So decide what kind of person in every relationship, what kind of role do you want to play, and then hold yourself to that standard and put away the scorecard because the scorecard is incorrect. It's not accurate and you'll always be unhappy. Having said that, don't be a doormat. I shed relationships all the time on a regular basis. I decide I'm just not getting a lot out of this relationship and I do a slow fade. Is that wrong? No, it's what I do. But just decide what kind of person you want to be in the relationship and hold yourself to that standard and just don't measure. Put the measuring stick and the scorecard away. You're just going to be much happier.
Welcome to Office Hours with Prof G. Today we're revisiting some of our favorite questions about relationships. Let's bust right into it. Question number one comes from Reddit. Ario 1010 asks, "I've heard you mention keeping scorecards in relationships and friendships. My question is how and why you decided to stop keeping scorecards and what helped change your mindset?"
Thanks for the question. Yeah, this was specific or situational or had to do with one relationship, and that is the relationship with my father. When I was 8 years old, my mom came home. My mom just disappeared for a couple weeks and my dad didn't tell me why. It was the '70s, you know. I remember being on the couch watching The Partridge Family. This like my mom's been gone out for two weeks and I just started sobbing uncontrollably. My dad's like, "What's wrong?" I'm like, "Where's mom? Where's mom?" I just like it dawned on me that mom's not around. And my dad, I remember, was the first time I ever saw my dad like fear in his eyes, like he didn't know what to do and had to handle an 8-year-old like sobbing uncontrollably on his couch. I think that's when he decided that my mom should come get me. And a few days later, my mom showed up and said, "Pack your stuff. We're leaving." This wasn't exactly Brené Brown parallel, like childcare, and said, "You know, we got to be out of here in 15 minutes." And I'm like, "15 minutes? I can't pack my..." It's just like, "We need to get out of here. Your dad's going to be home soon." I don't know if she was kidnapping me or just didn't want to see my dad. I don't know what the [__] was going on. Anyways, 8 years old. And as is often the case, well, because my mom was taking care of me, I had a tendency to sanctify her and demonize my dad. And my dad didn't make our lives very nice. He was so extraordinarily cheap that we struggled economically. And that is, as soon as my parents split, my dad went on to be upper middle class. And my mom and I immediately dove to the lower middle class, which was hard. And it wasn't... it was hard on me. Kids don't really need a lot of money. I was able, you know, 35 cents, an Abba-Zaba bar, and a Schwinn bike, and you kind of got everything you need. We didn't have streaming media or iPhones. Um, but it was very hard on my mom. And when you're the only child, especially, I think the only boy, you just absorb their anxiety. I remember my mom like coming home and my mom was like on the floor sobbing because the vacuum cleaner broke and I'm like, "Well, we can get it fixed" and she's like, "We don't have the money to get it fixed." I was like, you're [__] 9 years old. You're like, okay, what can I do to get a paper route to get the vacuum fixed? So that economic anxiety that was a direct result of my dad being such a bastard, quite frankly, because he could have helped us, made me resent him and it stuck with me. As I got older, again in college, I had no money, constantly stressed, constantly broke. Dad could have helped me and the bottom line is he didn't. And so I always resented him for that. And now having said that, my dad was a kick in the ass. My dad was a ton of fun. Funny, nice, smart. He did love me. He would make an effort. He'd be in town and he would take me to movies and stuff. So he did try. And when my mom passed away, I kind of, I think my resentment towards him grew and I would go months and I think one time a year without speaking to him. And he didn't really know what was going on, but didn't have the presence to try and figure it out. And then I just sort of decided that I wanted to have my father in my life and that I decided to focus on the good things. And rather than having a scorecard and thinking, okay, he did X amount, he gave me X amount of love, I'm only going to give him X amount of love, I said, well, what kind of son do I want to be? And the reality is I wanted to be a loving, generous son. And I was going to hold myself to that standard and just put away the scorecard. And that was such an enormous unlock for me because I think about what kind of boss do I want to be. If I pay someone more than they're earning, I don't... I used to think younger that pisses me off. They worked here for a... or I paid them a [__] ton of money and they added no [__] value. I hate that person. Now it's like if you are a boss and people get more out of working for you than maybe you get out of them or you pay them above market, that's a win. That's a victory. If you're a better spouse to your... if it is really hard for your spouse to figure out ways to be as good to you as you are to them, that's a win. That's the whole [__] shooting match. That's what it means to have kids. I hope at some point my kids level up what I've done for them. It's going to take a while. I've invested a lot in my kids. I always tell them you're negative surplus value. So approaching relationships from the mindset of always wanting to have surplus value and say, okay, what kind of boyfriend do I want to be? What kind of son do I want to be? What kind of employer do I want to be? What kind of investor do I want? I used to get mad at CEOs of companies I invest in lost money. Now I'm like, no, I want to be... I want to be a magnanimous, generous, supportive person. I've been on the board of a lot of companies I'm investing in where they [__] up and lost all my money. And I try to be... now it's no problem. You're going to get back up. This is great. I went into this eyes wide open. Well done. Let me help you raise money for your next thing. That's the kind of guy I want to be and I wasn't always that way. So decide what kind of person in every relationship, what kind of role do you want to play and then hold yourself to that standard and put away the scorecard because the scorecard is incorrect. It's not accurate and you'll always be unhappy. Now having said that, don't be a doormat. I shed relationships all the time on a regular basis. I decide I'm just not getting a lot out of this relationship and I do a slow fade. Is that wrong? No. It's what I do. Just decide what kind of person you want to be in the relationship and hold yourself to that standard and just don't measure. Put the measuring stick and the scorecard away. You're just going to be much happier.
Question number two. Hey Prof. This is a question about balancing career and personal pursuits with the responsibilities of being a good son. My brother and I both live in major cities far away from our aging parents. While we've benefited from city living, I feel guilty about the distance, especially with my father's declining health. My parents would never ask us to move. They don't want that for us. Moreover, they seem committed to staying for financial and social reasons. But I don't see how this works as they age and as they need more support. What advice would you offer young men who have chosen to live far from aging parents but worry about responsibilities that they hold as sons?
Look, this is a tough one and my general sense is it sounds like your parents have each other. It sounds like they're doing pretty well and it sounds like you are benefiting from living where you are. So my gut is that as you get older, they're going to get sicker and at some point you're probably, you and your brother are going to have to be pretty involved in their lives. And I'm not saying this is the right way, but this is my way. And it's two different sides of the coin. I was much closer to my mother than my father. My mother raised me on her own. I was her top priority. You know, it was me and her against the world. So, when she got sick, I actually moved in with my mom. I took a 9-month leave of absence from NYU. I was fortunate. I had some money, some resources, and I had the ability. And I moved into a senior's community, the Del Webb active living community. True story. They sent a letter to my mom's house saying, "It's become clear you're cohabitating with a man under the age of 50 in violation of HOA Del Webb community rules." And I had to go down there and say, "I'm her son. She's dying from cancer and I've moved in to help take care of her." And they said, "We're sorry. No problem." Anyways, and during the day, let's get this back to me. During the day, I would manage my mom... it was her third time with cancer. She said, I said, "All right, what do you want? What's your bucket list?" She said, "I only have one thing on my bucket list. I want to die at home." I'm like, "Okay, I can think I can figure that out." So, during the day, I would manage her healthcare, a nurse. There's certain things I just can't do for my mom. And at night, I would head down to the strip. She lived in a suburb of Las Vegas called Summerlin, and I would party with entrepreneurs and strippers, and get really shitty drunk and sometimes spend the night on the strip at a cheap hotel during the week for 49 bucks. And then the next day I'd go back and hang out with my mom all day and watch Jeopardy and take her on walks and push her wheelchair and watch Everybody Loves Raymond and then go out again. Kind of a weird time in my life. Kind of a weird time. And then when that thing resolved, I then started my life again. And that is something that I will treasure the rest of my life, that I had made enough money, had enough flexibility to give my mom like a fraction of the love back she had given me. That was... I will treasure that for the rest of my life. You know, these are again very personal questions, but some people, their reason for being, their center of gravity is family and they want to be around their family. And if that's the case, okay, make those sacrifices. But if you're doing well, especially in a city, you mentioned the term city living, two-thirds of all economic growth is going to be in one of 20 super cities. And what I tell young people is if you want to be economically secure, you got to get to a city. Or if you want to be in the top 10%, much less the top 1% of economic security or influence, you got to be in a city. And if you're just an economic animal, which I was in my 20s, 30s, and 40s, get to the biggest city in your country, get to a super city, and that's where you make your career, that's where you find opportunities. You're just in a... you're in a room of opportunities all the time when you're in a city. Long-winded way of saying the following: my gut is your parents are doing well and they have each other. My gut is you are benefiting, based on what you said, from being in a city. Which says to me there's no reason you can't be close to your parents now and kill it professionally, personally, and emotionally. Sticking where you are, knowing that at some point you're going to have to be more involved in their lives. And that mental and economic wellness that you will accrete by that point will help you do a better job with a reduction in the amount of stress that is naturally part of the process when they get really old. In sum, I'd probably stick where you are. And finally, I don't know all the nuance of the situation, so I'd have very open and honest conversations with your brother and friends or people who understand the situation and can better advise you. I very much appreciate the question and the fact that you're even thinking this way means you're a good son. It means your parents are good people or did a good job with you.
Welcome back. Question number three comes from CM14 on Reddit. How have your social relationships evolved as your financial success and fame grew? And have you been able to maintain core friendships over the years? How do you share your success and celebrate your wins with friends and family and not make them feel uncomfortable or awkward?
So my therapy is I talk to friends almost every night. And also something, a best practice which I only took up about 15, 20 years ago which I wish I'd started earlier. I now don't make any significant decision personally, professionally, economically without speaking to people because I have found that no matter how smart you are, it is impossible to read the label from inside of the bottle and you just benefit so much from having a kitchen cabinet and talking through things with friends. And even if you decide to ignore their advice and make a stupid decision, I find just talking through stuff that's bothering me or upsetting me with people who care about me and objective and will push back on me and say when I'm wrong or, you know, supportive but honest if you will, is really helpful for my own mental health. It's, I guess it's a form of therapy. In terms of how friendships have evolved or not evolved, the answer you want to give is, you know, friendship is friendship and money hasn't changed things. I have sort of two buckets of friends or three: kind of family friends or acquaintances from way back when, and then I have my college friends, my fraternity friends, and then I have friends I've sort of collected along the way. And the easy ones are the friends you collect along the way are usually you're in the same ecosystem and that is they're also people who have a certain level of success or also kind of grinding or living in New York, whatever it might be, but you're kind of all in the same weight class. And that is it doesn't matter if you're worth a hundred million or a million, as long as you're kind of wealthy, you're all sort of in the same weight class if you will. And then there's my fraternity friends and most of them are successful. They are... I was in a fraternity that was essentially a bunch of wealthy Jewish kids from the Valley at UCLA, ZBT, and most of them went to graduate school, a few doctors, some entrepreneurs, and to the one, they're almost all either are successful or very successful. So that doesn't come up. I will say that with some of my older friendships of people where you have maybe more time in common than overlap in terms of your life today, that the disparity in economic power is apparent and can be sometimes uncomfortable. I try to be just very self-aware that I was born on third base and not evaluate people based on their economic success. I do believe in America if you're hardworking and have your [__] together, you're going to achieve a certain level of economic success. I think any dude who is male and white and born in the '60s or '70s, if you're decent to good at what you do, you should have a certain level of economic sustainability. But those who aren't super successful, you realize a lot of that, a lot of your super success and or their lack thereof is really more a function of being in the right place at the right time. If you are the successful, you have a debt. You have a debt to help other people have as many opportunities to try and to try and bask in the same sunlight and the same glow and the same luck or have the same opportunities to get lucky that you had. If this sounds like a [__] word salad and I don't know the answer here, trust your instincts. Anyways, that's all for this episode. If you'd like to submit a question, please email a voice recording to officehours.com. That's officehours.com. Or if you'd prefer to ask on Reddit, just post your question on the Scott Galloway subreddit and we might feature it in an upcoming episode.
