Two Hot Takes - 67: Can Therapy Help? Ft. Psychology in Seattle's Dr. Honda

Episode Date: May 26, 2022

Two Hot Takes host, Morgan, is joined by guest co-host Dr. Kirk Honda of Psychology in Seattle! This episode features a variety of stories that touch on topics from enmeshment to trauma bonds.. And Dr. Honda sheds some serious light with his qualified take! TW is noted but last story contains sensitive topics!!! Merch: https://fanjoy.co/collections/twohottakes Dr. Honda's Social: https://www.youtube.com/psychologyinseattle https://www.instagram.com/psychologyinseattle/ Resources for those in similar situations to the last story: https://www.rainn.org/resources https://www.aacap.org/aacap/Families_and_Youth/Resource_Centers/Child_Abuse_Resource_Center/Home.aspx Partners: Zocdoc: Zocdoc.com/THT Babbel: Babbel.com/THT Credit Karma: Creditkarma.com or Credit Karma app Ship Station: Shipstation.com Promo code: THT Our SubReddit to Submit Stories!!! https://reddit.app.link/twohottakes Patreon bonus story from this ep to follow soon!!  https://www.patreon.com/TwoHotTakes Full length Video episodes available on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/TwoHotTakes

Any Hour Services has a team of technicians that can take care of any plumbing, electrical or air conditioning needs you might have around your house. Got a drain that's clogged? Call Any Hour Services. Need a ceiling fan installed? Call Any Hour Services. Air conditioner not working? Call Any Hour Services.

Maintenance repair or install. Any job. Any size. Any Hour Services. Mention this ad and take 50 bucks off your next visit. Call Any Hour Services or schedule online at anyourservices.com. No one helps more homeowners than Any Hour Services. Hi friends, I'm just checking in with you all.

This week has felt extremely heavy with another shooting in Texas, one that has affected so many including multiple listeners of the shows. We still have a war going on in Ukraine, there's our economy, our housing crisis, homelessness, COVID still, the world is feeling like a lot. So I just want to let you all know that I'm thinking about all of you and want to make sure everyone is looking after themselves. This is a really tough time for so many of us and mental health can be a struggle on a normal basis.

So check in, connect with friends, family, loved ones and make sure you're practicing some quality self-care. Love you guys. Hi guys, welcome back to another episode of Two Hot Takes. I'm your host, Morgan, and today I'm joined by the amazing Dr. Kirk Honda. Thanks for having me. Thanks for coming on. This is my first Zoom podcast I've ever done.

I typically have people in the studio, but I'm like, I need to have him on. Yeah, I'm guessing you're not in Seattle, so it would take me a while to get there, I guess. Yeah, Los Angeles, a little far, a little far. But I actually, the reason I found you, one, I had a listener poll and I was like, is there any therapist that you'd like to see me collaborate with or have on? Your name was overwhelmingly said. Everyone was, get Dr. Kirk Honda on, like he's amazing.

Wow. And then I was like, okay, I need to reach out. It's time. It's time. Well, wow. I mean, that's overwhelming. I don't know if I've ever heard that before. I mean, of course, I have my fans, but I've never heard of my fans in another realm that

overwhelmingly promoting me. So I guess I should thank all of them for being my agent. Yeah, absolutely amazing. You've got a strong listener base. But the theme today, it's kind of scattered all over, but essentially stories that I think a therapist's perspective could potentially help. Okay. Let's dive in.

Yeah. So up first, do you get a lot of mother-in-law problems with couples? Is that, do you find that that is a big issue? I mean, it certainly can be an issue. I don't think it's as prevalent as what is commonly talked about in the culture. I think more broadly, in-laws in general, regardless of who is absolutely a flashpoint for ongoing conflict and troubles, for sure. Okay.

Well, this one, it's an in-law problem. Am I the asshole for walking out of the airport when I saw my husband's mom standing there with her luggage? I, female 30, don't have the best relationship with my husband's mom. Since day one, she tried to make remarks and compare me to her. She then tried to get on my good side and started overly praising everything I do and sometimes even copying me, like this one time when she literally dyed her hair purple, just like mine.

And when everyone pointed out how ridiculous she looked, she actually blamed me and accused me of trying to make a joke out of her. So anyways, my husband and I took two weeks off to go visit some places out of the country, tourism in other words. The thing is, I was the one who saved up for this and arranged for the trip. My husband was responsible for booking the tickets. My husband's mom wanted to come along and through temper tantrums when I said no. She called, texted, sent people to talk to me and letting her come, even threatened to

call the police and make some complaint up to get us to stay if she can't come. My husband said we should just take her with, but I told him he was wrong to even tell her about the trip in the first place. He gave me an ultimatum. He said he wouldn't go if she can't come and I told him I'd gladly call his bluff, which made him take his words back and say, fine, I will tell her to stop it because we won't take her. Things got quieter, suspiciously quieter.

The day of the trip came and we got to the airport at 2pm. My husband was walking ahead of me and was looking left and right like he was looking for someone. I asked him, but he didn't respond. He led me to the waiting area and first thing I saw was his mom standing there with her luggage. I froze in my spot, I felt cold washing over me and I was fuming inside. She and my husband were hugging, that's when I quietly turned around and started walking

towards the exit. My husband followed me while shouting at me to stop. He tried to stop me, but I told him off in the harshest way possible. He tried to say I was overreacting and that his mom was there anyway and that I should let it go and not mess the trip up for us. I told him he and his mom could still go and that I was going home. I went home and stopped into my dog's fur for several minutes. Turned out he booked her a ticket without me knowing.

An hour later he came home yelling and raging about how pathetic and spiteful I was to walk out and go home and ruin this trip last minute. I told him he caused this to happen. He said that I was being so hard on his mom, it's ridiculous. I refused to fight anymore, but he kept on berating me, then called my family to tell them that the trip was canceled and that it was because of me. My family said I shouldn't have ruined it for myself and should have sucked it up and done my best to enjoy it.

Did I overreact? Wait, is this a question for me? Am I supposed to answer that question right now? That's what OP is writing in. Yeah, well, as a therapist, I hear stories from clients and am always wondering about what the others would say. I'm immediately wondering what the husband would say about the story and what the mom would say about the story.

If I heard all those stories and knew the three individuals and their personalities at least a little bit, I'd be able to cobble together at least a version of the truth, so to speak, so I could have an opinion about what to do. Now, but based on her description, I would feel very similarly and probably would have acted similarly given my personality. I'm the sort of person that it's hard for me to tolerate stuff like that and I'll just walk away. I don't want to get into it with someone and I'll just be like, yeah, I'm not going.

I'm bouncing. I'm going to go home. So I think there's that too. The bigger problem, I think, if I were in her shoes, and she was highlighting this, was the betrayal of the husband. Just to be lied to and tricked like that and not respected is really hurtful and sets a precedent of all sorts of problems of, does he ever care about my feelings? Does he ever listen to me to just be bulldozed like that?

The third thing I'll say is that if the first half, so let me tell you my reaction to the first half, prior to her saying the mom saying that she was going to force herself on the trip and was going to call the police if they were going to go by themselves. I mean, if any of this is true, that escalated quickly. But the first half was them in a very common scenario that I treat, which is, and I don't know about everyone, but in a lot of mainstream American cultures, people will get married and they don't consider the fact that they're marrying their in-laws. And there's this idea of the nuclear family that goes back to the 50s of mobility and

capitalism and all this stuff. So this notion of like, while I'm marrying you, but we're going to separate ourselves from each other's families, and we're going to create a new family and there's nothing wrong with that. But certainly there are some people that you're going to marry that are highly connected. So it's important for you when you marry someone to consider that. And two, to begin laying the groundwork for strong relationships with those people because they're going to be in your life.

And if there's going to be conflict, you have to have intimacy and open communication and positive regard for one another in order to handle the occasional uncomfortable moment. And what I find a lot of people do is they just avoid the whole thing because they don't want to deal with it. And then when there are conflicts, because there always are when you use a family members there's always like issues, then it just explodes because there's no goodwill between the two people and it can't handle it. And there's this resistance of just like, well, if there's any edges to those people,

I'm just not going to deal with it. Whereas when you're married to someone, you can't do that, right? If there are problems with your partner, you have to face it head on. You can't just be like, well, I'm just going to avoid that entire thing, which I find a lot of people do. So that was my first half reaction. I was just thinking, well, did you lay the groundwork with the mom? Sounds like there was some animosity there.

She colored her hair the similar to yours, seemingly trying to bond with you, which is a weird move, but it's maybe coming from a good place. And it sounds like you participated in ridiculing her at least behind her back or at least was going along with it in terms of the take on it. So I would wonder how much she contributed. But when we get to that middle part, I don't think, I don't understand the justification for any of that. One, to force yourself to go on a trip.

And then two, to threaten to call the police on what grounds? Like, what would be the reason for that? And so then I start thinking, well, if she's significantly suffering from some sort of problem of the mom, which if any of that's true, then I'm guessing she has some massive relational traumas that results in some kind of massive distortion or possibly even slightly delusional nose, then all bets are off. Like, you're not going to be able to reason with that. And then if that's true, then the son, her husband, grew up since day one in that relationship

and has been, I don't know, potentially abused emotionally verbally or something throughout his life, such that when his mom invades, he doesn't have any resources to push back because he was never allowed to push back and might even still be kind of working out his attachment needs with his mom that never were met. So then I think like, what do you do if you're the, if you're her, yeah, I mean, you cry into a pillow and then I guess he comes home and yells at you, but it's a pretty difficult situation to be in for sure. Yeah.

Well, and so I guess kind of a question I have, because I read this story and something I'm like personally fascinated with is the concept of enmeshment. And so I read this and, you know, kind of what you were saying is families are going to be close. And so you kind of have to go into these relationships and expect like, yeah, your in-laws are going to be in your life unless your partner has already cut them off because of toxicity or whatever reason, you know, making them feel bad, lack of appreciation for their boundaries, whatever that is.

So I look at this and I'm like, where is like the line? And I guess it's so different for every person, family, dynamic, whatever, but where is closeness and then where do you start leaching into enmeshment and things like that? Yeah. There's no hard criteria for enmeshment, but it does fit the general criteria in that there's invasiveness, lack of respect of one's boundaries, a lot of guilt tripping, a lot of control, a lot of assumptions about entitlement to other people's lives or boundary crossings. We would absolutely call that relationship between the mom and the son enmeshed if her

description is accurate and has probably been present since, like I said, day one. And I imagine typically what people will say to this is, well, you know, you got to push back and that's a simplistic response because like I said, if she's like that and she's probably better now than she used to be in some ways, her husband is a massively abused struggling individual that has 20 years of therapy before he can even draw a boundary. I mean, I'll tell you about a client I had many years ago who was in a similar situation with her parents and the abuse was actually pretty severe, you know, because she would tell me about that. She didn't tell other people about it. They're my client and she was, you

know, healing, she was coming to terms with it for many years with me, but the whole time she was her parents' caregiver and would bathe them and would, you know, stick up for them even though she absolutely hated them with a passion. So to simply say to someone like that who's been abused their entire life to draw a boundary is it's asking for too much. Yeah. I'm like, there is an update on this one, so we do get a little bit more. Maybe I'll ask my question after. So for the update, I don't know where to begin. It's been an absolute nightmare recently and I feel like I was losing my sanity. So for more details,

I have to admit that my husband's mom favors him over all of his siblings. This has affected his relationship with them and me as well. He's never seen an issue with how differently his mom treats him. It bothered me and made me feel uncomfortable. The whole dynamic made me feel uncomfortable. Going low contact has never even been an option, like he has to see her or call her every day. Most of his siblings don't talk to him and I 100% believe it's because of his mom's favoritism. Like I said, he does bear some blame for not seeing how wrong this is until this day. In my, in many instances, I found myself making excuses for behavior, even in my post. I did it spontaneously and I don't know why. But I guess it's because

of how much I love him and because I really wanted to be able to work things like this type of, these type of things out without letting them affect our marriage. Regarding what happened with the trip, he tried to have a talk with me and most of what he said came from a place of blame, blame towards me. I just couldn't continue with this argument. I told him I needed space and that I would be going to stay with my sister for a while. He didn't take it well. He literally got up from the couch and opened the door telling me to go right then. In that moment and seeing how he was still not anywhere near understanding what he has done just made things perfectly clear to me. I just had pictured years and

years of my life being lived like that. And I was like, no, I can't do it. Can't take any more of it, especially when he keeps focusing on being right every time. His mom can do no wrong. I'm always the aggressive, crazy, jealous, pathetic, overreactor. All of these people's opinions, advice and concerns were like a spark, like a wake up call that I really needed. Though I wish that I didn't get this far, but what's done is done. I'm staying with my sister right now. I brought my dog with me as well. He sent me his last message telling me I'm the one choosing to end what we had together, but I believe it's the other way around, especially with how he keeps making his mom the victim in this situation.

Yeah. I mean, given her description, prior to you reading that, I thought, I don't know what the answer is given what I think is happening. Again, I really love to hear the husband and the mom's perspective, but it's hard to spin those details in a positive way, threatening to call the cops, insisting that you come, the husband not alerting her until they're at the airport, that she's coming on a trip with just the two of them. Because, right, wasn't it just a trip for the two of them? Yeah. It wasn't like a big family thing and she was just not wanting the mom there. It was the two of them. And who does that? It's certainly not typical. I was thinking, unless you go to a lot of therapy, the three of them,

which doesn't usually happen, then either, I don't know, it'd be a really tough thing given the husband's attitude. Now, could the husband have come around with a lot of therapy and a lot of work eventually to at least not trounce on her in the process? Yeah. But to extract himself from what very well could be a lifetime of... Because the thing that people need to understand about these situations is, because often people, like I said, will just say, we'll just draw a boundary. Well, if you've been abused your whole life and denied your attachment needs from your parents, your entire life, not like just for a period like literally since you were a toddler or preschool age, although you have a desperate need for that

relationship to finally work and it's almost impossible to give up that hope. I can't tell you how many clients I've worked with that are, they're 40 years old and they're in the throes of still being abused by their parents and we will agree and I will be very adamant that what they're going through is abusive. And they will say, eventually I get it, but I still want that connection. I still think maybe it could be there and they're not wrong, but from the outside, it's like, well, there are plenty of other people you could be close to. Why those people? But our parents hold a lot of tremendous weight, particularly when you're denied that growing up. When you're given enough love growing up, then you can draw

boundaries with your parents because you're not all in this constant desperation of trying to get close to. Could the husband have learned that and said, okay, I'm on my journey. I don't need to crap all over my wife in order for, that was a weird way of putting it, but to be bad to her and drag her in. Because what's happening is the wife is being indoctrinated into their mini cults, essentially, and she's bumping up against the rules and the indoctrination and she's at the door of Scientology or whatever. And she's like, I don't want this. And they're like, well, because you're stupid or there's something wrong with you. Cult think is a very weird phenomenon and it's hurtful, of course, but I don't know any other way out of it,

given her description other than to, you know, maybe cut ties. I don't know. Yeah. Well, and I'm wondering, and I know gaslighting is like very overused these days, but just based on her description of how he's flipping the script on her and she's almost, she's like, what did she say? I feel like I'm losing my sanity. I'm always the crazy, aggressive, jealous, pathetic overreactor. And I'm wondering like, is he doing that to her because of the abuse that he's gone through and he doesn't even realize that he's then being an abuser? Yeah, I mean, well, so there's two thoughts. One, yes. And this is an example of the correct usage of gaslighting potentially, in that it's ongoing, it's denying, she's starting to,

you know, there's a campaign afoot by the mom, son, team to get her to believe things that no one would believe and to make her out to be like, there's something wrong with you. We all agree, there's something wrong with you. And, you know, it starts to get under your skin. Is there something wrong with me? And she even said like, I apologize for the way I reacted. I'm like, I don't, it's at least in your description aside from ridiculing her for coloring your hair purple. But so, yeah, I mean, that's part of it. But the other part of it that I think, and of course, there's no data to demonstrate this possibility, but I wouldn't be surprised if she also had at least some elements of the mother's personality because the son was

attracted to her or some elements of like, easy victim order, something's going on, you know, because the fact that it's taken her this long to see what's happening, you know, like, how, how do you not see that dynamic and how, how weird it was, you know, and to, to, because they're married, right? They got married. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, presumably it's been a number of years and, you know, all those decisions you make. So who knows? Again, she could be totally level headed, but I wouldn't be surprised if she didn't have some unhingedness similarly to the mom. Not that she's wrong for drawing, you know, a boundary with everything, but that would just be a question I would have. Yeah, definitely curious. I don't blame her for her reaction either. I would have,

I would have ran out of that airport. I would have been so mad. So I think she's kind of stuck in a sticky situation. And I kind of, I really do agree. Like how did it get this far? Because you're in law or like your mother-in-law competing with you. That's just a weird dynamic. Or trying to insert herself in your relationship. That would, that would be very difficult for me. So at least she's getting out. There's a positive update. Sounds like hopefully things will move forward. Yeah. Hi, Jan from Toyota speaking. Jan, I heard it's a good time to buy Toyota. Sure is. From now until April 4th, you can shop all your favorites like Corolla, RAV4, Sequoia and more. Imagine yourself in a new tundra where you stop by the home improvement store

and finally build that tree house you promised your daughter. Sarah, when did you hop on the call? Hi, dad. Mom said you were taking too long on the phone. Toyota, let's go places. See your participating Toyota dealer for details. Dealer inventory may vary. Okay. So this next one is from a subreddit called Legal Advice. And it's a little interesting. It's from Connecticut. Daughter is suspended from school for two weeks and school will only let her back if she gets unnecessary therapy. Please help. My daughter is six and just started first grade. The school brought in a wildlife instructor to show them some animals. My daughter hates snakes. And that was one of the animals they brought. The instructor told her to touch the snake.

She said no. The teacher also told her to touch the snake. She said no again. Both the instructor and the teacher began pressuring her to touch the snake and told her they wouldn't move on until she did. She started crying and ran out of the classroom into the hallway. She stayed in the hall just outside the door. This is the story from the teacher FYI. So I know my daughter isn't lying or exaggerating. I got called into school and the principal said that running out of class without permission is an automatic two week suspension. When I heard the story, I asked why they just didn't let her not touch the snake. It seems to me that she had a fairly expected reaction for a six year old in that situation. They said that they were doing

exposure therapy and were working to make sure she got over her, quote, irrational fears. I asked if there was any way that they could change the suspension since I can't afford unexpected childcare for two weeks. They said that they would waive it if I could show proof of her getting therapy for her fear of snakes. Frankly, I can't afford therapy. And even if I could, there are many things that my daughter could make better use of that than therapy for a fear of snakes when we live in a city and rarely encounter snakes. I'm furious with the school and also at a loss. Can the school put her through, quote, exposure therapy without my permission? Would a lawyer help me get her back into school? Are there any remedies here? Please help.

My God, so many. No, to the whole thing. Side note, I look at Reddit a lot as well, and there's this subreddit. I don't know which one, but I subscribed to a lot of cute animal subreddits. There's an A1AWW and Brain Bleach. I think it's another one or something. There's often cute things. And then every once in a while, there's a snake. And I'm not scared of snakes, but I don't consider, fine, snakes can exist in lizards and they're fine, but I do not consider them to be cute to me. I guess other people do. And when I see it, I'm always kind of like, oh, I'm expecting to see a cute seal or something or a puppy and then there's a snake. So I can relate to the kid on some level. So there's that.

One is that, no, schools cannot provide exposure therapy, and that is not how you do exposure therapy. Now, could she, if she wanted to, the child, engage in exposure therapy with a trained professional to reduce her fear of snakes? Yeah. I mean, it's a very high chance of working exposure therapy with phobias. I do that work. I've done it on myself to a good effect. And it's science. It works. But the key is that you need a qualified professional and you need a client that wants it. We don't do exposure therapy to people. Like if I see someone that's afraid of snakes, even though I'm qualified, I don't walk up to them at the pet store and just start making them go through exposure therapy. That's a criminal on some level, unethical,

at the very least. So a school doing that, one, two, she's six. So even if you had some stupid notion that somehow you are trying to help a child, she's six, three, there's no need for her to be not afraid of snakes because they're not in your life. If she was afraid of pencils or chalkboards or teachers, then okay, maybe, but again, you still wouldn't make someone do it. But people can be afraid of snakes and live a perfectly happy life. They just don't go to the zoo and they don't subscribe to subreddit. So that's fine. And then to suspend her, I mean, a six-year-old baby. You know, if you're 13 and you're being a little jerkface and you run out of the room, out of defiance, I guess, but you're being... So yeah, I'm not a legal expert, but I, as a

layperson, would imagine that this is a massive lawsuit. The damage is done to a child. You would find... It would be easy to find an expert witness like myself to say what they did actually made it worse and is absolutely traumatizing to its child and to go to overstep their bounds regarding heading into clinical work is akin to someone prescribing Ritalin without being a physician. You're not a clinician, so stay in your lane. Yeah, there's so... She could get millions from that school district for what they did, not just getting her back in school, but in terms of what to do, I mean, I've been a part of so many fights between parents and schools and it's hard to navigate that because it's such a... You got not only the teachers, but the administrators and

their lawyers and sometimes it's like just an immovable object trying to get a school to chase their way. Now, maybe if you go above her head and you just say the scenario, I would hope that you would get some disgust from upper administration. I don't know, but if I were her friend, I wouldn't know what to tell her because you get a lawyer and you go down that road and it... That could take years to work out. Meanwhile, your kid needs to be in school and what do you do? That's tough. Can you switch her to a different teacher? That'd be my first thought. You are so good, so there is an update on this one. And you hit... I'm sitting here, I'm smirking, I'm like, oh my god, you got it all right, nail on the head. But yeah, I think I'd

be in that boat too, where it's like, definitely get a lawyer, but then what do you do in the meantime? She can't just be out of school for weeks, months, potentially a year. So the update goes, after I read everything, I called and emailed the superintendent describing what had happened. I got a call back almost immediately. And after I explained the situation, the superintendent told me that she had to call the principal, but there was no way my daughter was suspended for two weeks. Got a call about an hour later, letting me know that my daughter could come back to school the next day, but would be placed in a different classroom. I received apologies from the district and from the principal himself, though I figure that's probably not a genuine apology, but whatever.

Thanks for the help. Ah, well, success. Success. I think she let him off. Happy ending. I thought after the last one, I thought these were all going to be bummer stories, but that's a happy ending for sure. That is one. And I think it is really crazy, like you said, one of the top comments on the original post was, ask them whose license they were practicing exposure therapy under and for a copy of that person's license and liability insurance. And someone else goes, frankly, you could argue that their negligent exposure therapy has actually exacerbated her fear of snakes, resulting in a need for therapy. And then you may actually have a case for damages against the school, which is just what you said, because

a wildlife instructor and a teacher are certainly not qualified. I mean, well, even if they were, that's not how you do it. You don't force people into exposure therapy. In that way, you would absolutely never force someone into it. Yeah. I mean, when I do exposure therapy, there's months of prep that we will go through, but sometimes potentially years. If it's childhood abuse and extensive trauma, the prep before exposure therapy can take years. It's very, very delicate work. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I even remember in my abnormal psychology class, I think the example in the video was exposure therapy for fear of snakes. And I mean, if this, like the person in this example, you couldn't even say the word snake

without her absolutely breaking down, crying. It was just so debilitating for her. And so kind of like you said, like this girl doesn't really need it. She doesn't see snakes. She doesn't live in an area with snakes. It's not impacting her occupations, her day-to-day life. So it's like, why put her through that? Yeah. Well, I'm glad there's a happy ending. Yes, exactly. Gotta walk the dogs, school drop-off, meetings from 10 to 3, take kids to soccer practice, then there goes the extra time for a jog. That's okay. Maybe next week. When everyone else relies on you, it's easy to put your needs last.

Therapy is a dedicated time to focus on what you need to be happy. So you can show up for yourself the way you do for others. BetterHelp offers convenient online therapy on your schedule. It's the same professional service you'd get from an in-person therapist, but with the option to communicate when and how you want, by chat, phone, or video call. Go to their site and fill out a brief questionnaire to get matched with a licensed therapist, and switch therapists anytime for no additional charge. Find more balance with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com today to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp.com.

Up next, wife is considering leaving me over difference of opinions. My wife, 29 female, is saying she isn't sure if she wants to stay with me after this. I, 32 male, grew up with a stay-at-home mom, and honestly, I think more kids deserve to. When I was dating my now wife, I told her this. She told me she never wanted to do that because she worked very hard to get her job, and if that was a deal-breaker, we should call it off now. I thought about it, but decided no, I didn't want to call it off. We got married three years ago. Well, we did discuss a compromise, and since her company gives good maternity leave, for the U.S. anyways, and with vacation time saved up, she would be able to take a year off.

I thought within that timeframe, I could convince her it would be better to quit and stay home. We were about to stop her birth control and start trying, and I mentioned exactly that. My wife was upset. She said she made it clear while we were dating, she never planned to do that, and the fact I thought that I could manipulate her otherwise was upsetting. I said I couldn't help but feel like she was being selfish by not putting kids before her job. She said, this is the part I love, she said if it was so important, why didn't I quit? She makes more money than me anyways. That's always been a bit of a sore spot for me, and just repeated, and I just repeated that she was being selfish.

Oh my god. She said the only person being selfish was me, but not to worry about it. I wasn't sure what that was supposed to mean, but we stopped talking then. Yesterday, she said she was going to stay on her birth control, and she needed time to consider if she wanted to stay married to someone who misled her by saying it wasn't an issue, then trying to force the subject later. She left and is staying with her brother's family. How can I talk to her so she'll see that I can't help but be disappointed? She isn't even willing to consider staying home.

I mean, that one just speaks for itself. I don't know if I have to say anything in response other than the fact that he's a misogynistic sexist a-hole, and he needs to go to a lot of therapy. He's a victim of our society and his family's ideas of gender. There's obviously nothing wrong with wanting that kind of life, but you want to find someone that also wants that. There's a lid for every pot. There's a there's a stay-at-home mom for every misogynist. No, just joking. They're not saying it being a stay-at-home mom, but yeah, I mean, there's so many layers to that because I'm thinking, well, maybe he earns more than her. That gives no justification

over this crap, but then she says she earns more than him. I know. That's the kicker. Are you kidding me? I'm frustrated personally because I've run into this and different shades of misogyny and sexism my entire life. Also, in my office, I'll never forget this, one of the very early couples I worked with 20 years ago or something. Both the parents worked in a nutshell. The wife was getting pretty depressed and overwhelmed with taking care of the kids, doing all the chores, and he would come home and just chill and play video games or something. We talked about it. It's a common conversation I'll have with heterosexual couples. I laid it all out logically, man to man. I'm like, hey, dude,

I get it, but there's a fairness to this. So 50-50, maybe you do different chores, but the amount of effort and time spent on childbearing and chores should be 50-50. You both work 40 hours a week. It took me a while to convince him of these obvious principles of fairness, but eventually we got there. Me and the wife were being nice to him, trying to lead him down the road and eventually got him to that place. Then I thought, okay, we've established it. He agrees. He gets it. We're good. Then nothing changed. Then we proceeded to have many, many sessions after that where he just refused to do anything about it. Then eventually we got to this point where he just said, he just admitted, he's like, yeah, I get it.

I totally understand your logic, but I'm not going to do that. It's just not going to happen. Not like he wasn't angry. He wasn't defensive. I think essentially what he was saying was my idea of masculinity is such that it's just never going to happen. I wanted to throw him out of a window. There are a few moments where I will feel that way about a client. I've had thousands of clients. Even when you were talking about that wife with the husband and the mom, I have a warmth in my heart for the mom, because she probably went through very, very similar things when she was growing up. You just can't imagine what she must have gone through as a justifier of behavior,

but I could see having warmth for that. There's something about sexism and misogyny, because it's the foundation of all sorts of evils of our world, racism and ableism and ageism and all the prom classism. The oppression of whole groups of people for centuries just enrages me. Hearing this guy, I'm just like, and what a smart move that life does. I'm going back in my birth control, because I've got some things to think about here. I detect that, because it'd be one thing if he was like, I just really wanted that lifestyle, and I thought I gave it up, but I just really want it. I was trying to convince her, but I don't have any grounds to say this, because one, why? And two, we've already been over this

before, and I did agree. But I don't know, I just really want it. It's weird, but fine. But he's still convinced that she's unreasonable. Yeah, it's selfish. And you would find so many people that would agree with him. There's whole sections of the Senate that would agree with him. And that's the problem. If you have one weirdo on your block that has some bizarre point of view, fine. I will emotionally just be like, well, okay. But when you have a large percentage of our country who believes this kind of stuff, and it results in active harm to half of our population, mainly women, I just, it boils to my blood. So I want to, yeah, I want to throw that guy out of the window similarly.

Well, and he does give an update too. And it's like, update, I'm not a misogynist. My opinion on a mother staying home might not be popular, but it doesn't make it wrong. I did not try to manipulate my wife. I was merely hopeful she'd come around to the idea. I don't know why people are writing their own narrative on this. As for why I don't quit, it's not generally acceptable in our area to be a stay-at-home dad, which just societal norms. Like, doesn't mean that's what you have to do, but this one reminded me a lot of, you did a reaction video to a 90 day fiance episode, Ed and Rose. And Ed kind of kept it under wraps that he wanted a vasectomy and didn't want any more kids, even though he knew that Rose did. And I mean, he flew all the way to the Philippines

before even sharing this, you know, with her. And so I think like, at least from what I've seen on Reddit and things like that, it, it seems kind of like it's not out of the realm for people to do this. And they kind of sit on these big bombshells in hopes that their partner will come around or just get over it. Or in her case, like, it's a good thing he said his feelings upfront before she did get pregnant and was like, baby trapped in a sentence and like really locked in. Yeah. Yeah. Like I said, he's a victim of sexism himself in a very acute way. He could literally lose his, the love of his life because he was brainwashed into a system of thinking that's ruining his life. It's, you know, he's not the, he didn't invent this idea. He was indoctrinated into

it and he's going to suffer. Well, everyone's suffering, but ultimately you might be him in the end. Yeah. Yeah, it is crazy. Even, I mean, I come across so many posts where the dad will write in and he's, they use, they use the word baby sat. I was babysitting my kids. I babysat my kid and it's like, or I was helping with the parenting. Yeah. And like even my brother, like my brother and his wife take on very active parenting roles. It's 50-50. I mean, they both get home from work and it's everything's 50-50, which is how it should be in my opinion. And I remember like early on, like he would watch the baby and she would go out and do girls nights and things like that. And there it was these comments of like, Oh my God, Matt is so great. Matt, you just takes

on such a big role in parenting. And it's like, no, like the bar is so low because what Matt's doing is like, that's the bare minimum that you should expect from a partner before you have kids with them. Like just mind blowing that we're still kind of at this backwards way of thinking about this. Yeah. And just as an asterisk to this whole thing, in case anyone misunderstands what I'm saying anyway, which is that if it's about flexibility and freedom. So if you want that lifestyle, then you find someone that also wants that lifestyle. And as long as those people want it based on their own needs, rather than wanting it based on brainwashing, then I'm fine with it. We could have someone that does 90% of the parenting and stays at home.

And that's fine as long as they're doing it voluntarily without being brainwashed into it. So there's a lot of different configurations to family, but you have to have volitional control and freedom to make a choice. That's my point. Yeah, exactly. And I mean, being a stay-at-home mom is no easy feat. A stay-at-home parent, I mean, it's a tough gig. You're on the clock 24 seven. I think the studies that have come out where it's like articles, opinion pieces, probably too. But it's like, if you were going to pay a stay-at-home mom, what they're actually doing and what they're worth, it's over six figures and blah, blah, blah. So I completely agree. It's not a problem that if you do want to do that, but it should be your

choice or you should find a partner that wants that with you because they're out there. I have friends that dream of being a stay-at-home mom and they want to go to yoga and bar classes and then just watch their kids and there's nothing wrong with that, but make sure it's mutual. Okay, up next. I lost him. Come back. Yeah, so can we actually include that in the recording? I think that'd be hilarious. Yeah, absolutely. I just like went on, I was like out of the corner of my eye, I was like, wait, he's gone. No. Yeah, so I think one of us was in the middle of a sentence and this loud explosion goes off down

the street and everything in the house goes dark and I'm like, did I blow a fuse or something? And then I hear another loud explosion and then another loud explosion was a transformer because it's really windy right now. That's not usually windy in Seattle. So there's a little bit more than what, and I'm guessing a branch hit a transformer or a power line or something. And so everything was off and I suddenly realized that without power or the internet, I have nothing to do. So I took a nap and then the power came back on after a 40-minute nap and I, now we're back here. So here we are. No, no problem. I would have been scared shitless. I don't know what I would have done in your situation. And you never know these days with

the state of our world. So side, we're back. So am I the asshole for not wanting to celebrate my mom on my birthday? I have three siblings between the ages of 10 and 18. I'm the oldest, fourth at 25. Every year on every single one of our birthdays, we're expected to celebrate my mom as well. We've done it since we were little. It was taught to me as quote, giving thanks for caring plus giving birth to us, which I'm all for. I am grateful as we wouldn't be here without her. The issue is though, it's become less of our birthday and more so an anniversary for the day our mom give birth. Every year on our birthday, our mom gets gifts too. As we got older, we're now expected to get her monetary gifts and not cards or homemade stuff. Just recently,

was my birthday and I was gifted some much needed clothes and dishware for my new apartment. My dad, however, got my mom a new MacBook computer. My siblings all got her gifts too. My youngest brother isn't expected to give much, but my 16 year old sister and 18 year old second brother work so they're expected to give gifts too. My sister pulled me aside before my birthday and said she was sorry she couldn't get me much. She got me a sweater. I love it. And that she wanted to get me more, but our mom was pressuring her to get a certain necklace for her. Apparently, my mom had been dropping hints for months and my sister was worried our mom would be upset and feel underappreciated if she didn't get it. I asked how much it was and my sister said it was

$300. I honestly lost it on our mom and chewed into her later that afternoon when my mom opened her gifts after me. I think she's ridiculous for even wanting my sister to spend so much on a gift. Mom started crying and my dad kicked me out. Mom won't answer calls, but my aunt, mom's sister, called and said I was a piece of shit for not respecting my mother and that I'm a selfish, narcissist child for being jealous of the gifts my mom got. I thought I was in the right, but now I don't know. It's been over two weeks and my mom won't answer my calls. She's been posting on Facebook inspirational quotes about letting go of toxicity in your life, how blood doesn't always equal family, and how hard it is to be a mother. Several family members,

aunt, grandma, uncle and two of my cousins are replying to the post and are very obviously directing vague comments at me about being a horrible daughter. I don't know what to think now because of how many people are on her side. Yeah, I'll ask to say, one, it's still windy and I hope the power doesn't go out. Two, fingers crossed. Yeah, so the beginning of the narrative, I was like, well, that's a nice tradition to honor your mom. She went through a lot at that time and I've never heard of that before, but it's kind of nice. I'm in a tight family and so we celebrate a lot of things and I could see that being really fun. But I did have this question because the question is, because I saw it leading in this

direction, she wasn't happy about it. So I thought, because for me, I was raised well enough that if my mom insisted on celebrating also and getting gifts also, I would have no problem with that because I don't have any deficit in attention and love and respect. But if I had a lot of deficits in those areas, then it would bother me because it's a symbol of yet again, I'm not getting my needs met and no one cares about me or someone else's needs are being or eclipsing mine. And so that was my first assumption was like, she's not giving any hints of childhood problems or relationship problems in the family. But to be upset about that, especially at the age of 25, it's like, you're not 13, it's like,

you're 25. There's a time when you get old enough where birthdays are just another day and I celebrate my birthday, but I certainly don't expect other people to care about my birthday. So then we get into what actually happened. And that tells me that's a very small tip of a very large iceberg of ongoing problems and a lot of issues and a lot of side-taking because of similar to an investment we were saying earlier. I mean, I don't know, but I'm just trying to think if something like that happened in my family, no one would rally on one side. People would probably just be like, well,

I don't know, I can kind of see both sides. So the fact that she posted on Facebook, I mean, it's like, is she 13? And the mom, and so not to denigrate 13-year-olds, but so yeah, what it tells me is that the mom has issues and has always had issues and the family has issues and has always had issues. And we have knowledge of family systems that usually show that someone speaks up for the family. If there's an underlying problem and no one is talking about it, often subconsciously the system will actually elect someone to be the truth teller or to be the person that tries to push the family to a different level of functioning. It doesn't always work and without

guidance from a family therapist. But I would suspect, given that people are so afraid of breaking from the mom's, I don't know, indoctrination of what the, how do I put it? It's hard to know exactly what's going on, but it seems like the emotional landscape is that she is the center of everything. And if you break from that, then there will be consequences from her or others such that people don't even want to not question that. And if someone questions it, then it becomes very threatening. And so she questioned it. And often this is how it goes. It's like the rebel or the truth teller or the scapegoat will speak up and it's not,

doesn't usually go well. They usually just explode. And they almost will self-sabotage because if she had taken the mama's side and said, Hey, mom, here's my feelings. But what it sounds like is she just went off on her in front of a crowd and was probably putting her down, which we would understand given her narrative. But at the same time, if you're trying to move the family to a different space, given how sort of entrenched this mom is on a variety of behaviors, just pointing something out that seems quite obvious to you and hoping that she'll go, You know what? You're right. I've been wrong my whole life. That's not likely to happen. Yeah. And that's why often these people are elected to be these people because

the chance of them self-sabotaging and the way that I think about it is that everyone is thinking what she said, but they can't really think it or deal with it or face it. So she's elected to speak for everyone. So she has everyone's voice in her head as she's screaming at the mom. And everyone gets a little bit of satisfaction from that without actually having to do anything about it. But she gets sacrificed on the crucifix because now everyone can point at her and say, there's something wrong with you. We reject you. You're the problem. And it's easier to reject her than the mom because she, the sister, is more reasonable and won't punish everyone and won't go on a campaign of control and enmeshment, whereas the mom will. And so it's

the solution that provides some need, sacrifices her, but brings everything back to balance again. And it gives someone else to talk about because now the sister is so noticeably, I don't know, upset or something and hostile that they don't have to face the fact that mom has a problem that we've always been dealing with, but we have no way of changing because mom is so entrenched. So, but we can yell at sister and I see this all the time. Yeah, it's tough. I think the whole concept is weird to me. I think it's so goofy. I think it's cute if the husband were to get her small gifts, like on the kids' birthday, as like a thanks, love you, love our family, blah, blah, blah, like flowers or, you know, a small token of a love, whatever that looks like,

but to then force your kids up until now 25, the oldest, to get you expensive, monetary things. It's not like she said, not cute homemade cards anymore and not crafts and whatever. It's a $300 necklace from her 16 year old, which the 16 year old is just getting a job. It's probably a retail job that pays nothing and she should be saving money for college or whatever else she wants to buy, not $300 necklaces for mom. And so to me, I'm like, this lady is a little unhinged and then everyone else coming at her too. There's a subreddit called just no mother-in-law and so it's a place for people to share about their bad experiences with moms or mother-in-laws and they have a term there and they call it, you typically see it associated with moms that they'll be like,

my mom is a narcissist and we got into this fight and then cue the flying monkeys. And I'm not sure where that term came from. Oh, maybe was there the Oz? Was there Oz? Is the wicked witch of the West had flying monkeys that fought for her? So that would be the family, the cue the flying monkeys. Yes. And so that's what I see happening here with everyone getting involved, aunt, grandma, uncle, two cousins. And just like the mom's immaturity to take this to Facebook versus giving your child room to have a conversation with you is just like, lady, what are you doing? Let's bring it back down to earth here. Let's come out. Yeah, that's really upsetting. And it also makes me think that the mom has been indoctrinated into our materialistic society

and might actually, like, I'm just going to take a guess and say that the mom's childhood had some abuse and trauma related to her birthday parties. I'm just going to take a guess on that. I could see that. That she was denied birthday parties or she was the black sheep of the family and she never got any good gifts. So because when I hear about someone being that materialistic and that weird about gifts and monetary value from a child, I think that person grew up with neglect and they saw maybe their siblings getting gifts and they sort of locked into gift value as this evidence of worth when, of course, that wasn't really what the child wanted was love and attention and safety. Yeah, this one's crazy. The top comment on it, not the asshole. It was her choice to carry

four children and give birth to them. Your mother sounds self-centered and selfish. And then someone else goes, for once, OP's mother is perfectly correct. Remove toxicity from your life. Dear OP, blood doesn't equal family. Yeah, tough. But like you said earlier, I mean, we all have these these draws, this need or want to remain connected to our birth families and sometimes it is hard to let go despite having unhealthy relationships. And I will say that that one sounds fixable with family therapy. I didn't hear anything there that gave me grave concern. I mean, there's an issue, but I could see the mom given her traumas actually feeling very lonely and maybe by her own doing and still in this mode of like, well, if people buy me expensive gifts

that are beyond their capabilities to some extent, that means they love me and I don't feel loved by anyone, including my own daughters. Again, it doesn't make anything right. But I wonder if she were in therapy and a therapist said that to her. I'm just going to take a guess and say that she would sob like a child. And maybe that would be the help that the whole family would need. So this attitude of just like, we'll screw her and she is the A-hole or whatever. I find to be fine for Reddit, but not really like a workable solution in real life. Yeah, definitely. And I could see what you're saying too, where like even O.P., our original poster who wrote in, she kind of says even like, I'm all for being grateful for her.

Like we wouldn't be here without her. But the issue is it's become less about our birthday and like more about the mom. And then I think the bigger problem that she kind of gets to is the fact that it's now more monetary gifts and not just cards or homemade stuff or nice gestures. So I think it could definitely be mendable if the mom will get off stupid Facebook and see a therapist. Yeah. And I just have to say, you know, I can't remember the exact wording of her original post, the mom, but there's so much to that going on, this claim of narcissism and toxicity and being gaslit. Like I don't know the percentage, but there's a pretty high percentage that those individuals are actually in the wrong and they're just

throwing those words around as a way of justifying themselves. Yeah, maybe a little projection even or whatever that looks like. When everyone else is relying on you, it's easy to put your needs last. BetterHelp connects you with a licensed therapist online so you can show up for yourself the way you do for others. Find more balance with BetterHelp. Visit BetterHelp.com today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHELP.com. Okay, moving along. Am I the asshole for expecting my husband to pay for the tools my daughter used for the homemade necklace he threw away? Kind of a wordy title.

But essentially husband threw out tools that the daughter used to make a homemade gift for her. My husband and I have disagreements from time to time. Nothing major, just normal stuff. He has a habit of throwing out something of mine as a way to quote, teach me a lesson whenever he's upset with me after an argument. This time he threw out the handmade necklace my daughter, 13, made for me herself on Mother's Day. The argument was about him wanting to hang out with his buddies on the day of my mom's surgery. I wanted him to stay home and be with our daughter, but he refused. Yesterday I found out he threw out the necklace and after he admitted to what he did, I went off on him and also told him that this necklace was

special to me and that my daughter spent so much time and effort to make it. She comforted me, then told me she'd make an identical one for me if I buy her the tools. I went to my husband and told him I was expecting him to cough up the money to pay for the tools so my daughter could make me a similar necklace. He laughed and said that I was delusional to expect him to pay when I haven't even apologized for my part of the argument. But I felt like I had nothing to apologize for and that yes, he should stay home for a family emergency. He said, quote, why don't you have one of your friends come stay with Chloe? Oh yes, you don't have any. This pissed me off, but he said he wouldn't pay, but I told him that our daughter knew what he did,

which set him off saying I was trying to turn our daughter against him and brainwash her into thinking he's the bad guy in this scenario. I told him I'm still expecting for him to pay, but he's now saying that I'm ganging up on him with our daughter. Well, so if we believe the narrative and we believe that there's nothing that would represent her side in what I'm guessing is an ongoing conflict between two of them, then he's a psychopath and there's no cure to that. So that's my answer if that's true. If he's not a psychopath, which I can't know, but would assume he's not because it's a pretty rare condition, then what I'm hearing is a very typical person who is in the midst of a conflict

taking no responsibility for their side and vilifying their partner. I hear this all the time in my office and these kinds of stories aren't uncommon and I'll hear them and I'll, if I was an inexperienced therapist, I would be like, oh my God, but I've been around the block enough times that if I talk to him, he would say like, no, no, no. This happened and that happened and this happened. Now, I wouldn't believe him either, but what I hear is troubling because it sounds like, can we imagine that this is the first fight they've been in in the past couple years? No, this is an ongoing problem between the two of them, probably lots of conflict. It sounds like there's a lot of contempt going both directions. There's been a degradation of love.

There's been a, they're involving the daughter that I don't know how much he is, but at least she is. Sounds like he is. I don't know. So when I hear that, I don't think like, no, he's the A-hole. I just think like, God help that kid because the two of them are at each other's throats and, because it'd be one thing if she said, here's my situation and I was out of line here and there. And just so everyone knows, I'm not just using Reddit as a some sort of guide. I mean, I'm going to therapy or I'm really trying to figure out what's wrong with my, if we heard something like that, I would be like, okay, but I get the impression like, they're totally fused in this conflict. They have no way of seeing their way through it.

They aren't reaching out for objective help and they just rant online and get tons of support to back them up. And then they're just right back into the ring and swinging emotional punches at each other. And that makes me kind of depressed about this OP. So that's what I have to say. Well, and it's so, it's, this one would just kind of blew me away because the first sentence is, we have disagreements from time to time, nothing major, just normal stuff. But then the next line is, he has a habit of throwing out something of mine as a way to teach me a lesson, which to me, I'm just like, if that's true, yeah, that's, that's awful. I mean, that's in line with the misogyny and paternalism, particularly that we were talking about earlier.

But again, who knows what he would say, you know, he can say something like, there were two times where I lost my temper. Yes. And it was wrong that, you know, who knows what he gets. Now, he, like I said, he couldn't be a psychopath or an abusive individual who literally does that, you know, it's not out of the realm of possibility. But I don't know, when I, when I read that story, I'm just like, I would need to know more information before I just said anything. Have you had, because to me, I hear that and I'm like, this sounds like such an extreme punishment to her or like almost abuse or like it kind of is treading towards that line of like, this is so manipulative to like hurt someone in this way.

I don't know. I just like, it gives me the worst feelings ever. So I'm like, I mean, if it's real, but yeah, I don't, I wouldn't put money on that being the accurate conceptualization, if we were to really know what happened, you know, like how many people think, you know, they're awful to their partner. And then their partner is like scared or whatever, or just resorts to the silent treatment, you know, sort of retreats and puts themselves, you know, in the bathroom and locks the door or something. And it wouldn't be unusual for that person, that other person on the outside of the bathroom door to feel like, oh, he's doing this to punish me. He always punishes me by doing, you know, it's like, that's not,

people will have very odd takes on things. And so unless she said in the narrative, something like, he literally told me yesterday that he threw this away to punish me, quote, unquote, or something, even then I'd be like, no, but that's, that's the way she's interpreting his behavior. Although it's hard to know what possible justification there would be for throwing away a daughter's, you know, necklace or bracelet or whatever. But you know, like I said, I've been around the block enough times to know that there's a lot of possibilities here. I'm sure from their story, they're both, well, no, I don't, I don't can't be sure, but I would take a guess and say that based on that, her story that they both have been struggling a lot and they hate each other.

And they see each other in very negative ways and they are fighting very frequently. Yeah, it seems like there's definitely like a lot of contempt here. Yeah. One of the top comments is you are adults, there should not be any punishment for disagreements. This is a big red flag suggesting you have no friends and are isolated as a joke or dig is also a red flag. And so OP responds to that comment and goes, this is something I've brought up counseling and he said that I'm the one who needs counseling, not him. This was hurtful because I was open and wanted to reach a solution, but he doesn't seem willing. Yeah, you know, we're getting more into him being perhaps more of a problem. Hard to know,

though. Yeah, still one sided. Yeah. And certainly a lot of men are therapy phobic. You know, men are much, she's no and courage and they're terrified of therapy and talking about their feelings. So yeah, I mean, it's yeah, certainly it doesn't look good. And there's a possibility that there's something really awful going on towards her. But I don't know. Yeah. Have you ever told a couple like, I think you should be done? Like, have you ever gotten to that point like where it's just so bad you're like? No, we're trained specifically to not do that. And in the beginning of my practice, I would have opinions, you know, I might like secretly think something along those lines. But over time, I learned through a lot of experience that

paradigm of being able to evaluate that from the outside is a wrong head. People are in love for, you know, there are reasons and it's in their heart. People stay in relationships for their reasons. And they might not be my reasons, but they're theirs. And it's, you know, there's an incredible level of hubris by anyone, I would argue, but particularly by a couple therapists to claim that they would know the answer to that question. I've seen people in horrifically abusive relationships who, you know, I might secretly wish the victim believe, but they continue to engage in various forms of therapy, including the abuser. And over time, they improve things. And it's not perfect, but it's workable. And it's important to them. So

what do I know? You know, I'm always here to help people. And I will ask, you know, where are we in terms of, are we heading towards improving the relationship? Or are we heading towards breaking up? And yeah, I'll have those conversations with them. But I gave up the notion that I somehow would know if someone should be with someone a long time ago. Gotta walk the dogs, school drop off, meetings from 10 to 3, take kids to soccer practice, then there goes the extra time for a jog. That's okay. Maybe next week. When everyone else relies on you, it's easy to put your needs last. Therapy is a dedicated time to focus on what you need to be happy. So you can show up for yourself the way you do for others.

BetterHelp offers convenient online therapy on your schedule. It's the same professional service you'd get from an in-person therapist, but with the option to communicate when and how you want, by chat, phone, or video call. Go to their site and fill out a brief questionnaire to get matched with a licensed therapist and switch therapists anytime for no additional charge. Find more balance with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com today to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp.com. So I have one last one for you. And this one's a heavy one. So those listening, if you don't want your day disrupted or you don't want a traumatic experience, because I did post it on my Instagram story and people were like, I wish I could unread that. I want to unsee that.

So this one's heavy. It does need a lot of trigger warnings, including sexual assaults, grooming, rape, I mean, everyone under the sun. So if you're not comfortable with those topics, this is your point of turning off the episode. My fiance dropped a bomb on me weeks before our wedding, completely lost and need advice. We started dating six years ago. She was 24 and I'm two years older. She was raised by her dad from the age of 13 after her mother dropped everything and moved to Canada to be with another man. She reconciled with her mother when she turned 20, but that's not related. I met her father a year into our relationship and we became friends and often went hiking and camping and

bonded really well. I loved him and considered him a second father figure to me. And when I was going through a tough financial patch in the midst of a COVID layoff in 2020, he came to me and wrote a large check and insisted that I take it and pay it back when I can. No one has ever done anything like that for me, not even my own parents. Thankfully, I found good work and paid him back the money in January and bought him a watch to even thank him. My relationship with the dad is very important to what's coming. During our six year relationship, myself and my fiance talked about everything, including questions about our exes and our first kiss and first time. She spoke openly about everything except her first time, which she said was something she

never wants to talk about and I respected that. In my mind, I always guessed it was an embarrassing mistake like a drunk prom night fling or such and didn't think much of it. I proposed to her last November. She said yes and we decided on a June wedding. A change happened to her. She seemed to be torn with some guilt and often seemed to be somewhere else when we were together. It was not all the time, but it was obvious to me that something has changed in the woman I knew for six years. I confided to my best friend and he said the way she acts is indicative of someone who cheated and was struggling with how to tell me. He pointed to a trip she took with her girlfriends to Nashville early 2020, which caused our only real fight because she would not pick up the phone or text me

that she was all right for a day and a half. He said something must have happened on that trip. I was devastated like never before. I became convinced that this is it and prepared to talk to her and give her a chance to tell me if she indeed cheated on me. I knew that I would not be able to forgive that and I intended not to lie or give her any hope that I would forgive and I only wanted to give her a chance to come clean. I asked her to come for breakfast because I wanted to talk to her in a safe, familiar environment. In hindsight, I wish I did not. We had the breakfast, she seemed nervous and we both felt that terrible things were about to come to the open. We then sat down and I began talking, told her that she was acting different since I

proposed to her, told her that I believe she has a terrible secret and that because she was a good person she was suffering, she seemed resigned as I talked and her facial expressions were agreeing to what I was saying. I then asked her to tell me if she cheated on me during that Nashville trip and let's see how we can deal with it and letting her know beforehand that there is no need to tamp down the act because a single kiss is as bad as sex and carries the same betrayal of trust as full-on sex. So better to come completely clean. That was the first time her expressions seemed to reject what I was saying and she replied that indeed she had a secret but she's not a cheater and never even flirted with another man since we became an item.

She said that she will tell me because she does not want to start our life together with a major secret but she made me promise to take the secret to the grave and to never act on it without her consent. She said if I acted on it on my own I would be betraying her and disrespecting her command of her own life. I was basically shaking at the moment but I swore an oath to never act on it whatever she was about to tell me. She told me that after her mom left her dad was depressed and got into heavy alcohol use and she too was struggling at school and her boyfriend broke up with her for one of her good friends and she felt rejected and humiliated and unwanted both by her mother and the boy she dated then. She said she began to go to her dad's

room at night. They would both cry then hug one another for comfort and fall asleep. Then one night something happened. She described it as quote we mutually started kissing and we made love. I chose not to interrupt her or try to try to correct her description and let her talk. She said that over the rest of the school year and whole summer she was in a quote relationship with her dad. She said it made them both feel happy and strong and continued to describe it as if she was talking about a normal loving man and woman relationship. Then she became pregnant by fall. She said it was a time of loss and horror but they managed to find a place that doesn't ask a lot of questions and got an abortion after she told the doctor the pregnancy was a

result of a relation with a boy close to her age at school. After the abortion her dad told her that what had happened between them was a huge mistake and that they were both broken and hurting. He quit drinking and they became a father daughter ever since and never spoke about that summer. He was always there for her. He stood by her in every aspect of her life and the beginning of her professional career and I know that she meant it because my entire time with that family he was perfectly supportive and protective father to her and he even did that whole thing where he took me aside on our first meeting and told me that if I ever hurt her I will be answering to him. It was corny but I knew it was coming from a loving place. Once she finished we sat there

staring at each other in silence for eternity. Then she stood up and said she will leave as it's my call whether to stay with her or leave quietly. I don't know why I let her leave the house because I was never in doubt that I will marry her and that none of what happened makes her a bad person at all. I was just in shock and that is why I let her leave. I called her that night told her I would never leave her but told her she needs to know that it was not a relationship or love making or any of that and that it was a crime against her even if she imagined that it was consensual. A teen that age can't possibly comprehend or consent. She said she respects my standpoint but whatever happened is in the past and there is no use in fighting definitions.

We agreed to forget about it and to continue preparations for our wedding and honeymoon. As the vents settled in my head I started thinking how can I ever deal with that dad again. He is in his late fifties and in good health always doing outdoor activities so it's not like he's 90 year old man who will not be around forever. If nothing unexpected happens then I will have to deal with him for the next 35 to 40 years and I don't know how to do that knowing what I know. That's not even the worst part. If we have little girls how am I ever going to let my daughter be near her grandfather or spends nights at his place or even leave her alone with him in our living room when he comes for lunch or such. I know he is someone who touched

and groomed and slept with a little girl, his own daughter. How am I going to predict my daughter or daughters from him for decades to come? I know that if I tell my fiance that we need to shut him out of our life it will be the end of us. She loves him more than I could dream she would ever love me and she completely forgave him and considers the matter a mutual mistake which is wrong. What should I do? I can't even talk to my best friend or anyone who knows us because I promised that might not even because I promised and they might even go to the cops to report that terrible crime and inflict immeasurable devastation on everyone. I'm open to all guidance, any advice please, anything. Thank you for reading.

Yeah, so for everyone out there listening take a deep breath, you know, you're safe. The people talking are relatively safe so there's no danger or emergency. So just check in with yourself about that. Last to say, and I've run into situations like this a number of times not only in my practice but primarily people emailing me. I've been podcasting for 14 years so, you know, and if you're a therapist, you know, and I'm always clear that I'm not providing therapy to people but you know, people have sort of these kinds of questions and last to say, so first off, of course, it's wrong what the father did. It's criminal, it's abusive, it's damaging, it's traumatic, it's despicable, it's disgusting for a reason,

it's one of the worst crimes you can commit, you know. There's a lot of ways to bond with your daughter. There's a lot of ways to connect with her. There's a lot of ways to make her feel better after a breakup and it was wrong in a thousand ways. And if he goes to prison, you know, I don't know how people feel about that but you know, that would be fine with me. And the OP should be absolutely concerned about not just his daughters, by the way, any of his kids regardless of gender around him. So yeah, absolutely. Have you said all that? Uh, some abusive relationships are complicated. So, you know, a lot of people when women like her, people like her, victims like her will talk with me about their narrative and they'll say,

you know, whenever I think about this or I tell other people or I read similar stories, there seems to be this vilification of the, you know, the older person like my dad. And what he did wasn't okay. You know, he shouldn't have done that. I was young but I don't really hate him. You know, I, it was wrong but I still want a relationship with him. I think he's changed. I think he's a good person. And in some ways, he's the one person that I felt like understood me and I know what happened was wrong but it's bigger than that. Our relationship was bigger than that. And I can't really even tell anyone, including therapists, about what went, what happened for me because I'm not allowed to like him. I'm not allowed to talk to him. People

think that I'm despicable for even talking with him. And so that aspect is an additional abuse to a victim, to deny her, her narrative or her development in terms of her understanding of herself as a victim or her own power in terms of how she wants to approach her life is us abusing her in a similar way. You know, she gets to decide how she wants to deal with this. She's the one who was victimized. She's the one who went through it and she gets to, she gets to define how that, how that goes down for the most part. Of course, when it comes to their kids and of course the husband, the boyfriend could say, I don't want to deal with them anymore because I can't look at them which is understandable. But so there are two possible futures.

One is that she eventually emerged, her emerging understanding happens over time that she was abused and it changes the narrative in her mind very drastically. You know, my co-host, Timberdo, who's been on the podcast for 14 years, went through a lot of therapy and later on in life, like maybe at the age of 35, suddenly realized that this sexual relationship he had when he was five years old with his babysitter, that she was a predator. But up until the age of 35, he thought it was this cool little thing that happened when he was five years old and that had to happen, that emerging understanding he had to go through himself and no one can dictate that for him. And now he sees it as completely abusive. He sees all the negative

effects that that had on him. Do you find that, I look at this situation too, I'm like, do you find that sometimes people have to do that in order to protect themselves? It's almost like a block from that trauma to try to protect themselves. Yeah, in the moment and that lingers, right? So in the moment, the abuse is happening and you have no way out of it. So one way sort of out of it is just to think that it's fine or good or preferred. All sorts of abuse are dealt with that way. In fact, that's the primary way that people deal with abuse is just to say, I deserved it or I asked for it or this is okay. This is normal. And that either gaslighting or self-inflicted gaslighting, it takes a while to deprogram one. So that's one possibility that

over time, she will have an emerging understanding of the damage that it did to her. But it's at her pace and the boyfriend should not be dictating that. No one can dictate that and certainly redditors shouldn't be dictating that. Yeah. I mean, the top comment on this one was very much so in support of therapy, it was, dude, you need professionals, not redditors. So yeah, good. There's an upside to that comment. Yeah. So that must have been the most upvoted one, which is good. And the other possibility of the future is that even though she's given a lot of opportunity and does grow and does heal, at the end of it, she still wants to be connected to him and still loves him. And in our society, we do not allow for that to happen. And so there's thousands,

if not millions of victims in the United States who have healed and grown. And we'll look back and say, that was wrong, what he did. I was 13. He was my father. And that was wrong 100%. But I think he's changed and he's very remorseful about it. And we have a good relationship in in spite of that. And that's another possibility. And the reason why I took all that time of caveatting everything until I said that point is because if I led with that point, people would think wrongly that somehow I'm supportive of those kinds of relationships. So that's why the first thing I said was, it's horrific. It's wrong. It's criminal. Because we have this black and white thinking about this kind of thing that negates the possibility of this happening. And I get it

because there's all sorts of silencing of human beings that makes it so that you have no idea that that even exists. But these human beings exist, people that have fond memories of their abuser and have even relationships currently with their abuser. And you can say for yourself that you would never do that. The boyfriend could say to himself, I hate that man. And if I see him, I'm going to punch him. And I think he would be justified. But you can't say to her, there's something wrong with you. And that's the problem is they'll say, you're disgusting or you're wrong. In his narrative, he's like, I went to her and said, he was a criminal. And it's like, and what he said wasn't wrong. I mean, it was criminal. It was abusive. But

there's this sort of crusade that people go on. And the damage is there. It's already done. And the victims get to decide what they do with it. Yeah. Well, and I think one of the other videos I saw you touch on trauma bonding too, and how trauma bonding is also one of those therapy terms that's kind of being misused in some stuff. And so just from what I know, this kind of seems like one of those situations where it could fit. And she still wants that relationship despite the abuse. And I can't imagine, it's a hard line where it's like, is it a trauma bond or is there a genuine father-daughter relationship now? And it's, there's no way, at least from my outsider,

non-therapist looking in, it's like, I just don't even know where to begin to differentiate that. And I don't know if in her eyes, you even could. You can usually with enough exploration. The idea is if you create enough safety for her self to emerge, then it will. You know, because with trauma bonding, it's Stockholm syndrome, it's the victim defending against the problem saying, I'm in love with my abuser, essentially. It's like easier that way. And so that you resort to that defense out of a sense of constant danger. And so that, that danger might linger for the rest of your life. But if you, and thus necessitate that defensive trauma bonding, but if you're given safety to say what you want, and that's experiential,

like you have to experience that often in therapy, where a therapist really spends a lot of time explicitly creating that safety for the person to say whatever they want and to feel whatever they want. And then the real her could emerge and say, oh my God, I was trauma bonding, or something like I said earlier, which is like, well, I'm starting to see like how screwed up it was. It wasn't a relationship. It was an abusive sexual rape of a child. But I still like him as my father. And honestly, if I went to him and said, you raped me, and what you did was wrong, I think he would agree with me and feel terribly remorseful for what he did. You know, again, there's also this confluence of pedophilia and

sadism and psychopathy. Again, I have to caveat this by saying that it's wrong to sexually abuse children under all circumstances. But there are people that have attractions that are criminal and abhorrent, but don't act on them. And they don't want to, and they have empathy. Or they act on them and feel terrible remorse about what they did. There are perhaps an equal number of people that have urges that are criminal that don't care about other people's human rights and will act on them and have no remorse. So there's those people. But just because you have this behavior doesn't mean that he has no empathy. It doesn't mean that he doesn't have remorse for what he did. It could mean that, but it might not. Yeah. And well, and based on

what she did share where the dad was like, no, it was wrong. It was a mistake. It was terrible. He got sober from alcohol and stuff like that. So you do hope that he at least feels like the terrible person he should after that. And I did really go back and forth with choosing to read this one. And one of the reasons I did go forward with it is because I did have a couple listeners reach out and share similar experiences in their family. And so someone shared, my biological father, I don't consider him my dad, is a rapist. He raped my sister for years. She was nine when it started and I was born when she turned 10. It continued until I was two years old and everything came to light.

He never touched me, but I am half of him and I hate myself for it. My sister's 38 now and still has nightmares. She too forgave him and blamed herself until she went to therapy and realized how wrong it was. I have been trying to find a therapist, counselor, psychologist, anyone who I can talk to about my situation, but all of the ones for in total I've had a consultation with have turned me away and said, good luck. I'm so curious on what you both have to say about this story. So it well, I don't know why they turned her away. I know. That sounds just neglectful. Well, I don't know. Like one, being wrong and turning her away, then yeah, but four, like four out of four, I have a hard time believing that four to four

professionals were just complete a-holes about something that's very common that people come into therapy for. So did she call the wrong therapist? Like the wrong group that doesn't deal with that kind of thing, because there are therapists that they specialize in something that's different than that. Also, there are insurance companies like HMOs where their therapy department is called behavioral health and it's mainly skills and cognitive behavioral therapy and quitting habits and this kind of thing. And that has nothing to do with that. So I would hope that she would call, start to look in a different place. Whoever she's looking, it's the wrong place for the list of therapists. Yeah. And honestly, maybe find someone who has

practice and trauma informed care. Because I know that's a big issue too. Even I'm an occupational therapist as well as having this podcast and something that really irked me during my schooling and stuff like that is we didn't really have anything on trauma informed care. And I know that's something you touched on in one of your videos where you were like, you can become a counselor or a therapist without ever having anything on trauma. And it's like trauma is so impactful in all of our lives and can really shape us and create the root of these issues that we deal with. So it's tough. It's tough to find good practitioners sometimes. Yeah. Yes. Absolutely. But what she went through is, yeah, it's really awful. And

I hope that she can recover. Now, some people from the outside might be like, well, you weren't the one abuse. So what's the big deal? It's a big deal. I mean, you, a person that you bonded with, you learned that they're a monster. And that's very disruptive to your trust and to your feeling of yourself. And you deserve to recover from that. Yeah, absolutely. I can imagine how your whole identity might be uprooted. And I think this one too, with Roe v. Wade kind of coming up. And there was a trend on TikTok where a lot of people were sharing their experiences did your dad do this to you? No, then keep your laws off my body. And so that's really

like coming up right now. And so I think it is a lot more common than we might realize. And I mean, they talk about it in TV shows. Grey's Anatomy comes to mind where one of the characters was born out of a rape situation. And when she found that out, her whole world shattered. She was a successful doctor. And when she found that out, she couldn't work anymore. She went into a deep alcoholism and was crushed. So stuff can really rock us. So with that being said, check in with yourself after this, because this was a little heavy and take a deep breath, take a walk, practice some self care. I will be sure to post some resources as well for those that might be going through something like this or, you know, similar circumstances. But

all that being said, thank you so much for joining me today. Where can everyone find you and follow you? It's called Gene Seattle podcast and YouTube channel. Amazing. I will be sure to post all of Dr. Kirk Honda's links in the description so you can easily find him and be sure to check out the YouTube channel he has because it's incredible. I was like just going through it and I was like, I feel like I'm just soaking up so much information and perspective and maybe I won't be so unhinged on my podcast when I give my takes on these Reddit stories anymore. No, a good rant now and then is a good expression of our frustration and anger. There's a lot to be angry and frustrated about these days. I know some of these people, I'm just like, I just want to shake them too. I'm just like,

get out of there. But everyone has to learn at their own pace, I guess. Yeah. Okay. Well, thank you so much. Bye guys. There will be an exclusive story up on our Patreon from this episode and be sure to subscribe. If you've ever had to deal with a plumbing problem, you may have felt the pain of realizing you don't know any plumbers. Whether you're trying to stop a leaky faucet, fix a running toilet, replace your old water softener or install a tankless water heater, the plumbers at any hour services can help. All you have to do is call any our services or schedule an appointment at anyourservices.com. Help with plumbing maintenance and repairs is closer than you think. Call any

our services or schedule an appointment at anyourservices.com. No one helps more homeowners than any our services. Hi, Jan from Toyota speaking. Jan, I heard it's a good time to buy Toyota. Sure is. From now until April 4th, you can shop all your favorites like Corolla, RAV4, Sequoia and more. Imagine yourself in a new tundra where you stopped by the home improvement store and finally built that tree house you promised your daughter. Sarah, when did you hop on the call? Hi, dad. Mom said you were taking too long on the phone. Toyota, let's go places. See your participating Toyota dealer for details. Dealer inventory may vary.