Less freedom isn't the solution

[Audience member, "Frank Petrone":] Eisel it seems like you give Melissa too much freedom in the relationship.  Revenge sex is all fine and dandy but it will not fix the problems at the core of your relationship.  If you really want to salvage your relationship you need to be a man and start making demands.  Tell her that if she wants to stay with you than she has to start taking her education seriously and not be allowed to use phones/technology which she cannot be trusted with.  How will you ever be able to marry a girl who can spend hours upon hours virtually cheating on you but cannot sit down and learn a new language?  How could you trust this person to be the mother to your child?

[Me:] You point out a number of serious problems, but then look back at your first sentence, starting the paragraph: less freedom isn't the solution.  The situation would be much simpler if too much freedom really were the (root) problem.

[Audience member:] you’re right.  I use the term ‘freedom’ very loosely but what I truly meant to communicate is that after this whole scenario you yourself have more freedom to hold Mellisa accountable for her actions.  She no longer can play innocent or cry victim because her true nature has been exposed.  If she acts like a spoiled ungrateful child than she can expect to be treated that way by the people around her.  She chose the path she is on and you chose your own path.  Because of her choices she will have deal with the fact that she has lost trust and respect.  You are no longer the bad guy for wanting to have access to her phone and knowledge of her whereabouts.  If she cannot change than good riddance, it means you deserved better to begin with.

[Me:] In this way, my own strengths become a weakness: I absolutely never would have asked to look at her phone (or read her private messages, etc.) because I know what I would do in her position, and I expect her to live up to the same moral standards I'd hold myself to (etc.).  Thus, quote, "You are no longer the bad guy for wanting to have access to her phone and knowledge of her whereabouts" —to me this seems surreal.  I never wanted to carry out surveillance: I wanted her to be motivated to do the right thing because it's the right thing to do —and (of course) these were agreements we'd made mutually and openly (i.e., she'd taken a vow).  She had everything to gain by obeying the rules, and she had everything to lose by breaking them: she would have to be stupid and crazy to cheat in an open (polyamorous) relationship… and it absolutely did not occur to me that I should really be concerned about just how stupid and crazy she was in practice (once the principe of the thing had been agreed to).

When Audience Participation Goes Wrong: Torn from the Comment Section PART TWO!

 

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…

The Seven Year Fugue: addiction is just an allegory in understanding Melissa's psychology.

 

[Count the number of days between their first communication, first sexting, declarations of love, and plans to spend the rest of their lives together: this is a timeline Melissa made herself, in retrospect, and if you really think about how few days transpire between each of the major events, it is subtly horrifying.]

"Who do you want to be five years from now?"

Who she is, today, is the product (and sum) of decisions made in the last five years.

She made a commitment to a five year plan: she was going to become a politically engaged intellectual with Chinese as her language of scholarship —perhaps in combination with economics, perhaps history, etc.

As soon as her "love affair" with Abhi began, all of that ended.

Forever.

Her life was ruled by "pornography" of a sort, yes, but it was ruled by malice to a greater extent.

She did nothing but practice her hatred and cruelty toward me for all these years, inventing the myth that she was entitled to be (simultaneously) a housewife and a porn star.

She made herself believe that she was justified in hating me because she wasn't already married and pregnant (she discusses this with Abhi many times, BTW).

She "forgets" that I never agreed to support her as a housewife (nor as a porn star)... I agreed to support her in becoming a Chinese-speaking intellectual (along with some politics, economics and philosophy in the mix).

She was supposed to have the distinguished career I couldn't have.  And she "forgot" all this precisely when she found a man (Abhi) who told her that she didn't need to do anything at all...

He told her that she didn't need to read a book, she didn't need to go to the gym...

...and he encouraged her to hate and resent the man who really was trying to help her because he made her feel "inadequate", rather than loving her just the way she was (with no further education or accomplishments required).

She cultivated this sense of resentment against me, forgetting entirely "the deal" (the commitment) that justified my moving with her to live (and study) in Taiwan in the first place, and then supporting her in Victoria (enrolled in studying Chinese) thereafter.

She reverted to teenage behavior not just in terms of webcam pornography: she "hates" the person who loves her because she can't be better than him, can't control him, etc. —and then cheats on him with a moron who is willing to agree when she rants on about how unreasonable it is for her boyfriend to force her to read a book or go to the gym (when she's totally unemployed, and my financial support was supposed to be for her studies and eventual career, nor for her perpetual status as an egomaniacal pornstar-housewife).

Many of the things we're discussing here as psychological subtext are explicitly stated as text in her dialogues with Abhi:

she openly says words to the effect of, "I hate Eisel because he refuses to flatter me; I love you, Abhi, because you flatter me endlessly no matter what, even if I'm bad and evil and wrong."

It isn't "beneath the surface", it is on the surface.

"I love you because you're helping me become a better person (sobriety, learning Chinese, politics, philosophy history)."

      —VS—

"I hate you because you're trying to force me to be someone other than who I am: you won't simp for me (you won't flatter me, adore me uncritically) like Abhi —the man who knows me as nothing more than an unpaid Cam-Whore."

[Again, look at the illustration at the top of the article: at most 13 days elapsed between their first contact (as total strangers on the internet) and Melissa sending him videos and pictures of her open vagina, masturbating —cheating on me, commencing an affair not just contrary to the usual expectations of monogamy, but very much incompatible with our own rules for polyamory / an open relationship.]