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Oct. 12, 2024 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
23:47
WHY YOU 'FIX' CRAZY WOMEN!
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All right. Good morning, everybody.
It's Sven Melanie from Free Domain.
Questions from freedomain.locals.com.
Thank you, of course, for your great queries.
And we're starting with...
Hi, Steph. I noticed that some people react to the abuse of their parents by absorbing the same behaviors, while others by, quote, reacting to it, slash, becoming dependent to manage the same kinds of people.
What do you think is the main driver to the different reactions?
Thanks for your great work.
And thanks for your great question.
I had to read it a couple of times to make sure I understood it.
I think I have it, and hopefully this answer will make some kind of sense.
Fingers crossed. We can always hope.
So, if I were to rephrase the question, I think you're saying that the most common reactions to being abused as a child are either to become an abuser or...
To end up managing abusers.
And this pattern continues, right?
So a guy who has an abusive mother, he's going to end up managing crazy women for the rest of his life, but not become a direct abuser himself in the same way.
Whereas a man who has an abusive parent, say mother, may actually become a screamer and an abuser himself.
So, I think a lot of times, if you look at sort of the modern cock-slash-symp phenomenon, then what you can see is we have a lot of men who are heavily focused on over-pleasing women, right? Over-pleasing women.
So, in general, the most common response for a man with an abusive mother and no father is for him to become a simp, right?
A simps. It's not anything to do with human nature.
It's not this sort of massive frailty thing or anything like that.
A simps just come from having a devouring mother.
The devouring mother is the mother who uses the child for her own Vanity for, you know, these kids in my life, my kiddos, you know, they're used to sort of vanity props to increase status, to help her play the victim.
They're used to extract resources from others through the state or through other means, and that's the case.
So a lot of it is, are you there to serve your mother?
And if you're there to serve your mother, and like men, if you've had a mother like this, You know exactly what I'm talking about, that her needs come first, your needs are unimportant, and in any contradiction between your needs and her needs, her needs have to win or you're a bad person and you will pay.
You'll pay either through direct violence, verbal abuse, you'll pay through guilting, you'll pay through bitter withdrawal, door slamming, rage signals, like all kinds of things.
So, yeah, and they don't know how to, this is women as a whole, they don't know how to negotiate, so all they know how to do is escalate, which is why they can't maintain relationships.
And this is why they're sort of like pinballs, they're bouncing off a bunch of chaotic and destructive relationships when they're younger.
And then when their sexual attractiveness fades, they just settle into a kind of haunting bitterness and rage that that which inevitably wasn't going to continue did not continue.
It's just kind of weird that people do this, but they do.
So, the enabler versus the abuser.
The enabler is the person who seeks out an abuser and then works to manage and to, quote, fix the abuser.
And if you want to look at it, the reason I call it an enabler is if you want to understand the practical dynamics of psychological states of mind or neediness, just look at the resource transfer.
I talked about this the other day, you know, how dare we talk about the corruption of the world when we serve and provide resources to the corrupt.
So what I mean by this is If you look and you realize around the world, there's good women and there are bad women.
And all the men who take resources, time, effort, money, attention, romance, whatever, all the men who take resources and provide them to dysfunctional women, immoral women, corrupt women, all the men who do that are rewarding the corrupt and punishing the virtuous.
And then they have the nerve to say, gee, women seem to be kind of crazy.
It's like, well, if you take your scarce and precious resources and pour them into crazy women rather than saying virtuous women, well then...
You're not part of the problem.
You kind of are the problem, right?
In many ways. Now, I say this again with all humility.
I've gone down that road of providing resources.
Because if you've grown up with a crazy, needy, bullying mother and no father, which is usually the case, or if there is a male figure around, he's kind of the same as you, so it doesn't provide you any guidance except in the wrong direction.
But if you've grown up with one of these crazy, needy, hanging-by-the-fingernails women, right?
Hanging-by-the-fingernails, overwhelmed, barely holding it together, and desperate, and hysterical, and in a constant state of alarm and hyper-excitement, staggering from one problem-slash-disaster to the other.
If you've grown up with one of these kinds of women, and you've had no choice about having to serve her as a child, Then when you become an adult, when one of these kinds of women comes into your purview, comes into your life, it's almost irresistible.
It's almost irresistible.
Of course, you know, sleeping with a woman who is kind of like your mother is pretty incestuous, obviously.
I mean, it's understandable in terms of patterns and copying throughout her evolution, but it is kind of incestuous, of course.
So, often if it's an opposite-sex parent, right, so you think of the woman, the girl, she grew up with a father who was chaotic and maybe a drunk and constantly getting fired and sentimental and teary-eyed and volatile and so on.
So she has to manage that, right?
She has to manage that as a kid.
So then...
When she gets older, she comes across a man who is chaotic and sentimental and aggressive and manipulative and self-pitying, and she feels this irresistible urge to take care of him because that's how she survived as a child.
If you've only survived as a child because of a particular strategy, that strategy is overwhelmingly attractive as a young adult.
Right? I survived by appeasing and trying to work with and being willing to serve the vanity of a needy, violent, chaotic mother who did not think of my needs first and used me as a vanity prop.
Right? So, when I would run into women like that, it's like a gravity well.
There's this almost irresistible, almost, right?
Almost being the philosophical part, almost irresistible urge.
And for those of you who haven't had this experience, like, fantastic.
I'm pleased. I'm really pleased.
But you want to think of it like this, if you grew up with this kind of needy parent who exploited you.
You've got to think of it like this.
So, when you're a man, and you grew up with this kind of mother, and you get out into the world, there's this dating pool.
And the dating pool is full of some, you know, secure, happy, content women.
And the world is full of chaotic, needy, hanging by the skin of their teeth, hanging by their fingernails, women who desperately need, quote, need you, right?
So the way that it works in the man's mind, and I'm sure this is true for the women with the chaotic fathers as well, is like this.
You are a lifeguard, and you are guarding a giant lake, the swimming area of a giant lake, and there are two female swimmers, right? You're a male lifeguard. There are two female swimmers in the lake.
Now, one of the female swimmers is going back and forth confidently using her front crawl, and you can hear little snatches of her humming, and she's muscular and glistening and oils with butter fat, or I don't know, whatever people, it's not that cold.
So, but she's totally comfortable in the water, she swims like a fish, and she's content to doing well.
On the other hand, you see a woman who is screaming at the top of her lungs.
Such screams undercut only by her head plunging underwater.
She's screaming out that she has a terrible, terrible cramp, that her foot is bleeding, that something's biting her in the water, and she's going to die.
I understand. This is what the dating market is like for traumatized and exploited men and boys.
Putting myself in that category in my 20s, putting myself in that category, not above any of this at all, at all.
So as a lifeguard, if you were to swim past the drowning, bleeding woman, and you were to go and chat with the healthy, strong swimmer, That would be appalling,
wouldn't it? How can you, as a lifeguard, swim past the drowning, bleeding woman screaming out for aid, which it's your job to provide, as a lifeguard?
How on earth could you possibly swim past the drowning woman to go and chat with The healthy, happy, strong swimmer.
Of course, the healthy, strong swimmer, the question would be in this analogy, why would the healthy, strong swimmer not go to the aid of the woman who is claiming to be bleeding and drowning?
And if asked, the healthy, strong swimmer, the Pearl Davis perhaps in this analogy because she's an athlete, the healthy, strong swimmer would say the woman is not bleeding.
She's not drowning. She's in fact in three feet of water.
She could just stand up and be fine.
But she wants attention and resources and she wants sympathy and attention from the lifeguard.
Right? She's not drowning.
If you lift up her feet, she's not bleeding.
It's a lake. What really is going to be chewing on her feet?
I guess there are some freshwater sharks in Nicaragua, but let's stay within the confines of northern Ontario.
What's going to be? I mean, maybe a snapping turtle, but it's kind of unlikely.
So she would say that woman is faking it.
She can stand up anytime.
She's putting on a show.
She's putting on an act in order to get resources.
And the strong swimmer would look at the woman who's faking it and say, this is gross.
A, it's gross. And B, it's super gross that men just flock to her.
Like, what is wrong with men that they can't see that the screaming woman is not bleeding, not drowning, just faking it.
But if you genuinely, as the lifeguard, believe that The woman is drowning and bleeding.
Then you've got to go rescue her.
You couldn't just turn up the volume on your headphones and ignore her or swim past her to the strong, confident swimming woman.
You have to help her.
And you understand that men who, as boys, were exploited by hysterical mothers We are lifeguards on the shores of the estrogen lakes.
We are lifeguards.
We are trained to rescue and provide resources, time, attention, and money to drowning women.
And women as a whole have a couple of choices when it comes to attracting a man.
Women as a whole have a couple of choices when it comes to attracting a man.
One is the hypersexual route and one is the damsel in distress route.
The other, of course, being the strong, confident swimmer, the strong, confident person.
And every time, again, I say this with all humility, every time a man puts himself in the position of providing resources to crazy women, and I have sympathy for the crazy women.
They were raised badly too, but I'm just talking about as men.
Every time we provide resources to the crazy women, We're starving the virtue of strong women.
We're providing resources, time, attention, money, sexual favors and romance, and possibly even families and children to the crazy women.
You can't complain about that which you subsidize.
I mean, you can, but it's ridiculous and corrupt to the core.
You can't complain about that which you subsidize.
And I think we've all had that fork in the road, haven't we, where there's been a sane, healthy, I can think about this in my 20s.
Not crazy, but certainly under-functioning.
Under-functioning is a big problem.
A woman with big dreams who just wants X, Y, and Z, but that was my particular weakness, was women with big dreams who just needed some help getting there.
So this would be, gosh, what was it?
One woman who wanted to be an actress.
She wanted to be an actress.
But she felt she needed to get her teeth fixed.
So she got some adult braces, she got her teeth fixed.
And she'd met a woman who said, oh, if you want to, she was a woman who was an agent.
And she said, oh, I want to be an actress.
And the woman said, oh, yeah, well, you should definitely give it a shot and take some acting classes, do some regional theater.
You know, you can do volunteer theater.
See if you like it. See if you have a connection with the audience.
See if you're good at it.
And that way you can come in with some kind of resume when it comes to trying to do auditions or doing auditions, right?
And so, this woman ended up, the woman I knew, she ended up going, she got her teeth fixed, but she never actually quite got round to acting.
And then she went back to this woman, That's so embarrassing thinking about it so many decades later.
But she went back to the agent and said, hey, remember me for a couple of years ago?
I got my teeth fixed, so I'm ready.
And the woman, of course, said, well, okay, I guess that's good, but have you actually done any acting?
Well, I wanted to wait until my teeth were fixed.
And she's like, I don't know if you can act.
I don't know if you like it. I don't know if it works for you.
Anyway, so it was one of these interactions where the gap in expectations is so wide.
And this was not a kid, right?
The woman I knew. She wasn't a kid.
The gap, the expectation, the gap was so wide that it was like, it's the awkward pause where you don't even know what to say.
It'd be like somebody, I don't know, emailing me and saying, in their 30s, right?
Emailing me and saying, I want to be the co-host for your philosophy show.
I'm like, oh, have you studied philosophy?
No, but I did take some voice training.
And it's like, well, I guess taking some voice training is fine.
I have, but...
You haven't studied philosophy, you have no experience, you have no resume, and I'm not sure why we're talking.
Again, the expectation gap, it's like me going to apply for a job as a neurosurgeon, right?
I have a podcast.
Really? On neurosurgery?
No. Philosophy.
Like, maybe I'm missing something, but why are you here?
Like, I don't understand what's happening.
I don't understand what's happening here, right?
So, who did I give my resources to?
Anyway, it wasn't a long relationship, but it was not a wise relationship, for sure.
So, in general, if you're a man who grew up with an abusive father, you're likely to end up mirroring your father, but if you're a man growing up with an abusive mother, or a girl growing up with an abusive father, you're likely to be an enabler.
I mean, the other thing that I would say is that, yes, sorry, just back to the simp thing, because it's really big on the internet these days, getting mad at simps.
It's like, okay, well, who raised them?
Right? Who raised them? Well, the moms.
So, simps are produced to some degree by devouring mothers and absent fathers.
They say, ah, yes, well, but it's the family court system.
I get all of that. I get all of that.
I really, really do. Blame the system.
Blame the environment. Blame this.
Blame that. Blame the other. For sure.
But then you're saying that virtue is impossible until the world becomes perfect, but the world cannot become perfect unless virtue is achieved.
That is the major problem.
We're blaming environmental factors.
And there are environmental factors.
Absolutely. But blaming them means that nobody can really take full moral responsibility until the world becomes perfect.
Men can't choose good women until the family courts are reformed.
It's like, well, So then, you're never going to have a good world.
I mean, just give up. Give up on lecturing anyone, give up on morals, give up on virtue, give up on exhortations, give up on criticism, give up on blame, give up on holding anybody accountable, because there are these environmental factors that mean that virtue is impossible.
Okay, so then give up on it.
Because if virtue is impossible because environmental factors...
But environmental factors can only be improved.
If people become virtuous, then there will never be any such thing as virtue, and you're just nagging people to try to become unicorns.
Damn it! You need to be a unicorn.
If you're not a unicorn, you're just a terrible person.
Well, that's just abusive.
Abusing people while also saying the environment is deterministic, morally exhorting people to become better while saying that the environment dictates morality is just brain-twistingly revolting and abusive as a whole.
I mean, are there environmental factors?
Sure. But it's your choice as to whether those environmental factors make you worse or better.
I'm a better parent because I was abused as a child.
I'm a better husband because my father left.
I mean, not just the family, certainly not just me, but the entire hemisphere.
So, yes, I'm a better person because that's so, you know, hardship makes you better or hardship makes you worse.
And so, I don't, you know...
Anyway, so... I chose to drop tens of thousands of dollars on talk therapy, and I chose to journal, and I chose to really strive to understand myself, figure out what made me tick, and then when the right woman came along, I was ready.
I mean, you understand that virtue is an extreme sport you better damn well train for, or you're going to get toasted.
You're going to lose, and lose big, and lose bad, and lose hard.
So, I just wanted to mention that.
Now, another reason why people end up emulating their abusers, rather than managing them or becoming virtuous themselves, is if you envy the power of the abuser, then you will likely become the abuser.
Right? So, to manage an abuser is to say, the effects of abuse are bad, I've got to work to minimize them.
That becomes a bad habit that follows you.
It's a good habit as a child becomes a bad habit that follows you as an adult, and puts you in the position of the lifeguard who has to save people.
The pretend drowning woman.
Oh, but what if the woman really, really is drowning?
What if the woman really is drowning?
Then don't you have to go and help her?
Why? Why?
I mean, that's the fundamental question of...
And it's a fundamental question to me, too.
If you see a woman suffering and you're a noble, heroic, white knight of a man, don't you have to go and help her?
Don't you have to... Reinforce what's best about her and help manage her problems and catastrophes and so on.
Well, that's just being a slave though, right?
There'll always be dysfunctional people in the world.
And you have to take the long view on dysfunction.
If you reward dysfunction, you get more.
If you don't reward it, you'll get less.
And you're not helping her, by the way.
Like, just so you know. Like, if a woman is floundering around and...
Or a man, right? So the women...
If a woman is floundering around and you come and you give her recess time, attention, money, and so on, you're not helping her.
You're paying her for being screwed up.
You're rewarding her for dysfunction.
It's not about managing her.
It's not about helping her.
It's about managing your own feelings of anxiety and fear of attack when being in the presence of female chaos.
That's all. That's all it is. You're just managing your own anxieties from what happened to you as a child.
You're not helping her. You're not helping you.
It's just being around a chaotic female, you can't tear yourself away, but then you have to manage your anxiety by, quote, helping her, but you're just exploiting her to manage your own anxiety.
You're not helping her, and you're rewarding her, in the same way that men rewarded your mother for being chaotic by giving her attention, assuming she was reasonably attractive, and so on, right?
And the other thing, of course, is that the concept of mutuality, like a mutual relationship, Exchange of benefits.
The concept of mutuality is incomprehensible to exploited people, right?
So it's a one-way relationship, right?
The woman's chaotic. You give her resources.
The chaos does not get resolved.
In fact, it often spreads.
And then when you are down and need time, attention, resources, whatever, the woman is not available.
In fact, she might even roll her eyes and scorn you.
So it's not mutual.
And if it's not mutual, it's corrupt, right?
If it's not win-win, it's corrupt.
So, yeah, if you envy the power of the abuser, then you will become an abuser.
If you want to manage your own anxiety about being around an exploiter and an abuser, then you will end up spending the rest of your life managing crazy people and getting hollowed out yourself.
So, I hope that helps. Let me know what you think.
And I'm happy to get more questions, freedomand.locals.com.
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