0:07 - Seeking Healing
1:26 - The Struggle of Understanding Emotions
2:10 - The Burden of Chronic Fatigue
3:00 - Inner Conflicts and Family Dynamics
4:18 - The Impact of Childhood Trauma
5:17 - The Weight of Unforgiving Memories
5:40 - Navigating Relationships and Isolation
7:01 - The Complexity of Past Relationships
10:45 - Love, Loss, and Regret
13:55 - A Journey Through Heartbreak
16:20 - The Aftermath of a Toxic Relationship
23:40 - Reflections on Unhealthy Patterns
27:00 - A New Connection
29:15 - The Oddities of Dating Strategies
32:20 - Misguided Decisions and Their Consequences
43:23 - Navigating Intimacy and Boundaries
45:55 - The Cycle of Fear and Abandonment
50:34 - The Weight of Past Trauma
1:02:16 - The Challenge of Progress
1:11:55 - Confronting Family Dynamics
1:12:48 - The Reality of Unrepentant Abusers
1:19:09 - Reflection on Childhood Experiences
1:26:49 - Family Dynamics and Early Memories
1:36:57 - Father-Son Relationship and Responsibilities
1:44:50 - Mother's Influence and Sadistic Behavior
1:52:51 - Confronting Childhood Trauma
2:03:12 - Father's Denial of Responsibility
2:15:03 - The Impact of Parental Choices
2:30:06 - Communication and Bonding Issues
2:38:54 - Acknowledging the Situation Clearly
In this episode, I engage in a profound conversation with a caller who has grappled with his tumultuous childhood and is seeking to understand the emotional scars that persist into adulthood. The caller shares his deeply distressing experiences, including a lack of parental support and the violent dynamics with his siblings, particularly from his middle brother, which left him feeling consistently unsafe. He expresses frustration over the slow progress in therapy, acknowledging a profound disconnect between his intellectual understanding of these experiences and his emotional processing of them.
Throughout our discussion, we delve into the complexities of his family dynamics, particularly focusing on the roles of his parents. The caller describes his mother as a "malignant narcissist," who created an environment filled with emotional peril, while revealing how his father remained largely disengaged, only showing up in his life sporadically and failing to address the underlying issues that plagued their family. The narrative reveals a poignant thread of abandonment, resentment, and a struggle for closure. Even in adulthood, the echoes of childhood trauma resonate, leading to feelings of defeat and hopelessness regarding potential future relationships.
As the conversation progresses, we explore the caller's feelings of inadequacy when it comes to establishing healthy relationships. He reveals a pattern of becoming attached to women whose behaviors mirror those of his parents, particularly an inability to confront emotional truths. I emphasize the importance of honesty within relationships, highlighting how the caller's fear of rejection, colored by his father's refusal to acknowledge past wrongs, affects his ability to connect with others. By reframing the narrative around his childhood experiences, I encourage the caller to confront these truths with his father while also dispelling the notion that he must remain complicit in his father's emotional evasiveness.
The dialogue culminates with an exploration of the caller's ongoing struggles with feelings of isolation and self-criticism. By drawing parallels between his interactions with his father and past relationships, we identify a cycle of avoidance that hinders his emotional growth. I challenge him to take ownership of his feelings, to question the validity of his father's past justifications, and to see the importance of standing firm in his truth. Ultimately, the call underscores the critical need for self-forgiveness, resilience, and the courage to engage authentically in his relationships moving forward.
[0:00] Dear Stef, I need your help. I've been a long-time listener and sought out therapy as soon as I turned 18.
[0:08] Between then and now, I've made very limited progress chipping away at my armor and processing my childhood. I'm panicking at how long it's taking me when I want to cross the desert, meet a virtuous woman, and make of the babies. I think my biggest hurdle is that I'm quite split between my emotional and intellectual. I'm really strong on the intellectual side, identifying patterns, reasoning through healthy behavior, and making theoretical connections with my past. I've learned this alone doesn't work. With me, it doesn't touch my beliefs or really change how I feel or even open the door for me to explore and interact with that realm. I feel hopelessly broken. To be more fair, I have occasionally made connections between those two worlds and have.
[1:01] But only briefly a handful of times in therapy. That's not enough. I still have many dysfunctional behaviors from my near-death experience called childhood. I had no bond, was not parented, and was constantly in danger of violence from my middle brother and abandonment from my sadistic mother.
[1:27] i'm baffled that i logically understand how bad i had it but still lagging behind with how much with my emotions and lack of empathy for myself typically in your call-ins um once people understand they connect i'm so fucking frustrated no matter how sorry if i swear oh no that's fine, no matter what I've tried, with two therapists and journaling I'm not touching it.
[2:01] I'm not without emotions. I can feel them strongly. I do try to suppress them until their intensity overpowers the suppression.
[2:11] Talking about suppressing, I've been experiencing chronic fatigue syndrome, self-diagnosed, for the past 10 years. I've been to alternate, normal, and specialist doctors and ruled out all kinds of illnesses, infections, and deficiencies. and I'm left with a we don't know what's wrong with you I have a working hypothesis that it's mental with physiological effects, I both overuse my fight or flight and ignore slash suppress the feedback of my body, I can just keep pushing through and at some point my body has burnt out and has trouble repairing muscle damage you're supposed to be able to repair when you're safe.
[3:00] On another note fair warning, my mom fights with fog my inner mom, prior to writing this I tried to overthink this conversation with you and I will have, I kept looping in the conversation because my inner mom would lose to inner Steph she kept trying tooth and nail to get by with I don't know and I don't remember when she couldn't outwit or outplay, or play passive or dumb or manipulate, I felt unspeakable danger would occur, like I would die. Contrary, I think this is when she dies, and I can be free to be vulnerable. In my experience, most of my past is a grand chasm of fog, so thick you can cut a slice of it and serve it as meringue. only a few plateaus memories peek out with little sense of depth on that note in a therapy setting when i try to bring awareness to what i'm feeling i get nothing like going to a play with a white curtain in front of a performance the whole time the cast is doing something back there but no matter what the curtains never part.
[4:19] There's quite a trail of blood leading to my mom in my present-day dysfunctions, whipping myself verbally, rounding down my accomplishments, believing I'm worthless, and feeling unsafe in social situations to the point where it's easier to avoid most interactions and fear of dating due to the risk of abandonment.
[4:44] My ACE score is 6 or 7 out of 10. not sure about the one about parents being assaulted counts um there's no drug use prison or sexual abuse um not counting early exposure to pornography through unfettered internet access my mother is a quote malignant narcissist my father is a workaholic middle brother is really fucked up and my oldest brother seems kind of okay but he sides with my mother.
[5:17] I've been torturing myself for the past three weeks straight trying to ask for your help. I've been strongly avoiding and fearing it, yet strongly intent to make it happen. Something tells me I did a good job providing enough info in this email alone for you to help me get unstuck. That's the end.
[5:41] All right, and how are you feeling reading this to me.
[5:47] It's hitting me in the feels I feel I'm tearing up.
[5:53] And how old are you now?
[5:56] 27.
[5:57] All right. And how's your life as a whole?
[6:02] Um it's mixed um from my career side it's pretty good from i own a house that's also pretty good um but i'm pretty isolated which is not good and i don't have any virtuous people in my life.
[6:23] How did you end up owning a house at your.
[6:26] Age that's.
[6:27] That's very impressive.
[6:28] Yeah um I mean, a lot of saving, a lot of hard work. And I had a boss which was really talented with real estate and was encouraging me and, pushed me a little bit through my initial belief that, oh, I couldn't do it. Not at my age, not in this place. It's way too expensive. And over the course of two years, I found and bought a very nice place.
[7:01] So you own it outright or is it still mortgaged mortgaged oh okay so you bought a house you don't own a house yet.
[7:08] Oh yeah i bought it on the behalf of the bank.
[7:10] Right right now i think we've all been there okay got it um what's the status you said you have no virtuous people in your life and what what does that uh what does that mean i.
[7:21] Mean there's pretty much just co-workers but that's just acquaintances. And then I'm in touch with some of my family and some of their friends, and that's pretty much my whole social circle.
[7:39] And dating?
[7:44] There's been some dating, but not recently. I've had, since turning 18, kind of two two relationships one of them lasted six years and the other one two months.
[8:05] All right. And can you tell me about the one that lasted six years?
[8:11] Yeah. Where do I start with that? This was in high school. I had just broken up with a girl, which was friends with this girl that I ended up dating. and pretty much after the breakup, she pretty much just hovered around me during breaks in school and whatnot.
[8:43] Sorry, just what you?
[8:45] Hovered around.
[8:47] Hover ground?
[8:48] Hovered around.
[8:49] Hovered around. Sorry. My apologies. Go ahead.
[8:53] She hovered around me and we started talking more and it kind of slowly increased the relationship. I didn't see her as someone to date right away. But yeah, she eventually shared about her self-harm and I think that kind of pulled me by the hard strings. And, um, we at least had that to connect with. And this is about the time I was learning about therapy and, uh, philosophy and whatnot. And I was very interested in that and she was interested in that as well. So kind of had that in common. And, um, yeah, so we started hanging out more and more and, um, she was physically attractive. so i mean at some point uh i oh boy i'm not going to take responsibility am i.
[9:59] Um things got more intimate after a while and it kind of de facto became a relationship, and um it stayed in this very bad gray area for a while where we weren't formally dating, we're kind of in a relationship but there was no real commitment um i know over the course of those six years i never told her i loved her um and sorry.
[10:31] When did it go from i guess friends with benefits to uh more formal exclusive dating if it.
[10:38] Did i mean it there was no like clear separation, so maybe a year, year and a half.
[10:45] Okay, yep, got it.
[10:48] Yeah.
[10:49] And did she, you said that she was self-harming, how did that manifest?
[10:54] In cutting, and also kind of shutting down and I think suicidal ideation.
[11:05] I assume, of course, that she had experienced significant amounts of child abuse.
[11:10] Yeah, she did.
[11:14] Okay and so uh what happened over the six years what was the arc of the relationship.
[11:23] Um i'd say for the first three years that kind of was steady at there um, but then um she grad graduated um high school um after me um and she was deciding what what what to do um i'd since graduated high school and started a job uh in the area, um but we had had a plan informally to move to another part of the country, and live over there and to a point where i helped her move after um Um, she turned, she turned 18 after she graduated and she wanted to get away from her mother that she was living with. And, um, I mean, I helped her do that, but more just helping her guide. I didn't really pay for anything or, uh, move with her. I pretty much had her move over and promised her I would, um, move shortly. and that dragged on into a long distance sorry.
[12:41] She moved where you were both planning to be but you didn't go no why not, Sorry if I missed that.
[12:52] Yeah, no, I didn't share that. I don't know if I fully understand other than I was conflicted and I was not making up my mind. And what would happen over the next year, year and a half, was that we'd do this long-term relationship thing where she would come over here or I would fly over there and spend a week or so together.
[13:19] I'm sorry if I'm missing this. She moved to be with you. Like you said, we're going to move to XYZ place. So she moved there. And then you didn't move.
[13:31] I did not.
[13:32] And I'm sorry, I had the excuse that.
[13:38] Oh, I want to finish up something for work. I mean, I was just starting my career without going to college. So that was important to me. But I also think that was just an excuse not to go.
[13:51] Kind of a big bait and switch, isn't it?
[13:54] Yeah, pretty big.
[13:56] Okay. And so how long did that go on for?
[14:00] I think a year, a year and a half. Wow.
[14:03] And how long into the relationship was this?
[14:09] This was year four and a half and five, something like that.
[14:13] Okay. And what's the goal? Had you talked about marriage or anything like that? I mean, it may not have been on the radar.
[14:25] In the abstract not not uh not her and i it was quite odd that way, I'm sorry, you asked me another question? How did it go during that?
[14:45] No, I got it. So sort of here, four and five and no talk of marriage. And then how did it end?
[14:54] There's a couple more story points in here to touch on. So, I mean, towards the last six months of that long-term, long-distance relationship, things were kind of getting bad. We were breaking up and kind of getting back together.
[15:16] And why were you breaking up?
[15:22] She was not happy with my lack of commitment.
[15:25] Yeah, no kidding. Yeah. I mean, you weren't even moving.
[15:28] I don't blame her.
[15:28] Where you were supposed to live together.
[15:31] Yeah. Yeah. And at the end, she broke up with me like that at the end of one of our meets. And we parted ways. And I was somewhat okay with that for a month or two. and then something inside me had this i don't know longing or desire or something and i was like i'm i'm moving now and oh wow over the over the course of a month i rather impulsively just packed up all my stuff quit my job and moved over there with not much of a plan, and um wait so she was uh.
[16:21] Willing to go back get back together.
[16:25] I only told her once i was there oh.
[16:28] Wow okay got it.
[16:30] Yeah um yeah so we got back together, um and that stayed that way for about a year and i mean it was a very weird talk i remember that that I got back but I wasn't making any promises and I was I was kind of wishful thinking like maybe after therapy just things were just magical we could just make things work and she would she went along with that, yeah so things were somewhat good uh for the next uh year i got my airbnb, long-term stuff over there and she had her own place um i would visit frequently at the time i wasn't working so it was kind of this no reality frou-frou living um, where I was just living off the savings. Oh, so you weren't working.
[17:42] But she was, is that right?
[17:43] Correct, yeah. Yeah, and then it all ended after an argument where we had left this Christmas party early because I didn't like to stay with her friends. this was she was working in the restaurant business and I did not like some of her friends and these were the friends in.
[18:10] The new place that you were both supposed to originally go to right.
[18:13] Correct yes so while she was there alone for the longest time she'd made some friends, and yeah they were into drugs and what not and I did not like them okay so and.
[18:30] Was she also herself into drugs.
[18:32] Yeah, she was going down that path after meeting them And.
[18:39] What sort of drugs was she into?
[18:42] Alcohol was the most prevalent But there was also weed and vaping And some cocaine.
[18:52] And had she stopped self-harming at this point?
[18:55] Yes, yes. So pretty much earlier, maybe like a year or two into us somewhat being together, the relationship, she had stopped pretty much all of that.
[19:10] Okay. And did she herself go to therapy as well to help with that, or did she manage to stop on her own?
[19:17] She managed to stop on her own. She didn't go to therapy at this point. Okay. yeah so this christmas party happens i i'm not liking the crowd um i i say hey i'm i'm not staying here um and she had then told the friend that she was closest to with uh kind of a white lie that uh that something came up and she needed to go um and for whatever reason i decided to pick a fight over this, at the end sorry after, this evening at the Christmas party where I was like you can't lie and I was adamant that she apologized, and all this and to her friend and that really drove a kind of a divide between us And sorry.
[20:21] Remind me, what was her lie?
[20:24] That, I forget what exactly it was, but that something urgent came up and that we had it to go. It was just one of these white lies.
[20:31] Oh, yeah, yeah.
[20:32] Escape the situation. yeah um so that happened then, i i'm forgetting the exact timeline but um yeah probably right after this i i kind of had my mindset like i'm i want to break up this is i just i just want out um i don't know if i had really much other than a gut instinct that it just I just want to get out and then that was a bit of a can of worms I remember, staying over at her place for like four days trying to, console her but it was not just consoling she also, got got got the urge to self-harm and thinking back on it she was threatening me with that and to a point where i called the cops um you mean self-harm does that mean.
[21:42] That she was suicidal.
[21:45] Um there was cutting for sure um and i was just pretty much worried at that point that it would be suicidal but I don't think I had any evidence of that okay, yeah yeah but I was worried about it because she was very very emotional about it and I was fearing the worst at this point and I remember calling the police and I was a complete, wreck where I just had tunnel vision and I just had to do something about it, yeah but by the time the police came she had kind of calmed down and seemed kind of okay they left the card and left and that was that was it then I got some of her friends involved and made my way out, And, yeah, that was the end of that relationship. And then I eventually...
[22:50] Did you catch it all afterwards? Have you checked up on her since at all? I mean, you've got this funny internet thing where you can sleuth it pretty quickly.
[22:59] Yeah, no, I was pretty adamant that we go no contact. I was concerned that I would slip back into, oh, this is okay, like I was for the past however many years. and that we'd get back together. And I just was like, said, no, we're not.
[23:21] Oh, she wanted to get back together. Okay, got it.
[23:23] Yeah, she did. She did. Yeah, and then a month or so afterwards, I was there still with no job, just living there, and I was on some level twiddling my thumbs.
[23:41] um and yeah i'm i got uh kind of some some work uh remotely through some uh through my father um back to the place we originally lived and i started working on that and then i eventually moved back there, and yeah that was the end of that.
[24:15] Okay and then you had a two-month relationship you said.
[24:20] Yeah that one was pretty intense that was two years ago yeah and i was not actively dating i pretty much stumbled upon her um i was living at my father still at the time um the same father that offered me the job and i came to move with with him um and so my father started a new work somewhere and the summer had uh this woman that they got acquainted and eventually invited for dinner, and that's how she came to my attention. And yeah, I just got interested with her, started talking. It was funny because I wasn't thinking about a relationship at the time. So it was kind of hitting me delayed that we were getting close and getting to know each other.
[25:28] And how long had you been out of the six-year relationship by this point?
[25:35] It would have been I think a year and a half after Okay, No, two and a half years. Yeah. Yeah, so we were just, I was like firing on all cylinders for excitement of finding someone I had a lot in common with in terms of she was really intelligent. and she herself had done therapy and had a good amount of self-knowledge and that. And I think fast forward a week of one or two meetings, we were like, yeah, let's call it a relationship.
[26:34] And was she about your age?
[26:37] She was older. I forget, either four or six years older. So she was quite a lot more experienced than older.
[26:47] She was like early 30s?
[26:48] Yes.
[26:49] Okay.
[26:55] Give me a second.
[27:00] Okay. What happened next? Yeah, so we had... Sorry, I'm kind of stalling on this, trying to lay it out in advance to go in chronological order. We had, I guess, a first date, which was a camping trip.
[27:32] Camping trip?
[27:33] Yes.
[27:34] What the ever-loving hell are you talking about? A first date is a camping trip?
[27:42] Well the first official.
[27:44] Date not just a day at the park like a camping trip like sleeping in the same tent in the wilderness yep, what are you talking about how does that become sorry I don't mean to sound but how does that become how is that proposed as a first date, hey instead of going for coffee let's go to the wilderness for a couple of days.
[28:10] So it came up because my father was also in this camping trip with some of our family members. And I think this was planned in advance. And we had gotten, we said, hey, let's become official on the ride there. So this just happened to kind of coincide. and i guess she trusted uh be enough at that point knowing my father to pretty much we were driving out for for whatever four hours to go to the space in the middle of nowhere in the woods, and i remember i had a i had a it was in our car in the middle of nowhere it's dark and i had a trunk full of weapons and it was just kind of a very bizarre situation sounds.
[29:07] Like the beginning of a true crime podcast but all right.
[29:10] Okay yeah and.
[29:13] So she was a big fan of your father's.
[29:16] Yes yes your father ended off quite well, How so?
[29:24] I mean, he married your mother.
[29:26] Oh, yeah.
[29:28] Sorry, you've listened for a while, and you don't think that your father has significant dysfunctions? I'm not sure where to place you on the spectrum of listeners in terms of unwise to wise or unknowledgeable to knowledgeable. You seemed a bit surprised when I said your father's kind of a monster. He married a malignant narcissist. He turned children over to her who she abused. He was a workaholic. he did not intervene he did not save he did not protect and he raised at least well he raised three dysfunctional kids sorry you seem surprised and i'm just not sure where we are in the conversation as far as being on the same page because you've listened for a while right yes.
[30:08] Um i was surprised because i was at that moment i completely that was out of my memory and i wasn't.
[30:17] Connecting two.
[30:18] And two together. It was not in my conscious.
[30:23] No, no, you said, my father's a monster. How? It's not a criticism. I'm not criticizing you at all, but you understand I'm a bit surprised.
[30:33] I was mostly surprised that you made that connection there, and I was a bit caught off guard by it.
[30:39] No, the reason's important, because if she likes your father, and your father's a bit of a monster, her judgment sucks.
[30:45] That's true yeah and one.
[30:48] One details therapy yeah part of therapy should be to be able to allow you to identify highly dysfunctional or toxic people so you can stay away, you know if i'm going on a hike in the amazon i assume my guide is going to tell me not to lick the bright frogs or something right like help me to identify the toxic stuff in the environments aren't safe yeah and taking back on that's your family history at all at this i guess it's pretty early on so you maybe you hadn't talked about your childhood or anything.
[31:27] Um no i think i think we already had some talk about it by that.
[31:35] Okay so she is she finds out about how virulently toxic your family is, and she's like, let's go camping.
[31:46] Yeah, pretty much.
[31:47] Okay, so that's somebody with no sense of self-preservation. And I don't mean that she would be dismembered in the woods or anything like that. But to get involved in this toxic family situation would be absolutely unwise. I mean, look, come on, man. You get older, you get married, you have a daughter. And your daughter says, I'm dating a guy. This is his family. We're all going camping. What would you say?
[32:14] Well, heck no.
[32:15] Right.
[32:15] Heck no. that's yeah i would be scared for her.
[32:18] Right sure.
[32:19] To do that yeah.
[32:20] Right so what have you got going on that overrides women's sense of self-preservation like there's this this total chad posted a picture on some dating app uh he's very good looking and he also said that this is an experiment right he had a history of beating up women and he got flooded with like 800 women oh wow well you know it's good that you confess you know it's time to change i can fix you you know whatever it is right so all these women like with no sense of self-preservation right this guy is like beats up women or had he said you know domestic felony violence or something like that and, And there's no sense of self-preservation, right? And so, that's a, I mean, that's beyond a red flag. Here's a massive, dysfunctional, abusive family that did just about every terrible thing that could be done to a children. Let's go camping. And how long ago was this?
[33:29] Give me a sec. Two years.
[33:34] Two years ago. Okay. So how did the trip go?
[33:38] It went fine, actually. No one got ax murdered. But yeah, it went good. She insisted we sleep in the same tent. because she was scared, and I completely fell for that.
[33:58] Ah, women in their 30s who might want kids. Right. Yes, and she definitely... I can't get pregnant. Let's go into... I've got a medical issue. I can't get pregnant. Let's sit in the hot tub together. Anyway, that's reference to an earlier show, but go ahead.
[34:13] Yeah. And then we didn't have sex or anything, but we started talking about it at the very end of the trip.
[34:23] How long was the trip?
[34:26] It was, I think, a two-day camping trip. Maybe three. Three days.
[34:34] Sorry, go ahead.
[34:36] Yeah, one more thing, since you were mentioning the bad judgment part. One thing that's coming up now of a red flag that I overlooked, that she had quite a number of relationships. She was pretty much a serial dater. And I heard somehow her last relationships went and it seemed a bit of a spray and pray situation rather than kind of careful consideration. and vetting right um she.
[35:09] Doesn't know her taste so she tries everything on the buffet.
[35:14] Yeah um yeah so the camping trip ends and then i think over text um the next day we're talking uh, or continuing the conversation about sex and i was thinking hey we're holding off i, I want to wait for marriage until sex. And I had mentioned this before, but I think she thought I was joking. Part of the reason for why I was saying that, because I think I somewhat, got dicknapped myself with the previous relationship, and that's why it lasted for so long.
[36:09] And what is it that you have, do you think? Are you tall, very good-looking, I mean, very muscular, very something? I mean, do you have a lot of charisma? I mean, there's got to be something that has these women sail off into the woods for you for the Deliverance Family weekend. So what do you think is going on that the women are drawn to you? Again, I'm not saying you don't have personal qualities of character, But these don't seem to be women who judge personal qualities of character. So what do you think they're going for in you?
[36:39] Probably tall and handsome.
[36:41] You're tall and handsome. And how tall are you?
[36:44] Six foot.
[36:45] Okay.
[36:45] So not extremely, but yeah.
[36:47] Above average, yeah, above average. And good looking guy, you, all right, okay.
[36:52] Yeah, probably eight out of 10.
[36:56] All right. And do you stay relatively, do you exercise? Do you stay relatively fit?
[37:00] I don't exercise uh for the chronic fatigue syndrome reason i i literally will be punished severely if i if i do try but i'm still in relatively good shape despite that.
[37:15] Okay so tall good looking and so uh she uh is acting on lust rather than qualities of character.
[37:27] Most likely yeah.
[37:28] Well i mean if she thinks it's it's good to if she likes your dad who is a pretty catastrophic human being then she doesn't judge qualities of character therefore she can't see the qualities within you therefore she therefore she's drawn to you this just logic right she's drawn to you for your looks she's a gene hunter or a height fetishist or something like that right yeah.
[37:52] That could be that explains maybe why she liked me as well as my father.
[37:58] Okay, so you get back from the trip and you say, no sex before marriage, and what happens then?
[38:06] Then she, I mean, I don't know what to call it, asserts a boundary. We talked about this before, but when we talked before, she was saying that she has a, I forget it, whether it's a three-month or a six-month rule or something like that. and i was like okay yep that sounds good but she definitely was uh she has a high sex drive and she was making sure that hey you haven't had many partners uh are you good bro kind of sorry i don't.
[38:44] Know what that means you haven't had many partners oh does she thought that there might be some sort of sexual dysfunction because you'd only slept.
[38:51] With one or.
[38:51] Two women before and then you wanted to wait until marriage.
[38:53] Yeah okay um yeah so she had mentioned the whatever three-month rule or something like that and i kind of asked her about that like hey uh sorry going back to after the cat going after the camping trip we talked about it and was like hey what happened to this rule and she just it just kind of kind of poofed into it like oh i know you well enough kind of deal or whatever.
[39:21] So it's a three-month rule until we go camping and then I just know you well enough.
[39:26] Yeah.
[39:27] Yeah.
[39:30] And I...
[39:31] Well, and sorry, and also she doesn't like the no sex before marriage rule, A, because of lust, and B, because then she will be evaluated on the basis of her judgment, virtues, and personality. Because she can't dangle sexual access to hypnotize a man into overlooking any deficiencies she has in qualities of character, right?
[39:53] Yeah, yeah. I think so. I think that's why she insisted we stay in the same tent.
[39:59] Yeah, yeah, yeah. She just wants you all horny and hot and bothered so you don't judge her personality. Okay. It's a pretty traditional R-selected mating strategy. So, all right, go on.
[40:11] Yeah, so I was at least pushing back on that, at least in the conversation. Sorry, pushing back.
[40:18] On having sex sooner.
[40:19] Yes okay yes i was yeah and then she said something that triggered me um and she i mean i will i'll recoll i'll share what my recollection was um but it kind of gets a bit hazy because i that's the point where i got triggered and kind of uh, kind of had a change of consciousness uh that's not explaining it well but i mean yeah let me give it a shot um so i think she's she said that i mean that's that's a hard requirement for her, and um like that that i thought she said that i thought based on the fact that you were agreeing to go into a relationship, and I had stated that this is a need for me, that you're going to do something about your rule, but now you're trying to have your cake and eat it too kind of deal with waiting for sex. And she was like, along the lines of, I can't be in the relationship if those are the conditions.
[41:36] Sorry, did she literally say that access to your dick was a hard requirement?
[41:43] Yes. Not in those terms.
[41:46] Oh, come on. This is like a porn script.
[41:50] Oh, good.
[41:51] I have a hard requirement, and that hard requirement is you and your man meat. Sorry, it probably doesn't sound quite like Thanos rubbing himself off on a nymph. But all right. so she she basically just said i'm not dating you if you're not going to screw me.
[42:08] Yeah and at that point i kind of lost my.
[42:13] Lunch my shiz yeah i got it.
[42:17] Mostly because i think uh fear of abandonment.
[42:20] I was i interpreted that.
[42:22] I interpreted that as oh my god this is terrible she's leaving me and i'd already gotten somewhat attached to her at this.
[42:30] Point and how long and this was was this at the two month mark i'm not sure what happened between the first date on the camping weekend for three days and then this whole thing about sex, Or did it after the campaign trip, and then you guys continued for another month or two?
[42:49] Sorry, this was, let me just clarify the timeline. I think this was two weeks into having first met her. And we met like twice in the first week. And then we started getting to know each other and talk like one-on-one in the second week. And that camping trip was over the weekend.
[43:10] Okay.
[43:10] And that's where we said.
[43:12] Hey, this is a relationship.
[43:13] And then the following Monday.
[43:15] Yeah, I'm not really sure how we get from the two weeks or the three weeks to the two months, but was this negotiation about sex for the next month or so?
[43:23] No, no. I caved.
[43:32] Oh, you had sex with her?
[43:34] Yes.
[43:35] Okay.
[43:35] Yes. And I was, at that point onwards, I was no longer myself. I was just trying to avoid abandonment, which was an impossible thing I was trying to do.
[43:51] It sounds like you did manage to overcome your whole objection to lying, though. Right, because one of the things that you had as an issue with, at least you had an issue, was no lying with you. You're trying to get away from the party with your former girlfriend. And now this woman was a liar. She says, I got a three-month rule, and then she's like, nope, psych, I really don't. So that's a big lie, right?
[44:15] Yeah, that easily slipped past me, that contradiction.
[44:21] Well, no, it's not a contradiction, it's just a lie.
[44:24] Hmm.
[44:25] I don't have sex before three or six months, and then it's like a week or so in, and she's like, let's do it. you and me baby we ain't nothing but mammals so let's do it like they do on the discovery channel right so so that's just i mean she's just a lie she's saying she's claiming to have standards and it turns out she doesn't yes and it wasn't like she'd vetted you because if she'd vetted you you'd say okay so you're the victim of severe child abuse whose last girlfriend was a cutter, Well, that's not vetting, right? No. And you have chronic fatigue, right?
[45:06] Mm-hmm.
[45:08] So that's not very good vetting, right?
[45:11] Not at all.
[45:12] Okay. So it wasn't like she had these rules, but because you were such a great guy and she'd vetted you, that she was willing to not enforce these rules. She had these rules. you were throwing off red flags like crazy too because you're still embedded in a toxic family structure and going camping with one of your co-abusers so you wouldn't pass any kind of vetting test from any quality woman right yeah.
[45:41] And i somewhat was aware of that which is why i wasn't actively dating at least one of the reasons.
[45:48] Right you're using family over future got it okay, Yeah.
[45:55] So then for the next two weeks, there was something that looked like a relationship, but it was rocky to begin with. I remember just freaking out a lot over anything that displeased her. If we were to disagree on something, that would cause me to overthink to the extreme. and kind of my mind was inside was kind of boiling over trying to have a relationship but also avoid this bad thing, which was abandonment, I think.
[46:50] I mean, you understand it's a little precious to hear you complaining about abandonment after you dumped your last girlfriend in the wilderness for 18 months. You gave her the rug pull, right? Hey, let's move out to this place. Okay, I'm not coming. You've got to live there for 12 to 18 months without me. I mean, that was abandonment, right? I mean, that was worse than abandonment, because you basically, you bait and switched her into living together in some other place, and then you didn't even go.
[47:20] Yep.
[47:22] Okay. So this woman went to having a lot of, she went from, And I guess the two-month-er, she basically had a lot of power over you because you felt that she was going to reject you. Is that right?
[47:40] Yes, yes.
[47:41] And why did you think she was going to reject you? What was she saying or doing that gave you that impression or concern?
[47:53] I thought she had standards and she was still vetting me. and I was just worried about falling up short.
[48:04] Okay and in what sense were you afraid of falling short what were you going to be missing for her.
[48:14] That's a good question, right off the top of my head I don't know that there was anything specific just in general, that, something wouldn't work in the relationship that could in my mind that could be any number of things um sorry that's not very specific.
[48:39] Well she somehow gave you the impression that she was in charge that she was the one doing the deciding and you had to just kind of beg and hope and plead with her to choose you so she put herself somehow and i'm not sure exactly how but she put herself, in the situation of being the one in power and in control, if I understand this correctly.
[49:04] Yes, yes.
[49:06] Okay. So how did she achieve that, do you think? Because it's important for you to know that, right, for other times, right?
[49:14] Mm-hmm. I don't have a clear answer, but the closest one I got is that, I mean, Nina got attached, and then I started fearing abandonment, and that gave her power, and the only thing I could draw is that she just took it from there.
[49:39] So, is it that the sex was so good that it was like a drug? Or the sex gave you such good feelings that it was kind of like a drug that you didn't want to get withdrawn? Is it something like that?
[49:52] No, I think it was even before, during the camping trip, just that intimacy.
[49:57] What do you mean by intimacy? That's a much stretched word. So, what do you mean by intimacy?
[50:08] Just having someone who i felt cared for me could talk to also get physically close to but not necessarily sex.
[50:19] But if she cared for you then why would you fear abandonment, and again i'm not criticizing i'm just trying to follow the logic thread.
[50:34] I think i i would have had that fear regardless of what she did does that make sense.
[50:41] And but you didn't have that with your last girlfriend oh with the six-year girl right no.
[50:47] I think because i kind of i always kept her at an arm's length away.
[50:52] I mean and you ended up abandoning her right to the point where she was suicidal yeah so, you went from being the one who had all the power to the one who had no power between the two women, is that right?
[51:08] Yeah, I flip-flopped.
[51:10] Okay, got it. And so then how did it end?
[51:16] It was quite a drawn-out, lengthy process where things weren't going good. It was like a week and two that were... A week, week and a half into the relationship, there were arguments and things that I remember a lot of times where I would go back to apologize to her for things I've done. And it almost seemed like I kept just fucking up every which way.
[51:48] Sorry, I apologize. So what had you done?
[51:57] Gosh, my mind is throwing a blank right now.
[52:00] Or were you just apologizing as a sort of preemptive strike? Like just in case she was upset about something. Oh, I'm sorry about that kind of thing, right?
[52:11] No, no, I did at the time think I had done some stuff wrong. one of them was the example where um oh yeah that was the major one the overthinking and one of the ways i dealt with that quote dealt um were to share some of my thoughts with with her on that which was a really bad idea i'm sorry i don't understand what.
[52:41] What overthinking means in the context of this relationship and that being a fault that you have to apologize for.
[52:48] The overthinking wasn't wasn't the fault but the way i was dealing with overthinking which i'll define in a second um was uh kind of best word verbally vomiting on her of trying to, um i don't know explain my thought process um one of the things i most remember doing this about might help me explain it, is I learned I hurt her quite bad or at least that's what she said when I called her too old, and I kind of did that way in the beginning of the relationship yeah and I so you're.
[53:40] Very sensitive to abandonment but you call a woman too old to date, Because, I mean, the victim-victimizer thing is pretty strong here, right? Because you're portraying yourself as, you know, all kinds of sensitive, and I was just afraid of rejection, and then it turns out that you told the woman in her early 30s she's too old for you to date, which is a brutal thing to say.
[54:09] I know.
[54:11] So I'm trying to figure out, like, all of this sensitivity doesn't seem to add up to shit, really. Yeah. Because you can be kind of brutal, right?
[54:22] That's true.
[54:23] Okay. I'm just trying to balance these two things in my mind. Okay. So she was upset. And how long into the relationship did you tell her she was too old for you to date?
[54:36] It was the second time we met solo. So like a week into knowing her.
[54:45] Okay. And in what context of the conversation did You're Too Old to Date come up?
[55:01] Gosh, I don't remember exactly, or approximately even. At this time, I wasn't thinking of her as a potential dating partner.
[55:18] No, that you would not have told her she was too old. That only makes sense in the context of dating, right? I mean, if she was going to play pickleball with you, would you say you're too old to play pickleball or something? It has to be in the context of dating, right? Because you're talking about fertility windows, right?
[55:37] Yes.
[55:38] She's a couple of years away from geriatric pregnancy, and if you want a bunch of kids, she might be too old, right? Okay. Alright, so... What was the context? I mean, if you don't remember, that's fine. I was just wondering if you did.
[55:57] Sorry.
[55:58] What was the context? out for a second.
[56:07] I don't know if this clarifies it, or not. This is the second time we met. I wasn't thinking of her as a dating partner. I think this was my first time I had mentioned that. and, I'm trying to weasel around the fact that I'm about to say it was unconscious that therefore I'm not responsible but this was the second time listen.
[56:41] Just be honest with me if you don't want to answer the question just tell me you don't but let's not waste time with this fog, it's fine if you don't want to answer the question or if you don't remember, however, that's fine but let's not waste time with the fog Mm-hmm. Okay, so I'll just move on.
[57:02] Okay.
[57:03] All right. So, and I mean, sorry, you sound passive there. Like you're okay. Like you're not going to answer this question about being kind of mean. And so you just want me to move on. Is that, I mean, don't exceed because it's your, it's your choice.
[57:14] Yeah. So, boy, I do feel like I, I am doing the fog, but also there's something important there to share, potentially important. I still want to share that.
[57:28] Uh-huh.
[57:33] So, the first two times we met, each time I blurted out something, at least, that seemed just coming out directly from my subconscious. And the first time I blurted out danger, I think when we were talking about our childhoods and whatnot.
[57:53] Sorry, you just blurted out the word danger?
[57:57] Blurted out the word danger.
[57:58] You just said danger.
[58:00] Yeah okay um when we're what was that of going i think we were talking uh about uh, our childhoods and it wasn't i wasn't saying danger about the fact that um, uh of what what we're sharing about more that uh we're talking in depth about this and uh I was bonding with her over that.
[58:28] I have no idea what you just said. I'm sorry, I don't know what that means. I was bonding with her. Oh, so she was talking about her childhood, and you said danger in that her childhood was dangerous?
[58:43] No, not in that sense. Not in that sense. I think that the fact that I was starting to get some attraction to her. I started blurting out danger.
[59:02] Oh, so being attracted to you is dangerous. Is that what it means?
[59:08] I think so.
[59:09] Okay.
[59:10] And that was the first time. And then the second time was I also blurted out, I think the topic of dating was up. And I just pretty much blurted this out with not a moment's thought. and it only had to be explained to me why that was very hurtful oh.
[59:30] That's so in the topic of dating you said you're too old.
[59:34] Yes I had already ruled her out of my mind.
[59:43] Right. So then you became a challenge that she'll prove to you that she can. Like, if you think she's too old and you're a younger, attractive man, then she'll prove to you that she can get you.
[59:54] Yeah.
[59:55] Okay. And then the whole dating relationship becomes kind of like a vengeance against what you said and something like that. Okay.
[1:00:01] Yeah. And part of the verbal vomit or overthinking was, uh, I was trying to.
[1:00:08] No, it's just cruel. What are you talking? Verbal vomit, overthinking. You're cruel. you're cruel yeah.
[1:00:15] What i what i was saying was really cruel because i was trying to go into detail of why i was saying that.
[1:00:21] Well i mean you are i'm sure that your last girlfriend the six year woman i'm sure that she did mean things too but it was really cruel to say to a woman who'd had such trauma uh i will meet you in this new place if we're going to start this glorious life together and then not even show up show up break up with her come back without telling her try and get her back and then break up with her again, and then complain that she's very sensitive to abandonment issues and being rejected, yeah, anyway so how did it end with the early 30s woman.
[1:01:06] It ended that she kind of had too much of this saying that it was kind of draining her all this effort of trying to speak with me and me, being cruel in this way and then she left on a trip and, for a while and I still had a thought that oh I could get her back and I was desperately trying that and, after about three weeks of texting and trying to get her i just at some point said like that's that's that's all i can do i i got to give up now.
[1:01:44] Okay and how long ago was that oh it's two years right you said two years okay two years okay and then that just petered out from there right yeah.
[1:01:54] And after that that was it.
[1:01:58] And do you think we didn't really talk together with you sorry do you think that she should have gotten back together with you. Do you think it would have been a good idea for her?
[1:02:08] No, no. But at the time, that's what I wanted.
[1:02:11] No, I get it. But in hindsight, she made the right decision.
[1:02:14] Yeah, no, that was the right decision for sure.
[1:02:16] Okay. And what's happened in the two years since, if anything, in the dating world?
[1:02:22] Zero.
[1:02:23] Okay. Got it. Okay. And do you want to get married and have kids?
[1:02:28] Yes.
[1:02:28] All right. And was there a particular event or circumstance that happened that had you want to talk to me?
[1:02:44] I mean, in general, some growing frustration during my therapy. So one thing, I started therapy around the time, right pretty much at the end or a little overlapping with that relationship. And I've stayed there since. But I'm feeling like I'm not making progress. but i also know that's i think somewhat bullshit um and i'm just not i'm i i have a tendency to minimize things.
[1:03:18] Sorry when you say you're not making progress what metric are you using and of course i'm not disagreeing with you i just want to make sure i know what you're, what you're saying what metric are you using to determine that you're not making progress hmm.
[1:03:34] Um there's kind of two there are two uh one is that the major dysfunctional behaviors i have are still there and two uh what i'm doing doesn't feel like i'm even on the path to affecting them.
[1:03:54] And what are sorry was there a three i don't want to interrupt you.
[1:03:57] No those are the two.
[1:03:59] And what What are the major dysfunctional behaviors that you would like to see resolved over therapy or perhaps over the course of this conversation?
[1:04:09] I mean, the cruelness is one for sure.
[1:04:12] Well, I'm not sure that you've even acknowledged it, have you?
[1:04:17] Not until this call, no.
[1:04:19] Okay, so cruelty. What else?
[1:04:26] There's, there's a thing I call whipping myself where I think I'm verbally abusing myself, I'm not exactly conscious of it but I can feel its effects, and then there's, the fact that I'm quite isolated and don't socialize. That's also another big one.
[1:04:54] And are you isolated? Do you work from home? Do you have any... Did you still work with your father?
[1:05:03] Not consistently. I've been on and off working with him and he's kind of in the background consulting with the company I work with.
[1:05:13] What percentage of your income comes from working with your father?
[1:05:18] Zero. but we're working at the same company what.
[1:05:22] Do you mean? If you work for him, don't you get paid?
[1:05:29] Sorry. I started, let's say, after I got back from this first six-year relationship, I worked at a small company that he was part of, but it wasn't his company.
[1:05:48] Oh, he worked there, but he didn't own it.
[1:05:50] Correct. Yeah. He was pretty high up.
[1:05:52] But he put a good word in for you, and I'm sure being your son helped you get the job, right?
[1:05:57] Yes.
[1:05:58] Okay?
[1:05:58] Yes. Sorry, I'm kind of like, what was the question?
[1:06:05] Well, you said that you still work off and on with your father, and I wanted to, I was asking, what percentage of your income comes from working with your father? And you said zero, and then I was a little confused, because if you're still working with your father to some degree then some of your income must come from that job otherwise it's a charity or something like that.
[1:06:26] Uh i don't know how to give you a number uh do you want like an average over the past whatever two years or do you want it now or i'm i don't know exactly how to answer that, i'm sorry i'm i'm.
[1:06:46] Come on man don't fuck me bro don't fuck me because do you think i'm asking for an exact percentage do you think i'm an accountant here, A quarter, half, a third, 10%. I mean, just some rough shit, man. Just don't nickel and dime me at this point. I'm just trying to be efficient for you.
[1:07:08] I appreciate that. Right now, probably a quarter. And before, it was between half and 100%.
[1:07:18] And before refers to what?
[1:07:24] Uh let's say when i just moved back here after the six-year relationship that was 100 and then it's gone down since then to.
[1:07:34] Let's say now 25 25 see wasn't that hard okay and so um what do you in what field do you work that you get your remaining 75 and if you don't want to say that's fine that just you can give me a rough rough estimate i mean or just you can tell me this, Are you isolated because you work from home?
[1:07:53] No, I don't work from home. For the past, let's just say, past whatever, four years since I moved from the place with the six-year relationship, I worked at a small company, like a startup, and there was only a handful of people there. so uh my dad being one of them for for a while and that's somewhat of the isolation so i would go to the office but there is for longest time maybe just one or two people out there or sometimes just me.
[1:08:31] Okay and now uh sorry that was that that was your oh so so now are you still working for the same small startup or no.
[1:08:42] I've went to a different company and it has a good number of people.
[1:08:47] Okay and you go into the office right yes and do you have any do you socialize at all even if it's just for lunch with the people in the office or you mostly keep i do i do and do you have any uh sorry do you have any friends uh that you hang out with, okay that's i mean i appreciate that honestly okay so bad habits that you want to get over the cruelty and the self-attack which are of course related and the isolation is that is that right.
[1:09:21] Yeah there's there's um it's probably a whole list but those are the ones that are in my face right now.
[1:09:29] And uh from one to ten how blunt do you want me to be.
[1:09:39] Eight or nine.
[1:09:40] Eight or nine all right so you've been listening to me for many many years right.
[1:09:46] Like a decade.
[1:09:47] Okay so you've been listening to me for a decade, so why haven't you done anything i've suggested.
[1:10:05] I think i've tried i just am not successful at it like therapy as one and.
[1:10:14] Well okay i get that but i have you listened to my show on how to find a great therapist or or if you ask the community for therapist recommendations and the therapist that you have, follows sort of the moral and blunt recommendations that I've had, but it's just not succeeding. Is that right? And then why would you stay with the therapist where it's not succeeding? I mean, therapy isn't a magical word, right? That's just one of the tools in the arsenal. And it's the one I have the least control over. I can suggest going to therapy, but I can't obviously control the quality of the therapist, right? So let's just drop the therapy stuff. What about, have you had the honest conversations with your parents and family members, but in particular, your parents, about the horrible abuses you suffered as a child? Hmm.
[1:11:09] So with my mom no i did leave a letter i don't think i mentioned this before but, right so i i lived with my mom um up to the age of whatever 17 and a half, um and then i saw an opportunity to live with my dad and i took that and left a letter i don't remember what the letter said okay let's not let's.
[1:11:40] Know because that's not what i it's nothing i've never suggested anything like that so we're just going to drop that one so in the 10 years that you've been listening you have not.
[1:11:48] Had a.
[1:11:48] Direct and honest conversation with your parents about what happened to you as a child or what they did to you as a child right.
[1:11:56] I mean i had something like that with my father but i found it quite hard to be honest and consistently on my side i'll just, hold when it becomes too uncomfortable.
[1:12:16] Okay, so you haven't had direct and honest conversations with your parents, as I have recommended, right?
[1:12:22] No.
[1:12:23] Okay, and your parents, have they gone through any particular moral revolution? Have they done therapy or anger management or had any self-knowledge illuminations? Have they taken ownership for the abuse they inflicted upon you as a child, and have they apologized. I mean, we both know the answer to this, so let's not waste time with hedging around.
[1:12:48] No.
[1:12:49] Right. And that's it, right? So, no, they haven't, right? Okay, so you have unrepentant child abusers in your life at the moment, right? The people who abused you as a child are still welcome in your life, and you lie to them continually through omission, right? You lie by omission.
[1:13:10] I'm having a bit of trouble here acknowledging that.
[1:13:14] No, no, listen, I could be wrong. So, I mean, this is my evaluation. Of course, I could be completely wrong, so I'm happy to be corrected. I just don't want the sort of hedging stuff like I left a letter 10 years ago and that kind of crap, right? So, if they haven't taken ownership for the abuses they inflicted upon you as a child, then they are unrepentant child abusers. And if they're still in your life and you haven't been honest with them, then you are surrounded by unrepentant, toxic, malignant child abusers.
[1:13:46] For whatever reason, I'm having trouble. I can put that label very easily on my mom, but with my dad, I have a harder time doing that. And he has, in some way, apologized, but not a real apology.
[1:14:04] I'm sorry, based on a bad name?
[1:14:07] No sorry they they separated.
[1:14:09] Oh sorry yeah you you said that earlier that you went to go and live with your father sorry so uh how old were you when they separated um.
[1:14:18] Three years old so quite young.
[1:14:24] Oh okay okay so you were quite young and what was your relationship with your father like when you were growing up?
[1:14:33] There was kind of a, whatever, visitation on the weekends.
[1:14:40] Oh, so your mother had you on the weekdays and your father had you on the weekends?
[1:14:43] Yeah, one day of the weekend and we'd pretty much go to a park and either play when I was age appropriate or he started teaching me some of the technical things that, I mean, I still used to stay for work.
[1:14:59] And do you know what, have you ever heard the story of what caused the divorce?
[1:15:06] Um, yes, I have from my father. I haven't heard it from my mother's side, but it goes something like this. Um, when I was about two or three, um, um, my, my father, my mother and my two other brothers were, we were all living in the same house. um then they took a trip uh then my mom and and i and she took me to a trip back to kind of a country of origin for for us we're first first generation immigrants i guess um, took a trip there and my father says that there was such a relief from some kind of tension uh that, my dad and my two other brothers felt that after that they decided to uh to split apart well not the after that.
[1:16:06] They being your parents your.
[1:16:08] Father decided.
[1:16:09] To split apart because he was relieved when your mother was away.
[1:16:11] Correct okay yes got it and they were separated i don't think it was a legal divorce they were just separated and like divorce um and then, when i was probably around 10 or so um my father tried to get remarried and in order to do that, he needed to do a divorce and from my father's side this is where my mom kind of went apeshit with the legal system and tried everything in her power to make his life hell, in terms of the courts and visitation rights and whatnot. I know he eventually went through the divorce, and he did get remarried. I don't think that lasted long and got divorced from that lady as well. Sorry, I kind of lost my train of thought.
[1:17:24] Do you know what your father found unbearable about your mother?
[1:17:35] I don't think he's ever shared it directly. I mean, I know he would.
[1:17:40] No, so, okay. Now, tell me a little bit about, you said in your email, I was constantly in danger of violence from my middle brother and abandonment from my sadistic mother. And, of course, I'm not disagreeing with your evaluation or anything like that, but I would like to understand what you were experiencing as a child.
[1:17:59] Yeah, so I guess it was maybe also around the age, just for some background. So let's say around age three, my parents separated. And it initially worked this way that on one side was my dad and two brothers. And then it was just my mom and I. And I was supposedly her golden child. and, a year or two afterwards my brother, middle brother came to live with us and at first that sounded great, I was happy to have someone there, but I quickly found out that we would fight and he was pretty violent, he was two years older than me so he always had the upper hand and and.
[1:19:07] I'm sorry he was your father's child.
[1:19:10] Yeah these are all my father's children.
[1:19:15] Sorry you're you're okay i got it got it so you're the you're the youngest.
[1:19:19] Three of us yeah i'm the youngest of three okay.
[1:19:22] Got it sorry go ahead.
[1:19:27] Um yeah so my my my brother and i would fight i would i would i don't have a good recollection of it but i remember the conclusion that it was pretty much daily that we would just tussle and, yeah fight, and I remember asking my mom for, to stay or help or do something and those that fell on deaf ears and how.
[1:20:02] Bad would the fights get.
[1:20:07] I mean, they felt pretty bad at the time. I never ended up in the hospital or for broken bone, so just soft tissue damage. But I do remember three times where I almost drowned by his doing. One of them included him holding my head in a shallow body of water.
[1:20:35] Oh so i mean he had kind of a murderousness to him oh.
[1:20:39] Yeah oh yeah i think i think if he would have had it his way he would have he would have uh offed me.
[1:20:44] Okay and.
[1:20:46] I i know i i know from my experience and what my father has told me that um once i came into the picture uh my middle brother was very resentful and was wanting attention that he didn't get and he felt that.
[1:21:02] That's all the better treatment that's all a lie yeah just so you know there's this idea that oh siblings you know they just he resents the attention given to the younger sibling and he's acting out and like that's that's just not true i know families where the siblings get along uh i know a family with four brothers and they all get along very well they all help and support each other they were at a play park and i saw the older ones you know making sure that the younger ones were safe and learning well and right that's all that's just a it's a it's a code it's a it's a lie so that parents can somehow blame your shitty childhood on a birth order that they couldn't like well hey what are you going to blame us for having more than one kid that's just what brothers do it's not it's not true i'm.
[1:21:48] I'm not saying it as that because he is the middle brother that he got treated badly I think he was treated badly by my mom I like preferentially she was treating me um, better than than him or but that's the issue not that yeah.
[1:22:06] So it just i just want to be clear and um maybe this is not what you're saying but the birth order has nothing to do with it it's just the cruelty.
[1:22:13] Of parents yes yes i think she was actually or she was either she taunted him by being nice to you and right yeah okay yeah and i think that set him fundamentally against me, uh for the remainder of my childhood and that's by design right that's yeah by design okay think so i mean yeah and also gave me a very convenient person to hate and, point blame towards that was not my mom yeah yeah um yeah so that that pretty much continued uh until so one thing i should note that my brother was diagnosed with autism and um, Asperger's, the middle brother. Yeah. My oldest brother is kind of not in the picture for a long time because he was, I think, eight or ten years older than me. So he was already kind of off after high school for most of my childhood.
[1:23:16] Okay.
[1:23:19] Yeah. So autism and I remember him being taken to all kinds of doctors and all that. and mental health and saw it as a lot of bullshit but they tried to drug him and whatnot and around the time where I'm jumping here if you don't mind by the time he was 16 or something he was notably stronger than my mom and the men she kept around, and I think she I remember this camping trip where it took like two or three adults to like pin him down, after some kind of fight and I think my mom was like okay I'm shipping him out to some special school in, in the middle of nowhere very far away um and that's i lost my train of thought but yeah until then he was in the household.
[1:24:29] And does he have like significant intellectual disabilities i mean is he unable to work or.
[1:24:38] Um so i after he left at 16 i have not kept at all in touch with him okay i mean i pretty much hate hate his guts although now i'm kind of softening up to saying he was just a pawn in in the whole thing but, yeah but um last last i heard um he was in um, a rural third world country with a i forget the detail whether it was a sex change or he got, cosmetic surgery to look like an anime character so wow some really fucked up shit okay.
[1:25:29] All right so what and you said your younger brother is not too bad but still sides with your mother is that right.
[1:25:38] Yeah yeah and.
[1:25:42] Tell me more about that.
[1:25:43] Um i mean the the one that um, come straight to mind um is when i wrote a letter to my mom when when i was leaving and whatnot and remember shortly afterwards my oldest brother uh sent me a message i don't remember what it said but it was kind of a stab stab at me uh for doing this um but yeah uh i'm kind of drawing a blank of how he was like for most of my childhood he would kind of just visit on on holidays, and i kind of admired him and he was kind of the cool older oldest brother and whatnot but yeah, i don't know what more i can say about him and.
[1:26:40] How's his life going as a whole.
[1:26:49] I mean, I haven't checked up on him much. The last I know of him was when I was around 16 or something. And I mean, he was somewhat making it. He had a career, I think, in a pretty despicable field, which is social media advertising. and spam um and i mean he was he parties a lot um i don't think he had any um, long-term relationships but i could be wrong about that definitely not married by the time he was like 28.
[1:27:35] Okay and how have things how did things go with your brother sorry with your father over the course of your teenage years.
[1:27:52] Sorry, can I add one more detail from before? One, I don't have many clear memories from my childhood, but one that is quite, I think, important is that around age six or seven, I remember being in some conflict with my mom in the house, and she just suddenly stood up without even saying something and walked off, just abandonment like that. and i remember like tiptoeing following her like as like that's that's that's my only hope of survival um tiptoeing following her down the stairs and whatnot and i think she got in the car um i don't know i don't know if she left at that point the memory kind of ends but, yeah at that point onwards I pretty much knew I was, on my own in terms of the bond I had with my mom, and I wouldn't say I ever had a very strong bond with my father.
[1:29:16] More like a mentorship professor kind of thing going on there.
[1:29:26] Anyway going back to your question about my father in my teenage years, By the time, I was still doing visitations every weekend, and we would pretty much do engineering projects or coding or circuit stuff with him, and that's what we would do together. That's his area of comfort.
[1:30:01] Why did he marry your mother? And give her children?
[1:30:07] Three yeah so they got married pretty early.
[1:30:14] Not for the why not the when i just i need to be efficient right to be talking for an hour and a half and we still have to get to the issues right so i just need you to be a little bit more efficient right so i'm asking why not when.
[1:30:28] Um i think it was lust.
[1:30:29] Okay it was pretty.
[1:30:33] They they had some status uh they had some status because they were both going to kind of this prestigious university and um i think status and, physical attraction.
[1:30:49] Uh-huh and is he religious no.
[1:30:53] No i think my both my parents are atheists.
[1:30:56] Okay okay so he got married to a dangerous narcissistic you called her i think a malignant narcissist i'll accept that uh you know her of course infinitely better than i do so he got married to a very destructive woman and decided to give her three children.
[1:31:14] Yes so first there was one they had by accident.
[1:31:19] No uh no by accident i mean no come on man but but i think mary of jesus fame could claim accident everybody else has a choice um.
[1:31:33] And so first child was by bad contraceptive practice, risky sex without a condom, timing the moon or something like that.
[1:31:49] Okay. So she got pregnant, right? Or they had risky sex or the condom broke or something like that. So there's the morning after pill. Well, first of all, there's 18 different forms of birth control that a woman can be on. And then there's the morning after pill. and then there's abortion and please understand i'm not recommending abortion but i'm just saying if they're atheists they wouldn't have any particular moral qualms about it so it's still a choice to have the child then there's also even if you have the child that's giving the child up, for adoption right there's lots and lots of different ways in which this can be dealt with so they chose there's nothing accidental about it.
[1:32:24] Yeah yeah so they they chose to to keep my oldest brother um and uh they were both still in university at the time and my grandma was then given given uh this this brother to to raise and whatnot and i know next part of the story uh my my mom never liked how uh this brother was raised so.
[1:32:58] So.
[1:32:58] Later on down...
[1:32:59] Wait, sorry, they literally handed over your eldest brother who has the autism and the Asperger's. They handed over...
[1:33:05] No, no, no. That's the middle brother.
[1:33:07] Middle brother, my apologies.
[1:33:08] The oldest brother seems kind of fine.
[1:33:10] Okay. So, they handed over the brother to the grandmother who basically raised him. Is that right?
[1:33:17] Yes. And that's the grandmother from my father's side.
[1:33:20] Okay. and do you know how long your brother stayed with your grandmother I assume at some point he was raised by your parents.
[1:33:30] Um, I honestly don't know.
[1:33:34] Okay.
[1:33:34] But it was mostly my grandma.
[1:33:36] All right. And then?
[1:33:39] Then, whatever, six or something years afterwards, my father had gotten a job. Or, yeah, yeah, he'd gotten a job. I don't know about my mom, where she was at this place, but she was, at this time, she was, what my father says that she wanted to raise some children right and that's why, she at that point started pressuring my father for kids and he at some point he says just caved and gave her kids, and wasn't involved yeah yeah he is and then yeah then that's and then middle brother and me two years apart.
[1:34:37] Okay all right and how's your relationship with your mother at the moment.
[1:34:44] I have not spoken to her since since I left at age 17.
[1:34:51] Ah okay so you just left and didn't look back and you have not spoken to her since?
[1:34:58] Correct. Yeah, I just, I don't want to do anything with her.
[1:35:05] And has she tried to reach out or has she tried to contact you?
[1:35:11] Once in the beginning and then once four years ago, but I ignored both of them because I just know she's plotting something. It wasn't an apology or anything like that and I was concerned that if I were to talk to her I would just, she knows what buttons to press, that I would just be, feeding myself to a tiger at that point.
[1:35:38] Okay. All right. So your father couldn't stand your mother and then left her with three kids?
[1:35:44] Yes. And he went heavily into work as, I think, a way of avoiding the family situation.
[1:35:53] Right. And did he, other than giving you technical skills, did he provide you any wisdom in terms of virtue and truth and how to be happy and how to fall in love and how to run a relationship, you know, based upon the bitter lessons that he'd experienced. Did he provide you any of that when you were growing up?
[1:36:16] No, no. No. I remember with the six-year relationship, he did warn me once that this was not a good thing that she was cutting in that. He didn't think she was a good girl for me, but at the time, he had no credibility with me with that, with his history of relationships.
[1:36:42] So what is your view of your father's responsibility in life and in the disastrous, as you said, your childhood was a near-death experience, right? I mean, I assume this was in part the near-drowning or the constant violence from your brother.
[1:36:57] But how do you view your father's role in all of this and his moral responsibility?
[1:37:13] I think I have to be frank and wrong, I think. that I I, don't give him much responsibility for that I know he chose it but I kind of think my mom tricked him, although to the contrary that he I did ask him if there was any red flags before they got married that my mom had this kind of, sadistic or malignant kind of cruel tendencies to her and he said yes that there was one time that she volunteered to go off and berate a guy who was misusing university resources, and he saw that the devil inside her then but yeah, okay sorry I'm not sure.
[1:38:21] If you have finished that story or not okay.
[1:38:24] So would.
[1:38:26] You say that your father is more intelligent than your mother yeah.
[1:38:32] It's hard to say. They're both pretty darn intelligent.
[1:38:38] And what's the sadistic stuff that your mother did to you, other than you'd mentioned the one time that she walked away when you were having a conflict, which is terrible, of course, right? But what else did your mother do that was sadistic?
[1:38:53] What comes to mind was one one incident where i had come this was maybe around age 13 if i would put a guess on it um i had come come home from school with with some bad grades and she, demanded that i go into the shower and she proceeded to beat me with socks with the water on oh like wet socks.
[1:39:31] But nothing in the.
[1:39:32] Song yeah i i don't i don't believe there was anything in the socks but i i i'm still kind of baffled of what what the fuck was that well it's designed i don't remember if i was designed or not i'm.
[1:39:46] Sorry go ahead.
[1:39:47] Oh sorry i i wasn't sure if i was closed or not in in that in that dream but either either way it's sorry in that dream uh no in in in in that memory okay.
[1:40:02] Yeah so it's it's just designed obviously to leave no marks and to frighten you and to say basically next time there'll be a roll of quarters in the sock or something like that probably okay what else.
[1:40:20] My memory kind of fails me here um i i mostly remember that conclusion but not that much evidence if that makes sense mm-hmm.
[1:40:34] And did you ever tell your father that you were being treated very cruelly by your mother, by the woman that he put in charge of you? Sorry, go ahead.
[1:40:45] Yes, yes, I did. And that's when the opportunity to move in with him opened up at age 17 and a half.
[1:40:52] Yeah, I'm talking not six months before you were finished childhood, I'm talking about when you were a kid. Somewhere between three and 16 and a half. 17 and a half, sorry.
[1:41:02] No but that conversation kind of covers from before so i think i want to share it no.
[1:41:11] I i'm listen bro you got to be more efficient with my time here so uh if it's really important you can tell me but if it's not let's let's keep moving.
[1:41:20] Yeah i think it i don't think i think it's important i'll keep it brief um that i i i told them what what my mom was doing and all that and my father pretty much broke down in tears, sorry how old were you 17 and a half yeah.
[1:41:35] No i'm talking about before that.
[1:41:37] No no okay your father.
[1:41:39] Broke down in tears and what happened then sorry i've just told you to move on but if you told your father about what had happened with your mother he broke down in tears and then what yeah.
[1:41:48] Yeah and he said he never suspected it that she always treated me well and blah blah blah blah She always treated you well. Yes. That's what he said.
[1:41:59] He couldn't stand her.
[1:42:01] Correct.
[1:42:02] So he's viewed her as highly toxic, I assume, right? Because if it was his fault, then he would have not left, but rather improved. So he viewed her as beyond salvation and that she was toxic.
[1:42:16] Yeah. It doesn't make sense to me either.
[1:42:19] No, it makes perfect sense. He's lying. He's just gaslighting you. Oh, I had no idea that the woman I couldn't stand and I ran away from basically in the middle of the night leaving behind three children and who dragged me through court in the most horrendous fashion possible, sicking lawyers on me like a whole band of Cujos. I had no idea that she might treat my children badly. Oh, no. How could I know? I mean, that's just a lie.
[1:42:56] Now that you mentioned it yeah i yeah.
[1:42:59] That is how that could not just be a lie i mean certainly would be the most logical thing for somebody who doesn't want to take responsibility it's the old i didn't know how could i know and it's unprovable, i never saw her treating my kids badly no okay did you tell your father about the violence you were experiencing from your brother oh.
[1:43:25] Yeah all the time yeah.
[1:43:26] And what did he do about that.
[1:43:29] I don't remember anything there might have been something used in court but nothing that impacted me.
[1:43:36] So he's willing to fight for a divorce and he's willing to fight your mother so he can go fuck some new woman and get married to her, right? But not for the sake of protecting his own children from violence, near-death experience, and toxic malignity, right?
[1:43:59] Yeah.
[1:44:01] So he's selfish. So he'll fight like hell just so he can get married, which turns out to be a divorce anyway, But he won't fight like hell to protect his children, Selfish, You think your mom's the only narcissist? Hmm, Oh, I'll fight her for years Because some woman wants to marry me And I want to please her But I won't fight her for five minutes To protect my children One of my kids almost got murdered by being drowned, but it's fine. I can still see them once a week. And, you know, the important thing is I teach you how to code. That's my job as a father, not protecting you from decisions that I made about who to have kids with.
[1:44:51] No, no, I'm going to teach you some syntax. Yeah, that's important.
[1:45:01] I feel quite sad hearing that.
[1:45:04] And then, when my son brings up how much he suffered, I burst into tears, and he ends up comforting me.
[1:45:13] Oh, yeah, that happened.
[1:45:16] And I never bring it up again.
[1:45:19] And I've tried to bring it up before, and he's like, I don't want to go there.
[1:45:22] Right.
[1:45:23] We already went down this road. I can't go there.
[1:45:27] So he can't even talk about it but you were supposed to fucking live with it, he can't even discuss your mother but she had total control over you for six days a week he can't even use the words but you had to have your face pushed in water and almost drowned.
[1:45:47] Yeah so that's weak and you see it doesn't fucking matter if he wants to talk about it or not. If he was any kind of father that I understand is virtuous, he would say, holy shit, it's really important for you that we talk about this, so we're going to talk about this. Because it's important to you, and it matters to you. As opposed to, well, I don't want to. I mean, let me ask you this. Did you want to go to school as a kid? Did you really enjoy being in school? no no oh and i'm sure your parents i'm sure at some point your parents figured out that you didn't like going to school did you have to go to school i did yeah for years and years and years, so you've got to do shit for years and years and years did you want to go back to your moms after spending time with your dad nope did you end up having to go back yep so you see you at the age to 3 and 4 and 5 and 10 and 15. You've got to have discipline, son. You've got to do all the things that are tough. But I won't have one fucking conversation that could save your soul because I'm uncomfortable.
[1:47:03] It gives me owies. It hurts me in the fifis. Bullshit. Absolute bullshit. You see what I'm saying?
[1:47:20] Yeah, I do.
[1:47:26] And the excuses you give to your father are the excuses you give to yourself. see your father says your father says i don't want to talk about it son therefore i'm not going to talk about it because i have the self-discipline of a fucking tablecloth but but and then you say well i don't want to talk i'm i'm feeling negativity talking about these important things with my father so i'm just not going to because i learned my lesson from daddy that you just don't do you just don't do what what you don't feel like doing oh unless you're five and have to go school, then you fucking shut up and go to school. Hence, when I said your dad's a bit of a monster, you were surprised.
[1:48:23] I somehow have this alternate reality where he's, somehow the victim and just made a bad choice and all that and I've had trouble.
[1:48:37] Knowing that a bad choice is when you take the wrong turn on the highway not when you subject children to narcissistic sadistic malignant child abuse for decades, that's not a choice, that's a habit.
[1:48:59] Yeah. And he did mention during that talk at age 17 and a half that he did see in my eyes kind of this fear when he would see me. So he definitely admitted he did know what was going on. I don't think it's a big stretch to connect two and together.
[1:49:21] No, and I would, sorry, and I would give him more sympathy if he hadn't fought your mom for years to get remarried. Sorry, I'm saying for years. How long did their court battles go on about the divorce?
[1:49:34] That's probably around, right, about maybe two years or something.
[1:49:37] Maybe two years. Okay, so he's willing to fight your mom because his girlfriend wants to get married, but he's not willing to fight your mom to protect you, the children. I mean, if he had talked to a lawyer, I'm no lawyer, so this is not legal advice, right? This is just my, of course, amateur idiot understanding of how these systems work, and I don't even know which country you're in, so that doesn't matter. But my guess is that if he had documented in particular, the near-murderous violence inflicted upon you by your brother while under the care, custody, and control of your mother, that he would have been able to get custody, or at least make a damn good case. I'm pretty sure that custody can switch if a kid is in danger of getting killed.
[1:50:24] Yeah.
[1:50:25] So that wasn't enough. You almost dying, almost being murdered, well, that wasn't enough for him to fight your mom. But when his girlfriend nags him to get married, oh, he's suiting up, man, he's in. That's ultimate president of Karkistan.
[1:50:44] Gosh.
[1:50:48] And he hasn't even apologized or taken ownership and said, you know what, I've really failed you. I was willing to fight your mom for some chick who ain't even in my life anymore, but I wasn't willing to fight your mom for you or your brothers.
[1:51:03] That's true. I never got that apology.
[1:51:06] Well, no, it's an acknowledgement. I don't want to talk about it. Well, you make the fucking choices, you talk about it. your kids want to talk about something you shut the fuck up and listen because they didn't have any choice, And it's tough to have a strong conscience yourself if you don't provoke the conscience of your father. Because what you're doing is, and I understand this, and I really sympathize with that, it's not a criticism, but what you're doing is placating your father for fear that he will abandon you or reject you if you're honest with him. So you still live under threat.
[1:51:54] Hmm.
[1:51:59] You know, I mean, good parenting is, like you say to your kid, like, you can say anything to me. Nothing can threaten the bond. You can say absolutely anything to me. Have any criticism, any condemnation, anything. The bond is unbreakable.
[1:52:17] Yeah, I did get the sense, I tried to bring it up before, that things would not go well if I kept trying to bring it up.
[1:52:25] Sure. That he would choose to, well, plus he walked out on your mom, who he voluntarily chose and was having sex with, right? I mean, he doesn't get those positive reinforcement vibes from you. So why wouldn't he? I mean, this is when you walk out on a spouse, you leave the kids with abandonment issues, of course, because they've been abandoned.
[1:52:51] And your father is like, man, I can't fucking live with this chick But you at three, good luck, kid Oh, and I'm never going to talk about it later I couldn't stand her I had to flee at the age of 30, Or 35 or whatever it was But you at the age of three Yeah, you'll be fine, Oh, and if you ever bring up any criticisms of my choices or my actions that resulted in, as you say, the near-death experience called childhood, I will whine and burst into tears and feel myself so full of self-pity that you end up comforting me because I'm a selfish man.
[1:53:29] Or call me oversensitive.
[1:53:32] Oh, did he call you oversensitive?
[1:53:34] Yeah.
[1:53:35] That's news to me.
[1:53:39] In regards to this because i mean i've been.
[1:53:43] So he insulted you for being upset about nearly being killed as a child and other things of course right so you're oversensitive for facing near-death experiences but him bursting into tears and not wanting to talk about stuff that's not being oversensitive so you're supposed to live with near-death experiences and not complain but if you bring up those issues with your father then he is not oversensitive by bursting into tears and refusing to talk about it.
[1:54:13] Wow.
[1:54:17] That's like saying that somebody complaining about a massive arm wound is oversensitive and then the guy who faints when seeing the wound is totally fine. That's rational and appropriate.
[1:54:34] Understood.
[1:54:35] So you still live under threat of abandonment. Okay, do you want to try roleplay so I can meet this dad of yours?
[1:54:44] I'm willing to give a shot. I don't know how good I'll be.
[1:54:47] Yes, and I'll be you, right? Dad, my gosh, do we ever need to talk, man? My life is a mess. I got no friends. I got no girl. And I think a lot of it, I mean, obviously some of it's my choices, and I get that. But some of it has to do with mom's choices, but I haven't talked to her in a decade and I still have these problems, right? So I have to at least put mom aside for the bit and talk to you. Like, so, you know, get ready. This is going to be a challenge, but, you know, you're a big, strong man. You can handle it. So, yeah, we need to talk about my childhood. It was really bad. I mean, you know, I was almost killed, right? and mom was incredibly selfish and she strangely attacked me in the shower with socks and was just completely bizarre and aggressive and threatened me with abandonment where whenever i had an issue she just walk away and i basically had to give up my entire identity and you know i can't help but think that you couldn't stand her and then you abandoned me to deal with her like so like i got If.
[1:55:54] You want to go down this road again, we could do it. I'm happy to do that, but I didn't know how bad she was. You left!
[1:56:03] What are you talking about? Don't lie to me, Dad. You didn't know how bad she was. You left. You left three children with her.
[1:56:11] I always saw her treating you well. Always.
[1:56:16] I think that's just a lie. Are you saying that this incredibly toxic and violent woman was just also a wonderful mother with no problems whatsoever? Do you think that that exists in the same personality?
[1:56:31] I mean, it was different with you. The way she treated your two older brothers and you, it was night and day.
[1:56:37] Okay, so you understand, because you're a man and you're not retarded, right? You understand that if my mother treats me well and my brothers badly, my brothers are going to take it out on me. so i was still being treated like shit like you understand that right it's not complicated, and i told you about the violence i was experiencing at the hands of my brother daily beating attacks near murder yeah the fuck did you do about any of it.
[1:57:04] We tried to get him help and i fought so hard in the legal system and that's one of my biggest regrets is not.
[1:57:09] No no no No, no, no, no, dad, don't fucking gaslight me, man. Don't do it. Don't do it, man. I'm telling you, do not gaslight me. You did not fight in the legal system for me. You fought in the legal system to get married. You fought in the legal system to get married. You fought because your girlfriend wanted to get married, and you couldn't because you were still married to Ma. So you fought for your girlfriend and for your loins, but not for me. Because if you'd wanted to fight for me, you'd have fought for custody based upon the fact that, I don't know, I was nearly killed under her care.
[1:57:56] I mean, I didn't know about that.
[1:58:00] Is this really where you want to go? like just claiming passive ignorance. Let me ask you this, Dad. Do you think it's your job to know these things when you have kids? Do you think it's your job to know how they're doing?
[1:58:19] Yeah.
[1:58:20] Right. So did you inquire of me on a regular basis how I was doing? Whether I was happy, whether I was protected, whether I was taken care of? like you say well i never saw your mother treat you badly but then you also say she fooled me for years you can't have it both ways you can't claim to be a victim because mom's such a cunning manipulator and then say well i never know her treat you badly because you you know she's a cunning manipulator so you know that what she shows you isn't what is you've made that case for years, if she's a cunning manipulator you have to ask me directly because she because she could be covering up the abuse in the same way you claim that she covered up her dysfunctional personality to the point where you got fooled. So you knew for years and years and years that she was a cunning manipulator who could pull a wool over people's eyes, and then you say, but I never saw her treat you badly. I mean, you can't have it both ways.
[1:59:22] I think he would do whatever he can to leave the situation, leave the talk at that point.
[1:59:27] Okay, then I would say, dad, if you leave, you're not coming back. If you leave this conversation, I'm going to do with you what I did to mom. It's not a threat. I'm just telling you consequences. I need to have this conversation. You need to step up and parent me. And you need, I don't care if it's uncomfortable for you. You know, it was uncomfortable for me being stuck with a toxic, malignant narcissist and being almost killed in my childhood. That was tough for me. And if I can deal with that shit You can deal with some tough words So sit your ass back down And we'll talk.
[2:00:00] I mean you're already an adult Son I don't know what to tell you What parenting can I give you now I wasn't a good father back then But I mean what do you want me to do about it now I can't change The fact, Why even bring it up There's nothing that can be done about it.
[2:00:19] Okay so you need to listen and you need to not insult me because i'm telling you i'm feeling pretty raw and pretty pissed off and if you insult me things would go very badly indeed between us i'm telling you that right now so is there anything in what i've said that indicates i want you to have a magical time machine and change the past.
[2:00:40] I mean what else could you.
[2:00:42] Have Have, is there, yes or no, yes or no, you need to listen. Is there anything in what I've said that has to demand, explicit or implicit, that you have a magical time machine and go back and change the past?
[2:00:55] Well, if you want to get nitpicky.
[2:00:56] Yeah. Is there anything in what I have said that indicates that I want you to have a magical time machine and change the past?
[2:01:06] No.
[2:01:07] Okay, thank you. So don't insult my intelligence. Do you think that I'm under the delusion that the past can be changed? Okay, so hang on, hang on, hang on. So if I'm not under the delusion that time can be changed, that the past can be changed, why would you pompously inform me that the past cannot be changed? But I'm perfectly aware that the past cannot be changed, and it has nothing to do with what I'm asking or talking about.
[2:01:39] Well, then I don't know why you're bringing this up, son. I mean, are you doing something that your cruel, sadistic mother would do to me?
[2:01:50] Wait sorry i thought mom was a perfect mom who treated me well now she's a cruel sadistic mother i'm a little confused.
[2:02:01] I mean that that's that's who who i've learned she is.
[2:02:04] Okay so then if you know that she's cruel and sadistic why would you gaslight me and say that she was a wonderful mother to me.
[2:02:11] That's what i believed at the time.
[2:02:13] Oh so right now you have changed your mind completely and thought that I was under the care and control of a wonderful mother and now you found out that she's cruel and sadistic.
[2:02:25] I mean, when you told me, when you came to live with me, that's the first I've heard about it.
[2:02:33] Right, which is almost 10 years ago, right?
[2:02:36] Yes.
[2:02:37] No, more than 10 years. No, almost 10 years ago. Okay. So then once you found out that she was a cruel and sadistic mother like 10 years ago, So why would you tell me that she was a great mother to me right now?
[2:02:52] I didn't say that.
[2:02:53] You did. You said you never saw her treating me badly in any way.
[2:02:59] Yes, and that's what I believed when you were growing up. That's all I ever saw. She treated you as a golden child. You were very well taken. You were always cared for. You always had food. She provided for you.
[2:03:13] Okay. Did you get married to her knowing that she was this cruel and sadistic?
[2:03:26] I didn't know she was going to be like that.
[2:03:29] No, no. Did you get married to her knowing that she was cruel and sadistic, or did she fool you to some degree?
[2:03:39] I mean, she must have fooled me.
[2:03:41] What do you mean, must have? You were there. Did she fool you, or did you know she was this cruel when you married her and gave her three children?
[2:03:56] I mean, she fooled me. I mean, looking back, I saw one time where she slipped up, but, I mean, she was good for so many years.
[2:04:06] I mean, she was good. And also, that was something where you were aware that she was going to yell at someone, this is the person who was misusing the equipment. And while I'm sure her reaction was exaggerated, it is also the case that there was some justification in her upset, right? yes okay but she volunteered for almost half a decade right so for many many years she was able to hide her negative behavior from you right, yes so you know that she's very good at hiding negative behavior and so then when you say to me well i never saw her behave negatively you'd know that that was a lie right like that that you would have no reason to trust that in her because she's very good at camouflaging, right?
[2:05:03] So if someone is very good at camouflaging and hiding their bad behavior, and that person is then in charge of your three children, you don't rely on your fucking eyes. You ask the kids. Because you know she's a liar and a manipulator who can hide bad behavior for years. And so you check in with your kids to find that out, right? To find out if she's hiding bad behavior, which you already know she can do for years. But you didn't. I had to finally tell you when I was six months shy of being a full-ass adult. You never once asked me. Hey, I know that my mother can fake being really a good person, so how are things going behind closed doors? You just abandoned me and ran. You couldn't handle her as an adult, but I was supposed to handle her at three. You knew she was a predatory, cruel liar. And then you give me this mealy-mouthed bullshit about how you never saw her do anything bad, which is exactly what you told me about how she was for years before you married her with the exception of that one instance. See, none of it makes sense at all. And you're just lying to me. Maybe you're lying to yourself, I don't know. But I'm really sick and tired of these lies.
[2:06:32] I have no idea what he would say at this point.
[2:06:34] You need to own up that you saved yourself and abandoned your children. You need to own up that you specifically did not ask me how mom was treating me because you didn't want to get the answer. You need to own up that you only fought mom in order to please your girlfriend who wanted to get married, not to save your children you abandoned to a narcissist. This is your life. These are the choices you made. And if you bullshit me about this anymore, we're done.
[2:07:11] I think he's already out of the conversation by that point.
[2:07:14] Okay, then I would not see him again. Personally, I can't tell you what to do. But if somebody's going to be such a weasel about decisions that he made that was so destructive to his children.
[2:07:27] Right.
[2:07:27] Well, I mean, you can't, you can't have, it's really tough to have someone like that in your life because they keep, they keep good people at bay. because it's saying, I mean, imagine, what's your favorite female name?
[2:07:44] Let's go Ashley.
[2:07:45] Ashley, that's a nice name. Okay. So let's say that you meet Ashley and then Ashley meets your father and knows that he abandoned his children to, as you point out, a malignant narcissist who was sadistic and tortured them and you almost got killed under her care. And your father is what? Is he chatty, jovial, fun?
[2:08:09] Uh yeah he can be welcoming yeah.
[2:08:12] So i mean he's pretty well camouflaged himself right, the guy's carrying around nuclear guilt the size of a hot bomb at hiroshima and yet he's just chatty because you participate and i understand why you participate in this delusion that, he's just a good guy a delusion some mistakes were made but you know everyone everyone seems It's okay. So, a quality woman is going to sense that about your dad immediately. And she's going to see the disparity between what your dad subjected you to and he did. Your father could afford to save you and your brothers at any time. At any time. But he didn't. Now, maybe he didn't have any fight in him. We could give him some spineless forgiveness to some degree. But when it turned out that his girlfriend wanted to get married, well, looky-la. Look at all the fight he has in him. Just so he can get sex, not that his children can be protected.
[2:09:24] Steph, I've never made that connection until now. So I always thought it was kind of, oh, sometimes he was fighting, sometimes he's not, and there's no good causality.
[2:09:33] No, he just didn't fight for you. Yeah. So you are not part of the equation of his life. You can understand that. You were not part of the equation of his life. You see, if he talks to you and takes responsibility, then you gain great relief.
[2:09:51] Yes.
[2:09:54] Let's say that there's some dad, right? And the dad accidentally kills the family pet, right? But then he says that his daughter is to blame, right? now she's going to suffer, right? She's going to feel terrible and guilty and bad, right? But she won't be mad at him, right?
[2:10:20] No.
[2:10:21] And she will feel bad and not be mad at him. Now, if then at some point in the future he confesses and says, I killed the family pet and I blamed you, she will gain relief from being mad at herself or feeling bad about her role in killing the family pet, right?
[2:10:40] Yeah.
[2:10:41] So when he takes ownership for what he did, he lifts the burden from her shoulders. So there's really only three possibilities. Either your father is worse than your mother, he's the same as your mother, or he's better than your mother.
[2:10:59] Okay.
[2:11:00] Right? If he's worse than your mother, then it makes no sense to have him in your life and not have your mother in your life, right?
[2:11:08] True.
[2:11:10] If he's the same as your mother same right, if he's better than your mother then he should focus on doing what's best for you regardless of his own level of discomfort right, Because your mother did what pleased her at your expense. She's angry at you. She just whips you with socks in the shower. She doesn't want to talk about something. She just walks away, leaving you insecure and frightened, and rationally so, right? So your father, sorry, your mother does what she prefers, no matter how much it screws you up. Does what makes her feel better in the moment, regardless of what screws you up, right? Now, your father, if he's better than your mother, shouldn't do that, at least as much, right? He should choose what's best for you over discomfort to himself.
[2:12:03] Maybe he's in that middle ground where he's not doing that, but he's still better than my mother. I mean, that's been my experience of him thus far.
[2:12:15] Okay, I only care about putting your kid's interests first. I don't care about anything else. I mean, that's like saying he's better than my mother because he taught me more about programming. I only care about putting your needs first because he's a father, right? That's the job. You put what's best for your kids ahead of your own interests. If you don't want to do that, just don't become a dad. It's pretty simple, right? And he chose to become, well, you can even say if the first one was a quasi-accident, he still chose twice more to become a father, right?
[2:12:47] That is true. Yeah, and he chose to keep my first brother as well.
[2:12:53] Right, right, right So, I only care about this Now, if he's better than your mother Then there should have been times Over the course of your life When he did that which was emotionally difficult For himself, but would be better for you, And I'm happy to hear of instances where he's done that, where he's done what was emotionally difficult for him, because it seems to me that 10 years ago, first of all, he should have constantly checked in with you about how you're doing.
[2:13:25] Yeah, for sure.
[2:13:27] Can you imagine hiring a babysitter with no references and never inquiring about your children as to whether they like or don't like the babysitter?
[2:13:38] I i cannot for my own children imaginary children no.
[2:13:42] Yeah it's incomprehensible right can you imagine hiring a tutor who came with no references and showed red flags and never asking your children how they experienced the tutor is he good is he bad is he helpful is he not i can't right you ask your children how they're doing because you're not an asshole and you're not selfish. Now, narcissistic, again, I'm just using this term in an amateur fashion. I'm certainly not competent to diagnose anyone, right? But a narcissist will only care how he or she feels and it doesn't matter, it doesn't even register really, whether their own self-protection costs other people.
[2:14:24] Yeah.
[2:14:26] So your father for 10 years has known a 0.1% of how much you suffered under your mother and has he ever brought the topic up knowing that that would give you relief?
[2:14:39] Oh, of his own will? No, never.
[2:14:42] Right. So he would rather you continue to suffer and fail in your relationships and be unhappy and maybe even if it's related to the CFS he would rather that all happen rather than do something uncomfortable for himself.
[2:15:00] God that's hard to imagine but that is what's happened.
[2:15:04] Now those are the facts right yeah which means he wasn't fooled by your mother he's the same as your mother, it manifests in different ways but the principle is the same.
[2:15:32] I'm a bit thrown for a whirl here, trying to comprehend all this.
[2:15:44] I mean, yeah, so my daughter the other day, it doesn't really matter the details, but I thought, you ever had this thing where you think you're joking, but the other person is serious, and then you end up coming across as really insensitive?
[2:15:58] Yes. Yeah.
[2:15:59] So, my daughter the other day, I thought we were joking. It turns out she was serious, and then she brought up that it was upsetting to her, and it bothered her. Now, was that fun for me?
[2:16:11] No.
[2:16:12] No, of course not.
[2:16:12] I can't imagine it.
[2:16:14] So, what did I say?
[2:16:17] Tell me more?
[2:16:18] Yeah, I'm really sorry. I certainly don't want you to have that experience, and if I misjudge the situation, which is certainly possible, tell me more, right?
[2:16:29] Yeah my father has not not done that it's only he's only given a little bit as to like the story of this when i just pushed him i mean it felt like as hard as i could but, obviously i didn't go to the full extent we had in the role play.
[2:16:48] Right and i mean that would be a tough thing to do right i could be all kinds of tough in the role play because it ain't my dad and it's just made up right so don't don't imagine that i would be that tough in real life. But my own father, I mean, to his credit, right? I mean, he did actually tell me about all his mental health struggles and about how depressed he was when I went to visit him when I was 16. And that's why he was not responsive to me. And that was so good. That was good. Now.
[2:17:19] It would have been better if he'd actually asked me about my experience at all, ever, which he didn't do. But at least he took that burden from me of being uninteresting as a young man or as a child, because my father didn't really pay attention to me, finding out that he was catastrophically depressed. It gave me some relief and release. Now, again, it would have been even better if he'd actually at some point over the 53 three years that he knew me actually ask me about anything to do with me or at least respond when i told him my experiences in in any curious way he never did that but at least he did take one burden off me right yeah uh your father it sounds like hasn't even done that no and none of it hangs together like when he says oh your mother is a incredibly good at camouflaging her own corruption Well, I never saw anything. That's literally like someone saying, it's like a guide in the Serengeti saying to me that there are invisible lions. And then when I get attacked, he says, well, I never saw a lion. It's like, you told me they were invisible. And then you claim to not be able to see them? That's insane.
[2:18:42] And there's no way around that because he already knew what was happening with my brothers and he knew at that point the conflict and all that, because for a long time in my childhood he focused on my middle brother so he knew gosh.
[2:19:05] Well I mean that's again that's a challenging one because of the autism Asperger's right, so i mean that is a challenging one because there may be a non-moral biological substrate substrata to that right like if your kid gets a brain tumor it's really aggressive it's not because of bad parenting right.
[2:19:29] Right but bad parenting would make it all the much worse.
[2:19:34] Well i think so i think so and it is incumbent upon the parents to get the violent child out of the environment if the violent child cannot be sorted out. I mean, did your family ever go to parenting classes? Did they ever go? I mean, divorced couples can go to family counseling if there's problems with the children. There are family counselors who will specialize in how to co-parent after divorce for the best interest of the children. Did your parents ever consult any experts on how to deal with a very violent child in the house who was, you know, potentially murdering the other kids?
[2:20:10] Not to my knowledge i mean they went to doctors i think independently for for his condition but, i don't know how much of that i believe that it was mostly the asperger's or whatever i think mostly he was just i think he just snapped after being so cruelly treated yeah.
[2:20:33] I mean that's that's a whole complex web of biology and environment and abuse and genes, and so I can't, you know, whack myself through that thicket in any rational way, but whether or not it was environmental or genetic, or as you say, maybe a combination, or is this possible? I'm sorry, I won't put words in your mouth, or a combination of the two, doesn't fundamentally matter, right? So if you have a dog that bites the children and you say, well, it's a nice dog. It's treated well. It just has rabies. Does it matter?
[2:21:08] No, it doesn't. He should have got me out of there.
[2:21:11] Yeah. You cannot have children subjected to daily violence in that fashion. It's just absolutely unacceptable. And there's no excuse for it. Both your parents knew that he was violent. And that they couldn't fix it.
[2:21:28] Yeah and at one point this weekend visitation had to be split because we were fighting my brother and i were fighting my middle brother and i were fighting during my father's time, so then we started seeing one day oh so your brother would hear the violence but.
[2:21:46] Sorry your father would see the violence between you and your brother when you were visiting him.
[2:21:49] Yes and eventually it got solved by splitting us up which is just masking well it didn't get didn't get solved.
[2:21:57] It's just that they were only interested in diminishing the symptoms insofar as it affected them, rather than insofar as it affected you.
[2:22:04] Yeah.
[2:22:06] So I would submit that through no fault of your own, and with great sympathy for this, you have no idea what it means to be loved and cared for. And that's the price of being raised by selfish parents. They don't put their own interests aside. you know when your father was full of lust he banged your mom because it felt good and then when she was unpleasant he left because it felt bad, right not confronting her about the child abuse would feel bad but then when his girlfriend was nagging him he felt bad about that so then he fought your mom I mean selfish people just bounce off dopamine it's just punishment and reward it's never a principle and it's certainly never empathy.
[2:22:51] Right Right, yeah.
[2:22:59] So, I mean, with great sympathy, how can you have a relationship when you don't even know that you were unloved?
[2:23:09] I mean, it's a hard one. How do you know what whatever chocolate mousse tastes like if you've never had it?
[2:23:16] Well, the problem is if you're eating a pile of shit thinking it's chocolate mousse, you don't ever get to the chocolate mousse. That's my point, is that you think you have a relationship and you think that you're cared for. But if you're cared for, then you should be able to have difficult conversations and the other person cares about you enough to have them and even to initiate them. It's your father's job to initiate these conversations. And looking at the wreckage of his children's lives, he should be initiating this conversation with all of you.
[2:23:45] Yeah.
[2:23:45] What happened? How bad was it? Tell me everything. and then take complete ownership for that because he chose your mother to be the mother of his children and then he chose to leave those children with that woman. That's 100% on him. You say, oh, well, my mother too. Yeah, but we know your mother. You've already dealt to a large degree with your mother, right? But your father, as I've always talked about, is the parent who gets away.
[2:24:11] Yeah.
[2:24:12] And you know that he's selfish, which is why you haven't talked to him really over the last 10 years about any of this in any persistent detail. Because selfish people, if you cause them discomfort, they'll just completely drop you. Because they don't have a connection with you. They only have a connection with their own comfort and preferences. Sorry, go ahead.
[2:24:33] I lost my track of thought, but it kind of makes sense that I would understand that that's the situation. I've kind of been blaming myself that I haven't pushed harder to You could talk to him about it, but...
[2:24:47] Well, you have that responsibility. I'm not going to let you off the hook for that. Because people always say, oh, I criticize myself so much. And it's like, maybe that's not totally wrong.
[2:24:58] Right? You've known about the need for this conversation. And the fact that you can't confront your father on his fairly obvious lies, and I say only obvious from the outside, because it's easier for the outside, right? So the fact that you can't confront your father on his obvious lies is why you can't be protected against a liar like the two-month girl or the two-month woman who said, no sex for 30 days or no sex for 90 days or 120 days. Oh, it's been three days. Let's do it. Right? So because she didn't have any principles, you couldn't really be alarmed by that. and you bonded with her because you're already bonded by someone who doesn't have any principles with your father. So you have a fake bond with your father, and then you end up with a fake bond who's a liar, in my view, and a manipulator. And then you end up bonded with this woman who's a liar and a manipulator, and then you feel strangely attached to her. It's like, well, yeah, that's your template. And then you feel strangely attached to someone who's not trustworthy, like your father, and then you're terrified of rejection from this woman, which made no sense because you just met and she had red flags all over the place. So why were you so terrified of rejection from this woman you just met who was a liar and a manipulator? Because your life is run by your fear of rejection by your father, which is why you won't be honest with him. And then the price of not being honest with your father is being played by someone similar to your father like this woman.
[2:26:23] Which is why she had no problems with your father because like recognizes like. Predators recognize predators. Liars recognize predators. Oh, you're not going to give me any trouble. Yeah, we're the same.
[2:26:33] She's actually still in the orbit of the family we're friends with some some of us, wow.
[2:26:44] And the fact that she is a female heard about your childhood, and then violated boundaries that you'd set up means that she was exploiting your wounds not helping you with them, because you said I don't want to have sex before marriage and she's like, let's do it, let's do it, let's do it, let's do it. You're tall.
[2:27:09] Yeah, and I told her about my previous relationship, which I think lasted as long as I did because I had.
[2:27:14] Okay, so you may not want to overly talk about your previous relationship with new women, either of them. Yeah, I had some dating. Some of it went well, some of it went badly. I've learned a lot. I'm in therapy, and I'm eager to move forward. But please, Scott, don't start unpacking old relationships with new dates.
[2:27:35] Got it.
[2:27:41] So, I mean, obviously, I can't tell you what to do, but, and I'm not sure you'd listen anyway, because I've sort of told people what to do over the call-in shows, or at least I've given them some pointers on things that might be helpful. And you don't want to do that stuff, right? So, you are still run by a fear of rejection from your father. And I sympathize with that. This is not any kind of negative. It's no blame. I really, really understand that. And listen, you're further ahead at your age than I was at your age, right? So the fact that I got 31 years on you is pretty significant, right? So it's not anything to make you feel bad or deficient or anything like that, but you have avoided being honest with your father. I think in general, if it's safe, thou shall not bear false witness, even if you're not religious is a pretty good rule to live by, right?
[2:28:35] Yeah, I agree with that one, although I don't practice it.
[2:28:38] Well, you know, but it's tough, right? So you can't be closer to people than your least close relationship in principle. So if you have a relationship based upon silence, lying, conformity, and avoidance, then you really can't get close to any woman. Because the moment you start getting close to any woman who's capable of being really close to you and caring for you, the first thing she's going to see is that your father doesn't really care for you. Because if he did, he would do that which was uncomfortable, but would benefit you.
[2:29:07] And why would she want to be a part of that.
[2:29:08] Well she doesn't and she knows that she's gonna you're going to be seesawing back and forth between intimacy and dissociation how often are you in contact with your father these days like let's say yeah the last year regular and what is regular.
[2:29:24] Once a week visiting.
[2:29:26] Right like that but yours is 25 of your income comes from the company he works with right yeah so i assume you're in contact at least to some degree for work issues yeah so how often do you talk to your father, or communicate with him or text with him or have interactions with him.
[2:29:49] Yeah i mean it varies but say twice per week.
[2:29:52] Really so you visit once a week and you're only in contact with him for business matters texting anything once a week.
[2:29:58] Um it depends it can be more but recently it's rather sporadic.
[2:30:07] Okay what is it typically not recently if recently it's a deviation from the norm what's the norm.
[2:30:18] I'm having trouble answering this. I mean, there are days when we work, the projects aren't consistent. So there's periods where we talk like every day for the whole working day. But then there's times where we don't talk for a month or two.
[2:30:45] Huh. So you don't even visit.
[2:30:50] That is also sporadic, yeah.
[2:30:52] Right. Okay. Okay, so you're not bonded. Because if you were bonded, you wouldn't go a couple of months without talking.
[2:31:04] Yeah, I mean, there's some bond, but it's not a healthy bond. So I do trust him enough to fall back on him sometimes, but I don't. I know kind of that's not a good thing to do.
[2:31:23] Okay. Well, yeah, so I would say, I mean, the advice you've heard a million times over the call-in shows is if you're going to have a relationship, be honest. And if the relationship can't survive your honesty, then it was not a relationship. You know, people always, I remember back in the day, people would get mad at me for this, right? Like, well, I tried talking to my dad and it just blew up. And it's like, hey, but don't blame me. if you're telling me this bridge if this little footpath over the stream you're saying it could totally bear your weight I'm like okay then walk on it and if you walk in it and collapse don't blame me.
[2:31:56] Yeah, and you can't even blame the whatever car you drive across it to test the bridge. No, I was walking.
[2:32:01] That's what the bridge is made for. I wouldn't want, just walking, and it's a little stream, right? It's just a little footbridge, right? Yeah, this footbridge can, I mean, it could carry three times my weight. I remember the CN Tower, like they had this glass floor. It could take six hippos, right? Or four Americans. So if you walk on this little footbridge that you say is totally stable and sturdy, and then it collapses, and then people get mad at me, like I broke the bridge. I'm like, no, I just accepted what you said. if you have a relationship with your father, you should be able to tell him the truth. If you tell him the truth and that results in your father not wanting to talk to you, you never had a relationship with your father. You just had frightened conformity and emptiness at the cost of your entire future. Because it's not about the past. Your father's made his choices. He's had his kids, right? And you still have, you're a young, well, youngish man, and you have a future. And to sacrifice your future for the sake of your father's shitty choices 35 years ago makes no sense. They're his bad choices. They don't have to be your bad choices. And for me, everything that kept me from being close to people was absolutely expendable.
[2:33:09] And anybody who treated me with disrespect could never be around my wife because I never, ever want my wife to see people treating me with disrespect. And I also never want my wife, or then girlfriend, to see me lying to people and conforming to people and being frightened of people. That's gross. And it's supremely unattractive because a woman needs you to be strong, needs you to provide and to protect. And if you're going over and white-faced lying and cowing, in a sense, before your father, a woman will not find you very attractive.
[2:33:44] How could she? You're supposed to be a provider and a protector. And if you are pissing your pants because your elderly father might disapprove of you, that's nothing a woman can find sexy. Like, I'm sorry, just we can mutter about this biology, but it doesn't really matter. It's not going to change. And so if your father, if you lie by omission and avoid telling the truth to your father, then your girlfriend who will know about your past, will know that this is the guy this is the man this is the person who did you the most harm in a way, because he left and didn't take you and he fought but not for you but for some woman who's no longer in his life and certainly of your current relationships, because you're not in touch with your mother of your current relationships your father is the person who did you by far the most harm and continues to do you the most harm by not raising the issue of your childhood because of his own bad conscience thus causing you to spiral into negativity. So your girlfriend knows that this is the guy who did you the most harm that you're in contact with and what does she consistently see? You never saying anything to him about anything. That's a slave. That's low status. That's spineless. And again, I'm not saying you're a coward. I understand the motivations and I sympathize with them. I really do.
[2:35:07] But however much I might sympathize with you and I do for what happened to you as a child the fact remains a girlfriend will get an intergalactic ick from watching you cuck to your dad and not tell the truth because you're scared.
[2:35:22] I've been aware of that yeah.
[2:35:26] You've been aware of that then why didn't you tell the truth on the camping trip, you don't get any points for being aware of shit you don't do in fact that's negative points I know the perfect diet for me I'm just not doing it That's even worse than not knowing the perfect diet for you.
[2:35:47] I might be dense right now But I don't know what truth you're referring to For the camping trip that I would share.
[2:35:53] Oh dad my childhood sucked And you were largely to blame Let's talk about it, Dad you're lying to me about mom And you're refusing to take responsibility And that's costing me You selfish jerk, You're still sacrificing your children for the sake of avoiding your own conscience. I won't do it. I won't participate in this nonsense. Let's have an honest conversation, man to man, about the bad shit you did. I mean, did your father ever criticize you for getting bad grades or not doing the right thing as a kid or displeasing him or doing something, quote, wrong?
[2:36:31] Oh, yeah. Yeah.
[2:36:32] Oh, yeah. So he lectured you when you were three and five and ten and, what, you can't say anything to him about abandoning you to a narcissist? and a near murder from your sibling? He's a big, tough guy who can nag and lecture and correct and, in a sense, bully a five-year-old, but he can't hear any actual criticisms of his own choices. That's shitty, man. That's so cowardly. Well, you're five, so I'm going to lecture you on all of your misdeeds and all the things you've done wrong. Dad, you did some things wrong when I was a kid. Oh, how dare you? I mean, it's pathetic, man. It's so weak. It's a bully.
[2:37:17] Wow. When you say it's so clear, but man.
[2:37:23] You know, I always hated this shit when I was a kid, right? Like you get some kid who would trash talk you and you'd trash talk him back and he'd run away crying or whatever, right? It's like, man, I always hate this shit. Don't dish it out if you can't take it. don't dish it out if you can't take it or how do you like a taste of your own medicine so your father nagged and corrected and in a sense bullied you when you were a kid and now because you were doing the wrong things you see you didn't study for that spelling bee kid it's really important you study for that spelling bee you you didn't get a high enough mark in math kid it's really important that you get a high mark in math oh really is it important that you don't leave your kids with a sociopath or whatever the hell your mother is, Is it really important that your children not get beaten up daily and almost murdered? Is that maybe slightly more fucking important than a spelling test or a math quiz or a mock when you're in grade four? But no, don't dish it out, man. If you want to correct kids, great, no problem. Hey, fantastic, correct kids. But then don't be surprised and don't cry foul when your kids grow up and correct you.
[2:38:34] So yeah it's it's gross to see that, and you just you will not be attractive to a quality woman while being bullied cowed and dominated by your father to the point where you can't even tell the truth about essential things.
[2:38:55] I hear you. And for whatever reason, I'm kind of feeling defeated, but also I kind of know there is no reason to, because I can now see the situation clearly.
[2:39:07] No, I'll just stop here, because we've talked for a long time, but you're feeling defeated because your father doesn't want you to have this conversation with him, obviously, right?
[2:39:16] Oh yeah, very much so. Right.
[2:39:18] So you're just feeling defeated as a way that your father will program you to not have this conversation with him. And you don't have to have this conversation with him at all. I mean, it's free will.
[2:39:29] My choice.
[2:39:29] Yeah, it's your choice. But if you don't have this conversation with him, don't pretend you have a relationship. That's all. All right. Will you keep me posted about how things are going?
[2:39:41] I will certainly do.
[2:39:43] I appreciate your time today, and you did a great job with the conversation. And again, massive sympathies for what you experienced as a child. It was absolutely wrong, absolutely not your fault, and you can still have a great life moving forward.
[2:39:55] Thank you, Steph, so much for taking my call and being so kind and generous to me.
[2:39:59] All the best, brother. Keep me posted and stay in touch, all right?
[2:40:03] All right. All the best. Thanks. Bye-bye.
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