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Jan. 11, 2022 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:44:24
"My Wife Wants Kids - at 45?!?" Freedomain Call In
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Time Text
Okay, do you want to start by reading your... Yeah, I can.
I just wanted to thank you for... I didn't expect such a fast response.
I just, I thank you for taking the time to talk to me.
My pleasure, my pleasure.
Okay, so, let's see.
Do you want me to just read the whole email from the top?
Indeed.
Okay.
Alright, I'll try not to I might get a little bit emotional reading it.
I've been listening to your show for seven to eight years now.
Never even thought about calling in, but I'm in desperate need for some no-bullshit wisdom.
I'm at a crisis point.
I fear that I've ruined my marriage.
My wife and I got married eight years ago.
in 2011 with a lot of hope for the future and a plan to start a family.
There was one problem with that plan though.
My wife is significantly older than me.
I was 30 at the time and she had just turned 38.
I understood the difficulties associated with her age and trying to conceive and I think she did as well.
However, she did not want to start trying right away.
She wanted to finish school first.
For the first two years of our marriage, I supported her while she was in school and then for another year after that while she looked for a job.
At that point, she wanted to wait until I finished school.
I started a two-year program in 2014 to train for the job that I have now.
The whole time the clock was ticking and I was becoming increasingly worried about it.
I would occasionally express my worry, but I feel I failed both of us by not being forceful enough.
Or not stating outright how horrible I knew our plan was.
She would often get very upset when I broached the topic and I censored myself just to keep the peace.
All the while I was screaming internally.
Finally, two years ago, we started trying.
She was almost 44 at the time.
Since then, we've managed to conceive one time.
Sorry, this is the part I knew I was going to get emotional.
No, it's horrible.
I mean, miscarriages are brutal, brutal on the system.
Yeah, especially after.
Okay, I'll keep reading.
So, we can see one time in March this year, her pregnancy ended in an early miscarriage at eight weeks gestation.
That was the worst heartache I've ever experienced.
And it feels like a part of me has died.
And then it gets to the reason I fear I've ruined our marriage this winter while on the thick of my existential discontent regarding the future and our failed attempts to start a family.
I got deeply emotionally involved with a female coworker.
She shared a lot of my intellectual interests.
We understood each other very well, and we developed a very deep connection rapidly.
It became an emotional affair.
It felt like an oasis of life in the increasingly empty desert that was my life.
My wife actually found out about it, and I told her I would put an end to it, and I did.
How did you find out about it?
Well, it was kind of carelessness on my part, I guess.
We had been exchanging a lot of text messages through Messenger app on Facebook, basically.
And I didn't even think.
And they were.
They were very personal conversations that her and I were having very often, and.
And one day I had just left my Facebook open and my wife used my laptop for something.
She opened it up and she saw what must have been a month and a half or two months of very personal conversations between me and this other woman at work.
Right.
And she confronted me about it and I told her that I was going to put a stop to it and I really believed I would at the time and I didn't.
And there's more I could say about that.
Can I just, just as we continue, I just want to make sure I get my placeholders correct.
Is it my guess that the woman you were having an emotional affair with was younger?
Yeah, she's 36.
But when you started the emotional affair?
Yes.
And that was this winter.
There was a lot of things that came to a head.
It actually, uh, when I was kind of in the thick of that situation with her, when my wife got pregnant and it was kind of weird, but, um, a lot of things came to a head then.
But, um, at the time, um, but, uh, but yeah, she's younger, she's 36, but she's also a single mother.
And what happened to the father of her children?
So he, I guess, divorced her back in 2010.
She told me that he was abusive, emotionally abusive.
Of course, I only have one side of the story.
Okay.
I'll bookmark this.
Let's keep going.
Okay.
You want me to finish the rest of the email?
Okay.
So I said I would put an end to it and I did for a time.
This coworker was in love with me and she didn't keep her distance.
I also didn't push her away because I realized Much to my dismay that I had fallen in love with her as well.
Or at least it felt like love.
Sure.
It often does.
It was very strong because my soul couldn't bear the dishonesty anymore.
I came out and confessed to my wife last night that we were still interacting and that I was in love with her.
Her heart is broken.
My emotions are a confused mess, but I know that I'm devastated to know that I hurt her like this, and now all I want is to make things right.
We just started seeing a fertility specialist, and I want to support her through all that, though I'm terrified of being heartbroken by a miscarriage again, and I'm so uncertain about the future, terrified of being swept up into more heartache and disappointment.
She isn't really talking to me very much right now.
I should say we actually did talk a little bit after I sent this email, but my apologies have fallen flat.
I don't know how to fix it.
I'm facing my own inadequacies and shortcomings now, and I'm frankly ashamed of the man I see in the mirror.
Do you think there could be a way past this without blowing up either of our lives?
That's a hell of a story.
It's a hell of a story.
And how do you feel having written it and sent it and now talking about it?
Well, I feel, truthfully, after having some conversations with my wife, I feel a little more clarity about what I want.
I'm also I'm also feeling maybe a little disconnected from my emotions right now to some extent, just because this is a little bit surreal.
I didn't expect this fast of a response and everything.
I wrote this email.
I wrote it probably in about 15 minutes.
Can I just ask you for a favor?
There's a lot of crinkling and moving and stuff like that in the background.
Can you just try and hold still?
Otherwise I spend forever in post-production.
Thank you.
Yeah, sorry about that.
Okay, so you feel a bit disconnected emotionally?
Now, just out of curiosity, what do you think people are thinking when they hear this about your story?
What do you think their... I hate to say, picture the comment section, you know, because that can sometimes be a little rough.
I try not to.
What do you think people's initial response is going to be to the data that you've provided so far?
Probably what's the deal with this guy and the decisions he's made or not making or possibly – It's a little jaw-dropping.
I'll just tell you, like straight up, right?
I mean, just so we get this all out of the way.
To me, it's a little jaw-dropping that you get married.
She was 38, right?
Yes.
Yeah.
So you get married.
She's 38, right?
And she just turned 38.
She just turned 38.
And then she's like, let's not try for kids now, because I'm in school.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's like, what the what now?
Yeah.
I and I, like, why would she want to go back to school?
Why would she want to go back to school if she's gonna be a mom?
I know.
I'm happy to hear the reasoning that I'm not following, right?
Maybe there's something that I'm not following.
So, tell me what the logic is here.
I don't know if I can tell you particularly what the logic is of it.
I can tell you what she told me when we had the conversations we did have.
about it when we were able to have conversations about it.
She felt that it was very important that she have – she went to school for physical therapy.
That even if when we had kids, if – and she were to be like a stay-at-home mother, that if something were to happen to me, she wanted to have something that she could fall back on.
Yeah, it's called insurance.
Like I still don't understand.
Like you take out life insurance and then if you get hit by a bus, she gets a million dollars or something, which is more than she could make in like 20 years of physical therapy.
So I'd be – still, I'm not quite – like hey, I mean of course somebody – Of course, if you are a woman and you get married to a guy and he gets hit by a bus, then you're in trouble, right?
But that's exactly why the entire industry of insurance exists.
So, again, I'm not quite following this, why she has to go to school.
And also, was she going to school to upgrade her physical therapy or was she going to school for something else or what?
She had already gone to school.
for nursing.
It was a two-year program for a physical therapist assistant, which is currently what she's doing now.
What happened to the nursing?
We could get lost in the weeds talking about some of that.
No, no.
These are not weeds.
You've got to trust me.
I've been doing this for 15 years, and I kind of have some idea what I'm doing.
Just not weeds.
Just trust me.
What happened to the nursing?
She... So... Let me think.
It's hard to go back and try to retrace her rationale because ultimately... Just roughly.
Did she not like it?
Did not pay enough money?
Her plan... She actually... When we were still dating, for like a year and a half when our relationship started, we were... It was a long distance relationship.
She eventually moved down here.
with me and immediately started nursing school at that time.
Wait, when you started dating?
She wanted to get into physical therapy.
She wanted to get into physical therapy.
Yeah, and that was in 2008.
She wanted to get into physical therapy.
Okay, you understand.
First of all, hang on.
Sorry to interrupt.
This is your life, right?
This can't be the first time.
It sounds like I'm asking you to translate something from Sanskrit and you have to look it up on the internet, right?
So did she have a profession before 2008 when she started to go into nursing?
She was – where she lived, she had basically a job at a factory that made doors.
Okay, so she had a job at a factory, she wanted to get out of the factory, and she wanted to get into nursing, right?
Did she take nursing?
She wanted to get out of the factory, she wanted to move down with me, and she wanted to get... Her goal was to get into physical therapy eventually.
She felt like... What?
How does nursing fit into that?
It doesn't.
Okay, I just want to make sure I'm not missing something, that's all.
I mean, if there's no good decision-making here, then... It does.
Okay, so she took two years of nursing and then she wanted to take two more years of physical therapy, is that right?
Yes.
Wasn't all this kind of expensive?
It wasn't terribly expensive.
She's not in any debt anymore for her schooling.
She did physical therapy at a community college locally.
I don't think the nursing school was very expensive.
Why did she take nursing?
I'm still trying to follow that.
There is no good reason.
I was a little bit naive at the time.
I was a little bit naive at the time.
I even had some misgivings, but I guess I thought things would work out. - Hmm.
Yes, the reason I'm asking this is that may be a pattern, right?
I have misgivings, like I would with the woman who's in her 40s trying to have her first baby, but I hope things, or I think things will work out, right?
And that hasn't been happening, right?
No, it hasn't, and I just, it's been a slow realization over the past few years that Things are not working out like I had hoped they would.
Now, when did you first, I mean, did you think when you met her?
She's 38, right?
And you were 30, right, at the time?
Oh, when I met her, I was 26.
And she was, it would have been 2007.
It was 2007 when we first started dating, so she would have been 34.
Okay, and when did you first think that you might want to become a father?
As early as 20.
Like, I pretty much always wanted to be a father.
Okay.
Now, when would you say that you thought about female fertility and the fertility window and this, that, and the other?
Not a whole lot until – Not a whole lot until we were making plans to get married.
So from her age, 34 to 38, you dated, but you didn't really think about, well, she's getting older, we should move this along.
But around the age of 38, you started to think about her fertility window, and then she spent another two years in school.
Yeah.
I mean, I know it's dumb.
Well, no, listen, it's not dumb because you listen to this show, so you're not dumb.
You're not dumb, right?
There's something else, right?
There's something else.
Okay, so she says, when did she take the nursing degree?
That was 2008 to 2009 or 2010.
And did she ever work as a nurse?
Yeah, she worked at a nursing home for a few years.
Ah, okay.
And then she wanted something else, right?
Yeah.
Yeah, I guess she wanted to have something that made her enough money or that she enjoyed to some extent while she was getting ready to and going to school for physical therapy.
Now, did she also want to be a mother?
So help me understand why there's all of this career planning.
I mean, she's had a couple of decades to plan a career, right?
Yes.
So I guess I'm trying to sort of understand why she's doing all of this career planning and education and so on when she's aiming to be a mom.
I feel like in order To answer that, like, I feel like I have to kind of go back and try to remember some of the rationales she gave at the time.
I've basically kind of come to the realization over time that it was always a bad plan from the beginning.
It was never a good idea.
I don't know why.
I know that I was naive and I thought things would work out.
I know that she had Always had difficulty confronting the reality of the situation.
Once she had a certain plan, she decided on a particular path she wanted to take, it was hard to logic her out of it, I guess.
Right.
And when did you notice that she was very bad at making these kinds of decisions?
I guess, like I said, when I first started thinking about ADN, Age and fertility.
When we were engaged, we had a conversation where I expressed my concerns about our plan.
It was always very upsetting for her when I tried to kind of just talk about the reality of the situation.
Like I said in my email, I wasn't forceful enough.
I guess I wouldn't use the term forceful to describe anything that I did.
I voiced my concerns, but I was also afraid that if I gave her an ultimatum or something like that, that she would not want to be with me.
So I basically told her, I have my misgivings, but I want to be with you, come what may.
Sorry to interrupt.
Go ahead.
Well, I was just going to say, I had no idea at the time if we had what it would be like to struggle with infertility.
I had no idea.
I wanted to be a father, but it wasn't like this deep existential need that I felt at the time.
As I've gotten older and time has ticked by, I've realized that I It's one of the most, it might be the most painful thing I've ever experienced, to not have become a father.
And I didn't anticipate that.
If I knew it, that would be like, maybe I would have behaved differently.
Right.
Now, of course, you're how old now?
38.
Yeah.
10 years if you want to become a dad, right?
You can become a dad.
Yes.
I mean, I'm no expert and no doctor, but you gotta understand that when people hear like, she's 45 and we're gonna try and have a baby, come on.
Come on.
Right?
Right.
I mean, am I missing something here?
No.
It's going to be hugely expensive.
I assume you're going to have to get donor eggs, right?
Possibly.
I mean, we might try IVF.
She's 45!
No, but she's 45, man.
The eggs are ancient.
Yeah.
We've talked about adoption, too.
It's something that's on the table.
Well, I don't know.
Again, I've never looked into it, but as far as I understand it, if you want to go with adoption, I'm not sure how keen they are on way older parents.
Yeah.
And is that really fair?
I don't know.
I mean, that's a big, big question, right?
And I also assume that you want your own kid, if you can, right?
Yes, that's preferable.
You're really rolling the dice with adoption, right?
You're really rolling the dice with adoption.
Yeah, I know, and listening to you has kind of made me think about that a lot more deeply.
Which is, you know, and people can get mad at me, and it's like, you know, I think the people who would do adopt, I think it's a great thing to do.
You know, I mean, if you have choices, I think in general most people would rather have their own kid, right?
Yeah, definitely.
So, as far as like shaking you out of unreality, the first thing that I would do is say, you know, gosh, not only the odds of getting pregnant at the age of 45 are tiny, and the odds of it coming to fruition, a healthy child coming out, is tiny, and then you get only one, obviously, right?
Yeah.
I would never have the slightest bit of hope for more than one.
No, and even the hope for one.
Or what you can do is you can start spending tens of thousands of dollars on IVF.
And that's going to be more heartbreak and you're still, again, unless you get donor eggs, in which case you're going to start spend tens of thousands of dollars more to get donor eggs.
And then the baby is, again, you're rolling the dice a little bit with the genetics of who you get the donor eggs from and all that, right?
It's a mess.
If you want to be a father, you're in about the worst situation that you can be in, because if she was 55, you'd say, OK, well, forget it, right?
I'm not even going to bother trying, right?
But you can have years of incredibly expensive, bank-busting heartbreak ahead of you, right?
Yes.
So it's about as bad as it can be, right?
And also, she's not a good decision maker, and I'm not sure how that would fundamentally change.
page.
Like, you have already established the dynamics of your relationship, right?
You've been going out for 10 years, right?
Or so.
Yeah, well, yeah.
Was it 11?
Well, I guess it would have been 12 years now.
12 years, okay.
So 12 years, you're not assertive and she likes you that way.
She gets upset and you shut up, which is disrespectful to both parties, right?
Your concerns should be taken seriously and you should respect her enough to not let her manipulate you in that bullshit way, right?
Right?
I'm upset is not an argument.
And when it's something that's very important to you, such as having a child, she should damn well listen to your concerns because you matter, right?
You're supposed to matter in a relationship.
Your concerns, your fears, it's all supposed to matter.
So when she cries herself into infertility when you desperately want to become a father, that's bullshit.
I agree.
I agree with all of that.
And this is part of the impetus for me.
Writing to you, I've kind of reached the point where I just I can't not assert what it is that I need what it is that I want
I have to that I need to have enough respect for myself to not tolerate I I'm finding it hard to find the words right now.
No, I get it.
I get it.
I understand.
So I guess my question is, let's go back early, right, and figure out how the hell you ended up as a slave to women.
I knew that was coming.
Of course.
There may be unpredictable speeches, but there are not unpredictable patterns, right?
So somewhere, right, you were taught that you're supposed to be of service to women.
And to have your own needs is cruel!
It's mean!
Poor women, they might cry if you have needs that make them feel bad.
And somehow, for you, this is like, yeah, that's legit.
Yeah, that makes sense to me.
That's how things should be.
That's how you survive in the company of women.
So where did that come from?
It's not natural.
It's not natural at all.
Yeah.
Or innate.
Listening to your show has made me think about this a lot.
I've kind of developed an idea I've thought about it a lot.
Can you please, just for the sake of my sanity, just answer the question.
Please don't give me all the back story.
You've had time to think about this.
I'm trying to keep these calls under two hours.
That's partly how I'm going to try and do it.
Less sighing, less pauses, and less explaining, the explaining, the explaining.
Where did you get this idea that to have needs around women was bad?
I know that my mother was – when I was growing up, was very emotionally volatile.
The most traumatic thing that happened there, when I was 12 years old, my mother attempted suicide.
That terrified me.
I know that for years.
What happened?
Well, so it's hard for me to determine, now that I'm older, how much of it was an actual attempt at suicide and how much of it was just a threat of suicide.
My parents had split at that point.
I was with my dad.
Long story short, when my dad dropped me off at my mother's house, we found a 90s.
So it's like on the on the answering machine.
There was a message from my mom, or it was basically, you know, I love you guys.
I love you guys.
I'm so sorry.
I'm so sorry.
And even at 12 years old, I could tell that it sounded kind of like a suicide note.
Apparently, I'm told it's her intention.
She had checked herself into a hotel.
Her intention was to lock herself alone in that hotel room and down a bottle of pills.
There were some people from my church that knew about the situation that had somehow tracked her down.
Some of the memory, my memory of exactly how that occurred is kind of fuzzy.
And after that she was, she was... Well she told people she was going to do it and that's how they knew, right?
Yeah.
So she was telling people, I'm going to kill myself, and she was taking herself off to a hotel, and she was expecting for people to rush and rescue her and save her and all that stuff, right?
Yeah, it seems like that's kind of the thing, and it terrified me.
And for years after that, I lived in this constant state of fear that if I upset her too much, If she got really angry about something, I would be terrified that it was going to be the thing that would finally set her over the edge and she was going to kill herself.
Or if we went out of town with my father, that we were going to come home and find out that she had offed herself while we were gone.
How old did you say you were when she did this?
I was 12.
Did this kind of manipulation show up elsewhere in her life?
I mean, I know that a lot of times, I know that very frequently, and probably in my early 20s, I think when and probably in my early 20s, I think when I had confronted her about some things from my childhood that
She very often, you know, she'd kind of play the victim, do the whole, I did the best I could with the knowledge I had, sort of thing.
Because I got very angry about the fact that when I was a child, I was diagnosed with ADHD.
They put me on all these medications.
I went through the litany of medications when I was in school that I feel like just robbed me of my soul while my brain was developing.
So that was something that I was kind of been angry about.
And when I confronted her about it, she just, I don't know.
It was, she would be upset.
It was about how upset she was.
And she would tell me she did the best she could with the knowledge she had, essentially.
So, I mean, in a way, that's kind of like emotional manipulation, I would think.
And was there anywhere else it showed up?
I don't know.
I mean, those are the kind of examples that come to my mind immediately.
And how's your relationship with her now?
I mean, it's okay.
It's better than it was.
I kind of...
With both of my parents, I decided a few years ago that they were who they were.
I wasn't going to change them.
My relationship with them would be whatever it was going to be, but...
Hang on.
Your relationship with them was going to be whatever it was going to be?
I don't quite understand that.
Right.
Like I guess when I was like in my twenties, I thought maybe I could somehow improve our relationship or something despite the past.
Um, but that didn't work with either of them.
So with my father, I don't even hardly talk to him anymore.
With my mom, I just kind of accepted the way it was and it was what it was.
And why do you barely talk to your dad?
Say what?
Oh... He's kind of... He's always been emotionally distant.
I've I gave up years ago on trying to like you.
When he left my mom, he just there was no emotional support coming from him while I was growing up.
And in my twenties, when I tried to work on our relationship, it was like, I tried to talk to him about real stuff and it was just like, there wasn't a person there.
There wasn't anything happening.
It was, I could never go below the surface level with him.
Um, so eventually I just gave up and he lives out of state and I hardly ever talk to him.
Yeah, it's almost like he, he achieved the suicide that your mom only threatened.
Yeah, yeah, kind of.
Do you know much about either of their upbringings?
Um, I know that, I don't know a whole lot of details.
I know that my mother's upbringing Her father was physically abusive towards her, like violently physically abusive towards her.
Her mother was kind of passive.
And I know that later in life, like when I was a child, I have this memory of my grandfather actually weeping and begging for her forgiveness in regards to that.
I think that was around the time she had threatened suicide, actually.
And my father, honestly, I don't know very much about his upbringing.
his dad died when I was I think like 9 or 10 and his mother when I was in high school I you know it's not to really talk seriously about his childhood it just doesn't seem like something my father would do so So I never really learned much about it.
Right.
Right.
And has your mother ever admitted to any of the stuff around suicidality or any of that?
I mean, she was found in time, right?
Did she even take the pills?
I don't think so.
Right.
Yeah, so she signaled very clearly.
That she wanted to go and, quote, kill herself, and then people came to the rescue, and then she got to dominate, right?
Because you were so scared of this happening again that she could... She always won, right?
You couldn't negotiate with her.
Right.
Right.
Yeah, definitely.
Negotiation was off the table.
Right.
So does your wife know this about you?
Yeah.
Okay, so she knows that your mother did not respect your feelings and was manipulative and kind of a bully, right?
Now, once you tell someone that, they are then fully responsible for not doing anything like that to you ever again.
Right?
That's the responsibility of intimacy, right?
Right?
So, you know, if I say to a girlfriend, well, I'm really... I had a very bad history with this dad or the other, right?
Then they can't... they have to avoid that kind of behavior.
Now, it doesn't mean that your traumas then control everyone around you, right?
But it does mean that you grew up being unable to negotiate with your mother, right?
Now your girlfriend, your wife, knows this and therefore she has to be extra sensitive and encourage you to negotiate because she knows how difficult it is for you, right?
Yeah.
You know, if my girlfriend is allergic to cats, I maybe shouldn't take her to the cat show or the cat shelter or something like that, right?
Right.
It doesn't mean that, you know, you can't do anything.
You understand, right?
So your wife knows for sure that you are easily bullied by women and easily manipulated by women and have a tough time standing up for yourself with regards to women.
I say this out of real sympathy, right?
I mean, your mom was a psycho bully with regards to suicidality and all of that, right?
So my question is, given that your girlfriend knows your vulnerabilities, what does she do with those vulnerabilities?
Does she say, wow, I've got to be really sensitive around this area because I know this was something his mother used against him.
Or does she say, oh, now I know how to control him?
It's hard for me to believe that it would be anything that consciously devious.
Who said anything about conscious?
It doesn't really matter.
The fact that people are unconscious is not any kind of defense.
People somehow think, oh, if they're unconscious of it, it's better.
It's worse.
It's worse, because it means that they haven't even troubled themselves to figure out what motivates them, what makes them tick, right?
Like, it's one thing for me to accidentally shoot someone, it's another thing for me to accidentally shoot someone while blindfolded.
So what I couldn't see, it's like, that's even worse!
What the hell are you shooting a gun if you can't even see?
And what are you doing being in relationships if... right?
And this is not rocket science, no one's asking her to Translate ancient Aramaic into hieroglyphics on the fly.
This is like, wow, you know, his mom was a real bully so I better make sure I don't bully him because that would be to profit from the wounds left behind by bullies, right?
Or a bully.
Right, look, it's clear that if your wife had been beaten up by her father, you should never threaten physical violence.
I mean, you shouldn't do it either, no matter what, right?
Or let's say her father yelled at her and called her names.
Then you should never ever yell at her and call her names.
Because she's told you that, you now have a responsibility to not do anything like that, right?
Mm-hmm.
So she knows that you were bullied...
by a woman growing up.
So the first thing she should do is say, well, I love this guy.
I don't want to add to manipulation or bullying in this guy's experience, because I love him, right?
So she should make a very conscious effort.
And this goes out to everyone out there.
When people tell you their vulnerabilities, you are now responsible.
If you use those vulnerabilities to your own ends in any way, shape or form, you are now 150% responsible.
You're profiting from the wounds left behind by abusers, right?
So, So, that's my question.
Did she, when you said, gee, I've got this concern or that concern, she knows your history, that it's tough for you to fight for what you want with women, because your mom was a manipulative, suicide-threatening bully.
So when you bring up these concerns, and then she cries and she's sad, well, she knows That a sad woman is terrifying to you because your mom threatened to kill herself, right?
So she's using... You understand where I'm going with this, right?
Yeah, I can see the outline.
She is using your greatest fear and your greatest trauma to get her way.
Wow, sad.
Hey, his mom threatened to kill herself because she was so sad.
So man, if I'm sad, he's helpless.
I'm going to totally get my way.
If I mind this bloody vein, right?
Right.
I think, though, I think I have some responsibility in it, in that my fear kind of made me more passive, and I don't know if I had been less passive.
Listen, now this is perfect white knighting, right?
You understand?
This is like, you've heard this show enough, right?
This is, hey, I'm criticizing a woman.
Well, it's not all her.
I have blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right?
Right, okay.
But you have less responsibility than her, because it's not her trauma.
Right?
If there's some deadly insect on my back and I say, hey man, can you just check my back and see if there's an insect there?
And I say, and you say, no, it's fine.
And then the insect bites me.
And I'm like, dude!
And you say, hey man, it's partly your responsibility to keep insects off you.
It's like, well, yes it is, but I couldn't see it and you could.
Right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I'll tell you something else, too, if you like, with regards to your mom.
Okay.
So the suicide threat is a totally thermonuclear option, right?
Yes.
Right.
Particularly when the suicide threat is made in the knowledge or with the knowledge of a child, right?
I mean, so somebody obviously told you, oh, mom tried to kill herself, right?
And you were 12, right?
Yes.
Right.
So that is a truly thermonuclear option.
And people can use that option.
And I've never had that used against me.
So, you know, I sympathize.
I really do.
I was lucky, right?
But I've certainly talked to people in the past who've had that threat used against them, right?
Now, my particular way of thinking with regards to this kind of threat, is anyone who's willing to threaten suicide, you can never ever negotiate with them.
You can't.
Because they've already held that over your head, right?
Yeah.
If I am displeased, if I am unhappy, I will kill myself and it'll be on you, right?
Mm-hmm.
You can't have a relationship there.
Because a relationship is two people negotiating, right?
Yes.
And you can't negotiate with a terrorist.
And this is a form of terrorism.
I mean, you could say, well, it's not for political gain.
It's like, I don't care.
I'm using the term because it's appropriate.
Right?
It works.
Well, it works, right?
So to me, my sort of thought is, oh, you say you're going to kill yourself?
OK.
You're safe now?
OK.
Bye bye.
Right?
Like, I can't have a relationship with you now because you pulled this option.
Right.
And then you say, well, but what if the person kills themself?
Right, because you say you won't.
Right?
And again, I know you're 12, right?
You don't have a whole heap of choices or options or whatever it is, right?
Yeah, no, I didn't.
But as far as that goes, once now, you say, well, somebody killed themself.
Okay, maybe they went to therapy.
Maybe they've sorted all this stuff out and they've really, wow, I went that far to bully someone?
Holy crap, blah, blah, blah, right?
But you can't have a relationship with someone if you're terrified they're going to kill themselves if you disagree.
It means that you basically, she turns you into your dad.
Somebody without opinions, without thoughts, without a self, without a soul, without an identity, without a being, right?
Yeah.
Yeah, that's exactly it.
Maybe that's what she did to your dad.
Maybe he was not that way before he met her.
It's possible.
He's kind of the same way with his wife now.
Well, no, I mean, I get it.
Once somebody cuts your leg off, it don't fucking regrow, right?
Right.
Yeah, I mean, that is largely what happens, and I've been, as I've come to It's kind of that realization that I'm sort of disappearing myself, essentially, over the last couple of years.
Over the last couple of years?
Well, I've come to the realization.
Oh, okay.
How much you've been disappearing in the past, right?
Yeah.
I mean, I say that word because that's sort of a term I've used for my wife, like that I feel like I'm disappearing, and I can't I just can't do that.
One of my fears is being like my father because I see a lot of myself in him.
Some of it maybe just genetically, but...
So, how pretty is your way?
I knew that was close.
I was trying to...
I would... - Okay.
Presently, I would put her at about a 6.
And yourself?
I mean, I can see a picture on Skype.
Pretty much the same.
You think?
6, maybe 7.
Well, yeah, except that she's infertile and you're not.
Or she's most likely infertile and you're not, right?
Yeah.
The numbers, I mean, as far as mere physicality goes, the numbers don't stay the same into your 30s and 40s, right?
Right.
Women drop off and men sometimes increase, right?
If you've had a decent job and you've made some made some coin, right?
Mm-hmm.
All right.
Is she overweight?
She actually... She's still a little bit overweight.
There was a period of time where she had gained a lot of weight after we got married.
Oh!
Wait, she pulled the pin on the fat grenade after you got married?
Yes, but I will say about a year and a half ago, both of us started this particular exercise regimen, and she's dropped about 60 or 70 pounds now.
Wow.
How's her skin doing?
That's too personal, never mind.
I know some people lose weight.
but she looks better after losing the weight.
Okay.
So, and she's 44 now, is that right?
We started trying when she was 44.
She's 45 now.
Well, do you want kids or do you want her?
It doesn't seem to me that you can have both.
I mean, do you want your own kids or do you want her?
I did a lot of thinking about that and I have a lot more thinking to do.
No, you don't.
Right now.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, you don't.
No, and listen, I'm not saying you've got to answer this now.
You don't have to tell me today, but you've known over 12 years and you've known that for 20 plus years you've wanted to have kids, right?
Yes.
You also know, I think it's fair to say, that she used your greatest weakness to control you, and in a sense, cheat you out of kids.
She makes terrible decisions.
She wastes resources like crazy, because you say, well, it wasn't that expensive for her to go to school.
Well, it kind of was, because she could have been earning money otherwise, right?
So she's four years in school.
She doesn't apply the education.
Let's say that she, you know, spent 20 grand a year on school and then there was 40 grand a year of unmade income.
Well, that's almost a quarter million dollars.
Actually, what has she got to show for it?
Not the things that both of us deeply wanted. - Okay.
Right, and she didn't listen to you about what you wanted the most, which was kids.
And she's kind of boxed you into a situation now where you're either going to go completely broke trying to have kids, or you're going to have another miscarriage or two most likely, or you could have a kid born with significant genetic problems, which would be a huge disaster I assume, or you got no kids.
And you don't think that's going to sit with you?
You don't think it's going to cause problems down the road?
And you are somebody who was abused, so you take on too much responsibility, which is natural, right?
Because, you know, if you grow up with dysfunctional parents, you have to grow up too quickly, which means you have to take on more responsibility than you should, right?
And so when it comes to this, well, I have this problem and I should have been more assertive and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Yeah, okay.
But listen, if you're in a relationship where you have to fight fucking tooth and nail to get what you want, why on earth would you want to be in that relationship?
I mean, you know what I mean?
Well, I should have pounded the table, I should have repeated, I should have woken her up at three in the morning, I should have repeated and repeated, you know?
Which is what I often wanted to do.
But you shouldn't have to do that in a relationship with someone who loves you, right?
It's not like you're negotiating for a used car, right?
You're supposed to have somebody who cares about what you want and strives to facilitate that.
Like, what should you have done for her to listen to what you want?
You shouldn't have to fight for that at all!
You should say, I want this.
And, you know, after a couple of clarifying questions, especially if it's something you've wanted since you were a kid, which I assume you talked about.
Oh yeah, about those kids.
Okay, you want the kids.
I've known this about you forever.
Let's work to facilitate you having the kids.
Which eventually is what happened, but it just happened too late.
and Well, you understand that makes no sense at all, right?
I won the race, but I did come in last.
I got what I wanted, but it was too late.
And then you didn't get what you wanted, right?
And then you find yourself mysteriously attracted to a younger woman of proven fertility.
Oh, I wonder what could be happening there.
She can make kids, right?
Probably.
I don't think that she would necessarily want to make any more kids.
I understand that, but you understand that you're fleeing from a barren womb of agony and pain and miscarriages and expense and whatever, right?
To a woman of proven fertility and fecundity, that's not a shock biologically, right?
Right, no, it's not.
I get it.
Funnily enough, we will often turn from the desert to the oasis when we're thirsty.
Right.
Okay, so tell me about your current wife and what you love about her.
Please.
Well, I know that – I know you're probably going to find this hard to believe, but she's a very compassionate person.
And what's the evidence that she's a compassionate person?
Yeah.
Because you've only given me evidence of the contrary.
And again, I'm happy to be schooled and corrected, but I just need to follow that.
She has in her own way – at least tried, perhaps not having the self-knowledge to do it very effectively, but tried to be emotionally supportive of me.
It's like...
Sorry, you're moving around again.
Oh, I'm sorry.
She has always tried and had the attention.
Whatever she may be doing unconsciously, that's something to think about.
She's always tried to be supportive of me, even if I think that some of her decisions in the realm of being supportive have probably not have definitely not been good.
Can you give me a concrete example of, because that's very abstract, and I'm not a Platonist, you know?
Well, she does manifest selfishness, but ideally she's selfless.
Can you just give me an example of how that's played out where she has shown empirical practical evidence of compassion?
Well, as far as practical, she did, when I was going through school to better my financial position, she supported me.
I barely had to work at all during those two years.
That was helpful.
She was actually, originally, the impetus that got me to, in my twenties, to start getting my life together.
I mean, I guess you could go back and say that maybe she had emotionally manipulated me into getting a certain set of behaviors out of me and maybe that worked just great.
I was kind of a mess financially.
I didn't have a plan for the future.
When I was in my 20s, at the time, I knew that I wanted to be with her.
She told me she was concerned because I was bad with money.
She wanted to know what my plan was, which seemed reasonable.
She wanted to know what my plan was.
She wanted to make sure you would be a good provider for the children.
That was my understanding.
I got a second job.
I didn't have a car at the time.
I got a second job.
I started riding my bike between both jobs.
I saved up enough money for a car.
I got the car.
I got her a diamond ring.
I married her within the next year.
My goal was to start a family with her.
In practical ways, I'm definitely in a better spot than I was at the time.
She was the impetus.
She was encouraging.
I felt that she was encouraging to me at the time.
That's why marrying her felt like a good idea.
Right, so she wanted basically for you to be a better provider for the kids that she wasn't going to give you.
Yeah, and I've had a building resentment about it.
I tried to stuff it down, but when you repress something like that, it doesn't... it's not good on the psyche.
No, it's not good at all.
And it does lead you into these kinds of emotional affairs.
Emotional affairs don't come out of nowhere, right?
You're putting out signals and you're unhappy in your relationship and... Right?
They don't just happen.
People say, oh, these affairs, they just happen.
No, they don't.
Right.
No, they don't, right?
Okay, so there's this compassion which... But she did pay, right?
Let's be fair, right?
So she did pay the bills for you both while you were going through school, right?
Yes, she did.
Just, I mean, yeah, just about everything.
Okay, I get it.
Well, that can be handy.
And what were you taking?
I was in school to be a respiratory therapist.
Basically, I work in the hospital.
I work in an ICU setting.
I work with life support systems.
All right.
OK, so let's chalk one up, I guess, for compassion.
She paid the bills while you were going to school.
And what else?
So we've got some compassion or some consideration.
What else?
Well, we had a lot of great conversations early on.
Like I said, initially we were long distance.
There was a friend of ours that thought we should meet.
I met her in person once before we started dating.
After that, a couple months later, she contacted me and we started corresponding online.
We'd talk on the phone and we'd have long conversations into the night.
night and I felt very- And how long ago did those taper off?
Hmm.
I mean, it's hard to say a specific time when I tapered off.
I mean, we still have conversations, but you know, we're married and we live together, so I guess it's kind of different.
But there is this sort of This underlying feeling, of course, that I have, where there's all these things that are left unsaid because of what would be the consequences for saying them.
So tell me, pretend I'm her and you could say whatever you want without fear of repercussions, what would you say?
say?
I'm trying to think if there's something I haven't said at this point that I would say.
I would say that I'm – and a lot of this I've told her, but I would say that I'm heartbroken that we haven't had children.
and Definitely heartbroken about the miscarriage.
I have a lot of regrets that we made terrible decisions when we first got together.
We should have We should have done things entirely differently.
We should have started trying before we even got married, you know, cause time was so short and there was a lot of, for whatever reason, there was a lot of evading of the reality of the situation that has gotten us into a shit place now.
Neither one of us is really getting what we want, because I know that she wants a child, too.
How do you know that?
Well... Empirically, right?
What you've said.
Empirically... I mean, she's weeped about it, the same as me.
I think she has a lot of regrets, too.
No, but she was pushing off having children past her fertility window.
And again, I'm just an empiricist.
I really don't care what people say.
I care what they do, right?
So if you're pushing off having children until you're in your mid-forties, I'm not entirely positive that you want kids.
She's always been very... I mean, it took me long enough to convince her to marry me.
She's always kind of...
Very slow to make decisions.
She's hesitant to make decisions.
She grew up in a very unstable situation.
Her father died when she was four.
She grew up in poverty with her mother and her sister.
It was very dysfunctional.
She felt like she had to have control over everything.
And she – I always had this feeling that she didn't want to rely on whatever support I could give as a husband because she felt like she had to be in control of everything.
*Sigh* That seemed to be a force at work.
Well, again, I mean, that's what insurance is for.
Yes.
Yeah.
All the logical objections that you could state, I cannot make any arguments against them whatsoever.
Right.
Right.
Okay.
I'm not even trying to.
So the reason I wanted to know this stuff is that you are with her and you've given up children and you resent her for that and you have a right to resent her for that because you made your case.
You said you wanted children.
Mm-hmm.
And she kept pushing you off.
Now, of course, you have some ownership in that and you have some responsibility and you could have said, listen, we need to stop having kids or I'm going to find a woman who wants kids because I really want kids.
Yeah.
Right.
But, but given how you were raised and the bullying that your mom did and the noose she had hanging over your interactions when you were growing up, that without a lot of therapy and self-knowledge, that wasn't going to happen, right?
Right.
Because with women, it's like the only way to get along is to go along, right?
Yeah, good for you.
Because if I had said that to her, she would have been like, oh, then you don't want me, you don't want me, you don't want me.
It's like, yeah, no, I want you.
No, I would say, I want you as a mother.
Yeah.
Right?
I want to have kids, right?
I want to have kids.
And that's like me saying, well, and I would say to her early on, you said, hey man, you got to get your life together if you want to be with me, right?
Oh, you don't want me?
It's like, yeah, I just, I want the best version of you, which is someone who's got their life together.
And I say, I want the best version of you, who's a mom.
Yeah.
I, and I actually pretty much finally, back in, while this emotional affair was going on, back in, I think, February, I finally sat her down.
And told her, I was like, I don't know what this marriage is.
If we're not making a family, I don't know what we're doing.
And she was very heartbroken about it.
And you know, she told me, I thought, you know, you wanted me, not just me with children, but yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
need children or no.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I mean, you want kids, right?
Yes.
Okay, so, do you want your wife or do you want children?
Now, if you say, well, I need to think about that, then I don't know what you've been doing for the last 12 years, because you've got all the information you need to get.
Like, this afternoon, tonight, tomorrow, is not going to give you significant new information, right?
You've had 12 years.
12 years plus one day is not substantially different, right?
One day to two days, that's double the information, right?
One day to four days, that's more information, right?
Four times the information.
12 years to 12 years in one day, not important, right?
Because now, not only do you have, you've got the triple tragedy, right?
Because you have an affair, You have a miscarriage, and you have infertility, right?
Yes.
Now, none of those, I believe, can be fixed.
And you can march down to the infertility specialist, but I gotta tell you, an infertility specialist who takes on a woman who's 45?
I don't know.
I don't know.
It would not be my first choice as a consumer.
To spend an ungodly amount of money and face an ungodly amount of heartbreak for the odds of having one, maybe one child.
Yes.
So, you don't need more information.
Can your marriage survive infertility, an affair, and a miscarriage, all of which are manifesting within a few months?
Because you don't want to spend the rest of your life being passive and crossing your fingers and going day by day and seeing what happens, right?
That I I do not want that.
Stephan, I want the marriage to survive and I want it to survive with my identity intact.
I have thought about this and I I don't want to... I don't want to... I don't want to abandon her just for the sake of... Well, not just for the sake of... Like, it's nothing, but I don't want to abandon her to go find some other more fertile woman.
Yes, you do.
Of course you do!
Come on!
You had an affair!
Oh, I don't want to abandon... It's like, come on, man.
You were putting out feelers.
You were pair bonding with another woman at your wife's expense.
Right, so don't give me this, well I don't want to, of course you do.
I'm not saying it's the only thing you want, but don't tell me it's nothing's there, otherwise you wouldn't have had the affair.
Okay, I, sure, there's a part of me.
And don't tell me I don't want to hurt my wife, because having an affair, you know, when she's had a miscarriage, is, come on, I mean, this, oh, I don't want to, come on.
Right, how far did not wanting to upset your wife go?
I mean, if you really didn't want her to be upset, you'd have fought harder for kids earlier and she wouldn't probably have had this miscarriage and you wouldn't have an affair.
We'll get to your level of compassion in a sec.
I mean, I was asking about your wife's, but there's your level of compassion as well, right?
Okay, fair enough.
And again, whether you should get divorced or not, I have no idea.
I'm just asking the tough questions because that's what I do, right?
I appreciate it.
So why do you want the marriage to survive?
Is it for you or is it for her?
In other words, you don't want to leave her?
Well, yes you do, otherwise you wouldn't have had an affair.
So there's... you just can't give me these blanket statements that go very much against what you've already told me, right?
Again, I'm not saying it's the only thing you want to do.
But the idea that you would have, what, Facebook messages that your wife could access?
Come on.
You're not a dumb guy.
You wanted to be caught.
I mean, come on.
I felt dumb.
No, but I mean, that's...
You wanted to communicate something to her, which is how hurt you were, and how angry you were, right?
Which is why she found Facebook messages of you flirting like mad with another woman, right?
Sure.
So what is the continuance of the marriage for?
What does it serve?
It means no kids.
It means you have to repair a marriage with a significant affair and you will also then have to march forward spending huge amount of money writing checks that are going to break your bank account in two because she didn't want to have kids when it could have been free.
Right?
And she didn't listen to you when you said, let's have kids when it's free, rather than when it costs, I don't know, $30,000 to try.
In other words, if your marriage wasn't succeeding in the past, right, it's like me saying, well, I can't climb this hill now.
I'm not strong enough to climb this mountain, let's say.
I can't climb this mountain.
And then you say, well I'll tell you what, Let's give you three 50-pound weights, and then see if you can climb the mountain, right?
because the marriage wasn't succeeding before and now you've had infertility, miscarriage and affair and this is going to make it work?
It's – yeah, I mean it's – Is it for you?
Is it for you, or are you just appeasing your mom?
Are you just not wishing to cause a woman pain through direct action?
Right?
Because you said abandon her.
Okay, you abandon children.
You don't abandon adults.
Right?
If you break up with a girlfriend, you don't abandon her.
That's a parent-child thing.
Right?
You don't leave her at the doorstep of a... You don't break up with a woman by leaving her at the doorstep of the police station with a note saying, please take care of her.
Right.
I, uh, yeah, I kind of don't know what to say.
I, uh, yeah, sure.
There's a part of me that wants something better.
All right.
Let me go, let me go back.
Let me go back.
All right.
Let me go back to when you were 27.
Okay.
All right.
So, or 26 when you, when you met her, right?
Now, if you could send a message back in time with the view from where you are now 12 years later, what would you say?
Would you say, do it?
I would say you need to make some things very clear.
If you're... you need to... No, no, no.
Basically make an ultimatum.
Knowing where you are now, not where you could be if you'd been a different human being and had a different mom and right...
Knowing where you are now!
Twelve years from now, you'll have no children, you'll have infertility, you'll have had an affair, and you'll have had a miscarriage.
I would say don't do it.
You would say don't do it.
Okay.
Okay.
That seems important.
You would say don't do it.
And how does that knowledge, how does that make you feel?
Regret.
I don't know.
It makes me sad.
I...
I don't know if I have more words for it than that.
It's It makes me sad.
It's also a little bit terrifying to think about.
Because this machinery is always going on in our minds.
Thank you.
This machinery of comparing our past hopes to our current circumstances.
Always going on in our minds.
Right?
If you go back to 17, go back to you when you're 17, and you say, okay, here's where you're going to be at 38, what would you say?
Oh, God.
I would tell myself to do things entirely differently in my 20s.
Right.
So, I'm giving you the time slice, right?
This is the time slice.
Because right now, my friend, right now, 20 years from now, you're going to be looking back at this moment, this conversation, this week in your life, right?
In the same way I'm asking you to go back 20 years to when you were a teenager, right?
And Let's say you continue with your marriage.
Okay.
You know what's going to happen.
Because the best predictor of future behavior is relevant past behavior.
There's no better predictor.
It's not absolute, it's not determinism, but it's pretty damn certain, right?
And it doesn't sound like your wife is launching into massive paroxysms of self-knowledge and therapy and journaling and right, right, right, right, right?
Right.
So, she's going to continue.
As she is.
Right?
And so the variable here is not her but you.
How are things going to look in 20 years if you stay married?
I don't know.
I've told her if something doesn't change then something has to change.
Well, that's not helpful.
No, I guess not.
Right?
I mean, that's like me ordering a food in a restaurant and saying, I'm not happy with what?
Well, something has to change.
Can't fix that, right?
That's cruel, right?
And saying something has to change is passive.
It's saying, you change for me.
If things continue There's no things.
There's no such thing as a thing in a relationship.
It's not you and your wife orbiting a thing.
It's you and it's her.
There's no thing that's going to change.
There's no abstract space alien that's going to sit itself at the heart of your marriage and fix things.
All right, let me ask you this.
Can you forgive her for not having children?
For pushing off having children, for rejecting your desire to have children until it became functionally impossible.
Can you forgive her for that?
I mean, I think I can.
I'm really working on it.
I really am.
Can you forgive yourself for not having children with her?
for not making the issue more front and center?
I'm trying to. - Yeah.
Can she forgive you for having an affair?
I hope so.
So there's no plan here, right?
There's fingers crossed and drifting.
Come on.
Don't waste your life like that.
Come on.
Don't do it.
I hope, I this, I that.
Because don't be in relationships with people you can't forgive.
It's brutal.
It's just slow motion abuse.
Forgive people or move on.
Now forgiveness, it sounds easy.
What has she done to earn your forgiveness?
What have you done to earn her forgiveness, right?
What actions, what specific actions is anyone taking in this relationship to repair it?
Has she ever said – so how long ago was it she found out about the affair?
Well, she originally found out in February.
I told her I would cut it off.
It started up again.
Nope.
Oh my God, man, what are you doing?
Come on, man, what are you doing?
Your wife found out that you'd betrayed her by reigniting an affair.
She found out the same day she got a positive pregnancy test.
And then what was it, eight weeks later, six weeks later, the baby was dead?
Yeah.
Four and a half weeks, I guess, at that point.
Oh yeah, okay, sorry.
Ten days later, right?
Or, well, no, it was, um, she was just about, she was just at eight weeks, so, like, it was like three weeks there when, um, when, uh, she was pregnant, and the whole time I was terrified she was going to miscarry.
She couldn't even enjoy the pregnancy, not only because of the fear of miscarriage because of her age, but because she found out you had reignited an affair and betrayed her.
It's fucking... it's terrible.
It's... yeah.
You really think you're good for each other?
You really think this is a love of the ages?
You really think this is worth giving up kids for?
She's treated you terribly.
You've treated her terribly.
What's there to save?
Again, I'm happy to hear the case.
But this is brutal, and this isn't even more than a couple of months ago.
I don't know.
I mean, these have been the things that are on my mind.
I just... I care about her.
Okay, pretend you're not you.
Pretend you're listening to this conversation.
Pretend you're listening to this conversation.
And it's just a call in with me and someone else, right?
Mm-hmm.
What would you be tempted to type into the comment section?
Or what would you be yelling at your computer?
I'd probably just be saying don't waste your life.
Sigh.
*sad music* You know, she thinks every day, probably many times a day, she thinks, I wonder if he's started up an affair again, whether with that woman or someone else, right?
Because you already broke her word twice, right?
Once by having the affair, the other by reigniting it after you promised you wouldn't.
Yeah, probably.
No, for certain she's thinking about that, right?
There was a – when she was pregnant, I – I stopped thinking about this woman.
It didn't matter to me anymore.
Things seemed better during that period of time.
And I think after the miscarriage and everything, I think that maybe she believed that I had, this time, really stopped interacting with her.
And I betrayed her again.
And this time I just came out and told her last night.
Sorry, last night what?
Last night, well, the impetus for me writing you was last night I came out and I told her that I had read that it had been reignited that I had reignited the affair.
And it was always emotional.
It was never physical.
But No, because that's a defense for a man but not for a woman.
Yeah.
Right?
But anyway, go on.
I met with her in person yesterday to talk about some things and to basically finally put an end to it.
And when I left the conversation... Wait, you met with the woman you were having the affair with?
Yes.
And when I left the conversation, I felt a deep sadness.
And I also felt very... And my wife could sense there was something wrong with me.
She was asking what's wrong, like she wanted to comfort me and I felt terrible because I didn't want her to try to comfort me.
It wasn't right to have her comfort me when what I was experiencing was grief over the affair ending.
Yeah.
Trying to, yeah.
And, um, I came out and I told her, I said, we've been continuing to interact and I'm in love with her.
And this was last night?
Yes, it was last night.
Right.
Dude, come on.
You just confessed to your wife shortly after she had a miscarriage that you were in love with another woman.
It's fucked.
Do you really think that this is how you want to be in the world?
Is this your contribution?
Because now, also the single mom, Who may have been looking for a stepdad, maybe looking for someone to help her with the kids, maybe been looking for someone she could get married.
She's also now heartbroken too, right?
Yeah.
This is not how I want to be in the world.
Right.
But this is how angry you are at your wife.
And I don't, I don't see how, I mean, you can't go back and have kids, right?
You can. - You might be right.
No, I am right.
You can't go back in time.
I'm pretty sure time is unidirectional.
You know, ELO albums non-withstanding.
You know, I am positive that you can't go back in time and have kids.
No, I can't do that.
Right.
Yeah, I have a lot of big decisions to make.
Right.
But, and what you're saying is completely true, that I cannot, I can't live a passive life.
I can't not take the reins.
I have to be clear about what I want.
I have to pursue what I want.
Well, and you have to stop hurting people this way.
And that's the, gosh, You're right about that.
That's the red pill that's so hard for me to take.
Yeah, I mean, it's far better to be wronged than to do wrong, right?
It's far better to suffer evil than to do hurtful things in this way, right?
But you are.
I mean, look, I'm not a fan of your wife's manipulation and avoidance of an essential topic and so on, but you could make the case that's unconscious, and I know I made the case that that's even worse, but What you're doing is fully conscious, right?
I mean, you have, in a sense, more responsibility in the actions, because your wife would have responsibility for not having enough self-knowledge to stop manipulating you.
But what you're doing is deliberate, right?
And you can't fall in love with someone else if you're already in love with your wife.
You can't do it.
It's like trying to walk in two different directions at once.
Yeah.
You can't do it.
And if you were in love with your wife, you wouldn't have fallen in love with another woman.
So that's your fourth thing, right?
You've got the affair, you've got the miscarriage, you've got the infertility, and you've got the fact that you don't love her.
And you're hurting her.
I did love her.
Yeah, I'm okay.
I fully accept that, too.
I once had hair.
This is your conscience thing.
I don't tell anyone what to do, of course, right?
But I will say this, that if you continue to hurt your wife, you will become extraordinarily unhappy.
And the solution is not.
Then people say, well, just stop hurting your wife.
It's like, well, no, if you're that angry.
And if unconsciously you want out of the marriage because you want to have kids, right?
And part of the attraction to the single mom would be like, okay, do I still have value in the dating market?
Right?
If I wasn't with my wife, could I get another woman?
Right?
That's part of this flirting.
And that's why it didn't become physical, because it didn't need to, because that wasn't the point.
The point wasn't, does my penis work?
The point is, what's my sexual market value, given that I've been out of the market for 12 years, right?
And so now you have proven to yourself that you have sexual market value.
Maybe not with the people who have the highest sexual market value themselves, but nonetheless, right?
You have sexual market value because you can get another woman, right?
And if you're with someone and you feel like you can do better, that's a torture.
It's a torture to them, it's a torture to you.
And, you know, you've got to think of the second half of your life.
And the second half of your life, with resentment, with anger, with temptation, right?
This is not the first woman.
Oh, the last woman who's going to throw themselves at you at one time or another, especially if you're an unhappily married man, which just puts out signals for other women to come along, right?
It's the kind of a pheromone that happens, right?
And pheromone.
Pheromone.
Yeah, people always make fun of me.
A feral gnome.
A pheromone.
And then you've got to think of, right, so you're in your mid-thirties and you've got to think of living for another 40 years, right?
Longer than you've even been alive.
Right.
With no kids, with no grandkids.
Yeah.
With a steadily diminishing social circle because people move away, they get old, they die.
People have kids.
People have kids and they get busy doing that, right?
And that's already happened.
So you're going to have, you know, it's going to be just you and your wife and that's about it.
And that's going to be, uh, You know, that's going to be pretty rough, as opposed to, you know, if you meet a new woman and you're young enough to do it, then you can have kids.
And you say, oh, but my wife's going to be so sad.
She's going to be very unhappy because now I'm putting out the posture of a woman in her mid-forties and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And it's like, yeah, that's a real shame.
You know, that is a real shame.
And it's very sad.
And I'm not going to pretend it's not.
But I like to give women a little thing called respect.
and respect equals responsibility equals accountability so a woman is perfectly free to deny her husband children until she's infertile she's perfectly free to do that and those actions have consequences which is if her husband wants children he's probably gonna leave her Right?
You make your choice, and you pay the price.
If you want a drink, when you're young, I guess it's a lot of fun.
I never found much fun in drinking, but I guess people like to drink.
It's okay.
Well, welcome to your liver when you're 50, right?
Which is basically something you could use to fill in a pothole in Keene, New Hampshire, right?
And so, you want to smoke?
Yeah, you know, quitting smoking is tough.
So you can keep smoking, and then you get sick.
You get your lung cancer, you get emphysema, you get whatever, right?
Throat cancer.
So for me, there is this weird thing that goes on in society where women now have choices, right?
Your wife fully had the choice to say no to you after you repeatedly said, let's have kids, let's have kids, I want to have kids, it's getting late, let's have kids.
She's like, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope.
Okay, fine.
She has that freedom.
Now, if you wouldn't have had that freedom a couple hundred years ago, because no birth Right.
So she has that choice.
She has that freedom.
And with great freedom comes great responsibility.
Right?
Like there's this weird thing where I get all these messages.
I just put out the economics of gender hiring and I got all these messages from guys who were like, yeah, this woman, she wanted to work on the dock and she wanted to work in the warehouse and so on.
And you know, she can't lift stuff.
And all these guys rushing in to help her.
I'm like, don't help her.
Don't help her.
Don't subsidize women.
Don't give them equality and then treat them as children.
She made a choice to try and start having children at the age of 44 with a man who repeatedly tried to get her to have children before.
Don't subsidize that bad decision on her part.
Don't take ownership of it.
Like, well, I should have been more forceful.
I should have made her have children.
That's not kind of a monster.
Don't be a monster and make someone have a child or bully someone into having a child.
That's horrible.
Right?
So she knew you wanted kids.
She also knew that you were very susceptible to women crying and bullying and being sad.
And that's what she used.
And it's like, okay, you take what you want and then you pay for it.
And the price may be that you don't want to be married to her anymore because you really, really, really want to have kids.
Right?
You say, oh, but she'll be sad.
It's like, well, uh, I don't ever remember anyone saying, well, you know.
We better not have women come into the workforce because it's going to displace men and then they're going to need all of these additional legal supports just to survive in the workforce.
And I don't ever remember anyone saying, well, we can't have affirmative action because that means fewer white men are going to have jobs, blah, blah, blah, right?
Or we can't have any more wars because men get killed.
I mean, nobody says that in society.
So why the hell should we withhold consequences from women's freely chosen decisions?
It makes no sense.
And it's crazy.
If a woman can't lift something and she wanted that job, don't help her.
Chivalry is for women who... That's an interesting question.
I'm going to finish that another time.
I don't want to go on a big tangent here.
But chivalry is a very important thing.
I like chivalry.
I'll open doors for women.
I'll buy my wife flowers.
I'm very into chivalry.
But that's for a whole different situation.
If the woman wants to work in the warehouse, don't lift stuff for her.
Because if you want equality, you get responsibility and you get accountability.
Society can't work in any other way.
And I'm a big advocate of men.
Stop pampering women.
Stop subsidizing women.
Stop stepping in and treating women as children when women want to be equal.
Say, oh, well, women don't want to be equal, but they don't want accountability.
They don't want responsibility.
It's like, well, then If we give them, quote, equality and then remove consequences and accountability, then we're giving women an unreality that is going to destroy them in the long run.
So with regards to, well, my wife is going to be sad if I leave her, it's like, well, that's called accountability.
That's called responsibility.
She has the freedom.
To say no to you when you say you desperately want to have kids and it's something you've wanted since you were young.
She has that freedom and she always should have that freedom and she'd always have that choice.
And with choice comes responsibility.
With choice comes accountability.
If you choose to gamble, you might lose a whole lot of money.
That doesn't mean That everyone else should rush in and make good your debt, right?
And so this idea, well, she's going to be sad and therefore she's going to be sad and therefore I don't have any freedom.
Come on.
You gain freedom by giving freedom.
If you want to stay with your wife, stay with your wife.
If you want to leave your wife, leave your wife.
But don't do it because she'll be sad, or because she's over the hill and nobody's gonna want her, or whatever else you might make up.
It's ridiculous.
Because that means that ascribing her no freedom destroys your freedom.
You don't have any freedom with your wife any more than you had with your mother.
Because the consequences of you having freedom are so terrible Well, your mother might kill herself and your wife might be sad if you leave her.
Well, how on earth does telling her she has no responsibility for her prior actions give you freedom at all?
And the name of the show, Free Domain.
Free Domain.
Freedom is the main thing.
And freedom should be your domain.
And if you can't make a choice because your wife might be upset, you're a slave.
You're not a physical slave.
You're an emotional slave, which is even worse in some ways, because a physical slave knows that he's a slave and tries to escape.
An emotional slave thinks he's being a good guy and can't get away.
She made the choice, man.
She made the choice to not listen to you.
To focus on our own feelings, to manipulate, to cry when you said, honey, gosh, let's have kids.
I really, really want to have kids.
You're getting too old.
It's getting older.
We've got to have kids.
I've told you from the very beginning.
I really, really want kids.
It makes me feel sad when you say that.
Okay, well, then you're free to say no, and I'm free to make my choices.
But you've got to stop treating women as children.
And then there's some people who say, well, you can only treat women as children.
I don't believe that.
I don't believe that at all.
But I believe as long as we continue.
To give women no accountability with pretend equality?
Those women will never grow up.
And I really want to launch my daughter into a world where she can't manipulate.
And as long as people are rushing over to lift up the things women say they can lift but can't... No.
No, that's not right.
I want you to be free.
to do what is best for you based on virtue.
And where you are right now is you're trapped in a marriage where you're being a really nasty person.
Right?
Yes.
You're breaking your wife's heart.
You're breaking this other woman's heart.
You're breaking your word.
You're, right?
I mean, this is not good.
Don't do this.
Whatever you do, don't do this.
I can't.
No.
You're right.
I can't do this.
And don't be passive aggressive.
If you're mad at her, get mad at her.
I mean, don't be abusive, obviously.
But if you're mad at her, you can be mad and very angry at people in very honorable ways, in very decent ways, in ways that actually make you closer and make your relationship a hell of a lot better.
But don't be this, I'm pushing it down, it ends up as an affair, and then I, you know, confess to her.
That's no good.
No.
No, pushing it down is What led to all this bullshit that I'm responsible for over these last few months.
Yeah, look, if the marriage is dead, then just end it, and if the marriage is not dead, then bring it back to life, but don't just slow-torture it into non-existence.
Yeah.
So that's the most stuff I wanted to say.
And if there's anything else you wanted to add?
I don't think so.
There's a lot to think about here.
I appreciate your brutalness.
I didn't expect anything less.
You can meditate.
Just try and find spaces to relax.
Don't overthink things.
The answer is already within you.
And again, I don't know what that answer is.
I mean, my answer might be different than your answer, and it's your life.
You've got to live it.
But you already have the answer, and you can run yourself ragged in circles.
You already have the answer, and most times in life, it's relaxing into certainty.
It's not heating your brain up, chasing certainty around until you fall over.
You relax into certainty.
I've had the greatest insights through meditation, through relaxation, through just being with my thoughts and not trying to chase certainty, but letting certainty emerge within me.
That is, there's no more thinking, no more information that you need.
I believe that you already have the answer, but you're going to need to just relax and accept it.
And I think that would be a very positive moment for you because when you have that answer and you trust yourself, then you can finally walk away from that childhood.
Will you let me know how it goes?
That's what I'm going to try and do.
Yeah.
All right.
Thanks, man.
I appreciate the call, and I certainly wish you the best.
And I really, really appreciate your frankness.
Yeah.
Thank you very much, Stefan.
Thanks, man.
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