Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux - Learn Dating Red Flags! Twitter/X Space

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Aug. 12, 2025 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

02:34:56

Learn Dating Red Flags! Twitter/X Space

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	I would really, really appreciate that.
	Help support the cost of what it is I'm doing and help spread philosophy to the world.
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	All right.
	Enough pitch.
	Let's get to your topics.
	I, of course, have a topic refined, granulated, separated, cut with a credit card into sniffable lines all ready to go.
	But, of course, I love hearing from you guys.
	Philosophy is in its best state of conversation.
	That's really what I love about what it is that I do, is that philosophy was originally a conversation.
	As you know, Socrates, basic founder of modern philosophy, didn't write things down.
	We only know what he was supposed to have said through Plato, who I believe is not the most reliable witness as a whole.
	But it's a conversation.
	And it is in the conversation that we get to the truth.
	Truth is not a solitary occupation.
	Truth requires us to stare at it from different angles, to refine, to whittle, to turn, to plane, to spin, to bring all the power tools of reason and evidence to bear to carve out the beautiful shape of the truth.
	And I really appreciate everyone's participation in this conversation.
	I mean, what I've been thinking about today is friendship because there's something, I remember this in the show Friends, and I talked about this on my show many years ago.
	Just how Rachel, the character Rachel, had a baby.
	I can't remember the circumstances, but basically the baby was not, well, it was without father.
	And all of her friends were like, don't worry, girl, we got you.
	We're going to be over.
	We'll help you.
	You won't go through this alone.
	And that's a well-meaning lie.
	That's a pleasant lie.
	It's a nice lie.
	It's, you know, maybe everyone means it in the moment.
	But I guarantee you, when your friend has to get up for work the next morning and your baby's up all night with colic, they ain't coming over.
	You'll get a little bit here and there, but they're not coming over.
	And, you know, studies have shown that friendships decay over the course of your life.
	I mean, personally, I mean, I don't have a typical life.
	We could say neurologically atypical life, however you want to take that.
	But I don't have any contact with anyone I knew before I was 30.
	Nothing.
	Nothing.
	It's a shame, really.
	I would love to know how people's lives turned out, although I will admit to checking up on people from time to time over many moons.
	But I think sort of mid-30s was my big switchover.
	I mean, I have good friends now, and we appreciate each other.
	We get along well.
	We're there to support each other.
	But man alive, there is no substitute for family.
	There's no substitute for family.
	And studies kind of bear this out.
	People change friends, they move away, and your friends get busy.
	Like if you're, especially, I don't know if you've been through this process, but what happens is your friends, I mean, if they're smart people, everyone who listens to this, I put in the top 1% of intelligence.
	So if you're smart people, then people have careers.
	They have to move.
	They travel a lot.
	And you just kind of lose touch, even with sort of all the modern communications and connections technology.
	But the biggest thing, of course, that happens to friends, if you're a single person, the biggest thing that happens to friends is, yes, that's right.
	They get married and they have kids.
	And if you haven't had kids, man alive, let me tell you, it is a totally different planet.
	I remember driving home with my daughter low almost 17 years ago, driving home with my daughter, doing the usual new parent, eight miles an hour drive home, and taking her into the house with my wife and knowing that nothing ever was going to be the same again because why?
	Well, it seems to be fairly important to keep them alive.
	And keeping them alive and keeping them entertained and keeping them happy and keeping them Healthy is, well, it's a lot.
	I wouldn't trade it for the world.
	It's been, along with marriage, the greatest experience of my life.
	But life's just not the same.
	And you are consumed by parenting.
	Parenting is the greatest opportunity we have in this life to escape the petty ego of, well, how am I doing?
	And how am I feeling?
	And what do I want?
	And what's next for me?
	And what am I going to achieve?
	And I, me, me, I, oh.
	It's kind of exhausting, right?
	And parenting is our biggest and greatest shot to climb out of the doomed spaceship of ego and launch yourself among the stars of continuance, of eternity, of the cycle of life, of the four billion-year march from the single-celled organisms to the glorious heights of conceptual ability that we now inhabit.
	You know, I used to think it was pretty cool to write a book, and it is.
	I'm working on one right now, but it's infinitely wilder and more powerful to create and shape a human brain.
	So, what happens, of course, is if you're a singleton and you lose your friends in successive waves, and be prepared.
	Be prepared.
	You lose your friends in high school because you're all scattered to go to college or move away or do something, right?
	And then you lose your friends in waves, or at least it diminishes when they get girlfriends and boyfriends, or for that odd friend, a sex doll, or for that really odd friend, a tiny sex doll.
	And then you lose your friends in another wave when they get married.
	Because when they get married, it's not just, well, you now have a spouse, but you have a spouse, you have their friends, you have their family, and you kind of get swallowed up in a whole new life.
	But the biggest one, of course, is when they have kids.
	When you have kids, it's impossible.
	I mean, I'm fairly good with language, but when you have kids, it's kind of impossible to understand how little you have in common with people who don't have kids.
	Like, you worship your child.
	You are dedicated to your child.
	And it is an amazing thing because it is really, really good and healthy and rare these days.
	It's really good and healthy to think about other people.
	Oh, it's glorious to get out of the maze of distorted mirrors known as self-reflection and just go out there into the world and do some good on the planet.
	Now, when you get married, you think about the happiness of your spouse.
	I mean, honestly, it may sound cheesy.
	It may sound like a cliché, but my wife and I have talked about this.
	We wake up in the morning and we basically say, how can I make your day better?
	What would you like to do today?
	What would make you the happiest?
	And so on, right?
	I mean, we had a kind of funny conflict last night where we were going to go and see a movie.
	And it was either the Liam Neeson Naked Gun remake, or I will admit to having a fairly low-rent, somewhat trashy preference for dinosaur movies.
	I suppose I'm just trying to recapture that Jurassic Park magic, you know, that high back in the day.
	Everybody remembers if you're old enough when you first saw Jurassic Park in the 90s.
	Just like, what an experience that was as a moviegoer.
	Now, she kind of preferred the Naked Gun, and I was a little bit more partial to the dinosaur movies.
	And, you know, sometimes we just do rock, paper, scissors.
	And if I get rock, paper, scissors, I do what she wants.
	If she gets rock, paper, scissors, she does what I want.
	Because it really doesn't matter.
	It really doesn't matter.
	The happiness level of whether we'd see Naked Gun or the glorious, perfect, amazing, fantabulous dinosaur movie is the, it doesn't matter because if I'm 10% less happy seeing the Naked Gun movie, I'm 20% more happy looking at my wife laughing at the Naked Gun movie.
	And if she wins the rock, paper, scissors and we go and see the dinosaur movie, she's 10% less happy at seeing a dinosaur movie, but she's 20% happier seeing me enjoy a dinosaur movie.
	And Then she has to deal with me pawing around and growling all the way home, getting back to my roots.
	Dino chicken legs is the way to roll.
	So you devote yourself to the happiness of someone else.
	And that's a beautiful, glorious thing.
	Like with social animals, our happiness should never be solely based upon that which we alone prefer because we are then bypassing all of this amazing wiring that we have within us evolved over hundreds of thousands or millions of years of being pro-social tribal animals.
	That at least half our happiness is wound and bound up in the happiness of those around us.
	And you can only get at max to 50% happiness focusing on what's best for you.
	The remaining 50% of happiness that you're capable of is based upon the happiness of those you love around you.
	This is not something I figured out on my own.
	This is something my wife taught me just by being the glorious person that she is.
	And, you know, I will admit to, you know, maybe being a little bit up my own butt with regards to self-regard.
	But I mean, she really did teach me just how much fun it is to bring happiness to others.
	And that really did complete the circle for me.
	And when you have kids, you just get so into your kids.
	You're so fascinated by your kids.
	They consume your thoughts so much that I have not had a single solitary thought for myself in almost a quarter century because everything goes through what's best for my family, what's best for my kids.
	And, you know, of course, what's best for myself.
	But the great thing is about having people in your life that you trust and love is they can watch your back.
	You know, like if I don't know if you've ever been in those kind of cranky, cantankerous relationships.
	It's close to being a word cantankerous, isn't it?
	But if you've ever been to those relationships where it's win-lose, I'll get my way, then you get your way, and all of that kind of stuff.
	But that's no fun.
	That's kind of diminishing.
	Doesn't really work out.
	So I don't have to watch out for my own happiness.
	My wife watches out for a good portion of my happiness.
	I watch out for a good portion of her happiness.
	And we both focus on our daughter's happiness.
	And her daughter focuses on her peers.
	That's fine.
	That's fine.
	That's natural.
	She's a teenager.
	It would be kind of weird if she wasn't.
	So I'm just kidding.
	She also cares about our happiness, but she's very into peers at the moment, which is exactly right.
	Exactly.
	You don't want just, you don't want your teenager just home staring at you.
	Now, if you have a spouse you love, you have a kid or kids, then you're no longer the person that you were when your friendship started in your teens or your early 20s, or however long you had friends before you got married and had kids.
	Like I'm not the same person after I got married.
	I'm not the same person after I became a father.
	And thank heaven for that.
	I mean, it was fine being Mr. Self-Regard in my sort of teens and 20s.
	It was sort of a survival thing, and there's nothing wrong with that, get your career going and all of that.
	But Lord above, if I was still the same person, that would be kind of tragic.
	So what happens is you change and grow.
	I think it's growth.
	And your friends who are single, they kind of stay the same.
	And you just have less and less in common, in particular, because you're so fascinated with your kids, and your life is just consumed with your kids.
	The best you can do is it's like a dimmer switch.
	You can turn it down, but not off.
	So you can think of other things, but they're never far from your thoughts.
	For my wife, you know, I think about her a lot because I love and care about her.
	She thinks about me a lot because when I'm supervised, I'm quite dangerous.
	So it's more caution, fear, and concern for her, but it's definitely love for me.
	And that's a big plus.
	What's he doing?
	Is he trying to cook?
	Oh, God.
	So your friendships, now, of course, it could be the case that your friends and you, you know, as we used to do, you kind of go through the same life paths together, right?
	So we evolved in this tribal situation where you and your friends would be out there choosing mates in your late teens, kind of about the same time, no real birth controls.
	You start having kids, you know, kind of around like the same time.
	And you go through life On the same path, in the same patterns, in the same timeframes.
	But that's not how it goes anymore.
	We have less than no community.
	We have like anti-community, like anti-community.
	Ah, you know what?
	I just lied to y'all.
	Oh, how wretched.
	There is one person I'm still in touch with from my early 20s.
	My apologies.
	My apologies, Voldemort friend with no name.
	But yes, there is one person.
	I'm still in this actually.
	From my early 20s.
	But he has a kid.
	So now everyone goes through everything at different times.
	And you lose what you have in common.
	It's almost like you have a friendship.
	You kind of grow up with people and you all speak the same language because you grew up together.
	And then what happens is you kind of move to another country called marriage and then you move to another planet called children and you just don't speak the same language as your friends anymore.
	And you, you know, can struggle and through, but you try and push through the incomprehension.
	But, and I'll be straight up with you.
	I mean, I'm not trying to diss anyone.
	I'm just telling you my honest experience.
	Maybe you've had different experiences.
	But, you know, when you are part of the great cycle of life and you're responsible for keeping tiny, tender minds and bodies alive and happy and healthy and flourishing, you know, your single friend's concerns to be nice about this.
	Your single friend's concerns don't seem as quite a high priority.
	You know, if you've got a kid who's going through a health crisis and your friend who's having some trouble at work, it just, you know, the whole purpose of life is to raise the stakes.
	And people who don't raise the stakes fall behind to those who do raise the stakes.
	I mean, you're supposed to learn more, right?
	You're supposed to, I mean, you don't see in kindergarten forever.
	The whole point is to raise the stakes.
	So, unless you happen to have friends in the same physical location who are going through the same kind of things.
	And of course, you also have to have to have compatibility and values.
	I mean, I wouldn't let my daughter hang out when we were younger, right?
	I wouldn't let my daughter hang out with kids whose parents hit them or spanked them.
	So, you know, heaven forbid, you have a friend that you choose based on proximity and coincidence and, you know, a shared sense of fun.
	But if you have a friend who then becomes like some hyper-authoritarian parent, well, that's another problem.
	Or, you know, if you have friends who, I don't want to say, it's a tough way to put it.
	If you have friends who have what I would conceive of, and, you know, perhaps you would conceive of as self-created problems.
	You know, there are things that happen to you in life that are problems that you don't create.
	And then there are things that you create in life, the problems that you do create.
	So if you have a friend who just decides to date the wrong woman, you know, she's pretty, low rent, lusts in, and then, oh my gosh, the pretty, pretty girl turns out to be kind of unstable.
	I got the last stable one, friends.
	So, you know, that's a little bit of a self-inflicted wound.
	You know, it's interesting to go watch boxing, I guess, if you're into that kind of thing, but it ain't so much fun to watch someone just punch themselves.
	Not much of a sport there.
	And when you take on more and more in life, you end up being, you know, there's injustice, there's corruption, there's things that you genuinely have to battle that aren't self-inflicted.
	And when people are just making bad decisions, you know, like, and I tell you this, man, in your 50s, you know, I'm in my last year of my 50s in the next month.
	So in your 50s, you also see a lot of people who have self-inflicted problems based upon bad health decisions in the past.
	You know, people who drink too much, people who don't exercise.
	Occasionally, there are still smokers, although they're pretty rare at my age.
	The people who maybe they exercised too much, gained weight.
	And it's, oh, I got problems.
	And it's like, you know, there's real problems and then there's self-inflicted problems.
	And the whole purpose of life is to replace self-inflicted problems with real problems.
	So another thing that happens as you age.
	Sorry for the person, I think it was Jay.
	I'll be done in a sec if you want to raise your hand to chat again.
	I'm almost done.
	But, you know, there is no substitute for a family.
	You know, when I was sick, it was about 13 years ago.
	I was sick, yay, verily, almost unto death.
	And, you know, it was my wife who took care of me.
	And, you know, friends were sympathetic and cared and all of that, but they had their own lives.
	And you just need someone in your corner.
	You need to be in someone's corner.
	There's no substitute for marriage and family.
	Marriage and family grow and intensify over time.
	Friendships in general decay and diminish.
	And especially if you have friends who are kind of moving on with their lives, getting married, having kids, you will almost certainly end up isolated.
	Or you'll end up with other people who are too oddly constituted to really maintain any kind of beneficial relationships over time.
	And it's funny, you know, because there's been a whole series of, you know, I just call everything psyops these days because I don't know if it's conscious or unconscious.
	But there's been this whole psyop that's been going on, I mean, since I was in my 20s, and it's targeted at women, although it certainly does include men, but it's really targeted at women.
	And that is the, you know, boys come and go, but friends are forever.
	Sisterhood of the traveling pants.
	Your girlfriends will see you through everything in life, right?
	The show was called Friends, not Spouses.
	And there has been this whole psyop.
	And it's just another one of this depopulation psyops.
	You know, boys, they'll come and go, but friends are forever.
	It's like, nope, that's the exact opposite of the truth.
	Statistically, according to social science, significantly reproduced data analysis.
	No, no, no, no.
	It is boys, girls, men and women, spouses, co-parents, they stick around.
	Friends come and go.
	And, you know, if you talk, last thing I'll say, and then I'd love to take your calls.
	I'll take your calls if you want now.
	If you want to poke your head over the parapet, I'd happy to hear your call.
	But if you're honest with yourself, and maybe you've escaped this, maybe you have.
	But I think if you're really honest with yourself, and if it hasn't happened to you, honest with other people, everyone's had that one friendship that completely flamed out for reasons that never made any sense.
	You know, just one thing happened, one hiccup, one problem, and then boom, years or decades down the train.
	All right.
	Let's get to Jay.
	And I went outside and smoked myself.
	Jay, what's on your mind, my friend?
	Don't forget to unmute.
	Going once, going twice.
	Can't hear you, bro.
	Hello?
	Yes, sir.
	Go ahead.
	Hi.
	Thank you for having me, bringing me up on the space.
	So yeah, I have a question.
	So my question goes like you made mention about you being in your 20s, have fun and everything.
	Like, do you get anxious?
	Like, oh, I'm in my mid-20s.
	I don't have a job yet.
	I'm not married.
	I'm worried about buying a house.
	Just like the new generations currently now, because I think the younger generation, like the Gen Z's, right?
	They have this high level of anxiousness, like not knowing what to do, what career to chase.
	Should I be in a relationship?
	Or is marriage really worth it?
	Do I be having kids?
	Should I be buying a house?
	I mean, we just find ourselves in this whole, you know, constant level, high level of anxiety, not knowing where to go, what, not knowing the choices to make.
	And I don't know.
	I don't know.
	I don't, I just want to know if maybe it was the same in your era when you were in your 20s, or I mean, if maybe there was just a bit of like differences.
	So I don't know.
	Thank you.
	Well, I mean, I don't want to make this about me after just talking about others, but I'll sort of, since you've asked me sort of about my experience, my 20s.
	So my experience was that I knew that I was destined for great things.
	I knew that from when I was a little kid.
	I knew, I didn't know how.
	I thought it was originally, I mean, I've tried a bunch of different things, right?
	I tried poetry, playwriting, acting.
	I tried Academia, business, and then, of course, for the last 20 years, this public philosophy podcast.
	But I always knew that I was destined for great things.
	Even when I was writing novels, if I cut a particular section, I would make sure I kept it placed to decide because I knew that people would be interested, you know, scholars and all that down the road.
	And I remember when I first, when I wrote my first novel called The Jealous War, which I wrote in my teens, actually, I started a novel earlier called By the Light of an Alien Sun, but I only got about a third of the way through when I was like 12.
	But I was like, the words were flowing, the ideas were flowing.
	It was like right away.
	And I was like, holy crap, that's quite a fire hose to be.
	It's quite a fire hose of language to have within me.
	And this is why I'm very humble about these kinds of things because I did not earn this ability.
	I sat down to write and the writing all poured out as it does now.
	I sit down to write, I do 3,000 words, and it's easy and fun.
	And I never believe it's going to happen when I sit down to do it, but then it always happens.
	So for me, I was casting about in various different things because there was a door to greatness with a lock and I had a bunch of keys.
	And I just had to keep trying different keys until I opened the lock to the future.
	So for me, I wasn't particularly worried about, you know, in my early 30s.
	You know, I was living in a little one-bedroom rental.
	I was not married or in a long-term relationship.
	And I felt no real anxiety about the future because I just felt, well, I'll keep trying stuff until I get the right key in the lock and it's all going to work out.
	And, you know, I'm sure people have that perspective where it doesn't work out.
	I had that perspective.
	And it really did work out.
	It's like my whole life was just waiting and preparing for podcasting, the internet, you know, what it is that I do now, where I can talk to the world without any gatekeepers.
	Now, again, not to make this about me, but because I always had a deep foundational belief that I was just going to be important or break through or have some significant value to the world no matter what.
	And again, I thought it was in the business world for a while, but the business world's pretty corrupt.
	I just didn't really have the stomach for it.
	But so I didn't particularly worry about things because I just felt, look, I just, all I have to do is keep trying things.
	All I have to do is keep trying things.
	And I would try things and I would find out that it was corrupt.
	You know, the theater world was socialist, communist, and utterly corrupt.
	And of course, increasingly anti-white, anti-male, you know, all the usual tropes.
	And academia was petty and corrupt.
	And the business world was slightly less petty, but even more corrupt.
	And I just needed to be in an environment where I had control.
	I was in charge, which is why I've sort of been entrepreneurial since my late 20s.
	I mean, I did dip in two occasions to work for other people.
	But so for me, which is not a sort of typical story, it was kind of different.
	But for young people, I mean, you're facing a lot of obstacles, honestly.
	And it's easy to look at the things, and I sympathize with this.
	It's easy to look at the things that aren't working or are impossible.
	It's not as easy to look at the things that are amazing and possible.
	So when I was younger, as a young man, it was easier to get hired.
	I mean, that sort of old economy, Steve, you know, lost my job, walked across the street, got another job.
	You know, that was kind of a thing, except for during the recessions, like in the early 90s, I just couldn't get work to save my life.
	Nobody was hiring.
	I ended up doing like odd jobs.
	I weeded gardens.
	I moved furniture.
	Some family had an aged relative visiting and hired me to take her around places, which she was kind of bitter about, which, okay.
	And I cleaned cars and just all kinds of crap.
	So you just have to keep trying.
	You know, your future is on the other side of the door.
	There's a lock you didn't make, but you got a whole bunch of keys.
	And you just have to keep trying and not give up.
	Sure, there are things that are harder now than they were when I was younger.
	And there are things that are easier now than when I was younger.
	When I was younger, there was no internet, no remote work, no nothing like that.
	So there's a lot of pluses.
	Is there anything that you wanted to add to that?
	Yes, yes.
	My final question to you is: I just would like to know your maybe your opinion about free will and unconditional love, like from your own perspective.
	Like, what do you think?
	Do you think like human being, we as humans have free will?
	And are we able to express or give unconditional love?
	Sure.
	I mean, so free will, I've got a whole three-part series on free will I did close to 20 years ago.
	So I'll just touch on it very briefly here, but you can go to FDRpodcasts.com, FDRpodcasts.com.
	I got a whole bunch of debates about free will.
	I've got a whole series on free will.
	So free will is our ability to compare proposed actions to ideal standards.
	In other words, is this the right?
	Is this the good?
	Is this considerate?
	Is this thoughtful?
	We can compare our proposed actions to ideal standards.
	I mean, one little example, my wife and I went shopping before the movie yesterday.
	Oh, after, let me get my facts straight.
	After the movie.
	And did we return the shopping cart to the right place?
	Well, it's nice and thoughtful to do that.
	And it's one of these sort of tests of basic social consideration and ethics.
	And so, yeah, we did.
	So it's good to return the shopping cart.
	And it's productive too, because if nobody returns a shopping cart, the price of groceries goes up because the store has to hire people to go and get the shopping carts and bring them back to the right place.
	So it's both pro-social, it's kind of nice, and it's also productive.
	So we do have the capacity to compare proposed actions to ideal standards, and nobody can argue against that.
	Because if a determinist comes along and says, we don't have the ability to compare proposed actions to ideal standards, then they are comparing a proposed action to an ideal standard, which is to have a debate about whether you can do that while already assuming that that is the case.
	Because he's saying, well, you should compare your belief in free will to an ideal standard called there's no such thing as free will and you should change your mind accordingly.
	You can't debate against someone who believes in free will without accepting this definition.
	It's tricky, but it's factual and it's real.
	So yes, we do have free will, but free will is also kind of like a muscle.
	And so to achieve maximum amounts of free will is kind of like being able to bench, I don't know, 500 pounds or run a marathon.
	You've got to work up to it.
	And of course, we're born with no free will, really, because babies don't have the capacity to compare proposed actions to ideal standards.
	They just cry and laugh and all of that, which is delightful and wonderful, and they shouldn't do anything different.
	And free will, a parent's are supposed to, or ideally parents should, encourage the development of free will among their children.
	So free will is like a muscle.
	So, I mean, from a very early age, I was giving my daughter as many choices as were practical at the time to help her develop her muscle called free will.
	And people who procrastinate, people who delay, people who don't make choices, people who just go with the flow and so on and just respond to social pressures, COVID, well, they're losing the muscle called free will.
	And, you know, I talk about this with regards to my mother who was very violent.
	And by the time I really met my mother, I didn't meet my mother when I was born because I didn't really have an identity when I was born.
	But when I really kind of met my mother, you know, she was already in her mid to late 30s and had already made a number of bad decisions.
	And, you know, the worst of which I think was avoiding any kind of self-knowledge and therapy and self-reflection.
	So she had no functional free will by the time I met her.
	And it took me a long time to sort of realize that.
	But it's kind of like if you want, if you want to go jogging with your friend, right?
	And your friend is 400 pounds and is only gaining weight.
	Well, they're not going to go jogging with you.
	They can't.
	Like they literally will probably bust a knee or have a heart attack or something, right?
	So maybe if your 400-pound friend who's gaining weight, you know, kind of wakes up and turns around and ends up losing the weight and has the surgery for the excess skin or whatever they do, and he gets a stomach stapled or goes on that creepy Ozempic biochemical witchcraft or something.
	But maybe at some point down the road, your friend might be able to go jogging with you, but it's a long ways down the road and there's a huge amount of work that they have to do.
	So people who've made bad decisions or, and the worst decision really is no decision, they've lost a functional capacity for free will because it's a muscle.
	It's a muscle.
	And people who are really unhealthy, they can't even climb five flights of stairs.
	And people who are really healthy can race up it.
	I mean, I remember when I had an employee when I was a manager in the software industry, and this guy was like crazy athletic.
	And he's like, race you up the stairs.
	We had a fire drill in the building I worked in one day, and he's like, race you up the stairs, boss.
	And I was somewhat healthy, but this guy just, I just ate his dust.
	I mean, he just powered up like some cooked up centipede on helium balloons.
	And, you know, so if he was like, you should come exercise with me, I'd be like, no, I think I'll probably just hold you back.
	Thank you.
	But so, yeah, exercise your free will, make choices, and learn to live with bad choices because nothing paralyzes free will, like a fear of the consequence of bad choices.
	But there's no choice worse than no choice in the long term.
	In the short term, not making a choice is a benefit in the long run.
	It's disastrous, right?
	So you ask that girl out, maybe she says no, maybe she rolls her eyes, maybe she scorns you, in which case, she's really telling you that your judgment sucks.
	You know, your judgment sucks.
	And then you should probably figure out how to make better judgment.
	Because if you ask a girl out and she's super rude, then she's not a nice person and you shouldn't be asking her out just based on looks.
	That's a dangerous game to play.
	So, but asking the girl out, getting scorned or rejected, rolling into a ball and painting it at your rejection is better than not asking the girl out at all.
	So you just have to keep exercising every day.
	You have to keep exercising that choice, that free will.
	Now, with regards to unconditional love, sure, we're absolutely capable of unconditional love.
	That's for babies.
	My daughter did not have to earn my love when she was a baby.
	I loved her unconditionally without reserve and dedicated myself to making her life as positive and happy as possible.
	And that's a wonderful state and a lovely state.
	And it is, of course, something that is not just human beings.
	Like most mammals are fiercely attached to their young and will do a lot to protect them.
	As storks, not so much.
	They take the run to the liver and dump it over the side of the nest, but most mammals are very attached.
	So it's a sort of biochemical attachment.
	It's not quite the same as adult love.
	So unconditional love is a beautiful thing, and it is largely biochemical attachment and wonder and beauty of newborns.
	And you don't disapprove of newborns.
	You shouldn't ever disapprove of newborns because they're just doing their thing and they're delightful in their own way.
	Now, when people say to you or to me, I want unconditional love as an adult.
	Well, they're saying they want to get paid, but they don't want to work.
	It's like the welfare state.
	People want to get paid, but they don't want to work or earn it through conformity with the charity's requirements or something like that, right?
	You know, like there used to be charities in the Victorian era that would take care of single mothers, but the single mothers would have to stop drinking and sleeping around.
	So unconditional love as an adult is just Viking exploitation.
	That's all it is.
	Just people who want to pillage you and they promote this idea, well, you just got to give and give and give and never expect anything in return.
	It's just unconditional love.
	And especially if you didn't have that as a baby, then you have a hole in your heart, the size of your heart, which needs to be filled with, quote, unconditional love.
	And then when people have these sorrows from their childhood, most people just spend the rest of their lives avoiding legitimate grieving and trying to replicate what they didn't get as children in adults, which turns horrible, manipulative, exploitive, destructive, and often abusive.
	So if a woman did not get unconditional love as a baby, she's got a great sorrow in her heart.
	Now, her mother and father, who didn't give her unconditional love as a baby, they don't want her figuring that out.
	And she will find it very painful to figure out how woefully deficient and neglectful her parents were when she was a baby.
	So, what she does is she says, Well, I've got this vague existential angst, anxiety, negativity, stress, whatever it is.
	But I just, I just, I just got to find someone who's going to love me unconditionally.
	And oh my gosh, everything will be better.
	It'll fix everything.
	And so she goes on rambling and prattling about unconditional love.
	And especially if she's, you know, physically attractive and around a bunch of shallow guys, then yeah, they'll promise her.
	Yeah, unconditional love.
	Yeah, sounds great.
	And she then demands unconditional love.
	And it can happen the other way, we're just talking about female to male.
	She demands this unconditional love to fix the sadness, the hole in her heart, the size of her heart, the anxiety, the depression, all the stuff that's left over from being neglected and abandoned as a baby, or at least not loved.
	And a guy says, Yeah, yeah, hey, you're hot.
	I'll give you unconditional love.
	But then he finds her neediness kind of annoying.
	And then he senses deep down that he can't fix her issues because he can't go back in time and be a loving parent to her when she was a baby.
	So she doesn't get what she needs.
	He starts to resent and feel like this is a hole with no bottom, a quicksand with no exit strategy.
	So he begins to withdraw, and then she re-experiences the same neglect and abandonment and avoidance that she experienced as a baby.
	And then she gets really angry.
	You were supposed to fix me and you're not fixing me.
	The hell's wrong with you?
	You're emotionally distant.
	You're emotionally unavailable.
	No, I just can't fix your baby issues because you ain't a baby.
	And you need to go through that legitimate suffering in order to have your heart open to adult love because adult love is an exchange of value.
	And people hate this kind of stuff.
	And I frankly don't care.
	I have to say what is true and right and good.
	And if it bothers people, it bothers people.
	And the people who it bothers and they run away from it.
	I'm not putting you, of course, dear listener, into this category, but the people it bothers who run away, well, they run away.
	That's fine.
	That's fine.
	You know, if I'm the first guy to discover that smoking kills, I'm going to go out there and say smoking kills.
	And people are going to be really mad at me because they're addicted to their cigarettes, but I'll save some people from death by COPD, lung cancer, emphysema, and God knows what.
	So unconditional love is a beautiful thing, parent to child, parent to baby.
	But as adults, we have to earn and we have to exchange and we have to trade and we have to provide.
	When I was a baby, I opened up my mouth, got me a German nipple, and got me some food.
	That ain't happening now.
	I mean, I keep asking.
	You know, you get decorators into your house and you ask them to hang some German nipples with feedbacks and they just give you all kinds of funny looks unless they're German.
	And then they understand.
	But you don't get that as an adult.
	You know, there's a funny thing where the socialists are always saying, well, you know, capitalism is brutal and terrible because you have to work.
	And it's like, no, that's life.
	Babies don't have to work.
	Toddlers don't have to work.
	But yeah, adults, we have to work in order to consume, you or someone has to produce.
	In order for you as a baby to consume breast milk, your mother as an adult has to consume food.
	And in general, that means your father has to go and earn the daily bread that gets converted into breast milk that gets converted into babies that get handed over to school and converted into self-hating leftists.
	But yeah, unconditional love is a demand for the unearned in order to avoid legitimate suffering as a child when you were a child.
	It will never be fixed by anyone even claiming to give you unconditional love and it will always destroy relationships, even if you stay together.
	Asking people as adults, asking other adults to fix what your parents broke is just a way to try and get your parents off the hook and you will forever be unsatisfied, angry, resentful, blaming, needy.
	It's going to be a roller coaster.
	Almost all, and this is not my formulation, right?
	Almost all mental dysfunction results from the avoidance of legitimate suffering, not self-inflicted suffering, legitimate suffering.
	So I hope that helps.
	Love yes.
	Yeah, love as adults is love is our involuntary response to virtue if we're virtuous.
	If you're virtuous and you see a virtuous person, you'll feel positive towards them if there's sexuality and romance and physical attraction and in general, possibility of marriage and children involved, then that's romantic love.
	If you're virtuous, you love the virtuous and you hate the evil, the evildoers.
	And maybe you even hate more the people in the middle, right?
	The people who won't make a decision, or if forced to make a decision, choose evildoers.
	Back to COVID.
	Anyway, so if you're virtuous, you love virtue and you love the virtuous and you hate the evildoers.
	If you are an evildoer, you hate the virtuous and you have a grudging respect and are willing to enter into a temporary alliance with other evildoers, but you will never experience love.
	Well, thank you for the great questions.
	I appreciate that.
	Oh, thank you very much.
	Appreciate it.
	Moy the boy.
	I can't believe the syllables I get to or theoretically have to utter in these situations.
	Moy the boy, if you would like to unmute.
	I hear rustling.
	Are you from the bushes?
	Go.
	Yeah, like we all do as babies.
	Anyway, go on.
	Okay, I assume you can hear me good, right?
	Yeah.
	Okay, perfect.
	Hey, always, it's an honor to speak with you, Stefan.
	What you're speaking about today really resonates with me because I actually just got out of the most significant relationship I've had in my life.
	And it's really interesting to see, you know, with everything that you taught me and stuff, just how true it is.
	How if people don't, you know, have a good relationship with themselves.
	And also when I, well, in my situation, when it comes to women, if they can't, if they have the wrong expectations of their partners, like healing them and healing them from their traumas, right?
	It's never going to work out.
	And with this relationship, I remember telling her things like, hey, I'm willing to work with, you know, like your issues.
	And I would recommend her your books and your rewritings.
	I even try to get her to listen to some of the podcasts.
	And she would always react very angrily to a lot of the stuff that you would say.
	She would say that you were unfair to women and try to put more value on the emotions that she had.
	And, you know, it just ended up creating a lot of issues because like I would tell her, like, hey, you know, you expect me to be able to demystify your female brain, but it's inappropriate in this relationship because I'm not a psychiatrist.
	And she eventually, you know, she was very good in the beginning, but eventually she became to resent a lot the fact that I, you know, I couldn't, I couldn't really help her with those issues.
	And eventually things fell apart.
	And I just got to say, I'm very thankful for everything that you share, all the stuff that you distill very clearly, because it's made this breakup a lot easier.
	Because although it's been the best relationship in my life, I realize that this person doesn't have the values that I need to have a healthy relationship.
	So I want to thank you and just wanted to share that.
	How true everything that you're saying.
	I appreciate that.
	Thank you.
	I'm very sorry.
	How long ago was the breakup?
	It's going to be a month here recently.
	Yeah, here on the 13th.
	And how long did you go out for?
	We were together for a year and eight months.
	Wow.
	Okay.
	And how old are you?
	I'm 27.
	Wow.
	Can you tell me a little bit about how you met and how you did discover the issues that she had?
	Were they evident from the beginning?
	Did they creep up over time?
	You know, she was the smartest woman I've ever dated and she portrayed herself.
	I can't share too much information, obviously, but she portrayed herself very intelligently in the beginning.
	And she hid a lot of stuff because she wanted to have me emotionally attached before she revealed a lot of stuff.
	And although I did ask, she gave non-clear answers and kind of hid things.
	And at six months, she revealed a lot of stuff that, you know, I told her, like, hey, if you would have told me this at the beginning, I would have not dated you.
	But, you know, I love you now.
	And as long as you're willing to put in the work, I'm here for you.
	But yeah, no, she was, she was really smart.
	She was older than me as well and more successful.
	Actually, at the her career was just taking off.
	So the way we met, to answer your initial question, it was while dancing.
	And I don't think I would have ever had like a good chance at her.
	But I looked pretty cool, just like doing moves and candlesticking the ladies, which is like raising them up in the air.
	So that's how we met, you know.
	I looked pretty cool that night.
	Was she significantly older?
	I was 25 and she was 27.
	Okay.
	Okay.
	Got it.
	And again, we don't want to tell tales out of school, but I'm going to just, you don't have to confirm anything, of course.
	But my guess is that if she revealed childhood trauma to you some months into the relationship, and it was the kind of stuff that you wouldn't have dealt with had you known ahead of time, you know, I would assume severe neglect, physical abuse, sexual abuse, something like that.
	And again, you don't have to confirm it, but were there any signs of dysfunction that you noticed early on before she told you about these things?
	Yes, there was.
	And I decided to be charitable just because she was the, in my experiences, she was definitely the smartest one.
	So I chose to be charitable and see how things would go.
	But there was issues, the general issues you talk about, there was.
	Right.
	Okay.
	Now, let's get to the important thing, which is her relationship with me.
	I'm just kidding, right?
	She disliked you, Stefan.
	No, no, I get that.
	Now, I mean, this is the funny thing, too, right?
	Is that I don't take any of that personally for the simple reason that, look, I'm just out here making arguments, trying to supply them with data, interviewing experts.
	And I do try to self-correct where possible.
	And somebody wrote to me the other day after I talked about India and China being significant contributors to ocean pollution.
	And they sent me an article, seems to be valid, which is that it's India and Africa.
	I think China's worse with air pollution, but when it comes to ocean pollution, it's India and Africa that seem to be the biggest culprit.
	So, you know, I put that out as a correction.
	And, you know, when you're pulling things from memory, occasionally you'll get things wrong.
	So important for those kinds of things.
	So I'm just out here making a case.
	And when people get angry at me, it's almost never them.
	It's almost never them.
	In other words, so let's say I'm making some argument and a lot of what triggers people is about sort of family issues or parent issues, right?
	So if this woman was mistreated as a child and I'm talking about holding parents to account and she gets angry at me, almost always what's actually happening is she is being taken over by her inner mother, usually could be, could be father, but usually inner mother.
	So if she was mistreated fairly horribly as a child, and then I talk about responsibility, parental ethics and sympathy for children and holding parents to account for the wrongs that they do, because, you know, parents hold children to account for the wrongs that they do.
	So why wouldn't the reverse also be true?
	Because parents have infinitely more freedom and moral capacity than children do.
	So it would be like saying children are morally responsible, but adults are not.
	Like that would be crazy, but that's kind of how society kind of weirdly tries to function these days all over the world.
	So when I talk about parental responsibility and sympathy to children and holding parents accountable, well, if she had bad parents, she's got alter egos in her head, which are internalized parents, which she used to survive her parents' mistreatment.
	And so, you know, if you've, if you're Unjustly imprisoned, you've got a guard who beats you whenever you say the word pepperage, then you've got to internalize that guard's mindset and avoid saying the word pepperage.
	In other words, the guard's hatred of the word pepperage has to be internalized within you.
	And then anytime you think about saying the word pepperage, you'll get sweaty and avoidant and tense and you won't say it, right?
	That's a way of internalizing your abusers or neglectors so that you can survive and get to adulthood.
	In other words, people who didn't do kids who didn't do that had a lesser chance of making it to adulthood because they kept annoying and provoking their parents.
	So she's got an inner parent who doesn't want to be held to account.
	Of course, look, bad people, it's not confirmed.
	I'm not saying you don't know this.
	I'm just saying this to the world as a whole.
	Yeah, you know what?
	Kind of a thing, right?
	It's kind of a thing.
	Bad people don't like to get caught.
	I don't know why this is so, you know, if you've robbed a bank, you don't want to get caught.
	You rob a bank, and then on the way out, you're like, oh man, there's all these security cameras and I didn't wear a mask.
	Oh man, you're angry and upset.
	People who cheat on tests don't want to get caught.
	People who lie don't want to get revealed and exposed as liars.
	And parents who abuse don't want to suffer negative consequences for being abusive.
	And of course, for parents, neglect is the big one.
	Neglect is the big, unspoken one.
	So it's not too shocking that if you're raised by criminals, when a lawman comes sniffing around, you get kind of tense.
	Because you're your whole life being raised by criminals.
	I'm not saying this woman's parents were criminals.
	It's just an analogy, right?
	But your whole life, you know, if your mom was evil.
	Yeah, if you're raised by criminals, what do your criminals say?
	Don't tell anyone.
	Shut up.
	Hide the boot.
	Hide the booty.
	Hide the loot.
	If anyone asks you, say nothing.
	Don't talk about anything.
	Don't talk about what you saw.
	Don't talk about what you did.
	Don't say anything, right?
	If you're raised by criminals, you're programmed and trained and bullied and threatened and bribed to shut up and not talk and not say anything.
	So when the lawman comes sniffing around, you get kind of tense.
	Natural.
	It's natural.
	And I am the lawman with regards to neglectful and abusive parents.
	And I say this with great sympathy.
	Listen, criminals are better off if they get caught.
	They're better off when they get caught because they take their punishment, learn their lesson, hopefully become better people.
	So criminals hate being caught, but generally they're better off if they're caught because they get to stop doing all these terrible things.
	I mean, to take an extreme example, a serial killer is better off after he's caught.
	Not just his victims, but he himself is better off.
	So yeah, criminals don't want to get caught, but it's often the best thing for them.
	People who cheat don't want to get caught, but if they get cheat, if they get caught, then hopefully they'll stop cheating over the future course of their lives.
	Liars don't like to get called out and exposed as liars, but if they suffer negative consequences for lying, it's their best chance at becoming a more honest person.
	So when she's listening to me, I'm the lawman sniffing around her parents' crimes, so to speak, again, in this analogy.
	And yeah, so her parents are like, shut up, stay quiet, hate that guy.
	He's bad.
	Don't listen to him.
	Right?
	Sure.
	I mean, it's not complicated.
	Criminals want to get away with stuff.
	A lot of people mistreat children.
	And when I talk about holding criminals to account, guess what?
	Criminals don't like me.
	I mean, you know, it's kind of a cliche, you know, when in movies and TV shows, right?
	When a cop gets killed.
	I just saw this in REACHA, right?
	A cop gets killed.
	It's like, well, you know, he did put a lot of really bad people in prison, man.
	So they're going to come out and they're going to be gunning for him.
	It's like, yeah.
	People who commit crimes don't like the law.
	They don't like lawmen.
	So when people get mad at me, I mean, I understand it.
	I understand it.
	I mean, if you can imagine being on the run, right?
	You're on the run, right?
	And every time a cop car drives by, you're tense and angry and upset and you kind of hate the cop car.
	And you, sure.
	I mean, that's not complicated.
	So I assume it was something like that.
	So sorry for the big aside and all of that.
	And how's, was there a particular incident that caused the breakup or was it a sort of more slow decay?
	It will say, like, you mentioned alter egos, right?
	And it's, it's interesting to see when she would get emotional or there was a, um, the mother had dysregulated her, right?
	Because she would have a negative situation with the mom.
	And I would kind of take the brunt of that dysregulation because she can't really confront the mom, right?
	It's, it was, I could see it was really difficult for her.
	Um, understandably so.
	Um, but um, you know, like it was interesting to me because I've taken, you know, I've listened to philosophy for for years, hundreds and hundreds of hours.
	And I've taken uh some college philosophy classes, including propositional logic.
	And when I listen to you, you make uh very valid arguments with uh, you know, like you make proofs for your arguments.
	And in a lot of situations, when we would get in uh arguments, right?
	Well, I would, and this might sound a little bit tedious, but I think it's a really good way to work out an argument with your partner so you don't go in circles and stuff.
	Well, I'll bring out the whiteboard and we would kind of write it out and uh you know, make diagrams and stuff like that.
	And um, eventually, the only way that I could win, uh, or that, yeah, that I could win the argument or for my feelings to be validated was to put her up against, you know, um, verbally speaking up against uh the wall, like basically don't, you know, like uh create a situation where she can't really weasel out.
	And I'll tell her, like, you know, like it's it's important to not obfuscate the conversations and bend reality.
	Cause if you're smart enough to bend the situation and the reality to only how it benefits you, right?
	Like you're smart enough to understand or to give a truthful account of what happened and you know, what I did wrong or what you did wrong, right?
	And I told her that I know that because I've heard the arguments she's had with her mother, I've known that the mother is very weasily like that.
	And I told her it's not, it's not a good way to be because, you know, like in a marriage, right, where we're dating seriously, honesty is crucial.
	And if I can't trust your judgment and the way that you're describing things, like you're going to be a dangerous person for me to marry.
	And initially, she was pretty open to it.
	But then there was like certain situations where she would break the trust in a big way.
	For instance, she purchased a, I think motorcycles are dangerous and she liked them.
	Right.
	And she purchased one without really talking to me and put me in a situation.
	And I told her, like, you put me in a situation where I can't even advise you.
	I couldn't say no.
	And that's kind of where I really started being less charitable because after so much benefit of the doubt and so much care and, you know, like, you know, I put a lot of effort into being a good, a good man in the relationship.
	Well, at this point, like, I kind of like can't trust you if you're making decisions like this behind my back.
	And seeing how those alter egos were kind of like alternate from, you know, very, very unagreeable and then very agreeable once I put so much energy making the argument and how this is this is really important.
	I just kind of realized she wasn't really reliable.
	I started pulling away the sympathy, right?
	And the empathy.
	And that just completely started ruining the relationship.
	Once I stopped being a healing factor, a cooling factor in the relationship, it was just a matter of time before she heated up and broke the relationship.
	So that's one example that I can share at the top of my mind.
	So it was interesting.
	I'm again, I'm really sorry about that.
	You've given me a lot of strength.
	So, but yeah, I definitely, you know, emotionally, like, it's like, oh, I missed the relationship, but logically, I have to be like, you know, Stefan would be really up.
	He wouldn't be disappointed if I got back on this.
	So you're giving me a lot of strength and I appreciate you for that.
	Well, thank you.
	And I will say this too, that dating is a job interview on behalf of your future children.
	It's not about your sex.
	It's not about your comfort.
	It's not about your happiness in the moment.
	What you're doing is you are auditioning or giving a job interview on behalf of your future children.
	Now, this woman, or I don't want to pick on her because, of course, she's not in the conversation, doesn't get to sort of plead her side.
	So, a woman in a dating relationship, you have to see how does she handle power.
	I mean, you really have to see how people in relationships handle power.
	Because for both men and women, monogamy is giving someone power.
	I'm only going to date you.
	I'm only going to kiss you.
	I'm only going to make love with you.
	I'm giving people the monopoly.
	And monopolies have power.
	When you become attached, when you say, I love you, you are giving people power over you.
	And there's nothing wrong with that if they handle power well and wisely and are sort of sensitive and delicate in their use of that power.
	I mean, my wife knows deeply how much of my happiness is bound up to her approval.
	So we're very delicate with the power that we have over each other.
	You know, when you're in a relationship, your lips, I guess, figuratively and literally, your lips, you're right up against the other person's ear.
	You're right up against the other person's ear.
	And you got to whisper.
	Because if you yell and you're that close, it's painful.
	Like it hurts your ears.
	It can harm your cochlear, your hairs.
	It's unbearable when you're that close.
	You need a very light touch when you're very close.
	So when you date and you give people your heart, you're giving them power.
	And how they handle the power with you is way better than how they handle the power with their kids.
	So if they're handling the power that you give them responsibly with due care and concern and sensitivity, if the people you give your power to use their power over you wisely and benevolently and lovingly, that's great.
	They're passing that test.
	If they use their power over you in a negative way, they won't admit that they're wrong.
	They escalate.
	They yell.
	They're tense.
	They're intransigent.
	Well, that's how they handle their power over you, which is way less than the power you're going to give them over the kids if you have kids with them.
	And if they mishandle or abuse the power they have over you, they will absolutely for certain mishandle and abuse the power they have over your children.
	So dating with an eye that this is a job interview for your future children is really essential.
	But we get lost in sex, love, lust, horniness, all that kind of thing.
	And I mean, if this is how she was with you, I mean, how would she have been with your kids when she has infinitely more power and they can't leave?
	Yeah, it was kind of scary and also interesting to, because if I would have, you know, been less trained in, you know, explaining trained and being principled, like trained in argumentation and philosophy.
	Like logic and objectivity and so on.
	Yeah, go ahead.
	Yeah, because I'm very good at, you know, like, yeah, like creating that framework of solving the argument or being honest, right?
	Of like keeping things truthful.
	And I think, you know, because she was very beautiful, very smart, very accomplished, right?
	And I think for most men, it would have been really difficult.
	And it was difficult for me as well, because like I was very charitable because I, you know, I saw that she was intelligent, but that's, you know, like when you're intelligent, especially, well, as a woman, and you can, and women know this, like they're smart enough to obfuscate and fog up the situations in their benefit.
	And it's like, well, if you're that smart to do that, like you're smart enough to understand what I'm saying and to, you know, have a little bit more control of.
	Sorry, let me rephrase that.
	Basically, you're smart enough to understand.
	And the fact that I have to put so much time and so much effort into clarifying the situation and putting you up against the wall verbally so you act and say things truthfully.
	I just, you know, that's why towards the end, I started distancing myself.
	And once she, you know, like, cause I told her, I'm like, hey, you know what?
	Like when I'm around you, I feel like you're making me go crazy.
	And, you know, I'm right now in college.
	I was doing a difficult summer class and I'm like, I need to focus on this because this is going to be my future career.
	And that angered her a lot.
	And I could see that very clearly at the end of the relationship because the last day that we talked or saw each other, I think she really wanted me to beg for, you know, like, hey, let's continue the relationship and stuff like that.
	Cause like, we're breaking up.
	And she's saying, honestly, you're best man I've ever dated.
	You know, like, I think you're going to be a wonderful husband.
	I'm sorry we couldn't, you know, work things out and this and that.
	And I was like, well, you know, if I felt that that way about a woman, right?
	If I thought she was like the best woman, she's going to be total wifey material.
	I would not be being this difficult.
	And I wouldn't be trying to manipulate her emotions to get her to bend the knee because like I want a willful, a willful, loving relationship.
	And that's that just kind of clarified that I'm like, yeah, this, this, I don't think this woman might be really smart, but she is not honest.
	And that's more dangerous.
	Yeah, because if she's like a lawyer or verbally skilled or argumentative in that kind of way, then her intelligence actually becomes a danger.
	I mean, if you're going to have someone embezzling from your company, you want them to be as dumb as possible, you know, to just grab fistfuls of 50s in front of a security camera.
	You don't want someone who's a total genius who shaves off fractions of a percent of a penny, you know, and you can't detect it to save your life, right?
	So intelligence is wonderful if the person is virtuous, but if the person is not committed to virtue, is not humble, cannot admit fault, then intelligence becomes incredibly dangerous because they can gaslight the shit out of you.
	And you're like, which way is up?
	And they can weave these very convincing webs of language that trap you like a trapdoor spider or something like that.
	So yeah, it's rough.
	It's rough.
	And can you think of a time in the relationship?
	This is the big test.
	The big test.
	Can the person admit when they're wrong?
	Or they just, there's this grim freaking battle, this fight to the death.
	I'll never admit, I'll gaslight, I'll change, I'll counterattack, I'll storm out.
	I will never admit that I'm wrong.
	Did you have that experience in the relationship?
	One thing I can tell you, because like I was good, I was good at basically putting her up against the wall where she has to say the truth because it's either or, right?
	Either, like, hopefully that makes sense, what I just said.
	But one of the whiteboarding stuff, and you okay, yeah, yeah.
	Well, but then, you know, like, even if you record someone, and I don't recommend doing this in relationships because it's kind of one-sided.
	But if you record someone and then, you know, they say, well, I never said that.
	You play them back the recording.
	Then they just say, well, you made me say it.
	Or, well, you know, they still won't admit fault.
	But sorry, go ahead.
	Well, one even smarter thing that she would do, right, is the value judgments she would make with her, you know, like the mistakes that she would make.
	They had, she would, she would basically frame it in like a way where they were more forgivable, more, you know, dismissed and stuff like that.
	So she might say she's sorry, you know, and you're right.
	Hey, you're right.
	I'm sorry.
	You know, I overreacted and stuff like That.
	But later, you know, down the weeks, down the months and stuff, she would say, she would completely be like, hey, well, you need to let that go, you know, this and this and that.
	And I'm like, no, you actually.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	So I've seen this sort of thing before, where, let's just say a woman, in this case, it's a woman.
	So a woman will say, you're right, I'm sorry, but there won't be a principle.
	Right.
	So if every time somebody said the word pepperidge, I started yelling at someone.
	And then I said, oh, look, I'm sorry.
	Right.
	And then every time they use the word pepperage, I started yelling at them.
	And then they said, oh, and I said, oh, I'm sorry.
	Like at some point, you have to say, gee, I wonder why the word pepperidge bothers me so much.
	And you have to work to prevent recurrence.
	In other words, if you're at fault, almost always there's a principle there.
	And the principle needs to be dealt with so that you stop being at fault.
	You know, if when I was being trained in tennis, when I was younger, I had a weak backhand and a slow serve.
	So my tennis coach was like, do this, do this, do this, practice this, this, and this, right?
	Because the whole point was to get better, right?
	To understand why I had a weak backhand and a slow serve and to work to improve it.
	Because if my coach kept telling me to do this, that, and the other, and I simply didn't do it, what would be the point of apologizing to him for having a weak backhand and a slow serve?
	The whole point is to is to fix things so that they don't keep recurring.
	So if, so if you say, you know, you get mad when this happens and it's, you, you really escalate.
	And then, you know, after you work for and whiteboard the crap out of it for an hour or two, she's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, you're right.
	You're right.
	I'm sorry.
	Right.
	Okay.
	So then what?
	Sorry is not the end of the story.
	Sorry is the beginning of the story.
	It's the beginning of the story.
	Because then once you've identified a fault in someone, which we all have, and it's helpful to have people identify them.
	So once you've identified a fault in someone, that should be the beginning of the journey called, how do I stop repeating this fault?
	And so I imagine what happened was she said sorry, kept doing the same crap over and over again.
	You kept pointing it out.
	And she's like, well, you got to let it go.
	And it's like, well, I'll let it go.
	When you stop doing it, absolutely.
	And, you know, what she, what she told, you know, when she, six months into the relationship, when she revealed a lot of stuff that broke my trust, because I told her, I was like, hey, so you put me in a vulnerable, like, you're a person who has put me in a vulnerable position because now I'm emotionally attached.
	And I would have not dated you if I would have known these things.
	So like, you're smart enough to do that.
	And she's like, yeah, I'm very smart.
	Sorry, were they childhood things or adult things?
	Basically, my, like, you know, I wouldn't, I wouldn't date a certain type of woman.
	And, you know, like, you can't do that to people because that's predatory, right?
	You can't portray yourself as a, you know, very conservative woman.
	And like, I can understand that you can like change, right?
	But it doesn't really indicate a lot of change if you've done that to me and six, like six months into the relationship.
	Now you're finally being honest.
	It's like, well, I'm in a more vulnerable position.
	And I made that clear and she apologized.
	But then she continued with the lies and the subversive power dynamics that she was deploying, which was very interesting.
	And listen, I say this with sympathy and I also say this with humility that I stayed in negative relationships a lot longer than you did.
	So I say this with all due humility.
	But why did you stay after six months?
	What does she have?
	So I, well, one thing is obviously I was emotionally invested up at this at this point.
	I think that would be the greatest factor.
	But also, but that's that's the no, but that's the argument to go, not to stay.
	That's the argument.
	Like, so I'm emotionally invested.
	That's the argument to get out because it doesn't get better after that, right?
	It's not, you don't become less invested as time goes on.
	You become more invested.
	It's a cut your losses scenario, right?
	Like if you've, if you've got, oh, I've got all my life savings in this stock and the CEO turns out to be a pathological liar, but I'm not going to sell because I'm down some money.
	It's like, no, if this is your life savings, you have to sell.
	You know, I would be willing to go further in detail.
	I'm like one of the, I'm a subscriber and locals.
	So, you know, I'll be willing to go more in detail there because I don't know, yeah, okay, so it's the emotional investment.
	Was there something else?
	Yeah, yeah, I can tell you, and in general, the um, like the intelligence was really attractive to me, and I thought, okay, well, she is, you know, and in with the women I've interacted with, she is the most intelligent and successful, you know, and I thought she was a great, um, still a great woman, even with that.
	I can understand as a woman lying about certain things, right?
	But I decided to um give it away.
	Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, hang on, hang on, brother.
	You know, you're talking to a moral philosopher guy, right?
	Yeah, I can understand as a woman lying and deceiving someone in order to get into a relationship.
	Yeah, that's not valid.
	We can understand the motives.
	I can understand as a murderer, you'd want to hide the body, but it's not good.
	I mean, so I'm not sure if you meant I can understand that she would want to deceive me to get what she wants at my expense, but I don't want to, I don't want to make I want to make sure that we're not transmitting over my channel.
	It's understandable and therefore okay that a woman would do that.
	I agree, and I don't think that's a good reason.
	Uh, or to it's not good to give a woman a pass because they could be better.
	So, I agree, and I guess you know, the reason I stayed, I did become more guarded, but yeah, I wanted to, I believed in her, you know, that's that's that's too vague.
	I don't know, I believed in her, yeah, I'm sure she was real, I'm sure she's not a Japanese robotic, Klingon, speaking sex doll.
	But oh, sorry, I was just reading my hands-on order.
	Um, so what do you mean you believe in her?
	I thought, you know, more than or more than most women, I thought she could change, especially if we got into, you know, like because I'll talk philosophy to her, I'll speak about, you know, religion and like a lot of the arguments for being virtuous, you know.
	So I thought things could improve, and they did, they didn't.
	So that's and was she religious?
	She definitely, um, you know, our second dates, I took her to church and she definitely definitely seemed committed.
	But I think she used she wasn't like as committed with the religion, more like because she was smart and she definitely could see that it was in her benefit to have a religious marriage because, well, many reasons, right?
	Instead of just like the secular type of marriage where anybody could leave, you know, like she did want a long-lasting marriage.
	And I think she kind of understood that she has a better chance at a long-term marriage with somebody that is religious or a man that's committed to that level of like, hey, we're promising to God that we're going to stay together.
	So maybe she was a little, yeah, like she wasn't really, there wasn't too much integrity, but she did portray herself as like, yeah, I want to get baptized and, you know, like follow these things.
	Sorry, so when you met her, she wasn't religious.
	She said, she was, no, not so much.
	Not so much.
	I'm sorry.
	I'm a little confused.
	Yeah, yeah.
	I mean, it's not exactly the same as being a little bit pregnant, but did she believe in God?
	Was she, you're a Christian, right?
	I assume.
	So did she believe in God and was she a Christian?
	Yeah, she would say that.
	Yep.
	Did she go to church?
	No, no, not frequently.
	Let's say she pray.
	Did she restrict her behavior to what would Jesus do or try to?
	No, she would only pray with me.
	Okay.
	And what obligations did her religion require of her?
	Oh, a lot.
	All the, you know, be, you know, bear no false witness, don't lie, be a good wife, right?
	Like submissive, right?
	Okay, so hang on.
	So tell the truth and be submissive with her religious edicts.
	And did she do those things?
	At the beginning, she did, Stephan.
	She was a lot better than the chameleon.
	Yeah, she is.
	She was very, I mean, yeah, she was very good at that.
	She chameleon lying there in the sun.
	All things to everyone.
	Run, run away.
	I love that song, man, because it's actually kind of true.
	And I'm not trying to make light of your situation, but yeah, chameleons are really dangerous because they're camouflaged, of course, right?
	She was smarter than, like, I'm telling you, she's smarter than any woman I've come across, except, you know, like once you're not honest, you can't think clearly.
	So you end up shooting yourself in the foot.
	But she was good.
	She was good at portraying herself as what I wanted out of the relationship.
	You know, she portrayed herself in a good way that was appealing to me.
	Because if I would have known, oh, you want to ride motorcycles?
	And then she had tattoos and she had an issue.
	Yeah, that she regretted, allegedly, in the beginning, because it later changed to like, yeah, I want to maybe get another tattoo.
	And I was like, wait, you know, like you said, you weren't, you know, like, I'm not saying hate your tattoos, but this is not Christian.
	So it's like, things did change with her.
	That's what I'm saying.
	I mean, it's, it's, was it one little butterfly in the ankle or she had good taste, but um, I don't, I don't remember what she wanted, what else she wanted to get.
	I just know that.
	No, no, I mean the tattoos she already had.
	Oh, I shoot.
	I can't, I can't tell you which one I find the most interesting because it could reveal.
	No, no, again.
	But sorry, what percentage of her, say, visible skin in a t-shirt and shorts, what percentage of her skin was tattooed?
	She had like five tattoos that could overall be covered, you know, except one on the wrist.
	So not heavily tattooed.
	Not a sleeve or anything.
	Okay.
	All right.
	So let's let's close with this.
	And I really appreciate your openness.
	And of course, we can talk more in the donor section.
	But for the young men and young women out there, I mean, you burned, what was it, a year in eight months?
	Do I have that right?
	Unfortunately.
	Yeah, so you don't have, you don't have many left in the chamber.
	You can't do this again.
	You can't burn up another because, you know, it's not just a year and eight months, right?
	I mean, it's the opportunity costs about all the good women who floated through your life while you were entangled, but this person.
	And then it's the recovery time, right?
	You got, you know, probably another couple of months at least before you're even potentially emotionally available to another woman, right?
	Yeah.
	So what are the lessons that you needed to have learned or you have learned that you could also communicate to others?
	Because the best thing we can do with that personal disasters is turn them into do not, none shall pass bridges to others.
	Okay, I think the biggest lesson would be that, you know, you, you're not anybody's therapist in a relationship.
	It's inappropriate to try to, you know, like give therapy and stuff.
	And I think, you know, opening myself open to be open to like, all right, let's be together while you get some therapy.
	I think that was a big mistake.
	You know, I think you need to be healed before you're in a relationship.
	And the second quick one would be to not be charitable, as charitable, because people, you weaken yourself when you're super charitable with people, especially, you know, if they don't get it on the first, second time, it's time to cut it because I definitely should have cut it earlier.
	I missed out on good opportunities, good people.
	And yeah, you ruined your emotional intimacy because you have to now deal with, yeah, trauma.
	So those would be two big lessons I got from this.
	Well, I mean, I'm glad that you didn't suffer any negative repercussions from the breakup because that's certainly a possibility, you know, bunny boiler time.
	And last, sorry, last question.
	I know I said one.
	Did friends, family, relatives, did they warn you against her or what was the perception among the people that you knew when you started dating her and they met her or got to know her.
	Well, the ones that knew more of her definitely, you know, like once she, because she broke up with me a couple of times and then would come back and like, let's work these things out.
	But my friends, my male friends definitely gave me earlier warnings and I should have listened.
	Okay.
	Appreciate that.
	And also, a breakup, don't ever get back together after a breakup.
	It's a bad idea.
	A breakup is the break of trust.
	And I've never in my life known or heard of a relationship that works out after this, especially multiple breakups.
	So that would be my other suggestion.
	All right.
	Well, listen, I really appreciate your candor.
	You know, big bro hug to you.
	I'm very sorry about how the way things played out.
	And I'm glad that you seem to have learned some good lessons and can open your heart.
	Just look for virtue.
	Look for virtue.
	Look for virtue.
	They're nothing else.
	There is no substitute.
	All right.
	So we're going to move on.
	Thank you.
	Yeah, no, thank you.
	Thank you.
	Bye-bye.
	All right.
	So we're going to move on to thank you for your patience.
	Chorder.
	I suppose that's the collision of chaos and order.
	Lawful, chaotic.
	If you want to unmute, Jordan, thank you for your patience.
	And I'm all ears.
	Hello.
	Hey.
	I do.
	Important question for the future of humanity.
	So I was listening to one of your shows with a gentleman that kept calling you a feminist and saying that men's troubles are far worse than that of a lady.
	And it got me thinking with AI increasing over time, you know, by the day, and robotics improving and the future of artificial wombs.
	I'm just wondering where we go because I'm going to have kids someday and I'm going to have to figure out how to talk to my kid about women, obviously, or men, if it's a woman.
	And it just seems to me that the divide between men and women is going increasing day by day.
	And eventually, you know, men will be able to have their own kids without women and women without men.
	So I don't know if this falls under UPB or if it'd be more of an aesthetics thing, but how do we map that?
	I'm not sure what you mean by how do we map that?
	And I'm sorry if I missed your question, if you can try to try again.
	Yeah.
	What I just mean is I know that this isn't necessarily what is, but what could be.
	But it just seems that in the future, probably near future, men and women will be able to have kids without each other.
	No, no, no.
	You don't, when I say I need your question, I don't need you to restate things.
	I'm not listening.
	I understand that.
	But you just put out a bunch of stuff there.
	And I'm not sure, like, how do we map that?
	I don't know how to answer that because it's not precise enough a question.
	And that may be a deficiency on my part.
	So I'm sorry for that.
	But look, I mean, it is a mark of the desperation of men that artificial wombs are something that's on the radar.
	That is how, you know, sad and desperate men are.
	And I don't say desperate like in any pejorative sense.
	You know, if I'm dying of thirst in the desert, I'm desperate for water.
	And that's not a pejorative, right?
	But it is a mark.
	You know, I think everyone's seen that meme of the guy laughing with the robot going down the road where the woman is panhandling because men don't want to deal with her.
	And there is a lot of frustration.
	And I really understand that.
	If it's any consolation, I dated a lot of women before I got married.
	I was frustrated too.
	I'm not saying it's the same because at least when I was younger, OnlyFans wasn't an option for like 10% of young women.
	But artificial wombs will produce children, but children need two parents, ideally.
	They need a mother and a father.
	That's kind of how we evolved, right?
	So saying you came out of a machine like Neo in the Matrix is not, to me, the healthiest option in that you'll have kids, but it's such an odd and artificial environment that I can't imagine it would be particularly good for those kids to know that they were birthed from a robot womb and grow up without any mother.
	That's, and of course, even if even if you have your kids, right, let's say you're a single man and you get the baby ejected positron 9000 that spits out triplets into your lap.
	Well, you still got to go back to work, haven't you?
	I mean, who's going to raise these kids?
	Just having the kids isn't the major deal.
	You can always adopt, I suppose, right?
	But who's going to raise your kids?
	Is the robot going to raise your kids?
	That seems like a pretty weird experiment.
	Is the robot going to breastfeed your kids?
	I mean, who's going to get up at night when your kids are hungry and breastfeed them two, three, four times a night?
	Well, it ain't going to be the dad because the dad, you know, our boobs are all taps and no plumbing, right?
	We got no milk ducts.
	So just getting the baby is the least of the issues with regards to parenting.
	There's a whole bunch of stuff that needs to happen after that.
	And the man's going to have to go to work.
	And even if he says, well, I work from home, if you have a kid or two or three around the home, you can't parent.
	I remember when I was in New Zealand and Jacinda Arden had had a baby, was going back to work.
	And I said, well, she can't be as good a mother.
	Oh, you're saying she can't be a good mother.
	I said, no, she can't be as good a mother because when you are working, you are not parenting.
	And when you are parenting, you are not working.
	I mean, you can fake it, I suppose, but that's just mostly lying, right?
	I mean, your employer is not paying you to parent.
	He's paying you to produce widgets or type code or whatever.
	So I really do sympathize with, and I'm certainly not trying to mock the desperation that men have with regards to we want kids, but women won't settle down.
	But, you know, and there's a difference too.
	And I get that it's a generational thing.
	I do have younger friends, so I'm not completely out of the loop as far as this goes.
	But there's this online stuff that is really toxic.
	And our brains don't know the difference deep down, like our lizard brains.
	They do not know the difference between what's online and what's in the real world, right?
	So I saw this video the other day, and it was these two, you know, fairly trashy-looking young ladies.
	And it's like, oh, me and my bestie about to head out to the night and get free drinks and give out our Instagram addresses and then ghost everyone the next day.
	And then tomorrow we're going to do it all over again, you know, all of this sort of stuff where women are just out there getting attention and free drinks and then never have to date and have a real relationship and so on.
	Now, that's not super, super common.
	It's there, for sure.
	But the problem is we live in a freak show called the internet because the freak shows, you know, back in the day, it's like world's heaviest man, world's strongest man, bearded lady, like circus freaks.
	It's a freak show.
	Freaky, just wildly unusual.
	Now, the internet, of course, how do you gain attention on the internet?
	Well, usually it's by being different, freaky, unusual, triggering, and rage baiting.
	I know I'm going to get all the comments under the show.
	But if all you do is travel from circus freak show to circus freak show, you're not going to have a very balanced view of the world.
	There was a woman who wrote a book.
	I've mentioned it before, Daniel Crittenden.
	And she said, you know, like reading all this feminist stuff and then going out into the world where, you know, men are pretty nice and people date and women seem to be dressed nicely and seem to care about the men and so on.
	It's kind of like when you study a bunch of Marxist economics about the exploited and pillaged proletariat class.
	And then you go out and there's, you know, waiters chatting while having a cigarette out back of the restaurant.
	And there are these construction workers who are laughing and joking with each other and making fun of each other.
	And what happens in that sort of concentrated psychotic world of ideology is not obviously a one-to-one mapping of what's out there in the world, right?
	So women with crazy makeup always sitting in their cars making bird hands, seeing outrageous things with filters on.
	It's just a form of deranged attention seeking.
	But most people are not like that.
	And certainly, you know, I mean, when I go to church, when I go to the Most people are just not like that.
	I mean, there's dysfunction, of course, in places and so on, right?
	But the internet is a generalized parade of the ultimate freak show.
	And it's really easy to say all women are like the bug-eyed bird hand blue-haired ranters sitting in their cars screaming about the patriarchy.
	That's not super common.
	Now, again, I know that there's a lot of programming and propaganda that goes on in schools, and that certainly has an issue.
	There's a big issue.
	But the people who are susceptible to propaganda have always been susceptible to propaganda.
	And I guarantee you that nobody who listens to this conversation or listens to this show, I hate calling it a show, this conversation.
	If you listen to this conversation, you can't spend 50, 60 years with someone who's an NPC.
	You can't.
	You just, you can't.
	You know, people are, the women are, some women are getting into these pseudo-relationships with AIs, a wired husband.
	And AI is more creative than most NPCs because with AIs, you can't always predict what it's going to say.
	But with NPCs, you can always predict what they're going to say.
	You always know what their stance is.
	It's just, there's no free will.
	They're basically just robots, action, reaction, and they're programmed.
	Now, I don't think that there's a massive greater number of people susceptible to programming and to ideology and to groupthink and Borg mind.
	I don't think it's hugely greater now than it was in the past.
	I mean, in the past, you know, men cheerfully with, you know, it's a long way to tipperary, sing song in their hearts.
	They marched off to war.
	That's propaganda.
	Women were taught how in the 1930s, women became smokers because, what was it, Bernays or someone was just like, oh, we just have pretty women smoking and everyone's going to start smoking.
	And you see, you know, when I was younger, there was this, you know, crazy hair stuff that went on, the flock of seagull singer with all the sort of weird curved poofy hair.
	And then Miami Vice came out and everyone had to have those brightly colored jackets with the sleeves rolled up because Don Johnson was a handsome guy with cool hair.
	So these waves of what is popular, the polo shirts were big, the big status symbols when I was younger.
	And then there was this wave of breakdancing.
	And then it was Rubik's Cubes.
	And when I was a kid in boarding school, we would go through these manic phases of conformity.
	Like suddenly paper airplanes, everyone had to have a paper airplane that could do the coolest tricks and fly the furthest.
	And then there were these things called conquerors.
	They're like chestnuts.
	And you'd put a thread through them and you'd whack somebody else's chestnut and yours would break theirs and you'd end up at the king chestnut.
	It just, we'd have these crazy Synvitistance medieval fits of conformity.
	And I mean, that's the mark of caged beasts.
	That's the mark of zoo animals to have these kinds of crazy conformity things that go on.
	But, you know, it wasn't like, I remember I did a book report on a book about a village called Montailleu.
	Actually, my book report was so good that the professor read it to the whole class saying it was the most perfect essay he'd ever received.
	It was nice.
	But in the village of Montailleu, just about everyone believed the dominant narrative of, you know, the king is God and this is the pope and the church and the, you know, like everybody just went along.
	And the Milgram experiments were in the 1960s where two-thirds of people will kill you if someone in a white lab coat just nudges them in that direction.
	And everyone will torture you if they're just asked too nicely or suggest it's suggested that that might be a kind of cool thing.
	So if I sort of look throughout most of human history, it's just a massive wave of a few people and a bunch of NPCs.
	And I honestly couldn't tell you exactly why.
	Obviously, with peaceful parenting and less violence, better education, I think we can rescue people from groupthink.
	But most people, you know, functionally don't think.
	They certainly don't think for themselves.
	They just, they get programmed by the TV and they turn into just another appliance, A pro-state, pro-current thing appliance.
	They're not there.
	They're not there as a person that you can talk with.
	That's why they call them PCs because there's like a dialogue tree.
	And I mean, NPCs actually have more dialogue trees than most people.
	So the fact that there are women out there and men out there who are susceptible to groupthink, and women are a little bit more susceptible to groupthink because they score higher in the trait agreeableness, which is getting along with people.
	And there's nothing wrong with that.
	That's just the way that the beautiful human mind, both male and female, has developed.
	So yeah, there's a lot of women out there who are susceptible to groupthink.
	And that's tough.
	And that's great.
	That's great.
	If people who didn't think for themselves had a big tattoo on their foreheads with a human brain with a circle and a line through it, like do not enter, big tattoo, or a small tattoo, but visible, which is, I don't think.
	Well, that's helpful to you.
	Because as somebody who thinks, you listen to the show, you think.
	You don't want to be with people who don't think, right?
	Because that's exhausting, it's debilitating.
	And you can't make them think all they could do is drive you crazy by not thinking.
	Like it's torture.
	It's torture.
	If you've ever been with NPCs, it's horrendous.
	Like, it's like they're not there.
	So, yeah, there's people out there who don't think.
	Are there vastly more of them now than there were?
	I think there's more extremes because of the internet.
	So people are, there's more programming in a way, but there's also more counter-programming.
	So there are the people who don't think don't think harder.
	And the people who do think do think better because of the internet.
	I mean, even just a show like this, right?
	Probably close to a billion views and downloads by now.
	It's pretty good over 20 years, right?
	And it's just going to continue.
	So all of the people who've been influenced by the conversations and the monologues that I have here, well, this is a billion points of light, a billion stars in the night sky that weren't there before.
	That makes the planet a little brighter and they wouldn't have been there without the internet.
	So the internet makes conformists more conformy and it makes free thinkers more free in their thinking.
	So the fact that NPCs are out there advertising themselves very, very clearly, you know, with just mechanical opinions and regurgitated talking points.
	And, you know, usually physically weak bodies, like people who are physically weak, just really can't think for themselves because their bodies are saying we can't handle rejection and we can't win any particular conflict or combat.
	So we'll just conform and go along, like the low-T argument.
	So yeah, a lot of conformists out there.
	And the fact that you can identify them very easily now is good.
	I think there are more free thinkers out there than there were when I was younger.
	And that's a good thing too.
	So sorry for a fairly long response, but yeah, I don't think that the answer is robotic wounds.
	Someone's still got to raise your kids.
	And you want your kids to grow up seeing a mother and a father who love each other, right?
	Kids don't learn to love as adults by being loved as children.
	It certainly helps.
	But the way that they learn to love as adults is by seeing their parents love each other.
	And you can't get that with the positronic baby ejector 9000, right?
	You actually need a human-loving, breastfeeding, attached, virtuous female in the environment, if that makes sense.
	Yeah, the only issue I worry about is that, like you said, most people are susceptible to propaganda.
	And as it stands now, we don't have the baby maker 5000 to pop out a bunch of babies.
	But when we do, I just worry that they will outnumber the thinkers and the people that are favoring biology.
	And I don't even know what argument you could make to, besides the human parents, but I mean, a robot, their firmware can be updated to be a better parent, you know, as the days go on, you know?
	So I just, I don't know the argument for what's going to be, hang on.
	So we evolved to have eye contact and skin on skin contact with an actual human female.
	The uncanny valley just is not going to be, you just will not get robots that are indistinguishable from humanity.
	You just, you can't, because we don't even know how to make a robot that thinks like a person.
	We don't know how to reconstruct the human brain.
	And we certainly don't have all of the levels of detail and the pupils and the eye dilation and the skin capillaries that bring the right level of warmth and spontaneity and laughter.
	And like, this just not, it's not, it's not going to work.
	But I, you know, listen, brother, I wouldn't worry about that.
	Honestly, I don't want to tell people not to worry about things.
	There's certainly things to worry about in the world, but I think this is what you want to worry about is how to be the best person you can to be able to identify and bring home high-quality women to have to make a family with.
	And, you know, what's going to happen with robot wombs in the future and all of that.
	Honestly, that's not date topic material.
	And I think it's having you concerned about things that are way beyond your control.
	What is within your control is what you say and what you do.
	What everyone else says and does is beyond your control.
	So I wouldn't worry about things that are so far beyond your control.
	I would really focus on becoming the best person.
	I'm not saying you're not, but even more perhaps focus on being the best person that you can.
	Because if you're worried about robot offspring in the future, it's going to be a little bit odd for a woman that you go on a date with.
	And especially when you're single, it should serve good day conversation.
	As many of your thoughts as possible should serve good day conversation if that helps.
	My wife is next to me laughing her butt off right now.
	She probably wouldn't have dated me most time.
	No, but would she have dated you if you were talking about your fears of robot babies in the future?
	Probably not.
	Maybe that's what she likes about me.
	My weirdness.
	No, that's not.
	Listen, it's not, it's not, it's an interesting topic.
	I get that.
	It's and I've enjoyed talking about it.
	So there's, I mean, I'm not going to say, oh, it's a bad topic.
	It's a good topic.
	But, and do you have kids?
	Uh, no, but uh, we're planning uh soon to have some.
	Okay, fantastic.
	So, um, but but you want to make sure you don't put too much of these quirks and these concerns into your kids' minds because they're going to have enough to worry about just with the way that the world is.
	But all right, I got another caller or two, but I really do appreciate the question.
	And uh, it's lovely to hear that you're married.
	Congratulations.
	Thank you.
	All right.
	Self-described psychopath.
	Let us screw our courage to the sticking place and chat with the self-described psychopath.
	What's on your mind?
	Maybe he's a psychopath and a mime.
	Going once, going twice.
	You'll need to unmute or just a shitty Southeast Asian connection.
	Fascinated by the conversation, by the way, gentlemen.
	And here's what I wanted to ask: like, what happens?
	What happens to the world, to the speech, when the robot pussy becomes better?
	Sorry, hang on.
	Just check.
	I think your baby's ready.
	Can you just check?
	Sorry?
	You know, I heard a beeping.
	I just wanted to make sure your baby might be.
	Oh, no, it's definitely in the background.
	Yeah, I'm sitting in a Taco Bell in Thailand right now.
	Currently.
	This is a Thailand for Taco Bell.
	My God, you are a psychopath.
	Anyway, so go on.
	Yeah, Rag.
	I haven't seen a Thailand in, I haven't, I'm sorry, I haven't seen a Taco Bell in Southeast Asia until I got to Thailand.
	And so obviously, I had to come here and then give myself diarrhea for tomorrow.
	That's my big point.
	Sorry, hit me with your question again.
	So here's my big question.
	Okay.
	So what happens when the synthetic, the robot, the FMS pussy is actually better, more tolerable, and just generally overall a more satisfying situation than a human lineup.
	What does that do to the human species?
	That's what I'm really wondering.
	I think we're like five years out.
	So you mean when robot sex apparatus provides potentially a more pleasurable experience than a person?
	Well, it's not a hop, skip, and a jump.
	Like it's like, if you could just fuck that pussy and it would be better without all of the female bullshit that comes along with it.
	I think most men would offer that, but you also have to have that reproductive factor.
	So like, let's say we go to a whatever that video game's called, you know, with Mr. Sexy from the zombie, the zombie TV show.
	Like, if we can get to a place where like men can birth their own children, like effectively, women are done.
	Like, they're done.
	They're out.
	Because no man is putting up with women bullshit if they have the option, right?
	That's all I'm saying.
	Why do you think you're angry at women as a whole?
	I'm saying this openly.
	I'm just curious.
	Well, I don't like, listen, I don't have an issue with like women in general, but I'm saying, no, no, no, no, I'm not doing the conversation, I'm not doing the conversation if you're gonna bullshit me, bro.
	You repeatedly said, hang on, you repeatedly said women's bullshit, right?
	Well, you do you not know what I mean when I reference that point, are you because it's like you have to just go through so much to what appropriate and like have a stable family without getting half of your ass taken away and all the nonsense that goes with it.
	Like, we live in a very um different world, right?
	Okay, so have you yourself had these negative experiences with women?
	Um, no, somewhat the women that I have like personally you know formed an attachment with, they've actually been better to me than I were with them, and I think in that respect, I got lucky, but um, you know, at the end of the day, for whatever reason, it doesn't work out.
	So, it's like, but now I look in the long term and I'm like, you know, I'm getting up with my years, I'm dating, and I look at these women, it's like you're basically unreliable, you're not responsible, you're not interested in child rearing, you don't have like nurturing instincts, like you're just not I would consider to be like a um an apex feminine prototype, like you're just you think.
	I don't know what, so hang on, hang on, hang on.
	So, do you think, hang on, do you think that there are virtuous and responsible women in the world?
	Oh, absolutely, 100%, yeah, everywhere.
	Okay, so how many of these virtuous, responsible women have you met over the course of your life?
	How old are you?
	Uh, I am currently 40, I'm 40 plus years old.
	Is there any chance I could get you to get to a quieter environment by chance?
	No, it's it's an absolute madhouse.
	Yeah, they're just going wild in the soccer belt, man.
	You have no idea.
	No, I mean, look, less than half of the women I've met in my life, I would get I would consider virtuous, like they're just not.
	So, hang on, hang on.
	So, you're in your 40s and you've met dozens of virtuous women, and none of them have wanted to marry you.
	Is that right?
	Well, I would say, how does this work out?
	When I'm more interested in them, they're less interested in me.
	When they're more interested in me, I'm less interested in them.
	And there's been like three or four overlaps where it was career, it was that timing, it was whatever was happening.
	It's just I it up.
	Um, like totally taking responsibility on my own part.
	When I look back at it now, I think, oh no, she would have been a good mom, she would have been a nice, like, uh, you know, life choice or whatever.
	But, uh, it's funny, you've got this whole Dennis Miller cadence going on.
	It's kind of interesting, anyway.
	So, what would you say?
	Um, what would you say are the virtues that you bring to the table in the dating and marriage market?
	Well, I would say, like, I'm not, you know what I mean?
	I'm a hard-tempered individual.
	I'm going to anger, but that also means I've got the loyalty statistics.
	So, like, I'm faithful.
	I don't cheat.
	I don't fuck around.
	I'm going to be there.
	I'm a loyal partner.
	But you have semi-emotional books.
	And so, some of these women have seen that than others, which I respect.
	And I try to get better.
	It's like, at the same time, it's like, I know I can appropriate wealth in my 70s, right?
	Like, I'm a product of a father.
	I have five male brothers and a sister.
	So, like, my genetics, um, we get deep.
	Like, if I need to, I'm just not at this point in my life.
	I'm not, I'm not just trying to dump some shit into some.
	Okay, sorry.
	I think that your audio is too bad to continue the combo, but you're certainly welcome to call back at some time when it's more audible.
	Fair enough.
	Yeah, so in general, though, I would say that if you're calling into a show, a moral philosophy show, and you're saying, well, robot vaginas can replace women, then what you're viewing is that the primary purpose of women is to be a convenient hole for men to dump their sperm into.
	If that is your view of women, quality women will avoid you like the mythical bear in the woods.
	Actually, I guess some women choose the bear.
	But no, women will avoid you in the same way that if you see a shark in the water, you are likely to get out of the water.
	And so if you're like, well, you know, robot vaginas can replace women, you say, right, because the women's bullshit.
	And it's like, well, then quality women are going to stay away from you.
	And then you end up in a self-fulfilling prophecy, right?
	There aren't a lot of quality women around, and you can replace a woman with a robot hole.
	Well, then you're going to end up in a life without a lot of quality women around because quality women don't want to be around that, right?
	In the same way that if a woman were to say, well, the only value that men have is to pay my bills.
	Well, you're going to end up with a bunch of creepy sugar daddies.
	And then you're going to end up calling into a show where the host is probably too nervous to ask you what the hell you're doing in Thailand.
	All right.
	Jackie, do you want to take us home?
	Be the last corner of the day.
	Thanks, everyone, for these great conversations.
	By the way, I really do appreciate it.
	Jackie, if you want to unmute, I'm all in.
	I just kind of wanted to go off of what Leif was saying.
	I'm sorry, who was Leif?
	The fellow that was just up.
	Okay.
	Okay.
	Is that his name?
	Yeah, it was part of his call sign.
	Okay, got it.
	Got it.
	Sorry, go ahead.
	Basically, we've all been steered into this materialistic world where everybody wants, wants, wants, and they forget the fundamentals of what humans actually need.
	Their basic emotions being met, the roles that males played, that females played, has all been misconstrued because when you look, males are very important.
	So are females.
	It's how life goes on.
	You got to have a correlation between the two of them, and they're supposed to complement one another.
	They're not supposed to be in competition.
	But when people get into relationships and that, they forget that jealousy can be a negative poison.
	And if they think that they're with somebody that's above them or like out of their league type of style, they develop these kind of mentalities toward the opposite sex, regardless of male, female.
	But one thing that men forget is there is not one man on this planet that didn't get here through a woman.
	And women need to remember that without men, there's no children.
	So the fundamental roles that we are supposed to hold have been taken away by the way that we've been taught to live our lives.
	The motherly role has been put into some industrial factor or working out in the world when they're supposed to be at home looking after the children.
	I am a mother.
	I'm sorry.
	And I do agree with the traditional roles of the family.
	And you don't have to apologize for that here.
	I appreciate it.
	You know, I would say I thank you for your service a lot more than I would to a soldier, but go on.
	But when a mother is forced to be the breadwinner as well, or things like that, there's so much stress on them.
	And they're trying to take care of their kids.
	They're trying to do everything because a lot of men run off.
	That's the situation I was in.
	And I had to raise my son on my own.
	I had to find good role models for him of the male persuasion just so that he had that balance in his life.
	Because without one or the other, you don't have that balance.
	And that's what's been lost in this world is the balance of the structures of the fundamentals of humanity.
	That's what they're ripping apart right now.
	And nobody's paying attention to the real big picture.
	The big picture is they're doing this to everybody.
	And unless we stand up and just say, look, the way that things were, the feminist movement, all it did was get the government another tax that they can take off of somebody else's wage.
	Well, and give the government control over children.
	But sorry, absolutely.
	Because if you're at work and the kids are in the institutions and the schools and everything, they're telling them what to think.
	They're not teaching them how to think.
	They're telling them what to think.
	And that is dangerous.
	So when people come up and they have the critical thought, they understand to ask their questions.
	And it's really simple: who, what, when, where, why, and how?
	Ask that about everything.
	Because without your critical thought, you're just going through the motions and there's too many sheep right now.
	We need some lions to wake up.
	Well, I appreciate that.
	And if you don't mind sharing, what was the story with your son's father?
	He was one that was a bit of a player.
	The jealousy kind of took over and things eventually got violent.
	I was blamed for absolutely everything.
	I'm not saying I'm perfectly innocent.
	It takes two to tango, okay?
	But when I'd be going to work and going home and like picking my son up from daycare, everything, there was no help with any of that sort of bills and everything.
	I was supporting him.
	The only thing that he covered was rent.
	I covered everything else.
	And if you add up all that stuff, it's way more than what rent was.
	Sorry, so he didn't work?
	No, he was working, but his money seemed to stay with him.
	Okay.
	And how long did you know him before?
	Hang on.
	How long did you know him before you got pregnant?
	About a year.
	Okay.
	So he was totally different, totally different.
	It was like a switch went off and a totally different person came out.
	As soon as that engagement ring went on my finger, a totally different person came.
	And I'm sorry.
	So you got engaged before you got pregnant, right?
	Right about the same time.
	Yeah.
	Well, which happened first?
	The engagement, actually.
	Okay, so you got engaged after you'd known him for, I guess, close to a year.
	And then he changed into a good guy to a bad guy.
	Is that right?
	Well, it's like he got possessive after the ring winning.
	Before that, it was like, because a lot of times a partner will figure that they own somebody or they can control them.
	And control is not love.
	When you love somebody.
	No, no, no.
	I don't want to get philosophical.
	Sorry.
	I know that sounds odd.
	I just'm trying to sort of figure this out because I have heard this a lot from women.
	And I appreciate, listen, there's nothing critical here.
	I'm just genuinely curious because I hear a lot about women's female intuition and women are wise and women are smart and so on.
	And but at the same time, I hear a lot of stories from women about how I completely misjudged the man I gave the greatest gift in the universe to, which is a child.
	And I couldn't possibly have known any better.
	That's the thing.
	He basically treated my child like he wasn't his.
	And there was never any doubt of whose he was.
	Yeah, but see, but hang on, hang on.
	Sorry to interrupt again.
	So, but the more you say what a terrible guy he is, the harder it is to hang on, hang on, hang on.
	The more you say what a terrible guy he is, the harder it is to understand why you had a child with him.
	He was not the same at that time.
	He was caring.
	He was conscientious.
	He was everything that a girl would want.
	And when I had my son, I was off work for only about two months before I had to go back to work.
	Didn't get Matt Leave or anything like that.
	And you know how the finances kind of take over and the struggles and all that kind of stuff?
	It really changed the dynamic.
	And with seeing how he wouldn't even take the time to look after my child, which is also his, which you shouldn't have to pass because they're the other parent.
	They should want to be part of it.
	Wouldn't even change a diaper.
	Okay, but so are you saying that he was like a Perfect, wonderful guy.
	And then he proposed he became possessive.
	You still decided to have a child with them.
	And then he was lazy and selfish.
	It was really, really close from when we got engaged to when I got pregnant.
	Like, I mean, within weeks.
	Well, why didn't you wait to get married?
	You would have, I mean, the whole point of engagement is to see how people have power, how they handle power over you.
	So why didn't you wait till you get married to have a kid?
	And that would have given you more of a chance to evaluate him as a fiancé.
	Sometimes nature just takes its course.
	Unfortunately, the situation that I was in wasn't what was going, what was in my mind wasn't what was in his mind.
	I'm sorry, I don't understand what that means.
	Are you saying, sorry, did you have unprotected sex or did you have a failure of birth control or what happened?
	Failure of birth control, yes.
	Like a condom?
	Pill, condom.
	Oh, so hang on.
	So the pill, so you had a kid with a bad guy because the pill and the condom both failed, and he was a perfect guy until he became a selfish bad guy.
	There is not a perfect person on this planet.
	I'm sorry.
	Okay, hang on.
	First of all, hang on, hang on.
	First of all, please try not to overtalk me when I'm making a point.
	So he was a great guy.
	So the reason you became a single mother is you had a guy who appeared to be really great and then turned into a total monster.
	And because both the pill and a condom failed and you got pregnant.
	You ever grown up with narcissistic parents?
	I'm sorry, say it again.
	Have you ever grown up with narcissistic parents?
	Or did yours actually care about you?
	No, I did not grow up with good parents for sure.
	Then you'll never understand, my friend.
	What this kind of insulting.
	So that's kind of hang on.
	That's kind of rude and insulting, saying I want to be a little bit more.
	It's just, you haven't walked those shoes.
	That's all.
	It's not being rude.
	No, no, no.
	No, no, we don't do that here.
	We don't do that here.
	This is not part of this conversation.
	So my parents were, I mean, my father left and my mother was violent and crazy and all kinds of stuff.
	So saying that I wouldn't understand.
	No, see, you're on the over talking.
	Please don't over talk when I'm talking.
	It's really rude.
	Let me finish my point.
	So it's not funny.
	Actually.
	So saying that I can't understand somebody else's negative experience is false.
	Of course I can.
	I asked if you had grown up, what you described, you did grow up with that type of parent.
	You might not recognize it as what it was, but when you are taught from basically the time that you were born that you are worthless, that you are not allowed to say no for any purposes, that no matter what you say, you're wrong, and things like that, you're really confused.
	And then when you get sent out into the world, it's very hard to unravel all that damage that has been done, all that trauma.
	And if you don't break the cycle, then you seem prone to repeat it.
	And it's not until you reach later years or have just more experience and understand that the way that you were being treated was not proper.
	And then you have to basically start from scratch and relearn everything right from the get-go.
	I'm not trying to be rude to you in any way whatsoever.
	I can't put your perspective of what you're hearing me say.
	I can't, I can't see it the way that I'm saying something.
	I can't see it from your perspective.
	You understand?
	I'm sure you do.
	You're a very smart man.
	Well, no, because you said that I couldn't understand something, which means that you are saying that you can see it from my perspective, which is that I can't see it from your perspective.
	No matter what, everybody pretends to.
	Hang on, I gave you, I gave a lot of time to talk.
	So it's a conversation, right?
	So listen, massive sympathy to what you suffered as a child, like massive no-holds borrowed, big hug from cyberspace sympathy for what happened to you as a child.
	But it's really bewildering to me because when I was asking you about the causes of you being a single mother, the story I got was that he was a great guy and then he just flipped.
	He just switched, right?
	He did.
	And it wasn't only me that saw the switch.
	Hang on.
	No, that's that's not.
	Let me finish my point.
	So apparently he was just a real chameleon, you know, really perfect at camouflage.
	And then you had the pill and the condom both failed, which is almost like a immaculate conception.
	And then when I started asking about that, you then switched to, well, the reason that I was in a bad relationship was because my parents were narcissists, which again, I have massive sympathy for.
	But you switched to my bad childhood when I was sort of asking more questions about how you became a single mother.
	And you didn't say at the beginning, well, the reason that I had a child with a bad guy is because I was raised by narcissistic parents and was told I was worthless and was never taught how to say no, which again, I hugely sympathize with, but I don't see how it fits that the reason you became a single mother.
	Hang on, hang on.
	I don't see how it fits that the reason you became a single mother is both because he was this fantastic chameleon and also because you were really abused as a child.
	You know, when you're in the beginning of stages of a relationship and everything and everything's going so good, your energy's high and things feel really good.
	But as you go on, right, this is through time.
	This is not immediate, okay?
	But through time, you start to see the flags and things like that.
	When you grow up in certain situations, those flags seem normal to you.
	And it almost seems like a comfort, like familiarity.
	Yeah.
	So that's where the issue with growing up with the type of parents that I had comes in, because it blinds you to those flags to save yourself.
	And listen, I mean, I appreciate that.
	I mean, you've explained that once already, and I don't have an issue with that.
	In fact, I have great sympathy for that.
	So here's what I don't want.
	And I'll sort of tell you why I'm pushing back on this.
	No worries.
	So how old were you when you got pregnant?
	21.
	21.
	Okay.
	And again, massive sympathies for the bad childhood.
	So here's what I don't want to put out on this channel.
	And I'll tell you why, and then you can tell me what you think.
	I don't want to make people paranoid.
	I don't want women to listen to this and say, wow, gosh, hang on.
	So if he seems like a really good guy, he could just be a really bad guy in disguise.
	And women get kind of jumpy and it makes them really tough to give their hearts and to commit to a guy who's good.
	Now, if on the other hand, you say, well, listen, I was raised, I couldn't see any red flags.
	Or if I did see red flags, they seemed kind of sickly familiar and almost comforting.
	That's a whole different matter.
	So then if the guy had red flags, but you, in a sense, were programmed to prefer them based upon a dysfunctional childhood, that's a whole lot different from he didn't have any red flags.
	And then after I got pregnant after a year, he turned into a total selfish monster.
	Those are two very different things, if that makes sense.
	Like it's one thing to say, I got jumped.
	I got jumped.
	Like I had a dog that suddenly turned into a tiger, right?
	That's going to make everyone jumpy of dogs, so to speak.
	But if you say, well, I thought it was a dog, but it was a tiger, but I'm blind.
	That's a whole different thing.
	Well, yeah, exactly.
	But that's what's going on a lot in the world now from what I've seen.
	It's not just myself that's gone through it.
	There's a lot of people that have.
	And one of the big things is finding a man or a woman, either way, it doesn't matter.
	One that's not going to cheat.
	Like it's been made so mainstream and things like that.
	And I can't tell you how many women I know that had gotten pregnant.
	They were married.
	They already had a child or everything.
	They get pregnant again or whatever.
	Man goes off and cheats while woman.
	Okay, no, I'm not.
	I'm not.
	Sorry.
	I'm not, I'm not doing this.
	I'm not having you just disrespect men on this channel.
	It's a constant.
	No, no, no, no.
	I'm still talking.
	It's just a constant negative dumping on men.
	I don't do that on this channel.
	Yeah, there's stuff to criticize about men.
	There's stuff to criticize about women.
	But you're like, well, he was, no, I'm still talking.
	So you're like, oh, he was this perfect guy.
	then he turned into this monster.
	And all of my friends, you know, I know so many women whose, the men cheat on them.
	And like, I don't do that disrespect towards men on this channel.
	You will need to, in fact, go elsewhere for that because I don't, I don't do that.
	Yeah, there are bad men out there.
	But what a lot of people fail to realize is that if you're in a negative social environment, right?
	So if you are a single mom and if you are, if you have, let's just say, to put it as nicely as possible, slightly inconsistent explanations as to how you became a single mom, then the likelihood is that you will be around other people who may not have as clear-eyed a view of the backstory to their own current life as possible.
	You're going to be around people who might be inconstant.
	You're going to be around people who might be false or might lie or might be lacking certain virtues.
	And then you're going to say, well, gee, everywhere I look, there's just these men who cheat.
	And it's like, well, yeah, but it's like if you're a drug addict, like a serious hardcore drug addict, then you're going to be around a lot of people who are really dysfunctional.
	You say, well, humanity's crazy.
	It's like, no, no, that's not humanity.
	That's you.
	Anyway, she dropped off the call.
	But yeah, it is important to ask.
	And one day I may get an answer from a single mother that is really honest and direct.
	But I mean, it's funny because she talked about being a chameleon and she herself was a chameleon.
	Well, he was a perfect guy or a great guy, and then he became a bad guy out of nowhere.
	There was no way to see it.
	Well, no, but I didn't see any red flags because I was raised by a narcissist.
	And it's just, and you know, if this woman ever listens to this, or if you are a single mother who's listening to this and you are raising a son, and I say this as a single, sorry, as the son of a single mother, don't dump on men, man.
	Don't do it.
	I know that there's been betrayal.
	I know there's been frustration.
	Do not dump on men because you're raising a son.
	Find things that are praiseworthy in men.
	Otherwise, your son is going to grow up with that same cycle repeated of not feeling like he's worth anything.
	Angela, help me.
	Give me a palate cleanse.
	What's on your mind?
	Hi.
	I actually drafted something.
	Sorry, I'm a little bit scared of public speakings, but I wrote this before Jackie spoke, but it was weird how it lined up a little bit.
	I wanted to say that I listened to your channel when I was younger.
	Sorry, I'm a little bit nervous.
	No, no problem.
	Just imagine that you're in my own private either dungeon or windowless fan.
	Whatever makes you feel more comfortable.
	All right.
	Windowless than it is.
	So I've written this.
	I'll read it out.
	How am I supposed to want to get into a relationship if I know that guys can reliably go to Thailand and go to Thailand on their phone from the comfort of their bedroom?
	I've seen how women lose their appearance after having a child and their partners tend to cheat or leave after key events such as engagement and marriage or having a child.
	I wrote this before she spoke.
	Sorry, was that the end of the statement?
	Yeah, it was brief, I guess.
	No, that's you know what?
	I aspire to brief.
	I respect and admire you for doing that.
	So how old are you?
	I'm 28.
	28.
	Okay.
	And what has been your experience with men cheating?
	Sorry, I'm not really good at public speaking or really knowing things also.
	I don't know.
	Let me ask you this.
	Have you had a boyfriend that you know cheated on you?
	I mean, not suspect, but no.
	No, I've not had a boyfriend that's cheated on me.
	I've not really had a cis male boyfriend.
	Okay, got it.
	So I guess that's a subset.
	Having not had a boyfriend, I can assure you that you've not had a boyfriend who cheats on you.
	Okay.
	And do you want to get married and have a family or do you have some other life in mind?
	I was told by like my mom is very pressuring on this because she thinks it's like the way to have a happy life.
	And I don't really, I can't really disagree with her.
	But I also can't really, you know, throw myself into something.
	I don't see how emotions can possibly like build up when you're just going on dates.
	I don't understand how that sort of thing like builds any sort of like that happens when people just hang out.
	You can't just date and create that kind of thing.
	Why not?
	I'm not disagreeing with you.
	I just want to understand your thinking.
	Well, I don't see how I could get attached from like going to dinner with somebody a couple of times.
	Well, I mean, if you really click and you have great conversations and you admire each other and find each other attractive, isn't that how I mean?
	I'm just, I don't want to make my experience some sort of universal, but I just happened to end up going out to dinner with my wife because we were on a volleyball team and everyone else couldn't make it.
	And we've been together ever since because it was such a great conversation.
	Now, like 23 years later, we're still having great conversations.
	So it can happen that way, for sure.
	Sorry, I've been a little bit shaken up.
	I don't really know what to say.
	No, that's fine.
	I mean, okay, so you said you haven't dated cis males.
	I assume that lizard people are off the list.
	So tell me a little bit about your dating history.
	I had gotten involved with someone over the internet, but it turns out that he was trans.
	And that's not what you're looking for.
	Oh, well, it's really tough because I really, for like years, really felt like deeply in love with this person.
	The kind of love that it seems like people are looking for.
	Like they seem to like want like women to be like extremely dedicated to somebody.
	I had that, but with the wrong person.
	And when did you find out?
	Oh, sorry, for how long did you know this person?
	And then did you find out that they were trans?
	I found out after that I had after I had fallen in love with him.
	So I couldn't really like stop the like train, you know.
	I don't know how people can stop that.
	No, no, but how long?
	How long did you know the person before you found out they were trans?
	A couple of months, less than a year.
	Okay, so for somewhere between a couple of months and less than a year, you were interacting with this person and was this person hiding the fact that they were trans?
	Not necessarily.
	I kind of understand like for safety or something why someone wouldn't really mention it.
	Okay.
	And was it a romantic relationship when you found had it become a romantic relationship by the time you found out about the trans thing?
	Yeah, in a way, but I sort of decided I wanted to be like really open and honest about things.
	And I kind of like, I told him about like my political leanings and stuff like that.
	So that turned him off, but I continued to be into him.
	And after, after that, like a month or two after that, he told me that he was trans, but that did not put me off.
	And I continued to like be sort of like simping a little bit for like years.
	And I couldn't like let go of it, you know?
	Okay.
	And can you tell me a little bit about, and I'm sorry, I mean, I really, I really sympathize with that yearning and that heartache.
	What was your childhood like?
	I think my parents are really good people.
	They still are.
	Good, but I do not like the American education system.
	Like there was a lot of like struggle there.
	I had some like racial tensions as well.
	Like even though my parents came from a country where there was none of that, like in America, there's like something gone wrong there.
	Like basically, like, I feel like black kids will just like hate white kids, like just fucking because they think that they're going to be oppressed by them or something.
	So that gave me a little bit of racism temporarily.
	Which is another reason why it's not a problem.
	There's a lot of, I think there's a lot of animosity stoked as well.
	It's not just innate.
	I think it's a lot of stoked by emotion and so on.
	Yeah.
	Most definitely.
	And the stuff that you see like on the news, that can't be really good for relations.
	And would you say that you were bullied at school?
	I think so.
	Yeah.
	But then, yeah, I was like more shy, an only child as well.
	So.
	Okay.
	And did you talk to your parents about your negative experiences at school?
	Yeah, a little bit, but I did kind of hide it a bit as well.
	And why do you think you hid it?
	Well, it's obviously embarrassing.
	Well, but they're families.
	I mean, you're supposed to, I mean, isn't it ideal in families that if you're sad or upset about something that you can talk about it with parents?
	Yeah, I feel like I must have talked about it a little, but I'm not really sure.
	I feel like I'm confabulating a little bit when I talk about this, but there's some stuff that happens in the moment, and then you don't really, it happens like too quickly or something.
	I don't know.
	Okay, I'm not sure what you mean by confabulating, but if you, hang on, if you were upset about things at school, why wouldn't you talk to your parents?
	I mean, they're there to help, right?
	You said they're good people, and I'm not disagreeing with you, but I mean, if you had a kid who was being bullied, wouldn't you want your kid to tell you so you could help?
	yeah, I can't really remember talking about this or not talking about this much, so I can't really speak on the issue.
	Okay, and now, did your parents ever notice that you were unhappy about certain aspects of your school experience?
	Oh, yes, definitely.
	My dad like caught onto this, like emotionally.
	Oh, so he knew that you were fairly miserable at times going to school, and so he would then sit down and ask you about it, right?
	Then you may not have to tell him because he already noticed and he would talk to you about it, right?
	I can't really remember, but like, probably it's been a long time.
	No, it hasn't.
	You're in your 20s.
	I mean, if you were 80, I could get that, but no, it's like 10 years ago.
	Okay.
	So, did your parents.
	I'm really lazy with accessing my memory.
	Okay.
	So, did your parents talk to you about emotions, your emotional life, your happiness, your unhappiness in general?
	Yes, but I can't really remember exact conversations or anything like that.
	Okay, so they did talk to you about your emotions, but not to your memory about your unhappiness at school.
	Well, it certainly was noticed, but I can't really remember any specific conversations about it.
	Okay, so you have a general sense that they talk to you about your feelings, but you can't remember any specific instances.
	Is that right?
	Yeah, I don't really, I've not really practiced with like remembering stuff from my past.
	I don't really spend a lot of time pulling things over, so I don't know.
	Well, memory is sort of involuntary, right?
	I mean, I remember, I don't sit and think about what my dorm room in boarding school looked like, but if I asked, I mean, it's sort of involuntary.
	It's kind of stored there, right?
	Okay, now, as an only child, what did your parents do to facilitate sort of peer social engagements and that kind of stuff?
	I don't think that they really did much in that regard.
	I went to clubs, like after school clubs, a little bit, but I was mostly like kept indoors, really.
	They were kind of scared of, you know, America being like first-generation immigrants.
	So, they thought that it was dangerous and it was dangerous, I think.
	Okay.
	I mean, you would look up crime stats and all that kind of stuff to try and find that out.
	But, okay, so if they view the outside world as dangerous, then the solution to that is to have kids come to your house, right?
	Or you go to other kids' house where they trust the parents or something like that.
	So, I don't know why they need to keep you home.
	Even if you say that the neighborhood was dangerous, I mean, you're pretty safe in somebody else's backyard or house, right?
	Or at least kids in your house or apartment or whatever, right?
	So, did they facilitate that?
	Yeah, I did meet up with people like that.
	My mom was a little bit embarrassed about the state of the house, so I mostly went over to other people.
	Okay.
	And was your, did you do any dating sort of mid-teens onwards?
	Mid-teens.
	What is that?
	Like 13?
	I would say maybe 15, 15, 16, 17, like sort of last couple of years of high school.
	Not really at that point.
	I think I had like a younger, like, cutesy little thing, but not really after that.
	Okay.
	So then I found this guy online.
	I'm sorry?
	Then I found this guy online.
	Okay.
	And how old were you when you found the guy online?
	I was in my second to last or maybe the summer between the second to last and the last year of uni.
	So early 20s?
	Yeah, like 21, 22.
	Okay.
	So, I mean, that's, you know, six or seven years after a lot of people at least start to think about dating.
	And did your parents talk to you if you weren't dating?
	Did your parents sit down with you and say, hey, what's going on with boys or what's going on with girls or whatever your preference is?
	What's going on with dating as a whole?
	Did they have any conversations with you about that?
	Yeah, I said that I wasn't interested.
	Like I understood the idea of like having a family and children.
	I was interested in that, but I wasn't particularly interested in having a partner until this person came around.
	That is, but I wasn't really interested in like dating for the fun of it.
	And they said that the time will come when I am interested.
	So when I become interested, like I would eventually become interested, they said.
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	And did you talk to your family about the trans person that you got involved with online?
	Yeah, when I went to see him, they were like trying to stop me.
	And that became into a whole thing where they were painted as like bad and controlling or whatever.
	And I was.
	Sorry, they were painted.
	What do you mean?
	Sorry.
	Sorry to interrupt.
	I don't know what you mean by they were painted.
	Who painted them that way?
	The person that I was interested in because he saw that I was a 22-year-old and I shouldn't be able to go and, you know, travel and like see him.
	But my parents were seeming a little bit controlling.
	What do you mean by controlling?
	I mean, can you understand that going to meet someone you don't know in person that you've only known online, that going to see that person?
	I mean, there could be some risks involved in that, right?
	Oh, yeah, it is definitely, I understand the reaction.
	Okay, so their reaction wasn't crazy, but the trans person was saying your parents are being controlling or bad or something like that, right?
	They were not really accurately getting across to me because they kind of still viewed me as a child and they continued to view me as a child and they sort of still view me as a child.
	Sorry, the trans and how old is the trans person?
	A little bit younger than me, so maybe like 26, 27.
	Okay, so the trans person who's younger than you use you as a child.
	No, no, no, no.
	I said my parents did.
	That's what I was saying.
	My apologies.
	I'm so sorry.
	Okay, I got it.
	That's okay.
	All right.
	So did you end up going to visit the person?
	Yeah, yeah.
	I ended up living in England for a while because of this.
	And I'd say the relationship broke down like 2022, but I continued like feeling really, I needed to like linger to let myself get over it, you know?
	Okay.
	That's kind of why I'm still in England or Scotland, technically.
	Okay, yeah, we don't have to get into too many details.
	Okay, so the relationship, the relationship with the trans person has ended, but you're still in the vicinity, is that right?
	Yeah, technically in the same like country, not in the same city.
	Okay, that's fine.
	That's fine.
	Okay.
	So I guess I'm a little confused when you say, well, you can't get to know someone while dating them, but you can fall in love with someone over the internet.
	Oh, yeah, that was a totally natural kind of environment.
	Nobody was trying to fall in love with anyone else.
	I see dating as sort of like, you know, when you are going towards something, you kind of are repelled by it as well.
	You can't like make yourself love someone.
	I see dating as kind of artificial in this way.
	That's not the same as friend groups where you're not intending to fall in love with anyone.
	No, no, but you were on, you were, you weren't in a friend group.
	You weren't hanging out.
	You were online.
	That's totally different, right?
	Yeah, but it was like a close-knit kind of Discord server thing.
	Okay.
	All right.
	So what do you, are you remote working?
	I mean, what do you live on?
	Sorry, I prefer not to get into that, I suppose.
	No, that's not my fault.
	Yeah, don't talk about anything you don't feel like.
	Okay, so you're 27.
	Did I have that right?
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	And do you still have, as a goal in your life in the future, getting married and having kids?
	I am very stressed about these sorts of things.
	I didn't ask you, but you were stressed.
	Just, I mean, try to try to put on the male garb and just answer a question directly.
	Do you want, at some point in the future, to get married and have kids?
	I don't know.
	The question puts me under stress.
	I'm not sure.
	Well, if you didn't want it at all, then it wouldn't be stressful, right?
	Yeah.
	I mean, I don't want to learn Japanese.
	So if somebody says, do you want to learn Japanese?
	I'm like, well, no.
	So I want to spend my time doing that.
	I'm sure I'd end up as an insult to the Japanese language.
	Okay.
	Do you think that it was a good idea to get involved in this long-distance relationship with the person in Scotland?
	Well, initially I thought that he was a cis guy.
	No, no, no, no, no, no.
	He gave up all the nice ties.
	Now looking back at the last six or seven years and you're still hung up on this person.
	So now looking back, do you think that it was A good idea.
	In other words, if you could give yourself advice at the age of 21 or 22, would you say, yes, go ahead with this online relationship, or no, this is probably not a good idea?
	I thought you were referring to the beginning, but that clears it up.
	I think that it was very valuable, actually.
	I think that I shouldn't have walked away from somebody that I felt that kind of spark for because I don't think that comes around very often.
	So I think it was good, but I probably shouldn't be wasting so much of my time currently because the past couple of years have been kind of stagnant.
	Okay, so you do view it as a good and positive thing, even though it has burned up like half your reproductive lifespan.
	It has indeed.
	I've actually written about that recently somewhere.
	Yeah, that's another one of these stressing factors.
	So again, I'm not trying to lead you on.
	I just so you still do view it as a positive in your life, even though you're kind of heartbroken and you basically spent six or seven years in pursuit of something that has turned to nothing.
	I still view it as a positive.
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	And what were the virtues of this person that you admired and respected so much?
	I think he's just like he's an intelligent and cuts through to the truth just like you and people like you.
	Well, but he did hide the trans thing for quite some time, right?
	I don't think he hid it for very long.
	Like, um, well, you said did you already fallen in love?
	It makes sense that he wouldn't like, it makes sense that he wouldn't like introduce himself with that.
	Well, but I think you said that you'd already fallen from him by the time you found out.
	Do I have that right?
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	So, I mean, if you did want to have kids and have a sort of more traditional or old-timey or old-schooly kind of relationship, then that would be something important to talk about sooner rather than later, wouldn't you say?
	Yes, it was my mistake to kind of like make assumptions that wouldn't someone sends that.
	Well, no, no, I'm not saying that.
	Hang on.
	I'm not blaming you.
	I'm just saying that if this person has a sincere or serious dedication to the truth, then they should have been more upfront, particularly when romantic feelings started creeping in, wouldn't you say?
	I guess so.
	But I was only one at the time.
	No, but let's say that you and I met online.
	And let's say that I was infertile.
	And you said that the thing that I want the most in this life is to have a big family, right?
	And I don't want to adopt.
	Yeah.
	Right.
	Now, if I knew that I was infertile, should I tell you that the moment that any sort of romantic interest starts to emerge?
	Yeah, that's true.
	Indeed.
	Okay.
	So what else did you admire about this person?
	I suppose on to your last point a little bit.
	I suppose that there was at least one time that I can think of that I asked him a question that he kind of didn't answer because it pertained to male things.
	And now, you know, later I realized why he couldn't answer that, but no, no, no, not couldn't.
	Yeah, he has been a little bit more.
	No, no, no, no, no, not couldn't.
	Not couldn't.
	Like if somebody speaks to me in Japanese, I cannot answer in Japanese.
	That's a different matter, right?
	He could have.
	Oh, you mean, I think I get what you mean.
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	Is there anything else in particular that you admired?
	Because, you know, for me, love is our involuntary response to virtue, if we're virtuous.
	And so I'm just kind of curious about the moral values that this person manifested, the moral virtues that this person manifested that would cause this kind of admiration and love.
	He was pretty academically inclined.
	He seemed and is intelligent.
	He, you know, could kind of like flow in conversation.
	It was fun.
	He was also flirty, but the way that he was flirty was like, I think he perceived that as something that you can just generally do.
	And on my side, I took that to mean more.
	And he took it to mean less, I think, since he was a more like open person when it comes to like social media.
	Okay, but none of these are virtues.
	I mean, the fact that he was fun and academic and smart, I mean, those aren't bad things, but you can be fun, academic, and smart and a terrible person.
	I'm not saying that he is a terrible person, but uh, I'm looking for moral virtues.
	Oh, um, I suppose he does um view kind of like all of humanity under his like wing, sort of.
	So that could be in way of virtue, but I didn't really value the virtues that much.
	Like, he's more of a virtuous person than I am to this day.
	Hmm.
	Okay.
	Yeah.
	All right.
	Well, I appreciate the conversation.
	Is there anything else that you wanted to mention?
	Um, um, uh, it's, it's too hard to wrap my head around it.
	So I think that's fine.
	Okay.
	Well, listen, I really do appreciate your time.
	Uh, in general, I would say that look for virtues.
	I guess it's been a kind of theme, right?
	I guess over the course of the conversation.
	Look for virtues in the people because love requires consistency, integrity, and love requires security.
	And the only way you're going to get security out of people is to focus on their virtues.
	And maybe you could name some virtues that I should look out for.
	Sorry.
	Oh, name some virtues?
	Yeah, sure.
	So I mean, so if you are getting involved with people, then they need to be sensitive to what it is that you're looking for in life and see if they can provide it.
	So when my wife and I first started dating, she said, I'm looking to get married and have kids.
	And if you're not looking for that, you're an attractive guy, like you a lot.
	But if you're not looking for that, let me know now.
	And so I was like, yeah, I want to get married and have kids.
	Love kids.
	I was worked at a daycare and all of that.
	So, all right.
	That's another thing.
	I feel like a lot of guys will just say that they have the same interests as you and then they won't.
	Well, but that's where you look for evidence, right?
	So you would look for evidence, such as if somebody says, you know, I love kids and so on, then you, you, you know, I'm sure somebody in their family has kids, right?
	So you'd go and visit those people and see how he is with kids, see if the kids like him, see if he gets along well with kids and enjoys their company and so on, right?
	And so there's lots of ways that you can sort of validate these things and get some sort of proof.
	And of course, what you want to do with people is you want to see, is there a gap between their self-image and what they're doing, right?
	So if somebody has a very elevated view of themselves, like they think they're all that and a slice of ham, then you would look to see some kind of achievement in their life.
	Now, that doesn't have to be, you know, that they've, you know, been an Oscar or something like that.
	So if somebody says, oh, yeah, no, I think I'm a, I think I'm a really good writer, that doesn't mean that they have been published 10 times or even once, but you then should say, I'd love to read some of the stuff you wrote.
	And if it's bad, then you kind of have to be honest with them and say, so, you know, the only way that you can really get stability in relationships is when your self-image is roughly in accordance with what you're actually doing in life.
	Vanity is when you think you're great, but you don't want to put yourself to the test of that, right?
	So if somebody says, oh, yeah, I've always wanted, I think I'd be a great actor, blah, blah, blah.
	I've always wanted to do it.
	It's like, it's pretty easy.
	Just go and audition for some community theater and go do some acting.
	It's pretty easy to do.
	You can even just do it with a webcam and put it online and do all kinds of stuff with that.
	Right.
	Or if somebody says, oh, I've always wanted to be a painter.
	It's like, oh, let me see your paintings.
	Well, I haven't done any.
	It's like, okay, well, so there's lots of ways, particularly when you get into your mid to late 20s, then you want to look at people's self-image and see how closely it accords with what they're actually doing in life.
	And I definitely see what you mean.
	And I agree.
	Yeah.
	So when I, you know, so with this fellow or this, this person from Scotland, you know, you should have asked them, you know, do you want to get married and have kids?
	And, you know, figure out what would be best for you.
	Because if you care about people, you want to do what is best for them, right?
	I mean, oh, yes.
	But at some point, like, when you are in this kind of like deeply, deeply like kind of like, not in love necessarily, but like infatuated, you kind of put your own ideas to the wayside sometimes.
	I see this pop up with a couple other people as well.
	Well, sure, But then somebody who really cares about you will have you not do that.
	Right?
	If somebody cares about you, they won't want you to lose your identity in the relationship with them.
	They'll always want to know what you think, what your thoughts are, what your preferences are.
	They will welcome disagreement because that's where growth occurs.
	So if there's this kind of infatuation and you find yourself kind of sliding into invisibility or conforming like water poured into an unfashionable container to somebody else's preferences, that's a sign that there may be some level of exploitation going on because people who really care about you don't want you to conform to them.
	They want you to be yourself because you can't love somebody who just conforms.
	It's like falling in love with the mirror and thinking you can make a baby with shards of glass.
	So I would say, yeah, look for these kinds of things.
	Looks for someone who genuinely wants to know what you think.
	Look for someone whose self-image matches what they're doing.
	Like when I met my wife, I said, you know, I want to write.
	I really like my writing and I was working on books.
	I'd already had a book published.
	And, you know, so there was some conformity between, you know, what it is that I was doing and what it is that I felt I could do or wanted to do.
	Whereas if people just daydream and have all these thoughts and don't actually really achieve much, it's going to be kind of exhausting propping up those delusions after a while.
	And when people aren't honest and direct and blunt with themselves, it gets tiresome and tiring.
	So, all right.
	Well, listen, I really appreciate everyone's time today.
	Have yourself an absolutely wonderful afternoon, my friends.
	We will speak to you Wednesday night, freedomain.com/slash donate.
	If you find these, come on, this is one of a kind kind of conversations.
	You know, you can't get this anywhere else.
	Freedomain.com slash donate to show a little love, to show a little thanks for the tens of thousands of hours I bought into being able to be articulate and useful in these topics.
	So freedomain.com/slash donate.
	Bye, everybody.
	Have a beautiful afternoon.
	Lots of love from up here.

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