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March 27, 2024 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

02:04:59

Hot Dancer Broke My Heart

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	Hello. Hello, can you hear me?
	I can hear you just fine. How are you doing?
	I'm doing great. A little nervous, but thanks for taking the call.
	Oh, it's my pleasure, my pleasure.
	So, obviously, a couple of things in the email you first sent me, but yeah, break it out for me, brother.
	How can I best help? Yes, I've been given a lot of thought, and so I wrote that in the middle of a night shift, and it amplifies a lot of the negative emotions, and it also kind of It messes with my focus a little bit.
	So throughout the week, and I think that one of the big problems that I'm having, it's less so getting over, like breaking up with somebody.
	And it's more so I have a very, since that time, I've adopted a really like a cynicism that I really, I'm like not, I'm starting to really not like Who I'm becoming.
	I feel like I'm very negative.
	And worse, I'm holding it against people who are positive in my life, which is horrible.
	And yeah, that's kind of...
	That's where I'd like to start, I think.
	Do you want to tell me about the dating and the breakup?
	Yeah, I can get in a little bit of that.
	So that was first relationship, as I think I had mentioned.
	That was kind of out of...
	What was that? Probably...
	20, like, you know, fall of 2021 through, you know, spring of 2022 is pretty short relationship.
	Moved really fast, though, like, in terms of just seriousness.
	And I had actually, you know, I've listened to you for a long time.
	So I actually, you know, I especially would listen to the relationship, you know, podcasts and, and like, how to Not be, you know, shallow in picking a girlfriend or boyfriend or whatever.
	And I felt that I had applied that pretty well.
	And it ended up not working because of...
	Mainly because of distance and because they actually lived in...
	And that was...
	Yeah, if you could just stay off the...
	Stay off places and names, if you don't mind.
	It's no problem. But yeah, keep going.
	Oh, sorry, sorry. Yeah, so they lived in a different spot than I did.
	And basically...
	They were like a dancer too.
	So that's kind of an unreliable job.
	It's not really sure where it's going to take you.
	So that was part of it as well.
	Anyway, that kind of crushed me for probably about a year.
	It was, you know, the last...
	Sorry, that did what to you for about a year?
	Oh, it just crushed me.
	Okay, but tell me about...
	I don't want to hear about the aftermath.
	I want to hear about the meeting, the dating, what happened.
	Okay. Let me think here.
	Sorry, I'm still a little nervous here.
	Kind of collect myself a little bit.
	Okay. So we worked in the same building, same complex.
	Walked by her during work a bunch.
	I was a valet. And I just walked up to her one day and just started talking to her.
	And we quickly kind of started...
	Noticing each other more. Then I asked her out.
	Like a week or two in.
	After that...
	Man, it's been a while.
	I haven't really rehashed it well.
	After that, it was just, you know, started going on dates every week.
	Took a while before...
	Like, we did end up, like, sleeping together, like, probably within a month or so.
	And... Sorry, what part of it was long distance?
	Oh, so it ended up...
	I'm trying to avoid locations.
	Basically, it wasn't long distance at the beginning, but we were both in a certain town for a certain amount of time.
	I was finishing school. She was finishing a ballet contract, basically.
	They happened to end at the same time.
	And so we were not sure.
	We knew we had six months to date and try to figure it out.
	And I'd made it clear that I wanted to go long term.
	And we were on the same page as far as I knew and as far as what she was saying.
	So when that time came, then it became long distance.
	Ended after a month. Okay.
	And what was it that attracted you to each other?
	Well, you to her. I thought she was very...
	She had a very mature energy to her.
	She was very kind, smart and funny.
	Not too bad to look at either.
	Definitely attractive. I was trying to be aware of that and not have that be the main factor.
	I truly don't think it was.
	And yeah, just super, very easy to be around, not political.
	I felt I had good morals.
	And yeah.
	Okay, so how did it go then?
	You said you dated for fall to spring.
	Yeah, just about. And then when they ended up moving away, and we tried long distance for like a month, we were, we actually had, the crazy thing is, She had actually agreed to basically move to where I lived, you know, and where I was moving. We had, like, a lease basically, like, in our inboxes, like, ready to sign at that stage.
	And that's where it kind of, you know, fell apart, you know, because it got real.
	But, yeah. I don't know what that means.
	Oh, um...
	Well, that was when she finally had to make a decision about pulling the trigger on it and moving.
	Decided not to. So, sorry, she moved away and then you had a lease?
	Yeah, sorry, it's a little confusing.
	We were living in a small town outside of my hometown.
	We both moved.
	I moved back to my hometown.
	She moved across the country.
	I was there for a month.
	We were planning a month or two from then to move in my hometown.
	Okay, and why did you break up?
	Entirely her decision.
	It was kind of blindsided me how that turned out.
	I think my understanding of it now is that it was just not She wasn't really being...
	I don't want to actually accuse her of being dishonest, but I don't think she knew what she really wanted, and she wasn't sure about kind of where her life was going, and didn't want to...
	Sorry, but she did agree to live with you, right?
	Yeah, she did.
	So it's kind of tough if you say, yes, and Elise, I will live with you, then she knew what she wanted, right?
	She just changed her mind or something?
	That's a tough one. I mean, maybe that's just how I want to recognize it.
	You did sign the lease together, right?
	No, it was in the inbox.
	The last step was signing it, but we had put money down.
	We had done all the things, put all the information in, and done all this planning and stuff.
	The last step was just signing it.
	So technically not fully committed there, but yeah.
	Months of planning and stuff.
	So, why did she say she changed her mind?
	She didn't really give a reason at the time.
	What kind of broke me the most about it was that I had been, first or second date that we had, I was super upfront about, hey, the reason I date is to eventually get married and I want kids at some point.
	And sooner rather than later...
	Putting all my priorities out there.
	I was fully convinced that she was on the same page because she said she was.
	Then she used those reasons as the most she would give me.
	It's like, well, I don't really know if I want to have kids.
	I'm not really sure now if I want this and that.
	It's kind of that you're like, That you date for marriage, that's kind of a problem.
	It was kind of crazy how quickly that switched and it really messed up my trust.
	The people in my family and friends that knew her, they thought it was marriage material.
	It wasn't just me.
	Why would you want to live with her without getting married?
	That was not the ideal.
	I'm glad that that didn't happen.
	Basically, it was one of those situations where she would have needed...
	It would have been very tough for her to afford living alone if I was going to ask her to do that and move across the country because she's, again, invested in a career that does not make much money, which is dancing, and that was okay with me because I make good money and I was expecting to...
	Be a breadwinner anyway in a long-term relationship.
	So, yeah, it definitely wasn't ideal, but it was the only way I could see it.
	No, no, sorry, but why didn't you ask her to marry you?
	I'm not saying that you should or shouldn't have, but I mean, women generally experience it as an insult to say, I want to live with you, but not marry you.
	Oh, I guess it seemed just way too early for that.
	Which I know is a contradiction to what we live together.
	Yeah, that is too early to live together.
	So, okay, what else? Yeah.
	What else? I'm sorry.
	No, why else wouldn't you want to marry her?
	Oh, at the time, I definitely saw it going there.
	I just wanted more time, I guess, to figure it out.
	Okay, but then why don't you date? Help me understand the moving in together stuff.
	Um, we were both, I think it was, in hindsight, I think it was mostly out of fear of things falling apart over long distance.
	I think that was probably the biggest part of it.
	Oh, so you just wanted to solve the long distance but without getting married?
	Yeah. And she was initially keen about living with you and then backed out just before the signing, right?
	Mm-hmm. Okay, okay.
	So, I mean, you know what the most likely explanation as to why she backed out, right?
	Would it be that it was half commitment?
	Well, you hadn't sealed the deal by getting married, so she's still on the market, and she just met someone local.
	I mean, I don't know if you checked up on her after the breakup, but I assume at some point she started dating again, and I assume that that point was sooner rather than later.
	Well, that's actually the thing.
	So I haven't checked up on her in quite a while, which I'm happy about.
	But I had, again, for a year, I was kind of keeping tabs, just checking the Instagram and stuff.
	It didn't appear as though dating anybody.
	In fact, it was the kind of, now I don't need no man kind of thing.
	And I'm just going to... Her parents got some money, so she like...
	Immediately started traveling internationally, which could well mean she's hooking up with people and having short-term stuff, which is definitely possible.
	You mean a dancer traveling on daddy's credit card overseas?
	Yeah, I think it's pretty safe to assume.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	So, not super surprising there, but not relationships.
	Yeah. Do you know maybe she had some female friend who was like indoctrinated her into the you don't need no man stuff?
	Well I think it was her mom actually.
	Ah excellent. Yeah her dad basically she described him as a pushover and her mom was kind of the domineering one and you could just tell I kind of got the impression that her mom had never met me.
	I just got the feeling like, man, when she left to go back to her family home for a while, for that month, you started to see these changes in her, how she would talk to me.
	It just seemed like someone was whispering in her ear, kind of.
	And, I don't know.
	I definitely had my suspicions about that.
	Okay, so she got the, you're young, why settle down, have your fun, travel, that kind of stuff, right?
	Yeah, and what was even more ironic was that the last time I had checked up on her, she's now in marketing school.
	So, a complete change of the dancer thing totally dropped, you know.
	And, Also living fairly close to where I am now, like, within the same region, which is definitely colder.
	And she was, you know, on the coast, very warm areas.
	And, like, one of the reasons, like, I don't want to live, you know, where it's so cold.
	And now she's not a dancer studying marketing in the cold.
	Right, okay. And what was so hard about, you went out for, like, A couple of months and then she went long distance and then a month later you broke up, is that right?
	It was like four to five months together, about a month long distance.
	And then literally like a day before, I had a ticket to fly and meet her family.
	And she backed out then, so yeah.
	So when you were together for the four or five months before she flew back to her home state, How much time were you spending together?
	Were you joined at the hip? Was it more intermittent?
	How did that work? It was...
	Let me think here.
	It wasn't joined at the hip.
	Neither of us wanted that.
	But it was definitely like, you know, on the weekends, we'll hang out and probably on a weekday in the middle of the week.
	And then if anything comes up, like, you know, she had problems with her apartment or stuff, or I, you know, want to study together or something like that.
	I don't know. We would... Fit stuff in.
	But it definitely wasn't joining at the hip.
	We would both do our own things and have our own events that we would go to and stuff.
	Okay. And is it fair to say that she broke your heart when she broke up with you?
	Oh, yeah. In a billion little pieces.
	So tell me how that hit you so hard.
	Oh, well, it was...
	I'm sorry.
	Let me try to gather myself here.
	Um...
	Alright, so...
	When I had to...
	I had to move back, you know, to my hometown, right?
	My school had been finished.
	I was about to enter the workforce.
	And during that two-day stretch of me packing up my apartment and having to get going, she started basically saying...
	She started with that she didn't want to move.
	And we had already...
	That basically left me with nowhere to live.
	I mean, I could live with my parents, but that was, you know, completely not ideal at all.
	And it was, you know, she kind of dropped this bomb like as I'm packing and like more stressed out than I've ever been.
	And then she kind of got very avoidant about, you know, talking about it.
	And I would be like, we really need to figure this out.
	And she would just put it off and it started to really weigh on us.
	And me. And so...
	And how long was that process?
	So that kind of started...
	You know, between doubt and, like, we're broken up.
	I think that was about two weeks.
	It felt like a year, but...
	Maybe...
	So, okay, it was like one week of...
	We're like, she kind of wants to...
	She's having second thoughts and stuff.
	We have a phone call, and I ended up...
	I think the biggest thing I regret is I yelled at her.
	I yelled one sentence at her.
	I said, I don't fucking believe you.
	Pardon my language. She said that, oh, I want to be with you and stuff.
	I just blew up.
	That was the one thing I said. Then she started crying.
	I immediately felt horrible that I had said that, but it was true.
	I didn't believe her. After that, we had talked for a really long time, thought things were patched up about that, and we were communicating, I thought, really well.
	But it seems like she was kind of avoiding the conflict then, too.
	Anyway, as I'm moving, a couple weeks later, then she kind of drops the bomb, like, yeah, I don't want to move.
	So now we're... Post that fight, we had made...
	Like, finalize the plans for moving and stuff.
	Like, it was... We were over it, as far as I know.
	And then she drops the bomb, and I was like, oh, like, kind of the world's kind of crashed down a little bit.
	Have another fight over the phone, which is the worst.
	I don't really...
	There's nothing there that I really regret saying.
	And... Then, basically, right when I... Once I move back, she...
	Called me that she doesn't like, you know, she's kind of over all of it.
	She's, so I'm like, okay, well, let's just like, you know, that's fine.
	I'm not going to talk to you for like, you know, as much time as you need.
	You call me if you, when you make like a decision, whatever.
	I wait like three days. She calls.
	She's like, yeah, I want to break up. So I'm living at my parents' house at the time.
	You know, get broken up with over the phone.
	You know pretty brutal Did you know how rough it was gonna be for you
	Thank you.
	Oh, how hard it was going to hit me?
	Yeah. Um...
	No.
	Yeah, because you basically said you didn't fight for her, right?
	I'm not saying whether you should or shouldn't have, I don't know, but you didn't, right?
	You're just like, yeah, let me know.
	I mean, I know it wasn't that flippant, but something like that.
	My retelling of it, it glosses over a lot of stuff.
	I don't believe in begging somebody to stay.
	I didn't want to reduce myself to that.
	I feel like, you know, women kind of make up their mind and then they tell you.
	So I was really hurt and I sent her something.
	So you thought by recreating the dynamics of her parents' marriage you'd win her?
	Like what do you mean women decide?
	You're just helpless? No, I mean...
	It's very interesting that you say that, though.
	I try to do the interesting things.
	Why so passive?
	I mean, that's what I'm trying to figure out.
	Okay. There was definitely a couple...
	Like, when she had first started saying, you know, before that little, like, three-day break, I just kind of left her to herself and let her think about it.
	There was an outpouring of the soul, for sure.
	And that was actually met with dismissive...
	Sorry, on your part, you mean?
	I thought you left her alone. No, it was that.
	I said my piece and then left her alone.
	So there was a, you know...
	There was an outpouring, for sure.
	Oh, you said how much you wanted her?
	Yes. Oh, yeah. Okay, so how is that?
	I'm trying to understand what you categorize as begging.
	I'm not saying that was. I just want to make sure I know what you mean.
	Begging, I guess I mean more after, like, if I had, on that last call, basically, if I had, like, started, you know, saying, oh, please, like, won't you change your mind and stuff?
	And, like, after that, at that point...
	No, before that. Like, before that, when she's deciding.
	Um... Well, begging at that point would be, I don't know, getting really emotional.
	Well, isn't it just honest?
	I'm not sure what begging means in this context.
	If you really want to date her and you really want to marry her or you really want to be with her, just stating that very emphatically and honestly, I'm not sure how that's begging.
	Isn't that just being honest? Yeah, I guess I don't really...
	I'm trying to recall...
	Exactly how that went.
	Because a lot of it is a little bit of a blur.
	The reason I'm asking is most breakup regret has to do with regrets at our own actions, not the other person.
	And so, if we've done everything we can to maintain a relationship and the relationship ends, there's usually not much regret.
	Like, the regret and the agony that you felt afterwards usually has to do with, and maybe not always, but usually has to do with something you wish you'd done or could have done or should have done that you didn't do, and the regret is more about a failure to act than it is the loss of the other person.
	Ah, okay, yeah.
	Well, I had given that during that process of breaking up, I was pretty cognizant of, you know, trying to not let those regrets happen and trying to just avoid that.
	So again, I don't like, I'm not...
	It was just more to me like when she had finally like, you know, come to a decision, I was like, you could just see it in her eyes like there was nothing really there.
	And I didn't just, you know, hang up on her.
	We talked for a little bit, but I was...
	Okay, so then why the regret?
	That's what I'm trying to figure out is the regret.
	Why did it hit you? That's why I'm trying to figure out why it hit you so hard, right?
	So if you did everything you feel you could have done and it turned out she was just cold-hearted or dismissive or not a nice person after all, dishonest or, you know, she can't connect or she can't commit, then, you know, good riddance and move on, right?
	Like you dodged a bullet. So I'm trying to figure out the regret part.
	I think it might be that I got so invested in the wrong person and now I kind of feel like...
	So I had waited a really long time for who I felt like to be the right person to date.
	I'm very, very picky. I don't hook up with people.
	And I definitely was a late bloomer, so very limited.
	Attention from girls, you know, growing up.
	And so I was like ready by the time I was, I was like 21.
	And by the time I was like, let's get a relationship going.
	So I was probably a little overeager, but I was also very, I consulted people that I trusted and, you know, I think that I did a decent job of vetting her and everything, but She just...
	I think that it was more regretting that like...
	I don't know if regret is really the right word.
	I feel just kind of bitter.
	And I kind of see her as...
	The question, why? Well, I think I see her as this...
	A perfect example of like what seems to happen.
	Like you were saying, like the modern kind of indoctrination of...
	You don't need a relationship.
	Just travel, you know?
	Think about yourself. And to me, it was like, man, how do I compete with that mind control?
	And especially, I was really in love and very much convinced that she was like...
	No, I don't buy the love thing.
	Sorry. I buy the lust.
	I buy she was a hot dancer.
	I get that. You know, I'll be frank with you.
	Like, where is her honor?
	Where is her integrity? Where are her virtues?
	Right? We can only love virtue.
	So when you said, oh, she was such a kind person.
	No, she wasn't. She set you up.
	She dangled you along. She dropped you hard.
	Like, that's not nice. Yeah, I definitely agree with that.
	It was that that stuff was revealed to me a little bit later.
	Yeah. As far as I had seen, it was, you know, in my living...
	No, I asked you what you liked about her, and you said, well, she's kind, and she was this and that and the other, right?
	She was kind, she was sweet, right?
	So it wasn't like I thought she was.
	Like, are you still of the opinion that she was?
	No, let me rephrase.
	She appeared that way.
	She appeared to be very kind, and...
	And why did she appear that way?
	What did she do that made it seem that way?
	From the things that she would say, and the things that she would respond to, The things that she would tell me that she liked about me?
	It was the kind of thing where...
	You're going with stuff they said?
	Stuff she said? Yeah.
	Okay, so why would you believe stuff that she said?
	What was the empirical evidence to back up her claims?
	I guess...
	I mean, if you're a woman dating some guy and he says, I'm a millionaire doctor, but he's taking the bus, right?
	At some point, don't you want some proof?
	Yeah, well, I mean, at that five or six month mark, I was starting to, you know, definitely question it, but I just hadn't had a reason to.
	It was just, that test hadn't really come yet.
	What do you mean that test hadn't come?
	I don't understand. Well, you know, her time to demonstrate whether she, you know, meant what she said.
	No, no, it's your job.
	You know, if you're taking wet dollar bills from a skeevy guy in an alley and you say, well, when I spent them five months later, it turned out to be a problem.
	It's like, no, you check them right away, don't you?
	I would much rather be able to check them right away.
	How would you suggest that I do that?
	In a situation like that, like you're dating someone early on and big decisions aren't really happening early.
	How would you verify for yourself some of these things?
	Do you want to know if someone was kind who claimed to be kind?
	Well, I mean, yeah, but...
	No, I'm not asking a trick question.
	Is that what you mean? The kind one is a lot easier for me to...
	I mean, she was kind to people when we were together.
	she was, you know, considerate and, you know, polite in public and stuff and like, and to
	me, um, but in terms of like, whether she was being upfront about what she wanted, it
	was just harder for me to bet.
	And it really, I don't know what you mean by upfront.
	Okay, so you meet this woman and you tell me her virtues again.
	She was kind and what?
	She seemed to want family.
	Well, that's not necessarily a virtue.
	If someone's virtuous, it's good to have a family with them, but there are lots of people who want families who aren't virtuous, so I'm talking about specific virtues.
	Courage, integrity, honesty, directness, vulnerability, you know, all that stuff.
	Directness and vulnerability, she definitely had that.
	Okay, and how do you know that she had that?
	Because she didn't have that at the end, right?
	Right, well, she would...
	How did I describe this? We were...
	Okay, let me just cut to the chase.
	Okay, so if she was honest, she would say, listen, when you were getting together, right, she honestly requires some degree of self-knowledge, right?
	So when you're getting together, she'd say, look, I do reserve the right to break up the relationship without really telling you why.
	And when you were working on getting the apartment, she'd say, listen, I reserve the right to just not show up, because, you know, that's how I roll, right?
	But she didn't say any of that, right?
	So the way she hurt you was not something she ever said she might do.
	Now, either she knows she can do that, and she's lying to you and telling you she won't, or she doesn't even know that she's capable of doing that, in which case her self-knowledge is virtually zero, in which case her capacity for morality is virtually zero.
	I mean, she'd been in relationships before, right?
	She'd been in one.
	That you know of, that she told you about?
	I mean, yeah, you can never know for sure.
	And how did that relationship end?
	Long distance. Okay, so you knew that long distance was a problem, and maybe that's why you kind of jumped into the living together thing?
	Okay. So, it wasn't so much that you desperately wanted to live with her, it's that you didn't want to lose her because she'd had a long-distance thing fail in the past.
	Yeah, and she had actually been the dumpy in that situation.
	But yeah, no, that was...
	Again, I think in hindsight, a lot of it was just fear of things falling apart and me getting...
	Replaced with somebody or getting cheated on or something and then having a worse, messier breakup.
	Okay, so you dated this woman for four or five months.
	She goes somewhere else and you're kind of immediately anxious that you're going to get dumped or she's going to cheat on you, right?
	Not so much immediately.
	It wasn't a matter of me trusting her in terms of like, could she go out to a, not like a club, but like go out with friends and stuff and, you know, Not, you know, fool around and stuff.
	It wasn't anything like that.
	And I truly don't think she is that kind of person.
	So there was no problem with the trust in that level.
	But it was just like the, how would I realistically compete with someone who lives much closer?
	I mean, just to be frank, you already didn't trust her when she moved away.
	Yeah. Okay, so what was untrustworthy about her that you knew after a couple of months of dating her could be a problem and turned out to be a problem when she moved away?
	I think it was just the, it was kind of, I kind of see dating her as like, it was kind of like, you know, catching up like a butterfly and trying to keep It's like a tension almost.
	No, no, I get that. So what was it that you noticed about her flightiness?
	She would talk about how, oh, I kind of just want to like, you know, I would love to just like, you know, be able to go to Spain for like six months and just live there.
	I'm like, that is a, wouldn't that be nice, but like, you know, you don't have to worry about a career.
	She said to you when you were dating that she wanted to move to Spain for six months.
	Not specifically, but like.
	No, I know, but something like that.
	With the implication, I'd want you to come with me, but I'm just being more realistic and also being a man who has to make money.
	I was just like, well, I couldn't do that.
	I'd have to get a completely different set of training just to be able to do my job in a different country.
	It was just the, how can I compete with the opportunities of the whole world Not necessarily even other men.
	It was just more...
	I'm a stable person and I don't think she was really deep down wanting stability.
	Okay, so you want to get married.
	She wants to go live in Spain for six months.
	Yeah. But at the same time, she would say things like, you know, I want to build a life with you and stuff.
	And... Yeah, build a life with you is one of these vague phrases.
	Nobody knows what the hell it means.
	It doesn't mean anything, really. I mean, because, you know, after when you were breaking up, she's like, I don't even know if I want kids, right?
	Oh, yeah. She said, and it stuck to me first.
	She's like, I don't want any of it. I was dumbfounded.
	Oh, I was just like, she didn't want any aspect of, you know, the relationship.
	I don't know. How that really came up, but I was just asked because I did question her a little.
	I guess, yeah. Okay.
	So she's flaky and she's flighty.
	Yes. Okay.
	And you sense that and that's one of the reasons why you said let's live together.
	Let's come back and we'll live together.
	That was a big part of it, yeah.
	Okay. So she's pretty clear that I mean, she told you what she wants to do, and then she ended up doing it, right?
	Going and traveling. And how long into the relationship did she tell you she wanted to go live in some place like Spain for six months?
	That was, uh, probably, I don't really remember.
	Just roughly. Yeah, a few months in, probably about halfway, three quarters through.
	And was there any other indication that she was this flighty beforehand?
	Um, no. Take your time, hang on, hang on.
	Are you saying that you dated this woman and slept with her for months without understanding a core aspect of her personality?
	Again, I was an eager young man.
	Well, let's be honest.
	I overlooked it because she was a hot dancer.
	I understand that. I get that.
	Yeah, I probably jumped in that a little too soon.
	There was To be perfectly clear, prior to this, I had been on two dates.
	You said a late bloomer.
	I understand all of that. I was doing the best I could and trying to vet and all this.
	You would do the best you could.
	What do you mean?
	I guess I didn't have any experience.
	I felt as though I was asking the right questions.
	I felt that I was...
	One thing I know I did was I was honest about what I wanted and comfortable in saying those things, even though it's not, you know, no one my age seems to want that.
	Okay, so how many years have you been listening to What I Do?
	I mean probably 2016.
	Probably.
	Yeah, so seven or eight years.
	Now, when you met this woman, and you knew that you were inexperienced, I, as a freely available village elder, did you ever think of calling me up and saying, you know, I'm kind of inexperienced, I met this high-octane hot dancer, is there anything that you could do to help me vet or talk about, you know, before I jump in, because I really don't know what I'm doing?
	No, I might have thought about it once or twice.
	Maybe I was a little overconfident in myself.
	I have a lot of...
	That's the first time I've heard Horny described as overconfident in myself.
	You didn't want to talk to me or someone who could help, right?
	You didn't want to because you wanted to date the dancer, right?
	Yeah, I definitely was not...
	Eager to let that attention go.
	Okay, I got it. And listen, I understand.
	I'm not criticizing at all.
	I sympathize. I get all of that.
	But if you say, well, I'm incapable of vetting for a lack of experience, and maybe your father doesn't help, or your mother, or siblings, or friends, or whatever, right?
	But, you know, I'm literally a phone call away.
	It wasn't that hard to schedule this call with me, right?
	Yeah, I was actually surprised how easy that was.
	I should have done it way earlier.
	Yeah, so I'm available, and you didn't call.
	And, you know, again, I'm not criticizing.
	I'm just pointing out that vetting was available.
	Mm-hmm. Yeah, I guess, I think, again, it was a lot of just not wanting to have someone break the spell.
	I mean, I did introduce her to, you know...
	I have a big family, and my parents and everyone all get along really well, and very happy family.
	And I brought her over several times, and I would talk to my dad.
	My dad doesn't pry too much into those things.
	Sorry, you mean by pry? I don't understand.
	Well, not pry.
	I mean, he definitely voiced his disapproval about moving in.
	He was very against that.
	I mean, we didn't talk super deeply about vetting and stuff.
	I mean, we talked a little bit, but again, I thought I was doing a good job of it.
	So I guess I didn't think I really needed to consult other people.
	Okay, so you didn't consult much with your dad because he wasn't very helpful.
	What about your mom? I talked to her a decent amount, probably a little bit more.
	We're pretty close.
	I think... And my dad also just, she just likes to talk about that stuff more, you know.
	But, so, yeah, I'm trying to remember the kinds of things we talk about.
	Your parents knew that this was your first relationship, right?
	Yes. And they know the dangers of heartbreak associated with that, right?
	Yeah. Yeah. So what did they do to help protect you?
	And they also know, I assume, that the modern dating scene is kind of tricky, right?
	Yeah. Well, I think that what they thought was protecting me was how we were kind of brought up.
	I don't really resent them too much for that, but I know that my older siblings do because they were more strict with them.
	It was kind of like, oh, don't date in high school because, you know...
	Those never last.
	There's valid points to it, but it was kind of restrictive.
	I don't know.
	Definitely, for my older brother especially, he was just very uncomfortable with the idea of dating and stuff and sexuality in general.
	Just because of how it was kind of repressive a little bit growing up.
	Your parents are religious?
	And are you yourself religious?
	Yeah. And was the dancer also religious?
	She was not...
	She was kind of...
	Oh no! Spiritual!
	Call it a personality.
	I'm just kidding. It wasn't that.
	So she was raised Catholic.
	As I kind of got to normal, I was like, I'm not sure how into this she really is.
	And that was kind of...
	That was probably the last month.
	It was around Easter, right?
	So I kind of got to observe that more religious side.
	And I just didn't... I wasn't honestly very impressed.
	And I started... In hindsight, I could kind of feel the...
	I should have been a little bit more...
	Sorry, so I assume she's not philosophical, right?
	We would talk about...
	I mean, she would listen to...
	I would like to show her Jordan Peterson stuff.
	We'd be driving and we'd listen to Jordan Peterson.
	Yeah, Jordan Peterson is not philosophical either.
	He's a psychologist. I guess.
	Yeah, I mean... Okay, my basic question is...
	That's a high bar for women in the modern day.
	No, no, no. Hang on, hang on.
	Let's not get into women as a whole.
	We're talking about your woman in particular or your ex-woman.
	Okay. So from which source did she get her morals?
	Where did she get her morals from?
	If you probably peel back every layer, when we talked, I think she believed that there was higher power.
	She wasn't sure about much better.
	To morality on the grounds of punishment or reward, or end reward.
	On the grounds of punishment and reward?
	Interesting. I don't really know.
	You accept punishment and reward as one of the elements of morality, right?
	I do too, by the way.
	I mean, if this is worth it. I accept those as...
	I mean, I don't necessarily accept it in terms of afterlife, but I think that the products of our actions...
	Sorry, you don't believe in an afterlife, is that right?
	I'm not criticizing, I just want to make sure I understand your perspective.
	I'm not sure I believe in it. Hell, I'm a Christian, I don't know if I think...
	Yeah, I get that. Okay, so even if you don't believe in hell, and maybe that being an immoral person simply gives you limbo or distance from God or something like that, but you believe, I assume, in a judgment and at least a reward, if not a punishment, in the afterlife for some sort of virtue, right? Yeah, universal moral standard, yeah.
	I definitely believe in that.
	I also believe, I'm not a religious man, but I do believe and accept punishment and reward.
	I have a dread of my own bad conscience, of course, right?
	I mean, if you have integrity, that's...
	Now, whether the bad conscience is in your soul for religious people or in your mind for non-religious people, it's very real to me.
	The reward of a good conscience versus the punishment of a bad conscience is I mean, if there's hell, it's on earth for people who've done evil.
	That's what I've seen very, very deeply.
	I would definitely agree with that, yeah.
	Okay. So you and I have the carrot and the stick, right?
	We have the punishment and the reward regarding morality, right?
	Be good or else. I mean, there is that aspect of things for me.
	I mean, I have all the abstract justifications in UPP, and that stuff makes sense, but also it comes down to just an Old Testament fear of a bad conscience and a desire to live well and do good, because that produces happiness, right?
	And the other thing produces hell on earth, right?
	I mean, there's nothing I would trade for a bad conscience.
	Like, there's nothing that I would trade to have a bad conscience.
	So, You and I both believe in rewards for virtue and punishments for immorality.
	Is that fair to say? Yes.
	Okay. Whether we call it heaven or hell or conscience or whatever, I mean, so, and punishments and rewards are kind of important.
	It's kind of what the capitalism is based on, right?
	It's why in communism or socialism, people don't work that hard because they don't get rewarded.
	And they don't care about being lazy because they don't get punished by being fired.
	Yeah, they're insulated from their own choices.
	Yeah, so human beings respond to incentives, right?
	That's a basic economic principle.
	Without incentives, there really is no economic efficiency.
	And without incentives, there's no morality.
	So what were her incentives to be good?
	Where does her morality come from?
	Why be good for her?
	Yeah, I mean, it's a good question.
	I'm not allowed to answer with the word karma, because that is not a good thing.
	She wasn't quite that mystical or anything.
	Most girls have their little astrology interests and stuff.
	And pretty girls can escape bad karma with sugar daddies.
	I get all of that stuff, except post-40.
	So, in terms of vetting, you say she was a kind person, she was whatever, a nice person.
	Okay. What are her punishments for being mean?
	Now, if I'm mean, I feel bad.
	And, you know, it happens.
	You've seen it happen on live streams, where I'm kind of nice.
	I'm pretty blunt with someone, and it turns out I'm in the wrong, and I apologize profusely.
	I apologize profusely, like I once dropped my daughter's tablet and cracked the screen, and I was, like, racked with apologies.
	I just felt terrible. And, you know, to the point where she's like, it's fine, we'll get it fixed.
	So, I feel really bad when I do something, even accidentally wrong or harmful, if I've chosen to do it, or if I've been overhasty in my judgment and got something wrong, then I apologize profusely, because I don't I don't want the feeling of having wronged someone and not taken ownership and apologize for it.
	Like, I don't want that feeling. That feels like cowardly and terrible and, you know, especially because I'm a bit of a public figure.
	It's bad modeling for others. It's just bad all around, right?
	So for her, she's like, I'm a good person.
	I'm a nice person. Okay. What happens if you're not?
	Right? So that's the whole thing.
	What happened? It's all the people who were like, well, I want this social program and I want that.
	It's like, well, you have no cost benefit.
	There's no cost benefit analysis for you.
	It's all debt and money printing.
	You get to virtue signal.
	So what are the consequences?
	This is my basic vetting for people.
	It's like, what are the consequences of you failing to meet your moral standards?
	Right? What happens?
	I say, oh, I'm a good, I'm a nice person.
	Okay, what happens if you're not?
	And if people don't have an answer, so for you, it's punishment from the divine or distance from the divine.
	For me, it's like the lacerations of a tough conscience, which I disliked in the past and I hugely appreciate now.
	For Socrates, it was his demon.
	For Jesus, it was his soul.
	What happens if you're bad?
	That's the fundamental vetting question.
	And what happens if she's bad?
	What happens if she breaks someone's heart?
	Like she broke your heart, right?
	Now, of course, you did swear at her and you did things that were wrong.
	Of course, I get that. But I'm sure she wasn't perfect either.
	What happens if you break someone's heart?
	Now, it sounds to me like she just kind of dum-de-dum.
	I mean, you checked on her afterwards, right?
	Did she say, I'm wracked with guilt about how things ended with my boyfriend?
	Did she say, I can't leave the house.
	I'm too full of shame. Did she say, I can't sleep because, you know, I keep thinking about how I broke his heart?
	Or did she just kind of dum-de-dum, off we go?
	Dum-de-dum. Okay, so she has no foundational conscience.
	See, it's pretty fucking important to vet people to find out if they have, I don't know, a conscience.
	Yeah. Yeah.
	So what were the indications?
	She no have a conscience, my friend, early on.
	God, let me try to think.
	Um... Man, I don't know.
	I don't know.
	I'm not sure. Nothing pops up.
	Here's one way you know if she doesn't have a conscience.
	Are you ready? I guess.
	She sleeps with you without vetting you thoroughly.
	She gets quickly involved without finding out if you're safe to fall in love with
	or fall in lust with or whatever the hell was going on, right?
	Did she vet the hell out of you?
	I felt that she asked a lot of questions.
	I was, again, pretty open book.
	Yeah, that's getting to know you is not the same as vetting you.
	Yeah. I mean, I'm asking you lots of questions, but I'm not vetting you as to whether you should be a central and important part of my personal life.
	Right. So asking, I mean, interviewers ask a lot of questions.
	I guess they're vetting too, right?
	So did she vet you to find out if you were a good and safe person to date, right, before jumping into bed with you?
	It was a decent amount of time before that.
	I probably knew her for like a month and a half.
	Yeah, you said a month. So the fact that you waited a month isn't that important.
	The question is, did she thoroughly vet you before jumping into bed with you?
	We both know that the answer is no.
	Yeah, I guess not. Well, no, she didn't.
	Do you say it because of the time frame or something else?
	No, you can vet someone.
	I mean, I decided to marry my wife of 21 years at about the same time as you guys were dating before she left, four or five months.
	Actually, it might have been three or four months.
	So, no, you can vet someone in that time.
	Hmm. How did she vet you?
	I'm sorry? How did she vet you, out of curiosity?
	Oh, she asked me endless questions about my background, my history, my relationships, my family, and compared my stated goals to my actual actions and, you know, met my friends, met the remnants of my family back in the day.
	I mean, she did a lot. Yeah, I guess she didn't do, you know, too much of that.
	I mean, it was a lot of questions and stuff.
	A lot of, like, what do we want in life?
	I mean, I guess I didn't really know it.
	Because we... It was a while before she met my family, too.
	But when that did happen, that was probably, like, a month or two into, you know, after, like, sleeping together, so...
	Okay, so...
	If she's sleeping with you without vetting you, it means she doesn't have a capacity to pair bond.
	A capacity to?
	Yeah. 100%.
	Like, irrecoverable?
	I mean, what do I know about the future?
	I don't know. Maybe she gets hit with a Krypton Ray down the road.
	I have no idea. But what I'm saying is that a woman who sleeps with you without pair bonding, sorry, without vetting you, She is not saying, well, I can't sleep with this guy unless I can trust him, which means she lacks a sense of danger, and she's not reserving herself for someone she can pair bond with, so she's just following lust rather than virtue.
	Because she didn't pair a bond with you, right?
	Because she's out of sight, out of mind.
	She moves to the other side of the country, and next thing you know, she's drifting off, right?
	Which is what she did with her last, well, what happened with her last relationship, right?
	Right, yeah. So, yeah, if a woman sleeps with you without vetting you, she has no capacity to pair a bond.
	Because if she has a capacity to pair a bond, that's what she'll do.
	because that's infinitely better.
	I guess I kind of I saw her you know free willingness like to kind of or an ability
	just to move on as more of a function of the options of an attractive young woman
	who has got no financial obligations.
	Yeah, so you're trying to make this attractive women rather than this woman.
	And that's so that you can dodge your own Lack of pair bonding, in this instance, because you didn't thoroughly vet her before sleeping with her, and thus you got your heart broken.
	Which you regret, right?
	And it's making you bitter.
	And it's pulling you towards the black pill of the darkest MGTOW universes, right?
	A little bit. That's the extreme.
	If it's a little bit, I don't want to...
	The reason I called you and put you to the head of the queue is you sounded like you were in fairly significant despair.
	Yeah, I mean, it definitely gets there.
	I think I'm also just afraid of becoming that and becoming really bitter, and I don't subscribe to that.
	But I find myself getting very...
	No, I get that. So this is why I'm saying your lack of vetting her in order to sleep with her, because she was pretty and a hot dancer or whatever, right?
	Which, again, I sympathize with.
	I'm not blaming you.
	But you didn't want to vet her because you knew deep down she'd fail the vet.
	She'd fail the vetting. And you knew that she'd fail the vetting because she wasn't vetting you.
	Women have infinitely more, almost, to lose in having sex too soon than men.
	Because women can get worse STDs, women can get pregnant, women of course can get stalkers, and so on, right?
	So for an attractive woman to sleep with a man, or a woman, a young woman in particular, a fertile young woman to sleep with a man, is a highly risky endeavor.
	And she didn't vet you.
	Which means she can't pair bond!
	So it was casual for her.
	See, what I'm trying to do is have you not feel like a victim.
	Like, she broke your heart.
	You were a lustful young man, which I have no problem with.
	I understand. I'm not criticizing at all.
	And you decided to not vet her and to not submit to vetting because you wanted to sleep with her.
	You know, take what you want and pay for it.
	That's life. You know, you want to drink to excess?
	Okay, I guess for some people that's fun.
	It isn't for me, but I guess for some people it is.
	So drink to excess and get your hangover.
	You don't want to work too hard at your job?
	Okay, well, you don't make much money.
	Right? You want to play video games instead of learning a useful skill?
	Okay, you're kind of broke. You don't want to save your money?
	Okay, you can't go on vacation.
	Take what you want and pay for it.
	So I think you're trying to make this into some cosmic male-female thing, and it's like, no, she was pretty enough that you lowered your standards for quality of character, and you slept with her body, and now you're pretending that she broke your heart.
	And it's like, what are you talking about?
	She was too pretty to vet.
	And so you took the risk, and risk it was, and deep down you knew she wasn't vetable.
	You didn't call me, you didn't write, you didn't see...
	You took her words over her deeds, right?
	And even though she'd signaled that the last relationship wasn't very pair-bonded and she didn't vet you, you're like, yeah, she's hot.
	I'm going to sleep with her. And now you're saying, oh, but female nature and MGTOW. It's like, what are you talking about?
	And listen, I know that I'm not criticizing at all.
	Yeah. At all. It's more so, I mean...
	If I'm wrong, tell me.
	Obviously, it's your life, not mine, so I'm trying to figure things out.
	But if I'm wrong, you can let me know.
	No, I don't want to...
	I don't subscribe to those ideas.
	I want to just make that clear. I'm trying to find the balance of an understanding of reality and also being gracious about that we're all humans and We make mistakes and stuff, but we also do have individual human nature, though.
	No, this wasn't a mistake.
	It wasn't a mistake.
	It's just consequences.
	Like, if someone gets really drunk and has a hangover, the hangover isn't a mistake.
	Now they can say, oh gee, I wish I hadn't drunk so much.
	But everybody knows you get a hangover when you drink.
	If somebody drives drunk...
	And then they get a DUI. I mean, don't drive drunk.
	Although this wasn't one you could get away with, right?
	Driving drunk, maybe you make it home alive and maybe you don't get pulled over.
	I guess it happens a lot.
	But you chose to get involved with a very attractive woman with no vetting.
	That's just lust. Right?
	And I'm not saying even that's a terrible thing.
	At all. I mean, whatever, right?
	Maybe this is your memory.
	I don't know, your spank bank or whatever.
	Maybe this is like, you know, I decided to sleep with this girl.
	She was a hot dancer and I didn't vet her and all of that, right?
	What I'm trying to figure out is it's like you went to McDonald's and you're complaining that you didn't get a great meal.
	That's what I can't figure out.
	Okay, I can help you there, I think.
	At this stage, now that I'm mostly over the more personal elements of that breakup.
	No, but it's metastasized into some worldview of tragic dating and women and men.
	Right, yeah. That's what I don't understand.
	Well, that is more...
	I don't think it just stems from that.
	I think it stems from just kind of seeing, you know, how it is for not just me, but people in my, you know, circle, in my family.
	No, I'm not doing that.
	No, I'm not doing abstract stuff here.
	No. Okay.
	So, let me ask you this.
	Let me ask you this. Okay. How much responsibility do your parents take for the good and bad in their lives?
	Oh, very much so. Go on.
	My dad was not good with money and my mom is a lot better with money and so basically he made poor financial decisions.
	He also had a lot of medical stuff come up and things like that that did not help at all but they taught us very early on to stay the hell away from debt So that's one example is a financial responsibility and him basically owning, he would 100% own his mistakes that he made financially and told us why he regretted them, how to avoid them.
	Alright, and when it came to vetting this hot young dancer, did he say to you, is she a God-fearing woman or not?
	I don't know if he asked me that directly, but it was very much ingrained in our upbringing that you marry and date within the religion.
	Okay. So, wouldn't that be pretty central to Vett in his young son's first dating experience?
	I think I wasn't probably super honest with him.
	It was like, oh, well, she was raised Catholic, so I kind of like...
	No, but they met her, right?
	They met her once or twice.
	It wasn't like... Okay, so wouldn't they cross-examine her?
	I mean, these were kind of...
	We went for my brother's birthday.
	We were over there, and it was like events and stuff.
	It wasn't necessarily a super serious...
	They all liked her. I mean, it was just more social.
	Are we really going to do this dance, man?
	Are we really going to do this dance where you minimize all of the essential questions that your parents should have asked about the woman you wanted to marry?
	Come on, man!
	Let's not waste time in this way, can we?
	This is the woman you said to your parents you wanted to marry, right?
	Or you were thinking of it. I don't think I ever said that, but I definitely was thinking.
	Well, they knew we were living together. Yeah, keep her.
	They definitely said, like, yeah, I can see this going long-term, yeah.
	Okay. And I assume that they had asked you what you talked about and you had said to her, I want to get married and have kids, right?
	Yes. Okay. So, let's...
	I mean, I just... I'm asking you to hit the gas here because I'm 57 years old and my time on this planet is limited.
	So, this is a woman that your parents knew you were extremely serious about and might want to have a family with, right?
	Okay. What vetting did they do?
	I guess they left it to me.
	They didn't really vet. Go on.
	Well, at the time, I kind of appreciated the space that they gave me because I think that they were very, again, it was very kind of sheltered growing up and to a point where it, I think, hindered a lot of us.
	No, that's more reason to vet. Why do you say that?
	Well, if you're more sheltered in the dating world, then you need more vetting because, I mean, there's more lust, there's more eagerness, there's more enthusiasm, there's less experience, and so on, right?
	I mean, if it's your first time flying the plane, you need a co-pilot.
	Yeah, that makes sense.
	Yeah, I don't think they...
	There's definitely consensus among my siblings that that wasn't a bright spot in the parenting.
	I hear a lot of the stories of parents on the show.
	So your parents kept you very sheltered in the dating world.
	You meet a woman of superlative physical attractiveness, and they don't do anything to vet her, even though it is...
	A requirement of their faith and their responsibility as parents to vet the woman, right?
	Um, they did not at the beginning when it got to, um, me talking about moving into stuff.
	I was just, I was explicitly going against their wish.
	So they did, uh, they did that at that point.
	Oh my God.
	Why did they care about you moving in together when they didn't even care whether she was religious and had a conscience?
	Well, I think I wasn't upfront with them about that.
	No, no, no, no. It's the parent's job to find out the information and they can ask her directly because they met her.
	Yes, you're right. I mean, of course, all parents know that if a hot young dancer around, their son's not going to tell the truth.
	I mean, come on. Of course they don't.
	Yeah, no, you're right. You're right.
	So I don't know why. I'm not sure why.
	I can tell you why. Why?
	Because they care more about appearance than virtue.
	Right? Because when people say, how's your son doing?
	They're going to have to say he's living in sin, and they don't like that.
	Because that makes them look bad. On the other hand, if you're dating a hot dancer, maybe that's, I don't know, maybe that makes them look good or something, right?
	but they care about the appearance of things they care about looking good rather than being good and
	therefore you ended up with a woman who looked good rather than was good
	You see the pattern, right?
	I mean, it's a little hard for me to swallow because they you
	I mean...
	I don't know.
	They are... I hugely respect both of them.
	And, you know...
	I hear the stories of, you know...
	Not even just parents of people calling to the show, for example, but even just people in my friends of mine, immediate family, there's not even a comparison in terms of the quality.
	So it's hard for me to hold them to account for things Sorry, I'm not sure I quite understand.
	So, you're saying that your parents are much better than the parents of most of my callers, is that right?
	I didn't mean it really like that.
	No, no, I'm fine with that.
	Again, I'm not criticizing, I'm just trying to understand.
	And I'm not being cynical about it.
	Listen, I'm fully willing to grant that you have really good parents, and your really good parents are way better than most of the parents of most of my callers.
	I'm not going to argue with you with that.
	I'm totally happy and willing to accept that.
	Okay. Sure.
	Now, have you ever been coached in sports?
	A little bit. Okay.
	Now, if you're really good in sports, do you get more coaching or less?
	I would say less.
	No, that's not true. It's the people who are the most good in sports who get the most coaching.
	Because they have the most potential.
	Hmm. I mean, if you're a coach, don't you want to coach the kid who's got all this natural talent and can go all the way to the major leagues?
	No, yeah, that does make sense. Yeah.
	So, listen, the fact that I'm criticizing your parents doesn't mean that your parents are terrible, doesn't mean that they're all bad, and if your parents are really good...
	Then they're still going to get criticism.
	In fact, they may even get more criticism because they have the potential to be absolutely fantastic, to go all the way, right?
	I mean, I criticize my own parenting.
	I get feedback from my daughter.
	I listen to my wife. So, because I want to be major league parent, right?
	So, I mean, I think I'm a pretty good parent.
	But I take a lot of criticism, and I should.
	Yeah, well, that makes sense.
	Yeah, that makes sense. I'm not criticizing your parents to make them into bad parents, but to make them even better, potentially.
	Because I can't figure out why, right, their primary job as parents is to nurture and protect their children, right?
	Yeah. And your parents have a lot more experience than you do.
	You have no experience in relationships, right, prior to this woman.
	And so you were relying on the expertise of those around you.
	So they didn't even find out her level of religion.
	So your parents say it's important to marry within the faith, it's important to marry a good Christian woman, and they never asked about her level of Christianity.
	Is that a fair statement?
	Again, I'm not trying to catch you out here.
	I just want to make sure I've got the lay of the land correctly.
	Yeah. Okay, so, but then they raise a stink and a half about you living together.
	Mm-hmm. Oh, yeah.
	Why? Why does it not matter to them whether she's religious, but it only matters to them if you're living together?
	Because then it kind of gets real.
	Then it's visible.
	Yeah, it's empirical, right?
	Yeah, yeah. Okay.
	Now, when you first told your parents about this woman, right?
	Say, I met this hot dancer or whatever, right?
	And, you know, you say, I'm really excited, right?
	So they now know that it is your first relationship, and they also know, because of pair bonding and oxytocin and all of those hormones that bind people together, that you're going to be awash in hormones and ready to pair bond, right? So you're in a very dangerous situation.
	I mean, a situation of both great danger and great possibility, right?
	Correct. All right.
	So when you're teaching your kids how to ride a bike, do you put them on concrete with no helmet?
	No. Of course not.
	You work to...
	I mean, I'm sure your parents got you inoculations and took you to dentists and doctors and, you know, got your checkups and tried to help you eat well and...
	That they did. Yeah, so try and keep you safe and healthy, right?
	Mm-hmm. Now, they are, I don't want to say very religious because that sounds like a pejorative, but they practice their faith with a significant degree of integrity.
	Is that a fair way to put it? Yes.
	Okay. So, I assume that they're not a big fan of secular humanism because they say it leads to hedonism without a conscience, right?
	Yes. Again, I don't want to put words in their mouth, but that would be my understanding of the logic of the argument.
	Yeah, I definitely see that.
	So then you're falling head over heels, and they also know the dangers of lust, right?
	So you're falling head over heels with a hot dancer, and they don't even ask if she's religious.
	Why not? Maybe they felt like they had been hovering too much, and they wanted to overcorrect, or they wanted to correct, but they overcorrected? No, because you can't say, I'm going to protect my children from the little dangers, but when the big dangers come along, to hell with them, they're on their own.
	Like, that doesn't make any sense, right?
	Right. And did they know that you and your girlfriend were sleeping together?
	Um... I mean, I didn't share that with them, but I got the feeling that they knew.
	Did they ask? They...
	Let me think.
	If they explicitly asked.
	You would remember if they had.
	Yeah, I think they explicitly said that they weren't going to ask, actually.
	Okay, so they weren't going to ask if you were sleeping together with the woman they hadn't even asked if she was religious, right?
	Okay, so why would they suddenly not be involved?
	Right, you said they're kind of hovering.
	Now, this is, I mean, this is the girl you lost your virginity to, right?
	Yes. Okay, so they also know that sleeping together outside of God's covenant is a sin, right?
	Yes. So they don't even ask if you're sinning?
	Imperiling your very soul?
	They don't ask how religious she is?
	And yet they say that it's very important to share religion and relationships?
	Yeah. Now, have they since you broke up?
	How long was it? Was it last spring?
	Spring last year that you broke up?
	No, that was...
	It's embarrassingly long ago.
	I think May 2022.
	So it's about a year and a half, almost two years.
	Okay. So, have they said, I assume you shared with your parents that you'd broken up with the girl and you were very sad, right?
	Yes. Now, have they shared with you, because we went down this path because I asked, whether your parents took ownership for their bad decisions, right?
	Now, you got your heart broken.
	And look, it's the first girl.
	Your body processes this as she died.
	That's what it felt like.
	No, and that is what it feels like.
	Because, you know, particularly for, like, northern Europeans or cultures from cold climates, pair bonding is it, man.
	Monogamous pair bonding, that's what we do.
	So, in your body...
	You're like, oh, I'm having sex with her.
	Well, we're pair-bonded for life.
	Oh my god, my first wife just died.
	Right? That's what your body goes through, I think.
	Yeah, I believe it after experiencing it.
	Right. So, your parents did not vet this girl, did not give you good advice, did not help you, right?
	In this way. Now, have they said, Holy crap, son.
	Did we ever fail you?
	We didn't vet her.
	We didn't ask enough questions.
	We didn't figure out if she was a safe person you'd fall in love with.
	We didn't do our job at all.
	We let you wander like a lamb among lions or wolves out there in the dating market, and we never even asked if she was religious.
	Boy, did we ever mess up.
	It's really on us as much as on you.
	We're really, really, really sorry.
	They haven't. Okay.
	Did they take any ownership?
	Oh, and also when you say, well, they don't want to intervene, they want to be hands-off.
	Well, they weren't when you were talking about moving in together, right?
	So have your parents taken any responsibility in A, keeping you from the dating market, and B, not vetting the first girl you slept with?
	We have never talked about...
	I've never talked with them.
	My other siblings may have.
	About the kind of more of the repression growing up and no to the second one.
	So why would they be so repressive when you were growing up but so ridiculously uninvolved when you actually are considering a relationship?
	I really don't know.
	Their religious conviction hasn't decreased.
	They... You know, I don't know.
	It was one of those, like, we were kind of the family, like, you couldn't read the Harry Potter books, like, growing up.
	But then my little sister, who's the youngest, she has a model on her bookshelf.
	She's, like, way into it.
	Like, they loosened up on certain weird things like that.
	They didn't loosen up so much on the relationship stuff.
	I still doubt my little sister's going to be dating.
	Oh, no, they did. Because they didn't vet your girlfriend.
	They totally loosened up on the relationship stuff.
	Yeah. Yeah, I don't know why.
	I really don't know why. Maybe they were seeing that...
	Like my...
	I'm sorry, there's some people walking by.
	That my older brother, he...
	You know, kind of similar situation to me, late bloomer.
	Definitely now gets a lot of attention for women, but no serious relationships.
	He's had one also very short term for six months, kind of at the same time as I did.
	Give or take a few months.
	Maybe they saw how the men of the family were faring out in the real world and they felt like they had messed up.
	I don't justify it, but that could be an explanation.
	Can you explain that again? They saw the products of what the repressive upbringing would have wrought.
	And they weren't happy with it, possibly.
	Oh, God, no. Come on.
	Do we have to go over this again?
	They were totally repressive when it came to you guys living together.
	So what are you talking about?
	They gave up their repression.
	Did you forget that part?
	I kind of did. Okay, so let's not go with they got all kinds of liberal because they didn't.
	Yeah. Are you getting at that it's appearances or that they were...
	Well, the detail regarding your sister about the Harry Potter books is telling, right?
	So, you know, there are some Christian parents who wage war against the Harry Potter books, and I think, in general, when the Harry Potter books were considered dangerous, Yeah, but I would agree that it is obsessive and I'm glad that they made that change.
	No, but it wasn't obsessive before.
	They were just conforming with the general thoughts.
	Harry Potter bad, now Harry Potter not so bad, so they're just going with that, right?
	So they don't have their own necessarily independent evaluation.
	Yeah, I think a lot of that is true, yeah.
	Okay, so they're going with the flow of the community, which means more about looks than direct virtue.
	And I'm not saying this about all of their life.
	I'm just talking about these examples that you've given me.
	Right, yeah. Yeah, I can see that.
	And I think that's probably greatly led by, was led by like my mom and kind of being in the church groups and stuff.
	Yeah, not wanting to be disapproved of, right?
	Yeah. So if it's going to be, if you're going to be disapproved of by letting your kids read Harry Potter, then your kids can't read Harry Potter.
	If you're going to be kind of disapproved of because your kids are not reading Harry Potter, then it's okay for them to read Harry Potter.
	Like, she's just sailing by approval and disapproval, not integrity to values.
	Correct. Okay, so then they wouldn't vet your girlfriend.
	Because you showing up with a pretty girl...
	Is positive to their status, right?
	Yeah. And it was a welcome change of taste.
	But then you living with that pretty girl is negative to their status, right?
	Yes. So they're not going to vet her, because, you know, otherwise people then don't have to say, gee, why don't your kids ever date?
	Why don't your sons ever date? Oh, you remember that pretty girl?
	So it's positive to your parents' status for you to show up at the pretty girl, but if you live with her, that's negative, so they don't vet her, but they'll criticize you for living with her.
	This is what I mean. It's all about appearance, not Godliness.
	I haven't considered this.
	You went for appearance over substance.
	You had to learn that somewhere.
	That's why they didn't vet her.
	Because if they give you the questions to vet her, you might vet them.
	The counterfeiter doesn't give you the counterfeit detection machine.
	Yeah, I think for me, that willingness to bend on some of those things and not let the vetting either be degraded or thrown out the window completely, in some cases, is out of a fear that they don't make them like they used to, as you could say.
	And I don't know if that's true or not, but it seems to be harder and harder.
	Oh, like to get you to lower your standards?
	Yeah, it seems like...
	Okay, but then it shouldn't matter if you're living together.
	Right, why would they not vet a woman who might break your heart, but only vet a woman co-signing a lease?
	Yeah. Yeah, I don't know.
	We do know. I mean, it's appearances.
	And, of course, one of the first things that Jesus always warns about is the appearances of virtue.
	Don't go for conformity, don't go for approval, go for integrity, and the world will probably hate you.
	Anything the world loves you for at the moment probably is the opposite of that which is good
	Yeah, yeah, it sucks that's that way but So
	So, I mean, I think that's the answer as to why you went for appearance over substance.
	And as far as pair bonding goes, right?
	I mean, there's pair bonding between your parents, but if they're united in the appearance of virtue, it's tough for me to believe in their pair bond.
	You know, pair bonds kind of show up when you stand by each other, though the whole world hates you.
	If you're chasing your community's approval, I don't know how you can pair bond, because it's like saying, can you hug water, right?
	It just doesn't have any particular shape of its own, just pours into the latest vessel of approval.
	Yeah, I mean, I would...
	I definitely see what you're saying in this case.
	I think that it doesn't...
	Necessarily apply to a lot of other things.
	Okay, so let's just say about your parents and you.
	Okay. Right?
	If you're a parent and you've discouraged dating, which is fine, and then your son falls head over heels in love with a very pretty hot woman, right?
	Mm-hmm. What's the most loving thing?
	If you're truly pair-bonded with your child, what is the most loving thing you can do?
	Well, of course.
	Which they didn't do. So where's the pair bond?
	Right. You can't recognize your girlfriend's lack of ability to pair bond because, at least in this instance, your parents did not act out of a pair bond with you.
	I mean, if my daughter falls in love with some underwear model, a Calvin Klein model, you know, which is fine.
	He could be a great guy, right?
	Yeah. But, you know, come on.
	Got a vet, right? Yeah, that's, you know, you're right.
	The next relationship, I'm going to be looking out for that.
	Well, yes, but you're still fighting the current in that.
	And look, I don't know the answer.
	Right? And this is a conversation it might be worthwhile having with your parents and say, look, why didn't you vet this girl?
	Well, we wanted to defer to your judgment.
	It's like, no. No, you've almost never done that.
	Right? You've always been pretty authoritarian and you certainly didn't want to defer to my judgment when it came to moving in together.
	So, well, you know best.
	It's like, no, no, that's not, right?
	That's not how you've been operating as parents even into the present, right?
	Right. So why is there this giant exception?
	Right. I don't know the answer.
	Maybe there's a good answer that I'm not aware of.
	Well, we knew it was going to hurt you, but we wanted to learn your lesson on the perils of chasing godless dancers.
	I don't know. Whatever.
	It could be some reason that makes more sense, but I don't know what that reason is.
	But it certainly is very much out of character for the parenting, right?
	Right. And it has produced some serious negative effects on you.
	I mean, your heart's kind of like a smoking crater in some ways, right?
	Right. No, if I'm wrong, I mean, since I got from you.
	No, I'm laughing because you hit it right on the head.
	Right. So your parents let you get fucking nuked.
	And they didn't step in to give you a shield, an umbrella, get you to safety.
	They just stood there and watched you get the fucking estrogen scud up the ass.
	No, because this is your first, this is your one-itis.
	This is your first, right?
	They let you, in a sense, get married knowing she was going to die.
	Do you know what I mean? Like, they just watched all of this happen.
	Yeah I don't know why
	Yeah, maybe I should have a It'd be like if I knew that My daughter's bike, the brakes didn't work, right?
	I knew for a fact that the brakes didn't work, and I'm like, yeah, let's go down this hill.
	Oh, man. I'm not kidding.
	No, I know. It's a colorful image, but no, I see your point.
	How is our child's heart going to be safe?
	Well, the only thing that keeps your heart safe is genuine virtue and integrity, which this woman did not possess.
	And I'm not saying you were super high in these virtues either, but this was your first time and your parents had been married for decades, right?
	Yeah. So, you were going into a very fucking dangerous sport here.
	With a woman who had all the signs of mystical amorality, right?
	She had a good amount of them, yeah.
	I wasn't... Again, a lot of people thought that it was going to be a long-term thing.
	A lot of people close to me thought that.
	And they were wrong. And have they apologized to you for getting it wrong?
	No. Because if I had said, let's say you had called me up, right?
	And I had gone through the vetting questions, right?
	Yes. And the first vetting question that I would ask is, okay, well, where do her morals come from?
	What are the consequences of her acting badly?
	And, you know, this vague karmic stuff is just nonsense, right?
	Right. Well, again, I never would have accepted that from her, but I didn't really, I didn't dig deep.
	I was afraid to know. You didn't have anything.
	Yeah, I was afraid to know.
	It doesn't, yeah. Well, no, no, hang on.
	So, if I had said to you, right, listen, and I don't, as you know, I don't tell people what to do, but let's say in some alternate universe, you'd called me up to vet, right?
	And I'd gone through the vetting questions, maybe with her live or, I mean, whatever, right?
	And then I'd have said, Green light, man.
	Full steam ahead. Go for it.
	She's the one, right?
	And then, four months later, she put your heart through a blender, right?
	Right. What would I say?
	You'd profusely apologize.
	I'd be like, oh man, I'm totally wrapped up in you getting your heart broken.
	I didn't, not only did I not intervene, I said go ahead.
	And I was totally wrong.
	Yeah, I see. Who around you who told you full steam ahead when this was your first relationship?
	If I've been a guy who's won the Tour de France three times and I'm teaching my kids how to bike, do I just push them down a hill?
	No, you don't. Of course not.
	So all these people, I assume older than you with more experience in relationships since you had none, told you to go ahead and your heart got broken and how many of them have circled back to say, Oof, man, I feel so terrible.
	Yeah, I haven't gotten an apology.
	I never thought to ask for one, but I have not.
	Okay, so who's pair-bonded with you?
	There's a reason you ended up with a woman without much of a conscience.
	How many people have circled back and said, we told you to go ahead, you're inexperienced, we got it wrong?
	I mean, no, they hadn't done that.
	There was a lot of people were there...
	I apologize to you for encouraging you to drive and crash.
	No, your point remains.
	None. And here's the big question.
	Since the job of your family and your elders in particular, and I say that word without any reservation, right?
	The purpose of your elders is to keep you safe.
	It was the purpose physically when you were younger and emotionally and financially when you get older, right?
	Which is what your dad was like all about, don't get into debt and here's the mistakes I made, right?
	Keep you safe. Now they failed, right?
	Yes. And nobody seems to have even acknowledged that there was a mistake.
	So what that means is, their consciences are not active.
	Because if I told someone to go ahead and I was totally wrong, I'd feel terrible.
	If I told someone when I had a lot of experience and they had no experience, it looks good to me.
	Like if I'm an aircraft engineer and I say to someone, this plane is good to fly, and that person flies the plane and it crashes and they lose an arm, I mean, can you imagine how I'd feel?
	Yeah, it's actually funny. I'm an aircraft mechanic, actually.
	Oh, okay, so you understand.
	You are... Oh, yeah, deeply.
	You tell someone it's good to go, it's got to be good to go.
	Yeah. Now, if you say to someone it's good to go, and then the wing falls off, and they crash, and they lose an arm, would you...
	Oh, man, I'm so... Oh, man, my sympathies.
	Here's some flowers. I'm so sorry you lost that arm.
	That's terrible. How sad. Cry on my shoulder.
	Oh, yeah. Wouldn't that be kind of weird?
	Yeah. So, how many people around you have an active conscience and take ownership for the mistakes they make?
	When it comes to this, it would seem like none.
	In this aspect, those same people do take responsibility for many other things, but not this one.
	I don't know why. Or I don't know why it's specifically this.
	But this is the most important thing for men.
	Boy, is it. No, it is, right?
	No, I agree. I mean, not only because of this possibility of embittering heartbreak, but also because...
	False accusations, unwanted pregnancies, entrapment in child support, entrapment in bad marriages, problems, STDs, right?
	All of this stuff that can really accumulate.
	I mean, women have their own risks in relationship, of course, but men do too.
	So why, when they're supposed to be all about protecting you, do they encourage you into this disaster?
	All these religious people, with their relationship with God and good and evil and virtue in the soul and the conscience, did anyone ever say, is she religious?
	and if not, where do her morals come from?
	Isn't that the first thing that God would say to do?
	If they prayed to God and said, how do I keep my children safe?
	Well, he's dating a hot dancer, which means lust and the devil are probably going to win, so you've got to get in there and stand between him and the object of his desire and vet her like crazy, because this could break his heart really badly.
	And a broken arm is less bad than a broken heart.
	So your whole family was encouraging you to do something that metaphorically broke your arm when they were experienced and you weren't.
	They encouraged you in the depths of their experience to do something you were inexperienced in which broke your arm.
	Oh yeah, this parachute is fine.
	You can jump out the plane, says the guy who's been parachuting for 20 years.
	Turns out it's just a lunch pail, lunch bucket.
	And you crash into the ground, you break your arm.
	Oh man, that's so terrible, you broke your arm.
	Here are my sympathies. It's like what the hell you guys with all this experience parachuting you told me it was
	good to go And I assume this is somewhat shocking to you
	you A little bit, yeah. I didn't think about...
	I never considered that they would have a responsibility or anything really to apologize for.
	But... This is a central Christian commandment to protect your children from the wolves of the world, isn't it?
	Yeah, I guess it's...
	And I rationalized it as, you know, not wanting to be like helicopter parents.
	But they were helicopter parents and then they were when it came to your living together.
	So that's out the window. Also, they should explain to you and they should say, if they, let's say they woke up one day and they said, oh my gosh, you've been too over-controlling, right?
	They sit down with you and they say, listen, we've been too over-controlling.
	That's a big problem. It means that you're really unprotected.
	You're inexperienced. So we're going to have to be a little bit more intrusive when it comes to you dating because you've been so unprepared because we told you all the way through not to date in high school, not to date until, right?
	And then you get in your early 20s or whatever it was and you start dating.
	We're gonna have to come in and vet because you're unprepared.
	Yeah, I never considered that.
	Thank you for watching.
	And pair bonding with the children would mean that you work to protect them from just this kind of agony, because agony is temptation to sin, right? The devil makes you fearful, depressed, anxious, unhappy.
	That tempts you to the sin, and I think, if I understand this correctly, where your sin lies, or your temptation lies, is despair.
	Yes. And you want to blame women for your families and your elders' utter failure to protect you.
	I would not say I would want to blame women.
	Oh, come on. You have that tendency.
	I'm not saying you're doing that. But that's the big-time stuff.
	Some of the stuff in your email, you know, the women are worse now than they used to be, right?
	All the options that the pretty woman has.
	Like, you want to displace...
	Like, if your family threw you to the wolves, you want to blame the wolves.
	Yeah, I definitely am displacing it.
	I don't want to give the impression that I'm, again, subscribing to those ideas.
	I just...
	Again, it's kind of a whole other subject, so I don't want to...
	And the sort of point I want to get as we sort of get to the end of the convo is something like this.
	Look, your heart is not accessible as far as I can see.
	And obviously, this is a particular kind of conversation, right?
	But... You're kind of skittish over your own heart, because over the course of this conversation, we talked about some very emotional stuff, right?
	Yeah. What do you think your level of emotionality has been?
	I'm pretty not very emotional.
	Right. Yeah. Why do you think that is?
	I am on three hours of sleep.
	No, no, that could make you more emotional.
	I guess it could.
	I guess I'm trying to keep it together for...
	Well, because I'm talking to an effective stranger and this is being recorded and stuff.
	So I think that's probably part of it.
	I tend to not...
	I kind of just speak like this.
	I used to be a lot more emotive and...
	If I'm in certain states, I'm definitely more like that.
	But in general, as I've grown, I've become a little bit more leveled off and not necessarily as emotional.
	Pair bonding is fundamentally an emotional state, right?
	A state of passionate attachment and need.
	Well, I feel like a lot of that's been snuffed out of me after this.
	That's kind of one of the big points of despair.
	I know. I know. I'm talking about it. Yeah.
	Because if you let this dancing witch and your four-month, almost two years ago relationship snuff you of pair bonding, I think that's like the most ridiculous loss known to man.
	Like, what a pathetic way to lose your capacity to pair bond and your happiness and your optimism and your ability to fall in love and all kinds of stuff.
	Like, what a terrible, terrible surrender.
	I agree, and that's why I'm speaking.
	That's why we're talking, right? Yeah, I get that it's ridiculous.
	No, it's ridiculous if you let it happen.
	It's not ridiculous to me that it has happened.
	Because for you to figure out why you weren't able to identify a lack of pair bonding in your girlfriend leads you to you figuring out that your family has not pair bonded with you in terms of protecting you from the greatest dangers that men face.
	And that's why you want to avoid pair bonding.
	Because if you say, the problem with pair bonding is with my family, not with my girlfriend, then you can't be safe in the future.
	Because you can't be safe in the future, you can't be vulnerable and you won't pair bond.
	It's your family, not the girlfriend.
	That is harming your ability to pair bond.
	Yeah, because even in the next stage, with the next relationship, I'll still be blinded in a way and need people around me to be the barometers of...
	Well, no, it's not just that.
	It's that you've grown up thinking you're close to people who don't take responsibility in this area and have not pair-bonded with you.
	Yeah. And so, because you have...
	A tenuous relationship with your parents and your family in this area.
	To pair bond with a woman will expose what you've been missing with your family, which they don't want to have exposed.
	Your parents, like all parents, we don't want our limitations to be exposed.
	Because we want to be the authorities.
	And so, if you really fall passionately in love with a woman, and she's a great woman, and she pair bonds with you, and then she meets your family, what's she going to say?
	What is she going to say?
	She's going to call them out on it?
	She's going to say, you know, man, they're kind of distant.
	They don't really talk about much.
	They don't really get to the depth of things.
	And they didn't vet me, which I find really bizarre.
	I mean, I'm supposed to just wander into this family and nobody's asking me anything about anything?
	Right. Why is everything so surface level?
	I mean, aren't they Christians?
	Don't they have a deep relationship to the spiritual father of the universe and are all about ethics and depth and virtue and conscience and nobody even asked me if I believed in God?
	I don't understand. What the hell is going on?
	Yeah, well...
	Yeah, I think that's definitely true.
	There's not a lot of good Christian women.
	They're not in a surplus.
	No, no, no, I'm not talking.
	Now, see, here's the thing.
	I criticized your parents in the part of this woman, and what did you immediately do?
	Kind of deflected it.
	You deflected it to criticizing Christian women.
	Well, I would submit that a Christian woman who's not particularly deep a Christian in this area would be your mother.
	Now, rather than criticize your mother, you want to condemn all women, which I understand.
	Your mother would prefer that too, which is part of the lack of pair bonding.
	Right. Because your mother should be, holy crap, our son got his heart broken, and we're supposed to be in charge as the family elders or his parents, and the last thing we want to do is have him become embittered.
	Now, have your parents noticed that you've become embittered?
	Well, I don't know if I... A lot of this is internal, and it's more...
	It's their job to know! I... I guess what I'm trying to say is I wouldn't classify myself as embittered yet.
	I've noticed things in my consciousness that I want to address.
	Do you want me to read you back your email just in case you've forgotten it?
	No, I have it up.
	I remember. Do you want to read your email just so people know where I'm coming from?
	You know, you can actually read it if you want.
	My laptop actually just died, but I had it up on there.
	I could get it on my phone, but then I'm on speaker.
	No problem. Let me grab the email, because otherwise I'm going to sound kind of crazy, right?
	No, yeah. And it's definitely...
	I was in a spot when I wrote that, for sure.
	Well, you didn't call me and say, I was in a spot.
	I don't need the call.
	Oh, that's not what I mean, that I didn't need the call.
	I mean that it was a little bit more...
	Alright. Yeah.
	Because I am here to try and show you something like this.
	Okay. Topic.
	Do you remember the topic? How to not fall into bitterness and...
	Steph. Topic.
	How not to fall into bitter hopelessness.
	Topic detail. I'm your age.
	I'm two years past a soul-crushing breakup.
	First love. Since then I started working full-time, out of school, making very good money and trying to improve my life.
	I don't know if it's the night shift, the breakup, or just being young and lost, but I honestly haven't felt happy for longer than I can remember.
	It feels like my bar is so high from that relationship that nothing moves the needle now.
	The state of modern dating tempts me to take the MGTOW black pill and just give up.
	Again, I'm not trying to make you feel bad, but then if you say, well, I'm not really in any danger of bitter.
	Yeah, you kind of are.
	I do believe that I am.
	That's why I'm reaching out. I just meant to say that I'm not, I don't think I'm there yet, but I don't, I'm uncomfortable with the way I'm thinking.
	And I don't, I want to change the way I'm thinking.
	Okay, so I start to criticize your parents and you start to minimize your symptoms.
	Pattern here? Yes, yes, I see the pattern.
	Okay, so listen, there's nothing wrong with your parents being imperfect.
	I'm a good parent, I think.
	Am I perfect? I am not.
	Right? There's nothing wrong with your parents being imperfect.
	Hey, quick question. Who's the only perfect person who ever lived?
	Jesus. That's right.
	If you believe in that sort of thing, yes.
	No, listen, I'll meet you where you are, man.
	I'll meet you where you are.
	It's conversations about you, not me.
	So, the only perfect person is Jesus, right?
	So, are your parents imperfect?
	Yes. They are.
	And did Jesus have some criticisms of parents?
	Yes. Yes, he did.
	That he who was without sin cast the first stone.
	There were a lot of parents in that square where the woman was going to get stoned.
	He also said I've come to sir to sir to to turn son against father
	Parent against child That's because of criticism of the parents. It's elders in
	his community were subject to his wrath and his scorn The money changers were whipped right? Yes. Yeah, and a lot
	of them. I mean a lot of them were making money for their Families they were parents fathers, right? So Jesus had
	some criticisms of parents And what would Jesus do?
	Well, if your parents have failed in their godly duty to protect their children, they deserve criticism.
	Doesn't mean that they're terrible people.
	Doesn't mean that they're human.
	They're fallible, right? Now, they have instilled in you...
	Something I think that my biggest criticism is not what your parents did or didn't do in terms of protection or, you know, look, they failed their own standards.
	Their own standards are you should get married to a religious girl, right?
	A Christian girl. Yeah.
	And they failed utterly to uphold that standard, except when it came to moving in, which is not particularly relevant, right?
	In fact, by throwing their opposition in late in the game, they destabilized the relationship even more.
	Yeah. So, they failed their moral virtues.
	That's life. I fail my moral virtues.
	I assume you, from time to time, fail your moral virtues.
	We all do. It's a goal to be striven for.
	It's not something you manifest perfectly every moment of every day.
	Does that make sense? Yes.
	Okay. So, your parents did wrong.
	Because they're human. They failed.
	Their standards, they probably succumbed a little bit to wanting to look good rather than wanting to be good, which again, we all do.
	We all do. Now, my problem is, That your parents have made you so uncomfortable with criticizing them that you'd rather go down the black moor of MGTOW instead.
	That's my problem.
	My problem isn't what they did specifically.
	My problem is that they have put themselves as gods unto you.
	They've turned themselves into Jesus regarding you.
	That you can't criticize them.
	That you can't hold them to account.
	That you can't call them out on any sin.
	Which they do. Why?
	Because we all do. But they somehow have elevated themselves beyond the possibility of sin or feedback or criticism of any kind.
	Yeah, there hasn't ever been really feedback to them.
	I've never... It would be very uncomfortable for me to have like the...
	The kind of conversations that you encourage, honestly.
	But why? Why?
	They are Christians, which means they know that they're fallible and everybody sins.
	So why have they put themselves forward as golden calf gods of perfection to their children that they cannot receive any negative feedback or any capacity for improvement?
	Isn't humility a profound Christian virtue?
	And is it not ultimately devilish arrogance to say, I am so perfect that all who criticize me are immoral?
	Yeah, I think I'm thinking about it now.
	Back to when I was very young, I was, you know, very willful and the most stubborn of any of my, you know, siblings.
	So I would argue with my parents a lot.
	And I would get that response of like, basically, I'm infallible.
	And that's kind of why I would rail against them a lot.
	So why, but do you believe that claiming to be infallible is a sin?
	Yeah. Okay.
	So why, where's your religion?
	If you continue to let your parents sin out of fear of confrontation, are you not imperiling their souls?
	Maybe you need to be the leader of this family and show what pair bonding really is.
	Which is, listen mom, dad, you've got this terrible sin of vanity.
	It's imperiling your soul.
	I want to be with you in the afterlife.
	And where you're heading is not where I'm heading.
	See, this is the challenge that I have.
	And obviously, again, we're all fallible, we're all sinners.
	I get all of that. But your faith, if I understand it correctly, your faith should lead you to confront your parents' sinful arrogance and inability to take, and hostility to any feedback.
	Even Jesus said, Jesus was younger than his elders when he criticized them, out of the mouth of babes comes pearls of wisdom.
	Jesus criticized people twice or three times his age, who were themselves parents.
	And the sin of arrogance, that you can't be corrected and everything you do is perfect, And even your own children, who you parent, should never give you any feedback, is so ridiculously arrogant, I genuinely can't even conceive of it.
	When you say that your daughter will give you feedback and that you will welcome it, it's like a crazy thing to me.
	I like that idea a lot, but it's as silly to me as that is to you, almost.
	It's very foreign to me.
	Right, right, right.
	And, of course, I mean, you've heard me on the show, and I do debates, and if people have criticisms, forever and ever, when I had a producer, and this is even the case now, if somebody has a genuine, like, a good-faith criticism of me, not just some nonsense whipped-up hysteria, if somebody has good-faith criticism, front of the queue, man, I will do that.
	If somebody comes and says, I have a really good criticism of UPB, I will...
	Front of the queue, man. Let's do it.
	Right? I mean, I'm desperate for critical feedback because that's how I improve.
	Right. And I've always welcomed that.
	So, you are participating in sin.
	And I mean this very deeply and very genuinely.
	I would define sin as well.
	you are participating in sin by allowing the virulent arrogance of your parents
	to continue unchecked.
	And given that they can't see it but you can, the sin is even more in a way on you
	than on them because they remain blind to their own behaviors.
	Right.
	And I guarantee you, they believe some things that their parents do not believe, and they oppose some things that their own parents approved of.
	So they have disagreed with their parents, of course.
	So if they have disagreed with their parents, how is it possible that you're not allowed to disagree with them?
	And I think that's the conversation Now, if you have that conversation and it turns out that they just continue to escalate and they're too in the grip of the demon of vanity to concede any point or admit that you might have anything of value to offer and it's all just going to be one-sided, you serve my vanity or we don't have anything to do with each other,
	which I'm sure that won't be the case, but if it does go to that extreme, then...
	Then they're standing between you and a good woman because a good woman is not going to want to get involved with a family where people that vainglorious and arrogant are in charge.
	She's not going to want them babysitting the kids or having a relationship with their kids.
	She's not going to want to spend time around them because that kind of, to me, I'm just telling you my own, that kind of toxic vanity is unbearable to me.
	It's almost inhuman to me.
	I know, I mean, of course, they're humans, right?
	But it feels almost inhuman to me to be around people who can never admit fault.
	It's way too brittle, and they're poised to attack at all times.
	That's exhausting. Right, no, I agree.
	I think that, you know, if I did, were I to approach these subjects, I don't think that they would respond to I think they would respond well to it as well as they could.
	I don't think it would be...
	It might take a couple of tries, and they may have some faltering, but I think if you get that kind of connection, because if you don't...
	This is all the way back to when I was asking about your passivity with regards to this woman where you say, you make your case, and it was a passionate case, and then you just say, you make your call, and then she sits for a couple of days and comes back with no, right?
	So that level of passivity is probably something you grew up with.
	But your parents are just going to make their decisions, and you can't have much impact on them.
	You can make your case, but they end up making the final decision.
	Yeah, and that's really...
	That's had a big effect on my...
	I don't know, my relationship with truth in a way, because I used to be very...
	Somebody who would...
	People would tell me, like, man, you should be a lawyer.
	Like, you're so convincing and you get so passionate about things.
	And after, you know, this experience with, like, breaking up and, like, not seeming to listen to reason and stuff, the power of reason kind of has diminished in my eyes a little bit.
	And it has made me kind of apathetic to it.
	Well, no, no, but reason has no power.
	For those who don't listen to reason.
	I mean, reason isn't a law of physics.
	Gravity has power even to people who don't believe in gravity.
	But reason has no power to those who reject reason.
	Science can't convince anyone who doesn't accept the scientific method.
	I can't convince anyone about anything who only speaks Japanese because I don't speak Japanese.
	So, yeah. That makes sense to me.
	It would be kind of weird if reason had an effect on people who don't listen to reason.
	That would be irrational, right?
	Yeah, no. Yeah, I guess I used to think that you could kind of talk anybody out of, you know, irrationality, but it's...
	But that's almost your arrogance, right?
	I'm so convincing that I can convince people of reason when they don't believe in reason.
	Right. In a way, I feel like I've grown out of it, and in a way, I've also felt like I've lost my edge a little bit.
	You say, I can yell so loudly that even Japanese people can understand my English.
	Like, no, not really. Yeah.
	So, yeah, listen, I want to pull you back from despair.
	And you didn't have the worst experience in your first relationship, right?
	You were passionate about the woman, you had some real connection, I assume you had some great sex, and, you know, unfortunately, it didn't pan out.
	And most first relationships don't, as you know.
	But I think it leads you to a very important place of wisdom, which is, who's watching your back?
	And you can't pair bond if you can't relax, and you can't relax if people aren't watching your back.
	Right. Like, to take a silly example, you can't imagine, if you're camping, you can't imagine having sex with your wife when you think a bear is sniffing at the tent, right?
	Yeah. Yeah.
	So... I mean, this is why sort of this famous thing about, like, married couples, they have got to go to a hotel.
	If they've got kids, they've got to go to a hotel to have any, you know, quality, fancy adult time together because otherwise, you know, bang, bang, bang, mom!
	You know, whatever it is, right? So the woman, you know, and the men, you can't feel safe or secure or relaxed or whatever it is, right?
	If it's the middle of the day or whatever, right?
	So kids are home. So it makes sense.
	That you would have some difficulty understanding what went wrong and why you ended up in this situation of danger.
	You ended up in a situation of danger because you did not have people around you who were invested enough in their pair of bond with you to watch your back.
	Now, I don't know the reason for that.
	But that's something worth inquiring about to try and find out what the reason is for that.
	Because if you don't have people watching your back, you can't relax.
	If you can't relax, you can't be emotional.
	If you can't be emotional, you can't pair bond.
	Because you're guarded, right? And being guarded is...
	It sucks. Being guarded is terrible.
	Because then you can't be open and connect.
	And people can't reach the real you to the point where they can really trust and pair upon.
	Because if you're always guarded, then people are just dealing with your defenses, which can change at any time.
	As opposed to the real you, which is more stable than permanent.
	And that's... We can only trust the authentic self.
	And if we're jumpy and guarded...
	People can't get through to the authentic self and they can't pair bond with us.
	I really haven't considered these things.
	I appreciate it. Well, that's why people call me.
	If it was something you'd already considered, then it worked.
	That's the one thing I know is that people who call me are very smart people who've tried everything else.
	I'm the last port of call.
	Yeah. Wow.
	Is that a decent place to start?
	Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.
	I appreciate it. All right.
	Well, listen, best of luck and keep your heart open.
	There's a great woman out there for you.
	And let me know if you have this conversation.
	Well, either way, let me know. But if you have this conversation with your family, let me know what their answer is because I'm rapidly curious.
	Yeah, well, thank you. Thanks, man.
	Take care. All the best. Take care.

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