All Episodes
Previous Next
Nov. 7, 2023 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
53:43
SHE WILL BREAK YOUR HEART BRO
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
All right, everybody. Hope you're doing well.
Stefan Molyneux from Freedomain, and we have great questions from listeners.
Here we go. Here we go. Why is it that in pretty much all famous novels with child characters, the children are written as orphans?
That's a fine question.
Of course, this is a standard trope in the Disney movies that the parents are gone or dead.
You can think of, of course, Howard Rourke and John Galt from Ayn Rand.
So why is it that they're written as orphans?
Well, there's a couple of things. First of all, for us to see children in danger is...
It arouses great sympathy in us and children are in the greatest danger when their parents are dead, right?
So it's just sort of high drama as a whole.
And of course, the more obstacles people overcome, in general, the more we admire them.
And so a child who becomes sort of a good, effective person over the course of his life Survives and overcomes obstacles and so on.
And an orphan is overcoming even more obstacles than usual.
So I think that's important to be without parental protection is important.
It has us admire and sympathize with the child that aches.
Like I remember when I first read...
Oliver Twist as a kid, my heart was breaking, the fact that he was trying to return money, but he got robbed and everyone thought he was a thief.
It just broke my heart.
I think that's why.
Dear Steph, please elaborate on the duty of close personal friends in regard to your personal happiness.
My consideration of the subject is derived from your narrative describing the dissolution of your first engagement from a relationship of seven years.
My circumstances were similar in duration to what was and is an amazing person, yet nevertheless amicably divorced a few years later, totaling 13.
The inquiry surrounds a friend of 20-plus years whose marriage I was thanked for helping preserve after potential infidelity by his wife only a few years earlier.
And was later dubbed godparents of their subsequent child, who nevertheless, in reference to my divorce, didn't have a single question regarding it until over a year and a half later, after distancing...
Oh gosh, sorry. This is not particularly clearly written.
All right. Let me just...
This is somebody who's unfortunately writing a bit too formal.
That's all right. We'll get it. We'll get it.
The inquiry surrounds a friend of 20 plus years whose marriage I was thanked for helping preserve after potential infidelity by his wife only a few years earlier.
I was later dubbed godparents of their subsequent child, who nevertheless, in reference to my divorce, didn't have a single question regarding it until over a year and a half later, after distancing myself.
Noor mentioned her name, and was the same friend I consulted as whether I should marry after expressing doubts regarding compatibility despite our genuine affection.
While I don't know if we should have married or divorced, and, to be fair, believe him to be an otherwise decent person who wouldn't know either, what concerns me, however, is having people in my life that appear to lack equal or any concerns about important decisions in my life and their outcomes.
Wherefore, it would be helpful if you could describe what philosophical standards underpinned your decision to eventually dissociate with those you've described as indifferent to your happiness.
Okay, so to boil this down, I can sort of understand why you have a formal approach to this kind of stuff, but to sort of break it down, you divorced...
After being together for 13 years, and you had a friend of 20 years, you helped him save his marriage, he didn't even ask you about his divorce, your divorce, sorry, he didn't even ask about your divorce for 18 months, right?
I don't understand.
If your wife's an amazing person and you were amicable in your divorce, why on earth would you divorce?
Maybe there was something like you wanted kids, she didn't, or there was infertility issues and you wanted to...
Roll your dice with some other ovaries or something like that.
But it just never makes sense to me.
Frankly, it's annoying to me.
It doesn't mean you're wrong. I'm just telling you I'm annoyed, right?
It doesn't mean you're annoying.
I'm just saying I'm annoyed. Because it kind of bothers me when people say, oh, my ex-wife's the most amazing person.
We're great friends. We're amicably divorced.
We couldn't have, you know, she was wonderful.
It's like, well, why would you divorce then?
Why would you divorce? It's so confusing.
It's like all of these people who are really overweight and they say, oh, I don't eat much and I just have weird metabolism.
It's like, no, it's math. I don't understand.
You don't have to explain it to me, of course.
I mean, nobody has to explain anything to me.
I'm just telling you, I've heard this over the years.
You see this with celebrity divorces all the time, when they say, Oh, we're conscious uncoupling and we love each other and we want what's best for each other and we're still devoted to each other and we want to be great co-parents.
It's like, well then, why not stay the F married?
I don't understand.
I don't understand. She's amazing.
Emma could be divorced anyway. So, you helped save someone's marriage.
And he didn't even ask you about your divorce until over a year and a half after you divorced and after you distanced yourself.
So, yeah, so you have an exploiter, right?
You have a selfish person.
And you've trained this person to be selfish by giving them more and more of your time, energy, resources, thoughts, attention, conversation, wisdom.
I mean, you've trained them. For all of this stuff, right?
You understand that, right? You understand you've trained them to exploit you and so on, right?
In a sense, you're exploiting them to maintain low self-esteem, to maintain low status and so on, right?
But yeah, you're just exploiting This person, they're exploiting you, and it's really quite sad and quite tragic.
And I would strongly recommend not doing this, right?
And maybe that low status stuff is one of the reasons why you ended up divorcing your wife, or she divorced you, or I don't know what happened, but probably, you know, something along those lines.
Something like that. So, yeah, they don't care.
They don't care. You're not like a real person to them.
You're not like a real person to them.
So many people are just wrapped up in themselves, wrapped up in their own lives.
They really don't have a thought for others.
The default position, it seems, of modern humanity is to not really have much of a thought or care or attention or time or love at all for others.
So, people who are indifferent to your happiness.
I mean, the guy was foundational to you getting married.
You saved his marriage.
He can't even be bothered to ask you about your divorce until you distance yourself a year and a half into it after the divorce.
I mean, first of all, he should be someone you're sharing your marital issues with.
Maybe they could have been saved. Maybe they could have been diverted or you could have ended up not getting divorced or whatever.
But yeah, it's not a friend.
You know, you can't...
You can't teach people to care for you.
You can't inspire them to care for you.
You know, I mean, my whole life was a famine of fake food until I met someone and now have a great circle of people I genuinely care about.
They genuinely care about me.
Man, I wish I could somehow communicate this In a way that impacted you, everyone out there.
I wish I could describe it.
What it's like to go from the false famine of fake food to actual nutritious meals and sustenance and all of that glorious stuff.
I wish I could explain it.
I mean, I tried to sort of talk about it.
Obviously, I tried to talk about it.
But I wish I could explain it better.
I spent, I would say, at least the first three decades of my life with nobody giving much of a shit about me.
30 years. And, you know, I had friends and I dated.
It wasn't like, you know, I wasn't isolated.
I wasn't thorough at Walden's Pond or anything like that.
I was not...
I moved through the world.
I had contact. I went to dances and dinner parties.
But as far as somebody caring about me...
Now, I'm going to be fair.
Obviously, I want to be fair and I don't want to play the victim here.
I can't honestly sit there and say, but I was full of nothing but love forever.
I didn't even know what any of this stuff was.
I mean, what do you see in the media when it comes to love or affection?
What do you see? Well, you see people falling in lust with each other.
You see people falling in lust with each other.
I mean, there's a goofy movie with Molly Ringwald.
And James Spader and some other forgettable 80s dudes, Pretty in Pink, where the girl, you know, Falls in love with the guy and for what?
For nothing. He's cute.
She's cute. So there's this sexual obsession or lust or a salvation fantasy or whatever.
But they don't care about each other.
You can't, like, literally, like, after three dates, they're, like, passionately and all.
And one of them was a really bad date.
But they're just passionately in love and they care.
And it's like, oh, it's madness.
When do you see genuine caring?
Genuine, thoughtful, considerate, virtuous, moral, deep, and empathetic caring.
You don't see that anywhere.
And I would imagine that you're in a situation in your life where you haven't seen it, you haven't experienced it, you haven't tasted deep of this beautiful fruit.
And I wish I had the poetry or the Language or the metaphors or the analogies or the storytelling ability to communicate to you how different the world is when you have people who delight in you.
Do you know what I mean?
People who delight in you.
People who really want to hear your thoughts.
People who really enjoy your company.
People who My wife, my daughter, my wife was helping me with something tonight and we were just joking about it and it was so funny and so much fun.
Last night my daughter sent me a message.
She couldn't sleep. She said, can we go out for breakfast in the morning?
So, of course, this morning I knocked on her door and, like, literally jumped up and down in her room, like, we are going to breakfast, we are going to breakfast, because, you know, it's great fun, and, you know, she's in the last couple of years of being at home, and I don't want to miss a thing.
So, to take genuine, deep, and beautiful delight in the presence of others, to be drawn to those people, to want to hear what they think and feel, to listen to them with great depth and seriousness, and to just...
Really, really enjoy and live for the company of others as they enjoy and live for your company.
To feel there's no end to the beauty of the gallery of their mind.
That there's no bottom or top to the science and art and beauty and landscapes of what they think and feel and communicate.
Please, my friends, can you try to get this?
Can you try to offer this?
Can you try to summon this?
Can you do anything within your power to bring this into being, to bring it about?
Lavish your affections on people.
Lavish your affections on people.
Why not? Oh, they're going to exploit me.
Yes. It might happen.
It probably will happen. So what?
The fact that there are bad people out there shouldn't turn you into a hard-guarded, stone-faced avoider of passion.
I have been affectionate to a fault in my life, and I regret none of it.
I have been overly generous in my life.
I regret none of it. I've been overly passionate in my life.
I regret none of it. I have cast my lot in and declared myself to women that I was attracted to.
And I've been accepted.
I've been rejected. I reject...
I regret none of it.
And when you get older, oh gosh, you know, I hate to be, oh, I'm 57, right?
But seriously, when you get older, you look back upon, oh, I was worried about this, I was worried about that, this person rejected me, this person liked me, I wanted this.
It doesn't matter. Like, your fears are going to mean nothing anyway.
For God's sakes, please, I'm begging you on my knees.
Your fears are going to mean nothing anyway.
You think you're going to be on your deathbed looking back and saying, well, boy, you know, the fact that I hesitated and never really ended up asking out that girl that I really liked, that makes total sense to me because I'm dying now.
Like, your fears are going to be nothing!
So why not have them be nothing now?
Before it's too late, before regret, before the ship has sailed, before the bridge has crumbled, before the passage of time has made your fears irrelevant.
I mean, we all gain a kind of courage as we age because our fears just become less and less important.
And I've always had a sense of that.
Obviously, you know, I have been nervous.
I have been afraid of things. I'm not, you know, you know, like I'm sending you some feel-less or thoughtless robot.
But I've always had a sense that this too shall pass.
I mean, you can think about this, right?
You can think about stuff that when you were a kid, right?
Stuff that when you were a kid massively bothered you, right?
It hugely bothered you. You lost something.
Somebody else ripped a page out of your book.
You lost your crayons.
Somebody used your chalk and bladed it down.
And now you don't even remember these things.
You don't know where any of that stuff is anymore.
When I was in my mid-teens, I saved up to get a Winslow Homer painting, you know, the sort of famous one of the guy in the boat in the storm.
And someone, I know who it was, but it doesn't really matter, right?
Someone put big goggle eyes on the guy in the boat.
And I was kind of annoyed at it, because it made the painting, which I thought was sort of kind of powerful, and I really loved that painting, it made it look kind of goofy and cartoony, right?
So I said, take those googly eyes off.
This is like insulting to me.
Like this is insulting to the passion and the fact that I don't have much money and I saved up for this painting.
And so that person took the googly eyes off.
And left a big tear on the painting and it looked like the man had like no face.
And it was, you know, bad.
So then he tried to, I don't know, patch it up with his crayons.
I just, you know, and it was annoying and it was sort of a sign as a whole of things.
I don't even know where that painting is anymore.
I borrowed a friend's sweater.
To go on a date. You know, when you grow up poor, you don't have nice clothes, and so you have to go to Goodwill, where you buy the clothing by the pound, and occasionally you can find these gems, like these great things to wear.
And my friend had one of these great things to wear, and I borrowed his sweater.
And I got caught in a sudden rainstorm and the sweater got wet and he was really mad.
He was really stretched out.
It's useless to me. I was really angry.
I was really angry about the sweater.
And, you know, this was a significant blow to our friendship because I obviously like, I'm sorry about your sweater.
I didn't mean to get it wet. I'm sorry about your sweater.
I will work to try and get you a similar sweater.
He's like, you can't. It took me a year.
You know, people just escalate.
It took me years to find this sweater.
This sweater was everything to me.
This sweater was going to be my future, man.
This sweater was made of my dad's blood.
Raising in the sun stuff, right?
And it was a big blow because I'm like, dude, it's a sweater.
And, you know, I bet you if I were to talk to this person now, You know, 40-plus years after the event, he would have no clue where that sweater is.
And his sweater wouldn't have mattered at all.
Now, it doesn't matter. Like, looking back, that which seemed so important.
Now, of course, I'm not saying be totally zen and have no feelings and have no anxieties.
But have some perspective, right?
Have some perspective.
I mean, I can tell by the formality of your writing that you're a very deliberate and careful person.
And deliberate and careful people, people who aren't spontaneous, people who don't take risks, and people who honestly try to create an impression or an appearance, you know?
My wife's amazing, amicably divorced.
It's like, you're a very formal, and I say this with sympathy, you're a very formal person, your language is a little tough to get across, and you don't express any emotions other than sort of abstract self-praise about how amazing your wife was.
And the inquiry surrounds it.
So you're a very careful person.
You're a formal person, which means you're going to be very hard to get close to and you're going to be very hard to connect with.
I had trouble even connecting with the language at the beginning of this.
And what are you hoarding for?
What are you playing so safe for?
What? You think you're going to get a medal at the end because you avoided risks?
You think there's going to be some ceremony?
You think you're going to get a 21-gun salute for living small and living super carefully and not being spontaneous, not being emphatic, not being exaggerated as you would think or feel?
I mean, why not live passionately?
Because everything that's holding you back from being passionate, everything that's holding you back from being direct, everything that's holding you back It's also holding you back from connecting with other people, from getting their loyalty.
I mean, I think that people like some of the stuff that I have to say because I'm pretty direct and I'm pretty passionate and I don't hold back.
And, you know, I'll laugh hysterically, I'll cry, I'll raise my voice, and, you know, I'll be spontaneous, I'll make mistakes, I'll come up with good analogies, bad analogies.
I'm just enjoying the actions of brain and communication in the moment.
And is it a bit of a dance along a cliff edge?
Yeah, yeah, for sure, sometimes.
But I think people like that, and I think that's kind of rare to see or to get in this world, Because people tend to be very careful, they tend to be very self-conscious, and they tend to say things for effect rather than being direct.
Effectiveness rather than directedness.
People say things for effect.
How does this... Like you say things, you say, how does this make me look?
How does this... What does this do for me?
What do I say in terms of status, right?
Right, so when you say...
My wife is an amazing person.
And you said your relationship was seven years, but it totaled 13.
You said you compared it to my relationship of seven years.
Mine was sort of off and on, long distance.
And you said, well, mine was 13 years, so I don't know how seven relates to 13 other than it's six less.
But you say to what was and is an amazing person, yet nevertheless amicably divorced a few years later.
And so that's for effect.
The formality of a language is for effect.
Maybe you want me to think of you as very educated and intelligent, and I'm sure you are very educated and intelligent.
I think that's great.
But wherefore, it would be helpful if you could describe what philosophical standards underpinned your decision to eventually dissociate with those you've described as indifferent to your happiness.
Well, I recognized that it was me who was most fundamentally indifferent to my happiness by not demanding more of myself and of others.
You know, open your heart.
I mean, do you ever have this friend when you were younger?
Usually everybody has at least one friend like this.
You have this friend and he is...
Cheap, right? Like pry open the wallet and mothballs and dust comes.
Pry open the wallet. And okay, like what are you saving for?
What are you saving all your money for? What are you saving your money for?
Go spend some money, have some fun.
You don't get prizes when you die for having the most digits in a bank account.
And inflation is going to take it anyway.
And I'm not saying be a spencer, obviously, right?
But the people who just hoard, and they hoard themselves, they hoard their money, they're super careful.
Everything they say is about how it affects how other people view them or see them.
And it's really, it's a sort of convoluted and paralyzing and impermeable kind of way.
It's a very opaque way.
Kind of, I mean, I'm very translucent, right?
I think people see that.
I think, was it my wife who said, over the years, she said, I don't know, like, you're the least offended person I've ever met.
And she meant that sort of in a very, very open.
So I think I'm very translucent.
People, you know, what you see is what you get.
What you see is what you get. And, you know, if you've ever met me in person, what you see is what you get.
I'm not saying things for effect or to try and look good or to try and seem smart.
I'm just trying to be direct and trying to do as much good with the skills that I have as humanly possible.
This has obviously been to my detriment at times to say things that are important and meaningful.
Obviously, I'm aware of the negative effects of some of the things that I say, but I'm willing to do that and take that risk.
There's a fantastic line.
I was in King Lear when I was in theatre school, and there's a fantastic line that always stuck with me over the years in the, you know, I guess it's close to 35 years or whatever since I was in theatre school.
And the line is, the weight of the sad time we must obey, speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.
The weight of this sad time we must obey.
Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.
And also a book I read by John Fowles called The Magus.
It was not a great book, but there was a very sort of powerful lesson in it about a guy who is very self-conscious and has an imaginary judge that surrounds him that's giving him points for good or bad or high status or low status behavior and as a result he can't connect with anyone.
So... You're indifferent to your happiness.
What are you doing to increase your happiness?
If you have people around you who don't even care that you got divorced, even after you helped them save their marriage, it's easy to play the victim.
I get that. It's easy to play the victim and get your heart done by and you're wronged and so on.
And, you know, you can certainly make that case.
But why are you settling for that?
Why are you settling for that?
Why are you selling for that? All right.
Any advice for a W2 employee who is transitioning to entrepreneurship while supporting a wife and two kids?
Oh, man. Stay close with people who have money.
You might need that. Try and build up a line of credit in business.
Cash flow is king. Cash flow means that you get paid intermittently, but your bills are monthly or biweekly or whatever, right?
Try and keep down the number of employees you have.
but outsource everything that you can.
So if you make, if you can make,
let's say you make $40 an hour, then everything
that you can pay someone to do that's less than $40, try and get them to do it.
So outsource as much as possible and make sure that you work on doing all of that.
Get involved in networking as much as possible and remember that the majority of building a business isn't producing goods.
But, getting people to know you.
Work to be as positive and pleasant and engaging as possible so people remember you.
And, yeah, good luck, man.
It's a tough time to do it. Alright.
Do you have a favorite character from the Lord of the Rings books or films?
If so, what do you find particularly compelling about this individual?
Yeah, my favorite character.
I think it's fairly common.
My favorite character is...
Samwise Gamgee is by far my favorite character in Lord of the Rings because that level of steadfast loyalty is really impressive.
I remember once, after I broke up with the woman I almost married in my 20s, I was living downtown with a couple of roommates.
I was actually the roommate and they were living there together.
And I was reading Lord of the Rings again and I came to the bit where they kind of clung together under the shadows of Mordor and supported each other and helped each other.
And I was like, damn, that should have been me and my brother, but never was.
So yes, I think that level of loyalty and courage, I mean, it's a beautiful thing.
About Lord of the Rings is just the unquestionable loyalty that everyone has in the fellowship, right?
And if there's a lack of loyalty, as there is with Baromir, there's a sort of explanation as to why and, you know, the ring and so on, right?
So, you have my sword, I will die for you, I will carry you, right?
Just that level. Just what we could achieve as a species if people had that level of loyalty.
I mean, I've tried to be loyal to you, the listenership.
I've tried to be loyal to philosophy.
I've tried to be loyal to the truth and to virtue.
I've tried to be loyal, obviously, to my family and that loyalty that Sam shows.
You can say, ah, well, Aragorn shows it too.
And it's like, well, yeah, but Aragorn is like this big monster cut out paper paladin fighter guy.
I know he's a ranger and all that, so it struck me as kind of a paladin.
You know, a well-bladed Jesus guy.
Not particularly tough for him.
What dangers did he really face, right?
But no, Samwise is just that loyalty, and that loyalty is just about everything in this world.
All right. Hi stuff.
Hi stuff. I've fallen for a woman who's incapable of loving and or feels herself to be unlovable.
So, your mother.
We have a history of three years of friendship, closeness and memories, but even casual sexual intimacy during the first year that we stopped because the sex was making the relationship too toxic.
After this, the friendship and closeness gradually developed into a very close relationship.
Anyway, I'm hurting a lot and I feel like a victim of a broken person as I open my heart to her and it's met with coldness and no communication.
Of course, this is a lesson I still needed to learn from the neglect of my toxic mother
in my early teens, and I'm also dealing with this in therapy.
But moving on.
I already found a new circle of friends whom I care about and am planning an event where
there will be awesome quality women with high potential for life partner.
So my question is, how do you recognize women who do not have this issue of being unable
to love or who feel like they're not worth loving?
I suppose it's about them embracing reason, at least to some extent, trying to do something
good in the world, and about me being connected to my feelings to recall from bad women.
Do you have some additional advice?
Yeah, I mean, people who are happy being themselves are great fun to be around.
Great fun to be around. Does she enjoy being herself?
Is she happy within her own skin?
I mean, again, I'm not trying to fake something here or whatever it is, but I enjoy my own company.
I'm happy spending time with friends and family.
I'm happy spending time alone.
And I am happy being myself for the most part.
You know, everyone has their little bits here and there or whatever, right?
But yeah, I mean, my happiness is a solid 7.5 to 8 on a regular basis.
That's most of my life, certainly since my 30s.
And, I mean, I'm not going to aim for 10 all of the time.
That would seem kind of deranged.
So, I mean, I think that's about as good, I think, as you can get as a whole.
So, yeah, people who are happy in their own skin, happy being themselves.
People who are competent.
Oh, man, that's a huge thing.
People who are competent, and I don't just mean competent at work, though, that's important, but people who are just plain competent are such a lifesaver.
You know, a life of any reasonable levels of achievement is a busy, complicated thing.
You need to get a lot of stuff done.
You need to get a lot of stuff done.
If you've got any Big, decent, reasonable goals in life.
You're going to need to get a lot of stuff done.
You might have to build a business.
You might have to build a house.
You might have to build a friend group.
You might have to move countries.
You've got to do your taxes.
There's a lot that's going on in life.
Parents get ill and there's a lot that happens.
There's conflict within the family.
There's conflict over wills.
There's cottages to divvy up for people and so on.
There's a lot of complicated stuff that goes on in life.
Your children get sick. Just complicated, difficult things.
You need people who are clear from convoluted mess and trauma so they can get things done so you can have a productive and purposeful life.
So this kind of person, let me just sort of go back and make sure I get the description accurately, right?
The victim of a broken person, and she's incapable of loving and, or feels herself to be unlovable.
So, when you have things going on in your life, like you're trying to build a movement, you're trying to build a business, you're trying to build a family, you're trying to just do something relatively important with your life, you don't have time, effort, energy...
Or reason to sit back and constantly pick up people who are wounded and broken and punching themselves and snarling at themselves.
I mean, you have a life with purpose.
Your purpose can't be to constantly stitch up somebody who keeps cutting themselves.
To constantly bind up the broken limbs of somebody who keeps smashing their legs with a ball-peen hammer.
Don't you have stuff to get done in this life?
You can't keep circling back and propping people up?
You know, I mean, the woman that I was almost married to in my 20s, I mean, she was in the arts, and I was grinding away, I was writing novels, I was doing all this kind of stuff, and she just wanted to do it.
And, you know, I tell her, well, do this, do that.
You know, I mean, I'd started a business.
I'd written a whole bunch of novels.
Like, I'd written, like, 30 plays or, like, hundreds of poems.
Just sit down, do X, Y, and Z. You know, write a screenplay.
Here's, you know, five different scenarios for screenplays you could write.
And it was just like, she couldn't get it done.
You come home every day. Get it done?
You know, I didn't really have the inspiration.
Okay, well, then probably not for you.
I mean, I remember when someone asked me a very sort of important question when I was sort of mulling over whether I wanted to be a writer or an actor in my early 20s.
I went to theater school for acting and playwriting.
Do I want to be a writer or an actor? And it was a woman, and she said, okay, well, when you come home, what do you do?
I said, I write. There you go.
Life's actually kind of simpler. She says, yeah, you're not...
You're not studying monologues, you're not learning accents, you're not signing up for sword fighting lessons in case they do a remake of The Princess Bride.
You go home, when you have time, what do you do?
do. You're right. Okay, so that's probably what you should be doing.
So, dragon along the wounded wounds your life, wounds your potential.
Thank you.
Right? You're afraid of living large.
You're afraid of having purpose. You're afraid of being big in the world.
And so you don't want to admit that to yourself.
So you hang around wounded people with your heart broken so you don't have to get anything done in this life.
So you can circle the drain and feel like a good person.
And look, I mean, you could say to me, Steph, well, you spend a lot of time talking with people who are kind of hurt and a lot of them are kind of broken.
And it's like, yes, I do. Yes, I do.
But that is not stopping my life.
That is helping my life.
Because I have these conversations, and I talk to people who put the conversations out, and it's very good for the world.
Right? They're not dragging me down.
Hopefully I'm helping them up, or whatever, or getting them pointing at least in the right direction.
But they're not dragging me down.
So I don't, you know, if you want to say, well, Steph, you spent a lot of time with broken people on the show, and I don't see broken people as not the right phrase, but, you know, people who are hurting and having big trouble or whatever.
And I do.
I absolutely do. And that is the purpose, one of the central purposes of my life, is to sort of try and use philosophy to help people gain moral clarity and forward momentum in their lives.
What the hell are you doing?
Just lurking around this broken person who is cold and it's toxic.
God, do you not have anything that you need to do in your life that makes this impossible?
Right? I mean, I want broken people to be like this to you.
Like you're on your way for a job interview for the career of your dreams.
Whatever you most want to do, you're on your way to that job interview that could give you the job of your dreams.
And there's someone comes tugging up to you and says, hey, do you want a paper route?
Because, you know, I've got like nine houses.
I give you a cozy 20 bucks a week.
I mean, I could really use help.
Do you want to help me with my paper route?
Wouldn't you just like, uh, no.
No, I don't even have time to talk.
I'm on my way. Right, so you've got a date with destiny, a journey to something relatively big and important in your life, or maybe majorly big and important in your life.
I don't know. You've got something great going on.
And somebody's like, hey, do you want to tend my stupid self-inflicted wounds for the next 50 years?
Nope. I really don't.
So you just shake that shit off and aim your sights higher.
Aim to get something done with your life.
Alright, how can you tell if you have truly morally changed as a person?
Sorry, how can you tell if you have truly changed as a person, morally speaking?
Ah, well that one's easy.
Everyone from your former life kind of hates you.
Maybe I should have wooed you a little bit before taking that band-aid off with a chainsaw.
But if you've morally changed as a person, truly morally changed as a person, yeah, everybody who used to like you now hates you.
And everybody, well, some people who used to hate you may now be open to your company.
Yeah. If you were kind of corrupt as a person, and I've been there, right?
If you were kind of corrupt as a person, you've morally changed.
When people are, like, not inviting you to places, they're spreading lies about you, they are putting you down, they're complaining that, oh, you just think you're so good for us now, you're too good for us now.
So yeah, you've truly changed when the people who used to approve of you now hate you.
Limerence is a state of mind.
I wanted to look this up.
Honestly, somehow this word had escaped me, so I'm really, really glad and thank you for bringing this word to my attention.
It's a great word. Limerence is a state of mind which results from romantic or non-romantic feelings for another person and typically includes intrusive, melancholic thoughts or tragic concerns for an object of one's affection as well as a desire to form or maintain a relationship with the object of love.
Hey, Steph, how do you get over the feeling of limerence?
I met this attractive girl a few months ago at a friend's wedding.
She gave me a social media, and I didn't really think much about her until I started following her post and talking to her online.
I was surprised at how many interests we had in common and similar childhood upbringings.
Unfortunately, she's dating someone.
But I still find myself checking what she posts almost daily to find out what she's up to.
How do I forget about this person?
Well, what the hell is she chatting with some guy online if she's already dating someone?
Like, you don't do that.
I mean, I know this may be some sort of Gen Z bullshit, but no, you don't do that.
You think I'm having long chats with girls online?
No, never, no million years.
So, yeah, oh, similar interests.
God, God spare me from similar interests.
We both like tennis.
We both like Scorsese movies.
We both like...
Hollandaise. Sounds like a great basis for a passionate, moral, virtuous relationship because you have a whole bunch of overlapping Venn diagrams of inconsequential coincidences.
God. We both had a dog to name Jeff when we were teenagers.
Weird coincidences, right?
I remember one guy who wanted to marry a woman because they were living together and they had a Brita filter for a long time with no filters.
It was a water filter. And they both came home after not having used this thing for a year.
They both came home on the same day.
With Brita filters.
Oh, dun-dun-dun!
It's like, oh, please.
Yeah, a bunch of coincidences, right?
We're both really into table tennis and frisbee golf.
It's weird, man. It's like, that's not a relationship.
That's a coincidence.
That's a bunch of coincidences.
Oh, we both grew up in small towns and then moved to a larger town for university.
Dun-dun-dun! So, yeah, she's flirting with you.
She is betraying her boyfriend by having chats and posts with you, and that's not good.
Not good. So, let me tell you something.
People who aren't closely bonded with their mothers in general, it could be fathers too, we just talked about mothers, right?
People who aren't closely bonded with their mothers, those people cannot handle rejection.
They can't handle rejection.
And so, because they can't handle rejection, but they have this sick fascination with rejection, they keep putting themselves in situations where they're going to be rejected because their unconscious is saying, it's not that bad.
Commit. If you get left or you get rejected, you get, you know, your heart beaten up, you'll be fine.
You'll survive. Like, for God's sakes, the fact that our mother didn't love us doesn't mean we're unlovable.
You've got to throw yourself in there.
And if you get rejected, so you keep...
You keep going to these women who are going to reject you because your unconscious wants you to master your fear of rejection.
So you are interested in a woman who absolutely 100% is going to break your heart.
Absolutely 100% is going to break your heart.
She gave me her social media.
I post. I talk to her online.
Oh, but she's dating someone.
Right. So if she's dating someone, why is she giving her social media to some new guy who's interested in her?
Oh, no, it's not like that.
Yes, it is. Yes, it is.
So, yeah, she's an Instagram girl, she's a social media girl, and she's a hypergamy girl, and she's going to break her boyfriend's heart, she's going to break your heart, she's going to waste your time, and you're going to get smashed up.
And, you know, listen, that's not the end of the world.
I had a limerence with a girl.
I dated a girl. We broke up.
And just a couple of years later, by coincidence, I found myself in the same place where we first met.
And for a while, and it was not a short amount of time, I just desperately wanted to get back with her.
And, you know, I poured my heart into it, and I wrote her poems, and I tried my best.
And, you know, probably wisely at the time, she decided not to get back together with me after a certain amount of negotiation, and it was very sad.
It was very sad. It was heartbreaking.
And I never feared rejection as much after that, because I just, you know, when you pull your heart in, and you really, really go for something, and then you get rejected, and then you survive, and you're fine over time.
I was sad at the time, and you're fine over time.
And you just don't feel rejection as much anymore.
So, yeah, it's about your mother.
And, yeah, you are definitely, I mean, if you were my son, right, I would be like, let me see your phone for a sec.
Yeah, sorry, I just formatted it.
Oh, no, but no, no, this is going to break your heart.
It's going to break your heart. See, here's the thing.
Women always know when you're attracted to them.
Always. Women always know when you're attracted to them.
Especially a woman on social media handing out her social media.
Maybe she's trying to gain clout and listenership or viewership or numbers or likes or thirst or whatever, right?
But yeah, she knows you're attracted to her.
She hands you out her social media and she's chatting with you online.
Which means she's using you for her own ego gratification.
Yeah, she's going to break your heart.
And maybe you need to go through that.
But in my view, don't just sit around being attracted to women.
I mean, I don't think it's right to go and try and break up somebody else's relationship.
But... I don't know.
What would I say? I mean, I've been attracted.
I mean, everyone has, right? I've been attracted to girls who are in relationships like, I don't know, my 20s or teens and 20s.
You're attracted to a girl. She's in some relationship.
And the other thing, like, it's really annoying when you know that the guy is not quality.
When you know for a fact, like, I mean, this is kind of ridiculous on my part, but I mean, I'll be honest with you guys.
For me, it was always like, well, I mean, you could date someone else, but why?
Why? I remember there was some website that William Shatner was involved in.
He's like, but you could go somewhere else on the web, but why?
Like, well, yeah, you could date someone else.
But why? I'm good looking.
I'm athletic. I'm funny.
I've got a good future ahead of me.
I'm skilled. I'm a hard worker.
I'm affectionate.
You could date some other guy, but why?
Why would you want to...
I mean, that's just crazy.
I mean, it's kind of nuts, right?
So when you're attracted to a girl and the guy's not that high quality, and you know for sure it's not going to last, right?
You just know it's not going to last.
But she doesn't know that, right?
Once a woman knows that it's not going to last, it's usually a matter of a very short time before the acts comes out.
So, yeah, it's tough.
So, I don't know. With her, yeah, I don't like...
I mean, personally, I don't like...
Because there's a kind of fraudulent aspect to it as well, like working behind the scenes, you know, the 1v1 of a girl with a boyfriend versus the 1v20 of an attractive girl with the internet.
So, I don't like the deception or the subterfuge or the undermining of a brother in balls to try and do an end run around him and get the girl or whatever.
And plus, you know, if she'll cheat on him, she'll cheat on you too, right?
She'll cheat with you, she'll cheat on you.
So, I think that's just going to have to be a grit your teeth, in my view.
A grit your teeth and...
No, no, no. Because what happens here is the problem, too, is the opportunity cost is really important in romance.
Because, you know, let's say you spend six months floating around this girl, it's probably not going to go anywhere.
I mean, maybe she just, you know, she breaks up with her boyfriend, and you're the one for me, and you're the best guy ever, right?
But that's not, I mean, what are the odds of that, right?
You could win the lottery, too, but it's probably good to have some savings in the bank.
But yeah, you can spend six months.
Now, six months floating around this, Your whole brain aligns around the pursuit of this woman, and what happens then?
Well, you're going to miss some other woman who's available, who's interesting, who's attractive.
You're going to miss her, right?
You are just going to miss her, and that's really bad.
So the opportunity costs, and you're going to, whether you like it or not, you're going to get attracted or attached to this woman, like it's going to happen.
You're going to get attracted or attached to this woman, And then you're going to get your heart broken, and then you're going to spend another six months in recovery.
This is a year out of your life.
Easy. Like, honestly, it can go just like that.
A year in your life can just vanish like that.
And don't do it, man.
Stay available for people who are attracted to you.
Stay available for people who are attracted.
Don't go chasing after people who aren't that attracted to you, who maybe, maybe, maybe.
This idea that a woman warms up over time, or, you know, there's this old thing about, like, this rom-com thing of, like, oh, the man that I was looking for all of this time turned out to be right under my nose, and it's my best friend who I should be...
That doesn't happen. That is not a thing.
That does not happen.
Or if it does happen, it's...
Like saying, I don't need to put only sunscreen on because I'm sure there'll be a solar eclipse.
Yeah, maybe. Actually, you probably even need more, right?
No, you don't. That's just your eyeballs, right?
So... Yeah, don't...
If the woman's not attracted to you...
And if she's just kind of playing you around or keeping you around for ego feeding or whatever, then she's selfish.
She's kind of narcissistic and exploiter.
And you can't win her.
So a woman who's looking for ego gratification can never pair bond.
A woman who's looking for first clicks, a woman who's looking for likes, a woman who's feeling good because men are attracted to her, she can't pair bond.
Right? What is pair bonding?
Pair bonding is forsaking all others.
You understand? Pair bonding is forsaking all others, right?
I mean, obviously, I get messages from time to time from women.
It's like, yeah, nice to meet you.
Here's my website, and that's it, right?
Pair bonding is forsaking all others.
I mean, she's kind of half flirting with you.
Oh, no, no, she's just sending messages.
Oh, come on, please.
Oh, God. It's like...
I don't know. Again, this is like the people who are like, I don't know why I'm 100 pounds overweight.
I mean, I barely eat anything.
It's like, no, you don't. I mean, don't even try, right?
Don't even try. I had a guy.
Yeah, I had a guy once... Doesn't really matter the circumstances.
He was very overweight and, you know, would eat like a bird.
Actually, birds eat like crazy.
But he would, you know, do a tiny bit of sushi for lunch or whatever, right?
But then, you know, I had to use his computer once and booted up his browser and the search was for, like, midnight binge eating.
Like, how do I start midnight binge eating, right?
So you just see these glimpses and that's where the reality is.
So how do I forget about this person?
You know, it's tough. I'm sure she's very pretty.
I'm sure she's got some charisma, that same kind of confident charisma that comes with pretty young women in their prime and all of that, their sort of physical prime.
So it's just a matter of self-respect, right?
If you think you're a catch and the other woman doesn't think you're a catch, then she's an idiot.
It's the same thing for ladies, right?
Ladies, if you think you're a catch, And let's say you've got some reason to believe that, right?
You're a catch, and the guy doesn't think you're a catch.
Then he's an idiot, and he's not worth you.
Like, honestly, if you take a piece of art to a bunch of idiots, they won't bid much for it.
But if you take a great piece of art to people knowledgeable about art, they will bid a lot for it.
So people have to be knowledgeable about your qualities in order to see what you have to offer.
And if you have qualities and people don't see them, it's because they're blind to quality.
And why are they blind to quality? Because they don't have any qualities themselves.
They can't see your value because they have little to no value.
Blind people can't evaluate art, paintings, and deaf people can't evaluate Bach or Brahms or Liszt, maybe Liszt a bit with the piano.
You could feel it maybe like Beethoven did.
But you have to be quality to see quality.
And if you are quality, and I think you're listening to this show, you are quality in my view and opinion, 100%.
So if you are quality and people can't see your quality, it's because they're not quality.
And you've got to keep moving until you find the people who see your quality.
And I mean, this is not a theoretical thing for me.
I had to spend a lot of time waving around big, giant, great quality until, through the internet, I found people who have the quality to see quality.
You know, it's kind of dispiriting.
People are rejecting you all the time, people being kind of indifferent, and you know you've created beautiful things, and people are like, meh.
But you know, you know, right?
I mean, I think with my novels and stuff like that, yeah, I've created beautiful things, poetry and so on, plays.
Created beautiful things, and people are like, meh.
And it's like, okay, well, either they're not beautiful, and I'm completely crazy for thinking that they are, or they are beautiful, and people can't see it because they have no beauty in their hearts, minds, or souls.
So, yeah, this woman...
She's going to break your heart. She's going to waste your time.
And some other woman who could be perfect for you is going to sail past.
And, like, think of a woman of quality.
A woman of quality says, oh, yeah, what have you been up to recently?
And you say, if you're honest, right, you say, oh, you know, I'm flirting with another guy's girlfriend.
And I'm, you know, kind of obsessed with another guy's girlfriend and I really want to, you know, get her.
What's a woman of quality going to think?
You understand that by pursuing people who don't have quality, you are diminishing and destroying your own quality.
Because quality people will look at you pursuing somebody of low quality and say, oh, well, if that's where he's at, sorry, he's low quality and I can't date him.
So you're not running towards this woman because she's a ghost, she's a fantasy, she's a projection, she's pixels, right?
You're not running towards this woman, you're running away from good women.
You're running away from quality women.
You won't get this woman, she's in a mirage, she'll just go off a cliff, but you're running away from quality.
You're sacrificing quality in pursuit of an inconstant woman who has no clue what forsaking all others actually means in a relationship.
What monogamy actually means in a relationship.
Anyway, I hope that helps.
Thank you for these great, great questions.
I really, really appreciate it.
freedomain.com forward slash donate if you would like to help out the show.
As of always, I hugely, hugely appreciate your support.
And the Peaceful Parenting book is coming along well.
If you would like to help out with that as well, again, freedomain.com slash donate.
Don't forget to check out the Great Locals community at freedomain.locals.com.
Lots of love, brothers and sisters.
▲
Export Selection