Jan. 13, 2024 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
02:27:42
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| Dear Stefan, I'm 40 years old from UK. I'm contacting you today because I would really like your help with regards to my relationships with the women in my life. | |
| For years, I have attempted to have long-term and intimate relationships, as more than anything, I really want to get married and have a family, and they will without a doubt be peaceful, parented and loved. | |
| But alas, I have never made it to the fully Pair bond is staged despite having several medium to long-term relationships over the last 10 years. | |
| I've just turned 40 years old and despite having done years of therapy and self-development and thousands of hours of studying, I'm still having major issues with pair bonding and being a magnet for broken women or women who seem to be in some form of crisis. | |
| The second major issue which leads on from this is that my whole life I've been a constant rescuer and fixer and I find it incredibly difficult to split from A relationship, even when I know it's really not going to work. | |
| As I feel, I will be hurting them at a vulnerable point in their life and I seem to sacrifice myself for them. | |
| This ultimately leads me to feeling stuck and trapped and experiencing side effects of anxiety and fatigue which contributed to a major burnout in 2017. | |
| I've listened to so many of your shows and I know this is wrong in many ways, especially as I don't want to take their fertility window unnecessarily. | |
| Or hemorrhage any more of my own time and resources. | |
| Yet, despite this level of self-awareness, which I have also developed through therapy, and I think it's linked to my mother in some way, it is still a massive problem for me. | |
| I still think there is something I'm missing or not understanding properly. | |
| I would love to get more clarity on the issue. | |
| I so often hear people on your show say that you highlight things in a few hours that they didn't realize in years of therapy, and I'm hoping you might be able to go a layer deeper with me To help me resolve this problem that is causing me so many issues. | |
| Outside of this, life is better. | |
| I am a dedicated libertarian, anarcho-capitalist and Bitcoin advocate who has several million views across all platforms on educational material that I created to help spread knowledge of Bitcoin. | |
| I spent many years doing hard work to turn my life around in many ways, from a depressed, unmotivated, anxious, unconfident guy in my 20s to a successful, much happier and confident person in my 30s. | |
| With much more of a purpose and mission. | |
| But ultimately, this is why I really need your help. | |
| I know I can be a great father and educator in this world, and I don't want to fall on such an important hurdle and throw away all my hard work by ending up with the wrong woman, potentially breaking up a family. | |
| I know it would be something I'd regret forever if I do this, and I feel like this is the way I'm heading right now. | |
| I'm a long-term listener of your show. | |
| I often have huge admiration for everything you do, and I'd love to be able to discuss this with you. | |
| Kind regards. Name. | |
| Yeah, yeah. Okay, got it, got it. | |
| Well, I appreciate that. | |
| I'm sure we can do some useful stuff. | |
| And when did you start listening? | |
| So I've been following you from the early days back on YouTube. | |
| But to be honest, at the time, I was kind of coming in and out of the conversation. | |
| I wasn't committed for time. | |
| But as of this year, I've gone all in on philosophy. | |
| I've become absolutely hooked. | |
| And I'm probably consuming about 80% of what you do, and I try to do 100, but I've got to eat and sleep as well. | |
| It's my life. Other people have lives, so yeah, I got it. | |
| But I'm generally, yeah, I've literally just absolutely loved philosophy now, and I'm having the same effect as when I got into Bitcoin. | |
| Bitcoin took over my life, and philosophy is starting to do the same thing, yeah. | |
| Good, good. All right. | |
| I mean, obviously I have my thoughts and I'm happy to take the conversation in your direction if you have something you want to talk about first. | |
| But no, yeah, it's basically just understanding. | |
| Yeah, I think one of the biggest issues is I get caught up in not being able to believe my intuition or trust it or Allowing myself to believe my intuition. | |
| I think one of the other things I do is that I get caught between blaming my past. | |
| I guess, yeah, my past, maybe trauma from my childhood is the reason why I can't pair bonds. | |
| So I get stuck between whether it's them that are causing problems that You know, make me not want to pair bond or whether it's things that I'm doing or a combination of both. | |
| Wait, hang on, sorry. | |
| So you think you can't pair bond or you just can't pair bond with the crazy women you choose? | |
| This is what, yeah, so this is where I get confused because I don't know whether it's the women I choose that are crazy or whether it's because of trauma from my past or whether it's my crazy, or it's perhaps my inability to Give everything to the relationship that's causing them to deregulate or something along those lines. | |
| Gosh, you are quite the thinker. | |
| Yeah, yeah. You are quite the overthinker. | |
| That's never happened in England before. | |
| You are the very first British person to overthink anything. | |
| All right. Okay, so overthinker. | |
| Right. So, yeah, because if you say, well, I just can't pair bond, then it's almost like expecting philosophy to get you out of a wheelchair. | |
| So I don't believe that's true. | |
| I don't believe that. I mean, if you're choosing women... | |
| For whatever past reasons or lack of sort of knowing the patterns, if you're choosing women that you can't pair bond with, well, that's like saying, I can't make anyone understand me if I just only speak to Japanese people that don't speak Japanese. | |
| So, okay, okay. | |
| So we'll say that you will put as a contingent thesis that you do have the ability to pair bond, you just haven't pair bonded with women yet. | |
| Yeah. Yeah, and it's weird. | |
| The reason I said that as well is because sometimes in previous relationships, I'll have these days where you get absolute... | |
| I feel these moments where I feel so close. | |
| And with my previous girlfriend, I remember a few specific days that burned into my mind where we actually got on really well amongst all the sort of madness. | |
| And it was those days where I just think, ah, this is what it must feel like to be pair-bonded, where you have no sort of reservations. | |
| You're committed. | |
| You don't have any doubt. And it was... | |
| I still remember those days clearly where we'd go out and it felt like we were properly connected and then a day or two later it's all gone again. | |
| It's almost like you get a taster and then you just can't find it again. | |
| Well, you know, that's the definition of a bad relationship. | |
| The worst kinds of relationships are the ones with the oases. | |
| You know, if it's all just a shitstorm from beginning to end, you just get out, right? | |
| But it's where you get these tastes and these teasers that's the worst kind. | |
| Yeah, exactly. Yeah. | |
| Alright, so you're a long-term listener, so we can hit the gas. | |
| Is that alright with you? Yeah, absolutely, yeah. | |
| Okay, so when you were a kid, did you ever go through this phase where... | |
| My daughter went through this phase where it's like, oh, there's a bird that can't fly. | |
| Let's take it home and take care of it. | |
| Yeah, I do remember a few times where we found injured animals, tried to take them home, yeah. | |
| Right. So you thought you'd just keep going with that, with women, right? | |
| And what that means is that, so, you know, the relationship template that we have, we all model ourselves after our fathers. | |
| Because our fathers... | |
| There's nothing Freudian about it. | |
| It's just Darwinian, really. It's because our fathers are the sexually successful men that we know, right? | |
| And, of course, throughout most of human history, there wasn't a huge amount of variation in the old tribe, right? | |
| So what worked for your father would work for you, right? | |
| So my guess then would be is that your father... | |
| You chose your mother and propped her up or tried to keep her functioning or tried to keep her running and she kept stumbling or falling or something like that. | |
| Does that fit the template of your childhood at all? | |
| Yeah, when looking at my parents, I think they both have issues, definitely, to say the least. | |
| But my mum, yeah, my mum is an incredibly anxious woman. | |
| Never came into her own, I don't think it would be fair to say. | |
| She's always served the family, but I wouldn't classify her as a mentally strong woman. | |
| She had a lot of issues from her childhood. | |
| She always served the family. | |
| What does that mean? I'm not skeptical. | |
| I don't know what it means. | |
| I'm not sure what it means to you. | |
| I would say, as in running the household, in terms of cooking, cleaning, Ironing, everything that needed to be done. | |
| Obviously, the emotional side wasn't there at all, I don't think. | |
| Oh, so she served the family like a maid would serve the family? | |
| Yeah. Like a surf. | |
| Okay. Okay, so what was missing emotionally? | |
| Just any deep understanding of education about... | |
| Well, put it this way. | |
| When I discovered philosophy, I was like, oh my God, how much haven't I been taught? | |
| In my childhood. That's why I'm just lapping it up now, because I'm just like, holy shoot, if I'd just known this, I would have been absolutely flying from a young age. | |
| Okay, so you need... | |
| I know, see, here's the funny thing, right? | |
| Everything you're doing is great, it's just a minor, minor tip. | |
| So, because you've listened to me a lot, you think I know your thoughts, because you know my thoughts, right? | |
| So, I'm just going to get on my knees and beg you to explain it to me like I'm five years old, and I don't know what you're talking about. | |
| Because when you go on these verbal journeys, I'm being dragged along like some guy in the back of a pickup truck along a stony road in Arkansas. | |
| So what was missing for you in your childhood? | |
| And then you go on about how much you love philosophy, and it's like, well, that's great, but what was missing for you in your childhood? | |
| Did she not play with you? Did she not chat with you? | |
| Did she not cuddle you? | |
| I mean, what was you saying? Because I still don't know what was missing for you with your mom in your childhood. | |
| I think love was conditional in my childhood from both parents. | |
| Okay, so now that's a judgment, and I appreciate your judgment. | |
| But if your judgment was correct, we wouldn't be having the call. | |
| Right? So I'd say, what was missing for you in your childhood? | |
| And you say, well, I think my mom's love was conditional. | |
| I don't know what you mean by love. | |
| I don't know what you mean by conditional. | |
| And I still don't know what was actually absent for you as a child. | |
| Does that make sense? Okay. | |
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry. | |
| No, no. Nothing to apologize for at all. | |
| It's totally great. | |
| Just my tip. | |
| At least my request. I would probably say intimacy. | |
| Like, emotional intimacy. | |
| Like, no strong feelings of... | |
| That's a really hard one. | |
| I've actually wrote loads of notes down. | |
| But it's really interesting when you worded it as what was actually missing. | |
| Well, hey man, I can ask you some questions if you think that would help. | |
| Yeah, yeah. Because I've talked about a lot of the problems, but I haven't really talked about what was missing. | |
| Yeah. Okay, so did your mother show great pleasure when you came home from school or came down from upstairs in the morning? | |
| Did she jump up and give you a hug? | |
| And did she take pleasure in your presence? | |
| I think sometimes. | |
| But it was, yeah, I would say it was more muted. | |
| It wasn't overt enjoyment. | |
| Like, she would never run up and give a big hug at anything. | |
| But we know we're hugs. | |
| But I can't... I think sometimes, yeah, but other times, not. | |
| I know that's pretty vague as well. | |
| No, that's fine. That's fine. Did she enjoy doing things with you, playing games, going for walks, exploring nature, or even playing games, like video games, if you were into something, did she try to figure it out, or did she enjoy doing activities with you? | |
| Yeah, yeah. We did a lot as a family, like day trips, played games, all those sorts of things, yeah. | |
| Okay, and did she enjoy trying to understand your thinking or your view of the world or how you approach life as a whole? | |
| No, I'd say that was completely absent. | |
| Okay, so she was not particularly curious about your thoughts or your mental activities or your emotional life? | |
| No, no. | |
| So, for instance, if you had... | |
| Either great or disturbing dream, would you ever say to your mom, wow, I had the strangest dream or whatever? | |
| No, I don't think I would approach her with that, no. | |
| When you were a child, as every child does, and you had various problems, whether it was at school or with the homework or wherever, who would you go to with your problems to get advice? | |
| I feel it's quite often my dad because he's He's definitely more academic, higher IQ than my mom. | |
| I'm sorry, did you say higher IQ? Yeah. | |
| Okay, that's fine. I just want to make sure I understood. | |
| Okay. And do you think that you tried going to your mom at times, but it didn't really work out? | |
| Or did you not try going to your mom at all, do you think, for reasons just you didn't think it would work at all? | |
| Yeah, I've been thinking about this the last two days because I was digging down into what things were like and I can't remember having really, really deep emotional conversations. | |
| Like, maybe never. | |
| Okay, so what do you mean by really deep? | |
| Because if you had medium deep, that's one thing, but I'm not sure what you mean by really deep. | |
| I mean, or just no deep, no depth at all. | |
| I mean, what do you mean? I would definitely talk about problems that occurred. | |
| But I think... The level of the conversation was not like a huge inquiry into the underlying emotions that go with it. | |
| So it's more a surface look at the problem, but not why is it happening, what's going on, what emotions are coming up, things like that. | |
| So it's more of a pragmatic approach to just there's a problem, but not like an inquiry into the underlying emotions that have been caused by them or someone else. | |
| And what happened with your childhood in terms of discipline? | |
| Yeah, so in our family that was definitely the drama triangle where you have the persecutor, victim, defender sort of playing out. | |
| So me and Esther would be the persecutor even though, oh sorry, me and my sister would be the persecutor even though we weren't. | |
| And I think this is because I was listening to one of your shows the other day and you know when Parents apply morals too early to kids, then they start to view the kids as adults, and then they become... | |
| They apply the same morals, and then they get angry at the kids. | |
| Or something along those lines. I'm sorry, I'm not sure what you mean. | |
| In terms... So let's go back. | |
| So in terms of like... | |
| Yeah, so we were physically hit... | |
| Yeah, it was definitely physical abuse. | |
| I'm going to modita on that. | |
| There was definitely, like, always an error of the threat of violence. | |
| Like, yeah, the violence wasn't severe, but there was always the threat of it. | |
| And sometimes there was, you know, they would go to hit and not hit, so there was always that as well. | |
| I'm trying to think of what else there was. | |
| I think a lot of criticism and judgment, and my dad had a Very bad temper. | |
| He'd go from 0 to 100. | |
| So there was that as well. | |
| And was his temper predictable? | |
| Not really I think one of the worst dynamics that played out was when we were upset our mum, she would then say to us, I'll wait till your dad gets home, and then We spend all day wondering whether she's actually told him. | |
| So we'd always look at my dad's expression as he came through the door to know if he's been told about what happened and then whether we're going to get hit or not. | |
| And how would the hitting manifest? | |
| It's normally hits around the head. | |
| On a few occasions I remember me and my sister having our heads banged together, which wasn't very nice at all, to say the least. | |
| But I think it was mostly the head or just getting hit on the arm or something like that. | |
| But there were a few times where there are a few that really stuck in my mind. | |
| It wasn't all the time either. | |
| I know that doesn't take away from how bad it is and it should never happen, but it wasn't prolific as in it happened daily. | |
| It was more, I would say, it's really hard to remember after this long, but I remember it maybe as like every couple of weeks, something like that. | |
| And how would the discipline be meted out when there was not physical hitting? | |
| There was definitely shouting, being sent to the room. | |
| Yeah, being sent to my room if I'd done something really bad. | |
| But also, yeah, the threat. | |
| So, for example, if we were at dinner and me and my sister were doing something that they didn't like, my dad would get up out of his chair quickly to... | |
| When he did that, you didn't know whether he was going to come and hit you or not. | |
| Sometimes he would get up and hit you, and then other times he would look to get up and then sit back down. | |
| So it was always that second guessing. | |
| And with regards to the hitting in the head, if we were in a room and we had to leave the room, he would stand by the door. | |
| And we know that as we went by and walked past him, we didn't know whether... | |
| Or not, we would get hit on the way out. | |
| So you'd sort of run through like ducking. | |
| Sorry, I shouldn't laugh. That's horrible. | |
| But yeah, you kind of run through ducking not knowing if you're going to get hit. | |
| So it was kind of that, are you going to get hit? | |
| Are you not? So there's always that kind of uncertainty. | |
| But there are times when, yeah, yeah, we did. | |
| And I think this happened for me for quite an early age. | |
| So I know there's a couple of times where my dad went too far. | |
| And apparently one of them was when I was really young because I don't remember it. | |
| But he's... Brought it up and apologized on a few occasions where I think he held me down in a bathroom when I was playing up as a kid. | |
| I must have been like, I don't know, maybe two, three or something like that. | |
| And I know he regrets it to this day because he's apologized for it a few times. | |
| But I think he held me down and did something. | |
| But he's a bit vague with what happened, but I know it couldn't have been good because it's been on his conscience, I think, a lot. | |
| Right, okay. So there was hitting every couple of weeks. | |
| There was threats of hitting. | |
| Were there any other ways that you were punished? | |
| Grounded or things taken away? | |
| I honestly don't remember being grounded that much. | |
| I really don't. | |
| I can't remember things getting taken away either. | |
| I think... Sometimes I played too many video games and it would kick off. | |
| Did you get lectured? | |
| I mean, you must have displeased your parents, I assume, more than a couple of times. | |
| More than once every couple of weeks. | |
| Yeah, so with the video games, I would play too long. | |
| My dad would run in and just smash the switches off at the wall. | |
| Yeah, that wasn't nice. | |
| I did play a lot of games, though. | |
| I think that was my escape. | |
| From a lot of stuff. I think going to my sister, I think one of the worst instances she had was she was pushed into the stairs and her tooth went through her lip at one point, which I didn't even remember. | |
| What went through her lip? Her tooth went through her lip. | |
| Oh, her tooth went through her lip. | |
| Sorry, got it. Yeah, so, excuse me. | |
| She had to go to... | |
| She had to take her to A&E. I think that was one of the worst things, but I didn't remember that until... | |
| She told me recently or a year ago or something like that. | |
| And the other one of the worst things I can remember is at one time I poked a kid at school with a pencil and got in trouble. | |
| My dad came in and I don't know what was going on this day, but he absolutely lost it. | |
| And for the rest of the day, I must have been like eight hours just getting shouted at home. | |
| And in the end, he told me to pack my bag and I packed some board games and I I was told to pack some games and my sleeping bag and he pretended to take me to an orphanage and said I was never going to see him again. | |
| What? How old were you? | |
| I was year 37. | |
| Seven years old. My god, that's sad. | |
| And I only found out a couple of years ago that that exact same thing happened to him as a child. | |
| And I didn't know this until literally a couple of years ago because... | |
| It came up and he said to me that, yeah, one of his family threatened to take him to an orphanage. | |
| And so I don't know how he thought it'd be a good idea to do the same thing to me, but it's one that sticks in my mind big time. | |
| Yeah, he literally took me somewhere near, I was in the southwest of England, somewhere into like a national park and said that there's an orphanage down here. | |
| I was crying my eyes out for hours, and then eventually he took me home again, but it was, yeah. | |
| That's not hot rage, right? | |
| That's a slow-burn sadism. | |
| That's highly controlled. | |
| That's not just lashing out. | |
| Yeah, yeah. | |
| That one stuck in my mind a lot. | |
| Yeah. Well, and it's a threat of the bond, right? | |
| That you are disposable. Yeah. | |
| Yeah, yeah. | |
| Because you stuck another kid with a pencil? | |
| Yeah, and that's honestly the thing that I cannot quantify to this day. | |
| I was seven years old in a classroom with 20 other kids. | |
| I think it was playtime and I don't know. | |
| I probably shouldn't have poked a kid with a pencil, but I can imagine. | |
| It just seems so disproportionate, the response. | |
| Like beyond disproportionate. | |
| But how did it go? I mean, was your father called in? | |
| Yeah, so they had to go in and talk to the teacher. | |
| Oh, okay. So that's the British shaming thing, right? | |
| Like, you've socially shamed me, and I've had to be pulled away from work, or was it something like that? | |
| Yeah, yeah. He had to go in and talk to the teacher. | |
| Yeah, so it's the whole social status thing, and shame, and all of that. | |
| So then you just have to be completely broken, so that that doesn't happen again, I assume. | |
| Yeah, and I think... | |
| Yeah, yeah. | |
| And I remember him saying... | |
| A few of the words I remember him saying during his rants... | |
| I remember sitting at a dinner table where he was pacing back and forth and he said, I didn't raise you like this. | |
| It was more a case of I shamed maybe the family name or him or his parental... | |
| His status, yeah. | |
| His status went down. Yeah. | |
| Okay. And when did the physical violence begin to diminish? | |
| Was it around puberty as it is for a lot of kids? | |
| Yeah, exactly. Yeah. | |
| Okay, so you get big enough and suddenly he finds all kinds of capacities for peace and reason. | |
| Yeah. And ironically, as I got into late teens, he would get angry at me for working out in the garden. | |
| And I could never understand this. | |
| For most kids, parents get angry at them for doing drugs and alcohol, whatever, and For me, I was exercising in the garden. | |
| He'd come out and he'd be like, what are you doing? | |
| You don't need to do this. | |
| And I'm like, he's like, you're not all right, are you? | |
| And I'm like, no, I'm not all right. | |
| So what was his cover story for being upset with you about exercising? | |
| Oh, as if saying that the way I am is not anything. | |
| Yeah. So he was trying to portray that I don't need to change myself. | |
| Like I don't need to try and improve myself. | |
| It's like I'm I was trying to be, I should be fine, you know, like be happy the way you are kind of thing, you know, like the worst advice you can ever have. | |
| Oh, so after he was like screaming at you and threatening to throw you into the woods and beating you around the head, knocking you and your sister's head together, suddenly now you're fine just the way you are and don't need to change? | |
| I mean, I guess that's what it was about, yeah. | |
| It was kind of like, you don't need to do this. | |
| And I'm like, but yeah, I wanted to, you know. | |
| Well, I mean, if I'd beaten up someone for quite some time, I wouldn't like them working out either. | |
| Yeah. Yeah. | |
| Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's a good point. | |
| And the other thing that happened was there was a couple of really other weird instances where I was really struggling at the time. | |
| I was really depressed. I think this was like my early twenties where I think that's where everything hit me hard. | |
| Like where life really caught up with me and I realized how far behind I was when I went to university. | |
| And I just felt out of my depth in every possible way. | |
| But I came home during one of the holidays and my dad came up and played a video of James Blunt and said, you know, you should try and talk more like James Blunt. | |
| And I'm just like, what the hell is going on? | |
| And I know that's like his, it sounded like a weird thing, but it really stuck with me, like as if, you know, I'm just not all right, you know, who I am. | |
| And, you know, my speech, I don't think it's too bad. | |
| Like, I know I talk a bit fast. | |
| Sorry, but who's, I don't remember who James Blunt is. | |
| He's like this proper, prim and proper sort of British music artist who has really eloquent dialogue. | |
| Oh, you should talk more like this Toph, right? | |
| Okay, got it. Yeah, because he believed it would improve my confidence, as if that was a thing that was kind of missing at the time, you know? | |
| If I could talk to me, I'd be confident. | |
| Right, okay. That's the impression I got. | |
| Do you think your parents had any real clue about how to parent or what parenting was at all? | |
| I don't know. Zero. | |
| Have they ever read any books or took any courses? | |
| No, because when I talk to them about it now, they say we didn't have any stuff. | |
| It's that usual argument that you've brought up many times. | |
| Oh, they said that there was no way for anyone to ever learn anything about parenting. | |
| Yeah, like we didn't notice at the time. | |
| There were no libraries, no parenting books, no seminars, no training. | |
| So they're lying, right? | |
| They're lying about that. Yeah. | |
| I mean, I could say stuff which would be excuses and you'd call me up on it. | |
| Like, they came from poor backgrounds and abusive. | |
| But yeah, I think at the same time, I think, you know, like if I had kids, well, you know, I'm consuming all your parental stuff and I don't even have kids because I know I do want to have kids and I don't want to make mistakes. | |
| So I can't for the life of me understand why they wouldn't have. | |
| I just can't comprehend why you wouldn't study hard how to race kid. | |
| And what's the status of your relationship with them at the moment? | |
| So we had a massive... | |
| So I say this is a massive event that happened with me and my sister and my parents. | |
| We had a massive crescendo event where I just started therapy. | |
| So this is about 10 years ago in 20... | |
| Yeah, probably 2013, something like that. | |
| But I just started therapy. | |
| I was about six months in and I was starting to learn about all the dynamics that were going on within the family. | |
| So like the drama triangles and all the different sort of behaviors that were playing out. | |
| And I naively thought, oh, do you know what? | |
| Now I know this. I can tell everyone and everything, you know, once people understand it, it'll be fine. | |
| It was like chucking a grenade into a hornet's nest. | |
| Yeah, it's a fundamental mistake that people with a clear conscience or a clean conscience think that everybody else will welcome notification of dysfunction just as much as they do because it gives relief to you but it gives agony to those with a bad conscience. | |
| It was incredible. | |
| I just could not believe it's like you say, that moment of morality just disintegrates everything and I brought up everything that was going on the way that My parents were sort of persecuting my sister at the time, the way they were so judgmental and critical and all the struggles we've been through and the way that, you know, like we'd upset them and then mum would cry, dad would be then the defender that comes in and attacks us and all these different dynamics that were playing out. | |
| Well, and of course, your mother knew that your father was violent and would wind him up and point him at the kids anyway, right? | |
| Yeah, exactly. And it took me ages to actually put the blame on her as well. | |
| But I did that many years ago where I think it was actually listening to you where it's not one of them. | |
| You know, it's never one. No, no. | |
| They're a team. Yeah. | |
| And it took me years to do that because I always sort of blamed my dad more because he was the one that issued the violence. | |
| But The fact is, yeah, it's a co-op team. | |
| No, there's the secret police and then there's the informant, right? | |
| Yeah, yeah. So I decided that I was going to go for it and just say, this has got to stop. | |
| All this behavior has got to stop. | |
| The judging, the criticizing, the manipulative behavior. | |
| All the different things that were affecting me and my sister so much. | |
| I really felt for my sister this day because they just kept... | |
| Going for her with everything. | |
| I can't remember the specific things, but I was just like, just stop harassing her. | |
| And then I brought it all up and literally my mum, you know, when I said about all the issues that me and Esther had been through, like both of us had been on antidepressants and we'd been through all sorts of stuff. | |
| I just said the truth of the impact of what their behaviour had had on us over the years. | |
| And my mum literally clutched her chest and I thought she was, Like screamed and I thought she was honestly having a heart attack. | |
| It was that much of a big crescendo moment for them to, for me to actually point out. | |
| I'm sorry, how do you, how do you know any of that is genuine? | |
| Oh, she was, um, oh no, it was, it was a hundred percent. | |
| She literally was just went hysterical, like crying. | |
| No, I get that. | |
| I mean, but how do you know any of that? | |
| I mean, you know her better than I do, of course. | |
| Right. But how do you know any of that's genuine? | |
| Could be a manipulation. I mean, she might be really committed to the manipulation, but it could be. | |
| It was so raw. | |
| It was unbelievably raw. | |
| Like, I'd never seen her react in that way in my entire life. | |
| And this was, what, when I was, yeah, 10 years ago, maybe? | |
| You said 2013, so yeah. | |
| Yeah, somewhere around that. 10 years ago. | |
| So did you feel closer to her? | |
| Did you feel connected to her? | |
| Did you feel closer to her as a result of her outburst? | |
| So after that, No, no, during that. | |
| I was initially worried that she was going to die. | |
| No, I get that. So what she was doing was aversive. | |
| It was training you to not bring this up, otherwise she's going to die. | |
| I never looked at it that way. | |
| No, because when people have genuine emotions, you feel closer to them. | |
| Even if the emotions are very much upset, right? | |
| You feel closer to them. But if it's like, I'm horrified and I have to stop what I'm doing immediately out of fear for my mother's sanity or health or whatever, then it's just aversive. | |
| It's just punishing you. | |
| Yeah, I never looked at it that way. | |
| I'm trying to... | |
| I'm trying to remember what happened after that. | |
| I don't think I went over and... | |
| I think she got herself together And I can't remember if I carried on, I think, I don't know whether that was the end of like, so I was talking for, I think I talked for two hours straight, just putting everything out that had been going on. | |
| And I remember then, do you know what, it ended with my mum and dad storming out the house and getting in the car and driving off. | |
| And it was just, yeah, it was horrendous. | |
| Okay, so instead of taking you to the woods, they just drove off in their car. | |
| They still, abandonment is the thing, right? | |
| Yeah, because I remember it was so, it was crazy. | |
| They left so fast, they forgot their keys and then dad had to come back in and it was, it was fraught. | |
| Absolutely fraught. There was no sort of like... | |
| Okay, so sorry to interrupt. | |
| So that was 10 years ago and what's happened since? | |
| So... Excuse me. | |
| The year after that, me and my dad were in a power struggle with every time... | |
| Yeah, every time. | |
| So I basically put really strong boundaries in that the toxic behavior can carry on, like the criticism, the endless criticism and judgment, the manipulation, the aggressive behavior, all of these things had to... | |
| I just put in zero tolerance with it. | |
| So anytime I went to visit them, if it happened, I would leave. | |
| And it's probably not the best way to deal with it, but I'm just telling you how I did it at the time. | |
| And yeah, so every time it happened, I would leave. | |
| And it was just fraught for ages. | |
| Me and my dad could hardly be in the same room together. | |
| And this was going on for years, probably like a year and a half. | |
| I mean, they were, I mean, not just abusive, of course, right? | |
| But they were kind of abusive when you were younger. | |
| And then when you brought up your issues, your mom pretended to die and they both ran out of the house. | |
| I mean, did they ever apologize and ask you to continue the conversation? | |
| Yeah. No. | |
| So what are you doing? | |
| I think they're really good at brushing, trying to brush stuff or whitewashing. | |
| But they can only do that with your participation, right? | |
| Yeah, yeah. So what's the plan with the relationship? | |
| Is it the hope that it's going to change? | |
| So I think for me, I've been teaching them for years about, well, all the stuff that comes up in a philosophy show, I just constantly talk to them about now. | |
| Why? Why? Don't you want to parent your own children, not your parents? | |
| Don't you want to parent people who've got a clean conscience rather than people who are sick with guilt over how they treated their children? | |
| I know, it's so hard. | |
| Why are you parenting your parents at the expense of your own children? | |
| Yeah, I think in terms of my relationship with them now, it's weird. | |
| They really don't They don't do any more of the criticism and judging. | |
| Okay, you know you just dodged my question, right? | |
| That was a good dodge, but a very obvious one. | |
| Jeez, did I? Yeah, so I said, why are you parenting your parents? | |
| And you said, well, they're not as toxic now. | |
| That doesn't answer the question. I just believed in them. | |
| I just think that... | |
| That's not an answer. | |
| I don't know what that even means. | |
| Your belief has to have some sort of evidence behind it, right? | |
| So I... So I completely red-peeled them in terms of, like, how the world works, and they've really run with that. | |
| And I think that's great that they've got that awareness, and I just think they can learn this stuff as well. | |
| And to be honest... | |
| You're 40 years old! | |
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
| I mean, come on! You're reaching the end of your fertility window in terms of, like, having a woman roughly your age, right? | |
| I know, and this is what... | |
| Yeah. So, I mean... | |
| I'm just trying to understand why are you focusing so much on fixing your parents rather than having a happy family yourself? | |
| I mean, it's not like that's been my sole job. | |
| Like, I honestly... False dichotomy. | |
| False dichotomy. I didn't say it was your sole job. | |
| Sorry, I didn't... Yeah, yeah. | |
| But, yeah, in terms of, like, you know, I have... | |
| Honestly, my main goal over the last four years has been trying to establish a good relationship with another woman. | |
| So it's not been... It's not something that I religiously pursue with them. | |
| It's like when I see them like once every couple of weeks or something, I will just point them in the right direction with stuff that comes up on your shows or talk about it. | |
| So you're not particularly philosophical as far as that goes, right? | |
| Like you don't have standards of relationships that you apply consistently, right? | |
| Yeah, and I'm reading your real-time relationships, and yeah. | |
| Yeah, I mean, listen, we all have that temptation, and family is family, right? | |
| So I get all of that, I understand all of that, and I sympathize with all of that enormously. | |
| But, you know, let's call it for what it is, right? | |
| That you have standards in a relationship where people can treat you terribly, they can punish you for bringing up any kinds of truth, they can storm out, they can pretend to have a heart attack, and you're just like, well, we'll keep going. | |
| They never have to apologize. | |
| They never have to treat you well. | |
| They never have to take ownership of their actions in any consistent or deep way. | |
| So, I mean, you have a massive glaring exception to any reasonable standard of behavior, which is called your parents, right? | |
| Yeah, that's true. And again, I understand. | |
| This is not a bad thing insofar as we all program that way, biologically and also socially as well. | |
| So I'm not trying to throw you under the bus or anything like that, or the lorry. | |
| But yeah, that's sort of a pretty significant exception to... | |
| Yeah, it is. | |
| And I knew that would be the most painful thing about talking about this. | |
| Well, why is it painful? | |
| Why is it painful? And again, I'm not saying it shouldn't be. | |
| I just want to understand from your perspective. | |
| Because I'm consuming like hours and hours of your stuff every week and I just, it's like a big, man, it's just like a big torchlight highlighting order. | |
| I'm not in securities. | |
| Sorry, the word has lost me, but I'm not applying this universally. | |
| Okay, so what happens? | |
| What's your thought? What happens if you do apply this universally? | |
| What happens if you do apply the requirement for honesty and integrity and self-ownership and responsibility and so on? | |
| What if you do apply this to your relationship with your parents? | |
| What happens? Probably similar. | |
| No, don't laugh. It's, yeah. | |
| There's been times where they have Apologize but not what you would call like an apology and obviously like it's very hard to have restitution after this long. | |
| But there's times when I have apologized. | |
| It's not been an absolute deep sincere but definitely for like I know this isn't great but like the instances where he went really far, the ones I told you about, he has really apologized for those. | |
| No, but that's not the issue, I think. | |
| And I'm sorry, I know that's kind of annoying and arrogant to say, well, I know what the issue is, but I don't think that's the issue. | |
| The issue is that your parents have been in your adult life for almost a quarter century and you haven't gotten what you most want and need, which is your family of your own, right? | |
| A family of my own. I mean, they've seen you date, right? | |
| They've seen you choose girls. | |
| They've seen you be in long-term relationships, right? | |
| Yeah, yeah. And are they giving you good advice? | |
| Are they helping you to get what you most want and need? | |
| You know, everybody who's in your life who claims to love you or care about you should be trying to help you get what you most want and need, right? | |
| Yeah. You know, if I love my wife and she's not feeling too well and she wants a cup of tea, then... | |
| I get her a cup of tea, right? | |
| I mean, if you love someone, you care about someone, you should try to help them get what they want and need, right? | |
| Yeah, so when I have problems, I can sit down with them, but they lack... | |
| And I've been really wondering about this lately because I also listened to your show the other day where you talked about how if there's dysfunction at home, then your parents don't want you to meet a quality person, so I'm aware of that, and I've been thinking about it. | |
| And I was wondering if that was the case for my parents because I don't know if that is the case. | |
| I think more that they're just so emotionally shut down. | |
| I don't think they can really understand how to give advice on how to give a good relationship because I don't feel like their relationship is good. | |
| So I don't know. I don't think they haven't done any self-development therapy. | |
| They haven't read any books about relationships or anything like that in regards to I just don't know how they could give the advice I need. | |
| But if I'm having a terrible time, I can share it with them and vent. | |
| But it's kind of like... | |
| As opposed to the kind of stuff you put out, it's just, yeah, I'm not going to get any of that from them. | |
| But that's the result of their choice, right? | |
| I mean, you chose to go to therapy, they didn't. | |
| You chose to read books, they didn't. | |
| You chose to listen to podcasts, they didn't. | |
| So it's not like they have some incapacity, like... | |
| They're just born crippled, right? | |
| It's true, and I tried to get them to go to therapy and they only did two sessions, which obviously is nowhere near what you need. | |
| Okay, so when was that? | |
| It was around about the same time, I think. | |
| It was that whole kind of era between 2013, maybe 2015. | |
| About a decade ago, you tried to get them to go to therapy and they basically didn't go. | |
| Yeah, maybe like eight years ago. | |
| So what was your anticipation about how things would go if you kept pursuing self-knowledge and they resolutely avoided it? | |
| The gap grows. | |
| The gap grows, right? Sorry, what did you say there? | |
| Well, the gap grows, right? | |
| Yeah, it gets massive, yeah. | |
| And you end up going in opposite directions? | |
| Yeah. Now tell me a little bit about the women you've been dating. | |
| So, actually, for disclosure here, I talked to you briefly on an AMA show, I think it was nine months ago, where I was the guy who actually had a relationship with his therapist. | |
| I don't know if you remember that. | |
| Yeah, which, I mean, to be honest, just for clarity for anyone that didn't hear that, she hadn't been my therapist for over six years. | |
| And She wasn't even a therapist at the time, so it wasn't like it was anything to do with... | |
| Yeah, it wasn't like we were in practice together, because obviously that is just absolutely unethical, and yeah, you can't do that. | |
| But how far back do you want to go with regards to... | |
| Because I've written a list of my relationships going back to 2009, but I don't know how far you want to go back, or do you want to do recent... | |
| Wait, 2009, so you would have been 26? | |
| 25? Yeah. Yeah, I'm 40, 20, 2009. | |
| God, yeah. Time flies, yeah. | |
| Was there anything before mid-20s? | |
| I can remember my very first relationship at 16, but in the 20s, I didn't kind of have any long-term. | |
| It was towards the end of my 20s where I started really trying to have the long-term relationships because, you know, I was thinking more about family and children and things like that. | |
| Okay. And how many long-term relationships have you had? | |
| So, let me decide one, two. | |
| About eight or nine. | |
| Eight or nine? About eight. | |
| Okay. What do you mean by long-term relationships? | |
| I would say a year to four years. | |
| So I think the shortest was about a year. | |
| And the longest was four years. | |
| Okay. And in the four-year one, how old were you when you started that one? | |
| Yes, that was 2013 to 2017. | |
| I was 30 to 34. | |
| Okay. And why didn't you marry that woman? | |
| Yes, that relationship. | |
| We... It was just so stressful again. | |
| I feel like she had a lot of issues from her childhood, which is a reoccurring thing, believe me. | |
| She was majorly stressed. | |
| What does that mean? How did that manifest? | |
| So, yeah, I'm trying to remember now. | |
| I've got it written here. I do remember the relationship well. | |
| So we started off I'd visit her in London. | |
| We actually knew each other growing up in southwest England. | |
| And we actually worked together when we were like 16. | |
| And I don't know how it was. | |
| I think we started talking online on Facebook or something like that and ended up going to visit her in London. | |
| And same kind of thing. | |
| Like, you know, you always have the honeymoon period where you're going well at first. | |
| And then she was just a very, very highly strung... | |
| Stressed out, and I think that's because... | |
| How did it manifest? My God, I keep asking every question twice. | |
| I'm sorry, I'm sorry. | |
| How did it manifest? Empirically, how did you know she was stressed? | |
| Just when we spent time together. | |
| She also had a job at a college where she was dealing with all the kids on whores, and some of them, you know, there were days where they would, like, some would commit suicide, which is absolutely horrendous, and so on top of I think all the stress she had with her family. | |
| It's weird. Thinking back, it just seems so stressful. | |
| Would she not sleep? | |
| Would she snap? Did she comfort eat? | |
| What did she do in terms of, I know that she's stressed. | |
| I think what was going on is what you refer to in your book, Real Time Relationships, the zing zing, where you're just constantly triggering each other. | |
| I'm going to ask you one more time. | |
| It's the fourth time, I think, Dan. | |
| What the fuck did she do that you knew she was stressed? | |
| I just want some empirical data. | |
| Sorry, sorry, sorry. It just, like, literally just around the house, like, we would snap at each other. | |
| We'd argue. Oh, so you were both stressed? | |
| Yeah, yeah. | |
| Okay, and what were you stressed about? | |
| I think, well, this is, yeah, it was the same sort of time I was going through the family breakdown. | |
| I was changing, starting to change careers. | |
| And you were living together with the one? | |
| Yeah, so we, no, actually we didn't, but we would spend almost all our time with each other. | |
| Okay, did she ever want to get married? | |
| Yeah, I think she did, yeah. | |
| You think she did? No, she did. | |
| She did. Did she, like, openly say, I want to get married? | |
| Yeah, yeah. I think... | |
| No, I think, yeah, it wasn't something we talked about a lot. | |
| I mean... | |
| No, no, I'm just asking... | |
| It's a yes, no, it's not. | |
| I'm not asking for a degree. I'm just asking for... | |
| She did say, I want to get married. | |
| Yeah, I know for a fact that she wanted to get married. | |
| Okay, and why didn't you want to get married? | |
| Because she was too stressed? Yeah, I just wasn't enjoying the relationship. | |
| Okay, so for how long did your family know that you weren't enjoying the relationship? | |
| Well, this is where my biggest problem comes in, and that is, I was probably with her another two years, and I hate to say it, I hate this, and I regret it, I regret every second of not getting out of the relationship scene, but I had, this is like one of my biggest problems that I wanted to bring up is that. | |
| Okay, go ahead, go ahead, bro, bro. Sorry. | |
| What did I ask? Sorry. Oh, how long do my parents know? | |
| Yeah, okay, so probably two years. | |
| About, I would say, 18 months, to be fair. | |
| Yeah. Okay, so how long were you unhappy in the relationship? | |
| You said two years you regret, but I assume it didn't go from, like, great to terrible in, like, one day, right? | |
| So for how long were you having doubts about the relationship or were unhappy in the relationship to the point where you're like, maybe this isn't going to work out? | |
| 18 months. So the first two and a half years were great. | |
| Um... I would say... | |
| It's a long honeymoon. Yeah, I would say... | |
| That's a good point. | |
| So she didn't show any signs of dysfunction really for the first two and a half years? | |
| No, I'm pretty sure she did. | |
| I'm pretty sure she did, too. | |
| Yeah. I think at the time, I was in such a case of survival, it's just... | |
| It was almost like the dysfunction was just normal. | |
| It was... But we weren't... | |
| Yeah, we weren't intimate. | |
| We weren't... Well, we would have sex, but... | |
| I think it was just... | |
| Both of us were just in a state of prefrontal cortex. | |
| We just weren't... | |
| That whole relationship just seemed... | |
| I mean, we had some good times. | |
| It wasn't all bad, and we're still friends now. | |
| We actually get on really well, and she's got a partner, and that's good. | |
| But at the time, I don't know. | |
| It's weird. It's really hard to remember. | |
| Did she end up having kids? | |
| She didn't. She didn't? | |
| Do you know why? No. | |
| We split up when we were about... | |
| I think she was 34, 35 when we split up. | |
| But she never ended up having kids. | |
| She never wanted them or just never ended up having them? | |
| I actually asked her this many times because I said to her, like, you know, make sure you put your focus on having kids because, like, she was really... | |
| She's always been, like, a really highly driven career woman. | |
| I said, look, after we split up, I said, look, if you really want to have kids, like, just put your focus on it. | |
| And she always said to me she wasn't sure if she wanted them. | |
| So, yeah. | |
| I genuinely am quite... | |
| I don't know. She was kind of on the fence about it. | |
| She was always on the fence about it. | |
| Right. Okay. All right. | |
| So for how long did you have doubts about the relationship? | |
| So I think I really wanted out 18 months, excuse me, 18 months before it ended. | |
| Right. And it was, oh, sorry. | |
| Sorry. Doubts. Probably, probably after a year and a half, a year. | |
| Okay, so for the first year or so, things were good, and then you had some concerns, right? | |
| Yeah. And who did you go to with those concerns, if anyone? | |
| I would have definitely talked to my parents about it. | |
| Sorry, you would have, or you did? | |
| I'm pretty sure I did. | |
| So you said, I have doubts about this relationship in one form or another, right? | |
| Yeah. And what happened then? | |
| I think they would always talk to me about it, but I just kept going. | |
| Well, what advice did they give you? | |
| I can't remember getting any... | |
| Well, I think they would have said, like, get out if you're not happy. | |
| Like, they definitely would have said that. | |
| They would have said, leave if you're not happy? | |
| Yeah, I'm pretty sure they would have, yeah. | |
| That's interesting. Are you happy in your relationship with your parents? | |
| They could be a lot better, yeah. | |
| So you're not happy in your relationship with your parents? | |
| I mean, it's like a thousand times better than it used to be. | |
| There are times where we get on really well. | |
| I wish they were more emotionally available. | |
| They've always been emotionally shut down. | |
| Okay. But yeah, sometimes when I hear you talking about your relationship with your daughter, it's It's like, man, that's something that I haven't experienced. | |
| So, they would have said, get out if you're not happy? | |
| Do you remember them saying that? | |
| Or is that what they might have said? | |
| We're in Fargland here, I'm not sure which one is that. | |
| It's so hard to remember the details about it. | |
| And believe me, I went through... | |
| It's not a detail. You ask someone for advice, and it's your parents. | |
| It's not a detail to remember what advice they gave you. | |
| So what will normally happen, if I have a problem with a girlfriend, I'll explain everything to them, and they'll say, oh, yeah, that's not great. | |
| But it's almost like the ball isn't just my court, what I'm going to do. | |
| They obviously say, if you're not happy, don't be in it. | |
| They do say that to me. | |
| But I just find it so hard to leave the relationship. | |
| Well, did they follow up? | |
| Did they say, you know, well, you said you weren't happier things any better. | |
| If not, you really should make a plan to get out and it's unfair to burn away her fertility years and all that, right? | |
| Um, not really. | |
| Nah. Alright. | |
| What about your sister? Yes, me and my sister get on well. | |
| Um, There are times where we've been distant, but we're actually really close. | |
| Not for any bad reason. | |
| We're just quite different people and we were leading separate lives. | |
| We're close now, but I can have conversations with her and she'll tell me exactly what to do and what I should do. | |
| She's much more open. | |
| She's done quite a bit of therapy. | |
| If she gives you good advice, why have you not got the outcome you're looking for? | |
| Because I don't then action the advice. | |
| So you don't act on the advice? | |
| No. There's definitely times in the past where I just haven't acted on the advice. | |
| And I just find it excruciating breaking up with someone. | |
| Especially when that person is like struggling. | |
| Because I feel like I'm just going to compound their pain. | |
| And so it just... | |
| I still remember to this day with the girl we were talking about. | |
| When I was in therapy at the time with the woman I ended up dating... | |
| I know this sounds crazy, but... | |
| So I was in therapy, and every session in therapy with her, I would be talking about just the excruciating decision of trying to split up with this girl. | |
| And it just... | |
| Yeah, it was just so painful. | |
| And I think... | |
| Honestly, every session I'd go in and be like, I just can't do that. | |
| You were honest with your mother, and you thought she was going to die. | |
| You don't think that's related? | |
| I know, but I just blame myself for not... | |
| No, no, hang on, back up. | |
| You're honest with your mother about your childhood, and you think she's going to die. | |
| She has that extreme a reaction, right? | |
| Yeah. And do you wonder why you're not assertive with girlfriends? | |
| Yeah, yeah, it's not how it does it. | |
| Well, she... | |
| I mean, she imitates death, if you're honest. | |
| And your father totally colludes with her and storms out of the house, comes back with his keys, right? | |
| How are you supposed to have any will or assertiveness in a relationship where your parents, your father hits you, threatens to leave you at an orphanage in the forest, your mother pretends to die when you're honest with her? | |
| I mean, I don't know how you're supposed to be assertive when you have this extreme level of emotional manipulation punishing you for any expressions of genuine honesty. | |
| Yeah, and this is honestly one of the biggest problems I've had through every... | |
| No, it's not a problem. | |
| It's not a problem. It's a choice. | |
| It's not a problem. No, no, you're right. | |
| No, no. Listen, man, you can choose to please your parents. | |
| It's just going to cost you assertiveness in your relationship with the woman. | |
| We operate on principles. | |
| It's not like your right arm is immune to gravity. | |
| We operate on principles. | |
| If your principle with your parents are, serve their needs, be their slave, try to wake them up, try to get what you want without provoking massive blowback, tentatively push here and there, see, retreat, manage them, try to raise them, be there for them, try to repair them at all times, never be assertive for fear of abandonment and death. | |
| So if you have that as a principle in your relationship, that's your principle in relationships. | |
| You can't be more assertive than your least assertive relationship because that's the principle you have. | |
| Sorry, can you just say that last line again? | |
| I can't be more... You can't be more assertive than your least assertive relationship because that's the principle you have. | |
| Like, for instance, if you're willing to take 10 quid an hour to do a job, right, and the person knows you just did the job for 10 quid an hour, what's he going to offer you? | |
| Yeah. He's going to offer you 10 quid an hour. | |
| Yeah. Because he knows you're going to do the job for 10 quid an hour. | |
| So if you are not assertive with your parents at all, in fact, you suppress yourself around your parents, everybody knows that. | |
| And you know that too. | |
| So it's not a problem. | |
| It's just a choice. That if you choose to get pushed around and silenced by your parents and to not be assertive out of terror of abandonment and death, which I understand and sympathize with, that's your principle. | |
| It's not a mystery. If you're willing to do the job for 10 quid an hour, you get paid 10 quid an hour. | |
| It's not a problem. It's just a choice. | |
| And I'll be doing this in every relationship, not just with women, right? | |
| Of course. Yeah, well... You may have, if it's psychologically far enough away, you may have more assertiveness in other areas, but when push comes to shove, you'll fall back to that position. | |
| I don't have relationships where I can't be assertive. | |
| I mean, I'm just telling you my own, you know, because I'm not a therapist, I can tell you all about my life, right? | |
| So, I don't have relationships where I can't be assertive. | |
| Because I don't want that to harm my relationships. | |
| It's like you say, if you can't be yourself in a relationship, it's not... | |
| It's not a relationship, and I don't want that as a principle. | |
| Yeah, I don't mind that. It's a principle. | |
| So you're 40 years old and you're still trying to parent your parents and fix your | |
| childhood and run around after them and and you know you say they're emotionally unavailable that they don't | |
| really give you any feedback that Yeah. Okay, so that's a choice. | |
| Like, you can spend until they're dead, right? | |
| I assume that they're, what, in their 60s or 70s, right? | |
| So, you know, you might have, you know, maybe by the time you're 50 or 55 and they're dead, then you can start to try and figure out what your principles are in relationships rather than the shit you just inherited that they defined. | |
| Like, you can set your own standards for relationships or you can just have the craziest, most dysfunctional, immature people around you set all your standards. | |
| You can live by that. It's not a problem. | |
| It's just a choice. I mean, if your parents cared about you in a way that I would consider to be real, vital, and practical, then what they would do is if you were having trouble in the relationship, what would they do? | |
| What would they do if they were really practically trying to help you? | |
| Or said the very least doing a lot of Doing the best to understand everything that was going on | |
| I guess reading books. | |
| Trying to provide advice on the best course of action. | |
| Talking. I'm trying to put myself in my position if I had kids. | |
| I would literally be doing what I'm doing now, which is like listening to you and then... | |
| I can tell you what I would do. | |
| If my daughter was dating, she was in her 30s and she'd be dating some guy for a couple of years, what would I do? | |
| Will you be asking her if it's right when you're getting married and if it's wrong when you're out of it? | |
| No, I wouldn't be doing that. That would be much earlier. | |
| Yes. We can't... | |
| What would you do? | |
| I'll tell you what I would do. | |
| I would invite my daughter and her boyfriend over and I would say, alright, what's happening? | |
| What's going on? You guys getting married? | |
| What's the plan? Are you guys playing house? | |
| Are you wasting time? What are your issues with her? | |
| What are her issues with you? | |
| Is it going to move forward? | |
| Because right now you're stalling. | |
| You're just circling the drain. | |
| And time's ticking away. | |
| Like, what's going on here? See, I would never even thought of that. | |
| I know you wouldn't, because you're not used to having people in your life who actually help you and really genuinely care about you. | |
| Your sister should have done that too. | |
| I mean, it's not quite as much her responsibility because your sister, not your parents, but you can't conceive of that, right? | |
| No, like, that's honestly a concept I've never thought of. | |
| Right. Right. And that's because these are your standards that are inflicted on you by history rather than chosen by you through virtue. | |
| And I should be doing this with all my... | |
| I do tell my friends when there's an issue. | |
| And I started to do that way more since listening to your shows and trying to be that to point out. | |
| I am learning this now. | |
| I'm really starting to try and implement it, but yeah. | |
| Okay, so you're 40 years old. | |
| Is your career going okay? | |
| Yeah, brilliant. Okay, good, good. | |
| So your career's going fine. | |
| Yeah, I love it. Love girls, love women and family, children, fatherhood, and all of that. | |
| You're slipping out of the friendly side, right? | |
| I'll be outside of the relationship. | |
| I would say my life is really good. | |
| Yeah, I love my career. | |
| I'm doing well. Okay. | |
| When was the last time you were in a long-term relationship? | |
| I'm in a relationship right now. | |
| Again. And how long has that been going on? | |
| Since May. Mid of May. | |
| And how old is she? 35. | |
| Okay. And what's the plan? | |
| So again, like... | |
| So I'm back in this position where... | |
| She's having all sorts of problems and... | |
| What are her problems? | |
| So... She... | |
| Her job is incredibly stressful. | |
| Like, she works as a teacher. | |
| Yeah, well, that's fine. Just knock her up and have her raise kids. | |
| Then job stress is done, right? | |
| Yeah, but I just... | |
| That's the thing. | |
| Like, this is... See, the problem I've had... | |
| I'm sorry, does she want children? | |
| Yeah, she does. Yeah, definitely. | |
| Okay, so what's... | |
| I mean, she's 35, right? | |
| She's already in geriatric pregnancy territory. | |
| So she wants kids and wants kids and what's her time frame? | |
| Like, what's happening? Yeah, so we've talked... | |
| Honestly, I talked about this on the first date with her about... | |
| Honestly, the first date we went on, we went for a walk and I said, like, do you want to have kids? | |
| So we were both on the same page. | |
| We both wanted to have kids and I even talked to her about your shows and peaceful parenting on the first day because I wanted to make sure that she was on the same page with that, you know? | |
| Like, I never want to marry someone who's not going to be a peaceful parent. | |
| So I started asking these things and then... | |
| So time has gone on and... | |
| She's just not very stable. | |
| She's had a very adverse childhood and she hasn't done any therapy. | |
| Okay, so what are you doing? | |
| Hang on, hang on, hang on. | |
| What are you doing? The thing is, I literally second date. | |
| So after coming out of my last relationship with the therapist, I'm like, okay, first thing I'm going to do is ask her what her relationship with her parents was like because I don't want to go through another round of... | |
| All this stuff, right? Like, so literally, I literally was like, oh my god, I've got to find out. | |
| I don't want another, like, fixed job. | |
| And she said it was good, you know? | |
| Like, she said her relationship was good and her parents were great and she loved them. | |
| But it turns out, like, I found out in the last few weeks that when she tried to implement a boundary with her parents, like... | |
| I only found this out literally... | |
| Sorry, I... Oh gosh, I'm so sorry. | |
| Am I jumping around? No, it's fine. | |
| So she said my relationship with my family is great, right? | |
| Yeah. Okay. | |
| So when did you first meet her parents? | |
| Two months in. No, hang on. | |
| Was it two months? No, I met them briefly after two months, yeah. | |
| Okay, so two months into the relationship, you meet her parents. | |
| Now, her relationship with her parents is great, which means that they're honest, they have self-knowledge, they're open, they're good moral people, right? | |
| Yeah. So, you should be able to figure that out, right? | |
| Ask them any kinds of challenging questions. | |
| Ask them about their parenting philosophy. | |
| Ask them the good and bad that happened when they were raising your girlfriend. | |
| You know, all that kind of stuff, right? | |
| You vet them. Because you're not a kid, right? | |
| You're not some 17-year-old just looking to get laid, right? | |
| You're a 40-year-old man, or I guess a 39-year-old man back then, who's looking to settle down, which means you've got to vet the fucking family, right? | |
| Yeah. So, did you do any of that? | |
| So, I met them briefly on the first time I met them, and... | |
| They seemed okay. But yeah, you're right. | |
| I didn't do enough vetting, 100%. | |
| Okay, what vetting did you do? | |
| You did some, right? I mean, sorry, you said I didn't do enough, so... | |
| I'm trying to remember what I did. | |
| Well, did you ask her about her childhood and the good and bad that happened? | |
| I asked her about her childhood... | |
| Sorry, sorry. That's fine, I'll cut that. | |
| So yeah, did you ask your girlfriend about the good and bad that happened in her childhood? | |
| Yeah, and she... | |
| The first time I got wind of it was when she said that she was always forced to apologize. | |
| Even when her father had done something wrong, she was the one that was always forced to apologize. | |
| And... That was the first time I started to realize that... | |
| Sorry, how long is the relationship was that? | |
| I think it was three or four months. | |
| Oh, come on! What are you talking about? | |
| You didn't. You waited three or four freaking months to ask her about her childhood. | |
| I don't... You know, I mean, come on, let's be frank here. | |
| You waited three or four months to ask her about her childhood? | |
| Oh, man. This is so painful. | |
| I'm sorry. I mean, I'm just... | |
| I'm being direct here because you're a long-time listener. | |
| Yeah, I know. I know. And I know it's going to be painful. | |
| No, there's no point in me having sympathy for self-inflicted wounds, right? | |
| No, no, no. And I don't expect it to be any different. | |
| I'm just like, oh, my God. Okay, so you waited three or four... | |
| I'm sorry, I don't mean to laugh because it's not funny, but you waited three or four months after listening to this show for ten years or whatever, right? | |
| You waited three or four months to ask her about her childhood. | |
| Yeah, and I just... | |
| Did she ask you about your childhood? | |
| I'll be honest. Yeah, and I... Yeah, I told her that I'd done... | |
| It wasn't the best, but I'd done all the work to try and... | |
| I've done like 10 years of work on myself to reverse everything. | |
| Not enough work to ask someone else about their childhood. | |
| Yeah. Actually, do you know what? | |
| Really going deep on the philosophy coincided with the beginning of the relationship. | |
| I think the last nine months I've really caned everything you've been putting out. | |
| There were times before I listened to you, but I wasn't ready for it. | |
| I was really caught up in Bitcoin at the time. | |
| It's only now I've come back to philosophy and realized that I have. | |
| Oh, so you're stripping yourself of free will. | |
| No. You just weren't ready for it and there was Bitcoin and so you're giving yourself all these dominoes so you don't own your own fucking self, right? | |
| Okay, so yeah. You made choices. | |
| You chose to avoid asking her about her childhood because she didn't want to talk about it. | |
| And I've got to admit, right, I think I started to pick up on it and I just thought to myself, I think I did just, I went into denial about it. | |
| Hmm. But, yeah. | |
| But the worst thing I found out, which was about two months ago, we went to the house and it's the first time we actually stayed at the house. | |
| It was the first time I was able to spend a lot of time with them and some weird things happened. | |
| So, for example, there was one time where she was like mid-sentence and she stopped talking and I was like, what? | |
| Why did you stop talking? | |
| And she's like, oh, dad wants to do something. | |
| I'm like, what? And I was like, why? | |
| I was like, why? I just couldn't believe it. | |
| She literally stopped mid-sentence, so she didn't upset her dad. | |
| And there was another time where I was cooking. | |
| I cooked some eggs in the morning, and I went to the toilet whilst the water was on. | |
| And, you know, there's no fire risk or anything. | |
| But then he got really funny about that, and he kept calling me, and I was like, what's the matter? | |
| And apparently her dad got funny about it. | |
| And it was only when we left the house after a couple of days, we were driving home, and she said, she said, Started to tell me the real truth about what had gone on and basically when she was young, when she tried to implement a boundary with her father, the only time she ever tried to do it and not have to be the one that apologized, he would threaten to kill himself. | |
| Oh my god, you're not serious. | |
| So he would get really drunk, he would run off in the middle of the night and they lived really warly and He'd go and stay in a hotel and not tell them where he'd gone, so they thought he could have been dead. | |
| Honestly, I was like, holy shit. | |
| Well, there's no more extreme than your mother faking a heart attack because you're criticizing her parenting. | |
| I know, I know. It's just so bad. | |
| It's so bad. This is what I've called, man. | |
| You don't need to call me. | |
| I mean, if you're avoiding essential knowledge about the women you're dating... | |
| The question is, why? | |
| Why aren't you asking them about their childhood? | |
| I feel like I was getting closer. | |
| I feel like because... | |
| No, no, no. First date, you're talking about peaceful parenting and all that kind of stuff, right? | |
| So why aren't you... | |
| Or tell me a little bit about your life. | |
| Tell me about the good and bad, the up and the down, right? | |
| You both got some mileage, right? | |
| So there's going to be some treads worn down. | |
| Right? Tell me, right? So why are you avoiding the whole childhood thing? | |
| I don't know. | |
| You still have all your hair, don't you? | |
| Mm-hmm. You do, right? | |
| Yeah. You have a baby face? | |
| I look a lot younger than I. Yeah, I knew that. | |
| How did I know that? How did you know that? | |
| How did I know that? Because you're living like you're immortal. | |
| You're wasting time like you're immortal. | |
| Spoiler! You don't live longer if you keep your hair. | |
| Oh, jeez, man. | |
| You don't live longer. Yeah, but I sense I'm, you know, I'm 40. | |
| I can't keep messing up. | |
| I can't. I know I'm getting, like, I know I'm late, late in the game. | |
| Well, I mean, how many good women are left? | |
| Oh, man. Yeah. | |
| No, I mean, like, every day that goes by, you know, the last couple of good women are all being snatched up. | |
| Shit. Unless you want to go super young, in which case you've got a 20-year age gap or a 15-year age gap, or, you know, then there's going to be a whole intergenerational thing. | |
| And, you know, maybe it can work, but it seems like a pretty rough gap to bridge. | |
| Oh, man. And also, I mean, it's not nice to this woman, right? | |
| Mm-hmm. No, I really feel for her. | |
| I really... No, you don't. | |
| No, don't even try. | |
| Don't even try that with me, brother. | |
| You do not feel for her. | |
| If you felt... No, if you felt for her, you wouldn't be wasting her very, very fast closing fertility window. | |
| That's not caring. No, that cuts me up. | |
| I've really got to... No, no. | |
| Don't give me this nonsense. | |
| Oh, I really care for her. That's why I'm burning up another year of her fertility window when she's only got three left! | |
| So, I... So what I did was I paid for her to go to therapy because I figured she can sort it out. | |
| We might be able to have a relationship, but I don't know. | |
| I don't know. I guess it's a long... | |
| And I've gone back into fixing, so I'm like, okay, how can I change the situation so that perhaps we can pair bond? | |
| Are you kidding me? I mean, all you do is try to fix your parents. | |
| Of course you're trying to fix these women. | |
| You exist to serve the dysfunctions of others. | |
| That's your job. You exist to fix people! | |
| Which means they'll never let you fix them because that's the whole point of the relationship. | |
| What do you mean by that? That's interesting. | |
| Well, if you exist to fix people, then you won't stay with them if they actually get fixed. | |
| You'll just go find somebody else to fix. | |
| How would they know that? | |
| Wait, wait, wait. One sec. | |
| That's a subconscious thing, right? | |
| They're not consciously thinking that. | |
| Who knows? Who cares? | |
| How would you ever verify? | |
| But do you know this? Mechanics work on broken cars, right? | |
| Yeah. And when the car's fixed, your relationship with the mechanic ends, right? | |
| Yeah. At least for the time being, right? | |
| So if you exist to fix people, then you're going to choose broken people, and the only way the relationship can continue is if they never get fixed. | |
| Because your job is to fix people. | |
| But the thing is, I've learned enough to know that I don't want to do that anymore. | |
| Especially over the last nine months when I've been... | |
| Well, I don't care what you claim. | |
| I only care about the empirical evidence of your actions. | |
| And you chose a woman right now, eight months ago, you chose a woman who's broken and you refused to find out that she's broken, although I guarantee you that you knew. | |
| And now you're trying to fix her by paying for her therapy. | |
| Yeah. I try and get her to listen to some shows as well. | |
| She's quite reluctant. | |
| Right. And do you know why she's quite reluctant? | |
| What happens if she's assertive with her family? | |
| So if she's assertive with her family, you know, Yeah, he'll attempt to kill himself, right? | |
| Or drive off in the night, right? | |
| And her mother will attack her and blame her and what are you doing? | |
| And, you know, he's old and he can't take it. | |
| Right? She'll just be crushed, right? | |
| Yeah. Oh, God. | |
| Are you going to be there for her? | |
| 100%? No matter what? | |
| Doubtful. So you chose this woman who's broken and now you're trying to fix her in the same way because you've got this... | |
| You're there for the potential. You're there not for the people who are. | |
| You're there for the people they could be. | |
| And that's from your parents, right? | |
| I mean, if you met your parents at a dinner party and you didn't have any history with them, would you be in a long-term relationship with them? | |
| Would they be your friends? Would they be your mentors? | |
| Would they be your guides through life? | |
| Would they be people you'd want to hang out with? | |
| Honestly, no. No, of course not. | |
| Of course not. Okay, so you're not in the relationship with your parents for who they are, but for who they could be. | |
| And your job is to fix them and repair them and make them better and bring them to the light and all that, right? | |
| When the amount of pressure that they're facing against that is something that's kind of hard for you to imagine. | |
| Sorry, go ahead. I mean, the only thing I would say about my parents is I've repealed them so much that they actually are fighting for freedoms. | |
| They did a lot around the vaccine stuff, so... | |
| They were issuing stuff to schools to say about how they shouldn't be vaccinating kids and stuff. | |
| That's the one thing I really do like about them. | |
| They've actually learned all this stuff through Bitcoin and they're running with it, which is good. | |
| So that's the only thing I would say. | |
| But that's nothing to do with your relationship with them as their child and that they were your parents. | |
| That could be anyone. Yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
| And you know for a fact that they've been significantly, massively influential in your life for 40 years, and you don't have a family, and you don't have any way of vetting women, right? | |
| So, of course, right, as if I were your father, I guess if I'd had you when I was 17. | |
| Anyway, so if I was your father, right, and you'd had a whole series of relationships, eight long-term relationships that hadn't worked out, right? | |
| Yeah. And you said, hey, I met a new girl. | |
| What would I say? Shit, here we go again. | |
| No, what would you say? | |
| How many people get this out? | |
| So I've just met a girl. You'd probably be questioning me on every single aspect of a character. | |
| Yeah. I'd be like, okay, so we know that you have a bit of a habit of disappearing into conformityville, right? | |
| And not challenging or not, you know, being there or trying to repair or trying to fix. | |
| So, you know, we got to, you know, really figure, I'd like to meet her sooner rather than later and let me grill her because it's tougher for you. | |
| Or, you know, I prepared a list of 15 questions you could ask her. | |
| I'd love to know the answers. Like, let's make sure this doesn't happen again because I love you. | |
| Yeah. Right? Are they doing any of that? | |
| No. No, but they care about the vaccine for other children. | |
| Yeah, I do feel like a lot of that can be a distraction from what they really need to do, yeah. | |
| Well, they're never going to do it. | |
| You're 40 years old. | |
| If you were 14, I'd say they're never going to do it, probably. | |
| But at 40, you can't ever be parented. | |
| You know that, right? Yeah. | |
| Because you're 22 years past needing parenting. | |
| That's almost a quarter century. | |
| Your parents will never parent you. | |
| Yeah. | |
| That's why I listen to your show so much, because I'm like, yeah. | |
| Well, I mean, I'm not sure what that means, because you're still obviously hoping you | |
| can fix them, right? | |
| Yeah, I am. | |
| If they are who they are and they never will change, do they have value in your life? | |
| Do they have value in my life? | |
| Do they have value in your life? | |
| By the age of 40, I assume that they know you want to have a family, right? | |
| They also know that you waste your time in lengthy relationships that go nowhere, right? | |
| Yeah. So, are they helping you with that? | |
| Are they helping you try to solve or fix that? | |
| Are they watching your back? | |
| Do they have your six? So, I think recently is the first time I've told them about all the massive issues I'm having in this relationship. | |
| In this current relationship? | |
| Yeah. And how long into the relationship did you tell them? | |
| Seven months. Okay, so they spent seven months watching you date without ever asking any foundational questions. | |
| Yeah, yeah. | |
| Okay, so listen, I mean, it sounds like you want to be a mommy and daddy's boy until they're dead. | |
| And, you know, I mean, I know that sounds kind of condemnatory. | |
| I don't mean it that way. | |
| I mean, you've got parents who either... | |
| Do you think they don't know that you've dated a bunch of women? | |
| They know that, right? Yeah. | |
| They also know that you want a family, right? | |
| Yeah, 100%. Okay. | |
| So they don't care. | |
| They don't care about you enough to watch your back when you get into a relationship | |
| or you're interested in a relationship. | |
| And look, if that's okay with you, I don't think it's wise, but I'm not going to tell | |
| I don't ever tell anyone how to live. | |
| But I'm just telling you that they don't care about you enough to help you avoid these kinds of messes. | |
| And you're 40. Why? | |
| How do they not care about you? | |
| Like, how... I mean, yeah, I can see it. | |
| I can see it. I just... | |
| Well, how? I could care less about it. | |
| I'm just talking about the empirical evidence. | |
| Yeah, yeah. That after eight failed relationships, they're not asking you or giving you any vetting on your ninth one. | |
| Yeah, they're not. Okay. | |
| So, they're not... | |
| Well, what about your sister? | |
| Is she watching your back at all? | |
| Is she covering your blind spots or keeping an eye out for where you may go astray? | |
| Same sort of thing. I've only just sort of really brought up the issues. | |
| No! It's not about you bringing it up! | |
| Oh yeah, sorry. No, they should be pro... | |
| Oh, did you meet someone? Tell me. | |
| She hasn't done any deep inquiry, no. | |
| Okay. Has she done shallow inquiry? | |
| We can play this game as long as you want. | |
| It's your time. I honestly can't remember. | |
| Okay, so she hasn't vetted any women either. | |
| So when you have people around you who just claim to love you so much and they keep watching you walk into disaster after disaster after disaster and don't lift a fucking finger to intervene, you are not surrounded by people who love you. | |
| You're not. You're surrounded by people who are sabotaging you through bottomless indifference. | |
| I'll just be frank with you. And that's because they don't want a quality woman. | |
| I don't know why. I don't care why. | |
| I don't care why. | |
| Trying to plumb their motives is irrelevant. | |
| And you'll never know. | |
| Because they won't admit to it and they won't tell you the truth even if they did. | |
| So there's no point, yeah. There's no point. | |
| All we do is look at the evidence. | |
| You know, if someone roofies your drink and you go to the ER, does it matter if the doctor knows the motive of the guy who roofied you? | |
| No. It's like, oh, I can't treat the poison until I know the cause. | |
| What's the motive? Guys disappeared into the night. | |
| You'll probably never find them again. | |
| Then you just die, right? | |
| I don't care about motive. | |
| I care about evidence. | |
| And Lord knows we've got almost a quarter century of evidence of you as an adult wandering into relationship after failed relationship after failed relationship. | |
| And people still aren't vetting anyone or anything or asking you any tough questions. | |
| That's why you're calling me, right? | |
| Yeah. Because you're desperate to find out even a hint or a scrap of what it means for someone to actually care about you. | |
| 100%, yeah. All right? | |
| So you were raised by people who are sabotaging you. | |
| Even if they don't know it, they are. | |
| Yeah. I don't care what they know or they don't know. | |
| That doesn't matter. Just they are. | |
| The motives are irrelevant. | |
| It's empirical, yeah. You know, if every time a friend of mine drives in the rain, he crashes, right? | |
| Yeah. And he says, I'm going to go drive in the rain, and I'm like, okay, go ahead. | |
| What am I doing? Yeah, yeah. | |
| I want him to crash. You'd want him to crash. | |
| So every time your family doesn't vet your girlfriends, you waste more time and end up more heartbroken. | |
| And so they're still not vetting your girlfriends, so they know exactly what's going to happen, and so they're behind it. | |
| They support it. They want it. | |
| They're keen on it. Again, I don't care why. | |
| Maybe because their marriage is fucked up and they don't want to see you happy. | |
| Maybe because if you meet a quality woman, the quality woman would look at your parents and say, holy shit, these people were vetting your girlfriends for 25 years? | |
| These people were vetting your girlfriends and you ended up with this anemic series of endless relationships that failed? | |
| Holy crap, I don't want these people around my kids. | |
| These people did you the most harm of anyone. | |
| They've never really deeply apologized or taken ownership. | |
| And they've never made restitution to the point where they're actually helping you. | |
| I don't want them around my kids. | |
| Oh, man. If I love you, why would I want to spend time with people who've done the greatest harm to you of anyone? | |
| I can't both love you and like your parents at all. | |
| Can someone love you and also love the people, the unrepentant people who've done you the | |
| greatest harm? | |
| you No. Of course not. | |
| So to chase your parents' approval, you have to chase incompatible women. | |
| Women who are not assertive. | |
| Women who won't call your parents out on stuff. | |
| Women who won't stand up for you. | |
| Women who won't love you. | |
| Because you have an imaginary bond with your parents, you can't have a real bond with a quality woman. | |
| I would say the one person that did that was the therapist. | |
| She, um... | |
| She did call out a lot of stuff. | |
| Yeah, I don't know what calling out means. | |
| Um... | |
| Phew... | |
| Ah, man. | |
| Just give me two seconds. | |
| I'm just trying to collect my thoughts here. | |
| So obviously as a therapist, she could see dysfunction really easily. | |
| But at the same time, she had it with her family. | |
| So I think, yeah, she could see it in my family. | |
| She had it with hers as well. | |
| Wait, hang on. Sorry. | |
| She had messed up relations with her family? | |
| Oh my god, the therapist was severe. | |
| Okay, so you understand then that she can't date an assertive guy who really cares about her. | |
| Because an assertive guy who really cares about her would say what? | |
| If she has really messed up parents. | |
| It's the same thing again. | |
| Yeah, I don't want my kids around this. | |
| Because I care about you, I don't want to see you harmed by other people. | |
| And these people are still harming you. | |
| They harmed you in the past. They're unrepentant. | |
| They're not making restitution. And I care about you, so I don't want to see you around these people. | |
| No, I can't, you know, I can't obviously command you. | |
| Oh, you can't do this, you can't do that. | |
| But I'm telling you, I won't be around them. | |
| I don't want to see you after you've been around them because it takes you a while to even recover. | |
| And I'll tell you this, that if we're having kids, I mean, if we get together and have kids, there's no way I'm having these freaks in my life. | |
| Like, there's no way. I mean, it's bad for you, bad for our marriage, bad for our kids. | |
| No. See, that's my biggest concern as well with the women dating because, like, I can't imagine my kids being around him. | |
| Like, his energy is... | |
| Oh, the threatened suicide dad? | |
| Yeah, like, he... | |
| I could not... I couldn't... | |
| Yeah, I was just... I was literally... | |
| When she told me that, I was like, oh my god, this... | |
| You couldn't have your kids around him. | |
| You couldn't. Like... | |
| Okay, but sorry, why is that a concern? | |
| But if I was going to have kids with her, then... | |
| No. Will you have kids with a woman who still has this, quote, bond with her parents? | |
| Would you invite these people in to be the grandparents of your children? | |
| No, I know. | |
| Okay, so then why are you dating her? | |
| If you're not going to marry her, and you're not going to have children with her, and you're not going to confront her on this, because she's never done therapy and she's 35, right? | |
| Yeah. So what that means, of course, is that she's got a lot of years ahead of her. | |
| It also means that she has been postponing dealing with this stuff for probably 20 years, right? | |
| And I can understand that because she's been held hostage by an emotional terrorist for 35 years. | |
| I know, it's so bad. | |
| She's a hostage. | |
| She's not a child, right? | |
| Oh my God, it's... | |
| It's heinous. It's heinous. | |
| Well, I mean, it is heinous, and I obviously have great sympathy for her, but she chose not to deal with it. | |
| Yeah, this is another thing that I'm trying to get into my head. | |
| It's like, I have massive empathy for her on a situation, and then I'm like, right, I'm going to try and fix everything, but at the same time... | |
| No, no, no, no. Massive empathy for her as a child. | |
| Massive empathy for her as a child. | |
| Because then you have choice as an adult, yeah. | |
| As an adult? I mean, she's a teacher, right? | |
| Yeah. Right. | |
| As a teacher, self-knowledge is essential. | |
| Yeah. To make sure you're not projecting or recreating your trauma in the children. | |
| Yeah. You said her job was very stressful, right? | |
| Oh, like, it's beyond. | |
| She's got migraines every day. | |
| So her job is probably quite stressful because she's not able to be assertive, and she's not able to be assertive because she's let herself be held hostage for 15 years. | |
| I mean, she knew she had a messed up family. | |
| She chose not to read any books or go to any therapy. | |
| And like, I'm sorry, I just, I don't have any patients. | |
| Dr. Phil's on TV. Everybody knows, psychologists, therapists, everybody knows about all of this stuff. | |
| And so I have about as much sympathy as I do for a 35-year-old smoker who develops a terrible cough. | |
| It's like, yeah, it's a bad thing you've got that cough, but you did choose to smoke. | |
| So why do I have such a big problem with it? | |
| Giving responsibility back to them. | |
| Oh, because your parents won't accept responsibility. | |
| Because if your parents accepted responsibility, they'd say, well, both our kids were on antidepressants. | |
| Is your sister married? Yeah, and she's got a kid. | |
| Okay. So there's something. | |
| But our son, who's wanted a family for a long time, keeps having these serial-fails relationships. | |
| We have to sit down with him and really sort through this stuff, no matter what, no matter how painful it is, because we care about him. | |
| And caring about people is not, you know, we had great fun at this theme park. | |
| Caring about people is, when it's really, really hard, that's when you do it, right? | |
| And so your parents, you know, they just get away with all of this avoidance and, oh, you know, we have sympathy, but they won't do the hard work to dig in and figure out what's going wrong with your relationships and how it pertains to them. | |
| So they won't take responsibility. | |
| And I guarantee you that the price of you being in a, quote, relationship with them is never assigning them responsibility. | |
| Sorry, can you just say that last sentence again? | |
| The price of being in a, quote, relationship with your parents is never assigning them responsibility. | |
| Yeah. So if you were to say, listen, guys, guys, I'm 40 years old. | |
| For the past quarter century, I've been getting involved in relationships with women where I'm not assertive. | |
| Now, this has something to do with my childhood. | |
| I get all of that. But, you know, I'm an adult now. | |
| Why don't you help me? | |
| Why don't you ask me questions? | |
| You know, if you claim to care about me, why don't you... | |
| Help me sort this out. | |
| Why am I just flying blind here? | |
| Why is nobody watching my back? | |
| Say, oh, well, you know, we didn't want to interfere. | |
| You're an adult now. You know what's best for you, right? | |
| Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's what they would say. | |
| Yeah, I get it. I get it. | |
| Oh, you know, every time my friend drives in the rain, he gets into a car crash, and he says he wants to go drive in the rain. | |
| I'm like, well, I don't want to interfere. | |
| I know you know what's best for you. | |
| I don't want to interfere as we don't have a relationship. | |
| All relationships are about interfering. | |
| Or at least giving your opinion. | |
| Yeah, and conflict. | |
| I remember you saying that the other day. | |
| You can't avoid conflict in your... | |
| I'm not talking about toxic conflict, but you're going to have some degree of conflict. | |
| See, your parents should have many, many, many years ago Sat everyone in the family down and said, okay, look, things are not working. | |
| You guys are on antidepressants. | |
| You know, we've really got to dig in and figure out what's going on. | |
| And actually, I've got a story about that. | |
| I don't want to change the subject, but when my sister went on to antidepressants for the first time, she came back from university and she was like really down and they said, I hope it's not going to be like this for the next three weeks when she was sad. | |
| So it was kind of like, holy shit. | |
| She told me, She told me that recently, and I was just like, I couldn't believe what she told me. | |
| Yeah, that's shockingly cold. | |
| I mean, even by British standards, that's shockingly cold. | |
| And this is the other thing, too. | |
| I mean, your unhappiness is inconvenient to me. | |
| The impatience, the sighing, the eye-rolling, and oh, fine, okay, you know. | |
| But other people's misery that I created is really inconvenient to me. | |
| I mean, you know, it's like some guy gets punched in the face while he's sleeping and then the guy who punched him is really angry because he got blood on the sheets. | |
| Yeah, yeah. Right. | |
| So that's the level of sympathy, right? | |
| You were depressed in your 20s, your early 20s, you said. | |
| Your sister was depressed coming out of uni and you guys are both on antidepressants. | |
| This is not at all enough for your parents to say, let's sit down and try and sort out what's going on. | |
| Yeah, it's unbelievable. Okay, so I mean, again, if that's where you want to live, that's how you're going to live. | |
| If you want to live in a place where nobody really intervenes to care for you or to watch your back or to see the things that you can't easily see, which we all need. | |
| We all need that, right? We don't have eyes in the back of our head, right? | |
| So we all need people to help us do the 360. | |
| Yeah. So, that's going to absolutely condition the women you choose. | |
| And you will forever choose women who won't threaten your parents. | |
| Because in your mind, you're always in that car going to the woods with your dad when you're seven after you stuck a pencil in some kid. | |
| You're always hanging by a thread. | |
| And that level of emotional terrorism can be quite crippling. | |
| And if you want to live life trying to fix your childhood, all you do is ruin your adulthood. | |
| Your childhood can't be fixed because it's gone. | |
| You know, you're like the kid who is a little short because he didn't eat too much. | |
| He says, well, I'll just eat more now. | |
| We just get fat. Can't go back in time and get enough food when you were a kid. | |
| If you had a friend who rolled their eyes and was impatient at your sister's depression, would that person be your friend? | |
| No. God, no. | |
| Okay, so what are you doing? | |
| Do you think that philosophy stops at the family? | |
| No. I mean, I guess traditionally it kind of has, but that's not what I talk about. | |
| Universal principles are universal. | |
| And then you say every relationship is voluntary, even family, yeah. | |
| Well, I mean, if a friend of yours was impatient at your sister's depression, oh, I hope she's going to be like this for the next couple of weeks, you'd be like, whoa, bro, she's really unhappy. | |
| Like, have some compassion, right? | |
| But what if it was the person who'd actually caused her unhappiness who was impatient with her unhappiness? | |
| What if somebody smashed her leg and then complained that she was hobbling about her? | |
| What would you think of someone like that? | |
| Would they be your friend? | |
| No. Well, what are you doing then? | |
| Oh, good Lord. They even cause problems over Christmas, you know? | |
| I'm just... | |
| Yeah, it's just unbelievable. | |
| You know what's great about Bitcoin? | |
| is... | |
| It's an objective universal standard that's not subject to human whims and greed and manipulation, right? | |
| And corruption. Yeah. | |
| Okay, so just Bitcoin up your moral standards in your relationships. | |
| Make them independent of human corruption and manipulation. | |
| So I make my relationships independent of corruption and manipulation. | |
| No, you make the standards in your relationships independent of corruption and manipulation and history. | |
| I mean, we don't say Bitcoin has no value because it's only 16 years old, right, or 15 years old. | |
| It's a new objective universal standard that vastly supplants the manipulated currency of fiat, right? | |
| Yeah, yeah. Okay, so Bitcoin has value because it's new, it's universal. | |
| And can't be corrupted. Well, that's having moral standards in relationships. | |
| That's the Bitcoin of relationships. | |
| And you're literally like someone who's saying, well, we've always had fiat, so we always have to have fiat. | |
| Well, my parents have always done this. | |
| They've always been my parents, so I have to... | |
| Right? Okay. | |
| But then... If you have that, and again, I don't know what you should do. | |
| I'm just trying to give you the costs and benefits. | |
| Yeah, yeah. That if you have... | |
| People who are brutal and indifferent to you and your sister in your life. | |
| That is going to condition everyone you date. | |
| And it has done that consistently and universally for the past 25 years. | |
| Oh, man. This is bad. | |
| It's bad to have an answer? | |
| Weren't you calling for an answer? I know. | |
| This is brilliant. I just... | |
| What has gone on before is bad. | |
| Wouldn't it be bad to have no clue what was going wrong? | |
| Oh yeah, don't get me wrong. | |
| This is amazing, but I'm just like... | |
| Just the sheer brunt of... | |
| And I can also tell you exactly what your next impulse is going to be, if you want. | |
| Please. Oh, I've got to go fix things with my parents now! | |
| I've got to go have another conversation with my parents! | |
| Oh my god. | |
| I am... You're in your fifth decade with your parents. | |
| Nothing's going to change. | |
| Now maybe if you threaten them and I'm never going to see you if you don't go to therapy, maybe you can get them to do something that they wouldn't normally do in the same way you can pay for your girlfriend to go to therapy. | |
| But it's never going to come organically from them. | |
| They're never going to want to do it. | |
| They're just going to conform under threat. | |
| They can actually resent that, can they? | |
| Because then you make things conditional or... | |
| Well, they'll just be blowback and they'll get you some other way back and all that, right? | |
| Yeah. They are who they are. | |
| They're not going to change. See, I've never had someone tell me the shit like this. | |
| Like, this is... | |
| I know, and that's why I'm trying to give you a sense of what it is for someone to actually care about you. | |
| Yeah, but it's just brutal. It's brutal in the best kind of way. | |
| I wouldn't expect it to be any different. | |
| No, it's only brutal for the dysfunctional people in your life. | |
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
| And I honestly love this. | |
| I just... Man, I'm just like, I've got to sort shit out. | |
| I really have got to sort stuff out. | |
| Okay, what does that mean? What does sorting stuff out mean to you? | |
| I've got to... Well, I know what I've got to do. | |
| See what you're saying? Not having that relationship with my parents is the key to sorting out my relationships with women because obviously they're setting the standard for all my relationships. | |
| You need people in your life who are going to watch out for your blind spots. | |
| I mean, we all need that, right? Yeah. | |
| I mean, you say you give advice to your friends so you're watching their blind spots, right? | |
| Yeah. And you need to vet very seriously, especially at your age. | |
| Yeah. Because you're going to get women in their 30s, right? | |
| Yeah, and I'm going to be honest, ever since I've been listening to these shows over the last nine months, I've literally, knowing what I know now, I just don't think I would recreate this. | |
| You don't think what? I don't think I would recreate this situation. | |
| I would have to vet so heavily. | |
| Yeah. Right, right. | |
| You have to vet heavily, in particular because you're 40, and in particular because you're good-looking, and in particular because you're doing well in your career, right? | |
| Yeah, and the other thing that I've learned, like, one of the most profound things I heard you say recently is, like, you don't fall in love with the person, it's their values, and, like, that blew me away, because, like, yeah, I think that's something that I've completely overlooked in the past. | |
| Like, it's not so much the person, it's what? | |
| Well, you fall in lust with their need with women. | |
| So, you know, she's stressed, she gets migraines, she has problems with her family and you're | |
| like I'm going to fix her, I'm going to, like she needs, right? | |
| I mean finding a woman who doesn't need fixing, finding a woman who's doing great, who's doing | |
| well, who's competent, right? | |
| And I dream about it. I just, I need that. | |
| I need that. You need to be competent. | |
| If you want somebody competent, you need to be competent. | |
| Like, if you want to play a really good tennis player, you have to become a really good tennis player. | |
| And to become competent means that you have to vet. | |
| I mean, I don't know if you've hired people in your life, I'm sure you have, but you don't just hire everyone who walks in, right? | |
| You vet, you call the references, you check the education, all that stuff, right? | |
| And most women who are still single in their mid-30s are still single for a very good reason. | |
| And that reason is very important to understand. | |
| Now, I met my wife in my 30s, so it's not impossible, obviously, right? | |
| But... I was going to ask you about this because I was reading this in your book. | |
| The thing I was wondering, right? Like at what point do you know, like even if these things come up in a relationship with a woman, like at what point do you know when to cut and when to run? | |
| Like when do you know it's someone that you can work with and actually help them and lead them in the right direction? | |
| What if they generate their own thoughts and preferences and if they circle back? | |
| Yeah, so we're all going to do things that are annoying or minorly hurtful or whatever to other people. | |
| That's going to happen. Does it sit with them? | |
| Do they come back later that day and say, you know, I was really thinking about this, right? | |
| Or do they just kind of passive and drag through life like a fish on a hook, right? | |
| Do they have their own conscience? | |
| Do they have their own mode of power? | |
| Do they have their own thoughts? Do they have their own independent consciousness? | |
| Or are they just basically trying to get away with whatever they get away with? | |
| Now, your parents, they do what they can get away with. | |
| Yeah. And your girlfriend sounds like she's kind of passive because she was bullied into atoms by this psycho dad who threatens to kill himself if she tries to set up any reasonable boundaries, right? | |
| And yeah, sympathy for that as a kid, right? | |
| Yeah, and I'm constantly trying to shake her out of that. | |
| Right. Just as you're constantly trying to shake your parents out of that. | |
| But you can't be the mode of power for someone else. | |
| You know, it's like the old Flintstones cartoon. | |
| They had this car that you had to run on the ground, right? | |
| It's like, oh, you don't have an engine? | |
| I'll push. But pushing for two is invalidating the other person. | |
| And pushing for two is saying to the other person, you can't ever have your own motive power. | |
| Yeah, do they have their own thoughts? | |
| Do they have their own conscience? | |
| Do they process for themselves their thoughts and experience? | |
| And do they circle back and check in? | |
| I mean, all that kind of stuff. | |
| Otherwise, you have to do the whole relationship for two, right? | |
| Yeah. I know, like, the one thing she says is, like, she doesn't really work on, like, a project when we... | |
| So when the trigger comes up, like, the first thing instinctively of them is, like, right, there's been an emotional conflict. | |
| We need to resolve this. We need to find out, like, why you're triggered, what it relates to in your past, like... | |
| So I just want to go into inquiry into, like, all of it. | |
| And she just goes defensive and says, like, she feels like she's being worked on, like, a project. | |
| And, like, I won't love her until she's fixed and stuff like this. | |
| And, um... Well, but you've been in therapy 10 years ago, right? | |
| So you're smart enough and wise enough and knowledgeable enough to know that if you push her to become assertive, she's going to be threatened by her father with death, right? | |
| Her father's going to threaten to kill himself or whatever, right? | |
| It's funny. I never made that connection, but I totally get what you mean, yeah. | |
| Yeah. It's going to happen. | |
| And whether it happens explicitly or implicitly or something like that, right? | |
| And she's obviously terrified of that, right? | |
| Of course. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I get it. | |
| Well, and she's terrified because she's let it terrify her. | |
| And I understand that. I have great sympathy for that. | |
| But she's also let it continue. | |
| And she hasn't gone to therapy and hasn't had someone in her corner to help her deal with this. | |
| For like, you know, 15 years or whatever, right? | |
| Since 20 to 35, she's avoided dealing with this and she's just appeased and bowed down and conformed and let the emotional terrorist run and ruin her life, right? | |
| Yeah. And she's not angry at her mother for not intervening and she's not, right? | |
| I don't know if she's got any siblings, but yeah, I mean, she's basically been left alone with this emotional terrorist and she's chosen to bow down and conform and, you know, I can sort of understand the reasoning, but she's still responsible for that. | |
| Yeah, it's savage. I just, um... | |
| This is where I get stuck. | |
| I just feel for them so much. | |
| I do genuinely feel, and then I'm just like, I need to help them. | |
| But it's like, yeah, I've got to get out of that. | |
| It's like, because she's an adult, she's made decisions that have put herself here as well. | |
| It's like... | |
| You need to help them. | |
| Okay, but, you know, fuck that, frankly. | |
| Who's helping you? Okay, if helping others, let's say, let's UPB this MOFO, right? | |
| So if helping others is such a great thing, who's helping you? | |
| I hire people. | |
| No, no. I mean, in your personal life, right? | |
| Helping others, helping your parents, helping your girlfriends, helping others. | |
| Okay, so it's a universal value. | |
| Got to really help people. | |
| Helping people is great, right? | |
| Okay, so who's helping you? | |
| Not that many people, no. | |
| Okay, who in your personal life is helping you? | |
| So my friends, when I was dating the therapist, they pointed out a lot of the issues I was having. | |
| And I took it on board, but I continued the relationship. | |
| So they did point out to me that I should be a lot happier, that it wasn't good. | |
| Like they saw that I was really depressed and said, you know, it shouldn't be like this. | |
| So like they did point out. Okay, that's not particularly... | |
| I need you to up your standards on what it means to be cared for. | |
| So if you were dating some messed up therapist and it was consuming your heart, mind and soul, I would say to you, you have to stop this and I can't have a friendship with you. | |
| And if you say, well, I'm going to keep going, I'll be like, but you have to go without me then. | |
| I can't watch you do this to yourself. | |
| It's too painful. If you're going to be that unwise... | |
| Or that consumed with lust or obligation, I can't support that. | |
| Yeah. It would be like if you asked me to come and rob a bank with you, I'd be like, no, don't rob a bank. | |
| Right? And if you decided to go, I'd be like, well, you've got to go without me. | |
| Yeah, because it's almost like endorsing their behavior by remaining their friend, right? | |
| Right, of course, yeah. You're saying, well, you know, I think you're doing this self-destructive thing and you're going to get really hurt by this. | |
| And you don't respect me as a friend enough to change your behavior when I make a good case. | |
| And then since you don't really care about me enough and you only care about lust for this therapist woman or obligation or whatever, and if my reasonable case for values and morals is ignored by you, then we don't have much of a friendship. | |
| Yeah. Yeah, that's next. | |
| So that's really standing for someone, isn't it? | |
| Yeah, it really is. | |
| Yeah, that is, yeah, properly. | |
| And you say, because you're still defining it as caring about people, but it's not. | |
| How many women have you hurt by not committing to them? | |
| Yeah, it's honestly, this is the thing that... | |
| How many years of women's life have you wasted? | |
| Yeah. You think this is caring? | |
| And it doesn't really fundamentally have to do with the women at all. | |
| It only has to do with your parents and their needs. | |
| You're serving your parents by not bonding with quality women. | |
| So you may say, well, I'm just so empathetic and I care so much. | |
| It's like, nope. No, you don't. | |
| I can't let you reframe that as a virtue. | |
| Yeah, I don't want to hurt any more women. | |
| I think that would be a good start. | |
| Choosing these women that are really broken and then being superior to them does not elevate | |
| them. | |
| Thank you. | |
| Right, you saying to your current girlfriend, well, you're really broken. | |
| I did therapy like 10 years ago. | |
| Maybe you can start right now. | |
| Do you think that elevates her? | |
| She always says she feels inferior to me. | |
| Right. Because you are avoiding your own inferiority to your parents by pretending to be superior to your girlfriends. | |
| Wait, wait, that's interesting. | |
| I'm avoiding my inferiority to my parents. | |
| Yeah, you're avoiding feeling inferior to your parents because you're with them because of reasons of power and history, not virtue and happiness. | |
| So you're avoiding feelings of inferiority to your parents that they boss and rule you based on history and aggression. | |
| And so you then compensate for that feeling of helplessness and powerlessness by lording it over | |
| dysfunctional girlfriends and feeling stronger and superior to them | |
| Because a strong and capable woman would say I don't like your parents | |
| And I don't want to spend time with them I don't think it's healthy for you to spend time with them because they're not going to change and they were abusive and, you know, they rolled their eyes at your sister and they won't take any responsibility really for the harm that they've done and they won't make restitution and they won't go to therapy. | |
| So, yeah, I don't want to spend time around them. | |
| Now, she would then push you into a state of crisis, right? | |
| Yeah. | |
| And then would you feel strong and empowered and confident? | |
| It's just a current girlfriend. | |
| I'm sorry? Sorry, who had pushed me into crisis? | |
| So, if you had a confident girlfriend, a strong, moral and confident girlfriend who really cared about you, Yeah. | |
| She would say, I don't like your parents, I don't want to spend any time with them, I don't think it's very healthy for you to spend time with them, and they're never going to be around my kids. | |
| Right? That would push you into some kind of confrontation with your parents, right? | |
| Yeah. Or some sort of decision around your parents, right? | |
| Yeah, absolutely. | |
| Now, would you feel stronger or weaker being pushed into that position? | |
| Yeah. Obviously weaker. | |
| Weaker, right? Now you want to avoid that feeling of weakness or rather your parents. | |
| The feeling of weakness and helplessness in a relationship is absolutely essential to experience because it's incredibly liberating. | |
| Like once I realized I was completely helpless in my relationship with my mother, incredibly liberating. | |
| So you actually do want to experience that helplessness but your parents don't want you to experience that helplessness because when you experience that helplessness you give up. | |
| And you recognize that the only quote relationship is entirely on their terms at your expense. | |
| You can't tell the truth. | |
| You can't be honest. You can't be direct. | |
| You can't be assertive. You can't get your needs met. | |
| It's all on their terms. | |
| It's all on what they want and nothing on what you want, right? | |
| Yeah. Now, you avoid strong women so strong women don't push you in confrontation with your parents. | |
| That's what I mean when I say you avoid your helplessness with your parents by pretending to be superior to your girlfriends. | |
| So you choose these under-functioning people so that you can feel superior and wiser and stronger and better. | |
| But then you can't commit to them. | |
| And then you claim it's about caring? | |
| Come on. Can I just bring up one thing here? | |
| So the therapist, she would constantly say that I wasn't involved enough for her. | |
| So it's almost like she felt superior to me in that relationship. | |
| Well, she kept you on the back foot so you didn't confront her about her parents. | |
| I actually spoke to her recently and she's actually just not seeing her parents anymore. | |
| And did she apologize to you for anything that she said? | |
| Yeah, she did. Okay, that's good. | |
| She... Yeah, she said that she projected so much of her anger towards her dad onto me, and she was really sorry. | |
| But yeah, she genuinely... | |
| Yeah, but she has actually just made that decision. | |
| She's finally not seeing her parents anymore. | |
| Well, her mum's dead, but her step-mom and dad, yeah. | |
| Right, okay. So neither of you were able to Care about the other to help the other person avoid getting hurt? | |
| It was... | |
| Yeah, that relationship really hurt. | |
| It was... | |
| I mean, yeah, she had a full CPD-SD breakdown during it. | |
| It was just so... | |
| She had a what? Like a PTSD breakdown during the relationship. | |
| It's weird. Something really weird happened. | |
| So I thought it would help the relationship. | |
| And this is completely voluntary. | |
| So I started to pay. I gave her some money so that she could take time off work so we could focus on trying to resolve problems in a relationship. | |
| Because it was getting quite stressful. | |
| And I was like, look, if I buy some time and space... | |
| And this is my decision. | |
| She didn't push me into it. She was actually a bit reluctant because she had a grandfather that financially manipulated her mother. | |
| She was kind of skeptical, but I was like, come on, let's do it. | |
| I'm happy to do it. And at the time, as soon as I did that, her whole body just went into PTSD. She could barely walk. | |
| She couldn't sleep for three or four nights in a row. | |
| Oh, this is like your mother when you were honest. | |
| Just some physical thing, right? | |
| Oh, no. This went on for ages. | |
| It was unbelievable. | |
| It was... It's like her whole body went into shock and it just went on for months and months and months. | |
| What do you mean? I don't know what you mean by her whole body went into shock. | |
| That's not very medical to me. | |
| Honestly, it was the strangest thing I've ever seen. | |
| She couldn't sleep for like three or four nights in a row. | |
| Her nervous system was just, she couldn't regulate her nervous system. | |
| Her whole body went stiff to the point where she could barely walk up a flight of stairs. | |
| Hang on, hang on. So how long ago was this? | |
| This was 2021. | |
| And how old is she? | |
| She's 36. | |
| So she's 36. | |
| You want a family. | |
| And you're dating someone like this. | |
| But it wasn't like that at the beginning. | |
| I was shocked. | |
| I was like... And she's done loads, and this is the thing, she's done loads of work on herself. | |
| She's done two decades of work on herself and like every single modality, healing modality you could ever imagine. | |
| So I was just like thinking that she'd be on top of everything. | |
| And obviously as well, she was My emotional confidant when we were doing therapy. | |
| So I thought, you know, like, she's someone that understands all this stuff and she's on top of it. | |
| But as soon as we're dating, she just, like, fell apart. | |
| Like, it was just, holy shit. | |
| Wait, sorry, I thought you didn't... | |
| You said you didn't know this at the beginning, but now you're saying that it was as soon as you were dating? | |
| No, it was about four months in. | |
| No, yeah, it was during COVID. Sorry, about four months in, you tell her, I'll pay for you to take time off? | |
| I think it was about four to six months in, yeah. | |
| Okay, a couple of months in, you're saying, I'll pay for you to take time off? | |
| Yeah. Are there no competent women left in England? | |
| I don't know. Your ability to find these people is really quite something. | |
| But she was like, on the flip side, right? | |
| She was really clued up on a lot of stuff. | |
| Like, we had really deep, interesting conversations. | |
| She was No, no, no, no. | |
| Come on. Come on, man. | |
| She has a PTSD reaction that lasts for months. | |
| And you're going to try and tell me that she was real deep into self-knowledge and all that? | |
| I've tried to get her to listen to you. | |
| I keep sending her links. | |
| What you still setting your links now Like are you still trying to fix | |
| How long did you guys go out for? 18 months. | |
| 18 months. Okay. | |
| I mean, we've known each other for 10 years. | |
| It's not like... | |
| Well, you didn't know her that well if both you and her were surprised by this meltdown. | |
| Yeah, I didn't realize... | |
| Yeah, it was to do with sexual abuse and I didn't know that. | |
| Oh, you didn't know she'd been sexually abused? | |
| No, she was sexually abused at three and I never knew that until I was in a relationship. | |
| But she knew that. | |
| Yeah, yeah, 100%. | |
| And she didn't tell you as you were getting into the relationship? | |
| I think it was about a month, maybe three or four weeks in, because she asked me if I wanted to continue knowing that, and I said yeah. | |
| I mean, she thought you should tell you at the beginning. | |
| It was... I mean, in fairness, it was close to the beginning. | |
| It was... | |
| Had you already had sex? | |
| Yeah. Okay. | |
| So after you've already had sex, she then tells you about her history of sexual abuse. | |
| Yeah. And did she know that she had this amount of unprocessed trauma that she was going into a meltdown mode for months? | |
| Um... Did she... | |
| Did she know about... Like, did she... | |
| The thing is, I feel like she felt like she dealt with it. | |
| Like, that's the impression I got, because she'd done so much healing. | |
| and that's what I can answer. Yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
| Yeah, I don't know man. It's very risky stuff that you're doing by the way. | |
| Just wanted to mention this as we get to the closing end of this part of the conversation, or this conversation. | |
| It's very risky stuff, man. | |
| Sooner or later, you're going to kick over a real bunny boiler. | |
| It's just a matter of time, really. | |
| You're going to get a stalker, you're going to get someone who's going to give you false accusations, and sooner or later, man, if you keep playing this night rescue guy, you're going to run into a woman who's going to swallow you whole. | |
| Yeah, I don't even... Yeah, yeah. | |
| Well, I've got to sort it out. | |
| I've got to sort it out. Well, just, I mean, have universal standards. | |
| Yeah. If you wouldn't hang out with a friend who was contemptuous of your sister's struggles with depression, that tells you all you need to know about your parents. | |
| And if you would hang out with a friend like that, then, you know, you can continue to see your parents, but that's the standard you're going to have. | |
| I mean, that's philosophy, right? | |
| Philosophy is you have standards or you don't. | |
| But at least be honest about it. | |
| If you say, like, if you're going to say, yeah, people who are contemptuous about the pain they've inflicted on others, particularly children, that's fine with me. | |
| I can hang with them. Okay, that's, I mean, I respect that as far as honesty goes. | |
| I really do. Philosophy just tells you to be honest. | |
| That if it's like, well, my parents aren't that valuable, but I'm too scared to confront them, and I don't want to set up any moral boundaries, and maybe year 41 of knowing them will be way better than the last 40 years. | |
| Like, no, just be honest, right? | |
| I'll have crappy standards for these people, knowing that that's going to have a ripple effect on all my relationships. | |
| It's like being in business and saying, well, of my 10 customers, I'll only cheat three of them. | |
| Oh, man. That's the crux of it, isn't it? | |
| Yeah, I mean, you either have a standard of cheating or not, right? | |
| And so if you say, well, I'll have crappy standards for my parents, then it's just going to have a ripple effect on all your relationships, and that's your choice. | |
| I mean, I'm not going to tell you what to do, but I am going to tell you the effects of your choices, I think. | |
| That's the irony as well. I have such high standards in every other part of my life, and it's like... | |
| Well, you have high standards in the parts of your life that are working well, right? | |
| Yeah. And you have low standards in the parts of your life that are working badly, which is exactly what philosophy would predict, right? | |
| Yeah, yeah. Yeah. | |
| I assume that you're in a fairly male-oriented business world? | |
| I'm... Yeah, I'm four-time Bitcoin. | |
| Yeah, so you're in a male space, right? | |
| Yeah, yeah. Right, so I would imagine that most of the emotional manipulation that you had as a kid came from your mother, which is why your male space works well and your female space works so badly. | |
| Yeah, I think one of the big things as well was when she got upset, I'd have to go and comfort my mum. | |
| So I'd put in a boundary, she'd go and cry in the room, and then I'd have to go and comfort her or she wouldn't stop crying. | |
| And would your father encourage you to do that? | |
| So the pattern was, I would upset her. | |
| I'd put in a boundary, mum would get upset, dad would get angry. | |
| That was the constant pattern that played out. | |
| Right, okay. Yeah, so for you... | |
| Assertiveness is rejection. | |
| Assertiveness is a break of the bond. | |
| Assertiveness is pain. So your parents were strongly conditioning you to be terrified and hostile to any reasonable standards or virtues or values. | |
| Yeah. And, you know, if that's going to be okay with you, then you're just going to keep having these kinds of relationships with women. | |
| I mean, they'll probably get worse and worse over time because your conscience, I mean, again, and also your conscience will get to you because you're not doing these women any favors at all. | |
| You're kind of parasiting off their helplessness so that you can feel better and stronger. | |
| And that's going to have a sort of cumulative effect on your own conscience. | |
| And it may not be too much further down the road that that's going to be a place you can't return from. | |
| I'm sorry? I remember you saying this the other day about when your conscious catches up with you. | |
| And I just, yeah, I don't want to get to that point. | |
| It's like when you said, like, when you finally get too far, the devil shows itself, right? | |
| Right. Yeah, I mean, when it's too late to turn back, yeah, then all of your bad mistakes will be made clear to you, for sure. | |
| Like, you know, the smokers who quit smoking after the lung cancer diagnosis, and then they look at all of their former ashtrays with hatred and revulsion, right? | |
| I just don't, I don't feel like I did any of this on purpose. | |
| Like, I didn't go out to her, like, I didn't, you know, I haven't gone out on this purpose thing, right? | |
| Um, yeah, it isn't empirically, that's what I've done. | |
| Yeah, you're right. Well, hang on, hang on. | |
| So you got a fair mind blast of new information and perspectives in this call, right? | |
| You have to say the least. Okay, so how on earth do you know what your motives are when you're in the two hours of being tossed around like a leaf in a storm, right? | |
| I mean, you've got a couple of weeks, if not months, of thinking about this kind of stuff and being brutally honest with yourself. | |
| So can you wave a magic wand called I'm Innocent of Bad Motives right in the middle of this maelstrom of new information? | |
| No, you're right. You're right. | |
| I just uh... How could you know? | |
| You have this thing as like well I can wave this magic wand called there's no ill intent right? | |
| That's your big magic wand. | |
| But that's also what traps you. | |
| Because once you wave that magic wand and you say, well, I had no ill intent or my parents had no ill intent or they didn't mean to or it's not conscious or whatever, then that just traps you. | |
| I get that. I get that. | |
| Because then you're kind of being mean. | |
| If you have standards, when somebody is just... | |
| Look, if somebody makes a mistake and you punish them for it, that's kind of mean, right? | |
| Yeah, yeah, that would be, yeah. | |
| Right, so what you do is you reframe this magical intent thing so that other people can be perceived as just making mistakes or being blind or unaware or lacking knowledge or whatever it is. | |
| And then for you to have any boundaries... | |
| Would be like shaming a child learning how to walk for falling down. | |
| I mean, they're not trying to fall down, it just happens. | |
| So I'd be really wary of this big magic wand you've got called No Ill Intent. | |
| How the hell do you know? | |
| I mean... okay. | |
| OK. | |
| I totally get what you're saying. | |
| And it doesn't matter. First of all, you can't say that about anyone, right? | |
| But that can happen on a subconscious level then, right? | |
| Because I've never thought to myself, I'm going to get into this relationship and try and mess this woman up. | |
| I've always thought I want to have a relationship and help them if they need it, but I haven't But I don't know if you can differentiate the subconscious from the conscious. | |
| No, I don't know. I know it's probably wrong. | |
| Well, do you choose women that you feel more functional then? | |
| Do I choose women that I feel more functional with? | |
| You feel more functional than they are. | |
| I mean, certainly I assume the woman who's having migraines because she's a teacher or the woman who's collapsing into bed for months because she's got some time off, I assume you feel more functional than they are. | |
| I mean, yeah, but at the beginning I just, I mean, I've chosen to continue the relationship, but no, I swear. | |
| Okay, so you feel superior to these women, right? | |
| At least more functional, right? | |
| Yeah, with the therapist it was a bit different. | |
| I feel like she was really, yeah, but then, yeah, maybe, yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
| And then there was the, so the new girlfriend has migraines from being a teacher and can't stand up to her parents. | |
| The therapist collapsed into bed, didn't sleep for a couple of days, then collapsed into bed for months because of earlier trauma that was unprocessed. | |
| And then the four-year relationship, she was seriously stressed at work and all of that. | |
| So you felt more functional than these women, right? | |
| Yeah, at times. | |
| I guess the more I've worked on myself as well, then yeah, definitely. | |
| Okay. And you feel more functional than your parents, right? | |
| No, 100%. Okay. | |
| So what do you think it would be like to be in a relationship with someone who is much more functional than | |
| you are? | |
| I'd feel massively insecure cure. | |
| Right. You'd feel like you weren't good enough and you would also have some anger and contempt towards that woman because it would be like, okay, so if she's that functional and superior, why is she with me? | |
| Does she pity me? Does she need to feel superior in that kind of way? | |
| Is she so insecure that she just needs to be around people who are worse off than she is so that she feels better? | |
| Like, why is she here? | |
| Why is she with me? Why doesn't she just... | |
| Get someone who's functional. Is this a rescue mission? | |
| Is this pity money? | |
| What? Or, if she's so functional, then why does she want to be dating someone who's not functional? | |
| Maybe her level of functionality is just a lie. | |
| And maybe her pretend superiority is just pretend. | |
| If I need to be fixed, why does he need someone who's broken? | |
| Thank you. | |
| What's broken in him? | |
| that he needs me to be broken in order to date me and I assume that these people | |
| were raised with families who looked down on them, right? | |
| Yeah. And now you are in a situation of reawakening all of their feelings of inferiority that they had as children, right? | |
| Yeah, that's brutal. | |
| You become the stern, rejecting superior father who doesn't want to elevate them but just wants to look down on them. | |
| But I've tried... | |
| I feel like I've been trying to elevate her today. | |
| I'm helping her get therapy and trying to teach her about libertarianism and stuff like that. | |
| And trying to get her to... | |
| When we're driving, I'll put some philosophy on. | |
| So I've been trying my best to elevate and try and get her out of that situation. | |
| Is that how she's experiencing it? | |
| Yeah. No, you already told me. | |
| Yeah, like that's... | |
| And yeah, it's weird because I got so confused with that because I just projected my own wants and thought she would feel the same, but it's not like that, is it? | |
| It's not... | |
| Well, if you... | |
| Hang on. If after 10 years of therapy... | |
| You still need to obsessively fix people. | |
| Then she can assume that if she does as well in therapy, then by the time she's 45, she'll still obsessively need to fix people. | |
| And fail. Yeah, it's not good. | |
| Not a good sales job for therapy. | |
| No, that's the worst out of it possible, isn't it? | |
| Well, and you're also saying you can't possibly do it by yourself. | |
| You need me, my energy, my focus, my attention, my time, my money, my interest, my knowledge, my expertise. | |
| Step aside, honey. Let me be you and fix you. | |
| Oh, man. Didn't you say this was like possession in one talk? | |
| It's almost like you possess the other person. | |
| Yeah, I mean... | |
| With your own will or whatever. | |
| And because you tried to fix your parents and have failed to fix your parents, it won't work with the girlfriends either and it never has, right? | |
| No. Have you left any girlfriend of the eight major ones, have you left any girlfriend substantially better off than you found her? | |
| I'm just going to go through this, but I don't think I have. | |
| Right. So it's not about helping people and it's not about fixing people. | |
| Jeez, yeah, you're right. | |
| It's about ignoring the fact that you can't fix people by continually trying to. | |
| And it's also a form of self-blame, right? | |
| So when you fail to fix, you get to blame yourself in the same way that your parents blame you for the low quality of your relationship with them. | |
| So it's a whole bunch of complex stuff, but yeah, it's certainly not about actually helping people | |
| You can say well my motive was this I don't care about motive. | |
| Motive is a ghost. | |
| Motive is an invisible friend whispering good things into your ear that has nothing to do with empiricism. | |
| I mean, you must have met competent women over the course of your life at some point, right? | |
| Yeah, I'm sure I have. | |
| Okay, but you avoided them. | |
| Or you didn't date them, or you didn't keep dating them. | |
| Yeah. So yeah, you're probably not in a situation where you've ever really | |
| experienced what it is to be wanted rather than needed. | |
| Yeah, probably not. | |
| Which is why, yeah, like you say in your book Real Time Relationships that | |
| love is a verb of I want, isn't it? | |
| Yeah, if you need someone, that's a little different, right? | |
| There's not choice really involved in need. | |
| But if you want someone, that's a choice. | |
| Yeah, yeah. And that's where you get the pair bonding, isn't it? | |
| Because once that genuine one is there, that's the pair bond. | |
| Well, the pair bond is trusting in the virtues of another person. | |
| We pair bond with virtue, with integrity. | |
| There's nothing else to pair bond. We can't pair bond with flesh. | |
| Flesh decays. We can't pair bond with great hair because it turns bald or silver. | |
| We can't pair bond with full lips because they wither with age. | |
| All we can pair bond with is integrity, which strengthens and grows with age. | |
| The pair bond is with virtue. | |
| There's nothing else we can bond with. | |
| What if there's no restitution for the women I've hurt? | |
| Like, what? If there's no restitution for the women that you've hurt, then... | |
| You have to just not ever do it again. | |
| You just have to deal with this stuff, have one standard for all your relationships, and make sure you never do it again. | |
| Sometimes that's the best restitution that you can do. | |
| I mean, obviously I was not always the best boyfriend when I was in my teens or early 20s, but, you know, I haven't done any of that stuff again, and I don't have any particular bad conscience about it now. | |
| But I wouldn't fall into self-attack. | |
| Your self-attack is going to drive you to want to do it again. | |
| Your self-attack will push you down and then you want to elevate yourself by finding some dysfunctional woman a mentor. | |
| Okay. You know, I didn't... | |
| I can truly comprehend what I've been doing. | |
| Well, I just, I know you've been doing it alone, right? | |
| And because you're a highly intelligent, highly verbally skilled guy, that's why I said at the very beginning, like, just give me some empirical answers. | |
| Just give me some facts as opposed to all of this analysis and ideas. | |
| And, you know, this is a little bit therapy brain where you can just make up a whole bunch of stuff and it sounds plausible. | |
| But I just, looking at the empirical facts is usually the best place to start. | |
| Yeah. And motive is not empirical. | |
| Yeah. Motivists, like, you know, every criminal says they're innocent, but we still have a trial, right? | |
| And the trial is based on evidence. | |
| Facts. And this is the witch trials, you know. | |
| Yeah, well, that's a... | |
| I know you put that in your book. | |
| Alright, is that a reasonably good place to start? | |
| I'm sorry, I have a bit of a cold today, so my energy is not massive, but I wanted to make sure I had enough for the call, but I can sort of feel myself lagging now, so I'm going to probably have to close it down, but I just wanted to make sure I got at least the major points across that are of value. | |
| Oh my god, yeah, like 100%. | |
| You've given me so much already, and I appreciate that so much. | |
| I knew it was going to be hard. I know I've got to go and listen to this a few times, and Sort everything out. | |
| But yeah, I can't thank you enough for your time. | |
| I really appreciate it. Keep me posted. | |
| I really do appreciate your time today. | |
| It was a really good call. Yeah, and I'm not going to fail. | |
| I'm going to resolve this. | |
| Yeah, I'm going to resolve it all. | |
| I have no doubt that you are. | |
| All right, man. Thanks, Emil. | |
| I'll hear from you down the road, and I wish you the very best. | |
| I'm sure you'll do great. Yeah, absolutely. | |
| And thank you so much for your time. | |
| Honestly, I appreciate it. Take care. |
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