I SURVIVED: The Ninja in the Attic

Transcript

Welcome to feedback Friday. I'm your host, Jordan Harbinger. As always, I'm here with Feedback Friday producer the gluten free tortilla holding this breakfast burrito of life advice together. Gabriel Mizrahi But you know, if it's the gluten free ones, they fall apart. That's the problem. Not as bad as the spinach ones. The spinach wraps are the worst. That's a problem with this analogy. Or is it just more accurate? Depends on the show, really. On The Jordan Harbinger Show, we decode the story as secrets and skills of the world's most fascinating people and turns their wisdom into practical advice that you can use to impact your own life and those around you. We want to help you see The Matrix when it comes to how these amazing people think and behave. And our mission is to help you become a better informed, more critical thinker so you can get a much deeper understanding of how the world works and make sense of what's really happening, even inside your own mind. If you're new to the show on Fridays, we give advice to you. We answer listener questions the rest of the week. We have longform interviews and conversations with a variety of amazing folks, from spies to CEOs, athletes, authors, thinkers, performers. This week we had Neil deGrasse Tyson. I asked a lot of what I thought were, Well, let's be honest, it probably kind of inane questions about space and astronomy, but I don't care. It's my show. I do what I want. No, but this guy is so fascinating. Just a great communicator. Great science communicator. Fun. We also covered how many pints of Ben and Jerry's you can eat before you die. That was insightful. You might find yourself using that. Just saying, we also talk to my friend Maria kind of cova. This is one from the vault. She dives into the minds of con men, scam artists, what makes them tick and how we can defend ourselves? Always. She is absolutely brilliant, as you would expect, and that episode is worth re-airing, so definitely have a listen to those too. If you haven't checked them out yet, Gabe, what's the first thing out of the mailbag? Hi, Jordan and Gabe, I'm a 27 year old woman in a committed long term relationship with my caring, patient boyfriend. We've been together for almost eight years and I fully intend to spend the rest of my life with this man. Over the last two years, however, I've been confronting my history with sexual abuse. I've always struggled with my relationship to sex. I have an extremely high libido that often causes tension or creates unattainable expectations for my partner, and I've been doing a lot of introspection to understand why my desire is so overpowering. My therapist says it's common to have mismatched libidos in a relationship, and that desire fluctuates, but I still struggle with feelings of inadequacy. When my boyfriend respectfully turns me down recently, he's developed certain sex omnia habits and I often wake up to my partner touching me intimately. So hold up. Let's just clarify for anyone who doesn't know sex somany, which is apparently a real thing, is a sleep disorder where a person engages in sexual activity during their sleep. Yes, exactly. Touching themselves, touching someone else. Making noise. Sleep, sex basically, right? So she goes on, This is always jarring because in the past I actually woke up to being raped, but I can push past the immediate terror once I realize I'm safe. These interactions almost always result in us having sex, which I'm personally all for. I engage him when he's in these states and he confirms that he's awake. But in the morning, he hardly remembers anything. I've confirmed that he's comfortable with me proceeding, even if he doesn't remember. But I just feel so icky about all of it. In a way, it makes me feel like I'm raping him, which creates immense shame and guilt when I bring all of this up. He laughs and dismisses it as a quirk. I asked him if he would be open to doing a sleep study or going to therapy for these habits, and he pretty much brushed off the entire idea as silly. I want to enjoy the moments we are intimate and not go into a shame spiral every time. But is it right for me to engage with him sexually while he's in a semi lucid state? Is it OK if he's given me his consent? How do I rationalize the guilt, shame and self-disgust that come with it? Is there a way to navigate my own history and this new issue simultaneously signed, struggling with consent with my overactive gender? Wow. Well, this is a new one. Yeah, new relationship. Problem, just drop. Yeah. Seriously, this is a fresh one for us. So she's asleep in bed, dreaming, dreaming about showing up to a final in college without studying or whatever. Next thing she knows. She's waking up her boyfriend, fooling around with her in his sleep, and all of that would be fine. She's waking up to her boyfriend, fooling around with her and asleep, right? Yeah, I'm sure it's kind of fun and sexy under normal circumstances, but for her, it's very complicated because of her past. Right? It's terrifying for a second, then it's exciting. It's a few things. It's kind of confusing, right? So before we go any further. Gabe, I just have to pause and appreciate the sheer irony of these two people getting together. I don't mean to make light of this. I know it's difficult, but it's just so interesting that a guy who initiates sex in his sleep and can't remember a thing the next morning ends up with a woman who has this. Very particular history. It's like you just couldn't engineer a more triggering dynamic for either side. That is fascinating, especially because the incidence of sex comedy is so low. Like, what are the odds of this happening? I mean, I'm wondering how much to read into that, or if it's just pure chance it could be pure chance. There's no way for us to know. It's just, well, relationships are fascinating anyway. I want to start by saying I am really sorry you went through what you went through in the past. I can only imagine how terrifying that must have been. But it sounds like you've done a ton of work here. You've come such a long way in understanding what happened to you and how it's affecting your life now, and that is tremendous. The fact that you can even respond to this whole situation the way you are. I think that says a lot about how far you've come, how far you've come and also how safe you feel with your boyfriend, which is great news. Yeah, that too. And that's actually the crucial variable here. How you feel about each other, how you communicate with each other. So we did a little digging online while we were thinking about your question, and everything we found confirms that the conflict you feel around engaging with your partner during these episodes. Yeah, it's very normal. In fact, sex salmaniya and I just again want to take a moment to appreciate that this is an actual word and a real conditioned sex omnia. It sounds completely made up. And yet here we are. Anyway, sex Sonia, it can often be more stressful for these sex omnibox partner than it is for the sex Tom Deac, precisely because it brings up all the questions you're asking and consent is often at the top of the list. Is this really OK? Am I doing something wrong here? And the consensus out there seems to be that, yes, this is OK. If you guys are having open conversations around this when you're both lucid and sober and awake and you're 100 percent on the same page about rules and expectations. If your boyfriend can't fully communicate his consent while he's asleep, because who could? Then the experts we read about seem to agree that, yeah, you can and should get consent while he's awake. If he says he's good with it and you're into it, then you know. Party on Wayne Schwing. There you go. Two sound bites and one. So, yeah, got a sound board? OK, I'm going to play with a little. It's, you know, it's a special day anyway. That makes sense. But that's still probably hard for her to wrap your head around. I imagine given her past, like no matter how much he says he's OK with this. I wonder if there will always be a part of her that wonders if she's doing something wrong. She might, and that's something that she should continue to bring into therapy into her conversations with her boyfriend. And hopefully she can start to release some of the associations that she has with it. But just on a practical level of is it right for me to engage with them sexually when he's in a semi lucid state? My take is in a healthy and respectful and fully consensual relationship where he's explicitly saying, Yeah, I'm good with it, I'm into it when he's awake. That just seems consensual to me. It's not like he's a random dude that they hang out. Sometimes this is her boyfriend right there sleeping in the same bed. But even if he doesn't remember what happened the next morning, if he's saying, I don't remember everything that happened, but I know what happened and I'm absolutely good with it, then I think, yes, if you were like, Wait, what? We had sex while I was half asleep last night, that's weird. I don't know how I feel about that. I guess it's OK. Then I would say, Hang on, something's off here. Maybe he's a little embarrassed. You guys got to get clear on this, but they are clear he doesn't feel manipulated or coerced. She's happy to have sex and get it in. Everybody wins. Although I just I know we're going to get some emails from people accusing us of condoning rape or something absurd. I can already hear your fingers clack and you sex omnia KARENS. Yeah, the way I handle the inbox. So it's fine. I'll take care of that. I'm with you. The consent question is almost the easiest part of this equation. The harder part is how all of this echoes this incredibly traumatizing thing that happened in her past. Yeah, I agree. OK, that's the really difficult thing here, the fear and the shame that comes as a result of this. Yes, exactly. So to answer your question, how do you rationalize the guilt, the shame, the self-disgust? Well, I wouldn't think of it so much as rationalizing. I think it's more like acknowledging, understanding, appreciating and then hopefully processing, probably with your therapist, giving these feelings airtime and exploring them rather than trying to suppress them or pretend they're not happening or justify them away. Which in the long run, obviously never really works. I would ask yourself and again, you're probably already doing some of this with your therapist, but you can do this on your own, too. I would ask yourself, where is my guilt coming from? Is it possible that I'm maybe projecting a part of myself onto my partner in these moments? Or am I punishing myself for enjoying this aspect of our relationship? And with the shame too, what's going on? And that whole, I'm bad for doing this feeling is that residual shame from the earlier trauma. Is that shame coming from the libido mismatch stuff? Or is it coming from the fact that what you're doing really does feel like you're taking it? Vantage of him in the moment sometimes, or is the shame compounded by the way her boyfriend responds to her concerns? Well, I'm really glad you brought that up because one of the things that jumped out of me in her letter was how she asked him if he would be open to doing a sleep study or going to therapy to talk about this stuff, which I think would be a great idea for both of them. And he brushed off the whole idea is silly. I could see that making her feel dismissed, maybe even kind of hurt, like, Oh, this whole sex in my sleep thing that's making you feel like you're raping me and sending you into a post-traumatic shame spiral? That's nothing. It's just this weird thing I do sometimes. You know, to your point, Jordan, I have a feeling that that response might increase her shame around all of this, because when he laughs it off and refuses to talk about it, then suddenly she's alone with all of this right? She's the one with the difficult past. She's the one who has to go to therapy. She's the one who has to worry about whether his sex omnia is fair to both of them, right? And he's sitting across from her at the breakfast table the next morning, eating frickin Cap'n Crunch and shrugging your shoulders like sleep banging. That's a silly quirk. Instead of saying, Listen, I have zero qualms about us hooking up when I'm half asleep, but I can see that this is bringing up a lot of stuff for you. So sure. Yeah, let's talk about it. Let's go to therapy. Let me do a sleep study. Let's figure this out. Yeah, I think if you just took that approach, even if it didn't become a whole huge thing in their relationship, that would go a long way in reducing some of the feelings. She has these difficult feelings because shame. We talk about this all the time in the show. It's isolating. It makes you want to withdraw. It makes you want to hide. It's a feeling that makes you feel like you're different and alone, and I think that's how she feels right now. Yeah. And then when you are alone with it, it grows because it's not being processed, right? And I think that's a huge, unspoken thing in this letter. Absolutely. Which brings us back to where we started. I think this question is less about the mechanics of consent and more about the quality of their relationship. The consenting matters, of course. But what she's really asking is what to do with these feelings and how do these feelings get explored and worked through in my relationship could not agree more. So my take just to be very direct here is, first off, keep bringing all of this into therapy. I'm really happy to hear you're there. You're still very much in the process of working through all the trauma. And it makes sense that all of this is still sort of in flux up in the air. Second, is there a way to navigate your own history and this new issue simultaneously? I think that's something only you can answer by being very attuned to your own needs, your own responses. Maybe the sex omnia thing is another useful window into the trauma work that you're doing. But I could also see it being very triggering and confusing. So my take is sure you can try to do both. Why not? But if you feel that the sex salmaniya stuff is retraumatizing you or just making things more difficult, maybe you hit pause for a little while. I think that's a good question for your therapist. My last thought is I would try to help your boyfriend appreciate what all of this is bringing up for you and invite him to help you work through it. Or at least acknowledge it a little bit more. Because again, I think that's a huge piece of why this otherwise fun activity is creating this profound shame. Spiral agreed completely. And by the way, if your boyfriend wants to manage the sex omnia a little bit better, he might want to talk to someone himself, as you suggested, or at least get a sleep study done. Look, I did a sleep study once because I was I was snoring like I had huge tonsils that I had out as an adult and like, you have to do a sleep study first. You basically just go to a hospital and get in bed and they stick electrodes to you. It's interesting. If nothing else, you sleep over and then you get up in the morning. Nothing hurts. It's not inconvenient. It's totally. This is a really light lift. Not a big deal in your insurance. Almost certainly covers it. Interesting, especially if you got a rare disorder that causes you to bang people in your sleep could be really helpful. I mean, when we were doing some research on this, we found out that there are actually a few common triggers for sex omnia, and they include stress, lack of sleep, poor sleeping conditions, anxiety, substance abuse. So if any of those are playing a role in your boyfriend's life, that might be a way to work on this some more. So come on, Gabe. She's finally getting the action she wants, and you're going to take that away from her. Let her have this one. You're right, I'm being a buzzkill. Actually, what you should do is keep him up for 36 hours straight, assembling IKEA furniture and leave the heater running all night. Then you'll really get some good night time. Lucky. That's the spirit crush, some Xanax and a yellow rice pudding and get freaky. But seriously, Gabe's right. If this disorder is causing more distress than pleasure, I definitely take a look at those factors. But because your boyfriend is shying away from opening up about all this and that could be a larger theme in the relationship, I do think therapy could actually be really good for him in the bigger picture. Plus, I can't imagine sleep banging leaves him feeling refreshed in the morning, either. It's probably a compounding effect here. You've been busy that Oprah is seriously so. I'm sorry you're struggling with this, and I'm sorry it's bringing up some difficult stuff. But I also think that the fact that it's bringing up all this stuff with the right support, this could be an opportunity to get an even deeper under. Ending of where these feelings come from, what drives them, how to respond to them, and long term, that could be valuable as long as you feel safe and in control and taken care of, of course. So I hope you get to do that. Take care of yourself. And good luck and have fun. Sleep banging sounds like you'll get more action after 3:00 a.m. than most of us get during prime time kind of jelly. Not going to lie. You know who loves a good four a.m. sleep shag Gabriel. The amazing sponsors that support this show. We'll be right back. This episode is sponsored in part by HIV, and you'll know I've been taking my health and fitness a lot more seriously these past couple of years, especially once I had kids. I want to be able to run around with them, get up off the floor, move them into their college dorm. If that's still a thing. In 20 years I've been taken VMS ketone IQ supplements. It has really helped during my workouts especially, and I'm skeptical of all supplements. Let me just put that out there. I really thought that this is going to be potentially nonsense. I didn't even necessarily want to take them on as a sponsor, but I've been taking key to an IQ regularly for a few months now, and I can definitely tell when I take it and when I don't, I'm not as hungry. Later on in the day, I'm in a better mood. My workouts are totally different. It gives you a focus for work that is different, better than coffee and also pairs well with coffee. I even thought that it was the coffee giving me a boost initially, right? Obvious sort of scapegoat for feeling more energetic, but I tested it, you know, anecdotally with myself, sample size one. It really is the stuff that's making me feel less angsty and more focused, so I don't know what to make of it other than they're on to something. Besides, as I joke with the company, it tastes absolutely vile. So you know, it works. If the ketones don't wake you up in the morning, the taste absolutely will. I wouldn't steer you guys wrong, at least not on purpose, and I won't recommend anything that I haven't tried myself. As you guys probably know, for 20 percent off your order of Ketone IQ, go to HIV Amazon.com Premature Jordan again, that's HIV Men dot com promo code Jordan for 20 percent off Ketone IQ. This episode is also sponsored by BetterHelp Online Therapy. I used to have a bad habit of complaining and I mean a lot of complaining, not just like the casual complaint here and there. I wasn't like that to begin with, but an old business partner complained a lot, and after spending years and years and years together, it rubbed off on me as how we related to each other. And it gets old. Fast complaining rewires your brain for negativity. It doesn't solve the problem. It scares a lot of other people away, and it took me a long time to deprogram that impulse. After seeking the help of a therapist, she helped me extricate myself from that situation. Things have improved a lot since then. So if you've ever thought about giving therapy a try for complaining or for anything else, better help is amazing. It's all virtual. So do it from the comfort of your own home any hour of the day they're available in any time zone, 24 hours a day. I got people in other countries doing this get matched with a therapist after filling out a brief survey. And if you don't jive with your therapist, switch at any time. There's no charge for that. Jen requested a therapist with at least two kids small ones so she could understand her perspective as a mom, and they made that match the first time around in 15 or so minutes. No joke. That's kind of insane, and Jen looks forward to our sessions every week. It's really helped out a lot. When you want to be a better problem solver, therapy can get you there. Visit better help.com/ Jordan today to get 10 percent off your first month. That's better. Yelp.com/ Jordan. Thank you so much for listening to and supporting the show. Your support of our advertisers is what keeps us going around here. By the way, I know there's a lot of codes in there. Different in the URL is a different. We put them all in one place. Jordan Harbinger RT.com Slash deals is where they are. You can also search for the sponsors using the search box right there on the website at Jordan Harbinger dot com as well. So please consider supporting those who support this show. And now back to Feedback Friday. All right, what's next? Hey, Jordan and Gabe. I'm a 31 year old librarian working in higher education, and I'm strongly considering a move to Knoxville, Tennessee, to be closer to my family and spend as much time as I can with my grandparents while they're still alive. The thing is, while Knoxville is a pretty liberal city, Tennessee as a whole is very much not. Recent legislation in the state has made abortion in any form almost entirely illegal, starting at fertilization, and that's giving me pause. I'm very passionate about women's health care, and I've done a lot of activism for Planned Parenthood. At the same time, I resist many people's impulse to write off the South when it comes to regressive policies. If I move there, I would probably resume activism and work to find support for women seeking safe abortions. On top of my other job, I'm now starting to get interviews with hiring managers down there. I definitely want to bring up that. I feel a lot of mixed emotions. Moving to a state that has so blatantly limited my bodily autonomy, and I want to ask them what they plan to do for the safety of their female employees if they needed to seek an abortion, especially if they were victims of violence, even if the answer is nothing. I want to start that conversation. Do you think I should bring this up in my interviews or is this unwise to discuss signed keep my feelings on the low or make them known post Roe? Interesting question. I know this is on a lot of people's minds right now. Obviously, a lot of women, but men too. And this is a real concern, especially for somebody who's passionate about women's health and activism, as she certainly seems to be. But this is obviously a tricky conversation to have, because who knows how to land with a hiring manager specifically? You have to be very thoughtful about how you bring concerns up during the interview process itself. And we wanted to run all of this by an expert. So we reached out to Michelle Lederman, author, speaker and top notch executive coach. And Michelle's take was, she thinks there's a way to bring this topic up without it being too risky. And the key, she said, is whether you bring this up more as a policy thing versus as a personal plan. So you said you want to bring up that you have mixed emotions about moving to Tennessee. But Michelle said she isn't sure if employers need to know your feelings about moving to the state, getting so deep into all that from the jump. Not totally necessary, but what you can do is ask them if there's a company position on access to abortion, what supports they have in place for keeping female employees healthy and safe in terms of actual policies and benefits, and also how they've handled activism among employees, either on an individual level or as a company overall. In Michelle's view, that can get the conversation going and give you a sense of their position without them knowing about your mixed emotions, so to speak. And I think she's spot on. Your mixed emotions are fair. That's for you to work through. Not for employers to know. The last thing you want to do is bring that energy to an interview where you might be signaling that you're not super hyped about the role or that you're bringing possibly inappropriate things to them from the get go. You want employers to fall in love with you. That's your job in these interviews. Besides your mixed feelings, they're not going to influence their policies anyways. All you need to do is learn about them so you can use that data to resolve these mixed feelings on your own. Now, Michel did say that part of this depends on how much you want these employers to know about you. And if you do want them to know certain things, then maybe the risk is worth the knowledge. But Michelle's take, and again, I think she's absolutely right. If you need the job, then your best bet is to approach this from a policy perspective. So go crush these interviews, sniff around for the information you need and find an employer whose values fit yours. Once you're in a great role, OK, then you can start speaking up on this issue if that's appropriate. But I would argue that that comes a later big thanks to Michelle Letterman for her wisdom here. If you want to learn more about Michelle, she writes a terrific newsletter called Connected Leadership. We'll link to that in the show notes. You can also sign up for it on her website. Michelle, tell us later. Mint.com We're also going to link to Michelle Letterman's book The Connectors Advantage in the show notes as well. It's a terrific book. I highly recommend checking it out, especially if you're in a situation like this, and good luck. You can reach us Friday at Jordan Harbinger dot com. Please keep your emails concise. Try to use a descriptive subject line that'll make our job a whole lot easier. And if there's something you're going through, any big decision that you're wrestling with or you just need a new perspective on stuff life, love, work, what to do if you found out your wife is secretly an escort? Whatever's got you staying up at night lately hit us up Friday at Jordan Harbinger dot com. We're here to help, and we keep every email anonymous. All right, what's next? Hey, Jordan and Gabe. I'm thirty nine. I'm divorced with twin five year old boys and I've always been a partier. Eventually, I got hooked on fentanyl and ended up in rehab a couple of times. The second time three years ago seemed promising, but I relapsed again about a year ago. I quit again and something is different this time. I truly feel and act differently. I'm a good man now. I've dated and it goes really well, all of my interactions with co-workers, friends and strangers are better than ever. The thing is, I'd like to reconcile with my ex-wife and raise our kids together, but she can't shake the city person I was not too long ago. Proving myself day after day is working, but it's slow. I don't want my kids to be teenagers by the time she decides. Is there anything more I can do to prove my worth? But I'm not considering signed the second act sooner? Wow. Well, first of all, well done on getting clean. That is a huge accomplishment, especially with fentanyl, man. That stuff is brutal. Brutal. I can only imagine how much strength it must take to kick a substance like that I've seen. We've all seen the documentaries. Yeah, we've all seen the news. It's clearly been a rough road and the fact that you have a year clean and you're feeling and behaving differently and you're relating to all these people in a new way, it's phenomenal. And recovery is a lifelong process. So I've heard, I'm sure you know that as well, but it really does sound like you've turned a big corner here, so it makes sense that you want to get back together with your ex. You feel like a whole new person, and this could be a whole new chapter. But that's harder for her. I'm going to go ahead and guess you put your family through some awful stuff, and it was probably very painful to watch you use and relapse twice. So asking her to give you another chance, it is asking for a lot. It's asking her to forgive you. It's asking her to have faith in you. And it's asking her to open herself up to the possibility of being hurt all over again if things don't go well. To say nothing of what that would mean for your kids. I'm putting myself in the same shoes. I just I wouldn't want my kids to find one of their parents overdosed in the house or something like that. Or to be around that, I just wouldn't. And you're not wrong to want to get back with her. I'm just calling this out so we can appreciate why this is such a huge decision for her. So my advice and this might not be exactly what you want to hear, but here it is. I would channel most of your energy into becoming the best person that you can be the best father, the best colleague, the best friend, the best student of recovery rather than trying to get your ex back. That can still be on your radar. And maybe that's one of your motivations for staying sober. And look, that's great if it is. But I would think of getting your ex back less as a goal in and of itself and more as a byproduct of your recovery and your growth. And I'm going to say that again, because I think it's really important. Rather than trying to convince your ex to see you as this new person so that she takes you back. I would invest your energy into becoming that new person and allowing her to come to her own decision here. And by the way, when I used to give dating advice for a living years and years and years ago, this advice was the exact same drugs in an addiction or not, when somebody would say, How do I get my ex back? The answer is don't try to do that, work on yourself, and either that will happen or it won't. But trying to get someone back is a process. It's fraught in many ways, and it's a flawed idea to begin with. And I say that for a few reasons. First, I think your biggest priority right now is staying sober and rebuilding your life. You're a year into recovery, which is amazing, but this is still early days, man. A year ago, you relapsed a year ago, you probably broke your wife's heart again. I understand how badly you want your old life back. But I think you also need to give yourself the time you need to rebuild this foundation for yourself. Not only so you can reconcile with her, but so that you can be healthy and happy. And second, if you ever did get back with your wife. You need that foundation to be rock freakin solid man. Otherwise, you're at risk of recreating the same situation again. And look at it this way. If you did get another chance right now and you relapsed because your foundation wasn't 100 percent rock solid. You're never getting another chance, probably. So in my opinion, it is much better to take your time and be safe rather than sorry. This is not time wasted. This is time well spent on becoming the guy who deserves his life and his wife and his family. Yeah, I agree. Well, said Jordan. I also think that he needs to respect her process here, too. Like when he said that proving himself day after day is working, but it's slow and he doesn't want his kids to be teenagers by the time she decides. Well, I understand that he's impatient, but what about what's going on for her? To your point, Jordan, she might have some very valid reasons to be skeptical or guarded. I mean, she's probably a bit traumatized to by everything they went through. He's come a very long way for sure, but he's also had a checkered past. He only has a year clean. She might need to see more before she's ready, and that is fair. And so I find myself wanting to say, I understand your eagerness. I appreciate your confidence. It's great. But I also think you need to be respectful and patient while your wife goes through her process. Because this isn't just about where you are on your timeline isn't the only one that matters. This is a really big deal for your wife and your kids, too. I could not agree more. If you want to. Speed things up, and it sounds like you do. I wouldn't do it by performing the role of the guy who has his s**t together, so she says, OK, let's give it a shot. I would do it by working every single day to become that guy. Be a present father, be a solid friend to your ex. Be a trustworthy colleague. Be those things. Not because you want your lady back, but because those things matter. And I promise that if you keep working on becoming those things, which I know you're already doing, she will take notice. She will have more reason to trust you. So you're still going to be serving your original goal here. You're just going to be doing it for the right reasons, which I think is crucial for anyone in life, but especially for somebody in recovery. So good luck, man. Take care of yourself and everything will fall into place as it should. We're rooting for you. And yeah, don't be too hard on yourself here, man. A year sober from frickin fentanyl. You've dodged a bullet multiple times. Yeah, so kudos to you for that. You know what's even better than wildly dangerous illegal substances? The products and services that support this show? We'll be right back. This episode is sponsored in part by Squarespace. Have you ever thought I'm just an ordinary dude or do that? Do I really need a website? 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Progressive will be with you 24-7 365 days a year, so you're protected no matter what multitask right now. Quote your car insurance at progressive.com to join the over 27 million drivers who trust Progressive, Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. National Annual Average Insurance Savings by new customers surveyed who saved with progressive between June 2020 and May 2021. Potential savings will vary discounts not available in all states and situations. Thank you so much for listening to and supporting the show. All of our advertisers deals discount codes are all in one place at Jordan Harbinger Akam Slash deals. You can also search for sponsors using the search box on the website as well. Please consider supporting those who support this show. Now back to Feedback Friday. All right, what's next? Hi, Jordan and Gabe. A friend recently invited me to join her women's circle. She described how empowering and rewarding it was for her promoting sisterhood, emotional support and women mutually holding space to help manifest each other's dreams. Ah yes, because when I get supernatural manifestation powers, I'm using them to help other people's dreams come true. Obviously, maybe these women are just really generous. You don't know. You don't know what's going on in this women's group. In the orientation, though, she explained how the structure of the group requires 15 women to reach completion. One at the top. Two below her. Four below them. And eight at the bottom. And how each woman is required to give a quote unquote gift of $1440 to the most senior woman. Upon joining after the quote-unquote Energy is complete. In other words, once eight women at the bottom have paid off the top person, she leaves the group and the two women below her form two new circles. Eventually, you two get to the top and get your money back. Eightfold eleven thousand five hundred twenty dollars. Ah yes, a financial circlejerk known as energy. And by the way, this just occurred to me if I draw a diagram of one person at the top two, people below them for people below them and eight at the bottom, it looks a little bit like I know, I don't know what is this? What is that shape called again? It's like, is it a trapezoid? It's kind of, well, it's more like there's a pointy top in the. The bottom is wider and there's slanty lines. Oh, right, it's a pyramid, right, right, right. Yeah. Yes. Go on, go on. This is all starting to sound suspiciously Ponzi schemes. Yeah. Pyramid schemes. Yep. Yes. So I told her I'd think about it. I then went down the internet rabbit hole, finding countless stories of similar women's groups being busted by sting operations, disgruntled former members turning in the group to authorities and the women involved facing large fines and even going to jail. When I declined the invite and raised the question of legality with my friend sharing some of the links I had found. She explained that they were taking care of any legal risks by having all new members sign a letter saying that they give their money unconditionally as a gift. It was her understanding that this made it legal under the IRS gifting laws. I'm dubious about all of this, and although I feel like I've done as much as I can to persuade my friend to reconsider her involvement, I'm understandably still concerned for her. Is there really a gray area where something like an illegal pyramid scheme can become legal if the parties involved signed such a letter signed? Roll with this loophole or dodge a sinkhole? Oh boy ! Well, these scams just keep getting dumber and dumber, don't they gave you? It's actually incredible to me. We've taken so many questions about MLMs multilevel marketing schemes, Ponzi schemes and other financial scams at this point. I just I think it's pretty clear they are all a waste of time. But this whole having people sign a letter saying they're gifting their money away, that's a new wrinkle. What a classy operation. We haven't heard about this particular variation before, so we reached out to not one, but two experts to figure out if this is on the up and up or if this is still a total scam and you're going to see this woman circle busted on the local news one day. The first person we spoke to was Bill on a free on New York transactional tax and planning attorney. And the first thing Bill said was pyramid schemes like this. Yes, indeed. It was a pyramid the whole time. They're very much a grey area in the law. Some operate without any opposition from the government. Others are taken to task. As he put it, What's right isn't always legal, and what's legal isn't always right. And that can be confusing, which is part of what draws so many vulnerable people in. In Bill's view, though, operating under the guise of gifting that does not help matters, and any attorney drafting gift letters to try and legalize this should be very careful. And look, I'm guessing an attorney didn't even draft. This is probably just something she found in the internet template for Microsoft Word. Yeah, it's a template. It's definitely not even from legal zoom, as he explained it to us gifts in the legal sense. Those are made without compensation if you can't play without pay. This is not a gift. It's an entrance fee with an expected 10x return. The payment up the chain that should constitute income to the recipient, and it should be reported to the IRS, which I'm of course, I'm sure they're doing that right. So bills take to avoid parting with hard earned money and then having to fight in a court of law to get it back. Your instinct was absolutely right. Don't sign anything. Don't give anything. Now, where my mind went was, should you warn other people about this group? You know, potentially save other victims. But Bill made a good point, which is you have to be careful about how you express your thoughts about this group and who you share them with, as he put it. Reporting concerns to the law is one thing, but bashing Suzy and her magical, energetic women's circle verbally or on social media that could have negative consequences. This woman is arguably running a business. Look, it's probably an illegal business, but it's still a business. And she could argue damages if the scheme ever implodes, especially as a result of you warning other people. Bill said he doesn't know of any judge who wouldn't just toss a libel case grounded in what is an illegal act. But still, anybody can be sued for any reason at any time, and defending yourself costs time and money. So it's probably best if you just sidestep the drama. Honestly, yeah, I hate that because I want her to go on Twitter and just drag these women definitely defrauding people, but that is really good advice. The second person we spoke to was Jeffrey Shurtleff, a federally licensed tax practitioner and the owner of Yorktown Main Tax and Accounting and Huntington Beach. And Jeffrey was even more blunt with us. In his view with the IRS, consider $1440 a gift. Ngoepe does a signed agreement make it a gift? Also, nope. His advice really echoed Bill's advice. A gift requires the donor that is the new member handing over the 14:40 to be doing so with no expectation that they will get something in return from the donee, which is the senior woman who's collecting eleven and a half thousand dollars. The 14:40 That's actually payment for services or as Susie and her coven of fraudsters call it, the energy and for membership also in a social club. So the new member should be reporting this payment on a 10 99 NSC, and the senior woman probably needs to claim it as self and. Women income. And if they don't. Jeffrey said that there could be civil and or criminal penalties for a social group to avoid reporting and paying income tax. It has to be exempt under I.R.S. 501 C seven, which, by the way, that's different from a 501 C3, you know, like the non-profit status. But Jeffrey said that groups like this are not exempt because of something called enforcement. So basically, in this case, an individual member of the organization is personally benefiting from the money paid by new members, and that is not OK. Jeffrey also confirmed that the IRS would not accept a letter or agreement that would make anything about this legal, even if it were signed by both parties. So this whole letter thing, it really does sound like total B.S.. So the best thing you could have done is stay far away from these folks, which I'm glad that you did. And I would also tell your friend to do the same, whether this group ends up getting investigated or not. This is almost certainly fraudulent, probably a scam or at least dicey kind of like borderline case shady. It's just honestly, at the end of the day, whatever the legal status is, it's a total waste of time. A total waste of time. And for not that much money, right? Imagine spending half a decade or more of your life fighting off the IRS and the feds and defending yourself against a lawsuit, or just always looking over your shoulder because you wanted to turn 4500 bucks into 11 grand. That's not even close to worth it. The 11 grand not even going to be the retainer on your attorney to fight one of the cases. Nothing is worth it, but certainly not fourteen hundred bucks or 11 grand or whatever you end up getting. We're also going to share some great resources Jeffrey sent us to help you and your friend better understand the laws at play here. We'll link to all of those in the show notes for you. One of them is the IRS Office of Tax Shelter Analysis, and there's a hotline there for reporting abusive tax shelter transactions. If you ever feel moved to drop a dime on Suzy and her merry band of fraudsters, that's your call. I'd probably do it because I hate scammers like this. But honestly, this fraud is a drop in the bucket compared to, I don't know, PPP fraud or billionaires with offshore shell companies hiding assets or whatever. There are many more serious criminals out there. It's always an option, though, but how would you even report people like this, like the IRS? There are some women in my hometown sharing some very weird energy. You should know about it like I totally. I have some real concerns about some of the dream manifestation I'm seeing in my women's circle. Agent Forester Yeah, yeah. The Bad Vibes division of the Financial Crimes Unit, that's where you got to take this. Exactly. And anyway, I'm with Gabe run from these people as fast as you can. Gather all the information and share it with your friend. I hope she can hear you and see this more objectively. You could save her a lot of trouble down the line. And if you need some help in approaching her, I'd check out the article and the deep dive we did on the psychology of people caught up in scams. We'll drop those in the show notes as well. Sending you good thoughts. Maybe try manifesting a group that doesn't defraud other people or the U.S. government and now must say. All right. Next up. Hey, guys, about eight years ago, I had this assistant who was always chasing this one girl. She wouldn't give him the time of day, so he worked his way in with her mom. He would help her around her business, her yard work and eventually in the bedroom. Oh, he really worked his way in with her mom. Worked his way. Yeah. Yeah, he would brag about it constantly, and I believed him as he was known to sleep with older ladies, including his mom's friends, and I even witnessed one leaving his apartment before work one morning. The thing is, the girl he was chasing originally this older woman's daughter, she finally accepted his advances, and now they're getting married in less than two months. I'm not friends with this woman or her daughter in any way, although this guy and I could be connected later on through work, although it's unlikely. Apart from all this, I don't like this guy and I have no respect for him. He's racist, he's extremely dumb, and he's very tone deaf. Am I morally obligated to tell his fiancee about what he did and how do I do that without blowing my cover signed? Watching from the sidelines while this slime climbs into the bloodline? This is where I got to make my own sound bite. And here's to you, Mrs. Robinson. That's what this reminds me of. Yeah, what can I say? Another feedback Friday banger. What a way to end the week gave literally a banger in this case. I thought I'd mix it up, you know, give everyone a little moral depravity to take it to the weekend. Seriously, this question makes me want to take a shower. A long one, a scalding one in nail polish remover. So, OK, this guy is bad news, right? He's agreed. He's a piece of work. He's a piece of work. Absolutely. I mean, I don't know what his plan is here. He's obviously very manipulative. But this also means that the mother is keeping this huge secret from her daughter as well, right? She's not telling her daughter that she's about to marry her former boy toy. That's incredibly messed up as well. Yeah, good point. They're both putting his fiancee in an awful spot. Maybe the mom is just so ashamed that she's slept with this guy. She'd rather just bury it. Maybe, although I don't really get that logic because the mom know it doesn't sound like she did anything wrong here unless you still. Married to somebody or something. I mean, assuming she didn't know that he had designs on her daughter, right, right. And if he was running a game on her to get to the daughter, then the mom was the victim too, and she could go to her daughter and say, OK, this is really weird and I'm mortified. But your boyfriend and I had a thing and I should have told you earlier and he won't tell you, but obviously you need to know before you get married, right? That's the right thing to do. That's the reasonable thing to do. Of course, it's the mother's job to tell the daughter, not this guy who randomly employed this guy eight years ago, but the fact that she didn't tell her daughter that tells me that there's something off with this family. I just don't get it. I mean, how can you attend your daughter's wedding when you were sleeping with the groom? Dude, that's going to be a weird walk down the aisle. I'll tell you that much. I didn't even think of that. Yeah. Just imagine giving your daughter away to the guy you used to paying after he pruned your azaleas. Like then and then watching them make out before they spend the rest of their lives together. Yes, while you clap and smile. I don't think it's going to be the rest of their lives. I think this is a ticking frickin time bomb that's going to go off any minute for sure, whether this guy spills the beans or not. And it's going to be a nightmare when it's a total nightmare. Yeah. So the million dollar question, should this guy tell the daughter what he knows? Honestly, this woman deserves to know the truth. I'm not totally convinced that this guy has to be the one to tell her, though, but he's the only one who knows. Besides, again, Mrs. Robinson and the African American Gigolo over here. Well, that's true. But he's not friends with this woman. He's not friends with his mom. He doesn't have any connection to them. If anything, I get the sense that he wants to drop a dime on this guy because he knows he's a POW as he hates this guy. Hmm. And, you know, not exactly, because he's really looking out for this poor woman. Well, he'd probably say that he's doing both, but you're making a good point. What are this guy's motivations, really? I think it's revenge a little bit. Or at least like, I hate this guy. He's ignorant, he's racist, he's tone deaf. And now I finally have an opportunity to mess him up. Yeah, but is that so bad? If this guy has been manipulating people and treating them poorly and spouting hateful crap for the last eight years, and now he's about to break some poor woman's heart? Does it really matter why the guy writing in wants to bust him? I mean, I think it does, kind of, because when you're not clear on why you're doing something, things tend to get messy. And look, it's kind of like that. You remember that question. We took Jordan a while back from the guy who's OK, so he had an employee and the guy was kind of a jerk, if I recall, and he and his wife were engaging in PPP fraud. Yeah, they bought a camera and a vacation and a deck. Yeah, I remember that this guy was trying to decide whether to report them to the IRS or whatever the body was. And if I remember correctly, our take was, yeah, report him. But do it because he's breaking the law and he's hurting all taxpayers, not because you have a personal vendetta against this guy. I just think when you start to act like a vigilante for personal reasons, things get messy and they get gross and it doesn't always make you feel better. I hear you and I get it. But for me personally, I find it really hard to separate those two things out, like this kid who's sleeping with the mom and the daughter. He wouldn't be in this situation if he weren't a complete squeeze ball in the first place. It fits a larger pattern. So, of course, the guy writing and hates him, the guys hate about his personal feelings about this dude. Confirm exactly what he's doing now. OK, so you know, that's a very fair point. But OK. The other reason I'm hesitating again, there's someone here who should be doing the right thing, and that's the mom. She's the one with a great reason for telling her daughter the truth, and she's not doing that. And that is their business. Not really his. Well, OK, I can't argue with you there. It should obviously be coming from mom and if it comes from somebody else instead of mom, that's going to blow up the family. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't want to be in that room at all. But in a world where she won't tell her daughter this crucial thing, I do wonder if it falls to this guy who's watching it all from the outside. And yeah, it'll be devastating to her when she finds out. But in the long run, she'll probably be grateful that somebody told you, Yeah, OK. Fair point. Like, it might not be his job, but is he creating a net good by giving her the heads up? Exactly. And I think he is, even if he's overstepping a little. But I really do see both sides of this, and I guess ultimately it just comes down to this guy's values what he believes is the right thing to do, right? As for how to tell this woman what happened without blowing your cover, I think that's pretty easy. You could create an anonymous email account or a Facebook account and a her. You could send an anonymous letter in the mail. If you want to go old style, you could cut out letters from different magazines and paste them on a blank piece of paper, like a ransom note from the 1970s. You could hire a plane to write, Brandon was being in your mom between Home Depot runs in the sky, you know? Yeah, that's my personal favorite. It'll set you back a little bit, but that's really making a statement. That's poetry. There are loads of ways to do this. You just have to get creative. But yeah, I would make sure you cover your tracks and keep this as far away from your business as possible. If you decide to go through with it, just minimize any potential. Low back, Gabe, family secrets can just be wild. The situations people get into this is just insane, insane. I feel bad for this young woman. She's obviously the innocent party here. Her mom's, between a rock and a hard place, made the wrong decision for a long period of time. I mean, they're about to get married. She should have said something like when she met the guy. Oh my God, I used to bang that guy. I don't see him anymore. Just jeez, I hope she finds out and dumps this guy ASAP one way or the other. Hope you all enjoyed that. I want to thank everyone who wrote in this week and everyone who listened. Thank you so much. Don't forget to check out the episodes with Neil deGrasse Tyson and Maria Cova on scams if you haven't had a chance yet. If you want to know how I managed to book all these great people and manage my relationships using software systems and tiny habits every single day. Check out our six minute networking course. The course is free. It's over on the Thinketh platform at Jordan Harbinger.com/ course. I'm teaching you how to dig the well before you get thirsty. I hear about this all the time. People get lazy with networking, they don't prioritize it. And then once they need those relationships, they are too late and this stuff takes up just a few minutes a day. Again, it's free. Jordan Harbinger.com/ courses where you can find it a link to the show notes for the episode can be found at Jordan Harbinger dot com transcripts in the show notes. I'm at Jordan Harbinger on both Twitter and Instagram, where you can connect with me right there on LinkedIn. You can find Gabe on Twitter at Gabe Mizrahi or on Instagram at Gabriel Mizrahi. This show is created in association with PodcastOne. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jace Sanderson, Robert Fogarty, Ian Baird, Molly Ocampo, Josh Ballard and, of course, Gabriel Mizrahi. Our advice and opinions are our own, and I'm a lawyer, but I am not your lawyer. So do your own research before implementing anything you hear on the show. Ditto bill on a free and Jeffrey Shurtleff. You can contact Bill at Walsh and on a free W AOL.com, and you can find Jeffrey at Yorktown Maine Tax and Accounting Yorktown Maine Gqom. Remember, we rise by lifting others, so share the show with those you love. And if you found the episode useful, please share it with somebody else who can use the advice we gave here today. In the meantime, do your best to apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you listen and we'll see you next time. If you're looking for another episode of The Jordan Harbinger Show to sink your teeth into. Here's a sample of my interview with someone with decades of experience in protecting people at every level from the top levels of government to victims of spousal abuse. Violence is a reality. If you're not prepared for its possibility, you'll be caught off guard by its eventuality. Learn how to hone your sixth sense for danger. Discover how to spot the red flags that signify someone's a likely abuser, con artist or predator. Here's a bite. Sixteen years ago, when I was 20, I got into a taxicab in Mexico City and it turned out to be a fake taxi. And the guy was driving me further and further away from my destination further and further away, and my brain went through this process. It said, No, it's probably going to be fine. I know he said he was going to ask for directions, but he's a cabbie. You should know that. No, no, no, no. But I mean, I've never been kidnapped before, so that can't be what's happening. And then I remembered some guy on Oprah in 1994 or something like that when I was a kid sitting there with my mom, who said never go to the secondary location. And I only realized a decade and a half later when reading the book The Gift of Fear that that was you. Everybody with a normal functioning mind and body system does have intuition, and what we have in varying degrees is our willingness to honor it and listen to it and learn about it. It's our most extraordinary mental and physical process. The stomach lining. As an example, has 100 million neurons, a hundred million heart cells. That's more neurons than there are in a dog's brain. When you hear the word our gut, you know, I had a gut feeling. It's a very accurate description of what's going on in these two brains, in the gut and in the skull. Communicate with each other through the body. And so the whole mind body system delivers intuition to you, which is knowing without knowing why knowing, without having to stop at all the letters from A to Z on the way, just getting from A to Z automatically. It doesn't really matter how things should be. It only matters how it is and how it is in terms of reality in this moment, and reality is the highest ground you can get to. That's the place where you can see what's coming. I'm so glad to hear that story and it makes my day. That means a lot to me, particularly as I'm about to hear. I hope how well you prevail because I know we're here having a conversation. So you did well. I slid behind the driver's seat and he reached over towards the glove box and I grabbed him and threw him back to his seat because I figured he had a knife or a gun in there or something. And that's when he made it fast. For more, including the most important thing we can do to cut potentially threatening people out of our lives forever. Check out episode 329 with Gavin de Becker.