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July 6, 2025 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

02:46:29

I Am Terrified of My Ex GF! CALL IN SHOW

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	All right.
	No, nice to meet you.
	I'm sure we can do some good stuff here.
	Just remember to stay off names and places.
	Can we come up with a name for your ex?
	We could just say Alice, if that's all right.
	Yeah, sure.
	Let's say Alice.
	Okay.
	All right.
	So, yeah.
	If you can start by reading, we'll take it from there.
	Yeah, okay.
	So.
	My ex has ruined her own life.
	She is in debt, lives with her parents, her former abusers.
	She's jobless and is suffering from undiagnosed paranoid schizophrenia, which is reaching a tipping point into openly suicidal inclinations.
	She is 28 years old.
	This has damaged my current relationship and is damaging my ability to make and save money.
	I am 30.
	I have no debts, but no savings either.
	I'm unemployed, but managed to get by month to month.
	I'm trying to get her recognized as a person with disabilities and at this point to have her submitted to the psych ward for more intensive care and ultimately to have her move out of her parents' place.
	Simultaneously, I'm, oh, sorry, I'm adding something, but I feel beholden to help her for three main reasons.
	One, I consider myself partially responsible for her present circumstances because of my own abusive behavior towards her in the past.
	Two, her suicide would simply be inherently traumatizing in and of itself.
	Three, her parents, upon learning of my efforts to help her, have purportedly cast me as a villain, conveniently sidestepping their own accountability.
	And should she succeed in killing herself, I anticipate further negative consequences from them.
	I met her in university in 2016.
	We dated for about a month, and then I left her to play the field.
	At that point, she offered to let me have sex with her nose strings attached.
	I took up that offer for about a year before she confronted me about not caring about her and only using her.
	At that moment, I lied to her and I told her I loved her to retaining sexual access.
	Your episode 5873 helped me to remember and register this as a pivotal moment.
	What followed was a six-year relationship fraught with mutually abusive and manipulative behavior.
	It was finally broken off in December of 2023.
	In December of 2024, she reached out to me by phone during a suicide attempt in which I told her to throw up the pills that she had taken, which she did.
	Since then, I have tried to help her in small ways by being an emotional support and notifying her father of her suicide attempt and her need for professional help.
	After two months of this, her parents have done nothing, and she has descended into a state of extreme dysregulation with almost daily screaming fits and general self-neglect.
	I feel that I know what I need to do to help her, which is to get her in an inpatient facility.
	But the real problem is rescuing myself.
	Right now, her and I are like two people swimming in an ocean with a rope tethered around both of our necks.
	Should I fasten her end of the rope to some other raft, I am still left treading water.
	I'm an artist and I want to make films.
	I have a special talent for video editing and believe in my potential as a filmmaker.
	I've struggled my entire life with motivation, laziness, and distraction.
	During my childhood, I was largely neglected.
	I was told by teachers I had potential if I could get over my laziness, but no one stepped in to help me.
	My mother used me emotionally, not sexually, as a surrogate husband.
	And if I include her, I've been mired in overlapping and hedonistic relationships since being a teenager.
	This includes two relationships with older women before ending up with.
	Currently, though, it is non-sexual.
	If you could just remember to, we're going to call her Alice.
	I'll make that edit.
	Oh, yeah.
	Yeah.
	I'll go back.
	Yeah, just remember, we're going to Alice.
	And yeah, Alice is not her real name, but sorry, go ahead.
	Yeah.
	This includes two relationships with older women before ending up with Alice.
	Currently, though, it is currently, though it is non-sexual, my efforts to aid Alice are overlapping and infringing upon my present relationship.
	In the grand scheme of things, I have spent only two months of my adult life in genuine solitude.
	My present relationship is a- Sorry, can we just go back for a second?
	I just want to make sure.
	So when you said, although it's not sexual, you mean that's your relationship with Alice, not your relationship with your current girlfriend?
	Yes, yes.
	There's, yeah.
	Yeah.
	So in the grand scheme of things, I have only spent two months of my adult life in genuine solitude.
	My present relationship is a consequence of my inability to put down my hedonism.
	I went on a date with her because the option was there, but not because I wanted to enter into another relationship.
	Since then, she has grown on me.
	I'm conflicted by this relationship because she appears to be a genuinely good person who would be an asset in my life.
	She has some red flags, but her willingness to do.
	Sorry, sorry.
	Is this Alice or the new girlfriend?
	The new girl.
	We can call her Kelly.
	Kelly and Alice.
	Okay, got it.
	Yeah.
	She has some red flags, but her willingness to do self-work makes them seem negligible.
	On a strictly Darwinian level, she is 32 and triple vaccinated.
	I would like to have more than one child, but I have no semblance of a career, and I'm almost starting out from scratch at this point in time.
	Okay, and then you had another update.
	Is that right?
	Well, the other update is filling in backstory, which I could just tell you a little bit.
	No, no, what's happened since.
	Didn't she get so with Alice?
	Well, let me just jump to that quickly.
	Okay.
	Thank you.
	Well, I mean, she just got institutionalized, right?
	I don't know.
	No, she didn't get institutionalized.
	Oh, she didn't.
	Okay, sorry if I misunderstood something.
	She is not.
	She had a psychiatric emergency and she was taken in to the ER.
	But, you know, what happens is they put her on antipsychotics, and the moment she's not having a screaming fit, they deem her fit to go out the door.
	Because the city I live in is one that has an enormous population of homeless drug addicts.
	I've basically been told outright that that is the standard for the kind of person who receives priority care.
	And because she's not a drug addict, she's a lower priority.
	So basically, I've been allowing her to stay at my place more, but the panic attacks were...
	So hang on.
	So she had this crisis and then she was admitted.
	And who admitted her or did she admit herself?
	In one, okay, she's been admitted a couple times.
	In one instance, she had an attack out in public, and I think some concerned citizen in conjunction with the police apprehended her and brought her to the ER.
	In another instance, which I heard some of over the phone, she had a panic attack in her parents' house.
	And this is only what I've been told by her, but it resulted in her younger brother beating her up and the police being called.
	And she assaulted the police.
	She was brought to the ER after that.
	But she wasn't charged with the police thing?
	Oh, she's charged.
	She has a court date coming up in April.
	Okay.
	And then she was discharged in one of these to your custody?
	Is that right?
	I was the emergency contact that she called.
	She didn't want to call her parents because, again, they're former abusers, even though I think it's predominantly her brother who would be outright abusing her now.
	They're basically gaslighting narcissists.
	And I've had personal experience talking to them, and this is mostly true.
	Okay, so she was released into your care, is that right?
	More or less, yes.
	Sorry, didn't she say she came to stay at your house?
	Yeah.
	So wouldn't that be me released into your care?
	Yeah, I guess it would be.
	She's been released into my care.
	Sorry, it sounds like I don't want to get anything wrong.
	So if I've misunderstood something, it sounds like I'm not accurate in what I'm saying.
	No, no.
	Well, I mean, technically, I'm not a caretaker.
	And there are instances where she'll go back to her parents' house, but it's just, it's a high-risk situation.
	She spends more time at my place.
	I guess I volunteered as a primary caretaker.
	At this point, I am her primary caretaker and advocate.
	Okay, so she was kind of signed into your care.
	I'm not saying you're the only person, but.
	It would seem so.
	Again, I'm not sure.
	Again, I don't want to get incorrect.
	I guess I'm in the same boat where there could be a technicality.
	I didn't sign any forms at the hospital or anything like that.
	I'm just the person who picked her up.
	I'm the person who's primarily taking care of her.
	So they released her to you, though.
	I assume they don't just toss her out on the street, right?
	I think they would have just let her walk out onto the street.
	They held her until I got there just as a kindness.
	Okay, got it, got it.
	So there's nothing legal or technical, but you picked her up and she's staying with you.
	Yes.
	Okay, I appreciate that clarification.
	Thank you.
	Sorry for not knowing the details.
	All right.
	Okay.
	So how many times over the last, over what time period did you say she's been institutionalized a couple of times?
	Well, basically since March 3rd, I have a chronology here where the worst initial, like, so she was always having these panic attacks, but mostly she would become very like crying, not really listening, just ranting, getting very, very upset and just very emotionally dysregulated.
	But basically at the beginning of March, things cranked up to an intensity where it's just like a living nightmare.
	Where on March 3rd, I received a phone call from her where she had one of these screaming fits.
	I had her stay at my place and the following morning, she woke up at 6 a.m., or I woke up to her having one of these screaming fits at 6 a.m.
	It lasted about 45 minutes.
	This is before we had access to antipsychotics.
	And basically, there was another one the next day.
	And then it sort of seemed to steady out into a pattern of once every three days with some escalating violence.
	And on the 19th, just I had a sense that things were somewhat like there was a stable pattern emerging.
	Sorry, by that, you mean sort of two days ago?
	Yes.
	Okay, got it.
	She had another fit and then another one on the 20th.
	And at that point, I had been trying to find various resources through calling services like 211, which allocates mental health resources.
	But basically, the 22nd, so yesterday, was the first day that I formally went to the hospital to have her assessed.
	And I was basically told, it's like this sort of Kafka-esque nightmare where they told me to make sure she takes the antipsychotics before she comes in.
	But of course, when we get there, she's calm, which means they cannot verify a mental illness.
	But the paradox is if she was having one of these fits, she would not be able to fill out the forms or the paperwork to get her through the door.
	So they basically told me, the person in the hospital told me that there's this massive system that barely functions to get people help, and I'm just going to have to submit to potentially, like, maybe she'll see a psychiatrist who could diagnose her in May or something.
	But that individual was not willing in spite of everything I told them and the evidence that she had been brought into the ER.
	That doesn't mean anything because she wasn't having a fit right there in front of him.
	And she's sorry, she wasn't having the fit because she'd taken some antipsychotics.
	Is that right?
	Yes.
	Okay.
	And I guess you can't record her and play that back or anything.
	I assume that's not allowed or legal or whatever it is, right?
	I've made audio recordings.
	The person in the hospital I was talking to declined to listen to it, but I will continue making audio and video recordings going forward, also partially for my own personal safety.
	Just make sure that you check with whether it's legal.
	And don't tell me where you are, obviously.
	But yeah, just make sure that you're in a two-party, one-party situation.
	I'll try to find that out.
	But when she has these fits, she self-harms.
	She will bash her arms against hard surfaces and she will bash her head against the wall.
	And so, you know, it's basically I find myself in this situation where I constantly feel eyes on me as if I'm the one actively abusing her as I'm trying to help her.
	Okay.
	All right.
	I'm obviously sorry for this situation.
	It's very tough overall.
	So how can I best help?
	Well, I suppose if I were to talk about my life or what had brought me to this point, you might be able to point to some form of insight that I hadn't noticed.
	At least when I listen to the calls, that's what I tend to see.
	No, but sorry, and I appreciate that.
	Now, obviously, very happy to help as best I can, but insight for what?
	Insight in what way?
	To achieve what, I suppose.
	I just need to know what you consider a successful call so that I can aim at that.
	So one of my main priorities in my life is to one of my main priorities is to try to get my career going because for the last decade or so when I should have been working on that,
	I've been caught in the turmoil of all these overlapping relationships.
	Sorry, caught?
	What do you mean?
	Well, I feel caught.
	I feel like I guess if I go, not I guess.
	Obviously, when I look back, I voluntarily continued to be a part of.
	Well, no, you dangled sex and you went for it, right?
	Yes.
	And that's why you're, I mean, it was lost.
	And I sympathize with that, and I'm not trying to throw you under the bus, but you're not caught.
	I mean, there was this unstable woman who then offered you sexual access in return for you not having any judgment about her character.
	And you went for that.
	And then you kept going for that, right?
	Yes.
	So, you know, you take what you want, which is sexual access with an unstable woman.
	And now the bill is here, right?
	Yes.
	Okay.
	Yeah, I just, I didn't quite get the court thing, so I'm glad we're on the same page about that.
	But sorry, go ahead.
	No, no, I do take, pardon me if I, I'll try to correct my language as I go forward.
	After hearing that other call that I mentioned in my intro, it, you know, I, before, if I had called before that, I probably would have been similar to that caller with all the grievances of what happened in the relationship.
	But with the hindsight of seeing like my explicit role in entering into something so dysfunctional, I feel as though I don't have any resentments or anything about what has happened to me, what is happening to me now.
	No, you absolutely should have resentments, in my opinion.
	I think they might be more suitable towards other people.
	Your parents should have taught you the dangers of lust.
	No, and effectively, the only thing that I recall being told about sex was to wear a condom.
	Yeah, so I mean, you were basically thrown to the wolves of modern femininity.
	Not that this girl is an absolute emblem, obviously, of modern femininity, but there are dangerous women in the world, and it is the job of the mother and the father, particularly the father, to prepare and warn his son about the dangers of dating and sex.
	Yes.
	Which didn't happen.
	No.
	Yeah.
	So, I mean, you're not caught in that you voluntarily entered into it.
	However, you were also unprepared for it, not trained to avoid this kind of mess.
	And for that, you can be angry, I think, or should be.
	And as things continue, because of the lack of dialogue I had with my parents, and I'm not trying to weasel my way out of my own accountability here, but I generally don't tell them of the struggles that I'm going through in my life.
	Partly out of shame, but partly out of a sense that I don't like, I've always had this sense since I was very young that I couldn't tell my mom any of my actual problems because she wouldn't be able to cope with the reality of them.
	When I was very young, I remember staying up all night terrified of, you know, my own imagination of death, of cartoonish afterlifes, and so on.
	And I wanted to call out to her, but I had this sense very, very early on that if I told her this, it would depress her or she wouldn't be able to cope with the existential questions that I was bringing to her.
	Okay, so you had to manage your mother's mental fragility, and now, of course, you're managing Alice's mental fragility.
	Yes.
	Okay.
	And in what ways were your mother, in what ways was your mother fragile, or how did you see that?
	I don't know how I knew that so young, but she really does not handle negative emotion very well.
	She has, I believe, a thyroid condition or something like that.
	And, you know, it's just always been there.
	And I remember when I came upon Gabor Mati, I gave her a copy of When the Body Says No.
	Because if you're familiar with the ideas of the book, it's that all of these autoimmune diseases or dysfunctions of the body come about as a result of unrepressed emotions or sorry, not unrepressed, repressed emotions, repressed emotional burdens, not enforcing boundaries.
	And she comes from a family, she's the youngest child in a family of nine that, you know, when I was younger, everything about her side of the family seemed very idyllic.
	But as more time goes on, it's very apparent that it was extremely dysfunctional.
	Many of my cousins, I know of one or two for sure, suffered some form of sexual abuse at the hands of a relative.
	I didn't, and as far as I know, my brother and sister didn't.
	My aunt and my mother, I know that my aunt of the cousin who suffered the sexual abuse, that she was apparently raped.
	And my mom.
	Sorry, who was?
	Oh, one of my aunts on my mom's side.
	And my mom has mentioned some story about some large figure overtaking her.
	That's all the details I know.
	So I don't exactly know what's happened, and I guess I haven't had the courage to ask further.
	Okay, so how did you, what was your sense of your mother's fragility?
	How did you see it?
	That she couldn't handle any existential problems.
	And then beyond that, when I began, I was exposed to pornography at the age of 10.
	And the first time I masturbated was to hardcore pornography at the age of 11.
	And who exposed you to that?
	I don't, I self-exposed at 10.
	I think the reason I was thinking about this as I was writing more talk.
	I think what prompted that was me looking up foul language that I had overheard my older brother and his friends saying.
	That's my best guess.
	And then one of my older brother's friends sold me a bootleg DVD of pornography when I was 11.
	My older brother's three years older than myself.
	Okay, I think we jumped a little bit from your mother's fragility.
	So the point I was making there, though, is there was a period of time where I was hiding the truth and reality from her, but then that changed from protecting her from unpleasant truths into hiding my guilt or hiding my activity, which now looking back, I consider that the same.
	I apologize if that's confusing or yeah.
	Can we go back a little bit earlier?
	We'll get to that stuff, but let's go back a little bit earlier.
	You said when you were very young, you felt this about your mother.
	Yeah, I think.
	So I can't.
	Let me think.
	I can't think of any more specific examples of her fragility.
	But I was the middle child.
	My older brother, he was three years older than me.
	My younger sister was two years younger than me.
	So my older brother, he bore the brunt of like all the parental guidance, all this sort of pressure to succeed or to do well.
	And then my sister, she has the best work ethic, but my mom kind of latched onto her and co-opted her identity in a way.
	So, you know, my mom likes riding horses.
	My sister likes riding horses.
	My sister still to this day lives at home.
	So my mom kind of turned her into like some kind of lifelong friend.
	And so in this dynamic, I think that all the pressure was on my brother.
	And it was just largely assumed that I would catch up or something like that.
	And for the most part, I almost never did my homework and stuff like that.
	Okay, do you remember my question?
	Yeah, you're asking about, I apologize.
	You're asking about signs of my mother's fragility.
	Yeah.
	I mean, are you aware that you're not answering the question?
	Look, it's fine if you don't want to answer the question, then just say to me, Steph, I don't want to answer the question, but I don't know why you're taking you on this narrative journey, which I didn't ask for.
	Okay.
	I mean, it's a real question.
	I'm not trying to pick on you.
	I'm just kind of curious.
	No, no, you know.
	I understand.
	Okay, so when I'm talking, if you could not talk, I'd really appreciate that.
	So do you know that you're not answering the question?
	Like, are you aware of that?
	Yes.
	So why would you not answer the question or at least address that you're not answering the question?
	I don't know the answer as far as me being a young child goes beyond that example of having an intuition that that was the case.
	Okay, so if you just tell me you don't know, then that's fine.
	I'm just not sure what we went on with all this other stuff.
	Oh, I'm sorry.
	Okay, so, and just in general, I'm sorry to be a nag, but if you could just give me the facts, because your interpretations are, I assume that your interpretations are invalid, not because you're not a smart guy, of course you are, but because if your interpretations were valid.
	I wouldn't be where I was.
	You wouldn't be where you are.
	So just try and give me the facts as best you can.
	Okay.
	Of course.
	So you didn't see your mother getting real upset.
	You didn't see her freaking out over relatively minor things.
	You didn't see her lying in bed.
	You didn't see her.
	So there was no sort of indications of her fragility when you were younger.
	When her and my father would fight, she would get very upset very quickly.
	And there were two instances I can think of where my father had this explosive, like just is like this explosive outrage or rage event where she was just like screaming and cleaning the house angrily.
	And one, I apologize for being tangential.
	One instance, my mom was not there.
	In the other instance that my mom was there, she was weeping and begging him to just leave the house to go for a walk or something like that.
	And how old were you then?
	At that point, I might have been early adolescence, 13, 14.
	Oh, okay.
	So this is like almost a decade after the time period we're talking about.
	Perhaps.
	I'm trying to figure out.
	No, not perhaps.
	We were talking about you being sort of four or five, and now you're talking about 13 or so.
	Well, it could have been when I was five or six.
	I don't mean to be vague, but I don't have great memories of when I was young.
	It can't be 10 years off, right?
	It can't be four.
	No, it was 14.
	Well, that's what I was saying earlier, though, is it's only later that other examples of my mom's fragility became more evident.
	I'm asking early.
	And I'm telling you, I don't remember.
	Okay, that's fine.
	But when I ask you a question, basically to try and figure out if there's things that you can see when you're young, and then you describe to be stuff that happened when you're 13 or 14, that's not answering my question.
	I'm trying to figure out how you knew your mom was fragile when you were young, anything that you may have seen.
	So then when you describe things happening when you're an adolescent, that's not the same thing at all, right?
	Okay.
	Then I'll make it simple.
	At this point, I do not remember.
	I have no specific memory of what would indicate to me that she was so fragile that I could not even call out to her at night.
	Okay.
	So you didn't see her overwhelmed.
	She wasn't a nail biter.
	You didn't see her fight and get really upset with your dad when you were little?
	Not that I remember.
	Okay.
	Do you think that she did and you don't remember, or do you think she didn't?
	That's quite possible.
	Okay.
	So let me ask you this.
	When do your memories begin?
	Like when do you remember things that you believe or like you accept as accurate?
	What age?
	There are memories from when I was about that age or younger, but they're very few.
	And I think the more consistent memories come in at about the age of six because that's when I would have began, begun elementary school.
	Okay.
	So what's the earliest or the youngest you remember being when you saw your parents fighting?
	Yeah.
	Thank you.
	Thank you.
	I don't know.
	Other than the example that I gave you, I apologize for 13 or 14, right?
	Yes.
	Okay.
	What's the earliest memory you have of your mother that's a specific thing rather than a narrative?
	When I was in a bathtub with her and my sister and I was a baby.
	You were a baby?
	Yeah.
	Oh, wow.
	You can remember back to babyhood.
	Yeah.
	I don't know why that makes me upset, but I don't really have any other memories from that period.
	Well, I mean, you're lucky to have any memories from babyhood.
	That's very impressive.
	Okay.
	And what are you feeling at the moment?
	Just a general grief.
	And I think it comes out a lot because I'm just upset all the time.
	And most of the time, I don't express myself.
	No, sorry.
	Sorry.
	I don't know about upset all the time.
	You started talking about your mother and your sister and you in a bath when you were a baby.
	And I'm trying to understand why you're feeling strongly About that, and not a general cry of, I don't express my feelings, but what are you feeling when you're thinking back of your mother and yourself as your sister in the bath when you were a baby?
	I don't know.
	Sorry, you don't know why?
	No, I don't know why that fills me with so much grief.
	Is it a positive memory?
	It is a positive memory, I think.
	There's a memory a little bit later, if you don't mind me jumping ahead, and I won't jump ahead hugely.
	Now, but you put caveats on everything.
	It is a positive memory, I think.
	And I'm not sure what that means.
	I guess I could say it.
	Sorry, I'll stop saying it.
	I guess it could be neutral.
	It's just, you know, that's a nurturing place to be.
	So if you're being nurtured, isn't that a positive memory?
	Yeah, I guess.
	Yes.
	See, I guess.
	I need some facts.
	I can't have all of these caveats because then it's just like trying to navigate through an utter fog.
	Is it that you don't know whether it's a positive memory?
	I mean, if you're in a bath and you're being nurtured and, I don't know, assume you're blowing bubbles or having fun or something.
	Is that a positive memory?
	It is a positive memory.
	Okay, good, good.
	All right.
	So listen, I don't mind if there's ambiguity, but I just need to have some facts.
	Otherwise, if there's no foundation, you can't build the house, right?
	Yeah, of course.
	Okay.
	So you have a positive memory.
	And what is your next positive memory of your mother after babyhood?
	My, does it have to be positive?
	It could be my, can it just be my next memory?
	Nope.
	Nope.
	That's why I said positive.
	Okay, yes, yes.
	Huh.
	Thank you.
	Thank you.
	Maybe being bathed in the sink.
	Sorry, maybe?
	I don't know what you mean.
	Stop with the caveats, my God, man.
	Do you have a memory of being bathed in the sink?
	Was it a positive memory?
	Yeah, that would be a positive memory.
	That would be a more explicit positive.
	It's a fun memory, yeah.
	Okay, so that's a positive memory.
	And do you have any idea how old you were there?
	Maybe approaching three.
	Okay.
	So that was a fun memory, I assume, right?
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	And what's the next positive one that you have of your mother?
	Mm-hmm.
	I'm sorry.
	I don't know why this is so hard.
	You don't have to apologize.
	I'm just asking a question.
	It could be that you don't have many, which is fine.
	It's not fine.
	I'm sorry for that, but I'm just.
	I don't know.
	I assume.
	I'm sorry.
	So you don't know what?
	I don't.
	No memories are coming to mind right now.
	So from three, hang on, hang on.
	From three to thirty, and I'm not doubting at all.
	I'm not doubting.
	I just want to make sure I understand.
	From the age of three to the age of 30, you have no positive memories with your mother or of your mother.
	And that's fine.
	I'm not trying to make it sound impossible.
	I just want to make sure I understand what you're communicating.
	I guess.
	Sorry.
	Don't guess.
	It seems like.
	Don't know.
	No, don't seems.
	Don't guess.
	See, here's the thing.
	There's your memories.
	If you're not sure of them, I can't be sure of anything that's going on.
	So what you're confronting is there's...
	Is it the case just so I'm clear?
	Yes.
	Because you put a lot of caveats in, right?
	I just want to be clear.
	From the age of three to 30, you have no positive relationship or you have no positive memories of your mother.
	And again, I know that sounds like, well, how could that be the case?
	I'm just saying, but if that's what you feel, that's what you feel.
	I'm not going to argue with you.
	That's your experience.
	So is that what you're telling me?
	Right now, yes.
	Oh, my God.
	What do you mean right now?
	Do you mean in five minutes you won't be telling me that?
	No, it's that I do think there were positive events, but that when I look back, everything is tinged with this sort of gauze of pity for my mother.
	Okay, but what do you mean by right now?
	And when I say, is that the case, and you see, right now, yes.
	It's like you keep giving yourself these outs or these escape clauses, like you can't be pinned down on anything.
	Nothing is jumping to mind.
	What does that mean?
	I mean that when you ask the question, I sit and assess what's coming through my mind.
	No, but it's not a court of law.
	Right?
	You're not going to get punished for being wrong about something or if a new memory pops up.
	Like, you're treating me as if I'm a hostile lawyer trying to put you in jail.
	Yeah.
	Well, don't, because if that's your view of me, then this is a negative or destructive conversation.
	No, no, that isn't my view.
	No, it is, because emotionally it is.
	Because you're treating me like I'm someone from a sinister alphabet agency trying to catch you in a lie so I can throw your ass in jail, which is why you keep putting all these hedges in.
	It's just a conversation.
	There's no stakes here.
	Then right now, sorry, not right now.
	No, there's no positive memories.
	Okay, got it.
	All right.
	So if I understand what you were saying earlier about the gores, you have some positive experiences with your mother, but they're tainted by this pity.
	Yes.
	Okay.
	So what do you pity about your mother?
	She has been depressed most of her life.
	I mentioned that I was somewhat of a surrogate husband.
	I have a memory of gardening with her and asking her questions about what she would have liked to have done with her life.
	And I remember her telling me that she, at one point, she wanted to be a singer.
	And that filled me with immense sadness and grief because her personality, like the idea that she could be a singer in any meaningful sense, was absurd at that point.
	Did you ever hear her sing?
	No.
	She never sung.
	Now that I can.
	Oh, yes, she did, and she's not a good singer.
	Oh, so she was wrong.
	She couldn't have been a singer.
	Because she was not a good singer.
	Yeah.
	So this was just a delusion.
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	Okay, got it.
	All right.
	So she was depressed and full of delusions of grandeur about what she could have achieved.
	Yes.
	Okay, got it.
	And how else did her depression or self-pity manifest?
	She would frequently complain about our father who was cast in, not just cast, but he manifested this sort of tyrannical husband-father role.
	He was very surly, quick to anger.
	There is a considerable amount of yelling.
	And in the instances that I mentioned earlier, there's a couple moments where he blew up in a frightening way.
	So he was a bully?
	Yes.
	Okay.
	And why do you think she chose to marry a bully?
	She might have been more fun when they were courting.
	Sorry, she might have been more fun?
	She might have been.
	He might have been more fun.
	Okay.
	Yes.
	Well, I mean, how long did they know each other before they got married?
	I don't know.
	I don't know that.
	I mean, usually it's at least 12 months.
	Oh, well, they had already had my brother and maybe myself before they were married.
	Oh, so she had sex with a guy and then ended up getting trapped in a relationship.
	I never thought of it that way, but yes.
	Well, that's what happened with you.
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	So, yeah, this is why it's important to know your parents' history so you can figure out what mistakes to avoid.
	Okay, so is she religious?
	Not particularly.
	She was raised Anglican.
	Her father stopped going to church after purportedly having an argument with the priest.
	And I have a memory of being an angsty teenager, which I regret.
	I did the whole debunking the life of Jesus by comparing it to other resurrection myths to her.
	And because she has no foundation in her beliefs, she was unable to push back against it.
	And so since then, she regards religion as something old-fashioned.
	Sorry, I believe.
	Because she had no foundation in her.
	I'm sorry, there's a lot in what you just said there.
	Because she had no foundation in her beliefs, she was unable to push back against it.
	Yes.
	Sorry, is she stupid?
	No, I mean, some people are, right?
	It's like being short, right?
	It's no shame.
	It's a fact, right?
	Yeah, sorry for the pause.
	I've never thought of her that way before.
	No, I'm not saying she is, but I think she's not.
	You're treating her as if she's kind of retarded.
	No, you are.
	Because if you present an argument to her, she can go look up a fucking book or something.
	She can go look it up on the internet.
	She can go look for the counter-arguments.
	She can go follow Jack Pesobic and get the counter-arguments to the myth of Horus and all these kinds of things.
	So I'm not sure what you mean when you say she had no way of fighting back against you or countering you.
	I mean, she knows how to read, right?
	She knows how to read, and she was the person who taught me how to read.
	Okay, and you had a computer because you had access to this nasty stuff on the internet, right?
	So you had a computer, and she knows how to read.
	And did she work outside the home at all?
	She mostly did not work when I was growing up.
	When I was about, I think, from 15 onward, she worked outside the home at a kennel.
	Okay, got it.
	So she knew how to read.
	She knew how to look things up.
	So she could have written, she could have, you know, spent an hour reading about Jesus' myths and the rebuttals, right?
	She doesn't particularly have any intellectual interests.
	Well, you were making an argument that shook her faith, right?
	Yes.
	So she can look up the counter-arguments.
	If it's enough to shake her faith, then it's enough for her to look up the counter-arguments, right?
	Yeah, but she didn't.
	So I'm not sure what you mean when you say she was unable to because she lacked any firm foundation, she was unable to push back or something like that.
	That's treating her as a passive, dumb object, right?
	She could have made the choice, she could have looked it up, she could have phoned up a priest, she could have done anything, right?
	She could have phoned her parents.
	Hey, what are the arguments against this?
	Or, you know, anything, right?
	Yeah.
	In what you're seeing, I'm seeing that there's a tendency to coddle her or infantilize her.
	Well, you have to obey your mother, and your mother sounds pureed in her own quicksand of infinite self-pity.
	Yeah.
	My son took my faith away.
	Bullshit.
	You made an argument.
	You're allowed to make an argument.
	She's allowed to rebut it.
	If she doesn't, if she just folds, that's on her.
	you would be treating her then as a retarded child.
	So was your father more intellectual?
	No.
	He doesn't really read.
	He knows how to read, but he would read things like manuals and things like that, nutritional books.
	But he doesn't have any intellectual interests.
	He doesn't have very good verbal dexterity.
	He was raised by Italian immigrant parents, and he was physically abused and basically made a slave in some sense at the age of three.
	He was made a slave at the age of three.
	Of course, I'm shocked, but I'm willing to hear the case, of course, right?
	I see the narrative that forms in me saying that my grandfather was putting him to work by the age of three, straightening nails and helping out building houses.
	And my grandfather was physically abusive.
	He is the kind of person who I could see just casually hitting his kids.
	But I know there is an instance in my father's life where my grandfather was drunk and my dad commented on it, perhaps in a snide way.
	And he was apparently very badly beaten as a result.
	Right.
	And what does this mean about your father?
	In other words, what excuse does this give your father?
	What free will are you stripping from your father with his obviously tragic past?
	His ability to articulate or mount a defense of his positions or what he wanted for us as children.
	My mom would frequently, I guess, just wear him down in an argument.
	She is a little bit more verbally dexterous.
	And in his own words, at a certain point, he gave up on parenting us because in his point of view, she took complete control.
	I'm sorry, I thought he was a bully.
	He was violent and dangerous and cleaning the house angrily.
	And your mother was begging on her knees.
	But wait, she bullied him into giving up parenting?
	I'm trying to follow this.
	It seems like the pendulum has swung a little bit.
	That is the expression of what he felt.
	And that is the expression of what he felt.
	I'm not sure what that means.
	So your father said, I had to give up on parenting because your mother took it away from me by bullying me.
	That's what he said to you?
	Or I'm not sure what you mean?
	That is what he meant.
	I don't know what that's what he meant means.
	How did he communicate this?
	He told me that he gave up on parenting because my mom took control over everything.
	Okay, so both your parents played the victim.
	Yes.
	And now you are enmeshed with a victim.
	Yes.
	Okay.
	So is it true?
	Were your parents victims?
	At certain points in their life.
	Oh, my God.
	Of course.
	I say your parents, not when they were children.
	Oh, okay.
	My parents.
	As adults.
	As parents.
	No, as parents, they were self-pitying losers who gave up.
	And my mom.
	Hold on.
	Your mother didn't give up because she wrestled control of the parenting from your dad, right?
	She didn't give up, but her own motivations, she said she would be happy if all of her kids just stayed home forever, basically.
	So her motivations are to have a group of friends forever.
	Okay.
	So they didn't give up because your mother blocked your father from parenting to some degree.
	And that makes it more likely that the children are going to overbond with the mother and stick around, right?
	Yes.
	Okay.
	All right.
	And what did your dad do for a living?
	Or does he?
	He was a mechanic.
	Now he fixes vacuums and sewing machines.
	Okay.
	Got it.
	And what would you rate his intelligence?
	Intellectually low, but he can repair almost anything.
	So I don't know what term you would use for that kind of intelligence.
	Oh, physical, he's got manual dexterity.
	He's got pattern recognition with regards to motors, great physical skills, and so on, but not abstract conceptual kind of stuff for the most part, right?
	He might be all right abstractly, but he's very bad at communication.
	He's very bad at communicating.
	And because he was a bully, he was not able to transmit any of his knowledge to myself or my brother because we just developed a fear of being bullied by him.
	And so we just avoid him at all costs.
	Okay, so because he was a bully, he was unable to transmit.
	Okay.
	No, that's fine.
	So did he admit this as a fault?
	He said, look, I'm shitty at communicating, so just deal with it.
	Or did he think he was a good communicator, but you guys just misunderstood him?
	There was a point in time that I confronted, actually, he was confronting me.
	There was a confrontation between us when I was about 18 or 19 where I was giving him grief about how he was treating our mom.
	And he started laying into me that no one talks to him.
	And he doesn't hug his children.
	And this is making him very sad.
	And I explained to him.
	Sorry, he was laying into you.
	You mean he was attacking you because he doesn't hug his children?
	Because they don't hug him.
	Oh, so they don't hug him.
	Okay, so he feels like he doesn't get affection.
	Okay, got it.
	He feels like he's not, you know, I know there's irony in this, but he feels like he's not treated like a real father.
	Right.
	Okay.
	And I explained to him at that time events in our life that caused us to fear him or caused us to resent him.
	And what were one or two of those events?
	Well, there's the explosive episodes I mentioned before, but another event, there's one where he was showing my brother, getting my brother to wrap up an electrical cord.
	And my brother started wrapping it around his hand rather than making the loops.
	Yeah, my elbow elbow something, right?
	Yeah, yeah.
	And because he didn't know.
	And so my dad said, that's how you tie your dick in a knot and took the cord from him and just did it.
	And I remember.
	Who was your brother at this point?
	Maybe 11, 12.
	Okay.
	Gotcha.
	One other instance that was very pivotal for me falling away from him was he asked me what I wanted to do when I grew up.
	And I told him I wanted to be a filmmaker.
	And he said, oh, you want to be stupid like your brother?
	And after that, I just decided I don't want to talk to this person.
	Sorry, what was your brother?
	How does he play into it?
	Well, my brother wanted to be a filmmaker, but he doesn't really have very good discipline in terms of how outcomes.
	My sister wound up very disciplined.
	She can do anything she can push her mind to.
	My brother is one of the worst procrastinators.
	He's very dysfunctional in a lot of ways and self-sabotages.
	And I would rate myself somewhere in the middle.
	Okay.
	So your father was kind of caustic and coarse and dismissive and kind of contemptuous of what you wanted to do and so on, right?
	Yes.
	And how were you disciplined by your parents as a kid if you were?
	When I was mostly threatened, I remember being spanked, not badly, but I do remember being spanked on the couch when I was, I don't know, maybe five or something.
	But otherwise, I do remember my dad saying things like, if you keep crying, I'll give you something to cry about.
	I remember being, whether playfully or otherwise, threatened with being belted.
	He had a belt that had these studs on it.
	That never happened, though.
	In one instance, in grade eight, I believe, I had a midterm report card for math at 43%.
	And my father woke me up in the morning yelling at me because he found this report card in my backpack.
	And he told me, if I get grades like that, I'm going to grow up into a criminal.
	And were you not, yeah, I assume you weren't particularly good at math, right?
	I can do it, but I had no interest in it.
	Well, yeah, but I mean, you weren't good at getting grades at math, right?
	No.
	No.
	Okay.
	So your father blamed you for what you were not good at, right?
	Yes.
	But he pities himself for what he's not good at, which is communicating or soliciting affection or supporting his children or something like that, right?
	And he mostly sees it as the fault of others.
	Oh, you mean his lack of communication is the fault of others?
	Yes.
	I will say after that conversation with him, though, he started being kinder.
	And so how old were you when you had that conversation?
	I think 19.
	Yeah.
	So sort of pointless then, isn't it?
	Well, I believe I might have said this before, but it's pointless to an extent, except if I have grandchildren and if I keep him in my life.
	Well, keeping him in your life, you have a suicidal ex hanging off your neck that's half drowning you.
	So I don't see grandchildren coming out of any of that.
	Yeah.
	Okay, so your father is very angry at the things that you're bad at, and then he blames others for what he's bad at, right?
	Yeah.
	So if you'd have said to your father, and I'm not saying you should have, but if you'd said to your father, well, the reason I got 40 AE3% in math is you never tutor me.
	It's your fault.
	What would he say?
	Like if you blamed others in the way that your father did.
	I've told him that more recently.
	No, no, as a kid.
	Oh, as a kid?
	Like, when was the last time you tutored me, Dad?
	I wish I had said that.
	I don't know what would have happened.
	Sure, you do.
	Sure you do.
	He's coming in yelling, saying, oh, it's really bad that you did badly at math.
	And you say, Dad, that's on you.
	You're the adult, you're the parent, and so you don't tutor me, you don't teach me what is important about math, you don't check my homework.
	So maybe I would have gotten hit or physically threatened.
	Yeah, so if you blame him the way that he blames others, he would have attacked you.
	Yeah.
	Almost for certain, right?
	So he's just a raging hypocrite.
	All the bad things you did as a child are 100% your fault.
	All the bad things I did as an adult are 100% others' fault.
	Yes.
	Right.
	Saying that children have perfect self-ownership and free will, and adults are just victims of circumstance.
	I mean, it's deranged.
	Like, it's morally insane.
	And corrupt beyond words.
	Okay.
	So tell me some positive memories of your father, starting early.
	I remember wrestling with him, with me and my siblings as a kid.
	That was a lot of fun in the living room, attacking him and stuff like that.
	Otherwise, I returned to a very similar blank.
	And most of my childhood, I felt fear or resentment towards him.
	And then as I went into my 20s, I started to feel pity for him.
	Oh, so you don't really hold him responsible?
	I do.
	Well, where's the anger then?
	Well, I will tell you when I confronted him that one time when I was 19 about all of this stuff, you know, I explained to him how this had damaged our ability to communicate and so on.
	And he said something so monumentally self-pitying.
	He said, I'm sorry I ruined your life, which, you know, he didn't ruin my life.
	I mean, maybe he did, but that's not how I felt at the time.
	I felt like, no, you ruined your life, old man.
	But there's an instance, and please forgive me if I'm jumping, but I'm thinking of another instance where I did confront him with a lot of anger, and I actually managed to correct his behavior as a result.
	An uncle of ours died, and my mom got the news on the phone, and she immediately started bawling.
	And I would normally have went and consoled her, but at this point in my life, I had come to realize the way that she had used me as a surrogate husband.
	And so I no longer felt it was responsible, or I didn't want to take part in consoling her anymore.
	So I went into the living room.
	At this point, I would have been 24, give or take.
	I went into the living room where my father was sitting there, and I said, what are you doing?
	Go console your wife.
	And he went into this.
	Nobody tells me anything like self-pitying routine.
	And I said, you're going to self-pity right now?
	Someone's dead.
	Your wife is grieving.
	And I had to pursue him and really drive this home two more times throughout the day.
	But in the end, he did show up and he was compassionate towards.
	He hates some of my mom's siblings, in particular, the widower in this instance.
	He went, in my view, above and beyond, where at the funerals, he was hugging these people and he was actually stepping up and doing what he should of consoling the people around him.
	So how was he able to do that?
	How was he able to have such compassion, such empathy?
	Because when we had that fight or confrontation when I was 19, I was able to tell him at that point that I loved him and there was an agreement that came out of that, that we had to speak more honestly, even if it was harsh, or that I had to speak more honestly.
	And so he has more of a connection with me because I went out on a limb and said that.
	I don't think my brother, since being a child, has ever told my father that he loves him.
	But I did that.
	And so he, you know, his pride still gets in the way, but he will listen when I tell him something.
	Okay, so there's a lot in what you said there, too.
	So when you were 19, you told your father you loved him.
	And what did you love about him?
	What did you admire about him morally?
	I can recognize that even though he gave up in a lot of ways, that he had insights for what was right.
	He didn't leave my mother.
	He stuck it out.
	That could be codependence.
	That doesn't necessarily.
	So what did you morally admire?
	Not theoretically, like he had some instinct for rightness or whatever.
	You know, I mean, you've listened to my show for a long time.
	Love is our involuntary response to virtue if we're virtuous.
	So you had to have virtue and you had to admire the virtues in your father in order to honestly say that you loved him.
	At 19, what were the morals that you admired in your father?
	At 19, I don't know if I would have seen any virtues.
	Okay, so Then you told him you loved him, but it was just sentimentality in history.
	It wasn't based upon moral admiration.
	Yeah, you could almost compare it to some kind of Stockholm syndrome.
	Okay, so then why are you making me do all of this work?
	Like, why didn't you say, I mean, you've listened for nine years, if I remember rightly, to what I do off and on.
	No, no, no, no.
	I don't know.
	I've only been listening for less than a year.
	I don't know why you thought nine.
	Oh, sorry.
	That was in the entry, but maybe you misclicked or mistyped.
	No problem.
	Okay.
	Yeah.
	All right.
	So I forgive.
	I apologize then.
	I asked for your forgiveness because I thought you were a more experienced listener.
	So I got that.
	Okay.
	All right.
	So you told him that you loved him, but that was mostly based upon sentimentality, not admiration of his moral virtues.
	Arbitrary biological pair bonding.
	Okay.
	Not quite the same as love, right?
	Well, if I could ask, you know, when you read a piece of literature and you see a tragic character and you feel for them, I don't know what that is.
	Is that just sentimentality?
	I mean, that's a very abstract question.
	Could you give me an example?
	Like, I guess Lenny of mice and men.
	We don't think we love Lenny, do we?
	We don't moral.
	Well, we admire his moral character.
	We have compassion for him.
	I think I have more compassion for the other guy who kills him.
	Who has to shoot him?
	I mean, him as well.
	Well, I mean, but of course, the other guy brings Lenny around, the people knowing how dangerous Lenny is without wanting them.
	Yeah, so I'm sorry that I don't...
	I understand what you say when you say love is the involuntary response to virtue in another person.
	Yeah, if not virtuous herself.
	I guess I'm not virtuous myself.
	I'm trying to be, but most of my life I have not been.
	How old were you when you met the woman we're calling Alice?
	I was 21.
	Okay.
	So this is two years after you confronted your father and told him he needed to do better, and he, I guess, made some commitment that way, right?
	Okay.
	What was your dating like before Alice?
	Pretty messed up.
	When did you first start dating girls?
	The first girl that I dated was in high school when I was about 17.
	There's a friend of her that I liked more, but I could sense that she was trouble.
	Like I could really sense that she had come from that.
	Well, the first time I heard about her was that she had beaten up some other guy in school.
	And that's also why I started talking to her, because I thought that that was funny at the time.
	But you thought that her beating up another guy was funny.
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	And so I started talking to her over Messenger about that.
	And we related very much, very quickly.
	Sorry, this was the friend of the girl you dated or the girl?
	Yes.
	Yes.
	The friend of the girl I dated.
	So I could tell that I liked her quite a lot, and that we connected.
	You put yourself forward as an abuse victim.
	Yeah.
	Right, because she beat up some guy, which is horrible and ghastly and incredibly humiliating for him, of course, given that it's girl boy.
	And so you said, I think that's funny.
	I think beating up guys is cool and I want to date you.
	Yeah, except I never went further than that because I recognized that I wouldn't want to, at least this is my internal thought process at the time.
	I wouldn't want to be with her in a long-term relationship and getting out of it might be bad.
	So I never went further than just being very close friends with her.
	Yeah.
	Can you imagine being in a long-term relationship with an unstable woman?
	All right.
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	So then you went for her friend, and how did that go?
	It went all right at first.
	We got along.
	We both liked movies.
	I had an easy in because I knew her friend.
	And we started, we just kept seeing each other because we were both in the musical in high school.
	And so it was easy to get a steady rapport and get closer and closer to her.
	And then once we, after we kissed and formally started seeing each other, we'd go and have coffee.
	But then we would go to her place, watch movies, feel each other up.
	And there was a pivotal point where two things happened.
	I talked to the friend, the more violent one, and we had a conversation that was intimate.
	And she said something.
	I don't remember exactly what, but it was something to the, I don't remember exactly what she said, but it made me realize that I didn't actually like the girl I was with and I had liked her.
	And that, in conjunction with there was an opportunity to have sex with the girl I was actually dating.
	And I avoided going to her house that weekend because I had an innate feeling of the commitment that that would submerge me into had I gone for it.
	Wow.
	This makes the story when you were 21 even more confusing, but all right.
	Okay, so who did you end updating from those two?
	Oi.
	I...
	Thank you.
	I had an online relationship with an older woman who approached me.
	Wait, sorry, I'm talking about the two girls you were one girl you had an explicit.
	Oh, sorry.
	What happened?
	What happened with her?
	Yeah.
	Oh, sorry.
	I became extraordinarily distant.
	I didn't have the guts or courage to properly break things off.
	And after probably about a couple of weeks or a month of me growing steadily distant, she just asked, like, hey, is this just done?
	And I was like, yeah.
	Okay.
	And you never dated the other girl, the violet one?
	No.
	Okay.
	And then you got involved in an online relationship with an older woman.
	How much older?
	15 years older.
	And you were how old?
	I was 17.
	Jesus, man.
	Yep.
	And I was still, in spite of the fact that I was using pornography, I was still very innocent.
	All the letters that I wrote to her were just like love letters.
	Did your parents know that you were being preyed upon by a 32-year-old woman?
	My mom knew, but outwardly she accepted my excuse that it was just some kind of pen pal friendship thing.
	But at the same time, anytime it came up, there was this sort of looming jealous competitiveness.
	So she wasn't, she didn't ever confront it head on in a motherly way, I think, because this is all very abstract.
	So she knew that you were in an online relationship with a 32-year-old woman.
	I think so, yeah.
	As a minor.
	Yes.
	Okay.
	And did she ever talk to the woman or review the messages or vet what was going on in any way?
	No.
	There's probably one instance where she asked what it was about and she outwardly accepted my excuse that it was a pen pal situation.
	Well, she didn't, though.
	I mean, she's not a kid.
	No.
	Okay, so she basically, grooming is too strong a phrase, but whatever it would be, she lets you, she puts you under the tender mercies of a woman who's almost twice your age, right?
	Yeah.
	Okay, so that's, I mean, criminal, in my view.
	That's criminal.
	It's a criminal act.
	Criminally negligent.
	Yeah, it's a criminal negligence and failure to protect a child.
	Now, were you a tall, athletic, good-looking young man?
	I'm not saying you aren't now, but back then, what were you doing?
	What was drawing the women in this way?
	They described me as an old soul, which I've heard is what I've done.
	No, that just means traumatized.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	In terms of your looks.
	In terms of my looks, I always felt like I was unattractive throughout high school.
	Towards the end, I was starting to grow a stubbly beard, and that gave me a defined jawline.
	And so I was starting to look handsome.
	Were you overweight at all?
	No, it was quite skinny.
	Okay.
	All right.
	So how long did this creepy older woman hang around for?
	I'd say probably about a year, and then she slept with a guy in the States.
	That's her own age.
	And I found out because the evidence was just right there on her Facebook page in various forms.
	And I confronted her about it.
	And I also messaged the guy to confront him.
	And she got very angry at me for doing that and threatened to break things off or did break that, tried to break things off.
	And then I made an appeal to her kindness or that I was just really upset.
	And she took just enough pity on me to not dump me, but to just continually.
	So were your boyfriend, girlfriend?
	Yeah, but it's online, so it's all bullshit.
	Well, it's not all bullshit.
	No, not emotionally.
	And, you know, we're writing letters as well.
	Did you have like sexual conversations, sexual calls?
	No.
	No nude.
	So your boyfriend, girlfriend, you never met and you never exchanged anything.
	She had sent me some explicit photographs, but I had never...
	Is that even legal, WS?
	Don't answer that because neither of us are lawyers, but holy crap.
	That's sick.
	That's really sick.
	Yeah, I agree.
	No, don't laugh, man.
	It's sick.
	I mean, you're a year older than my daughter.
	Yeah.
	I can't even tell you what I would do if some 32-year-old guy was, oh, no, no, no, let's not go there.
	Let's not go there.
	Did your father know about this?
	I don't think so.
	And if he did, he didn't do anything or say anything.
	Okay.
	All right.
	And then, I guess, what, around...
	Let's just skip to Alice, unless there's something of note beforehand.
	I mean, it'd be a very, very long call.
	There's lots of note.
	It's just, you'll be continually appalled.
	Give me a highlight or two.
	Okay, well, towards 18, I ended up having an affair with a woman 27 years older than me at a community center where I was showing my art.
	45?
	I guess I would have been her age.
	I said 27 years older than me, correct?
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, and that would have continued until I turned 20, at which point I had an affair with a married woman 30 years older than me.
	And that was supposed to end when I was 21, when I went to university in a different city.
	But then what ended up happening...
	How much older than you?
	How old was your mother when she had you?
	30.
	30.
	All right.
	Yeah.
	So, then what happened is when I went to university, that was supposed to be broken off.
	That was supposed to be...
	That 45-year-old?
	The 50-year-old.
	51-year-old.
	Sorry, I missed a missed one.
	Okay, so there's the first one at the community center.
	27 years older.
	Yes.
	And then when I was 20, I went after another one who was married, who was 30 years older than me.
	You went after, so you pursued her?
	I pursued her.
	So, this is like a fetish, right?
	Yeah.
	I don't like it anymore.
	I don't want anything to do with anyone significantly older than me ever.
	Was this something that came out of the pornography or something?
	Like, where is this imprinting coming from?
	It's probably the pornography because with pornography, I think it just became about wherever I could get sexual access.
	Wherever I could get that level of no real commitment sexual access.
	I don't...
	So, the pornography...
	So, sorry.
	That's not...
	I mean, that's all, yeah.
	Young boys to some degree or young men to some degree, right?
	Yeah, I guess...
	So, I didn't have a steady internet connection.
	And I think this might make a slight difference in terms...
	And there might just be more genetic addictive tendencies on my mom's side of the family.
	But we...
	So, for me, whatever internet access I had was very scarce.
	It would be over at friends places, at relatives places.
	And then...
	So, there would be a lot of things of like downloading it and then having it on a computer at home.
	Or I had that DVD for a while.
	So, I think that...
	For young men who just use it and it's just there...
	You know, obviously some get very addicted...
	but some I think they can just put it to the side it just it just becomes of lower priority but in my life with the lack of the lack of care or oversight that I had the lack of emotional connection I had with my parents this became like a giant soother which speaking of which I also sucked my thumb until I was 10.
	Okay.
	So what happened with the 51-year-old?
	So I went to university.
	We were supposed to break things off.
	And then I got a phone call from her.
	Her husband had found explicit photos she had taken of me, at which point her marriage was collapsing.
	And I felt obligated to stand by her or help her or not abandon her.
	Okay.
	What does that mean?
	That I continued talking to her on the phone.
	When I saw her in person, we continued our relationship.
	Is that what she wanted?
	Yeah.
	So she gave up on her marriage?
	Essentially, yeah.
	The only chance you'd really have to...
	And was that long distance?
	Or with any of these older women, was it sexual in person?
	It was in person.
	It was in person with the 47 and the 51-year-old.
	Okay.
	And so the only chance for this woman's marriage, I imagine, would have been to have a complete cutoff from you, where there was no future, of course.
	And so she basically gave up on her marriage and wanted to continue to see you.
	Yeah.
	And when she made that call, I remember feeling so much anger at her.
	And I felt a deep suspicion that she had left the photos out.
	And she swears that that's not the case.
	But I felt...
	That's how I felt.
	What do you mean, left the photos out?
	You mean on her...
	I assume it was digital.
	They were printed out.
	Oh, printed?
	How the hell do you print explicit photos?
	Oh, like a color printer.
	Sorry, I'm old school.
	Okay.
	Walmart self-help kiosk.
	Oh, okay.
	All right.
	Okay.
	So then what happened with this woman who was a little over half a century?
	That has more or less overshadowed all my school years.
	And it...
	It...
	Uh...
	I...
	I...
	The way I feel, about it and I'm not sure practically what overshadowed feel I what happened did she sorry did you stay as a couple for how long probably and stayed as stayed as a a couple you know it's secret my parents didn't know about it um uh So I started school in 2015.
	It probably would have gone until 2018.
	Oh, I'm losing track now.
	I thought you met the other girl when you were 21.
	I was 21 in 2016.
	So there was an overlap between...
	Oh, so you were two-timing?
	Yeah, it was two-timing, three-timing, whatever.
	Okay.
	And did you have any moral compunctions about this at all?
	No, just non-stop anxiety.
	So you're just afraid of getting caught or losing out in some way, right?
	I felt morally horrible towards the older woman.
	And I, at the time, yeah, and then it was just the fear of losing out and this.
	Sorry, morally horrible towards the older woman.
	What does that mean?
	Well, because I wasn't going to rip the band-aid off and dump her or abandon her.
	But then I was also not going to sacrifice my pursuit of seeing women in university.
	So I still not went morally horrible towards her.
	Well, in my perspective, I was cheating on her.
	Well, not just in your perspective.
	You were cheating on her.
	Yes, yes.
	I was cheating on her, and then she would inevitably find out and be all heartbroken.
	And I'd fervently apologize, and I'd feel all this grief at what I was doing to her.
	And then we did she have any children?
	Yes, she has two children.
	How old are they?
	One of them is back then.
	Back then.
	One is three years older than me.
	One is two years, a year younger than me.
	So back then.
	Oh, they've all grown.
	It doesn't matter.
	So they were early, mid-20s.
	Okay.
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	It's kind of a homewrecker, although the kids weren't still at home, I assume.
	Well, and now that she's a grandmother, I'd hardly say that it doesn't matter.
	Right, right.
	Okay.
	All right.
	So you said you were three-timing.
	Is that right?
	You had three women on rotation?
	At one point, yeah.
	Okay.
	So there was the 51 or 52-year-old.
	And then how old was Alice when you met her?
	Two years younger than me, so she would have been 19.
	Okay.
	So you had the 51-year-old, the 19-year-old, right?
	And it's up to 70.
	And then who else?
	There's another girl who it was not a very serious relationship, but she was my age.
	But you were sleeping with her, and were you lying to all three women?
	Yes, whether by outright lying.
	Oh, no, no, no.
	There's no difference.
	In fact, lying by a mission is usually worse.
	Okay.
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	All right.
	So then how did things end with the older woman?
	Or the old woman?
	I, I, um, she, I would...
	Thank you.
	She would keep finding out that I was cheating on her.
	Two girls?
	Yeah.
	Over the other.
	I mean, there were other girls that I slept with throughout this time, but they're not significant in terms of being anything like a relationship.
	Okay, when I say it's the stuff.
	Yeah.
	Which, of course, she'd be concerned about because of STDs, I assume.
	Yes.
	Okay.
	All right.
	So she would find out I was cheating on her.
	She would be heartbroken.
	I would apologize.
	I'd feel full of guilt.
	And then, you know, she'd take me back and I wouldn't leave her.
	And this went on until a certain point.
	I can't remember the exact nature of this pivotal moment.
	I guess it was just that I was more firmly with Alice or I had been seeing Alice for a much more extended period of time.
	And she just tapped out.
	She went, I can't do this anymore.
	Right.
	Okay.
	And so that would have been around 2018.
	Do you know?
	I mean, I assume that her marriage, did she get divorced?
	Yeah, they got divorced.
	Okay.
	Got it.
	Do you have any feelings for the husband?
	I do.
	I feel some amount of fear, which is justified.
	Why?
	Is he a dangerous person?
	He's very large, and he's the kind of person who he always restrained his temper.
	And then there were moments that he'd explode.
	And he read a lot about atrocities, which I can't speak for everyone, but I can speak for myself because I read a lot about atrocities.
	It betrays, I believe, an ability to carry out those things yourself innately.
	Okay.
	But you've never received any contact from him?
	No.
	Okay.
	I've been glared at by him a couple times.
	What do you mean?
	Like you've met it?
	Well, like I was in a car and he was in a car and he saw me.
	Stuff like that.
	Oh, like just on the road.
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	I don't currently.
	Well, you certainly do win the prize for the biggest age gap I've ever talked to.
	21 to 51.
	20 to 51.
	Yeah, 20 to 50, 21 to 51, 30 years.
	Yeah, yeah, okay.
	All right, okay, so then you meet Alice, and Alice doesn't know about these other women, right?
	Yeah.
	So you lie to her as well.
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	And what drew you to Alice?
	She's pretty, and she had, we just had, maybe it was just lust, whether socially or otherwise, we had mutual chemistry.
	And she would push me.
	I remember her pushing me on drawing.
	You know, she was looking at my drawings and she told me to loosen the fuck up.
	And after that, I started drawing better.
	And I had, there were visions I had very early on where I could envision us making art together.
	And so we went on a couple dates and eventually we had sex.
	And after we did that, I was informed by her that I had taken her virginity.
	And from my own history, I feel like if I had known that beforehand, I might not have slept with her because there were other opportunities in the past to be with someone who was still a virgin and I was not interested.
	Okay.
	Okay.
	And so the relationship.
	So the relationship progressed for maybe a little more than a month.
	And then she one night she transmitted to me a yeast infection.
	And that was kind of maybe I just use that as an excuse, but that was a pivot point where I decided, you know what, I want to play the field.
	And so I went and I broke things off.
	I think that looking back, I did that because everything was already corrupt with me lying and so on.
	And meanwhile, I felt like I was taking care of this old woman emotionally and so on.
	So I think I put her at a distance in that way, probably just out of self-preservation to not be exposed or to not confront that reality.
	Well, just the reality that I was, I that I felt stuck in this relationship with this older woman, that I felt like I was a home wrecker.
	I felt you were?
	Yeah.
	So I was a homewrecker.
	I felt responsible for her well-being.
	Sorry, whose well-being?
	The older woman's.
	Okay.
	And that's just your mother, right?
	Yeah.
	You feel responsible for your mother's well-being.
	Yes.
	Okay.
	So you had sex with the Virgin, and then you broke up with the Virgin out of a sense of self-protection?
	I'm theorizing or analyzing.
	I think it was just.
	Yeah, please don't do that.
	Well, I'll be.
	Yeah, no, please don't do that.
	Yeah, don't do that.
	I'll be as blunt as I can then.
	I broke up with her so I could pursue other women.
	Yeah, okay, good.
	Yeah, if you can just be honest about that.
	Okay.
	So you banged the unstable virgin.
	You took her virginity and then you dumped her a month later.
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	And then that's when she offered me herself in a no-strings attached relationship.
	And that went on.
	That continued for about a year.
	And you were still speaking with other women?
	Yes.
	Okay.
	And what was roughly at this point?
	I don't even know.
	Um, I don't even know.
	I don't even know.
	Okay, doesn't it?
	Still under 10.
	Okay.
	All right.
	So you continue to have, quote, no strings attached sex.
	Does Alice know that you're still sleeping with other women?
	Alice knows that I'm with Kelly presently.
	Oh, do you mean back then?
	Sorry.
	Yeah, back then.
	Back then.
	Not directly through me, but through other people.
	So you were lying to her.
	Did she think you were in a monogamous sex with benefits relationship?
	I don't think so.
	So she knew you were sleeping with other women.
	I'm sorry, I was confused.
	I thought you didn't.
	But not through you.
	Okay.
	So you were even though she found out somewhere else.
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	Friends warning her.
	Okay.
	And then after a year, what happens?
	After a year, she confronted me.
	So as this went on, I became more, I guess, sociopathic or more mean in that I would basically tell her explicitly that I was only interested in her for sex.
	And I would refrain, avoid having real conversations and push her away emotionally.
	Yeah, a little sadification, right?
	Even though she just offered up sex, obviously women who want to offer up sex usually want more, right?
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	And so after about a year, she confronted me saying that you don't care about me at all and basically trying to break things off.
	At which point, I lied to her that I loved her to keep getting sex.
	And sometime after that, we did MDMA.
	And that, even if only chemically, opened me up to her in a way where I was able to tell her the total truth of my life and just what was what was, as I saw it, what was happening to me, but also what I was doing.
	And I think we did MDMA a couple times.
	And so that created this artificial window of emotional intimacy and this feeling of absolute like being accepted and not just accepted emotionally, but just being accepted for who I was.
	At that point, I felt pretty irredeemable generally.
	And so this was like a narcotic where after that, I kept becoming closer to her, and she was accommodating.
	She was accommodating me both sexually and emotionally.
	And so this was approaching Christmas break.
	That's when I formally broke things off with the older woman completely.
	And through phone conversations with Alice, through phone conversations with her, we formally decided that we were boyfriend, girlfriend.
	And when I got back to the city, I was thinking that, you know, it's going to be like, you know, I feel all this mourning for the older woman in that relationship.
	But you know what?
	I can deal with that mourning in this relationship.
	And I just had these rose-tinted glasses that things would work out and it was going to be good.
	And what had Alice given you of instability so far other than the offering of the sex and the drug use and so on?
	And the, I guess, the yeast infection.
	Yeah.
	Thank you.
	The other signs of instability would be that she got she the roommate that she moved in with initially they had a falling out and she basically went around bitterly cursing that person and would not let it go.
	It was just like this obsessive like and that person who seemed also kind of psychopathic went around or maybe they're kind, depending on your perspective.
	They went around telling people not to let Alice move in with them.
	And so Alice's perspective was that this person was going around sabotaging her reputation.
	And rather than, I guess, in some moments of, I don't know if it's kindness, but just speaking honestly to her, I would try to tell her that she just has to let it go or move on or think about other things.
	But she just latched on to this to the point where she kept losing friends and people wouldn't take her seriously.
	And what did you know about Alice's childhood at this point?
	I think it was.
	No, no, not what you think.
	I asked what you know.
	You have to answer me in a masculine fashion, not in the I think, I feel stuff, right?
	Which is, what did you know about Alice's childhood?
	I mean, not obviously empirically, but what did she say?
	What did she told you?
	No, sure.
	Sure.
	It's just that I would have to look at my journals to know whether I knew this before the MDMA or after.
	It doesn't matter.
	At this point, if it doesn't matter, then, yeah.
	Her parents, her father beat all the kids, and she would, out of a sense of justice, when the beatings were happening, she would provoke her father or push her father and basically wear her parents down to the point where she was beaten up and bloody, in her own words.
	And she would basically do this to emotionally exhaust them and to torture them with their own malice.
	Her mother had some postpartum thing and frequently talked about killing the kids.
	And in one instance, there was an instance where she was perhaps about to outright do it to her and her older brother, but did not.
	And they also manipulated her older brother into becoming into becoming a live-in servant.
	They told him that he'd never have a girlfriend and basically.
	Oh, like your mother with keeping the kids forever, right?
	Yeah, but with my mom, it's keep us forever so we can all have fun.
	With them, it's keep your forever so you're our slave.
	Okay.
	Yeah.
	I could probably go on, but that's a general overview.
	And roughly, when did you find this out?
	I'd say all during the period before and after taking the MDMA.
	Okay, so she'd been beaten bloody repeatedly.
	She provoked her parents to torture them with their own malice.
	Her mother had claimed to want to kill the children, and at one point, Alice was concerned or afraid that she was about to do it.
	Yeah, and she has a distinct memory of mentally as at the age of two or three, being mentally prepared to die.
	So, I mean, that's all just so appalling, of course, right?
	Okay.
	And so what was your relationship like with your parents and siblings at this point?
	Did they know anything about this madhouse of a dating life?
	No.
	So you just hit everything.
	Did they ask you if you were dating?
	You just lied?
	I don't really remember them asking too much.
	Okay.
	And if they did ask, I would have lied.
	Okay.
	Got it.
	All right.
	So you get enmeshed with Alice for, was it six years?
	About seven.
	And, you know, I'm basically still enmeshed now.
	So, you know, but when did the breakup?
	Oh, in 2023, end of 2023.
	Okay.
	So like five, six years in?
	2016 to 2023, seven.
	Okay.
	And what caused the breakup?
	She graduated school in 2023.
	So our relationship was characterized by every month.
	I mean, there's a lot of bickering.
	So after we became boyfriend, girlfriend, she started putting up these boundaries that she had never put up before.
	And it took me a couple years to adjust to that because I was mostly just in disbelief that this was happening.
	Sorry, I don't know what you mean by what boundaries.
	Just if she wasn't interested in sex at that moment.
	Just any boundaries, really.
	Like, I just wanted to have preferences.
	She started to have preference.
	Yeah, she started to have preferences.
	And at that time, I was bewildered and indignant.
	But you want to have her as a sex object.
	So if she doesn't want to have sex, that's a big problem for you, right?
	Yes.
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	Yeah.
	And so there's it was very tumultuous.
	I began working on myself and going to therapy and fixing a lot of my behaviors, fixing a lot of the things probably in 2020, around 2020.
	And how long did you go for?
	Probably about a year or a year and a half with the one therapist.
	And that helped quell some of my anger.
	But at this point in the relationship, it had also gotten...
	Just I had anger towards her and resentment towards her, not only for no longer being a willing sex object, but also for never allowing, I had resentment because she never acknowledged any of my effort to change.
	And anytime I tried to talk about the difficulties that I was going through in trying to accommodate her, she wouldn't want to listen to any of it.
	And I really don't view myself as a giant victim here because this is the mess that I made for myself.
	But that is a very important thing.
	What did your sexual frequency go from and two, from sort of the high point to the low point?
	Honestly, there is never a huge period of no sex.
	We were still having sex at least probably like at worst, like once a week, but it stayed pretty, like, probably pretty generous in spite of all my complaining and whining and her resistance.
	It's probably still like three to four times a week.
	Okay.
	So when she said she had sex, well, when you said she had sexual boundaries, she didn't enforce them that much, I guess.
	No.
	No.
	She wouldn't, well, you know, she wouldn't.
	What woman said if she didn't want to have sex?
	I mean, would you convince her to have sex?
	I mean, how did that go?
	I became very sullen and resentful, which is about as arousing to a woman as, well, I can't think of a metaphor, a clever metaphor, but it's a little bit.
	No, but if she didn't want to have sex and you became sullen and resentful, would you normally end up having sex?
	Inevitably, yes.
	So she was rewarding the negative behavior ultimately by caving to it.
	So, I mean, she would have sex with you when she didn't particularly want to.
	She was just afraid of your disapproval or sullenness or.
	Or just sick of it and would rather just, you know, resolve it.
	Okay.
	Got it.
	All right.
	So then you were in therapy a year, year and a half.
	You said, was that with your first therapist and then there was more therapy later?
	There was another therapist later post-breakup.
	So, But what caused the breakup?
	Oh, what caused the breakup?
	She graduated from school at a certain point before.
	So, because the relationship would just go up and down, we'd have these breakups.
	And then when I accepted that we were broken up, she would suddenly feel like things could work.
	And then so we'd reunite.
	So it's just this cycle.
	Yeah, I love you.
	I hate you.
	Don't leave me.
	I love you.
	I hate you.
	Don't leave me.
	Okay.
	Yes.
	Yep.
	Which why would you go back?
	For the sex, but also because I increasingly felt that I loved her.
	And I think that for the most part, that was a sexual attachment.
	I think I developed a lot of empathy in order to facilitate sexual content, sexual attainment.
	Hang on, what?
	Empathy in order to get sex?
	That's manipulation.
	What do you mean, empathy?
	Well, if the other person doesn't want to have sex, you're like, okay, well, that's fine.
	That's empathy.
	Empathy isn't, oh, you don't want to have sex.
	Let me figure out how to get you to have sex.
	That's not empathy.
	Well, I guess I figured out how to be more kindly, emotionally manipulative over longer periods of time.
	Okay.
	Right.
	Because empathy is trying to understand the state of mind of another person, not get them to have sex with you.
	Yeah.
	I guess it's probably misusing the word, but.
	That's fine.
	Okay.
	Yeah.
	All right.
	So then, sorry, you had a bunch of breakups.
	How many breakups do you think you had over the seven years?
	Oh, tons, tons.
	There's probably, it's probably safe to say, I mean, what would happen is we would have this like either either it's a breakup level fight or it's a fight that approaches a breakup.
	And then a day or two later, she would she'd go, oh, I'm on my period.
	And then things would settle down.
	And so did you, did you talk to your therapist about these breakups and this horrible past of your girlfriends?
	Yeah, the therapist, I did.
	I talked to him about a lot of it.
	Most of the effectiveness of talking to the therapist was just in having an emotional outlet at all or having a therapist, and you don't have to tell me anything you don't want to outside of therapy, of course.
	I know it's a private conversation.
	No, of course.
	But did the therapist ever recommend not getting back together?
	No, he was a very like one of these kind of people, right?
	Yeah, just listen, don't judge radical honesty.
	You know, let the patient lead the way kind of thing.
	Okay.
	And did you have another therapist after that?
	Yeah, this wasn't until after the breakup, though.
	Okay.
	And this therapist was useful in terms of catharsis.
	I had a lot of emotional grief to go through.
	And I was able to process a lot of that or just spew out all of my emotions to her.
	Okay.
	And yeah.
	Okay.
	So what caused the breakup?
	She graduated in 2023.
	She graduated from university.
	And that was when she decided that, you know, it was just time to move on.
	She had decided in some sense that it wasn't worth the turmoil or the change while she was still finishing up school.
	And so we could really deal with the relationship when she was done school.
	And she left you?
	Yes.
	Okay.
	And did you know that that was the final one or did you think it might be another?
	I was always trying to angle to make it work until the bitter end.
	did she move away or did things have a kind of finality that way I I I uh I went to a neighboring city where my cousin, who runs a construction company, gave me a job for three months.
	And so the idea was this would provide a gap and I would find a place.
	The reason that I was allowing her to have the apartment was because she had previously told me that she would, if she had to move out of this apartment, that she would kill herself.
	So then did she first threaten suicide?
	Probably before graduation.
	Was this when you were with your first therapist?
	Yes.
	And he pointed out to me that that was an act of extortion.
	So you got a therapist, you're saying, this girl is telling me, give me the apartment or I'll kill myself.
	And he still can't bring himself to say, this might not be a great relationship.
	You probably should get out.
	No.
	And part of the reason that I did stop seeing him is I got a kind of queasy feeling when, and I don't want to talk about the particulars of what, but I was talking about something that I had done in the past that I felt was not just wrong on society's terms, but innately wrong, that in my guts, I knew it was wrong.
	And he said something along the lines of, wow, you've really internalized society's judgment.
	And there was just this moment where I was just like, I don't agree with this.
	I think it's wrong.
	And I don't think it's just a society thing.
	And so I stopped seeing him after that.
	And you don't want to share what that was, right?
	No, no, I don't.
	that's fine.
	All right.
	So you break up, you go to the other city, your cousin's construction crew, a couple of months.
	And how long is it till you see her again?
	Well, she came and visited me in that city after about two weeks.
	Just habit, loneliness.
	No, but you broken up.
	Yeah, but you know, we had already been, we'd already broken up nine or ten times before.
	Okay.
	All right.
	So she came to visit you and you have sex again, right?
	Yes.
	Okay.
	And then in the last month of that, she saw that I was really not intent on letting go.
	And so she finally, definitively closed off sexual access, at which point I accepted that at that point that it was actually over and could actually start grieving.
	And how long had you stayed monogamous, both of you, over the course of these sort of six or seven years?
	She had stayed monogamous the entire time.
	There's the other women that I mentioned earlier at the end of the property.
	After all of that?
	After all of that, there is one instance after I got in a relationship with her, after we were boyfriend, girlfriend, she told me that I could, in order to try to offset my sexual desire, she told me that I could sleep with someone else if the opportunity presented itself.
	I said that I wasn't interested, but then I met someone in school and I had sex with them probably three or four times and decided I didn't want to do that.
	Okay.
	And did you tell Alice?
	Yes, she knew.
	And sorry, when was that in the relationship?
	That would have been after the MDMA, after we were formerly boyfriend, girlfriend, and when we were going through her boundaries being put in place.
	So this is fairly early on?
	Yes.
	Okay, got it.
	All right.
	So then she breaks it off with you, and then what?
	And so since I still had a bunch of my stuff in the apartment, there was some logistical stuff going on still.
	She was going to go she was going to go on a residency in the first couple months of the new year.
	And so offered to let me stay in the place for those two months.
	In your medical field?
	No, art residency.
	Art residency.
	Okay.
	Got it.
	Yeah.
	And so before at the end of the work period, I was going up to my hometown and I stopped back in the apartment and I got there and she wasn't there.
	And I saw a note on the floor in the one room.
	And my subconscious or my stream of consciousness said, don't look at that.
	And then I looked at it.
	And it was a letter that she was writing to a friend of hers.
	Basically, what I learned from it is that she had been, was planning on and actively seeking to replace me with another man that she had known for years at her workplace.
	So before this, in all of our conversations, my understanding was just that it wasn't going to work and that that was it.
	And then I find out that, and I, you know, I accepted the inevitability that she'd be with other people, obviously.
	But this felt like some, and I had asked her outright during a phone call while I was away, I asked her, you know.
	Okay, I'm honestly, brother, I mean, we've been talking for a long time.
	I'm only going to have so much fucking patience for you being outraged when you lied to this woman.
	You slept with other women before and during the relationship.
	And so, like, I only have a certain amount of patience for your outrage.
	So you might want to get it done quickly.
	I'll make it quick.
	I was outraged.
	Okay.
	And then what?
	I told her that if I had known this before, I wouldn't have consented to allowing her to have the apartment.
	I expected her to basically tell me that I expected her to threaten to wreck my reputation or something like that.
	But to my surprise, she didn't.
	And she conceded to allow me to have the apartment back.
	It's a very nice apartment.
	It's useful as an artist studio for either of us.
	It's also very cheap.
	Anyways, so fast forward to 2024.
	I had been with the new girl, Kelly, for about half a year.
	And I'm sorry, what was the gap between the final breakup with Alice and Starting Today, Kelly?
	I think I first hooked up with her after about two and a half months.
	Jeez.
	But yeah.
	Okay.
	And she knew all about the history.
	I was pretty upfront with her about what was going on in my life.
	How did you meet her?
	I was recommended to go out with her by a friend.
	Sorry, a friend of hers or a friend of yours?
	Mutual friend.
	What the fuck is a friend saying, hey, you've just had this tumultuous seven-year relationship.
	You've had 10 weeks.
	So go date someone new.
	The fuck kind of friend is this?
	I'm a little baffled here.
	Well, I'll be harsher on myself because I did criticize his point of view.
	This is entirely my fault.
	I should not have even just a casual date or whatever I thought it was.
	I should not have done that at this stage.
	So, after your date, how long till you slept with Kelly?
	We slept together on the first date.
	Oh, man.
	I mean, okay.
	All right.
	And how old were you at this point?
	30.
	All right.
	No, sorry, 29.
	29.
	By a few months, I was going to be 30.
	And when you slept with Kelly, did she know about your history with Alice?
	Yes.
	You talked about all of that on the first date.
	I certainly constricted it.
	I said that I had been in an abusive, I characterized the relationship as me being abusive and that, you know, I tried to make it work in the second half.
	Hang on.
	So you told Kelly you were an abusive boyfriend and she's like, let's have sex.
	Yep.
	Jesus.
	Jesus.
	How old is Kelly?
	32.
	All right.
	Does that seem healthy to you?
	So what are you doing?
	Thank you.
	Thank you.
	That's obviously so fucked up.
	What are you doing?
	Like, why would you continue?
	But somebody who's like, hey, I was an abuser.
	Let's have sex.
	The first date.
	Probably out of a very low opinion of my own character and an unwillingness to judge her according to a higher standard.
	Okay.
	So if you're not willing to judge yourself by a higher standard, why are you calling a philosopher?
	Or what do you want to do?
	I'm trying to fix myself.
	Well, I mean, if you had a daughter, right?
	And you had a daughter who went on a date and she said, she called you in the middle of the date and said, this guy has been an abuser for years and his girlfriend is suicidal.
	And he really wants to sleep with me.
	What would you tell your daughter?
	Don't.
	Get the fuck out.
	Yes.
	So she's got no people around her to protect her.
	She's got no one who's giving her good advice.
	Okay.
	All right.
	So then how long have you been going out with Kelly?
	Probably like nine months.
	And when did Alice return into your life?
	In December.
	So, oh, sorry.
	Let me go back.
	We had a conversation in the summer of last year where she effectively told me that her life sucked.
	And I gave her some advice and some encouragement, but I didn't realize the actual extent of it then.
	It wasn't until I was called in December by her where she tried to overdose on pills and I encouraged her to vomit them up that I realized that this is actually a real problem.
	And what would you say you did that was abusive towards Alice in the relationship?
	Just using her as a sex object and being mean, unkind, verbally abusive.
	In what way?
	Well, just telling her that that's all I wanted her for.
	You know, there were some times where I was being brutally honest, but it seems like just not useful because she would ask me questions sometimes like, am I pathetic?
	And I'd say, when you ask that question, you are.
	And things like that.
	And it's funny because I've been listening.
	We've been talking for a long time now.
	And I've been looking for any kind of emotion.
	And there's only been two bits of emotion.
	One when you were talking about your mother bathing you with your sister and the other was to do with your father.
	What's the only emotion you've had?
	After I told you about Alice's abuse by her parents and you confirmed how horrendous that was, I started crying a bit, but then you went on to the next thing.
	And I'm not blaming you.
	It's just that's what happened.
	All right.
	So I'm obviously sorry for all of this.
	It's a very ugly mess.
	And how can I best help you in the time that we have remaining?
	Hmm.
	Thank you.
	My biggest priority in this, because at the end of the relationship with Alice, I had felt that I had wasted a giant portion of my life.
	Oh, my God, man.
	It's still all about you, isn't it?
	Well, I didn't until now realize how much I'd helped in wrecking hers.
	Or not now.
	I mean, you laughed at her.
	You took her at the age of 19, right?
	She was 19?
	Yeah.
	You took her out of the most hellish abuse, really, we can imagine, where she'd been used as an emotional dumping ground and punching bag.
	She'd been used for her flesh to satisfy her parents' rage, and then you used her for flesh to satisfy your lust.
	Yeah.
	And you were 21, she was 19, right?
	When you met when did you begin to think that you might not be treating her well?
	Um...
	Probably about after we formally became boyfriend-girlfriend.
	Probably about two years after that, it really started to sink in.
	But you were using her for sex for a year before, right?
	Yeah.
	Okay, so a couple of years into the relationship, you began to think that you were not treating her well.
	And then you changed in that you were nicer about getting her to have sex with you.
	I also did start to try to accommodate her.
	And I, I mean, yeah, my main concern for a long time in that still was just about sexual access.
	And to the extent that I wanted to be with her or I felt that I loved her, I tried to right my behavior.
	Well, I mean, but you needed for her to be the victim of child abuse in order to have sex with her.
	And I suppose this is, and, you know, this, I have sympathy for this, of course, but from the age of 10 onwards, you were masturbating to victims of child abuse, right?
	Because it's not like sex workers are generally the healthiest people with the healthiest.
	So you had masturbated to victims of child abuse, and then you pressured the victim of child abuse for endless sex, right?
	Yeah.
	Right.
	Right.
	And what's your relationship like with your parents at the moment?
	Cordial, but I don't, I haven't, I don't, I have not told them that I'm dealing with the problem that I am.
	What is the plus of having your parents in your life?
	Or the pluses?
	I'm not saying there aren't any.
	I'm just trying to understand.
	When I go visit them, it's a pleasant place to be financially.
	I have tooth problems that my mom helps me pay for, partially from the neglect in my childhood of no one making sure I was brushing my teeth.
	I also was a little bit anorexic because of my father making fun of my brother for being fat.
	And I don't want to try to confirm this, but I have a suspicion that I was also breastfed less.
	Okay.
	So.
	All right.
	Some practical and financial positives.
	Okay.
	And how are things going with the new Girlfriend?
	It's quite strained.
	I know this sounds preposterous, but from the way I comport myself and the way that I really try to be honest and decent, she thinks that I would be a good father.
	And I think that she would be a good mother.
	And, you know, things are strained because she obviously doesn't like that I'm taking care of my ex and it's taking away from our time together.
	But she's understanding because partially because of the guilt that I've expressed over how I treated her in the past.
	And I guess partially just because it's a human being.
	I mean, she's 32, right, Kelly?
	Yeah.
	Yeah, so she doesn't have much time.
	No.
	So do you think that you will be in any reasonable position to be a stable provider, protector, and father in the next 6 to 12 months?
	If I'm not, no, there's always an if.
	No, not.
	If I win the lottery, I'll have all the money.
	There's always an if.
	I'm saying.
	Okay.
	Do you think that you will be able?
	No.
	Okay.
	What's your current income roughly?
	It's like next to nothing.
	Are you not working?
	No.
	What do you live on?
	I work intermittently at an art gallery.
	They pay me pretty well, but it's only every few months.
	Otherwise, I sell used books to a used bookstore.
	I pillage free little libraries for all the valuable books, and then I sell them to the used bookstore.
	But what are you living on?
	I mean, you said you make next to nothing.
	You have an apartment.
	How much money do I need to live on?
	No, no.
	I mean, what are you living on?
	What I mean is that what is your income to pay your rent and your utilities and your phone and your cable and your entertainment, your internet, like that's the stuff about $1,200 a month.
	Okay, and so you're able to get that from the use book thing plus the gallery, is that right?
	Plus the gallery, plus, I can sell drawings every now and again, but I haven't been able to actively engage with my social media account because of everything that's going on.
	So the odds of you being able to provide for a family in the next six to 12 months are virtually zero, right?
	Yeah, it'd be a fair guess.
	I'm not trying to be derisive at all.
	That's a fair assessment.
	Okay, and I assume that Kelly wants children.
	Yes, but she probably wants some kind of validation more.
	What?
	I don't know about any of that.
	Oh, sorry.
	Sorry.
	Is it fair for you to burn up more of her very short fertility window when you cannot provide a stable husband and father role for her?
	No.
	So what's the best thing for Kelly?
	For her to find someone else.
	Well, I think so.
	I mean, because the problem is, of course, she's 32.
	Let's say if you guys break up, then she's got to go meet someone else.
	Hopefully she can meet someone who's not going to have sex with her on the first date.
	Or I don't know.
	But that's, you know, that's not on your conscience anymore, right?
	But, you know, she meets someone, and maybe it takes another year, then she's 33, and then they got to start trying at 34.
	She's a year away from geriatric pregnancy.
	Like, she doesn't have a lot of time.
	And, you know, one of the things that's challenging from a moral standpoint is to do what's best for people you care about and you care about Kelly, right?
	Yeah.
	And I think that's a big part of the reason that I'm calling because I've had a really awful past and I don't want to harm anyone anymore.
	Well, but then why, why did you get involved with Kelly when your life is so scant?
	I mean, you're living like a teenager.
	Yeah.
	And you don't have any particular prospects as far as I know.
	I mean, maybe you do, right?
	Maybe you could turn the gallery thing more full-time or whatever, but nothing's imminent.
	And of course, you've got the last girl, as you said, hanging around each other's necks like ropes in a river, right?
	Yeah.
	Alice.
	So is it fair and right to get involved with Kelly when you cannot provide her children in the foreseeable future?
	So this is what I mean.
	Like you have to start to think about what's best for other people rather than just you.
	Yeah.
	Or, of course, if you do want to be there for Kelly, then you have to work like kind of crazy to get your income up from $1,200 a month.
	Yeah.
	I mean, unless you all want to go live on a farm or something.
	I don't know, right?
	But.
	No.
	And one thing that I think you have helped me realize in this call is I had this idea that I had done a whole bunch of work on myself.
	And really, as bad as the situation is, I am really trying to handle it well.
	But you have helped reveal to me that I'm still very self-involved.
	Well, I mean, with all due consideration, brother, I mean, it wasn't like you had anybody modeling any kind of self-sacrifice for you, right?
	Like, who sacrificed for you?
	Who focused on your happiness?
	Who tried to make sure you were having a good and productive time in this life?
	Not many people, really.
	Well, I haven't heard of any in your life.
	No, all my role models were my older siblings or cousins, and they were not voluntary role models.
	Well, children don't hugely count, right?
	Because your parents kind of exploited you.
	In my view, they were kind of selfish.
	And, you know, when your brother and you express dreams of being filmmakers, your dad's like, oh, you're going to be an idiot like your brother.
	You know, that kind of stupid stuff.
	Not stupid on your part, but stupid on your, and cruel, right?
	So your dad kind of blows up and vents his own anger.
	It's all selfish.
	It's just for his own feeling better in the moment.
	And he doesn't really think about how he lands for other people.
	He doesn't really think about what's best for other people.
	Now, you can't have loving relationships if you don't think about what's best for the other person.
	I mean, honestly, I have a wonderful wife and daughter.
	And I wake up in the morning.
	I'm like, okay, how can I make their day great?
	Now, they do the same with me.
	So it actually works out pretty well.
	But if you don't have that as your general way of thinking, then you're just like somebody half drowning, grabbing at a surfboard or something.
	You don't really care about what the surfboard needs.
	You just don't want to drown.
	Well, and I'm really not just trying to defend myself here, but I have been really trying to help Alice.
	No, but you're under threat.
	No, no, no.
	Listen, I'm not saying it's all bad and wrong, and I'm not saying it's all, but you're under threat.
	Yeah.
	This is not you being nice.
	And I'm not saying you're not nice in anything that you do, but foundationally, you're doing it because you're under threat.
	I'm performing very well under threat then.
	Right.
	No, I get that.
	And again, I'm not trying to say there's nothing good in anything that you're doing.
	But as far as I understand it, and if I'm wrong, obviously please correct me.
	The last thing I want to do is tell you what your thoughts and feelings are.
	No, no, but it's you are deathly afraid that She's going to kill herself.
	Yeah.
	It's terrifying.
	Absolutely terrifying.
	This is like a giant guillotine over your neck, isn't it?
	Yeah.
	Absolutely terrifying.
	And then you also mentioned that you're concerned about blowback from her parents, right?
	Yeah, and then all of this as well, I'm concerned about wasting Kelly's time because I did grow fond of her and I thought things could work.
	Now there's this.
	Well, and I understand that.
	I think you guys got together way too quickly, but that's kind of water under the bridge, right?
	But you couldn't necessarily expect that Alice was going to come screaming back into your life like a fucking comet and lay waste to the city, right?
	No.
	I mean, maybe I should have expected it because she was so unstable.
	You know, I had a friend say, "Ah, you know, after a few months, she'll be crawling back." But you know, that's just like a...
	But this emotional terrorism of do what I want or do what I prefer or I'm going to kill myself.
	And I'm not saying she's directly saying that, but of course, you know the conversation.
	It's implicit.
	Yeah, but that's what you're concerned about, right?
	So that's terrifying.
	And it's like being tied behind a pickup truck and dragged along a gravel fucking road for a weekend.
	So, you know, I do sympathize with the gut-reg terror of that.
	And that it's kind of all-consuming, right?
	And then every time the phone rings and every time there's a message bank on your phone and it's just like, oh, God, what now?
	Yeah.
	Right.
	So that is you're under the gun.
	Yes.
	Now, do you know what happened, and we don't have to get into much detail, but do you know what happened between the last breakup where she left you?
	And then I guess you wrangled the apartment back.
	And then what was the timeframe between that and then when she contacted you late last year?
	I know it in like almost minute-by-minute details.
	She slept with the guy at her work five times.
	He came inside of her, which is not psychologically great for, you know, just speed running pair bonding.
	And then he tried to push having threesomes or having an open relationship on her, and she wasn't into it.
	It's vague as to whether she actually objected or if she just intimated that she didn't want that.
	And after that, he ghosted her.
	And because he is like in a senior position at the job that she used to have, she's it partially some of her own crazy behavior has made her workplace reluctant to hire her.
	But now she's got the added crippling shame of going back there.
	And yeah.
	Sorry, reluctant to hire her.
	Did she get fired?
	It's no, she was not fired.
	It's just she like these sort of panic attack episodes and stuff like that.
	I don't know the full details about what happened with her work, but I do know that she is very reluctant to go back.
	I guess she may be on some kind of leave or something like that because of these issues.
	Who knows?
	Okay.
	Okay, but she didn't do any more drugs that you know of, right?
	She was doing mushrooms at her parents' place, and I took those away from her.
	Otherwise, she's on pharmaceuticals.
	Well, but did she do other street drugs?
	I'm trying to figure out what may have caused some of the added to the destabilization.
	Because she was unstable when you were dating her, right?
	Not to the extent that she is now, but I see patterns.
	The patterns that are manifesting now are similar to ones in the past, but now they've just gotten to a point of unmanageable extremity.
	So she's on a bunch of SSRIs or other kind of psych meds, I assume, and she's doing some street drugs, and then she had this affair with the guy who wanted threesomes and then ghosted her.
	So this is all just like a pinball, just bing, bing, bing, just going all over the bumpers, getting thrown around by circumstance, right?
	Yeah, and then just being in her parents' home, who are her former abusers, and having them tell her what to do with her life while she basically probably scrolls on her phone excessively and deteriorates mentally.
	Right.
	Right.
	Okay.
	So listen, I'm obviously I'm no expert.
	So this is all nonsense.
	It's just amateur opinion hour, right?
	So just so you know, right?
	So the experts don't know how to fix her, right?
	No.
	So you can't.
	Yeah.
	Right?
	Right.
	If an expert surgeon says this is inoperable, there's no point going in with a spork, right?
	Yeah.
	So from my point of view and from what other people have told me about trying to get people committed to the psych ward is you basically have to get borderline litigious with the doctors and you have to tell them to if they see this person as unfit to be admitted, you have to push them and to say in their individual, put it in writing, in their individual opinion, they are unfit to be entered into the psych ward.
	And apparently, if I've had friend, I have a friend who says that in pushing them that way and basically creating individual liability for the doctor in question.
	Yeah, yeah, if there she goes and has self-harms, I get all of that.
	Okay.
	Yeah.
	But you have no legal standing as far as I understand it.
	I'm no lawyer, but I don't think you have any legal standing in the matter, right?
	To request that.
	Well, you're just an ex-boyfriend.
	No, yeah, yeah.
	You're a family member.
	You have no legal custody.
	You're not an executor.
	I mean, like, you've got nothing, right?
	So I don't know what kind of threats you're supposed to make, but you don't have any standing.
	Again, that's just my amateur opinion.
	But so I don't know.
	I don't know how you're supposed to fix this.
	Well, right now I'm submitting to some of the process.
	There's a harm reduction phone line that I have to call on her behalf tomorrow and figure out what services are going to be offered.
	So I'm just submitting to the process.
	Otherwise, I'm waiting for her next breakdown.
	And when that happens, I'm calling 911 and I'm going to try to get the doctor to, I'm going to try to persuade the doctor to admit her.
	Okay.
	And then if he doesn't.
	If he doesn't, he can't be the only one.
	I don't, Thank you.
	I haven't created a formulation of this where I absolutely give up, except in the area where she, I don't know, destroys all my possessions or something like that.
	If she causes direct harm to me or, yeah, I haven't envisioned an absolute exit of giving up.
	So this could be months or longer of you attempting to deal with this situation, right?
	Yeah.
	Which means, again, is that a ride that's fair for Kelly?
	No.
	That's not a fair ride for her at all.
	No, I mean, I don't see how this benefits her and if she wants to have kids or whatever it is, right?
	Yeah.
	No, it's already very stressful and undermines whatever relationship we have.
	And at the end of it, it could just result in total failure.
	Right, right, right.
	No, it's a very tough situation.
	Of course, you've got a lot of history with this woman.
	She's been, you know, more than half your adult life.
	And so you've got a lot of commitment with this woman.
	And she is, it sounds like she's just in a very unstable place.
	And it seems to have passed beyond her ability to control it, if that makes sense.
	Yes, 100%.
	I don't regard her as someone with free will right now.
	Right.
	Thank you.
	So if she's outside of free will and you have no authority in the situation, I mean, I guess you can try a couple of things, but you've got to have some kind of fuse, some kind of cutoff mechanism, don't you?
	I do.
	I guess I should prepare for that.
	And it feels like a very dire Phyllis.
	It feels like a very dire contemplation where it almost seems like I am really resisting any romantic delusions about this, but it seems like if I don't have a coherent cutoff,
	or even if I do with, I don't know, whatever vengeance her parents might wreak upon me legally or otherwise, it seems like I'm being submitted to some martyr-like processing herself.
	What are your concerns about what the parents might do legally?
	Well, I don't know if they could.
	I am going to be talking to a lawyer soon.
	I don't know if they could sue or something.
	And I don't know if you've mentioned this, but I might have heard this from somewhere else.
	But lawfare is just a modern duel.
	I mean, I'd be pretty easy to crush.
	I have almost nothing.
	So they could just make my life hell, make it more miserable.
	I don't know if I could be criminally charged or held accountable for anything.
	I've been making lots of recordings, and when I talk to them, I try to record it as well.
	I don't know if there's any legal backing for any of these recordings if they're taken unknowingly, but I'm just operating on self-preservation.
	Yeah, I obviously know that I can't give you any legal advice, but yeah, talking to you like a good idea.
	Otherwise, you know, I don't know.
	I don't know if being willing to beat all your children makes you more liable to go and physically harm someone else in real life.
	I don't know.
	I don't know.
	All right.
	So, I mean, difficult situations, horrible situations, which obviously this is to the nth degree.
	My particular approach is to try and get as much good as I can out of a bad situation.
	And the worse the situation, the more good I try to get.
	Okay.
	Now, when you were more aggressive with Alice.
	Yeah.
	And you were kind of in control and you were kind of in the driver's seat in the relationship because you were driving whether you were close or not, you were driving whether you had sex or not.
	So you were kind of in charge, right?
	So if I were in your shoes, The lesson I think that I would try to extract from this situation is now I know what it's like when someone else is really in charge and is not acting with empathy.
	Yeah.
	Because you kind of emotionally manipulated her into having sex, and now she's emotionally manipulating you into giving her attention.
	Yeah, and maybe futilely attempting to save her life.
	Well, but this is a sort of karmic flip, right?
	Now you know what it's like when somebody else is really driving things in their direction with no empathy.
	And of course, I'm not putting you in the same moral category because you weren't sitting there threatening suicide.
	But just in terms of like, what can I extract from this that is going to save me going forward?
	And it is that to be manipulated and bullied in this extremity is almost infinitely worse than what you did, but it's in the same continuum, if that makes sense.
	Yeah.
	And no, I think about that quite often because I had profound guilt over what I did.
	And I regarded some of the what I felt was horror when I was going through the actual breakup.
	I thought that was horror.
	And now here I am.
	I've been very acutely aware of this karmic reality.
	Yeah.
	That in a sense, you kind of pushed her around and now she's seriously pushing you around, right?
	So bitter and difficult though it is, I think there's an important lesson to be learned.
	And when we learn that lesson, and everyone has to learn this lesson if we're raised with selfish parents.
	Like, so I hope you don't feel alone, isolated, picked on.
	That's certainly not my intention in the conversation.
	Everybody has to learn this lesson.
	You know, this is sort of why I got a little impatient earlier.
	So everybody in a relationship, particularly when you're young, you know, maybe you're not particularly attached to the woman you're dating and you're kind of angling or fantasizing about someone else.
	And then you find out your girlfriend is angling or fantasizing about someone else and you're outraged, you know?
	And it's like, well, no, it's what you were doing or what whoever was doing, right?
	So it's just a mirror.
	And so you weren't raised with empathy and people thinking what was best for you and making any kind of sacrifices for you other than sort of base material kinds to keep you alive as a baby.
	But I don't think you know what it's like for people to put your interests above their own for reasons of compassion and affection and love.
	And because you had manipulated people in the past, you are susceptible to manipulation.
	You know, the old Bible saying, he who lives by the sword dies by the sword.
	Now, of course, I'm not saying you're going to die.
	I don't mean anything like that.
	But what I'm saying is that when you manipulate others, one of the things that happens when you manipulate others is you become susceptible to manipulation to yourself.
	Yeah.
	And I think that the path forward, I obviously can't give you any particular advice with the path forward with Alice, but what I can say is that I think if you think about what is best for Kelly, and sometimes you have to say what's best for the other person, even if they don't agree.
	Yeah.
	Right.
	You know, it's the whole thing, if you have a kid and they want, you know, a bunch of candy for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, you kind of got to say no, even though, right?
	So she might be like, no, I want to support you through this and this and that and the other.
	And, you know, whatever magic source you have with dysfunctional women is also kind of risky.
	Right.
	Yeah.
	But, you know, if you look at, if, you know, if she wants to have kids, like I don't think you're the guy at the moment.
	And of course, you just have a longer runway.
	You can have kids for another 20 years, but she can't.
	But she can't.
	And so I think once you do that thing where you say, I'm going to do what's best for the other person, even if they don't agree, and you act on that, you gain this, once you start acting in a truly compassionate and empathetic manner.
	And I'm not saying you've never done any of this, but, you know, obviously I can improve, you can improve, right?
	But once you start acting in a genuine and empathetic manner, manipulations become blindingly obvious to you and you don't want them.
	Yeah.
	So Alice came back because she knew at an instinctual level.
	I can't read her mind.
	This is just my guess, right?
	Alice came back because she knew you were susceptible because you'd manipulated her in the past and you felt bad.
	No, she had thumb screws of all my guilt.
	Well.
	She had the thumb screws that you used on her and she was willing to use it.
	No, I have them on you.
	Sorry, I don't mean that in a victimy way.
	And I, you know, I don't want to.
	Well, there's something I want to say later that's a lesson that I learned in all of this that's somewhat on the side that I think would be very useful for people going through a similar problem.
	But that could wait a minute, perhaps.
	So, no, that's fine.
	We've had a long chat, so I'll let you get the last bit in here if you have something that you wanted to mention.
	Yeah.
	So part of the relationship I had with Alice also became physically abusive.
	I never beat her, but I did slap her at certain points.
	there was a pattern of physical violence that was emerging.
	And when I went to Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Right.
	So you knew that this was the great susceptibility for her, right?
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	And so When I started going to the therapist, that helped level up my emotions a little bit, but it did not help stop the violence.
	The thing that helped stop the violence, and maybe if you already go to the gym and you're in a violent relationship, I don't know what you have to do, but I wasn't going to the gym.
	The moment I started going to the gym, I was able to have complete self-control over myself in that regard.
	It stopped dead cold from me.
	And how long into the relationship was this?
	I guess probably three years.
	We hadn't been violent for three years, but it was an element, yeah.
	Yeah.
	Yes.
	Yeah, I mean, that's one of the reasons I try to treat people very well is I don't want the shackles going on me that I put on others.
	Yeah.
	Because you, you know, when you manipulate people, you give them weapons against you.
	Yeah.
	Which is a sense of obligation and guilt, particularly as you morally evolve, which I know you're working on and good for you for taking that approach.
	But that's why I try to treat people well.
	And that way, if they treat me badly or they want, they're manipulative or whatever, I just, I have no, I have no guilt.
	They can't hook into anything and so on.
	No, you're able to have standards.
	Yes, yes.
	And so, I mean, one of the, that there's the good, you know, feeling good about yourself and doing the right thing in the world, but there's a very practical element to not manipulating people, which is then you're not susceptible to their return manipulations because you don't have the guilt.
	You know, we don't exploit others and that way they can't exploit us back.
	And you get, that's an amazing sort of fiery magic moat shield around you.
	And so I know that you get that and sort of going forward saying, look, I'm just not going to do things at other people's expense just to benefit myself because that harms my heart, it harms my soul.
	And it also turns me into a kind of prey of blowback, of return manipulation, because it's hard to fight.
	You can't fight a principle that you yourself have established in a way, right?
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	Is there anything else that you wanted to mention?
	No.
	I just want to thank you because listening to your show has continually given me insights to the problems I'm dealing with as I'm dealing with them.
	It's been one of the most immensely useful resources I've ever come across.
	And, you know, I know I have very little, I'm in not great a position to judge on anything, but I think that it would be tremendously useful whether you were on Twitter or not to have more of an open presence because it took, I knew about you for a long time, but it took me a while to actually find the podcast site, Free Domain Radio.
	It was through another content creator.
	They just mentioned it.
	And so it was years after I initially knew about you that I finally actually found your website.
	And that might be a testament to my own ineptitude in terms of using web browsers.
	But I think that if you have more of it.
	I think you probably accessed some porn through some web browsers.
	So I can't quite give you incompetence in web browsers as a whole.
	But I appreciate the thought.
	I really do.
	I also did give up on that.
	So thank you.
	All right.
	Well, listen, man.
	I appreciate the feedback.
	I'll certainly take it into consideration.
	I appreciate the conversation and your openness and your directness.
	Obviously, I wish both of you the very best, and I hope that you can find some kind of peace.
	And I hope you'll keep me posted about how things are going.
	All right.
	Thank you.
	All right.
	Take care, brother.

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