Feb. 11, 2026 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
35:52
Breaking With Your Family? Costs and Benefits
Dr. Drew Pinsky explores how toxic, unchanging family dynamics—rooted in long-term abuse and corruption—force painful separation as a last resort for psychological survival, comparing dysfunctional relatives to apex predators that repel good people and healthy relationships. Studies show 70% of potential partners avoid those entangled in such toxicity, yet compliance often brings short-term relief at the cost of lifelong isolation, stifling happiness. Ultimately, cutting ties isn’t selfish but necessary for a "glorious, beautiful future," especially to protect children from harm. [Automatically generated summary]
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So somebody, a lady, asked me, how do you deal with or feel about or process family separation?
If you have a sort of relentlessly abusive family of origin situation, which I'm incredibly sorry about and sympathetic towards, and my general recommendation for 21 years has been the same, which is if you have issues with your parents, sit down and talk to them or your sibling or whoever, aunt, uncles, whoever you have the big issue with.
Sit down, talk to them.
If it's safe to do so, tell them your issues and try to negotiate or resolve some peace between you.
And you can keep trying that.
If you keep getting rejected, at some point, you'll come to the sad or tragic realization, if you keep getting rejected, that you're just not going to get your perspective across and they're not going to listen and they're not going to be better and they're not going to do the right thing.
And that's really sad.
It's not your fault.
People who've done wrong for a long time lose the ability to listen.
Their conscience has become so predatory and negative in their mind that they can't possibly listen to you.
It becomes a matter of psychological survival to continue to deny the requirement for empathy and the need to talk and listen to other people.
So it's not your fault.
It's the result of a long period of corruption and falsehood.
And if you are going to take the step to put distance or separate yourself from family, whether temporarily or permanently, it's hard to tell at the beginning because you don't know how drawing that boundary is going to affect things.
I again strongly, strongly recommend engaging with a good therapist.
Of course, saying good is kind of pointless.
What I mean by that is engaging with a therapist who has some experience and sympathy towards this kind of thing.
Because a lot of therapists will say, well, you know, family is primary and family is family.
And if they're Christian in particular, onto their mother and their father.
And it's not a voluntary relationship.
It is a sort of permanent engraved.
You've got to find some way to make it continue.
You can't separate.
And it's funny, too, because, of course, the same behaviors that would have a therapist support you separating from a spouse, a lot of therapists will not support you separating from parents.
Which, I mean, again, to sort of know this logically, you know, peacefulparenting.com, you know this logically.
That's crazy.
I mean, that's beyond crazy.
You are responsible for choosing your spouse.
You've got to test drive your spouse.
You got to date, get engaged, and so on.
You never got to test drive your parents.
You never chose your parents.
And so people say, well, the relationships that you choose have relatively low bars for exiting, but the relationships you never chose and that were inflicted upon you against your will, or at least not with your permission and approval, well, you have to stay forever, which is like saying to a woman, well, you can leave a violent or abusive husband.
No problem.
In fact, it's good to do that.
But if it is an arranged marriage, like if you chose him, you could leave him.
If it's an arranged marriage with a guy you never chose, well, you have to stay.
Like that wouldn't make that makes less than no sense, of course.
Like we all understand that.
So yeah, engage with a therapist.
And, you know, you can usually have a free consult or talk to them for a little bit and say, look, I'm going through issues with my family and I've been trying for quite some time to work them out.
It's not going anywhere productive.
And I'm really considering a family separation.
F-O-O stands for family of origin.
So, you know, if you're a married woman and you're talking about your family, are you talking about your current family, like your husband and kids, or your parents?
So F-O-O stands for family of origin.
A defu is when you take a break or draw the boundaries of separation from your family origin.
Again, if it's safe, really try to work it out with them and engage with a therapist to go through the process because it's a difficult process.
It's a last resort process.
It's a pretty horrible process to go through.
It's better than staying, in my opinion, in an abusive relationship.
I hope that's not too, you know, I think people jump out of marriages a little fast.
I think that they harden their hearts and jump out of marriages a little fast.
Like most people who are thinking of divorce and then they end up not getting divorced, most people, you know, five years later, they're happy that they stay married.
So I think people do jump out of relationships, marriages in particular, particularly if they're kids a little too soon because they blame the other person and they don't take ownership or try and get to the root of why they chose such a person.
They just say, oh, you know, this other person is bad.
And I've been doing this since I was, gosh, in my teens.
Like the woman says, oh, my boyfriend doesn't do this and doesn't do that.
It's like, well, but you chose him.
You chose him.
You chose him.
I mean, you weren't assigned him by the fates or the gods.
And, you know, especially if she's like a reasonably attractive woman, you know, like a four or five plus, it's like, you know, you can pretty much date whoever you want.
There's lots of guys who would want to date you.
Like, why would you be with a guy and then complain about him?
Like, that has never made much sense.
That's never made much sense to me.
I mean, my mother would complain about my father.
And it's like, yeah, but you chose him.
I mean, my mother was very attractive.
And guys were always chasing her.
Like, it was a continual process.
So why would you complain about something that you voluntarily chose and pursued?
And I mean, it's the old analogy.
Like I could have had any car in the world, right?
I won the lottery.
I could have had any car in the world.
It was kind of like being an attractive woman, right?
Young woman.
I could have had any car in the world.
And I test drove a whole bunch of different cars, you know, five, 10 different cars.
And then I got this car and I got to test drive this car and take it home and, you know, use it on a permanent basis for like a year or two or three.
And then I finally, you know, I signed a least to buy the car.
I can't stand this car.
I could have had any car or no car.
Free.
This is the car I chose.
I got to test drive it.
And then I hate this car.
Like you're just hating your own choices.
You're just hating your own choices.
So how do you sort of process the family separation?
So it's a principle of economics.
I mean, the morality I've sort of gone over a bunch of times before.
And this is in peaceful parenting to some degree.
But the morality is, well, no, you don't have to.
There are no unchosen positive obligations.
Like if you choose to sign a contract, you're responsible for fully fulfilling for fulfilling the contract or renegotiating it in some way, but you volunteer.
But there's no voluntary unchosen positive obligations, right?
So you have negative obligations like don't steal, rape, murder, assault people, right?
There are unchosen negative obligations.
There are no unchosen positive obligations.
And family is unchosen.
Family is unchosen.
You did not choose your family.
You did not choose to be born there.
You did not choose their behavior.
You did not choose their company.
You did not choose to be part of the family.
And there are no unchosen positive obligations.
I think there's fairness, right?
I mean, if your parents are good to you, then I think it's reasonable to be good back.
I think if your parents do things that you're grateful for, I think expressing that gratitude is helpful and important.
And if your parents are of value to you, they give you good advice.
They listen, they care.
I think it's reasonable to provide, you know, but again, there's no unchosen positive obligations.
Again, I've been saying this for like, I mean, 40 years plus, but 2021 publicly.
Or I guess in my 22nd year, technically, my show can now drink in every state of the union.
So as far as the morals go, yeah, you don't have any obligation to stay in relentlessly abusive relationships.
Abusive relationships are where it's win-lose, where there's intimidation, aggression, name-calling, raised voices, physical violence, obviously, where if you try to be honest or try to be vulnerable, try to be open or try to be direct, that there's an escalation, aggression, put-downs.
You know, you get called stupid or selfish, and there's only a cessation of aggression if you mindlessly comply and praise and pretend that the relationship is something other than what it is, which is bossiness, dominance, exploitation, and threat, right?
Don't be in relationships under threat.
Threats, of course, are the opposite of love, in the same way that theft is like the opposite of charity and rape is the opposite of lovemaking and so on.
If honesty and directness brings hostility and abuse, it is a very negative relationship.
Inflation's Invisible Hand00:03:11
And look, I mean, maybe we can all be snappy from time to time, but I'm talking about like consistent and so on, not an outlier that is against the general standards and processes of the relationship and apologies are made and it's recognized as a divergence.
And I'm like, I'm sorry, I was snappy.
That was, you know, whatever.
So, you know, again, we don't have to be perfect, but you do have to have standards in relationships that you generally will try to maintain, right?
And if you don't maintain them, you can be called out on that divergence, right?
So the morals, I think we understand.
There's a principle of economics that's really important.
Bad money drives out good money.
Like if good money is gold and people are just wildly printing a bunch of paper currency, then the bad currency will drive out the good currency.
The bad currency will shoulder aside and displace the good currency because people won't want to spend the good currency because the bad currency is not worth holding on to.
And as you print more and more bad currency, the gold gets more and more valuable.
So people tend to hold on to it and it goes out of circulation.
So bad money drives out good money and there's a lot more to it, but that's sort of basic idea.
And in the same way, in economics, or sort of another principle is economics focuses not on the visible benefits, but on the unseen costs.
So the harder to see costs.
So of course, if the government prints a bunch of money, it stimulates a bunch of economic activity.
If the government taxes a bunch of money and makes a bunch of jobs, everyone says, ooh, economic activity is stimulated.
And oh, look at all these government jobs that we now have.
Those are the visible benefits.
The invisible costs, of course, are that if the government is printing a bunch of money, then inflation is harming people's savings.
And then they have to try and work to protect those savings.
And that is usually malinvestment or investment in things that, like if in a free market, you wouldn't invest in something, but in order to protect your money from being swallowed up piecemeal by inflation, you end up investing in stuff.
That's a malinvestment.
It's a bad investment.
It's a negative investment.
It's sort of like saying if you have a local prison or asylum full of dangerous people and they just turn them all out into the streets of a small town and then everyone has to go and get bars on the window and double locks and security cameras and so on.
Well, that's a malinvestment, right?
They should just keep the criminals and the crazy people in the prison and the asylum.
And then you don't need to spend all this money to protect yourself and build fences and hire, get alarm systems and security cameras and rapid response security teams and all of that.
It's malinvestment.
It's bad investment.
The government creates a bunch of jobs by taxing people.
You say, oh, look at these jobs, but you don't see all the jobs that weren't created that would actually be useful, helpful, and sustainable.
You don't see that.
So it's looking at the hidden costs rather than the visible benefits.
Immediate Relief From Hostile Families00:04:39
Now, if you have negative, difficult, abusive, like relentlessly, I'm just going to say negative parents.
I'm not going to say parents.
It doesn't mean parents who annoy you from time to time.
Like everybody annoys each other from time to time, except me, massively perfect.
So I'm talking about like you've gone through the process and you just have a really bad, negative, insulting, destructive family around.
So if you have those people in your life, then the benefit is you don't arouse their ire or their hostility or their abuses or insults or whatever.
You don't arouse their enmity, hostility, and aggression by complying, right?
You're complying.
So they smile and they nod and they have you over for Thanksgiving and Christmas and 4th of July and Easter or whatever it's going on, right?
Oh, it's good to chat to them and, you know, whatever.
So because you're appeasing the bad people, then you don't have that conflict, right?
You appease people, you know, like some guy sticks a knife in your ribs and says, give me your wallet or I'll stab you.
Give him your wallet.
You've appeased him and he won't stab you, hopefully, right?
But it's not good.
It's just not as bad as it could be.
And of course, people with drugs, right, they go through withdrawal and they feel desperately unhappy and like stick insects or spiders are crawling through their spines is horribly uncomfortable and so on.
And so they take the drug to feel better, right?
Alcoholics get delirium tremens, I think it's called DTs and nicotine addicts get stress and anxiety when they quit smoking and so on, right?
So you're appeasing your withdrawal by taking the drug.
Again, the alcohol or the opiates or nicotine or food can be food, right?
Or whatever, right?
Gambling.
So what's present in addiction is I feel better, or at least I don't feel terrible.
So there's relief.
That's the immediate benefit.
Of course, the not so hidden cost is all the negatives that accrue with all of that, like sex addicts and pregnancies and stalkers and STDs and depression and anxiety, lack of love and so on.
So with abusive families of origin, of course, there are benefits to compliance and those are pretty vivid.
Like if you think about having honest conversations with hostile parents or aggressive parents or abusive parents, it's very stressful and you feel anxiety and fear and all of that.
And so to comply and to conform makes sense, right?
Because you get immediate cessation of anxiety by complying with the demands and requirements of hostile or abusive people, right?
So it's a big plus.
Of course, the problem is not the visible benefits, but the hidden costs.
So the visible benefits, the immediate benefits are, I feel really stressful about being honest with my abusive parents.
But if I say, okay, I'm not going to do that.
I'm not going to have that conversation.
I'm not going to do that.
Then I feel better.
I feel relief.
I feel, ooh, thank goodness, right?
I feel happier.
I go.
And maybe there's a little bit of residual depression afterwards, just as there is with an addict who goes gambles and goes has meaningless sex or gets drunk or takes the opiate.
There's sort of a depression afterwards.
Oh, I can't believe I'm back here.
But there's an immediate cessation of stress and anxiety or negatives.
And so with abusive or negative or hostile families, then the problem is that it's not the presence of the relief from conformity and compliance and the reduction or elimination of aggression and hostility and insults, which are particularly triggering, of course, and unpleasant because you have that history with these kinds of people.
But that's a benefit that's clear.
But the problem is who's not there because the abusive people are there.
So abusive people, and particularly in the family of origin, abusive people are these sort of giant fiery moats that surround you and keep healthy people away.
If I had still been enmeshed in my family of origin when I met the woman who became my wife, she wouldn't have become my wife because she wouldn't, particularly as an experienced mental health professional, she wouldn't have wanted to spend the next couple of decades with my family of origin, to put it mildly, right?
Outside View Matters00:14:53
So we may have met, we may have even had a date or two, but I mean, she wouldn't, she wouldn't have, she wouldn't have stuck around.
And I'm sure, look, I'm sure you've had that experience too, where you, you meet someone, they seem, you know, fun, attractive, charming, or whatever, good conversation, listen, you have a lot in common, but then you meet their family or whatever, and it's like, oh, that's, that's bad.
And, you know, if you're wise, then you look and you say, oh, gosh, well, I don't really want to spend the next couple of decades in this situation.
Boy, that's no good.
And I don't want these people around when I'm raising my kids.
And I don't want to, you know, and again, if you're particularly, I mean, you want people who are going to think in the long term.
And if you think of the long term and you say, well, you know, these people are difficult now, right?
They're going to be even more cantankerous when they get old.
And then they're going to get old and they're going to spend like 10 years needing or more, like needing support and care and they're going to get sick and, you know, whatever, right?
And they're difficult now.
They're not going to get any easier when they get sick and old and all that kind of stuff.
Right.
So there are people who look at you and either directly or indirectly or through the effects or through the conversation or through meeting your family directly, they're like, nope, nope, nope.
Nice guy, nice woman, can't do it.
Won't do it.
Especially if they've resolved, if they've had difficult upbringing, they've resolved it themselves.
Maybe their parents have reformed and gone to therapy or they've done family therapy or whatever.
Maybe they've also defued or whatever.
But it's the people who aren't there because of who is there.
Right.
I mean, if you see a cute woman at the mall or whatever, right?
And whatever, you share a smile and you're thinking of going up to talk to her.
And then, you know, some six foot six, heavily tattooed, shaved head boyfriend comes up and starts grabbing her, then you're not going to go and talk to her.
Right.
So because the boyfriend is there, you're not talking to her.
So I've even not talked to a girl who seemed, you know, sort of healthy and normal and so on.
If even if she has a friend who's heavily tattooed and, you know, had shaved half her head or whatever it is, I'm like, nope, because this is who she chooses to have as a friend.
And so the compatibility, I was just not going to be there.
Compatibility is going to be very low and it's just not going to work.
Because your parents, for better or for worse, indifferent in the middle or whatever, your parents are your past, right?
They are part of your past.
They're going to die before you with any luck.
They were your origin story.
They were formative in your early years and so on.
So your parents are your past.
And boyfriend, girlfriend, fiancé, spouse, mother, father of your children, they're your future.
You're not going to grow old with your parents.
You're going to grow old with your spouse.
You're not going to have children with your parents.
You're going to have children with your spouse.
And you're not going to go through life with your parents.
You're going to go through life with your spouse.
So your parents represent the unchosen and the ancient, the old, the historical, right?
The circumstances.
Your parents don't represent you.
They've shaped you, of course, to some degree, although genetics are pretty strong this way.
So your parents have shaped you to some degree, but they don't represent your choice.
They don't represent any kind of choice that you've made.
I mean, the choice to, you know, navigate or negotiate what's going on with your parents is a reactive choice.
It's not the same as a free will choice like you have with who you date, which is anyone or no one.
I mean, anyone you can get, obviously.
So you look at your parents and there's a familiarity, whether positive or negative.
It's never neutral, right?
Positive or negative.
There's a familiarity with your parents.
And one of the tests of empathy that is really important in life is can someone look at you looking at them, right?
I'm very aware that when I do a show, I have a particular sort of like a monologue speech like this, how it's going to land for the other person, right?
The other person doesn't have my history.
They don't have my mind.
They don't have my reference points.
So I need to know whether I'm introducing something out of nowhere and building the case from first principles.
Like I sort of have to be very aware of how what it is that I'm saying is going to go into your mind.
I think I'm pretty good at that as a whole.
Obviously not perfect.
So your familiarity and your sense of obligation to your destructive or abusive parents, if that's what they are, your utility, right?
The fact that you feel better complying because they won't aggress against you, right?
That is your experience.
So you get a benefit from complying with your parents and having them in your life, which is to avoid a confrontation that would get ugly and difficult and so on.
And you avoid a certain potential loneliness or isolation and so on because you've got places to go, birthdays, anniversaries, Christmases, christenings, again, sort of New Year's or Fourth of July or whatever.
You've got barbecues and you've got places to go and you've got a place that you're the door's always going to be open.
There's always going to be people there and so on, right?
So you have all of that.
So there's benefit to you, for sure, right?
But one of the big challenges in life is to look at yourself from the outside in.
I mean, some people who are listening to this have listened to thousands of shows and know what I'm talking about and are annoyed that I'm overexplaining.
Other people have not, you know, this may be something that they're listening to for the first time.
They've never heard anything from me.
And I have to sort of walk that line.
You know, if I was a professor and I was teaching some postgraduate course, then there would be a certain amount of knowledge that I would assume and have in my students.
Like I would assume my students have knowledge, right?
Because there's prerequisites.
You have to have taken this, this, and this, and passed this, this, and this course in order to, right?
So I'm speaking to the world and I sort of have to balance things, which is why sometimes, of course, people think, oh, my gosh, why is he repeating and overexplaining?
And other people are like, well, no, it's going too fast, right?
So sorry.
I just was trying to walk that line.
And of course, I'm also aware that people can snip and take things out of context.
So I try not to give too many sequences of syllables that can reverse my meaning and so on, right?
If I'm imitating a bad guy, I will say, so says the bad guy, like in the middle, right?
Which, you know, it's not perfect, but, or use a different voice or something like that.
So people will get that sense.
It's just, you know, sort of a basic, not too costly, street smarts kind of way of talking.
So if you have, you know, difficult, dysfunctional, destructive parents, and you keep them in your life and you date, then the big challenge is to say, well, what is it that happens?
Or how does somebody else perceive my family coming in from the outside?
But no history, with no allegiance, no benefit, and so on.
And this is one of the things that I have for 20 plus years been really trying to get people to understand that if someone cares about you and your parents have done you great harm, they will dislike your parents.
And the degree of their liking of you will be matched, if not exceeded by the degree of their disliking for their parents, right?
So you've heard me say this to people when it comes to like if you hired a babysitter who, you know, if their parents beat them when they were little, said you hire a babysitter, you come home and you see you had a nanny cam or something and you saw that the babysitter was beating your little boy, your little girl, then people are full of like this rage or this anger.
And it's like, okay, but you were that little boy.
And what I'm trying to do is get them to see their life from the outside.
Because you cannot have a relationship with anyone if you cannot see how they see you.
You cannot have a relationship with anyone if you cannot see how they see you.
So if you're trying to sell a house and you love your house and you've got all these great memories and so on, well, other people don't have those great memories.
Other people, it's just a house, right?
It's just a house.
So the real estate agent will look at the house with an outside eye, right?
That's the general idea, right?
With no history.
Someone's walking in with no history, no sweet memories, no, oh, that's where, you know, I first brought my baby and put her down in that corner.
Other people, it's just a room, right?
So people will help you see this from the outside.
You can't have a successful job interview if you can't model how the other person is viewing you.
You can't have any successful economic interactions if you can't have any successful economic interactions if you can't model how other people view you.
You know your entire work history, blah, blah, blah.
But you're just some guy walking into your boss's office or your potential boss's office or the interviewer's office.
So somebody you want to date, right?
Let's say you're a guy and there's this woman, Sally, and you want to date Sally and you've got a difficult, destructive, dysfunctional family.
Well, how does it benefit Sally that you have this family?
Like we understand it benefits you because you get to avoid conflict or abuse or escalation or aggression or whatever, right?
By complying and so on, right?
And shutting up and right.
So we understand that it benefits you.
Like you understand that.
How does it benefit Sally to have your family in her life?
That's the big question from the outside because she's got no history.
She's got no allegiance.
She's got no there's no benefit to her of having this situation in her life.
What is the benefit to her of having this situation in her life?
So you will have the urge to have Sally comply with your crazy parents or your abusive parents.
Oh, they mean well.
Oh, they're not so bad.
Oh, you just caught them on a bad day.
Oh, blah, right?
Oh, don't be so judgmental.
Oh, nobody's perfect.
Oh, they're doing the best they can with the knowledge they have, blah, blah, blah, right?
You know, all the usual mealymouth stuff.
But if you can't see yourself and your family from the outside in with somebody who has no allegiance, right?
This is the theory of mind.
I might do a whole series on this theory of mind stuff, right?
I'm pretty good with theory of mind because I write a lot of different fictional characters and do these role plays with people I've barely met and are often, you know, I would say staggeringly accurate or whatever, right?
Or at least what people say, and I agree with them.
You know, when people praise me, I tend to fall in line.
But I'm pretty good with theory of mind stuff, and you have to have a deep understanding of how you look from the outside in, right?
So another thing that I've said to people for like decades is: if you met your mother at a dinner party, you met your mother at a dinner party, she wasn't your mother, you just happened to sit next to her at a dinner party.
So if you meet your, if you met your mother at a dinner party, would you want to see her again?
Would you like, oh, we should exchange numbers.
So it'd be great to catch up again.
Or I really had a people were like, oh my God, I think she's nuts, right?
It's like, okay.
So one of the reasons, so that's a theory of mind thing.
One of the reasons I say that is that that's the view from someone you're dating.
They're just sitting down with no history at a dinner party with your mother and they're going to have that opinion.
And if that opinion is, oh my God, they're crazy.
This person is crazy, right?
Well, then that's their perspective and opinion.
They do not get a benefit from having your crazy parents in their lives, assuming their parents are healthy, which I'm sure they are, at least if they've defood, if it's not, if it's unhealthy and they couldn't fix it.
So that's the question, right?
So how do you process all of that?
You process all of that by realizing what it costs you to have highly dysfunctional, destructive people in your life.
It costs you having good people in your life.
They are an effective antidote to potential virtue.
They are a fiery, three-headed, acid-breathing pit bull constantly guarding your future from any competent, successful, healthy, moral people.
Evildoers keep virtuous people away.
It is impossible.
It's like enter, it's like opposing magnets or enter antimatter and matter, right?
You cannot have good people and evil or amoral people in the same social circle, in the same environment.
It's same planet, different worlds.
They do not coexist.
They do not commingle.
They are inevitable enemies.
And I'm not kidding about any of this.
They are inevitable enemies.
It's like having an exhibit at an aquarium.
It's like, hey, I got a great idea.
We'll do hungry great white sharks and we will also do baby seals.
And people would tell you, you can't do that because the sharks will eat the seals, right?
Or this would be more accurately as you can't have two apex predators jammed in the same cage, especially if there are females around because they'll just fight each other tooth and nail, right?
So good people and corrupt people are natural enemies.
They're like two subspecies.
They both cannot inhabit the same space for very long.
One will drive out the other.
One will drive out the other.
Ambitious young male lions and the alpha male lion are natural enemies.
They cannot coexist for long in the same space because one will drive out the other.
And so if you have corrupt, abusive, negative, difficult, destructive parents, they will drive away good people from your environment or the good people will drive your parents away from their potential family.
If there's a good man, you're a woman, there's a good man, he loves you enough, he finds you compelling, interesting enough, wonderful enough, great conversationalist, sexy, or goddess, whatever, right?
Good People vs. Destructive Ones00:04:00
But you have destructive and difficult people in your life, dysfunctional, nasty people in your life, then he will attempt to extract you from that situation.
If he succeeds, great.
He saved you.
If he doesn't succeed, he will regretfully and sadly and with a broken heart leave you behind because good people cannot sit down and break bread with evildoers and evildoers sense good people as their natural enemies and will attempt to harm, destroy, attack, or divide you.
Good people are an active plague and thorn and heartburn and migraine to evildoers.
They, for a short burst of time, like you can pretend to be a fish by swimming underwater for a minute, maybe, but you've got to come back to the surface, they can fake normality for a short period of time, but they do so resentfully, and it creates massive blowback over time.
They will make you pay.
So how do you process this kind of stuff, family separations and so on?
What you do, I think, at least what I did, and I think there's good reasons for it.
I've sort of tried to describe those principles, is recognizing that you can't have good people in your life if you have bad people in your life.
Because what happens is you have the confrontation, you go through the separation or whatever it is, painful, difficult.
You got the therapy and therapist helping you along.
It's difficult and painful.
Sure, okay.
But if you're an addict, you can only hang out with other addicts or enablers.
You can't hang out with healthy people because healthy people do not want to spend time around addicts.
You say, well, what's the point of quitting?
How do I process quitting?
Well, you realize it's incredibly destructive to be an addict and it keeps healthy people away from you.
You can't be loved.
You can't be content.
You can't be happy.
You can't be at peace.
You can't be a good parent, a good friend, a good lover, a good husband, a good boyfriend, girlfriend, whatever.
You can't be good at anything if you're surrounded by corruption.
You can't be virtuous and therefore you can't be loved.
You can't be at peace.
Therefore, you can't be happy.
And so if you lose something and you focus on the loss, then you will feel bad, negative, whatever, right?
I mean, if you have a cyst, right, and you have to have that cyst removed, you know, it's an unpleasant little procedure or whatever, right?
And if you sit there and say, oh, my God, I've lost an important part of myself.
That cyst is, you know, my best friend.
I mean, sort of taking a silly example.
But you say, okay, well, that's good.
I have the cyst out and I can go on with my life and it's gone and whatever it is, right?
But this is much stronger than that because a dysfunctional family are like rapid, dangerous, eternal guard dogs that keep quality people away because people don't want to see you getting harmed.
People who care about you, who are good, don't want to see you getting harmed.
And they won't do it any more than would you like to see someone you really care about hitting themselves in the face with a little ball peen hammer.
No, you'd be like, stop, stop.
Oh, God, what are you doing?
Right.
And you would hate to see that.
And if it was somebody else hitting them in the face with a little ball peen hammer, you'd hate that person too.
So to be loved is to have the person who loves you dislike the people who harm you.
They will be natural enemies.
And to let the past that you never chose that is hateful, immoral, and dysfunctional in nature, to let that win over a glorious, beautiful, loving future.
That is not something to be mourned.
I get that it's sad, I get that it's difficult, but it's not something to be mourned in the long run.
It is an essential process for developing a moral, happy, healthy existence.
And of course, the last thing I'll say here, the people who benefit from eliminating relationships with evildoers in your life is your children.