1371: Showed Intent to Roam, so In-Laws Stole Home | Feedback Friday

Your in-laws lowballed you for your own home, took the deed, and kept the cash. Do you fight family in court, or eat the loss? It's Feedback Friday! And in case you didn't already know it, Jordan Harbinger (@JordanHarbinger https://twitter.com/JordanHarbinger) and Gabriel Mizrahi (@GabeMizrahi https://twitter.com/GabeMizrahi) banter and take your comments and questions for Feedback Friday right here every week! If you want us to answer your question, register your feedback, or tell your story on one of our upcoming weekly Feedback Friday episodes, drop us a line at [email protected] mailto:[email protected]. Now let's dive in! Full show notes and resources can be found here: jordanharbinger.com/1371 https://jordanharbinger.com/1371 On This Week's Feedback Friday: Your wife's parents paid off her mortgage, then "gifted" the renovations they now insist were a $225,000 investment. When you two planned to move states away, they demanded the house, lowballed you to $100,000, took the deed with no written contract — and never paid up. Can you claw it back? Everyone swears you'd make a great mom — you teach Sunday school, you "mother" a neighbor's two boys — but you have never wanted kids of your own. Your husband knew that before you married him at 18, yet he keeps pushing, promising he'll magically change once there's a baby. Do you hold the line? Your wife swapped a structured corporate career for an under-resourced nonprofit that promised training and delivered "figure it out." Now she's on a performance plan built to push her out, her confidence is shredded, and you're bracing for a fight over unemployment. Can she protect herself before the axe drops? Recommendation of the Week: Unsubscribe from every email you don't need — Jordan finally purged every newsletter, promo blast, and dormant Facebook group from his inbox, and calls the relief life-changing: less daily noise, and a quiet defection from the "push" world of stuff shoved at you back into the "pull" world you seek out yourself. You're a 48-year-old in Texas and the past two years erased your marriage, your career, your finances, even your dog. Your ex came out as trans, leaned on you through all of it, then discarded you the moment someone new appeared. You barely recognize yourself in the wreckage. Where do you even begin to rebuild? Have any questions, comments, or stories you'd like to share with us? Drop us a line at [email protected] mailto:[email protected]! Connect with Jordan on Twitter at @JordanHarbinger https://twitter.com/JordanHarbinger and Instagram at @jordanharbinger https://www.instagram.com/jordanharbinger. Connect with Gabriel on Twitter at @GabeMizrahi https://twitter.com/GabeMizrahi and Instagram @gabrielmizrahi https://www.instagram.com/gabrielmizrahi/. And if you're still game to support us, please leave a review here https://itunes.apple.com/podcast/id1344999619?mt=2&ls=1 — even one sentence helps! Sign up for Six-Minute Networking https://jordanharbinger.com/course — our free networking and relationship development mini course — at jordanharbinger.com/course https://jordanharbinger.com/course! Subscribe to our once-a-week Wee Bit Wiser https://www.jordanharbinger.com/news/ newsletter today and start filling your Wednesdays with wisdom! Do you even Reddit, bro? Join us at r/JordanHarbinger https://www.reddit.com/r/JordanHarbinger/! This Episode Is Brought To You By Our Fine Sponsors https://www.jordanharbinger.com/deals/: Wayfair: Start renovating: wayfair.com https://www.wayfair.com/Hims Weightloss: Get a personalized, affordable plan that gets you: hims.com/harbinger https://www.hims.com/harbingerOrion Sleep: 15% off: orionsleep.com/jordan https://orionsleep.com/jordanProgressive: Free online quote: progressive.com https://www.progressive.com/See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  At Lowe's this Veterans Day and every day, military members, veterans and their spouses get automatic MyLowe's Rewards Silver Status Benefits. Plus, 10% off eligible purchases with no annual limit. It's one way we honor and give back to those who have served and still do. Learn more and verify now at Lowe's.com/military. 10% discount can't be combined with another offer. Exclusions, terms and conditions apply. Loyalty programs subject to terms and conditions. Details at Lowe's.com/TERMS. Subject to change.

• 0:32Speaker 00

  Too soon for Black Friday at Lowe's? Not when the deals are this good. Get your choice of a DeWalt 20V Max reciprocating saw or circular saw for just $99. Plus, MyLowe's Rewards members get free same-day delivery. Black Friday deals are on now at Lowe's, in-store and online. Valid through 11/4. $25 minimum and loyalty membership required. Order eligible items by 2 p.m. Subject to weight and size restrictions and availability. Terms at Lowe's.com/shippingterms.

• 1:03Speaker 01

  Welcome to Feedback Friday. I'm your host, Jordan Harbinger. As always, I'm here with Feedback Friday producer, my entomologist in arms, helping me turn over your weird emotional rocks and identify all the different species hiding underneath, 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, organized crime figures, economic hitmen, gold smugglers, hostage negotiators, tech luminaries. This week, we had Peter Zian on Iran, Ukraine, China, and more. We also did a Skeptical Sunday last Sunday on trepanation and castration.

• 1:46Speaker 01

  Yikes. On Fridays, though, we share stories, take listener letters, offer advice, and gorge ourselves at the all-you-can-eat buffet of life's most pressing trials and tribulations. All right, let's get right to it. Gabe, what is the first thing out of the mailbag?

• 1:59Speaker 02

  Hello, Jordan and Gabe. I've been with my wife for six years. We're in our 40s and currently live in a rural area. I'm not from the area, but my wife has lived here all of her life. At the beginning of the year, we decided that we were going to look to move to a major metro area in another state. I started looking for jobs there, and last month, I accepted a job that will allow me to be closer to many of my friends and my daughters. Our long country commute to work has gotten quite old, and we're both looking forward to living in a major metro area. Before we met, my wife owned our house for over 10 years. When we got married, she added me to the deed because she wanted it to be our house. Before I entered the picture, her parents helped her pay off the

• 2:40Speaker 02

  mortgage. Then, when we got married, they kindly and generously offered to remodel several rooms of the house and redo the driveway. They said they wanted to make things nice and would rather use the money now than risk the government taking it later. We were always very appreciative and thankful that they improved our home. During our time together, my in-laws have been very kind and supportive of both of us, but they have not been pleased that my wife, their daughter, will be moving several states away. As time has gone on, I've also learned that they aren't happy with me, quote, "for what I'm doing to them", unquote. The market value of our home is now $300,000. Homes where we're moving are

• 3:20Speaker 02

  in the $400,000-plus range. With the proceeds, we would have a manageable mortgage. When we told my in-laws that we were going to move, they told my wife, they never wanted to discuss these things with me, that they wanted our house. I thought that would simplify things, and the sale of the house would be one less thing to worry about. Then, they started talking to her about how much money they put into the home and told her that they wanted to deduct it from the price. According to their figures, after all the deductions, they felt $75,000 was a fair offer. This came as a shock to me because everything was always presented as gifts.

• 3:57Speaker 01

  Wow. Yeah, okay. So if my math is math and these parents believe that their investments, which were gifts, in the house, which is what, the driveway and a couple bedroom renovations, were worth $225,000?

• 4:10Speaker 02

  The vast majority of the value of the house? Okay.

• 4:13Speaker 01

  That's insulting, but also crazy. Like, just get a calculator out, Bill. You'll find out that you have your head way up your own arse. Jeez.

• 4:20Speaker 02

  After they continued pressuring my wife, I told them how difficult this was making things and that we probably wouldn't be able to buy a new house. They said we could rent for the time being, but that looks like it'll be more expensive than buying. No one left that conversation very happy.

• 4:35Speaker 01

  Oh, you don't like being lowballed and emotionally manipulated by your in-laws? What's your problem, pal?

• 4:41Speaker 02

  A week later, my father-in-law came over and said he doesn't want to come between us. He said he would like the house, but can't do anything if we sell it. He then said that he'd be willing to go up to $100,000.

• 4:53Speaker 01

  Oh, how generous of him to move his offer up to one-third of the value of the actual house.

• 4:58Speaker 02

  I mean, at least he's negotiating against himself, right?

• 5:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, he's not the brightest bulb. That's a good start, I guess.

• 5:03Speaker 02

  He said he could have that money at the beginning of the week and that $100,000, quote, "would make one hell of a down payment."

• 5:09Speaker 01

  That is so annoying. You know what? God, oh my gosh, these people are irritating.

• 5:13Speaker 02

  You know what else would make one hell of a down payment? $300,000, which is the market value of the house, my friend.

• 5:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know what'd really make a hell of a down payment there, Bill? The actual number, according to Zillow and the real estate agent and, you know, the appraiser. I don't get this, Gabe. Why are they just making up a number about what their so-called investments were worth? I mean, even if the most generous interpretation is not even going to come close to that amount.

• 5:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, like, I don't understand. He, like, did his own calculations. Can't they just look back at the invoices with the contractors and see what it costs?

• 5:43Speaker 01

  Exactly. Unless they were just totally hosed by the contractors, they did not pay, this just did not happen. They did not pay $225,000 to have two bedroom renos and a driveway redone. So these parents are trying to screw them, but in the dumbest, most transparent way.

• 6:00Speaker 02

  Let's see where this story goes. Either screw them or retaliate against them for moving away. Either way.

• 6:05Speaker 01

  Both, yeah.

• 6:06Speaker 02

  Oof. "His requirement is that the money only be used for a down payment on the house, not closing costs, not diverted to any debt payments."

• 6:14Speaker 01

  What a dickhead. I mean, he was a dickhead before, but I'm going to lowball you and dictate how you use your money that I'm paying. What is going on here? You're right, this is purely retaliation. He's trying to make this painful for them.

• 6:28Speaker 02

  While it would be nice to have instant equity, it would be more helpful to be able to pay off a car loan and a credit card and to be able to use some of the money for movers. "One mortgage company seems to be okay if we don't pay any debt off, but we're still concerned that we're biting off more than we can chew. We've never had a house payment this high, and we'd have to use another credit card for the move, which puts us in a tenuous situation." I took a walk and thought about it. I realized that my contributions to the house have not been close to their contributions, and I didn't want to ruin my wife's relationship with her parents. We checked out some mortgage companies and were able to get pre-approved with $100,000, as long as a portion of it goes to paying off some debt. So, we let

• 7:09Speaker 02

  him know that his proposal was acceptable, showed him the mortgage pre-approval requirements, and signed over the deed with my in-law's lawyer.

• 7:17Speaker 01

  Oh, man. So they won. Y'all caved.

• 7:19Speaker 02

  There wasn't a signed contract or settlement sheet, just a transfer of the property within the family through a quitclaim deed transfer, which has been recorded. None of the agreement was in writing.

• 7:30Speaker 01

  Oh, no. Oh, my stomach is starting to hurt.

• 7:34Speaker 02

  We expected the $100,000 then or that week, but it didn't come.

• 7:39Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 7:40Speaker 02

  When we started applying for mortgages, all of the sudden, my father-in-law claimed that the $100,000 is only to be used for a down payment on our next house, nothing else, which was not our understanding. Our understanding was that we sold the house to them for $100,000. I guess he decides because he has the money.

• 7:59Speaker 01

  Wait, wait, wait. I'm confused, Gabe. If he gives them the 100 grand or however much money, they can use that money however they see fit. Why does this a-hole get to decide how they spend it?

• 8:09Speaker 02

  I can't see a way that he does, assuming that it's a, if he just transfers the cash to them.

• 8:14Speaker 01

  Right.

• 8:14Speaker 02

  A, how would he know how they spend it? He doesn't have any control over it, anyway. It sounds like he wants to stipulate how they use it, and he just believes that they're going to play ball.

• 8:21Speaker 01

  This guy's used to just getting whatever he wants and telling his daughter, well, and now her husband, how it's going to be. I'm hating this guy more by the minute. This guy is such a piece of crap.

• 8:32Speaker 02

  His only rationale is that they put money into the house in the past, money that they always claimed was a gift and that they didn't want back. He feels insulted that we were not grateful for their generosity. He also can't believe someone who put so little into the house would expect proceeds from it.

• 8:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I'm fuming. I hope you sue the pants off this guy. Well, it's your family. But actually, I hope you sue the pants off of him anyways.

• 8:54Speaker 02

  We tried to set things straight and make this right. My wife has tried to talk to her father several times, and he says he's not changing his mind. One time, it turned into a shouting match because my wife and I were so frustrated. That didn't help, of course. Meanwhile, I've already resigned from my current job. I spoke with a local attorney who handled the deed transfer, and he said he wasn't aware of any conditions on the money. My wife and I feel so dumb for not getting anything in writing, but we never thought we would need it. We had no reason to distress them. I am beyond furious. I feel conned, lied to, and betrayed. I feel that they stole our house and that this is just an attempt to block the move. I don't see how I can ever have a relationship with

• 9:37Speaker 02

  them again. My wife is in a miserable situation as well and is torn between her parents and me. I also feel stupid. In the years I've known my father-in-law, there has never been any deceit, and my wife says nothing like this has ever come up. I don't understand how someone could do this to their daughter and family. I understand that they don't want their daughter to move, but destroying the relationship seems so much worse. Now we don't feel motivated to come back and see them for holidays.

• 10:03Speaker 01

  Of course. Yeah, good job, Dad. You're never gonna see your grandkids. But hey, well played. You win, buddy. This guy is just not used to not getting his way. And this is a man-child financial temper tantrum. That's what I think this is.

• 10:18Speaker 02

  Remember, he's never done anything like this before. So this is really coming out of the blue. It's there's no precedent.

• 10:23Speaker 01

  You know why? Because he's always gotten whatever the hell he wants before, and he's never had to play this card before.

• 10:30Speaker 02

  So there have been other lesser versions of this, or he's never been child interesting.

• 10:34Speaker 01

  Like, he's probably been like, I'm gonna do this. And everyone's like, well, we're not gonna argue with Dad, and it's fine. Who cares? You know, what, you know, he's probably been doing this his whole life with his daughter. And now it's like, well, we don't want her to move. Well, I'm moving. Well, what can we do? And he's just had a meltdown about it. I'm surprised her mother isn't like, you're gonna steal the kid's house? Oh, well, no, I'm gonna give it back as soon as they decide not to move. You'll see. This is just a part of my plan. It's like, have fun, Grandma. You're not gonna see your grandkids.

• 11:04Speaker 02

  We still don't have the money. We're now seeking an attorney. What should we do here? What do you make of all this? What are our options? Signed, wondering what we're owed and debating whether to go beast mode after my in-laws straight up stole our abode.

• 11:19Speaker 01

  Well, Gabe, if you can't tell, I'm fucking pissed.

• 11:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, I can see that. I'm I'm still in the shocked phase, but yeah, this is horrible.

• 11:29Speaker 01

  What a bait and switch. This is actually crazy. So your father-in-law essentially stole your house. You're not wrong. This is not an exaggeration.

• 11:37Speaker 02

  Stole his own daughter's house.

• 11:39Speaker 01

  Because he and his wife just can't stand that you have your own life and you're moving further away.

• 11:44Speaker 02

  Unconscionable.

• 11:45Speaker 01

  This is the most psycho way to get your child to stay close to you. I mean, locking her and her husband in the basement would be more psycho. By a hair. I can't believe they did this. You know what this is, Gabe? This is a covert contract. That's what this is the result of, where one party has an idea in their mind, like, we're gonna renovate their driveway and renovate the bedrooms, and then they're gonna stay close to us. And that's their version of the contract, the parents. And then these two are like, actually, we're gonna get a better job and move somewhere else, and it's gonna be a little bit nicer. And so the parents think, well, you're in breach of this agreement that we had that was never explicit, that was never actually discussed. And people do this in relationships all the time. Again, it's called a covert contract because one party is not aware of it at all.

• 12:27Speaker 01

  Anyway, so look, I guess we can't know with total certainty whether your father-in-law intended to deceive you from the outset. That's kind of my bet. But I suppose it's also possible he's misremembering the agreement about the house repairs or is really just retaliating against you guys for moving away. He hasn't thought this one all the way through. This chicanery is gonna make you guys wanna stay close. LOL, buddy. Whatever's going through this guy's head, he materially changed the terms of these so-called gifts when it suited him, and then withheld the money and is now trying to control how you use it if he's generous and benevolent enough to give it to you. This is a profound betrayal, a massive breach of trust, and it's incredibly gross, really.

• 13:08Speaker 02

  I wish we could talk to this guy and just be like, what are you doing here?

• 13:12Speaker 01

  I would love to grill this guy. One, give him a piece of my mind and probably a good audible slap across the face. How do you sleep at night? What mental gymnastics is this guy doing to justify essentially stealing his own daughter's house? It's for her own good because she needs to stay close to us because when they have kids, they'll need our help. Dude, you're never gonna see your grandkids.

• 13:33Speaker 02

  Also, keep in mind that part of the reason our friend wanted to move is to be close to his daughters. So they're saying, you're not allowed to move to be close to your kids because I need to be close to my daughter.

• 13:43Speaker 01

  Who's an adult.

• 13:44Speaker 02

  So I'm gonna take this asset from you. This is crazy, dude.

• 13:47Speaker 01

  This is one of like the shittiest things I've ever heard of anybody doing on this show to their own family.

• 13:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:53Speaker 01

  I'm so sorry, man. This has got to be a terrible feeling or feelings on top of the stress and uncertainty with the move and the mortgage. So very unfortunate. You transferred the title before receiving payment without a written agreement, without using escrow, based entirely on trust. But you know what? Even as a lawyer, I can't really blame you for doing that. You had no indication that your family, your in-laws, your wife's parents were capable of this. People do this all the time with family, but I don't really expect most people to know that. You're not a lawyer who sees litigation where you're like, well, let me wait. You stole your brother's inheritance? What? You know, but as you can see, doing business with family without written agreements and stuff like that, this is extremely risky.

• 14:33Speaker 01

  Contracts exist precisely because good relationships often stop being good relationships. I'm obviously not saying that to pile on. I am quite sure you're kicking yourself for all of this already. But this is a cautionary tale to everyone else in keeping things informal and loosey-goosey, even with family members. I mean, even in a world where they are not being nefarious, where they are genuinely misremembering the terms of their gifts and always believe they'd recoup their investments or whatever, papering the sale in the right way and just making sure the money was in the bank before handing over the deed, all of that would have avoided a lot of confusion and heartache.

• 15:09Speaker 02

  I also hate to say this because I know they can't go back, but I really wish our friend had not caved in the first place.

• 15:14Speaker 01

  Oh, me too. Yeah, his whole walk and talk with himself.

• 15:18Speaker 02

  The whole, I realize my contributions to the house have not been close to their contributions. I didn't want to ruin my wife's relationship with her parents. That is where the trouble really began.

• 15:27Speaker 01

  I agree. He's a decent person and decent people don't like to play hardball or stand up to manipulative people who might even be in there. Your wife's parents, you know, but that's also how manipulative people, and make no mistake, these in-laws are manipulative jerks. That's how people like this get away and take advantage of good people. This is how it goes.

• 15:47Speaker 02

  To your point a moment ago about how things were done in this family, why this father-in-law thinks he gets his way. This might be the dynamic, right? He says something and they cave, even when it was small things. And then now, dot, dot, dot, you stole my house.

• 16:00Speaker 01

  Right.

• 16:00Speaker 02

  But I'm just looking at all of this and going, who is really ruining your wife's relationship with her parents? Is it you by potentially countering their offer and refusing to sell them the house? Which, let's remember, was absolutely an option. He said, I can't do anything if you sell the house. Or is it them by screwing you out of the house and the money to move into a new one?

• 16:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, they needed to be a lot tougher with the parents from the start. Again, I get why they didn't think they needed to have their guard up with her own parents. But this is also why so many people say not to do business with family. And if you are, the paperwork has to be airtight. So my first recommendation would usually be, okay, you guys gotta keep talking to your in-laws. You gotta make them realize what they're doing and get them to at least give you the 100K that they promised. But they've already taken the house and withheld the money, and they seem perfectly okay with that. And your father-in-law literally said, I'm not changing my mind because he's always right about everything. That's at least, I assume he's one of those. So as much as I hate this, I think you guys have to stop treating this primarily as a family conflict to be resolved through reasonable discussion. This is now a legal dispute, I'm afraid.

• 17:01Speaker 01

  But candidly, I don't know how likely it is that you guys will get the money or get the money on the terms you want or be able to undo the deed transfer. My understanding is that's pretty hard. I don't know what state you're in, but you need an attorney, a real estate attorney, representing you here quickly. And as awkward as it is, you probably need to communicate with your in-laws through counsel when it comes to matters about the house. Of course, I would also create a record of how all of this went down. Write down the timeline of events while memories are fresh. If you remember the dates and the amounts of the gifts and the terms of the gifts, write those down too. If there's text messages, preserve those, preserve emails, voicemails. I don't know how much good it'll do at this point, but if things escalate, if you guys end up at the negotiating table or even in front of a judge, this is gonna be crucial documentation.

• 17:46Speaker 01

  And if you have absolutely no record of the agreement on the price, I would email your father-in-law and be like, okay, we're ready. What do we need to do to give you in order to get the 100K for the sale of the house, like you said? And when he responds with something like, I told you, you can only use it as a down payment. We decide, here are the stipulations. Now you got a record that he did agree to pay you the 100K and is making unreasonable stipulations based on what you're allowed to do with it. And that's an admission and that it shows that there was a contract. Your attorney can advise you also on whether there are any legal avenues to recover the house, possibly compel payment, pursue some other kind of remedy. I would also talk to your attorney, and you might need a litigator here specifically, a real estate litigator, about the possibility of suing your in-laws for breach of contract.

• 18:30Speaker 01

  People are like, wait, there was no contract. Yes, there's an oral contract. That's a thing. Oral contracts are legally enforceable, and you can sue for breach of contract if the other party fails to perform. Legally, an oral agreement can be just as binding as a written one if the usual elements of a contract are present. Offer, acceptance, consideration. This is like law school L1 flashbacks here. That means each side gives or promises something of value, mutual intent to be bound by the agreement, and sufficiently definite terms, all of which sounds like you had. The difficulty is always improving oral contracts, right? But that's why, I mean, now we've got email and text messages and witnesses and stuff like that and circumstantial evidence, which, you know, on TV crime shows, Gabriel, they're like, that's circumstantial evidence.

• 19:12Speaker 01

  Circumstantial evidence is totally fine. It might not be as strong as other kinds of evidence, but it's perfectly fine. Oh, he happened to be in the same area during all the murders. That's circumstantial. Yeah, it sure is. But man, does that look sus. They weigh that stuff. It's not just something you throw out because it's circumstantial. Now, whether you'll win that lawsuit, that depends on if there was, in fact, a valid contract. I think you could argue that there was, of course, and if the law required that this particular contract be in writing. Candidly, I don't know. That's a state thing. It's also a real estate thing. I think also the fact that they had an attorney advising them and you didn't, that's not gonna look very good in a lawsuit. That does not look good. Judges do not like that kind of thing. It looks like imbalance of power. I also have some questions about how that attorney handled all this.

• 19:57Speaker 01

  He might have been misled himself by your father-in-law. Like, maybe he didn't know there was supposed to be a money transfer. But I also wonder how much he knew about the deal and whether he presented himself as some kind of neutral party who was, you know, I'm just refereeing this whole thing for you guys. You know, just trying to make it all legit. Or whether he made it real clear that he was only representing your in-laws and that you guys should have had your own counsel. And if you do end up in a lawsuit, that documentation is going to be pretty clutch. But honestly, it's possible that the second your father-in-law gets a letter from a lawyer being like, you are hereby notified that you need to preserve all of the evidence that we're going to need for the lawsuit that we are filing, or a notice of what's called a quiet title action, which is a lawsuit essentially asking a court to determine who

• 20:42Speaker 01

  legally owns a piece of real property, real estate, and to eliminate competing claims to ownership. Or there's something called, I'm trying not to get too in the weeds, there's something called a lease pendens, which is a public notice filed in the county land records. And it states, hey, there's a lawsuit that affects ownership or rights to a piece of real estate, and it's pending, which basically makes it impossible to sell a house until it's resolved. Because nobody's like, oh, somebody says they own the house that you're trying to sell to me? That seems messy. Once he gets anything like that, your father-in-law, that dude is going to transfer that 100K to you guys, toot sweet, because he's going to watch, he's going to call a lawyer and they're going to go, yeah, give me a $15,000 retainer and I'll take a look at this for you.

• 21:25Speaker 01

  And by the way, I bill $600 an hour. And, oh, it sounds like you screwed your son-in-law and daughter out of a house and it's not going to go well. Do you have 100K to litigate this? Because that's what it's going to cost. I mean, my hope is that he realizes you guys grew a spine and it's too real for him. And he goes, huh, what? No need to get crazy. Here's your 100K for your down payment. And you go, Bill, get lost. I'm paying off a credit card debt and you have nothing else to say about it and we're still not coming home for Christmas. Bye.

• 21:55Speaker 02

  I mean, that seems like the only real option at this point, but are we really, he has to sue his in-laws. I'm just wrapping my head around this.

• 22:02Speaker 01

  He has to posture that he is absolutely ready to do so, because right now, Bill, or whatever we're calling him, he's the tough guy, he's the sheriff in town, he's the guy with the money, he's calling the shots. Well, we'll see, because we're going to get a judge and that judge is going to call the shots and it's going to cost you a ton of money. And then you're going to cut me that 100K check on top of all of that. And maybe I'll come after you for fees, not that I'll win, but I'll make sure that you see dollar signs just flying out the window. He needs to see that his son-in-law has a spine and that his daughter's not going to cave. That's what he needs to see.

• 22:35Speaker 02

  Whether they get the money or not, I'm just trying to figure out what all of this means for their relationship.

• 22:39Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 22:39Speaker 02

  It feels like the end.

• 22:40Speaker 01

  I can tell you what it would mean for me when they're all like, well, now that we've wrapped this up, we'll see you guys at Thanksgiving. I would be like, Bill, are you under the impression that you will ever see us again?

• 22:51Speaker 02

  Totally. How do you come back from this?

• 22:53Speaker 01

  They cannot unf** this, even if he for some reason was like, okay, I'll give you the full 300. That's a starting point to realizing that you're totally wrong and you're a complete asshole? That's all that that is. That's, that's the beginning of this.

• 23:08Speaker 02

  I am just heartbroken for them. And I don't know what they're supposed to do about this. I don't know how they're supposed to live with this awful feeling, this anger, this sadness, this gross feeling of being manipulated by their, like, there's just no easy answer to that. Their own parents, their own in-laws stole this amount of money from them.

• 23:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, there's no easy answer. I hope they recover whatever money they can, but money alone is not going to repair this. I think that was, that's what I'm kind of implying above.

• 23:34Speaker 02

  This is the part where we say, okay, guys, now it's time to work through the anger, find productive uses of it, go to therapy, whatever. And yeah, maybe there are ways of understanding this that make it hurt less, maybe doing the forensics on how your in-laws experienced your decision to move away and decided that this was somehow their only course of action. Maybe that'll give you some measure of compassion for them or something, maybe owning the mistakes you made along the way, basically agreeing to play ball with them. Maybe that'll distribute the blame a little bit more in a way that, I don't know, soften some of the anger toward them. But honestly, at this point, I'm afraid you guys might live with this difficult feeling, this pain for a long time. And it's more of a question than a statement. I'm just like, how do you accept that in whatever way you can?

• 24:18Speaker 01

  It's interesting, because he was like, they've never done anything like this before. We didn't see it coming at all. I believe him, but this obviously must have been in them from the start. They just didn't know, they didn't see it, because they hadn't tried to separate from their parents before. So the relationship wasn't really challenged in a significant way. So all of this has brought to light what her parents are really like, deep down. And so they're just showing you who they are, which is actually kind of more creepy and sad.

• 24:44Speaker 02

  Right. So the only upside here, and it's a very perverse upside, is knowing that you guys now have the truth about your wife's parents, the truth about what people can do to one another in this world and what you guys need to do to protect yourselves in the future, which is devastating and clarifying, I guess. That's kind of the only way I can imagine making peace with something like this. Like, we lost my relationship with my in-laws, my wife lost her relationship with her parents, we lost $300,000, and the whole move was infected by this really terrible family rift. But we know who they are now and we know what kind of relationship we can have with them. That's something. I just hate that it had to happen this way.

• 25:22Speaker 01

  Exactly, yeah. The only other big upside here that I can see is that, given what her parents did to them, you could move to Timbuktu now, man. You can move anywhere on planet Earth with zero guilt. If you have to rent, rent. If you need to save for another five years while you work before you can buy another house, maybe that's what it takes. Who knows? Maybe the financial pressure makes you negotiate harder for the salary you want, or inspires you to rise up faster, or forces you to be more strategic and disciplined in your career somehow. Hopefully, the money piece gets worked out eventually. I don't know, but I would not let this stop you from building the life you guys want in this new city. It's so ironic, man, and trying to keep you close or even the scales for this betrayal, again, the covert contract. Your in-laws have shown you what kind of relationship you would have been prioritizing

• 26:07Speaker 01

  by not moving away. So I say, go now and have absolutely no regrets. I doubt you'll ever do anything money-related with your in-laws again, but going forward with any friends, any family, no more unwritten agreements, no more, hey, don't worry about it, no more, it's just a gift, enjoy it, everything gets documented, or better yet, keep family and money separate, because my God, look what can happen. I am deeply sorry, friend. You guys deserve so much better. Sending you and your wife a huge hug. We're rooting for you. You know what you won't need a hull of a down payment to enjoy? The fine products and services that support this show. We'll be right back.

• 26:49Speaker 00

  At Lowe's, this Veterans Day and every day, military members, veterans, and their spouses get automatic MyLowe's Rewards Silver Status Benefits. Plus, 10% off eligible purchases with no annual limit. It's one way we honor and give back to those who have served and still do. Learn more and verify now at Lowe's.com/military. 10% discount can't be combined with another offer. Exclusions, terms, and conditions apply. Loyalty program subject to terms and conditions. Details at Lowe's.com/terms. Subject to change.

• 27:17Speaker 01

  Thanks so much for listening to and supporting the show. All of the deals, discount codes, and ways to support the show are on the website at jordanharbinger.com/deals. Please consider supporting those who support the show. Now, back to Feedback Friday.

• 27:32Speaker 01

  Okay, next up.

• 27:33Speaker 02

  Dear Jordan and Gabe, everyone in my life tells me that I would be a good mom, including my husband of many years, who I married when I turned 18. But the reality is that I have no long-term maternal instincts. I almost like kids. I volunteer in our church program with kids. I teach Sunday School three times a week. There's a single father with two sons who I quote-unquote "mother." I pick them up from school, make them dinner, help with homework, then go home after their father gets off work. I like kids, but I like that I'm not actually responsible for them. My husband wants children and keeps pushing to have them, even though he knew before we got married that I never wanted any. He doesn't understand that he himself is a child.

• 28:17Speaker 02

  We both work full-time, but I'm the one who cooks, cleans, shops, budgets, plans, dusts, sweeps, mops, does small farm and garden care, does laundry, plans appointments, and so on. My husband and I both have very minor medical issues, but he's louder about his than I am. We can't afford for both of us to see the doctor because we don't have insurance. So we decided his medical appointments are more important since he's in college to secure our future. He needed more time off work to study, so I took on a second job. But he spends the extra hours on his computer doom-scrolling news or listening to music. And he still pushes me into having children, saying that he'll be different when he has a kid.

• 29:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, oh, because that always turns out to be the case. Dude, you don't even know yourself well enough to know that that's bullshit?

• 29:07Speaker 02

  I've never been 100% against having children, but after my mother passed away when I was 12, I raised my five-year-old brother because my father was a work-only kind of man. My brother is 23 now and honestly, not doing great. I did a really bad job raising him.

• 29:24Speaker 01

  Oh, man, that sentence makes me sad.

• 29:26Speaker 02

  You were 12 years old, dude.

• 29:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, forced to be a mother at 12 years old and beating herself up for not knowing how to do it well with nobody showing her what to do. No child should be put in that role. Shame on your dad.

• 29:38Speaker 02

  So tragic, yeah. I don't know what her father was going through at the time. I'm sure it was extremely difficult, but he should not have let that happen.

• 29:45Speaker 01

  No, that's crazy work. A work-only kind of man is an interesting way of saying, didn't want to be a real parent and pawned off all the responsibility of raising a small boy to his older daughter. That is not okay. Jeez, buddy.

• 30:00Speaker 02

  Is also a work only kind of man like my father. I don't want a child with him, but I don't know what to say or do because I don't want to raise another child alone. Should I have a child with my husband? Is it fair for me to not want them? How do I handle this? Signed, kinda hate that I have to explicate that I don't want to procreate at this very late date.

• 30:23Speaker 01

  Oh, boy. What a situation. Well, okay, to cut to the chase here, no, you should absolutely not have a child with your husband under any circumstances.

• 30:33Speaker 02

  100% agree.

• 30:35Speaker 01

  Not only is he showing you in all these ways that he would not be a truly equal and responsible co-parent, you're also conflicted about having children yourself. You're literally saying, I don't want a child with him. I don't know how much more clear you need to be with yourself. This is not a fair situation to bring a child into, by the way. Even if you wanted kids, this would be a recipe for disaster with this current husband of yours. Plus, practically speaking, it sounds like money's tight, kids are very expensive, take it from me. So I just do not see how this ends well if you do that. And yeah, of course, it's fair to not want children. It's fair, especially given your own childhood. You have a very unique trauma here, having lost a mother young and then having to be a mother yourself from a young age. No wonder you don't want kids. I don't, I totally get it.

• 31:19Speaker 01

  I'd probably be the same in your situation. It's also just fair in general. People are allowed to not want kids. It's a perfectly legitimate choice, no matter what some manosphere streamers want you to believe.

• 31:31Speaker 02

  I completely agree with that, but it is probably meaningful that it feels so hard for you to feel secure saying, I don't want them. That's the end of that conversation.

• 31:38Speaker 01

  Yes, and maybe also to struggle to express that to your husband in a way that he can understand unequivocally. Gabe, that's gotta be part of the parentification too, no?

• 31:47Speaker 02

  I assume so. You mean like harder to feel that it's just okay for you to want what you want?

• 31:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:51Speaker 02

  In general, or to not want this thing that other people foisted on you?

• 31:55Speaker 01

  Also, yeah.

• 31:55Speaker 02

  Yeah. If you grew up in a home where your needs and interests were not taken very seriously, I can see why it would be hard to defend this decision.

• 32:01Speaker 01

  Right. Mom dies young tragically, dad's only interested in work, that's his escape from everything else in life. She's left raising, what, a five-year-old when she's in seventh grade?

• 32:11Speaker 02

  And who was looking out for her? Nobody.

• 32:13Speaker 01

  Also, nobody. So I'm also puzzled by the fact that your husband knew you didn't want kids and is now pushing you to have them. That's also man-child behavior. I don't know what to make of that. Is he dense, really? Does he know how you feel, but he's trying to convince you because your opinion doesn't matter and he doesn't take your stance on this seriously for some reason? Or did you really not fully communicate this position to him before you guys committed to each other and so he's confused now or he thinks there's some kind of wiggle room?

• 32:40Speaker 02

  But she's saying he did know before they got married.

• 32:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I'm gonna take her word for it, except, you know, over the woman who runs everything in the house, over the guy who plays video games and doom scrolls all day. I don't see how something this big doesn't get settled pretty early on, man. Jen and I were at the Cheesecake Factory on our fifth date, talking like, okay, so do you want kids or not? Because, you know, this is fun, but let's not waste each other's time. I, that was, seriously, like, single-digit number of dates, somebody, this comes out. If he really wanted kids, then it's a, it's an interesting decision to marry somebody who unequivocally does not. But who knows how these conversations went down, how he's thinking about all this. But again, all of this, your choice and partner, your stance on kids, the way you guys communicate, all of it must be informed by this childhood you had, which sounds incredibly formative, of course.

• 33:27Speaker 02

  I think the most interesting part of her letter is just her ambivalence. Her letter started off so dogmatic, I have no long-term maternal instincts. And then she's like, I almost like kids. And then she goes on to say that she actually spends a ton of time with them. She's actually volunteering to spend more time with them. And then she says that she's never been 100% against having children, but she doesn't want them with her husband. But what she actually seems to struggle with is the responsibility of having them.

• 33:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, which again, of course she does, right? She was given that responsibility long before she was equipped to handle it.

• 33:58Speaker 02

  And without choosing it, which is, to your point, a double wound. Uh, this probably is not just about having kids. This might be about her relationship with responsibility in general and her anxious relationship with her own needs, which she does seem to subordinate to other people's needs, most notably her husband, in a variety of ways, like with the medical stuff.

• 34:16Speaker 01

  And the way through that is?

• 34:18Speaker 02

  I mean, again, like, this is where we would say, great thing to bring into therapy, there are great books on this topic, you know, time to really take stock of the thoughts and feelings that come up for you and you're responsible for somebody or for something and maybe start to find ways of choosing to be responsible for a situation without being beholden to it, without losing yourself in the process. You know, get clear on your standards, your boundaries with other people so that you don't end up taking on too much work for them or allow them to coast or take advantage of you. I think it's all of those things, but this is a very big process. There's a lot to rewrite.

• 34:51Speaker 01

  Right, yeah, man, what a huge template to rewrite, though, huh?

• 34:54Speaker 02

  Not easy, but doable.

• 34:56Speaker 01

  It's interesting. She called her husband a child. I tend to agree, based on what we know about him. There might be some immaturity there, I can't say for sure.

• 35:03Speaker 02

  It sounds to me maybe more like a lack of empathy or regard for her.

• 35:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, right. It sounds like he's not really able to imagine what all of this is like for her, what his responsibility to her is, for example, making good use of his time and studying if she's taking on a second job to make his degree more doable, which I get why that's hurtful. Immature or not, though, what's clear is that she's doing the lion's share of the work. She's prioritizing his time and freedom over hers because his degree is the key to their future.

• 35:32Speaker 02

  Yes, but she might want to make some room for how she is helping create that situation.

• 35:36Speaker 01

  I agree. I mean, she chose him, even if she was only 18 at the time?

• 35:40Speaker 02

  Good point. She was still very much a child herself when they got married. So how, how much could she have really understood about all of this at the time? But yeah, she chose him. She seems to have taken on most of the responsibility around the house, on the property and their relationship. She decided to let him go to the doctor instead of her, which, you know, maybe that is the right move in a very tough situation, but that's a big sacrifice when you have medical issues. What does she say? He's louder about his than mine. I mean, that means that she's quiet about hers and she took on the second job for him. So I guess my question is, is she rushing in to fill the void that he creates with his lack of responsibility and/or is her hyper responsibility creating a situation where he gets to enjoy the benefits and often coast?

• 36:24Speaker 01

  Exactly. That's a dance. I have no idea which came first, but this model might have gotten created as soon as they met.

• 36:30Speaker 02

  Arguably got created on her side of the equation when she was 12.

• 36:33Speaker 01

  Hyper responsibility, resentment, overwhelmed, but also, well, this is what I have to do, nobody else is gonna do it. Who am I to complain? Dot, dot, dot, she finds a guy whose contributions are asymmetrical. So yes, I think her husband probably has a lot of work to do here. Spending his time scrolling Twitter when he's supposed to be studying while his wife works a second job? I mean, how do you sleep at night, pal? How do you even relax? Sheesh. Pushing her to have a child when she's clearly saying, I don't want them and nothing about their life suggests they're remotely ready for that. It's just reckless. It's unrealistic, misattuned, in my view. And she's in this relationship, too.

• 37:09Speaker 02

  The parentified child who refuses to be a mother, then chose to work with kids in a variety of ways and married a child. It's fascinating.

• 37:17Speaker 01

  Ain't it, though?

• 37:18Speaker 02

  Honestly, dude, it makes me kinda sad because there is a part of her that likes kids and could probably be a good parent. To be clear, I am not pushing her toward that decision whatsoever, but she's acknowledging her conflict in her letter. And it's just, I don't know, I guess it's kinda sad to imagine what might have been had her father, who, again, to be fair, might have been reeling after his wife died without many tools to work through that time, but had that guy not made this five-year-old child her responsibility.

• 37:44Speaker 01

  There's a lot of grief there and a lot of good data about why this question is so fraught for her and what's actually happening in her marriage. So if you don't want kids or you're just not ready, then know that that's an okay choice. I would say that it's the most responsible choice in your current situation and I would not capitulate to please your husband. I think that would be a disaster. If he keeps pushing you to have kids, I would say, you've known since we met that I don't want them. My position on that hasn't changed and you pushing us to have them is becoming very difficult. And I'd like to know if you're pushing because you're hoping to change my mind or because I wasn't clear or what? And I'd also like to know how you think we can realistically handle that, given everything else going on right now? What is this kids thing about? And then I would take this time to start digging into your larger relationship with

• 38:29Speaker 01

  responsibility and caretaking and see what you can learn. I imagine it's a little hard financially to work with a therapist right now. I get it. There are also other ways of working on this stuff. You have plenty of opportunities to explore this, though, with your husband, with the kids you work with, with the families you work for, with yourself. I'm very sorry about your mom, your brother, all this difficult childhood stuff. None of that was your fault and it sucks and it's clearly left a mark on you, but it doesn't have to define you. We can always evolve. And if you don't want kids, great, that's perfectly fine, that can be your choice, but there's still an opportunity to grow here in a bunch of important ways, so I hope you get to do that. Good luck, my friend. You can reach us, [email protected]. Keep your emails concise, try to use descriptive subject lines.

• 39:14Speaker 01

  That makes our job a lot easier. If you're wondering whether you need to go no contact with a painful family, you're being slow-fired by a company that expects results but never trains you, or you just found out that a colleague you vouched for is a serial predator, whatever's got you staying up at night lately, hit us up, [email protected]. We're here to help and we keep every email anonymous. All right, you know what you don't have to give up going to the doctor in order to afford? The fine products and services that support this show. We'll be right back.

• 39:43Speaker 01

  By the way, if you haven't signed up yet, come check out our newsletter, We Bit Wiser. It's a bite-sized gem from a past episode from us to you, delivered to your inbox on many Wednesdays. If you want to keep up with the wisdom from our episodes and apply it to your life, I invite you to come check it out. You can sign up at jordanharbinger.com/news. Now, back to Feedback Friday.

• 40:03Speaker 01

  All right, next up.

• 40:04Speaker 02

  Dear Jordan and Gabe, my wife was laid off from her job last summer when her company restructured. About a month later, she accepted a role at a nonprofit. While the position generally aligned with her experience, she was less experienced than her colleagues. She was assured that she would receive training and support to help her get up to speed. Most of her career has been in corporate environments where responsibilities are clearly defined. Established workflows exist and many specialized tasks are handled by dedicated departments or outside vendors. One of the biggest adjustments in this role was discovering that this nonprofit operates with very few support functions, and a lot more work was expected to be managed internally by her team. But from the beginning, it was apparent that her new team had little interest in training or helping her.

• 40:50Speaker 02

  Her manager asked her to create her own expectations and goals without providing any priorities or success metrics. When she asked questions, she was frequently met with responses like, "figure it out", "you should know this already", or even just asking another question rather than giving a direct answer. This left her frequently spinning her wheels. But when she attempted assignments on her own, her work was often criticized or picked apart without constructive feedback or guidance. Expectations frequently shifted, making it difficult to know what success actually looked like. In some cases, she felt she was being criticized regardless of which approach she took, frequently leaving her in no-win situations.

• 41:29Speaker 02

  The guidance she did receive largely consisted of shadowing, during which she was often discouraged from asking questions by her colleagues. This place sounds incredibly annoying. Wow. So they're like, "uh, yeah, we're not going to train you, but you can tag along with Frank in marketing to find out how we get the word out." But then when she does it, he's like, "don't ask me any questions. Just be quiet."

• 41:50Speaker 01

  Silence, Rube. I'm not going to help you do your job. Just stand behind me and try to figure out what I'm doing. Insane.

• 41:56Speaker 02

  To her credit, she repeatedly raised concerns about the lack of guidance, unclear expectations, and crushing workload. But the situation only continued to deteriorate. Over time, this environment took a significant toll on her. Then recently, she was placed on a performance improvement plan that appears designed to justify her removal rather than help her improve. The document contains "few measurable goals, no clear success criteria", and is largely a collection of criticisms of her work. All of her responsibilities were shifted, and she was purposely left out of meetings related to her projects. We know the writing is on the wall. What concerns me most is the effect this has had on her confidence. She started to question her own abilities and professional value.

• 42:41Speaker 02

  It kills me to see her this way, considering that she's had success in her previous roles. She's already begun searching for a new job, but losing this position would also create a serious financial strain for us. We're concerned that her employer might attempt to challenge her eligibility for unemployment benefits if she's terminated. Since being placed on the performance improvement plan, she's carefully documented examples of the lack of training, conflicting guidance, and shifting expectations. She also obtained documentation from her therapist regarding the emotional distress that this situation has caused. How should someone navigate a situation where they're being managed out of a role they were never properly trained or supported to perform? Is there anything else you should be doing now to protect yourself if termination appears inevitable?

• 43:26Speaker 02

  How do you rebuild your confidence after spending months in an environment that constantly tells you that you're failing? And how can someone separate legitimate areas for growth from the damage caused by poor management? Signed, recovering from the doubt of being managed out after being told to just figure it out.

• 43:44Speaker 01

  Oh, man. Well, this sucks. I'm sorry to hear things have played out this way for your wife. I mean, that's... It's been a while since I've had a traditional job, as y'all might know. But I remember being in a couple environments like this where you're just expected to achieve certain things, but it's not even clear what those things are exactly, and no one's there to help you, and you can't do anything right. But then you're weirdly punished for doing it wrong. It's very demoralizing, and it can do a real number on you. I remember when I worked for one of the law firms, I checked in too often with his partner, and they were like, "you're being... You know, you don't need to check in about everything. And when you do check in, check in about multiple things at once, so you don't interrupt them." And then the next assignment, which was substantially the same, I didn't check in at all because I knew how to do it, and I left it on his chair earlier than he told me.

• 44:28Speaker 01

  And then he, instead of telling me, told the intern manager that, like, "well, you need to manage expectations more and check in more." And I was like, "nope, you're just totally torturing me now. That's all this is." You have decided that any way that I do this is going to be incorrect, and it's total bullshit. And when I told them that, they were thrilled. They were thrilled with my feedback.

• 44:49Speaker 02

  I can see why you stuck around in the law.

• 44:51Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. It was a natural fit for this place, huh? That said, it was a British law firm, so they were like... This was the one where I asked a partner what he was doing on the weekend after he asked me what I was doing, and then I got a lecture about, "that man has worked very hard to get where he is." And I'm like, "and what does that even mean?"

• 45:07Speaker 02

  Surprise, surprise.

• 45:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, surprise, surprise. You're insulted by me existing. Anyway, if that nonprofit is really a mess, or it's just not a good fit for your wife, it's probably for the best that she move on. I'm sorry it comes with all this stress and uncertainty, but obviously something isn't working here. Now, I know that one of your big concerns is that if your wife is ultimately let go, they're going to try to withhold unemployment. We looked into that a little bit. In the US, poor performance by itself usually doesn't disqualify somebody from unemployment benefits. When an employer doesn't want to pay unemployment, they have a few potential grounds. One is misconduct, so repeated violation of company policies, excessive unexcused absences,

• 45:48Speaker 01

  insubordination, theft, harassment, violence, intentionally poor work, just stuff like that, which I think is pretty clear your wife is not doing. Other grounds include failure to follow reasonable instructions, attendance issues, falsification, again, none of which your wife seems to have engaged in. But one of the most common ways that employers challenge unemployment is by claiming poor performance caused by willful disregard. In other words, the employee was capable of performing adequately, but they just chose not to. And to make that case, they might point to prior successful performance, multiple written warnings, repeating the same mistakes after instruction, and as you probably guessed, a performance improvement plan. But if they did, it's far from guaranteed that they'd succeed.

• 46:33Speaker 01

  Most states allow these benefits if the employee simply wasn't good enough at the job, they lacked necessary skills, they weren't a good fit, they made ordinary mistakes, they exercised poor judgment without intentional wrongdoing, stuff like that. What we found is that an employer can submit performance reviews, disciplinary warnings, performance improvement plan documentation, emails, written policies, witness statements, termination notice, whatever. And then the unemployment agency, they decide whether they establish misconduct under state law. So it's not just your employer gets to go, "oh, yeah, misconduct, I guess. We're not paying." But then the employee can also clap back, like, "hey, I made good faith efforts, expectations were unreasonable, they were constantly changing, I lacked training, performance standards were subjective,

• 47:16Speaker 01

  I was terminated for inability, not misconduct," which sounds like your wife could make a good case for. But to make that case, she's going to need excellent documentation. So I am very glad that she's writing all this down, she's creating a clear record. That'll be money if this becomes a fight. And I would also maybe reach out to an employment attorney, get their take on all this. Start their relationship now. It shouldn't even cost anything. It's a consultation. Hopefully, she won't need an attorney, but if it comes to this, at least she'll be ready, and her lawyer can tell her what else she should be doing right now.

• 47:48Speaker 02

  Sound advice all around, but part of me is going, is this hot mess of a nonprofit that has no good support functions, whose HR department probably consists of like, half a woman named Brenda who works from home and is mostly there to process payroll or whatever? Is this organization really going to challenge an employee's unemployment with a government agency? I don't know, bro.

• 48:10Speaker 01

  Good point. They'll probably just be like, "let's cut ties and move on. We can't even manage her while she's here. Why are we going to try to manage a whole other bureaucracy when she isn't even here?" But it can't hurt to be prepared, man. Beyond the documentation, the best advice I can offer your wife is, keep checking in with herself and see if it makes more sense to stay and wait to be terminated, or just leave and find a better job. But if she sticks around at this nonprofit, I would encourage her as much as possible to keep showing up with a minimum of kindness, positivity, collaboration, a genuine desire to do as well as possible. I know she's not very motivated to do that. She's frustrated and resentful, and the higher-ups might have turned on her. But it's easy to make a bad situation a whole lot worse by showing up with a poor attitude.

• 48:53Speaker 01

  And that mindset might also make it more likely that they'll try to withhold unemployment or just make things difficult, you know, try to teach her a lesson. But really, the best thing your wife can do is to keep investing in her relationships. You know the spiel, not going to do a whole Six Minute Networking rant, but if she jumps into sixminutenetworking.com and reactivates some of those old and dormant ties and starts kicking the rust off, it's going to be a lot easier to leverage those relationships when she needs them. You know, dig the well before you're thirsty. Don't know if you've heard that on the show before, but check it out, sixminutenetworking.com. It's free, no shenanigans. Most people think of developing their relationships to support their options, but actually, their options are created by the relationships that they develop and support. So if your wife wants more power here, if she wants to enjoy more freedom,

• 49:37Speaker 01

  if she wants to hedge against the risk that this place is going to screw her on owning Employment benefits, she should be reaching out to people now. All this energy y'all are pouring into stressing and worrying about employment and grappling with uncertainty. You guys really need to be channeling that into things that'll actually empower you. And your relationships are at the top of that list. Anything else in my experience is just unproductive anxiety.

• 50:01Speaker 02

  I'm just thinking about the fact that his wife was apparently quite successful in other environments before this one. So it's not like she's incompetent. She has a track record of doing well. That might mean that this place really is a disaster. But I also wonder if it means that in an environment where there isn't as much structure and where employees aren't, you know, given a lot of training and where they need to be more self-directed, maybe come up with their own definitions of success, be more resourceful, be more independent and all of that. Maybe in those environments, she struggles.

• 50:29Speaker 01

  Or it could be both.

• 50:30Speaker 02

  Or it could be both. I mean, our friend here is making a good case that it's the former. But to be fair, even if this place is poorly managed, it's probably an environment where a more resourceful and self-sufficient employee would do a whole lot better. And so this might also be a nice opportunity to ask what this place revealed about her, about how she operates, about what she needs from a workplace. You know, maybe she decides, look, this Lucy Goosey, under-resourced nonprofit world, not for me. And fair enough. But she might also look at it and go, okay, this place was definitely a mess. This was mostly not my fault. But I also see that, hmm, I panicked when nobody officially trained me. I wasn't as creative as I could have been in finding the information that I needed without that guidance.

• 51:13Speaker 02

  I didn't sit down with the higher ups in week one and say, okay, what does success actually look like here? How can I make sure that I meet that for you? Stuff like that. I'm making this up, of course. Maybe this isn't entirely accurate, but I do think that this environment probably revealed stuff like this. And that would be really good for her to know. I also wonder why this place has shaken her confidence so profoundly. If all of this really can be chalked up to poor management.

• 51:38Speaker 01

  Okay, hearing you're bad at your job every day for six months, totally get why that chips away at your confidence. But what he's describing, I don't know, it sounds like more than just, you know, hey, this place made me forget how valuable I am.

• 51:50Speaker 02

  He said she's starting to question her own abilities and professional value. She's experiencing emotional distress. Again, I'm not blaming her entirely for that. I think I would struggle at a place like this as well. But we know that these experiences are co-created. Again, bit of a theme on today's episode. It's not just the leaders at this place grinding your wife down. It's probably also how she makes sense of that feedback. How does she maintain perspective? How does she stay connected to her talent when these people are being annoying? How does she work with this disappointment, this anxiety? She is at least half of this equation, if not more.

• 52:23Speaker 01

  Totally. Emotional distress really depends on the person, doesn't it?

• 52:27Speaker 02

  Totally. One person could be like, this is causing me emotional distress. And another person could be like, oh, this is just showing me that I need to leave. Let me just move on and figure out how to share my values somewhere else. But I think this is also important because these challenges exist in relatively well-run companies too. So it won't be the last time she gets difficult feedback or, you know, wishes she had more training.

• 52:47Speaker 01

  As for rebuilding her confidence, I think she does that by booking meetings with people, going on interviews, hopefully getting an offer to finding a company that's a good fit, making a real impact again, remembering that she actually is capable. I think that's the corrective experience that she's looking for, but it's not going to fall in her lap. She's got to seek it out, which is another reason not to settle for the baseline stress and anxiety of a crappy situation. We're rooting for your wife. Hope she lands somewhere great and good luck. Also, in case you didn't know, there's a subreddit for the show. If you want to jump into discussions with other listeners about specific episodes, we are talking a lot in there and it's just, it's so fun. It's funny. You guys challenge me, you guys give good feedback and, and negative feedback that I implement. So I love it.

• 53:31Speaker 01

  You can find all of it on the Jordan Harbinger subreddit. All right, you know, it's a great use of that unemployment money you fought tooth and nail to get. The fine products and services that support this show. We'll be right back.

• 53:45Speaker 01

  If you liked this episode of Feedback Friday and found our advice valuable, I invite you to do what other smart and considerate listeners do. Learn more, get all the discounts you hear on the show at jordanharbinger.com/deals. And if something doesn't work or you can't find something to email me, [email protected]. We'll happily dig up codes for you. It is that important that you support those who support the show. And now for the rest of Feedback Friday.

• 54:09Speaker 01

  All right, time for the recommendation of the week.

• 54:12Speaker 03

  I am addicted to Litville.

• 54:14Speaker 02

  So about a month ago, I finally did something that I had been putting off for literal years, which is I unsubscribed from every email and every newsletter I did not want to receive anymore. And actually I even unsubscribed from several that I did kind of like. So you know, when you check your inbox and you see those emails from Expedia, Hotel Tonight, Bed Bath & Beyond, you know, whatever newspapers you read, whatever trade magazine you follow, some Substack writer you kind of liked three years ago, but you just don't have time to really keep up with. And instead of unsubscribing, you just delete the emails because it seems easier than going in there and clicking unsubscribe and then clicking unsubscribe again, and then giving them a reason you're unsubscribing. And yeah, so I did that for years. And then finally I was like, enough, this is getting out of hand.

• 54:59Speaker 02

  I just have way too much email from people I just don't care about. So over several days, and I'm still having to do it because some of them apparently don't believe you the first time. And you're always being added to new bullshit for some reason. I don't understand how that happens.

• 55:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, they sell your address. That's how that happens.

• 55:14Speaker 02

  Totally. You buy a croissant at a cafe and the next thing you know, you're getting like baking newsletters and stuff. I don't know. I just unsubscribed from everything, including, by the way, Facebook groups I joined over the years.

• 55:25Speaker 01

  Oh my God, I forgot those existed.

• 55:27Speaker 02

  Dude, they're really handy when I'm traveling. Like I've signed up for the expats group in Tokyo, the, you know, the foreigners in Rio de Janeiro. But then you leave the city, but you don't unsubscribe from the group and you get all these notifications. And I never checked them because I don't need to anymore, but I haven't left the group or whatever. And they give me a notification every time somebody posts something and I just, I kept dismissing the notifications over and over again. But finally I was like, okay, I gotta clean this up too. So I decided to just unsubscribe from everything. And I was like, let's see what I actually miss. If I need to keep up with any of this stuff, I can always resubscribe.

• 55:59Speaker 01

  The answer is going to be none of it. You're not going to miss any of that.

• 56:02Speaker 02

  Correct. It has been life-changing. My inbox is no longer a war zone. I'm not being bombarded by news updates and announcements and advertisements all day long. Looking at my inbox, especially when I'm checking my email on my phone, stresses me out way less. I save time not reading subject lines and deleting stuff and the relief is indescribable. But I did not realize that the biggest benefit of doing this is we live in a world where so much stuff is pushed to us and everything claims to be super important, super urgent. You gotta read this, it matters if you read it, you need to know now. And what I'm loving is this feeling of if I want to know something, like if there's something going on in the news or there's some topic I want to research, I can go look for it.

• 56:46Speaker 02

  If I need to learn something, I can choose to dig into it. I'm not just settling for whatever arrives in my inbox, which somebody else decided is important, which somebody else packaged for my consumption in a way that's going to make me want to engage with it. And I'm just remembering how powerful that is to opt out of the push world and step back into the.

• 57:04Speaker 01

  The pull world, yeah.

• 57:05Speaker 02

  Or more like the all go out and look for it world, which is just so much more efficient. It's so much more peaceful and really so much more rewarding. And so, yeah, I know the whole idea of an information diet is not new. We all know that what we consume has a huge impact on our mood and our opinions and our worldviews. And this stuff is literally food for the mind, but it's not just the content of the content we consume. It's the way the content is delivered and the way it overwhelms and frankly disempowers us just in the way that it's marketed and brought to our attention. I get it, I respect it. I understand that this is the digital economy now, but what I'm learning is that I do not want to participate in it any more than I have to. And the coolest thing is I don't feel any less informed than before.

• 57:49Speaker 02

  I actually feel more informed and sharper because now I'm choosing what I want to consume. So that's my recommendation of the week, unsubscribing from every email you do not need. Take the extra 10, 15 seconds to do it. Do it over two, three, four days and let me know how you feel. I think you're going to love it.

• 58:06Speaker 01

  I want to add a little bonus to this. If we can turn off any push notifications you get from your email program. I can't believe people have these on. People close to me without throwing them under the bus have these on. And I'm like, wait a minute, you just got a push note, you got 100 push notifications? It's like, oh yeah, they're from Gmail. And it's like, why are those on? I looked at the phone screen and it's like Crate and Barrel's having a summer sale. Southwest Airlines is having a getaway fare. And I'm like, oh my gosh, the anxiety you must get from this. And I know some people are like, oh, I can't turn that off because I get emails from my boss or from clients that are actually urgent, like their website is down or something.

• 58:47Speaker 01

  If your email program does not allow you to filter emails, you need to get a, one that had like superhuman or something that has split inboxes. There are plenty of email programs do this where you can VIP list senders or you can have it triage things for you. So if you really need push notifications, fine, but they have to come from, I don't know, your domain or the subject line has to be this or AI can read it and it has to be regarding that. There are email programs that can do that kind of thing. Because if you're letting Crate and Barrel and Southwest Airlines reach you through your watch and your phone screen at all hours of the day and night, because once a week or whatever, you get an urgent email that you actually have to attend to, that you can't miss,

• 59:30Speaker 01

  you're allowing 0.1% of your emails to dictate how you live your entire life. That's not a good trade.

• 59:37Speaker 02

  And those micro hits to your attention are significant.

• 59:40Speaker 01

  They're destroying your ability. Ability to focus and relax as well.

• 59:43Speaker 02

  100%.

• 59:44Speaker 01

  So turn off push notifications for email. And if you can't do that, turn off push notifications for email that's not actually super important. And another way to handle this is if for some reason like, oh, I can't filter it because it could be from anyone, yada, yada. Go and grab a Google Voice number and make an email autoresponder that says something like, hi, your email is in my inbox. I'll see it within 24 to 48 hours. If this is urgent, call or text your Google Voice number. So you're not giving your phone number to every stranger who emails you. And then you'll see texts that will pop up like regular texts because Google Voice will forward these to you. And they'll be, hey, this is so and so client. Our website is down.

• 1:00:25Speaker 01

  That way urgent people can get ahold of you and you can block all email notifications forever. This is probably one of the best investments in your sanity that you could possibly make. All right, next up.

• 1:00:36Speaker 02

  Hi, Jordan and Gabe. I'm a 48 year old woman in Texas. Over the last couple of years, my marriage ended, my career fell apart, my finances became a disaster, and I'm trying to figure out how to start over while also being a parent and a human being and trying to reconstruct my nervous system from the studs. The marriage piece is complicated. I was married for about 10 years and during our marriage, my spouse came out as a trans woman. I want to be clear, I don't see her transition itself as the problem. I was there with her through the process, encouraging her, reassuring her, talking her through the moments when she panicked or wanted to turn back and trying to be a safe place for her because I loved her and wanted her to be okay.

• 1:01:20Speaker 02

  The marriage had also become very painful and destabilizing. For years, my ex would sometimes wake me up in the middle of the night and say frightening things, including threats about killing me in my sleep. Then later say she didn't remember or that it quote, wasn't my fault, I was asleep, unquote. I begged her to get medical help for it. She did not until three years later. Whether or not she fully understood what she was doing, I was the one living with the fear, lack of sleep and feeling that I was never really safe in my own home. By the end, I think I had normalized more than I should have. After the divorce, she kept clinging to this idea that we would still be best friends and still be important people in each other's lives.

• 1:02:02Speaker 02

  I wanted to believe that because losing the marriage was painful enough without also losing the person I had talked to every day for a decade. But looking back, I think I may have been serving a purpose for her. I was still there for validation, companionship, emotional support and attention while she didn't really have anyone else. Then, once she found someone new to fill that role, her attitude toward me changed almost overnight. I'm not angry that she moved on romantically. I'm angry that she led me to believe I still mattered in this deep enduring way and then discarded that version of our relationship as soon as it was no longer useful to her. It feels like I helped her survive becoming herself.

• 1:02:44Speaker 02

  And then when I needed care and humanity in return, I became disposable.

• 1:02:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, wow, I'm sorry to hear that. I get why that hurts. That's really crappy.

• 1:02:53Speaker 02

  While all of that was happening, the rest of my life apparently decided it wanted a verse in the country song too.

• 1:03:00Speaker 01

  That's hilarious. Yeah, I'm gonna start using that.

• 1:03:03Speaker 02

  My 22 year old son totaled my brand new car last year. I lost my job under circumstances that felt unfair and shady and I've been unemployed for months. My dog died, my house is in serious financial trouble. I feel stuck in Texas and keep thinking I need a change, maybe even a completely new city, but I don't know whether that's wisdom or just an urge to flee the scene of the emotional crime.

• 1:03:28Speaker 01

  My God, when it rains, it pours. I'm so sorry, friend.

• 1:03:31Speaker 02

  I also don't feel like myself anymore. I used to feel smart, funny, competent, resourceful. For most of my life, I was the fixer, the dependable one, the person who can handle hard things. These days I feel foggier, less confident and more emotionally worn down. Some of that is probably perimenopause, but I also know that trauma changes you. After years of fear, grief, rejection and instability, I don't entirely recognize my life or myself in it.

• 1:04:02Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, that's intense. I mean, you've been through a lot here. How could you not be different? This also sounds like it could be depression. It's impossible to say for sure.

• 1:04:10Speaker 02

  I'm trying to become the next version of myself, but right now I feel like I'm trying to build her out of panic, Diet Coke and whatever scraps of executive function I can find under the couch cushions.

• 1:04:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, I can relate.

• 1:04:24Speaker 02

  Piece of advice, number one, I might cut out the Diet Coke. I know people have different opinions about this, but I can't imagine that that stuff's really good for you when you're already feeling kind of down. But we'll get into all that. You disagree, right, Jordan?

• 1:04:36Speaker 01

  I mean, I survive on it. So yes, I my copium strategy involves Diet Coke as well.

• 1:04:42Speaker 02

  Did you say my copium strategy?

• 1:04:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, I have to huff that copium, that life copium. Diet Coke is the oral version of copium that I ingest.

• 1:04:50Speaker 02

  My copium strategy. That sounds like a new kind of radiation you picked up when you were in Serbia.

• 1:04:54Speaker 01

  That's right. Yeah, exactly.

• 1:04:56Speaker 02

  Got that copium.

• 1:04:57Speaker 01

  It's unfortunately not as rare as it sounds.

• 1:04:59Speaker 02

  My son is one of the biggest reasons I'm still trying so hard. He lives with me and he's been a huge emotional anchor. I want stability for him too. I want him to see me rebuild, not disappear into this mess. I feel like I'm standing in the rubble of several major life events and I'm having a hard time figuring out what to rebuild first. How do you rebuild when several major parts of your life collapse at once? How do you decide what deserves your attention first without getting paralyzed by the size of it all? And how do you stay compassionate towards someone without erasing the harm they caused, especially when sensitive identity issues are tangled up in the story? Signed, trying not to be mean and grasping for a new dream when my life has come apart

• 1:05:44Speaker 02

  at the seams.

• 1:05:45Speaker 01

  Wow, okay, big questions, good questions. Like I said, you've been through some truly extraordinary things recently and I'm so sorry that they've done such a number on you. Just going through one of these things would be hard on a person. The cumulative effect of these events could be crushing, paralyzing. Your letter is the definition of what I would professionally call a lot. And yet here you are, struggling, yes, grappling with some difficult feelings, but you are here.

• 1:06:11Speaker 02

  Also funny.

• 1:06:12Speaker 01

  Yes, and funny. That is one of my favorite parts of your letter, that even amidst all this pain, you're still in touch with your irony. And I honestly think humor is one of the greatest survival tactics.

• 1:06:22Speaker 02

  Plus she has her son, who clearly matters a lot to her. That's a huge gift.

• 1:06:26Speaker 01

  And thank goodness for that. I know he just totaled your brand new Kia Sportage, which I'm sure was a huge headache.

• 1:06:32Speaker 02

  I'm sorry, her Kia what?

• 1:06:33Speaker 01

  It's a Sportage. Tell me you don't say sportage.

• 1:06:36Speaker 02

  Of course, it's sported. I've never heard anyone say Kia Sportage.

• 1:06:39Speaker 01

  I swear that's what it's called. I don't know.

• 1:06:41Speaker 02

  It's a Kia sport. Hang on, I'm gonna look this up.

• 1:06:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think we need to look this up.

• 1:06:44Speaker 02

  Ah, in Europe and in Canada, they say Sportage, but in America, they say sportage. Okay. So once again, you're cosplaying as a fancy British person. I understand.

• 1:06:54Speaker 01

  No, no, here's what happened. Kia was probably like, it's a Sportage. And everyone in the US was so, well, let's just say they couldn't pronounce that correctly. And they said sportage and they're like, ah, yeah. So now it's the sportage in the United States, but in other parts of North America and you know, the rest of the planet, it's Sportage. They're just capitulating to the fact that we don't know how to pronounce things. That's what's happening.

• 1:07:17Speaker 02

  I cannot argue with that logic, but Kia Sportage is now in the same category as grandiose. I'm never gonna, and no, canabs as you do in the office.

• 1:07:27Speaker 01

  That's a new level. Okay, I know he just totaled your brand new Kia Sportage. That sounds terrible.

• 1:07:33Speaker 02

  Do you want to be a man of the people or do you not want to be a man of the people?

• 1:07:36Speaker 01

  You know, I am torn now.

• 1:07:37Speaker 02

  Very confusing mashup. Like sometimes you're like this everyman from Michigan and then sometimes I can, you like say things like you're wearing a monocle.

• 1:07:44Speaker 01

  You're the one who says Spanish with a real Spanish accent. So I don't think you have any, I don't think you have any room, Mr., I'm in a properly pronounced Portuguese words.

• 1:07:53Speaker 02

  You're drawing an equivalent between those two. I mean, I kind of grew up speaking Spanish poorly.

• 1:07:58Speaker 01

  Oh, now you're Mexican. Fine.

• 1:08:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, but did you grow up saying Sportage or you just putting that on later in life?

• 1:08:04Speaker 01

  Now, how do you know I didn't? All right, anyway, the car is totaled. That was a huge headache, but let's take a moment to be grateful that your son is alive. That's all that matters. It sounds like he's one big source of inspiration for finding your way through this and that is wonderful and he's uninjured, right? The car took the damage. So you're looking for some kind of roadmap for how to rebuild when several parts of your life collapse, which I understand, who wouldn't? I've been there. But the reality is no such template exists. And the sooner you embrace that, the easier this is gonna be, ironically. Sometimes the biggest obstacle to moving through a period of instability is believing that you need some kind of foolproof strategy, some kind of objective rubric for success.

• 1:08:48Speaker 01

  The fact is, sometimes life becomes extremely incoherent. Things break down, relationships dissolve, accidents happen, lives end, money runs low, the familiar touchpoints, people, places, ideas, expectations, we cling to them, but they have a strange way of falling apart. And when they do, we feel unmoored, we're scared, we're out of control. You feel like a blender with the top off. Obviously, the first thing your brain is gonna want to do is find control again. And one of the easiest ways to find that control is to believe that there's some kind of magical right way to rebuild, but that's just another idea.

• 1:09:28Speaker 01

  In my experience, it's less about finding the perfect plan and more about good practices. And that really comes down to investing in your relationships. We just talked about that in the previous question. Surrounding yourself with good people. Your way to the people you need to meet, meeting them with generosity and curiosity and a genuine desire to be of service. You do that the right way, it'll all come back to you. Also, taking good care of your mind, taking good care of your body, talking to a couple trusted people, journaling, exercising regularly, eating well, cutting out harmful substances, getting good sleep. And in general, cultivating certain qualities that are going to serve you well wherever you go.

• 1:10:08Speaker 01

  Kindness, generosity, flexibility, knowing how to ask for help, being patient, having faith, being resourceful, all that good stuff. And just to be clear, this isn't about, you know, like positive thinking or whatever. This is about meeting every person in every situation, meeting yourself in a way that's going to maximize the chances that good stuff enters your life. In a way that maximizes the chances that you'll find opportunity within all this adversity. And yeah, obviously you need to prioritize. I think it would be unwise to, for example, spend most of your energy trying to find a new spouse or plan some kind of epic trip when what you really need is a job that'll put a roof over your head. You gotta take care of yourself in some very basic ways first, but you already know that, come on.

• 1:10:53Speaker 01

  These practices, they create an architecture for your life. Every one of them is a pillar in the new structure that you are creating. My experience is if you deliberately invest in those pillars, things slowly start to get better. The rebuilding almost seems to happen on its own. It might not look how you imagine. It might not happen in the order that you'd prefer that it happened, but it does eventually happen. As for not getting paralyzed by the enormity of all this stuff, yeah, I feel for you there. It's very hard. A few weeks ago, Gabe, you mentioned that Marcus Aurelius quote, "Do not disturb yourself by picturing your life as a whole." I think about that one a lot. It kind of applies to almost every letter that we get. You know, if you think about your entire life falling apart and the 14 things you gotta do,

• 1:11:37Speaker 01

  the 14 massive things you gotta do to get back on track and oh my God, where am I going to be in 10 years? You're going to want to curl up into a ball. You're going to want to drink a bottle of whiskey or wine and fall asleep. And it's just too overwhelming. But if you narrow every moment of your life down to the one thing you can do right now, send an email, fill out a job application, pay the rent, be present in a conversation with your son, have a good cry, get up and make dinner, whatever it is, you will make real progress. I promise you. And again, the bigger picture just kind of takes care of itself. So there's another practice for you. It's not easy, but it's essential. It takes discipline, but it does get easier with practice.

• 1:12:16Speaker 02

  Wise words, Jordan. Our friend here is in a very intense process, very intense. There's so much grief in her story. There's a lot of anxiety. It sounds like, yeah, I hear the same thing, some depression, definitely some anger. There's also a big existential piece here about making sense of loss and grappling with what gives her life meaning and all of that. I'm sure we could talk for hours about all of this. I wish we could, but it seems to me that part of the answer here is knowing where she needs to act and where she needs to not act, where she needs to just accept and allow. So for example, she probably needs to fight like hell to get a new job and make sure she's stable and not lose the house. That's not going to sort itself out. But coming to accept her ex's reasons for leaving, making peace with losing her dog,

• 1:13:01Speaker 02

  coming to terms with being destabilized in general, there's very little for her to do about all of that. And the fact that there's so little to do probably feeds the anger and the grief and the depression might also in part be a response to the intensity of that pain.

• 1:13:15Speaker 01

  For sure. She said it might be perimenopause. That could totally play a role in her mood, but honestly, given what she's been through, I think it makes a lot of sense that she'd be shutting down and withdrawing from life.

• 1:13:25Speaker 02

  From life and perhaps also from herself. Now, why she's withdrawing, you know, what makes this depression as opposed to appropriate sadness? That would be one good question to ask herself. But look, I want to speak humbly here because I have not lost these things myself. I definitely haven't lost this many things all at once. I think it would be brutal for me as well. But hearing about your situation from the outside, hearing you ask basically, how do I deal with my life falling apart? I do wonder if part of the answer here is let it.

• 1:13:56Speaker 01

  Let it fall apart, you mean?

• 1:13:57Speaker 02

  Let it fall apart. I mean, first of all, it's falling apart one way or the other. So whether you decide to fight for certain things or let them go, you have to at least give yourself over to the fact that things are changing. But also, all of this clearly had to happen. We don't adopt a dog without knowing that we'll have to say goodbye one day. You know, we don't lend our car to somebody without inviting the possibility of an accident. We can't ultimately control how someone else feels about us, whether they're going to stick around forever. And as it happens, the relationship was far from perfect. So something had to shift here. So what I'm getting at is, yes, work hard to stabilize yourself. Channel your energy into these practices, which are so important. Keep showing up to your life, that's crucial.

• 1:14:38Speaker 02

  And at the same time, I would keep an eye on what doesn't require very much of your attention. What simply needs to be left alone, what needs to break down naturally as it should. I think there's great wisdom in that too.

• 1:14:50Speaker 01

  Yep, that's the dance, isn't it? Fight and allow, fight and allow. But listen, about your ex, you're trying to find the balance between compassion and recognizing the hurt she caused you. And it sounds like that's hard because she transitioned.

• 1:15:02Speaker 02

  Really interesting question.

• 1:15:04Speaker 01

  So what she's saying is, how angry am I allowed to be when she's trans, right?

• 1:15:09Speaker 02

  That's what I'm hearing. Yeah, when she had to go through something that difficult, am I allowed to be angry with her?

• 1:15:14Speaker 01

  Right, I mean, it's complicated clearly because transitioning to another gender is a really intense thing. You know firsthand that this is a very complex, very charged, sometimes painful process. And so, yeah, she deserves a lot of grace and compassion there. But at the same time, she's a human being first and foremost. And having gone through this transition, it doesn't mean she could do no wrong. It doesn't automatically forgive every mistake she made in your relationship. I don't see why you can't make room for both. You are making room for both. That's the contradiction of human beings. And to be blunt here, I don't think that makes you a bad person to harbor some difficult feelings about somebody who just happens to also be trans, even if them being trans does play into some of the particular struggles that you guys went through.

• 1:15:58Speaker 02

  Let's take her ex's gender out of the equation for a moment. What she's angry about is that her ex led her to believe that she mattered in this deep forever way, right? And then when she didn't need her anymore, apparently because she met someone else, she ended the relationship.

• 1:16:12Speaker 01

  Right, but like, isn't that true of a lot of relationships that end?

• 1:16:16Speaker 02

  I mean, if it's fair to be angry about something like this in a more conventional relationship, I think it's totally fair to feel that way here too. But it's interesting, her resentment is about being discarded, as she put it, right?

• 1:16:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, not feeling like the love she gave her ex was actually reciprocated.

• 1:16:31Speaker 02

  Which obviously hurts, but there's a lot going on in that stance. I mean, first off, we don't know what her ex was feeling. We don't know what her ex really needed. Maybe she really was selfish and uncaring and made promises that she couldn't keep or didn't intend to keep. Maybe she really did throw our friend over when she found something that she felt was better. Or maybe she was simply evolving and this relationship no longer felt right for her and she knew she needed to leave. And maybe that friendship wasn't sustainable for her for whatever reason. And so there were always going to be hurt feelings and there was no good way to do this. From our friend's perspective, she gave and gave to somebody who needed a lot of support. And she paid quite a price for that support, including her basic sense of safety in her own home,

• 1:17:14Speaker 02

  her ability to sleep through the night, which is very intense. And then she didn't get that support in return. From her ex's perspective, who, again, we don't know much about this woman, but maybe her feelings changed. Maybe she was simply doing what was right for her. I don't know which story you should land on here. Both are probably true. But what might be helpful to explore is this. If you're going to cling to the narrative that your ex did wrong by you, which means clinging on some level to the difficult feelings that come with it, it seems to me that you have to continue believing certain things. For example, that your ex is fundamentally self-interested and unfeeling, or that you were owed something for supporting her through this transition. Those are powerful assumptions.

• 1:17:57Speaker 01

  I hear you, but to be fair, she has some good arguments for those assumptions.

• 1:18:01Speaker 02

  She does, but also she could probably make the opposite case, especially in her more compassionate moods.

• 1:18:07Speaker 01

  I guess that's true. And so your point is, is her ex really a villain? How mad can she really be?

• 1:18:13Speaker 02

  My point is, all of her feelings are fair and our narratives are a lot shakier than we like to believe and probably a lot less necessary than we want to believe. And so if you really start to investigate the beliefs that underpin these stories, they start to unravel fairly quickly. And when that happens, and I think it can be a really good thing to watch those stories fall apart, or at least to have a more flexible relationship with them. It can be very scary, but it can also get harder to defend your right to only be angry or only be sad or only be scared. Because how can you settle on one feeling about something as nuanced as two very different human beings parting ways, you know? Or like, an amazing dog comes into your life and brings you all of this joy, and then one day leaves your life and brings you all of this sadness. So how are you supposed to feel about that?

• 1:18:58Speaker 01

  So her question about how she should feel about her ex, it might be less about, can I be angry at somebody who transitioned? And more about, how do I live with the paradox of conflicting feelings towards this person?

• 1:19:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, am I allowed to feel both, which she's already doing? But maybe even better because she's trying to figure out, where do I begin rebuilding my life? Maybe the better question is, can I be open to not feeling any one way at all? Can I just be curious? Can I just accept and maybe not harp on, for example, the moral status of my ex? And just do the next thing I need to do to take care of myself?

• 1:19:32Speaker 01

  For sure. To be fair to her though, I do think her current situation is making her even more resentful that her ex left. She's kind of at rock bottom, so she feels extra.

• 1:19:42Speaker 02

  And her ex promised to be there for her and that they would stay connected after they separated. So I do get that. I understand. I'm not dismissing any of that. But even that is a story worth looking into. Like, was she abandoned? Or was she liberated?

• 1:19:55Speaker 01

  Damn. Yeah, well, on one huge level, her murdery sleep demon is gone.

• 1:20:00Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 1:20:01Speaker 01

  So that's something. But I guess the question is, is this lens on things actually helping me? Or is it keeping me stuck?

• 1:20:09Speaker 02

  Yeah. Is this a productive question? And am I having empathy for myself? Or am I throwing myself a pity party to some degree, basically?

• 1:20:15Speaker 01

  Yeah. And that's a tough one to answer. But I think when we get honest with ourselves, we usually know which side of that line we're falling on.

• 1:20:22Speaker 02

  There's a book I'm reading right now. It's pretty famous. It's called When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chodron. Have you heard of it?

• 1:20:27Speaker 01

  I feel like I hear about that book a lot online.

• 1:20:30Speaker 02

  So hilarious connection here. She was a major teacher in Shambhala Buddhism, and she was a disciple of that guy. Oh, what's his name? Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche? That guy? The guy whose followers ended up founding Shambhala?

• 1:20:42Speaker 01

  Oh, right. Is this the maybe cult where all the sexual assaults happened? But the book is good.

• 1:20:47Speaker 02

  So far, the book is great. And like we said on that episode a couple of months ago, it's so hard to know if a teacher or organization is all good or all bad. I guess that's kind of what we're talking about in this letter, too, which is interesting. Anyway, that doesn't matter right now. I just bring it up because this book has some really great teachings in it. And it's basically all about how to move through breakdowns, how to come to terms with the ends of things, grief, basically, but from a Buddhist perspective. And I'm really getting a lot out of this book. So you might want to check it out.

• 1:21:14Speaker 01

  So interesting. Hey, about leaving Texas, maybe that's the answer. Maybe all this is a sign that it's time for a fresh start and a new adventure. But my advice here is always the same. If you move to a new place, make sure you're not just running from something, but running towards something, which I know you're already keeping an eye on. And it can be both. That's okay. But make sure that on the balance, you're seeking something, you're not just escaping something.

• 1:21:39Speaker 02

  I also would not pin all of my hopes for things getting dramatically better on a move. A move can do wonders. It can bring new people into your life, new inspiration, new opportunities. It also creates a lot of new complexity, a lot of new challenges, and a lot of the old challenges just persist.

• 1:21:55Speaker 01

  100%. Wherever you go, there you are and all that.

• 1:21:57Speaker 02

  Yes. But you know, sometimes wherever you are, you want to go. And that's important to listen to as well.

• 1:22:04Speaker 01

  Nice. Yeah, I like that. I get why she wants a fresh start. Home is freighted for her now, but she's still going to need to put her career back together. She still has to find a job, manage her finances, keep her relationship with her son alive, and heal from this breakup. So I guess my question is, is moving going to help you do that? Is it going to make it harder? What does that look like, really? I mean, you can always move later, but there might be some basic rebuilding closer to home first. Again, so sorry you're going through it, friend. This is a lot, but it's what's happening. And anything that happens, A, is something we usually got to deal with the right way, or not deal with the right way, and B, contains the seeds of growth. Pretty soon, your ex and this financial stress and the insurance paperwork, all that's going to be in the rearview mirror,

• 1:22:49Speaker 01

  hopefully the rearview mirror of a 2027 Kia Sportage.

• 1:22:55Speaker 02

  Sportage.

• 1:22:56Speaker 01

  Nope, not doing it. Sending you a big hug and wishing you all the best. Don't forget our episodes this week with Peter Zion and the Skeptical Sunday on Trepanation, which is drilling holes in your head, and castration, which I shouldn't have to explain. Go listen to those if you haven't yet. Show notes and transcripts on the website, advertisers, deals, ways to support the show, all at jordanharbinger.com/deals. I'm at Jordan Harbinger on Twitter and Instagram. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn. Gabe's on Insta at Gabriel Mizrahi. This show is created in association with Podcast One. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jace Sanderson, Robert Fogerty, Ian Baird, Tadusid Louskas, and of course, Gabriel Mizrahi. Our advice and opinions are our own. And I might be a lawyer, but I'm not your lawyer. Consult a qualified professional before implementing anything you hear on the show.

• 1:23:40Speaker 01

  Remember, we rise by lifting others. Share the show with those you love. If you found the episode useful, please share it with somebody else who could use the advice we gave here today. And because this timeless gem also wants a verse in the country song, I hope you apply what you hear on the show, so you can live what you learn. And we'll see you next time.

• 1:23:58Speaker 01

  Your electric car may run on clean energy, but the path from a Congolese mine to your charging cable is far dirtier than most companies want you to see.

• 1:24:07Speaker 04

  A lithium ion battery is a type of very powerful battery that was first created in the 1970s. This battery basically have allowed modern life to be possible. They contain nickel in some cases, cobalt, lithium, lots and lots of rare metals. Your phone has at least a 20% chance of having cobalt that was dug out by an artisanal miner. Somebody going using a metal bar, sometimes they're bare hands, sometimes they have bare feet. People climb down into these pits. The mines are super, super unsafe. They collapse. These people are being essentially treated not just as very low paid workers, but essentially as conditions of modern day slavery. There's just a kind of fatalism, I guess, to living

• 1:24:52Speaker 04

  there and working there. And for most of these people, the only life that they know is just so brutal and so dangerous. Yeah, they don't have a choice. Some companies have pledged to clean up their supply chain, and there are so many other companies buying this stuff that don't really care about where it's coming from. So there is a direct connection between these companies and some of the tech in our pockets. We are condemning yet another generation of people to incredibly crushing situation, exporting the suffering and the pain and the environmental impacts to Africa, to Asia, to other places. And you think, God, what are we doing in our scramble for clean energy?

• 1:25:34Speaker 01

  To hear why the clean energy boom may be built on one of the dirtiest supply chains on earth, check out episode 1315 of the Jordan Harbinger Show.

• 1:25:47Speaker 05

  Your delivery has arrived. And once it's unpacked, the box has one more stop to make. Think outside the box and into a recycling container. Here's how to recycle right in Montgomery County. Open and empty your box. Recycle clean, dry cardboard with other mixed paper. Never put recyclables in plastic bags. It's that simple. Keep cardboard out of the trash and into a recycling container. Learn more at montgomerycountymd.gov/recycling.