Should I start again? No, no, no, you're doing great. Yeah. Oh, okay.

I'm Rapph Jeffrey Stifman.

I have served congregation Shera Emoth. Actually, Shaare Emoth, but everybody in St. Louis calls it Shera Emoth since 1965. Wait a second. I'm reeling from the fact that I have apparently been mispronouncing Shera Emoth.

Same. Every Jew in St. Louis I know says Shera Emet.

Everybody says Shera Emet.

When people ask me where I am or was the rabbi, I tell them Shera Emet.

Actually, in modern Hebrew, it's Sha'ar-e-met.

But if I would say that, nobody would know where I was.

What does Sha'ar-e-met mean?

Okay, Sha'ar is a gate, and Sha'ar-e means gates of, and emet is truth. In the old Hebrew and Yiddish emmis, which means truth. Well, that is perfect because today we are opening a gate, hopefully to some truth ourselves. Right. My childhood rabbi Jeffrey Stiefman first met my grandparents, Sydney and Sylvia Jacobs, back in 1965, when he came to St. Louis to be a rabbi at Sher emmet. Now, since rabbi as Stifman has known my family for almost 60 years, there might be no one better for me to go to to seek the truth about my dad, if that's what I actually want to do. See, when we started this podcast, I thought that's what I was after. Of course I did. I mean, who doesn't want the truth? But after the last two episodes, when we took that unexpected detour into my dad's old house, the Royal Manor.

It was like a command center in the basement.

A panic room.

This guy was so afraid of people coming after him or discovering what it was he was up to.

He would always tell me all these crazy stories about crazy Jacobs and all those cameras.

We think that might actually be not just audio, but video, which would mean that your dad had a camera in your and your brother's room, possibly?

There was so much devastation that was done here. I think that a lot of my own feelings about shame are coming back of just feeling like I've done something wrong. You know what I mean? After that, I started to question what I really want. It wasn't just that hearing all the pain that my dad caused brought me back to childhood shame, though it obviously did that. It was the new revelations, things I'd never known, more of the truths than I'd ever really cared to know, frankly, that was most upsetting. I realized I might not like what I discover in this podcast. It might upset the narratives I've told myself, the carefully curated status quo I've built for myself as a husband and a father. At the same time, I may never find peace until I deal with the truth of my childhood. Who who my dad was and how that affected me and everyone I care about. For example, one of the things I've never understood and one of the questions I've desperately wanted answered is how in the world did my mom and dad get together? I mean, why would anybody choose to marry that man?

What was their courtship possibly like? And how did she not see what she was getting herself into? With this podcast, I can answer that question. So I moved forward with some hope and lots of trepidation, ready to get into it. The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but, wherever that may take me. My name is Danny Jacobs, and this is How to Distroy Everything, a podcast about how one Narcissist, My dad destroyed his family, his neighborhood, and his community. This is episode 4, How to destroy a courtship.

You know something-Darren, whoa, whoa.

Hey. Hey, Danny.

I did not see you there. Oh, I'm always looking, always listening. That's what supportive friends do, you know. Lerk and listen. I don't actually think that's what supportive friends do. Agree to disagree. Anyway, what I noticed in this intro-I haven't finished it yet.

What do you mean? I got to introduce you.

Dumb dumb. Oh, I think they know the deal by now. I mean, I'm the best friend who witnessed it all, endures insults like dumb dumb, holding your hand in this journey. Fair enough.

Okay, all right, proceed.

What's interesting is I'm listening to you in that intro, and I've always noticed this, but I'm noticing it, particularly now, when you talk about your mom and how she and your dad got together. I don't know if you realize this, but you sound more than incredulous. You sound a little bit angry to me.

I mean, yeah, I guess that's true. Look, it just seems ridiculous to me that my mom would make this choice when there had to have been so many red flags.

I mean, yes, I hear that. At the same time, we're looking at it from... We have all the knowledge of what happened. Isn't it possible that your dad wasn't the fully formed Richard Jacobs back then? He was not the man that you and I would come to know?

Yeah. Okay. I suppose it's possible that he got worse as he got older.

I also want to point out, and this just amuses me, that you are mad about the particular circumstance that led to your own existence. It's like you're longing for a back to the future scenario where you and your brother's photos get erased, actually go away.

Okay. Actually, yeah, I think when I'm actually I'm longing for is a scenario where they don't get married, my parents, and yet somehow my brother and I are still born. Okay, sure. Maybe through a divine intervention, we have an immaculate conception. Okay, fair enough.

You two are the second and third coming. That's right. Well, okay, so let's get into it. In terms of how they got together, let's talk through... You have a working theory of how that transpired, and what is that?

Yeah, this is what I've always thought, and it's pretty simple. I thought, okay, my mom is someone who grew up in the '50s and '60s in the Midwest under the thumb of a pretty strict and conservative father. Then she just jumped right from him to my dad.

One controlling the end of the next. Yeah. That is obviously how you framed it to me over the years. But what's interesting is that when we talk to your mom as well as your uncle Hyman, her brother, about their childhood, that's not exactly how they framed it.

Okay, so mom, I want to go way back to your childhood. We talked to Diane, your childhood friend. She said that you, or at least she wasn't aware of anything, but she said that you did not do much, if any, dating in high school. Is that true?

That's true.

Did you date anybody?

No. I didn't date till I went to college.

Why didn't you date anybody in high school?

Because, well, I don't know. I went out once with somebody, and I just didn't like it.

Do you think... What was your opinion of the male gender then? Do you remember?

Well, I guess it was based on my dad. He He didn't do anything to me to make me afraid. He didn't hit me or anything. But he was strict. When we acted up, he had us go to our rooms, my brother and I. I would stand right next to the line on the floor where the door is, but I wouldn't step over because I knew he would get mad. I had a good relationship with my dad. He was a very caring person, but he was also not He's not thinking girls could do the same as boys. The girls had to be married and have kids.

Just say who you are and who you are to me.

Okay. My name is Hyman Sleeper. I I am the uncle of Danny Jacobs. Sandy Jacobs is my sister, and Richard Jacobs was my brother-in-law.

Tell me about Papa, so your dad, a little bit of what he was like.

He was fairly strict. Meet us. We were never spanked or anything like that. If we were bad, he would send us to our room and we couldn't come out of our room and things like that. But he was a Ward Cleaver type of father. That's how I put my father.

Okay, I must admit that's not exactly what I was expecting to hear either of them say.

It's interesting. I wonder if sometimes we make these narratives up about our parents without actually necessarily having any evidence to back them up.

No, it's vibes, right? I built up this idea of my papa as hyper strict because it made sense in terms of how my mom is.

Totally. Look, it's not like he wasn't strict at all. I mean, Ward Cleaver, your uncle referenced, he had certain expectations for his kids behavior. But yeah, this image of your papa as this overbearing authoritarian, that seems to be an oversimplification.

Yeah, but there's also the possibility that my mom and uncle have a rosier image of him today, glorifying the past. No, that's true.

That's truly like how presidents become more popular when they're out of office.

Yeah, my papa is the George W. Bush of parental figures is what I'm saying. It all makes me think that the truth of who he was was more nuanced than I thought.

Yeah, people are complicated, including your mom, by the way, as we learned when we sat down with her childhood friend, Diane Shriver.

Okay. Well, my name is Diane Shriver. Sandy, Danny's mom, and I were best friends in the eighth grade, and she was a practical joker. Okay, hang on.

I have to pause the interview for a second to say that I have never in my entire life heard anyone call my mom a practical joker. Anyway, please proceed.

We met in gym class. After class, we all had to take showers, and somehow she managed to get out and into where you have your clothes and your notebooks for the next class, and she hid my blouse in my notebook. So when I arrived at the locker room to put my clothes on for the next class, I had no blouse. Yes. I took her clothes and I hid them in her books because I thought she's going to find this, and I wanted to play a joke on her.

Why did you want to play a joke on her?

I don't know. I just thought it was funny. And I thought she'd get it right away as soon as she opened her book.

This show is sponsored by better help.

Daryn, do you know what you're going to be for Halloween this year?

I don't, but I do know that it will involve a mask.

Yeah, and you know what I'm going to do? No. I'm going to take off that mask. Wait, on Halloween? Yeah. Instead of putting one on, I'm taking one-off because-So you're not going to wear a costume? Look, I feel like these masks are all putting us a layer between us and our true selves.

Oh, I see what you're doing now. You know what I mean? And therapy- You're not talking about Halloween.

Well, I'm using it as a way to talk about therapy, which helps you accept all parts of yourself. You don't have to worry about what that mask is doing anymore. That's good. That's what therapy has done for me.

It's done the same thing for me, honestly. I feel as though without therapy, I would be struggling to maintain a friendship with you because you're You're a nightmare.

I'm going to let that slide. Listen, guys, if you are thinking of starting therapy, please give better help a try.

Yeah, it's entirely online, which is super duper convenient. It's flexible and it's suited to your schedule whenever you're available.

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Like Danny, take off the mask with Betterhelp.

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That's betterhelp, H-E-L-P. Com/destroy. Okay, so look, it's not like your mom is going around pranking people left and right. She still sounds like the same woman we know, We need a little bit more rebellious, perhaps, than we realized.

Okay, but I think that that's actually hugely important. I mean, I never thought of my mom as a rebel in any way, but clearly, there was that side of her.

Right. That actually makes me think about other ways that your mom went against the norm. Despite the fact that she came of age in this very conservative era in the Midwest, she didn't actually grow up dreaming of getting married and having kids. Yeah.

I mean, that might have been part of her vision for the future, but she also wanted something more.

What's this?

Dr. Sandy Ceefer has made a huge discovery. By the looks of its flat teeth, it seems to be a herbivore, a new dinosaur, of course. Scientists have named it the Sandysaurus, after the amazing doctor that found it herself. The world waits with... Hi, Daddy.

So? What is this thing?

It's...

It's an archeology kit? Where'd it come from? I ordered it with my allowance money.

I've been saving up for two years. Hand it over. But Daddy... Now, now.

You I don't want to work. You want to work, you can be a nurse or a secretary.

Maybe a hygienist.

Nothing wrong with that. Daddy, I don't want to– And when you get married, you quit.

Please, Daddy. Enough.

The most important thing a woman can be is a wife and mother. Understand?

Yes, Daddy.

Your mother says dinner will be ready in 10 minutes.

Get yourself cleaned up. All right, my first reaction to that is just heartbreak. I mean, thinking about my mom as a kid with these big dreams just totally dashed. It's really sad.

By the way, having kids also and imagining doing that to your kids is rough. In that regard, the other thing is your papa was definitely strict. I mean, at least in terms of what he saw as acceptable employment options for Sandy's future. Yeah.

I mean, my mom came from a very traditional family, and there was an expectation that she would grow up to live in yet another very traditional family.

Right. Well, and that does lend some credence to your theory that there was a transference from your papa to your dad in terms of these strong, controlling men.

But I just wonder if... In your childhood, in your home, was your dad... Was Papa the... Is he in charge or was it Nana? Yes. He He was in charge of everything.

He was in charge, yeah.

Was there anything about, I don't want to lead the witness here, but was there anything about that that felt safe?

Yes.

Can you talk a little bit more about that?

Yes, because I felt like he would always watch after me, and I felt that way with Richard sometimes. I felt like he's being weird, but I feel nobody will ever take advantage of me with him around, with Richard around or with them. Right.

That's I mean, that's pretty definitive and clear to me. You can draw a straight line, I think, between your papa and Richard. She gave up on her archeology dreams to follow her dad's wishes, and then later she gave up so much to accommodate being with your dad.

My mom was an experienced and accustomed to submitting to her father. I think primed in a way to meet and eventually fall for someone like my dad, someone who made her feel safe, albeit in a much more destructive way than her dad did.

Totally. No, I see it. Okay, but now let me throw another theory at you. Ever since our last episode, I've been thinking about what your mom said in the end, about the sex.

Oh, God damn it, Darren. So Very good. Oh, God damn it.

Between your mother and your father.

No, I understand.

When they would have intercourse.

Love making. Oh, God.

It was tremendously pleasurable for your mother.

I hate you so much. I hate you with a burning passion.

Who probably made sounds of pleasure. I'm just guessing. I'm just trying to imagine. Oh, God, I want to die. Anyway, actually not about the sex per se. What I mean is that maybe your dad offered your mom something else, something that she really wanted.

Okay, I'll buy it. What's that?

No, it's going to be okay. Maybe he offered her excitement.

One time we went to a hotel, and somehow he got mad at the office, and he called up and he sent towels and sheets and all kinds of stuff saying he was this other person. And then we stood outside and watched all that stuff happen, and I thought it was fun.

Wait, you mean he called down and requested all of those for a different room?

And then you guys stood outside of the room giggling as you saw them bring all this stuff up. You know what? You might be onto something with this excitement thing. I mean, my mom had grown accustomed to submitting to her father's wishes, and then she had this yearning for something more, something exciting that my dad fulfilled.

Yes, exactly. Okay, so she wanted excitement. She was a little bit rebellious. She had had her dreams crushed by her father. Let's keep all of this in mind now as we track through the story of your parents' relationship. First, we need to go back to when they first met, because I want to return to something we started talking about back in episode one. You might remember this whole thing about on one of their earlier dates, your dad asked your mom to clean his apartment.

Okay, so when I would drink at a party, I would maybe just drink maybe one or maybe two glasses of wine or something that's not very strong. He said he had a special drink that he wanted me to drink, and I didn't like it, I didn't have to it, or I could just have one if he didn't like it anymore, I wouldn't have to drink it. So it was super, super, duper strong. But I couldn't tell because of the way it was mixed. And I was like, sick that whole night at the party, throwing up and everything in the bathroom. Oh, wow. And then there was a girl there that knew Richard, and she had said to me, I think Richard did the same thing to me at another party. He gave her this drink that made her drunk in one drink. So I don't know. I didn't... I think I might have asked him later about it, and he lied and said... I still think that he did do that because he was mad at me for not cleaning up in his house. But at the time, he said, Oh, no, I didn't do that.

You must have had a bad... I only had one drink, and I was like, as if I had a whole jug of beer or something. I mean, it was a lot.

Wait, so you think that what happened here was. He invited you to this party, said, I want you to clean my house. You did not do that. You showed up for the party. Then to get back at you, he messed with a drink to make you sick?

Yes.

Oh, man. God, where do I start? I got to tell you, I think I blocked that out of my mind. I knew she said it, but I remember at the time when I heard it, I wanted desperately to dismiss it. It's probably why we didn't include it in the first episode. I did not want to face that.

Yeah. Can you talk about why? I mean, I get it, but I just want to hear it from you.

It's just so much darker.

You know? Yeah.

It's fucked up.

No, it is. Yes.

I think on some level, I get a—this is going to sound weird—but a perverse pride by talking about my dad's schemes and everything. There's a cleverness to them. They're destructive, obviously, and cruel, but they're elevated. He was a criminal, but an elevated one.

No, I mean, it'sNot so base, not so base. Not this.

This is just evil. Yes, you're right. It is. This is like a base evil. It's like, man, that is rough for me to wrap my around. As a result, it's bringing back all this anger that I feel at my mom again. I mean, how do you stay with this guy? How? When he asked you not only to clean his apartment, okay, and even then, fine, but then you think he drugged you? Right.

What? Look, I do think we have to keep in mind the context. Your mom is not a modern, liberated woman at this point. She's under her father's way, not to mention society. Society has a lot to say about this.

I suppose it's also true that my mom didn't know for sure that she'd been drugged. She suspected it, but you know.

Yes. Also, let's not forget that your dad, he could be very charming and extremely persuasive. He was highly intelligent, and he could adhere himself to people. He had that twinkle in his eye. He was fun.

Yeah, that's true. I mean, one minute he could drive you insane, and the next minute he could charm you.

It's like that story your mom told us about one of their early dates. These statues are really neat. Oh, yeah, those. Yeah, those are Alaa and Igbo, African Goddesses of Fertility.

Oh my gosh.

I had no... I didn't realize it was so late. Oh, I'm sorry, Richard. I should probably head home.

Oh, that's okay. Hey, you know what? That reminds me. I'm supposed to have a call with my parents in a minute. Oh, okay.

Let me just grab my purse.

I'll get out of your hair. No, no. I... You want to listen in?

To what?

My call with my parents.

I do.

Sorry, I don't understand.

Yeah, well, I'll call them on the phone in the kitchen, and you just pick up this one here and listen.

Just listen? Yeah. Do you think that's really a good idea? I don't want to into trouble.

Oh, a little trouble never hurt anybody. Besides, they'll never know.

Oh, okay.

Yeah, all right, great. Well, just wait until I give you this signal.

Okay, I'll wait.

Hello.

Hi, Mom.

Hi, Honey. Hold on. Let me get the King.

Dad?

Okay, okay, now, now, now. Anthony. Who is it?

Yes, what?

Pick up the phone in your office.

Who is it?

Just pick it up. Who is it?

Your son. Who else would it be? Hello, Richard.

Howhow did the date go?

With Sandy?

Yes, with Sandy. How many days did you have tonight?

Just the one.

Well, it's very sweet that you call even after your date.

Well, I love you both very much.

Yo, we love you too, Richard.

We do. You know that. Well, how did it go? Did she like you?

I don't know, but I sure like her.

It's so interesting that there's this glimpse in that scene of who my dad would become in the future, listening when he's not supposed to, violating people's trust.

Yes. In this case, the trust of his own parents.

Right. But at that time, at least, my mom saw it in a different light. She saw it as harmless fun.

Well, yes, exactly. See, I think what you do sometimes, and I understand this, but I think when you're thinking about your dad, you are imagining him as you knew him, older, possibly worse with his mental illness, but definitely having far exceeded his welcome. It's like how when you know someone super well, That's the only little thing that they do that early on might have been unnoticeable, now it's immensely annoying.

Yeah, but, Darren, he might very well have drugged my mom on one of their first dates. That does not feel like some mere annoyance.

True, true. But my 8 is an important word there. We don't know for sure. Let's just keep that in mind. Still, I get your point. I think I'm just saying that early on when your mom first met him, she couldn't have put all the dots together. To her, he was just a guy.

Man, that blows my mind what you just said, that at some point in his life, he was just a guy. But you're right.

I remember how your uncle Hyman talked about him?

Sure, she went out with some guys, but your dad was probably the first one that I knew that would have been something serious.

You remember meeting him?

Oh, yeah. I thought he was very nice.

What do you remember about that?

Oh, yeah, it was funny. He was outgoing. He seemed charming. It was nice to see him. I mean, there was nothing that he did. I just thought he was nice. Nothing weird about him, I didn't think. In fact, this is where one of those things, illegal things, occurred. I was going to KU, and the girl I was dating, Ellen, lived in Kansas City. And we couldn't call a lot of times because at that time, it was long distance. There was long distance phone charges. So he had a gadget that somehow, when you dial the number, you hit this button on a tape recorder, it diverts the charges. It goes through the phone. You can still get you where you're calling from, but the charges somehow would go to someplace else. I don't know where. So basically, I could talk to my girlfriend at that time, Helen, all I wanted to for free. Did he give you that gadget?

He gave that to you?

Yeah, he gave it to me, which I thought was cool.

At this point, you're probably like, This guy is awesome. My sister is dating an awesome guy.

Oh, yeah, I had no problem with them. Like I said.

See, your dad was actually capable of some pretty incredible things, technologically speaking and otherwise. I mean, with him, anything was possible.

I see it. I do. I guess it had to feel exciting to a woman who was consigned to the limitations set by her father. Let's talk about his piloting the plane.

When I was dating him, one day, he came out and he said, I'm going to surprise you. So he had the blindfold thing.

All right, walk this way, right here.

Follow the sound of my voice.

Richard, where are we? I can't see anything under the blindfold. I'm so nervous.

Almost there.

Okay, I'm and we got to the airport, he had a blindfold me, and there was a Cessna train there. Voila. Oh my gosh. Wait, is that on?

Yeah. I'm going to fly.

What?

Wait, what?

Yeah, I've been taking lessons. Don't worry. It's perfectly safe.

Nothing to worry about. And I said, Okay. So I got in the plane. Hop on up there.

Strap yourself in. Very important safety first.

Okay, here we go. And he flew it, and he seemed like he knows what he was doing. He showed me that he had all these hours. He had taken lessons and he had enough hours to fly it by himself.

And you didn't know up until that point that he could fly an airplane? We did not. We did not.

Okay. Anyway, so we went up in the plane. Oh, my God.

What a kick.

Oh, my goodness.

Oh, my Richard, this is, this is unbelievable. Yeah, I know, right? He flew around, and when we got to my house, he said, let's wave to your house.

Let's give it a little wave with the wings. What do you say? Here we go. I'm going to wave with the wings.

And so he took those like this, swiveling back and forth. And that was waving to my house. Richard, please don't do that again. Please don't do that again. No, please don't do that. I don't want to do that again.

All right. Well, all right. We're just having a little fun.

And that made me sick to my stomach a little bit. Sure. And so then he landed and I thought, Okay, this is over. I hope we don't do this again.

Nothing could be simple with Richard Jacobs. Nothing. Nothing could be pure fun.

We went up with somebody else once, and that person later told me that he took chances. They shouldn't have taken. I didn't know, so then I was scared after that. Also, he wanted me to take flying lessons in case he would have a heart attack and I could land the plane. He had an obsession with having a heart attack. He did? Yeah, all along.

Was he in his 20s at this point?

And so you were like, 20, what, three?

Yeah. So he was really into that, wanting me to do that. So I said, okay. Well, it was a special class for people who were just for that reason. Oh, not at all. He had a lot of learning He knew how to fly because they're significant. They knew how to fly, and in case they would have a heart attack, I guess. He always had to make it weird.

Yeah, he did. You know what? Speaking of weird, that just reminds me, back to this arc of my parents' relationship thing, we asked my mom to talk about when they fell in love with each other.

Richard had a dog.

He really did care for the dog, and the dog died, and he was really I remember going over to his house and bringing him food or something, maybe a cake or something that he liked. Then I also paid for the dog to be buried.

You did? Yeah. Wow.

As a gift.

How long had you been dating at that point?

I don't really remember. But it was not super long. But I did really like him. The fact that he cared for the dog was a plus. When I paid for the dog, when he realized that, and then I saw him when I was leaving that day that I came over, I could tell he was falling in love with me. How could you tell that? Just the way he would look at me.

Doughy-eyed.

Yeah. When I left, I thought, Maybe this is going to be something that will be good, getting married to him.

One of the things that was actually really interesting to me in what my mom was talking about in terms of them falling in love is that it didn't sound like a mutual thing. The way she was talking, it's mostly from my dad's side.

It was when he was falling in Exactly.

What I think my dad might really have been doing is he might have really just been falling in love with something that she was doing for him, you know what I mean? Rather than her or their relationship.

Oh, interesting. He had someone to do things. He had an assistant who's falling in love with that. That's interesting. I could see that. Look, even from your mom's side, though, one way that I was thinking of it was that she's been programmed by her dad, and by society for that matter, to think she is supposed to get married, right? Yeah. Here, what's she doing? What's happening is she's getting this guy to fall in love with her. She's feeling good about fulfilling that obligation to what she's supposed to do.

Or were they both falling in love because that was a societal norm? My dad, too, even as a narcissist, he may have been trying to fit into society and do the normal thing.

Right. Maybe in that sense, it was mutual in a very boomer way.

Yeah, and I suppose love is love.

Yes. And then they lived happily ever after.

End of podcast.

We should probably talk about their engagement.

Oh, yeah, for sure. Okay, the plan was for them to get married in Kansas City, where my mom grew up. But then about a month before.

I remember when we were getting married and my best friend from California came in. It wasn't a wedding. It was for a party or something. It was a month before the wedding. They stayed at this hotel where Richard was staying. And all of a Richard got mad and said that they were calling him in the middle of the night and were bothering him and hanging up on him and all this stuff. I called her up and I said, Why were you doing that? They were really sophisticated people, they wouldn't do stuff like that. So they said, no. So Richard was saying, Oh, no, I don't want them in the wedding. I don't want Nancy in the wedding. And so we had a fight over it. I remember I was going to break up with him then. And so what happened is I said to my dad, I said, I don't think I want... It's only a month before the wedding, and I said, I don't really think I want to marry him because of all this. And he said, that's okay. He said, if you don't want to marry him, it's better now that you break up and you do it later.

But the thing is about this Nancy story that's really interesting is that it was almost the exception. She really did consider calling off the wedding.

You're right. You're right. Speaking of that, it's like, what was he even doing here? It's such a remarkable act of self-sabotage that admittedly, I do not understand it at all.

It's a great question. I don't know. The only thing I can think of is that it was about control. I wonder if it was one last attempt to see how amenable my mom could actually be. Would she toss aside one of her bridesmaids, one of the most important people to her for him? Good Lord. Like a test. Yeah.

But again, to her credit, she refused. He saw that there was, in fact, a red line she was unwilling to cross.

Totally. In the face of that blowback, she actually confronted him.

With the whole Nancy thing leading up to the wedding, did you talk to Richard about that? Yes.

He was in a cry, and he said he was sorry and that That he would let her be in the wedding, and he cried.

That's right.

Yeah. Because he thought I was really going to break up with him. I did it. It was the same weekend that he visited, a month before the wedding.

Did he justify his behavior in any way? Did he say that?

No. I mean, I don't remember. He just said he was sorry.

Man, my dad cried and apologized. Who is this person? I mean, in my entire life, I've only seen him do that one other time.

Maybe because he realizes that he has to, that he's gone too far. There's no other way out here. In your case, his relationship with his son may be at stake. Back in this story with Sandy, his potential marriage here was at stake. If he didn't back off, he was going to cost himself this relationship.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. It actually goes to something that we're going to get into in later episodes, which is that when my mom eventually left my dad, I think that was a real fulcrum point in his life. I think it was this disintegration of a meticulously created delusional sense of self. Here in this moment, right before their wedding, perhaps he scraped up right against that and knew deep down that it was not a place that he could go.

Oh, interesting. I think that makes sense. I think that you may be right. Now, with regard to the wedding, I want to get into one more thing. That's the thing that happened right at the very last minute, just before your mom was about to walk down the aisle. Richard's father seems nice. It could do without his mother, though.

Dad.

Just saying. I'm not sure her face muscles are working properly. Does she ever smile?

Oh, my gosh.

Okay. Here we go.

Hold on a second.

Dad, it's starting.

You want to run out. Just say the word.

What?

It isn't too late. I know it seems like it is, but it's not. All you have to do is say the word and I'll shut this whole thing down. No questions asked.

Are you serious?

I'll make up an excuse We'll send you off to Hawaii for a few days.

Why would you... Why are you saying this? I just...

I want to make sure that Richard is the one you want.

Yeah, he is. I have never been more sure of anything in my whole life.

So that is really a stunner.

Wow. Yes, it is. I mean, okay, first of all, for this little out to come from her father, the guy who so wanted her to get married.

Right, exactly. Then for her to make that choice. I mean, God. Look, my dad may not have been the fully formed, full-blown monster that he would become at that point, but He had clearly lied about a friend of hers harassing him in the middle of the night.

Yes, and she knew this.

She knew this. She saw it. My papa saw it. And yet, Darren, and yet she still made the choice to walk down the aisle.

Even when she had been given an out by her father right there.

I'm a little turned around here. Am I angry again? I think I'm angry.

I think you're angry again. I'm angry on your behalf. You know what? I think we need to go back to the source.

All right. In Kansas City, they have a dance that is like something ball that they had here, something like that. So my dad wanted me to be in it. I was a junior in high school, and I wasn't even dating. I didn't want to be in that at all, but he really wanted me to be in it. And so it was a big deal. I had to go to these parties that I didn't want to go to with my date and talk to the other kids. And I felt like they were more on top of the social ladder than I was. And I felt like I just didn't enjoy that at all. It made me feel like I couldn't really talk to these boys that were super popular, that were in with those girls that were super popular. I don't know. It just made me feel like I wasn't on their level, and it was hard for me to really talk to boys back then. I didn't think I was good enough for those boys.

You're saying that that experience colored your relationship with men from that point onward?

Yeah. But then where did Where did it come from? I don't know. All I know is that I even had it later. Every once in a while, I still have it, that feeling that I'm not on somebody's level.

Oh, Mom, all the time. When we are talking and maybe there's something that you don't know, you will often preface it to me being like, Now, don't think I'm stupid, or, Don't say that I'm stupid. That is a very big part of how you go through the world, is this fear that somehow you're not good enough or you're not smart enough. All right.

Yeah. Okay. The only thing I can think of is it's nothing to do with my dad because he was always encouraging to me, but he always was more into what Hyman... That he was not as interested in me as he was in Hyman because Hyman- There it is. Because Hyman didn't study or whatever Hyman was doing. He got sent to a military school so that he could make sure he got good grades and got into a good college. But with me, he didn't even say anything about my grades.

Mom, okay, so that's it. I mean, you're saying that you grew up with this feeling that was never expressed to you explicitly, but that was there, that you were not good enough, that Hyman was valued higher, that he was higher on the ladder, and When you start making all these assumptions like, Oh, I guess I'm not smart enough. I guess I'm not on their level. Because that's the primary dynamic of your home life when you were a kid.

I guess so. I also feel like- But I see it now. I also feel like I've done pretty well in my life. I was able to live on my own for a long time and do things. I went to Israel. I just did a lot of things I felt like in my life. I have a career career that I like, a paralegal career, and I've worked for a long time. I've worked out things when I was separated from Richard, like how to work plus take care of kids at home. There was a lot of stuff I did that I felt like I did well. I look around my place and I really love the way it looks. At my house, too.

I love this.

Sandy, I love hearing from you. You are saying the words of a confident person now, someone who is not as insecure as you were when you were younger. You feel proud of what you've accomplished.

Yeah, mom, it's nice to hear you speak so positively about your life. What's occurring to me right now is something really interesting. We were talking about how, I was saying at the beginning, about how my papa offered her an There's a escape hatch there leading up to the wedding to cancel it. But in a way, that wasn't an escape hatch at all. That the real escape hatch was from a boring life that my papa had inadvertently laid out for her, a future that she was not excited about.

Oh, that's interesting.

The real escape hatch was actually my dad. The That the opportunity that Papa gave her to cancel that wedding was actually him saying, Hey, you can actually have the life that I dreamt for you. This is not going to be that. I just want you to know you can still have that boring life where you're going to be that wife and nothing out of the ordinary is going to happen and you're not going to do anything out of the ordinary. That's the life that he was actually offering her in that moment.

Marrying your dad was the act of rebellion. Yes. That's very interesting. The excitement we've been talking about. She wasn't even aware of it. I don't think this was a conscious choice.

Dude, it also makes me rethink the drugging thing. Even if you did think somehow that this guy tried to drug me on an early date, it's about your whole life, right? It's like she suddenly sees this opportunity. If you have an opportunity to live a more interesting life, is that worth it?

I mean, it's a bit of the-It's a It's an easy question. No, but you know what you're making me think of? It's like being a Mafia wife. It's like the Karen character in Goodfellas. Ever since I was a kid, I wanted to be a gangster. It's like, ever since I was a kid, I wanted to be an archeologist. I wanted to have adventure. On some level, this guy gives me adventure.

If you got to just turn your head in the other direction as a mob guy is getting stuffed in the trunk for that to happen, then you're like, Well, I'm just going to ignore it. I'm going to do what my mom always says she does, which is I don't like to think about negative things. I'm going to ignore it, and I'm going to live a more interesting life. I mean, Jesus, I can totally empathize with that. We all have one chance at this life. We have one chance to do stuff and experience things and have interesting things. I can see that there is a way that you can look at your life as like, Oh, my God. Wait a second. You're telling me that I just have to live this boring existence?

It's a prison sentence.

It's a prison sentence. You do anything to out of that prison.

Yes. Marrying your dad was an escape from that prison. We've come now to the point at which you married Richard, and we've come to an understanding, I think, of how you got there. We know in the next episode, we're going to get into the marriage and where it all went wrong and how it all went bad. But before we do, we have to end this episode.

Is there anything that you want to say about to set that up about what the marriage was like and how it went bad?

Yes. After I married Richard, and it wasn't until it was maybe a few days later, he said to me, You know, Sandy, I just don't like how your nose is. I think that you should have a nose job. And I was shocked. But he insisted that he never liked my nose and wanted to have a nose job. And then he decided that he wanted to the nose job, and we were going to have two nose jobs at the same time in New York.

What?

So he scheduled an appointment with a doctor in New York City.

And you took a trip to New York as a couple to get nose jobs?

Yes.

All right. Well, Mom, I mean, the amazing thing every time- Every time I enjoy this. The amazing thing is there's just an endless supply of stories.

I know, but see, I'm worried that people are not going to believe it.

You know, because people didn't believe me.

My friends didn't believe me when I told them some of the things that Richard did to me when I was married to him, and they told me not to talk about it because- Wow, that's really interesting. People wouldn't believe me. Those aren't friends, Sandy.

That's terrible for people to say, I don't believe you and don't talk about it.

That's horrible.

I guess so, yeah.

We started this episode with a search for truth and with a bit of anger coming from you, Danny Jacobs. Let me ask you this, do you think that in this podcast as a whole, we're wrestling with your anger and your own complicated emotions? Is part of this possibly about your own kids? And what I mean is, is there any fear you have that if you don't figure this shit out, that your kids may one day talk about you? Not in the way that you talk about your dad exactly, but in that way. Yes.

Oh, yes, for sure. In both conscious and unconscious ways. In the conscious ways, it's like those times when I feel like that feeling I get of like, Oh, I'm in an unjust situation and I want to lash out or I want to do something in public-In front of your children. In front of my children. I've been trying to really consciously not do that. But I'm sure that there will be times when I fail at that. I think that that behavior is all tied to my dad. So understanding that and diminishing that is really important to me. Then in unconscious ways that I don't even understand, what are the ways in which growing up with my dad in that context has seeped into me in unseeable ways, but they're there under the surface. I think that's absolutely the case.

For what it's worth, as an observer of you and a friend of you, I have noted you seem very calm with your kids. Very calm. I don't know what's going on inside, but very, very calm and loving.

Well, you should see me when my daughter's coming out of her room for the 28th time in an evening's bedtime routine. Who can blame me for that? No, that's great to know. Honestly, what I'm talking about, though, that behavior is less about worries about how I'm going to interact with them and more about how they're going to see me interacting with the world.

Yes.

That my relationship to the world, there are echoes I see sometimes in my behavior of my dad's relationship to the I remember what it was like being a witness to that and how that affected me and the shame and guilt of that and fearing that that will also happen with my children.

Perhaps in going through this Sha'aray emet, this gate of truth, and feeling a little less anger, maybe we're making progress towards you not repeating that cycle.

Yeah, I hope so. I think so. I do.

How to destroy everything is written, directed, and created by Danny Jacobs and Darren Grotsky. Executive, produced by Michael Grant-Terry, and edited, sound, designed, and music supervised by Dashil Reinhardt.

Dashil Reinhardt. His name's Dashiel?

Okay. Original Music by Jessie Terry, starring in alphabetical order, Noah Harpster, Caroline Jania, Jonathan Kaplan. Jania.

Caroline Jania.

Let me start over.

No, you got it. You have to start over.

Noah, Caroline Jania, Jonathan Kaplan, Keel Kennedy, Emily- Kyle Kennedy? Kyle Kennedy, Emily Pendergast, Hartley Wexler. If you knew Richard Jacobs and have a story tell, please reach out to us as, I knowrichardjacobs@gmail. Com. Additionally, if you would like to support this podcast, please consider becoming a patron at www. Patreon. Com/howtodestoryeverything. And of course, you can find us on Instagram and Twitter. How to Distory Everything is available on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Special shout out to Spotify Studios for hosting our recording sessions here for the pod down in downtown Los Angeles. Thanks, Spotify.