The Jordan Harbinger Show
1081: Stuck Co-Parenting Lad with an Imprisoned Dad | Feedback Friday
Fri, 22 Nov 2024
Co-parenting with a narcissistic ex in prison wasn't part of the plan. Now he wants phone calls with your son. What could go wrong? This is Feedback Friday! And in case you didn't already know it, Jordan Harbinger (@JordanHarbinger) and Gabriel Mizrahi (@GabeMizrahi) banter and take your comments and questions for Feedback Friday right here every week! If you want us to answer your question, register your feedback, or tell your story on one of our upcoming weekly Feedback Friday episodes, drop us a line at [email protected]. Now let's dive in! On This Week's Feedback Friday, We Discuss: You're co-parenting with your ex who is currently in prison for multiple crimes including drugs, guns, and stolen property. Your young son misses his dad and wants phone calls, but you're concerned about your ex's narcissistic tendencies and potential for retaliation. How do you protect both your son's heart and your safety? You've been a loyal employee for 11 years, but after your company was acquired, you discovered new hires are making significantly more than you. With a recent acquisition of an Indian company making everyone nervous about job security, how do you advocate for fair pay without rocking the boat? Your nephew's friend fell victim to a devastating online scam involving compromising photos, leading to tragic consequences. As these scams targeting young people become more prevalent, what can parents and communities do to prevent similar tragedies? Your fiancée bought a house without your input, following her parents' wishes rather than your shared plans. Now she wants to live alone first and might not give you space for your belongings. Is this just about the house, or is there something deeper going on? Recommendation of the Week: Portuguese Reggae Music You're torn between joining the Marine Corps and pursuing graduate studies in Milan, Italy. Having experienced both the military culture and European life, you're struggling to choose between duty and adventure. Which path leads to your authentic self? Have any questions, comments, or stories you'd like to share with us? Drop us a line at [email protected]! Connect with Jordan on Twitter at @JordanHarbinger and Instagram at @jordanharbinger. Connect with Gabriel on Twitter at @GabeMizrahi and Instagram @gabrielmizrahi. Full show notes and resources can be found here: jordanharbinger.com/1081 See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Chapter 1: How to handle co-parenting with a narcissistic ex in prison?
Then in early 2022, he was arrested for having a loaded ghost gun in his truck, then arrested again. for assault and battery with possible great bodily injury and another gun.
So this guy, first of all, he can't stop, can he? But also, Gabe, when somebody comes back and says, oh, yeah, these random guys beat me up and then I drove four hours to a hospital. No, no, no, no. Two guys grabbed your ass, threw you in the trunk of a car, drove you somewhere, beat you up. You went to the nearest hospital and now you got home. Like, that's clearly what happened.
You know what I was thinking? I thought that he went to that hospital far away because he was afraid of going to a local one because the guys would find him again. Possibly. Or he didn't want to tell the local doctors what happened to him and then they call the local police or something. That's possible.
I just have a feeling that two dudes nabbed him, put him in a basement, beat him up for a while, and they let him go and he went to the nearest hospital. Could be. But that just happened to be four hours away.
But then he said he drove four hours to the hospital.
Yeah, but we don't know that. That's what he said after also saying two random guys.
I don't know why I was trusting him on this one detail after everything he said. But he said that he personally chauffeured himself.
That's right. Unless you got that GPS record that a location tracking on his phone, no.
As if this guy's not an unreliable narrator in every other way. Exactly. I had to tell my six-year-old son why his dad suddenly stopped coming by. I kept it as age-appropriate and vague as I could. It was awful. He understood that his dad broke the rules and there were consequences, but he didn't understand the why.
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Chapter 2: What should I do if my ex wants to call our child from prison?
And I'm not a big fan of prioritizing the villain in this story to keep things on an even keel. No. If not allowing your son to have more contact with him with these phone calls, if that means that your ex or your son are sometimes upset with you, I think that's a reasonable cause for protecting yourselves from a dangerous person. On the other hand, okay, this is his dad.
If they can have some kind of relationship, even if it's very limited and flawed, maybe that's important. And as far as we know, he's never been violent with you guys, although I would argue that even if he never directly hurt you guys physically, just being around this guy is harmful. Look at the people he attracts. You could be riding in a car with somebody like this.
Suddenly someone's beating you up on the side of the road, holding a gun to your kid's head. This is terrifying. But he is in prison now. So the chance of him being a risk in that way is low, probably non-existent. The bigger risk, obviously, is what he's going to do when he gets out. And that's where things get hard.
Like, how much do you cater to him now to avoid him retaliating against you in a game? What's the timeline here? I'm a little vague. Is it like six or seven years from now?
It sounds like it, yes, if he serves his full sentence, which apparently he will.
But who knows? Yeah, maybe he's in Joe Arpaio's prison in Arizona and he's, you know, loving life down there. But at which point your son's going to be 15. He's probably going to be much more equipped to understand the situation, decide how he feels about his father, potentially agree with you that it's best to keep his distance. Who knows?
Right. But that doesn't mean his dad won't be a problem for them.
No, that's where I'm struggling here. Like how much of a threat would he be? Really? We just don't know. He might also blame the mom for alienating the kid and then the kid's 15. So maybe he's old enough to get his ass beat by dad who just got out of prison. Who knows if he's just going to yell and bluster on the phone sometimes for keeping him at arm's length. Okay. You can deal with that.
But if he's going to pound on your door at four o'clock in the morning, multiple nights per week, if he's going to take out a ghost gun, he got from some dude he met in prison and pointed at our friend here to intimidate her into seeing his kid. I mean, this is That's a very different story. And look, I do not mean to give you more nightmare fuel. I really don't.
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Chapter 3: How do I advocate for fair pay after a company acquisition?
Second, if you're gonna send nudes, definitely don't send them to somebody you don't know intimately. Third, we need to have conversations with our kids that we would rather deal with whatever fallout comes from a dumb mistake than not have them with us.
From what I hear, the parents have engaged with law enforcement and local schools to tell their story and to try to stop this from happening to anyone else. I immediately had this conversation with my own family, and I tell everyone this story when the topic comes up. I hope this somehow helps prevent a similar tragedy. Thank you for spreading this, in whatever way you choose to.
Signed, hoping to start a caravan to warn people against these scams.
Oh man, this is truly awful. The worst. The fact that this young man had zero mental health issues before and then bam, just like that, over the course of like three hours decides to commit suicide because he can't bear the thought of his nudes being leaked. It just breaks my heart, man. Gabe, you know how much I hate these scammers. These are total parasites. Scum.
Seriously, I feel like we should drone strike these people. I'm not even kidding. Although, you know, a lot of these cyber scammers are actually caught up in these slavery operations where they're forced to do this stuff. And we talked about that with Nathan Paul Southern and Lindsey Kennedy on episode 833. So that complicates the picture somewhat.
You just don't know if you're talking to some a-hole in a scam call center in, you know, Pakistan, or you're talking to somebody who's been kidnapped, essentially, who's being forced into this stuff. You just don't know. So a lot of these scammers, yeah, they're not part of trafficking operations. Those people are, well, they're evil. They're evil, obviously.
But look, you get some money out of people, you string them along, you move on, it's gross, it's awful, but it's just money. But this kid killed himself. This scammer has blood on their hands and it's unconscionable. I wish these scammers understood the pain they put people through slash cared because it's not just like, oh, I lost 10 grand in Bitcoin.
Sometimes it's I lost my 16-year-old son, grandson, brother, friend to these people. This scammer devastated countless people's lives.
Yeah, man, it is. It's kind of unspeakable. This is just like another level of tragedy. It's hard to wrap my head around it. I was reading up on some of these, you know, sextortion stories that lead to suicide. And I actually learned some really disturbing stuff. So one really sad thing is that this type of scam. often plays out in a very short amount of time, just like this one.
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Chapter 4: What can we do to prevent online scams targeting youth?
Of course! That has been my plan for the last 18 months. Oh, really? I thought you don't do it. Not that I have nudes out there, but hypothetically, if I did and anybody saw them, I'd be like, oh, come on, please, as if I have that. Look at those six-pack abs. You think that's really me? Come on, that's AI.
Plot is getting real good. I don't know.
Yeah. My God. All right. Look, if your kids ever do something dumb, my kids, for example, if they're ever in trouble, you just got to tell your kids, don't panic. Come to me. We'll figure this out together. It's so important for children to know this. And I'm going to be having these very awkward conversations with my own kids in a few years.
By the way, I'll link to all of these articles in the show notes if you guys are interested in checking them out.
I'm so sorry to hear about your friend's nephew. Absolutely heartbreaking, and thank you for sharing his story so we could dig into this stuff. I hope it helps at least one person listening right now to avoid these scams or teach someone else how to avoid them, and I really appreciate you giving us this opportunity. Sending you, your nephew, and his friend's family a big hug.
You know who you can trust with your nudes, Gabriel, AI-generated or otherwise? The amazing sponsors that support this show. Why would you send the sponsors your nudes? That's a valid question. How do you think I get all these amazing discounts for everybody? I've been sending AI-generated dick pics to these people in exchange for 15% off children's vitamins. We'll be right back.
If you liked this episode of Feedback Friday and you found our advice valuable, I invite you to do what other smart and considerate listeners do, which is take a moment and support our amazing sponsors. And I don't mean by sending them dick pics. Just by using our discount codes, just in case that wasn't clear.
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Chapter 5: How to navigate a complicated relationship with a controlling partner?
They can just serve us better than the other options, and they can move us closer to the life we truly want, which, as my friend Mark Manson points out, is just another way of saying the set of problems
we truly want. Man, that is so important. I'm so glad you, can you say that one more time? I feel like I need to hear that.
Choices don't solve our problems. They just serve us better than the other choices and they move us closer to the life that we really want. And Mark Manson always says something along the lines of you're choosing the set of problems that you really want.
Yeah, man, that is great advice. I just want to touch on one last thing here. And I know it's not the main thing he was asking about, but it sounds to me like he has a bit of a fraught relationship with his family, especially with his parents. And there was this moment where he's like, my parents were no help. My dad should have helped me. He worked remotely. He didn't help me.
And I just hear some anger on his part about what kind of support or what kind of guidance he's getting from his family. And I don't know quite what to make of that. But I do think that whatever his next move is in his life is probably informed by his relationship with his family.
And maybe going to Italy is really important for him to get some distance from the family that he grew up in, see them more clearly, carve out an identity of his own. Such an interesting theme on today's episode, Jordan. You know, we heard that in the woman who bought the house without consulting her fiance, and maybe she's missed out on some important life phases.
It occurs to me that maybe that is part of what he's wrestling with, too. But I just want to acknowledge there might be a little bit of a complicated relationship with your family. and with other people in your hometown. And part of what you're wrestling with here is like, why won't anybody come and help me?
Why won't anybody understand me well enough to say, this is the path that you should follow. But I think now you have enough information to know that nobody is going to come and just say that to you. And if they could, it might actually rob you of a really valuable experience, which is you deciding for yourself what kind of life lights you up and is authentic to you.
So while you contemplate this move to Italy, I might also look at some of these relationships and maybe think of this as an opportunity to heal some of this early family stuff that I do think is playing a big role.
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