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Feb. 18, 2025 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:41:51
Why Do I Have No Friends? Freedomain Call In
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Time Text
How can I best help?
I'll give you a brief recap of my life.
Well, I grew up in Western Europe.
Currently, I'm in my early 20s.
I was one of the youngest persons in my classes as long as I've been in school.
I went to high school when I was 12. I was the youngest one there.
I had no friends for two years.
And after two years, I finally got a couple of friends.
After that, I went to a bit of higher education into the logistics field.
I just chose it because...
You need to do something.
It wasn't really like a big passion in my head at the time.
And well, yeah, afterwards, COVID happened.
I chose to go to the army.
And I went there for a couple...
I prepared for a year for that.
And I left after three months because I was so miserable there.
And then I started working at the company I currently work at.
And now things are looking, well, way better because I'm moving out this week.
I'm starting a promotion next month.
And yeah, I like what I do.
That's the brief of it.
Well, what do you think is...
I'm always interested in what's missing.
From people's conversations about their childhood in particular or their youth, what do you think is missing?
Maybe the relationship with my parents and my brother.
Yeah, yeah.
You talked about your childhood and the biggest influence on our childhood is our parents.
So what is the story there, my friend?
Well, my mom was always very dominant.
My dad was always very...
Kind of a bit more submissive.
Every time there was a conflict, he usually de-escalated.
And he always basically just...
If my mother said A and he wanted B, then he would just say A, but he would do B. And that would also, of course, create a lot of conflict.
I have more of the personality of my mother.
Not always to my liking, but I do.
And that's why I escalated a bit more.
My mother was arguing.
I would argue back.
I would be the only one to argue back, basically.
And that's why we would get in a lot of fights with my mother.
My father was mostly just nice to me.
My brother also has a bit more of my father, so he also never really went into any argument with my mom.
Okay.
Sorry, go ahead.
No, no, no.
You go ahead.
How were you disciplined, if you were?
I was just yelled at.
One time there was a physical thing, but my mom apologized a lot for that, like for even years afterwards.
But every time it was just verbally screaming at me.
And my dad usually didn't really discipline me very much.
So what do you mean by screaming?
I mean, just like, yeah, raising her voice a lot and screaming at me.
I don't know, sometimes things about my future, like, oh, if you don't do this now, then you will be a deadbeat later in life or something.
And yes, you would very much hammer on that, like, you need to do this.
I can't remember what it was about.
One time it was just about a cup of yogurt, I remember.
It's very fake to me.
Sorry, I'm having a little trouble understanding you.
You said something is very fake to you?
Yeah, it was vague to me.
Oh, vague.
Sorry, vague.
I got it.
Okay, go ahead.
It was vague to me what she was getting very angry at.
So tell me the yogurt story.
Well, my brother, he wanted to eat some yogurt.
And my dad said, you already ate enough.
You don't need it.
But he wanted it anyway.
And then my mom and my dad started getting really angry at my dad or something.
Because you don't want to make it dirty.
Because we put the yogurt in a cup.
And we don't want to make the cup dirty because the dish washer was already on.
And yeah, she got the...
She got very mad at that.
Because the dishwasher couldn't get run on time or whatever.
I was very young.
It's not really an active memory for me.
I don't really think about this at all, mostly.
Sorry, go ahead.
So yeah, the present day is a bit more there.
I tend to do a lot more chores around the house because mainly that makes my mom also very less argumentative with me.
So I just sort of surrendered with that.
So I do a lot of cooking now.
I do a lot of dog walks and stuff like that.
And grocery shopping, that's also something I do.
And how old are you now?
I'm 23. 23, okay.
And you're back home after the...
How long ago did you leave the army?
I left the army about three years ago now.
Right, okay.
A little bit less.
All right.
And what are you hoping to get the most of out of this conversation?
Well, mainly, I can't seem to really figure out why I don't have a relationship with a girl or whatever.
Because I would think, mainly, I would do things right, according to most people.
I'm physically fit.
I have quite some money.
I have a decent job.
And I'm going to get even better ones very soon.
But I can't get myself to talk to a lot of girls.
Sorry.
So you're saying that you sort of check off the list of what girls are looking for, but you can't talk to girls?
Yeah, at least I think that.
Sorry, what do you mean you think that?
Do you talk to girls?
No, I don't talk to girls.
Okay, so that's not a theory, right?
That's like a fact.
You don't talk to girls, right?
Yeah.
Yeah, okay.
I'm not criticizing.
I just want to make sure I understand if we're dealing with subjective or objective things, if that makes sense.
Yeah, okay.
Okay.
And why do you think you don't talk to girls?
There's this conversation a bit forward.
Well, I always just think I'd have very low confidence.
I just never think, like, oh, am I, like, my perfect self right now?
And always just never, yes.
I'm never perfect.
I'm never, like, the maximum I can get out of me at a given time.
I can always be better.
And that's what I think, even though it's kind of unreasonable, because, you know, the girls are probably not, like, perfect.
Right, right, okay.
So what would be perfection for you?
What would that look like?
Be earning all the money, having a nice house, being very good-looking physically, and having success in the business world, having high status with that.
That would be kind of like my perfection, I think.
Got it.
Okay.
I think I understand.
I think I understand.
Okay, so do you think that it's reasonable to expect or want that at your age?
I mean, men don't really hit their prime earning years until their, you know, 40s or 50s or whatever, right?
Yes, yeah, I know.
But I know it just, I heard after listening to all the studies mainly, I know that it's important and most people get together when they're like young.
And I would like to have that.
I would like to grow with somebody to a better place, if you understand.
Right.
Okay.
Okay.
When did you first start to become really interested in girls?
In the physical attraction sense?
Yeah.
We were around 13. About 13, okay.
And your brother is older, is that right?
Yeah, he's about four years older.
About four years older, okay.
And so, when you began to get interested in girls, in that sort of, you know, it's obviously fairly, you know, hormonal and all of that, which is fine, but when you started to get really interested in girls, how did you experience that, or what was your...
What were your thoughts about that?
Well, it was very physical.
I felt like they were just very good-looking.
And yeah, that was maybe the hormonal aspect.
It had a lot to do with it.
I'm sorry, that was what?
The hormonal aspect had a lot to do with it.
It does.
It does.
Yeah, I get that.
Okay.
All right.
Sorry, go ahead.
I don't really have much thought into that.
Okay.
And did you talk to anyone about this?
About, yeah, I have with my brother and with a friend who's also like a friend of my, originally a friend from my brothers.
But we also, I also have very good friendship with him now.
So yeah, I have a conversation with them, but it never seems like...
Well, it doesn't really seem to lead to a lot of action for me.
The closest thing I got to having a relationship with a girl was about a year ago.
And that was a lot of self-sabotage at my end.
Because I didn't even conceive what would happen if she said yes.
I would just assume that she would say yes.
Tell me a little bit about that, if you can.
Well, it was a girl.
She had a lot of red flags, and I knew that from the start.
But I was still into her.
And after a while, I was finally like, oh, hey, you want to do something with me?
And she said yes.
But I just never thought that she would even say yes.
It just didn't come up to me.
So I had no idea what we were going to do.
And then we just never ended up doing it.
Right.
Okay.
And so tell me a little bit about, so how old were you and give me the sort of circumstances and details of that?
I was just out of the army.
I was 20, around 21. So I've been working for there about a year, year and a half.
And then she was also working there.
Sorry, working where?
I'm working at the company where I work at, the big logistics company.
And she was also working there and we just kind of caught on.
She complimented me because of a shirt I was wearing.
And I was totally unaware of it.
I was just like, oh yeah, thanks, whatever.
But later on, I said, oh hey, she actually gave me a compliment.
And then I went and talked to her.
Well, we kind of clicked for a bit.
Okay, so you talked to her, and then what?
I talked to her.
It was nice for a while.
We were just kind of like friendly.
And after a couple months, I asked her to do something.
I asked her if she wanted to go out with me, basically.
She said yes.
We never ended up ever doing anything.
And at some point, she just got a...
Sorry, you asked her to go out with you, but you never went anywhere or did anything with her?
No.
And why did you not do anything with her, do you think?
I always say because she did not have a lot of red flags.
And what were those red flags?
Well, for one, she actually had red hair, like painted.
Oh, she had dyed red hair, is that right?
Yeah, dyed red hair.
She had a nose piercing.
She faved.
She did some drugs occasionally with her friends.
She had a very extremely weird sleep schedule where she would stay awake till one, wake up at five to go to work.
Then she would go to bed again when she was done with the first shift, basically.
Right.
Okay.
So I just knew she wanted to be an artist.
I wanted to have more of a stable type of life, I think.
Bullet dodged, right?
Yeah, basically.
Okay.
Yeah, you could put it like that.
Well, I mean, it is in a way, right?
I mean, if she was not going to be a good woman for you, then you probably didn't want to get involved, right?
Because once you're in, right, you're in, right?
And it can be kind of tough to get back out again.
Yeah, but I never had like an...
Yeah, but it was the first time I actually felt I had the chance to get an in.
Right.
That was actually the first girl I actually had a longer conversation with, and I very much clicked, which was of my age, of course, a girl of my age.
Right, right.
Yeah.
And how long ago was that?
That was about a year ago now.
Okay, so we kind of went from 13 to 22. Yes.
So what happened from 13 to 22?
So you start getting interested in girls, and...
I was about the lowest social ladder at my school that you can imagine.
For the first two years, I didn't have any friends.
I had some people I occasionally sit next to, but it usually did not end up hanging out.
I was always sitting alone.
I prefer to sit alone because I always felt like I didn't really belong at that school.
And why didn't you belong at the school?
Well, I was very young.
I was younger than most people.
This made me very physically weak.
I could very easily be overpowered.
I did not really think highly of myself.
So, yeah, I didn't have a lot of confidence.
Okay, I mean, the size thing is not...
Deterministic, right?
I mean, I was the youngest kid in my boarding school, so that doesn't mean that you can't be friends.
It's got to be something else.
You said there's sort of low self-esteem or whatever, but that doesn't answer much.
Yeah, I never really wanted to have a lot of contact with them because I always think I was going to switch to a bit of a higher education.
So I always thought, oh, I'll be gone here in a year or in two years.
But I never ended up materializing because every time I would go home, the last thing I wanted to do is to be at school, like to actually work for school.
So I ended up getting up higher on the ladder, so to say.
And after that, after two years, because it was like a cut-off date, after two years, if you don't have those grades, then you can get it.
So after two years, I did not get the grades.
So I stayed there.
After that, it was a bit better.
I actually ended up hanging out with a bunch of kids.
And after that, the next two years, we're just hanging out with them.
And not much else.
Not very many interactions with girls at the time.
Also.
Okay.
Okay, and how would you describe your emotional state in your early teens?
Sort of.
Prideful, in a way.
So I always felt like sort of really superior to the others because I thought I was smarter.
So I was basically, I thought I was better than most people, even though there was no indication of that.
I felt really prideful.
I felt better than most of those people.
Oh yeah, kind of frustrated that I had to be there all the time.
I hated school.
So you hated that you weren't bigger?
No, I hated school.
I just didn't like being there.
If you don't have any friends for the first two years, then maybe you can understand that it's not a very nice place to be.
And what efforts, if any, did you...
Or did you take to make friends?
I just went to hang out with this one guy.
We did a couple of group projects together.
We sort of clicked on.
And afterwards, I just sort of went in with his group.
And then we were the four of us until the end, basically, until I was done with high school.
Yeah, no, I'm just talking about the...
In the two years, a year or two that you were trying to get friends, what steps did you take?
No, I didn't take any steps.
So you chose to not have friends?
Yeah, I chose to sit alone.
I didn't like when people would come to my...
I found a little corner at school where basically most people wouldn't.
And I always disliked people and went there.
So I was very much a loner.
I usually did my school homework at that place in the breaks so that I wouldn't have to do anything at home.
And did you miss kids or did you enjoy, I guess, more the feeling of superiority and so on?
Yeah, and I think I felt the superiority feeling was probably felt a little bit.
It was a lot easier to cope that way, I think.
So I think I like that more.
Sorry, but cope with what?
Cope with the situation I'm in.
Okay, but the situation that you're in, you had to cope with because you felt superior.
Like, if you feel superior and don't make any friends, then you can't say that the superiority...
Like, it's what comes first, right?
If the superiority comes first, then you feel superior, you don't make friends, but then you can't say, well, my superiority was a way of coping with not having friends.
Does that make sense?
Yeah, in a way it does.
Okay, so you came in with a sense of superiority, and I guess my question is, where does that, where did that come from?
Oh, I just thought I was smarter than most people.
No, no, I understand that.
I understand that.
But where did that sense of superiority come from as a whole?
Because you can be smart and still make friends.
There are other smart kids around and so on, right?
So the vanity, I guess.
Where does the vanity come from?
Maybe because I sort of got raised as higher class.
I'm sorry, you got erased?
I didn't follow that.
Yeah, erased, like in the working class, you have upper middle class.
I was sort of raised upper middle class, and most kids there were from just working class.
It was maybe a bit of the way I was raised.
Okay, so were you raised to be snobby that way?
Well, not by my dad at least.
My mom maybe a little bit, because of certain word choices in my language.
A lot of people say certain phrases wrong.
It's not actually how you properly say them.
And my mother always corrected me if I said it wrong.
So I always said it right.
So I always thought, hey, I can talk.
Yeah, yeah.
My mom was like, well, I know that...
I say, can I do this?
She says, well, I know that you can, but I don't know that you may.
She always wanted to make me get the right phrase, so I get that.
Yeah, stuff like that.
Okay, so did your parents feel superior to people as well?
My dad certainly didn't.
My dad is a bit of friends with everybody.
He can just talk to everybody.
He's an extremely social guy.
Also, later in life, he tried to actually help me get like, I mean, sort of introduce me to some girls at the gym because he just talks to everybody, so he can also talk to the girls there.
And then, yeah, so he tried to help.
But he was very social.
My mother, well, yeah, I look a lot more like her personality-wise.
So, yeah, I didn't really have much interest in a lot of people.
So, you felt that people didn't have much to offer you?
Yes.
Okay.
Now, why did you go to a lower-class school if you were a middle or upper-middle-class family?
I mean, normally it's the neighborhood, right?
Like, if you are in an upper-middle-class neighborhood, you go to kids with upper-middle-class...
Well, I have dyslexia.
I'm not very good at writing.
And I have ADHD. So I'm not very good at concentrating.
So those were kind of like a mix to get me into a lower-end school.
Because here you get judged by the grades you get.
Sorry, I don't understand.
If you're very smart, but you have these issues...
Wouldn't you just go to an upper-middle-class school but get more help with those issues?
I'm not sure why you would be put into a lower-class school.
Yeah, my parents thought this school was better for me because it was smaller.
The upper classes were a lot bigger, and they thought I would not fare well in those.
Still don't understand.
Can we just cut to the chase here?
Did your parents put you in a lower-class school so you'd get better grades and look better?
I don't think so, but no.
No, I don't think that was the reason.
I just thought they thought I wasn't going to get any help if I went to the other school.
I could go to the other school.
Sorry, but how would they know that?
Because the school advertised about it, I think.
Sorry, the school what?
Where I went to, that school advertised, oh, hey, we're smaller, so we can give more intimate care to your child.
And did that happen?
Well, yeah.
In a way, they have helped a little bit, but I don't think it helped much.
Okay, so I'm a little confused.
If your parents have a theory that if you go to the smaller school, you'll get more help with your ADHD and your dyslexia, but you don't really get much help, then that theory is not true, right?
It's false.
Yeah, and it took a lot of time for them to admit that.
Yeah, because my mom is very prideful, and my dad just, I think, kind of just ignored the problem.
So they put you in a school that was unsuitable for you, based on the theory it would help you with your dyslexia and ADHD, but it didn't really do that, and it took them how long to admit that and change the situation?
Oh, they only changed, they never changed anything while I was at school.
It's only that conversation.
Happened a couple months ago.
So they never just admitted anything.
Okay.
So was it the case that you went to that school, the lower class school, like started to get five or six?
Is that right?
Excuse me?
What age did you start going to that school?
To that school?
I was about 12. 12. I'm so sorry.
And where did you go before?
I went to just a local kinder.
So like, yeah, sort of.
We have a child school and a teenage school, basically.
Here you have high school and the other school.
Yeah, like a junior high school or something.
Like a primary school.
Primary, yeah.
And did you get along better with the kids at the primary school?
Yeah, I did.
I actually am still friends with one of them.
Okay, so your parents took you out of the school where you had friends and put you into the school where not only did you not have friends, but you didn't have much in common with the kids.
And they kept you there for the next half decade from 12 to 17. Is that right?
Yeah, basically.
But it was not really a choice.
You had to move schools anyway.
The primary school was done.
You had to go to the high school.
Yes, I'm aware that as you age, you have to go to a different school.
I don't know why you'd need to tell me that, but it doesn't mean you have to go to that school, right?
Yeah, well...
I think their decision-making was kind of, you know, yeah.
Their decision-making to which school I was going to go to, it was a bit of like a lesser of two evils, I think.
So at this point, it's probably better.
And did they consult you and say, which school do you want to go to?
I did not.
I truly did not care.
That was a thing.
You don't care?
What do you mean?
Hang on, hang on, hang on.
Hang on.
So you've got friends that are going to a different school, and you don't care to follow them and go to that school.
You don't care which school you go to.
Well, my friends went to a school that was, for me, a lot farther away.
So I would most of the time...
There are a lot of schools in my area, so I would go to a different one.
Oh, so you would have gone to a different school no matter what?
Yeah.
Unless you wanted to have more time on the bus or something, right?
Yes.
Okay.
But you could have gone to a school that was more...
that the kids were more like you.
Like middle class or whatever, right?
Yeah, yeah.
But you didn't care about that.
No, I cared very little about most things.
All I cared about was just be home.
Yeah, I just wanted to be home all the time.
I didn't really want to have much else to do.
Now, were you in...
Be safe at home, basically.
Be safe at home.
Now, you mean, so was there bullying?
The first year, actually, everybody left me alone.
It was kind of strange to me.
Because in most of the movies, you would expect some bullying.
But no, most people just left me alone.
They don't care for me.
And at the third year, there was some bullying.
That was when I had some more friends.
And I actually stood up a little bit to the guy.
But luckily, he left very quickly into that year.
He got sent to a different school as well.
He was a bad kid.
Okay.
And did you talk to your parents about your unhappiness at school?
Yeah, a couple times.
I think they mainly just ignored it.
They never really asked very much about it.
I would never really say much about it because I didn't want to talk about it.
Do you think they noticed that you were unhappy for years?
Yeah, you would think so, but no, they didn't notice.
Sorry, how do you know they didn't notice?
Well, because the conversation we had a couple of months ago, they basically said, oh, well, you actually had a pretty good time there.
And I was like, no, I know I did not have any good time there at all.
Sorry, I'm a little sorry to be confused.
So you're saying your parents didn't notice because they claimed you were happy.
Not happy, just like not sad.
Okay, so you're saying that your parents didn't notice you were unhappy because recently they said you seemed okay or you were having a good time.
Yeah, and they never brought it up anyway.
But why would you believe them?
Because they defended it very, very strongly.
They basically said, we made the best decision at the time we could have made.
Sorry, because they defended their position very strongly, they can't possibly be lying?
Well, they are very good liars, and I don't really know them as very good liars.
So no, I think they actually fully believed it.
Well, okay.
Did they make...
In your view, did they make the very best decisions they could possibly have made?
No, they could have definitely done some more.
Okay, so when they're saying they made the best decisions they possibly could have made, that's not a true statement.
Because if they don't even know that you're unhappy, how could they make better decisions?
And if they don't ask you whether you're happy and check in with you about how you're doing in school, How could they possibly make the best decisions?
Yeah.
Maybe I'm a bit...
I'm just as lost as you are here, I think.
But it's a false statement, right?
It's a false statement to say we made the best decisions if they didn't even know how unhappy you were.
Yes, that's false.
So, why would they tell you that they made the very best decisions while also saying, we didn't even know that you were unhappy?
They said, like, we did the best at our time, and basically, we did our best.
Well, no, no, they can't possibly have done their best.
Because if you're making decisions on the part of a child, it is pretty important to know if the decisions are making your child happier or unhappier.
Now, if you don't even ask your child if he's unhappy, you can't possibly make the very best decisions.
You can't even make decent decisions.
your decisions will all be terrible.
Yes.
Well, yeah.
Terrible is maybe very strongly put it.
But yeah.
Well, let me ask you this.
Your parenting, or the decisions your parents have made, have resulted in you being crippled when it comes to dating.
Or you've had a pretty strong influence in that, right?
I think that's very, very accurate.
So this is about as terrible as it can be.
Because dating and love and marriage and children and romance and pair bonding, One of the two main ingredients in life's happiness.
I mean, work and love, that's all we have for happiness, right?
Yeah, they give me work, at least.
But, yeah, the love part is very much...
They also don't really get why I don't do that.
Because, well, basically, the checklist I talked about at the very beginning...
And they all say, oh, why don't you have a girlfriend?
And I never have an answer to them.
Yeah.
Oh, it's just a fatal question.
Okay.
Let me ask you this.
Do you know when other people are unhappy versus happy?
If I know them very well, then yeah, I can.
Okay.
So what you're saying is that in a movie, you watch a movie, you don't know the actor or the character, you have no idea if the character is happy or unhappy.
Oh, no, that's very strongly portrayed, of course.
It's very obvious, right?
Yes.
I mean, they're called comedies and tragedies for a reason, right?
Correct.
So for you, it's very easy to identify when someone is happy or unhappy.
Yes.
Okay.
I mean, you had to identify that you were unhappy about something just to send me a message, right?
Yeah.
Okay, so do you think that your parents have no ability to tell if people are happy or unhappy?
Like, do they watch a movie and someone is crying and tearing their hair out and saying, oh, that person seems very happy?
Or they watch some Justin Timberlake dance video and they say those people are very depressed.
Like, they have no idea and no capacity to identify human emotions.
Well, yeah.
I think that at the time when I was that young...
No, no, no.
I'm just asking this question right now.
I mean, some people just have real mental or cognitive deficiencies in identifying emotions.
They genuinely can't.
They don't know that somebody who's crying is unhappy.
It's like, I don't know, half autism.
There are some people who have genuine brain deficiencies in recognizing human emotions.
Do your parents have no ability in particular, like you watch a movie with them and they're laughing at the tragedies and they're crying at the comedy?
No, no, they're not like that.
Okay, so they have a good capacity to determine human emotion, right?
Yes.
Okay, so that means that they knew you were unhappy.
Yeah, I think they had to know.
Well, they had to know, right?
I mean, did you get up and saying, oh, I'm so excited to go to school today.
I can't wait.
I'm going to meet my friends.
I'm going to try out for the play.
This is a girl I like.
I mean, did you ever express to them joy or enthusiasm?
I mean, maybe you're just a really good actor, right?
And maybe you just...
I never did anything remotely close to it.
I always went as late as I could possibly get before getting punished for being late.
To school.
And I biked home as quickly as I could possibly can.
Okay.
So, and you never expressed any enthusiasm for school?
Like you weren't trying to make them feel better by pretending to be happy?
No.
No, I didn't.
Okay.
So, it's completely clear that you were unhappy?
Yeah, I would think so, yeah.
Okay.
So, this is when I said they're lying.
They're lying because they said...
You had a good time, or you had an okay time there, right?
Yeah, maybe that's a lie they told themselves.
Why, I don't care whether it's a lie they told themselves.
That's mind-reading.
But it's a lie, right?
Yeah, it's a lie.
Because they didn't ask you, and you showed every evidence and every indication of sheer bloody misery.
Yes.
Yeah.
So why did they not ask you?
Why you were unhappy, why you didn't want to go to school, why you came home right away, why you didn't have friends, why didn't they ask you?
Usually when they ask me, I would be very evasive, I think.
Okay, but you were evasive because, why?
Well, because I didn't want to cause them, yeah.
I didn't want to cause them very much trouble.
I didn't want them to cause the school much trouble.
I didn't want to be like a standout there.
Okay, so you didn't want to cause your parents upset, which was the complete inverse of what parenting is supposed to be about.
Yeah.
Parenting is supposed to be about helping you with difficulties.
Right, so let's say you have a big pain in your stomach and you happen to have your annual checkup or something, right?
You get a huge pain in your stomach.
It's lasted for two weeks.
And you go to the doctor and the doctor says, how are you doing?
And you say, oh, I'm fine.
Do you have any pain?
No.
And so if you say, well, you have this big pain in your side, your stomach.
Why didn't you tell the doctor?
Well, I didn't want to bother him.
Would that make any sense?
No, that would be ridiculous.
Right.
Right.
Because the job of the doctor is to help you with that kind of stuff, right?
Yes.
And the job of your parents is to know how you're doing and help you to navigate life's inevitable difficulties, right?
Yes.
I think that they...
I would say no.
I was going to say, I think they could not really relate, but my mom was also very much like an outcast for the first...
What the fuck would it matter if they could relate or not?
I mean, does the doctor need to have the same pain in his side in order to help you with the pain in your side?
No.
Does the dentist need to be having their wisdom teeth out at the same time as they're taking your wisdom teeth out?
What does relating have to do with anything?
You know your child is unhappy.
You say, hey, what's going on?
You seem unhappy.
Let's talk about it.
That's parenting, right?
Yeah.
So why don't they do that?
And even now, you said a couple of months ago, you brought up that you'd been, oh, you weren't, you were fine.
We did the best.
We made the best decisions.
You're wrong.
Well, that's why you didn't ask them as kids, as a kid, right?
Because they don't help.
They just tell you that you're wrong and go on about their day.
They tell you that you're wrong.
About a half decade of misery you experienced because of the decisions they made!
Yeah.
Yeah.
Why?
I don't know.
Yes, you do.
Yes, you do.
Of course you do.
I mean, you know your parents for almost a quarter century, right?
Let's just say 20 years.
If you can't remember the first couple of years, maybe 20 years you've known your parents.
You know everything about them.
Why did they not ask you why you were unhappy when it was very clear that you were miserable for years and years and years?
Maybe they didn't want to put in the work.
Maybe they didn't feel like they could do much about it.
Okay, let's take these excuses one at a time.
Okay, so they didn't want to put in the work, right?
Yeah.
Okay.
Do you know the best way to not put in the work?
Don't do the work.
Don't have children?
Yeah.
Right?
I don't want to get up in the morning at five o'clock and go for a walk for an hour.
I don't want to do that.
I'm not a morning person.
It's not my thing.
Yes.
I don't have a dog.
Pretty easy to not do that.
Just don't have a dog, right?
Yeah.
Now, but if I have a dog, I have to walk the dog.
Is that fair to say?
Yeah, correct.
So if they're too lazy to do the work, that's pretty easy.
Don't have kids.
If they don't want to do the work, don't have kids.
But they chose to have kids.
So if I get a dog, let's say it's a dog that really needs to be walked every day.
It goes crazy if it doesn't, right?
I get the dog, I keep the dog home, the dog is going nuts because it isn't getting walked, and I just won't walk the dog.
Fair enough, we have a dog now, and that's sort of like what's happening.
They won't walk the dog?
It doesn't get walked enough, to say.
Right.
I mean, dogs really need to move, right?
Boys, which is why they sometimes, I think, get ADHD, in my humble opinion.
Okay, so, if somebody says to you, if somebody says to me, hey, your dog's going insane because it's not getting walked.
How often do you walk the dog?
Oh, I never walk the dog.
And it's in a small apartment.
And it's an 80-pound dog.
Yeah.
Right?
And the dog is, like, biting things and then morose and depressed and anxious and trembling, right?
And jumping all over the furniture and just going nuts, right?
Aggressive.
And I said, oh, the dog's perfectly happy, perfectly content.
Yeah.
Yeah, that would be a blatant lie.
And everybody could see it.
Right.
So that's your parents.
Yeah.
So, it's not that they don't want to do the work.
If they don't want to do the work, they just don't have kids.
Right?
I love dogs.
I absolutely love dogs.
I think they're wonderful.
I just can't do that morning thing, and it's cruel to the dark otherwise, so I don't have a dog.
Plus, I used to travel a lot, right?
So, anyway.
Okay, so, it's not that they don't want to do the work.
And what was the other thing?
Sorry, I should have jotted it down.
My apologies.
I didn't want to do the job.
Yeah, they.
I'm sure it will come back.
So when you have a kid, you have to talk to that kid.
You have to find out what's going on with his emotions.
You have to help the kid.
With life challenges, you have to do these things.
It's not optional, right?
So, why didn't they do it?
Maybe they didn't want to do it.
Well, that's tautology, though, right?
When I say, why didn't someone do it?
Well, they didn't want to.
That doesn't add any new information.
Because that's, by definition, whatever they don't do...
They don't want to do, but why?
Why don't they want to do it?
Why don't they want to ask you how?
Oh, maybe you said maybe they felt they couldn't do much about it.
But they already put you in a school that was full of kids who you didn't have much in common with because they already made a decision about the ADHD and the dyslexia, that you'd get more help, which turned out to not really be very true.
So they already did something about it.
So they could just change schools.
They could, I don't know, is it legal to homeschool in your country?
I don't think so.
And they would absolutely never want that.
That's one thing.
My mom never wanted that.
I mean, she didn't want a kid for the longest time until basically my dad.
At some point, she just, yeah, she agreed with it.
And then she had my brother and then they had me.
Okay.
So she never wanted to have to homeschool.
It's like totally out of the picture.
They would never want to do that.
Sorry, they being your mother or both your mother and your father?
My mom never wanted to do that.
And my dad had to.
Yeah, my dad also didn't want to.
And he was making the money at the time.
Okay.
So if they felt they couldn't do much about it, then they wouldn't have switched schools for you.
To get you more help.
Because that's doing something about it, right?
So clearly they believe they can do something about it, right?
Yeah.
Okay, so that's not the answer either.
So why would they watch you trudging back and forth to school in absolute misery for half a decade and not ask you how you were doing?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Thank you.
They were just...
They were just ignorance or something.
No, that's not the answer either.
Sorry to be annoying.
I really apologize for this.
No, that's not the answer because of the information that you gave them a couple of months ago, right?
A couple of months ago, you said, Dad, Mom, I was miserable, right?
They were delusional?
No.
No, they got the information.
Now, first of all, you can get the information very easily, right?
By just asking your child.
It's very simple to get the information, right?
Are you happy?
No.
That's easy, right?
I'm not saying, you know, it's emotionally, whatever, right?
But as far as facts go, right?
I mean, let me give you an example, right?
So, let's say that your parents bought a lottery ticket and then gave it to you for safekeeping.
Yeah.
And then it turns out that lottery ticket won a million euros or dollars or whatever, right?
What would they do?
Uh, well, my...
No, would they say to you, where's the lottery ticket?
Yeah, that would be one.
They would, right?
They wouldn't just sit there and say, well, we don't want to bother him, we don't want to...
Right, so if you have the winning lottery ticket somewhere...
And you've been told to keep it safe, and they find out they've just won a million euros, they would come to you and say, where's the lottery ticket, right?
Yeah, they would.
Okay, so when they have incentive, they can ask you questions.
Yeah.
Maybe they didn't want to be parents.
They didn't want to do the job.
Maybe that's just the way.
Well, I mean, if you say, you said your father wanted to be a parent, right?
Yes.
Okay, so then he would ask.
Even if we take your mom out of the picture that she was somehow bullied into becoming a mother or whatever, right?
Yeah.
Yeah, I don't know why I didn't do very much more.
Sorry, I'm not sure what you're saying.
I don't know why my dad didn't do much more.
Sorry, much more than what?
I thought he didn't.
Then what he did.
If he did ask me, why didn't he follow up on why didn't he?
Sorry, did he ask you if you were unhappy at school?
Yeah, a couple times, I think.
Okay, so he would say, are you unhappy at school?
Or are you happy at school?
Or something like that.
And then you would be hesitant to answer, right?
Say, I'm fine.
I would straight up just say, no, I don't like it.
So sometimes you would say, no, I don't like school?
Sorry, go ahead.
My brother also didn't like school.
So I guess maybe I thought it was just sort of normal.
But most kids don't like school.
Oh, so sometimes they didn't ask you because they couldn't relate, and then sometimes they couldn't ask you because they could relate.
Do you see how this is not really much of an answer either way, right?
Yeah.
Okay, so your father says, do you like school?
You say, no, I'm miserable there, and then what?
Then, if...
What are you saying?
He would basically...
Just give me some basic advice and then maybe I would try it for a little bit.
And what sort of advice?
I mean, it's hard to remember, but if you can, what sort of advice?
It's very hard to remember all of this.
I don't really want to remember this because it's not a very nice time.
I hope you can understand that.
Yeah, basically, just the way to be a better conversationalist and why I... Maybe that's not an indication of this call very much, but I can actually talk very well with most people.
And I partly attribute that to him, to the ways that I can talk to people.
Sorry, so you would say, I'm unhappy, and he would say, you just need to be better at talking to people?
And here's how to do that.
Indirectly, yeah.
Okay, I get that.
Okay, so then he would say, here's some advice on how to talk to people, and that's what you should do, right?
Yes.
Okay.
And then you would try that or not try that, and then what?
I would, well...
I mean, he would circle back and say, how is my advice working?
Yeah, and if he would, I might have lied to him.
Or I would have just, again, switched topics.
Didn't want to talk about it.
And he would never really hammer things home because, well, just like the relationship with my mom, he's kind of used to just surrender.
Just like, oh, okay, you don't want to talk about it?
Okay, that's fine.
So he was passive?
Yes, very much.
Okay, so he'd give you advice but would never check and see really whether the advice was helping or not?
Yeah, even if it was followed or not.
Okay.
And did you ever talk to your mother about being unhappy at school?
Did I? It's not a criticism whether you did or didn't.
didn't I'm just curious um well I did talk to her about school because well she would help me with a with group projects that I would do on my own because I didn't want to work in a group yeah um But no, she would never really ask about that very much.
She would never really ask, why don't you bring any friends over?
How was school?
I didn't want to talk about it.
Come home, well, technically it's not that you didn't want to talk about it, it's that you didn't want to be not listened to about it.
Yeah.
So you'd come home from school and were you a latchkey kid, like your parents were both working, or what happened when you came home from school?
My parents were both working at the time.
When my dad got fired from his job.
It was actually one of the worst times in my childhood.
I remember that very vividly.
That's where the yogurt fight came from.
They fought all the time.
I thought they were kind of the force.
And sorry, how old were you when your father got fired from his job?
I was about 10, I think.
Okay.
And do you know why your father got fired from his job?
The job, he worked sort of in a loophole in the law, and that loophole got batched.
Yeah, then his job was kind of obsolete now.
Okay.
And what did your parents fight about?
Everything.
Everything you can imagine.
If I think about it, it's just kind of strange how can you even fight about certain things.
Like missing a turn when you're driving or something.
My mother would curse so much.
It's weird how much she would just blame herself if she did something wrong like that.
And yeah, constant and about everything you can imagine.
They would basically fight about everything.
Mainly because my dad didn't do like a chore around the house.
Yeah, that was it.
Yeah, all right.
Maybe my dad, my mom would say, hey, can you do this?
Can you do that?
And he would say, yeah, whatever.
Yes, I wouldn't do it.
And then they would get in a fight.
Right.
Okay.
Got it.
And what do you think they were really fighting about?
I think my mom was very frustrated that my dad didn't work because she values it extremely highly when people work.
It was certainly strange because my brother, for the longest time, when he didn't have a job, when he was studying, she got very angry at him.
And it was so noticeable when he got a job when she actually stopped just bothering about most stuff.
Hmm.
I'm a tiny bit confused.
So you would say that your mom is hardworking and doesn't like lazy people?
Yeah, I would say that.
But wasn't she just about the laziest parent on the planet?
Uh, yeah.
Didn't even bother to ask her kids for half a decade how they're doing?
Whether they're happy or not?
Didn't even notice whether they were miserable?
When you go to your parents with an issue a couple of months ago, they just wave you off and don't even discuss it and won't listen to you.
That's the laziest parenting known to man, isn't it?
Yes.
Sorry, I'm a little confused about the work here.
I mean, I understand workaholics, but work at Japan...
If it's a company, basically.
I'm sorry?
If it's working for a company, then she is a workaholic.
She truly values that extremely highly.
She values more the gratitude she gets from her boss or customers.
She values that more the gratitude she gets from her than the money she gets from the company.
Oh, so in order to get your mother to try and do even a halfway decent job, you have to pay her.
So the problem with the parenting is that you couldn't pay her.
Yeah, maybe.
Couldn't compliment her enough about her good parenting, maybe?
Yeah, I mean, so you could not provide her a positive experience of flattery or money, so she didn't really care about parenting at all.
Because parenting, good parenting would benefit you, whereas her boss pays her, so it benefits her to do a good job.
Yeah.
Yeah, she always wanted to be more independent.
Sorry, what did she say?
She always said to me that it's important for, if you're an adult, that you can always stand on your own feet.
You don't have to be reliant on somebody.
And that's why she always insisted that she was going to work, even though it costs more money to have the babysitter for two of us in a second car than actually what she was getting from the job at the time.
Oh, so she lost money working?
Yeah, when we were very little, yes.
So how on earth does that make her independent?
Well, if my dad decides to leave her, then she can get money on her own.
And do you know why she was willing to sacrifice her relationship with her children?
Because she was afraid your dad would leave her.
Do you know why she thought that he might leave her?
Well, because my dad is very social.
And every time she would sometimes jokingly say this, that he could always very quickly get a new wife, basically.
Because he's so good at talking.
Ah, okay.
So she didn't feel valuable to your dad?
She felt replaceable.
Yeah, basically.
But I think it's totally unjustified that she felt that way.
Why do you think it's unjustified?
Because there was never any indication that he would do such a thing.
He seems like kind of...
I mean, what you just said about that he didn't really have much follow through with me, that he didn't want to be put into work as a father.
It would be also difficult to put in the work as a cheating husband.
So I don't think he wanted to do that.
So he was too lazy to divorce, is that right?
Yeah, maybe, yeah.
Okay.
But your mother feels that she doesn't provide much value to your husband, and you don't feel like you can provide much value to friends or a woman, right?
Yeah, basically, unless I give him something.
So if I do more stuff for them, if I pay...
But that's straight off your mother's behavior, that you'll get my loyalty if you can pay me or flatter me, right?
Yeah.
Okay.
So do you know what it's like to have someone treasure you for who you are?
Just for who you are.
You mean a relationship where just an equal amount of give and take?
No, no, forget that.
Just somebody who enjoys your company for who you are.
You don't have to flatter them.
You don't have to pay them.
You don't have to have abs.
Somebody who just enjoys the operations of your mind and is thrilled to be around you because of who you are.
My brother and two of my friends, I would say.
Okay.
So, let's talk about your brother.
How did your brother handle it when you got interested in girls but weren't talking to them when you were 13 and he was 17 or so?
I mean, did he transfer his skills?
Did he help you talk to girls?
Did he practice with you?
Did he know you were unhappy?
Did he advocate your cause of unhappiness to your parents?
Like, if he cares about you enormously, then there would have been real signs and indications of that when you were a kid, right?
Yeah, well, he still is.
I was not very successful with girls.
And at the time, he also had no experience.
So he also had the same thing, even though he was a bit more popular than me.
But he also, just like me, hated school.
He went actually to the school I was probably going to go to if I didn't went to this school.
And he had basically the same issues.
Not everything.
He had more friends.
He was a bit more popular.
He didn't really hate it as much as me, I think, at least.
Okay, so did he, when you were 13 and he was 17 and unsuccessful with girls, did he say, whatever you do, you've got to work on this being unsuccessful with girls things because it's really tough for me?
No, he didn't.
Okay.
If you were more unhappy at school than he was, did he know how unhappy at school you were?
I mean, he probably knew that I was very unhappy, but then again...
What do you mean he probably knew?
What are you talking about?
Your brother, you talk to him, right?
He knows that you're unhappy.
Unless your brother can't figure out who's happy or unhappy in a movie.
Yeah, he knows.
Okay, so he knew you were miserable, and he knew this for year after year, and so what did he do about it?
Well, he had most of his own problems to care about, so I didn't think he had much time to help me, especially if he doesn't have very much success and how are you going to help somebody else get successful.
No, that's not what I was talking about.
I was talking about he knew how unhappy you were at school and you were more unhappy than he was, right?
Yeah, I think so.
So did he talk to you about your unhappiness?
At the time, no.
I don't think so.
Okay.
Did he ever...
Sorry, go ahead.
I rather talk about anything else in school.
I'm sorry, I didn't quite catch what you were saying.
I rather talk about anything else than talking about school.
No, but that's because nobody was listening.
It wasn't some choice if you just decided to hide your unhappiness.
It's because nobody cared.
So rather than have one burden called I'm unhappy, you would then have two burdens, which is I'm happy and the people who claim to love me don't give a rat's ass.
It wasn't some decision you made to not talk, well, I just hid things.
No.
It's because nobody was asking, nobody was insistent, nobody was figuring out what was going on.
Nobody was noticing.
So it was not your choice.
To not talk about things.
It was because nobody cared.
So what's the point?
Yeah, nobody cared.
See, this is what I want you to zoom out and think of five years, half a decade, a third of your young life was spent in misery and nobody asked much or did anything really about it.
And that's your template for relationships.
People just live together and don't care.
Yeah.
That's what you think of, and it makes perfect sense to me, but that's what you think of as a relationship.
Yeah, fair, yeah.
Right?
Yeah.
So why would you want to get involved with a girl?
So you could just live together and not care?
Yeah.
Why would you want what your parents have?
See, everybody faces an existential crisis if they don't want what their parents have.
Because we evolved in small tribes where you couldn't choose anything different from what your parents had.
Yeah.
But now you can.
We have relative freedom, relative independence.
We can choose different values than the ones we grew up with, right?
Yes, correct.
So, if you ended up in a marriage like your parents, would you be happy or unhappy?
I would probably divorce.
You'd be miserable, right?
Yeah.
Okay.
I could not be in such a thing.
Sorry, go ahead.
I could not be in such a relationship, I think.
Right, but what else is there?
This is why I ask these questions.
Have you denormalized what your parents were doing and realized how screwed up it is so you can make a different choice?
Well, now talking to you this way, I think I have full.
And that's why I'm trying to shake you out of these excuses and all of this nonsense.
Because to make a different choice, you have to recognize that what your parents did is not foundational to human relationships.
It's not the norm.
It's very specific, very weird, very harmful and toxic choices that they are responsible for.
Because, you see, we can never have more free will than we assign to our parents.
So if you say, well, my parents didn't have a choice and this is the way they were raised and my mother was an outcast and they couldn't do this, then all you're doing is saying, I have no control over my future.
And if you have no control over your future...
And you don't want what your parents have, but they had no control over their future.
You're just going to end up like your parents.
I mean, if you're on that train track that leads off a cliff, the best thing you can do is not start the train, right?
Yeah, right.
So you won't start because you know the destination.
You don't want the destination.
You don't know how to jump the tracks.
Oh, yeah.
Well, you might have figured it out.
I don't know, you might have figured out a solution here.
Well, let's get to the emotions of what I'm saying first, because this is your first flash of emotion that isn't mostly sardonic.
So what is, does it make sense what I'm saying?
It does, it does.
Okay, so then you get interested in this girl with the...
Red hair?
Red hair and the vaping and all that, right?
And you get interested in this girl, and then you're like, ooh, I can't ask her out because I'm going to end up in a messed up relationship, right?
Yes.
And so, I don't think you know how specific in particular your parents' choices are and how much they were choices.
Now, you can say, well, but they didn't actively choose.
It's like everything in life is a choice.
This is what I really try to get across to people as a whole.
Everything in life is a choice.
Everything, everything, everything in life is a choice.
So, if you say, well, I'm just going to avoid asking my kid how unhappy he is, that's a choice.
Yes.
Right?
I'm going to avoid getting on the way scale because I don't want to know how much weight I've gained.
Okay, that's a choice.
I'm not going to go to therapy to deal with childhood issues.
That's a choice.
Everything in life is a choice.
The choice not to choose is a choice, right?
You can't escape it.
Now, unless your parents have specific brain injuries or the kind of autism where they can't recognize human emotions or whatever, that's why I was asking about that stuff, then they have choices, right?
Yes.
And you have choices.
But you can't have more choices.
Then you're willing to give to them.
Yeah.
So I have to give them full ownership on what they...
Full responsibility.
Now, when you give your parents full responsibility, as I was doing in this sort of Socratic question about the motives of your parents, if you give your parents full responsibility, what happens?
What do they do in response?
Uh...
Well...
What they would do...
They would be confronted by the bad decisions they made.
And that's maybe a burden too hard to handle for them.
Great.
Okay.
So, let's take this for a little test drive, if that's alright.
So, do you want to play your mom or your dad?
or both?
Play my mom.
Okay.
Mom, I've got to talk to you about something.
I hope this isn't going to be too uncomfortable, but I know that you want me to tell the truth and you don't want me to lie.
I've really been thinking about my teenage years, and I was miserable for like, gosh, like half a decade, and hated going to school.
I always wanted to come home.
I didn't have any friends.
I've never asked a girl out.
And I'm upset about it.
I'm mad about it.
I mean, I think you guys should have noticed that I was unhappy and talked to me about it.
I think the fact that you didn't do that has really caused a lot of problems for me.
Well, we did the best we could at the time with the information we had.
Yeah, we did our best and you didn't end up that bad as I see it.
You have a good job.
You're getting out of the house very soon.
You're good looking.
You have pretty good things going for you in life.
So I think we did a pretty good job of what we did.
So you don't think that there's any validity to any of my experiences or thoughts?
I'm just wrong.
Basically, yeah.
Okay.
So you said you did the best you could with the information you had, right?
Yeah.
So why wouldn't you ask me how unhappy I was?
Or whether I was happy or what my experience at school was, good or bad?
Wouldn't that be information that you should have?
Well, yeah, maybe I should have asked you a little bit more, but if you want, I'll pay for your therapy if this is such a big issue for you.
Yeah.
That's kind of insulting, right?
I mean, the fact that your child was unhappy for half a decade, shouldn't that also be a big issue for you?
No.
You've been charged, right?
You've been charged in the household, so why are you saying it's just a big issue for me?
shouldn't it also be a big issue for you that I was unhappy for half a decade and you never really asked me about it?
No.
Thank you.
So it's not a big issue for you that I was unhappy for half a decade and you never really asked me about it?
Well, maybe if you put it like that.
No, I did not think at that time.
Sorry, you did not what at the time?
I did not think.
I didn't know it at the time, and I could not have known it because you didn't come to me.
Okay, so you as my mother...
Sorry to interrupt.
Let me just...
I don't want to...
Let's not do the gish gallop thing.
So you as my mother, you're saying that for half a decade I was miserable, never wanted to go to school, always came home immediately, never showed any enthusiasm for school.
And you're saying that as my mother...
From the ages of 12 to 17, you had no way to know that I was unhappy.
No, I just thought you were like that.
Thank you.
I'm sorry?
No, I just thought you were a bit, you were just different from the others.
So you didn't know that I was unhappy?
No, I didn't know.
Okay.
So, as my mother, and I've seen you watch movies, and, you know, you cry at the sad parts, and you laugh at the funny parts, so you are perfectly capable of identifying human emotions in actors and other people.
But what you're saying is that if you see someone at the park bawling his eyes out, you have no way of knowing they're unhappy unless they come up to you, tug on your dress, and say, I'm super unhappy.
Well, then she would go in, but I never saw you cry like that.
No, I'm just asking on principle, right?
So if somebody's bawling, do you need them to say, I'm unhappy?
No.
Okay.
So when you say that I didn't tell you that I was unhappy, that is not an answer.
Because you're asking for a 12-year-old kid.
Who's still, I'm not even halfway to full brain development.
So you're asking a 12-year-old kid to understand his own emotions, to be able to verbalize them in a way that gets through to you, and to process them in that kind of way.
Now, you understand that's really asking the impossible of a little kid, right?
It's really the parent's job to see that the child is unhappy and to try and figure out what's going on.
Yeah.
Yeah.
She would probably, if you're still role-playing, my mom would probably just, she would evade the question, and she would most likely walk away.
Okay, and then I would say, Mom, this is a really important conversation to me.
I would appreciate it if you would finish it.
Well, then she would just ignore you, and she would still go away.
Okay, and then I would say, Mom, if you choose to walk away, You are doing irreparable harm to our relationship.
Because I do have to have the right to talk about things that are upsetting to me.
And of course you have the right.
I'm not going to chain you to the chair, right?
You can walk away.
But I'm telling you that if you do walk away from a conversation that's really important to me, then you are doing irreparable harm to our relationship.
I don't know how to repair it.
Well, then we don't know how to repair it.
We don't have to be here together.
Okay, so you would rather do sort of permanent damage to our relationship than have a conversation that you're uncomfortable with?
Yeah, and she did the best, too.
Okay, so clearly I don't mean that much to you.
Because this level of discomfort is more important.
How could you say it?
I'm doing all these things for you.
Okay, good, good.
Then you want to do all these things for me?
Then stay and finish this conversation.
I appreciate that.
Thank you.
I shouldn't need to ask, right?
I mean, you criticized me a lot as a kid, right?
I mean, you literally screamed at me on a regular basis, telling me that I was doomed to disaster unless I did XYZ or ABC or whatever it is, right?
So you had a lot of criticisms of me as a kid.
And...
I have one criticism of you that I'm talking about here.
And so if you say, well, you do all of these things for me, that's great.
So I listen to years and years and years of criticisms from you.
I have a criticism of you, so you can handle it.
You're a big girl, right?
If you can dish it out, you can take it, right?
And if you can criticize me for years and scream at me for years about things I'm doing wrong and scream at dad for not doing the chores and you've got all these standards and people don't meet them and you've got to rail at them and rage at them.
I'm having a reasonable conversation with you about a deficiency that I experience.
You have had, I've seen you, I mean, not just in my brother, dad, me, you've railed and raged at us for years about things we're doing that are deficient to your standards.
So, right?
You wouldn't want to be one of these people who can bully children and then runs away in a panic the moment they're criticized back.
Like, you don't want to be one of those people who can dish it out but can't take it.
I mean, that would be really sad, right?
That would make all of your parenting a complete lie.
It would make it just bullying, right?
So you have these standards that other people in the family fail to meet, and you scream at them.
Now, I'm being a lot nicer than that.
I'm not screaming at you.
But you're not meeting a standard that I have.
And I think it's a reasonable standard that if your child is unhappy, the parents should ask what's going on and try to work to resolve it.
So I'm just saying, live up to the standards you've imposed for years on others.
And I'm not screaming at you.
I'm not bullying you.
I'm not threatening you.
I'm just saying I really want to talk about this.
So, you know, sit down and listen.
Yeah, then she would...
If she wouldn't walk away, she would just listen and she would just take it and just make it very obvious that she was just a son of this.
That she was what?
That she was just...
Or she would stay.
Make it obvious that she was ignoring whatever you said.
Okay, but then I would say something, she would ignore it and say, well, I need a response from you.
Then she would just give a response.
You ended up pretty well.
You ended up very well.
You have a lot of things going for you now.
Okay, even if that's true.
And she would say that.
So I'd say, well, first of all, you're telling me my experience of life.
Which is narcissistic in the extreme.
Right?
I mean, you're saying that your opinion of my life is totally correct and my actual experience of my life is completely wrong.
Right?
That's not...
That's a little crazy, right?
Yeah.
Right?
I mean, if you say, I have a toothache and I say, no, your tooth is fine, that wouldn't make much sense, right?
Because I'd be saying my opinion is more important than your direct experience, right?
That wouldn't make much sense.
So, I don't really understand what you mean by that.
And secondly, if, you know, when you got mad at me or at Dad for not doing some particular chore, right, and we were to turn around and say, hey, you know, so I didn't make the bed, or I didn't do the dishes, or I didn't vacuum the carpet.
Come on, Mom.
Your life is pretty good.
You've got your health.
You've got a job.
You know, your kids are all healthy.
You're doing fine.
Don't be upset.
Would you have accepted that and said, yes, there's no reason for me to get upset because you didn't do a chore because my life is in general fine?
No, of course you wouldn't.
Of course you wouldn't, right?
So let's stop at this silliness, right?
And actually have a conversation because what you're saying has no reality to it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
She would probably just be speechless.
And then, after a day or so, we just pretend that it didn't happen.
Well, and then you'd come back and say, well, you know, when you had a criticism of me and you would say you're not doing your chores, if I continue to not do my chores, you'd bring it up again, right?
Yeah.
Okay, so when I say I want this conversation, we have the conversation, then you completely ignore it.
I'm going to bring it up again because you taught me well, and if someone is not meeting a standard, you don't just mention it once and then ignore it for the rest of time.
You keep bringing it up until the standard gets met, right?
Yes, correct.
So, what's the upshot of all of this?
What happens if you keep bringing this to your mother's attention?
I think our relationship would slowly but surely end, especially now that I'm moving out of the house.
Right.
And I'm really sorry for all of that.
I can't imagine cratering an entire quarter-century relationship because someone had some criticism.
I can't conceive of that.
I can't fathom that.
I can't follow that.
I can't understand that at all.
But I do know that that's what a lot of people do.
Which means that...
To the price of being in a relationship with your mother is to not exist as an independent person, to not have your own thoughts and preferences.
that's the price of being in a pretend relationship with your mother is you can't really exist at all.
And that's why you can't attract a woman.
you Thank you.
Because you're still in the...
womb of delusion, so to speak, right?
Yeah, I think you're right.
Tell me what you're feeling.
Well, she was very sad.
And, yeah, she'll pass.
I can't make more of it.
It just doesn't.
Yeah.
I have.
Thank you.
That's the way she is.
And I'm really sorry for that.
It's a very difficult and painful thing to deal with.
But women will sense this about you.
And no woman of quality wants to get in combat with a really selfish and destructive mother-in-law, if that makes sense.
Yeah.
That's probably why I haven't tried it.
Well, there's really...
What can you do?
What can you say?
Right?
Yeah.
How can you...
How can you attract a quality woman if this is how things are with your mother?
Probably can't.
Well, I think it's tough, right?
Yeah.
Definitely is.
And if we have, you know, selfish parents as a whole, then this is a battle that we all have to deal with.
And I'm really sorry that this is the battle.
But it is a reality that one of the reasons why you have trouble attracting both friends and lovers is because your definition of relationships is where you don't exist, where you're not allowed to have your own thoughts, where if you have your own thoughts and preferences, you will get attacked and ostracized and your own mother would rather cut off relations with you rather than listen to some reasonable criticism
you will get attacked and ostracized and your own mother would rather cut Yes.
Thank you.
Yeah, yeah, most likely be it.
And that's really tragic.
and I'm obviously desperately sorry about all of that.
And I think my dad would, if you want to know what he would do, he probably would hear me out He probably would partially take it to heart and then just sort of accept that this is the new dynamic.
Because he was actually...
I could actually convince him that I was having a bad time.
He was actually open to it.
Well, okay, but would he still accept that it was his job to know you were having a bad time in the past?
Yeah, he probably would.
And your dad would probably be fine until one particular circumstance or situation where you would say, Mom's threatening to cut me off.
If I continue to talk to the stuff about the stuff with her, I need you to take my side.
I need you to tell her that that's absolutely unacceptable, and she owes me good contact and conversation.
Now, if in a sense you set your father in a collision course with your mother's selfishness, that's where things would probably begin to fall apart.
I'm not certain of that, but that would be my guess.
No, I think that's a very accurate statement.
Yeah.
But it's only when we can be honest in our relationships that we can actually call them relationships.
Otherwise, it's just empty conformity and complying with bottomless selfishness and entitlement.
And it's not a real relationship.
If you can't be honest, it's not a real relationship.
No.
No, it isn't.
Yeah, tell me what you're thinking, what you're feeling.
Damn it.
Damn it, man.
Doesn't it suck to get an answer sometimes?
Yeah, sometimes.
Oh, man.
I would not expect, when I emailed you, I did not expect this.
I mean, I say this as a, you know, I obviously always try not to project my own experiences onto other people, but I tried this with my mother to say, I need to have some preferences in this relationship.
We can't just talk about your lawsuits and your health, like it needs to be about other topics and so on.
Just from time to time, I'm happy to talk about those things, but not all the time.
I had some honesty, you know, I know everyone portrays themselves as like, oh, I was just fine.
I didn't do anything wrong.
But I mean, really did.
I mean...
Work with that to try and get some decent answers and some preferences in the relationship.
And it was just not possible.
She would not have it.
She would not have it.
And I was like, okay, so, I mean, it's really sad.
I think it's really sad.
But my mother, she was my past.
And my fiancé, my girlfriend, my wife, the mother of my child, that's my future.
And it generally is a very bad idea to sacrifice the future for the sake of the past.
In other words, to give up on a great girlfriend, fiancé, wife, mother of your children for the sake of appeasing a woman or a man that you never chose to have in your life and who had complete control over you and exercised some fairly aggressive authority over you.
And then when you try to have any say or standard, In the relationship as a whole, they just threaten abandonment, which is a brutal thing for parents to do.
Of all the people that threaten abandonment, parents are the worst because you can't survive without your parents.
And even though you're an adult now, it is very tough.
And of course, the survival, like evolutionarily speaking, the survival of your children would be hampered by a non-involvement of your parents.
So it is actually, it's a very, very powerful, powerful threat.
And the fact that parents do that is, it's kind of jaw-dropping to me.
I just, I find it shocking.
I still find it shocking, if that makes sense, because they just have so much power, and where you have the greatest power, you must be the most sensitive and delicate with it.
And the fact that it would be like, you know, screw you, kid, you don't get to criticize me, even though I've spent 20 years blowing your head off with screaming, you don't get to criticize me, you don't get to have any preferences.
That interfere with my immediate happiness.
I'm like, okay, that's brutal to see and hear.
And I'm really sorry if that is the situation.
But it sounds a little bit like it, because when you talked to them a couple of months ago, they brushed you off, right?
If I understand this correctly.
Yeah, basically.
So you say, well, why didn't I tell them as a kid?
Well, you told them as an adult, and how did that go?
Yeah, well, probably about the same as a kid.
Well, but worse, because as a kid, you didn't have, I can move out.
Yeah.
As an adult, you do, so.
Yeah, it's a very sad situation.
You know, I mean, obviously, I've told my daughter, like, there's nothing that you can say or do that is going to break the bond.
There's nothing.
Yeah.
And, you know, any, like, the most aggressive criticism of me that you can have, I will...
You know, it will never break the bond.
And same thing's true with my wife and, you know, other friends and so on.
But the people who were like, hey, if you do something I don't like, I'm going to threaten the bond.
Oof, man, that is brutal.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's probably why my oldest friend was from primary school still.
I also never really talked to him about anything very serious because I don't want to.
Like, run the risk of destroying what we have.
Oh, right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I see that now.
I would just say that I do see it at some more points in my life, this pattern.
Yeah.
Right.
Well, I mean, as far as solutions go, I think denormalizing it in your mind is very important.
That, you know, no matter what you say to your parents or anything like that, I think denormalizing this is really, really important.
This is not right.
This is not how relationships are supposed to go.
This is not how parenting is supposed to be.
And you can choose different.
You can choose different.
And, you know, whether you talk to your parents or not any further, it is just important, I think, within your own mind to say, this is really wrong.
And this should not have happened this way.
It should not be the case right now.
And because you denormalize it, then you can choose differently.
You know, like, if you didn't know that you had a secret mole you could push to fly, you wouldn't fly.
Because it's not an option, right?
I could walk, I could take an Uber, I could drive, I could bike, or I could push my secret mole and fly.
Well, if you don't know you have the secret flying mole, you can't choose to fly.
And so, more knowledge gives us more choices.
And the way things are with your parents, and the way things were between your parents in this time when your father lost his job, through no particular fault of his own, but the fact that you did, that your parents did behave in this kind of way, it absolutely in no way, shape or form has to be that way for you.
At all.
Even a tiny, tiny bit.
And when you can choose differently, Then you can pursue a woman without the albatross of, I can't disagree with women, I can't have any opinion with women, I am a servant to women's narcissism, I can't ever upset them, because then you can't be any kind of leader in the relationship, you can't be any kind of authority in the relationship, and you're only going to attract women who are highly dysfunctional and bullying, maybe like your mom a little.
But you can choose differently once you've identified the dysfunction.
Sorry, go ahead.
Or women that are highly passive, maybe.
Like my dad, maybe.
Yes.
Except that then, no, because women who are highly passive, you would then have two people not acting in the relationship, which means it probably wouldn't be a relationship, right?
Right.
So does that make sense as a whole?
Again, I obviously can't tell you what to do.
And I mean, some talk therapy, I think, would probably be a good idea.
But just really want to get across.
What I really want to get across is I'm really sorry that you weren't listened to as a kid.
No kid should be languishing in misery for half a decade and nobody lifts a finger to help.
That's just appalling beyond words.
And I'm really, really sorry for that.
It shouldn't have happened that way.
It should never happen that way.
Unfortunately, it does quite a lot.
But...
You can view that as an apparition and choose differently, but it does require that you criticize the choices your parents made.
Right.
Yeah.
I think you're right.
I also, last time, I'm in the process of sort of moving out.
My mother screened at me because, well, there was a chore that needed to be done.
And I didn't do it immediately.
And she immediately went like, then you just don't get this food right now.
And I was so willing because, well, I have the apartment right now.
I was just so...
If it was done, I would have just, I thought immediately, like, I would have just gone up and left.
Yeah, it's just, it is, like, yeah, not healthy in a way, the way of communicating to, especially to childhood, to your own childhood way.
Yeah, it's terrible.
And, you know, the fact that your father didn't work harder to transfer his social skills to you also, I think, is pretty, Pretty reprehensible, but yeah, it may just be time to just denormalize this and learn how to, because you've got good friends, so you can learn how to be more honest in your relationships.
Not that I'm saying you're a liar or dishonest, but you can work to become more honest in your relationships by practicing this kind of honesty with your friends, and I'm sure they'll be relatively okay with it, and so on.
And listen, what you're going through is very common.
I mean, it's tragically and sadly common.
You know, I mean, you can probably read online all these people who are saying, oh, you know, my friend brought up the Trump assassination and said, gee, I wish they hadn't missed, right?
And it's like, okay, so you want people shot you disagree with politically, right?
That's pretty rough.
And so a lot of people are going through this kind of stuff.
People went through this with COVID. Like, oh, you want my right to take it away?
Because I don't want to take this experimental whatever it is.
And so there's a lot of people who are finding out just how kind of unimportant they are relative to other people in the context of ideology.
And, you know, narcissism, if that's an accurate way to put it, is one of the ultimate ideologies.
So you're certainly not alone in this.
And I really do sympathize.
All right.
Will you keep me posted about how things are going?
I definitely will.
All right.
Thanks, man.
I really appreciate the call and I hope you'll stay in touch.
Thanks for all the time and thanks for everything you've done.
You also, even before this call, maybe you need to realize that this was not normal and it's not how things should be.
Oh, you're absolutely welcome.
I'm glad to help any way that I can.
All right, brother.
Take care.
Keep in touch.
All right.
Thank you.
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