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Oct. 8, 2023 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

02:44:53

PLEASE PANIC I BEG YOU! Freedomain Call In

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	Hey, how's it going? Good, how are you?
	I'm not too bad.
	I'm not too bad. I'm all ears.
	Do you want to read your email, original message, or how would you like to start?
	I guess I'll start.
	I don't have the email in front of me, so I'm just going to have to go from memory.
	I guess I'll go from the most uncomfortable thing first.
	Basically, that is...
	I'm 27 years old and I'm a virgin.
	I've never had sex.
	I have never had a girlfriend.
	It's a deep insecurity that I have.
	And, you know, after watching a few videos of yours, you kind of, you know, you begin to figure out that all roads kind of lead back to your parents.
	I had a bit of a think, and yeah, there's a few things there that I wouldn't mind discussing with you.
	You know, a bit of, let's say, like physical abuse and verbal abuse and stuff like that.
	So, yeah, that's why I reached out.
	Well, I'm sorry to hear about all of that, of course, and I'm happy to hear, well, I wouldn't say happy to hear, I'm ready to hear your story.
	Tell me what happened with you as a child.
	Okay, so I guess I'll start from my first memories of my parents.
	So with my dad, my first memory of him was when I was about three or four years old.
	He was kind of pushing me on a seesaw.
	So I was on the other end, obviously, and he was on the other end.
	But he couldn't, because his legs were too sort of big, he was kind of standing on the other end, right?
	And he was pushing the seesaw, because I couldn't do it myself.
	Anyway, so I'm having a good time.
	And then he just like sort of kept pushing down faster and faster and faster.
	I said like, hey dad, stop, it's too fast, it's too fast.
	And he kind of, he just kept going, kept going and increasing the speed, increasing the speed.
	And it was getting too much, and I said, like, Dad, Dad, I'm going to fall.
	And he didn't stop.
	Like, he just kept going faster and faster and faster.
	And then I fell, and I fell forward, and the upswing of the seesaw hit me straight in the forehead.
	And I fell to the ground.
	I was crying and had a massive, like, sort of egg coming out of my forehead.
	And it was, like, super apologetic.
	But when we got back home to Mum, You know, mum asks, like, what happened?
	What happened? Why has he got a massive lump coming out of his forehead?
	He's just like, oh, he just fell off.
	He just fell off the seesaw.
	And I remember when I look back on that, I remember feeling like, I think even at the time, I remember feeling like, oh, you hurt me.
	Like, I told you to stop pushing the seesaw and you ignored it and you went faster.
	And that's like the first memory I have of my dad.
	And yeah, so I guess I'll switch over to mum now.
	So with my mother, the first memory I have of her is she's dragging me out to the front of the house where our bin is.
	And she has this broken umbrella.
	And it's an umbrella that I broke.
	Again, I was like four years old at the time.
	And I broke it because I was trying to jump off a ledge or something and I was trying to be like Mary Poppins.
	And when I jumped off with the umbrella, I inverted it and I broke it irreparably so it couldn't be fixed.
	And she was dragging me out by my arm and with the umbrella in her other arm.
	She took me out to the bin and then she threw it in the bin and then she hit me.
	She slapped me straight across the side around where my bicep is.
	That's the first memory I have of my mum.
	Both memories are sort of violent.
	I'm sure there are more.
	Oh yeah, I've got a whole list.
	There's more to come, but yeah, that's how it all started, basically.
	And, you know, I guess I'll go into a little bit more detail about sort of my dad in particular.
	You know how when you get kids, you get like two little boys or whatever together, like school boys, and then they sort of fight each other about like who's got the tougher dad?
	You know, that sort of thing. Like, oh, my dad could bit up your dad.
	No, my dad could bit up your dad.
	That type of thing. Like, my dad was, like, pretty scary, right?
	So, I would actually see on a regular basis whether my dad's workplace or kind of just out and about.
	Like, men would, like, cower around my dad.
	He's kind of a Like I said, he's like a scary dude.
	Like I hate using the word, but he's a, um, he's like an alpha guy.
	And, um, you know, he's, you know, he can be like, he's got a violent sort of, uh, you know, streak about him.
	You know, he was kind of renowned for getting into, you know, getting into street fights and, um, you know, Being super aggressive, he'd had no problem getting in your face and telling you what was what.
	He'd always tell me stories about how he'd get into fights at school.
	He'd tell me stories about how he'd get into fights with his own siblings.
	When he left school, he would go out with his mates and get into bar fights and stuff.
	He's got no problem with violence.
	I think he definitely brought it home with him.
	And because, like I said before, men would sort of cower around him.
	No one's going to tell him no.
	You know what I mean? So if he goes too far, there's no one, you know, say, for example, too far with discipline, physical discipline, no one's going to tell him to stop.
	No one's going to be there to sort of stop him from hurting me.
	Yeah, so I was kind of...
	You know, it felt like I was trapped.
	sometimes sort of at his mercy.
	And yeah, and like again, like, because I, you know, I mentioned that he's a bit of an alpha
	He has his own business and his business is in an area where You've got to be a certain type of person to have a successful business where it's sort of located.
	There's a lot of standover men in the area.
	There's a lot of...
	Sorry, I'm not sure what you mean by standover men.
	So, you know, people...
	They're like tough guys.
	You know, like sort of wannabe, like mafioso type guys, mobsters, you know, they kind of, especially in his sort of location, there's a lot of crime.
	Alright, so he's in like the construction business or the restaurant business where there's just a lot of protection money and criminal activity, is that right?
	Yeah, it's definitely blue collar.
	Yeah, it's kind of, yeah, I'd say that's accurate.
	Okay. Yep.
	yeah so anyway you have to be a particular type of person to be running a business in this area and you know he does very well for himself so if you can imagine he's you know he can handle it and um yeah so just you know just to paint a little bit of picture a bit of a picture about him um my mum um She is...
	She's definitely softer.
	I wouldn't say she's not like a loud sort of person, but, you know, she can definitely be emotional at times.
	Especially when I was growing up.
	Well, your dad's emotional too.
	It's just more rage, right?
	That's it. Yeah, 100%.
	But yeah, so I think what happened with my mum is that my dad wanted somebody, you know, if he's going to be the alpha, so the head of the home, so to speak, like the wife has to be, you know, lack of a better word, like subservient. So I think in my mum, that's what he found.
	You know, somebody who was, you know, a cook, clean, Do all that stuff.
	Look after us, the kids.
	And, you know, she did do those things, but I felt that, you know, I think she definitely felt trapped as well by him.
	And if she had any sort of, I'd imagine she would have had, you know, sort of aspirations for You know, where she wanted to take, you know, her career.
	But she would have had to, like, throw that out the window, you know.
	And my dad's sort of, like, request.
	Well, what sort of career was she looking at?
	Oh, she's, just to keep it vague, like, she was in education.
	So, a teacher of, you know, such.
	Okay. So, not really a career.
	Yeah. Um...
	I mean, not the same way, like, if you were a lawyer or an entrepreneur or something.
	I mean, teachers are teachers, and maybe they can become principals or something like that, but it's not quite the same career arc as an entrepreneur.
	Sure, yeah. Yeah, that's correct.
	Um... So, yeah, like, um...
	So that, you know, that's my parents.
	Um... And yeah, there's just a lot more of little anecdotes that I have here.
	I guess I'll continue.
	So one particularly unsettling one for me, and it's kind of embarrassing, was I remember I was about four or five.
	And I was over at a family friend's house.
	And I think just it was me and my mum, she took me.
	And it was just like I was playing.
	It was like a, you know, like a play date type thing.
	There was heaps of kids there. Anyway, I really needed to go to the bathroom for number two.
	But the only toilet that was working at this place was this like outhouse type toilet.
	And, um, so I quickly ran over there, went inside, turned the light on, and the whole outhouse was just filled with spiders.
	They were just everywhere in his outhouse.
	And I was petrified, but I really needed to go badly.
	Well, and given your accent, we're not talking like nice little British spiders.
	We're talking like monsterous, right?
	That's it. 100%.
	These are doozies, these ones.
	Um, Anyway, so I'm like, alright, I need to go bad.
	I need mum to come with me and like kill them for me because I have to go.
	Anyway, so I go over to her, I tell her what the deal is.
	She seems like super, like really pissed off and really annoyed that I've come over and asked her to do this.
	But she comes over anyway.
	But it's quite...
	She definitely doesn't want to be there doing it.
	Anyway. So I go in there, start doing my business.
	She comes in, closes the door, and she's kind of standing there with her arms crossed, kind of just staring at me.
	And she's got this look of utter contempt on her face.
	And I'm like, okay, this is kind of awkward.
	Anyway, and, you know, a spider will crawl up the wall.
	I say, my mum, there's one there, get it, get it, get it.
	And she, like, smacked the wall real loud.
	And then she folded her arms again, kind of looked down at me with this, like, face of contempt.
	And this went on for, like, oh, jeez, I don't know, like, two minutes or whatever, until I was, you know, done doing my business.
	And then she asked me, like, are you done?
	I said, yeah, I'm done.
	And then she just, like, turns around Gets out of there and shuts the door behind her.
	And there's still some spiders crawling around.
	It's one of those things where it's just like, why did I make you so angry?
	It made me feel really bad at the time.
	And I think it was one of those moments where I was like, oh, I'm kind of reluctant to I don't think this person is the one to call if I'm in trouble.
	But you said this was sort of shameful for yourself or you felt embarrassed about this yourself.
	I'm trying to sort of figure out why.
	I mean, for a child to be frightened of spiders is, well, anyone really.
	I mean, spiders are dangerous.
	Right? They can bite.
	Bites can cause infection.
	They can have poison. I mean, spiders are extremely dangerous.
	And so for a child to be scared of spiders, particularly when you're putting your butt over a hole in a vulnerable condition, I mean, I don't think that...
	I mean, it would be kind of crazy if you weren't scared of spiders.
	Like, if our ancestors as children or as adults even weren't scared of spiders, I don't know how we would have survived.
	Right? 100%.
	Yeah. So is it because your mother had contempt for you being scared?
	I think it's because I took her away from her friends to do this thing.
	I think that's what it was.
	Well, no, that's not it.
	I mean, there are plenty of times when children take you away from socializing because they need things that doesn't result in contempt.
	So what else was it?
	If I'm gonna take a really big guess I think she you know
	She definitely hated my dad you
	And, you know, from the stories I'm going to tell, you're going to notice that it's kind of the same way the other way.
	Dad, like, didn't like my mum either.
	And I think a lot of the times that, like, me and my brothers in particular were, you know, the punching bags.
	And they take their anger out on us a lot.
	So I think this is one of those moments where whatever anger or resentment that she had, she was taking it out on me.
	Yeah, I mean, that's kind of a traditional way of looking at it.
	Maybe it's right, maybe it's wrong, but it doesn't seem to fit in my mind, which again, I'm not you, right?
	But it seems the same as when your father was pushing you on the seesaw, right?
	Yeah. So you have a need.
	I need something. I'm vulnerable.
	I need you to stop pushing me so hard.
	I need you to take care of these spiders.
	Yeah. And like, were you four or five when this happened?
	Is that right? Yep.
	Okay. So you're four or five, which means the spiders are, let's see, four or five, you're pretty young, you're small.
	So it would be like spiders.
	Now, that would be four times the largest spider you've ever seen.
	So these would be spiders that would be the size of a trampoline, like a backyard trampoline, in sort of modern terms, right?
	Like in sort of grown-up terms.
	So, I mean, just by body weight and size.
	So, you are then in a position of need, right?
	Like, you need your father to stop pushing you so hard.
	You need your mother to protect you from spiders, which, according to your brain, and entirely rightly so, could just kill you.
	Right? Yeah. Okay.
	So you're in a position of need.
	You need them to be parents.
	You need them to protect you.
	and how did they respond to your situation of need?
	Uh, with content.
	So when you need them, they have power over you, right?
	Yeah. Because you need them to do something.
	And for some people, when you need them to do something, like if you're a parent and your child needs you to do something, then the child has power over you, so to speak.
	I mean, if you're going to think about it in terms of power, which unfortunately, like a lot of people do.
	So, you know, when you're a baby and you wake up crying in the night, you need your mother to do something, right?
	You need her to come and comfort you or give you milk or whatever it is, right?
	Yeah. So for a lot of people who examine relationships in terms of power, they resent the baby having, quote, power over them and compelling them or forcing them to do something.
	Does that make sense? Yeah.
	And so you build up, because there's no love, there's no attachment, obviously, there's no virtue, there's no affection, there's no kindness, there's no bond.
	So it's just like, okay, kid, fine, you can make me do things.
	When you're younger, fine, but I'm going to resent you and I'm going to hold it over you and I'm going to be mad at you.
	I'm going to get you back whenever I can.
	So then you're in a position where you need your parents to do something or not do something.
	And because the only way they analyze emotionally relationships is on the basis of power, then...
	Not only are they paying you back for all the times you made them do stuff as a baby, but also because they view helping the child as being dominated, as being humiliated.
	Because in this kind of power-based interaction, there's no win-win, right?
	Like free markets and love, it's all about win-win.
	But for these guys, I assume, it's just win-lose, right?
	Like if you go into a fistfight with some other guy...
	You win, he loses, or he wins, you lose.
	There's no win-win in a fistfight, right?
	Yeah. It's actually kind of lose-lose, obviously.
	So it's just win-lose, win-lose, win-lose.
	And so when you have need for them...
	Showing need in the power dynamic of relationships.
	And that's kind of like the modern world.
	It's the modern left and all this power dynamics, right?
	So in the power analysis of relationships, if you show need, you're a complete idiot.
	You're a complete idiot.
	It's like you're going into a fistfight and you're telling the other person exactly how they can win.
	Exactly where you're, you know, it really hurts on my shoulder here, so if you pummel my shoulder, man, you're going to win.
	So showing vulnerability is showing other people how to dominate you, and they would have massive contempt for that.
	So when you say to your father, I need you to push me slower, he's like, are you insane?
	I'm going to teach you to never show vulnerability.
	Right, if you want a cruel person...
	To stop doing it, do you say, that's upsetting to me?
	No, what do you say?
	I don't know.
	Sure you do.
	If I want a cruel person to stop.
	Let's say your father's pushing you on the seesaw, and you want a cruel person to push you less, what do you say?
	I've got no answer for you.
	I'm sorry. I don't really know.
	You don't have it consciously.
	So if you're with a cruel person who's pushing you too hard on a seesaw and you want that person to stop pushing, you say, I love, push me more, push me more.
	It makes me so happy.
	Right. Right?
	Because you live an opposite world.
	Does that make sense? Yeah.
	You live an opposite world.
	I mean, it's not the art of love.
	It's the art of war.
	So in the art of war, you say to your enemy, you get them to attack you where you're strongest and avoid you where you're the weakest, right?
	So where you're the weakest, you put on the greatest show of strength.
	And where you're the strongest, you put on the greatest show of weakness because you want to draw them into attacking you where you are the strongest.
	So if you want to win in a war, you would never play over the radio...
	Gee, I'm really weak on this spot.
	Because that's just inviting to get conquered.
	Does this make sense? Yeah, yeah, it does.
	So in war, I mean, it's called the fog of war, or like 90% of war is deception.
	So in war, and it sounds like your parents kind of lived and breathed for war, right?
	So in war, you never, ever, ever show actual vulnerability.
	Right? Ever.
	And so if they're raising you to be in a situation of combat or war, then if you show vulnerability, you have to be punished out of that.
	Never ever show vulnerability.
	Like in their world, if you say, I hate spiders, then what are cruel people always going to do?
	They're going to fire dead spies and throw them at you.
	Yeah, I mean, I don't know if you've read 1984, but the one thing that Winston Smith is the most terrified of is rats, and what do they use that to punish him?
	They use rats. He's most afraid of losing Julia, so they take away Julia.
	So to show need in a sociopathic world is to show vulnerability.
	Which must be attacked and humiliated.
	Like, you must be attacked and humiliated so you never show vulnerability.
	Because showing vulnerability is showing how to lose in life, how to lose to others, how to lose in war.
	Does that make sense? Yeah.
	Yeah. It's crazy how much of my life you've picked apart in two or four scenarios.
	I mean, you remembered them because they contain important lessons.
	Right? So, your memory retains things where the morals are, where the important lessons are.
	So, it doesn't have...
	We take these things personally as a child.
	Like, it doesn't have anything about you.
	It doesn't have anything to do with you.
	In a sort of bizarro world, your parents are trying to protect you.
	Right? Your parents are trying to protect you.
	Like... If you were to go hunting, they would say, make sure you stay downwind of your prey, otherwise they'll smell you, right?
	Yeah. And so, they're trying to make sure that you don't end up in situations in life where you're just going to lose all the time.
	Don't show vulnerability.
	If you show vulnerability, that's exactly where the cruel people will stick their thumbs in to make you comply to their wishes.
	So when you, as a child, are vulnerable, they have to hold that in scorn and contempt and give you the most negative experience of vulnerability, because otherwise, you're going to go out into the world and you're going to lose.
	You know, like, I mean, if you're in prison, heaven forbid, right?
	You're in prison, and, you know, you walk up to people like, hey, everyone, how you doing?
	You know? Like, possibly even peppy, like, you're just going to get hammered, right?
	Yeah. You got to look mean, you got to look surly, you got to keep your head down, you got to Get a gang together or whatever it is you're going to do in prison, right?
	Yeah. So, in a weird way, right, they're trying to protect you because you live in a world of predators and you never show.
	You know, if you're a zebra and there's a bunch of lions around, you never show that you limp, right?
	Yeah. Because if you show you limp, that's going to be a magnet for the lions because they're going to be like, well, this one's going to be easy because it can't run, right?
	Right, yeah. So listen, I'm not saying it's love or anything like that, but your parents were doing their best in a way to protect you from people like them.
	And I assume that pretty much everyone in their world is kind of like that.
	So your parents are trying to protect you from people like them by saying, look, if you show vulnerability, man, you're just going to get eaten alive.
	Like you're going to get beaten up, controlled.
	Because everything is win-lose, everything is combat, everything is a fight, and everything is war.
	And in war, you never show weakness.
	You always pretend to be strongest where you're weakest and weakest where you're strongest.
	So you never, ever cry out for help and you never, ever, ever say to someone who's got control over you, I don't like what you're doing because they'll just do more of it.
	Does that make sense? Yeah, it does.
	Yeah. So again, it's not some judgment of you like, oh, you're weak and contemptible.
	It's nothing like that. It's just that they assume that the world is full of predators, and if you show weakness, you'll be a slave.
	You'll be destroyed.
	You'll be controlled.
	And so almost it's like if you're in a win-lose environment, if you're in a predatory, war-like, brutal environment, your genes will not survive if you show weakness, if you show tenderness, right?
	So, I mean, this is why spies don't have families, right?
	If spies have families, then their enemies will simply use their affection for their families to control them.
	So, sorry, long speech on my part, but it's like, oh, you're just, they're taking out their frustration on you.
	I don't think that that's deep enough.
	And, you know, I'm sorry to say that.
	I mean, I assume that's why you're calling, right?
	I don't mean it. But no, it's, you know, you got to be cruel to be kind, if that makes sense.
	Yeah, I guess I haven't looked at it that way.
	I guess I'll, shall we move on to the next?
	It's your call, man, whatever you like.
	So the next one is pretty much, you know, I walked in, I had to go to the bathroom once when I was seven years old, late at night.
	And the bathroom's at the end of this long, dark hallway.
	And I'd never go down there.
	It's too scary. So I'd always go just across the hall into my parents' bedroom and kind of use their ensuite toilet.
	And one night I did that, opened the door, and then I basically just walked in on my parents having sex.
	And my dad turned around and just screamed at me at a pitch I've never heard at that point.
	Heard him scream before.
	Screamed at me, get out!
	Like that. And, you know, I told him, I gotta go to the toilet.
	And he's like, well, go then!
	Screamed at me again. And I go into the toilet.
	He said, like, he told me to get out.
	And I told him, I have to go to the toilet.
	He's like, well, go on then!
	Like that. So, yeah, I ended up going to the toilet, probably the longest piss of my life.
	And then, yeah, quickly got out, closed the door, went into my room and cried for hours.
	Did you know what they were doing? Not at the time.
	I didn't know what sex was. And then it's sort of like something clicked in my brain.
	That I kind of knew what was happening, but not really.
	No one had explained it, what sex was.
	But yeah, that was my first introduction to it.
	I was kind of messed up for a few days after that.
	I assume you were messed up from being screamed at, not because you saw your parents having sex.
	Yeah, it was definitely the screaming.
	Yeah, it was...
	It's one of those things that sticks with me because it was such a traumatic experience for me so early.
	I would assume most kids, their introduction to it is through an honest conversation about it with their parents.
	Well, I mean, ideally, but I mean, you're not that precious that, oh my gosh, I saw my parents having sex, I'm traumatized forever.
	It's something else. It's something else.
	I mean, I think I have an idea, but it's not just because you saw your parents having sex, or just because you were yelled at or screamed at, because, I mean, I assume that happened other times as well, right?
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Yeah. I mean, I have a thought.
	Obviously, I can share it with you, or you can continue.
	No, please, go ahead. Well, what's really disturbing is that, I mean, particularly between a husband and wife, sexual activity is an act of deep and profound love and affection and lust and all that kind of good stuff, right? So the fact that your father could switch from lovemaking to screaming at the top of his lungs in a split second is pretty terrifying, isn't it?
	Yeah. Yeah. It's that mood flip from, you know, what I assume is, I mean, it's supposed to be a sort of healthy expression of affection and pair bonding and love and lust and all that kind of stuff.
	It's a very positive thing.
	And then for your father to co-join affection or love and rage to flip from one to the other, I think that's the disturbing part, at least for me.
	Yeah. He told me once that he lost his virginity at like 12 to a neighbour, I think.
	Did you say how old the neighbour was?
	She was like late teens.
	Oh, so he was raped? Yeah.
	Yeah, I think that explains a lot.
	He told me actually during a sex education night in high school.
	And when I started to sort of just ask a little bit about it, he got really like super defensive about it and just shut it down real quick.
	Wait, you asked about him losing his virginity?
	Yeah. Okay.
	Yeah, because I was kind of taken aback.
	I didn't really know what to think of it, because I hadn't, obviously, lost my virginity at the time.
	Yeah, he was, like, way younger than me, and then he lost years.
	So I was, like, sort of...
	He was less than half your age, yeah.
	Yeah. But no, he didn't lose his virginity.
	He was raped. Yeah.
	Losing virginity would cover voluntary actions among consenting adults.
	Yeah. So he was raped by a woman in her late teens when he was 12?
	Yep. Okay. So that's not losing your virginity.
	That's being raped. Yes.
	Yeah, that's more accurate. Or a challenge of sexual abuse or molestation.
	Well, I guess more than molestation, but...
	Okay. So...
	Yeah. That's pretty awful.
	Yeah, it's not good.
	Um... Again, probably just tying into the verbal abuse, just moving on a little bit.
	I remember mom, she was calling for me to go to go have a shower.
	Again, I think I was like eight or seven.
	And I wasn't answering her because I wanted to scare her.
	And then she kind of came close.
	I wanted to scare her.
	But why did you want to scare her?
	I think it's just a dumb, you know, seven-year-old decision to make.
	Well, no, but your parents are pretty dangerous, right?
	Yeah. I mean, I don't, you know, not many seven-year-olds are going to be like, I think I'm going to go startle the bear or the lion or, you know, like I'm trying to figure out why you would do something.
	I mean, you had to be pretty angry to take on that kind of risk.
	Yeah. Yeah.
	This isn't something I would have done to Dad.
	Definitely not. But to Mum, I don't know.
	Yeah, I felt a bit cavalier at the time.
	I'm not too sure. But yeah, I was kind of peeping around the corner, sort of wanted to scare her.
	And then when she came close enough, I did.
	And then she just screamed like, Let out this massive scream and then she just said, you little shit!
	Like proper fury in her face.
	And I was not expecting that reaction at all.
	And she's just like, go get in the shower now!
	And I just...
	I remember walking around like, oh Jesus, that was fucking...
	That was a bit fire.
	It was just these little moments of unhinged screaming.
	It's burned into my brain.
	That was definitely one of mum's moments for me.
	So you really didn't think that your mother was as aggressive as your father at this point?
	Or that she might tell your father if you had done something unpleasant to her?
	No, I definitely didn't think of it at the time.
	I thought it was just going to be a little like, oh, you got me, get in the shower, type thing.
	But yeah, it definitely wasn't that.
	So there's a big lesson in that, I think.
	I mean, this is probably why you remember it.
	And the big lesson is, it's not about you.
	So one of the things that's pretty wild about parents is that Their moods, like children don't really process their parents' moods.
	And so if your mom had been in a good mood, maybe she would have done, oh, you got me or whatever, right?
	But obviously your mom was in a bad mood about something, right?
	Yeah. And so once you begin to explore your parents' moods, it's a great relief in life.
	Because again, then it's not personal to you.
	If my daughter comes for a hug and I'm really positive, and then she comes for a hug the next day, and I tell her to get lost, I can't imagine, but if I did, then it helps my daughter to understand that it's not about her.
	That it's just my moodiness.
	It's not personal. Does that make sense?
	Yeah. Yeah.
	Yeah, it's good to look at it that way now, but yeah, at the time I was...
	Definitely hurt by it, the comment.
	But your parents won't be honest about that.
	Like they won't say, like maybe you'd scared her a couple of times before and she was like, oh, you got me or whatever, right?
	So they won't sit there and say, gosh, you know, I'm sorry I overreacted, man.
	I'm having a really tough day or I just got some really bad news or whatever it is, right?
	I think your father's cheating on me.
	No, nothing like that. So they won't say, I'm having a bad day.
	And it's not your fault, but I'm really strung out.
	They will say, as she did, you little shit.
	Like, it's all on you. The reason I'm upset is not because of my mood.
	It's not because of anything outside of our interaction.
	It's 100% on you.
	And so they blame you for their own bad mood reactions, which again is kind of liberating,
	because again, it doesn't really have anything to do with you.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, that makes sense to me.
	It's kind of weird. It seems pretty simple, but when you don't talk about these things with anybody, you sort of develop your own Our look on it.
	Well, the reason that I'm breaking it down this way is because these are all the reasons why you're not dating.
	It's because you don't know really what happened with your parents.
	And so if you don't know what happened with your parents, why would you date?
	It's way too risky because you wouldn't know who to choose, what to avoid, how to manage the situation, how to not end up in the same situation that you were in as a kid where you've got some woman, you know, maybe with the power of divorce lawyers in the family courts, like tearing your life in two.
	Yeah. I'll move on to the next.
	So I was at school.
	I was in second grade, so I was around eight years old.
	I was playing soccer and this kid kicked the ball and I didn't see it quick enough and it hit me right in the balls.
	And I remember feeling really embarrassed, but all these other kids around me were laughing about it.
	And then there's this one kid, like right in front of me, like the one who kicked it, was laughing his ass off about it.
	And he didn't say sorry or anything, he was kind of just standing there laughing at me.
	And then I just went into this rage and I went over to him and I just beat the shit out of him.
	I just punched him like a couple of times in the stomach and I threw him to the ground.
	How old were you here? Eight.
	Okay. Eight years old, yeah.
	So I punched him a few times.
	I threw him to the ground. And then I remember I stood on his neck with one of my feet.
	And everyone was kind of shocked.
	They didn't know what to do. And then I just walked away.
	And I remember talking to the teacher about it sort of in the next class.
	And I remember telling her about the neck part where I stood on his neck.
	Again, she's just writing everything down on her book.
	And then when I said, when I mentioned the neck part, she sort of raised her eyebrows at me.
	I mean, there's really shocked sort of expression on her face.
	And then she quickly went back to writing down her notes.
	Anyway, mum picks me up.
	She's yelling at me in the car.
	I get home and on the way home, she's like, you wait till your father gets home.
	You wait till your father gets home.
	And, um, I was scared and then I was we went into my room and she went on to the computer and she said sit there pointing at the bed so I sat on the bed with my legs crossed kind of just waiting for dad to pull up and he pulls up he walks in through the door comes into my room and then I barely got out oh hey dad and then he just Fucking cracks me like smacks me straight across like the body and then he hits me again just as hard and I go flying off the bed and I land face first on the carpet.
	He grabs me by my shoulders and rips me back up to the bed and just like screams in my face.
	Just screaming about like, how could you do this?
	You know, how does this make me look?
	You know, absolutely like frothing at the mouth, just screaming at me.
	And... Yeah, that was...
	It was one of those things where...
	You know, I think at kindergarten, I remember Dad telling me, like, don't you ever let me catch you bullying other kids.
	I don't want to hear that you're bullying.
	Oh my God. Yeah, that's my job done.
	Exactly, yeah. He's like, don't you ever let me catch you being a bully.
	I'm like, okay, Dad, I won't.
	And it's just one of the, I look back on it now, and then I, it's not funny, but it's like, you know, I wonder where that aggression came from, like from me, to just lash out on that kid.
	Well, your dad is really keen on getting into fights, right?
	But when you get into a fight, it's terrible, right?
	It's terrible. But...
	I mean, I sort of half thought the story might be, you know, your mom's like, wait till your dad comes home, right?
	And your dad comes home, finds out what happens, and he's like, yeah, son, I know your mom's really mad, but hey, some kid's laughing at you like that after whamming you one in the nets?
	Yeah, I got no problem with it.
	Good for you for sticking up for yourself.
	Yeah, definitely wasn't that. I would have liked that, actually.
	So, do you know what was going on for him at this point?
	I can only assume, like, the one thing he said, like, throughout the years has been basically, like, this soft admittance of what he's done.
	What he says is, like, oh, man, I just, you know, I remember when you were like little and I come home from work all pissed off and you know, you do something stupid and I just, I just lash, I just lose it.
	You know? And it could have been that, but it's that last comment he made when he was screaming at me.
	He was like, how do you think this makes me look?
	Well, that's the key.
	I mean, you're right to remember that.
	Because that's his big fear.
	Yeah. And do you know what he's afraid of?
	Being exposed?
	Well, but more specifically.
	Me turning into him?
	Nope.
	you Nope. Well, because he has no logical reason to be upset with you getting into a fight or starting a fight or beating up somebody who'd hurt you and was laughing at you.
	I mean, he praises his own fights and he's a violent guy, so he would have no logical
	or moral, quote, moral reason for opposing this, so why was he so angry that you beat
	up a kid?
	I'm not sure.
	I always thought it was because I embarrassed him, you know?
	No, but why would you, if he's a tough guy and he beats people up, why would his son beating up someone embarrass him?
	and wouldn't he be kind of proud of that?
	He'd always do this thing.
	He'd never encourage me to get into fights.
	He's never done that. Ever.
	But he's got no problem telling me about all the fights he's been in.
	I get that. So let's get back to what are the practical consequences of you getting into a fight with another kid?
	What are the practical consequences that are negative to him?
	Well, the teachers are going to want to talk to him.
	Thank you.
	Yeah, I mean, if the teachers had any brains at all, they'd say, well, this is a really violent kid, and we have to look into his home life to find out what's going on because it's putting the other kids in danger.
	Right. Yeah, they'd have to start asking questions.
	Well, also, if you did some injury to another kid, then your family could get sued, right?
	And in the lawsuits, there would be depositions, there would be talking under oath, and they would ask your father under oath, right, and penalty of years in jail, they would ask your father under oath...
	How many times he's hit you, how many times he's screamed at you, and so on.
	And they would ask your mother under oath, the same kind of thing.
	And if he had hit you and had to admit it under oath, he could be charged criminally, maybe, if he'd excessively used force, which I'm sure he had, so he could end up losing his house and going to jail.
	Yeah, right. See, remember, it has nothing to do with you.
	Yeah. Yeah, that never crossed my mind.
	Yeah, I had a listener once whose neighbour, when he was a little kid, I guess he was about 10 or 12, his neighbour had failed to restrain a dog.
	The dog bit him and his father sued the neighbour.
	So yeah, if you had done, this is probably why, you know, like, if you stood on this kid's neck and you, I don't know, you gave him some significant damage or whatever, right?
	I mean, you can paralyze someone that way, I'm guessing.
	And so yeah, if you are out there fighting with kids, your dad could go to jail.
	So yeah, you can't be doing that.
	No. No.
	And your dad would be interviewed under oath, your mother would be interviewed under oath, and any discrepancies between their stories could lead one of them to go into jail.
	Like, it's a really big mess, right?
	Yeah. And it's also, you can't coordinate your stories ahead of time, and I guess you can't really testify against your spouse.
	It depends where you are. But they could still both be interviewed, and they would not be testifying against each other, but just testifying about their own behavior.
	So, yeah, I mean, this is why you can't be, I mean, your father can beat up all the people he wants, but you can't lay a finger on another kid because your dad could lose the house and go to jail.
	Yeah, right. And, of course, he's asking you to exercise self-restraint.
	Well, he almost never exercises self-restraint, I guess, except when he's out in public and doesn't beat you up then.
	Exactly, yeah. And I guess I'll go into the next one that kind of is in the same vein.
	I remember Dad had brought home this stray dog that had kind of walked into his work and I had it for a few months and I'd end up loving this dog and I'd play with it all the time and then but one day it's about a medium-sized dog like up to my At the time would have been like up to my hip because I was around about like nine or ten and I was playing with his dog and my dad was at the back as well like playing with one of my brothers and I'm mucking around with this dog and this dog beat me really hard on the hand really hard and I screamed out like fuck and dad turned and saw what happened And he comes over and he just boots this dog right in the belly.
	Boots it. And he literally goes, he goes, that's for biting.
	And then he turns to me and he had a plastic cricket bat in his hand.
	It's like a thick plastic cricket bat.
	And he smacked me across the body with it.
	He's like, that's for swearing.
	And then... I just went inside and just cried.
	I cried to mum.
	I couldn't...
	I didn't even know what to make of that at the time.
	It was so unhinged.
	Such an unhinged reaction.
	What do you mean by unhinged?
	Well... It all happened just so quick.
	Like the dog's getting kicked.
	I'm getting hit with a bat. No, no, no.
	Sorry. So we have this defense against abusive parents called, they're crazy.
	Right? Sure. And the reason we say is to give them the insanity plea.
	Right? To give them the insanity defense.
	Yep. So when you say unhinged, I don't understand that.
	Why is it unhinged?
	For him to hit you for screaming a swear word at the top of your lungs.
	How does it make him look if you're out in public screaming swear words at the top of your lungs?
	People are going to say, where does that behavior come from?
	Boy, that dad must be really bad and he loses status.
	Again, I'm trying to sort of figure it out and I'm obviously happy to hear the case.
	How is this unhinged?
	It seems to follow the same pattern as everything else, which is don't lower your father's social status, don't put him at risk, don't put him in danger, don't make him look bad.
	I mean, it's not unhinged, it's in the same behavior as everything else.
	Yeah, you're right. Yeah, it's in the same...
	It's in the same vein. It shocked me because it was so cruel.
	It was like a cruelty that I think that was the first moment where I truly felt that that entire situation was not my fault.
	Excluding the seesaw thing, but at that time, I just felt like it just wasn't my fault, and I'm getting hit.
	Well, of course you don't bring a stray dog home to a house with kids.
	I mean, of course you don't, because you have no idea what's happened to that dog over the course of its life, and how unhinged or deranged It may be.
	So of course it's not your fault.
	If you want a dog with your kids, then you get a gentle dog from a good home and you raise it peacefully.
	But you don't just bring in some stray dog from the streets and let it just hang out with your kids.
	Because obviously it's the kind of thing that's very likely to happen.
	Yeah. 100%.
	Now, of course, I know people who hear this and be like, well, what are you saying?
	All stray dogs are bad and I had a stray dog and it wasn't bad.
	It's like, yeah, good for you, man. Good for you.
	You smoked and didn't die of lung cancer.
	That doesn't mean smoking isn't risky.
	So if you happen to roll, you know, good dice with your stray dog, good for you.
	But you don't put those risks on kids.
	Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's...
	I guess I'll move on.
	Well, hang on. We've been going for an hour now, right?
	And we've had some, you know, lots of complaints about your dad and your mom, which I understand and I sympathize with.
	But in terms of the time that we have, I don't want us to run out of time with repetitive stories about how bad your parents are.
	Like, I get that they're bad and I sympathize with that, but I don't know that if we just keep going down the path of more stories about my parents being bad that we're going to solve why you're still a virgin.
	Yeah, yeah. Sure.
	Okay. Do you have any ideas where we should take it from here?
	Well, I'm not trying to tell you what you should or shouldn't say.
	If you want to spend the time, and if this is useful to you, I don't have some big plan about how this should go.
	But I just, if you, and if you have more stuff that you really want to talk about, could be very helpful, could be very useful.
	I just don't want to spend, like if we have about two hours, as we usually do, I don't want to spend, you know, an hour and 50 minutes with repetitive bad stories about your parents, and then have 10 minutes to try and solve what's actually going on in your life, if that makes sense.
	So if there's more stuff you want to talk about that's relevant to where you are, I'm certainly happy to hear.
	We can spend the time.
	It's your time. I'm, you know, I'm not in charge of this time.
	This is your time. But I just want to give you that caution that I get that your parents are bad.
	I don't need more stories about it.
	If you want to tell more stories, I'm certainly happy to hear.
	But that comes at the cost of actually solving things in the present for you because it's less time to be able to do that.
	So I don't know where we should go, but I just wanted to point that out as a potential.
	At the end of this, I don't want you to be like, oh man, you listen back to it.
	It's like, man, I spent all this time complaining about my parents and didn't solve that much about my current life, if that makes sense.
	Yeah, it does. So I leave it in your hands if you want to.
	I think what would be helpful, if you want to talk more about your parents, I'm happy to hear, or we could talk about what's been going on with your dating life, like what happened in your teens and so on, right?
	And I assume virgin at 27, it's like chronic masturbation and stuff like that.
	So what's been going on with the internet and how have you managed to avoid You know, the tender embraces of the fairer sex for almost 10 years as an adult.
	Yeah. So I guess I'll start with kind of...
	You know, with high school, I guess.
	So I've always kind of had...
	I've always kind of had, like, girls like me.
	You know, I've...
	That's never kind of been a problem.
	So you said you've always had girls liking you?
	Yeah. Okay. Yeah.
	And, you know, I get close to a lot of them.
	But when it came time, you know, I go through the talking phase and, you know, when it really came time to, you know, get things really moving, you know, actually see it go through to the girlfriend stage, relationship stage.
	I'd always have this fear.
	I was really scared about it going to that place.
	And I kind of rested on my...
	Because what would end up happening was I'd be in the talking stage with a girl.
	She'd be interested at the start, but then because I wouldn't make a move, she'd move on.
	And to sort of cope with that, I'd be like, oh, it's okay, there'll be another girl.
	He sort of comes around. There usually was.
	But then the same process would happen.
	I'd never really make the move, really ask him out.
	And then partly is because, ironically enough, my dad would frown upon having girlfriends during high school.
	And you know about that. He did the whole Christian thing, but I'm assuming there's obviously another reason.
	No, he didn't. That was just an excuse, right?
	So, why did he not want you to have a girlfriend in high school?
	Probably not to get distracted at work.
	Nope.
	I've heard him say that before.
	Um...
	Pffft.
	Oh, come on! You're 26!
	We've been through this for the last hour.
	What motivates your father?
	What motivates your father is status, right?
	And keeping secrets. Keeping the secrets of the family abuse.
	What happens if you get a girlfriend who loves you, cares for you, and asks you about your life?
	The cat's out of the bag.
	Yeah! He's just like, you don't have a big, I guess maybe your virginity or something, but you don't have these big giant secrets to keep.
	But that's all the principle is, right?
	Yeah. You get a girlfriend, and especially if your girlfriend is a quality girl, she's going to be like, your father does what?
	Your mother does what? And she might talk.
	She probably would. She'd tell her parents.
	Her parents would know. They might tell other parents.
	And their reputation is toast, right?
	So... I mean, does that make sense?
	Yeah. Okay.
	So he discourages you from having girlfriends because he wants to keep the secret of his and his wife's abuse, right?
	Right. But towards the end of high school, you know, I started to, you know, not like sort of go on, you know, dates so much, but, you know, I'd like kiss girls at parties and...
	You know, I still kind of fool around with girls, but it come to the stage where my mates were actually doing some pretty insane things for the time, as far as advanced sexually and stuff.
	I was sort of kind of getting left behind.
	Sorry, I don't know what you mean by insane advanced stuff, actually.
	I'm sorry, I don't mean to be prurient.
	I'm just, I'm not sure what that means.
	I mean, oral sex, intercourse, anal sex, what are we talking here?
	Well, like my two best mates, they would like, they would go and have sex with girls, like together.
	Oh, so like a mini orgy?
	Yeah. Okay.
	Yeah, and that was just like so far beyond like Where I was at.
	Anyway, they kind of wanted me to...
	They had lost their virginity, but I hadn't.
	So they wanted me to sort of get going.
	And they organized one night that we'd go over to one of their houses and, you know, they kind of did some research and then they sort of found a girl that was into me and then sort of arranged for a meet-up type thing.
	Like a little mini party, but what it was really for was to sort of get me laid.
	Anyway, so I go. I start talking to the girl.
	It's all good. We end up going into the bedroom.
	I'm sorry, how old were you here?
	I was...
	I think I was 17.
	Okay. At the time, yeah.
	We started to get busy.
	We sort of got into the foreplay a bit.
	When it came time to really start the intercourse, I couldn't do it.
	I couldn't get hard.
	I was super nervous. And I started to panic.
	And I kind of didn't want to be fumbling around there for too long.
	You know what I mean? I didn't want it to be so blatantly obvious.
	That was what was happening.
	Well, and of course, a lot of girls who can't get hard on out of a teenage guy are going to take it kind of personally, right?
	Yeah, yeah. And we kind of...
	We kind of just ended it.
	We did the full play and that was it.
	That process, that timeline I just gave you, has been a reoccurring theme for me.
	It happened a few times towards the end of school and that happened after school until I was about 22.
	It wouldn't go past full play.
	Things like that. I'd always get so nervous when it came time.
	It was crushing my self-confidence in the bedroom.
	It just got to the point where I just said, I don't want to do this anymore.
	I don't want to keep getting embarrassed.
	There's no one to talk to about this.
	I have no one to talk to.
	There's no one in my life I feel Remotely comfortable talking to about this.
	And obviously like when you leave school, your friend, your friend group sort of like gets smaller and smaller as you go off and do your own thing.
	And I started to find that I was becoming more and more reclusive.
	And yeah, I'd stopped going out.
	I started to develop this, you know, a bit of social anxiety.
	And it's morphed to the point now where those two close mates I was telling you about before that I had in high school, you know, I know I could call them up now and just have a conversation with them, no problem, but I haven't spoken to either of them in like a year, And that's kind of where I'm at now.
	Yeah.
	And when was the last time that you had this, I guess, aborted attempt at sexuality?
	Like foreplay and then followed by bailing out?
	I was 22.
	Right, so it's been half a decade, right?
	Yeah. Okay. And what do you want to get out of this conversation?
	Do you want to... Well, I wouldn't put words in your mouth.
	What would you consider to be a win?
	Because we've had trouble getting this conversation going, which I understand.
	I mean, it's tough stuff to talk about, so I sympathise with that.
	But what is it that you would most like to get out of this conversation?
	There's so many dynamics at play, and it'd probably take ages to get through it, but I don't know.
	I feel like I'm the only one Around who's dealing with this type of thing.
	And I just thought, like, maybe we could connect the dots between, you know, because I've had therapists before, but they, it didn't, like, it didn't really help me that much.
	And I always kind of considered you like the final boss of, like, you know, of these sort of, like, People that can help me.
	And what did your therapist say?
	I assume you brought these issues up with them and in general what did they say?
	It kind of, those three main points I brought up with the therapist.
	One thing was the girlfriend thing.
	The other thing was finding like a job that I actually enjoy.
	And the third was like dealing with my dad.
	Most of those therapy sessions went towards the job and the dealing with my dad thing.
	We didn't really get to the girlfriend part.
	I told them all these, the stories I just told you now about the sexual encounters, but they kind of just related to, they brought up the fact that, you know, that sort of thing is kind of confidence crushing and kind of agreed with me that it was like, you know, Not good for your self-confidence or whatever.
	We didn't really get too much into...
	We didn't really solve that problem.
	But that's the number one thing you want solved, right?
	Is that right? That's the number one, yeah.
	And so you would like to have a girlfriend, you'd like to have a sex life, maybe lead into marriage and fatherhood, that kind of stuff?
	Yeah. Right, okay.
	When was the last time that you really wanted to ask a girl on a date?
	There's a girl at work now that I don't mind.
	She's quite nice. She'd be a pretty good person to take out.
	The work thing makes it a little bit hard, but I know that she likes me.
	But, you know, how do I go about it now?
	Eventually she's going to find out that, you know, that I'm 27 and I'm a virgin.
	So how do I tackle that problem, you know?
	And have you ever tried the NoFap thing?
	Yeah. And how long has that lasted or has it lasted?
	I did it for like three months at one point.
	But that's in the past, I assume, right?
	Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, so, I mean, there's kind of a vicious cycle that can happen, and we'll sort of get to the origin of it, but the vicious cycle is something like, sex is scary, I have a negative experience of sex, so I'll masturbate more, but then masturbating more can lead to sexual dysfunction in the presence of a woman, because it's just too unfamiliar.
	Right. I mean, you're kind of training your body to have sexual responses in the absence of an actual female in the room?
	Yes. So, I mean, I'm sure you're aware of all of that, but that probably would be an important thing to look at and try and work on, if that makes sense.
	Yeah. Now, as far as, like, why it failed the first time...
	Ah, well...
	What are your theories as to why it failed, like the anxiety or the fear that you had when you were 17?
	What's your theory about where that was coming from?
	It's gonna have to do something with my dad. I think...
	Okay, so you don't have a theory.
	If I have something to do with my dad, it means you don't have a theory.
	And that's not a criticism. It's just, I don't want to waste time.
	If you don't have a theory, that's fine.
	Then we can work on one.
	But if you don't have one as bad, that's fine.
	Yeah, I haven't really thought about it.
	Okay. So, for your parents, when were you aware, you said that they hated each other.
	When were you aware that they hated each other?
	When did you first figure that out?
	I think it was about maybe six or seven.
	We're on a car trip coming back from somewhere and they're having this massive, massive fight in the front of the car and it's a long trip.
	It's like hours, like four or five hours to get to our destination and they fought and screamed at each other the entire way and we were just trapped in the back Me and my brothers.
	And that's when I kind of clued in to the fact that, okay, this is an abnormal family.
	Okay, so was this before you walked in on them having sex?
	This might have been before.
	I think so.
	I mean, I think you said seven for the sex thing, and so this would be six or seven.
	It's not hugely important, but let's just say for the sake of argument that it was before, right?
	Yeah. So then for you, sex would be an act of hatred and rage, right?
	Because if your parents hate each other and you walk in on them having sex, then sex must be an expression of hatred.
	Plus the fact that your father turns from having sex to screaming at you at the top of his lungs means that rage and hatred and sex are all combined in your mind.
	Right. And you don't want to be like your dad, right?
	No. So if the only way that you can have sex is if you hate someone and you're full of rage, and you don't want to hate people and be full of rage, how could you have sex?
	I mean, imagine if the only way that women would let you have sex with them is if you punched them in the face or some weird Fifty Shades of Grey stuff.
	I'd be a virgin too.
	I'm not going to punch women in the face.
	I'd be a monk, right?
	Right. You're right.
	Dad, like your father, is the most sexually successful, reproductively successful, romantically successful guy you know.
	Because his romantic and sexual success is the only reason you exist in the first place, right?
	Yeah. So if you exist as a product of rage sex or hate sex or something like that, Uh, that's a little tricky to reproduce if you don't, I mean, if you just embrace, ah, be like my dad, I'll just be a violent, abusive, aggressive, whatever, right?
	But you don't want to be that way, right?
	No. Right.
	So your dad owns the definition of sex.
	Your dad and your mom own the definition of sex, and marriage, they own that.
	So if rage hatred and sex and aggression and abuse and violence are all tied in together
	Then you will not be able
	to be successful in the act of having sex because That would require that you hate the woman and be violent
	in your mind or your heart I mean if I'm wrong, I'm wrong, but that's what it would
	seem like to me Yeah.
	Thank you.
	Thank you.
	They're around.
	I've never Yeah, this is this is news to me
	I don't honestly know what these therapists are doing sometimes.
	Because I'm sorry, this just seems so blatantly obvious, but I'm not a therapist, but it just seems like such an obvious connection.
	But, I mean, I don't want to disrespect the people you've talked to.
	I'm just not sure why this would be a thing that would be tough to figure out, right?
	Yeah. It's hard to, when you've only got 50 minutes for a therapy session, it's hard to...
	You've got 50? At least...
	Yeah, 50. Yeah, but you have a whole bunch of them, right?
	True. I mean, you don't just have one.
	Yeah. Okay, so let me ask you this.
	Was there anyone in your environment when you were growing up, was there anyone
	who you saw as having a healthy, happy, loving, positive, romantic relationship?
	I mean your friends sound like total porno creeps, right?
	I mean, that's just really decadent and hell-scent kind of stuff, right?
	And only the most self-humiliating women were involved in this multiple sex environment grossness.
	But was there anyone, you know, when you're growing up, you say, well, you know, that's a good, loving, healthy relationship.
	That's something I could look for.
	Something I could aim for, ain't it?
	Um... I would say...
	Yeah, there's definitely one.
	One of my aunties, you know, she's got a pretty good husband, doesn't they?
	Yeah. They love each other to a point where it's sort of like open and sort of cringy at times, but it is sweet.
	They do have a nice relationship.
	And this is an aunt on which side?
	It's on my stepmother's side.
	Alright, who the hell is your stepmother?
	Well, my parents got divorced when I was like around 11 or 10, around then.
	So my dad remarried a few years after.
	Oh, I don't think you mentioned that.
	Not a big deal, I just don't recall that.
	Yeah, that was down the list.
	Didn't get to that, but yeah. Okay, so your parents separate when you're 11 or 12, right?
	And who does your dad remarry?
	He remarried somebody he met at a Starbucks, I think.
	He had just recently turned, you know, Christian at the time and she was a Christian already and yeah, kind of went from there.
	And what was she like?
	She was really nice.
	She's, yeah, she's She's really nice.
	She isn't the stereotypical bad, evil stepmother type thing.
	She loved us all.
	Um...
	Yeah.
	Sorry, I'm just trying to inhale over the copious waves of bullshit that I feel coming over the wire.
	I could be totally wrong about that.
	But how the hell does a really nice, strong, good, honorable, moral Christian girl marry someone like your dad?
	Yeah.
	Yeah, that's a good question.
	I mean, unless your dad had a complete reformation in the way that he's like...
	Apologizing, making restitution, can't ever do enough to make up to you for what he did?
	Or did he just kind of like, I'm a Christian now!
	The past doesn't exist and I'm healed!
	I think he was very motivated.
	He was a very motivated Christian when he was courting my stepmom.
	And then I think after the marriage, his second marriage, I think it started to taper off a bit.
	And... Yeah, so, you know, perhaps she was kind of swept up by that.
	I'm sorry, did he become a Christian in order to marry her?
	No, he had a friend just after they got divorced.
	He had a close friend that was already a Christian at the time and was trying to sort of turn him over for a long time.
	But then after he got divorced, Divorced, he kind of, you know, his friend kind of helped him out and supported him and said, hey, why don't you come to church, talk to some guys, and it kind of went from there.
	Alright, so he woos this Christian woman by being more Christian than he ends up being, right?
	Yes. And she's a good Christian and loves you and your brothers, right?
	Yeah. So...
	Obviously she vetted, right?
	I mean, she wasn't astray like that dog your dad brought home.
	So obviously she vetted the family that she wanted to get involved in and tie her fortunes to and she vetted her kids.
	So, you know, she must have sat down with you guys before she married your dad because she's a Christian.
	She's not mentally defective, right?
	So she must have sat down with you guys and asked you about your childhood and how you were raised and how discipline worked and all that and what your dad was like because, you know, She's tying her fortunes into this family.
	So how did that conversation go before you got married? She got married to your dad?
	I don't remember a conversation about the punishments and stuff.
	of.
	Bye.
	you From memory, I think dad might have chilled out for the moment.
	With all that. No, but she must have gotten to know you.
	Yeah. She must have gotten to know you before she decided to marry your dad, right?
	Yeah. So she must have asked you about your life, your childhood, all that kind of stuff.
	Yeah. I mean, I'm not saying this is a good or bad thing because you're in survival mode at 13 or 14 or whenever they got married.
	So, I mean, did you lie to her and say, no, no, it's great, peaceful, wonderful, everything was great, no problems, I'm not traumatized, looking forward to having a stepmom?
	I mean, when she got to know you and asked you about your life, what did you say?
	Um...
	She definitely knew that I had trouble with my mum.
	That's my mom.
	At the time. I told her about that.
	I don't remember mentioning the smacking.
	I don't know if it's because I lied or she never asked.
	I just don't remember that conversation.
	Oh, no. I know exactly why you didn't say that.
	And you'd be insane to say that.
	Do you know why you never told her about your dad's violence?
	I would have blown it, probably.
	Well, what would have happened? She would have turned away.
	And then what would your dad have done?
	He would have beat the shit out of you for taking away his future wife, right?
	Yeah. And could have killed you, right?
	All these kinds of beatings are always associated with the possibility of death.
	Always. So did you put up a false front?
	Did you say, oh, it's just with my mom, my dad's fine, things are good?
	Did you pave the way for her to get involved with this lunatic?
	Sorry, not lunatic, this your dad.
	You know what, I think at the time, because I ended up living with my dad
	when they separated after a few years, I always had this thing,
	you know, this super, like, this love for him, despite the, you know, the violence.
	Um...
	Because I idolized my dad.
	So, you know, if my stepmom was ever talking...
	This is also new information.
	You understand that when somebody says, here's a guy, he was violent and brutal and kind of tortured me.
	But I love him and idolized him.
	This is a bit of a whiplash part of the conference.
	I've just been telling you that from the outside, it's like, whoa, where the hell are we going next?
	Yeah. What do you mean you idolize him?
	Yeah, yeah. Oh, I thought he was like the coolest dad ever, you know?
	Well, did you think that or was that just a requirement?
	Like if you were skeptical about your dad's coolness or virtue, wouldn't you just get beaten?
	I mean, wasn't that just a requirement?
	Yeah, you could say that.
	Well, no, I don't want to say anything that's not true.
	Yeah. I mean, if you had criticized your dad and said, Dad, you were really violent to me when we were younger, I assume he wouldn't have been so cool anymore, right?
	No. However, I mentioned earlier that he would tell me the stories about him fighting, getting into bar fights, you know, Like, he'd also tell me stories about all the girlfriends he's had and things like that.
	And to me, I'm like, oh man, my dad's the man.
	My dad's so cool.
	Well, it's what you said earlier about the alpha thing, right?
	Yeah, yeah. Yeah, except alpha protect their children.
	They don't beat them up. Like, beating up children, not fucking alpha at all.
	No. You understand, right?
	Yeah, I do. Hey, he's one-fifth of my size.
	I'm an alpha for beating him up.
	Yeah. Yeah. But it was like I was under, you know, I think I was in denial for a lot of this type stuff.
	Well, I mean, you can say that, but that's putting the onus on you.
	It was a requirement to be with your dad that you praise him lavishly because he's narcissistic.
	Yeah. In my view.
	Yeah. Just say selfish, right?
	He's a selfish guy, and selfish people will always demand that you praise them in order to not be abused by them.
	Yeah. That's what happened.
	But, yeah, at this time, when my stepmom came into my life, you know, I really hated my mom.
	And I, it was like a, you know, the anger I should have had towards my dad, I had like doubled.
	Well, because your dad hated your mom at this point over the course of the divorce, and that was another demand that he would have of you.
	You love me, you praise me, and you hate that bitch I just divorced.
	Yeah. Right? You wouldn't have your own independent emotions.
	Yeah. At this point, given how traumatized and bullied you'd been.
	You know, it's like asking someone in North Korea, do you really love the Supreme Leader?
	Yes! It's like, you don't know, right?
	I'm doubtful. But that's just what you have to do to survive.
	Yeah. I understand.
	My mum did end up doing some things that I really did resent her for.
	Like, I don't talk to her anymore.
	I stopped talking to her when I was like, 23, something like that.
	And what did she do that you resented?
	Because she moved house.
	We had to get new houses and stuff.
	At her new house, she was just an emotional monster.
	She would scream, sometimes randomly.
	She would throw plates.
	It just became like a nightmare.
	Whenever I had to go over to her house for the week.
	And it was like this slow building of resentment towards her, like having to go there.
	Like being stuck there for that whole week in this house with this bad lady.
	Was she teaching at this point?
	She was just starting to get back into it.
	Excellent. Nothing better than those unhinged women being in charge of kids.
	Beautiful. Beautiful.
	Seems to be their favorite job.
	Yeah, it really does.
	That and nurse. Alright. Okay, so you were angry at your mom and you idolized your dad and your stepmom didn't really vet things very much, right?
	Like, we talk about how, like, Guys end up dating single moms and taking on the kids and all of that as kind of like cucked behavior, kind of beta behavior.
	So what's up with your stepmom that she's marrying into?
	A family where there's been a relatively recent divorce, where there's a crazy ex, where there are three traumatized children or a couple of traumatized kids.
	What was wrong with her that this was the best she could do?
	Well, she had a kid of her own.
	She was a single mom.
	And she got it out of a bad marriage.
	She was beat up pretty bad by her ex.
	Okay, so this woman you claim is virtuous, doesn't vet the new family, is willing to give...
	sex to your dad who is kind of a monster and she had been in a relationship and
	vetted a guy Dated a guy got engaged got married to gave kids to a guy
	who beat her up Yes, okay, come on man
	This is kind of an unholy of a mess, isn't it?
	Yeah. Yeah, it's not...
	That's all good. Okay, so she's also a disaster, right?
	Yes. She gave a child to a violent guy, and then the child witnessed the mother being beaten up.
	I'm sure the child would be aggressed against or beaten up as well.
	So I can't tell you how much I'll be open about my own feelings about this.
	I really hate the women who keep sleeping with these violent guys and giving them children.
	One violent guy to another.
	And then do you know what the women say?
	Wow, the world's kind of violent.
	There's all this patriarchy.
	Women are not safe. It's like, well, maybe if you stop having sex with violent guys and giving them children, the world would be a little safer.
	Sorry, it just drives me a little kind of batty.
	This kind of stuff. That makes sense.
	You know, women, we're not safe.
	Like, yeah, well...
	Stop giving kids to violent assholes and maybe the world will be a little safer.
	Nope! Can't have that.
	I just watched this old 80s movie called The Breakfast Club and there's this one guy who's really peaceful and intelligent named Brian.
	He's a bit of a physics geek and a math geek.
	And the total sociopath rebel gets the girl.
	The emotionally cold-hearted athlete gets the girl, but the guy who's actually got a future and a brain and is a hard worker and a hard studier gets no one.
	Nice guys finish last.
	Yeah, nice guys finish last.
	And to me, okay, you make your choices, but then I'm just not going to have any sympathy when you claim to be afraid of the world.
	Like, if you're going to have kids with violent guys and expose...
	Those kids to those violent guys, and then be violent yourself, I have no sympathy when the world is violent around you.
	Like, I just don't have any sympathy.
	I just, like, come on, of course, right?
	It's like if women only had babies with guys who were five foot tall and then complained that guys were short.
	It's like, come on! You've got to be kidding me.
	Yeah. Anyway, so we're just talking about your...
	Because it seemed like you had sort of a more positive view of your stepmother, and I'm just having a little trouble seeing it.
	I could be wrong. Obviously, you know her way better than I do, but I'm just having trouble seeing it.
	Yeah. I think it was just a relief initially.
	I got 12 when, you know, Dad said he met this new girl.
	Wait, what did he get divorced at 12?
	What was the gap between the divorce and...
	Um, so I think it was like around 12 I got divorced and she must have come in at around like when I was 13 towards the end.
	It was around that time.
	Okay, so we were talking about her because I was asking if you saw healthy relationships when you were a kid.
	So you said there's the aunt, right?
	And the aunt is your stepmother's sister, right?
	Yeah. Okay. Yeah.
	And do you know, I guess you wouldn't know, if the aunt ever, did she ever talk about trying to get her own sister to not marry the violent guy?
	No. I've never heard of a conversation like that.
	And were you close to your aunt, the good aunt?
	Not really. Okay.
	Do you know, have you seen the mechanics or seen anything up close that is like a healthy, positive relationship?
	I mean, the aunt thing, which you're not really close to, who only came into your life later, and I guess just, you know, part-time.
	Have you seen anyone up close who has what you would call a healthy relationship?
	Um... Not really, to tell you the truth.
	Okay. That's important, right?
	Yeah. Because you don't have empirical evidence.
	I mean, you've maybe read about stuff or heard about stuff, but you don't have empirical evidence up close that
	relationships are possible to be healthy.
	No, not close evidence.
	No. So, you want the opposite of what your parents had?
	Definitely. Okay.
	So, given that you want the opposite of what your parents have or had, what have you been doing to reverse the imprinting?
	Like, so, if I grew up and I spoke Japanese and I said, I don't want to speak Japanese ever again, Then I have to go learn another language, right?
	I mean, I guess I can stop speaking Japanese, but then I mute, right?
	I got nothing to say because I'm not speaking Japanese, but I haven't learned another language, right?
	So I got nothing to say.
	I mean, this is obviously an analogy for your sex life.
	I don't want a sex life like my parents had.
	I don't want a relationship like anyone around me.
	I haven't learned a new relationship, so I guess I'm sexually mute.
	I have no relationship. Right.
	It's the old thing, like if I knew that I was going to give birth to the Antichrist, I guess I'll get a vasectomy, right?
	Sure. Now, I'm also a little bit annoyed here because you seem very emotionally distant in this conversation.
	I feel like I'm doing all the work.
	I have no sense of emotional connection or passion.
	I feel like I'm caring more about this conversation than you are, and that's fine.
	It's just, it's your life, and this is, you know, we've only got maybe another 20, 25 minutes maybe, so I'm not really sure what to do because you're kind of like, yeah, okay, mm-hmm, uh-huh, yeah.
	I mean, I'm not trying to mock you or anything.
	I'm just saying it's very distant, and I don't know how to fix something if you're not passionate about anything.
	Yeah, I apologize for that.
	I haven't, um, I'm running on fumes at the moment.
	I haven't slept since, uh, Since we arranged the time.
	Because I've been writing stuff down, just not wanting to forget it.
	Yeah, so I'm sort of running on fumes at the moment.
	Well, that doesn't mean that you're not emotional.
	Sometimes when you're tired, you can get more emotional.
	That's not a reason why you're not emotional.
	I mean, tell me, because I can't see you, obviously, right?
	So what are you feeling?
	I mean, I've had more passion from people discussing sports than the weather, so I'm just trying to, like, what are you feeling at the moment?
	I don't know. Yeah.
	It's just... I just feel so lost with it all, you know?
	I've... You know, one of the things my therapist said is that I haven't really developed a sense of, like, agency.
	Okay, this is all very abstract.
	Sorry, that's just blech.
	That's very abstract. So, lust is not a feeling.
	That's a judgment. What do you feel?
	Happy, sad, angry, nothing?
	Uh...
	Angry. You feel angry?
	Okay. So tell me, how do you know?
	How do you know? Why does that show up in your body?
	Usually in my gut. Well, not usually.
	What are you feeling now?
	Oh. Yeah, it's in my gut.
	It's in my gut. When I've been watching your videos, things like that, it brings out this anger at my dad.
	You said something the other day which really haunted me.
	Was that, you know, he was doing all these things to me when he was in his 30s, right?
	And, like, I would never do any of this sort of stuff to my kid, ever.
	And I'm 27.
	And it haunts me to think that he was doing these things to me at, like, 30 or 35.
	And I just...
	I just had this sort of anger in general towards him.
	And, you know, I'm sure you might have picked up that I never developed that thing.
	I was never brave enough to kind of, you know, say, like, hey, I'm angry.
	And this is why. Well, what do you mean brave when you were a kid?
	What do you mean? Yeah, yeah.
	You can't be brave with a giant abuser as a kid?
	Yeah. That's like saying, I'm a coward because I don't run at a line of tanks.
	It's like, no. That's called survival.
	Yeah. What's your relationship with your dad like now?
	It's awkward.
	It's not a real... No, of course it's not.
	Of course it's not a real relationship, but how often do you see each other and what do you talk about and all of that?
	I usually go over to his house every weekend, usually just to see my brothers.
	If we do talk in long-form conversation, usually politics is a topic.
	We seem to be able to talk about politics just fine.
	Yeah, so you avoid all the real stuff.
	You talk about that with therapists, or I guess with me in this conversation, but you avoid all the real stuff with your dad, right?
	Yeah. Okay. Yeah.
	And, yeah, it's kind of this weird unspoken thing that...
	Yeah, you don't talk about the abuse, you don't talk about the past, you don't talk about what you feel, right?
	Yeah. Okay. What's your, just out of curiosity, from 1 to 10, what's your level of urgency about dating and sex?
	It's coming across like a 2.
	Like, yeah, it'd be nice to get to it at some point.
	Yeah. Over the years, it's sort of kind of gone down.
	You know, it might have been a 6, and then it's maybe when I'm 24, it became a 5, and then, you know.
	So it's sort of been trickling down.
	You know, it's, yeah, it's just a, it's like this, it feels like this paradox I'm stuck in, you know, where it's like, you know, you know, like to have sex, like, you know, you want to do it like with your girlfriend, but then to get a girlfriend, you got to sort of talk to them, you know, Take him out on dates, all that sort of stuff, all this kind of work, right?
	Sorry, it's not particularly urgent for you.
	It's not like a big gotta have, right?
	No. Okay. Yeah, I mean, that certainly seems to be the case.
	And now normally I deal with more urgent things with people.
	Yeah. So it could just be a mismatch that this isn't, you know, I'm used to sort of trying to deal with things that are...
	You know, so very serious and imminent and urgent.
	And for you, this is like, yeah, you know, be nice at some point, but it's not a big
	priority as far as I understand it.
	Yeah, sure.
	Thank you.
	Well, maybe what you should do is bookmark me and you can call me back in sort of five or ten years when it's more urgent.
	In five or ten years, when you're still alone, still single, still a virgin, you can call me when you're a virgin at 32 or 37, and then it'll be more urgent and we can probably deal with it then, if that makes sense?
	Yeah, that makes sense.
	And that's a good plan for you?
	No, it's not. Well, sorry, why would it be more urgent in the future?
	I mean, if you don't do anything about it, like, nothing's going to change, right?
	Yeah, okay. So if you don't like why would it be more urgent in five or ten years if
	For sure, it's gonna be the same if it's not urgent now There you go me
	Because I tell you what I tell you what it's like on this side of the conversation
	Let's just use an analogy here, right?
	So it's like you're coming to a nutritionist, right?
	And you're like 400 pounds, right?
	And your health is collapsing.
	Your health is failing.
	And your nutritionist is like really passionate about you losing weight.
	And you're like, yeah, you know, that could be good.
	Yeah, that could be something I could look into.
	Yeah, that's interesting. What is the nutritionist supposed to do in that situation, do you think?
	Yeah, I don't know.
	I think it's a drag a horse to water type situation.
	What can the nutritionist do?
	Nothing. Well, I mean, the nutritionist can be honest, right?
	I've rarely been as frustrated as I have in this conversation, particularly this part.
	Like, this is really quite a novel experience for me.
	And sure, I mean, the temptation, of course, yeah, you just throw up your hands and you
	say, well, okay, if you don't really care about it, I can't, I mean, there's no point
	in me caring about it.
	You know, I've got a kid, I'm happily married.
	And if you don't really care that much about it, and it's not that important to you, then I guess you'll just keep doing what you're doing.
	But, I mean, you really did insist on this call, right?
	It's a little fucking confusing, right?
	We tried to schedule, you canceled, we tried to schedule, you canceled.
	You really committed to the call and now you're just like on the moon or something as far as emotional connectivity
	goes, right?
	Yes Yeah, you're right
	You're right. So what the fuck is going on?
	Seriously, what the fuck is going on?
	Why do you beg for a call and then bring nothing to the table as far as any kind of emotion or passion goes?
	Why are you making me do all the work?
	It's your life, man. It's not mine.
	Why are you making me do all the work when it's your life that's in the toilet, right?
	Yeah.
	Um...
	I'm...
	Okay, if you're going to self-censor to the point where it's ten seconds between each word, there's nothing to say.
	Um... I'm... pause...
	That's just a dissociation technique.
	Like, you're either going to talk to me honestly and passionately or not.
	But this, um, del, but, uh, pause, pause, pause, that's just dissociating crap, right?
	Do you want to change this?
	I don't understand what we're talking about here.
	Do you actually want...
	A girlfriend, a lover, a wife, a mother for your children, or what?
	I mean, it's now and ever as far as this conversation goes, right?
	You understand this is not going to come along every day, these kinds of conversations, right?
	Yeah. Yeah.
	Yeah, I do. I don't believe you.
	Yeah, I do. I don't believe you.
	Honestly, I don't believe it at all.
	I mean, understand, right?
	You'll hear this back when you hear it back.
	Do you want a future with a woman and a wife and a mother of your children?
	Yeah, I do. Okay, because you just said it was two or three, right?
	Or when I said it sounds like a two or three, you're like, yeah, that's about right.
	Okay, so if that's a two or three, is there anything in your life that's higher?
	Or is everything else in your life pretty much perfect?
	What's higher than this need?
	You know, I always thought that I'd You know at this point I'd be in a job that you know, I
	enjoy Anyway.
	Something that I wanted to do.
	But I've been doing the same job that, you know, my dad has...
	My dad basically told me to do when I was like 18.
	And I kind of just did it just because he...
	He told me to do it back then.
	And I've just kept at it and I haven't really made a change.
	Why are there so many pauses in what you say?
	I don't understand. Are you not certain of what to say?
	It's not your second language, is it?
	I'm definitely put on the spot right now.
	No, I'm just asking for directness and honesty.
	I don't know why there would need to be all these pauses when you're simply telling me about your job.
	I guess I'm just thinking of what to say.
	No, you're self-censoring.
	You don't need to think of what to say, do you?
	I mean, just say what you think, right?
	And you're putting all these pauses in as a way of creating emotional distance and dissociation.
	Okay, minus 10 to plus 10, how is your life?
	What is it on that? Minus 10, hell, plus 10, as good as it can be.
	Where is your life as a whole?
	Three. Oh, so it's positive.
	Sorry, I read that the wrong way.
	I read that the wrong way. So it'd be like minus five or something.
	Minus five. Okay, so you're 15 points away from where you should be aiming, right?
	Yeah, all right Yep, and are you expecting people as a whole to care about
	your life more than you do You
	You Thank you.
	Because you understand, to complain about your life and then to have no emotion or passion about fixing it is a trap.
	I feel like I'm just speaking to your father, not even you.
	Because it's a trap. Steph, I'm desperate for you to come in and help me with my life.
	Okay, fine. I'll cover up the time this afternoon and we'll talk about your life, right?
	And then there's no passion.
	There's no connection.
	There's no emotion, right?
	So this is a trap. Now, why are you trying to reproduce your incredible...
	Like, why are you trying to reproduce frustration and helplessness in me?
	Because you feel frustrated and helpless, right?
	Right? But if you express feeling frustrated and helpless, then we're back to expressing vulnerability, which is going to get you attacked.
	Does that make sense? Yeah.
	Yeah, back to your dad pushing you on the seesaw and all of that, right?
	Yeah. Okay.
	But you're not working for your dad, right?
	You're just working in an industry he said to work in.
	I guess it's the same industry that he's in.
	Yeah, it's... No, no, it's different.
	Okay. Completely different.
	Yeah, yeah. Right. Okay.
	So listen, I mean, we can wind things down in the conversation.
	I think it's a shame. I mean, it is really frustrating.
	But if you don't feel any particular sense of urgency...
	Because, and I'll tell you why, like it happened when you said you felt lost, right?
	So what happened was over the course of this conversation, my friend, I dropped all of these connections into your mind, right?
	I can think sort of five off the top of my head, right?
	All of these connections about why your dad was doing what he did, why he got mad at you for stepping on the other kid's neck, why he was pushing you harder on the seesaw when you asked him to push you less.
	I just gave you like illumination after illumination after illumination, right?
	Do you remember those? Yeah, connection after connection after connection.
	And at the end of that process, and I said, how do you feel?
	What did you say? You said you felt lost.
	And then you had something about, you said that your therapist said that you lacked certain kinds of agency and blah, blah, blah, blah, right?
	So after I had, you know, racked my brain, poured heart and soul into trying to help you make these connections, you just feel lost, empty, and emotionally distant.
	Because all I can do is try and give you these connections, right?
	About here's why your life is the way that it is, right?
	And I gave you the connection of You can't sexually perform with women because your parents
	taught you that sex is Hatred and anger, right
	Yeah Doesn't like none of these insights seem to be connecting
	at us at all. There's no emotions. There's no progress.
	There's no breakthrough Now all I can do is give me that's what you're calling for.
	I all I can do is give you these insights, right?
	Yeah.
	I mean, you understand that, yeah, pause, nothing, right?
	There's nothing coming back as far as emotions or passions or excitement or possibility or
	anything like that, right?
	I'm, um...
	Yeah, I'm really sorry.
	No, no, I'm not asking for an apology.
	Apologies don't mean a thing in this conversation.
	I'm just telling you that this is why you're single.
	Do you understand? Women are drawn to passion, right?
	Because in passion they gain security.
	And if you won't allow yourself to feel any passion, any enthusiasm, any excitement, any
	possibility, what is attractive about that for a woman?
	Nothing. Well, not really.
	I don't think that... I mean, obviously, I'm sure you're attractive, physically appealing and all of that, right?
	But are you emotionally available to the world?
	Or are you just walled off in this kind of way?
	I'm walled off.
	And who benefits from you being walled off?
	Do you benefit from it?
	No. Okay, so who does?
	My dad. Okay, how does he benefit from it?
	He doesn't have to...
	He doesn't have to hear the, you know...
	You know...
	There's no chance of me sort of taking him to task for what he did.
	Why do you want to take him to task for what he did?
	Because no one else will.
	And so? Okay, so let's say you take him to task for what he did.
	So what? What happens then?
	You say, Dad, you did these violent things, you did these terrible things, you were mean, you were cold, you were selfish, whatever you say, right?
	Then what happens? Because if you think that emotional connection to these issues means you have to go and yell at your dad, you're totally wrong.
	That's not a requirement. You don't have to do any of that.
	You don't have to bring up any of the stuff with your dad.
	Because if you're like, well, I can't connect with Steph, and I can't connect with philosophy, and I can't connect with morality, and I can't connect with my trauma, because that means I then have to go and yell at my dad, which I really, really don't want to do.
	Then you would short-circuit your emotions, right?
	Because it would lead you to a place of great terror, right?
	Yeah, yeah, you don't have to talk to your dad about any of this shit
	You just need to know what it is and why it is and not take it personally
	That your dad was a cruel, vindictive and abusive guy who was all about himself and it wasn't you who was bad and it wasn't you who was wrong.
	He didn't attack you because of anything you did.
	He just failed in a pussified fashion to deal with his own demons.
	Therefore, he re-inflicted those demons on his children because he's a coward and a bully.
	Two sides of the same coin.
	And he's a braggart.
	And you're still enthralled to him.
	You still see him every week.
	Which means every week you've got to go over there and kill your history.
	Kill your emotions.
	Put your inner child in a soundproof basement.
	That's the price you pay for being around an unrepentant abuser.
	Right? Yeah.
	It's kind of tough to kick the fight or flight thing when you spend every week with a lion.
	So you're doing what he wants, not what's good for you.
	Because that's how you were raised.
	To do what he wants... Rather than what's good for you, because what he wanted, what he demanded, what he needed, what he inflicted, was for you to not experience feelings, for you to not experience anger, for you not experience loss or pain or fear.
	So that's the requirement.
	You have to self-erase in order to be around him.
	Tell me if I'm wrong. If I'm wrong, I'm certainly happy to hear it.
	No, you're wrong. Okay, so if you continue this habit of self-erasure, what's going to happen to your life?
	Just fade away. Right.
	You ghost yourself, right?
	Yeah. Does that worry you?
	Yeah, it scares me.
	Tell me more. Well...
	You being honest as you are now is kind of...
	Definitely freaking me out a little bit.
	I thought I would have had a bit more to say to you.
	Definitely didn't go the way I thought it was going to go.
	Okay, these are all thoughts.
	I didn't ask you for your thoughts or your fucking analysis or any of that.
	I don't care about that. I get it.
	You're an intellectual guy. You're a verbose guy.
	I get it. Don't care.
	You said you felt afraid of ghosting, becoming a ghost.
	Tell me about that fear.
	Not your thoughts about the overall arc of the conversation.
	What is your gut telling you about what I'm saying and the risks you face?
	The risks that are already manifesting in your life.
	Yeah. It's like fear of being, like, not achieving anything.
	Being, you know, just a nobody.
	Just a recluse that doesn't leave his home.
	And what's scary about that?
	What is scary about that? Let's say that that happens.
	What is scary about that? Well, opportunities start to close.
	Start to close? Yeah.
	They already close. Yeah.
	Yeah, this is not in the future.
	You're not 17 and worried about this.
	You're 27 years old.
	I mean, you're way closer to 30 than 20.
	Right? You've got a dead-end job.
	You got no woman and it's been half a decade since you even tried to get intimate
	Yeah, why would you wait why would you wait to panic You
	You You
	.
	Yeah, I shouldn't be. Well, no, but you are if you're right about the fear of the ghosting, right?
	Hmm. What happens if you're worse off in 10 years?
	What's your life like at 37?
	Still a virgin, still working the dead-end job.
	What's your life like? Depressing.
	Also the now. Um...
	Probably a lot of shame, I feel.
	Probably wouldn't be able to look friends and family in the eye type thing.
	You know, being 37 and never having a girlfriend, that's, yeah, that's gruelling.
	Well, I mean, you're done, right?
	You're never going to get a girlfriend at that time.
	Like, it's just not going to happen.
	Because you'd have no experience having a relationship after you'd been an adult for 20 years.
	You had no experience having a relationship and no sane woman would date you.
	Right, because the only woman you'd have anything in common with would be a woman who also has
	never had a relationship.
	Hopefully that's just a Coke.
	Thank you.
	Lots of water.
	Is it easier to tell a woman that you're still a virgin when you're 27 or when you're 30?
	you No. 27.
	So, you understand. This is why I don't understand the lack of panic.
	It only gets worse from here.
	If you say, well, I'll worry about it later, it's not that high a priority.
	Like, it only gets worse from here.
	If you've got some weird lump in your body, you go and get it checked out.
	You don't say, well, I'll start worrying about it in three or four years when it's the size of a grapefruit.
	It's like no, then you're probably dead Yeah, yes, I struggle with that
	Struggle with one? With, like, you know, putting off the inevitable.
	It was pretty bad during high school with, like, assignments and stuff.
	I'd always leave them to the last minute.
	Homework, same thing. Well, I get that.
	But you got them done at some point, right?
	Yeah. So, here's the difference.
	Like, you think that the assignment is due in the future.
	This is the difference. You think you've got time to procrastinate.
	You think it's not that urgent. You think you've got, yeah, just, you know, I'll deal with it in a couple of years or five years or ten years, right?
	You think the deadline is in the future.
	That's what I don't understand.
	The deadline is now.
	It's fucking today. You take more steps into this fog, it's not easy to come back.
	You just get more lost.
	Yeah, you're right. Like, the assignment is due today!
	And you're just pushing it off into some...
	The assignment is due today because it only gets harder after this.
	You say, well, I'm not that good at algebra.
	Well, next year it's calculus, and after that it's functions and relations, and after that it's vector calculus, and after that it's superstring theory or some other shit, right?
	It's not going to be easy to study this shit in five years or three years or tomorrow.
	If this is not a panic action plan now, when is it going to be?
	If you can't do it now, will you be able to do it when it's harder?
	This is what I don't understand about the lack of panic.
	If you can't make yourself do it now, And you say, I'll just wait till it's even hotter.
	I'll wait till I've erased myself more.
	I'm longer without a relationship.
	I'm longer without virginity.
	I'm more of a porn addict.
	I'll just wait till later. It's like you're heading the wrong way in the woods, into the wilderness, and you say, well, I won't turn around now because I don't want to accept that I'm going the wrong way.
	I'll turn around next year or next month or 10 miles from now.
	It's like, it's going to be harder to turn around then.
	Yeah, you're right. You're right.
	I mean, if this doesn't get you to asking a girl out at work or talking to girls at a coffee shop or something, if this conversation doesn't get you in that direction, then what, are you going to wait until next year, until five years from now, until ten years from now?
	My God. Well, I can't lift this 20-pound weight, so I'll wait until it's 40 pounds, then I'll lift it.
	No, because you'll be weaker and the weight will be heavier.
	Yeah.
	You got me. You got me stun locked here.
	Stay home.
	Thank you.
	It's, uh...
	You just don't want to face the fear.
	Like, you don't, you don't want to face the fear and so you want to postpone it, right?
	Which means the fear wins, your dad wins, your mom wins, you lose.
	Forever and ever, amen.
	You won't turn around and fight.
	You won't confront the fears. You'll just space out and postpone, right?
	Yeah. Okay.
	Then you should have told me that before asking me for a call.
	No, no, no, no. No, no, no. I'm just going to space out and postpone.
	I'll listen a little bit, but I'm just going to space out and postpone.
	That's not what I meant. That's not what I meant.
	I was agreeing with what you were saying.
	That's me saying, yeah, wasn't me saying that's what I'm going to do.
	Sorry. Okay, so that's not what you're going to do.
	No, no. Okay, so what are you going to do?
	What are you going to do over the next week?
	I'm talking to that girl. I'm going to ask her out.
	And what else?
	Why does your mom take all the heat and your dad gets all the visits?
	I'm terrified of it You are terrified of him, and I understand that.
	Listen, man, I deeply sympathize with that.
	I really do. Like, brother to brother, that's horrible what you went through.
	I mean, you know, there's something that Dostoevsky wrote about in one of his novels about This nihilist says, you know, what if the afterlife is not heaven and it's not hell, but just an old bathhouse, a dusty old bathhouse full of spiders?
	Like, you went through hell as a kid, and I don't, you know, any of my sort of bluntness, I don't want that to cover up any of my incredibly deep sympathy, my friend, for what you went through as a child.
	This horrible stuff. But you've got to stop letting it win.
	Otherwise, all that suffering and survival was kind of for nothing.
	The point is not just to make it through and barely survive.
	The point is to make it through, turn around and live a great fucking life.
	You are doing what your father wants because you're terrified of his temper.
	Thank you.
	Right? Yes.
	Okay, do you want to do this quick roleplay?
	Do you want me to meet your dad?
	Yes. All right, here we go, brother.
	Let's get it on. Okay, so I'm you.
	I won't do the pauses because of sanity, but I'm you.
	I sit down with your dad and say, Dad, look, man, we've got to talk about the past.
	This is really messing me up.
	Like, I'm single.
	I've actually never... Really dated a girl.
	I've never gone down that.
	I'm stuck in a dead-end job.
	I think a lot of it has to do, I mean, some of it's my responsibility, for sure, as an adult, but I think a lot of it has to do with the screaming, the violence, the abuse that I suffered as a kid, man.
	And I'm like, my heart's pounding now, even just talking to you about this stuff.
	Like you are really a really intimidating guy and I don't know maybe you take some pride on that but
	Intimidating me when I was like four years old doesn't seem particularly brave and you scared the shit out of me a lot
	when I was A kid dad and that's really kind of heartbroken me as an
	adult Well
	I know what No, no, just be him, man.
	Just be him. Yeah, yeah.
	My dad wasn't easy on me either.
	Yeah, but I'm not talking about you.
	I'm talking about me. I need you to focus on me.
	Right? Not talking about you.
	Not talking about your dad. You understand how violent you were towards me as a kid, right?
	That you terrorized me.
	That you beat me up. I didn't beat you.
	I just smacked you. Smacking and beatings, two different things.
	You want to tell me my experience, Dad?
	You want to lecture me on what I experienced as a child?
	You want to override what I actually experienced as a child?
	It was a beating, Dad.
	You never did it in public, did you?
	It was a beating. And you screamed at me at the top of your lungs, which is completely terrifying as a kid.
	So don't you lecture me on what I experienced as a kid, Dad.
	I experienced this as a beating.
	It was a beating. Are you telling me that you had some kind of magical control over your temper when you were younger?
	You did not. I mean, when I hit that kid...
	For smacking me in the nuts with a ball and then laughing at me?
	I hit that kid, stood on his neck.
	You hit me so hard I flew halfway across the room.
	Don't tell me that's just a smacking, you asshole!
	That's a beating. Okay, I remember that.
	I'm surprised I remember it because it could have given me brain damage, fallen on the floor, face down that way.
	That was a beating, Dad.
	Okay, so don't tell me what you did and didn't do.
	I was there, I know.
	And it was shitty parenting.
	And you know it. Don't even try.
	You actually have kids.
	Oh, so are you saying it's the fault of children that you have to beat them?
	It's the children's fault.
	You have no self-control. What are you, some kind of irrational, crazy, deranged woman?
	You have no self-control.
	Kids exist in the environment.
	You just have to smack them across the bed.
	You just have to scream at them.
	It's all the kids' fault.
	Listen, I'm not a part of that new age stuff, okay?
	I'm old school. Yeah, that doesn't mean anything.
	You hit and beat at your children, Dad.
	You bullied little children.
	If I didn't hit you, and I'd just let you run rampant, you'd become disrespectful.
	So it's good parenting to beat your children.
	Can you tell me which parenting books you read that in?
	Because obviously, you know, when you become a...
	You know that you had bad parenting yourself.
	You said your dad was very aggressive towards you.
	So you know you had some bad parenting yourself.
	So obviously, you must have read parenting books.
	I'm just... If you can give me...
	I've got a pen here.
	I'm happy to write this down.
	If you could just tell me the parenting books that you...
	You know, because you said you had some bad parenting yourself.
	Your dad was very harsh. So if you could just tell me the parenting books that you read in, it's really good to beat your children.
	Otherwise, they'll be disrespectful.
	I'd really appreciate it because I'd like to know what kind of books are out there that are telling you that.
	Yeah, I don't need to read a parenting book to, you know, to know how to raise my kids.
	Now, you know that what you did is actually illegal, right, Dad?
	Like beating children in that kind of way?
	It's assault? Yeah.
	It's not illegal.
	Absolutely it is. You are not allowed to hit your kids to that degree.
	Not close fists, not across the face, not knocking them halfway across the room.
	Absolutely not. And you know that because you never did it in public, right?
	So you're saying that beating children is a good thing and you're proud of what you did?
	Discipline is a good thing.
	No, no.
	Say it! Beating!
	That's what happened. I went flying across the room.
	And this happened on more than one occasion, as you know.
	Stop changing the language.
	Hey, if you're proud of it, just say it.
	If you're proud of beating your children, just say it.
	Just tell me you're proud of it.
	I just need to know. You have any regrets?
	You could have handled it at all differently?
	Anything you could have done that could have been any...
	Okay, tell me this. What could you have done differently?
	I mean, every parent has regrets, I assume, right?
	What could you have done differently as a whole?
	Anything. I... Nothing.
	Right. So you were a perfect...
	No, that's fine. So you consider the violence and screaming and beatings and so on.
	This is this is perfect parenting and it can't be improved, right?
	I'm not trying to force you a corner you or anything like that. I'm just
	I just genuinely want to know if there was...
	I mean, most people in life have some kind of regrets, but you did everything perfectly...
	Nothing could have been improved.
	Nothing could have been different. Nothing could have been better.
	You did everything perfectly as a parent, including, I guess, screaming at my mom for that four-hour trip in the car, just screaming at...
	At each other. So even fighting with mom in front of us, that's great fucking parenting, right dad?
	Like that's just really great for your kids to be terrified in the backseat, watching two people operating an 8,000 pound piece of machinery going along at 70 miles an hour screaming at each other for four hours straight.
	That's great fucking parenting.
	Is that your theory? Or is that all her fault and you're also perfectly innocent and never did anything wrong that you are the perfect husband as well?
	You're the perfect dad and you're the perfect husband.
	Everything went to shit because you're just a victim.
	Is that right? Like Mr. Big Strong Guy is just a victim of everything?
	He's bullied by his kids and he's bullied by his wife and he's just a helpless little fucking jellyfish?
	Don't swear. I will fucking swear.
	I will swear. Don't talk to me about swearing, Dad.
	I've heard you swear a million times, okay?
	Don't even try. Oh, and now, see, now you have standards.
	Beating your kids is fine, but don't swear.
	Oh my gosh. Oh no, swearing?
	What are you, some delicate little Victorian bride you're fainting on a couch?
	Was it good parenting for you and mom to be screaming at each other with your kids in the backseat for hours in a
	car?
	See you can't you got all these pauses You can't even give me an honest answer, can you?
	You're just trying to calculate what you can get away with.
	You can't even be direct and honest with me.
	You can't even be mad enough to say, yeah, you know what, that was not good behavior.
	You can't even own anything negative you did.
	You can't be self-critical.
	What are you, that weak that you can't even evaluate yourself?
	You've got to be right all the time like some toddler?
	This is pathetic, Dad.
	You know I told you about my work and how stressful it was?
	So? Aren't men supposed to be able to handle stress without screaming at people and hitting people and beating people?
	Is that your excuse?
	Well, I was stressed. Oh, Dad, this is pathetic, man.
	Come on. I was stressed.
	Oh, no. I was stressed.
	That's why I had to scream at people and beat them.
	Oh, my God. This is so embarrassing, Dad.
	It's just terrible. Sorry, you were saying?
	I was just going to say, you run a business and get back to me.
	Yeah, okay, so you're fine.
	Because you were stressed at work, it's perfectly fine.
	So on the one hand, this is the funny thing, Dad, right?
	So on the one hand, you say, well, son, it was great parenting.
	And on the other hand, you say, well, I acted badly because I was stressed.
	Okay, so which is it?
	Was it great parenting or were you acting badly because you were stressed?
	You can't have it both ways, right?
	You understand? Because if it was great parenting...
	Then you wouldn't be doing it because you were stressed, right?
	So, was it great parenting or were you acting badly because you were stressed?
	I'll have to cut this from you.
	I'm sorry? I don't have to cop this from you.
	I can't hear what you're saying.
	I don't have to cop this from you.
	I don't have to hear this from you.
	Oh, I'm sorry, are the things I'm saying upsetting to you?
	So you scream at me half my childhood, which is terrifying to me, but then when I bring it up and I'm angry about it, I'm not screaming at you.
	So now suddenly you're very delicate about negative words in the environment.
	So you can scream at me half my childhood, top of your lungs, like purple-veined creepy shit, right?
	You can scream at me half my childhood, but then when I bring it up as an adult, suddenly you're all kinds of delicate and you don't have to listen.
	Is that what you're saying? And when I catch you in a big contradiction, like you say, it was perfect parenting, I couldn't have done it any better, and then you say, well, I acted badly because I was stressed, and I point that out, and suddenly you're running away from the conversation because you've proven wrong about something?
	I mean, Dad, I can't believe I looked up to you all this time.
	It turns out you're just like a house of cards.
	You're like this fragile spiderweb in the wind.
	One contradiction, and you're like, oh, I'm out!
	I'm out! I can't talk about it.
	Which was it, Dad? Were you a perfect parent or did you act badly because you were stressed?
	Were you a good parent or did you let work stresses boil over to the point where you were violent at home?
	Look, I admit I could have done some things better.
	Oh, fantastic.
	Look at that. Look at that journey we've made in just a few minutes.
	From you being a perfect parent to you could have done some things better.
	Look, first of all, you understand that you were just lying earlier, right?
	Like, you're just lying to me? I just pointed that out, right?
	What was the lie? You said you had nothing that you could have done better, and now you're saying there's things you could have done better.
	Like, literally, in the space of three minutes, you went from, I'm a perfect parent, to, I could have done things better.
	So it was a lie when you said I was a perfect parent, right?
	When you said you were a perfect parent, that was a lie.
	Because like literally two or three minutes later, you're saying I could have done things better.
	I've just pointed that out as a disparity there.
	So now tell me the things you could have done better.
	Perhaps I was excessive in my, um, in how I raised my voice at you.
	What do you mean perhaps? So you said you could have done things better and now it's perhaps.
	Is that a yes or no?
	Should you have screamed at me less?
	Yes, I should have screamed at you less.
	Okay, so you did something wrong as a parent there, right?
	Because there was a lot of screaming, to be fair, right?
	Yes, there was. Okay.
	That's a screaming. And are you sorry about that?
	Yes, I am. Could you give me an apology, please?
	Sorry, son, for what I did to you.
	Please forgive me. I appreciate that.
	And what about the hitting?
	What you do call it, I called it beating, you said smacking, right?
	So you know that there's a lot of parents in the world who don't hit their children, right?
	And, you know, you know in your heart of hearts that some of it was some really, really violent stuff, right?
	I mean, again, me flying across the room, that kind of stuff, right?
	So, even if we say that some smacking is okay, like spanking or whatever, spanking is supposed to be like you have rules, the kid knows ahead of time.
	You explain the rules. If they don't obey, you smack them a little.
	You explain afterwards.
	Like, you just lost control and smashed me in the face, right?
	I mean, that's not ideal parenting, is it?
	No, it's not ideal.
	Bye.
	Bye.
	Okay. And there was a lot of smacking, right?
	And it was also spread across three kids, right?
	Yes. Right.
	You were a naughty boy at times.
	You were a naughty boy at times.
	Oh, so we're back to like I caused it?
	I mean just you just lied to me Do I get to smash you in the face now?
	Like, you lied to me repeatedly just over the course of this conversation about some really important things.
	Do I get to smash you in the face?
	Knock you across the room because you lied to me?
	Because you're a naughty boy? You're a naughty dad?
	Is that okay? Am I allowed to do that?
	Or is that bad? I should just not smack you for being naughty and disrespectful and lying to me.
	I would prefer that you don't smack me.
	So that's my whole childhood right there, Dad.
	That's my whole fucking childhood. I would prefer that you don't smack me.
	See how that works? It's kind of a universal thing, wouldn't you say?
	You prefer not to get smacked.
	And I, as a kid, you know, when you were five or ten times my size, I also kind of preferred to not get smacked, right?
	And you and I both know that it had nothing to do with discipline, Dad.
	You lost it. You lost your shit.
	You lashed out and you hit your kids.
	If you had an ounce of discipline, if discipline worked, then you would have been able to restrain yourself.
	And maybe I would have been spanked, but I wouldn't have been knocked halfway across the room.
	Like you just lashed out, you lost it, you screamed, you hit.
	There was not a tiny bit of self-control.
	It was a complete lack of self-control.
	You just acted out, you lashed out.
	Okay, so this has nothing to do with discipline.
	I could have handled being hit if it had been disciplined.
	Like, I'm sorry I have to do this, son, but this is the rules.
	You know the rules. Here's a couple of smacks.
	I explained to you why I've done it.
	And you never lost your temper.
	You never lost your shit. You know, you and I both know what happened.
	You come home and you're in a bad mood.
	Something happens. Mom riles you up or I do something you don't like.
	And you just, blah! You just smash out, right?
	There's nothing about discipline about any of this.
	It was just anger.
	It was just losing your shit.
	Boiling over. That's why you said it was a lot of stress at work and so on, right?
	So you were having tough stuff in your life and you took it out on your kids.
	But let's not talk about discipline or respect or responsibility or any of that shit.
	I mean, that's not what was happening.
	Things were going tough for you.
	You took it out on your kids.
	It had nothing to do with discipline or good parenting or theories about respect or if I hadn't done that.
	Because that's never what happened.
	And what happened was you're in a bad mood and you lashed out.
	You said you try running a business, right?
	It's really stressful. So you lied to me again because you said it was about discipline and respect and it wasn't.
	It's just about stress, right?
	Yes.
	Now, how was I punished when I lied to you as a kid?
	If I lied to you about really important things as a kid, how was I punished?
	Physically. Right.
	So now you're lying to me about really important things, but you're saying, please don't hit me.
	And you see, as a kid, I had way more excuses.
	You're a grown-ass adult, right?
	I mean, you're in your 50s or your 60s or, like, you're a grown-ass adult and you're lying to me.
	I was a little kid. I got beaten for lying.
	You're a grown adult. You're lying.
	But you see, now beating is really...
	It's just wrong. It's just not what you should do, man.
	Even though I had way more excuses as a kid than you do as an adult, right?
	True. And why is it up to me to bring this stuff up, right?
	Do you not... I'm just curious.
	I mean, do you ever think about... What you did in the past and the good and the bad and the right and the wrong.
	I mean, you're a Christian, right?
	You know that Jesus says whatever you do to the least among me.
	So do you also do to me, you know, that Jesus says whoever harms the children, it is better for a millstone to be hung around his neck and be dropped into the ocean, that Jesus specifically is about the protection of children.
	I'm just curious.
	I mean, do you think about this stuff?
	Do you ever sort of reminisce or ruminate or view what you did?
	Or is it just kind of like, just kind of blur of the now or something?
	I see you left out the spare the rod part from the Bible.
	Yeah, but the rod is instruction.
	The rod is not a beating stick, right?
	The rod is like a shepherd guides his sheep.
	He doesn't beat the sheep with the rod.
	He uses the rod to guide his sheep through the wilderness.
	So spare the rod, spoil the child is if you don't give any moral instruction, words, like not beatings.
	If you don't give moral instruction to your children, then they will not tend to end up...
	Very well. They spoiled, right?
	And that makes perfect sense to me.
	Are you supposed to morally instruct your children?
	I mean, we're not supposed to be raised like wolves, right?
	So, yeah, that makes sense.
	I mean, but did you ever look up the meaning of that phrase, or did you just say, oh, that means beat your kids?
	Because that's bullshit, right?
	I mean, I was supposed to study for tests, right?
	Like, when I was a kid, I didn't just say, well, I think I know what it means, and then write it down and get the wrong answer, right?
	If I didn't study for it, if you said to me, son, you need to study for this test, and you said, ah, I already know the answers, right?
	And then I failed the test, I would get beaten, right?
	So you failed a test called don't hit your children, because you just assumed this word rod meant beat your children.
	Without ever looking it up.
	And, you know, the internet was around.
	Or you could have gone to the church.
	So you had a test called parenthood.
	You didn't even study for it. You failed it.
	And if I failed the fucking spelling bee, I could get screamed at or hit.
	You failed an entire thing called parenting.
	And I'm supposed to be what? Like, oh, it's fine.
	No worries. Water under the bridge, man.
	What's past is past. No biggie.
	So spelling tests are really important, but actual parenting is not so important.
	Sorry, go ahead. I was going to say, you cut out there for a bit.
	Sorry, I'm just going to jump in.
	Actually, I think I'm too far back.
	Continue. Well, I was just saying that...
	Spelling test apparently is really important and you should yell at and beat your kids for a spelling test.
	They fail. But apparently parenting just isn't really that important.
	Like actually learning how to parent is completely unimportant and you should never experience any negative repercussions for bad parenting.
	But if you're a kid and you don't study properly for a test or you think you know the answers but you're wrong, then you get yelled at or beaten, right?
	So spelling tests when you're 8 years old, super important.
	20 years of parenting, getting wrong, doesn't matter at all, right?
	See some logic there?
	But you're kind of fucked up, Dad.
	Honestly, you're kind of fucked up.
	You beat your kids, you screamed at your kids, and then later on now that I'm talking to you about it, you lie about it.
	And say, oh, it's great parenting. Oh, I could have done some things better.
	No, but I was stressed. You're just changing your story all the time.
	This is just bullshit, right?
	You understand. You're just making stuff up.
	And honestly, it's kind of embarrassing to look at.
	But yeah, you owe us some apologies and you owe us some restitution.
	Because you did fuck up a lot as a father.
	I mean, as a husband too, which is why you got divorced.
	You either fucked up as a husband or you fucked up in choosing your bride.
	Either way, we kids suffered, right?
	There was horrible fighting, yelling, screaming, a divorce, a new mom, right?
	It's all messed up for us, right?
	You're the head of the family, right?
	You're a Christian. You're the head of the family.
	Everything that happens in the family, it's ultimately on you, right?
	You're a Christian. You're the head of the family.
	And you fucked up a lot, right?
	Is that fair to say? Yes.
	And I appreciate that honesty.
	You understand what a distance we traveled in 10 or 15 minutes.
	So, yeah, here's what I need.
	I need you to start the sort of healing process here.
	I don't know. I know you hate this New Age shit or whatever, but just the honest process, right?
	Like when I was a kid, I was supposed to say sorry if I fucked up, right?
	So here's what I need you to do, Dad.
	I need you to write down the things that you regret as a father.
	I need you to write them down and write it down for each of the kids, right?
	You've got time. I know you've got time.
	I mean, we jawbone about politics every weekend, so I know you have time.
	I need you to write down The things that you did that were wrong as a parent and the effect that you think it had on us.
	Now listen, I'm perfectly happy to hear, not happy, I shouldn't say that.
	I'm perfectly willing to hear about how difficult your childhood was and the negative things that happened to you and what your dad did that was bad or wrong.
	Because I get that you're the product of an environment just like I am.
	But we got to dig this shit up and get these bodies out there because right now, like, my life is kind of fucked, right?
	And I'm not blaming you.
	I'm an adult. I'm not saying it's all on you.
	But, you know, there's an influence.
	There's an effect. You know, I got no girlfriend.
	I got a dead-end job.
	And, you know, we're not able to solve this as a family, right?
	You're not sitting me down saying, son, you know, what's going on?
	You're not dating. You're a dead-end job.
	What can I do? How can I help?
	Right? We just jawbone about politics like that's going to change a thing.
	So I just, I need you to write down, and listen, I'll write down the things that I think I did wrong as a kid.
	I'm not making this a one-way street, but I really do need you to write down the stuff that you think you did wrong, how you could have done it better, what the causality was, because that takes the burden off me, right?
	Because you're still saying, well, it wasn't my fault because maybe my mom was difficult, your mom was difficult, or my job was difficult, it was stressful, or, you know, you wait till you have kids, kids drive you crazy, right?
	But I just need you... I mean, you were the adult.
	I was the kid, right? So you've got to take 100% ownership of how you parented, right?
	You can't blame your kids. You can't blame your wife because that's kind of pathetic, right?
	And false. You're in charge of yourself, right?
	So I need you to write down all of these things.
	And I think it would be helpful for my brothers too.
	Just write down the things that...
	You did that were wrong and why you did them, at least in your theory, so that I don't take it personally, right?
	Because to have a dad hit you or beat you or smack you, as you say, or scream at you all the time and call your names, it's kind of soul crushing in a way, right?
	So I just need you to write down these things so that I can lift this burden off my shoulders.
	I would consider it a great personal favor for you to do that.
	Is that something you would do?
	Listen, I've said sorry to And I understand this is hard for you, but don't give me directions.
	Don't give me orders. You don't give me orders, okay?
	You don't tell me to write whatever down.
	I don't do that. Sorry, when did you hear me give you an order?
	I just told you, I just told you literally, literally 10 seconds ago, I told you I would take it as a great personal favor.
	Did you hear that? I'm not sure what you've got in your ears, but did you hear that?
	You cut out of that 10 seconds ago, you literally just told me what?
	About 10 seconds ago, I literally told you, first of all, I never gave you an order.
	I said I would consider it a great personal favor if you would write down the things you did wrong as a parent and why you did them.
	A favor is not an order.
	Can we at least agree on the language of that?
	Yes. Okay.
	So don't accuse me of giving you orders when I'm asking for favors, okay?
	Okay. Okay.
	So if I ask you to do it for me as a personal favor and to do it for my siblings as a personal favor
	Would you do it?
	I'll do it fantastic All right, so I'm going to end the roleplay here, and to tell me what you thought.
	Okay. Now, then he probably wouldn't do it, right?
	I mean, you'd have to give him a deadline and, you know, three days or whatever.
	Don't you give me deadlines! It's like, no, it's okay.
	I mean, you can survive. You have deadlines all the time at work.
	You have deadlines in taxes.
	You have deadlines all the time.
	You can handle a deadline, right?
	So tell me what you thought of the roleplay.
	I thought it was interesting.
	We covered ground I'd never even thought to cover.
	You were very...
	A lot more assertive, obviously, than I would have been or I've ever been with him.
	Well, that's only because it's not my father, right?
	I mean, when I was with my father, it was more scary, right?
	I mean, this is roleplay. So don't take that as a standard.
	Let's just be roleplaying rather than it's my dad, right?
	So I can understand it be more alarming.
	Cool. Yeah, the swearing part was interesting.
	Go on. That was interesting because that's one of his rules.
	Don't swear on his house. Don't let us swear.
	Or you can swear until he tells you to stop, type thing.
	But didn't he ever swear when you were growing up?
	Oh, he swore. Yeah, okay.
	That's why I said I've heard you swear a million times.
	And that kind of distraction, like, let's have a stupid rule that doesn't really mean anything.
	It's like, we're talking about beating children.
	It's like, but don't say a bad word.
	It's like, come on, let's get a hierarchy of values that makes some kind of sense here, right?
	Yeah, that's it. 100%, yeah.
	Yeah, it led to an amicable or like a friendly sort of resolution.
	Well, not exactly friendly because, I mean, he would postpone it and then he would say that you were bullying him or being like, I'll get to it when I get to it.
	Stop harassing me. Stop bullying.
	So he'd postpone it and then it would be like, A bunch of defenses.
	This wouldn't resolve like that.
	He wouldn't be honest and direct about the things he did wrong and why, right?
	No. But, you know, the thing is asking someone who's selfish for something is really important because either they're going to do it, in which case they're not selfish for some reason, or they're not going to do it, or they're going to do it badly, or they're going to do it in some passive-aggressive way or something, in which case it's like, okay, I can't ask for anything from this person.
	They can make your decision on the relationship based on that.
	Yeah, that sounds fair.
	Tough. You heard how much he lied, right?
	Yeah. He lied about everything.
	And didn't even seem to notice.
	I was a perfect parent.
	No, I hit you out of stress. It's like, come on, man.
	You can't have both, right?
	Yeah, yeah. He's pivoted like that before on the fly.
	Yeah. Yeah, it's quite annoying.
	Well, and usually when you catch people on those pivots, as he did in the roleplay, he just wants to leave the relationship, just want to leave the conversation, right?
	Like, that's cowardly, right? That's really pussy.
	Pussy-fired, right? Yeah.
	He's walked off before, mid-combo, stuff like that.
	Oh, see, that's also very instructive.
	So if you have a voice in a conversation, and you're trying to have a voice in a conversation, the other person leaves, it's like, okay, well, I just can't have a voice in this conversation.
	I can't have a voice in this relationship.
	Like, if I say something this person doesn't like, right?
	It's like me in social media.
	If you say something that this person doesn't like, there's no relationship.
	Okay, then there's no relationship.
	And let's not mouth off about politics and pretend like we're having a relationship.
	Does that make sense? Yeah.
	Yeah, makes sense. All right.
	All right. All right. So yeah, that would be sort of, whether you have that conversation or not with your dad, I don't know.
	But I think it's a good time to, you got to act now because it's just going to get tougher as you go.
	If you don't act now, you're just promising yourself in the future, you're never going to act.
	Right? Because if you say, well, I'll do it when it's harder.
	It's too hard to do now.
	I'll do it when it's harder. You're just promising yourself to never do it at all.
	You're actually the first person who's put it to me in that way.
	Most people, if they kind of tentatively bring up the girlfriend aspect of it, they kind of pussyfoot around.
	But yeah, you really went straight for the truth of it.
	And I appreciate that.
	I knew talking to you, you do this with people.
	You kind of just tell the truth regardless of...
	Well, I'm caring about your feelings.
	I don't want you to be horribly depressed in your 30s.
	I care about your feelings.
	I'm doing this for your feelings, to help with your feelings.
	Yeah. I don't want you to wake up one day and be like, I have no life, and what's my life for?
	That nihilism, that's really dangerous shit, man.
	I mean, you really are playing with fire, postponing stuff, because it may get really, really bad.
	So, no, this is exactly for your feelings that I'm blunt.
	You know, like if I say, well, I'm going to sit on the couch for another six months, then
	I'm going to run the marathon, I'm just going to be even weaker to run the marathon, right?
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	All right, man.
	Well, will you keep me posted about how it's going?
	you Yeah, I will. All right.
	Well, thanks for the convo. I appreciate you hanging in there.
	I know it was a bit tough at times, but I really do appreciate the conversation, and I'm glad that you pushed for the call, and I look forward to hearing how it's going.
	All right. Cool. Thanks, Stefan.
	Thanks for everything. Bye. Thank you.

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