1398: Months After Choice, Still No Room to Rejoice | Feedback Friday

1398: Months After Choice, Still No Room to Rejoice | Feedback Friday

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Jordan Harbinger: Welcome to Feedback Friday. I'm your host, Jordan Harbinger. As always, I'm here with Feedback Friday producer, who's the worst, the wurst, because he's in Germany now, Gabriel Mizrahi.

Gabriel Mizrahi: You're kicking us off with a sausage pun.

That was what you went with?

Jordan Harbinger: Vegans are the wurst.

Gabriel Mizrahi: That's a t-shirt. Come on. That would be such a hit in Berlin.

Yeah. For sure. Well, maybe not Berlin, because it's pretty vegan friendly, but Germany in general.

Jordan Harbinger: That's right.

Gabriel Mizrahi: They'd love that. They would love that. Here on Feedback Friday, the show will set you free.

Jordan Harbinger: Ooh, it's dark. Yeah. Well, on The Jordan Harbinger Show, we decode the stories, secrets, and skills of the world's most fascinating people.

Our mission is to help you become a better informed, more critical thinker. During the week, we have long-form conversations with a variety of amazing folks, rocket scientists, drug traffickers, Emmy-nominated comedians. This week, we had the legendary Kaskade, DJ, eight Grammy nominations, just an incredible artist.

We also had Kyle Vowinkel, former FBI hostage negotiator. That's a crazy set of tales as well. He worked on the Boston bomber case and convinced that second terrorist to come out of the boat, if you've seen that movie.

We also had a Skeptical Sunday last Sunday on the telepathy tapes. Debunking that was something I didn't think I had to do, but apparently was quite controversial. And there's a lot of people that really wanted to believe that stuff.

So just making all kinds of people mad this week. Go back and check out those episodes if you haven't done so yet. Berlin, treating you well, Gabe?

Gabriel Mizrahi: I just got here a couple of days ago, but yes, I'm super happy to be back here. Only thing is that I barely slept for three, four nights in a row. And then I took two trains, one bus and an easyJet flight to Berlin with a bunch of people who were openly hacking up along.

This flight was your worst nightmare, Jordan. You would have hated it. And so now I sound like this.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, you do sound a little rough. You've got that central European plague.

Gabriel Mizrahi: I sound like a blues singer who's doing his final Rolling Stone interview in like a hospice center.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh man. Yeah. And still smoking a cigarette through like a, what is that called?

Gabriel Mizrahi: A stoma?

Jordan Harbinger: That's right.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Let me tell you about the days we doled out advice to the huddled masses. And my boy called me the worst. You get it?

Jordan Harbinger: Wurst. Yeah. Took me a second to.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Takes long extended drag.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. I'm under the weather too.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Yeah. You don't sound great, my man.

Jordan Harbinger: No. And I'm sitting in the dark. I went out to dinner with friends and my buddy was like, yeah, though these drinks look good.

And I was like, Oh, they sure do. So I ordered a drink and I ordered another drink and I was like, two drinks, like an alcoholic beverage. Yes.

Yeah. Two alcohol.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Yes. Unusual for you.

Jordan Harbinger: I never drink. Yeah. And I had two and I'm like, I used to drink, put a zero at the end of that.

That was a night for me in my twenties. Oh my God. I slept so bad.

I feel terrible. Somehow it was super dehydrated. And I'm like, no, no, I drank water.

And the truth is life comes at you fast. And when you're 46, two drinks is like having eight drinks, I guess when you're 20, I realized now that drinking for me is binary. Like maybe once a year I go to some big event and it's like, all right, it's John's bachelor party.

We're getting wasted tonight. I'm like, okay, that's tomorrow's a wash. We're in Vegas.

That's what we're doing. Stay hydrated and just try and keep, you know, do what you can. And then I can have none.

There's, you know, go ham. And then there's zero. There's no more, oh, I'm going to have one or two.

That's just apparently is not a thing that I can do anymore. That does not happen.

Gabriel Mizrahi: That's not a thing. You might as well hook up the poison to your veins through an IV.

Jordan Harbinger: Exactly. And maybe it's just whiskey. Like maybe I could try a beer. Look, when I was in Germany, again, I was so young, but my host father, he drinks beer.

The guys my age, they drink beer. It's fine. They're fine the next day.

So I don't know, maybe I just can't do whiskey. It's also possible that that stuff just really takes an extra toll. Who knows?

You could be allergic to something that's in a spirit like that. Who knows? For me, I'm just like, okay, this is not worth it.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Wherever you guys are listening, go take a shot because Jordan just mentioned Germany and that's part of the drinking game.

Jordan Harbinger: It is part of the drinking game.

Gabriel Mizrahi: No, dude, you're right. Also, hungover at home is different from hungover on vacation. Would you agree?

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. You're hungover on vacation. You're like, oh, I guess I'll go eat like a nice breakfast spread and have some coffee in here.

It's like daddy jumping on the bed and like, let's trade Pokemon cards, which is fun. But I'm also like, oh no, that's fine. I just have to do a performance that is palatable for hundreds of thousands of people.

Gabriel Mizrahi: I'll be right back. That's right. You're on hungover Friday right now.

That home hungover makes you start researching funerals in your area. But vacation hungover, you're like, oh, I think I might walk up this hill and just feel a little off. Yes.

Very different. Exactly.

Jordan Harbinger: Distract myself with some ancient cobblestone streets.

All right, Gabe, what is the first thing out of the mailbag?

Gabriel Mizrahi: So about six months ago, we took a letter from a 38-year-old woman who got pregnant. And naturally she did the standard genetic testing for her baby, because in her letter, she explained that she knew she did not want a special needs child.

I think she said that many people in her family had special needs children and it was really hard to watch them go through all of that. But then the results of the genetic test were delayed. And by the time they would be ready, she would be past the window to decide what to do about the pregnancy.

And so she decided in the end to terminate the pregnancy at home. And then hours later, she got the results, which said that the baby was perfectly healthy.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, this is such a sad story. So she wrote us because she was feeling tremendous guilt and anger at herself. But then she was also struggling with whether to tell the people at her church what happened.

So she's Christian, very committed to her faith. Well, obviously, this kind of thing is considered taboo, especially at her church.

Gabriel Mizrahi: So and she had all these big questions like, I know I want a healthy child who doesn't have these needs, but it's blasphemous to even think about that. What does it say about me that I ended this pregnant? You know, all of that.

Jordan Harbinger: Right. That was episode 1287, by the way.

Gabriel Mizrahi: So she wrote in with an update and it goes, Hey, Jordan and Gabe, since aborting my perfectly healthy son hours before receiving a healthy diagnosis, it's been rough. I'm crying at the moment just writing this. When I think back to the moments leading up to taking the abortion pill, I was so tired.

My two girls were awake until midnight and they woke up that morning at 5 a.m. I called my mom and she was not able to assist me, but had also told her friends I didn't know how to look after my children. When I picked her up later, my kids were crying and I needed someone to be with me because I had not slept and I was nauseated and I needed help.

Jordan Harbinger: Man, she sounds totally underwater right now. This is a super intense place to be for a mother, especially.

Gabriel Mizrahi: I asked my mom if I could sleep and she was angry. I was in a state of mind where my self-doubt was louder than my ability to be patient and reasonable with reality. I should have just waited the extra eight hours to know the baby was perfect and remember that all I needed was rest and sleep.

Instead, I ended my son's life over momentary discomfort.

Jordan Harbinger: So this is new information for us now.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Yeah. She didn't really tell us what led up to the moment she decided to do this in her first letter. It sounded, what I took away from that letter was it was more of a principled decision given her stance on having a baby with special needs.

Jordan Harbinger: Right. Right. And what she's saying here is it was a really tough day after a string of tough days maybe and she freaked out and nobody was helping her.

So that's really sad.

Gabriel Mizrahi: I want more children, healthy, normal children, but it has not happened naturally and I'm almost 40. I'm angry at myself for pushing my biological clock. Even more regrettably, I've gained 20 pounds emotionally eating.

It's not attractive and definitely not ideal for trying to conceive. I'm going to be doing IVF very soon. I feel so hollow and empty.

I'm not even sure I want to do it. I also told my church group about what I've done. Everyone was polite when I disclosed it, but then I was removed from the Facebook group and no longer invited to events and my messages went unanswered.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh man, that's terrible. What a supportive community. So they were like, yeah, oh, we're so sorry you went through that.

That's terrible. What would Jesus do? Right.

He would shun you, shame you, isolate you. Okay. That's the plan then.

That's so disappointing. I know that not all Christians are like this because we get emails from Christian listeners all the time that are like, these people are terrible whenever we talk about something like this. In fact, one Christian fan of the show wrote in with, I guess this is a common phrase, I haven't really seen it, but I think it was, there's no hate like Christian love is what he said.

And I thought that was an interesting thing for a Christian to say. He was obviously, I don't think he was talking about his own church, right? He was just like some of the more extreme people who act like this.

I thought that was a really interesting, apparently that's a common thing that they will say or hear.

Gabriel Mizrahi: I'd never heard. I thought it was clever. Let's come back to this because I think it's a really big part of her letter.

So she goes on, I'm happy it was a polite ending of these friendships, but really I am a—

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, I can imagine.

Gabriel Mizrahi: I don't quite know what I'm seeking clarification on or what particular feedback I'm looking for, except to say that I am still heartbroken and still so angry at myself. Signed, Still wrestling a ton after jumping the gun and coming undone after being ditched by my loved ones.

Jordan Harbinger: Wow, man.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Yeah. It's such a heartbreaking letter.

It's even more tragic, I think, than her first one with this new information.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

Gabriel Mizrahi: I'm just, I'm so sad for her. I'm sad and I'm also a little worried after this latest letter.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. I mean, well, she's really going through it. She sounds extremely overwhelmed by being a mother and that seems to be part of the reason that she made this decision.

It's worrisome.

Gabriel Mizrahi: I find it interesting that she's not sure what she's asking. She just wanted us to know.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Well, I think it's an update slash vent session. She wanted to add context and she was like, while I'm here, which I totally understand.

I'm not judging that at all. I think I'm kind of the same type of personality.

Gabriel Mizrahi: I get that. But I also wonder if not asking a question is part of her predicament. I mean, she could have said, how do I learn to manage these feelings or something so I don't do something like this in the future?

Or like, what am I going through? What should I be thinking about even?

How do I find the support I need to get through this chapter?

Jordan Harbinger: She rightfully has relied on us to come up with her questions and it's worked.

Gabriel Mizrahi: So maybe she was like, look, I'm too tired and overwhelmed to put more thought into this email. I just need to get it off my chest, send. Or maybe just a theory, not being able to articulate what she needs or how she wants to be helped.

Could that be part of what she's struggling with?

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. So is she making it harder to be helped because she isn't great at saying, here's how I'm struggling. Here's what I need to get better at.

Here's where I just need support. Can you help? Also, maybe she's afraid to ask for help.

I mean, she did tell her church group and they were like, oh, okay, bye. No one answered her messages.

Gabriel Mizrahi: That raises the stakes on speaking up. Or maybe she doesn't even really know what she needs.

Jordan Harbinger: She did ask her mom for help and her mom didn't really help her. Actually, she did the opposite. She told all of her friends, my daughter doesn't know how to care for her kids and how dare you want to take a nap.

Gabriel Mizrahi: I want to pause for a second because I'm remembering there was a pretty strong pro-life message in the first email. And some people were like, this is abortion propaganda or whatever. And I was like, oh, I didn't.

Jordan Harbinger: That's right. I had forgotten about that.

Gabriel Mizrahi: So she might be writing in because she wants to get that idea out there again.

And the pain she's in is a powerful argument in her mind for not ending a pregnancy. I don't know.

Jordan Harbinger: Good point.

So maybe she's not actually looking for advice.

Gabriel Mizrahi: She just wants people to know.

Jordan Harbinger: I think she is on some level, but I suspect that there's also this other thing in there too. And so I'm just going to acknowledge that. I think most people know where I stand on the letter.

I also don't think it's the most meaningful part of her letter anyway.

Gabriel Mizrahi: The picture she's painting is that these feelings she's struggling with are very big, very amorphous, and they seem very overpowering. And when she experiences what she called momentary discomfort, it must have been hard for her to know how to manage it or how to work with it.

Jordan Harbinger: Dot, dot, dot. I'm going to end this pregnancy because I can't take care of a child with Down syndrome on top of all this. And I think that's what they were screening for.

Gabriel Mizrahi: But I would love to know what that dot, dot, dot really was because she went from exhausted and overwhelmed to I'm going to have a special needs child and it's going to flatten me completely real quick.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, right. What kinds of thoughts does she have when she's in this state? How does she see the world when she's in this state?

How does she make sure she's creating an accurate picture? How does she sanity check that? Who's keeping her grounded?

I don't know.

Gabriel Mizrahi: I think the big thing we're learning in this email is she was extremely fragile when she made that call. And that fragility, even if it was amplified by having young kids, by being pregnant, feeling nauseous and all of that, I have a feeling it probably existed partly before all of this.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. How did she handle stress and fatigue and overwhelm before she had kids? I know being a mom to young kids does a real number on you, but I don't think you become a completely different person overnight.

Then again, it depends if there's any sort of postpartum stuff going on. You never know. I mean, I, there were some days where I didn't recognize Jen either.

Gabriel Mizrahi: That's fair. But her kids are what they're like a little bit older. They're young, but it's not like within the year of having them.

Jordan Harbinger: So although if there's postpartum stuff going on, it depends how old the kids are, but even I know postpartum is only supposed to be like six to 12 months or something. But I don't know, man, I think some of that stuff can linger. Maybe they just don't call it that anymore.

Maybe it's post postpartum, but I think that some of that stuff lingers, especially if you don't address it.

Gabriel Mizrahi: I also find the mom subplot very interesting.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, same. So she called her mom and her mom was like, sorry, can't help right now. And then goes and tells all of her friends that her daughter doesn't know how to look after her children.

Because part of me hears that and is like, wow, mom's kind of a dick going around saying your daughter's not a good mother, either be more supportive or help her get better. What's your problem? On the other hand, and I tread lightly here because we truly do not know.

But what qualities is her mom seeing in her that led her to say that unkind thing? Maybe nothing. Maybe her mom is just that way.

But she wrote this email saying how she's extremely overwhelmed by parenthood to the point of being nauseated, which could also have been from the pregnancy and how she made a very unfortunate decision when she was in that state. So like, I don't know.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Does her mom have some reason to be a little concerned?

Jordan Harbinger: I don't know. Maybe. I mean, she did raise her.

Right. So it's a genuine question. Maybe, maybe not.

I wish her mom were more supportive. I wish her mom didn't go around expressing that opinion cavalierly to all of her friends. That doesn't seem kind or helpful in any way at all.

But if I were related to our friend here and I saw her struggling in this way, I might think to myself, huh, OK, I hope she's taking care of herself. I hope she finds a way to handle all of this well, because it is a big responsibility.

Gabriel Mizrahi: That does make me wonder about mom. Again, it's hard to know for sure what to make of that. Is her mom used to seeing her daughter get overwhelmed and tap out a lot?

So when she says, I need to go take a nap, her mom gets frustrated. Or is her mom truly unable to empathize with her daughter, give her a break and just like let her rest for a couple hours and watch the kids?

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Which is not unreasonable whatsoever for a parent to need.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Not at all. We're also hearing our friend here's read on this, right?

She's saying her mom was angry. Maybe she was, or maybe she had some kind of reaction that our friend here interpreted as angry because maybe she heard it in a certain way, went through the prism of her own judgments at this moment.

Jordan Harbinger: Well, to be fair, it's coming from her mom. A lot of messages from parents feel loaded or get misinterpreted or whatever. That would be another good question to ask herself, whether her mom is responding to an objective thing she needs to work on or whether her mom is kind of, oh gosh, what's the Snoop?

What's the word I'm looking for?

Gabriel Mizrahi: That's the word. Thanks, Snoop. I hear that.

And if she is, that might help explain why our friend here is struggling in this way right now. Like why she was pushed to such a precarious place. I mean, our mothers are the first people who teach us how to manage our anxiety.

Jordan Harbinger: That's a good point. And then when she got into that very delicate place, she says she was in a state of mind where my self-doubt was louder than my ability to be patient and reasonable with reality. So everything got distorted.

All she could see was how unequal she would be to the task of raising a special needs child. Now she's on the other side. She feels the answer would have been to just wait another eight hours and get some rest.

And I agree with her. That would have helped a lot and obviously would have been preferable to what she did. I know she said she was up against the deadline in the previous letter, but I don't know.

The deadline's probably not within a range of a single hour or two. I think there's got to be some flexibility on that biologically. Is that really all she needed?

A little more patience and a nap?

Gabriel Mizrahi: Well, I'm not sure.

Jordan Harbinger: Exactly. Because plenty of parents sleep in five hours a night don't terminate a pregnancy early. There's so much more going on here.

And I think she needs to really study how her mind works under stress and her tendencies and her close relationships and her general relationship with discomfort, which is such a huge part of parenting. And is often born from uncertainty.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Going back to that question from the woman whose mother is dying from last week, it just brings up a lot.

Jordan Harbinger: Yes. For example, the massive uncertainty of whether your child is going to be healthy, which is always a roll of the dice.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Which might be another way of saying the uncertainty about how you'll show up to a challenge like that.

Jordan Harbinger: Yes. What kind of parent would you be under different circumstances when all you have is the data in front of you at this moment, which for her seemed to be you're drowning.

Gabriel Mizrahi: This theme alone would be a powerful entry point into therapy. But in light of the trauma and the grief that she's dealing with now, I think it's even more important now that she talked to someone.

Jordan Harbinger: All the more so because she's been abandoned by her community, which I'm just, again, so heartbroken about that. So she opened up to them. They smiled and nodded.

And then they're like, yeah, well, she's out.

Gabriel Mizrahi: This is an interesting moment for you and me, Jordan, to appreciate something that we might not fully understand to your point earlier, which is—

Jordan Harbinger: What? That people can be judgmental pricks?

Gabriel Mizrahi: Yeah. People have very strong beliefs sometimes, especially in a religious community, and maybe opening up to them was riskier than we thought.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, that's what I said.

Gabriel Mizrahi: But yeah, I mean, look, like, were we slightly naive and believing that they would be supportive if she took that chance?

Jordan Harbinger: OK, maybe when she said she was a pro-life Christian and talking about something like this with her community was taboo. We should have assumed it wouldn't have gone over well. But then I think it's a religious community.

If a religious community isn't designed to help people in precisely these really tough moments when a person makes a mistake or when a person is grieving or when a person is worn thin, what are they there for? What are they there for to hold everyone to some weird standard of perfection? It never ceases to amaze me.

You see these there's a guy on trial right now for murdering his wife at point blank range with a gun while he was having an affair with a girl who is 20 years younger than him, who ran the church choir, and he was the pastor. Their text messages are full of plans to kill her and then them judging a crapload of other people for their actions. It's like so psycho to read these things in court.

And it's really amazing to me, like a lot of these people that are judging this person for getting an abortion could be shagging their husband's best friend, and it's like they can compartmentalize that. It's totally insane. So, I mean, to judge people when they fall short of their idea of what an ideal person is, look, I'm in no position to say what a Christian should be like.

I understand there are many types of Christians out there, many ways to interpret these systems, but this does not seem right. I was really hoping they would meet her very differently. They could even say, oh my gosh, this is a really bad sin.

You should go talk to the pastor, but to just be like, well, never answer Angela's messages ever again. She's bad now. That's totally crazy to me.

Gabriel Mizrahi: I mean, I guess to be fair, we don't know what process these people went through to arrive at that decision, whether it was a tough call for them or an easy call for them or how much judgment there really was in them. You know, we don't know those things. I guess we also don't know how our friend was in that group before the conversation, what her relationships with these people were like before all of that.

What I do know is she is terribly alone in her grief and her guilt and her regret, and that must be making it so much more painful and just so much harder to move forward.

Jordan Harbinger: I'm sure, and I don't think this is something she can work through entirely on her own. I think she needs that empathetic witness to talk about all this and help her come to a new relationship with these facts, and a therapist is really the best person for that.

Gabriel Mizrahi: It's just so interesting to me because this was precisely the response we were hoping to help her avoid when we recommended she see a professional outside of her community.

Jordan Harbinger: Yes, which I have to point out makes it even more ironic that a few people got mad at us for suggesting that.

Gabriel Mizrahi: That we were somehow trying to steer her away from her faith, which is not what we were doing.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, we were not doing that, but I'm going to leave that there. That's beside the point, and I guess I think the actions of the community sort of show us what might have happened there. The point is she has a road ahead in working through all of this, and I think a big part of her recovery is going to be appreciating how she arrived at this decision and figuring out what she needs to learn from all this, starting with the way she's responding to her responsibilities and her feelings and her relationships with her mom, with her kids, with people at church, with herself.

I would also get very clear on a few things before you start IVF.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Hard agree. What did she say?

I feel so hollow and empty, and I'm not even sure I want to do it.

I'm worried about her starting something so big when she's in this state, and also what do you think she meant by that? I don't want to go through the process physically, or I'm not even sure I want another child.

Jordan Harbinger: It's a little unclear, but earlier in her letter she did say she wanted more children, healthy, normal children, as she put it. Either way, I think you're right. This is a precarious time to start thinking about getting pregnant again.

By the way, IVF, you're injecting hormones and stuff. If you're having trouble stabilizing your moods, maybe you shouldn't be pumping yourself full of hormones that make that even more difficult. See a doctor.

This is a question for a doctor, a qualified medical professional.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Not to put too fine a point on it, but a therapist as well. I just want to make sure that she's making this decision very clearly and very thoughtfully, and not just going through with it because it was already in motion, and she can't say no. I don't want her to be half in and half out, and most importantly, I want to make sure that, yeah, she is stable and strong enough to make important decisions about this potential baby that might be coming, especially if things get stressful again.

Jordan Harbinger: That's my concern too, because what if the genetic test is late again, which is terrible that they were late with that? What if there's another big call to make, or what if she has another baby and it's perfectly healthy, which in all likelihood it will be, but now she's a mother to another young child and she hasn't worked on these skills. I don't know.

Gabriel Mizrahi: I'm worried about all this. I'm not saying don't have another baby. That's obviously your call.

I'm just saying I would be very thoughtful about how you proceed.

Jordan Harbinger: I totally agree. Maybe this isn't the time to do IVF and try again. It sounds like you might need some time, or who knows, maybe getting pregnant again and handling all these decisions differently is precisely the corrective experience you need right now.

That's really up to you, your spouse, and your doctors, and your therapist really to decide.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Her spouse, her husband, who, by the way, she hasn't said anything about him, which is kind of interesting.

Jordan Harbinger: I was just thinking the same thing when I said it, because I was like, oh yeah, that guy.

Where is this guy? Where's he in all this? Not one single word, not a line about him.

Gabriel Mizrahi: So maybe she just didn't want to talk about him, but all she told us in her previous letter is that they're both professionals and both educated, and they can provide well for their children. But I am wondering, how is he helping you through this? Does he know about all of this?

Jordan Harbinger: That's what I was wondering too. I mean, surely because she told her church group, and that would get back to him if she didn't tell him, but I don't know. I really hope that's not the case where he doesn't know, because then she'd be even more isolated.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Yeah, it's interesting because both of her letters really do paint the picture that she's alone in all of this. She made the call alone, it sounds like, and it's on her alone now to manage her grief and her regret.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, which is, in a way, why I'm glad she told her church group, hear me out. She tried to share this with people, which is essential, but obviously that didn't go her way.

Gabriel Mizrahi: I guess we just don't have enough information to know whether her husband knows what she did and how he's supporting her. I obviously hope he does and is. But the fact that she feels so alone in all this, and that she is constructing her narrative as one of isolation and self-reliance, maybe that's still meaningful in the context of her larger struggle, and one more window into the insight that she's looking for right now.

Jordan Harbinger: Again, a powerful theme to bring into therapy, a window into a whole bunch of important stuff about her, I'm sure. So very sorry you're suffering, friend. My heart does go out to you.

And there's a way through the suffering, and it's here to teach you some important things, including and especially if you decide to have another child. I feel like that sounds like it could be a paraphrase from the Bible, you know, the book that none of the people in your church group seem to have read. Anyway, take good care and good luck.

You don't need IVF to conceive of the healthy deals and discounts on the fine products and services that support this show. We'll be right back. This episode is also sponsored by HomeServe.

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Now, back to Feedback Friday.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Okay, next up. Hi Jordan and Gabe. I'm a woman in my mid-30s, never married, no kids, college educated with a fulfilling career.

I'd like to think I have a good head on my shoulders and more importantly, a good heart. About six months ago, I started dating a man who is 15 years older than me. He is honestly everything I've ever asked for in a partner and I'm genuinely happy with him.

The relationship feels healthy and exciting and I can see this becoming something serious. But there's one thing I'm struggling with, figuring out where I fit into his life. He's extremely successful and spends a lot of time around other very successful accomplished people.

When I'm around them, I sometimes feel like I'm out of my league. I'm educated and intelligent and I'm proud of what I've accomplished. But these people seem to operate on another level, financially, professionally, socially and in terms of their experiences.

I also didn't grow up with money, so my exposure to luxury, expensive travel, fine dining and other things that are normal in his world has been limited. I'm comfortable with who I am and where I come from, but I sometimes worry that my lack of familiarity with those things makes me seem less sophisticated or worldly. At the same time, I realize there is a 15-year age gap between us.

That's 15 additional years for him to build his career, develop relationships, travel, experience different things and become the person he is today. So part of me knows it's not exactly fair to compare where I am in my life to where he is in his.

Jordan Harbinger: For sure. And I'm glad you know that. Those are 15 crucial years during someone's prime, essentially.

But I hear you. It's still a thing in the relationship. And it's funny because when I was 30, I was not well off.

I was probably below many 30 year olds. And then when I was 35, I was doing very well.

And sometimes these leaps are just they're quantum, just something to keep in mind.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Still, when I'm around his friends and social circle, I find myself wondering whether I'm sophisticated enough, interesting enough or accomplished enough to really belong in his world. And I hate that I even think this way because I know my worth shouldn't be determined by the people I'm sitting around.

How do I become more comfortable and confident in his world without feeling like I need to become someone I'm not? Should I make an effort to educate myself about the things his friends and colleagues are interested in and become more, quote, unquote, attuned to that lifestyle? Should I try to gain more experience with some of the things that are new to me?

Or is the bigger issue that I'm putting these people and possibly him on a pedestal and undervaluing what I bring to the relationship?

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, it sounds like that is definitely in the mix.

Gabriel Mizrahi: How do you navigate being with someone whose life experience, success and social world are significantly different from your own without allowing that difference to make you feel less than? What would you recommend? Signed, Feeling unable to deserve my place at this table, even though I'm quite stable and understand that I'm on a different timetable.

Jordan Harbinger: Okay, such thoughtful questions. So let's start with the good news. The good news is you have a good head on your shoulders and a good heart.

You found a great guy. He's everything you could ask for in a partner. You're genuinely happy.

You guys seem to be moving in an exciting direction. Amazing. What a gift.

Y'all sound like a sweet couple. What I'm hearing from your letter is that you have two self-concepts and they're kind of in tension with each other. One is that you bring a lot to the table.

You're proud of what you've accomplished. You're more than enough, basically, which I agree with. The other is that, to put it very simply, you're not enough, not sophisticated enough, not interesting enough, not accomplished enough.

If that concept or belief wasn't there, this thing about your boyfriend's world wouldn't affect you the way it does, so it sounds like just being around these conversations, that puts you in touch with ideas and experiences that go through these filters and produce this experience called I'm not enough, but I've got to tell you, that is extremely normal for people who didn't grow up with wealth or status, which of course is most people, and it's hard to not feel a little daunted or out of your depth when you're hanging out with people who happen to operate on another level. It's only natural, but whether it needs to come at your expense, I think that's the question.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Yeah, like she said, she hates that she thinks this way because she knows her worth shouldn't be determined by the people she's sitting around, but I don't know if it needs to be that way.

Jordan Harbinger: It sounds like there are two things happening here. One is the simple fact that she and these people have different means, different tastes, different interests. The other is that she's not as worthy as a result.

Now, she knows better than to feel this way, and yet she can't help it sometimes. I guess my question for her is, how do you go from, huh, I'm out of my depth, I don't know if I totally fit in, to maybe I'm not as good as they are and I now feel even worse that I'm letting these people determine my worth?

Gabriel Mizrahi: I agree. I think there's a way she could hang with these people, enjoy these, whatever they're doing. Fancy dinner, she's not used to.

Talk about experiences she's never had or, you know, notice when she feels out of her depth and at the same time hang on to herself.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, it's interesting. We're in slightly complicated territory now because there is something inherently compelling and powerful about wealth and status, right? Or at least impossible to ignore.

It's hard to go to an $800 dinner with a bunch of entrepreneurs and then drive home in your boyfriend's Aston Martin and not go, man, these people are awesome. We ate Chef Boyardee growing up. I couldn't tell you the difference between Maker's Mark and Macallan.

Do I really fit in here?

Gabriel Mizrahi: But I would really encourage her to separate these people's personalities and characters from their situations and their interests. Because feeling like you're out of your league when you're around people who are smart and driven and accomplished, that is not necessarily a bad thing. It could even be a good thing if it inspires you, for example, to do something similar.

But feeling like you're out of your league when you're around people who, I don't know, can't stop talking about the interest rate on their new ski chalet and all the different kinds of caviar they ordered for the table. I don't know if you want to factor that into how you feel about yourself. You know what I mean?

I would take seriously the qualities you admire in these people that led to this wealth, but maybe not so much the wealth itself.

Jordan Harbinger: Good distinction. Is she valuing the trappings of that wealth or is she admiring the skills and decisions and habits that created it? Part of it is these more material things.

Fancy dinners, how many stamps they have in their passports, that stuff is interesting. It can obviously be meaningful, but it is not the most interesting. Something you appreciate as you get older.

People with means, people with status, that doesn't automatically make them high quality people or people you should aspire to. So I do wonder if she's over-indexing these qualities and assets, and maybe just under-indexing other ones that she knows are more valuable just because the lifestyle is kind of seductive.

Gabriel Mizrahi: But it's still an interesting question. What does she do with this feeling of being out of her depth or ignorant about certain topics or just unfamiliar with this world? She could use these interactions to diminish herself.

She could use these interactions to maybe inspire herself. She could also use these interactions just to learn about herself, right? Her interests, her insecurities, areas where she wants to develop, or areas where she is developed in a way that these people maybe are not.

Jordan Harbinger: The answer to her question might be, you all have different things to offer one another, and theirs might seem more important or compelling, but that's not always the case. Also, she's asking, how do I fit into his world better, right? But I'm also wondering, okay, is he fitting into her world?

Is he valuing her life and her friends and what she finds meaningful? Are his friends taking an interest in her, or are they like, we're really into expensive cheese and luxury handbags, and we're only going to talk about our companies for three hours? Because that's equally important.

Also, he could be helping her feel more comfortable in his world. He could be helping her connect with his friends better, maybe. Maybe he already is, but I'm just calling that out.

It's not only her job.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Maybe the key to all of these conflicts you're in is just, rather than debating back and forth whether you should feel this way, or rather than questioning your self-worth or defending your self-worth, you could just embrace the fact that you feel a little out of your depth in your boyfriend's world sometimes, and there are some objective reasons for that. You're younger, you're from different worlds, et cetera. Maybe there are things that you have yet to accomplish or learn, which is perfectly normal, and just let that be.

You can hit pause on the question of whether that feeling is good or bad. You can put down the question of whether you need to cling to who you quote-unquote really are, or whether you need to adjust to fit in, and then just go to dinner with your boyfriend and his friends, or go to the work thing with his colleagues. When you talk to these people, listen.

Listen to them, to what they talk about, to what they find interesting, to what lights them up, which you might or might not ultimately find that meaningful, and listen to yourself, to the feelings and opinions and responses you have to all of that, and just let yourself be 15 years younger than your boyfriend, you know? That's a fact you can't change. It might always create certain differences between you, and who knows, maybe that's even part of why this relationship works.

There are clearly qualities in your boyfriend that you are responding to, that you value, and that might be because he has 15 years on you, you know? But you can do all of that without feeling like you have to compensate or apologize for it. So when you have something meaningful to say with these people, you can say it, and if you don't feel like you have something to add to the conversation, then maybe just ask a question, or listen again, and just notice when these differences between you and these people create a certain response in you.

Maybe it's anxiety, maybe it's some shame, maybe it's a kind of wound, and what you find yourself wanting to do about that wound. Like, do a lot of work to prove that you can hold your own with these people, or go the other way, like, I don't need to prove anything to them, I don't need to change at all, because I know what I'm worth. Interestingly, both of those responses might be different ways of staving off those same feelings.

Whereas just letting the feelings be while you spend time with these people, and not trying to do too much with them, that might allow you to do something much more important, which is just learn. And I don't just mean about the whiskey they ordered for the table.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, good point. She can be a student of all this, them and her. And what I like about that is, it leaves a lot of room for her to enjoy all the possibilities here.

It allows her to hang onto herself, to know her worth, and it allows her to expand through these people in some potentially exciting ways. Because it's also a fact, potentially an exciting fact, that these people might have a lot to teach her. It's not that they're better than she is, that they have all the answers, or even that they're good people, we don't know that.

But they've done impressive stuff. They're older, they might open up her world a little bit, what's wrong with that? So being willing to be the student when she's around them, as opposed to, say, the person who knows exactly who she is, exactly how she feels about these people at all times, that's how she can grow the most through these relationships.

Gabriel Mizrahi: That might also answer her question about becoming more comfortable and confident in his world, as she put it, without feeling like, I need to become someone I'm not. Because what if the most authentic version of her is just a person who's open and learning and finding out how she feels about these people?

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, I love that. Because again, she's framing it like she has to choose, right? Like the options are stay small but true to myself or adapt and be fake somehow.

Gabriel Mizrahi: She doesn't need to invent a persona in order to fit in with these people. That's not going to work anyway. She also doesn't need to abandon herself in order to evolve.

And that's basically what I want her to make room for.

Jordan Harbinger: I think when we're being really honest with ourselves, we know when we're being inauthentic. And if we can just catch ourselves doing it, that's half the battle. So maybe this is also about your motivations for becoming more comfortable and confident in his world.

You can do that in order to impress your boyfriend and his friends or make yourself feel better or be able to perform the role of yourself better. Or you can do it because it's an opportunity to learn about new topics, because you want to understand these people better and connect with them, because you want to accomplish similar things in your own life. I think you know which motivation is going to be more rewarding and which one's going to make you feel better.

But more than anything, my hope for you is this. That you enjoy everything this relationship is bringing into your life. Both in terms of the worldly stuff and in terms of the deeper stuff.

Love, values, experiences, capabilities without letting it diminish you in any way. And I love that you found a great guy. I love that he and his circle have a lot to offer you.

And I hope that he and his friends also find that you have a lot to offer them too. So enjoy it, have fun, and good luck. You know what you don't have to be a rich old fart in order to enjoy?

The fine products and services that support this show. We'll be right back. This episode is sponsored in part by Progressive Insurance.

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This episode is also sponsored by AG1. October mornings always sneak up on me. One week there's sunlight coming through the windows, the next I'm getting up in the dark trying to get myself and the kids ready, wondering why finding one missing shoe requires the entire family.

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Gabriel Mizrahi: Okay, next up. Dear Jordan and Gabe, Recently, I had to end a four-year friendship with a man I had considered a close friend. I discovered that he had been lying to me and hiding aspects of his dating life from me, despite the fact that I actively encouraged him to date.

That started a larger conversation, where he eventually told me that he had been deeply in love with me since we first met and that he had quote only ever felt love like this one other time unquote in his life.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, that's quite a thing to find out.

Gabriel Mizrahi: We met in a gym training group that he attended with his long-term partner at the time.

They broke up about a year later. I was also in a long-term relationship for most of the duration of our friendship, and I believed I had been very intentional about not giving him any romantic signals, especially after his relationship ended. From my perspective, there was no flirting or behavior that I thought could reasonably be interpreted as romantically ambiguous.

Also, before allowing myself to become fully invested in the friendship, I checked that he had other long-term female friendships in his life, which he did. But when he finally told me how he felt, he said that he thought I knew he loved me, that I was somehow quote unquote in on it.

Jordan Harbinger: I'm relying on soundbites to relay my humor because of this hangover that I'm dealing with. Yes, like I can't reach the level of emotion physically that I need, so soundbite it is.

Gabriel Mizrahi: He told me that he thought my knowing about his dating life would hurt me. I believe he obscured his dating life from me because he thought my knowing about it would hurt his chances of being with me.

Jordan Harbinger: Could very well be, hard to say for sure, but that is certainly my guess.

Gabriel Mizrahi: It was incredibly upsetting. I had felt safe and confident in the friendship, and after the revelation, I felt a lot of betrayal and shame, realizing that I had been so open and trusting with someone for years while we apparently had completely different understandings of the relationship and what each of us wanted from it.

Jordan Harbinger: Well said. I totally get why this is unsettling, something I think women deal with far more than men do, but it's hard for anybody to learn this kind of thing. I'm sorry this happened.

I, Gabe, I think he was just sort of hoping she would eventually come around. I don't think he thought she was in on it, none of this stuff. I think he was just sort of like going to play last man standing in this training group.

That's my theory.

Gabriel Mizrahi: What does in on it mean? If she's in on it, they would share the feelings?

Jordan Harbinger: I think what she slash he meant there was like, she knows I love her. She's just sort of pretending to only be my friend, and then eventually she's just going to give in. Or like one day, this guy for sure in the back of his head had some sort of weird fantasy that like one day he was going to make a move and it was going to be well received.

Kind of like when he told her, I've been madly in love with you. I guarantee you her expected, the reaction he expected from her was not, oh my God, I thought we were just friends. I can never see you again.

I guarantee you he was in his head. He tells her that. And she's like, oh my God, me too.

Let's go make love right now in your apartment. That he was hoping for some version of that, not her writing into Feedback Friday and be like, crap, I've got to get a new gym.

Gabriel Mizrahi: So in on it means that she's pretending to.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. He thought, oh, she knows I'm in love with her and she's eventually just going to relent or come around or realize it even more. But she knows.

I don't even know if he believes that or if it was just wishful thinking either way. That's super creepy to me.

Gabriel Mizrahi: So I'm trying to work out what I should do differently. I have wonderful, deep friendships with other women, and I want to be able to have that same kind of meaningful connection with my male friends. I know you've both spoken before about having meaningful friendships with women.

So I particularly value your perspectives. How do I establish a clear boundary with a male friend that says I value you enormously, but I'm not romantically interested in you. And I only want this to be a friendship without sounding conceited or assuming that he is attracted to me?

Jordan Harbinger: Honestly, I think that's a pretty good start. I'm trying to think how I would react to that. And I would probably be like, oh, yeah, no, totally understand.

I think we're on the same page. I don't think I'd be like this. She thinks she's in my league or come on.

I mean, a guy who reacts like that is probably going to be a guy like this. So I wouldn't worry about it. Maybe a good filter.

Gabriel Mizrahi: I think you just throw in. I hope I'm not being presumptuous by saying this. This is just me wanting to be totally clear in my relationships.

But blah, blah, blah, blah. What you just said. And you've got your script.

Jordan Harbinger: I think so, man. I mean, this is just one of those chats where you go super literal, call everything out. And then you're like, oh, OK.

Yeah. OK. Now that that's out of the way.

Yeah. Did you ever have you tried the new coffee shop down the block? And the guy's like, yeah, yeah.

Awkward, but totally necessary. Guys who have women friends. I don't know about you, Gabriel.

If somebody tells me something like, hey, just FYI, I'm not looking for a relationship or anything. I'm like, oh, no, I'm married. Sorry.

I probably should have led with that. And then we have a laugh and like that's the end of it. And we're both kind of relieved that the awkward part is over.

And that's it. Guys who are friends with women, they also understand that women get hit on constantly and any ambiguity never works out in her favor. Right.

It's only a bad thing. So the extra clarity, guys who are well attuned to this, a.k.a. guys that can handle being friends with women generally go, no. Yeah.

No, I got you. I understand. Yeah.

I can only imagine the stories you have about that going awry. Anyway. Yeah.

The place down the street is way the frappuccinos are way too sweet. I would not. Don't bother.

That's how those conversations go.

Gabriel Mizrahi: In my experience, I don't want to fundamentally change how I relate to people or become less open, attentive or emotionally available with male friends just because attraction is possible. But I also don't want to be naive about how differently two people can experience the same friendship. If I'm contributing to this pattern in some way, I genuinely want to understand how so that I can change as a woman.

How do I have genuinely close friendships with men while making it clear that I'm interested in friendship and nothing romantic? Signed, Trying to reflect on how I relate to the opposite sex, but hoping to still connect without sounding like I'm trying to flex when I don't always know what men actually expect.

Jordan Harbinger: Wow. I love this gal. Not like that, though.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Just as friends. Sure. As you doodle her name in your notebook over there.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh, my God. Did you ever do that? Like right in your Trapper Keeper?

The Trapper Keeper name is so it's like you got the folder and it's you push it in because the pencil isn't quite grip and it's like Libby Harbinger. And then you're like, oh, I hope nobody sees this. You have to throw the folder away and that in my fractal notebook burning it.

In all seriousness, she strikes me as a very mature, very conscientious, very evolved person, and she wants to get better at her side of this. She wants to get better at communicating. I just I dig it.

Gabriel Mizrahi: But again, kind of like the last letter, I really love that she's not going so far the other way, which is what a lot of people would do and go. I clearly cannot be friends with guys anymore. It just doesn't work, right? Or I have to keep these relationships all superficial because look what happens, too risky.

Jordan Harbinger: But a lot of women have reached that conclusion. And it's sad for them.

And it's sad for the guys that can't be friends with them because a few weird, uncalibrated guys are like, Becky, I love you. It's just weird. I don't know.

I thought we all got over that in like high school or college, but some guys seem to just bring it right into their 40s. And it's like, what's wrong with you?

Gabriel Mizrahi: Yeah. She wants closeness and clarity. I think both are possible.

Jordan Harbinger: She can have both. She should have both. So the first thing I want to say is, I'm sorry this happened.

I'm pretty sure you didn't do anything terribly wrong here. It sounds to me like you were sending a lot of platonic signals. You were taking this guy at his word.

In this case, I mean, look, we only have your side of the story, but it sounds like it's largely on him for not being honest about his feelings sooner. Or adjusting his feelings based on the pretty obvious signals that you were sending. At the same time, to be totally fair, I guess I do have a little teensy bit of compassion for the guy because look, people are complicated.

Feelings are messy. You can fall in love with somebody that you're friends with. It happens.

Like he said, he's only ever felt love like this one other time. So probably with the girl that he dated the group before you. So your relationship probably meant a lot to him.

And I'm sure that it was hard. In another timeline, if you happen to share those feelings, he would have been over the moon and it could have been great. And I'm sure that's, again, what he was hoping for initially.

I also think a lot of men just aren't used to women genuinely being interested in being close friends and nothing more. And a lot of guys are certainly not taught how to be genuinely friends with women. Oh my gosh.

Or they don't have that modeled growing up. So it can be confusing sometimes. Again, I thought we kind of all got over that in high school or college, but it doesn't mean it's okay to lie about their feelings, but it might explain some things.

But maybe most important, this guy clearly struggled to communicate this to you. And if he knew how to handle this better, he would have. And maybe this experience is teaching him how to make sense of these feelings and handle them better in the future.

I mean, this is how we learn, right? Also, not to gas you up too much here, but you sound great. You're kind, you're thoughtful.

You have the capacity for meaningful relationships with men. You were over there encouraging him to date. You were truly invested in this guy as a friend.

I'm not blaming you whatsoever, to be clear, but I'm also not entirely surprised that he caught feelings for you. In a way, it's a compliment, you know? I mean, too bad he handled it in a creepy way.

Gabriel Mizrahi: If you just wanted to be friends with this guy, you should have been way less awesome. That's what Jordan is saying.

Jordan Harbinger: Exactly. Maybe this is all your fault. No, I kid.

It sounds like she's asking which part of it is her fault. It's hard to know based on your letter if you're contributing to this pattern in some way, but I really hate to blame you for this because I don't think — it doesn't sound to me like you were sending mixed signals or anything like that. But to somebody who secretly harbors feelings for you, maybe any signal at all could be interpreted as a mixed signal when you've got that level of wishful thinking going on.

Again, not your fault at all, but who knows? Maybe there's a little bit of that in the mix. Only you know the answer to that.

I also wonder if he had any inkling along the way that he might have had feelings for you, or just a vague suspicion that there was something going on or something misaligned. And if you did, you didn't go right at it and say, hey, is there anything for us to talk about? Because that could be a way that you participated in the dynamic.

Again, not by encouraging his romantic feelings, but maybe by sidestepping a conversation that could have surfaced the feelings sooner. I think if he had feelings, it was up to him to speak up sooner or read the freaking room better and adjust his feelings.

Gabriel Mizrahi: I understand. You're not saying it was her responsibility to do that in this situation, but it might have played a role in how it played out.

Jordan Harbinger: Exactly. Definitely highlight that is not her responsibility to figure out some dude's emotions for him.

Gabriel Mizrahi: I'm interested in the shame that she felt after he came clean to her.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, me too. The anger and betrayal, I totally get. The shame, I'm not so sure.

Gabriel Mizrahi: So she's ashamed because she feels naive, right? She trusted him. She felt safe.

And then he's like, surprise, not what you think at all. I have this whole other idea of our relationship, but he misled me. He withheld his feelings from me.

That seems to become in her mind. I did something wrong. And it's mostly on me to avoid this in the future.

So in a way, I love that you're thinking that way because you're responsible. You're thoughtful. You don't want to inadvertently create a situation like this again.

In another way, this process might speak to how you sometimes take on more responsibility than you should. So here's something I would keep in mind going forward. You can do everything right in a friendship, in a relationship, and the other person will still have whatever experience they have of you.

What I've learned over the years is that your job is to give the other person as much information as possible about how you feel, about what you want, about what the other person means to you, including, by the way, if it applies, saying, I'm a little confused. I'm not sure where this relationship is going, but that's where I am right now. And that's about it.

What they do with that information, whether they really listen, whether they use that to adjust their feelings, how they manage their emotions, all of that, that is their business and that's up to them. And that's how you can avoid a lot of this guilt and shame in the future because how can you feel guilty if you truly gave the other person all the information they needed to form an accurate picture of the relationship, right? Like what's there to be ashamed of if you treated them with kindness and respect by being totally honest with them?

So if you do this and you still have these feelings, then I think you'll go, okay, this is probably about how responsible I feel for other people's feelings or how I internalize blame for things that were not my fault, or this is my anger at the other person being turned against me. And that's the other upside to being extremely clear with people.

Jordan Harbinger: Amen. Also, it's possible that your friendships with men might be one area where you do need to spell things out more explicitly than usual instead of trusting implicit cues, especially early on. And if you do all this and you still get the sense that the other person might be on a different page, you could say something like, hey, I want to make sure you and I are totally clear with each other.

I want to make sure I'm being fair. I'm not being confusing in any way. I'm loving our friendship.

I see you this way. I want to check in and make sure you see me in the same way. And if it turns out that you are on different pages, you can say, I can see that we want this relationship to go in different directions.

So I'm going to have to pull back now. Also fair game. Of course, the other half of the equation is to choose friends who are emotionally mature, listen to what you're saying you want out of a relationship, and then here's the key, actually respect the answer.

That is key. I hope you continue to find good guy friends in your life. I love that you want to be close with all kinds of people, and I hope these conversations help you do that.

And good luck. Also, in case you don't know, there's a subreddit for the show if you want to jump into discussions with other listeners about specific episodes, something you like, something you didn't like. There's a lot of Feedback Friday feedback in there over on the Jordan Harbinger subreddit.

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All right, time for the recommendation of the week.

Soundbite: I am addicted to lip filler.

Gabriel Mizrahi: So as you guys know, I'm traveling most of the time these days, and I'm always trying to figure out where to fit my workouts in. And sometimes I'm in a city that has gyms and yoga studios, and I can go drop into a class. Sometimes I'm in small towns that don't have them, or I'm on a travel day, so I have to do a home workout on my mat before I like head to the airport or whatever.

Yoga and calisthenics are my jam. I love them, but I also really love lifting weights, and obviously I can't travel with weights. And this is why I love resistance bands.

You know, those rubber elastic bands that come in different resistances. I use the small ones, the ones that you can loop around your feet or your ankles or your thighs or your wrists, and then suddenly it's like adding 15 pounds to your bodyweight routine, depending on the exercise you choose to do and all of that, of course. It's amazing what you can do with these things.

You can recreate shoulder presses, triceps, pull downs, weighted squats. You can create tension with toe taps, bicycle crunches. You can use them to do isometric holds or mobility exercises.

I am obsessed with these things. I use them almost every day. They've become a real staple in my life.

There are tons of companies out there that make them. I'm going to link to one in the show notes. A set of five will cost you $10.

They weigh nothing, so they're really great to travel with. And they've also inspired me to be more creative with my workouts on the road, which I also really like. I'm sure there are tons of YouTube channels and influencers teaching classes with these things.

So if you get these bands, you can also look up a couple of videos and that might give you some cool ideas as well. Resistance bands, huge fan. Give them a go.

Jordan Harbinger: All right, next up.

Gabriel Mizrahi: So a few weeks back, we took a letter from a guy who believes he's a pedophile, but had never acted on these impulses, he said. That was episode 1377. And he was looking for advice on how to get treatment, hopefully get better without landing in trouble with the law or with his social circles at work and all that.

He was struggling with a lot of fear and shame and that was preventing him from getting the help that he needed. So we did what we always do on Feedback Friday. You know, we listened to his story, we met him where he was, we didn't judge too much, which was honestly not terribly hard because according to him, of course, he's never acted on these impulses, never plans to.

We were hearing from a guy who sounded genuinely distressed by these thoughts and quite in control of his behavior based on the facts that he shared. So with Dr. Erin Margolis's help, we gave him some advice about his potential diagnoses, about how important it is for him to talk to a therapist, about how that probably was not as risky as it seemed given that he was not at imminent risk of victimizing anyone in particular. So this kicked off a very passionate debate in our subreddit.

You can find that at reddit.com slash r slash Jordan Harbinger, and we wanted to spend a few minutes talking about it.

Jordan Harbinger: Yes, because a few of you felt that our response to this guy was fundamentally misguided, including the listener who kicked off the Reddit thread who wrote, and I'm reading their post now, I'm sorry, but the segment on the pedophile felt really weird to me. Why are we platforming someone who openly talks about how he likes underage children? We're supposed to take his word that he hasn't done anything nefarious?

Instead of detailing it to a podcast, maybe you should change apps and look up a psychiatrist or drive yourself to a psych ward. I mean, really, WTF, Jordan, are we supposed to feel sorry for him? What's the point in reading this?

Gabriel Mizrahi: Yes, and then another listener chimed in saying, I completely agree with you, OP, and sincerely, my knee-jerk reaction to hearing that segment was to come here to make a post like this. The only reason I didn't was because I knew the audience would respond this way, meaning most of the people in the thread did not feel the way these two listeners did. Continuing with the post, this person said, it's a super liberal audience and the same type of people who brought the world the terminology minor attracted people were predictably going to come here to scold you for being judgmental while calling you an ignorant moron in the same breath.

Now they're going to condescend to me too for disagreeing with them. Maybe sweeping the entire thing under the rug isn't the solution, but normalizing it isn't either, and it's definitely not the morally superior position, no matter how many of them gang up on you.

Jordan Harbinger: What I loved about this was absolutely nobody condescended to these people as a response to this at all. People explained their perspective in calm, rational ways, and I think they were almost probably disappointed that they didn't get attacked, because when people attack you, you can dig your heels in, but when people are calm and explain things, it's like, I've got to think about this now. So look, these were the two main criticisms of the segment.

The rest of the comments on that thread, last I checked, were counter-arguments in general support of how we handled the segment. So I don't want to give the impression there were two comments and they were both negative. So let me start by saying, I understand why people struggle so much with this topic.

I totally get it. Pedophilia is a particularly upsetting and unsavory disorder. The victims or potential victims are vulnerable, innocent, deserving of protection.

I think most people look at pedophiles as fundamentally broken or wrong, people who need to either magically fix themselves or, if they can't, just stay far away from everyone else. And look, I'm the father of two young kids. I get it.

And I think I said as much on the original episode. At the same time, I've got to make room for the fact that anybody who struggles with an impulse like this is obviously in need of serious help, is probably in a lot of pain or distress, probably in some cases also has a difficult personal history that contributed to the pedophilia. I mean, they're a human being who deserves help, assuming they're genuinely interested in getting that help, of course, just like anybody else with a mental illness or other problem.

I can hold both of those ideas in my head at the same time. And I think it's crucial to hold both of these ideas at the same time. Although I will confess it's way easier to hold both when we're talking about somebody who, according to him, and yes, we're taking his word for it, just like we do with every letter that we read on the show, when we're talking about somebody who has never victimized anybody and absolutely does not want to.

And when we're talking about this disorder in theory, and it's not like my own kid, I fully admit that my emotions would run much higher if I were victimized in some way by somebody with this disorder. So on one hand, I understand the disgust and outrage from these folks. On the other hand, respectfully, I think it's a very simplistic and sort of the easy response to this topic to just be like, oh, all these people are gross and should be shunned by.

It completely glosses over what a person with this disorder needs, what a person like this wrestles with, how it impacts their life, what's stopping them from getting help, all of which I think is extremely important and interesting.

Gabriel Mizrahi: I could not agree more. It also suggests that we can't make room for certain experiences, certain narratives when it comes to certain topics, which I just fundamentally disagree with.

Jordan Harbinger: Yes, especially since making room for this guy's story on our show in no way permitted or encouraged his disorder, quite the opposite. It just made space for him to talk about it and get some help, which was why he wrote in.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Which, by the way, is also the best way of preventing a crime and a trauma from happening in the first place.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. So if that's really where the thrust of these criticisms comes from, a focus on the victim, then I find that curious since this guy getting help is the best thing for everyone involved. It's the best thing for society.

The other thing is this word is so overused. Nobody was normalizing pedophilia in the episode. To listen to that segment and walk away thinking we were normalizing anything, you would have had to been listening very selectively and just reading some very weird intent into our response that simply was not there.

Gabriel Mizrahi: If we were normalizing anything, it was just talking, right? Talking about anything, working through it, hopefully getting help. That's very different from normalizing the behavior in question.

Jordan Harbinger: I'm surprised we have to spell this out, but that's exactly right. Gabe, I'm finding that, again, normalizing, it's just one of those trendy words that's used in online and cable news discourse to attack certain conversations that make people uncomfortable. You talking about this is normalizing it.

No, that's not what that means. Us talking about it is acknowledging that it exists and there are potential solutions to the problem. Those are completely different things.

I guess I mystified at how some folks cannot seem to separate these concepts, but here we are. No one normal thinks pedophilia is okay, including and especially the person who wrote in asking for help who was literally saying, I know there's something wrong with my brain and I really don't want to hurt anyone. That's why he wrote in.

Gabriel Mizrahi: All we did was not shame the guy.

Jordan Harbinger: All we did was not do whatever that first listener seems to think we should have done, which is ignore what could actually become a real life problem for other people, because right now it's only a problem for him. And our goal was to keep it that way. As for the idea that we're platforming a pedophile, we took an anonymous letter from a person in serious distress who wasn't sure how to get help.

That's it. We offered him some guidance. He hopefully listened and is following it.

No one in that segment, not the letter writer, not me, not Gabe, not Dr. Margolis, nobody in the subreddit, nobody was advocating for pedophilia, quite the opposite. Our hope was just to help this guy get some help so that he could stop suffering and so that he didn't potentially get worse and end up hurting someone one day or himself. I mean, he literally said he would rather take his own life than face any consequences of opening up about being a pedophile or hurting someone, which really says a lot about the stakes for people who want treatment for this.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Also, not featuring a letter like that doesn't make the problem go away. It just means we don't talk to this guy and no one gets to hear his story. As one of our listeners wrote, quite eloquently, I thought, platforming him or platforming an issue that doesn't go away through being ignored?

The greatest enemy is silence. Not platforming an individual also shuts down broader information that could help more children stay safe.

Jordan Harbinger: Exactly. It helps no one.

Gabriel Mizrahi: And it deprives everyone else, including potentially other people struggling with this, but not just them, of the opportunity to learn from this guy's story.

Jordan Harbinger: Not to put too fine a point on this, but if we were trying to normalize or advocate for pedophilia, how could we then turn around and say, you need to talk to a therapist about this ASAP? That's not a logical conclusion. I really feel like these people just had an emotional brain fart in the subreddit.

Gabriel Mizrahi: I'm trying to imagine what actually normalizing this would have looked like, like if we had a pedophile on the show talking about pedophilia and how, you know, it gets a real bad rap, guys.

Jordan Harbinger: We just misunderstood it.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Yeah, come on. Yeah. And by the way, here's my pro-pedophilia book.

I'd love for you to read it, download it. Like, I don't know, if we featured like a super graphic letter that was subtly a way for a pedophile to like get their rocks off while pretending to ask for advice or something, that might be platforming a pedophile, but that is absolutely not what happened.

Jordan Harbinger: Right. It's just not what happened. That's not what the segment was.

That listener knows it, I would think. So I respectfully suggest that you get clear on what platforming actually means and why merely discussing a topic you find difficult, understandably so, activated you so much that you reached for this concept to attack us for talking about it. As for the claim that our audience is super liberal across the board, I mean, that actually made me chuckle because I'm not super liberal.

Most of the contributors to the show are somewhere center left, some are center right. But our audience is extremely diverse. It's one of the things I love about our community.

We've got hardcore lefty weirdos, communists, whatever. I love you guys, but geez, some of you guys. Hardcore righties, tons of centrists, center left, center right.

There's white supremacists that listen and they're like, I disagree with you on everything, but good episode on nuclear power. I mean, it's just kind of funny to get emails from these people, right? We've got anarchists, we've got bootlickers, we've got nihilists, we've got atheists, we've got people of faith, we've got independents who move across the aisle depending on the topic.

We've got people who literally don't care about any of that and people from other countries who are like, God, Americans are weird. You guys have labels for everything. And even our listeners who have strong opinions, they tend to not be very tribal, which is another thing that I love about y'all.

So yeah, definitely not a super liberal crowd. It's not even close. It's probably split pretty evenly according to survey data.

It actually skews right on some episodes. So it seems to me that you really want to believe this is a lefty show because your argument benefits from believing that the audience is a bunch of hyper empathetic loons who don't have the moral backbone to call pedophilia wrong. And therefore, it's up to folks like you to call a spade a spade and stand up for what's right, which I do believe you think is protecting children.

I believe that you think you're doing that. But which in practice apparently means condemning and isolating people who genuinely want and need help to avoid doing the very thing you say you don't want to see happen.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Well said, Jordan. Also, guys, it's Feedback Friday, right? It's not a show called, you know, Another Way to Live, where we feature all kinds of ways to live and one of them happens to be abusing children or something like this.

This is called Feedback Friday because we give feedback on Friday.

Jordan Harbinger: That's essential. Or today, like Sunday with massive hangover.

Gabriel Mizrahi: If our show came out on Wednesdays, maybe these listeners would have a point. I don't know. Another listener pushed this argument even further and said, I don't claim to know the best possible solution for dealing with people who have inappropriate thoughts about children, but waiting until after they commit a hands-on offense and then dealing with it in the criminal justice system is obviously an imperfect solution.

It still leaves victims in its wake, and that's an objectively bad thing.

Jordan Harbinger: Exactly. There's a reason when somebody says, I'm going to kill this person, we don't go, well, guess we better keep an eye on him and wait till he does, then we'll arrest him. I mean, we take action based on those things.

That itself is a problem. So there's a reason why we want to prevent crime instead of just isolating those people and ignoring them and waiting until they commit the crime. Look, is this the outcome that OP really wants?

OP, by the way, is the term on Reddit for somebody who makes the post, the original poster. Is this the outcome OP really wants? Because this is what happens when we refuse to make room for difficult subjects.

They go underground and then bad things are much more likely to happen.

Gabriel Mizrahi: I find it fascinating that the guy who wrote in was so ashamed that he couldn't ask for help. And then some of our listeners were piling onto that shame by saying in essence, yes, screw that guy, proving his point.

Jordan Harbinger: Exactly.

Gabriel Mizrahi: But I love the way another listener put it. They said, unfortunately, you can't shame this kind of experience out of someone and castigating them to the shadows with no hope of ever being able to admit it out loud only ensures the person is more likely to offend in the future.

Jordan Harbinger: Yes. Slow clap. Also, OP said we're supposed to just take his word that he hasn't done anything nefarious?

Well, yeah. Knowing that there's always a risk that the people who write in are unreliable narrators, we talk about this all the time. What I find interesting about bringing that up in your argument is you're implying that this guy was lying and therefore he's a POS who didn't deserve airtime.

When you could have gone, boy, I hope he's telling the truth because if he hasn't hurt anyone and he's really determined not to, then he might really deserve help and might really benefit from that help and won't have caused anyone any pain other than himself. I just find that interesting.

Gabriel Mizrahi: It's almost like the listener needs to believe this person is worse than he actually is in order to justify their argument.

Jordan Harbinger: Bingo. Of course, that only reveals that the argument is much weaker than they think. Also, everything we say on the show is conditional on the facts that you guys give us.

If the guy lied to us and has abused a bunch of kids, then obviously important parts of our advice would change. But here's what I find interesting. The public value of the segment actually does not depend on his honesty at all.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Good point.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Somewhere out there, at least one other person is listening and they really haven't defended and they're also terrified to seek help and that person still needs to hear what responsible next steps look like in their situation. To say nothing of all the people who are too embarrassed to seek out help for something else.

Another listener took up this mantle beautifully and he wrote, what would you have done? You, the morally superior being with blindfolded eyes and fingers deep in your ears, instead of asking advice from real experts like Dr. Margolis. The writer says he hasn't done anything.

Why not believe him and try to alleviate his fears and sufferings brought on by his thoughts? If he was content with his life and didn't see any problems with his preferences, he would not have taken the time to write into the show. Empathy is a value that has to be expressed in all situations, not only in the easy and cutesy ones.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Slow clap myself now this time. To which the OP responded to the question, what would you have done? This person wrote, see a psychiatrist.

Jordan Harbinger: That actually made me laugh because A, not answering the very good question this other listener posed whatsoever because he had no answer to it. He just couldn't do it. And B, the guy writing in was literally saying, I know I need to see a therapist, but I'm afraid to.

Are they going to, am I going to get in trouble? So this person is just probably being deliberately obtuse, but also just so emotional about it that they're tossing logic out the window and just getting mad, which is not how you solve problems, duh.

Gabriel Mizrahi: So it seems that a lot of you feel the same way that we do. And so at a certain point, OP said, eh, it tracks that I'm the only one trying to protect the kids by writing this and everyone here is protecting the pedophile. Nice.

Jordan Harbinger: Again, can we hold more than one idea in our heads at a time? Trying to get a pedophile help does not equal failing to protect a child. As if we needed to choose between these two things.

I mean, shaking my head, really. But in the end, someone else responded with something I really loved, which was, you might want to check why your reaction is so out of sync with everyone else here. If you are the only one in the room that thinks a certain way, it's often a good idea to at least check why that is the case.

If even thinking about other people's standpoints feels unbearable, it's almost always about you, not everyone else, which I think like, oof, yeah, I couldn't have put that better myself.

Gabriel Mizrahi: I think that's really the deeper theme in this debate, not just whether pedophiles deserve help, but how to defend your argument, when to reconsider it, and maybe this is the most important thing, when to pause and go, huh, if just hearing from someone I find gross or despicable makes me feel so intensely, what is that about? What are these feelings that I have to be in touch with in order to have this conversation? And what are they trying to say?

Jordan Harbinger: I mean, look, when we have mafia enforcers on, we don't get emails that are like, oh my god, you're platforming a murderer. You know, people just go, wow, that was so interesting. But you know, Gabe, that's a process that this line of argument shuts down, right?

I fear what's happening is these objections are like plaster on the wall of their mind and their heart, and it allows them to avoid having to stop and ask themselves why making room for another experience is so distressing and what consequences that's creating. But look, you do not have to feel warmth toward the guy that wrote in. You don't have to like him.

You don't even have to sympathize with him at all. But if your goal is really fewer children being abused, and we can all get behind that, then my feeling is you should want people who recognize dangerous or distressing sexual interests to have somewhere competent to go before a child is ever harmed. Compassion and accountability are not opposites.

So thank you all for chiming in on that segment, including the listeners who disagreed with our take. I know you're like, oh, wow, I hate you guys now. But genuinely, I appreciate your input here because I think this kicked off a really interesting and important conversation, and I always appreciate that.

Don't forget to check out our episodes with Kaskade, the legendary DJ, Kyle Vowinkel, and our Skeptical Sunday on the telepathy tapes, if you haven't heard those yet. The best things that have happened in my life and business have come through my network, the circle of people I know, like, and trust. That's our plug for Six Minute Networking over at sixminutenetworking.com.

Dig the well before you get thirsty, folks. Build relationships before you need them. Again, it's sixminutenetworking.com.

Show notes, transcripts on the website, advertisers, deals, discounts, ways to support the show, jordanharbinger.com slash deals. I'm at jordanharbinger on Twitter and Instagram. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn.

You can find Gabe on Instagram at Gabriel Mizrahi. This show is created in association with PodcastOne. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jase Sanderson, Robert Fogarty, Ian Baird, Tadas Sidlauskas, and of course, Gabriel Mizrahi.

Our advice and opinions are our own. I might be a lawyer, but I'm not your lawyer. Consult a qualified professional before implementing anything you hear on the show.

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.

In the meantime, I hope you apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you learn, and we'll see you next time. Ever notice your back aches or your head pounds when life gets overwhelming? Here's a preview with Nicole Sachs on how stress can keep showing up as pain even after you think you've moved on.

Nicole Sachs: The pain is in your head. You're making it up. You're hysterical.

You're oversensitive. These are things that have blocked people from healing for decades. It's truly a societal paradigm that I seek to shift.

We are not built for long-term fight or flight. We are built for bursts of being able to save our own lives. Pain meds do not help for chronic pain because chronic pain is a consistent firing of pain signals based on a nervous system that is dysregulated, and so you might get some relief.

If you take an opioid, you're just going to basically be high for a little while, and so you probably will care less about what's going on. Two things. First is I'm not saying the pain is in your head.

You are not hysterical. You're not making it up. One million percent, this is neuroscience.

Second is I don't want you to try to use emotional work or mind-body work for a tumor, for a blood disorder, for anything that needs medical attention. It is simply neuroscience. If you believe that a stressful day can give you a headache, and if you believe that being super anxious can make you throw up, you must believe that doing journal speak and getting to the things that have been causing you to be in a heightened state of fight or flight will stop your chronic symptoms of inflammation, muscle constriction, spasm, and neuropathy from stop firing.

You have to. It is the same exact thing. Your nervous system will protect you without your permission and without your opinion.

That nervous system is not going to stop.

Jordan Harbinger: To hear why that pain can linger and what might help you interrupt it, check out episode 1337 of The Jordan Harbinger Show with Nicole Sachs.