Jocko Underground: Is My Girlfriend Abusing Me?

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Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Jocko Willink?

  This is the Jocko Underground Podcast, number 149. Sitting here with Echo Charles. We have some interesting and important questions from the troopers today. Opening up with a little bit of a doozy.

• 0:14Speaker 01

  Little bit.

• 0:15Jocko Willink?

  Let's rock and roll.

• 0:16Speaker 01

  Okay, all right, first question. Thank you for everything you do. The positive impact on my life for the last eight years is imaginable. I'm 32 year old male and have been with my girlfriend for three years. The first year and a half was amazing and I thought for sure she was the girl I was gonna marry. She's beautiful, driven, loyal, and we share so many important values. I knew she had mental health issues in the past, including bipolar and borderline personality disorder tendencies and self harm. It seems she was keeping all of that under control with regular therapy and coping mechanisms that she had learned. She was functional, successful, sweet, intelligent and loving person. Year and a half ago, she moved in with me and things began to change. She stopped going to therapy because life got quote unquote, "too busy."

• 0:59Speaker 01

  And she was doing so, and she was doing so well. Her mental health issues began resurfacing and have escalated ever since. She is off in still all the things I fell in love with her for. But now almost weekly, she has, she has a mental, mental breakdown where she is unhappy with everything in her life, including me. She sometimes screams at me, tells me she's done with me and insults me. I try to take ownership and, and attempt to do what I can to make her feel better. Later she apologizes, feels guilty, calls herself crazy, tells me I'm the most understanding, best guy ever and can't wait for me to propose to her. I usually forgive her quickly, but then it happens again. She thinks that if I propose, she will feel more secure and stop this pattern.

• 1:42Speaker 01

  But she also says she has always been like this and always will. But I can't accept that because she wasn't for the first year and a half. I've tried getting her back into therapy, both individually and as a couple. Both therapists upset her and she quit. They made her feel worse about herself and like they were ganging up on her, quote unquote. I don't want to give up on her, but I can't live the rest of my life with someone yelling and insulting me. I'm not perfect, but I remain kind to her and do not yell back at her. And I try to make changes to help the things she says she's unhappy with. What do you guys think?

• 2:21Jocko Willink?

  Um, you're right.

• 2:27Jocko Willink?

  You can't live the rest of your life with a person yelling and insulting you. Actually, let me rephrase that. You can. But it's gonna be miserable.

• 2:37Jocko Willink?

  I'm

• 2:40Jocko Willink?

  fairly certain that

• 2:44Jocko Willink?

  one of, if not the, most important decision that you're going to make in your life as a human is who you're gonna get married to.

• 2:55Jocko Willink?

  This is a person you're gonna be with for, what, fifty years, maybe sixty years, something like that? You gotta deal with them every day. You got all kinds of little decisions we're making as a team. We got strategies and tactics we're gonna employ to live, go through the whole thing. Financial, fitness, what's for dinner?

• 3:18Jocko Willink?

  This woman has issues that you are going to bring into your world for the rest of your life.

• 3:26Jocko Willink?

  And that is

• 3:30Jocko Willink?

  very that's not good. That's, it's, it's, it's a

• 3:36Jocko Willink?

  it's a nightmare, man, honestly. I have seen like, this, this isn't gonna end well. Right? And I feel very sorry. I'm sorry that, you know, I'm, I'm is this cold? You know what I mean? Am I, I'm sorry that I'm a little bit cold and a little bit

• 3:58Jocko Willink?

  like lacking empathy. But I'm gonna tell you this is not going to go well. All right?

• 4:09Jocko Willink?

  If there was something we could do, if there's some way we could get her help, I would, you know, help her out, like, you know? But I can't help her out. You can't help her out.

• 4:19Jocko Willink?

  She needs like five years of uninterrupted squared away behavior before I would consider marrying her. I actually wouldn't consider marrying her, but if you're, if you are so, if you are so like totally head over heels in love with her, and you care about her so much,

• 4:41Jocko Willink?

  then I would say, yep, I definitely want to stick with you. I need five continuous, straight years uninterrupted of you being a squared away awesome human. Then I'll start to date you as if we might get married in the future. And you're, you're 32 years old, so the clock is ticking.

• 5:00Jocko Willink?

  By the way, marriage is stressful for most people. Money, house, rent, jobs, throw kids into the mix because they're coming and what's going on with kids? Now you got this whole freaking thing. Kids are

• 5:16Jocko Willink?

  a huge like disruptor of life. Especially when you're young. I remember, you know, when my kids were babies. And I'm like, wow, like this is stressful for me. I don't get stressed out about anything. But like you have a sick kid? Or a screaming child? Like it's stressful for someone that's very good at dealing with stress. Like I can't imagine if I'm someone that has bipolar and borderline personality disorder tendencies and self harm.

• 5:53Jocko Willink?

  You want a life partner that can and will help the situation.

• 6:02Jocko Willink?

  You don't want one that needs help.

• 6:06Jocko Willink?

  That you don't want one that's going to drain resources. You want one that's going to add resources.

• 6:17Jocko Willink?

  And you know, this woman, she needs help. She needs protocols. She needs medicine. She needs a professional.

• 6:32Jocko Willink?

  And so I, this is just a, a bad scenario, man. I'm, I'm really, I, I feel for her. I'm sure it's very difficult for her. I'm sure that, um, you know, it's really hard and it sounds like she has a lot of potential when she's doing the right things. But when she's not doing the right things and now you're, now your life is destroyed because of it. It's just bad.

• 7:00Jocko Willink?

  It's bad. So my advice here is wish her luck, be very nice to her and move on.

• 7:12Jocko Willink?

  And like I said, if you really, really feel that this is the girl that you want to sacrifice your life for and possibly ruin your life and ruin the lives of your future children.

• 7:24Jocko Willink?

  Then I would require at a minimum five years of totally normal behavior for her, from her. And then I would, then I would put her in the mix for consideration. And I, I'm sorry that I'm being cold, but that's where we're at.

• 7:41Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. It feels like if you're trying to maximize a happy life with a, you know, life partner, wife, family, et cetera. This is not currently the ingredients for that. Red flag two is that it's getting like worse, like measurably worse in the relationship, you know? And then it's like, oh yeah, let's get married, you know?

• 8:02Jocko Willink?

  If, if she was like, oh, you know, I used to have these issues and I was, you know, I had these problems in the past and you know, then I. That is a little excerpt of what we are doing on the Jocko Underground Podcast. So if you want to continue to listen, go to jockounderground.com and subscribe. And we're doing this to mitigate our reliance on external platforms. So we are not subject to their control and we are doing this so that we can support the Jocko Podcast, which will remain as is free for all, as long as we can keep it that way. But we are doing this so we don't have to be under the control of sponsors. And we're doing it so we can give you more control, more interaction, more direct connections,

• 8:46Jocko Willink?

  better communications with us. And to do that, we are, we're building a website right now where we'll be able to utilize to strengthen this legion of troopers that are in the game with us. So, thank you. It's jockounderground.com. It costs $8.18 a month. And if you can't afford to support us, we can still support you. Just email [email protected] and we'll get you taken care of. Until then, we will see you mobilized underground.