Torn from the Comment Section!

Can we save the relationship?

Should we save the relationship?

At the conclusion of the last video, we asked for advice: we asked, pragmatically, what we should now do (for Melissa to "make it up to me", in the parlance of our times).  As you will see: very nearly zero of the comments offer any suggestion along those lines!

You didn't expect me to take a poll, did you?  ;-)

I am ashamed of who we are, therefore, having done nothing wrong, I am ashamed of who I am.

I have tried to live a morally good life, Melissa.

I have tried so hard for us to live a morally good life, together.

My standards of morality are unconventional, but they are strict: I have tried to live an exemplary life by my own standards.

And I wanted to be proud of what I had done with my life when I met my daughter again, I wanted to be proud of what you had done with your life when I met my daughter again, I wanted to be proud of what we had done with our lives together when I met my daughter again.

I tried so hard to be a morally good person.

I tried so hard for us to be a morally good couple.

And you have ruined that for me: I now have to regard myself with contempt, even though I did nothing wrong, simply because I allowed you to do this to me —and because it was possible (because I trusted you) for you to do this to us.

I did nothing wrong; but now we are bad people; your actions, our consequences; your decisions, but we both have to live with the implications.

I am ashamed of what we did with our lives in the last four years.

I am ashamed of writing No More Manifestos, because of what you did to me while I was writing it.

I am now a bad person in my own eyes because of what you did, even though I did nothing wrong; and I would be ashamed to be reunited with my daughter.

You have deprived me of the only sources of dignity in my life, again and again.

I am ashamed of who I am now; not because of any decision I made; not because of any mistake I made; not because of any weakness or flaw in my character.

I am ashamed of who I am now because of something you have done, Melissa, because of decisions you made, because of who you are —because of the kind of person (ethically and intellectually) that you revealed yourself to be.

I am ashamed of who we are.

I trusted you. And you ruined me. You ruined me in the eyes of my own daughter. You ruined me in my own eyes, too: I consider myself "a bad person", because I trusted you, I enabled you, I loved you and encouraged you and supported you —and thereby (because of your deceit) I allowed this to happen, unaware of what was happening.

You are wrestling with fictions of your own authorship, Alexandru Peride.

In 2024, "stop blaming others for your problems" has become a thought terminating cliché.  And a very dangerous one.

Polyamory in the 21st Century.

When people say, "I've seen this 100 times before..."

I let them know that they've never met anyone like me before —ain't never met nobody like me 100 times before.  ;-)

The fine art of not being a hypocrite.

A conversation with the YouTuber commonly known as "Scare theater".

The culture of flattery as foreplay: when women tell me that I'm a great philosopher…