1406: Chase Forbidden Fruit or Stick with the Galoot? | Feedback Friday

1406: Chase Forbidden Fruit or Stick with the Galoot? | Feedback Friday

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Jordan Harbinger: This episode is brought to you by Xero.

That's Xero with an X. Running a small business and managing your finances shouldn't make your day more complicated. Learn more at Xero.com.

Welcome to Feedback Friday. I'm your host, Jordan Harbinger. As always, I'm here with Feedback Friday producer, the detachable European handheld shower wand, to my American stationary shower head, helping me get into all your existential nooks and crannies, Gabriel Mizrahi.

Gabriel Mizrahi: I never use that handheld shower thing. I just leave it in the clampy thing and I shower like a goddamn American.

Jordan Harbinger: Same. I don't want to have to do more work in the shower. Just let gravity do the job.

Come on.

Gabriel Mizrahi: That's right. So undignified, the detachable shower head. It feels like you're power washing a car or something, like hosing down a dog.

Not for me. I'm a human with a faucet, not a golden retriever that just dashed through some mudflats.

Jordan Harbinger: That's right. I mean, it is like a car wash in that you can get your undercarriage, but glad to know Berlin hasn't taken your Yankee card, Gabe. Thank goodness.

On The Jordan Harbinger Show, we decode the stories, secrets, and skills of the world's most fascinating people. 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, former cult members, former jihadis, current gold smugglers and astronauts, I guess former astronauts because they're not usually in space when we interview them.

This week, we had Alex Davies, author of Kobuk the Destroyer, and other tales from the wild unseen world of test engineering. This is a, well, frankly, an unseen world most of us don't know about. We discussed the hidden work that keeps the modern world going safely and dependably, and how human ingenuity allows us to combat uncertainty and create reliability in a very fragile world.

In other words, how we test products and make sure they don't kill us. Really cool and occasionally terrifying conversation. We also had an episode with Steven Bridges.

He's a card counter. So essentially, he robs casinos for a living. Really interesting guy.

We talked about card counting, getting kicked out of casinos, how they can't just recognize him with facial recognition, of course, all the disguises and tricks he uses to get around it. Really interesting conversation here on the show. We also had a Skeptical Sunday last Sunday on restaurant food.

On Fridays, though, we take listener letters, offer advice, play obnoxious soundbites and compare ourselves to various international plumbing solutions. I hear we have a very full dooze cruise today. So let's get right to it.

Gabe, what is the first thing out of the mailbag?

Gabriel Mizrahi: Dear Gabe, intuitive boy number one and Jordan, judicious defender number one.

Jordan Harbinger: Ooh, new nicknames. New nicknames just dropped.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Guess we're both number one boys now, huh? Yeah, I see what she's doing there. I don't really like it, but I see it.

I'm quickly moving toward 40 as a woman with a lot more life to experience and reconciling seemingly contradictory parts of myself is becoming increasingly difficult to navigate. I have everything a modern person could ask for. Relative health, a loving partner, a supportive and inspiring community, access to challenging ideas and truly interesting opportunities.

But I feel myself drifting dangerously away from all the things that could sustain a stable, satisfying life. I find myself dreaming and daydreaming of dangerously tantalizing scenarios and worlds I have yet to discover in search of things I might never get to experience.

Jordan Harbinger: Damn, that's quite a paragraph. If this were on the back of a romance novel, I'd buy it. For my wife.

Gabriel Mizrahi: I've traveled a lot in my life, but I still feel it's never enough. I want to take more risks and learn things about strangers and strange lands with even stranger stories, truths that will dissipate with time unless I get to capture them. This occupies my consciousness like a ripe fruit rotting away on the kitchen counter that I pass by daily, and yet somehow cannot bring myself to throw into the compost despite the smell and presence of fruit flies.

Jordan Harbinger: Okay, that's quite a metaphor. So she's saying I either need to eat the fruit before it rots, or I just need to throw it away, but right now I'm not doing anything. I'm doing neither.

Gabriel Mizrahi: And now it smells weird in my brain.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Sound familiar, Gabe? I don't know.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Relatable. Highly relatable. Weird metaphor, but relatable feeling.

Jordan Harbinger: That's right. She did write into the correct number one boys. All right, so let's hear it.

Gabriel Mizrahi: I've been with my boyfriend for 12 years, and I love him. He is empathetic and understanding and puts up with all my intolerable quirks. He's my best friend and the first person I go to with inside jokes and the latest ridiculous encounters of my day.

He is supportive, thank God, because I make a lot more money than he does, and I see that he struggles with envy, but he also never lets it overwhelm him. We've had a rocky history, mostly because of our deliciously bad habits and overindulgences, and now that we're a bit older, we've settled into a much more stable routine. What does that mean?

They used to, like, party a lot?

Jordan Harbinger: I don't know. That's the vibe I'm getting. Okay.

I think so. And maybe cheat on each other? I don't know.

Is that in there, or did my mind put that in there?

Gabriel Mizrahi: I don't know. I'm confused. She's being vague.

I'm not entirely sure why. I suppose it could mean all of these things, but let's see where this goes. She goes on.

But I still can't help feeling that there's something I'm desperately missing that might pass me by. Or maybe it's simply the languishing in routine that's driving me absolutely bonkers. Lately, I find myself fantasizing about women quite a lot, wondering how strongly I need to squeeze a peach before the juice runs, and whether a rogue piercing will disrupt my focus in just the right way to make my hair stand on end.

In that shocking way, an unexpected paper cut exposes the next layer of raw skin.

Jordan Harbinger: Okay. I'm lost again. I don't know.

I don't read this kind of smut online, or potential smut. So what's happening right now?

Gabriel Mizrahi: What is going on? I am not sure that I understand it. Let's read that again, shall we?

Jordan Harbinger: Okay.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Lately, I find myself fantasizing about women quite a lot. That part I understood. Okay.

But the rest of it, not so much. Wondering how strongly I need to squeeze a peach before the juice runs, and whether a rogue piercing will disrupt my focus in just the right way to make my hair stand on end. In that shocking way, an unexpected paper cut exposes the next layer of raw skin.

Jordan Harbinger: This is like a fruit-based BDSM metaphor. I'm, I don't know. What?

Yeah? Maybe? I feel like I'm at a slam poetry showcase.

Yes! Okay. Is she describing a woman's body?

This is like part of the The Vagina Monologues that I'm just not picking up? Unclear. I don't know.

Our girl loves a fruit metaphor.

Gabriel Mizrahi: That's all I know.

Jordan Harbinger: Metaphorical or not, what she's maybe saying is she's into girls too, and that longing can be very intense.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Okay.

Jordan Harbinger: That's the headline. Let's go with that. Yeah.

Gabriel Mizrahi: I don't know what a rogue piercing is, though.

Jordan Harbinger: Me either.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Maybe she's talking about clocking a lady's tragus ring in line at Starbucks or something?

Jordan Harbinger: Is that part of the ear that's in the middle?

Gabriel Mizrahi: Yeah, I think so.

I think it's the piercing the cool baristas have.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, that's got to be it. You know which one I'm talking about. She sees that tragus piercing, and she starts writing the lesbian version of Call Me By Your Name in her head?

I don't...

Gabriel Mizrahi: Which, by the way, also heavily features a peach, incidentally. Major plot point in that movie.

Jordan Harbinger: I have not seen it. I don't want to know what happens with the peach, so don't tell me.

Gabriel Mizrahi: I do not want to make judicious defender number one blush, but Timothée Chalamet does something unholy to it in his private time.

Jordan Harbinger: Okay, so he f***s a peach. Cool. So Call Me By Your Name just stole the apple pie bit from American Pie.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Wow. Good point. I never made that connection.

Probably. Yeah. And then it won an Oscar.

Very Oscar-worthy. I find myself wanting to take trips without him so I can continue to experience the world on my terms. He tends to like the all-inclusive side of vacation, while I prefer backpacking with very few dollars to my name.

That way, I'm forced to rely on people in a truly human way, and they can know me and rely on me in return.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, this is so interesting.

Gabriel Mizrahi: They sound like a sweet couple, but they could not be more different. So her boyfriend's like, babe, let's hit the Sandals in Barbados. We never have to leave the property.

They do a mean omelet at breakfast.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, they do unlimited pours on the Robert Mondavi collection.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Exactly. And meanwhile, she's like, I'd rather stuff two and a half outfits into my REI backpack and ride the night train from Delhi to Udaipur without my Amex card. Let's go.

Jordan Harbinger: Let's go, yeah. In the movie version of their relationship, she's played by Jennifer Lawrence, and he's like, Ed Helms. I would actually see that movie.

There's something there. Go write it. And then, once again, quiet-quit Hollywood, so they decide to actually make it.

That's the winning strategy.

Gabriel Mizrahi: That's what I've learned. Let's see where this letter goes, though, because we need a central conflict, and I'm not sure what it is yet. I'm over here like, I'm dead.

I've tried in the past to broach the subject of an open relationship. Ah, there we go. Okay, there's the then.

In fairness, I tried it once in my early 20s, and while my boyfriend at the time used it as an excuse to cheat, I ended up with all the suitors, so he shut it down quickly and then became intensely jealous and abusive as a result.

Jordan Harbinger: Open relationships, famously smooth sailing.

Gabriel Mizrahi: I'm willing to try addressing it again.

Jordan Harbinger: Okay, well, I wonder how her boyfriend's going to feel about that.

I mean, anytime you have an open relationship, of course the woman's going to get all the suitors, unless you're dating an A-list celebrity or something as a guy. We all know this, right? Even an average woman can have 10 a day on the apps, and an attractive guy might get that much in a month, if he's actually playing his cards right.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Cut to Ed Helms crying by the omelet station.

Jordan Harbinger: Totally, while J-Law gets hit on by people of all genders at the Sandals pool bar.

Gabriel Mizrahi: My partner knows that I'm bisexual, but has still made disparaging comments, such as, I can never date a bi girl, because then I'd have to compete with everyone, or so-and-so is such a f***ing idiot for not seeing what's right in front of her.

Jordan Harbinger: I want to make sure I got that. So he knows she's bi, but then he's also going, oh, you can never date a bi girl, like, just making sure you're not bi, even though I know you are. Weird.

I don't understand it.

Gabriel Mizrahi: That's an interesting stance.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, just conveniently forgetting she told him that, or kind of hoping it wasn't true.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Yeah. Does he not believe her? I don't get it.

Yeah, but she's saying he knows. I think what we're hearing is that this is a difficult subject for him.

Jordan Harbinger: Clearly. So he's really struggling with this part of her, and the fact that she makes more money, and etc.

Gabriel Mizrahi: So he feels threatened by her, I guess, in a couple ways?

Jordan Harbinger: I mean, by this, and also the money thing. Those are both tricky. That's tricky stuff.

And I suppose I have some compassion for his feelings about her orientation, but isn't this also something that bi people hate? When straight people assume they're going to be more promiscuous or less trustworthy because of their orientation? Like, I'm bisexual, so I can't stop myself from having sex with people.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Right.

You do hear that a lot.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Yeah. But, I mean, to be fair, it is a fascinating wrinkle to a relationship.

Because if you date a straight person, your competition, so to speak, is everyone in your gender, and you can commit and say, look, you're not competing with anybody anymore, this is over. But if you date a bi person, your competition is theoretically everyone. He's not totally, totally wrong here, you see?

It's just... I'm not saying, oh, there's just more people. A woman is different in a way that you can never be.

You can't, like, be the best man and the best woman for her. It's not possible.

Gabriel Mizrahi: I gather that what rubs bi people the wrong way sometimes is just this idea that because they're into men and women, they'll sleep with anybody, or they'll constantly get interest from all sides, and it'll just be a constant problem, which is not automatically the case. I mean, if they're in a monogamous relationship, theoretically, their orientation shouldn't matter, right? They're not going to get involved with another person.

Jordan Harbinger: But in this guy's mind, that's the fear. And if he's this vulnerable around the orientation stuff, I think his brain's going to explode when she proposes opening up the relationship.

Gabriel Mizrahi: We both grew up in fairly conservative communities, and habits are hard to shake. We also both grew up as only children, so pleasing our very conservative moms is a constant battle between genuinely being honest about who we are and hiding the rest of ourselves so that we don't reveal too much, just in case we give them heart attacks.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, Kathy from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania is going to love that her bi daughter is in an open relationship. Man, so many layers to these two.

Gabriel Mizrahi: All right. It's also probably important to note that I do not believe in marriage, as it has historically been the surest way to subjugate a woman against her will and keep her down. Therefore, I am completely against marriage, even though I think he would very much prefer it to how we're currently living, despite his protestations that he's perfectly happy with our life and the way it's structured.

Yeah, yet another big difference between them. All right, interesting. I want to tell my boyfriend that I have a lot more life to explore, and maybe that includes meeting a few cute girls, especially because we're on month seven now of no intimacy.

Ooh, crucial fact. He tries. I don't.

Maybe because I've absolutely had it with his daily pattern. Log into work, turn on TV, maybe play with dogs, maybe go on a walk, most likely get wankered on the couch in the evening.

Jordan Harbinger: Getting wankered, I assume means getting drunk, and is that a UK slang or something? Getting wankered, not wanking on the couch. Yeah.

Different things. So, he's envious that she makes more money, but his nightly routine slash daily routine is watching TV, maybe playing with the dogs you own, and then just getting schwasted on a La-Z-Boy and passing out? I mean, okay.

Gabriel Mizrahi: He's gained a lot of weight and won't do the things he needs to do to work it off. The worst part is that he expects me to enjoy doing nothing with him. Ooh, that's a tough sentence.

That line might be the litmus test for a relationship. It's like, do I enjoy doing nothing with this person, or am I just doing nothing with this person?

Jordan Harbinger: 100%. So, this is not, we can have fun no matter what we're doing, even the boring things are fun. This is, hey, you're sleepwalking through your life and you just want me to sleepwalk with you.

Gabriel Mizrahi: No thanks. I end up avoiding him as much as I can and working late so that we overlap as little as possible, a pattern that started during COVID and has only gotten worse. I also do this because I try to avoid his angry and crazed outbursts over seemingly tiny things.

I'm not good with loud noises and intense emotions.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, COVID was five years ago. This is not sounding good. He's volatile and she's avoidant.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Which is understandable if Ed Helms is waiting for you at home in a rage because the remote control ran out of batteries and he can't watch Slow Horses.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, crashing out because he can't watch some of Gary Oldman's finest work on Apple TV. Yeah. No wonder she's fantasizing about backpacking and being literally anywhere else without him.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Yeah. All my friends have told me to leave him, but they're all single and don't necessarily know what it's like to be in a relationship quite this long. And no, neither of us are parents, despite our old age and much to our parents' chagrin, but children are not in our future.

That simplifies matters for sure. I do fear that I'm taking all of this for granted and that I should probably listen to elders and just succumb to social norms that I deeply disagree with just because it would make everything so much easier.

Jordan Harbinger: Would it though? Yeah. Or would it just get a few people off your back and resolve a couple sources of tension while creating an even deeper one and imprisoning you in your relationship and or an institution that you view as subjugation?

I just can't see this being the solution. It's funny, Gabe, because she makes more money than him, right? So it's like that money is then going to become his.

So actually, I don't know who's subjugated here. I mean, she still ends up subjugated financially. I don't know.

Gabriel Mizrahi: This is a mess, dude. I'm struggling with the idea of permanence in relationships and the continuity that is required in the implicit promises we make to others.

Jordan Harbinger: Ooh, snap. She said the quiet part out loud.

Gabriel Mizrahi: She sure did. So she takes us home. How do I tell my partner that he is wonderful and means the world to me?

Jordan Harbinger: Okay. Didn't see that question coming. Why do we need to do that?

But okay.

Gabriel Mizrahi: How do I communicate in a loving way that I feel my creativity and youthfulness drooping ever further toward my knees and I'm determined to make the most of my assets while I still have some risk tolerance left in me, signed, hating this loop and wondering if I need to regroup when every cell of my body is telling me to fly the coop?

Jordan Harbinger: I thought you were going to throw a droop in there, but all right.

Gabriel Mizrahi: I wasn't about to plagiarize her own word from the closing. I've got to take it to a new place.

Jordan Harbinger: I see.

Gabriel Mizrahi: I feel like I lived a few lifetimes in that story. Very much the ripe peach of Feedback Friday letters.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Let's see if we can bite into it or if we need to throw it in the compost pile. And also, let's never use the peach metaphor again because it's weirding me out.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Fine with me. Very on board with that. Continue.

Jordan Harbinger: Man, there's so much going on in this letter. I'm not even sure where to begin, actually.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Maybe we should begin by appreciating the various conflicts she's in right now because they're left and right and she's in a bind. That's the central theme, I think. Between stability and chaos, between responsibility and freedom.

Jordan Harbinger: Between men and women, which maybe that's not a conflict, but there is a tension there given that her boyfriend has complicated feelings about her orientation. Yeah. Between being married and being unmarried.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Yeah. Conventional life versus unconventional life. Being authentic, hiding who you really are.

Like you said, reconciling these contradictory parts of yourself is becoming increasingly difficult and that's very evident from your letter. And I guess, yeah, I really feel for you there. I have to say, we might be very different from this woman, Jordan, but I think we all struggle with these conflicts in some way.

I know I do. But they sound especially stark for her because the fact is she is a fairly unconventional person and I guess in some way she probably is more complicated than your average person. And how do you work with that?

Jordan Harbinger: And you have certain beliefs like this stance on marriage that raise the stakes in all this.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Yeah. So I know you're asking about how to talk to your partner, how to broach the topic of basically living a bigger life, I guess. We'll talk about that in a minute.

But I do sense that the deeper question here is how do I make sense of these competing goals, these potentially incompatible desires? How much do I prioritize my own wants and needs at this stage in our relationship, right? Like how do I balance them with the interests and the feelings and I guess apparently the vulnerabilities of my partner?

How selfish can I be, basically? In a word, yeah. I don't know.

Is selfish the right word?

Jordan Harbinger: No, not really. I don't know.

Gabriel Mizrahi: It's interesting. I guess being quote-unquote selfish in this way, becoming friendly with all of these parts of ourselves, as many as possible, is not easy. Tricky business.

And it can definitely come at a cost, but yeah, I'm not sure that's selfish, but maybe it feels that way sometimes.

Jordan Harbinger: I hear that. I'm just bottom lining it because I think the bind she's in is how can I fully be me and enjoy this one life I've been given while I still have time when doing that is probably going to impact some people, namely my partner, but also my parents and my friends and maybe the world in general and how those people see me, which is maybe where the whole, maybe I should just get married. It would just be easier kind of idea comes from.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Like you touched on, that's the struggle of being authentic, right? We're constantly negotiating between like, this is who we are and we're going to assert who we are, but also I'm going to sacrifice and back away from who I am because it's too difficult.

Jordan Harbinger: Right.

Gabriel Mizrahi: You know that famous idea, Jordan, you see it on Instagram all the time. Like the privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are. Beautiful thing in theory.

And I agree that it's part of why we're here, but we always pay some price for that, right? Always. Of course, the price we're willing to pay, the things that we're willing to give up to potentially enjoy the life we want, that tells us what these choices are worth to us.

Like, okay, you want to travel, you want to have relationships with women, for example. If that's part of who you are and that's important to you and you want to explore that great, but then are you willing to potentially end your relationship for it? Because that might be part of the deal.

Jordan Harbinger: Or I really want my friends and parents and society to get off my back, but I also want to be a digital nomad and start a vlog about my travels. Am I willing to potentially leave my job to make it happen? Am I willing to disappoint my parents even further?

So she has some big things to sit with.

Gabriel Mizrahi: She does. I mean, she's already doing it, but I'm with you. These questions might be primary to the conversation she's trying to prepare for with her partner.

Jordan Harbinger: So let's talk about that conversation. How do you tell your partner that when she says what is wonderful and means the world to you? I mean, look, that's a nice start.

You just tell them and you really mean it. And you be specific. You know, when I come home and I tell you about the dumb fight I got into with Jeff at work and we get to laugh about it, it means the world to me.

I know my money situation can be hard for you sometimes, and I really appreciate that you don't let your feelings about it get in the way of my success. I mean, I think that's a pretty sincere and straightforward conversation. The hard part is what I assume comes after that.

I understand, I guess, why she's led with that. But yeah, that's not the hard part. The hard part is you're wonderful and you mean the world to me.

And I also want more and I need more. And you're probably not going to like it.

Gabriel Mizrahi: So I don't think this is just like one conversation she's preparing for now, right? She might be thinking of this as the one big chat where she tells him, you know, like Memento Mori. I want more out of my life.

I want other experiences. I have to make the most of my assets while I can still, which I don't know if I'd frame it that way, but that's how you feel. I have to make the most of my assets while I can still accept the risk.

But I think a better approach, one that will potentially make this less painful for your partner and one that will hopefully create some kind of process that you two can be in together would be to start with something like, I want to share some new things with you, some thoughts and feelings I'm having lately. Also some big questions. I want your input.

I want you to know where I am. I think you're going to end up being part of these decisions in some way. And I'm curious to know how you feel about them and if you have similar ones.

Jordan Harbinger: I like that. I feel that's got to be the better approach because I just felt my shoulders drop.

Gabriel Mizrahi: I mean, that's intense. I guess it's a question for her. Has she already decided that this is what she's doing and she wants to give him the news while also letting him know how much he means to her?

Or is she still figuring out what she wants her life and relationships to look like and she wants to just start a dialogue with him? I'm kind of hearing both in her letter. I'm kind of hearing both.

And so yeah, she might be a little confused. If her goal is to slowly share these things and put these ideas on the table while also minimizing the hurt she might cause, this is one way to do that. But there's one huge question looming in this letter, which is like...

Jordan Harbinger: Does this relationship even make sense anymore?

Gabriel Mizrahi: Yes.

Jordan Harbinger: Look, obviously her friends think it doesn't and, you know, they might be right.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Her questions might just imply that it's already over in some sense, but there might be a version of all of this, the open version, I guess, where the definition of their relationship changes pretty dramatically, but they don't break up.

Jordan Harbinger: So my feeling there is we can't tell you whether to break up with your partner. The picture you've painted, it's a mixed bag. There's some very sweet and touching stuff in your relationship.

There's some objectively concerning and very dysfunctional stuff. The concerning and dysfunctional stuff to me is your partner's lifestyle. I mean, not so much being a homebody.

That's whatever his choice, fair choice, if that's what he genuinely enjoys. But the getting hammered on the couch most evenings and the weight gain, I mean, that's just not a good sign. You haven't told us much about him, but I'm going to guess he's numbing and coping and escaping with these habits.

He's got some other stuff he's not dealing with. Equally concerning, though, the fact that you're avoiding him as much as you can and you have done so for what sounds like five years plus. I mean, COVID, again, was a long time ago.

And you do that so you don't have to deal with his angry and crazed outbursts over seemingly tiny things. Man, OK, that's an interesting dynamic because, well, it's a dynamic. You're not good with loud noises and intense emotions.

OK, fine. But I also wouldn't like angry, unhinged outbursts over nothing. I don't think anybody would.

It sounds like he's not good at regulating himself and expressing his feelings in a more productive way. We'd need to know a lot more about you guys to really understand what that dynamic consists of and how it developed and what it says about you guys. But my questions for you are, what conflicts and what feelings are you avoiding specifically in him, but more importantly, in yourself when you stay away from him?

Is this something you can talk to him about? Do you want to work on this with him? Or is the relationship essentially over in your mind and you're just kind of hanging around?

Gabriel Mizrahi: It's interesting, this dynamic. It might point to the fact that there are problems in your relationship that you no longer want to deal with or work on. Or this dynamic is the problem and leaning into it would breathe new life into your relationship.

For example, staying late at work and avoiding your partner. That might be a reasonable response to an unpredictable person and a symptom of being in a relationship that doesn't really work. It might also be a response to your partner, a way of communicating something to him when you don't actually want to say it.

And that could be depriving you of the intimacy and the aliveness that you say you're craving. So if you went to him and said, hey, when you get worked up about relatively small things, I get overwhelmed and then I want to stay away and then there's distance between us. So I want to get better at maybe tolerating some of this intensity so we can stay connected.

And I want to ask you to get better at regulating yourself and communicating differently so I can hear you. Like, can we try that? If you said something like that, I do wonder what would happen.

Would it bring you closer together? Would it remind you that there's still life in this relationship? Would it give you guys a chance to evolve?

Jordan Harbinger: Maybe. Definitely a possibility. But then I wonder if he's prone to these outbursts, does she even feel safe enough to share this stuff with him?

Like, is this conversation even doable?

Gabriel Mizrahi: If it's not doable, then that is also very crucial information.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. I should have said this earlier, but Gabe, I used to avoid my former business partner and his girlfriend. I lived with them and I would go to I think I've said this on the show before.

I'd go to Denny's after working out in the evening. So she'd come home from work and I was like, oh, here we go. So I'd go work out and then I'd go to Denny's or whatever, like stay for like three, four hours working on my laptop.

And Denny's Wi-Fi is not the best, right? They're not known for their Wi-Fi. Yeah, they're known for the steak and eggs.

Nor for much else. Yeah, $2.99, are you out of your mind? Remember that?

And I was out of my mind. And the thing is, what's funny is I remember telling my therapist what my routine she's like, what's your routine? You know, you're working out now.

I'm like, oh, I work from home. And then as soon as she gets back, they, you know, it turns even worse. And then I go work out and then I don't go home for five hours.

And I sit at Denny's in my sweaty gym clothes and eat, you know, Grand Slams or whatever. And she's like, this is crazy. You need to move out.

And I was like, oh, I don't know. I mean, it's just and she's like, no, you're avoiding them. You need to move out.

And what's funny, man, I moved out and they broke up. I don't even know if it was a month later. And I remember telling my therapist, like, of course, right when I move out, they break up and I didn't need to move out.

And she's like, no, they broke up because they couldn't blame all their problems on you anymore. And they figured out it was actually their relationship. Years later, I spoke with his ex-girlfriend.

Actually, it was like last year. She confirmed all that was true. She's like, yeah, once you moved out, we realized we actually hated each other.

We didn't hate you. Like, I blamed it all on you and he blamed it all on you. But no, you were just there and we hated each other.

We didn't want to face that. I thought that was a really interesting insight from my therapist that turned out to be correct.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Cut to her sitting in the booth across from you at Denny's. Now you're both riding the Wi-Fi at night.

Jordan Harbinger: And I'm like, can I go home now? Because if you're going to be.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: So, yeah, that to me, this isn't a direct application. Right. But if you're avoiding somebody by sitting around, you're staying in your office later, you're working from a coffee shop until 11 so you don't have to deal with the people at home.

There's something wrong at home and you need to address that. And sometimes addressing that means saying goodbye like I did and like you possibly should. Anyway, look, it's possible these two simply aren't right for each other.

They just seem to have very different needs, very different interests, very different ways of communicating.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Yeah. I'm also just remembering that they had that rocky history she alluded to. So what was that about?

Jordan Harbinger: Yes, the deliciously bad habits and overindulgences, which I still don't understand what the hell that means. But, OK, I don't know why that's stuck in my craw, but it is.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Yeah, you're a little worked up about it. When people dance around something in a Feedback Friday letter, you get angry and I get it.

Jordan Harbinger: I get worked up.

I'm direct. I don't know if you guys notice. I don't use flowery language to hide shit like I love a metaphor if I know what's going on.

But if it's just the metaphor or some vague language, then what is this?

A Harlequin romance novel?

Gabriel Mizrahi: She means penis, Jordan.

Jordan Harbinger: She means penis.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Whatever that chaos and drama was about, I wonder how much that played a role in bonding them earlier on in their relationship and also maybe allowed them to avoid some big things in their relationship that are impossible to ignore now that they have settled into a much more stable routine.

Jordan Harbinger: And now she's like, oh, this is what our relationship is actually like. And meanwhile, they're evolving in very different directions. Could opening up your relationship be the solution?

Maybe it seems to be for some couples, although that's not without its challenges, as I'm sure you know. Is he going to go for that? I have no idea.

I'm guessing he's not going to be over the moon about it. I mean, he can't seem to fully accept your orientation.

I'm not sure he's going to cheer you on from the sidelines while you go off and have flings with men and women from around the world. Who knows? It's possible.

It's a conversation. But here's what I think is going to happen. She's going to work up to saying, I want to open up our relationship.

And he's either going to go, absolutely not. In which case, she's either going to have to let go of that idea and stay and be miserable and trapped, or they're going to break up. Or he's going to come around to the idea and give it a shot.

And she's going to be gone half the year, backpacking and having sex with a bunch of people. And it's going to kill him and highlight all of the things that she already finds frustrating about him.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Oh, boy. I can't wait for her update in six months. It's going to be a good one.

Jordan Harbinger: Look, you know me, I'm on the Reddits. And when people talk about open relationships, yada, yada, that seems to only work for people who have always been ethically non-monogamous, right? They date that way.

If they get married, it's from the jump, right? It's not like, oh, something, something in our marriage isn't working. Let's open it up.

Those are the ones where people go, oh, my God, this is going to be a disaster. And I think there's a whole subreddit for this called Open Marriage Regret. And it's essentially the cliché is guy wants to open up the marriage, screws his secretary once or twice, finds out that nobody wants a 56-year-old overweight dude who, you know, is on dating apps.

And wife gets banged by, you know, three dudes a week barely trying. And then the guy's like, hey, can we close it back up? And then wife is like, no, actually, you're a disaster.

And this is great. And makes me feel young again. I'm out.

Or they can't close it up. And there's all this jealousy and regret from the guy. And he basically says like, you're a whore.

And she's like, dude, you told me to do this. So you could sleep with your secretary. Anyway, like you said, can't wait for the update in six months.

Like, I'm not sure opening up the relationship solves any of these problems anyways, really.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Again, I think the questions that she's asking are not the real questions are not quite the right questions at this stage.

Jordan Harbinger: Agreed. Here's a question I think is much more helpful. If you lived in a world where you could not sleep with women at all, would you still want to stay in this relationship?

I'm a go ahead and guess the answer is no. Because these problems with him exist independent of your orientation and your hunger for more life experiences. Gabe, I think she wants to leave this guy and she wants to date women, but she's conflating the two things somehow.

And she needs to separate those things. So here's another question. What form of freedom do you want really?

Is it freedom to have some time to yourself? Is it freedom to do things like travel without your partner? Is it freedom to have relationships with other people or is it the freedom to just not have a partner at all and do whatever you want?

Look, you have some work to do in getting clear on that because you seem to be flirting with several different forms of freedom and I'm not entirely sure that you know which one you truly need, which is, I understand why, but I don't think you're that clear on this.

Gabriel Mizrahi: I'm also curious about what her friends are seeing and why that's hard for her to take in.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Okay. So they're going, he sits on the couch.

He has drunken outbursts. You're avoiding him. You haven't had sex in seven months.

What the hell? And she's going, well, you guys don't know what it's like to be in a relationship this long. And they're like, yeah, because we don't stay with people that long when it gets like this.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Like, how is that a response? I think she means you guys don't understand how hard it is to think about saying goodbye to somebody you've been with for this long.

Jordan Harbinger: Okay. Or she's like, Oh, all relationships degrade to the point of absurdity. And you guys just don't understand that.

And you're supposed to put up with it. I mean, but she's also saying we have some major problems and I want more out of life. Sorry.

Gabriel Mizrahi: So another conflict, but this one is born from perhaps some willful blindness about the problems in their relationship or her unwillingness to confront the end of this thing, basically.

Jordan Harbinger: Agreed. And her loyalty to this guy, which I appreciate, but which I'm, I'm also a little confused by. It's not more important than whether they are actually compatible.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Exactly. And she's not doing him any favors by sticking around. If she does not want to be there, which seems to be the case.

If she's avoiding him this much, that's not ultimately kind to him. It's just kind of protecting him in a weird way and avoiding the pain.

Jordan Harbinger: Exactly. But my feeling is that you have to answer these deeper questions first, before you throw the proverbial peach into the compost.

Gabriel Mizrahi: I thought you were done with the peach talk.

Jordan Harbinger: I thought we were done. I would like to be done with the peach talk. Talk to your partner.

Share courageously. Listen generously. Move slowly and go from there one step at a time.

I hope it's a productive conversation and good luck.

And now some peach f**kingly good deals on the fine products and services that support this show. We'll be right back. This episode is sponsored in part by Fabletics.

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Gabriel Mizrahi: Okay, next up. Hey guys, my sister and I co-owned a condo in Los Angeles. We are not rich by any means, and we tried for a while to keep our heads above water on it.

Over the years, I lived there for a while, and we also rented it out to some long-term tenants as well as on Airbnb. Then, last year, a prospective tenant, we'll call her Jenny, responded to my sister's listing on Zillow. Immediately, Jenny was trying to negotiate the security deposit lower, and she wanted to move in within the next week.

She said it would just be her in the two-bed, two-bath condo. My sister, who was stressed about finding a renter and is also heavy on the people pleasing, agreed before consulting me. Perfect condition for something bad to happen, yeah.

As soon as Jenny came to view the place, drop off the security deposit, and prorated rent for the last few days of the month, and grabbed the keys, I got a sinking feeling. She was definitely strange.

Jordan Harbinger: Sometimes you've got to listen to that feeling, but man, it's really hard once the train's moving.

Gabriel Mizrahi: But the background check that Zillow claims to do came back clean. She provided references and pay stubs and bank statements, so we figured she was just a social media influencer or something. Cut to a day or so after she moved in, and my sister and I went over there to replace the air filters.

When we walked in, the place reeked of weed. The lease and building rules clearly state no smoking of any kind, and a man and two small children were clearly at home there.

Jordan Harbinger: Wow, she didn't waste any time, did she?

Gabriel Mizrahi: We sent her an email explaining that everyone who was living there needed to be on the lease, and to please send us everyone's names. She assured us that everyone else was just visiting for the holiday. We also told her there was no smoking allowed, which she never responded to.

My sinking feeling sunk even lower after that visit. When the five-day grace period for the first month's rent came and went, I immediately knew we needed to start eviction proceedings.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh, this is awful. Good for you for starting that process immediately and not letting it drag out even longer.

Gabriel Mizrahi: The process worked its way through the courts. That took three months, and then through the sheriff's office, which took another three months, until the squatters moved on.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, sadly, that's how the process works, at least in California. I've heard of landlords waiting a year or more for an eviction. Six months is probably, maybe it's about average.

Gabriel Mizrahi: They left the place completely trashed, and the walls and carpet were saturated with weed smoke from their incessant hot-boxing of the condo. Yes, even while the young kids were in the home. Such trash.

So sorry about this. During this process, I did a little investigative work of my own, and found a property owner who had dealt with Jenny the previous year, and they had literally the exact same story. I am 100% certain that when Jenny left our place, she went and did the same thing to some other unsuspecting property owner.

I also found out that all of her bank statements were falsified. We briefly consulted with a private investigator, and he found that she's a really shitty wannabe rapper slash OnlyFans operator, is using multiple people's social security numbers, and is definitely defrauding the welfare program. Zillow claimed to have performed a background check, but none of Jenny's prior three evictions came to light.

It's almost like they're lying about the value they provide to property owners. Yeah, wow, I can't with these kind- How do these people live with themselves? Seriously.

You have to be like, clinically antisocial to be okay living somewhere for six months without paying rent and damaging the property and causing all of these problems.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, knowing that the landlord and probably all the neighbors know you're a nuisance and a scammer and you have to just not care. You have to be such an antisocial idiot.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Either that or there are some people who are so desperate for housing and can't get it together. They just don't care.

Jordan Harbinger: No, there's being desperate and there's being a parasite. You can be desperate for housing and lie and falsify pay statements and then be like a normal tenant and try to pay on time and not destroy the place. No, this person is a parasite.

Most of these people are just defective pieces of crap. If somebody fakes bank statements because they need housing, I have a little bit of sympathy for that. That's fraud, by the way, and illegal.

But like, I don't know, you work your butt off and you pay rent. Eventually we forget about the whole thing and you turn yourself into a decent tenant. No, no, this is not what this woman did.

I hate people like this.

Gabriel Mizrahi: All in all, she cost us $25,000 in unpaid rent, $10,000 in property damage, and another few thousand in cleanup fees and lost rental income while we got all the damage taken care of. It was one of the most demoralizing things I have ever had to experience. It put enormous strain on my sister and my relationship, ruined both of our credit, which we had worked really hard to maintain in good standing, and put both of us in serious financial trouble.

The only way I got through it was by taking out a credit card with a 0% APR for 18 months as soon as I started to sense trouble. I maxed it out during this process and am just now close to paying off that balance.

Jordan Harbinger: Again, I'm so sorry to hear all this. I can't believe this woman compromised you guys personally like this. I feel like a lot of people think, oh, landlords, they're just all rich.

Screw them. It's a business. They'll be fine.

They have insurance. But in the US, 70 to 85 percent of residential landlords are mom-and-pop. They're just people.

It's not their LLC with 500 grand in the bank that takes a hit when a tenant refused to pay rent. The Jennys of the world can bankrupt families. They can ruin their lives, and they don't care.

It's awful. So my heart goes out to you and your sister. I'm glad that credit card came in handy.

Well done for almost paying it off in full. Really, that's an accomplishment.

Gabriel Mizrahi: I'm so angry that someone would do this to someone else intentionally, and I'm super angry that the law protects professional scammers like Jenny. Not only is the process to evict someone extra tedious, I mean, what more do you need than we have a contract in which I provide you housing in exchange for money, and you haven't given me the money, so you need to leave. But it was also insanely slow.

Jordan Harbinger: I get it. I mean, look, the law also needs to cover all situations and offer protections for tenants against dangerous landlords and stuff like that. You know, there's people who fall behind on rent, and they should not be homeless because they need an extra 30 days or something like that to pay when they're in a dire situation.

That's not what happened here. I mean, this was fraudulent. There's multiple crimes here.

So I understand your anger. And in a situation like this, it is insane that it takes so long. I mean, once you can prove fraud in the inducement with the bank statements and stuff, I mean, they should just be like, oh, in that case, the whole contract is void.

Sheriff, go kick their ass out and give them 72 hours to get their ish out of there.

Gabriel Mizrahi: I know it's highly unlikely that we will ever recover the money Jenny owes us, but is there a way to hold her legally accountable? Is there a way to prevent other unsuspecting property owners from falling prey to her scams? What about alerting the people whose social security numbers she's using?

Can anything be done about Zillow not catching the prior evictions? How can I hold a professional squatter accountable for the $25,000 that she owes me and the rest of the money? She owes all the other property owners she scammed.

Might there be a way to recover any of this money? Signed, wondering what I'm owed after I got totally snowed by the straight-up scammer who took over our abode.

Jordan Harbinger: What a nightmare. I'm so sorry you and your sister went through this. I know it's not just the money, which is significant.

It's the feeling of being manipulated and screwed by a scammer, a straight-up scammer. It leaves you with some really awful feelings, I know. And this desire for justice, which you deserve.

If I were in your shoes, yeah, I would be livid and I'd think I'd have a dartboard with Jenny's picture on it. I'd be throwing darts at it all day while imagining how I could recover my money and hold this criminal accountable. I mean, this is the kind of thing where you're like, hey, do I know anybody who's like a paid thug that will go break her kneecaps?

I would be so pissed. About recovering this money you absolutely deserve. First off, your unlawful detainer judgments of the eviction, it produced a judgment for possession of the home.

It may have also produced an enforceable money judgment against Jenny, meaning she owes you the rent she never paid. So my first idea for you is to turn that debt into a judgment or enforce the judgment that you already have. California's real estate laws specifically account for obtaining a money judgment for unpaid rent and a writ of execution can then be used to collect.

Look, a judgment is not just a piece of paper that says Jenny's squat owes me 35 grand. It gives you enforcement machinery. Once they know where the money is, California allows things like wage garnishment, bank levies, liens against real estate.

Look, I doubt she has that, but maybe she has other assets. A bank levy is particularly interesting if Jenny is self-employed and she has money periodically landing in identifiable accounts. You know, I know this person is a total freaking loser, obviously.

But look, if OnlyFans is making transfers to her Chase account every five days for the crappy homemade porn her and that guy are making in front of their kids, that's real money. You could be entitled to it, with some exceptions that we just don't need to get into right now. Now, let's say you enforce a judgment against her, but you can't find the assets.

Theoretically, you could haul her into what's called a judgment debtor examination. That's a court proceeding you can use to find assets that you can legally seize. And basically, this allows you to ask her stuff, your attorney, to ask her stuff under oath, like, Hey, Jenny, where do you work?

Where do you bank? What property do you own? What businesses do you have?

Who owes you money? You could subpoena her financial records. And look, she, again, is a total parasitic loser, so she might not show up.

Fine. The judge will issue a bench warrant for Jenny for failure to obey the court order. Then, one day, she's going to be driving around in the lease car she stopped paying for.

She's going to get pulled over, arrested, brought before the court, and a judge would address the failure to appear and could order her to participate in the examination. To be clear, the examination itself probably won't get you paid, but it would give you the information you need to pursue collection. And in some cases, apparently, the court can order certain property or money turned over towards satisfying the judgment.

Now, if your judgment didn't encompass all the rent and property damage, I would absolutely book a consult with a California landlord attorney and ask them whether it's worth bringing a separate civil action for the remaining damages. I would also ask them whether the evidence in this case, which you seem to have a ton of, whether that supports a fraud claim, not just a breach of the lease agreement. And if Jenny's like, sorry, I have no money right now, tough kishka, that doesn't mean the judgment is worthless.

California judgments generally remain enforceable for years. They could potentially be renewed. It depends on the kind of judgment.

And if I'm in your shoes, I'd put every renewal deadline in my calendar and I'd stay on top of that so this doesn't just go away. Which is probably what a lot of landlords end up doing. That's why the Jennys of the world often get away with this crap.

California specifically treats judgments arising from fraud differently from certain ordinary personal debts, which is another reason I would definitely explore the fraud claim. She can't just be like, I don't have any money. Sorry, I'm going to let the clock run out on this.

It's like, no, no, you committed a crime. We're not just going to let you sort of write this one off and notify everybody. It gets treated differently in a way that's prejudicial to her.

Gabriel Mizrahi: All sound advice, but I might actually go a step further because one deadbeat tenant failing to pay rent, that's like a garden variety civil matter, right? But what Jenny did, falsifying bank statements, apparently using stolen social security numbers, making false representations to get a lease, doing this to multiple other landlords, possible welfare fraud, like this is a much bigger ordeal.

Jordan Harbinger: Yes, I know that Jenny's again a total loser dumbass, but this is a repeat fraud operation. The one thing she's good at besides making raps or whatever and her OnlyFans, which it sounds like she's not that good at, is fraud and identity theft. You've gathered all this evidence through the process.

I would do what we often recommend, which is create one big binder of evidence. The lease, the application, the allegedly falsified financial statements, the screening report, the eviction judgment, photographs and invoices for damage, communications, whatever your private investigator found out, the previous landlord's information, the evidence they collected. In fact, you might even want to get together with the other landlord and make this a group project.

That'll only strengthen your case. It'll divide up the work. I'm sure it'll give you a much needed ally in all this, which would be nice for all of you.

And then you take that package to the LAPD and you file a police report. And when you talk to the police, I would specifically frame the allegation against Jenny as rental application fraud and identity theft. Not, wah, she didn't pay rent.

Because it sounds to me like there's several potential crimes here. Theft, potentially by false pretenses, potentially grand theft, forgery, identity theft, which is potentially very serious if you actually have proof she used other people's social security numbers, and welfare fraud. And who knows what other crimes, honestly, depending on what the investigation uncovers, this could be the tip of the iceberg.

Gabriel Mizrahi: I would also highlight all of the evidence you have that there are repeat victims here. When I was looking into this earlier, I saw that the LAPD has publicly looked for additional landlords in previous rental fraud investigations before because multiple victims means a larger pattern, which means a bigger case, which means stronger enforcement, and hopefully that'll also make them prioritize you. The LAPD also has something called the Commercial Crimes Division, which specifically investigates rental fraud schemes involving people using other people's identifying information to obtain apartments.

So, the person you talk to should give you a report number, take that police report and that report number, add them to the binder, and send that copy to the LA County DA's real estate fraud section. That section explicitly accepts real estate fraud complaints, and basically you're going to fill out their real estate fraud complaint form. It's a downloadable PDF on the website.

You snail mail it to them with your package of evidence, and hopefully they look into it. And by the way, that form specifically asks whether there's already a civil case and for that case number, which to me is another sign that pursuing multiple avenues here is going to increase the likelihood of any one agency taking action.

Jordan Harbinger: Smart. Yeah. Also, you said Jenny is definitely defrauding the welfare program.

I don't know which welfare program, what evidence you have, but the LA County Department of Public Social Services, they have a Welfare Fraud Prevention and Investigation Unit where you can report suspected fraud involving LA County benefits. I would file a report with them, too. Again, as many channels as appropriate, sticking to the evidence that you have.

As far as warning other landlords, all right, this is kind of where my dark Jordan mind went, but you have to be really careful about this, because even if your story is true and provable, publicly accusing an identifiable person of crimes, that can get dicey. Suddenly, you're exposing yourself to claims of defamation, harassment, privacy violations. So I would not, you know, make a hosting or page called JennyIsAProfessionalSquatter.com or send emails to her temp job employer or try to contact her family or post her alleged crimes on Instagram or try to get her OnlyFans account shut down. You want that money anyway. The smartest strategy is just to work the system. And if you do that, it is very possible that future legitimate tenant screening will actually pick up these public court records.

Now about Zillow, I'm stunned that their background check failed so spectacularly. I mean, she had three previous evictions and Zillow didn't catch any of those. What the hell, man?

That is crazy, dude. How did that happen? That's their job.

That's, they have one job. Yeah, turning up previous evictions filed in civil court is like just the bare effing minimum that these reports should be able to do. That is the entire point.

But then, I do know that these record searches, they have a lot of restrictions, like certain older records and non-judgments and vacated cases and appealed cases. They often get left out. And federal law, state law, local law, that can all change what turns up in these things.

Gabriel Mizrahi: So maybe your beef is with the state of California. Not that you need more reasons to hate the Golden State after all this, but maybe that's where the fault lies.

Jordan Harbinger: I do understand that Zillow almost certainly uses a third-party screening provider for these reports, but so what? That's not okay. I'd be super pissed at Zillow for this.

Come on.

Gabriel Mizrahi: This might also speak to how low-level criminals can very easily fly under the radar, especially if other landlords didn't pursue judgments or criminal charges against her, and then it just doesn't show up when you pull the records.

Jordan Harbinger: Here's another half-cocked, dark Jordan idea. Next time you get a renter, you can just casually say something like, hey, quick heads up because we've had rental fraud before. Applications that raise authenticity issues get escalated beyond the Zillow check we're about to do.

We've had fake pay stubs, fake employment records, identity fraud. Anyway, that all gets documented and we've had to refer it to law enforcement. So you don't seem like the type, but if anything you've submitted isn't genuine, now is the point where you should withdraw the application.

No questions asked and good luck in the future. You could even say like, hey, funny story. We actually had someone try to scam us and, you know, I looked into this and there was a California tenant who used fraudulent information to get approved for an apartment and they got two years and eight months in state prison.

Oh my god, apparently rental application fraud, that can turn into identity theft and false financial statement and grand theft charges. So anyway, I'm just extremely careful of how I verify everything. Do you want to send the documents via email or do you have them right now?

Gabriel Mizrahi: Clever. And they're going to waddle off and scam somebody else. That's a nice way to avoid this in the future.

Jordan Harbinger: I think so. But really the best thing you can do now is file all these reports and complaints because if these agencies pursue these crimes, that might show up on future background checks. And that's really the most reliable way to help other unsuspecting property owners from falling prey to this woman.

That said, if there were three recent reportable eviction judgments under Jenny's correctly supplied identity and Zillow literally said, Oh, search for them. Nothing there. She's good.

That is sus. I would have your attorney maybe investigate that and I would preserve everything Zillow showed you guys when you pulled the report and then have your attorney review it. You could theoretically have a case against Zillow or its screening provider and you know, who knows?

Maybe other landlords. Maybe it has the potential to be a class action. You could try to hold them civilly liable for your losses.

But an attorney might also look into this and go like, Zillow complied with its obligations. There's no viable claim. Here's the document.

My feeling is that's just a whole other legal battle that you do not want to fight right now. It's going to cost you time. It's going to cost you money.

I'm guessing it's a long shot. You're going to want to focus your efforts on going after Jenny. She's the real POS here.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Well, she's angry and so she's looking at all these different entities from Zillow to the California court system to everyone else who failed them that should have protected her and her sister. I get it.

Jordan Harbinger: Yes, which I totally get. You could argue that they all failed her because they did.

Gabriel Mizrahi: But I also think it's important that she and her sister, her sister especially, owned their role in all of this. There were red flags from the start. Jenny trying to negotiate the security deposit down, wanting to move in weirdly quickly.

Her sister was stressed about finding a renter. She's a people pleaser. So I'm guessing she did not appropriately push back on Jenny or maybe challenge her a little bit if necessary and fully vet her.

She also agreed to rent to Jenny before consulting our friend here, which I just find that detail interesting.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, what is that about? Does her sister often make decisions alone? Did she know our friend would have questions and push back and was she afraid of that conflict?

What's going on?

Gabriel Mizrahi: That's what I'm wondering. All of these things are possible, but they owned this condo together.

They are partners. So they should be making those decisions together unless they have some other arrangement. And when Jenny came to see the place and drop off the check, our friend got that sinking feeling.

That sinking feeling is very significant, like we say all the time. It's not always right, but it is absolutely worth factoring in. So they made a few mistakes before Jenny moved in.

It is not their fault that Jenny scammed them. But I think it's really important that they used this terrible experience, which severely compromised them, but apparently did not ruin them completely, which is wonderful. Thank goodness.

They can use this to learn. To learn, hopefully, to be savvier landlords if they still have this property. It's a little unclear.

To communicate and collaborate with each other better. To pay attention to these gut reactions and social cues. And in her sister's case, I think to manage her anxiety better and to work on tolerating conflict, whether it's with prospective tenants or with our friend here, because that's where this vulnerability to Jenny really began.

If those qualities were not there, Jenny probably would not have moved in.

Jordan Harbinger: That is a really important point. Careful people also get conned, of course. It's not foolproof.

But that's why it's important to build a process, like a checklist, that'll work for you even when you're eager to fill a vacancy. All the anger our friend here feels is absolutely legit. And it might also be a way to avoid sitting with the anger she feels at her sister, and maybe at herself to some degree, for not clocking this scammer parasite before she moved in.

Which I know can be really hard to feel when you've been conned. At the same time, I think she can hold her sister accountable for making this decision alone without making her responsible for being defrauded by a professional scammer who does this for a living. But this is how you learn.

Every landlord I know has at least one of these nightmare stories, pretty much, and every single one of them taught them something crucial. How to vet tenants, how to manage problems, how to navigate the system. But here's the great news.

You didn't go bankrupt. Maybe you still have the condo. I'm not totally sure, but that's a blessing.

You're still in the game. So my advice to you is hold Jenny accountable in all these ways, but also try to shift your lens from who can I get mad at to how can I learn from this and what can I learn from this. And I know in time Jenny's going to become the villain who turned you and your sister into much better landlords.

Sending you both a big hug and wishing you all the best. All right, now we're going to hotbox you with the dank deals and discounts on the fine products and services that support this show.

We'll be right back. This episode is sponsored in part by ZipRecruiter. The holidays are coming and somewhere a business owner is trying to hire a real bearded Santa.

Meanwhile, somebody else needs a Grinch. Very different interviews.

One candidate needs to be great with kids. The other needs to steal Christmas without making anybody cry. It's funny until you're the person who has to fill these jobs, whether you need a convincing Santa or a snowplow driver with a special license.

Specific skills matter and those people aren't always easy to find. ZipRecruiter helps you find qualified people who are excited about your role. And right now you can try it for free at ziprecruiter.com/Jordan.

ZipRecruiter has a new feature that shows you the most interested qualified candidates first. So you meet the right people faster.

Candidates can even tell you in their own words why they're excited about your job. That gives you more to go on than just a resume alone. Let ZipRecruiter find the right people for your roles, seasonal or otherwise.

Try it for free at ziprecruiter.com/Jordan.

That's ziprecruiter.com/Jordan. Meet your match on ZipRecruiter. This episode is brought to you by Xero.

That's Xero with an X. Running a small business means there's always something competing for your attention. Managing your finances shouldn't make your day more complicated.

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That's Xero with an X at Xero.com. The 91% claim is based on a 2024 Xero survey conducted in the US, UK, and Australia. Also, y'all, there's a subreddit for the show.

A lot of fun discussions going on there. You can find it in the Jordan Harbinger subreddit. All right, back to Feedback Friday.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Okay, what's next? So over five years ago now, we took a letter from a recent college grad who had moved in with her boyfriend and his parents during COVID after their neighborhood became unsafe. And the four of them got along really well, but living with his mother had become apparently extremely stressful.

She was intense and petty and passive-aggressive about relatively minor problems. The woman writing in tried to be sympathetic to this person and helpful and generous and basically a considerate house guest, but the constant negativity and the drama made the house feel suffocating to the point that she actually dreaded leaving her home office to go have dinner in the common area. That was episode 478, by the way.

And so her question was, beyond being thoughtful and accommodating, what can I do to build a better relationship with my boyfriend's mother and make living together less stressful? Well, she just wrote in with an update and it goes, Hi team. An update and follow-up almost six years later.

My relationship with my boyfriend ended amicably after two years when I moved to New York City. But we've been pretty much like family ever since. His parents became my second parents as they helped me navigate my early career in the US as my parents live in Asia. I've been to family events and I talk to them almost every day. We have a family group chat with the four of us.

Jordan Harbinger: Wow, that's really sweet. So this mom who is driving her nuts actually, apparently not all that bad, huh?

Gabriel Mizrahi: I guess not. This is rare though, to break up with somebody but still be adopted by their parents and talk to them every day. That's really, that's cute.

Jordan Harbinger: It is, but look guys, this is Feedback Friday, so there's a problem right around the corner. I mean, again.

Gabriel Mizrahi: The awkward thing is, I've been dating my current boyfriend for over a year. Things are getting serious and marriage is definitely on the horizon, but I haven't told him about my second parents yet.

Jordan Harbinger: Interesting.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Okay, and it's been over a year? He also doesn't know that I talk to my ex.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh, okay, this is a thing. Wow, stressful.

Gabriel Mizrahi: There's nothing shady going on. I talk to my ex-boyfriend almost every day and we're best friends, but there's nothing romantic or flirty there. I would be happy to show my current boyfriend our entire convo history, but my boyfriend doesn't keep in touch with any of his exes and is a very stand-up guy in that regard.

You can imagine how this adds to my guilt. I also haven't told my ex-boyfriend and his parents about my new boyfriend. It's like they all know all parts of my life, except for one another.

Jordan Harbinger: Okay, so yeah, nothing shady going on except for all the lying, which I mean, come on, that's a little shady.

Gabriel Mizrahi: What's going on here? I guess I wanted to wait until things were more official with my new boyfriend to share the news, but I never found a good time, and now it seems kind of late. It feels like anything I do would seem shady.

What is the best way to navigate this? Signed, struggling to hit the mark and hoping for a better arc when all of my people are in the dark.

Jordan Harbinger: Wow. Okay. Well, first of all, sorry that you and your ex broke up, but it sounds like that was a peaceful breakup.

There's still a lot of love there, both from him and from his parents. It's sweet. It really is.

And the fact that y'all's chat history is normal and you're happy to show it to your boyfriend, that suggests that your ex and his parents are just solid people. You guys have a special bond. Everyone's on the same page.

So it's all on the up and up. Congrats on also finding your current boyfriend. Sounds like the relationship is heading in an exciting direction.

This guy might be your husband. Amazing. But there's this little secret you've been keeping.

So let's get clear on one thing. It wasn't that you never found a good time or whatever to tell your boyfriend about your relationship with your ex's family. You were afraid to tell him, so you kept kicking the can down the road.

And now it feels like this big secret, like there was something shady when it didn't need to be this way. So my question for you is, what were you avoiding by not telling your boyfriend about this sooner? Were you worried that he would get angry or jealous or insecure?

Was it scary to just think about saying this to him out loud? Were you afraid that he'd tell you to stop talking to them? I would sit with this and be very specific about what you were dodging here.

Whatever it is, even if it seems to be about your boyfriend, his feelings, his reactions, ultimately, I think you'll find it's really about you. For example, if you were worried that your boyfriend would be angry and jealous, look, I'm making that up. I have no idea if he would be.

It doesn't sound like he has any reason to be. But if that were his response, by avoiding this conversation, you were probably avoiding having to feel fear and guilt or a more general tension with your boyfriend.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Or avoiding having to defend the relationship. Like, I can see that you don't like it, but this family is really important to me, so I'm going to stay close with them so we can talk about it and I'm going to help you understand why. But I'm not saying goodbye.

Jordan Harbinger: Good point. And again, this might not have even been a problem at all. The reaction she feared, it might have been entirely in her head.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Yeah, it might have been, but that doesn't make it less meaningful, right? What she fears her boyfriend's response would be, what she anticipates her response would be to his potential feelings. That's still very relevant to all of this.

Jordan Harbinger: Exactly right. Point is, those reactions would be yours, not just his. All of that leads to avoidance and that's what created this secret.

And so that's the first part of this, getting clear on all that. Then what you need to do is you need to tell your boyfriend about all this, for sure. You cannot keep these huge parts of your life hidden from a partner, especially if you guys are thinking about getting married.

But since this might be a sensitive topic now, you might want to start this conversation by saying, listen, I want to tell you something. I should have told you a lot sooner, but I didn't. The fact is, I was afraid to tell you because I was worried that you wouldn't like it, even though I don't believe there's any reason you would object, other than my own secrecy.

And so I put this conversation off to avoid my own, I don't know, you can fill in the blank based on what you learn about yourself, my fear that you wouldn't like it or my own guilt or my discomfort with conflict, whatever it is, but I don't want there to be any secrets between us. So here goes. And then you just tell him, I'm still best friends with my ex.

I'm still super close with his parents. We talk every day. We have a group chat together.

They're like my adopted family. They're very important to me for this reason and that reason. There's nothing shady going on with my ex.

I'm happy to show you the chat history. He and his parents are a big part of my life. I believe that our relationship is very clear.

I'm really sorry for not telling you sooner. I see now that I avoided this conversation for, you know, this reason and that reason, and I created a secret to avoid facing that. That was wrong.

I apologize and I'm ready to talk to you about all this. And then you listen. And maybe your boyfriend says, wow, okay.

I don't know how I feel about this. I need to think about it. Maybe he says, wow, I don't like that you kept that a secret, but I trust you and I hear these people are important to you.

It's all good. Thanks for telling me. Or maybe he doesn't react well at all.

And then this becomes a larger conversation and you guys have to navigate that, but this is kind of your bed and you need to, you know, make it slash sleep in it, whatever that phrase is.

Gabriel Mizrahi: However he responds, I have a feeling this is going to be a very pivotal conversation for both of them.

Jordan Harbinger: This is definitely the kind of fight you want to have before you get married. That's for damn sure.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Absolutely. They're going to be better for it no matter how he reacts if they work through it the right way. But look, if your boyfriend is uncomfortable with you being close with your ex and his parents, then maybe this is about helping him understand what these people mean to you and what your friendship with your ex is about and what about the situation makes him uneasy, whatever it brings up.

If he's ultimately fine with you being close with them, but he's angry that you kept it a secret, then I think it's probably a conversation about why you did not tell him, which means opening up about the part of you that is not great at transparency. And to be fair, maybe acknowledging the parts of him that you correctly anticipated and wanted to avoid triggering, namely whatever feelings he has about remaining close with an ex, which he does not do and which you feel makes him a stand-up guy, which is interesting.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, I caught that. That's a good point. I thought I think that goes back to her stuff again, right?

That not talking to his exes is just about being a stand-up person and then using that to confirm that she might be guilty of something.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Right. She's implying by saying he's a stand-up person that she's not a stand-up person by being friends with her ex, but being friends with her ex does not make her a bad person. It's just the lying about it that makes this complicated.

So I think this is a really good point. So I'm just thinking about this interesting theme on today's episode, owning different parts of yourself, integrating different parts of your life, which is so much of what we call, you know, authenticity and transparency. She is keeping a lot of secrets here.

Yeah, this isn't just one secret. It's a pattern for her. What did she say?

It's like they all know all parts of my life except for one another, which is a funny sentence because that's not true. Yeah, they don't all know all parts of her life.

Jordan Harbinger: She's saying they all know everything about me except for one another, which are the most important people in my life. I mean, come on.

Gabriel Mizrahi: So she's quarantining all of these pieces, right? She's putting them in silos.

Jordan Harbinger: Yes, they're behind emotional firewalls. Exactly.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Yes. And so we're back to your question. Why?

Like what is that accomplishing for you? Where did you learn that and why does it feel necessary?

Jordan Harbinger: Childhood, mommy, daddy, early experience, culture, whatever.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Sure, always, right? But we'll let her figure that out. I'm just appreciating how many problems this fear of integrating different parts of ourselves can cause and even when we see that clearly how scary it still feels to do.

And so why is that?

Jordan Harbinger: I think it's the fear of hurting people, hurting people by fully owning who we really are and what we really want. Like if she told her boyfriend, hey, I'm with you, I love you, but I also love my ex as a friend and his parents and we have a great relationship and that means a lot to me. He might feel some type of way about that and she just doesn't want to do that to him.

Gabriel Mizrahi: So a couple things about this, he might feel some type of way about that, but that doesn't mean that she is doing that to him. Crucial distinction. Yeah, taking responsibility for creating other people's feelings, trying to manage them in advance or even in the abstract, that is a really good way to end up in this situation.

Facts. Oh my gosh. But then by turning these things into secrets, she's also shifting the pain to herself, right?

And then she pays the price in the form of guilt and shame and anxiety and stress and this fear.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, the mental burden of maintaining all the secrets. Yeah.

Gabriel Mizrahi: When most of that could just be avoided by saying, hey, everybody in my life, hear something about me. I have a new boyfriend. I have an ex-boyfriend who's also my good friend.

I have adopted parents. I want you to meet them. I want you to know about these people and it's all on the up and up.

And if this brings up anything difficult for any of you, let's talk about it. When you put it like that, the calculus hardly makes sense. I mean, I guess it only makes sense if you believe that it's better to take on difficult feelings yourself than invite the possibility of someone else having a difficult feeling.

Jordan Harbinger: Bingo. Yeah, I think that's the assumption she needs to really investigate and hopefully rewrite by having these chats.

Gabriel Mizrahi: I'm also realizing that the other cost of quarantining like this is we probably increase the likelihood that people cannot accept all of the parts of us. Because we aren't creating experiences that show us that they can. And that only confirms for us that we do need to keep these pieces separate.

Jordan Harbinger: So true. Like by hiding this from her boyfriend, she hasn't given him a chance to understand her friendship with her ex and accept this part of her life. And then she thinks, well, I've never seen him accept me like that.

So I'm probably right that he can't handle this.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Exactly.

Plus now there's a greater chance that when he finds out, he goes, well, I might have been able to accept this if you had told me immediately. But now it's this huge secret. So I don't know how I feel about this guy.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, like, okay, there's nothing shady going on, but you waited a year to tell me and we're talking about getting married. Like what other secrets are you hiding and why was it such a big deal if there's nothing, if it's not a big deal? I don't know.

We inadvertently create the very outcome we fear. We keep the secret and that makes it a secret worth keeping. It's, I mean, worth in air quotes.

Gabriel Mizrahi: That's really nicely put. I think a version of that might be happening with our friend who rented to the squatter as well. Like what was she not integrating by being angry at all of these outside forces instead of her sister?

And what was her sister not owning by being a people pleaser? Yes, exactly. I guess also our friend from Q1, she's literally asking how do I reconcile these contradictory parts of myself?

Like how much do I assert these needs if some of them are going to make people uncomfortable and might hurt my partner, right? It's just, this is a huge theme. It's very powerful stuff today.

Jordan Harbinger: It really is. Fascinating how that popped up again and again today. Man, I love Feedback Friday.

Stuff happens all the time. So now we've unpacked all this. I think there's a really big opportunity for you here telling all these people about one another.

That's not just about coming clean, repairing any conflicts that result. This is about learning to say this is me. This is all of me.

I have several meaningful relationships in my life and learning to trust that if all these people truly love you, and there's nothing problematic about these relationships, of course, then they should welcome and accept all these parts of you and that doesn't have to come at anybody's expense. And I think a helpful question to answer would be what am I afraid will change if everyone knew about each other?

Gabriel Mizrahi: Oh, that's exactly the question.

Jordan Harbinger: If she can really name that thing, I think she'll have the key to the predicament that she finds herself in. Now, what I think you'll find in the process is honestly pretty profound, that you don't need to segregate these parts of your life in order to protect people or secure their love. I mean, that's what I'm hoping for anyway.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Or if you find out that is not the case, then that would also be really good for you to know. Like, if the answer to Jordan's question about what would change turns out to be, well, my ex's parents wouldn't really have as much of a stake in my life. They wouldn't stay in touch if they knew I was dating somebody new.

That's painful, but that would be important for you to know. So you have a more honest picture of that relationship. And you might end up using that information to redefine some of these relationships or maybe adjust your feelings or adjust your expectations of them, but you don't need to worry about that yet.

This stuff comes first.

Jordan Harbinger: Agreed. I also think that your relationship with your boyfriend, your ex's parents, they're only going to get deeper and more rewarding when you stop hiding because you'll be bringing more of you to them. Like, ideally your ex's parents get to meet your new boyfriend, celebrate your relationship.

Ideally, your boyfriend comes to appreciate your friendship with your ex and who knows, maybe even they become friends and you get to let go of the stress of keeping all these subplots separate. That way's so much better. I was just at, uh, Jen's brother got married and there's a woman I've seen a bunch of times and she comes to all these family events and big parties.

Super nice. And I'm like, how do you know her again? And she's like, oh, that's my ex-boyfriend's mom through high school and college.

Like, they just became really close and now she's like part of the family. It would have been so weird if that was the first time I learned about it. And even though I've been married to her for 10 years, right?

But early on, I was like, oh, who's this lady? And she's like, oh, that's my ex-boyfriend's mom. And I was like, oh, okay, cool.

Like, there's nothing weird about that because it was out in the open for a long time, you know? And I just think this is the way to do it. You shouldn't have your, you know what, clenched every time there's a family party.

You're going to want to invite these people to your wedding. You don't want your groom to find out on the day of the wedding. Oh, how do you know my, you know, oh, she dated our son.

We've been in touch. I mean, that would just be really bad. And then what are you going to do?

Not invite them to your, I mean, come on. You know, this is a massive problem that you have to handle. So it's time to have these conversations, my friend.

It's not going to be fun, but it's the right thing to do. They might go a lot better than you think. Huge growth ahead, my friend, and good luck.

Now, let's start a secret group chat with you, us, and the amazing sponsors who support this show. We'll be right back. By the way, you can reach us at friday@jordanharbinger.com.

Keep your emails concise, use descriptive subject lines. That makes our job a whole lot easier. If you're wondering how many of your partner's affairs to put up with, you're trying to set boundaries with a volatile and withholding parent, or you're finally free from a predatory neighbor, but you're still wrestling with grief and complex PTSD as a result, whatever's got you staying up at night lately, hit us up at friday@jordanharbinger.com.

We're here to help and we keep every email anonymous. Now, for the rest of Feedback Friday. And now, for the recommendation of the week.

I am addicted to lip filler. My recommendation of the week, this is not a new podcast. It's quite old, in fact, but it's called Big Brother: North Korea's Forgotten Prince.

And this is about the assassination of Kim Jong-nam, and that's Kim Jong-il's older brother. I know, if you're not a North Korea watcher, you're like, who, what, why? Anyway, this is such a weird, wacky event that happened that I want you guys, even if you don't care about the inner workings of North Korea, it's just such palace intrigue.

So basically, Kim Jong-nam, he's Kim Jong-il's son. So he's older than Kim Jong-un, the current dictator of North Korea, and he's supposed to kind of be the leader later on, like he's supposed to be running the place right now. But years and years and years ago, because he's a little bit of a strange duck, he gets caught traveling on a fake passport, and he goes to Japan, the arch nemesis of North Korea, like the big bad guy besides the United States.

And it's because he's trying to go to Tokyo Disneyland. And so it's so embarrassing for the whole country that he basically gets put into a trust fund and they're like, move to Malaysia, you effing weirdo, or Macau or wherever, right? And they're like, don't ever show your face here again.

And he's like, fine. So he's living this sort of life of like a weird, rich North Korean guy who's being watched by the intelligence services, but is largely harmless. And then one day, he gets murdered with a chemical weapon in one of the strangest ways that anyone has ever heard of, in an airport, and I believe Malaysia.

And this story is crazy because the people who killed him theoretically didn't know they were actually going to kill someone. They were tricked into it. The North Korean intelligence services were responsible for it.

I mean, the whole thing is just so stinking weird that it should be, if it was a plot of a movie, people would go, eh, it's a little contrived. It's a little too, it's a little too out there. This is real life.

It's just such a strange tale, and this podcast does a really good job of documenting the whole thing, even if you're not weirdly obsessed with North Korea like me and Gabe. Again, it's called Big Brother: North Korea's Forgotten Prince, and we'll link to that in the show notes. It's a free, you know, it's a podcast.

It's free, like most podcasts. All right, back to Feedback Friday.

Gabriel Mizrahi: What's next? So a couple months ago, we took a letter from a 48-year-old woman in Texas whose entire life seemed to be falling apart all at once. Do you remember this one, Jordan?

Her marriage had ended.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, it was like a country song.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Yeah, that's right. What was it? She's like, because this part of my life wanted a verse in the country song or something like that.

Jordan Harbinger: I don't remember that phrase, but it really was. Like, her marriage ended, she lost her job, her house was in trouble, her finances were in trouble, her dog died, her kid totaled the car.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Kia Sportage.

Jordan Harbinger: Right!

Gabriel Mizrahi: Kia Sportage. That's where it all started. Exactly.

Jordan Harbinger: Super intense letter. Didn't her ex also transition genders and then...

Gabriel Mizrahi: Yes.

Jordan Harbinger: But that also, that person said weird stuff in her sleep, like, I'm going to kill you. And it's like, what? And they're like, I don't remember.

Sorry, I was asleep.

Like, it was just so bizarre. The whole thing was bizarre.

Gabriel Mizrahi: There was a whole other subplot. She supported her ex through the transition, but she also caused her a lot of stress. But then they also promised to always stay close, and then she felt that her ex abandoned her when she found somebody else.

Jordan Harbinger: That's right. And all the losses, which happened basically at the same time, left her feeling foggy and exhausted and insecure and disconnected.

Gabriel Mizrahi: It was a really tough story. So her question was, how do you rebuild when several parts of your life fall apart simultaneously? Like, how do you prioritize?

Jordan Harbinger: Yes.

We ended up talking a lot about grief, if I recall.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Well, she just wrote us, and I really loved her letter, so I wanted to share it with you guys. Hi, Jordan and Gabe. I figured after everything you guys have heard from me, I owed you one final update.

I got a job.

Jordan Harbinger: Nice.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Like, an actual job.

A good job. In my field. A management position with salary and benefits and everything.

Apparently, those still exist.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, I was going to say, okay, I guess those are still around.

Gabriel Mizrahi: When I first wrote to you, I had been unemployed for what felt like approximately 700 years.

My marriage had fallen apart, I was losing my house, my health was a mess, and every time I thought I had finally hit the bottom, life seemed to locate a previously undisclosed basement. This woman and the metaphors.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, yeah.

Gabriel Mizrahi: The metaphors are out of control today, guys. You really delivered with the metaphors. They're peachy, indeed.

Then things were maybe, possibly, perhaps, starting to move. I had some consulting work developing, interviews were happening, and for the first time in a long time, I could at least see a path forward. There were still a few plot twists after that, because apparently my life has contractual obligations to remain interesting.

You're funny. I interviewed, I got rejected, jobs resurfaced and disappeared again. I interviewed some more, I took assessments, interviews got rescheduled, I tried very hard not to lose my mind waiting for people to make decisions about my entire financial future, while they casually went about their Tuesdays.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, that must have been maddening.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Waiting can be the worst. And then this job happened. The first interview went incredibly well.

Then came assessments, then more interviews, and more interviews, and I kept walking away thinking, I think they actually like me? Turns out they did. Amazing.

Jordan Harbinger: So happy for you.

Gabriel Mizrahi: And maybe the best part is that this isn't just a job I took because I desperately needed one. It's a job I genuinely wanted. It's a management position in the field I've spent years building my career in, doing work I actually care about, and they saw value in the experience that I was starting to wonder if anyone was ever going to give me the chance to use again.

Man, that's got to feel great. There are still things in my life that need rebuilding. Getting a job doesn't magically undo the last few years or tie everything up with a perfect little bow.

But holy shit, does it change a lot. For the first time in a very long time, I'm not just trying to survive whatever happens next. I'm making plans again.

And I wanted to thank you guys for being part of this incredibly weird chapter of my life. When I originally wrote in, I think I mostly needed somebody outside of my own head to look at the whole situation and help me figure out what the hell I was supposed to do next. Turns out the answer really was just do the next thing.

Then the next one. Then the next one.

Jordan Harbinger: Yep. That's the name of the game.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Eventually, one of those things was accepting a job offer. So unless something truly spectacular happens, I promise this is my final update.

Jordan Harbinger: You don't need to promise that.

No, your life can still fall apart. Don't count yourself out just yet.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Although given my track record, maybe don't hold me to that.

Jordan Harbinger: Exactly. Exactly.

We will not.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Thank you. Seriously.

Signed, finally enjoying a new dream after my life came apart at the seams.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, great letter. Isn't that awesome? I love this.

Well, yeah, I'm so happy for her. I mean, it's about time we got some good news on the show. Obviously.

I mean, if it's too good, we can't air it. Nobody wants to hear that. But, but, you know, we're here for you.

Gabriel Mizrahi: We needed this verse in the country song. And it's the redux where they have like four additional bridges and all these new parts. I loved it.

Obviously, I wanted to celebrate her big win and share the update with people. You guys seem to enjoy these updates, like I said, and we do too. And it's fun to hear how people's stories go.

But I also thought that there was some real wisdom in her letter. Simple wisdom, but profound wisdom, you know, and also hard-earned wisdom. I would say that was just worth sharing today.

Jordan Harbinger: Well, the whole do the next thing over and over. I mean, relatable. I remember when the biz fell apart.

I was like, okay, just make a list of crap you can get done today. Don't worry about like your five-year plan. I just, I, it's so relatable and I think that's huge.

Gabriel Mizrahi: For sure. I feel like that idea keeps coming up on the show. Like, do not disturb yourself by imagining your whole life all at once.

That famous chestnut. Her life is a perfect case study in that, right? Your mind can worry about every single problem at the same time.

I think that's what Jordan calls, what was it, being a blender with the top off?

Jordan Harbinger: The blender with the top off. Yes, that was the same thing when I felt like a blender with the top off and I was like, no, focus on the, do one thing at a time because that's all you can do anyway.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Which is the only thing you can do. Exactly. And so a lot of the game of life really does come down to getting clear on the handful of things that truly need your attention and then only doing those things.

And it's just doing that over and over and over again.

Jordan Harbinger: It sounds like one of your lame-o meditation retreats, Gabe. Buddhism in action. Don't think about yesterday.

Don't think about tomorrow. Truly. Except in so far as it helps you decide what to do today.

Be here now and act, but act with discipline, with focus, and trust that your inputs, like continuing to show up to all these interviews for jobs, that will lead to different outputs.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Which is the other big gem in here, I think, just this idea that no problem or feeling lasts forever.

Jordan Harbinger: Right. Sometime you'll die.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Something's got to give.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh, sorry. No, just kidding. Also that.

You'll eventually be dead.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Yeah. You really were inside my inner monologue during the silent meditation. That's right.

That's good. But yeah, something's got to give, right? New opportunities always enter the picture.

We can always make choices that change the equation somehow. And even when you're in the depths of your despair, that always shifts eventually in some way. I mean, dude, when she wrote in and we talked about grieving and letting all of these old structures in her life fall apart, right?

I was thinking, okay, if she really takes this to heart, this is probably going to take months. This could take years, right? Like this might be a two-year-long period where things are kind of brutal and she'll come out of it eventually.

But here she is two months later and everything looks different. I just think that's a really good reminder to keep perspective and you know, like you said, trust.

Jordan Harbinger: I had the same thought. My money was not on amazing management position coming her way and getting her out of survival mode in the next eight weeks. But also look, this was not divine intervention or whatever, right?

This was not just pure luck. Luck plays a role. It always does.

But she worked for this. She stuck in the process and she kept showing up and none of these nice ideas work without that effort. So kudos to her for that.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Agreed. But you know, the other thing I appreciate about this letter is this part where she said, there are still things in my life that need rebuilding. Getting a job does not magically undo the last few years or tie everything up with a perfect little bow.

Jordan Harbinger: I like that. Yeah, that jumped out at me too, obviously, of course.

Gabriel Mizrahi: She's not saying, well, I have a paycheck and benefits and an identity again.

So everything's actually fine. Like I don't know what that was, like in a kind of manic way or in a defensive way. She's saying the stability massively helps and I can actually contemplate the future again.

And that's a very, obviously a very real thing in our system. And I'm still in touch with my sadness. I'm still in a grief process.

There are still parts of my life that require attention. Both are true.

Jordan Harbinger: For sure. Having a paycheck makes tomorrow something she can plan for, not just brace for. In all the mental bandwidth she was spending on looking for a job and freaking out about the uncertainty, she can now use that to, you know, actually do a job and live her life.

But yeah, I'm with you. She's not cherry picking the parts of her life that are convenient or telling herself a story about how things are going. Her story seems to be there's a lot of new good.

There's a lot of previous bad. There's a lot in between and I'm here for all of it, which I just have to point out. I think that's also a version of this big theme that we keep coming back to today.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Good point. Yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: So she's integrating all these parts of her life, all these parts of her story, all the notes in the symphony and you know, look where that's gotten her. That's pretty great.

Gabriel Mizrahi: So true. It's very inspiring. I agree.

Jordan Harbinger: So congratulations, my friend. Thank you for the update. Thank you for keeping us in the loop.

Thanks for those contractually obligated plot twists that make Feedback Friday juicier than the ripest of peaches in that woman from Q1's weird secret heart kitchen for Timothée Chalamet.

Gabriel Mizrahi: What a metaphor. I thought you were done with the peaches. I really, you just, you can't stop.

Jordan Harbinger: Clearly I am not. Uh, look, keep up the amazing work. Best of luck with the new job.

I'm sure you're going to kill it. We're sending you a big hug. We're all rooting for you.

Go back and check out Steven Bridges, Alex Davies, and our Skeptical Sunday on Restaurant Food, if you haven't done so yet. The best things that have happened in my life and business have come through my network, the circle of people I know, like, and trust. If your kid totaled your car and your life is falling apart, try to rebuild it as best you can using our free course available at sixminutenetworking.com.

These drills are designed to take just a few minutes a day. I wish I knew this stuff 20 years ago. Dig the well before you get thirsty, folks.

Build relationships before you need them. That's all, again, at sixminutenetworking.com. Show notes on the website, advertisers, deals, discounts, ways to support the show.

All at jordanharbinger.com/deals. I'm at jordanharbinger on Twitter and Instagram. You can hit me on LinkedIn.

Gabe's on Insta at Gabriel Mizrahi. This show is created in association with PodcastOne. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jase Sanderson, Robert Fogarty, Ian Baird, Tadas Sidlauskas, and of course, Gabriel Mizrahi.

Our advice and opinions are our own. And yeah, I'm a lawyer, but I'm not your lawyer. Consult a qualified professional before implementing anything you hear on the show.

Remember, we rise by lifting others. Share the show with those you love. If you found the episode useful, please share it with someone 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. Chess isn't just a game. You're about to hear a preview where Danny Rensch shares how building Chess.com put him face to face with cheaters, death threats, and a past he had to rewrite to survive.

Danny Rensch: I was born into a cult. As I've talked about it more and more, I've gotten better at just saying that and naming it for what it was. The collective itself was called the Church of Immortal Consciousness.

My generation within a couple of years was part of the first group of kids that were being born into the collective, which again, at that point, it was full communism. People's finances were merged. When you came to the collective, you gave up all of your material belongings.

You just sort of look at it and go, this was fucked up. This was not okay. There is no excuse to be made for this.

And then Western media was paying attention to chess for the first time, maybe since Bobby Fischer in the 70s. This movie had come out, and these two kids trapped in a cult were basically under house arrest and didn't have anything else to do. And anything that Steven Camp was fond of, everybody was into, right?

He was literally in charge of every human being in the collective. I went from zero to being one of the top kids in the country. Within two years, I was already an All-American.

I was one of the top rated players, and I've worked very hard to heal my relationship with my own abusers, not because I'm trying to excuse their behavior, but because I really do believe that forgiveness is not rewriting the past. It's freeing yourself from it. And so with Chess.com, accidental success 15 years later. So we have 25 million games a day, 623 games finishing every second. You can have a different relationship with your experiences if you want to. The obstacle can be the way, and you can overcome hard shit.

That was my goal with this.

Jordan Harbinger: To hear the story of how Danny Rensch got on the hit list, check out episode 1289 of The Jordan Harbinger Show.