The Jordan Harbinger Show - 1029: Mental Deterioration Tests Marital Dedication | Feedback Friday

Episode Date: August 9, 2024

Your wife's dementia diagnosis at 43 has turned your world upside down. How do you care for her while preserving your sanity? Welcome to Feedback Friday! And in case you didn't already know it, Jordan Harbinger (@JordanHarbinger) and Gabriel Mizrahi (@GabeMizrahi) banter and take your comments and questions for Feedback Friday right here every week! If you want us to answer your question, register your feedback, or tell your story on one of our upcoming weekly Feedback Friday episodes, drop us a line at [e-mail]. Now let's dive in! On This Week's Feedback Friday: Your wife was diagnosed with behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia at 43, causing major personality changes. She now has delusions and aggression towards you. As her caregiver and husband, how do you cope with this devastating situation while maintaining your own well-being? You're a 31-year-old woman who's never dated before. You recently connected with a guy over intellectual discussions, but he suddenly cut off contact as you were preparing to move away. How do you process this confusing experience and move forward? You run a multi-million dollar tech startup and have encountered various scams, including a suspicious investment offer and fake job applicants. How do you protect your company from these threats while still pursuing growth opportunities? [Thanks to former FBI special agent Kevin Barrows and former FBI Behavioral Analysis Program head Robin Dreeke for helping us with this one!]  Jordan explains his cosleeping arrangement with Jen and and their two young children. What led them to choose this unconventional setup, and what advice does he have for other parents considering cosleeping? Recommendation of the Week: TableTopics  You're dealing with a messy divorce involving child support disputes and potential perjury by your ex-wife. Do you pursue legal action that could seriously affect her, or take the financial hit to maintain a civil co-parenting relationship? [Thanks — once again — to attorney Corbin Payne for helping us answer this one!]  Have any questions, comments, or stories you'd like to share with us? Drop us a line at [e-mail]! Connect with Jordan on Twitter at @JordanHarbinger and Instagram at @jordanharbinger. Connect with Gabriel on Twitter at @GabeMizrahi and Instagram @gabrielmizrahi. Full show notes...See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Welcome to Feedback Friday. I'm your host, Jordan Harbinger. As always, I'm here with Feedback Friday producer, my right-hand man in this existential sleight of hand, Gabriel Mizrahi. On the Jordan Harbinger show, we decode the stories, secrets, and skills of the world's most fascinating people and turn their wisdom into practical advice that you can use to impact your own life and those around you. Our mission is to help you become a better informed, more critical thinker, and during the week we have long-form conversations with a variety of amazing folks from former cult members, arms dealers, four-star generals, rocket scientists, neuroscientist, astronauts. This week we had Johna Mendez, former chief of disguise in the CIA's Office of Technical Service and author of the new book, In True Face, a woman's life in the CIA unmasked. I see what they did there. We went over her career in the CIA, but also just fascinating tricks of the trade that are declassified. So apparently, Gabriel, you know Mission Impossible? I know you're not probably into movies like that, but you know how he peels off his face? And it's like, and you're like, wow, totally only in the movies. Apparently she invest. something that is as good as that. Wow. I mean, I don't know if it would be like, I'm talking with you,

and you're like, that's not a mask. But certainly if I just walk past you or if I'm in a room with you, you wouldn't know. That's incredible. And it moves with you and everything and it can be peeled off quickly and isn't like, you know, eight hours of makeup. Very cool. In the book and in the show, there's one anecdote where she goes to show it to President Bush because it's so amazing that they're like, oh, you got to, we got to take this to the top, right? Justify that funding. Sure. And They take a photo with it, and later on they send her the photo, and it's just her hand out holding nothing because they edited out the actual mask in the photo. Oh, because they didn't want that published. Yeah.

At the time, it was. Now it's still classified, but all she can say is I invented a mask, and it's really good. Like, she can't say it's made out of this or whatever. It's just pretty funny. Imagine you have a photo with the president, and you're just clearly holding something, and it's just like scrubbed out and there's nothing there. She is a badass. We also re-aired my first interview with her from a few years back, where we talked about her working as a heavily surveilled CIA operative in the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War and how the CIA manages to recruit brilliant scientific minds even out of Hollywood. So Gabriel, there's still potential for you to make something of yourself. Oh, good. Yeah. I should go back and listen to this episode. Yes. The disguises basically, they came to be used in the intelligence community since the 70s, but she played a huge role in developing those. And disguise, you know, we think of it as like a fake mustache and some glasses, but it's so.

much more. There's so much more sleight of hand and trickery that goes on. And we also did a skeptical Sunday last Sunday on hypnotism. On Fridays, though, we take listener letters offer advice, play obnoxious sound bites like a couple of shock jocks from the early aughts, running out the clock on their terrestrial radio contracts. And wherever possible, we roast Gabe's incoherent, but undeniably iconic mashup of competing aesthetics. You really get me, man. Hard not to, man. You're wearing a psychedelic wristband and a designer hoodie today. Like pick a lane, dude. I am all over the place today, aren't I? Yeah. I can In multitudes. I don't know what to say.

Before we dive into today's letters, I get a lot of emails and messages about how I've managed to grow this show. Like, what's your secret? Do you advertise? I know you do. I heard an ad here. Do you do social media? What is it?

Word of mouth. Yes, that's part of it. I did ads for years. I also now do something called introcasts where I essentially pay podcasts to run an episode or a trailer for my show that works really well. I've also tried tons of stuff, social media, cross-promotion, and all that. and it all works kind of a little, but not necessarily enough for me to hire and or focus on it. I would say the most overlooked growth strategy for most businesses, especially creative ones,

is actually patience, more specifically, consistently producing great work over a long period of time. And don't get me wrong, my bread is buttered quite a bit by people who hire me for consulting and are like, I don't want to wait, I want to do it fast. And I'm like, okay, if you have an unlimited-ish budget, pay me some of that and I'll help you do it. But it's not really worth it, in my opinion. I really think the big secret to how I've grown this show is patience. You could be the greatest marketer in the world. If your product isn't strong, if you're not putting in the reps over a long period of time, you're getting incrementally better.

It's never really going to work unless you're a scammer. There's always the little asterisk by that, right? The little dagger, unless you are a scammer. You can always scam your way to the top by lying to people. But the key, if you're not doing that, is to keep producing great stuff, investing in yourself and your skills to do the kind of work that you want to do, to have the kind of product and following you want to have. It's really not rocket science. There's ultimately no hack to it. And the problem with this advice is it's not sexy. It's not exciting.

It can actually be kind of devastating sometimes because you start to slowly realize how much you have to grow when you really put in the time. And I think this is just one major reason we were also able to restart the show and crush it seven, six, seven years ago, whatever it's been. It's hard, may be impossible to ruin someone's ability to do great work once they have built that. So you might get laid off from your job or whatever, but they can't take away, they can't take away your corporate email. They can't take away your ability to perform at a high level. And companies and people have to do that really themselves by thinking short term, not being patient, not being dedicated to a craft. So that's really the name of the game. It's the only

game I want to play anyway. One last thing, and then this pain train will kick off. I want to thank all of you who donated to Pete Dinella's GoFund. me these last few weeks. Pete, if anyone doesn't know, he's one of our listeners who recently passed away, his wife, Barbara and his daughter, Nikita, both wonderful people. They've been dealing with a mountain of medical expenses, and we wanted to help them out. And we've been in touch with the family. They are just beyond grateful for all of your support. Barbara has told us that the outpour of love has been amazing. So thank you all so much for that. Y'all are the best. You've had a big impact on a really special family going through a really rough time.

All right, Gabe, what is the first thing out of the mailbag? Dear Jordan and Gabe, my wife and I have been married for almost 25 years and together for almost 30 years. She was my first real girlfriend and we had a lot of the same values like working hard, wanting a family, managing finances, and helping each other through school and first career moves. We enjoyed raising our children, have lots of great memories, and were able to enjoy several great family vacations. Then, in 2016, we noticed a large change in my wife. The following year, at the age of 43, she was diagnosed with BVFTD, that's behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia, a form of dementia that can cause changes in personality, behavior, and judgment.

Oh, man, I've never even heard of this before, but it sounds terrifying. Because, look, at 43 years old, that is younger than me. That is so tough, and I am so sorry to hear this. My God. Looking back, it's clear that some of the symptoms started even earlier. It's also clear that she has anisognosia, a condition. where you can't recognize health conditions or problems you have. She swears off all doctors and believes that when she feels sick, she has no illness and someone else is responsible for harming her.

Oh, that is so sad. Again, I've never heard of that, but that sounds miserable. Can you imagine every time you get a headache you're like, someone's hitting me with microwaves? Man, I wonder how often that is conflated with something else like schizophrenia too, right? I was going to say, isn't that wild? It sounds like psychosis. Yeah, like, oh, I have the flu. Somebody must be poisoning me. That's what Right. Is that what we're dealing with? Is that what we're talking about here? Yeah, because you can't wrap your head around the idea that you might be sick. What a weird thing for a disease to target. That is so bizarre. Wow.

People seem to be her biggest trigger. If they look at her or do something the wrong way, she reacts strongly. She also loses track of where things get placed or how long ago items were purchased. We do have some really good days where we can enjoy time together laughing, joking, watching movies and talking about future plans that I now know will never get to realize. But today is one of those days where she's very aggravated and hates everything and everyone. I am the spawn of Satan and I have control over everything in a plot against her. I'm a natural helper and problem solver and my career in engineering and computer programming

is totally based on reason and logic. But none of these skills or traits I've honed in my career are of any use here. My emotional state is so intertwined with my wife's that I tend to have emotional responses that only make the situation worse. I tend to get extremely frustrated that I am so ill-equipped to give her help or reassurance. Oh, man, this is so hard. If I were in your shoes, I'm pretty sure I'd be having the exact same reaction. I think most people would. And my heart really goes out to you.

Man, carry on Gibb. After doing some reading on an FTT support forum and looking back on these past few years, I'm now coming to accept that I somehow need to try and make some changes in myself in order to help her and our family through this. But I've been estranged from my family for many years and have basically no relationships outside of work acquaintances. Meanwhile, my wife is estranged from all but her mother and one sister. Her mother is getting up there in years and having mobility and health issues and the sister has her own health issues and doesn't always have other people's best interests at heart. My wife talks to both of them regularly, but they take everything she says

as 100% truth when she mixes dreams with reality or exaggerates or fabricates details to argue that someone is deliberately manipulating her environment or messing with her stuff. They agree with her and pile on because that keeps the focus of her aggravation off of them, which is what happens if someone disagrees with her. Wow, what a weird feedback loop that is. At this point, she's unable to work, I don't think she'd be able to live on her own, and her mom and sister are in no position to provide assistance. I've heard many stories on Feedback Friday about controlling, micromanaging, and toxic relationships, and the consensus is almost always to get out. Does having an untreatable medical condition change that recommendation? How can I learn to control my emotions and responses when her

condition flips a switch and turns my loving wife into a scared shell of herself? And how do I hold out hope for better times while maintaining a career and providing support to our adult children. Signed, Try Not to Be Callous as I Deal with My Still Alice. Still Alice, what is that? It's a movie about a woman who gets dementia pretty early in life. Julianne Moore plays this woman Alice and she crushes it as usual because she's Julianne Moore. It's pretty devastating. Yeah, I think I'll give that a miss.

Not high in your list, is it? No. The acting is pretty amazing, but yeah. I'm more of a cocoa melon guy these days. Oh, got it. Paw Patrol is high on the list. for me. Not a lot of dementia-related psychosis in those movies. No. I found, yeah. Alec Baldwin, by the way, is in this movie, too, but that's not why it's hard to watch. Oh, is it? Yeah,

I figured that probably doesn't help. No, it doesn't. So still, Alice, got it now. Well, man, what a situation you're in. This is so intense. Gabe, I don't want to make this about me, but while you were reading this letter, I was just thinking about what it would be like if this were Jen. And I had to take care of her every day and walk on eggshells all the time and play along with her delusions while still doing the show every day, riding the business, taking care of our kids in the house. This is kind of a nightmare. Yeah.

My heart really goes out to this guy. This is just a devastating turn of events. I'm so sorry. Yeah, he's living through one of the most painful experiences I can imagine going through. Yeah. In some ways, and I know this sounds weird to say, but in some ways, this is worse than a spouse dying, which as you can imagine is one of my greatest fears as well, because your wife is dying. Very slowly, though.

And in the meantime, her condition is creating so much sadness and conflict and stress. Yeah. Ooh, man, I am so very sorry you and your wife are going through this. And I'm amazed that you're handling things as well as you are. So look, it seems to me, and I think you already know this, it seems to me that you're up against a situation here that is largely out of your control that is absolutely going to win, right? This disease is going to win.

And I just want to acknowledge how painful that is, how demoralizing that is, how scary that is, especially because you're largely alone in all of it. this, right? She's not totally going through this with you kind of at the same level. And her family's no help. What you're going through, and in some ways I do think you have it the worst out of everyone here because you don't have the benefit, so to speak, of buying into the delusions that the BVFTD creates. And B, you're the first line of defense for your wife, taking care of her as your job. What you're going through is beyond heartbreaking. So you've already lost. I know that sounds super depressing and defeat us, but in a way, that might be kind of liberating. Ultimately, the only thing

you can do is surrender to the reality that you guys are facing. And in another way, it must be devastating to have to live with these incredibly complicated feelings, powerlessness, anger, confusion, love, fear, the desire to flee, the desire to stay, all of it. The unique brand of grief that this guy is going through must be beyond intense. I was going to say, this dude is full on grieving. But what he's grieving is so unique. He's grieving his wife, obviously, the one he used to have, and also the one who's slowly decompensating. He's grieving the hopes and the plans they had together. He's grieving the version of himself who could fix situations like this. I mean, my God, the roller coaster our friend must be on. And yet, this is his roller coaster.

For reasons that don't make sense, this is the direction their lives have taken. And now he has to be with his wife and this and become a different kind of husband, a different kind of father, a different human being in order to manage and survive this. So yes, I do feel that having an untreatable medical condition changes are common advice to get out of a relationship that's controlling or chaotic. Of course it does. Your wife is not malicious. She's sick. She has a disease that is making her insane. This is not her fault. She can't help it. And as her husband, you do have a responsibility to be there for her through this because it's kind of part of the deal of marriage and sickness and health and all that. But I completely understand if you sometimes have the impulse to leave her run away. How could you

not. Just because this isn't your wife's fault, that doesn't mean that it isn't incredibly scary, painful, stressful, that it isn't taking a toll on you. And that's one of the many contradictions that you're probably learning to live with. Which is why I really appreciate your question about learning to control your emotions and calibrate your responses when your wife gets activated, because that's really the only option. Same. That is absolutely the right question to be asking. I think that speaks to this corner that you turned recently. You know, you're no longer going, how do I make her better? How do I convince her she's wrong? How do I fix this? Now you're going, okay, how do I give myself over to the situation and evolve in a way that makes this situation

as peaceful and supportive for everybody as possible. Which is so hard to do, but which is really his only choice. And just asking that question, that already tells me you're meeting this very challenging experience with the right lens and the right spirit. And I just want to really commend you for that. So basically what you need now is to create some space around your thoughts and your feelings, not to go all Eckhart Tolle on you, but to go all Eckhart Tolle on you, that's your only option here. You need to start teaching yourself how to notice your thoughts and feelings as they come up, not to act on them immediately, whether it's saying the thing that pops into your head at the moment, or exploding when you're angry or breaking down when you're scared or whatever it is,

and become the observer of those thoughts and feelings. You need to start meditating, basically. And I don't even mean like sitting down and closing your eyes three times a day formally, although that might be incredibly helpful for you, maybe give that a shot too. What I mean is You need to become a constant meditator in a very basic, practical way. You need to go from being the guy who has all these intense thoughts and feelings to being the guy who notices himself having all these intense thoughts and feelings. If you can do that, even a little bit, I think what you'll find is that you'll have more say in how you show up to this situation.

Because then you can feel angry and go, okay, I am enraged right now. Let me sit with that anger and let it do its thing and then decide later whether to act on it or not. Or you can feel that impulse to fix things and go, yep, there's that fixer personality of mine, there's that hyper-rational engineer stepping in, let me sit with that impulse for a little bit and then see if there's actually anything to fix, or whatever the thought of the feeling might be. And this isn't about denying your wife's situation. That's not about pretending everything's fine or suppressing your rage or wishing away your sadness or never saying or doing anything again and just giving up. It's actually quite the opposite. It all starts with giving all of these

experiences the air time that they deserve. But when you start observing your reactions, I think you're going to find that you'll have a lot more insight into how your mind works, how your heart works. You probably won't act on the feelings that aren't truly helpful or appropriate, and you'll probably run with the ones that are helpful and appropriate, and you'll deploy them in a way that's most productive, most intentional, ultimately most loving. The other thing you need to do, and this is just as crucial, you need to have space in your life to express and process all of these feelings that Jordan just talked about with your friends, with your family, with a therapist. Again, I don't think either of us is telling you to become a little Buddha who never feels anything painful

ever again. We're telling you to feel everything because it's all fair, it's all appropriate, as your wife's caregiver, and to be able to express those feelings with people who are safe and supportive. That way, you won't try to bring them to your wife who can't understand or handle them, but you also won't get stuck in them because, you know, they have no place to go. In fact, I think that's another interesting contradiction that you might want to start embracing, that you need to feel your feelings fully so that you don't get buried by them entirely. And part of that is staying connected to your love and your empathy for your wife. I know you love her. It is obvious from your letter. But she's changing dramatically. And the way she's behaving these days must make it hard for you to stay

consistently connected to her and what she's going through and just how scary and strange all of this must be for her. So when you find yourself about to snap or rage or complain or, you know, approach her intellectually, you might want to take a moment and remember that she is still a human being who's going through something really scary, really tragic, and that this is incredibly difficult for her. And I know you're already doing that, but it's just one more practice to stay connected to when the feelings get very intense and it's hard to remember. For sure, Gabe, my only other thought is, I love that you want to get better here, but I also want you to give yourself some grace to struggle and fail sometimes. You

don't need to get this exactly right. I'm not even sure what that means. Even if you approached your wife with 30% more compassion and patience, that would probably be a huge shift for you. So if you snap at her every now and again, if you break down when she's being irrational, if you speak harshly in a tough moment, whatever it is, yeah, just catch yourself, try to do better next time. But also, you've got to be kind to yourself and forgive yourself. You're learning, this is hard. And you don't need to meet some abstract and unattainable standard of perfection in caring for a very difficult patient. You know, my dad cared for his mom quite a bit in the last decade or so of her life, he and a sisters together, but oftentimes it was just my dad checking in on her. And she was already a

handful to deal with as a person. But in the last few years of her life, she got pretty bad dementia, which made her extremely intense to deal with. And I saw my dad respond to her with a lot of kindness, a lot of patience, so much joy. But over the years, he also had moments where, yeah, he would get a little irritated. He would be maybe a little short with her, or he couldn't spend as much time with her as she wanted some days. And he tells me sometimes how he looks back at certain moments with her, and he kind of sometimes wishes he handled them better. But overall, he feels secure and proud of the way he cared for a very challenging personality, as he should. That's the standard I think you want to aim for. Not necessarily perfection, whatever that means in a situation as

challenging as this, but an overall level of love and care that your wife deserves and that you can feel secure about as this disease progresses. And that is totally compatible with getting better and better in the way you respond to her. Totally agree, Gabe. We all make mistakes. And in a situation like this, slipping up and snapping, I mean, that's par for the course. Right. His wife is yelling at him about changing the shower temperature and thinks strangers are giving her migraines or whatever. If this were me, I'd be snapping twice a week at least. So I'm with Gabe. Give yourself grace while you also keep getting better. But listen, man, as for holding out hope for better times while maintaining your career

or supporting your children, I find that question so interesting because, and this might be a little hard to hear, and I'm sorry about that, but I think you're ready. I'm not totally sure that part of your job is to hold out hope for better times here, not as they relate to your wife and her diagnosis, I mean. I think it's important to face the facts here that this disease is progressing, it's brutal, there's no cure, and to feel the profound sadness of that. And also, I hope the strange piece of surrendering fully to the reality of a disease like this. We did a little reading on BVFTD, as I know you have, and it seems that the average life expectancy

for a person after diagnosis is six, seven, maybe eight years. Your wife got diagnosed in 2017. It's 2024 now. So if the information we read is correct, then your wife might be nearing the end of her life. And this incredibly challenging chapter might be coming to a close and a new might be opening. I can only guess that that will be a very painful transition and that in time it will also be a relief. So what I want to say to you, my friend, is if you hold out hope for anything, I would hold out hope that this disease has a timeline and a trajectory that is inevitable and largely uncontrollable, that life will always serve up new experiences for you and your family, and that on the other side of your wife's transition, whenever that day comes, there will be so

much more life left to live for you, man. There's going to be a lot more joy and love and excitement to experience alongside your grief and that you will be okay. And I said this at the top, I want to say it again, you're going through one of the most painful experiences a human being can go through, and you're handling it like a real mensch, but it will not last forever. So be there for your wife, be there for yourself, be there for your kids, keep an eye on your career as much as possible, although work will always come second to being a human being and serving your family. And on that note, look, I would consider telling your bosses, your colleagues, what you're going through, so that A, they can support you appropriately, whether that's offering you medical leave or flexibility

or just support and a little bit of grace on deadlines or whatever. And B, so that if a day comes where you need to step away from work, they already know why, and maybe they're a little bit prepared for that. I know that's kind of a footnote to your main question here, but sometimes sharing these challenges with the right people in the right way, that can remove one of the biggest layers of stress and lay the groundwork for a time when you need to be even more involved in your wife's care. We're also going to link to a bunch of FTT resources in the show notes for you. These organizations have a ton of information on how to best care for somebody with FD, financial

assistance to people with FD support groups, hotlines and other sources of support for caregivers like you. I'm sure you've read a lot of this, but I would definitely check those out. I think they'll be very helpful to you. So trust, trust that if you approach everyone in this situation with love and empathy and grace and let them do the same for you, you're going to be more than okay. So hang in there, man. We're going to be thinking of you and we're sending you, your wife, and your kids a huge hug. You know what's unforgettable under any circumstances? The deals and discounts on the fine products and services that support this show. We'll be right back. Thank you for listening to and supporting the show. All the deals, discount codes, and ways to support the show are searchable

and clickable over at Jordan Harbinger.com slash deals. Please consider supporting those who support the show. Now, back to Feedback Friday. Okay, what's next? Dear Jordan and Gabe, I'm a 31-year-old woman from a very small country, and I've never dated. I've been focused on my studies and enjoy my own company. I consider myself very reserved and have few close female friends. Then, recently, I met a guy who's a year younger than me, and a relative of a close friend.

I followed him on Instagram using a private account and we started chatting about classic literature, philosophy, existentialism. He initiated the conversation and we seemed to have a lot in common. After a month, I revealed my identity and we continued those intellectual and philosophical discussions, though they were brief. I even gifted him a book he liked to show my gratitude. But as I prepared to move to another country to pursue my studies, he became distant, eventually deactivating his social media. I don't know why. This experience hurt me, as I thought we could at least be good friends.

Now, almost a year later, I still struggle with feelings of rejection and confusion. I'm not sure if he was ever interested in me or if I did something wrong. Should I have confronted him about ignoring me? Is it normal to be ghosted? What would you have done? Signed, Mining the Source of the Scar after Pining from afar. Oh, man. Well, I'm very sorry that this guy dropped off like this.

I totally get why that's dissoning. to pointing, hurtful, confusing, especially when you seem to have a decent connection with somebody, and I'm sorry that this guy left you with some difficult feelings. I've been in similar positions myself. It sucks, obviously. I got to say, though, I'm very proud of you for putting yourself out there. And I hear you that dating is a new experience in opening yourself up to another person, allowing yourself to get excited by them, to get inspired. That takes a lot of vulnerability and a lot of courage. What you're discovering is that other people can be unpredictable and confusing sometimes, and that's a part of life. You don't have access to all

the information you want about why this guy dropped off, how he truly felt about you, what he wanted from your relationship, and that is infuriating, and that has left you feeling rejected, confused, hurt, which again, I totally get those feelings. There's a lot of ambiguity here, and ambiguity is very difficult for our minds to live with. But here's the thing. You don't truly know why this guy dropped off, so you have to be very thoughtful about the explanations that you provide to yourself. The tempting narrative is, he ghosted me because he didn't like me. But it's equally possible that he dropped off because he was going through a difficult time, or because he needed to focus on his studies, or because he didn't want to be on social media anymore, or because he isn't

very good at maintaining his relationships and communicating well with the people in his life. Or who knows? Maybe he started dating somebody else and they're jealous. Yeah, he might not have even been thinking about you when he deactivated his accounts, which might be part of why this is painful, but in another way, maybe somewhat comforting, just to know that this might not have ultimately been about you at all. Whatever this guy's reasons were, he was ultimately focused on himself. People generally do things for self-oriented reasons that are not about us. But that doesn't mean they don't affect us. But then it's on us to work through these feelings on our own. So your job now is to, first of all, accept your feelings of hurt and confusion and just let them be, kind of like our friend from

question one, right? Then, you have to notice the stories your mind is telling about why this guy ghosted and pay attention to how those stories probably reflect some of the ideas you already hold about yourself, about dating, about other people. We tend to hold beliefs that fuel these stories, and the stories then reinforce the beliefs. Then, remind yourself that because you don't know all the facts, you can't possibly know whether these stories are true, especially the story that goes, oh, he was rejecting me. And finally, and this is sometimes the hardest part, start letting go of the need to know exactly what happened here and just let this guy go, for now anyway. The closure you're looking for, it's not going to come from figuring out why he did what he did, but in fully accepting

the fact that you just don't know. And no, I probably wouldn't have confronted him about ignoring you at the stage of your relationship. You don't want to chase people who aren't meeting you with the same spirit and intention. You liked a guy who didn't or just couldn't reciprocate your feelings. That hurts, but it hurts more to push for a relationship that the other person just doesn't want to have. And yes, ghosting is sadly normal in the sense that people do it a lot these days. It's not normal in a sense that it's ethically okay or legitimate. It's not. I personally find ghosting to be highly avoidant, totally immature. People ghost when they're too afraid to tell somebody what they want and don't want.

They're protecting themselves. They're depriving the other person of crucial information. I am not a fan in relationships, business anywhere. But again, we don't know if this guy was truly ghosting you or just going through something else. Could not agree more, Jordan. I think we're hearing from somebody who has the capacity for very meaningful conversations, who's obviously very kind, who's super generous, for example, with the gift of the book, those are wonderful qualities, and they are her qualities, and they are going to be superpowers

to her and all of her relationships, romantic or otherwise. So as you mourn this relationship, I would also take stock of the experiences you did gain through this guy, this willingness to be excited, a stronger connection with your desires, a better understanding of your interests, your values. This guy probably isn't your guy, but he was a guy who stirred up some really important feelings in you, and that makes him a meaningful part of your dating journey. Now you know that you have the courage to hit up an interesting guy online. Now you know a little bit more about how certain people respond to certain signals.

Now you know how you attach to people you're interested in and how you behave in these contacts, how they behave. So much great data. So that's part of the morning too, just going, okay, it didn't work out with this guy I really liked. That hurts. But he revealed these things about myself. He showed me X, Y, Z aspects of dating. He's teaching me how to live with ambiguity now, how to accept people for who they are. That was why I had to meet him. 100%. Every single relationship we enter long or short, successful or unsuccessful, they always reveal parts of ourselves, don't they? And if you do go into relationships with that lens without too many expectations, especially at the beginning, without going, right, so this is how this

relationship has to go for me to be happy. This is how this person needs to behave for me to feel okay. We have to date for at least six months, or this was a total failure. If you can set those ideas aside and just be open to learning about yourself and other people, you can't lose. You can be bummed, hurt, confused, but you can't fail. That is exactly right. The last thing I just want to touch on because to your point, Jordan, it probably played a big role here, is how our friend sees herself, how she relates to other people. Like she said, she considers herself very reserved. She has a few close female friends, which is great. But she might also be saying that she doesn't have a ton of other ones, especially male friends. She followed this guy on Instagram,

she used a private account, she hid her identity at first, then later fessed up to who she really was. I do wonder if maybe that spooked this guy a little bit. So there's a theme of hiding here. Oh yeah, you know what? That would freak me out potentially a little bit. Like, hey, by the way, I'm this person that knows people that you know. And he's like, oh, crap. I thought I was having this anonymous internet chat. And what have I said? And I'm embarrassed now or I shouldn't be doing this? Or what if this gets back to so on? Yeah, there's a whole lot there. So good point. I get the sense she's afraid to show parts of herself to other people. Again, to be vulnerable, which I can understand. But also, like, didn't she kind of rob that other guy of the exact thing that she's afraid of? Like, he's like, oh, I'm totally anonymous right now. And then she's like, I know you personally and all of your friends. And he's like, oh my God. I was vulnerable under false pretenses. Bye. And she's like, oh, no, I opened up and he hates me. Yeah. She's kind of like, oh, this thing that I would never normally do blew up on my face. And it's like, well, you let the fuse under his face. In this weird, ironic way, you almost did this thing to him that you would be definitely afraid to do yourself, right? You sort of forced him to, or tricked him into being

vulnerable. And now you're saying, oh, no, I was vulnerable and it blew up in my face. It's like, this definitely blew up in his face. That decision didn't really end up serving either of them. Even this detail about giving him a book, look, that is so sweet. And I'm sure that there was a layer to that gift that was purely, you know, here's something that expresses my feelings for you. It'll give us even more to talk about, which I love. But I found it interesting that she said she gave it to him to show my gratitude. That makes me wonder if she might also have been, I don't know, trying to compensate for something or on some level kind of like buying his continued interest, his affection, or maybe just let him.

letting the book say something for her that she struggles to say herself. Yeah, I know what you mean. My sense is that that gift came from a very sweet, genuine place. It's one of the things I love about her in this letter. But so many of our gestures are kind of laden with unconscious stuff, right? And that's all I'm inviting her to do, just to get curious about how she related to this guy and how she chose to communicate with him when it was hard for her to just come right out and say, hey, we have a mutual friend.

We're related in this way. And they just have like an authentic conversation. because this is another way that she is learning about herself, the way she communicates, how other people respond to those communications, and hopefully she can go into future relationships with more confidence, more self-awareness because she had this one. Bingo. And when you do, when you meet some new guys, I promise this memory will hurt a lot less. I think you might even be kind of grateful to this guy for playing an important role in your life. He might be the person who shook up the Snow Globe and put you in touch with all these feelings,

which is great. So try to step back and appreciate that. Accept this wound, let it heal, and then take all of this fantastic growth into other relationships. That's the name of the game. And you got this. We're rooting for you. You can reach us Friday at Jordan Harbinger.com. Please keep your emails concise.

Use descriptive subject lines. That makes our job a whole lot easier. If you're sifting through the fallout of your polyamorous escapades, your neighbors are eavesdropping on your therapy sessions through the wall, or you unknowingly slept with a pedophile and you don't know how you feel about it.

Whatever's got you staying up at night lately, hit us up Friday at Jordan Harbinger.com. We're here to help, and we keep every email anonymous. By the way, if you haven't signed up yet, come check out our newsletter, We BitWiser. It is a bite-sized gem from a past episode from us to you, delivered to your inbox once a week on Wednesdays. If you want to keep up with the wisdom from our thousand plus episodes and apply it to your life, I invite you to come check it out. You can sign up at jordanharbinger.com slash news. Okay,

what's next? Hi, Jordan and Gabe. I run a multi-million dollar tech startup backed by some of the most prominent investors in the world. As a result, I've been the target of various scams. For example, while we were fundraising recently, we received an email offering to invest. This would have seemed too good to be true if we hadn't closed investment offers entirely over email before. This investor didn't have much of an online presence, but we've also received large investments from legitimate investors without a good online presence. The email also used bad grammar, which I believe is a common tactic of scammers, but we've also received real investments from investors with terrible grammar. So I requested a call with the investor. We met on a video call, but his video was off. He said he was

based in Denmark. He had a pretty strong, seemingly Asian accent. He said his name was Wallace, and he was the broker for an investor named Kent, who manages the money of royal families. I said it would be great to speak with Kent directly. He said, sure, let me see if I can get him on the call. Kent then join the video call also with no video. He just happened to be available at the time. No problem. He's not busy at all, managing the King of England's money and the Prince of Saudi Arabia. He's got plenty of free time to join random Zoom calls. Also, Wallace and Kent are so stereotypically rich money people names from someone who doesn't. Would you just like watch one episode of Bridgeton and steal all the

character's names for your free? Exactly. Quincy, please fetch Wallace for me. Thank you so much. Come on, man. Kent then joined the video. call also with no video, Wallace said he'd let us speak privately, so he got off the call. Yeah, hard to hold two conversations with the same fake accent, not get caught. Once Wallace was off, Kent spoke, and he sounded eerily similar to Wallace. Oh, so funny. This is so brazen and weirdly comical. He's doing some sort of extended bit where he's playing multiple people and pretending to hand off the phone call. Kind of great. I guess I admire the creativity of a dude, put in a little effort, come up with a voice, have maybe an accomplice in the same damn room that you can call on in a pinch?

Something. Seriously, where's your craft, bro? Take a little pride in your work if you're going to scam these people. So the letter goes on. Kent said he wanted to invest millions into my company. He wanted to fly me out to Milan to close the deal. He would be there already since he'd be closing a $50 million deal with some Japanese people. Ultimately, I didn't go to Milan.

I just sent them a contract for the investment. In a subsequent video call, I got Kent, with his video on and took a screenshot of him. He was a cool-looking Asian dude in a black leather jacket. Usually, legit investors dress like scrubs. So his cool vibe seemed suspicious. Note to self. Wear ill-fitting clothes and use bad grammar.

Like, if you're a legit investor, you have bad grammar crap style. And the worst Patagonia vest you've ever seen in your life. Yeah. Oh, God, that does ring true, though. Looking at like VC Silicon Valley folks, it's, yeah. My business partner and my wife both thought Kent was legit. I did not. He didn't sign the contract and did not invest. I found some other founders who documented a similar situation they believed to be a scam. I considered submitting a tip about this to the FBI, but decided not to because I was worried tipping them off might in some way implicate me and lead to an investigation of my business.

Separately, I regularly encounter another scam while recruiting software developers. For example, I recently had a call with one Adrian Maxwell. These names are just so good. These names are ridiculous. He was clearly an Asian male, probably in a call center in China. His resume claimed he graduated from Vanderbilt University. When I asked him whence he had graduated, he had to check his notes, and after a few seconds, produced a terrible pronunciation of Vanderbilt University. I ended the call. Where'd you graduate? Just a second. So sus. Wanderbilt. University. Yes. Okay. Definitely a place you spent four years. What clowns? Although this probably speaks to how gullible and desperate other targets are that some of them don't even ask these basic questions. So well done there. And nice use

of the word, whence, by the way. I can almost see Gabe's eyes lighting up when he read that. Wentz does not get enough play these days. I'm a big fan of that word. Gabe's just happy as minor in English with a concentration in Shakespeare is finally paying off. I can't believe you remember that. That's so funny. Oh, your utterly useless degree? How could I forget? It's a good thing you asked me, whence I graduated when I first started scamming you over grilled cheese in Hollywood 10 years ago. Yeah. But you pronounced UCLA correctly, so that's all I needed to note if you're comfortable working together.

I practiced that hard for a long time. Oh, I graduated from Okla. There you go. Take notes, Adrian. So he goes on, a friend of mine who founded a now large startup, hired one of these scammers and the guy copied his code base and completely disappeared after the first day. Yeah, brutal. If this investment thing was a scam, what was the point of it?

How would they make money? What recourse do I have against these scammers? Should I submit a tip to the FBI? If I had tipped off the FBI, would I have gotten to be part of a sting operation in Milan? I love that. That's one of his questions. Signed, seeing through the sham of the old wham scam. Thank you, ma'am. So I love that he's like, I don't want the FBI to investigate my company.

However, I do want to be part of a sting operation in Milan. So, yeah, this is fascinating. Well, good on you for being so skeptical. That's terrific. You've avoided a ton of stress and damage by being savvy. Proud of you for that. We wanted to run all this by an expert here, so we reached out to Kevin Barrow's former FBI special agent and now principal of Renaissance Associates, a top investigative firm.

And Kevin turned out to be the perfect person to ask because many of Renaissance's clients are multi-million dollar startups and major investment funds. So he's quite familiar with these scams. In fact, you might consider retaining them, given your position. So the investment thing was almost certainly a scam. and Kevin told us that once someone intent on committing fraud infiltrates an organization, there's a whole host of potential ways to make money. One way is what happened to your friend.

The scammer who copied his code base disappeared after the first day. That's a common one. I mean, we hear about IP theft all the time, especially from companies in China. So with the remote work, that is just a runaway problem. The scammer might also intend to obtain banking information to commit check or wire fraud or attempt to access bank information. they might want to perpetrate a cyber-related fraud, a ransomware attack, identity theft, stuff like that. They might want to identify and extort other legitimate investors. Gabriel, I'm reminded of

the company that my in-laws run, they got some request, my mother-in-law, I think, got some requests like, oh, our banking information changed. Can you send the next wires to this different bank? And it was like an amount, and everything matched. And it was addressed to the right people. And she called and was like, we just switched banks. Why did we switch banks again? And they were like, we didn't switch banks. And she goes, oh. And then they found out it was fake. But had they not switched banks like two weeks prior, she would have been like, oh, okay, you know, whatever. Good on her for calling. Yeah. That's wild. Yeah. So now their matter is anything above like a few hundred bucks they call or they send like a quick slack and like this is legit. Yes.

Smart. Whenever we wire money, our banker calls us and it's like, I just want to make sure this is you because you're sending $3,000 to Jordan or whatever. That's great. The country. Not to me. They might also want to identify and extort other legitimate investors. They could want to fraudulently obtain stock shares or engage in money laundering through your company. You get the idea. It's always about money, basically. Unfortunately, Kevin's experiences that you have little to know recourse in situations

like this because the perpetrators are typically located outside the U.S. They didn't actually perpetrate a fraud. They just intended to. Now, he did say that there are many places to report this stuff. The FTC website is one of them, but Kevin said the report will almost certainly go unanswered because of the insane volume of frauds being perpetrated daily. Now you can file a report with the FBI, but practically speaking, unless there was actual fraud and the fraud involved a significant amount of money, Kevin's opinion is it's highly unlikely that the FBI is going to

open an investigation. Because again, the Bureau is inundated with reports of actual fraud involving large amounts of money and they are obviously going to prioritize those cases. Another FBI friend of ours, Robin Dreek, retired head of the FBI behavioral analysis program. he confirmed this as well. He said it all comes down to prosecution workload and dollar amounts lost, as well as the likelihood that the bureaus can reasonably find the culprits, who are usually well-cloaked overseas in places like Russia and China, where even if they can prove everything, the government is like, whatever, they're stealing for us, we don't care. He said what the FBI typically does is they'll take some information from your tip and put it into a relevant control file,

admin, basically, just in case they get a major break at some point, but the odds of that are so low, it's almost not worth doing. By the way, Robin was a guest on the show, super interesting guy. We talked about how to size people up. That was episode 357, and we'll link to that in the show notes. As for the chances of the FBI conducting a sting operation on a potential attempted fraud on foreign soil, Kevin said they're infinitesimal, to say least. So unfortunately, you would not have gotten to cosplay as Matt Damon in Oceans 11 in Italy or whatever to take these scumbags down, but that would have been fun, and you probably would have looked pretty awesome doing it. And honestly, never going to show up to Milan. That was all a bunch of fake nonsense. Anyway, I do think he would

have probably had to buy some new clothes for that sting operation. Because if our boy is anything like his investors, he's probably just rocking some Patagonia. And you know, you can't go around in Milan trying to sting operation people into prison in that garb. So we asked Kevin, hey, like, how can business owners avoid these scams in the future? And he had a few great pieces of advice. So his first recommendation was, whenever possible, try to seek investors from referrals, from friends, family members, your network. That way, you're obviously meeting people who have some inherent credibility as opposed to some rando who just barges into your inbox unsolicited. His second tip was, whenever possible, meet a potential investor in person. That way, you can look them in the

eye, you can observe their body language, you can assess their credibility. The next best thing is what you did, which is to jump on Zoom and insist on video. That's crucial. If you do decide to move forward with an investor, Kevin recommends conducting a thorough background report or due diligence effort, ideally with an experienced professional firm. So Renaissance, for example, they create these reports that are deep and complete. They go into all public records about a subject's reputation. They tailor the research to the specific interests of the client. In fact, Kevin told us about two recent clients who immediately pulled out of their deals after Kevin's team did background for them. And that potentially saved them millions of dollars, which is wild to think about. Kevin said

that at the very least, it's a huge red flag if a startup informs an investor that they intend to conduct diligence, and the investor is like, uh, yeah, no, I'm not giving you any identifying information. That's a red flag. That's almost certainly a sign that you do not want to move forward with them. Kevin's final tip was, do not ignore your initial concerns or these red flags for the sake of fundraising. Your early instincts, he said, are often correct. Yeah, we've talked about that a bunch on the show, how intuition isn't always perfect, but it is important, the Gavin DeBecker principle and all that, how we often discount that inner voice trying to protect us because we want to believe that there's something worth getting, whether it's money, validation, attention, avoiding conflict,

whatever it might be. So I'm very sorry that these low lives targeted you. This is organized crime, by the way. They know what they're doing. But I'm proud of you for sniffing them out and not taking the bait. You're an amazing case study in the power of healthy skepticism, solid legwork, and trusting your intuition. By the way, there's no such thing as somebody who runs investments for multiple royal families. Those people have their own family office, and often it's possibly even a part of the government. It's a royal family, right? They're part of the government. They don't need some guy who's like a high net worth investor that manages the Saudi Arabian money and the UK money. It doesn't exist. So the way you handled this was terrific. And I hope everyone listening is a little more equipped

to do the same. Congrats on building a successful company and keep up the great work. Now my colleague, Gordon Farbinger, who sounds suspiciously like me, but is definitely a different person, is going to take over. You know, what's not too good to be true? The deals from the amazing sponsors who support these show. We'll be right back. If you like this episode of Feedback Friday and found our advice valuable, I invite you to do what other smart and considerate listeners do, which is take a moment and support our amazing sponsors. To learn more and get links to all the great discounts you hear on the show, just visit Jordan Harbinger.com slash deals. You can also email me, Jordan at Jordan Harbinger.com. I'm happy to surface codes for you. It is that important that you

support those who support the show. Now, back to Feedback Friday. Okay, what's next? Hey, Jordan and Gabe. My question is just for Jordan. Sorry, Gabe. All good. I'm happy to just read a letter sometimes. Also, Jordan is a raging pathological narcissist,

so you just made his day with that line. That's not true. But yeah, shut the fuck up and give me my spot light back. You've mentioned on Feedback Friday that you and Jen sleep in different rooms with your two kids. Can you talk a little bit more about your co-sleeping situation? Why do you and Jen decide to go that route versus more Western ideas of safe sleep situations? And what do you recommend for new parents or parents preparing to welcome their second or third child who want to co-sleep? Signed, spill the tea on how you get your z's.

Right. So what they're asking is why Jen and I sleep with the kids instead of having done that thing where you sleep train them, you put them in the other room and then they cry and then you ignore them or you comfort them and eventually they learn to sleep on their own. And the answer is not because we have access to the latest and greatest medical technology. I mean, we did hire a private doctor. Jen gave birth at home. I don't know if people sort of knew that, but she did. You should only do that under certain circumstances. Arguably no circumstances, but very low-risk circumstances.

We're also right near a hospital, yada, yada. So whatever, that's not the question. That doctor was like, hey, you can go-sleep. There's no reason to sleep train your kids medically psychologically necessarily. Most people do it so they can put their kids to bed at 7 or 8 p.m. and then have a couple of hours of time for themselves and then, like, you know, go to sleep on their own. It doesn't necessarily result in kids who are better adjusted. In fact, it's kind of the opposite, according to some research.

When you sleep with your kids, they tend to be a little bit more attached. You can run an attached parenting style. We did not think that far ahead. We just realized our kids were crying so much when we set them to sleep, and we liked sleeping with them, so we just decided to keep doing it. and we met a lot of other parents that do it, and it hasn't been a problem for them. And we found actually, once we started admitting

that we were doing this, that tons and tons of parents do this, they just don't admit it because they get judged by other parents. There's a lot of that with parenting, as you may have noticed. And if you haven't noticed, you will notice soon. It's actually totally fine to co-sleep.

The whole like, oh my God, SIDS, you're going to roll over on your kid. That's when they're really small. It's very rare unless you're an alcoholic or you're morbidly obese, and we are none of those things. so we didn't have that problem. We also had a little alarm we put on our baby.

That was a sock that told us if they stopped breathing or something like that. Of course, the alarm never went off, thank God. Our doctor told us there's some research about the kids being better adjusted. The kid's sleep thing is just a big grift a lot of the times, not like sleep training is all fake. I just mean there's so many devices and little things you can buy, and we spent a lot of money on that stuff too. We spent like $1,500 on some live coaching thing that Jen was like,

I'm not using this because it's terrible. The kid's got to cry it out. It's painful for the kid. and there's a lot of guilt attached to this sort of stuff. And frankly, look, I am usually the guy who leans into science, but I'm also, at some point, common sense tells me, if the kid cries a bunch for days or weeks or months while you're sleep training them,

and it's hard emotionally on the parents, maybe we aren't evolved to put our kids in a different room and make them sleep alone in the dark without us, right? Because our kids have no problem falling asleep. They sleep with us. They wake up with us. usually sleep in a little bit, they fall asleep earlier. I mean, it's just maybe we're evolved to do that. I don't really think we're evolved to take our kids, rip them away from us, have them cry it out for

literally days or weeks on end. I just don't think that's the way to do it. Again, I have no business telling anybody how to parent. The research told us one thing. We decided to go with that. It's worked out well for us. Nobody should be judging people either way on what they do with their kids and sleeping, unless they're hitting their kids and they shouldn't be doing that. But other than that, do what you want. So if you're a new parent, you want to co-sleep, I would say, Go for it. I mean, with a newborn, just be careful that you're not like rolling over on them or something like that. You can get that little alarm. You can put them in the bassinet next to your bed, which is safer anyways because they're not supposed to sleep with blankets. And, you know, go for it. But when they're toddlers, they're not always going to want to sleep with you. If they want to sleep with you, enjoy it, enjoy it while you can. That's my two cents. My son loves sleep with me. Juniper sleeps with Jen. We sleep in separate beds. People are like, what about your marriage? We work together all day. Like we'll be able to find alone time if we need it. And again, this is. a very short period of just a few years. I just don't see why we need to make it any harder than it already is. There's no research that says my kids are going to be weird and have a failure to

launch because they slept with dad for two or three years. It's not a thing. Recommendation of the week. So the newish segment, I'm happy to be doing it this week. What I recommend are table topics for kids. It doesn't have to be the brand table topics, but we use that brand and another brand that we got off of Amazon. We can link to some of that stuff in the show notes. What these are, cards that have topics on them that you can use to discuss. It doesn't even have to be with kids. They have them for parents. They have them for the whole family. They're just really interesting topics. Like, if you could have any superpower, what would it be? But there's hundreds of them. They're quite unique. Some of them tailored to kids. Some of them tailored to older adults.

And it gets the conversation going because what we found is my parents come over and then they're on their phones after they ask what we did all day. And then they play with the kids for a second. And then they're kind of like, we have nothing to say or we're just talking about our day or it's all small talky. You bust out these cards. and the whole family starts opining and making up scenarios and having fun and laughing and it just really sort of ups the quality

of conversation. And this stuff is cheap. You can get hundreds of them for like 20 bucks on Amazon. So table topics, they're also great for the car. You know, you're in the car, you're sick of hearing

the Peppa Pig theme song the 30th time in a row or they're trying to watch Netflix in our car and it freezes because there's no internet and everybody's having a meltdown. You can use the table topics and just talk.

Go figure. Something you can do in the card that doesn't involve the internet. We should give that a go, Jordan, you and I. I feel like we don't really talk enough intimately about our lives and stuff. Yeah, really. We don't share anything here on Feedback Friday. I could use the help opening up, frankly. Table topics for producers. Speaking of intimate conversation, if you don't know, there's a subreddit for our show if you want to jump into discussions with other listeners about specific episodes or about the show in general, frankly. If there was an episode you really liked, an episode you really didn't like, you want to share additional

thoughts. There's also a meme thread where people are making frankly ridiculous memes of mostly me and Gabriel that are being posted in that thread. Yeah, they're really good actually. Y'all have way too much time on your hands and I'm here for it. If you want to learn about or from other people in our show fam, you can definitely check it out some really cool conversations happening over there. Reddit.com Jordan Harbinger subreddit is where you can find us. All right. What's next? Greetings Jordan and Gabe. I got divorced a few years ago. It wasn't my choice. I was in therapy with my wife, but due to a betrayal on her part that I couldn't get over, she felt I would never forgive her, and she was miserable.

Huh, interesting. So Gabe, this betrayal, she cheated on him, or do we know? He didn't specify. It sounds like maybe, but I think it also could be something completely unrelated to adult, impossible to know. I'm not sure. So it could have been a money thing or a dicey conversation with another person or an emotional thing. Yeah, unclear.

Whatever it was, hard for him to forgive. So he goes on, during the divorce proceedings, I refused to give her full custody of the kids. She accused me of looking at underage pornography. Whoa. I fully admit to occasional porn viewing, but have never knowingly or willingly looked at any CSAM. Wow, that is a crazy, aggressive allegation

to throw into a divorce proceeding about the father of your children. Wowza. That is a grenade. After the divorce was finalized with a 50-50 custody agreement, she was awarded child support. The amount wasn't much. She made more money than I did, but her CPA made a claim that her W2 was inflated and was not a valid way to calculate her income. Four years later, I took her back to court for a child support adjustment after watching her purchase her third car, remodel her home, and take the kids on some pretty swanky vacations.

As part of discovery, I saw that she claimed almost double my salary on mortgage applications, took out pretty massive distributions from the company she owned, and recently took on a new job while continuing to own. own the business, she was taking distributions from. Interesting. I mean, good for her for doing well, but yeah, that is not cool to do to you. Her co-parent, child support-wise, this sounds just vindictive as opposed to functional. I lost the case. During the trial, she lied under oath between four and six times. I can easily prove four of them, but two are open to interpretation. The judge ignored all evidence and allowed her to claim just her current employment as her only income. My child support went up, and I was charged a significant amount of back expenses for out-of-pocket items that she had never asked for, and that she said she didn't want until we went to trial. For example,

co-pays for doctor visits for our kids, which we always took turns paying, but now I have to pay for all of hers. Now I believe that they're going to ask the judge for attorney's fees, which is adding insult to injury. All of this could come to about $20,000, and I'll have to get a home equity line of credit or a 401k hardship withdrawal to pay for it. I believe that given her perjury, which is a felony in our state, I can appeal and possibly win

this time. The problem is she's a great mother, and if I win, the court could charge her with multiple felonies. That could lead to loss of her current job and will really make her hate me going forward, which will make co-parenting a nightmare. Yeah. Should I just take the possible

$20,000 hekey and go on about my business? Or do I file the appeal and possibly get her in serious trouble causing hardships for me and the children. Signed, take the L and wish my ex well, or raise hell and send her to jail. Oh, boy. Well, look, man, I'm very sorry things played out this way. Divorces obviously can get pretty nasty, and it sucks that your wife played dirty, and you kind of got the crap into the stick, especially after it sounds like she sort of initiated the turmoil on the relationship. I think part of the reason I was fixating on what ultimately led to you guys splitting up was,

well, first of all, I'm nosy as hell, and this is Feedback Friday, and we want the tea. True. But also, I also want to know what this betrayal actually consisted of, because I'm curious about whether it fits with the way your wife behaved during the divorce proceedings, whether you struggle to work through certain things with her, whether she's retaliating against you now for how things went down in therapy and in your marriage. In my experience, these things don't just happen for no reason. There's usually a chain of events leading way back, something you might want to consider as you do the forensics here. But look, your question's a really good one. And my gut is telling me, if this really comes down to 20 grand, which is not a small amount of money, but also isn't like

$600,000, I think you should take the hit and move on. Because to your point, you need to play the long game here. If you take her to court and potentially land her with a felony and make her lose her job and lose all goodwill and affection that still exists between you just for 20 grand. I mean, I think you're going to be shooting yourself on the foot. By the way, this is not going to be perjury. That's something a prosecutor has to do. This is going to be contempt of court, so it's a little different. But that's neither here nor there. You can't put a price on having a great relationship with your co-parent. You can't. And even if you could, I promise you, it's worth way more than 20 grand. I totally agree, Jordan. He's already on to the right answer here, and that says a lot about him.

but I think he's very angry, which I can appreciate. And if he decides not to take his ex back to court, if he does take this $20,000 loss, then he's going to have to find a way to work through that anger on his own, which again goes back to that theme from question one. You're going to make the BetterHelp plug or should I? No, you can go for it. It's all you, bro. Betterhelp.com slash Jordan, 10% off your first month.

Get on the virtual couch and let the rage created by your perjurious income obfuscating ex-wife melt away. There you go. Obviously, I think therapy would be great. but also yeah, go see a friend, vent a little, let it out, make sure you're going to the gym regularly, release some of this energy. I mean, make forgiveness for your wife, which is a difficult thing to do, make that a practice, you know, the usual stuff. We talk about this all the time. This anger has to go somewhere. And if it's not going into another divorce case, I would make sure that you express it in other healthy, appropriate ways. But it's so interesting, Jordan. Now I'm kind of back to their

couples therapy again. I know we're like a dog with a bone here, but he said she betrayed him, he couldn't get over it and she felt that he would never forgive her. I do wonder if we might be hearing something similar in his question now. She did some objectively unethical and manipulative things during their divorce proceedings, which is another betrayal, so I'm very much on his side here. But again, he does seem to be wrestling with whether to hold her accountable or whether to just let it go and move on. Super interesting. I'm happy to hear that he's at least open to considering taking the hit for the sake of their relationship, but I just want to appreciate that there might be a part of our friend here's personality that really struggles to work through these injuries, to stay connected to

his forgiveness, to his empathy when other people make mistakes or do more than that when they really hurt him. And I'm not saying that he's wrong about any of this. For all we know, his wife, I don't know, lied about money stuff or cheated on him or didn't take his side in an argument or whatever it was. And by the way, the way she lied about her income and the CSAM stuff, the child pornography stuff during the divorce, that is objectively not okay. It's really dirty. So I don't blame him for carrying this anger. But that doesn't mean that he doesn't have some work to do in how he processes those feelings. He might even have some work to do in figuring out why he chose a partner who would do these things in the first place or how he showed up in their marriage in a way that might have

motivated a questionable personality to do these things as well. Yeah, good point because there's so much more for him to appreciate here than just, you know, how do I run the cost-benefit analysis of holding my lying ex-wife accountable. This is exactly what he needs to figure out. Kind of like our friend from question two, this might be one of the reasons he had to go through this marriage and divorce to confront these parts of himself to evolve. But, you know, I did have a Dark Jordan idea or two.

Oh, let's hear it. You said that she took a second job while she also runs a company that she's taking distributions from. You know who doesn't love when you have two jobs? The people who gave you those jobs. So she owns a company. The other person is so much darker than I thought. deploying her? Yeah. I think there's a place here where you just let them know that she's got another

company and that's probably taking a lot of her time because it is not a side hustle. Look at those distributions she took. There's significant revenue there. Surely that requires a lot of her time. This other job, is she working remotely? What is she doing all day? Are you sure she's working for your company or is she working on her own while she takes a check from you? So there's that. Also, what your ex-wife did in these proceedings, I also want a second what you said, Gabriel, it is not okay. It sounds like you have solid proof that she committed a crime. So you could have, or at least, or at least should be held in contempt, okay? So you could have your lawyer, tell your ex's lawyer in whatever lawyerly way they want to do it,

that you guys know she committed perjury and she can either share expenses fairly and back off on recouping these lawyers' fees or, you know, she can be held in contempt and you can appeal all of this with the evidence that you have. And I imagine lawyers have a way of framing this that isn't, you know, like blackmail slash, extortion. In fact, I've checked on this. In a perfect world, it's something like, I have evidence your client committed perjury. It should be held in contempt. This is a crime, as you know. I'm compelled to turn this in ethically. We both know this could get really bad, but, you know, you can make it all go away, that kind of thing, but in lawyer speak. What you want to essentially convey here is that your lawyer needs to tell her lawyer, my client's not going to bend over and pay you when we all know

she got lucky and she makes more money here and she lied about it. We're not doing this. So we ran this all by our boy Corbin Payne at the last minute. And C. Payne said you could probably petition the court to revisit the alimony and child support issues on the grounds that your ex-wife lied to the court. If she did, in fact, lie, you'd probably get a reduction. And all of those back, whatever things that you owe, those are either going to go away or it might even turn around in your favor. And Corbin thinks it'll probably piss off the judge and potentially trigger contempt for her.

Now, that could be used for perjury, but that's going to involve getting the prosecutor's office involved, so you could tell your ex you're going to petition to revisit the alimony and support and give her the option to do this the easy way or the hard way. But Corbin said you need to make sure that you didn't waive your ability to amend the alimony or support. Sometimes that happens in final filings. If your attorney was able to get her income records, a judge might take the position that, you know, you snooze, you lose. Also, Corbin told us in some states, they only allow spouses to revisit this stuff after a certain amount of time and or a certain percentage change in income has occurred. But look, if this judge ignored, you know, if this judge ignored,

the records and made an adverse filing, then you probably need to consider an appeal, and you need to move quickly because there are often time constraints involved. So that's Corbyn's take, and man do I love, when an actual attorney who, you know, is doing this stuff in the real world more or less signs off on Dart Jordan's agro impulses. You know, Gabe, the more we talk about this, the more I really feel like his ex-wife is a scumbag, actually. Or at least shamelessly self-interested? I mean, you don't falsely accuse the father of your children of watching child sexual abuse material so that you can get more money out of him when you are making more than he is. Plus, she didn't want to share custody. I feel like we need

to address that. Uh-huh, that's true. So is she really as good a mother as he says? I'm going to push back on that a little, because I got to wonder. I can't imagine that the person who behaves this way is also just a wonderful parent. Right. She might be a decent caretaker, but she is setting a terrible example for how to behave, especially in conflict with somebody who's important in your life. And both of those things are equally important in parenting, in my opinion. You have to set a good example and also not treat your kids like crap. Look, you would never say, oh, he's such a good dad. I mean, he hits me sometimes, but, you know, he's a great father. You would never say that, because those things are inseparable. And by the way, if you're saying that, you need to immediately

exit whatever relationship you're in and stop diluting yourself. So I say, stand up for yourself appropriately. Work with your lawyer to find a creative solution to this financial problem. I really hope they can come to an understanding. But don't do anything that'll backfire or make your life too much harder. This is a tricky line to walk, legally, logistically, emotionally. I'm sorry you have to walk it. But I have a feeling there's a solution here.

And a big part of me wants to hold your ex-wife accountable for raking you over the coals and playing very, very dirty. Just if you're going to tell her current employer, run that by your lawyer first. because the important thing is you get a better settlement, not that you get her fired from her gig. So sending you a big hug and wishing you all the best. Hope you all enjoyed that. I want to thank everybody who wrote in

and everybody who listened. Thank you so much. Go back and check out Johna Mendez and our Skeptical Sunday on Hypnotism if you haven't done so yet. The best things that have happened in my life and business have come through my network, the circle of people that I know, I like, and I trust,

and I'm teaching you how to build that same thing for yourself in our six-minute networking course. It is free. It is not gross. It is not shmoozy. It's on the thinkific platform over at six minute networking.com. The drills take a few minutes a day. This isn't going to take a lot of your time.

It is about digging the well before you get thirsty and building relationships before you need them. And if you're a great networker, this is even more for you. I get a lot of people like, oh, my problem is I'm too good of a networker. And I'm like, yeah, cool, sure you are. But the systems involved here are what the benefit really is, not just like, oh, I'm afraid to talk to people. It's not like that.

This is, I would say, intermediate and advanced. There's some beginner stuff in the beginning. and you can find it once again at six-minute networking.com. Show notes and transcripts at Jordan Harbinger.com. Advertisers, deals, discounts, ways to support the show, all at Jordan Harbinger.com slash deals. I'm at Jordan Harbinger on Twitter and Instagram. I'd love to connect with you there.

Gabriel's on Instagram at Gabriel Mizrahi or on Twitter at Gabe Mizrahi. This show is created in association with Podcast One. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jay Sanderson, Robert Frogety, and of course Gabriel Mizrahi. Our advice and opinions are our own. I am a lawyer, but I am not your lawyer. Do your own research before implementing things you hear on the show.

Ditto Corbin Payne. Remember, we rise by lifting others. Share the show with those you love. And if you found the episode useful, please share it with somebody else who could use the advice we gave here today. In the meantime, I hope you apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you learn. And we'll see you next time.

You're about to hear a preview of the Jordan Harbinger show with Johna Mendes. She was the chief of disguise for the CIA in Moscow during the latter part of the Cold War. We'd really get into the weeds on how they hid people and hid spy gear in one of the most hostile espionage environments anywhere in the world. We invented technology that didn't even exist yet. The small batteries, for instance, they're in our watches and our phones and all of that stuff today. They're kind of like Q from James Bond, but it's the CIA. We could create any kind of character over your face. Masks that came out of Hollywood, and we'd say, great.

Go down to the cafeteria and have lunch. This is at CIA headquarters where everybody knows everybody in the cafeteria. And they would go and discover that no one paid any attention to them. You go, wow, I'm hiding in plain sight. They were following us just every minute. The case officer would step out of the car. The driver would hit a button. This dummy would pop up wearing the same clothes as the guy that had just left.

Trailing surveillance would come around the corner and they'd follow that car all night. They never knew. and if they could get to those people, they would execute them. They were feeding people into these crematoriums, feet first, alive. Unbelievable. A really valuable agent said, I'll work for you on one condition, and that is that you give me the ability to take my own life. Eventually, everybody got arrested.

So they arrested him, and we had put that L pill we gave him in the cap of the Montblok pin that was cyanide, and he knew where it was. And they said, we want you to write your confession. So they brought him as a morpillop. and walked in. This episode is sponsored in part by Something You Should Know podcast. Finding a new great podcast shouldn't be this hard, so let me save you some time.

If you like the Jordan Harbinger show, you'll probably like Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. It's one of those shows that makes you smarter in a practical, useful way. Same curiosity vibe we go for here, just in a fast, focused format. Mike brings on top experts and asks the exact questions that you'd want to ask, and the topics are all over the place in the best way. Recently, they've covered things like why we care so much what other people think, the It's of laughter, why sports fans get so invested, and what makes people like you or not.

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