1081: Stuck Co-Parenting Lad with an Imprisoned Dad | Feedback Friday

Welcome to Feedback Friday. I'm your host, Jordan Harbinger. As always, I'm here with Feedback Friday, producer that Q-Tip, you know darn well, you stick just a little too far down that ear canal of life drama. Gabrielle, Mizrahi. Getting increasingly absurd, dude. That does feel, though, like an upgrade from, what was it, jiggly knockoff USB dongle?

Yeah, for sure. You're moving on up, Gabe, we're rather moving on in to that ear canal. Yep. On the Jordan Harbinger Show, we decode the stories, secrets, and skills of the world's most fascinating people, and we turned 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. During the week, we have long-form conversations with a variety of amazing folks from undercover, jihadis, drug traffickers, astronauts, national security advisors. This week, we had Dr. Alok Kenojia.

author of how to raise a healthy gamer we covered mental health dating relationships confidence in a whole lot more a great conversation even if you are not a gamer or raising a gamer at all of course and we had a skeptical Sunday last Sunday on sound healing on Fridays though we share stories take listener letters offer advice play obnoxious sound bites and compare game to various toiletries that you would find in a hotel amenity kit

Yeah, we do do that. At least I'm off the shower cap. You know those shower caps that rip as soon as you try to put them on. I do, and I'm always like, who's using this enough where this is in every amenity kit?

This is a girl thing, dude. Girls use the shower cap set hotels. Clearly. It's just so weird. And you pull it on and the string just separates immediately from the plastic and you're thinking, whose delicate little fingers can put this on without destroying it? Not mine. Sounds a lot like you've been using them in hotels. Look, the shower cap on this greasy head of life advice just doesn't hit in the same way. No, it doesn't. Before we kick off, Gabe, you had a little letter for us, yeah?

I do. Yeah. A little pre-do's a moose-boosh for you. So I use a moose-boosh. That's like a tongue twister. That's a good one. So a listener wrote in saying, hello, Gabe and Jordan, but mostly Gabe. Whoa. I know. I do not like that at all. I'm just reading the letter, man. Yeah. Look, my toxic narcissism is getting very triggered here. Clearly. Okay. You'll see why she said that in a moment. Fine. Carry on. I live in New York City and the outright failure to use headphones in public is maddening.

Ah, okay. I agree with you 100%. I see, because you talked about how much it bothers you when people watch whatever TikToks and take calls on speakerphone in public the other week. So, okay, now I feel placated now. Yes, I think she was referring to the quiet cabin policy. Yes. So, she goes on, the other day I was at an airport waiting to board a flight next to one of the only seats available at my gate, sat a woman watching videos on her phone at regular volume.

I sat down and asked, are you not going to use your headset? She looked up and said, no. Oh, okay, I said, then I won't either. I then pressed play. Sorry, I'm already laughing. I then pressed play on Salton Peppa's late 80s classic. Push it. Wow, that is just chief pettiness. I am so here for that well played.

You may live vicariously through me if you like. As a New Yorker, I have nearly zero more Fs to give. Signed, fighting fire with fire and turning it up higher when people refuse to use wires. Wow, so she was like, oh, you're not going to use headphones? Okay.

I can't decide if this person is my hero, or just as annoying as the person that they were trying to check. But at least she has good taste in music. Just imagine being the other people waiting at the ceremony. Just looking at both these people, battle it out with their tinny speaker phones in public. Yeah. Like, well, I don't know. Do I like salt and pepper more than I like some dude jumping on a table full of drinks that I can't see? Probably.

I don't know. I mean, it is petty as hell, but this woman is kind of my hero. She's out there fighting the good fight and I want to thank her for it. I want to find the person who says you're not going to use headphones and then just rips the phone out of that person's hand and spikes it on the ground. That's the person that I want to be around or see or hear about because that's what these people deserve.

No innocent bystanders just destroy the noise maker and maybe, you know, what could go wrong destroying a stranger's $400 plus phone. That sounds like a TikTok. This person would watch in public. That's right. TikTok's section. As always, we've got some fun ones and some doozies and I can't wait to dive in. Gabe, what is the first thing out of the mailbag?

Dear Jordan and Gabe, 11 years ago, I met a man I thought was the one. Things moved on the faster side, and a few months later we were living together. A few months after that, we moved to a small town where he worked for a small company. Over time, things started to go downhill.

There were several complaints about his lack of professionalism, but the big ones were usually regarding his temper. I noticed changes in him, but chalked him up to stress. After lots of complaints, he lost his job. A few months later, when I was four months pregnant, I drove home for lunch one day, and there were about a dozen law enforcement vehicles from several different agencies at the house. Highway Patrol, Sheriff, Game Wardens,

Wow, that must have been wild to come home to. Can you imagine? So intense. So intense. That's a movie scene, no? You come home and like those red lights are flashing outside your house. Wild.

I found out from a deputy that my now ex was being arrested and they were searching the house and property. I was dumbfounded to say the least and my heart sank. Long story short, he got well over 20 charges regarding drugs, guns, and stolen property. I wonder why the game wardens were there though. They're in charge of wildlife related stuff or public land, so is he like illegally fishing or something or maybe growing drugs on public land? Maybe.

Something like that. We're using the guns to illegally hunt. Maybe I think game wardens can also investigate trespassing and property violations. So maybe that was it. Yeah, whatever he did to require multiple different law enforcement agencies to come to your house. You must have been up to some shit. Although I kind of wonder if they're like, Oh, we're going to go bust that guy. Yeah, make sure you call bill down and get fishing game. He's going to want to see, you know, this because it's like, do you really need 16? He hasn't seen action in months.

And it's a small town. Yeah, I lost a bet with him. And one of the things I wager it was the ability to come on a door kicking raid. So call the game warden. It's like, all right, I don't know if he needs to be there, but it looks pretty badass when 16 SUVs roll up and the other guys are out on vacation. So yeah, we're busting him for fentanyl, but he has a tarantula in a cage. So we're going to need. Yeah, we need animal control stat. In the end, he was sentenced to seven years in prison, but in California, he only had to serve approximately a third of his sentence.

My parents had me move back with them as I was left with nothing. I had come to find that my ex hadn't been paying the mortgage and received a foreclosure notice about a month after his arrest. He'd also opened multiple credit cards with multiple stores and had racked up a bunch of debt.

I also found out that he had defrauded California unemployment and owed them about $10,000 in overpaid wages and penalties. The cherry on top? He had cheated on me. The bastard. No, man, I'm so sorry. This must have been absolutely insane to go through this whole rigmarole, this whole thing. Needless to say, I broke things off. Fortunately, my name was not anywhere on the house or credit cards. I sought counseling and I found it extremely helpful. I had a lot to process.

Yeah, I bet it was during this time that I realized he was a narcissist and I had in my naivete unwittingly fallen prey. I found podcasts like Dr. Romany and others and things have started to make so much sense as my ex ticked off boxes left and right. Well, yeah, that tracks man. That is so intense. Maybe that was why the game wardens were at their house. Maybe narcissism falls under their jurisdiction.

No, yeah, but for poaching our friends energy. Exactly. Maybe a stretch. So she goes on. In 2016, I welcomed my son, who is my everything. I have soul custody. My ex was in prison when my son was born and thus could not be put on the birth certificate. He hasn't asked me to amend the birth certificate. I consulted an attorney and followed his recommendation to not file for child support as that meant that my ex could then sue for custody once paternity was established.

Interesting. Never heard of that. Smart move. But I kept in touch with my ex and sent him pictures of our son. I had hoped that he had learned a solid lesson and would grow up and be a dad. He got out of prison when my son was two. For the next few years, things were okay. My ex came over on weekends and spent a few hours hanging out with my son, or we take him to local parks and such. Then, about four to five years in, I started noticing odd things.

Oh boy, here we go. Let's hear how these do's clues stack up. One day, he told me he got jumped. That two random dudes pulled them out of his truck and proceeded to beat the ever-loving shit out of him. He wound up tearing a quad and a bicep fighting them off. Wow. The really odd thing was that he said he drove four hours to go to the hospital when there were four other hospitals in the area to choose from. Then he kept saying he was being followed and threatened at gunpoint. I knew something was up because that sort of random thing just doesn't happen here.

How I see it is that he really pissed off the wrong people, and it was a type of hit. Then, in early 2022, he was arrested for having a loaded ghost gun in his truck. Then, arrested again.

for assault and battery with possible great bodily injury and another gun. So this guy, first of all, he can't stop Kenny, but also Gabe, when somebody comes back and says, oh yeah, these random guys beat me up and then I drove four hours to a hospital. No, no, no, no. Two guys grabbed your ass, threw you in the trunk of a car, drove you somewhere, beat you up. You went to the nearest hospital and now you got like that's clearly what happened.

You know what I was thinking? I thought that he went to that hospital far away because he was afraid of going to a local one because the guys would find him again. Possibly. Or he didn't want to tell the local doctors what happened to him and then they call the local police or something. That's possible. I just have a feeling that two dudes nabbed him, put him in a basement, beat him up for a while, and they let him go and he went to the nearest hospital. Could be. But that just happened to be four hours away. But then he said he drove four hours to the hospital.

Yeah, but we don't know that. That's what he said after also saying two random guys like, no, I don't know why I was trusting him on this one detail after. No, but he said that he personally chauffeur himself. That's right. Yeah, unless you got that GPS record that a location tracking on his phone. No, as if this guy's not an unreliable reader in every other way. Exactly.

I had to tell my six-year-old son why his dad suddenly stopped coming by. I kept it as age-appropriate and vague as I could. It was awful. He understood that his dad broke the rules and there were consequences, but he didn't understand the why. That is so sad. This fricking guy. Cool fathering, bro. Good job. What an a-hole. When my ex got out over a month later, I let him know that he was no longer welcome to our home. We'd meet somewhere for dinner, so visits were shorter. He kept trying to pull the, it wasn't my fault, card, and tried to paint himself as the victim.

He blamed the fact that he lost his job on the police.

Of course, classic narcissistic response. I'm the victim. Everyone's out to get me. No one's on my side. Yes. The police classically known for just making sure that people, certain people just don't have jobs. Over and over and over and over again. This is like textbook Dr. Romany stuff. Yes. Ignore the ghost gun that I had in my car and the assault and battery and the other gun and then the other drug thing. That's all just the police. This is the teacher hates me adult drug dealer version. I was having none of it.

Eventually, he decided to take a job in Arizona, a two-day drive from us. I was stoked. My son wasn't. It made him sad. My ex called every week to talk with my son. He came up for his court dates, and we'd meet in town. Then, that Christmas, there was no call, no text, nothing. We had planned to get together so he could give a present to my son like always, so when Christmas came and went, I knew something was wrong.

Lying in bed on Christmas night, I started Googling and quickly found that he had been arrested again in Arizona on Christmas Eve. The charges, theft of the means of transportation, plus a couple of other charges I don't remember. Great, so he's off playing live-action Grand Theft Auto. Merry Christmas, dude. This guy is a moron. I had to explain again to my son why his dad didn't call or visit at Christmas.

The following year, he pled guilty to the auto theft and two domestic violence charges. One talked about impeding breathing, which made my heart stop. He was sentenced to seven years, and he's supposed to serve all of it. Good? I mean, this guy is out of control. He's obviously highly dangerous, especially the women. I'm just sorry that your son is paying the price, but this is not a good parent to have in the picture.

All of this has been hard. My kid can go weeks without mentioning his dad, then all of a sudden it's I miss daddy and tears for days. I've had him speak with a counselor for a short bit. I told him that his dad is a guy who just made bad decisions that hurt people. I encourage him to talk to me about anything, including his dad. We talk, we snuggle, we cry. Great. This is all exactly what I'd recommend you do. You sound like a good mom, but God, this is heartbreaking.

My ex writes letters even remembered to make a card for his birthday this summer. We sometimes work on a letter to his dad when he wants to, and we've sent a few pictures. But now my ex wants to do phone calls. Since he mentioned the phone calls, my son has brought it up a couple of times. I get noncommittal and make excuses that we have to pay a fee, we have to have background checks, because I don't want to talk to him. If I'm being brutally honest, I effing hate him. He broke my son's heart. I want nothing more to do with him.

But because my son got to know his dad and got attached, I play nice. We do the letters and pictures, and I don't badmouthed his dad to him. Oof. Well, I totally get that. I feel the same way, but yeah, God, this is really tough, man. My concern is this. My ex has a tendency to keep score, as many narcissists do. There's a small part of me that's concerned about when he's out of prison and done with parole. I believe there's a small chance that he could blame me for never getting to talk to my son and come to hurt me, my parents, or my son.

Another part of me thinks that he'll be upset, but won't hurt us. I'm also concerned about how this will affect my son. Since my ex hasn't taken any responsibility in his letters, I fear that my son will hear that kind of thing more during the calls and start to believe that his dad didn't do anything wrong. But then I don't want my son to think that I kept him away from his dad.

Be mad at me for preventing their relationship. For my part, I've worked hard these past years, processed what I had to go through, got a decent job that I enjoy and as good perks, started taking a women's self-defense class and found out I can throw a mean hook.

My friends, coworkers, and family lend their ears and support. But they all tend to argue that my ex doesn't deserve any of the kindness I've shown, which, if I'm being honest, he probably doesn't. I want us to feel safe and not live in fear of this asshat, but I also don't like people mad at me, especially someone who I think is capable of harm, and I don't want my son to wind up hating me. Should I keep my eight-year-old son and his father's relationship to letters only?

Or should I bite the bullet and go through the approval process to do phone calls to placate my ex? Signed keep these chats behind glass because my ex is an ass or let him get on the horn so my son doesn't have to mourn.

Wow, what a story and what a difficult situation you're in. First of all, I am so sorry that you and your son are going through all this. My goodness, having a co-parent like this, what can you say? It's awful. The fact that he's a narcissist on top of being a dangerous criminal, that he doesn't seem to be learning anything from his time in prison, that he's not changing it all, that makes everything more complicated. And I can only imagine how stressful and sad and scary this actually must be. And I really feel for you guys.

So I don't think there's a perfect outcome here. I think either way, somebody's going to pay a price. That's the unfortunate reality of this situation. The question is, what price should be paid here and who should pay it? From where I'm sitting, your access caused a ton of chaos and pain here. He's showing zero remorse for any of it. He's taking no ownership over any bit of this.

He just sounds like a piece of crap. And I'm not a big fan of prioritizing the villain in this story to keep things on an even keel. No, if not allowing your son to have more contact with him with these phone calls, if that means that your ex or your son are sometimes upset with you, I think that's a reasonable cause for protecting yourselves from a dangerous person. On the other hand, okay, this is his dad. If they can have some kind of relationship, even if it's very limited and flawed, maybe that's important.

And as far as we know, he's never been violent with you guys, although I would argue that even if he never directly hurt you guys physically, just being around this guy is harmful. Look at the people he attracts. You could be riding in a car with somebody like this. Suddenly someone's beating you up on the side of the road, holding a gun to your kid's head. This is terrifying.

But he is in prison now. So the chance of him being a risk in that way is low, probably nonexistent. The bigger risk obviously is what he's going to do when he gets out. And that's where things get hard. Like how much do you cater to him now to avoid him retaliating against you in game? What's the timeline here? I'm a little vague. Is there like six or seven years from now?

It sounds like it, yes, if he serves as full sentence, which apparently he will. But who knows? Yeah, maybe he's in Joe Arpaio's prison in Arizona, and he's, you know, loving life down there. But at which point your son's going to be 15, he's probably going to be much more equipped to understand the situation, decide how he feels about his father, potentially agree with you that it's best to keep his distance. Who knows? Right. But that doesn't mean his dad won't be a problem for them.

No, that's where I'm struggling here. Like, how much of a threat would he be? Really? We just don't know. He might also blame the mom for alienating the kid and then the kid's 15, so maybe he's old enough to get his ass beat by dad who just got out of prison. Who knows? If he's just going to yell and bluster on the phone sometimes for keeping him at arm's length, okay, you can deal with that. But if he's going to pound on your door at four o'clock in the morning, multiple nights per week, if he's going to take out a ghost gun he got from some dude he met in prison,

and pointed at our friend here to intimidate her into seeing his kid. I mean, that's a very different story. And look, I do not mean to give you more nightmare fuel. I really don't. I just want to understand how much of a liability this guy is, really. My sense is he's maybe more bark than bite when it comes to you and your son. You haven't said anything about him hurting you directly, but just given his past and his personality, I don't know if we can put anything past him. And I'm also not sure that prison makes people better all the time. You know, he might come out worse and more violent than he was before.

The good news is, it sounds like he doesn't have any real parental rights here, which is a smart move on your part. So legally, I'm not sure he has much power to compel you to let him see your son. Obviously, that doesn't mean he can't try, but if he starts showing up in seven years demanding to see him and that's not what you or your son want, you call the police, you get a restraining order, you hire a lawyer, you have options, but look, there's also a part of me that wants to go

Don't let your son talk to his father at all. No letters, no phone calls, the less contact, the better, because I just don't know how much good this relationship is doing him. I worry that having contact with a narcissistic, hot-headed, mess of a criminal father might actually be doing more harm than good.

On the other hand, a child's need for a parent, even an imperfect parent, is real. And as you can see when your son talks about daddy and where's daddy and when can I talk to daddy on the phone? And so there's this other part of me going, let him have whatever father he can as long as their relationship is safe. But I don't love that answer as it comes out of my mouth.

To your point at the beginning, there is no good solution here. It's so hard to know what is right in this situation. And also I'm wondering, is it actually safe? Because yes, there's very little he can do to hurt him over the phone behind a glass window. But like our friend here said, she's afraid that he's going to tell her son a certain version of events. And then he's going to start believing that his dad didn't do anything wrong. And then he's going to come home and say that to mom. And then she's going to be in a tough spot. Like, do I correct him? Or this is a bit of a problem.

Right. But that's also something she can responsibly control to some degree. She can talk to him after these phone calls. She can ask him how he feels, what dad said, what questions he has. And if he's like, dad says he didn't do anything wrong and all these bad people were out to get him. And I feel bad for him. You can say, well, listen, honey, I know this is hard to understand because daddy has his story about what happened, but daddy's in prison because he did a lot of bad things. He made a lot of mistakes and it's hard for him to admit that and gave this kind of reminds me you ever see arrested development. I've seen a few, but I don't really know the show. Why?

Jeffrey Tambor gets arrested for, I don't know, embezzling money or some kind of crazy fraud or whatever it is. And Michael Sarah goes, well, pop-hop's going to get out soon because he didn't do it. And Jason Bateman's like, oh, no, he did it. Right? And that's kind of what this reminds me of. You're just going to have to have this very difficult conversation with your son about how, no, dad's in prison for a reason.

And he tells you one thing, but it's not true. You gotta have some version of that without piling on too much, although I don't even necessarily think that piling on is totally inappropriate in this case, given what he's done. But you know what I mean. You can gently counter any false narratives that your axe tries to download into your son, and as he gets older, I think that's going to be easier and easier for you to do as he matures.

I totally agree with that, but then it begs the question, why let them have this additional contact by phone at all if she's just gonna have to go deprogram him every time he talks to his dad?

Right, that's the calculation she's gonna have to make. The upside is that he gets a relationship with his dad and they potentially avoid pissing this guy off. The downside is that her son potentially gets even more confused and that kind of empowers her ex to demand more of them when he gets out of prison. Like I said, there's no way you totally win here. It's about deciding which costs you can live with.

And again, who bears those costs? I found it interesting when she said, my son got to know his dad and got attached. So I play nice. We do the letters and pictures. I don't badmouthed his dad to him, which I do appreciate. And God, man, that must be so hard to resist that urge. Then later, she said, I don't want my son to think that I kept him away from his dad and be mad at me for preventing their relationship. And then at the end of her letter, she really got to the heart of the matter when she said, I don't like people mad at me and I don't want my son to wind up hating me.

Yeah, it's hard for her to feel that people are angry with her. I can relate. I think it's probably more than hard. I get the sense that it's almost intolerable for her. And look, I can understand why, to some degree, feeling that you're a year old child, the one who's your entire world is mad at you. That is devastating. And knowing that your dangerous criminal ex is mad at you, that's terrifying. So this is somewhat appropriate, but this inability to be the object of somebody's anger from time to time.

I do think this is something she probably needs to look at, because there's a real possibility that she'll need to limit how much contact her son has with his dad, or she might have to share some facts with him that are not always easy to take in, or who knows, maybe there will come a day when she even has to cut contact with her ex completely,

and her son will have some feelings about that. He's a child, he doesn't understand all of the nuances yet. He might be mad at Mommy for not letting him talk to Daddy, and she might not be able to tolerate that anger from him in order to do right by him. Right, totally. And the same thing is kind of happening with her ex, right? She's asking, should I bite the bullet and let my son do these phone calls to placate my ex? Which sounds a lot to me like, I want a cave on these phone calls because it's just too distressing to think about my ex being mad at me.

Yeah, okay, I understand the conflict she's in here. I really do, but it also sounds to me like she's still kind of catering to this guy way too much. She's catering to him, but I think in a way she's kind of catering to herself, to the part of herself that might not be developed enough to withstand her child's disappointment.

and tolerate her exes anger, which is part of her job as a mother and also just as a person in general. I do wonder if this extreme anxiety about being disliked or disapproved of or falling out of someone's favor for perfectly legitimate reasons, by the way, if that might have been one of the things that might have made her vulnerable to a partner like this in the first place.

I was just thinking the same thing, because I could see her being afraid to stand up to this guy way back then, or ask him some pointed questions about weird stuff she was noticing, or even just be in touch with certain feelings early on that might have signaled to her that he was bad news, and not allowing herself to do that because it might have meant being the bad guy. Which, again, I can't understand because this guy is objectively scary. Right, yeah, she might have some very good practical reasons for not wanting to piss this guy off at any point in their relationship.

Her job now, I think, is to separate the appropriate fear of being disliked by a dangerous person, from the possibly unnecessary fear of being disliked by anyone who wants something different from what she wants, and which she's right to draw a line on, and with her son to be willing to bear his sadness and his anger from time to time.

in order to protect him. Until she confronts this quality, I don't know if she can really make the right decision here and stand by it. Because here's the thing, she needs to know whether she's agreeing to more contact with his dad because it's truly the right thing to do, or because she's trying to avoid a certain feeling in herself.

I totally agree, Gabe. There's some important work for her to do here if she's going to effectively navigate an objectively difficult situation. And that would be great work to do in therapy if possible. So that is our hope for you. Keep doing right by your son, but also take stock of the thoughts and feelings that this situation is bringing up in you.

Candidly, I'm not sure I'd encourage my child's relationship if my ex were like this, but that doesn't mean you don't have some good reasons to follow your son's lead here and let them have some kind of relationship. Because again, I understand a child's need for a father and it breaks my heart to think about him not even having the option to talk to his dad.

My hope is that there's some level of contact that's safe and boundary and that you keep developing the kind of relationship with your son where you can help him understand his father as clearly as possible. It's a hard line to walk. It'll be painful sometimes, but it's not impossible. But to Gabe's point, what the situation is forcing you to do is grow your capacity for tolerating the distress of not always catering to other people's wishes. And I'm sure that theme shows up in other parts of your life too. So it's an important one to look at.

Again, so sorry you guys are in this position. You don't deserve any of it, but I know that you'll find the right balance here, and you'll use it to continue to grow in some important ways, sending you and your son a big hug and wishing you all the best. And now for some deals that are so good, you'll need a restraining order to keep yourself away from them. We'll be right back.

This episode is sponsored in part by Dell and AMD. Episode four of the cybersecurity tapes has just dropped diving into a set in Silverwood Heights, a small town that jumped headfirst into becoming a smart city. And on election day, everything goes off the rails. The digital systems they rely on from parking meters to voting machines. They all go haywire leaving Edgar, a regular resident just trying to vote caught in the middle of a total tech collapse.

What should have been a routine day quickly spirals into a full-blown digital disaster with Edgar battling malfunctioning systems at every turn. As technology integrates more deeply into the fabric of our daily lives, this podcast feels more relevant than ever. I love how the cybersecurity tapes brings awareness to the side of tech we don't always see. The vulnerabilities, the hidden risks, the ripple effects when things go wrong. Edgar's experience isn't just a tale of tech frustration. It's a stark reminder of how our increasing digital dependencies could lead to serious widespread issues when they fail.

It's a powerful look at the challenges we face in keeping our smart infrastructure secure. Catch the cybersecurity tapes on your favorite podcast platform. And if you've ever had a cybersecurity story of your own, drop them a review. Who knows? Your story could inspire the next gripping episode. This episode is also sponsored by

rose at a stone, you know, thanksgivings around the corner. I've been thinking about what I'm grateful for and a big part of that is the opportunity to have traveled in many parts of the world. I'm especially looking forward to our family trip in China and Taiwan coming up this spring. I want to bust out that Mandarin. It's a great way to connect with the locals or basically who am I kidding? I'm just impressing waitresses with that stuff, but whatever, it still feels good.

Rosetta Stone is a great way to learn another language because it's one that immerses you. There are no English translations. You're actually thinking in the language, you're not just memorizing words. I'm diving into the Mandarin right now, but there are 25 languages to choose from, everything from German to Japanese, Dutch to Arabic, and their true accent feature. It's kind of like a personal coach making sure you're getting the pronunciation right. Rosetta Stone is available on your desktop or as an app so I can squeeze in some practice during holiday travel or even when relaxing at home.

Don't put off learning that language. There's no better time than right now to get started. For a short time, our listeners can get Rosetta Stone's lifetime membership holiday special. This offer will not last long. Visit Rosetta Stone dot com slash Jordan. That's unlimited access to 25 language courses for the rest of your life. Redeem your holiday offer at Rosetta Stone dot com slash Jordan today for yourself or as a gift that keeps on giving.

Thank you for listening and supporting the show. Your support of our advertisers keeps the lights on around here. All of the deals discount codes and ways to support the show are all searchable and clickable over on the website at jordanharbinger.com slash deals. Please consider supporting those who support this show. Alright, back to feedback Friday.

All right, next up.

Soon after, one of my co-workers was promoted to manager, and he fought tooth and nail for a raise for me. My salary was eventually bumped up, but still a fraction lower than my co-workers with the same or similar experience. I still wasn't happy, but remained grateful.

I moved on as it was a positive step forward. A year and a half later, one of my co-workers with the same role and job title moved on to one of our clients. Today, I saw their role being advertised and the salary range was $3,000 to $8,000 more than what I'm making.

The thing is, the knowledge we have is specialized. Those of us who have been working with the product for 10 plus years still don't know everything there is to know about it. What irks me is that they're expecting some novice to come in off the street and get paid more than somebody who knows the job and the product and does a damn good job at it.

To rub salt in the wound, I will probably be asked to train the new person. To throw in an extra curveball, we recently acquired a company from India, and some staff are worried that they could replace us for half the cost. This new acquisition is making everyone feel a bit antsy and want to keep a low profile, so speaking up about this to upper management might not come across as a good look. I think a new job is probably the way forward, and I've already started making moves by updating my LinkedIn profile and my resume.

I've also started speaking to job agencies as well. In my free time, I'm learning new skills, one being AWS, to further myself and stand out. How do these salary decisions even make sense? How does nobody think about the negative impacts this will have on Team morale?

How do I go about trying to get paid what I deserve? Should I speak up or keep a low profile? And how do I motivate myself? When I clearly know people with fewer skills are making more than me, signed coping with my feelings and concealing how unappealing it is that my company is not fairly dealing when I keep hitting this ceiling.

Well, first of all, I'm really sorry that your company is treating you this way. I totally understand why you're frustrated. You're dedicated, you know your stuff, you're getting good reviews, you're always learning and supporting other people. You sound like a dream employee, honestly, and now you're finding that your talent and loyalty just are not being rewarded, really.

And the fact that they gave you that bump after your coworker advocated for you, OK, that's a positive sign. But it's also a signal that without without that nudge from a friend, they would have just not done anything. And I don't know if that's a cultural thing or a bureaucratic thing or a you thing. But at this point, I don't know. It kind of doesn't matter.

I think you have enough data now to know how your company values you and looking for a new job is absolutely the right move, in my opinion. Scenario one is you find a company that values you appropriately. You jump ship. You're happy with what you get paid. Scenario two is you get a better offer. You go back to your company and say, Hey, I've got this offer. I want to give you a chance to match it or beat it and see if they respond. I say this all the time. Sometimes a competing offer is the only language that companies speak.

which is super lame. And the reason they're probably going to lose you, but that's just how they are. It's interesting. This actually came up in my interview with Scott Galloway a couple of weeks ago. He talked about how employees who stay at their job for a long time, they're often undervalued because their bosses don't think of them as, you know, fresh talent that they need to pay for. They get used to having them around at a certain price with a whatever it's called quality of life or cost of living increase every year or whatever it is. So switching jobs is actually the best way to get a raise.

And I think he even said that every year or two he goes out and talks to other universities to see what they're offering so you can just make sure his employer is paying him the market rate or better. So there are some good reasons for you to be doing the same honestly and by the way that was episode one oh seven four ten seventy four great conversation with a really smart dude and Scott Galloway was there to you also have the.

Once you become a dad, you can never not do it. Sorry, folks. You also have the option of speaking up, asking for what you want again. You have a few objective data points for what you should be making. So it's not crazy to say, look, guys, this is what the markets pay in people. This is what you are paying people. I'm just asking to be treated fairly. And if they say, no, that'll be the last big signal that you need that your company is never going to do right by you or certainly not in this area. And if so, they deserve

to lose you at that point and if they're like i know it's not gonna happen you might even say okay thank you for letting me know with the little look in your eye that says pardon me while i update my linkedin profile and warm up all my contacts that i got from six minute networking and leave you in the next ninety two hundred and twenty days also i don't know how much you have to lose by doing that i mean what are they gonna say sorry no i mean it's not that big of a deal as long as you make a good case in your frame it respectfully even if they did replace you with somebody from this company they just acquired which you know we don't know for sure that they would

They would just be pushing you to the conclusion that you are already reaching which is that it's probably time for a change. As for how to motivate yourself when you know that people with fewer skills are making more money, honestly, I don't know if you can. If your company is treating you unfairly, they probably don't deserve your best.

What you can do is use this anger that you feel to motivate yourself to find a new job and yes hold yourself to a certain standard at work you know don't quite quit completely and then just start performing badly because hey you might need to stick it out for a little while before you get an offer.

And B, you want to end on the best possible terms, and you might need to list your boss as a reference. So just keep that in mind. But if you can't find the motivation to care about your job, then I would find the motivation to find a better one. The job search is going to give you a healthy distraction from all of this stuff. And it'll also empower you when you start seeing results, when you're booking interviews, you know, eventually you got an offer. That is going to feel great.

Agreed. The good news about your company treating you this way is that they're making it real easy for you to piece out. You don't have to feel guilty for one second. They did this to themselves. I also think there's something to be said for changing things up after 11 years, right? Like he started at this place when it was a mom and pop. It grew into this big company. It got sold to this corporate behemoth. That's a long time to be at one place and maybe the inertia that he's encountering around getting the pay that he deserves.

Maybe that's a reflection of a larger relationship with this company that's kind of grown stagnant and maybe a phase in his life that is, you know, slowly winding down. I think there are exciting things ahead for him and this just might be the, you know, that little push out of the nest that he needed. Yeah, exactly. I was just thinking the same thing. This might actually be a healthy, well, you said, push out of the nest or at least a sign. It's time to shake things up. Either way, I'm excited for you and good luck.

You can reach us Friday at JordanHarbinger.com. Please keep your emails concise. Try to use a descriptive subject line that does make our job a whole lot easier. If you're trying to make sense of rumors that your partner did some awful things in his past, your father-in-law is sending you on work trips to a war zone, or you're in love with a well-meaning addict who's compromising you financially. Whatever's got you staying up at night lately, big or small, hit us up Friday at JordanHarbinger.com. We're here to help, and we keep every email anonymous.

Oh, and if you haven't signed up yet, come check out our newsletter, Webit Wiser. This is a bite-sized gem like a two-minute read from a past episode from us to you delivered right to your inbox every Wednesday. If you want to keep up with the wisdom from our thousand-plus episodes, you want something to forward to your friends, some little bite-sized stuff you can apply. I invite you to come check it out. It's over at jordanharbinger.com slash news. Okay, what's next?

Hi guys, my nephew's buddy recently received a scammers message on Snapchat, and through some level of seduction became convinced that he should send this person some nudes. He did, and within minutes, received messages threatening to share these with all of his contacts, unless he gave them money.

The amount was enough that the boy felt unable to pay. I'm connecting some dots here because he can't tell his story, but I imagine he felt lost, scared, and alone. Then he ended his own life.

Oh my God, this is so tragic. Good God. This happened in a matter of a few hours on a Sunday morning from first contact to his suicide based on the messages on his phone. There were no previous signs of depression or other emotional distress. Please spread the word that we need to help our kids understand the risk that comes with the use of this tech. First, don't send nudes. Second, if you're going to send nudes, definitely don't send them to somebody you don't know intimately.

Third, we need to have conversations with our kids that we would rather deal with whatever fallout comes from a dumb mistake than not have them with us. From what I hear, the parents have engaged with law enforcement and local schools to tell their story and to try to stop this from happening to anyone else.

I immediately had this conversation with my own family and I tell everyone the story when the topic comes up. I hope this somehow helps prevent a similar tragedy. Thank you for spreading this in whatever way you choose to. Signed, hoping to start a caravan to warn people against these scams.

Oh man, this is truly awful. The worst. The fact that this young man had zero mental health issues before and then bam just like that over the course of like three hours decides to commit suicide because he can't bear the thought of his nudes being leaked. It just breaks my heart, man. Gabe, you know how much I hate these scammers. These are total parasites. Scum. I seriously, I feel like we should drone strike these people. I'm not even kidding.

Although, you know, a lot of these cyber scammers are actually cut up in these slavery operations where they're forced to do this stuff. And we talked about that with Nathan Paul Southern and Lindsey Kennedy on Episode 833. So that complicates the picture somewhat. You just don't know if you're talking to some a-hole in a scam call center in, you know, Pakistan or you're talking to somebody who's been kidnapped, essentially, who's being forced into this stuff. You just don't know. So a lot of these scammers, yeah, they're not part of trafficking operations.

Those people are, well, they're evil. They're evil, obviously. But look, you get some money out of people, you string them along, you move on, it's gross, it's awful, but it's just money. But this kid killed himself. This scammer has blood on their hands and it's unconscionable. I wish these scammers understood the pain they put people through slash cared because it's not just like, oh, I lost 10 grand in Bitcoin. Sometimes it's I lost my 16 year old son, grandson, brother, friend to these people. This scammer devastated countless people's lives.

Yeah, man, it is. It's kind of unspeakable. This is just like another level of tragedy. It's hard to wrap my head around it. I was reading up on some of these, you know, sex extortion stories that lead to suicide and I actually learned some really disturbing stuff. So one really sad thing is that this type of scam.

Often plays out in a very short amount of time, just like this one. So I read another story, very similar, where a 17-year-old kid, straight-A student, boy scout, he met a scammer at 10 p.m. and by 2 a.m. he had committed suicide.

Oh my god, that is awful. So these victims are desperate. Desperate. I'm sure they're desperate because these scampers crank up the heat. They manufacture urgency. They make them believe their lives are over. Totally. It's like that scam letter that we aired that, you know, you got a few weeks ago where they were trying to freak you out and make you pay up. Exactly. And if you know how this stuff works, it's so easy to just delete and ignore. But if you're 15, you've never heard of these scams. No adults have ever talked to you about sending nudes, whatever scams you can spiral out so quickly.

Well, one of the articles I read was about another 17 year old who was targeted by someone on Instagram. The scammer sent him 200 messages in less than 20 hours. And his mom said that the messages ranged anywhere from I own you to you need to take your own life. There you go. But wait, these scammers are actually telling people to kill themselves. That's insane. That's sociopathic, psychopathic, whatever, on top of being a scammer.

How dark is that? So obviously this is a strategy to make them feel like their lives are over if they don't pay up. But then some of them actually go and do it. Yeah. My anger just went to 11. This is so gross. And when they catch these people, they should absolutely be charging them with murder. I hate this.

Here's another startling fact that I read an FBI agent said that scammers generally target male children between the ages of 14 and 17, but they have interviewed children as young as 10 10 years old being sex-storted that is unbelievable and prosecuting these cases apparently is really hard because the scammers usually live abroad and they require extradition and they take multiple steps to obscure their identity of course.

I mean, do they require extradition? I don't know. I feel like we should just find out where these buildings are, where they operate, and clean house. That's an overreaction. But is it though? Honestly, I really, I can't stand that this is happening. It's really hard. But yeah, it's basically impossible to prosecute these people from what I hear, which is why they keep doing it, which is why you get 10,000 scam calls a week from these a-holes.

Well, to your point, the FBI received more than 13,000 reports of online financials extortion involving at least 12,600 victims between October 2021 and March 2023. And I have to imagine that those numbers have only gone up. Yeah, I was going to say those are the ones we hear about.

Yeah, exactly. Interestingly, there was one case in your home state of Michigan, actually, where two brothers from Nigeria were sentenced to 17 and a half years in prison, further roles in this extortion scheme that targeted 100 people, including at least 11 other minors, and it tragically led one teenager to commit suicide in 2022.

I mean, good that they're in prison. They caused a kid to die. I have zero sympathy. Rotten prison. Put them under the prison. Well, check this out. They're exchanged with that teenager. Apparently it went on for hours, again, on a single night until he told one of the scammers that he was going to kill himself. And the scammers said, quote, good, do that fast, or I'll make you do it. I swear to God, unquote.

Oh my God, again, they deserve prison. This is awful. These people really are terrible. These are terrible people. Interesting side note about this case, the US had to extradite these brothers from Nigeria and as part of the negotiations, US officials had to take the death penalty off the table and the brothers then had their charges reduced as part of their plea agreements.

Wow. So that means they should have even got more time. More time than that. That's right. The article talked about that. Actually, some people were mad that they only got 17 years because they apparently removed other charges and they knocked off like five to 10 years from that sentence. I mean, the system's the system. I get it better to punish them for 17 years though than not at all. Look, their lives are now ruined because they're going to be in prison for 17 years unless it's some crap where they get out after five. But yeah, I can understand that the family members of these victims are just very justifiably upset about that.

Anyway, these articles all mentioned some really good advice along the lines of what our friend here is saying. So I figured I'd just quickly pass it along. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children advises parents and children to seek assistance before deciding whether to pay people like this. The quote here is, block the suspect, but do not delete your profile or messages because that can be helpful in stopping the blackmailer. A law enforcement official said, don't assume people are who they say they are. Obvious advice, but worth repeating.

Don't share compromising images and if you're a victim, please reach out. There is help and law enforcement stands ready. And maybe one of the most interesting things, one of the articles interviewed the chief of adolescent medicine at Mass General in Boston, this guy named Dr. Scott Hadland. And Hadland said something fascinating. He said, teen brains are still developing. So when something catastrophic happens, like a personal picture is released to people online,

It's hard for them to look past that moment and understand that in the big scheme of things they'll be able to get through this.

A hundred percent. This is what's so tragic about this. Our brains don't stop developing, and well, I don't know if they ever stopped developing, but right. They're not fully formed. Is it until we're like 25, 27 or something like that? So just imagine what a 15 year old thinks when a scam or targets them like this. Exactly. Dr. Hadlan also said that it's critical that parents specifically warned teenagers of scams, likes extortion without shaming them. In the article, he said, quote, you want to make it clear that they can talk to you if they have done something or they feel like they've made a mistake.

Absolutely. This is good advice for parents. My goodness. But I think the best advice is do not send nudes. It is not worth it. Not in this day and age. By the way, Gabe, I don't know. I'm not in the game, right? But if someone was like, send nudes, I'm not spending three hours trying to figure out lighting and angles. I'm just going to have AI make the best possible looking nude with 8% body fat or something. And I'm going to send that. Why would you send a real nude in the first place? No, you're catfishing. Now I'm catfishing. Well, you're dickfishing.

I have the turntables, eh? Yeah, it's... I mean, come on. Who's sending real nudes? It's like, hey, send me a dick pick. Prepare to be underwhelmed. Actually, let me get the AI out. I don't know, man. I don't know if AI is good enough to be able to pass as an authentic de-pick, but maybe soon that's going to be the reality we live in. I'm not sure, man. I've seen some pretty gross AI stuff coming in from my European family and friends. You know what the flip side, the flip side of your advice, though, is that if somebody does ever leak your nudes,

Could you just turn around and say that actually wasn't me. That was AI. Of course. That has been my plan for the last 18 months. Oh, really? I thought you don't do it. Not that I have nudes out there, but hypothetically, if I did and anybody saw them, I'd be like, oh, come on, please, as if I have that. Look at that six, those six pack. Do you think that's really me? Come on. That's AI. Claude is getting real good. I don't know.

My God. All right. Look, if your kids ever do something dumb, my kids, for example, if they're ever in trouble, you just got to tell your kids, don't panic, come to me. We'll figure this out together. It's so important for children to know this. And I'm going to be having these very awkward conversations with my own kids in a few years. By the way, I'll link to all of these articles in the show notes if you guys are interested in checking them out.

I'm so sorry to hear about your friend's nephew, absolutely heartbreaking, and thank you for sharing his story so we could dig into this stuff. I hope it helps at least one person listening right now to avoid these scams or teach someone else how to avoid them, and I really appreciate you giving us this opportunity. Sending you, your nephew, and his friend's family a big hug. You know who you can trust with your nudes, Gabriel. AI generated or otherwise. The amazing sponsors that support this show. Why would you send the sponsor to your nudes? That's a valid question.

How do you think I get all these amazing discounts for everybody? I've been sending AI-generated dick pics to these people in exchange for 15% off children's vitamins. We'll be right back.

This episode is sponsored in part by The Defender. We all have those big goals that seem just out of reach, right? But the truth is, that's what keeps us moving forward. For the people who embrace challenges and explore their way, there's The Defender. The Defender is built to handle whatever comes its way with legendary capability, on-road or off.

It's engineered with a tough, rigid body tested to the extreme and built with durable, lightweight architecture for strength and confidence. But it's not just about ruggedness. It's an icon reimagined with a design that feels modern, yet honors its adventurous roots. Plus, there's a defender for every kind of explorer, from the defender 90 to the 110, and even the 130, which seats up to eight people. So whether it's just you or the whole family, there's a model for your journey.

If you're ready to embrace the impossible, the Defender is your perfect partner. Be incapable and ready to go wherever you're headed next. Build your Defender at LandRoverUSA.com.

This episode is sponsored in part by Airbnb. True story, my brother-in-law lives right next door. He's an Airbnb super host. He's been crushing it for years. But the twist is, the guy is also a huge travel junkie. So guess who gets wrangled into covering for him every time he's off on one of his globe-treating adventures? Yes, that would be Jen because proximity. Let's just say Jen's got plenty going on without adding backup super host to that list. And thankfully, Airbnb has this brilliant thing called the co-host network, which means Jen is officially off duty.

Now you can just hire a local co-host to handle everything while he's out exploring the world. So whether you're spending the summer in Italy, the winters in Florida, you just want to chill without hosting duties, a co-host has it all covered. They'll handle everything, creating your listing, managing reservations, messaging the guests, even handling onsite support. If your space could use a little design magic, they got that handled too. It is the perfect setup for anybody with a space that's empty for a while. It's an effortless,

hands-off way to bring an extra cash without really lifting a finger. So instead of letting your place just sit empty, let a co-host keep it running smoothly while you're off living your best life. Find a co-host at Airbnb.com slash host. This episode is also sponsored in part by Jasper. If you're like me, you do a lot to keep your family safe at home. There's outlet covers, there's cabinet locks, you have phone bumpers on sharp edges, but the air we breathe, that's something people don't really think about much. I've been diving deep into the science of air quality, especially after all the wildfires we have out here. And it was honestly was a wake up call.

That's why we started using jasper air purifiers you heard mike on the show talking about jasper when we did our air quality episode and jasper is not just another purifier it has an ultra sensitive sensor that picks up on particles in the air it kicks in instantly even from something as small as cooking fumes or pollen.

I'm talking 30 years of reliable performance and a beautiful metal build that doesn't look like your standard clunky plastic. The results in our home have been amazing. I can confidently recommend it. And right now you can get an additional 400 bucks off with code Jordan at Jasper.co. If you care about keeping your home environment as safe as it is comfortable, this is definitely worth checking out JASPR.co slash Jordan.

If you like this episode of feedback Friday and you found our advice valuable, I invite you to do what other smart and considerate listeners do, which is take a moment and support our amazing sponsors. And I don't mean by sending them dick pics. I just buy using our discount codes just in case that wasn't clear. All the deals discount codes and ways to support the show are all searchable and clickable over at Jordan Harbinger dot com slash deals.

or use the AI chat bot to search for your sponsor codes. That's handy over at Jordan Harbinger dot com slash AI. And if that doesn't work, you can email me Jordan at Jordan Harbinger dot com. We are happy to dig up those codes for you. It really does keep the lights on around here. It's that important that you support those who support the show now back to feedback Friday.

Okay, next up.

However, one recurring issue has left me uncertain. We've had multiple discussions about our future plans, weighing options, and making decisions together. But after she talks to her parents, things often change. For example, we initially agreed that she would spend more time at my place, which is 75 minutes away, and commute for work. Her parents didn't like that, so it never happened.

Then we decided to wait until after marriage to get a house. Her parents pushed her to get one sooner, even offering financial support, so we could live together before marriage. Although we agreed to wait until the following year, I suddenly learned she had applied for pre-approval, made an offer, and had it accepted. Without me ever seeing the house, despite asking to see it before making any decisions.

Her parents love the house. It's a three-bedroom, two-bath patio home. And she wanted me to be excited about it. But we had several arguments because I wasn't involved in the process. I had planned to move in a month after she closed, but two days before closing, she told me she wanted to wait two to three months, so she could experience living alone first. She's never lived on her own. She's always either been in a dorm or with her parents. Meanwhile, I moved out when I was 21.

Her request made me feel like we were breaking up, though she reassured me we weren't. She also said that I would have a room to myself in the new house. I have a lot of belongings, so most of my things will need to go into storage since her parents are furnishing the house. She suggested that in five years, her parents would buy the house from us and we could move into a bigger one where my things would be needed. But then recently, she said I might not have a room at all because she has so much stuff.

This upset me, as I feel like I'm being left without space for myself. After a discussion, I told her I wouldn't move in unless I had at least one room for myself. I'm a gamer, and I need a place to unwind. She later said she was joking about not giving me a room, but she feels that my response wasn't ultimatum, whereas I see it as setting a boundary.

Now I'm not sure if this relationship could be saved. I love her, but it feels increasingly one-sided. What are your thoughts? Signed, feeling unsettled, and increasingly unspecial because her parents want a medal.

Yeah, they're not in alignment. Are they in some kind of minor ways, but also in some really major ways? Yeah. So to just boil this down, there are three problems here, right? Problem one is her parents seem to exert a lot of influence in her life slash she's doing what her parents want her to do instead of making decisions for herself as a fully grown 32 year old person with a fiance like with the not moving in with him as they had planned because her parents didn't like it thing. And then the whole decision to buy the house. Problem two is

She has a tendency to make big decisions without him and then to kind of call the shots in a way that makes him feel left out or not prioritized and kind of disrespected.

which is interesting because those two are, aren't they kind of in tension a little bit? That's interesting. In one way, she's just going along with what mommy and daddy want. In another way, she's doing what she wants and just not taking into account at all what her partner wants. Unless those are ultimately the same thing. Like if she doesn't, maybe she's just going along with what mom and dad want. It seems like it's what she wants and she doesn't even know what she wants. It's also possible that if she doesn't feel that her parents support her autonomy and interests, it might be hard for her to appreciate our friend of yours.

Or they're actually the same problem if her parents are calling all the shots and she's going along with them and he's the one who pays the price. So problem three is this specific argument over whether he gets a room in the new house, right? It's clearly not just about the room, right? It's about the way this whole process is gone. Right. And their whole argument about whether he's going to move in, that's about so much more than just, is there really a place for my stuff and my game console in the house? I think it's, is there a place for me in our whole relationship?

Of course, and in that way, I think this kind of was an ultimatum or at least a way for him to say, hey, I don't feel I can move forward in this relationship if you're not going to treat me fairly and take me seriously and prioritize both of us in this future. That's supposedly about the two of us.

I also find her response kind of fascinating. So she later said she was joking about not giving him a room, but it didn't sound like it was a joke. I'm struggling also with how much to read into that. It might have been a joke, a really lame, weird, inappropriate joke to make with your fiance, but okay. But it sounds to me like instead of taking ownership of the fact that she was obviously prioritizing herself and saying, hey, I'm sorry that was selfish of me. Let's try this again. She's laughing it off like, hey, dude, I was just joking, bro. Relax. LOL.

Which in addition to being, I don't know, kind of squirrely, it's also like a little bit dismissive of him and his feelings. In kind of condescending to assume that he's not going to see through the ruse of pretending it was a joke? When it doesn't sound like it was said in just at all, and when it totally fits with the larger pattern of not including him whatsoever.

Right, so, okay, he still loves her, that's important, but he knows that this relationship is feeling increasingly one-sided. Which it is. Which it is, but it's interesting, I can't tell how malicious this is on her part. I think it's possible that she's just afraid to assert herself with her parents when they're being very generous with them, and so she's maybe prioritizing them and herself over him, and he's experiencing that as she doesn't care about me.

But is it possible that that speaks more to her fear of her parents than her disrespect for her fiance? I think it's possible, yes, I don't know if that makes it excusable, though. I still think there's more to her parents' help than just being super generous, because they were the ones who convinced her not to move in with him before the whole house thing, which is still odd to me.

And then there's that detail about them saying they'll buy the house from them in five years, which makes this whole purchase feel very managed and planned out in a way that, look, even if the parents are trying to help them out, again, it's highly unusual. I just know from all the stories we've heard over all the years we've been doing the show.

Whenever parents are playing a big role in their children's lives financially, especially their adult children, right? These people are 32. They're not 20. They're not teenagers. There's almost always some weird politics at play inside the family at this point in their lives because how do you tell your parents who are helping you buy a three bedroom house and then promising to buy it from you in a few years so you can move into an even bigger place? How do you turn to those parents and go, hey, mom, dad, I love you. Thank you so much for the support, but you're smothering me and controlling me and I need you to back off and let me build my own life.

Oh, by the way, I still need all of your money because you own the house that I live in. I'm gone. That's really hard. It's really hard. And also she might not even feel the need to do that. She might be more than happy to go along with her parents because, I mean, who knows, I am wildly speculating here, but it's possible that she feels protected and taken care of by them. And she doesn't see how that is a barrier to her independence and now apparently her relationship with her fiance.

Well i think she's starting to i hope she's starting to anyway and if she's not i'd be worried which actually brings us to what i think is the last big problem in their relationship which is that she told her friend here that she wanted to wait two or three months before he moved in so she could experience living alone first mmm interesting yeah i lost track of that detail with all the parents stuff that's a big red flag to me.

First of all, given everything else that's gone down, it does sound like one more way that she's prioritizing herself here. And to tell your fiance, the person you presumably want to marry and spend the rest of your life with, hey, I don't want you to move in immediately. And this is by the way, after saying that I would live with you, but now I decided not to live with you because my parents don't think it's a good idea.

After all that, I want to be on my own for longer. Red freaking flag, man. Red flag slash is this really what you want at this stage of your life, because it sounds like you're putting off living together in a number of ways. Also, let's say she really does want to experience living alone before she settles down because she missed out on that life phase. Although, again, that doesn't that beg the question, why did you miss out on that life phase? I think we know the answer to that. Like our parents, you mean?

I think so. He said she's either been in a dorm or with her parents the whole time. Right. It sounds to me like she never really individuated. If that's, I think that's a word. And now she's 30 freaking two and she's about to move in with her partner and get a house and get married and she's freaking out. But what I was going to say was even if she needs that, even if our friend here is willing to give it to her,

Is two or three months going to scratch that itch? No. Try two or three years maybe. Right. Is three months really the difference between being happily engaged and unhappily engaged? Like just you just need to watch Netflix alone and defrost your own hot pockets for like eight to 12 weeks and then it's good. Yeah. You think she's a hot pocket scale? I'm going to Giorno vibes over here. Giorno and Trader Joe's Rose.

Where is it out on that patio that house comes with good call door dash twice a week also when she's tired but that's a detail all on daddy's credit card of course I kid mostly we don't know but anyway if she gets two or three months on her own how do we know she's not going to say you know actually this is great I need more time or is she going to go okay you can move in now but secretly want more time alone and then what just try to bury that for the rest of her life.

Well, I think you're getting at something interesting, which is that his fiance might be asking for something extremely important and totally legitimate here, which is her freedom, her independence, her chance to grow up when she maybe didn't, her identity, basically, which if our theories are anywhere near correct, she might not have fully developed. And now that the window for being her own person is kind of closing because she's getting married soon, she might be looking for small ways to carve out that autonomy and that identity.

You know, that might even be what's driving these apparently selfish decisions on her part, which raises the question, is she truly ready to settle down with our friend here? Exactly. Whereas he's been on his own since he was 21, he went through all these stages of development, which is great, and he's ready. But it's very possible that she has some unfinished work to do. And if so, that's the real issue here, alongside their communication about all this, of course.

So I don't know if this spells the end of their relationship. I really don't. That's for them to decide. And the only way they're going to figure that out is by talking a lot and often and being very honest with each other about what they each want, what they each need in their relationship. There might be a world where she can make peace with not having the independence that she seems to want.

And she can find a way to create that independence within their relationship, I don't know, by making her own interests and relationships or doing her own work on this part of herself or even setting some boundaries with her parents so that she and her fiance can have the privacy and independence they need to build the life that they really want.

There's also a world where she can't be fully happy and confident about their relationship until she's truly on her own and she needs to go and have that experience, which to your point, Gabe, I don't necessarily hold that against her. I actually kind of feel bad that she hasn't gotten to have that experience.

Yeah, so do I. What I do hold her responsible for, though, is understanding that need, if it's real to her. And if it's important to her, she needs to express it in a way that's understandable and hopefully fair to her fiance instead of making all of these decisions on her own and then leaving him confused about whether she cares about him.

Which again, is why they need to have some very honest chats. Yes. So that's your next step, my man. Time to sit down with your fiance and get real. I would tell her what it's been like for you to be treated this way. You already have. I would keep going. I try to frame things less as ultimatums and more like, here's a feeling I'm having. Can you understand why I feel that way? And I would invite her to be very open with you about why she's been handling things this way.

And then I would get clear on whether you guys are truly aligned on the things that you want and the values and experiences that matter to you guys. And when you want to have them and make sure that you're both taking each other seriously. And of course, I hope you guys talk about the role that our parents are playing in your lives. Although I suspect that's kind of wrapped up in all of this. If you guys can have these chats with a lot of courage, a lot of vulnerability and trust, then you'll know what to do. This is about so much more than a room in the house. You know that. Now it's time to get to the heart of the matter together. Good luck.

All right, and now for a recommendation of the week. My recommendation of the week is Portuguese reggae music. So I know I've talked about this on the show. I've been studying Portuguese in my free time. I'm hoping to spend more time in Portugal in the future. So I've been trying to learn a little bit here and there. One of the fun ways that I study is listening to Portuguese music, both from Portugal and from Brazil. And then I look up to lyrics and the slang and somewhere along the way, I stumbled across Portuguese reggae, which is amazing. And

Honestly, all Portuguese music is amazing. If you haven't listened to Fato music, for example, I highly recommend. But Portuguese reggae is next level. Most of it comes from Brazil. There's a little bit from Portugal, but man, it just hits. There are a ton of great artists out there. A few of my favorites are junior dread, Ponte decquilibrio, Nati roots, and I am shamelessly saying those in American accent because I do not want to embarrass myself by trying to speak in Portuguese, but I will link to a few of them in the show notes.

Awesome music to hang out to to work out to play in the car. It's just a very unique blend of Caribbean and Portuguese influences that you guys are going to dig it. Also, in case you didn't know, there's a subreddit for our show. If you want to jump into discussions with other listeners about specific episodes, if there's an episode you really liked an episode you really didn't like, you want to share some additional thoughts or learn more from other people in our show fam, definitely check it out. There's some cool conversations happening over there.

What's the latest thing Gabriel people ranting about, you know, one of your sign offs. There's lots of inside baseball on feedback Friday. It's all in the Jordan Harbinger subreddit on Reddit. Okay. Next up. Hello, Jordan and Gabe. I'm a 26 year old male. And two years ago, I faced a big decision about what to do with my life. And I'm certain that I made the wrong call. After college, I was lost due to anxiety and bad advice. I didn't have a clear career path.

Like many men, I thought to myself, maybe the military can solve this. I quit my job and went on a volunteer trip to Milan to have fun, after which I told myself I would go to the Air Force's office. After the Milan trip, I traveled around Europe and Morocco. I experienced some heartbreak and some confusion, but I also met amazing people. Attended a Russian wedding, had one night stands, connected with long-distance friends. I also met a marine officer who encouraged me to press forward in whatever I did.

and a nice young woman who encouraged me to recapture my college interest in economics and psychology and go to graduate school in Milan. That sounds like quite a formative trip, I can relate. I returned home to my parents' house with no goals, but a dream to move to Europe. I applied to the university and was later accepted, but also walked into the Air Force Recruiter's office. My parents were dismissive of both ideas, so I asked my aunt and uncle what to do.

They recommended the military. I said, okay, let's do this. But my medical waiver was denied. I kept in touch with the young woman I had met on my trip. We started dating, I saw her often, and I looked for remote work so I could be closer to her. Once again, I got no help from my father who did remote work too and who I felt could give me some pointers. I started to doubt that the relationship with this girl could work.

and I became so desperate that I walked into the recruiter's office for the Marines. I thought maybe I could be stationed in Europe, but I was scatterbrained. The recruiter recommended joining the reserves, which gave me some hope that everything could finally fit together like a puzzle. The relationship, ultimately, did not work out. But the last time I visited her, I saw smiling, ambitious young classmates, rich social lives in a vibrant city, people going on to work or getting PhDs, and I thought, God darn, this is what people said college was supposed to be.

I started to develop the goal of staying in Europe long enough to naturalize and pass that option onto my future children. Eventually, my medical waiver for the Marine Corps was approved, but then I read that Officer Candidate School involves 13 months of training that I will have to wait 7 months to start and has a 25% fail rate.

Also, my plan to go into cyber warfare is not guaranteed. I dread ending up a supply officer in Missouri, unable to escape the warehouse life. And if I fail, I would have to wait a year for my plan B of going to grad school abroad,

go back to a family and work situation that I do not enjoy, and I would already be older than most students. I ask myself how much I want to sacrifice and whether I wanted to join the Marines for the right reasons and not just uniforms, history, and prestige. Sometimes I'll do an exercise with the other candidates and feel that ambition again, but I worry that my pride has played too big a role in all of this. Should I spend the rest of my 20s pursuing duty, or should I pursue the fun and vibrant life?

that I found in Europe and my studies signed take a stand and lead a command or expand to new lands and talk with my hands. Wow. Okay. Good question. So first of all, I really admire your curiosity, your ambition, your resourcefulness. You sound like a driven guy, a really adventurous guy. You have a lot of different interests. I know those qualities would serve you very well, no matter what you do.

Gabe, it reminds me of a t-shirt I saw a long time ago. It was an army shirt and it says like travel to exotic locations, meet amazing and interesting people and then kill them, army. Dark t-shirt. Maybe just go travel to Europe and not do that. Well, I think that was the joke, right? It's like you're going to see the world meet amazing people and then murder a bunch of them and then sniper them from a rooftop. That's right.

And I don't mean to disrespect the military. I just thought that t-shirt was funny. That's as far as that goes. Don't read into this, folks. I'm also hearing a 26-year-old guy who's a bit lost and ping-ponging between these two options without some kind of North Star. And that's okay, man. A lot of people in their 20s are lost. I certainly was. I think it's kind of your job to be a little lost to some degree. That's another thing Scott Galloway touched on in that interview. And it won't be the last time you feel that way.

I promise you, but it's really hard to make the right call when you don't have a sense of what truly matters to you, what kind of life and identity you want to build. You've been confused and indecisive for a while and that can be really, really frustrating can be distressing in your kind of.

outsourcing some of your decision-making to other people when ultimately you need to decide what you really want to do. But that's hard when you don't have a good grasp of your needs, your values when you're looking to other people, whether it's your parents or your uncle or your aunt or this school or the military, when you're looking to other people to tell you what to do.

This idea of going into the military, for example, it sounds like it's served a certain function for you to solve your anxiety, so to speak, to define your career path, to fulfill your desire for prestige, for belonging, for a sense of duty. Now, those aren't inherently bad things to want. They can be beautiful, but I think you're right to be a little suspicious of them. If you don't know in your bones that you're joining the military because it's genuinely meaningful and fulfilling to you,

I think it's also interesting you've hit a bunch of roadblocks on the path to the Marines. Some of those roadblocks have been external, the medical waiver, the training success rate, the timeline. Some of them have been internal, namely your own conflicts around joining the military. You're obvious passion about doing a degree abroad. And I rarely say this kind of thing because it sounds woo woo. But in this case, it's not either way. It really does sound like the universe verse verse. They're telling you not your path, bro. Your path path path. Yeah.

clearly but put aside the universe there's a voice inside of him saying don't join the military and he's not fully listening to it right so my question is why not i mean i kinda did that with the military to it took a lot of slaps across the face to be like this place is chaos about

What is that voice trying to tell you? Why aren't you listening to that? It sounds to me like studying in Italy. Man, that's so much more compelling to you. It sounds like a lot more fun. You've had these incredible experiences there. Some were fun, some were profound, and they meant a lot to you. It sounds like Italy lights you up. The Marines? I'm not hearing a whole lot of lighting upping. Not so much. Hardly at all. So my question for you is, what makes you excited about life?

Where do you feel stimulated? Where do you feel inspired? Where do you feel useful? Where do you feel welcome and loved? What moves you closer to people and places and situations that are interesting and exciting? That's the direction you should head. And if the duty thing seems missing, look into the State Department, perhaps. You get duty, you get service to country, but you also get to, depending on what you do, live abroad, learn languages. You just don't necessarily get yelled at by drill sergeants and shot at. Just saying.

I mean, I would argue that you can find a sense of duty and purpose in so many different, I mean, the Peace Corps, you could find it in corporate life. I mean, there's a lot of, there are a lot of different paths. I was with you with the Peace Corps. Corporate life. Okay, fine. It's possible. But if you want something that's sort of like bigger than yourself, it's probably not Procter and Gamble.

Fair enough. What I do know is that it's pretty clear that joining the reserves is not his path or not his ideal path. Right. And not because the military is always a bad choice for everyone or because you'll definitely fail that training or because you won't have valuable experiences there, you could. But everything you've shared with us suggests that this path is not authentic to you. And I would hate for you to go down a path that doesn't feel right just because it offers certain vague concepts that seem attractive. That is a recipe for regret.

and probably unhappiness. But it's interesting, Jordan, I'm aware that he's asking us what he should do here. He might also be outsourcing some of his decision making now to us as well. That's a good point. I mean, that's kind of what the show is for. But yeah, I mean, look, again, nothing wrong with soliciting advice. You should be doing that and we're happy to help. But you're literally asking, OK, I'm lost. I'm confused. I made a mistake before. I don't want to make that mistake again. So should I do X or should I do Y, which is the same question that you asked your parents.

and your aunt and uncle, and other people, including some of those people that you met on that first trip after Italy. I'm with Jordan. I think at your age, chasing your bliss and doing your degree in Italy, if it's between that and the military, that is probably the right call here. But more importantly, I kind of want to encourage you to start developing more confidence that you can listen to that inner voice telling you what to do, and that you can build a life that is uniquely your own, that you can make it successful if you nurture it the right way. Because that's a really big part of the journey that you are on right now.

Not just deciding between the Marines and Italy, but building up your capacity to make your own decisions and stand by them. Exactly. He's about to grow in a huge way, but he needs to commit. And that's the thing. You only develop those qualities by acting, right? He has to embrace the uncertainty of moving to a new country and pursuing what he cares about, perhaps when his family doesn't get it, and going a different way from what they want, from what society wants.

But when he does that, and after he realizes that he can succeed, I think he's gonna find the confidence he's been looking for, and then he can build on that confidence by making more and more decisions. But these are not qualities that anyone can just give him, including the Marines, which is another interesting feeling that he might be outsourcing to other people.

Exactly right. So look, I'm on team Italy, or at least not really on team Marines, not with the Marines, but for this guy, I don't think it's clearly not what he wants. But also, I would not pin all your hopes for an easy path on studying in Italy. This one decision is not going to solve all your problems.

You still have to work hard. You still have to confront your confusion, your doubt, your fear. You're going to be living in a foreign country, which, yes, it is super exciting. It always is. I've done it many times, but that's going to create its own unique challenges, especially in Italy. It's far from perfect. I mean, living anywhere is far from perfect. The fantasy of visiting a place that is very different from the reality of living there permanently.

Once you try to do your taxes and get a driver's license in a place, right? It's a whole different thing. Take it from me. I've been there multiple times, many different countries. Italy was not one of them, but, you know, Europe, Eastern Europe, et cetera, South America, also life will always surprise you with new challenges. So it is not like Italy is going to be a walk in the park.

As the old wisdom goes, wherever you go, there you are. So whatever challenges you have now, you're bringing them with you to Italy. I know you think you're going to reinvent yourself from scratch every time. It's not how it works. It does sound like Italy would be a great place to work on those challenges in some really exciting ways, but they are not going to be staying at home in Alabama or Albuquerque or, you know, Minnesota, whatever. I say this, by the way, not to dissuade you from going, but to be realistic about what Italy can and will provide. Because to Gabe's point a moment ago,

It is possible that the way you're approaching Italy is similar to how you've approached the Marines at first as a solution to your anxiety and no country, no job, no relationship can ever really offer us those things. They can just serve us better than the other options and they can move us closer to the life we truly want, which as my friend Mark Manson points out is just another way of saying the set of problems.

We truly want man. That is so important. I'm so glad you can say that one more time. I feel like I need to hear that choices. Don't solve our problems. They just serve us better than the other choices and they move us closer to the life that we really want. And Mark Manson always says something along the lines of you're choosing the set of problems that you really want. Yeah, man, that is great advice. I just want to touch on one last thing here. And I know it's not the main thing he was asking about, but it sounds to me like he has a bit of a fraught relationship with his family, especially with his parents.

And there was this moment where he's like my parents were no help my dad should have helped me he worked remotely didn't help me and i just hear some anger on his part about what kind of support or what kind of guidance he's getting from his family and i don't know quite what to make of that but i do think that whatever his next move is in his life is probably informed by his relationship with his family.

And maybe going to Italy is really important for him to get some distance from the family that he grew up in, see them more clearly carve out an identity of his own. Such an interesting theme on today's episode, Jordan. You know, we heard that in the woman who bought the house without consulting her fiance and maybe she's missed out on some important life phases. It occurs to me that maybe that is part of what he's wrestling with too. But I just want to acknowledge there might be a little bit of a complicated relationship with your family.

And with other people in your hometown, and part of what you're wrestling with here is like, why won't anybody come and help me? Why won't anybody understand me well enough to say this is the path that you should follow? But I think now you have enough information to know that nobody is going to come and just say that to you. And if they could,

It might actually rob you of a really valuable experience, which is you deciding for yourself what kind of life lights you up and is authentic to you. So while you contemplate this move to Italy, I might also look at some of these relationships and maybe think of this as an opportunity to heal some of this early family stuff that I do think is playing a big role.

Whatever you decide to do, my hope for you is that you go in with eyes wide open, with a strong work ethic, and with confidence and trust in your needs and your interest in that inner voice. It's time to take yourself more seriously, stop outsourcing to other people, the work that you can only ultimately do yourself.

I'm excited for you, man. The world is your oyster. Good luck. Go back and check out Dr. Alo Kanoja and our skeptical Sunday on sound healing if you haven't done so yet. The best things that have happened in my life and business have come through my network. That's the circle of people I know like and trust. I'm teaching you how to do the same thing for yourself. In our six-minute networking course, it's 100% free. It is not schmoozy. It's on the Thinkific platform over at sixminutenetworking.com. The drills take just a few minutes a day.

I wish I knew this stuff

This show is created in association with podcast one. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jason Sanderson, Robert Fogarty, and of course Gabriel Mizrahi. Our advice and opinions are our own, and I am a lawyer, but I am not your lawyer. So do your own research before implementing anything you hear on the show. Remember, we rise by lifting others. Show the show with those you love. If you found the episode useful, please share it with somebody else who could use the advice we gave here today. In the meantime, I hope you apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you learn, and we'll see you next time.

Join us as Adam Gamal, a Muslim Arab American, and former Egyptian refugee recounts his rise to become a key operative of one of the U.S.'s most secretive military units in this two-part podcast series. In part one, Adam delves into the high-stakes world of counterterrorism and covert operations, revealing the personal and ethical complexities of fighting terrorism from within the shadows. I came to the U.S. to give me the right to dream.

In Egypt, you don't have that option. It's not cliché, I'm not trying to recruit people to join the army. But I was like, here is a key, actually, to be as American as anybody can argue with you. And it was joined in the military. You end up there by pure determination, by having grit and by being a bit lucky. So we were basically getting our tasks from Secretary of Defense level. Join Special Operation Command in charge of three main missions.

counter narcotic, counter terrors, and hostage rescue. I believe myself, if my dad did not push me towards getting the right education, then maybe I would have went in the wrong direction. So, education is going to help people prosper. It's going to help people actually critically analyze the information they are receiving. So, when somebody is bullshitting them about, hey, if you go to the bathroom with your right foot, not your left foot, you're going to hell. If you have an educated person going to look at him and say, you know what, man, this doesn't make any fucking sense.

And then I believe to educate women is crucial because they are raising us. A lot of people spend more time with their moms than with their dad because they nurture us and lead to all of these things. So if we have a population of educated women in the Middle Eastern and any of these countries, I think these countries will prosper. And it would be harder to convince these guys to become terrorists.

Business is war and business is good. When we give people the proper education, we all live a better life. Tune in to uncover his unique journey and critical insights only he can provide on episode 978 of The Jordan Harbinger Show.