[0:00] Hello.
[0:01] Hello, can you hear me?
[0:02] I can hear you just fine. How are you doing?
[0:04] I'm doing great. A little nervous, but thanks for taking the call.
[0:07] Oh, it's my pleasure, my pleasure. So, obviously, a couple of things in the email you first sent me, but yeah, break it out for me, brother. How can I best help?
[0:15] Yeah, so I've been giving a lot of thought, and so I wrote that in the middle of a night shift, and it amplifies a lot of the negative emotions, and it also kind of messes with my focus a little bit.
So, throughout the week, and I think that one of the big problems that I'm having, it's less so getting over, like breaking up with somebody.
And it's more so I have a very, since that time, I've adopted a really like a cynicism that I really, I'm like not, I'm starting to really not like who I'm becoming. coming, I feel like I'm very negative.
And worse, I'm like, holding it against people who are positive in my life, which is horrible.
And yeah, that's kind of that. That's where I'd like to start, I think.
[1:10] Do you want to tell me about the dating and the breakup?
[1:13] Yeah, I can get a little bit of that. So that was first relationship, as I think I'd mentioned, that was kind of out of what was it?
Probably fall of 2021 through spring of 2022. It's a pretty short relationship.
Moved really fast though in terms of just seriousness.
I've listened to you for a long time, so I especially would listen to the relationship podcast and how to not be shallow and picking a girlfriend or a boyfriend or whatever.
And I felt that I had applied that pretty well.
And it ended up not working mainly because of distance and because they actually lived in...
And that was...
[2:05] Yeah, if you could just stay off the... Stay off places and names if you don't mind. It's no problem. But yeah, keep going.
[2:10] Oh, sorry, sorry. Yeah, so they live in a different spot than I did.
and basically, they were like a dancer too.
So that's kind of an unreliable job.
It's not really sure where it's going to take you. So that was part of it as well.
Anyway, that kind of crushed me for probably about a year. It was, you know, the last...
[2:39] What did that do to you for about a year?
[2:41] Oh, it just crushed me.
[2:42] Okay, but tell me about... I don't want to hear about the aftermath.
I want to hear about the meeting, the dating, what happened.
[2:49] Okay. Let me think here. Okay.
Sorry, I'm still a little nervous here. I'm going to collect myself a little bit.
Okay. So we worked in the same building, same complex.
Walked by her during work a bunch. I was a valet.
And I just walked up to her one day and just started talking to her.
And we quickly kind of started noticing each other more. Then I asked her out like a week or two in.
after that it's been a while I haven't really rehashed it well, after that it was just you know start going on dates every week took a while before like we did we did end up like sleeping together probably within a month or so but.
[3:43] Sorry what part of it was long distance.
[3:45] Oh sorry so it ended up I'm trying to avoid locations, basically it wasn't long distance at the at the beginning but we had both been uh we were both in a certain town for a certain amount of time i was finishing school she was finishing a ballet contract basically and at we they happened to end like at the same time and so we were not sure like we knew we had like you know six months to be you know to to date and try to figure it out and i'd I'd made it clear that I wanted to go long-term, and we were on the same page as far as I knew and as far as what she was saying.
So when that time came, then it became long-distance, ended after a month.
[4:29] Okay. What was it that attracted you to each other, well, you to her?
[4:35] I thought she was very... She had a very mature energy to her.
uh she was very kind smart and funny not easy no not not uh you know, not too bad to look at either definitely attractive um but again i was, now i was trying to be aware of that and like you know not have that be the main factor and i don't i truly don't think it was um and yeah just super very easy to be around not political um i thought i felt you had good morals and yeah okay.
[5:16] So how did it go then you said you dated for fall to spring.
[5:20] Yeah just about and uh then when they ended up moving away um and we tried long distance for like a month we were we actually had with the crazy thing is is she had actually agreed to basically move to where I lived and where I was moving.
We had a lease basically in our inbox. It was ready to sign at that stage.
And that's where it kind of fell apart because it got real. Yeah.
But yeah, I.
[5:55] Don't know what that means.
[5:57] Oh, um, well, that was, uh, when they, when they finally actually had to make, when she finally had to make a decision about, you know, pulling the trigger on it and, you know, moving, um, decided not to.
[6:10] Um, so sorry, did she moved away and then you had a lease or.
[6:15] Yeah. So sorry, it's a little confusing. um we were living in a small town outside of my hometown we both moved I moved back to my hometown she moved across the country and then was there for like a month you know and then I we were planning like again a month or two from then to move in in my hometown okay.
[6:40] And why did you break up.
[6:41] Um entirely her her decision.
It was kind of blindsided me how that kind of turned out.
I think my understanding of it now is that it was just not, she wasn't really being, I don't want to actually accuse her being dishonest, but I don't know.
I don't think she knew what she really wanted and she She wasn't sure about kind of where her life was going and didn't want to.
[7:14] She did agree to live with you, right?
[7:19] Yeah, she did.
[7:20] So it's kind of tough if you say, yes, Annalise, I will live with you.
Then she knew what she wanted, right? She just changed her mind or something?
[7:29] That's a tough one. I mean, maybe that's just how I want to recognize it.
But yeah, I mean, a lot of people.
[7:34] You did sign Annalise together, right?
[7:35] No, it was in the inbox.
The last step was signing it, but we had put money down. We had done all the things, put all the information in, and done all this planning and stuff.
The last step was just signing it. So technically not fully committed there, but yeah, that was months of planning and stuff.
[8:01] So why did she say she changed her mind?
[8:06] Um, she didn't really give a reason at the time.
She, what was, what was the most, uh, what kind of broke me the most about it was that I had been like, you know, first or second date that we had, I was super upfront about, you know, Hey, the reason I date is, you know, to eventually, you know, get married and I want kids at some point and, you know, sooner rather than later, putting all my priorities, priorities out there.
Um, and you know, we had, I was fully convinced that she was on the same page and because she said she was and, Yeah, and then she used those reasons as like, Like the most she would give me it's like well, I don't really know if I want to have kids right like and I'm Not really sure now if I want like this and that and it's kind of that you like, you know That you want to date that you date for marriage.
That's kind of a problem too. Like it was It was kind of crazy see how quickly that switched and it really messed up my trust.
Because the people in my family and friends that knew her, they thought it was marriage material. It wasn't just me.
[9:16] So sorry, why would you want to live with her without getting married?
[9:20] So that was not the ideal. I'm glad that that didn't happen in hindsight.
Basically, Basically, it was one of those situations where she would have needed, it would have been very tough for her to afford living alone if I was going to ask her to do that and move across the country because she's, again, invested in a career that does not make much money, which is dancing.
And that was okay with me because I make good money and I was expecting to...
be a breadwinner anyway in a long-term relationship so that yeah that it definitely wasn't ideal but it was the only way i could see no sorry what but why.
[10:07] Didn't you ask her to marry you.
[10:08] I'm not saying that you.
[10:10] Should or shouldn't have but i mean women generally experience it as an insult to say i want to live with you but not marry you.
[10:15] Oh that's i i guess um, it seemed just way too early for that which i know is a contradiction to too early to live together so.
[10:28] Okay what else.
[10:28] Yeah um what else what i'm sorry i don't no.
[10:35] Why else wouldn't you want to marry her oh.
[10:39] At the time there was i definitely saw it going there i just wanted i wanted more time um i guess okay but then why don't you date.
[10:46] And like help me understand the moving in together stuff.
[10:50] Um we were both i think i think it was in in In hindsight, I think it was mostly out of fear of things falling apart over long distance.
I think that was probably the biggest part of it.
[11:05] Oh, so you just wanted to solve the long distance, but without getting married?
[11:09] Yeah.
[11:11] And she was initially keen about living with you and then backed out just before the signing, right?
[11:18] Mm-hmm. Okay.
[11:19] Okay. Okay. So, I mean, you know what the most likely explanation as to why she backed out, right?
[11:28] Um, would it be that it was half commitment?
[11:34] Well, you hadn't sealed the deal by getting married, so she's still on the market and she just met someone local.
I mean, I don't know if you checked up on her after the breakup, but I assume at some point she started dating again and I assume that that point was sooner rather than later.
[11:51] Well, that's actually the thing.
So I haven't checked up on her in quite a while, which I'm happy about.
um but i had for again for like for a year i was kind of keeping tabs you know just checking the histogram and stuff she's uh it didn't appear as though dating anybody in fact it was the kind of now i'm a now i don't need no man kind of thing and i'm just gonna you know her parents got some money so they she like immediately started like traveling internationally and like which could well mean she's hooking up with people and having short-term stuff which is You mean a dancer traveling.
[12:28] On daddy's credit card overseas? Yeah, I think it's pretty safe to assume.
[12:34] Yeah, yeah, yeah. So not super surprising there, but not relationship-wise, as far as I know. But again, I don't really care that much.
[12:44] Yeah, maybe she had some female friend who indoctrinated her into the you-don't-need-no-man stuff.
[12:51] Well, I think it was her mom, actually.
[12:53] Ah, excellent.
[12:54] Yeah her her dad i her dad basically she described him as a pushover, and her mom was kind of the domineering one. And you could just tell, I kind of got the impression that she hadn't, well, her mom had never met me, and I just got the feeling like, man, when she left to go back to her family home for a while, for that month, you started to see these changes in her. how she would talk to me.
And, you know, it just seemed like someone was whispering in her ear, kind of.
And I don't know.
I definitely had my suspicions about that.
[13:44] Okay, so she got the, your young wife settled down, have your fun, travel, that kind of stuff, right?
[13:51] Yeah, and what was even more ironic was that the last time I had checked up on her, she's now in marketing school. school.
So a complete change of the dancer thing totally dropped.
And also living fairly close to where I am now, within the same region, which is definitely colder.
And she was on the coast, very warm areas.
And one of the reasons, I don't want to live where it's so cold.
And now she's not a dancer, studying marketing in the cold.
[14:31] Right. Okay. And what was so hard about that?
You went out for like a couple of months and then she went long distance and then a month later you broke up. Is that right?
[14:41] It was like four to five months together, about a month long distance.
And then literally like a day before I had a ticket to fly and meet her family.
And she backed out then. So, yeah. Yeah.
[14:57] So when you were together for the four or five months before she flew back to her home state, how much time were you spending together?
Were you joined at the hip? Was it more intermittent? How did that work?
[15:10] It was, let me think here. It wasn't joined at the hip. Neither of us wanted that.
But it was definitely like, you know, on the weekends, we'll hang out and probably on a weekday in the middle of the week. Like, and then if anything comes up, like, you know, she had problems with her apartment or stuff, or I, you know, want to study together or something like that.
I don't know. We would fit stuff in, but it definitely wasn't joined at the hip.
We would, we would both do our own things and, you know, have our own events that we would go to and stuff.
[15:42] Okay.
And is it fair to say that she broke your heart when she broke up with you?
[15:48] Oh, yeah. You know, a billion little pieces.
[15:51] So tell me how that hit you so hard.
[15:55] Oh, well, it was, I had, it was, I'm sorry. Let me try to gather myself here.
All right. So when I had to, I had to move back, you know, to my hometown, right?
My school had been finished. I was about to enter the workforce. four years um and during that like two-day stretch of me like packing up my apartment and having to get going she started like you know basically saying oh she started with that she didn't want to move and we had already like that basically left me with nowhere to live i mean i could live with my parents but that was you know completely not ideal at all and it was She kind of dropped this bomb as I'm packing and more stressed out than I've ever been.
And then she kind of got very avoidant about talking about it.
And I would be like, we really need to figure this out. And she would just put it off.
It started to really weigh on us and me.
[17:08] And how long was that process? Between doubt and we're broken up.
[17:15] I think that was about two weeks it felt like a year but, maybe so okay it was like one week of um, We're like, she's kind of wants to, she's like having second thoughts and stuff.
We have a phone call and I ended up, I think I made the biggest thing I regret is I kind of, I yelled at her.
I said, I yelled one sentence at her. I said, I don't fucking believe you. Pardon my language.
[17:47] Which she said that, oh, I want to be with you and stuff.
And I just blew up. That was the one thing I said.
And then she started crying. and I immediately was just I felt horrible that I had said that but it was it was true I didn't believe her after that we had talked for a really long time thought things were patched up about that and we like you know we're, communicating I thought really well but it seems like she, She was kind of avoiding the conflict then too.
And anyway, as I'm moving a couple weeks later, then she kind of drops the bomb.
Like, yeah, I don't want to move.
So now we're, post that fight, we had like made, like finalized the plans for moving and stuff.
Like it was, we were over it as far as I know.
And then she drops the bomb and I was like, oh, like kind of the world's kind of crashed down a little bit.
Have another fight over the phone, which is the worst. And I don't really, there's nothing there that I really regret saying.
[18:53] And then basically, like, right when I, once I moved back, she called me that she doesn't like, you know, she's kind of over all of it.
She's somewhere, okay, well, let's just like, you know, that's fine.
I'm not going to talk to you for like, you know, as much time as you need.
You call me if you, when you make like a decision, whatever.
I wait like three days. She calls me like, yeah, I want to break up.
So I'm living at my parents' house at the time.
You know, get broken up with over the phone. You know, pretty brutal.
[19:36] Did you know how rough it was going to be for you?
[19:42] Oh, how hard it was going to hit me?
[19:43] Yeah.
[19:47] Um, no.
[19:50] Yeah, because you basically said you didn't fight for her, right?
I'm not saying whether you should or shouldn't have, I don't know, but you didn't, right? You're just like, yeah, let me know. I mean, I know it wasn't that flippant, but something like that.
[20:06] My retelling of it It glosses over a lot of stuff, I don't believe in begging somebody to stay I didn't want to reduce myself to that I feel like, you know, Women kind of make up their mind And then they tell you So I was really hurt And I sent her something Oh.
[20:27] So you thought by recreating the dynamics If her parents married, you'd win her, like what do you mean women decide like you just helpless.
[20:42] Uh no i mean, that's very interesting that you don't say that though, i try to.
[20:51] Do the interesting things, i've just why so passive i mean.
[20:57] Well so i figure out okay um there was definitely a couple, like when she had first started saying before that little three day break I just kind of left her to herself and let her think about it there was an outpouring of the soul for sure, and that was actually met with dismissive sorry.
[21:20] On your part you mean I thought you left her.
[21:21] Alone no it was that I said my piece and then left her alone so there was a, you know there was an outpouring for sure oh.
[21:34] You said how much you wanted her.
[21:35] Yes oh yeah okay.
[21:38] So how is that i'm trying to understand what you categorize as begging i'm not saying that boys i just want to make sure i know what you mean.
[21:43] Begging i guess i mean more after um like if i had on that last call basically if i had like started you know saying oh please like won't you change your mind and stuff and like Like after that.
[21:56] Before that, when she's deciding.
[21:59] Um, well, well, begging would just, at that point would be, I don't know, getting, getting really emotional.
[22:10] Um, well, isn't it just honest? I don't know about, I'm not sure what begging means in this context. If you really want to date her and you really want to marry her, or you really want to be with her, just stating that very emphatically and honestly, I'm not sure how that's begging. Isn't that just being honest?
[22:26] Yeah, I guess I don't really... I'm trying to recall exactly how that went.
Because a lot of it is a little bit of a blur, but I definitely...
[22:42] The reason I'm asking is most breakup regret has to do with regrets that are own actions, not the other person.
And so if we've done everything we can to maintain a relationship and the relationship ends, there's usually not much regret.
Like the regret and the agony that you felt afterwards usually has to do with, maybe not always, but usually has to do with something you wish you'd done or could have done or should have done that you didn't do.
And the regret is more about a failure to act than it is the loss of the other person.
[23:12] Ah, okay. Yeah. I, well, I had given that, um, it's during, during that process of breaking up, I was pretty cognizant of, you know, trying to not let those regrets, um, happen and trying and trying to just avoid that.
that so again i don't like i'm not it was just more to me like when when the book she had finally like you know come to decision i was like there you could just see it in her eyes like there was nothing really there and i didn't just you know hang up on her we talked for a little bit but i was.
[23:49] Okay so then why the regret that's what i'm trying to figure out is the regret why did it hit you that's what i'm trying to figure out why it hit you so hard right so if you did everything thing you feel you could have done and it turned out she was just cold-hearted or dismissive or not a nice person after all dishonest or you know she can't connect or she can't commit then you know good riddance and move on right like you you dodged a bullet so i'm trying to figure out the regret part i.
[24:15] Think um it might be that i you know got so invested in the wrong person And now I kind of feel like, so I had waited a really long time for who I felt like to be the right person.
To date, I'm very, very picky.
I don't hook up with people. And I definitely was a late bloomer, so very limited attention from girls growing up.
and so I was like ready by the time I was I was like 21 and by that time I was like let's get a relationship going so I was probably a little over eager but I was also very I consulted people that I trusted and you know, I think that I did a decent job of vetting her and everything, but she just, I think that it was more, I'm more regretting that like, I don't know if regrets really the right word.
I feel, I feel just kind of bitter and I kind of see her as the question.
[25:25] Why?
[25:26] Um, well, I, I think I, I see her as this, a perfect example of like what it's, what seems to happen.
Like you were saying, like the modern kind of indoctrination of, You don't need a relationship, just travel, you know, think about yourself.
And to me, it was like, man, how do I compete with that mind control?
And especially, like, I was very, I was really in love and very much, like, convinced that I was, like, that she was, like.
[26:05] No, I don't buy it. No, I don't buy the love thing. Sorry. I buy the lust.
I buy it. She was a hot dancer. I get that.
[26:13] Yeah.
[26:13] You know, I'll be frank with you. Like, where is her honor? Where is her integrity?
Where are her virtues? Right? We can only love virtue.
So when you said, oh, she was such a kind person. No, she wasn't.
She set you up. She dangled you along. She dropped you hard. Like, that's not nice.
[26:31] Yeah, I definitely agree with that. It was that that stuff was revealed to me a little bit later.
As far as I had seen, it was, you know, in my...
[26:43] No, I asked you what you liked about her, and you said, well, she's kind, and she was this and that and the other, right? She was kind, she was sweet.
[26:49] Right?
[26:49] So it wasn't like I thought she was. Like, are you still of the opinion that she was?
[26:54] No, let me rephrase. She appeared that way. She appeared to be very kind, and...
[27:00] And why did she appear that way? What did she do that made it seem that way?
[27:04] From the things that she would say and the things that she would respond to, the things that she would tell me that she liked about me.
It was the kind of thing where… You're going with.
[27:16] Stuff they said? Stuff she said?
[27:19] Yeah.
[27:21] Okay, so why would you believe stuff that she said? What was the empirical evidence to back up her claims?
[27:26] I guess…, I mean.
[27:30] If you're dating, if you're a woman dating some guy and he says, I'm a millionaire doctor, it's not anybody, you know, he's taking the bus, right? At some point, don't you want some proof?
[27:40] Yeah. Well, I mean, at that, at that five or six month mark, I was starting to, you know, definitely question it, but I just hadn't had a reason to, it was, it was just the, that test hadn't really come yet.
[27:54] What do you mean that test hadn't come? I don't understand.
[27:56] Well, you know, her time to demonstrate whether she, you know, meant what she said. No, no, that's your job.
[28:06] You know, if you're taking wet dollar bills from a skeevy guy in an alley and you say, well, when I spent them five months later, it turned out to be a problem.
It's like, no, you check them right away, don't you?
[28:17] I would much rather be able to check them right away.
How would you suggest that I do that? In a situation like that, you're dating someone early on, and big decisions aren't really happening.
How would you verify for yourself some of these things?
[28:37] Do you want to know if someone was kind who claimed to be kind?
[28:42] Well, I mean, yeah.
[28:45] No, I'm not asking a trick question. Is that what you mean? mean.
[28:49] The kind one is a lot easier for me to i mean she was kind to people in when we were together she was you know considerate and you know polite and public and stuff from like and to me um but in terms of like whether she was being upfront about what she wanted it was just harder for me to bet and it really.
[29:09] I don't know i don't know what you mean by upfront okay so so you meet this this woman and you tell me her virtues again she was kind and what she.
[29:20] Seemed to uh want family.
[29:23] Well that's not necessarily a virtue i'm talking about that that's if someone's virtuous it's good to have a family with them but there are lots of people who want families who aren't virtuous so i'm talking about specific virtues courage integrity honesty uh directness um vulnerability you know all that stuff directness.
[29:39] And vulnerability she definitely had that that um.
[29:44] Okay and how do you know that she had that because she didn't have it had that at the end right right.
[29:49] Well um she would uh how would i describe this um, we were.
[29:59] Okay let me let me just cut to the chase okay so if she was honest she would say listen um when you were getting together right she honestly requires some degree of self-knowledge right so um when you're getting together she'd say look um i i do reserve the right to break up the relationship without really telling you why and when you were working on getting the apartment she'd say listen i reserve the right to just not show up because you know that's how i roll right but she didn't say any of that right so so the way she hurt you was not something she ever said she might do now either she knows she can do that and she's lying to you and telling you she won't Or she doesn't even know that she's capable of doing that, in which case her self-knowledge is virtually zero, in which case her capacity for morality is virtually zero.
I mean, she'd been in relationships before, right?
[30:54] She'd been in one.
[30:57] That you know of, that she told you about?
[31:00] I mean, yeah, you can never know for sure.
[31:03] And how did that relationship end?
[31:06] Long distance.
[31:08] Okay, so you knew that long distance was a problem, and maybe that's why you kind of jumped into the living together thing?
Okay. So it wasn't so much that you desperately wanted to live with her.
it's that you didn't want to lose her because she'd had a long distance thing fail in the past.
[31:23] Yeah and she had actually um been the dumpy in that situation um but yeah no that was again i think in hindsight a lot of it was just um fear of things falling apart and me getting, replaced with somebody or like getting cheated on or something and then having a worse messier your breakup okay.
[31:44] So you dated this woman for four or five months.
[31:48] She goes.
[31:49] Somewhere else and you're kind of immediately anxious that you're going to get dumped or she's going to cheat on you right.
[31:55] Not so much immediately um i had i it wasn't a matter of me trusting her in terms of like it could she go out to a um not like a club but like go out with friends and stuff and you, not fool around and stuff. It wasn't anything like that. And I truly don't think she is that kind of person.
So there was no problem with the trust in that level, but it was just like the, how would I realistically compete with someone who lives much closer?
[32:32] Well, so you over, I mean, just to be frank, you already didn't trust her when she moved away.
[32:39] Yeah.
[32:41] Okay, so what was untrustworthy about her that you knew after a couple of months of dating her could be a problem and turned out to be a problem when she moved away?
[32:51] I think it was just the, it was kind of, I kind of see dating her as like, it was kind of like, you know, catching up like a butterfly and trying to keep bits of like attention almost.
almost and like no no i have a flyaway so what.
[33:10] Was it that you noticed about her flightiness.
[33:14] Um she would talk about how oh i kind of just want to like you know i would love to just like you know be able to go to spain for like six months and just live there and i'm like that is a wouldn't that be nice but like you know you don't have to worry about a career to.
[33:29] You when you were dating that she wanted to move to spain for six months.
[33:33] Not specifically but no i know but something Yeah. And then with the implication, I'd want you to come with me, but I'm just being more realistic and also being a man who has to make money.
I was just like, well, I couldn't do that.
I'd have to get a completely different set of training just to be able to do my job in a different country. country.
So I, you know, it was just the, how can I compete with the opportunities of the whole world?
Not necessarily even other men. It was just more, um, I'm a stable person and I don't think she was really deep down wanted stability.
[34:16] Okay. So you want to get married. She wants to go live in Spain for six months.
[34:21] Yeah. But at the same time she would say things like, um, you know i want to build a life with you and stuff and and um yeah.
[34:31] Build a life with you it's one of these vague phrases nobody knows what the hell it means doesn't mean anything really.
[34:37] I mean.
[34:37] Because you know after when you were breaking up she's like i don't even know if i want kids right.
[34:41] Oh yeah she said she and it stuck me first she's like i don't want any of it, sorry i was dumbfounded oh i i was just like um Um, she, she didn't want any aspect of, you know, the relationship.
I don't know how that really came up, but, um, I was just asked cause I did question her a little, I guess. Yeah.
[35:06] Okay. So she's flaky and she's flighty.
[35:10] Yes.
[35:10] Okay. And you sense that. And that's one of the reasons why you said, let's live together.
Let's come back and we'll live together.
[35:22] That was that was that was a big part of it yeah.
[35:24] Okay so she's pretty clear that i mean she told you what she wants to do and then she ended up doing it right going and traveling and how long into the relationship did she tell you she wanted to go live in some place like spain for six months.
[35:39] That was uh probably i don't really remember.
[35:43] Just roughly probably.
[35:44] A few months in probably About halfway, three quarters through.
[35:47] And was there any other indication that she was this flighty beforehand?
[35:55] No. Take your time.
[35:58] Hang on. Hang on. Are you saying that you dated this woman and slept with her for months without understanding a core aspect of her personality?
[36:09] Again, I was an eager young man.
[36:12] Well, let's be honest. I overlooked it because she was a hot dancer.
I understand that. I get that.
[36:17] Yeah. I probably jumped in that a little too soon.
There was, I had never, so this would, to be perfectly clear, I, prior to this, I had been on two dates and there was one. I get that.
[36:34] You said a late bloomer. I understand all of that.
[36:35] Yeah. So it was kind of, I was doing the best I could and trying to vet and all this, but I guess, I mean, yeah, I didn't.
[36:42] You would do the best you could trying to. What do you mean?
[36:47] Well, I guess I didn't have any experience, so I felt as though I was asking the right questions. I felt that I was...
One thing I know I did was I was honest about what I wanted and comfortable in saying those things, even though it's not...
No one my age seems to want that.
[37:10] Okay, so how many years have you been listening to what I do?
[37:15] Um, God, I mean, probably 2016, probably.
[37:25] Probably yeah so uh seven or eight years now when you met this woman and you knew that you were inexperienced i as a freely available village elder did you ever think of calling me up and saying you know i'm kind of inexperienced i met this high octane hot dancer uh is there anything that you could do to help me vet or talk about you know before i jump in because i really don't know what i'm doing no.
[37:52] I i well i mean i might have thought about it um Um, once or twice, I didn't really, um, maybe I was a little overconfident in myself. Um, I have a lot of.
[37:59] Um. Uh, that's the first time I've heard horny described as overconfident in myself. Uh. You didn't, you didn't want to, uh, talk to me.
[38:07] I didn't want.
[38:07] Or someone, like, you know, someone who could help, right? You didn't want to because you wanted to date the dancer, right?
[38:17] Yeah, I definitely was not eager to let that attention go.
[38:24] Okay, I got it. And listen, I understand. I'm not criticizing at all.
I sympathize. I get all of that.
[38:32] But if you say, well, I'm incapable of vetting for a lack of experience, and maybe your father doesn't help or your mother or siblings or friends or whatever, right?
But, you know, I'm literally a phone call away. way it wasn't that hard to schedule this call with me right.
[38:47] Yeah i was actually surprised how easy that was right so turn away earlier yeah so i'm i'm available.
[38:54] And you didn't call and you know again i'm not criticizing i'm just pointing out that vetting was available.
[39:01] Yeah i guess i think part again it was a lot of just not um wanting to have someone break the spell and again i mean i I did introduce her to, you know, I have a big family, and my parents and everyone all get along really well.
And very happy family. And I brought her over several times, and I would talk to my dad.
My dad doesn't pry too much.
Sorry, you mean by pry?
[39:33] I don't understand.
[39:34] Well, not pry. I mean, he definitely voiced his disapproval about moving in.
He was very against that, but we didn't talk super deeply about vetting and stuff.
We talked a little bit, but again, I thought I was doing a good job of it, so I guess I didn't think I really needed to consult other people.
[40:02] Okay, so you didn't consult much with your dad because he wasn't very helpful. What about your mom?
[40:07] I talked to her a decent amount, probably a little bit more work.
pretty close. I think, I definitely, and my dad also just, she just likes to talk about that stuff more, you know.
But, so, yeah, I, trying to remember, the kinds of things we would talk about.
[40:29] Your parents knew that this was your first relationship, right?
[40:34] Yes.
[40:35] And, they know the dangers of heartbreak associated with that, right?
[40:42] Yeah.
[40:43] So what did they do to help protect you? And they also know, I assume, that the modern dating scene is kind of tricky, right? Right.
[40:52] Yeah. Well, I think that what they thought was protecting me was how we were kind of brought up.
And I know I don't really resent them too much for for that, but I know that my older siblings do because they were more strict with them.
It was kind of like, oh, don't date in high school because, you know, those never last.
and you know you guys are you know then there's valid points to it but it was it was kind of restrictive and I don't know just definitely, for if for my older brother especially it was like he was just very uncomfortable with the idea of dating and stuff and sexuality in general like, just because of how it was kind of repressive a little bit growing up.
[41:47] I see your parents are religious and are you yourself religious.
[41:52] Yeah and so the dancer also religious she was uh not she was she was kind of it was I was oh no spiritual no no that's your defense and.
[42:07] Call it a personality I'm just kidding.
[42:09] Um no it was it wasn't that her so she was raised Catholic as I kind of got to know her more I was like I'm not sure how into this she really is and that was kind of that was probably you know like the last month it was around Easter right so I kind of got to observe that more the religious side and I just didn't I wasn't honestly very impressed and I started in hindsight I could kind of feel the oh I should have been a little bit more note like you know taking sorry so no to that so she's.
[42:40] I assume she's not philosophical Philosophical, right?
[42:45] We would talk about, I mean, she would listen to, you know, I would like to show her Jordan Peterson stuff. We'd be driving, we'd listen to Jordan Peterson.
[42:54] Yeah, Jordan Peterson is not philosophical either. He's a psychologist.
[42:58] So, I guess, yeah, I mean.
[43:00] Okay, my basic question is.
[43:01] That's a high bar for women in the modern day.
[43:04] No, no, no. Hang on, hang on. Let's not get into women as a whole.
We're talking about your woman in particular or your ex-woman.
Okay. So from which source did she get her morals? Where did she get her morals?
[43:19] If you probably peel back every layer, when we talked, I think she believed that there was higher power.
She wasn't sure about much of that stuff.
[43:31] But does that higher power command her to morality on the grounds of punishment or reward, or end reward?
[43:37] On the grounds of punishment and reward? um interesting i don't i don't really know um you accept punishment.
[43:45] And reward as one of the elements of morality right i do too by the way i mean if this is worth it but.
[43:53] I i accept those as i mean i don't necessarily accept it as a in terms of like afterlife like but i think that the products of our you know actions tend to bear the you know Sorry.
[44:09] You don't believe in an afterlife, is that right? I'm not criticizing, I just want to make sure I understand your perspective.
[44:14] I'm not sure I believe in it, hell i'm a christian i don't know if i think there's it's a whole.
[44:19] Yeah i get that okay so but if you don't believe in hell and and maybe that being an immoral person simply gives you limbo or distance from god or something like that but you believe i assume in a judgment and at least a reward if not a punishment in the afterlife for some sort of virtue right or for universal moral standard yeah it just sounds i definitely believe in that okay so and i i also believe i'm not a religious man but i do believe and accept punishment and reward i i have i have a dread of my own bad conscience of course right i mean if you have integrity that's now whether the bad conscience is uh in your soul for religious people or in your mind for non-religious people uh it's very real to me the reward of a good conscience versus the punishment of a bad conscience i mean if there's hell it's on earth for people who've done evil that's what i I've seen very, very deeply.
[45:16] I would definitely agree with that, yeah.
[45:17] Okay. So you and I have the carrot and the stick, right?
We have the punishment and the reward regarding morality, right?
[45:27] Right.
[45:28] Be good or else. I mean, there is that aspect of things for me.
I mean, I have all the abstract justifications in UPB, and that stuff makes sense.
But also it comes down to just an Old Testament fear of a bad conscience and a desire to live well and do good. because that produces happiness, right?
And the other thing produces hell on earth, right?
I mean, there's nothing I would trade for a bad conscience.
Like, there's nothing that I would trade to have a bad conscience.
So, you and I both believe in...
rewards for virtue and punishments for immorality. Is that fair to say?
[46:05] Yes.
[46:05] Okay. Whether we call it heaven or hell or conscience or whatever, I mean, so, and punishments and rewards are kind of important.
It's kind of what the capitalism is based on, right? It's why in communism or socialism, people don't work that hard because they don't get rewarded and they don't care about being lazy because they don't get punished by being fired.
[46:27] Yeah, they're insulated from their own choices.
[46:28] Yeah, so human beings respond to incentives, right? That's a basic economic principle. Without incentives, there really is no economic efficiency.
And without incentives, there's no morality.
So what were her incentives to be good? Where does her morality come from? Why be good for her?
[46:46] Yeah, I mean, it's a good question.
[46:48] I'm not allowed to answer with the word karma, because that is not a good thing. so she wasn't she wasn't.
[46:54] Quite that uh mystical or anything you know most girls have their you know a little astrology interesting.
[47:01] Stuff but girls can escape bad karma with sugar daddies i get all of that stuff except post 40 so yeah so in terms of vetting you say she was a kind person she was you know whatever a nice person okay what are her punishments for being mean mean now if i'm mean i feel bad and you know it happens you've seen it happen on live streams where i'm kind of nice well no i'm pretty i'm pretty blunt with someone and it turns out i'm in the wrong and i apologize profusely i apologize profusely like i once dropped one of my daughter's tab on my daughter's tablet and and cracked the screen and i was like racked with apologies i just felt terrible and you know to the point where she's like it's fine we'll get it fixed so i feel really bad when i do something even accidentally wrong or harmful if i've chosen to do it or if we've been over hasty in my judgment and got something wrong i apologize profusely because i don't want the feeling of having wronged someone and not taken ownership and apologize for it like i don't want that feeling that feels like cowardly and terrible and you know especially because i'm a bit of a public figure it's bad modeling for others it's just bad all around right So for her, she said, I'm a good person. I'm a nice person.
Okay, what happens if you're not?
[48:18] Right, so that's the old thing. What happens, it's all the people who were like, well, I want this social program and I want that.
It's like, well, you have no cost benefit, there's no cost benefit analysis for you because it's all debt and money printing. You get to virtue signal.
So what are the consequences? This is my basic vetting for people.
It's like, what are the consequences of you failing to meet your moral standards, right?
What happens if you say, oh, I'm a good, I'm a nice person. Okay, what happens if you're not?
[48:50] And if people don't have an answer, so for you, you know, it's punishment from the divine or distance from the divine.
For me, it's like the lacerations of a tough conscience, which I disliked in the past and I hugely appreciate now.
For Socrates, it was his demon. For Jesus, it was his soul.
What happens if you're bad?
That's the fundamental vetting question.
And what happens if she's bad? What happens if she breaks someone's heart?
Like she broke your heart, right? Right now, of course, you did swear at her and you did things that were wrong. Of course, I get that. But I'm sure she wasn't perfect either.
What happens if you break someone's heart?
Now, it sounds to me like she just kind of dum-de-dum. I mean, you checked on her afterwards, right?
Did she say, I'm wracked with guilt about how things ended with my boyfriend?
Did she say, I can't leave the house? I'm too full of shame.
Did she say, I can't sleep because, you know, I keep thinking about how I broke his heart? Or did she just kind of dum-de-dum, off we go?
[49:45] Dum-de-dum.
[49:47] Okay, so she has no foundational conscience. See, it's pretty important to vet people to find out if they have, I don't know, a conscience.
[49:58] Yeah.
Yeah.
[50:02] So what were the indications? She no haba a conscience, my friend, early on.
[50:09] God, let me try to think. Um...
Man, I don't know. I don't know. I'm not sure.
Nothing pops up.
[50:27] Here's one way you know if she doesn't have a conscience. Are you ready?
[50:32] I guess.
[50:33] She sleeps with you without vetting you thoroughly.
she gets quickly involved without finding out if you're safe to fall in love with or fall in lust with or whatever the hell was going on right did she vet the hell out of you.
[50:56] I felt that she asked um she asked a lot of questions I was again pretty open.
[51:03] Book yeah that's getting to know you is not the same as vetting you yeah i mean i'm having i'm asking you lots of questions but i'm not vetting you as to whether you should be a central and important part part of my personal life right so asking i mean interviewers ask a lot of questions i guess they're vetting too right but uh so so did she, vet you to find out if you were a good and safe person to date to date, right before jumping into bed with you it.
[51:33] Was a decent amount of time before that was probably Probably, I probably knew her for like, I mean, this might sound short, but I probably knew her for like a month and a half.
[51:40] Yeah, you said a month. So the fact that you waited a month isn't that important.
The question is, did she thoroughly vet you before jumping into bed with you?
We both know that the answer is no.
[51:55] Yeah, I guess not.
[51:56] Well, no, she didn't.
[52:00] Do you say it because of the time frame or something else?
[52:04] No, you can vet someone. I mean, I decided to marry my wife of 21 years at about the same time as you guys were dating before she left, four or five months.
It might have been three or four months. So, no, you can vet someone in that time.
[52:19] Hmm. How did she vet you?
[52:27] I'm sorry how.
[52:29] Did she vet you out of curiosity oh.
[52:31] She asked me endless questions about my background my history my relationships my family and compared my stated goals to my actual actions and you know met my friends met the remnants of my family back at the day i mean she did a lot, Yeah.
[52:52] I guess she didn't do too much of that.
I mean, it was a lot of questions and stuff, a lot of like, what do we want in life? And I mean, I guess I didn't really know it.
[53:04] Because it was a while before she met my family too.
But when that did happen, that was probably like a month or two after sleeping together.
[53:17] Okay, so if she's sleeping with you without vetting you, it means she doesn't have a capacity to pair bond.
[53:29] A capacity to? Yeah.
[53:36] 100%.
[53:39] Like irrecoverable?
[53:41] I mean, what do I know about the future? I don't know. or maybe she gets hit with a krypton ray down the road. I have no idea.
But what I'm saying is that a woman who sleeps with you without pair bonding, sorry, without vetting you, she is not saying, well, I can't sleep with this guy unless I can trust him.
Which means she lacks a sense of danger.
And she's not reserving herself for someone she can pair bond with, so she's just following lust rather than virtue.
you and because she didn't pair bond with you right because she out of sight out of mind she moves to the other side of the country and next thing you know she's drifting off right which is what she did with her last well what happened with her last relationship right right yeah so yeah if a woman sleeps with you without vetting you she's no capacity to pair bond because if she has a capacity to pair bond, that's what she'll do, because that's infinitely better.
[54:50] I guess I kind of I saw her you know free willingness or an ability just to move on as more of a function of the options of an attractive, young woman who has got no financial obligations.
[55:08] Yeah so you're trying to make this attractive women rather than this woman and that's so that you can dodge your own, lack of pair bonding in this instance because you didn't thoroughly vet her before sleeping with her, and thus you got your heart broken.
Which you regret, right? And it's making you bitter.
And it's pulling you towards the black pill of the darkest MGTOW universes, right?
[55:37] A little bit.
[55:39] That's the extreme. If it's a little bit, I don't want to...
The reason I called you and put you to the head of the queue is you sounded like you were in fairly significant despair.
[55:48] Yeah, I mean, it definitely gets there.
I think I'm also just afraid of becoming that and becoming really bitter.
And I don't subscribe to that.
[56:03] But I find myself getting very... No, I get that.
So this is why I'm saying your lack of vetting her in order to sleep with her, because she was pretty and a hot dancer or whatever, right?
which again I sympathize with I'm not blaming you but you didn't want to vet her because you knew deep down she'd fail the vet.
She'd fail the vetting and you knew that she'd fail the vetting because she wasn't vetting you.
Women have infinitely more almost to lose in having sex too soon than men, because women can get worse STDs, women can get pregnant, women of course can get stalkers and so on, right?
So for an attractive woman to sleep with a man or a woman, a young woman in particular, a fertile young woman to sleep with a man is a highly risky endeavor.
And she didn't vet you, which means she can't pair bond.
[57:02] So it's casual for her. See, what I'm trying to do is have you not feel like a victim.
Like she broke your heart. You were a lustful young man, which I have no problem with I understand I'm not criticizing at all and you decided to not vet her, and to not submit to vetting because you wanted to sleep with her.
[57:28] You know, take what you want and pay for it. That's life.
You know, you want a drink to access? Okay, I guess for some people that's fine.
It isn't for me, but I guess for some people it is.
So drink to access and get your hangover.
You don't want to work too hard at your job? Okay, well, you don't make much money.
Right, you want to play video games instead of learning a useful skill?
Okay, you're kind of broke. You don't want to save your money?
Okay, you can't go on vacation.
Take what you want and pay for it.
so you're i think you're trying to make this into some cosmic male female thing and it's like no she was pretty enough that you lowered your standards for quality of character and you slept with her body and she you know now now you're pretending that that she broke your heart and it's like what are you talking about she was too pretty to vet and so you took the risk and risk it was and deep down you knew she wasn't vetable you didn't call me you didn't right right?
You didn't see, um, you, you took her words over her deeds, right?
And even though she'd signaled that the last relationship wasn't very pair bonded and she didn't vet you, you're like, yeah, she's hot. I'm going to sleep with her.
And now you're saying, oh, but female nature and MGTOW, it's like, what are you talking about? You, and listen, I know that I'm not criticizing criticizing at all.
[58:44] Yeah at all it's in it's more so i mean.
[58:51] It's more i.
[58:52] Don't want if i'm wrong.
[58:54] Tell me obviously it's your life not mine so i'm.
[58:56] No i'm trying to figure things.
[58:57] Out but if i'm wrong you're gonna let me know.
[58:58] No i i i don't want to um i don't subscribe to those ideas i want to just make that clear like i i i'm trying to find the balance of um an understanding of reality and um, also being gracious about, you know, that we're all, you know, humans and we make mistakes and stuff, but we also do have individual human nature.
[59:26] No, this wasn't a mistake. It wasn't a mistake.
It's just consequences. Like, if someone gets really drunk and has a hangover, the hangover isn't a mistake.
Now they can say, oh, gee, I wish I hadn't drunk so much.
But everybody knows you get a hangover when you drink.
If somebody drives drunk and then they get a DUI, I mean, don't drive drunk.
Although this wasn't one you could get away with, right? Driving drunk, maybe you make it home alive and maybe you don't get pulled over.
I guess it happens a lot. but you chose to get involved with a very attractive woman with no vetting. That's just lust.
Right? And I'm not saying even that's a terrible thing.
At all. I mean, whatever, right? Maybe this is your memory. I don't know, your spank bank or whatever.
Maybe this is like, you know, I decided to sleep with this girl.
She was a hot dancer, and I didn't vet her and all of that, right?
What I'm trying to figure out is, it's like you went to McDonald's and you're complaining that you didn't get a great meal. That's what I can't figure out.
[1:00:47] Okay okay the okay i can help you there i think um at this stage now that it's i'm it's i'm mostly over the more personal elements of that no but it's metastasized.
[1:01:01] Into some world view of tragic dating and women and men and.
[1:01:04] Right yeah so that's that's what i don't understand um well there's there's, that is more, I don't think it just stems from that.
I think it stems from just kind of seeing, you know, how it is for not just me, but people in my, you know, circle, in my family.
[1:01:24] My outer family. No, no, I'm not doing that. No, I'm not, I'm not doing abstract stuff here.
No. Okay. So let me ask you this. Let me ask you this. Okay.
How much responsibility do your parents take for the good and bad in their lives?
[1:01:41] Oh, very much so.
[1:01:45] Go on.
[1:01:51] My dad was not good with money. My mom is a lot better with money.
And so basically, he made poor financial decisions.
He also had a lot of medical stuff come up and things like that that did not help at all but um he they taught us very early on um to stay the hell away from debt um for example so that that's one example is a financial responsibility and him him basically owning he would 100 own his uh mistakes um that he made financially and, told us why he regretted them what you know how to avoid them, All right.
[1:02:34] And when it came to vetting this hot young dancer, did he say to you, is she a God-fearing woman?
[1:02:44] I don't know if he asked me that directly, but it was very much ingrained in our upbringing that you marry and date within the religion.
[1:02:57] Okay, so wouldn't that be pretty central to Vette in his young son's first dating experience?
[1:03:07] I think I wasn't probably super honest with him. I was like, oh, well, she was raised Catholic, so I kind of like, you know.
[1:03:17] No, but they met her, right?
[1:03:20] They met her once or twice. It wasn't like, you know, it was visiting.
[1:03:23] Okay, so they cross-examined her?
[1:03:27] I mean, these were kind of like we went for my brother's birthday.
We were over there, and it was like events and stuff. It wasn't necessarily a super serious thing.
They all liked her. I mean, it was just more social.
[1:03:42] Are we really going to do this dance, man? Are we really going to do this dance where you minimize all of the essential questions that your parents should have asked about the woman you wanted to marry? Come on, man.
Let's not waste time in this way, can we? This is the woman you said to your parents you wanted to marry, right? Or you were thinking of it.
[1:04:04] I don't think I ever said that, but I definitely was thinking.
[1:04:06] Well, they knew you were living together. Yeah, deeper.
[1:04:09] I definitely said, like, yeah, I can see this going on term, yeah.
[1:04:12] Okay. And I assume that they had asked you what you talked about, and you had said to her, I want to get married and have kids, right?
[1:04:20] Yes.
[1:04:21] Okay. So let's, I mean, I just, I'm asking you to hit the gas here because I'm 57 years old and my time on this planet is limited.
So this is a woman that your parents knew you were extremely serious about and might want to have a family with, right?
[1:04:39] Right.
[1:04:40] Okay. What vetting did they do?
[1:04:45] I guess they left it to me. They didn't really vet.
[1:04:53] Go on.
[1:04:56] Well, at the time, I kind of appreciated the space that they gave me because I think that they were very, again, it was very kind of sheltered growing up and to a point where it, I think, hindered a lot of us.
[1:05:09] That's more reason to vet.
[1:05:15] Why do you say that?
[1:05:19] That well if you're more sheltered in the dating world then you need more vetting because i mean there's more lust there's more eagerness there's more enthusiasm there's less experience and so on right i mean if it's your first time flying the plane you need a co-pilot yeah.
[1:05:32] That make that make sense yeah um i yeah i don't think uh they, There's definitely consensus among my siblings that that wasn't a bright spot in the parenting.
But it was, you know, I hear a lot of the stories of parents on the show.
[1:05:54] I don't want to hear about the parents. So your parents kept you very sheltered in the dating world.
You meet a woman of superlative physical attractiveness, and they don't do anything to vet her, even though it is a requirement of their faith and their responsibility as parents to vet the woman, right?
[1:06:18] They did not at the beginning when it got to me talking about moving into stuff.
I was explicitly going against their wish.
So they did that at that point.
[1:06:31] Why did they care about you moving in together when they didn't even care whether she was religious and had a conscience?
[1:06:46] Well, I think I wasn't up front with them about that.
[1:06:49] No, no, no, no. It's the parent's job to find out the information, and they can ask her directly because they met her.
Yes, you're right. I mean, of course, all parents know that if they have a young dancer around, their son's not going to tell the truth. I mean, come on. Of course they don't.
[1:07:05] Yeah, no, you're right. You're right. So I don't know why. I'm not sure why.
[1:07:08] I can tell you why.
[1:07:10] Why?
[1:07:12] Because they care more about appearance than virtue.
right? Because when people say how's your son doing they're going to have to say he's living in sin and they don't like that because that makes him look bad. On the other hand, if you're dating a hot dancer maybe that's I don't know maybe that makes him look good or something, right?
But they care about the appearance of things.
They care about looking good rather than being good, and therefore you ended up with a woman who looked good rather than was good. You see the pattern, right?
[1:08:10] I mean, it's a little hard for me to swallow because they... I mean...
I don't know. They are, I, I hugely respect both of them.
And, you know, I, I, I hear a lot, I hear the stories of, you know, even not even just parents on like that, you know, of kids, people on the, they call it, call it a show, for example, but like even just people in my, you know, friends of mine, immediate family, it, there's like not even a comparison in terms of like the equality so it's hard for me to um you know hold them to account for things.
[1:08:56] Sorry i'm not sure i quite understand so you're saying that your parents are much better than the parents of most of my quarters is that right that.
[1:09:03] That's i didn't mean it really like that i mean.
[1:09:05] No no i'm fine with that i'm not i'm again i'm not criticizing i'm just trying to understand and i'm not being cynical about it listen i'm fully willing to grant that you have really really good parents, and your really good parents are way better than most of the parents of most of my callers. I'm not going to argue with you with that.
I'm totally happy and willing to accept that.
[1:09:26] Okay.
[1:09:27] Okay?
[1:09:28] Sure.
[1:09:29] Now, have you ever been coached in sports? Yes.
[1:09:35] A little bit.
[1:09:36] Okay. Now, if you're really good in sports, do you get more coaching or less?
[1:09:41] I would say less.
[1:09:43] No, that's not true. It's the people who are the most good in sports who get the most coaching because they have the most potential.
I mean, if you're a coach, don't you want to coach the kid who's got all this natural talent and can go all the way to the major leagues?
[1:09:57] No, yeah, that does make sense.
[1:09:58] Yeah. So, listen, the fact that I'm criticizing your parents doesn't mean that your parents are terrible.
doesn't mean that they're all bad and if your parents are really good, then they're still going to get criticism in fact they may even get more criticism because they have the potential to be absolutely fantastic to go all the way I mean I criticize my own parenting I get feedback from my daughter I listen to my wife, because I want to be major league parent so I mean I think I'm a pretty good parent, but I take a lot of criticism and I should, yeah that well that.
[1:10:36] Makes sense yeah that makes sense.
[1:10:37] I'm not criticizing your parents to make them into bad parents but to make them even better potentially because i can't figure out why, right that their primary job as parents is to nurture and protect their children right, yeah and your parents have a lot more experience than you do you have no experience in relationships, right? Prior to this woman.
[1:11:06] None, yep.
[1:11:08] And so you were relying on the expertise of those around you.
So they didn't even find out her level of religion.
So your parents say it's important to marry within the faith, it's important to marry a good Christian woman, and they never asked about her level of Christianity.
Is that a fair statement? Again, I'm not trying to catch you out here, I just want to make sure I've got the lay of the land correctly.
[1:11:39] Yeah.
[1:11:40] Okay, so, but then they raise a stink and a half about you living together.
[1:11:44] Mm-hmm. Oh, yeah. Yeah.
[1:11:47] Why? Why does it not matter to them whether she's religious, but it only matters to them if you're living together?
[1:11:55] Because then it kind of gets real. Then it's visible.
[1:11:59] Yeah, it's empirical, right?
[1:12:01] Yeah, yeah.
[1:12:03] Okay. Now, when you first told your parents about this woman, right? Say, I met this hot dancer or whatever, right?
and you know you say i'm really excited right so they now they now know that it is, your first relationship and they also know because of pair bonding and oxytocin and all of those hormones that bind people together that you're going to be awash in hormones and ready to pair bond right so you're in a very dangerous situation i mean a situation of both great danger and great possibility, right?
[1:12:41] Correct.
[1:12:42] All right. So when you're teaching kids how to ride a bike, do you put them on concrete with no helmet?
[1:12:51] No.
[1:12:52] Of course not. You work to, I mean, I'm sure your parents got you inoculations and took you to dentists and doctors and, you know, got your checkups and tried to help you eat well.
[1:13:04] That they did.
[1:13:05] Yeah, so try and keep you safe and healthy, right?
Now, they are, I don't want to say very religious because that sounds like a pejorative, but they practice their faith with a significant degree of integrity.
Is that a fair way to put it?
[1:13:21] Yes.
[1:13:22] Okay. So I assume that they're not a big fan of secular humanism because they say it leads to hedonism without a conscience, right?
[1:13:31] Yes.
[1:13:33] Again, I don't want to put words in their mouth, but that would be my understanding of the logic of the argument.
[1:13:37] Yeah. I definitely see that.
[1:13:40] So then you're falling head over heels, and they also know the dangers of lust, right?
So you're falling head over heels with a hot dancer, and they don't even ask if she's religious.
Why not?
[1:14:01] Maybe they felt like they had been hovering too much and they wanted to overcorrect or they wanted to correct but they overcorrected No.
[1:14:10] Because you can't say I'm going to protect my children from the little dangers but when the big dangers come along to hell with them they're on their own That doesn't make any sense, right?
Right And did they know that you and your girlfriend were sleeping together?
[1:14:29] Um i mean i didn't share that with them but they i got the feeling that they knew.
[1:14:37] Did they ask.
[1:14:41] They let me think if they explicitly asked.
[1:14:44] You would remember if they had yeah.
[1:14:47] I don't i don't i think they explicitly said that they weren't going to ask actually.
[1:14:50] Okay so they weren't going to ask if you were sleeping together with the woman they hadn't even asked if she was religious right okay so why would they suddenly not be involved right you said they're kind of hovering now this is i mean this is the girl you lost your virginity to right yes okay so they also know that sleeping together outside of god's covenant is a sin right yes so they don't even ask if If you're sinning, imperiling your very soul, they don't ask how religious she is, and yet they say that it's very important to share religion in relationships.
yeah now have they since you broke up how long was it uh that was it last spring or spring last year that you broke up no.
[1:15:47] Um that was it's embarrassingly long ago um i think may 2022 so it's about a year and a half almost two years.
[1:15:58] Okay so have they said I assume you shared with your parents that you'd broken up with the girl and you were very sad, right?
[1:16:09] Yes.
[1:16:10] Now, have they shared with you, because we went down this path because I asked, whether your parents took ownership for their bad decisions, right?
Now, you got your heart broken. And look, it's the first girl.
girl, your body processes this as she died.
[1:16:35] That's what it felt like.
[1:16:36] No, and that is what it feels like. Because, you know, particularly for, like, Northern Europeans or cultures from cold climates, pair bonding is it, man.
Monogamous pair bonding, that's what we do. So in your body, you're like, oh, I'm having sex with her. Well, we're pair bonded for life.
Oh, my God. My first wife just died.
right that's what your body goes through i think yeah.
[1:17:05] I believe it after experiencing it.
[1:17:07] Right so your parents did not vet this girl did not give you good advice did not help you right in this way now have they said holy crap son did we ever fail you, We didn't vet her. We didn't ask enough questions. We didn't figure out if she was a safe person for you to fall in love with.
We didn't do our job at all.
We let you wander like a lamb among lions or wolves out there in the dating market.
And we never even asked if she was religious. Boy, did we ever mess up.
It's really on us as much as on you. We're really, really, really sorry.
[1:17:52] No, they haven't.
[1:17:54] Okay. okay did they take any ownership oh and also when you say well they don't want to intervene they want to be hands-off well they weren't when you were talking about moving in together right so.
[1:18:05] Have your parents.
[1:18:06] Taken any responsibility in a keeping you from the dating market and b not vetting the first girl you slept with.
[1:18:15] We have never talked about as i've never talked with them my other siblings may have about the kind of more of the repression growing up um and no to the second one there's so.
[1:18:29] Why would they be so repressive when you were growing up but so ridiculously uninvolved when you actually are considering a relationship.
[1:18:40] I'm i really don't know um their religious conviction hasn't um decreased they uh you know i don't know it was one of those like we were kind of the family like you couldn't read the harry potter books like growing up but then my little sister who's the youngest she's has a model on her bookshelf she's like way into it like they they loosened up on certain weird things like that um they didn't loosen up so much on the relationship stuff i still doubt my little sister's gonna be dating oh no they did that because.
[1:19:14] They didn't vet your girlfriend they totally loosened up on the relationship stuff.
[1:19:17] Yeah, yeah i don't know why i really don't know why maybe they were seeing that um, like my my uh i'm sorry there's some people walking by um that my older brother he um, kind of similar situation to me, late bloomer. Definitely now gets a lot of attention from women, but no serious relationships.
He's had one also very short term for six months.
Kind of at the same time as I did.
Give or take a few months. And I don't know, maybe they saw how the men of the family were faring out in the real world. and they felt like they had messed up.
I don't justify it, but that could be an explanation.
[1:20:13] Can you explain that again?
[1:20:16] They saw the products of what the repression, the repressive kind of upbringing would have wrought, and they weren't happy with it, possibly.
[1:20:28] Oh, God, no. Come on. Do we have to go over this again? They were totally repressive when it came to you guys living together.
So what are you talking about? They gave up their repression.
Did you forget that part?
[1:20:40] I kind of did.
[1:20:41] Okay, so let's not go with this, they got all kinds of liberal, because they didn't.
[1:20:47] Yeah, are you getting at that it's appearances, or that they were trying to keep up, or something like that?
[1:20:57] Well, the detail regarding your sister about the Harry Potter books is telling, right?
So, you know, there are some Christian parents who wage war against the Harry Potter books, books and i think in general when the harry potter books were considered dangerous, they made that case now wouldn't it appear kind of odd to view harry potter as dangerous so now it's not so much that they've become less repressive it's just that in the past it was considered a good thing to be against the harry potter books now it might seem a little obsessive so they're just going with the flow yeah.
[1:21:36] But but i would agree that it is obsessive and i'm glad that they made that change uh but i can.
[1:21:42] Know it wasn't obsessive before they were just conforming with the general thoughts harry potter bad now harry potter not so bad so they're just going with that right so they don't have their own necessarily independent evaluation yeah.
[1:21:56] I think that was a lot of that is true yeah.
[1:21:59] Okay so they're going with the flow of the community which means more about looks than direct virtue.
And I'm not saying this about all of their life. I'm just talking about these examples that you've given me.
[1:22:09] Right. Yeah.
Yeah, I can see that, and I think that's probably greatly led by, was led by, like, my mom and kind of being in the church groups and stuff, and I don't think I— Yeah.
[1:22:23] Not wanting to be disapproved of, right? Yeah. So if it's going to be—if you're going to be disapproved of by letting your kids read Harry Potter, then your kids can't read Harry Potter.
If it's going to see—if you're going to be kind of disapproved of because your kids are not reading Harry Potter, then it's okay for them to read Harry Potter.
Like she's just sailing by approval and disapproval, not integrity to values.
[1:22:45] Correct.
[1:22:46] Okay. So then they wouldn't vet your girlfriend.
Because you showing up with a pretty girl is positive to their status, right?
[1:23:05] Yeah. And it was a welcome change of pace.
[1:23:08] So you living with that pretty girl is negative to their status, right?
[1:23:11] Yes.
[1:23:12] So they're not going to vet her because, you know, otherwise people then don't have to say, gee, why don't your kids ever date? Why don't your sons ever date?
Oh, you remember that pretty girl?
So it's positive to your parents' status for you to show up with the pretty girl.
But if you live with her, that's negative. So they don't vet her, but they'll criticize you for living with her.
This is what I mean. It's all about appearance, not godliness. Right.
[1:23:36] Yeah, I haven't considered this.
[1:23:40] You went from appearance over substance. You had to learn that somewhere.
[1:23:45] Yeah.
[1:23:47] That's why they didn't vet her.
Because if they give you the questions to vet her, you might vet them.
The counterfeiter doesn't give you the counterfeit detection machine.
[1:24:00] Yeah, I think for me, that willingness, to bend on some of those things and not let the vetting either be degraded or thrown out the window completely in some cases is out of a fear of, that they don't make them like they used to as you might say, and I don't know if that's true or not but it seems to be harder and harder Oh.
[1:24:32] Like to get you to lower your standards?
[1:24:37] Yeah, it seems like...
[1:24:39] Okay, but then it shouldn't matter if you're living together.
Right, why would they not vet a woman who might break your heart, but only vet a woman co-signing a lease?
[1:24:49] Yeah.
Yeah, I don't know.
[1:24:53] We do know. I mean, there's appearances. appearances.
And of course, one of the first things that Jesus always warns about is the appearances of virtue.
Don't go for conformity, don't go for approval, go for integrity, and the world will probably hate you.
Anything the world loves you for at the moment probably is the opposite of that which is good.
[1:25:18] Yeah. Yeah, it sucks that it's that way, Thank you.
[1:25:31] So, I mean, I think that's the answer as to why you went for appearance over substance.
[1:25:40] Yeah, that's...
[1:25:41] And as far as pair bonding goes, right?
I mean, there's pair bonding between your parents, but if they're united in the appearance of virtue, it's tough for me to believe in their pair bond.
You know, pair bonds kind of show up when you stand by each other, though the whole world hates you. if you're chasing your community's approval.
I don't know how you compare bond because it's like saying, can you hug water, right?
It just doesn't have any particular shape of its own. It just pours into the latest vessel of approval.
[1:26:12] Yeah, I mean, I would...
I definitely see what you're saying in this case.
I think that it doesn't necessarily apply to a lot of other things.
[1:26:25] Okay, so let's just say about your parents and you.
Okay Right If you're a parent And you've discouraged dating Which is fine, And then Your son Falls head over heels In love With a very Pretty hot woman Right, What's the most loving thing If you're truly pair bonded With your child What is the most loving thing You can do, Bet him Well of course Which they didn't do, so where's the pair bond right you can't recognize your girlfriend's lack of ability to pair bond because at least in this instance your parents did not act out of a pair bond with you, right I mean if my daughter falls in love with some underwear model Calvin Klein model you know which is fine he could be a great guy right yeah but you know come on, got a vet right.
[1:27:35] Yeah that's you know you're right, The next relationship, I'm going to be looking out for that.
[1:27:45] Well, yes, but you're still fighting the current in that. And look, I don't know the answer.
And this is a conversation it might be worthwhile having with your parents and say, look, why didn't you vet this girl?
Well, we wanted to defer to your judgment. It's like, no, no, you've almost never done that.
You've always been pretty authoritarian, and you certainly didn't want to defer to my judgment when it came to moving in together.
So why did, well, you know best. It's like, no, no, that's not, right?
That's not how you've been operating as parents even into the present, right?
[1:28:15] Right.
[1:28:16] So why is there this giant exception?
[1:28:19] I don't know the answer.
[1:28:20] Maybe there's a good answer that I'm not aware of. Well, we knew it was going to hurt you, but we wanted to learn your lesson on the perils of chasing godless dancers. I don't know.
Whatever, it could be some reason that makes more sense, but I don't know what that reason is. But it certainly is very much out of character for the parenting, right?
[1:28:36] Right.
[1:28:38] And it has produced some serious negative effects on you i mean your heart's kind of like a smoking crater in some ways right no if i'm wrong i mean yeah since i got from no no you're.
[1:28:50] You i'm laughing because you hit it right on the head.
[1:28:52] Right so your parents let you get fucking nuked and they didn't step in to give you a shield an umbrella get you to safety they just stood there and watch you get the fucking estrogen scut up the ass.
No, because this is your first, this is your one-itis. This is your first, right?
They let you in a sense get married knowing she was going to die.
Do you know what I mean? Like, they just watched all of this happen.
[1:29:25] Yeah.
[1:29:28] I don't know why.
[1:29:35] Yeah maybe i should have a.
[1:29:36] It'd be like it'd be like if i knew if i knew that, my daughter's bike the brakes didn't work right i knew i knew for a fact that the brakes didn't work and i'm like yeah let's go down this hill oh man i'm not i'm not kidding no.
[1:29:53] I know it's it's it's a colorful image but no i i see your point.
[1:29:57] How is our child's heart going to be safe Well, the only thing that keeps your heart safe is genuine virtue and integrity, which this woman did not possess.
And I'm not saying you were super high in these virtues either, but this was your first time and your parents had been married for decades, right?
[1:30:20] Yeah.
[1:30:22] So, you were going into a very fucking dangerous sport here, with a woman who had all the signs of mystical amorality, right?
[1:30:39] She had a good amount of them, yeah. I wasn't...
again a lot of people thought that that was it was going to be a long-term thing a lot of people close to me thought that that so.
[1:30:51] And they were wrong and have they apologized to you for getting it wrong no because if i had said let's say you had called me up right and i'd have gone through the vetting questions right yes and the first vetting question that i would ask is okay well where does her uh where do her morals come from what are the consequences of her acting badly Sadly.
And, you know, this vague karmic stuff is just nonsense, right?
[1:31:15] Right. Well, again, I never would have accepted that from her, but I didn't really, I didn't take the, I was afraid to know.
[1:31:21] You didn't have anything.
[1:31:21] Yeah. I was afraid to know. It doesn't, yeah.
[1:31:24] Well, no, no, hang on. So if I had said to you, right, listen, and I don't, as you know, I don't tell people what to do, but let's say in some alternate universe, you'd called me up to vet, right?
And I'd gone through the vetting questions, maybe with her live or, I mean, whatever.
right and then Ida said green light man full steam ahead go for it she's the one right and then four months later she put your heart through a blender right what would I say.
[1:31:55] You'd profusely apologize.
[1:31:56] I'd be like oh man I'm totally wrapped up and you're getting your heart broken, I didn't not only did I not intervene I said go ahead and I was totally wrong.
[1:32:11] I see.
[1:32:12] Who around you who told you full steam ahead when this was your first relationship?
If I've been a guy who's won the Tour de France three times and I'm teaching my kids how to bike, do I just push them down a hill?
[1:32:26] No, you don't.
[1:32:27] Of course not. So all these people, I assume older than you with more experience in relationships since you had none, told you to go ahead and your heart got broken and how many of them have circled back to say, oof, man, I feel so terrible.
[1:32:42] Yeah, I haven't gotten an apology I never thought to ask for one, but I have not Okay.
[1:32:47] So who's pair bonded with you?
There's a reason you ended up with a woman without much of a conscience.
How many people have circled back and said, we told you to go ahead, you're inexperienced we got it wrong, I mean.
[1:33:05] No, they hadn't done that there was a lot of a lot of people were there to comfort.
[1:33:13] But and I mean that I apologize to you for encouraging you to drive and crash.
[1:33:21] No, your point remains none.
[1:33:26] And here's the big question. Since the job of your family and your elders in particular, and I say that word without any reservation, right?
The purpose of your elders is to keep you safe, right?
It was the purpose physically when you were younger and emotionally and financially when you get older, right?
Which is what your dad was like all about, don't get into debt and here's the mistakes I made, right?
Keep you safe. Now they failed, right?
[1:33:55] Yes.
[1:33:56] And nobody seems to have even acknowledged that there was a mistake.
So what that means is their consciences are not active. Yes.
because if I told someone to go ahead and I was totally wrong, I'd feel terrible.
If I told someone when I had a lot of experience and they had no experience, looks good to me.
Like if I'm an aircraft engineer and I say to someone, this plane is good to fly and that person flies the plane and it crashes and they lose an arm, I mean do you know can you imagine how I'd feel yeah.
[1:34:43] It's actually funny I'm an aircraft mechanic actually.
[1:34:45] Oh yeah okay so so you understand you are oh yeah oh yeah you you tell someone it's good to go it's got to be good to go yeah now if if you say to someone it's good to go and then the wing falls off and they crash and they lose an arm would you would you oh man I'm so so man my sympathies here's some flowers I'm so sorry you lost that arm that's terrible how sad that cry on my shoulder oh yeah wouldn't that be kind of weird, So how many people around you have an active conscience and take ownership for the mistakes they make?
[1:35:28] When it comes to this, it would seem like none.
In this aspect, those same people do take responsibility for many other things, but not this one. I don't know why. Or I don't know why it's specifically this.
[1:35:41] But this is the most important thing for men.
[1:35:44] Boy is it.
[1:35:45] No it is right no.
[1:35:47] I agree I mean yeah I.
[1:35:48] Mean not only not only because of this possibility of embittering heartbreak but also because, false accusations unwanted pregnancies entrapment in child support entrapment in bad marriages disease sorters problems, STDs right all of this stuff that can really accumulate I mean women have their own risks in relationship of course but men do too, so why when they're supposed to be all about protecting you do they encourage you into this disaster, all these religious people with their relationship with God and good and evil and virtue in the soul and the conscience did anyone ever say is she religious and if not where do her morals come from.
[1:36:48] Isn't that the first thing that God would say to do if they prayed to God and said how do I keep my children safe well he's dating a hot dancer which means lust and the devil are probably going to win so you've got to get in there and stand between him and the object of his desire, and vet her like crazy because this could break his heart really badly, and a broken arm is less bad than a broken heart, so your whole family was encouraging you to do something that metaphorically, broke your arm when they were experienced and you weren't, they encouraged you in the depths of their experience to do something you were inexperienced in which broke your arm, oh yeah this parachute is fine you can jump out the plane says the guy who's been parachuting for 20 years turns out it's just a lunch pail lunch bucket and you crash into the ground you break your arm, oh man that's so terrible you broke your arm, here are my sympathies it's like what the hell you guys with all this experience parachuting you told me it was good to go.
[1:38:07] And i assume.
[1:38:09] This is somewhat shocking to you a.
[1:38:12] Little bit yeah i didn't i didn't think about you know i never considered that they would have a you know responsibility or anything really to apologize for but.
[1:38:21] This is a central christian commandment to protect your children from the wolves of the world isn't it.
[1:38:28] Yeah um i guess it's um, I rationalized it as, you know, not wanting to be like helicopter parents.
[1:38:45] But they were helicopter parents, and then they were when it came to your living together. So that's out the window.
Also, they should explain to you, and they should say, if they, let's say they woke up one day and they said, oh my gosh, you've been too over-controlling, right?
They sit down with you and they say, listen, we've been too over-controlling.
That's a big problem. it means that you're really unprotected you're inexperienced so we're going to have to be a little bit more intrusive when it comes to you dating because you've been so unprepared because we told you all the way through not to date in high school not to date until right and you get in your early 20s or whatever it was and you start dating we're going to have to come in and vet because you're unprepared.
[1:39:24] Yeah, no, I never considered that.
[1:39:28] And pair bonding with the children would mean that you work to protect them from just this kind of agony, because agony is temptation to sin, right?
The devil makes you fearful, depressed, anxious, unhappy.
that tempts you to the sin. And I think, if I understand this correctly, where your sin lies or your temptation lies is despair.
[1:40:05] Yes.
[1:40:06] And you want to blame women for your family's and your elders' utter failure to protect you.
[1:40:17] I would not say I would want to blame women.
[1:40:21] You have that tendency. I'm not saying you're doing that, but that's the big town stuff.
Some of the stuff in your email, you know, the women are worse now than they used to be. And right.
All the options that the pretty woman has, like you want to displace.
Like if your family threw you to the wolves, you want to blame the wolves.
[1:40:41] Yeah, I definitely am displacing it. I don't want to give the impression that I'm, again, subscribing to those ideas. is i just um again it's kind of a whole nother subject so i don't want to.
[1:40:54] If you so and and the sort of point i want to get as we sort of get to the end of the convo is something like this, look your heart is not accessible as far as i can see and obviously this is a particular kind of conversation right but you're kind of skittish over your own heart because over the course of this conversation, we talked about some very emotional stuff, right?
[1:41:18] Yeah.
[1:41:19] What do you think your level of emotionality has been?
[1:41:23] Um, I'm, I'm keep, I'm pretty, um, not very emotional.
[1:41:28] Um why do you think that is.
[1:41:30] Um i am on three hours of sleep i just uh so that that that.
[1:41:38] Could make you more emotional.
[1:41:39] I guess it could um i guess i'm trying to keep it together for um, well because i'm you know talking to you know effective strangers and this is being recorded and stuff so i think there's probably that's probably part of it um i i tend to not um, i kind of just speak like this i used to be a lot more emotive and um some if i'm in you know, certain states i'm definitely more like that um but in general as i've grown i've become a little little bit more leveled off and not necessarily as emotional or at least the most you know pair bonding is fundamentally.
[1:42:25] An emotional state right a state of passionate attachment and need.
[1:42:33] Yes well i feel like a lot of that's been snuffed out of me after this that's kind of one of the big points of despair i know they're talking about it yeah because.
[1:42:41] If you let this dancing witch and your four month almost two years ago relationship, snuff you of pair bonding I think that's like the most ridiculous loss known to man like what a.
[1:42:55] Pathetic way to lose your capacity to.
[1:42:57] Pair bond and your happiness and your optimism and your ability to fall in love and all kinds of stuff like what a terrible terrible surrender.
[1:43:03] I agree and that's why I'm you know yeah I get that it's ridiculous No.
[1:43:11] It's ridiculous if you let it happen. It's not ridiculous to me that it has happened.
Because for you to figure out why you weren't able to identify a lack of pair bonding in your girlfriend, leads you to you figuring out that your family has not pair bonded with you in terms of protecting you from the greatest dangers that men face.
[1:43:34] Right.
[1:43:37] And that's why you want to avoid pair bonding.
Because if you say, the problem with pair bonding is with my family, not with my girlfriend, then you can't be safe in the future.
Because you can't be safe in the future, you can't be vulnerable and you won't pair bond.
It's your family, not the girlfriend.
That is harming your ability to pair bond.
[1:44:04] Because yeah because even in the next stage with the next relationship i'll still be blinded in a way and need people around me to be the barometers of.
[1:44:14] Well no it's it's not just that it's that you've grown up thinking you're close to people who don't take responsibility in this area and and have not pair bonded with you.
[1:44:24] Yeah.
[1:44:25] And so, because you have, a tenuous relationship with your parents and your family in this area, to pair bond with a woman will expose what you've been missing with your family, which they don't want to have exposed.
Your parents, like all parents, we don't want our limitations to be exposed.
[1:44:50] Right.
[1:44:52] Because we want to be the authorities. And so if you really fall passionately in love with a woman and she's a great woman and she pair bonds with you and then she meets your family, what's she going to say?
[1:45:09] What is she going to say? She's going to call them out on it?
[1:45:13] She's going to say, you know, man, they're kind of distant.
They don't really talk about much. They don't really get to the depth of things.
And they didn't vet me, which I find really bizarre.
I mean, I'm supposed to just wander into this family and nobody's asking me anything about anything?
[1:45:29] Right.
[1:45:30] Why is everything so surface level? I mean, aren't they Christians?
Don't they have a deep relationship to the spiritual father of the universe?
verse and are all about ethics and depth and virtue and conscience, and nobody even asked me if I believed in God.
[1:45:44] I don't understand.
[1:45:45] What the hell is going on?
[1:45:48] Yeah, well, yeah, I think that's definitely true.
There's not, um, good Christian women, they're not in a surplus, and it's...
[1:46:01] No, no, no, I'm not talking, no, see, now you've, now, see, here's the thing.
I criticized your parents in the part of this woman, and what did you immediately do?
[1:46:09] Kind of deflected it.
[1:46:10] You deflected it to criticizing Christian women.
Well, I would submit that a Christian woman who's not particularly deep a Christian in this area would be your mother.
Now, rather than criticize your mother, you want to condemn all women, which I understand.
Your mother would prefer that too, which is part of the lack of pair bonding.
[1:46:32] Right. Because your mother should be.
[1:46:34] Holy crap, our son got his heart broken, and we're supposed to be in charge as the family elders or his parents.
And the last thing we want to do is have him become embittered.
Now, have your parents noticed that you've become embittered?
[1:46:50] Well, I don't know if I... A lot of this is internal, and it's more...
[1:46:57] It's their job to know!
[1:47:00] I guess what I'm trying to say is I wouldn't classify myself as embittered yet. I've noticed things, in my consciousness that I want to address.
[1:47:09] Do you want me to read you back your email, just in case you've forgotten it?
[1:47:12] No, I have it up. I remember. Do you want me to read your email.
[1:47:16] Just so people know where I'm coming from?
[1:47:18] You know what? You can actually read it if you want. My laptop actually just died, but I had it up on there. I could get it on my phone, but then I'm on speaker, so the sound will get bad.
[1:47:26] No problem. Let me grab the email, because otherwise I'm going to sound kind of crazy, right?
[1:47:31] No, yeah. And it's definitely... i was in a spot when i wrote that for sure well.
[1:47:38] You didn't call me and say i was in a spot i don't need the call.
[1:47:44] Oh that that's not what i mean that i didn't need the call i mean that it was a little bit more all right yeah because.
[1:47:51] I am here to try and show you something like this Okay.
Topic. Do you remember the topic?
[1:47:59] How to not fall into bitterness and...
[1:48:03] Steph. Topic. How not to fall into bitter hopelessness.
Topic detail. I am your age. I'm two years past a soul-crushing breakup.
First love. Since then, I started working full-time. Out of school.
tool, making very good money and trying to improve my life.
I don't know if it's the night shift, the breakup, or just being young and lost, but I honestly haven't felt happy for longer than I can remember.
It feels like my bar is so high from that relationship that nothing moves the needle now.
The state of modern dating tempts me to take the MGTOW black pill and just give up.
Again, I'm not trying to make you feel bad, but then if you say, well, I'm not really in any danger of bitter.
Yeah, you kind of are.
[1:48:56] I do believe that I am. That's why I'm reaching out. I just meant to say that I'm not, I don't think I'm there yet, but I don't, I'm uncomfortable with the way I'm thinking and I don't, I want to change the way I'm thinking. Okay.
[1:49:08] So I start to criticize your parents and you start to minimize your symptoms. Pattern here?
[1:49:15] Yes. Yes. I see the pattern.
[1:49:17] Okay. So listen, there's nothing wrong with your parents being imperfect.
I'm a good parent, I think. am I perfect? I am not. Right?
There's nothing wrong with your parents being imperfect. Hey, quick question. Who's the only perfect person who ever lived?
[1:49:33] Jesus.
[1:49:34] That's right.
[1:49:35] If you believe in that sort of thing, yes.
[1:49:37] No, listen, I'll meet you where you are, man. I'll meet you where you are.
This conversation's about you, not me.
So, the only perfect person is Jesus, right?
So, are your parents imperfect? They are.
And And did Jesus have some criticisms of parents?
[1:49:57] Yes.
[1:49:59] Yes, he did. That he who was without sin cast the first stone.
There were a lot of parents in that square where the woman was going to get stoned.
He also said, I've come to turn son against father, parent against child.
That's because of criticism of the parents. His elders in his community were subject to his wrath and his scorn.
The money changers were whipped, right? Right?
[1:50:26] Yes, yeah.
[1:50:27] And a lot of them were making money for their families. They were parents, fathers, right?
So, Jesus had some criticisms of parents.
[1:50:36] Yeah.
[1:50:37] And what would Jesus do? Well, if your parents have failed in their godly duty to protect their children, they deserve criticism.
Doesn't mean that they're terrible people, doesn't mean that they're human.
They're fallible, right?
[1:50:52] Yeah.
[1:50:53] Now, they have instilled in you, something i think that my biggest criticism is not what your parents did or didn't do in terms of protection or you know look they failed their own standards their own standards are you should get married to a religious girl right a christian girl yeah and they failed utterly to uphold that standard except when it came to moving in which is not particularly relevant right right in fact by throwing their opposition in late in the game they destabilize the relationship even more yeah so they failed their moral virtues that's life yeah that's life i fail my moral virtues i assume you from time to time fail your moral virtues we all do right it's a it's a goal to be striven for it's not something you manifest perfectly every moment of every day Does that make sense?
[1:51:50] Yes.
[1:51:50] Okay. So your parents did wrong because they're human.
They failed their standards. They probably succumbed a little bit to wanting to look good rather than wanting to be good, which again, we all do.
We all do.
My problem is that your parents have made you so uncomfortable with criticizing them that you'd rather go down the black moor of MGTOW instead.
That's my problem. My problem isn't what they did specifically.
My problem is that they have put themselves as gods unto you.
They've turned themselves into Jesus regarding you, that you can't criticize them, that you can't hold them to account, that you can't call them out on any sin.
which they do. Why? Because we all do.
But they somehow have elevated themselves beyond the possibility of sin or feedback or criticism of any kind.
[1:52:53] Yeah, there hasn't ever been really feedback to them. It would be very uncomfortable for me to have the kind of conversations that you encourage, honestly.
[1:53:06] But why? Why? Why? They are Christians, which means they know that they're fallible and everybody sins.
So why have they put themselves forward as golden calf gods of perfection to their children that they cannot receive any negative feedback or any capacity for improvement?
Isn't humility a profound Christian virtue?
And is it not ultimately devilish arrogance to say, I am so perfect that all who criticize me are immoral?
[1:53:40] Yeah I think I'm thinking about it now back to when I was very young I was you know very willful and the most stubborn of any of my siblings so I would argue with my parents a lot and I would get that, response of like, Basically, I'm infallible, and that's kind of why I would rail against them a lot.
[1:54:03] So why, but do you believe that claiming to be infallible is a sin?
[1:54:08] Yes.
[1:54:08] Okay. So why, where's your religion? If you continue to let your parents sin out of fear of confrontation, are you not imperiling their souls?
Maybe you need to be the leader of this family and show what pair bonding really is.
which is listen mom dad you've got this terrible sin of vanity it's imperiling your soul I want to be with you in the afterlife and where you're heading is not where I'm heading.
[1:54:45] See this is this is the challenge that I have and obviously again we're all fallible we're all sinners I get all of that, but But your faith, if I understand it correctly, your faith should lead you to confront your parents' sinful arrogance and inability to take, and hostility to any feedback.
Right, even Jesus said, Jesus was younger than his elders when he criticized them, out of the mouth of babes comes pearls of wisdom. him.
Jesus criticized people twice or three times his age, who were themselves parents.
And the sin of arrogance, that you can't be corrected and everything you do is perfect, and even your own children, who you parent, should never give you any feedback, is so ridiculously arrogant, I genuinely can't even conceive of it.
[1:55:50] It yeah when you say that um your daughter will give you feedback and that you will welcome it it's like a crazy thing to me and i don't i i like that idea a lot um but it's just it's so it's it's as silly to me as that is um to you almost.
[1:56:08] It's very.
[1:56:09] Foreign to me.
[1:56:10] Right right right and of course i mean you've heard me on the show and i do debates and if people have criticisms criticisms for forever and ever uh when i had a producer uh and this is even the case now if somebody has a genuine like a good faith criticism of me not just some nonsense whipped up hysteria if somebody has good faith criticism front of the cube man i will do that if somebody comes and says i have a really good criticism of upb i will front of the cube man let's let's do it right i mean i'm I'm desperate for critical feedback because that's how I improve.
[1:56:46] Right.
[1:56:48] And I've always welcomed that. So, you are participating in sin and I mean this very deeply and very genuinely.
I would define sin as well. You are participating in sin by allowing the virulent arrogance of your parents to continue unchecked.
[1:57:10] Hmm.
[1:57:15] And given that they can't see it but you can the sin is even more in a way on you than on them because they remain blind to their own behaviors, right and i guarantee you they believe some things that their parents do not believe and they oppose some things that their own parents approved of so they have disagreed with their parents of course so if they have disagreed with their parents how is it possible that you're not not allowed to disagree with them.
[1:57:44] Right.
[1:57:55] And I think that's the conversation. Now, if you have that conversation and it turns out that they just continue to escalate and they're too in the grip of the demon of vanity to concede any point or admit that you might have anything of value to offer, and it's all just going to be one-sided, you serve my vanity, or we don't have anything to do with each other, which I'm sure that won't be the case.
But if it does go to that extreme, then they're standing between you and a good woman. Because a good woman is not going to want to get involved with a family where people that vainglorious and arrogant are in charge.
She's not going to want them babysitting the kids or having a relationship with their kids.
She's not going to want to spend time around them because that kind of, to me, I'm just telling you my own, that kind of toxic vanity is unbearable to me.
It's almost inhuman to me. I know, I mean, of course, they're humans, right? But it feels almost inhuman to me to be around people who can never admit fault.
[1:58:51] Yeah.
[1:58:51] It's way too brittle, and it's way too, they're poised to attack at all times. That's exhausting.
[1:58:57] Right. No, I agree. I think that, you know, if I did, were I to broach these subjects, I don't think that they would respond.
I think they would respond well to it as well as they could.
I don't think like it would be.
[1:59:15] It might take a couple of tries, and right, they may have some faltering.
But I think if you get that kind of connection, because if you don't like this, this is all the way back to when I was asking you about you, your passivity.
[1:59:27] Yeah.
[1:59:28] With regards to this woman where you say you make your case and it was a passionate case. And then you just say you make your call and then she sits for a couple of days and comes back with no. Right.
Yeah. So that level of passivity is probably something you grew up with.
Your parents are just going to make their decisions and you can't have much impact on them. you can make your case but they end up making the final decision.
[1:59:50] Yeah and that's and that's really um, That's had a big effect on my relationship with truth in a way.
I used to be very like somebody who would...
People would tell me like, man, you should be a lawyer. You're so convincing and you get so passionate about things.
And after this experience with breaking up and not seeming to listen to reason and stuff, the power of reason kind of has diminished in my eyes a little bit.
and it has made me kind of apathetic to it.
[2:00:29] Well, no, no, but reason has no power for those who don't listen to reason.
I mean, reason isn't a law of physics. Like, gravity has power even to people who don't believe in gravity.
But reason has no power to those who reject reason.
Science can't convince anyone who doesn't accept the scientific method.
I can't convince anyone about anything who only speaks Japanese because I don't speak Japanese yeah so yeah, That makes sense to me. It would be kind of weird if reason had an effect on people who don't listen to reason. That would be irrational, right?
[2:01:11] Yeah, no.
Yeah, I guess I used to think that you could kind of talk anybody out of, you know, irrationality, but it's… But that's almost your arrogance.
[2:01:23] Right? I mean… I'm so convincing that I can convince people of reason when they don't believe in reason.
[2:01:31] Right. Right. In a way, I feel like I've grown out of it. And in a way, I've also felt like I've lost my edge a little bit.
[2:01:35] I can yell so loudly that even Japanese people can understand my English. No, not really.
So, yeah, listen, I want to pull you back from despair.
And you didn't have the worst experience in your first relationship.
Right. You were passionate about the woman. You had some real connection.
I assume you had some great sex. And, you know, unfortunately, it didn't pan out.
And most first relationships don't, as you know.
But I think it leads you to a very important place of wisdom, which is who's watching your back.
And you can't pair bond if you can't relax, and you can't relax if people aren't watching your back.
[2:02:23] Right. Right.
[2:02:24] Like, to take a silly example, you can't imagine, if you're camping, you can't imagine having sex with your wife when you think a bear is sniffing at the tent, right?
[2:02:33] Yeah. Yeah.
[2:02:38] So, I mean, this is why sort of this famous thing about, like, married couples, they have got to go to a hotel.
If they've got kids, they've got to go to a hotel to have any quality, fancy adult time together, because otherwise, you know, bang, bang, bang, mom, you know, whatever it is.
So the woman, you know, and the men, you can't feel safe or secure or relaxed or whatever it is, right?
If it's the middle of the day or whatever, right? So kids are home.
[2:03:05] So it makes sense.
That you would have some difficulty understanding what went wrong and why you ended up in this situation of danger.
You ended up in a situation of danger because you did not have people around you who were invested enough in their pair of bond with you to watch your back.
Now, I don't know the reason for that, but that's something worth inquiring about to try and find out what the reason is for that.
because if you don't have people watching your back you can't relax if you can't relax you can't be emotional if you can't be emotional you can't pair bond because you're guarded right and being guarded is it sucks being guarded is terrible because then you can't be open and connect and people can't reach the real you to the point where they can really trust and pair bond because if you're always guarded then people are just dealing with your defenses which can change at any time as opposed to the real you which is more stable than permanent and that's we can only trust the authentic self and if we're jumpy and guarded people can't get through to the authentic self and they can't pair bond with us well.
[2:04:12] That's you know that's i really haven't considered this these things i appreciate it.
[2:04:19] Well that's why people call me because right i mean if it was if it was something you'd already considered then it worked right that's the one thing i know is is that people who call me are very smart people who've tried everything else.
I'm the last port of call.
[2:04:34] Yeah. Wow.
[2:04:36] Is that a decent place to start?
[2:04:38] Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I appreciate it.
[2:04:41] All right. Well, listen, best of luck, and keep your heart open.
There's a great woman out there for you, and let me know if you have this conversation.
Either way, let me know, but if you have this conversation with your family, let me know what their answer is because I'm rapidly curious. curious.
[2:04:56] Yeah, I will. Thank you.
[2:04:57] Thanks, man. Take care. All the best.
[2:04:59] Take care. You too.
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