Feb. 13, 2026 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
02:12:09
Should I Date Women Who Want Money? Call In
Dating for Status or Security? Caller from a Baptist upbringing grappled with a woman who demanded $5K–$10K/month income before commitment, offering only performative companionship—like "peacocking" at events—while cycling back to her ex and ignoring his emotional needs. The speaker, raised by a screaming mother and emotionally absent father, equated her lack of reciprocity with childhood trauma bonds, dismissing empathy as innate rather than learned. Honesty now repels his toxic social circle, forcing a choice between superficial attraction and sustainable connections. His daughter’s peaceful upbringing contrasts sharply with the church’s unchallenged authoritarian parenting norms, proving accountability over blind faith is the path forward. [Automatically generated summary]
And the message was a little ambiguous, which is totally fine.
But I'm happy to dig in.
Right.
So just for a little bit of context, last week on the Sunday call, I was trying to connect with you through the Rumble thing and it just wasn't, it was flapping.
It was terrible.
So we were doing, I put out there, relationships are greater than power, which is an idea that I've been trying to work out and noodle out.
And I think it draws more from like my experience where I grew up in this like power transaction, you know, scenario, like society even.
Like it was church, Baptist background.
Everything was like performative and there was a lot of neglect.
So the there was no connection.
I don't think there was really any relationship.
It was all performance based.
So when I say relationships are greater than power, it's really just talking about the connection you have with another person.
And it doesn't matter if it's like man, woman, man, man, woman, woman.
Like it, it's universal to all relationships.
And the idea, I kind of drew it out.
One of the things that you taught me is truth is at the foundation of all relationships.
And this whole thing, it depends on truth.
Like you cannot have a relationship unless you are honest and truthful with people.
So I drew a line across this, just like imagine I drew a line across the center of a page.
Truth is that line.
Relationships are above the line.
Beneath the line is a triangle.
And the point of the triangle hits that line of truth, meaning like you can always go back to that pinnacle of truth.
But as soon as you start lying, you descend into the, I call it the pyramid of dysfunction underneath of it, where there, it comes to the point of truth, but beneath that, it could expand out and it's kind of like choose your own adventure of dysfunction.
And I look at that and I say, all right, people who have relationships with other people who are sitting in a dysfunctional relationship, like let's just say people are verbally abusive, right?
And I lived this myself in my own marriage, where you're fighting about something, but you're not ever resolving anything.
I would argue or speculate rather that you are lying about something with your partner and you're not discussing that and the emotions just bottle up and then you explode.
And I just call that you're just sitting on a ledge of this triangle.
You've chosen to lie about something and then that's where it sits.
And people who can have functional relationships, you can still have a relationship in a way, but you're just interfacing within that power structure.
That makes sense.
Just trying to articulate this and it seems to fit.
So I just wanted your brain on this idea because one of the critiques you said last week is, yeah, relationships are great, but you still got to eat.
Like you still have to have this material interaction.
So I don't know.
I'm being very, I'm having a lot of random thoughts right now.
No, that's listen.
That's, that's philosophy.
I have no problem with that.
And I'm happy to help articulate the idea.
If that's, I mean, is that what you want out of the call?
I want to make sure we do a maximum value for you.
I want to refine this idea.
I want to poke holes in it, destroy it if it's garbage, you know.
Also, discuss how this perspective is affecting how I interact with people because I think it's coloring a lot of my interactions now.
Particularly, I just got out of a romantic relationship with a woman yesterday, actually.
Oh, gosh.
I'm sorry about that.
Yeah.
How long was the relationship?
Well, I've known her for a year.
We were kind of going steady for two months, but we just kind of hit an incompatibility, and we both actually decided to end it.
I mean, I'm late 30s, she's late 20s, we're both adults.
So it was sort of a mutual thing.
Well, I should say, sort of, it was a mutual thing.
I'm sorry.
Sorry, start to end.
Say again?
Sorry, start to end, like from first meeting till yesterday.
I met her last year in January, so about this time last year.
Ah, okay.
Okay.
But she was in another relationship at the time.
It's kind of an interesting story because I met her on a dating app and she was kind of in between relationships at that point.
And then she decided to go back with her ex.
And I'm like, okay, that's fine.
We stayed in touch, contacted her on and off, maybe like once every two weeks, something like that.
She would mostly reach out to me.
When she was back with her ex, she was flirting with you.
She was kind of using me as like an emotional support system.
So she was expecting you.
I think I was using her as the same thing, probably mutual exploitation.
And what were you talking to her about with regards to emotional difficulties?
I was talking to her about just this kind of stuff, like relationships, what they are.
You're talking a lot about her relationship with her guy.
And I mean, I was trying very hard not to like interfere with that.
Like, that's your thing over there.
If you want my advice, you can have it.
But, you know, I wasn't ever telling her what to do with that.
I was.
Sorry, you were talking to her about these relationship ideas and she was talking to you about her specific relationship.
Yes.
So I assume most of it was about her specific relationship.
Yeah.
And our past marriages, you know, kind of like getting to know each other type stuff.
Like there was a lot of stuff about childhood trauma and how that affects us.
There was a lot of topics that we discussed.
So.
And did her boyfriend know that she was she met on dating app?
She did.
I mean, he did at one point, but he was basically just using her.
I mean, I don't know his side of the story, but I know her side.
I'm sure he wouldn't have been okay with it.
And I called that out to her.
I said, you know, you have this guy.
Why are you talking to me so much, et cetera, et cetera?
It was, I don't know if this makes sense, but like I had to position myself to not get involved too deep.
Like, I'm here.
You can talk to me.
I'm not going to just cut you off and say we're done, blah, blah, blah.
It's like you have that guy, like, go use him for this stuff.
Does that make sense?
None of it makes sense.
So, apologies if I'm if I'm a little slow here.
It's a morning call, so I'm afraid you get morning stiff.
Okay, so I have my coffee.
You meet this girl on a dating app, and how pretty was she?
Um, six and a half.
Okay, and where would you put yourself?
I would say six.
Okay, so you met this girl on a dating app, and you start chatting, and you, you, you are, I mean, you know, you're doing the flirty thing, which I assume is what happens on dating apps.
Yeah, well, the the protocol is get talking to them and then immediately get them off the app as soon as possible because most dating apps are garbage when it comes to maintaining communication.
So I got to you were talking and so on.
And this went on for a couple of weeks before she said she went back to her next.
It went on for about a week.
It was end of December where I met her on the dating app.
And then I got her phone number.
I scheduled a date for, I believe, January 3rd of 2025.
Okay.
And then New Year's Day, 2025, she's like, I'm not, you know, you're great, but I want to go back with, like, she was conflicted.
So she was just kind of, I think, dipping her toe in.
And she said, oh, I'm going back with my ex.
I'm like, okay.
And then she said, can we be friends?
And I said, well, what do I get out of being friends?
You know, like, I don't really know how to be friends if I'm romantically interested in you and you're going with this other guy.
It seems kind of like, what's in it for me?
So I actually gave her a proposal.
No, this is a, this is my transaction here.
I said, tell you what, we could be friends if you go out with me and raise my status because of how pretty you are.
And I go and try and meet other women because it is a thing.
And it's a little bit of like a game theory.
And she agreed to that.
So it was kind of, that was kind of the basis.
And then we ended up meeting after the fact, like public after that conversation.
Like two weeks later, we met in person.
Okay.
And yeah, we it was a really strange meeting because we hugged.
And when I hugged her, like my whole body was like shaking.
It was very strange to me.
And that, I don't know what it, like, why I was so like, why I felt so intensely.
And it's something I've thought about.
I think it's because I recognized her as a safe person.
What?
That's, that's where I correct me if you, but you're, give me your thoughts, please.
I'm happy to be corrected on this because I'm trying to figure it out.
A safe person.
Yeah.
So you're romantically attached to a woman who is going back to your boyfriend and you consider this a safe person.
Yeah.
Bro.
Come on.
How can she be safe if she's on a dating app, she chats with you for a while?
You have a date set up.
She says, I'm going back to my ex.
Please don't be my friend.
That is the polar opposite of a safe person.
I mean, just imagine you, you have some, I mean, where's your empathy for the guy?
I mean, imagine you are trying to get back together with your ex And she wants to keep flirting with a guy she just met on a dating app while back with you.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
How would you feel?
Terrible.
Yeah.
That's horrible.
That's total sabotage.
And she's fine with this.
And she's also fine because you praise her.
And you say, oh, you're so pretty.
She's six and a half, man.
Come on.
So then you say to her, come out and pretend to be my girlfriend so that other women will see you and you can ask them out.
Or I don't know exactly how that works.
So you're like, well, come and lie and pretend to be my girlfriend.
And we'll go from there.
And she's like, yeah, sounds good.
No, no, I'll just, I'll push back on that because the whole idea was to go back, to go out as friends.
Like we weren't going to go out as boyfriend, girlfriend, or lie to people about that.
It was just you, it's like if you walk into a situation where you need to cold approach people, having people who look good with you makes you look better.
So it's more of a peacocking strategy.
So then you and the girl would go to a bar or, I don't know, a pool hall or wherever people congregate these days.
Yeah, yeah.
You guys would go out together and she would raise your status to the point where even though it's you and an attractive woman going to this places, you would go to cold approach women with this skill around.
And this would make it more likely you could get these other women's number.
Yeah, basically.
Okay.
That was a strategy.
And so how, I mean, did it work?
It never even materialized.
That was my way of getting around the whole friendship thing, like the friend zone.
Because as soon as you said, sorry, hang on, hang on, hang on.
Hang on.
Let's just back up for a sec.
So the plan was, and I know it never materialized.
We'll get to the friend zone thing in a sec.
But the plan was to go talk to women.
And then let's say they're very impressed that you have an attractive woman around.
Right, right, right.
So then they're like, yes.
But wouldn't they say, well, hang on, aren't you here with your girlfriend?
Did you say?
I would say, no, that's my friend, you know, so-and-so.
Okay.
We're just going out.
We're having a good time.
We're meeting people.
So, and then a woman would say, is she single?
I would say, no.
Why She Was Single00:02:37
So why is she going out with some guy to a bar who's not her boyfriend?
As long as you guys hang on, how long have you guys known each other?
About a month.
It would have been at that point.
Okay.
So then any quality woman is going to run away, right?
Yeah.
I'm not saying I thought this through.
No, you thought it through.
No, no, you thought you said it's a whole game theory, right?
Whole peaking, you called it, right?
It's a whole game theory.
Right, right, right.
But it's bullshit.
I mean, any quality woman is going to see through it in about 30 seconds.
Okay.
No, it is.
It's true.
It's true.
This woman who's got a boyfriend, this woman who's single, but she wasn't single, so you'd be lying about that because she's back with her boyfriend, right?
So her relationship with this other guy, according to her, because I never met him, obviously, it was very, it was a secretive, it was more like a rendezvous, friends with benefits situation.
But she's not, she's not single, because if she was single, she'd be dating you, right?
Right.
But it wasn't like a public relationship.
So if that makes sense.
No, but the moment you had like, so if there's an intelligent woman, she sees you out with some other woman, and the other woman has a boyfriend, and you've only known her for a month, it doesn't add up at all.
Like, why would a woman who's got a boyfriend go out with another single man to a bar when she's only known him a month?
That doesn't add up at all.
Like, if you've grown up together or whatever, and you were childhood friends, you know, that could be understandable, but it doesn't make any sense in its formulation, right?
But it clearly would be a strategy, not anything organic.
Sorry, go ahead.
Yeah, yeah, no, I think you're right about that.
Yeah, it would not add up.
Okay, all right.
So, uh, sorry, you were saying it was this was your way to try and get out of the friend zone.
Is that right?
It was like I need to not just be in the friend zone and have I have to get something out of being in the friend zone, was like the mental math.
But why do you want Sam?
But why do you want to be anything with the woman?
She's on a dating app, you set up a date, and she goes back to her ex.
So, why do you want anything from her?
That's I'm trying to figure that out.
That is a great question, and you and you and my roommate at the time are unified on this because he basically yelled at me and said, What are you doing?
Get you know, get rid of her, forget about her, who cares?
Why Stay Connected?00:14:47
Um, and yeah, you guys are both saying the same thing.
So, why do I want I think it's because of the conversations we had?
We connected very well.
I mean, we basically were talking over the phone, texting and talking over the phone.
Um, we could have deep conversations, they weren't superficial, they were all about our um basically our past, our stories, how we developed behavior patterns, that kind of stuff-like a mutual therapy trauma bond or something.
Yeah, okay, that's probably the way to put it, yeah, okay, and that's really really interesting that you say that because it was the trauma stuff that I think ultimately ended the ended this.
Well, and listen, I mean, talking about your past, talking about your history, I'm not obviously gonna have any, I'm not obviously gonna have any problems with that, but relationships are founded on virtues.
I mean, right?
How long have you listened to what I do?
I think I'm on year three or four now.
Okay, so you've heard me a million times say that love is our hang on, let me let me finish my sentences.
Love is our involuntary response to virtue if we're virtuous.
And what were her virtues?
Um, great question.
She was she could listen, she like a con man will listen to you too, because he wants to find out what buttons to push.
So, listening is not a virtue, it's not bad, but it's not a virtue, yeah, what were her virtues at least back then?
We can't say honesty, that's for sure.
No, in fact, she was very willing to participate in a lie to get you laid, right?
And even lie to her boyfriend, yeah, she lied to her boyfriend about the extent of your involvement with her, right?
Right, okay, so she was a liar, she was willing to cheat other women and to pretend that you had higher sexual market value than you otherwise might have.
So, she was willing to deceive other women in order to get you laid, and you're fucking telling me what a safe person she is.
So, come on, bro.
I'm just telling you how I feel, Steph.
That's fine.
No, no, you said you were shaking, and then you said you thought it was because you thought she was like, so the shaking is a physiological response.
Yes.
And your interpretation of that was because she was a safe person.
Yeah.
But shaking is a symbol of anxiety or of stress or of tension or cold, I guess.
You know, normally when we're around somebody safe, we relax, right?
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I think your body was like danger, danger, danger, danger.
Right.
And rightly so.
And that's because for you, and this is like why it's interesting that you come up with this sort of theoretical stuff about honesty, which is fine.
And I'm fine with the theory, but you still not do the basics of philosophy.
And I say this with all due humility that it took me a long time to put them actually into practice.
But this is a liar and a cheat and a manipulator.
And, you know, this we suffered, let's trauma bond is a bad basis for a relationship.
Because it's not like you guys are honest.
Because she says, do you want to be my friend?
It's manipulative in the face of it.
Like it is manipulative right up front for a woman to say that there was this woman on the whatever podcast.
She was kind of average and she was like, well, the guy needs to make a million dollars a year to be with me and all that.
And I think Brian was like, well, what if he doesn't?
And she said, well, we can be friends.
So let's be friends from a woman you've just met who led you on and went back to her ex and still wants to be in a relationship.
That's bullshit.
Top to bottom, back to front.
See, that's so interesting because I like when she said that, I appreciated that.
I said, oh, she's being honest with me.
That's how it registered to me.
Okay, so she's being honest with you.
So then honesty is a virtue for you.
So then why would you ask her to participate in a lie and go out with you places to make you look good?
See, I did not think it was a lie.
I thought it was, you know, because like the whole idea of cold approaching people and meeting people, it's a game.
I think that's why they call it game.
It's a way to sort of get over the hump of judging by appearances because you don't know people.
So you don't know who they are, what they believe, et cetera.
So you have to signal that you are high status in order to get past filters.
That was, I viewed it more as I'm going to be.
Yes, but you're not high status if she's not your friend.
If you just met a month ago, and this is the condition by which she gets to trauma dump on you about her boyfriend, if it's an exchange, it's like paying someone to be there and then saying, she's my friend.
Wow, man.
If it was organic, that's a different matter, but it's not organic.
It's a trade.
It's a fake.
Right.
It's a transaction.
Right.
It's like if some guy rents a Maserati and says, I'm super rich, you know, I mean, it's just a fake, right?
Right.
And you're pushing 40.
What are you cold approaching in bars for?
Because I don't know what else to do.
All right.
So what was the, I mean, she left him and went to you for a year off and on or somewhat?
So she, yeah, she got out of that relationship.
And we had, I had actually stopped talking to her over the summer.
There was a good like three-month time where we were not we yeah, we weren't talking.
Um, she reached out in October, said she was she was out of that relationship.
I said, Oh, okay, cool.
You know, she reaches out over something innocuous.
I forget what it was, but oh, and we just kind of started up again.
And sorry, when was this October, October of last year?
Oh, wow.
So, wait, so you did this friend zone stuff for like nine months, ten months, yeah.
But there was communicating working every day.
We were communicating maybe once every two weeks from like January through June, roughly.
Okay, and then I moved out of the area, got a new place where I am now, and I was very busy.
I was on a project.
I didn't talk to her basically the entire summer, like June through August.
Um, no, June through September, because she reached out to me October.
I'm going to guess mid-October.
I could look it up for the exact timeline, but I mean, I wouldn't call us.
I mean, we weren't talking, so it was more like, Hey, I wonder what, how she's doing, you know, etc.
Okay, so you barely had any contact for most of the summer, and then she contacts you in October and she says, I'm through with my boyfriend.
Uh-huh.
And then, yeah.
And then we kind of rekindle things over the phone and texting.
And sorry, how long had the boyfriend relationship how much of a how much of a chunk of her life had it been?
Was it a year, a couple of years, less more?
It was a year.
Now, did you get that in with you?
Sorry, so she was with him for three months.
She broke up.
She was with him again for nine months.
So it was a year going back from October.
I think it was a year.
I think she broke up with him in the summertime.
So I think it was a year going back from that summer.
So it was sort of like this on again, off-again thing with this guy.
Okay, so she broke up with him in the summer, and then a couple of months later, she contacts you.
Yeah.
Okay.
And was she just going down the list of people in the friend zone?
I don't know.
I mean, you'd have to ask her.
Yeah, yeah.
Okay.
Well, I don't know if she ever mentioned that.
Okay.
So she gets so you guys were only together for like what two months?
Two months and change?
Yeah.
It was.
Yeah, it was the Wednesday.
Yeah, I remember it was the Wednesday before Thanksgiving.
Yeah.
Okay.
So what was the arc of this blistering fast relationship?
So hard to the arc.
I guess, you know, we rekindle things.
We're texting.
We're talking.
Because we're like out of the area, like she's not where I am.
It's a long distance relationship at this point.
So I asked her to be my girlfriend on that Wednesday.
She agrees.
And basically define it like because I wanted to be exclusive with her.
I didn't want to be going.
No, no, I understand what the definition of girlfriend is.
She just broke up.
Well, she broke up with this guy in the summer.
So okay.
So no, you're right.
So sorry.
So she broke up recently.
And so, okay, sorry.
You're right about that.
Sorry.
That's my mind.
Okay.
So you say, let's be boyfriend, girlfriend.
She says, yes, I assume.
Yep.
And then.
And then we start talking more about what that means from a relationship standpoint and building a future.
I mean, like you said, I'm pushing 40.
Like, I don't really want to mess around in the girlfriend, boyfriend zone.
So, and did she start to get married and have kids?
Was that sort of part of her life goal?
Oh, yeah, yeah.
So we're discussing this, and it's so funny you mentioned the whole Brian like million dollars a year thing because that's the thing that was the first hangup.
And she's like, I have a, you know, a lifestyle requirement, like in a relationship.
And I'm like, tell me what that means.
Like, what do you mean?
Tell me more.
And she's like, I'm used to this particular lifestyle.
So if I'm in a relationship, I've got to feel safe.
So I'm working out what does it mean to feel safe?
And what does that translate to in dollars?
And are you making the relationship contingent upon those dollars?
Because if you are, that's going to basically destroy me.
And I'm trying to work out like what is reasonable and rational versus what is a gold digger, you know?
Because I don't think it's crazy for a woman who wants to have children to feel secure in a household, right?
Otherwise, she wouldn't have kids.
She's like, you know, like you say, she's disabled for, you know, two years off the bat between everything.
So that, that's the thing that ended it yesterday because it just felt way too performative.
Like, you're not making enough money.
So therefore, we can't be in a relationship.
And I just.
So sorry.
So, so when, like in October, when she contacted you and you said, let's be exclusive, she said, that's going to cost you.
Or I need to see your W-2s or wherever you are, right?
No, no, no.
She wasn't, she wasn't that overt about it.
It was, I know, I'm trying to pilot.
I have it, right?
So she's saying, I have to feel safe, you know?
Okay.
I told her.
Hang on.
Yeah.
So feeling safe means what?
What was she actually saying?
Let's cut away the fluff, right?
So she was saying, what?
You need to make six figures.
You need to make seven figures.
Like, what was she saying?
We never really got to a number, but it was basically in the area where we would live.
She wants, you know, a three-bedroom with, because I mean, I was married before.
I have a daughter.
So we need to accommodate that.
Sorry, she wants a three-bedroom house?
Three-bedroom house, apartment, that kind of thing.
That was the what I was working with figure-wise was somewhere between five to ten thousand a month U.S. and is that what she wanted if you got married and she had kids?
Yeah.
Okay.
So she was saying, I need you to spend five or ten thousand dollars a month on the family in order for me to feel secure enough to have children.
Have a family.
Yeah, yeah.
It was like, I need to see the proof that you can do this before I feel like I can do this.
Okay.
And I don't think that's unreasonable.
Oh, hey, listen, I have no problem.
I have no problem with people having requirements in a relationship.
So what were your requirements?
What did you need to see from her?
So my biggest requirement is relationally not to feel like I'm performing, like unconditional acceptance.
Like I want, I want us to be honest with each other.
And I know you're no, no, come on.
Please stop.
Was like, I was bracing myself when you said I want honesty in a relationship.
This is why I love talking to you because it's like this idea.
And then it's like it's exploded within the first 10 minutes.
I need to get you back up here.
Yeah, back up.
Okay.
So she wants proof that you can pay for a household, right?
Requirements for a Household Good00:10:35
Yeah.
Okay.
So how did she prove to you that she can run a household and be a good mother?
So I mean, she can cook.
I know she can cook.
Did she cook for you?
No.
Okay.
So she didn't do that.
Did she do your laundry?
Did she pay your bills in terms of like mechanical aspect of things?
Did she take particular chores from you?
Like, did she say, oh, you know, maybe I can help you with your driver's license.
Okay, bro.
Maybe I can help you get your driver's license renewed.
Did she make arrangements for people to come and fix things in your house if that was necessary?
Did she show you that she can run a household?
Well, no, we didn't live together.
No, I know that, but she can, that's things you can do by phone or online, that she can take the load off of your back.
Hey, is there any paperwork?
Do you want me to run, you know, run through your taxes and make sure that they're okay?
It doesn't have to be in person, but she needs to show.
And also, she's saying, here's my theory of parenting.
If I was raised, well, here's what I learned how to be a good mother.
If I wanted to be raised, well, here's the books that I've been reading in order to become a better mother.
So listen, I got no problem.
If she wants to say, I need a three-bedroom house, fine.
Okay.
I need a woman who can run the household and be a good mother.
So how does she show you that?
Well, I mean, she couldn't.
Couldn't what?
She couldn't.
We didn't live together.
She wasn't active in handling my day-to-day business stuff like it's or household stuff on my side.
No, I understand that you didn't really.
I understand that you didn't live together.
What did I just say about that?
Said there's ways you can do this over the phone or take loads off, helping you.
Yeah, she didn't do any of that.
Okay, so she basically had a list of demands, which were pretty exorbitant, you know, like three-bedroom plates or whatever, which is fine.
Again, that's, I have no problem with people having demands or requirements.
But the way that you find out the narcissist, I'm not saying she's a narcissist, right?
But the way you find out selfish people is it's fine to come with the list of demands, but you also have to come up with a list of what you offer.
Right.
So what did she have to offer other than looks and sex?
Right.
Yeah.
Companionship for sure.
I mean, we could have three-hour conversations, which is that's mutual.
Hang on.
That's mutually beneficial.
I'm talking about what did she have to offer that cost her and benefited you.
Because if you're going to give $5,000 to $10,000 a month to her, that's costing you and benefiting her and your family and blah, blah, blah.
So what did she do that cost her and benefited you?
That's empathy.
That shows whether she has empathy or not.
Nothing.
Okay, so you're supposed to give $5,000 to $10,000 to her and then she doesn't give anything to you other than what you both mutually enjoy, which is sex and conversation.
Sex, conversation, companionship.
No, companionship is mutual.
Children, you know.
Well, no, but see, giving you children is terrible unless she knows how to run a good household and be a good mother.
Right.
Right.
I mean, you already had one woman give you a daughter, right?
How did that go?
Went fine until I decided to change, get out of the, get out of the situation based on, you know, the power dynamics of that.
Well, but it didn't work out fine because the woman who's the mother of your children was not a good wife.
I mean, that's why people get divorced.
I mean, not only maybe you weren't a good husband too, but someone needs to show that they can run a good household.
Let me ask you this.
Did you ever visit her at her place?
No.
Oh, okay.
Yeah, because that's one way you can find out is that it's not a bad idea.
I mean, you know, if you have doubts about these things, to do a drop-in.
Right.
Because when you do a drop-in, what do you see?
You see the day-to-day, how it works.
Yeah.
How does she run her own household?
Yeah.
Right.
And I've, you know, it's funny you say that because I've been, you know, even my own space, it's like one of the things I do, you know, I maintain it.
Like I make the bed every day.
You know, it seems so stupid, but it's really for when someone drops in on you.
You know, you don't look like a sla, right?
You know, like I learned that lesson at 39.
Yes.
I understand why I'm so behind.
But yeah.
Okay.
Let's see where you go with that.
So she's got a list of demands and she's not providing anything that isn't mutual.
You know, for a woman to say that sex is a benefit for you is a grave insult.
Yeah.
Like I'm sacrificing by having sex with you.
That's a grave insult because that's she's then she's saying it's like a chore.
Then either you're ugly, bad and bad, smell, whatever.
It's an insult.
It's an insult.
Yeah.
And so, or is she saying, well, my sacrifice in this relationship is talking to your ass for three hours.
It's like, oh, God, that's really bad, right?
I mean, what do you have to pay like a therapist or something?
So if a woman is, again, fine to come with a list of demands, I think having them explicit is tough.
I think it's tough because it does seem pretty mercenary.
And also it indicates a lack of trust.
Now, the other thing, of course, that a woman needs to bring to the table is absolute fidelity because you don't want to raise a child who's not your own, right?
That's the biggest nightmare.
What is it?
I was reading about how, I don't know if it's true, but somebody was saying how only male humans are uncertain about paternity.
But so we can't see.
Hang on, sorry.
So she needs to bring absolute fidelity to you.
And based upon the origin of your relationship, was she able?
Did she demonstrate absolute fidelity?
No.
She demonstrated that if she doesn't get her needs met in a particular way, she will monkey branch to a new guy.
Yeah, she'll keep guys on the deck.
She'll keep guys in rotation.
She'll keep guys in the friend zone.
She'll cycle in and out.
So what were you getting from her in exchange for $60,000 to $120,000 a year?
Well, nothing.
Nothing, yeah.
Well, it's a negative.
It's a liability then, right?
Yeah.
Okay, so she's a liability and she doesn't have empathy for what you need.
Because if she were to say, listen, I have these material requirements, it's a lot.
It's a lot.
Let me tell you that.
And here's what I'm going to offer in return.
Blah, blah, Because she's going to want to make sure that she's not greedy and taking.
She's going to want to make sure that it's mutually beneficial because relationships that aren't mutually beneficial don't last.
At least it's certainly not going to last in terms of happiness.
Right.
So did she ever address what you were going to gain other than children, which is a negative unless she's a good homemaker.
And I mean, being a good homemaker is a skill.
It's a real, it's a real ability.
And so if she's a good mother and a good homemaker, sure.
I mean, what do you need all this excess money for, right?
This is what we, we men make a lot of money generally, and it's there so that we can have kids.
And that's the point.
So it's a fine exchange to make money and then give it to the mother of your children so that you can have a happy household and raise kids.
And that's, you know, that makes working worthwhile.
Otherwise, it's just kind of hedonistic after a while.
So what did she, and you knew this at the beginning.
You knew this, you knew that she wasn't reciprocal because she said, well, can we still be friends?
And you said.
I said, only in exchange for this thing.
You said, what's that to me?
Right.
Right.
So she's saying, let's be friends.
And you're like, okay, I see how that benefits you because you get me and your sexual needs are met by another man, which is to be in a relationship with woman, with a woman who's been clouded by some other dude is a form of trickery.
Yes, that was the word my roommate used.
Okay, good.
All right.
So you knew that she wasn't empathetic because she, did she say, listen, I know that you're sexually attracted to me.
I'm going back to my boyfriend.
I really do our conversations.
I'm trying to figure out, you know, I'll tell my boyfriend about us and, you know, because I want to be honest.
I need to figure out how this is going to be beneficial to you because I don't want to exploit you.
You know, just normal, basic human decency stuff, right?
I mean, she did have a little bit of that.
It wasn't that explicit.
That would have been great because that would have very much, that would have ended the whole thing right there, actually.
What do you mean?
I know that.
Well, if she said that and actually followed through on that and went to the other guy, the other guy would have said, who the hell is this guy?
Either choose him or me is what he would have said, most likely.
Okay, so then the only way you can continue the relationship is to have her lie to her boyfriend and then consequently the value that you got was her lying to other women by implication.
Yeah, there's a lot of lying going on.
Sure, sure, yeah.
Okay.
Yeah.
So why are you defenseless against liars?
That's your childhood question.
Because I've been lied to like my entire life.
That's that's the cause.
So you could say, because I've been lied to my entire life, I do not put up with liars.
So the fact that you were, and I'm sorry that you were lied to, of course, right?
But it's not causal.
There's a missing ingredient.
Caring for Siblings00:08:18
It has to benefit me some way.
Well, who lied to you when you were a child?
My parents.
About what?
About loving and caring for me.
Yeah, I've noodled out a lot of this with my childhood.
Basically, I grew up in an environment that, you know, oh, we love you.
They would say that they would love us, but then they would neglect it.
And so there was the verbal affirmation and then nothing material, nothing that would reinforce that.
It was, in fact, the opposite.
It was perform, perform, perform, like for the household.
Sorry.
And you mentioned perform at the beginning.
Tell me what you mean in the context of your childhood.
Basically, when I was, I'm second born of eight children.
So the first couple years, I assume I was getting love and affection from my parents because there was only two of us, you know, when I was an infant.
When I got older, let's just say six, seven, eight in that ballpark when you start to become more able to do things.
I was heavily relied upon to help in the household because at that point, I think I had two more siblings.
Yeah, because my sister was born when I was four.
Yeah.
So, and then my younger brother also came around when I was six.
So by the time I was seven or eight, it was like, we have my parents were like, we have a system.
We have to, we have to keep this system going because, you know, they have four kids at the time.
So performance of like, you exist to help mom and dad maintain their sanity and the material state of the household, really, like doing chores.
Like my job, I remember my job was doing the dishwasher, like, you know, take the dishes out, that stuff, which isn't bad.
But I would say the lack of caring, like they weren't ever giving me a why I should do the dishwasher, if that makes sense.
It was just empty this because if you don't, we're going to scream at you and call you a bad person for not contributing to the household.
You had no, you had no responsibility in forming.
So it was right.
Yeah, I know.
Okay, don't do the chuckle.
Yeah.
I mean, you've listened to it.
I'm sorry to be an egg, right?
You've listened to enough of these people in shows that you're inviting me to view this as funny when it's not.
It's not.
Yeah.
I mean, this is child labor and child labor under extreme conditions of bullying.
Right.
Same thing with church.
You know, you must perform at church.
You must be good, quiet, essentially, you have to be their perception of a good kid.
So that was what you did to avoid punishment.
My older brother did not perform.
He was the quote unquote rebellious one, according to their perspective.
I think, and I've talked to him a couple times about this because I wanted to figure out why he did what he did.
He was a constant thorn in their side in that he just would not obey.
He would not do it.
He would not like his job would be to empty the top half of the dishwasher.
My job is to do the bottom.
And he would, you know, just not do it or complain about it or just generally give my parents a hard time completing that task.
And I was a thorn in their side.
That's interesting because that's your parents' perspective, right?
Yeah.
Okay.
So, so that means that you're repeating your parents' perspective to me, but just saying that your parents were kind of screamers and controllers and bullies.
My mom was a screamer.
My dad was checked out most of the time.
Okay.
All right.
And yeah, I assumed the parents' perspective because I didn't want, you know, beaten.
No, no, but you're pushing 40.
My concern is not that you are able to describe your parents' perspective.
It's that when you start bringing up your brother, he was a rebel.
He was a thorn in their side.
He was not compliant and so on.
I mean, that's all your parents' perspective, right?
Right.
Arguably, he was heroically resisting bullying.
Yeah.
So, when you talked to your brother, and when you said why he did what he did, was that as a kid or as an adult?
With this, this statement, why what do you think?
It was as a kid, okay.
And I just remember being confused about it because you know, the surely just doing what you're told is better than doing what you're doing.
Because to me, as a kid, it didn't make sense.
Okay, but what about now?
I mean, how's your brother's life compared to yours?
Um, I don't think it's as I mean, I'm single, living alone, he's got three kids and a wife.
Um, got a forthcoming.
I wouldn't say his life is necessarily better.
Uh, they still run power games like him and his wife, yeah, but you're running power games and ain't even getting kids or a family.
I got one, Steph.
Sorry, sorry, you're right, but you still, but you split up with your wife, right?
Right, I would say our lives are pretty much the same if we're going to look at it that way.
Um, I tell, I mean, I've told him that you know, he abuses his kids the same way mom and dad abused him-you know, the spankings, stuff like that.
I sorry, so you mentioned screaming.
Sorry, interrupt, you mentioned screamings with your mother, and your father was checked out.
So, who was the spanker?
My mom would have been primarily.
And how often did she hit?
Um, I'm gonna, it's it would be probably once every three days with my older brother, um, but it kind of seemed to go in phases.
Like, if he would be defiant to them for like a like a two-week or three-week span, and then it might be like a month after that where he wouldn't get hit.
Okay, does that make sense?
Yeah, like it was, I mean, I didn't get I observed that and didn't decided not to go that way.
Okay, all right, and what's your relationship like with your parents going into your into your 30s?
Sorry, it's getting like really emotional, isn't it?
No, I sympathize.
I mean, it's it's that's a rough and chaotic childhood.
The lots of kids is not necessarily a bad thing, and the fact that you, I don't know, had to sort of pull your weight or pitch in, that's not necessarily a bad thing at all.
I mean, that that can be something which you know gives you lifelong companionship with your siblings, and you know, if it's in a loving and positive environment, I know families with a fairly large number of kids, and of course, everybody has to pitch in for sure.
I mean, one, especially if your dad's working, one woman can't do the household chores for eight children, like that's that's not possible, right?
So, so the fact that the kids have to work, uh, you know, my daughter's pretty eager to help with things and so forth, right?
So, so yeah, so the fact that there's a lot of kids is not bad.
Sorry, go ahead.
I was gonna say, my daughter's the same way, like, I don't ever have to compel her to do anything.
She wants to help, she wants to pitch in, right?
Yeah, kids want to work, they want to help.
Um, so what's your relationship like with your parents over the last 10 or 15 years?
So, my dad passed away in 2021, 2021, December.
Please tell me it wasn't late on post-facts.
Oh, yeah, dude.
Advice From Instinct00:04:26
This was the first call.
Yeah, that was that was the hospital situation.
Oh, yes, yes, okay, okay.
All right, yeah, okay.
So, um, and what was your life?
What was your relationship like you said?
My dad broke up there with your dad before he died.
Um, he was probably the closest one in my family I was attached to out of everybody As a kid, he was not there from about late teenager 18 on.
He was involved more.
We would have, we had the ability to have long conversations, but it was all centered around our shared worldview and shared perspectives.
You know, the whole church dynamic.
You know, he's very conservative.
You know, I remember in my first call, I basically labeled myself like a fundamentalist Christian.
That's probably too extreme.
But the, if you're going to look at Christianity as a spectrum, you know, conservative Christian way on that side.
So we had a lot of talks in my adulthood.
And if you go back to the first call, you know, one of his problems was laughing.
Like he gave me really bad advice when handling money quite.
But as far as our relationship, I fell close to him.
So you went.
Just remind me.
So you went to your father for advice on how your wife when he checked out and his wife screamed at and hit his children.
Yeah.
Yeah.
How would he have credibility with you?
That's what I'm trying to puzzle.
Well, I mean, this is when I was 24, 28.
I had done absolutely zero work on myself at that point.
Well, but you would have an instinct as to whether your father put his head in the household.
Sorry, you were breaking up there.
Sorry about that.
You would have an instinct as to whether your father was good at being the head of the household.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I remember that.
I did have an instinct about that, but I still listened to it.
Because I remember when he gave me that bad advice about, you know, pick your battles with your wife.
I felt like that was the wrong move.
And I think that was just because of how he and my mother got along so poorly.
But I still listened to him.
Now, did your dad ever address his lack of credibility?
Did he ever say, listen, I mean, it wasn't like you saw an ideal marriage growing up.
So, you know, this is hard one advice.
And, you know, I should have followed it myself.
Did he ever was he honest about his lack of credibility?
No.
You know, if somebody were to say to me, Steph, I got a question for you.
I'm an up-and-coming social media star.
How should I avoid being deplatformed?
And let's say they didn't know I'd been deplatformed, right?
What would be the first thing I would say?
Go find somebody else.
No, I might be really good at telling someone how not to be deplatformed, right?
But I'd have to say, well, I mean, I have been deplatformed and here's what I learned.
Or here's what I chose.
And if you really don't want to be deplatformed, you know, here's the list of topics that are quite lengthy that you need to avoid or something like that, right?
Right.
Yeah, I see what you're saying.
So I would need to address.
I mean, imagine if I was doing a QA with an audience and somebody said, well, you've never been deplatformed.
How did you avoid it?
And I just said, oh, you know, I guess I just navigated it really well.
And here's my advice and blah, People would look at me with their jaws open, right?
Like, what?
You just totally doubted the fact that you were deplatformed.
Like, what are you doing, right?
Bible Teachings on Beliefs00:02:14
Yeah.
So did your father give you advice from the standpoint of I'm really good at this?
No, it was always from his interpretation of scripture.
So it wouldn't really, it wouldn't be, here's my hard-won experience.
It would be, this is what the Bible teaches about this based on my interpretation of scripture.
Okay.
So the Bible teaches that the man is the head of the household and the woman must obey him in the way that he obeys the church and Jesus.
So, I mean, that's, that's not controversial, right?
Controversial.
That's, that's basic biblical teaching.
So, well, I'm not sure how that squares with pick your battles.
It doesn't.
Yeah.
Also, the Bible teaches that you should be gentle in the instruction of your children.
Right.
They were not gentle at all.
So I'm trying to figure out this Christian thing.
And this is a general puzzle that I have.
So this is not particular to your parents.
I tend to take beliefs very seriously.
And I am willing to take great sacrifices for the sake of those beliefs because that's, you know, what's the point?
Right.
What's the point?
Otherwise.
I mean, it's no point having beliefs if you don't follow them.
Like then just be a hedonist.
Right, right, right.
So, you know, for me, it's like, well, you know, tell the truth is important, especially about important matters, right?
Thou shalt not bear false witness.
So, you know, when I was talking about IQ or feminism or other things, these were, or the voluntary family, these are very important topics.
And I, I mean, I had an obligation to tell the truth based upon my values and philosophy.
So I'm trying to figure out, because Christianity says that sacrifice and persecution and loss are foundational to living a moral life.
You know, Jesus says, if they hate you, don't be too troubled because remember they hated me first, right?
Failed Children's Perspective00:09:25
Yeah.
And what I find odd about modern Christianity is this focus on social approval.
Yes.
Because to be a good person is to be disapproved of by the majority.
This has been a basic factor of philosophy and Christianity since its very inception.
Sorry, go ahead.
Yeah, this is one of the reasons I think, you know, philosophy and Christianity are actually joined at the hip because and the church, the modern church, I like Lox Day's approach of coining the term churchian.
You're just devoted to the social structure, power structure.
And that's where you get your salvation.
That's what you focus on.
And that's where you get your lollipops and fancy pants.
Okay.
Oh, so my social approval stuff is kind of anti-Christian.
So did your father, was he ever critical about the way that he parented his household?
Self-critical?
I do recall a couple times where he said, you know, I failed you kids.
He didn't get into specifics.
He was just generally emoting a feeling of failure.
Oh, okay.
And how old were you when he said that?
I remember you said it was a couple of times, but how old were you?
It would have been, I would, yes, in my early 20s.
Wow.
20 years ago.
So that's like 15 years before he died?
Yeah.
Wow.
So he had a real confessional there.
Yeah.
So what did you, I mean, what did you ask him about that?
I didn't pursue that because I thought of myself as, oh, I'm fine.
But it's not that view.
Well, I'm just a kid, so I was thinking.
Don't you start excusing on me.
I ran out of excuse juice last night.
Oh.
I had a guy who gave me excuses for an hour and a half.
So I asked very specifically that you knew that your father felt that he'd failed his children for 15 years.
Yeah.
Right.
Do you remember me asking that?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
So you were in your mid-30s when your father died, right?
Yes.
So you had 17 years of adulthood.
If it was in his early 20s, you had almost a decade and a half of knowing that your father felt that he'd failed his children.
So then when you say, well, I didn't follow up on that because I was just a kid, that's not true.
That's an excuse and that lie because you weren't just a kid.
You were in your mid-30s and you remembered this, right?
Not following here.
Sorry.
Just try to avoid the urge to just minimize and gaslight.
That makes the conversation contentious and difficult.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
No, I'm not sure.
If you said, well, my father told me he thought he'd failed his children and then he died that night.
Yeah, I wouldn't sit there and say, well, why didn't you follow up with like he died, right?
And whatever, right?
But you knew for 15 years that your father felt that he'd failed the most important aspect of his life, which was raising his children.
That he felt like a failure, and you never asked him about it.
Because I didn't believe him.
But that's about this is what I'm trying to pry off you.
That's about your perspective.
Who gives a shit about your perspective?
Ask him about his perspective.
Oh, I see what you mean.
Okay.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I did not ask him, hey, tell me more about that.
But why not?
You said you were close.
You said you had lots of deep conversations.
And I'm not trying to rack on you here.
I'm genuinely curious why you wouldn't ask about that.
I remember dismissing it.
I said, you didn't do that bad.
I turned out fine.
Okay, so why did you dismiss it?
Trying to remember.
Because I don't know why I would dismiss it.
I was married at the time, likely because I didn't want to go down that rabbit hole.
What's the rabbit hole?
How I was raised.
No, I understand that, but what about how you were raised?
What's the rabbit?
I understand your father raised you, but what was the rabbit hole?
What was the disaster scenario for you if you'd asked him, oh, you know, the only thing that comes to mind is if I go down that hole, if I go down that line, it's going to invalidate my choice in a spouse.
It's going to reveal a lot of my reasonings for choosing the wife that I chose at the time.
How old were you?
Sorry, how old were you when you got married?
I was 20.
Okay, got it.
Now, of course, it could have been that it saved your marriage.
I don't know.
You obviously know the situation infinitely better than I do.
But so you felt that if you had asked your father what he felt he'd failed at, that your life would have unraveled?
I would think so, because where I was at the time when he said that, I was, of course, living with my wife.
We were, and I was essentially modeling their approved rule set at the time.
So my life reflected what your dad did.
And if your dad felt like a failure, then you're getting it.
Sorry, you broke up there.
You were living the values your dad had taught you.
And if he says, I feel I failed my children, then you're in the direction of failure.
Right.
Okay.
100%.
Because, like, yeah, I'm doing what you and mom say I should be doing.
You know, like I find a good woman.
We get married, you know, et cetera.
Live together, go to church.
Right.
And was your mother self-critical about how she raised her kids?
Sorry.
It's cutting in and out again.
My apologies.
My apologies.
Was your mother ever self-critical about how she raised her kids?
Never.
What do you think your father meant, if you had to guess?
I don't know.
It would probably not spend enough time with us, probably not connecting with us.
But even that, like, I don't even think he knows how to have a connection.
Or since everything is colored by the social order, it's like, would I even get an authentic person, an authentic relationship?
Like, that makes sense.
Okay.
Well, I mean, he was confessing a massive and catastrophic issue in his mind.
Right?
Yeah.
I mean, to feel like a failure in your family life, especially in Christianity, right?
That's the big thing, right?
The biggest thing is the family, right?
So to feel like a failure in how you've raised eight children is as catastrophic a situation as can happen to anyone, but especially a Christian, right?
Thinking more about it, it was likely, yeah, it was all colored by the social, by the social.
Okay, that's very abstract.
What do you feel about it?
Right, Fred.
So I'm trying to project into what I think his perspective is.
Okay.
And it would have been, so he would look, he would say, I'm proud of my secondborn son.
I'm not proud of my firstborn because at the time he was in the military doing running around.
He would not have been proud of his thirdborn daughter because she was living a wild and reckless life at that point, like doing the opposite of the rule set.
So I would, I think that's what he was talking about.
Like, I failed in raising all of my kids as Christians by my definition of Christianity.
Okay.
So did he, was he saying, I failed my children in the way that some Christian parents do, which is to say, my parents, my children failed me or my children, like I did my best, but I must have failed because look at how they've turned out, but it's not quite their fault.
If that makes sense.
I don't think he was taking responsibility for it.
I think he was saying, yeah, I don't want to give him too much credit.
Okay.
All right.
Like, I don't know what I did wrong, but I must have failed them somehow because look at how they turned out.
You know, that kind of thing.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
So maybe you didn't want to ask him why he felt he'd failed his children because you didn't want to see the ugliness of him blaming his children.
Yeah, that's possible.
For sure.
And in the 15 years that you had with him prior to his death in 2021, did the topic of your childhood or your discontents or your issues, did you ever bring that up?
Why Babies Sin00:04:33
I was working toward it.
It would have come up.
I know that, because I had brought up to him.
I was questioning why he did what he did.
And this is like fall of 2021, like literally two months before he died.
I was asking him, why did you do what you did?
Like, help me understand this.
And what was it in particular that you were asking him about, or would you have asked him about?
It was mostly the neglect.
Like, hey, I was, I was here.
I needed stuff, and you guys couldn't provide it.
Like, what, what was behind that?
What?
Because I, at that point, 2021, my daughter was three because my daughter was like the catalyst in all this because I was raising her completely different than how I was raised.
And it was just stirring all this crap up because, hey, here's a different way.
And I'm getting great results over here.
So I'm going back to my dad going, so help me make, help me make sense of this.
How is this working?
Because, like, I remember my dad telling my telling me that my 18-month-old kid was evil.
You know, what?
Yeah.
That was like original sin stuff.
Like, yeah, you got to discipline.
And I'm like, she is not even coherent.
Like, what are you talking about?
You can't even, you can't communicate verbally with this person yet.
She's all non-verbal.
All she can do is express her needs non-verbally.
And you're calling that like sinful.
Like, and what did he say?
Was it just evil in the essence because of original sin, or was it evil because of something in particular she had done or not done?
I think it was more of a stimulus.
Like she, he hears the baby crying, and he's like, oh, that's just, you know, the sin coming out in a way, or like that's something that needs to be corrected.
And I'm like, no, bro, that is a signal of a need.
Oh, so he thought that you should, what, hit your child?
Your baby's crying.
Oh, and he said corrected.
What did he mean?
Yeah.
He's like, you need to be on top of the discipline.
Like, he wasn't advocating for me to like hit my 18-month-old, but he was advocating for.
He was advocating for, I would call it a spirit of discipline.
Like, I need to be really vigilant about that.
And I did, I was just like, you're freaking crazy.
Like, that's insane.
Like, no, this is, she doesn't know how to talk.
How can you make the rational claim that she's evil?
Like, she can't even sin at this point, you know, from a Christian perspective.
I mean, I challenge a lot of that stuff.
Like, you could tell me a baby can sin.
A baby is nonverbal.
A baby does not think to itself, I am sinning and I am rebelling against the will of God.
Like, that's the most insane thing you could possibly tell me.
Right.
So it was that, like, I think he was trying to install that same programming because, and this just dawned on me, like, he was saying there needs to be a negative disciplinary reaction or a negative stimuli that the kid receives upon expression of needs.
That's what he was espousing there.
Right.
And I, I ate him alive for that.
I publicly told him he was batshit crazy in front of all of his other kids and his wife.
Wow.
Because I was furious.
It's like you're going to touch my kid.
I'll kill you.
No.
And that's peaceful parenting in action, by the way.
Yeah, yeah.
And you were in your mid-20s at this point.
You said you don't.
No, you don't.
You say your early 20s?
No, no.
This was when my daughter was born.
This was like 20, this was 2020.
What?
Time frame.
I'm so sorry.
You got married at 20?
Publicly Told Him Batshit Crazy00:08:46
Yeah.
It took you how long to have kids?
11 years.
What?
Sorry, I'm sure we've been over this before, but just remind me why.
Yeah, we did.
Well, I know why.
One, there was sexual dysfunction with my wife based on her childhood trauma.
Two, we did not want to have children based on these mutual shit shows that we grew up with with kids.
Right.
So it was, yeah, my daughter was born 2018.
So it took from, yeah, 10 years.
Okay.
2017.
All right.
So what's your relationship like with your mother at the moment?
Strained.
I had confronted her about the child abuse first when after we had our first call back in 2023, I think, or 2020.
Was it 2023 or 2024?
I think it was 2024, like February 2024.
Yeah, because she was just getting remarried at that point.
I confronted her after that about the child abuse.
I kind of cut things off with her.
Wait, wait, but how did it go?
She was apologetic.
She, you know, gave me this standard.
I did, did the best I could with the knowledge I had stuff.
Yay.
Who cares?
I don't think she understood it.
I've maintained limited contact with her.
I did.
It's been kind of, I don't know.
I don't feel like I have a good relationship with her at all.
Like, it's because she's still plugged into that power game scenario with the whole church.
And yeah, I feel like I'm estranged with my whole family in general.
No, but you're still in contact, right?
Yeah, we're still in contact, but it's very superficial.
It's very surface level.
Okay.
Just the last thing I did was a week ago.
I did write her a letter.
And because I felt like I just had to, I had to just, I think of it as like bearing witness.
Like, this is what I experienced.
And I gave it to her.
And I've heard nothing since then.
It's been a week.
Oh, she hasn't responded to your letter.
She has not responded to my letter.
Okay.
And what if she doesn't?
I'm reluctant to call her out and say, hey, what do you think?
I want to know what she thinks because I'm basically saying, are you able to have a relationship?
I mean, did you, are you sure she got it?
I mean, if it was.
Oh, I handed it to her directly.
Oh, you had, okay, sorry.
I wasn't sure if it was email or spam bin.
Okay, so you handed it to her directly and she hasn't gotten back to you.
Okay, so that's her answer.
Yeah.
And so what are you going to do with that answer?
I don't know.
I'm probably, I mean, I feel like just disconnecting further because it's, I can't have a relationship with someone who just wants me to perform in a particular way.
But you got to be the good son doing this this way.
And that's one of the reasons, you know, the relationship with this woman went away because I felt that same you have to perform.
Okay, do you want to get married again?
No, no.
I mean, you want to date, right?
I mean, you did last year.
Great.
Right.
You want, you mean, you went through all of this, you jumped through all these hoops to be with this woman in her 20s, right?
Yeah.
Okay, so you want to date, right?
I don't know why I'm just saying trip.
Break it out.
Well, you can't spend the next 50 years entirely alone, right?
I mean, we're not built for that.
You'll go mad.
Yeah.
Okay.
So I'm going to tell you when a man reaches true maturity.
And again, I say this with all humility, right?
I was not totally dissimilar from your age when this happened.
So I'm just telling you from my I'm going to be 60 this year.
So I get to be the grizzled old guy on a rock telling you how it is.
You think it matters what you think of your mother.
It doesn't.
There's only one thing that matters regarding your mother.
Whose perspective matters regarding your mother?
I don't know, Steph.
Right.
Well, I'll tell you: it doesn't matter what you think of your mother because you're pushing 40.
The only thing that matters is what your potential wife thinks of your mother.
That's the only thing that matters.
If a quality woman comes along, right?
Strong, moral, clever, curious, and she comes to a family gathering, what does she think?
She's going to think she's horrible.
Right.
And then you say, hey, want to spend 20 or 30 years with this woman?
You want her to be around raising our kids?
What's she going to say?
Going to say that's an awful idea.
That's terrible.
She's going to go.
She's going to leave.
Yeah, she's going to leave.
So you're facing the wrong direction.
You're facing the past.
Why?
Well, because your parents want you to, because your mother wants you to do that.
Because you told me this.
Your brother rebelled.
What did you do?
I complied.
You complied.
So you do what your mother wants you to do.
And I understand that.
I sympathize with that.
But if you want a quality relationship, you have to have quality people in your life.
Right.
I mean, can you imagine you meet some, you think she's a strong, virtuous, competent, intelligent woman, and you go over to her place and her father is drunk and her mother is yelling at people.
And right, would that make any sense at all?
No, it would make absolutely no sense.
Right.
So you are judged by your least quality relationship because that's where your actual standards are.
You know, like if you're selling a house, do you ever sell it higher than the lowest offer you're willing to take?
I'm sorry, it broke up there.
If you're selling a house, let's say you're selling a house for half a million dollars, right?
Can you ever sell that house for more than the lowest offer you're willing to take?
No.
No.
The lowest offer is the price of the house because that's what you're willing to take for the house.
So if you say, I want to sell this house for half a million, someone can say, I'll give you 400,000.
And you say, sold.
Can you ever sell it for more than 400,000?
No, because you just accepted that offer for 400,000.
So your standards are revealed by your least quality relationship.
That's where your actual standards are.
This is why I ask people, like, if they have dysfunctional parents, what's the status of your relationship with your parents?
They say, well, you know, it's drained, but she's still in my life.
I have had this problem.
And you say, I handed this this letter.
She's not even responded to it.
So those are your standards.
I don't care what you say.
I'm an empiricist, right?
Just as nobody should care what I say.
It's only what I do, right?
So that is what you're willing to live with.
That's what you're willing to put up with.
So that's all you're going to get in life.
You will never get more than 400,000 or 50 bucks for your house if that's what you're going to accept.
You can't have high, low standards, right?
You think of the, I don't know, but the buttress, I think they're called, at the top of castles where they'd shoot the arrows, you know, the locks and depressions, right?
So you can't have standards that go up and down.
They're just standards.
Yeah.
Right.
And so your lowest standard, is it your relationship with your mother or something else?
What's your lowest quality relationship?
Well, it's quality relationship.
The lowest, lowest, yeah, lowest quality.
Yeah, it would be in that, I mean, I have just trying, I'm like doing an index of all of my relationships.
Like the, yeah, I mean, like acquaintance level.
Standards Of Empathy00:15:37
No, I don't mean that.
I mean, work stuff doesn't count.
I don't mean any of that.
Okay.
Like an intimate relationship with someone who you're yeah, it would, it would be, yeah, it would be on that like superficial side.
Okay, it's not superficial.
You keep saying that.
It's not superficial.
It's a lie in that you have stuff that you want to talk about, but you don't talk about it.
So that's not a superficial relationship.
That's a false relationship.
So, you know, if I've had a tough day and I'm talking to, I don't know, I'm exchanging a few pleasantries with the guy I'm buying a pack of gum from, right?
Some convenience store owner, right?
Right.
And I don't tell him all about how difficult my day has been.
Right, right.
Right.
That's that's appropriate because I, he shouldn't be, he should, I shouldn't dump on him, right?
We don't have a relationship.
So that's a superficial relationship.
You know, I'd like a pack of gum.
That's a dollar.
Here's the dollar.
Here's the gum.
Thank you.
Have a nice day.
Nice weather for this time of year.
Blah, blah, blah, not in Canada, but right.
So that's not a superficial.
I mean, you could say that's a superficial relationship, but that's all it is.
It's not even really a relationship.
It's surface level economic.
So a woman who raised you that you've known for 40 years almost, if you don't talk about anything, that's just a lying relationship.
Yeah.
That's just, you can't be yourself.
You can't be honest.
You can't share your thoughts and feelings.
That's why I wrote the letter because I wanted to do that.
Right.
I mean, a letter is not terrible, but it's not quite as good as a conversation.
But okay.
So you wrote the letter and you handed her the letter and she's not saying anything.
Right.
Right.
So why is she not saying anything?
I guess because she does not want to.
Well, that's totally that's tautological, right?
I know.
But why not?
That's the reason.
I would think because she feels hurt or distraught or makes her uncomfortable.
So your mother is always silent when she's hurt or distraught.
So when you were a kid, when she was hurt or distraught, she never raised her voice or expressed anything.
No, she would rage out.
Okay, so her being hurt and distraught is no reason for her to be silent as far as I understand it.
So what else?
She doesn't want to address what I wrote about.
Okay, but that is also tautological, right?
She doesn't want to.
Why does someone not do something because they don't want to?
Well, but why don't they want to?
Right.
Likely because it would reveal her flawed nature, and she would have to accept that.
She would have to accept that I have a problem with how I was raised.
Okay.
And then.
And then she would have to address it.
Okay.
How would she address it?
She can't address it.
Right.
And that's why she's not responding because there's nothing to say.
Because you're pushing 40.
You're pushing 40 with one failed marriage behind you.
You just got involved with a kind of psycho 29-year-old, right?
So how is she going to parent you now?
Can't parent me.
Right.
She can't parent you.
I mean, and imagine this with your daughter.
Obviously, this isn't going to happen, right?
But imagine this scenario where your daughter is 25 or 30 years old and says you totally failed as a parent.
What would you be able to do?
Nothing.
I can't functionally do anything.
You can't go back and start again.
There's no mulligans in parenting.
I mean, when it's.
So what was the point of writing the letter?
Well, that's the question.
And tell me.
Tell me.
What was the point?
I did it because I felt like I needed to do it.
Okay.
And that's not saying that doesn't answer the question.
You know, why did you do it?
I felt I needed to.
Well, but why?
It's still not.
It's just the same as saying, why didn't she respond?
Because you didn't want to.
Sorry, go ahead.
Yeah.
Because I feel like I'm not able to assert myself.
I'm not able to say what I need.
Okay.
And why is it important for you to try to assert yourself pushing 40 with your mom?
I don't know.
Why does she matter at this point?
That's the question.
It could be religious instruction on thy mother and thy father.
Yeah, well, I'm not.
I'm becoming less and less religious as time goes on.
Okay.
So what are you trying to achieve?
You hand this letter to your mother.
What would be the ideal outcome for you of handing this letter to your mother?
What would be the best thing that could happen?
I could just be she could just recognize that that happened and just apologize for it.
Okay, so she could have empathy for you.
Yeah.
Okay.
And how old is your mother?
66 this year.
66.
All right.
Okay.
So what do you think are the odds of somebody who doesn't have empathy getting empathy in their mid-60s?
Do you think she has backup empathy that she can access?
Do you think that she has untapped?
No, she does not have a well of untapped empathy.
So I want you to think of empathy like the language Japanese.
It's really, really important.
So if you grow up speaking Japanese, you speak Japanese.
If you grew up with parents who have empathy, then you have empathy, right?
Right, right, right.
If you don't grow up with parents who speak Japanese, then as an adult, you have to spend years learning Japanese, right?
So I understand.
Let me finish the analogy.
All right.
All right.
Your mother clearly did not grow up speaking Japanese, right?
Right.
And she certainly did not spend years learning how to speak Japanese in her adulthood, right?
So then you hand her a letter in Japanese, and you're like, why isn't she responding?
Because she can't read it.
Right.
It's a language she does not speak.
She has no idea how to process or respond to it.
He doesn't, it's just a bunch, just a bunch of squiggles to her.
Now, empathy and honesty are intertwined because we like to be told the truth.
And basic empathy is: well, if I like to be told the truth, then other people will like to be told the truth.
So, empathy and honesty are intertwined.
People without empathy can only and forever be aggressive, manipulative.
They can only bribe and punish.
They cannot appeal to shared emotional experiences or common humanity because they do not speak Japanese.
All they can do is bribe, bully, threaten, manipulate, pressure.
They have no capacity to speak Japanese.
They haven't learned it and they didn't grow up with it.
So you are trying to speak the language of common humanity and empathy to a woman who does not speak that language and only speaks the language of power.
The power to provide benefits, which is a bribe, the power to inflict punishments, which is a threat.
Which is why at the beginning of this conversation, you were very tangled up in your mind with a great set of ideas in my mind, or in my view, about power and relationships.
Your mother's relationship is based on power.
You are trying to have a relationship based on common humanity and empathy.
The two cannot coexist.
Right.
Yeah.
Which is why I was asking earlier about did the woman who wanted five to ten K from you a month for the three bread, whatever, did she empathize with you and recognize that you also would have your needs and preferences?
Which is why I asked at the beginning, what would happen to a quality woman who found out that you were faking a relationship with this attractive young woman in order to gain status?
Right.
It would make her skin crawl.
Yeah, yeah.
It would be gross.
And it would be fine if you were 20, but you're pushing 40, so it's ridiculous at this point, right?
Yeah, yeah.
I have since not made any other offers to any other no, no, I get it.
So the young woman and your ex-wife, your recent girlfriend, and your ex-wife, did they speak Japanese?
Did they speak the language of empathy?
No.
Right.
Hmm.
And the connection becomes clear.
Right.
There it is.
You are talking to people in Japanese in the mad hope that they will be able to speak back.
So where's Japan stuff?
Where is Japan?
Well, Japan is just the analogy for empathy.
Speaking Japanese is just speaking in terms of empathy.
And I'm saying, where are all the people with the empathy?
Well, they're not around you.
Do you know why?
Because I'm around the people who don't have empathy.
Right.
And we do not move in the same circles.
It's like I'm telling you, man, same planet, different worlds.
Yeah.
You know, they are ghosts to me, and I am demons to them.
Right.
I no more thinking of having a relationship with someone who has no empathy than I do with an NPC in a video game.
Right.
Exactly.
And I can spot them very quickly.
They can spot me pretty quickly.
And we just, we can be in the same room and we're in completely different worlds.
We do, we, we, it's almost like we can just walk through each other.
They're ghosts to me and I'm demons to them.
So do I possess empathy given my upbringing training right now?
Like, because if I'm attracting women that don't have empathy, I would say, well, that would mean I don't possess empathy.
Well, it's not just that you're attracting women who don't have empathy.
That can happen.
It's that you are pursuing women who don't have empathy.
And you're doing that on the commandment of your mother.
Yeah.
Which is why I fixated earlier on the part about you saying that your brother was a thorn in their side.
Remember, I said this is your parents' perspective.
So why does your mother not want an empathetic woman to be your girlfriend?
Because they would not get along at all and it would reveal that she sucks.
Yeah, she would, a woman of quality, a woman with empathy, would say, yeah, your mother's cold as ice, man.
She's a manipulator.
Yeah.
And I, you know, she also, along with your father who's departed, she also did you the most harm of any person in the world.
And I can't love you and love your mother who did you the most harm.
Right.
I mean, could you, you love your daughter?
Could you love a boy who beat her up?
Of course not.
I would kill him.
Right.
And what if, what if you beat your daughter up for, say, 20 years?
He wouldn't get past year two.
Right.
So my point is that how you would feel towards someone who, what if it was an adult who beat your daughter up?
Yeah, it's Dean's resolve.
Well, even more so, right?
Because at least we can forgive a child, right?
More so.
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah.
If it's a child and they're getting into a fight, obviously it's different.
Okay.
That's a protection thing on my side.
Hey, you're never seeing this person ever again.
Right.
But if you found out that some adult had been beating your daughter up repeatedly, you would feel enraged towards him, right?
Yes.
Right.
So this is how a woman coming into your life feels about your mother, except times infinity.
Right.
Because you were a child and you either saw your mother assault your brother.
You said it sounded like every three days, so a hundred times a year, times, let's say five to 15 or 4 to 14, 10 years.
So you saw your mother assault your brother a thousand times.
Maybe she assaulted you.
Maybe she assaulted other kids.
But she is a child.
She's violent against children.
And a good mother is fiercely protective of children.
And a good mother is fiercely protective of you as a child.
So she is going to fucking loathe your mother.
Right.
And that's why your mother will not allow you to date an empathetic woman.
And this is why having your mother in your life means having cold women in your life because they're the only people who get past the defenses.
So the goosebumps, the body chills, the shakes you got when hugging that woman was, oh, she's mom approved.
Ooh.
She ain't going to fight with mom.
Mom's happy with her.
Wow.
So the thing that scares the shit out of me is that I thought it was the opposite.
You thought that she was the opposite of your mother.
Yeah, I thought she was, I thought she's the safe one.
She's not going to be like my mother.
But she was a liar and a manipulator.
Right.
And you knew that from the very beginning.
She wouldn't even go on a first date with you because she bailed to be with her ex, but wanted to keep you around as a friend, knowing that you were attracted to her.
Right.
So she was a manipulator and a liar.
What was it that caused the breakup yesterday?
It was, I called her up.
I said, I basically my body freaking out yesterday morning.
I could not, I can't handle being in this performance-based scenario.
And because her basically saying, I require to feel safe, and it's going to be based on my feelings of safety.
That was like a contingent rewrite of my marriage.
Like my ex-wife did the same thing.
It was, I'm, I don't feel this way, therefore you act.
And I don't feel safe, therefore you give me money.
I'm not going to have a relationship unless I feel safe, which requires you to have money.
How much money did you give the woman in her 20s?
I didn't give, I gave this woman no money.
Okay.
There's no exchange of money.
But did you pay for outings?
Well, no, we've never, this was long distance.
We're in the rain.
We're in the same area.
Like we're, this has all been just an emotional connection situation.
So we never went out on dates because of the timeline.
Fathers and Filtering00:04:37
If you recall, you know, she was with the other guy.
She wouldn't go out with me.
If I would have took her out, I would have paid for the date, obviously.
But where she is now, we were really in this long-distance relationship for two months.
And because of the distance, we never went out.
But had she been around, yeah, I would have went out with her.
Okay.
And what was the performative requirement that had you in a full body revolt yesterday?
It was make more money, essentially.
You just don't make enough money.
And so she was saying, I don't want to go out with you.
I won't go out with you because you just don't make enough money.
Basically, yeah.
Okay.
All right.
And I just, I called her up.
I said, I can't do that.
That's horrible.
Oh, it'sn't horrible.
I mean, she was pretty upfront with it at the beginning, right?
Why is it horrible?
Why is it horrible?
Because it doesn't empathy for me.
No, no, but sorry.
But she said that at the very beginning.
She said, these are the standards and requirements to date me.
Well, it was kind of beyond dating.
It was more like, these are the standards and requirements for us to, you know, move on with our lives.
Like, we want to build a life together.
Okay.
So to be in a relationship with her, you had to make a certain amount of money.
Right?
Yeah.
And she said that from the very beginning.
Yes.
So why was it a shock and a horror that you didn't make enough money for her when she said you need to make a certain amount of money, which I guess you didn't make?
Well, yeah, I don't make the requirement.
I was probably, I'm just going to say I was lying to myself about it.
Like I thought I could change her mind about that.
You thought you could make her empathetic.
Yeah.
Right.
And I've got to filter on that.
That's, I got to do that.
Sorry, what do you mean?
I have to filter on lack of empathy.
Like I didn't do that.
I said, oh, you're you, I think you're a good person.
And I think I could change your mind on what is a good relationship.
And sorry, you said you think she's a good person.
And on what grounds on did you think she was a good person?
Based on our conversations and our connection.
No, she lied at the beginning.
She manipulated you.
She was willing to participate in the lie and she demanded money.
How does that up to how does that add up to a good person?
Maybe I'm missing something obvious here.
Yeah, you're right.
Yeah, why does that add?
Yeah, I just got to get over Hotman.
And that's, I think that's really because it's, am I just blinded by biology?
Well, how pretty was your mother when she was younger?
Oh, she was very pretty.
Right.
So your dad married the hot, unpleasant, violent woman, tried to fix her, found he couldn't check out.
Yeah.
So why would I mean that's that's a pretty obvious pattern, right?
Like, why, why?
It's a fundamental question we have to answer.
Why did our fathers, if we're male, right?
Why did our fathers marry our mother?
If our mothers were dysfunctional, why didn't our fathers marry our mothers?
Yeah.
Yeah.
So why did your father marry your mother?
Well, because she, because she was attractive, sexually.
Because she was hot, right?
Right.
Okay.
So at 40, you should know this shit, right?
Yeah.
Yeah, I should.
So this woman, you said, was I mean, it's, I can understand bleeding your heart dry for a 10.
I mean, at least I could understand, but at six and a half?
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, that's weird, isn't it?
I like, I really liked the fact that she could engage with me conversationally.
And she was above average in that area.
And I talked to a lot of women around her age who cannot.
Well, you know, because you're kind of in no man's land, right?
Because you're pushing 40.
And if you want to have more kids, then you need a younger woman, right?
Right.
But younger women have been raised on TikTok.
Yeah.
So there's a big cultural difference there.
Right.
Bird-Shattering Situation00:05:50
So, yeah, I don't have any particular answers for that other than maybe look for a woman in her early mid-30s.
And you've got to have a way of filtering for filtering for quality.
And I can give you a couple of tips there if you like.
If there's anything else you wanted to mention in sort of the closing part of the convo, I'm certainly happy to hear it.
No, I'd be happy to get any advice on this.
Okay.
So what you want is a woman with no drama.
Right.
Does this woman have drama?
Talking about ex-girlfriend here.
Yeah.
Yeah, she does.
Did she have drama when you met her?
Yeah.
Yep.
Yeah, because she, how long had it been since she'd broken up with her ex?
You said it was the summer, and this was like you met her in the winter?
Yeah, I'm not sure about that.
That was this past year.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
But before, when she met her on the dating app a year ago, December, do you know how long she'd been broken up from her boyfriend that she got back together with?
For my memory serves me, it would have been about a month.
Okay.
So it could have been that she broke up with this guy.
She wanted to get back together with him, but she wanted to see what was out there.
And it was just kind of a game.
Yeah.
But that's drama, right?
So you don't date someone who's just broken up with someone.
Like, that's not a good thing as a whole, particularly a woman, right?
So don't date someone who's just broken up with someone.
She had a troubled childhood, I assume.
Oh, yeah.
Okay.
And had she gone to therapy?
Yeah, she had.
Okay.
And so that's a plus.
But how long was it in the relationship that you had that she started talking about her financial demands?
So she said, you know, when we were not in a relationship that would lead to, you know, marriage, she would, she said, like upfront, like, hey, me in a romantic relationship, you know, I think I'm really demanding.
I think I'm really Basically, calling yourself crazy about it.
And I said to her, I said, well, the fact that you can call that out kind of proves that you're not crazy in a way.
Like, how do, how can you observe this?
Well, no, only if the demands aren't real.
Like, right?
So, I mean, somebody can say, I have OCD and they still have OCD, right?
Right.
But I'm looking at it like I have this tendency to, whenever I put on a black hat, I go and murder someone.
And I'd be like, well, so if you know that's the pattern, why would you ever put on a black hat?
Why would, or how can you not, how can you just continue that having full conscious knowledge of the pattern?
Like, can't you interrupt that sequence?
That was my reason.
You're still dating your mom.
Don't talk to me about other people solving their patterns.
Jesus, have some humility.
Don't be your dad.
You know, I'm drawn to women with no empathy.
And then when I, and I'm 10 years older than this woman, I'm drawn to women with no empathy.
So then I lecture them about patterns and how to overcome them.
Yeah, and I can't even overcome my own pattern.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I love talking to you stuff.
This always happens when I talk to you.
I get this like bird-shattering situation.
It's like you saying, hey, stupid.
Hey, stop doing that.
It's very like, take the plank out of your own eye.
Well, I think everyone goes with that.
With all due humility, right?
Again, I say this with great humility, but it's really good.
No, no, but so here's what you need to get.
So the reason that you think it's easy for her to break patterns is you haven't broken your own patterns.
So it seems easy.
Like once you go through the genuine process of breaking your own patterns, which feels like you're fucking dying.
I'm not kidding about that.
It feels like you get like, I say panic attacks, but there's like anxiety, there's insomnia, like you're really just wrenching your whole, your whole pattern.
And it is like voluntarily getting into a coffin to be buried for a month, believing you're going to arise with angel wings or something like that.
And this is within the Christian tradition, right?
It's called being born again, which means your old self has to die, right?
Right.
And so because you've only talked about breaking patterns, but haven't actually gone through the genuine process, then you think you can just talk other people out of their patterns.
Okay.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's like I'm scamming people.
Well, it's like you're someone looking at a baseball game saying, you know, just hit the ball, just throw the ball, just catch the ball, just right, get the ball in the net.
It's like, it's really tough.
Right.
I mean, if you've ever been up against a really good pitcher in baseball, I mean, it's hard as hell to hit that ball, right?
Oh, no, no, bro.
Don't get me started on the baseball thing, man.
Okay.
But it is, right?
I mean, if you've got like some slow pitch giant ball, okay, fine, whatever, right?
But his name was Clint, and he was amazing, and he threw probably like 70 mile an hour at like 15.
It was nuts.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
Like a real hit off him.
So that was my crowning achievement as a teenager, right?
So it's really tough to change.
It's really tough to change.
The Fundamental Lie00:08:34
Yeah.
And because you've done verbal understanding and listen, you've done great stuff.
You, you talked to your mom, you wrote the letter.
I mean, so that's good stuff.
But that's all they're gestures.
They're not true commitments.
True commitments are we have an honest relationship or no relationship at all because I'm facing the future, not the past.
I'm not concerned about my feelings about my mother.
I have empathy for the woman I want in my life.
Right.
And going through that process is really hard.
And people will fight you tooth and nail.
Now, when you've gone through that process, though, and then you meet someone who's not even really started that process, you don't imagine that your words can do it.
Again, to sort of, I don't want to overuse the analogy, but if you've gone through a couple of years of really learning and practicing Japanese and all the subtleties and you learn how to write the script and like it's, and then, you know, somebody doesn't even really speak Japanese or they maybe watched a few Japanese movies with subtitles and they would you say to them, listen, let's just start talking in Japanese because you'd be like, oh, God, it's going to take them years.
Yeah, it would be like, well, kind of improve on that.
It would be like saying, if I already went through the pain and suffering of learning a second language, and then I meet someone who only talks about what it would be like to learn a second language.
And they just think, they say to themselves, oh, it would be easy when you already know how difficult it is.
That's kind of what I'm doing.
And the big, yeah, and the big difference is between having standards and enforcing standards.
Right.
So having standards is saying, I will not have relationships in this short special life that I have.
I'm not going to have relationships where I can't be honest.
Right.
Now, it's one thing to say that.
Oh, honesty is a virtue.
Honesty is great.
Honesty is important in relationships.
And that's having a standard.
But enforcing a standard is I am not going to spend time with people where I can't be honest.
So I'm going to be honest with people, even though it's horrible.
I'm going to be honest with people.
And if they don't like me for being honest, I have to move on because I want to be around people who like me when I'm honest, not around people who only pretend to like me when I lie my ass off.
Right.
Now, this woman right away was dishonest, like right away.
Yeah.
And she signaled her lack of empathy by talking only about her demands and requirements.
This is the basic test of, you know, kind of selfishness, which is, you know, what do you bring to the table?
Oh, wealth, you know, status, money, whatever.
Generosity, competence.
And you say to the woman, what do you bring to the table?
I am the table.
I don't have to bring anything.
Okay, that's just a selfish person.
That's a, that's, that's a fundamental test of no empathy.
And the reason you stay away from those women is you're thinking with your balls, not their contents.
So the contents of your balls, of course, are future children.
And so you look at that and say, okay, how would she be as a mother for my children?
Right.
So what I'm asking you is to get out of your own head, which, you know, you've been in there a long time and that's fine.
But get out of your own head and say, okay, what's my dating standards?
Well, my dating standards are looking at your existing relationships and saying, if I invite a quality woman into these relationships, how's she going to react?
And if she's going to react negatively, then if you want the quality woman, you have to dump the bad relationships.
I mean, you can try and fix them and all of that, but sounds like you've been doing that for a while.
Yeah.
Or, or here's the thing.
Again, I'm not saying whether you should or shouldn't dump the relationships.
I'm just telling you the choice, right?
A nutritionist won't tell you, you can't eat cheesecakes.
Just say, if you eat cheesecake, you know, it's not going to be good for you or something, right?
So, I mean, your doctor can't even order you as a diabetic to eat or not eat certain things.
He just tells you about the consequences.
So the consequences of having bad relationships in your life is you can't have good relationships.
So you can stick with your family.
I just don't want you to not know the cause and effect of that.
So you can stick with your family and you can hang out with your mom and you can do all of this stuff.
The cost of that is no quality of dating.
Right.
And I think one of the things that terrifies me is all of my external relationships outside of my family of origin are basically offshoots from that social structure, the church social structure.
So one of my close friends, I won't say the name, but he actually converted to Catholicism.
So he's kind of outside of that.
Now that I think about it, yeah.
And we've maintained a good relationship.
I'm honest with him about everything.
So I have that good quality relationship with him.
But other people that are still in that old arena, yeah, I'm just afraid to, I'm going to have to like rebuild my entire life here.
Well, absolutely.
That is for a Christian, right?
Yeah.
I have come.
What did Jesus say?
I've come to set child against parents, friend against friend, brother against brother.
Yeah.
Oh, no, no, it's not Jesus' love.
Love.
Love, buddy.
Yeah, yeah.
So, and listen, my point is not to tell people what to do, but to make their lives comprehensible.
Yeah, yeah.
So the reason your relationship didn't work is you did not filter based upon empathy for your future children or empathy for your future self.
You were looking at, you were taking a R selected mating strategy, which is is she hot?
Versus a K selected mating strategy, which is, is she good?
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
Because the most fundamental lie that most people have in their relationships is that they like each other.
Did your parents like each other?
Ew, God, no.
Right.
But did they say, they said, oh, we love you, right, but yeah, yeah.
Did they like their children?
No, they did not.
No.
So the most fundamental lie that most people tell in their relationships is that they like each other.
When the truth is, it's like, well, I found you hot 10 years ago, but I'm kind of stuck now.
Yeah.
And that's where the that's just like, that's a ledge on the pyramid of dysfunction in my book, in this illustration.
So, yeah, I don't want that.
Yeah, I don't want that.
I don't want to get into another relationship and to just find myself lying to the person, lying to my partner, and then we're all settling in some lying bullshit just to keep up appearances or whatever external motivation.
Right.
But the problem is, of course, if you are genuinely honest, which is why you didn't probe this stuff with your father feeling like a failure, is that most people's lives are dismal failures.
And they're dismal failures because they lie to themselves.
You know, it's like a woman who doesn't want to go on a diet.
So she just buys a slimming mirror, you know, one of those funhouse mirrors that make you look fit, right?
Yeah.
So most people lie to themselves and so they fail.
And so when you tell the truth to people who've dedicated their entire lives to lying to themselves, you become enemies.
Oh, that is, wow.
And there's no fighting that.
Like, there's no fighting that.
It is just a fact that if you start to become genuine and authentic with your mother, she will have the impulse to kill you because you're revealing her entire life to be a falsehood and a failure.
And people do not like that.
You become an enemy.
See, this kind of makes me think of like how Jesus interacted.
If you read the scriptures, he didn't lie to people like ever.
He was just the brutal guy who says the quiet part out loud.
Well, he was also a little bit careful because he felt he was the Messiah, but would be put to death in his community if he claimed that.
So he did have to do a little bit of a dance, but that's, I mean, that's natural.
I mean, well, he did claim it and was then killed.
Bad Decisions and Blame Sharing00:15:01
Yes.
Yes, but he suspected it long before he claimed it, which is fine.
I mean, it's not a big criticism.
It's just that there's sometimes you have to do a little bit of a dance or a prevarication.
And that's, I mean, that doesn't, to me, that doesn't fundamentally interfere with your pursuit of truth.
It just means that you can't say every truth all the time, no matter what, because you'll get killed in about five minutes.
So, so, yeah, so, so, when you it would be like if you were actually in a horrible prison, but you were being drugged thinking you were free and relatively happy, how would you feel about someone who took away that drug?
Right.
Well, you'd want to kill them, you'd you'd view it as like a because you can't get out of prison, right?
It's the matrix thing, right?
Do you want to stay exactly right?
I was thinking the same thing, yeah.
So, if you are genuine and because you know, the Japanese thing is a morally neutral analogy, right?
But it's helpful.
But if you're genuine and authentic and real and honest and truthful, and all of that, then you are revealing to the NPCs that they're not real.
And that they're ghosts.
See, that's another struggle.
How because that's kind of like the original prop.
He's because I'm saying relationships are greater than power, but you still got to eat.
And eating does require interfacing with the NPCs.
So, how do you well?
No, not necessarily, not necessarily, not necessarily.
Well, first of all, if it's a business matter, you know, I don't know the politics of the people who, I don't know, like whatever service I get.
I don't know their politics, but so we don't have any particular interaction other than purely financial.
Now, people I actually work with, then I know their philosophy, their politics, and so on.
I don't know the philosophy and politics of everyone I interviewed in my sort of days of interviewing and so on, but it's still worth having a conversation.
So, you can still make a living while interacting with people who disagree with you.
But in the chosen relationships, in the relationships where you have voluntary choice, that's where your values are really going to show up.
Right.
So, I guess my struggle is: am I just lying to the people in the business world?
Well, I would say that.
Oh, forget the business world.
Forget the business world.
That's not your point right now.
The point is you're dating and your family.
Forget the business world.
That's you dodging to another complication to make it seem overwhelming.
You sent a letter to your mother, you handed a letter to your mother, she has not responded.
Right.
What are you going to do?
Because not responding is an answer.
Yeah.
It's not, she has, she has completely answered.
Right.
I am going to, yeah, I'm going to disconnect from her.
I have to disconnect from her.
Otherwise, my life will continue to suck and swirl down the drain of that familiar, shitty way of living.
Well, you can't be half an NPC.
Right.
Well, you know, Jesus talks about that.
Don't be lukewarm.
That's the worst.
Right.
Yeah.
So halfway between the dark and the boat just ends with your ass of the water.
Right.
So, yeah.
I mean, I would certainly suggest, and I talked about this in my very first book, like that trek across the desert to find the village of honest people away from the zombie city.
So it's a real thing.
I mean, it's a real thing, and it's a tough thing for sure.
At least with the internet, we have people we can talk to about this sort of stuff.
But that's the reality.
And the other thing, too, is that.
How old is your daughter?
She is seven.
Okay.
So How would you explain what happened with this long-distance half-girlfriend gold digger?
What would you, how would you explain that to your daughter if for some reason you had to tell her what happened and why?
To a seven-year-old or older?
Uh, let's say when she's 12.
When she's 12, so she's just getting ready to the hormones are just kicking in.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I would say to her, I'm sure she's going to ask.
Yeah, me and the ex-girlfriend, we one, we didn't work out because we were incompatible with values.
You're already lying.
Oh, okay.
All right.
Daddy was thinking with his, you know, what, and that was a mistake.
And what was bad about her, Daddy?
Um, she lacked empathy and she wanted to require performance in exchange for a relationship.
What does that mean, daddy?
That means you're transacting for what you need as a human.
What does that mean, daddy?
Remember, I'm 12.
Yeah, I'm getting way too complicated, Virtual.
Um, it means daddy made a mistake, but what mistake, daddy?
Because I'm going to start dating in a couple of years, and I need to know how not to make these mistakes.
And just saying I made a mistake is like some teacher saying you made a mistake in your math answer, but without telling me why or what the mistake is, daddy.
I need to know.
I put my hormones and sex drive above virtue.
But what does that mean, daddy?
That means you have to filter out for who the good people are.
But what does that mean, Daddy?
How do I do that?
You have to discern it.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
If I can't articulate it, it's because I can't do it.
No, it's because you don't want to be honest.
Do you know what the honest answer is?
What's the honest answer, Steph?
Well, she started out by lying to me, but I was taken in by her looks.
And then I used her to try and manipulate other women into going out with me.
Yeah, yeah.
And then she had money demands, which I was fine with, but then those money demands became too high.
She said I had to make a lot of money to date her, which made her a gold digger.
And then I kind of panicked and freaked out and left.
Yeah.
Because that's something that a 12-year-old could understand.
This transactional blah, blah, blah.
Like, who knows, right?
Yeah.
It's just being straight up honest.
Yeah.
So, so the like, why did you break up?
Because she demanded money to date her.
She said, I couldn't date her unless I increased my income.
Right.
So she wanted to be, in a sense, paid to date me.
The embarrassing thing.
Listen, when you talk to your kids, there's absolutely nothing wrong with saying, I made pretty bad mistakes.
Let me, and I was old enough to know better.
Yeah, and I, yeah, I agree because I don't want them going through the same crap I'm going through.
Right.
So, so, in order to do that, right?
So, if you say, well, you need, listen, my 12-year-old daughter, you need to filter people for virtue.
She's going to give you a thousand-yard stare.
Well, concerning, right?
Okay, yes.
But that's like saying, if your kid's having trouble with their math homework, well, you know, it's really important to get the right answer.
Okay, but how, right?
But how?
So, you got to give her the bold facts.
She, she, and, you know, this, this is, this is how bad decisions are.
This is the bad decisions I was making.
Right, right, right, right.
She told me up front she was a gold digger.
I'm like, sounds good.
She wouldn't even go on her first date because she went back to her boyfriend.
And I'm like, sounds good.
Let's keep dating or let's keep in a relationship.
I didn't have any empathy for the fact that I was sabotaging this other guy's relationship.
I didn't have any particular caution or warning on the fact that she was lying to him.
And I decided to use her to try and get dates from other women.
It was bad.
I was wrong.
Oh, it's so embarrassing.
But at least I can teach you these things.
So you're not doing these things when you're pushing 40.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So just, you know, I think as a whole, I don't think, you know, I've ever thought really negatively of someone who said, oh, yeah, I made these really bad decisions, bad mistakes.
Now, I really worked hard to figure out why I was making them and I haven't made them since.
But, you know, because kids have this incredible, you know, this, right?
They have this incredible antennae for truth.
Uh-huh.
And if you start gaslighting with all of these, you know, $20 words about human transactional analysis problems, she's just going to know, oh, so daddy's covering something up.
Whereas if you just say, oh, yeah, boy, was that ever a series of embarrassingly bad and wrong decisions?
So when my kids asked me, so why did you and mommy not make it?
Really, the only thing I could say is I made a terrible mistake.
Well, that's a different matter because you're still going to have to have a relationship with her for the rest of your life, as do they.
So I don't have an answer about how honest to be about divorces.
I don't have an answer about that because it's so complicated.
That's the thing.
Because, I mean, she's already asked it.
She's already been down that road.
And I've had to be very like, I have not crapped all over my ex-wife took her.
But you can't know that.
Hang on.
You cannot crap all over your ex-wife any more than you can blame your ex-girlfriend.
Because you had 10, but certainly I know your wife and you were probably the same age, but you had 10 years on your ex-girlfriend.
You had much less excuse for making bad decisions than she did because you were 10 years older.
So you cannot dump on your ex because you chose her.
Yeah, no, I have no.
I'm not dumping on my.
Are you talking about my ex-wife?
Yeah.
Yeah.
You said, I haven't dumped on my ex-wife.
And I'm like, but you can't.
Because that would be to dissociate from your own prior choices.
Right.
Now, my ex-wife is very flawed for sure.
That's not.
I'm not going to, I'm not going to sit there and say she had no, you know, part in the marriage going south because she did.
Again, lack of empathy.
But yeah, I chose that at 20.
Yeah, with bad family advice.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And so listen, I'm not blaming you, but if you have to say all of your choices, you have to own all of your choices because you want your daughter to own her choices too, right?
You don't want to give your daughter.
You don't want to give yourself excuses because then your daughter will use excuses.
I'm sorry, go ahead.
Correct.
Yeah, no, no, it's the determinism trap.
If I am not 100% responsible, then we can start blaming the environment.
We can blame anything and everything.
And I can convince myself it's because of all those other things, which then takes away your agency.
So, yeah.
I just don't know how to balance being honest because it does take two to tango.
It's only to tango.
It takes two to have a relationship.
Otherwise, it's like a one-sided thing.
Okay.
So please don't, please don't explain to a relationship expert that there are two people in a relationship.
I mean, I don't know what you do for a living.
You don't tell me.
But if I told you the basic, like let's say you were an entrepreneur and I decided to tell you that it's very important that you make more money than you spend.
Uh-huh.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
No, I'm saying I can't just say the marriage dissolved and it was 100% my fault, 0% her fault.
That's not true.
No, it's 100% both of your fault.
Right, The 50-50 thing doesn't work.
Now, if it's an arranged marriage, then it's 100% the parents' fault, right?
If you can't get married, right?
But you chose to get married and she chose to get married, and you are both 100% responsible for the failure of the marriage.
A marriage isn't like a couch that both of you are carrying and one of you drops it, right?
Or both of you drop it.
I mean, everybody in life is 100% responsible for what they do as adults.
Yes, yes, yes.
So you can talk about your 100% responsibility.
And the urge, of course, is to balance it out by saying, yes, but she did X, Y, and Z, right?
Right, right, right.
And don't worry about it.
No, but you want to transmit that 100% responsibility.
I mean, I'm sure you've heard me say this.
Who was responsible for me being deplatformed?
You are.
100%.
It's 100%.
Who knew that?
You know, relationships I've had in the past, have I ever blamed the other person?
I almost married the wrong woman in my 20s.
100% my fault.
And I had very little excuse because I'd already been studying philosophy for a decade.
So, so, so, yeah, just the tendency is to try and share the blame.
And that's a problem because then it's saying that the quality of your relationship is not dependent upon your choices at the beginning, but some perhaps cooperation down the road, which is kind of something you're still working on.
So, if you don't want the person as they are, don't be in the relationship.
So, with the woman you just broke up with yesterday, did you want her as she was at the beginning?
No.
No.
I wanted her to develop empathy.
Right.
Right.
Yeah.
So, yeah.
So, don't be in a relationship on the assumption that someone will change.
Yeah.
And I'm doing the same thing with, and the whole thing with the letter is the exact same manifestation.
Like, that's me pleading with my mother to change.
And she's not going to.
Well, and it's you pounding on a brick wall rather than changing yourself.
Yeah.
Do you like your mother as she is?
No.
There you go.
That's it.
You've had 40 years to try.
She's in her mid-60s.
If you don't like her as she is, just accept that.
She ain't going to change.
And even if she was, you sure as hell aren't going to do it.
Yeah.
Nobody, like even psychologists, psychiatrists can't fix people.
Nobody knows how to fix a lack of empathy.
Boy, if we did, we wouldn't have prisons, right?
That's so true.
No, we don't know.
You can't fix a lack of empathy.
It's a wiring in the brain.
And particularly when people are older, if they have lived an immoral life and your mother beat or hit children thousands of times, if you were to develop empathy in her, she would kill herself.
Can't Fix Lack of Empathy00:02:13
I'm not kidding about that.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, imagine, sorry to use this analogy, but imagine if you'd beaten your child, how awful you would feel.
Yeah.
Now, imagine if you did it thousands of times to eight children.
The lack of empathy is the only way they can continue to live.
And that's the whole freaking church structure, dude.
What do you mean?
That's the social structure that they're in.
They all believe in beating children and it's disgusting.
And it's, dare I say, satanic?
Like, Jesus says, don't do that.
And we do it, and no one sees it.
And I don't understand it.
Well, if everyone, if anyone sees it and talks about it, can you imagine me giving a peaceful parenting?
I mean, has any church ever reached out for me to give a peaceful parenting lecture?
Do you think I'd be happy to hear it?
I certainly would.
You're an atheist.
You're bad.
No, that's the mantra.
It's all otherism beats tribal nonsense.
Right.
Although I will say that there's been a number of Christian parents who have thanked me enormously for my work, which I really, really appreciate.
Yeah.
And count me as one of them because that's literally saved my daughter.
Now that's great.
That's great.
Because my ex-wife, even as flawed as she is, she will not spank because of it as well.
And that's why your daughter is positive, pleasant, and helpful, right?
Oh, yeah.
She doesn't throw tappertoes, doesn't do anything.
It's shocking.
Yeah.
Yeah.
No, it is, well, you know, it's just having empathy with myself as a child and how would I like to be treated?
Well, reasoned with and left and all of that.
And that doesn't come with fists and smacks and beatings and hittings.
Right.
All right.
Is there anything else that you wanted to mention?
I appreciate the call.
We've had a good old jawbone.
Yeah, yeah.
No, I'm good.
I know your time is valuable.
I really, really appreciate it.
So good.
I hope that you will keep me posted about how things are going.