1202: Grandma's Feast Ruined By Guest You Trust Least | Feedback Friday

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Welcome to Feedback Friday.

I'm your host, Jordan Harbinger.

As always, I'm here with Feedback Friday producer, the two-factor authentication, making sure I don't send these transmissions of life wisdom to the wrong recipient, 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, investigative journalists, four-star generals, rocket scientists, astronauts.

This week, we had Dr.

Benjamin Bickman on insulin resistance.

I know it sounds like maybe no big deal, but this causes all kinds of problems in the body and in the brain, including sexual dysfunction in men and women, PCOS, erectile dysfunction, dementia, Alzheimer's.

It's just absolutely not something you want to live with.

This is not fringe science.

This is legitimate stuff.

It's kind of on the cutting edge, or at least not a ton of people know about this, which is why I chose to cover it.

We also did a skeptical Sunday last Sunday on fundamentalist Christian ideology versus science, because we don't like getting emails from people that are deeply offended.

So we decided to do something on religion versus science.

On Fridays, though, we share stories, take listener letters, offer advice, play obnoxious sound bites, and compare ourselves to various niche internet security protocols.

Gabe, T-min three days before I fly out to Portugal.

Pumped to see you, man.

Yeah, man.

It's going to be awesome.

I can't wait.

I saw you've been cosplaying as a food influencer this week on the Graham.

Interesting departure from your usual shirtless thirst traps and ridiculous hat pics.

Don't call them thirst traps.

They're not.

They're yoga traps.

They're yoga thirst traps.

Did you say yoga fetish traps?

Yoga fetish traps.

That's what I meant to say.

Thank you.

Just be accurate.

Yeah, I just thought I would diversify the stereotype.

a little bit, you know, keep things fresh on the grid.

I'm teasing you, but I'm secretly happy you're doing this so that you can take us to all these dope spots when we get there.

Because whenever I try to get vegan food, it's horrible.

And I'm like, so it's a steak fritz without the steak.

Bro, it's, I've found some amazing places here.

I'm actually really excited to take you guys to one in particular.

But yeah, one of our awesome listeners, Shannon, you know, Shannon from Paris, who took you around.

Yeah, of course.

So she very generously introduced me to a friend of hers, an American guy who moved here from the States.

And his wife runs this thing called Vegan Safari Week, which is like a monthly self-guided vegan food tour around the city.

And she invited me to be kind of like an ambassador for this, like a guest.

They call them guest guides, which means I just go around to different restaurants and try their vegan dish and then I post about it.

So that's why I've been cosplaying as a food influencer.

Okay, that explains it.

I was like, is Gabe pivoting to becoming some kind of Euro expat plant-based influencer?

Or is he just bored and he needs something to do while he's walking around?

So he's taking food photos.

What's happening?

Dude, I'm the last person who should be a food influencer, but I will say it is so fun.

First of all, the vegan scene here is surprisingly amazing.

And you meet all kinds of people doing this and you hear cool stories and you learn a lot about the food i've been having a blast and they just they treat you to like a dish and then all you have to do is post about it i i understand why people want to do this for a living sure it's pretty cool share old gaby bourdain over here that's right no reservations about how shameless my plugs are on instagram i guess yeah oh i have to tell you something hilarious ridiculous maybe more like it okay i mean you just did but go ahead for the next something even more ridiculous than what i just told you so i probably should not tell you this because i have a feeling you're going to bring it up for the rest of our friendship but yes

you remember a few weeks ago you were talking about a purse stool, that little table at restaurants where you put your purse?

Yeah, I remember because it's the one time I know something that you don't, that you've never heard of, and I was shocked.

Yeah.

So it's like a thing so that your purse doesn't sit on the floor.

You don't put your bag on the floor.

You got a purse stool.

So I finally saw one.

I went to dinner with a friend of mine, a woman, and we both got to the table and I saw it in like a weirdo.

I was like, oh, I know what this is.

I've heard about this thing.

She's like, okay.

You sound like one of those aliens and men in black.

Like, I know what this is.

This is a table for holding purses.

Yes, very convincing human impression I'm doing right now.

But the reason I'm bringing this up is: guess who the purse tool came in handy for?

Stop.

You're making this too easy for me.

Tell me you had a purse.

But in my defense, no, no, no.

But in my defense, it wasn't a purse I was wearing.

It was a crossbody bag, which is different, which is different from a purse.

Does it go over your shoulder?

It goes over the shoulder, but like a messenger.

Right, yeah, like a man, like a merse.

Sure.

Do you have to look for something like, say, a hook or or the back of a chair or a table for this express purpose on which to rest it?

Yeah.

You have a purse.

You are wearing a purse and you put your purse on the purse table.

Okay.

I do instantly regret telling you this, but it's a crossbody bag.

That's what the manufacturer calls it.

A crossbody bag.

Yeah.

So a purse that goes across your body.

Uh-huh.

Totally different.

I love that you went from never hearing of a purse stool in your life to needing it more than the woman that you were with.

Okay, but she used it too.

I just, I'm saying I also got to enjoy it.

And what I'm saying is I get it now.

That's my point, is it's a nice invention.

I think you should be a purse stool influencer.

Maybe that's the next niche that you should focus on in your ridiculous Instagram marketing journey.

That's actually kind of a great idea.

Something tells me there's not a lot of competition in that category on Instagram.

You could kind of be the accidentally cross-dressing American straight guy who brings purse stools to the male market.

Maybe I'm just the fake influencer that they've been waiting for.

Yeah.

Hey, if the vermilion blouse fits, you know what I mean?

Now I'm saying, well, all right.

Anyway, I'm glad you're doing recon on all the cool spots.

We're super excited to kick it with you in Porto.

And it sounds like we're going to record a Feedback Friday episode together live while I'm there.

So look for that in a few weeks, guys.

Should be fun.

I can't wait.

And bring your, you have a crossbody bag in your

closet somewhere, I'm sure.

No, I'll bring my backpack like a normal person.

All right.

Well, a backpack is just a purse with two straps on it, I say.

You and Jen can compare handbag depth or whatever.

Speaking of depth.

Yeah.

Want to take this dews cruise out of the harbor into the depth of the ocean?

Yep, take it away.

Dear Jordan and Gabe, I could go on for days about issues I've had with my mother-in-law, Sheila.

My husband and I, both 37, are high school sweethearts, so I've known her a long time.

She has taken a toll on my mental health.

She makes passive-aggressive and snide comments and seems to enjoy pushing my buttons.

Your mother-in-law does that?

Really?

I've never heard of that happening to people.

You're not getting along with your mother-in-law.

Crazy.

Pretty universal, smooth sailing, the mother-in-law relationship.

Yeah.

You You know, pretty conflict-free, I hear.

Let's just lay this down right now.

It's definitely our friend here's fault.

Let's just go to the next letter.

100%.

Yeah, I'm done.

Just take Sheila to the Cheesecake Factory and say you're sorry.

Cheesecake Factory, the official venue of airing your dirty laundry over an 1800-calorie tray of chicken picada.

This got significantly worse after our kids were born.

I'm usually someone who knows how to stick up for myself, but I have a very tough time standing up to Sheila.

She has a way of hitting me with a lot of small jabs that would make it seem like an overreaction if I called her on any one.

But they build up.

Ah, yes.

Death by a thousand digs.

Yep, a war of attrition.

I understand this, actually.

It's tough.

So she goes on.

A very small example.

For years, she would only cook the same three sides that she knew I didn't like every time we went to their house.

She would make it a point to comment to everybody about me being picky when I didn't eat them.

That is so petty.

That chicken picata is sounding pretty good right now, I bet.

Yeah.

I usually have my husband talk to her when there's a big issue.

He always supports me, even if he doesn't completely understand the situation.

But my therapist and I have talked about me taking the reins and standing up to her on my own, and my husband supports this.

My husband's cousin, Sarah, is married to Bob, both in their early 50s.

Sarah is my father-in-law's niece, so not biologically related to Sheila.

My father-in-law died two years ago, and in recent years, Bob and Sarah have become severe alcoholics, lost their jobs, and had to move back from another state to live with Sarah's mom.

We heard through family rumors that Bob had several affairs prior to moving and may have been involved with at least one underage girl.

Sarah's mom lives a few miles away from Sheila, and Sheila hangs out with Sarah on a somewhat regular basis.

Last Thanksgiving, Sheila hosted us, my husband's brother, Sheila's only other family member, a cousin, and Sarah and Bob.

I got weird vibes from Bob.

I hadn't seen him in about five years, but in the past he was outgoing, friendly, and pleasant.

This time he was very reserved, and I had, don't let this guy around your kids alone.

Mom alarm bells going off.

We had assumed the Thanksgiving invitation was a one-time thing, so I got through the day and went on with my life.

Then, early last summer, my four-year-old spent the night with Sheila.

She told us the next morning that she had taken our son out to eat, and while out, received a call from Sarah.

Sarah was crying and asked for a ride because she was drunk in the hospital parking lot after visiting her sick mom.

There were plenty of other family members, including us, Sheila could have called, or she could have called an Uber.

But instead, she took our son with her to pick up a drunk and crying Sarah.

My husband later asked our son, I heard you saw my cousin Sarah, was she nice?

Our son just said, yeah, she was crying a lot.

This alarmed me.

We know it was confusing for him.

This also made me wonder how often Sheila sees Bob.

I did some digging and found out that Bob pleaded no contest to soliciting a minor a few years prior.

The original charge was statutory rape, and I'm assuming it was decreased as part of the plea deal.

He avoided prison time or having to register as a sex offender and received two years probation.

I understand that statutory rape of a teenage girl does not necessarily mean he would molest my young boys, but I don't trust Bob and don't want him around my kids.

I told my husband what I had found and he 100% agreed.

A few weeks later, I found myself alone with Sheila and brought up Bob's charges.

She wasn't surprised and I'm pretty sure she already knew.

I explicitly told her we do not want the children around Bob under any circumstances.

She agreed.

A few weeks later, she called my husband to invite us to come swim at her house while Bob and Sarah were over.

My husband declined and told her we did not want the kids around Bob and explained why.

I hadn't told him about my talk with his mom, so he didn't realize she had already been told this.

I later told my husband we should have clarified that this included Thanksgiving, but he didn't want to come across as lecturing.

He said, I think my mom is smart enough to know Thanksgiving is included.

Oh, wait, let me guess what happens next.

Thanksgiving 2024 rolls around and Sheila invites Bob and Sarah again.

Of course.

My husband informs her we will not be attending.

We offer to get together on another day or at a different time on the same day.

Sheila took a week to think it over, but eventually decided she would only be participating in the one Thanksgiving event.

It would not do a separate get-together.

We could take it or leave it.

She said Bob being there should not be an issue because there are several other adults around to keep an eye out.

Plus, it couldn't have been that big of a deal since he isn't a quote-unquote registered offender.

She claimed we didn't tell her that we didn't want Bob around until after she had invited him.

She presented it as us ruining Thanksgiving with hardly any notice.

My husband gave her specifics of both talks we had with her, but she claimed she didn't remember either talk.

We didn't back down and did not attend.

We haven't talked about it since.

Even if I give her the benefit of the doubt, I'm confused and concerned.

I feel like any reasonable person would be willing to do a separate Thanksgiving if they found out that they unknowingly invited a sex offender to an event with their young grandkids.

Yes.

There was never an apology or a claim to ignorance.

It really felt like she chose him over us.

I also want to add that a few weeks after our summer conversation about Bob, I walked into her house to find a new picture of my two oldest boys as toddlers in her living room.

They were running naked in the rain, and the picture is of their bare backsides.

It's a cute picture for a baby book, but not one I would ever post online or display in my living room.

I said I wasn't comfortable with it being in the living room, but she went on about how cute it was and that it was just baby butts.

It stayed up for a few months.

I asked her to take it down once I knew that Sarah and Bob were house-sitting for her, but it was still up the next time we went over.

We visited a few days before Thanksgiving, and since I knew Bob would be there, I took it out of the frame.

She took it down, and it has not been up since.

The more I thought about it, the weirder it seemed that she put a two-year-old picture up a few weeks after I talked to her about Bob.

It seemed deliberate.

My husband didn't understand why I was so upset at first, but I explained that all someone has to do is snap a picture of it on their phone and it's on the dark web.

I may seem paranoid, but I take these things very seriously.

We recently found out that we have an unusually high concentration of sex offenders in our town because we are one of only two cities in the state that has a halfway house for people coming out of prison that sex offenders can stay in because it's not close to schools, churches, etc.

So I've been very aware about who has access to my kids.

Wow.

Oh, my goodness.

Should all of this make me question Sheila's judgment as a whole?

Am I making a mountain out of a molehill?

Should I let it go for now and just set a firm boundary closer to Thanksgiving that we will not be attending if Bob is invited?

Should I make myself go sit down with her and get answers?

If she agrees not to invite Bob again, do I just move past it?

Or is this indicative of a deeper trust issue?

Signed, Protecting My Bambinos from the straight-up weirdo when my mother-in-law torpedoes all of my vetoes.

Oh boy, what a weird story.

It's super disturbing and anxiety-provoking to have someone like this in your family.

Not just a person who's apparently into minors, but the alcoholism, the chaos, the weird vibes, and then to feel like your mother-in-law is not equally invested in actually protecting her grandchildren.

As a parent, I totally get why you're so concerned.

You got to protect your kids.

Now, I don't know for sure what's going on with Sheila.

It's possible she's actively looking for ways to defy you or just taking Bob and Sarah's side over yours, in which case, like, screw her, she's actively harmful.

You don't need that.

But she might also just be avoidant and scared of conflict as so many people are.

And she's looking for the path of least resistance here.

And that means not telling Sarah and Bob, hey, sorry, we can't have you over for Thanksgiving or even, hey, can you come at eight instead of four?

Which still means that she's failing you guys.

She's dodging the issue and making everyone else deal with this burden in a really ineffective way, frankly.

Gabriel, I got to say, say, I lean towards her doing the being difficult on purpose because instead of going, oh, I don't want to have this awkward conversation.

Yeah, I'll have two Thanksgivings.

She's like, no, you have to come to mine or you can't come.

You know, we're not doing anything together.

It's like, well, if you were just conflict avoidant, you wouldn't be like, I'm going to set up a conflict with.

my daughter-in-law and son.

You would just do the separate things because that's what avoids conflict.

So this makes me lean toward her actually

just trying to do whatever she thinks is going to piss off our friend here.

I don't know.

I I think there's another possibility, which is that she's so naive slash disconnected from reality that she doesn't even understand the gravity of the situation.

She seemed to know about Bob's charges, which is confusing.

True.

So I can't imagine why she wouldn't keep this guy away, but we do know that some people just do not want to believe that people are dangerous, that bad things can happen in their own family, but that's usually a way of saying that they don't want to know.

You know, that's how bad things happen, man.

That's how bad things happen.

Yeah, exactly.

So look, I don't know what's in Sheila's heart.

Maybe it doesn't matter what her intention is, honestly, if the result is that she's putting you guys in a super awkward situation and potentially leaving your kids vulnerable to a freaking sex offender.

So are you making a mountain out of a molehill?

My feeling is no.

I mean, maybe a little bit in some way, but no, in the sense that your mother-in-law is bringing a guy who is charged with statutory rape and who has a substance abuse problem around your kids.

That's insane to me.

Even if nothing horrific ever happened, that's still a weird person to expose your kids to.

And you saw that when your son went to pick up Sarah that night.

Sometimes your job as a parent is to go way out of your way to be cautious, if it means protecting your child from even the chance of harm, especially from a known predator, especially in the town you live in, I'd probably do the same.

On the other hand, you might be making a mountain out of a molehill a little bit in one sort of strict sense that you don't know all the details about what Bob did.

You don't know for sure that Bob would target your children.

There are ways to take a strong stance here without creating a massive rift in the family.

I hate splitting hairs on this one.

I guess I'll cover that later.

But look, Bob solicited a female minor, right?

We don't know how old she was.

We also don't know if he was, I don't know, trying to pick up a sex worker while he was drunk one night and didn't know how old she was, or if he was propositioning a clearly teenage girl at Walmart or whatever, right?

One thing is worse than the other.

I'm not trying to minimize what the guy did.

He sounds like a mess.

He sounds like a creep.

No, I understand.

You're saying there's a spectrum of severe

here.

That might change the risk calculation for our friend here.

Yeah, I get that.

Yes, exactly.

It's kind of like saying they're on drugs.

And then you find out that they were high on marijuana and on their couch, not like driving while railing lines of money.

On PCP.

Yes.

Yeah.

But honestly, this guy is your husband's cousin's husband, whatever.

You owe this guy next to nothing, right?

At all.

There's no reason, again, to split hairs to keep a relationship with this guy.

It's not like he's your sibling and you're like, oh, how severe is it?

Is this dangerous?

We got to weigh all the options.

No, there's enough bad news here to keep your distance from this weirdo and just call it a day.

Yeah, I think I agree with that.

But also, also, those weird vibes that you got from Bob, look, they might be 100% accurate.

I know a mother's instincts are usually pretty good, but you know, he was reserved when you saw him.

What does that mean?

That could have been shame.

That could have been him laying low and keeping to himself because he knows that all of you know what he did.

It's hard to know how much you're projecting or reading into this guy because you read up on his charges and you're just imagining the worst.

So there's that.

Also true.

And this thing about the photo, I get your concern given.

I'm confused about the photo.

I don't know what to make of that.

Is that really as scary as she thinks it is?

I think I'm kind of with you on this, right?

Look, everything that happened makes every little thing kind of weird.

It's like where there's smoke, there's fire, but I also don't know if that was really as much of a liability as it seemed.

It might have just been a photo.

It sounds like it was just a cute baby butt photo.

Bob might not have even noticed it.

I think your mama bear instincts, though, are so strong these days that everything feels like a threat.

And I'm kind of in the better safe than sorry camp when it comes to like, will a sex offender see pictures of my kids and decide to target them?

I wouldn't really shrug that off either.

Yeah, we don't know what's in this guy's Dropbox.

Right.

Right.

He might have a weird folder that we don't want anywhere, you know, we don't want this photo anywhere near it.

That's right.

Somebody look at this guy's hard drive.

I think what's meaningful about the photo, actually, is just that it was one more sign for our friend that Sheila was not attuned to the situation or taking her seriously.

Whether or not it was actually a poor choice to have it up, that's actually the problem.

Of course.

But look, if your mother-in-law won't be an ally in all this, you and your husband can just kind of say, hey, Sheila, I'm sorry to have to do this, but because you're not taking this seriously or apparently not remembering our conversations, we're going to have to decline invitations to the house when Bob is around.

We wish you took this more seriously.

We wish you could respect our wishes.

We're not looking for a fight.

This is just how it has to be.

That can be the end of it, at least insofar as it relates to Bob.

And in that way, you protect your kids without creating a huge thing.

Now, will she implode when you do this?

You can't control that.

I think that's the right approach, especially because I don't see Sheila changing.

She sounds pretty set in her ways, and there's a long history of her being petty and defiant.

So it's like, what's going to shift now?

Also, it's really hard to have a productive conflict with somebody who says, oh, I don't remember us talking about that.

Like, where do you go from there?

Exactly.

That's one of the hard parts of dealing with older family members.

It's like, do you really not remember because you have memory issues?

Or is this some nonsense you're pretending you don't remember because it's easier for you to then blame us and be like, I didn't even know.

Gabe, I have to say though, oh, I knew not to invite him to this, but I didn't know it included Thanksgiving.

Come on, you're an idiot.

You're either an idiot or you're lying.

Which one is it?

I don't know.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say it's a bit of both.

I think it's probably more of an I don't want to remember thing.

Yes.

Because remember, she seemed to remember Bob's charges just fine.

So you're telling me you can't remember the conversation we had about how we can't let the known predator around your grandkids?

It just doesn't really make sense to me.

I think what I'm trying to say is that conversation should literally have not even needed to happen.

Of course.

Hey, I found out Bob has sex offender charges.

I'm not going to to let him come to Thanksgiving.

It's like, no, you told me that you couldn't come to the swimming thing, but you didn't say anything about Thanksgiving.

It's like, okay, you're actually an idiot, right?

Come on.

Yeah.

Sheila, you only seem to get early onset dementia when it comes to pedophiles around your grandkids.

That's weird.

I just don't buy it at all.

But then if you don't want to be in touch with something, you can really put it out of your mind.

People do this all the time, in which case, she might be forgetting in a sense.

So it's a little tricky.

Anyway, I do think a longer conversation with Sheila might still be in order.

I wonder what would happen if you and your husband sat down with her and you said, Sheila, look, here's where we stand with Bob.

We all seem to be on the same page about his problem and what he's done, but we're on different pages about whether he should be around the kids.

And that is really hard for us and it's putting us in a really difficult position.

It's also depriving the kids of having more quality time with you because you seem to insist that Sarah and Bob be invited to family events.

You're bringing the kids along to help them when they...

spin out and drink too much and end up in a hospital parking lot crying, all of that.

It's just not okay with us.

So help us understand your logic here.

Tell us what you know to be true of Sarah and Bob so we can really understand that we have all the same information.

Walk us through how you're making this decision to invite them over because frankly, we just don't get it.

And it's just, it's a real obstacle in our relationship with you.

Hold her feet to the fire a little bit.

The way she responds should tell you whether this is avoidance or naivete or malice.

I like that.

And then maybe you can dig in with her, help her see the risk and work with her to come up with a better policy about Sarah and Bob, but I don't know.

Or maybe you can't and that's the end of that.

And you guys just need to pull back and protect the kids on your own because Sheila has her head up her ass.

Okay, so call me crazy, but I just want to make a little room for Sheila here.

Just in the interest of imagining everybody's perspective in the situation, is it possible that she is feeling very freaked out and uncomfortable and scared?

Like if she takes our friend here side, she has to tell Bob and Sarah, I'm sorry, but I can't have you over when my grandkids are here.

And they're going to know why.

Or they're going to say, what do you mean?

Why?

Why can't we come over?

And then she's going to have to say it out loud, like, because of.

Because Bob was charged with statutory rape.

Statutory rape.

Exactly.

And that might be a tall order for a woman who's probably not well equipped to handle tough conversations like this.

Yeah.

And if she takes Bob and Sarah's side, she has to tell her son and daughter-in-law, I'm sorry, but my preference is to have them here.

And that's more important than your comfort and your kids' safety.

Although I'm just realizing that's essentially, that's what she's doing.

Right.

That's what she's doing.

And also, that is the absolutely wrong take.

If someone's a threat to children and your son and his wife, you're like, oh, sorry, but my deceased husband's niece's husband takes priority.

What the hell is wrong with you?

Let's also remember that Sheila only has one other family member, that random cousin she invited to Thanksgiving.

So I wonder if she might be having a hard time pushing even more family away.

Even if they are addicts and one of them is a statutory rapist, that might be part of why she doesn't want to let them go because maybe she feels like she needs family.

I'm just imagining all the possibilities.

Well, she's going to lose the other side of the family, the one with the grandkids, because she's an idiot.

I don't know.

I give far less leeway to this form of stupidity.

So I hope that gives you some new angles here.

If your objective is to get Sheila to not invite Bob to Thanksgiving this year or tell her that you guys won't be going, that's relatively straightforward.

If your objective is to actually get through to Sheila and change her mind and repair things, help her confront these qualities of hers, that's a much taller order.

I don't know if you're going to be successful.

Might still be worth trying, but I'd adjust your expectations.

So maybe your real question is, do I want to protect my kids or do I want to heal some major rifts in my family?

Or it's actually your husband's family.

So Gabe, she's so much more patient than me.

If this was like Jen's mother's nephew, I'd be like, you're never seeing your grandkids again unless you come over alone.

That guy's never allowed to be near them.

And if I hear that you brought him over, I'm, you're done.

We are done here.

Yeah.

I just have no patience for this crap.

The stakes are too high.

I think it depends.

Every family is different.

But there's another interesting question here, which is, what is it about Sheila that activates me so much?

You know, I get that this woman is annoying.

She's making cauliflower.

You hate cauliflower, whatever you guys are getting in fights about the,

it's so petty and in a way that makes it worse somehow.

But I think it's a fair question.

Like, what parts of me are vulnerable to this woman and why?

Because there's a larger theme here of an objectively challenging mother figure who's provoking you in a variety of ways, many of them perfectly understandable.

But it might be interesting to look at some of those pressure points with your therapist and build up some of those muscles or perhaps draw some boundaries if you need to so that she can't hurt you quite as much.

Because again, I don't know if she's going to change.

Good point.

But hey, at the end of the day, you don't want your kids around chaotic addicts.

Even if one of them isn't trying to pick up a teenager at a truck stop or whatever, you add that in and it's just kind of a no-brainer.

I also think there's some work for you and your husband to do together.

It sounds like you guys are slightly disconnected sometimes, and I think it would be helpful and important for your marriage to talk openly and really sync up up so you guys can fully understand each other, make sure your instincts are calibrated correctly, and find productive solutions with his mom.

Sorry about all the stress and dysfunction, but good on you for protecting your kids and good luck.

You know what you can't pick up in a truck stop parking lot, Gabriel?

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All right, what's next?

Dear Gabe and Jordan, I'm 48 and I've been in the same monthly club for 25 years.

While some of our members have come and gone, the core of the group has remained stable over the decades, including our hostess and founder.

Let's call her Kathy.

We've traveled together, watched each other's kids grow up, and weathered a lot of life storms as a tight friend group.

Recently, Kathy has become more strident at club meetings.

She's always been vocal and confident, but lately she's become more abrasive.

She's not done opining on a topic until she is done-done.

We're all intelligent women who understand what she was saying 15 minutes earlier.

She gets angry and one-sided during these tirades too, so that disagreeing with her is risky.

The rest of us spend a lot of time at our meetings trying to redirect redirect the conversation by tuning her out, blandly agreeing with her, and trying to introduce segues.

But even our playful attempts to segue are shut down with unnecessary heat.

Our last meeting was particularly uncomfortable.

I counted four times when she either bit my head off, belittled my viewpoint, or interrupted me to shut me down.

At one point, I called her on it and she instantly looked contrite.

She's a kind and generous person at her core who has developed these bad conversational habits.

Damn, good for you for speaking up.

That's not easy to do.

Something's going on with this woman, I think.

You know, that was one of those situations where everybody else was too terrified to say something, and then she did, and everyone was like, oh, thank God she said something because we all wanted to, but we were too afraid to say something.

100%.

It's like, better you than me.

Thanks for doing that.

They're all sick of Kathy's shit for sure, but

our friend here actually had the stones to call her out and Kathy's response that she instantly looked contrite.

I actually think that's a good sign.

It's encouraging.

It is, isn't it?

Yeah, that's true.

Then at the end of our meeting, Kathy told me to contact her with my availability for lunch.

I agreed to text her, but for the first time, I'm dreading having lunch with her.

I need to assert a boundary and say, it didn't feel good when you snapped at me, and currently I'm not excited about spending more time with you.

I mean, that's pretty perfect.

I kind of love that.

No notes.

Did you even need to write us?

Because so far you are...

you are crushing this.

So she goes on, but a few things complicate my boundary setting.

First, another member of the club recently attempted to give Kathy feedback about things that made her uncomfortable, and that did not go well.

It was not well handled, and the other club member had her own issues.

Nevertheless, Kathy's feelings were deeply hurt, and to this day, she holds a grudge against the woman because she never explicitly apologized to Kathy for picking on her.

I have low hopes that Kathy can hear honest feedback from me about her behaviors without a repeat of the same drama.

So interesting.

I'm not sure I share that view, but I get it.

Yeah, same here.

I think this is even more good data because now there's a pattern that Kathy would have to confront, and our friend here knows how how not to have this conversation like this other person botched it.

Frankly, I'm feeling pretty hopeful here.

It's not going to go worse than that one, right?

Like,

I'll err on the side of not pissing her off too much.

I just introduced a new member to our club, a colleague of mine whom I've recently become friends with.

She's enthusiastic about the club and retains a positive attitude about all the holding forth that Kathy does.

But I feel bad about bringing her into this context with someone who's being pretty difficult right now.

I also don't feel as free to quit the club because I would be stranding my friend in an awkward position.

Lastly, because I've known Kathy so long, it's clear to me that she's going through a rough patch, personality-wise.

She's the only active club member who has never been married or had kids, and sometimes it's annoying for her to host a club full of women who want to talk about their grown children.

I can also see that when her friends gather in her house, she needs to let loose with all the ideas and opinions that she's been curating and refining since the last meeting.

And what she wants most is to be validated and heard, not debated.

She's lonely, basically.

That's a really good insight that you know that that's why she's acting this way.

Makes sense.

I have to say, Jordan, I'm really struck by our friend here's empathy.

She's thinking about her new friends she brought in.

She's thinking about the other women in the group.

She's even thinking about Kathy, who has been so annoying.

She's a really kind person.

Totally.

Yeah, I can see why it's tying her up in knots.

She doesn't want to hurt anyone, but that's making it a little hard for her to defend her own feelings.

Yeah, and protect the group as well.

Right.

Yeah.

Sometimes being empathetic means leaning into the conflict.

How do I help my friend read the room and avoid unintentionally pushing her friends away with her rude behavior without triggering her and driving an even bigger wedge between us?

And what should I do about texting her with a plan to have lunch?

Signed, seeking a retort for when my friend holds court, so she'll keep it short.

Or maybe it's mission abort.

Man, from one Sheila to another, okay?

Yeah, it's a tale of two Sheila.

Well, Sheila to Kathy, but I think

I see where you're getting at.

Code names today, though.

Sheila, Kathy, these are names that if we made it up, people would be like, how dare you?

My daughter's name is Kathy.

I'm Sheila.

We're not all bad.

So don't write us, guys.

The listeners chose those names.

We're not always painting all women with a certain name with a broad brush.

Anyway, just to Lydia, you guys, right off the bat, seriously, I'm sorry you're in this predicament.

It's an incredibly awkward position to find yourself in.

I feel like I've been there myself a few times.

We all have, right?

There's a problematic person in a group.

They have zero self-awareness and it's on someone else in the group to call the person out or they just dominate and drive everyone else away, which is a shame because your group sounds really special.

I think it deserves to be cared for.

And unfortunately, given your empathy and people skills, I think that person is probably you.

So what if you met up with her, maybe you accept that invitation to lunch, even though you kind of don't want to, and you do it there, or you do this on the phone beforehand and you say in a direct but respectful tone, listen, Kathy, I adore you.

You know how much I love our group.

We have a special thing going.

You've done an amazing job leading it all these years, and I'm so grateful to you for that.

As your longtime friend, I also want to share that I've noticed some changes recently.

For example, I can see that you get very passionate about a topic.

You really want to make sure everyone knows your position.

And hey, I appreciate the enthusiasm.

But what I'm seeing is my old friend becoming quite strident, abrasive, sometimes angry in a way that makes our meetings less of a conversation and more of a one-way lecture.

It can eclipse other people.

It can shut down conversation.

Like at our last meeting, on four different occasions, I felt that you just jumped down my throat.

You belittled my viewpoint.

You interrupted me, which is why I felt the need to say something.

I got to tell you, Kath, this is not easy for me to say, but that really hurt my feelings.

And candidly, it's not making me excited to spend more time with you, which makes me sad.

Now, look, I've known you for decades.

I know this is not who you are.

I'm sure this is not what you intend.

You're a kind and generous person.

But this is how it's coming across.

This is the effect it's having on the others.

And if I were in your shoes, I'd want someone to tell me.

But what I really want to ask you is, how are you feeling these days?

What's going on?

What's coming up for you during our meetings?

Because I sense that something is going on and I'm here to listen.

Damn, dude.

Bravo.

No notes for me.

Nice.

I could never do that in real life, by the way.

I'd be like, what is your problem?

Oh, man, you pitched it so confidently.

I was like, damn, dude.

Giving other people advice is a lot easier than following it yourself.

It's a lot easier, I know.

But you know what?

Even if she says 50% of that, even if she doesn't say it perfectly, I think that's a really nice approach.

Yeah, I really do.

I feel like if she takes that tech, it's kind of impossible to go wrong.

Yeah, because she would be giving her the gift of her honesty and respect, but she's also giving her the gift of her compassion and patience with your script.

It's like, look, I love you enough to tell you directly what I'm noticing.

Yes.

And I'm not here to make you feel bad.

I'm here to understand what is going on.

How are you?

What's the problem?

If you can't accept that gift, assuming it's delivered correctly, of course, then you're the problem.

Or maybe a nicer way to put it, going to tap into a little more empathy myself here.

You have some work to do to learn how to take that in.

And hey, maybe that'll be a process for Kath Kath.

I think what this woman needs is a dose of reality and a dose of kindness, right?

That's probably what that other person in the group failed to give her.

And that's probably why that did not go well.

This feedback almost needs to be a tiny bit confrontational in the best way, just so you can like puncture Kathy's self-involvement.

But it also needs to be accompanied by a genuine interest in the roots of her response.

Why is she so aggressive?

Why does she have this tendency to dominate?

Why is she not really connected to the other people in the group and reading the room?

Because to your point a moment ago, Jordan, this woman is clearly struggling.

She's lonely.

She's isolated.

Sounds like she's kind of understimulated.

I mean, she probably feels out of the loop and scared in a variety of ways.

And I just feel like, yeah, Kathy is such an easy person to despise and dismiss.

I am so on our friend here's side.

It's not even funny.

But underneath that is a human being who is clearly hurting and who is flawed.

Yeah, I mean, why else would you feel the need to take up so much space, to diminish people, to dominate?

It's actually really sad, right?

If you can get into that stuff with Kathy and you approach this with your famous kindness, I think you have a real shot at making progress here.

I really do.

Same.

And like I said during the letter, the fact that she was contrite when you pushed back, I think that bodes well.

That tells me that she's still a decent person deep down and she's just painfully unself-aware.

Yeah, it also tells me that she probably has some embarrassment around this tendency of hers.

So just be prepared for that to maybe come up in your conversation too.

It sounds to me like she can go from grandiosity and anger to shame and withdrawal very quickly, which makes sense.

And if you can meet her embarrassment with compassion as well, if you can sit in that with her too, then you'll probably make even more progress because she might be willing to acknowledge this with you, but then the next step after that might be to like collapse and withdraw.

So a friend who can say, look, it's okay.

I know this is hard to talk about.

You know, thank you for being willing to go here with me.

Let's figure this out together.

That's a true friend.

And that's going to keep her engaged with the goal here, which is to help her stay connected to the rest of you guys while she also stays connected to herself and also just learn some basic like self-awareness and good hosting, frankly.

Bingo.

But look, I would also be prepared for this to be a little bumpy.

You could do everything perfectly.

She might still have a tough reaction.

But that's why your script matters.

You want to feel secure that you did everything you could to create the best possible dialogue.

What happens after that is out of your control.

And hey, she might need to get angry and go away for a little while and then come back like, oh, so I thought about what you said and you're right, I'm sorry.

Or she might never want to talk about it with you again, but she stops pulling this crap at meetings.

That's also a win.

But I hope she can take this in for all your sakes and also for the sake of this awesome community you guys have created.

Love your mindset.

Love your empathy.

Now, time to be brave and put it to work.

Good luck.

You can reach us Friday at jordanharbinger.com.

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Try to use a descriptive subject line that makes our job a whole lot easier.

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Okay, what's next?

Hi, Jordan and Gabe.

My senior year of college, I reconnected with a guy named Justin.

I was recently divorced.

I got married very young, and it only lasted a couple of years.

And Justin had just come back from a semester abroad in Costa Rica.

We started talking about our situations, my divorce, and his long-distance relationship with a girl he had met in Costa Rica.

Let's call her Karen.

Okay, I just need to point out that she chose that name, right?

This is all her.

Okay, just for any listeners named Karen who think we're going for the easy bit, y'all are slaying the character names today, we are hands off.

He was very unsure about continuing this relationship due to the distance, but mostly due to religious differences.

He's Catholic and she was not, and he felt very strongly about that.

Fast forward three months, our relationship had become romantic and I got pregnant.

He hadn't broken up with Karen yet.

He then broke it off and we became a real couple and then parents.

Our relationship was tumultuous, to say the least.

He proposed eight months after my daughter was born.

He graduated and got a very good job and I started teaching.

He bought a house and we moved in together when my daughter was one.

It was a rough couple of months when I first moved in and we decided to go our separate ways.

A week later, I found out I was pregnant with our son.

Okay, the only thing Catholic about this guy so far is he doesn't use birth control.

Everything else is up in the air.

What a roller coaster this is.

What is happening?

I considered an abortion, but he was adamant about having this baby.

He said we would work things out and we would be a little family.

I honestly wanted the same for me and my children, so we tried again.

We finally got married by a justice of the peace the week before my son was born.

We were happy and we loved each other.

But it wasn't easy by any means.

We went through a lot of financial and emotional hardships, but we pulled through.

It was very important to him to get married by the Catholic Church, so we got married by the church two years after my son was born.

We both got our master's degrees while raising two small children and working full-time.

Fast forward 10 years.

We had bought the house of our dreams and we were living the life of our dreams.

Or so I thought.

Here we go.

Chugga chugga doos doos.

Here comes.

He was a great father, but an okay husband.

He had a few indiscretions that I know about, and I forgave him and went to couples counseling multiple times.

Interesting choice of words.

He was an okay husband, multiple affairs.

Well, yeah.

But his fathering, that was okay, until something, I mean, you know, where's this going?

There's so much to talk about, Org.

I hope we remember all of this.

She goes on, it was a lot of work, but we made it work.

In 2008, we went to a Catholic couples retreat, and we even renewed our vows there.

I loved him, and I kept working hard to make it work for our family.

Around 2015, he moved companies and got a big raise.

He's always traveled for work and this new company had projects in South America, which he was excited about because he has family there.

Oh boy.

Okay, I see where this is going.

Gabe, you know Latin America.

I'm guessing there's a direct flight from Caracas to San Jose, Costa Rica.

I'm sure there is, although if you're determined to get there, I'm guessing you'll put up with a layover or two, if you need to.

So she goes on.

A couple of years later, things started to change with him.

He wasn't trying as hard, and he was absent-minded even when he was home with us.

He was always on his phone.

He had two phones, a work phone and a personal phone.

I've never had access to them.

He became unhappy, and he started working out more.

Ah yes, tale as old as time.

Two phones and a brand new six-pack of abs.

Name a more iconic duo, am I right?

Uh-huh.

Fast forward to 2020.

He filed for divorce.

It wasn't a total surprise because he had been threatening a divorce every time he got mad or didn't get his way.

I thought he was just depressed or going through a midlife crisis.

I never thought he would divorce his family.

He was so Catholic and loved his kids so much.

It was fast.

We were divorced and he moved out three months later.

The week after the divorce, he came back to the house to use the printer and was unaware that he left his email open.

Man, this is like every cheating cliche in the book.

I guess this is how it happens.

These motherfuckers never heard of Kenko.

Somebody say she.

Later that day, I was helping my daughter with her homework when we saw his email and noticed hotel reservation confirmation emails and Zelle confirmation emails where he had sent money to a woman.

That woman was Karen.

My daughter confronted him about it, and of course, he lied and said they were just friends and had recently reconnected.

Wow, okay, so much to say about this, but I find it interesting that the daughter confronted her dad about this for a while.

She is strange, as opposed to mom, right?

Right.

So she's a teenager at most, right?

She just said I I was helping her with her homework, and then it's like, honey, when you're done with your long division, can you go confront your father about his years-long affair?

Look, I know the parents are divorced at this point, but this still feels like something our friend here maybe would have confronted him about first instead of their child.

It's interesting, given how much she seems to have overlooked and forgiven here.

I mean, I wonder if this is one more instance of her avoiding the difficult conversation.

Uh-huh.

And her daughter's like, well, if you're not going to say something, I will, even though I'm 14 years old.

Or they both agreed that the daughter would confront him but that's that is not something a child should have to do no that's that's even worse one year later they were married i don't know exactly how long they were having this affair but i have my suspicions that it started shortly after he moved companies back in 2015.

yeah those airline miles man though they add up and they expire you gotta lose those things that's true i wonder what tier you have to be in on Copa airlines to get priority boarding when you fly to visit your mistress in Costa Rica.

I don't know, but he's at least group three in the boarding process.

I can tell you that.

Yep.

Sadly, he became an absent father since he was busy with his new family.

He was now a father to two stepdaughters, but not to my kids.

I was hurt and very angry with his deceit, and for my kids as well.

I have never confronted him about his affair in any way.

Well, there it is again.

That's a big part of the story, huh?

So the daughter confronted him, but she didn't.

Right.

Fascinating.

Yeah.

Karen held a government position in Costa Rica, and when I started looking into her, it seems that she resigned her position and left the country very quickly, but was still using government funds and receiving pay without actually working.

She was under investigation and has had to repay some of those funds, but she still owes the government money.

Ooh, juicy.

It makes me think she wanted to get married quickly to get a green card and leave the country.

Interesting theory.

Hard to say.

I mean, it could be.

Sure.

Fast forward to today.

Karen has reinvented herself.

She's changed her last name, calls herself a doctor, and works as a life coach.

She claims to have years of experience in the field.

As far as I can tell, she only has a bachelor's in psychology and not a doctorate.

She's clearly a con artist.

As far as I know, she may be hiding from the Costa Rican government, but I'm not sure.

I want to make sure this woman doesn't get away with hurting and deceiving more people.

Is it illegal to advertise yourself as a doctor when you're not?

What can I do to make sure this woman doesn't get away with deceiving and hurting any more people?

Signed, trying to get this woman shunned after she made off with these funds and also my husband.

That sign-off was as legit as Karen's doctorate.

Dang,

that was a nice deuce cruise.

Had some twists and turns.

It did.

Stopped in some good ports along the way.

We did some good shopping.

Solid trip.

Yeah, got a nice 10 out on the deck.

10 out of 10.

Well, first of all, I'm very sorry that you've been through all this, this tumultuous marriage, the instability and hurt.

You and your kids all went through, the divorce, and of course, the affair, multiple affairs, apparently.

Multiple affairs, yes.

Let us not forget.

by the way gabe sheila kathy karen we got a real pantheon of villains today don't we all these tricky ladies back to back i would love to get these women in a room and they should start their own little ladies meetup i would love to be a fly-on-the-wall in that one what a weird club that would be kathy ranting at the other two for 45 minutes sheila bringing a drunk pedophile to the book club

Karen in the back taking money out of their purses.

Honestly, it might be a great fit.

Peas in a pod, these ladies.

Anyway, this is all very painful stuff.

I'm sure it was super hurtful and disturbing to find out he was having an affair with his ex while you were together.

I'm just very sorry about all of it.

So look, I totally get why you want to bust this woman.

It sounds like she committed fraud of some kind.

Now she's inventing credentials and potentially conning people and possibly hiding out in another country.

She's very dodgy for sure.

And she had a hand in breaking up your marriage.

She's the obvious villain here.

Although, to be fair, obviously it was not the only hand.

And who knows what brought her and your husband back together?

Maybe she just wanted money and a green card.

Maybe they really do have a meaningful relationship.

Not saying it was okay by any means, especially for a guy who insisted for years on being a good Catholic, which is pretty rich coming from him, but maybe they're a better match.

I don't know.

So I think the question you need to ask is, are you thinking about calling Karen out because you genuinely want to protect people from her or because you want revenge?

Yeah, that is exactly the question.

And I can't help but feel that there are a few motivations at play here.

Yeah, in most places, it's illegal to advertise yourself as a doctor if you're not licensed or qualified to use those titles.

Although the life coaching industry in most countries, including the U.S., is just basically the wild west.

To call yourself a life coach, there's no legal requirement for certification, licensing, formal education.

There are organizations that offer voluntary certifications and ethical standards, but it's not like there's a state board of life coaches you can file a complaint with.

No, but I'm pretty sure that a state licensing board can issue a cease and desist order to somebody like this, maybe even potentially refer the case for prosecution if they're out there treating patients and saying I'm a doctor.

Yeah, that's good to know.

Also, if a coach crosses into clinical territory without a license, like if they're making diagnoses or prescribing medication off the book.

Yeah, exactly.

That's not okay.

Then they could be liable for practicing therapy or medicine without a license, which is, you know, definitely a crime in most places.

I think the FTC or your state attorney general's Consumer Protection Division, I think it's called, they could look into it.

They're the ones usually responsible for investigating false advertising, misrepresentation, fraud, but I don't know if this is going to be worth their while, to be honest.

Yeah, I'm sure Karen would be small potatoes to them.

They're probably going after, you know, predatory online poker sites and massive email scams and mislabeled food packaging and stuff like that.

More to the point, you wouldn't even know about this woman if your husband hadn't dated her years ago and then zelled her 600 bucks.

And what did he do?

He booked her a suite at the four-point charitable Buenos Aires or whatever for the two of them?

Yeah, so why is she on your radar?

Yeah, exactly.

Look, this is personal for her.

I'm sure she's driven in part by a desire for justice, but I'm sure there's also a part of her going, I want to take this bitch down for stealing my husband.

Yeah, more or less.

I think you can take a beat and sit with this, ask yourself what you're really trying to accomplish here and why.

I'm not saying Karen doesn't deserve it.

I'm not saying her clients don't deserve to be protected.

She sounds like a hot mess.

And if you decide that you're doing it for those reasons, fine.

I get it.

I can be petty the bill too.

But if I stop and think about this, I probably wouldn't get involved just because you're hurt and angry and you're looking for a way to discharge those feelings.

And this is the only way you can think of to do it because there's no guarantee that it's going to work.

The damage is already done.

You might do this and still find yourself feeling angry and embarrassed about how this all played out.

It's okay to just be angry.

It's okay to just be sad.

You don't necessarily need to channel those feelings into revenge in order to cope with them.

I also do wonder what the ripple effects would be.

Karen is a mother to two children, I think it was, and she's in a relationship now, possibly one she truly wants to be in.

We don't know.

Of course, we don't understand the details of this relationship, but look, is she dodgy?

Of course.

Did she do a hurtful and messy thing by getting involved with our friend here's husband?

Definitely.

Does she need to face the music back in Costa Rica?

Probably based on the facts here.

Does she deserve even more drama and instability for trying to reinvent herself in a new country?

I just don't know.

Look, this woman has made a series of highly questionable choices.

So has your husband.

And as we talk about from time to time, people who do that do tend to invite the negative consequences for themselves.

That's where I'm leaning to, only because her crime at this point, pretending she's more qualified than she is to make a living and probably not even making a great living at that, it's relatively innocent.

If she were more explicitly hurting people, I'd say report her.

Don't even think about it.

But calling yourself a doctor on your Squarespace website because you're desperate for clients who need help prioritizing their to-do list or something.

I don't know.

Not enough to overcome the revenge question for me.

But I totally understand the impulse.

And I'm sorry that you're hurting.

But honestly, you've already won here.

You separated from a guy who wouldn't or could not treat you and and your daughter the way you deserved, who put you through a lot.

You've probably learned a ton through this experience and now you're free.

So maybe the better question is, what more am I looking for?

And also, what do I still have to learn from this situation?

Because for me, the big theme, as we talked about, is this avoidance of hers.

All the things that she overlooked, forgave, dismissed when she was with her husband, all the points at which she could have called him out for these indiscretions and figured out if this was the right marriage, potentially have gone their separate ways earlier.

But she insisted on staying and working through things for the sake of their little family, as she put it.

But there were so many indications that something was fundamentally wrong here.

So I think you're going to get a lot further investigating that stuff than trying to get Karen banned from LinkedIn for putting doctor in her bio, you know?

And in fact, this preoccupation you have with her, I wonder if that might be one way to avoid doing some work closer to home.

Totally agree.

So sit with that, start there, keep the focus on you.

That's all you can ultimately control.

Sending you and your daughter a big hug and take care.

You know it's a great use of embezzled Costa Rican government funds, Gabriel.

The products and services that support this show, most of which will fit in the overhead compartment on Copa Airlines.

We'll be right back.

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Now, back to Feedback Friday.

Okay,

now for the recommendation of the week.

I am addicted to Litvilla.

My recommendation of the week is an app called Every Day.

I've had it for years.

I don't know why I didn't say something about it sooner, but you take a picture of yourself every day, just a selfie.

It's got a little grid so that you're in the same position, and then it turns it into a movie automatically so you can see yourself getting older and uglier.

Or if you're a closet narcissist like me, fitter and thinner.

But honestly, it's a really cool app.

It's great for parents because you can create little time-lapse videos for your kids.

You can capture a long-term project like a house being built or a fitness journey or something, I don't know, Legos, whatever, anything really that you want, you can sort of time-lapse it by taking a photo every day.

I'm a big fan of that.

We do it for the kids.

I do one with Jen and then one alone.

And I just have these years of albums with just a selfie every day, almost every day.

So definitely check it out.

I think it's a few bucks.

on the App Store, but there's a free version as well.

It's called Every Day and we'll link to it in the show notes.

Also, in case you don't know, there's a subreddit for our show if you want to jump into discussions with other listeners about specific episodes.

Stuff you like, stuff you don't like, the recommendations, guest suggestions, all happening over there inside the Jordan Harbinger subreddit.

Okay, what's next?

Dear Gaben Jordan, my husband was raised by an alcoholic father who had seven kids living in a three-bedroom trailer and a sweet mother who made the best at feeding her kids saltines with butter for dinner and never complained or worried when the heat was turned off.

She was used to having nothing, while my father-in-law would buy motorcycles and cars for fun.

All of this seemed normal to my husband and his siblings growing up.

What a childhood.

That is so sad.

My husband has always taken his responsibility as provider very seriously.

In fact, he never really wanted me to work unless it was something I could do from home.

He is very skilled and has so many talents.

Throughout our 23 years together, he has done AutoCAD architectural design, had a tree service, done plumbing, HVAC, and carpentry, and had a very successful contracting business.

His work was always top-notch.

The pattern is: start a business with high hopes, get noticed for high-quality work, get lots of business credit cards and business loans, claim we are rich, take me on vacations, buy expensive gadgets and tools, host fancy end-of-year employee appreciation dinners, then the work dries up and we are left with tens of thousands in debt.

Once we both had to file for bankruptcy.

Oof, this is a really tough cycle.

I'm 55 now and tired of the roller coaster.

I'm sick of just surviving.

No kidding.

But then six years ago, my husband got diagnosed with CML leukemia.

He's on a very low-dose chemo med that saps his energy and causes low testosterone levels.

Of course, following his dad's example, we don't have any savings or retirement plans.

He would always rather take me on vacation or out for expensive dinners, leaving nothing for a nest egg.

He's always said, money is just money, but experiences are priceless.

I somewhat agree and adore him for wanting to share those times with me.

But obviously, as we get older and his energy wanes, this is becoming a problem.

Yeah, I mean, I get it.

He's all, YOLO, and you're like, okay, but what are we going to do when we're 80?

Or maybe more to the point, sorry to go here, but what am I going to do when I'm 80?

In 2024, his formerly successful contractor business just stopped getting work.

For an entire year, we were living off of his business savings and credit, and then even my credit cards.

I even had to do a bunch of tricky 0% APR balance transfers just to keep paying my bills.

And now we're in $100,000 of debt.

Yeah, that's really stressful.

I remember Amex cutting off my card.

I don't know, it's like almost 20 years ago.

Cutting off the card and like, you know, hey, you need to pay us $35,000.

You want this thing back on?

You're like, oh my God.

I'm curious to know how a thriving contractor business goes from having a ton of work to not having a single job for an entire year.

Something doesn't add up.

Yeah, I don't know.

I've never been a contractor, but it seems like we're flush and we can't do anything because we're totally overbooked to we literally have nothing for the whole year.

Is that normal?

There's got to be more to that story, right?

You'd almost have to deliberately sabotage or severely neglect your business to not get one lead on a job for a year if you had tons of great work before where people were thrilled with you.

And this is a pattern for him.

It keeps happening over and over again.

Yeah, he's doing something or he's not doing something to tank these successful businesses.

Spending too much and not saving is part of it, but I just don't think that's the full story, man.

After almost a year with no income, he took a job with a wealthy family who is paying us very well and free housing as part of the salary package, which is how we wound up moving from New York to Florida.

We are not paying rent here and making a great salary, but it's all going towards this massive pile of debt.

So we've decided to sell our home in New York.

The sale will allow us to pay the mortgage off and leave us enough to cover most of the debt, which puts us back at the starting line.

Oh, okay.

Well, that's a tough hit, but it's a blessing, too.

But my husband hates this job because it's extremely demanding working for billionaires who never hear the word no.

He's working about 10 hours a day, five days a week, planting trees, wrestling snapping turtles out of ponds, and weeding in the Florida heat with leukemia and low-tee.

My poor guy is almost 50 and exhausted.

He wants to leave here as soon as the house sells and start a new business.

That's crazy, right?

Yes.

We have no savings.

If he could stick it out for just 10 months, I could have $10,000 saved up, and we'd be much safer.

He doesn't want me looking for work, which I am also willing to do.

I'm also not looking to end my marriage, no matter how financially irresponsible my husband is.

I love this man, and we've raised a beautiful family together and have mostly wonderful memories together over the course of 23 years.

That's a loaded mostly.

I want to know more about the mostly.

She does not elaborate on the mostly, but I'm with you.

Maybe she just means the financial stress.

That's not been fun.

Or maybe everything else around it, which is a real challenge, but okay, I hear you.

Separating, not on the table.

Separating, not on the table, but also is that a rigid thing?

I don't know.

There's something.

It's interesting that she's telling us I will not even consider this option.

So it has to be something else, but we'll come back to that.

Doesn't it make sense to stay in Florida and put into savings all that money we were spending on bills while we don't have rent or even an electricity bill?

Am I being a greedy, unfair wench?

If he doesn't agree to let me work, how can I convince him to stay at this soul-crushing job for just 10 more months?

Or at least agree to not start another company until we have some kind of financial stability?

Signed, doomed to fret over this never-ending debt.

Oh boy, such a tough situation.

I can feel my blood pressure rising just listening to this letter.

I can't even imagine living it.

I know.

My heart is like tight right now.

Yeah.

It's hard.

First of all, I'm obviously deeply sorry to hear about all this.

Your husband's traumatic childhood, the business chaos, the financial instability, his illness on top of everything, the challenges you guys have in tackling this together.

This is extremely intense.

There's no other way to say it.

Gabe, I'm assuming you're over there doing the math, too, on how this guy's childhood informed his relationship with money and responsibility as an adult and all that.

Oh, yes.

This is fascinating.

This is really formative stuff, the way you grew up.

This poor guy, man.

I'm so curious about how one person growing up in a family like that might have turned out exactly like his dad, kind of spendies, selfish, nay or do well.

And then someone else like her husband can grow up to be an ambitious provider at all costs.

It is a really interesting thing, but you know, what's fascinating to me is that he kind of ended up being both in a way.

That's true.

He's extremely talented, resourceful, resilient, hardworking.

He wants to be the provider, and he's extravagant and impulsive.

It's like he followed in his father's footsteps, but instead of being a total POS letting his children go hungry while he's out buying Kawasakis or whatever, he's found a kind of of noble version of those qualities, right?

Like he's treating his family to experiences and he's taking his employees out to dinner and he's telling his wife, I don't want you to have to work.

It's not for you.

But then he's failing to plan and be responsible, right?

Man, we'd have to know so much more about him to understand why he operates this way.

And I know that's not what she's writing in about, but her husband is like super interesting.

I actually think it is kind of what she's writing in about, but she might not realize that.

But yes.

And also, by the way, the fact that he's doing all of this while fighting cancer for six years, this is a lot for one person to deal with.

I know.

It's insane, dude.

Can you imagine working this hard while you're fighting cancer and just trying not to go bankrupt under 100K in debt?

It's just, this guy is built different.

But that also speaks to how strong his ideas must be about who should be the provider.

So he would rather stress and suffer in this way than allow his wife to work, which she is more than happy to do, because I'm assuming the idea of not being the sole provider, which would mean having to admit that they're in a pretty precarious situation and he needs help.

That must be quite a blow to him.

Yeah, that would be a wound, right?

And I can vaguely connect the dots to his father there.

He probably doesn't want to feel like he's anything like his dad, but it's like, my guy, you're 100 grand in debt.

You've tanked every business you've owned.

Now you're slaving away in tropical freaking heat to make ends meet while you're fighting cancer.

Let your wife get a job at the library.

Yeah.

Come on, man.

I don't think you're in a position to say, no, honey, just stay home.

Let me handle this.

That is just an absurd stance to take right now.

So look, we can't really advise you on the personal finance aspect of this.

We're not financial coaches.

But given the facts here, I do think it probably makes more sense to save some money and create as much stability and flexibility as possible.

Given his track record, I don't see how starting another business solves all your problems.

In all likelihood, without any meaningful changes, this pattern will just repeat itself.

And I think that's really important for you to recognize.

Now, in your husband's mind, starting a business is obviously preferable to planting trees and pulling weeds and wrestling snapping turtles out of billionaires' ponds in the Florida heat with leukemia for 50 hours a week.

And I can appreciate that.

I don't know how sustainable this job is.

It doesn't sound sustainable at all.

I also get the sense that he likes being the boss and probably likes being in charge.

So working this job, especially for clients like this, I'm just getting the sense that that might also be a bit of a wound for him.

Okay, but what concerns me is that your husband isn't sitting down with you and going, okay, we need to figure this out.

Clearly something isn't working here.

Clearly there's a pattern.

I really don't want you to work, but I also can't keep doing this job.

And I want to get back to owning my own company.

What do we need to look at together?

What do we need to do differently?

Right.

He's just swinging from branch to branch, trying to keep all these plates spinning.

Very mixed metaphor, Dave.

Yeah, that's exactly right.

Juggling turtles at the same time.

That's right.

No, you're not being a greedy, unfair wench, which is, I haven't heard the word wench in a while.

So thank you for that.

That's a question.

I'm actually a bit surprised that this is even a question from you, given that you're literally saying, hey, I want to work.

I want to contribute.

Can we please get our feet under us so that we're not living paycheck to paycheck constantly while you're really sick?

But I'm guessing that your husband's way of managing things for 23 years has made you feel selfish and unfair for wanting him to be more grounded and more responsible.

Yes, bingo.

So you guys obviously need to talk about all of this, like really talk about it.

And the things that you need to discuss are, first of all, why your husband believes that you guys are in the position that you're in right now.

Does he think it's all bad luck or can he maybe see the pattern here even a little bit?

Is he open to talking about that pattern with you?

Is he open to finding ways to rewrite it?

And that includes the way that he manages his businesses, the way he spends, the way he doesn't save, and also his relationship with money and experiences and the future in general.

This YOLO quality of his, like, where does that come from?

And what position is it putting you guys in?

This fear, this anxiety it's creating for you is something that I think you need to share with him.

I also want to know why your husband is so adamant about you not working when you guys obviously need to generate as much income as possible right now.

I mean, I think you know what I think is the reason, but I think it would be helpful for him to tell you why that's so important.

But really, in the short term, on a practical level, you guys got to figure out what is the strategy here?

What are the pros and cons of staying at this job in Florida?

What are the pros and cons of moving back home, starting a new business, all of it?

I think you guys got to roll up your sleeves and confront the facts.

get clear on your true goal and have some healthy debate about this and just make the most responsible choice here.

Yeah, as much as possible, I would try to frame this conversation as you and your husband versus the problem, not you versus your husband, which is part of the reason you guys are stuck right now.

Look, these wounds that we've been talking about, I think they're a very big part of this conversation too.

Now, I don't know if your husband wants to go there, but I think he kind of has to if something is going to change, because as long as your husband experiences your working as an injury to him, the more he clings to this idea that he absolutely needs to own his own business, ASAP, because 10 more months of this job is too great an insult if that's in fact what's going on.

As opposed to thinking of this as like a very challenging, but also a very helpful gift in this precarious time, the harder it's going to be for you guys to make progress.

He needs to investigate all of these beliefs, all of these values with you, and decide if they actually hold water.

And even if they do hold water, are they really tenable right now?

It's not that he's necessarily wrong per se to hold these beliefs.

I get wanting to quit an exhausting job when you're fighting cancer.

I get why this childhood created some real trauma that's probably informing every single aspect of this experience.

No, totally same.

Despite everything we're saying, I really do feel for this guy.

I have a lot of empathy for him.

It's just that he's creating so much additional dysfunction and stress because of the way he's handling it.

Yes.

The question is, are your beliefs and assumptions helping you find solutions here or are they shutting them down?

Are they empowering you to make the best choices or are they digging an even deeper hole?

Yes, that is the conversation they need to have.

And I think she has to make it okay for him to look at some potentially quite painful stuff.

You know, he has to be willing to feel the distress of saying, okay, maybe I'm not providing for us as well as I should be.

Maybe I did play a role in why we're here.

And yeah, maybe I do need help.

My sincere hope is that he can bear those feelings enough to own a few important things and then step into a shared reality with her and then collaborate with her to come up with a plan.

that puts them on much more solid ground.

Which could very well mean staying at this job for a little while longer and not starting another company until they're more stable.

That sounds like the most responsible thing to me, but there might be other versions of that that also work, right?

It could be another job that's less taxing, or it could be allowing her to get a job and pitch in, or it could be digging into this more personal stuff to change his whole operating system.

Although I think that's going to be a longer process if he's willing to do it.

I also just want to say, look, my heart goes out to a guy who's fighting cancer, who has low testosterone, who's exhausted.

It's more than anyone should have to go through, and I'm sure he wants to stick around and take good care of his family.

But I also also can't help but wonder if on some level, his health stuff is giving him a kind of a get out of jail free card where the consequences of his, frankly, reckless behavior feel lower to him.

So you mean, is the YOLO quality exacerbated by the fact that he might not live forever?

That's what you're getting at?

I know it's uncomfortable to talk about, but look, just to call a spade a spade.

He's been fighting cancer for six years and he's not in remission, which means they're treating it.

They're just managing it.

I'm not a doctor.

We obviously don't know the details, but where is this heading?

The painful fact is that he might not live as long as she does, especially when you add in the stress and the exhaustion.

At best, they might be just extending his timeline.

I know that that's probably hard to hear.

I feel really bad highlighting that, but surely you've thought about this.

So part of me is going, are you just not super motivated to look deeply at this pattern because you feel like you're living on borrowed time?

Are you throwing caution to the wind because at some point this is not going to be your problem anymore?

Look, I'm not saying he's consciously doing this to screw over his wife and family.

I think he might just be in denial, which is a common place for people who have a terminal illness.

That's something else they definitely need to talk about.

I mean, even if that isn't how he's actually thinking about it, he is effectively going to leave her holding the bag for his poor choices.

Actually, he already is doing that because they're her credit cards too.

Exactly.

They're both on the hook for the debt.

And that's unfair of him to do to her, even if he were totally healthy.

So get to talking, get to planning, work with your husband to look at this stuff and make decisions that set both of you up to be as safe and stable as possible and hopefully healthy, of course, as well.

But then the question becomes, what then?

How do we do things differently next time?

That's the real conversation.

I sense that's a conversation your husband struggles to have, so you'll probably have to show him how to do it, sending you both a big hug and wishing you all the best.

Go back and check out Dr.

Benjamin Bickman and our skeptical Sunday on fundamentalist Christian ideology versus science 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 I know, like, and trust.

And I'm teaching you how to build the same thing for yourself in our six-minute networking course, which is free.

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Again, sixminutenetworking.com.

Show notes and transcripts are on the website.

Advertisers, deals, discounts, ways to support the show, all at jordanharbinger.com slash deals.

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And we'll see you next time.

How do you earn the trust of a violent outlaw gang, knowing the whole time you're going to betray them?

Jay Dobbins didn't just infiltrate the Hells Angels.

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there's nothing more important to those true believers than that Hells Angels name and that deathhead logo.

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In this episode, we unpack the fake crimes, real danger, and brutal psychological cost of going all in undercover.

Check out episodes 11-11 and 11-12 for more with Jay Dobbins.

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