March 24, 2026 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
02:18:55
Has My Wife BETRAYED ME? CALL IN SHOW
Stefan Molyneux analyzes a caller's marital crisis, where childhood trauma from an alcoholic father and neglectful mother created a pattern of appeasement that his wife now exploits. The caller recounts how his fiancé insisted on inviting abusive parents to their wedding, resulting in a traumatic drunk incident that shattered trust while the caller felt "neutered" by her refusal to prioritize safety over social convenience. Molyneux argues this dynamic stems from the caller's suppressed will and advises replacing avoidance with assertive techniques like the "broken record" method to establish authority and prevent enabling his wife's selfishness. Ultimately, the discussion highlights that true partnership requires justice-based boundaries rather than emotional submission to past wounds. [Automatically generated summary]
Okay, so my main problems I feel like I'm stuck with right now are procrastination and avoidance.
I am currently married.
I've been married for three and a half years, and I have a two-year-old.
I walked away from both my parents and the rest of my family over three years ago, right after my wife and I had gotten married.
I've been a free domain listener for 10 years and have done a lot of work on myself over that time.
My marriage is very strong overall.
However, I have had a lifelong struggle with both procrastination and avoidance that I have been unable to move past.
Additionally, I continue to struggle with asserting my needs and wants in my relationship with my wife and in general, just other relationships.
And despite her encouragement for me to do so, I feel stuck and would really appreciate any wisdom that you can provide me, Stefan.
Sounds good.
And how old are you?
I am, see, I tend to track out 32.
And how long have you been married?
Been three and a half years.
And any kids?
Just the one, two-year-old.
Okay.
All right.
So is the procrastination in work?
So you said procrastination and avoidance.
So yeah, just tell me the two areas where those are showing up the most.
Yeah, I'd say like it can be fairly general, but I'd say my primary thing is when it comes to people.
One aspect of it is like I tend to avoid responding to people just over like text messages or anything like that.
Even I tend to just like put it off.
And I've always done that to an extent, whether it is, you know, going back to when I was little, like my mother would ask me to like, oh, I got a card from a grandparent in the mail and I would, she'd ask me to call them and then I would feel like anxious about calling them and I would put it off.
And the longer I put it off, like it would, I would get scolded and then I would, uh, it would kind of snowball into being this bigger and bigger thing the longer I put it off.
And that is kind of like how I see things now to an extent is where I just like put off responding to somebody.
And even at like in my, I work from home.
And so I'm, you know, responding to people over chat all the time.
And like sometimes I just like, if I don't get back to somebody right away, then it just sort of snowballs in my mind of like just increasingly like feel like I get more and more worried about responding to them if I haven't gotten back to them early.
So that's an example.
It's like people in that regard.
I do just tend to like procrastinate like sometimes like household tasks or just like simple things, just like things that I, you know, my wife and I have things that we look to get done.
I tell her I'll go do something that are that, yeah, I'll get this done by tomorrow or whatever.
And I just like don't end up getting to it right away.
So that's kind of a high level.
Do you have any specific questions around that?
Or then you'll see like what area do you work in?
I am a software engineer.
Ah, okay.
Got it.
And does your wife work?
She does not.
She is staying on mom right now.
Okay.
Got it.
And how is your career at work going?
My career is actually going very well.
I'd say like despite my procrastination in certain ways, it doesn't ultimately limit me there too much.
I've had certain circumstances of where the procrastination is around like responding to people and stuff like that can be a little bit problem, but like overall it has had not a lot of impact, thankfully, on my career.
It's more than anything is just stuff around home that I tend to have issues with in personal life type of stuff.
Okay.
And what is your wife's perspective on your procrastination and avoidance?
Definitely is something that's very frustrating for her.
Um, that I think that it gets in the way of her trust in me sometimes in the sense that I like say I'll get something done.
Um, and I, and I mean to when I say that, at least I think I do, um, but I, I just like either forget about it or I just like put it off a little bit and I just don't, yeah, it bothers her for certainly, um, because she gets she doesn't want to nag me.
She doesn't want to have to nag me to get something done that needs to be done around the house, like or something that she wanted me to get done.
Okay, so can you give me an example of a project around the house that frustrates your wife?
Uh, yeah, like, I mean, an example of something right now is just like there, we put up curtains recently, and there's a holder for each of the curtains that she wants me to install next to the windows and you know, make sense.
I said I would do it.
I didn't have a problem with the request in general.
Um, and it just haven't done it yet.
Um, just it, I don't typically enjoy that type of task too much.
And I just like, yeah, I haven't gotten to it yet.
Okay.
And when you say you haven't gotten to it yet, it's how long would the task take?
It'd probably take me like a half hour to do so.
Um, and it'd be very like I'm just walking through what would typically go in my head is like when I'm thinking about doing it while it's something, maybe my daughter's asleep and during her nap and it'd be too loud for me to do it during a time frame where she is asleep and I don't want to wake her up.
And there's certainly, again, on a weekend I could do it.
There's time, but like then there's priorities of around other things.
And yeah, I don't know.
I'm getting a little mixed up right now, but okay.
So your concern is that there's always something in the way or always something else to do?
Physical Abuse and Drunkenness00:11:11
I would say yes.
Oftentimes that's something like that.
Okay.
So tell me a little bit about your ability to will things as the child, so to speak.
I mean, certainly when it came to my parents and my interactions with them, there was not much that I could will.
I typically didn't try to will things.
Well, that's a succinct thought.
Okay.
Can you tell me a little bit more?
Yeah.
Sorry.
It just, yeah, I mean, I, my input was not particularly, I try to think of the right way to put this.
Like, it was typically things that I wanted or things that I wanted to do, I was typically afraid to ask for those.
I was more just like trying to blend in and not and just kind of go without whatever would be the least disruptive at all at all times.
And so typically I was not one that would try to ask for things outright with my parents.
I would sometimes try to lead them to a conclusion or like be indirect in a way of like trying to get them to think I wanted something or needed something.
But I like I typically wouldn't like ask them outright for it.
And why not?
It's hard for me to specifically say why with my mom in particular, but my dad, I mean, my dad was a drunk and moody all the time.
Just, it was very much like trying to keep him, like, just always trying to keep him in a good mood, always trying to make sure that like I didn't step on his toes or anything.
And sometimes it was impossible to avoid that.
There's sometimes nothing to do with anything I was doing.
And it was just even my best efforts to avoid that type of situation with him or he would get really upset.
Or Yeah, what even to avoid that, like there wasn't, um, sometimes it wasn't possible.
And I'm really sorry to hear about that.
So tell me a little bit about the alcoholism.
How bad was it?
How often was it?
How far did it go?
Did he ever quit?
Uh, he always abused alcohol throughout my entire childhood.
He still does now.
I know for a fact he does.
Um, always, he always had a very abusive relationship with it.
Uh, he, I, I wouldn't say he had like a he wasn't an alcoholic in the physical dependence sense, but he had it more like in the like it was his crutch from a mental standpoint.
He couldn't deal with his own like internal demons thoughts.
And so he always had to be like drunk.
He'd get home from work and he'd start drinking and he'd put down, you know, at least a 12-pack a night typically was average of a beer.
Um, and so it was like my time with him generally was like more often with him drunk than than sober, um, most of the time.
So, yeah, it was always like that.
He was never physically abusive with me.
There was a couple, like, okay, arguably like a few different times where it was like very close.
Um, but in general, it was just very like verbally abusive, uh, very just and just he'd just kind of throw tantrums.
Um, if he was in a bad mood and he was drinking, he'd just have tantrums oftentimes.
So, when you say drunk, I mean, are we talking like can't climb the stairs or like how drunk?
Um, it would, it would vary, but I mean, quite often would be him like, yeah, like stumbling around and falling asleep on the chair in the living room and, you know, greatly slurring his words and stuff like that.
So, yeah, it was oftentimes very, very drunk.
Okay.
And was this, you said he'd come home from work.
Was it any different on the weekends?
I mean, it was just worse.
He'd start sooner.
So it would just be, you know, 11, 11 a.m., you know, something like that, typically.
Wow.
And do you have any idea when he started drinking as a whole?
Like, sorry.
I didn't say 11 a.m. I meant in his life.
Yeah.
I mean, he was probably 10 or 12 when he started drinking, something like that.
Wow.
Maybe sooner.
I mean, yeah, that his whole life arc, it was pretty bad.
Yeah.
Tell me a little bit about you said he was controlling his demons.
What were the demons that you know of?
Yeah, I mean, his mom, his mother, my grandmother, was extremely physically abusive.
And you, of course, wouldn't be surprised to hear that she was a single mom.
His dad was not in the picture.
My grandpa was not really much in the picture.
He'd see him during the summers and stuff like that, but he was not like particularly available.
And he was quite an authoritarian himself.
But my grandma was like very, very physically abusive to him, like and would throw him against the wall and that type of stuff.
She'd like, of course, like when she was around other people, she was great.
They'd go visit grandparents, his grandparents, and everything would be great.
The moment they leave the driveway, she'd start hitting them and stuff in the car as they'd pull away, like just like immediately switches back to crazy.
I don't maybe say crazy, but just violent the moment she got away.
And so she'd tell him, like, of course, he was, she wished she was never born and stuff like that.
Sorry, you wish I think she wished she wished he was never born.
He was never born.
Okay.
So murderous in that way.
Okay.
Yes, absolutely.
And I think my dad like got kicked out of the house when he was like 16, I want to say.
Right.
Roughly.
Right.
Okay.
All right.
So do you know much about how your parents met?
I actually don't particularly know.
I want to say it's probably at a bar.
Yeah.
Of course.
Typically, that would be the case, right?
Yeah.
But typically, what I do know is that I was a the reason they got married, we'll put it that way.
So my mom was quite a bit older.
She was like, I mean, not seven years older, I want to say.
Again, I don't know what drew them to each other.
These aren't questions that I ever really asked them too much of before I stopped talking to them.
I don't know how they met in that kind of way, but I do know that they, my mom got pregnant and then that's the reason they got together and probably the only reason.
And what do you know about your mom and her history?
Yeah, she that one is a little bit like she was not always so forthcoming with me about her past in the same way my dad was.
I do know she was one of like five total children.
I did find out just a few years back before I stopped talking to them that apparently my grandfather had been abusive to my grandmother, like would physically hit her at times in front of those kids.
And it's interesting because I look back and like out of those five, my mom and her four siblings, only two of them out of the five had kids that end up having kids at their own, which, you know, something I didn't think much of when I was growing up, but realizing there's obviously a lot more that went on that I just didn't know about and probably still don't know about.
But she grew up in that type of scenario.
She was, my mom also is not very intelligent person.
I think the family in general is intelligent.
My mom was definitely the one who did not inherit the intelligence on that side.
She is very much unfortunately just not very bright.
So, yeah, it's hard for me to say much more about her past, though.
I don't know too much.
I don't know that she was physically abused herself, but I do know if she witnessed violence.
And any substance abuse in your histories?
No, not for me.
Okay.
So, yeah, neither of your grandparents had substance abuse issues.
Oh, neither of my.
I don't know about my grandparents as far as substance abuse.
I've never seen that.
I've never seen any example of them abusing substances.
Okay.
All right.
And what was financial stability like in your family growing up?
Predictably pretty terrible.
One of those kind of weird situations.
So I was an only child, so the only one in the house.
My dad could never hold a job down.
Like he was competent to a certain sense, but he was the one who always quit jobs because he was so discontent everywhere and he hated.
He always is a problem with the people around him.
It was always like dealing with others and stuff like that.
He just didn't cooperate well.
The jobs he held the longest were ones where he was like an independent contractor working by himself most of the day.
There was a few times that he did well.
He also had this large ambition.
Well, I don't know how large it really was, but he certainly, his stated ambition was to own a restaurant, be a chef in that kind of way.
We tried that and it failed numerous times throughout my childhood.
And it was very disruptive.
There was times where we were doing a little bit better financially, but overall, I mean, I moved to a lot of different houses, trailers, different places as I was growing up.
And honestly, most of the time, we probably had enough money to get by.
But of course, my parents, my dad in particular, loved to spend his money on stupid stuff.
So like I'd have more material things than some of my friends and stuff growing up at times who were clearly much more stable and doing a lot better.
But I happened to have like the latest game council or I used, you know, we had a new TV and stuff like that.
And it was very like confusing as a kid, like to be able to say like, well, we don't have money.
And my parents are always openly complaining about that and worrying about that in front of me constantly.
I was always, always, always hearing about it.
Like, I could, I never didn't hear of it.
So, it was, I had to internalize that fear myself all the time.
And have you puzzled out why they were like that in terms of money?
Yeah, I mean, to an extent.
I mean, I think my dad was just had a big gaping hole in himself.
And so he's trying to fill that by always shiny new objects, things like that.
I think that was to an extent what it was.
Certainly, I mean, he had just no like financial awareness at all, didn't understand anything about investing.
There was never even a conversation that ever came up.
I didn't know anything about it.
Sorry, I respectfully disagree.
Obviously, I could be wrong, but I would disagree because, I mean, most people have a gaping hole.
That doesn't mean you have to fill it with useless purchases.
You can fill it with wisdom, with love, with God, with whatever, right?
So, and as far as financial acumen go, just don't buy stupid shit.
I mean, I'm not saying he's got to be like Warren Buffett or anything like that, but just don't buy stupid stuff that you don't need.
Yeah, no, you're absolutely right.
I mean, there's not an excuse for it.
Well, no, no, I'm sorry.
And I apologize because I'm not being clear.
Hedonism and Negative Emotions00:05:28
I'm not saying there's an excuse, but what I would argue is that your father, one of the things that's true about alcoholics is they can't handle frustration.
They can't handle negative emotions.
That's partly why they drink.
As you say, the demons, right?
Keeps the demons at bay, keeps the demons away.
So I would argue that your father was a hedonist.
A hedonist is someone who puts immediate pleasure far ahead of long-term happiness.
I mean, you know, drug addicts, obviously, the high of the heroine is worth the teeth later, right?
Giving up the teeth later.
So I would argue that your father is a hedonist.
All addicts are hedonists fundamentally because addiction is something that you like that's bad for you.
And the only reason that you would do something that you like that is in fact bad for you is out of hedonism.
And hedonists can't handle negative emotions.
They get overwhelming.
And so they run from propping up brief happiness to propping up brief happiness.
And asking them to stop and deal with negative emotions is like asking someone who's got a long trek across a desert to just stand there in the middle of the sand dunes and die rather than get to the next oasis, if that makes sense.
Yeah.
And then, of course, the cycle is that you drink, sorry, not you, say Bob, right?
So Bob drinks to escape the pain of his childhood.
And then because Bob is drinking to escape the pain of his childhood, Bob behaves terribly towards other people in the present, notably his wife and his children.
And then Bob can't deal with the pain of his childhood because he's become what he hates, right?
He's mad at his parents for his bad childhood, but now he's a bad parent.
So he can't experience healthy anger towards his parents because he's become a bad parent or bad husband or whatever it is.
It's like the thief can't get outraged if someone steals from him.
I mean, he can, but it's all kind of foolish and he can't have sort of clean, healthy anger.
So then instead of dealing with the negative feelings from a bad childhood as the addict continues on his life journey, he ends up dealing with the negative feelings of his own bad behavior.
So because he drinks to escape negative feelings, but every time he drinks, he creates more negative feelings because he's behaving badly towards others.
It's a never-ending cycle, or at least it's very hard to break.
And the longer it goes on, of course, the more impossible it is to break because there's so much accumulated bad behavior that, in a sense, you're drinking to avoid just throwing yourself off a bridge.
Because if you kind of go into that silent room of your own conscience and stare at yourself in the mirror, what stares back is so grotesque that life barely seems worthwhile, I think.
So the hedonism is to say no to yourself with regards to foolish purchases, to say no to yourself is self-discipline.
Do I really need this?
Am I, you know, what's my life if I don't have it?
And what's the cost of buying it?
Because, you know, whenever you buy something, you have to, you buy it, you use it, you got to store it, put it in a box somewhere, clean it, tidy it, maintain it, like that kind of stuff, right?
Like I, every now and then I'm like, oh, I should get a snowblower, you know, because there's snow.
It's Canada, right?
So I got a shovel.
And then I say, well, you know, A, it's just exercise.
There's nothing wrong with that to shovel.
And B, okay, I'll get the snowblower.
Then I have to go choose one.
I got to go buy it.
And then I have to maintain it and fuel it up.
And like, you know what I mean?
Like it's just more stuff to have.
And everything that you have takes time, space, energy, money, mindset, mind space, and all that kind of stuff.
So with your father, I would argue that, and again, you know him infinitely better than I do.
So correct me if this is astray.
But with your father, I would say he wanted something and because he's a hedonist, he just goes and buys it because he can't handle the negative emotions of not buying it because he wants it in the same way he wants a drink and he can't handle the negative emotions of not having the drink.
So I would argue that the foolish spending and the alcoholism is all not being able to handle negative emotions, as is the quitting every time he has a conflict with his boss, right?
Can't handle the negative emotions.
I'm out, right?
Yeah, that makes absolute perfect sense.
I'd say calling him a hedonist is the best label I've actually seen for him.
And it tracks completely the cycle part of it because he would get into these like moments and these places of where he would have all this like deep shame that he would like, he was clearly like dealing with these cycles of shame all the time.
And at times, occasionally that would bubble up to me where he would express some amount of like shame for some behavior that he had.
And, you know, I get this like glimpse of hope that, oh, maybe he gets it and he understands and it'll get better.
Discipline vs. Foolish Spending00:15:24
And then, of course, it just never would.
So, yeah, it definitely tracks.
And I don't dispute the label at all.
And of course, most people who have these kinds of addictions, and the addiction can be to non-physical substances like vanity or status or things like that.
But most people who have these addictions, you know, I'm sure your father woke up several times a week with like, oh, man, I feel like crap.
I got to stop drinking, you know, and these sort of idle, I'll quit things maybe pass through his mind.
I've talked to people, and this is long before I did a show, but I've talked to people in my life who've done wrong to others.
And, you know, what they've generally said is, ah, you know, every morning I'd wake up and say, oh, I'm going to be nicer.
I'm going to be better.
And then it just wouldn't happen.
And, you know, there's this sort of frustration that things didn't kind of happen, you know, because there's no traction.
That's why I was asking at the beginning about willpower.
There's no traction to will something and to make it happen is not common.
I think it's kind of foundational to our biology, but it's not common in our society, particularly for people with dysfunctional parents.
And of course, even if you have functional parents, you're still going to crappy schools where you have no say or control or anything like that.
So I think that your willpower would be blunted by your inability to control anything.
And as parents, one of the things that we need to develop in our children is our children's willpower.
But willpower only grows when it's able to achieve some goal.
I mean, to continue the winter analogy, right?
I mean, you can spin your wheels if you're stuck in snow and you won't go anywhere because your tires aren't gaining any traction on the asphalt or the tarmac.
And so that's what I'm trying to understand is your willpower and how you were able to affect change as a kid.
If you had a preference or a desire or a want, were you able to affect it?
Were you able to make things happen?
Yeah.
And I would say largely no.
I would say that most of the time that wasn't the case.
And again, I would typically, after a certain point, largely gave up on trying to do that, at least in any sort of direct way.
I think most of the time my wants or needs were just seen as a sort of a disruption to whatever he was dealing with or whatever he wanted at the time.
Can you remember a time?
It could have been quite early, of course, but can you remember a time when you wanted to achieve something but were not able to?
Were thwarted or ignored or attacked or mocked or something like that?
That's difficult to recall off the top of my head.
Yeah, I don't know.
I can't think of like a specific example right now.
I can keep trying, but I don't even really recall striving towards too much as a kid.
I can't think of a great example of something that I was like, I really like tried to do.
Okay.
So one other aspect of procrastination is perceived hypocrisy on the part of those giving us rules.
So when you were a kid, did you have lists of chores or were there expectations of things that you had to do when you were home?
Yeah, typically there was certain things I was expected to do.
It was never like super structured.
It was usually like, it was just whatever random things.
It wasn't like a routine of it, like every week or every month, typically.
So there were things.
I don't recall that it ever really be.
I feel like I was typically pretty good about doing the things I was asked to as a kid, but that's because there was like threat of like essentially if I didn't like that, I was too scared of like what would happen if I didn't oftentimes.
And what would happen if you didn't?
Just my dad having a tantrum of some kind yelling at me and just like getting really upset.
And yeah, I just typically him yelling at me or something like that.
And then him being in a really bad mood over it.
And then, yeah.
And what sort of things would she get mad about if you didn't do them?
He'd just he'd say things like, oh, like I'm just like lazy or that I am.
So I guess this is maybe like a side tangent, but I feel like it's worth noting.
Like one thing that he would, he was the type that would always, if, if he was working on something and he was busy, like I had to be doing something when he was.
Like he hated if somebody else was relaxing when he was busy doing something.
It was just like, if he was on his feet, then like I better be on my feet.
Otherwise, I would get scolded and get called lazy or be called like whatever.
Like, I don't know if he, I can't really recall if he threw on the word like worklist or something.
I don't know that he went that far.
Um, but he would certainly like just get very grumpy and start scowling and things like that.
If I wasn't doing something when he was okay, um, I think you missed the question, which is fine.
I mean, to get these emotional topics, what sort of activities would you be asked to do and then be afraid to not do?
Uh, mowing the lawn, um, cleaning the house in certain ways, uh, maybe doing the dishes.
Um, I would say fairly like typical types of tasks, but household stuff.
Okay.
And at what age were you expected to start contributing in this kind of way?
Uh, probably something like seven or eight years old.
Um, and additionally, I had mentioned that like my dad tried running multiple restaurants at different times throughout my childhood, and I was always like heavily involved in those things.
So, he would, I was the free labor oftentimes.
Um, for whether it was when I was really young, I would help wash dishes.
By the time I was one restaurant we had when I was 10 years old, I that's when I started like cooking with him and I was there to like help him when he otherwise really didn't have anybody else that he needed help, didn't have it otherwise, couldn't afford it.
Uh, I was always like in the kitchen helping him.
Um, and so that was always something.
And he was very like, he'd get very volatile when doing that, highly stressed out and would yell a lot and get very that was very volatile working with him in that way.
Okay.
So when did you see, if you did, your parents exercise admirable self-discipline?
I can't recall that happening.
That was very, that was very quick.
That's just, yeah, I mean, that's the first time.
Some of your father went to some of the restaurants, I'm sure, when he didn't want to.
I mean, that must be.
He was right.
Yeah, that's fair.
I mean, he, despite his like drinking, he, he still, like, was, um, he'd go to work.
So that's, that's something he also, like, I will say my dad had a, when it came to like cooking, which was his thing, he was, he wasn't very good at just cooking.
And he had a very like, he took pride in like what he delivered.
He, he derived a lot of his, I think, self-worth out of his ability to cook.
Um, and his, so that there was, that was something from him that he was very diligent about.
Well, but diligence doing something you enjoy is not self-discipline.
Yeah, that's true.
Did your father give you the impression, he said, leading the witness, did your father give you the impression that there were lots of things in life he had to do that were imposed upon him?
Um, I, I mean, I think just in general, he didn't want to typically, if he wasn't cooking at the time, like he didn't want, certainly didn't want to go to work.
I don't know that he, I don't know, like I'm trying to think if he like expressed that in terms of his relationship with me.
I mean, I guess he really was quite, and I don't know if that's where you're trying to lead that because he did certainly by the time I was like seven, eight years old, like he did not take time to really be much of a parent to me at all.
Definitely a lot of neglect there.
And so I don't think that he certainly wasn't disciplined in the sense of like fatherly duties.
So, sorry if I kind of went away from the question there, but again, just thought that occurred to me from that.
Okay.
And did your mother stay home?
No, she worked as well.
Okay.
And when you were little, how were you taken care of if your parents were working?
So I think that there was some amount of like babysitting when I was younger.
I was, I think I was in the, I actually, it's weird that I don't know the full answer to this question.
I think I did some amount of daycare.
My dad, at one point, though, when I was like three, when I was like three or four, he was running a business.
And so he actually kept me with him a lot during the day.
But otherwise, like, I mean, by the time I was like six or seven years old, my parents would like leave me at home alone, like when they, when they'd be working.
And that started very early.
I'd just be at home alone during the day if I wasn't at school.
It's interesting that you get this kind of vocal fry sometimes when you're talking.
I'm trying to figure out the pattern of the vocal fry when you're talking about your parents.
But, and did you see your mother exercise any self-discipline that you recall?
Um, she was definitely very disciplined in just her ability to like, she did very, she had the opposite problem of my dad when it came to work.
Like she just, I guess it wasn't a problem, but she just like she did her like factory jobs or whatever they were.
And she just day in, day out there every day.
Uh, she was very consistent and kind of just going through whatever she had.
She was a very hard worker.
I will like give her credit for that.
Like she was always like, when it came to her actual work, like she was very consistent and did very dull, monotonous jobs, but like she was always there.
So yeah, she didn't have the sort of flash of creative fire that your father had with cooking.
She was just moving stuff as a job, right?
Yes.
Okay.
And in their personal life, did you see your parents exercise any self-discipline that you remember?
Not particularly.
I mean, they're not healthy people.
They don't eat well.
They don't exercise.
It was never anything that was ever, I don't remember our parents ever exercising or talking about exercising.
Well, it's tough if you're either drunk or hungover.
Pretty tough to get in a game of tennis.
Yeah, no, absolutely.
So yeah, that was definitely like this general health stuff.
They were not disciplined.
So no, I don't know whether I could think of anything off the top of my head that they were particularly otherwise disciplined in.
Okay.
So in viewing your parents giving you orders, right?
Because I mean, when your parents say, we want you to mow the lawn or wash the dishes or whatever it is, right?
Then they're giving you orders and they're saying you should do something that you don't want to do.
It's important for you to do something that you don't want to do.
And of course, the best way to get your children to do things that they don't want to do is to model doing things that you don't want to do.
You know, there have been times where, you know, I've been really tired or I've had a headache and, you know, I'd say to my daughter, yeah, I have to go do a show.
And I don't want to right now.
I'm sure it'll be fine when I get into it.
But boy, I give some part of my kidney to not do a show.
It's not common, but it does happen.
And but also I wouldn't be like, oh, I can't believe I have to go to a show or grumble, grumble, grumble, and then be sort of in a bad mood for the rest of the night or something.
Be like, yeah, I just have to, you know, or she has seen me exercise consistently, sort of even when I don't particularly feel like it.
I don't enjoy exercise.
I mean, I like, you know, sports or whatever, but if I'm just doing weights, it's not like, hey, this is great.
I'd do this even if it was bad for me.
It's like, yeah, it's not particularly fun, but it is something that I need to do.
And I certainly don't want to get old and creaky and frail.
Like that's especially the bone stuff, man.
That's brutal.
So I suppose, you know, if I ask my daughter to do something, she'll usually do it.
And I think that's because both her mother and I have modeled, you know, there's stuff you have to do and you don't want to do it, but it's worthwhile doing it, right?
That kind of stuff.
I mean, taxes, you know, the kind of stuff that's not too much fun, but you have to do it.
So, and that's sort of why I'm asking about your parents.
Because if your parents don't have self-discipline, then how are you supposed to have self-discipline?
I mean, there's a child.
And the worst is when your parents don't have self-discipline and are hedonists and then get strangely annoyed when you copy their behavior.
Yeah.
Yeah, that makes sense.
My mother was a bit of a hedonist and she had an inability to handle negative emotions.
And so when she would say to me, you know, oh, she would say to me, why are you getting so angry?
Sometimes it's like, hello, Miss Rage Queen, right?
So there is something that's very alienating and angering and frustrating when people who don't follow rules impose those rules upon you.
Right.
You know, the sort of old meme about, you know, the government can literally lose track of $100 billion.
But, you know, if you send someone $601, they'll be like all over you.
Right.
And so when you have people who are hedonists who then say to you, well, you should sacrifice your short-term happiness for the sake of long-term good.
It is important to mow the lawn.
And yeah, I mean, that's helpful.
It's good to mow the lawn.
But they're saying you don't want to mow the lawn, but you should mow the lawn because it's important to do things that you don't want to do.
Now, I'm not going to quit drinking, though.
And I'm not going to go exercise.
And I'm not going to eat well.
And I'm not going to control my temper.
Like, I'm just going to let it all hang out, but you should hold it all in.
I can't control myself, but I sure as heck can control you, kid.
That is really enraging, isn't it?
Emotional Distance in Childhood00:03:05
Yeah, it certainly was as a child.
I definitely felt that.
And you've been listening to me for 10 years.
What do you think might be missing from your side of the conversation here?
What is missing from my side?
Are you saying that maybe emotional engagement on this, or trying to guess what you're trying to lead me towards here?
Well, I asked your age in part to find out how distant you are from your childhood.
And your childhood was 14 years ago.
Yeah.
Right?
Right.
Now, if you're 75 or whatever, I would say in my 50s, I've been able to look at my childhood with much less emotion.
I was clearing out some stuff in the basement over the last day or two and came across a lot of old childhood photos.
And I can look at them and like, it's a half century ago now, right?
But yours is closer.
And I still feel some things about it.
And that's what I'm curious about is the absence of emotion of any kind.
I can't really tell what's going on.
Yeah, that's a good call out.
I think I'm not saying you're failing to deliver something that I ordered.
That's not a criticism.
I'm just surprised a little because, of course, I'm not the philosopher who says you should master your emotions and you should be distant from your emotions and do not let your emotions control you.
I'm like a big fan of the passions.
And I guess I'm, I'm, yeah, I'm curious about your emotional experience of this convo.
Yeah, I mean, I, I was not really feeling anything until you mentioned that just now.
I, I, I certainly felt something just like sort of acknowledging that and then like having you point that out.
I like felt something about that.
And like, kind of, it just, I definitely like when I think of my parents in general at this point, I, I feel just such like a deep like apathy.
Uh, it just like, I don't, even I talk to my wife about it sometimes.
Like when I think about my parents and I think about my child, like I just like feel nothing, it feels like I can't think of the last time I like really emotionally engaged with that, but it's not even that I feel like at least like that I'm consciously avoiding it.
I just like, I don't know, I have a hard time like tapping into the feelings on it.
I think even one time I did go to therapy for a brief amount of time.
This was probably like six years ago.
And I had somebody try to do like EMDR with me and things like that.
And like focusing on the memories and sort of like get into like feeling those things.
It was like, oh, I found it like impossible to, or at least that person, that therapist was not able to like help me get to that place of where I was like really like deep into the emotions.
Like I could, I was thinking about the memories and trying to like focus on them and like immerse myself in that.
And I'd had such a hard time to like actually really like put myself in that situation and feel something from it, if that makes sense.
Therapy Attempts with Dogs00:04:51
It does.
And do you know what the biggest predictor of non-emotionality regarding childhood is?
I do not.
So the degree of emotional absence is directly correlated, in my view, to the degree of sadism that was experienced.
Okay.
So if you had parents or others, authority figures in your childhood who used your emotions against you, then you will dissociate from your emotions because rather than being a source of richness and wisdom and guidance, they are a source of external torture.
Right.
Right.
So if that's true, if it is true, how did your parents deal with your vulnerability?
I mean, certainly not well.
I mean, I just didn't, again, I don't know where exactly what age it started at for me, but like, I just didn't tell them anything.
Like, they knew nothing about me.
But why?
And I'm not disagreeing with that, but why wouldn't you tell them anything about you?
Right.
It's, it's hard for me to like think of a specific memory or exactly why.
Like it's one of those things where I feel like it's just as far back as I remember.
I just don't, I just didn't do it.
Now, I, I, well, just a couple like examples of maybe some of what you're referring to, though.
It's like, I remember, I mean, there was a time like we had our dog die when I was like really little.
And my dad got really angry with me because I was, instead of helping him bury the dog, I was watching cartoons that morning.
And I, like, I, he told me I didn't care about the dog.
Um, and I certainly cared that the dog died.
Uh, seven, maybe.
Okay.
And were you close to the dog?
Yeah.
I mean, it was the, I had the dog around for like three years and I did like the dog a lot.
Yeah.
I have an urge to record the dog's name for posterity because otherwise it's going to be lost at the sands of time.
Name of dog, please.
Sheba?
Sheba.
Okay, good.
Okay.
Yeah.
Sorry for some reason I just wanted to rescue the dog's name because, you know, when you're dead and gone, Sheba's name will never be known.
But now it's known forever.
Okay.
Well, that diarrhea, unfortunately, is that like the reason she died, she was German Shepherd.
The reason she died is because we were having a bonfire outside at night.
And of course, my dad had let the dog off the leash and let her be out around when he shouldn't have.
And she wandered off and got hit by a car.
Right.
And that type of like negligence on his part is something that was persistent, consistent throughout my childhood.
Oh, I mean, that's the chaos of addiction.
It's just like crazy, bad, random stuff just keeps happening.
Yeah, absolutely.
All right.
And so that's very interesting.
So you were sitting out the funeral in protest because you weren't allowed to express anger towards your father.
Yeah, I guess I had never thought, you know, I don't ever recollect at that time if I felt like anger.
I probably did.
I don't recall specifically like.
No, but you would be angry if you're close to a dog and your father is being irresponsible with the dog and the dog goes and gets killed, then you would be angry with your father.
Yes.
And to take that further, like there was other examples like where we had my dad always had dogs because it was always like he was able to, he always said they couldn't judge him, which is pretty obvious.
Yeah.
And so like we always had honestly too many dogs.
And that's also their avoidance of any silence or capacity for self-reflection because there's always a dog who needs something, needs to be walked, yapping, growling, defecating, and there's always a problem.
So it's just part of the general people who aren't comfortable with themselves always need external distractions.
And before social media, it was dogs.
Anyway, sorry, go ahead.
Yeah.
My dad had no like friends or anything.
Right.
So he'd always say like, oh, the dogs are such a good judge of character and stuff like that.
So like this sort of like, oh, like the dogs love me.
So like they, you know, that must mean I'm actually good or something.
I don't know.
Like that just weird logic like that.
But there was times where like where when I was a teenager and he would like things like that would happen where the dog, he'd let the dog out and the dog would run away and then come back like a couple hours later.
And I remember one time I got really mad at him and I called him out on it and he just blew up.
Like he was so like pissed off at me over it that I would throw it back in his face.
So like, yeah, certainly there were times as I was older.
I do remember being very angry with him for his negligence at various points.
No, but he just overrode you.
Here I am just interrupting you talking about your dad overwriting you.
Betrayal Over Lost Pets00:02:46
Sorry.
But he just overrode you.
You yelled at him or you got mad at him and he just got he-escalated, didn't he?
Yeah.
And I actually, if I remember, I think it was that occasion that I'm thinking of that I actually like, he got in my face.
He was like screaming in my face.
And I was 17 and I punched him in the face and gave him a black eye.
And then at the time, my then high school girlfriend, I drove to her house to like get away.
Like I immediately just got in the car and left.
Right.
Right.
I got no problem with that.
He even like told me later, he was actually like, it was this weird thing where he told me he was like, like proud of me for doing, I like never knew how to like interpret that.
But it was, yeah, it was a weird situation.
Right.
Right.
Okay.
So vulnerability.
Vulnerability.
So vulnerability is obviously just you're telling people, hey, here's how you can hurt me if you want.
Right.
So if I say to someone, I don't like X, or, or, you know, I don't know if they still have them.
Oh, I still remember this body memory.
There used to be these things called Duatangs, and they were like folders.
You'd put your three ring papers in in junior high school or high school right after you sniffed the photostats.
And these duetangs used to have these little metal strips that you'd push up through the holes, then fold them down to keep the three-ring binder paper in place.
This is like Sumerian, ancient Sumerian technology.
And if I were to take my nail and rub it against the end, the edge of those metal strips, it would make my whole body shiver.
Like usually, people have a little thing that there's just something, right?
And this is in 1984, like Room 101 is the worst thing in the world, right?
For some people, it's spiders, for some people, it's rats or whatever, right?
And if you tell people about these things, then you're telling them, here's things that really bother me.
Here's things that are very negative to me.
And it's a trust thing, right?
And so if you're going to the dentist and the dentist is doing some work and it hurts you, you say, hey, this hurts.
And then the dentist will either inject more Novocaine or try something else or whatever, right?
But they'll try to adjust what they're doing to minimize the pain.
But if you're being tortured and you say, hey, that really hurts, what does the torturer do?
Torture will hurt you back.
No.
If the torturer is torturing you and you say, oh, it really hurts.
Oh.
When you do that, what does the torturer do?
Just more of that.
Yeah, they'll do more.
Trust Issues at the Dentist00:10:16
Yeah.
Right.
Of course.
And so vulnerability is simply a trust action where you say to people, this is how you could really hurt me.
And of course, when people love you or care for you, or even the dentist just doesn't want to get sued or wants you to come back, then they will avoid doing the things that hurt you, right?
Right.
And if people are sadists, what do they do?
With the knowledge of what hurts you.
They use it against you.
That's right.
You have now given them power over you.
And that's generally what I mean when I say that the degree of emotional dissociation is directly proportional to the degree of sadism from those in authority, particularly when you're a child.
I will neither give you positive nor negative emotions because positive emotions can also be used to control you.
So if you say, I really like it when this happens, then people should do whatever this is, you know, for the purposes of making you happy.
But they can, of course, also do this as a form of bribery.
So when I was a kid, if you had some candy, a whole bunch of swarthy layabouts, well, not swarthy, it was pretty white, but a whole bunch of sketchy layabouts would come over and they would want your candy.
And they would say, hey, I'll be your best friend.
Now, I already had best friends.
I didn't really need more best friends.
And what they did was they said, oh, well, children want best friends.
And if you give me candy, I'll be your best friend.
And so they're trying to provide something positive in order to get what they want from you, which is the candy.
So it's not always cruelty.
Sometimes it's the offer of a positive or the delivery of a positive.
So a very attractive woman will go out with a guy.
Maybe she has no intention of dating him or sleeping with him or anything like that.
But she goes out with a guy and the guy is paying to some degree for, I don't know, masturbation fantasies or high status or, you know, envy from other guys, like, or whatever it is, right?
So she's delivering a positive in return for dinner or gifts or a night out or whatever's going on.
That's why you can't show what makes you happy and you can't show what makes you sad because cruel people will simply use those as buttons like you use a vending machine.
Hammer the buttons until you get what you want.
And so you have to disconnect yourself from your emotions because they're always going to be deployed against you.
I mean, statistically, white people are the least racist people on earth, and racism is perceived or viewed with a particular horror.
And so that word is used often to bully and control people who are against racism rather than because racism is innately bad.
Because of course, if racism was innately bad, then let's take the argument that racism is innately bad.
Then you would simply look at the studies and figure out which race was the most racist, which race perceived itself as the most superior and put down other races.
And that would not be whites.
You'd focus on other people, but it's not.
Oh, white people are sensitive to charges of racism, so we'll use it to control them.
Okay.
So that is the general flow of society.
So if you have great distance from your emotions, I assume, could be wrong, obviously, but I would assume it's because your emotions were used to control you.
That if you said, this makes me unhappy, it would get pushed.
Like, oh, I got a really bad bruise here.
And then the cruel person, what do they do?
Well, they push that bruise.
Or I have a really great need for something, right?
I have a really great need for, you know, maybe some calm and peace.
And I have a really great need, as all children do, for affection.
Like, oh, well, I'm going to withhold affection, and I'm not going to give you peace and calm and so on.
And sometimes it's used in bribery.
So if your parents want to make you happy so that you'll view them better, not because they care about your happiness, because if you cared about your happiness, they wouldn't drink, they wouldn't scream and do these terrible things, but they want to keep you bonded to them.
I was sort of struck.
And maybe your father played them too, but I was struck when you said that in the trailer park, you had the latest video game consoles, right?
Yeah.
And that's to bribe you into having a positive experience as a result of your parents.
And so that non-emotion, the absence of emotion, the dissociation from emotion, is because it's not safe to feel because feelings, both positive and negative, are used to control you, if that makes sense.
Yeah.
I mean, that makes perfect sense.
And I kind of bookmarked as you were going along there a couple of things.
Like, I think it's interesting because it's exactly what my wife has said at various times of like she has expressed that she has a hard time understanding like what like makes me happy um or like that certainly that emotional vulnerability in terms of like she just has hard time telling me if i if i'm actually like something or if i don't like something because it just like all comes off like Very neutral.
And I'll like maybe say, like, I like this or whatever, but it just, she doesn't like feel that or doesn't like it doesn't convey more overtly, I guess.
Like, it's definitely something that she has numerous points pointed out as something that is concerning, I guess.
Well, and you in the tech fields, right?
Yes.
So in the tech field, your willpower gets manifested, right?
If you want to do a particular thing with the computer, you tell the computer what to do, and the computer will do it.
So your willpower gets manifested.
And also with computers, unlike with people, with computers, at least prior to AI, maybe, your emotions would never be used against you.
Computers are not manipulative.
You're in complete control.
So your willpower has traction and your emotions will never be used against you.
Yeah.
So it's a safe space, but it doesn't help you develop emotional connection.
Now, one question I have, well, I have a lot of questions, but the one I'll focus on next, if it's all right with you, is in general, when we feel that we are in a safer environment, our emotions will tend to come out.
And you said that you defooed how long ago?
About three and a half, almost four years ago.
Almost four years ago.
And that stuck, like they've stayed distant?
Yes.
They tried to message me a few times, but I pretty much burned that bridge because I had during that time, a couple different grandparents have died during that time.
And I basically just did not engage through that time because I just didn't want to go there.
Sorry, why you didn't like you decided to not see them, but you didn't block them?
I have now.
I just did not at first.
I did not block them immediately.
Well, but I mean, maybe not immediately, but if they contact you against your wishes, don't you, I mean, wouldn't a sensible thing be to block them?
Yeah, I certainly should have done that upfront.
They also like tried to go like contact me through my wife at first, and she had, she then blocked them too.
I've not heard from them in not directly in like two years at least.
Okay.
And so that's created a bit more of a safe space.
So if your emotions are still distant, it must mean, I think, that there's still a sense of concern or aggression or something negative.
It may be mild, of course, in the environment.
And I'm trying to figure out what that might be.
Yeah.
I don't.
I mean, I know what you're getting at.
Hang on, hang on.
What do you mean?
What am I getting at?
I don't know what it is.
I'm just getting at because that's you plying the end result of the conversation.
Like, what trap is Steph laying or something like that?
Yeah, of course.
I mean, I would obviously the most direct environment would be like my family, my wife, particularly.
I don't have much outside of that in terms of like relationship.
I wouldn't say I just don't talk to a whole lot of other people in general at this point in my life.
Like friends I did have, I don't really engage with anymore from my past.
So that would be my direct environment would be my home and with my wife.
So that's what I was implying.
Okay.
And you did say earlier that your wife would get annoyed at you about chores.
Like you said, the things that you have to do, there was hanging something that was going to be a half hour or something like that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That would definitely happen.
I think we've definitely had our like just we have a, I'd say overall a good relationship.
Just there's these things that we've, we both have had similar pasts and just very different ways, but bad pasts.
And we're both like very actively working.
Actually called into you before through a private call in um on when I had advised her to, and so she had.
She's been dealing with stuff on her side, is working through things actively, uh.
But i'd say one of the things that like where we've had some conflict between each other in the past, is that her way of um, when she gets uh, when we have conflict in any sort of way and usually just very minor upfront or anything like that she has in the past and it's gotten better but it's not fully better yet that she kind of shuts down herself when, if I upset her in any way um,
Frustration With Unconfronted Pain00:10:07
that has been something we've had in the past where she, it was sort of like an emotional withdrawal.
And we've talked through that a lot and I've actually expressed to her in the past, like how difficult that is for me to feel like if, if I say something that, you know, it without even intending or with even like I, you know, sometimes just with best interest or best interest in mind, but maybe I just do something that upsets her in a certain way, like that she might just completely emotionally disengage from me for maybe even a couple of days.
Um, and that was some.
So just as an example, maybe a void where we've had conflict before.
You're a very intellectual fellow.
I guess i'll take that as a compliment, thank you.
Well no, I mean it's it's.
You're sort of giving me a very abstract, unemotional explanation of various things.
But okay, so it's avoidance and procrastination.
Those are the two things to wrestle with right today.
Yeah okay, avoidance is a bit of a tricky word because it just means avoiding.
But but I, you know I, I avoid Detroit.
That doesn't mean that anybody knows where I am right.
So what are you avoiding?
What do you mean by avoidance?
Yeah, I guess.
Yeah, maybe that's just sort of more, just an extension of the procrastination.
Uh, maybe that should just be one.
I should have just said procrastination in general.
I think it's just because the procrastination, I guess, is avoiding things.
Um uh I, I like avoidance would be uh, I mean, one thing is I, when it comes to like emotional conversations where I feel like emotionally charged up, like where there's maybe something difficult that I need to talk about or want to talk about, if I don't talk about it, like right there, when i'm feeling it at its peak, like then from there i'll likely at least in the past, would never likely talk about it, like once that fades, like i'm just total avoidance mode,
like i'm not gonna like, I like i'll know it, it'll be in the back of my head, but I like avoid going there because like, I am afraid to then engage on that, like that thing again.
You're afraid to then engage on that thing again.
Okay, i'm not sure i'm enlightened again, it's all very abstract and you never provide me any examples.
Uh, because i'm an empiricist right, you would, you would know that right, so it's usually.
This is why I asked i've asked a number of times, can you provide examples?
And it's it's tough for you to do that.
So when you say like, Like, if there's an emotionally charged topic, if I don't talk about it, right then, I tend to avoid it later, blah, That's it's like the credits of a movie.
That's not the movie, if that makes sense.
Yeah.
You're describing things in a sort of abstract, unemotional, intellectual manner, but you're talking about emotional topics.
Right.
Let me see.
I could probably pull something up from a recent conversation with my wife.
Like the first thing I'll just say is like an example from not a full example, but like at a high level, like when I was a kid, my dad, if I would be really upset with him in the middle of something when he was like blowing up and stuff, but I'd like hold my tongue.
I'd be like, I just need to wait till the morning when he's sober and I'll talk to him about it.
And I'd be like, compelled.
I'd be like, tell myself, I'm going to talk about it tomorrow.
I'm going to confront him.
I'm going to do this.
The next morning comes, like all those feelings would like drain from me.
And then I just like.
That's good.
It saved me.
I understand.
Holy shit.
I mean, you want to talk with a drunk who's got a hangover about emotional improvement?
I mean, seriously.
I mean, look at the practicality of that.
Did it ever work?
I mean, certainly not.
Like, he would like maybe say that he was going to try to do better.
There was a few times where things come do like.
People say a whole bunch of stuff.
Yeah.
Cut back on my drinking.
Yeah, I shouldn't have done that.
But there's no commitment to change.
There's no focus.
There's no I get love bombed.
I would get love bombed like, oh, like I just care about you so much and blah, blah, blah.
And then it would just, you know, nothing.
It would like get this sense of like, oh, we came to this like conclusion that, yeah, we're going to, things are going to get better, kumbaya.
And then it would just, you know, nothing would change.
But in retrospect, yeah, like I, that was probably, I would be frustrated with myself afterwards for not confronting.
But then like when I think about it, it's like that was the right thing to not confront.
That was, that was a protection mechanism.
Yeah, because you said avoidance.
Like if I, if I have a tree that is blocking something, I need to remove the tree.
And I say, you know, damn it, I, I really, I'm really avoiding the conversation with the tree to ask it to leave.
That's a problem.
What would you say to me?
While backing away slowly.
Dude, don't, yeah, like, don't bother to do that.
Or you shouldn't, yeah.
The problem is not with the tree.
The problem is think that you can talk the tree into moving.
Right.
Exactly.
And after, I'm sure, hundreds or thousands of hours of conversation with your parents over the years, produce exactly what?
Nothing.
Yeah.
You're trying to talk a tree into picking up its roots and moving on.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I, I, I tried to like, you know, after I started listening to you, I tried to have some conversations with them and then it was, that just didn't go anywhere.
I was suddenly holier than thou.
And it was just like the proposition of like therapy or like my, you know, asking my dad to stop drinking.
Of course, for me to, like, my dad got very, very angry when I suggested that he needed to stop drinking, like extremely angry, which makes sense.
I get it.
Like, I understand the tale about his anger.
What did he say?
Like, his, when you say the tale about his anger, like is his reason for not wanting to drink you.
I just drink socially.
It's not a big deal.
Why would you want to be such a killjoy?
Yeah.
Like you become a fundamentalist.
Like, like, what he had to have a story about how the, I mean, people don't get angry without a story.
They have to have some justification.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, he would say, he'd always try to argue that it wasn't that bad.
He was a type that would be like, he'd be drunk, slurring his words, and he'd insist he wasn't drunk.
And if you tried to tell him he was drunk, he would be like, he'd get pissed off about that, like that kind of thing.
But this is what addicts do.
Like you say, you have a problem.
They say, I'm not addicted.
I don't have a problem.
I could quit anytime.
And then you say, well, then quit.
Yeah.
Right.
I mean, because if they say, I can't quit, then clearly they have an addiction.
If they say, it's not a big deal, I can quit, then just quit.
Yeah, it saves you money, saves your health.
You don't wake up with headaches.
You know, I mean, it's, there's no net, there's no downside to quitting alcohol.
So if it's not, if you're not addicted, then just quit.
Right.
So there's always this back and forth.
But sorry, go ahead.
No, sorry.
Just like, I think there was a time when I was at, I think I was probably like 24 at the time.
I had gone to a sporting event with him and we had on a long drive back.
And I wasn't living with him or anything at the time.
So I was rarely like confined with him for very long.
And I remember just coming back and I had been really angry because he was just belligerent the whole night and I was just over it, just completely over it.
And I confronted him in the car about his drinking when he was drunk, a terrible idea on a long drive.
And I told him he had to stop all this stuff.
And it just like he ended up taking it as far as, you know, basically telling me that if he didn't drink, he'd kill himself.
And that that was like what he, yeah, that he needed it, and which is contradictory to what he'd always told me that he didn't need it and that he just chose to.
Well, and that's true.
I would imagine that's true.
Because as I said earlier, like if you treat people like shit.
And how old were you when you had this conversation with him?
Probably like 24.
So if he's been a shitty father for almost a quarter century and he comes face to face with that, I mean, it's funny, you know, I mean, most everyone's wasted time from time to time in their lives, right?
And I sort of look back and I don't really play video games anymore, except maybe socially or with my daughter, because I'm like, you know, I've spent some time on video games and I don't particularly regret it.
I mean, I've also run a big show and written like, I don't know, 20 books or whatever.
So, but, you know, we all waste our time.
And every now and then we look back and say, ooh, you know, I should have played some Skyrim or whatever it is, right?
And I can't imagine, though, looking back, if you were 24, looking back on, I don't know, a couple of decades of drinking my ass off and wasting all of that money and time and health and not being a present father and being a bad father and being a bad husband and being a bad employee and just mistreating myself and others.
Like that's, oh, I shouldn't have played 200 hours of Skyrim or something.
Like, do you know what I mean?
Like that, which is, you know, fairly innocuous and so on.
So I can't imagine peeling back that onion and looking at my life and saying, I completely fucked up being a father and a husband.
I fucked up my career.
I fucked up my health.
I've blown hundreds of thousands of dollars on drinking and related expenses.
And it's cost me hundreds of thousands of dollars more.
So I'm sick, poor, broke, wasted my life.
I mean, I don't even know how would you look at that and survive in a way.
Yeah, no, absolutely.
What he was seeing in the mirror, I can understand.
It was not a good image to look back at.
Absolutely.
Yeah, it's a terrible addiction.
It is the worst waste of your life that you could possibly have.
At least if you just go and live in the woods and do nothing, at least you're not harming others.
Still a kind of wasted life, but at least you're not harming others, but especially children.
You can't harm children and survive psychologically.
Yeah, absolutely.
So I know I kind of pulled back from where we're at talking in the present with my wife.
So I think I should get back to that.
Addiction as Life Waste00:15:12
I think an example, like there was, so she has like a friend that we, it's an older friend of hers that she had before I met her.
And it's somebody that is a crazy lefty, you know, post, retweeting, posting, resharing things on X that are like just terrible, violent leftist garbage.
But like, yeah, like my wife is comfortable inviting this person into our home.
Um, even though we've like, I've expressed concern about that in the past.
Um, and it's like we whatever.
I've been trying to like help like like my wife acknowledges like that she's concerning.
And my wife and I are both, you know, certainly politically like aligned overall.
Um, neither of us are COVID vaccinated, that type of stuff.
Um, but it's like her friend doesn't know anything about who she actually is.
Um, and so my, my daughter's birthday is coming up.
And so we were, uh, this, this, her friend of her, this friend of hers lives across the country and was going to come out here.
And I told my wife that we wanted to, especially after the, um, the, why am I blanking right now?
After Tarli died, uh, like there was a lot of stuff there.
We had talked, I'm like, this is like gross stuff.
Like, I don't feel comfortable having this person around.
And I told her that.
And I thought we were on the same page.
And then all of a sudden she kind of was like telling me recently that the, she was like they were trying to figure out when she was going to come out here to come visit for the birthday party.
And I was just like, I was upset.
And I told her, I'm like, this, like, I thought last time we talked, this was not something like that.
I thought we'd agree that like this was really concerning.
And like, I thought I had expressed that I don't feel comfortable having this person in our house and around her daughter.
This person's very nice on the serpent.
It's never been like confrontational at all with us in any sort of way personally.
But like knowing just who this person is like in other settings, like that to me is enough.
I don't need to like just because she doesn't go to political stuff or talk about any of these things in front of us, like that doesn't make me feel better about it.
But I tried to express my wife that she like that I was frustrated by that.
And I just felt like I got at the time, it felt like I expressed her, I'm like, I'm trying to like, I feel frustrated and upset by this.
And she kind of shut off for me and kind of like I was trying to emotionally connect with her and try to like tell her like, hey, I'm feeling frustrated by this.
Like, and like I got met with like some friction and I think even some frustration from her at that point.
And it became kind of a larger conflict between us that night because there's some other things that came up too.
But I just like, I had felt very, very frustrated in that situation.
And we've like since like we, you know, after the fact, like a couple of days later, we really talked through it properly.
And I think we made a, came to a better conclusion with it.
And I was able to convey to her why I was frustrated and upset at the time.
And I think she understood and, you know, she apologized for it.
But it was, it was, that was an example of a conflict, I guess, um, that we had had recently.
And how long have you known your wife?
I've known her for six years.
And what was her perspective on your parent?
Um, it's an interesting one.
She there was, there's, that actually was quite complicated.
When she first met my parents, she actually liked them quite a lot, even though I was already like, had been listening to you for a while.
I was like, I had kind of put off conversations that I needed to have with them.
But I'm lying.
I'm sorry.
This is, this is too fast.
So you met.
No, I wasn't clear.
So you met, you meet your wife, some event.
And how long between meeting your wife and her meeting your parents?
Maybe three months.
Okay.
Over those three months, how much did she find out about your childhood?
I mean, I told her probably everything, at least everything that seemed important to talk about, certainly.
So you told her about the dysfunction, the emotional abuse, the chaos, the drunkenness, the screaming, all of this stuff, right?
Yeah.
And, you know, I obviously probably wasn't very good at conveying the emotional facts.
I gave her the facts.
Yeah, but I gave her the facts, yes.
So why would she want to meet your parents?
You know, it's a good question.
And I mean, frankly, the same thing could be applied to me.
I mean, she had a different fucking jumping all over the place.
Okay, just, I know, just like a deep breath kind of thing.
Like, I'm just trying to understand, right?
Yeah.
Let's just focus on your wife for the moment.
You were severely abused and neglected, alone from six or seven years of age, right?
At home.
Your father was a rampant, dangerous, abusive alcoholic.
Did you experience direct physical violence from your parents?
Not maybe a couple different times, but it was minor overall.
It was mostly screaming and that sort of disruption, right?
Okay.
Yes.
Are your parents the people who've done you the most harm in this life?
Yes.
Okay.
So your future wife loves you and knows that your parents are the people who've done you the greatest harm without, as far as I can tell, correct me, of course, if I'm wrong, but without much compensatory good.
That's right.
So it's unmingled with good things.
You know, my father was a bastard, but he taught me a great love of nature.
And then he taught me French.
And like, you know, that there's not much compensatory stuff for the awful stuff.
Right.
And you say, let's go meet my parents.
And she says.
I mean, yeah, I don't recall any sort of like her having any concern about that.
Okay.
And she meets your parents and she likes them, knowing what they did to you.
She did somewhat like them, yes.
And I like certainly the thing that was appealing to her is that my parents would love bomb me and her upbringing was the opposite of that.
So it was, she was lured in by the sort of love bombing that my parents would do.
And how long till you met her parents?
Probably roughly the same time frame.
I probably actually met her, her dad first.
Her parents were divorced.
And I like definitely like went into that knowing that I like, I had like sort of the sense of my mind, like I would want to lead her away from them, like whenever I could.
So you didn't claim to, or you didn't like them?
I certainly up front didn't claim to like them or anything like that.
No.
But what about after you met them?
I was, I think I was pulled in a little bit by her dad thinking like with some sort of dumb hope that maybe we could like make him better.
It was just really stupid.
I think because he was everything that my dad wasn't in the sense that he was actually had a good career professional and all these things.
And so there was an allure there for me.
And so I kind of bought into her frame of that, oh, we can make that better.
Like, well, sorry, but the major complaints that your wife had about her parents.
I mean, her dad was extremely authoritarian, very absent, just workaholic, never home, and just kind of left her to her mom, who the mom was a stay-at-home mom, but was just very like abusive, very just an unpleasant person all around.
Nobody liked her mom.
Just very screaming at her.
I think that there was times she threw things at her, I believe.
That's definitely the case.
Overall, it wasn't particularly physical, but just thought it's extreme, like yelling and like, just, Yeah, like just great disdain towards her.
Like, she did not, there was barely any affection other than occasional, like, love bombing, but it was very rare.
And did your then-girlfriend know that your parents had expressed the desire that you'd never been born?
Um, I believe so, yes.
Wow.
I, oh, I don't know.
I mean, I didn't, I don't necessarily know that I, I, my dad, I don't think my so to be to sorry, correction.
I don't think I ever heard that from my dad.
My dad heard that from his grand from his mom.
I never actually heard that.
Okay, sorry.
Sorry.
So I got a little layered there.
My, I obviously don't want to be on Twitter on Jess.
So sorry about that.
Okay.
Yeah.
Okay.
And did your father drink around your girlfriend when she met him?
Yes.
And did he drink a lot?
Um, yeah, I mean, his typical amount, which was a lot.
And he was, he, she only met them like not a lot of times, maybe like five, six times before like the wedding and everything.
But it wasn't a lot of times he would like very, it was very like kumbaya would be like Christmas and it'd be like, oh, we're so happy to have you in the family.
And it was all this kind of like fluffy like kind of stuff, that type of attitude.
And how did you experience your girlfriend fiancé liking your parents?
I mean, I think it was confusing for me at the time because I was still like thinking, I still, at least in my head at the time, felt like I somewhat liked them or wanted to like have a I still had like some dumb hope that I would have a relationship with them yet, I think.
But to take that a little bit further, where this got to really a T is as we were getting closer to our wedding.
So like not to, I'd say about a year after I met my girlfriend, now wife at the time, I had like the sit-down confrontation with my parents like that I had been kind of putting off for a long time.
And I really like gave it to them.
And it was essentially it came out of it like it was not good.
Overall, my dad came away from it and it was like all apologetic, but like kind of rubber bone kind of stuff.
But my mom had been like, she was always very quiet.
I had never called her out before, never confronted her.
She was always kind of like victim perpetual of my dad in a sense.
And when I called her out, she became very angry and bitter towards me.
And like it became apparent after the fact, like my mom, like in phone calls, would be like, oh, like, she was angry that I wasn't just letting it go and that I like, you know, that hadn't, I wasn't just willing to like just let it let it go and be done and everything.
Um, because she was very codependent and, you know, enabled my dad and all these things.
But, um, but uh, my wife or my girlfriend at the time, my fiancé, like, I told her, I mean, I like, I had gotten the point where I was just done with my parents.
Like, I said, like, I can't do this.
Like, I need out, I need to be done.
Like, I don't want them at the wedding.
I don't want any of this.
And this is maybe six months prior to the wedding.
And I just like, I can't do this.
But she at the time, it was in, she didn't want the wedding to be disrupted.
And she was still holding out hope that my parents would like, that it would get better, that we could figure it out.
And I was so over it.
I'm like, I just don't want to do this.
I don't, like, I just, please don't, like, I don't want to do this.
But she was very like, she was very serious about like, like, we just need to like figure it out.
Um, so that was a definitely probably the biggest conflict I think we've had, or certainly a biggest sticking point in our relationship that was difficult for me around my parents with her.
Okay, I don't know.
Honestly, I don't, I don't really know what to say.
I don't know how many times I can ask for some sort of genuine connection or feeling and just get this brochure, this abstract description.
I don't really know where to take the conversation from here.
Because you're just, it's like you're reading a script.
Well, you know, my right?
There's no actual, I'm not sure what it is that you want to get out of the conversation.
I don't mean this in a critical way.
I'm just telling you, I don't know what to do with the conversation because I keep saying you're emotionally disconnected.
You don't have any feelings.
Here's what I think is going on.
You had the sadism thing.
You had the control thing.
You had the helplessness thing.
And there's no emotional connection.
And, you know, you experienced a massive betrayal on the part of your girlfriend, your fiancé.
You're saying these people are appalling.
And I'm not trying to throw her under the bus.
We can look at all the reasons for that.
But there's still the base animal passions, right?
Yeah.
But she sided with your abusers for reasons of bullshit social convenience.
And this was after you had been married for how many years?
So we've been married for three, over three years now.
Okay, so you've been together six years, married three.
Yes.
Okay.
So obviously you were together for three years when you got married, and she had met your parents a number of times.
She knew about the abuse.
She knew about how appalling they had behaved towards you and continued to behave towards you.
She knew the absolute horror and pain that they had caused you.
And she sided with them.
Yeah.
And I mean, I've told her, it's come up a number of times.
I mean, it's just like really, that's something that I mean, she's since apologized.
And she, I think, fully acknowledges and understands like why that was hurtful for me and why that was like, that was just not a good situation.
No, no, that's a female way of putting it.
Who cares if it's hurtful to you or not?
That doesn't matter.
Yeah.
What matters is if it's right or wrong.
Yeah, you're right.
I mean, I have conversations with people that could be hurtful to them.
Does that make me a bad guy?
No.
I say truths to people that are hurtful.
Does that make me a bad guy?
Nope.
I'm sorry I hurt you makes it not moral because you could be hurt by anything.
You think you're a great singer and people say, ah, it doesn't sound that good.
That's really hurtful.
It's like, well, but it's true, right?
So that hurting people, who cares?
I mean, men shouldn't care about that.
What matters is if it's right or wrong.
And again, I'm not throwing her under the bus or saying she's some terrible person, but it absolutely was a moral betrayal to side with your abusers against you.
Yeah.
And I mean, if some guy had beaten the shit out of her and you said, I'm going fishing with him, would that be okay?
No, obviously not.
No.
If some cousin had repeatedly assaulted her as a child or done even worse things and you said, no, he's got to be in the wedding.
Feeling Betrayed by Silence00:03:03
We've got to balance out the tables.
That would be a betrayal.
And we can come up with all the reasons and so on, and that's fine.
But too much understanding blunts emotions, kills life.
Too much trying to figure things out and puzzle things out like everything's Sudoku.
It has you living a bloodless existence, a passionless existence, an analytical, abstract existence, a description of things rather than the things, an unthreading of the yarn of causality rather than a vivid experience in the moment.
You're like helium, not gravity.
That's what I'm trying to get at.
Yeah.
Because you say, well, when I brought this thing up with your girlfriend, and you say, well, but, you know, I did the same thing with her parents.
So I'm a right?
That's a way of just not feeling.
You could be mad at someone and love them.
In fact, the anger is part of loving them.
Because the anger says, this is unacceptable.
This was wrong.
And through that, you drill through to get to the base of the thing rather than describing it.
You know, think of it as some form of art that you love, arts, let's say dance, whatever, right?
So we'll take an example.
I know I was talking about manliness.
Let's take ballet.
Let's say that you love ballet and your favorite ballet performer is in town and you and I are supposed to go.
We both love ballet.
I was excited.
Come in for months.
We paid a ridiculous amount for tickets because it's ballet.
Doesn't go to food.
It goes to something.
And you can't make it.
There's three stages in life.
Well, four, I suppose, not being interested in the ballet at all.
And let's say you can't come to the ballet, but I can describe the dance to you.
Oh, she's spinning.
Oh, she's doing a little hop.
Oh, she's turning around.
Right.
Oh, she's on her toes.
I think she did a plie.
Right.
Would that be particularly enthralling for you?
No.
Right.
Now, the second layer, third layer, first layer, you don't care.
Second layer, it's described to you.
Third layer, you're there and you're watching the dance, right?
More interesting, right?
More vivid.
Yeah.
The last layer is you're the dancer.
You actually move in your butt.
You are at one with the music.
You are floating through the air like a butterfly.
You are pirouetting like a talk.
You are the dancer.
So in conversations with you, I'm trying to get to the dancer.
I'm getting somewhere between don't care and a description.
Yeah, I understand.
I am feeling a lot right now, like from what you're describing.
And I think that the that like that particular situation is something that has been that I'd say the biggest barrier in our relationship during since that.
I mean, it just, I did feel it as a betrayal.
Wedding Conflict and Family Flux00:16:03
And it was, it was very, that was a very rough time for me at the time during that period because it was just like, I just didn't want, like, I was just, I knew that I, like, I couldn't be, have my parents in my life anymore.
I just like knew it.
I, I, I did not want to put in a single ounce of energy into spending any more time with them or trying.
Like, I just, I knew and I kept trying to express that.
And I just kept getting met with with just friction.
Like it was just like, I, and it's, I think, like as an extension of that, like something that was also very, very frustrating at a later point is like we had a conversation about her dad.
And I, like, I had been, you know, maybe okay with like the idea of seeing if things could work with him, but like based on certain criteria that had to be met, essentially.
And once it became clear that wasn't happening, I just said at a certain point, and this is actually shortly after you had done a call-in with her, and you had actually called me to me out in that as not essentially protecting her enough from him, which it was a reasonable point.
And I took that very seriously.
And we had conversations around it.
And I, you know, there were some more things that happened with her.
And I decided, like, we can't do this anymore.
Like, we have a daughter.
Like, like, he can't be in our lives anymore.
And I, like, she got very, very upset and actually very angry with me when I said that.
Like, she felt that I was trying to be controlling and trying to, she didn't want to be, like, feel like I was controlling her.
Controlling the modern woman's word for standards.
And it was just like taking that and like mixture with like what past experience was like, I tried to get rid of my parents.
You at the time weren't like letting me.
You wouldn't like Ariel Lacey.
You're getting pushing back on that.
Now, why was she taking a very land?
Why was she pushing back?
I mean, with my parents, it was, again, I think largely, there's one, I think she still held a hope because she like the, she had been offered affection by them in a way that my her parents had never done, but also the bigger part, I think, the wedding.
Like, I think it was ultimately like we didn't want to disrupt the wedding.
Okay, what does what does that mean?
Disrupt the wedding.
So you keep saying these things.
I don't know what the fuck you mean.
No, of course.
So, I mean, just like by extension, it's like my parents can't come.
Then it's like, well, like, what about the rest of my extended family?
No.
Like, all the other things.
Not that.
No, it's not that.
Okay.
Why were your parents not coming to your wedding?
Such a problem for your wife.
I guess if not what I was trying to say, then I may be missing what that is, or what you're getting at.
Well, from your wife's perspective, if your parents aren't coming to the wedding, who does she have to tell about that?
Her parents.
Right.
And her parents will say, what?
Oh, I guess I don't know.
Like, they would be, they'd be concerned.
They would be upset.
Like, I guess I'm not even sure what their parents would say.
Well, they would say, why?
Why?
Why are his parents not coming to the wedding?
Right.
And what would your fiancé say?
I mean, we were pretty.
So a little more context.
Her mom was actually out of the picture for quite a while.
And then it was only like sort of last minute.
She decided to invite her mom because she didn't want to regret not doing that.
She didn't want to.
Okay, so fine.
So her father.
So she goes to her father.
She says, By the way, Dad, my fiancé's parents aren't coming to the wedding.
Yeah.
I mean, now, had the parents met?
They had not.
They had never met.
They'd never met.
So the kids are getting married.
Had they talked on the phone?
Had they had a Skype call or whatever they would do?
No.
Nothing.
What the fuck is going on in the modern world, man?
How the hell do you merge families that the parents have never talked?
That's a great question.
Jesus.
It's never incomprehensible.
Yeah.
All right.
So she goes to her dad.
She says, my fiancé's parents are not coming to the wedding.
Her dad says, why not?
And what would she say?
I mean, I think she would have told him why, because the actual reason why, because I had already expressed, he was aware of that I had a tumultuous relationship with my parents and that.
I can't do this fucking abstraction anymore.
I'm just going to stop it.
What would she say?
How would she describe this issue to her father?
I think she would have said that my parents were abusive to me and that I had chosen not to have them there because they were, my relationship with them was not good, that we had had conflict and that I had decided to end it.
I think she would have said that.
Okay.
You be your wife.
I'll be the dad.
Ready?
Okay.
Okay.
So his parents were abusive to him.
What do you mean?
They would have his dad was an alcoholic.
He was very explosive.
He would yell a lot.
And so, yeah, that's the type of abuse he'd yell at him all the time, was mean to him.
That was the main way that he abused him.
Oh, so his dad is like an abusive drunk.
What about his mother?
His mother was an enabler, and she was neglectful herself overall.
Okay.
Now, honey, my understanding, because you met his parents half a dozen times, is that you like them.
Do you agree with his decision?
Oof.
Yes.
So what changed that you liked them up until five minutes ago, and now they're not even able to come to the wedding?
Matt had had conversations, or he had had conversations with them, and he tried to confront them.
No, I'm not talking about him.
I'm talking about you.
You liked them up until five minutes ago, and now they're not coming to the wedding.
Do you agree with him?
Not what did he do and the whole process.
Do you agree with him that his parents should not come to the wedding because his father drank and yelled?
Yes, I agree with them because of the way they had treated him more recently that I had seen and witnessed in their conversations.
And when I saw how bad they were towards him, I understood.
And 10%.
So you've seen this directly.
You've seen his parents abuse him.
Yes.
Okay.
And what did you see?
I saw them on the phone.
This dad just screaming at him on the phone and telling him that he can't go.
His dad said they can't go to therapy or he won't go to therapy because that's not like it's not going to happen.
How dare he suggest that how dare he suggests that he that we go to therapy or anything like that?
How dare you suggest that I stop drinking?
That like just get he got very angry at him on the phone and it was he was drunk and belligerent.
Okay.
Has your fiancé ever gone to therapy?
Yes.
Okay.
And when did he go to therapy?
A couple years before we met.
Okay.
So the therapy didn't take, right?
Because he was still in contact with his parents for years after therapy, if they were such terrible parents.
That's right.
Okay.
Do you have any concern, oh daughter of mine, that you are marrying into, well, it's a family that's completely fallen apart.
You have no access to grandparents and he is a largely untreated victim.
If I understand this correctly, I assume that the abuse had to be very severe to not even have the parents come to the wedding.
Are you concerned that you are marrying into a pretty trashy family with a history of severe abuse and your fiancé is largely untreated?
That is, I mean, yes, I should be concerned about that one, put it that way.
Yes.
Okay.
Is it wise to go ahead with the wedding in the near future if everything has changed that you thought you knew about this family and the people that you liked turned out to be absolute monsters, which means that you are re-evaluating the entire situation and you thought it was a good family and it turns out to be so monstrous that the parents are uninvited from the wedding, which is severe.
Obviously, if the parents didn't let him have a Nintendo when he was eight, then it would be no reason to have them not come to the wedding.
So it must be incredibly severe abuse to have them, to have their wedding invitations extended and then yanked.
Can we agree on that?
Yes.
So you judge the entire family to be the opposite of what it actually is.
You thought good family, nice parents, love to have them at the wedding.
Turns out you were entirely wrong.
Now, how could you be right about your fiancé and entirely wrong about his entire family?
Yeah, I don't know.
Sorry, I just need to pull back for one second.
I just remembered one part of it is that my mom, after I confronted my mom for the first time, she started not treating my wife very well, my fiancé at the time very well, and was very cold to her very suddenly after that because my parents, I think, were trying to attribute my change.
What I consented to have to do with the conversation we were just pretending to have.
So, no, I was just saying, because you jumped right out of the conversation.
Sorry.
Why?
I mean, the point I was just trying to make is that my wife may have, it may have changed when she was a woman.
No, because your mother was not abusive.
She was just cold.
True.
Okay.
So her father, and you would do the same with your daughter.
If your daughter said for three years, yes, my boyfriend, my fiancé, has a good family.
I like them.
And then it turns out that the family was extremely abusive.
And this would be the perception.
If you yank parental invites to a wedding, that signals and radiates severe abuse.
Yes.
And also that it wasn't known, that it wasn't processed, that it suddenly emerged.
It was unconscious before, now it's conscious, and everything is reversed, which means that for a father, his daughter fell in love with a guy who was lying.
Maybe not consciously, but he's like, hey, come meet my parents.
Hey, my parents should come to the wedding.
Hey, you like my parents.
Hey, my parents are good.
And then everything blows up and the parental relationship is utterly severed and they can't even come to the wedding.
It will never be part of his life, which means that the structure and the person that his daughter fell in love with has just done a 180.
Yeah.
No, that makes complete sense.
And I, as a father myself, I'm not, I don't know what her dad is really like, of course, but as a father myself, that would be raising all kinds of alarm bells with me.
And you fell in love with a guy who seemed to like his family.
Now it turns out he hates his family.
What?
Who was the guy who loved his family who now hates his family from the outside, right?
Who was the guy who loved his family who now hates his family?
Which means that he can think he loves someone and then turn on them.
What's that going to be like for you as a wife?
That he can love people for decades and then cut them out of his life.
And it turns out he just didn't love them at all.
He hated them.
Or he went from loving them to hating them or whatever.
What does that mean for you as a wife?
I mean, means every, I mean, the whole foundation that we're on is just non-existent or that it's like in terms of trust or knowing who the person is, certainly you don't know who they are at that point.
Well, it would mean that the person's personality is in a state of extreme flux from loving the parents you should meet them to, I hate my parents, they can't come to the wedding.
It means that, and this is how long before the wedding?
A couple of months, six months?
We started having those conversations about six months or so.
And when was it that you decided your parents weren't coming to the wedding?
So they, I mean, they did come, but I had been telling her, having those conversations with her probably six months prior, and we had those for a while before we finally just like settled on, like, okay, they're coming.
And what do you mean, settled on?
What does that mean?
Settled on.
We just like, I mean, we just ended up.
No, what's the we here?
You didn't want them to come.
Yeah.
No, I didn't, of course.
And I capitulated to, I could, I capitulated to what my wife wanted.
Or the opposite of that.
Okay, so why did your wife want it so badly that she would have your abusive parents at your wedding to avoid the conflict with my or with her dad or avoid that topic coming up with her dad and that?
Well, her dad would, and I would completely understand this, not to have sympathy with her dad.
You know, maybe he was a bad guy.
I mean, obviously, if she thinks he was, I'm not going to question that.
But it looks kind of fucked up, doesn't it?
Yeah.
It looks trashy.
It looks random.
It looks like grudges.
It looks like, almost looks petty.
You know, like, what, five minutes ago, you left your parents.
Now they can't come to your wedding.
What the fuck?
Yeah, absolutely.
It looks like there's no stability of income or sorry, no stability of affection.
And there's a roller coaster that is occurring.
Yeah.
And unfortunately, like her dad, though, was not any of those things.
And he never would have said a word.
But that doesn't change.
I don't know what you meant.
So her dad just like he was so like he couldn't engage on anything serious in any sort of way.
And he just would have like, he would have frowned upon it probably and expressed that, but he wouldn't have ultimately, he wouldn't have ultimately made some like big judgment like that about it.
He would have just like tried to sweep it under the rug.
And like, but he, it would have been a really awkward situation for her with him in that regard and for him and hang on.
Now I'm really confused.
Like, sorry, now I'm completely baffled, and I'm sure I'm missing something obvious.
So just step me through it.
So you really don't want your parents to come to the wedding.
And your wife's father, who at that time was the only person coming to the wedding from her parents, like because your mother, her mother wasn't coming till the last minute, if I remember correctly.
So you really didn't want your parents coming to the wedding.
And your wife's father wouldn't have said anything, would have just swept it under the rug.
Hiding Severity From Wife00:14:54
So why did they come to the wedding then?
I mean, the again, my, what I had believed about it was it's just general like optics.
She didn't want it to look like people to judge that or to think that there was that there was some instability there.
So she didn't want people knowing the truth.
That's kind of what I would think.
She wanted to cover up and go for appearance at the expense of your happiness.
Right.
Because I mean, no.
And that was we, it was over after the wedding.
I never talked to, like, I never saw them again after the wedding.
My dad was there drunk and everything that I, you know, anticipated would be the case.
And it was, I just, I never talked to them again, never saw them in person.
Okay.
So why?
And again, this isn't a judgment question.
It's just a curiosity question.
Why did you capitulate?
What was her reasoning that compelled your agreement?
I think it was me just trying to avoid more conflict with her above all else.
I had been generally conflict averse through most of my life.
And I like just would, I just wanted to not continue to have that conflict.
And so I okay, but what was her argument as to why they should come?
I mean, of course, you were conflict averse.
I get that.
That's almost baked into the equation.
Why did you fold?
Well, because I wanted to fold.
It's like, yeah, it doesn't really add any information.
But what was her argument as to why your parents should be there?
Yeah, I don't remember like all the specifics, but generally, I think it was her argument was that it was that it was but she didn't want to disrupt like the wedding by like, oh, like my parents don't show up, then what does that mean for the rest of my extended family?
Like, how does that like reflect how do people feel?
Has it ruined the general feeling of the wedding?
Does it like that kind of thing?
Like, we don't want to disrupt the wedding itself.
Like, that was her.
Okay, tell me what you mean by you keep using this word.
I keep asking you, what the fuck, what do you mean by disruption?
Disrupt just that.
It would be like that people would be talking about it behind our backs and people like, and that I don't know that people would look down on us.
Would that people would?
It's hard for me to articulate it, it's just this, I felt like it's just she wanted to keep the appearances for the wedding um, and just keep things looking like they were better than they actually were, at your expense.
Yeah, I mean now, not only do you have that horrible memory of the wedding, but every time you look at wedding pictures, there's your father's bleary eyes somewhere in the background right yeah yeah no, absolutely.
I mean I just say this and maybe I'm taking this too personally, but because you know, neither of my parents came to my wedding, I mean it was.
I didn't want them there.
I deeply didn't want them there and it was.
It was very.
The whole experience between us, like with that, was very hurtful for me and it has continued like we've had conversations at various points since then and I, you know, I think she generally understands that now and it's like she's been sincerely apologetic since that time and and understand sorry, I'm not.
No, I do, I do, I.
She is genuinely apologetic about it.
I she may not fully like, like I may not have like be able to fully convey to her like maybe, the severity of that, of what happened and like how that maybe is how deeply that has impacted me and that sort of undercurrent of our relationship in that regard.
But she is genuinely apologetic about, about what happened with that and she has expressed regret about doing that in that back at that time, and that we should have just basically eloped on got married.
We didn't need all those people there, we should have just not even done any of it.
Okay, so there's.
I don't know if you remember, but my framework for apologies is three things, apologies, restitution and a guarantee that it's not going to happen again.
So she's made the apology.
What else?
Um, I guess restitution.
I have a hard time imagining what that would look like in that regard uh, other than her trying to.
You know she continues to put in a lot of serious work, for well, I can tell you what restitution would look like if I had done something like that and obviously i'm not putting myself forward here as some universal standard, i'm just telling you so if I had uh screwed up my wife's experience of the wedding, then I would throw her uh as big a party as I could afford, uh in some beautiful place and invite people we really Cared about and have a do-over, so that she could replace the negative memories with positive memories.
I would do that and I would plan all of that and I would make sure it happened.
And so I would redo the wedding, but in a positive way.
Yeah, I think that makes sense.
And so it certainly there was nothing like that.
I wouldn't say there was any like actual like restitution that way.
And then as far as promise not to do it again, I mean, I guess it depends on like she certainly promised to not do it again.
Obviously, we haven't had another scenario quite like that one, but you know, there are probably topics that could be more.
Again, I'm not trying to, you know, throw her under the bus, but I'll.
So when you are procrastinating or avoidant and your wife gets irritable or annoyed or frustrated, that's a repeat.
Right.
Okay.
Because she's not being curious.
Tell me what you think.
Tell me what you feel.
Yeah.
No, that's interestingly.
And I've sure it's because I've heard you talk about it before, but that's something that's been on my mind a lot more recently is like feeling like it's she's first upset and frustrated with me, but like I'm like always kind of like feel like there's no curiosity as like, wait, well, why do you and I actually brought that up with her recently like I want to feel like you actually are like concerned because if something happens to her, I try to like, if she's, if I did, um,
it's the opposite and something, she did something that maybe upset me or whatever, like my immediate question is like, okay, like, what's going on?
Like, why is this happening?
Like, I want to get to the bottom of like why that happened and not just like be upset about like what happened.
I don't hold on.
I'm not somebody who can hold on to things.
Like if I get like, and there's a, that's one of the differences between her and I is that I get upset with her about something.
It's almost always very brief.
And it's almost always like this very like, okay, like, I get it.
I understand.
I don't take it personally usually, like, unless it should be personal.
And I'm like, okay, yeah, like, I get it.
I understand where you're coming from.
Like, it's, it's over and done.
Like, we're moving on.
And for her, it's like, yeah, but that's these things.
You can do that because your feelings are so distant.
And that's true.
It's not necessarily a virtue.
Yeah, no, definitely.
100%.
But, but, yeah, I mean, I think.
I mean, if somebody can't get that, can't pull out their tooth, but you can just yank your tooth out without any pain.
That doesn't mean the tooth is healthier.
Right.
Yeah.
And what's the status of her relationship with her parents at the moment?
She hasn't talked to her mom since the wedding either.
Her dad, she had cut off for a year and now she's in therapy with him once a week.
And she's trying to see if there's any way forward there or not.
And why did she cut off her dad for a year?
And when was that relative to the wedding?
That would have been about two years after the wedding.
We had moved across the country after the wedding too, just to get away from all of them, everybody.
Oh, so you wanted everyone at your wedding so that you could move and put a continent between you.
Okay.
Absolutely.
But her dad had just like, she had been, she was going through therapy and stuff herself.
She again, she had had a call on with you and talked about the situation with her dad.
And so she took some of the things that you had said and had really thought about a lot of that.
And so she kind of confronted, tried confronting him a couple of times and it didn't go well.
And that's why she stopped talking to him.
Okay.
And why did she pick it up again?
No, I don't know whether she should or shouldn't have, of course.
I'm just asking these questions.
I always want to make sure I don't sound accusatory.
Like, why the hell?
I don't know, right?
I mean, but why did she pick it up again?
Yeah, she picked up again because she just she essentially didn't feel like that she had closed the door yet and wanted to.
Okay, please don't give me these analogies.
I don't know what that means.
Sorry, that sounds like she closed the door yet.
I don't know what that means.
Sorry.
I'm stating how she described it.
No, no, what the what happened?
Yeah, I mean, she was just feeling guilty about it and she was feeling, I think she just didn't have what she at least she would claim she didn't feel like she had closure on it.
She had some hope yet that things could get better.
And she, I mean, she want, I don't know if this is because she, I think it's because she just desperately wants to have like a dad or a parent because none of us do otherwise.
Well, but I mean, sorry, but okay, did you want her to get back in touch with her father?
No, absolutely not.
I told her no directly.
I didn't want that.
Okay, so why does she have your parents at the wedding and you don't have her avoid getting back together with her dad, right?
Because the fact that she wants to see her dad is not particularly relevant because she already established that wanting something doesn't mean it's going to happen.
You wanted your parents not at the wedding.
Your parents were at the wedding because she wanted it.
So that's my question.
In what area in the relationship does she defer to you?
Because you're deferring to her.
I get that.
In what area of the relationship does your wife defer to you?
Yeah, I mean, I don't think that that happens a lot with trivial things, sure.
But like when it comes to like the more significant things, like does she understand that not giving you any authority is emasculating?
That is also a repeat of what your parents did.
Sorry, go ahead.
No, I know I recently had started to kind of have that conversation.
Definitely said like I felt like I not able to, like by when that happens, when she when she denies my ability to like protect not again, it's not just about her, but with our daughter is obviously a big thing too, the biggest thing.
Like that I don't feel like I like it's a huge problem and dilemma for me because I feel like then I'm not, I actually use the word neutered with her and she actually like felt up.
I think she definitely seemed, she expressed being upset that I even used that word like that aggressively.
I'm like, that's not upset at you feeling neutered?
Like that I use that word.
No, no, I understand that aggressively.
No, I know.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You know, it's like, I touch a client.
I don't really have any authority.
You do what you want.
My feelings don't really matter.
I feel neutered.
And she's like, I'm upset by that.
So you're saying I'm not really having my feelings taken into account.
And she's like, hey, I'm going to focus on my feelings about that.
Yeah, that was essentially it.
Okay.
That's how it went.
And after the fact we had a conversation about it, and we cleared the air on that.
And like, she acknowledged that that was like, it's like oftentimes we have those type of conversations in the moment and it gets heated, but then like she will step back after the emotions have subsided and we can have a more rational, calm conversation.
Yeah, it doesn't matter though, bro.
Sorry to be blunt.
It doesn't matter because you still don't have any authority in the relationship.
It's all these reasonable discussions that don't lead to you having any authority.
Listen, there's stuff my wife says it's this way and it's this way.
It's fine.
She's got her areas of expertise and there's areas where I say it's this way and it's this way.
Yeah.
And I have that with certain, like when it comes to financial things, when it comes to certain things, but it's like, it's when it comes to those, like certainly her relationships, that like that, her relationship with other people, like that's oh, so financial things would be, no, we're not paying for therapy with your dad.
That's a waste of money.
That would have been something I should have and could have said.
Yeah.
Okay.
So not really financial things because she can just spend money on things you don't like and you can't say anything about it.
Yeah.
And that's a great point for sure.
Okay.
Absolutely.
Okay.
So you have areas in your marriage.
And of course, I'm not saying the marriage is bad or anything like that, right?
But you have areas in your marriage that are just like your parents in terms of not, of course, in the abuse or anything like that, but in terms of your will and your capacity to affect things, to have decisions have traction and meaning and validation in the world.
To have your willpower be more than idle daydreaming.
And your wife, of course, knows, because she knows all about your childhood, your wife knows that you were not allowed to will things as a child, right?
You felt helpless.
Right.
And that's really bad for you.
That's a vulnerability.
Now, love, of course, is when we put what's best for the other person against our own impulses.
I mean, to take a silly example, if you're, I don't know, business travel or something and some hot woman throws herself at you and you say, well, no, because I love my family, right?
Whereas in the moment, there may be some temptation or something like that, right?
But you say no, because what's good for the other person is more important than your immediate impulses, if that makes sense.
Yeah.
Okay.
So your wife knows that your feelings weren't taken into account by somewhat selfish people who overrode your concerns with their own preferences when you were growing up, right?
Right.
And it's always the big question about getting together as a couple, which is if she's kind of bossy and you have a very tough time holding up your end of the negotiation, does she choose you in part because of that?
Does she choose you because of the wounds?
Disrespecting Wounds and Habits00:10:06
And again, I'm not saying 100%, obviously, right?
But is she choosing you unconsciously in part because of the wounds of your childhood that she can more easily get her way because your parents never let you get your way?
Yeah, that's that certainly resonates with me right now.
She also knows that your parents apologized but never made restitution and never took steps to guarantee the bad behavior wasn't going to happen again.
That the apologies were largely meaningless or empty.
Because a lot of people will say, I apologize, and that's it.
That's the end of the whole thing.
And then if you say, well, I'm not satisfied, what do they say?
Why do you keep bringing that?
Yeah, hey, I already apologized.
I already apologized.
What do you keep bringing it up for?
I mean, she doesn't have closure with her father.
Do you have closure with her apologies?
I'm not sure.
Doesn't sound like it.
Yeah, certainly with certain things.
I do not feel that way.
Right.
If the other question is, can things be universalized?
You remember I was talking about how the thief can't really complain about being stolen from, and lazy, self-indulgent, hedonistic parents can't much complain if you lack discipline to do chores, right?
So can your wife's principles be universalized?
What I want is what I want, and it doesn't matter if you don't want it.
Your desire to not have your abusive parents at your wedding vastly exceeded your wife's desire to look slightly better to people you didn't care about and moved away from anyway, right?
And don't have it in your life, right?
Right.
So, your desire to not have your parents at your wedding was like a plus 10.
It's probably about as strong a desire as you've ever had in your life.
Her desire to not disrupt, you know, whatever that fundamentally means, was like, I don't know, a plus two or a plus three, right?
Yeah.
And so her relatively minor preference absolutely trumped your massive major preference.
And let's universalize that.
Can a marriage function if people say, my preferences, my weak preferences trump your strong preferences, my conformity preferences trump your moral preferences?
That I get my way and you don't get your way.
Can a marriage function like that if that principle is universalized?
No, absolutely not.
No, of course not.
I mean, marriages, I think, flourish best when you focus more on the other person's happiness and well-being and they focus more on yours because they have more objectivity than we have internally.
You know, I can't check my back for weird moles, right?
My wife can.
And your wife knows 150% because you haven't hidden your past from her and she's listened to me, talked to me.
So your wife knows 150% that she can get her way because you were abused as a child.
Yeah, it's tough when you put it that way, but you're right.
Listen, I'm not saying she sits there like rubbing her hands and consciously plotting it out.
I'm just unconscious, right?
Unconscious.
We can give her a lack of self-knowledge thing.
And that's tough, right?
So the tough thing is if the marriage negotiations are founded upon unconscious exploitation of prior abuse, what happens when that abuse is healed?
What happens if you change the deal?
Because the deal in the marriage was, I get my way from your wife.
And you'll put up a fight and you'll fold.
And I don't mean this with any disrespect, right?
This is just childhood training.
You were still in your 20s and, you know, all of that, right?
So what happens if you change the deal?
And you say, I am not going to allow you to unconsciously exploit my childhood wounds to get your way anymore because I am a father.
And you have a daughter, is that right?
That's right.
Yeah.
And I don't want my daughter growing up to think that that's how women and men interact.
I don't want my daughter growing up thinking, there's an old Greek saying, they said, the man is the head of the household.
And then the women say, yes, but the women are the neck and can turn the head any way they want.
And you need to have your areas of authority so that your daughter sees two people negotiating, not one person escalating to some degree and the other person folding.
Because your wife, I'm sure, says, as she said when you said, I feel neutered, she said, that upsets me.
She's saying, hey, you should really take my feelings into account.
My feelings matter.
My feelings are important.
Okay.
But why is that not true for you as well?
Your feeling of feeling neutered is very important.
And this is why she's susceptible to the leftist friend, because leftists focus on their feelings, not on what is just or right or fair or moral.
And I'm obviously not saying your wife is immoral or amoral.
I'm just talking about this corner of the marriage, so to speak.
Yeah.
So, in the short, so, and this is the last thing I'll say.
Sorry for the long speech, but the last thing I'll say is that you are a hedonist regarding conflict.
You see, right?
Because a hedonist puts short-term relief above long-term happiness.
So, if you withdraw from conflict and surrender your position, what happens in the short run?
I mean, it gets better in the short run, but it doesn't help longer term.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
And so, the addictive behavior is to appeasement.
And that is entirely, and I say this with no negative judgment of you at all or of your wife.
I'm pointing out the mechanics.
I'm not, you know, casting big thunderbolts of moral judgment, right?
But I am saying that in my view, that is the mechanic.
That you saw your parents appease their hedonism with short-term strategies that cost them everything in the long run.
And your father's addiction to alcohol is matched to some degree by your addiction to appeasement.
It reduces discomfort in the short run and increases discomfort in the long run.
And you want your daughter to respect you, right?
And if things continue without change, what will happen in the long run?
Do you think, I'm not trying to lead the question here, I'm genuinely curious.
Do you think that your daughter will look to you with respect as an authority figure?
Certainly would imagine not in that scenario.
I mean, to some, yeah, I mean, not as much as would be ideal.
Now, if your daughter doesn't look to you as an authority figure, then she won't look to your wife as an authority figure.
Because if your wife is, quote, dominating you, that comes out of weakness.
Like to take a silly example, if Mike Tyson beats up a girl guide, we don't look at the girl guide as strong.
Do we look with respect at Mike Tyson for beating up a girl guide?
No, of course not.
Right.
So if she looks at her mother and says, well, mom kind of had to marry a guy that she could push around, does that make her respect her mother?
No.
So if your daughter grows up without, and there'll be some, obviously, it's not black and white, but if she grows up with diminished respect for her parents, what fills the void?
Because she's going to have to figure out how to live.
And if she doesn't hugely respect her parents, what fills the void if parental authority is diminished?
Her peers?
Yeah, peers, media, woke, whatever, right?
I mean, one of the reasons why women are going super woke is because they do not respect parental authority.
And parental authority is: I care enough about my wife to push back against her worst habits.
I mean, you talk about your mother being an enabler, right?
In the role play between your wife and her father, you described your mother.
You had your imaginary fiancé describe your mother as an enabler to my playing the father, right?
Yeah.
Okay.
So are you enabling some of your wife's not massive, but bits of selfishness?
Yes.
Right.
I am.
So you are rewarding, in a sense, some of the more negative corners of her personality.
That's not love.
We have to protect people from their own bad habits as well.
And we all have them, right?
I'm not placing myself above this at all, right?
Yeah.
And so to love your wife is to say, I you developed this authoritarianism from your family, and I'm not going to participate in that.
Yeah.
And for the sake of our daughter and our future marriage.
Sorry, go ahead.
No, you're fine.
Fighting for Self-Respect00:09:42
There's just a lot to a lot that you just said there.
I did have been like, before I called in the email, it sent, I had mentioned too, that I struggle with asserting my needs and wants in my relationship.
So great how you segued into that with this because it's just, I, and it has, you kind of stated like, right, like I've been trying to work towards, like, I'm aware of these problems I have.
I've been trying to like get there, but it's like, it's hard when the relationship is like built on how it initially.
Well, you chose her for this.
She chose you because you surrendered and you chose her in order to surrender.
So you can't blame her, right?
No, absolutely.
And that's, and so like, we've actually had more conflict the last like year or so because I've been trying to like be more like that.
And we've had discussions about it even to a certain extent.
And it's just like, yeah, it's a really painful process trying to like to change something that was I am very aware is fundamentally no kind of no, no.
So sorry to interrupt.
You can't, yeah.
We can't fight.
You can't fight for these things.
Right.
You just assert.
Right.
And the broken record technique, you can negotiate anything.
It's a pretty good book I read as a teenager.
But the broken record technique is, you know, your wife says, I want you to do X, and you have a disagreement.
You say, I don't want to do X, but I want you to, but I don't want to.
Right.
It's not really a fight.
You know, if you go into a car dealership and they try and sell you the most expensive car and you say, I don't, I don't want the car.
Thank you.
I don't want a $200,000 car.
Is there a fight?
No.
No, you just don't want the car.
Now, if they keep pushing you, say, I don't want to, thanks.
I'm out.
Right.
In terms of that particular conversation, but you don't get into a fight.
Yeah.
And the other thing, too, is you're allowed to be assertive and wrong.
Because a lot of times we say, well, I can't be assertive unless I'm 100% right.
I don't know.
So certainly there are lots of people who are assertive who are completely wrong.
It's called the Dunning-Kruger effect, right?
So one of the ways that we kill our own assertiveness is we demand that we be absolutely certain that we're right.
I mean, I have, I mean, I said earlier I made a mistake because it was your grandparents who said to your parents, wish you were, right?
Wish you had never been born and so on.
And you corrected me, which is great.
I appreciate that.
But that doesn't mean I have to be tentative about everything I say going forward.
I just asserted something.
I'm not, you know, taking voluminous notes here.
So I made a mistake.
And there are times when I've been assertive and I've been wrong.
So?
I mean, so you don't have to be right.
You have to be honest.
And the problem with appeasement is it's just lying.
I mean, we have all these words for it, right?
Just lying.
Yep.
Right.
It's saying, okay, I guess I'll be okay with it.
Or, okay, we can do it your way and so on.
But it's not genuinely what you feel.
What you feel is rejected because the other person should be fighting for what you want.
And just to piggyback off that, I mean, it's something that even in recent conversations with her that I've stated is like, I've tried to express like, I don't necessarily like feel like loved sometimes.
And like, it's very hard for me to articulate why.
Like, I had such a hard time to explain why, but I just, and it's something I've grappled with for quite a long time.
I just didn't know how to articulate it.
I didn't know how to like say like the reason why and explain like this is why I couldn't play it to myself.
Like put words to like what it is that was making me feel like unloved, right?
And it makes more sense now, right?
It does, yeah, because she's fighting to get what she wants at your expense.
That's win-lose.
Marriages cannot flourish with win-lose.
It has to be win-win, right?
And you, you just keep figuring things out, right?
Because you guys have a pattern where you have a disagreement, and then I assume usually you fold, and that's how the disagreement is resolved.
But it's not because if she gets what she wants at your expense, the feeling of unloved will grow and the feelings of resentment will grow.
And then at some point, you're just going to start fighting back.
And I guess that's been the last year.
But you have to have an agreement on principles, right?
So you guys need to have a philosophical conversation, which I'd be happy to facilitate if that would help.
But the philosophical conversation goes something like this: UPB, what is the principle by which we resolve disputes?
Well, and if your wife says, well, I get my way, well, that's not UPB, right?
Why should one person and not the other person get the way?
If the principle is, well, we should just both get our way at the other person's expense, that can't be achieved, right?
Logically.
Logically, that can't be achieved.
It's impossible.
So you have to say, well, we have to keep having the discussion until we come up with some kind of win-win.
And we also need to examine the justice and virtue of each person's preference.
You not wanting to have abusers at a marriage is just right and fair.
Now, you, having listened to me for half a decade before you got married and being all kinds of positive and lovey-dovey with your parents is definitely on you.
And that's mixed signal.
So she's got reason to complain.
Yeah, to be fair, I was not lovey-dovey with them.
I just, I told her that they were not great and I was seeing if there was a path forward, but that's fair.
I just didn't want to mischaracterize that, but it's still like, I should have already done that.
You were positive about having them in your life and you wanted them at the wedding, as far as I understand it.
And then you had the confrontation where things turned around.
And you also invited your girlfriend five or six times to meet and visit with your parents.
So you were certainly positive.
Yeah, you're right.
And Lovey Dovey was too strong.
And I appreciate the correction, but you were certainly positive towards your parents.
And then from her perspective, that's kind of a rug pull.
Yeah, I should have dealt with my parents before I met her and should have already had that buttoned up and done.
Well, yes.
And she should have, you know, she should have said, well, hang on.
Why would I want to meet the people who did you great wrong as a child, right?
Who neglected and abused you.
And so, yeah, but listen, I mean, we're all growing.
It's a journey, blah, blah, blah.
So that's, that's all, that's all sort of water under the bridge.
But you guys need to have a conversation on how do we resolve disputes.
Yeah.
And, you know, the existing pattern seems to be, and, you know, seems to be that she asserts and then you put up a sort of mock fight and then fold.
And that's not productive in the long run.
Yeah.
And I think that what happens for me oftentimes, I'll go into something where I feel like I have the sort of the argument in my head or have like the rationale in my head.
But then as if it starts to get like emotional at all, like I lose my head.
No, no, because you think you have to, this is the intellectual side of you that I'm sure, sure.
Right.
You think that you need to have just the right arguments.
You don't.
Yeah.
You have feelings.
I don't want to.
Yeah.
Right.
Because people, like, if you, if you were to say, I don't want you to go to therapy with your dad because it brings your dad's influence into our life.
It's negative.
It's difficult for our daughter.
It's difficult for me.
It's an expense we don't need.
I don't want you to do it.
Now she's going to have all these arguments, right?
And you're just like, but I don't want you to do it.
Well, why?
And people ask you why so that they can dismantle it, right?
Like if you say to a car dealer salesman, I don't want to buy this car, they'll say, well, why don't you want it?
And they're going to ask you those questions so they can dismantle your arguments and get you to do what they want, which is to buy the car, right?
Oh, it's too expensive.
Oh, no, but look at all these features and maybe I can knock 5% off the price and blah, blah, blah.
Right.
Yeah.
I just want to note, like, you stating that right there actually has probably made me feel like the largest amount of emotion like in this conversation.
Like feeling like a pattern that I've always seen is like, yeah, like being sort of somebody arguing me out of my feelings.
Yes.
Or I have to justify my feelings.
And if I don't have a good explanation or argument for my feelings, then they're not valid.
Yeah, because your wife has a feeling called, I don't feel like I have closure.
And I think I'll be happy or I'll be better or have more positive feelings if I go to therapy with my dad.
So she's just basing everything on feelings, which is fine, but then you can too.
I have a feeling I want to go.
I have a feeling I don't want you to go.
Right.
So that cancels each other out.
And then you have to actually negotiate.
Because right now, it's like you're like, okay, you have your feelings and I'll suppress mine.
Right.
Which is your childhood thing.
And she shouldn't do that because that's exploiting a childhood wound, which I'm not saying she's doing consciously, but yeah, you have to be like once you find out about people's childhoods, you have an obligation to not repeat what was inflicted upon them as a child because it's a cheat code.
You can get your way, but only by working an existing wound, which is not honorable.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And once she helps you put the wheels of your will on the ground and get you somewhere, you will find the procrastination will evaporate.
Procrastination is despair.
It's hopelessness.
It's my will can't affect anything.
And it's also passive aggression.
So you don't want to do what your wife wants you to do because you feel pushed around.
And like everyone who's pushed around, like the extreme example, like that's not a very hardworking slave.
It's like, well, yeah, because he's being ordered around.
So he's a note.
It's a form of resistance.
And that would explain the contrast of that with like other things that maybe I do well in my like job and career versus more domestic things.
Procrastination as Despair00:00:38
Yeah.
If women want men to succeed, which they do, right?
I mean, obviously your income is essential to the household.
So if women want men to succeed, they need to foster that will at every possible opportunity and not override that will because that's going to limit career potential for sure.
Right.
Okay.
All right.
Have we done useful, helpful stuff?
Yeah.
I appreciate your help.
This is super insightful.
And I just appreciate your time.
You're very welcome and happy to help any further.
If I can, do say hi to your wife for me.
And I enjoyed our private call.
And I hope you'll keep me posted about how things are going.