heartfelt connecting apologies is the way to go.
And listen, whether or not your relationship succeeds, the apologies are essential.
Right?
So you may apologize and realize, you know what, this is like, we don't have enough to keep us together, too much damage has been done.
The apologies are essential.
Mm-hmm.
Regardless of what happens.
And if they're mechanical, I mean, you'll know the difference.
Like, a real apology is like, you're heartfelt, your voice thickens up, you know, whatever, right?
I mean, it's really, you really connect.
Because to trust each other, you need to know that you get how much you've hurt each other, that you've really connected, that the trust comes from the authenticity.
And if there's a mechanical reading a script aspect to the apologies, that won't be enough to build the trust.
In my opinion.
That makes sense.
So, again, we don't have to do it in this call, but I think that's important.
Listen, everyone has something to apologize for.
Everyone.
Because, you know, we all run around doing things in life and bump into each other and bruise each other from time to time.
So we all have things that we apologize for.
And, I mean, I'm a good husband and dad, but I still will apologize from time to time about things, and that's perfectly natural and healthy.
But I think the apology, it's funny, you know, with apology for wronging someone, we also connect with the anger at people who programmed us so badly that we ended up doing that kind of stuff.
Yeah.
So, yeah, I think that's the major stuff I wanted to go over.
Was there anything else you guys wanted to mention?
No, I mean, I think it was an extremely useful call, Stefan.
I mean, I'm really impressed with what we've covered and there's a lot of good stuff here that I think we both need to process.
It's kind of like a weird speaking in tongues talent, isn't it?
Like, I mean, it's just kind of wild how these conversations go.
And kudos to you guys for doing a fantastic job with some very difficult material.
Yeah.
But no, it's been really good.
I think we've got a lot of, yeah, a lot of things to look into now.
And I definitely understand, even just like family and that, it all makes a lot of sense.
So no, thank you very much, Stefan.
I really mean, yeah, thank you very much.
You're very welcome.
Listen, I absolutely wish the best for you guys.
I really, really do.
You are two great people.
You are two great, great people and you should I hope that you can find a way to appreciate that in each other.
And I'm so sorry about everything that happened to you guys as children.
It's given you a burden, and it's made you stronger.
And if you can shrug off the burden, you'd be amazed.
You know, like, if you carried an 80-pound backpack on a hike for, like, a day, and then you... I could fly giant steps, I was doing song references and all that.
But you guys can do amazing stuff with your life.
I hope you can do it with each other.
I hope you can.
And I also hope that you will keep me posted about how it's going with you guys.
Yeah.
No, definitely.
This call is definitely going to help us.
Hopefully together, as you say.
But no, super, super helpful.
And yeah, we'll tell you how it goes.
All right.
All the best, guys.
I hope you have a wonderful time.
I look forward to hearing from you.
And thanks again for your time today.
Thanks a lot, Stefan.
Thanks.
Have a good weekend.
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