0:30 - The Secret Sex Life of Women and the Writer Who Exposed It
4:32 - Horrifying Revelations and Cautionary Advice
8:12 - Unpacking Lewis's Cycles of Anxiety
39:33 - Legal Matters
40:36 - Age and Family Updates
1:09:13 - The End of a Relationship
1:12:36 - Temperament and Authority
1:18:57 - Lack of Interest
1:20:19 - Core Rejection
1:22:36 - Standing up for Myself
1:30:18 - Providing What Was Lacking
1:34:03 - Unmasking the Toddler
1:39:49 - The Impact of Neglect
1:46:22 - Passion vs. Aesthetics
1:51:57 - Accepting Rejection
2:02:18 - Masculinity in Crisis
2:05:19 - Being a True Father
2:24:32 - Confronting the Father
2:30:26 - Not For Sale
2:36:41 - Fear of Confrontation
Stefan Molyneux from Freedomain shares insights on Lisa Taddeo's book "Three Women," exploring themes of female desire and the author's personal life. He engages with Lewis, a caller, addressing his cyclic anxiety and its impact on relationships and future plans. Stefan guides Lewis to delve into the root causes of his anxiety, focusing on financial instability. They discuss managing success-related anxiety and share examples from the entertainment industry, encouraging open confrontation of anxiety triggers.
Reflecting on societal structures and upward mobility, the conversation touches on generational anxiety and distant paternal relationships. The speaker navigates family dynamics and hidden stressors like financial troubles, highlighting the importance of communication. They explore the father's tax debts, secretive behavior, financial issues, and the mother's role in the family, unveiling complexities within generational behaviors.
The speaker discusses their father's leukemia battle and lack of reconciliation with the family post-separation, leading to insights into the father's unsupportive actions. The speaker's sister's struggle with severe OCD and the father's behaviors are examined, shedding light on potential motives behind his actions. The discussion delves into family complexities post-separation and emotional struggles resulting from strained relationships.
Examining a father's verbally abusive behavior towards his family, the speaker dives into the impact on familial dynamics and the father's standards. The conversation explores rejection felt by the children and the father's disinterest in their activities, delving into the implications of contempt experienced. The speaker reflects on rejection, insecurities, and anxiety stemming from their father's neglect, emphasizing the need to address past experiences for healing.
The importance of redefining manhood, masculinity, and fatherhood along moral lines is stressed, urging genuine interest in children's activities for engagement and support. Emotional responses versus moral judgments in parenting are differentiated, emphasizing commitment and passion for positive change. Personal experiences on fatherhood, rejection, and responsible adulthood underscore the significance of nurturing and protecting dependents with care and support.
Emphasizing a man's role in providing stability and protection for loved ones, the speaker explores defining masculinity and manhood amidst feelings of rejection and neglect. They advocate for self-reflection, honesty in relationships, and recognizing emotional growth stagnation. Encouraging breaking free from emotional stunting for personal development, the importance of accepting, loving, and guiding children is highlighted. The dialogue closes with a call to address interpersonal challenges for holistic growth and fulfillment, navigating difficult conversations with integrity.
[0:00] Good evening, everybody. Hope you're doing well. This is Stefan Molyneux from Freedomain. And how's your evening going? How is your life in lockdown going? How is your lock-home syndrome going? Hopefully, philosophy is helping you a little bit, and this show helped you to prepare just a little bit. And, well, I know we got a two-hour hard limit. We're going through a particular app at the moment. So we'll get to the listener in a sec, but boy, oh boy.
[0:30] The Secret Sex Life of Women and the Writer Who Exposed It. There's this woman, her name is Lisa Taddeo, and she wrote a book in 2019 called Three Women. It interrogated female desire.
[0:48] Female desire. And yeah, she's a mess, right? She's a mess, this woman, right? Right. She says my entire 20s were just swallowed whole by black death grief. She was raised pretty much an only child, got a 14 year old older brother. And she said it was easier to just suffer alone, quote, stay in hotels or a room service, just sit, take an ambient pass out. So she liked friends to be close by. Since as a serious hypochondriac, she constantly fears dying. Eventually, with the proceeds from her parents house, her parents died young. She moved to Manhattan where, quote, I was just so massively, wildly depressed I would walk the whole city up and down every block for hours. It was a very dark, dark, painful time.
[1:35] Dating was hopeless and she craved someone, quote, who had great parents and just brought me into this family construct. I had lost or replaced everything. Not a fun proposition for guys her age. Older men sniffed out and exploited her neediness and lack of a father. I got really angry. I would wonder why complete assholes were walking around. Me and my dad, who legitimately, and my dad, who was legitimately a good guy, was dead. Why did my life have to get effed up in this way? So she mooted a book exploring the secret desires of women. She planned to include many stories, but then it coalesced into a deeper project where she'd embed herself in a few women's lives, share their thoughts, diaries, enter their communities, walk in their shoes. For eight years, she drove back and forth across America looking for suitable candidates. Sometimes a woman who'd opened her heart would abruptly drop out, wasting months of work. How did she keep going? Eventually, she narrowed it down to three women who were willing to tell me the truth without worrying about ego. In other words, without boundaries, without any sense of pride or privacy or anything like that. So anyway, I've not read this book. It Apparently, it was all the talk among women two years ago, last year. But here we go. What kind of women do you think this nut job ended up?
[2:54] Telling the stories off. I mean, what kind of women are going to want to talk to kind of a stranger about their most intimate, personal, sexual lives?
[3:02] Well, unstable women. So what do we got here? These three women. There's Maggie, who'd had a teenage relationship with a teacher. Lena, married to a man who won't even kiss her, now in a sizzling affair with an old boyfriend. And Sloane, a beautiful restaurateur whose husband wants to watch her having sex with other people. Oh, my gosh. What are you supposed to do? So anyway, the three women hung in there. Tadeo's book became an extraordinary piece of writing. For instance, when Lina met her lover for sex in a forest clearing, Tadeo followed so she could accurately describe the view, the type of trees. So in other words, Lina, this is the woman whose husband won't kiss her. Let's see here. I can't remember which one of these messes. is married to a man who won't kiss her now and is sitting in an affair with an old boyfriend. So she opened up to this writer, this Taddeo, and basically said, yeah, I'm going to go and meet my old boyfriend in the woods for sex. So here's where we're going to be. Here's when we're going to be. Be sure you follow us and watch. Oh, my God. Oh, my God.
[4:15] And, yeah, just horrifying stuff. This is the kind of people, this is the kind of art, this is the kind of writing, this is the kind of, quote, literature that infests our society at the moment.
[4:32] Just horrifying. So anyway, I just want to sort of point that out, that ladies, please, friends, stay away from this kind of stuff, gentlemen. It may not be a bad idea to ask a potential girlfriend if she's read this book and what she thinks. Yeah, yeah, that's totally normal. It's totally normal to have an affair and invite a writer to come to the woods and watch you have sex. My God, where are we as a culture? Well, it's Titanic with half an inch above the waterline and about to snap into. Just wanted to mention that kind of stuff is just floating around the culture like mosquitoes around the corpse of what used to be. All right so to get to the caller this evening uh let's just see here jimmy james o von bobby head are you with me brother i am with you i do i need to make you unmuted do i remember anything oh can you hear me now yeah yeah i can hear you how you doing man perfect i'm doing quite well had a day off today it's been very nice day off must be not i'm just kidding yeah yeah, Once in a while Sorry? We have our caller here, are you going to read him after us? We have our caller, he's in the chat Since we had a couple issues last time Let's see if we can make sure he's in Before I read off.
[5:49] So caller, if you wouldn't mind Hitting one of the call-ins at the top of the screen Do I need to give him permission? I don't see him connected Hmm, let's see allow call in oh yeah there we go okay invite has been sent last time we could not connect there we go we have him in all right how you doing man hey good thanks how are you i am well i'm well so do you want to read your letter james do you want to read yeah james why don't you read his letter and then we'll take it away with the caller all right sounds good all right so tonight our caller writes my name is lewis i'm 24 years old and for my whole adult life, I've had cycles of anxiety which have manifested in relationship anxiety, work anxiety.
[6:34] Insomnia, and various phantom or fake health issues for which there is no physical evidence. Most of the time, the anxiety is mild and manageable, and I'm generally a happy positive person who enjoys his life. I have a wonderful girlfriend whom I've been seeing for three months, and we have long-term plans for marriage and having a family. My work pays pretty well and has decent future prospects. And overall, I'm happy with my life. However, every so often, I'll have a wave of major anxiety, which will make everyday life very difficult. And all I'll really be able to manage is the basics of going to work, exercising, etc. This will then go away again for months or even years, and I'll feel fine before returning in another form for weeks or months and once again going away. I'm going through one of these waves right now. In the past, I've always considered calling in but haven't, maybe because I'm scared on some level of what the conversation could uncover. Instead, I just tried to manage the symptoms until they went away. However, I've realized now this is holding my life back. Whenever I think of the big plans for my life, like having kids, owning a business, or getting a higher paying job, I know in the back of my mind that another wave of anxiety could come sooner or later and ruin my plans.
[7:49] I also don't think it's fair to my girlfriend or future kids to not deal with this issue, for obvious reasons. And the best way I can think of dealing with it is to call into free domain with an open mind. As I've listened to many call-in shows, I don't know of anyone who has been more successful in helping people get to the root causes of their issues. Thank you, Steph, for all the good work that you do. Well, thank you. That's very kind. I appreciate those words. Is there anything that you want?
[8:13] I'm sure there is stuff that you wanted to add to what you wrote. um yeah it's it's basically yeah basically just seems like um like this this issue sort of is holding my my life back in a way because um you know but there's lots of lots of things that i want to do um you know like certifications that i want to get you know more studying and that sort sort of thing um you know um but it's just difficult when um you know when i when i i'll have sort of one of these waves of uh of anxiety and it's kind of you know interferes with um kind of interferes with everything you know like it makes it hard to you know to to plan stuff out and and do stuff and commit to stuff um like that so um yeah like i mean in the last the last one it It was, you know, I had quite bad insomnia. And so, you know, that just kind of made everything pretty difficult.
[9:15] Right right i'm just going to ask one tiny favor we all have our verbal tics do you know what your one is the phrase that you overuse the most uh what's that you know you know you know you know you know you know you know i'm just gonna ask you to tamp back on that just a little bit and i will work on my and or and right right so those are my verbal tics so now you said that so it doesn't.
[9:36] Like the anxiety you said it's sometimes just not really there other than maybe like a low grade end of civilization anxiety that i guess most of us are carrying but you're saying that the sort of the deep pit it bypasses you for years is that right sometimes um yeah so like months or years it can it can i can pretty much be uh be fine i can you know i feel like i can kind of do anything and you know i can you know no no you got to watch those you know i need you to focus man i need you to focus on those you know so i had like three or four right after i asked you to not so i'm sorry i hate to i hate to do it but but i just got to remind you because i can't edit all of those out and it will drive the audience completely mad as it drives me a little batty too so because with the reason that you're throwing in the verbal tics i mean obviously you're nervous this is not your job it's mine so i get all of that but yeah just try and try and focus back on them and and all of that so um yeah so it does yeah go away for for months or years and i can do pretty much anything and then for seemingly no reason it'll just come back and you know kind of interferes with everything right well it's the seemingly no reason right so do you remember the longest time that it was away the anxiety.
[10:57] Um it's has been quite a while since the last time so it's been about um about a good good year or so okay and i mean obviously you've thought about this and you you haven't noticed any particular patterns as to when it comes or goes not really uh no not not really i haven't noticed any particular pattern it just seemingly seemingly random everything can be going perfectly fine and that's what makes it quite annoying and quite frustrating is that it seems like you know everything will be going great and i have you know lots of you know future plans and everything and then i'll just get hit with it and it kind of you know puts everything on hold kind of and how are you feeling at the moment you sound quite distant from the conversation emotionally are you feeling really wound up intense or or how is how is it going for you well i'm just a bit uh a bit nervous at the moment because i haven't called into anything like this before, yeah but you've listened to a bunch of these right like you know how this rolls right.
[12:02] Yeah yeah okay so let's talk about the fear that you have of this conversation because if you're this guarded and distant it's going to be really tough to have a conversation about depth and you're going to end up feeling cheated and frustrated that it didn't go the way that you wanted it to go and again it's not a criticism at all i'm just sort of pointing it out something Something that we need, you know, got to open the garage door before we back out. Right. So what's your worst case scenario for this conversation? Like what is just going to be, oh man, was that ever a mistake to call in? What does that look like for you? Okay um let me let me think because usually it's not not succeeding at all or succeeding way too well where it's like oh i have the answer to my anxiety but the answer is going to cause even more anxiety and be even more of a problem yeah well in terms of the anxiety i guess the it sort of started when i was about 17 and the the the root cause of it uh pretty much has been a um Um, it's been a fear of like, um, of.
[13:07] Okay, dude, you are killing me with this conversational style of, well, you know, but it's, you know, I'm really, again, I hate to nag you, but if we're going to have this convo, you got to lean into it, man. You got to just grab that mic with both hands and just lean into it. Because if you're this distant from, you know, we simply can't have the convo, right? Cause it's just, you've committed to not having the convo. So just understand there's a part of you that, I mean, the part of you that doesn't want to have the convo is kind of strangling you in the conversation, if that makes sense. So just be aware of that and put that to one side and just dive in. Okay. Okay. So when I was growing up, we had a lot of sort of financial instability.
[13:51] And sort of like we had a lot of up and down financial instability. And when I started working when I was 17 I did have a lot of anxiety that if if my anxiety itself prevented me from from being able to work I you know it could end up homeless or something like that like it was just the fear of and that was just a fear of that that sort of that sort of sorry to interrupt but that seems a bit circular you said your anxiety came when you were 17 because of financial instability. But then you said that when you were 17 and started working, it was the fear that your anxiety would undo your work progress.
[14:34] So yeah yeah it's just anxiety yeah go ahead yeah so it was the fear that the anxiety would stop me from being able to to to function sort of and stop me no no that's circular though sorry sorry to interrupt that's circular which which means there's something i'm just missing here in this right because if you say well my anxiety started because i was anxious about something that's like a tautological right because if you say well i'm worried about not succeeding at my job okay but that's then you're worried about not succeeding at your job but if you're worried that your anxiety is going to cause you to stop succeeding at your job and your anxiety is that your anxiety might start cause you to stop then it's it's self-referential if that makes sense well and so the anxiety had to be about something else and then you were afraid that that something else was going to cause enough anxiety to cause you to fail at your job if that makes sense well yeah but that's the only like that's the only thing like the anxiety is like the only thing that would stop me from being able to work and support myself, right?
[15:36] Okay, but you had to have, so what's your anxiety that you were just going to fail at your job? Yeah. Okay, so that's different from the anxiety being that your anxiety will cause you to fail at the job. Okay, okay. Okay, I just needed to, that's sort of inception anxiety, if that's sort of Mobius strip self-referential snake eating its own tail anxiety. Okay. So you were anxious, and how long in your family had you had financial instability before?
[16:01] Well, it had been pretty much on and off for my whole life. So my dad made good money, but he...
[16:11] They weren't good at managing the money and so there'd be periods of you know having plenty of money then there'd be periods of not having any money and being quite quite stressful and having a lot of you know debt and um and all that sort of thing and so that was kind of quite stressful although you know my parents they always sort of managed to sort of just sort of pull through it was quite stressful. And so then when I, you know.
[16:43] So do you have a thesis? I'm just going to start interrupting you every time you say, you know, now. I'm afraid I'm just going to have to trade you out of it. So do you have a thesis as to why your parents were in and out of the money? Like that's an old song. I'm going to love you like nobody's love you. Come rain or come shine. And there's a line in the song where they say, days may be cloudy or sunny. We're in or we're out of the money. Just like the tide comes in, tide goes out. and money comes and goes. Do you have any theories as to why your parents were so bad with money? Because, you know, money's coming in. You should save some, right? You should invest some. You should hang on to it so that, you know, you don't end up with a feast or famine thing. Yeah, so he made good money, and basically it wasn't like a regular paycheck, like every, you know, you get paid every fortnight or every month. It was more that he would have, like, contracts, and he would get paid maybe a huge chunk of money and then not get anything for six months, kind of like that. So he would have a lot of money, but he wouldn't just save it.
[17:47] No, no, I get that. I get that. But that doesn't have anything to do as to why you'd be out of money because if he knows it's feast or famine, right, then he's going to put money aside and spend wisely and save and hang on to his money and all that, right? So it has to be something else that would cause them to be so bad with hanging on to cash. Yeah. I'm not 100% sure. Do you want to know what it was?
[18:13] Yes, I do. Okay, so a lot of people are very anxious around success. This is one of the reasons why so few people succeed. If people start to do well, they start to make money, and they get anxious about doing well. In other words, if they break through the ceiling of their own parents' success, if they do a lot better than their parents, their family, their extended family, family the kids they grew up with the whoever right the social circle they started in then what happens is they start to get this high altitude sickness right i mean basically we are our own oxygen like if we start to do well we start to become successful.
[18:51] Then we should be able to carry our own oxygen up the mountain so to speak it'd be fine but for a lot of people they get this high high altitude sickness they get oh man i can't i can't breathe up here i can't breathe it's too stressful and then what happens is they feel they need to descend back down to base camp so they can get their oxygen and you see this with people who quit drinking they get anxious because they're doing much better than their alcoholic friends and then they're like oh we gotta we gotta i gotta have another drink right just just one right and then they just fall off the wagon they tumble right back down so making making your home in high altitude is pretty tough there's one reason why yeah there's one reason why like famous, actors and musicians, they have all these agents and all these people around them who coach them through the problems of doing well, right? I mean, look at Justin Bieber, look at look at Billy Eilish and all, it's all a big mess, right? I mean, Billy Eilish wore all this baggy clothing for a long time, now she's 19 and she's just got, you know, tits out brigade going on like the prow of a battleship coming off a bed, right? And so to survive success is very hard.
[20:01] Because we're not really designed to vastly outstrip our origins, because for most of human history, you were either born into wealth and power, like you were a king or a prince or a viscount or something, or what happened was you did well, educationally speaking, like you'd become a monk or a priest, but then you took a vow of poverty, so you never became that wealthy. And so we really weren't, we're not designed to break out of our origin story. Now we've got a free market, at least some of it, a meritocracy, at least some of it. And so now the possibility exists to break out of our origin story. But it's tough. A lot of people climb up, get dizzy, and then just jump down again. They do well, and then they start to feel, oh, man, I'm doing well. That's bad, man. I mean, I can't be proud of it to my friends because they'll get resentful. I can't really talk about it with my family. So they end up sealed off by their own success.
[20:55] And then what happens is they're like, okay, well, if I just get rid of all of this stuff, it's all unconscious, right? I get rid of all of this stuff. Then I can just go back to where I started and still have good topics of conversation, which is why the people who win the lottery often become very lonely and blow the money. And it's just their way of going back to where they started and feel like they still have things in common with a lot of the losers that they began life around. So yeah, you said that makes sense, but go ahead. Yeah I'd just like to add as well that the anxiety seems to run mostly on my dad's side as well, so my dad was prone to anxiety and also his dad as well so they didn't cope with it too well but they also had that that anxiety that I sort of see in myself as well.
[21:41] So, yeah, prone to anxiety, I just want to make sure you don't think that that's some sort of baseline thing or genetic thing or something like that. That's what I don't know, and that's what I was calling in about. Did your father come from a poor background? Not really. It was sort of a middle-class background. ground uh his dad um i don't know the details about it but his dad had some kind of mental breakdown and he ended up in a mental hospital and they gave him electroshock therapy and all that stuff that they did back there and yeah he was never the same after that well no that stuff really fries you literally fries your brain right oh yeah it's pretty and And you don't know what the history was with all of that, right? Not really. I'm not very close with my dad, so I don't really know the deep history there. Are you close to your dad? No, not really. And what's the story with that? Well, he was never close to me in the first place, so it has to come from the parent, right?
[22:49] So it's… Yeah. I don't feel as though it's like a choice. It was my choice or anything, but he was never, he was always quite absent, quite distant. Right. So it's your dad who's kind of running the beginning part of our conversation where you're kind of guarded and distant. Yeah, maybe. No, no, without a doubt. I mean, like you're very good at this. And again, I don't mean this in any critical way. It's just an observation, right? So if you're a young man, right? And although I know it, it feels odd to me, But of course, I know there are a lot of people out there who look at me as kind of a father figure. So if I'm sort of actually, I actually do as well. Right, right. Well, I appreciate that. And I'll try to live up to that as best I can. But it means that if you've got a history of a distant dad, then the conversation with your web dad or Internet dad or whatever is going to have that. It's going to have that aspect of it to it. Right. Which is just like guarded and and all of that. Yeah. And do you know why your dad decided to forego the pleasure of your intimate company for his life?
[23:57] Well he honestly i don't i don't even like know if he has the the capability because he doesn't have like really close like personal relationships with anyone sort of like he's he spreads himself thin right so he's really good at socializing on the outside with people at parties and dinners and, oh king king of the empty-headed small talk stuff and jokes and entertaining people and good stories and but but no personal revelations or connection good times and and stuff like that but no is he in sales really what is he in sales or marketing no okay just one um no but he's yeah he's he's he's good with with with that sort of stuff but he doesn't have any really close personal relationships right so it's the same with my the same with the other the other members of my family like none of them were ever close to him either so it's not just me all right, i'm so sorry i think you're touching your microphone or something i'm getting this odd crackle from time to time so just you know hands off the mic man please okay so what's the story with your mom they were still together is that right no oh when did they divorce uh when i was 17.
[25:17] Dude, dude, why are you taking me on this kind of ride, man? Why are you doing this to me? Do you know what kind of ride I'm talking about here? Yeah, it started when? When I was 17, I got strangely anxious about my job performance. Oh, well, that was the year that my parents separated too, but come on, man. What are you running me around the garden here for? Sorry. No, no, I'm not mad. I'm just like, I'm genuinely curious. Like, what are you doing i remember it said that there's something else that had to cause the anxiety you would just self-ref it was self-referential there had to be something else right, right now did you think i mean did you think at the time that i asked that a couple of minutes ago did you think huh well i i guess i'd better be honest with steph about the divorce thing or did it not even cross your mind it didn't actually cross my mind really i yeah now you've listen to a bunch of college shows right the year that your parents get divorced you get anxious and you're like doesn't even cross your mind is that right no yeah it actually didn't really cross my mind again and i i know i sound like naggy and i'm not trying to be i'm just trying to sort of gauge like where we're coming from here right so how long have their marriage been bad and and who initiated the divorce and and what happened yeah so um.
[26:35] My mum initiated the divorce. My dad seemed like he would be fine to just continue along with things how they were forever. But yeah, at the time where they eventually broke up or she eventually said that she was leaving him, there wasn't really any relationship left anyway. So it's kind of like gradually over time, just, you know.
[26:57] Yeah, so there wasn't really any relationship left at that point anyway. Way and it wasn't really a surprise that that they were going to be breaking up and yeah that's uh that's what happened and so sorry i just want to make sure i understand so there was just this general drift apart like they just had less and less conversation less and less time together that kind of thing pretty much um pretty much so they would get closer again gradually over time and then they would have a fight. Like my dad, he would like snap over something small and that would, you know, my mom would sort of blow back and that would have a big fight. And then my dad just wouldn't talk to anyone for a while and then they would gradually, gradually sort of start talking and get closer together again and then it would happen again. Oh, so it's the same shit as the finances, right? Yeah. Right. Finances get better, and then they crater, and then they get better, and then they crater.
[28:04] And it's the same thing with the closeness, right? I mean, things would get better, then he'd... And the same thing with my anxiety, I guess, right? Well, yeah. I'm going to be really skeptical about your self-pronouncements about your anxiety at the moment, if that makes sense. Just because I did happen to accidentally come across the cause of it when you were 17. So let's hold off on your insights about your anxiety, if you don't mind, and we'll get there. But I'm going to have to clearly do a bit of a wider sweep and scan of your history to get the circumstances.
[28:35] So do you have siblings? Yes. Okay. And where are you in the birth order? I'm the oldest, so I have one sister that's younger. Okay, I got it.
[28:47] Now was your father somebody who was tense a lot and you didn't know when he would and you kind of got the sense like okay i'm walking across a minefield it could go off or was he the kind of guy who was relaxed but then would slowly get tense over time and then blow up or was he relaxed but then would just it would blow up out of nowhere or what was the level of his out of it could just be out of nowhere yeah right okay so he was generally kind of relaxed and gregarious and it sounds like good conversationalist and then boom like just out of nowhere then he'd just blow up about something oh yeah he could just blow up about just some just some little thing can you remember an example i mean how little to be talking um, um oh let me let me think um like i remember i remember one time um and this didn't end up being a big big fight or anything but it's still sort of stuck with me we're on a boat and.
[29:47] I asked him we're you know talking and i asked him oh is that the um whatever island over there so i pointed to island over there and he just snapped me like oh what do you think like it was just like really vicious and i was just like really kind of uh humiliating i guess, oh so does it experience do you experience anything similar if i'm kind of nagging you a little bit over the course of this conversation does it seem similar or or not not the same or uh not so much because i like i know that you're just trying to like you're trying to help me you're trying to get to the the cause of it and like sort of dig the truth out so i understand that it yeah and i'm i'm not critical i'm just i just want to make sure we connect uh over the course of this conversation that's that's fine yeah it's a little bit like trying to get a squirrel to feed out of your hand but we'll get there we will absolutely get there i promise you just just trust me in the process and and we'll get there okay uh sorry is there something else that you wanted to mention at the moment i got more questions but i don't want to interrupt yeah sorry so it could just be some some things like things like that that would happen and um and you You know, so that, yeah, was kind of humiliating. It would cause a fight with my mum if she was around because then she'd, you know, say to him like, oh, you can't talk to him like that. And then he would start yelling at her and they would just have a fight. Oh, so yelling at her. So he would escalate pretty hard, right?
[31:17] Well, they would end up, they would, I remember this a whole bunch of times when I was like little and they would end up. Yelling at each other and then my dad would eventually just leave he would storm out and go and stay the night in a motel or something and come back the next day and just not talk to anyone for for a while and a while so that's very vague but what do you mean a while like um i don't know like a couple days or something and then they would you know just talk about the essential stuff they need to talk about but there was no like warmness or anything and then over the coming weeks, they would gradually sort of, you know, get closer again where, you know, they would sort of joke around and sort of be a bit more warm towards each other, I guess.
[32:06] And then, yeah, then it was just. And was there any kind of rhythm to this stuff? Are we talking a three-month cycle, six-month, one-month, one-week, one-year, like as far as like explosions and then. There was good parts and good parts and good cycles and bad cycles. Yes, I know. That's why I'm calling it a cycle. I'm just curious what the rhythm was here. Yeah, I would say probably months, yeah. Like three months? Probably a month. Oh, one month? I forgot that. I was pretty young, so I don't know exactly, but probably months, I'd say, so like a few months. And then things would get better and then, you know, just snap all over.
[32:48] Do you know if your dad had any kind of secret life? Because that kind of blow up to me often is associated with, obviously not perfectly, Perfectly, but it's often associated with a secret life, like an affair or gambling debts. I said this in a show I published on Locals the other day, that I had a friend who got fired from his job because he was working on a book over lunch and found it easier to write while he was drinking. And he basically would get drunk and show up to work in the afternoon. He ended up getting fired. He didn't tell his wife. And he'd just pretend to go to work and then just come back home for the day. But he took money out of their retirement plan to pretend he had a paycheck. They had separate accounts or whatever. And so he is pretty tense during that whole time. Cause he had this whole secret life thing going on that, that, and I'm just, I don't know. Did you ever get any indication of that from your dad? Uh, he had a lot of, he did have a lot of debt. And he had a lot of, he ended up having a lot of tax debt because as a self-employed person, you have to pay your own taxes at tax time. You don't just get it withheld from your paycheck.
[33:52] So what ended up happening is he would be in, he would go way in debt to the internal revenue department. Oh yeah. So he did the entrepreneur thing where it's like, wow, look at all the money I have. I've got so much money. I can. And then like the tax bill comes and it's like, oh dear. Yeah, yeah. No, always look that... Yeah, yeah, go ahead. Yeah. But one time, it's all resolved now. There's nothing sort of outstanding now. But he did almost go to prison one time because the IRD got to the point where they basically said, okay, you either have to pay us like 20 grand right now or we're sending you to prison because he delayed it so much.
[34:38] Did he not have... I mean, this may be a technical question. You don't have to answer anything, but, I mean, I always say to entrepreneurs, man, just get a good accountant, right, and make sure that you pay your taxes, you know, right? Yeah, he didn't have an accountant. But this is the thing that was so stupid is that all of the fines and all of the stuff that he paid and tax fines and stuff like that probably wasn't that much different to what he could have written off if he actually had a proper accountant. And he could have written off all of his business expenses and got tax refunds for this and that. Oh, yeah. Listen, yeah, you get an accountant and a good accountant because you don't want to be doing your own taxes, especially if you're incorporated or you're an entrepreneur with this kind of stuff, an LLC or something. It's ridiculously complicated. You don't know what right or wrong, and the rules are always changing.
[35:31] And every time you're doing your taxes, you're not doing your business. So, of course, you outsource it to someone else. In the same way, it's like you don't figure out how to scrape your own gums with that weird scratcher they have at the dentist. You go to a dentist or a dental hygienist and have them do it for you, right? So, yeah, okay. Just a general bit of advice out there. Yeah. Yeah, I'm just employed normally, and I go to a tax agent just because they know everything. And if anything goes wrong, then you can just point to them, right? Right. I mean, way back in the day, I used to be able to get programs and do it. And I used to do my taxes back in the 80s and 90s that way. But yeah, at the moment, things are complicated, especially if you're deducting stuff. I mean, you get a good accountant who knows what he's doing. I don't. Okay. So why do you think your dad didn't? I mean, this must have been suggested by your mom or you or someone, right? So why do you think your dad didn't get an accountant?
[36:24] I'm not too sure he was i don't know if there's anything else like there's could be stuff that even i don't know about or even maybe my mom might not know about to this uh to this day but, maybe there was other stuff that that i didn't know about but he was kind of a bit secretive, like in that way like he didn't want anyone to know about his finances and even he didn't want people to know to be able to reach him at any time like he refused he always refused to like just carry a mobile phone or whatever, like he would refuse to have one. Or when he didn't have one, he'd always have it turned off. But that's pretty common with people who don't pay their bills, though. I remember way back in the day. Can I just ask you for a quick favor in this convo? I hate to be a nag. There's something that's just driving me crazy. I keep talking and then you keep talking over me.
[37:16] Sorry. Okay. And, and I know I do that sometimes as well, but, but it seems like just about every time I opened my mouth, you start talking right in the middle of my sentence. And I don't know if you have something that you need to add and it's really just throwing me off as far as that goes. So, uh, if you could just wait until I'm finished by thought and then say stuff, but you know, if I started saying stuff, whenever you started saying stuff, we just couldn't have a convo. Like I just, if you could, if you could hold off on that, uh, I'd appreciate it. Yeah. Yeah, so back in the day, way back in the day, I used to sometimes be like a movie extra. It's a pretty decent way to make some money, and it was kind of fun in a way. And I met a guy, and we really hit it off as friends, and we were friends for a little while, and he was really in debt. And he had this whole system, which is like you had to call, let it ring twice, call it, let it ring once, then call again, and he'd pick up. Just so he didn't end up picking up from the people who were trying to get his money. So, yeah, if you've ever been around people who are heavily in debt, they usually have this whole moat system of, you know, this may have been why he was. And this would be probably maybe it was just the tax authorities. But I would imagine if he was taking money to pay the tax authorities, there were other bills that he wasn't paying.
[38:25] So he was probably pretty stressed about this debt stuff. And as you say, it sounds a little bit unnecessary because he was making pretty good money. And if he just managed it properly or got an accountant or planned in a basic manner or turned it all over to his wife, because oftentimes if you've got a wife who's good with money, she's not a bad person to hand your money over to and to just focus on the business side. But did your mom take any involvement in his business that you know of? Not really she did help him with um you know some sort of filing and management and paperwork and stuff from time to time but generally generally not uh she was she didn't have to work when i was younger and so she was like sort of the primary uh the primary caregiver and she you know stayed home and and raised me and my sister and she sort of started working part-time when i when we're a a bit older, but she wasn't really too involved with the business side of things. And what was the industry or- Well, they would talk about it, but yeah. Yeah. What was the industry or business sector that he was in?
[39:34] It was law. Now, was he himself a lawyer? He's not a lawyer himself. However, he- He's not a lawyer himself. Like he doesn't have a law degree or anything like that. So he could come practice law himself, but he works closely with a high level lawyer. Got it. Okay. So just one other thing you, you explain things usually three times and I'm, you know, we're both smart people, right? So you say, my mom was a stay at home mom. She took, she stayed home and she took care of my sister and I, and she didn't have to work. It's like, I know what a stay at home mom is. Right. And we get, we just dispense with the rest. So you say like, Like, my dad's not a lawyer. He didn't have a law degree. It's like, I know. I know, but not a lawyer. So, again, just in the interest of sanity and time, just assume that you're dealing with a smart guy who gets it the first time around. And I'm also an excellent listener, so I'll get that. And this is just part of the slow, hypnotic way of trying to keep us at a distance in the conversation. So, you know, just if you could help me out a little bit that way, I'd appreciate it.
[40:37] And what's your age range? Mid-20s. Mid-20s. Okay. Okay.
[40:43] And so your father is still plugging away, is that right? Yep. We live in different countries now. Right, okay. Yeah. Do you remember – I'm sorry, go ahead. Yeah. He's also been diagnosed with leukemia now, so he probably doesn't have that long. Oh, gosh, when did that happen? A few years ago, I'd say. But he's got a new partner now as well. So yeah so she's she's taking care of him as well wow is do you know if anything about his prognosis, it's in remission so it's not too bad at the moment he hasn't had to start any chemo or anything yet but he will have to at some point soon so wait they he got leukemia they didn't treat him it went into remission and they're going to treat him later that seems odd to me, Well, the count, I don't know the specifics, but the white blood cell count is low enough that they don't need to do chemo yet. They're going to wait until it gets high and then do chemo because of the bad effects of chemo as well. I do. All right. Okay. Now, do you remember, like, you know, your dad was your dad in the house for 17 years. I probably can't remember the first couple of years. If you think about sort of the arc of your dad's life.
[42:07] How did it go? Right. I mean, you think of a movie like Citizen Kane. I don't know if you've ever seen it, but there's like a big arc of the character, you know, where he starts and where he ends. It's usually quite different. And this is true for a lot of people's lives. Right. I mean, my mom was like this vivacious, attractive, you know, bombshell who could command attention. And then she just kind of ended up this this weird, skinny old woman. Right. So there's this character arc that goes off in people's lives. And I guess I'm just wondering what, if you sort of noticed the big sort of patterns or arc of your dad's life for better and for worse. Well, he's pretty much, you know, winding down now as he gets older and also because he's got leukemia as well. He actually seems, from what I can see, he seems to be fairly happy. Just, you know, with his socializing with his friends and, you know, going about his business and stuff. Over there, it doesn't really seem to bother him that he's not close with his children and that they live in a different country and he doesn't, you know, really see them anymore.
[43:17] Well, and even the mortality scare didn't seem to do that much, right? Like, I guess if you get that diagnosis, it wasn't like he's like, oh my God, I could die. I've got to make peace with my kids. That didn't seem to happen, right?
[43:29] No it didn't and or actually because i have been back to see him a couple times or a few times since since he got diagnosed and i did think oh maybe you know he would have like a you know a moment you know since he's been diagnosed with a terminal illness so he might realize what's important or something like that but no he uh he did snap again at me over some stupid thing uh the last time I was there, and I just haven't been back since. I have no interest in going back anymore. I'm really sorry about that. I really am. That's so fundamentally and horrifyingly sad. I really am. I'm very sorry about that. I mean, there's a lot of wisdom that you could get from your dad and hopefully some good things as well, and it's such a desperate shame that that's not available, and I'm just really, really sorry. I mean, as a father myself, It's just, it's a really, really sad and silly and kind of pitiful state of affairs. Not anything to do with you or what you've done wrong. I don't think you've done anything wrong, but it's just, it's sad, these kinds of decisions. So what happened after your parents separate and how did you end up living in different countries? So when I was 17, after they separated, we had to, we lived in the country. We had to move to a city in order to be able to get jobs and stuff like that because we lived in a country where there was not much opportunity.
[44:59] We decided to move to Australia from New Zealand where we had some other family, like some extended family living there. And yeah, so we moved over there when I was 17. And my family, like my sister and my mum and me, have sort of all been together here in Australia since then.
[45:19] And did your dad stay in New Zealand? Yep, he stayed in New Zealand. And this is the thing is that he has never bothered to come over and see us. I went back to see him a few times, as I mentioned, and he never bothered to come over at all. Wow. And it's short. I've done that flight, right? I mean, it's a short flight. It's three hours, yeah. yeah it's easier to get from Australia to New Zealand than to get from the middle of Canada to either end you know okay yeah and here's the other thing is that which was kind of like pretty, pretty sad we all thought is that he actually did go on holiday to Australia to a different part of Australia a couple years back but didn't bother to come and see her wow like he went to a different state in australia i guess it's kind of like my dad too like i mean my dad i believe he died in hospital last year so usually when you die in hospital you've got some warning it's not like you get hit by a bus or something and yeah there was never any reach out never any connection never any anything like that and okay so what's your mom's story about your dad have you ever talked to her and said like what's what's the deal with that yeah i have so she pretty much.
[46:47] Didn't it didn't have any interest in having kids until she was in her she till she kind of hit 30 or early 30s and then she i guess suddenly got like the the baby rabies or whatever you know happens at that age when you hadn't thought about it and then suddenly you you get the urge or you really want to have children and because she hadn't sort of planned for it beforehand she basically grabbed on to the first sort of half decent sort of looking guy, in order to have a family so it was quite rushed and I think I was born like only maybe a year or less after they got together, Well, that's a very brief explanation of things.
[47:37] Has she ever said about your dad, I mean, yeah, he was cold to me too, or he's just a cold person, or he's got no attachments. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely. So there was – she did realize quite early on, but she just continued anyway with it. For the kids kind of thing? Yeah, yeah. So when we were growing up, when I was little, all um she wanted to to be with us sort of more than anything she didn't want to have to go out and get a full-time job and put us in daycare and after school care uh so she just stuck with him for that reason uh which i am glad about because i'm really glad i didn't have to get put in day care or after school care because i saw that happen with other uh other kids and yeah seemed him pretty pretty bad yeah no i i agree good yeah good for her and i guess he was at least a good enough provider that he could give that right oh yeah so we did for the most part like my childhood was quite quite happy we had a lot of fun and you know did a lot of things especially with my mom like she would just take us and and you know go on trips and do things during the day and he would A lot of the time while I was little, they didn't even live in the same house, so we lived in the country.
[49:00] Oh, he worked in the city? Worked in the city, yeah. Yeah, I was going to ask about that, like you're living in the country, but he helps lawyers. Not a lot of lawyers in the country, right? Okay. No, and he would stay in the city, and he would basically live with one of his mates during the week and live flat in the city.
[49:18] And, yeah, basically lived kind of like a bachelor during the week, going to bars and stuff after work and kind of living like a bachelor during the week and then just coming home on the weekend.
[49:29] Oh, interesting. How much like a bachelor, hang on, how much like a bachelor do you think he lived? I don't believe he had any affair, because he just wasn't like, I think he just wasn't like that passionate enough enough about women and stuff to go and have an affair. My mum said that she never thought that he ever had an affair for that reason. She said he didn't think that he would be bothered.
[50:00] To have one. So, I mean, I don't know, like it's possible, I guess that he, that he may have, but we don't think so. Well, I mean, it's, yeah, it would be entirely theoretical. We've got no evidence either way, other than your mom, I'm sure has said that your mom said that he, she didn't think he did. So we could take that. It's not evidence whatsoever. She said that, um, that he did have an affair. So, right. But he would just, you know, want to hang out with, hang out with his, his friends and just hang out with people when they're sort of very surface level socialization. He prefers that than being with his family. Yeah, yeah. Beer, cricket, rugby. Yeah, I get it. I get it. Yeah.
[50:38] So do you know, I mean, how long did he live in the city during the week thing? That was while we were younger. When we got a bit older, it became sort of possible to work from home. And so he did mostly just work from home. And he would go into the city when you know they were when he had to like go into court and stuff like that so but he spent a lot of time working at home doing like research and you know teleconferences and things like that and yeah just sort of yes socializing in the small town that we lived in you know he.
[51:16] Would be very very involved in the community on the outside but not very involved with the family on the inside sort of yeah that's a lot more common than people think it's a lot more common i mean you can be close to the community or close to your family it doesn't seem that the two are pretty easy it doesn't seem like the two are very easy to achieve but that's probably a topic for another time and do you know with the divorce with the separation what your mom initiated is that right yeah they weren't actually uh married okay separation yeah Yeah. But they'd be common law married like many times. Oh yeah. It was a de facto kind of thing. And yeah, my mom initiated it because she just didn't want to be with him anymore. We were sort of 15 and 17 respectively. So there was no reason that she had to just stay with him like for the kids because we were kind of, you know. Well, I mean, but another couple of years would have been less, right? I mean, your sister's 15, so she's still got another two years of high school. So it must have been something that hit the gas on that because she was probably like, well, I'm going to wait till your sister is out of high school at least, right? Then you go to go to uni or something, right? So, I mean, was there any particular big blow up or a reason why she couldn't make that final sprint? Yeah.
[52:36] There wasn't any big particular thing, but I think she just got, she was just really tired of it, of being with him. And she just kind of couldn't stand it anymore, I guess. I don't know. But there was no particular thing that happened.
[52:53] Okay, okay. And yeah, my sister has had issues as well. Go on. Yeah, so she had really, and still does, a really severe OCD. And she was actually admitted to a mental hospital here in Australia for a while. And that was sort of happened when I guess I probably would have been about, I would have been about sort of 19, maybe at that stage, 18, 19. And was it the OCD or something else that got her into the mental hospital? It was the OCD. So basically what happened is her OCD got worse and worse, and she stopped eating. And then we called the ambulance because we didn't know what to do. And they checked her out and said that they had to take her to the hospital because she was in danger of dying. Wow. And so they took her to the hospital and they had to pour the tube down the throat and that kind of thing. Now, the OCD, because that's almost like an eating disorder that strikes me, how did the OCD manifest?
[54:14] It's sort of manifested and it's kind of like kind of like rituals or like i can't do this until i've done all of these like stupid sort of like silly kind of uh kind of rituals and then it sort of just got worse and worse and spiral to the point that she couldn't actually function and do you remember how old she was when these first, manifested these symptoms first manifested um it had kind of been there a bit in the background just low level um sort of all our life but just sort of very low level again like sort of my anxiety i guess it kind of really flared up at about the same sort of time um so like after the, after after moving country that was when it really flared up for her so you got some i guess Yes, moderate to maybe severe anxiety, and she got OCD after the separation, right? Yeah, although for her especially, there was traces of it beforehand. Yeah, yeah, but it really escalated, right? But that's when it really escalated, yeah. Yeah, yeah, okay, okay.
[55:25] So the nature of the divorce is the key, or rather what the – and I know they weren't married, but just separation just sounds kind of lame uh because it basically was a divorce as far as the kids went right i mean whether you're formally, married yeah but let's just say divorce if you if you don't mind so the divorce so how i mean did you did you move did you move countries pretty quickly after the separation or the divorce, uh yeah pretty much straight away well we sold the house first so we sold the house.
[55:57] And yeah we sold the house took the money from there and then moved, right okay and so what were the conversations with your dad about you leaving the country because obviously he said well i'm not coming right uh yeah well he basically he basically said okay well i'm gonna go and move in with my sister um until you know whatever he went we went and moved in with her for a while and um he actually i actually he sat me down and he was like uh i don't know you're gonna be annoyed i didn't tell you this earlier i guess anyway hey good at least at least inner staff is keeping you informed so good yeah no this thinks of it so he was he was kind of really sort of nice and friendly sort of all the way up to to leaving like he was just sort of quite mild and sort of just you know like oh well you know at least you're going to have good opportunities in the in the big city and everything like that um it's probably for the best or whatever and then he sat me down sort of right before we left and he was like um oh you think you're going to just go over there and you're just going to walk into a job well you won't blah blah blah and he's like giving me this advice and basically kind of like.
[57:19] Yeah, but it was really quite aggressive, like saying, like, you think you're just going to go over there and you're just going to walk into a job and things like that? Well, it's not going to happen and stuff like this. Wait, that's not advice. That's a goddamn curse. That's like a voodoo spell of disaster, isn't it? Yeah.
[57:40] That's sabotage. That's not advice. Where is this coming from? Yeah, but the thing is that that exact thing did actually happen. And so when I did move to Australia and after a few months of settling in, I did look for a job and I did get the first job that I applied for. Yeah, of course you did because you're a smart guy. So that exact same thing. Okay, so one. You want to just go to a job and that's exactly what happens. Right. So you say that you have anxiety about your job performance without telling me that your dad cursed you to unemployment, right? Yeah, that's what I said. No, it's fine. That's fine. So what was he doing? What was his motive? That I would out-succeed him. Maybe, maybe. Anything else?
[58:30] I'm not 100% sure. I'm not 100% sure. What do you think?
[58:36] Well, my guess would be more that he was trying to hurt your mom by cursing you. Because it doesn't sound like he cared that much about you, but he would certainly care about, I assume, about hurting your mom, right? Yeah, he. You think this family can be successful without me? Let me tell you something. I'm going to make sure these kids are really screwed up. And that way. It could be like a vanity thing. A what? Like a vanity thing. Like, you know, that we can be successful without him. Well, no, because if he was truly, if he was truly vain, right. If he was truly vain and truly thought that, that then he would just let it play out. Right. You know, like if you've got, if you've got a friend who doesn't brush his teeth, You don't need to curse them. I just, you know, you should brush your teeth. No, I'm not going to. Okay. Well, I really think you should. No, don't tell me what to do. My teeth are fine. Right. Okay. And then you just let it play out. Right. So, so your dad, by, by stepping into actively sabotage the kids and who knows what he said to your mom, he probably said to your mom, you know, you're never going to find another guy like me. You know, you're, you're over the hill. You're, you're past your prime. You know, you, you, you, you've lost your spark. spark, your appeal, whatever, right? He probably cursed her into solitude. Maybe that's how it played out. Maybe she's with someone again.
[59:56] And then, you know, God knows what unbelievable things he said to your sister to trigger all this OCD escalation, right? Yeah. Do you know what he said to your sister?
[1:00:07] I'm not sure. I'm not actually sure what he said at the time of leaving. I don't recall anything. Well, you wouldn't be there, right? Yeah, but I'm not too sure what he said at that point. But, yeah.
[1:00:25] You should ask your sister if she had a tidy little sit down with her dad. Before leaving New Zealand.
[1:00:35] Although this was, and this was like, obviously years later, but after he, remember I told you that he's like snapped at me the last time. And then I haven't been back since she was in New Zealand after that one more time. And she did see him. And then she did mention she, she brought that up and they had a big fight about that because she, she, she got like really angry at him for him having said that to me.
[1:01:03] And then he basically he basically said well if you guys can't handle it then you can get if you know if you guys can't handle what me snapping at you or me whatever being who i am you can get get fucked is that what he said yep and did he did he swear at or around the kids sorry go ahead yeah and then she just like stormed out and just yeah um she's yeah said that she was done with him and just left and has your mom intervened at all to try and save or rescue the relationship between your sister and you and your dad i'm not saying she should have i'm just curious if she has um earlier on earlier on she she did say because when i was seeing him uh and going over to see him uh and when you had leukemia and stuff and before he snapped again she did say that uh oh it's you know, good that you have at least, you know, having some sort of, you know, some sort of relationship with him or whatever or some, you know, it's good that you're getting along with him and stuff like that. So she was happy about that.
[1:02:10] Then, yeah, after this thing with my sister, like she's kind of acknowledged that it's, yeah, it's kind of all over because I mean, like, what, what can you do? Like, what can you expect after that, right? I mean, you say snapping, but telling one of your kids to get fucked is really brutal and harsh and vicious. I mean, that's straight up core attachment-breaking verbal abuse. Yeah, and that's why it's good to talk to you about this, because you're, yeah, just to sort of get that. I mean, if he was Australian, it would obviously be completely normal. But New Zealand, New Zealand is a whole, I'm just kidding. All right. Is he Maori? All right. No, no. Maori what?
[1:03:01] So, yeah. I mean, so the snapping bit, I don't know, man. I don't think snapping is quite the right word. No, yeah. That was on a higher level. Yeah. That was on a higher level. And what did he say to you when you last experienced the snapping um oh yeah it was it was like um basically he was at a um it was at a restaurant and he it was just like it was just about like i can't remember exactly what it was but it was just about like table etiquette or something stupid like that oh like elbows on the table that sort of shit it wasn't that out exactly but something like that just some sort of table etiquette doesn't really matter you're using the wrong fork for your prawns okay all right yeah but he just like completely just went off just all of a sudden it wasn't like a reasonable person that might say like oh could you could you not do that or could you could you do it like this instead or something you know so how did he phrase it or what what did he say it's just like oh i don't know what you guys think is acceptable over there in Australia, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and just went off sort of from there.
[1:04:18] Now, okay, so help me understand. I mean, you know, I've been doing this like 15 years plus, right? I've heard some pretty harsh things from parents to kids, you know, like nagging at you about table manners, and that does sound in the nagging category. It seems like not as much as I've heard to break relations with your father, if that makes sense. And I'm not saying you should or shouldn't. I'm just saying that as far as the scales of offenses on this show goes, this barely registers as a two. And so no criticism or anything. I'm just sort of trying to sort of flesh out why it would be so different for you as opposed to others or whether there's something else or some other provocation that is occurring. So you're saying, sorry, you're saying that it's pretty mild. It's pretty mild to say, I don't know what you guys do in Australia, but here in New Zealand, we don't do that. I mean, it's certainly a little harsh and all of that, but it's not like torrents of verbal abuse or, you know, he's not, you know, flinging hot soup at your face or, you know, I mean, I don't know. I'm just sort of trying to fathom the, you know, that he's nagging at you harshly about table manners. I mean, you've listened to the show. I mean, I've had, you know, fathers who beat the hell out of their kids regularly and the kids are still sticking around as adults.
[1:05:40] And so i'm just trying to figure out given the unusualness and there's no criticism i mean you could be entirely in the right but as far as the scale goes what he said to you was not super harsh compared to other things i've heard if that makes sense well yeah and i mean he basically it was kind of like humiliating i guess because it was in front of you know that was kind of like a scene sort of oh so it wasn't just you and he at the table uh it was him and me and his partner um but he's like he was kind of like he was you mean his romance sorry to interrupt you mean his romantic partner yes okay but it was it was loud like he was kind of like yelling right, and he i can't remember what but he was like effing this and effing that and whatever as well oh so he swore as well yeah okay so dude my god please stop having me run around.
[1:06:33] Tell me what he said and how he said it. Just pretend I was at the table. I'm you. What did he say and how did he say it? I can't remember the exact words, but he did yell and he was like, oh, you think you can fucking do this or that? I don't know what you fucking guys do in Australia. Fucking, fucking, it's not fucking acceptable here. Da, da, da, da, da, like that sort of. But so he was yelling as well. Did he, I mean, so that swearing about what you're doing, did he swear at you like you can take these and just fuck off or you can take these manners and shove them up your ass? He didn't swear at me at that time.
[1:07:14] And where was this relative to his leukemia diagnosis? Well, this was the last time I went there. So that was sort of just before COVID. Yeah, so I'm not sure where that is relative to his leukemia diagnosis. Sorry, a couple of years ago. Oh, no, it was well after it. Well after it. Okay, okay. And what did his partner do? do um she basically she basically was like because he didn't he didn't apologize or anything afterwards right and she was like oh you know um it was a bit harsh but like that's just how he is or whatever like she's basically just like you know she doesn't stand up to him at all so good Good Lord.
[1:08:00] Right. So, I mean, I guess he, I mean, your mom must have been a bit of a dishrag as far as all of that went, too. I mean, I know she fought back at times, but, yeah. So, you know, and here, so, okay. My mom always fought back against him, and that's why, yeah, that's why it escalated. Well, but she must have held back in order to keep the marriage going for 17 or 18 years, right, or keep the relationship going, right? Well, yeah, I mean, she didn't, yeah, she didn't, like, she didn't leave him or anything. At that point right well he didn't change and she didn't leave him so she had to, she had to back down in order to maintain the relationship for the sake of the kids i assume and then when she wouldn't back down anymore it all ended right pretty much yeah okay so she must have folded and i'm not criticizing her for this i'm just saying that the mechanics of the like when you have a verbally abusive bully like that then if you don't fold usually it's over right, When they fought, they would basically fight and escalate until my dad would just storm out.
[1:09:02] Right, but your mom never laid down the law and says, you know, you pull this shit again, we're done. Like, one more time. Oh, no, yeah. Yeah, she didn't do that until the end, yeah.
[1:09:13] Well, but then she was done, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So she must have known, I assume, that if she tried to lay down the law with him, and say, no, this is bad for the kids, this is bad for us, this is going to wreck our relationship. You go to anger management, you go to a therapist, you do whatever the hell you count to 100, I don't care, but you are not pulling the stuff with me.
[1:09:39] Yeah, well, I mean, after he would come back the next day or whatever, she wouldn't insist on confronting it again. She would just leave it until we kind of, yeah. Right. So your mother. He's gone up to normal again. Well, your mother, I guess, understood that he would always choose his temper over his family. Right. So if somebody tried to lay down the law, then he'd just be like, fuck off. Right. And he'd just storm out and wouldn't come back. Right. Which is what he did with my sister when she she confronted him about it and she wouldn't back down, and she kept you know um you know she she she kept uh kept on at it and that's when he's like oh if you can't handle it you guys can all f off or get f or whatever right right so yeah i mean that's did he want kids i mean i guess when he got together with your mom she didn't want kids And then she did, right? Oh, no, no. Sorry. She already wanted the kids. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. I forgot about that. So she got the baby rabies. She grabs him out of the lineup. And do you think he ever, I mean, did he take pleasure in being a father? Did he take pleasure in having kids? Did he take pleasure in instructing or playing? Or, I mean, what was, what was that like for him?
[1:10:55] He did seem excited like at first before I was born and when I was just born I think there was kind of a vanity thing as well like he sort of.
[1:11:11] Enjoyed the vanity, I guess, that it gave him or whatever. But yeah, he pretty quickly kind of lost interest. Right. Now, did you ever see him escalate his temper against anyone in authority or strangers or waiters? Did he yell at people outside the family? Did he tell people to fuck off or whatever or fucking this or fucking that? That um i yeah but only but not people that that not people that would be in um high positions of power right so it's like it could be it could really be a an arsehole you know like for example at a at a shop um finally get some product and they didn't have it in stock or whatever and he'd like yell and make a scene and make like the girl at the like the cashier girl cry or whatever oh my god i remember that when i was like a little kid and it was like yeah but but yeah not to anyone in authority like not not obviously wouldn't do that when the taxman came coming he wasn't telling them to yeah right or a policeman or or uh you know his law his you know um other lawyers or legal people with you know clout or you know high status and authority or whatever So he had no problem keeping his temper when other people had some authority over him, right?
[1:12:37] Oh, yeah. He wouldn't have shown it to them or the guy, the high-level lawyer that he worked for or whatever wouldn't have seen any of that in that way. Okay. So let's just reiterate this because I'm not sure that sunk in yet or maybe this is something you processed years ago.
[1:12:54] So your dad had no problem containing his temper. Yes. Do you know what that means? I mean, in general? Yeah. It means that he chose to lose his temper because he knows that he could get away with it. He's a coward and a bully. Yeah. That's important to understand. Because people say, oh, my father had a bad temper, or my father was ill-tempered, or he blew up. And it's like, none of that's true.
[1:13:25] None of that's true. If he had a bad temper, then the bad temper is like a demon that possesses him against his will. And, you know, and then you can at least fault someone. It's almost like epilepsy, like they just have a bad temper. And it's like, but he could be sweet as sugar, right?
[1:13:39] And even when facing, I'm sure, in his job and all of that at court, right, if the judge would rule against his suggestion or the case would go badly, I mean, I'm sure he'd be all, well, please and thank you and all of that. And and fine but the judge or the lawyers or his customers or whatever he was probably sweet as sugar and reasonable and mature or at least to some degree but yeah but then when it comes to his wife his kids like the people who are dependent upon him and who uh you can't fight back you know he sees mr fucking rambo right he's mr tough guy right yeah yeah or or again like low-level cashiers or people that don't have any authority and can't he made a cashier cry i've never seen that in my life man i've seen some pretty bad behavior and i i worked retail for a number of years in i worked in a shelving store i worked in a hardware a couple of hardware stores and so on right and you know we had some jerky customers to put it mildly but i mean really made it made a cashier cry yeah and look i've seen it like and yeah go ahead oh sorry i'm just was going to say like i've seen it happen and um through work and like fast food and stuff like that um you know where there's been arsehole customers but yeah i mean yeah basically just yell and make a scene and stuff and and yeah basically yeah i think at least one time here, what would you say to the cashier sorry to interrupt what what would you say to the cashier.
[1:15:09] Um honestly i can't actually remember i was pretty young at the time like it was He took me somewhere to some shop. I was pretty young at the time, so I can't remember what he said, but I just remember him just yelling at me. Wow. Yeah, that is such an abusive power, right? Oh, yeah. And then, of course, he puts himself in a position, right? This is the psychology of it as far as I'm concerned. So he bullies those weaker and dependent upon him, and then he puts himself in a situation where he is being bullied by the tax collectors and creditors, I assume, right? Yeah. So the indebtedness, the not hiring the accountant, is specifically to put himself in a position where he's bullied and rejected and chased, right? It's the balance for his bullying. Oh, okay. So he hits down and then he's also got someone on top of him as well. Right. Right, right, right.
[1:16:11] Did he ever admit to having a bad temper or it's a problem he needs to deal with or he shouldn't do what he did or anything like that? Oh, yeah, he would joke about how he has an Irish temper or whatever in a jokey way. It's not fun either. Oh, but he never really admitted he had a problem. He would just joke about it. No, he didn't admit that he had an actual serious problem he needs to deal with or anything. Did he view it as a virtue? In other words, I guess I just have too high a set of standards and you just don't match up. And I guess I just get frustrated at the incompetence of people. Does he have it as a glory thing? Does this make him a tough man and he has high standards and other people better measure up? Or is it like that Sergeant Major stuff that goes on that people have about their own temper? Like somehow it's a virtue? Yeah, I guess it is kind of like he has high standards. And, you know, like when he said to my sister, like, oh, if you guys can't handle it, you can get F'd. It's kind of like, it kind of seems to me like, well, you know, if we have a problem measuring up to his standards, then we can F off. Right. And did you, as a kid, did you feel that you did not measure up to his lofty standards?
[1:17:33] Well, that's the, he never really, he never really took any interest in anything that I was interested in, which was. Well, that means you're not measuring up to his lofty standards, right? You're not interested. Yeah.
[1:17:47] Be interested in the things that he was interested in um not the things that i was interested in so like if he wanted to if he was interested in something or he wanted to do something then he would do it and if um but he wouldn't actually make any effort to get involved or, take any interest in anything that i was interested in like if i you know like you mentioned you know like you play among us with your daughter and everything and you kind of like get involved with of the you know things that she oh yeah she's teaching me how to animate and uh you know she likes dungeons and dragons so we've been playing that off and on for years and she likes among us so i'll play a couple hours a week with her because i want to understand and i also i mean she's better at it than i am so i enjoy watching her skill uh manifest and and her social skills and her leadership skills so yeah it's a great pleasure yeah but but with things like that you know like um you know if i you know had some some game or whatever i was interested in like i would I would have loved for him to have just come and played it with me or whatever. But yeah, he never did. He wasn't interested. He just wanted to do the things that he wanted to do.
[1:18:57] So it's not that hard to do. It's not that hard to do. You just have to, I don't know, you just have to engage with him about it. You mean it's not that hard to do things with your kids?
[1:19:09] No, it's not. I mean, I don't think it's, it's, it's not like, I don't mean to criticize at all. I mean, just from a, from an involved dad standpoint, that's an odd thing. It's an odd perspective and I'm just going to try and denormalize it for you. Cause I think we're really getting to the anxiety stuff here. I know this has felt like a walkabout as they say in Australia, you know, but, but it's not, I mean, I've been, I've been mapping this whole thing out. Right. So do you think it's hard for me to play? Like, it's not that, Do you think I would say to myself, well, it's not that hard to play a game with my daughter?
[1:19:43] No, well, you like doing it. Yeah, it's great fun. It's great fun. And that's what I think as well, because I want to have a family. Me and my girlfriend want to have a family, and I'm looking forward to doing things like that with my kids and playing with them and getting involved in the things that they're interested in. Yeah, again, I want to do that. I'm looking forward to doing that. Thank you. Right. Yeah. Okay. So here's where we get to the core. I think, I think we're at the core, whether we feel it, feel the air pulsing or not. I think we're at the core.
[1:20:20] So the core, my friend is this. What is your experience of being rejected by your father, of your father, scorning you, holding you in contempt, holding you as uninteresting, holding you as unworthy of attention. Attention, what is your relationship to fundamental rejection by your father?
[1:20:41] Yeah, well, he did reject me, I suppose, and it feels bad. Sorry, he did what, you? And it felt bad. What was that, sorry? You said he did something, you, and that seems like an important word for me to get. No, no, I just was confirming, yeah, he did reject me, and yeah. Okay, so here's where I need you to grab yourself by your ball sack and get in touch with your feelings, okay? Because you sound like you're reading a cricket score from a game 12 years ago. Okay, so what is your experience? And you and I share this, right? You and I share this. What is your experience of being rejected by your father? What does that mean that you're rejected by your father? What does that mean to you about you, about manhood, about him? Masculinity. Um, well, yeah, I mean, it means that like, I'm, I'm, I'm not, uh, I'm not interesting or the, the, uh, the things that I'm interested in, they're like, not, um, you know, they, they, they can't be interesting to other people and, and things like that, like, like that. And, um, trying to find the words, I guess that's kind of fueled insecurity in me as well because his rejection and his disinterest in me is kind of, I guess I kind of object to that on the world.
[1:22:09] Sorry, you did what to the world? I kind of projected that onto the world as well. That the world finds you uninteresting or? Yeah, to a degree. That's always kind of been an insecurity, and I guess I can see why now, because it's just like his projection and his disinterest sort of just projected, right? In conflicts, are you pushed over fairly easily? Do you have to withdraw quite a bit?
[1:22:36] Um in conflicts with my dad i've no no no no no no not with your dad i know your dad's impossible to stand up to except by walking away but in life as a whole in it work or or wherever this may occur, look i i have i have managed to stand up for myself but it does um it does sort of trigger quite a um it does sort of trigger quite a lot of anxiety sort of more than it should i think, more than it should oh come on man be nice to yourself i think it triggers more than it should like for example um you know for example like a difficult boss or a difficult customer you know getting upset about something like i do you know manage to you know i come back to them and you know say like you know this is this isn't correct this is actually the case or whatever there may be like to correct them but it does push it is very anxiety inducing for me.
[1:23:41] And whereas with a lot of other people you know they just are like they sort of take it with with not much trouble at all, like they don't seem to be bothered by it. They're just like, oh yeah, they're upset, you know, whatever. So, you know, they'll calm down or just, you know, tell them, tell them what the go is and, you know, they don't really not bothered by it. But with me, it's kind of like quite anxiety inducing, that sort of confrontation. Yeah. Right. It was a funny thing. I remember in theater school, near the end, I didn't stay. I got really sick of it. They didn't like me, and I didn't like them back. Very considerably very Marxist, in my opinion. But I remember one of the actors, who has actually become quite a successful actor, he was trying to get someone's attention. He was just drumming away on some bongos, and he was trying to get someone's attention. And he just kept repeating that person's name, and he didn't escalate. It wasn't like so-and-so hey so-and-so hey so-and-so so-and-so like he didn't escalate he's just like uh-huh so-and-so so-and-so he's so-and-so he didn't it didn't and i was just looking at that like quite fascinated like here's somebody who wasn't getting what he wanted and he didn't escalate and he didn't bully or anything like that he's actually a pretty nice guy about it right.
[1:24:54] And i just remember them being kind of weird and that was that was the same i think that was the same month that my father visited me well actually he was visiting someone else but he came came with me. And he tried to, I mean, he was a geologist, right? So he went to the university and he gave a big lecture on, I guess, the geology of South Africa. And it was a fairly well-attended lecture and he was up there. And I guess he had me come and, I guess he wanted me to look up to him or be impressed by him because he had me come and sit while he gave this lecture. And he seemed quite proud of the fact that he was there giving a lecture and people were listening to him. And I'm like, you do understand that by promoting yourself when you rejected me, you're just making it worse, right like he's he was the big man on campus and and he didn't achieve a huge amount of professional success but he did lecture and he did um he was in charge of a mine in south america at one point where he tried putting he told me with this once he said i tried i tried putting all of the workers on piecework to try and increase productivity but they just achieved what they achieved when they were doing hourly they just went home you know like if we pay you 10 bucks per units right they'd make their 50 bucks and they just head home they just had no interest in in getting more it's just It's kind of an interesting cultural thing. And then that night, we went out for dinner, and I was a totally broke student. And, I mean, obviously, I thought he was pretty wealthy because, you know, he was lecturing at the university and all of that.
[1:26:15] And, yeah, a guy stiffed me on my restaurant meal. Like, he stiffed me on the bill. I couldn't believe it. I didn't have my wallet. I'll get it to you later. And he never gave it back to me. And I'm like, I can't believe my dad lectured at a university and then stiffed his broke son on the bill. Anyway for for for you know where he'd had a drink or two and a pretty nice pretty nice uh meal uh a meal i never like i never would have gone if it wasn't for my dad and i just like okay i get that you're not giving me a lot of money for my college if any but you know you know come and stiff me on the bill might have undone some of the good work you wanted to have me be impressed by you lecturing at a university or something but so so with your dad.
[1:26:53] Who is the man, right? Because you're an adult now, right? So who is the man, right? Because if you look at him and he's your dad, you can't help but have this big, burning, branding imprint of that is a man, that is masculinity, that is what it is to be a man, right? So when you're a kid, if you don't measure up to his standards, he's not interested in you, he doesn't care, or anything like that. And I mean, I read my father's entire biography. I showed up, I think, twice in passing, and this thing went on for quite a long while, right? So I just, I didn't show up for him in his life. I didn't impact on his consciousness. Now, my dad was other side of the world for most of my childhood, so it's sort of a different matter with him being under the same roof. But who is the man? Because if you're quite different from your father, and in my mind, a vast improvement, but if you're quite different from your father, then who's the man? And what is masculinity and what is manhood?
[1:27:55] Because if the big towering man, God in your life rejects you, you, you got a problem. You've got a problem and you have an opportunity, but it's like, okay. So with my father and I, okay, which one is the man? Which one? Who's the man? I know that sounds kind of who the man, right? But, but it's a, it's an important question, right? Because if he's, if he's masculine, if he's the man, then what the hell are you? Oh, well, I can only, I can only be myself by being less masculine. And this is where you get a lot of this, oh, toxic masculinity. And it's like, well, there's just a lot of asshole dads out there whose sons have to say, well, I have to have a different kind of masculinity. But fundamentally, unless you deal with it psychologically, you just end up feeling less masculine. It's where these soy boys, I'm not putting you in this category. Obviously, I'm just saying that as a cultural phenomenon in general, it's where those big gap tooth, low T soy boys come from. We're almost like, well, my dad was this way, and I don't want to be this way, so I'll just be more sensitive, more of a feminist, less masculine, and so on. If you haven't solved the problem, who is the man? Is my father the man, or am I the man? What is masculinity?
[1:29:06] Right? And these are very, very big and deep questions, and the fact that they're coming up for you when you're considering being a father is not accidental by opinion. Opinion so what is a man was your father a man was he masculine was he masculinity, who were you relative to that is a very very important questions for men particularly young men to answer so was he the man were you rejected by masculinity what does masculinity or manhood mean to you both then and now i know these big questions but you know just tell me tell me what What do you think of this line of approach? Well, yeah. I mean, that is the case as well where like –, I pretty much sort of want to be like the opposite of him. Like I pretty much want to be, I want to be everything that he's not, you know, when I become a father. Okay, so, but the opposite is not a thing, right? No, I know, I know, I know.
[1:30:19] It's a reaction. yeah like i want to sort of feel like i want to give them all of the things that i didn't get from my dad okay so so then you have okay no we'll get sorry i'll bookmark that in my head because there's a lot in what you said so you want to provide the opposite right, well i just want to provide what what he didn't what he didn't provide to me, so give me the major things that he didn't provide to you um well the major thing obviously is just just being engaged and interested in them and, you know, enjoying their company. And also the other major thing is stability in terms of, you know, like just, you know, financial responsibility and stability so they don't have to care or worry about, you know, about just the basic, you know.
[1:31:14] The basic financial stuff when they're younger. Like it's all sort of just, you know, it's taken care of when they're younger. They, you know, their parents will have, will be financially stable and have, you know, savings and everything like that. So that they won't have to have any fears or anxiety about that. So those are kind of the two, those are the two major things. And also, obviously, as well, having a strong relationship and a strong connection to my partner as well so that they can see a happy and healthy and functional relationship when they grow up. So that's something to model for them as well, because I didn't see that. And so it was quite, it's been quite difficult to, it was quite difficult for a while for me to kind of find out what like a relationship should be like. Oh, you mean like a romantic relationship?
[1:32:16] Well, yeah, because the thing that I had modeled wasn't good at all, right? Oh, no, no, I get all of that. Yeah, no, I'm with you. You want something different than your parents' relationship. And in fact, in some ways, the opposite, right? Yeah, and also for the kids as well, so that they have something, they have like a good model to kind of go off, you know? Okay, so three things are missing here for me. It doesn't mean they're missing in objectively. I'm just telling you my subjective, what's missing for me. What's missing for me, hurt, anger, and judgment. Right. Because it's sort of like, well, you know, my father took a left on this street. It turned out it didn't kind of get us where we wanted to go. So next time I do that journey, I'm just going to take a right. Like that's the level of emotional depth in what you're saying here. And again, not a criticism. I'm just saying that if you really do want to change direction from your father, you're going to need a little bit more weight in your assessment. There's no moral judgment here at all. Right. Right, so we need to look at that. And I can tell you why there's no moral judgment.
[1:33:27] Because your assessment of your father is messed up, man. Do you know what you said to me about your father and his current state of mind with his new partner? What did I say? You said my father is happy. He seems happy from the outside. No, well, okay. okay, you said your father seems happy or is happy.
[1:33:51] Now, reason equals virtue equals happiness, right? Your father is not rational. He was not virtuous. And again, I'm open to hearing this argument.
[1:34:04] If you ignore your children, if you yell verbal abuse at your children, if you drive your wife away and you end up with a woman who can watch you verbally abuse his son and not say anything to anyone and not stand up and not push back a fucking dishrag of a non-entity human being you tell me how the accumulation of all of that intergalactic assholery results in someone being happy because you see if you define your father as happy and you're going to do the opposite of your father where are you going to end up are you going to end up happy no okay so you and that's where your anxiety is coming from is you say well dad you know he is who he is and he did these things but he's pretty happy.
[1:34:49] So what you're saying is yeah you can be uh i don't know i mean i'll be frank right you listen to the show for a while and me telling you what i think is not what is i'm just telling you what i think so it could be totally wrong okay okay so not paying attention to your children is abusive neglecting your children is abusive verbally cursing abusing and swearing around your children is abusive telling your son you're not gonna be able to find a job it's not gonna be that easy son is abusive telling your kids you either do it my way or you can fuck right off is totally abusive effing this and effing that in a restaurant in public and yelling at your kids It's as abusive making a toddler, sorry, making a cashier cry is abusive and it's cowardly because again, he didn't do a policeman. He didn't do it to.
[1:35:42] Of yours. He didn't do it to the tax authorities. He didn't do it to anybody who had power over him. He didn't do it to the lawyers or his customers. So your father is not a man. Your father is not a man. Your father is an infant. Your father is an overgrown infant. And it's kind of an insult to infants because infants are supposed to be the way they are. He's having temper tantrums. Infants are profoundly selfish, right? If you catch them playing with something, I mean, you know, can you imagine if my daughter's like six months old and I say, hey, I'm working on this new book called On Truth, The Tyranny of Illusion. I'm going to read you some. I'd really like it if you could give me your feedback. And she's absorbed playing with some blocks or something like that. She's not going to look up, right? So that level of self-absorption and I'm only interested in my own thing, that's a toddler. The level of rage and the lack of inhibition, that's all a toddler. A toddler cries and gets angry and they don't have inhibitions. So to me, your father is a toddler, not a man, not masculine, not masculinity.
[1:36:52] And I don't take it personally when a toddler is not interested in what I'm doing because they're a toddler. And so I would never expect them to be interested in what I'm doing. Now, if what I'm doing is engaging and entertaining them, they'll be interested, right? Right. Like if I'm making funny faces or telling a big story or, you know, dancing around to make them laugh or whatever, or helping build blocks with them or carrying something for them or bringing them food when they're hungry. Then they'll be interested because it overlaps significantly with their preferences. But the idea that they would jump out of themselves and be interested in me for me sake. I mean, my daughter's 12. She's not even there yet. Right. And that's fine. You know, she's getting there, being interested in me for my sake. When I play a song for her, she's still at the phase where she figures, she tries to say, she says to herself, do I like this song or do I not like this song? She doesn't say to herself, I wonder why my father likes this song or tell me like, and that's fine. She's 12. She's not supposed to be there yet. She's still 10 years away from brain maturity, right?
[1:37:50] So your father's self-absorption is a toddler problem. It's a toddler. Now, unfortunately, he's a toddler with great authority over you. He's a toddler in a man's body. I assume he's not the smallest guy in the world if he's throwing his weight around like this. He's a toddler with a big loud voice, and he's a toddler who holds the financial reins of the family. So a toddler also consumes now and doesn't save for the future, right? You give a kid, you know, say, here are your two cupcakes. A toddler eats how many cupcakes? You give him two. How many is he going to eat? Two. Yeah. yeah, is he going to sit there and say, well, I might want a cupcake tomorrow? No, he's going to go, right?
[1:38:32] Oh, yeah. And one thing I just wanted to mention is that I remember one other time as well when I was in high school and the school was having some sort of event or whatever and they needed some parents to volunteer and to help with something to do with it. I can't remember exactly what. lot and my mum asked my dad if he could um help as well and he's just like just like oh nah and she's like why not and he said oh i'm not interested like it's there's always he can only frame it in terms of himself right yeah like you didn't he wouldn't ever think like it's not just about himself like maybe you know there's things you need to do that that aren't just about yourself right or there's things that you should do that aren't just about by yourself is that he would never think to do something that's not about himself. Right. Right. So that's a toddler. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
[1:39:33] Okay. So, and I listen, your, your lack of emotion here again, I just want to sort of point it out. I'm not expecting you to magically be able to summit it, but it is something I'm noting, right? Like you're very analytical because you probably have associated emotions with your father. Like my father gets really angry.
[1:39:49] He gets really upset and those are emotions and emotions are bad. and emotions are dangerous and i have to keep a tight control over my emotions otherwise i'm going to end up like my dad it's like no no that's not it that's not it that's not it that's not it at all so yeah sorry go ahead oh sorry yeah like i never really characterized him specifically as abusive but yeah now that now that now that i think about it he he was like he he he was abusive and it's perfectly well and the abuse sorry to interrupt but the abuse that you're the abuse that you're identifying is like the verbal abuse and stuff like that but the far more impactful abuse is the neglect yeah yeah that is and so yeah i mean i think it is perfectly justified that i don't want to you know i don't want to have anything to do with them, well and that's but that's not the issue that you're facing right that's not the issue that the issue that you're facing is the anxiety right.
[1:40:47] Right. Right. Right. So, do you know where, I mean, now that we've ranged over this whole thing, do you know where that's coming from? Not entirely. Right. Not entirely. So, you need to redefine manhood, masculinity, fatherhood, and all of that stuff, right? You can't be bouncing off, you can't be reacting, you have to redefine it from the ground up. and it has to be along moral lines. Your father owed you attention. You didn't have, you're not supposed to win his attention. You're not supposed to engage him. And it's like, well, you know, he wasn't, just wasn't that interested in what I had to say or what it is that I had to do. It's like, that's, that, okay. So if you have, if you have a dog, right?
[1:41:32] And you don't like dog food, does that mean that you don't have to feed the dog? No. Well, of course, parents aren't interested in what their kids are doing because those kids are doing i wouldn't be playing a couple of hours of among us i wouldn't be going to to the park to to to sit on swings and chat and jump around the monkey bars and go down slides and and race and and play you know we throw these paper we throw these polystyrene airplanes around i wouldn't be buying drones to fly around the backyard i wouldn't be doing any of these things why because i'm 55 years old almost, and I wouldn't be doing any of these things. Of course, I wouldn't be doing any of these things. I wouldn't be sitting there playing with blocks when my daughter is two. No, I wouldn't be drawing outlines of coins on paper. I wouldn't be doing any of this stuff because I'm an adult. But you don't do it because you care about the stuff itself. You do it because it's a way of engaging with your child, and that's what you want to do, and that's what you deserve. That's what the child needs and the child deserves. So it'd be like a dog owner. Well, you haven't fed your dog in a week is like, yeah, but I don't eat dog food. And be like, what are you talking about? Of course we know you don't eat dog food, but you've got a dog. You've kept it in your house. You owe the dog some dog food.
[1:42:46] So for your father, there was not an option for him to say, well, I'm just not that interested. I mean, of course, he can do it in the same way you can say, well, I don't have to feed my dog because I don't like dog food, right? Or, you know, it'd be like me saying my daughter, let's say my daughter couldn't read, right, at the age of 12, right? It'd be like me saying, well, of course I didn't teach my daughter to read. I already know how to read.
[1:43:12] Of course I didn't go to a pediatrician. I'm not a child. It's like, but you have a child, and you owe the child that. You owe the child that. Absolutely, completely, and totally, you owe the child that. It is a solemn, foundational obligation. You must be interested in what your child is doing. You must find a way to be interested because your primary interest is not the activity. The primary interest is your child. but you have to be not a selfish asshole in order to understand that right my primary interest is not playing among us my primary interest is my daughter and it's what she likes to do and what she's good at and it gives her it also gives her something she can teach me about because a lot of times if you have interest different from your parent your parent won't get interested because they're not the authority and they like to stay in charge and they like to be the one teaching you things whereas my daughter has sat down and taught me quite a lot about among us because she's better better at it than i am she's got a great instinct and knack for it so she's teaching me so i get to learn from her which gives her the experience of equalizing and leveling up and knowing that she has information that i don't have and that she can be a value to me as well as me being a value to her, i owe her that in the same way that i owe her food and shelter you owe your children some kind of financial stability because you're not a fucking toddler who just spends oh oh wait there are taxes Oh my god. Oh my... really? Holy crap. I mean, who could have guessed? Who could have known? It's not possible to know.
[1:44:40] So your father is a toddler, and he has to be around absent people because he has the narcissism of a toddler. And again, narcissism can't really be applied to a toddler. It's like calling a baby short or big-headed. It's just the developmental phase, right? Now, for whatever reason, your father chose not to get out of that developmental phase. He found it more comfortable to stay there. Again, I have no idea why I'm not talking to him. I'm talking to you. but the moral thing is not well i just want to spend time and i want to be invested in my kids in the way that my father wasn't i want to provide what wasn't provided no i don't want to be a selfish infant like my father i don't want to be somebody who supplies chaos and uncertainty and stress to my family because i can't walk three feet to take a shit in the toilet so i take a shit in the hallway because i just you know like like toddlers do right when you're toilet training any of them, right? That's to check your father with finances. I don't want to subject my family to me going to jail, so I won't blow all of my stupid money, but I'm going to hang on to it for the tax man because I'm not a fucking toddler. I'm not an infant. I'm not ridiculous.
[1:45:52] So the passion that you lack, I think, is because passion is morality. Morality and and passionate, two sides of the same coin. And so if you can't morally judge your father, you can't be passionate about it, passionate about your change. And it'll always be like, well, he chose to go left. I would rather choose to go right. That's not going to give you enough energy to make the transition because I'm here for your future kids. I'm here for you now and here for your future kids. And your future kids are going to need you to completely commit to the change that you want to achieve.
[1:46:22] And that change cannot be committed to if you don't have the passion and you won't have the passion if it's simply a matter of aesthetics. Well, my father raised his voice, I don't want to raise my voice. My father used this language, I don't want to use this language. My father didn't pay me much attention, I want to pay more attention. This is not a matter of aesthetics. This is not a matter of personal choice or habit or, yeah, my father was a bit of a bully, I don't want to be as much of a bully. But I don't want to be.
[1:46:51] Because I owe my children that, and because I want to have a good relationship with my children so that I end up happy. But if you've given the happiness award to your father, despite his behavior, then the whole process becomes incomprehensible. You say, well, why would I want to give interest to my kids? Well, I didn't like it when my father didn't pay attention to me, so I want to give that to my kids. But that's hedonistic. Well, I didn't like it, so I'm going to provide it to my kids, as opposed to, no, no, no, it's the wrong thing. To do to withhold attention from your kids. And if you say, well, I didn't like it when my father didn't pay attention to me, so I'm going to pay attention to my kids, you're still basing it off emotion rather than moral judgment. And simply playing it off emotion, you're going to be like your dad. Your dad just, well, you know, I don't like it when I pay attention to my kids, so I won't do it. I find it boring when I pay, and you say, well, I didn't like it, so I will do it. It's the same mechanism. It's just emotions.
[1:47:47] It's still hedonistic. It's not moral. Your father did the wrong thing your father did very bad things he was abusive he was neglectful he was unstable he almost got himself thrown in jail while he was the primary provider for the family how well do you think he'd be able to continue working in law if he got himself thrown in jail, he almost wrecked his entire career why because he wanted to buy a laptop or whatever the hell he spent his money on that he owed to the tax department that's an infant you don't want to to be an infant. You want to be a grown-up man. You don't want to be a toddler. You don't want to be a fool, an idiot. You want to be a grown-up man who provides for his family and is capable of adult love. Your father is a selfish, self-absorbed, bullying toddler. He's not a man. He's not a man. He's not masculine. He's not a man. He barely made it out of diapers, as far as I'm concerned. And he's not, he's not happy. Sorry, go ahead.
[1:48:50] Sorry yeah i always held back on like i always sort of held back on on defining him as as abusive but yeah i mean he by all accounts he he was so yeah like well and is and is and is and is because every day every day he doesn't call you and say oh man oh son i have been oh i can't sleep i've just been tossing and turning and i i i just feel so bad about what i said to your sister like the f-bombs i i feel so bad about what i said to you in the restaurant it was so, wrong of me to do that especially you you know you were in in the country you flew out in part to see me i feel bad that i flew to australia and didn't even bother to check in with you guys face to face i just i don't know if it's getting older i mean and this is a terrible thing because now oh my god my dad has a conscience and he's feeling bad and but i am i'm sorry it didn't strike me before i'm so sorry beyond words that it didn't strike me before every single day he doesn't make that call to you he's continuing to abuse you it's not in the past you understand it's in the present and for the next 20 or 30 years probably i don't yeah i don't think for like that but it's true right the calls that don't come are the ones that hurt the most.
[1:50:05] Yeah and it's uh and it's it's it's never gonna come that's that horse never gonna come from him You know what? We're going to have to take a short pause and start again because this stupid app gives me two hours. So can you hang tight? We'll be back. We've got another 10 minutes or so to go if that's all right with you. So can you just give me a second and come back?
[1:50:28] Yeah, I'll come back in one minute. Yeah, okay. Hang on. I'll just end this. And sorry to everyone here. I'll end and we'll just have to start again. And normally I can do it in two, but I did a few minutes at the beginning. So hang tight. So hang tight. We're just coming back in here.
[1:50:43] And we'll just wait for him to come back in, finish up here. Yeah, it's really, really important to define things. I view myself as a realized, fully realized, or at least fairly fully realized adult male. And I view my father who raised me as a toddler, as kind of selfish, as kind of random, as somebody who just never quite got around to growing up and did not end up, he did not end up happy. And it's a real shame. I think it's very sad that he didn't, but I can't force people to grow up. I can't force people to take responsibility or to become mature or to be honest or anything like that, right? So yeah, I just wanted to sort of point that out that how you deal with being rejected is really, really important. See, you don't take it personally when a toddler rejects you. I mean, a sane person, right? A mature person doesn't take it personally when a toddler rejects you, right? Now, when you start to take it a little bit more personally when you get rejected, that's when your child is growing up. And you have a reasonable responsibility to provide them decent standards and reasonable behavior and being polite and all of that, right?
[1:51:57] But I remember, oh, gosh, when my daughter was little, I guess it wasn't even that long ago, I played to her a movie that I liked when I was younger. Called The Princess Bride with Carrie Elwes and Mandy Patinkin. And oh, gosh, that woman from the Kevin Spacey political drama. I can't remember her name. And Carrie Elwes had magnificent hair. One of the things I remember about that show. And what happened was my daughter really did not like the movie. Now, I thought she might like it because, you know, we did a sort of a bit of fantasy stuff, sword and sorcery stuff. I told her a bit of the story of Lord of the Rings, which she enjoyed. So I thought my daughter would like the movie and boy, did she ever hate it? I mean, she really, really, really didn't like the movie at all. In fact, we played, I don't know, 20 minutes of whatever. And I, you know, she wasn't really enjoying it. I said, well, you know, we'll take a break. We'll try tomorrow. And the next day I tried to put the movie on. She literally bursted it to you. You just didn't like the movie to that that point, right? And did I sit there and say, oh, my God, I'm so rejected. It's like, no, she doesn't like the movie, right? She's allowed to have her own opinion. She's allowed to have differences of aesthetic tastes and all of that. So if a toddler rejects you, and you're a reasonably mature person, you know, they're.
[1:53:21] Their brain is too young to process that, you know, maybe give it a little bit more time and it's important to expose yourself to new things and so on, right? So the reason I'm saying that, how do you overcome being rejected by your father? If he was a good father, he wouldn't have rejected you. If he was a man, then he would have protected his children, right? Now, protecting your children means that you show an interest in them, that you take care of them, that you build their self-esteem, that you help them understand that they're a value and that they're interesting and that they're cool and they're fun. My daughter is so fun and so much fun. And she's just cool. She's really, really cool.
[1:54:08] And she's very funny and caustic at times, but just in the right way that's enjoyable, not like in that way that leaves you like, oh, whoa, what was that, right? And she's just really cool. And the things that she's interested, the things that she's into are just fantastic. And I just, I relish her company. I love this phase. I've loved all the phases of parenthood and this phase in particular. I just really adore it. So as a man, as a father, as an adult, you take care of the people who depend upon you. You protect them and you take care of them. whereas if you are a selfish toddler in a man's body then you only care about your own thoughts your own feelings and you view them as kind of inanimate objects that you just thump if they don't give you what you want so my father and i never saw eye to eye we never were in sync we never even even a tiny bit he was always super awkward around me he wasn't that way with other family members my brother really but around me it just just super awkward i mean just felt very self-conscious and we just were never in. I actually, I've had the thoughts over the years that I'm not actually his son. To be honest, I've had the thoughts over the years. Occasionally it's like, I wonder who my mom did sleep with. Cause we really couldn't be further apart in looks or temperament or anything like that.
[1:55:30] But of course it was his job to try and find a way to bridge that gap and blah, blah, blah. Right. So having been rejected by my father and my father was not harsh in this kind of way. He didn't like yell at me. I mean, as I said before when I went to visit him when I was 15 or so he would he sent me up to scrape.
[1:55:48] His roof to sand down his roof and paint the roof of his garage in the blinding hot African sun for day after day after day, which was not, and he did give me a radio up there. I remember listening to Joan Jett's Crimson and Clover up there and really liking the song quite a bit. Just as I remember being, oh, I just thought of this today for some reason. I remember listening to Brian Ferry's more than this, or I guess Roxy music's more than this. Great, great album. Avalon. Um, I do anything to turn you on as a great song. I love that line. Is it raining in New York down Fifth Avenue out on Broadway after dark? Love the lights, don't you? It's beautiful. He sings it beautifully, and it's really, really well done. But I remember listening to that in a planter shop. Oh, and also, actually, I just played this to my daughter today. The opening, Alan Parsons' project, it usually is the opening to Eye in the Sky, but the song is actually called Sirius. It's like two minutes, S-I-R-I-U-S. You can find it on YouTube or YouTube Music or Amazon Music or whatever you listen to. Honestly, just put it on headphones. phones it's really hypnotic and i remember hearing that in a supermarket that song in a supermarket in africa when i was 15 i was like oh man what an amazing piece of music mike batts tarot suite's also great it's in the same sort of genre but anyway so how do you get over being rejected by your father well if you look up to him as masculine and and and manly and and an authority figure and so on that being rejected makes you feel like crap and that's what his narcissism and his vanity wants you to do right because you look up to him and he feels like the big man on campus, right?
[1:57:16] But for me, it was just like, well, you know, my dad just never grew up.
[1:57:21] And he never did, for me, maybe he did it for others, but he never did for me what a man is supposed to do, which is to keep his children safe. I mean, he never did with me, right? I mean, he certainly didn't keep me safe with regards to leaving me and going to the other side of the world, leaving me with a violent mother and so on, right? He just didn't keep me safe. So this is some basic questions, right? Did my father keep me safe? Well, no. He didn't keep me safe from others, and he didn't keep me safe from himself. Okay, so he failed at the basic job of a man. And not even of a father, right? But just the basic job of a man is to protect the people you care about. And you don't have to be a father to do this. It could be your girlfriend. It could be your Alzheimer-ridden father who might be bullied in an old age home. It could be kids in the neighborhood. It could be some cashier being bullied by some infant in a man's body.
[1:58:10] But the primary job of a man is to take care and to protect those he cares about. And part of that protection is just keeping them safe, and part of that protection is some financial stability or some stability of mood and so on. So you have to define what masculinity and manhood is, adulthood is, for a man. What is it? It has to be protected because it's what we do. That's why we're bigger. It's why we have 40% more body strength. It's why we're not debilitated by childbirth. It's so we can be there to guard the perimeter and protect those we care about. That's what we do. That's our job, right? So when you're a kid, did you have a father who was a man? Did you have a father who was masculine? Well, first thing is, did you feel safe, respected, and protected? Did he prepare you for adulthood by bringing a strong foundation of security for you to go out into the world and have that inestimable benefit? What's real privilege? Real privilege is just being loved and respected and protected as a child. That's what it's all about. out right so was your father a man did he provide stability and protection for those he cared about well no your mother didn't feel protected around him you didn't feel protected around him he protected your sister so little that she developed OCD in particular after he may have verbally eviscerated her before you guys left to go to Australia from New Zealand right.
[1:59:33] So, were you rejected by your father? No. See, my father, my father, did not think about me enough to reject me. He avoided me because he felt awkward around me, and bad people, or immature people, or childish people, they do feel nervous around me because I kind of tell it how it is, right? I kind of tell it how it is, at least for me. I don't make any claims to omniscient truth, but I'll certainly be honest, as I have in this conversation, about my thoughts and feelings. So, because I was going to be honest, because I was going to be direct, I was like a random bomb to my dad, right? Because I could make him, I guess, feel bad by being honest with him at any particular time, and he had a great susceptibility to feeling bad and all of that. So, of course, he's going to feel awkward around me because I kind of held his happiness in my hands, and if I chose to speak up, his happiness could be, you know, tsunamied like a sandcastle on the beach, just tsunamied out of existence. So, of course, he's going to be kind of tense around me, right?
[2:00:41] Because I hold the balm of truth, and it could go off at any time as it's been going off for 16 years here on the internet and before that even in my private life, right? So, my father didn't know me enough to reject me, right? Right. In the same way that when I showed The Princess Bride to my daughter when she was younger, she didn't reject me because the only thing she could process was, do I like this movie or not? Not like, well, I don't particularly like it, but my father really seems to like it. So I really need to step out of myself and figure out what's important to him, because that's an adult.
[2:01:12] If she could do that, I wouldn't be her father in the same way anymore. And so that's part of the education. And she will do that over time. And she's starting to do it now because she knows that I jump out of what I want to do in the moment to make sure that she's happy. And I'm, I'm fulfilling my obligations and responsibilities as a man, as a father. And one of the reasons why fatherhood is in such crisis in the West is that the government is, you know, continually importing dangerous people and causing and withdrawing police protection to the point. And then actually, I mean, in England, men, I think white men and Sikh men whose children had been kidnapped by these, the Muslim Pakistani immigrants had been kidnapped and were being used as sex objects as children. Children, the police would come and arrest the fathers trying to rescue their own children, right? So you can't, like, you actually go to jail for trying to protect your family. It's one of the reasons why masculinity is facing such a crisis is how well are we allowed to protect our own families these days? Well, we can actually be arrested for trying to do so, right?
[2:02:18] For the men who have skepticism about the efficacy and safety of the COVID vaccines, and they're out there trying to protect their families and protect other people's families by telling the truth, well.
[2:02:29] You can get, I mean, Brett Weinstein got a strike, a one out of three YouTube strike for one of his videos. Goes against community standards. Like, you can't even protect. Yeah, you can't protect. What if you think, oh, it's not necessarily great. I'm going to wait for the COVID vaccine. You know, more data wasn't really tested on kids or anything like that. Nope. You can get in real trouble for that, right? If you want to travel or whatever, right? So, yeah, it's how well are we able to protect our own kids, our own society, our own families? It's kind of what we do, right? What we do as men is what we do as fathers. So the fact that your sister ended up in a mental hospital, the fact that you have this intermittent, pretty significant and severe anxiety is because your father was not a father. Your father was not a man. Your father was a toddler. He was a selfish infant.
[2:03:18] And you actually want to be a father. Saying I want to be a different father implies that your father was a father. I know it's kind of a brain twisty, language twisty way to do it. But say, well, I want to be, I mean, if your father was a murderer, like take a really extreme example. If you say, well, my father was a murderer, but I want to be a different murderer. I want to be a different kind of murderer. That wouldn't make any sense. You don't want to be a different kind of father. You just want to be a father, which your dad was not. Your Spohm donor was not in the way that I sort of view it. So it's not like he went left and you went, you want to go right. It wasn't, well, you know, he didn't pay us enough attention. I want to pay my kids more attention. It's like, no, I actually want to be a father. My father was not my father. And I remember this in boarding school. Saturday mornings, I would get a haircut.
[2:04:08] And then they would sit down and I would have to write to my mother and I would write to my father. And to my mother, I would write, dear mother. And I used her, sober cave mother. To my father, I would write dear and I would use his first name. And they were like, no, you have to write to your father. And he said, but he's not my father. And he's like, no, he is your father. It's like, he's in Africa. No, no, but he is your father. I'm like, no, he's not. Like, I genuinely was like, I don't understand what this means. Right? Parent is a verb, not a noun. He's not fathering me, so he's not my father. He's not parenting me, so he's not my parent. I mean, he's some guy who impregnated my mom. I understood that enough. But I would write to him, dear, and I would just use his first name. And they, we can't mail this because you're not referring to him as your father. But he's not fathering me. He's not parenting me. So how can he be my parent?
[2:05:04] And your father did not parent you, as far as I can tell. He ignored you. He, you know, maybe when your interests would coincide on those rare occasions, he would. But that's not, you know, that's not parenting. So you don't want to parent differently. You want to be a parent.
[2:05:19] You don't want to be a different kind of father. You want to be a father, which your sperm donor was not. So I hope that makes, you know, so you're not rejected by an adult who assessed you. You're rejected by a child. A toddler who couldn't possibly, I mean, at this point, right? I mean, a toddler genuinely can't. Obviously, your father could have if he'd wanted to. So you're not rejected. You're not scorned. Were you abused? Yeah. And the first job of the father, don't abuse your kids. Don't neglect your kids. Raise them to be strong, healthy, independent. Think for themselves.
[2:05:57] Having a secure sense of their own value. Be there for them because that's going to make you happy and it's the right thing to do, which really is important. The same thing, doing the right thing and being happy is the same thing. And I say this to all the people out there, all the listeners out there. You're rejected by your father, you're rejected by your mother, then they are not in any moral sense, your mother or your father. Because their first job is to accept you and to love you and to take interest in you and to help you understand yourself and to model good behavior. That's parenting. Just being in the same room and feeding you, who gives a shit about that? that. That's like saying, well, my prison guard was actually my father because he put a roof over my head and he fed me food and gave me healthcare. So my prison guard is my father. No, just parenting is an active moral process of the transfer of values and a value itself to the child. And if that's not going on, it's not any kind of parenting as far as any philosophical definition would occur so that's i think the level that you need to operate at because right now i think that there's tension because there is a moral gap between what you want to become and what your father did but i don't think you're aware of that and because you're not aware of it you're not going to make enough of a change and therefore you're anxious about fatherhood to come.
[2:07:20] Because you're not rooted deeply in, I want to be a father. I was not parented. I was not fathered. And I want to provide that. Because you got these details. Like, well, I want to provide more attention to my kids than I got for myself. I want to provide more security than I got myself. It's like, no, no, no. I actually want to provide fatherhood and parenting to my children, which my father did not do. I want to father as a noun, not just as a sperm donor and a verb and a guy under the same house and a guy who pays the bills. And if you have that analysis and you have that goal, then you have, and listen, I've made this journey, right? I've made this journey. So this is like bitter, hard-won knowledge. Doesn't mean I'm right, right? But it is bitter, hard-won knowledge from how much it takes to turn this around. I'm not just, well, I want to parent differently than my parents did. It's like my parents weren't parents. They were toddlers in charge of me. They weren't parents. The only time they ever took any interest was when their preferences overlapped with mine, which is like saying some guy you're in the same tennis club with is your brother. It's like, no, you both like to play tennis, right? So my mom liked to play tennis. I like to play tennis. So sometimes we'd play tennis together. That's about it. I like to write novels. My grandfather was a novel writer, and my mom took some interest in that because it overlapped with her ambitions as well. She wanted to write books.
[2:08:47] But there was never any interest in anything that I was interested in.
[2:08:52] Because I was interested in it. Because it didn't interest them, they had no interest in it, which meant that they weren't interested in me, which meant they didn't care about me, which meant they weren't my parents. Because the category of parent can't include me and my father. It just can't. Because it's complete opposites. It's like including the category murderer, people who kill people and people who save people.
[2:09:15] Parenting is something you do. It's not something you squirt into and pay for. Four, parenting is the continual action of raising your children as strong, healthy, independent, clear-thinking human beings. And that's a huge time investment. And it pays off in spades, in joy, in love, in connection, in attachment. You want to provide that to your kids? Fantastic. I think that's the greatest thing in the universe to do. You want to provide that to your kids, but your gap analysis is like 1% of where it needs to be, in my humble opinion. opinion, your gap analysis is 1% of what it needs to be. You got to widen that. Otherwise, you'll say, well, my father went left. I'm going to try and go left. Maybe I'll just go left-ish because I kind of want to make a few tweaks along the way. And I'm diminishing a little what you're saying. I know you're not just talking about tweaks, but if you have an understanding that you're actually going to try and be a man, you're going to try and be a father and you will achieve it. I have no doubt of it. But if you have the right amount of gap analysis, right? If you know you've got to go in the opposite direction, you can actually achieve there. If you think you've got to tweak what came before, you're just going to go in the same direction, but just make your own mistakes where your father made his. But you….
[2:10:27] Probably the first man in several generations or many generations, or maybe forever, who's actually going to be a father. And that is going to bring you to happiness, to closeness with your kids, to a sense of satisfaction and self-respect at the job you're doing. And if you think your father can get one iota of happiness over having half wrecked the lives of two brilliant children, man, I'm telling you, you're wrong. You're wrong about that. There's no way he's happy. He probably puts on some bullshit, but you look at the woman he's with. He had to take an empty sock puppet who can't even stand up for an abused child. No, that's not happiness. That's not happiness. That's just the weird, aggy contentment that comes from not being challenged. Sorry, go ahead.
[2:11:15] Sorry. Yeah, and I haven't actually really been just sort of straight up and honest to them about any of this as well. So, yeah, that's something else that I kind of know in the back of my mind is necessary, but I haven't done up to this point. Well, and this is sort of why I do say, and you don't have to do anything, right? I mean, the joy of philosophy is if you have enough self-knowledge, you can do whatever the hell you want, and it's going to be fine. If you're honest enough with yourself and with others, fine, right? but the reason why i think it's important is if you try to make yourself real to your father like you go up and you say honestly your experience of of him as it's a dad and and growing up and all of that and and what's happened since right if you go up and you're just honest.
[2:12:07] Okay can i can i actually be in the same room as my father can i can i actually be in the same room as my father that's a big ass question man can i actually be present in can my father have two people in the same room or is it like him and his sock puppets is it just him and his narcissistic projections can he actually have someone else in the same room who and you know how you know that someone else in the same room is that they disagree with you right a lot of times right, i mean you think of a conversation conversation is two people disagreeing all the time in a way right otherwise it would be you and i saying exactly the same words at the same time right so we have to both listen and speak and there's disagreement and and that's right that's exactly what a conversation and relationship is right not moral disagreement but at least disagreement in syntax and speaking so you go and talk to your dad about these things or you do it on the phone or however it works right and you see okay you actually experience being rejected by your father probably for the first time since you were a toddler right so you go out okay what's it like for me to actually show up in a relationship with my parent or whoever you're having difficulties with in your relationships? What is it like for me to show up in this relationship to just be myself and be in this conversation? Now then, if your father, and I assume it would happen that he would viciously reject, swear at you, slam the phone down, you say, ah, okay. So my father had the opportunity to learn something about who I am. And he ran away. Why? Because he's a toddler and a coward he's like a fucking puppy with the vacuum cleaner you turn it on the puppy runs away.
[2:13:35] Right i'm serious about i know he's a big imposing guy i'm sure it certainly was when you were a kid right but he's yeah that's a good way of putting it he's a toddler he's a puppy he's a kitten he's an infant he'd ever listen but this is a tip in life as a whole and then i'll shut up in a sec so i appreciate your patience with this but there's a tip in life as a whole scan the the people around you and you can scan yourself too and say okay where did they get stuck where did they stop growing where did they stop growing i had a conversation i can't even remember if i published it yet but it was some guy who got involved with a girl who was an adult but she'd started drinking when she was like 12 or 13 like heavily right and i said okay so she must have the emotional development of like a 12 year old and he's like holy crap that's right i'm like well yeah because when you find some convenient way of avoiding growth and avoiding self-confrontation avoiding pain you stop growing so your dad stopped when he was a toddler he stopped growing when he was a toddler and you can see this all over the place you can have a look at everyone in your life and it would be really we'd be so convenient if we'd see two numbers on people's foreheads right number one iq that would just make things so easy right you see all the people rioting and you see 85 iq it's okay well that helps right it's a little that's why that's why they're writing right Right.
[2:14:54] So you see the IQ on the left hand side of the forehead and on the right hand side of the forehead. Here's why emotion. Here's where my emotional development stopped. Would be two very helpful numbers to have and you can do this in your own mind but the people in your life and you can do it with yourself as well i mean maybe not the iq thing but you can certainly look around your life and say okay well where did where did their emotional life stop where did their emotional growth stop where are they right now my mom was about three my dad was maybe six or seven that's where it stopped and with your dad yeah probably two to three years old because because that's the toddler blow-up tantrum face, right? And whatever happened to him and whatever choices he made afterwards, that's where he got stuck. But you tell me that somebody who hasn't had emotional growth in half a century and is still using the same bullshit tactics of a toddler when he's in his 50s, you tell me how that person could be happy, I'll tell you someone's not right, and that would be you. Sorry, go ahead. I'll shut up now, so tell me what you think.
[2:15:51] Thanks. Yeah, I mean, for me, I guess it feels like mine would have probably been sort of stunted or really slowed down or stopped when i was a teenager because i'm i still sort of feel at that um like not quite adult sort of phase with when it comes to the anxiety and stuff like that and um yeah i yeah that's that's sort of where i feel i'm at and this means that yeah so if you stay stuck there it means that the anxiety is going to increase because there's that rubber a band that stretches, right? So if you get stuck sort of 15, 16, 17, as your parents' marriage was disintegrating or whatever, right? So you get stuck there. Now you're 10 years past that. And if you can't get yourself to catch up, then it's going to get progressively tougher going forward. And that may be where some of the anxiety is coming from.
[2:16:43] And it, and it tends to sort of, um, trigger when I'm having like increasing success sort of, because like your dad, right. That. Yeah. Yeah. So, so because when I, when I've like the more, um, successful I become is that it kind of triggers that kind of triggers that, that anxiety, um, because there is the, there is a, a, a fear of what's ahead sort of.
[2:17:11] Yeah. Okay. So, I mean, this is kind of where you started from. So if you have time, can we just spend another 10 minutes on something? Yeah, sure. Because we're back to sort of success anxiety, which is kind of where we started, but I've spent a lot of stuff. I've said a lot of stuff since then. So I think your dad is blocking, your inner dad is blocking this conversation about him and turning us back to the origin story of the conversation, which had less to do with him. Does that make sense? Yeah. Okay. So let's try this with your indulgence. So you just pretend to be your dad. If you don't mind you know these role plays right so you just pretend to be your dad yeah uh call you up right, and i say i won't do your accent right even though i'm a bit of an accent whore but i won't do your accent i say dad dad dad so dad you know like the way things left with us that restaurant that you know ugly restaurant scene it's been bothering me i've been thinking about a lot since then, and to me it's like it's kind of part of a bigger pattern with us like like you know you You would raise your voice, swearing, you swore at this, you know, like your daughter, and said, you know, if you guys can't handle it, you can all just fuck off. You know, and that bothers me. I don't, that's like, that's not right. And I'm thinking also, like, when I was a kid, you really didn't take any interest in what I did. We didn't really do much together. Like, there's something not right.
[2:18:36] In in all of this and and it just feels like you know you you came to visit australia didn't even come to see us i mean i know you got your issues with mom and all of that but you know we're still your kids right sis and me like this is not right is it i mean what what do you think i mean the swelling the yearning yelling and swearing and i remember you telling me when i was going to australia oh you're not going to find a job son i mean this just doesn't seem right this doesn't seem good. What do you think? Oh, well, you know, um.
[2:19:11] I tried to engage you, but, you know, we just weren't interested in the same things. And your mother was too overbearing. So, you know, I didn't really get a chance or an opportunity. And then she took you guys away to another country. Well, hang on, Dad, Dad, look, I'm sorry to interrupt because I just asked you a question, but cut the shit, Dad, seriously. Are you going to sit there, go all rubber bones on me and say that for 17 years you never had the opportunity to try and figure out what I was interested in and meet me there? Because, you know, saying, well, we just didn't overlap in our interests, like, you're the father, right? You're not just supposed to, hey, I hope my kids and I are all interested in the same thing so we can get along. Like, that doesn't make any sense, right? Like, isn't it your job as a dad to get interested in the stuff that I'm interested in? Yeah, look, I haven't actually had this conversation with him, so I don't actually have a good, I don't have an answer. Yeah.
[2:20:20] Well, I could tell you what his strategies would be. His strategy, so most people, if they're kind of selfish or narcissistic, when they get confronted, they jump out of the conversation. Where is this coming from? Who have you been talking to? What books have you been reading? Is it that podcast? Is that that Canadian guy? like where's all this is this coming from your mom where is this coming what are you what are you talking about all of a sudden yeah what's all this all of a sudden where's this all coming from, I had my stressors. I had my problems. Yeah, you and I, you know, I had to work. I had to go live in the town.
[2:20:53] I can't spend my entire life staring at some kid's Lego and pretending to be fascinated. I had my own troubles. I had my troubles with the government. I had troubles with the tax agency. I was threatened with jail. And now you're saying, well, but dad, you didn't play Minecraft with me enough. It's like, hello, I'm putting food on the table and trying to stay out of prison. Through no fault of my own, I might add, I tried to obey the law.
[2:21:13] And yeah there were some challenges guess what kid life is tough life is tough and you saw me handle it i expect you to handle it too i don't know just stuff like that right i always sort of he would always sort of try to um to to put anything i put everything on my mom sort of, um like oh well she must have she must have been saying things to you she must have set you against me blah blah blah well and so i can try both sides here right okay so so he would he would try and frame it to jump out of the conversation and try and say because he'd need to know the origin story of the conversation as a way of avoiding the actual content right and say oh did your mom put you up to this it's like dad can you just answer my question no i'm not gonna ask you a question until i know where the hell this is coming from why would it matter what would it matter if mom told me or a hand puppet told me or space aliens told me i saw it written on a fucking wall these are honest questions that i have about you as a parent and criticisms to be honest about it right well i just need to know where this is going no you don't need to know where this is coming from because now you're trying to distract me or drag me away from these actual questions into some weird origin story it doesn't matter.
[2:22:24] Doesn't matter what i do expect and what you owe me as my father is some honesty and some answers to the questions that i have fine he'd say fine go ahead ask your questions i'll answer right that's indicating that he's totally throwing his arms like folding his arms and he's not going to push back right he's not going to give you the answers that you want it's okay what was what were your what were your issues what were your questions again then right that's indicating it It doesn't matter to him, and he's listened so little that you have to repeat them, which is a form of humiliation, right? So this would be the kind of stuff. So then you would patiently repeat the question, say, well, so for instance, what were you doing swearing at me in the restaurant? Well, Christ, son, I'm here with my new girlfriend.
[2:23:09] You know, I was sick. I had lymphoma. I could still be sick. I've got chemo going ahead, and this is her first introduction to my family. And you're just sitting there, stuff on your face. You got fucking butter all over your lips and your chin. And basically, I might as well be sitting across from a bonobo. I might as well be sitting across from a monkey. You can't even show me the basic respect of having some decent table manners when you're meeting my girlfriend for the first time. So yeah, I told you pretty bluntly and pretty directly how unhappy I was with all of that. Oh, but I thought you were all about expressing feelings. Isn't that what this conversation is all about, that I'm just supposed to – we're supposed to express our feelings. Well, there I was expressing my feelings, and now I'm a bad guy. So which is it? Do you want people to express their feelings or not? I don't know. It's probably not anything close, but something like that, right?
[2:24:00] Yeah, that seemed like it could. Okay, so then you'd say, okay, so dad, you know, you swore at me, right? In public. I mean, you just F-bombed while I was frustrated. It's like, but that's not an excuse. I mean, you're a grown-ass man.
[2:24:18] If you're trying to say to me, dad, oh, well, I was frustrated, therefore I lobbed F-bombs around.
[2:24:23] Quick question, oh, father, quick question. why didn't you lob f-bombs at the government when they threatened to throw you in jail over the 20,000.
[2:24:32] Well that's a totally different situation yes you're right it is a situation where someone had power over you and therefore you were perfectly polite but you as my father have a lot of power over me so if i don't do something that you want you launch f-bombs at me do you know i remember when i was a little kid i remember you made a cashier this woman a girl i think it was young woman you made her cry because they didn't have something in stock oh christ what are we going back what was that 20 years now is this i think we march oh you sound just like your mother oh i remember this thing that happened 20 years first of all you were a kid you don't remember it that well you don't remember it that well i don't even remember it that well it's such an but you've you've you've held on to you held on to this for like 20 years now 20 years you know i got mad at some cashier and she's burst into tears because she was on her period and you're just sitting here like you're bringing the dread this is this where we are you're dredging this up there that's older than the titanic for god's sakes that's all that's all you got but 20 years ago some woman got upset because i was i got bad customer service and didn't sit for it didn't didn't come on i mean what what are you on medication did you hit your head like it's what what what what what is going on i don't know something like that right yeah to which you say okay let me give you a challenge dad.
[2:25:55] Tell me a time that you remember where you weren't interested in something that I was doing, but you sat down and tried to learn it anyway. Oh, Christ, I can't be expected to remember every single detail of parenting that happened over the last 25 years, for God's sakes. I mean, it happened, but you can't expect me to dredge up every little thing. It's like, Dad, I'm not asking you to dredge up every little thing. I'm just asking you for one example where I was interested in something that didn't appeal to you immediately, you know, because when I was a kid, right? I didn't like new food, right? I was better than sis because she hated new food, but I didn't like new food. I liked the familiar stuff, right? And what did you all say to me? Try something new for Christ's sake, stop being so fussy, right? And so that by that logic, you should have wanted to try things I was interested in just because, you know, try something new, don't be so fussy, but I'm, I'm racking my brain and I don't want to be unfair to you, right? But I'm racking my, I can't, I can't honestly remember a single time where you said to me, well, I don't understand this, but But show me, son. Teach me. Help me. Help me understand so that we can do something. Do it. Do it together, right? I can't remember a time. Well, I was busy. I was working. Your mother wasn't working. I was the one putting food on the table. It's like, yeah, I get that. But we still had a lot of time together. You had vacations. There were weekends.
[2:27:11] I was home for 17 years. And I can't remember one time over those 17 years when you sat down and tried to learn something I was interested in just because I was interested in it. Oh Christ where's all this coming from who put you up to get all this stuff right and then I would say so dad.
[2:27:30] When I would bring home a report card, let's say that the report card wasn't that great. I got like a B minus or a C or something like that, right? And he said, what the hell's been going? Why are you getting a B? Why are you getting a C? If I had sat there and said, Dad, where the hell is this coming from? Where is this? Did the teacher put you up to this? Did mom put you up to this? You'd look at me and say, this got nothing to do. I demand to know what's been going on in this class. Why you've gotten a C? I say, look, I can't remember everything that I did in this class. It's been a bloody year. It's like, no, son, that is not a good enough answer. Like, here's the thing. You wouldn't give me the excuses you're pulling out now when I'm asking you about your parenting. You would never give me these excuses when I was eight bloody years old. You would never let me have these excuses when I was eight years old. You would demand to know, and you wouldn't let me gaslight you, and you wouldn't let me dodge, and you wouldn't let me fog, and you wouldn't let me try and frame it. You'd just answer the damn question, son. So if I didn't get these excuses when I was eight, how the hell do you get these excuses when you're 55 years old, dad? Come on. Man up.
[2:28:30] Grow up a little, I would say, just answer the questions. I mean, they're not that complicated. I get that they might be a little emotionally difficult to answer, but you always told me to tough it up, right? What did you say to sis? You said, hey, if you can't handle it, then fuck off, right? Okay, well, here's something which you appear to be unable to handle, but you're a tough guy, right? Because you get to mouth off at me, your kid, you get to mouth off at your daughter because you're such a tough guy, right? You didn't mouth off to the tax authorities, as I already mentioned so i guess if you're finding this difficult you just got to show me that, manliness and that courage that you've always encouraged in me and just answer these questions i don't have any time for this i have no patience for this i've given you enough time i've given you all the answers that i have you got to take this up with some therapist or whatever the hell has got this bee in your bonnet i don't care click right because the more persistent you are it escalates to when he disconnects right yeah and i think that's what happened with my sister when she was over there because she just kept escalating and wouldn't back down. And so then he just blew up. Well, not escalating. Escalating is when you continue, like you insult and you scale some, just being persistent. Right. Or maybe she did escalate.
[2:29:42] So, yeah. So if he couldn't, if he could, yeah, if he couldn't manipulate you, then he would simply disconnect. Right. Which is also abusive. Parents have no right to disconnect from their children in these circumstances. No, right. Because I wasn't being abusive to him. him, right? In that double-sided role play where I'm playing table tennis with myself, right? I wasn't being abusive to the guy. I was simply being persistent and not letting him get away with gaslighting and manipulation, right?
[2:30:08] I wasn't calling him an asshole. I wasn't calling him a terrible father. I wasn't saying you rejected me and you abandoned me and you're a jerk and you're an asshole and you made that up. I was simply being persistent in, no, no, give me an answer. Don't give me these bullshit excuses, which you wouldn't give to me when I was a kid. So, you know, live by your own rules, right? That's all we do in these situations.
[2:30:27] Live by your own rules, right? Just live by your own rules.
[2:30:29] So then he would disconnect, right? And then it would be like, okay, so he can't handle an honest conversation. Conversation he can't handle me being inconvenient to him he can't handle anything why because he's a toddler he manipulates he bullies he threatens and then he runs away because hanging up is just just running away right just runs away because he's a toddler yeah and if i think about it the reason the reason that i probably haven't been honest with him so far is i always kind of thought like oh it would be good to have um him as sort of like a uh backup you know if i ever needed support or anything like that or ever got into i ever you know had any any sort of trouble but yeah i i i do need to be i do just need to be to be honest with him because that sort of um, holding back of honesty is probably probably like reflecting in other parts of my life as well so So you will have far more professional success if you can master this than anything your father could ever provide to you, because whatever your father will provide to you will come at such an emotional cost that it will never be worth it. Yeah, that's true as well. well and i since this is the root of it as well um not holding back from being completely honest with him would help in the in all the other parts of life as well because it's probably.
[2:31:58] It's probably projected onto other parts of my life as well if i think about it yeah no it's it's not worth it it's absolutely not worth it absolutely not worth it in terms yeah sorry about the confrontation sorry in terms of avoiding that the confrontation with him then that makes me uncomfortable.
[2:32:16] Having confrontations with other people as well, right? Well, yeah, if you can handle that confrontation then you gain the superpower because nothing else, like everything you want is on the other side of fear, the cave you're most afraid of is the one that has the greatest treasure so I've been put in ridiculously uncomfortable situations over the course of this show, still doing my thing, still enjoying what I'm doing, so no, you gain this superpower and i don't think there's any other way to gain it right confronting the father it's the darth vader thing right confronting the father gives you the force right yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah and and obviously yeah like you're right if um if i am able to deal with this then yeah like the professional success i could have for yeah i'll be able to get way more resources than any.
[2:33:07] Yeah, I was offered some resources from my father's estate, and I just said, nope, no, they should go. They should go to his kid, not me. Not even tempting. That's the other thing as well.
[2:33:21] Yeah, there's going to be an inheritance from him as well, right? That's the other thing as well. But again, I can't see it being worth it. Oh, gosh, no, no. No, you know, no, because it's, I mean, first of all, he's got probably 20, 30 years left on the planet, right? And I know, listen, I mean, I had illness like your dad, and it's like eight years in the past. Now my health is great, right? So he could last 20 or 30 years more. No, no, no. And listen, you know, would you want anyone in your life hanging around you just for money? No. Would you want your, let's say you get married, right? And your wife takes out a life insurance policy. You take out a million-dollar life insurance policy or a half-million-dollar life insurance policy, and your wife openly says to you, oh, you know, I don't like you at all, but I'm just sticking around to get the money after you're dead.
[2:34:15] Would you say yeah well that would that would um that would be the relationship i've owned well i mean it's gross right you just just hang around people for money right it's and look i know that you know that it's just probably never been put quite as starkly but don't be for sale right if you're not for sale you'll end up making a lot more than if you are for sale because whenever you're for sale you think you're getting something for nothing but you're not or it's another way of saying well my father didn't give me attention but maybe he can at least give me money but if If the only way you can get that money is to continue to not be paid attention for the next 20 years, it's not worth it, right?
[2:34:52] Yeah, yeah, that's true. And that's the thing as well is that, I mean, it doesn't matter either way, but like when he passes away, then there'll still be his partner who will get the money first anyway, right? So it's like it'll probably come so late anyway that it's like… Well, he'll know. He'll know why you're sticking around and he'll stick it to you. He won't leave you a penny. I mean, if you had a wife who was only sticking around for the insurance company, sorry, for the insurance money, you'd make sure the insurance money never went to her, right? Yeah, that's true. That's true. No, I think the real thing you've got to talk to before your dad is your sister. That's the real conversation, I think, right now. Find out what he said to her when you were teenagers, what her experience of his parenting was like, and get more details about what happened when she went to see him in New Zealand. Yep. So um sorry go ahead right oh yeah we had talked about it to some degree but i had i didn't uh inquire as much as i should have i guess well again you're you should sir you know you inquired quite a bit but it's what i said to a listener the other day you know uh i made a mistake i didn't know better i'm gonna learn better right that's that's all we say in life right i made a mistake i didn't know better i'm gonna learn better right that way you don't have to i should have done more Or I'm deficient or whatever. I just made a mistake. Didn't know better. Going to learn better.
[2:36:14] All right. So that's the major outlines of how the conversation go for you. How are you doing? Yeah. Yeah. It's that's that. Yeah. That definitely that definitely makes that definitely makes lots of sense. I can kind of see now in my life how I've sort of held back from being honest. And so that means that I've also held back from being honest and just in general sort of as well.
[2:36:41] Like for the same for the same reasons and um yeah that it's basically like whenever I talk to him that's I don't like I don't really exist anyway because it's just sort of kind of like repeating repeating back to him like what he what he wants to hear and not actually being being genuine or honest at all and then will you keep sorry go ahead oh yeah and sorry and that That fear of confrontation then also manifests itself in all the other parts of my life as well in terms of work or just other things in general as well because I haven't had that core confrontation.
[2:37:22] Yeah, and that way you can be successful and you don't have to sacrifice anything for it, right? I mean, if you look at people like, what is that old meme? Well, it's not that old meme now where people say, so the two richest men in the world couldn't keep their wives happy. What chance do you have, right? Like Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos, right? Both got dumped by their wives, right? And it's like, okay, so they got their financial success and it cost them their relationships. Like, what if you could just have it all? Well, to have it all though, you've got to work philosophically and you've got to be very clear in your moral delineations and very clear in your moral outrage, right? Because these guys, you know, they traded their families for money in many ways, right?
[2:38:02] And it's a bad deal, man. It's a really bad, I can't imagine how depressing it would be to get divorced in your 60s. I guess for Bill Gates, I guess, I don't know, Jeff Bezos. He's in his 50s. He's got this weird RoboCop thing going on. I don't know how the hell old he is. But yeah, it's very sad stuff. It's very sad stuff. What if you could have it all, right? What if you could have success in your career and you could have love with your wife, love with your kids, and you didn't have to sacrifice anything? Well, in my case, my reputation, but that's all right. My reputation is still good among good people and that's really what counts. All right. So keep me posted if you could about how it's going Owen, and I really appreciate it, the call today. Very, very good stuff. I also appreciate that you hung in there through the coaching, which I hope wasn't too naggy, but I just wanted to make sure we got to a very productive place, if that makes sense. No, no, that was, yeah, it was very helpful. Yeah, thanks a lot for all that. And I'll let you know later on how it all went.
[2:38:57] It all goes all right well thanks everyone so much free domain.com forward slash donate to help out the show should you be so inclined and i would certainly be happy if you inclined that way free domain.locals.com you can check that out for premium shows a community that you can chit chat with as much as you feel uh as much as you see fit it's also a great way to message me free domain.locals.com thanks to james as always the magnificent please check out, fdrpodcast.com it's amazing stuff got a brilliant new coder there who's just making easily shareable lightning fast searches and you can find all of the videos there as well fdrpodcast.com a new revamped search engine that is really of the gods uh it's so psychic it will actually tell you what the price of bitcoin is in 12 seconds from now which i think is all we need uh all we need these days all right thanks everyone so much have a great evening uh lots of love from up here uh i I will talk to you soon. Bye.
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