0:02 - Introduction to the Journey
0:48 - Struggles with Authenticity
3:37 - Therapy Challenges
5:26 - Early Signs of Anxiety
7:26 - Childhood Influences
11:43 - Family Dynamics
19:29 - Dating History
20:35 - Managing Sexual Drive
21:59 - Childhood Secrets
26:46 - Discipline and Punishment
32:54 - Breaking Family Contact
36:45 - Trust Issues
39:47 - Reflection on Kindness
44:12 - Relationship with Siblings
49:16 - Community Connections
54:47 - Charitable Works
1:00:39 - Sibling Relationships
1:03:22 - Exploring Family Dynamics
1:19:13 - The Challenge of Emotional Connection
1:23:33 - Language Barriers and Family Conversations
1:50:44 - The Weight of Isolation
1:55:54 - Seeking Fulfillment Beyond the Past
2:00:07 - Uncovering the True Self
2:02:48 - Breaking Down Protective Walls
The conversation begins with Stefan and a caller identified as Bob, who initially intends to discuss a previously defined topic but decides to pivot to a more pressing issue regarding his personal struggles with emotional openness. Bob reveals he has been in therapy for a year but still finds it extremely difficult to express his true feelings and thoughts, even to his therapist. This deep-rooted issue leads to ongoing challenges in fostering relationships, as he admits to feeling a strong emotional resistance when faced with the prospect of sharing intimate matters from his life.
Bob reflects on his experiences in therapy, detailing a moment where he prepared for a session by writing down his thoughts on a piece of paper, only to end up handing it to his therapist without verbally expressing his concerns. This mechanism of self-preservation highlights a profound fear of vulnerability that Bob has developed over the years. He recounts how, despite being aware of his struggles, he still finds it challenging to engage in authentic conversations even with close family, resulting in feelings of isolation and limited interpersonal connections.
As the conversation unfolds, Stefan encourages Bob to delve deeper into his emotional responses, guiding him through various moments from his past where he felt extreme anxiety and pressure regarding social interactions. Bob shares troubling anecdotes from his childhood -- particularly highlighting how he grew up in a violent household with parents who often resorted to physical punishment. This environment not only cultivated a sense of fear but also instilled a belief that expressing any preference or individuality could provoke violent reactions from authority figures.
Stefan adeptly connects Bob’s fear of emotional exposure to his childhood experiences, helping him to recognize how the violence he suffered has shaped his present-day relationships. Through their dialogue, it becomes clear that Bob has internalized the belief that expressing his true self or preferences could lead to punishment or rejection, creating a substantial barrier to forming meaningful connections with others.
Discussion shifts to Bob’s issue with dating and relationships, which he admits has been largely non-existent due to his deep-seated fears. He touches upon past romantic interests but acknowledges a pattern of avoidance and missed opportunities throughout his teenage and early adult years, leading to regret and loneliness. Stefan reinforces the idea that Bob's experiences of fear and isolation stem from the patterns of control and abuse established by his parents, emphasizing the need for Bob to start breaking down the defenses he has built around himself.
The conversation further explores familial relationships, especially Bob's connection with his siblings. He describes a relatively good relationship with one younger sister while maintaining a cautious distance from others, which exposes his ongoing struggle with authenticity in familial settings. As they reflect on these dynamics, Stefan helps Bob realize how past trauma continues to impact his willingness to be vulnerable, even with those closest to him.
Towards the end of the call, Stefan draws attention to Bob's aspirations for a future with a partner and children, suggesting that Bob's desire stems from a sense of needing purpose and fulfillment rather than for intrinsic joy in those connections alone. He emphasizes the importance of becoming comfortable with vulnerability, pointing out that love and affection are reciprocated only through openness and authentic expression of one's self.
Bob acknowledges that while he appreciates the safety in being guarded, he also desires a richer, more fulfilling life that encompasses love and emotional connection. The dialogue culminates in the realization that Bob must confront the fears wielded by his past and begin dismantling the walls he has erected around his heart to forge meaningful relationships and ultimately live a more satisfying life.
In closing, Stefan encourages Bob to bring these insights into his therapy sessions and work through the emotional challenges he faces. The discussion ends on a hopeful note, with Bob expressing a commitment to change and a desire for deeper connections moving forward.
[0:00] All right. We are all set. We are recorded. There's a public call, right?
[0:03] So if you can just remember, I'm sure you will, to stay off Names and Places, we can take it from there.
[0:09] Okay, great. Then I'm Bob.
[0:12] Bob it is. Do you want to read the message you sent me to start?
[0:19] Actually, no, because over the past week or so, I kind of thought about the topic I wanted to talk about and I wanted to switch to something else. Maybe we can still get to it later on, but I think I want to switch to something that's more important for me right now, if that's okay.
[0:38] It's a little bit unusual because normally I screen by topics. So, okay, let's hear what else you have to talk about.
[0:49] Uh well it's an i have trouble opening up to people in general and it's like i have a very strong defense mechanism that makes it very hard for me to be authentic and it's, it's basically it's so bad that even i've been in therapy for one year now and i'm even having trouble after one year of therapy to open up to my therapist about well things i want to talk about and it's kind of a problem in in general and i think that's the biggest problem, for me right now to solve to to improve my myself and my life if that makes sense i.
[1:39] Think i understand so yeah tell me more.
[1:41] Well, i'm going to try to explain what what happens when internally emotionally speaking when i come up get into a situation where this, happens. So, for example, in the past couple of months or so, when I'm in therapy, my therapy asks me, is there something I want to talk about? And I have a couple of topics I want to get into. And I have a very, very strong emotional resistance. And I would even describe it as I'm pretty much terrified to open up about things. And it's, as far as I can trace my own internal logic, it's something like the following. It's like, something like, it's too embarrassing to talk about the problem I have, so I need to solve my problem first before I can talk about it, something like that.
[2:53] Okay, I think I understand. Do you want to talk about the form of the issue? In other words, you want to talk about the difficulty opening up, or do you want to talk about a specific issue that you have difficulty opening up about?
[3:11] The first one about my issue opening up in the first place, because like I said, it's becoming a problem in therapy. And just to give you an example of what happened a couple, like two months ago or so in therapy, where I literally like prepared for the therapy session and I had like a piece of paper, like I wrote down on both sides a couple of things and thoughts that I wanted to talk about.
[3:38] And I literally had the paper with me in my back pocket because I wanted to talk about it. And I knew that I had this issue, but I'm having a hard time opening up. And during the therapy session, we talked about something completely different. And at the end of the therapy of the session I took the piece of paper the piece of paper out and gave it to my therapist and literally told him, take this paper and let me leave before I change my mind it's like I was so terrified to open up that I literally had to, make up this mechanism of giving him the piece of paper and just leaving so that I don't take the paper back and just run away, basically.
[4:28] So, yeah, that's why I want to talk about it because it's hindering my progress, both in terms of therapy and I think just generally speaking in my life. I basically don't have any relationships. The only one I really have is with my sister and with her boyfriend, my younger sister. I have three siblings and even with her I can barely open up it's like I'm completely terrified, and yeah maybe maybe to give a bit more context because I've been aware of this issue for like years now probably like seven eight years or so I'm sorry are you in your 20s and 30s.
[5:15] Or your 40s or you don't have to tell me exactly how old you are but what.
[5:18] Decade you went, Uh, I'm the end of my twenties.
[5:24] Okay. Sorry. Go ahead.
[5:26] So, so yeah, I've been aware of this issue for a couple of years now and I've actively worked on it and I've improved a lot. I guess to give you an example from like 10, 10 or so years ago where I like first noticed it, uh, where, uh, uh, you know, my friend at the time, like got his driver's license and, you know, we were driving around in a car, going to McDonald's or whatever. And he gave me the assignment, let's say, to put on some music. And I had a borderline panic attack.
[6:00] On the outside, I kept it together, but I connected my Bluetooth and I was sitting there completely terrified of his reaction to the music I was listening to. And it's not like I was listening to some crazy satanistic, because I grew a Christian, so it's not like something completely crazy. It was just rock or metal at the time or something like that. But I still had to literally force myself and sit there. And it's almost like I expected him to scream at me or even basically kill me. That's the kind of fear I had inside. and, you know like I said I noticed that and I've worked over the past like 7-8 years or so on improving that and I've made progress but like the way I would describe the situation now it's like if you imagine a circle and being authentic and open it's like from the outside coming closer to the circle it's like I've gotten the outer walls down but it's like the inner their wall got much higher and bigger by doing so as like a defense mechanism, if that makes sense.
[7:16] Yeah, I think I understand. And what's your theory as to why this is in your personality?
[7:27] I'm not entirely sure, but I think where it comes from is, well, childhood, obviously, and the way my parents handled, well, us in general, as we were children. And what I mean by that is something like, it's like, like I said, we grew up in a Christian household, or I grew up with my siblings in a Christian household. Christian, Christian. Yeah, Christian household. And this is a theory, just to give more context. So my family has migrated or my parents have migrated in the 90s from Eastern Europe to Central Europe. And my theory is that they have like a, what would you say? It's like a very superficial culture. And again, my theory is it's because they grew up in communism and.
[8:40] And it's like the what would you say uh the super they are kind of superficial like it matters a lot how things look and i think in in their parenting they had like this idea and i thinking back i always felt like it was more important how things look as compared to how they are so for example which is something i thought about in the past uh one and a half two weeks before the call there was a situation where.
[9:11] Our church offered like with a couple of different churches it was like yeah we had church relationships throughout the country and they decided to have a theology course and my dad like even without asking me he signed me up for it because and that's how I felt at the time and still now it was more about the prestige of having like my son is doing theology and it was even in the eastern uh european uh language that you know i speak it but it's a very very different thing of like speaking it every day versus like diving into the bible and having like old vocabulary and and stuff like that so he just signed me up for that and i always had the feeling that it's much more about the the looks of like oh look my son is doing theology and after like three months when we after we had the first test i was like i i can't do this i literally don't understand the language and i i basically spend more time reading a dictionary than i do studying this theology course and then i wrote the the organizer of of of this theology course that i'm break uh i'm stopping doing it.
[10:27] I just wrote him an SMS and my dad got like really, really fucking angry. Like he was screaming at me and he was, you know, he was basic. I think he literally said at one point, screaming at me something like, as long as you are in my house, you're doing what I'm telling you to. And it was like a really, really, really big deal. And again, my perception is that it was literally just about the optics of, oh my God, my son is now not doing this theology course anymore. How does this look? He never said that explicitly, but that's like the feeling I got. And that happened like throughout a lot of our childhoods with me and my especially younger sister, because I'm the second in the birth order. And my older sister is, let's see, four or five years older than me. So there's a bit of a gap. And at that time, she was like older. And yeah, my younger sister is just one and a half years younger than me.
[11:32] So yeah, my older sister was borderline, not even in the picture anymore. She was like almost early 20s at that point, because I think this happened when I was 16.
[11:44] So yeah, I kind of forgot the point I was trying to make. Yeah, this happened a lot. that's what what i was trying to say and at some point just to give a different example at some point uh my mom asked me and my younger sister oh you never talked to us about about anything why is that and we literally told her that well every time we tell you something you just scream at us so why why would we talk to you and, That's kind of my idea of where this comes from.
[12:14] Okay. All right.
[12:16] And I just can't shake like this.
[12:18] Sorry, go ahead.
[12:19] Sorry, go ahead.
[12:21] No, you said you can't shake this.
[12:24] Yeah, I can't shake like this inner terror of the, I'm going to call it the internalized parents of, like I said earlier, I have to solve this problem because it's embarrassing to have this problem, so I kind of have to solve it or make it less embarrassing, before I can talk about it. It's like an optics thing.
[12:49] Okay. What has your dating history been like?
[12:56] More or less non-existent. I had one relationship. And you know what? Let's actually go a bit earlier because when I was in school, I had at least two opportunities that I just didn't read or in one I realized it at the time and in one I didn't and yeah in the one I didn't realize it like a girl I was sitting next to in class was was showing very obvious signs of of interest in me but I just didn't get it and and I'm kind of laughing about it because it's so obvious now afterwards that it's embarrassing that I didn't notice it like she was literally like, she wasn't sitting besides me at first and then during the last year of school she, switched seats so that she could sit besides me, and she would literally write my name draw a heart and then her name and I still didn't get it and, yeah and the thing that uh that i got hung up on is that she was like a very very tall girl like she was i think one meter 90 like really really tall she was a volleyball player and i think she played basketball early on and she like a couple weeks before that started to happen.
[14:23] Uh she literally said something along the lines of no oh no i just i want the guy that's at least as tall as i am so that was kind of like it did not compute that what happened what was going on when she wrote my name with her heart with her heart and then her name so i was just like what's going on here because it's like i'm obviously i'm smaller than her like five foot nine one 175 centimeters and i just didn't get it that's what i got completely hung up on, and she tried a couple more things but at the end of the day I didn't realize it then the second thing was, it's not dating but the second woman girl that showed interest in me was again at the age of about 17 and I was on a trip with a couple of different groups from different nations.
[15:19] And there was one girl that constantly wanted to spend time with me and was like oh do you want to do this do you want to do that and i was kind of at that time i was taking christian christianity very serious so i was like kind of scared to to engage with her because she wasn't christian and i was kind of scared of the temptation of maybe having sex or something like that like that so i kind of like was very passive and i wasn't aggressive about rejecting here i was just always like oh maybe maybe later let's see maybe maybe this and that i was kind of avoiding her in a sense and then later on the third one i actually had a relationship with for about six months or so was when i was 22 and we we got to know each other over playing an mmo an old online game and you know i knew her for about a year when we got together and you know we spent a lot of time in discord we had a lot of of laughs and uh and had a lot of fun we were like talking with each other almost like 10 hours a week or something like that and at some point uh during new year new year's eve she confessed to me that she liked me a lot but i rejected her at that point because I was still Christian and, you know, she was far away.
[16:49] She was in a whole different country and she was also 10 years older than me. So I was 22 at the time at the time and she was 32.
[16:58] So those were kind of arguments that were like, yeah. It's not going to happen. And what happened then was, like a couple of months later, I decided I'm not going to be Christian anymore.
[17:15] And now, this was not what I thought at the time. There was a whole bunch of, what would you say, rationalization. So what I'm telling you now is my analysis afterwards. and after I decided I wasn't going to be Christian anymore, in the back of my mind it was like, I could have sex now and in essence she was in my friend zone, and then I basically told her hey you know I like you too because we spent a lot of time together, we had a lot of fun, I like you too, and that's how our relationship started then and it was still a long distance relationship because she was still another country away. But then over the summer, I spent like about a month at her place and I had sex with her for the first time in my life and, you know, obviously multiple times. And then after about six months, we kind of...
[18:23] How would I say? And the rose-tinted glasses went away, and we kind of both realized that we don't really fit together, and we broke up. Like, it was amicable. There wasn't any fighting or anything. It's just like, I think the conversation was something like, because we talked before, you know, I want to have kids. She wants to have kids. And she was, like I said, 10 years older, 32 years. And she had kind of, she was running out of time. And I think I said something like, you know, I also want to have kids, but I don't think I can do that in the time frame that you need to do it. You need to have kids. And that's how we basically broke up at the end. And yeah, other than that, I have no dating history at all. Like, let me think.
[19:24] Well, this isn't necessarily dating, but there was a girl I was interested in a couple of years ago.
[19:30] And at that time, I still wasn't Christian, but she was Christian. And I went to her and I said, like, hey, I find you interesting. I like you. But here's the thing. I'm not Christian. I know you are Christian. And she's one. She was and is someone that takes Christianity very serious. And she was like, okay, I appreciate it. It's really nice. But, you know, I don't want to have a relationship with someone that's not Christian. And yeah, those are the four women that I had interest in or that had interest in me over the, yeah.
[20:06] Okay. So the long distance one last?
[20:10] About six or seven months, something like that, from April to October.
[20:13] And how often do you or how many times did you meet up face to face?
[20:18] Uh it was only for the month i was with her uh yeah when because like i said it was long distance and i spent a month at her place in the different country and that's the only time like we met physically other than that it was just like discord and having phone.
[20:35] Calls so what do you do with your sex drive i mean as a young healthy man you are primed for sex a couple of times a week i assume in some sort of marital situation or girlfriend relationship so um do you just not you don't masturbate you don't like how do you deal with just your sex drive.
[20:57] Uh well i take care of it myself and yes there is porn involved with that yes.
[21:02] Okay because you know that's the problem with being it's one of the problems of being in your late 20s and being without much experience with women is that women look at you and will generally assume and it's not always true, but it's often true, you know, maybe a porn addict, right?
[21:19] Yeah, I get that. Yeah.
[21:21] Okay. All right. So the seminary school, I kind of get that, the parental expectations and so on. What did you do with, I guess, secrets or inner life stuff when you were a little kid? Like, you know, when you were five or seven or 10 or something like that, you know, we all have odd thoughts or secrets or, you know, our little worlds. And did you try sharing any of that with your family? Parents or other people? I mean, how did it go when you were very little?
[21:55] I'm going to have to think about this because I don't really remember.
[21:59] I'm trying to think of a specific situation, but I can't think of one, to be honest. The immediate impression, like immediate reaction in my brain is like there just wasn't any time I even tried to. But again i'm not sure so maybe give me a moment to think about it maybe i can think or it could be that your.
[22:22] Parents inquired about about something.
[22:28] Yes but it was always very superficial and the example that comes to mind is you know like probably most or every parent ask their child yeah you know what do you want to be when you're older and every time my parents asked it it was basically just one question i gave an answer like when i was early like five six years old i wanted to be a doctor i think yeah something like that i think i wanted to be a doctor and but what my parents asked about it i said it and then nothing happened like there wasn't any like looking into schools buying me books making me interested or even asking for the why I want to be a doctor or anything like that. It was just very superficial and just like, you want to be a doctor. OK, what's for dinner? Something like that, if that makes sense.
[23:22] OK, all right. OK, and if you want to take a moment to think of anything you might have tried to share with your parents when you were a kid.
[23:35] Yeah, I'll think about it. Let's see. Hmm. You know, an example comes to mind, but it's not something I wanted to share with my parents. In contrast, it's something I kind of kept hidden from my parents.
[24:00] That's fine.
[24:01] When I was about eight years old, we moved places like just a city over because my parents built a house. Um and a friend of mine in in the school gave me you know a a deck of yugioh cards because you know that's what that's what we were into at the time and i just i didn't necessarily specific no i didn't i didn't hide them those cards specifically from my parents it's just something i had from from the trend that i didn't see after that anymore but one day my mom found those cards and you know how those Yu-Gi-Oh cards, they have like demons or monsters on them and stuff like that. And, you know, my mom literally took them away, threw them in the garbage and said, we don't have demons in the house.
[24:51] Right. Okay.
[24:54] So it's not exactly an example of me trying to share something, but I have like this, this gives me the impression that I, I never really trusted my parents enough even try to share something.
[25:09] Right but.
[25:10] Again i'm not entirely sure but that's kind of the.
[25:12] Well she didn't think i ask you questions or try and figure out what the cards were or what they meant to you and so on and your parents when you were little how did they discipline you if they did like when you did something that they didn't like or whose behavior like the behavior they wanted to change how would they react to that what would they do a.
[25:33] Lot of spanking and maybe to add a bit more context to all of this because like I don't remember stuff before I was about 10 years old and I, The 10-year-old mark is very important because when I was 10 years old, my younger brother was born. And he was born with Down syndrome. And for like two years straight, he was constantly in the hospital and he had heart surgeries.
[26:07] And again, I can't really remember much from before I was about 10 years old. And there was definitely spanking. I know that for sure.
[26:17] But what I also want to add that after 10 years, like when my younger brother was born, and that's not to justify my parents, of course, but the spanking and screaming got a lot worse.
[26:31] Like I don't remember, for example, before 10 years old, I don't remember much and specifically nothing like really, really bad. But after I was 10 years old, I specifically remember like really, really bad.
[26:46] Like not spanking, but literally hitting. For example, I specifically remember my mom like completely screaming like hell at me and my younger sister and like literally just like in a blind rage, like just hitting us. Like to the point where like the specific example I'm thinking of, like my younger sister or my mom had bought like one of those sprays for the bathroom for making the smell better or something like that and you know my little sister found it and she was spraying it around and she was spraying around it a lot and that set off my mom so fucking crazy like and for and this happened also kind of a lot i would say 30 to 40 percent of the time where my sister would do something that my mother didn't like and she would get really really angry and then i was in the room also and i won't also like get like hit the same like my sister like i was yeah i was just in the room so another target to hit basically all right and when you say.
[27:55] Hitting what do you mean like open palm closed fist implements what do you mean.
[28:02] Uh open palm yeah definitely open palm and hit to the face like slap on on the on the cheeks and stuff like that but like the specific example with the spray like i specifically remember, because it like my parents had a separate bathroom where the spray was and my sister sprayed it and like right outside the door with like a like a two meter uh gap let's say or a, a connecting thing i don't know what to call it there was the bedroom of my parents and me and my sister were there i'm pretty sure it was a saturday and saturday was cleanup day for the house, and my mother went to the bathroom realized that the smell was uh bad and that my sister had spread a lot of it and she came over to the bedroom and started hitting us and i remember me and my sister both like falling back to the bed and lifting our our feet in front of us to protect ourselves and she would like really like hit the down our legs like really really hard like that type of thing and that's that's my mother and to go over to my dad uh you know my dad was working a lot so he wasn't home much uh but when he would get angry like he would.
[29:24] What he would do is besides the slapping open hand, I don't think he ever did it with fists, not to justify it but just to explain it, he would slap us as well, but what he would also do is he would grab us by the side of the head, and I'm not even entirely sure if it was just hair or just ears, but he would literally grab us by, grab us grab us by the side again by the ears or by the hair and lift us up and like throw it up throw us back on the ground I think yeah that type of thing.
[30:01] And the incident with your sister with the air freshener how old were you and how old was she roughly.
[30:11] I would have to say about 10 like I was about 10 and she was about 9 like she's one and a half years younger than me so eight and a half nine years old maybe 11 and nine and a half or 10 something like that and.
[30:23] How often did you guys get hit or assaulted in this way.
[30:29] In this like complete rage no no just being hit at all like being.
[30:33] Any kind of hitting.
[30:34] Just being hit at all i would say at least once a week it got less the older we got but i would say at least once a week that i can remember from the from the time i my younger brother was born before that i really can't give you a number it's like yeah.
[30:54] You say you can't remember okay and.
[30:56] With your younger.
[30:57] With the youngest brother uh did did he survive the couple of years in the hospital is he.
[31:01] Uh is he still with you or uh yes he survived but uh yeah uh his his situation honestly is pretty damn bad because like i said he has down syndrome uh which is one thing like he can to this day barely speak like when he basically still speaks like baby speak to this day and And if you don't spend a lot of time with him, he says words that you don't understand and you can basically not communicate with him if you don't spend a lot of time and know exactly what he's talking about. And with baby talk, I mean also he says, he tries to say the word, but he even pronounces it wrong. So in that sense, it's really, really bad. And another thing is during one of his heart surgeries.
[31:57] The doctor accidentally blocked an artery down to his legs so from the age of two or so on he also couldn't use his legs so still to this day he's in a wheelchair and he barely has any function in his legs like he can move it like a tiny bit but like he basically has no muscles because he didn't use them for like years, and I think the nerves slowly kind of grew back and because like a lot of nerves died, and he kind of has a bit of movement and then, you know, he can move his toes a bit and yeah, he has a tiny bit of movement but he has basically no muscle in his legs and yeah, he still can't walk to this day.
[32:44] Okay, okay. And what is the status of your relationship with your family at the moment, family of origin?
[32:54] Well, with my parents specifically, I've broken off contact without any notice or any explanation or anything, which is why I was having the original call-in request about my parents. And I broke off contact in late November or early December last year. And it for me it was just the idea of pretending for another christmas to that there is any form of relationships with them i was just like i can't do this anymore and i just broke it off no notice no no nothing i just didn't respond to their calls their message their messages or anything anymore and maybe a small detail here.
[33:37] My dad never contact or never tried to contact me it was always just my mom i think she even sent me a letter in January. But yeah, that's the state of the relationships with my parents. My younger brother with Down syndrome is with them, so I also didn't have any contact with him. My older sister, by proxy, I also don't really have contact with her. And what I mean by that is, first of all, sometimes I write with her on WhatsApp, but her and my parents live in the same building. So to me it's kind of scary to go visit her and she has two two sons i'd really like to visit them, but given that my parents live in the same house there's and i don't want to deal with my parents i basically avoid her physically so we only if we write something with each other and with my younger sister my relationship is comparatively pretty good like we meet often multiple times a week because she's repeating a couple of classes of school, to prepare for.
[34:50] What, yeah, to prepare for being an architect or something like that. It's not exactly an architect. It's like something else, but it's in the construction business, basically. And I'm helping her with learning specifically mathematics for school. So we often meet up to learn for her math class a couple of times a week. And, you know, there's sometimes a couple of weeks or even a month or through of a gap where we don't meet that often. But yeah well i have a lot of contact with her because she lives some someplace else like pretty near me so yeah we have a comparatively pretty good relationship.
[35:31] Okay i really am sorry for all of this violence that you went through as a child that's really appalling i mean to see your parents out of control in that kind of way is is i mean it's pretty terrifying right.
[35:45] Yeah and i don't know if this comes through right now but i'm i'm holding back tears right now.
[35:52] Well i was going to ask about that because no it does not uh does not come across at least to me but of course we're just doing audio as well which is fine but um okay i've just i'm really sorry this is just a a terrible state of things to to live in that much fear of your parents is really tough and I just really want to express my deepest sympathy for that that's a terrible way to grow up, thank you now you, Did you see any examples when you were a kid of sharing thoughts, ideas, opinions, perspectives, that later were used against someone? I don't know if you've seen this meme. You know, it's this woman saying, oh, you need to share your darkest thoughts with me or something like that.
[36:46] And her boyfriend is like, no, you'll just use it against me later. And I'm good. And he sort of wandered off. um so so sometimes we have a hesitation to share our sort of deepest thoughts and feelings, because we are concerned that they're going to be used against us later and i don't know if you saw anything like that or experienced anything like that when you were young younger.
[37:13] Yes and i can think of a specific example but it wasn't with my parents like i'm sure that it It happened with my parents, too, because, like I said, at some point, my mom asked me at my little sister, why don't you talk to us? Why don't you tell us anything? And we both had the same answer because you're punishing us, basically, if we tell you something. I can't think of a specific example right now, but the example I can remember right now, it's again when I was around 11, maybe 12, there was like a family with one son.
[37:50] And for some reason, our parents, I don't know, they talk with each other and they, I think they talked with each other and were like, hey, yeah, maybe our sons could meet and play or whatever. And I kind of, yeah, I was resistant to the idea because I, you know, I didn't know that kid. He was going to the same church with his family, but I never really had any contact with him. so anyway.
[38:22] I didn't really want to, but at the end of the day, I drove with my bicycle to him. And, you know, we spent an evening together. And then I slept over at the time or that day until the next day. And during the day, we went to McDonald's and I didn't have any money on me. But he paid for like a chicken burger or something like that, something small. And I was kind of resistant to the idea because I was, I think I literally told him, yeah, I don't want to owe you anything. With the idea being, you know, I don't want you to use this against me. And ironically, and sadly, when I slept over with him, because he was like two or three years younger than me, I slept over and we slept in the living room. And he had like a scary dream or something. And he wanted to go to his parents, but I don't know, he was so scared. He wanted me to go with him. And I was like, just go to your parents. I just wanted to sleep and he would keep on going, telling me to help him go to his parents. And at some point he literally said, well, I bought you the cheeseburger, chicken burger. So you have to help me here or something like that.
[39:41] How old were you here?
[39:44] Around 11 or 12 and he was 9 or 10, something like that.
[39:47] Probably 10. yeah so i was about 12 and he was about 10 something like that.
[39:52] Right so you hadn't been taught anything about sort of compassion or empathy so you wouldn't help out your friend right.
[40:01] Uh yeah okay.
[40:03] I mean he was in desperation saying when i bought you a chicken sandwich he wasn't really trying to control you or use it against you right.
[40:16] The way i i remember it being like that like i.
[40:21] Remember i don't come on come on i don't think the eight or nine year old was i mean he was he'd had a terrifying dream which at that age is hard to distinguish from reality right and he had a terrifying nightmare and he was afraid to go through the dark corridors up the stairs or to the dark corridors or down the hallway or whatever he was afraid to go to his parents that he wanted your compassion and help to get him to his parents right yes yes and you wouldn't help him yes exactly because you wanted to sleep some more.
[41:01] Let me see you know what i i remember one detail here i think that's what also kind of made me scared because at the same time there was an uncle visiting them and he was also live sleeping in the living room with us and i was scared of waking him up i think that's that's.
[41:21] That's what that doesn't make much sense though to me because if you're scared of waking him up then you would simply take your friend to his parents not have this negotiation back and forth where he's continually asking you for help and you're rejecting him right i mean that that's more likely to wake up the uncle isn't it.
[41:38] Yes logically speaking from from now looking back but i i remember in the moment for some reason being scared of waking him up.
[41:55] Like well yeah but i mean i can't get you hang on go ahead go ahead.
[42:02] I know like looking back and thank you for the perspective because honestly i didn't look at it that way even like a couple minutes ago but yeah looking back what you're saying makes complete sense but i specifically remember still in the moment being scared of waking him like the uncle up that was also in in the in the living room yeah.
[42:21] Yeah but you're an intelligent a very intelligent guy right so i put every listener in this show in the sort of the top one percent or two percent of intelligence so if someone wakes up with a nightmare and is very upset and wants to go see their parents and you want to not wake up someone in the room the first thing you do is take them to see their parents so that they're not upset in the room so i don't think that waking up the uncle as the reason to not help your friend is the reason.
[42:49] Yeah that makes sense i i can't remember anything else specifically though so.
[42:56] Well when he was asking for your help what was your feeling.
[43:12] Hmm i don't remember a specific feeling i'm trying to think well no you had a.
[43:19] Feeling which was fear of waking up the uncle right so that's a feeling.
[43:23] Yeah yeah, like it's not a feeling but i was just like i didn't want to help him but i think okay but There's got to be feelings.
[43:41] Associated with that.
[43:46] Now that you said that, thinking back, I think it was something like, I didn't want to sleep over here anyway, so leave me alone, something like that.
[43:59] So is that irritation?
[44:04] I'm trying to think if it's irritation or even anger.
[44:08] Okay, if it's anger, that's fine.
[44:13] I would say it was anger too, yeah.
[44:17] So you were angry with him or the situation or both?
[44:26] I think I was angry with the situation and the fact that I even, quote, had to sleep over at him, at his place, because I didn't want any of this to happen. But it's like i didn't have any agency so to speak like it was in a sense like you couldn't get home or your parents couldn't.
[44:46] Come and pick you up.
[44:47] Uh no it was even worse than that i would say because there was like i was surrounded by all of this pressure of like oh it's true you can sleep around sleep sleep here and i think the the parents of of this other child uh they were kind I think I'm not entirely sure, of course, but I think they were kind of always giving him what he wanted. And they also talked to my mom and they were kind of like pressuring me pretty hard into sleeping over and even into going over to him, which I didn't want in the first place. And I kind of went along with all of it. And I was kind of angry about all of this because I didn't want to be there. I didn't want to have anything to do with him. Like I didn't want any of what happened today, basically. So I was angry at, like I was projecting the anger on him, obviously, but I was just angry at the whole situation. I didn't want to be in any way, like sleeping over at his place. Like I didn't want to do that.
[45:52] And how much of your childhood do you think you spent in this sort of irritation or anger?
[46:00] Like i'm assuming you mean generally speaking yeah yeah or you mean, can i ask you maybe to ask the question a different way because i'm having a hard time like thinking about it so.
[46:20] For a lot of people with dysfunctional households particularly violent households there's kind of like a dominant emotion that occurs over the course of.
[46:28] Childhood, Okay, yeah.
[46:35] And of course, but you can't remember much before the age of 10, right? So that's one of the reasons the question is tough. Okay, let me ask it another way. Can you remember a time in your childhood where you extended a real kindness towards, say, a child outside of the family?
[47:03] Nothing comes up right now no what about sorry go ahead, I think maybe early on before the age of 10 I have like a very very vague memory of sharing toys in kindergarten garden something like that okay and but what about in your teens or.
[47:26] What about in your teens or 20s what would you say are the sort of highlight reel of your kindness towards others.
[47:51] I'm still thinking, give me a moment, please. Well, I remember around the age of 15 or 16 or so sharing homework. I did, and when one of the other kids didn't do it, I shared it with them.
[48:19] Um well that's sort of that's helping.
[48:22] A kid.
[48:22] Cheat isn't it.
[48:24] Uh yes and and maybe one more thing like are you asking about me specifically going out of my way to offer kindness or being asked for something like for example homework and then agreeing to help or do you mean both things i.
[48:44] I don't really know how to how to react I'm just asking for examples of you being kind. I don't know why it's complicated. I'm not sure that helping another kid cheat is necessarily the same as kindness. But yeah, just kind stuff that you did.
[49:03] No, honestly, I can't think of any.
[49:06] And what about in your 20s?
[49:10] Uh well the most obvious thing is when i mentioned helping my sister with with her math lessons in in school no.
[49:17] No sorry i said earlier outside the family.
[49:19] Oh outside the family, i honestly i can't think of any right now no.
[49:37] And when did you end your devotion to Christianity? What age were you?
[49:46] I was 21 when I decided to not be Christian anymore.
[49:54] And before that, you were part of a church, is that right?
[49:57] Yes, exactly.
[49:59] And didn't your church do charitable works and try and get you involved in helping people in that way?
[50:07] Let's think you know what yes there was for example we had some.
[50:16] Someone that was a policeman for his entire career and he was, every Christmas he was making like this present packages for prisoners you know giving them a bible and a calendar with like bible verses and stuff like that and i would help uh with uh yeah with making the packages because you know we would do it manually we had like a christmas card uh and a bible or a calendar with with bible verses and i would help out with those kinds of things like probably two or three years in a row for the time uh he was doing that and while i was still uh in the in the city.
[51:02] What else was there yeah then another thing our church did was because we were like in the central European country there were hospitals or there are hospitals that are throwing out like old hospital beds or wheelchairs and one of our charities was to collect those from the hospitals and then donate those things to hospitals in the eastern european country of origin because there was like the the church was basically all from this uh eastern european country uh and i would help with loading up the truck with those things uh yeah with the beds and so on um what is them and i'm sure there were multiple things like that where i helped yeah and since you and that was in the teams and.
[51:54] Since you yeah so that's stuff that you were assigned and and that's not to say that it has no relevance but uh so that's some kind and stuff you did. What about over the last, I guess, close to 10 years since you left the church? Have you done any kindnesses or charity work or anything outside your family?
[52:14] I can't think of any specific examples, but if I might add, how would you say, from the ego perspective, I kind of look at myself as a pretty friendly and helpful person, but I can't think of any specific examples. Like because i'm like most of the time when somebody asked me asks me for help i most of the time i say yes but i for some reason i can't come up with examples right now.
[52:51] So you believe that you say yes when people want help but you can't think of an example i'm not trying to mock you.
[52:56] Or anything i just.
[52:57] Want to make sure i understand what you're saying.
[53:00] Yeah but yeah no that's fine but that's exactly what i'm saying which Okay.
[53:03] So then the good that you do, which you can't remember at the moment, is reactive, right?
[53:10] Yes, exactly. That's definitely the case. It's reactive, yes.
[53:14] And why do you think, I mean, have you noticed that in your life, that you don't do anything particularly charitable or kind in your community? Do you see that as something that's missing? Is this the first time you're thinking of it that I'm talking about it?
[53:30] Honestly it's the first time i'm thinking about it because like i said like my ego perspective is like when somebody asks for help i'm most of the time i'm helping them so it's like my my impression on myself is that that's kind of already covered by that.
[53:49] Right except we have a distinct lack of examples right.
[53:53] Yes okay.
[53:56] So it's a perspective with that, at least at the moment. I'm sure things will come up over the course of the conversation or maybe after, but it's something without empirical support at the moment, right?
[54:06] Exactly, yeah.
[54:09] And did your parents do any charitable works that you can remember?
[54:18] I think maybe my dad, for example, loading up that truck with hospital supplies, I think he was there with me once or twice. And I remember specifically my parents donating money to some charities, but I don't remember any more than that, to be honest.
[54:44] Okay, got it.
[54:48] Maybe one thing, yeah, one thing that I'm not sure if this counts as kindness necessarily, I don't think so, but still, you know, when once a month we would, what would you call it in English, when you would remember the sacrifice of Jesus by breaking bread and drinking wine, my mom sometimes cooked the bread for that, for the church.
[55:12] Okay, got it, got it, all right. Okay. And are you part of any larger community? I guess you have stopped seeing your parents, at least. Are you part of any larger community at the moment?
[55:27] No, I'm not.
[55:31] So what do you do for sports activities or social life or anything like that?
[55:42] Pretty much nothing if i don't meet up with my my sister to to learn from math or like sometimes we go to movies or after we learned math with my sister like we we watch a series or, movie uh that yeah but that's basically it's for my social life and and colleagues at work of course but we don't meet in in private or anything the most we do there is sometimes before work like most of us come in at around seven to seven thirty o'clock in the morning and then uh until eight we like drink a coffee and and talk uh and then yeah at eight we start work but other than that and i want to mention this because this this isn't really by coincidence it's kind of like, by design by my own design so i just want to be upfront about it it's not like i'm i'm, i coincidentally don't have many social relationships it's pretty much by design, i would say and.
[56:47] Does your sister date at all.
[56:50] Oh yes she has a boyfriend she's living with right now okay.
[56:53] Got it and do you think they're going to get married?
[56:57] Yes, I think so. Like, yeah, I think so. I don't know when my sister does that.
[57:02] So she's probably going to embark upon a family life, get married, have kids, and will certainly be less available to you, right? Although, of course, you'll probably get involved in her family life, right?
[57:13] Uh yeah except my my younger sister doesn't want to have kids so she says so right now she's yeah she's coming to uh to be late 22 so maybe that will change but honestly i don't think so knowing her sister i thought in.
[57:28] Your late 20s i thought she was two and a half years younger.
[57:32] One and a half years one and a half years also so.
[57:36] So so so this is the sister that you tutor and and she's got a boyfriend, she wants to get married, but she doesn't want to have kids, right?
[57:44] Yes, exactly. And I don't think she will change her mind about it, to be honest.
[57:48] And why doesn't she want to have kids?
[57:52] You know, I actually never asked her.
[57:55] What?
[57:56] When we, the topic.
[57:57] What do you mean you never asked her? She says, I don't want to have kids and you're like, okay. Sorry, I don't mean to sound censorious. It's just, you listen to this show, so you're used to not shallow conversations you spend hours watching movies and shows but you don't ask her why she doesn't want to have kids.
[58:16] Yes and i just want to add a bit more detail about that but you're overall right and that's kind of the reason why i'm why i wanted to talk about this topic but just to add a bit more detail to why she doesn't want to have kids um she mentioned And she said something like, yeah, it's nice to be an aunt, but it's a different thing to have kids myself. That's the only detail that I could add to that. But yeah, you're right.
[58:52] Has she been through a feminist phase or an environmentalist phase? Or like, why would she not want to have kids?
[59:01] No, not as far as I know. No, absolutely not.
[59:05] And is her boyfriend of the same opinion?
[59:10] Yes, he also doesn't want to have kids.
[59:15] Okay but you have a sister who has kids is that right.
[59:18] Yes exactly she's in her early 30s now with two boys okay all.
[59:27] Right yeah i mean ask her for heaven's sakes, ask her it's very it's the biggest decision you can make really.
[59:42] The thing is i agree with you but immediately when i think about, asking her about it i have like this this like what would you call it like like an internal freeze up of like i can't do that it's it's like it's too personal like, and that's that's like exactly why i wanted to talk about it because it's like, i i notice i notice these kinds of things not maybe the the the baby or children question for my sister but i generally notice these things where it's like oh i could ask that and then i have like this internal like freeze up where it's like i can't i can't do that i can't ask that i but.
[1:00:26] That just that's from the parents that's from your parents your parents don't want their kids getting close. Divide and conquer.
[1:00:37] Yes.
[1:00:39] I mean, did your parents set you guys against each other as kids? Was there sort of selective punishment or collective punishment? Was there anything that happened when you and your siblings were kids that sort of set you against each other? I mean, And how did you get along in this sort of flurry of yelling and blows that characterized a lot of how you were parented?
[1:01:06] Uh i i would say like collective punishment in the sense that like i described before where maybe where uh if i was in the room when my sister quote very.
[1:01:18] Oh yeah but the stuff yeah so with the air freshener so yeah that would be an example of uh if you get punished for what your sibling does then you're going to end up trying to control your sibling's behavior so you don't get punished which creates an opposition or different or a distance between you.
[1:01:33] Now it's Actually, I would say it's more of the opposite. It was more like uniting against the common enemy. That's moral, because I don't think, and there was, of course, puberty, and we had conflicts and disagreements and stuff like that. But overall, I would describe it more as like uniting against the common enemy. So you guys were.
[1:01:58] You and your sister, or you and your siblings, outside of your youngest brother, you were close as kids.
[1:02:06] Um specifically with my younger sister because my older sister was so old that like when when, when i was 12 she was like 16 and she was spending more time with friends and was longer times in in school and so on so i didn't really ever have a strong relationship with my older sister but specifically with my younger sister.
[1:02:25] Okay so why can't you ask your younger sister why she doesn't want to have children if you're close and i'm not criticizing i'm genuinely curious like what's the fear of just asking her that question, what's what's your worst case what's your worst case scenario if you ask her that question and again does none of this is a criticism at all i'm genuinely curious i'm why why would it what's in your mind, the worst case, if you ask her the question, Does she sort of freak out for you to get lost and how dare you and like your last Cuban connection almost evaporates in your hands?
[1:03:22] No, it's not that. Or like I know logically speaking that it would be just a fine conversation and it would be fine. You know, maybe I'm sure she would appreciate me asking and opening up more and so on and so forth. But i'm trying to figure out right now emotionally speaking what what happens when when something like this comes up and i'm.
[1:03:45] Okay let's just run through a couple of possibilities right so one possibility is she gets really angry and upset and and is mad at you for even asking the question but you say that's not likely to be the quest the the outcome right so exactly she might another annoying sorry so another possibility of course is that, she is with her boyfriend and her boyfriend uh doesn't want to have kids if through conversation with you she discovers in her heart that she does want to have kids that might threaten her relationship with her boyfriend and then she's going to be mad about that.
[1:04:24] No i don't think that either.
[1:04:29] Well the second one is hang on the second one is not not so easy to dismiss, if her boyfriend does not want to have children and let's say through a conversation with you she discovers that maybe she does want to have children that is going to set her, on conflict with her boyfriend.
[1:04:58] Okay there is an element of that but i don't think that just asking if she wants to have children would result in that what what i think.
[1:05:09] I don't know i'm i'm not saying that it would result i mean come on you're a smart guy engage in a theoretical i'm not saying it would we're looking at possibilities if through a conversation with you she does discover some latent desire to have children and her boyfriend does not want to have children, that will put her in conflict with her boyfriend because she's going to sit down with her boyfriend and say you know what i know we don't want to have kids i've thought about it i kind of do want to have kids and that's going to cause trouble in her relationship or at least it's going to destabilize it right yes.
[1:05:41] That's that's true yes.
[1:05:42] Okay good so yeah let's just not dismiss that one out of hand because it's a possibility i'm not saying it's a probability but it certainly is a possibility right yes can i maybe maybe um maybe if you ask her about kids and maybe you end up i mean let me ask this do you yourself want to get married and have children.
[1:06:08] Yes i absolutely would want to.
[1:06:11] Okay so if your sister does uh let's say through conversation with you she ends up wanting to have kids and let's say she talks to her boyfriend and he's keen to have kids or something like that or something changes that way right, so then she gets married and has kids does i mean she's less available to you right.
[1:06:40] Yes that's true.
[1:06:41] And again i'm not saying you have some big nefarious motive i'm just looking at sort of possible ways that this could play out, right? So she's less available to you if she becomes a mother, right?
[1:06:57] Yes.
[1:06:58] Okay, so you would, and she is, it sounds like if I have this right, she is your most important relationship, it seems by far, right?
[1:07:07] Yes, exactly.
[1:07:08] So would you give her up so that she could have kids?
[1:07:18] I don't have a an emotional resistance to that i think that means that i would give her up because in my view yes i would spend less time with her and she would be more preoccupied, but at the same time i would gain nephews so it's it's i wouldn't see it necessarily as a loss per say it's like a change so i yeah okay but.
[1:07:44] Then then we have the problem which is that you're terrified to have this conversation with your sister for no cause whatsoever.
[1:07:51] Which makes.
[1:07:53] The conversation our conversation incomprehensible i mean people like you me everyone we have reasons for what we feel and this is an interesting one i have no objection to i have no problem with it It's a very interesting one, which is, why are you terrified of something? And every avenue we explore, there's no fear. That's interesting, right? Terrified of talking to your sister about having kids or why she doesn't want to have kids. But there's no specific cause for that fear, which is really interesting.
[1:08:37] Yeah, if I might, I think I can answer that. And it's like, it's not that I'm scared of the specific conversation or the specific question of asking her why she doesn't want to have kids. I think it's more just something inside me is just scared to get too close emotionally to another person, just in general. It's not about a specific thing.
[1:09:09] Hang on, but you said as kids, and I'm not trying to catch you out here, but you said as kids you were close and united against a common enemy, and you're close now. So if you say, well, we were close as kids, we're close now, but I don't want to get close. I have a little trouble processing that. Sorry if I've missed something.
[1:09:27] Okay, then. Yeah, sorry. Maybe I framed it maybe a bit wrongly and I gave you the wrong impression because yes, we were, quote, close in the sense that you united against a common enemy, but we weren't much closer than we are now, emotionally speaking. We were just in the same prison in a sense. So we would talk with each other And, you know, sometimes when my parents would like, because she was the one between us that got into more trouble. So I would, you know, soothe her after that happened. And like, we didn't talk much. I would just like give her a hug or something like that. Like there wasn't, how should I describe it? There wasn't like a deep emotional.
[1:10:17] I think I understand. There's no particular emotional connection or sharing of thoughts. Okay let me ask you this how much if at all has your sister inquired as to your life and your choices i'm sure she's noticed that you've been almost exclusively single your whole teen and adult life does she have any like does she ask you like, what's going on with dating or are you meeting any girls or you know you're living this kind a solitary life. You say it's by design. Help me understand the design. I mean, do you guys talk much about your lives?
[1:10:59] No, we basically don't, like specifically to the point where if she would ask me why I'm single and what's going on there, the only, I don't give you a moment to remember the specific things she said. I think it was something like, because a couple of years ago, I moved to a different place and she was buying new plates and silverware for her place. And she would give me her old stuff just for free because she just wanted to get rid of it. And I didn't have any, it was a perfect fit, so to speak. And I made like a comment, like, I don't need that many plates. And she said something like, yeah, well, maybe you will need some time soon, implying I would get a relationship and so on. But that's pretty much the extent of how much we talk personally or about personal stuff. There's like one or two conversations in the last year or so where we got a bit deeper into it. Not the dating thing specifically. it was, I don't know exactly how we came to the topic but she was talking about how she was depressed and she went to therapy and you know she didn't think she had depression and it took her some time to get over it and had therapy.
[1:12:26] And maybe one more instance of some yeah exactly the second thing was talking about why she didn't go to church anymore because she is she is still Christian, but she has been very disappointed with the.
[1:12:44] How would you call it let me open Google Translate for a second and, the chit-chat behind the back.
[1:12:59] Like the gossip?
[1:13:01] Exactly, the gossip.
[1:13:04] You don't necessarily want to judge Christianity by some Christians, right? For sure, for sure.
[1:13:10] Exactly. But yeah, those are the two conversations I can think of in the entire last, year or even two years, maybe actually ever, let's say literally ever, that we got a bit deeper into some personal and emotional stuff but other than that like like i said before like after learning math with her like we talk we watch series and so on and so forth but it's always very superficial it may be like a small tiny comment like the the the the implication, i mentioned before of getting a relationship like that's that's the extent of how how close we get to being okay so you have a very non-communicative.
[1:13:53] Functional relationship as a.
[1:13:55] Whole yes you.
[1:13:57] Exchange company and skills and whatever okay all right so i mean tell me what i mean what do you think of your life as a whole i mean how would you rate it is it satisfying what do you what do you think of your life as a whole let's sort of zoom out to the big picture.
[1:14:21] No, I'm not happy. And I'm trying to think of a way to...
[1:14:33] Well, you said you have this incredibly isolated life, I think. And you said by design, right?
[1:14:40] Yes, and that's kind of the issue I'm having with answering the question. And maybe to, I'm sorry, maybe this is a bit late, but when I started or before I started therapy a year ago, I thought I had autism because that's how I came across more specifically what I'm talking about here, I think, which is called masking. It's, I don't know, are you familiar with the term?
[1:15:07] No.
[1:15:07] Masking. I would describe it as autistic people notice that they themselves don't really fit in socially and create problems, uh basically superficial behaviors to mask them being autistic and i that's a couple okay sorry sorry just in.
[1:15:29] The interest of time and clarity uh is it your belief that you are autistic.
[1:15:34] Uh yeah that's what's what i'm getting to i i made it i just i just understand i mean is.
[1:15:39] Is it your belief because i mean philosophy can't do much with autism can it it's not there's not like a philosophy so i'm trying to sort of figure out what what what i can provide is it is it your belief or have you been tested or is it your belief that you are autistic or what.
[1:15:52] Yes i i have been tested and like you said in the interest of time i've i've barely not been diagnosed with autism but i have been diagnosed with schizoid personality disorder that's which is another thing in itself okay.
[1:16:09] And what does that mean.
[1:16:10] Uh generally speaking it's a personality disorder where people are very, maybe not anti-social but very isolated as i am and they refrain from engaging in relationships, and yeah isolate themselves okay it's you know it can get more complicated and to go back to your original question which is why i brought it up is like i said it's by design, but at the same time okay let me describe it like this i've made my life by design this way but i've started to realize that having my life this way is comfortable but is actively hindering me getting closer to my goal of having a relationship of children so i'm getting.
[1:17:04] Closer to your goal aren't you getting further away from your goal i'm sorry maybe i'm.
[1:17:08] Missing something here.
[1:17:09] But you're getting further away because every day that goes by where you don't have dating experience you continue to use pornography you don't have social experience and and sharing experience you're getting further away right.
[1:17:22] Oh yeah sorry maybe i misformulated it but that's exactly my point right i.
[1:17:27] Mean if i was if i wanted to be a ballet dancer and i was in my late 20s and I'd never taken any lessons. And I said, well, I'm just not getting closer to my goal. It's like I'm kind of getting further away, aren't I?
[1:17:39] Yes, exactly. That's exactly what I'm trying to say.
[1:17:44] Okay. So you have schizoaffective? Was that the?
[1:17:52] Schizoid personality disorder.
[1:17:53] Schizoid personality disorder. Okay. All right. Okay. And is that the therapist that you're working with at the moment?
[1:18:04] No. I got from a psychologist, I got the evaluation and I found the therapist later.
[1:18:10] Okay. And is your therapist working with you on this avoidance of the social life that you have?
[1:18:19] Yes, he is. The thing is that, again, I'm having this problem because it's hard to even open up to him about it. And he's slowly trying to get me to trust him to open up and he's not being pushy about it. So he always tells me you know take your time we do it at your pace and stuff like that but it's yeah it's it's a year now and i've kind of reached my this limit like i said where i'm kind of terrified to go deeper okay.
[1:18:56] And still the question is why i mean have you i mean we certainly talked about some sensitive or difficult things over the course of this conversation and how do you feel about that.
[1:19:14] I'm pretty okay.
[1:19:16] Okay. So, I mean, you can share, you've shared sort of thoughts and feelings, and you said you were on the verge of tears earlier. And when you say you said that, I don't disagree with you. I'm not skeptical. I'm just reporting what you said. So, we've had a conversation where it seems to me that you've opened up quite a bit. And how has that experience for you?
[1:19:41] It's pretty good overall like it's it's emotionally heavy and i have to like, overcome a bit of my resistance but i i can do it okay.
[1:19:55] Got it, so maybe you could do that with your maybe you could do what you're doing with me with your therapist.
[1:20:04] No i'm trying to give just a moment just yeah take your time i mean if i'm.
[1:20:20] Oversimplifying it please let me know and i apologize if i am.
[1:20:23] No you're not oversimplifying it it's just the rationalization that comes to mind when talking to you is I'm having an easier time talking to you because there is, in a sense, there is no stakes involved. And I don't mean that in a negative way towards you. It's just there is a safety net in knowing that if it's too much, I can literally hang up on you and never talk to you again. So there is, in a sense, no threat from you.
[1:20:54] I think that's happened once over the course of the show that somebody just hung up on me, but yeah, you certainly have that option for sure. For sure. Yeah. But you could just get out and walk out of your therapist's office too, right?
[1:21:10] Yes, but...
[1:21:12] But you've already paid, whereas this is free. Less financial stake involved. You're not leaving any gold on the table.
[1:21:20] Okay, I get it. No, but it's not exactly that. It's like I feel imprisoned. It's like the thought that came to head when you said that is... But i'm not allowed to do that and i don't know where it comes from get up and.
[1:21:42] Walk out of your therapist's office.
[1:21:43] Yes okay and you know now now that i said it i'm kind of making a connection with you know when i told you about meeting that that child when i was like 12 or so and i had a sleepover like the connection i'm making right now is like i'm not allowed to have preferences and the therapist in the moment could punish me with screaming in the moment, if i express my preferences whereas if i just hang up on you what are you what are you going to do like at worst you're going to write me an email and i'm just going to delete it without reading it so to speak if that makes sense right.
[1:22:22] I mean if you leave your therapist's office you think he might scream at you if you try to leave it's going to block your exit what do you mean.
[1:22:30] Logically speaking no but emotionally oh because that would be what i hear yeah.
[1:22:38] So i'm i'm.
[1:22:38] Distant on.
[1:22:39] The phone uh and so you could just hang up on me and then you're in control of the outcome whereas the therapist who's physically present is more like your parents is that right.
[1:22:49] Exactly okay.
[1:22:51] Did you ever have a conversation sorry how long have you been listening to what i do.
[1:22:54] Uh about eight years okay so did.
[1:23:00] You ever have the you know the conversation with your parents about your childhood and what happened.
[1:23:06] Uh no and that's why i originally wrote you my my my message for the call-in show uh because i was thinking about doing that but no i didn't i didn't have that okay.
[1:23:19] And you know uh why i i i don't know whether you should or shouldn't have had the conversation. I'm just curious, your decision.
[1:23:33] I think there's two things two elements to that or i think it's one stacking on the other if that makes sense so the first one is i i i have just been avoiding it because i know it's going to be pretty damn hard and i'm also scared of my parents in that way because i have a certain language barrier with them so even if let's say i wasn't terrified of them you know with the internalized parents let's say um even if i didn't have that i don't even know if i could get my point across because they don't speak the language of the country we are in right now very well and my i don't speak our mother tongue very well what like i speak it well for everyday tasks but as you can imagine with with my parents i don't even really have the vocabulary to talk about emotional things so there's like a language barrier that's also yeah don't you have a.
[1:24:37] Sibling who could translate who might know both languages better.
[1:24:43] Honestly i think i'm the best with with both languages okay so the language barrier.
[1:24:48] And And there's the fear aspect, and then there's the language barrier. Okay, that makes sense. I completely understand that. Okay.
[1:24:56] And maybe to add one more thing to it, which I talked with my therapist actually two or three weeks ago, which is like a borderline stupid idea that I could have come up with myself. And stupid in the sense, it's stupid that I didn't come up with it, Because for some reason in my head, when I imagined having this conversation with my parents, it was always at their place. And my therapist was just like, well, why don't you just go on a neutral ground, like meet in a restaurant or a cafe or something like that? And that actually made my conversations in public. Well yeah but to me personally when he said that it like kind of was a bit of a relief so to speak because it's like okay it's going to be tough having this conversation in public sure, but there's a lot less danger there's i mean my parents aren't gonna like become violent or scream or something in public and if they do they're going to probably be more embarrassed than i am okay so in that sense in a strategic sense let's say it's it's making the idea of talking to them easier okay but.
[1:26:14] You still didn't right.
[1:26:15] No i still didn't.
[1:26:17] Okay, all right so how can i best help you in the time that we have remaining i certainly have some thoughts but i want to make sure i'm focusing on what's most valuable to you.
[1:26:34] Well the most obvious thing like after talking with you like for an hour and a half now is there something obvious that you see with my like internal resistance that i'm missing that i haven't mentioned yet why it's there.
[1:26:48] Your resistance to share mentioned.
[1:26:51] For example already yes exactly to being open in general like with my sister and and things like that.
[1:27:03] Well it's right down in your gut isn't it it's not like an intellectual thing it's like your whole body seizes up i was really struck when you said in your early 20s when your friend said play some music and you thought he might kill you.
[1:27:14] Uh yeah like you obviously don't see it but.
[1:27:19] No no no of course i know i know that i know that that was just your feeling i'm not saying he was pulling out a knife or something right okay so the point sorry go ahead.
[1:27:28] Just just to add to your point like i'm gesturing it while i'm sitting here you don't see it but i'm like literally like freezing it up like like you say it's coming up from from the gut it's like.
[1:27:39] Yeah like.
[1:27:39] You know when you see in those cartoons when an animal like a cat gets scared and their hair like stands up.
[1:27:45] Like completely.
[1:27:46] Like in spikes.
[1:27:47] Oh yeah this is full this sounds like full-on fight or flight like adrenal and cortisol and right ambigdala and okay yeah it sounds like all of that stuff so i'll tell you what i think it is and then you can tell me if it makes any sense, and i think it's it's bound into what you were saying earlier about the expression of preferences, so okay if you have very violent parents and in my view i mean you took you took hundreds of blows to the face, to the head, that's really bad and appalling and indiamoral at its core. So, for you to express a preference is to enrage your parents.
[1:28:46] Yes.
[1:28:47] And so preferences equal the potential for death. Now, when it comes to your parents, the fact that they were willing to slap you on the face, which is, you know, hitting you on the head and which is not particularly great for your system as a whole, there is a fear that's baked into us when our parents are violent. And the fear is they might kill me.
[1:29:15] And evolutionarily speaking, we can completely understand that fear. Now, it may be that your parents don't directly, you know, kill you, right? As this used to happen with 40% of Aborigines back in the day in Australia. So it's not that they're going to necessarily strangle you to death or anything like that, although that certainly did happen throughout human history. But if your parents really don't like you, your chances of survival went down. Because they may not feed you when food is scarce, or they may give you less food. They may give you a more dangerous assignment in the hunting party. They may give you a more dangerous job on the farm. They may not be there to protect you if a predator comes by. They may seat you a little further away from the fire. They might not give you quite as much food and warmth if you get sick. Like, there could be any number of ways. When resources throughout the course of our evolution were scarce, there could be any number of ways in which we would have less of a chance of survival if.
[1:30:25] We angered our parents too much, now the purpose of violence is to erase preference, the purpose of violence is to erase personality which is why you know you see, If you read the Gulag Archipelago, right, under Solzhenitsyn's work, everybody ends up with the same hangdog expression, indistinguishable from each other. The same kind of thing happens in prison, right? This sort of slope shot, staring at the ground, don't cause any problems, dead face, you know. So the purpose of violence is to erase preferences, and through the erasure of preferences, it is to erase identity or personality, if that makes sense.
[1:31:11] Yeah.
[1:31:12] So if the purpose of violence is to erase preferences, then preferences, the expression of preferences is going to provoke the most violence. If the purpose of a hunter is to shoot coyotes, because maybe the coyotes is taking the flock of sheep or something, if the purpose of the hunter is to shoot coyotes, then the more coyotes there are, the more the hunter is going to shoot, right? So if the purpose of violence is to erase preferences or personality then to express preferences to have a quote personality to express preferences is going to provoke more violence.
[1:32:04] So to put it another way the only way we can be violent to others is to dehumanize them to view them as things, as objects, as not human like ourselves, right? And that's because then you have to create two categories, right? Your mother wouldn't like it if somebody smacked her around the face, you know, 50 times a year. She knows that she'd hate that. So she has to put her children into a completely different category, but not only is that okay, that's good, right? I've worked in in youthful parenting and also in real-time relationships to try and break down these these categories right so people say well you have to hit kids because you know their brains are still forming and so on it's like okay so mental deficiency means it's okay to hit so can you hit your parents when they age if they forget where their keys are right so so we say well no so i'm just trying to break down these opposite moral categories right adults can't hit. Elderly certainly can't hit. Children must hit. It's like, why the hell would there be all these opposite moral categories? That's crazy. So
[1:33:19] To be hit is to be dehumanized. Now, somebody who hits children, especially as much as your parents did, and as you said, your father would lift you by your ears off the ground, sort of Darth Vader style or whatever. So to express a preference is to threaten the dehumanization. So if your parents wish to be violent towards you or prefer to be violent towards you, which empirically they did because that's how they acted, right? Whatever people do is what they prefer to do. Sort of by definition, that's just an empirical observation, right? If somebody is in the grocery store, we say, well, they wanted to go to the grocery store because if they didn't want to go to the grocery store at all, they wouldn't be in the grocery store, right? So your parents hit you and your siblings, and they do that because the purpose of violence is to dehumanize, to erase preferences and personalities, which means that if you express.
[1:34:27] Preferences and personalities, sorry, not personalities, that would be schizophrenic, If you express preferences and therefore a personality, then you will provoke more violence against you. In other words, if you show up, if more coyotes show up, the hunter is going to shoot more coyotes. And if preferences show up, it's going to draw violence towards you.
[1:34:54] So to have opinions, to have preferences, to have a personality, to have a perspective, to express your thoughts and feelings is to attempt to rehumanize yourself in the eyes of violent people. And they will fight that tooth and nail because they can't have you be human to them because then they can't use you as a punching bag or whatever they were doing. Right so for you i think it sounds like the expression of preferences the revelation of preferences is gonna get you killed why when your friend says hey play me your music you're like i'm gonna die full fight or flight kicks in, and it's why that.
[1:35:41] Makes a lot of sense.
[1:35:42] It's why when you talk to you you don't want to ask foundational questions of your sister because the expression of preferences the connection, is is extremely dangerous i mean our systems view violence as a necessary self-erasure right i mean i've talked about this before that when i was i don't know maybe three or four or whatever years old that I tried to run away from home. And my mother was very, you know, beat me against the door. And I just, I went limp. I'm like, okay, I can't have preferences. I can't express preferences. I can't have preferences. I just have to conform and comply. Or she's, you know, we don't push it as kids. We don't say, oh, I'm sure she'll just knock me around a bit, but she'd never really hurt me. It's like the kids who thought that had a lower chance of survival. Now let's say that only their chance of survival only went down a couple of percentage points. Well, that's, That's enough to scrub that in a couple of generations, evolutionarily speaking. So to be yourself, to be in a relationship, to express preferences feels like me saying, you know, you should just chat with people and share your thoughts and feelings. It's like, yeah, you should just blindfold yourself and dance along the edge of a volcano. You'll be fine. It's like, I'm pretty sure I won't be. And I think that's what's happening at the gut level at the.
[1:37:11] Yes. And actually, now that you said that, I can confirm it like two ways, basically. So one way is where you said like not having a personality. And I'm going to have to think about this a bit more to be more precise. But the thing I'm thinking right now is that in social interactions, and until now, and again, I have to think about it more, but I thought about myself being very superficial as an intentional defense mechanism to keep people away. And there's obviously a certain level of intentionality behind it. But now that you said that, it's like, yeah, that makes sense.
[1:37:56] It's to keep death at bay exactly.
[1:38:00] Exactly so that's like yeah it makes a lot of sense it's like the underlying reason why i'm keeping people away is because i'm terrified of yeah dying.
[1:38:10] And the second way i'm thinking about.
[1:38:12] Oh yeah exactly.
[1:38:14] Yeah you're terrified of the violation of violence uh or indifference right i mean if if you piss off your parents maybe they'll beat you up or maybe they'll just not rescue you if a wolf comes by or something like that, right?
[1:38:29] Yeah, and the second way I think of this, and I want to preface this, I don't intend to do anything like this, to be very clear, but I often thought about how a conversation with my parents would go and it always ended basically in me either intentionally provoking my dad or my dad just being provoked by the conversation itself into being so violent that one of us would die, well and that would.
[1:39:03] Be an echo of yourself as in particular your early to mid-teens when you get bigger and stronger.
[1:39:14] Yes, it's like, now that I'm strong enough, I can have my own preferences that I can enforce on you. Something like that.
[1:39:22] Yeah, and then it's win-lose, right? So he enforces his preferences on you, or you enforce your preferences on him. There's no win-win. It's win-lose, and with the violence, there is the win-lose random dice roll of injury or death, right?
[1:39:36] Exactly.
[1:39:39] So again, I obviously wouldn't want to mess with any diagnosis of yours, and I'm obviously not competent or skilled or trained or any kind of profession where I can give anybody any kind of diagnosis. But I would say that keeping things shallow, keeping yourself undifferentiated, being a general blob of small talk is just a survival mechanism. The price of rich connection was increased violence and extreme danger. Now sorry if there's more that you wanted to say on that i'm certainly happy to hear but i wanted to take it to the next level.
[1:40:19] Uh no that's fine go ahead thanks.
[1:40:22] Okay so the next level though is that your parents have fucking won that's the problem the problem is you've turned yes i don't know if you've ever seen the matrix like agent smith times a thousand so you've taken your parents and put them into everyone so you've turned everyone into your parents and so you can't talk to anyone this is the undifferentiated part right yeah yeah so that's the problem, so you said it's by design so you say it's by design well i keep i keep myself safe from a couple of lions by pretending everyone is a lion. I don't know that that keeps you that safe. Or if it does, it also keeps you extremely isolated, right?
[1:41:13] Yeah.
[1:41:14] So you grew up with a couple of, I mean, in my view, kind of predatory people, and you have allowed people on a fairly extreme edge of the bell curve to define for you humanity as a whole. Your friend will kill you if he doesn't like your musical tastes. And again, I know that was to some degree an exaggeration or hyperbole, but you certainly had that visceral reaction. Which is to say, everyone's my parents. My parents are everyone.
[1:41:56] That makes a lot of sense yeah or yeah.
[1:41:59] Right so if there's um if there's a couple of vampires around you know and and i move away from them i but then i go around treating everyone like they're vampires i really haven't escaped the vampires now have i yeah so help me understand that process by which everyone is potentially your parents that's a that's a pretty pretty broad brush to be painting with, right?
[1:42:28] Uh-huh. Now I have to think about this.
[1:42:34] It must have happened in your teen years to some degree because otherwise you would have dated more.
[1:42:47] Hmm. I'm trying to think. I don't think this is a direct answer to your question but it's the only thing that comes to mind right now it's like at the time when i turned 17 i had like a like i got like really really hardcore depressed like to the point where I would sit on my bed at night with a knife in my hand, trying to convince myself to kill myself like that type of bed, and it like, yeah that's what I'm thinking about where it's like I think at that time at least logically that would make sense it's like I gave up on all humans and all hope, that's too.
[1:43:51] Undifferentiated a statement.
[1:43:53] Yeah exactly that's the only thing that comes to mind right now.
[1:43:57] Well at the age of 17 you should be launching yourself out into the world, right.
[1:44:07] Yeah i did the exact opposite well.
[1:44:09] Hang on so you should be getting out of prison right.
[1:44:13] Uh-huh so.
[1:44:15] What do your parents want you to believe about the world do they want you to believe that they are unusually violent and abusive but there are a fair number or a reasonable number of nice and caring people out there, They don't want you to think that, right?
[1:44:39] No, they would say that, but they don't want...
[1:44:42] Well, would they say that? Would they say, we're unusually violent, but there's lots of... I don't think they said that, did they? We're really violent, but there's lots of nicer people in the world? I can't imagine they would say that. Maybe they did, but I'd be shocked.
[1:44:55] Sorry, no, then I misunderstood your question. I thought you asked, like, specifically that... Whether they would tell me that the other people in the world are violent or not.
[1:45:05] No, they wouldn't even admit that they themselves were violent. They would just say we were, you know, maybe we were parents or something like that, right? Exactly.
[1:45:13] They were justified with the Bible and yeah, exactly.
[1:45:17] So your parents, when your kids get older, if you've been very harsh or violent as parents, so when your kids get older you have a challenge in that they're going to go out into the world and they're going to meet nicer people right, yeah i mean that's generally what i certainly did i went out into the world and i met nicer people than my parents, so what does that mean if you go out into the world you meet nicer people and let's say you get sympathy from those people for what you suffered as a child is that good for your parents and their hold over you.
[1:46:13] I'm sorry, is it okay if I add something in and not answer your question? That's what I'm thinking about what came to mind right now. Because I remember specifically now that you said that when I was 17, I was surrounded by a lot of people from church. I would go to, we would meet every Thursday or something like that. We would meet at the church for our youth group. And I was surrounded by a lot of people. But like I told you with my sister and everybody else, I also didn't really engage with them on an emotional level. So it kind of resonates with what you're saying in the sense that I avoided, the knowledge of the people surrounding me being nice. I'm trying to formulate it. It's like by not talking to them, opening up. I don't know how good of a job they would have done, to be perfectly honest. I think they would have done a much better job than my parents, so they would have been nicer, like you said, meet nicer people. I don't know.
[1:47:32] I don't know. I don't know. That's a tough question. How do people generally deal with parents who were revealed to be, say, violent or abusive? I mean, society is really not very good at that.
[1:47:50] Yeah, yeah. Now that you formulated the question like that, it's like they would have expressed verbal sympathy and then moved on to a different topic, I think.
[1:48:02] Maybe, yeah. Maybe. Of course, if they're part of the church and your parents were part of the church, they may not even do that. Because maybe they would feel complicit or maybe they would agree with your parents or something like that right i mean abusers or violent parents tend to choose communities that support them.
[1:48:28] Yeah and i can confirm that by the way do you mind if i tell you a little story in regards to that, um i remember specifically like once a year we would have a like a a summer camp of like five or six days uh for for our youth in the church like from 14 years to like 20 something years and you know it was a surrounding a specific topic and so on and so forth and i remember specifically one night sitting together with a couple of people and us like this is really messed up but us literally laughing about talking or telling each other stories how our parents would would spank or hit or punish us like there was one i specifically remember now where you know that like this old charging cables for like nokia's that had like really thin cables and we were laughing about like how funny is it my parents hit me with this like really thin really like stingy charging cable. Like that's, yeah.
[1:49:35] So in your 17 maybe you're thinking there is no escape. There is no place that's not like this. Because I think that's kind of how you've lived, isn't it?
[1:49:54] Yes. that's yeah that resonates a lot.
[1:49:57] Right so if someone has been in prison for 20 years they think they're getting out but they're just being transferred to a different prison they'd probably feel kind of suicidal too right yeah so if your parents in a sense run the world, people like your parents then where is your sanctuary where is your escape where could you lay your head where could you find peace and comfort where is kindness where is, sympathy empathy.
[1:50:45] Yeah basically nowhere in in that mindset.
[1:50:49] Right and so because there's no sympathy anywhere you live nowhere relative to people as a whole right yeah exactly yeah lonely in a crowd kind of thing right because the crowd is predatory, and this is when the bad guys win in a sense the moral argument they've won the moral argument, they are the world they they run everything they rule everything they dominate uh maybe there are a couple of good people out there but they're kind of wide-eyed and frightened like a field mice under the giant bird toes of dinosaurs or something like that right, and so what's the best you can do hide out.
[1:51:41] And you know what other connection i'm making right now when you asked me earlier about acts of kindness it's like i have this feeling of like the world doesn't deserve my kindness.
[1:51:54] Yeah yeah yeah no i get that i get that for sure i get that for sure yeah for sure i mean if uh if the guard has beaten you up every day do you want to go and wax his car probably not right yeah yeah i get that for sure that's just a kind of resentment right uh-huh exactly right right okay so i mean that's your choice i mean one of the reasons why I think it's fairly important to do acts of kindness is it signals to kind people that you're around. Whereas you're hiding even potential kindness from the world. And that means that people will view you. I mean, do people view you as particularly individual or differentiated, or are you just a sort of NPC blob of small talk? I'm not saying what you actually are, but how people perceive you.
[1:52:57] I don't think they look at me like an npc i think they look at me like a very, introverted intelligent guy because this is i have like a lot of situations where but.
[1:53:10] You can be an npc and be very intelligent i mean look at cnn.
[1:53:14] Okay right okay so.
[1:53:17] Do you share Yeah. I mean, I assume if you've listened to what I do for eight years or so, that you've had a couple of interesting thoughts rolling around in your brain, whether for me or in reaction to stuff that I've said. So do people get your thoughts in the world? Or do they get, as you said, with your colleagues at 730 in the morning, coffee and small talk?
[1:53:42] Uh i actually have a specific example from like a couple weeks ago where you know this whole trump tariff situation was going on and i i literally held like a sort of presentation for like an hour about the economic situation and how trump tariffs might affect it and so on and so i don't do it often like very seldom but sometimes i do share but yeah okay like, yeah okay so that's why i would i mean i'm.
[1:54:17] Not criticizing that but it's not personal.
[1:54:20] No no it's not personal it's.
[1:54:22] A knowledge dump which is fine but in.
[1:54:25] Terms of.
[1:54:25] Personal, do you do you feel lonely, there's no right answer it's not a trick question i'm just curious.
[1:54:47] Sorry if this is annoying but it's like a yes and a no because like being alone is kind of safe, but i also like i said i would like to have a relationship and kids and so on so it's like it's i would literally say it's like pretty much pretty much split down the middle middle, where i enjoy being alone like it's not stressful it's it's peaceful it's calm but then i i also really like want to get my shit together and have a relationship and have kids why why.
[1:55:17] Do you want a wife and kids.
[1:55:18] Because i think that would be very fulfilling now.
[1:55:27] That's an npc generic answer fulfilling is just a word i don't know what what does that mean to you personally though why do you want a wife and kids.
[1:55:40] Like the the thought that came to mind is because i want to to do it better than my parents did.
[1:55:49] Yeah i mean that's not going to sustain you for very long right as a motivation.
[1:55:53] Yeah vengeance doesn't last.
[1:55:54] You know the rest of your life with a wife right, so why do you want a wife and kids.
[1:56:13] I i have i want to tell you a bit longer of a story if that's okay or a couple of minutes it's.
[1:56:18] Been two hours let's let's not do too much story time this is a simple question why do you want a wife and kids.
[1:56:23] Because i decided that i want to have a wife and kids no.
[1:56:28] That's but that It doesn't answer the why. If I say, why are you going to Philadelphia? Well, I've decided to, but it doesn't tell the why. Why do you want a wife and kids?
[1:56:47] I have it in my mind. I just need to formulate it like something like, when I decided to not be a Christian anymore, I had the, I was nihilistic and I needed to have a goal in life that would give me a reason to stay alive. If that makes sense. And not just like.
[1:57:12] So they're like, this is the stuff you jam in your wound. so you don't bleed out nihilism? They're just like stim packs or something? What do you mean? Wife and kids are there to prop you up so you don't jump off a bridge? Bad reason. Why do you want a wife and kids?
[1:57:38] Honestly, I can't answer it.
[1:57:41] Okay, well, it's to love and be loved. Right, to have people to love and to be loved, to be treasured, to be worshipped, to be adored, all of the stuff, you know, that I ask my wife every night, did you feel treasured, worshipped and adored today? Because she is. And she asked me the same thing, because I am. I mean, it's beautiful, right? I mean, to love and be loved, isn't it? I mean, I don't want to oversimplify it, and love is sometimes complicated, but isn't it something like that.
[1:58:14] Yeah that that resonates.
[1:58:17] Okay so what do you need to do in your life, to earn love to be worthy of love, Why would a woman choose you over someone else? Why would she love you and not someone else? Because you're you. But if you cover up who you are, she can't love you. Right? This is why you revealed yourself. This is why you are vulnerable. This is why you were open. This is why you are honest. So that you can be loved. Right? Right. How much would you pay for a painting that had brown paper over it and you couldn't see what the painting was of?
[1:59:13] Well, nothing.
[1:59:14] Right. How much would you pay for a cardboard box that didn't know what was in it?
[1:59:24] Nothing, yeah.
[1:59:25] Right. So you have to be honest and direct about who you are so that someone can love you. Because we are each unique, right? And the more honest and direct you are, the more someone can look at you and appreciate who you are and love you. Otherwise, you're just a blob like a raindrop like everyone else or like all the other people who cover themselves up and hide, right?
[1:59:53] Mm-hmm.
[2:00:07] So when you cover yourself up just think just think of being a beautiful painting covered in brown paper nobody can see it nobody cares, whereas you take the paper off and show who you are then some people will like it some people will hate it and some people will love it, but if you're hiding away from the world no one's heart can find you.
[2:00:46] You're like someone who's perfectly transmogrified into a tree deep in the woods nobody can find you as a person, everybody who's defensive is just copy paste the npcs they're like everyone else who's defensive who's avoidant everyone who's honest and direct is themselves and, and capable of being loved. But if you can't or choose not to do that, and there's a downside to it. I mean, I've worn my heart on my sleeve in public for 20 years, right? And there's some people who really like what I do. There's some people who love what I do. And then there's a number of people who hate what I do, like hate it with a burning biblical Old Testament passion, right because if you are direct and yourself and honest and open and i suppose vulnerable in that way then all the people who are covering up and hoping to get away with it get upset because you've raised the standard you've changed what it means to interact as a human being, if that makes sense.
[2:01:59] Yeah it makes a lot of sense yeah.
[2:02:04] So you can just hide if you want nobody will ever fall in love with you nobody will ever express any particular loyalty to you, you'll get fat old bald and wrinkled and then they'll just throw you in a hole in the ground at the end and your secrets never get out.
[2:02:29] But I wouldn't let the wall that your parents put around you as a kid and that you participated in as a good and honorable survival mechanism, and I'm very sorry that you had to do that, but I'm very glad you did that. Otherwise, we probably wouldn't be having this conversation and maybe at 17 the knife would have won.
[2:02:48] So I'm very glad that you put that wall up for sure. but, it's important to know when to put the wall up and it's important to know when to take it the fuck down, yeah, there's this little line from the album The Wall right all in all are in twos the ones who really love you walk up and down outside the wall, and when they've given you their all some stumble and fall after all it's not easy banging your heart against some mad buggers wall, it's not easy banging your heart against the wall hoping to get in, yeah you know throw wide the gates yes people will scorn you they'll mock you they'll right yeah i get the wall people don't like it when somebody else takes the walls down, because then it makes them conscious of how much they're hiding away from the world.
[2:03:57] Mm-hmm. Yeah it makes makes a lot of sense.
[2:04:04] But just you can't let the bad guys that you had to wall yourself off from you can't let them just dictate all of that for the rest of your life i mean yes a lot of people do but it's a it's a pretty bad idea.
[2:04:25] Yeah i i don't want to that i want to change that yeah.
[2:04:28] Yeah yeah i think that's why you're calling isn't it exactly right now of course then the big question is well how do i tear down the wall tear down the wall well i mean this just to some degree it's just a matter of willpower, yeah you know if if you can talk about this with your sister if you guys are close like i feel real distant from the world and i think i hide myself away to protect myself i think it comes from our parents um you know i've never really had a girlfriend and um i'm falling by the wayside as general coupleton marches on right and i want to have a wife and kids but i don't know how to go about getting it uh you know just be honest right and and you know be be sensitive to the fact that, you know, this is an unusual conversation and I'm really trying to change sort of the course and direction of my life as a whole, but I would like to be less shielded and distant from everyone. And you might get quite emotional about it as you did earlier when I gave you sympathy for what you'd suffered as a child. Yeah, it absolutely might tear you in two. It might make you quite emotional. And emotions won't kill you at all. Sorry, go ahead.
[2:05:57] I think it's worth it.
[2:06:00] All right. Okay, is there anything else that you wanted to mention or anything else I could help you with as we just wind things down?
[2:06:08] No, this has been great. Thank you very much. And sorry that I kind of sprung the topic change on you. Yeah, sorry about that.
[2:06:17] No, that's fine. I'm glad you did because you'd already dealt with the parental stuff, at least to some degree. So this was the next step. So I have no problem with that. And I, listen, you know, what's funny is that I guess I was somewhat of an authority figure and you started off the conversation by expressing a preference that was different from what you'd said before. You changed your mind and you said, no, I want to talk about a completely different topic. So it's interesting that when we were talking about authority figures and your fear of expressing preferences, you started off with a quote, authority figure and expressing a preference. So I think that was actually that modeled it really well.
[2:06:55] I didn't think about that, yeah.
[2:06:58] All right. Well, listen, you can maybe work on this sort of stuff with your therapist. I think that would be great. And I hope you'll keep me posted about how things are going. And please accept, again, my very deepest sympathies for what happened to you as a child. And a big hug for your brother. And I'm sure this will be the start of a beautiful new set of circumstances into your life.
[2:07:17] Yeah, I'm going to work on it. And thank you very much. And how can I keep you posted just on the call-in email address?
[2:07:24] Yeah, just so you can do it in the call-in email or you can just do it in the messaging system we're using for the call here.
[2:07:31] Okay, okay, great. And thank you very much. I appreciate your work a lot.
[2:07:36] My pleasure, man. Have a great evening. Take care. Bye-bye.
[2:07:40] You too, bye.
Support the show, using a variety of donation methods
Support the show
