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July 10, 2023 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

03:12:41

Breaking Up with Self-Destructive Girlfriend? Freedomain Call In

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	Got it, got it. Okay. Do you want to start off by reading me what you wrote or do you want to just talk about it?
	What's your pleasure? I think I'd prefer to just talk about it.
	Yeah, I'm all ears, man.
	What's going on? I'll just...
	So...
	Oh man, where do I start?
	We've been dating for six...
	And a half years, something like that.
	We were each other's first everything.
	First boyfriend, first kiss, first sex.
	And we even moved in together to the UK. So we used to live in the same town back in Eastern Europe.
	I don't want to say what the country is, but...
	And for the past two or three years, our relationship just...
	I don't know...
	It started around COVID, everything went so toxic, and it's just a constant cycle of breaking up, getting back together.
	A week later, separating, getting back together, and as I stated in the email, just in 2023, we've done it at least 15 times by now.
	The last probably 10 days, we've broken up three times and gotten back together, and the cycle is the same every single time, so We're happy, we're happy.
	And then one day, it's usually the morning, she comes to me, she says, we need to talk.
	And she says, I'm not happy, I want to leave.
	And just an argument starts.
	I try to convince her that everything's going to be fine.
	But then it's like a switch flips.
	The person I know is not there anymore.
	It's like I'm talking to a Terminator.
	I don't know how to explain, but All humanity is gone.
	There's no emotion, nothing there.
	And then I just say, fine, leave.
	You know, since we live together, I say, okay, you can pack your things, you can leave, let's do it.
	And then I ignore her for a day or two, even though we live together.
	And then she becomes the nicest, most feminine, loving person.
	I come back home, she's jumping on me on the door.
	She has written me love letters, promising that everything is going to be fine.
	Am I going to take her back? And every time I've been like, yeah, sure, we can deal with this.
	We can work through it. And I'm calling you this time because for the past maybe two months, we've been seriously talking about having kids.
	As I said in the email, we want to have six or seven kids.
	But I really need you to I can't have this with kids around.
	I can't put them to this shit.
	Sorry if I'm swearing.
	Don't mind at all. Whatever's on your mind, just speak.
	Yeah. And since I emailed you, I think two days ago, but yesterday, especially today, I've been having so many memories that I completely forgot from my childhood.
	Everything is flashing by.
	And this morning...
	I was just crying my eyes out, not because of her, but I was just remembering stuff from my childhood.
	A week ago, I remember it was on a live stream.
	I mentioned that when I was little, my parents used to threaten me to just abandon me in the woods if I don't do my homework and stuff.
	And I remember the time he said, oh my God, Were you raised by Hanzo and Gretel's parents?
	And I even started getting memories when I was five years old, I think.
	It was my birthday. We had other kids over and for some reason, I don't know what happened.
	I think they hit me. So I just took like a little bag of food and I just wanted to leave the house, just run away.
	Sorry, you said you had friends over and they hit you.
	Does that mean your parents or your friends?
	Yeah, it was my mom, my dad.
	So my dad never... He never touched me.
	He was just verbally abusive, but my mom was beating me a lot.
	She would beat me with...
	You know how the vacuum cleaners have pipes?
	So you attach the holes to a pipe.
	She used to beat me with the pipes until they break.
	And one time she even pushed me so hard that I broke just a balcony window with my head.
	And when I think about that now, it could have just fallen in.
	I don't know, decapitated me.
	So yeah, so I took all my stuff in a bag, I remember.
	It was probably my fifth or sixth birthday, and I just said, okay, I need to leave.
	I can't do this.
	And since it's a commie block, there's a long stairway, so you keep going down and down and down, and it was dark.
	It was probably midnight, and I can remember my mom was just looking from upstairs, and she said, if you want to leave, leave.
	I don't care. And she just closed the door, and I was like, Crying.
	And ever since that time, every single time, for the smallest thing, oh, you're watching TV instead of doing homework.
	We're going to send you to...
	How do you call it the place where you abandon kids?
	Like an orphanage? Yeah, they said...
	And keep in mind, Eastern European orphanages are hell.
	So every single time, we're going to abandon you in the woods, you're going to die alone.
	And all those memories are just flashing by this morning.
	I'm not sure why, but...
	Yes, you are. You are sure why.
	You know why. Why, when your girlfriend keeps abandoning you, why is it you think you're getting memories of being abandoned or threatened to be abandoned by your parents?
	You know this one, right?
	Because it's the same button.
	Yeah, it's the same thing. Is this pushing the same button?
	Yeah, I mean, your girlfriend has found a button in you that produces compliance, just as your parents, right?
	I mean, first of all, I'm incredibly sorry.
	It's so tragic, so heartbreaking.
	I was against this stuff from my core before I became a father, but the idea of beating my beautiful child, my wonderful, funny, exciting, interesting child...
	Beating with a vacuum cleaner hose until it broke and smashing her up against glass.
	It's beyond insane.
	It's like the dark pit of human evil.
	I'm so sorry. Can I just ask you, I'm getting a lot of noise on your end, like rustling or...
	I sort of hate to interrupt, but it's really distracting that it ends up being a huge amount of work when the show's done.
	I'm just crying, I'm sorry.
	No, no, that's fine. When you're crying, I don't want to interrupt with that, but just move the microphone a little bit away so I don't get all the rustling because it's hard to concentrate.
	So yeah, I'm really, really sorry that this all happened to you, that this was done to you, that this great evil was wreaked upon your helpless frame.
	The act of trying to run away.
	I mean, I don't know if you heard the story when I was, I don't know, three or four, right?
	I tried to run away again as well.
	And it is two things, I think, with the running away, because I think that's really important.
	The first is that it is an act of absolutely desperate protest.
	I can't live like this.
	And the most desperate protest is when you would rather die than continue in the current situation.
	Does that make sense? Yeah.
	And running away into the night...
	Leaving, I mean, if you think about the evolution, right?
	Leaving the campfire and going out into the darkness when there are predators and you can't fend for yourself and you can't get your own food.
	It is a saying, I would rather die than continue like this.
	And what an awful, desperate, terrible situation to be in as a child.
	I mean, it's like those monks who set themselves on fire or just, I would rather die than continue like this.
	This is an unbelievably appalling and terrible situation for a child to be in, and I'm just, I'm so sorry about all of that.
	And then, of course, for your parents to twist the knife.
	Every time you have a disagreement, it's like, well, you can go, or your mother's saying, you can go, I don't care, right?
	Yeah. Right.
	That is absolutely appalling.
	And it's beyond appalling because just the thing like...
	I'm going to swear, but you swore first, man.
	But no, this is like, why the fuck have children?
	Like, I don't understand this.
	Why? If you hate children so much, if it's horrible, if it's stressful, if it's ugly, if it brings out the absolute demonic within you, like, if that's your experience of having children, why have children?
	Like, nobody's forcing you to.
	There's 18 different kinds of birth control, 19 if you include the male condom.
	So you've got like 19 different forms of birth control.
	If you become a parent and you hate being a parent, you can drop your child off in most places in the world, right?
	You can just drop your child off at a police station or a hospital or a fire station and they'll work their best to try and find...
	Or maybe you can find a relative who wants children, who likes children.
	Maybe there's a childless aunt who really wants a child and Just give the child up.
	If I bought a dog, right?
	If I bought a dog with the idea of what dog ownership was going to be like, and then I found out that I can't imagine why because I really like dogs, but imagine I just hated having a dog and I felt the urge to starve and beat.
	I can't imagine this, but let's just say for the sake of argument.
	Right? Then I don't...
	I mean, I wouldn't keep the dog, right?
	Because it would be cruel to the dog and bad for the dog.
	Like, you either find some way to be a good dog owner or give up the dog.
	I don't understand this...
	You hate your kids, right?
	I mean, tell me, is that too strong a statement to say that you experience them as hating you?
	Yeah, like if you hate your kids, I don't...
	I mean, we've got this...
	People go through divorce, right?
	And divorce is like hugely expensive in a lot of places.
	It's a multi-year process.
	They go through this divorce. Because they, you know, I thought I loved this person, was going to be forever with them, but I don't love this person.
	I really dislike this person, or it's negative or bad.
	People go through this, like, multi-year, very expensive divorce process, and all you have to do with a kid is drop them off at a police station and say, I can't, I'm doing too much harm to this child.
	It's not working for me. This is not what I wanted.
	It's not in the best interest of the child to stay with me.
	Now, can you imagine if you were unhappy with your spouse, you just dropped the spouse off at the police station and your divorce is done?
	No. I mean, we would say, well, okay, then at least divorce is not a long-suffering, expensive process.
	So, I mean, I guess it's part of the sadism, like people keep the kids around just to be cruel, just to have power over someone, just to, I don't know, reenact their own childhood.
	I don't know what, like, I mean, we couldn't possibly imagine the motives because I think to truly get the motives would be half to go insane with the infection of evil.
	But that's just horrible, man.
	And so we talked, of course, about your early childhood.
	How did things play out for you as you grew up?
	So... I'm just getting random memories, but I'm just going to share with her.
	Maybe when I was eight or nine, I can remember how my mom was beating me even more.
	I just remember how I was cowering under a table, just trying to escape.
	And I just remember this giant with death in her eyes, just chasing me, and I would manage to run, let's say, to the toilet and lock myself inside.
	And she'll start screaming and banging on the door that if I don't open the door, she's going to break it and basically kill me.
	So I would have to open the door and she would continue just beating me.
	What did she say? Do you remember what she said in particular?
	You said basically kill me, but like you're dead or it's going to be worse for you or like how did she put it?
	In English, the clause says, I'm going to end you.
	Right, yeah, well that's a death threat.
	So I was eight or nine, and I can just remember every night I would lock my door, I would lock my windows, everything, and just hide under the covers.
	I was afraid that if I fall asleep, either my mom or dad would just kill me.
	And I started going to hunting shops and just buying knives and sleeping with a knife under my pillow.
	And even...
	I remember the brightest day, one night I would just...
	I was so afraid, so I grabbed my knife and just went to their bedroom.
	I opened the door and they were sleeping and I was thinking, can I do it?
	Can I kill my parents or are they gonna kill me first?
	Like, what's gonna happen? And then I'll go in bed and just pray to God at the time I believed in God.
	But I was praying that they're gonna die just in a car crash.
	I was just hoping to be an orphan.
	But My prayers were never answered, and then I was 10 or 11, I said, okay, God doesn't exist.
	I remember I used to, even after a lot of that, I used to be a very...
	I see old photos, I was always smiling, laughing.
	I would go to other kids and just say, like, hey, wannabe friends, let's play this, let's play that.
	I would be nine years old and just selling random stuff to other kids so I can get some money to go play some games or buy something.
	And I was really aesthetic.
	I was playing tennis a lot.
	At least five or six days a week, I was really serious about it.
	And I remember when I was 13, I was representing my town in the tournament.
	And there was one other kid that I was playing.
	He was really good. And it was...
	Semi-final, I think.
	And everything was going really well.
	And years later, that guy, he used to be in the top ten for men's in the world.
	So, top ten tennis player.
	Wow. Yeah, it was a really good game.
	And I remember I saw his family, his dad was there, his mom, everyone, grandparents, and they were just cheering him on and wearing shirts with his name.
	And my mom didn't come to the game.
	My dad was there.
	All I can remember was with his sunglasses and somebody called him on the phone and he just went and talked for the whole game and at that point something broke.
	So I just threw the game.
	Every single shot I threw it on purpose and I never played tennis after that.
	Well, it's an interesting thing that you mentioned, and I'm, again, sorry about this, right?
	But it's an interesting thing because this is one of the reasons, like, it's one of these incomprehensible things.
	Like, why does the world not move solidly against child abuse in the way that it moves against racism or sexism or, you know, slavery and so on?
	And I think you touched on something interesting, which is Well, one of the reasons is that it takes away competition.
	Like, child abuse takes away competition because it's very hard for children who are abused to work at the highest levels of competition because, as you say, there's, you know, there's emotional issues and resentment and rage and all of that.
	So it's just a way for people in power to make sure that poor kids, kids who just get some great gifts or some great willpower, just don't compete with them.
	So it's one of the reasons why I think the elites don't.
	Because child abuse kind of keeps the elites where they are in many ways.
	So that story, which is, again, really tragic.
	I remember that too. I used to do a lot of painting, painting landscapes and all of that when I was a kid.
	I remember, yeah, after getting beaten up one time too many, I was just like, that's it.
	Like, I'm not. I was on strike.
	It was a protest. It was like an Atlas strike thing.
	Like, I'm not going to bring beauty into a world that's so ugly.
	I'm not going to bring skill and competence and excellence into a world that's so brutal and immoral.
	It's sort of like you're working very hard.
	As a kid, building stuff, and then at some point, maybe you get the thought or the insight, well, I'm building war materials, and I'm on strike because I'm not contributing to death, I'm not contributing to violence, I'm building bombs or bullets or something like that, and you go on strike, right? I mean, I don't want to tell you that that was your experience, but that was certainly something to do with what went on with me.
	Yeah, for me, the way it felt, it just broke my heart, because...
	So I was playing tennis since I was six years old, and every time we went somewhere, my parents would be, yeah, our son, he's really good at tennis, he's really good, he's really that.
	They're just bragging about it, but they never supported it, actually.
	They would only pay for the lessons.
	And even when I was, God, maybe eight or nine, there was a tennis instructor, and he put them aside and said, listen, your son is really good.
	You should have them in private lessons, because usually there are three or four kids, everyone just getting trained together.
	And they said, you can pay the same rate, but the guy said, I'm going to train your kid, because he's really, really good.
	He has a future.
	And I remember my parents were just bragging to everyone, but they never told me, we're proud of you.
	It was only in front of other people.
	I never got a other boy.
	And that same year when This happened.
	That was the summer before high school.
	And the way the education system is in my country, before you go to high school, you need to take something like the SAT in America.
	So you take a really important exam and that determines the high school you're going to get to.
	So it's meritocratic.
	And I remember the whole year when I was supposed to prepare for that, they would always...
	Tell me, you're gonna fail.
	You're gonna fail. You're not studying.
	You're not studying. We're gonna send you to the woods if you don't study.
	I'm watching TV and they'll just start yelling and abusing me.
	Why are you not studying? And I kept explaining.
	Studying is easy for me.
	I can just read the text once and I remember it.
	I don't need to. I don't need to study.
	And then the results come out and I had number 13, so 1-3 from the whole country for all of the kids that took it.
	Wow. And I went to them and I said, see, I told you the way I study is the way I do it.
	And they said, well, imagine how bad it could have been if you studied extra hard.
	And then they said, a kid we know plays number 10, so that's not good enough.
	And I think after that, When I went to high school, I just stopped studying at all.
	I didn't put any effort.
	I was still getting nice grades, but I never studied.
	Now, what are your thoughts about, in a sense, giving up on study and giving up on tennis?
	Do you look back with regret?
	How do you think about that stuff?
	I remember giving up on study in particular because when my dad was in high school, he So every single grade he ever got throughout the years, every single test was perfect marks.
	And then when he went to college, he went to the university.
	He went to the nicest one and he was just the top student every single time.
	And he always kept repeating that.
	Yeah, I'm so smart. But then I look at his life and I said, okay, if that's what studying gets you, I do not want to study.
	I don't want your life.
	I would do anything just to have the exact opposite of your life.
	What was it about his life?
	I mean, obviously his marriage, and you don't have to get into any details about his career, but what was it about his life that you found so repulsive, so gross?
	I mean, the work he was doing is kind of included, but...
	So, when communism fell in 92, that's when I was born, he was the first person to start a business in the whole city.
	He started a construction company.
	He has...
	A few masters degree around construction.
	So they started a business, right?
	And it was going really well for a few years.
	The stories have heard how entrepreneurial he was.
	Let's say on the trip, they were meant to go and get trucks full of lumber from the mountains.
	So when they got there, somebody grabbed the officials so they couldn't get the lumber.
	And my dad just bought thousands and thousands of Christmas trees.
	Because it was around Christmas. They came back and they were hustling and just sold them and made a lot more profit.
	But later on, he would just stay at home all day.
	He would just lay in bed and watch Stephen completely.
	I would try to talk to him.
	I was six, seven, eight.
	He wouldn't respond.
	And that would last sometimes months.
	And then he would get up. He would put those sunglasses even inside.
	He was watching Mafia movies and he was pretending that he's a mafia boss and telling me how he's gonna kill this person, he's gonna have this person kill, that person killed.
	And then, I don't know, maybe a few weeks later, the same shit again happened.
	So he would lay in bed and throughout my teenage years, probably for five, six years, he did not get out of bed.
	And he had contracts, he was supposed to do construct buildings.
	And at the time, I think it was, I was about 13 again.
	My mom tried to kill herself twice.
	The first time she was about to jump from the balcony and I was there and just holding her hand and trying to get her back.
	Then maybe a month or two later I remember my dad is yelling for me so I go to his bed and his, your mom went to kill herself in the garage, go save her basically.
	So I go downstairs and Wait, how old were you at this time?
	13. It was the same time.
	So I go downstairs and she's in the car.
	The engine was burning and she was smoking cigarettes and she was just crying and said, just leave me.
	I just want to go to sleep and never wake up.
	And I don't know why I remember I said, mom, please come back.
	I'm going to stay here with you, so if you die, I die.
	So please, let's go.
	And she started crying and just, we went upstairs again.
	And then I remember she started working because my dad was refusing and people were coming to collect the bills, they were going to take our house, everything.
	But he still refused to go and do his job, even though he had a business, he had employees.
	And I remember my mom was Going on her lunch breaks, just running to the construction sites to try to do some job and then after work as well.
	But yeah, for most of my life my dad just never worked.
	He was just completely depressed in bed.
	And when I go there, it was like a vegetable.
	There wasn't a human being. I would try to talk to him.
	He would just be, had a thousand yards there.
	He was just looking into nothing for years.
	And roughly at the same time, his father, so my grandfather, did the same thing.
	The moment he retired, he just laid in bed so long that his feet stopped working, so after that he was crippled.
	He could never walk again.
	And before that, I remember my grandfather, they had a farm, so he was always building something, working.
	He was the most go-getter I've ever seen.
	But the moment he retired, something just snapped, and after that he was just a cripple, And we just hold it over people.
	It would be, oh, I can't do this, so you need to take care of me.
	You need to take care of that. And then my dad did the same thing for years.
	He was always saying, oh, I have a bad back.
	When I was skiing in my 20s, I hit myself.
	But then we'd say, okay, go to a doctor.
	You can have surgery. And he would always say, no, I don't want to.
	And then the doctors would say, yeah, you have a slight injury, but it's not that big of a deal.
	Like, You're blowing this out of proportion and you're not there crying from pain and stuff.
	You can still live a normal life.
	But he just refused to.
	And even when I went to university, that's a whole other story, but I remember one day my mom called me and she said, oh yeah, your dad got a job.
	I said, what? How?
	She said, oh yeah, for the government.
	And I said, what? And he became mayor out of nowhere.
	He just had some old friends.
	They were looking for, I guess, a new mayor.
	So they just called him and he got the job.
	And I was thinking, are you insane?
	So, yeah, he was married for five years out of nowhere, I remember.
	And apparently he did a really, really good job.
	However, people hated him because he would go to the government employees and just say, you're so incompetent, you're so stupid, I'm going to fire all of you.
	So it wasn't long until they got rid of him.
	How old were you when he did this?
	Early 20s. So I was pretending to be at university at that time.
	So my parents thought...
	Sorry, go ahead. My parents thought...
	So...
	When I finished high school, I just wanted to leave the country so bad.
	Really, really bad. I just wanted to get away from my parents.
	And they were promising me, if you get accepted into a nice European university, we're going to pay for you, we're going to pay for that.
	And... Yeah, so I went and studied.
	I had to do a lot of exams because English is not my native language, so I had to hold all my exams in English.
	So I was taking lessons, I was studying, and I got accepted in the...
	I really wanted to go to the Netherlands at the time, so I got accepted into the top three universities.
	And I remember I was saying to my parents, yeah, I got the letters, I'm going there, and they said, oh, we can't pay for that.
	And I said, what? For the past year, you've been promising me that We're gonna do this for you.
	So I was studying. I was going there.
	I got accepted. I was ready to leave and they said, no, you can't.
	We can't pay for this.
	So I just had a few weeks to apply to universities in my country.
	So I went to the capital. I got accepted.
	My high school grades weren't the best because they didn't put any effort, but I aced all the exams.
	Usually I'm really good at exams.
	Even if I haven't studied anything, it's just logic to me.
	So I got accepted into the best university and then I was going there.
	I'm not sure how university was back in your day, but when I would go to class, nobody cared.
	Even the professors, they were saying, yeah, you don't care about studying, you just want to get the degree.
	And the teacher would even say, listen, if this is my, so I made a textbook, I'm going to sell it for a hundred pounds or a hundred dollars or whatever.
	So if you buy it from me, the test I'm going to give at the end of the year is going to be in the back of the book.
	So everyone who buys it gets an A immediately.
	And I was sitting there and I was thinking, why am I at university for this?
	And I remember just one day I was supposed to go to university and I just didn't.
	It was around Christmas. And ever since then I was just living close to the university but never went.
	I just dropped out after a few months of it.
	And I was just pretending that I was studying.
	So when my parents would call up, how is it going?
	I would say, yeah, it's really well, blah, blah, blah.
	And I kept it up for almost four years.
	Yeah, I would say certainly I didn't have anything as corrupt as buy the textbook for me and I'll give you an A, but I would say that of the people who were at university, about 99% of them had no interest, no foundational interest in the subject matter and they didn't particularly care.
	They were just going through the motions.
	They were killing time. They were having parties.
	They were sleeping around.
	They were going to bars and discos and Yeah, it was just – but as far as the number of people there, I met maybe one or two, literally one or two in my entire undergraduate, and I went to three different universities, so it was a pretty big sampling.
	I maybe met one or two who had genuine interest in the subject matter and wanted to talk about ideas in a passionate way.
	It's a holding pen for indoctrination and corruption as a whole university in particular – I mean the arts in particular, so – Yeah, I mean, I think my experience wasn't quite as bad as yours, but as far as the people who were there who actually cared about the subject matter and were interested in ideas and wanted to debate and like, yeah, I mean, people just looked at me like when I would be interested and try and engage in conversation about the subject matter, they look at me like, what are you doing?
	This is like, we're going through the motions here.
	Why are you taking any of this seriously?
	What are you doing? Like, we're here to spend money, kill time, avoid adulthood, and get drunk.
	Like, what are you doing? Why are you trying to, you know, it's sort of like it reminded me of a friend of mine who was on an assembly line and he was very conscientious and worked very hard and people got mad at him.
	Like, well, you're making the rest of us look bad.
	Like, what are you doing? This is, like, we keep it slow.
	We keep everyone employed.
	We're here to, you know, have a social life and go bowling after work.
	And, like, what are you doing with all of this hard work nonsense?
	It's just, it's bad, right?
	And so, yeah, there was this colossal, vacant, zombie-eyed indifference to the actual subject matter and what you were supposed to care about.
	Yeah. No, it was the same thing with me.
	And I just felt my soul dying.
	And I said, okay, I'll I'd rather just stay at home, do nothing.
	And for about three years, I was just...
	I don't even...
	I can't remember anything that happened those four years.
	It was just living day for day and just pretending every time my mom would call or something.
	Because she would try to say, oh, can you show us the report card?
	Can you show us this? Can you show us that?
	And every time I'd have to find an excuse, like, oh, the teacher has it, or I forgot it, or something like that, for four years.
	I think she knew the whole time because my parents are really intelligent people.
	I think she knew. For four years, I've never shown her any proof that I'm still at university.
	She must have known.
	I remember the last year...
	Sorry, what were you living on?
	How were you funding?
	What were you living on? I mean, they were mostly sending me a little money just for the rent and a little bit for money.
	I had a lot of savings from when I was in high school.
	So... I just couldn't study.
	I always felt so entrepreneurial.
	When I was 13, somehow I found the Robert Kiyosaki book.
	It was, I think...
	Oh, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance?
	No, no, no, no. Rich Dad, Poor Dad.
	Oh, okay. Got it, got it.
	Yeah. So I read it.
	I was 13. I remember even.
	It was in the summer and...
	It just something clicked with me.
	I said, yes, that's what I want to do.
	I'm going to do something.
	So I found a job when I was 13.
	So I bought a nice...
	At the time, it was a really nice mobile phone.
	And it was the first year of high school.
	So I just wanted to direct movies.
	So I got all of the kids from my class and other classes.
	And we'll just be shooting movies between the classes.
	And I remember during class, I would be editing.
	I would be doing cuts, doing shuffling, putting...
	Just like music and stuff, we would upload it online and later on when I was 15 or 16 I discovered poker.
	So I just started playing a lot of online poker and then we managed to sneak into casinos because if you knew somebody it was really easy to get in.
	So I remember I was 16 and just playing against people who are 50 years old and just taking their money.
	So I had a lot of savings from that and I was living on that for those four years.
	And you don't really remember what you were doing, right?
	No, it was almost four years.
	I have almost no memories.
	I just remember there was a period right when I stopped going to university.
	I remember I blacked out my windows from the place when I was leaving, so...
	I just put a bunch of sheets on all of it.
	So I could never and I got rid of all clocks or watches so I could never tell what was the time.
	It was always dark inside.
	I just felt I need to isolate from the world so much.
	So for at least a month, I didn't even see sunlight.
	I was just ordering food deliveries.
	And I just said I can't live and I cannot keep doing this.
	And I remember the last year, a few months before I was supposed to graduate, I somehow stumbled onto your YouTube channel.
	So that was about seven, eight years ago.
	It was the early years.
	And something really clicked.
	I remember I was just binging your content all the time.
	It just felt like I've been in the desert for years and I just found some waters.
	I was trying to gorge myself.
	And at that time, I told my parents.
	So they said, okay, we're not going to keep paying.
	You need to come back then. So I went back, and at the time, I was really overweight.
	In high school, I gained a lot of weight.
	At my heaviest, I used to weigh 150 kg.
	That's well over 300 pounds.
	Wow. So I went back home, and I remember I was just...
	I was like, okay, I'm 22 or 23 at the time.
	I'm back with my parents.
	I'm so overweight.
	I was embarrassed to leave the house.
	And one day just something snapped.
	I genuinely don't know what it was.
	Something completely snapped.
	And I said, I'm not living this life anymore.
	So immediately I signed up for a gym.
	And late at night, I remember when the sun goes down, I would just be going out for walks for five, six hours just to do my cardio because I was too embarrassed to do it, to show myself I was so overweight.
	I lost 60 kg in about 9 months or something like that.
	Wow, that's very impressive.
	Thank you. I remember I was just listening to your calling shows at the time while just doing my walks.
	It was right around that time when I was losing the weight that I first met my girlfriend.
	We actually... Sorry, I want to obviously get to the girlfriend, but I need to rewind for a second, or at least I'd like to.
	So, your parents, are they sort of the same age as each other?
	They have five or six years difference.
	Right, okay. Almost six, I would say.
	They're born in the same month, in the same week, but my mom is a few days before my dad, so it's almost six years, but we can just say six.
	And your dad's older? Yes.
	So, how old were you when your dad took to bed?
	About 13 or 14.
	Everything happened at the same time.
	Do you know why your parents collapsed mentally?
	Your mother was suicidal around this time, is that right?
	Do you know why your father took to bed and your mother tried to kill herself twice?
	From... Because they would never tell us anything, but from what I was thinking at the time is the business was going down.
	No. So, that's what they said.
	No, I'm sure that's what they say, but, you know, forgive me if I don't believe child abusers.
	No. No, because there would be, I mean, saying I got suicidal because the business was going down doesn't explain why the business was going down.
	Like, there has to be something going on before that you're losing focus, losing concentration, right?
	Losing your work ethic.
	I think I know, and obviously I could be wrong, so this is not to tell you that you're wrong, I'm just telling you why I think.
	This is because I've had enough of these calls to see this pattern that very often when the child is going through puberty
	abusive parents collapse This is because I'm big and strong now
	Yeah, because they cannot keep their own demons at bay by physically brutalizing you.
	So the demons heat them up then?
	Yes. So child abuse and suicidality are two sides of the same coin.
	People abuse children in part to avoid their own suicidal impulses.
	Murder and suicide are two sides of the same coin.
	So your parents kept their own suicidal and depressive demons at bay.
	It's almost like the demons said, you beat your child, we'll let you live.
	That's the bargain. Like the devil almost says, you beat your child and you don't suck carbon dioxide in a garage.
	You beat your child and you can keep working.
	You beat your child and I won't push you off the balcony.
	Now, when you get big and they can't beat you anymore or can't dominate you as much anymore and they recognize that you're going to be leaving, then the devil says, well, okay, time to collect.
	Time to collect. And your father takes to bed and your mother tries to kill herself.
	Because they can no longer dominate you.
	and all of the evil that they've done comes back like a big bladed boomerang or something
	I mean the same thing happened with my mother, the same thing happened with countless people
	I've talked to who's... particularly physical abuse and particularly the women
	The dads tend to be more depressed and the women tend to be more suicidal.
	But again, I'm not saying this is your experience or this is the absolute truth, but it just seems like a common
	enough pattern that it's, you know, fairly close to true for me, if that makes sense.
	Yeah.
	And the craziest thing is that it was exactly the same time as my granddad.
	He was also stuck in bed voluntarily.
	And he became a cripple as well.
	It was roughly the same time as my father.
	Maybe it was an intergenerational debt collection for evil.
	Yeah. And the one thing I remember, my dad hated his father so much.
	But he also had to basically sin for him.
	I remember even when he was in his 40s, Because they were always broke, because my dad never worked.
	So he would go to his parents, and he would just beg for money, beg for the life savings, and my granddad would absolutely humiliate him.
	He would basically make him...
	Keep in mind, my granddad is in a wheelchair at that time, and he would basically make my dad kneel and kiss his hand, just asking for money and stuff.
	And I remember...
	I... I felt disgusted when I was seeing that.
	Because when I was little, and they would leave me in the farm during summer, because every summer they would leave me and my younger brother, just for the whole summer, they would just leave us with our grandparents.
	So we would be in nature, and they would do whatever they would do.
	And I remember, well, they would come and pick us up, and I would just look up and see those two giants, and I would be just amazed, because my dad is very tall as well.
	I'm 6'2", he's a bit taller than me.
	And then to see that man just kneeling and kissing a hand for some money because he couldn't get out of bed, just...
	I was disgusted and me and my brother would always mock him about it.
	We would always... We would always humiliate him about it.
	Anytime there would be anything, he would always say, oh, you need to...
	Ask the man of the house, and then me and my brother would say, okay, we'll go ask mom instead.
	And then our mom would just be laughing.
	That's actually kind of funny.
	Yeah, I remember, but something about it, I went to a therapist maybe last year, and I was telling her that story, and she said...
	Oh, that was wrong. You need to call and apologize to your dad for humiliating him.
	No, she didn't.
	Please tell me she didn't.
	Like, you have one little strike back against the vampiric empire that dominates your childhood.
	And your therapist is like, oh, you're in the wrong.
	You've got to apologize. It's like, no, good for you, man.
	Good for you. I hope it hurt him.
	Yeah, and she was telling me about it, how...
	When you're a little boy, your dad is your blueprint from mom.
	So when you were mocking him, you were destroying yourself.
	And she said, until you apologize to your dad, you're going to be self-destructive and something like that.
	Yeah, that's like a gypsy voodoo curse, you know?
	Unless you grovel before the people who beat you, then you're just going to be...
	I'm going to put this curse called self-destruction on you.
	Yeah, it's pretty...
	I mean, it's basically one step up from being a witch.
	That's actually funny. I wanted to rewind to that teenage stuff because when child abusers get suicidal, I'm like, well, yeah, of course you do.
	When child abusers can't get out of bed, it's like, well, yeah, because evil has a price.
	Evil has a price. It happens in the conscience.
	Obviously, some people would believe it's the devil taking the soul after evil has been done.
	If you smoke like crazy, you're probably going to die of smoking.
	and if you beat your children and give them death threats and drive them almost out of
	the home at the age of four or five, then yeah, there are consequences.
	I mean, I can't change those consequences, you can't change those consequences, it's
	just a fact.
	I mean, obviously we wish they hadn't done the evil, but once the evil has been done,
	it can't be undone.
	I mean, like little things we do wrong, yeah, okay, sure, you know, if I'm a bit snappy
	I can say, oh, sorry, you know, that was, that was, I'm distracted or something's going on or whatever. Right.
	And that was wrong for me and I'm sorry about that.
	And, you know, once or twice a year, I have to sort of say sorry to people if I've just been a little grumpy or something.
	But it's nothing major and it's fine.
	And that, to me, is just part of the normal friction of living.
	And it's very rare. But, you know, I mean, if you've done the kind of wrongs that can't be undone, like if you've mentally, physically and emotionally tortured your child for 13 years straight, you can't.
	I mean, you can't undo that.
	You know, like a guy who has a couple of cigarettes over the course of his life is not going to die of lung cancer, right?
	A guy who's a two-pack-a-day smoker for 40 years, well, he's probably not going to do very well, and no one can undo that damage.
	There's no, like, control Z, there's no edit, undo, there's no, you know...
	Your body will heal, I assume, from a couple of cigarettes over the course of your life in the same way that if you have, I don't know, a drink a month or two drinks a month, you're not going to kill your liver.
	Your body can heal from that.
	It's the same thing with doing wrong.
	Like, yeah, there's got to be a little bit here and there, but you can heal from it and it's fine.
	And in fact, it can be instructive on how to improve.
	But when you do the kind of absolute malevolent evil that your parents did, you can't undo that.
	There's no rewind.
	There's no undoing that damage.
	It's accumulated. And so, yeah, when you get addicted to brutalizing children and then your children grow up and you can't brutalize them in the same way anymore, yeah, there's a crash.
	You know, all addicts have a crash, right?
	I mean, that But there's no recovery from it.
	You can't undo it.
	Usually the pride is so great that...
	And also the weight of what you'd have to apologize is so great.
	I sort of genuinely believe that for people who do great evil...
	Apologies would be suicide.
	Like they can't apologize. Like when you meet someone who just...
	She can't admit that she's wrong or he can't ever admit that he's wrong.
	I assume that to admit that you're wrong would be to court suicide.
	It's actually become like a life-saving defense mechanism because you've done so much wrong or you've...
	Things have been so bad that to apologize would be to uncork all of that immorality.
	I mean, I'm going to go out on a limb here.
	I'm going to assume that your parents have never taken responsibility and genuinely apologized and sought therapy for what they did to you as a child?
	No, never. They don't even...
	Every time we bring it up, it's, oh, that didn't happen.
	Oh, you're exaggerating.
	Oh, we never even touched you.
	Right. So they're continuing the abuse, right?
	Because they're gaslighting. They're lying to you and they're saying you're crazy.
	You're imagining things. So they're sacrificing your mental health for the sake of defending their own evil, right?
	And that's just a continuation of the abuse.
	And again, I'm really, really sorry for that.
	But it feels kind of inevitable in that way.
	It's like you're begging a guy who smoked two packs a day for 30 years.
	You're saying, no, no, come join our marathon long-distance running team.
	It's like, well, you can't.
	I mean, you can't. Lungs are short, right?
	All right, so I don't want to rush things along.
	Obviously, massive sympathies, and it's a terrible tale, although the redemption arc is great.
	I'm very glad you went for those five-hour walks in the middle of the night, and I'm glad that The podcast seemed to have done some good, and that's wonderful to hear.
	But let's get to the girlfriend.
	The girlfriend. Can we just give her a name that's not her name?
	I can't think of anything.
	Can we just go totally Anglo and call her Mary?
	I'm pretty sure she's not Mary.
	Yeah, she's not Mary.
	Yeah, she's not Mary. It's probably something with a mouthful of Polish syllables or something.
	So, okay, let's call her Mary.
	I know she's not Polish either. So, we call her Mary.
	So, how did you meet her?
	What happened? So, it was 2016, I remember.
	And I was going to the gym.
	Just one day, I know it's a girl, right?
	She wasn't the prettiest, she wasn't the sexiest, but there was just something about her that I couldn't stop thinking about her.
	I remember I would go home and then before I was sleeping, before I go to sleep, I would just imagine, okay, what's her name?
	What is she like as a person?
	Will I see her again? Sorry, and looking back, do you have any idea what it was that was so appealing?
	I don't know, to be honest.
	It was just mysterious.
	It was something about it.
	I think it was the way she just walked or the way she was moving.
	I mean, I have a theory, but I don't want to step in the way of your story.
	Okay. So, a few weeks later, I saw her again, and I just made some small talk.
	It was just something like, hi, blah, blah, blah.
	Nothing came from that.
	And I remember I was...
	It was the night of the US elections when Trump was being elected and I was really feeling optimistic back then.
	I remember even you had a live stream or something and you were singing the American anthem and I told myself that, okay, if Donald Trump can win the election because the results were out, I can ask out that girl, right?
	So I saw her the same day Trump won the elections and I just went to her.
	She was using a machine.
	And I just introduced myself, said hi, started chatting, and I said, do you mind if we use the same machine?
	She was like, no. And then when I was finishing my workout, she said, I'm going to leave.
	And I said, can you wait for me?
	I'm almost finished. And she said, yeah, I will just wait for you.
	And then after the gym, we're just walking home and she was asking me, for example, Because she was 18 at the time and I was about 24, I think.
	We also...
	Our birthdays are really close together as well.
	I'm sorry, I just missed that last part.
	Could you repeat it? Yeah, so at the time she was 18, I was 24.
	And she was asking me, oh, where have you studied?
	And I just said, no, I dropped out a few months from that.
	And she was really impressed.
	She said, oh... So what do you plan to do?
	And I said, I've just been getting my life back together and I just want to have a business, do something for myself.
	And then we were just walking, I was walking her home because she lived 20 minutes from the gym, so I was in the same direction.
	And I just asked her, I remember point blank, I said, do you have a boyfriend?
	And she was a bit flustered, but she said no.
	And then we keep talking.
	I say, do you want to go on a date with me?
	Let's go on a date. And she said, I remember what she said.
	She said, hmm, maybe.
	And I said, no.
	I'm not taking maybes.
	It's a yes or a no. And she said, yes.
	I remember. And then we went on a date a few days later.
	And I remember I was so excited, but she wasn't giving me much.
	I was thinking to myself, oh, okay, this girl is really nothing to me.
	There's nothing here. So after the date, I never called her, never messaged nothing because I said, okay, this is really obvious.
	There's nothing there. And so I see her at the gym maybe a month, month and a half later.
	And I see her and I just go and I felt really bad and said, oh, listen, I'm sorry that I never called you back, never got in touch, nothing.
	But I just felt there was nothing there.
	We kept talking and talking and I walked her to her place again and we arranged for another date.
	And later she told me that actually on the first date she really, really, really liked me and was really nervous, I guess.
	And after that, when I didn't call her back, she said she was going at the same time we met at the gym every single day, just hoping to see me there and just walking the same route, both of us too, because she was hoping she was going to just spot me somewhere along the street.
	And I was thinking, But you have my phone number.
	You could have always just texted or called.
	You didn't have to put so much effort every single day just to randomly see me.
	You could have just texted or said anything, just call me, whatever.
	Anyways, we just started dating from there.
	And, given that you've listened to my show for years, you to my show for years. You asked her, I'm sure, about her
	childhood and what did she say?
	Oh, my God. You know, the craziest thing, so when I saw her at the gym, I remember, I saw her the craziest thing.
	Because on the first date, I remember we were talking about stuff, and I said, your parents are divorced, aren't they?
	And she said, how did you know?
	And I said, I could see it by the way you walk.
	I don't know, it's really weird to explain, but by the way she was walking, I could tell that her parents were separated.
	I'm sorry to interrupt. Also, I think you're touching your microphone.
	I'm getting the sandy sound in my ear.
	If you could not do that, I'd appreciate that.
	So, okay, so her parents were divorced and what else happened in her childhood?
	It's it's really bad so I'm not sure which one of us has it worse, to be honest.
	Even the actual therapist, because...
	Spoiler, but it turned out that both of us had the same therapist at the same time.
	And one of my last therapy sessions, I just dropped my girlfriend's name and the therapist was like, oh!
	And she mentioned something that the moment we met, we saw something in each other like, We clung to each other because we were both basically broken, so we wanted to basically fix each other.
	We saw each other as two abused kids, basically, who could just cling to each other in, I don't know, in the hopes of salvation or something.
	But her dad basically abandoned their family when she was five or six years old.
	They were fighting with her mom a lot.
	Her mom is batshit insane, to be honest.
	Even in the beginning of our relationship, she called me in tears and she said that she locked herself up because her mom was screaming and she was screaming like a demon.
	She wanted, I don't know, they got into a fight.
	So I had to immediately go and just pretty much break in and get her out of the house, protect her from her mom and then she came to live with me for a little bit.
	Sorry, your girlfriend came to live with you?
	How long into the relationship did you have to break her out of this crazy house?
	Maybe six months or five months, something like that.
	right about.
	Wow, okay. So she felt she was in danger from her mother and you went into the house while the mother was screaming and you pulled her out?
	Yeah, pretty much. I had to make sure just to keep her protected and then...
	Her mom called her grandparents and her granddad and they said, okay, so I went there as well, my parents went as well.
	So we went into a cafe just to figure things out and I remember how her grandfather was trying to tell me...
	I got really upset at him because I said to her mom, you're not going to touch my girlfriend, you're not going to beat her, you're not going to hit her, I'm going to stop you from doing that.
	And then I got really, really angry, and her grandfather, he told me, you need to relax, boy, or something like that, and I said, I don't remember what I said I told him about it, but things were relatively smooth afterwards, and I think after that incident, her mom never properly, never yelled at her, never hit her, nothing like that.
	How long did she stay with you, the five months or so?
	After you started dating, you pulled her out.
	How long did she stay with you, or what happened there?
	Oh, it was probably a week or two.
	So we had...
	Yeah. And I remember after that point, her mom would...
	She completely flipped, so every time she talks to her, she's trying to be...
	Friendly and just every single time after that would be, oh, I care about you.
	She'll talk about me, how I'm ruining her life, how bad of a person I am.
	And even to this day, even when we broke up a few days ago or a week ago, whatever, I still remember to that time, every single time we would have any sort of a fight, her mom would be, oh, you just need to come back, live with me, live with me.
	This guy is dangerous, he's bringing you life, he's using you, he's using you for your money, which I always get so upset because for the last at least three years I've been paying virtually for everything, so...
	And I keep repeating that.
	I say, okay, I'm the one paying for everything.
	I know your grandfather has... No, no, look, I mean, to some degree, you're an ally of hers, and so the parents are going to be hostile towards you.
	I get that. I get that.
	But she was never hostile to my face.
	I get that too. Child abuses tend not to be the most courageous people in the world because they beat up children, so not a lot of moral courage or martial courage there.
	Yeah. Okay, so, sorry, she moved back home, and your relationship, I mean, you were continuing because, so why, I'm not saying you should or shouldn't have, right, but I'm just, the relationship started off where you thought she wasn't interested, turns out she was. What was it that was keeping you there, and was it, like, the quality of the conversation?
	Was it sex? Like, what was it that was keeping you, pursuing the relationship?
	No, it was keeping the sex, so we waited almost Seven or eight months in the relationship to have sex because it was both of us.
	It was the first time for both of us.
	So at the time we weren't having sex, but I remember we were spending almost every single day together.
	So late at night we'd just be sitting somewhere on a bench in a park in the cold of winter and just talking for hours and just talking and talking.
	And we were discussing philosophy, we were discussing Politics at the time, libertarianism, like all of the good stuff.
	And she's really smart as well.
	So, like, she's really, really intelligent, which is going to come in handy later in the story.
	Was there any indication of the instability that you're seeing now, which almost seems like possession, you said, like her eyes turned cold or something.
	Was there any indication of the instability back when you were starting the relationship?
	No. Honestly, no.
	She was really kind.
	She was really timid at the time.
	She was very feminine, obviously.
	She didn't complain.
	There was nothing of that. To me, as a guy, my first relationship was so smooth and everything was so happy.
	Obviously, she would tell me, I had this argument with my mom, this happened, that happened, but her mom didn't live with her, so her mom lived in another city for work.
	And then she would just come by from time to time to check on her and her brother.
	But basically they were living mostly on their own and with their grandparents.
	And the dad who abandoned the family when she was five or six, he never came back?
	He never re-established? No.
	So he left when she was about five or six years old and from the story she was telling me, her mom and him were constantly fighting.
	He was really highly artistic.
	He tried to have a design agency, but I don't know what he did.
	Apparently some of the clients came to his house and they came with knives and they trashed his car and stuff.
	So I'm not sure what happened, but she was telling me stories of how...
	Well, he probably built them for work that he didn't do and they couldn't get caught relief.
	Yeah, probably.
	And then she'll tell me how they'll get home after late at night and then the whole house will be trashed.
	So... All the furniture, all the silverware, everything was stolen by her dad and just he sold it somewhere for God knows what, maybe he had debts or something.
	And then he said her mom would start throwing dishes and knives at him and they would start yelling and arguing and one of the days he just packed his things and just left.
	Well, he might have left also because he was being hunted by people who would beat him up or kneecap him or kill him or something.
	Yeah, he left the country actually. He went all the way from Eastern Europe to the UK. Yeah, yeah.
	So he probably was escaping dangerous business debts as well as the family.
	Okay, so then how did things progress after, I guess, the first year or two of your relationship?
	Things were pretty stable.
	Things were pretty enjoyable.
	Is that right? It was really fun, yes.
	And then what happened? I remember the time, two years in, I was really feeling entrepreneurial, so I had different business ideas, different product ideas, and I would develop the prototypes, and she would just watch YouTube videos and learn how to do 3D designs, so they can be 3D printed for prototypes, and she would learn it in a day or two, which is insane to me how she learned software so fast.
	And they would do it, and There was always something in the way, for example, legal issues, we spoke with a lawyer, we couldn't do this, maybe there's a patent there, or we couldn't get payment processors because we're from Eastern Europe and American companies don't process.
	But all that is fine.
	And maybe two years into the relationship, I properly got a job at the time.
	I remember one night we were just going out and she told me, you're You're 25 years old, almost this year you're going to be 26, but you still never had a proper job, a stable job.
	And I remember that night I just felt, holy shit, nobody ever told me that.
	My mom didn't tell me that, my dad didn't tell me that.
	So I remember next morning I just woke up and I just started applying for jobs and jobs and I was going to this interview and that interview and the same day I found a job immediately.
	Since I had so much experience with weight loss in the gym, so it was kind of like managing a gym, and her granddad said, okay, if both of you get jobs, we're gonna basically gift you an apartment so you can live there.
	They had a few properties.
	So I got my girlfriend a job in the same company, just a different location, and At that point, we just moved in together, and I remember on the day of moving, we just saw this little stray cat on the street, so we just picked it up and we got a cat at that time.
	And then we worked for probably four months, and she couldn't take it anymore.
	She just hated the job, she just hated working, so she quit.
	And a month after that, that was maybe April, I quit as well, so I had Hannah in my notice.
	Wait, so you were managed for a gym for like five months?
	Why did you quit?
	The owner was really shady and pretty much he was embezzling money and he was making us do the paperwork for quite illegal stuff so I had to speak with...
	Oh yeah, you got to get out.
	I had to speak with a lawyer and actual judge and they told us you need to leave immediately because that's a lot of money and a few months after that I remember We read in the news that he got investigated and everything got foreclosed, his house, he had to flee the country with his family, basically. So I had to leave immediately.
	But I still have clients because I was a personal trainer at the time.
	Sorry, it's also a little bit shady that without any particular experience, this guy puts you in charge of a gym.
	You know, that's like, wow, he really knows talent.
	It's like, yeah, well, maybe, but also maybe he senses something about you because, yeah, that's not much of a progression.
	I go to the gym. Oh, you should be a gym manager.
	It's like, really? No, don't need any experience?
	Don't need any resume? Don't need any references?
	All right. Yeah, I was asking, okay, I don't have the...
	Because, you know, you need to have qualifications to be a personal trainer to work in a gym.
	He said, don't worry.
	I can actually give you the documents myself.
	Oh, so he was shady at the very beginning, right?
	No, that happened maybe a month into it because he said, okay, I'm going to need you to train some clients because this personal trainer left, that personal trainer left.
	And when I was about to leave, he tried to force us to sign contracts that if anyone tries to leave Without a six-month notice, we need to pay something like $20,000, $30,000, just like damages if you quit in the next six months.
	And I remember I got really freaked out and I said, I'm not signing this.
	I need to leave immediately.
	Something's happening. Wow.
	Well, good bullet darts there, my friend.
	Yeah. And I remember I had a bunch of personal clients I was training after work.
	So let's say I would...
	Start work from 6 in the morning to about 3 o'clock.
	And then from 3 to 7, 8, I would be training people and I would go home and just wake up and do the same.
	And I told all my clients, listen, I need to leave.
	I understand if you don't want to come, but I can train you in another gym.
	My dad had a guy he knew who owned a gym and he allowed me to just train people there.
	And I just had to pay a little fee for that.
	Later on, I found out that the same guy who owned the gym was actually in the mafia and they were cooking meth and I think the gym was how they were laundering the money.
	Wait, the guy you left or the guy you paid the fee to that your dad knew?
	Yeah, my dad's friend, basically.
	We found out he was cooking meth and other stuff.
	Wow. And the gym was just up front.
	So that's why he didn't care if I trained people there.
	So I just went there and for a few months it was really nice.
	My girlfriend wasn't working, so...
	She would just be...
	I don't remember what she was doing, but she wasn't working for sure.
	And then her dad invites us to come and visit him to the UK. He lives in northern England.
	So he's been here for, what, 15 years?
	Sorry, her dad?
	Yes. So he kind of re-emerged, right?
	Yeah, out of the blue. He knew about me, obviously.
	And he said, I want you to both come here.
	So I think he wanted to just vet me or something, just to see...
	What kind of a person am I? And at that time, they hadn't seen each other for a while.
	I'm sorry, so when he abandoned the family, he did stay in some contact with her?
	A few years after that, I remember when she told me when she was 13 or 14, he came back.
	So the whole family went on a nice vacation for my girlfriend's birthday.
	It was her 12th birthday, I think.
	And they went to the seaside because he had a lot of money, right?
	Like he was working in the UK. So they went there and she said, I remember we were in the restaurant and just her parents started yelling and screaming at each other.
	And she said that was my, her words on my fucking birthday, on the 12th birthday.
	And she was hoping they would make up and they didn't.
	So after that, I think she saw him once.
	He invited her for Christmas.
	Right around when we started dating, roughly.
	So, maybe a week or two after we started dating, he invited her to visit for Christmas.
	Why? And did you guys go?
	No, so...
	No, when he invited you later.
	Yeah, both of us went, and I've never been to the UK. I remember the time I was...
	Why, sorry, why did you go?
	I'm not sure, to be honest.
	She was telling me, oh, maybe he's...
	Maybe he's changed. I mean, you weren't listening to this show, right?
	No, the time I stopped.
	Oh, you stopped. Okay, that's fine.
	I'm just wondering if you have an inner Steph.
	What was the inner Steph saying to you?
	Yeah, sounds great. This guy abandoned his family, traumatized his daughter on her 12th birthday.
	Let's go see him. Sounds like a great dad.
	Actually, I wanted to beat the shit out of him at the time.
	I remember that. And I was really, really pissed.
	So part of me was there just...
	I even confronted him and said, like, how dare you abandon your family?
	Like, what the fuck is wrong with you?
	But I remember the moment I stepped into the UK off the...
	So the moment I was off the plane, I was really smitten with the country.
	I know we've criticized it a lot, but compared to Eastern Europe, this is heaven.
	Everything was so clean, everything was so tidy.
	And I just remember, even before we met her dad, I told my girlfriend, listen, Let's come and live here.
	We can have a future here.
	It's not going to happen in our country.
	And so we were there for probably five days.
	We didn't see Hadad much.
	He was working all the time.
	We saw him, I think, for a day.
	He had one day off. Wait, he invited you out, but he had a lot of work to do?
	Yeah, pretty much.
	He couldn't take the time off.
	Well, no, but I mean, you don't invite people over if you can't take the time off, especially if you abandoned them and they were younger.
	Oh, I'm too busy for you now.
	It's just, I don't know, that's strange to me.
	Yeah, so the whole time we were just spending time with her dad's new girlfriend.
	And since she was from the same country, she invited her son and his girlfriend at the same time.
	So basically both couples at the same time.
	We're there. So we had to spend time with her dad's girlfriend and her children.
	Well, that's very strange.
	I mean, there's no chance to reconnect then.
	Okay, so what happens after that?
	Okay, so after that, he's just telling us, yeah, you should come in, we're going to help you, so you can live with us for a few weeks, so you can get documents, so you can work.
	All of that stuff, and we're really excited, so we go back and we just start making plans.
	Okay, we're thinking we need to make some money, so I sold a lot of personal possessions, I have a lot of books and stuff, and just sold everything.
	And then one night her dad just calls, maybe a week later, and he's just trashing, he says that he really hates me, he doesn't like me, that he's not going to help us move there.
	And I remember we both felt absolutely crushed because we really wanted to go to the UK. And I remember my girlfriend was crying somewhere outside.
	And her aunt called.
	So her aunt also lives in the UK as well.
	And she said, you can come and live with us for a few weeks.
	That's fine. So then we just sold everything.
	And two weeks later, we were on the plane to Wales, basically.
	And I remember we come to the UK. We had between us maybe 400 pounds combined, so that's nothing.
	And just a backpack with some clothes.
	So we go there and her aunt and her family is something else as well.
	And I remember on the first day she pulls my girlfriend aside and she says, you better behave so we don't break the family bond.
	So I think that was a threat that if we misbehave we're gonna be kicked out.
	So that was the first day there and then I was thinking, okay, I can't live in this place.
	I cannot do it. I just made a resume really quickly and I had no experience in the UK. I just landed there.
	I got documents extremely quickly so I could work.
	And I just printed like a hundred CVs and I was walking around the town and just giving it to every business, anything I can think of.
	So I found a job probably a week into that.
	So I immediately got employed and I got my girlfriend a job in the same place.
	It was really shitty. It was minimum wage.
	It was in a cake factory, but...
	So we started working, and I think on my second or third day, I literally got promoted.
	People were really impressed, and they said, okay, we're giving you a promotion.
	And they gave me a job that was ridiculously easy.
	The shift was 12 hours, but my actual work would take me maybe one hour, and then for 11 hours, I was just sitting in the canteen and reading books and doing stuff.
	I remember, and my girlfriend had to work Just like making cakes on the line and stuff.
	And she was really resentful for it.
	She was constantly telling me, oh, you have an easy time.
	I'm breaking my ass working.
	And I said, listen, I got promoted.
	It's not my fault. People like me.
	And then we had the job for maybe two weeks.
	And after two weeks, I just told her, listen, we need to go to London because Wales wasn't a nice place.
	It was really racist.
	And people just look at you really funny.
	So I just said, listen, we're going to work another two weeks, give a notice, and we're going to save up £1,000 each.
	So we can just go to London.
	£2,000 is plenty enough.
	When you mean racist, do you mean they were just hostile to foreigners?
	Really hostile, yeah. It was in Cardiff.
	Yeah, more xenophobic, I think, than racist.
	Oh, yeah. Okay, no biggie.
	Go ahead. So then we tell her aunt and her uncle...
	Yeah, we're going to move to London and they start telling a story.
	Oh, we've lived there for 10 years.
	You're going to get stabbed. You're going to go live with...
	I don't want to be racist, but they were saying we're going to live with the N-word people.
	And I said, I don't care. I'm going to go and we're going to make something of ourselves.
	That's why we came to this country.
	So we just called...
	We found a website, you know, where you can find a place to stay.
	We just called the first guy and he was really nice, really polite.
	So we just sent him the money.
	And then two weeks later, we were basically on a bus to London, but virtually no money.
	So we come into London and it was East London.
	I remember I just go into the property and one of the neighbors, he said, oh yeah, last night I just got stabbed and murdered next door.
	And I was like, oh, interesting.
	Tell me more. I just moved here and somebody just gets stabbed.
	And So I think next day, again, I just started calling for jobs.
	I was just searching online, just looking for anything, looking for anything.
	I found one really close by.
	The job was really bad, but I needed the money, and so I worked there for a couple of weeks.
	And then I found a really, really nice job for myself, and I got her a job as well.
	It's like a trillion dollar company, so...
	It was paying really well and we had virtually no experience.
	So we were really happy and the job was easy as can be.
	So we started working there and the moment I stepped foot in London, I just signed myself up to study.
	So I went to the YMCA and I wanted to properly study fitness and nutrition because I had a lot of experience.
	And I said, listen, you can make a lot of money without London, like a lot of money.
	So I was working five days a week, and then the weekends I was studying in central London, I remember.
	So that lasted six or seven months.
	And I graduated, I kid you not, maybe a week before the COVID lockdowns.
	So then everything got shut off.
	Everyone got fired. And on top of that, I contracted, so I got COVID, and I almost died.
	I'm a young and healthy guy, but it was really bad.
	Well, this was the alpha strain, right?
	I mean, the alpha strain was pretty nasty.
	Yeah, that's the one in March.
	So it was before the lockdowns even.
	And I remember I had it and I was just for a week straight, I was completely suffocating with pneumonia.
	I could barely breathe and I couldn't sleep for more than one hour a night.
	And I was taking sleeping pills, nothing worked.
	And I would spend the whole night just in the toilet and just like praying.
	Even though I wasn't religious, I was just praying that I don't suffocate and just...
	You couldn't get a single breath of air.
	It was the worst thing I've ever experienced.
	And one of the days, I remember, it was really bad.
	I couldn't breathe. I was completely panicking, so I called for an ambulance.
	And they had me on hold for like a full hour.
	And then somebody picked up the phone after one hour, and they said, we're going to have to transfer you.
	And I waited for another hour.
	So I'm two hours freaking out on the phone.
	And then they're asking me, Questions like, have you lost consciousness?
	And I say, no, I'm clearly speaking to you.
	And they say, is your face blue?
	Are your lips blue? And I said, no.
	And they told me, we're sorry.
	What we can advise you, drink some water, watch some telly.
	And if you lose consciousness, if you pass out, have somebody call us then.
	Yeah, I do remember that there was something about, like, if your lips aren't blue, like, wait, wait until you're almost dead, and then we'll look at it.
	Yeah, but I was thinking, okay, if I pass out, somebody's going to have to call me.
	My girlfriend has to go to work at the time.
	Who's going to call, first of all?
	And second of all, if I lose consciousness in the time that somebody picks up the phone in two hours, I'm going to be dead.
	Like, nothing's going to happen. But imagine if the government didn't provide healthcare.
	I mean, that would be terrible, right?
	I mean, that would be awful. Anyway, sorry, go on.
	But yeah, so everything crumbled then.
	I just had COVID and Even after I healed, so it took me two weeks to properly be able to breathe again, but I felt so weak.
	Even I would leave the house and I would walk maybe 20 steps and I would feel like collapsing and I just had to come back home.
	So it took me another two weeks at least to...
	Well, you know what probably saved your life though?
	What was it? The fact that you'd lost the weight.
	Oh, yeah. Because COVID was brutal on obese people.
	Yeah, actually that's really crazy because...
	At the time I had it, I had six pack abs.
	So from 150 kg to abs was really...
	I was in the peak condition of my time.
	So I would wake up five o'clock in the morning, go to the gym, come back, make food for work, go to work, come back, study.
	And then on the weekends, I would have to study all day, every day.
	I didn't have a day off maybe for six months or something, but...
	Yeah, I'm just pointing out that, you know, I mean, this is one of the reasons why it's important to stay in shape and it's important not to be overweight is, okay, well, everyone thinks, oh, but my knees might hurt in 20 years.
	It's like, yeah, or you might get a virus that flourishes on fat cells that could happen anytime, so...
	Okay, listen, because we've got to get to your relationship here, so I really find this stuff interesting, and I appreciate the sharing, but if you could touch on the highlights until you get to where you are with your girlfriend now, that would be great, because we've been like an hour and a half, and we're not even at the relationship yet.
	Okay, so I remember, okay, when I was sick with COVID, and I was freaking out, my girlfriend was telling me, oh, you're a big baby, you're exaggerating, this and that, and she was really annoyed at me.
	Like, she was really... Kind of like, how dare I be sick?
	Was this new behavior?
	Had you not seen this before? Yeah, it was pretty new, to be quite honest.
	I guess she's not good when people are sick.
	Because every time I've gotten sick, she's not really kind, and it makes her really uncomfortable when somebody's sick.
	But you picked her because she was broken in a lot of ways, right?
	Is that fair to say?
	I mean, if it's not fair, I don't want to be unfair.
	But this is the pattern.
	So the pattern is if you've had a really brutal and domineering mother, you pick a girl who's shy, who's meek, who's kind of broken, and you think that's going to give you some kind of security because, by gosh, she's nothing like your mom, right?
	And then it turns out That she kind of is, you know, that the meekness is kind of an act to draw you in, or maybe it's real, but then it changes.
	And so, yeah, this idea, well, my mom was really dominant and brutal and violent and dangerous and screaming, and so I'm just going to pick this meek thing, and I'm going to be in charge.
	And, you know, you're getting her jobs, you're taking her to different countries, you're protecting her from her father.
	At her grandfather or whatever it is, right?
	And so, not her grandfather, but you're protecting her and you're getting her jobs and you're in charge and she's just coming along and you think, well, great, you know, she's nothing like my mom, right?
	But the problem is that if you choose an asymmetric relationship, like if you're in charge and she's submissive, you're the strong one, she's the not strong one.
	Then you set up this relationship dynamic where she's going to get really tense, anxious, and upset if that changes.
	So when you get sick, you're not in charge, you're not leading her, you're not dominant, and then she flips to the dominant one, right?
	Oh my God, that's exactly what happened then.
	Well, not just what's happened, what keeps happening.
	But anyway, go on. And so I'm going to keep it brief, but...
	When the lockdown hit, we managed to stay for a couple of months in London because we had a lot of savings.
	I'm really good with saving my money, but we couldn't find jobs, nothing.
	And I was thinking, okay, it's getting really bad.
	It was the end of the world.
	So we just went back home to our country because there things were a little bit more relaxed.
	We even went to the seaside where you could go to actual gym.
	Things were open. And did you get vaccinated, or were you allowed to travel without the vaccine?
	No, we completely refused, actually.
	And even afterwards, when they implemented the...
	Everyone had to have a vaccine passport and stuff.
	We completely refused, both of us.
	And she also said, like, I'm not getting this shit into my body.
	Like, that's not happening. If it means I'm going to be stuck at home or under arrest, we don't care.
	We didn't get the vaccine. Both our families were just bitching nonstop.
	Yeah, you need to get it. This person died, that person.
	We said, no, listen. And I remember I watched at the time your content on the topic and I said, there's no way we're getting vaccines.
	So none of us did.
	And then later in the year, we were like, okay, the lockdowns were lifted.
	We're coming back to London, everything fine.
	so we come back again and we start calling for jobs and there was a startup
	pharmaceutical one he just called us. Keep in mind it was for the lowest position but
	they really liked me from the first day and they pulled us aside and they even
	said three days into the job they gave us both raises because they say we
	really want to keep you and they wanted to keep me because my girlfriend didn't
	do much. So... Sorry, what was that again?
	You wanted to keep you because why?
	They wanted to keep us because I was doing a really good job.
	So they gave both of us promotions, actually.
	They gave us raises three days into the job, actually.
	No, I get that. But I mean, I thought you said they didn't as much want to keep your girlfriend.
	I didn't quite follow that. Yeah.
	So, I mean, since we're working together at the same place, I think they saw us as a package deal.
	So if they fire her, let's say, or something, they're going to lose me as well.
	So I'm pretty sure that's what I kept because she had such an attitude of, I hate this place.
	Again, it was from the bottom of the company, right?
	It was a really low position, but I started getting promotion after promotion virtually every week.
	And at the time, like two months into it, I was properly mixing actual drugs and pharmaceuticals.
	So they were just training me, training me, training me, promoting me.
	I was running a lab at one point, but she couldn't last A month into it.
	So she asked, can I do just part-time two days a week?
	So they said, fine.
	Pretty sure they just didn't want to lose me.
	And then she worked for two days, two days a week for a couple of months, but she couldn't handle it.
	And I remember it was the beginning of a shift.
	We're supposed to begin work.
	And there was another co-worker.
	She just looked at her funny.
	Didn't even say anything. Just looked at her funny.
	And my girlfriend just broke into tears.
	And she just rage quit.
	She just Took her stuff left and I guess called them crying from the bus of the train and she said, I'm leaving this job, I'm quitting because somebody looked at her funny.
	So I'm not sure what happened then.
	And that was the beginning of 2021.
	So that happened, let's say, January 15th.
	And we just moved to a much nicer place because both of us were working.
	So we're thinking, okay, let's get something nice.
	We're living in central London at the time.
	And after that, she would She just stayed at home for the next four or five months, didn't work, didn't do anything, couldn't leave the house.
	And I remember I'm going to work 12-hour shifts, two hours travel by train, and I'll have to come back home and buy dinner, cook dinner, do the dishes, do the laundry, because she wouldn't do anything.
	She would just sit in bed for months and months at a time.
	Like your dad. Yeah.
	And she tried to get a couple of jobs.
	Like temp jobs, maybe at a bar or at a cafe or something, but she would last maybe a day or two and just call them and say, no, I'm not coming.
	Or she would have to leave for a shift and she would just start feeling really bad and she just calls them.
	One time even she was there, a few meters from the venue and she just didn't enter and she told them, I can't, like I'm not coming.
	And I remember the owner was trying to call her and say like, please, like you shift stars in five minutes, we need people.
	Okay, so again, she doesn't like to work and she's kind of hysterical.
	Did any part of you say, maybe this isn't the girl for me?
	I mean, she can't handle any job, even though you get her job.
	She kind of breaks down when someone looks at her funny.
	I mean, she's pretty fragile.
	She's kind of lazy. Or, you know, you could say traumatized or whatever you want to say, right?
	Was there any part of you that was like, yeah, maybe this is not such a fantastic fit?
	No. Actually, the dynamic was reversed.
	She was telling me that. I have changed.
	I'm not the same guy that he used to be.
	The problem is with me.
	She started reading stuff from Buddhism and Alan Watts.
	I don't know if you've ever read Alan Watts, but I really, really hate the guy.
	Yeah, everything I've heard is just trash.
	He's so slippery. Everything contradicts itself.
	He keeps saying, but that's the point.
	The point is there's no point.
	I don't know, this kind of melted her brain in a way.
	So, yeah, it was just like it was my fault, everything was my fault, and I was thinking, okay, shit, what do I do?
	How do I make it better? Maybe...
	And now that I'm saying it, I think that's my childhood pattern, that I was just the one blamed for everything, so I was trying to fix...
	Trying to fix stuff, and...
	One day I remember I come home and she's crying on the floor and she just smashed all her makeup and she smashed the mirror and she was trying to cut herself and stuff.
	So I just called her mom and I said, listen, I don't know what the fuck is happening, but...
	So she tried to kill herself?
	I'm not exactly sure, but yeah, she was...
	Kind of like play cutting her wrist, so she didn't put much pressure, but she completely lost it.
	She just smashed everything on the floor, like all the makeup.
	And she destroyed all her makeup, right? Yeah, like in front of her and she's sobbing on the floor.
	And do you know why she destroyed all her makeup?
	Maybe she was thinking that the reason I was with her was her looks.
	I would imagine that would be the case, that her looks were trapping her.
	Yeah. But she would even tell me, oh, you only care about sex, you're only with me because of sex.
	And I kept saying, listen, we weren't even having sex, maybe once a month at a time.
	We were just under so much stress.
	So I don't even get where you get that from.
	Sex is the last thing I'm getting from this relationship.
	And... So when I called her mom, they somehow agreed that she's gonna start studying at the time because she was freaking out, okay, I'm 20, 21.
	And she also didn't go to university, same as me.
	And so she signed up for a graphic designer course, right?
	And her mom and dad paid for it.
	It was a lot of money.
	And then a few weeks into her course, I actually had changed jobs to another startup.
	It was It was a really good one.
	And she told me, listen, let's go back to our country so I can do my course for the next nine months or whatever.
	It was a really quick course, like a very rapid one.
	But she said, I'm going to do it for nine months, so we don't have to worry about bills and all of that stuff.
	And then she said, we're going to come back.
	I'm going to get a nice job.
	I'm going to get a graphic design job.
	And I said, OK, I trust you.
	Let's do it. We pack all things and go back into our country again for about nine months.
	And then while she's doing her course, she's freaking out every single day.
	So every Monday she had to present her work.
	Like, what have you done the last week?
	And every time she would be like crying for days, couldn't do anything.
	And three hours before the deadline, she would just make something.
	And then all the tutors would say, like, you're the best, obviously.
	Like, your work is incredible.
	They even told her, like, people, your work, like, your projects for the course are better than people's actual portfolios and stuff.
	But every single time, she would just be freaking out.
	No, I can't do it. I want to quit.
	I want to quit. And about three, four months into the course, she just called in and she said, I can't do this anymore.
	If you require me to have weekly projects, I need to quit.
	So they just said, okay, listen, you can still do the course, but you just don't have to present anything.
	That's too much for you. So she did that.
	And then, I think in February last year, so 2022, she finally finishes this.
	And they say, okay, you have two months, you need to present a project, a portfolio, so we can graduate you, give you all the certifications.
	And at that time, she started telling me, oh, let's go back to London.
	I don't have any motivation here, I don't have inspiration.
	So we talked and talked and I said, okay, listen, if you're going to do it...
	Now, remember, we're close to two hours and I want to make sure we get to the relationship stuff.
	So if you want to tell me more stories about how your girlfriend can't handle pressure, you can, but it's going to cut into the productive time.
	We can talk about the relationship.
	Okay, okay. So we come back to the UK. I get the job to start another one immediately.
	And so last year from March, For the next five or six months, I was, again, paying everything, and she was supposed to be doing her stuff.
	But around September, last September, I just said, okay, listen, this is not working out.
	You need to start. You need to get a job because I'm working my ass off.
	I got a promotion, and still all of my money is just supporting both of us.
	This is not working. So I got her a job at my company again.
	Managed to get her stuff.
	And right about that time, she...
	Broke up with me like for real.
	She said, okay, this is completely done.
	I want nothing with you. But for financial reasons, we live together.
	So we're just going to keep living together.
	But we're not dating.
	You know, everybody's one is sleeping on the bed, the other on the couch.
	And, you know, start going to work and I'm doing my job.
	And it's we barely see each other for the next two months, probably, because that's how our shifts were.
	When I come back home, she would be sleeping and then she would leave in the morning.
	And that's how we spent most of the latter part of last year.
	But the whole time I was trying to kind of get her back.
	I was trying and she would always be there, oh, the reason is this is not, like, I don't like this about you.
	I don't see a future with you.
	I don't see this. I don't see that.
	You used to be more ambitious.
	You used to be more crazy. Now you're like a shell of a man.
	She said, I see you don't even want to wake up in the morning.
	You have... No will to get out of bed?
	And I said, yeah. And then something...
	We were supposed to go out on a date right late 2022 and we're going to a restaurant and she's just asking me, oh, do you think this means a guy likes you?
	And she's like grinning and blushing and I say, well, first of all, yes, but what's that about?
	And she said, well, there's this guy at my, you know, the new place at work.
	He's really cute, blah, blah, blah.
	And Because I've been listening to stories about the guy for like a month at least, and she was always, oh, he's just friendly, we just understand.
	And I said in the very beginning, I said, oh, do you have a thing with him?
	She was like, no, no, he's just friendly, blah, blah, blah.
	And then she drops it while we're on a date.
	She says like, yeah, he's really cute, blah, blah, blah, I like him.
	We've been flirting at work sometimes.
	Nothing else happened because he has a girlfriend, but they're just flirting, they're just having fun.
	And I really lost it, and she was telling me, oh, I wanted to have a nice time at the restaurant.
	Why are you getting upset?
	And I said, I'm here on a date with you, and you're just talking about some other guy asking me if that means he likes you.
	Like, what the fuck do you mean? And then later on, when we got home, when I was pissed, she was trying to calm me down and stuff.
	But I saw on her phone, like, she received messages from her friends because she was saying, oh, this guy is so cute.
	He wears a cute hat, blah, blah, blah.
	I was like, I lost it again.
	And a few days later, we're walking out and she was again possessed.
	I don't know how to say it.
	She's possessed, like, oh, I'm a strong, independent woman.
	I don't give a shit, blah, blah, blah.
	And I said to him, okay, is this guy serious?
	What happened? We're supposed to be on a date again.
	We're talking about this shit.
	And she says, no, no, I don't want him as my boyfriend.
	I just want him for sex.
	And I was like, oh, all right.
	Even though he had a girlfriend as well.
	So, nothing much happens with that.
	And later on, maybe a month later, so in November, one night I was at home and I come home and she's really sweet and she's...
	We talked for hours and hours and she was telling me, oh, I bet on you, I believe in you, let's be together, let's make up.
	And we're talking and talking and talking and we got back together after months of this shit.
	And then she's calling her family.
	She's calling her friends. Yeah, everything is good.
	Everyone is congratulating.
	So nice. And then that lasted maybe a couple of weeks.
	And then Christmas comes around and she's supposed to go to see her mom.
	And I was going to be all alone here in London.
	And then my mom calls and she says, like, no, listen, we got your plane ticket.
	My son is not spending Christmas alone in London while...
	Your girlfriend is here with her family.
	So I said, okay, I'm going to come as well.
	I'll just visit. We live in the same town.
	We can see each other. And I call my girlfriend and she's really rude.
	She says, oh, I was hoping to go there alone.
	And I got really upset.
	And I said, okay, so you want me to just stay here all alone?
	And I just hung up the phone.
	And later she calls me.
	She's like, oh, you're acting really disrespectful, really immature.
	You need to think about how you treat me.
	And I was like, what?
	I don't know what...
	Like, I call you and I'm not going to stay on Christmas alone.
	And the first thing you say is like, oh, I was hoping you wouldn't come.
	So I go there and I go to stay with my family for maybe a week.
	And the whole time there, the first few days, she basically ghosts me.
	She doesn't answer. She just reads the messages, doesn't respond.
	I try to call. She's cold and stuff.
	And one of the nights she calls me, like, oh, I hate my family, I hate this.
	And I kept repeating, every time you want to see your family, I tell you, those people, like, they're not your family, you're going to hate it.
	And she's like, no, I love them, I love them, blah, blah, blah.
	And then on the second day, she always calls me, oh, I hate them, I hate them, I want to leave, let's go, let's go.
	So this happens again on Christmas.
	So I go to her place.
	She's arguing with her mom or something.
	And I'm just there making sure everything is fine.
	And she got sick the next day.
	She got really sick.
	And when she gets sick, she gets really scared.
	So she really gets really nice.
	So I take care of her. So I took care of her and then we come back to London and I switch jobs.
	And then 2023 is when shit really hit the fan.
	So that's when things got really, really bad.
	The first time was in the beginning around Valentine's Day.
	We had a really big fight, really, really big fight.
	And I remember I just couldn't handle it.
	I just didn't want to live anymore.
	So one of the days we had a huge fight over the phone while I was at work and I just...
	I felt the same way as a kid.
	I said, okay, I would rather die than continue living like this.
	So after work, I'm just going to go and jump in front of the chair.
	I can't handle this.
	I would rather be dead at this moment.
	So I just tell her that and I just switch my phone off.
	So that's maybe a week before Valentine's.
	And apparently she got really upset and she went outside and was trying to search all of London just for me, like in the middle of the night.
	And then she calls me.
	I switch my phone off because I started getting regrets.
	Honestly, I felt... Psychotic at the time.
	I was getting visions, hallucinations.
	I was losing my fucking mind that night.
	And I just switched my phone on and she's calling me and she's nice and she's like, please just come back to me.
	If you don't come back by midnight, I'm gonna take some pills and I'm gonna die as well.
	And that shit. So I say, okay, I'm gonna come back home and she's really nice and polite and she got me some food and she made sure I was calm and stuff.
	But then the next day I found out that While that was happening, she was chatting with her mom.
	While that was happening, she was chatting with her mom and just saying, oh, I just told him that I'm going to kill myself.
	And like an idiot, he came back home.
	He trusted me. So kind of like she was faking, so I would just come back home.
	And I really lost it.
	I felt like that's how behind the scenes she was chatting to her mom.
	And then Her mom lost it and she said, okay, I'm going to send you a lot of money.
	Just leave this guy. Like, leave him.
	He's bad. He's toxic.
	He's ruining your life. You need to get as far away from him as you can.
	So she sends her a lot of money and then things...
	I didn't know about the money, but she pretends that everything is fine for the next week or two, I guess, until the money got transferred or something.
	And then she's going to visit her aunt and...
	I'm sending her off to the station, but she's really cold, and she said, I go hug and kiss, and she's like, I don't want to do that.
	And I'm thinking, wow, that's out of nowhere, okay.
	And the moment she gets on the train, she started messaging me, okay, I'm completely done, I want nothing to do with you, with different people, we have nothing in common, this and that, and I remember we were chatting for a while, but at one time I just, I couldn't do it, and I said, okay, I want the same, you can go.
	So you're at your aunt's house.
	When you come back, you can just pack your things in here.
	And then a day or two later, she starts messaging me because she's like, oh, I was washing my hair and then a lot of it fell out and my skin is really pale and stuff.
	I think I'm getting sick.
	I'm really freaking out. But I mostly ignored it.
	I was like, I can't be bothered.
	That's it. And then three days later, she's calling me while I'm at work and she's...
	She's really soft, and she's like, hey, how are you doing?
	I miss you. I want to see you, blah, blah, blah.
	And I say, okay, when you come back, we can just go for drinks or something.
	So I come back home, and she's really cold, so all that niceness is gone.
	She's really, she's like, oh, you're home.
	I say, wow, okay.
	We're going out. So we go out, and she's ranting how she hates her, and she hates this.
	Their lives suck. She doesn't want to have a life like that.
	And we don't make up.
	At that time, I was thinking, okay, no, I'm done.
	We're just friends until we give a notice, so we leave.
	And I even met another girl.
	So we arranged a date.
	She was a really nice girl.
	I mean, I don't know if I can tell, but she seemed really nice.
	And I'm supposed to go on a date with the other girl.
	And I remember the other girl had to cancel because she had a She was working in healthcare, so she had an emergency.
	And I said, okay, that's fine.
	We can just postpone it for another day.
	And I was at the gym. And when my girlfriend is thinking I'm supposed to be on a date, she calls me late at night and all crying and a ton of missed calls.
	And she's like, please come back home.
	I need to speak to you.
	And I come back home and she's, again, really sweet and really polite.
	She wrote me a love letter.
	She was saying, I bet on you, I trust you, I can see you've really changed, all of this, all of that.
	And as a fool, I buy it.
	So, then, that was two months ago, she goes to visit her mom again for two weeks.
	And when she comes back, that's a month from now, a month ago, she comes back, everything's really good for two weeks, it's the perfect relationship.
	So, the way it is with her, when things are good, it's the sweetest sweet.
	Like, it's the happiest I've ever felt, but It never lasts.
	It keeps switching from complete hell to complete heaven.
	And then two weeks ago, she started again talking.
	She was saying, yeah, I'm not happy.
	I want to leave. I can't do it.
	Because keep in mind, she still to this day hasn't done that portfolio.
	So it's almost two years now.
	She still hasn't done a single project.
	She still can't get a job.
	So she's working these random temp jobs while I pay most of the stuff.
	And she was saying, no, I need to go.
	This is too much pressure. I just can't handle a job.
	I can't handle this. I can't handle that.
	And I remember she was out and I was at home and I really got really angry.
	So I just took all of her stuff and put it outside of the house.
	And I said, okay, just take it.
	Call your dad. He's going to pick you up in two hours and just go.
	I don't want to see you again. And then she comes back home and she's crying and she's apologizing and she's all nice and all that.
	And she's like, we can do everything.
	We can... Again, love letters, love messages, all of this shit.
	And then it was last Sunday.
	I'm getting ready for work.
	And she comes to me while I'm having my coffee and just doing something on my laptop in the kitchen.
	And she's like, yeah, I want to leave.
	I want that. I can't live here anymore.
	And I tell her, okay, you're 24.
	You're going to be 25 next year.
	So you're going to go back home.
	What's the plan? If you're going to go to university, you're going to be a 25-year-old with a bunch of 18-year-olds.
	What's your plan? And she got completely enraged and threw something in my face.
	I don't remember what it was.
	There was something on the table.
	She threw it in my face. Luckily, I have glasses.
	And I was drinking lemonade, so I just splished it in her face because my fight or flight was really bad.
	And I was like, how dare you throw something at me?
	And then it moves into a Huge-ass fight with yelling and stuff.
	I broke a mirror.
	And then I stepped on some glass and I was bleeding and she's calling her dad to basically...
	I'm not sure why she got, I guess, afraid of me.
	And then her dad is on the phone and he's really annoyed that he was telling me, oh, you're a good guy.
	You take good care of her.
	Figure it out. You can't figure it out.
	But I really couldn't do it.
	So I say, okay, you need to leave immediately.
	Like, this is done. This is over.
	I need you out of the house.
	I don't trust you here.
	You're going to... I don't want you in my house anymore.
	And she's like, no, I'm not leaving.
	So I pick her up and I just take her outside.
	And I say, are you going to put some shoes on?
	Or do you want me to look?
	And I'll come back after I do one.
	After I finish work. And she's like, I'm not going, I'm not going, I'm not going.
	So I just take her out as she's barefoot.
	Keep in mind, it's not on the street.
	It's like in a building. So she's in the corridor.
	And I leave for work, but she just starts crying and I come back and she's a mess and she's hugging me and Asking me to please let her in and then I come back late at night from work and she's again completely flipped, so no emotion, nothing.
	It's the freaking Terminator.
	I'm not even a human to her in that point.
	She's on the phone with her mom and she's basically going to go live with her dad or live with her mom or something.
	She's leaving. And I'm like, okay, pack your things, leave.
	And then late at night, she comes back home and she's like, can I sleep on the bed next to you?
	Is that fine with you? And I'm like, okay, that's fine.
	And the following, so that's last Monday.
	I'm going to work and she starts messaging me again.
	I want you to know this is fine now, blah, blah, blah.
	I'm not playing. And I say, yeah, that's what I want.
	Thank you so much. And I leave it.
	And then... Throughout the day, she's just sending me random messages.
	She's like, oh, I stepped on glass as well.
	Oh, do you want me to get you this?
	I'm outside. And I come back home that night and she greets me.
	She jumps on me on the door.
	She's really happy and smiling and just gives me another love letter.
	And she's like, yeah, we can do this.
	But I tell her, listen, you need to leave.
	So go leave with your dad.
	We're going to have some time alone.
	We need to figure this shit out.
	And then I take her to the station and...
	We grabbed some food, and she's really happy.
	She's messaging me, thank you so much for this and that.
	I was like, okay, yeah, go there.
	Have some time for yourself.
	Figure your shit out. Do your portfolio, whatever.
	And whenever you're ready to be an adult, you can come back.
	And two or three days later, she calls me.
	She's really sad. She's, oh, I hate it here.
	And... I can barely hear her on the phone.
	She's like, yeah, I miss you.
	Okay, I'm sorry to interrupt.
	Why are you telling me all this level of detail?
	That I need to understand. Oh.
	Like, okay, are you trying to tell me that she's unstable?
	Like, help me understand why you're telling me this level of detail.
	This happened, and this day, then I had this call, then I stepped on glass, then she wrote me another love letter, then she was cold to me.
	Listen, I don't mean to sound unsympathetic.
	I'm very sympathetic. But I'm trying to figure out why you're telling me this level of detail.
	What are you trying to get across?
	I'm not accusing you of anything negative, of course, right?
	I'm just genuinely curious, like, what is it that you're trying to get me to understand?
	I mean, you wrote me the email.
	I understand she's completely unstable, right?
	Like, you said that in the email.
	So I'm not sure why we do in a half hour on why she's really unstable when that was right there in the email you sent me to begin with.
	And I want to provide you what you're looking for, but I don't know what you're looking for.
	Are you looking for me to say, she's really unstable?
	Well, of course she is. Yes, she's really unstable.
	She's untrustworthy.
	She's highly manipulative.
	There's money involved, so she's nice when she wants money.
	I get all of that.
	So I'm trying to figure out, like you said in the email, She runs hot and cold.
	She loves me. She hates me. She's indifferent.
	And so I get that.
	And we have a sort of short amount of precious time together.
	And I'm not sure why you're telling me all the things that you already told me.
	I'm trying to sort of... And again, I don't mean this in any negative way.
	I'm genuinely curious.
	Because to me, I don't know.
	All of these things seem normal, to be honest.
	I'm not sure if the people listening...
	Wait, sorry. You just said all of these things seem normal?
	Yeah, they don't seem that bad from my point of view.
	No, no, no, no.
	That's not true. Because you sent me the email in a desperate situation, right?
	That's why I've moved you up by the queue of people to call to, right?
	Because you said, I'm thinking of having a kid with this crazy woman, right?
	Because we've been talking a lot about it the last month, maybe, or the last two months.
	This is not okay. Come on.
	You've listened to the show long enough.
	You can't tell me that you think this is normal.
	I don't know, Steph, but there's something in me that if she starts calling me, crying me, there's a button inside of me that just wants to make everything all right.
	No, I understand.
	I get the white knight. I understand that.
	And I respect the white knight.
	It's why we're here.
	I get all of that.
	But when you're telling...
	See, hang on. See, my concern is that when you keep telling me how unstable she is over and over and over again, it becomes kind of hypnotic.
	In other words, you're telling me not feeling it yourself.
	Do you feel how incredibly unstable this woman is?
	Do you get that?
	Have you processed that?
	Because it's almost like hypnotic.
	Like you're taking me on some bizarre roller coaster that has my brain fall out, if that makes any sense.
	Are you trying to convince me or you or what?
	Are you saying I'm a victim?
	Like I have to deal with this crazy woman?
	I'm trying to figure out – because I said let's keep moving and don't do too much detail.
	And I know that was to some degree about the career, but I'm trying to figure out what the purpose of – Like, you know, you don't sell past the sale, right?
	So in your email, I fully accepted that your girlfriend was unstable, right?
	I fully accepted that.
	I haven't disagreed with any of that.
	I haven't pushed back on any of that.
	So then spending 20 minutes telling me in great detail how unstable she is, why?
	What's the purpose? Is it to avoid some sort of conclusion?
	Because I feel almost like you're hypnotizing me and running out the clock so we don't come to a conclusion.
	Yeah. You know, they call it...
	What's the term?
	They use it in politics when you're just running out the clock with a speech.
	But yeah, it feels almost something like that because I'm trying to get to the relationship, which is the major issue, and we've spent like well over an hour on things that aren't directly related to the decision that you need to make about your relationship.
	Well... So the reason I emailed you at the time is I feel like this is the best I'm going to get to completely separate because she's far away and today I've been just packing all her things so I can ship it.
	I gave my notice so I can just leave.
	And I was kind of hoping that you're going to give me kind of a kick in the balls.
	Okay, but the issue is not whether or how you get out of the relationship.
	That's not the issue. That decision is pretty easy.
	The real issue is Why have you been doing this for six plus years?
	I don't know, to be honest. Okay, but that's what we have to get to.
	It's the why are you in this, not how do you get out.
	Because if you get out and you don't know why you're in it, what's going to happen?
	There's going to be some other girl who comes along, who cries, who's upset, who's under-functioning, who's smart but incompetent and kind of lazy and you're just going to fall for her.
	Exactly, yeah. I think that's why I'm calling you.
	Right. So you're calling me for patterns, but all you're talking about is details.
	Do you see what I mean? Oh, so I'm fogging you in a way.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's dissociating, it's fogging, and it's kind of running out the clock.
	Filibustering, that's the word I was trying to think of.
	Filibustering, right? You just make a speech to kill time, right?
	Because every detail you give me is one step away from the patterns you need in your life.
	Like you need to understand patterns in your life and you're just giving me an avalanche of details, right?
	Yeah. And that's what I wanted to interrupt because I don't find myself getting too annoyed with people, but I found myself kind of annoyed like, why is he telling me all these details?
	Because it's just avoiding the patterns, right?
	Yeah. And another reason I wanted to talk to you is in the last couple of years, so let's say looks-wise, I've improved a lot and I have a lot of women just chatting me up and asking me on dates and Jesus, the last two weeks I've had at least five or six women just asking me out, but I'm terrified because I'm thinking, okay, I don't trust myself to pick a woman, so...
	No, I get that. I get that.
	Okay, so you wanted to talk to me, and what is the greatest value you were hoping to get out of me?
	If you can tell me why I have this pattern...
	Okay, so then my question is...
	Hang on.
	So my question is then if you know that that's the greatest value that you can get out of
	me again running down the clock and filibustering on endless details that don't change any of
	the patterns like if... do you know what I mean?
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Honestly, I don't know.
	Thank you.
	I can't explain what's happening.
	No, that's fine. I'm not sure I can either.
	I just know that it's not what needs to be happening.
	That's all I'm saying.
	It's just not what needs to be happening.
	It seems like some defense mechanisms kicked in so we wouldn't get to the actual point.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, it's your parents or your girlfriend or someone is just running the clock so that we can get distracted by details so that you don't get any pattern recognition, right?
	Because I even feel bad for her now.
	So she's Even after we broke up today and yesterday, she's messaging me how it's really bad where she's this and that.
	Okay, so I get all of that.
	More details, right? So understand that the love letter is a part of the abuse.
	Right? Threatening to end the relationship, bringing up other guys.
	This is all horrible and toxic and kind of abusive, right?
	Yeah. Look, I'm sure you're not a saint in this either or so, but I'm talking to you, not her.
	So you understand that every drug that destroys you has a high and a low.
	And every relationship that destroys you has a high and a low.
	Now, if she doesn't provide the highs, she can't hit you with the lows.
	Now, this is different from your parents because your parents didn't have to provide you any highs, right?
	Your dad didn't have to watch you play tennis.
	Your mom didn't have to understand the skills that you were bringing to bear in school.
	So your parents didn't have to give you a high because they just owned you, right?
	But if you're in a voluntary relationship like you are with your girlfriend, she has to give you the highs, right?
	In order to get you to the lows.
	So she has to apologize.
	I'm so sorry. Let's have great makeup sex.
	I wrote you a love letter. She has to do that to draw you close so that she can, like, okay, you know what a Venus flytrap is, right?
	Yeah. And you know how it works?
	I think it spreads pheromones?
	No, it's just kind of a sweet, sticky substance, like sugar, that attracts the flies, right?
	So it hands out something good, and that draws the flies, and that's what gets the flies eaten.
	So the fact that she's...
	Is it your confusion?
	Like, why is she so nice, and then why is she so cold?
	Is that your confusion? Yeah, I was always thinking maybe she has bipolar, maybe this is not conscious, maybe...
	Again, I don't care about diagnoses and I don't care about trying to read her mind, but I absolutely can tell you that abusive relationships are not all negative.
	That's why they're so abusive.
	If they were all negative, people would just leave.
	Yeah, exactly. If everyone who started drinking immediately got a hangover, there'd be no alcoholism.
	The reason people drink is they get a high out of it, and the low is later.
	And you know it's dysfunctional because you get a high and then a low, as opposed to something more even, which is sort of what virtue and integrity is supposed to give you, is sort of more of an even positive experience rather than these ups and downs.
	So every relationship that is abusive that's not your parents, right?
	There's always a high.
	There's always a high.
	And if you ever want to see one of the great depictions of this is in, it's an old play by now, I guess, A Streetcar Named Desire, where Stanley Kowalski, who's married to this woman, is abusive.
	He's a drunk. He's like an ape.
	He hits her. And then he comes back and he's really desperate for her and they have great makeup, sex, and so there's a real high.
	And then she's just really thrilled about the sex and she has a great time and the next day she's all relaxed and happy because the sex was so great.
	So in every relationship that is abusive, there's a high and a low.
	So the fact that your girlfriend is nice and then cold, you see, if she wants to have power over you, But she can't have power over you if she's just negative and cold.
	Because you won't say that, which is why also she knows she has power over you when she cries.
	And resisting female tears is one of the great surfing mechanisms required for modern manhood.
	I'm sorry, I keep interrupting. Go ahead.
	No, something literally just clicked by...
	Since career-wise, I'm better.
	Even looks-wise, I think I'm the more attractive of the two.
	So whenever she feels like I might leave, she flips the abandonment, like she presses the button for abandonment.
	So I keep freaking out.
	And before I can grieve properly, just leave the relationship.
	In the next two or three days, she immediately turns nice and sweet.
	So it's a cycle, kind of like addiction, you know, when you play gambling machines.
	It's just like completely random, so you get completely addicted.
	I get that for sure.
	So for me, one of the definitions of abuse in a relationship is when you provide a pretend benefit that's actually at the other partner's expense.
	So a pretend benefit is I'm not going to leave, like you threaten with leaving unless the other person complies.
	Well, that's a pretend benefit at the other person's expense because you're forcing a compliance from that person under threat of abandonment.
	So that's a fake thing.
	I'm sad.
	I'm crying.
	And if you do what I want, I'll feel happier again.
	That's manipulating based upon your empathy and, of course, your historical – I mean, she knows about your childhood, obviously, so she knows that you had a brutal and manipulative mother and that you have been programmed to comply with female manipulation, like you've been programmed.
	And she's like – she's just picking up those fucking reins.
	She's picking up those fucking reins and saying, oh, yeah, well, his mother broke him in.
	I can ride this. Now, I have sympathy for her childhood.
	I really do. But she's very intelligent.
	You were telling me how she got the 3D modeling software and the 3D printing stuff in a day or two.
	She's very smart. Oh, yeah.
	And she knows that you are programmed to comply with female manipulation.
	And she's just hammering those fucking buttons.
	I always thought I was a victim.
	I never thought it was...
	You saw her as a victim of who?
	She's just so frail and fragile and...
	Yes, but a woman's weakness is her strength.
	A woman's weakness is her strength and your strength is your weakness because you're like, well, I'll save her and I'll get her a job and I'll make things all right and I'll pay the bills and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
	You're like her father, not her lover.
	You're running her life.
	You're telling her where you're going to move, where she's going to work, what she should do.
	Jesus Christ. Because maybe you feel that that makes you safer because she's not powerful like your mom, but you're giving her...
	I mean, okay, let me ask you this, right?
	I mean, you've been the one working, right?
	You've been the one making money for the most part.
	How much money have you spent on this relationship over the past six or seven years?
	I mean, just in the past three years, it was tens of thousands of pounds.
	Easy. Alright, so you're a smart guy.
	You're good at math. Give me a rough estimate.
	$20,000, $30,000, $40,000.
	How much have you spent on this relationship?
	And that's not even counting the lost wages that if you hadn't been in this relationship, how much more work you could have gotten done.
	But just directly, how much money have you transferred to her benefit over the course of this relationship?
	This also includes the extra room that you need because there's two of you, not one of you living in a place.
	And how much roughly have you spent?
	Maybe 35k, easy.
	Sorry, 35k, did you say?
	Yeah, I would say that. Okay, so 35k, alright.
	Just the last two or three years.
	No, no, no, over the course of your relationship.
	But then it's over 40k, it has to be.
	Well, you only spent 5k over the first four years of your relationship.
	Because we didn't live together, so she was living with her mom in the first two or three years.
	And then afterwards, her Yeah.
	Yeah.
	right? Yeah. Okay. Why? Why are you paying for a girlfriend?
	Paying for a wife, paying for the mother of your children because she's home
	working hard to run your household, to raise your children.
	Yes, pay the bills, absolutely, because you're both working hard, right?
	You're paying the bills and she's raising your children, your combined children, right?
	So I get all of that. Why have you dropped £40,000?
	This is a pretty big sum of money, right?
	Why have you dropped £40,000?
	On a girlfriend. I mean, she's not running your household.
	She's not raising your children.
	She's not even that nice on a consistent basis.
	In fact, she can be quite nasty.
	Why? Do you feel like just men pay for women without, what, expecting anything in return?
	Like, without expecting them to work or contribute or be productive or...
	Like, what?
	I was almost...
	Seeing it, I'm just helping.
	I just want to be a nice person.
	I want to be kind.
	I want to help. Okay, so why just helping someone?
	Like, I want to help you.
	Am I going to send you a big-ass bill?
	No. I mean, if you want to help a friend move, do you then bill him or expect him to bill you?
	Helping is fine, but helping is...
	So help me understand, what are you buying for £40,000?
	What are you buying? Would she be with you if you didn't spend £40,000 on her?
	I think that's where she left, because I said you need to work again, so I think that's why she just left.
	So, definitely no.
	I mean, she's 25 years old, right?
	24. She's 24 years old, and she's never sustained a job in her entire life.
	Is that right? I would say no more than two months, maybe.
	Okay, two months is not a job.
	Two months is a rip-off to the employer.
	I mean, if you ever become a hiring manager, to interview people, to hire them, to set up the paperwork, to get their file going in HR, to set up the taxes, to set up the payroll, and then they quit after a month or two?
	I mean, she's costing businesses money.
	So she's never had a job.
	And why hasn't she had a job?
	Why is it that she's not had to have a job?
	She's even spoken about it.
	So, her grandma, her mom, her aunt, all of them don't have proper jobs.
	They were just supported by her grandfather.
	Well, but they raised children, right?
	I mean, badly, I guess, right?
	But they're working at raising kids, right?
	They were. And until actually three months ago, she kept repeating she never wants to have kids.
	Okay, again, don't detail me into distraction.
	Okay, so why has she not had to have a job?
	Because she can just cry and I'm going to give her money.
	No, it's not because she cries.
	I mean, I'm sure there's people around you who've cried, you haven't given them £40,000.
	Why does she get £40,000?
	What specifically does she do to get £40,000?
	Don't make me say it, brother!
	Because we have sex.
	Yeah, because she sleeps with you.
	But it's not even that often, to be honest.
	No, I don't care how often it is.
	That's the differentiator. That's why you give her money, right?
	Oh my god, is that why she keeps saying you only want me for sex?
	Because she knows she doesn't offer anything else.
	You know, she's telling the truth, isn't she?
	Yeah, she is. Because if she was just a friend, like if she was, let's say, that she was...
	She was Bob.
	Yeah. Well, you know, if she was unattractive or let's say that for some reason she couldn't date you, let's say maybe she was gay or maybe she was married or maybe she was in a relationship already with someone that was solid, would you be hanging around?
	Like if there was no possibility of sexual access, would you be hanging around for years giving her tens of thousands of pounds?
	Nope. Nope!
	No, you wouldn't. Fuck no.
	Right. Well, it's actually because of fuck, it's yes, but okay.
	I get where you're coming from.
	Probably some weird angle.
	So that's the differentiator.
	Now, listen, I understand your desire to show your fitness as a provider.
	Like men are designed to, you know, yeah, we pay for the first date or the first whatever, and we show our fitness and show our capacity to give women money.
	But that's in return for...
	Running her household and raising her kids.
	But she's not doing any of that.
	No, I mean what does she do?
	Um We have I don't know long talks for five six hours every
	night and stuff and that's a big part of a relationship We don't even go out much because it's just not Not much fun anymore, to be honest.
	So we just talk for hours and hours and hours.
	And what do you talk about?
	I don't about her issues. So she I'm kind of like a therapist in a way or just calming
	Okay, so you're trying to provide a service or a value there, along with the 40,000 pounds.
	And the other half of the stuff is just what's wrong with me and what I need to do to fix myself.
	So she's telling me, this is wrong with you.
	I have all the answers. If you just listen to me, I'm going to save you.
	Okay, so the hours is you trying to help her and her putting you down.
	Yeah. Do I have that about right?
	Yeah. Dude, come on.
	Hang on, what are you doing here?
	You're a 6'2 guy with a six-pack who makes good money, is very smart, good prospects.
	What the fuck are you doing?
	Like, what are you doing in this mess, this quicksand, this quagmire, this go-nowhere, expensive, no-future, manipulative hellhole?
	Like, what are you doing? You say to your girlfriend, but you don't have a plan.
	You moved back home. What's your plan, brother?
	What's your plan here? Just keep doing this shit until you, what?
	Jump off the bridge for real?
	Like, what's the plan here? That's why I called you.
	Right, okay, so what is your theory about what you're doing?
	Oh, I'm trying to help her!
	No, you're not. Because you helping her for six years has put her into this position.
	It's like you've never read The Fountainhead, right?
	So you trying to live her life for her and you getting her jobs and you giving her money, you understand that's made her weaker.
	You've weakened her by not having any requirements.
	Because you know who we don't have requirements for?
	Babies. Babies.
	Toddlers. So you're stepping in and you're paying her bills and you're getting her jobs and you're trying to prop her up and I assume that you're paying for therapy for her and all this kind of stuff.
	So you're just stepping in and throwing all these resources at her, right?
	Has that helped her? Is she stronger now or weaker than when you first met her?
	No, when she was aging she was much stronger than now.
	So you're harming her.
	I mean, you can't think that you're helping her when she's worse off now than when you met her.
	You're harming her.
	She hates it.
	She's mad at you because you're crippling her by giving her money and doing things for her.
	I mean, I dated a woman who was studying to be an engineer.
	And she had terrible...
	Exam anxiety. She was like the opposite of you.
	You're like fantastic at exams.
	And it sounds like your girlfriend is not particularly good with assignments.
	And yeah, she was an engineer.
	She had terrible exam anxiety.
	And she always said, like, I should do better on these exams.
	I just get so anxious, right?
	And I said, well, you know, building a real bridge is a lot more stressful than taking an exam about building a bridge.
	So maybe engineering is not for you.
	And it was like, what?
	She just couldn't process it.
	And it's like, well, if you can't do the test, you can't do the real thing.
	That's sort of what tests are designed to do, right?
	They're designed to test your capacity to do the real thing.
	Like somebody who, like a nurse who can't successfully inject something into an orange doesn't get near my arm, right?
	Yeah. So, you are in this life where you are keeping her in a state of dependence and infancy, in my view.
	She should be out there in the world getting stronger through resistance.
	I mean, you're a weight trainer.
	If somebody says, I want bigger biceps, what do you say?
	Grab the weight. Yeah!
	How does your muscle grow?
	Through resistance, right?
	And yet you're keeping her in this semi-comatose state of inactivity and expecting her to get stronger?
	No, she's just going to get weaker and more manipulative.
	That's why she's gotten more manipulative.
	holy shit. Because you've kept her from the robust requirement to earn her own
	bread and again earning her own bread could be running a great household, it
	could be raising kids, it could be like if she was like, if she was like you know
	what, there's a lot of homeless people in our neighborhood I'm gonna
	really gonna set up a plan to try and deal with that problem. I'm gonna do some
	charity work, I'm gonna volunteer at the soup kitchen, I'm gonna go down to the
	local animal shelter and like anything even then that's something but she's not
	living for anything other than controlling you because that's that's
	Her job is to get resources out of you.
	That's her job. And that's what you're paying her for.
	And what? What she subsidizes, you get more of, right?
	Yeah. And if she succeeds, then you stop paying her bills, right?
	Which is like asking someone on a welfare to go and get a job Where they make less money than they do on welfare.
	Like, you don't have a girlfriend.
	You've got a charity case.
	In my view, you're handling the charity very badly because you've set it up that if she gets a job, she loses money.
	So, the pharmaceutical company, she's working on the line.
	Somebody looks at her funny, right?
	Yep.
	Why did she quit?
	What do you mean?
	Why did she quit?
	...
	She didn't have to.
	She chose to quit. Why did she choose to quit?
	Why was she able to quit?
	Because I was there? Because you'll pay the bills!
	If she had that job, and she had to make rent, and she didn't have some guy to get resources from, would she have quit?
	I mean, she wouldn't end up homeless, would she?
	Because someone looked at her funny?
	I mean, she keeps saying that she would rather be homeless and sleep on the street than have a job that she doesn't like, so...
	Well, Her Majesty is...
	But do you know why she's saying that?
	Because she knows it's not going to happen.
	Well, first of all, she is threatening you, and she's saying, this is how far I'm willing to go.
	Like, I will move out, and I will go and live on the street if you don't give me some fucking money.
	Also, then she's going to be in danger, so...
	Yeah, yeah, so you're going to white knight all that shit.
	And the other thing, too, she's a fairly attractive young woman, right?
	Yeah. So when you're out and about, and you see homeless people...
	Do you often see young, attractive women who aren't, like, completely drugged out, right?
	Do you often see young, attractive women on panhandling and homeless?
	I've never seen a single woman.
	Of course you haven't. Of course you haven't.
	Not even fat ones, none of them.
	Yeah, and you know why that is, right?
	Yeah, because somebody's gonna pay the bills.
	Yeah, because she can always land on her back, right?
	I don't mean to be coarse, but it's a frank fact of nature, right?
	Yeah, I know what you mean.
	Okay, so you have trapped her by your generosity, and in my view, deep down within you, you're angry at her.
	And so, because you're angry at her and your mom, you're sabotaging her with generosity.
	It's not generosity.
	Because if you want to do something good, right?
	Let me give you a stupid example from the world of tennis, right?
	Because we both play tennis, although I'm sure you're better than me, right?
	So, if you said, you know what?
	I'm going to think outside the box.
	Instead of holding the handle...
	And swinging the head of the racket, like the stringy end.
	I'm going to hold the stringy end, and I'm going to hit the ball with the handle.
	I mean, there's nothing illegal about that in tennis.
	Now, that would be really interesting.
	Now, you would try that, and what would happen?
	Is that going to work? Well, you'd lose.
	Yeah. I mean, you'd lose every single time.
	So you would try something, and then...
	You would find out that it doesn't work, and you'd stop doing it, right?
	You're like, well, that was kind of stupid, so I'll go back to holding the handle, right?
	Now, you have been trying to help your girlfriend for six or seven years, right?
	Now, if you really were concerned with helping her, you would have what's called a feedback loop.
	I don't know if you know. I'm sure you know what a feedback loop is, right?
	A feedback loop is, does it work?
	And if not, then you adjust it, right?
	So, you would have a feedback loop to say, well, I really want to help my girlfriend.
	Am I helping her? Now, because you keep doing stuff that is harmful to your girlfriend, and you never ask yourself whether you're actually helping her or not, then you don't actually want to help her.
	Then the question is, what are you doing if you don't actually want to help her?
	Like if you were a personal trainer, right?
	And you put some Asian guy on heavy milk supplements and then he had horrible stomach pains, would you say, yeah, just push through it, man.
	Just keep going.
	You'd say, no, you're probably lactose intolerant like most Asian people are.
	So let's maybe get a test or whatever, but let's definitely switch you off those lactose supplements, right?
	Yeah. So you would do that if you tried some exercise to make your triceps bigger, but instead your left calf got bigger, right?
	You're like, I had to step up and down on my left calf to improve my triceps, and it didn't work.
	You would change, right? Yeah.
	Right. So the question is, what are you doing?
	Because it's not about helping your girlfriend, because if it was, you would have changed what you were doing years ago.
	What are you doing with your girlfriend?
	It's not to do with helping her. That's the big question because that's how she's got you
	That's how she's controlling you is you're getting a benefit from her. What are you getting for your 40,000
	pounds?
	And you say well, it's not sex much right?
	You've got girls asked lining up to ask you out so you could get sex elsewhere and more than once a bloody month
	Which is inconceivable, but all right So it's not sex right now
	What are you getting from her That's worth staying and it's got to be something and it's
	not about helping her because she's not being helped And it's not about sex now, right?
	It was maybe in the past, but it's not.
	What are you getting? I think I've watched enough shows and something is clicking, but I feel like I have repressed anger towards my mom, and I think I'm just taking it out of my girlfriend.
	I could never punish my mom, but I think I'm just...
	You know how you said...
	When I was little, they were basically externalizing their own self-hatred into me by punishing me, and I think I'm doing the same to her.
	Why can't you hang on? Why can't you punish your mum?
	Because now she's really nice and she's really...
	Pleasant and supportive and all of that and every time I try to...
	Wait, wait, hang on. I don't...
	I'm sorry if I missed this.
	I don't remember you telling me that your mom had gone all super nice on you.
	Oh yeah, the past few years and she's even enabling my brother who's...
	Dude. Dude, my brother in spirit.
	Oh my god.
	Wait, so your mom runs hot and cold too?
	Your mom can flip a switch and be nice too?
	Bye.
	Bye.
	Well, that can't be related to you being susceptible to your up-and-down girlfriend, now could it?
	Oh, let's just drop that.
	That's crazy. So your mom manipulates you with niceness, too?
	Yeah. She does it to my brother.
	He's even worse than me.
	Yeah, I'm not talking to him.
	I'm talking to you. So let's not distract.
	Don't wave that shiny object over there.
	All right. So why can't you punish your mother?
	And again, I don't mean, you know, be violent or anything like that.
	But, you know, if she is an unapologetic child abuser...
	And you understand the niceness is part of the abuse.
	People think, well, she's mean and that's abusive, but then she's nice, so that's nice.
	It's like, no, no, no, no. The nice is part of the abusive.
	Because the nice is in order to keep you around for the nasty.
	Now, your mother can afford to be nice to you because she's offloaded the abuse to your girlfriend.
	Because if your mother's not saying you've got to get out, then she's offloaded the abuse to your girlfriend, if that makes sense.
	She's now keeping you in the orbit of a dysfunctional and frankly very dangerous woman.
	She's very dangerous, your girlfriend, at the moment, which we'll get to in a sec.
	But if your mother is not trying to rescue you from this, you know, like if someone wants to be really cruel to his child...
	Like, really angry at his child, but doesn't want to, you know, hit his child, then he will say to his child, oh, yeah, you can wander in the woods, it'll be fine, and, you know, the leaves with the three-pointers are, you know, if you touch them, you get a little high, right?
	It's fun, right? And these are like the poison ivy and so on, right?
	Right, or he'll say, oh, no, those mosquitoes, they're not doing you any harm, and then the kid gets really itchy and it's very...
	Right, so he'll let the environment do the damage.
	That he wants to do. I mean, if you were to leave your girlfriend and say to your mother, like, why didn't you warn me?
	My God, this woman is really unstable.
	Well, of course we know why she didn't warn you, because she's an unapologetic child abuser.
	She even says, so I've told her even in more details than you, but she said, oh yeah, me and your dad, we never...
	We never liked her, but we just didn't want to interfere.
	It's your life. Right.
	Didn't want to interfere. That's right.
	That's right. That's right.
	Of course, she was perfectly happy to interfere when you were little by beating the soul out of your body half, right?
	So, yeah. So, I mean, in terms of, like, if your mother is not a positive, productive, and healthy influence in your life, you can see her, you cannot see her.
	I'm sure she would experience you not seeing her as a form of punishment.
	So, I was just kind of curious, like, if you're mad at your mom, and you keep your mom in your life, what happens to that anger?
	Maybe it hits your girlfriend in some subtle way.
	Maybe your mom is being, quote, supportive of your relationship with your girlfriend, and And that puts you in massive danger in the same way that you're, quote, supportive of your girlfriend's laziness and manipulations, which puts you both in danger.
	Like, maybe nobody here is being very nice and nobody wants to admit it.
	Because what you do is you withhold consequences from your girlfriend, right?
	Yeah. And she has learned not to be good at what she does, but to manipulate, right?
	So she's like, well, I can't do an assignment every week or two.
	They're like, okay, that's fine, right?
	So she cries, and I'm sure it's some dude in the administration.
	Yeah, so everyone is just manipulating her to have no consequences for her life.
	No consequences. Oh, if you're upset, we'll fix it.
	I mean, this is literally taking down our entire civilization, so sorry if I sound a little overpassionate about it.
	But, yeah, you're removing from her consequences, which all it does is teach people to be manipulative.
	Right, she can quit her job and you'll pay the bills.
	She can be freaked out about the assignments, and rather than figuring out how to grow and mature and do it, She goes and cries, and they're like, okay, you don't have to do this.
	You know what I mean? It's not healthy, and it's not positive, and it's not productive.
	And, I mean, look, she's half out the door anyway, right?
	You're aware of that, right?
	I mean, she's keeping you around, but I guarantee you she's got at least one other dude she's going to jump ship to.
	No, she has nobody because she's not social at all.
	Wait, wasn't she talking about some guy she was texting with and...
	No, they were just chatting at work, but there was no texting.
	There was nothing. Oh, they're just chatting at work.
	Is that right? Yeah.
	But then if it was just a friend she was chatting with at work, why did it bother you when she brought it up when you were out on a date?
	No, it wasn't a friend.
	They were kind of flirting at work.
	So that's what I'm saying.
	She's got someone in the wings.
	I mean, monkey branching, right?
	But then I think...
	It didn't work out, so maybe that's why she decided to come back with me?
	Yeah, so she may have tried, okay, well, if this sugar daddy is not working out, maybe I can get another sugar daddy.
	Oh, that sugar daddy didn't work out.
	Okay, I'll go be nice to this sugar daddy.
	And then the problem is, she's got to cut you down, like these hours of everything that's wrong with you, like she has any right to say what the hell's wrong with people.
	But it's these hours a night of everything that's wrong with you is because you're six foot two, good looking, you've got abs.
	So she's got to, you know, this is what you said earlier, right?
	It's not big inside of mine, but if yours, she's got to cut you down because if you realize your value, you're gone,
	right?
	So tell me if you wouldn't mind what you love about Would you say that you love her?
	Do you feel like you love her or what's your status emotionally?
	It's complicated because I don't think I love her.
	I love when she's happy and we're having fun, but I don't love the other person in a way.
	And even now that we broke up, I don't feel like crying about this.
	I just feel numb and a part of me feels free.
	There's something inside of me that I just want to jump and start dancing.
	Sorry, is that where you are right now?
	Like you are officially broken up?
	Yeah, so she kind of broke up three times in the last four days.
	But the day when I messaged you, it was...
	Finally, I just said, okay, that's it.
	So, today I'm just packing her stuff, shipping it, and...
	Okay, but it could...
	I mean, this has been 20 times over the last...
	this year, right? So, it could change.
	That's why I messaged you, yeah.
	Okay, so you said...
	So, you said that you love her when she's happy, right?
	Yeah. Right. So...
	That's the mark of a prisoner, right?
	Right? That's the abuse victim.
	Because if you love her when she's happy, when she's happy, she's not going to attack you.
	It's like the prisoner. I love it when the guard's in a good mood, because when he's in a bad mood, I don't get dinner and he beats me.
	So I love, oh, I'm so happy when he's in a good mood, because I'm safe for a while.
	And I think a lot of what's going on in your life is to do with safety.
	How do you feel safe?
	How do you feel secure?
	And I think you can't confront your girlfriend and say, no, you have to have a job.
	Like, people have to work. I mean, if you're not running my home and raising my kids, you've got to have a job, right?
	Now, you don't say that because why?
	I'm afraid she's going to leave.
	Well, because she'll get angry and she might abandon you and so on.
	But it's not that she might leave.
	Because if you say to someone who's in their 20s, gee, you kind of have to adult a little.
	You have to be an adult. And then they say, how dare you?
	How dare you demand that I be an adult?
	And they leave. I mean, that's not the worst thing in the world, right?
	Yeah. So you can't be assertive.
	Because if you're assertive, what happens?
	How does she make you feel? Oh, God.
	Anytime she would just say, oh, I can't believe you said this.
	I don't want to talk about this.
	I don't want to respond this and that.
	Well, no, but you would, I mean, assertive is you don't take no for an answer.
	You say like, okay, listen, if you don't talk about this, I'm not paying any more bills.
	Like, you don't get to take my money and then tell me what I can and can't talk about.
	I don't pay you to censor me.
	I've actually said that.
	Okay, and then what happens?
	She gets extremely angry, almost violent.
	Yeah, so she threatens you.
	She becomes abusive and she threatens you.
	How dare you? It's not love if you expect anything in return for the money and for the bills.
	It's not love if you expect anything in return.
	I'm sorry, that's just so infantile.
	Okay, so she threatens you, she gets angry, and she makes you feel like hell, knowing that you grew up with a violent mother.
	She knows which buttons to push, right?
	So she gets angry and threatens you and makes you feel like crap if you don't give her money.
	She threatens you, so you give her money, right?
	Yeah. Okay, I mean, you know what that's called, right?
	Extortion? Yeah, it's a shakedown.
	You are paying for her to be nice to you.
	You are paying so that you don't get attacked.
	You are paying in order to get Two days of peace and quiet and security.
	You're paying for her to not be mommy!
	At least for a day or two.
	And she's like, well your mom was really vicious at being an aggressive so I
	Can get a lot of money out of you if I threaten you with that.
	You think of her as a victim?
	Do you know who gets paid a lot for crying?
	No. Actors.
	Particularly if you're a young person, if you're a kid or whatever, if you can cry on cue, you can make a fortune.
	Actors used to be classified along with whores.
	In the social hierarchy, because they were considered to be false and dangerous and manipulative, because they can summon emotions on a whim for money.
	Ha! Summon emotions on a whim for money.
	Where's her sympathy for you?
	She ever sat down and said, look, I'm costing you a lot of money.
	You have to work extra hard, and I feel really terrible about that.
	You know, it's not fair to place all the financial burdens on you.
	We've got to do something to sort that out.
	Like, tell me how I can best help you in this area because it's not fair at all.
	Yeah, she said it quite a lot almost after every time in makeup, but then nothing comes out of it.
	So she just says it.
	There's big promises. There's like, Yeah, don't worry.
	I'll get a job. I'll give you the money back and then nothing happens.
	Okay, so she knows what you need.
	She knows that you need this fairness and she dangles it in front of you and then never follows through.
	She promises it every time, yes. Okay.
	All right. So, in my view, I mean, you're being used.
	You're being exploited. You're being threatened for money and bribed maybe with vocational sex.
	But it's just, it's all about the Benjamins.
	It's all about the cash. And every time you give her money, you make both of you worse.
	Because you're saying, I can't be loved for who I am.
	I can only be tolerated if I give money.
	Right? It's the me plus, right?
	No. Are you worthwhile?
	Are you lovable?
	are you someone that someone should bond with if you are putting in way more than they are?
	Because it's not just about the money.
	Again, I said, if your woman is raising your kids and taking care of your household
	and running your finances or whatever, right, then okay, then you're both putting it equal.
	One's monetary and one's non-monetary.
	And the non-monetary makes the monetary worthwhile because without kids you just have a bunch of stuff
	that gets buried with you when you die.
	So she has been putting far less into the relationship than you,
	if I understand this correctly, right?
	Yeah. Okay, so why do you have to put in so much more?
	Because that's what you have to watch out in the future, like whatever happens, right?
	That you have to be you plus...
	Endless amounts of therapy that you provide and £40,000 and, you know, whatever else is going to decisions and getting her jobs.
	Like, why do you have to put so much more in?
	What's wrong with you that she's just enough by being kind of a lazy dud that's mean to you on a regular basis, but you have to be...
	Daddy Warbucks and abs.
	Right, like why do you have to put in so much when she puts in so little?
	I don't know, because I don't think it can get better.
	Thank you.
	Well, because you were a slave to mommy and daddy, right?
	Your parents didn't have to be good parents, but I bet you had to be a good boy.
	Yeah. Your parents, like, you were trying to get attention from your dad, and he was just sitting there like a fucking Henry Moore statue in his dark bed, right?
	Yeah. You've got to work, man.
	You've got to hold people's attention.
	You've got to pedal like crazy because they're just sitting there like a log on a bike.
	You've got to do all the work.
	You've got to bring all the reality.
	You've got to bring the resources.
	You've got to pedal twice as hard because people are just sitting there.
	You've got to row twice as hard because you've got 10 fat passengers in the rowboat and the riptide is coming.
	So you've got to work like crazy because that's how you were raised, if I understand this correctly.
	Yeah, even in my teens, I had to give money to my parents so they can pay the mortgage.
	I was giving them my money to pay so we wouldn't get evicted.
	I was probably 14 or 15 years old.
	Right. Yeah, I mean, if it's any consolation, I was doing the same Dickensian slave labor as a kid, too, in some ways, right?
	Better than the alternative, but not much fun, right?
	And you try to bring reality to your mother, and she's like, oh, that didn't happen, blah, blah, blah, your dad, that didn't happen, you're crazy, blah, blah, blah, right?
	So you're just used to doing all the work to have any kind of relationship.
	You see, if you...
	Let me put it to you more bluntly.
	What would have happened if you'd have said to your parents, you need to be better parents?
	I got you some books out of the library on how to be better parents, because you are not doing a good job, and I'm not satisfied.
	Dad, you need to get out of bed.
	Mom, you need to find somewhere to deal with me other than violence.
	You need to up your game.
	You need to bring more to the table.
	You need to be better parents. What would happen?
	I tried it with my dad, and he threatened to beat me up, but then I said, I'm much bigger and stronger than you, so...
	I went back to bed, yeah.
	So, yeah, so he became nice after that and he's never been mean to me ever since that time.
	Well, no. God, man, of course he's been mean to you.
	He's been absolutely vicious to you.
	How? By supporting my relationship?
	I mean, at least not calling him out.
	Does he accept that he abused you as a child?
	No. No!
	He's completely denied your experience of abuse.
	And when you threaten to beat him up back, he becomes perfectly nice.
	You see, the niceness is the abuse.
	It's the same thing.
	Because now they're saying, oh shit, we could have been nice the whole time.
	I guess it was your fault.
	Like the moment you stood up for yourself, we were nice.
	We were just waiting for you to do that.
	It's your fault. Oh, and it never happened anyway.
	Like, what's changed? They're not accepting any responsibility.
	They're not acknowledging any of the evils they did to you, which were grave and great evils.
	And now they're just being super nice now that you have independence, now that you have size and strength, and you can choose to see them or not.
	It's kind of like, if there were nice people all along, then, yeah, it's something wrong with me.
	Yeah, great! But the fact that they were vicious, and when you asked for some reasonable standards of behavior, were threatened with violence, and then when you pointed out you could fight back, they just switched into nice mode.
	It means they could have, like, why weren't they nice before?
	They could have been nice the whole time. When they could be absolute evil bastards, they were absolute evil bastards.
	When they couldn't be, they flipped to, like, butter-couldn't-melt-in-my-mouth nice guys, right?
	Same thing with your girlfriend.
	Doesn't she flip from horrible to nice?
	Depending on the power dynamic?
	Depending on what she feels her opportunities are?
	Every time I kick her out and I say, she's probably going to flip in the next few days as well.
	Oh, listen, this is why I take you to call this, like, this is why I'm doing this on a Saturday morning, right?
	Which is not my common time.
	Because what's she going to do when she comes back?
	Assuming she doesn't have some other guy to get resources from.
	Oh, God. She's going to switch on the honey again.
	She's going to switch on the honey, and she's going to try to get pregnant.
	Is that why she's been talking the last two months?
	She's going to try to get pregnant.
	Why is she going to try to get pregnant? To trap me, because until recently, she always said, I never want to have kids, and out of nowhere, she's like, yeah, I want to have kids, even if you're raging out, this and that.
	She's going to come back, she's going to love-bomb you, and she's going to try and get pregnant.
	Now, once she gets pregnant, then what happens?
	She's going to use the kids to control me?
	She's going to run to the government, she's going to get your resources, you're going to be her slave for 20 years, and she's probably going to turn the kid against you, like all of this sort of stuff, right?
	Like, the reason why I'm taking this call on a Saturday is you've got vagina lasers on your forehead, brother.
	Oh my god, two weeks ago we even started having sex without...
	Dude, don't do it!
	If you have to punch yourself in the nads, I would do it for you, but I'm not there.
	Like, seriously, don't be there.
	If she's coming to pick up her stuff, have a friend be there.
	Do not be there. She's gonna come in seductive as a succubi and she's gonna
	try and get your seed so that she doesn't have to grow up and then you're
	really doomed.
	I think that's why I want to get her stuff out as soon as possible.
	Seriously, hire a truck.
	Have it delivered. Have a friend be there when she comes.
	Do not be near her.
	In my opinion, I can't tell you what to do.
	do I'm just if I were in your shoes you know this is what you do you know how
	many times I've heard we had make up sex the relationship was terrible we had
	make up sex she got pregnant we tried to make it work
	It went to hell in a handbasket.
	Now I'm living out of a car. Unfortunately, you have to some degree trained her.
	She's responsible for herself.
	I get that. But to some degree, you have trained your girlfriend to be a moral resource acquisition princess.
	A moral resource acquisition princess.
	Oh, I don't have to work.
	I can just nag. I can just sleep with someone.
	I can just bully. I can just be nice.
	I can write love letters. Nobody's paying me £40,000 for a love letter.
	And, you know, I have sympathy for her childhood.
	And, of course, it's like you were older, right?
	So you have more responsibility in the relationship than she does.
	You were 24. She was 18, right?
	So you should not have been...
	Rushing in to solve all her problems and shielding her from reality for the last six or seven years.
	Come on, you know that, right?
	This was not good. And you are older and you have some more responsibility in this matter.
	You took a highly traumatized child, well, highly traumatized legal adult, probably still emotionally a child.
	you took a highly traumatized young woman and shielded her from adulthood.
	You see if you have a...
	See, we like to say, I care about this woman, I care about this woman, and therefore, therefore, therefore, right?
	I should do nice things to her.
	It's like, to me, if you care about her, you have to stop paying her bills, because this is crippling her.
	This is incredibly destructive to her, because it's training her that she doesn't have to work, that she doesn't have to take responsibility, that she can manipulate resources out of people.
	I mean, I won't say you're turning her into your mother, but you sure as hell aren't turning her into the opposite
	of your mother.
	She's even said that in arguments that it's really toxic that I'm basically dating her,
	and she said you're the one who turned me into this.
	Bye.
	Oh, is that what she said? She said, you turned me into this?
	Yeah, and she said, the biggest issue was that you've been treating me like a father, not like a girlfriend, and you turned me into this.
	Yeah, I mean, so there's, obviously, there's some healthy, I mean, whether that's manipulative or not, probably it is to some degree, but there's some part of her that knows that this is destructive to her, and I mean, it is like asking people to give up a winning lottery ticket, and very few people will do that.
	I'm not sure I could, right? Sorry, you were saying?
	She's really highly intelligent, so she has to know.
	And especially her intuition is insane.
	But I don't know how relevant it is, but when I was in my late teens and later in the early 20s,
	for work purposes and study purposes, I've had my, for example, IQ clinically tested.
	It was about 160 and she can hold a candle to that.
	So she's somewhere on that level as well.
	Oh yeah, no, I have no doubt she's very smart and all of that.
	She's extremely smart. Which, you know, see, smart plus moral is fantastic.
	Smart plus immoral is not so dangerous because it's so obvious, right?
	Smart but amoral, ooh, that's your soft spot.
	That's your sticky spot, right?
	Mm-hmm. Because immoral is like the smart but immoral are like, hey, let's go rob a gas station, you know?
	And you're like, okay, like you might have a great plan, but that's kind of evil, so no, right?
	But the amoral is like just, it's so manipulative.
	Your head gets turned around, you spin.
	And it's almost like you were trying to be the good parent to her that your parents were to you or, you know, it's something like that.
	But it's just not...
	It's not healthy.
	It's not productive.
	It's not positive. The big question is, how are you going to deal with your susceptibility to manipulation going forward?
	Let's say this relationship doesn't work out.
	Obviously, you need to take some time to let things settle and learn your lessons and all of that.
	But at some point, what are the signs that you're going to look for About a woman who is manipulative.
	What are you going to look for when you start dating again?
	Well, the first thing, if she's a victim, she's like, oh, I can't take care of myself.
	I need a shining knight.
	I'm going to run away.
	Any woman in her 20s that can't take care of herself is highly dangerous, in my opinion.
	Yeah, you're absolutely right.
	Yeah, she needs to be competent.
	She needs to be competent.
	I knew a guy once, he married a woman who was literally afraid of answering the phone.
	And, you know, maybe he felt safe.
	You know, well, you know, she's not going to threaten me or question me or whatever.
	And it's like, oh, man, what a nightmare.
	What a quicksand, right?
	So, yeah, she has to be competent, right?
	I mean, it's not, you know, she doesn't have to be a brain surgeon, but she's got to be competent.
	She's got to have, you know, no debt or at least a way of paying down the debt.
	She has to have taken some degree that she's able to make productive.
	And in some manner, she has to...
	Have held and kept a job for at least a year or two.
	She has to have a good resume, good references.
	I mean, the good thing about being like you're 30 or pushing 30, right?
	So the good thing about being that old is that you don't have to roll the dice.
	Like when the girl's 18, you don't exactly know how she's going to turn out, obviously.
	But if you date a woman who's in her late 20s or whatever, I mean, she's been 10 years an adult.
	She's got a track record. She's got proven...
	success or failure and you know if she's like you know what I got fired from this
	job and I got a degree in art history but I'm heavily in debt and you know I'm
	working part-time and this is like okay so you're you've been 10 years an adult
	and you're a complete failure. I'm still living at home and and you know I just
	I've never really got things going.
	I'm opening up an Etsy store and trying to be a life coach, you know, whatever it is, right?
	Like, no. Absolutely.
	Like, yeah, good luck with all of that.
	But I need, like, if you've got 10 years of failure under your belt, you're not going to have 10 years of success right around the corner.
	I mean, you just trained yourself in failure.
	So you need someone who is successful.
	You need someone who is competent.
	And she doesn't have to be a big earner.
	But she's got to be competent.
	Because incompetent women will drain your will to live.
	And this is another reason why I took this call on a Saturday morning, which is often family time, because you are in grave fucking danger, my friend.
	Because you've had suicidal thoughts over the course of this relationship, right?
	Yeah. Right.
	This is shark in the water time.
	You are in serious fucking danger.
	I'm not kidding about this. And I'm not just talking about she could get pregnant and all of that.
	That would be probably it for you.
	Because you look at 20 years of slavery down the road for this kind of nonsense and that might be enough.
	But yeah, you're in serious danger because this relationship is stealing your will to live.
	I mean, tell me if I'm wrong.
	Because just going off what you said, I don't want to exaggerate it, but this is what I understood you were saying.
	No, that's exactly true because...
	The last three years, I used to have so much life in me, and the last three years, I've just been like a shell of a human being.
	Literally just work and nothing else.
	And I don't even buy nice clothes for myself.
	I spend almost no money on myself.
	And she bought a new piano for herself.
	She was buying a guitar.
	She's buying clothes with her money.
	Don't you make a lot more than she does?
	Yeah. Yeah, so it's not her money.
	Because she wouldn't be able to afford that shit if she had to pay her own bills, right?
	No, absolutely not. So it's not her money.
	In your relationship, when you live together, there's no one person's money.
	That doesn't exist. It's a fantasy.
	But it's what women say when they say, well, I want you to pay the bills.
	But no, your money is for us.
	My money is for me. So, yeah, you're in grave danger.
	I know we've made some jokes, but I'm very, very serious about this.
	Like, you are in life-threatening danger.
	Also, if you've let anger bottle up, you could do something aggressive and wrong and immoral.
	It could get you in legal trouble. You are going to face, like, every day that you're in this relationship is another day you have to recover from the relationship.
	Every hit you take of a drug is just more detox and rehab you have to go through, right?
	So when you are in a situation where death appears preferable to staying in the relationship, you are being stalked by a predator that will chew your fucking throat out.
	I'm not kidding about that.
	And you are a brilliant guy.
	And you are a very strong-willed guy.
	And you are a very competent guy.
	And you are a guy striving for virtue.
	And you are a treasure on this planet.
	And you don't have the right to throw that treasure away or to burn it on the altar You don't have that right.
	Your brain is a gift from the universe or from God, whichever you choose.
	Your abilities are a gift.
	Your life is a gift.
	You don't have the right to squander that gift for the sake of mediocre sex once a month.
	You don't have to buy a woman to have her love you.
	You don't have to run a woman's life in order to give her value.
	You need an equal.
	You need somebody. She's the smartest you are, which is both a plus and a minus.
	The minus, I think, given the immorality.
	And I have sympathy for her as well.
	But I'm talking to you, not her.
	You are 100% responsible for this mess.
	You can't give any of it to her.
	Because part of what you were doing earlier when you were telling me how unstable she was is you were trying to say, look at what I have to deal with.
	Look at how difficult she is.
	Look at how unstable she is, right?
	Self-pity. And listen, I have pity for you too.
	I understand that.
	But I've got to give you back this flaming gloves of self-ownership, right?
	Yeah. They burn, but they can melt through stuff too, right?
	So you are 100% responsible.
	For staying or going. You have no obligation to stay.
	You're not married. I don't know if there are common laws where you are.
	No, no. Okay.
	So you have no responsibility to stay.
	And I said this to someone.
	I can't remember if I published a show or not, so I'll keep this analogy really brief.
	So let's say you and I have been friends for 10 years.
	Now, a couple of years in our friendship, I say, hey, man, I'm going to learn the violin.
	I'm going to learn the violin. And I say, I think I've got a knack for it.
	Like, I've been listening to a bit, I've got a violin, and I play you a little bit, and it doesn't sound too bad, right?
	And you're like, well, you know, maybe this could be something for you, right?
	I mean, you seem to have a knack. It's, you know, violin's kind of tricky, and you seem to be doing all right.
	Sounds actually kind of pleasant, right?
	And let's say, we'll zoom forward six or seven years, right?
	And I say, listen, I played your violin for a while.
	I've been really working hard on it, man.
	I've poured 40,000 pounds into lessons for my violin.
	And I've been practicing like hours a day, right?
	And I pull out my violin and start playing, and it sounds like cats being strangled.
	It sounds horrible.
	It sounds almost infinitely worse than when I first played you the violin.
	After 40,000 pounds of lessons and six to seven years of practicing many hours a day, I sound worse than when I started, what would you say to me?
	What's wrong with you? This is actually cruel.
	Yeah, this is worse than when you started, right?
	Yeah. Now, is your relationship with your girlfriend, is it worse than when you started?
	Yes. Every single year it's worse than the previous.
	Right. Every single year it's worse than the previous.
	You've put $40,000 into this relationship and you have spent probably 5,000 hours trying to fix it and it's worse than when you started, right?
	Bro. Absolutely, yeah.
	Bro. Would you tell me, no, no, just keep doing the violin.
	Maybe it's going to turn around anytime soon.
	Pay another £40,000 in lessons and check in with me in another five years.
	Anybody who didn't say to you, put down the violin, step back from the violin,
	and I'm gonna jump up and down on the violin, because it's not a violin, it's a...
	and it's a demon that's possessed to take your money, soul and my hearing.
	You're almost seven years into this relationship.
	You've spent thousands of hours trying to fix it and £40,000 trying to support it.
	And it's infinitely worse than when you started.
	Now, like a dude, like a dude, how comfortable are you with admitting you've made a mistake
	and walking away?
	Like men can be building a brick wall, have it literally falling down around them and
	they're like, no I got it!
	I got it! I just need a couple of props.
	Oh, the mortar was a little thin here.
	I got it! Like, we're not big on, I fucked up, and I gotta change.
	And she's also an expert at playing you, which is on her, but your response is on you, right?
	She's got you figured out because you've let an unstable and dangerous woman get complete control over your mind, heart, and soul.
	You've told her where all your buttons are.
	You've given her six or seven years of empirical evidence on how to make you do what she wants, right?
	Now, that's on you. And again, you were poorly raised.
	I have massive sympathy for that.
	I really do. I mean, I hope I'm not saying anything that makes you feel rad or wrong or humiliated because I don't mean that at all.
	But my conscience absolutely demands that I put things as clearly as possible.
	But my justice demands that I don't portray you as bad or stupid or wrong.
	Does that make sense? Yeah.
	I'm not feeling any of that.
	Oh, good. Good. I wanted to check, right?
	I wanted to check. No, actually, sometimes when I post messages on the live stream, you've chewed me out much worse than this.
	Excellent. Okay, good. Well, now you get the live experience.
	All right. No, this is much nicer, huh?
	Okay. When is she coming by?
	I'm pretty sure she's not going to come by.
	So I told her that I'm going to get just a moving company.
	So they're going to come and pick her stuff up.
	So I'm pretty sure I'm not going to see her again.
	The only contact she has is just...
	She messages me at random times.
	Even today, she called me crying because...
	Our landlord was calling her for something and she was asking me, can you handle this because I can't deal with it?
	And she was crying. Hang on.
	When do you block her? At what point is the breakup done and whatever shit she's got to deal with, she's got to put on her big girl panties and deal with, right?
	When do you block her?
	I have a fear because...
	Maybe a month ago when she was going to commit suicide and leaving me letters, she just said, that's okay, I'll just wait for when you're not around and then I'm going to do it.
	Right. Now, is she still in therapy?
	No. She refuses to go back.
	I even told her, go, I can even pay for the first few sessions.
	She refuses. Right.
	She's still in contact with her family, right?
	Yeah, she went to live with her dad.
	Okay, so, you know, one of the things you could do is you could phone her dad and say, listen, our relationship is not working out.
	I understand you weren't a big fan of mine, so I'm sure that that's fine with you.
	Our relationship is not working out, but she has threatened suicide.
	Now, I'm not her boyfriend anymore, and I obviously can't be her counselor.
	I'm not a therapist. You're her father.
	I'm putting you on notice that she has expressed suicidal thoughts a month ago based upon the breakup.
	I can't fix this, but you're her father.
	You need to be on alert for this.
	You need to talk to her about it, and you need to get her the help that she needs.
	This is called the hot potato strategy, which is, look, if you're breaking up with the girl, you can't be responsible for what she does.
	But if you're in possession of knowledge about the state of her mental health that other people need to have, then you can pass that knowledge along.
	So that the responsibility goes to them.
	Do you understand? Yeah, I know what you mean.
	Sorry, you've got 160 IQ. I'm never going to ask you again.
	Do you understand? I'm sorry, that was entirely wrong and I withdraw and apologize for that ridiculous piece of sophistry.
	Two plus two is four, Mr.
	PhD in mathematics. Do you understand?
	I'm sorry, that was ridiculous.
	My apologies. But yeah, so there's the hot potato thing.
	It's like, okay, look, you've got to transfer the responsibility to others, right?
	So that they know, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	The other thing too, of course, is you can do the slow exit strategy, which is she texts you and you just take longer and longer to respond.
	It's like the weaning off the drug strategy.
	Yeah, because I'm thinking if I do it really quickly, she might escalate really bad.
	Right, yeah, and depending on how unstable she is, you don't obviously want to get hit with any false accusations or anything like that.
	So, yeah, I mean, I don't know.
	I've never had to disengage from a crazy girl.
	Like, I'm not saying this, like, I'm just, I was lucky, that's all.
	I've just, you know, I've never had to disengage from a crazy girl.
	I've never really had a bad breakup that way, and the good news is she's probably just going to attach to someone else.
	I hope so. Yeah, it's not a sad thing.
	I mean, no, I actually even told her the other day, please, if you meet somebody else, don't treat him like that.
	Nobody deserves this.
	I don't know.
	I hope she doesn't do it.
	She's also bisexual, so I'm hoping she finds another crazy girl.
	What the what? When did you find out about the bisexuality?
	It was pretty early, but she's never done anything with it.
	But she wasn't sexually abused as a child, right?
	I've tried to mention it and ask her about it.
	She says no throughout the years.
	We have to take her at face value.
	There's no other standard of proof.
	So she's living with her dad, right?
	And his girlfriend? Oh, and your dad's girlfriend.
	Does she have any source of income?
	No, her dad's girlfriend, not mine.
	Her dad's girlfriend. No.
	I'm sorry, she's living with her dad and who?
	And his girlfriend, so her dad is dating another woman.
	That's what I said. She's living with her dad and her dad's girlfriend.
	No, you said your girlfriend.
	Oh, did I say your girlfriend?
	My apologies. Yeah, okay.
	She's living with your ex-girlfriend, which is her.
	Okay, so she's living with your dad and...
	No, it's her dad. I'm sorry.
	I'm so sorry. It's been a long call.
	She's living with her dad and her dad's girlfriend.
	Yeah. And the girlfriend's daughter as well, who's around her age.
	So she's got people.
	She's not going to be just, you know, staring at her, like, flicking the light on and off like Glenn Close in that movie, Fatal Attraction.
	I don't know. You're probably too young to have seen it.
	Yeah, so she's got a support system around.
	I personally, if I were in your shoes, I would definitely tell her support system, her family about, you know, that this is tough and, you know, she has expressed suicidal thoughts and all of that.
	And just, you know, please talk to her and keep an eye on her and, you know, tell her I wish her the best, that kind of thing, right?
	Yeah. And yeah, I mean, as far as how to detach, yeah, maybe the block is too extreme.
	Maybe the slow, the weaning strategy, like the weaning off strategy might be the way to go.
	And as far as you go, right, because I'm talking to you and my allegiance, of course, here is to the truth, but, you know, the truth as it affects you.
	So what are your thoughts of suicide or self-destructive thoughts as you go through this process?
	I haven't had them.
	I've had it twice when it was extreme, but it was in times of really, really big fights.
	I'm actually pretty happy about that.
	I was the one who sent you a poem a week ago.
	I don't know if you remember, on the live stream.
	I remember that, yeah. I've actually written almost 20 now in the last week, so I'm going to work on editing and just publishing.
	I also wrote a whole book the last Yeah, and I'm starting a business as well.
	I'm going to have some calls with investors as well.
	But yeah. Well, good for you.
	Listen, I have to say this just from my own conscience, that if you do, I just want you to make me a promise, however goofy it might seem, that if you do have any thoughts of suicide or self-destruction, that you will call someone, you will call a suicide hotline, you will go to ER, you will absolutely not do anything suicidal, you will take care of yourself and do me the honor of keeping your word to me to get the help that you need.
	I'm not saying you will, but if you did.
	I promise, sister. You promise, okay.
	Yes. How are you feeling now?
	Do you remember when I called you, I said I was really anxious, but now I feel really happy.
	I feel light as a feather, to be honest.
	Fantastic. Thanks so much for this.
	Oh, listen, man. I'm so sorry for your childhood.
	I'm desperately sorry for her childhood as well.
	But, you know, this toxicity to me, it just doesn't go anywhere good.
	It just goes bad places. But I'm really sorry for what happened to you as a kid.
	And... I'm really sorry about what happened to her as a kid, and I'm sorry about this intersection that seems to produce this mess, but man, you have got so much to look forward to.
	It's crazy. You're a young, fit guy.
	You're very smart.
	You're entrepreneurial. You've got so much to offer.
	I just want you to remember, just remember, you look in the mirror in the morning, you're a catch.
	And there's lots of people in the world who will try to reduce your value on the sexual marketplace, on the business marketplace, on the intellectual marketplace, on the artistic marketplace, And you just have to say, I've got empirical evidence.
	I'm smart. I'm entrepreneurial.
	I'm good-looking.
	I'm tall. You know, I'm slender.
	I've got six-pack.
	I'm healthy. I'm a catch.
	And really work to keep your standards up.
	And remember that for a woman, being pretty does not make her a catch.
	It's not a bad thing. It's a fine thing.
	Does not make her a catch. And look for somebody.
	The purpose of life is to walk hand in hand facing the future and your challenges, not to stare at each other and just kind of in a dark apartment sitting Nancy style.
	So find someone who can join you on your life's journey and contributes as much to you as you do to her.
	And that's your path forward.
	And I think then you get a great girlfriend, you get a great fiance, you get a great wife and you get, I hope, I'm sure you will, a great mother for your children.
	Thank you so much, sir. Will you keep me posted, my friend?
	Yeah, absolutely. I'm going to keep in touch and I'll send you another poem in the next live stream.
	Fantastic, man. Well, thanks for a great call.
	I really appreciate it and well done and I look forward to hearing about the next chapter.
	Thanks so much, sir. Take care, man.

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