March 18, 2026 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:47:02
Father Bad, Mother GOOD! CALL IN SHOW
Stefan Molyneux analyzes a caller's trauma from a father with covert narcissistic traits who abused his children weekly and manipulated the family via feigned cancer. The host critiques the mother's enabling silence and her partner's failure to confront her, noting that abusers operate on hedonistic cost-benefit analyses making change impossible. Ultimately, Molyneux advises the caller to stop seeking reconciliation with unrepentant parents and instead demands his girlfriend fiercely protect him from family members who cause pain, asserting true love requires shielding loved ones from harm. [Automatically generated summary]
I defooed from my father about three years ago now.
And I had no problem doing it because there was an incident and there was a lot of stuff leading up to it for 10 years or, you know, basically my whole life.
But I never had the conversation, the D-foo conversation with him.
I just felt like it was totally unreasonable at the time.
He wouldn't, there's no way he would ever listen to me because he never had in the past.
And, you know, it's been three years now and occasionally I get comments from, well, messages from him.
And I see them and it's all this stuff about you ghosted me.
You never gave me a chance.
You never wanted to hear me out.
And I'm wondering now how, I mean, I have a lot of questions, but the main thing is how necessary is it that I talk to him?
Did I already screw it up?
Can I go back now and talk to him?
And how can I just figure out what to do?
I'm very sorry for the situation.
Of course, it's always a great tragedy.
And I just want to extend my sympathies for that.
And I guess I'll need some backstory.
I mean, there's no recipe for this kind of stuff.
There's not a sort of have to, like a checklist, you know, like when you're going to fly a plane, you check your fuel and, you know, check your air aligns and so on.
So there's no absolute recipe or menu for this kind of stuff.
So it's not like you have to or you can't.
The general purpose of the conversation about any kind of separation of a relationship is to make sure that there's closure, which means, and closure just means certainty.
So it's not like you did a right thing or a wrong thing in having or not having the, as you say, the Dfu conversation.
So I just want to put that out up front, but if I can get some backstory to this sad tale, I'd appreciate that.
Thank you so much.
Yeah.
Seeking Closure and Certainty00:11:09
So I don't even know where to begin, but basically, ever since I was a little kid, I knew that there was something off about my father.
And I had been, as soon as I was old enough to realize it and communicate it, I was communicating it to the other members of my family, but obviously not to him because I knew that if I, when I ever did bring anything up to him, when I stood up to authority, it would get, you know, it would rain down on me.
So I had always been doing that.
And basically the rest of my family denied it and said that I was crazy for my entire childhood until all the way up until I was 26 when they finally got away from him.
And once they got away from him, which was three years ago, that's when I officially defooed.
I got away from him as well.
But I don't know.
Do you want me to go into detail of all the things that he did?
Well, not all.
I'm sure that would be a very lengthy conversation, but at least some.
So just so I get a sort of sense of what kind of personality we were dealing with.
Yeah.
So I'm no expert, obviously, but everyone has said, people that I've talked to has said it sounds like he has some type of covert narcissism personality disorder type thing.
So whenever I mean, just since I was a little kid, he had all of these standards for us.
We couldn't use bad words.
We couldn't, you know, even things like poop or stuff like that.
He would get angry at us for, but he would be swearing and saying F words and all this and that.
And he would completely deny it when you brought up, well, hey, you said this.
And it was scary.
It was to the point where it seemed like he really, really believed that he didn't actually say these things.
And I would always point this out as a kid.
And the rest of my family would say, no, no, he's, you know, he's just goofing around.
He's being jokey or something like that, which either way, that's not okay either.
More and more things started to come out as we were growing up.
Weird sexual things that he was into being into pornography and finding pornography on his computer and in his room and all of this stuff like that.
And then, if he ever caught me or any of my brothers getting into that when we were in high school, just totally coming after us and telling us that we're going to hell and all this stuff like that.
But we had found pornography in his belongings multiple times, but we none of us brought it up to him, of course, because we knew that he would act like he would just gaslight us and say, You didn't see anything.
You didn't know what you don't know what you're talking about.
You're too young.
So basically, this trend with just everything, everything, all of these standards that only apply to us.
And then, sorry, go ahead.
It certainly is the case, obviously, not with things like pornography and so on, but it certainly is the case that there are different standards for adults and children.
So, I mean, I have let loose a cuss word more than once in my life, but I didn't want my eight-year-old daughter letting loose with cuss words.
And so, but of course, I would be careful not to swear around her and so on.
So, there are different standards.
And I'm not telling you anything you don't know.
I'm just sort of pointing it out that there are different standards for adults and children, but the denial stuff is not good.
Totally.
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah.
Yes.
So all of the denial, exactly.
I think that's what the issue was.
It wasn't like, well, hey, you know, you're a kid and I'm an adult.
And here's why I do this and maybe you do different.
It was just, it was just denial.
That never happened.
You don't know what you're talking about.
Yeah, I mean, we want adults.
I mean, adults can engage in sexual activity.
Children can't.
Right.
So I mean, there are different standards as a whole, which we understand.
But if the standards bleed over and then any contradiction is denied, that's a problem.
Yes, totally.
That makes a lot of sense.
That's yeah.
So exactly.
Just that with nearly everything in life is just, he did all these things that were that were strange or weird or, you know, and then you're a kid and you don't know if this is okay or it's not okay.
Things that they're doing, things that my dad is saying, he started getting really weird and sexual at certain times.
And like I said, we found out that he was into weird pornography and all this stuff.
And then at the same time, but how did you find that out?
And you said on his computer?
Yeah.
So, well, I always stayed out of my dad's stuff and way away from his room because I knew if he ever caught me in there, I would get beaten or something like that.
But my older brother was kind of different than me.
That he was very, he would always stand up to them no matter how many times he lost to my parents or how many times he got beaten or whatever.
And he was always snooping in around snooping around in their room, looking for things.
I don't know.
Just, I don't even know why.
But yeah, found, I think, things on his computer and then found like magazines and playing cards in his like office.
And just a lot of other strange situations like that.
And then, but yeah, so things started getting weirder and weirder.
I'm still telling the rest of my family, hey, there's something off about this guy.
They're all denying it, saying that I'm crazy.
Why are you trying to separate the family?
Stuff like that.
And I guess, yeah, I started to be toward the end of high school.
I guess I was 16, 17, something like that.
And he was always making weird comments about like girlfriends that I had at that age.
And it was nothing that I could ever say.
Like, this is for sure wrong or not.
And even to this day, I'm not sure if it was weird that he said this stuff or not, but he would always make comments on their bodies.
Oh, that girl's, you know, oh, she's really less.
Uh, oh, she's got um big breasts and stuff like that.
And always, always talking about that about uh girlfriends that I had ages 15, 16, 17, stuff like that, which I thought was strange.
And it is, anyways, it is strong.
Yeah, okay, okay, yeah.
Um, so and then, gosh, I don't want to, I don't want to give into everything it's going to take forever, but more or less, uh, my mom finally comes around, starts trying to look into his stuff, finds out that he's been having affairs for years and all this other type of weird stuff that he's into.
They separate, my dad, of course, denies everything.
And then at the same time, my dad was diagnosed with prostate cancer.
When he broke the news to me that he and my mom were getting a divorce and that he had affairs and this is why they're getting a divorce, he said, before you say anything, just so you know, I was diagnosed with prostate cancer.
So if you're going to like get onto bad terms with me now, you don't know how much longer I'm going to be around.
And then he also said, and by the way, before you judge me, know that you have no idea what it's like to be a man, what a man goes through.
And when you become a man, there are a lot of things that you have to do and you won't understand it now.
So don't you dare judge me and all this stuff like that.
Okay, so sorry, that's a lot to compare.
How old were you when this happened?
16, I think, 16 or 17.
Oh, okay.
So you already were mostly a man.
So it's a little confusing.
Okay.
And did he, in fact, have prostate cancer?
So as far as I know, he did, and he got a surgery for it.
But as far as I know, it was like pretty much as early as you can possibly catch it.
And he basically got the surgery right away.
And it wasn't anything like a long, it wasn't a scare.
It wasn't a long.
I don't know.
I guess I shouldn't be talking too much because I don't know too much about cancer.
But it seems like he went through the sort of brutal chemo and radiation rounds or was it just stuff not removed or none of that.
He got something removed and he was in and out and that was that.
And never saw anything again.
Now, that's a little hard.
I'm obviously not a doctor, but it seems a little hard to follow.
Yeah.
I mean, if you, if you have a lump, right?
I mean, my general understanding, amateur though it is, is that it's benign or it's cancerous.
So if you have a lump and they remove it and it's just a mass or a cyst or, you know, a non-cancerous tumor, then you don't need any radiation or chemo as far as I know.
But if they remove something and it is cancerous, I think they want to make sure it hasn't spread or anything like that.
So there may be further stuff.
So, I mean, did he have an operation and something removed?
Yes.
Was it cancerous?
I don't know.
But it seems if he didn't go through any further treatment, I would have my doubts.
Okay.
Yeah.
So at that time, it's like there was so much going on in my life.
And my world was turned upside down.
He was out of the house and all of that.
So it's hard to know if he really did get all this stuff done or what was true or it wasn't.
I wasn't there for the house and he is bald.
He's like totally.
Did he lose his eyebrows?
Ah, no.
Okay.
I mean, I just say this because I had a lump removed.
It turned out to be cancerous.
Even though there was no indication it had spread, I still went through some rounds of chemo and radiation just to make sure.
So again, it's obviously I'm no doctor, but if somebody seems to have a habit of lying and not taking responsibility, then I doubt everything that comes out of their mouths.
I'm just trying to sort of get a sense of the situation as a whole.
Totally.
Okay.
So his explanation, so he did admit to the affairs, is that right?
Yes.
My mom had, I mean, I think she had so much evidence that there's no way he could deny that.
Okay.
And were the affairs things that he had pursued and it was free will kind of affairs?
Were they escorts or prostitutes or what was the nature of the affairs?
For the ones that we know exist, he was back in his hometown, which he visits relatively frequently, once a year, something like that, and seeing people, ran into somebody from high school or from college or something like that and hooked up, I guess, with some woman who he knew in the past.
Well, that's what he told me.
He told me it was that.
And then years later, I found out from my mom that there was more.
And it wasn't just one time.
And it was maybe multiple women back in this town, multiple times.
Okay.
All right.
I got it.
Violence in the Household00:04:57
And is your father an older father?
He is.
Yeah, don't mean that.
I mean, did he have you in his 30s or 40s?
Yeah.
35 when he had me.
Okay.
Got it.
All right.
And does he live an unhealthy lifestyle as a whole?
I wouldn't say unhealthy or healthy necessarily, pretty average.
Okay.
It's just it's unusual, as far as I know it, to get prostate cancer in your 50s.
But okay.
All right.
Okay.
So he separated from your mother and they divorced when you were 16 or 17.
Is that right?
That's right.
Okay.
And you earlier mentioned that if your brother was snooping or if you were found to be snooping, that your father would beat you.
So tell me about the corporal punishment situation.
Yeah.
So just more times than I can count, that was the regular punishment when we were kids.
It was spankings.
But at least, I mean, somewhere around 10 times, I was hit with objects, bare butts, whatever was in the vicinity, stick, belts, stuff like that.
The worst time that I remember for me was I said a word that he didn't like, and I must have been 10 years, 10, 12.
And we were at dinner, and he grabbed me by the head and pulled me out of my dinner chair at the table and accidentally hit my head against the wall behind me and then dragged me across the house, like on the floor into the bathroom, and then like slapped soap into my face because we didn't have like a bar of soap and he wanted to feed me soap.
So he had like put a bunch of like, what do you call it? The liquid soap in his hand and basically slapped my face a whole bunch of times.
Wow.
I'm so sorry.
That's appalling.
That's appalling.
I mean, my daughter is 17 and the idea of being violent with her is absolutely incomprehensible.
So I'm really sorry.
I'm really sorry about all of this.
And how often was there hitting in your household?
Not just you, but siblings?
Every week.
I would say every week.
Yeah.
And sorry, was that every week just you or every week somebody was getting hit?
So I had two brothers and my older brother got hit way more than I did.
Okay.
Okay.
So how often were you yourself hit on average?
Not sure, maybe once a month, something like that.
And from what age to what age?
As early as I can possibly remember until basically until I was puberty.
Okay.
So, yeah.
So 10 years, that's 120 hittings or assaults or beatings, you know, plus another two years.
Well, maybe not when you were a baby, plus another year and so on, right?
So we got 130, 132 beatings.
Okay.
I'm really sorry for that too, of course.
And what about yelling, screaming, like physical intimidation without assault, verbal abuse, name calling?
What happened there?
Yelling happened, but it was pretty rare because my dad, like I said, he seems to be the more covert narcissist type thing.
So he never did this really, really aggressive stuff until he started hitting.
But it was always the guilt-tripping and lying and emotional.
Yeah, I'm not an expert.
I mean, you say covert narcissist.
I don't know exactly what that means, but I think that would be more about reputational destruction and undermining of self-esteem through language.
I don't know that outright beatings can form with that.
Okay.
Yeah.
Yelling was very, very occasional.
I mean, happened sometimes, but not much at all, maybe once a year or something like that.
But it was one of those.
Did he have sort of like negative nicknames or would he use language that was sort of demeaning or something like that?
No.
No.
The thing that, yeah, it wasn't calling us bad names or anything.
The thing that always was was the guilt tripping.
It was like, son, are you, oh my gosh, son, are you, you would really do this to your father in your father's home?
That makes me so sad.
I'm going to have to hit you, something like that kind of.
Wow.
That's an unusual path.
Yeah.
Self-pity followed by violence.
Early Twenties Confusion00:07:30
All right.
And how many siblings do you have?
Two brothers.
Two brothers, okay.
And you are middle or youngest?
Middle.
Middle.
Okay, got it.
All right.
So how old were you when you left home?
So I first got out of the house, out of my mom's house at 24, I believe.
And then I moved abroad at 26 until I'm still living abroad.
24?
Okay.
Why were you at home for so long?
I was wanting to move abroad for a long time.
So I wanted to stay home.
My mom was nice enough to allow me to stay there and save my money for a big move at some point.
Okay, got it.
And how was your relationship with your mother?
We've talked a lot about your father, of course, but how was your relationship with your mother over your childhood and teen years?
That's it's complicated because she's so much better than my father and really is okay.
But there's some things that when I think about it, I get just, I think that's why I just get, because my dad's on my life now, so when I think about him, I just don't, I don't care too much.
But when I think about my mom, who's still in my life and we have a good relationship now, and I think about these things that trigger me, I get really angry and I can't sleep.
And it's mostly suggesting.
Sorry, I'm trying to unpack all of this.
So your father's out of your life, your mother's in your life.
And you say, when you think about all of these things, you can't sleep and so on.
I'm not sure what all of these things refers to.
Okay.
Yeah.
Mostly allowing my dad to be the way that he was and justifying it and making excuses for him until this day.
Sorry, allowing him.
I'm not sure I quite follow that.
I mean, was your mother hideously unattractive as a as a young woman?
No, she's very attractive.
Very attractive.
Okay, so very attractive.
So she probably had 10 or 20 guys who wanted to date her, at least.
Yeah, definitely.
So she didn't allow it to happen.
She made it happen.
Out of all of those guys, she chose your dad.
Totally.
And she dated him.
She got engaged to him.
She got married to him and she gave him three, count him three children.
And she stayed with him for what, 20 years?
25.
25 years, quarter century.
She didn't let it happen.
She made it happen.
She chose him voluntarily, chose to have sex with him, give him children, take care of him, and he was sick out of all of the guys she could have had.
And you know what it's like.
I mean, when you were in high school, the attractive girls, there were tons of guys who wanted to take them.
So, and I'm sorry to be focusing on language, but the language matters, as you know, right?
So when you say she let it happen, I don't understand.
Like, if someone is by the ocean and they see someone who's having trouble out there in the distance, in the ocean, they're on the shore, right?
And for some reason, maybe they have a good reason, maybe they don't, they don't go and try and help them.
Maybe they can't swim or whatever, right?
But they didn't create that situation.
And we could say they let that person drown, if that makes sense.
So that language is when you don't create the situation.
Right.
But if I take someone out in a boat and throw them off the ocean, deep in the water, throw them in the ocean, I'm not letting that happen.
I'm making that happen.
So that's what I, that's why I sort of wanted to understand the language there.
Okay.
Yeah.
I was thinking like once they were already in a relationship, she never like told him to stop hitting us or something.
But yeah, that totally.
Yeah.
I'm totally.
That makes sense.
That makes more sense.
Well, and I hear what you're saying, right?
Because so one of the things that's tough in evaluating parents is we don't know them as non-parents because, you know, by definition, right?
They, I mean, step parents, I guess, maybe, but, but we don't know our parents as non-parents.
And so what happens is we see them in these circumstances as if those circumstances happened to them because we don't see them in the time of maximum choice.
Right.
So you're the second born, right?
So by the time you sort of start thinking or noticing these things, you know, four or five or six years old, you are looking at your mother trying to manage a situation.
But we don't, we weren't around when she created the situation.
So we don't see that.
It's hard to picture.
Especially, I mean, how did your mother view your father and the situation that she created?
What was her narrative about why she had your father as a husband?
It's just, it's she didn't, she never saw it come and she never saw it coming.
He was this, I mean, I have different ideas of probably what, why it was, but every time you talk to her, it's just she had no idea.
That's what she says.
Okay, so she's pulling the blind card.
Yeah.
So do you know how long they were together before she got pregnant?
Roughly.
I mean, I know it's tough to know the exact details, but it wasn't like a shutdown wedding within a couple of months of meeting.
No.
No, they did it the right way.
I believe they started dating and maybe got married three years after or something and then had kids three or four years after that.
Okay.
So she had a couple of years to evaluate him before she got married, right?
Yeah.
Okay.
And did they grow up together or did they go to high school together or did she have any knowledge of him before she met him?
No.
Okay.
All right.
So she had a couple of years.
And were they, I don't think so from your timeline, but were they married in their teens or mid-late 20s?
I believe it was early 20s.
Early 20s.
Okay, so how is it close to 15 years before you come along?
I'm trying to get the dates right.
Let's see.
Because you said your dad had you at 35, right?
Let's see.
Yeah, dad had me at 35, had my brother at 31.
Yeah, so maybe mid-20s, actually, 25 or something like that.
Yeah, I don't think it could be early.
would be very unusual i mean not impossible but it would be very unusual because then i guess and are they the same age Yes, same exact age.
Okay, so they dated from early 20s to mid-20s, got married mid-20s, and then took like five or six years to have their first kid?
Family Dysfunction Patterns00:04:48
Something like that, yeah.
Okay, I mean, I know we're not, it's not a quiz, right?
I'm just trying to get.
I can't do the math in my head.
Right.
So she had pretty much a decade to evaluate your father before she gave him children.
Totally.
Okay.
And she says in that decade before she gave him children, he showed absolutely no signs of dysfunction.
Yes.
Come on, man.
I'm there with you.
Are you?
Well, because you said it happened to her.
I think it happened to her.
Yeah.
I think I'm there with you.
I've had this idea in my head for a few years now.
Sorry, which idea?
The idea that, well, my brothers always tell me, well, we just got one crazy parent.
Oh, yeah, no, I always have a parent.
And it's natural and healthy, but there's one parent who's blamed and another parent who gets rewarded, a savior.
Yeah, yeah.
The one who gets away.
Totally.
All right.
What do you know about your father's family of origin?
Gosh.
There's a lot I know and there's a lot I don't know, but they're just riddled with mental health issues, abuse, drug issues, criminals, trauma.
Okay.
There's a complete catalog of mental, social, and legal dysfunction, right?
Yeah.
Okay.
So your mother knew your father's family for 10 years before she gave him children.
Yeah.
And is her contention that your father, although he came from an addicted, criminal, I assume violent dysfunctional family, that he was perfectly healthy and there was no sign of dysfunction?
For the most part.
Yeah.
I mean, what do you think of that?
Yeah, I think it's Cope.
No, it's not Cope.
No, it's not Cope.
Cope is when something's happening to you, not what you create.
It is, in fact, sabotage.
It is sacrificing her children's capacity to love in order to not take responsibility for her choices.
Now, that's the covert narcissism, in my humble opinion.
Because what she's saying is, hey, you know what's weird, kid?
This is what's weird.
You can be totally in love with someone.
They can be wonderful, moral, healthy, great, virtuous, loving, honest.
And then after 10 years, they just totally do a 180 and become violent, manipulative, pathologically lying assholes.
What does that do to your capacity to love and pair bond?
That makes me, that's a great reason why I fear getting into relationships.
Well, sure, because your mother's lying her ass off.
Yeah.
I mean, it's funny.
I was just talking to someone the other day who was saying that one of the most inspirational things he heard from me was just a throwaway comment, which is kind of funny.
But wherein I said years ago, my wife and I are never getting divorced.
And he mentioned this to his own family who said, well, there's no way you can know that.
It's like, you can, actually, because you just make that commitment, right?
And so I said this, I guess I started my show.
I'd been married for a year or two.
And I said, yeah, we're never getting divorced.
And now it's like I'm in year 21 of the show and 23 or so or 24 of the marriage.
And yes, although we have gone through some challenges, to put it mildly, we are not divorced and we are as happy or as happier even than ever.
And so, of course, it's different if you're a hedonist.
If you're a hedonist, well, I don't know what I'm going to like or not like in 10 years.
But if you have principles and honor and virtue, then you know that absent some horrible brain injury or degradation, that you're going to keep your promises, right?
Yeah.
So your mother, in saying someone can fool you for 10 years, means that she is avoiding any responsibility while absolutely sabotaging her children's capacity to trust women.
Yeah.
Mother's Manipulation Tactics00:04:09
I think that's why I'm so angry when I think about her.
Right.
I mean, have any of the three boys, this is not certain.
I'm just wondering if this, like, how far the shadow has gone.
Have any of her three boys achieved happy, stable, successful marriages?
No, not even close.
Right.
And that's to some degree, to some degree, it's on your father, but to a more subtle degree, it's on.
That's why I couldn't figure out where the covert stuff was coming from.
But no, this is the covert stuff.
Yeah.
And she won't take responsibility for choosing your father.
She puts all the blame on him, and she's just this innocent little angel who trusted in a good man and was just betrayed.
Right?
I mean, it's not true.
It's not true.
Your father, I mean, just based on his family of origin, would have red flags all over.
Totally.
And that's what she wanted.
That's what she liked.
I mean, for me, in a sane and rational society, what your father did would be criminal.
I mean, you certainly, if he was on the subway and some guy said a rude word, would he be able to slap that guy with sanitizer?
No way.
No, he'd go to jail, right?
It's even worse when you've got kids because the power disparity, right?
So hybristophilia, I think it is, the love of or being sexually attracted to criminals, being sexually attracted to violent men.
I mean, you think your father's sexuality is weird, and I'm sorry to be talking about your parents in this way.
But you think your father's sexuality is weird.
Your mother is turned on by a guy who beats her children.
Crazy.
And she only left him when her own interests were threatened.
In other words, she didn't leave him because he, do you know this, right?
But he didn't, she didn't leave him because he beat her children or was a pathological liar or was endlessly manipulative or guilt-tripping.
No, no, no, she left him because he cheated.
So when her interests, her happiness was threatened, and maybe she was concerned that he would bring home a sexually transmitted disease, or maybe she was concerned that he might become attracted to someone else, or her vanity was wounded because he chose someone else or something like that.
So when it negatively affected her, she up and left him, but not when he was beating his children hundreds and hundreds of times over the course of their childhood.
That's crazy.
I've told my brothers this exact thing, and they get so angry when I say that.
Okay.
But didn't you say you have a good relationship with your mother?
Yeah, good.
I mean, there's these things lying kind of under that I haven't talked about that make me angry when I think of them.
But these days, if I just try to ignore that, she's nice to me.
She treats me well.
Well, sure.
I mean, if you don't bring up someone's immorality, they tend to treat you kind of nicely.
I mean, if you decide not to testify against the mafia, they might buy you a car.
Doesn't mean they're nice people.
Just means they're rewarding those who comply.
So help me understand how your mother has gotten away.
And we'll get you dead, I promise, but I'm just trying to figure this one out.
I'm sorry.
What do you mean by gotten away?
Well, that's you have come down like a ton of bricks on your dad, which I'm not saying is wrong, right?
I'm still trying to puzzle the situation out.
And again, I appreciate your patience while I sort of map this landscape, but you don't talk to your father and you have a good relationship with your mother and you say, gee, I never confronted my father.
Understanding Her Escape00:02:21
Have you confronted your mother with these basic facts?
I have.
And she has surprisingly apologized for some things.
And kind of every time that I see her, which I see her very rarely, she talks to me and apologizes for more little by bit, little by little.
But she's still hanging on to certain things.
I'm hoping that she eventually obviously apologizes for everything.
Okay.
And what decade of life are you in?
My 30s.
Right.
I mean, you don't have time to wait.
Because, moment, do you know why?
Like, you don't have time for, hey, maybe when I'm in my 40s or 50s, if she's still around, she'll apologize for more.
Like, you don't have that time to wait.
I assume that you're not in a happy, loving, moral, pair-bonded relationship because you said that things are fairly bad that way.
If I understand this correctly, maybe I'm wrong, but.
So I'm actually, I think I've done a lot of work on myself, and I just got into a relationship about one year ago, and things are perfect so far.
Okay.
And do you want to become a father?
Totally.
Okay.
Is the woman your age or younger or older?
Just a couple years younger.
Okay.
All right.
So how are you dealing with the pair bonding trust issues that we talked about earlier?
I think I got most of those, most of those out in previous relationships, and I don't worry about that at all in my current relationship.
Okay.
I mean, perfect is a bit of an alarming word.
Totally, yeah.
Okay.
So, and sorry to be jumping around.
In your current relationship, what has changed?
Sorry, how many previous relationships have you had?
One long term and then a couple, I don't know, two or three for a month or two.
Okay, got it.
And what is different about this woman?
We communicate everything open to each other.
And when there's an issue, we talk about it and basically get to the bottom of it right there.
Moral Standards Debate00:15:33
And I also don't feel like I ever have to censor myself around her for anything.
And I think she feels the same about me.
Okay.
And what are the virtues that you find most admirable about her?
She holds her friends to standards, moral standards.
She doesn't lie.
She wants to see me do better.
Wants me to lead and is happy to hear me out and let me lead.
Just for a couple off the top of my head.
I don't know.
Do those count?
Sure, sure.
And what does she think of your mother?
She, of course, thinks she's nice and has a cordial relationship with her.
She has not, I guess, out of politeness, she hasn't told me a very real opinion about her.
No self-censorship.
Hang on.
You gave me this.
No self-censorship, and she doesn't either.
So politeness, niceness, holding your tongue, that's not a thing, right?
Okay.
I mean, you can't have both, and I'm sorry to be, I don't mean to sound mean, but you can't say, well, she doesn't self-censor around me, but she also hasn't told me what she thinks of my mother.
Okay.
Yeah, that makes sense.
I mean, how much of your childhood is she aware of?
I've told her the whole story, the story.
I haven't told her all of the explicit details of what exactly my dad did to us and all that, but I told her the general ideas of things.
Well, that's sorry.
That's annoyingly foggy.
I mean, I don't know what it means to tell everyone the exact explicit details of every, I don't know what that means.
Does she know that your father beat you?
Yes.
Okay.
And she knows that your mother, I mean, allowed it, encouraged it, permitted it, rewarded him with sex despite the fact that he beat, or maybe because of the fact that he beat you.
So she knows that your mother was intimately intertwined and involved with your beatings.
Yeah.
Okay.
And she doesn't have anything negative to say about your mother, if I understand this correctly.
She has not.
Okay.
So if there was a guy who had beaten up your girlfriend a hundred times, would you have any negative thoughts or feelings about him?
Definitely.
Okay.
And if she said, well, let's say that it was a cousin or something like that who beat your girlfriend up as a child a hundred times.
And she said, I still enjoy hanging out with him.
What would you say?
I would say that's crazy.
And if she said, I want you to come and hang out with him too, what would you say?
I would say goodbye.
Well, you would say, I mean, I don't want to tell you what you would say, but you certainly would say, I don't want to.
And she would say, well, why wouldn't you want to hang out with my cousin who beat me up a hundred times?
Why wouldn't you want to come out and hang out with him?
He's nice.
Okay.
And what would you say?
I would try to explain to her or see what the hell she's thinking and why she's saying this guy is nice.
And does she not realize what's going on?
Okay.
So why do you think she hasn't said anything about, I mean, the more she loves you, the more she's going to dislike people who've done you great harm.
You can't love someone and also have love or affection for people who do them great harm, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
So I'm trying to, I'm just trying to map this again.
This is maybe this is a tall order, but does she knows that your mother presided over you being beaten for over a decade?
Yeah.
And she doesn't have anything negative to say.
True.
So just help me understand that.
I'm sure she would have something negative to say when framed like that.
No, that's why I think I want to understand.
That's why I asked what she knew about your childhood.
And you said, I told her, and you told her that you were beaten.
You told her that your mother was there and your mother knew.
I assume that that's all been told.
And so it's not framed like these are the facts.
I mean, these are the facts.
I'm trying to frame them in a particular way.
When I tell her about this stuff and maybe I made a mistake, it's always the focus on my dad the same way.
Oh, I'm aware.
So that's why you're calling me.
But she's an intelligent woman.
Obviously, I put my listeners always at the top 1% of intelligence.
And if she's a perfect woman for you, then she has to be intelligent.
And that's why I asked about her morals.
You said she holds her friends to high standards, right?
Yeah.
Okay.
So if she holds her friends to high standards, it means she has high moral standards.
Now, if one of her friends was letting her boyfriend or husband beat her children, what would your girlfriend say?
I think she would speak up and talk to that friend.
Whether she would or wouldn't speak up, what would she say to you about that?
Oh, she would say that it's terrible.
Yeah, that this is immoral, that this woman has invited a man into her house who's beating her children.
And so if she holds her friends to high moral standards, then why is she not holding your mother to even basic moral standards?
Yeah, I it's a good question.
Yeah, it's a good question.
I think that there's I maybe need to retract my statement then about us not censoring ourselves because I think that she would say something about my mom knowing her and other things that she said because she's had things to say about people like that in her family as well.
And maybe she does censor them.
Maybe we do censor.
Well, I don't know.
Obviously, you know the relationship infinitely better than I do.
I mean, there are a couple of logical possibilities.
One is that you don't want to criticize your mother as much.
You certainly don't want to criticize your mother as much as you do your father, right?
Right.
So it could be that she senses that you don't want to criticize your mother and she's complying with that.
I think that makes a lot of sense.
But that means she's putting appeasement above virtue and honesty.
In other words, well, his mother is a pretty terrible person, but he doesn't want to criticize her.
So I'm not going to say anything that is putting your avoidance in a particular situation that the blowback is going to be terrible or bad or, you know, it's not worth it and so on.
And we can think of certain situations in life.
You know, like let's say I'm in some foreign country.
I don't have a huge respect for their government, but you know, I'm I'm going to obey the laws, right?
Because I don't want to get my ass thrown in jail, right?
So there are times when we aren't, you know, direct or, you know, don't hold ourselves in our highest moral activation or whatever.
And we do that out of anxiety or concern or fear that there'll be some negative outcome.
And so do you think it might be something like that?
Has she ever experienced anything negative from you for being blunt, direct, honest, or having these moral standards that she applies to her family and her friends, but just not to your mother?
I don't believe so.
Do you mind if I give some context and maybe it's relevant?
Maybe it sounds like an excuse.
No, no.
Oh, here.
Go ahead.
I mean, again, I'm just feeling my, I'm like a jellyfish feeling my way forward through the crevices.
So yeah, yeah, please guide me along.
So we live in Asia, in East Asia, and there is, I'm sure, as you know, the culture of respect your elders, respect family, kind of don't talk about anything bad about elders and other people's family, which I don't agree with, by the way.
Of course, I don't agree with that at all.
And she's trying to get out of that.
And she is on her way out of that.
But I think it is, it stems from that thing for sure, because even after I told her this stuff about my childhood, she kind of stared at me and she's like, I'm so sorry to hear that.
And then I was like, well, don't you have anything to say about my dad?
Like, he sounds like an asshole, right?
And she's like, is it okay to say that?
And I'm like, yeah, totally.
I'm saying it.
You can say this.
And she was like, yeah, like I, that makes me so angry.
Like, I'm upset about that or whatever.
So I think she is holding back for sure.
No, no, because you've already told her.
Hang on, sorry, Tim.
But you've already told her that not only is her criticism acceptable, but it's welcomed.
You're actually inviting it.
You want her to criticize your family.
Say, oh, doesn't my dad sound like an asshole?
You want her to criticize your parents, right?
Yeah.
So then it can't be that she feels it's unacceptable in her relationship with you.
So that's not it.
So the fear thing, you know, you're completely right.
And that doesn't make sense to say that it's some fear thing.
So it's some other thing.
What is the other thing?
I don't know, but it's important.
Because if she's, if you've invited her, no, no, no, please, please, please.
I need your objective moral judgment on my father, which means you can criticize my parents and my family, you know, sort of by extension.
So if you are desperately wanting her to criticize your father or needing her to, which I understand, I think, then why wouldn't she point some things out about your mother?
I think because she's waiting for me to give that again and the focus wasn't on my mother, although it the focus was.
Yes, but we need, but that's why you're calling me.
We need people to see the things we can't see.
Yeah.
Right?
Like, I mean, in battle, our eyes face one way.
We don't see behind us.
We don't have like prey eyes on the side of her head, right?
And so in battle, we can't watch her back.
So we need other people to watch her back.
So, you know, one of the great powers of a relationship, why great relationships give you like superhuman abilities is you've got someone to watch your back and see the things that you can't see.
And so she has these principles of don't beat your children.
And she knows, of course, in the West, marriages are not arranged or enforced by the tribe, the mullahs, or the government, right?
So she knows that your mother chose this.
And the question is, why wouldn't she say anything?
And this is this, please understand, this is not a criticism of her.
This is not a criticism of you.
I think it's just important.
Because if there's blind spots in you both, that's going to be challenging for your relationship as a whole.
So if there's something where either she doesn't see female immorality or evil and you don't see it, that's going to be a big hole in your relationship through which bad things can pour through.
I'm not sure if it's that, I mean, she's criticized her mom and had these talks with her mom for things that have happened to her mom in the past.
And she's opened up to me about issues with her mom and talking to her mom.
I really think it's, and I'm not saying it makes sense.
I'm not saying it's okay, but I think it's this politeness thing.
I'm not going to talk about your mom because I haven't outwardly said, hey, my mom, you know, F my mom or whatever.
She did all this stuff because I just, when I do rants to her, I talk about my dad.
Right.
Okay.
So why?
So she's criticized her mother.
You've invited her to criticize your family.
So why is your mom getting away with her too?
Yeah.
I think she's just waiting for me, waiting for me to make the move.
But that's not how.
And again, I'm sure she's a wonderful woman.
So these are just little tweaks or course corrections.
So this is not any kind of condemnation.
But that's not how virtue works.
Right.
Virtue is you have to be honest and direct with people.
You don't just wait for permission, right?
I mean, to take a silly example, if your girlfriend, if some guy was creeping up behind her, you would warn her ahead of time, right?
You'd say, hey, hey, look out.
Come here.
There's a creepy guy behind you or whatever.
Jason Mamoa style just kind of creeping up on the red carpet.
And so, but you wouldn't be passive about it, right?
No way.
If you saw that she was being abused at work, you know, people calling her horrible names and all of that, you wouldn't wait for her to bring it up, would you?
Of course not.
No, you'd be like, okay, this something's something's not working out here, right?
So if you saw her being mistreated by someone in her life, you wouldn't wait for her permission.
That's kind of not how virtue works.
It's not passive, right?
Right.
So I don't think the waiting is, I mean, maybe it's true, but then we do have to cut back a little bit on the virtues because the virtues are that you say things when you see negative things happening to someone you love, right?
Yeah, I'm there with you.
Okay.
All right.
So she's East Asian, right?
So are you white?
I am.
Right.
So, I mean, you are choosing biracialism for your kids, right?
Yes.
That's a challenge.
Yeah.
Okay.
Just so you're aware, right?
I mean, love whoever you want, but you are making decisions for your kids to be, what do they say, Waysians now?
I can't remember the term.
But you're choosing for your kids to be mixed race, which is going to open up significant possibilities or probabilities of identity issues and mental health issues and so on.
So just obviously be aware of that if you can.
It's easier for your kids if you don't do that.
But again, if this is love and all of that, just I just, I always feel honor bound or conscience bound to sort of point that out and just be aware of that.
Okay.
All right.
So do you think that you and this woman are going to go the distance, get married, have kids and so on?
I think so.
Okay.
And what do you think of her family?
I think they're very nice.
I enjoy being around them.
I have some issues with her with her father.
Yeah.
Father's Inappropriate Behavior00:14:39
He just some things.
Yeah.
She told me that he doesn't own up to things, kind of like my father, denial, gaslighting, some stuff like that, but they don't seem to be big issues, I guess.
And was she subject to any violence when she was growing up from her family?
She told me she was like very occasionally they did like spanking.
Okay.
And any name-calling or put-downs that way?
No, as far as I don't know.
As far as you know.
I mean, you've been together for a year.
I assume you've had conversations about childhood.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So she was raised, I mean, with a few exceptions, in the peaceful parenting paradigm to some degree.
It seems like it.
I would say most things that I've heard about her family, I just like, wow, it's crazy to me that you can have an upbringing like that compared to mine.
Okay.
I mean, that's wild.
And, you know, all credit to her family for discovering peaceful parenting before there was even a word for it.
I mean, and I don't mean that with any cynicism or negativity.
Like, honestly, that's wonderful that they would be so advanced in a way or so moral that they would, in a sense, discover these principles of the non-aggression principle regarding children and so on decades even before the term, well, a decade or two before the term was even invented.
And that's, I mean, all credit to them.
That's that's wonderful.
And have has your mother ever met her or her parents or her family?
No, they've exchanged letters.
Okay.
And how do they get along?
Well, they don't know each other very well, but it's just kind of polite.
Hey, thank you for taking care of my daughter.
Thank you for taking care of my son.
Look forward to meeting you someday.
Happy holidays, things like that.
And I assume that it's going to be a blended Western and Asian family.
So, I mean, your mother will have to talk to them or meet them, I assume, at some point.
Yeah.
Okay.
And not that they should, but does her family know about the violence you experienced at the hands of your parents?
I don't know.
I don't know for sure.
I would guess that her mother knows.
I would guess that they both know.
But I'm not totally sure.
I haven't asked my girlfriend if she's told her parents this stuff.
Okay, got it.
All right.
So let's turn to your dad.
And I appreciate all of that.
I know it seems like a side quest, but I don't think it is.
So when you got to your father, you had conversations with him.
You tried to get him to take some responsibility for the negative things that happened over the course of his parenting.
He wouldn't take responsibility.
He did the gaslighting thing.
He did the right, all of that stuff.
And then three years ago, if I remember rightly, you decided to stop communicating with him.
That's right.
And your siblings, what's their state?
I know that they're still defending your mother, but what's the status of your siblings' relationship with your father?
So the reason that I defooed three years ago and not 15 years ago or whatever it was was because I was kind of trying to defoo.
But every time that I tried or I talked to my brothers or my family and said, I need to get away from this guy, they all guilt-tripped me and told me I was crazy.
He doesn't deserve this.
Finally, three years ago, a situation happens where it opened the rest of their eyes and they all defooed from him.
And then I said, okay, I'm going to do the same.
And that's what happened.
And now my younger brother just started talking to him again, but everybody else doesn't talk to him.
I mean, you don't have to get into specifics.
Was it a financial situation?
Was it a violence situation?
What was it that happened three years ago that had everyone ditch him?
My dad moved across the country.
He would randomly show up occasionally back in our hometown.
And he showed up at my brother's house, asked to like stay there for a little bit, just, hey, want to visit my son type thing.
And I think my brother was at work, came home or something like that, and found my dad trying to have sexual things with people in his apartment, in my brother's apartment.
And my older brother freaked out on him.
They got into a big fight.
And then we all were like, we need to get away from this guy.
And I was like, thank you.
Finally, everybody understands.
Okay.
Got it.
Okay.
And so then you didn't have any particular conversations with your father.
And then how long was it before your father connected with you?
He connected with me as soon as that situation happened.
I got a long text message on my phone and a bunch of missed calls from him.
And then he about once every month, or I don't know, maybe once every couple months after that, sent me messages and emails.
And now for the last year, year and a half or so, they happened more like once or twice a year.
Okay, so your family was fine with him beating his children and all of the creepy pornography and sexual stuff and all of that, but they weren't fine with him trying to have sex in your brother's apartment.
Yes.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry to sound dense, maybe old-fashioned.
I don't quite understand why the one, which is consensual, I guess maybe your brother didn't consent to all of that in terms of having your father try to have sex in his apartment.
But I assume that the person that your father was having sex with, it was consensual.
And so I'm trying to sort of puzzle out why consensual sex is the deal breaker, but violence and creepy sexuality around children is not.
I'm right there with you.
And this is what I've been saying.
Oh, I'm sorry.
I thought you agreed with them because you said, finally, now you see how bad he is.
It's like, but it's not that bad compared to what happened in the past.
So what I've been telling them for years and years and years, like, we need to get away from this guy for so many reasons.
And they were just excuse it, just excuse it.
And then this thing happens and then they move away, which, I mean, I am upset also that it took this for them to understand that he's crazy, but I just feel like whatever it takes, as long as they got out.
And have you ever talked to your family about, you know, this sort of perception of feeling that you were right and they were wrong?
Or that, you know, the violence, sorry to interrupt, but or that the violence against you and your brothers was not enough for them to change, but your father trying to have consensual sex was a deal breaker.
I've said, I believe I've said that exact thing to my mom before.
Your mom.
Yeah.
But your mom divorced him because he was a creepy cheater.
Like, why would she have a...
I'm sorry. I'm sorry.
Sorry if I'm missing something.
Like, why would you have to convince your mom that your dad is bad?
Even pretty much to this day, she makes excuses for him and says that I really should have a father.
It's unfortunate that I don't have a father.
And then I, of course, said, well, you don't have a husband.
You don't want to be around him.
So why should I be around him?
And then I brought up that same thing.
I said, well, he beat us and did all this weird stuff and made comments about kids and you didn't have any problem with it.
And he does this weird sexual stuff, you know, has a hang on, hang on.
So weird sexual stuff.
This was a consensual relationship with an adult, right?
Unless it wasn't.
In which case I kind of need to tell you.
Yes.
Yep.
Okay.
So the only weirdness, I assume, is that it's in his son's apartment.
It was also gay stuff, which sorry, not that gay is weird, but nobody had any idea.
Oh, it was with a man.
Yes.
Okay, got it.
Or maybe even multiple men and like maybe much younger.
What maybe?
What do you mean, maybe?
Well, my brother found his phone and there were messages on it, I think, of I think that that's what he said.
There are messages on it of like younger men.
It was definitely on a gay.
Oh, so like he might have like multiple sexual partners as he's a younger man and so on, right?
Yes.
Yeah.
And he was trying to do it at my brother's apartment when he was at work.
Got it.
Got it.
Okay.
All right.
So your mother still feels that your father is a good influence who should be in your life.
Is that right?
In recent months or maybe to the past year, she's eased up on that and she's for some time.
Yeah.
Yeah, definitely.
Hmm.
Okay.
And what's her reasoning behind that?
Doesn't make any sense to me.
No, no, but her reason.
It's just this whole thing of you boys need a father.
Boys need a father because you only have one.
That's what she just, that's kind of what she would always say.
Boys need a father because you only have one.
Right.
Something like that.
So that means that she should choose a good guy to be your father.
Totally.
If fathers are so important, then she should choose a good guy to be her father.
Has she ever mentioned that?
I'm sorry I didn't choose a better guy to be your father?
No, no, no, no.
Okay, so she hasn't apologized for much.
I mean, what has she apologized for?
She's apologized for things between just me and her that don't have to do with my father, things in the past.
She's apologized.
Trying to think if she's apologized for anything that has to do with him.
I don't know.
I mean, at least I can say it doesn't come to mind.
Even the most recent thing I can remember, and this was two or three years ago now, but I was visiting home and my brother made some type of comment about the way dad treated us when we were young.
And my mom, even though she's divorced him and everything, goes, don't talk about him.
He's not here to defend himself.
And I said, why does it matter if he's here to defend himself?
Everything that he did to you and to us.
And she just started crying and she just said like she didn't want to hear it.
And I got crying, which is manipulative and said she didn't want to hear it.
So isn't that the covert narcissism, as far as I understand it, you know, in an amateur fashion?
Isn't that kind of the covert narcissism that you've been talking about?
Yeah.
That she only cares about her own feelings or if those feelings are even real.
Okay.
All right.
Okay.
So back to your dad.
So he's in contact and he's trying to trying to be in touch with you and get back in contact and reestablish the relationship and so on.
And so you said you got some messages and some texts from him, some commits calls after the gay sex in the brothers' apartment stuff.
And what's happened since?
I have never responded to any of them.
I told myself that if any of his messages seem genuine, like he just wants to talk and really get down to the bottom of something, we can talk and all engage in a conversation with him.
But until now, every single message that he's sent me, every single one has been filled with manipulation.
You boys don't understand me.
What about me?
How come you never asked about, or how come you never consider my childhood or why I do these things?
Don't you remember when I used to take you to baseball games?
How dare you ghost me like that?
Stuff like that.
Okay.
And why are you saying to him that, or did you say to him directly that you would be happy to have a conversation with him if certain conditions were met?
I did not.
I just told myself that.
Okay, got it.
All right.
So he continues to be manipulative and all of that sort of stuff.
And so how often is he contacting you now?
Probably two to three times a year.
Okay.
All right.
And I was want to make sure that I'm going to give you as much value as possible in the conversation.
And so how can I best help you in the time that we have left?
Thank you so much.
So the issue is now, well, there are a couple issues, but the number one thing is when he does message me, he always says this stuff of you ghosted me.
If you ghost someone, it's going to come back to haunt you.
If you're, you know, you're going to be a man like I was and you're going to start freaking out and you're not, you're going to regret all this stuff and not having these conversations and getting closure and you need to, like you, you, you shouldn't have ghosted me.
You need to give me a chance, stuff like that.
And I really almost never think about him.
But when he does message me, I think a little bit, I think, is he onto something or should I just not even entertain it at all?
Did he deserve the conversation?
Or is that just going to be him like in the past, fake apologizing, pulling me into something else, saying he's going to change and he's going to get better, which he can be good at at times.
And then next thing you know, he's just not following up on his promises, continuing manipulation.
He's a master manipulator.
Social Circle Dynamics00:16:01
Right.
Well, I can certainly give you a couple of tips on how to know if someone can change.
So, one of the ways that you can tell if someone's going to change is if they admit that there's a problem.
Right?
Now, has your father admitted that he has a problem, that he was violent, that he's dishonest, that he's manipulative?
Has he admitted that there is a problem?
Really, no.
Very occasionally, in the messages where he does kind of say, like, well, I did this bad thing, he will say, I did this because you guys, don't you remember the stories I told you about my childhood?
Why didn't you hear me out?
Why have you given me some sympathy and thought about that?
Okay, so he's claiming that his negative actions, he should not be blamed for them because he had a bad childhood.
Yes.
So, why is he blaming you for ghosting?
You had a bad childhood.
Yeah.
I mean, if he can do bad things because he had a bad childhood and he says ghosting is bad, then he should accept that because, well, you had a bad childhood.
But of course, that's not how manipulators work.
They just make up rules to try and win in the moment, but there's nothing consistent about it.
Okay.
So he doesn't, so he's still blaming his childhood.
Right?
I mean, Bro's in his 50s or 60s or whatever he is, right?
Still blaming his childhood.
Okay.
60s, I guess.
So he has not admitted fault in any foundational way.
He's not taking responsibility for his life, right?
No way.
Okay.
No way.
So that's not going to happen.
Like, change is not going to happen.
And I'll just keep this real brief because I've sort of talked about this before.
But, you know, 95% of people who try to quit, who try to lose weight, gain it back or more.
And so there's a 95% failure rate, even among people who are highly motivated and whose health is on the line and who get lots of praise for their choice.
Oh, you look great.
You've lost weight.
Blah, blah, blah.
Right.
So even among people who admit significant fault, the failure rate of change is 19 out of 20 or 9 out of 10 or something like that.
And your father doesn't even think he's overweight in this analogy.
He doesn't think that he has done anything wrong.
Or if he did do things that were wrong, he needs sympathy because of his bad childhood.
Yeah, 1,000%.
Okay.
So he's not going to change.
I mean, for a whole number of reasons.
The other thing, too, is that age is a factor.
The older people get, the less likely they are to change.
Because the purpose of change is to fix the future.
Like, why would someone go through a big self-confrontation?
I've done wrong things.
I beat my children.
I lie.
I manipulate.
I've alienated people.
Like, why would someone go through all of that?
Well, to fix their future.
Yeah.
And the less future you have, the less incentive you have to change.
It's why nobody worries about the calories if they're on death row and it's their last meal.
Nobody sits there and says, oh, well, you know, I've got to watch my weight.
It's like, because you have like 10 minutes left to live, right?
So the less future you have, the less incentive you have to change from a sort of practical standpoint.
That's number two.
Number three is you have to look at the costs of change.
So if you have a guy whose entire life is based, his entire social life is based on drinking, like his friends go out and they drink and they get together at lunch and they drink and they go out to bars and they drink and right and they go to the cottage and they drink and so on, right?
And his family drinks, like all of his social relationships are based on drinking, then asking him to quit drinking is asking him to challenge and confront his entire social circle.
And what people do is they say, I mean, deep down in their genes, they say, ooh, you know, well, drinking may not be great for me, but loneliness is even worse.
And in a way, they're kind of right.
So for people who have social anxiety or, you know, they're not comfortable in their own skin or whatever you want to say, they drink because the damage that alcohol does to them is less than the damage that loneliness would do to them, because loneliness is the equivalent of smoking like half a pack of cigarettes a day in terms of longevity.
So if your father is amoral, which he is, because that's what manipulators are, is amoral.
They use morals just to get their way.
But if your father is amoral, then what that means is that he's going to do a calculation on what benefits him, not what is right.
And I think there's a tiny echo of that in your girlfriend, because if it's right, you should do it even if it doesn't benefit you.
I think I have some credibility in that.
It sort of blew up my whole career to do what was right.
So your father will look and say, if I become a good person, first of all, I have to confront all the bad things I've done over the past 50 years.
Let's say he's sort of, he's in his mid-50s, mid-60s, and you sort of get some real moral responsibility in your mid-teens.
So 50 years of bad behavior.
And if I start to become a halfway decent person, I'm going to lose my entire social circle.
Because if you're embedded in a corrupt social system, it's like saying, I'm in the mafia.
I want to inform to the police and I want to tell my friends in the mafia that, and I want to keep all the quality relationships in the mafia.
It's like, that's not going to, right?
That's not going to work.
You will be dumped.
The moment you start to become a good person, you're dumped by all the bad people.
Because badness, it has an immune system called keeping good people away.
So your father would have terrible feelings about all the terrible things he's done, which are unfixable.
He would lose his social circle.
He has no capacity to admit fault.
He doesn't appear to have a conscience.
So there's not even a part of him that would be able to tell him that he did wrong.
And he would lose his entire social circle.
And the last thing, which I sort of mentioned before, in terms of figuring out whether someone can change, is can they fix what they broke?
Once people can't fix what they broke, they can't change.
They can't change.
Because what's the purpose of changing?
It's to fix things.
And if you can't fix things, what's the point of changing?
And your father can't repair the damage that he's done in his life.
So there's no possibility of change because the purpose of change, as I said, is to improve things.
Is there any aspect of your father's life that in the relatively short term, like over the next couple of years, let's say your father woke up tomorrow and he had a big conscience and he realized all the bad things he did and he wants to become a better person and right, he'll take moral responsibility and he'll read peaceful parenting and realize that he beat his children and screwed around on his wife and I don't know, perhaps got involved in some highly questionable sexual activity or whatever.
So let's say that he wakes up tomorrow with all of that.
Tell me what aspect of your father's life would get better and what aspect of your father's life would get worse.
Well, he could have an opportunity to have a relationship with his sons.
No, no, but I'm talking about in the short run, like in over a couple of years, because he's not going to fix all of that in a couple of years.
Yeah.
And gain back trust and like have a good relationship.
Like that, that's not.
Oh, let's just say over the next over the year.
Let's say he wakes up tomorrow and he's got a conscience and he feels terrible for all the wrong things he did and he's willing to like, so tell me about the cost because your father operates on cost benefits.
Selfish people do.
Hedonists do.
And it sounds like he's a hedonist.
They just operate on cost benefits.
So sell morals to your father.
Why would he benefit from them?
I don't know.
The only thing I can think of is eventually having, like I said, just the long-term thing, eventually having getting in very slowly getting back into his children's lives.
Okay, so it's possible that some years down the road, he might have better relationships with his children, right?
Yeah.
Okay.
If, like you said, if a miracle happened and he woke up tomorrow and realized all these things, yeah.
Okay.
So maybe down the road, he could have a better relationship with his children.
But you all live far away, don't you?
Yeah.
Okay, so what is he going to call you once a week in Asia?
I mean, he's, I assume he's retired or somebody retired or heading that way.
He's got a lot of hours of the day to fill.
Old people don't sleep that much, right?
So Bro's got like 18 hours a day to fill.
What's he going to fill them with?
Having better phone calls with your kids once a week is a couple of hours at best.
I mean, he's not going to come and live in Asia, is he?
Hell no.
Right.
So he loses all of his friends, all of his social circle.
And the only happiness that comes into his life or the only positive experience is hedonism.
So he loses all of that.
He's racked with conscience and guilt.
He'll probably feel suicidal.
For what?
Maybe in a couple of years, you can have some better phone calls with your kids.
Right.
It's too late.
It's far too late.
Like it's decades too late.
The time to fix himself was when he first hit his children.
And that was the time for your mother to fix him too.
But she didn't.
She sabotaged him and she sabotages you and your brothers.
Totally.
Because if you see someone doing something really bad and wrong, like beating the kids, you said sometimes with implements, and you don't do everything in your power to stop that, you are sabotaging that person.
So your father is who he is in part because your mother enabled and encouraged him.
Yeah.
She also put the grease on the slippery slope down to the hell he inhabits and the hell he inflicted.
Yeah.
She is a partner in crime, bro.
No, no, don't me.
I need you to get that.
Yeah, I'm there, maybe not exactly where you are yet, but I've had this idea in my mind for a couple years now.
She's still encouraging you to have him in your life.
You say it's diminishing now.
But for decades, or at least for years, in the last three years, for the most part, she's been saying you should have your father in your life.
Yeah.
Now, let me ask you this.
If you had your father in your life, let's say you talked a couple of times a week and he visited in some magical fashion or whatever, right?
Would you be someone that your current girlfriend would truly love?
We're assuming my father is still crazy, not like the miracle changed.
Yeah, nothing changed.
He still manipulates.
No way.
So would you be someone that your girlfriend could really look up to and morally admire if you had your father embedded in your life?
I don't think so.
So your mother is still sabotaging, bro.
Yeah.
Have your father in your life means you can't get a quality woman.
So rather than deal with her own complicity in the destruction of your childhood, her own orchestration and masterminding in many ways the destruction of your childhood, rather than say, I chose a terrible man to be the father of my children and still gave him children after having a decade to evaluate him.
I'm still going to push him on my kids despite how much that's going to fuck them up.
I think I need to get you to switch your searchlight to the covert narcissist.
It's not a chuckling matter, bro.
Okay.
And if you bring up anything negative, I'm crying.
I don't want to hear it.
I'm sad.
I mean, you don't think that's manipulation?
Come on.
At least your father.
This is why I'm saying at the beginning, like, covert narcissist, where the hell is this coming from?
He's as obvious as the sunlight on the face.
Yeah.
But maybe, I don't know.
I mean, again, we've been talking for a while, so, but I just want to say, like, maybe, just maybe, there's another covert narcissist around that unmasking your mother will also unmask that person.
Maybe it's in your business relationships.
Maybe it's a sibling of your girlfriends.
Maybe it's someone in her family.
But there's a reason why you don't want to lift this most obvious lid on your mother, and that's because it's going to cost you something in the present in your existing social or business situation.
I think I know who it is.
My, well, gosh, I don't know.
That's maybe, you know, staying narcissist sounds so crazy for the first time, but my older brother is incredibly difficult to deal with.
And he is the biggest defender of my mother.
And he lashes out at me if I ever bring up any of the stuff that you're saying now.
I'm talking about my mother's issues.
Even the language suddenly changed.
Issues is very neutral.
Your mother's manipulation and corruption.
And her sacrifice of her children's well-being for the sake of her own emotional hedonism.
What feels better at the moment?
It makes me feel unhappy to have my choices criticized, so I'm going to pretend to cry so that it stops, despite the fact that it's what my children need to be healthy.
Look, being criticized by your kids is not fun.
Every parent should be criticized by their children, right?
I mean, I've certainly talked to my daughter and said, you know, what is it that I could have done better over the years?
And, you know, but you've got to hear that stuff.
No one's perfect, obviously, right?
Yeah.
Okay, so then the question is, why does your older brother's perspective matter so much to you?
I mean, I assume you live in different continents and don't have much to do with each other.
So why does his perspective about your mother matter so much?
Well, thankfully, I'm learning at this age to care a little bit less about it, but he really had been my closest friend, my best friend for so many years.
And I, yeah, I was in denial, kind of maybe, about his issues, and I didn't know how to stand up to him.
Okay, but when you did start to stand up to him, what happened?
Or when you started to have a divergence of perspective?
We used to, we would fight a lot, or not even fight.
Would tend to take it out on me.
And just in the last year or so, I've realized that I just don't engage with anything like that with him.
I just avoid, I don't bring any of the stuff about my mom up.
Confronting Past Denial00:10:46
Okay.
And what do you think for you to avoid it?
Sergeant Drep, what does your girlfriend think of your elder brother?
She's got opinions that he is should be working on himself, is not maybe the most mentally stable.
He's my brother, so you know that that's family and we should have a relationship, I guess.
But I don't think she respects him very much.
Okay, who in your life is currently doing the most harm to your health and happiness, stability, and well-being?
Who is causing you to have the most self-censorship?
And sorry, go ahead.
Yeah.
The one that's on my mind the most that I lose the most sleep over and feel myself getting upset about and getting in arguments most is my older brother.
Okay.
And so your older brother at the moment is doing the most harm to you because of his aggression and intransigence, right?
Yes.
So your older brother, if I understand what you're saying correctly, treats you badly.
Yeah.
And your girlfriend is doing what to help protect you?
I don't know if she's doing anything.
So you and your girlfriend need to have a conversation, bro.
And look, I'm sure she's great.
And, you know, again, these are just sort of tweaks, but I don't know that you have experienced yet in your 30s what it means to be absolutely and truly loved.
To be loved means that the people who treat you badly are hated.
I mean, some guy comes and beats up your girlfriend, you probably want to tear his head off.
You hate that guy.
Yeah.
So for your girlfriend to truly love you means that she's got to step up to help protect you when you're being harmed.
I don't know what that means exactly because we've just touched on your brother.
But if you love someone, you cannot also love the people who are doing them harm.
Right?
Yeah.
And I do want you to go through the experience of being loved.
Okay.
And I want you to go through that before you become a father.
Because when you become a father, you will get a fierce protectiveness about your children.
And then you will realize that that's been missing in your life.
We need to fiercely protect the people we love.
Fiercely protect the people we love.
Yeah.
And your girlfriend, while I'm sure she's very nice, is not fiercely protecting you.
You know, men are expected to lay down our lives to protect our women.
And what do we ask in return?
Well, watch my back for emotional manipulation and predation.
Watch my back for people I can't see that are doing me this much harm.
Bring objective morals to the relationship that is conditioned by historical momentum, just having grown up together and being used to.
I mean, look, if you met your brother at a dinner party, you didn't know him from Adam, would you want to hang out with him again?
Great question.
In his current state, how he is these days?
No.
No, okay.
I mean, I'm sure it would be fine to hang out with a Syria killer when he was three months old, right?
But we're talking about now, right?
Yeah, yeah.
So your girlfriend is coming in from the outside, like she just meets these people at a dinner party and she needs to protect your ass from those coming up from behind.
Behind the past, right?
Those who have an avenue to your life because of accidental family rather than specific moral choices.
Yeah.
And you need to do the same with her.
Yeah.
So, with regards to your father, he is not going to change.
At this point in his life, it's like saying, Well, man, I'll be with you if you change your eye color.
Okay.
I'll be with you if you're a foot taller.
No surgery, right?
But he will not change.
All he has left in life, and this is the price of hedonism, is that you can't have principles.
You can't be trustworthy.
We don't trust people.
We trust the principles in the people.
My wife doesn't trust me in some abstract manner.
She trusts my integrity to the promises we made.
She trusts my virtue.
That's all we can do: trust virtue, which is why when virtue diminishes, trust diminishes.
If you met your mother at a dinner party, would you want to have her in your life?
You didn't know her at all before.
Well, she's just a random older woman.
Yep.
I don't know.
I don't know.
To be fair, I don't know if I know any 60-something-year-old women that I want to have in my life.
Okay, well, they would be of value to you and interesting and wise and helpful.
Or let's say that she was more of a contemporary.
Let's say that she was sort of somewhat your age or maybe in her 40s or whatever.
And the host said something that upset her and she pretended to cry and she ran from the room.
Would you say, oh, there's someone I want to have in my life?
Yeah, no.
Well, that's what she's doing when you and your siblings bring up things she doesn't like.
Yeah.
And that's why she was with your father.
Did she ever remarry?
No.
Right.
Did she date?
Yes.
Well, but she's never been able to sustain a relationship since your father.
She's had a couple different, maybe two or three guys that have been around for about a year each.
And what has their quality been like?
The current one, I haven't met him much, but he's from the very few interactions I've had, he seemed okay.
The first guy after my dad was very similar to my dad, seemed crazy.
Oh, okay.
So your mother says that she didn't know anything about how bad your father was, but even after she spent 25 years with your father, she just chose another man like him.
So she absolutely knows.
Now, why?
Yeah, so, but sort of, you care about your mother, right?
I mean, this is why she's in your life, right?
Yeah.
And you know, this again, sorry, I just have such a tough time understanding this, and please sort of explain it to me in a way that hopefully can help me understand.
So your mother has terrible choice in men, right?
Yes.
So why the fuck aren't you vetting these guys?
Why don't you get them on the line?
Do something to help your mother who makes bad choices in men and cross-examine him, find out about his childhood, his history, prior relationships, what he does, how he had it.
Does he ever go to therapy?
Did he have a bad childhood?
Like, I don't understand why you just let your mother just date.
It's like giving a kid a machine gun.
I mean, do any of your brothers look out for your mom in this way?
Any of you?
We had, I mean, yeah, very surface-level conversations with her about this first guy and just said that he seemed like a wacky wacky.
And she said, well, you know, she kind of made some excuses.
And that was that.
We never really got too deep into it because we just figured, I guess, that that was her thing and we should stay out of it.
That was her thing.
And you should stay out of it.
Think so.
And this is your girlfriend with your family.
Yeah.
So this is why she's doing it.
You're modeling this behavior.
I don't get it.
I have people in my life, but I don't look out for their best interests.
I don't help them if they've got a habit of making bad decisions.
Yeah.
I don't even know.
This is like, how can you claim to care about your mother and not vet her boyfriends when she has for her entire life made terrible decisions?
I have an issue with confrontation.
I'm working on.
And I know that consciously.
Everything that you're saying, I know that.
But every time I try to speak up about something like that, I feel my faith, everything getting hot, my heart beating really fast.
Yeah, your mother will attack you if you question her taste in men.
Yeah.
Okay.
So then you can't help her.
She's an addict.
She's addicted to bad men.
She's addicted to dysfunctional relationships.
And she will, like any drug addict, she will attack you if you say, I don't think you should be taking this drug.
Like it's a kind of emotional terrorism that addicts do as a whole, that they just unleash all the guns on you if you get between them and their drug, right?
Yeah.
Okay.
So why would you want to be around an addict who attacks you if you try to help?
All you can then do is watch helplessly by as bad things happen.
This guy is not a good guy.
Guaranteed.
100%.
No doubt.
How do I know that?
Because of the history of the other guys.
Well, and your mother is who she is.
So why would a good, honest man of virtue and integrity want to be with a manipulative woman with a taste for narcissists?
Yeah, I don't know.
Well, because he's messed up himself.
Okay.
I mean, a healthy man won't want to be with your mother.
I mean, you know that, right?
Yeah, that makes sense.
So you know he's going to be a messed up guy or a bad guy.
Now, if you say, well, I can't talk to my mother because she'll just attack me and won't listen to me.
It's like, okay, well, if people won't take good advice or won't let you speak or attack you for stating your thoughtful opinion, why the fuck would you want them in your life at all?
The issue is not with your father.
The issue is your family as a whole, your family structure as a whole.
Yeah.
That you have people in your life who attack and I think abuse you verbally for speaking your mind and trying to help them.
1,000%.
Okay.
And I've listened to your show.
It doesn't stand up for you.
It doesn't help protect you.
And yeah.
I mean, you should have an issue with confrontation if confrontation leads to abuse.
You say, I have a fear of confrontation.
Tools of Control and Anger00:03:36
I don't think that's true.
Let me put it to you this way.
I've been probably a little bit confrontational or direct or whatever it is in this call.
Have you experienced that as horrible or abusive or negative?
No, but I can feel myself getting nervous when you say something that when you come down or not come down on me, I shouldn't say that.
When I'm just pushing that direct or whatever, right?
Yeah, I can feel I feel like it's an unreasonable response at how old I am and how I've progressed in other areas of my life for me to be this.
And I'm sorry to interrupt.
I don't want to tell you your experience, but my sense is, and of course, correct me if I'm wrong, but my sense is that it's not because I'm being direct or, quote, confrontational.
It's because of where it leads in your other relationships.
Exactly.
Right.
Exactly.
In terms of you doing beautifully in a challenging conversation, and all credit to you for that, right?
So I don't mind being, quote, confrontational if I'm dealing with a reasonable person.
Now, I, if I'm dealing with a crazy person or a really dysfunctional person or a manipulative person, then I'm nervous about confrontation because the other person doesn't have any restraint in their response, right?
So, let's say that I, let's take a sort of silly example.
Let's say I'm going to be in Atlantic City for debating in April.
Now, I'm very comfortable and happy being pretty assertive, if not downright aggressive, during a debate.
Now, if I believed that the other person was armed and might shoot me, would I be nervous about that debate?
Yeah.
Yes.
So if I said, well, I'm really nervous at debates, it's like, well, no, not if I'm dealing with someone who's going to respect the rules of debate.
But if somebody's not going to respect the rules of debate, even if they didn't, even if they didn't shoot me, so to speak, right?
Even if I said, okay, well, this person, the last time they lost a debate, they spread vicious rumors.
That would be higher stakes, right?
Yeah.
So if I'm dealing with reasonable people, and if you're dealing with reasonable people, you know, bluntness, directness, confrontation is not scary, right?
But if you're dealing with unreasonable people who escalate and bully and abuse and so on, the entitlement, which is hedonism, right?
Hedonism is the substitution of pleasure and pain for good and evil.
So all that brings me pleasure is good.
All that causes me discomfort is evil.
And so if you confront a hedonist, you make them feel bad, which means that you're evil, which means they can use any and all tools in their arsenal to punish you for your evil.
And so if you have hedonists, and hedonists, of course, they don't have any restraint over their temper because restraining your temper is uncomfortable.
And they're hedonists, so they just go all out.
It's a very foreign mindset to me, but it certainly is very real in the world.
And so if you're being confrontational with a hedonist, then they will use any and all tools to attack you back, right?
I mean, just look at my Wikipedia page, right?
I mean, just any and all tools.
Hedonism vs. Conscience00:02:39
Oh my gosh.
Yeah, any and all tools to fight you back.
It's not because there's no principles in any of that.
It's just anyone who interferes with what I want is a bad person, and I can use any and all tools at my disposal to stop that person from interfering with my pleasures.
And so it's not that you have an issue with confrontation.
It's that you can't have positive confrontations with selfish or non-empathetic or hedonistic people.
You cannot have positive confrontations with people who don't have principles.
Okay.
How do you feel?
I still, though, can you explain this to me?
Even with some of my best friends for minor issues, political conversations, things like that, I feel even if I do address something or say, hey, well, I disagree with this, when I feel myself, it takes time to muster up the courage to say these things.
And I can feel, like I said, my heart beating and breathing heavy and stuff like this.
And even with my best friends who I know won't dislike me or lash out at me, I feel like it's this response that has been built into me from my parents.
Well, it is.
Okay.
It is definitely a response that's been built into you by your parents.
But the question is, a wound that is constantly picked will never ever heal.
So, how do you heal a fear of confrontation that is bred into you by people who abuse you for honesty?
How do you heal that?
Well, you have to stop having the wound reopened.
Right.
So, when I was a kid, confronting people or standing up for myself or anything like that was pretty appalling.
It was a pretty appalling situation.
And we all have that in school or church.
It certainly had it in the home.
And now, if people are, you know, I mean, I don't know if you heard the live streams or whatever, but if people are sort of negative and pissy, I could be pretty robust at standing up for myself.
And that's partly a function of age, right?
So I'm a lot older, so I've had more time.
But it's also, it's been 25 years since I've had any kind of abusive manipulator in my life.
So the wounds have all healed over.
I mean, our bodies and our minds are designed to heal, but in order to have them heal, we can't keep re-injuring ourselves.
Okay.
You know, if I'm allergic to peanuts, I have to stop eating peanuts, right?
Changing Unwilling Minds00:05:28
If I keep eating peanuts, I'll, I don't know if there's some sort of, maybe that's not perfect because maybe there's some graduated exposure thing that helps.
I don't know, right?
But if I break a finger, it's not going to heal if I keep breaking it, right?
Right.
And so you are still in an environment or a situation with regards to, it sounds like your father's still contacting you.
I don't know why.
I mean, why is the number not blocked if you don't want to talk to him?
Or that you still hold something out in your mind that there could be a change.
If you hold something out in your mind that there could be a change, you're holding yourself partly responsible for the bad relationship.
And so hoping, having hope that someone can change is having hope that there's something you can do to have them change.
There's some word, some phrase, some interaction, some honesty, something that's going to provoke or cause change in someone else, right?
So I've used this analogy, but it's been a while.
So, you know, if you have a lock that you desperately need to open and you have 500 keys and you think that one of those keys in the sack, one of those keys is going to open the lock, then you'll try all the keys, right?
And if you get to the end of the 500 and none of them have opened, you'll just try again.
Oh, and maybe I didn't Jimmy it the right way or something like that, right?
Because you believe that you have the power to open that lock.
So you'll keep trying, right?
Right.
Now, if someone comes along and says, oh, no, none of those, I'm the locksmith.
I made this lock.
None of those keys will work.
You feel a certain amount of relief.
I mean, it's frustrating.
And maybe you can get the locksmith to make you a different, like, but you know that there's nothing you can do with that bag of keys to open that lock, right?
Like you're going to stop wasting your time.
So if you hold the possibility, well, there's something I can do to open this lock, to unlock the conscience, to make this person a better person, there's something I can do, then you're going to sit there and part of your brain is going to be occupied with trying to fit, oh, maybe whatever.
I could try this approach, maybe Jimmy this key, maybe whatever.
Maybe pull it out a little bit and then turn.
You know, we've all done that thing where you try and get a key to work in a lock or whatever, right?
And so I was with a friend the other day and he has one of those push-button locks on his house and he had to keep entering the code because it wasn't working.
And he's like, no, I know the code.
I know the code.
And it turned out that the battery was out and he hadn't changed it and so on, right?
So he stopped trying, right?
Because there's no point entering the code if the batteries are gone, right?
It's not going to open.
And so if you believe that your father, your brother, your mother, if you believe that they're capable of change, then you will sit there, keep trying to lock, keep trying to keys in the lock.
If you accept that people who don't admit fault will never, ever change.
And that's not even a theory.
Well, most people, no, nobody who refuses to admit fault will ever change.
100%.
Okay.
It's sort of like if you're driving home and you're one block from your house and you've done this route a million times and your passenger says, this isn't the way to your house, you're wrong.
What will you say?
Yeah.
No, really, what would you say?
Sorry, the passenger.
So you're driving with a friend of yours in the car.
You're a block.
You can see your house.
You're a block from your house.
You've done this route a million times.
And he says, this isn't the way to your house.
What would you say?
I'll say, what are you talking about?
Well, yeah, you'd say this is the way.
And if he says, no, no, no, man, you've got to turn around.
You've got to turn around.
This is not the way to your house.
I need to get there urgently.
I really have to pee.
And you got like, this is not the way to your house.
Would you ever turn around?
Of course.
You would turn around, even though you're driving directly towards your house.
You can see it.
You're a block away.
You've done this route a million times.
Would you ever turn around and go the opposite direction?
Sorry.
No.
No, you wouldn't, right?
Because you're absolutely certain.
You're absolutely, and you're right, but you're absolutely certain that this is the way to your house.
You're never going to turn around.
So you're trying to get someone to turn around who's absolutely certain that they're right.
I could see my house.
I've done this route a million times.
I know this.
You cannot change my mind because I know that I'm right.
Like if someone were to say to me, two and two doesn't make four, they would be unable to change my mind because I'm absolutely certain that two and two make four.
Not mostly certain, not 99%, 100% certain.
And so people who do not admit fault or do not admit that there's a problem, they will never, ever change their minds.
Ever.
Okay.
People who see, people who say crazy things, like I did a debate with someone years ago who said that it was theoretically possible for a woman to produce a child by having sex with a tree.
Now, I cannot fix that.
And so you admit fault, change your mind, change your course, listen to philosophy.
So you're saying, well, I don't know the way to my destination.
So you're going to call up the GPS.
You're going to look at maps.
Whatever it is you're going to do, right?
Yeah.
But you are trying to change people's minds about the best way to get to their destination to get home when they're already sitting in their living room.
It's like, bro, I'm already here.
Acceptance Over Fixing00:01:26
What are you talking about?
I'm not going to get out and start driving randomly around to get home.
I'm already home.
This is what the mindset is of people who are always in the right, don't question themselves, don't criticize themselves or anything like that.
That's exactly it.
They will not change, bro.
It's physics at this point.
People who don't criticize themselves will never change.
They don't admit there's a problem.
They will never change.
Okay.
So accept them for who they are or don't have the relationship, but don't be in there trying to spend the rest of your earthly existence, whether it's with your parents, your siblings, or other people, trying to fit keys into a lock that won't ever turn it.
Okay.
Yes, sir.
All right.
Have we done?
Great.
Thank you so much.
You're very welcome, my friend.
And I'm really sorry for all of this.
And also magnificent job in what you're doing in not reproducing things and your commitment to self-knowledge and philosophy is a beautiful thing to see.
So I just want to provide all of that positivity and the stuff with your girlfriend is very advanced to say, you know, we have to fiercely protect people that we care about.
That's not a big deficiency in your relationship.
That's just top-level stuff.
So sorry, you were going to say?
Thank you.
I understood that.
Thank you so much.
And so much of it is thanks to your show.
So thank you, sir.
I appreciate that.
I hope you keep me posted about how things are going.