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

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

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Jordan Harbinger: [00:00:00] 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 Zeihan on Iran, Ukraine, China, and more.

We also did a Skeptical Sunday last Sunday on trepanation and castration. 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?

Gabriel Mizrahi: [00:01:00] "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 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, [00:02:00] 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 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.

Jordan Harbinger: Wow. Yeah, okay, so if my math is math and these [00:03:00] 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?

Gabriel Mizrahi: The vast majority of the value of the house?

Okay.

Jordan Harbinger: 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. Geez.

Gabriel Mizrahi: 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.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh, you don't like being low-balled and emotionally manipulated by your in-laws? What's your problem, pal?

Gabriel Mizrahi: 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.

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

Gabriel Mizrahi: I mean, at least he's negotiating against [00:04:00] himself, right?

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

Gabriel Mizrahi: 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."

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

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

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, you know what would 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, I don't get this, Gabe. W- why are they just making up a number a- about what their so-called investments were worth? I mean, it's, e- even if the most generous interpretation, it's not even c- going to come close to that amount.

Gabriel Mizrahi: 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 cost?

Jordan Harbinger: 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 [00:05:00] way.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Let's see where this story goes. Either screw them or retaliate against them for moving away. Either way. It's both,

Jordan Harbinger: yeah.

Gabriel Mizrahi: 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.

Jordan Harbinger: 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.

Gabriel Mizrahi: 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.[00:06:00]

We checked out some mortgage companies and were able to get pre-approved with the $100,000 as long as a portion of it goes to paying off some debt. So we let him know that his proposal was acceptable, showed him the mortgage pre-approval requirements, and signed over the deed with my in-laws' lawyer.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh, man, so they won.

Y'all caved.

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

Jordan Harbinger: Oh, no. Oh, my stomach is starting to hurt.

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

Jordan Harbinger: Oh my God.

Gabriel Mizrahi: 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.

Wait,

Jordan Harbinger: wait, wait. I'm [00:07:00] 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?

Gabriel Mizrahi: I can't see a way that he does, assuming that it's a s- If he just transfers the cash to them-

Jordan Harbinger: Right ...

Gabriel Mizrahi: 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.

Jordan Harbinger: 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.

Gabriel Mizrahi: 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.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, I, I mean, I'm fuming. I hope you sue the pants off this g- well, it's your family, but actually I hope you sue the pants off of him anyways.

Gabriel Mizrahi: We tried to set things straight and make this right. My wife has tried to talk to her father several times, [00:08:00] 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 distrust 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 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 have 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.[00:09:00]

Now we don't feel motivated to come back and see them for holidays.

Jordan Harbinger: Of course. Yeah, good job, Dad. You're never going to 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.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Remember, he's never done anything like this before, so this is really coming out of the blue. It's,

Jordan Harbinger: there's no precedent for this. You know why? Because he's always gotten whatever the hell he wants before, and he's never had to play this card before.

Gabriel Mizrahi: So there have been other lesser versions of this, or it was-

Jordan Harbinger: That's what I think

he's

Gabriel Mizrahi: never been chal- interesting.

Jordan Harbinger: Like, he's probably been like, "I'm going to do this," and everyone's like, "Well, we're not going to 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 the... I'm surprised her mother isn't like, "You're going to steal the kids' house?" "Oh, well, no, I'm going to give it back as soon as they decide not to move. You'll see. This is [00:10:00] just a part of my plan." It's like, have fun, Grandma. You're not going to see your grandkids.

Gabriel Mizrahi: 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.

Jordan Harbinger: Well, Gabe, if you can't tell, I'm pissed.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Yeah, I can see that.

I'm-

Jordan Harbinger: I'm

Gabriel Mizrahi: very angry ... I'm, I'm still in the shocked phase, but yeah, this is horrible.

Jordan Harbinger: 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.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Stole his own daughter's house.

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

Gabriel Mizrahi: Unconscionable.

Jordan Harbinger: 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 a result of, where one party has an idea in [00:11:00] their mind, like, "We're going to renovate their driveway and renovate the bedrooms, and then they're going to stay close to us."

And that's their version of the contract, the parents. And then these two are like, "Actually, we're going to get a better job and move somewhere else, and it's going to 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. 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's going to make you guys want to 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 [00:12:00] 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.

Gabriel Mizrahi: I wish we could talk to this guy and just be like, "What are you doing here?"

Jordan Harbinger: 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 going to see your grandkids.

Gabriel Mizrahi: 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 who's an adult. Who's an adult.

So I'm going to take this asset from you to..." This is crazy, dude.

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

Gabriel Mizrahi: Yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: 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 [00:13:00] 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.

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 [00:14:00] 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've avoided a lot of confusion and heartache.

Gabriel Mizrahi: 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.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh, me too. The, the, yeah, his whole walk and talk with himself.

Gabriel Mizrahi: The whole I realize my contributions to the house have not been close to their contributions- Right ... I didn't want to ruin my wife's relationship with her parent, that is where the trouble really began.

Jordan Harbinger: I agree. He's a decent person, and decent people don't like to play hardball or stand up to manipulative people- Yeah ... who might even be in their- It's uncomfortable ... 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.

Gabriel Mizrahi: 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.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:15:00] Right.

Gabriel Mizrahi: 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?

Jordan Harbinger: 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 got to keep talking to your in-laws.

You 've got to 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 w- 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 [00:16:00] dispute, I'm afraid. 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 going to be crucial documentation.

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 [00:17:00] 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. 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 in sufficiently definite terms, all of which sounds like you had. [00:18:00] The difficulty is always in proving 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." 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 going to 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. He might have been misled himself by your father-in-law. [00:19:00] 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 ad- 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 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 lis 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 [00:20:00] 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. 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, "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."

Gabriel Mizrahi: I mean, that seems like the only real option at this point. Totally. But is- are we really suggest- he has to [00:21:00] sue his in-laws.

I'm just wrapping my head around this.

Jordan Harbinger: 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.

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

Oh. It, it feels like the end.

Jordan Harbinger: 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?"

Gabriel Mizrahi: Totally. How do you come back from this?

Jordan Harbinger: They cannot un-this.

Even if he for some reason was like, "Okay, I'll give you the full 300" [00:22:00] 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

Gabriel Mizrahi: 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 par- Like, there's just no easy answer to that. Their own parents, their own in-laws stole this amount of money from them.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, no, there's no easy answer. The, I hope they recover whatever money they can, but money alone's not going to repair this.

I think that was, that's what I'm kind of implying above.

Gabriel Mizrahi: 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 [00:23:00] ball with them, maybe that'll distribute the blame a little bit more in a way that, I don't know, softens 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?

Jordan Harbinger: 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 the 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.

Gabriel Mizrahi: 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 [00:24:00] 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.

Jordan Harbinger: Exactly, yeah. The only other big upside here that I can see is that given what her parents did to them, you can 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, m- 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. In trying to keep you close or even the [00:25:00] scales for this betrayal, again, the covert contract, your in-laws have shown you what kind of relationship you would have been prioritizing 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. This episode is sponsored in part by Wayfair. Because we have podcast guests coming over to our home to record, we like our space to feel polished and uncluttered, which is a pretty big ask when you have two little rugrats. A guest walked in recently, looked around, and gave us what might be the greatest compliment a [00:26:00] parent can receive, which is, "Hey, do you guys actually live here full-time?"

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Gabriel Mizrahi: 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 [00:29:00] 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. 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

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

to be the case. Dude, you don't even know yourself well enough to know that that's bullshit?

Gabriel Mizrahi: I've never been 100% [00:30:00] 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.

Jordan Harbinger: Uh Oh man, that sentence makes me sad.

Gabriel Mizrahi: You were 12 years old, dude.

Jordan Harbinger: 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.

Gabriel Mizrahi: 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.

Jordan Harbinger: 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. Geez, buddy.

Gabriel Mizrahi: My husband 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 [00:31:00] 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? Sign, kind of hate that I have to explicate that I don't want to procreate at this very late date.

Jordan Harbinger: 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.

Gabriel Mizrahi: 100% agree.

Jordan Harbinger: 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. [00:32:00] 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. 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.

Gabriel Mizrahi: 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."

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

Gabriel Mizrahi: I assume so. You mean, like, harder to feel that it's just okay for you to want what you want-

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah ...

Gabriel Mizrahi: in general, or to not want this thing that other people foisted on you.

Also, yeah. If you grew up in a ho- Yeah. 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.

Jordan Harbinger: Right. Mom dies young, tragically. Dad's only interested in work. That's his escape from everything else in life. She's left [00:33:00] raising, what, a five-year-old when she's in seventh grade.

Gabriel Mizrahi: And who was looking out for her? Nobody.

Jordan Harbinger: 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?

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

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, I mean, I'm going to take her word for it, except, you know, over the, 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." That was, seriously, like single digit number of dates, somebody, this comes out.

If he really wanted kids, [00:34:00] then it's a, it's an interesting decision to marry somebody who e- 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 in 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.

Gabriel Mizrahi: 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.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, well, which ag- of course she does, right? She was given that responsibility long before she was equipped to handle it.

Gabriel Mizrahi: 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 [00:35:00] 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.

Jordan Harbinger: And the way through that is?

Gabriel Mizrahi: 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 when 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.

Jordan Harbinger: Right. Yeah, man, what a huge template to rewrite though, huh?

Oof.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Not easy, but doable.

Jordan Harbinger: 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.

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

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, uh, right. It sounds like [00:36:00] 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 taken 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.

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

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

Gabriel Mizrahi: 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, in 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 did she say? He's louder about his than mine. I mean, that means that she's quiet about hers, and [00:37:00] 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?

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

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

Jordan Harbinger: Hyper-responsibility, resentment, overwhelm, but also. Well, this is what I have to do. Nobody else is going to 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, [00:38:00] too.

Gabriel Mizrahi: 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.

Jordan Harbinger: Ain't it, though?

Gabriel Mizrahi: Honestly, dude, it, it makes me kind of 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 kind of 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.

Jordan Harbinger: 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 [00:39:00] 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 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. [00:40:00] You can reach us Friday at jordanharbinger.com. Keep your emails concise. Try to use descriptive subject lines.

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 Friday at jordanharbinger.com.

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. This episode is sponsored in part by Orion Sleep. I've tracked my sleep for over a decade.

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You can sign up at jordanharbinger.com/news. Now, back to Feedback Friday. All right, next up

Gabriel Mizrahi: 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.[00:43:00]

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. 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 [00:44:00] 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.

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, uh, Frank in marketing to find out how we get the word out."

But, um, then when she does it, he's like, "Don't ask me any questions. Just be quiet."

Jordan Harbinger: 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.

Gabriel Mizrahi: 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 [00:45:00] 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's started to question her own abilities and professional value. 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 [00:46:00] role they were never properly trained or supported to perform? Is there anything else she should be doing now to protect herself if termination appears inevitable?

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.

Jordan Harbinger: 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 this partner and they were like, "You're being, you know, you don't need to check in about [00:47:00] 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, uh, earlier than he told me, 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 ev- 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

Gabriel Mizrahi: I can see why you stuck around in the law.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh yeah, I was a natural fit for this place, huh? That said, it's, 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?"

Gabriel Mizrahi: Surprise, surprise.

Jordan Harbinger: 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 [00:48:00] she move on. I, 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, 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 [00:49:00] 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. 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, "Uh, yeah, uh, 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. I was terminated for [00:50:00] 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 the 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.

Gabriel Mizrahi: 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.

Jordan Harbinger: 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 [00:51:00] 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, 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 [00:52:00] 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, if she wants to hedge against the risk that this place is going to screw her on unemployment 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.

Gabriel Mizrahi: 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 [00:53:00] 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.

Jordan Harbinger: Or it could be both.

Gabriel Mizrahi: 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 loosey-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've been in finding the information that I needed without that guidance.

I didn't sit down with the higher-ups in week one and say, 'Okay, what does success [00:54:00] 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.

Jordan Harbinger: 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."

Gabriel Mizrahi: 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 [00:55:00] annoying? How does she work with this disappointment, this anxiety? She is at least half of this equation, if not more.

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

Gabriel Mizrahi: Totally. One person could be like, "This is causing me emotional distress," and another person could be like, "Ugh, this is just showing me that I need to leave. Let me just move on and figure out how to share my value 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.

Jordan Harbinger: As for rebuilding her confidence, I think she does that by booking meetings with people, going on interviews, hopefully getting an offer or two, 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 [00:56:00] 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. You can find all of it on the Jordan Harbinger subreddit. All right, you know what'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

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, email me Jordan@jordanharbinger.com.

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. All right, time for the recommendation of the week.

Lip Filla Clip: I am addicted to lip filler.

Gabriel Mizrahi: So about a month ago, I finally did something that I had been [00:57:00] 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- Yeah ... 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.

Exactly. 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."

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. And like- Yeah,

Jordan Harbinger: they sell your address.

That's how that happens.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Totally. You buy a croissant at a cafe, and the next thing you know, you're [00:58:00] 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.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh my God, Fa- I forgot those existed.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Dude, they're really handy when I'm traveling.

Like, I've signed up for the expats group in Tokyo, the, uh, 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 check 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- Oh my God ... I kept dismissing the notifications over and over again, but finally I was like, "Okay, I 've got to 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."

Jordan Harbinger: The answer's going to be none of it.

You're not going to miss any of that.

Gabriel Mizrahi: 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 [00:59:00] 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 've got to 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.

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-

Jordan Harbinger: The pull world, yeah

Gabriel Mizrahi: or more like the I'll 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 [01:00:00] 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. 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.

Jordan Harbinger: I want to add a little bonus to this if we can. Uh, 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 [01:01:00] bus, have these on, and I'm like, "Wait a minute. You just got a push noti- You got 100 push notifications?"

And 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 & Barrel's having a summer sale, Southwest Airlines is having a, a getaway fares, 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.

If your email program does not allow you to filter emails, you need to get a, a one that ha- like Superhuman or something that has split inboxes. There 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 [01:02:00] Crate & 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, you're allowing 0.1% of your emails to dictate how you live your entire life.

That's not a good trade.

Gabriel Mizrahi: And those micro hits to your attention are significant.

Jordan Harbinger: They're destroying your ability to focus and relax as well.

Gabriel Mizrahi: 100%.

Jordan Harbinger: 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 e- 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 [01:03:00] 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." 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.

Gabriel Mizrahi: 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 [01:04:00] I loved her and wanted her to be okay.

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.

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, [01:05:00] 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, and then when I needed care and humanity in return, I became disposable.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Wow, I'm sorry to hear that. I get why that hurts. That's really crappy.

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

Jordan Harbinger: That's hilarious. Yeah, I'm going to start using that.

Gabriel Mizrahi: 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 [01:06:00] 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.

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

Gabriel Mizrahi: 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 could 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.

Jordan Harbinger: 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.

Gabriel Mizrahi: 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, [01:07:00] and whatever scraps of executive function I can find under the couch cushions.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, I, I can relate.

Gabriel Mizrahi: 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-

Jordan Harbinger: Eh.

Gabriel Mizrahi: We'll get into all that. You disagree, right, Jordan?

Jordan Harbinger: I mean, I survive on it, so yes, I- my copium strategy involves Diet Coke as well.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Did you say my copium strategy?

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, I have to huff that copium. That life copium. Diet Coke is the oral version of copium- I love that ... that I ingest.

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

Jordan Harbinger: That's right. Yeah, exactly.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Got that copium.

Jordan Harbinger: It's unfortunately not as rare as it sounds.

Gabriel Mizrahi: 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 [01:08:00] 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 at the seams.

Jordan Harbinger: 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.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Also funny.

Jordan Harbinger: Yes, and funny. That is one of my favorite parts of your letter, that even amidst all this pain, you're still in [01:09:00] touch with your irony, and I honestly think humor is one of the greatest survival tactics.

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

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

Gabriel Mizrahi: I'm sorry. Her Kia what?

Jordan Harbinger: It's a Sportage. Tell me you don't say Sportage.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Of course, it's Sportage. I've never heard anyone say Kia Sportage.

Jordan Harbinger: I swear that's what it's called. I don't

Gabriel Mizrahi: know. It's a Kia Sport- Hang on, I'm going to look this up. Do- Yeah,

Jordan Harbinger: I think we need to look this up.

Gabriel Mizrahi: 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

Jordan Harbinger: understand. 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, "Uh, 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.

Gabriel Mizrahi: I cannot [01:10:00] argue with that logic, but s- Kia Sportage is now in the same category as grandiose. I'm never- Or not ... going to, and conno- Okay. No, connosseurs you do in the office inside. That's a new

Jordan Harbinger: level? Okay. I know you just totaled your brand-new Kia Sportage. That sounds terrible.

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

Gabriel Mizrahi: You know what? Yeah, I am torn now. Because it's a 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.

Jordan Harbinger: You're the one who says Spanish with a s- real Spanish accent, so I don't think you have any I don't think, I don't think you have any room, y- mister I'm going to properly pronounce Portuguese words.

Gabriel Mizrahi: You're drawing an equivalent between those two? I mean, I kind of grew up speaking Spanish poorly, but I grew up- Oh, now you're, now

Jordan Harbinger: you're Mexican. Fine.

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

Jordan Harbinger: Now, how do you know I didn't? All right. Anyway, the, uh, the, 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, [01:11:00] and that is wonderful, and he's uninjured, right? Uh, 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 going to 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.

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, a blender with the top off. Obviously, the first thing your brain is going to want to do [01:12:00] 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. 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, finding 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.

Kindness, generosity, flexibility, knowing how to ask for help, being patient, having faith Being [01:13:00] 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, or plan some kind of epic trip when what you really need is a job that'll put a roof over your head. You 've got to take care of yourself in some very basic ways first, but you already know that.

Come on. 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 happen, but it does eventually happen. As for [01:14:00] 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 've got to do, the 14 massive things you 've got to 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. It is, 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.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Wise words, Jordan. Our friend [01:15:00] 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, 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.

Jordan Harbinger: For sure. She said it might be [01:16:00] 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.

Gabriel Mizrahi: 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.

Jordan Harbinger: Let it fall apart, you mean?

Gabriel Mizrahi: 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 [01:17:00] 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. 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.

Jordan Harbinger: 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.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Really interesting question.

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

Gabriel Mizrahi: That's what I'm hearing. Yeah. When she had to go through something that difficult- Right ... am I allowed to be angry with her?

Jordan Harbinger: Right. I mean, it's complicated clearly, because transitioning to [01:18:00] 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. A- 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.

Gabriel Mizrahi: 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.

Jordan Harbinger: Right. But, like, isn't that true of a lot of relationships that end?

Gabriel Mizrahi: I mean, if it's fair to be [01:19:00] 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?

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

Gabriel Mizrahi: 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 once 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, her ability to sleep through the night, which is very intense, [01:20:00] 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.

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

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

Jordan Harbinger: I guess that's true. A- and so your point is, is her ex really a villain? How mad can she really be?

Gabriel Mizrahi: My point is all of her feelings are fair, and our narratives are a lot [01:21:00] 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?

Jordan Harbinger: 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?"

Gabriel Mizrahi: 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 [01:22:00] 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?

Jordan Harbinger: 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 abandoned.

Gabriel Mizrahi: 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?

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

Gabriel Mizrahi: Exactly.

Jordan Harbinger: So that's something. But I guess the question is. Is this lens on things actually helping me or is it keeping me stuck?

Gabriel Mizrahi: 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?

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, and that's a tough one to answer, but I think [01:23:00] when we get honest with ourselves, we usually know which side of that line we're falling on.

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

Jordan Harbinger: I feel like I hear about that book a lot online.

Gabriel Mizrahi: 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?

Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche. That guy? The guy whose followers ended up founding Shambhala.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh, right. Is this the maybe cult where all the sexual assaults happened? Yes. But, but the book is good.

Gabriel Mizrahi: So far the book is great, and like we said on that episode a couple months ago, it's so hard to know if a, 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.

Jordan Harbinger: So interesting. Hey, about leaving Texas, [01:24:00] 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.

Gabriel Mizrahi: 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.

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

Gabriel Mizrahi: Yes. But, you know, sometimes wherever you are, you want to go and that's important to listen to as well.

Jordan Harbinger: 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 [01:25:00] 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, 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 rear view mirror, hopefully the rear view mirror of a 2027 Kia Sportage.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Sportage.

Jordan Harbinger: Nope, not doing it. Sending you a big hug and wishing you all the best. Don't forget our episodes this week with Peter Zeihan 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 @JordanHarbinger on [01:26:00] Twitter and Instagram. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn. Gabe's on Insta @GabrielMizrahi. 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, and 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. 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.

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.

JHS Trailer: 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.

[01:27:00] 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 their 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 it's conditions of modern-day slavery. There's just a kind of fatalism, I guess, to living 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 [01:28:00] 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?"

Jordan Harbinger: 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.