Aug. 23, 2023 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
02:09:10
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| Time | Text |
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| So I guess if you would like to read the email, that'd be fine? | |
| Sure. So this is what you wrote. | |
| I've been married for 33 years. | |
| My husband and I have not been sexually intimate for eight years. | |
| He is unhappy. He started showing signs of sexual dysfunction about 12 years into the marriage. | |
| I suggested we seek counseling to see what was going on. | |
| Soon after that, I discovered he was looking at pornography. | |
| He was sexually molested as a young man and seemed to prefer masturbation to our sex life. | |
| There has been... A lot of things that have happened since then, which has destroyed any trust in him. | |
| Does that seem about right? | |
| Yeah, I summed that up better than I recalled. | |
| Good, good. All right. Well, you know, it's tough to do 33 years in a sentence or two, but you certainly managed it. | |
| You certainly managed it. Well, I would say, where do you want to begin? | |
| I mean, probably his childhood, your childhood, like how you met and all of that? | |
| Sure. We met, we worked in the same place. | |
| I had been previously married and had just finished up going through a divorce and met him about maybe a month after that. | |
| And I thought it was wise to marry him six months later. | |
| Hindsight, you realize that was not a great idea. | |
| We married six months after I had divorced, so I basically divorced and married in the same year. | |
| When I first met him... | |
| Sorry to interrupt. What was the separation timeframe? | |
| You know, some people separate for years and then the divorce is more paperwork. | |
| But when you say you're divorced and married, what was the sequence there? | |
| It was not separated. | |
| Probably divorce started in January and we were divorced by March. | |
| So it wasn't a very... | |
| It was a quick... It was very quick. | |
| I was very young... | |
| Didn't have a whole lot of assets or anything to split up, so it was just basically a legal thing. | |
| Okay, got it. And so how long were you married that first time? | |
| Six and a half years. | |
| Wow, okay. So you weren't that young, right? | |
| Okay. Well, I was pretty young when I married. | |
| I married when I was 19 the first time, so that's pretty young. | |
| Right, okay, got it. | |
| So yeah, go ahead. Okay, and so when I was dating my husband... | |
| He mentioned that he had been sexually molested as a kid, I think around 10, 11. | |
| We didn't talk a lot about it, and I didn't ask a lot of questions. | |
| I didn't have a lot of frame of reference of what exactly that—I mean, I knew what it meant, but I didn't ask a lot of questions, basically. | |
| We talked about it a little bit. | |
| Sorry, what did he say about it? | |
| He said when he was 10 or 11, he was at a family gathering and at a, if I understand correctly, a next door. | |
| Next door was a family member, I guess, at their house, and it was some men who, I believe, masturbated Him, and I don't know if anybody else was there, and showed them pornography. | |
| That's the general idea. | |
| I am not 100% sure on that. | |
| So I don't know if it was just him alone. | |
| That's a question I guess I should have asked. | |
| I don't know if it was him. I had the impression maybe some other kids were involved, but I'm honestly not 100% sure on that. | |
| And was it a one-time thing? | |
| Did it recur? I believe that it may have recurred, you know, a couple of times. | |
| Again, the information has always been a little slim as to what exactly happened. | |
| So I've only heard about basically maybe once or twice. | |
| Wait, you've only heard about it once or twice or maybe it only happened once or twice? | |
| I think maybe it only happened once or twice that I'm aware of. | |
| And why did you... | |
| I mean, this sounds accusatory, and I don't mean it that way. | |
| I'm just genuinely curious why... | |
| I mean, this is a formatic and... | |
| Sorry, I put traumatic and formative together in some weird way. | |
| So, I mean, it's a formative experience, obviously significantly traumatic, I suppose. | |
| it's you know first exposure to sexual activities and you didn't really ask him | |
| that much and I guess I'm just curious why you wouldn't be more curious. | |
| I didn't ask him at the time we were dating and I don't know I guess | |
| Maybe I thought it was such a traumatic thing for him. | |
| I didn't want to question, you know, like, give me all the details. | |
| I guess that was what I was thinking. | |
| Sorry, the idea is that the solution to trauma is to bottle it up? | |
| Is that, like, to not talk about it? | |
| Is that the idea? No, you're right. | |
| I mean, I get you. | |
| No, that wasn't the reason. | |
| I appreciate that as a first pass at trying to convince me of something, but that kind of been the reason. | |
| Like, nobody really thinks that, right? | |
| Right, yeah. Oh, you're saying that I, that couldn't have been the reason why I didn't ask your question? | |
| No, that wasn't the reason why. Yeah, because nobody says there, oh, wow, this is really, really upsetting to you. | |
| The most important thing is that we never talk about it, right? | |
| Nobody really thinks that, right? | |
| So there had to be some other reason that you didn't want to ask him about it. | |
| I guess part of me didn't want to hear the details. | |
| Okay, that's great. | |
| Why didn't you want to hear the details? | |
| Hmm. And again, I don't mean this in an accusatory way. | |
| Like, why the hell did you... I don't mean that at all. | |
| I just mean, I'm just genuinely curious. | |
| Why? Yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
| No, I understand. | |
| I understand. And yeah, I kind of... | |
| Yeah, I get what you're saying. | |
| I don't know that I... I don't know. | |
| I mean, sorry. I really don't. | |
| Let me give you an analogy, right? | |
| So if... If you were going into business with someone and this was going to be, you were putting your house up for mortgage, you were taking up massive loans, you were pouring in your life savings, and you said, and your business partner said to you, well, you know, I was, I had a terrible business relationship in the past, I got stolen from, and I almost got thrown in jail, and, you know, there was a massive investigation. | |
| I mean, before you poured your life savings into this, wouldn't you want to find out more? | |
| Yes, I would. | |
| Yeah. I mean, you wouldn't say, well, if it's upsetting for him to talk about, I guess I won't do it. | |
| I mean, of course, if it was that upsetting, he wouldn't have talked about it at all. | |
| So I guess that's my curiosity. | |
| So you didn't want to know the details, and I'm just curious why. | |
| Yeah. Yeah. | |
| No, I mean, I understand what you're saying, and I regret that, not asking more questions. | |
| Yeah. I've tried to think back because it was a long time ago and I think why didn't I ask more and I wish I had a more definitive answer. | |
| Well, you do know why, right? | |
| I mean, you've probably heard these calls before, right? | |
| Like, you know that I don't know is never an answer, right? | |
| Because you do know, right? It may not be easy knowledge, but you know for sure, right? | |
| I... Well, if I don't figure it out, I'm sure you're going to help me with that. | |
| Maybe I just didn't want to know and didn't want to make it an important thing. | |
| Like, I was like, oh, it'll be fine. | |
| I don't want to think about it. | |
| Okay, but why still not ask questions? | |
| Because if a man has been preyed upon in this kind of way, and the reason I'm asking is... | |
| He was masturbated by an older man, right, when he was 10 or 11. | |
| He was masturbated by an older man, and now that he's older, he masturbates himself, right? | |
| So he's kind of become what happened to him earlier. | |
| Yes. So, I mean, if somebody's been molested... | |
| Do you guys have kids? | |
| Yes. Okay, so yeah, if somebody's been molested... | |
| It's important to find that out, to find out if it's been dealt with or if there's more stuff that needs to be dealt with or to be processed and so on because, you know, there is a cycle to these kinds of things and you wouldn't want to put your own kids at any kind of risk. | |
| I'm not saying they were, right, but you'd want to sort of sort that out. | |
| So this isn't just like a little thing. | |
| Right. You know, like if, you know, when I was 12, I lost my keys. | |
| You're like, oh, tell me more! | |
| You know, I mean, it's... But this is a very sort of important and deep thing and it turns out it probably has had You know, massive effects on your marriage. | |
| You haven't had sex in eight years, right? | |
| And of course, everybody knows that, you know, first sexual experience, particularly if it's predatory and illegal and vile and horrible in this kind of way, you know, it's going to have an effect. | |
| So there is a reason why you didn't ask. | |
| Okay. I mean, I have a theory, but I'm probably wrong. | |
| Well, I would love to hear your theory. | |
| Maybe that'll make me figure out what I was thinking. | |
| Oh, because you were desperate for a relationship and you didn't want to find out that this guy had problems because then you would be out of a relationship and maybe you couldn't stand being out of a relationship. | |
| Okay. Yeah. Okay. | |
| Yeah. I get you. | |
| You know, I'm going from the fairly significant data that you jumped from one marriage to another in a year. | |
| So a little codependent, maybe a little desperate for relationships, and you don't want to ask those questions. | |
| You know, like if you win the lottery ticket, you don't sit there and say, hey, man, can you run this again just to make sure it's not by accident? | |
| You just grab the money and run, right? | |
| Right. You're right. You were correct. | |
| You're correct. Yes, that makes sense. | |
| That makes sense. Yeah, I didn't want to be alone. | |
| Yeah. Okay. I get that 100%. | |
| Yeah. And you didn't want to be alone, so you didn't ask the vetting questions, so what ended up happening? | |
| I've made another mistake. | |
| Well, you've ended up alone. | |
| Right. Well, yeah. | |
| True. You're right. I mean, I know you're still married, but I mean, only in word, right? | |
| Mm-hmm. I mean, we're, you know, yeah. | |
| I mean, Maybe not in the way most husbands and wives are married, correct? | |
| Well, I mean, nobody's married exactly the way that other people are married, but, you know, sexuality is really the... | |
| I mean, that's why marriage exists, right? | |
| It's because we have sex, we have babies, and babies need protection, and we pair bond, and so on, right? | |
| Yes. So, I mean, I know that there's some people who can't have sex on medical reasons or whatever, right? | |
| Mm-hmm. But marriage without sex, it's like business without profit. | |
| I mean, it could go for a while, but it's not really a business as far as I know it. | |
| I see. Yeah. | |
| Okay. All right. | |
| So let's go back to, I guess, your early story about why you were desperate for a relationship to the point that you wouldn't ask sort of Basic vetting questions, right? | |
| So what do you think had you in that situation when you were younger? | |
| Well, I guess I married young the first time and got out on my own. | |
| And then... Yeah, the guy I was married to got involved with another person, another girl. | |
| And so... | |
| I was left by myself again because we divorced. | |
| Boy, you're really working hard to not tell me about your childhood. | |
| I was born at the age of 18. | |
| I was already married. | |
| Okay, no, no. | |
| Okay, my childhood, I came from a... | |
| A family who my parents remained married the whole time. | |
| It was a good family. I didn't have any childhood trauma. | |
| I grew up in a family with Christian values and morals. | |
| I didn't have anything traumatic happen to me. | |
| My dad was a great guy. | |
| He taught school and People loved him and my mom mostly a homemaker and took care of me and I have another sibling. | |
| So I didn't have anything really terrible that happened to me as a child. | |
| And how were you disciplined as a child? | |
| I mean, I was a pretty good kid most of the time. | |
| When I was younger, my parents did believe in spanking, but I didn't really get I was disciplined too often because I wanted to be a good kid and do the right thing. | |
| So I didn't get in trouble very often. | |
| I mean, even as a teenager, I didn't... | |
| Now, not to say that I was picked. | |
| I did some stuff, I just didn't get caught. | |
| You know, silly teenager stuff that you do in just a little bit of rebellion, but nothing big or major. | |
| So I didn't... | |
| I mean, I wasn't the kind of kid that did drugs or anything like that. | |
| Just average, small-town teenager, I guess. | |
| And how often would you get spanked? | |
| Not very often, because I didn't... | |
| I don't have a lot of recall of getting spanked, more than just, you know, maybe one or two times when I was younger, and that was it. | |
| I mean, that was young. | |
| Sorry to interrupt. If your parent... | |
| Like, if you did something your parents didn't like, or was against their sort of ethics... | |
| How else would they deal with it? | |
| I guess we would talk about it I'm trying to pull up a memory from my past. | |
| My dad was strict, but we would talk about it and then... | |
| And then that was it. I mean, we talk about it, and I accept, I guess, that this was the rule, and I just didn't get into a lot of trouble. | |
| I didn't do a whole lot of things to get into trouble, so... | |
| Okay. I'm not trying to make things up whether I'm or anything, so I'm just looking around, right? | |
| You know, I always feel like I'm a metal detector, but if there's no metal, I don't just go beep, beep, beep, you know, just like to make something up, so... | |
| Well, if I could think of something to tell you, I would. | |
| No, that's fine. And what about siblings? | |
| I have a sister. And you aren't like, how did she get in trouble? | |
| How did you guys get along as kids? | |
| She was younger. | |
| We got along okay. | |
| We weren't super, super close. | |
| She was the one that did get in trouble a little bit more than me. | |
| She was kind of the little rebellion troublemaker. | |
| A little bit, not bad, but just, you know, she would go against the grain of what the parents were saying more than I did. | |
| Right, but again, nothing too extreme, right? | |
| No, correct, correct, yeah. | |
| Okay, so then you got married. | |
| Let's just call the guy Jake, right? | |
| Your first husband. | |
| So tell me how that came about. | |
| We were in high school together. | |
| We knew each other from fire and just became friends and fell in love, as young people do. | |
| My parents married young. | |
| They married at 19. And so I guess I always kind of thought, well, you get married when you get out of high school and you marry young. | |
| And so they weren't opposed to us getting married young. | |
| So I finished a year of university and then we got married after my freshman year. | |
| You literally got your MRS degree, right? | |
| I did. I did, yes. | |
| Right. Right. | |
| And so, yeah, so that was... | |
| We just knew each other a couple of years as kids. | |
| What did your parents think of our good friend Jake? | |
| They liked him. | |
| He came from a family that was having a lot of family problems. | |
| Really? Yeah. | |
| Really? So you married two guys with significant family issues? | |
| Yeah. Yes, you're right. | |
| So yeah, his dad had an alcohol problem. | |
| His mom put up with the alcohol problem and then they were going to divorce and then they get back together. | |
| And so, you know, kind of it was in hindsight, I think like We're rescuing him maybe from his family situation because he wanted to get out of the house. | |
| And so I was like, well, let's get married. | |
| So that'll get you out of your bad family situation. | |
| I mean, that's a pretty bad family situation, like rampant alcoholism, I assume, and all that goes with that, right? | |
| Like the problem with growing up with alcoholics who are really addicts of any kind is it's very, very hard, if not impossible to To develop the capacity for a stable pair bond. | |
| So the fact that he ends up cheating on you is kind of predictable, right? | |
| Yeah. I mean, I didn't realize that as a 20-year-old, but yes, I do realize that. | |
| No, no. You're not supposed to know that as a 20-year-old. | |
| Who's supposed to know that? | |
| My parents. Right. | |
| It's fine to get married in your teens. | |
| In your late teens, it's fine to get married. | |
| Yeah. But your parents, because you're such a young person, right? | |
| I mean, you're still close to a half decade away from brain maturity. | |
| Right. So it's fine to get married in your late teens, but your parents better vet the living heck out of your husband. | |
| You're right. So what did they do? | |
| I mean, this wasn't even subtle, right? | |
| You said alcoholic, divorce-ridden, abuse, neglect, all this sort of stuff, right? | |
| Right. So did they sit down and say, oh man, you guys got to go through premarital counseling. | |
| We need to really cross-examine this guy because we're inviting him into the family. | |
| And because you grew up in such a nice environment, if you grew up in a city, you don't know the signs of when there are tigers around, right? | |
| So you don't just put your kids out in the African belt and say, good luck. | |
| I mean, if you grew up in a nice environment... | |
| Then your parents need to help you make good decisions in a dangerous world, right? | |
| Correct. Yeah, you're right. | |
| Now, they knew him, and I mean, he had kind of, you know, he'd been at my house, and so I guess they kind of felt like they had been a good influence on him, and so they thought he was a good guy. | |
| Sorry, is there a theory that... | |
| That the cure for serious dysfunction is just kind of hanging around with functional people? | |
| I don't know. I mean, I can't really... | |
| I don't know. Yeah, that's a good question. | |
| They have both since passed, so I don't know. | |
| You told me that that was sort of the theory, that they were just rubbed off on him. | |
| Yeah. I mean, I'm making that assumption, I guess, because there was never a... | |
| I did not have a conversation with my parents that was like... | |
| I mean, they did want us to do premarital counseling. | |
| And did I do it? | |
| No, I didn't. Well, I think we did a little bit, but not anything... | |
| You know, it was like maybe a couple of sessions where you fill out a form and you kind of look at what you're compatible, but we didn't really do like really intensive. | |
| Yeah, that'll do it. | |
| So we didn't do an intensive like, let's go over how your life's going to go and let's spend six months. | |
| We did not do that. | |
| Yeah, a lot of times instead of going to the gym, I'll just check off, went to the gym and it's the same thing. | |
| I don't need to eat a meal. | |
| I just need to check off that I ate a meal and I'm full. | |
| Yeah, right. | |
| So... And your parents were happy that you were getting married. | |
| I mean, they did suggest some premarital counseling, but, you know, that's sort of like, maybe you should stretch a little before you go for a run. | |
| It's like, but it's not that big a deal if you don't, right? | |
| Right. Yes, that is correct. | |
| They were happy. Yeah, they were fine with me getting married. | |
| Okay, so they were completely wrong. | |
| Like completely and totally and heartbreakingly wrong. | |
| I'm not trying to dig on your parents. | |
| I'm just sort of pointing out the facts as you're mentioning. | |
| Yes, I have thought about this very thing and thought, why didn't they stop me? | |
| Why didn't they go, wait a minute? | |
| Those thoughts have occurred to me, yes. | |
| And do you know why, in particular for women, why do you jump from relationship to relationship or this sort of codependent needer? | |
| Do you know what the primary driver is for that? | |
| I guess the primary driver. | |
| I guess I don't know that I do know the primary driver. | |
| I guess do you feel a need to be with somebody? | |
| Well, that's just another way of saying, like, why do people need to feel... | |
| Why do people really want to be with someone? | |
| Because they feel the need to be with someone. | |
| It's like that doesn't really add much to the equation. | |
| Right. Why are people rich? | |
| They have money. No, no. A little more to it than that. | |
| Okay. Okay. Right. | |
| You're right. Maybe a need to feel loved? | |
| Well, I mean, we all have that, right? | |
| But that doesn't... Okay. But you end up not feeling loved, right? | |
| You didn't end up feeling loved by your first partner. | |
| You probably don't feel very loved. So if you really have a need to feel loved, then you go about it carefully, right? | |
| Right. I feel like I'm missing the question or missing the answer to this question again. | |
| Well... In particular, women. | |
| Why does a woman run from man to man? | |
| Because she's insecure, because she feels in danger, right? | |
| Okay. Because there's something in the world that is a threat, and she needs to protect her. | |
| Okay. Okay. | |
| I'll think about that one. | |
| I've never really thought about myself as being insecure, but yes, I can see that. | |
| Yeah. Listen, I don't want to tell you about you. | |
| You've lived with yourself for decades. | |
| We've been talking for a cozy 14 minutes. | |
| If you don't feel like you're insecure and my theory is not applicable, we absolutely will toss the theory aside and work with something else. | |
| Please tell me about your thoughts regarding that. | |
| I guess everybody has a certain level of Of insecurity with themselves, but I felt, I guess I felt like for the most part, I had been secure with my life, you know, and maybe as a younger, maybe as a younger person, maybe, maybe I was a little bit more insecure. | |
| But I feel like maybe maturity and growth, I'm more secure than I was. | |
| I don't want to ramble. | |
| No, no, ramble away. I do it all the time, so please, go ahead. | |
| Well, I'm just trying to think about what I'm saying, yeah. | |
| I guess I've never thought of myself as being insecure. | |
| I felt pretty secure in what I've done through life and made decisions, but maybe I was deceiving myself, and maybe I was more insecure, and that's why I was Well, no, I don't go with, I don't believe that's true, but maybe I'm just lying to myself. | |
| Like, if you don't feel like you're insecure, that's what we'll go with. | |
| I mean, the reason that I had this question is, you know, you married a guy with clear red flags, right? | |
| So the first guy you married, alcoholic family, like, absolutely clear red flags, right? | |
| I mean, if my daughter wanted to marry, you know, you get to talk to, like, official dad guy now, right? | |
| So if my daughter wanted to marry a guy, a very young guy, who was desperate to get out of his abusive household, what would I say? | |
| Yeah, and you would probably advise her not to. | |
| Oh, it would be more than an advice. | |
| It would be more than an advice. | |
| Yeah, it would be more than an advice. | |
| And I would also, of course, really sit down and grill, like, The soul out of that young man, right? | |
| I would cross-examine. I would grill. | |
| I would, you know, spend dozens of hours trying to... | |
| I would sit down with the family. | |
| I would like, you know, you got a vet, right? | |
| Because your kids are young. Right. | |
| Right. Yeah. Because I would have to spend a lot of time with these people. | |
| These people would be heavily involved in the raising of my grandchildren. | |
| Like, that's, you know, I would at least spend as much time vetting that as I would, I don't know, if I want to buy a new car or a new computer, right? | |
| Vet something, do some research, right? | |
| Yeah. So, you married the wrong first guy. | |
| I know we're really glossing it over, right? | |
| So, just forgive me for the oversimplification. | |
| But you married the wrong first guy because you didn't vet or your parents didn't vet, right? | |
| Right. And then, so that was the issue, right? | |
| And then you married the second guy who told you about his dysfunction, just as the first guy did. | |
| Well, my first marriage failed because I didn't vet. | |
| So you know what I should do is absolutely not vet the second guy. | |
| Right. So that means you have a drive or desire for a relationship, but no vetting. | |
| And it wasn't like these guys were hiding their dysfunction from you. | |
| You saw it. They told you all about it, right? | |
| Or at least they told you about it. | |
| I mean, your second husband was probably dropping this to see if you would care about him enough to ask more, right? | |
| Because men do that, right? | |
| If we talk about a vulnerability with a woman, we won't go into it in great detail because we don't know if the vulnerability... | |
| It's something that she cares about and wants to know more about because she cares about us and her history. | |
| Or if she's like, no, no, no, you have to be the tough guy. | |
| I don't want to hear about the stinking vulnerability stuff in a way, right? | |
| Uh-huh. So that's where I got some of the insecurity stuff. | |
| And by insecurity, I just mean that you don't feel particularly safe. | |
| Okay. Right? So if your parents didn't vet and you didn't vet the first guy and it was a disaster, did you have kids with the first guy? | |
| No. No. | |
| No, okay. So you start a marriage, right? | |
| Like you start a house, right? Yeah. | |
| Yeah, so you didn't vet and it was a disaster and then you actively avoided vetting the second guy. | |
| And did your parents vet the second guy? | |
| Did they say, whoa, whoa. | |
| Okay, so sorry. We really missed the red flags on the first guy, but boy, what a disaster that marriage turned out to be. | |
| So as parents, boy, you know, we got to... | |
| We've got to turn this around. | |
| We've got to make sure that we vet the second guy because we all missed the signs on the first guy. | |
| Man, we've got to make sure this marriage is better. | |
| Yeah, no. | |
| Because I had some reservations about whether I was doing the right thing, marrying so quickly, and I did go to my parents and I believe he was with me and we did have a discussion about whether this is okay. | |
| I guess they were like, yeah, I think it's fine. | |
| So I did get their blessing. | |
| Do you see why I say that you might have felt unprotected? | |
| Yeah, I do. | |
| I do. I see what you're saying. | |
| Did you share with your parents the molestation history of your husband-to-be? | |
| I don't. I don't think I've ever been molested. I've never been molested. I've never been molested. | |
| I doubt it. I don't know if I did. | |
| Yeah, you may be right. | |
| I mean, I know at some point I did later on because signs begin to happen in the marriage, but I don't know if it was before that. | |
| I might not have. You're right, I probably didn't. | |
| But I don't recall because it's been so long ago. | |
| Yeah, I know it's been a long time, but I'm sure that you didn't because if you wouldn't even ask your husband to be about what happened in detail because then you might not be able to get married to him. | |
| Right? So the reason I say that you feel insecure is it just means that you feel unprotected. | |
| Okay. And in my view, your parents did not do even 1% of what was needed to do to help protect you. | |
| Agreed. Let me ask you this. | |
| Let me ask you this. Were you, I'm not saying you aren't now, but back in the day, were you a sweet and pretty young thing? | |
| Yes. Okay, so a good-looking young woman, right? | |
| Correct. I mean, without any sense of modesty or nonsense like that, you, your friends, the boys, when you were 19, how would you rate yourself in terms of looks, sort of 1 to 10? | |
| Oh, I had a lot of guys always wanting to talk to me. | |
| Yeah, it looked good. Yeah. | |
| Attractive. So 9 or 10? | |
| Come on, let's just be... | |
| Yeah, all right. Give me a 10, sure. | |
| Okay. And see, 10 doesn't mean perfect. | |
| I don't know why people are so illiterate that they think 10 means absolutely perfect. | |
| I mean, that's not true. | |
| It just means top 10%, right? | |
| Okay, I like that. Sure. | |
| Yeah, yeah. So... So you were a beautiful young woman. | |
| And again, I always hate to say this to women who are a little older because it's not like you were beautiful. | |
| I'm just saying that you're probably beautiful now, but I'm just saying back then you were, right, a beautiful young woman. | |
| Yeah. And so your beauty was a bit of a danger magnet, right? | |
| Yeah. I mean, you know what I'm talking about, right? | |
| Correct. Yes, I do. | |
| Tell me the danger that your beauty represented. | |
| I mean, I guess you're saying I did often have men making passes, saying things. | |
| Even when I was married to my first husband, trying to flirty and stuff like that. | |
| I'm assuming that's maybe what you mean by just always having to feel guys like, no, I'm married. | |
| I can't do that. | |
| Well, not just that, but even before getting married. | |
| Oh. Right, so even before getting married, the big danger for beautiful women, of course, is why is the man choosing me? | |
| Is it for my virtues? | |
| Is it for my character? Is it for my morals and my ethics and my intelligence and my integrity? | |
| Or, you know, is it I fit this particular silhouette and I have fertility markers up the wazoo? | |
| Yeah, yeah. And I don't think that was ever a thought-out situation Thought in my head at that, you know, younger age of, you know, 18, 19, whatever, yeah. | |
| I'm sorry, are your parents not aware of the sin of lust? | |
| I thought you said they were good Christians. | |
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, yeah, they were. | |
| I don't know. I guess they didn't think about it in terms of me. | |
| I don't know. What? | |
| Well, I mean, I don't... | |
| I know they didn't think about it in terms of you with them, but, I mean, you know, I mean, the fact that if you have... | |
| A beautiful young woman as your daughter, being aware that some men are going to choose her for her looks, and that's a terrible basis for a relationship, I mean, that's a pretty important thing to talk about, isn't it? | |
| Yes. Yes. | |
| uh... yeah and i don't have any talk to you about that uh... | |
| in in not I guess a little, but not like really specific, like urgent, like you really need to think about this. | |
| It was just like a general, you know, you talk about it and you don't... | |
| Wow, we really are sailing in a fog later. | |
| What did they say? What did they say that you recall? | |
| I'm trying to think of... I guess I'm not remembering much of a conversation about, you know, be careful about the The lust that the guys are going to have. | |
| It was always like, you know, you got to be dressed modestly. | |
| You're a Christian young lady. | |
| And so you had to behave differently. | |
| But I don't know. Behave properly? | |
| Yeah. Cover up and behave properly. | |
| That's the extent of the duty management tips that you got? | |
| Yeah, I think maybe. | |
| Yeah, I'm not pulling up anything else, actually. | |
| I don't want to discredit my parents, but I just can't. | |
| Nothing's coming to mind right now that they were like, be really careful about this guy. | |
| I mean, I did have a bad boyfriend, I guess, before My husband. | |
| And they didn't like him and they kind of intervened and helped me. | |
| They told me he's a bad guy and you need to get away from him. | |
| So he was a bad guy. | |
| So your parents are good at identifying some bad guys. | |
| So what were the red flags they saw in him? | |
| Well, I mean, I found out he had another girlfriend and he was kind of wild and known as a partier. | |
| And so they thought he would be a bad... | |
| Bad influence on me, yeah. | |
| So you've got three guys. | |
| No, you've got three guys kind of cheating on you, right? | |
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
| Right, so you've got one guy cheated on you with another girlfriend, you had a husband who cheated on you with another woman, and you've got a guy who's kind of cheating on you with pornography. | |
| Do I have that correct? Yeah, yeah. | |
| Right, okay. I'm always looking for these kinds of patterns, right? | |
| Yeah. Were you... | |
| Did your parents... | |
| I mean, we all see pictures of our parents when they were younger, right? | |
| Uh-huh. Did your parents... | |
| Like, was your mother very pretty when she was younger? | |
| Did she have sort of experience with this? | |
| Or was this kind of like you're a bit of an outlier in the family history and maybe they didn't have much experience with this stuff? | |
| Yeah, no. I'd say that my parents... | |
| My mom was a pretty girl, but they didn't have any experience with that. | |
| They met at college and got married quickly. | |
| No, no, no, because you got married quickly too, right? | |
| Yeah, right, right. | |
| Would you say... | |
| I guess they stuck it out. | |
| They stayed together. | |
| I'm sorry, go ahead. | |
| I was going to say, but they're married. | |
| They stayed together in their marriage for... | |
| Well, you've stayed together with your husband for 33 years, so that doesn't always mean everything, and I'm not trying to diss your parents' marriage, but staying together isn't always the... | |
| Yeah, it was always a great thing. | |
| But would you say that when your mother was younger was she more pretty than you less pretty than you were about the | |
| same? | |
| I I | |
| Really don't know how to answer that question I mean, she was attractive, I guess, maybe the same. | |
| Okay. So, and do you know if your mother had any sort of bad boyfriends or negative experiences before she got married? | |
| To my knowledge, she did not. | |
| She didn't date a whole lot. | |
| Right, okay. And how old were you when you had the first loser boyfriend? | |
| Boyfriend? Probably 16. | |
| Yeah, probably 16. | |
| And what drew you to him? | |
| Oh, he was just one of those guy personalities that was just a big talker and funny and I thought he was cute. | |
| Hey man, there's nothing wrong with being a big talker. | |
| He said defensively. | |
| No, I'm kidding. Show 5,300 or something. | |
| I guess one of the things, I guess obviously he had charisma and all of that, but how susceptible are you To a tasty slice of man meat, a himbo, a square-jawed, tall, dark, and handsome kind of guy. | |
| Are you a looks person? | |
| Some people are. Some people aren't. | |
| It's not good or bad. I'm just curious. | |
| Yeah. I think I was, yeah, more susceptible than I am now. | |
| But, yeah, I mean, I had to be attracted to them. | |
| Of course you had to be attracted to them. | |
| But some people are a little more – generally, it's more men than women, although it can be women. | |
| Women, it seems, these days are more that way. | |
| Some men, as you know, just lose reason with a pretty face, right? | |
| I mean, you've probably experienced that countless times over the course of your life. | |
| And are you someone who is heavily swayed by physical looks? | |
| I could be, yes. | |
| You mean in the future, in another life, in another dimension? | |
| If you were a lizard, what does that mean? | |
| Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I think back when I was younger, yeah, I was probably more that way. | |
| Like, ooh, he's cute. Yeah, he's good looking. | |
| I mean, I think maybe most girls are like that. | |
| Yeah, I think that's true. But with maturity, you know, with maturity, you start to realize you need to look for, you know, other things. | |
| Well, but you haven't been on the market for well over three decades, so I don't know what this means now, right? | |
| Yeah, yeah. So in the past, yes, correct. | |
| Okay, so let me ask you this. | |
| Just talking about the three guys, right? | |
| First boyfriend, first husband, current husband. | |
| When you met them, how would you rate their looks, one to ten? | |
| When I met them, I guess I thought they were all pretty close to ten. | |
| Yeah. I mean, there was some personality that you find attractive to. | |
| So, yeah, I mean, not just the looks, but the personality. | |
| But it's kind of a side dish here. | |
| Right, right. The meat was fantastic. | |
| Yeah, the potatoes were good, too. | |
| Yeah. The looks were fantastic. | |
| Yeah. Okay, so what was the primary driver for choosing these men, right? | |
| If you've chosen these three men, there has to be something in common, right? | |
| What was the primary driver for choosing these three men? | |
| I guess their outgoing personality, they gave me attention. | |
| They thought I was fun to be around. | |
| Yeah, I guess. | |
| What is 10% of 10% of 10%? | |
| Yeah. 10%? | |
| So 10% of 10% is 1%, right? | |
| Yeah. And 10% of 1% is 0.1%, right? | |
| It's 1 in 1,000. So the odds of you marrying three 10s are 1 in 1,000. | |
| Mm-hmm. That's not... | |
| I wouldn't put any money on that, right? | |
| Right. So the looks had to be significantly important. | |
| The looks. I mean... | |
| Well, I mean, I guess if I wasn't going to be... | |
| Physically attracted somebody, then, yeah, I mean, it definitely had to be the looks. | |
| So, yes. And, you know, you're still a Christian, is that right? | |
| Yes. Okay. What does God, Jesus, and the Bible say about getting | |
| together with someone based on looks? Well, probably that's not the primary | |
| reason why you should. | |
| Well, yeah, it's a combination of two kind of sins, right? | |
| One is the sin of vanity. | |
| We look good together, right? | |
| Two tents walking down the street, going into a bar, sitting, I mean, there's a certain amount of envy there, right? | |
| Right. Right. So one is sort of vanity and one is pride. | |
| And the other is just a kind of shallowness, right? | |
| That looks fade, that the soul is more important than the body. | |
| And that spiritual beauty is unrelated to physical beauty. | |
| In fact, it sometimes can be the inverse, right? | |
| The less attractive. The body... | |
| Right? There's a sort of old joke about overweight women being funny, right? | |
| Because you have to find somebody to compensate or whatever, right? | |
| So a lot of times qualities of character are inversely proportional to physical looks, particularly when you're younger, right? | |
| I mean, if somebody is... | |
| There's a sort of old joke as well on the internet about, you know, how I became a millionaire at age 25. | |
| One, I got up at four in the morning. | |
| Two, I went to the gym every day. | |
| Three, I inherited a million dollars, right? | |
| Uh-huh. Right? And so we respect an entrepreneur who comes from nothing more than we respect an entrepreneur whose daddy gave him the company or whatever gave him the money and so on. | |
| So people who are born very physically attractive, they have a lot of stuff handed to them kind of on a platter, right? | |
| Mm-hmm. Okay. | |
| I mean, I got tons of dates when I was younger. | |
| It wasn't because I was the best boyfriend in the known universe, I'll tell you that, right? | |
| Just because I was handsome, right? | |
| So, the Bible sort of warns against the flesh, right? | |
| That the flesh is the devil's playground, right? | |
| The lust is the flesh, the body is not what you should be basing your love on, right? | |
| Correct. It should be love of virtue, love of spiritual characteristics, love of moral excellence, love of piety, love of humility to God and His commandments. | |
| And again, this is nothing, you've heard this a million times since you were a kid, right? | |
| And, you know, your parents are, or were, good Christians. | |
| You raised a nice young Christian lady, and... | |
| So, looks had to be pretty significant if you married three hunkasauruses in a row, or you dated and married three hunkasauruses in a row, right? | |
| Yes. Right. | |
| So... Let's talk about your first husband. | |
| And all of this is with the aim of, like I hadn't forgotten what we're actually here to talk about. | |
| I know it sounds like ancient archaeology and stuff, but trust me, it all has a purpose and a plan. | |
| I'm not just digging for no reason, right? | |
| So let's talk about your husband. | |
| What was it outside of his looks and his desire to get out of his crazy house and all of that? | |
| What qualities of character did you find admirable about him? | |
| He was a nice guy. | |
| He was funny. | |
| He was kind. Sorry. | |
| Oh, you mean you felt like he was a nice guy before he cheated on you? | |
| Yeah. Well, I mean, we were married and he didn't cheat on me until later on in the marriage. | |
| So it wasn't like he started off cheating. | |
| Well, no, but he wasn't a nice guy if it was on his list of things that he could do was cheat on you. | |
| True. Okay. | |
| Yeah, you're right. Okay, so you thought he was a nice guy, but you missed that he wasn't, right? | |
| What else? Yeah. | |
| I mean, we had fun together. | |
| Yeah. I mean, I... I... Yeah. | |
| I don't know. He was... It's even nice, and he was fun, and we got along well together. | |
| Okay, none of those are virtues, right? | |
| I feel like I'm failing. I feel like I'm failing so badly. | |
| No, don't. Honestly, I'm not trying to make you feel bad. | |
| Lord knows we all make these decisions when we're young. | |
| This is why we need this kind of coaching against it, right? | |
| But having fun together is not a virtue. | |
| Agreed. Right. And being pretty is not a virtue and all of that, right? | |
| So I guess sort of my question is that if you chose... | |
| I mean, your first boyfriend when you were 16, we can pretty much write off because he had another girlfriend pretty much at the same time and all of that kind of nonsense, right? | |
| And your parents obviously saw all of that. | |
| So... Were there virtues... | |
| Because what do you need most in a marriage? | |
| You need loyalty and a commitment to communication, right? | |
| Right. Now, you need a commitment to communication because sometimes in marriages there are times where you don't want to communicate. | |
| You're angry, you're withdrawn, you're upset, you're frustrated, and you just want to withdraw and not be in the conversation. | |
| And that's when you need the virtue called loyalty and a commitment to communication. | |
| So you communicate, right? | |
| And it seems to me what's kind of lacking in your relationships is this commitment to communication. | |
| Yes, you're right on. | |
| Well, and you're part of that because your current husband was talking about being molested as a child and you avoided that communication, right? | |
| Yeah, yes. | |
| And again, I'm not sort of criticizing. | |
| I'm just sort of pointing out the sort of trends as I see them. | |
| So the reason why you have to look for virtue is because without virtue, you can't have trust. | |
| Virtue is when you have consistently positive behavior, and in order to have that, you have to have integrity. | |
| And if somebody has integrity and is consistently positive in their behavior, then you can trust that person, right? | |
| Yes. I mean, if you've lent money to a friend ten times and that person has repaid you every single time, You don't fear on the 11th time that he's not going to pay you back, right? | |
| Yes. Right. | |
| Okay. So, first husband, no particular commitments to virtue that I can see. | |
| And again, this is actually good news, right? | |
| Because it tells you what's missing and then you can fix it, right? | |
| I mean, it's funny, you know, I don't know if you've ever watched this show, Kitchen Nightmares with Gordon Ramsay. | |
| I have, yeah. Okay, so you've seen these restaurants, right? | |
| And they're all losing money and people are going to lose their houses and life savings and it's all a disaster. | |
| And then people are desperate for Gordon Ramsay to like their food, right? | |
| They're going to serve their best food and the food is always crap, right? | |
| And people are really upset by that and I'm like, no, no, that's the best news you could get. | |
| Because if your food is excellent and your restaurant is failing... | |
| Well, that's not going to be easy to fix, right? | |
| If the food is crap and your restaurant is failing, then fix the food. | |
| It's really good news if the food is bad. | |
| I think you get it, right? | |
| I need to do another example. | |
| Yeah. So if there's something missing, then we can fix it. | |
| We can solve it, right? But if everything's perfect, then we can't, right? | |
| Yeah. So, like, if you're losing weight for no reason, you're probably ill, right? | |
| So, like, if you're losing weight, like, you know, I went in and I had my, you know, post-50s lovely experience with the colonoscopy, right? | |
| Oh, yeah. For no reason. | |
| And I said, no, I'm not losing weight for no reason. | |
| That's a good thing, right? And now if I said, oh, yes, I'm on a strict diet, then you say, okay, well, you're losing weight because you're on a diet, right? | |
| But if you're losing weight for no reason, that's bad. | |
| If there's a reason, that's good. | |
| If there's no reason, that's a disaster, right? | |
| So that's sort of what we're not trying to – yeah, I'm not trying to make you feel bad. | |
| I'm trying to say, okay, well, look, if there's something that's a sort of consistent pattern that's a problem – We can solve it. | |
| That's good news in my opinion, right? | |
| Yeah. Okay, so let's talk about your current husband. | |
| Okay. And what drew you to him, especially over the chaos of this divorce from your first husband? | |
| We started talking. | |
| He was a very kind, considerate, nice person. | |
| Um, I enjoyed, you know, hanging out with him. | |
| He gave me a lot of attention. | |
| Um, he, I, we had some mutual, uh, friends and I asked those people, you know, and they said, Oh yeah, he's a good guy. | |
| He's a good guy. And so, um, yeah, so we just started spending a lot of time together and, uh, uh, fell in love. | |
| Okay. And, and what did you fall in love with? | |
| That turned out to be true. | |
| Yeah. Well, I mean, he is a good person. | |
| I mean, he's a kind person. | |
| He cares. So I guess, I mean, I did fall in love with him. | |
| I just... | |
| There was just other things, I guess, that came with it that I didn't realize... | |
| Okay, so tell me what you mean by he's kind and he cares. | |
| I'm not disagreeing with you. Those are pretty open-ended words. | |
| Yeah. I mean, he's been a good father to his children. | |
| He's a good dad. In his work, he deals with people and he's good to people. | |
| Yeah, he... He does stuff for people at our church. | |
| He always says, I always want to help people. | |
| I have a friend that he is always happy to come help if she needs something. | |
| He's kind-hearted, I guess. | |
| Okay. Do you want more? | |
| No, if there's more, I'm obviously happy to hear. | |
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, yeah, let's just go ahead. | |
| Go ahead. What's his view of his own pornography use? | |
| I think there was... | |
| And he's not using it, well, to my knowledge... | |
| He's not using pornography now. | |
| When I discovered it, we had started counseling because I knew there was something not right with our sex life because he was having erectile dysfunction. | |
| This was back in like 10, 12, not 12 years ago. | |
| And I kept asking him, like, something's What's going on with you? | |
| I said, maybe we need to see a counselor and see what can be done. | |
| When we started going to the counselor, I happened to look at his history on the computer. | |
| I don't remember why, except maybe I was trying to figure out what was going on and discovered a lot of pornography in the history. | |
| There had also been When the kids, when my children were younger, a couple of times when my son and his friend were on the computer and some pornography had popped up and I realized, I was like, oh, this should not be on here. | |
| And when confronted, he lied about it and said that he had been looking at some The art that you see on people when they paint on their body. | |
| And he said, I was looking at that and I somehow ended up in pornography. | |
| And I bought that as an excuse. | |
| So I guess as I speak, I'm realizing that a lot of his pornography use, he really denied it first and tried not to acknowledge it. | |
| But when I found it, it was right there on the computer. | |
| He couldn't really deny it. | |
| But he did though, right? | |
| Yeah. Well, I mean, yeah, he still did. | |
| He tried to actually say maybe it was our son or something. | |
| And he tried to say maybe it was our son that was looking at it, but I knew that wasn't true. | |
| Oh, he blamed your son. | |
| Sorry, this is the kind person you're telling me about? | |
| I'm trying to sort of follow this moral path here, but it's getting a little thorny and dark. | |
| Yeah. Yeah, he did actually do that. | |
| And so that, I mean, that's been some years back. | |
| And so I don't, I mean, I don't know, I don't think he's looking at it anymore. | |
| But I mean, I guess what do I know, right? | |
| He could be and I'm just ignorant of it. | |
| Yeah. Right. | |
| I mean, and as far as I understand it, I did an interview with the guy about this years ago. | |
| Erectile dysfunction is one of the symptoms of pornography addiction. | |
| And of course, addiction generally involves lying and blaming and manipulating and all of that, right? | |
| Right, yeah. | |
| And there's a lot of that, yeah. | |
| And what happened over the course of your... | |
| And of course, the other thing too is that erectile dysfunction can be the sign of, you know, some fairly serious medical issues, right? | |
| And so, by not fessing up, he was also, I assume, alarming you and maybe even your doctor about potential health issues. | |
| Possibly, yeah. I mean, I guess I didn't really connect it as a health issue at that time, but yeah. | |
| Okay. So, what happened over the course of the couples counseling? | |
| Well... Once the pornography was discovered, she, the lady we were meeting with, suggested that maybe he see a male counselor. | |
| And I'm sorry to interrupt you, but did he confess at some point about this? | |
| He finally, I mean, he had to own it. | |
| So yeah, I mean, he did finally admit that he was looking at it, yes. | |
| Okay, got it. So he ended up going... | |
| Sorry, go ahead. Yeah, so he ended up going to a male counselor for about a year, maybe, yeah, probably about around a year, and I don't, I really don't know that they got a lot accomplished, you know, or I don't know, I don't know how forthcoming he was or how much he really wanted to own what he was doing, you know, and then he tried to say, oh, I'm all okay now, and We can move on. | |
| But did your sex life resume? | |
| Sorry to be so blunt, but... | |
| Yeah, yeah. No, no. I understand, yeah. | |
| It did. I mean, it did resume, but it was always... | |
| Yeah, he still had erectile dysfunction, and he would get different medications to help him with that. | |
| I mean, then after that, I did discover a few years later, like he was... | |
| Trying to get attention from different old friends, girls on Facebook, and he was messaging them and talking to them a little bit. | |
| Sorry, I'm not sure old friends, old girls? | |
| I'm not sure what that is. Reconnecting with girls from his past that he had known. | |
| And reconnecting on Facebook, like, hey, chatting and stuff. | |
| Yeah, I'm trying to remember one girl he was chatting with and then another girl he had I think maybe been his old girlfriend is what it was. | |
| And so I ran across some messages of some conversations on Facebook chat of him talking to her and then even discussing maybe she was coming to town and maybe he would meet up with her and see her. | |
| But I confronted him about that and then he stopped talking to her. | |
| Was it more than one ex or more than one woman? | |
| I did discover another girl also. | |
| It was like a late night phone call or something. | |
| And I confronted him about that. | |
| And he just said, yeah, he had talked to her real late one night. | |
| But I don't think she even lived in town. | |
| And the messages that he was exchanging with his ex, were they flirtatious in nature or more just factual or catch up or what? | |
| Yeah, they were flirtatious in nature, yes. | |
| And how long ago was this? | |
| This has been, let me think, back around 2012, 13, somewhere in there, I think. | |
| And then things sort of dried up, you said, about eight years ago? | |
| Yeah, probably around 2015. | |
| Yeah, it was just... It got to be to where... | |
| The sex was just always... | |
| He either couldn't... | |
| He could never complete an orgasm, or he couldn't even hold an erection, or he would have to have masturbation happen during the sex. | |
| He would have to masturbate himself in order to achieve a climax. | |
| Not super ideal or complementary towards you, I'm sure. | |
| No, no, no. | |
| Or if he... It would become painful because it was like trying and trying and nothing was happening. | |
| Oh, you mean painful for you? | |
| Yeah. Go, go, go, go, and nothing would happen. | |
| Finally, I just reached a point where I was thinking, I don't want to do this anymore. | |
| This is not fun. | |
| This is not anything I'm enjoying, and I don't want to do it anymore. | |
| Yeah, so we just stopped being intimate. | |
| And did it sort of die out, or did you have a conversation about it? | |
| You know, it just kind of died out. | |
| He didn't bring it up, and I just didn't initiate anything, and so yeah, it just kind of died out. | |
| Can't get it up, wouldn't bring it up. | |
| So, as far as the communication avoidance goes, right, that would be kind of a thing here, right? | |
| That, you know, sort of central defining characteristic of Marriage, as I mentioned before, is sexual activity, right? | |
| And we kind of know that because the primary defining characteristic of marriage is not financial because you can have financial relationships with other people. | |
| It's not friendship because you can have friendships with other people. | |
| It's sexual because you can't have sexual relations with other people. | |
| That's what monogamy means, right? | |
| Doesn't mean you can't have friends, you can't have business partners, you can't have acquaintances, you can't have whatever people you confide in, although not outside your marriage is not a particularly good idea. | |
| But isn't it fair to say that the primary defining characteristic of monogamy is sexual activity? | |
| Yes. Right. | |
| And that's sort of why I say, you know, it's a marriage at law, and you live together and so on, but it's not a marriage in the way that I would understand the term. | |
| And I think the definition of all of that is... | |
| Is sort of important. Okay, so it kind of dies out. | |
| Yeah, and so then I guess back in 20, I would say like around 22, back in February, he's... | |
| I'm sorry, 22 is 2022? | |
| Correct, correct. Okay, sorry. | |
| Yeah, yeah. He, on Valentine's, He gave me a letter. | |
| He wrote a letter and was just basically saying that he would like to be intimate again and could we talk about it. | |
| We talked about it some and I said, you know, I am at this point for me that I am not interested in that anymore because it's been so long and I don't I don't that's not where I want. | |
| I don't feel that way In our relationship anymore. | |
| And I said, you know, I understand if you don't want this and if we need to separate and divorce. | |
| I mean, I understand if that's what you want to do. | |
| So you'd rather divorce him. | |
| And I'm not criticizing. | |
| I just really want to make sure I understand this. | |
| You'd rather divorce him than try having sex with him again. | |
| Again, I know that sounds like a criticism. | |
| I don't mean it that way. I'm just trying to understand the decision here. | |
| Yeah. I just... | |
| That's seriously unfaunt memories of making the beast with two backs. | |
| I'm just sort of pointing that out. | |
| You're right. Yeah, I mean, it is. | |
| I didn't... It was just... | |
| I felt like I was always trying to please him and do stuff for him, and it just... | |
| I don't... It just doesn't make... | |
| I don't want to do it again, you know, with him. | |
| Well, it's... Again, I'm no woman, but as far as I can understand it, a failure for the man to get erection and achieve climax is... | |
| I would imagine that women would experience that as a significant rejection, a significant you don't find me attractive, you don't find me sexy, and... | |
| It's a hugely serious rejection. | |
| It's painful, right? | |
| Not just physically, obviously, if you can't complete, but emotionally. | |
| Right. Yes. I felt like I kept working at it and trying to do things that would make him happy. | |
| I just kind of felt like I'm done. | |
| I'm tired. I'm tired of battling this all the time. | |
| Well, I mean, you put couples counseling into it. | |
| He put a year's worth of therapy into it, and it didn't seem to improve, right? | |
| Right, right. | |
| I mean, so aren't you kind of then... | |
| I mean, if he stopped looking at pornography, and he's done a year's worth of therapy, and all of that, and you can't figure out a way to make this enjoyable for, I guess, either of you, I mean, I can understand being out of options. | |
| Like, what else can I do? | |
| Do I have to, like, I don't know, hire a dolphin and put in a bikini somewhere? | |
| I mean, like, what do you do? | |
| Yeah. Yeah. | |
| Okay, so you basically said, if I understand this correctly, we're not going to restart this. | |
| And if you want to divorce me, that's fine. | |
| Or not fine, but that's acceptable. | |
| And how did it go from there? | |
| Um, he says he does not want a divorce. | |
| Um, you know, he wants us to stay together. | |
| So I don't know if he, that back at that time, well, we, we did, uh, I said, well, we, I will do some, another counseling session with you, different counselor than before, somebody we both had been to. | |
| Uh, and so we met with her. | |
| I met with her first by myself and then we met with her together. | |
| And it was kind of the same scenario. | |
| She said, you know, y'all can, if y'all need to, you know, divorce, then, you know, you can do this and still be, you know, friends with each other. | |
| You can still, you know, you don't have to be an ugly divorce. | |
| And I'm sorry, you don't have to give me their ages in particular, but... | |
| Are your kids out of the house? | |
| Are they still around? | |
| They're grown. They're both out of the house. | |
| And so we talked to her and he was like, I don't want a divorce. | |
| I don't want that. | |
| Sorry, I'm not saying he should or shouldn't want a divorce, but I'm obviously curious as to What's his reasoning behind not wanting a divorce? | |
| Why doesn't he want a divorce? Because he loves me very deeply. | |
| He said, I love you. I love you very much. | |
| I don't want... | |
| He said, you're my person. | |
| I want you. And I don't want anybody else. | |
| I'm sort of having trouble, and I'm sure it's just my deficiency, so hopefully you can be patient, but... | |
| Okay, do you know if he told, the first therapist that he saw for a year, did he tell that therapist about his sexual abuse? | |
| I do not know if, I don't know what they talked about for a year. | |
| That was the idea, that he would meet with them. | |
| And I think he did, he said he did talk to him some about it, but I don't know how. | |
| It was more, I think it might have been more focused on the pornography and just like behavior modification for not Sorry, I assume that the root of the addiction would have something to do with the manifestation experiences. | |
| Right. Yeah. I mean, I don't know for sure, but that was the plan. | |
| That was what he was supposed to do. | |
| So, I mean, it was desperately important for you to know what was going on with his therapy, wasn't it? | |
| Yeah. Yeah. | |
| So, why wouldn't he tell you? | |
| I guess, well... | |
| I mean, was he actually going? | |
| Yeah, he was going. How do you know? | |
| As far as I know. Well, we paid for it. | |
| So, yeah. So, he went, but I mean, this is kind of like, I mean, to sort of take an extreme example, if your spouse is You know, they suspect that they have cancer or the doctor suspects he has cancer and they run a test. | |
| They take a biopsy, they do an analysis, they run a test. | |
| I mean, it's pretty important to share the results with your spouse, isn't it? | |
| Yeah, yeah. | |
| I mean, you're diagnosing a massive dysfunction at the core of your marriage and trying to fix it and he's not telling you anything about the cure? | |
| No, no. I mean, it's like he's going through chemo and, you know, how's it going? | |
| Oh, fine. Yeah. | |
| Are you good? Are you going to die? | |
| Are you going to get better? We'll see. | |
| The withholding of this information compared to the deep and abiding love, I'm having trouble getting that square into the circle, if that makes sense. | |
| It does, yeah. | |
| Yeah, it does make sense. | |
| So, I mean we can't really theorize about him because he's not here, though of course I'd be fine to talk with him if | |
| he wants to, but I'm just trying to sort of puzzle this one out. | |
| out. | |
| Yeah. So I guess I should... | |
| I guess I feel like whenever I would ask questions, I didn't get a whole lot of information. | |
| So... Okay, so... | |
| Even when, like... | |
| Things would happen, and I could see he would have depression. | |
| And I would say, you know, sit down, tell me what's going on. | |
| And he would be like, well, I don't know. | |
| And he wouldn't ever give me a lot of information because I'm just struggling with some stuff or I don't want to talk about it. | |
| And so even the other day... | |
| We'd had a blow-up previously, and again, another talk about whether we should stay together. | |
| And he said, well, I could give you that whole thing if you want to know it, but basically, in my house, there's a window that you can see into the bathroom, and I discovered that he had fixed the window to where he could peek in and look Look at me when I was unaware, you know, addressed. | |
| And when I discovered that, I was very upset and I felt very uncomfortable by the whole thing. | |
| So I had a confrontation and I said, hey, I know you're not happy. | |
| And, you know, I think maybe we should just consider separating. | |
| I'm not saying we have to divorce, but Would you like to, you know, one of us move out. | |
| Either you can move out, we'll get you an apartment, and just kind of take things from there. | |
| Because I said, obviously, you're still not happy. | |
| You're not happy with the way things are after I told you clearly, you know, how I feel. | |
| And I was very, he said, well, I just don't understand why you don't, Want to try having sex. | |
| I think you need to try to go to trauma therapy. | |
| Maybe you need the traumatic therapy to get you over it so that you'll feel like having sex again. | |
| I laid it out as to how distasteful and how much I didn't enjoy sex with him. | |
| I was probably the most blunt I have ever been about it wasn't fun. | |
| You made me feel bad. | |
| It was uncomfortable. All you could do was masturbate. | |
| I laid it All out to him. | |
| And I said, you know, so if we need, this is where I am. | |
| This is how I feel, and this is how it's going to be. | |
| But he still was very emotional, crying and saying, no, I don't want us to divorce. | |
| I love you. I love you. | |
| I want you here. | |
| So we had that long conversation. | |
| And then the next day, he came home from work. | |
| And I could tell like he was still edgy and still, it seemed like he'd been better the day before, but then he came home the next day and I said, so you seem upset, you know, what's going on? | |
| And oh, I don't want to talk about it. | |
| And I said, well, okay. | |
| And so we ate dinner and then a few minutes later, I was like, are you feeling a little better now? | |
| Do you want to tell me what was going on? | |
| He goes, I just, I don't want to talk about it. | |
| I just, I don't want to talk about it yet. | |
| And so trying to get him to give me information is... | |
| He doesn't ever want to give information. | |
| Right. I just want to understand the window thing. | |
| So this was a... Was he watching you showering or on the toilet? | |
| Or what was the idea behind that? | |
| No, he could see in like... | |
| It's a big closet bathroom thing. | |
| And so there's blinds there. | |
| That for privacy, because it opens up into a common room. | |
| It's a it's at it was a anyway, it opens up into a common room. | |
| So there's a blinds that are for privacy. | |
| And but and I, if you turn the blinds a certain up or down, if you turn them down, you can sort of see into the bathroom. | |
| And I always make sure the blinds are turned And they're up for the privacy because, I mean, other people could walk into that room too, so it's for privacy. | |
| But apparently he had gone in there, and I don't know when, but had turned the blinds down so that if he walked in, he could kind of look into the bathroom and see me if I happened to be walking around undressed. | |
| Oh, so it wasn't just a bathroom like a toilet. | |
| It was like a bathroom, like a bath and a shower and so on. | |
| Right, it's a big closet. | |
| Yeah, a big closet that has a bathroom too, yes. | |
| That's a compliment? | |
| That he finds you physically attractive? | |
| I mean, I know it's a bit of a reach, but I mean, I guess that's the most positive feedback you've had in years. | |
| I guess. | |
| I'm not saying it's ideal, but you know. | |
| I just feel like it was an invasion of privacy. | |
| It was like you were trying to sneak and do this when unaware. | |
| No, no, no. Look, I get it. | |
| I was just making a joke. | |
| I mean, the Peeping Tom stuff is not exactly... | |
| No. Not good. | |
| It's not good, so I'm sorry if that landed wrong. | |
| Okay, so when you talk about his depression, and this is the first time you mentioned sort of the blow-up thing because you haven't mentioned the blow-up before. | |
| So tell me a little bit about how do you know if he's depressed? | |
| I assume it's not like he can't get out of bed stuff. | |
| No, but his whole demeanor is different. | |
| He's not talking much. | |
| He'll just sit in front of the television and not talk to me much. | |
| I can tell the way he's acting that he's over going on another... | |
| He'll be up for a while and then he'll go on another down tick of depression. | |
| But he still can do his job, yeah. | |
| Okay, and how often do you feel that you connect in terms of a good conversation? | |
| How often? | |
| I guess it would depend on what you mean by a good conversation. | |
| Like, we'll get home from work, and I cook dinner, and we'll sit and we'll chat about our day. | |
| You know, talk about what might have happened at work. | |
| So we sit and talk and talk about family stuff. | |
| So, yeah, I mean, we do that pretty much daily. | |
| Like an information exchange, right? | |
| Right, right. In terms of like a conversation, a marital conversation is one you can only have with your spouse. | |
| Like you, I don't know, you say things that... | |
| Okay, so when was the last time? | |
| I'm sorry? | |
| I guess a couple of weeks ago when we had that conversation about whether we were going to stay together was probably the last big conversation, I guess. | |
| Okay. When was the last time that you had an important conversation that was positive or engaging, enjoyable? | |
| You mean besides just coming home and talking? | |
| Session that you can only have with your spouse that was positively engaging and enjoyable | |
| Um, I don't know I'm kind of That idea is not coming to me immediately. | |
| I mean, talking about our granddaughter, talking about Family stuff like that. | |
| Yeah, you can talk about that with anybody. | |
| I'm not saying, right, but that's not specific to your spouse, right? | |
| Right. Yeah. | |
| Maybe there hasn't been one. | |
| Do you mean, I mean, over the course of the marriage or that you can remember recently? | |
| That I can remember recently. | |
| So what's one in the distant past or medium to distant past that you can recall? | |
| Um... Oh, man. | |
| I don't know. | |
| I'm not really... | |
| Nothing's coming to me. | |
| I mean, you can do it. | |
| I mean, would you say it's a fair characterization to say that you and I are having a fairly meaningful conversation at the moment? | |
| Yes. And how do you feel about... | |
| Talking in this kind of depth or in this kind of way? | |
| How do I feel about it? | |
| I mean, I've been really stressed about the whole idea that I was going to talk to you. | |
| Well, I am terrifying. | |
| It wasn't you, it was me. | |
| No, no. Every morning I wake up, I look in the mirror like, oh my God, I have to be me for the whole day. | |
| I'm stressed. No, I get it. | |
| No, I get it. It's a tough conversation. | |
| But over the course of the conversation, how do you feel? | |
| I'm better now. | |
| I'm feeling better. You're making me think about a lot of things, so that's good. | |
| Right. Okay, so you can do these conversations. | |
| I mean, you're frank about things that sometimes can be difficult to talk about and so on. | |
| Right. And you can do this kind of stuff. So do you think if your husband was on | |
| the call or if it was just me and your husband talking, how do you think it | |
| would go? I mean I think he would. | |
| I don't know how... | |
| He would talk, but sometimes he starts just kind of getting off task. | |
| Yeah, but I know that. | |
| I can draw him back on that, but how do you think it would go if we were plumbing the depths together, so to speak? | |
| Yeah. I mean, it might go okay. | |
| Yeah, I mean, I guess he would talk to you. | |
| So you can both do it, right? | |
| Right. You just can't do it with each other. | |
| Yeah, we struggle with that, for sure. | |
| Well, if you can't really remember the last time you had a positive, engaging, deep, meaningful conversation, it's more than a struggle, isn't it? | |
| Yeah, well, I mean, I guess, you know, he gets real caught up in Politics and all this stuff that's happening in current events and he can be very negative about it. | |
| If we try to have a conversation, I finally just go, okay, never mind. | |
| I don't want to talk about that anymore because it just gets too emotionally driven, I guess. | |
| Oh, like you can't make him feel better? | |
| Right, yeah. | |
| You can't de-escalate his political doom and gloom. | |
| Yeah, yeah. | |
| Right, I mean, because that's one of the massive advantages, of course, of being married is that the other person can help talk you out of your crazy tree and help you put things in perspective or remind you of the things you can change and the things you can't change and help you distinguish between the two and, you know, Yeah. | |
| We all go crazy on our own. | |
| In our relationships, we have a chance of sanity, but on our own, if you're locked up in your own head, we all drift towards nuttiness. | |
| Right. He definitely can drift toward nuttiness without just letting things get him so upset, rattled about what's happening and How ridiculous things are. | |
| I finally go, well, I don't even want to talk about it because we have similar ideas, but sometimes he's just over the top with it or he gets into such a conspiracy theory that's like, come on, let's think about this. | |
| Well, if the conversation is, let me spend three hours convincing you to be as depressed and anxious as I am, well, that's not... | |
| Well, yeah. Particularly enticing, is it? | |
| Right, right. No, no. | |
| Because I'm like, you know, it's terrible, but it doesn't affect my life that much, you know. | |
| Well, and you can't, I mean, what could you do about it? | |
| Right, exactly. Exactly, yeah. | |
| So, I mean, you can keep your eye on it, and you can hopefully stay somewhat mobile and nimble if you have to move or whatever, right? | |
| But, you know, I mean, you can't fix it, right? | |
| You can't solve it, right? Right, right. | |
| So, all right. Alright. And was there something in particular? | |
| Was it this blow-up? | |
| What was it in particular that had you write me the initial email? | |
| Yeah, it was. | |
| My son, he's the one that introduced you to me. | |
| He's like, Mom, I listen to him all the time. | |
| He can help people figure things out, and I feel like he would be helpful in helping you. | |
| Because I had talked to him after our blow-up, and he said, well, it sounds like y'all are determined to stay together, but he said maybe he can give you some advice or some insight as to something that would be helpful. | |
| So that's kind of an interesting path for you to end up talking to me, boy. | |
| Hey, this is random on the internet you should talk to. | |
| Oh yeah, sounds great. | |
| I mean, I had listened. | |
| He sends me calls and I'd listen to you and I'm like, oh yeah, this guy, you really know how to Get people to think about things. | |
| It might be something rolling around in that speckle-headed noggin of his. | |
| Yeah, I'm with you. | |
| I hope so too. This would not be something I would have done on my own for sure. | |
| But I love my son dearly and he's a good man and I feel like you've had a positive influence on him because he really listens to how you deal with people and so, yeah. | |
| Until this call, which he's going to faint and scream about. | |
| I'm just kidding. No, I thought it would be a little awkward if he listens to this for him to hear all the gory details of his parents. | |
| You know, he's a big boy. | |
| He's a man. He'll handle it. | |
| Okay, so what is your ideal? | |
| What would be the best outcome? | |
| I mean, not just of this call, but in terms of your life as a whole. | |
| You know, I just want to, you know, I like, you know, my family being able to get together. | |
| I like, I love my husband. | |
| I do. I love him. | |
| Ideally, if we could just live peacefully together, you know, and I, no big change had to happen. | |
| I don't want a divorce. | |
| I don't, divorce doesn't always solve things. | |
| And I, you know, I don't know that this would just Solve our problems either. | |
| So just to be peaceful and to come home and to be able to enjoy him and us to be able to sit and talk together. | |
| You want him to be a woman? | |
| Oh, no. A little bit. | |
| A little bit. I say this with great affection and respect. | |
| Okay, look. Let's be real. | |
| Now, you... | |
| As a woman, have this, to men, incomprehensible capacity to turn off your sex drive. | |
| Is that fair to say? | |
| Yeah. Like a woman who doesn't have sex for a long time turns into a car that's been left in a field for 30 years, right? | |
| I mean, it doesn't start anymore. | |
| I don't mean to be overly glib, but there's a switch that women have that men really don't have. | |
| Is that fair to say? Yeah, yeah. | |
| I mean, again, I don't want to tell you your life, so if I'm incorrect about any of this, you know, tell me and we'll change course, but you don't miss too much, if I understand this rightly, not having a sex life. | |
| I don't because I did enjoy, I mean, there was a point in my life, I enjoyed it, but I don't miss it because it was not enjoyable and you don't miss something that you didn't enjoy. | |
| Right, I get that. To a man, that's somewhat incomprehensible. | |
| Right. I mean, and again, I don't want to speak for your husband, but, you know, testosterone is a significant driver of sexual energy, and men have, what, I don't know, 17 times the amount of testosterone that women have and so on, right? | |
| So, it's not too shocking to me that you're okay with the way things are, and your husband is not, right? | |
| Right. Right. | |
| And it doesn't help that he thinks he needs to get hormone pellets. | |
| So, yeah. I'm sorry. | |
| Say again? He needs to get what? | |
| He gets the hormone pellets that you get because he felt like he needed more testosterone because he wanted to build muscle, you know. | |
| So, he gets testosterone pellets. Oh, wait. | |
| So, he's taking testosterone supplements and he's working out? | |
| Yeah. Well, he doesn't really work out. | |
| Wait, how is he expecting to build muscle? | |
| What is he doing? That's an excellent question, yeah. | |
| He pretends. | |
| He'll go work out once every couple of weeks and go, oh, I worked out. | |
| So, yeah. So do it. | |
| Okay, so, I mean, Lord above help you if he's on testosterone supplements and he works out, then you're doomed. | |
| You'll have to get a bodyguard. | |
| Yeah. Okay, so are you guys in your 50s, 60s? | |
| Unfortunately, I just turned the big 6-0, so yeah, I have to say the 6-0. | |
| No, don't ever say unfortunately, ever. | |
| Well, that's true. Good point. | |
| You know, aging sucks, but it infinitely beats the alternative, right? | |
| That's true. Right. So... | |
| It's better to have problems than no problems, if you know what I mean. | |
| Yeah. Okay, so you... | |
| If somebody said to you... | |
| I know this sounds like an odd thing. | |
| If somebody said to you, that's it, you're never having sex again until the day you die, you'd be like, yeah, but as long as things are relatively peaceful and I'm content, that's okay, right? | |
| Yeah, I mean, you can always... | |
| Yeah, yeah, I get it. I get it. | |
| Sorry, I'm just hearing the sound of your son thudding up in the direction. | |
| I'm just kidding. I'm kidding. No, forget it. | |
| Forget it. Don't worry. Forget him just for now. | |
| We're talking about you. Edit that part out, yeah. | |
| You have focused so much on your family, we've got to focus on you, right? | |
| So that's fine. Yeah. So you would be okay without sex with your husband until the day you die, right? | |
| Yeah. Right. And your husband... | |
| Is not okay. Now, did this desire to resume sex, did that arise? | |
| Did you call them pellets? | |
| Sounds like something to put up a horse's butt. | |
| Like pellets? Well, you know, you slit a little spot in the hip and you insert these pellets and the doctor sews it up and then you get them every, you know, five, six months. | |
| So, yeah. Wow. Oh, like they're like slow dissolve? | |
| Yeah. Alpha Celsius of masculinity? | |
| Okay, got it. Right on. | |
| I'm surprised you haven't heard of him. | |
| I had no idea you could sew your manhood into your hip. | |
| I had no clue about that. | |
| Yeah. Oh, I forgot. | |
| What was your question? Do you know, was he diagnosed low T or low testosterone? | |
| Yeah, correct. That is correct. | |
| Yeah. All right. And was it after these pellets that he approached you for sex? | |
| It seems to be, yeah, once they're first inserted, yeah, it's more, yeah, I think his drive is higher. | |
| And then as the pellets absorb, I think then it kind of goes back down again. | |
| So, yeah, it seems like that is a pattern that I've noticed. | |
| Oh, and again, I hesitate to Slip myself into your shoes, so to speak, but it does seem less than hugely complimentary if it's like the pellets are drawing me to you, honey. | |
| Well, that's true. I hadn't even thought about that. | |
| Yeah, that's true. If it's like just, you know, my hormones are drawing me to you. | |
| Right. I mean, yeah, that's not a hugely intimacy, love, connection kind of thing, right? | |
| Right. That's true, yeah. | |
| Okay, so the reason I was sort of making a joke and saying you want him to be like a woman is because you can switch off, you can bypass, you can have a content life relatively, but especially if he's getting super extra manhood by these hip pellets. | |
| It wasn't a sentence I thought I was going to say today, but all right, we'll roll with it. | |
| If he's becoming super extra manly, Because of this TRT, then he's becoming more man, and he's not going to... | |
| It's not likely that... | |
| I mean, he has no off switch, right? | |
| Mm-hmm. Right. | |
| So... The idea that... | |
| Sorry, so for the low testosterone, was it a health issue that he was concerned about? | |
| Is it something else that, like, why did he take this therapy? | |
| Well, according to what his prescription, when I saw it, it said for depression and anxiety. | |
| That was what the doctor wrote on the reason why he should have the pellet, and that he had low T. Right, yeah, I think those two are associated, if I understand my... | |
| Biology, somewhat. | |
| And has he become less depressed and anxious since he's been on this therapy? | |
| No. Oh. | |
| Is that because he's consuming Twitter? | |
| Maybe. I don't know. | |
| Yeah. Probably. Yeah. | |
| Because if a man is faced with stress that he can't manage, and political stuff can do that to you, right? | |
| Where the man, you're just constantly threatened with danger. | |
| Which I can't do anything about then you get depressed and anxious right? This is one of the dangers of consuming | |
| politics, right? | |
| Well, yeah, and you know, he has been He's been buying guns | |
| and he came well, I discovered an AR-15 in the closet and I didn't know he'd purchased this gun and | |
| And so that was another confrontation we had about a month ago because I was like, why did you buy this? | |
| And he said, for protection. | |
| I said, well, are you taking up hunting? | |
| Because usually that's what people use an AR-15 for is hunting. | |
| And he didn't give me an answer there. | |
| He's like, no, we do for protection. | |
| Listen, my friend, my fine lady. | |
| Oh, dear. He's a man. | |
| There are indications of social unrest. | |
| He's concerned. Right. | |
| Yeah. Mock his manhood and his desire to keep his family safe at your significant peril. | |
| I just mean emotionally, right? | |
| Yeah. Well, and it's not like we don't have other guns. | |
| No, I get that. I get that. | |
| I understand that. But he's a man. | |
| Yeah. So he wants to feel very secure and safe in protecting his family. | |
| Okay. Okay. So, look, one of the things that kills the male-female dynamic in a marriage is the eye roll. | |
| And trust me, my good friend, men have as much reason to eye roll about women's stuff as women do about men's stuff. | |
| I don't know why we need 400 throw pillows on the bed. | |
| Because they're pretty. I don't know why we need coasters on a plastic table. | |
| I don't know why there are soaps I can't use. | |
| I don't know why a small nation needs this many towels, let alone our house. | |
| It's delightfully incomprehensible. | |
| I don't know why things need to be cleaned again when they're already clean. | |
| I don't know why we need to rinse everything when we have a very good dishwasher. | |
| I don't know why. | |
| Do I roll my eyes? | |
| I do not. Because I trust my wife. | |
| She's a wonderful homemaker. | |
| I don't understand it, but I assume she understands it. | |
| And if it works for her, it works for me. | |
| So, for a woman to look at the things that she doesn't understand about the man, the big temptation is to roll the eyes, right? | |
| That's not a good idea. | |
| I mean, unless he's spying on you in the bathroom, in which case, absolutely, that's a bad idea, and you should confront that, right? | |
| Right. But men and women, we are delightfully incomprehensible to each other. | |
| I mean, that's a fair way. | |
| You don't know why he needs all these things. | |
| But if you roll your eyes, how does the man experience that? | |
| Yeah, I'd say it's a negative. | |
| Yeah, I put down against it. | |
| What a man feels is that you don't like that he's a man. | |
| That you would prefer he be a woman. | |
| My wife makes the bed like she's going to be inspected by the editors of Architectural Digest. | |
| Like, every female ancestor back to the single-celled organisms is going to come and judge her. | |
| I mean, I'm obviously making a joke here, but I understand making the bed. | |
| You know how men make the bed if we make the bed. | |
| How do men make the bed if we make the bed? | |
| Kind of throw the sheets up and toss the pillows on. | |
| It's vaguely horizontal. | |
| Yeah. It's vaguely one thing on top of the other, right? | |
| And, you know, most men, what do we do? | |
| We crawl under the covers and in the morning, if we live alone, we pull the covers, we put the covers back and the next time we crawl back into that womb again and we don't even think about it during the day, right? | |
| Right. I mean, after I got married, I learned there was such a thing as toothbrush holders. | |
| You ever heard of these? Yes. | |
| They're incredible. They literally hold your toothbrush up. | |
| So that it doesn't touch the... | |
| I don't know, what is the thing called that's next to the sink? | |
| The countertop! The countertop! | |
| I don't even know the names for these things! | |
| I can tell you every single processor of every single computer I've ever owned, but I don't know what that thing is that you put the toothbrush holder on is called, right? | |
| I don't know why... | |
| There are also these other things called tea towels. | |
| And if the question is, can you ever have enough tea towels, the answer apparently is no. | |
| Yeah. You don't dry a lot of stuff. | |
| Well, apparently you just dry a lot of stuff, right? | |
| Also, apparently it's really bad. | |
| You have multiple different fork sizes. | |
| You're aware of this, right? Mm-hmm. | |
| Right. Now, multiple different fork sizes apparently... | |
| You know those little cutlery dividers that you have in the drawers? | |
| Yes. Apparently it's important that they go into the correct one. | |
| Like each size. Right, right. | |
| Of course. Your wife sounds like she's brilliant. | |
| Well, see, here's the thing. | |
| You've got a wonderful woman, Steph. | |
| I do have a wonderful woman. | |
| It's an incomprehensible genius to me. | |
| I don't follow it. I don't understand it. | |
| I do it. I never roll my eyes. | |
| Why? Because my wife also has like this, you know, how do men test food in the fridge? | |
| Is it okay to eat? Yeah, if you're lucky. | |
| Otherwise, we just eat it and hope for the best. | |
| If it's not specifically squirmy or furry or blinking, we'll just eat it, right? | |
| That's what we do. We'll just eat it and, you know, I'm a man. | |
| I'm robust. I'm a barrel of acid. | |
| It will destroy whatever is bad that's in there, right? | |
| I mean, it's just men. I mean, it wasn't the women who tested which berries were poisonous. | |
| That was a dude thing, right? | |
| Of course. | |
| But my wife has like this incomprehensible ability to know exactly what's the freshest | |
| and what's maybe not so fresh and when things need to be thrown out and all that in the | |
| fridge. | |
| It's bizarre to me. | |
| I barely even know what's in the fridge but she's got it down to a fine art, a T across, | |
| she's got a database going on in there. | |
| It's like incredible. | |
| So I mean, you know, we could sort of do this kind of thing all day but I don't know why | |
| this dress is needed and this dress is not. | |
| I don't know why she needs all these shoes, but she does. | |
| And that's fine. I don't roll my eyes. | |
| Because why? Because I'm glad she's not a man. | |
| Because I'm not gay. So the fact that she does stuff that's incomprehensible to me is because she's a woman and I'm not. | |
| And so your husband is going to get involved in politics. | |
| Why? Because that's what we do as men. | |
| We scan for danger. I mean, you see the male lions. | |
| What do they do? The female lions all playing with the cubs. | |
| What are the male lions doing? They're patrolling the circumference. | |
| They're looking for danger. They're looking for food. | |
| They're looking for other lions or aggressive animals that could come and disrupt. | |
| So the men, we keep our eyes on the horizon. | |
| We keep our eyes on the borders. And women keep their eyes generally on the kids and the home. | |
| And it's great and wonderful, right? | |
| Yes. So, you know, the woman lion, I'm sure if they could speak, they'd say to the male lion, what are you doing out there all day? | |
| Why don't you just stay around? | |
| It's like, I can't. | |
| Because there's danger out there. | |
| And as a man, your instinct is to scan the horizon. | |
| This is a little bit behind the doom scrolling in Twitter or whatever, right? | |
| Right. But you scan the horizon and you look for danger. | |
| And women are called roll the rice, right? | |
| And it's like, do you know why women get to roll their eyes? | |
| Because men have successfully scanned the horizon for danger and created a civilization where women are protected. | |
| And then women are like, why do you scan for danger? | |
| It's like, that's the whole reason you're protected. | |
| The reason you can ask me why I scan for danger is that I've successfully scanned for danger. | |
| So... Yeah, so... | |
| So finding a way to love and respect... | |
| What is incomprehensible about your spouse for the very reason that it is incomprehensible is a really great trick for marriage. | |
| You know, rolling your eyes at a man who's behaving as a man is rejecting his masculinity. | |
| I'm sure if I were talking to your husband and I say, well, what does your wife do that's kind of incomprehensible to you? | |
| I'm sure he could go on for the whole afternoon, right? | |
| Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, for sure. | |
| I mean, apparently there's such a thing as child-proofing your home. | |
| That's completely fascinating. | |
| Didn't happen when I was a kid, but I'm sure you were pretty focused on that when you had your kids, right? | |
| Yes, absolutely. | |
| I mean, apparently, before you give your kids milk in a bottle that you've heated, where do you put it on your body? | |
| You test it on your arm. | |
| Yeah, you test it on the inside of your forearm, right? | |
| Right, right. Because apparently that's a sensitive... | |
| I had no idea. Men only think about one sensitive area. | |
| So apparently that's another one. | |
| Apparently there are two. I had no idea. | |
| That's not a good idea. Right, right. | |
| So your husband is different from you. | |
| And, you know, the French say vive la différence, right? | |
| Relish and enjoy the difference. | |
| Right, so you find his AK-47. | |
| I assume it's all legal. You find his AK-47 and you say... | |
| I'm glad there's something long and hard in the house. | |
| No, I'm kidding. Don't say that. You say, tell me what your thoughts are. | |
| That's really cool that you got this. | |
| Tell me what's going on. | |
| I didn't handle that well then. | |
| I didn't do a good job there. | |
| It's this kind of weird thing where we're all taught or instructed that we all have to be like each other and that Women are like men and we're all the same and any deviance is wrong or bad. | |
| And this is kind of a thing that women are wonderful, right? | |
| The ideal standard in modern culture is a woman and everything that deviates from that is bad, right? | |
| Which is why the girls who sit nicely in class are praised and the boys who go insane because they're being treated like girls get ADHD and drugs, right? | |
| It's just this weird thing that's going on in society as a whole. | |
| So if you... | |
| If you respect and are curious about your husband's differences from you, that which is incomprehensible to you should be interesting and fascinating. | |
| And you should enjoy that because you're not a lesbian and he's not gay. | |
| So you should enjoy the things that your husband does that make no sense are exactly why you're with him. | |
| Because if everything your husband did made sense, you'd be with a woman. | |
| Okay, right. Yeah. | |
| It's a wonderfully foreign territory that you get to explore in perfect safety for the rest of your life and | |
| enjoy the journey. | |
| Okay. | |
| Relish that he's a man just as he should relish that you're a woman. | |
| Now, I don't know. I mean, there could be some arguments as to how that might end up helping your sex life. | |
| But if he feels that way, Yeah. He has said, | |
| I don't have to have the sex, but if you will just be more affectionate. | |
| And that was something I was definitely failing at for a long time because I was angry. | |
| And so I've tried to come around and do that and give him more affection and give him a kiss and touch him. | |
| And so that's something I definitely need to I'm still working on, working toward that. | |
| Okay, and I want to help you with that. | |
| I want to help you with that. So, is your husband a good provider? | |
| Yes. Okay, does he make more money than you do? | |
| Yes. Okay, do you know why he makes more money than you do? | |
| Because his job pays him more. | |
| Because I guess we went with the idea that the man is the provider. | |
| Yeah, I get that. So the reason why he's a good provider is because he's a man. | |
| Do you enjoy the money that he makes? | |
| I do. Right. | |
| You understand that the money and the guns come from the same place. | |
| Right, yeah. He pointed that out to me in our conversation, so yes. | |
| Yeah, to provide and to protect, right? | |
| That's what men do, to provide and protect. | |
| Right. Right, so how successful would your husband be If you mocked him for his career and rolled your eyes at every paycheck he brought home. | |
| Yeah, that wouldn't be good. | |
| It'd be pretty tough, right? Right. | |
| So, you can't slice and dice people, particularly men and women. | |
| We can't slice and dice. Right? | |
| So, the masculinity... | |
| It sounds like you slice your husband, slice and dice your husband. | |
| Okay. Okay. The masculine impulse for him to be a good provider, and you said he was a good father, fantastic, right? | |
| So the good father, the good provider, that's the masculinity. | |
| So you don't get to carve up the masculinity into good and bad. | |
| This part I like, it's very convenient to me, makes a lot of money, he's a good dad, I appreciate that. | |
| Ooh, this part I don't like, it's kind of silly, it's ridiculous, I'm going to roll my eyes at it. | |
| Like if you slice and dice people, that's called conditional love. | |
| Okay. This part I like. | |
| This part I don't like. | |
| This is good. This is bad. | |
| This I understand. This is just stupid. | |
| I love what you do here. | |
| I hate what you do there. That's called conditional love. | |
| And you are withholding from yourself one of the greatest glories of existence, which is just love every part of someone. | |
| Okay. Just love every part of someone. | |
| Now, the slicing and dicing happened right at the beginning. | |
| How do I know that? How do you know him? | |
| Because you sliced out a part of him called, I was molested, and judged that negatively. | |
| I don't talk about that. | |
| I don't ask about that. | |
| I don't want to know. Okay. | |
| All right. Also, what he talked about with his therapist, you can say, well, he didn't really want to talk about it. | |
| It's like, well, of course, because you gave him permission to not talk about stuff, and in fact, you encouraged him to not talk about stuff by slicing and dicing him into good and bad. | |
| Okay. Alright. | |
| So you say, oh, these things, you don't have to talk about things you don't want to, because I don't want you to talk about the things that I don't want you to. | |
| Okay. So he's got this secret life. | |
| He's got, he's looking at pornography and lying about it. | |
| He's got this ex-girlfriend. | |
| He's So he's got these secret lives. | |
| And I'm not blaming you. | |
| I'm just saying this is the consequence. | |
| He's got all these secret compartments because that's what you want. | |
| You have not only given him permission, you've in a sense forced him into this defensive posture of having a secret life because you don't accept all of him. | |
| Okay. And look, if I'm wrong, if I'm astray, this is your life, and I don't want to mischaracterize anything in what I'm saying, because I'm making some pretty broad statements here. | |
| Yeah. I mean, yeah. | |
| I understand what you're saying, so I guess, how do I fix this? | |
| And I guarantee he's done that with you, too, because, you know, like tends to attract like. | |
| I'm sure that there are parts of you... | |
| That he rejects, and this is when you were saying earlier, you know, I love him, and it's like, you know, you love him, that means you have to love all of him, right? | |
| And that's also a Christian commandment, right? | |
| Right, right. Even if there are parts of him that you feel are enemies to your happiness, what does Christ say to do with your enemies? | |
| Yeah, love your enemies. Love your enemies. | |
| So I'm sure, and again, so I'm not... | |
| I'm not saying it's your fault. | |
| I'm not saying it's his fault. | |
| I'm just really in my mind trying to unpack the cause and effect. | |
| What would it mean to love every part of your husband and to reject none of him? | |
| to not give yourself the excuse to condemn him even in your own mind. | |
| Why? | |
| Because the moment you condemn him in your mind, even if it's just in your mind, the moment you condemn him, | |
| his response will be to create a secret life. | |
| Okay. I mean, this is what addicts do, right? | |
| The addiction is condemned and they create a secret life. | |
| All right. Now, this doesn't mean saying yes to everything he does or wants to do. | |
| I don't mean anything like that. | |
| Can you open your heart and swallow him whole, so to speak? | |
| Not slice and dice, this good, this bad. | |
| You can't carve people up into what you like and what you don't like. | |
| Because the marriage vow is, I love you in sickness and in health, in richness and in poverty. | |
| For better or for worse. | |
| Now, for better or for worse means we all have a worse side. | |
| I do, you do, your husband. | |
| Everyone has a worse side. But life is a test. | |
| A marriage is not. | |
| A marriage is where you come home and you're accepted for who you are, top to bottom, back to front. | |
| Warts and all, weaknesses and strengths, right? | |
| Because when a man is out there in the world, he's constantly being tested and constantly being found wanting, right? | |
| Life is a test. You've got to go make the money. | |
| You've got to get the promotion. You've got to make the sale. | |
| It's a big test, right? | |
| And you pass and you fail all the time. | |
| And you're judged as wanting all the time as a man. | |
| What do you come home? You come home to refuel. | |
| You've got to come home to someone who loves every part of you for exactly who you are. | |
| Now, again, you don't have to do any of that. | |
| I'm just saying that it sounds like that's been missing. | |
| That you have the right to carve your husband up, like some parts, love other parts, dislike other parts, hate other parts. | |
| The fundamental reason why you have to accept all of your husband is because if you say, I hate this part of my husband, you are saying, I hate part of myself. | |
| Like, why does the Bible say a husband and wife are one flesh? | |
| Because he is a manifestation of your choices. | |
| One of the reasons I asked how pretty you were was because if you're very pretty... | |
| And you're obviously very verbally skilled, very intelligent, a good conversationist, great sense of humor, like there's so much positive about you. | |
| That means that you had your choice of how many guys? | |
| Pretty much an infinity, so to speak, right? | |
| Uh-huh. So you had a choice of so many guys. | |
| And you chose this guy. | |
| Now, after your first marriage, you were still no kids, right? | |
| So you weren't a single mom. That's why I asked about whether you had kids or not. | |
| Right. So you could have taken some time and you could have chosen any guy, but you chose this guy. | |
| Right. So if you reject him, you are rejecting yourself. | |
| I'm saying do it selfishly. | |
| He is a manifestation of your choice. | |
| Not only did you date him, get engaged to him, marry him, you gave him two kids and you've stayed together for 33 years. | |
| There's nothing that you can criticize about him that doesn't bounce back on you. | |
| Nothing. I mean, imagine if I looked at a thousand houses to buy just the perfect house, and I finally, after years of looking at houses, I finally settle and buy one house, and then I invite you over and I say, oh, I hate this room, man, this room. | |
| It's just, there's no light. | |
| It's crazy. Like, the roof is the wrong shape, and, you know, the backyard's too small. | |
| What would you say to me? You picked it. | |
| Like you could have picked any house. | |
| Right. And you picked this house. | |
| And now you understand that you can't criticize the house without making yourself look ridiculous and idiotic. | |
| Okay. You chose him and you chose to stay with him. | |
| And you chose to not talk about his molestation. | |
| Right. And what that means is You chose sexual dysfunction because you rejected that part of him. | |
| Okay. I'm trying to give you 100% ownership here because you can't... | |
| Remember we said that if you can't fix it, it's important to stay away from the topic, right? | |
| About politics, right? And it doesn't drive you crazy that your husband keeps consuming all this politics without being able to fix it. | |
| So I'm trying to give you... | |
| Here's the fix-it stuff. | |
| You rejected the single most important occurrence in the sexual history of your husband. | |
| So the sexual dysfunction was not inflicted on you because you chose a man who'd been molested and you refused to talk to him about the molestation. | |
| This didn't happen to you. | |
| You participated in it. | |
| It's both of yours problem because you distance yourself. | |
| Well, he was molested. He's got these sexual dysfunctions, right? | |
| You chose him knowing this and you chose to not talk about it with him. | |
| Okay. Right? And then, here's the thing. | |
| Then you found out about his pornography and you condemned him, didn't you? | |
| Yeah. Right? | |
| Yeah. You chose a guy... | |
| Who'd been molested by older men, had a horribly dysfunctional introduction to sexuality. | |
| A criminal. I mean, he was a victim of criminal sexual predation as a child. | |
| You chose that guy. | |
| You'd never talked about it with him, really. | |
| And then, when the symptoms of what you had both participated in, you had both participated in this, because he also chose not to talk to you about this, But he also probably is such a sensitive topic and he's a man that if you didn't want to talk about it with him he probably wasn't going to inflict the topic on you. | |
| So then when the inevitable symptoms of his sexual dysfunction showed up you condemned him as if you had nothing to do with it as if you didn't choose him and also choose not to talk about it with him. | |
| Which is like me condemning the house That I chose out of a thousand houses. | |
| Right. You understand you are attacking a mirror here. | |
| You are condemning and criticizing a mirror. | |
| You are absolutely involved in this relationship and there's nothing that your husband does or thinks or says that is separate from what you chose. | |
| You distance yourself like you're judging him like a teacher who's forced to teach a student. | |
| Okay. He is here, and he is who he is because of your choices. | |
| Okay. You married him quickly, you avoided topics, and you've never, as far as I understood it, sat down and said, okay, tell me about this habit you have, right? | |
| Like, I want to understand, I want to know, we're in this together. | |
| Right, you're right. And I'm sorry, I'm sorry that I never asked you about your molestation. | |
| That must have been really tough for you because you haven't been able to talk about it with anyone and it was a hugely important event in your life and I rejected you on that. | |
| It wasn't your fault you were molested. | |
| You were a kid. You were unprotected by your parents. | |
| I hate your parents that didn't protect you. | |
| I hate the people who abused you. | |
| I hate the men who molested you. | |
| I hate the effects that it's had on you. | |
| But I sympathize with you, because you were a victim of all of this, and I apologize for not talking about it with you and helping to create this secret world. | |
| Because it's a reproduction, right? | |
| So when he was molested, it became a shameful secret, right? | |
| Because nobody wanted to ask him about it. | |
| Nobody wanted to talk about it. Everybody pretended nothing happened, right? | |
| Move past, right? So he has this shameful secret, right? | |
| So then what happens with him and pornography? | |
| He ends up with this shameful secret. | |
| And you end up wagging your finger at him and condemning and criticizing him to the point where he's so desperate to evade your condemnation that he's holding up a child as protection. | |
| Blaming it on your son, right? | |
| Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Wow. | |
| Wow. Yeah, that's good. | |
| Look, you can condemn strangers all you want. | |
| I've been known to do it myself. | |
| You can condemn strangers all you want, but you can't condemn the products of your own choices without condemning yourself. | |
| You have this belief, and maybe your husband has it too. | |
| I don't know. I haven't talked to him. You have this belief that you can't, like you're in a rowboat with your husband in the great storm of life and you think you can sink his side without drowning yourself. | |
| Everything you do to him, you do to yourself. | |
| Okay. You were not a victim of him being a peeping Tom. | |
| I don't agree with him being a peeping Tom, of course, right? | |
| But it wasn't like a stranger looking into your house. | |
| You chose him. And you chose not to talk about your sexual dysfunction and you chose to shut down sexual activity without discussing it in great depth and detail. | |
| Right. Why was he sexually dysfunctional? | |
| Because you wouldn't talk about the molestation. | |
| And yet you put him on the other side of the room and think you can throw something at him and blame him and castigate him, right? | |
| Mm-hmm. Yeah. | |
| But you chose him. He is not separate from any of your choices. | |
| You and he are one flesh. | |
| That's what the Bible means. One flesh. | |
| Right. Right. | |
| I mean, if you're trying to lose weight and the weight doesn't seem to come off because you keep eating too much, do you get to punch yourself in the stomach and feel like a good person? | |
| Is that effective and productive? | |
| No. No. | |
| You're just punching yourself. Okay. | |
| Okay. You're one flesh. | |
| You're the same body. | |
| And you are bound up in every single one of his choices, and you are bound up in his secret life. | |
| You are not separate from it. | |
| You are part of the reason he keeps the secret life. | |
| That's good news, in my opinion. | |
| Right? We were talking about the kitchen knife yesterday. | |
| Yeah. The food you're serving is not great. | |
| Right. So you can fix that. | |
| Okay. He can probably talk about this molestation and its effects on him for a month straight. | |
| And what a burden that will be off his mind and heart and shoulders. | |
| Okay. Okay. | |
| He was a victim. Now, he's involved in all of this too because he decided to marry a woman who resolutely avoided talking about the central trauma of his life. | |
| So he's responsible. | |
| I'm not putting all the blame on you like he's innocent. | |
| Like you both chose each other. | |
| So he also can't condemn you for failing to ask him about his molestation. | |
| Because he chose a woman who avoided talking about his molestation. | |
| Because he wanted to avoid the trauma of talking about it. | |
| He wanted to avoid the shame. | |
| But the shame that you avoid, it recurs and it returns. | |
| So he ended up not talking about the molestation and then being shamed for his pornography addiction, right? | |
| Right. So it didn't solve the problem. | |
| And you can have peace in your marriage, I think. | |
| Okay. But you have to become one flesh with your husband, which means... | |
| If you reject him, you reject yourself. | |
| If you attack him, you attack yourself. | |
| If you criticize him, you're criticizing yourself. | |
| Now, if you do something wrong, are you just supposed to condemn yourself and punch yourself in the face or scream nasty things at yourself in the mirror? | |
| No. If you do something wrong, I think the good thing to do, if you want to avoid doing it again, is to be curious about it. | |
| Why did I do that? Why did I have that approach? | |
| Why did I... Right? | |
| Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. | |
| I mean, I didn't just say, you cold-hearted witch, how come you didn't ask it? | |
| I was very gentle and curious, right? | |
| Tell me why, right? | |
| Right. And was that helpful? | |
| Yes. Have I condemned you for anything? | |
| No, no, no. You have been amazingly helpful. | |
| I mean, given me a lot to think about, and I truly appreciate that. | |
| Yeah, it all makes sense, and it's definitely, I'm hearing it in a different way. | |
| I've never thought about it before. | |
| Well, to be curious without condemnation is the essence of having a relationship. | |
| Yeah. I mean, the government will condemn you. | |
| The courts might condemn you. | |
| The police will condemn you. | |
| People online will condemn you. | |
| I mean, there's got to be one place that we go where people are curious about us without condemnation. | |
| Yeah. When we are critical and harsh towards someone we claim to love, whatever wrong they've done is vastly overshadowed by the wrong that we're currently doing. | |
| To condemn your husband for the effects of you guys not talking about his molestation is worse than whatever he was doing online. | |
| In my humble opinion, right? | |
| I'm not saying that's some big proven thing out there in the universe. | |
| I'm just saying that level of self-criticism is to say, okay, your husband, like when you get married, your husband doesn't have a problem. | |
| Who has a problem? Me. | |
| You both do. Yeah. | |
| Okay, gotcha. You share it. | |
| Right. Yes, you see. | |
| Well, it must be. If he's not to blame, then I'm to blame. | |
| Someone's got to be to blame. We can't be a team or anything. | |
| You tell me who's to blame. | |
| Is it the milkman? Is it the guy down the street? | |
| Maybe it's the guy doing the sky. | |
| Someone's got to be to blame. | |
| Tell me who to blame. And I'll blame them. | |
| Right. You think your husband's the armed one? | |
| Yeah. You both have a problem. | |
| Mm-hmm. You share a problem. | |
| Okay. You can be curious about how it came about, why it happened, what's going on. | |
| Okay. But you have a problem together. | |
| Right. Okay. | |
| And that open, gentle, curious, non-judgmental. | |
| Because, you know, judging him, how's that worked out? | |
| Not well. Not well. | |
| You're right. Not well at all. | |
| And you want to stay married. | |
| I mean, you know, the average lifespan for healthy women in their 60s is close to 90. | |
| Right. 30 years to go. | |
| Well, and between now and, you know, dead, I want to have, you know, a good relationship. | |
| Right? Right. Now, of course, he's going to be skeptical and, you know, you unfortunately have a lot of, you both, I think, would have a lot of bad habits. | |
| And look, we all have them. Please understand, I'm not isolating myself like some guru on a mountain floating above the troubles of the world. | |
| I struggle with all this stuff too, so please understand that, right? | |
| So, we all have these habits, but, you know, if you've had 33 years of not talking about some pretty important stuff, it's Not going to turn around. | |
| Because, you know, what's going to happen is you're going to be like, okay, I'm going to be non-judgmental. | |
| I'm going to go and talk to my husband about stuff. | |
| And then it's like, it's going to go badly. | |
| I'm like, I know this non-judgmental stuff wasn't going to work. | |
| I can't believe he said that to me. | |
| You know, like, it's like, oh, no, you're going to have to turn things around. | |
| It's literally like saying, well, I skipped one candy bar. | |
| Why haven't I lost weight? No, no, it's a process. | |
| It takes time. And I live, like, your husband is like, well, I go to the gym once a month. | |
| Why am I not both? Well, because, you know, it takes a little while to turn these things around, right? | |
| So, Okay, okay, right. | |
| So yeah, that's most of what I wanted to get across. | |
| Tell me what you think. Yeah, I think it definitely makes a lot of sense, and I just have to be patient and, like you said, give it time, and I just have to approach it and think it through and make the move to do what I need to do. | |
| All right. Will you keep me posted about how it's going? | |
| Sure. Thank you so much. | |
| I really appreciate you. | |
| I really appreciate that. And thank you for a great conversation. | |
| Have yourself a wonderful afternoon. |
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