Honesty: Breaking Up With My Girlfriend… AGAIN.

honesty is not a virtue that you
cultivate as an end in itself you don't cultivate honesty just for the sake of being honest you practice honesty you get good at being honest you build up the musculature of the mind necessary to really be honest with others because it changes real world outcomes right not just honesty with your boyfriend girlfriend husband wife not just honesty with your parents you know even in a situation like a university campus you can look back at different conflicts you had with professors and ask yourself what if i had really been honest you know what if i had given it 110 what if i really let him know the reasons why i was dropping the course and i've done that i've done that with professors now i was an old man i did not have that strength of character i had none of that practice of being honest back when i was 19 years old but when i was in university at age 36 i can remember going to talk to the professor and saying look this is how many hours i put into this assignment this is how many hours i have to put into study chinese i can't stay in your course it's too much work for too low a grade i can't do this this isn't sustainable where i was really honest about what my reasons were for dropping out of course and i think that having three times two of the professors offered me positively and insisted that instead of taking their course i do an independent study credit where i'd write the essay on my own i wouldn't have to come to class and i wouldn't have to do other smaller assignments that would be a waste of my time and of the three the third he had a complete meltdown he completely freaked out i could tell you what he said it was a little bit interesting but he just he just flew off the handle and he was very very upset he was very hurt that i dropped the course and um [Music] i think there were maybe six students in that class and i did most of the talking i mean it was supposed to be a seminar where everyone speaks equally but uh you know i'm a big personality my absence was noticed by all uh when i when i dropped that course and for that professor i just mentioned he was retiring it was the final course he was teaching on his life's work and i think it actually meant a lot to him that i was there and i was doing the readings and i was asking intelligent questions that i was participating as it was before i dropped that course okay you're never going to get another chance to be honest right if i had been phony with that guy there are a million ways to talk your talk yourself out of that situation there are million there are a million ways to lie and there's only one way to tell the truth right and if you pass that up if you don't tell the truth then you'll never know and honestly brings about very different you know real world outcomes okay what you see in the background is an inflatable mattress okay i don't know if it's ever been on camera before i think we put it away or deflated it times when recording youtube videos okay i bought this deflatable mattress because my girlfriend and i have some have come so close to breaking up repeatedly we have so many times made the decision okay let's end the relationship you'll move out tomorrow or next week or as soon as possible but until then you need a separate bed sleep on this mat it's a really good air mattress by the way um if anyone's visiting if i have guests use this air mattress okay and it's a it's inflated again today it's inflating indeed because this morning again we had the conversation where i said to her i don't want this relationship to go on anymore i want you to move out i want to end this relationship all right and the truth is i have been saying that again and again for two and a half years i did not have that number memorized um the last time we went through this about a month ago a month and a half ago i think i looked up the email record and i was like when when was it that i first said look i have no hope in the futures relationship this is bad for me this is not working this is wrong i want to break up and it turns out it's been fully two and a half years that i've been saying to my girlfriend look um you know this is the this is the minimum standard i need you to live up to this is what i need to try to this is the effort i need you to make and if you can't do it let me go like let me move on let me start a new life and she has sometimes begged and sometimes demanded a second chance you know sometimes with tears sometimes with other methods and modes but this has been two and a half years of me trying to end the relationship trying to break up again and again and again and my girlfriend asking for a second chance or a tenth chance or a 20th chance again and again and again and with one exception i think we've never discussed this and you believe there was one breakup where i did come and talk about it on camera and then when we got back together again there wasn't any real discussion of what was going on or how that happened why okay look motivation is a bit of an overly vague buzzword all right right now i'm trying to study french again i don't know how high priority it's going to be in my life i don't know how committed to what i am but i've been taking photographs of my homework and taking photographs myself writing out french exercises and uploading to the internet and other people tell me mistakes of me you know other people who speak more french now you're like oh you know you got this fellow wrong got this thing you know i'm not going to call that motivation but you know taking photographs of yourself studying french and sharing them with other people and involving other people it sure is different from studying french all alone right i think it's different in a really meaningful way i believe the difference you can make in your life by coming on youtube and talking about why it is you're breaking up with your girlfriend or why it is you got back together again or what the issues are or what the struggles are i think that can be a really positive part of your life i think it could be really positive part of my girlfriend's life you know and i think that this whole relationship will be in a way better situation today if we've done that over the last four years now or at least over the last two and a half years now some of you don't believe me i mean some of you think of youtube the same way some people think of instagram as if the point of youtube is only to show yourself uh when you're clean-shaven i mean i'm not here i've got stubble sometimes i've appeared like the point is only to show yourself at the most flattering angle at the most flattering moment like just to share on instagram pictures of yourself on a sailboat diving into the ocean pictures of great happiness and accomplishment you know you share a picture of yourself collecting the diploma you know that you studied french but not the pictures of you making mistakes along the way struggling to spell things correctly in french and having people correct you all right and i'm saying you know i'm saying you the opposite sharing the struggle sharing the mistakes you make and really talking about it and inviting other people to be a witness to whatever it is you're up whatever it is you're trying to do right you know i think that's so much more meaningful and so much more constructive than what people call therapy okay uh you know my ex-wife and i when the marriage was falling apart before we split up we wanted to see a therapist together didn't help a goddamn thing it just it just made me resent more the indifference of the therapist frankly and it made me resent you know what my wife said and what she didn't say and there i mean you know you can go to therapy and talk about your problems and you go to therapy and lie about your problems and cover up your problems make it sound good for the therapist you know it could have other effects okay there was an earlier point in this relationship where my my girlfriend went in and talked to a therapist all right i in my opinion you know the potential to really learn something to really resolve to do better to do something different i think it can come from recording yourself and even if just just you go back and watch it later right if just you go back and say oh yeah that was me when i was a student learning chinese that was me when i was learning french that was me struggling with that um i think for a lot of us this can be part of developing you know the musculature the mental muscles necessary to really be honest and have some sense of pride and some sense of dignity not in the accomplishments but in the struggle all right life is not just about jumping off a sailboat and at this point i feel like we've been so dishonest with the audience in the last four years i don't know what you guys think of my relationship i don't know what you guys think of my life the last time we broke up whatever is a month ago two months ago now i wrote to several people i consider friends and said well you know we're finally doing it like we're finally gonna buy airplane tickets and like it's not just the inflatable mattress like okay melissa and i really finally bring him and they will they roll back and said like wow i thought you had this amazing positive relationship i had no idea these are people who watch my youtube videos and know me talk to me for years now i'm not out here trying to deceive anyone right but you can see the way in which this can become a powerful source of self-deception all right um who do you want to be who do you want to become what are you willing to do to make it happen so mostly questions we just ask of ourselves in isolation when you've got a relationship when you're defining a relationship when you're redefining a relationship when you're breaking up and getting back together again i think the question you've got to ask is who do we want to be who do we want to become and now what are we willing to do to make it happen