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Dec. 22, 2022 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:57:37

'Am I a Dud Wife?' Freedomain Call In

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	My dear Steph, I'm writing to you because of recent events that have transpired on my marriage.
	A few months ago, my husband called his long-term ex-girlfriend, and a few days ago, I discovered he had her number saved in his phone.
	We've been together six and a half years and married for over two years.
	We both have a history of family dysfunction as well as relationship dysfunction.
	Our current marriage is my fourth and his second.
	My husband and I were like in many ways before I was introduced to you.
	Hyper-independent, completely disrespectful of the opposite sex, we both self-sabotaged our relationships, and both of us were extremely selfish and lacked empathy.
	We've both had emotionally immature ways of dealing with conflict.
	I've slowly learned how to handle my anger and hurt in more appropriate ways through listening to your podcast.
	He has listened to a few of your podcasts with me, but he still struggles with accepting the truth and reality of who his family is and how they affect his life.
	I, however, have defued from my entire family, with exception of my brother who recently passed away and my cousin.
	Both of my parents are now deceased.
	About three months into my current relationship, my brother began sharing your videos with me.
	The two that he sent me were, my girlfriend is in the attic.
	That always cracks me up.
	And the dangers of dating a supermodel.
	These two videos are permanently burned into my brain.
	Oh, that's the one I took my shirt off.
	Yeah, I remember. Exactly.
	They began the profound change in my life that I had been so desperately seeking.
	I knew that I was screwed up, but I didn't know how to change.
	Your brutally honest way of explaining things was exactly what I needed to finally call myself out on my BS excuses for living such a morally bankrupt lifestyle.
	I will never be able to repay my brother nor you.
	I'm going to get emotional.
	Or permanently altering my life for the better.
	Once you opened my eyes to what an absolute piece of crap I was, and had been for 40 years, I was overcome with grief, regret, and a whole lot of guilt.
	I don't know why I didn't put guilt in there, but I didn't.
	I changed my mindset so drastically that my closest friends were left in shock.
	I now believe that I should fulfill my role as a woman and I no longer feel the need to be a man or not need a man.
	Physically, my body is paying for being a man for the previous 40 years.
	I chose to completely change my lifestyle.
	I gave up my 18-year career and my horse ranch and dog rescue to move in with my current husband.
	I gave up my comfortable six figure salary to become a housewife.
	I gave up my dream home to move into an older home that is literally falling apart.
	The trade was worth it because the bond and commitment that I have with my husband is more than I could have ever imagined possible.
	There have been so many times that I felt like I was going to burst at the seams because I so desperately wanted everyone around me to have this opportunity to live a life that isn't full of mistrust and deception.
	I would share your videos and thoughts only to be met with complete rage from other women.
	I gave up on offending people with the truth and decided to just accept the reality that most people aren't searching for answers or truth.
	It seems like every time my husband and I have had a conflict, we reasonably work things out and are closer afterwards.
	This one conflict has been the exception.
	I'm hurt. I feel embarrassed and disrespected by him.
	He's given me a few BS not apologies and admitted that he was wrong, but in the same breath he's tried to blame me for him calling her.
	He wants this to just go away and us get back to how we've always been.
	He says it was just a stupid decision and that he has always had her number saved.
	I need to figure out who is the bigger dumbass here, him or me, and why did he do this?
	Right, right. Well, I'm sorry, of course, that it happened.
	Now, did he actually have an affair or was it just he was in contact?
	No. Okay. To give you some background, this ex-girlfriend has very stalkish behavior.
	And what had happened was a few weeks before he called her, we found out that she showed up with one of her best friends at a restaurant that we go to every single Thursday.
	And... She went there knowing we were going to be there.
	Do you see what I'm saying? It was a very weird situation.
	So I was making fun of it because when we found out that she showed up and she called their mutual friend saying, hey, where are y'all?
	Why aren't y'all here?
	I started joking with my husband saying, oh, look, you know, your stalker's still in love with you.
	And then it turned into kicking at him like if he would backtalk me, I would say, you better watch out or I'm going to call your ex-girlfriend to come pick you up.
	You know, and we joke like that all the time.
	Literally, like we listened to one of your call-ins recently where the guy was saying that his girlfriend threatened to call the cops.
	And after we listened to that, we would joke with each other saying, I'm going to call the cops on you.
	You know, that's probably not healthy.
	We probably shouldn't do that.
	And that's why he was saying it was my fault, was because he claimed that I kept picking with him about calling her.
	But you have to understand that when he called her, first of all, he was drinking, which is never a good combination.
	And a bunch of people were around.
	So I didn't believe him when he first told me that he called her.
	Another girl said, yeah, Ann, I heard him.
	He really did call her.
	It was like a big joke, but it wasn't.
	Because I'm like, why would you...
	To me, that's inviting more of her crazy behavior in our lives.
	And what's his history with her?
	They were living together, I guess, about eight years.
	And so that was, they were dating, they had broken up, I guess, about a year before he and I got together.
	But when I say broken up, he wasn't truly broken up with her because they still had contact with one another.
	She had left him for another man.
	And even though she had moved out, there was still some phone conversations for sure.
	He told me that they talked when we first met, even though that they were broken up, which of course I don't consider broken up anymore.
	But back then, in both of our dysfunctional minds, that was broken up.
	So she left him, right?
	She did leave him.
	When I tell you this woman's crazy, he doesn't like me to call her crazy, but she's crazy.
	She literally has punched his father.
	She has left marks on his chest, like scars from scratching his chest.
	She will fight men.
	She will fight women.
	And when we first got together she would drive by and take pictures of my car at his house.
	She would stalk my Facebook page.
	I mean there's just like this whole crazy history of her acting irrational.
	So for him to call her, I was like, what are you thinking?
	That's really just going to invite more of that behavior in our lives.
	Well, I mean, sorry to be annoying, but I mean, you kind of invited this woman into your life by dating him in a way, right?
	If he's still in contact with her.
	So how long was it between her breaking up with him?
	I think she cheated on him. Is that right?
	And you and your husband getting together initially?
	I think she had moved out the March.
	Okay, we met in June.
	So it had been just over a year.
	So she had moved out, I think, the March of the previous year.
	And then me and my husband met in June of the following year.
	And had he dated other people in between?
	Yes, and supposedly she had ran some previous girl off, according to one of the ex-girlfriend's best friends.
	This is just secondhand information that she had given me.
	So, sorry, he was in an eight-year relationship.
	His girlfriend cheats on him, leaves him, and he starts dating again.
	I'm sorry? Yeah, she does not want him to be with anybody else, but she doesn't want to be with him.
	No, no, no, I get that. So, he's in an eight-year relationship with her, and then she cheats on him, she leaves him, and he starts dating again.
	I guess there was maybe more than one other woman in between the crazy ex and you?
	I mean, yes. He went out, I guess, casual dating, but no committed relationship.
	Right. Okay. And was she gone from your lives for a while?
	Yeah, like before her showing up at this restaurant, we had not heard from her probably, I would say, about two years.
	Right, okay. And how long ago did she show up at the restaurant?
	That was, I believe it was in September of this year.
	Okay. And do you know if he had any contact with her beforehand?
	Do you have any idea why?
	I mean, you can always do this cyber-stalking these days, right?
	You sort of track people on social media.
	But do you have any idea why she circled back, so to speak?
	All I know is her mutual best friend that went with her to the restaurant, she had just also broken up with a longtime mutual best friend of theirs.
	So it was like these two couples that used to hang out and I guess being single and free, I don't know, she invites his ex-girlfriend back to town and they have a girls night out.
	I don't know.
	Like I said, it was bizarre because we haven't heard from her and she hasn't been around for quite some time.
	And as far as like me thinking that he's physically cheating on me, no, absolutely not.
	We literally, I'm a housewife.
	My job is to take care of him and we are literally together 24-7 except when he's at work.
	I mean, we don't, we do everything together.
	Okay, yeah, I was just curious about that.
	So, let's circle back a little bit towards your history and childhood.
	You said family was a mess or dysfunctional, and how was that?
	What happened? Oh, geez, how much time do you have?
	My parents made marriage look like the worst thing that could happen to two people.
	My father was the one that Drilled into my head, and don't ever need a man.
	Get a college education, become independent, get a good job.
	Don't ever need a man.
	Well, I mean, that wasn't just your dad.
	Like, that was kind of a belief system as a whole for quite a long time, just part of the general war on the West agenda and all that.
	But yeah, for sure.
	But sorry, go ahead. And he never, like, he didn't tell me how to find a good man.
	He didn't, of course, by telling me what a good man looks like, that would mean he would have to call out his own self.
	Right. So, just a real, I mean, they just argued constantly.
	They would get me involved.
	My mom would wake me up in the middle of the night when they were fighting to cry on my shoulder.
	And I was the youngest in the family, so it was like, what are you doing waking up a seven, eight-year-old And she's literally crying on my shoulder saying, what did I do wrong?
	I don't know what I did. My dad would leave.
	He would go out drinking. He would come back.
	He would threaten to blow his brains out.
	She woke me up one night because he had a gun to his head.
	And he was saying he was going to kill himself.
	And she goes upstairs, gets me out of bed.
	Again, I'm the youngest.
	And of course, he didn't kill himself, right?
	Didn't actually kill himself.
	No. He was down there.
	Right. He was down there.
	He was drunk. And...
	They had a lot of...
	He was very insecure about their relationship, so a lot of it was jealousy and just if he felt like she was putting her family before him.
	A lot of that went on.
	I don't know what else you want to know, but yes, it was very dysfunctional.
	It's certainly not a good template for me to follow.
	Right. And do you know why your parents got together?
	What their attraction was? Was it just physical?
	Was it desperation?
	Codependency? Something else?
	I can tell you that my mom and all of her siblings are very good looking.
	She was definitely a hottie.
	And my dad is a little bit more plain looking.
	He was going bald early on and kind of skinny and gangly.
	Yeah. And there was also something very important to understand is that they literally had like three or four marriage certificates before they finally got married because she literally left him at the altar one of these times that they were supposed to get married.
	I mean, it was like dysfunction from the word go.
	Right, okay. Yeah, so take what you want and then pay for it.
	Hey, she's pretty. I'm not going to evaluate based on character.
	I'm living in hell.
	Yeah, okay. Exactly.
	I think most people have been there to one degree or another at some point in their life.
	Now, are they still together?
	They never divorced, surprisingly.
	My mom died first, back in 2004, of pancreatic cancer, and then my dad died last year.
	Okay, okay.
	And what's your age range at the moment?
	You don't have to give me a specific age, but just roughly.
	I'm in my late 40s.
	Late 40s, okay. So, siblings?
	Yes. Yes, my brother was the oldest.
	He just passed away from cancer this year.
	He was 53.
	Wow. And then I have a sister that we have cut off several years ago.
	She is about four years older than me, so she's the middle child.
	Okay. And how long have you been with your husband?
	It's coming up on seven years.
	And how did you guys meet and what was the circumstances around that?
	It was totally a chance meeting.
	I used to work a lot of overtime at my job and I was about to work a turnaround where I was going to be working like 60 or 90 days straight.
	Me and my girlfriends decided to rent a cabana at the casino in my hometown and just have a girls' day out.
	It was on a Wednesday. It wasn't even a weekend.
	Nobody was there. It was dead.
	He happened to be there with one of his friends.
	I tried to warn him.
	I told him to run.
	I said, you don't want anything to do with me, but he just kept wanting to talk to me.
	And what do you mean when you said, like, what was your reasoning behind him not wanting to have anything to do with you?
	Because I was so dysfunctional, I've literally treated men like crap my whole life.
	I had a history of, like, non-commitment.
	Anytime a man would upset me or say something I didn't agree with or I didn't like, it was like, hit the road, Jack.
	You know what I'm saying? I just, there was zero...
	Well, I mean, you were listening to your dad, right?
	And you were avoiding the fate of your parents, I assume.
	Oh, absolutely. I didn't value marriage or relationships at all.
	Right, right. So, you told him, you're going to regret this.
	And he's like, I live for regrets or something.
	Sign me up! Right, right.
	He said, give me your phone number, please.
	And the funny thing is, the very first day that we met...
	I was just getting into attachment theories and learning how I was dysfunctional.
	And I made him take an attachment test.
	On the first date?
	Yeah. Okay.
	Well, you know what? That's not a bad thing, necessarily.
	I already knew enough about myself to know what kind of man I attracted, and when he scored what he did on the test, I was like, well, this is why you are attracted to me.
	I'm highly avoider attachment, and so is my brother, and we tend to attract the more needy Well, you know, I can go out on a fairly safe limb here and guess that your husband was raised by an avoidant mother, and so he's just used to pursuing and trying to win over affection and throwing himself at a cold heart, and that's his training, right?
	Well, it's even worse than that, Steph.
	And that's one reason after I listened to your videos and I put myself in his shoes as a child, there is no way I could ever threaten to leave him or not do everything possible to make this work because he's literally been abandoned.
	By every woman that he's ever had, his mom abandoned him.
	Then his first wife, who was his high school sweetheart, they were together for like 12 years.
	She left him. 30 days after he moves out, she's got another man living in their house, so I'm pretty sure she also essentially had already established a relationship with this other guy.
	And then the ex-girlfriend left him.
	So, yeah, he's used to that.
	Wow, were you in sales at all?
	No. Interesting, because you're good at selling.
	Do you know what I mean by this?
	No. Well, you're trying to sell me the...
	You know, the crazy, crazy ex, which, you know, I accept and I'm with you 100%.
	But there's a bit of a victim narrative there.
	And, you know, obviously what happened to your husband when he was a kid was appalling.
	You know, his father, sorry, his mother rejected him and what happened to you as a kid.
	But, you know, 18, you get this magic...
	Free will thing, right? And again, it's tough and all of that.
	But everything that, like you say, his mother rejected him, abandoned him, terrible.
	And then you put that category in like, well, and his first wife.
	And it's like, no, no, those are two completely different situations.
	One was a relationship he didn't choose, his mother.
	The other was a relationship he pursued.
	Yep, you're right. You're right.
	And he knew how bad it was to be abandoned by a mother or by a woman.
	And so at that point, he's responsible.
	It's kind of like if your father is fat and smokes and drinks and dies of a heart attack, and you say, well, I've got no choice but to...
	Eat too much and not exercise in smoke because my family history is like, no, no, no, you saw the guy die.
	Like, your husband saw the effects of female abandonment and then went off in hot pursuit, even to the point where, as you say, seven years ago, when you said, I'm bad for you, I'm not available, and he's like, you know, so even well into his middle age, right, he's still pursuing this stuff, right?
	So I give him nothing but sympathy.
	Right. Right.
	Absolutely, I guess. I guess.
	True. So just wanted to just mention that because you've been listening for a while.
	So I just want to I can I can throw we can both join hands and jump in the deep end, I suppose, right?
	Okay, so with your childhood, was there other stressors, like were there financial stressors, were there other health stressors, or other things that were going on that were tough outside of this madness within the family?
	Not really, just that there wasn't, there definitely wasn't a I always craved my father's approval and never got it, and so did my brother.
	It wasn't just me, obviously.
	There was never a moment where he was going to tell me, good job, or that's awesome.
	And no matter what I showed him that I accomplished or did, that just wasn't going to happen.
	On the other hand, my mom was sort of like, I could go crap on the pot, and she'd be like, oh my God, you're the greatest.
	So we definitely had two opposites there with our parents and how they parented us.
	My mom was not a disciplinarian.
	My father was.
	But I can't really think of anything else that was major.
	Tell me a little bit more about your father and approval.
	I want to make sure I follow that.
	I'm trying to think of one of the earliest memories.
	Well, okay, so I've always been extremely into animals, and I remember being like, I don't know, seven, eight years old, and I had trained my dog to do like 10 different tricks all by myself, you know, and my mom's out there videoing, she's so happy, and my dad's just like, oh yeah, that's cool, whatever.
	And then, like, when I started riding horses, it was the same sort of thing.
	I would try to show my dad what I had taught them or trained them to do, and he was totally unimpressed.
	And there was a point in time where he would come watch me compete, and it would be crushing because...
	I heard on a video that my mom was making, him, his voice coming across, tell some guy, she's not even running the horse.
	Like, basically criticizing my riding the whole time.
	And this is your dad? Yeah, and I had no clue because I'm up on the horse.
	I don't know what he's saying until the next day when I replay the video.
	But he's always been that way, like, even later in life when he would come watch me ride.
	I remember one day...
	He told my cousin, who I'm real close to, that, I don't know why you drove two hours to come watch this pathetic performance, like, basically saying I was no good.
	I mean, he just, there was never going to be any positive reinforcement from him.
	Why do you think he was that way?
	He's definitely a lot like his mom.
	His mom was a bitch.
	There was never affection in that family at all.
	Just a generally unhappy person.
	Okay. So, I mean, to not take pleasure in your children's accomplishments, to me, is just about the biggest sign of depression that I could conceive of.
	Definitely. Like the suicide thing, he definitely threatened that multiple times throughout my childhood.
	No, but that was a power play.
	Because he didn't do it, right?
	Yeah. Obviously, I'm glad he didn't do it, but that's a power play thing.
	I'm so desperate to win in this fight with your mom that I'll threaten even this, right?
	Exactly. It was all over their relationship.
	It was all over, you're putting somebody before me, you don't love me, that kind of stuff.
	Right, okay. So, because now, this view that you have of your father and approval, let's go a little deeper, if you don't mind.
	Now, I'm going to make the case that it was not approval that you were after with your father.
	Okay. So what do children need the most from their parents?
	Food, shelter, care, love.
	Okay, so that's called the buckshot answer.
	I'm just going to run through the dictionary and one of these is probably going to be, you know, what's two plus two?
	Nine, seven, unicorn, blue!
	Right, okay. Okay, so what's the one thing do you think that children need the most?
	In other words, what does everything else point out?
	And if they get that, they don't need anything else.
	Acceptance. Well, okay, but acceptance with the goal of what?
	Like what does acceptance give them?
	I'm not even sure what acceptance means there, but let's say at least what emotion would those, would acceptance give kids?
	I'm just thinking in the way of like you're part of the family unit.
	You're going to be protected. We're going to care for you.
	Okay, protection, right? Am I not going in the right direction?
	So biologically, like right down to the raw animal, right?
	So biologically, what do children need the most?
	I think they need security.
	I think they need protection.
	Because if they're not protected, they don't live.
	I mean, you can live without love, right?
	I mean, you and I did when we were growing up.
	You can live without love. But you can't live without protection as a child.
	Now, protection, of course, involves love.
	I mean, if you feel genuinely loved, then that love is your protection.
	If your parent loves you and wants to spend time with you and enjoys your company, then, you know, by definition, your parent is going to protect you.
	Yeah, yeah. So love leads to protection.
	If you are protected, you get to survive.
	So I guess another way of putting that is all children who didn't have protection as their main goal didn't make it as much.
	It didn't survive as much.
	Right. So, protection.
	So, you say that you want your father's approval, and I don't think that's the bottom layer.
	I think the bottom layer is in the realm of protection.
	In other words, if your father approved of you, praised you, loved you, then you would feel safe.
	You would feel protected. Okay.
	That makes sense.
	So yeah, you were after protection from your father.
	Because approval is like a value judgment.
	Look, your kids will do things that you as a parent will disapprove of.
	I mean, while we're talking, your husband is doing something that you disapprove of, and I'm sure you've done things that he disapproves of.
	So disapproval...
	Being approved of, it can't be the essence or the basis of what you needed from your father because that's, you know, it's going to fluctuate a little bit from time to time, right?
	Right. So you needed from your father protection.
	And that's the one thing that you can't question, right?
	Right. So if you say to a parent, do you always approve of your children?
	Right. Well, the parents will say, well, no.
	Of course not, right?
	But they also don't approve of me 100%, right?
	And I think nobody can approve of everyone all the time.
	That's impossible because it's sort of an emotional state.
	Now, the physical act of protection, yes, that's something that you can do.
	Did you childproof your home?
	Do you keep your children safe?
	Do you just throw them down a hill on a bike sideways or something?
	Or do you keep them away from water?
	Do you take them to the dentist?
	And I don't think anyone, if questioned and say, well, I regularly put my children in extreme danger, I don't think anyone would say, well, I can understand that.
	I think that's the one thing that the parents do have to provide is protection.
	Children can't relax if they don't feel protected, if they don't feel secure, if they don't feel...
	And love and acceptance is all part of that.
	But the one thing I think that's the bedrock is security, is protection.
	That's the one thing that if parents don't provide that, there's no excuse.
	There's no excuse. I've used this analogy before, but if you bring home some big old dog and the dog is kind of nice for a little while and then just starts biting kids, there's no parent who, well, I'm going to keep the dog.
	The kids will heal. I mean, come on.
	Rabies shots aren't that bad.
	Nobody would sit there and say, yeah, I can see that.
	Because that's sort of a physical thing.
	You have to keep your kids physically safe.
	Right. So,
	what you needed, I think, and again, this is your life, so, you know, if I go awry or I'm off track, please put me back on the right path, but I think what you most needed from both your parents was protection because the stories that you gave to me, you know, your mom waking you up in the middle of the night and your dad's got a gun to his head and pouring her heart out, I mean, that's such a sense of chaos.
	And you can't feel protected.
	See, you can never feel protected when you're being used.
	Yeah, it was like I had to be the adult, you know?
	Right, right.
	Oh, you did the laugh, didn't you?
	Oh, you've been a listener long enough to know that when you're talking about childhood horrors, you can't give a laugh.
	No, so that feeling of instability, that feeling of danger, if you're being used, you can't be protected.
	Right. And it sounds like your parents used you as kind of buffers or, you know, cry pillows or, you know, like, I don't know, places to vomit their emotional excesses into.
	So they were using you and, yeah, you can't.
	If you go to a salesman and you want to buy a car, if the salesman is genuinely interested in selling you something that meets your needs and is perfectly willing to say, we don't have a car that meets your needs, then you feel like your needs are being protected.
	If the salesman is just desperate to sell you any old piece of junk because his business is about to go under, you're not going to be protected because he's using you to save his business.
	You're not going to feel protected. So it's just sort of a labored analogy, but it seems to me like this sense of protection and security is Was what was most absent in your childhood?
	And again, it's your childhood, so if I'm wrong, obviously we can take on another path.
	Well, and now that you've heard it like that, the fact of being used, my father actually used me up until the very end because before I cut him off, he was using me to get my sister under control.
	Yeah, I was going to circle back on good old sis.
	What's the story there?
	Well, she has no conscience, I guess.
	So he literally had to buy her love and attention.
	But my brother and I, we had good jobs.
	We didn't need your money.
	So if we did something for my dad, it was because we truly wanted to.
	He had to...
	Sorry, if you could just keep off the names.
	I'm sorry. So my sister was just the opposite.
	It was a mutually using relationship between her and my dad and very codependent type.
	Well, see, now that's just a bunch of words without any details, right?
	You can't go to the doctor and say, I feel negative.
	So codependent, what specifically happened that gave right to the theories?
	Specifically, my sister has never been able to manage her money and he's had to bail her out financially.
	Never been able to manage her money?
	What do you mean? Is she in a coma?
	She's never managed her money.
	Never been able?
	I mean, seriously, does she have brain damage?
	Is she mentally handicapped?
	Does she have math phobia to the point where she passes out?
	What do you mean she's unable to?
	We actually just call her Satan.
	Okay, that's another way of not giving her free will, because Satan doesn't have any free will anymore.
	So what does she do?
	My brother and I never understood it.
	It was just, she lives in fantasy land.
	I don't know. Like, there's no...
	Well, did she get your mom's looks?
	She, how do I explain this?
	She... She's a beautiful person.
	Well, she was a beautiful person when she was younger, but she also struggled with acne, so she has a lot of scarring on her face, and I know that that probably affected her forever.
	But does she use her looks to get resources?
	Or does she use her sexual appeal to get resources?
	Yes, she has. She's not been faithful to her husband ever.
	Right. Okay. So she's the kind of person – and listen, you don't have to be a beautiful woman to do this.
	You just have to lower your standards, right?
	Beautiful women can get just about any guy to give them resources.
	If you happen to be less beautiful, you just have to go for less attractive guys on average, right, and just get resources from them.
	So has she used her looks to avoid consequences or has she used her sexuality or sex appeal or availability to avoid consequences of bad decisions?
	Yeah. I would say yes.
	I know that she's admitted to me in the past that her boyfriend had given her money.
	What do you mean? I'm talking about while she's married to her husband.
	Oh, she's taking money from her boyfriend while she's married to her husband.
	Yes. I think that might fall into the category of...
	Prostitution? Well, I mean, I don't know exactly, but it certainly would be in the category of using her sexual availability to get resources, right?
	Correct. Okay, so she doesn't have to grow up because she's not going to remain monogamous, right?
	I mean, monogamy is maturity because it means like, okay, I'm in this – I'm with this person, so I'm not going to use anybody else's – I'm not going to get resources from anybody else, so this is the person I'm going to be with and make them happy and so on.
	Whereas a woman who's willing to be unfaithful is a woman who doesn't have to grow up because she can just – Turn around and get resources.
	This is this weird kind of odd little TikTok phenomenon, probably not that little at the moment where I don't know if you've seen it, but it's a woman and there's two versions that I've seen.
	The first is she's putting on a wedding dress and the moment the wedding dress lands on her shoulders, she has a vision of herself doing laundry, holding a baby, holding a broom, and then she just like, ah, she throws the wedding dress away and she I don't know, go to a disco or some useless crap like that.
	And the other one is a woman, she puts on an engagement ring.
	She puts on an engagement ring in the bathroom.
	And the moment she puts on the engagement ring, this one is without the baby, but she sees herself cleaning the toilet.
	She sees herself mopping the floors and doing laundry.
	And she just jumps back and she throws the engagement ring down the toilet, flushes it, and then leaves in her perfect yoga pants to go to, I don't know, a park or something, whatever it is, right?
	And the fact that these young women, these are young, sexually attractive women in the prime of their youthful fertility markers and beauty and so on, well, they don't have to grow up.
	And the implication being, of course, that single women don't do laundry or clean their house is like, well, I know that's true for some of them, but that's pretty disgusting.
	Exactly. Yeah. So, I mean, your sister, if there's sort of incomprehensibility around this, If I understand this right, okay, if she's willing to have sex for resources or...
	And it doesn't have to be just sex.
	I don't really know what the right word is exactly, but...
	It's something like using her sexuality for resources.
	And that doesn't mean having sex with people.
	It doesn't mean that at all. I mean, you can flirt subtly with a guy to get a job and never sleep with him, but that's using your sexuality to get resources, right?
	Right, right. And so if she has used consistently her sexuality to get resources, why on earth would she need to deal with money?
	Like, why on earth would she need to be good with money?
	She's good with flirting. I mean, this is one of the options for women.
	It's a little bit for men too, but mostly for women, right?
	Why would you have to be responsible?
	Why would you have to be good with money?
	You can just get a guy to give you money, if I understand this correctly.
	Yes, absolutely. Okay, yeah, I just wanted to mention that as one way of sort of understanding.
	And this fork in the road women take usually when they're very young, right?
	And a woman, it's the choice, right?
	It's the big choice, right?
	The big choice for men is to play versus to work, right?
	Am I going to play or am I going to work?
	Right. Yeah, yeah.
	Yeah, I mean, these days, it seems like a lot of women are, you know, I saw this image from a video where some woman was mailed $70,000 in cash, you know, for wearing a low-cut top on, I don't know, or maybe it was OnlyFans.
	I have no idea, right? But it's like, okay, well, good luck with that, right?
	Good luck with, oh, no, no, I don't want your $70,000 in cash.
	I'm going to go to McDonald's and work minimum.
	Like, you know what I mean? Like, that's a really tough, that's a tough decision to make.
	I mean, we all know what the right thing is to do, sort of, in terms of self-respect and all of that.
	It sounds like your sister took a cue from your mom and said, well, okay, the value that I'm bringing is sexual attractiveness.
	And again, that doesn't mean having sex.
	It just means having that as a resource-gathering mechanism, right?
	Right. So that's probably...
	Now, it does hollow out the soul, and there is a certain element of prostitution in it, but...
	And you really can't pair bond, right?
	If that's your approach, you can't pair bond because you have to break the pair bond in order to be able to flirt with other guys to get resources, right?
	Yeah, and in my opinion, you can't say that you love your husband and be doing that.
	No, because you love resources and you'll do whatever it takes to get the resources.
	And if your husband has the resources, great.
	And if he doesn't, well, too bad, right?
	You'll just go and get more resources that other way, right?
	So, yeah, I just sort of wanted to point that out.
	Now, you...
	Sorry, we got to your sister from...
	The sister was an interruption.
	I'm sorry. I couldn't recall how we got there.
	We were talking about your father and protection, and then we were talking about something else.
	We jumped onto your sister. It'll come back.
	But the purpose that I wanted to sort of purpose the next part of the conversation, you said that your body is paying the price for your youth, and I just wanted to make sure I understood what you meant, but that's a rather startling statement.
	I just wanted to make sure I sort of fully, fully got it.
	So, thanks to affirmative action, I was able to get a job at an oil refinery.
	Doing a man's job, essentially.
	So I had very physically strenuous work.
	I loved it, don't get me wrong.
	And then on top of that, my hobbies with the horses and the acreage I had to keep up all involved lifting a lot of heavy stuff.
	And yeah, my neck and back are basically shot.
	What are the symptoms?
	What does that mean? Well, I hurt every single day.
	I've already had two herniated discs.
	I've had two discs removed in my neck and fused with cadaver bone.
	It's just a constant going to the doctor to get injections.
	So fused is when there's not flexibility between the spinal bones, is that right?
	Yeah, they literally took out the herniated disc that was torn and then the one below it that was in such bad shape it was pressing on some of my nerve roots.
	They removed those two discs and put cadaver bone in between.
	Wow. Yeah, so now, and the doctor told me that when I had the surgery, he said, look, you know, this isn't going to last if you continue doing the same physical work because now your spine is no longer as mobile.
	So now you're going to put more stress on the disc above and below where the fusion is.
	And so now I actually have another herniation on the Are you still doing the six-figure?
	I thought you said you quit the six-figure salary.
	Was that the physical labor one?
	Yes. Okay, but you quit that, but there's some other physical difficulty that you're doing?
	No, actually, I recently got hit by an 18-wheeler.
	What? Yeah, so I don't know.
	We're thinking that that's what caused the latest problem.
	We're thinking that that's what, is there something else other than he being, did he get hit by a 20-wheeler as well, or?
	Literally, my car's the size of a go-kart, and an 18-wheeler Sanker truck hit me.
	Oh my god. I'm so sorry.
	When did that happen? That was back at the end of August.
	So I'm still trying to recuperate from that.
	Oh, isn't that interesting?
	So end of August and then, if I remember this rightly, the crazy ex showed up in September.
	Yeah, I believe that was right.
	I hope I'm not lying to you. It's like she senses weakness.
	You know what I mean? She's like, ah, new girlfriend is prey.
	Yeah. Interesting.
	No, that's an interesting coincidence, right?
	Could be, yes.
	Right. Okay.
	So, what were the other things that you, because you had your guilt in there, right?
	And I want to make sure I understand where that was coming from.
	What were the other things that you were doing in your youth that had you feel, had guilt pop up in your head?
	Guilt for how I treated men.
	I mean, I was very emasculating to men.
	I hurt them.
	Emasculating, sorry. The adjectives don't particularly help me or the descriptions because I don't know what you're describing.
	Because that's a conclusion and I don't know what the facts are.
	The way society is towards men and talking to them like they're stupid.
	Just that general...
	Okay, so you've given me another excuse here called society, so let's talk about you and your choices.
	Well, I know for sure that my previous husband was very needy, and I would make fun of him.
	What does needy mean? That's a conclusion.
	What did he do? What did he say?
	He just wanted to feel special and he wanted to spend more time with me.
	Okay, how is that needy?
	I'm sorry. I'm trying to answer because needy, of course, is a pejorative, right?
	Like he's calling you 20 times a day and stalking you at work and like that's sort of needy, right?
	So wanting to feel special and spend more time with you, I don't quite get how that's in the needy category, but I'm certainly happy to be educated.
	Okay. The phone call would be a great example.
	So he called me every day on his way to work.
	And then as I'm leaving, he would call again.
	And one day I couldn't answer the phone because my cousin had called and she was in the middle of this, I don't know, life altering story she was telling me.
	So I didn't. Stop her and interrupt her and take his call.
	I just figured I had just talked to him a few minutes ago, so I'll call him right back.
	But he was actually annoyed and irritated that I didn't call him right back, you know, accept his phone call.
	And once you explained it, was he okay?
	Yeah. Yeah, but it was still like, well, you could have just swapped over and told me and then swapped back over.
	But my argument was, my God, I had just talked to you.
	I mean, I don't know.
	I mean, I'm okay with that kind of stuff now.
	I literally, my husband, I dote on him.
	I will answer him, even if it is just a quick text, because I understand now that That attachment disorder...
	Okay, hang on, hang on. Sorry, sorry.
	Your ex-husband at one point got annoyed because he couldn't get through to you on the phone.
	And I'm trying to figure out the big needy thing here, though.
	Um... He wanted me around.
	Like, he wanted me to spend time just with him.
	If it was his last day off, he wanted that day to be just he and I. There was just a lot of, and I was so obsessed with the horses and competing.
	It was like, I don't have time for this.
	I was just, like I said, I was extremely selfish.
	Well, hang on. So you keep bouncing around all these conclusions without any facts.
	So I'm sorry. If you already have the conclusions, then we don't need to talk about it if those conclusions are accurate.
	But when you've got, you know, I was selfish, he was needy, I'm still trying to sort of figure out the facts.
	It could be like Joe Friday, homicide, just the facts, ma'am.
	The facts are, he wanted to be loved, and I did not love him.
	That's what the facts are.
	I didn't prioritize him.
	Well, hang on. Okay, loving, prioritizing.
	So, again, how long were you together and married for?
	We were together, I think, nine years, married five.
	And did you love him at any point in that relationship?
	Well, I thought it was love stuff, but now I know.
	Like, I would never treat somebody like that and then claim to love them.
	Well, treat someone like what?
	So far, I've only heard that you were a little miffed at him.
	Not prioritize him.
	But what does that mean? What does it mean?
	How would I know, looking at it, that you're not prioritizing him?
	What are you guilty about?
	Well, because if he told me he needed something from me, I would just blow him off or make fun of him.
	You know, it wasn't I wasn't trying to understand where he was coming from, like spending more time with me or whatever.
	Oh, so he would say something like, okay, so in an average month or an average week, if horses was the big sort of, I guess, block between spending time with you and your husband, how much time would you spend a week or a month doing horse stuff?
	Uh, I work 12-hour days, so I would come home and probably spend at least the first two to three hours out in the barn and riding.
	So by the time I got done doing that stuff, it was time for me to take a shower and, exactly.
	Right. So you had no time for your husband?
	Exactly. Right.
	Why did you prefer the horses?
	Well, obviously I think I was trying to avoid at all cost facing my life, like facing my dysfunction, facing the fact that I didn't even know how to have a relationship or be close to somebody.
	And this was in your 30s, right?
	Yes. And did your husband want kids?
	He actually, he had two daughters from a previous marriage, but he actually did beg me to have a son and I was absolutely against it.
	I very much had the same attitude as the caller that you had a few weeks ago where she said she didn't regret anything she did in her life, but she couldn't find anybody.
	I thought it would be selfish to bring a child into this world if I didn't know it could have a mother and father there for forever, and I couldn't trust myself to stay with one man.
	I know that sounds terrible.
	I was horrible. Sorry, I'm trying to... So, you didn't want to have kids because you thought you might leave their husband?
	Yeah. Your husband, sorry, your husband, their dad, right?
	Yes, yes. And did you tell him that?
	Did I tell my husband that?
	Yeah. Let's see.
	How did I word it? Probably not specifically in those words.
	I know I've told my husbands before.
	Stupid crap. Like I've actually said early on in my 20s that I hated kids and I don't hate kids.
	I hated what kids, what that represented for me.
	And what do kids represent for you?
	Well, that I couldn't be a good mom.
	I didn't have the skills. Oh, so you, rather than criticize your parents, you turned on kids?
	Right. Yeah, okay.
	I got it. Look, I understand.
	It's not like the culture is trying to lead you back to the joys of motherhood exactly, right?
	Not at all. I mean, people around me thought I had it made.
	They were like, you don't have kids.
	You're single and free.
	Or even when I was married, like, you're making all this money.
	Look at all the cars you have, the horses.
	You can go travel, do whatever you want.
	People looked up to me.
	And now looking back, I'm like, that was so sad.
	How are they looking up to me?
	Well, all you see on social media, 99% of what you see on social media is antinatalism.
	It's like, oh, I can't get along with my husband.
	Oh, my wife is a bitch.
	And oh, my kids don't listen to me.
	And it's all just, yeah, it's all just family is horrible.
	Family is horrible. Family is horrible.
	Family is horrible. And that reminds me, the very first time that I met my current husband's mom, and she was, you know, giving me the 20 questions, and she said, do you have any kids?
	And I said, no, I don't.
	And she said, oh, that's good.
	And I thought to myself, did she just say that in front of her son?
	Like, it just felt icky.
	It felt really icky.
	It's hard to say that in front of her son.
	So, with your first husband, you were together with him, I think, for seven years or something like that?
	Sorry, go ahead. I've had a lot of husbands.
	Is this your third marriage, fourth?
	This is my fourth.
	Fourth marriage, okay. And do you want to tell me a little bit about the other marriages?
	The first one, I was really young, and basically, I think I was just trying to get out of the house.
	I think I was 20 when I got married to him, and we were only...
	Like, we met over the internet.
	We were only together for like a year and a half.
	He had two small children, a one-year-old and a two-year-old.
	It was a disaster waiting.
	He was about, I want to say he was like three to four years older than me.
	He was, you know, early 20s.
	And did he have a crazy ex as well?
	Oh, yes. No patterns, though.
	No patterns at all, I'm sure.
	No, not at all. Not at all.
	Let's see. Then the second husband, we were together.
	Hang on, sorry. What happened with the first marriage and why it ended?
	Well, it was lame.
	I just told him, I was like, I can't handle this anymore.
	You're not helping me with these kids.
	He had no real initiative to try to get a better job and get us out of poverty.
	And so for a long time, I stayed home with kids, right?
	Because that's what makes sense money-wise, or it did for us at the time.
	So during the I Hate Kids phase, you were home with kids that weren't even yours.
	Mm-hmm. Yes, and believe it or not, I was so anal.
	They had to have a home-cooked meal every single day.
	I mean, it would enrage me if I came home and he was feeding him peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and I'm like, no, I have this roast.
	All you had to do was stick it in the oven.
	I want them eating good food.
	And was he unemployed or just working a dead-end job?
	Just, like, part-time work, so he didn't have a steady income.
	So he would go to these staffing agencies and, you know, just get a job for a few months.
	Yeah, I used to do that stuff in my teens, so yeah, I know that teen.
	Yeah. It's like the job board, right?
	Yeah, yeah. A little bit insecure feeling for me, not having, you know, a steady provider and then having these two small children.
	Did he have sole custody?
	He was actually trying to get it, and we could have easily gotten it because his ex was crazy, like you said, and she ended up getting locked up.
	And even to this day, his boys will tell me that I was more of a mom to them than their own mom, which is incredibly sad because I judge myself more rashly than mine.
	Yeah, but, you know, I mean, we still got them.
	Like, my mom was a schoolteacher, so my mom would get them every summer, and they would still come stay with me.
	Oh, your mom's a schoolteacher.
	Oh, God. People who can't manage their own lives, but are great to instruct children.
	Yes. Isn't that crazy?
	That's horrible. That's horrible.
	I mean, I don't think you should be allowed to teach when you're going through a divorce or if you have a terrible marriage.
	But anyway, that's... That would be a free market thing, whatever that would be.
	But I wouldn't put my kid in a classroom with a teacher who was going through a divorce.
	Yeah, definitely. Right.
	Okay, so you eventually just like, I can't do this anymore.
	And you ended that marriage.
	And then what happened with the next one?
	The next one, we dated for a really long time.
	He struggled with...
	There was always some drama with work, and it was like we always felt like he might get fired at any minute, but he finally did get fired.
	And when he got fired from his job, he decides that he wants to become a pilot, so he needs to move two hours away to go to pilot school, and then he's going to get a job with Border Patrol, so then he's moving 15 hours away.
	And it was at that point where I said, look, I'm not going to give up my job.
	I'm actually a good hard worker and show up every day on time.
	And so it would be stupid for me to give up my income to follow you to pursue this pilot dream of yours when you might be hired.
	How was he paying? Did he have savings?
	How was he paying for all this retraining?
	Yeah, so the pilot school, he actually, I think, pretty much wiped out his 401k to pay for that.
	So, he was a disaster as a boyfriend slash husband because he was very flirtatious.
	No doubt that he cheated on me.
	Very just...
	My sister would say he's got you as arm candy.
	He was about 10 years older than me.
	I've really got to beg you to quit the names.
	Sorry. I've got them all noted down, but I'm going to spend the rest of the day editing.
	But go ahead. Yeah, so she just said, you know, I think he's just with you for the looks, like you're his arm candy.
	Yeah, he was definitely disrespectful of women, just...
	Well, he was disrespectful of women who were first disrespectful to themselves, right?
	Correct. Right.
	He doesn't operate in a vacuum.
	None of us do, right? Right, right.
	Okay, so he moves two hours, then 15 hours.
	He's a bit of a himbo, a bit of a pretty boy, and he flirts a lot, and he cheats on you, as you think, right?
	Yes. And you're working – is this one of the physical labor jobs?
	Yes, this is the main job that I have most of my life.
	Okay. And so he's separated from you, and did he at least become a pilot?
	He did. Oh, okay.
	Plus – But the stupid thing was, like, as a last-ditch effort, this is so retarded, but as a last-ditch effort to, like, prove that he wanted to be with me and move back, he said, let's get married.
	So we literally didn't get married till the very end of our relationship.
	And, of course, it didn't work out, you know, because after he married me, he then tells me, well, I thought after I married you, you would see how serious I was and you would come get a job over here.
	Yeah. And I'm like, did we not have this discussion already?
	And did he want kids at all?
	He never asked me to have a child with him.
	He already had a son from his first marriage.
	Could you not find guys who don't have kids?
	These are young guys. What's going on?
	It took me 40 years.
	No, no, but why? I'm trying to understand.
	I mean, I've dated a lot.
	I never dated a single mom and I'm trying to figure out like, I'm sorry, I don't mean to laugh, but I'm just like, how are you finding all these guys?
	Are you in like a place where they add sperm to the water or what?
	I was a piece of crap, so therefore I attracted pieces of crap.
	But I mean, were there guys without kids who wanted to date you and you just said no or...
	There were definitely guys that were probably interested in me.
	I remember one guy that was friends with my sister's husband, and he made the comment that he had tried to, I don't know...
	No, but he's friends with your sister's husband, so he's a lunatic too, by association.
	Wow, so did you just live in this whole world with no functional people, this underworld?
	Right. But, well, you also have to understand I had major social anxiety.
	I was not outgoing.
	I would not have talked to anybody.
	I would have not, I don't know, pursued or tried to...
	Well, not pursued. I'm just...
	Did no guys without...
	Like, did no healthy, normal guys ask you out?
	I mean, that's what I'm sort of trying to figure out.
	Well, I think, like I said, I think I would scare them away because if they did try to be friendly with me, I had that chip on my shoulder and I was like...
	Don't talk to me. Leave me the fuck alone.
	No, no, no, no. You kind of had a chip on your shoulder against men and got married twice.
	That doesn't work. Right?
	I'm sorry. That's the wrong chip.
	You got something on your shoulder, probably your heels, but it ain't a chip.
	I definitely had the wrong chip on my shoulder.
	No, because you didn't have a chip on your shoulder about men as a whole, right?
	Because you got married. It's so crazy.
	Right. So I'm trying to sort of figure this out.
	A lot. Yeah.
	A lot. So, where were the men?
	I mean, were there...
	I mean, do you have a one, like, you look back and it's like, everyone has something like this, like, you know, the one that got away kind of thing.
	Was there any guy you look back and you say, gosh, it's really gone for him, rather than the pilot guy with the kid?
	I don't really remember...
	I don't really remember meeting anybody.
	And I was sort of like a serial monogamous because I would immediately get...
	I didn't date around.
	So even like the people that I did get with, there wasn't this, you know, periods of dating around.
	It was pretty much just... Okay, so where did you meet these guys in general?
	Social circle, bars, clubs, internet?
	Yeah. So, the first husband, the internet.
	The second husband, he was like a mutual friend of the family.
	Of your family?
	Yes. So, you hadn't really processed any family trauma at this point, because if it's a friend with your family, he's going to be crazy, right?
	Right. And then, let's see...
	Third husband I met at work.
	And then this last husband, like I said, we met at the casino.
	Right. Right.
	Okay. Okay.
	So this is husband number four.
	Now, so first husband wanted kids.
	Second husband didn't?
	Sorry, I can't remember about the first husband.
	First husband had the two small children.
	Well, you wouldn't have wanted to have kids with him anyway, because he was indifferently employed and supposed to be a dad, right?
	Correct. All right. And second husband, the issue with kids never came up.
	Third husband, he desperately wanted kids, but you didn't want kids.
	And you weren't particularly upfront with him, I think, about the why.
	Right. Right.
	And by the time you met your fourth husband, or your current husband, I guess you're in your late 30s, and did you have any, like, let's get one in before the gates close?
	Great. We actually had the conversation early on.
	I asked him, you know, did you want kids?
	Because obviously I'm getting too old to have kids, so that's something you need to think about.
	And he was like, no, no, I said if I didn't have kids by the time I was 40, I wasn't going to have them.
	Well, when I told my brother that, he said, you better listen, you better heavily question that because He needs somebody younger if he even thinks that he wants to have children.
	And so I sat him down.
	I said, really, you need to know that, you know, the chances of us having a kid is slim to none.
	So are you okay with that?
	Let's see. He was 39 and I was 40.
	Right. So, I mean, by the time you sort of settle down and all that, it's pretty much past prime, right?
	Correct. So, sorry, he said, if I'm not going to have kids by the time I'm 40, I'm not going to have them.
	And, sorry, what was your brother saying?
	My brother was scared that he might regret it.
	Because if there wasn't that finality, I definitely don't want kids.
	And it just kind of sounded stupid.
	but like what is 40 a magic number that you just quit wanting to have kids you know what I'm saying so my brother was questioning you really need to get to the bottom you know and make sure that he's okay with not having kids and did you go through that process
	Yes, and at one point he did tell me that when he was in his 30s and had this relationship with the crazy ex-girlfriend, that he had actually thought about leaving her at one point because she couldn't have kids any longer.
	I guess her tubes were tight or something.
	Oh, it wasn't an age thing, it was something else?
	Like she wasn't much older?
	Right. Yeah, and so that was another concern because I was like, well, if he thought about having kids at one time, does that really ever go away, you know?
	But when we sat down, you know, and he just said, no, I'm fine.
	I'm fine with not having kids.
	Well, I mean, I hear you, but I mean, you also told him, don't get involved with me.
	I'm a hot mess.
	And he was like, I'm in, right?
	So how well does he know his own preferences?
	He doesn't. He doesn't.
	Right, okay. And so did he ever regret that or did he ever mention that that is anything that he looked back with?
	I mean, I think it was Stephen Fry, the British comedian that says that he sort of regrets not having children, sort of his big regret.
	And I think William Hurt, the British actor from Aliens, also said...
	Not that it's true for everyone, but did he ever circle back and say, maybe I did miss the boat a bit on that?
	I'm going to call out his bullshit.
	I know if you asked him, he would say...
	No, I'm fine.
	I don't have time for kids, and I don't want kids.
	He has that tough guy persona all the time.
	But I know for a fact, because we actually had a miscarriage, let's see, when I was 40, I was almost 45.
	Oh my gosh, wow.
	Yes, my doctor was completely astounded.
	She said, I cannot believe you even got pregnant.
	This kid's going to walk on water if he's born.
	Of course it didn't make it.
	Sorry, and big sympathy for the miscarriage is one of these things that's under-discussed in society, in my opinion, so a big, big sympathy for that.
	So were you trying at the time?
	Did you say, well, let's go for kids, or was it just happening, or what?
	The reason I had gotten off of...
	Most of my life I was on the birth control pill and obviously it worked fine, but I started having a lot of hormonal issues and I decided to get the implant IUD and I had a horrible time with it.
	I mean, it was just gross.
	I would get infections constantly, and so it wasn't feasible for me to go back on the pill because I'm having to take all these additional hormones.
	Sorry, what were the additional hormones for?
	I take testosterone and progesterone.
	I've taken that since I was in my 30s.
	I started having massive hot flashes, night sweats.
	Like perimenopause stuff?
	Honestly, when I got off of the pill, It's like my body, I guess, could no longer make hormones because I had been on the pill for so long.
	I'm thinking that's what happened.
	I don't really know, but I'm just saying when I got off of the pill, my body went berserko as far as hormones go.
	And so he started treating me, yes, like I was premenopausal.
	And so it made it a little bit more difficult.
	I had the discussion with him.
	I said, look, I'm 44.
	I want to get this IUD out.
	You know, yeah, I guess there's a chance that I could get pregnant, but it would be so slim.
	And I said the chance of it surviving if I did get pregnant is also very slim.
	We talked about it.
	I said, look, the ball's in your court if you want to go get snipped.
	Well, he decided not to.
	And it was like, I don't know, I guess it was like a year later when I ended up pregnant.
	But like I said, it only lasted, I guess about, I think by eight weeks I started bleeding and by 10 I had lost the baby.
	I'm sorry again. How were you guys, what were you guys' feelings about you being pregnant?
	I think he kind of felt a feeling of panic at first because his first reaction was, you've got to get back on the pill.
	We can't let this happen again.
	Bond door, horse, lock.
	Anyway, go on. Yeah.
	But then there was this sadness and we had, shortly thereafter, hung out with his nephew and he had his nephew in his lap and he was like, baby, if our little baby would have survived, this would have been him, you know.
	And it made me realize, but it made me so sad because he won't have that opportunity, you know?
	Well, it's several times you don't have that opportunity, right?
	Not just that you may have more than one kid, but also that grandkids and great-grandkids or whatever, you know what I mean?
	So it's multiple times that you don't have that opportunity.
	Okay. And again, I'm very sorry about that.
	It's a very, very difficult thing to go through as well.
	So... Now, do you think that that's behind him now, when he was sort of bouncing his nephew on his lap or whatever, do you think?
	Because, I mean, this is one of the challenges with kids, right?
	Again, not everyone has to have kids, as you well know and all that, but one of the challenges is by the time you realize that you've got a long way to go...
	And how are you going to fill that time?
	Because, you know, kids are pretty fantastic fillers of time, to put it mildly.
	Yeah, yeah. But once you figure out, you know, like if you're in your mid-40s and you say, okay, I could live for another 40 years, like I'm just a little over halfway done.
	And those 40 years are a long time because really the first 20 years of your life kind of don't count because you're a kid and you're not really making decisions and all that.
	So by the time if you're 40, let's just say you're 45 and you can live to 85.
	You've really only been an adult for 25 years, and so you've got a lot more.
	I mean, it's close to double that still to go.
	Now, of course, aging has its own issues, of course, but a lack of time is not one of them because you end up sleeping even less, right?
	As you age out, you tend to sleep less, so you're more awake.
	And you have your health issues and all of that, but by the time you say, gosh, you know, I've got a lot of time ahead of me, Without a lot of creature comforts.
	And of course, the other thing that's so important for kids is that, you know, you love your husband, but one of you is going to die before the other, right?
	And you're pretty much alone.
	Then what, are you going to start dating when you're 80?
	I guess you could, but it just seems like a very odd thing to do.
	Right. It's a lot of time on your hands.
	And, you know, if you could be a grandmom and all of that, that's one thing.
	So how have you guys felt?
	I mean, I assume we've had some conversations about it.
	And there's a reason I'm asking about all of this, which is not particularly, it may be obvious down the road, but how have you guys felt about the no kids thing in your life as it stands?
	Well, now, and so that's why I tell you that the lady you called and said she had no regrets.
	I'm like, what? Because if I could totally redo my life, I would do everything the opposite.
	I mean, I would marry young, like you said, have kids, have a family, be with one man, not 50,000 men, and share that incredible experience.
	But So yeah, it's crazy to sit there to listen to her be around my age and say, I don't have any regrets.
	Are you kidding me? Like, no, I would absolutely do everything opposite.
	But he probably would say, oh, I'm just fine.
	It's fine.
	You know, that's he is so he's so in denial about, you know, Well, hang on.
	I mean, maybe he is fine.
	I don't know. Obviously, he's not on the call.
	But what makes you think he's in denial that way?
	Because that's so natural.
	It's so natural for us to want to have that.
	Don't you think? Well, I do.
	For me, the default position has always been to have kids.
	And I had a couple of...
	One couple I knew when I was...
	In my 20s and 30s, they've since divorced, but they didn't have kids.
	And for me, it was almost like, why not?
	Like, the default position is to have kids.
	And to me, it's like, well, why not?
	And, you know, there can be good reasons.
	Why not? But it turned out that he didn't want to have kids because he was afraid of his wife's temper and he didn't want to expose kids to that.
	I'm like, well, that's maybe a good reason to not have kids, but it's a pretty good reason to not stay married if you can't get that temper thing sorted out.
	And again, eventually they did end up divorcing, so there was a lot of time wasted there.
	Because how old?
	He's your age-ish, is that right?
	Sort of mid-late 40s? Yeah, he's a year younger than me.
	Right. So, did you go through the baby rabies in your 30s, or not so much?
	No, no, not at all.
	Well, you're on hormones and stuff, right?
	Yeah, and I just, like I said, I had that attitude, like, there's no way I could put a child through this world.
	There's no way I could bring a child.
	Now, I... Now I know that I could.
	But back then, all I saw was dysfunction.
	I knew I was dysfunctional.
	I was attracting dysfunction.
	So I just thought it would be incredibly selfish to bring a child into that.
	So I was a very faithful pill taker.
	A very faithful what?
	Pill taker. What do you mean?
	Birth control pill. Right.
	Okay. Sorry. I thought we might be drifting to red pill, blue pill territory.
	So I just wanted to make sure we were in hormones, not analogies.
	Okay. Well, this is one of the reasons why it's so important to try and elevate your social game early on in life.
	Because if you're raised in crazy families, you tend to be around crazy people.
	And then you're like, well, why would I want to bring in a world full of crazy people?
	It's like, well, the world isn't full of crazy people.
	A lot of crazy people, but it's not full of crazy people.
	And you can find sane, healthy social circles to move in.
	But yeah, that's why I was sort of asking you about, like, didn't you know any guys who weren't crazy or dysfunctional with multiple kids in their early 20s or whatever?
	And you couldn't find those people or they weren't in your orbit or they weren't in your environment.
	And if you're around dysfunctional people, it's not like they've got a whole bunch of healthy people to introduce you to.
	Right. And my parents weren't social people.
	Well, they had too much to hide.
	It can't be social people. True.
	Right. Exactly. It's too teeth gritting to put on the veil of normalcy for an evening.
	Right. Exactly.
	Because there's a second wind that men have...
	And you know the sort of midlife crisis?
	It's sort of a cliche, right?
	The guy who gets hair transplants, starts to exercise, gets interested in younger women, buys a sports car, you know, all of that kind of stuff, right?
	So the midlife crisis is very real and it's very biological.
	The midlife crisis is your body saying, we could go again.
	So a guy who's in his 40s is in his sexual market value prime.
	Because he's proven – assuming he's got some resources, some skills, some money and all of that, right?
	And some savings. So, I mean, there's a reason why younger women are often attracted to older men and, of course, older men are attracted to younger women, which is that you want to make more of you.
	Right. The way that monogamy does it is it says, okay, look, you're in a monogamous relationship until the day you die.
	You've had your kids. You can't make more of you, but you can make more of you and your wife through grandkids, through encouraging your kids to get married and being available as a grand...
	Father and a grandmother, which helps a lot.
	Studies and just common sense, if you have much-loved grandparents around, it's really great for the kids, it's really great for the family, and it can help your kids want to have kids if you're available as a resource because then it's not all on them and they're not raising the kids alone and all that.
	So it could be that your husband is going through a sort of midlife crisis and his hormones or his instincts, which is not to say his morals or his commitment to you, they might be leading him towards trying to have kids.
	Of course, he can't have kids with you and that may be leading him elsewhere.
	Now, again, I know that his girlfriend has her tubes tied or something like that.
	But I'm just...
	We can eliminate this as a possibility if it doesn't fit your experience of the marriage, but I wanted to put that out as a vague possibility as to why he might be contacting women outside the marriage.
	Well, definitely. I don't think he would admit it.
	I think it would be sort of a subconscious thing.
	I don't think it would be something that he would say, yeah, yeah, I think I want to have kids now.
	No, he's...
	Well, it's not a conscious thing.
	It's like the baby rabies thing where women feel like...
	That's not like a conscious thing.
	It's your body just flooding you with hormones to want to have kids.
	Your body floods you with hormones for sexual desire.
	Your body floods you with hormones for hunger and thirst.
	I mean, it's just trying to keep you alive and keep the genes going, right?
	So it's not like a conscious thing where he just wakes up in the morning and he's like, hey, I think...
	But it's like the hormones just like, boom, right?
	I mean, I don't have to tell you about the effects of hormones on your life, right?
	I mean, what a rollercoaster it can be.
	But yeah, it's your hormones just saying we have resources because the hormones are amoral, right?
	They don't recognize monogamous commitments or marriage.
	They're just like we want more of ourselves and we're going to pull every lever in your brain and body to try and get that.
	So I don't know if that is something that might be going on.
	You think it may be the case?
	Do you have any – I mean I don't want to say do you have any evidence like I'm cross-examining you but I guess what is the evidence that you feel that?
	Yeah. Well, I can tell you that since the miscarriage, all of this happened like during the COVID crap.
	And it also happened that at the same time, we started getting his nephew a lot and doing things with him.
	He goes camping with us and stuff.
	So it was sort of, before that, he didn't have anybody with small children anymore.
	We were around a lot, but now we've gotten really close to his half-sister and her family, and so he's being exposed more to this young child, which I have a blast with him.
	He's so much fun. So it could be.
	What I'm saying is I don't think he would admit it.
	But I think, yes, it definitely could be, especially after the miscarriage and the feelings that he was feeling.
	I was feeling things because he wouldn't have said what he said if he wasn't, you know?
	Right, right, right. Yeah, I mean, the pandemic was pretty wild as far as stripping people of their shallow pleasures, right?
	I'm going to go to discos!
	No, you're not. I'm going to sleep around.
	No, you're not. Right? For a lot of people, right?
	And a lot of these kinds of shallow pleasures, you know, I'm going to stroll through the mall in my banana blonics or whatever the hell they are, and I'm just going to look good.
	And it's like, no, you're not, because the mall's going to be closed for a while.
	I mean, in a lot of places, right?
	That's crazy. And female attention, which, you know, is very important for women and very important for the survival of a species, female desire for male attention, is I mean, I guess you could get it online, but a lot of women were too nervous to meet up, and particularly the early part before the, quote, vaccines.
	And a lot of people who are like, well, I don't need a monogamous relationship because I can just go on lots of dates.
	And it's like, no, you can't. Bet you wish you had that monogamous relationship now when it's been a year since you've been able to go on a date, right?
	And I think a lot of the depression and substance abuse came out was just because people were just like, Oh, gosh, you know, I didn't plan for this.
	And of course, you can't plan for this.
	But the whole point of life is there's so much you can't plan for that you got to live on principle.
	And the principle is, you know, find someone you love, find someone who loves you, settle down.
	And, you know, I mean, in many ways, outside of my show, I didn't really notice the pandemic.
	I mean, I spend time with my wife, we homeschool our kid, we go hiking, and other things.
	And, you know, that stuff didn't really close down.
	So there was very little break in continuity for us.
	It was a non-demic in many ways.
	For other people, it was this huge, massive thing.
	And also the people who – I think of the poor women who were like 28 who was like, you know, I'm going to start searching for – I'm going to settle down soon, right?
	And the pandemic cuts you off from dating for two years.
	It's like, oh, now you're 31.
	And, you know, that's why you don't know what the heck is being cooked up in weird labs and, like, weird programs all over the world.
	And you've got to try and live on principle because thinking that the future is going to be much like the past is one of the basic mistakes of youth, and I certainly made it myself.
	But yeah, sorry for the slight tangent, but I think the pandemic grounded a lot of people.
	And for some people that helped them make better decisions, for other people, they just felt really depressed and anxious and weren't able to get the dopamine of attention and dating and stuff.
	And there was a lot of withdrawal, I think.
	Yeah.
	So how's your marriage doing at the moment?
	It's always been better than anything I've ever had.
	He even says the same thing.
	Our relationship is pretty amazing.
	Just like you say, it's not work to be married.
	It really isn't. No, it's great.
	It's wonderful. And we're constantly surrounded by all of his friends who seem to struggle with that.
	And it's hard for me to see that because I want to share with them the information that I have, but people aren't so open to that.
	Sorry, go ahead. So after I wrote that out, he actually, he had gone to his friends to do some work on his jeeps and he comes back home.
	And it's, I noticed this about him, like when we have a talk, sometimes it takes him a little while.
	He'll go take a shower and then it's like he processes it and then he comes back and he's like, hey.
	And then I get like the real apology, the apology that feels like he's sincere.
	You know what I'm saying?
	Like, At first when I confront him about something, a lot of times it's a little bit of anger and, you know, trying to make excuses.
	And then after he thinks it out, he's like, no, you're right.
	You know, I would have been really upset if you did the same thing.
	I'm so sorry that, you know, I don't know what I was thinking.
	Um, so that came later that night after I wrote the letter to you.
	Um, like I said, I don't feel like he's hooking up with somebody.
	If he did, he would have to be magic because we are literally together all the time.
	And the other thing, Stefan, is that he always wants me by his side.
	Like he cannot stand for me to not go somewhere with him or he just wants me there.
	And, um, But like I said, it just felt extremely disrespectful.
	And the fact that I know how she is, like I was afraid she might take it obviously the wrong way or it would encourage more contact from her.
	Well, I mean, this is like the story of the vampire, right?
	In a way, right? You got to invite the vampire in, so to speak, right?
	Correct, yes. So, yeah, because he's contacting a crazy person.
	And that crazy person is...
	You know, could potentially sort of come into your life, right?
	Right. In some manner, right?
	And what's his story as to what is going on or what might be happening, his motivation?
	Well, did I tell you how he blamed it?
	He said it was my fault because I was joking about calling her to come pick him up.
	So he was like, you kept saying it, you kept saying it.
	So I just said...
	I'm going to call her. And he called like in front of all of his friends.
	And I guess had her on speakerphone because like one of the girls was telling me, yeah, as soon as she picked up, she said, don't call me.
	I'm engaged now.
	You know, so it was just stupid.
	I don't know. Like, that's what I wish he could figure out.
	I wish he could figure out why he even did it in the first place.
	Right. Right. Right.
	And he doesn't have a particularly good answer, I assume?
	No. Right.
	And has anything else happened, do you think, that could be influencing this as a whole?
	I know that her lately, he's been frustrated with me not wanting to be more socially active with him because I've been in more pain, obviously.
	And he, like I said, he, we've literally not spent one night together.
	Like, we do everything together, so...
	Right. We're always together.
	And so, like, last weekend, I had told him to go to his friend's Christmas party down south, like an hour and a half away, and to just go by himself because I didn't feel, like, I just didn't feel like standing all night, and I knew I would sleep better at home.
	And when he went to leave, he was just like, I just don't even want to go now if you're not going.
	I mean, he just, he definitely has, like, this...
	Separation anxiety?
	He doesn't like to be apart.
	At all. Right.
	Okay. Now, he doesn't have any particular limiting health issues, is that right?
	No, unfortunately.
	And you're kind of right in a way, right?
	I mean, you're kind of joking, but you're kind of right in a way.
	Yeah. Yeah. So, your age, I mean, through, you know, bad fortune and, you know, again, this sort of like, I guess, affirmative action, you know, hiring stuff, putting you in jobs that cost, right? Your physicality.
	But age is hitting you like Mike Tyson, right?
	Right. And it's not hitting him in the same way.
	And this is sort of, you know, this is not super uncommon.
	I'm sure you're aware of this, right?
	I mean, it's not super uncommon for this phenomenon to be occurring because age hits men later and less hard usually because, you know, we don't get menopause and all that sort of big change and, you know, a bunch of other stuff and so on, right?
	So that is one of the reasons why – it's another reason why monogamy is kind of important because – By the time the age hits women, you want to have a real solid unity and togetherness and all that kind of stuff.
	Yeah. We're actually not the norm as far as his friend group.
	It's always he and I together.
	So if I don't show up, it's really...
	We're not the norm as far as his friend's group goes because we are always together.
	And a lot of his friends...
	And he'll tell you that. He'll say, you know, so many guys I work with will say, I'm trying to get away from my wife for the weekend.
	And we're just the opposite. We want to be with each other, you know?
	And I agree.
	Sorry, I agree. And of course, I accept all.
	I think it's wonderful. But the issue is that your health issues are severely limiting what you can do, right?
	Yes, I can't do the mud riding.
	I can't do the stuff because it makes me hurt worse.
	Yeah, yeah, I know. I get that for sure.
	And, you know, I'm sure he's sympathetic and cares and all of that.
	But, you know, one of the issues is that he's sort of looking forward.
	And it's not like these things are, you know, they're not easily solvable, if solvable at all, right?
	Right. I mean, you've already had the...
	The operations and the surgeries and so on, right?
	So these are not issues that are going to be resolved.
	Like, oh, you know, I broke my arm, but it's going to get better.
	You know, if I understand this rightly, and of course, if I don't, please let me know.
	Correct. It's kind of chronic, right?
	This is lifelong. Right, yes.
	So I think he's looking, if I had to guess, right?
	He's looking and saying, okay, and, you know, nobody's fault, so to speak.
	But these are the issues that I'm going to have to get.
	It's a whole different kind of life.
	I've got to live the life of a much older guy.
	Does that make sense? Yeah.
	I mean, is he like a very active guy as far as all of that goes?
	You said something about writing?
	Mud writing, yes.
	What is that? Like, I don't know if you know what side-by-sides are, but he's got Jeeps and side-by-sides, and they ride out in the woods through trails.
	And it's bumpy and rough, and that's what's hard for my back.
	I can't take a whole lot of that.
	Right, right. Okay, so yeah.
	My guess is, and again, I don't know, obviously, right?
	And I'm certainly happy to chat with him if that would be helpful.
	But my guess is something like this, that he's sitting, and he said he's a year younger than you.
	Is that right? Correct.
	Correct. So he's mid-40s?
	Am I getting that roughly correct?
	Okay, so he's mid-40s, and, you know, his health is good.
	He's hale and hearty, and he's got all kinds of things that he wants to do and all of that, right?
	Right. But he can't do them.
	Well, he wants me there, and...
	Well, yeah, no, I get that, but I mean...
	And that's the way your marriage has been, right?
	It's that you do stuff together, right?
	Yeah. So...
	He's now, okay, so I can't do these things.
	I have to, like, okay, how would you, when you think of sort of the path of your life as a whole, right?
	So if you didn't have the chronic health issues, the back issues and all of that, if you didn't have that...
	How old... And you were hearing these kinds of stories about something like this.
	What sort of...
	Sorry, I'm not putting this very well.
	Let me try this again.
	I'll try and get it actually good and helpful.
	What age do you feel like you're living in terms of how you were expecting your life to go?
	How old do you feel?
	It was like when I turned 40, I hit a wall.
	Yeah. I mean, I can tell you my doctor says my x-rays look like I'm somebody 15 years older.
	Yeah, that's kind of the sense that I got.
	Like, you kind of got a body age of 60.
	And not like even a particularly...
	And I'm sorry to sound so harsh.
	No, there's not even a particularly well 60, right?
	Right. Right.
	So, in other words, my whole life I've been extremely active.
	I mean, I was running five miles a day.
	That's part of the problem. Yeah.
	It's like I just...
	Once I herniated that disc in my neck, it just sucks.
	I can't do the things I used to do.
	And with no particular path to doing those things, right?
	Right. Right.
	I mean, I do as much as I can.
	And one of the ways that we've kind of gotten around this is like we have a camper.
	So when he goes riding, we bring the camper and I'll hang out in the camper while they ride.
	And then I'll socialize after they're done riding.
	So I'm still there.
	I'm still spending the night with him.
	We're still spending time together, but I just can't go on every single ride.
	Well, and if I understand this rightly, and again, I say this with all sympathy, right?
	It's not like you were some drug addict, you know, overdosed or something, and this is why you've got these issues, right?
	But it's not just the pain or yes or no, right?
	It's the self-management.
	Which is, oh, can I, can I not?
	And I want to do this because, you know, I care about my husband and I want him to have fun and I also want to have fun, but I don't know if I can.
	Like, it's a lot of mind space to deal with chronic pain, right?
	Correct. Because I know if I, it's not, okay, I can do certain things, but I'm going to pay for it afterwards.
	And weighing that, it's not just the pain, it's the complete alteration, or not complete, but it's a significant alteration in your entire personality structure.
	Because now you have stuff to manage that you didn't have to manage before, if I understand this correctly.
	Correct. And I still want to be able to cook for him, and I still want to be able to keep his house clean and do all the normal stuff that needs to be done.
	Right, right, right.
	So this is all a big challenge because it's not just you plus the pain.
	It's you plus the pain plus the changes in your personality to deal with the guilt, the wanting to change, don't know if you can, want to help, but it's really complicated.
	There's a whole massive, massive self-management that goes on.
	I don't want to say mess like it's wrong or anything like that, but there's a whole bunch of self-management that goes on when you have chronic pain that changes who you are, if I have this correct in my understanding of these things.
	And because of that, I've essentially changed his lifestyle as well.
	You have changed his lifestyle as well.
	That's right. And he's now having to live a life 15 years down the road of what he expected.
	Yeah. As are you, right?
	He's married to a grandma. No, and I hate to put it this way because it sounds mean, but I'm trying to be sort of frank in sort of how I think it might be occurring.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	The people who have, and it's funny, listen, I mean, I'm not trying to speak in any negative way about you, because again, massive sympathies for what you're having to face.
	But a lot of times when you're dealing with chronic pain, it's easy to forget how difficult it is for the other person.
	And that sounds weird, because like, dude, I'm the one in pain.
	And it's like, yes, but he's also having to change a lot as well.
	Correct, because my first question will be, okay, where are we going?
	How long are we going to be there?
	Am I going to have a place to sit down and rest?
	You know, all those things are going through my head immediately when he says, hey, I've got to sign up to do this this weekend.
	You know, I have to think about, where am I going to feel like being there for X amount of hours?
	Yeah, so it is. Yeah, so you have stuff to manage that is not on his – I mean, obviously, he cares about you and all of that, so I'm not trying to say that there's anything mean, but he just kind of got shot forward through time.
	He did. I mean, if I have this understanding correctly, right?
	And I'm sorry to keep saying that, but I don't want to sound at all heartless because, I mean, it's very difficult what you're having to face.
	But he's being shot forward through time, and at the same time, he's being shot backwards through time.
	And what I mean by that is that at the same time as you're kind of aging like a cryptkeeper, he's got a kid in his environment too, right?
	His nephew or your nephew, your half-sister, his half-sister's kids.
	So his nephew, let's just stick with that, right?
	So I think, I mean, that's one of the big challenges, right?
	That he's got, he's being shot forward to 60 and back to 30, right?
	In a strange way. Right.
	He's having a face...
	Right. So he's got premature mortality and kid stimuli hitting his hormones.
	Now that's... I mean, I can see that being kind of destabilizing.
	Yeah, definitely.
	And I mean, I think if that's identified, right?
	So if it's not talked about...
	Look, there's two things that this is what I've heard from women.
	Look, I don't know if it's going to make any sense to you.
	It might not hit your experience at all.
	So I just want to be very clear about that.
	But here's two things I've heard about women, from women, which is the most scary for them.
	Number one, they don't want to be perceived as damaged goods, right?
	In that, you know, they've lost their pair bonding capacity.
	They don't want to be perceived as damaged goods, right?
	And that's one.
	Number two is they don't want to be perceived as a guy married a dud.
	Now, the married the dud is, it has to do with fertility at times.
	Like the guy, he wants to have kids.
	Turns out I can't have kids.
	Oh, he married a dud.
	I remember some woman saying to me once, he married a dry doe.
	Just for those of you who don't know anything about this, a dry doe is a reference to a female deer who can't have kids.
	If I have that, I don't want to sound authoritative on these references, but it's something to do with that.
	Does that make sense? Yeah, absolutely.
	Right. So that's one issue, is the dry dough and the issue of being a dud of some kind, right?
	And that's tough.
	That's tough. So...
	Do you have...
	I always want to be careful with this stuff because I don't want to implant anything in you.
	Like, no, I didn't think about it.
	Now you've told me I can't think of anything else.
	Like, I don't want to do anything like that.
	But do you have...
	Do you think that maybe cooking in terms of your connection with him?
	That you feel...
	Because if you're prone to guilt, you might feel guilty about...
	You know, I had a miscarriage and I aged 15 years all within the space of a year or two.
	Does that make any sense? Um...
	I mean, I feel bad that I can't keep up with his lifestyle.
	I do. Because I know he wants me there.
	Of course, yeah. I mean, that's how your relationship has been founded, right?
	Yeah. So for instance, last weekend, he actually did leave without me.
	But by the end of the evening, I was like, let me just go down there.
	And when I showed up, it's like seeing his face light up.
	Makes me so happy because he was like, oh, my lady is here.
	You know, it's just, that's what makes him happy.
	And I want to do what makes him happy, but I also have to be mindful of not making my life so much worse.
	Right, right. Now, and of course, your relationship has been to some degree founded on this, right?
	Right. Which is, you spend all your time together, and your life has been set up this way, right?
	I mean, one of the reasons why it's, you know, easier to not have kids is you get to spend time and do things with each other, right?
	Right, because I've offered to go back to work in some capacity, and he's like, no, I like it.
	You know, we don't have to work around your work schedule.
	You can always go.
	We can do what we want, when we want.
	So... Right.
	So, yeah, your whole relationship has been set up with, we spend lots of time together, that's how we do things, and now, that's all, right, so you don't have the kids, and your whole relationship being set up on doing fun things together, that's really, I would say it's gone by the wayside, but it's taken a real body blow, right?
	Right. Right.
	So, it's a huge adjustment.
	It's a huge adjustment.
	I mean, it literally is like an extreme analogy.
	It's like the athlete ending up in the wheelchair.
	It's a huge adjustment.
	Yeah. And I think that that's where the – I mean, if I were in your shoes, that's where the conversation would go.
	It's like, look, don't struggle to try and have the marriage you used to have before your physical disabilities.
	Okay. Okay. Right? Because that's not to accept the nature of what's going on for you.
	And that's not going to work. It can't work, right?
	So you say, okay, look, we have to have a new kind of life.
	And, you know, if you are trying to have your old kind of life, when you can't have your old kind of life, well, it's not going to work, right?
	Right. That's not going to work.
	And so, you know, we had a life where we might have had kids, right?
	You had a miscarriage. And we had a life where we, you know, we're going to spend the rest of our life, or at least for the next 20 or 30 years, we're going to be doing fun, challenging physical activities, right?
	Right. Unless you want to start getting addicted to opioids, which I'm sure you don't.
	No, thank you.
	Hey, look at that. I'm not feeling any pain.
	Oh dear, my spine is sticking out my ear, right?
	Right. Right.
	So, yeah, you have a rewrite of a life.
	Now, a rewrite of a life, I mean, obviously in a minor way, when I was unable to speak on social media, when I couldn't do any speaking tours, when I could barely show my face in public and all, okay, that's a bit of a rewrite of a life.
	Right. And so you are rewriting your life.
	Right. And I think there's a time you're in denial, right?
	Like everyone is with these kinds of things.
	I'll find a way to manage it.
	We can go back to our old life.
	But it's not happening, right?
	Exactly. Right.
	So I would say that that's the issue, that if you think that you can rewrite your life or you can maintain your life as it is, I think that's a mirage.
	You're going to have to find a new life.
	Whatever that life's going to be, but the chronic pain thing, it's funny because I was just talking with a friend of mine about this.
	She was telling me about her life with chronic pain.
	So it's a funny kind of coincidence, but I don't have to tell you this, but it's a completely different life, isn't it?
	It absolutely is.
	And it's tough for me. You have very little in common with how you used to live, right?
	Now you've got this constant self-management and can I and can't I? You used to enjoy doing these things with your husband and now it's a hassle to do them but you want to do them for his sake.
	It's a whole different life, right?
	Right. And I don't want to be grouchy.
	No, but you will be.
	I don't. Exactly.
	So I'm always torn with not, you know, I don't want to take the medicine unless I absolutely have to.
	And then I'll take my medicine.
	And a lot of times he's like, hey, why didn't you take it before it got this bad?
	But It's like I can't live on this crap.
	I can't live on all these pills.
	You know, so I'm a little bit more conservative when it comes to that.
	And mostly I just take ibuprofen, but still at some point you're doing harm to your insides.
	Well, also isn't there some damage that if you suppress the symptoms, then the actual issue could get worse, right?
	Correct. Right. Right.
	So it is going to be tough.
	And of course, yeah, so there's some things you can manage, right?
	And you can sort of get back to your old life.
	It doesn't sound to me like this is one of those things which means a new kind of life.
	And that's tough.
	That's a tough thing to renegotiate.
	There's also another thing I just sort of wanted to mention about this kind of stuff as well, which is that And this is a harsh question, and again, I mean this with great affection and all that, but okay, let me ask you this.
	If your husband were to have met you now with these sort of chronic health issues, would he marry you?
	Well, he wouldn't marry me now because I'm not crazy like I used to be.
	Right. Okay, so that's one thing that's changed.
	Let's see. I don't know, Steph.
	Because that is a big question, right?
	Because literally, yeah.
	Right, that's a very big question because that's what I mean by like it's a new kind of relationship.
	Right. Because if he'd have said, look, I love you, but boy, with these chronic health issues and so on, I just, I can't do the active stuff that I love to do, and, you know, I love you, you're a great person.
	But if you met him now, and he wouldn't have married you, I'm not saying, this doesn't put the marriage in jeopardy, but I think it's important to recognize that you are in a situation where I'm holding him down.
	No, no, no, no. I don't want you to get that out of this.
	But that's what I mean when you have to rewrite things.
	Yeah. And it doesn't – look, you can end up in a better position.
	You can end up in a better life situation.
	But I think you have to say, you know, and, you know, he's a nice guy, so he's going to be like, well, no, of course I would, you know, I mean, you know, let's be frank about these kinds of things, right?
	Like, the guy who gets married is like, oh, I can't wait to start a family with you, right?
	And then the woman turns out to be infertile for some reason.
	Now, he's going to be a nice guy, right?
	And he's going to, for the most part, he's going to say, no, no, no, I mean, I love you anyway, but you're going to have to rewrite the relationship because his life goal was to have kids.
	He can't have kids, right?
	Right. And he has to be honest with himself, at least I would strongly recommend it, be honest with yourself and say, okay, well, the woman has to say, if you'd have known that I was infertile before you married me, would you have married me?
	Right. These are very, very important questions to ask.
	Yeah, that would be a good...
	Because here's the thing, whether we ask them consciously or not, They're happening in our brain.
	Exactly. Like whether you like it or not, this is happening in your brain.
	So it can either be conscious, right?
	Or it could be unconscious.
	The unconscious is very, very bad because then you get this kind of acting out stuff, right?
	Right, right. So that's, yeah, that's my strong suggestion about, you know, you have to rewrite stuff, right?
	He may be having feelings about, you know, gee, I wish I'd had kids.
	Okay, well, then you need to figure that stuff out.
	Okay, well, we're not having kids.
	So what does that mean? How can we find a life that has meaning and purpose and value without the kids thing?
	Right. Because otherwise, he's going to, again, he's just going to act out, and it's going to be like, again, I don't know, but it could be affairs, it could be, I don't know.
	And he also, you know, the other way that people act out, if they have a partner who's in chronic pain, and it's a very strange thing, but I've seen it happen, they will injure themselves.
	They will take physical risks in an attempt to rebalance the relationship.
	Really? Yeah. Oh yeah, because then they're like, okay, well now we both have this thing to issue, and me being inactive, that's not a big issue anymore, and we both have this in common and all that.
	And I'm not saying it's a conscious thing, but I think people are like, we're going to recalibrate this relationship if you're physically limited.
	Guess what? I'm going to become physically limited too.
	Right. And of course, you don't want that, obviously, right?
	No. I would say that, yeah, this kind of stuff is...
	It's the rewrite of the relationship.
	And rewriting a relationship has real benefits.
	And you can end up being happy that all these things happened and so on.
	But you don't want the rewrite to be an unconscious thing or to have fate or nature or immaturity or affairs.
	Like, okay, that's the thing.
	Every woman knows this and some men too, right?
	Every woman knows this. You want to break up with a guy, but he's a super nice guy.
	So what do you do? Well, you just become progressively more difficult until he breaks up with you, right?
	I mean, every woman knows this trick and men still fall for it.
	I guess it still works. That's why they do it.
	And so that's an unconscious way to rewrite a relationship, right?
	And that's not the way to go.
	That's pretty bad. So, yeah, that would be my suggestion is, you know, just say, look, I think we have to be frank that I'm not getting back on the horse anytime soon.
	You know, hey, maybe some miracle thing comes along and all this stuff gets sorted out, but, you know, that's not something you can bank on, right?
	Right. So I think, you know, if I were in your shoes, I'd say, look, we're going to have a different kind of marriage, man.
	Like, I'm sorry. I mean, it's not my fault, right?
	But this is the way things are, and...
	What are we going to do? You know, we can't just...
	I'm not just me. It's not just my relationship with some back...
	It's not like our relationship with some back pain, right?
	This is a fundamental change in our relationship, right?
	The fun stuff that you want to do, which, you know, I want to do too, but I can't.
	And I can't just live my old life like everything's just chugging along.
	Like, I can't do that because it's not.
	And it's a different life and it's a different relationship.
	And then you can rewrite things consciously and figure out what you're going to do.
	Right? We're not having kids.
	I assume you're not about to adopt or anything.
	And I have chronic pain and it's not going anywhere.
	And it's, you know, if I understand this rightly, and the doctor is saying, you know, you've got the spine of a 65-year-old.
	Not only is it not going anywhere, it's going to get worse.
	Right. And so what are we going to do?
	I can't just grit my teeth for the next 20 years and pretend that I'm not ill.
	That's not going to work.
	And he won't want that for you either, but I think that all needs to be made real conscious and really, really talk it out.
	Because it's the biggest change you've ever had, right?
	Exactly. It is. It's the biggest change in your life, right?
	Besides you coming into my life, which totally screwed things up.
	Yeah, I know. I mean, this is probably your second worst injury after philosophy.
	So, yeah. Hey, if it's any consolation, I feel the same way about philosophy.
	So, I'm with you as far as that goes.
	It was so painful. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	The first few years were so painful for me.
	Give me wisdom and knowledge and virtue.
	Just not yet.
	You know, maybe put some lube in it.
	There's no lube in philosophy.
	I really want to see all of this.
	Yeah, yeah. Get the butter.
	Nope. Philosophy is no butter.
	There's no lube. There's no KY. It just is what it is.
	So, yeah. I mean, that was sort of my major thoughts in philosophy.
	What I wanted to, or what I felt might be helpful to discuss, does it sort of fit what you think?
	Absolutely. All right.
	Useful convo? He will, absolutely, and I know he will be thrilled when he comes home from work to have this conversation with me.
	Yeah, yeah, listen, if he wants, it sounds to me like I don't think he needs me for this conversation.
	I'm certainly happy to help, of course, in any way that I can, but that would be my thing.
	Yeah, and listen, everything you guys have done is perfectly fine.
	I mean, you want to see, hey, maybe I can manage it, maybe, but, you know, if it's not happening and the doctor's saying it's not going to happen, then at some point you have to say, you know, like it's not going to happen, right?
	Right. You know, it's like people who get, I mean, they're not trying to compare it because it's much worse.
	People get like tinnitus and stuff like that.
	It's like, ah, maybe it'll go away, you know?
	Okay. Right. Maybe it won't, right?
	And I mean, the injections help short term, but right now I'm waiting.
	I'm just waiting to get into the doctor for another injection.
	So obviously there's nothing I can do.
	You know, it's just, it's a wait.
	Right. Wait and see thing.
	And yeah, again, the sort of habit of saying, let's live like I'm not sick, that's fantastic if it works.
	Because you don't want to sit there and live like a 65-year-old if you don't have to.
	But at the same time, if it's making you worse, then it's going to make everything worse.
	And you're going to get even worse aging if you're living like you don't have chronic injuries.
	It's just going to make those chronic injuries worse, right?
	Right. Right. And then, you know, hey, I'm no longer 65.
	I'm 85. Like, you don't want that, right?
	So, yeah, that would be my suggestion.
	And listen, obviously, again, massive sympathies for your childhood.
	And I'm thrilled that you've landed into a good marriage that you enjoy.
	I'm glad that philosophy has provided that for you.
	Because, you know, here's the good thing.
	At least you're not with some total immature doofus trying to deal with this stuff, right?
	At least you've got a mature guy who loves you where you can deal with this stuff without having to manage all of his petulance and immaturity and like all the other crap that might be happening if you hadn't gotten into philosophy.
	So, you know, this pain and discomfort was coming either way, right?
	But at least this way you have a mature guy that you can have reasonable conversations with about this stuff.
	Yeah, we have the tools to talk things through.
	Right, right, right.
	So that's good.
	Yeah.
	All right.
	Will you keep me posted about how it's going?
	Absolutely. Thank you so much.
	You are absolutely welcome. Thank you for a great conversation.
	Take care. You too.

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