- 3 years ago
Dear Stefan,
I am 40 years old from the UK. I am contacting you today because I would really like your help with regards to my relationships with the women in my life.
For years I have attempted to have long term and intimate relationships as more than anything, I really want to get married and have a family (and they will without a doubt be peaceful parented and loved!). But alas, I have never made it the fully pair bonded stage despite having several medium to long term relationships over the last 10 years. I have just turned 40 years old and despite having done years of Therapy and self development and thousands of hours of studying I am still having major issues with pair bonding and being a magnet for broken women, or women who seem to be in some form of crisis.
The second major issue which leads on from this is that my whole life I have been a constant rescuer and fixer and I find it incredibly difficult to split from a relationship even when it’s really not going to work, as I feel I will be hurting them at a vulnerable point in their life and I seem to sacrifice myself for them. This ultimately leads to me feeling stuck and trapped and experiencing side effects of anxiety and fatigue (which contributed to a major burnout in 2017)
I have listened to so many of your shows and I know this is wrong in many ways, especially as I don’t want to take their fertility window unnecessarily or haemorrhage anymore of my own time and resources.
Yet despite this level of self awareness which I have also developed through therapy (and I think its linked to my mother in some way), it is still a massive problem for me.
I still think there is something I am missing or not understanding properly and would love to get more clarity on this issue. I so often hear people on your shows say that you highlight things in a few hours that they didn’t realise in years of therapy and I am hoping you might be able to go a layer deeper with me to help me resolve this problem that is causing me so many problems.
Outside of this life is better, I am a dedicated Libertarian, Anarcho capitalist and Bitcoin advocate who has had several million views across all platforms on educational material I have created to help spread knowledge on Bitcoin.
I have spent years doing the hard work to turn my life around in every single way from a depressed, unmotivated, anxious, unconfident guy in my 20’s to a successful, much happier and confident person in my 30’s with much more or a purpose and mission.
But ultimately this is why I really need your help, I know I can be a great father and educator in this world and I don’t want to fall on such an important hurdle and throw away all my hard work by ending up with the wrong women and potentially breaking up a family. I know it would be something I would regret for ever if I do this and I feel like this is the way I am heading right now.
I am a long time listener of your show, donate often and I have huge admiration for ev
I am 40 years old from the UK. I am contacting you today because I would really like your help with regards to my relationships with the women in my life.
For years I have attempted to have long term and intimate relationships as more than anything, I really want to get married and have a family (and they will without a doubt be peaceful parented and loved!). But alas, I have never made it the fully pair bonded stage despite having several medium to long term relationships over the last 10 years. I have just turned 40 years old and despite having done years of Therapy and self development and thousands of hours of studying I am still having major issues with pair bonding and being a magnet for broken women, or women who seem to be in some form of crisis.
The second major issue which leads on from this is that my whole life I have been a constant rescuer and fixer and I find it incredibly difficult to split from a relationship even when it’s really not going to work, as I feel I will be hurting them at a vulnerable point in their life and I seem to sacrifice myself for them. This ultimately leads to me feeling stuck and trapped and experiencing side effects of anxiety and fatigue (which contributed to a major burnout in 2017)
I have listened to so many of your shows and I know this is wrong in many ways, especially as I don’t want to take their fertility window unnecessarily or haemorrhage anymore of my own time and resources.
Yet despite this level of self awareness which I have also developed through therapy (and I think its linked to my mother in some way), it is still a massive problem for me.
I still think there is something I am missing or not understanding properly and would love to get more clarity on this issue. I so often hear people on your shows say that you highlight things in a few hours that they didn’t realise in years of therapy and I am hoping you might be able to go a layer deeper with me to help me resolve this problem that is causing me so many problems.
Outside of this life is better, I am a dedicated Libertarian, Anarcho capitalist and Bitcoin advocate who has had several million views across all platforms on educational material I have created to help spread knowledge on Bitcoin.
I have spent years doing the hard work to turn my life around in every single way from a depressed, unmotivated, anxious, unconfident guy in my 20’s to a successful, much happier and confident person in my 30’s with much more or a purpose and mission.
But ultimately this is why I really need your help, I know I can be a great father and educator in this world and I don’t want to fall on such an important hurdle and throw away all my hard work by ending up with the wrong women and potentially breaking up a family. I know it would be something I would regret for ever if I do this and I feel like this is the way I am heading right now.
I am a long time listener of your show, donate often and I have huge admiration for ev
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LearningTranscript
00:00:00 Dear Stefan, I am 40 years old from UK. I'm contacting you today because I would really
00:00:07 like your help with regards to my relationships with the women in my life. For years I have
00:00:12 attempted to have long-term and intimate relationships as more than anything I really
00:00:18 want to get married and have a family and they will without a doubt be peaceful, parented and
00:00:22 loved. But alas I have never made it to the fully pair bonded stage despite having several medium
00:00:29 to long-term relationships over the last 10 years. I've just turned 40 years old and despite having
00:00:35 done years of therapy and self-development and thousands of hours of studying I'm still having
00:00:41 major issues with pair bonding and being a magnet for broken women or women who seem to be in some
00:00:46 form of crisis. The second major issue which leads on from this is that my whole life I've been a
00:00:51 constant rescuer and fixer and I find it incredibly difficult to split from a relationship even when I
00:00:58 know it's really not going to work. As I feel I will be hitting them at a vulnerable point in their
00:01:03 life and I seem to sacrifice myself for them. This ultimately leads to me feeling stuck and trapped
00:01:11 and experiencing side effects of anxiety and fatigue which contributed to a major burnout in
00:01:16 2017. I've listened to so many of your shows and I know this is wrong in many ways especially as I
00:01:23 don't want to take their fertility window unnecessarily or hemorrhage any more of my own time and resources.
00:01:29 Yet despite this level of self-awareness which I have also developed through therapy
00:01:33 and I think it's linked to my mother in some way it is still a massive problem for me. I still think
00:01:39 there is something I'm missing or not understanding properly. I would love to get more clarity on the
00:01:44 issue. I so often hear people on your show say that you highlight things in a few hours that
00:01:49 they didn't realize in years of therapy and I'm hoping you might be able to go a layer deeper with
00:01:53 me to help me resolve this problem that is causing me so many issues. Outside of this life is better.
00:02:00 I am a dedicated libertarian, a narco-capitalist and bitcoin advocate who has several million views
00:02:05 across all platforms on educational material that I help create to help spread knowledge of bitcoin.
00:02:10 I spent many years doing hard work to turn my life around in many ways from a depressed,
00:02:17 unmotivated, anxious, unconfident guy in my 20s to a successful, much happier and confident person
00:02:22 in my 30s which much with much more of a purpose and mission but ultimately this is why I really
00:02:28 need your help. I know I can be a great father and educator in this world and I don't want to fall
00:02:32 on such an important hurdle and throw away all my hard work by ending up with the wrong woman
00:02:36 potentially breaking up a family. I know it would be something I'd regret forever if I do this and
00:02:41 I feel like this is the way I'm heading right now. I'm a long-term listener of your show,
00:02:47 don't I often have huge admiration for everything you do and I'd love to be able to discuss this
00:02:50 with you. Kind regards. Name yeah yeah okay got it got it. Well I appreciate that I'm sure we can do
00:02:58 some some useful stuff and when did you start listening? So I've been following you from the
00:03:04 early days back on YouTube but to be honest at the time I was kind of coming in and out of the
00:03:11 conversation I wasn't committed full-time but as of this year I've gone all in on philosophy. I've
00:03:16 become absolutely hooked and I'm probably consuming about 80% of what you do and I try to do 100 but
00:03:23 I've got to eat and sleep as well and um but yeah it's my life other people have lives so yeah I got
00:03:29 it but I'm generally yeah I'm I've literally just absolutely love philosophy now and I'm having the
00:03:36 same effect as when I got into Bitcoin like Bitcoin took over my life and philosophy is starting to do
00:03:42 the same thing yeah. Good good all right I mean obviously I have my thoughts and I'm happy to
00:03:50 take the conversation in your direction if you have something you want to talk about first.
00:03:53 Um but no yeah it's basically just understanding um
00:04:00 yeah I think one of the biggest issues is I get caught up in
00:04:03 not not being able to believe my intuition or trust it or allowing myself to believe my
00:04:13 intuition. I think one of the other things I do is that I get caught between blaming my past
00:04:19 um I guess yeah my past maybe trauma from my childhood is the reason why I can't pair bonds
00:04:26 so I get stuck between whether it's them that are causing problems that um you know make me not want
00:04:33 to pair bond or whether it's things I'm doing or a combination of both and then. Wait hang on sorry
00:04:37 so you you think you can't pair bond or you just can't pair bond with the crazy women you choose?
00:04:44 This is what yeah so this is where I get confused because I don't know whether it's the women I
00:04:49 choose that are crazy or whether it's because of trauma from my past or whether it's my crazy bit
00:04:55 um or it's perhaps my inability to give everything to the relationship that's causing them to
00:05:02 deregulate or something along those lines. Oh my gosh you are quite the thinker. Yeah yeah yeah
00:05:07 that's you are quite the overthinker never that's never happened in England before you are the very
00:05:11 first British person to overthink anything all right okay so overthinker right and so yeah because
00:05:17 if you say well I just can't pair bond then it's almost like expecting philosophy to get you out
00:05:21 of a wheelchair so I don't believe that's true I don't believe that I mean if you're choosing women
00:05:26 for whatever past reasons or lack of sort of uh knowing the patterns if you're choosing women
00:05:32 that you can't pair bond with well that's like saying I can't make anyone understand me if I
00:05:40 just only speak to Japanese people I don't speak Japanese so okay okay so so we'll say that you
00:05:46 will put us a contingent thesis that you do have the ability to pair bond you just haven't
00:05:51 pair bonded with women yet yeah and yeah and it's weird the reason I said that as well is because
00:05:57 sometimes in previous relationships I'll have these days where you get absolute I feel these
00:06:03 moments where I feel so close and with my previous girlfriend I remember a few specific days that
00:06:09 burned into my mind where we actually got on really well amongst all the sort of madness
00:06:14 and it was those days where I just think ah this is this is what it must feel like to be pair bonded
00:06:19 where you have no sort of reservations you're committed you don't have any doubt and it was
00:06:23 and you I still remember those days clearly where we'd go out and it felt like we were properly
00:06:28 connected and then a day or two later it's all gone again and it's just like it's almost like
00:06:32 you get a taster and then you just can't find it again it's uh well you know that's the definition
00:06:37 of a bad relationship and the worst kinds of relationships are with the ones with the oases
00:06:42 you know if it's all just a shit storm from beginning to end you just get out right but
00:06:46 it's where you get these tastes and these teases that's that's the worst kind yeah exactly yeah
00:06:51 all right so um you're you're a long-term listener so we can hit the gas is that all right with you
00:06:57 yeah absolutely yeah yeah okay so when you were a kid did you ever go through this phase where
00:07:04 my daughter went through this phase where it's like oh there's an animal there's a bird that
00:07:10 can't fly let's take it home and take care of it yeah yeah i do remember a few times where we found
00:07:17 injured animals tried to take them home yeah right so you thought you'd just keep going with that
00:07:22 with women right oh my god um and what that means is that um so you know the the the relationship
00:07:32 template that we have we all model ourselves after our fathers because our fathers there's
00:07:38 nothing freudian about it it's just darwinian really it's because our fathers are the sexually
00:07:43 successful men that we know right and of course throughout most of human history there wasn't a
00:07:49 huge amount of variation in the old tribe right so what worked for your father would work for you
00:07:53 right so my guess then would be is that your father chose your mother and propped her up or
00:08:01 tried to keep her functioning or tried to keep her running and she kept stumbling or falling
00:08:05 or something like that does that fit your the template of your childhood at all
00:08:08 yeah when looking at my parents i think they both have issues definitely like to say the least um
00:08:17 but my mom yeah my mom is an incredibly anxious woman um never came into her own i don't think
00:08:25 would be fair to say like um she's always served the family but um she i wouldn't classify her
00:08:33 as like a mentally strong woman or yeah she had she had a lot of issues from her childhood
00:08:38 she always served the family what does that mean
00:08:41 i'm not skeptical i just i don't know what it means i mean i'm i believe you i just i'm not
00:08:47 sure what what it means to you yeah sorry yeah so i would say you know they always yeah like as in
00:08:52 running the household in terms of cooking cleaning ironing everything that needs to be done obviously
00:09:00 emotional side wasn't there at all i don't think there was there was no so she served the family
00:09:05 like a maid would serve the family yeah like a surf okay okay so what was missing emotionally
00:09:12 i'm just any deep understanding of education about well put it this way when i discovered
00:09:21 philosophy i was like oh my god how much haven't i've been taught in my childhood it's just i'm
00:09:26 just that's why i'm just lapping it up now because i'm just like holy shoot if i'd just known this
00:09:31 like i would have been absolutely flying for young okay so you need to you need i know see here's the
00:09:35 funny thing right and i you know everything you're doing is great it's just a minor minor tip so
00:09:39 because you've listened to me a lot um you think i know your thoughts because you know my thoughts
00:09:45 right so i'm just gonna get on my knees and beg you to explain it to me like i'm five years old
00:09:51 and i don't know what you're talking about because when you go on these like verbal journeys i'm like
00:09:59 i'm being dragged along like some guy in the back of a pickup truck along a stony road in arkansas
00:10:04 so um what was missing for you in your childhood and then you go on about how much you love
00:10:09 philosophy and and it's like well that's great but what was missing for you in your childhood
00:10:13 did she not play with you did she not chat with you did she not cuddle you i mean what was you
00:10:18 say because i still don't know what was missing for you with your mom in your childhood
00:10:22 i think love was conditional and my childhood um from both parents um okay so now that's that's a
00:10:32 judgment and i i appreciate your judgment but if your judgment was correct we wouldn't be having
00:10:37 the call right so if you so i'd say what was missing for you in your childhood and you say
00:10:44 well i think my mom's love was conditional i don't know what you mean by love i don't know what you
00:10:48 mean by conditional and i still don't know what was actually absent for you as a child does that
00:10:54 make sense okay i yeah yeah yeah sorry i don't know nothing to apologize for at all it's it's
00:11:01 totally great i just you know just my tip my or at least my request i would i would probably say
00:11:06 intimacy like emotional intimacy like no strong feelings of um that's a really hard one i do not
00:11:18 i wrote late wrote i've actually wrote loads of notes down but it's it's really interesting me
00:11:25 what it is what was actually missing well hey man i can i can ask you some questions if you think
00:11:30 that would help yeah yeah because i thought i talked about like a lot of the problems but i
00:11:34 haven't really talked about what was missing like um yeah okay so uh did your mother show great
00:11:42 pleasure when you came home from school or came down from upstairs in the morning did she like
00:11:48 jump up and give you a hug and did she did she take pleasure in your presence
00:11:51 i think sometimes but it was yeah i would say it's more muted it wasn't
00:12:01 over enjoyment like you wouldn't she would never run up and give a big hug i don't think but
00:12:06 we never were hugs like but i can't i think sometimes yeah but other times not i know
00:12:15 that's pretty vague as well no that's fine that's fine did she enjoy doing things with you uh playing
00:12:21 games going for walks exploring nature or or even you know playing games like video games if you
00:12:26 were into something did she try to figure it out or did she enjoy uh doing activities with you
00:12:32 yeah yeah we did a lot as a family like day trips um played games all those sorts of things yeah
00:12:41 okay and did she enjoy trying to understand your your thinking or your view of the world or how
00:12:51 you approach life as a whole no i'd say that was completely absent okay so she was not particularly
00:12:59 curious about your thoughts or your mental activities or your emotional life no no so
00:13:07 for instance if you had a either great or disturbing dream would you ever say to your mom
00:13:14 wow i had the strangest dream or whatever no i don't think i would approach her with that no
00:13:21 when you were a child as every child does and you had various problems whether it was at school or
00:13:26 with the homework or or wherever um who would you go to with your problems to get advice
00:13:34 i feel it's quite often my dad because he's he's definitely more academic
00:13:40 hierarchical than my mom i'm sorry did you say hierarchy yeah okay that's fine i just
00:13:47 want to make sure i understood okay and did you do you think that you tried going
00:13:52 to your mom at times but it didn't really work out or did you not try
00:13:58 going to your mom at all do you think for reasons just you didn't think it would work at all
00:14:02 yeah i do not i've been thinking about this the last two days because i was digging down into
00:14:08 what things were like and i can't remember having really really deep emotional conversations
00:14:13 like art like maybe never okay so what do you mean by really deep because if you had medium deep
00:14:21 that's one thing but i'm not sure what you mean by really deep i mean or just
00:14:26 no deep no depth at all i mean what do you mean i would definitely talk about problems that occurred
00:14:33 but i think the level of the conversation was not
00:14:36 like a huge inquiry into like the underlying emotions that go with it so it's more a surface
00:14:47 look at the problem but not why is it happening what's going on what emotions are coming up
00:14:54 things like that so it's more more of a pragmatic approach to just there's a problem
00:14:59 but not like an inquiry into the underlying emotions either that have been caused by them or
00:15:02 someone else and what happened with your childhood in terms of discipline
00:15:08 um yeah so in our family that was definitely uh the drama triangle where you have
00:15:15 the persecutor victim defender sort of playing out so me and my me and ester would be the
00:15:21 persecutor even though oh sorry me and my sister would be the persecutor even though we weren't
00:15:27 um and i think this is because i was listening to one of your shows the other day and you know when
00:15:32 parents apply morals too early to kids then they start to view the kids as adults and then they
00:15:39 become um they apply the same laws and then they get angry at the kids or something like that i'm
00:15:49 sorry i'm not sure what you mean um so in terms so let's go back so in terms of like
00:15:55 yeah so we were physically hit um yeah it was definitely physical abuse i'm going to muddy
00:16:02 it on that um and there was definitely like always an area of the threat of violence
00:16:07 like yeah the violence wasn't severe but there was always the threat of it um and sometimes there was
00:16:15 you know like you they would go to hit and not hit so there was always that as well
00:16:21 um i'm trying to think of what else there was i think a lot of criticism and judgment and um
00:16:28 my dad had a very bad temper he'd go from naught to a hundred um so there was that as well
00:16:36 and was his temper predictable
00:16:43 um not really i think one of the worst dynamics that played out was when
00:16:51 mom well when we were upset our mom she would then say to us i'll wait till your dad gets home
00:16:59 and then we spend all day wondering whether she's actually told him so we'd always look at my dad's
00:17:04 expression as he came through the door to know if he's been told about what happened and then
00:17:08 whether you're going to get hit or not so and how would the hitting manifest um it's normally hits
00:17:16 around the head um on a few occasions i remember me and my sister having our heads banged together
00:17:22 which wasn't very nice at all to say the least um uh but i see i think it was mostly the head
00:17:29 or just getting hit on the arm or something like that but there were a few times where
00:17:34 the ones that really there are a few that really stuck in my mind
00:17:37 uh it wasn't all the time either i know that doesn't take away from how bad it is and it
00:17:43 should never happen but it wasn't prolific as in it happened daily it was more i would say
00:17:49 i mean it's really hard to remember after this long but i remember it maybe it's like a
00:17:53 every couple of weeks something like that
00:17:54 and how would the discipline be meted out when there was not physical hitting
00:18:03 um there was definitely shouting being sent to the room uh yeah being sent to my room
00:18:08 if i'd done something really bad um but also yeah the threat so for example if we were at dinner
00:18:15 and me and my sister were doing something that they didn't like my dad would get up out of his
00:18:20 chair quickly to um when he did that you didn't know whether he was going to come and hit you or
00:18:24 not sometimes he would get up and hit you and then other times you'd look to get up and then sit back
00:18:29 down so it was always that second guessing and with regards to the hitting in the head like
00:18:33 if we were in a room and we had to leave the room he would stand by the door and we know that as we
00:18:38 went by and walked past him we didn't know whether or not we would get hit on the way out so you'd
00:18:44 sort of run through like ducking okay sorry i shouldn't laugh that's horrible but um yeah you
00:18:49 kind of run through ducking not knowing if you're gonna get hit so it was kind of that are you gonna
00:18:55 get hit are you not so there's always that kind of uncertainty but um there are times when yeah
00:19:00 we did and i think this happened for me for quite an early age so i know there's a couple of times
00:19:05 when my dad went too far and apparently one of them was when i was really young because i don't
00:19:09 remember it but he's brought it up and apologized on a few occasions where i think he held me down
00:19:16 in a in a bathroom when i was playing up as a kid i must have been like i don't know maybe two three
00:19:22 or something like that and i know he regrets it to this day because he's uh apologized for a few
00:19:27 times but um i think he held me down and did something but i mean he's a bit vague with what
00:19:32 happened but i know it couldn't have been good because it's been on his conscious i think a lot
00:19:36 right okay okay so there was hitting every couple of weeks there was threats of hitting um were there
00:19:47 were there any other ways that you were punished uh grounded or things taken away or
00:19:52 i don't i honestly don't remember being grounded that much i really don't i can't remember things
00:20:01 getting taken away either i think sometimes i played too many video games and it would kick off
00:20:07 but um did you get lectured or or how did i mean you know you must have displeased your parents i
00:20:12 assume more than a couple of times more than once every couple of weeks yeah so um with the video
00:20:20 games i would play too long my dad would run in and just smash the like switches off at the wall
00:20:26 and yeah that wasn't nice um i did play a lot of games though like i think that was my escape
00:20:33 from a lot of stuff i think going to my sister i think one of the worst instances she had was
00:20:39 she was pushed into the stairs and a turf went through her lip at one point which i didn't even
00:20:45 remember what went through her lip a turf went through her lip oh it seems like through like
00:20:50 sort of got it yeah so excuse me she had to go to um let's take it to a and e i think that was
00:20:58 one of the worst things but i didn't remember that until she told me recently or a year ago
00:21:03 something like that and the other the other thing the other one of the worst things i can remember is
00:21:09 um at one time i poked a kid at school with a pencil and got in trouble my dad came in and
00:21:17 i don't know what was going on this day but he absolutely lost it and for the rest of the day
00:21:21 i must have been like eight hours just getting shouted at home and in the end he told me to
00:21:27 pack my bag and i packed some board games and uh i was told to pack some games and my sleeping bag
00:21:34 and he pretended to take me to an orphanage and said i was never going to see him again which was
00:21:38 yeah that's what i was for you i was year three seven seven years old my god that's santa and i
00:21:48 only found out a couple years ago that that exact same thing happened to him as a child and i didn't
00:21:55 notice until literally a couple years ago because uh it came up and he said to me that yeah one of
00:22:00 his family friends take him to an orphanage and he did and so i don't know how he thought it'd be a
00:22:05 good idea to do the same thing to me but it's one that sticks in my mind big time that yeah he
00:22:10 literally took me somewhere near i was in the southwest england somewhere into like a national
00:22:15 park and said that there's an orphanage down here and i was crying my eyes out for hours and then
00:22:20 eventually he took me home again but it was yeah i've that's not that's not hot rage right that's
00:22:27 a slow burn sexism that's highly controlled that's that's a whole that's not just lashing out
00:22:33 yeah yeah that that one's stuck in my mind a lot oh yeah well and it's a threat of the bond right
00:22:42 that you are disposable yeah yeah and the thing is you stuck another kid with a pencil yeah and
00:22:49 that's the weird that's the honestly the thing that i cannot quantify to this day is that i you
00:22:53 know i was seven years old in a classroom with 20 other kids like i think it was playtime and
00:22:58 i don't know it was me you know maybe i probably shouldn't have poked a kid with a pencil but i
00:23:03 can imagine it just seems so disproportionate the response like beyond disproportionate but
00:23:09 how did it go i mean what your father called in yeah so they had to go and talk to the teacher
00:23:15 oh okay so that's that's the british shaming thing right like you've socially shamed me
00:23:19 and you've had to i've had to be pulled away from work or was it something like that
00:23:24 yeah yeah he had to go in and talk to the teacher yeah so it's the whole social status thing and
00:23:28 and shame and and all of that so then you just have to be completely broken so that that doesn't
00:23:34 happen again i assume yeah and i think yeah yeah and i remember him saying a few of the words i
00:23:40 remember him saying during his rants um i remember sitting at a dinner table was he was like pacing
00:23:46 back and forth and he said i didn't raise you like this and uh yeah it was more a case of like i
00:23:51 shamed maybe the family name or him or his parental yeah his status went down yeah okay
00:23:59 okay and when did the physical violence begin to diminish was it around puberty as it is for a lot
00:24:07 of kids yeah exactly yeah okay so you get big enough and uh suddenly he finds all kinds of
00:24:12 capacities for peace and reason yeah and ironically as i got into like late teens
00:24:17 he would get angry at me for working out in the garden like and i i could never understand this
00:24:24 so for most kids like they get parents get angry with them for doing like drugs and alcohol
00:24:28 whatever and for me i was exercising in the garden he'd come out and he'd be like what you doing
00:24:33 you don't need to do this and what is and i'm like he's like you're not all right are you and i'm
00:24:37 like no i'm not all right and uh but it's just what was it what was his cover story for being
00:24:42 upset with you about exercising oh as if saying that the way i am is not anything yeah so he was
00:24:49 trying to portray that i don't need to change myself like i don't need to try and improve
00:24:53 myself it's like i'm i was trying to be i should be fine you know like be happy the way you are
00:24:59 kind of thing you know like the worst advice you can ever have um oh so after he was like
00:25:03 screaming at you threatening to throw you into the woods and uh beating you around the head
00:25:09 knocking you and your sister's head together suddenly now you're you're fine just the way
00:25:12 you are and don't need to change i mean i guess that's what it was about yeah it was kind of like
00:25:17 you don't need to do this and i'm like but yeah i wanted to you know well i mean if i'd beaten up
00:25:24 someone for quite some time i wouldn't like them working out either yeah yeah yeah yeah that's a
00:25:31 good point and the other thing that happened was there was a couple of really other weird instances
00:25:36 where i was really struggling at the time i was really depressed i think this was like my early
00:25:41 20s where i think that's where everything hit me hard like where life really caught up me and i
00:25:45 realized how far behind i was when i went to university and i just fell out of my depth in
00:25:50 every possible way um but i came home during one of the holidays and my dad came up and played a
00:25:56 video of james blunt and said you know you should try and talk more like james blunt and i'm just
00:26:00 like what the hell's going on like and i know that's like his it sounded like a weird thing
00:26:06 that really stuck with me like as if you know i'm just not all right you know who i am like um
00:26:11 and you know my speech i don't think it's too bad like i know i talk a bit fast but i'm sorry
00:26:15 but who's uh i don't remember who james blint is oh he's like this proper prim and proper sort
00:26:21 of british music artist who has really eloquent dialogue yeah oh you should talk more like this
00:26:28 tough right okay got it yeah because he he believed it would improve my confidence and
00:26:32 like that as if that was the thing that was kind of missing at the time you know is if i could talk
00:26:36 they i'd be confident right okay that's the impression i got do you think your parents
00:26:41 had any real clue about how to parent or what parenting was at all i don't know zero i don't
00:26:47 believe they ever read any books or took any courses or no because when i talked to them
00:26:52 about it now they say um oh yeah we didn't have any stuff when we were you know it's that usual
00:26:58 argument that you've brought up many times oh they said that there was no way for anyone to
00:27:02 ever learn anything about parenting yeah like we didn't notice at the time and yeah yeah there were
00:27:07 no libraries no parenting books no seminars no no training no okay so they're lying right they're
00:27:13 lying about that yeah i mean i could say stuff which would be excuses and you caught me up on it
00:27:21 like they came from poor backgrounds and abusive but yeah i think at the same time i think you know
00:27:28 like if i had kid well you know i'm consuming all your parental stuff and i don't even have kids
00:27:32 because i know i do want to have kids and i don't want to make mistakes so i can't for the life of
00:27:37 me understand why they wouldn't have had you know i would yeah i just can't comprehend why you wouldn't
00:27:43 study hard how to raise kid and what's the status of your relationship with them at the moment
00:27:50 uh so we had a massive so i say this is a massive event that happened with me and my sister sister
00:27:59 and my parents we had a massive crescendo event where i just started therapy so this is about 10
00:28:04 years ago um in 20 yeah yeah probably 2013 something like that but i just started therapy
00:28:11 i was about six months in and i was starting to learn about all the dynamics that were going on
00:28:14 within the family so like the drama triangles and all the different sort of behaviors that were
00:28:19 playing out and i've naively thought oh do you know what now i notice i can i can tell everyone
00:28:24 and everything you know once people understand it'll be fine it was like chucking a grenade into
00:28:29 a whore in its nest it was um yeah it's a fundamental mistake that people with a clear
00:28:34 conscience or a clean conscience think that everybody else will welcome uh notification
00:28:39 of dysfunction just as much as they do because it gives relief to you but it gives agony to
00:28:42 those with a bad conscience oh it was incredible i just it was i just could not believe like
00:28:50 it's like you say that moment of morality just disintegrates everything and i brought up
00:28:56 everything that was going on um the way that my parents were sort of persecuting my sister at the
00:29:02 time um the way they were so judgmental and critical and all the struggles we'd been through
00:29:07 and the way that you know like we'd upset them and then one would cry dad would be there and the
00:29:13 defender that comes in and attacks us and all these different dynamics that were playing out and
00:29:18 well and of course your mother knew that your father was violent and would wind him up and point
00:29:22 you point him at the kids anyway right yeah exactly and it took me ages to actually put the
00:29:27 blame on her as well but i did that many years ago where i think it was actually listening to
00:29:31 you where it's not one of them you know it's never one it's no no it's yeah it's it's it's their team
00:29:36 yeah and it took me years to do that because i always sort of blamed my dad more because he was
00:29:42 the one that issued the the violence but the fact is yeah it's a it's a co it's a co-op team and
00:29:47 no there's the uh there's a secret police and then there's the informant right yeah yeah so um i put
00:29:54 yeah so i decided that i was going to go for it and just say this has got to stop like all this
00:29:59 behavior has got to stop like the um the judging the criticizing the manipulative behavior um
00:30:06 all the different things that were affecting me and my sister so much like i really felt for my
00:30:11 sister this day because they just kept going for her with everything um i can't remember the
00:30:15 specific things but i just like just stopped harassing her and then i brought it all up and
00:30:20 literally my mom yeah when i when i said about all the issues that me and estra had been through like
00:30:25 both us been on antidepressants and um we'd been through all sorts of stuff i just said the truth
00:30:33 of the impact of what all that what their behavior had had on us over the years and my mom literally
00:30:38 clutched her chest and i thought she was like screamed and i thought she was honestly having
00:30:42 a heart attack it was that much of a big crescendo moment for them to for me to actually point i'm
00:30:48 sorry how do you how do you know any of that is genuine oh she was um oh no it was it was 100%
00:30:55 she literally was just went hysterical like crying no i i get that i mean but how do you know any of
00:31:02 that i mean you know her better than i do of course right but how do you know any of that's genuine
00:31:06 could be in manipulation i mean she might be really committed to the manipulation but it could be
00:31:12 it was so raw it was unbelievably raw like i'd never seen her reacting that way in my entire
00:31:20 life and this was what when i was yeah yeah 10 years ago maybe 20 you said 2013 so yeah yeah
00:31:27 somewhere around 10 years ago so so did you feel closer to did you feel connected to her did you
00:31:32 feel closer to her as a result of her outburst oh so after that i just want to know during that
00:31:41 during that i was i was initially worried that she was going to die like i was no i get that so
00:31:47 so what she was doing was aversive yeah it's training you to not bring this up otherwise
00:31:53 she's gonna die yeah i never looked at it that way no no because when people have genuine emotions
00:32:00 you feel closer to them even if the motions are very much upset right you feel closer to them
00:32:05 but if it's like i'm horrified and i have to stop what i'm doing immediately out of fear for my
00:32:10 mother's sanity or health or whatever then it's just aversive it's just punishing you
00:32:15 yeah i never looked at it that way
00:32:20 i'm trying to
00:32:26 i'm trying to remember what happened after that i don't think i went over and
00:32:32 i think she she got herself together and i can't remember if i carried on i think i don't know
00:32:39 whether that was the end of like so i was talking fat i think i talked for two hours straight
00:32:44 from the board just putting everything out that had been going on and i remember then
00:32:51 i do you know it ended with my mom and dad storming out the house
00:32:54 and getting in the car and driving off and it was just yeah it's horrendous okay so
00:33:06 instead of taking you to the woods they just drove off in their car they still abandonment
00:33:11 is the thing right yeah because i remember it was so it was crazy they left so fast they forgot
00:33:16 their keys and then dad had to come back in and it was it was fraught absolutely fraught
00:33:23 there was no sort of like okay so sorry interrupt so that was 10 years ago and what's happened since
00:33:30 so after you're so the excuse me the year after that me and my dad were in a power struggle with
00:33:38 every time yeah every time so i basically put really strong strong boundaries in that
00:33:47 the toxic behavior can carry on like the criticism the endless criticism and judgment the manipulation
00:33:54 the aggressive behavior all of these things had to um i i just i just put in like a zero
00:33:59 tolerance with it so so anytime i went to visit them if it happened i would leave
00:34:05 um and it's probably not the best way to do it but this is i'm just telling you how i did it at the
00:34:11 time um and yeah so every time it happened i would leave and it would yeah and it it was just
00:34:18 fraught for ages like me and my dad could hardly be in the same room together um and this this was
00:34:24 going on for years um probably like a year and a half sorry um i mean they were i mean i'm not just
00:34:30 abusive of course right but they were kind of abusive when you were younger uh and then when
00:34:36 you brought up your issues your mom pretended to die and you're they both ran out of the house i
00:34:41 mean did they ever apologize and ask you to continue the conversation
00:34:46 no so what do you what are you doing i think they're really good at brushing trying to brush
00:34:53 stuff or white well yeah but they can only do that with your participation right yeah yeah so what's
00:34:59 uh what's the plan with the relationship is it the hope that it's going to change or
00:35:04 so i think for me i've been teaching them for years about well all the stuff that comes up
00:35:11 all the stuff that comes up in a philosophy show i just constantly talk to them about now why
00:35:16 the uh i mean don't you want to parent your own children not your parents
00:35:26 don't you want to don't you want to parent people who've got a clean conscience rather
00:35:31 than people who are sick with guilt over how they treated their children i know it's so hard
00:35:36 are you parenting your parents at the expense of your own children
00:35:39 yeah i think in terms of like my relationship with them now
00:35:46 it's it's weird they really don't they don't do any more of the criticism and judging
00:35:55 okay you know you just dodged my question right that was a good dodge but a very obvious one
00:36:04 geez did i yeah so i said why are you parenting your parents and you said well they're not as
00:36:09 toxic now that doesn't answer the question i just believed in them i just think that
00:36:13 that's not an answer i don't know what that even means
00:36:16 your belief has to have some sort of evidence behind it right
00:36:18 so i so i completely red-pilled them in terms of like how the world works and
00:36:27 they've really run with that and i think that's great that they've got that awareness and i just
00:36:32 think they can learn this stuff as well and and to be honest that you're 40 years old
00:36:37 yeah yeah yeah i mean come on you're you're reaching the end of your fertility window
00:36:44 in terms of like having a woman roughly your age right i know this is what yeah so i mean
00:36:51 i'm just trying to understand why are you focusing so much on fixing your parents rather than having
00:36:57 a happy family yourself i mean it's not like that's been my sole job like i honestly false
00:37:02 dichotomy false dichotomy i didn't say it was your sole job sorry i don't know yeah yeah but um
00:37:08 yeah in terms of like you know i have my honestly my main my main goal over the last four years has
00:37:15 been trying to establish a good relationship with another woman so it's not been it's not
00:37:21 something that i religiously pursue with them it's like when i see them like once every couple of
00:37:27 weeks or something i will yeah just point them in the right direction with stuff that comes up on
00:37:34 your shows or talk about so you're not particularly philosophical as far as that goes right like you
00:37:39 don't have standards of relationships that you apply consistently right i yeah i'm reading your
00:37:47 real-time relationships and yeah it's yeah i mean listen i'm i'm we all have that temptation and
00:37:51 family is family right so i get all of that i understand all of that and i sympathize with all
00:37:55 of that enormously but you know let's call it for what it is right that you have standards in a
00:38:00 relationship where people can treat you terribly they can punish you for bringing up any kinds of
00:38:05 truth they can storm out they can pretend to have a heart attack and and you're just like well we'll
00:38:09 keep going they never have to apologize they never have to treat you well they never have to
00:38:14 take ownership of their actions in any consistent or deep way so i mean you you have a massive
00:38:21 glaring exception to any reasonable standard of behavior which is called your parents right
00:38:26 yes true yeah i understand i'm not this is not a bad thing in in so far as we all program that way
00:38:34 and biologically and also socially as well so i'm not trying to throw you under the bus or anything
00:38:38 like that but or the lorry but uh yeah it's it's that that's sort of pretty significant exception
00:38:44 to yeah yeah it is and i knew that would be the most painful thing about talking about this
00:38:50 is uh well why is it uh why is it painful and again i'm not saying it shouldn't be i just want
00:38:55 to understand from your perspective because i'm consuming like hours and hours of your stuff every
00:39:01 week and i just it's like a big man it's just like a big torchlight highlighting order um
00:39:10 i'm not insecurities um sorry the word has lost me but i'm not applying this universally
00:39:19 and my okay so what happens what's your thought what happens if you do apply this universally
00:39:24 what happens if you do apply the requirement for honesty and integrity and self-ownership
00:39:29 and responsibility and so on what if you do apply this to your relationship with your parents what
00:39:33 happens probably similar um no don't laugh it's it's yeah like there's there's been times where
00:39:42 they have apologized but not what you would call like an apology and obviously like it's very hard
00:39:49 to have restitution after this long like um but there's times where they have apologized it's not
00:39:55 been an absolute deep sincere but definitely for like i know this isn't great but like the instances
00:40:05 where he went really far the ones i told you about he has he has really apologized for those um no
00:40:12 but that's not the issue i think and i'm sorry i i know that's kind of annoying and arrogant to say
00:40:17 well i know what the issue is but i don't think that's the issue the issue is that your parents
00:40:21 have been in your adult life for almost a quarter century and you haven't gotten what you most want
00:40:26 to need which is your family of your own right um a family of my own yeah i mean they've seen you
00:40:34 date right they've seen you choose girls they've seen you be in long-term relationships right yeah
00:40:40 yeah and are they giving you good advice are they helping you to get what you most want to need
00:40:46 you know everybody who's in your life who claims to love you or care about you should be trying to
00:40:51 help you get what you most want to need right yeah you know if i love my wife and you know she's not
00:40:58 feeling too well and she wants a cup of tea then i get her a cup of tea right i mean if you love
00:41:05 someone you care about someone you should try to help them get what they want to need right
00:41:10 yeah so i can so when i have problems i can sit down with them but they lack
00:41:14 and i've been really wondering about this lately because i also listened to your show the other
00:41:21 day where you talked about how if there's dysfunction at home then your parents don't
00:41:27 want you to meet a quality person so i'm aware of that and i've been thinking about it and i was
00:41:33 wondering if that was the case for my parents because i don't know if that is the case i don't
00:41:37 know if i think more that they're just so emotionally shut down i don't think they can really
00:41:42 understand how to give advice on how to give a good relationship because i don't feel like
00:41:49 their relationship is good so i don't know i don't think they hit you know they haven't done any
00:41:54 self-development therapy they haven't read any books about relationships or anything like that
00:42:00 in regards to i just don't know how they could give the advice i need but if i'm having a terrible
00:42:06 time i can share with them and vent but it's kind of like as opposed to like the kind of stuff you
00:42:13 put out it's just yeah i'm not going to get any of that from them. But that's the result of their
00:42:19 choice right? I mean you chose to go to therapy they didn't, you chose to read books they didn't,
00:42:24 you chose to listen to podcasts they didn't. So it's not like they have some incapacity like
00:42:29 they're just born crippled right? It's true and i tried to get them to go to therapy and they only
00:42:34 did two sessions which obviously is nowhere near what you need. Okay so when was that?
00:42:41 It was around about the same time i think it was that whole kind of era between 2013 maybe 2015.
00:42:52 About a decade ago you tried to get them to go to therapy and they basically didn't go.
00:42:56 Yeah maybe like eight years ago. So what was your what was your anticipation about how things would
00:43:00 go if you kept pursuing self-knowledge and they resolutely avoided it? Well the gap grows. Gap
00:43:10 grows right? Sorry what did you say there? Well the gap grows right? Yeah it gets massive yeah.
00:43:19 And you end up going in opposite directions? Yeah. Now tell me a little bit about the women
00:43:25 you've been dating. So actually full disclosure here i talked to you briefly on a AMA show
00:43:34 quite i think it was in nine months ago where i was the guy who actually had a relationship with
00:43:42 his therapist. I don't know if you remember that. Yeah which i mean to be honest just for clarity
00:43:50 for anyone that didn't hear that like it we hadn't she hadn't been my therapist for over six years
00:43:55 and she wasn't even a therapist at the time so it wasn't like it was anything to do with
00:44:00 yeah it wasn't like we were in practice together because obviously that is just
00:44:04 absolutely unethical and yeah you can't do that. But how far back do you want to go with regards
00:44:11 to because i've written a list of my relationships going back to 20
00:44:15 2009 but i don't know how far you want to go back or do you want to do recent?
00:44:20 Wait 2009 so you would have been 26 25?
00:44:24 Um yeah i'm 40 20 2009 god yeah time flies yeah probably about that. Was there anything before
00:44:34 mid-20s? Um like i can remember my very first relationship was 16 but in the 20s i just i
00:44:41 didn't kind of have any long term it was it was towards the end of my 20s where i started really
00:44:48 trying to have the long-term relationships because you know i just i was thinking more
00:44:51 about family and children and things like that. Okay and how many long-term relationships have
00:44:56 you had? So let me decide one two three about eight or nine. Eight or nine? About eight.
00:45:07 Okay um what do you mean by long-term relationships? Um i would say
00:45:18 a year to four years so i think the shortest was about a year and longest was four years.
00:45:23 Okay and in the four-year one how old were you when you started that one?
00:45:29 Um yeah so it was 2013 to 2017 i was 30 to 34. Okay and why didn't you marry that woman?
00:45:41 Um yeah so that relationship um
00:45:47 we it was just so stressful again like i feel like she had a lot of issues from her childhood
00:45:56 which is a reoccurring thing believe me uh she was majorly stressed um
00:46:02 what does that mean what does that mean how did that manifest?
00:46:07 So her yeah so i'm trying to remember now i've got it written here um i do remember the relationship
00:46:17 well so we started off i'd visit her in London and we actually knew each other growing up in
00:46:22 southwest England and we actually worked together when we were like 16 and um i don't know how it
00:46:30 was we i think we started talking online on Facebook or something like that and ended up
00:46:33 going to visit her in in London and same kind of thing like you know you always have the honeymoon
00:46:40 period where you're going well at first and then she was just a very highly strung stressed out
00:46:46 and i think that was because yeah how did it manifest my god i keep having to ask you every
00:46:50 question i'm sorry i'm sorry i'm sorry um how did it manifest yeah empirically how did you know she
00:46:56 was stressed? Just when we spent time together she she also had a job at a college where she was
00:47:05 dealing with all the kids on whores and some of them you know those days where they would like
00:47:10 someone commit suicide which is absolutely horrendous and so on top of i think all the
00:47:15 stress she had with her family um but it's weird thinking back i just it just seems so stressful
00:47:22 um it's would she not sleep would she snap would she uh did she comfort eat like what did she do
00:47:30 in terms of like i know that she's stressed i think what was going on is what you refer to in
00:47:35 your book real-time relationships as zing the zing zing you know where you're just constantly
00:47:40 triggering each other and i think the problem i'm gonna ask you one more time that's the fourth time
00:47:44 i think now what the fuck did she do that you knew she was stressed i just want some empirical data
00:47:50 sorry sorry sorry um it just like literally just around the house like we would snap each other um
00:48:01 we'd argue oh so you were both stressed yeah yeah okay and what were you stressed about
00:48:07 i think it well this is yeah it was the same sort of time i was going through the family breakdown
00:48:15 um i was changing starting to change careers um and you were living together with the one
00:48:21 yeah so we no actually we didn't but we would spend almost all our time with each other
00:48:28 okay did she ever want to get married um yeah i think she did yeah you think she did
00:48:37 no she did she did did she like openly say i want to get married
00:48:44 yeah yeah i think no i think yeah it wasn't something we talked about a lot i mean no no
00:48:51 it's just asking it's a yes no it doesn't it's not i'm not asking for degree i'm just asking you for
00:48:55 she did say i want to get married yeah i know for a fact that she wanted to get married okay and why
00:48:59 didn't you want to get married because she was too stressed yeah i just wasn't enjoying the relationship
00:49:05 okay so for how long did your family know that you weren't enjoying the relationship
00:49:12 well this is where my biggest problem comes in and that is
00:49:14 i was probably with her another two years after and i hate to say i hate this and i i regret it
00:49:21 i regret every second of not getting out of the relationship scene but i had this is like one of
00:49:27 my biggest problems that i wanted to bring up bro bro sorry did i ask um oh how long did my parents
00:49:34 know yeah okay so probably two years oh about i would say 18 months to be fair yeah okay so how
00:49:40 long were you unhappy in the relationship you said two years you regret but did i assume it didn't go
00:49:45 from like great to terrible in like one day right so for how long were you having doubts about the
00:49:50 relationship or were unhappy in the relationship to the point where you're like maybe this isn't
00:49:54 going to work out 18 months so the first two and a half years were great um i would say the first
00:50:04 yeah i would yeah i would say that's a good point so she didn't show any signs of
00:50:10 dysfunction really for the first two and a half years
00:50:12 no i'm pretty sure she did i'm pretty sure she did too yeah um i think at the time it was is i
00:50:28 was in such a case of like survival it's just it was almost like the dysfunction was just normal
00:50:33 it was um but we weren't like yeah we weren't intimate we weren't well we we'd have sex but
00:50:41 i think it was just both of us were just in a state of like prefrontal cortex like
00:50:48 we just weren't it just you know that whole relationship just seemed i mean we had some
00:50:55 good times like it wasn't all bad and we're still friends now and we actually got on really well and
00:51:03 she's got a partner and that's good um but at the time i don't know it
00:51:08 it's weird it's it's it's really hard to remember did she end up having kids
00:51:14 she didn't she didn't do you know why no we split up when we were about i think she was 34 35 when
00:51:25 we split up but she'd never wanted she never ended up having kids she never wanted them or just
00:51:32 never ended up having them it's what i actually asked her this many times because i said to her
00:51:36 like you know make sure you put your focus on having kids because like she was really she's
00:51:42 always been like a really highly driven career woman i said look after we split up i said look
00:51:48 if you really want to have kids like just put your focus on it and she always said to me she wasn't
00:51:52 sure if she wanted them so yeah i i genuinely i'm quite i don't know she was kind of on the fence
00:52:01 about it she was always on the fence about it right okay all right so for how long did you
00:52:10 have doubts about the relationship so i think i really wanted out 18 excuse me 18 months before
00:52:16 it ended right that's not and it was oh sorry sorry doubts probably probably after a year and
00:52:26 a half a year okay so for the first year or so things were good and then you had some concerns
00:52:32 right yeah and who did you go to with those concerns if anyone i would have definitely
00:52:39 talked to my parents about it sorry you would have or you did i'm pretty sure i did so you
00:52:47 said i have doubts about this relationship in one form or another right yeah and what happened then
00:52:54 i think they was they would always talk to me about it but i just kept going
00:52:58 well what advice did they give you um i can't remember getting any well i think they would
00:53:10 have said like get out if you're not happy like they definitely would have said that
00:53:13 they would have said leave if you're not happy yeah i'm pretty sure they would have yeah
00:53:19 that's interesting are you happy in your relationship with your parents
00:53:21 um that could be a lot better yeah so you're not happy in your relationship with your parents
00:53:29 i mean
00:53:33 i mean it's like a thousand times better than it used to be
00:53:42 um there are times where we get on really well i wish i wish they were more emotionally available
00:53:50 like they've always been emotionally shut down okay but yeah i sometimes like obviously when
00:53:59 i hear you talking about your relationship with um your daughter it's it's like man that's
00:54:04 yeah that that's something that i haven't experienced right so they would have said
00:54:12 get out if you're not happy
00:54:14 well do you remember them saying that or is that what they might have said i'm we're in fargland
00:54:22 here i'm not sure i know it's so hard to remember the details about it and i believe me i went it's
00:54:28 not a detail yeah someone for advice and it's your parents it's not a detail to remember what they
00:54:34 get what advice they gave you so what so what normally happened if i have a problem with
00:54:37 girlfriend i'll explain everything to them and they'll say oh yeah that's not great but
00:54:42 it's almost like the ball's in just my court what i'm gonna do like they don't really
00:54:47 you know they obviously say if you're not happy don't be in it like they do say that to me
00:54:52 but it's i just find it so hard to leave the relationship
00:54:59 well did they follow up did they say you know well you said you weren't happy are things any
00:55:04 better if not you really should make a plan to get out and it's unfair to burn away her
00:55:08 fertility years and all that right um not really nah all right what about your sister
00:55:17 yes my sister me and my sister get on well um there are times where we've been distant but
00:55:25 we're actually much from really close not not for any bad reason we're just quite different people
00:55:29 and we were leading separate lives but um we're close now but she yeah i can have conversations
00:55:35 with her and she'll tell me exactly what to do and what i should do she's much more open she's
00:55:40 done quite a bit of therapy and she's much more if she gives you good advice why have you not
00:55:46 got the outcome you're looking for as i don't then action the advice so you don't what you
00:55:54 don't act on the advice no there's something about there's definitely times in the past where i just
00:55:59 haven't acted on the advice and i just find it excruciating breaking up with someone especially
00:56:04 when that person is like struggling because i feel like i'm just going to compound their pain
00:56:10 and so it just i still remember to this day with the girl we're talking about
00:56:18 but i was in therapy at the time with the woman i ended up dating
00:56:22 i know this sounds crazy but um so i was in therapy and i every session in therapy with her
00:56:28 i would be talking about like just excruciating decision of trying to split up with this girl
00:56:34 and it just yeah it was just so painful and i think i just honestly every session i go in
00:56:43 and be like i just can't be honest with your mother and you thought she was gonna die
00:56:46 you don't think that's related i know but i just blame myself for not no no hang on back up
00:56:54 you're honest with your mother about your childhood and you think she's going to die
00:57:00 she has that extreme a reaction right yeah and you do you wonder why you're not assertive with
00:57:06 girlfriends yeah yeah it's yeah it's not helped is it well she i mean she she she imitates death
00:57:19 if you're honest yeah and your father totally colludes with her and storms out of the house
00:57:28 comes back for his keys right yeah are you supposed to have any will or assertiveness in a relationship
00:57:37 where your parents your father hits you uh threatens to leave you at an orphanage in the
00:57:46 forest your mother pretends to die when you're honest with her i mean i don't know how you're
00:57:51 supposed to be assertive when you have this extreme level of emotional manipulation punishing you for
00:57:57 any expressions of genuine honesty yeah and this is honestly one of the biggest problems i've had
00:58:05 through every you know it's not a problem it's not a problem it's a choice it's not a problem
00:58:10 no no you're right no no listen man you can choose to please your parents it's just going to cost you
00:58:14 assertiveness in your relationship with with the woman right we we operate on principles it's not
00:58:21 like your right arm is immune to gravity right we operate on principles if your principle with
00:58:26 your parents are serve their needs be their slave try to wake them up try to get what you want
00:58:31 without provoking massive blowback tentatively push here and there see retreat manage them try
00:58:37 to raise them be there for them try to repair them at all times never be assertive for fear of
00:58:43 abandonment and death right so if you have that as a principle in your relationship that's your
00:58:47 principle in relationships you can't be more assertive than your least assertive relationship
00:58:54 because that's the principle you have so i can just say that last line again i can't be more
00:58:59 you can't be more assertive than your least assertive relationship okay that's the principle
00:59:06 you have like for instance if you're willing to take 10 quid an hour to do a job right and
00:59:15 the person knows you just did the job for 10 quid an hour what's he going to offer you
00:59:20 yeah he's going to offer you 10 quid an hour yeah because he knows you're going to do the
00:59:24 job for 10 quid an hour so if you are not assertive with your parents at all in fact
00:59:32 you suppress yourself around your parents everybody knows that and you know that too
00:59:38 so it's not a problem it's just a choice that if you choose to get pushed around and silenced by
00:59:46 your parents and to not be assertive out of terror of abandonment and death which i understand and
00:59:50 sympathize with that's your principle it's not a mystery if you're willing to do the job for 10
00:59:59 10 quid an hour you get paid 10 quid an hour it's not a problem it's just a choice and i'll be i'll
01:00:07 be doing this in every relationship not just with women right of course yeah well you may have if
01:00:13 it's psychologically far enough away you may have more assertiveness in other areas but when push
01:00:19 comes to shove you'll fall back to that position i don't have relationships where i can't be
01:00:24 assertive i mean i'm just telling you my own you know because i'm not i'm not a therapist i can
01:00:29 tell you all about my life right so i don't have relationships where i can't be assertive
01:00:34 because i don't want that to harm my relationships
01:00:40 it's like you say if you can't be yourself in a relationship it's not
01:00:43 it's not a relationship and i don't want that as a principle yeah i don't want that as a principle
01:00:48 so you're 40 years old
01:00:55 and you're still trying to parent your parents and fix your childhood and run around after them
01:01:02 and and you know you say they're emotionally unavailable that they don't really give you any
01:01:06 feedback that right okay so so that's a choice like you can spend until they're dead right i
01:01:12 assume that they're what in their 60s or 70s right so you know you might have you know but maybe by
01:01:17 the time you're 50 or 55 and they're dead then you can start to try and figure out what your
01:01:21 principles are in relationships rather than the shit you just inherited that they defined like
01:01:27 you can set your own standards for relationships or you can just have the craziest most dysfunctional
01:01:32 immature people around you set all your standards you can live by that it's not a problem it's just
01:01:37 a choice yeah that's
01:01:42 i mean if your parents cared about you in in a way that i would consider to be
01:01:53 real vital and practical then what they would do is if you were having trouble in the relationship
01:01:59 what would they do what would they do if they were really practically trying to help you
01:02:03 or said the very least doing a lot of
01:02:10 doing their best to understand everything that was going on i guess reading books
01:02:21 trying to provide advice on the best course of action
01:02:28 talking um i'm trying to put myself in my position if i had kids i
01:02:34 i would literally be doing what i'm doing now which is like listening to you and then
01:02:38 if my daughter was dating she was in her 30s and she'd be dating some guy for a couple of years
01:02:46 what would i do well you'd be asking her if it's right why don't you get married and if
01:02:52 it's wrong why don't you know i wouldn't be doing that that would be much earlier
01:02:57 yes um after two
01:02:59 we can't
01:03:03 what would you do i'll tell you what i would do i would invite my daughter and her boyfriend over
01:03:13 and i would say all right what's happening what's going on you guys getting married what's the plan
01:03:17 you guys playing house are you wasting time what are your issues with her what are her issues with
01:03:23 you is it going to move forward because right now you're stalling you're just circling the drain
01:03:28 god time's ticking away like what's going on here see i would never even thought of that i know you
01:03:34 wouldn't because you're not used to having people in your life who actually help you and really
01:03:38 genuinely care about you your sister should have done that too i mean it's not quite as much her
01:03:43 responsibility because your sister not your parents but you can't conceive of that right
01:03:46 no like that's honestly that's a concept i never thought on right and that's because
01:03:53 these are your standards that are inflicted on you by history rather than chosen by you
01:03:57 through virtue and i should be doing this with all my like i do tell my friends when there's an
01:04:03 issue like and i started to do that way more since listening to your shows like
01:04:06 and trying to be that to point out like i i am learning this now like i'm really starting to
01:04:13 try and implement it but yeah yeah okay so you're 40 years old is your career going okay yeah
01:04:20 brilliant like that okay good good so your your career's going fine but i love it love love girls
01:04:27 love women and family children fatherhood and all of that is uh you're you're slipping out of the
01:04:33 the friendzone right i'll be off like outside of the relationship i would say
01:04:38 my life is really good like there isn't you know i'm really yeah i love my career i'm doing well
01:04:43 okay when was the last time you were in a long-term relationship
01:04:49 i'm in a relationship right now again and how long has that been going on since may
01:04:54 middle middle may yeah how old is she 35 okay and what's the plan
01:05:01 so again like
01:05:04 so i'm back in this position where she's having all sorts of problems and what are her problems
01:05:16 so she her her job is incredibly stressful like she works as a teacher
01:05:24 yeah but that's fine just knock her up and have her raise kids then she's
01:05:28 job stress is done right yeah but i just i
01:05:31 that's the thing like this is see the problem i've had i'm sorry does she want children
01:05:36 yeah she does yeah definitely okay so what's i mean she's 35 right she's already in geriatric
01:05:43 already in geriatric pregnancy territory so she wants kids and wants kids and what's her time
01:05:48 frame like what's happening yes so we've talked i honestly i talked about this on the first date
01:05:53 with her about first honestly first day we went on we went for a walk and i said like
01:05:58 do you want to have kids um so we're both on the same page we both wanted to have kids and i
01:06:03 even talked to her about your shows and peaceful parenting on the first day because i wanted to
01:06:07 make sure that she was on the same page with that you know like i never want to marry someone who's
01:06:11 not going to be a peaceful parent so so i started asking these things and then so time has gone on
01:06:19 and she's she's just not very stable like in terms of like she's had a lot she's had a very adverse
01:06:26 childhood and she hasn't done any therapy and okay so what are you doing and hang on hang on
01:06:33 what are you doing yeah but i didn't the thing is right i literally second date
01:06:39 so after coming out of my last relationship with the therapist i'm like okay first thing i'm gonna
01:06:43 do is ask her what her relationship with her parents was like because i don't want to go through
01:06:47 another round of um all this stuff right like so literally i literally was like oh my god i've got
01:06:55 to find out i don't want another like fixed job and but she said it was good you know like she
01:07:02 said her relationship was good and she her parents were great and she loved them and
01:07:06 but it turns out like i found out in the last few weeks that when she tried to implement a boundary
01:07:11 with her parents like so when she was young so i only found this out literally sorry i uh oh gosh
01:07:18 i'm so sorry am i jumping around so no it's fine so you she said my relationship with my family
01:07:23 is great right yeah okay so when did you first meet her parents two months in no hang on was it
01:07:33 two months no i met them briefly after two months yeah okay so two months into the relationship you
01:07:39 meet her parents now her relationship with her parents is great which means that they're honest
01:07:43 they have self-knowledge they're open they're good moral people right yeah so you should be able to
01:07:52 figure that out right ask them any kinds of challenging questions ask them about their
01:07:56 parenting philosophy ask them the good and bad that happened when they were raising your girlfriend
01:08:01 you know all that kind of stuff right you vet them because you're not a kid right you're not
01:08:05 some 17 year old just looking to get laid right you're a 40 year old man or i guess a 39 year
01:08:10 old man back then who's looking to settle down which means you got to vet the fucking family right
01:08:14 yeah so did you do any of that so i met them briefly on the first time i met them and
01:08:22 they seemed okay i yeah you're right i didn't do enough vetting 100 okay what vetting did you do
01:08:30 you did some right i mean sorry you said i didn't do enough so um i'm trying to remember what i did
01:08:40 well did you ask her about her childhood and the good and bad that happened
01:08:46 um ask about her childhood your girl yes sorry sorry that's fine i'll cut that uh so yeah did
01:08:56 you ask your girlfriend about the good and bad that happened in her childhood yeah and she
01:09:03 the first time i got wind of it was when she said that she was always forced to apologize
01:09:11 even when even when her father had done something wrong she was the one that was always forced to
01:09:16 apologize and that was the first time i started to realize that sorry how long is the relationship
01:09:22 was that i think it was three or four months oh come on what are you talking about you didn't
01:09:29 you waited three or four freaking months to ask her about her childhood i don't
01:09:36 i'm you know i mean come on let's be frank here you waited three or four months to ask
01:09:42 her about her childhood oh man this is so painful i'm sorry i mean i'm just i'm being
01:09:50 direct here because you're a long-time listener i know i know and i know it's gonna be painful
01:09:54 no there's there's no point me having sympathy for self-inflicted wounds right
01:09:58 no no no and i don't expect it to be any different i'm just like okay so you waited
01:10:02 three or four i'm sorry i don't mean to laugh because not funny but you you waited three or
01:10:06 four months after listening to this show for 10 years or whatever right you waited three or four
01:10:11 months to ask her about her childhood yeah and i just did she ask you about your childhood
01:10:20 i'll be honest um yeah and i
01:10:23 yeah i told her that i'd done it wasn't the best but i'd done all the work to try and
01:10:29 i've done like 10 years of work on myself to reverse everything
01:10:33 or not enough work to ask someone else about their childhood
01:10:37 yeah i i actually do not the like really going deep on the philosophy coincided with the beginning
01:10:45 of the relationship i think the last nine months i've really caned like everything you've been
01:10:50 putting out and yeah so there were times before i listened to you but i just wasn't ready for
01:10:59 wait i want to say i wasn't ready for it but i was just i was really caught up in bitcoin at the
01:11:03 time and it's only now i've come back to philosophy and realize so you're you're stripping yourself of
01:11:09 you're stripping yourself of free will you just weren't ready for it and there was bitcoin and
01:11:15 so you're giving yourself all these dominoes so you don't own your own fucking self right
01:11:18 okay so yeah i can make choices you chose to avoid asking her about her childhood
01:11:25 because she didn't want to talk about it and i've got to admit right i think i started to
01:11:30 pick up on it and i just thought to myself i think i did just i went to denial about it
01:11:36 but yeah but the worst thing i found out which was about two months ago
01:11:44 we went to the house and it's the first time we actually stayed at the house it was the first
01:11:50 time i was able to spend a lot of time with them and some weird things happen so for example there
01:12:00 was one time where she was like mid-sentence and she stopped talking to me and i was like
01:12:04 what why did you stop talking and she's like oh dad wants to do something i'm like with what i was
01:12:09 like what why i was like why why if you i just couldn't believe it she literally stopped mid
01:12:13 sentence so she didn't upset her dad or um and there was another time where i was cooking i
01:12:20 cooked some eggs in the morning and i went to the toilet whilst the water was on and you know
01:12:24 there's no fire risk or anything but then he got really funny about that and kept calling me and
01:12:27 i was like what's the matter and apparently your dad got funny about it and i was like what's the
01:12:31 matter and apparently your dad got funny about it and it's only when we left the house after a
01:12:35 couple of days we were driving home and she said she started to tell me the real truth about
01:12:40 what had gone on and basically when she was young when she tried to implement a boundary with
01:12:45 her father the only time she ever tried to do it and not have to be the one that apologized he would
01:12:52 threaten to kill himself oh my god you're not kidding you're not serious so she would he would
01:13:00 get really drunk he would run off in the middle of the night and like and they lived really royally
01:13:03 and he would go he'd go and stay in a hotel and not tell him where he'd gone so they thought he
01:13:08 like could have been dead and i just honestly i just like was like holy [ __ ] well there's no
01:13:13 more extreme than your mother faking a heart attack because you're criticizing her parenting
01:13:16 i know i know it's just it's so bad it's so bad this is what i've called man and just like
01:13:21 you don't need to call me
01:13:27 i mean if you're avoiding essential knowledge about the women you're dating
01:13:33 i mean the question is why why are you avoiding why aren't you asking them about their childhoods
01:13:39 i feel like i was getting closer i feel like because like the last nine months
01:13:45 first date you're talking about peaceful parenting and all that kind of stuff right so
01:13:49 why aren't you or tell me tell me a little bit about your life tell me about you know the good
01:13:53 and bad the up and the down right you got some you both got some mileage right so there's going
01:13:57 to be some treads uh worn down and right tell me right so why are you avoiding the whole childhood
01:14:02 thing i don't know because i know you still have all your hair don't you you do right yeah yeah
01:14:20 you have a baby face i look a lot younger than i yeah i knew that how did i know that
01:14:26 how did you know that how did i know that because you're living like you're immortal
01:14:31 you're wasting time like you're immortal spoiler you don't live longer if you keep your hair
01:14:37 oh geez man you don't live longer
01:14:45 yeah but i i sense i'm i know i'm 40 i can't keep messing up i can't i i know i'm getting like
01:14:51 i know i'm late late in the game well i mean how many good women are left
01:14:57 oh man yeah no i mean like every day that goes by
01:15:04 you know the last couple of good women are all being snatched up
01:15:09 sure unless you want to go super young in which case you got a 20 year age gap or a 15 year age
01:15:16 gap or you know then there's going to be a whole intergenerational thing and you know i'm maybe it
01:15:20 can work but seems like a pretty rough uh gap to to bridge oh man and also i mean it's not nice
01:15:32 to this woman right no and i really feel for her i really no you don't no don't don't even try
01:15:41 don't even try that with me brother you do not feel for her if you felt no if you felt for her
01:15:47 you wouldn't be wasting her very very fast closing fertility window that's not caring
01:15:53 no that that cuts me up i've already got a no no just don't don't give me this nonsense oh i
01:15:58 really care for her that's why i'm burning up another year of her fertility window when she's
01:16:02 only got three left so i so what i did was i i paid for it to go to therapy because i figured
01:16:12 she can sort it out we might be able to have a relationship but i don't know i don't know i guess
01:16:17 it's a long this is and i've gone back into fixing so i'm like okay what how can i change the
01:16:23 situation so that perhaps we can pair bond well are you kidding me i mean all you do is trying
01:16:27 to fix your parents of course you're trying to fix these women you exist to serve the dysfunctions
01:16:32 of others that's your job you exist to fix people which means they'll never let you fix them because
01:16:40 that's the whole point of the relationship what do you mean by that that's interesting what
01:16:44 why would you exist to fix people then you won't stay with them if they actually get fixed you just
01:16:51 go find somebody else to fix how would they know that like what hand wait wait hang on one sec
01:16:56 okay they they that's a subconscious thing right they're not consciously thinking that
01:17:03 well does it who who knows who cares and who how would you ever verify but do you know this
01:17:08 mechanics work on broken cars right
01:17:12 yeah and when the car's fixed your relationship with the mechanic ends right
01:17:18 at least for the time being right
01:17:24 so if you exist to fix people then you're going to choose broken people
01:17:28 and the only way the relationship can continue is if they never get fixed
01:17:33 because your job is to fix people
01:17:38 but i but the thing is i've learned enough to know that i don't want to do that anymore like
01:17:44 especially over the last nine months when i've been well i don't care what you claim i only
01:17:49 care about the empirical evidence of your actions and you chose a woman right now eight months ago
01:17:56 you chose a woman who's broken and you refuse to find out that she's broken although i guarantee
01:18:02 you that you knew and now you're trying to fix her by paying for her therapy yeah i try and get her
01:18:13 to listen to some shows as well uh-huh she's quite reluctant i couldn't yeah right and you
01:18:21 know why she's quite reluctant what happens if she's assertive with her family so she's assertive
01:18:29 with her family you know yeah he'll attempt to kill himself right or drive off in the night and
01:18:37 right and her mother will attack her and blame her and what are you doing and you know you know he's
01:18:42 old and he can't take it and right she'll just be crushed right yeah oh god are you going to be
01:18:51 there for her 100 no matter what doubtful so you chose this woman who's broken and now you're
01:18:57 trying to fix her in the same way because you've got this you're there for the potential you're
01:19:01 there not for the people who are you're there for the people they could be and that's from your
01:19:05 parents right i mean if you met your parents at a dinner party and you didn't have any history
01:19:11 with them would you be in a long-term relationship with them would they be your friends would they be
01:19:15 your mentors would they be your guides through life would they be somebody would they be people
01:19:19 you'd want to hang out with honestly no no of course not of course not okay so you're not
01:19:28 in the relationship with your parents for who they are but for who they could be i mean your
01:19:33 job is to fix them and repair them and make them better and bring them to the light and all that
01:19:37 right when the amount of pressure that they're facing against that is something that's kind of
01:19:42 hard for you to imagine sorry go ahead i mean the only thing i would say about my parents is they
01:19:46 they i've repealed them so much that they actually are fighting for freedoms like did a lot around
01:19:53 the vaccine stuff so they were issuing stuff to schools to say about how they shouldn't be
01:19:58 vaccinating kids and stuff so like they have the one thing that's the one thing i really do like
01:20:02 about them they've actually learned all this stuff through bitcoin they're running with it which is
01:20:08 which is good like so that's that's the only thing i would say like i actually do but that's nothing
01:20:14 to do with your relationship with them as their child and that they were your parents that could
01:20:19 be anyone oh yeah yeah yeah yeah and you know for a fact that they've been significantly
01:20:29 massively influential in your life for 40 years and you don't have a family and you don't have
01:20:35 any way of vetting women right so of course right as if i were your father i guess if i'd had you
01:20:42 when i was 17 anyway so if i was your father right and and you'd had a whole series of relationships
01:20:49 eight long-term relationships that hadn't worked out right yeah and you said hey i met a new girl
01:20:54 what would i say sure here we go again no um no what would you say how many people with this out
01:21:02 so i've just met a girl you'd probably be questioning me on every single aspect of a
01:21:08 character yeah i'd be like okay so we know that you have a bit of a habit of disappearing into
01:21:14 conformity ville right and and and not challenging or not you know being there or trying to repair or
01:21:20 trying to fix so you know we gotta you know really figure i'd like to meet her sooner rather than
01:21:24 later and let me grill her because it's tougher for you or you know i prepared a list of 15 questions
01:21:29 you could ask her i'd love to know the answers like let's make sure this doesn't happen again
01:21:33 because i love you yeah right they're doing any of that no no but they care about the vaccine for
01:21:43 other children yeah i do i do feel like a lot of that can be a distraction from what they really
01:21:49 need to do yeah well they're not this isn't they're never going to do it yeah you're 40 years
01:21:55 old if you were 14 i'd say they're never going to do it probably but at 40 you can't ever be
01:22:02 parented you know that right yeah because you're 22 you're 22 years past needing parenting
01:22:09 that's almost a quarter century your parents will never parent you yeah
01:22:18 that's why i listen to your show so much because i'm like yeah
01:22:21 well i mean i'm not sure what that means because you're still obviously hoping you can fix them
01:22:30 right yeah if they are who they are and they never will change do they have value in your life
01:22:42 do they have value in my life do they have value in your life if if by the age of 40 i assume that
01:22:49 they know you want to have a family right they also know that you waste your time
01:22:53 in lengthy relationships that go nowhere right yeah so are they helping you with that are they
01:23:01 helping you try to solve or fix that are they watching your back do they have your sex
01:23:08 so i think recently is the first time i've told them about
01:23:11 all the massive issues i'm having in this relationship in this current relationship yeah
01:23:18 and when did you how long into the relationship did you tell them
01:23:23 seven months okay so they spent seven months watching you date without ever asking any
01:23:31 foundational questions yeah yeah okay so listen i mean it sounds like you want to be a mommy and
01:23:40 daddy's boy until they're dead and you know i mean i know that sounds kind of condemnatory i don't
01:23:47 mean it that way i mean you've got parents who either do you think they don't know that you've
01:23:54 dated a bunch of women they know that right yeah they also know that you want a family right
01:24:00 yeah 100 okay so they don't care they don't care about you enough
01:24:06 to watch your back when you get into a relationship or you're interested in a relationship
01:24:12 and look if that's okay with you i i mean i'm not i don't think it's wise but i'm not going to tell
01:24:23 you how to live i don't ever tell anyone how to live but i'm just telling you that they don't
01:24:28 care about you enough to help you avoid these kinds of messes and then you're 40
01:24:34 why how do they not care like how i mean yeah i can see it i can see it i just well i don't know
01:24:46 how i i could care less about i'm just talking about the empirical evidence yeah yeah that after
01:24:51 eight failed relationships they're not asking you or giving you any vetting on your ninth one
01:24:58 yeah they're not okay so they're not what what about your sister is she watching your back at
01:25:08 all is she covering your blind spots or keeping an eye out for where you may go astray same sort
01:25:15 of thing i've only just sort of really brought up the issues no it's not about you bringing it up
01:25:21 oh yeah yeah sorry that she no they should be pro oh did you meet someone tell me she hasn't done
01:25:26 any deep inquiry no okay has she done shallow inquiry we can play this game as long as you want
01:25:31 it's your time i honestly can't remember okay so she hasn't vetted any women either
01:25:39 so when you have people around you who just claim to love you so much
01:25:48 and they keep watching you walk into disaster after disaster after disaster and don't lift
01:25:52 a fucking finger to intervene you are not surrounded by people who love you you're not
01:25:58 you're surrounded by people who are sabotaging you through bottomless indifference i'll just
01:26:03 be frank with you and that's because they don't want a quality woman i don't know why i don't
01:26:09 care why okay okay i don't care why trying to plumb their motives is irrelevant and you'll
01:26:15 never know because they won't admit to it and they won't tell you the truth even if they did
01:26:18 so there's no point yeah there's no point all we do is look at the evidence
01:26:23 you know if someone roofies your drink and you go to the er does it matter if the doctor knows
01:26:29 the motive of the guy who who roofied you no no it's like oh i i can't treat the poison until i
01:26:36 know the cause uh what what's the motive guys disappeared into the night you'll probably never
01:26:42 find him again then you just die right i don't care about motive i care about evidence and lord
01:26:48 knows we've got almost a quarter century of evidence of you as an adult wandering into
01:26:53 relationship after failed relationship after failed relationship and people still aren't
01:26:58 vetting anyone or anything or asking you any tough questions that's why you're calling me right yeah
01:27:04 because you're desperate to find out even a hint or a scrap of what it means for someone to actually
01:27:08 care about you 100 yeah all right so you were raised by people who are sabotaging you
01:27:16 even if they don't know it they are yeah
01:27:22 i don't know what they know what they don't know that doesn't matter just they are like
01:27:27 it's the motives the motives are irrelevant it's empirical yeah you know if if every time
01:27:33 a friend of mine drives in the rain he crashes right yeah and and he says i'm gonna go drive
01:27:42 in the rain and i'm like okay go ahead what am i doing yeah yeah you'd want him to crash
01:27:52 you'd want him to cry so every time your family doesn't vet your girlfriends
01:28:02 you waste more time and end up more heartbroken
01:28:04 and so they're not they're still not vetting your girlfriend so they know exactly what's
01:28:11 going to happen and so they're behind it they support it they want it they're they're keen on
01:28:14 it and again i don't care why maybe because their marriage is fucked up and they don't want to see
01:28:22 you happy maybe because if you meet a quality woman the quality woman would look at your
01:28:25 parents and say holy shit these people were vetting your girlfriends for 15 for 25 years
01:28:31 these people were vetting your girlfriends and you ended up with this
01:28:34 anemic series of endless relationships that failed holy crap i don't want these people around my kids
01:28:40 these people did you the most harm of anyone they've never really deeply apologized or taken
01:28:46 ownership and they've never made restitution to the point where they're actually helping you
01:28:50 i don't want them around my kids oh man why why if i love you why would i want to spend time with
01:29:00 people who've done the greatest harm to you of anyone i can't both love you and like your parents
01:29:05 at all can someone love you and also love the people the unrepentant people who've done you
01:29:21 the greatest harm no of course not so to chase your parents approval you have to chase incompatible
01:29:35 women women who are not assertive women who won't call your parents out on stuff women who won't
01:29:40 stand up for you women who won't love you because you have an imaginary bond with your parents
01:29:48 you can't have a real bond with a quality woman
01:29:50 here's the i would say the one person that did that was the therapist
01:29:57 she um
01:30:01 she did call out a lot of stuff
01:30:06 yeah i don't know what calling out means
01:30:16 um
01:30:18 ah man just give me two seconds i'm just trying to collect my thoughts here um
01:30:27 so obviously as a therapist she could see dysfunction really easily
01:30:36 but at the same time she had it with her family um
01:30:44 so i think yeah she could see it in my family she had it with hers as well but she sorry
01:30:50 she had a messed up she had messed up relations with her family oh my god the therapist was
01:30:57 severe okay so you understand then that she can't date an assertive guy who really cares about her
01:31:04 because an assertive guy who really cares about her would say what if she has really messed up
01:31:09 parents it's the same thing again yeah i don't want my kids around this oh my god you know i
01:31:14 because i care about you i don't want to see you harmed by other people and these people are still
01:31:21 harming you they harmed you in the past they're unrepentant they're not making restitution
01:31:25 and i i care about you so i don't want to see you around these people no i can't you know i can't
01:31:34 obviously command you i oh you can't do this you can't do that but i'm telling you i won't be around
01:31:41 them i don't want to see you after you've been around them because it takes you a while to even
01:31:46 recover and i'll tell you this that if we're having kids i mean if we get together and have kids
01:31:52 there's no way i'm having these freaks in my life like there's no way i mean it's bad for you bad
01:31:57 for our marriage bad for our kids no see that was that's my biggest concern as well with the women
01:32:03 dating because like i can't imagine my kids being around him like his energy is oh the threatened
01:32:09 suicide dad yeah like he i could not i couldn't yeah i was just i was literally when she told me
01:32:16 that i was like oh my god this you couldn't have your kids around him you couldn't like okay but
01:32:23 sorry why is that a concern but if i was gonna have kids of her then no will you have kids
01:32:33 with a woman who still has this quote bond with her parents would you invite these people in
01:32:40 to be the grandparents of your children no i know i know okay so then why are you dating her
01:32:47 if you're not going to marry her and you're not going to have children with her
01:32:55 and you're not going to confront her on this because she's never done therapy and she's 35
01:33:00 right yeah so what that means of course is that she's got a lot of years ahead of her
01:33:07 it also means that she has been postponing dealing with this stuff for probably 20 years right
01:33:12 and i can understand that because she's been held hostage by an emotional terrorist for 35 years
01:33:23 no it's so bad she's a hostage she's not a child right oh my god it's
01:33:30 it's heinous it's heinous well i mean it is heinous and i obviously have great sympathy for her
01:33:39 but she chose not to deal with it yeah this is this is another thing that i'm trying to get
01:33:47 into my head it's like i have massive empathy for her on a situation and then i'm like right i'm
01:33:54 gonna try and fix everything but at the same time no massive empathy for her as a child
01:33:58 massive empathy for her as a child because then you have choices as an adult yeah as an adult
01:34:05 i mean she's a teacher right yeah right as a teacher self-knowledge is essential
01:34:17 yeah make sure you're not projecting or recreating your trauma in the children
01:34:20 yeah you said her job was very stressful right oh like it's beyond she's got migraines every day
01:34:30 right so her job is probably quite stressful because she's not able to be
01:34:33 assertive and she's not able to be assertive because she's let herself be held hostage for
01:34:39 15 years i mean she knew she had a messed up family she chose not to read any books or go
01:34:48 to any therapy and like i'm sorry i just i i don't have any patients dr phil's on tv everybody knows
01:34:55 psychologists therapists everybody knows about all of this stuff and so i have about as much sympathy
01:35:02 as i do for a 35 year old smoker who develops a terrible cough it's like yeah it's a bad thing
01:35:06 you've got that cough but you did choose to smoke so why why do i have such a big problem with
01:35:11 giving responsibility back to them oh because your parents won't accept responsibility
01:35:17 because if your parents accepted responsibility they'd say well both our kids were on
01:35:27 antidepressants uh is your sister married yeah she's got a kid okay so there's something but
01:35:34 our son who's wanted family for a long time keeps having these serial fails relationships
01:35:39 we have to sit down with him and really sort through this stuff no matter what no matter
01:35:44 how painful it is because we care about him and caring about people is it's not you know we had
01:35:49 great fun at this theme park caring about people is when it's really really hard that's when you
01:35:55 do it right and so your parents uh you know they just get away with all of this avoidance and
01:36:01 oh you know we have sympathy but they won't do the hard work to dig in and figure out what's
01:36:05 going wrong with your relationships and how it pertains to them so they won't take responsibility
01:36:11 and i guarantee you that the price of you being in a quote relationship with them is never assigning
01:36:15 them responsibility sorry can you just say that last sentence again the price of being in a quote
01:36:24 relationship with your parents is never assigning them responsibility yeah so if you were to say
01:36:29 listen guys guys i'm 40 years old for the past quarter century i've been getting involved in
01:36:37 relationships with women where i'm not assertive now this has something to do with my childhood i
01:36:41 get all of that but you know i'm an adult now why don't you help me why don't you ask me questions
01:36:47 why you know you claim to care about me why don't you help me sort this out why am i just flying
01:36:53 blind here why is nobody watching my back say oh well you know we didn't want to interfere
01:36:57 when we you're an adult now you know you know what's best for you right yeah i'm pretty sure
01:37:02 that's what they would say yeah i get it i get it oh you know every time my friend drives in
01:37:10 the rain he gets into a car crash and he he says he wants to go drive in the rain i'm like well
01:37:14 i don't want to interfere i know you know what's best for you i don't want to interfere as we don't
01:37:20 have a relationship all relationships are about interfering or at least giving your opinion
01:37:26 yeah and conflict i remember you saying that the other day you can't avoid conflict in your
01:37:31 i'm not talking about toxic conflict but you're gonna have some degree of conflict right see
01:37:38 your parents should have many many many years ago sat everyone in the family down and said okay look
01:37:46 things are not working you guys are on antidepressants you know we've really got to dig
01:37:50 in and figure out what's going on and actually i've got a story about that i don't want to change
01:37:55 the subject but when my sister went on to antidepressants for the first time
01:37:58 she came back from university and she was like really down and they said i hope it's not going
01:38:05 to be like this for the next three weeks when she was sad so it's kind of like holy shit she told
01:38:09 she told me that recently and i was just i couldn't believe what she told me yeah and that's
01:38:14 that's shockingly cold i mean even by british standards that's shockingly cold
01:38:18 yeah i couldn't believe it
01:38:20 so and this is the other thing too i mean your unhappiness is inconvenient to me the impatience the sighing the eye rolling and oh fine okay you know but but other people's misery that i created is really inconvenient to me
01:38:42 oh i mean you know it's like some guy gets punched in the face while he's sleeping and then the
01:38:49 guy who punched him is really angry because he got blood on the sheets
01:38:52 yeah yeah right so that's the level of sympathy right you're you you were depressed in your 20s
01:39:00 your early 20s you said your sister was depressed coming out of uni and you guys are both on
01:39:05 antidepressants this is not at all enough for your parents to say let's sit down and try and sort out
01:39:11 what's going on right yeah some believe on
01:39:15 okay so i mean again if if that's where you want to live that's how you're going to live
01:39:22 if you want to live in a place where nobody really intervenes to care for you or to watch
01:39:32 your back or to see the things that you can't easily see which we all need we all need that
01:39:36 right we all we can we don't have eyes in the back of our head right so we all need people to
01:39:41 help us do the 360. yeah. so that's going to absolutely condition
01:39:48 the women you choose and you will forever choose women who won't threaten your parents
01:39:55 because in your mind you're always in that car going to the woods with your dad when you're seven
01:40:06 after you stuck a pencil in some kid you're always hanging by a thread
01:40:10 and that level of emotional terrorism can be quite crippling
01:40:16 and if you want to live life trying to fix your childhood
01:40:22 all you do is ruin your adulthood your childhood can't be fixed because it's gone
01:40:27 you know you're like the the kid who who is a little short because he didn't eat too much he
01:40:33 says well i'll just eat more now we just get fat can't go back in time and get enough food when
01:40:38 you were a kid if you had a friend who rolled their eyes and was impatient at your sister's
01:40:46 depression would that person be your friend no god no okay so what are you doing do you think
01:40:56 that philosophy stops at the family no i mean i guess traditionally it kind of has but that's
01:41:03 not what i talk about i totally get it universal principles are universal and then you say like
01:41:09 every relation every relationship is voluntary and family yeah it's um well i mean if if
01:41:13 your if a friend of yours was impatient at your sister's depression oh hope she's not gonna be
01:41:19 like this for the next couple of weeks you'd be like whoa bro she's really unhappy like have some
01:41:24 compassion right but what if it what if it was the person who'd actually cause her unhappiness
01:41:28 who was impatient with her unhappiness what if somebody smashed her leg and then complained
01:41:35 that she was hobbling about what would you think of someone like that would they be your friend
01:41:42 no well what are you doing then
01:41:48 oh good lord they even cause problems over at christmas you know i'm just
01:41:53 yeah it's just unbelievable
01:41:58 you know what's great about bitcoin is it's an objective universal standard that's not subject
01:42:09 to human whims and greed and cut and manipulation right and corruption yeah okay so just bitcoin up
01:42:18 your moral standards in your relationships make them independent of human corruption and manipulation
01:42:23 so i make my relationships independent of corruption and manipulation
01:42:31 no you make the standards in your relationships independent of corruption and manipulation and
01:42:36 history i mean we don't say bitcoin has no value because it's only 16 years old right or 15 years
01:42:43 old it's a new objective universal standard that vastly supplants the manipulated currency
01:42:50 of fiat right yeah yeah okay so
01:42:53 bitcoin has value because it's new it's universal
01:42:59 and can't be corrupted well that's having moral standards in relationships that's the bitcoin of
01:43:06 relationships and you're literally like somebody who's saying well we've always had fiat so we
01:43:10 always have to have fiat well my parents have always done this they've always been my parents
01:43:17 so i have to right okay but then if you have that and again i don't know what you should do
01:43:25 i'm just trying to give you the costs and benefits yeah yeah that if you have people who are brutal
01:43:33 and indifferent to you and your sister in your life that is going to condition everyone you date
01:43:40 and it has done that consistently and universally for the past 25 years
01:43:46 oh man this is bad it's bad to have an answer weren't you calling for an answer
01:43:55 i know i'm not oh no this is brilliant i just what is what has gone on before is bad wouldn't
01:44:03 it be bad to have no clue what was going wrong oh yeah don't get me wrong this is amazing but i'm
01:44:07 just like just the sheer brunt of it and i can also tell you exactly what your next impulse is
01:44:13 going to be if you want please oh i gotta go fix things with my parents now i gotta go have
01:44:21 another conversation with my parents i gotta oh my god i am
01:44:34 you're in your fifth decade with your parents nothing's going to change
01:44:39 now maybe if you threaten them and i'm never going to see you if you don't go to therapy
01:44:45 maybe you can get them to do something that they wouldn't normally do in the same way you can
01:44:49 pay for your girlfriend to go to therapy right so maybe you could but it's never going to come
01:44:54 organically from them they're never going to want to do it they're just going to conform
01:44:57 under threat they can actually resent that can they because then you make things conditional or
01:45:03 well they'll just be blow back and they'll they'll get you some other way back and all that yeah
01:45:08 they are who they are they're not going to change see i've never had someone tell me
01:45:15 the [ __ ] like this like this is i know that's why i'm trying to give you a sense of what it
01:45:20 is for someone to actually care about you yeah but it's just brutal it's brutal in the best kind of
01:45:26 way i wouldn't expect it to be any different no it's it's only brutal for the dysfunctional people
01:45:32 in your life yeah yeah yeah and i'm not i honestly love this i just man i'm just i've got to sort [ __ ]
01:45:40 out i really have got to sort stuff out okay what does that mean what do you what is sorting stuff
01:45:44 out mean to you i've got to well i know what i gotta do with like see you're saying like having
01:46:01 not having that relationship my parents is the key to
01:46:03 sorting out my relations with women because obviously like yeah they're setting the standard
01:46:09 for all my relationships you need people in your life who are going to watch out for your blind
01:46:16 spots i mean we all need that right yeah i mean you say you give advice to your friends
01:46:20 so you're watching their blind spots right yeah and
01:46:28 you need to vet very seriously especially at your age
01:46:35 yeah because you're going to get women in their 30s right yeah and i'm going to be honest like
01:46:41 ever since i've been listening to these shows over the last nine months i've literally
01:46:47 knowing what i know now i just i don't think i would recreate this you don't think what i don't
01:46:54 think i would recreate this situation i would have to vet so heavily right right you have to vet heavily
01:47:00 in particular because you're 40 and in particular because you're good looking and in particular
01:47:06 because you're doing well in your career right yeah and the other thing that i've learned like
01:47:10 the thing the most one of the most profound things i heard you say recently is like you don't fall in
01:47:13 love with the person it's their values and like that that blew me away because like
01:47:18 yeah i think that's something that i've completely overlooked in the past
01:47:24 like it's not so much the person it's what you you you you fall in lust with their need
01:47:32 with women
01:47:34 so you know she's stressed she gets migraines she has problems with her family and you're like
01:47:43 i'm gonna fix her i'm gonna like she needs right
01:47:46 i mean finding a woman who doesn't need fixing finding a woman who's doing great
01:47:56 who's doing well who's competent right and i dream about it i just i need that i need that
01:48:01 and like the biggest problem you need to be competent if you want somebody competent you
01:48:07 need to be competent like if you want to play a really good tennis player you have to become a
01:48:13 really good tennis player and to become competent means that you have to vet i mean i don't know if
01:48:21 you've hired people in your life i'm sure you have but you don't just hire everyone who walks in
01:48:25 right you vet you call the references you right check the education you all that stuff right
01:48:33 and most women who are still single in their mid-30s are still single for a very good reason
01:48:37 and that reason is very important to understand now i met my wife in my 30s so it's not impossible
01:48:43 obviously right but it's very skeptical i was gonna ask you about this because i was reading
01:48:49 this in your book the thing i was wondering right like at what point do you know like even if these
01:48:56 things come up in a relationship with a woman like at what point do you know when to cut and
01:49:01 when to run like when do you know it's someone that you can work with and actually help them
01:49:06 and lead them in the right direction generate their own thoughts and preferences and if they
01:49:11 circle back yeah so we're all going to do things that are annoying or minorly hurtful or whatever
01:49:18 to other people that's going to happen does it sit with them do they come back later that day
01:49:24 and say you know i i was really thinking about this and right or this kind of passive and drag
01:49:29 through life like a fish on a hook right do they have their own conscience do they have their own
01:49:33 mode of power do they have their own thoughts do they have their own independent consciousness or
01:49:38 are they just basically trying to get away with whatever they get away with
01:49:40 now your parents they do what they can get away with right yeah and
01:49:48 your girlfriend sounds like she's kind of passive because she was bullied into atoms
01:49:57 by this psycho dad who threatens to kill himself if she
01:50:00 tries to set up any reasonable boundaries right oh yeah sympathy for that as a kid right
01:50:04 yeah and i'm constantly trying to shake her out of that um right just as you're constantly trying
01:50:13 to shake your parents out of that but you can't be the mode of power for someone else
01:50:19 you know it's like the old flintstones cartoon you know they had this car that you had to
01:50:25 run on the ground right you're getting it's like oh you don't have an engine i'll push
01:50:30 yeah but pushing for two is invalidating the other person and pushing for two is saying
01:50:38 to the other person you can't ever have your own mode of power yeah do they have their own thoughts
01:50:45 do they have their own conscience do they have did they process for themselves
01:50:52 their thoughts and experience and do they circle back and check in and
01:50:55 right i mean all that kind of stuff otherwise you have to do the whole relationship for two right
01:51:00 i know like the one thing she says is like she doesn't really work on like a project when we
01:51:06 so when the trigger comes up like the first thing instinctually i was like right there's been an
01:51:11 emotional conflict we need to resolve this we need to find out like why you're triggered what
01:51:15 it relates to in your past like so i just want to go into inquiry into like all of it and she just
01:51:21 goes defensive and says like she feels like she's being worked on like a project and like i won't
01:51:27 love her until she's fixed and stuff like this and um well but you uh you are you've been in therapy
01:51:33 10 years ago right so you're you're smart enough and wise enough and knowledgeable enough to know
01:51:39 that if you push her to become assertive she's going to be threatened by her father with death
01:51:49 right her father's going to threaten to kill himself or whatever right it's funny i've never
01:51:53 made that connection but i totally get what you mean yeah yeah it's going to happen and whether
01:51:57 it happens explicitly or implicitly or something like that right and she's obviously terrified
01:52:01 of that right of course yeah yeah yeah i get it well and she's terrified because she's let it
01:52:06 terrify her and i understand that i have great sympathy for that but she's also let it continue
01:52:14 and she hasn't gone to therapy and hasn't had someone in her corner to help her deal with this
01:52:19 for like you know 15 years or whatever right it's in 20 to 35 she's avoided dealing with this and
01:52:24 she's just appeased and bowed down and conformed and let the emotional terrorist run and ruin her
01:52:29 life right yeah and she's not angry at her mother for not intervening and she's not right i don't
01:52:36 know if she's got any siblings but yeah i mean she's basically been left alone with this emotional
01:52:40 terrorist and she's chosen to bow down and conform and you know i can sort of understand
01:52:46 the reasoning but she's still responsible for that yeah it's savage i just um this is where
01:52:55 i get stuck i just feel for them so much i do genuinely feel and then i'm just like i need
01:53:00 to help them but it's like yeah i've got to get out of that it's like because she's an adult
01:53:03 she's made decisions that have put herself here as well it's like after a child to help them
01:53:10 okay but you know fuck that frankly who's helping you
01:53:13 okay if helping others let's say let's upb this mofo right
01:53:18 so if helping others is such a great thing who's helping you
01:53:22 um i hire people no no i mean in your personal life right helping others helping your parents
01:53:30 helping your girlfriends helping others okay so it's a universal value got to really help people
01:53:35 helping people is is great right okay so who's helping you um not that many people no okay who
01:53:45 in your personal life is helping you so my friends when i was dating the therapist they pointed out
01:53:54 a lot of the issues i was having and i took it on board but i continued the relationship so they
01:54:01 did point out to me that i should be a lot happier that wasn't good like they saw that i was really
01:54:07 depressed and said you know it shouldn't be like this so like they did point out okay that's not
01:54:13 particularly i need you to up your standards on what it means to be cared for so if you were dating
01:54:20 some messed up therapist and it was consuming your heart-minded soul i would say to you you have to
01:54:26 stop this and i can't have a friendship with you like and if you say well i'm going to keep going
01:54:31 i'll be like but you have to go without me then i can't watch you do this to yourself it's too
01:54:35 painful like if you're going to be that unwise or that consumed with lust or obligation i can't
01:54:42 support that yeah it would be like if you asked me to come and rob a bank with you i'd be like no
01:54:48 don't rob a bank right and if you decided to go i'm like well you got to go without me
01:54:53 yeah because it's almost like endorsing their behavior by remaining their friend right
01:55:00 right of course yeah you're saying well you know i think you're doing this self-destructive thing
01:55:04 and you're going to get really hurt by this and you don't respect me as a friend enough to change
01:55:09 your behavior when i make a good case and then since you don't really care about me enough and
01:55:14 you only care about lust for this therapist woman or obligation or whatever and if my reasonable
01:55:20 case for values and morals is ignored by you then we don't we're not we don't have much of a friendship
01:55:28 yeah
01:55:29 yeah that's next so that's really standing for someone isn't it yeah really is
01:55:42 yeah that is yeah properly and you say because you're still defining it as caring about people
01:55:52 but it's not how many women have you hurt by not committing to them yeah it's honestly this is the
01:56:01 thing that how many years of women's life have you wasted you think this is caring
01:56:07 and it doesn't really fundamentally have to do with the women at all it only has to do
01:56:14 with your parents and their needs you're serving your parents
01:56:19 you're serving your parents by not bonding with quality women
01:56:24 so you may say well i'm just so empathetic and i care so much it's like nope
01:56:30 no you don't i can't let you reframe that as a virtue
01:56:36 yeah i don't want to hurt any more women i think that would be a good start
01:56:48 yeah
01:56:49 choosing these women that are really broken and then being superior to them does not elevate them
01:56:58 right you saying to your current girlfriend well you're really broken i've been i did therapy like
01:57:04 10 years ago maybe you can start right now do you think that elevates her she always says
01:57:10 she feels inferior to me right because you are avoiding your own inferiority to your parents by
01:57:16 pretending to be superior to your girlfriends wait wait that's interesting i i mean avoiding
01:57:22 my inferiority to my parents yeah you're avoiding feeling inferior to your parents
01:57:30 because you're with them because of reasons of power and history not virtue and happiness
01:57:35 so you're avoiding feelings of inferiority to your parents that they boss and rule you based
01:57:41 on history and aggression and so you then compensate for that feeling of helplessness
01:57:48 and powerlessness by lording it over dysfunctional girlfriends and feeling stronger and superior to
01:57:53 them
01:58:10 because of course a strong and capable woman would say i don't like your parents
01:58:15 and i don't want to spend time with them i don't think it's healthy for you to spend time with them
01:58:20 because they're not going to change and they were abusive and you know they roll their eyes at your
01:58:26 sister and they won't take any responsibility really for the harm that they've done and they
01:58:30 won't make restitution and they won't go to therapy so yeah i don't want to spend time around them
01:58:36 now she would then push you into a state of crisis right
01:58:38 yeah and then would you feel strong and empowered and confident
01:58:45 is this the current girlfriend i'm sorry sorry who would push me into crisis so if you had a
01:58:59 confident girlfriend a strong moral and confident girlfriend who really cared about you yeah she
01:59:04 would say i don't like your parents i don't want to spend any time with them i don't think it's
01:59:09 very healthy for you to spend time with them and they're never going to be around my kids
01:59:12 right that would push you into some kind of confrontation with your parents right
01:59:17 yeah or some sort of decision around your parents right yeah yeah absolutely now would you feel
01:59:24 stronger or weaker being pushed into that position obviously weaker weaker right now
01:59:30 you won't want to avoid that feeling of weakness or rather your parents the feeling of weakness
01:59:35 and helplessness in a relationship is absolutely essential to experience because it's incredibly
01:59:40 liberating like once i realized i was completely helpless in my relationship with my mother
01:59:46 incredibly liberating so you actually do want to experience that helplessness but your parents
01:59:52 don't want you to experience that helplessness because when you experience that helplessness
01:59:56 you give up and you recognize that the only quote relationship is entirely on their terms at your
02:00:03 expense you can't tell the truth you can't be honest you can't be direct you can't be assertive
02:00:08 you can't get your needs met it's all on their terms it's all what they want and nothing on
02:00:14 what you want right yeah now you avoid strong women so strong women don't push you in confrontation
02:00:23 with your parents that's what i mean when i say you avoid your helplessness with your parents
02:00:31 by pretending to be superior to your girlfriends so you choose these under functioning people so
02:00:39 that you can feel superior and wiser and stronger and better but then you can't commit to them and
02:00:45 then you claim it's about caring come on i said i can i just bring up one thing here so the therapist
02:00:53 she would constantly say that i wasn't involved enough for her so it's almost like
02:00:59 she felt superior to me in that relationship
02:01:05 well she kept you on the back foot so you didn't confront her about her parents
02:01:12 and i actually spoke to her recently and she's actually just
02:01:14 not seeing her parents anymore and did she apologize to you for anything that she said
02:01:22 yeah she did okay that's good she she um yeah she she said that she projected so much
02:01:29 anger towards her dad onto me and she's really sorry and she um but yeah she genuinely
02:01:37 yeah so but she's she has actually just made that decision she's finally
02:01:40 never not seeing her parents anymore well her mom's dead but her step mom and dad yeah right okay
02:01:48 so neither of you were able to
02:01:53 care about the other to avoid to help the other person avoid getting hurt
02:02:03 it was um yeah that relationship really hurt it was um
02:02:08 i mean yeah she had a 4c ptsd breakdown during it it was just so
02:02:16 she had a what a c like a ptsd breakdown during the relationship she um
02:02:25 it's weird like something really weird happened like we um
02:02:31 so i thought it would help the relationship and this is completely voluntary so i started to pay
02:02:35 i gave her some money so that she could take time off work so we could focus on
02:02:38 trying to resolve problems in a relationship because it was like it was getting quite
02:02:42 stressful and i was like look if i buy some time and space and this is my decision she didn't push
02:02:47 me into it she was actually a bit reluctant because she had a grandfather that financially
02:02:52 manipulated her mother so she was kind of skeptical but i was like come on let's do it i'm
02:02:56 happy to do it um and at the time as as soon as i did that she her whole like her whole body just
02:03:04 went into like ptsd like she she could barely walk like she couldn't sleep for like three or
02:03:10 four nights in a row oh this is like your mother when you were honest just some physical thing
02:03:15 right oh no this went on for ages like it was it was unbelievable it was um it's like her whole
02:03:22 body went into shock and it just went on for months and months and months what do you mean
02:03:28 i don't know what you mean by her whole body went into shock that's not very medical to me
02:03:32 yeah i i honestly it was the strangest thing i've ever seen she had to she couldn't sleep for like
02:03:37 three or four nights in a row her nervous system was just she couldn't regulate her nervous system
02:03:41 her whole body went stiff to the point where she could barely walk up a flight of stairs because
02:03:47 so how long ago was this um this was 2021 and how old is she
02:03:55 she's 36 so she's 36 you want a family and you're dating someone like this
02:04:06 but this but this yeah but it wasn't like that at the beginning it just um i was shocked i was like
02:04:14 and she's done loads and this is the thing she'd done loads of work on herself like she'd done two
02:04:17 decades of work on herself and like every single modality healing modality you could ever imagine
02:04:22 so i was just like thinking that she'd be on top of everything and obviously as well she was
02:04:27 my emotional confidant when we were doing therapy so i thought you know like she's someone that
02:04:32 understands all this stuff and she's on top of it but as soon as we're dating she just like fell
02:04:37 apart like it was just holy shit wait i'm sorry i thought you didn't you said you didn't know this
02:04:41 at the beginning but now you're saying that it was as soon as you were dating um no it's about
02:04:46 four months in no yeah it's during sorry about about four months in you tell her i'll pay for
02:04:52 you to take time off i think it was about four to six months in yeah okay a couple of months
02:04:58 in you're saying i'll pay for you to take time off yeah are there no competent women left in
02:05:08 england i don't know your ability to find these people is really quite something but she was like
02:05:14 like on the flip side right she was really clued up on a lot of stuff like we had really deep
02:05:23 interesting conversations she was no like no no no no come on come on man she has a ptsd reaction
02:05:31 that lasts for months and you're gonna try and tell me that she was real deep into self-knowledge
02:05:36 and all that yeah i've tried to get her to listen to you i keep sending her links
02:05:42 what you're still sending your links now um
02:05:46 like oh you're still trying to fix her how long did you guys go out for 18 months 18 months okay
02:05:56 i mean we've known each other for 10 years it's not like well you didn't know her that well if
02:06:03 both you and her were surprised by this meltdown yeah i i didn't realize yeah it was to do with
02:06:11 sexual abuse and i didn't know that like oh you didn't know she'd been sexually abused
02:06:15 no she was sexually abused at three and i never knew that until i was in a relationship
02:06:22 and but she knew that
02:06:24 yeah yeah 100 yeah and she didn't tell you as you were getting into the relationship
02:06:32 i think it was about a month maybe three or four weeks in because she would um
02:06:38 yeah she asked me if i wanted to continue knowing that and i said yeah i mean she should tell you
02:06:47 at the beginning it was i mean in fairness it was close to the beginning it was it was
02:06:54 he wasn't already had sex yeah okay so after you've already had sex she then tells you about
02:07:00 her history of sexual abuse yeah we had and did she know that she had this amount of unprocessed
02:07:08 trauma that she was going into a meltdown mode for months um did she did she know about like did she
02:07:19 i think is i feel like she felt like she dealt with it like that's the impression i got because
02:07:25 she'd done so much healing and that's what i think is wrong right yeah yeah yeah
02:07:32 yeah i don't know man it's very risky stuff that you're doing by the way just wanted to
02:07:41 mention this as we get to the closing end of this part of the conversation or this conversation
02:07:46 it's very risky stuff man sooner or later you're going to kick over a real bunny boiler
02:07:50 it's just a matter of time really you're going to get a stalker you're going to get someone who's
02:07:58 going to give you false accusations and you like sooner or later man if you keep playing this
02:08:03 night rescue guy you're gonna you're gonna run into a woman who's gonna swallow you whole
02:08:15 yeah i don't even yeah yeah
02:08:18 well i gotta sort it out i've gotta sort it out i gotta sort it out well just i mean
02:08:26 have universal standards yeah if you wouldn't hang out with a friend who was contemptuous of
02:08:34 your sister's struggles with depression that tells you all you need to know about your parents
02:08:39 and if you would hang out with a friend like that then you know you can continue to see your parents
02:08:45 but that's the standard you're going to have i mean this philosophy right philosophy is you have
02:08:53 standards or you don't but at least be honest about it if you say like if you're going to say
02:08:58 yeah people who are contemptuous about the pain they've inflicted on others particularly children
02:09:04 that's fine with me i can hang with them okay that's i mean i respect that as far as honesty goes
02:09:11 i really do philosophy just tells you to be honest that if it's like well my parents aren't
02:09:18 that valuable but i'm too scared to confront them and i i don't want to set up any moral
02:09:23 boundaries and you know maybe maybe year 41 of knowing them will be way better than the last 40
02:09:28 years like no just just be honest right that these i'll have crappy standards for these people
02:09:35 knowing that that's going to have a ripple effect on all my relationships
02:09:41 it's like being in business and saying well of my 10 customers i'll only cheat three of them
02:09:45 oh man that's the crooks bit isn't it you can't i mean you either have standard of cheating or not
02:09:53 right and so if you say well i'll have crappy standards for my parents then that's just going
02:09:58 to have it's just going to have a ripple effect on all your relationships and that's your choice
02:10:02 i mean i'm not going to tell you what to do but i am going to tell you the effects of your choices
02:10:08 i think that's the irony as well as i have such high standards in every other part of my life
02:10:14 and it's like well you have high standards in the parts of your life that are working well right
02:10:19 yeah and you have low standards in the parts of your life that are working badly
02:10:24 which is exactly what philosophy would predict right yeah yeah
02:10:35 yeah i assume that you're in a fairly male-oriented business world
02:10:41 um yeah i'm four-time bitcoin yeah so you're in a male space right yeah yeah right so i would
02:10:52 imagine that most of the emotional manipulation that you had as a kid came from your mother
02:10:56 which is why your male space works well and your female space works so badly
02:11:03 yeah i think one of the big things as well was when she got upset i'd have to go and comfort
02:11:07 my mom so like i'd put in a boundary she'd go and cry in the room and then i'd have to
02:11:11 go and comfort her or she wouldn't stop crying would your father encourage you to do that
02:11:15 so what had the pattern was i would upset i'd put in a boundary mama get upset dad
02:11:22 would get angry that was the constant pattern that played out right okay yeah so for you
02:11:32 assertiveness
02:11:33 is rejection assertiveness is a break of the bond assertiveness is pain so your parents were
02:11:43 strongly conditioning you to be terrified and hostile to
02:11:48 any reasonable standards or virtues or values yeah
02:12:00 and you know if that's going to be okay with you then you're just going to keep having these kinds
02:12:04 of relationships with women i mean they'll probably get worse and worse over time because
02:12:08 your conscience i mean again and also your conscience will get to you because you're not
02:12:12 doing these women any favors at all you're you're kind of parasiting off their helplessness so that
02:12:17 you can feel better and stronger and that's gonna have a sort of cumulative effect on your own
02:12:23 conscience and it may not be too much further down the road that that's gonna be a place you can't
02:12:28 return from i'm sorry and this is i remember you saying this the other day about when your conscious
02:12:35 catches up with you and i just yeah i don't want to get to that point it's like when you said like
02:12:39 when you when you finally go too far the devil shows itself right right yeah i mean when it's
02:12:46 too late to turn turn back yeah then then all of your bad mistakes will be made clear to you for
02:12:52 sure yeah for sure like like you know the smokers who quit smoking after the lung cancer diagnosis
02:12:57 and then they look at all of their former ashtrays with hatred and revulsion right
02:13:00 i just don't i don't feel like i did any of this on purpose like i didn't go out to her
02:13:05 like i didn't you know i'm gonna this purpose thing right um
02:13:12 yeah it isn't empirically that's what i've done yeah you're right well hang on hang on
02:13:19 so you got a fair mind blast of new information and perspectives in this call right
02:13:24 yeah to say the least okay so how on earth do you know what your motives are when you're in the two
02:13:29 hours of being tossed around like a leaf in a storm right i mean you've got a couple of weeks if
02:13:34 not months of thinking about this kind of stuff and being brutally honest with yourself so can
02:13:40 you wave a magic wand called i'm innocent of bad motives right in the middle of this maelstrom of
02:13:46 new information no you're right you're right i just uh how could you know
02:13:50 you have this thing it's like well i can wave this magic wand called
02:14:01 there's no ill intent right that's your big magic one but that's also what traps you
02:14:05 but i just want to wave that magic wand and you say well i had no ill intent or my parents had
02:14:11 no ill intent or they didn't mean to or it's not conscious or whatever like then that just
02:14:15 traps you i get that i get that well because then you're kind of being mean if you have standards
02:14:25 when somebody is just look if somebody makes a mistake and you punish them for it that's kind
02:14:30 of mean right yeah you know it would be yeah right so so what you do is you reframe this magical
02:14:38 intent thing so that other people can be perceived as just making mistakes or being blind or unaware
02:14:44 or you know lacking knowledge or whatever it is and then and then for you to have any boundaries
02:14:49 would be like shaming a child learning how to walk for falling down
02:14:54 i mean they're not trying to fall down it just happens
02:14:58 so i i'd be really wary of this big magic wand you've got called no ill intent how the hell do
02:15:10 you know i mean okay yeah i totally get what you're saying and it doesn't matter i mean first
02:15:21 of all you can't say that about anyone right but that but that i don't know but that can happen on
02:15:28 a subconscious level then right because i would never i've never thought to myself i'm gonna go
02:15:32 into this relationship and try and mess this woman up like i've never you know i've always thought i
02:15:38 want to have a relationship and help them if they need it but i haven't unless but i don't know if
02:15:45 you can differentiate the subconscious from the conscious as no i don't know i know it's probably
02:15:49 wrong but well do you choose women that you feel more functional then
02:15:56 do i choose women that i feel more functional with you feel more functional than they are
02:16:05 i mean certainly i assume uh the the woman who's having migraines because she's a teacher
02:16:10 or the woman who's collapsing into bed for months because she's got some time off i assume you feel
02:16:15 more functional than they are i mean yeah but at the beginning i just i mean i've chosen to
02:16:21 continue the relation but notice where okay so you feel superior to these women right
02:16:26 at least more functional right yeah i with the therapist it was a bit different i feel like she
02:16:33 was really yeah but then yeah i yeah maybe yeah yeah yeah and then there was the the so the modern
02:16:43 the new girlfriend has migraines from being a teacher and can't stand up to her parents
02:16:46 the therapist collapsed into bed didn't sleep for a couple of days then collapsed into bed for months
02:16:51 because of earlier trauma that was unprocessed and then the four-year relationship she was
02:16:57 seriously uh stressed at work and and all of that so you felt more functional than these women right
02:17:03 yeah at times i think i guess the more i've worked on myself as well and yeah definitely
02:17:09 okay and you feel more functional than your parents right
02:17:12 no 100 okay so what do you think it would be like to be in a relationship with someone
02:17:19 who was much more functional than you are
02:17:30 um i'd feel massively insecure right you'd feel like you weren't good enough and you would also
02:17:45 have some anger and contempt towards that woman because it would be like okay so if she's that
02:17:50 functional and superior why is she with me does she pity me does she need to feel superior in
02:17:56 that kind of way is she so insecure that she just needs to be around people who are worse
02:18:00 off than she is so that she feels better like why is she here why is she with me
02:18:07 why doesn't she just get someone who's functional
02:18:12 you recognize this is a rescue mission is this pity pity money what
02:18:20 or if she's so functional then why does she want to be dating someone who's this not functional
02:18:28 maybe her level of functionality is just a lie and maybe her pretend superiority is just pretend
02:18:36 yeah i need to be fixed why does he need someone who's broken
02:18:48 what's broken in him that he needs me to be broken in order to date me
02:18:55 and i assume that these people were raised with families who looked down on them right
02:19:22 um yeah and now you are in a situation of reawakening all of their feelings of inferiority
02:19:33 that they had as children right oh yeah that's brutal yeah you become the stern rejecting
02:19:39 superior father who doesn't want to elevate them but just wants to look down on them
02:19:45 but i've tried but like i've i've been i know i've been trying i feel like i've been trying
02:19:53 to elevate her day like i've been trying i'm like helping to get therapy and trying to teach her
02:19:57 about libertarianism and stuff like that and and like trying to get her to like when we're driving
02:20:03 up her some philosophy on like so i've been trying my best to like i feel like elevate and try and
02:20:10 get her out of a situation is that how she's experiencing it yeah um no you already told me
02:20:24 yeah like that's and i can feel like and yeah it's weird because i got so confused with that
02:20:30 because i just projected my own wants and thought she would feel the same but it's not like that is
02:20:36 it it's not well and then if you hang on if if after 10 years of therapy you still need to
02:20:47 obsessively fix people then she can assume that if she does as well in therapy then by the time
02:20:53 she's 45 she'll still obsessively need to fix people and fail yeah it's not good not a good
02:21:03 sales job for therapy no that's the worst advert possible isn't it well and you're also saying you
02:21:12 can't possibly do it by yourself you need me my energy my focus my attention my time my money
02:21:19 my interest my knowledge my expertise step aside honey let me be you and fix you oh man
02:21:27 didn't you say this was like possession in one talk where you it's almost like you possess the
02:21:38 other person yeah i mean with your own will or whatever yeah and because you tried to fix your
02:21:45 parents and it failed to fix your parents it won't work with the girlfriends either and it never has
02:21:49 right no have you left any girlfriend of the eight major ones have you left any girlfriend
02:22:00 substantially better off than you found her
02:22:03 i'm just gonna go through this but i don't think i have
02:22:10 right so it's not about helping people and it's not about fixing people
02:22:17 geez yeah you're right it's about ignoring the fact that you can't fix people by continually
02:22:21 trying to and it's also a form of self-blame right so when you fail to fix you get to blame yourself
02:22:27 in the same way that your parents blame you for the low quality of your relationship with them and
02:22:32 so it's a whole bunch of complex stuff but yeah it's certainly not about actually helping people
02:22:37 you
02:22:39 i think you can say well my motive was this and i bet i don't care about motive motive is is a
02:22:54 ghost motive is an invisible friend whispering good things into your ear that has nothing to do
02:22:57 with empiricism i mean you must have met competent women over the course of your life at some point
02:23:04 right yeah i'm sure i have okay but you avoided them
02:23:11 or you didn't date them or you didn't keep dating them yeah
02:23:19 so yeah you're probably not in a situation where you've ever really experienced what it is to be
02:23:26 wanted rather than needed yeah probably not which is where yeah like you say like in your book real
02:23:38 time relationships that love is a verb of i want isn't it it's um yeah if you if you need someone
02:23:43 that's a little different right then it's not it's not there's not choice really involved in need
02:23:47 but if you want someone that's a choice
02:23:53 yeah yeah
02:23:54 and that's where you get the pair bonding isn't it because once
02:24:01 the genuine one is there that's the pair bond
02:24:05 well the pair bond is trusting the virtues of another person
02:24:11 pair bond we pair bond with virtue with integrity there's nothing else to pair bond we can't pair
02:24:18 bond with flesh flesh decays we can't pair bond with great hair because it turns bald or silver
02:24:24 right we can't pair bond with full lips because they wither with age all we can pair bond with is
02:24:30 integrity which strengthens and grows with age right the pair bond is
02:24:34 with virtue there's nothing else we can bond with
02:24:36 what if there's no restitution for the women i've hurt like what
02:24:45 if there's no restitution for the women that you've hurt
02:24:47 then you have to just not ever do it again you just have to deal with this stuff have one standard
02:24:58 for all your relationships and make sure you never do it again sometimes that's the best restitution
02:25:05 that you can do i mean obviously i was not always the best boyfriend when i was in my teens or early
02:25:11 20s so um but you know i haven't done any of that stuff again and i i don't have any particular bad
02:25:18 conscience about it now but i wouldn't fall into self-attack because self-attack is going to drive
02:25:28 you to want to do it again because self-attack will push you down and then you want to elevate
02:25:32 yourself by finding some dysfunctional woman a mentor okay
02:25:37 yeah
02:25:44 you know i didn't
02:25:50 i couldn't truly comprehend what i've been doing
02:25:54 well i just i know you've been doing it alone right and because you're a highly intelligent
02:26:02 highly verbally skilled guy that's why i said at the very beginning like just give me some
02:26:06 empirical answers just give me some facts as opposed to all of this analysis and ideas and
02:26:10 you know this is a little bit therapy brain where you can just make up a whole bunch of stuff and
02:26:14 it sounds plausible but i just looking at the empirical facts is usually the best place to start
02:26:19 yeah and motive is not empirical motive is a claim
02:26:23 yeah motive is like you know every criminal says they're innocent but we still have a trial right
02:26:29 and the trial is based on evidence facts
02:26:35 and this is the witch trials you know yeah well that's uh i know you put that in your trial yeah
02:26:41 all right is that a reasonably good place to start i'm sorry i i have a bit of a cold today
02:26:48 so my energy is not massive but i wanted to make sure i had enough for the call but i can sort of
02:26:52 feel myself lagging now so i'm going to probably have to uh to to close it down but i just wanted
02:26:57 to make sure i got at least the major points across that are of value oh god yeah like 100%
02:27:03 like you've given me so much already and um i appreciate that so much i knew it was going to
02:27:09 be hard like i i know i've got to go and listen to this a few times and sort everything out and um
02:27:16 but yeah i can't thank you enough for your time i really appreciate it like good work man
02:27:20 it's going and uh i really do appreciate your time today it was a really good call
02:27:25 yeah and i i'm not gonna fail i need i'm gonna resolve this i just
02:27:29 yeah i'm gonna resolve it all and i have no doubt that you are all right man thanks abil i'll i'll
02:27:35 talk as well i'll hear from you down the road and i wish you the very best i'm sure you'll do great
02:27:38 yeah absolutely and thank you so much for your time honestly appreciate it take care bye thanks bye