April 6, 2026 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
02:10:35
You Need ANGER! CALL IN SHOW
Stefan Molyneux analyzes a caller's marital stagnation rooted in childhood neglect, where emotionally muted parents withheld their son's father's terminal prognosis and treated him like a houseplant. The host argues that the caller's dismissive-avoidant attachment stems from internalizing this parental failure as personal unworthiness rather than recognizing it as deliberate selfishness. Molyneux insists that suppressing these feelings causes depression, urging the listener to channel specific anger toward wrongdoers to punish their faults and break toxic family cycles. Ultimately, expressing this justified rage is presented as the only path to clearing emotional voids, enabling genuine pair bonding with his wife and children instead of remaining trapped in non-relationships. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Unplanned Family Beginnings00:14:30
I'm the youngest of three children, the only one that did not require some sort of fertilization treatment.
I was put into childcare at a very young age, about six months.
My best guess, I've never asked my mom about that, while she finished up her college classes and her master's degree in teaching.
She started teaching at the age of 39 as a preschool teacher while my brother and I were still in daycare.
My childhood is very foggy, and memories are mostly derived from pictures that I remember seeing later in life.
The regular day to day experiences are all but lost in my memory up until about the time I started high school.
I was overshadowed by my brother, who's two years older than me, who excelled at making friends.
He was popular, and his interests in music and drama followed the interests of my parents.
My interests were more on the mechanical side of things.
I liked working on cars and trucks, and I excelled at things like math and science, but found it hard to make new friends in pretty much any setting.
I went through school by drifting, always getting good grades, and did not.
Ever need help with homework?
Graduated near the top of my high school class.
I went on to college without really the proper coaching or guidance that I needed.
My parents were those that subscribed to the you should do what makes you happy mindset and did not give any advice about student loans or debt in general.
I went out of state for my first year of college and transferred back to a college that was an hour away from home after my father passed away.
Again, I drifted through college, maintaining relatively good grades, but not making any real lasting relationships.
Moving closer to home, I thought I was helping out my mother, but as I look at it now, I realize that it was just as much to satisfy my own avoidant tendencies.
I don't know how much you know about attachment styles, but I'm very dismissive avoidant, which you'll see later in this message, which has nearly, for lack of better words, destroyed my life.
I've been emotionally numb for as long as I can remember, being neglected emotionally and physically for the most part, and so I have a hard time expressing emotions.
As well as detecting the emotions of others.
The avoidant in me has also steered me into a sort of counter dependence.
This makes it extremely hard to ask for help, and sometimes I avoid doing things simply because it would require me to ask for help.
The maddening part is I would gladly help someone else out who asked me for help with the exact same thing.
How stupid does that sound?
I guess fast forward.
My wife and I have been married for almost 12 years.
We have six kids.
I am embarrassed to say that I have not been the husband and father that I can be proud of.
I have avoided any kind of difficult or meaningful conversation, as it should probably be read, merely for my own comfort.
My wife has let me know several times over the course of our marriage that if I can only provide more of what I have been, she can't stand to stick around for it.
I'll dive into self help books and podcasts to show her that I mean business and that I'm making real changes, but that only lasts for a couple of weeks.
My tendencies trickle back, and there I am, avoiding the things that matter again.
She has had the bulk of the family mental load for as long as we've been together scheduling appointments, swimming lessons, activities, trips, meals, etc.
She points it out to me, and every time my heart sinks a little, knowing that I'm exactly the man she thinks I am.
I want to change, I need to change.
But I'm so depressed and unmotivated most days that I just want to crawl in a hole.
I know that if I continue down this road, it will be alone.
And when I think about that, I get so down because I don't even know if my family would know I was gone.
And that's the end?
Yes.
That was, that was, yeah.
Well, there's more that I didn't get written down.
I'm sorry, go ahead.
There was more that I didn't get written down.
I meant to put more into it, but that was what I had prepared.
Okay.
I'm very glad that you called.
I'm sure we can do some good, helpful.
And useful stuff.
So, of the stuff that you didn't write down that you wanted to communicate further, what would you say?
Just, I guess, there's more to it with my family of origin.
In my adult life, they've been pretty absent.
It's a call once or twice a year kind of thing.
It started out at least from my.
Young adulthood.
Since then, it's, I don't even get a call.
You know, sometimes they'll call me on my birthday, but they don't remember my kids' birthdays.
They don't, they don't call just to chat.
It's just kind of empty.
Are they physically far away?
Yes.
All right.
So, what else do you have that you wanted to add?
Really, no specifics.
That's about it.
Oh, I'm sorry.
I thought you said that there's more that you wanted to or that you didn't put in.
Well, I'm not trying to catch you out.
I just want to make sure I understood what you said.
I think that's the kind of stuff that we need to.
What I had written down is the stuff that I need help with.
Got it.
Okay.
All right.
And let me just see here.
What would be a good place to start?
You said it's ruined your life.
And by that, you mean sort of ruined your marriage or your relationship with your kids or what?
Yes.
And yes, to all the above.
And it's, yeah.
And it's kept me from really making any kind of a meaningful relationship with just about anybody.
I've noticed that the friends that I thought I had in high school, everybody grew apart because when you're in high school, nobody.
I mean, nobody's fully developed.
You don't really know who you are anyway.
But throughout life, generally people will meet others who share interests or passions or something like that, and you create adult friendships.
And I just haven't created any of those.
Got it.
Okay.
Okay.
So, what are your wife's major complaints?
Do you think she's halfway out the door?
Did I have that right?
Leaving hasn't been exactly brought up, but she's made it very clear that our marriage as it stands will not last if something drastic doesn't change.
So, that's halfway out the door.
I mean, sorry, I don't mean to mischaracterize what you said, but that's so.
I mean, she said that if things don't change, Then the marriage is done, right?
Yes.
Okay.
Got it.
Got it.
All right.
So tell me a little bit.
We'll get to family stuff, but I just want like family of origin stuff.
But tell me a little bit about how you met your wife and how you courted, what you saw in each other.
And you said you've been married for 12 years.
How long were you together before that?
So we met.
We got married about.
15, 16 months after we met.
We met.
I was working a job and she was going to college about an hour away or two hours away.
And we actually met online.
Ah, okay.
And seemed to hit it off right away.
I moved to be closer to her, got a new job.
Near where she was living, moved in with her.
And then she was still finishing up school.
We bought a house together.
Then we got married.
And then, you know, since then we've had, you know, six kids.
And it's been a very wild ride, honestly.
I bet.
And was that something that you discussed before you got married, having that many children?
No.
Having a large family wasn't really something that either one of us had.
Like any real passion about at the beginning.
But as we started having kids, you know, and then the youngest would get to be about a year old or so, and we'd think, you know, we're not all here yet.
Huh.
Okay.
Tell me about that.
About how it came that we had six.
Yeah, like we're not all here yet.
Is that religious in nature or something else?
No, it was just, it was just, it just felt like our family wasn't.
Really complete.
I wouldn't say it was religious or spiritual or anything.
It just, um, some kind of intuition.
I don't know.
Ah, very cool.
I mean, I'm not, no way criticizing.
I envy that size of a family.
So, you know, good for you.
Well done.
Fantastic.
Amazing.
Okay.
So you, I assume that your wife did not continue to work with six children?
No, she, um, She quit her job to be a stay at home mom when our second was about six months old.
Does she homeschool or?
No.
Ah, okay.
So the kids are going to government school, I assume.
Yes, our three oldest are.
And how's that going?
For the most part, very well.
Our oldest has some tendencies that are scarily much like my own.
She just kind of avoids doing things that she doesn't want to do.
And we're having trouble with trying to.
Course correct that, I guess.
And with her, so sorry, how do you feel about the curriculum in the school?
I've met all their teachers, everything seems legit.
I know there's a lot of public schools out there that, you know, have all this propaganda and this message that they try to send.
I don't think that the school they're going to is that way at all.
Oh, okay.
So that's good.
And is her family anywhere nearby?
They're right next door.
Yeah, I was going to say, I couldn't imagine that you guys are doing six kids without at least some external help, right?
Well, I didn't say anything about them helping.
Oh, okay.
So they're next door, but they don't help?
Correct.
No, tell me about that.
So her mom did help us out quite a bit when our oldest two were pretty young.
She would watch them a couple times a week while my wife was at work, and we had daycare a couple other days a week for them set up.
But since then, everything has kind of dwindled, and the relationship between us and them has been very rocky.
We actually were renting the house that we're living in now from them, and then we bought it with the intention of kind of sticking around and having family help and all this.
Um, but since so her younger brother also lives, he used to live right next to them in like a little apartment shop thing that they had on the property.
Um, but he and his wife have moved about a quarter mile down the road into a different house.
Um, so they're still very close too, but her parents have kind of poured all of their love and support into her younger brother and his family and have kind of.
Almost not really shunned us, but we aren't invited to family gatherings anymore.
Like birthdays, Christmas, Fourth of July, that kind of stuff doesn't, we don't even get an invite.
So it's kind of like, well, yes and no.
I would say it's not shunning.
She's not openly saying it to anybody, but it's, I suppose it would be kind of an indirect shun.
And why?
Why does it happen?
You know, it's one of the.
So my wife is kind of the black sheep of her siblings.
She's the middle child.
She has an older brother and a younger brother.
And she was the one who always asked questions like, hey, why did you do this when we were little?
Or, you know, that kind of thing.
She noticed a lot of things growing up, also.
Like both of her grandparents were very present in their lives.
Her, her, one of her grandmas lived in a different country and she came over, you know, at least once a year, I think, and kind of babysat.
Them and watched them and took care of them while her parents went on vacations.
They took a trip to Mexico for a week or two, and her grandparents just watched them.
And it kind of, I don't know if her mom has forgotten these things, but she certainly says that she didn't have any help growing up or when she was raising her kids.
And so that's kind of where this all started hey, you had these six kids.
Now you have to deal with them, kind of thing.
The House Gift Reciprocity00:15:38
Okay.
All right.
So her mother feels that she didn't get help and therefore your wife shouldn't get help.
Correct.
That's a strange thing.
But at the same time, she says, I have helped you out so much.
Right.
And they did.
I mean, they sold us the house.
I'm not saying we haven't ever gotten any help from them.
There have been times where we have gotten along really well.
Um, You know, I've been able to ask her dad for help on projects and, you know, borrow some equipment that he had or a tool or something.
But anymore, it's just kind of silence.
But I'm still not sure exactly what happened or even approximately.
So there was a pretty big event that happened a couple years ago.
I was working a job up here and I wasn't, I felt pretty undervalued at the company.
And so I had been kind of just.
Openly looking for other work.
And I had gotten a hold of a friend of mine that I had from college, which I guess that's one relationship that I kept open and didn't destroy.
But he, you know, put in a good word for me at the company that he worked at, and I got a job there.
And it was a couple, it was probably 1,200 miles away from here.
And so when I took that job, we sat down and talked to her parents and said, Hey, we're going to be moving.
And, you know, hey, I got this job.
It pays way better and it'll be, you know, a really good step up for our family.
And all they could say is, How dare you want to leave and sell the house that we helped you, you know, get into?
And from then on, it was just.
Nothing positive.
And did you end up moving and taking the job?
Yeah.
It was a whirlwind.
You might have actually heard this before.
My wife had a call in show with you six or eight months ago, and she got into a little bit.
But I initially left by myself.
I moved in with my mother, which was honestly a big mistake to begin with, while my wife and kids stayed back here.
And, you know, it was, I was getting established at the job.
I was looking around at properties down there that we could move into while saving rent by living with my mom.
So we didn't have two, you know, rentalslash mortgage payments every month.
And so we did that for about two months.
And then I came back, helped to pack up all of the stuff.
To move.
And then we moved down there as a family.
We ended up putting the house up here on the market.
And then my wife and I kind of came to this conclusion.
We were very unhappy in the city that my job was.
The schools there were not good.
And we decided to move back here.
The company I was working for, actually still work for, was.
Very good about it.
I'm working fully remote now, and my job is going well.
But now we're living in this house that's right next to my in laws.
It just makes the whole familial situation up here very edgy, I guess.
Well, I guess it's not that edgy if you don't really see them.
Well, that's the thing.
So we live right next door.
So we see when they're having family gatherings and when her siblings show up to the house and they invite neighbors over.
And I mean, they throw pretty big parties.
They have a big speaker that they have out on their porch and they play loud music.
And it just kind of feels like they're.
Throwing it in our face, saying, you know, like, hey, we're having fun without you guys.
So, and it was because, was it mostly because of the move or because they felt that they got you the house that you don't want or, or don't can't use?
What was their major issue, do you think?
The major issue is that they believe my wife and I don't remember this at all.
They believe there was an unwritten agreement, a verbal agreement that when we bought this house, we weren't going to just quote unquote.
Sell it and leave with the profit.
Well, we rented the house from them for two years prior to buying it.
And then we owned the house outright.
Well, sorry, we bought it from them and we lived in the house owning it for the next three years.
And when it came time to move, all they could think of, because it was right around the time we bought it in 2020.
And so the property values where we lived.
Skyrocketed, and they were feeling left out of the profits that they could have seen from that if they had not sold the house to us.
And that was what kind of brought their resentment towards us is that we had all of this equity in the house that we didn't earn, so to speak.
Okay, well, why not just give them some money?
Well, it's maybe, I'm sorry.
And I'm not saying whether that's the right thing to do.
I have no idea.
I'm just hearing about this for the first time.
But if you made, you know, I don't know, 50K or whatever it was, just give them some portion of that and then they'd probably feel a little better.
Or I don't know, but what's.
Well, it's kind of touchy on that too because, like, they've owned houses before that they've sold, and then the next people have sold them, and so on and so forth.
And they, you know.
No, but they sold you this house in particular, I assume, at a fairly advantageous price because you're family.
It was maybe 10% off market.
Okay.
So that's good.
That was relatively nice, right?
So it was not a business transaction in that you were just some strangers or they sold it to you at full value.
Or something like that.
So, you know, if the house is $500K and they're giving it to you for $450, that's just saved you $50, right?
Yes.
So they gave you a break on the house, which saved you some money.
And then if you made a bunch of money when you sold it, wouldn't it be?
I mean, the way that I would see it, of course, I could be wrong, is if they gave you a special deal when you bought it, Wouldn't you give them some of the profits from the sale?
Well, the only problem with that is we would have needed the proceeds from the sale in order to buy the next house.
Well, that's not true.
It wasn't the number we were going to buy.
No, no, hang on, hang on.
That's not true, though.
It just means you wouldn't be able to buy quite as expensive a house.
Yeah.
I just want to be technically correct.
I'm not trying to figure out the morals of it.
But this is what I have in my mind, right?
And I'm not saying these are the numbers and don't tell me the numbers.
But it's like, okay, so the house is 500K, you get it for 450, and then maybe it goes up to 600K when you sell it.
So you've made 150K profit, and they feel, well, geez, if we'd hold on to the house, we would have made 100,000 or whatever it would be.
I mean, from 500 to 600K.
So you're up 150K in part because they sold the house to you and because they gave you 50K.
I don't know.
I mean, you could say of the 150K, we give you 25K.
50K or something like that, whatever it would be after taxes or something like that, to say, hey, thanks for giving us the house at a reduced rate.
And I mean, that would be look, just because that would be my instinct does not mean at all that it's right, right?
I'm just telling you that that would be my thinking.
And I mean, I guess you and your wife didn't think that.
Like they gave you 50K off the house, then you made 100K or 150K and you kept all that for yourself.
Well, the house didn't actually sell.
We moved back into it, but that was, we were basically just going to take the equity from this house and put it into something else.
So our thoughts were that.
I'm sorry, hang on.
Now I'm really confused.
Now I'm really confused.
You said you needed the house sale to get the new house, but then it turns out you didn't get the house sale.
Sorry if I'm missing something obvious, but I'm not following this.
Right.
So we moved away.
Yep.
And then about two weeks later, we moved back.
We took the house off the market.
We didn't sell anything.
Okay.
So it was in the two weeks that they thought you might sell it and they felt that they deserved some of the profits of the house sale.
Is that right?
Yes.
Okay.
And you said no.
Correct.
And hang on, hang on.
But what was your reasoning for saying no?
Well, our reasoning was that they sold us this house as a leg up.
And I mean, we were gracious for it when it happened.
We weren't, you know, you mean grateful for it?
Sorry, yes, we were grateful.
Yeah.
We, sorry, I'm getting scattered now.
What we viewed it as was a leg up.
And when they kind of demanded this payment back, it was like, okay, you're giving us this leg up, and then you're pulling the rug out from under us when we're trying to use that in order to, you know, kind of continue that leg up, I guess.
Well, no, hang on.
Do you need the leg up when you're getting a massive increase in pay?
I mean, you don't need another leg up because you're moving away because you pay doubled or whatever, like you go massive increase in pay, and then you also have the profits from the house.
Going up in value, and that was the anticipation, right?
And so it wasn't like you continued to need a leg up when you've got a house sale where the house has gone up immensely in value, and you're also getting a huge pay increase that's well worth traveling 1,200 miles for, right?
Again, I'm happy to be corrected, and I'm just trying to follow it.
So maybe I'm not explaining this correctly.
What my wife and I kind of interpreted this gift as.
Was almost like a sort of early inheritance.
It was never discussed that way, but that was kind of our feeling from the get go.
Well, you got a favor because of family, right?
Yes.
So you got 10% off the price of a house because of family, right?
Yes.
But then when you sold the house, it no longer was family.
It's just a pure economic consideration, and you don't owe any favors to family.
So you were happy to be on the receiving end of special consideration because of family.
But you didn't want to provide any special consideration because of family.
That's kind of a one way street, isn't it?
Well, I guess we never really went down that road.
Yeah, I don't know what that means.
I don't know what going down that road means.
I'm just asking.
I'm just asking if somebody says, hey, like if you're my brother and I say, yes, you can absolutely borrow my car for the weekend, you don't even have to fill up the gas, you're family, blah, blah, blah, right?
Then I'm giving you a favor because you're family.
If it was just some stranger, I wouldn't let them borrow.
My car for the weekend, right?
And then if I want to borrow your car, you charge me $50 a day and say, hey, that's the going rate for renting a car.
That would be a little confusing to me, right?
Like, hey, I lent you my car for free.
Like, why can't I borrow your car?
Why are you charging me?
Like, I didn't give you the going rate.
I gave you a car for free.
And then when I want to borrow your car, you're charging me some.
Hurts rent a car going rate.
In other words, I give you special considerations and charity because of family, and then you don't want to return the favor.
Again, I'm happy to be corrected, but that's my sort of first pass thought.
So here's my kind of philosophy on the situation here.
I'll give an analogy here.
We'll use cars.
So if, say, my brother needs a car, and I say, hey, I have this car.
I'll sell it to you for half of what I'd sell it to someone else for.
It's your car.
That's yours now.
It's not mine anymore.
And then he goes and sells it for $1,000 more than what I sold it to him for.
Would I be upset?
Yes.
But at that point, that's his car.
If I wanted to buy it back from him, it's his car because you gave him a great deal because he's family.
So he has an increase in the value of the car that he got just because of family.
So technically, you're right.
It's his car, but it's only his car.
Like he only has the profit.
Like, let's say he sells the car for, I don't know, let's say it's a $5,000 car.
You give it to him for $2,500 and he sells it for $12,500.
Like, whatever, right?
So that's a $10,000 profit.
So he only has that profit because you gave him half off the car because he couldn't afford the $5,000.
So he only has that profit because of your generosity, right?
Right.
But so how long?
How long would he be a little bit generous back?
Possibly, but that's up to him.
But well, no, it's not just up to him.
There's a certain amount of reciprocity.
And how long do you hold a gift over someone's head?
See, you're using very inflammatory language, pull the rug out from under or hold it over someone's head.
It's not a matter of holding, it's a question of do you recognize reciprocal obligations or reciprocal generosity?
Yes, I do.
Right.
So if you have a neighbor who's very happy to lend you his lawnmower.
Hey, man, whatever you want it, lend the lawnmower, blah, blah, blah, right?
And then he comes over and says, Hey, can I borrow your ladder or your snowblower?
And you say, No, but you can rent it from me.
You understand that you're breaking a little bit of the general principle of reciprocal obligation.
That if you have borrowed from your neighbor and returned and so on, then if your neighbor asks you to borrow something, you should be happy to lend to him, right?
Yes.
Now, that doesn't mean that he owns your ladder, but there is a reciprocal obligation.
Understanding Reciprocal Obligation00:04:32
So if you have benefited from your family's generosity because your family, shouldn't they also benefit a little bit in return?
Or is it just one sided, like only you benefit and they?
Don't.
No, absolutely not.
I don't feel that way at all.
Okay, then you should have given them some of the increased value of the house.
Same principle.
Now, if you grew up without a generous family, which it sounds like you did, then I can understand why this would feel foreign.
But I'm just telling you that is the principle of reciprocal obligation.
That if you only have a value because somebody was very generous to you because you're family, then you should be generous in return.
I don't know if it's one for one, it doesn't really matter.
I don't know if it's the part of the profit or their original 50K or half of that, it doesn't really matter.
But if you're only in possession of a house, Because your wife's parents sold you the house significantly below market value, then it's not that they have a contract or it's not that you owe them in some financial sense, but it's just a question of reciprocal obligation.
That if people are generous with you, should you not also be generous in return?
Again, if I'm missing something, I'm happy to hear.
No, that is the idea.
So, why was that not on the table, do you think?
Like, we're so happy to have this additional money, which only came about because of the generosity of your wife's parents.
I would love to cut them in on some of the profits because the profits only exist because they were so kind to us.
Because what you're doing is, if you don't cut them in on any of the profits, you're saying, I'm not going to treat you as family.
I'm going to treat you as just some people I got a house from.
Right?
I mean, if there were some strangers who, for some reason, gave you the house at a very good rate, Then, when you sell the house, you wouldn't call those strangers and give them money.
So, you're saying to your wife's family, we're going to treat you as economically equivalent to absolute strangers.
And then they're like, okay, well, if we're going to be treated as strangers, then there's no particular family obligation here.
So, we're not going to invite you to family events because you're treating us as if we're strangers.
Does that make sense?
I'm not defending them, or they certainly think they should have communicated it better, but I imagine it's something like that.
I guess it could be that it was never discussed between myself and them.
Oh, so you never discussed it with them?
They said, so how did the conversation go?
Yeah, how did the conversation with them go?
It was just, I guess, to me, it felt like they were simply upset with us solely for they were feeling like we were taking advantage of them.
Like we had purchased the house specifically for the purpose.
Of selling it for a profit, which was never the goal.
If things had worked out here, we would stay here forever.
As you have, right?
Yeah.
Yes.
Okay.
Okay.
So that's very much an interpretation.
So do you know?
I assume that you talked about your wife with your wife, how it went when they had the conversation.
We've discussed it some.
I'm not being there for the whole thing.
I mean, I'm sure that there are details missing, but yes.
And that was almost three years ago now.
So.
So, they wanted some reciprocal obligation from you guys for their own generosity or some reciprocal consideration.
And you said, no, we are not going to be generous back.
We were happy to take your generosity, but we're not going to be generous back in that way.
Because it's something like that.
I'm not saying that's what was said, but is that the general process?
You know, 30,000 foot view, that's probably what it looked like, yeah.
I'm not trying to do what it looks like.
They were very kind to you and gave you $50,000 in my made up model.
They gave you $50,000 worth of value.
You made $150,000 from it and you didn't want to be generous back.
Like you only have the $150,000 because they gave you the $50,000, right?
Yes.
Okay.
And you were like, hey, thanks for that $50,000.
We're just going to keep the whole $150,000.
Keeping Secrets From Parents00:15:49
Yes.
Okay.
I mean, the way that I'm framing it, which is hopefully not a frame, I think that there's some facts involved in it.
Can you see why they might be a little miffed?
I mean, I tell you, I would be, and that doesn't mean that I'm just telling you my personal experience.
I'm not saying that that's right or wrong.
I can understand why they'd be miffed at that.
It's like, oh, so if reciprocal family obligations don't exist, then if he's going to treat us like we're just people and not family, then we'll do the same.
I mean, do you dislike them as people?
I dislike a lot of their mannerisms.
They're.
How do I put this?
They lack the ability to accept others' boundaries.
Sorry, what does that mean in practical terms?
I'm not disagreeing with you.
I'm just going to show what it means.
They show up at our house unannounced and just kind of walk.
And we've told them, you know, her mom would come down here and she would bring her dog and.
My wife would tell her every single time, Hey, you got to leave your dog at home.
Our dogs don't get along.
Just leave her at home.
And she'd say something like, Oh, yeah, I guess I didn't know.
The next time she comes down, her dog comes with her.
And it's just like that over and over and over again.
Is she just like, I'm not, again, I'm not trying to defend her, obviously, but sorry, I don't mean obviously, but I'm not trying to defend her.
Is she just not smart?
Like maybe she's got an IQ of 90.
She's definitely showing signs of early dementia.
Which has run in her family.
She has told my wife that they have had conversations that they obviously have not had, and that my wife has said some things that are very uncharacteristically her.
But she, for one example, so I had to go out of town for work a couple weeks ago.
So I drive out of the driveway and I head into town.
And I got a call from my wife about 20, 30 minutes after I left.
Apparently, her mom had seen me drive out the driveway, and our four year old son was standing on the porch waving to me because I was leaving.
And her mom came running down.
From her house to our house, flung open the door and acted very worried that we had left our four year old at home alone.
Which, if you know my wife, she won't, I mean, she won't leave our kids anywhere alone.
And for her mom to kind of put that on her is just, it's just one of those things where there should be some kind of boundaries, right?
Like, hey, why don't you call us to see if something's happening?
Why don't you knock on the door before you open it up?
And again, I'm sorry, but doesn't she have early dementia?
Undiagnosed.
I mean, she won't admit anything.
None of her, None of her other family will admit anything, but there's just certain things.
No, but it runs in the family.
You said it runs in the family, and she is behaving in ways that are not cognitively appropriate to her mind, right?
Yes.
So if it is early onset dementia, it's not her fault, right?
Well, the boundaries thing has been going on for since we've lived here.
Like I said, they'll just come over unannounced and just open the door and say, hey, we're here.
Kind of thing where they expect to be notified if we are going over to their house.
I mean, sorry if I'm mistaking something.
It's a little different if two people are coming over who are largely self sufficient as opposed to two adults and six children all under the age of 10.
No, even if it was just me, like I went over and I had actually called her husband, asked to borrow something.
I went up there, I knocked on the door.
They have an alarm.
Sorry, her husband.
Oh, your Your mother in law?
My father in law.
Your father in law.
Okay, sorry.
Yeah.
So I called him.
I asked if I could borrow this thing.
I went up there.
I knocked on the door.
There was no answer.
They have an electronic keypad on their door.
So, and I knew the code.
I put the code in, went inside, said, Hey, it's me.
Went and got the thing and went back out and went on my way.
And apparently she had called my wife and said, Hey, that was really not cool.
I almost went down with a shotgun.
And I'm sorry, when is this?
This was years ago.
I mean, this was probably six or eight years ago.
Okay.
Okay.
So she's a problem person.
So if she's a problem person, why would you take $50,000 from them in terms of a special sale price for the house?
So at that time, when we bought the house, we were getting along just fine.
So it was a whole other thing.
Oh, so the shotgun thing wasn't a problem.
I'm sorry, I'm really confused here.
Like, I'm trying to ask what are the problems.
And you say, hang on, hang on.
You say, here's an example of a big problem.
I go to borrow something.
I knock on the door.
There's no one there.
I use the keypad.
I go in.
I get my thing.
And then I get a call.
My mother in law says to my wife, that was not cool.
And so I thought that was an issue of a problem because I asked you, what are the problems?
And then when I say, well, if this is a big problem, why did you take the 50K?
And you say, no, we were getting along fine.
It's confusing, right?
No, we were getting along fine when we purchased the house, which was how long ago?
That was six years ago.
Right.
So you just said this happened five or six years ago.
You were getting along fine.
And then you say, but five or six years ago, there was the whole issue with you going into the house to get something.
And that was a negative, right?
I guess that might have been last time.
That may have been in the last.
I don't think we had moved out yet.
All I can do is tell you, I'm not trying to nag or pick at you.
I'm just trying to understand the situation.
Sorry, go ahead.
It was well after when we purchased the house.
I know that much for sure.
But no, as a family, when we bought the house, we were all getting along well.
Everyone was going to family functions.
We were inviting everyone over for kissing.
Sorry, I thought the boundaries issue went way back.
The boundaries issue, yes.
Okay, so if the boundary issue is a big problem, then, and the dog thing was more recent because of perhaps the early onset dementia.
If the boundaries issue was a big problem, then it kind of been that you were getting along really, really well back when they would just come over, even though you asked them to let you know ahead of time, they'd just come over but wouldn't let you go over, right?
So again, I'm just trying to sort of map things.
And the reason I'm doing this is that if there were problems before you took the 50K, and I know that's just a made up number, it's a bookmark, right?
So if there were problems before you took the 50K, then it makes taking the 50K questionable.
If there weren't any problems when you took the 50K, but the problem is more recent, then it may have to do with the dementia.
That's what I'm trying to understand.
Okay.
Yeah.
The privacy boundaries and they.
They've never really respected the way we wanted to parent our kids, however, that was.
You know, if they had a disagreement with it, you know, we would say, Hey, don't say that around them.
And, you know, her dad would be like, Well, that's.
Sorry, say what?
Like what?
Like what sort of thing?
Oh, cursing, that kind of stuff.
Oh, he swears around your children.
Yeah.
Okay.
Well, that's not acceptable, obviously, right?
So what does he do about that?
What does he do about it?
Yeah.
Nothing.
He just continues to swear.
Yes.
And what is his justification for that?
That he's always been that way and he's not about to change for them.
Okay, got it.
Well, really, it might not be not change for them.
It might, I don't know if it's he won't change for them or he won't change for anybody, but.
Okay, and for how many years has he been swearing around your children?
All of them.
So when does that start?
Your oldest was nine?
Our oldest is 10.
10, sorry.
Okay.
So for a decade, he's been swearing around your children.
And six years ago, you took the 50K.
Yeah.
Okay.
Was that wise?
Because if you take the money, it's kind of tough to criticize people, isn't it?
I mean, if they're good enough to take money from, it's a little tough to complain too much about them, right?
Yeah, I don't know that we've thought about it that way.
Okay.
All right.
So you took the money, you made the profit, you didn't want to give any profit back, you left for two weeks and came back.
And you hadn't sold the house.
And what happened when you came back with your in laws?
That was where we've kind of been getting the cold shoulder since then.
And what have you done about that, if anything?
I mean, we've tried to figure out some common grounds, the right word.
We've tried to figure out ways that we can all get along, but.
It's almost as if they've kind of written it off at this point anyway.
And like I said, they're sorry, I'm not sure what it means when you say you tried to figure out ways that you can all get along.
What does that mean in terms of like what's happened?
Well, I guess we kind of tried to.
I guess I'm not really sure how to go about that.
Well, no, I mean, you must have noticed the cold shoulder.
I mean, did you sit down and talk with them, or did you ask for any other family members to intercede, or did you invite them over?
Or, like, well, what happened when you came back and you were getting the cold shoulder?
I guess I'd have to ask my wife.
She, she, she, since then, she has done most of the conversations between them.
Sorry, are you guys Christians?
Not, not practicing.
I mean, we.
I was raised Christian.
She was not.
But we kind of follow.
We have the same values and morals, I guess.
Okay.
So, I mean, in some ways, not perfectly or in every way, but in some ways, would you be considered the head of the household?
Yes.
Okay.
So, if you're the head of the household, your in laws are Christians?
No.
Oh, okay.
So, you couldn't sit down as the head of your household with the head of her household and work things out, could you?
I suppose we could try.
I honestly don't think that anything would come of it, but I mean, that's.
Sorry, what do you mean?
Like, have you tried?
No.
And why not?
I don't have an answer for that, a concrete answer.
But it's been three years that you've seen them have parties across the street and you're not invited, right?
Mm hmm.
So, have you and your wife discussed what might be done?
What could be done?
Just between me and my wife?
Well, I mean, no, no.
What could be done with this situation?
No.
You've never said maybe we should talk to them or maybe we should ask a family member to talk to them or maybe we should be self critical and figure out what issues they have with us or nothing.
Well, that's the other thing, too.
When we came back, there was the same kind of falling out with her brothers that lived in the area as well.
Her younger brother hasn't.
Said more than maybe three words to her since we moved back, and that was just in passing.
Okay, and what's the issue there?
Um, I, uh, her family relationships are very, um, that's a very deep topic.
Um, So, her mom, she likes.
I'm going to ask you for a tiny favor here.
So, her mom, like, it's so slow.
Like, you're a smart guy, good communicator.
I'm not sure what all these pauses are, but it's going to make this a 19 hour conversation when it could be a little bit more rapid.
So, I'm not sure if you're self censoring or you don't know the answer, but if you could just try and tighten up the pauses a little so we could get a little more info across in the same timeframe, I'd appreciate that.
Sure.
So, her mom is kind of a what we've determined is a narcissist, and her younger brother would be the golden child in that situation.
And my wife would then be the scapegoat in the whole dynamic there.
So, my mother in law kind of likes to control the whole conversation between all of her children.
And so she gatekeeps all of that stuff.
And she has been kind of telling her brothers other things about.
I guess what we have been doing, which I don't know how she would know because she hasn't been involved.
So she's kind of tried to turn her siblings against her, I guess you could say.
Okay, I still don't know.
Like, so you have descriptions of things.
I don't know what actually happened.
I do know that your descriptions of things are probably inaccurate since most descriptions are, and you're calling me.
Right.
So when I ask you what happened, I don't need a narrative.
I'm not looking for a narrative of, oh, this narcissist is trying to turn this and that and the other.
I just want to know what actually happened.
That you know of?
I don't know.
Okay.
And what has your wife done about it?
She has one brother or more than one?
She has one younger and one older.
Okay.
And is it the younger or the older who stopped talking?
Both.
Oh, both.
Okay.
And this happened right when you came back.
And what has your wife done about this?
She has actually had lots of conversations with her mom about this stuff.
They would go on walks together.
And kind of discuss this stuff, but she said that it was all like her mom didn't really quite understand, or she didn't want to answer the questions my wife was answering or what my wife was asking.
Okay, so that's not doing much, right?
If she's got a problem with her brothers and she's talking to her mother, but her mother's not answering the questions, then she needs to talk to her brothers, right?
Well, so her older brother stopped talking to us.
This is another thing that has happened in the last 12, 13 months.
Pregnancy And Family Tension00:07:59
So our sixth child was born with a heart defect, but that we kind of kept her pregnancy not a secret.
We just.
No one ever inquired.
And so when we had the baby, everything was really good.
And we were just, we were thinking this was going to be our last child.
We just wanted to have a calm, at home, you know, start to our last child's life.
That was interrupted about a week into his life, and he had to be flown out for surgery.
And that was kind of when her older brother blew up on her for, you know, Keeping everything, you know, having a secret baby and not telling the family about it before it happened, kind of thing.
Sorry, but how did, if it was a secret baby, how did your in laws know about the baby?
Well, after it got her pregnancy leaked, I guess you could say.
It wasn't a secret, but.
We were trying to keep it to a small group of people who knew.
One of those people leaked it to her mom, who also kind of kept it under wraps within her family, I guess.
But she felt pretty, I guess, out of the loop, which she was.
Okay.
So you kept your wife's, your wife kept her pregnancy secret from her family, but it got leaked before the child was born.
Is that right?
Yes.
Okay, and then your mother in law was predictably, as was everyone in the family, hurt and upset, right?
Yes.
Was that unfair for them to be hurt and upset?
Was it unfair?
Sorry for the pause.
I'm really trying to give a.
No, it's fine if you're thinking about things.
It's just after you start answering if you can keep it tight.
But yeah, take your time to think for sure.
Yeah.
I mean, I could see how they would portray it as us trying to keep a secret from them.
Oh, no.
Hang on.
You were trying to keep a secret from them.
That's not a portrayal thing, right?
You said it was a secret pregnancy.
Of course, you were trying to keep a secret from them.
Right.
And it was because of the reason we didn't tell all of our family members is because of the way that the relationships had deteriorated already to that point.
Well, you hadn't done anything to fix them for three years, right?
Or try.
My wife tried to patch things up with her mother several times.
I thought, sorry, I thought you said they went on long walks and had conversations.
So, what am I missing?
Yes, and that was, that was, she had conversations with her mom, and it was a lot of the stuff was about the boundary stuff.
Um, and, you know, how they weren't really, they weren't really respecting us, you know, as the parents of our children and what they need to, you know, be told and not told and, and, uh, all that.
Um, and her mom just never really, They never repaired their relationship.
Okay.
So your mother said, your wife said to your mother in law, I want you to let us know if you're coming over so we can prepare or make sure we're home.
And her mother said, No, we're never going to do that.
We're just going to drop by or something like that.
To that effect.
Yeah.
Okay.
All right.
So why?
I'm sorry.
Just help me understand why are you still in the neighborhood?
Because it's awkward as hell, right?
Like, why haven't you sold the house and moved?
Well, if we were going to sell the house and move locally, we would not be able to.
I mean, we would have to move into a much smaller house in order for us to keep affording to live in the area.
If we moved out of the area, which we have discussed several different options for where we could move to, it's just a lot of logistics, you know, moving.
Just moving with six kids is a huge logistical challenge.
Oh, you mean because they might change schools or something like that?
Yes.
And just all, I mean, six kids, you have six kids' worth of stuff.
Yeah.
But I mean, there's just movers for that, right?
So, okay.
All right.
So, and there's nothing that you've tried to fix things in the family across the street, in your in laws.
You haven't sat down with anyone to try and work things out.
Is that right?
I have not.
Now, is it worth having these boundaries?
In other words, you've lost three years of helpful childcare, right?
And how often would they come over unannounced and how inconvenient was it?
It was probably once or twice a month.
You know, it wasn't necessarily that big a moment.
Oh, come on.
Oh, man.
No.
No, no, no.
You can't blow up the whole thing for one or two drop buys a month.
It was the timing that caught it.
They would show up, you know, right?
No, it doesn't matter.
No, come on, man.
If they're coming over every day at like two in the morning, or I don't know what, I mean, one or two drop bys a month.
And this is the point of no return, the unacceptable breaking of the family.
I mean, help me understand this.
Please help me.
What am I missing?
I mean, I get the swearing in front of the kids.
I get that for sure.
But the drop bys seem to be the big issue and it's one or two a month.
Yeah, but yeah, I guess it's also, if you're saying like, hang on to us, but well, no, but also, if you're saying I can't handle anything negative from other people in a relationship, do you know what that implies about you?
You're perfect, there's nothing that anyone ever needs to put up with with you because you're perfect, and because you're perfect, you can demand absolute perfection on the part of other people.
And they better not drop by once or twice a month without telling you first because that's unacceptable.
And you can have those standards because you're perfect and nobody ever needs to put up with you about anything.
Now, I'm a pretty good husband.
I'm a pretty good dad.
But I don't for a moment think that there aren't annoying things that I do that other people have to put up with.
There are and they do.
Okay.
How long were you in the house before you were going to sell it?
Was it two, two and a half years?
Oh, we owned it for three.
Oh, you owned it for three years and then you were going to move and sell, right?
Yeah.
Just one thing here.
So I wanted this call in so that we could talk about my childhood and my upbringing.
And we've been stuck on the house for an hour and 10 minutes, it seems like.
I don't know why.
I mean, I wanted help with trying to unlock a lot of my childhood stuff.
Okay.
And do you know why I'm talking about this stuff?
Childhood Roots Of Coaching00:03:21
No.
Okay.
I've been doing this for over two decades.
Do you think I know what I'm doing?
Yes.
And I'm not saying that you don't.
Okay.
I'm trying to understand.
It's a fine question.
So you said that childhood stuff has ruined your life, right?
So I'm trying to understand what is wrong with your life so that I can figure out what to focus on in your childhood.
Okay.
Most of what I was talking about in my life that's being ruined is my marriage.
And do you think that the principles of a little bit of entitlement and a little bit of perfectionism and a little bit of non negotiating and a little bit of just cutting people off for what seem like relatively minor problems do you think that does not occur in your marriage or is it totally different?
I guess I hadn't made the connection.
So, what I'm trying to do in this part of the conversation, and listen, it's totally fine that you ask, of course, right?
I'm not trying to be Mr. Mystery Guy, right?
But one of the things that I'm trying to figure out in this conversation is how coachable are you?
Right.
So when I was talking to you about the money in the house, I was trying to probe whether you can take a contrary opinion and absorb it.
And then when we moved on to your mother in law, and you said, well, she's got early stage dementia, I'm trying to figure out if you can take a contradictory opinion and absorb it or be coached, if that makes any sense.
And what do you think I found?
That are not?
Not really, no.
And it's not this massive criticism, but you're not particularly coachable because you either get vaguely annoyed, you change the topic, or you go rubber bones.
I don't know if you know the phrase rubber bones.
Like when you're a kid, you just go limp.
And so, why do you think you are not particularly coachable?
Like an exact reason why?
See, that would be stalling.
Right?
I said, why do you think you're not coachable?
And then you say, like, an exact reason why I don't know what an exact reason would mean.
I don't know.
I'm just asking you why you think.
I don't know what an exact reason would mean because our psychology is complicated.
Our psyches are very complicated.
So I don't know what an exact reason would be.
I mean, if somebody would say to me, why do you like philosophy?
What's the exact reason?
It's like, I don't know.
It's just a bunch of different things, right?
So why is it that you would, if you had to guess, Or, why do you think it's tough for you to be coached in these areas?
I guess after you saying all that, and kind of looking at the way I handled it, I'd say it's difficult for me to view others' opinions.
Right.
And I would argue that the reason why, and it doesn't mean I'm right, of course, but I think the reason why you find it difficult to be coached is when you were growing up, you could not be both loved.
And corrected simultaneously.
Missing Emotional Validation00:15:22
In other words, corrections for you, which all people need and all children need, corrections for you from your parents did not come out of love for you, but came out of impatience or hostility or distance or irritation or maybe even attack or humiliation or something like that.
And so this is sort of why I was probing your capacity to take critical feedback.
Because if we grew up in non bonded families, the attachment stuff that you were talking about at the beginning, which is kind of what I'm rotating the conversation around.
So if we grew up with unattached parents, then we don't get, and we're right, but we don't feel that their criticisms of us are coming out of love and a genuine desire to see us happier and better, but instead are coming out of dominance or irritation.
Or annoyance, or something like that, but it's not for our benefit and it's not out of love, which means that we generally strongly resist any criticism because it's coming from a negative place rather than a place of love and affection, if that makes sense.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
So when you were a child, what happened when you were criticized or corrected by parents?
I don't remember.
Well, you just said cha, which seemed quite heartfelt when I was talking about being criticized in a negative way.
Okay.
Are you saying to me that nothing before the age of 18, you have no memory of being criticized or corrected by your parents at all?
No.
So, like I said, my memory of my child is pretty foggy.
I remember some things here and there.
But nothing, there wasn't a whole lot in my memory before about high school, like 14, 15.
Okay.
So, what do you think I was asking?
I suppose you'd be asking about what I remember of being criticized.
Do you want me to repeat the question?
Because I'm not sure if you're listening, to be honest.
Yes.
Okay.
Sorry.
In your childhood, what do you remember about being corrected or criticized by your parents?
Childhood up to 18.
Up to and including 18.
That's sort of technically your childhood, right?
So, what do you remember about being corrected or criticized by your parents as a child?
I don't remember any criticism, positive or negative, honestly.
And as far as, yeah, their method of, I guess, dealing with me when I would do something they didn't like, they would just send me to my room and leave me there.
Without.
Okay, but they must have told you what you did that was wrong.
See, I don't know.
Okay, so they just said, go to your room with no explanation.
I'm not disagreeing with you.
I just want to make sure I understand the situation.
Yeah, that's all I remember them sending me to my room.
I don't remember why.
And there was no real explanation.
Sorry, I'm not sure what the word real means there.
There was no real explanation.
Okay, so they would just say, go to your room.
And you'd go to your room.
I find that hard to believe.
I'm not saying you're lying.
I'm just telling you that I've been doing this for over two decades and I've had thousands of these calls.
And I'm not saying you're lying, of course, right?
But I'm saying I've never experienced that ever where somebody's parents are just sitting at the couch doing nothing.
And the parents just say, Go to your room.
You're bad with no explanation and no reason.
Again, if that's what happened, that's wild, and I'm really sorry for all of that, of course.
But that's a wild situation to deal with that you're just sitting there reading a book or having dinner, and your mom or your dad just comes in and says, Go to your room, kid, you're bad.
And you just go to your room.
Well, no, it wasn't just random.
It was when I had done something bad.
Like, I don't know, I can't recollect any.
Exact circumstances.
Okay, exact.
Again, you've got, hang on.
I'm not calling you a weasel, but you have all these weasel words.
I mean, exact circumstances.
I'm not asking you to paint a 3D portrait for me, just roughly.
Okay, what were the rules in the house?
Did you have any idea what the rules were?
Yes.
Okay, give me some rules that your parents had.
No fighting.
The.
I'm sorry.
I'm trying to remember here, but my parents were so lax on everything that there weren't really a lot of expectations with us.
Well, there weren't expectations with us.
You kept getting sent to your room.
Okay, so no fighting, right?
And do you have siblings?
I have two older siblings, yes.
Okay.
And brothers or sisters?
One brother, one sister.
Okay.
And so there was no fighting.
And so would you get sent to your room for fighting?
Yes.
Okay, fantastic.
So we have a cause and effect, right?
No fighting.
You're fighting.
And do you have any memory of whether your parents said, please stop fighting or you guys better stop fighting?
Or did they just say, the moment they saw any fighting, Both of you go to your room.
Do you have any idea if you were ever there?
Was no, there was no warnings.
No warnings.
Okay.
So the moment you broke any rule, no fighting.
Okay.
Did you have to do your homework or did they not care?
I, I, I, from what I, sorry, I'm not, I'm trying not to be extra verbose.
I don't remember ever having homework at home.
I would always finish my schoolwork at school.
And is that because you finished it in class or you would stay after class or after school to work in some way?
I remember in high school, I would finish my homework in class rather than watch the lecture that the teacher was giving.
Okay.
So you would finish your homework at school.
Did you do any sports in school or any band or?
Okay.
And what did you play?
Golf and soccer.
Golf and soccer.
Okay.
And did you have coaches for those, right?
Yes.
And what was it like being coached by those guys?
I mean, good.
Okay.
So they were positive coaches who were helpful in improving your golf swing or your soccer kick or whatever, right?
Yes.
Okay.
Got it.
Did your parents come to see you play sports?
Soccer games.
Yes.
They never came to golf matches.
Okay.
And what was your parents' general response to you playing sports?
Were they excited, enthusiastic?
Did they cheer when you scored a goal or console you if the game went badly?
Or like how, what was their emotional reaction to the sports?
Not a whole lot of emotional reaction at all.
It seemed like my dad wanted to go to the games just to take pictures.
He was one of his hobbies was photography.
Okay, so they had no emotional reaction to your game?
Yeah.
Like none.
I'm sorry, I don't want to.
They just stood there with no expression on their face.
I mean, they were probably smiling in the stands or sitting next to the other parents.
And then after the game, what was it like?
They just, it's basically like a generic, you know, hey, you played well, let's go home.
Okay.
And do your parents, do you have any memories of your parents having strong emotions?
No.
So your parents were depressed?
I guess I never thought of that.
Well, if you don't have any strong emotions, I mean, that's my formulation.
I'm obviously not a psychologist, but if you don't have any strong emotions, then you're muted.
You're just slimy, is kind of a technical word.
It means you're just kind of mildly depressed.
You never really get up, you don't have any really strong emotions.
Okay.
I mean, would that forget the depression thing, but would you say that they had more negative emotions or positive emotions, or it was kind of balanced?
It was balanced, I guess.
And what was the strongest that you ever saw your parents' emotions?
Do you remember?
I know it's tough to sort, but just doesn't have to be like the number one, but just some high point of emotion.
Well, the strongest emotion that I ever saw out of my mom was when she came home.
Um, And was telling me about my father's diagnosis with cancer.
And how old were you then?
I was 19.
Okay.
And as a child before that, what was your parents' experience or what was your experience of your parents' emotions?
I, before that, I don't recall any emotions.
Oh, come on.
That can't be zero emotions.
They're not zombies.
Um,.
They must have smiled and frowned at some point.
A frozen face throughout your whole childhood, right?
I guess if that's what you're looking for, yeah, they smiled, they frowned, they laughed sometimes.
But they weren't, I don't know, I guess they weren't explosive emotions.
Explosive is a whole different category, right?
That's more hysteria, but just, you know, strong emotions.
So you didn't see them experience strong emotions.
Correct.
Okay.
Did they seem happy?
Yes.
Okay.
And describe their happiness to me.
And I've talked about this with my wife too.
The way I described my parents' marriage was happy simply because I saw them and never saw them fight.
Well, that's not the same as happy, though.
I know.
I know that now, but that's not the same as I remember them being.
No, but you just said that they were happy.
You just said now that looking back, you said they had a happy marriage or you said that they were happy.
Like in real time now, you just told me they were happy.
And then you say, well, I know they weren't happy just because they didn't fight.
I guess the evidence I have for that is when I would talk to my mom about my dad is that she always had happy memories with him.
Okay.
And were your parents curious about your thoughts and feelings?
No.
Okay.
Did they ever ask you about your thoughts and feelings?
No.
Okay.
So they didn't care about you.
Really?
That's kind of what I have gotten out of my thoughts.
Yeah.
Did they ask each other about each other's thoughts and feelings that you know of?
I don't know.
Okay.
Let me ask it another way.
I feel like I'm a lawyer at the moment, cross examining someone.
Okay.
In your experience, did you ever see or hear your parents talking about or asking each other about their thoughts and feelings?
No.
Do you think it's possible to be a parent and happy while not caring about your children or your spouse?
No.
Okay.
So they weren't happy.
Because you can't be a parent and be happy and not care about your children.
Is this a surprise to you?
Yes.
You're putting things in a direction I've never, ever thought of by myself.
That's why people call, man.
That's why I appreciate your patience in the first hour plus.
All right.
Okay.
So, do you care about your children's thoughts and feelings?
Yes.
Okay.
You ask them about their thoughts and feelings, right?
Yes.
Are your children quite passionate?
Yes.
Yeah.
Children tend to be, right?
They tend to be quite passionate.
I mean, I love watching kids in movies because they run everywhere, right?
Can you imagine being so enthusiastic that you run everywhere?
Beautiful.
So, yeah, children are quite passionate and enthusiastic, and you care about their thoughts and feelings, right?
Yes.
Okay.
Now, can you imagine how you would feel if you didn't give a shit about their thoughts and feelings?
I would have to feel pretty bad.
You'd have to be pretty fucking depressed if you didn't care about your children's thoughts and feelings.
Mm hmm.
Okay.
Do you care about your wife's thoughts and feelings?
Yes.
Okay.
You ask her about her thoughts and feelings.
Not as often as I should.
But you do?
Yes.
Okay.
Can you imagine what it would be like?
If you didn't care about your wife's thoughts and feelings, I can imagine that.
Okay.
And how would you feel?
Like shit.
Right.
So that's your parents.
They put on a bit of a sunny demeanor because they're empty inside.
There's no person there.
There's no soul.
There's no vitality.
There's no curiosity.
There's no energy.
There's no compassion, no empathy.
If you were to ask any parent in God's own universe, do you think it's important to give a shit about your children's thoughts and feelings, to care about your children's thoughts and feelings, what would parents say?
Is it a good thing, mom and dad, to give a shit about your parents, your children's thoughts and feelings?
Yes.
Okay.
If you were to ask your parents, if some stranger were to ask your parents, do you think it's important to care about your children's thoughts and feelings, what would they say?
Well, I guess they would say no.
No, what would they say?
Not how did they act.
Oh, what did they say?
They would say yes.
Yeah, they would say yes, of course it's important to care about your children's thoughts and feelings.
So they knew what the right thing was to do.
They just refused to do it.
Why?
Why would you have children know that it's really important to care about their thoughts and feelings and then not ask them about their thoughts and feelings?
Why would people do that?
I don't know.
You ever had pets as a kid?
Yeah.
What kind?
We had a dog and a cat.
All right.
Did the dog need to be walked?
No.
Really?
She was a small dog.
We had a stake in the yard with a long lead on it.
We would put her out there and clip it to it, and she would do her business in the yard and then come inside.
So, did your parents play with the dog?
My parents did not.
Okay.
So, they didn't walk the dog.
They didn't care about the dog, right?
So, why did they have the dog?
Was it for the kids?
They got the kid for my sister when she was younger, or the dog for my sister.
And how old was your sister when she got the dog?
12, 13, probably.
Feeling Unloved By Parents00:04:17
Okay.
And so, they didn't care about the pet, the dog either, right?
Is there anything that you could remember seeing your parents care about?
No, not like, well, no.
Did you ever feel a need or a preference that your parents care about what you thought or felt?
Would you have liked it if they'd have said, Hey, what's going on in your mind?
What's going on in your heart?
What are you thinking?
What are you feeling?
How's life?
Let's talk.
Love to know what's going on in your head.
I think that would have been very beneficial to me.
Now, let me ask you a more difficult question, if you're ready.
Sure.
In this conversation, do you think that you're different from your parents?
No.
In what way do you think you're the same?
No.
I feel like I'm just copy and pasting themselves on me.
Go on.
Well, it's.
No, I'm.
I don't know.
I'm struggling with this right now.
What do you feel when we're talking about this?
I feel, I guess, kind of disappointed in myself because a lot of the things that my parents and my wife have brought this up to, I kind of do a lot of the things my mom did.
Those aren't feelings, just so you know.
I'm not expecting you to be an expert on feelings, but disappointment in myself is a judgment, and my wife complains about it too, is not a feeling.
Feelings are just like four major categories mad, sad, bad, and glad or happy.
If you had to pick from mad, sad, bad, or glad, at the moment, what would you pick?
Sad.
Yes, that's right.
I get waves of sorrow coming off you.
Waves of sorrow and loss.
Like a big empty tide of dead fish, so to speak.
That's the image that pops into my head.
And what do you think you feel sad about, my friend?
I guess mostly I feel sad that my parents didn't care about me.
Go on.
My parents didn't care about me.
And I don't want to continue that to the next generation.
Okay, don't analyze right now.
I know, I guess you're an analytical guy.
I get that.
But stay with that feeling.
What does it mean to you that your parents didn't care about you?
What does it mean to me?
Yeah, how does it make you feel?
What does it mean to you that your parents, as you say, didn't care about you?
Well, I don't know how to go about that without analyzing.
Well, just go deeper into the feeling.
I don't know how deep I can go with feelings.
That's.
One of the reasons why I'm calling it.
Just go deeper into the feeling.
Don't ask me how deep I can go.
We're not trying to measure things here by the pick a meter.
Just go a little deeper into the feeling.
And what does it mean?
You feel sad because your parents didn't care about you.
Go a little deeper and just, you know, step by step, ankle, whatever, right?
What does it mean for you that your parents didn't care?
That I wasn't worthy of love?
Yeah.
That they're not interested in you because why?
Because you're not what?
Because I'm not perfect.
No.
Nobody's perfect.
They're not interested in you because you're not interesting.
It's not a deficiency in them, it's a deficiency in you.
If you were more interesting, your parents would be interested in you.
Did your parents have any hobbies that they put time, effort, and attention into?
Were they TV computer zombies?
Like, what was there anything that they showed interest in?
Father's Death And Regret00:15:40
Yeah, my dad liked to golf.
Ah, okay, golf.
Okay.
So, golf is interesting.
And did he choose to go golfing, which, of course, as we know, can be a four to six hour journey, right?
Did he choose to go golfing rather than spend time with you and your siblings?
Yeah, he went golfing almost every day in the summers.
Oh my God.
And again, four to six hours, easy.
And then, of course, they're socializing afterwards.
And I got to tell you, I don't mind the game of golf particularly.
I don't really play, but man, I hate golfers when they socialize.
They're so fucking loud.
Yeah.
Everything's got to be some coarse joke and they laugh like donkeys with an ICBM up their asshole.
It's just crazy.
Anyway, so he'd be gone all day, right?
Well, it was a nine hole course.
So.
The round was only two hours, but he'd be gone for three or four.
Okay.
All right.
And did he ask you to come with him at some point?
Did he teach you the game?
Is that how you ended up playing it in high school?
He didn't teach me the game.
I was in junior golf, so we got lessons, and I had friends that were playing the game.
But did he play the game with you at all?
How much?
Some, not very often.
I remember in high school, my mom always telling me, hey, you should go golfing with your dad.
But he rarely asked me if I wanted to myself.
And when you did go golfing, what did you talk about?
Golf.
Right, right.
Sorry, foolish me.
You're right.
You're right.
And did your father die of cancer?
He did, yes.
And you were 19 when your mother told you of the diagnosis.
And how old were you when he died?
19.
Oh, wow.
Same year?
Yeah, it was horrible.
Sorry, that's redundant.
Of course, it was the same year.
My apologies.
That was me just having a brain fart.
My apologies.
Okay.
So that was really rapid.
What kind of cancer was it?
Leukemia.
Leukemia.
Oh, gosh.
And was there any cause that was talked about?
No.
They never found a cause for it.
Just got leukemia and died the same year.
And that's a rough death, right?
That's an ugly death.
Yeah.
And how did your father experience his coming death?
I assume he knew for some months beforehand that he was going to die.
You know, they.
They gave him the diagnosis and then he did a round of chemo.
And then, you know, after that, they were like, hey, things are looking really good.
And then it came back.
And then he passed.
So, how long was it between it coming back and him passing?
Oh, probably five, six weeks.
Holy crap.
That's a wildfire, man.
Wow, I'm so sorry.
I'm so sorry.
And how was your mother with all of this?
I, like I told you, when she came home and told us his diagnosis, she was, I mean, she was hysterical.
And that's the first time she couldn't drive.
Yeah.
Okay.
And the second time?
And I wasn't there.
I was in my first year of college, I was away from home.
He was diagnosed over winter break.
I came home for spring break, and at that point, everything was looking better.
Then I went back to school and got a call about a month later.
What?
Yeah.
A call saying what?
Saying, hey, you need to come home.
And how close was he to death then?
I got the call.
I drove home eight hours.
I saw him that night and the next morning, and then he died.
And did you have much communication with him over that last month?
No.
What?
So, for how long did he know he was dying?
It took a turn for the worse.
And I think it was only the last week where they'd actually said, Hey, he's not probably going to come out of this.
Oh, so for three weeks, he thought it could be fixed like the first time.
And then in the last week, they said, He's probably a goner.
Yep.
And I assume that he was conscious over that time.
When I got there, he was very out of it.
No, no, but the week before.
I don't know.
I didn't have a whole lot of communications with my parents during that time.
My parents were kind of trying to limit how much got out to the kids because they were misguided, but I think they were trying to not create issues for their kids.
I don't know.
But no, there wasn't a whole lot of communication while my dad was in the hospital.
But you knew that the leukemia or the cancer had come back the second time, right?
Yes.
So the cancer had come back, and then you didn't get any real communication until like, what, 12 hours before, or I guess after the drive, like 18, 24 hours before he died.
Why didn't he call you?
Why didn't your mother call you earlier after they had a week?
Where they were told he was probably going to die.
I don't know.
I think that's one of those times where I just kind of tried to.
That whole four months, I've kind of tried to.
Not consciously.
I think it's my body trying to protect itself, my nervous system.
But it's just kind of blocked out that whole amount of time.
Because I've always.
You know, from growing up in a house where my parents really were emotionally devoid, that's kind of what I learned is that you stuff your feelings down.
I mean, but this is appalling, absolutely appalling that they did not give you the warning so that you could have a conversation or a whole series of conversations with your father before he died.
And that when you got there, he was, I assume, drugged to the gills and barely coherent.
So you didn't have a chance to have any kind of conversation with him if I understand.
Understand this correctly before he died.
Yes.
And they took that from you, your mother in particular, and your father.
It's appalling.
And it's actually not their choice to make.
Because they robbed you of any possibility of final connection or reconciliation or thawing of your relationship with your father.
They just took that away through silence.
Yeah.
Now, enough about you.
Can we make it about me for a moment?
Yeah.
Now, it's about both of us.
My father died with no communication to me.
Right?
I'm not right like you'd know.
But my father died.
And I had no communication from him, only from my brother afterwards.
Nobody told me.
I can only tell you my experience.
I'm not trying to say this is your experience, but I can tell you what my experience was.
Okay.
You assholes.
And this is why I don't talk to them.
Did my dad owe me a letter, a call, an email?
Of course he did.
Of course he did.
And that was taken from me.
Now, of course, people can say, and I understand it, I can hear it in my head, and I'm.
Not even particularly arguing it.
They can say, yeah, well, you chose not to talk to the guy for a long time.
So, it doesn't matter.
It's still owed to me because I'm the child and I didn't choose to be born at all.
And I certainly didn't choose to have the parents I had.
And even if he had written me a letter to be opened after he died, whatever, right?
But he did not provide me or anyone in the family did not provide me.
Any of that choice.
I mean, I don't even know what he died of, which is actually kind of important because it's an indication of genetics, right?
What he died of, I would be at risk of, right?
Don't even know that.
He did not want to make any reconciliation with me, and neither, I guess, did any of the surviving members of his family.
And he did not offer me any opportunity to make reconciliation with him.
And again, I understand.
Well, you didn't talk to him, and I get all of that.
But dying is kind of a special circumstance, right?
And you were in communication with your father.
And I, of course, do not know why your parents chose not to tell you about your father dying.
You thought, okay, it seems okay.
He beat it once, he'll beat it again.
And then you drive eight hours, you get there, and he's out of it, right?
My father, when he was dying, in my opinion, should have said, What would be the best for my son?
What would be the healthiest for my son?
Would I have liked to have the opportunity to say goodbye to him?
Yes, I would have liked to have that choice.
Because when my father wasn't that old, and when people aren't that old, you think that there's time maybe for them to come around and so on.
But when they're dying, you know that that time is not going to happen.
So it's nice to have that choice.
I think it's considerate to have that choice.
And, uh, my family took that choice away from me.
Now, again, I get it.
Oh, you made that choice when you chose not to talk to him for a long time or whatever it is, right?
But it's not totally true.
I mean, I still did talk to him.
He would still call.
I'd still pick up the phone.
We still had some conversations, even after my daughter was born.
So it wasn't like I had no contact with him or no communication with him.
He still wrote me letters.
So I experienced that myself.
I'm not telling you what you should feel.
I experienced that as a giant fuck you.
To be honest, I hadn't even thought of any reason why they wouldn't have called me before.
Okay, let's go back in time.
Would you have preferred it if you had known how much danger your father was in before he died?
Yes, yes.
Of course, of course, of course.
Do you think, on average, that children should know when their parents are dying?
Yes.
Right.
So why the fuck weren't you told?
It's what you deserved, it's what you needed, and you should have had that choice.
Now, I'm not saying you would have, but you could have chosen to not go.
I don't think you would have, but you could have chosen to, but that choice was taken away from you.
Was anyone thinking, was your father thinking, what's best for my son?
My time is almost up.
There's nothing that can really be best for me other than a bunch of drugs at the end.
What would be best for my son?
No.
In dying, he was as he was in life, not giving a shit, as far as I can see.
Or at least he could have written you a letter to say, here's why we didn't tell you.
Or your mother could have explained to you, here's why we didn't tell you.
And if your mother had said to you, well, son, we didn't tell you because we didn't want to upset you, what would you say?
Say that's bullshit.
Yeah, you don't have that right.
You don't get to decide for me as a grown ass adult what I can and cannot handle.
If I was three, maybe.
Not when I'm old enough to be drafted.
You don't get to decide for me what information I do or do not deserve.
I wanted to be there when my father was dying.
I wanted to see if there was reconciliation.
I wanted to hold him.
I wanted to hold his hand.
I wanted to help him.
I wanted to give him comfort.
Maybe some forgiveness, something.
To go with him into the shadowy land of death.
With his hand in mine to bid him farewell.
And that choice was taken from you.
I assume you did your siblings know before you?
No.
So your mother and your father conspired together to keep the news of your father's last week of life from all of his children.
Right.
And what do you think of that?
It wasn't their secret to keep.
Okay.
What do you feel about that?
Now, I kind of feel mad.
Go on.
I said I feel kind of mad about it.
Yeah, go on.
I just, if.
If I had known the severity of what he was up against, I feel like I would have done things differently then.
You would have.
Of course, you would have.
You'd have got compassionately from school and you'd have driven over and you'd have spent the whole fucking week with him in the hospital, right?
Holding his hand, talking to him, laughing, crying, connecting as best you could.
And it would have brought you some peace.
As opposed to, hey, he's drugged.
Oh, he's gone.
And whatever you loved about him, you didn't get to tell him.
In a way that he could hear because he was so out of it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
When I got there, he was, I mean, he was incoherent.
Right.
Right.
And once again, at the end, your feelings didn't matter.
What was best for you didn't matter.
I don't think your needs, preferences, or requirements, or those of your siblings, crossed either parent's mind one iota.
Yeah.
Yeah, that doesn't really make a person feel very good.
No, no.
And it is being treated disrespectfully.
And again, that your feelings and thoughts and preferences don't exist and don't matter.
Because your parents weren't saying, well, our children have to live with this death a lot longer than we do.
Your father, one week, is your mother still alive?
Yes.
Okay.
And what's your relationship like with her now?
I've been in contact for the last couple of months.
And what happened?
So, remember, I said that our sixth child was born with a heart defect that needed surgery.
Yes.
She, so my wife went with our son to the hospital, which is a plane ride away.
So, I was at home with the other five and I was on parental leave from work.
And that was going to come to an end at some point because I had to get back to work and start making money.
And so, we could still.
Live in the house.
Fear Of Being A Burden00:04:50
So I called my mom, you know, and said, Hey, do you think you could come up here and help me out for a couple of weeks and just, you know, watch the kids?
And honestly, it was only going to be two kids during the day because the other three were in school.
And I said, You know, could you just come up and help for a couple of weeks?
And she initially agreed to it.
And, you know, we were looking at plane tickets.
And a couple of days later, I got a text message from her.
Saying that she was actually not going to come because she felt like her health reasons would make herself a burden on me rather than helping out.
And what are her health issues?
Well, she has what is it called?
I think it's a heart arrhythmia.
And she was on blood thinners, and she was saying that somehow that would make her a burden to me and the two boys that she would be watching.
But she could sit at home on her own couch just fine, and she could drive for a few hours to go meet my sister and her kids and hang out with them.
I'm really sorry about that.
I mean, it's terrible.
There's absolutely zero excuse.
There's absolutely zero excuse.
I mean, you do for your kids, right?
I mean, you just whatever you have to do.
And again, she's going to visit your sister and her kids.
So the idea that she can't come and help you.
Well, and it wasn't even necessarily that she couldn't just be here herself.
There was no offer for like helping out with babysitters or.
Oh, you mean like if you needed babysitters to help you with some money?
Yeah.
Or even sending like a meal or two, you know?
Right.
Right.
It's selfish.
And if I had been honest with myself about the patterns from her past, I don't even think I would have asked her.
Okay.
That's probably the more painful part.
So, would you like the answer?
Which answer?
As to why your relationship is a mess.
Yes.
Yes.
Okay.
Good.
I appreciate your patience.
So, we can go pretty fast from here.
All right.
So the reason why your relationships are a mess is because you blame yourself, not the selfishness of your parents.
The earlier question that we talked about my parents aren't showing any interest in me.
What does that mean, and why is that the case?
Well, I think the answer that you have, which is perfectly understandable and actually very healthy when you're a child, is it's not that my parents are selfish assholes, it's that I am not interesting.
My inner life is not interesting.
I am not worthy of love.
I cannot keep people's interest.
And what that does is it makes the core of you pretty fucking depressed.
And it makes any attempt to gain love feel fraudulent, like you're going to be found out.
Like you're Elizabeth Holmes from Theranos, you know, the blood machine that never worked, getting billions of dollars of investment.
It's all kind of a fraud.
People are going to find out.
That you're not actually that interesting are you tall and good looking?
Yes, both.
So you're chosen perhaps for your height, your good looks, your charm, your money, everything but your essence, if that makes sense.
Yeah.
And it's just a matter of time until it all comes crashing down because it's all kind of fraudulent.
I'm not saying it is.
I'm saying that's the thought.
If my own parents didn't find me interesting, it's because I'm not interesting.
So, I can fool my wife and kids for a while because I can be fun and energetic and tall and handsome and a good provider and so on.
But it's all building a taller and taller structure on no foundation at all.
So, there's tension, stress, anxiety, fear, hiding, evasiveness.
Because if people get the truth of what your parents drummed into you, not that they were deficient, but you were boring, if people get to the truth, They'll go, they'll leave because you're not interesting.
I feel that.
Building On No Foundation00:03:50
I'm sorry?
Said I feel that.
Yes, I do.
And I completely sympathize, obviously.
And I understand and I actually respect that feeling because that's the only way you get through childhood with completely selfish parents, with parents who have no empathy.
That's the only way you get through.
That's the only survival card to play.
And it worked then.
And you're in your 30s now?
I'm 39.
39, all right.
So, yeah, you're kind of halfway done overall, give or take.
And it's time to drop the belief, the defense, the parent protecting delusion that you're not interesting.
If you ignore your children, who's the asshole?
Me.
That's correct.
You are correct.
Ding, ding, ding.
You are correct.
If you found video games or golf or watching paint dry more interesting than your children's drawings, games, and stories and thoughts, who's the asshole?
Me.
Right.
If you have a dog and you don't take the dog for a walk or play with the dog, but just throw some food in a plate once in a while, who's the asshole?
Me.
If your parents ignore you, who are the assholes?
Them.
Yes!
Yes!
Yes.
Yes.
They are deficient.
They were lazy.
They chose to have children and chose to ignore children.
They did not ask you what you thought or felt.
They did not ask your siblings what they thought or felt.
They showed no interest in who you actually are.
I mean, they fed you and they watered you like a fucking houseplant.
Okay, fine.
Then you get that shit in prison.
But as far as interest in you as an individual, nope.
That's being an asshole.
Hey, you know, if you find that you're totally like, if I buy a dog and I find, ah, you know, I don't want to play with the dog.
I don't want to walk the dog.
I don't want to interact with the dog.
What should I do?
Get rid of the dog.
That's right.
Give the dog away.
Give the dog to a better home.
If your parents are like, you know what, we don't really give a shit about our kids, they're kind of annoying.
They want stuff.
We don't want to provide it.
They should just give you to relatives, get you to a better home, right?
But no, they hung on and they hung on and they hung on.
You see, you know this.
I mean, you're six times the father that I am.
So you know this way better than I do.
Do you owe your kids attention?
Yes.
If they don't get attention from you and they don't get attention from their mother, where can they get attention when they're little?
Nowhere.
Yeah, nowhere.
Nowhere.
You are the sole provider of their sense of self.
Now, with parents who aren't emotional, Okay, let me ask you this, and I know we've gone for a long time and we'll keep it relatively brief, but let me ask you this.
Were you able to convince your parents and change their mind about things?
Were you able to exercise your will with regards to your parents?
Yes.
Okay, and in what did you exercise your will with regards to your parents?
It was mostly just the one instance I remember is my choice of college.
Okay, that's as an adult.
I'm talking about as a child.
And I'm not trying to dismiss that or rig the game, but as a child, like in your evolution as a little kid.
I don't remember.
I don't remember ever influencing them one way or another.
The Pain Of Ignored Emotions00:08:51
You can't really influence depressed people.
You can't really change their minds and you can't criticize them, right?
Welcome to the first half of our conversation.
So, the antidote is anger.
I get the sadness.
I appreciate the sadness.
It's a little girly.
And I say this to myself as well there's nothing wrong with a little girly.
But the more robust and masculine response is anger.
Like, if you heard of a guy who had a dog and ignored that dog and caused great distress to that dog, because dogs are social animals, they need to be petted with, they need to be interacted with, they needed to be walked.
If you had a guy who kept his dog locked up at home and never interacted with it, would you be sad or angry?
Well, my first instinct is to be sad for the dog, but I guess you should be angry at the person.
Right.
And the purpose of the anger is what?
Why would we have a response called anger to a guy who tormented a dog by ignoring it, but kept it in the home, kept it locked in the home and ignored it?
Uh, because that's wrong.
Yeah, to punish him.
And if you torture animals, you should be punished.
And that's what the anger does.
The sadness is like, oh, my dog died.
I'm sad.
It's fine because we don't punish a dog for dying and we don't, you know, if the dog dies, just some illness or accident or old age or whatever, right?
Nobody's fault.
So sadness is when it's nobody's fault, right?
Yeah.
Anger is when it's somebody's fault.
You know, there's a terrible story from Marilyn Monroe.
When she was a kid, she adopted a stray dog, she lived in a terrible neighborhood.
And the dog was a bit of a yapper, and she came home one day and somebody had sawn the dog in half.
And the two halves were on her porch.
Are we sad about that?
No.
What are we?
Angry.
That's right.
And what anger does, anger is a big, you're wrong.
You did wrong.
You're fucking wrong.
So if a dog dies of old age, we're sad.
If somebody saws our dog in half, we're angry, right?
Yeah.
I mean, there's some sorrow mixed in there as well, but the primary emotion would be anger.
If your kid opens a door awkwardly and bumps himself in the nose, you would comfort him, right?
You wouldn't get angry at the door, right?
Right.
If somebody punches your kid in the nose, are you angry?
Yes.
Of course, because they're responsible for that.
So sadness is the inevitability of life, aging, decline, accidents, nobody's fault.
That's sad and that's fine.
It's a fine emotion.
There's nothing wrong with sadness.
But when people are being assholes, sure, there's some sadness in there, but the primary emotion, which is missing from you, I would argue, is anger.
Your wife says, I assume you're emotionally unavailable, right?
Yes.
All right.
Now, why are we emotionally unavailable?
Because the emotions that we have are unacceptable.
Now, you could not get angry at your parents as a little boy if you'd have said, Mom, Dad, you're kind of like zombies.
Can you snap out of this?
Can you actually pay some attention to us?
Can you ask us some questions?
Can you show some interest in me?
It's your job.
Do your job.
What would your parents say?
No.
Okay, be them.
Why?
Why not?
It's your job.
You've got to pay attention to your kids.
It's not a choice, it's not optional.
You know, snap out of your head.
They'd probably just say that they didn't want to.
What would they say?
They'd probably just say they didn't want to.
Okay, then great.
Make arrangements for us to be somewhere else.
Who do we call?
Do we call the government?
Do we call Children's Hotline?
Then you've got to make an arrangement for us to be somewhere else.
Because I'm not fucking sitting around here being ignored by my parent for the next 15 years.
So let's get on it.
Maybe we can go to your mother's.
Maybe we can go to grandma's.
Maybe we can go to aunt, uncle, someone.
Maybe we just go to, like, you've got to get us to a place.
If you're not going to do your job, you've got to let someone else do your job.
So let's get on it.
Who do we call?
You're asking me who would we call?
No, like, what would your parents respond?
If you were to say that, like, you don't want to give us attention.
Okay, I think that sucks.
I think you're kind of dicks about it, but okay, you don't want to give us attention.
You got to give us to someone who will give us attention.
Who's that going to be?
Who is going to take us?
I have no idea who they would say.
Well, they would say, you can't go.
You're not going anywhere.
Right.
You're our children.
It's like, okay, then you got to pay us attention.
You not paying us attention is not an option.
You know, like if you weren't feeding us, somebody would have to feed us because we die.
If you're going to keep us here, you have to pay us attention.
Otherwise, we're going to get fucked up emotionally.
You have to give us attention.
It's not an option.
It's not a choice.
It's not a maybe.
Stop playing golf.
Stop watching TV.
Stop doing all this wasting bullshit.
Sit down.
Play a fucking game with your children.
Look us in the eye.
Ask us questions.
Be parents.
Would that work with them?
No.
No, it wouldn't.
They wouldn't do it, right?
Now, what you would elicit from them if you did that assertively, what emotion would they respond with over time?
If you were as assertive with them as I was with you as a kid, what emotion would come up in them?
Frustration, anger?
Yeah, they would get angry.
Because you would be asking them to access emotions that would cause them great pain.
Because the reason they ignored you is because their parents did what?
Ignored them.
Right.
And they normalized it by saying, This is what parenting is.
This is fine.
My parents weren't bad.
This is just what parents do or don't do.
They just normalized the shit out of that.
And then they reproduced it.
And you're trying to shake them out of their stupor and say, This is not right.
And if you say your parents owe you attention and their parents didn't pay them attention, then you're saying your parents were assholes.
And you're kind of being assholes too.
So stop being assholes.
And they just can't handle that.
They just get angry, right?
It crosses all kinds of defensive wires.
So you couldn't do that as a child because it wouldn't work.
So you have to say, Oh shit.
Well, I can't get my parents to be interested in me.
So the only other option I have is to pretend to myself and really, I guess, dig into that bullshit that I'm not interesting.
And it's a lie.
It's a lie.
Is it, is it the child's job to entertain?
Is it your kid's job to entertain you?
No.
No.
Is it your kid's job to put on a show and get your interest?
No.
Are your kids like somebody in a flea market or a farmer's market?
They got to, hey, come have an orange.
Here's a sample.
Buy my wares.
Blah, blah, blah.
Is that their job?
No.
No.
It's their job to be kids.
It's your job to be interested in them.
It's not your kid's job to be interesting.
It's your job to be interested.
It's not your job to be interesting to your parents.
It's their job to be interested.
And they failed completely, catastrophically.
They fucked up.
They failed.
I don't know.
Maybe by the time you came along, They were completely incapable of it.
And then you're like someone complaining, My dad never played ball with me, never played throw and catch with me.
Oh, by the way, he was blind since birth, but still.
But it's certainly not your fault.
It's certainly not that you're not interesting, if that makes sense.
But in order to recover the belief that you're interesting, you got to get angry.
Your parents, in my view, were selfish withholding bad parents.
Let's be as nice as possible after I've not been nice at times.
And lazy.
Lazy because you know you're supposed to pay attention to your kids.
And if you're not, then you got to fix it.
You got to fix it.
And every time your father went to play golf, instead of spending time with his children, he was harming his children.
Now, it's not like parents can't have any outside interests or activities, but your kids have to know that they're very important and that they really matter, right?
Yes.
So that's my point.
In order to recover what's beneficial in your marriage, you're going to have to get angry at your parents.
Because that denormalizes the idea that you're not interesting.
And what it does is it says to your emotions, yeah, we can come out now.
If your primary emotion, which is anger, is unacceptable to you, you don't get any emotions.
You maybe get some sadness, which is what you expressed, and I respect that, and I think that's great.
You express some sadness, right?
Expressing Anger To Connect00:14:38
What have you not really expressed?
Anger.
Right.
And if you don't allow yourself to get angry, nobody can get close to you.
Because if you have to hide your anger from yourself, You have to hide all of you from everyone.
If you have a great secret, you can't have an open heart.
Right.
I mean, imagine some alternate universe where you're stealing $10,000 worth of diamonds or something.
You have them in your pocket, you leave in the store, and the security guard says, Hey, can you have a normal conversation with the security guard?
No.
No, because you've got a big secret.
I've got your diamonds.
I'm going to jail.
If you catch me, you can't have a normal conversation.
If you've got a big secret, you can't have a conversation with anyone.
And if you've got a big secret called, I'm kind of angry, and you should be, in my opinion, you can't have a natural conversation.
It's all kind of dodgy and manipulative and vague and maybe and self conscious.
And this is, again, the first half of our conversation where I was kind of probing for this stuff.
Can you be direct?
Well, they don't have memories.
Well, I kind of do.
Well, they don't have any rules.
Well, they kind of do.
Like it was all very vague and contradictory.
And my head was spinning, right?
You remember I'm saying, I don't understand this.
Help me understand it.
Right?
It's all very vague.
It's hard to pin down.
It's like trying to have a handshake of fog, right?
Yes.
It's like trying to sculpt something out of water.
And that is defensiveness, which is I have to be vague because I'm hiding my anger from myself.
And it must drive your wife nuts.
It does.
And it's going to start driving your kids nuts, certainly when they hit puberty.
Yeah.
Because puberty is when you need directness and clarity.
And your wife, I assume, is like, well, I just, I can't connect with you.
I don't know what's going on for you emotionally.
You're Too distant, right?
Yeah.
Is that accurate?
Yes, it is.
It's actually like spot on.
And she's saying, you have to become real in this relationship, or I have to accept that there is no relationship.
Yes.
And if you think of, and I appreciate your patience in the conversation, I really do.
But if you think of how different our communication is now as it was two hours ago, it's night and day, isn't it?
Yes.
Yes, that is.
That's connection.
That's what your wife is looking for.
And, you know, I hate to say it, bro, but you kind of owe it to her because she can't get it anywhere else, or at least you don't want her getting it anywhere else, right?
Right.
You know, I've been to at least, well, I've been to four counselors, talk therapists.
They've never talked to me at all about the showing of anger as a positive thing, as something that I was missing.
And I gotta tell you, bro, for women, I'm not kidding about this, it's pretty sexy.
Because you're giving off all kinds of masculine, high testosterone protector vibes.
Oh man, this might have just unlocked a whole bunch of stuff.
Go on.
No, just being able to say, hey, this is what is missing.
I need to start showing it and acknowledging that it's there.
Yes.
Yes.
Because the alternative to anger is just depression, anxiety, avoidance, disconnection.
And you can't pair bond without anger.
Everybody wants pair bonding to be this big, friendly, positive flowers and unicorns emotions.
And, you know, there's that aspect to it.
But pair bonding is also anger.
Not, you don't get angry at people that you pair bonded with, at least not very often.
But anger is necessary for pair bonding because anger gets rid of the bullshit non pair bonding.
So you're pair bonded to a void at the moment, which is the memory of your father and the reality of your mother or the unreality of your mother.
So you're pair bonded to a void, which is why you avoid directness.
That's why I was asking earlier, what have you done about the problems in.
With your in laws across the street.
So you have to detach from the unreal in order to attach to the real.
And you are pair bonded or you are child bonded to a non relationship, which dominates and excludes real relationships to some degree from connecting with you in a consistent way.
And anger blows away the bullshit non relationships so that you can connect.
Like you ever do this thing with your phone?
I don't know if you have like the USB C and then the.
The lightning connector or whatever, right?
I have devices that use one or the other.
And every now and then, if I'm kind of tired or whatever, I'm trying to put the wrong connector into the wrong phone.
You ever done that?
No, we all have the same phones.
Okay.
All right.
But you can understand.
But I get the concept.
Yeah.
Or it could be that you're trying to put the plug in and it turns out it's a three prong.
You're trying to get into a two prong.
It's just not going to work, right?
It gets kind of annoying.
Go in, right?
And so for me, when I'm trying to put the wrong connector in, I have to.
You know, I have to get annoyed, otherwise, I'm just going to keep trying.
I have to get annoyed, oh, it's not working, right?
And then I have to stop doing that so I can plug in the right thing.
So the anger blows away, erases, removes, eviscerates, disembowels the non relationships so that you can connect with the real people.
Anger is necessary for pair bonding because anger eliminates the pretense of pair bonding, which is what you have with your mother and the memory of your father, I think.
Maybe it's with your siblings too.
That's a whole other conversation, perhaps, but.
Your sister doesn't sound very pair bonded because I assume your sister knew about the tragedies with the heart issues with your sixth child, right?
And did she also know that your mother asked your mother to come by?
She wouldn't have heard it from me.
I have also been very low contact with her for the better part of six or seven years.
Okay.
That's a whole separate issue, too.
That might be another call.
I don't know.
But that's also a non relationship, right?
Which is not resolved.
The anger is breakthrough or break out.
Connect or leave behind.
Yeah.
Get together or get gone.
Come to a resolution.
This floating around shit, kind of half there, half not, unresolved, maybe yes, maybe no.
Nope.
Don't leave things unresolved.
That allows for the illusion of the pair bond to displace the actual pair bond, is to leave things unresolved.
If I have an issue with someone, listen, I'm not perfect with this.
So I say this with all humility.
But my goal and ideal is I have an issue with someone, I'll talk about it with them.
I had a friend recently, pissed me off.
So I called him up and said, I'm pissed off.
I don't mean that I'm right.
I don't mean that I'm justified.
I'm just telling you what I am.
And we jawboned for about an hour and a half and worked it out.
Again, I'm not perfect with it, but I definitely have that as a goal and an ideal.
But you were never able to do that with your parents.
So you have to go through all.
Of your relationships and say, are they real or are they not?
If they're in a state of whatever, maybe yes, no, whatever, if there's no closure, then get some fucking closure.
Talk to people or make a decision.
Get the bullshit out to get the good stuff in.
You know, there's a little funny meme where somebody has a sticker of plug outlets, like electrical outlets, and they put it on a column in the airport and they just film people going up trying to put their plugs in, right?
And of course, it's funny because they, well, what the hell, right?
Then they finally realize it's just a sticker and they're very confused, right?
But eventually they say, they don't just sit there, keep trying to put the plug in.
They say, Oh, this isn't a real plug.
And they go elsewhere.
Right.
You have to do that with all of your relationships that remain in flux and uncertain and unresolved are draining your capacity to connect in any real way.
It costs you to have a maybe half bit of a percent of a relationship with your sister breakthrough or break out, connect or leave behind because all this vague shit.
The maybe, maybe, it just keeps you from connecting in a very real way with your wife and over time with your children because it comes out of fear.
Yeah.
And fear is the opposite of anger, fight or flight, right?
And if you are living based upon the fear of rejection because of unstable relationships or maybe relationships or people who will always choose themselves over what's right, their own comfort over what's good for you, no, Out with the old, in with the new, out with the bad, in with the good.
And the only thing that does that dividing line, that does that sorting mechanism, is anger.
I can give you an example and I'll just end up with this thought.
Sorry to interrupt.
I'll give you an example from this conversation.
So, after an hour, you were annoyed, right?
Yeah.
And you expressed your annoyance.
Like, I mean, I wanted to talk about my childhood.
I want to talk about my relationship and we just talked about my in laws.
And you were annoyed, right?
Was that helpful to the conversation?
No.
Go on.
If that was the conversation we were having, then I don't know that it was.
Why wasn't it helpful to the conversation?
It allowed me to change tack.
I said, okay, so I've got, you know, I'll tell you why I'm talking about this and we'll move on to the next topic.
So, in my view, I'm not going to tell you for you, in my view, it was very helpful that you were annoyed.
Okay.
And that you told me.
Good stuff.
Okay.
So obviously we spent enough time on this and, and you were asserting what you needed, which was to talk more about your childhood.
So we moved to that topic, which was to me helpful and positive.
Good.
Thank you.
Thank you for that.
By the way, I appreciate that.
I said, and I said to you, there's nothing wrong with asking me why I'm doing what I'm doing.
I can explain it and then we can move to the next topic.
That's fine.
But I thought it was very helpful.
And see, if you can't express your anger, let me ask you this again.
Last question.
Okay.
Does your wife.
Get irritated with you.
Just in general?
Well, I don't mean in general, but is it consistent?
Or does she often get irritated with you or annoyed?
Yes.
Right.
So, if we do not express our anger, where does it go?
Well, generally, if we don't express our anger, it goes into what's called passive aggression, which is instead of expressing our anger directly, we provoke other people into becoming angry.
We frustrate other people so that they express anger.
If we don't express anger, we provoke anger.
If you're angry, someone's going to get angry.
Now, if you're honest and direct about your anger, then you're honest and direct about your anger, and it can be dealt with out in the open.
If you're not honest and direct about your anger, then you will tend to act in ways that are annoying to others.
And so, after you expressed your anger in this call, you stopped being passive aggressive and giving me endless amounts of contradictory information, which was annoying to me.
If that makes sense.
Once you express your anger directly, you stop being passive aggressive.
And we had, I think, a more direct conversation.
So I'm just telling you that there's no escape from anger.
You're either honest about it or you provoke it in others.
And I don't want you to provoke it in your wife because I want your family to be happy and together.
Yeah, me too.
And yeah, the second half of the conversation was much different.
Good.
And then that was, you expressed anger.
Good.
It was great.
I'm not made of glass.
It's good.
I may have been annoying and obsessed and off topic.
I don't know.
I think I knew what I was doing.
Maybe I did, maybe I didn't.
It doesn't really matter.
But you expressed your anger and the conversation improved, which is great.
So, does that help in terms of at least the sort of framework?
There's a good book by Nathaniel Brandon, B R A N D E N, called The Disowned Self, which is all about, got a lot of sentence completion exercises and so on about accessing anger.
But yeah, I think you've got good reason to be angry.
And I'm really, really sorry, of course, massively sorry, brother, for what happened to you.
As a child, or to be more precise, what didn't happen to you as a child, which was interest from your parents, which you deserved and your siblings deserved.
And as you know, I don't know if you know this, but there are four categories of abuse for me as a child.
The worst is sexual abuse, the next worst is neglect, the third worst is emotional abuse, and the least worst is physical abuse.
And you sound neglected to hell and gone, which is really tough to deal with.
And the anger is your way forward, in my view.
Okay.
So your suggestion is that I get angry?
I think that you should get angry at the neglect you experienced as a child.
That denormalizes it and says, no more, no more.
This is not right.
This was not right.
And then by shedding the non connections, your wife can have access consistently to your genuine heart, which will be beautiful for her.
Yeah.
You can ask your mom the tough questions.
Nothing wrong with that.
Why did, uh, why did you guys not show me any interest in me as a kid?
Why didn't you care about my hobbies?
Why didn't you care about my video games?
Why didn't you care about my sports really?
Why didn't you tell me dad was dying?
Like just ask those tough questions.
Nothing wrong with that.
Assuming her health can take it and she's not going to call in an airstrike on you, then, uh, yeah, it's nothing wrong.
It'd be, it's nothing wrong with being angry with people.
Seeking Closure With Mom00:01:11
It's very healthy.
So, like I said, I've been in no contact with my mom since it was about Thanksgiving.
Would you think that it would be worth it for me to open up that communication again?
Well, I don't know.
But I will say that if you haven't got closure about the relationship, you have to find a way to get closure.
Either connect with the woman or let it go.
This state of like ghosting and maybe and It's not decided and there's no closure.
That stuff is going to choke all direct connections you can have in your life.
If you're going to have a conversation with her, have a real conversation with her.
If you say, I can't have any real conversations with her, let the relationship go.
Breakthrough or break out.
Okay.
All right.
Well, I appreciate the call.
Thank you for your patience with the length.
And I hope that you will keep me posted about how it's going.
And I really do appreciate the conversation tonight.