Oct. 9, 2024 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
03:02:53
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| Time | Text |
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| Nice to meet you. | |
| I, of course, read your email with great interest and just a reminder to stay off names and places. | |
| And I'm all ears, my friend. | |
| Let's hear the tale. | |
| All right. I don't know if you want me to just jump into what's going on now, but currently, cheers. | |
| I've got four kids. | |
| I'm in a marriage that I'm having. | |
| A lot of trouble, staying motivated to stay in, and I feel stuck, basically. | |
| I don't necessarily think things are so bad. | |
| Well, they might be. | |
| They could be bad enough to blow up our family structure, or do I just ride it out? | |
| I've been struggling with this for a while, and I've been a listener for a long time, and I know you can't tell me what to do, but I thought maybe you could at least help me think through where I'm at and maybe how I got here and if things do change to help me prevent me from getting in a similar situation in the future. | |
| Right, right. Well, I guess let's start with the story of the marriage. | |
| Sure. So, we met in college, and I'm dated for, I guess, a big part of the background of the story is I grew up a Mormon. | |
| And I haven't always been the best of Mormons in their eyes, I would suppose. | |
| I've kind of been one foot in, one foot out for most of my high school and beginning of college. | |
| When I went to college and met the woman who became my wife, I was sort of mostly out at that point. | |
| But we started dating for about a year. | |
| I got to the point to where I needed to decide if I was going to participate in one of these two-year Mormon missions or not because the window was then. | |
| And I ultimately decided that I wanted to clean up my act as far as standards of the church and get myself in a place to where I could go and serve one of these missions. | |
| Well, I was dating my wife at the time. | |
| She saw a lot of positive changes in me at the time. | |
| And she ultimately became interested and ended up joining the church as well. | |
| And I shortly thereafter left and did a mission for two years where we were basically waiting for each other. | |
| Where did you do your mission? | |
| I know it's all over the place for some people. | |
| I went to Down Under. | |
| Wow, that's brave, man. | |
| I remember having to go to Australia with a lot of security, but that's just me. | |
| Anyway, go on. Yeah, so I guess that was a good enough experience. | |
| I came home, and when I came home, we basically resumed our lives where we had left off. | |
| And I ended up proposing to her and getting engaged within probably two months of returning home. | |
| We were probably married six months thereafter. | |
| So within a year of returning, maybe less, we were married and starting our life together. | |
| And so we've been married ever since. | |
| Now, you wouldn't be an engineer, would you? | |
| No, I'm not. I'm in business. | |
| Right. I mean, because when I ask for the story of the marriage, you give me a timeline. | |
| Oh, yeah. You know, it doesn't particularly matter, that stuff, what matters, because none of that stuff is involved with the problems, right? | |
| Right. No, no, not really. | |
| Not a criticism, it's just interesting to me. | |
| I mean, you're a bro, and I'm a bro, so I understand that, but if you could tell me, you know, let's, you know, estrogen it up a little, and if you could tell me kind of, you know, what attracted you to her, what drew you guys together, what allowed you to survive this When you were in the savagery, in the savage planet on the other side of the world, how you survived those two years, like all of the stuff that was the foundation for getting married. | |
| Yeah, so initial draw was definitely the attraction. | |
| She was, you know, I found her very attractive. | |
| It was, I was starting my college experience, and she was one of the You know, first girls that I had connected with where I went to school. | |
| And so at the beginning, it was, you know, physical and just enjoyed our time together, like in a hanging out sense. | |
| And so I just really enjoyed our time together. | |
| And there wasn't much fighting or arguments at all before I had left for my mission. | |
| And... I'm sorry. | |
| Could you repeat the questions again? | |
| That's tricky, right? Yeah, yeah. | |
| So, very pretty. | |
| and nothing wrong with pretty but as a religious man or a man who grew up | |
| religious you know that pretty is has within it a danger right yes that pretty | |
| tends to be very fertile in venting Correct. | |
| And then that starts the process of trying to manufacture other virtues and of course I'm not saying she doesn't have | |
| those virtues But that's the risk, right? | |
| correct so pretty and then you said that you enjoyed hanging out | |
| together and What was it that you liked about hanging out together | |
| Well, she was light-hearted and fun. | |
| You know, we could joke together. | |
| We had a lot of similar interests. | |
| You know, we'd go out to, you know, playing and dancing together. | |
| You know, we'd Go to country bars and line dance. | |
| I thought you said financing together, but it's line dancing. | |
| Okay, got it. That came later. | |
| It's just someone that I really connected with. | |
| I went to a school far from where I grew up. | |
| I was in a long-term relationship at high school that I had broke off to go to college to not be attached when I went to college and Somehow, very quickly became attached to a new person. | |
| And she was the person I attached to, I guess. | |
| Okay, so I'm trying to understand something here. | |
| Just forgive me as I'm sort of trying to catch up from zero to infinity with your life, but you're talking about how much fun she was, how pretty she was, and then you say there's this connection stuff, right? | |
| Yes. I'm trying to understand... | |
| Fun and pretty is a really dangerous combo. | |
| Again, doesn't mean that there aren't virtues, but fun and pretty is just hitting all your dopamine, right? | |
| Right. Particularly if you've had an over-serious relationship in the past, then the fun and pretty gets a kind of helium giddiness in your brain and balls. | |
| So help me understand the sort of connection thing, which again, I'm not saying it's not real, that doesn't exist, but I'm just not sure I get it. | |
| You can go line dancing with a lot of people, you can make jokes with a lot of people, but where's the big connection stuff here? | |
| Just help me sort of follow that. I mean, I think she had a kind heart. | |
| I thought she treated me well. | |
| I thought she treated others well. | |
| She was honest with me. | |
| I felt like she was a good person other than just the physical attracted side of it. | |
| I thought she came from a good family. | |
| She had goals that I was not necessarily impressed with, but I was impressed that she had goals and she was trying to get accomplished. | |
| The question of the connection, I don't know why it's so difficult for me, which is probably one of the things I'm struggling with, but Sorry, is that the end of the thought? I don't want to interrupt. | |
| Probably, I guess. No, take your time. | |
| I'm in no rush. | |
| I just, if you are done, you know, because we don't have visual cues for these conversations. | |
| True, true. No problem. | |
| If you are or are not done, that's fine. | |
| I just wanted to know. | |
| Yeah, let's call it done. | |
| I was kind of losing my train of thought there. | |
| Got it. Okay. All right. | |
| So... You said she's a kind person, again. | |
| I always have to qualify this just so you know. | |
| So when I say, how do you know she was a kind person, I don't mean to say she's not a kind person. | |
| I just want to know what the evidence is so that I can be on the same page. | |
| Right. Yeah, she would... | |
| Maybe cook for me and my roommates. | |
| This is still going back to our dating timeline. | |
| She would cook meals and share them. | |
| She would offer to drive. | |
| I didn't feel like she wanted to pull her weight, so to speak. | |
| She wasn't just sort of there to be taken care of, but I felt like she enjoyed making sure others were taken care of as well. | |
| I'm trying to think of specific examples, which, you know, it's 20 years ago and I've got a fuzzy memory, but I guess I didn't find her, You know, I didn't think she spoke ill of others | |
| Kind of kind of blank and I'm sorry No, I don't have to apologize. | |
| I mean, if we had all the answers, we probably wouldn't be having the convo, right? | |
| So that's entirely... | |
| I mean, it's sort of like life is an exam, and if you had all the answers, you wouldn't need a tutor, so to speak. | |
| So I get all of that. | |
| It's totally fine. Okay, so... | |
| What was it, do you think, that, well, from your religious upbringing, what are you supposed to be, you know, ideally, right? | |
| What are you supposed to be looking for in a spouse, for the mother of your children? | |
| Right. You know, patience, I think. | |
| You know, looking for someone that's going to be a great mom. | |
| She wanted to be a stay-at-home mom, which I thought was something I was looking for. | |
| She seemed to show traits of patience and kindness, and I feel like she's good at assessing others' feelings, So maybe she'd be able to maybe connect well with uh the | |
| children on that level um | |
| You know, she was she was smart so I thought she would Be helpful and you know teaching and and raising children | |
| children in that sense. But I thought it was a kind heart and she wanted to be a mom and | |
| to be a stay-at-home mom and that was important to me, especially with the religious upbringing. | |
| That was something I was looking for. | |
| Huh. Again, I obviously wasn't raised Mormon and so on. | |
| My religious upbringing was you needed a good, brave, morally courageous, godly woman. | |
| I don't know about this sort of kindness and good heart. | |
| I mean, I suppose that's something, but in this In this travail through the veil of tears known as human life, don't you need a really staunch, stalwart companion in the road to virtue and somebody who shows significant degrees of moral courage and integrity? | |
| I mean, this sort of nice stuff, obviously it's not terrible or anything, and if our upbringing was different, I just sort of need to understand that gap. | |
| I think that I think the gap is more of, it wasn't necessarily that I wasn't being taught those things with my religious upbringing, but that I was not invested in, you know, I had a lot of animosity towards being a Mormon and I didn't like growing up Mormon. | |
| I don't know if it was maybe a rejection of some of that stuff, but I specifically never had dated anyone in the church just because... | |
| Well, part of it's probably because the sexual access to girls and women in the church was going to be limited, and that was something I was very interested in when I was a teenager. | |
| Yeah, that's natural. | |
| Yeah. And so, I think it's, you know, not necessarily that I wasn't taught those things, but I didn't necessarily accept them for myself. | |
| Okay, so some of the virtues that you talked about in terms of her being honest and so on, what is it that gave you that idea or thought or experience of her honesty? | |
| Her speaking her mind, and I never had any experiences of her, like, catching her in any sort of contradiction or a lie. | |
| And I felt like I've always kind of been an avoider. | |
| Come on, man. | |
| Come on. I never caught her in any contradiction or falsehood. | |
| Ever. That is not true. | |
| Come on. I mean, maybe. | |
| Look, I don't want to sound overly cynical, but you've never heard her make any kind of white lie or spare anyone's feelings with a certain diplomatic turn of phrase that wasn't the most direct thing. | |
| Like, she just is, like, autistically blunt with everyone and tells the truth to everyone all the time, no matter what. | |
| I'm like, okay, maybe. Yeah. | |
| I'm just like, I've never heard of anyone like that. | |
| I've never met anyone. | |
| Like, don't we all have a little bit of lubricant of minor falsehood at times in life to just kind of get through things? | |
| And, I mean, again, I don't want to sound overly cynical, but I'm like, who is this goddess of truth that, man, she must be both loved and hated everywhere in the world? | |
| I mean, I think I come pretty close to telling as much truth as possible, and I tell you, it's been quite a ride, so I... Come on! | |
| Really? Yeah. | |
| No, I probably oversold it. | |
| You think? More accurate to say that I never heard her... | |
| I can't recall her saying anything that, to me, was a red flag at the time. | |
| And I can't think of any instances where, looking back, I was like, that was a red flag in her honesty. | |
| But... Yeah, I wouldn't go so far as to say that... | |
| She was incapable of sugarcoating truths or whatnot. | |
| Well, I occasionally go to these Renaissance fairs with my daughter. | |
| And, you know, they have these stalls, and some of them are just full of the most absolute crap, and then, you know, the vendor says, what do you think? | |
| And we say, oh, nice, nice, you know, not particularly for us, but, you know, what are we going to say? | |
| This stuff is junk, you know? | |
| I mean, maybe it's overly British of me, but there's a certain amount of, I mean, you know, the truth in important matters with people who are close to you is essential and all of that, but... | |
| I don't know. That was some pretty sentimental exaggeration. | |
| Never caught her in any contradiction or any falsehood. | |
| It's like, no, no, that can't be it. | |
| True. I feel like all my memories of us being together in the dating phase were positive in the I don't know if I've just blocked out or, you know, I... No, that's fine. | |
| We just plumb in the memory. | |
| So you said, sorry, you also said that she came from a good family. | |
| Again, I'm not disagreeing with you. | |
| I just want to make sure I understand what you mean by that. | |
| So what was it about her family? | |
| Well, I no longer harbor those thoughts, but at the time, you know, she was... | |
| Her parents were together. | |
| They were successful. | |
| You know... There wasn't any sort of abuse or drug use. | |
| It seemed like a clean, well-put-together, intact family. | |
| What did you find out later? | |
| The relationship between her parents and some of the siblings, We weren't as solid as the relationships, to put it mildly, as I felt mine were growing up. | |
| I'm older, right? | |
| I'm mortal, so you've got to stop beating around the bush here. | |
| It wasn't quite as... | |
| Just tell me, what did you find out later? | |
| Just lay it on me. | |
| Her mom treats her dad like shit. | |
| You know, when we were dating, one of the red flags that I do recall is that she made | |
| the comment that she didn't think that her parents had sex, which was mind-blowing to | |
| me at the time. | |
| It's like, surely you're wrong. | |
| But getting to know them, yeah, she's probably right about that. | |
| So I don't think there's any intimacy between them. | |
| Are they Christians? | |
| They grew up Christian. | |
| I think they took her to church a little bit when she was younger, but I would not consider them religious at all, no. | |
| Alright, so how does the mom treat the dad like shit? | |
| Well, everything seems to be an inconvenience to her. | |
| He's got some mobility issues now, and it seems like It doesn't seem like she basically will leave him to his own devices, even though he can't get around himself. | |
| They've got a chair he likes to sit in, but he couldn't get to it because of coffee. | |
| There was a chair in their living room that he got for himself to sit in, but then When he started having these mobility issues, his little walker deal couldn't get around the coffee table, so he couldn't get to his chair. | |
| And it was moving the coffee table to make a path to the chair was a bridge too far. | |
| What? The guy's got mobility issues and they won't move a freaking coffee table so he can get to his chair. | |
| Right, that kind of stuff. | |
| Okay, so that's specific, right? | |
| Yeah, it's rough to watch. | |
| And I think one of my struggles is that I can see glimpses of that in my life now, and I'm scared that's my future. | |
| I think that's one of the issues that I'm having. | |
| All right, so hang on. | |
| So the family, and you said that the siblings and relationship between siblings and parents is not great either? | |
| No, real surface level, you know, the charges of, you know, from parents, mother to daughter, she's just one of two. | |
| It's like, you guys are ungrateful. | |
| You know, look at all the things we do for you guys, and you guys are just ungrateful. | |
| Oh, so the mother's like verbally abusive and condemnatory and so on? | |
| Yeah, she can be, for sure. | |
| Well, what do you mean, can be? Sorry, that's a little binary. | |
| Well, you know, that serial killer, there's a lot of times he didn't kill people, so he can be stabby. | |
| Right. Right. | |
| Sorry. Yeah. | |
| When they get into conflict, she can say some pretty nasty things, but a lot of times it's just surface-level interaction, and so it doesn't devolve down to that very often. | |
| You can't have any real conflict with somebody who's verbally abusive, because it's just too horrible. | |
| They'll do anything to win. | |
| They don't have any standards where they say, well, I'm not going to say that. | |
| It's a state of nature, right? | |
| Yeah, it escalates, and then things that can't be said Or it can't be unsaid, get said, and then never circle back. | |
| Oh, things can be unsaid. Oh, things can be unsaid, right? | |
| I mean, my mother said things to me, and the unsaid is, I don't talk to her. | |
| It's completely unsaid now. | |
| Never going to put themselves in that situation again. | |
| Sure. Okay, so how old was your wife when you first started dating? | |
| We're... Late teens, like 18, 19, that kind of age. | |
| Okay. And she knew about the dysfunctions in her family, right? | |
| Oh, sure. Yeah. | |
| So, if she doesn't lie about important things and she knew about the dysfunctions in her family, why did you think her family was a good family? | |
| Well, good. | |
| Be careful. This is a big question. | |
| Don't be glib. Yeah. | |
| Yeah. Because on the surface, I was... | |
| No, no, you're not getting the question. | |
| There'd be a longer pause if you got the question. | |
| Okay, let me repeat it. | |
| Let me repeat it. | |
| Because don't talk to me about on the surface, right? | |
| Okay, so we've got a basic argument here, right? | |
| Which doesn't fit together. | |
| The first argument is, my girlfriend tells the truth, right? | |
| Right. The second argument is, or the second premise is, she knew her family was dysfunctional, right? | |
| Right. Yes. | |
| And then the third thing is, I thought my girlfriend's family was good. | |
| Right. So do you see the challenge here? | |
| Yes. What's the challenge? | |
| If she knew that the family was not good and she's a truth teller, why was I under the impression that they were good? | |
| Do you see the challenge of the question, right? | |
| Yes. Okay, that's why when you were just like, well, on the surface, like, no, no, no, that's not the point, right? | |
| Yeah. So, what's the answer? | |
| Either she didn't know, that's why I asked if she did know, either she didn't know, but she did. | |
| So either she told you that her family was dysfunctional, but you refused to believe it for some reason, or she and her family colluded to show functionality, which was not true. | |
| And so she and the family lied to you as a whole, and you believed it. | |
| So did she tell you my family's messed up and you were just like, nope, they look on the surface, they're fine. | |
| So clearly you, with your 18 to 19 years of experience of your family, you're totally wrong. | |
| And I, who just bungeed in for the last couple of months, am totally right. | |
| Did she tell you my family's dysfunctional and you didn't believe her? | |
| Or did she say my family is good when she knew that it wasn't so? | |
| She told me things about, like, she didn't think her parents had a good relationship, and she would tell me that she didn't feel close to her sibling. | |
| Okay, so her parents have a bad relationship, and she's not close to her sibling, right? | |
| Right. Okay, so that's pretty honest, right? | |
| Yes. So she was telling the truth. | |
| Good for her, right? So then why would you tell me that you thought she came from a good family when she's telling you there are pretty big problems in the family? | |
| I think when I was referring to good, it was more of like the image and the surface level outward appearance of the family. | |
| That, you know, they were still intact. | |
| They were, you know... | |
| Okay, are you like the worst Christian on the planet? | |
| Like, what are you talking about here? | |
| I mean, come on! High status in the community? | |
| Oh yeah, that's exactly what Jesus taught you to judge people by, was how outwardly and superficially stable and good they appear and whether other people esteem them. | |
| Yeah. Isn't the whole problem high status in the world is low status in the eyes of God a lot of times? | |
| More often than not, yeah. | |
| Yeah, I mean, that's usually a red flag. | |
| It means you're too conformist. | |
| It means you're not telling enough truth. | |
| You're not being hated. If everybody loves you, you're corrupt to the core. | |
| Yeah. So again, I'm sorry to be Mr. | |
| Theology here. This is like pretty low-level theology stuff, but... | |
| Surface appearance and social approval? | |
| Oh yes, just like Jesus wanted. | |
| That's all he was after was social approval and high status. | |
| Yeah, I think I felt that she was an outlier to her family. | |
| And so although she was truthful about the dysfunction within her family, she seemed to be above the fray. | |
| At what, 18 or 19? | |
| Right. She's resolved all of her family issues and dysfunctions? | |
| No, not necessarily resolved, but maybe she was separating from it, or she was less affected by it. | |
| Come on, man. Let's just cut to the chase here. | |
| She was pretty and fun, so you invented a bunch of virtues. | |
| One of the virtues you invented was she comes from a good family, so it didn't really matter what she said, because you liked her and you were horny. | |
| That's fair. Okay, because remember I said that the pretty and fun thing, your brain will just start inventing all these virtues so you can pretend that it's not all about the pretty and fun? | |
| Yes. Okay, so she said things were messed up, but you're like, well, but she's pretty and fun, so she seems fine. | |
| And the family seems fine on the surface, and so let's get to the panties-off part. | |
| Right. Okay, we might as well be blunt about these things, right? | |
| Yeah. I guess, you know, because at the time, you know, especially when she started, you know, when I was trying to make changes in my life as far as, like, stop drinking, stop the sexual activity, just so I could try to... | |
| Sorry, when were you doing all the drinking? | |
| I don't know about the drinking yet. | |
| So I drank in my last couple years of high school and my first year of college when I was basically... | |
| Separating myself from the church. | |
| And then in my second year of college, after I'd been dating my wife for a little while, it was kind of a now or never situation with the going on a mission thing. | |
| So that's when I started making some personal changes to clean up what I perceived as sinning. | |
| And she went along with it. | |
| She ended up joining the church as well, making some of those changes for herself. | |
| Sorry, so when she met you, how much or how often were you drinking? | |
| Oh, probably a couple times a week. | |
| And to excess, right? | |
| Not like a glass of wine at dinner, but... | |
| No, yeah, it would be like, you know, probably four or five, six drinks per sort of... | |
| So, I mean, you were like a social alcoholic, right? | |
| Like, you didn't do much socializing without drinking? | |
| Correct. Okay. And when I stopped drinking, I found it very awkward when I was still socializing, because I would still go out with my friends and go to the places, but without drinking. | |
| That It was a very awkward transition for me. | |
| Oh, yeah. You drink to pretend that people around you have inequality, just so you can have stupid stories to regale each other with. | |
| I was so wasted, you know? | |
| And rather than just saying, well, these people aren't particularly interesting or deep or thoughtful. | |
| You drink to erase how boring people are. | |
| Okay, so when she told you about the dysfunctions within her family, what did you do or say | |
| with that information? | |
| Well, I think I was a little in disbelief about, in particular about the marriage itself | |
| In my mind, I was like, why would they still be married? | |
| If your perception is true, why are they even still together? | |
| So I think I was... | |
| A little bit of disbelief. | |
| And then the few times that I had met her family, of course they seemed very pleasant and friendly. | |
| So I guess I just didn't take her for her word. | |
| So in your perception, she was incorrect about her family and you as the newcomer were correct? | |
| Right. Yeah, because I was... | |
| Looking at it through the lens of my experience, rather than just... | |
| No, come on. Hang on. | |
| Yeah. Looking at it through the lens of your life. | |
| Right. But I guess I thought maybe she'd be exaggerating it or something. | |
| I'm going to go to a Japanese person and say that Japanese is incomprehensible language. | |
| It's just Babel, because I don't speak it. | |
| I'm just looking at it through the lens of my experience. | |
| Right. Yeah, I guess I just didn't believe it. | |
| At least I didn't believe that it was to the level that she had perceived it. | |
| Okay, so if you didn't believe her, then you thought she was lying or exaggerating. | |
| So what did that say about her character if she was defaming her mostly loving parents and calling them dysfunctional when they were mostly fine? | |
| what did that say about her character at the time that she would lie about her | |
| parents or exaggerate their dysfunction for some unknown reason? | |
| Like how did you process that? | |
| She's just trashing her family in a way when they're actually pretty nice. | |
| I mean, would that be a huge red flag? | |
| Yeah. I mean, I guess I didn't just think too much about it. | |
| Like, it'd be like, I don't even think my parents have sex. | |
| I'm like, surely they have sex. | |
| And that was just sort of like, you know, I didn't put any real value to... | |
| You know, it's like, how could she know, for one? | |
| And then for two, I didn't know it was as big a deal as I think it is now. | |
| Sorry, but why wouldn't you ask her more? | |
| Like, tell me what you think, or what was it like for you growing up with the parents who didn't show affection, or like, have some basic sympathy and curiosity about her life? | |
| Um... Just... | |
| I didn't go... | |
| I wouldn't go deep with her emotionally. | |
| It was pretty... | |
| I don't know. | |
| I mean, I should have for sure. | |
| It was pretty. I like that. | |
| It was pretty. The object was pretty, i.e. | |
| my girlfriend. It was pretty nice to look at her. | |
| Okay, so you didn't want to get to know her? | |
| Yeah. That's fair. | |
| So you wanted to avoid getting to know her because you found her sexy. | |
| And you didn't want anything to mess that up, right? | |
| Yeah, I wanted her as my girlfriend. | |
| I didn't, at that time, think... | |
| I wasn't looking for her as a long-term partner. | |
| It was sort of a new... | |
| And did she know that? | |
| Um... I don't know. | |
| I think she did. I mean, you think she did? | |
| No, she definitely did. | |
| She definitely did because there was an instance because I had told her that I wanted to marry a Mormon girl because I wanted to raise my kids in the Mormon church and not have a spouse where we weren't on the same page with... | |
| With that kind of stuff. | |
| And that was something that was upsetting to her. | |
| So she knew that for my long-term goals, she didn't fit the mold for my long-term spouse. | |
| Well, except she could convert, right? | |
| Yeah, which she did. | |
| Which she did. Okay. So that's a solvable problem. | |
| Right, right. | |
| Okay. And that was one of the other reasons why, I don't know if it's important, but when she converted, it's like, well, why did you leave her right after she converted to the church and basically put your relationship on hold for two years? | |
| And one of my thoughts for doing that was I wanted to see if she was converting for herself or if she was converting for me. | |
| Is this something she wanted for her or is she just doing this to appease me so that the relationship could go forward? | |
| I ultimately thought she was doing it for herself. | |
| I still believe she did. | |
| She stayed in the church while I was gone and we were active in the church for 10 or 15 years of our marriage. | |
| I ultimately believe she did join for herself when she did. | |
| But that was a conversation we had when we were dating was, yeah, I want to marry a Mormon because I want my wife and the mother of my kids to be a Mormon, and she was not that. | |
| But like I said, we solved that problem. | |
| So tell me a little bit about your parents and your childhood and upbringing. | |
| Yeah, so my parents were high school sweethearts. | |
| My mom... | |
| They both grew up Mormon, so I don't know how many generations Mormon our family goes back, but a few. | |
| And they were high school sweethearts. | |
| They got married right after my mom graduated high school. | |
| And my dad was two years older. | |
| And they had a big family. | |
| I'm the youngest of seven. | |
| And moved around a lot as a kid. | |
| I feel like I'm going back into my engineering question. | |
| Susceptibility to the timeline stuff. | |
| No, no. They moved around a lot. It's irrelevant. | |
| Yeah, okay. So my dad would take jobs and opportunities as they came. | |
| And so there was no stability of place growing up. | |
| So there was a pretty big gap between the first five and then the next two, me and my brother that's a couple years older than me. | |
| But I grew up, when I was growing up, we moved every year or two through my younger years to the fact of where I attended four different elementary schools growing up. | |
| And it wasn't until I was in the fifth grade when we moved to a new town and my dad started his own business. | |
| That we stayed put anywhere. | |
| I'm sorry, how old were you? So fifth grade would have been like 11. | |
| Okay, yeah. Something like that. | |
| So once I got to be about 11 years old, I'd lived in like four different states, probably eight different houses, like moved to a couple different towns within states. | |
| And so we were packing up and leaving every year or two for most of my youth. | |
| And when I got to sixth grade, I went to the same middle school, grade six, seven, eight, went to the same high school. | |
| So I had a core group of friends, and that when I got to that age, but on my first half of childhood, it was really nomadic. | |
| Okay, and how were you disciplined as a child? | |
| There was some timeouts. | |
| I can only remember being spanked once or twice. | |
| I would have been probably five or something. | |
| My mom was pretty soft-spoken. | |
| I don't remember her ever yelling at me. | |
| My dad could be a little bit of an ornery guy, but He was never really verbally abusive, but maybe just kind of stern. | |
| I wouldn't say my dad was emotionally available to me if by any means. | |
| I don't ever remember having any deep conversations with him about anything of importance. | |
| I feel like they... | |
| Not even of theological matters or... | |
| No, not really. I feel like they just punted on those conversations to Sunday school at church. | |
| We would have at-home activities where we might have some sort of a spiritual lesson and then play a game or something as a family. | |
| But I would say most of the moral instruction, I feel like, was I delegated to those at the church or in Sunday school, and then they weren't necessarily the one. | |
| It wasn't necessarily coming out of their mouth, but they exposed me to it through attendance at the church. | |
| Right, okay. And how'd you get along with your siblings? | |
| Well, pretty well. | |
| The brother that's just older than me, I'm closer to him than the older five. | |
| He's actually the one that turned me on to you probably eight, ten years ago. | |
| And then my older five, we get along well. | |
| I wouldn't say we're particularly close or deep. | |
| I would have a conversation with a couple of them about the struggles I'm having in my marriage and stuff and ask them their advice. | |
| But for the most part, I connect with the brother that's just older than me. | |
| Okay, and your relationship with your parents? | |
| My dad passed a few years ago. | |
| My mom, I would say, is still a good relationship. | |
| She lives about seven hours away. | |
| We'll try to visit her at least once a year, and she'll come out and visit us a few times a year. | |
| I want to say we talk super frequently, maybe a phone call once a month. | |
| So I wouldn't say we're particularly close as far as frequency of talking or visiting, but I feel close enough to be honest with her about what's going on in my life and trust her opinion, I suppose. Okay. | |
| And what did your father die of? | |
| He had dementia. | |
| Oh, gosh. Yeah, it was probably about 10 years between kind of the diagnosis and finally passing, but yeah, it wasn't great. | |
| I mean, he was at home the whole time, but if he didn't pass when he did, it was getting to the point where my mom wasn't going to be able to take care of him. | |
| Oh gosh, I'm so sorry. | |
| That's a very tough situation. | |
| Thank you. And was he in his 70s? | |
| He was 80. That's a very, very tough situation. | |
| Juxtapose the way that my mother was with my dad versus how I see my wife's parents. | |
| It's just a struggle for me to see the difference of how My dad's illness and the way my mother handled that versus how I see it in the in-laws is tough for me. | |
| Right, right. Okay. Alright, so let's do the marriage. | |
| What's going on at the moment or has been going on for a while that has got you most upset? | |
| I feel like all of our Conflicts go unresolved, and attempts to resolve conflicts end up with escalated fighting. | |
| There's no physical abuse on either side, but it just escalates and escalates, and I feel like I have to put the brakes on the conversation because I don't feel like she has brakes. | |
| I feel like my grievances go unheard or dismissed, and as I have been trying to advocate for myself more in the relationship, it's just causing more conflict, which leaves me more resentful. | |
| Okay, so those are the mechanics, but I need to know what the content of the disagreements is. | |
| Okay. Well, the most current example might be a good one to start with, but a little background, maybe I'll try to keep this brief, but I was jealous for a long time of her having her friends and going out with her friends and doing things where I felt like I was... | |
| Overly sacrificing to be around her, be around the family, not socializing, things like that. | |
| Well, anyway, in the last year or two... | |
| Sorry, sorry. I don't know what on earth any of that means. | |
| So you could break it down. | |
| Don't be afraid to get granular with me, because everybody wants the big picture stuff, but if I don't know what the actual facts are, then I'm listening to narrative rather than I'm an empiricist, right? | |
| So I just need to know what does that mean, that you sacrifice for her to be with her friends and for you to be with the family. | |
| I don't know what that means. Well, she's still close with a few of her high school friends and they would get together and they would go visit each other maybe once a year or every other year. | |
| After she had done this three or four times and I hadn't basically been on any trips of my own to go see my friends, I was Maybe jealous and resentful. | |
| And, you know, she was like, well, what do you want me to do? | |
| You want me to... | |
| Okay, hang on, hang on. So she gets together with her friends once a year? | |
| I mean, I want to say it's that maybe she's done it five or six times in the last, you know, 10 years, maybe. | |
| Okay, so let's just say every two years. | |
| Sure. And how long does she get together with her friends for? | |
| Probably a long weekend. | |
| Maybe she leaves on a Thursday, returns on a Monday. | |
| Okay, so a long weekend every two years. | |
| And this bothers you. | |
| Well, it didn't bother me that she did it. | |
| No, no, it bothers me. Come on, let's not waste time. | |
| You said it bothers you. | |
| Right? So I don't want to do this sort of thing where you say something bothers you and I say, and this bothers you. | |
| No, it doesn't bother you. Let's not do that, right? | |
| So let's just be straight, right? | |
| So why does it bother you that every two years she goes away for a long weekend? | |
| It bothers me because it was making me... | |
| Upset that I didn't have the same sort of connections in my life. | |
| So like a jealousy thing. | |
| So you were jealous that her friends wanted to get together with her and nobody really wanted to get together with you? | |
| That, yes. | |
| Yes and. I didn't feel like it was... | |
| Something that was going to be allowed for me. | |
| Like, it would put her out for me to do the same thing. | |
| Sorry, it wouldn't be allowed for you. | |
| I don't understand that. | |
| Like if I was going to try to plan a trip with some of my friends, that it would be too much of a burden or too | |
| selfish of me. | |
| And that it would cause conflict between us if I were to attempt to do the same thing for myself. | |
| And did you try? | |
| I mean you had a theory. I did you talk about it with her and she said oh I can do this, but you can't | |
| Not necessarily like we I did try and The and I think it did end up having | |
| some conflict Okay, this I can't work with stuff this vague man | |
| I think I did try. | |
| I think it ended up having some conflicts. | |
| Like, what are you talking about? | |
| That's so vague. I have no idea what to say about that. | |
| I mean, if you don't remember, we can move on to another topic. | |
| But if you do remember, I can't do the vague stuff. | |
| Right. Well... | |
| You know, it's like you go to the doctor and you say, I have some vague discomfort somewhere. | |
| And the doctor's like, okay, can we narrow this down a little bit? | |
| How am I supposed to diagnose that? | |
| So like two years ago, I was invited to go on this golf trip that was going to be like a week-long golf trip. | |
| Are you a golf guy? Yeah, I try to be. | |
| Okay, so how often are you spending the day golfing? | |
| In the last year or two, I'll spend maybe two or three hours a week. | |
| Two or three hours? How do you get a golf game in two to three hours? | |
| Is it mini golf? Are you able to get part of the little... | |
| The windmill and the clown nose. | |
| No, I would typically just play nine holes. | |
| So, you know, an 18 hole round is probably going to take you four, four and a half hours, but I would typically just play nine holes. | |
| Okay. And do you play how many times a month? | |
| Right now, I'm during the summer this year. | |
| And last year, I'd say I'd play once or twice a month. | |
| So you have more time with your friends than she has with her friends in terms of, like, she's a couple of days every two years, and you're, you know, half a day, a couple of times a month. | |
| Right, but that's just the most recently. | |
| Like, I golf more than once or twice a year, probably for the last 15 years, and then just two years ago. | |
| Oh, so you're not really a golf guy then? | |
| Like, once or twice a year, you're not a golf guy? | |
| Well... Well, I'm an aspiring golf guy, I guess. | |
| It was always too much of a burden to go golfing. | |
| Because your wife was complaining? | |
| Yes. Okay. | |
| And what would she say about you going golfing? | |
| She would say, like, it must be nice to go get to go golf, you know, some sort of, like, passive-aggressive, sarcastic-type comment, or just... | |
| Things of that nature to make me feel like shit for being there and guilty for going and not to be able to enjoy it when I would go. | |
| And so I would just stop trying. | |
| Okay. And do you know why you being away was upsetting to her? | |
| I think it's because she... | |
| It's an inconvenience for her when I'm gone and she doesn't want to deal with the inconveniences of having the kids alone without me like on a Saturday morning or something. | |
| It's an inconvenience for her. | |
| She wants me at home so I can help her With the family obligations. | |
| Okay. And she's a stay-at-home mom, right? | |
| Yes. Does she homeschool? | |
| No. Okay. | |
| So she's a stay-at-home mom, and what are the ages of your kids? | |
| Just give me the range. I don't need everybody's details. | |
| Sure. I've got one that's an older teenager, and then I've got two that are like early teens, and then one that is grade school. | |
| So, she has been a stay-at-home mom for like two decades? | |
| Nearly, yep. Okay. | |
| So, she's home all the time, right? | |
| Yeah. And she's dealing with kids all the time. | |
| Yes. So, doesn't she need a break? | |
| Yeah, she does. | |
| And when does she get a break? | |
| Outside of the once every two years, long weekend thing? | |
| Well, basically, every day when I would come home from work, it would become, you know, daddy's in charge type of deal. | |
| Like, hand them off, basically. | |
| And then... Whenever she wanted. | |
| She used to have a friend group that she would get together with once a week and they'd watch a reality show together that they were into. | |
| She would do some socializing as well. | |
| It wasn't that she was just stuck at home with the kids all day, every day. | |
| And then I was at home with her on the weekends. | |
| More often than not, you know, 90% of the time I'd be at home. | |
| And then when I'm at home, I almost would take the lead or do the heavy lifting with the kids as far as, you know, doing bedtime or, you know, those types of things. | |
| Okay, and does she enjoy parenting? | |
| Overall I'd say yes. | |
| you you | |
| I think she is... | |
| I wouldn't say she is overly loving it, but I think she likes being a mom and, in general, likes parenting. | |
| What does she not enjoy about it? | |
| She... I know she doesn't enjoy bedtime, so as far as getting kids ready for bed, I think she gets frustrated with getting them to conform or follow her directions without pushback. | |
| One of the things I think is she doesn't handle pushback from the kids very well. | |
| So I'd say that's I think if they were all in lockstep and following her orders all the time, I think it would be much easier for her. | |
| And I think that would take away a lot of what she perceives as the problem. | |
| But our kids, at times, need to be reminded several times. | |
| And she's not very good at negotiating with them. | |
| It kind of ends up being... | |
| You know, threats of taking boys away or taking privileges away. | |
| She gets exasperated and doesn't really know how to negotiate, right? | |
| Right, yeah. She gets conformity through threats versus then through negotiating. | |
| I mean, I assume that's how she was raised, right? | |
| I would assume so, yeah. | |
| I think that's pretty accurate. | |
| Okay, so tell me a little bit about how she can't be corrected. | |
| That... Not to be too vague here, but when I have something that she's done and I bring it up, she won't take any ownership. | |
| I understand you're just telling me how she can't be corrected in a longer fashion. | |
| Tell me how she can't be corrected. | |
| Well, when I try to correct her, it's like, no, I understand that. | |
| Can you give me an example? | |
| Again, I know it can be tough to remember, but just a rough example or a typical example. | |
| A typical example would be, so she was upset by something that I did yesterday, and she texted me in a passive-aggressive way. | |
| And I responded with a text saying... | |
| Okay, you understand that you're just telling me stories again, right? | |
| I just need some facts. Sure. | |
| So... Okay, what was she upset with you and what did she text? | |
| We had a conversation a few nights ago about how she was upset about this group of guys that I do this nine holes of golf with every week. | |
| Sorry, every week? | |
| Well, they do it every week. | |
| I don't participate every week. | |
| There's probably a group of 12 guys, and on any given week, there might be 5 to 10 of us that can play. | |
| And so it's a standing game, but I don't participate every week. | |
| And so she was upset that she thinks that I'm playing too much. | |
| And so they play, and then They'll go and get a bite, get some dinner together as a group afterwards. | |
| And so they texted me yesterday and asked me if I was playing. | |
| I said, no, I'm not going to play, but I might be able to make it to the restaurant afterwards, depending on what's going on at home. | |
| And so I put it in our shared calendar, you know, the family, the one that's just, yeah, the one that we have a calendar that just is shared between us two. | |
| And then there's another one that's a family calendar. | |
| But I put it in the one that's shared between the two of us and just said, hey, I put the restaurant's name with some question marks because one of my daughters has a volleyball game. | |
| And this is tonight. | |
| This was yesterday talking about today. | |
| My daughter has a volleyball game and I'm like, I don't know what time the volleyball game will end. | |
| I may be able to make it for dinner. | |
| I may not. And so I put it in the calendar with some question marks and then she screenshotted the calendar and sent it to me with a text that said, just to give you the specifics, I can actually pull it up. | |
| Her deal was, I see you really heard me last night, and then sent me a picture of the text. | |
| Because we had been talking the previous night about her criticisms of my time at home. | |
| And so I just responded with, please don't text me stuff like this. | |
| If you want to talk about something, let's talk. | |
| This isn't helpful. Okay. | |
| So, sorry to interrupt. | |
| So, you guys have done a couple of rounds of marriage counseling as well as individual counseling, right? | |
| Correct, yeah. Okay. So, is there any therapist that has urged her to be indirect and passive aggressive in this kind of way? | |
| And I agree with you, that is. | |
| So, she's taken, like, probably a year plus or more of individual and family therapy, right? | |
| Yeah. Okay. | |
| She's done individual for probably like eight or nine months, but we've done two rounds of couples therapy. | |
| So like a year and a half of communication therapy, right? | |
| Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Yeah. | |
| In a room with a therapist for at least a year and a half. | |
| Okay. So a year and a half plus she's done individual? | |
| Oh, she's done. | |
| So two years. | |
| Yeah. So a year and a half of couples and probably a half a year of individual. | |
| Okay. So, again, I've not done couples counseling, so I mean, the therapist must have told her to be direct about what she thinks and feels and not do this passive-aggressive stuff, right? Certainly. | |
| Okay. So, why do you think she hasn't listened, or does it anyway, or doesn't take the coaching? | |
| I think that she doesn't recognize that it's a problem. | |
| No, no, no, come on. Two years of therapy, right? | |
| It must have come up, right? | |
| You must have talked about this passive-aggressive stuff in couples counseling, right? | |
| Right. Okay, and the couples counselor must have said, that's not a great way to communicate, try this, try this, that kind of stuff, right? | |
| Right. Okay, so why is she still doing it? | |
| I mean, has she acknowledged, does she say to the therapist who says, don't be passive-aggressive, she says, you're right, you're the expert, that's what we're paying you for. | |
| Right? Sorry, just help me understand. | |
| So does she agree that it's not the best way to communicate? | |
| Is it a standard you can hold her to? | |
| And she's like, oh, yes, that's right. | |
| That's what the therapist said. You're right. | |
| I'm sorry. Blah, blah, blah. | |
| Right? I think she agrees that it's not an appropriate way to communicate. | |
| She... Does it anyway? | |
| I don't tell you why it's so hard for her to stop herself. | |
| No, sorry. Is it a standard that she has agreed to not do? | |
| Yes. Okay. | |
| So, then... | |
| I'm trying to figure out your response, and I'm not criticizing anyone, I'm just, like, your response is, why don't you try that again, remembering that we've paid $20,000 in therapy? | |
| Or, you know, I mean, that's maybe passive-aggressive too, but maybe this, like, I mean, I thought we talked about this, that this wasn't a great way to communicate, do you want to try that again? | |
| Or something like that. Like, is that... | |
| Like, you know, if there's a standard that says, don't raise your voice, the moment somebody raises their voice, you say, whoa, whoa, whoa, hang on, remember we don't raise our voices? | |
| Is there a standard that she's agreed to? | |
| There's a standard that she's agreed to, and then if I try to hold her to that standard, she gets put off by it. | |
| Okay, so then why are you still paying for couples counseling if... | |
| It's like, the equivalent to me would be like, my wife is 300 pounds, she spent two years with a nutritionist, but she won't change her diet or even acknowledge that her diet really needs to be changed. | |
| It's like, well, what's the point of the nutritionist then? | |
| Well, a couple things come to mind. | |
| One, you know, the reason I... This second round of counseling came on the heels of me asking for a divorce. | |
| This was after the Christmas party thing, right? | |
| Yes. Okay. And so I, after, you know, we had this initial conversation where I'm like, you know, I think we should get a divorce. | |
| And then a couple days, over the next couple days, we've had continued conversations, and I ultimately said, agreed to try counseling again. | |
| And in my mind, Two reasons. | |
| One, I wanted to give our marriage every opportunity to be saved and with the hopes that maybe a different counselor with a different strategy may be able to get through to her better than our first one. | |
| And then two, looking down the road, if our marriage did end up in divorce, I could have, I guess, the satisfaction of knowing I looked under every rock and tried every key. | |
| And if there's, you know, if there's animosity, I'm sure there will be with the kids and me, then I haven't... | |
| I didn't just throw in the towel too easily. | |
| Just because you talked about it very briefly in the email, the Christmas party story, which sounds almost like some Spanish soap opera, but what was the story there? | |
| Yeah, so... | |
| Leading up to the Christmas party, my wife had had a hysterectomy. | |
| So this was probably three or four months before the Christmas party, but I think it's relevant. | |
| So during the, uh, after the hysterectomy, obviously there's going to be a period of time where, uh, sexual activity is not going to be, uh, advised or possible. | |
| Yeah, of course. And, and so, uh, and, and the frequency of sex in our marriage has always been, uh, an issue for me. | |
| And what is the average frequency? | |
| Uh, previous to the beginning of this year, probably, uh, Once or twice a month. | |
| Oh, gosh. But there had been stints where, like, she didn't like having sex when she was pregnant, because we had had a couple of miscarriages, and in her mind, she thought that sexual penetration could potentially be an issue. | |
| And so there had been times in our marriage where... | |
| My God, man, how well hung are you? | |
| No, I'm just kidding. Right. | |
| Wash your eyes. That's right. | |
| So there have been times in our marriage where we might go six, nine months without any sex. | |
| And that's over the course of pregnancy or other things as well? | |
| That's typically over the course of pregnancy. | |
| Like, she finds out she's pregnant and then it's almost like no sex until, you know, two months until after the baby's born, which is nearly a year. | |
| And sorry, not to be like overly graphic, but I mean, obviously there's non-penetrative, like non-penis-vagina sex, right? | |
| Right. And so that did not happen either. | |
| And, you know, in my mind, it's just sort of like a rejection. | |
| She doesn't care about what I need in the relationship. | |
| And does she express any sympathy or empathy about your lack of sexual access? | |
| No, when I would bring this up as a concern to me, it would be shut down as she would respond with things like, well, what about me and what I need? | |
| Or calling me selfish or something for wanting that in a relationship or wanting more of it in a relationship. | |
| That was a selfish ask of me. | |
| Okay, so she's very harsh when you express needs, right? | |
| Yes. She then gets overly, I mean, really quite nasty. | |
| Right. You express needs. | |
| Okay. Does she follow the general biblical teaching that the man is the head of the household? | |
| No. And is that a part of the Bible that she rejects, like she knows better than God, Jesus, and the prophets? | |
| I'm just curious where this comes from. | |
| Well, I don't know where it comes from. | |
| It definitely doesn't come from anywhere that she's been taught in a religious sense. | |
| But, you know, she'll say things to me like, you know, I want you to be the take the lead, but then whenever I lead, it creates conflict. | |
| But her mother is very dominant in the marriage of her parents, right? | |
| Yes. And you knew that before you married her, right? | |
| You said her mother treats her dad like crap? | |
| Yes. I witnessed that more after the marriage. | |
| They would put on a good show the few times that I had spent time around them before the marriage. | |
| But she warned you that her parents don't have sex, and then you ended up in a significantly sexless marriage, right? | |
| Right, which, you know, that became a big red flag when it was too late. | |
| I didn't recognize it. | |
| No, no, she told you that ahead of time. | |
| Her template for marriage is sexless or largely sexless. | |
| Yes. And that was... | |
| Sorry, did she criticize her mother, or what's her relationship like with her mother as a whole, and what was it like back then? | |
| Because if she says, this is how my mother is, I love and respect my mother, then, you know, whatever we love and respect, we become. | |
| She was... She's very critical of her mother. | |
| I feel like she's becoming less critical of her mother in more recent years, but she's always been very critical of her mother and feels like the way she treats her dad is not fair. | |
| And the fact that she can go a year without sex is unusual, right? | |
| I assume that you've kept yourself reasonably attractive and all of that, right? | |
| Yeah, I think so. | |
| You know, and when I would suggest things like, well, maybe it's a hormonal imbalance, you know, maybe you should go and get your hormones checked, or, you know, that would be off-putting to her, like, well, you know, the reason we're not having sex is because I don't feel connected to you, not because there's something wrong with me. | |
| So, you know, point the finger back at me of why our sex life sucks. | |
| Or, you know, I would ask her, like, is there... | |
| Was there any sexual abuse before I met you that would have you be apprehensive about sexual contact? | |
| And she was like, no, there wasn't anything. | |
| And if you think that's why we're not having sex, that's not it. | |
| It's because I don't feel emotionally connected to you. | |
| And so I thought it was unusual and I've kind of poked around on the edges and None of my hypothesis had seemed to be correct, and every time I poke, it was not well received. | |
| Interesting. So, if you were to say to your wife, I don't feel like working anymore because I don't feel emotionally connected to you, what would she say? | |
| That would be a non-starter. | |
| Well, no, no, because you would say, look, I just don't feel emotionally connected, and I just don't feel like going to work. | |
| As soon as you pass this standard I have, which I'm never really going to define, called emotional connection, then I'll start working again, what would she say? | |
| Her response would be, well, that's not the same thing. | |
| No, no, but it's the same. | |
| Okay, let's do this debate, right? | |
| You pretend to be your wife, right? | |
| So I'd say, you know... | |
| I don't feel very emotionally connected, and I think I'm going to take an indefinite period of time off from work. | |
| I don't feel particularly motivated to go to work and fund all the family stuff. | |
| I just don't feel close enough. | |
| I don't feel connected enough, so I'm just keeping you informed. | |
| It might be a month, it might be a year, I'm not sure. | |
| Well, I don't know how you expect us to pay our bills, and I don't know why you feel like you need to be emotionally connected to your job to go to work. | |
| Well, that's okay if you don't understand it. | |
| I mean, we're different, right? | |
| So you don't have to understand it. | |
| I'm just telling you what I'm feeling. | |
| Well, you can feel that way, but you still got to work. | |
| No, actually, I don't. | |
| I don't. I mean, this will probably involve some changes in our lifestyle and so on or whatever, but yeah, I'm just not feeling it. | |
| I'm just not feeling emotionally connected. | |
| I don't feel motivated. And you'll figure it out. | |
| That's just not going to work for me. | |
| Well, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, but this is how I feel. | |
| Like, you know, the same way that you say you don't want to have sex because you're not emotionally connected and committed or whatever. | |
| I'm not sure exactly what it is, but you have the right to not be physically close to me. | |
| And listen, I was annoyed by that for quite some time. | |
| I really was. But I've realized that Instead of being annoyed and frustrated by our lack of sexual activity, I've just realized, and it is an amazing thing, and I really do have you to thank for this, and I'm not being sarcastic, like I genuinely have you to thank for this, that you have liberated me from obligation. | |
| So if you don't feel like having sex, we just don't have sex and there's nothing I can do or say in particular that I know of. | |
| And so rather than saying, oh, that's so terrible and it's got to be fixed and getting frustrated and tense and feeling rejected and all of that, right? | |
| Because I don't know what to do to fix it, I mean, after 20 years, right? | |
| So rather than say It's really bad. I can look on the other side and say oh, | |
| so if we don't feel like doing something We don't have to do it and listen. I've got a lot of dreams | |
| I you know, maybe I could be a semi pro golf player. Maybe I can work on that | |
| You know, I've always wanted to learn how to sketch with charcoal | |
| I mean, I I'd love to learn how to play the guitar you know, there's lots of things that I want to do and work | |
| is kind of getting in the way and So I'm taking | |
| Freedom, the freedom that you have, I'm just taking that exact same freedom. | |
| So I'm actually thankful to you for liberating me from obligation. | |
| Well, that doesn't work. | |
| You're still obligated. | |
| You've got a family to take care of, and you can't just not work because... | |
| We need you to work. | |
| So, I don't know what you need to do, but you need to figure it out. | |
| No, see, I need sex, and that's not an obligation for you. | |
| So, need is clearly not an obligation mover, right? | |
| Need doesn't mean that obligation changes. | |
| Well, you don't need sex. | |
| You just want sex. No, you can't tell me as a man what I do and don't want and need. | |
| Like, I am not at all remotely interested in your opinions of what I as a man need. | |
| I as a man know what I need. | |
| And listen, you don't need me to work. | |
| We can just move to a smaller house. | |
| I mean, it's not a need. It's not like we're going to die. | |
| Or we can move in with your parents. | |
| It's tons of things we can do. | |
| We can spend saved money. | |
| We can sell assets. | |
| We don't need me to work, right? | |
| We can survive without it. | |
| And so we just have to change, right? | |
| So you don't need me to work. | |
| So it's the same situation. | |
| I don't know what she would say after that. | |
| It's a fairly reasonable case, isn't it? | |
| Yeah, no, for sure. | |
| I mean, you both work together, so she can just work more. | |
| Yeah, maybe I'll stay at home with the kids, and you can go find work. | |
| Exactly. Because she's saying, well, you don't need sex. | |
| It's like, well, yeah, but you don't need two incomes. | |
| You need one income, right? | |
| Or I guess you can go on welfare or something, but you need one income, but she can be that income, right? | |
| Yeah. And so that is an equivalent, right? | |
| Right. And so freedom for other people is freedom for you. | |
| Right. If your wife is free to reject your sexual needs, then you're free to reject her financial needs. | |
| So instead of being frustrated, look at it as liberation. | |
| Well, and to be honest, Steph, the... | |
| I have, in a sense, but rather than doing it from a work standpoint, I've been doing it, and I feel like I've used that as my justification for trying to get into a weekly golf game, or trying to... It's like, well, you know, if... | |
| And so I've used her rejection... | |
| Of me as basically a liberation to do more of the things I would- No, no, but you still feel bad about it, you were saying, right? | |
| I was. | |
| I don't now, which is why there's conflict, because I'm not showing enough remorse for my time spent away from the family. | |
| Well, okay, so when we make choices, we choose the outcome, right? | |
| Flick the first domino, assuming all the dominoes are put correctly, then you end up with the last domino, right? | |
| So the first domino is, well, my wife is not, and it's not just about sex. | |
| I assume it's just about affection as a whole, right? | |
| Right, just like her caring for my needs as a whole. | |
| Right. So, I mean, it's not just about sex, it's about affection, right? | |
| And did you both take the vows to love, honor, and obey? | |
| We sure did. | |
| Okay. So obedience has to do with meeting the other person's legitimate needs, right? | |
| Yes. Okay, and of course, she would recognize that you have a legitimate need for closeness, cuddling, intimacy, and so on. | |
| And then it all becomes kind of twisted. | |
| I don't want to speak for you, so obviously if I'm incorrect, you can tell me. | |
| But it usually becomes kind of twisted then because you're so hungry for affection and sex that anytime she shows you any affection, you think it might lead to sex, and then she's like, I'm just trying to show some affection, you know, that kind of stuff, right? | |
| Correct, yeah. There would be very little sort of like Cuddling or physical contact because I think she didn't want to open the gate that might lead to a sexual encounter. | |
| Right, okay. So if you say, I am not going to be emotionally engaged because my wife is not | |
| affectionate, then you're just giving her more excuses to not be affectionate, right? Because | |
| then you say, well, I'm not affectionate because you're not affectionate. And then she says, well, | |
| I'm not affectionate because you're not emotionally available, whatever that means, right? | |
| Mm-hmm. Yeah. I'm happy, and just not to lose the thread of the Christmas party. | |
| Yeah, sorry, go ahead. | |
| So, you know, the background, you know, I mentioned the hysterectomy, and, you know, I'm saying about, say about six, eight weeks after the hysterectomy, you know, I come to her, unfortunate turn of phrase, because that's exactly what did not happen, but I go to her and I say, I... She used some sexual contact, you know, like basically asking, you know, blowjobs are off the table, | |
| but, you know, I was like, can you get to work over here for me? | |
| Sorry, why are they off the table? | |
| Because she, well, they weren't before we were married, but after we were married, she is not interested. | |
| Oh, really? So you got oral sex before marriage, but then after marriage, it gives me the ick, you know, something like that? | |
| Yeah, basically, yes. | |
| Wow. Yeah. | |
| That's quite the bait and switch. | |
| I feel bait and switched. | |
| Right. Okay. | |
| Sorry, go ahead. | |
| I was going to say, and that's why I, you know, when I I'm struggling with the divorce thing, the question in general, because I made these obligations, but I also feel like she has broken the, not explicit, but pretty reasonably for me to assume conditions of what our marriage would be like from what our relationship was like before the marriage. | |
| But I feel like that was broken. | |
| So I feel That's why I struggle with the morality of the divorce in general. | |
| Okay, so let's do the Christmas thing? | |
| Yeah, not to lose the thread for the Christmas thing. | |
| So I asked her for basically a handy, and she's like, how selfish of you? | |
| No. I'm still recovering from my surgery. | |
| How dare you only think of yourself? | |
| Although the surgery did not involve her forearm or wrist, but go on. | |
| Right, yeah. Her grip strength was fine. | |
| The phalanges are fine, yeah. | |
| Yeah, so that happened. | |
| So come to the Christmas party, so this is probably four or five months, probably four months after the surgery. | |
| We still hadn't had any physical contact. | |
| Four months? Yeah. | |
| Okay. Not my first four-month tour. | |
| The first one that didn't involve pregnancy, right? | |
| Yeah. I mean, we could go a month or six weeks without a pregnancy involved, but this would be the longest without a pregnancy involved. | |
| So we get to my company Christmas party, and I'm kind of on and off about wearing my wedding ring. | |
| And my dad never wore a wedding ring. | |
| I'm not trying to signal to anyone by not having a wedding ring on or anything. | |
| But anyway, we're at the party together. | |
| I'm not wearing my ring this particular night. | |
| And one of the people that worked for me and my wife were... | |
| So we had the Christmas dinner and then we go to this bar after the dinner to hang out and socialize. | |
| And so one of my employees and my wife were having a conversation when I'm across the room. | |
| And she's asking my wife, hey, how come your husband doesn't wear a ring? | |
| And my wife's like, I don't know. | |
| And then she's like, both of my employees, we should ask the schemes of this plan with my wife. | |
| Let's go have the waitress ask him. | |
| And so they pay one of the waitresses at the bar to approach me and say, I see you're not wearing a wedding ring. | |
| Are you single? And my response to her was, no, but I might be in a month. | |
| And because I had... | |
| Earlier this week, I had actually went and had a consultation with a divorce attorney. | |
| So this was already on my mind. | |
| And so that was my response. | |
| And you had talked to your wife about that, is that right? | |
| No, I did that without her knowledge. | |
| Okay, got it. So the waitress returns and reports back to my wife and this employee what I had said, which... | |
| You know, in hindsight, was this real cryptic message that kind of embarrassed her and blew up in her face. | |
| Well, it's not that cryptic. | |
| Right, right, right. | |
| In the sense, like, what do you mean maybe not in a month? | |
| What does that even mean? You know, so... | |
| No, what that means is you could leave her. | |
| Right, right, right. | |
| And so she has all this egg on her face from this caper that she says was the other girl's idea, but she had every opportunity in the world to stop it. | |
| And when I pressed her on it, she was like, well, I was genuinely curious on what you would say. | |
| And so she basically sets me up that it could have gone very poorly if I entertained it at all. | |
| Then the marriage could be over. | |
| There could be very big ripples in the business. | |
| The owners are getting divorced. | |
| That's not good for anyone. | |
| Everyone starts jumping ship. | |
| So this could be a very problematic situation, to say the least, if I respond in a different way. | |
| Back to can't admit fault, can't feel like she can do anything wrong. | |
| She feels completely justified and shows no remorse. | |
| It wasn't my idea. | |
| I didn't do anything wrong. | |
| After me calling her out on that was when I concluded in my heart that this is over, this cannot be saved. | |
| But I was going to wait until after the holidays to have this conversation with her. | |
| So after the holidays is when we sat down together and I asked for the divorce. | |
| Then a few days later, I agreed to marriage counseling. | |
| So that was the last straw. | |
| I sat her down and said, I think we should get a divorce. | |
| I think we should... | |
| I didn't want to fight about the things previously, so I said, I think we should just focus on the future and how we can try to make the co-parenting work and just try to find a way to make co-parenting as good as we can possibly make it, given the circumstances. And then she was like, I can't believe you'd be willing to quit so easily. | |
| You're not even fighting for us. | |
| So even when you say, I'm so unhappy, I want to get divorced, she can't stop shitting on you? | |
| Yes. Okay, so she has contempt for you? | |
| Yes. Yeah, so that's not a marriage. | |
| Contempt is the worst emotion. | |
| And contempt, as far as I understand it, contempt is the biggest predictor of a divorce or a breakup. | |
| Because if you're saying, I'm so unhappy, I want out, and she's like, you're lazy, you're a coward, you won't even fight. | |
| If it's just torrents of verbal abuse, even when you're confessing how unhappy you are, I mean, honestly, it's not a marriage, is it? | |
| No, it's not. And so... | |
| And then, like, I feel guilty and selfish for wanting to end the marriage so that I can find something better for myself. | |
| But why does she, why do you, and look, I'm not blaming you, obviously, I'm just, why do you think she has this contempt? | |
| And again, I'm not blaming you for it, I'm just curious where you think it comes from. | |
| Well, you may not know. I understand you don't know consciously, but my concern is that, let's say you get divorced. | |
| I don't know if you get divorced or not, right? | |
| But let's say you do get divorced, but you don't know where this comes from, then it's just going to happen again. | |
| Right. And then you'd be like, okay, so I'm out of the frying pan, into the fire, except I broke up my marriage and I'm basically back at the same place. | |
| That's the worst situation, right? | |
| Right, exactly, yeah. | |
| That's the nightmare scenario. | |
| Yeah, yeah, for sure. So, content. | |
| One of the things that she had said to me in one of our heated arguments that really, I don't know if If it is the base, the root of it, but one of the things that really was a head-scratcher for me was, and this is after we had left the Mormon Church, you know, one of the things she said with so much contempt in her voice was, you know, I married you and you were a Mormon! | |
| And it was like this most contemptuous thing, like, I don't know if she has contempt for me for like, feeling like I... Drug her into this Mormon church, and she wasted two decades of her life being a Mormon because of me. | |
| And I'm like, well, I was born into it. | |
| You chose this as an adult. | |
| But she was just dripping with contempt. | |
| No, but that's an effect, so let's go back further. | |
| Yeah. Okay. | |
| She has a lot of contempt for me. | |
| Because of porn use. | |
| So that's another element of the relationship, for sure. | |
| I mean, I'm not condoning that, of course, but I would assume that the pornography use comes in part as a result of no sex. | |
| I agree. | |
| I hate giving myself that excuse because it doesn't take the accountability, but I do, you know, No one can masturbate without pornography. | |
| Yes, but you're a businessman. | |
| I assume you like to be slightly more efficient or whatever, right? | |
| Right, exactly. And I always had like very vanilla, you know, porn use. | |
| And, you know, I've had these conversations with her. | |
| It's like, I'm not a video guy. | |
| I was a picture guy because I didn't, you know, the video stayed in my mind longer. | |
| Sorry, I don't want to... that is to some degree the result of dysfunction within the | |
| relationship. I mean, it's not like you're gonna go look at porn right after you've had | |
| great sex with your wife. | |
| Correct. | |
| Right, okay. So, you know, of course you're responsible and all of that, but there's cause | |
| and effect and dominoes and I get all of that. So let's go back further. | |
| When do you think it first showed up? It didn't show up in the line dancing, right? | |
| No. | |
| Our wedding night, it showed up, for sure. | |
| I'm trying to think if it goes back before then. | |
| I mean, if it's not too sexually explicit, when did it show up? | |
| Or how did it show up on your wedding night? | |
| So, you know, we had our wedding, reception, great party. | |
| I had my brother and her best friend, which was her maid of honor, collect a bunch of... | |
| Flowers and candles from the reception party and move them over to our honeymoon suite to try to set the room for us getting there eventually. | |
| And this is near the end of the night. | |
| People are filing out. | |
| Very few people left in the reception area. | |
| And we finally get back to the room. | |
| And we had not had sex since before my mission. | |
| So this is like years in the making. | |
| And even before the mission, we didn't do penetrative sex. | |
| It was just oral and that kind of thing. | |
| So this would be like a real first penetrative sex experience together as a couple. | |
| And we had like a 6 a.m., Flight for our honeymoon the next morning. | |
| And she was like, well, a couple things. | |
| One, she sent me out of the room a couple times to grab a bag from the room she stayed in the night before. | |
| She sent me out again to go get a bottle of water because she didn't want to take her pill with the sink water. | |
| And so I'm roaming the halls of this hotel at midnight on my wedding night. | |
| Yeah. And then we get to, you know, and finally she's like, well, I guess we can have a quickie, but we gotta, you know, we gotta be up early for the flight tomorrow. | |
| And so it was just such a deflating... | |
| So why didn't you, and I'm not saying it's the easiest thing, but why wouldn't you just annul then? | |
| Say it wasn't consummated. I'm not living like this. | |
| My parents had a sexless marriage. | |
| I don't want that. I just didn't have the courage to stand up for that for myself. | |
| Okay. All right. | |
| So you had the quickie and it was like... | |
| It was like, yeah, quickly, I'm feeling rejected and annoyed, but I don't want to ruin our, you know. | |
| Okay, so let's go back further, because that had to come from somewhere. | |
| Mm-hmm. So, she felt like when I pressed her about it later in later conversations, like, well, I felt like you were trying to rush me to get out of our reception, and I always wanted to stay to the end of my wedding reception. | |
| And I'm like, well... Okay, no, no, let's go back further, right? | |
| Because she's already criticizing you for wanting to sleep with her after you got married and haven't had penetrative sex ever or any sex for years. | |
| So, she should be trying to tear your clothes off too, right? | |
| Okay, so let's go back further. | |
| I can't remember anything specific between like me returning home from the mission and us getting married, but | |
| I do recall. | |
| Having cold feet about the wedding. | |
| Wait, wait. So she didn't treat you with any coldness or contempt until the wedding night? | |
| And I'm not disagreeing with you. | |
| I just want to make sure I'm clear. | |
| No. There was some coldness and contempt before the wedding night. | |
| I just can't think of any specific interaction. | |
| I mean, it's hard to think she was a total chameleon for years. | |
| Because what were you, like three years plus before you got married? | |
| I know two on mission, but you're still emailing and texting, right? | |
| Yeah, we dated for two years before the mission, so we had been a couple for four years by the time we got married. | |
| Four years, no intercourse. | |
| Okay. And so... | |
| Now, hang on. | |
| Over the four years of no intercourse, did she seem to have any problems with no intercourse? | |
| Is she like, I'm going up a wall, this is not healthy, this is like, I want to rip your clothes off? | |
| up like did she have or did she express any difficulty with a virtually sexless four years? | |
| um well no | |
| I mean, the first year, and plus, you know, we had this sexual activity, but non-penetrative sex. | |
| But then she, you know, we were on the same page from the church standpoint. | |
| No, no, I'm not talking about the same page as far as whether you do or don't. | |
| Right? You know, when I gave up sugar, right, at the beginning of this year... | |
| I was like drooling. | |
| I dreamed of sugar, right? | |
| Like I was dying for sugar. | |
| Right now, I still didn't have sugar. | |
| I mean, occasionally I'll have a little dessert here and there. | |
| So, was it difficult for her to be years with little to no sexual activity? | |
| It seemed to me that it was a challenge for her as well. | |
| Okay, how did she express that directly? | |
| Like, this is driving me crazy. | |
| You're designed to meet and get married in your teens within a couple of months, so you're not supposed to go years without sex unless you're literally a monk, right? | |
| Uh-huh. So, how did she express her frustration at the lack of sexual activity? | |
| Well, there would be a few... | |
| There's instances where we might flip up, where it might be, okay, our hands get a little too active below the belt. | |
| And so there was sort of a, it was almost like a pressure relief valve for the both of us, I think. | |
| But still keeping some sort of guards on how far we let it go. | |
| So to me, it felt like she was also holding back and then sometimes giving in. | |
| And so I got the impression from her that it was a challenge as well and just seemed eager in those instances before we were married to indulge. | |
| So are you saying that she hid her sexual dysfunction or frigidity until the wedding night? | |
| Yeah, I think so. | |
| I was genuinely shocked on the wedding night that it played out the way it did. | |
| Okay. Okay. And then when we were on our honeymoon, you know, in my mind, I was like, yeah, we're probably going to be fucking like rabbits on our honeymoon. | |
| We, in a week, maybe we would do it three or four times. | |
| And so I was, I was, so the, you know, I could remember at our honeymoon, like leaving the hotel room and going to sit on the beach by myself because I just felt rejected by her. | |
| Yeah, you're trying to make up for four years of lost time, right? | |
| Right, yeah. I was like, finally, you know, growing up in the church, it was always like, sex before marriage is a sin, but you can have all the sex in the world once you're married, and it's like, you got the green light, and I feel like I finally got the green lights waving, and we're just sputtering on the start line. | |
| Okay, so why did she marry you? | |
| What's her draw to you? I think it's a status thing. | |
| I think she saw the potential of me being successful from a business standpoint. | |
| And I think she thought I was going to be a good dad, which I think I am. | |
| So I think she had... | |
| Okay, hang on. Hold the phone then. | |
| Hold the phone. Sure. Okay. | |
| Can you be a good father without loving the children's mother? | |
| Because you're modeling a relationship for your kids. | |
| No, I can't. | |
| A father is as much to do with the mother as it is to do with the kids. | |
| Sorry, can you repeat that one more time? | |
| Being a good father is as much to do with the mother as it is with the kids. | |
| You're not atomized and it's just you and the kids like there's no mother there. | |
| Because they're seeing every day, they're breathing in what's going on with you and your wife. | |
| And they're saying, this is a marriage. | |
| This is what it is to be married. | |
| This is what it is to have children. | |
| And that's the template, right? | |
| Right. It's like, do I do more harm staying in a bad relationship? | |
| Hang on. I just gave you a big insight, and you're immediately jumping into conclusions. | |
| This is part of the emotional unavailability stuff. | |
| I did just blow your mind a little bit, because you probably thought of yourself as a great dad, and I'm sure with relation to the kids, you do great stuff. | |
| But I'm telling you that you are modeling being a husband As much as you are modeling being a father. | |
| Yes. And one of the things that you're doing as, well, this is you and your wife, one of the things that you're doing is you're selling marriage and parenthood to your children. | |
| Because if they don't want the life that you have, things are tough for them. | |
| Right? Do your parents, like, you have how many sons? | |
| Uh, just my oldest. | |
| Okay. So, does your son want your life? | |
| I don't think so. No, absolutely not. | |
| I mean, you don't want your life, right? | |
| Right, true, yeah. Your son does not want your life. | |
| So, if your son doesn't want your life, what's he going to do? | |
| Um... Nobody knows. | |
| Something, yeah. But it's gonna be something quite rebellious and different, right? | |
| Right. I mean, I hope that my daughter wants the marriage that my wife and I have. | |
| Sorry, I don't mean to brag or anything like that. | |
| But I mean, that's just generally the point is that, you know, I mean, I have to sell philosophy a little bit, right, to people, right? | |
| And so on, right? | |
| So there's sales involved in all aspects of life. | |
| And are you and your wife doing a good job of selling marriage to your kids? | |
| No. No. So they don't want what you have. | |
| Which means you don't have much credibility. | |
| So why does your wife need to threaten your kids? | |
| Because she doesn't have credibility. | |
| Why doesn't she have credibility? | |
| Because her life sucks. | |
| Because she doesn't suck. | |
| Sorry. No, but she doesn't have credibility with the kids, right? | |
| And maybe you not either, right? | |
| So you're fun to play with. | |
| You're entertaining. You're probably a good storyteller. | |
| You have good conversations. | |
| But foundational credibility? | |
| No. I mean, it's the fat guy trying to sell the diet book, right? | |
| He just doesn't have credibility. | |
| It doesn't really matter what the diet's all about. | |
| Right. Because I know you're thinking about, well, what's best for the kids? | |
| And the funny thing is that your wife refers to you as selfish, right? | |
| Often. Right. So the real selfishness, and I'll just talk about her, right? | |
| I'm sure you're involved in this as well, but the real selfishness is disrespecting the father of her children. | |
| Not loving him, not showing him respect, not worshipping the ground he walks on, not showing how delighted she is in his presence. | |
| She just looks like a cold-hearted witch. | |
| Who mentally castrates her husband on a regular basis. | |
| And so the kids are like, well, you have no credibility for me. | |
| Look how you're living. I'm supposed to respect you? | |
| You tell me what to do so I can end up like you? | |
| You've got to be kidding me. | |
| If the fat guy says, here's how you eat, what do you say? | |
| I'm going to do the opposite. | |
| Right. So the real selfishness, and this is true for both of you, is that I think you've missed out on that the quality of your parenting is half the quality of your marriage. | |
| Half of the quality of your parenting is the quality of your marriage. | |
| And you can't be good parents if you're bitching at each other and cold and hostile and calling each other. | |
| I mean, do the kids ever hear... | |
| Does their mother call you names? | |
| Like the selfish and the... | |
| Does she ever do that in front of the kids? | |
| Very rarely. So, yes. | |
| I don't think she's called me selfish in front of the kids, but there was like an incident last night where, you know, she basically chopped my legs out from under me when I was having a conversation with my daughter. | |
| Not what how many names well she she came in my room and She | |
| She was like can I get a back rub I said, no, I'm talking to your mom. | |
| And she was like, you owe me a back rub. | |
| I'm like, no, I don't. | |
| And she was like, or I go, I don't owe you a back rub. | |
| And my wife's like, you don't owe her? | |
| And so... | |
| She just, like, chopped me down in front of her, you know, in the room. | |
| Sorry, your daughter said that you owe her a back rub. | |
| You said you don't, and your wife said, but you do. | |
| No, she had contempt that I would respond to her with, I don't owe you one. | |
| Okay. So she didn't have any position on whether I owed her or not, just how I responded to her. | |
| Got it. Okay. Okay. | |
| But she did that in front of her when she was in the room. | |
| Got it. Okay. | |
| But your kids don't see you and your wife affectionate with each other? | |
| Because our relationship can be a little hot and cold depending on how hard we're trying to make it work. | |
| And so they can see us affectionate with each other when we're Both putting in the effort to try to make it work, but then... | |
| But they can also see that it's effort, right? | |
| Right, yeah. And they can see that it runs hot and cold. | |
| Okay. So then what they're going to see is... | |
| So the way that marriage works, kids, here's the way that marriage works. | |
| You sign up for someone to be your sole source of affection. | |
| And then that person can turn it off at will and keep it off for years. | |
| Is that a good deal? It's a terrible deal. | |
| It's a terrible deal. In the same way, it would be like if you signed up and for some reason you were able to, I don't know, make your wife stay home and you were the sole source of income and then sometimes for 6 to 12 months you just wouldn't have a job. | |
| You just would quit and work on, I don't know, putting little masked boats inside of bottles or something, right? | |
| And then other times you might go into work, you know, maybe a couple of times a month for a day, and your wife would be frantic because she'd never know how much money was coming in. | |
| She wouldn't be able to plan anything. | |
| You'd be stressed all the time. Bills would pile up, right? | |
| She wouldn't be able to answer the phone because she would sign up for you to be the monopoly provider of income, and she wasn't allowed to get a job anywhere else. | |
| And you would barely work. | |
| It's the same thing with a faction, right? | |
| Mm-hmm. And the funny thing is, after this conversation I had where I asked for a divorce... | |
| The frequency of our sexual activity skyrocketed to where now it's like once or twice a week. | |
| Well, that's not exactly skyrocketing. | |
| Well, I mean, when you're in the desert, I feel like I'm in the oasis at this point. | |
| Every oasis is an ocean, right? | |
| Yeah, exactly. | |
| But of course, that's just manipulation, right? | |
| Right, yeah. It's kind of a love bomb. | |
| It's kind of how I read it. | |
| I mean, yeah, that's just manipulation. | |
| It's just to keep the gravy train running or to keep the family, quote, intact. | |
| Mm-hmm. Okay. She'll sell it as, you know, I'm putting in an effort to do what you need in the relationship, and she wants to see the same out of me. | |
| So she's saying, I'll hold my nose and have sex with you, but you have to provide me what I want. | |
| Right. Okay, so this is just a male pride thing, man. | |
| Why do you want to have sex with a woman who doesn't want to have sex with you? | |
| Exactly. Okay. | |
| Yeah. Oh, you were going to say something? | |
| I was going to say, a lot of times that's when the sex would dry up because I would Stop trying to initiate because I didn't have any desire to have sex with someone that was... | |
| Well, it's a humiliating ritual at that point, right? | |
| Yeah, it's like masturbating into a person. | |
| It's like, this isn't sex. | |
| This is just co-masturbating. | |
| Yeah, yeah. Not the spiritual union that divinity would prefer, right? | |
| Right. Okay. | |
| All right. When did you first start to feel contempt for your wife? | |
| Um... It had to have been somewhere between returning from the mission and getting married, or at least at the very latest, the wedding night. Okay, but before you got married? | |
| Well, because I know, I remember having a dream before we got married, and in this dream, I was holding a baby, and And the infant said, don't marry, and then said her name. | |
| It was almost like my kids reaching through time to warn me. | |
| Or God. Or God. | |
| Because honestly, there was a Jesus figure in the dream as well. | |
| Right. And so I kind of took that as cold feet. | |
| But also, like, something's not right here. | |
| But then I... I felt like the train had left the station on the momentum of our relationship. | |
| This is the problem with investing in relationships without a moral standard, is that it just becomes like train tracks. | |
| Next thing, next thing, next thing. | |
| Okay? Um... | |
| Remind me, is there a power imbalance in your parents' relationship? | |
| I wouldn't say so. | |
| My dad was definitely the patriarch of the home, but treated my mom very well. | |
| My mom always would say the same. | |
| Your dad always treated me so well. | |
| I know I'm speaking to your father's dad, but your parents loved you? | |
| Yes. Okay. | |
| Why didn't they warn you? | |
| There was only one conversation I can remember with my mom when the relationship with my wife was getting a little bit more serious. | |
| No, no. Before you got married. | |
| Before you got married. Yeah, this is when she was still my girlfriend. | |
| Oh, sorry. When I had been dating her for about a year. | |
| And this was before my wife had converted. | |
| Yeah. To Mormonism. | |
| And my wife or my mother had a conversation with me like, are you sure this is what you want to do? | |
| But from my perspective, I think it was more of, I don't think you should go down the road with someone that's not in the church. | |
| I don't think it was her warning me about her Virtue or character. | |
| But did your parents know about your girlfriend's parents' relationship, that the mom treated the dad like crap? | |
| No. Why didn't they know that? | |
| Did they not meet them? | |
| Did they not ask? I mean, they're merging families. | |
| I don't think they had met at this point. | |
| No, but four years! | |
| Four years! Again, I know you're away for two, but... | |
| Four years. Aren't they supposed to vet? | |
| Isn't that one of the job of the church elders? | |
| Or I guess they weren't religious, but just parents as a whole? | |
| Aren't they supposed to vet? Because everybody knows that teenagers and young people are, you know, overly attracted to looks and don't look for qualities of character and are horny, and there's nothing wrong with that, but everybody knows that. | |
| So your parents are supposed to look out for you. | |
| Yeah, they failed me in that, for sure. | |
| Why? Because they weren't curious enough about my relationship. | |
| No, I understand the mechanics. | |
| The question of why is, why did they not work hard to protect? | |
| Right? Right. | |
| Why? I mean, it absolutely is a biblical thing, right? | |
| And again, I know they're not super Christians, but just as parents, right? | |
| As parents. You want to watch out for your kids' hearts and make sure they marry the right people. | |
| I can't think of anything except for it just being neglectful. | |
| But then they didn't love you enough. | |
| I'm like, I'm sorry to be so blunt, but I can't say I love someone and then watch them wander into traffic and not say anything. | |
| Yeah. No, it's crossed my mind for sure. | |
| So, what's the answer? | |
| Because you're in the same situation. | |
| A woman who claims to love you but neglects you. | |
| And your parents, you claim that they love you but they neglected the most important decision you make in life. | |
| The most important decision you make in life is who you marry. | |
| There's not even a close second. | |
| And especially who you have kids with, right? | |
| So, your parents gave you no feedback of any use on the most important decision of your life, the one decision that determines the vast bulk of your future happiness or misery. | |
| So why? Yes. | |
| Why didn't they sit you down? | |
| They had four years. | |
| Why didn't they meet her, meet her family, evaluate? | |
| This is a huge decision. | |
| I don't know. I wish they would have. | |
| Of course you wish they would have. | |
| But the question is, why didn't they? | |
| I think I got that switched in my brain. | |
| My apologies. Yeah, her parents are not super religious. | |
| So for your parents, knowing that you have to pass down the wisdom, knowing that you have to marry for qualities of character, because you're marrying the soul, not the flesh, right? | |
| So why? I think they... | |
| I remember getting that type of direction, but no... | |
| Sorry, what type of direction? | |
| Like, you know, that the person you're marrying is going to be the most important choice that you ever made, that you want someone that's, you know... | |
| Okay, were they hands-off with you as a whole? | |
| Did they just not give any feedback to you as a whole? | |
| They didn't care what you did as a kid? | |
| They gave you no feedback on studying or tests or school or friends or drugs? | |
| Did they just were completely hands-off and this is just part of that? | |
| Yeah, they were pretty hands-off. | |
| Okay. So, can you think of any advice that you got from your parents when you were growing up that you're still used to this day? | |
| Um... Yeah, I've heard you ask this question to other people, and I've asked myself that, and I have not been able to think of something. | |
| I think they delegated all that type of things to the church and they did not take an active | |
| role in giving me advice. | |
| Okay, did anyone in the church talk to you about your girlfriend? | |
| And let's say they delegated it to the church, okay. | |
| you Did anyone in the church talk to you about qualities of character and virtue and don't get distracted by a pretty face and look for family history and look for self-knowledge and look for wisdom and morals? | |
| No. Okay, so everyone failed you. | |
| Everyone. Yes. | |
| And I'm really sorry for that. | |
| Thank you. So, what did you get out of people's complete indifference about you? | |
| That I'm on my own and my experience and happiness is not their concern. | |
| Well, no. If you had believed that you were on your own, you'd go live in the woods or be a monk. | |
| So, what does it mean that no one gave a shit about you enough to raise one fucking word about protecting you from a bad marriage? | |
| Nobody cared. Nobody cared. | |
| What does it mean that no one cared about you? | |
| I'm not sure. | |
| Well, it means that you're there to serve others. | |
| You can't have needs of your own. | |
| You don't exist. You're like a slave. | |
| You can't ever demand that people serve your needs. | |
| I felt that. Right. | |
| So then you go to your wife and you say, can you please serve my needs? | |
| And she treats you with contempt. | |
| It's the same thing. You needed guidance from your parents, your elders, aunts, uncles, grandparents, great aunts, great aunts, whoever, right? | |
| You needed guidance, and you got complete indifference. | |
| While still, like, complete indifference would be nobody even wants to talk to you, but people have, like, endless conversations about the fucking weather and sports and politics and all that kind of unimportant bullshit. | |
| Yeah, all surface-level shit. | |
| Right. But not, you know, okay, you need to protect your heart. | |
| Okay, so why were your parents content to guide you into marrying this woman? | |
| Why were they okay with this? | |
| Let's put it another way. | |
| Let's put it another way. If you had met a woman who was assertive, moral, confident, and loved you to death, and she saw you around your parents, what would she say? | |
| Um... They seem like nice people. | |
| No, that's not what she would say. | |
| They seem a little... | |
| They seem... | |
| Uh... | |
| Not involved in your life very much. | |
| Okay, so you haven't spent much time around really honest people, right? | |
| Which is why I was kind of railing up you about calling your wife honest, right? | |
| Okay, what does an honest person say after she spent time around you and your family? | |
| They Honest | |
| you They don't talk about anything of importance. | |
| Okay. What else? | |
| Your parents don't ask you anything of value or give you any direction. | |
| Seems like they are pretty hands-off. | |
| No. Hands off is when people don't contact you at all. | |
| She would say, it's not a relationship. | |
| It's not a real relationship. | |
| You're just hanging out in the same, you're breathing the same air. | |
| But you're not sharing hearts, minds and thoughts. | |
| I can't stand this. | |
| It's so shallow. There's nothing here. | |
| I feel like I'm out of oxygen 10 minutes into the room with these people. | |
| Like, why don't you guys talk about anything that's real? | |
| What's going on? Why is there this weird cone of surface-level nonsense going on? | |
| And then she'd go and talk to your parents with you in the room and say, I mean, I've been here a couple of times. | |
| Nobody talks about anything. Like, why? | |
| I mean, you guys haven't even vetted me. | |
| I'm dating your son. | |
| You haven't grilled me. | |
| Do you not care who he dates? | |
| I don't understand this family. | |
| I don't understand. Look, why is there nothing here? | |
| And what would your parents say? | |
| And honestly, that's what Jesus would do. | |
| He would say, we're not born and given great souls and the capacity for truth, intimacy, and virtue to spend our lives talking about nonsense. | |
| So what would they say? Like, you're not even vetting me? | |
| Or don't you care who your son dates and marries? | |
| Like, I don't understand. This is family. | |
| And I'm, you know, I'm supposed to marry into this and I don't understand it. | |
| I can't marry into it if I don't understand it. | |
| Why don't you guys talk about anything? | |
| I've asked your son, what, any advice he got from you guys when he was growing up and he got nothing. | |
| I don't mean to drag you into this, honey, but you guys didn't give him any guidance or moral. | |
| You're supposed to be the mentors and the teachers and the bringers to the Lord, and you didn't talk to him about much as a kid. | |
| You didn't give him any advice. | |
| You didn't even talk to him about drugs, sex, rock and roll, tests, studying, nothing. | |
| Like, how are you parents? | |
| I don't understand how this all works. | |
| I can't imagine anyone being that honest. | |
| Okay, but that's what I'm talking about in terms of honesty. | |
| Right. And that's what I'm talking about in terms of someone who cares about you. | |
| See, if you care about someone, you care when they're ignored. | |
| If you care about someone, you care that people don't care about that person. | |
| I had a friend who went over... | |
| Three times to his girlfriend's place and he said, nope, not doing that again. | |
| Like, you vanish. I'm just sitting awkwardly with these people. | |
| I'm not going back. Or if I'm going back, I'm not participating in this cone of absence. | |
| Yeah, usually when we get together as a family, it's just like play board games, surface level conversation, nothing of substance. | |
| Kind of enjoy each other's company, but not really... | |
| Well, it's just proximity. | |
| Yeah, get into anyone's real... | |
| And that conditioned you to look at fun as the basis of a relationship, which is why you thought, hey, this girl's fun. | |
| That's the basis of a relationship. | |
| Right. I could really enjoy my time with her. | |
| She would make a great partner. | |
| Right. Like, you go and have fun with your parents. | |
| There's some cards, some board games, you know, you watch a comedy, you laugh, you talk about the food, the weather, people, right? | |
| Mm-hmm. Okay? | |
| So, do you want to know where the contempt comes from? | |
| Please. All right. | |
| And I don't know from her side, because I'm talking to her, not you. | |
| I'd be happy to talk to her, but I doubt she'd do it. | |
| But the contempt comes from the very beginning. | |
| Very beginning. She says, my parents have a sexless marriage. | |
| And you say, no, you're wrong. | |
| No, it can't be. Forget it. | |
| Let's go line dancing. Look, I know she has her faults. | |
| But she tried to have, 20 years ago, or more, almost a quarter century ago, she tried to have a real conversation with you about something that was deeply troubling her. | |
| And what did you do? I was not curious, wasn't I? Well, you brushed it off. | |
| I brushed it off, yeah. | |
| You told her she was wrong and that you'd rather go line dancing. | |
| She had a need. | |
| You brushed it off. | |
| You have sexual needs, and what does she do? | |
| Brush them off. That's right. | |
| Because you had needs and your parents brushed them off. | |
| You had needs for guidance, wisdom, knowledge, love, virtue, protection. | |
| So you had needs with your parents and they blew you off. | |
| She had needs with her parents. | |
| They blew her off. She had needs of you, you blow her off. | |
| You have needs of her, it blows you off. | |
| It's all one big cycle of indifference, proximity and rejection. | |
| Feels true. | |
| And that's what you're modeling for your kids, and this is how the virus of proximate absence | |
| reproduces. | |
| And that's what you're modeling for your kids, and this is how the virus of proximate absence | |
| reproduces. | |
| And that's what you're modeling for your kids, and this is how the virus of proximate | |
| absence reproduces. | |
| you you | |
| That's great insight, Steph. | |
| Thank you. Right. | |
| Well, I mean, I wish I'd been there a quarter century ago. | |
| Right. Now it's one of these, I've made my bed, how long do I have to lie in it type of situations in my heart. | |
| Well, yeah. I mean, that obviously I can't answer because that's a very personal decision. | |
| You know, it's a tough question, right? | |
| And sorry, of course, that's completely retarded of me to say. | |
| I apologize for that. No, it's a simple question. | |
| You don't know that it's a tough question. | |
| That's why you called. Sorry, you know that, and I apologize. | |
| How dare you? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. | |
| That was me. | |
| I didn't want to say er, um, so I just said something completely even more useless than that. | |
| So sorry about that. You're good. | |
| See, there it goes. There's my pause. | |
| All right. There are certain types of female personalities that need to be constrained by the masculine. | |
| In other words, assertiveness. | |
| So, she's drawing you into a feminine game. | |
| Right? Which is, I can go without intimacy longer than you can go without intimacy. | |
| And you are trying to play a woman at a woman's game. | |
| Will not work. Will not work. | |
| Right? Will not work. | |
| It's like... What was it? | |
| I remember in health class from like grade 8 or something, they said, well, if you get crabs, you know, those little weird things in your pubic hair that you can get as an STD. And I remember them saying, and it's kind of struck me, I remember them saying, well, you know, if you get crabs and you think, oh, I'll just lie in the bath for an afternoon, it's like, trust me, they can stay under water a lot longer than you can. | |
| Right? Which means that you don't try and... | |
| I have a conflict with people who are really good at that kind of conflict. | |
| Like, I'm not going to go and go to some black belt and try and take them down physically because they just hand me my ass on a silver platter, right? | |
| So, you are trying to play a woman's game with a woman. | |
| A particular type of woman. | |
| Not all women play these games, of course, but a particular type of woman, right? | |
| So you're trying to manipulate someone who's really good at manipulation, right? | |
| Yes. And clearly, she can go without sex for an indefinite period of time. | |
| That's just a fact, right? | |
| And you, as a sort of red-blooded man, you can't, right? | |
| Nope. Plus, not having an orgasm is actually bad for your health. | |
| I mean, you can go look up orgasm and prostate. | |
| Make sure you put both of those in the search terms. | |
| Don't be prostate. I'll be in cognito mode. | |
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I'm just so, look, there's a certain number of orgasms that are optimum for male health. | |
| So it is just, you know, sort of fact of life kind of thing. | |
| So she can clearly go without sex, but it's rough for you, right? | |
| Right. I would say I was getting my requisite number of orgasms, just I was the only one in the room. | |
| No, but it's, you know, kind of gross and humiliating, right? | |
| Yeah, it's shameful. Right. | |
| So you won't be able to win that, withholding of affection and whatever it is, right? | |
| Right. Now, I mean, to be honest, I mean, if she... | |
| Now, and clearly she can change what she does with regards to sex because she's willing to do it if you threaten divorce. | |
| But that's kind of... | |
| Sex under threat is not... | |
| I mean, obviously it's not good, right? | |
| So my particular page has been with people, if someone... | |
| Someone doesn't want to take into account my needs. | |
| This is sort of when I was younger. | |
| I've mostly whittled these people out of my life. | |
| But, you know, if someone doesn't want to take my needs into consideration, that's fine. | |
| So rather than get mad at them, I'm like, okay, so freedom for them is freedom for me. | |
| Freedom for them is freedom to me. | |
| And so, I'm not trying to tell you what to do. | |
| I can tell you, if I were in your kind of situation, I'd be like, okay, so, you know, for almost 20 years, right? | |
| For almost 20 years, she has, to some degree, to a large degree, not taken my physical needs, my needs for affection, not just sex, into account, right? | |
| Yep, okay, so I don't have to take her needs into account Right, all right, and so you just you don't have to take | |
| her needs into account She wants you to do something, it's like, no, I don't want to. | |
| Now, as opposed to, and if she passive-aggresses, if someone passive-aggressed me, I'd be like, do that again and I'm blocking you. | |
| She's like, well, how am I going to get in touch with you? | |
| Well, don't do that. But if you do this passive-aggressive stuff, I'm blocking you. | |
| And we're going to go have a fine day. | |
| And when I come home, if you nag at me, I'll just go back out again. | |
| Like almost like training someone. | |
| Yeah. Like if someone's got dysfunctional behavior, they have it because it's worked. | |
| So if she's not going to listen to sort of abstract reason and virtue, then the behavior that has worked for her has to not work. | |
| And if she's like, then this is part of a sort of very important debate, which is like, okay, well, if you don't have to have sex, I don't have to work. | |
| I mean, do you love your job? | |
| No. Okay, so then you don't have to do what you don't feel like. | |
| And if she says, well, you have an obligation to work, it's like, well, no. | |
| I mean, you said to love, honor, and obey. | |
| You've not been doing that, so I'm free to... | |
| Like, because you haven't kept up your obligations, I don't have to keep up mine. | |
| I mean, it's just basic morality, right? | |
| I mean, if you order something online and they don't ship it to you, you don't have to pay, because they didn't hold up their end of the bargain, right? | |
| Right. So, it's a mindset shift where you simply mirror her behavior, but don't have higher moral standards than people you're interacting with. | |
| Now, that's tough for you, right? | |
| It has been. | |
| I feel like I'm doing that a lot more in the last year or two, and it's sort of shifted how our conflicts go. | |
| Now it's I'm selfish versus... | |
| No, no, sorry. | |
| Why are you having conflicts? | |
| Why are you getting engaged in conflicts? | |
| Are they ever productive? They're not. | |
| Then don't do that! Stop it! | |
| Yeah. Stop it. | |
| She starts to get cranky. | |
| I'm going out. She gets cranky when you come home. | |
| I'm going out and staying at a hotel. | |
| She gets cranky like you just have to not participate in the behavior. | |
| That which worked ain't gonna work Don't engage | |
| The moment she gets crabby nope not doing it and just go You | |
| you you | |
| I'd start personal, and then if she continues to be crabby, just don't show up to work. | |
| I'm not enjoying spending time with you, so I'm not coming to work, because you work together, right? | |
| No, she stays up. I mean, it's our family business, but she doesn't participate in the actual business. | |
| Oh, okay. Yeah, so if you go to work, and then if she's crabby, just block the number. | |
| I'm blocking you. Right? | |
| And then, if she's nice when you come home, then maybe you can unblock her, and if she continues to be crabby, just go out. | |
| Go play golf. And you say, oh, but what about the kids? | |
| And it's like, but this is for the kids. | |
| You can't allow yourself to mistreat to you can't allow yourself to be mistreated in a relationship | |
| Yeah, we would go through we there's been stints in the last year or two where we might have six weeks of hardly | |
| Talking to each other except for logistics with the kids and I was sleeping in the guest rooms | |
| It's like, I'm just not going to, I'm going to avoid you while you're being, you know, this way. | |
| And, you know, I mean, I guess it's not, if I want the relationship to work, it feels like that's, That's not a great long-term strategy, but neither... | |
| So the kids know all that, right? | |
| Yeah. So the kids know that you're barely talking to each other and you're sleeping in the guest room. | |
| Yeah, there's been instances where I've done that. | |
| Sorry, I thought you said there was four to six weeks at a time. | |
| Yeah, there was one time where it was like four to six weeks where I slept in the guest room, but that was just a one-time thing. | |
| Okay. Sometimes I'll sleep on the couch or something because I just roll and ruminate if I'm laying in the bed next to her and I just like, I gotta get it out of this bed. | |
| Yeah, I mean, it's easy for me to say, right? | |
| Because I'm not married to your wife, but I don't... | |
| When people have negative interactions with me, I just block them. | |
| Until they're more positive, I just won't do it. | |
| Yeah. Yeah, that's why, actually, I've been enjoying the couples counseling just from the perspective of the conversations I can have with her, with them in the room, is... | |
| Much more productive because they don't, you know, we're both on our best behavior, I guess, as far as like... | |
| No, it's not productive because it doesn't last. | |
| No, that's true. It doesn't last, right? | |
| So... I just feel like I'm kicking the can down the road. | |
| It's like, when will my kids feel old enough? | |
| So she does not have, it sounds like, an internal standard of behavior. | |
| She does what she can get away with. | |
| Right, it's like, it's not a first principles standards. | |
| Yeah, like I shouldn't do this, it's rude. | |
| And so, you are selfless, and so she gets what she wants when she calls you selfish, right? | |
| Right, yeah. Because people who are cruel, they figure out what values are the most important to us, right? | |
| Mm-hmm. And I'm really, really concerned that people think for themselves, so what do people do? | |
| They know that, so they call me a cult leader, like I'm programming people, because they know that that goes against my highest value, right? | |
| Right. So you are selfish to a fault, and so she calls you selfish, knowing that that will push a button and get compliance, right? | |
| Right. So, you know, wear it proudly. | |
| So, you know, if she says you're being selfish, yep. | |
| Yeah, you've called me selfish for years. | |
| I'm just not fighting it anymore. | |
| Hey, if you think I'm selfish, who am I to disappoint you? | |
| I'm going to be selfish. I'm only going to think of myself, right? | |
| Because you call me selfish, you married me knowing that I was selfish, so you've got no right to complain. | |
| So, yeah, I'll be selfish, right? | |
| Mm-hmm. Because she calls you selfish because she knows you don't want to be selfish and you consider that an insult, not because there's any objective judgment of your behavior, right? | |
| Yeah. And of course, if you really were being selfish and she cared about you, she would try to figure out what was going on and why in history and self-knowledge and wisdom and virtue and all that kind of stuff, right? | |
| Right. So, yeah, she's just someone, she's the kind of person who does what they can get away with. | |
| And it works because you take on the term or you rail against it, you engage in conflict and so on, right? | |
| So the big challenge here is to say, and it's tough for you because, as it is for a lot of us who are raised without really caring parents, is to say, what do I want? | |
| So if she's being mean to you, I don't want to hear this, so then just leave the situation. | |
| Now, right now, what negative consequences does she face for bad behavior? | |
| Um Mm. | |
| Thank you. | |
| I will get distant from her and then she gets anxious at my distance. | |
| No, she's fine with that. She's fine with that because she doesn't want to have sex anyway. | |
| So what negative consequences does she face for bad behavior? | |
| I'm less likely to go out of my way to prevent her inconveniences. | |
| Okay, that's pretty abstract. | |
| What tangible negative consequences that she can trace back to the source? | |
| I tell her no when she asks for my help. | |
| Okay, and what does she do? She's like, hey, can you pick up the kids? | |
| Like, I could, but why can't you? | |
| And then I just make her do it. | |
| Well, but I would use the mirrored language, right? | |
| I don't feel like it. Yeah. | |
| Right? And make it clear. Like, you know, the way that you don't feel like sex and we don't have sex, I don't feel like picking up the kids. | |
| I'm learning from you. | |
| I am kneeling at the feet of my mistress who's teaching me all about don't do things that you don't feel like doing and don't even work to try and figure out them out. | |
| I've learned from you. I've accepted. | |
| I've internalized. | |
| I've absorbed the lesson. But now that we're having more sex than we did previous to the threat of divorce, I feel like that argument might not hold as much weight as it did Well, no, you can say, well, there was a whole year we went without sex, when I was still paying the bills and being a good husband and father, so I've got a year, right? | |
| Like, you took a year, I can take a year. | |
| Do you mind if we just role-play that real quick? | |
| Sure, sure, go for it. Okay, so she says, so let's say that you've had a conflict and she says pick up the kids or something, right? | |
| Uh-huh. Well, I was going to be her. | |
| Okay, so you be her. | |
| Okay. Just so I can see how you would handle it. | |
| So like, you know, if I would have responded with, you know, there was a whole year we didn't have sex. | |
| Wait, wait, wait. Sorry, what conflict are we talking about? | |
| Well, in your hypothetical, right, about, like, not picking up the kids, I don't feel like it, just like you didn't feel like having sex with me for a year. | |
| I feel like she would say something to defect. | |
| Well, I thought we were trying to make this work now. | |
| You know, that was then. | |
| Are we really trying to make this work now, or are we not trying, or are we just faking it? | |
| Well, I genuinely don't feel like going to pick up the kids. | |
| I'm not faking it. So you just expect me to drop everything and go do that? | |
| Well, I'm just telling you, I don't feel like picking up the kids, right? | |
| So, I mean, when you didn't feel like having sex, did I say to you, so you just expect me to look at topless pictures of Demi Moore or whatever? | |
| Like, you know, you just didn't, like, you were just honest. | |
| Like, I'm learning from you. | |
| Like, I'm really trying to understand that, right? | |
| And so, obviously, you call me selfish, which means that I'm not doing what you're doing, right? | |
| And when you don't feel like doing something, you just don't do it. | |
| And I'm not criticizing that. | |
| I accept that. And since you call me selfish, it's because I'm not doing what you're doing. | |
| Right? So when you don't feel like doing something, you don't feel like being affectionate, you don't feel like giving me a hug or a kiss, or we don't have sex, or you don't feel like it, then you just don't do it. | |
| So I don't want to be selfish anymore, honey. | |
| Like, I don't want to be selfish. | |
| So I need to be more like you. | |
| Because you obviously know a lot about selfishness and selflessness. | |
| And so, clearly, your definition... | |
| Of selfish is the opposite of what you're doing. | |
| Because you don't say, well, we're both selfish. | |
| You say, you know, husband of mine, you're selfish. | |
| I'm not. So I'm honestly, I'm trying to be a better husband. | |
| I'm trying to learn from you. | |
| I'm trying to follow your example. | |
| And so, clearly, being selfless is not doing what you don't feel like doing. | |
| Because that's in your approach to, you know, very significant areas of the marriage for like 20 years. | |
| So I'm honestly confused, because I'm genuinely following your example and trying to not be criticized, you know, because I have been fighting this, and I apologize for that. | |
| I have been fighting this and trying to do the opposite of you for a long time, but I'm kneeling before you, honestly. | |
| I'm genuinely trying to learn from you, and if there's one thing you've taught me is that if you don't feel like doing something, don't do it, and don't worry about what the other person has to do as a result. | |
| That's on them, right? | |
| So I don't feel like picking up the kids. | |
| It's your problem to solve because I don't want to be selfish. | |
| I mean, I can say it, but... | |
| No, no, what would she say? What would she say? | |
| Oh, um... | |
| Well... | |
| I'm not being selfish when I do that. | |
| I do so much, and so sorry for asking you for help when I've got everything else I'm responsible for. | |
| I accept your apology. | |
| See, here's the thing. With passive-aggressive people, just take them at face value. | |
| Right? So, listen. Look, I appreciate you apologizing. | |
| For asking me to do what I don't feel like doing. | |
| I appreciate that. | |
| That's very kind. I genuinely do thank you for that. | |
| And it's no problem. | |
| I forgive you. | |
| Well, now you're just being a smartass. | |
| So, goodbye. | |
| And then hang up on me or something. | |
| Okay, great. Then you don't have to go pick up the kids. | |
| Right. Now, she's stuck there, right? | |
| Because she called you selfish... | |
| She called you selfish for putting her needs first. | |
| She called you selfish because it was a way to get her to do what you want. | |
| In other words, because you cared about her thoughts and opinions and feelings, she called you selfish to get what she wanted. | |
| Now, if you say, listen, if you call me selfish, then I have to do what you do, not what I do. | |
| And if there's one thing you've taught me is don't do things you don't feel like doing. | |
| So then what's she going to say? | |
| Is she going to say, that's right? | |
| The very definition of selfish is never thinking of the other person and just doing whatever you feel like. | |
| Is she going to say that's the actual definition of selfish? | |
| Of course not. Or she's going to have to say, wow, now that you're doing what I'm doing, I recognize that I've been selfish for 19 years, and I accused you unjustly. | |
| She's not going to say that either. | |
| So that's why she just has to escalate, right? | |
| Right. She has to escalate until I submit. | |
| Well, yeah, and just like, no, no, no, you've called me selfish, which means I have to do more of what you're doing. | |
| I have to learn from you, and I'm absolutely willing to learn from you. | |
| And you've taught me, don't do things you don't feel like. | |
| And she says, well, you have to pick up the kids. | |
| You say, I'm sorry, I don't feel emotionally close enough to do that. | |
| And you've taught me that, that you don't owe obligations to the other person. | |
| You don't have to try and figure out how to help the other person if you don't feel like it, and if you just don't feel close enough or whatever, right? | |
| And I don't feel close enough. | |
| I don't feel like we're getting along well enough and all of that, right? | |
| Right. The rule is you don't have to do anything for the other person if you feel like they're not meeting your needs. | |
| So if I apply that... | |
| No, if you're feeling like they're not meeting your needs, it's just another subjective thing, right? | |
| So you don't even have to explain any of it, right? | |
| Right. Right, right. | |
| And so that's the first thing and then you know depending on how far you want to take it, then the question is | |
| I don't feel like working as much so we're going to have to cut our expenses. | |
| If you don't like your job, why should you be a slave horse for someone who doesn't care about meeting your needs? | |
| you I shouldn't be. Well, no, of course not, right? | |
| Take a page from her book. | |
| If she's got all this moral authority and she can call you selfish and all of this, right, and cold and distant and emotionally unavailable, if she's got this moral autonomy, And she's got all of this moral knowledge to the point where she can criticize you, then just be more like her. | |
| She can't complain about you being more like her, right? | |
| Because she's the moral authority and you're the bad guy. | |
| So clearly, if she's slender and you're fat and you start eating like her, she can't get mad at you, right? | |
| You wouldn't think so. So, yeah, just like, you know, I don't feel like working. | |
| I'm not enjoying my work. | |
| I might take 6 to 12 months off and figure out what I want to do with my life. | |
| Well, how are we supposed to pay our bills? | |
| It's like, well, that's not my concern. | |
| Well, how is it not your concern? | |
| Well, I mean, just as an example, and again, I'm trying to be more like you because you call me selfish and I want to be more like you. | |
| So when you don't show me any physical affection, you don't worry about how I'm supposed to deal with it. | |
| You just don't do it. So really, I don't want to be selfish. | |
| I'm really trying to learn from you. | |
| You don't care how I handle your preferences, so I don't care how you handle my preferences, | |
| because I really genuinely want to be more like you. | |
| Yup. | |
| Tough state of affairs to find myself in. | |
| Well, my choices brought me here. | |
| Well, so here's the thing. | |
| If she can figure out that she hates being treated by you the way that she's treating you, you have a chance for empathy. | |
| But you've covered all that up. | |
| You have denied her, in a sense, the experience of being like her. | |
| I think I've tried not to... | |
| There's truth to that, but I feel like rather than using it going through my I don't want to go to work, it's more of I don't want to spend discretionary time with you. | |
| No, no, but you don't want to go to work. | |
| You told me you don't like your job. | |
| I don't like my job, but I like what it provides, so I'm willing to do it. | |
| No, no, no. Come on. Listen. | |
| Listen. Okay, this is the last thing I'll talk about. | |
| You want to know the secret to masculine power? | |
| Yes. Okay. Women can live with less sex. | |
| Men can live with less stuff. | |
| Mm-hmm. Right? | |
| Right. Look, come on. | |
| You know the story. How did you live as a bachelor? | |
| Yep, a futon. | |
| You had like a futon and you had the TV on a box it came in. | |
| Right. Right, you lived like a savage. | |
| Yeah, opened the fridge and it's a Gatorade and a bottle of ketchup. | |
| Yeah, that's right. And maybe some MSG packets from three years ago. | |
| Right, so you can live with less stuff. | |
| Right? Right, yeah. | |
| I mean, look around the house. | |
| God's sake, look around the house. | |
| Oh my god. If we were to get divorced and I would pack up all the stuff that I wanted, it wouldn't fill many boxes. | |
| Life is all crap. | |
| You can live with less stuff. | |
| I mean, just go to the mall. How much of it is there for what men want to buy? | |
| Almost nothing. Almost nothing, right? | |
| So, she can live with less sex, you can live with less stuff. | |
| So for her, a lowering of the income is like, for you, a lowering of sexual access or physical attractive access, right? | |
| Mm-hmm. So thou shalt not bear false witness. | |
| Do you enjoy working this hard to fill up a big house with crap that you don't want? | |
| No. Okay, so this is just being honest. | |
| I don't want to work this hard. I think we have too much stuff. | |
| You know, we're supposed to be Christian. | |
| What does Christ say? Sell everything you own, give your money to the poor, and follow me? | |
| Does Christ value material wealth? | |
| He does not. Right. | |
| I want to live closer to God. | |
| I want to live closer to Jesus. | |
| This is too materialistic. | |
| This is not healthy. This is not good for our souls, and it's not making us happy. | |
| So, I'm going to cut my hours in half, and our income is going to go down by 50%, and we'll be happier thereby. | |
| Because I don't want to work this hard for all of this useless stuff that I don't want. | |
| Again, I'm not trying to make you be manipulative. | |
| This is the level of honesty that men need to have. | |
| It's too much stuff. It's too much stuff. | |
| I don't want it. | |
| And I don't want to work half my day for crap I don't want. | |
| Alright, there's another nine holes that I never get to see on the golf course. | |
| Exactly! I'd rather spend time golfing than working for a big house I'm not happy in. | |
| I'd rather have a small house than I'm happy in. | |
| I'd rather, you know, it's better to live on a corner of a roof, says the Bible, than in a house with a contentious woman. | |
| I believe it. So just be honest and say, we've taken the wrong path. | |
| I'm working a lot. I don't like it. | |
| It makes me unhappy. And we have too much stuff we don't need. | |
| And then sit down with your kids and say, kids, you know, as the head of the household or whatever, right? | |
| I don't have a contentious you want to get. | |
| Right? But you say, kids, I'm not happy working this hard. | |
| Like, I'm sure that you'd rather have less stuff and happy parents, right? | |
| Of course, Dad. Right. | |
| They would. And they would. | |
| Or if you were to say to them, Mom and I can continue to snap at each other like a bunch of jackals, or we can have less money and be happier, right? | |
| Mm-hmm. So, and this is the level of honesty that you need in relationships. | |
| You don't want to work this hard. | |
| I mean, okay, how many hours a week are you working, including commute? | |
| Probably 40. | |
| Okay. So if you cut that down to 20 and you cut your income in half, you guys could still survive, right? | |
| Well, I work in a business we own, so if I... Hire a manager to take on Slack, whatever, right? | |
| Right, right. Yeah, I mean, there's things that I do that could go undone and it wouldn't affect too much. | |
| Well, whatever, right? I mean, but you're not happy. | |
| You're working for an unhappy family. | |
| You're working for a wife who doesn't... | |
| I mean, when was the last time your wife said to you, thank you so much for getting up and going to work. | |
| I hugely appreciate the income. | |
| It is what provides us everything that keeps us happy, safe, sheltered, and secure. | |
| Never. She has never, ever shown any appreciation for you working 40 hours a week. | |
| Not that I can remember, and I feel like I'd remember that. | |
| Okay, so let's do this last roleplay, right? | |
| Sure. So, honey, I've come to a conclusion. | |
| I'm not really happy in my job. | |
| I'm going to cut my hours in half. | |
| Obviously, this is going to have a big impact on our finances, but, you know, obviously, we're supposed to be caring more about the quality of our souls. | |
| We're not happy. I don't think our kids are particularly inspired by our marriage. | |
| We need to focus more on the spiritual values and moral values rather than stuff. | |
| So I'm just telling you I'll, you know, we'll take a month or two and then I'm just gonna cut my hours in half. | |
| Well, I don't think you are. | |
| I'm sorry? You just can't do that. | |
| You just can't do that. No, I'm sorry. | |
| I'm sorry. I absolutely can't. | |
| Well, I'm not a slave, right? I'm not a robot. | |
| I absolutely can't. What are you talking about? | |
| And then what do you think is going to happen with the business if it goes under because you don't want to work so much? | |
| No, no, I mean, I'll hire someone to do more of the slack. | |
| We'll just, you know, have to take less money out of the business, and, you know, maybe we'll need a smaller place, but, you know, we're not happy here. | |
| I mean, you're not happy, I'm not happy, so something's got to change, and I think, for me, focusing less on work and more on, you know, spiritual growth and morals and, you know, maybe a little bit more golf, that would make me happier, and I think it would make us happier. | |
| I just don't like going to work for this... | |
| Big house that I'm not happy in, so I'm just telling. | |
| I mean, it's not a debate, right? | |
| I'm just telling you, right? Well, we won't be happier. | |
| Maybe you'll be happier, so I guess you'll just do what you want to do, like you always do. | |
| Okay. But that makes it easier, because this is how unhappy you are with me, and clearly... | |
| So whatever I'm doing in life is not making you happy, so I'm just going to change things to, you know... | |
| Hopefully it'll make you happier, but I'm just keeping you... | |
| So just plan for probably about a 30% reduction in income starting in maybe two or three months. | |
| Well, I guess you better start looking for your own place then because that's not going to work for me. | |
| Sorry, are you saying that you'll divorce me if I bring home 30% less money? | |
| If you don't want to, you know, work, and you're okay with us just trying to figure it out so that you can do whatever you want to do, yeah, that's not going to work for me. | |
| Sorry, hang on. | |
| I mean, for sometimes a year or more, you didn't want to have sex, and I just had to figure it out. | |
| So I'm trying to be more like you. | |
| Sorry, I must be misunderstanding something fundamental here, and I apologize for my foolishness, but I'm a little confused. | |
| Like, I don't want to go to work. | |
| I'm not happy going to work. | |
| And the house is not happy. | |
| And when you didn't feel like physical affection, you just didn't do it. | |
| And you keep calling me selfish, which means you want me to be more like you, which is great. | |
| So I'm just being honest with you. | |
| No, the Bible says, thou shalt not bear false witness. | |
| I'm not happy going to work for an unhappy household. | |
| And I think we have, I mean, look all around, look at this place. | |
| How much of this stuff is mine? | |
| How much of this stuff is anything to do with me? | |
| This is all stuff that you want, which is fine, but I'm just, I don't want to work for this. | |
| I'm not happy. I mean, you care that I'm not happy at work, right? | |
| I mean, that matters to you, doesn't it? | |
| I mean, sure, it matters to me, but what do you want me to do about it? | |
| Okay, so it matters to you. | |
| Good. So you care that I'm not happy at work, right? | |
| I mean, yeah, I want you to be happy at work. | |
| Okay, but I'm not happy at work. | |
| Well, that's not my fault. | |
| I didn't say it. | |
| Did I ever say it was your fault? | |
| No, but you're saying it to me like you're blaming me or like you think I can fix it or something. | |
| Well, I would like you to support me trying to be happier. | |
| Because clearly what we're doing has not made us happy, so we should change something, right? | |
| Yeah, well, I don't think that's what we should change. | |
| I don't see how that's going to make us happier. | |
| I thought we were trying to work on this. | |
| I mean, I've been trying to have more sex with you, and you think, you know, that's not what I'd rather not. | |
| So you're having sex with me just under obligation, and you don't want to? | |
| Well, I mean, I want to, but I don't want to when I'm not getting my needs met. | |
| Sorry. So you do want to have sex with me? | |
| I mean, I... I want to want to have sex with you, but I just don't feel close to you, so it's hard for me to want to have sex when we don't feel close. | |
| Right, and I hear what you're saying, and obviously the last thing I'd ever want you to do is to have sex with me when we don't feel close. | |
| I mean, that's terrible, and I wouldn't want that for you, and I wouldn't want that for me, right? | |
| Because that's a very personal and powerful thing, and sexuality should not occur when we're not feeling close, right? | |
| I mean, we can agree on that, right? | |
| Yeah. Right, right. | |
| Yes. And so my work, I don't feel close. | |
| And so it's the same principle. | |
| I don't feel close enough to work very hard for us. | |
| Right? So it's the same thing, right? | |
| You wouldn't want to force me to go to work when I don't want to go to work if I'm not happy and don't feel close. | |
| Right? Because my work for the family is an act of love. | |
| Right? And obviously, if I don't feel loved, like, if you don't feel loved, you don't want to have sex, and if I don't feel loved, I don't want to go to work. | |
| It's an act of love for me to go to work. | |
| And, I mean, I was just thinking about this this morning, oddly enough, like, I can't remember a single time when you've ever thanked me for going to work. | |
| Or shown any appreciation of the fact that I go to work. | |
| I mean, I show appreciation for how good you are as a mom. | |
| I show appreciation for how well you keep the house or the cooking. | |
| And I show appreciation for all of that. | |
| And I just realized, you know, it's a funny thing. | |
| I was literally just thinking about this this morning. | |
| It's kind of half-dozing on the pillow. | |
| This is a pretty good time for thinking. | |
| And I was thinking like, okay, well, if she's never shown me appreciation for going to work all these years, then clearly it doesn't matter much to her. | |
| Doesn't really care about it. | |
| It's not important to her. | |
| Because she knows that when she does things for me, like when you cook me a nice meal or whatever, then I show you appreciation, because I care. | |
| And I am appreciative. | |
| I do thank you for that. But then I thought, well, why am I working this hard when it doesn't matter to you? | |
| You don't really care about it. | |
| So I don't want to do it. | |
| You don't really care about it. | |
| Why am I doing it? Like, it doesn't make any sense to me. | |
| Well, I care about it. | |
| Maybe I don't say it, but I care about it. | |
| Well, no. You know that you like appreciation, and you constantly remind me to give you appreciation. | |
| And not once in, like, 19 years have you ever thanked me for working. | |
| So you don't care about it that much. | |
| And I'm not criticizing you for that. | |
| I just realized, if you don't care about it that much, and I don't want to do it, you know, it'd be kind of like if we took up Taekwondo, And you didn't care to go and I hated it? | |
| We just wouldn't go, right? And so it's the same thing with work. | |
| You don't care about it. I mean, because you don't show any appreciation, which means you don't care about it. | |
| I don't want to do it. | |
| And we'll figure it out. Well, I do care about it, and I'm sorry that I... You don't feel appreciated for working. | |
| No, it's not a feeling. | |
| No, don't do that. | |
| Don't do that. It's not a feeling. | |
| You don't show, and never have, shown any appreciation for me working. | |
| And I'm not criticizing you for that. | |
| I accept that. You don't care about it. | |
| You don't, right? | |
| So if you don't care about it and I don't want to do it, why would I do it? | |
| I mean, it's like sex, right? | |
| No, it's exactly the same principle as sex, right? | |
| Well, then just don't do it. I'm sorry? | |
| Then just don't do it then. | |
| Fine. Just don't do it. Fantastic. | |
| Well, I'm really glad. Listen, I'm glad that you care about my feelings in that way and that you're willing to support me trying to be happier in life. | |
| Because, you know, if I'm happy, you're happy, and I'm sure we'll be happy. | |
| And plus, I get to spend more time at home. | |
| I get to help out more with the kids. | |
| I get to spend more time with you if that's what you want. | |
| Which, you know, you're asking for a lot anyway, and I want to be able to provide that. | |
| And I think more quality time with people you care about is more important than extra money, right? | |
| So I really appreciate your support in this. | |
| Well, I don't support it. | |
| Sorry, you just said I could do it. | |
| Oh, yeah, I mean, because you're going to do what you want anyway. | |
| So, yeah, I guess just do it. | |
| But I'm not going to... | |
| I don't agree to it. | |
| Sorry, what do you mean I don't agree to it? | |
| Hang on, when I said I wanted sex and you said you didn't want to, what does that mean to say I don't agree? | |
| I don't agree with it. | |
| I'm trying to be more like you and I'm very confused here. | |
| So I said I want sex, you said I don't want to have sex. | |
| If I say, well, I don't agree with that, what does that mean? | |
| I'm trying to be more like you, but you seem to be upset that I'm trying to be more like you. | |
| I'm very confused now. Because you call me selfish, so I try to be more like you, and then apparently I'm selfish when I'm more like you, so I'm just called selfish no matter what. | |
| Well, when you're being selfish, but these are not the same things. | |
| So you can call it what you want, but these are just not the same things. | |
| Sorry, what are not the same things? What do you mean? | |
| Going to work and having sex with you. | |
| Sorry, are you telling me my experience as a man? | |
| I'm not telling you anything. | |
| I'm just saying. Yeah, no, you are. | |
| Hang on. You are. | |
| You just told me they're not the same thing. | |
| But how would you know? You're not a man. | |
| You can't tell me. Look, I won't tell you your experience as a woman, right? | |
| But you don't tell me my experience as a man. | |
| How dare you? It's my experience as a man. | |
| I told you sex for you is an act of love. | |
| Working for me is an act of love. | |
| And if love is diminished, sex goes down and work goes down. | |
| So you can't tell me my experience as a man. | |
| That's ridiculous. I won't tell you your experience as a woman. | |
| Don't tell me my experience as a man. | |
| Good Lord. But, you know, feel free to try again, but that ain't it. | |
| Well, if going to work to support your family is something you don't want to do, Then I don't know what to say. | |
| Fantastic. I mean, again, I'm taking a page from your book that if you don't feel like physical affection, then we don't have physical affection. | |
| So I'm confused. | |
| If I don't do what is like you, I'm selfish. | |
| If I do what's like you, I'm selfish. | |
| It makes me kind of suspicious that you're just using this word as a bludgeon to get what you want. | |
| But yeah, okay, so good. | |
| We're agreed then that I'm going to cut my hours. | |
| I'm not asking for your permission. | |
| I just want you to understand. | |
| Well, enjoy all your extra time while I take care of everything. | |
| Great. So, oh wait, you're going to take care of everything? | |
| Hang on. Let's back up a little there. | |
| That's really something. | |
| Hang on. You're going to take care of everything? | |
| Yeah. So you're going to get a job? | |
| Well, not that. | |
| No, no, listen. That's exciting to me. | |
| Hang on, because I hadn't really thought about that. | |
| This is something! Holy crap! | |
| Hang on! Okay, listen, this is incredibly kind. | |
| So you're going to take care of everything, so you're going to get a job, and listen, I'd be happy to stay home. | |
| I think I'd be actually pretty good at it. | |
| I'd be happy to stay home. | |
| So you're going to get a job, and you're going to take care of everything. | |
| You wouldn't last 10 minutes. I'm sorry? | |
| You wouldn't last one week if you had to stay at home and I was the one working. | |
| Fantastic. Well, I'd love to try. | |
| And you go and get a job and I will stay home. | |
| And I'm going to see just how tough it really is. | |
| And listen, if we switch roles, right? | |
| And let's say I find out that staying at home is like 16 hours of incredibly complicated and difficult work, right? | |
| I mean, the kids are all in school, but let's just say, then I'm going to be, like, humbled. | |
| And I'm going to be so much more immensely grateful for what you do. | |
| So, yeah, let's do it. | |
| Like, let's get your resume fired up. | |
| Let's get you a job, and I'll stay home. | |
| Because, I mean, I don't like working at all. | |
| So, yeah, you want to take care of everything. | |
| Fantastic. Well, that's not what I meant. | |
| Sorry, what did you mean? I meant take care of everything at home. | |
| I mean, I cook, I clean, I get the kids, organize, I, you know... | |
| Okay, so hang on. | |
| I'm sorry. I know the list of what you do. | |
| That's fine. So what you're saying is that if I work less, you're still going to take care of everything. | |
| And I appreciate that. That's really going to give me a lot of leisure. | |
| And, you know, I mean, after working this hard for 20 plus years, I kind of feel like I deserve it. | |
| So, listen, that's really kind of you that I can cut my hours in half and you're still going to take care of everything. | |
| I really, gosh, that's kind. | |
| I appreciate that. I don't have to then do more at home because you're going to take care of everything, right? | |
| Well, yeah, because you won't be here. | |
| Sorry, why won't I be here? | |
| Because if you think that I'm going to stick with you when you just think it's okay to stop working... | |
| No, no, I just said cut back. | |
| I mean, unless you want to get a job. | |
| If we're going back to the original thing where you're going to take care of everything, then I appreciate that offer. | |
| I'll cut back on my hours, you take care of everything at home, and I'll figure out what I want to do that's going to make us happier, or at least me, right? | |
| Well, if I'm taking care of everything, I'm not taking care of you, too. | |
| So, you can go find your own place to live and have that bachelor life you wanted. | |
| Okay, so what you're saying is that if I cut back on my hours, you're going to divorce me? | |
| Yeah, probably. So, in other words, if I do what you do, with regards to physical affection, right? | |
| Just don't feel like it, therefore don't do it. | |
| So, if I do what you do, that's worthy of divorce. | |
| I don't see it the same way, but yeah. | |
| No, but it's the same principle, right? | |
| I don't feel like doing it, so I'm not going to do it, which is work. | |
| You don't feel like doing it, so you're not going to do it, which is sex, right? | |
| It's the same principle. Well, I don't have sex with you to support our family, but you work to support our family. | |
| So if you just want to quit working, you can have your own life. | |
| Okay, so if I cut back on my hours, right? | |
| No, with sex, sometimes it was a year without sex, right? | |
| I'm not talking about not working for a year. | |
| I'm just talking about cutting back my hours and 30% less income. | |
| So what you're saying is that if I do a third of what you've done, you'll divorce me. | |
| In other words, if I do what you've done, but to a much lesser degree, that's worthy of divorce? | |
| Yeah, I think so. Okay, so if I take a third of your principle that you've been inflicting on me for close to 20 years, if I take a third of your principle, you'll divorce me? | |
| Yeah, probably. Okay. | |
| Well, I appreciate that. | |
| I appreciate that I have to pay to keep you in the marriage. | |
| That you basically just have to get paid to stay in the marriage. | |
| And if my paying you to stay in the marriage goes down, then you don't want to be married to me. | |
| Then I'm just a money machine. | |
| I'm a workhorse for you. | |
| I'm like a financial slave. | |
| So if I cut back on the amount of money I'm giving to you, you'll divorce me. | |
| Well, I mean, if the money was less because of something you can't control, that's one thing. | |
| But if you're just If you're deciding that you don't want to work so much so you can have all this free time to do what you want to do, then yeah, that's a problem. | |
| So, good luck. | |
| But you chose to have less sex, right? | |
| Well, that's because you look at porn and that's disgusting. | |
| No, I hear you. | |
| I'm definitely, you know, I get that and you have every right to complain about that for sure. | |
| I mean, the degree to which that's an effect of our dysfunctional physical relationship is, you know, perhaps a question for another time. | |
| But okay, so if I choose to hand over less money because I'm unhappy, then you'll divorce me. | |
| So you'd rather me be unhappy but paying you more money than happy and paying you less money. | |
| I'm done having this conversation. | |
| I bet you are. So that would be the end of the particular conversation, right? | |
| Yeah, she would probably leave the room at that point. | |
| Okay. And what did you get out of that roleplay? | |
| That there are two standards of behavior between the two of us, that what's good for her is not good for me, and vice versa, and That I'm just, as long as I'm fulfilling what she needs me to fulfill, I can stick around, but as soon as I try to enact the same principles that seem to be guiding her, | |
| that it's a deal-breaker for her. | |
| Right, so you're selfish if you don't do what she does, and you're selfish if she does what she does, which means she's been using the word selfish to control you. | |
| Right. She's been using your morals to bully and control you, which is really an absolutely appalling thing to do, just to be clear. | |
| Now, I'm not saying it doesn't, you know, obviously there's two sides, blah, blah, blah, but, you know, I'm obviously just talking to you, not her. | |
| Right. And a lot of women do fail to see that a man's work is an act of love. | |
| And if a man is not feeling loved, energy goes out of the work ethic. | |
| Honestly, Steph, I think, I don't think, she's made comments before. | |
| It's not only is it not perceived as an act of love, but this is going to shock you. | |
| It's perceived as It's akin to selfishness because I get to spend all day alone at my office while she's got all this stuff she has to do. | |
| See, now, then that's the thing. | |
| So if you were to say, as we did in the roleplay, as I said, as you, it's like, I'll help out more at home. | |
| It's just less money than... | |
| Okay, so if I'm at work, I'm selfish. | |
| If I'm at home, I'm selfish because I'm not providing enough income. | |
| How the fuck am I not selfish in your equation? | |
| Well, I... Every action is a nail to be hit with the selfish hammer. | |
| Right. Okay, so that's good. | |
| So it means that it's a word that means the same as flippity-jibbit. | |
| You're so flippity-jibbit. | |
| Okay, maybe. It's just a word that she uses as a button she pushes to get resources and control, right? | |
| And why does she do it? | |
| Because you... You conform. | |
| Because I don't want to be perceived as selfish. | |
| Oh, I don't want to be selfish, so I'll do what you want. | |
| So you've trained her to use that phrase, right? | |
| To use that word. Yeah. | |
| It's worked. Why would she not use it? | |
| Well, I mean, compassion and all of that, but again, you didn't have a lot of compassion to her family issues at the beginning of the relationship because she was cute and good at line dancing. | |
| Right. So, I mean, to me, if the relationship is really going off the rails, changing things up, like if you worked less and were home more and helped her out more, I gotta tell you, I could be wrong, I could be wrong, but I gotta tell you, this idea, you wouldn't last 10 minutes, it's like, I bet you would. | |
| Honestly. Labor-saving devices, washing machines, laundry, grocery stores, freezers, you know, grandmothers, great-grandmothers before the invention of modern labor-saving devices. | |
| Yeah, I mean, that was 16 hours a day and massive amount of sympathy. | |
| Come on, the kids are in school all day. | |
| She's got all these labor-saving devices. | |
| Oh, I would definitely figure it out. | |
| Please. Yeah, yeah. She doesn't want you home because she doesn't want you to see how little she has to do, probably. | |
| Anyway. Right. No. | |
| All right. So listen, we've had a good old chat. | |
| I just sort of want to give you some of the sort of moral perspectives that you've got to stop being browbeaten by these accusations of selfishness and immorality and blah, blah, blah. | |
| Like, it's just noise. And it's just, it's terrible. | |
| Because... You get ground down. | |
| A woman cannot love a man she can bully. | |
| And a man cannot love a woman who bullies. | |
| And so the degree to which you allow yourself to be bullied, you've just got to sink down into, what do you want? | |
| Do you want to work this hard to give money to a woman who keeps putting you down? | |
| No. I don't imagine you do. | |
| So work less. Just be honest. | |
| And that's, you know... | |
| Honesty is the foundational commandment, right? | |
| Right. You don't want to get up. | |
| I mean, you may want to get up and go to work because it gets you away from your wife, but... | |
| And you've got to find out whether it's just... | |
| Is she just keeping around as income, right? | |
| And status. I feel like if she's afraid of the... | |
| Stigma of being a divorced woman in her social circles and whatnot, too. | |
| Well, then, okay, that's fine. | |
| So then she can work to support you being happier, right? | |
| But, like, I mean, honestly, like, when I said to my wife, I don't want to do politics anymore, right? | |
| I sort of went through my reasons, and she's like, yeah, it's going to result in less income, but, you know, if you don't want to do it, you know what I mean? | |
| Like, you just support your partner's happiness, right? | |
| Right. And it was more than 30%, let me tell you that. | |
| Yeah, yeah. Anything else you want to mention? | |
| No, I just really appreciate your time and, you know, just going back to I haven't had people in my life that, you know, seem to care, you know, to have someone that's a stranger on the internet show more care than those I grew up with. | |
| I just really appreciate it. | |
| Well, I appreciate that too, and you're a great guy, and I really appreciate your devotion to your family and to moral values and all of that. | |
| But yeah, just bringing that honesty to bear. | |
| Honesty is the great thing that reduces conflict one way or the other. | |
| And this sort of game-playing manipulation, I'll withhold, she'll withhold, blah, blah, blah. | |
| I think just the straight-up honesty is usually the best way to defuse these kinds of things. | |
| Because, you know, if you're honest and then the person views that as a vulnerability that they can exploit and bully based on, that's one thing. | |
| But I think your best chance is just be relentlessly honest and see how things fall. | |
| I'll do it. I appreciate it. | |
| Thank you so much. Will you keep me posted? I will. | |
| All right. Thanks, brother. Take care. |
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