In a heartfelt conversation, I discuss the caller's struggles with psoriatic arthritis, depression, and alcoholism, reflecting on the impact of neglectful parenting on childhood. We explore the lasting effects of childhood trauma on self-worth and relationships, emphasizing the need to break negative generational patterns for emotional well-being. Additionally, we delve into a caller's tumultuous relationship marked by infidelity, highlighting the link between past familial dynamics and current relationship challenges. Self-reflection and accountability are key in learning from past mistakes to build healthier relationships in the future.Join the PREMIUM philosophy community on the web for free!NOW AVAILABLE FOR SUBSCRIBERS: MY NEW BOOK 'PEACEFUL PARENTING' - AND THE INTERACTIVE PEACEFUL PARENTING AI AND AUDIOBOOK!Also get the Truth About the French Revolution, the interactive multi-lingual philosophy AI trained on thousands of hours of my material, private livestreams, premium call in shows, the 22 Part History of Philosophers series and much more!See you soon!https://freedomain.locals.com/support/promo/UPB2022
Just spill your guts and we'll see what philosophy can do for you.
All right.
So where would you like me to start?
Well, usually the way that we work is current problem, current crisis, and then we go back into childhood.
So, if you want to lay it down for me, what's going on at the moment, then we can get a sense of the problem and then try and figure out the root cause.
Okay, sounds good.
So, right now I'm finding myself in a very dark period in my life.
The darkest I've ever found myself.
And I'm currently failing at a retail job.
Struggling with alcoholism.
I lost my driver's license some time ago, almost about nine months ago.
Almost one month exactly after I got married to my wife, which caused me to lose my job because of traveling.
And so... I'm sorry, are you using, sorry to interrupt, are you using speakerphone?
Because you're kind of cutting in and out a little bit.
Oh, am I?
Oh, I'm so sorry.
No, no problem.
No, I'm not.
I've got some earbuds in.
I might have to move location here.
It might just be the echo.
Yeah, no problem.
I just, I always want to concentrate on what you're saying rather than whether I can hear it better easily, so.
Yes, of course.
Can you hear me better now?
Not hugely.
Okay, how's this?
That seems fine.
It's hard to tell until you keep going, so sorry for the interruption, but please go ahead.
No problem, no problem.
So, all right.
So, essentially, a year ago, I became extremely ill with an illness that kind of crippled me physically and prevented me from working, and because I'm a musician, I wasn't able to play anymore.
This was a huge problem for me because if I'm not able to work, if I'm not able to play, it kind of struck me in the identity.
And sorry, what was the illness?
It's called psoriatic arthritis.
So it's a very severe kind of arthritis that kind of shoots through your whole body like nuclear radiation where every part of you is affected.
And you develop massive sores and parts of you swell up and become impossible to use.
I'm so sorry.
That just sounds absolutely appalling.
And was it fairly rapid in its onset?
Or tell me a little bit about this.
I mean, health stuff is a nightmare.
It's something you totally take for granted.
Oh, I'm fine.
And then if you don't have it, it's like,
Everything else in life falls away, and you just become, like, one thing.
Sick guy.
So, I really sympathize.
And, yeah, tell me a little bit about the history at the end.
Did you ever have it before?
Did it come on quick, or how did that go?
It was severely rapid onset.
So, essentially, I was fine for the first two months of last year, and then all of a sudden, I developed these sort of, like, welts all over my torso, and then my hand starts freezing up, and I immediately have to go to my boss and say,
Uh, dude, I don't know what's happening to me.
And I being a typical man, I just like, well, whatever, we'll get through it.
And, uh, but I call my mom and she says, you need to go to the hospital right now.
And so I did, they checked me out.
Um, and almost immediately after I went to the hospital, I, uh, stopped being able to move around or use my hands.
Uh, I'm talking like my hands were so broken feeling, they were so frozen up and swollen.
That I wasn't able to hold a glass of water and pull it to my mouth.
I wasn't able to open the fridge door, feed myself.
I basically just became a very sad case of just laying on the couch for the next four months, unable to move or help myself to the bathroom.
Sorry, I'm obviously no expert in any of this, but for the people I know who have arthritis, I don't know that it presents with skin welts.
Yes, so that's the psoriasis part of the diagnosis.
Oh, psoriasis, okay.
Sorry, I thought you said thoriasis.
Okay, so the psoriasis is the skin part and then is it the swelling of the joints and so on that happens with the arthritis part?
Correct, yes.
So is it an autoimmune disorder, like your immune system is attacking you?
That's exactly right.
Okay.
And did you take the COVID shots?
I did not.
Okay.
Wow.
That is some seriously bad luck.
I am, I'm so sorry, any family history or anything like that?
That's the thing.
I took some blood work last year, maybe like a year prior to when this first started flaring up.
And it said I may have the potential to develop arthritis.
Um, but no family history as far as I can tell, but I'm not exactly close with my extended family and I have no access to their medical records.
So I've never even met my grandfather, for example.
So there's a whole, uh, history there that I'm just completely shut out of.
Okay.
So, so did they say that you have a chance of developing arthritis as a whole, or was it this stuff?
Cause this is, this seems like a bit of a different animal.
Well, yeah, exactly.
So they said, just in general, you may develop arthritis later in life.
And then all of a sudden I'm swelling up like a balloon and all my joints stop working and I can't move.
It was very, very strange and, well, I'm just going to say it, it was traumatizing.
No, gosh, I mean, absolutely.
I mean, in any shape or circumstances, this would be traumatizing.
But of course, for a musician in particular, it's, you know, I guess I could still vaguely do what I do, but you would be shut out of your whole business, right?
Your whole career.
That's exactly right.
So that was pretty bad.
As a result, I sort of spiraled into a self sorry hole.
What's the word?
Oh, self-pity.
Yeah, self-pity.
And I spiraled into a depression and allowed myself to self-medicate with alcohol in order to deal with just the stress and anxiety of losing my identity and my career.
Well, I mean, it's almost like losing your life in a way, right?
I mean, you're trapped in a body that... Was there constant pain, or if you didn't move, it was relatively okay?
That's the thing, Tony.
I'm always in pain.
Sorry.
That's an Avengers reference.
I'm serious.
Sorry, go ahead.
Oh, okay.
Oh, that's a Tony Stark reference?
Is that right?
Well, yeah, it's the Hulk.
He says something about anger.
Oh, okay.
I'm always, I'm always in pain.
I'm in pain right now.
I've been in pain for the last year straight.
Gosh.
And what is it, you know, the old one to 10 scale?
Um, what is it like for you?
Okay.
So it, it goes up and down.
I'm actually on a kind of experimental medication right now that costs about a thousand dollars a month.
Um, that it reduces the pain, it reduces the inflammation, but there are parts of my body that are never really going to go back to normal.
So, for example, one of my hands, fortunately enough my right hand, that is, it's never going to be the same.
My left hand is going to be okay.
But for pain scale, when I was on a 10 before, I'm now at about a 4, which is manageable, I think.
And is the answer that it's just genetics and age?
Is there any other proximate cause?
You know, I obviously a bit hesitate to say, you know, it's the omnipresent distress, you know, which probably is not true, but is there any other cause that you've been given?
They say that it's genetics and stress.
The drinking probably doesn't help.
And so I've been paring back on that, but no, those are the three primary excuses that I've been given.
Sorry, stress genetics and drinking?
Correct.
But if I understand this rightly, you drank as a result of the ailment, not before it, or was that also occurring before it?
Well, it was also occurring before it, but not as heavily.
So, like, what did it go from and to as far as drinking?
Alright, so we're probably talking about a typical tradie boy, a handful of beers a night, maybe three or four beers a night, and then working its way up to, well, I have nothing going on and I feel like I'm dying, so let's just drink two bottles of wine then pass out on the couch.
Oh gosh.
So, I mean, you were a medium daily drinker before, right?
That's right.
Got it.
And from what age were you drinking this way?
Mid-twenties, I want to say.
Oh, so you weren't like a teen drinker?
No, not really.
I like to be precise, and it's just my own particular fetish, so I apologize for this.
But stuff like not really drives me crazy, because I don't know what that means.
Fair enough.
So my mom would buy wine very often and I would have the occasional glass on the weekends when I was in high school, say 16 or so.
Okay, got it.
So, I mean, no particular drinking that matters or would have much of a health effect.
And was your mother a drinker?
She was, yes.
And was she like an alcoholic?
I don't know.
I mean,
Yes.
You probably do, actually, technically.
I mean, if you don't know, who does, right?
Right.
Fair enough.
So, yeah, I suppose, correct.
She would meet the definition of alcohol.
And what would she drink?
How much did she drink?
Probably about the same as I did when I got sick.
So a couple of bottles of wine.
Actually, you know, maybe not every night, but she would have her moments a couple of times a week.
weekends and then whenever she felt the affliction coming on.
Sorry, what's the affliction here?
Oh, sorry, the want to drink.
Oh, the urge.
She felt the urge.
Okay.
I've just not heard it referred to as an affliction.
Maybe that's AA lingo.
Okay, so your mother would drink a couple of times a week a couple of bottles of wine?
Yeah, that sounds about right.
So how on earth is that not a clear alcoholic?
Again, I'm no expert, but if she's drinking, I don't know, five, six, seven or eight bottles of wine a week, how is that not a raging alcoholic?
Because you had some like, well, maybe, and I'm like, what?
Yeah, yeah, fair enough.
All right, so my mother was a raging alcoholic and so am I.
Well, I'm just curious as to the hesitancy, I suppose.
And it's not a criticism, I'm just genuinely curious, like, I thought you said, well, you know, she'd have a couple of drinks on the weekend, maybe one or two during the week, or, you know, if she was a social drinker, but it's like, no, no, no, five, six, seven, eight bottles of wine a week, that's like serious alcoholic, right?
All right.
And is that something that's a surprise to you?
Or if I ask you that question more directly, is it like, yeah, I guess she was?
Is it, is it that?
No, no, not at all.
Um, I, I, I, I just, I feel a little bit of shame about it myself.
Well, because I feel like I picked it up from her.
And so.
I feel like I've ruined my life because of her influence, and it's not a good situation.
Well, that's an interesting question of causality, right?
I mean, you've heard a million times the, you know, the
The twin brothers.
One drinks, the other doesn't touch alcohol.
And you say, why do you drink?
Well, my father was an alcoholic.
Why do you not drink?
Well, my father was an alcoholic.
I saw how bad it was.
Right, so having a dysfunctional family member does not cause dysfunction in the next generation.
It can easily go.
The other way.
Like, you know, both my parents have mental health problems based on mysticism and selfishness, so I try to be generous and rational, you know?
Sort of.
I mean, I don't think you can go too far in the opposite direction.
Like, you can't have too few drinks.
So, the causality is not that your mother drank.
It's something else.
So, where would you like me to go next?
Well, what was your childhood like as a whole?
Did you grow up with a father?
How did your parents get along?
How were you disciplined if you were?
How was school?
You know, that stuff.
Sure, alright.
So, I was a pretty lonely kid.
I struggled to make friends quite often.
I had a few friends here and there.
Sorry, are you an only child?
No, I have a sister.
A younger sister.
How much younger?
Three years younger.
Three years younger.
Okay.
Did you play with her much or did you hang out with her much?
Oh yeah, but we definitely had different interests and I loved to be alone.
Um, we would have, we would play sometimes and then we would fight and it wasn't really serious, you know, rough and tumble and then she would get hurt by accident and then she would hit me and then I'd go, Hey,
And smack her back.
Sorry, so you would roughhouse, as kids do, and she would get injured?
Not, like, severely.
No, no, I didn't say severely.
Let's not haggle over language here.
I didn't say severely.
So she would get injured, and how often, roughly, would she get hurt or injured or accident?
I mean, I get by accident and all of that, right?
Very seldom, you know.
Oh, okay.
Oh, okay.
So, I mostly just spent time, you know, playing with Legos in my room, or playing video games by myself, imagining, drawing, and just entertaining myself.
When I was going into
Sorry, sorry, sorry, just interrupt.
I'm trying to sort of figure this out.
So, your mother, sorry if I missed this, your mother and your father were together, right?
Okay, so you've got two parents home.
I mean, in the evenings and on weekends, right?
Was your mother a stay-at-home mother?
She was, yes.
Okay.
So, you have two parents home, and one home full-time.
I mean, even before school, after school, and so on.
So, why would you spend all this time alone?
And it's not a criticism, I'm just curious, why you would spend all this time alone?
I mean, my daughter, you know, I've been a stay-at-home dad for like, close on 16 years, and my daughter wakes up and
We plan what we're going to do with our day, right?
Because we enjoy each other's company.
So did you not seek out your mother's company?
Did you not enjoy her company?
Did she not play with you or take you to parks or board games or, you know, uh, imagination games or, uh, why was the solitude so pervasive?
Um, the first thing I think of is I was very severely bullied in school when I was younger.
I was a, I was a small sort of nerdy looking kid.
And so I would seek out the solitude of my room where I could just engage in my fantasies and play with my imagination.
Yeah, that's okay.
Sorry to be annoying.
None of this is causal.
None of this is causal.
So, small, nerdy kids are not inevitably bullied.
You weren't bullied for being small and nerdy looking.
Okay.
Do you know why kids are bullied?
I suppose not.
Okay.
I mean, I know tons of small and nerdy kids and weren't bullied or anything like that.
So the reason that kids are bullied is because they lack protection and connection with their parents.
They're separated from the herd.
They're isolated.
They're without protection.
They don't have all the brothers.
They don't have fathers.
They don't have a close... I mean, they don't have close connection with their fathers.
Bullying is the target of the weak and the isolated.
Who can't fight back because they don't, I mean, no kids can fight back really, but you don't have parental protection.
And that's why you're bullied.
It's your parents' fault.
Okay.
Well, I, I was not particularly close with my mother growing up.
She was, she did feel very, very absent.
Um, we would still do, you know, movie nights on Friday and Christmas was typical.
But, uh, I didn't really see her much during the week and I don't have a whole lot of.
Were you in a house or an apartment?
Was it a mansion?
Was she in the West wing?
Like, what do you mean you didn't see her?
You're in the same house.
Yeah.
Uh, so my dad made a lot of money in the oil field.
He was able to buy a big house and, uh, she spent a lot of time out of my view.
I had my own room.
Uh, she just didn't feel like she was there.
So she's kind of a thief and a con artist then?
To be blunt.
No, and I'll tell you why.
So your dad's making good money, right?
And your mother is a stay-at-home mother, right?
That's right.
Except she's not doing her goddamn job.
She's not parenting.
She's not engaged.
So she's taking money for a job she's not really doing.
Which is why it's kind of a con artist and a thief.
Oh, man.
No one's ever put it to me like that before.
Listen, tell me I'm wrong.
Stay-at-home mother is supposed to stay home.
And what's she supposed to do?
Run the household and raise the kids, which means you're paid, you know, $100, $150, whatever it is, $1,000 a year.
You take your portion of that.
You've got a big ass house.
You don't have to work.
And you have one job, fundamentally.
Which is the mother part of the stay-at-home mother.
To actually mother, to actually parent your children.
So she took the money, she just didn't do the job.
That sounds about right.
Alright.
So that's pretty catastrophic.
And your father paid her and didn't find out whether she was doing the job.
I mean, if your father took $150,000 to work on an oil rig for a year and just never showed up and cashed the checks anyway, he'd go to jail!
Yeah, that's right.
And raising children is a little bit more important than sucking dinosaur juice out of the ground.
Yeah.
I'm so sorry.
I'm sorry.
I found this outrageous.
That a woman, I mean anybody...
Would take, let's see, so she had the job of raising you for 20 years, right?
So let's say she got a hundred grand a year to raise you for 20 years, right?
So that's two million dollars, which you invested it and all of that probably would go to four to six million dollars.
So let's just say five.
So she got paid five million dollars for a job she didn't really do.
Because her job is to protect you from bullying, to make sure you were close, to keep tabs on you, to engage with you, to give you good advice, to raise you, to parent you, not just be a parasitical roommate.
Yeah.
Again, if I'm being unfair and unjust, absolutely correct me.
No, no, that's a fair assessment.
I mean, if I'd stole five million dollars, they'd lock me up until the moon turned to cheese.
Well, as long as we're talking about that, can I tell you about my father as well?
Uh, yeah.
Alright.
So, this guy, when I was growing up, I have a much stronger recollection of what he was like.
Oh, even though he was gone a lot, right?
Yes.
And there's a good reason for that, because he was kind of a rage monster when he finally got home.
Uh, so I did not have very strong communication with him.
Uh, most of it was just a matter of me trying to avoid him because I, he didn't hit me or anything.
There was no physical abuse at all.
Uh, but he, he scared me in the sense that I went to my little imagination land in my room and he would do things like barging and go,
You should stop doing that.
Go outside and play and take away all my stuff, my video games, my toys, and kick me out of the house and tell me not to come back until there were bats or something like that.
And so how old were you when this started?
I don't remember a time before I reached adulthood where that wasn't the case.
Okay, so if your earliest memory starts at two, three, four, so he would kick you out at the age of four to roam the neighborhood and not come home?
Essentially, yeah.
Sorry, I'm not sure what essentially means.
Yes.
Yes.
Okay.
Sorry.
I just, I, the hedging terms, I always want to make sure that I am precise.
So, so from, from four years old or maybe younger, maybe a little older, you were kicked out of the house with no toys, no money, no friends, just go wander the neighborhood and don't be inside.
That's right.
And your sister too?
My sister too.
Yes, I think she might have had things a little bit more leniently than I had them.
It seemed to me when I was growing up that she was allowed to stay in and play with her dollhouse or whatever, while I was forced to go out and try and make friends with the neighbor kids.
And did your father...
Take you outside, play ball, parks, running games, whatever, climb trees, like whatever you'd be doing, uh, outside.
Did your father bring you outside and, uh, did, uh, did he play with you outside ever or much?
Um, it wasn't that he, uh, played with me.
He may.
So I was made to play hockey ever since I was five years old.
And that was his way of playing with me.
He was usually my hockey team coach.
And so I was never really into hockey all that much.
I enjoy team sport as much as the next kid, but I didn't enjoy actually playing hockey because it involved a lot of like going to hockey practice, going to arenas and, you know, putting on the stuff and
And engaging with the other kids on the team in the locker room.
And a lot of them were not exactly my, my kind of, they weren't people that I would wish to hang out with on my own time.
You know, some hockey kids are a little psycho.
Oh, yes.
I mean, there's a huge level of aggression, lack of empathy, and they're not exactly sensitive or thoughtful.
I mean, they're, you know, sort of brute robots of skating and bashing, which, you know, I mean, that's the sport, right?
It's a pretty aggressive sport, can be violent.
And, you know, they're still probably better than the boxing kids, but not exactly the theater kids, right?
Absolutely.
And they're resolutely anti-intellectual.
I mean, a good friend of mine was a hockey kid and I hung around some of those kids.
And, uh, yeah, not my type of kids either, but I suppose if you have a war to fight, they're pretty good.
And that's probably what it's kind of for.
So, okay.
So your dad and, and you did, you, you didn't really have a choice with this, right?
It's just hockey or get yelled at.
Basically.
Oh yes.
Very much so.
Yes.
Okay.
And so were you disciplined, uh, in any way that was consistent or, or memorable in terms of like when you did stuff, your parents didn't like?
Um, so there was one time where my father spanked me, but his heart wasn't in it in the sense that I could tell even as a six or seven year old child that he was trying specifically not to hurt me.
And so when he finished with, like, two or three pats on the bum, I just sort of pulled up my pants and ran away.
I was like, oh, I guess that's over with now.
Back to my regularly scheduled imagination land.
But aside from that, it was mostly just fear of anger and being yelled at.
And when he yelled at you, did he call you names?
No, I think... I'm sorry.
Would imply that I was, uh, what would you say?
Um, being, being a bratty child.
I don't remember anything specific if that's what you mean, but you know, the feeling I would come away from, uh, the, the yelling match was that I was being a bad son who was a disappointment to him.
So did he have this like half ape-like manly standard of manliness and anytime you deviated from that and you're a sissy, you're weak, you're disappointing, you're not a real son, you're not a real boy, you're not a real man, was it that kind of stuff?
Yes.
Okay.
All right.
Again, not wildly unknown among... I've done my stint among heavy manual laborers, and I'm not saying he was unskilled.
Obviously, working on an oil rig is quite skilled.
But I know the type, and they have no inner voice, they have no observing ego, and they just act fairly impulsively, and they don't have any particular standards by which they control, focus, or restrain their behavior.
Yeah, that sounds extremely accurate.
Okay.
And how did your parents get along?
Um, they didn't, uh, they would fight quite often, sometimes loudly.
They wouldn't hit each other.
No physical abuse.
Um, except for this one moment where something very strange happened that will always be lodged in my memory where they started yelling, started screaming.
And so my sister and I went up to our respective bedrooms.
We heard this very loud gong sound and we found out the next day when we were preparing to go for school that my dad had thrown a knife across the kitchen into a giant popcorn bowl and left a big hole in it because he had struck his target.
And it scared my mom pretty bad.
We were all terrified for a long time after that.
Uh, but it was mostly just yelling.
That, that is the big moment that struck us.
And what did they fight about?
I don't know.
I honestly don't know.
Well, you must've heard some of the language.
If, if I did, uh, I, I must've been specifically trying not to hear it.
Like I'm talking, going up into my room, then into my closet, then putting both hands over my ears and trying very hard not to listen.
Right.
Yeah, I was just saying to somebody the other day that one of the most frightening things for children is the perception that the parents are out of control.
Right.
Because then you can't be protected and so on, right?
Now, at what age did you start getting bullied?
Um, pretty early on.
Um, I think at about the age of seven, six or seven, something like that.
And did your parents know?
No, I didn't tell them.
And what is most telling to me about this is when I finally did tell them, I was already in junior high and I admitted it over the, over the dinner table and just very sheepishly like, well, this is what's happening to me now.
And this is what I'm still continuing into junior high, right?
Yeah.
It happened for a long time.
Okay.
And how did the bullying manifest?
Uh, there were a lot of fights, physical fights.
Um, a lot of, there were a lot of physical fights is very obtuse.
I mean, did they, did you get attacked?
Did you fight, did you fight back?
I mean, none of this is good or bad.
I'm just curious.
Oh, sure.
Sure.
Um, so, uh, they, I would never start a fight myself, but people would attack me.
And, uh, it took me several years, uh, before I got to the point where I started fighting back.
And then my philosophy regarding having physical fights with people was you need to, if you're going to be in a physical fight, just put the fucker down, hit him in the goddamn face and end it.
Yeah.
And so it was how I was resolving my fights from about the time that I was 10 onwards.
And when did the bullying fade out?
It faded out at the end of junior high.
So I must've been 14 or so.
And, uh, then, well, I started to go through, well, I was in puberty, but I started to really develop, uh, my looks and my body started filling out.
I started getting stronger looking and then I was never bullied again after that point.
So was it from like kindergarten or primary school onwards until the age of 14?
That's about right.
Yes, that's, that's correct.
So it's almost a decade.
Yeah.
My God, man, that's just appalling.
I'm so sorry, that's just... To me, it's incomprehensible what these parents are doing, or not doing.
So, do you feel that your parents are somewhat off the hook because you didn't tell them?
No.
I... It's... Okay.
I didn't tell them.
Because I didn't want to... well, I didn't feel close with them, for one.
And for two, I didn't want to engage with my father's anger and feeling like I was this tiny little sissy boy who wouldn't fight back.
Right.
Because I'm supposed to be a hockey player, right?
I'm supposed to be an athlete.
Yeah, but if you were smaller, I mean, it's not like you were bullied for your size, but given that you were disconnected from your parents, the size is a factor in terms of just, can you win?
Can you be easily picked on?
Because, you know, I mean, size variation among boys is huge.
Yeah, well, I was smaller as a kid.
I'm now, I think I'm above average in terms of height.
And I'm way above average in terms of fitness and, um, strength, I think.
I think.
Well, no, but I'm not sure why we're talking about you now.
We're talking about when you were five or 10 or 12.
Okay.
I was, I was pretty small.
Okay.
So, uh, let me, I mean, you're not a father, right?
Not yet.
Okay.
Wait, is it coming?
Is it, is your wife pregnant?
She's not pregnant, but we've stopped trying not to have children.
So we're just sort of playing fast and loose, and if she ends up pregnant, then happy accident.
Right.
But, sorry, are you missing a source of income at the moment?
No, I actually do have a job, and she works as well.
Okay, got it.
Okay, sorry, I just wanted to check on that.
Okay.
So, when you become a father, you and your child kind of share a nervous system.
Like, you're kind of one.
You know, your child stubs their toe and you wince, right?
And if your child is unhappy, you feel it immediately.
Yep.
So, just to be clear,
Your parents had the absolute responsibility to know that you were bullied.
It was their job.
It wasn't your job to tell them.
It was their job to know.
So, if you say to parents as a whole, is bullying a problem in school?
What would they say?
Yes.
Yes.
So they would say, yes, bullying is a problem in school.
It is a risk factor.
You know, it's sort of like saying to parents of teenagers, hey, do you think peer pressure is at all an issue?
And it's like, well, yeah, of course, peer pressure is an issue and you need to keep your eye on it and so on, right?
Are drugs in school?
Yes, they are, right?
So do kids drink?
And yeah, of course, sometimes they do.
And so this is a
A sort of natural and normal risk of childhood.
Now, for your parents, they'd say, oh, okay, is your kid a little shy?
Yes, he is.
Is your kid kind of smaller than average?
Yes, he is, right?
So, could he be at risk for bullying?
Yes, of course, right?
I mean, this, right?
That's not even complicated parenting.
That's very true.
So it was their absolute job and responsibility to make sure you weren't getting the living shit kicked out of you.
Bullied, frightened, harassed, chased, haunted, living in anxiety, looking over your shoulder, hiding in the bathroom, all the shit that happens to kids who are bullied.
It was their absolute job and responsibility and a completely fucking obvious one to make sure you weren't bullied.
And they failed.
So, in doing that, they were colluding with the bullies.
In other words, the bullies instinctively, absolutely knew this about your parents.
And that's why you were bullied.
That's why I say, like, a lack of connection and protection.
So, by not asking you if you were bullied... And the other thing, too, like, again, when you become a father, you'll... I hate to be this, like, play the father card, but... When you become a father, you'll genuinely understand that
Your kids' moods are completely obvious to you.
You know, like kids, they think they're hiding stuff, you know, like they're trying to put on a brave face, or... Like, your kids' moods are completely so obvious.
So, what that means is that, you know, there was a day before you started being bullied, and then there was the time after you started being bullied, and your parents absolutely knew the difference.
Yeah.
Right, like if you have a girlfriend and then she goes to some party and she gets assaulted, right?
Let's just say she gets punched in the stomach or, you know, it's not like black eyes and stuff, like she gets punched in the stomach or, you know, some wound that she can cover up or something like that.
And if you went for her for brunch the next day, do you think you'd notice a change in her mood?
Oh, big time.
Yeah.
Correct.
That our child was being bullied.
That's what they always say, right?
If it comes up, right?
Oh, gosh, why didn't you tell us?
It's your fault.
You should have told us.
And it's like, but if I had been able to tell you, I wouldn't have been bullied.
Yeah.
Because your dad's a tough guy, right?
And as a tough guy, he'd want to protect his small son, right?
Because he's a tough guy.
Yeah.
Except he didn't.
He chickened out.
Or he liked it.
Or he's not a tough guy.
Yeah.
I mean, you know, people who would consider themselves tough guys because they scream at little kids.
Uh, that's really just about the most, I mean, that's like some guy saying I'm a, I'm a fantastic boxer because I can beat up a girl guide.
Like, that's just sad.
That's just pathetic.
Sorry.
The way you worded that was funny, but, uh, no, I, I, it is pathetic.
So what did they say when you finally told them you'd been bullied for like a decade almost?
So it is kind of a poem in the story of our family as to when I finally confessed to them that I was being bullied and how it made me feel.
My parents, they went down to my school the next day and spoke with the, I don't know what you call them, the principal, superintendent.
And sorry, how old were you at this point?
I believe I was around 12.
Oh, so this is like two years before the bullying ended?
That's right, yes.
Okay.
So your parents go down to the school, and what did they say?
That's what they did the next day, but what did they say when you said, hey, I've been bullied for like seven or eight years?
Oh, this is really going to raise your hackles.
It's not my hackles who need to be raised, brother.
Well, my mom,
All but climbed onto the desk, pointed at the principal, and said... No, no, that's the next day!
When you said, Mom, Dad, I've been bullied for seven or eight years, you said you said that at dinner or something?
That's right, yes.
Okay, so what did they do and say when you told them this?
Oh, okay.
My dad became very quiet.
My mom said, I can't believe this is happening to you.
And then my dad said, you should just punch him in the face.
That was his advice.
Right.
Yeah, so Mr. Tough Guy is putting the protection of his child on his 12-year-old child who's prepubescent, who's facing damn bullies probably a third larger than he is.
Yes.
Okay.
Okay, so that's terrible.
And did he offer to teach you how to box, or how to punch, or did he take you to martial arts, or did he teach you something about self-defense?
He did, actually.
He took me to martial arts, and I learned karate.
And when did that happen?
Pretty much at the exact same time.
He was very immediate about enrolling me after that.
Okay, so the first thing out of your mother's mouth, which is quite telling when you tell her you've been traumatized and bullied for seven or eight years, the first word out of your mother's mouth is what?
Oh my god, that sucks.
No, no, that's not what you told me.
Do you remember what you said your mother said?
Oh my God.
No, she said, I can't believe this happened to you.
So the first word out of her mouth that you remember is I. So you've been traumatized and it's their failure, their absolute failure, right?
They could have homeschooled you.
Your mom was home.
Right?
They could have taken you to a different school, they could have asked you how school was going, they could have figured out that you were in a sad mood or a bad mood.
So, after your mother realizes that she has overseen your trauma, you're being traumatized, she's like the first thing out, I!
Me!
I!
Me!
Me!
I!
I!
Me!
Me!
I can't believe this happening!
I!
Right?
Did your parents ever apologize?
For their failure in protecting you?
I think they felt pretty proud about how they defended me afterwards, if you can call it that.
Okay, so sorry, let's get your, what was it, your dad leaning over the principal's table, or what?
Right, so the next day, both my parents went down as a couple to the principal's office, and my, oh my god, I'm sorry, I need to move my desk out of the room here, they're rustling.
Sure, no problem.
Even they sense the tension.
Behave!
All right, so my parents went down to the school together, and it was during the day, so I'm sure my dad took some time off of work, my mom went down there, and they're both in the principal's office together, and the story that I have been told is that my mother became extremely angry with the principal and said, you know this is happening, you've always known this is happening,
It's your fault that this is happening and you need to do about it.
Okay.
So she blamed the principal.
That's right.
Right.
Which is, I mean, obviously the principal is, is causal in this, but I mean, it's really the parent's job to protect their children.
I'm struggling not to laugh at myself, but I'm just going to say, my God, are you ever right?
Yeah, I mean, if some parent takes their five-year-old swimming and the five-year-old half-drowns, does she get to scream at the lifeguard?
I mean, that's ridiculous.
I mean, is it the lifeguard's job to help out?
Absolutely!
But the lifeguard can't substitute for the parent.
I mean, if they go, go swim for a five-year-old kid, there's a lifeguard.
And then the lifeguard is distracted or helping someone else or whatever.
And your kid half drowns and then you scream at the lifeguard.
It's like, well, shouldn't you be in the water with your kid?
I mean, that's, that's ridiculous.
I mean, it's, I can't even tell you how ridiculous this all is and how pathetic.
I know, I know.
The only reason I found any thallus was just by fighting back as hard as I could, you know, just out crazy the bully kids.
Right.
That seemed to work extraordinarily well.
Sure.
Um, I instilled a lot of fear in my bullies by just unexpectedly whamming them in the face in public, in front of authority figures, like the teachers or the bus driver, whatever.
And then they stopped.
And that was the only thing that worked.
Yeah.
I mean, what would have worked is for you to have a close relationship with your parents and for them to actually protect you.
That would have worked.
But in the absence of that, after you hit puberty, you can start belting the kids, right?
Yeah.
Okay.
Now, what is your relationship to not doing that when you were younger?
Like, do you feel bad about that?
Are you okay with that?
Like in terms of not fighting back?
Uh, I'm not proud of it, um, at all.
I do feel some, some shame, but I don't feel like it's particularly my shame.
Uh, I do place some blame on my parents.
Up until, well, up until this conversation, I've never really blamed them all that much, uh, for that, for failing to protect me, I mean.
Okay.
Um, I mean, in my view, in my view, you were entirely wise to not fight back until later.
Okay.
Entirely wise.
So, I mean, I wasn't really bullied much as a kid.
There was one guy who was sort of hunting me through the halls of my junior high school because his brother said that I'd hit him, which I hadn't, but it was just causing trouble, right?
Now, this kid was 17 and I was 12.
And he had, I still remember his name now, like decades later, and this guy had this, this... I mean, he was almost an adult, right?
He had those cold psycho eyes, where you just know there's, there's like nothing going on back there that would ever cause him to halt or question his behavior.
I've seen those.
Yeah, you've seen those eyes, right?
Now, I avoided him.
And then eventually it just kind of faded away.
Now, why did I avoid him?
Because...
He could have killed me.
Now, I don't mean that he would have purposefully tried to kill me, but, you know, you reach to hit some kid, the kid jerks away, maybe they fall down the stairs, maybe you break your neck, maybe you're just dead, or maybe you break your arm, or maybe there's some permanent injury.
Or, you know, he hits you and then a bone fragment goes into your brain, or your nose cartilage goes into your frontal cortex.
I mean, violence is really, really a dice roll.
It's Russian roulette every time, right?
And maybe some psycho thing just takes over, like Fight Club style.
Where did you go, psycho boy?
Right?
So maybe just some psycho thing happens because, you know, the kid obviously was severely damaged and abused as a child, and maybe that all comes out.
Right, maybe he's like genetically or just weird as a whole and it's like he views me as superior and then there's this destruction of the superior that's common to this kind of stuff, right?
You know, like the people who aren't smart will sometimes attack the people who are smart.
Like if you ever saw the movie Raging Bull, right?
The boxer's girlfriend is attracted to this handsome boxer and then her boyfriend destroys his face.
It's like, well, he ain't so pretty now, is he?
Right?
The sort of attack upon that which is perceived as better.
And so you don't know what kind of psycho stuff is going to go on.
Or maybe you take out this bully
Somehow, right?
I don't know, you hit him on the side of the head with the edge of a metal tray or whatever it is you do, right?
Okay, and maybe he's beaten and then he goes to hospital.
And then what happens?
Well, everybody makes fun of him because he got his ass beat by a 12-year-old.
And then what's the only way he can retain his status?
Or regain his status?
Beating up a 12-year-old?
Well, he's gonna have to do something, right?
And so then you've got a kid in school, well actually I mean an older kid, in my case sort of a virtual adult, you've got an older kid in school who is tortured until he takes you apart.
Because everybody jeers at him, women jeer at him, his friends jeer at him, he gets known as the guy who got beaten up by the 12 year old and he is crushed and humiliated and extremely dangerous.
So do you mind if I tell you a little story about my encounter with a psychopathic, potentially murderous bully?
Sure.
All right.
So this was about at the tail end of when I finally had had enough.
Um, I was in the gym locker room and I think I was 14 at the time.
And we had this kid who everybody knew he was kind of a nutcase anyway.
So I was laughing at him, uh, not
Like not making fun of him or anything, just like he was trying to show off his, his macho bravado as a 14 year old kid.
And I was just laughing open.
And sorry, you were laughing at him?
Uh, yes, yes.
I was laughing at his weirdo childish attempt to prove to everyone that he was a real scary boy.
Right.
So he was reminding you of your dad and you were angry.
I was very angry.
Yeah, got it.
So, I mean the laughing is like provocative, right?
It's jeering.
That's right, yeah.
I was almost wanting a confrontation.
So then he comes over, he's much bigger than me, slams me into the lockers, pushes me onto the ground and starts choking me.
And when I say choking, I don't mean like holding his hands around my neck.
I mean, he's actually pushing his thumbs into my trachea.
And your trachea can get damaged and your hyoid can get cracked and like really bad stuff can happen, right?
Okay.
Yeah.
In that moment, I did not fight back.
What I did was I laughed at him until I couldn't laugh anymore because there was no air going into my lungs.
Right.
There was nothing coming through.
And I just smiled and smiled.
I'm sorry, you just what?
Oh, I was just smiling because I was trying to prove to him that I wasn't scared of him.
Okay, so that's a bit of a death wish though, right?
Oh, absolutely.
Yeah, okay.
I'm sure you're aware of it.
I just wanted to double check this.
I would die rather than surrender.
Because you, I mean, were you scared?
It's strange to remember.
I remember being scared of being hurt, but I wasn't scared of him.
Well, I suppose if he killed me, I wasn't scared in that moment.
So you weren't scared of death in that moment?
That's correct.
And what mattered was to not show any fear.
That's exactly correct.
Thank you.
Which is kind of a death wish.
Because he's choking you until he sees fear, which is a dominance thing from him and a submission thing from you.
So withholding that would be courting being murdered.
Yes.
Okay.
Okay.
Just as long as we're aware.
And your age at this time?
Fourteen.
Fourteen.
Okay.
Got it.
Yeah.
So your life at this point did not seem to be much worth living?
Yes.
This is when my first inklings of suicidal ideation started to occur.
And he probably caught a whiff of that anyway.
Right.
Right.
So, I mean, so submission is, I mean, submission to a greater force where there's no benefit and in fact the danger increases if you fight back.
Submission is perfectly rational and wise.
It is a survival mechanism.
I mean, if the deer has a giant tiger jumping at it, do you tell the deer, hey, you've got some teeth, you've got some hooves, you can turn and fight?
So, my thinking at the time was, well, I've had enough of this shit, of being bullied by people, of everyone in my life not caring about me.
Uh, I I'm just going to laugh at these people until they kill me.
Right?
No, I get it.
Yeah.
And then after that point, uh, he, he let me go.
Uh, I'm assuming because he was scared of what might happen to him.
If he actually did hurt me, but I just stood up, went back to my locker, continued laughing and went about my day as if nothing happened.
Of course, internally I'm screaming and I just realized the true violence of what can be visited upon me if I don't submit.
If that makes sense.
Right, but you were also telegraphing that you were transmitting or transmuting yourself, I guess transmogrifying yourself, into a kind of psycho boy yourself.
Because after you laugh at a guy, he almost chokes you to death, and then you continue laughing at him and pretend like nothing happened, you are signaling to the crowd that you are now transforming into a kind of psycho boy, if that makes sense.
Yeah, and I'm not trying to make this story seem to be like, and then everyone stood up and clapped or something like that.
But I could tell that everyone was very scared of me from that point on.
Well, I mean, but that's, but that's why.
Because the story would have gone around like your name.
Oh man, he was like, uh, he was choked out.
He was turning blue.
He almost died.
And he got up and laughed at the kid and went about his day, like nothing happened.
And, and so now, uh, people are, uh, of course, yeah, people are scared of you.
That makes perfect sense.
And that's what I wanted.
Right.
And I got my wit.
And so.
Well, no, no, you didn't get your wish.
Your wish, like all children, was to be cared for, to be loved, to be treasured, to be played with, and for your family, and in particular your parents, to really enjoy your company, so that you don't feel like a weirdo, freak, Cylon, violent robot.
Sorry, that was brilliant wordplay.
I love that.
That's beautiful.
You're entirely right, though.
My God.
I mean, you made the best of an absolutely shitty situation, and you scared everyone away, which did not exactly help with your isolation.
And it also would mean that only girls who had probably some sociopathic tendencies themselves would be drawn to you.
Because you put out psycho-baiting signals, right?
Right.
So what happened with dating?
Oh boy.
Well, um, once I hit puberty and I was able to start dating, um, I, I found myself to be very successful with girls.
So I've never had an issue attracting girls, having girls interested in me, but I always had this romantic bone in my body where I just wanted to find my one woman and be with her forever.
Uh, which was,
Extremely bad, because I encountered a BPD woman when I was 19, and she took advantage of that hardcore.
All right, so hang on, we've accelerated like five years here real quick.
So you say that you're very successful with women, right?
That's right.
Okay.
I would question that.
That doesn't mean I'm right.
Obviously, we're just talking for the first time.
But to me, successful with women doesn't mean getting dates, and it doesn't mean getting laid, and it doesn't mean having girlfriends.
Success with women is success with quality women, with moral women, with caring women, with thoughtful women, with women with the capacity to pair bond and love and be great mothers.
Right?
And after your, you know, I'm a psycho mating display, and again, how that would have raced around the school and carved into the annals of school history or whatever, quality women would have been like, Oh God, I can't.
I mean, I guess he's a good looking guy, but
Damn!
I mean, he'd be a crazy dad and a dangerous guy to have children with or to date.
So, the quality women, right?
The women of character and of morals and of virtue, and with caring fathers in particular, right?
Because, you know, I guarantee you these conversations happened where, because you were a good-looking young man or a good-looking boy,
They would have been like, yeah, he's cute, man.
And yeah, he got almost choked out and laughed at the guy who was choking him out.
And what would the dads have said?
That kid's nuts and don't talk to him?
Yeah, like this is a seriously disturbed kid.
And listen, I mean, as a father, right?
I mean, to a daughter,
I mean, you would say, listen, I'm real sorry that that kid's going through this, like whatever has happened in his life that he's like this is really sad and really tragic, but you can't have anything to do with him.
I would just stress that, okay, so I did jump ahead a little bit.
A little bit, yeah.
In between the moment when that happened and I started getting old enough to date, you know, after high school and everything.
Um, I, I did.
I moved into the position of, well, I was starting to go through puberty.
I was getting really good at hockey.
Uh, I was a good fighter, um, with karate and everything.
But you were good.
You were joining the dark side, right?
I, I.
See that's the thing is like I really tried to hone My idea of what it meant to use violence and it was always in self-defense And I never did anything like that again.
Like when I think about that moment of the of the bully choking me Uh, it scares me even now thinking that I have that within me.
I acknowledge it but I I always I only How do I put this?
I would only ever use violence to defend myself and the people I care about, but I would never start a fight.
It was... and I just... I encountered too many fights.
Okay, this is all a bunch of words, but you ended up dating a bipolar girl.
That's the dark side.
So you could tell me all you want about your theories, but the evidence is you were on the dark side.
Bipolar is about as dark as it... sorry, was it... it was a borderline or bipolar?
It's borderline.
Okay, so borderline is about as dark as it gets, right?
I mean, it's one of the worst... I mean, we're probably just using this term in an amateur sense, right?
Because we're not clinicians, and I don't know if she was ever diagnosed or whatever.
But, I mean, that's about as bad as things get, right?
It's the worst thing I've ever experienced.
Oh, no question.
So, if you are getting wrapped up
In the life of a borderline, then you're in the dark side.
I'm not saying you yourself are immoral or evil.
I'm not saying anything like that.
But this is the dark side.
This is trash planet.
This is like the underbelly.
This is like layers of hell.
This is Dantean.
This doesn't get worse than this.
I couldn't agree more.
Right.
Okay.
So, did you get any dating advice from your parents, particularly as they saw that you were growing into a good-looking young man?
Let me just say this.
No.
Okay.
So you had to try and figure things out yourself.
Yes.
And you had taken the dark side.
And again, the dark side is not that you fought back.
Although that's semi-dark.
Now, listen, self-defense is perfectly morally justified and I have no problem with self-defense.
You know, people break into your house, you can use whatever means, including lethal force, to protect you and your family.
Like, I have no issue with that.
But the problem is that the bullying is evil seeking to replicate by imprinting upon children.
So, I mean, I'm not a Christian, but we can look at sort of the general analogy of the demon possesses the bully and then uses the bully's body to torture other children so that other demons can take up residence.
Okay.
And the only way to avoid that happening, and I hate to say it, is to keep avoiding the fights.
Oh, I'm sorry.
I try as hard as I can to avoid fighting.
I never want to fight.
No, you can always avoid fighting.
Okay.
No, I mean, technically you can, right?
I mean, you did when you were being choked out.
Right.
And listen, I'm not at all criticizing anything.
I'm just talking about the different paths, right?
So you got lured into a life of violence.
How many fights would you get into in any given school year?
And again, I'm not saying you started them, but how many fights would you get into?
I never started fights, but I think I got into an average of about five per year.
Right, and these would be full-on bare-knuckle schoolyard or street brawls, right?
So how many fights do you think you got, like you said, five a year, for how many years?
Maybe the last five years of my experience being bullied?
Okay, so from the age of, say, 9 to 14, you got into 25 fights?
That's about right.
And that's after you learned karate and self-defense and so on, right?
Yes.
So, you know, I always hesitate because I never want people to think, aha, he's catching me out, or I'm trying to jump you like some prosecution lawyer.
I don't mean that at all.
But my understanding was, and I could have misunderstood completely, probably did, right?
But my understanding was that you said, I learned how to fight back and the bullying stopped.
That does not quite square with, it went on for five more years, even after I was beating the crap out of kids, because I knew karate and they didn't.
Right.
Yeah, I suppose.
Yeah.
No, you're right.
And again, I'm not trying to catch you out.
Oh, I got you at a contradiction.
I'm just genuinely like, I don't quite square the, I can't quite square the circle.
Um, oh, uh, I, I should mention some of these fights happened on the ice in the hockey rink.
Uh, a good many.
Okay.
But that doesn't really count.
Does it?
I mean, that's, you know, the old deal, the old joke.
Like I went to a, I went to a fight and a hockey game broke out.
Okay.
Well, if that's the case, then maybe one per year for the last five years.
Okay.
Okay.
But still, it didn't stop when you fought back.
Well, I stopped being dominated by people.
I'm not, that's not what I said.
The fighting didn't stop when you started punching back.
The bullying.
Because you just kept, for another half decade, which is like 35 years in the life of a child, is like dog years, right?
So for another half decade, from 9 to 14, you were still getting into fistfights.
So the fighting back didn't stop the bullying.
That's right.
Okay.
And, and again, I'm not trying to catch you out.
I just want to sort of understand things.
Okay.
So, so that's important, right?
It's all good.
Yes, absolutely.
Sorry, you said what?
Uh, uh, I just, I thought you said it's all good.
And I, I can't quite understand what that means.
None of this is good.
No, I was just trying to say that, uh, I don't feel like you're trying to catch me.
Oh, okay.
Got it.
Okay.
I appreciate that.
You're right.
Okay, so you got lured into a life of violence.
Now, again, there are lots of options when it comes to being bullied, but
You know, punching the kid didn't work, right?
Because everyone has this fantasy like I just beat up the bully and everyone cheers and carries me down the hallway on their shoulders and I'm the popular kid forever and nothing bad ever happens, right?
But when you engage with bullies, they tend to escalate.
Because you're in a trapped situation.
Yeah.
Right?
Because you have to keep going back, and they have to keep going back, and you can't get away.
Like, school is like a prison.
Although often with even more violence, right?
So school is like a prison.
If you're locked in with someone, it's a whole different matter, right?
I mean, if you use self-defense because someone breaks into your house and then he goes to hospital and then to jail, well, he's not coming back to your house.
But when you're locked in with people,
Week after week, year after year.
You can't get away, you have to go back.
It's messed up.
Right.
I, I hated school for that exact reason.
Sure.
Being trapped, building all of these crazy eyed motherfuckers who want to hurt me.
Right.
It, it was.
Well, they're trying to turn you into a crazy eyed MF, right?
I get that.
I get that.
That's how it transmits.
That's how it changes over.
Okay.
Now, your parents knew about your bullying when you were 12, is that right?
Yes.
And how did they follow and track, because at 14 you were getting choked half to death.
So it's hard for me to see, given that your parents are now fully and consciously aware of the problem of bullying, what happened.
I mean, I guess your father took you to karate, and what else?
Uh, we all just stopped talking about it, and I dealt with it in my own way.
Okay, so your parents are completely responsible then, because they should have known since you were five, and they explicitly knew when you were twelve, and was there a plan?
Did they say, we're gonna meet once a week with the principal until this is resolved?
I need to find these kids' parents and go talk to them, and tell them to stop bothering my son, or I'm gonna sue their asses, like, whatever, whatever, right?
He's a tough guy, right?
So,
There was no plan and it all just vanished, right?
They never asked about the bullying again.
That's right.
Okay.
All right.
So this is like unbelievably terrible parenting, just so you know.
Appalling.
Like, it couldn't be worse.
Okay.
Um, well, I, yeah.
No, I need you to denormalize this because you're trying to have a kid.
So you need to denormalize the living shit out of this stuff so that you're not even tempted a tiny bit to replicate what your parents did.
And the only way that we stop repeating behavior is we roundly and bottomlessly condemn it.
I... How do I... I'm sorry, Steph.
This is sort of...
Difficult stuff for me to wade through just remembering my history of violence.
It doesn't bring happy memories No, of course and and I sympathize with it.
I really do I sympathize I sympathize and I so I mean, I don't want to make it about myself.
I chose a different path But in part I chose a different path because I grew up without a father, right?
So is it it's a different situation when you don't have a dad
Because you had your dad's image in your mind goading you to punch and to beat and to be violent and to fight, right?
Like, I didn't have any of that in my mind.
So your dad was kind of goading you on to fight.
But your dad didn't fight.
Your dad didn't go and confront the kid's parents or make sure that there was a plan in place or get lawyers and figure out what his legal options were.
I mean, seriously, bro, if you'd gone home and told your dad, I was almost choked out in school today.
I mean, how old was the kid who choked you, roughly?
Uh, I think about the same age.
So like 14?
14, maybe 15.
He, he was so big that I think he might've been held back a few years.
He wasn't exactly- Okay, so he could have been 16, he could have been 15.
So if, if, uh,
If your kid gets choked out by a much bigger kid, you contact a fucking lawyer.
Because that's like attempted murder.
That's like grievous bodily harm.
That's some serious shit, right?
And you don't do it just to protect your own kid, but the other kids.
Like, if you have a lion loose in the school, somebody should make a fucking phone call.
When I think about it, it's still weird to me that nobody said or did anything about this kid.
Right.
Well, you know, I mean, society is designed to bully kids because that way they become compliant citizens, right?
So it's a lot of political power is based upon the bullying of children.
So there's not much incentive for government schools to prevent kids from being bullied because governments rely on kids being bullied and growing up to be compliant adults, right?
So yeah, it is.
From a moral standpoint, it's completely weird, but from a sort of mechanics of power standpoint, it makes sense.
Okay, so tell me about Borderline Girl.
Borderline Girl.
All right.
So I'm just going to start from the beginning of the music stuff, because that leads directly into it, if that's okay.
Sure.
Okay.
So, one day my dad brings home a guitar for me.
He paid for it with a bonus that he got, and I immediately took to it like a duck to water.
Play until my fingers bled was the summer of 69.
Yeah, okay.
That's my singing audition for your guitar.
I'm kidding.
Go ahead.
Oh, thank you.
Well, I'll sing for you too.
Ah, no, probably not.
So this thing took over my brain, my soul, my entire life.
I spent probably eight hours a day playing this thing.
By the time I hit high school, I was creating bands and leading them and playing shows and stuff.
So by the time I was 19, I managed to get into a somewhat prolific local band.
That needed a, an expert guitar player.
And I was the man for the job.
They wanted me to move into their house with them.
Uh, which it's like, Hey man, you have those long God given spider fingers, like the Brian May full on daddy long legs, or I have giant Italian hands.
There you go.
Okay.
Got it.
Got it.
Okay.
Now that helps.
I unfortunately have stubby Irish hands.
So for me, an F chord gave me a seizure, but anyway, go on.
All right.
So I move into this band house and
A girl from my past, uh, I want to say, I'm trying to remember exactly.
Uh, I think I was six teen when I met her.
Um, I meet her again, three years later, she comes to a house party, uh, with another guy on her arm.
Now, as soon as she sees, how pretty is she?
Um, I think most people would think of her as like a five or a six, like not beautiful in the face, but, uh, her body is, is incredible.
I'm just going to say that.
Okay.
Smoking body.
Nice legs.
Shame about the face.
Got it.
Okay.
Yeah, exactly.
So as soon as she walks in the house, she remembers me.
I remember her.
She drops the guy's arm, you know, like the, she's doing the reverse Gene Simmons.
Just like I can make her drop her hand.
Anyway, so then she just walks straight over to me and for the next, I don't know, four hours of this house party, she's all about me.
We're just face-to-face.
Yeah, you get love-bombed.
Yeah.
Yeah, love-bombing, exactly.
And sexual presentation, heavy breathing, hair tossing, touching your arm, like sexual presentation?
All that stuff, yeah.
Okay, got it.
When I think about this memory, I think about how I've never experienced anyone paying that close attention to me and giving me the kind of, what would you say?
I don't know, validation?
You hove into view in somebody else's consciousness and you finally start to feel real for yourself, right?
Manifest, socially.
Yeah, I get it.
It's like being summoned back from the dead by an expert witchy necromancer with great tits.
All right, go on.
Yeah, okay.
I'm just going to warn you, as I go further into this story, it's going to be harder and harder for me to keep my emotions straight.
I'm going to be... this is hard stuff to talk about, but this is why I'm here.
So, anyway.
Uh, we start dating.
Um, she is unbelievably, um, sexual.
Uh, she, she wants to have sex and she wants to have sex, uh, two, three, four, five times a day.
Right.
So she was sexually abused as a kid, right?
That's yes.
Yes.
Uh, that's I'm sorry.
Oh, that's what she told me.
Yeah, okay, got it.
So she's completely love-bombing you, and she is making you a dopamine addict to sex and attention.
She's reeling you in.
I wouldn't say grooming, because you're an adult, but it's kind of like that.
Yeah.
Oh, all right.
And you know what, you know what, take what you want, right?
Take what you want and then pay for it.
Hey, look at that.
Really great sex, four or five times a day with a smoking hot female.
I wonder if there's going to be a price.
No, there's not going to be a price to this.
It's all free.
Can't lose anything.
Anyway, go on.
Yeah.
Sorry.
So she wants to have
Sex all the time.
This is kind of like the entire basis of the relationship.
She's like, ooh, hot musician boy.
I want to have sex with him all the time and make him addicted to me.
I didn't know this at the time, but now that I look back, that's how it felt.
Well, I mean, you're not getting any advice, right?
I mean, your idiot peers are like, yeah, she's hot.
You know, good for you, man.
Five times a day.
Go for it, bro.
And your parents aren't giving you any warning and there's no village elders to punch you in the nads and say, snap out of it, kid.
This goes straight off a cliff.
Yes, exactly.
And I am... I did... Sorry, one thing at a time.
It was not easy to... I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
Okay, let's continue with the having lost a set.
All right, so anyway, so three months go by.
Everyone's very proud that I have this girlfriend and we're all crazy in love and everything.
And she breaks up with me out of nowhere with very little explanation.
And I am, uh, I'm relatively heartbroken because it's like, well, now I, I don't have access to this great source of fun anymore.
And that sucks.
The bullet like just passed right past your ear.
Like the, the borderline broke up with you.
Yes.
You got an out?
You got a get-out-of-jail-free clod fluttering down from the infinite cleavage?
Holy crap, bro!
What happened?
Well, we're only starting this story, Steph.
I'm sorry.
Okay, but she gave you an out.
She broke up with you.
Yes.
Okay, and so she gave you some post-nut clarity, right?
Yes.
Then what happened?
And then...
Uh, I spent about a week, uh, wallowing in self pity, missing a girl who I thought I'd connected on a deep and psychological and emotional connection with.
And, uh, I reached out to her and tried to rekindle things and she accepted.
And only after... Sorry, what was her story about breaking up with you?
Why did she, why'd she break up with you?
See,
It's hard to even tell, like, I, I still to this day don't even know why we initially broke up or why she broke up with me.
Oh, she just said, I don't want to date anymore and that's it, right?
Yeah, basically.
Okay.
So it's kind of sadistic, right?
To get a guy addicted and then yank it away.
It's, you know, it's kind of cruel, right?
But all right.
We, we understand the borderline.
Okay.
So then what?
All right.
So then we get back together and I find out that basically what she had done
Is she became attracted to another musician guy and decided that she wanted to have sex with him and not feel guilty about being with me at the same time.
Sorry.
I'm trying to understand this cause I've never heard this before.
Are you saying that a groupie was unfaithful?
No, like, hang on.
Let me just, I got to jot this shit down.
Cause this is like revelatory.
Okay.
Groupie unfaithful.
No, my, my pen just broke.
It won't write it.
It just won't write it.
It's like trying to draw a square circle.
It's impossible.
Okay.
Sorry.
Go on.
No, it's all good.
It's all good.
Um, so anyway, um, then, uh, after this, she has a week long fling with this other musician guy.
And then I reach out to her and go, Hey, I actually really miss you.
Well, you know, I thought that we were able to.
Going to be able to hang out and well, I just wanted to have sex with her.
Like that's all it was.
At least at that time, but I was also completely addicted to her and I'd never, I don't even know what emotional connection feels like at this point.
I get the psych psychology of it.
So, uh, what happened?
Okay.
So then we get back together from that point, we stayed together for about
Three years with, as far as I'm aware, no infidelity issues or anything, just we hang out constantly, we're constantly having sex, and it's like this crazy weird dream with the occasional bump in the road that, for whatever reason, didn't seem to bug me at the time, where she would do something like
You didn't have sex with me today.
That makes me... that makes me sad.
I'm gonna go sit and cry and then spend the next week not talking to you because you made me feel bad.
And then... I'm sorry.
I'm very sorry.
This is hard to talk about.
Um, yeah, I mean, I'd, I'd really appreciate it if you stopped apologizing to me.
I mean, this is what we're here to talk about.
I mean, like if you go to a doctor and you start saying where it hurts, you say, I'm so sorry.
I don't mean to burden you with where it's like, that's the whole point.
Right.
So we could talk about, I understand.
You don't have to apologize.
And I sympathize.
Go ahead.
Thanks, Steph.
Um, so I'm picking up on this pattern of behavior, uh, within the relationship over years, but I do nothing about it.
Well, no, but compared to your parents' marriage, this is bliss!
I mean, your parents are fighting all the time, and your mother's drinking all the time, and your dad's yelling and frightening you, and like, I mean, isn't this relative bliss?
It was supreme bliss.
And that's a long time for that kind of bliss to go on, right?
I mean, some hiccups and all of that, but that's, uh, that was not my guess as to the next chapter of the story, but anyway, go on.
Okay.
Um, so, uh, basically what she would do is I would be completely addicted to her.
And then if I failed in any way to live up to her expectation of what she, what she wanted from me.
Then she would withdraw sex, withdraw affection, just completely leave me in the dark, not talk to me on the phone, not come over to my house.
And I felt this impending doom of like, oh God, I'm going to lose this girl again.
Yeah, so she was sort of training you like a puppy with positive and negative stimuli.
So when you did what she wanted, she'd reward you with sex.
When you didn't do what she wanted, she'd withhold affection.
And so she wasn't communicating you, but she was trying to train you like some wayward puppy, right?
Exactly.
Yeah.
Okay.
So this, this is going on for several years.
Um, and then she does the BPD thing where she mirrors my behavior.
She changes her personality to match mine so that she can further sort of dig her claws into me.
Yeah.
It's mirroring.
Yeah.
I got it.
Okay.
Yeah.
So then she becomes a musician, uh, dated.
It should be stated here that her father is a musician and she had musical inclinations before.
Sorry, did she become an actual musician or just a drummer?
No, no.
We're getting there.
All right.
No, she actually did become a real musician.
But she wasn't very good.
But, you know, she's this odd tip who's kind of this blood around town.
And so people want to be associated with her.
And so she joins a band.
She joins her own band, not my band, and she wants to be a guitarist like me.
Who would have figured?
And at this point, she is telling me things like, Well, I need to spend more time with my bandmates because I'm serious about wanting to be a musician just like you, and so I can't be around you as often.
Sorry about that.
I immediately start thinking, Oh God, here we go again.
Turns out that she cheated on me with her drummer from the band that she joined and needed to spend more time with.
Oh, it's the drummers.
Okay.
Always the drummers.
Yeah, yeah.
Okay.
All right.
So, he confesses to me
One day when she realized that I'm suspicious of her, she goes, Hey, I just want the thing.
I'm sorry.
It's so serious and dark, but, uh, this guy and I, we, my drummer, we actually made out and stuff and I'm sorry.
Sleep together.
Just, I mean, it's not great, but well, and then, so I say, look, even kissing is infidelity.
Get the fuck out of my house.
So.
Then I messaged the guy and I say, Hey man, uh, I don't blame you.
Uh, but don't do it again.
And then he messages me back.
Yeah.
So sorry about this, but, uh, she and I have had kind of our hands all over each other for a long time now.
And, uh, I didn't know how to tell you, but basically he was saying she's a ho man, like your girlfriend.
But he knew that she was your girlfriend, right?
He did.
Okay.
Yeah.
And so then I get back to her.
You didn't just kiss, did you?
And then she breaks down.
I'm sorry, then she does what?
Emotionally breaks down, like starts crying.
Okay, so she's caught, right.
Which is inevitable, right?
I mean, it's not that big a community.
Musicians, particularly budding musicians, they all know each other, so.
Okay.
Very much so, yeah.
So then, uh, she decides to message me again and say, Hey, we're like, I'm sorry.
I just want to meet up with you.
Just want to express how sorry I am about everything.
And then she throws herself at you and you have sex again and correct the Mundo.
Um, but during this conversation, uh, when we meet up, uh, I, this is, this is the revelation that kind of.
broke my mind when it comes to this stuff and the nature of this relationship.
Uh, so she comes to me and says, yeah, I'm, I'm a cheater.
I'm, I'm a bad, I'm a bad bitch.
Uh, well, she, she didn't put it like that.
I'm, I'm, I'm doing this thing.
Okay.
She says, I'm a cheater.
I'm a bad woman, but I just want you to know that I actually truly, really only love you and only you.
And so then I decide to ask her, okay, so how many times have you cheated on me?
And she says she doesn't remember.
So I'm like, well, can you count it on your fingers?
And she's going 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, loses count of her fingers, has to start counting her toes.
And I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
Okay.
How many fingers and toes, 40 things we share.
41 if you include the fact that we don't care.
All right.
Oh, thank you for that.
But yes, and then I asked her, okay, so how many times have you cheated on me where it's led to sex?
And she gave me a look that I will never forget.
It's kind of like a sad, tired eye, like where she knows she's caught out in a lie, but she doesn't know how to cover for herself.
Like, do I tell the truth right now?
And she just goes, I don't remember.
Right.
She doesn't remember how many times she's cheated on me where it led to sex.
Or she does.
Or she does, but she just doesn't want to say it, right?
Yeah.
Yes.
So I'm fortunate at this point because I am tested.
I don't have an STD.
She's not pregnant.
We're not married.
Like, okay.
So can I forgive this woman?
I don't know.
But I really want to, because she's hot.
And nobody else in the world, I feel like, is going to give me the amount of attention... Sex?
Sorry, go ahead.
Yeah, sex!
Well, sex, but yeah, like, yeah.
I'm so lonely in this world, and this woman is here to make me feel like a god, basically.
As long as she's not cheating on me!
Right.
Okay, so anyway, um, I choose to forgive her and we continue with being a supposed being in a supposed relationship Uh some wait, sorry, but how was the cheating resolved?
Uh, very whoopsie
Yeah, essentially.
Very, very badly.
I essentially said, oh, okay.
So you love me though, right?
And she's like, yes, baby.
And then like, let's forget about this now.
All right.
So, so we're talking about your girlfriend, but we're not really.
No.
Who are we talking about really?
Oh God.
Why don't you tell me so I don't have to say it.
All right, paging Dr. Freud, right?
What are we really talking about here?
Like, why would you be in this mindset or this way inclined?
A lack of attention from my parents and especially my mother.
Sorry, say again?
A lack of parenting.
Uh, lack of attention and affection from my mother.
Well, okay.
Let's, uh, let's, let's dig into it.
Okay.
So why did your father marry your mother?
Uh, they married basically as soon as they were able to, they met in high school and they were both extraordinarily good looking people.
There we go.
Look at that.
That didn't take long.
All right.
Very good.
So my mother was a model straight out of high school and my dad was a typical, you know, hockey jock.
Okay.
So your parents married each other for sex.
Not for virtue, not for a quality of character, not for integrity, not for being good parents, not for being good partners.
Your parents married for sex.
Yeah, that seems about right.
Wait, they didn't like each other, right?
No.
Now, come on, as man, is this that complicated?
Why is a man with a woman who's young and attractive that he doesn't really like?
For sex?
Of course.
Of course.
Right?
Okay.
And if I'm anything like my dad, he was a sex maniac.
And so that makes complete sense.
Jesus Christ.
Yeah.
So, I mean, I hate to say this is why I said paging Dr. Freud, right?
Right.
I shouldn't be laughing.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's, that's pretty rough.
So shall I continue with the relationship story or?
Ah, well... Yes, yes, do that.
Okay.
Alright, because this becomes compoundingly more complicated and weird.
So anyway, we have several instances over the next several years where she continues to cheat on me, then I break up with her,
Then she comes back to me weeping and sobbing and spreading her legs and I go, Oh, okay.
I guess we'll get back together.
And we do this literally so many times that I don't, I personally don't remember how many times we had broken up and gotten back together.
Um, so it's so strange in the way that it ended because she became, uh,
Psychotically obsessed with sex as if she wasn't before.
She started playing around with ideas and kinks and she was obsessed with a K-pop band and was... This is so ridiculous.
She's kind of a girl who writes fan fiction about her favorite celebrities and
Somehow she ends up obsessed with the idea of gay men having sex with each other and this is sort of like Becoming disturbing to me and yet i'm addicted to this woman and so She's increasingly putting this stuff into the bedroom where she wants to do role play where she is a guy A celebrity of her choosing and I am the other celebrity of her choosing and she wants me to play this out
Now at this point, if we don't have sex, she's going to leave me, cheat on me, whatever it is.
So it's like, well, I get to have sex with this girl, but if I don't do it her way, uh, she's going to leave me and cheat on me and hurt me again.
And I'm just going to forgive her.
So, Hey, may as well just try and maintain the peace by diving into whatever it is she wants to do in the bedroom.
So.
I'm just gonna play along and pretend like I like it.
Talking about this is really hard, man.
So, even outside of the bedroom, she's talking about her favorite celebrities, she's writing fanfiction about it, she's completely obsessed with it, and the obsession just grows and grows.
I'm becoming concerned at this point.
Because I just want to be with the girl that I met, the one who just matches my energy and is just wanting to, I don't know, play around, I guess.
But it's becoming unbelievably difficult to deal with her for the only reason that we're together now.
I'm just trying to make her not cheat on me.
By allowing her to what increasingly feels like a violation in the bedroom.
She is doing things.
I'm at first, I tell her, I don't want to do this.
And then I go, okay, well, you know, you want to be experimental and fun.
And I'm, I'm with you and I'm, I have an open mind and I'm playing around with her and it's getting increasingly.
increasingly weird and i am i'm growing i'm growing to feel more and more violated as time goes by she starts talking about hey did you know that uh did you know that when trans people when trans women when they get their pits popped off they have to like push their nipples down so that they stay in place proper when the scars heal and i go what
Uh, so she's obsessed with gay sex.
She wants me to play along with her sexual fetishes.
Now she's talking about, uh, getting a double mastectomy and I am very much starting to pull away because if the cheating wasn't enough, I actually have to start telling.
Why does she want that?
All right.
What, uh, the surgery you mean?
Yeah.
Alright, so, she was so obsessed with sex, and so obsessed with growing her sexual interest, that when she became obsessed with gay sex, like specifically gay men, she wanted to have gay sex.
And this is what she wanted and I was her boyfriend.
Sorry, she wanted to have gay sex as a man?
Yes, correct.
Okay, got it.
All right.
Was she doing drugs?
No, no, she wasn't doing drugs, at least as far as I... Okay, so listen, over the course of the sort of five years that you were with this woman, what did you find out about her childhood?
Alright, so her mom and dad met and her mom immediately pegged her father as the guy who's going to give birth to their child.
Now, the story that I've been told as to why her mom wants to have a child with this man is because she wants to get impregnated, have a kid, and then run away.
And she thought that she could take advantage of this guy, basically steal his sperm, have the baby, and then
Run off into the mountains and just be this mother-child perfect couple who never has to deal with the world.
Crazy shit.
I know.
And her mom is, I mean, she, she was extremely overprotective, like hovering over her child at all times, calling her out of school because she had, you know, she stubbed her toe or something.
uh was complaining to teachers uh about how they treated her child and her father um all right this is again i said this is going to be difficult to talk about and i'm getting emotional um so her father uh also a musician uh he was sent to court
Because somebody overheard, I think he was on the phone with a phone company or a cable company or something, and they overheard him saying something while he was on hold and he didn't know he was being recorded.
And some kind of interaction happened between him and my ex-girlfriend.
And then lawyers were called, and he had to go to court to defend himself against accusations that he was sexually abusing his daughter.
Well, I mean, I think it's more than accusations if it's recorded, isn't it?
Yeah.
Yes.
So I, I believe that these events that have been described to me actually occurred and this is why she ended up the way she did.
Well, hang on.
So do you know whatever happened to this court thing?
What I'm told is that he paid a high power lawyer and just got himself clear to the entire thing.
He, he, if let's just say if the, if the prosecution hired somebody who was super expensive, he just hired somebody more expensive and somehow he managed to get away with it.
That must be a pretty successful musician.
He's extremely successful.
Yes.
All right.
But not Steven Tyler.
Okay.
Got it.
No, he's not Steven Tyler.
Okay.
That's fine.
We won't go through the process of elimination.
All right.
All right.
Okay.
So when did you find out about her childhood?
Um, it was a slow drip when we first started dating.
There was not much time for talking about childhood and we were too busy fucking each other's brains out.
There was tons of time to talk about childhood.
You chose not to.
So when did you find out about her childhood?
Oh.
About four years in, I believe.
No.
No.
No, I can't imagine that's true.
Oh, I'm sorry.
I mean, about the court case.
I learned about that four years... No, no, her childhood.
I didn't say the court case.
Her bad childhood.
Okay.
Well, I, I learned about that pretty quick just by watching her mom.
Oh, so you met her parents?
Yeah.
Yeah, absolutely.
And did her mom stay with her dad?
They were together in the same house.
Her mom lived on the upper floor in a separate bedroom and they didn't spend any time together.
She doesn't work.
Sorry.
Yeah.
The father was recorded, as far as we know.
We don't know for sure because I'm sure we never heard the recording, but the father was recorded sexually abusing his daughter.
That's right.
And the mom stayed.
That's right.
So, her mom is like your mom in a way, in that she's got a job called parent, which she's paid to do, which she's not doing.
I mean, I can't even tell you what kind of human being you'd have to be to hear this recording and stay under the same roof with the man.
I can only imagine what... Oh my God.
I mean, this is how foundationally unprotected this girl was, right?
The mother listens to a recording, which we assume, based upon the court case, is either proof of or strong indication of the rape or sexual abuse of the child.
And she sticks around.
Yep.
And of course, we don't know much about
The court case, if anything, but it's hard to imagine that if the mother had not been a strong witness for the prosecution that the dad might have been convicted, right?
That's right.
So my guess is that spouses can't be forced to testify, right, against each other.
They can't be forced to, they can.
So again, I don't know any of the details, but one of the theories that could fit the facts as we know them is that the mother refused to testify against her husband.
Well, my understanding is that she supported him.
Right.
No, I get that.
I get that.
He's like, oh, well, he's innocent, or something like that.
Listen, you wouldn't, and I'm not talking about this woman in particular, because I don't know her, right, and these are just very sketchy details, which is fine, but the number of women who sell their children to pedophiles for money is not zero.
You keep paying, you can have the kid.
Right.
I'm not saying it's this woman, because I don't know.
I don't know.
I'm just saying, I actually have just read a case about this for research on another matter, where the mother would deliver the children to the grandfather in order for him to molest, and in return he would give her money.
Right.
So you learned pretty early on, maybe you didn't learn about the court case, but you learned pretty early on that she'd had a completely screwed up childhood, right?
Yes.
Yes, that's right.
She was... This is so stupid.
I... I loved her for the crazy.
Well, I didn't... You didn't love her at all.
Come on.
No, I... Come on.
Don't even try.
Don't even try.
It was lust.
Absolutely.
Come on, if she was 200 pounds or like, come on.
You'd love her for her quality.
Please.
Well, when you put it like that.
No, come on.
If she had the same personality, but was a man, would you be her friend?
No, you'd be like, oh my God, what a nut job.
Good luck with all that, right?
Yeah, a hundred percent.
Okay, so let's not talk about the love stuff.
And you think the darkness is in her, right?
Like you're saying, oh this is dark, this is tough for me to talk about.
So you think the darkness is in her, right?
No, no.
Okay, so where's the darkness?
It's within me.
Right.
I know that.
Okay, so what is the darkness within you?
Lonely.
Isolation.
Nope.
Okay.
What is the darkness within you with regards to this woman?
You know where I'm going.
I know, I know.
Where's the darkness in you relative to this woman?
Um... What's, uh... What's the term here?
That one complex that, uh... All right.
The relationship with my mother.
Nope.
It's not Oedipal.
I mean, there may be elements of that, but that's not the darkness.
Boy, you might not actually really see this.
And sometimes people know it but they don't want to talk about it.
You might not actually see this one at all.
I don't think I do, actually.
Alright.
Let's just go with the assumption based on the evidence that this girl was raped as a child, right?
Alright.
Right.
And how old was she when you first had sex with her?
Nineteen.
Right.
How old was she when this recording occurred?
I believe she was a toddler.
Like, six to eight sort of age range.
Right.
The darkness, my friend.
Is that you, to some degree, exploited a woman who had been raped as a child for your own sexual gratification.
That she had no boundaries, she was hypersexual, she'd been completely screwed up by her childhood.
She didn't need another guy banging her, she needed some TLC, she needed a friend, she needed some care, she needed some... Oh my god.
But you picked her off the rubble of her childhood and kind of used her for sex for half a decade.
You didn't sit there and say, holy crap, she had a really bad childhood.
I know what that's like.
I, uh, I got to pull back on this because this is not what she needs.
This is not healthy for her.
This is a repetition of the trauma.
Which would have meant that I would just have to stop being with her and
Well, no, you could have been her friend, if you cared about her.
You could have said, hey, you know, I'm no therapist, but Lee, talk to me about your childhood.
You really should probably go and see a therapist, and this is really appalling.
Did you take her side against her mother, like your mother is really a terrible person?
Did you try to help her at all with her family?
Did you try to help her at all with her issues, or did you just bang her?
Well... I'm not going to make excuses for myself.
I... Holy shit, man.
Nobody's ever said anything like that to me.
I feel like a monster.
Uh, well, if I'm unfair... I'm trying to figure out what's going on deep down in your body.
Okay.
So... Alright.
I don't, I don't feel like that's what I did.
Like, this relationship lasted a long time and we did connect as people.
We shared interests.
Bro, bro, bro, come on.
Did she get better or worse over her time with you?
Much worse.
Right.
So, that's the empirical fact, right?
Mm-hmm.
I mean, she went complete and total degeneracy with you, and after half a decade with you, she wanted to saw her own breasts off.
And I'm not saying you were the direct cause of that, but you were involved!
You didn't love her.
You just wanted to have sex with her.
What did that do?
I mean, and also she was sexually exploited as a kid, and of course, she was a kid, I'm not putting you in the same moral category as her father, of course, right?
Please, understand that, right?
Yes, absolutely.
But you didn't like her, because she cheated on you, and she lied to you, and she betrayed you, and she broke up with you for no reason, and lied to you about that, going to sleep with the other guy, and she slept with the drama.
So she was not a good moral person.
I sympathize with her, but she was not a good moral person.
We can only love virtue.
It's all we can love.
And while I sympathize, of course, with all of her trauma, she sure as hell was not a virtuous person.
So you kind of loved her.
So you used her for sex.
Now, I'm not putting you in the same moral category as her father, but it's not the total opposite behavior.
Right.
And that's why she got worse!
All I have to offer is my body.
I am a piece of fuckable meat.
Yeah.
Men don't care about me.
They only pretend to care about me.
I mean, the funny thing is you had this whole tale of being hard done by by this woman because she lied to you.
And you said, I was the victim, and I was the victim, and this was terrible, and it was so bad, and I was so hard done by, and so hard... You lied to her about the whole fucking thing!
Because you were there for the sex.
And the fact that she was defenseless and had no boundaries, and had a nymphomaniac sexual compulsion based upon being probably raped as a child, was fine with you.
That was a plus.
Now that's the darkness I'm talking about.
Okay, see... I'm... Okay, you were there for the sex, primarily, and the sex was available to you because of the wound left by the father.
Right, but... So you were exploiting the wound left by the father to get sex.
I'm not saying it was conscious, and if I'm just unfair or wrong, absolutely tell me.
Push back and maybe I'm being completely unfair here, but it seems to match all the facts and I'm happy to be corrected.
Okay, so I didn't know about this until four years in?
Nope.
No, you didn't know about the court case, and that's because you didn't ask.
Oh, now you're blaming her for not telling you in the same way that your parents blamed you for not telling them about being bullied.
But the evidence was clear.
Of course.
What did I say?
You said she's compulsively sexual.
What's the first thing I said?
She was sexually abused as a child.
Everybody knows this.
This is common knowledge, right?
Yes, absolutely.
I'm sorry.
So, you knew she had all the symptoms of significant and probably quite rampant childhood sexual abuse.
You knew that from the beginning.
And you knew about her childhood in the first couple of months.
Now, did you know all the details of the court case?
No, it doesn't matter.
But you didn't ask.
But you knew, you showed all the symptoms.
Like, what was I saying earlier?
What was I saying earlier?
If your girlfriend got beaten up at a party, you'd know the difference, right?
Yes, the difference in her behavior after.
So her nymphomania and sexual compulsions arise out of a loving, happy, healthy childhood with great protection from her father?
Nope.
Not at all.
And you knew all of that.
You knew all of that.
Don't give me this four year bullshit.
That's a cope.
You knew all of that almost from the very beginning.
It should be stated here that she didn't even know it until it was revealed to her at that moment at the four year end period.
I just said don't give me the court case and you're now going right back to the court case?
Bro.
Oh, okay.
Fair enough.
Like, at least acknowledge that I said something, and don't pretend I didn't.
I may be wrong, but I'd still like to be heard.
Alright.
It's not about the court case.
Your court case is your technical excuse, in the same way your parents would say, well, you know, we didn't do anything for the first seven or eight years, but hey, he didn't tell us.
So... You knew she was messed up the moment you met her?
Yes.
You knew that she was messed up the moment you met her?
Yes.
Right?
And you didn't do much to inquire as to why?
Because then, you would have had to change lust into empathy, which is what would have helped her.
Right.
You didn't want to interfere with the lust, so you didn't ask much about her childhood.
Because you knew what the answer was going to be, and you just wanted to keep fucking her, rather than have some empathy for her suffering as a child, which is kind of what she needed.
Man, I really feel like a monster right now.
Look.
We all do bad things.
Right?
Nobody's perfect.
We all do bad things.
Yeah.
So, but we have to be honest with ourselves, right?
Because the funny thing is, right?
You said, as a victim, about you described yourself or portrayed yourself or brought yourself forward as a victim in this relationship.
Yes.
Which is kind of a lie.
Not a total lie.
I've been lying to myself.
But if you'd said to me, if you said to me, you know, I fell prey to the sin of lust and I exploited a woman whose sexual defenses had been destroyed by being sexually abused as a child and I just had a lot of sex with her and didn't inquire as to her childhood because I didn't want to know because I just wanted the lust.
I wanted my gratification at the expense of her mental health.
I'd be like, damn, this guy's got it going on.
That's some honesty.
Did you help her mental health?
No.
It got worse and worse and worse.
And you sort of have this odd thing where you're like putting yourself at a distance and saying, well you know she got into this strange stuff and kinky stuff and weird stuff and right?
Like you're not a huge participant in all of this.
Like you're just observing this like it's a movie you have nothing to do with.
I mean, what I hear is... What I hear is... Well, she started out with me.
You know, kind of promiscuous and untrustworthy.
And then after five years with me, she wanted to hack her own breasts off.
Hmm.
Yep.
And yet you feel like a victim?
Like she just did bad things to you and... She was cray-cray and... Jeez, bro.
You're using her like the other men and you say, well, she betrayed me.
It's like, well, you lied to her.
You told her you loved her, right?
Which was a lie.
You could have cared about her.
You could have been compassionate with her for sure.
I understand all of that.
But you didn't love her.
Because she was too wounded and broken.
So, how do I redeem myself with this?
Well, let's talk about... I mean, this is why I... there was a kind of primal innocence here, in a way, right?
Which is, you're like, well, it's... my loneliness is the darkness.
It's maybe something Freudian, and I'm like... and I was like, remember I said, like, maybe you really don't know this.
Because, you know, bro, you might have a daughter.
And when you have a daughter, and you watch that daughter grow, you will understand that your ex-girlfriend did not come with the Barbie figure and the plain face.
She was birthed from nothing to where she was.
And what she went through to end up where she was, was hell itself.
Right.
And you, in a sense, there's a wounded woman on the road.
She desperately needs help, she needs someone to call 911, she needs someone to bind her wounds, and you steal her fucking wallet and move on.
You used her.
Now, of course, people will say, ah yes, but she used him too, and I get all of that, I'm not saying it's totally one-sided, right?
I'm not saying, you're both adults, I get all of that.
But I'm talking to you, not her.
Yeah.
Because I'm telling you, man, this story, the way you tell it, would make almost all decent, compassionate people run for the fucking hills.
And it's gonna keep you isolated from quality people.
Because you need to take ownership for what you did.
Now, you were a young man, I get that.
You were untutored, I get that.
She was hot, I get all of that.
I understand that there's mitigating factors.
Yeah.
But the question is not whether there are mitigating factors.
The question is not can you make excuses.
The question is one thing and one thing only.
What does your conscience say about this?
It doesn't matter what I say.
I could be totally wrong.
It matters what you think very much deep down.
You knew that she'd had a completely screwed up childhood.
You didn't ask her about it.
You didn't try to help her.
You lied to her and you had sex with her body knowing that her sexuality was largely a compulsion that resulted from rampant, probably rampant, childhood sexual abuse.
She wasn't healed.
She wasn't whole.
She wasn't better.
And you found her as a young woman who was messed up and you left her as a woman on the verge of psychosis wanting to cut her breasts off.
There's no appealing to hormonal stupidity on this one.
I have... It doesn't matter what appeals you make to this, that, or the other, because you're the one who has to live with your conscience, not me.
We're just flying past each other, right?
Now, you have to open yourself up to your conscience.
Now, if you start making excuses, your conscience will escalate.
Okay.
Right?
So you just have to say, you know, with regards to your conscience, you say, I am here defenseless, give me the case for the prosecution.
Okay.
Give me the case for the prosecution.
Now, you'll want to ward off that prosecution, right?
Because your conscience is trying to get you to connect with people, and the more you lie to yourself, the less you can connect with people.
So when you say, gosh, I was a victim in this crazy bipolar girl, and she started off hypersexual, then she betrayed me, and then she got into gay sex, then she wanted to cut her breasts off, and I'm like, yes, but you're part of this, you're related to this, you're causal in some of this.
I honestly have never heard this idea about how this has all gone down.
Sorry.
My conscience about this was very clear for years.
And now that I'm hearing about it in this way, it makes me feel so utterly stupid.
No, no, because listen, I could be wrong.
If your conscience was clear, I'm perfectly happy to hear that case.
So don't assume just because I'm saying something that I'm right that this is a case, right?
And the case could be false, right?
Sometimes people get prosecuted and the case against them falls apart.
Absolutely.
This is a case.
So tell me how your conscience was clear.
What was the case?
It really felt like I was just trying to be with her.
Okay, so let me put it...
So this sexual relationship was, uh, I'm, I'm just telling you this.
I'm just telling you the facts.
She was the one who instigated all of these sexual interactions.
And part of the rule baits for our relationship at that time was you must have, this is her talking.
You must have sex with me, or I'm going to emotionally blackmail you and kick you out of my life.
Okay.
So she was kind of like a sexual terrorist.
Yes.
So she threatened you to have sex with her?
Oh, yes.
And so this is... You don't think that's pretty fucking disturbed?
I absolutely do, Stefan.
And you did at the time, right?
Like, that's seriously fucked up.
So, this kind of... I got a new job at one point, and I had to be up very early in the morning
And she demanded that I was... And when I say these words... Hey, I get it.
She's a sexual addict.
I got it.
No, no, no.
I'm being specific about our time schedule.
She was like, you must hang out with me.
We have to be together.
Yeah.
And regardless of what time you have to wake up in the morning, regardless of what you have going on in your life... Okay, yes.
She was a sexual addict.
So I actually didn't want to do this.
Uh, I... I didn't want... Oh my god... I... There was about a period of two years... You had semi-consensual sex.
You were threatened... into having sex.
I didn't want to do it, Stephen.
No, I get it.
I get it.
It's kind of creepy and looming, and your instincts were, this is A, dangerous, B, completely fucked up.
This is coming out of a very dark, bad place.
Right?
Yeah.
And did you say to her at any point, tell me a little bit about these sexual compulsions, what happened in your childhood, did anything inappropriate happen, or when did you first get these sexual compulsions?
Like, you know, basic, you care about someone's stuff and you want to find out about them.
I did ask her and it was kind of a, a whirlwind of emotions where she was telling me these stories about how, you know, her first boyfriend she found when she was 15 or something.
And he was a bit of a sex addict as well.
And this was very emotionally traumatizing for her.
And I didn't want to push her to do anything that she didn't want to do.
What do you mean pushing you to have sex when you don't want to?
Yeah, but, you know, I figured at the time, hey, I can take it.
Like, if this is what it... to make the relationship work... I know.
It's so stupid.
I'm s... This is why... I'm so angry.
Well, there's a lot of trauma here.
But you're not a victim.
Alone.
No, of course not.
You also victimized.
My God.
I feel so stupid.
Well, tell me what you mean.
If stupid is not a feeling, what do you feel?
Stupid is a judgment, right?
I feel like I should have known that she was... that this wasn't like just, hey, I'm a crazy, horny, young teenage girl.
Let's go and fuck forever.
Like, I feel stupid for not knowing that she was in so much pain or
If I did, then I ignored it because I wanted to escape my pain as well.
Well, I mean, again, there's sort of mutual exploitation here to some degree, for sure.
I mean, did she ask you much about your childhood?
I was still trying to unpack it when she was asking me.
Sorry, did she ask you much about your childhood?
Yes.
And I didn't want to talk about it much.
Okay.
And she was okay with that, right?
So you all basically pretended you didn't have a past and then found out you don't have a future.
That's inevitable, right?
Right.
Okay.
So you were both avoiding pain by using each other?
Right.
Except you ended up married and she wanted to saw her breasts off.
So you got the better deal.
I'm not going to feel guilty about getting married to my wife.
No, I didn't make any suggestion like that.
I'm just saying, of the two, she came out much worse off from your relationship with her.
Which indicates who did the more damage, right?
Honestly, I don't... No, come on.
If there's two cars in a car crash and one can drive away and the other one can't, which car got more damaged?
The one that can't drive away.
Right.
So she is completely messed up, and you're married.
Now, I'm just saying that's an indication of who did more damage.
Or, and you know, come on, you know that promiscuity for men is not nearly as bad as promiscuity for women.
Yes, yes.
Right, because we're designed to repopulate the planet in the event of the pretty common male die-off, right?
Yes.
So, promiscuity for women is much worse than promiscuity for men.
That's right.
And she slept probably with hundreds of people, and she certainly slept, you said she ran out of fingers and toes, so dozens of people when she was with you, right?
Yes.
And, you know, that's terrible, right?
For women.
Oh my god!
And you didn't say, honey, listen, uh, you know, all due respect, I really care about you.
You've got to see a therapist.
Like, you're gonna, you're gonna fucking, looking for Mr. Goodbar, some guy's gonna lock you in a windowless van and disassemble you in a forest.
Like, you've got to stop, this is incredibly dangerous.
You're gonna get a stalker, you're gonna get a psycho, like... You have to stop, like, this is...
This is incredibly dangerous and you're destroying your ability to pair bond.
You've got a long life to live on this planet and what's going to happen when you're 40 or 50 and your looks are gone and your body's sagging?
What are you going to do?
I care about you and you're heading in such a terrible direction.
I will work night shifts to help you pay for therapy.
You have to stop.
Oh my god, I am a monster!
See, monster is a way of avoiding your conscience by giving yourself a label that's hard to believe, right?
You're not a monster!
So you're just saying that in order to ward off your conscience.
Alright, I cop a plea, I don't want to hear the charges, I'm pleading out!
It's like, no, no, you've got to hear the charges, because your conscience wants to be heard.
Because if you just plea out, then you don't hear the charges, and they will cut, as they do, and every man who's exploited a woman in this way has to face this trial, right?
So, you just want to stop hearing the charges by jumping a monster, right?
And I understand that.
I don't, right?
Don't.
Because you need to confront this lack of compassion within you, because you want to be a father.
I do.
I do.
Okay.
What if you were to contact her and apologize to her?
I mean, I know you're married and contacting exes and all of that, I get all that complication as a whole, but just as a mental exercise, do you have any, like, when, how long ago did you break up?
It would have been eight years ago.
Eight years ago.
And have you heard of anything, anything about her since?
Only, uh, things that have been sent to me by friends who have kept tabs on.
Okay.
So what have you, what have you heard about?
Uh, I know that she moved away to the other side of the country and doesn't talk to her parents anymore and, uh, has gone through with the top surgery.
As far as I know, not the bottom surgery, uh, but is lonely and writing internet fan fiction.
Okay.
That's all I think.
Got it.
And I assume that she had, you said she had a great figure, so I assume she had attractive breasts?
I just liked the way she looked.
She had nice breasts, yes.
Okay, so part of the mastectomy might have been to cut off the addiction, to control the addiction, to reduce her attractiveness so that this compulsion and being used in this way was less agonizing.
Well, it seems like her activity regarding...
Pursuing the idea of being a gay boy is such an obsession for her that she's still obsessed with it.
Her fiction about this topic is... Okay, sorry.
I don't want to... I mean, that's probably a very bleak place to go, but obviously she's not improved.
No.
She's only ever gotten worse.
Okay.
Okay.
And, you know, as a young man, I mean, obviously you couldn't save her, right?
I mean, that's not... right?
But that didn't mean that you had to use her as she had been used in the past.
Right.
Now, just to be clear, she wanted to use me as well.
I'm just pointing that out.
Well, again, I understand that.
But what does your conscience say?
My conscience is telling me that
I know that I screwed up big time by even getting into a relationship with this woman in the first place.
And I should never have done it.
It makes me feel horrible that her life turned out this way and I couldn't, I didn't help her.
No, you harmed her.
No, no, it's not that you didn't help her.
I didn't help her.
I didn't know her.
But by continuing to use her for sex, when she obviously as clearly has a very disturbed and dysfunctional relationship to sexuality, you were exploiting a wound left by her father, most likely, right?
Right.
And now she's like, oh great, so all men do is use me for sex.
That's all I'm worth.
That's all I'm good for.
I should reach out to her and apologize.
Well, no, I don't know.
You know, your responsibility is to your marriage.
So, I'm just, as a mental exercise, and also, she may be at this point so disturbed that it would be toxic.
I don't know.
It was just sort of as a mental exercise.
It might be something you could write the letter and burn it.
You could do it in your mind.
I mean, I don't know about contacting her, because it sounds like she's in pretty, an even more messed up place, and who knows how that would play, right?
And also, you know, she's already cut her breasts off, right?
So, it's not like there's a return journey from that, Mr. Frodo, as the meme goes, right?
So, I don't know.
I mean, probably not, but it may be worthwhile as a mental exercise.
Okay.
So, I'll just point out here that I have never blocked her on any medium.
I haven't reached out to her, but I made a point of allowing the methods of communication open.
She has called and left me drunken voicemails at three o'clock in the morning.
Sorry, as recently as when?
This was probably five years ago.
So what would your conscience direct you to say to her if you could speak to her without repercussions?
Like, it wouldn't stimulate any stalky behavior, or 3am voicemails, or her contacting your wife.
If you could speak to her with no repercussions about anything that you regretted, what would you say, do you think?
Like, talk to me as if I were her.
Okay.
You know, I really did have a wonderful time with you.
We shared so many.
Okay, how about we don't start with lies?
Okay, like, seriously, bro, you gotta get out of this Hallmark bullshit.
You did not have a wonderful time with her.
Oh.
Because the whole thing you said was, I dated this borderline, which is the worst time of my life, you said.
Okay, so let's try this again, but without, can we just un-bullshit it, if you don't mind, right?
Fair enough.
What do you regret?
I regret... I regret not treating you the way you should have been treated.
With... With the kind of respect and love that you've never been given.
And... I can't believe... How I... It... You're such... You're such a beautiful person and you could only... No!
No!
No!
Stop it!
Stop going to sentimentality!
What do you regret?
And she's not a beautiful person, she's very much messed up, which we can sympathize with.
What do you regret?
Don't go to sentimentality.
Okay.
As I said, this is very difficult to talk about.
Um... But you need to clean the nest.
You got a kid coming, hopefully, so you need to clean the nest, which means this kind of honesty.
So go ahead, sorry.
That's... that's why.
Thank you so much for talking to me.
You're welcome.
I deeply regret the way I treated you.
With my own selfishness.
Believing that I was some sort of genius musical sex god when all I was was a pig.
I could have tried to help you, but I didn't.
For years, I let this happen.
You didn't let it happen.
I made it happen.
Thank you.
And I did nothing to stop it.
And you also did things to accelerate it, right?
Exploitation.
I ruined your life.
No, that's too much.
That's too dramatic, that's too sentimental again, right?
I mean, she's ultimately in charge of her life, but you did continue a pattern of exploitation that she'd experienced from childhood, right?
Right.
But it's too strong.
Again, that's back to sentimentality.
We have to be precise, right?
It's my fault.
What's your fault?
It's my fault that she ended up worse off after the relationship than when it began.
You contributed.
It's not your fault.
She made choices too.
Okay.
Sorry, go ahead.
I'm sorry, man.
No, because if you make the case too strong, you can just dismiss it later saying, well, that's not true.
And then you can get rid of the whole thing.
You need to be precise.
She made bad choices.
You made bad choices.
She was an addict.
You exploited the addiction.
You were an addict.
She exploited the addiction.
You both made bad choices.
But she's not a shadow cast by your choices.
She's her own being.
Because if you reduce her to just a shadow cast by your choices, that's dehumanizing her again.
I allowed my demons to grow so strong in my heart and you
Ended up being the victim of that.
You were the victim of that.
And I did it.
You did not allow the demons to go.
I mean, I know we used this analogy before, and I'm sorry to be such a nag.
I really do apologize.
You can't cast it off on demons.
It was you.
And, you know, you had your bad childhood, and you had your exploitive parents, and your parents would get together for sexual reasons, and so on.
So, I sympathize with all of that.
But it wasn't just, I allowed the demons to do this to you.
That's not taking ownership, right?
I mean, I know it's tough.
I mean, this is a new language for you, right?
And I sympathize with that too.
Thank you for bearing with me.
Sure.
I failed you.
I did you so wrong.
I, it's my fault, man.
What's your fault?
That I, I didn't, that I didn't, I didn't even tell her how screwed up it was, what she was doing.
I just made her feel bad.
I just made her... I just made her regret it.
By... By exiting the relationship and getting back together over and over.
I was so stupid.
No.
I'm really...
I hurt her.
I took advantage of her.
And I allowed myself to believe that I was the victim of her.
Yeah, because you also attacked her reputation, really, I assume in countless conversations since then about this crazy girl who was borderline and ruined your life and how sad it was and, you know?
Rather than saying, yeah, I chose to sexually exploit a pretty damaged woman.
I mean, it's hard to say, like, it's hard to say how much consent there is in an addict.
Sorry, just allow me to have a glass of water here.
Yeah, of course.
Okay.
How's that for a start?
No, that was very good.
That was very good.
Well done.
Well done.
And, you know, obviously this is a, you know, a lot of journaling conversation.
I'd be a big fan of talking to a therapist.
And not because there's something, you know, terrible or toxic about you, but just because you grew up without empathy.
Right?
So, empathy is gonna be a challenge, right?
I mean, if I grow up without speaking Japanese, I gotta learn Japanese.
It's gonna take a little while, right?
And I'm not saying it's as bad or as hard as Japanese.
You obviously do have empathy, which is what I was probing for.
Like, can you connect with some regrets, right?
And all of that.
And you could, and you did.
So, that's wonderful.
Good for you.
Well done.
You're gonna need to really, really empathize with a child, and if, you know, one of the things that blocks empathy is guilt, particularly hidden guilt.
And, yeah, she did wrong to you, and you're aware of that, you did wrong to her.
I did.
You enabled her addiction, you fed her addiction, you mirrored her addiction.
You know, like, you said, uh, oh, she mirrored me.
It's like, well, you became a sex addict too, right?
You mirrored her.
And I'm sure the sex was, you know, physically pleasurable, but, I mean, there was a coldness and a distance there.
I mean, didn't you just look into her eyes sometimes and see these dead glass beads?
Um, at the end, especially, yes.
But you knew it was a compulsion for her?
Yes.
It wasn't like, I feel so connected, I feel so close, I feel so loved and safe and secure and loving.
It was a compulsion, right?
Right.
Right.
Right.
So, I mean, you used her addiction for sexual gratification, and that's tough, right?
Because it fuels the addiction, right?
And you're not getting to the root of why it's occurring.
It'd be kind of like if I played along with your victim narrative here.
That would be a way of keeping your conscience at bay, which is to say, keeping your empathy at bay.
Which is not going to be good for your wife and your future children.
All right.
I'm calming down now.
I think I'll be able to talk a little bit more.
No, that's fine.
I mean, that's really the most of what I wanted to get across.
And I say this with sympathy, like, you're not a monster, and so on, right?
You've done some bad things, we all have.
So, I don't want you to go to some opposite extreme, like, I cannot get out of bed, I am the devil incarnate.
It's like, you were young and untutored and traumatized yourself, but you ain't a victim, brother.
You did some bad stuff.
We all do bad stuff.
We have to find a way to fight through that, and commit to virtue, and empathy, and kindness.
All of us, and particularly, you know, us the... I mean, you're younger than me, but, you know, that kind of the fucked-up generation that had no tutoring.
We don't have a God, we don't have a church, we don't have mentors, we don't have parents, we don't have teachers we respect.
We gotta figure all this shit out for ourselves, which means there's a lot of fuck-ups and a lot of progress.
Right, so you're a child of boomers, right?
And boomers are notoriously, they don't give a shit about training their kids or parenting their kids.
They're hedonists.
And so you became a hedonist.
And hedonism comes at a great price.
I just did a show about this, you should check it out at fdrpodcast.com.
But so there has to be a way that you say, I did bad things, I'm not a bad person, right?
Because once you define yourself as a bad person, then you can't escape it, it becomes existential, and then your parenting gets screwed up and you can't be a good husband, right?
So how do you do it, right?
I did bad things.
Like, you know, if you have bad health, if you have bad habits of health, it doesn't mean that you're going to be sick forever and ever, amen.
I mean, in terms of like, if you smoke for a while when you're younger, it doesn't mean you have to keep smoking and get lung cancer, right?
You can say, yeah, I was a smoker, I had to stop smoking.
I did bad things health-wise and I can do better things now.
And, you know, there was this innocence for you because you didn't know, right?
Now, you did know unconsciously, right?
The way that you know is what you avoid, right?
So, of course, if you want to get to know someone... Right, so I wanted to get to know you, so what's the first thing we talked about?
Sorry.
Yeah, so you were asking, so we talked about some of the current issues, and then we talked about childhood, right?
And we did like two hours on your childhood, right?
Which is small, it's a tiny slice, right?
You've been with this woman for five years, of course you had two hours to talk about your childhood, in between like compulsive Adderall bang-a-thons.
And so, it's in the avoidance that the danger is.
Right?
So, you knew she was messed up, you didn't really want to ask about her childhood.
Now, you catch yourself, right?
This is where our conscience is.
So, the devils, if you want to say that, right?
The devils within you want to avoid her childhood, and so that's where you have to go.
Because if you had found out that she had been viciously and repeatedly and brutally raped as a child, your sexual desire would have dried up, and would have been replaced with compassion.
So you avoided that knowledge.
And it's in the avoidance that our conscience is.
So you say, oh shit, I don't want to ask her about her childhood.
She's got some very strange behaviors.
Everybody knows childhood has a big effect on the personality and you met her when she was only a year out of childhood.
So she's very strange, let me ask about her childhood, right?
And then you say, well I don't want to because it's going to interfere with my sexual gratification.
It's like, okay, well then there's your next five years.
So it's in the avoidance that we need to
Most look and just you know personally for me I'm absolutely positive my mother went through like horrendous things as a child sexually and so under the war and all of that and There were a bunch of men who?
had sex with my mother right a bunch of bunch of men who dated her and had sex with her and Nobody tried to help her and she just got worse and worse and then she lost her mind
I don't just come out of this out of nowhere.
This isn't just blindingly obvious.
I had to live this for decades.
And then by the time, after all the men had used her, then by the time I became old enough to try and help her, she was too far gone.
I just have to give you such a heartfelt
Thank you for talking with me about this.
You are very welcome, and I'm afraid I will have to jump off.
I've got to get a little bit of food.
I have another call shortly.
I've scheduled things sort of back-to-back.
Will you keep me posted about how things are going, and will you accept a big hug from me and promise me that you won't just lay into yourself as some bad guy, right?
But just accept that, you know, you, like everyone, made some mistakes, were untutored, did some wrong, and you've got to commit to do better and be open
to that in the future, but not just, you know, lay into yourself and, you know, feel bad or whatever.
That's helpful, but just promise me that, and if you'll drop me a line and let me know how things are going, I'd really appreciate it.
