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Jan. 15, 2022 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:23:53
DIVORCE COURT IS HELL! Freedomain Call In
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Hi everybody, Stefan Molyneux here with Dave, not necessarily his real name.
And Dave, why don't you start off by reading the email you sent and we'll take it from there.
Sure. So first of all, my sincere condolences for the passing of your father.
As someone who has been a long admirer of your work, I know what a big impact he had in your life, both positive and negative.
The reason I'm writing is because I'm currently in a situation that I believe is similar to the one that your father was in.
I too married an attractive, narcissistic woman and have multiple children.
They're going through a terrible separation where I'm being denied access to my kids, especially now with the coronavirus, and have spent many years in court trying to get access to them.
And the reality is that I have to make a decision on staying near them or moving to much greener pastures.
I'm well-educated with in-demand knowledge and I'm stuck in a metropolis that I do not like and can barely afford.
And whereas I could have the option of living somewhere where I can buy my own place and save some money.
So I'm torn. Do I stay here in limbo in order to see the kids whenever she allows me, which is almost never?
Or do I move somewhere or do I move elsewhere and hopefully spend a quality few months exclusively with them?
This terrible situation is what led me to your show in the first place, and luckily I've been able to do a deep dive into the self-discovery, and I'm starting to heal the trauma bonds, which Makes the time I spend with kids much more enjoyable.
If you think it's a worthwhile discussion, please let me know.
And here we are. Well, I do, and thank you for your condolences.
What is the story of the woman, the mother of your children?
How did you meet her?
How did that come about? So we met in school.
It was, to be honest...
It was a love-bombing stage.
You know, I've gone through a lot of the literature about borderline and narcissistic, and it kind of maps directly onto what you would expect the love bombing stage of being in a relationship with the borderline would be.
Where I was put on a pedestal and, you know, she was beautiful and, you know, had all the qualities that I thought I wanted.
And, yeah, shortly after, you know, our child was born, things just took a terrible turn for the worse.
Um Things became physical.
We had to get the police involved a number of times.
And I was just in shock.
I didn't know what to do at the time.
And we had a long separation after that.
And then amazingly, we, you know, she called me again and we ended up getting back together and having another child.
And, you know, since then it's been court and, you know, struggling to get access to them and, you know, being financially hurt and being stuck in a place, having to live somewhere being financially hurt and being stuck in a place, having to live somewhere where I don't really And she ended up actually picking up and moving an hour away.
So I'm not even close to the kids anymore.
And just getting to see them on any kind of regular basis has been pretty much impossible.
Even with multiple lawyers, multiple court trials, it's just become an impossible situation.
Sorry about that, for sure.
Yeah, thank you. And my struggle is, you know, I want to have a relationship with the kids.
But I can see she's already poisoning the well, you know, saying bad things, blaming me for things.
And I don't know if it'll be possible to have any kind of normal relationship with them.
And so that's why I I've been a long time follower and I've listened to a lot of the stories you told about your father and your mother, which I have tremendous sympathy for.
And I can see where he's coming from.
I can sympathize with him.
I would imagine it was a hard decision for him to The alternative looks really good right now.
You mean starting something new or moving away?
Yeah, starting something new, getting away from her.
She just pesters me.
She sends me legal threats all the time.
She blames me for You know, you don't want to have access to them.
You don't give me money for this.
You don't do this. And it's just so frustrating.
And, you know, I just ask myself, why do I have to deal with this?
You know, I understand that I made the choice to, you know, marry her and have kids.
But I didn't make a choice to, you know, I didn't make a suicide pact.
No, that's a very good way of putting it.
Sorry, you have more to say and I'm happy to hear, so go ahead.
Yeah, I can go through some of the...
I haven't seen the kids really since the coronavirus started.
As soon as there was word that it was in our country, she cut off access.
I've been able to talk with them sometimes when they call, although that's not very frequent.
And then prior to that, she would also do that, where she would just deny me access, and then she would say, well, you never asked for access.
Meanwhile, we're in court the whole time.
And just even with court orders, even with these agreements, I just cannot get...
Any kind of consistent access with them.
Well, she can just keep playing the legal battle to attrition, right?
And, you know, even if there is...
I mean, is she really going to get arrested for denying you access to the kids?
Are there any negative consequences to what she's doing?
Well, there are if you're a litigious person, right?
Which I was not at the time when I got married.
And, you know, before my...
My journey into self-discovery.
The alternative is you go to court.
You get your court order.
If she doesn't follow the court order, you go back to court.
You get the court to issue a code of misconduct against her.
And then maybe you can get the police to enforce the court order.
And you're talking about Thousands of dollars in court fees, tens of thousands probably, maybe even up to $100,000.
And then still, every time you want to see them, it's just a battle.
Well, and then you show up for quality time with your kids, with the cops, right?
Yeah, exactly.
And part of my issue was I really had this terrible anxiety.
And I had that I've only started to address that in the past year.
When I would get these emails from her where she's threatening legal action, I would get so anxious that I wouldn't even want to open up my emails.
It was that bad.
At that time, the idea of just this prolonged court battle was terrifying.
And then I wasn't able to plan anything.
I didn't know what my financial situation was going to be after the court stuff had ended.
I didn't know where I wanted to move because, like I mentioned, she picked up one day and just left.
I moved to the same area where the kids were.
I discover a month later that she's gone and she moved, you know, an hour away.
And so now I'm like, do I, so I'm stuck in this place that I don't want to live in.
And, you know, do I move closer to her and change everything, you know, for this hope that maybe I can spend some time, you know, some more time with the kids?
Yeah. So it's just been this, all this uncertainty, all this anxiety, um, It was really tough to deal with.
I'm still trying to get around it.
Just one thing I want to say maybe in defense of your father is that I found you while I was going through this.
I was able to go through a lot of your call-in shows and get support in that way.
I was able to find a therapist and do that.
But if I hadn't, I think I would have just given up, you know?
I would have just isolated myself and just, you know, every time she emailed, I would ignore it.
And, you know, because I just didn't have that coping mechanism for that type of anxiety.
Well, those kinds of threats are terrifying.
That's not an irrational anxiety, right?
I get that. No, it's not an irrational anxiety.
Sorry, let's go back a little bit further.
And I'm not going to ignore your current situation, of course, right?
But I'm one for looking at the deepest point of the lever before we deal with the handle end.
So just give me a sense, if you could, about your upbringing, your childhood, what your parents' relationship was like, how you were disciplined, that kind of stuff.
Sure. I grew up in a very sheltered household.
We didn't have really much quality time with the parents.
We were raised really by TV and video games and things like that.
My father woke up early so that he can pick us up from school.
So we went from school to home and then to the TV and to the computer.
My parents really, I didn't have much of an emotional connection with them.
My father is a good man, but he's very passive and never really spoke to me about his life or offered any kind of life lessons or any kind of advice or anything like that.
So I thought I knew what I was doing, you know, and my mom was I think I wanted her attention, but I had siblings as well, and I think she was just too busy, so I do think there was a lot of neglect in that area.
The discipline has been mostly Just, they would take away things that we liked.
There wasn't any kind of crazy discipline.
It's just like, okay, now we're taking away your video games that you can't play, or things like that.
But it was kind of a boring upbringing, to be honest.
And so, you know, my parents are still together, and they've been together for years.
You know, 40 plus years.
And that was kind of my model growing up, right?
I knew my mom was kind of volatile and my dad just, you know, would come home and sit on the TV and just, you know, she would complain about things and he would take it, right?
Never complained, never really raised his voice back to her, you know, was just passive.
And she did basically what she wanted.
And I do think her intentions were okay, right?
Her intentions were good.
I just think that she also had bad role models.
And so I didn't really grow up close to my parents.
I mean, close in the physical sense, like we would get together quite often, but not in an emotional sense, like not really at all.
And so When I first started dating my ex-wife, I didn't even really think to ask them, what are your thoughts on this?
What do you think? I didn't really value their opinion at all.
And looking back, partly because I was so sheltered, I feel like I was unprepared for Just this kind of craziness that exists in the world.
Well, or prepared a little bit because of your volatile mom.
Yeah. Conditioned to see that as like, well, that's just women, right?
Women are just, it's like that hot crazy matrix and all these stereotypes that, you know, women are just children and, you know, this kind of stuff and all of these stereotypes.
Well, they're reinforced to some degree by the actions of moms.
Like yours, maybe moms like mine, but I mean, you know, that's not all women, of course, but if it's all the women you know, or if it's the woman who raised you, it's kind of tough to break out of that, right?
No, absolutely. I've normalized crazy in a lot of ways.
And then my dad's reaction to crazy was just, you know, to be passive.
And that's exactly the pattern that I followed.
You know, but I think the difference is, you know, my mom was not at the same degree of crazy as my ex-wife was.
I think my ex-wife is a little bit, you know, probably similar to your mother.
Although she's...
Discovered Jesus. So now, you know, after the physical assault charge that she had, she kind of turned that around.
I think more because she knows what the repercussions of it are, which might be losing the child.
But I think if she was in a situation where there weren't repercussions, you know, I don't know what she would really be capable of.
So, how did you meet her?
And I assume it was her looks that attracted you in the first place.
Were there other things as well? Yeah, there were.
So we met in university, and yeah, she was absolutely beautiful.
And we were studying a challenging program, so I thought she was very smart.
She had done a degree in psychology, which I think is a red flag.
I don't think people generally take psychology unless they have issues that they want to investigate.
And she presented herself well.
She was really elegant, dressed really well, was very polite and nice.
Yeah, I mean, in a lot of ways, was the ideal woman that I thought I wanted.
And when you sort of look back, other than the psych degree, which, you know, I might contest a little, but what else was there that you saw that, if you sort of look back, you say, yeah, kind of a red flag?
Yeah, I mean, there were a lot.
So she had a terrible relationship with her mother.
Her mother was, you know, they had some real economic problems in their country when she was growing up.
And She told me some of the details about her upbringing, and it sounded pretty horrible.
And then she would get into these arguments with her mother, and she would threaten to cut herself.
Even over small things, the mother would give a gift for her birthday, and she'd be like, This is too expensive.
Why don't you buy me this crazy gift?
And she would blow that up really out of proportion.
Wait, she said your wife, when you met her, she was having fights with her mother, and your future wife would say, I will physically cut myself because I'm so upset.
Yeah, I don't remember the exact details, but it was something along those lines.
Yeah, and I just thought, oh wow, her mother must be a terrible person, right?
Why is she not thinking more about what her daughter wants?
Why is she only thinking about what she wants?
I thought at the time that she would never do that.
I thought the mother was just being unreasonable.
Okay, but hang on. She would threaten to cut herself physically.
She did that once.
Wait, she would threaten to cut herself physically or she did cut herself physically once?
No, no. She threatened self-harm once when we were dating.
With you or with regards to your mother?
No, with regards to her mother.
She reiterated a conversation that she had had with her.
She reported to you that she had threatened to self-harm with regards to her mother?
Yeah. How long had you guys been going out at this point?
It was probably about six months.
And before that, I guess you'd heard about these blow-ups with her mother.
Well, I had met her mother a few times, and we got along really well.
You and her mom got along really well.
Yeah, yeah.
I thought she was just a wonderful person to be around.
She was very accomplished and very intelligent, and she really liked me.
I realize now that I probably have this ability to appease narcissists.
Looking back to you, would you put that label on her mom?
Absolutely. How so?
The mom, like I said, is very successful.
She used to run a large organization.
I used to see her at her workplace and She was the boss.
Everybody was afraid of her.
Everybody listened to everything that she said.
Maybe some of it was deserved, but she did have this mentality that she was above people.
She was more capable than others.
And then the other red flag also was her father.
So her father and her mother kind of split up multiple times.
We're living separate, but we're technically still married.
And she didn't really have much of a relationship with her father.
And the father was also really passive and would basically do whatever the mother asked.
There was no pushback against anything that she said.
And she asked for whatever she wanted.
Right, okay. Alright, and any other warning signs from early on in your dating life?
No, it was a honeymoon phase for a long time, really until a child was born.
And did your wife report any other issues with regards to her own childhood other than her issues with her mother?
Yes, she did.
She didn't go into details, but I think it was something with a family member when she was young.
You mean sexual abuse kind of stuff?
I believe so.
I didn't ask for details at the time.
Yeah, that can certainly do some harm to the personality structure.
Yeah, absolutely.
Especially if it's kept silent or not dealt with.
When did you find that out in your dating history?
It was quite early on.
My reaction was just sympathy.
I didn't really understand that it could have that kind of impact on a personality.
Even afterwards, we would argue.
I always had this kind of sympathy for her childhood.
And, you know, I kind of used that as an excuse for her actions.
Right, okay. And did you sort of feel that love would fix it?
Before you got married, I assume that some of this, you said it was pretty good until you had a baby.
Was there anything else in terms of interactions with you that could be a warning sign before you got married?
Yeah, so she does not like my relatives, my siblings, or my parents, so she would almost never meet with them.
And we met pretty often for birthdays and for holidays and stuff like that, and she never wanted to go.
She tried to isolate me from my friends and my family.
And you know the reasons behind that, right?
Yeah, I do now.
I do now, yeah.
At the time, I didn't.
At the time, I believed a lot of what she was saying.
She would say, oh, your mother's really controlling and, you know, she's doing this because she wants control of the child's upbringing and, you know, you just follow everything that your mother wants.
And so I believed in a lot of that.
And part of it was true, right?
I... Growing up really isolated, I was overly dependent on my parents.
And so I, for a long time, thought that my parents were the ones who were the cause of a lot of our problems.
And yeah, just for those who don't know, the answer as to why she wanted to separate you from people was so that they wouldn't see how crazy she was and warn you about her, right?
Yeah, yeah. It's super obvious now.
Because my family in public, they have this real desire to portray a great public image.
And I think she took advantage of that.
And in public, my family would seem like the ideal family.
And so there was never any reason really for her to have such Animosity towards them.
Right. Right.
Right. Okay. So then you get married and how long after you get married do you have your first child?
It was about a year after.
And then you said things really went off the rails?
And then things went really off the rails.
Was it like postpartum depression or like what happened then?
A lot of people had mentioned that to me.
But it continued for well after the period where postpartum depression usually ends.
But she would just snap at anything.
I remember she was talking to customer service one day and she just started yelling at them.
And I was like, what's wrong with you?
It's just customer service or whatever.
And these things just kept escalating.
And then, you know, she turned violent and I was just completely shocked.
And, you know, all the neighbors just heard all this yelling and all this commotion and the police got involved.
And then the police ended up giving her a What's it called where you can't be in the vicinity of somebody for a certain period of time?
A restraining order? A restraining order.
So we had a long break because of a restraining order.
And it wasn't something that I wanted.
Throughout this whole time, I kind of, I guess, had the characteristics of my father where, you know, you're in it for the long haul, right?
Like, this is... You just have to be strong enough to be able to fix it.
So I didn't want that at the time.
But yeah, so she got the restraining order, and then we started court after the first child, and that was just a terrible, terrible experience. The court, was that related to the domestic abuse or was that something else?
No, it was related to the child.
She started procedures to get access to the child because we didn't have an agreement and there was no way we were going to come to an agreement.
Oh, so sorry, after the, I'm just trying to sort of follow the pattern here, so after the physical abuse, when you called the cops, I guess, and she was charged, and then she got the restraining order, and after that, was that the marriage was done at that point?
Uh, the marriage was done at the time.
Um, so she had the restraining order.
Um, so we didn't see each other for a year or, I mean, mostly didn't see each other for a year except for exchanges of the child.
And, um, I, I, I, I, I didn't know if the marriage, I mean, the marriage, you know, in retrospect was obviously over.
I kind of thought that it was a domestic disturbance that we could have overcome for the benefit of the child.
Did she, I mean, what were the consequences of the assault?
I mean, did she anger management or anything go like that?
I don't believe she had anger management.
I think they just dropped it and they just gave her a restraining order.
Yeah, but then we had children's aid involved also.
And that was also very painful.
Was that based upon how she was treating your child?
I think that's just standard protocol where if the police are called during a domestic assault.
And just the number of lies.
All of a sudden I became the worst person in the world and capable of being near a child.
It was just, you know, walking on eggshells this whole time, and then I would just get swamped with all these emails, and I would just, you know, I just didn't know what to do.
Right, right.
Well, I mean, if she doesn't really suffer any consequences for hitting you, it's hard to imagine how she'd suffer consequences for false statements.
No, absolutely. She's had basically no consequences for any wrong that she's done.
Yeah, you know, it's a terrifying thought.
I was thinking about this with regards to my own father, of course, that I always say power corrupts, right?
And women have been handed such unjust powers with regards to the family court system and the general, you know, gynocentric nature of the, quote, legal system that for them to abuse that power, well, you know, human beings can't handle power.
It's a system that gives women this much power and I think corrupts them through that process.
Again, it's kind of like saying that somebody who works at a Soviet factory in 1960 is just lazy as opposed to, well, the incentives are all screwed up and you can't get ahead.
So I don't know.
It's with regards to female responsibility.
If I'm going to say political power corrupts people, then I do have to say that political power or legal power in the form of female preferential family courts, that is going to corrupt people.
And you can't just blame the individual.
I mean, it'd be nice if they didn't take advantage of that power, and lots of women don't.
But the power exists, and for an unstable personality, it obviously can be pretty addictive, right?
No, absolutely. And she was very good at playing the victim.
Sure, yeah. She would go into court and, oh, poor me, poor me.
And the judges were always sympathetic.
It doesn't matter how good my documents were, how good my case was.
At the end of the day, it all depends on the judge.
Now, tell me then how you guys ended up getting back together and having the second child?
Okay.
So we ended up meeting after the restraining order was done, and we had kind of a lull in our case.
And so we ended up meeting, I think it was over exchanging of the child And she had told me at the time that she had gone through therapy and she understood how much her mother had an impact on her and how she was making changes because of that and she didn't want things to get so bad.
I was still in shock at the time.
I didn't know what to do.
I still had this mentality that I've got to make this work.
I come from a family where my grandparents were married for 60 years.
They took their vows seriously.
So I was kind of happy to try again.
Do you know why she circled back to try and restart things?
My understanding is that that's a common pattern for the borderlines and our narcissists.
They want to always maintain control of their quote-unquote victim.
But I don't know, to be honest.
Aside from that, she's very attractive.
She had financial means.
She could have done a lot of different things.
I don't know. Okay, so she said she'd gone to therapy.
Do you know if she did, or she might have just said that?
I believe she did.
She's been going to a therapist for a while, although arguably with no results.
But I believe she may have...
But again, she's been in therapy before.
She studied psychology.
She had mentioned that she was in therapy.
That's probably another red flag.
So she may have gone through therapy.
Or at least I believed it at the time.
So you get back together with her and do things go relatively well?
Things went relatively well.
We moved back in.
She said that things were going better because, you know, the interaction with our relatives was minimal.
And then when things went south again, so we ended up moving back together and we had another child to the surprise of my parents and my family.
And things were kind of okay.
It was really this wild, you know, where it went from one extreme to another.
But when it was good, it was great.
Well, and it's funny. Isn't it funny?
I mean, I don't mean funny, obviously, but isn't it strange how crazy people can act sane for a fairly long period of time?
Oh, absolutely. It's a wild thing.
Like, why not just keep doing that?
You know, why not just keep doing the thing that's sane?
If you can do it, do it.
Absolutely. And I've gotten that from your show, because I know you mention that quite often.
And I brought that up to her.
I'm like, look, we get company, and now you act like a proper human.
You know how to behave, so why don't you behave like that all the time?
Yeah, that was really frustrating.
That's something I still don't understand.
It's a strange thing, right?
I mean, I have this odd thought from time to time.
There's an old movie called What's Eating Gilbert Grape with Johnny Depp and a very young Leonardo DiCaprio.
And Leonardo DiCaprio plays...
Somebody who's mentally retarded, right?
And, I don't know, it's a dumb thought, but it sort of circles around my head once or twice a year, which is, you know, what if somebody was not mentally retarded but was just doing a great job of acting that way their whole life?
Mm-hmm. Like you'd never know, right?
You'd never know because I don't know if there's any particular brain test where you say, aha, you're faking it or whatever.
Like you were just a great actor.
You just say, you know, for whatever reason, you want to avoid responsibility or there's some pathology.
Like you're just going to act that way your whole life and it's going to be such a convincing performance that everybody – and yet you weren't, right?
And I think the reason it floats around in my head is this kind of thing that, you know, crazy people can really act sane.
Like, you know, you and I, if we were paid a million bucks, we could act crazy for a day, right?
I mean, we could put that – I mean, we certainly had some experience in observing it, right?
We could do that for a day.
But – and, you know, you give people a million bucks, they can act sane for a day probably.
You know, schizophrenics can't.
People who are going through psychotic breaks can't.
And I get all of that, right?
But they can fake it, and why not fake it till you make it?
Like, why not just...
I was going to say, yeah, same thing with my mom, right?
She would perk up and be fine when visitors came, or knock at the door, or a phone call comes in, and boom, it changes.
It's like, well, why not just keep doing that?
It kind of works. Yeah.
And my mother was similar, although not to the same degree, but no matter what was happening in the house at the time, when somebody called, she would...
Hello! So glad to hear from you!
And just put on this persona that was different from what she just was.
And I always saw the contrast between how she was a minute ago and how she was when she picked up the phone.
But on the other side of the phone, they probably think, oh, they're calling the super friendliest person in the world all the time, and she's always in a good mood.
Yeah, it is wild to think.
I think it goes something like this.
I mean, I don't know, obviously, but I think it goes something like this, that it's all about power.
It's all about power.
And so the degree to which they're acting nice is the degree to which they're building up resentment at having to submit and conform to somebody who has power over them.
So, you know, like the old story that the boss yells at the husband, the husband yells at the wife, the wife yells at the kid, and the kid kicks the cat, right?
This crap rolls downhill.
And I think with people who act nice, they don't want to act nice.
But they feel bullied and humiliated into acting nice.
But what that does is it builds up that resentment.
And then the moment that door closes and they don't have to be nice anymore, they have to reestablish their sense of personal power by bullying someone else.
And I mean, it's probably not the most sophisticated explanation, but that's all I've been able to kind of summon so far.
Yeah, I don't know either.
I braised that with her.
I wanted to find out. If you're capable of being like this, why aren't you like this more often?
Yeah, it's a mystery.
And that's even harder, right?
Because when you try to tell other people about the situation that you're going through, people don't believe it because they see...
They see something different, right?
They see this alternate persona.
Well, and because she's so good-looking, right?
There's that particular aspect of things as well.
Yeah, no, absolutely.
And then she plays the victim, so she'll cry about things, and nobody would suspect that she's really the one causing a lot of the problems.
Right, right. Okay, okay.
So then you get the second kid and then what happens?
And then again, you know, like we have more problems.
She'll kick me out of the house.
She'll pack up all my stuff.
She'll, you know, I remember one day she would just knock on the door all night, you know, just trying to keep me awake so I didn't go out.
I mean, so I didn't go to sleep.
I remember one time she took the baby, the baby must have been one, and she just threw her on me and she was like, here, it's your turn now.
And the baby's just sitting there crying.
I'm like, the baby needs a mother.
What are you doing? And she just let the child cry for, I don't remember how long, an hour maybe?
And I'm like, this is not...
I can't do this.
I don't know what to do. I don't want to be in this room with this unstable person and now I'm in the room with the unstable person and now I have to play the mother too because the mother is refusing to play that role.
And it just got to this terrible situation where I think, I'm trying to remember, I ended up leaving.
So I was paying the rent for a place and then I ended up leaving And she continued to stay there, refused to pay rent.
You know, we had this big thing with the landlord.
And then one day she just, you know, I moved to that same area.
And then the next month she picked up and moved somewhere else, took the child out of school, moved schools without telling me.
And yeah, so then I was stuck in this place that I didn't want to be at.
And she was gone.
And what was interesting is that before that we had 50-50 custody of the child, right?
And then when she took the child away, she took the car also because we were trying to remediate that through the court and she had no reason to settle anything.
So she had access to the car and I was stuck far away, an hour commute.
And the other really frustrating thing was that Every time, like, when things were okay, she would be acting okay.
And then the minute that, you know, her mood changed, then it's, you know, that's it.
She emails lawyers, she'll email the court, she'll, you know, just go really, like, the nastiest things you can think about.
She put videos of me on YouTube that were really embarrassing.
She would email people to To try to hurt my reputation.
Yeah, and it was just this up and down for a long time.
And then, you know, stupid me would forget about those things and then she would act really nice and, you know, we would go somewhere with a child and, you know, it's like, oh, maybe this can work, you know.
And then I just went through this cycle for years.
And Yeah, and while I'm going through this, while I'm having these breakups, I'm trying to learn what's going on.
So I was going to therapy, I was doing talk therapy, I was trying to delve into psychology also.
And then understand how I got into this situation, right?
Because there were no indications earlier in my life that I would be in this kind of crazy, you know, it was beyond anything that I ever expected or was capable of handling.
And so I had to try to build myself up so that I was capable of it.
But, yeah, it went on for years.
It was the same kind of pattern, right?
And we were in court many, many times, and we would put it on hold, and then, you know, when she got sufficiently angry, she would threaten court again, and then we'd go back to court, and then she would, you know, withhold access to the child, to the children, and then, you know, I eventually had to retain a lawyer because my anxiety didn't allow me to deal with it.
And, you know, unfortunately, these lawyers are all, you know, I can't say I've had even a neutral experience.
I mean, it's just been disaster after disaster.
And I'm there, right?
I'm just spending crazy amounts of money to try to see my kids.
She's just delaying it, right, as much as possible.
Just, like you said, a war of attrition.
And, you know, Eventually, I had to make a choice, right?
Because I was eight months into a new lawyer, right?
And it didn't look like we were getting anywhere.
And I've already paid a crazy amount of money for the terrible service that I got.
I'm like, I just can't do this, right?
I'm going to try to represent myself.
And I just have to accept that I'm not going to spend...
The amount of time that I wanted with my kids.
As much as I would have wanted to, she was making it completely impossible, aided by the court system and everything else.
How much money do you think you've spent on lawyers?
I was lucky because I was self-represented for a good period.
But I would say easily $40,000, $50,000, maybe more.
And if I had to go through to the end, I easily could have spent $100,000, $150,000.
To go through trial now, in some places, it will cost you a minimum of $100,000.
And that would be over and above what you've spent already, right?
Over and above what I had spent already.
It costs about as much to raise a child as it does to try and see your child.
Yeah, exactly.
And I knew it was just wasted money.
I had to try, but I knew that I was David against Goliath.
But there was just a point where you have to take your loss.
It was a sunk cost at that point.
Because in order to keep going, I would have You know, it was a choice.
Either I bankrupt myself or I just accept the situation as it is and try to get on with my life.
And how long since you last saw your kids?
So it was when the coronavirus...
Oh yes, sorry, you mentioned that. And before that, how often were you seeing them?
Well, it would be whenever she wanted.
I would almost never have access without her present.
And then she would make it as difficult as possible.
So if I wanted to spend overnight with the child, I would have to commute with the child an hour, drop her off at school, and then commute back another hour, and then go pick her up by three, because again, she didn't I didn't want my parents or any of my family to help me or to be part of the children's lives at all.
So I would have to go there myself because I knew if anybody else would go pick her up, then that would be it.
And so that was unsustainable because that meant I had to work five hours a day in order to compensate for the four hours of commute.
And then she moved to a really expensive area that I couldn't afford anyways.
So yeah, I was between a rock and a hard place.
I didn't know what I was...
And I didn't really have anyone around me at the time that I could go to advice for on this kind of stuff.
You know, because...
Well, and what advice could have been given you?
Yeah. No, you're right.
Yeah. Like, I know my parents were totally unprepared for this kind of thing, right?
So I knew there was no point of even really talking with them about it.
Well, what do you think they would have said?
Well, you know, my mom, of course, because, you know, she wants to save face, she would say, You know, just give it another try.
You know, maybe it's...
She's the one who always said, oh, maybe it's postpartum depression.
Maybe it's that. And so she really...
She really wanted it to work together.
Right? And I remember one of my siblings at one point said, hey, you know, we know you're going through a lot.
You know, if... Just leave her, man.
And that was really the first advice I had gotten from that sibling.
Was it just leave her?
Yeah, he saw what I was going through, and he saw, you know, I couldn't take it, and he's like, you know, we're here for you, just leave her, you'll be fine.
It was nice to know that, you know, and I know they are there for me.
But I still didn't know what the right thing to do was because I knew that I would have suffered greatly just to have any kind of normal access with my kids.
But I didn't want to give up on that.
But hang on, how could you have gotten normal access to your kids?
I mean, as you say, the court case is horrendous, it's time consuming, and there's no certain outcome, it's ridiculously expensive and all that.
So there's no methodology that I can see that would have resulted in you having some sort of regular access to your kids.
Yeah, the only way I would have had it would have been to go along with her charade.
You know, similar to what her father had done, and just allow the mother to go crazy and basically suffer and ignore it.
Well, no, but it's a little different, though, because you have physical violence, which your mother doesn't perpetrate against your father, right?
No, no, I mean her parents, sorry.
Oh, do what her dad did, which is just suck it up, right?
Yeah, exactly. Right.
But then, of course, what you're doing is you're programming your children that abusers win, that good people get ground down and beaten up and they can't ever stand up or do anything.
That's unfortunately the message that you would be then transmitting to your kids, right?
Yeah. No, absolutely.
Yeah. Well, then the other thing, too, is that I don't know how it works male to female, but from what I understand, female to male, is that if you...
Like, if the woman breaks the man, so to speak, then she gets bored and has an affair.
So even that might not be...
Even if that was some sort of emotionally or parentally practical solution, it might not shake out to have lasted...
To last in the long run, if that makes sense.
No, absolutely. And I was always...
Suspicious of that too.
I never had any evidence of it, but yeah, I knew that was a possibility too.
Right. Right.
And so, I still don't have a clear sense, unless I've missed it, but I still don't have a clear sense of how much time you've actually spent with your kids over the last couple of years.
Well, that's...
It's a hard question to answer because when things were okay, right, when we had a more or less amicable relationship, I would go over, you know, I would see them sometimes on weekdays, on weekends. We would go places with them.
But it was really up to her discretion So I would say in the last few years, you know, maybe in total four months.
Over the last couple of years?
Yeah. Now, does that count the time that you and your ex were still under the same roof?
Yeah. Okay, but outside of that, right, since you moved out, do you see them once a week, once a month?
I mean... So before...
Before this pandemic, yeah, it was probably like, you know, I would go there, spend a few hours with them, and that's it.
We would go to the park near where she lives, and that was it.
You know, I couldn't spend Christmas with my family, with my kids.
I couldn't go to, you know, weddings or anything like that.
It was terrible.
I didn't have any control of that situation at all.
And she would kind of promise, well, you know, if things get better and blah, blah, blah, then I'll let the kids visit them once in a while.
And sometimes she would go over to my grandparents' house for an hour or two.
I don't know why, to be honest.
But yeah, access has been minimal, you know?
And I don't know how it's going to get better, if it's going to get better.
Right. Right.
Yeah, I know, and...
I mean, I was thinking about this before the call, right, about my own dad, right, because this is one of the connections that we have, right, is that you feel, and I think there's some reality to it, that you're in a similar situation to my dad, which is, so, you know, many years ago, A friend of mine was complaining to me about his wife and asked me my opinion.
And I'm always kind of delicate with this stuff.
You know, you never know, right?
And I said, oh, you know, she can be a little harsh or she can...
Sometimes it seems like she's kind of peremptory or doesn't listen as well as maybe she could or whatever.
You know, it's just pretty mild stuff, right?
Anyway, so of course, the next time he had a fight with his wife, he said, you know, you know who else thinks you're a real bitch?
And then it's like, oh, great.
So now we had this friendship.
It's not a friend of mine anymore.
We had this friendship for like, I mean, I knew the guy for 20 years, right?
And then, you know, to score some stupid point with his wife, he drags me into it, misrepresents what I said.
And then what? Am I supposed to sit down with his wife and say, no, that's not really what I said.
I'm not stepping into that quagmire.
Like, sorry, right?
And so, you know, it all just kind of fell apart.
I did think about it.
Oh, I should sit down and chat.
Part of me was like, oh, forget it.
They can sort it out.
Good luck. But he took a private conversation and blurted it out with his wife.
And then what, right?
Yeah. And the reason I'm bringing that up...
Is because it struck me that when I wrote to my dad and told him what had happened with my mother, that he may have had a similar concern.
In other words, I think, I mean, I thought for a long time, well, you know, I was an adult, so therefore it wasn't like my mom could go after him for something to do with access because at that point I was in my mid to late 20s or something, right?
Yeah. And I was in my early 30s, in fact, early 30s the last time.
And so, but, but here's the thing, though, I wonder if his concern, if he'd had enough of the kind of horrors that you've gone through, I wonder if his concern was like, oh, great, so now, you know, let's say that I agree with my son, or I listen to my son, or I listen to how bad his mom was, or anything like that, and let's say that this somehow gets back to my ex-wife.
Now, it's like, okay, well, she's an adult.
Like, I don't know, what can she do?
Can she maybe sue him?
I don't know, right?
Maybe these legal threats start pouring in like this.
So maybe it was just the kind of scar tissue from the early dealings that even as an adult, you can't tell the truth, even when your kids become an adult, if that makes sense.
Yeah, I mean, that's, I think, where him and I kind of diverge.
I can't relate to that.
You know, and maybe it's like, yeah, maybe like you said, he was just beaten down so bad and didn't really have that support, you know, any kind of support around him.
Because I see it with her father, right?
He's kind of a shell of a man.
And he's not capable of changing, right?
She'll talk to him maybe once a year and she'll say, oh, I have a great relationship with my father.
And they'll talk on his birthday and her birthday.
And, you know, I cannot see him being ever active, even though he probably would want to be, right?
Like, I see him as a good person, but it just seemed like he was so battered down.
And I guess maybe, fortunately, I never got to that degree for whatever reason.
You know, maybe just luck, maybe just, you know, having resources.
Having curiosity to try to understand how I got into that situation in the first place.
But I can see people going down that kind of road and just not knowing how to handle it and just isolating and withdrawing, if that makes sense.
Yeah, no, it does. And I'm not trying to make this about me.
I mean, I'm really not.
I'm just... Looking down the road, right?
Because here's the problem, I mean, as you know, right, for this kind of situation is you can't be honest with your kids.
Yeah. Right, because they go and spill to the mom and you're in shit, right?
Yeah, yeah, I see it already.
Everything that my kids say or everything I do with them, even if it's only for an hour, they report everything to the mother.
You know, and they're scared of telling me anything.
Well, and they say, why haven't we seen you for a while, right?
Or if they were to say that, I mean, what can you say?
Your mom's keeping you from me?
She keeps threatening me with lawyers?
I mean, what happens then when they tell her that?
Yeah, yeah. They don't understand that.
And then once they go back to the house, the story becomes, well, he doesn't want to spend time with you.
I offer all the time access and, you know, he's too busy and who knows, right?
Yeah. But I see that already starting.
And it's been going on for a while.
And I don't know how to combat that, except by just being honest, except by trying to be a role model for them and trying to be truthful.
Again, that's something that I've really had to develop, too, right?
And that's come over the last few years of real intense seeking of knowledge.
And, you know, I think now I handle the situation completely differently than what I used to.
Before, I was just so down and hopeless that I, you know, I didn't even know if...
I would see the kids, but it wouldn't be...
I had this cloud of all this anxiety and all this uncertainty around me that I wasn't able to enjoy spending time with them like I do now.
Right now, I've kind of overcome that, and now I can tune out the rest of the world when I see them, and it's great.
But before, it was just, you know, you spend time with the kids and you have her just constantly, you know, messaging you or emailing you or calling you.
And it's like this isn't quality time.
Oh, so even while you were there, she'd be pinging you with various things?
Oh, for sure.
I would get, easily I can get 20 emails.
Why are you not answering? You know, I want to speak to the child right now.
And then she would just go on and on.
So, very destructive interference in that, right?
Yeah. I mean, now I can ignore it and not worry, partly because I know the consequences of, you know, at the time I thought, well, you know, I have to reply right away or this will look bad in court, right?
And maybe they'll rule against me because I didn't answer her call or whatever.
And now that I understand basically the repercussions are basically zero for almost anything you do in our legal system, I don't have that concern anymore.
Right, right.
Right. And your kids are still young, very young, right?
They're still young. Right, right.
So, I mean, there are three choices, as you know, right?
I mean, this doesn't tell you which to do, which, of course, I can't tell you to do, right?
And it wouldn't make any sense.
I would never have that expertise and wouldn't do you any good even if I did.
But the three choices are fight the legal battle, continue status quo, or abandon ship, right?
Yeah. Now, fighting legal battles seems to be off the table, and I think you've got good reasons to be pretty suspicious about that, given what you've experienced and the expense and all of that.
And I've known some guys.
I've known men who've just had to abandon that process, and I can understand why.
I mean, you're looking at, as you say, $100,000, $150,000, $200,000, an uncertain outcome.
Yeah. Lots of stress and bad, bad for the kids.
It's not a good system at all.
It is not the system that should exist.
But it is a system that has power over us at the moment.
So take the legal thing off.
Continue the status quo.
Or, abandon ship.
Abandon ship meaning like, you know, hope that you can get in touch with them when they get older, but go and start your life anew, right?
Yeah, or, you know, I don't know if I'll ever get to get an agreement with her outside of the court, but, you know, best case in that situation would be like, you know, okay, During school years, they can stay with you, and then summers and Christmas break or whatever, they can come with me, right?
And at least then I would have uninterrupted time with the kids.
Right. But it doesn't seem too likely that she's going to give you much uninterrupted time with the kids, right?
Yeah, it doesn't seem likely at all.
Right. And, of course, you don't know how long this coronavirus interruption, at least in the mind of your wife, is going to continue, right?
She might just say, oh, no, I'm still worried about it, or I don't know where you've been, and kids are vulnerable, and there could be any number of things that she would use with regards to this current pandemic as a way of, in a sense, denying you access, right?
No, absolutely. I've given up hope on really spending any quality time with them during this pandemic.
Well, but the during the jury is a question is a question during what?
Right. I mean, who knows when when I mean, that's never going to end right in terms of coronavirus is always going to be with us.
Right. And so who knows what?
You know, it's not like they get a mandate opening up the economy and your ex-wife is going to be like, yes, that's great.
OK, it's over. So let's return to normal.
Right. She could drag it out as long as she wants.
Right. And that's been her strategy.
It's like, just keep status quo for as long as possible, and then force me to go through these tremendous hurdles to try to see them.
Now, where did she get the money for all this?
So, her parents, mostly.
Oh, so the mom you got along with is funding her legal garbage, right?
Yeah, as far as I can tell.
Does she work? She's not working right now.
She's with the kids.
Right, right, okay. Yeah, so I don't know how long she can go on like this.
Maybe indefinitely. Well, I mean, I assume you're kicking in some cash too, right?
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, things have been uncertain with everything because...
If we do have to settle and I do have to split assets and pay alimony and all this other stuff, it's just like I don't know what...
I don't...
Again, that's up to the court to decide or up to the judge.
So you guys haven't figured out anything with regards to your longer-term obligations, is that right?
We have something in place right now, but...
It doesn't cover, they're outdated and they don't cover a lot of things.
And then plus, I mean, even if I get one, you know, a settlement, I don't have any belief, I don't have any faith that she's going to follow it.
Right, right.
So, if the option then sort of arises, or you can mull over the option of starting again, right, or I don't want to say starting again necessarily, but saying, you know, man, look, I gave it a shot.
I've got documentation in case my kids ever ask.
I've really given it a good, honest shot, but there's no possibility for me to be a father in this situation.
I'm too bullied. I'm too controlled.
I'm too vulnerable. I'm too stressed.
She holds all the cards.
You really can't have a relationship with people who are going to fight dirty.
You just can't. You just don't like any more than you can play tennis with people who also show up with a gun.
I mean, it may be something, but it ain't tennis, right?
And so you can't...
If she's willing to deny access, to interfere, to threaten, to...
Like, she's just fighting so dirty that you can't win.
Now, you can say, oh, well, I'm just going to go fight even dirtier, but you don't have a mom or a dad funding all your bills and You know, you have obviously a conscience and you've gone through a lot of self-work, so it's certainly questionable as to how dirty a fight you could get involved in.
And I'm not saying that would be a good thing either, because it's one thing for you to fight dirty with your wife, but when there are kids involved as well, it becomes a whole other situation, right?
No, absolutely. Yeah.
And I know any resources we waste on court battles is ultimately coming out of Coming away from them, right?
Yes, quite right, quite right, quite right.
So, what is the case against jumping ship?
I mean, other than obviously you want to spend time with your kids and all that, but that doesn't seem to be happening anytime soon, and it's been pretty spotty.
Like outside of actually being under the same roof as you were with your wife when you had your first kid, when you had your second kid, but outside of that, it's pretty spotty, right?
Yeah. So, I mean, that's the only thing really...
Keeping me. But you can't be a dad, as far as I understand it, in this situation.
Because being a dad is kind of like a more constant thing.
I mean, being a high-pressure babysitter, not that the high pressure is coming from you, but it's kind of a, you know, babysitters are just come and go, right?
It's not this emotional intensity and legal threats and stuff like that.
But being a babysitter is not the same as being a dad.
And, you know, it's conceivable, of course, that babysitters are seeing your kids more than you are, right?
Oh, for sure. Everybody's seeing the kids more than I am right now.
So if you can't be a dad, and if you can't be honest with them, and if you can't tell them what's going on, and if you can't reason with your wife, and if you can't go to court, what is, again, with all due respect and massive sympathy for the emotional difficulty, but I have, you know, a pretty iceberg-hearted practical streak to myself.
And so if I can't do something, I won't pretend to do it.
Yeah. And that's kind of how I've been the last, you know, so many months.
I know I can't do anything.
I'll make the best of what is the situation that I have now.
But, you know, ultimately, I'm stagnant, right?
I'm in limbo. Live in a more exotic place or more interesting place or, you know, make more money.
Well, and also start to open up your heart.
Yeah. To a new, potentially a new relationship with all the wisdom that you've gained from this horrible and bitter process, right?
It seems to me, especially if you listen to this show, you're doing this kind of work, it seems extraordinarily unlikely that you would end up making this mistake again, right?
No, absolutely. I... So that's one of the big lessons that I had to learn, was just creating boundaries.
I know you've talked about that extensively.
And I basically had no boundaries initially, and now I have really solid boundaries that will never be preached again.
But you're absolutely right.
I mean, in a lot of ways, this situation has I'm a much stronger person.
If you can't be a dad in the current situation, but I assume you became a father because you wanted to be a father, then there's a fairly decent case to be made for abandoning ship and striking out and with great regret, with great sorrow, knowing that it's not your fault.
Again, I know I'm only hearing one side of the story here, but I'm just going to go with you because you're the one who's calling and you've done the work that you say, so...
So, then, I think a stronger case is to be made for, you know, the ship's going down, you can't swim, you can't be a parent, but it is preventing you from being a parent in a more effective context, which would be with a healthy woman who loves you and is not going to be crazy.
Yeah. And people say, you know, of course I say too, having been on the receiving end of this, right?
This is, I appreciate the call and the trust because people say, yes, but what about the kids?
And it's like, well, yeah, it is a real shame.
And so either you can give kids a false version of yourself that's needed to not tell the truth, that needs to not tell the truth for fear of, and for legitimate fear of the mom going ape on you, right?
Barely being there, being held back, being under the wife's thumb, being under...
The order of falseness.
And it's kind of weird then.
Like, you could be around your kids, but you can't be honest with them.
You can't tell the truth. You can't be authentic.
And so you can't be a connected dad in the way that they need.
Like, no matter what. I mean, I guess even if there was some miracle that happened and your ex-wife kind of turned around and changed and this and that and the other, well...
There'd still be a long time to regain any of that kind of trust, right?
So if you can't have an honest and natural relationship, and it's not impossible with divorced couples, right?
I mean, I know it's hard, but it's not completely impossible for there to be some kind of normality in the parenting that is allowed.
But you're not going to have any of that.
So your alternative is to try and go and be a father in a new context over the years it will take to sort of recover from this.
Or to stick around for the next 20 years not being any kind of real dad to these kids because you can't be honest, you can't be direct, you can't be authentic, and you also have very inconsistent access.
And the other thing, too, is that this is, I think, another real issue as well, which I'm sure you've thought about.
But if your wife is as cruel as you say that she is, then what's going to happen is the better your relationship with your children, the more she's going to want to mess it up.
- Yeah, I already see that happening. - Right, so in which case, you simply will not be permitted to have a good relationship with your children.
That if, I mean, heaven forbid, that you're a good, authentic, decent person with the kids and then they look at her and say, mom is kind of crazy relative to dad, and then that comes up in some conflict, and then what's she gonna do?
She's gonna be like, "Well, don't you dare have a better relationship with my children than I do," and she'll work to mess it up.
So, I mean, you are in a situation, sadly, you know, she has the power of the state.
It's not her, right?
It's the state. And the state, you know, divorce is a government program.
Marriage is a government program.
And government programs don't, well, they never achieve what they want, right?
They achieve the opposite of their stated goals.
And so, I think your only chance to be a father is to strike out on your own.
Yeah. That's kind of the conclusion I've come to too.
And just for the people out there listening to this, this is a terrible system we have.
You could not invent a system that would be more harmful to families, to men, to women.
Like, your wife obviously has issues, and those issues are only inflamed and exacerbated by the power that she wields over you through the state.
And giving anyone that power, if it was reversed, right?
I mean... In the Muslim world, there is, of course, a lot of power that the men have over women, and those men abuse that power as well.
This is why a free and voluntary society is the way to go, because nobody can handle power, and your wife can't handle the power that's been unjustly granted to her by the state.
I mean, it is also a bit of a power play to say, I'm striking out on my own, because if your wife feels you slipping away, so to speak, then she may become more reasonable, and maybe that's kind of a pressured thing to happen.
But, you know, as you say, she can point out these things if she needs to.
She can, sorry, she can achieve this stability if she needs to, right?
Yeah. So it may be that it is something that brings her more to reason in a way as well.
Again, I'm not saying you would do this as a ploy, but it also may have that effect.
Yeah. Yeah, and I just want to agree that this system that we have, this legal system, is...
Just the worst possible system.
It's a system that was created really for the 1500s where everything was mailed.
There's no reason now that it should take so much effort to file a document with another person and cost that insane amount of money.
It was always designed to make lawyers money and to keep I mean,
it just doesn't work.
Yeah, and the lawyers, you know, they all play this game where we promote mediation and friendly agreements and stuff like this.
But then once you sign on with them, it's just cookie cutter, right?
They just follow the same process.
They basically copy and paste.
You know, the case law is basically all the same.
And they're just minting money off of the backs of people that are really suffering and are really stressed.
And it is the worst possible system that you can imagine.
And, of course, you're not going to get a huge amount of objective legal advice from people who might be able to buy their next yacht based upon your decision.
Although, you know, there definitely are honest lawyers out there.
Don't get me wrong. I've had some of them on the show and, you know, but a lot of times and family law seems to be a particularly challenging area to find high integrity lawyers, again, to put it as nicely as I can.
But yeah, I mean, I don't see any situation wherein you can have a natural and relaxed and authentic and genuine relationship with your kids.
I don't see how. How that could occur.
And I'm, like, as I said, I was saying this to Jesse Lee Peterson this morning, like, I just, I'm sick.
I can't spend the rest of my life faking things.
I can't spend the rest of my life faking things and pretending things aren't what they are.
They are what they are.
And if you can't be yourself, it's probably better to be somewhere else.
Yeah, and a shout out to Jesse Lee Peterson too.
I discovered him through your show and I followed his advice on forgiving your parents and that's been just a tremendous, tremendous difference in my life.
You know, the anxiety kind of went away.
I think, you know, and again I got this from your show, right?
Your persona is built To large part, based on your role models as a child, right?
And when that role model is causing you all this anxiety, and then you're able to overcome it, a lot of that anxiety just goes away.
And, you know, so thank you for introducing me to him, and shout out to him.
Well, I appreciate that. So that's what I wanted to say based upon what you had said, and I just want to close off by just giving you massive sympathy for this situation.
You're not alone in this.
I'm sure you know. I mean, you've probably been on parts of the Internet, but this stuff is discussed, and it is...
It is a brutal system for men.
And, you know, people say, oh, why do men live less long?
And why do men more prone to suicide and addiction and so on in some ways?
And it's like, well, a lot of it has to do with this terrible, terrible stuff, this crap, this garbage that passes for a legal system.
It is a terrible piece of machinery that just catches you, doesn't let you go, doesn't kill you, doesn't, you know, just continues to grind away at you and drain you of life.
It's not the money, particularly, although that's important, but It's the mindset.
It's the happiness. It's the sense of control of your own life.
It's brutal.
And I massively sympathize with you.
I sympathize with your children, of course, and to a lesser degree, but still somewhat relevant.
I do sympathize with your wife.
She had it rough, and she is abusing the power, but that's kind of what power does to people.
And it's hard for us because we're not beautiful women who have a court system and infinite cash, it seems, at our beck and command.
It is hard for us to imagine how we would handle that kind of power, but it's brutal.
The system is brutal on everyone, and it does tend to bring out the worst of the worst.
And I can't see how you can at all flourish and how your relationship with your children can flourish with this kind of threat hanging over.
So I just really wanted to close off by expressing my massive sympathy to what you've had to go through.
Thank you, Stefan. And thank you also for sharing your experiences with your father also and all the other experiences.
That's been a tremendous help.
I think I found your show You know, when I had separated from her.
And like I said, if I didn't, I don't know where I would have ended up.
I didn't have any kind of useful support around me.
And so, thank you for that.
You're very welcome. Will you keep me posted about how it goes?
Yeah, absolutely. I appreciate that.
Have a great evening and thanks again for your honesty.
It was very, very much appreciated.
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