When There is No Clean Choice | Ethical Adulthood Evolves — Part III

In this episode, I explore a third group of people for whom the original Ethical Adulthood framework does not fully apply:

•  people who are not overwhelmed,
•  and not disconnected from reality,
•  but trapped inside situations where every available choice carries pain, loss, rupture, or sacrifice.

This episode looks at:
 • impossible family systems
 • loyalty and obligation
 • grief over unlived lives
 • agency and its limits
 • people who stay too long
 • people who cannot pivot
 • the ethical complexity of “doing the right thing” when no clean option exists

Through the stories of “Charley” and “Roger,” this episode asks:
 What happens when capacities are online…
 but the structure of a life itself becomes the trap?

This is not an episode about blame.
 It’s about reality, responsibility, grief, and the quiet costs of living out of alignment with ourselves for too long.

And it’s also about compassion:
 for the people we love,
 for the people we cannot fully help,
 and for ourselves.

Approx. 30 minutes.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:05

Welcome back to Ethical Adulthood. This is part three of Ethical Adulthood Evolves. We've got this episode and one more before the season is over. So today I'm discussing the third group of people who don't fall into the original group for whom the framework was written. The first and second groups were defined in the previous two episodes. The first group, people overwhelmed by life, overtaxed, tired, carrying too much. They need space, rest, permission, even, a chance to claim authorship in their lives again. The second group, people who cannot stay in contact with reality, in the places that matter most. Not because they don't care, but because they can't hold it long enough to respond. The third group is different. These are people for whom the ethical adulthood framework just doesn't quite work. They don't lack capacity. They're living inside a situation that cannot be resolved cleanly. The discomfort is constant. They're already living in it. The situation cannot be left without causing significant harm. They've already ruptured other relationships trying to manage it.

SPEAKER_00 2:03

They don't hold the power to change it.

SPEAKER_01 2:09

They're grieving a life that's no longer available to them. And they are not willing to act to change without some assurance that the change will reduce the overall suffering. Let me give you an example. A boy is born in a small town in 1960. Let's call him Charlie. Charlie marries his high school sweetheart, 18 years of age. He gets a job where he's well compensated, works with his hands and his mind, and enjoys the ride for a few years. He becomes a parent three times in six years. His job keeps up with the needs, and his family is financially secure. There's only one real problem in his life. His wife has very limited capacities. She cannot tolerate even small amounts of discomfort. Things like housework, preparing meals, or managing a family calendar are beyond her.

SPEAKER_00 3:37

She takes care of her own needs and fritters away most of the day. She is not failing at life.

SPEAKER_01 3:50

She is managing it. She has structured her life to stay in control. And in doing so, she makes demands on her extended family to pick up her responsibilities.

SPEAKER_00 4:07

She largely succeeds at this.

SPEAKER_01 4:13

She bends reality to relieve her own discomfort, and the cost is distributed across everyone else.

SPEAKER_00 4:27

Charlie loves his wife deeply.

SPEAKER_01 4:44

But the discomfort he has to withstand every day pushes him to the end of his capacity. Meals are not a sure thing. A clean, functioning home is not a sure thing. A relationship where his needs are accounted for has been absent for many years.

SPEAKER_00 5:10

And still he holds steady. What do his ethics look like?

SPEAKER_01 5:23

He was raised to believe in God, and while he doesn't attend church, he considers himself to be a good and ethical man. But when his family and friends come to him with a need for emotional connection, he turns away. When his political or social values are questioned, he shuts the conversations down, makes a joke, walks away. When his children need reassurance, he cannot meet them on an honest level. Intimacy becomes limited.

SPEAKER_00 6:09

Joking, drinking, deflection.

SPEAKER_01 6:18

When he tries to see clearly what continuing this costs, he can't. As he continues to support his wife, he withdraws support from the rest of his family. He is at the edge of his capacity. He is now over sixty years old, and he is tired.

SPEAKER_00 6:50

He's paid a hefty price for his choices. But did he really have many? That's Charlie. A second example.

SPEAKER_01 7:12

This one's from my own childhood. Roger peaked in high school. Captain of the football team, star of the debate team, got average to good grades. Good looking, popular, lots of friends. One serious girlfriend. His dad was rich, and Roger was set to inherit a trio of car dealerships. He was driving a late model corvette at sixteen. Mom was a pious woman, however, and required Roger to take her to church every day. Required him to drive her to church and stay in the pew with her. Every day. By the time he graduated high school, he and his mother were close. Well, not really, but you get the picture. Close enough that no other relationship could compete. No woman was good enough for Roger in his mother's eyes. She did things to try to disrupt his social life. Especially with women, especially when dating became serious. His dad ushered him into the business at eighteen and died within one year. His mother took control of everything. The finances, the major business decisions, the access, along with the family attorney, accountant, and bookkeeper. And there was secrecy surrounding this empire the family had built.

SPEAKER_00 9:39

Roger stayed.

SPEAKER_01 9:42

He ran the business. He cared for his mother as she aged. He supported his brother, a cocaine and sex addict. He did this for forty years. He died from three forms of rare cancer. Maybe from a lifetime of smoking. At sixty, less than one year after his mother died. He had one serious relationship as an adult. It lasted sixteen years and was mostly on, but often off. It ruptured over and over again. Not because he didn't love her, and not because he couldn't repair, but because he lacked the agency to change his life. He tolerated plenty of discomfort. He repaired again and again. But he never changed. Meanwhile, his other passion was art. He painted magnificent oil paintings his entire life. Huge canvases. Masterpieces, really. No one ever saw them. Roger was a good man. He ran an ethical business, as far as he knew, and he was generous with his employees and his friends. He helped people wherever and whenever he could. Everybody loved Roger. But he could not pivot to a life lived for himself. Tolerating discomfort, repairing ruptures, dealing with power issues, craving the loss of a life never lived. These are not lessons he needed to learn. These capacities were online and intact. He met reality every day, with beautiful capacities. But Roger had wanted to live a different sort of life. Instead, he quietly lived the life his mother chose for him. The life his mother felt she needed him to live. That was Roger, a good man, and a life he didn't choose. Four different kinds of people are outlined here. Three to evolve the framework. We try to stay in contact with reality here. There needs to be some room in the thing so that we can understand all kinds of people, not just the sort of people who write ethical adulthood frameworks, or the sort of people who read about them. So what is ethical adulthood if it isn't about you? About your life.

SPEAKER_00 13:36

The life that's not separate from you. An ethical life, it's not just being a good person.

SPEAKER_01 13:50

That can't be all it is. It's got to be about being a person who is good in the world, to the world, yes. And good to themselves, too.

SPEAKER_00 14:08

A person who knows themselves well.

SPEAKER_01 14:14

A person who's settled the basic questions about what makes them tick, what lights them up, what makes them back away. A mind one can trust, a body one knows how to listen to and respond with appropriate action. And a soul that asks only for alignment with reality. A person who listens beyond their conditioning and responds with understanding and ethical action. A person who not only admires ethics and living well, but also wants to make a decent stab at living in concert with their own innermost songs.

SPEAKER_00 15:20

We aren't here to martyr ourselves to a cause, creed, or another person's will.

SPEAKER_01 15:32

We're here to listen to our own inner life force and respond to that energy in a way that respects it if we can.

SPEAKER_00 15:46

If we can. But if we can, we should. We should try. So the capacities still matter, yes?

SPEAKER_01 16:18

Yes. But this is not just a question of willpower or desire or whether or not we are selfless or selfish.

SPEAKER_00 16:34

This is a question of balance.

SPEAKER_01 16:38

Sometimes the problem isn't that we don't know what's right. It's that all available options seem to carry a cost too expensive to take. So I've got some thoughts, right? Of course I do. Let me share them with you.

SPEAKER_00 17:14

Live ethically for happiness.

SPEAKER_01 17:20

Increase your capacity for tolerating discomfort when life seems to hand you a little bit more than your nervous system is ready to handle.

SPEAKER_00 17:33

Go slow. Learn to regulate. Learn how to stay in relationship, even when it gets tough.

SPEAKER_01 17:48

Don't blow off your responsibilities to your family and your friends.

SPEAKER_00 17:54

Don't tolerate abuse. But don't abandon yourself either. If you're overwhelmed, see what is happening.

SPEAKER_01 18:14

Maybe it's time to begin to put yourself and your own mental health first.

SPEAKER_00 18:28

Do one less thing. Explain less. Stay in your lane. Stop trying to fix everybody else. Do the work you're meant to do. Allow other people to have consequences.

SPEAKER_01 19:05

You're not going to be able to relax if you keep trying to fix every problem other people bring to you. Just because you are resourced and you care and you can see a way to solve it doesn't mean that it's what you're meant to do.

SPEAKER_00 19:31

Your needs matter. All of us need to rest, pause, breathe, get some help if we need. Remembering how to listen to our own songs.

SPEAKER_01 20:03

When we see people who cannot really make good contact with the situations of their lives, we need to remember that we're not here to fix them. They have challenges that make the framework and its steps not the way back to contact with the truth of the truth of their lives. Acknowledge them. Learn to tolerate the discomfort that might arise while you maintain whatever boundaries you set up and move on. Don't opt out.

SPEAKER_00 20:43

Change how you meet them. There are people who have made their difficult life choices. Perhaps they would not have been your life choices.

SPEAKER_01 21:05

Allow this to be without comment. Without the kind of judgment that makes you bitter or hardened. If you've been harmed by them, learn what you can and allow them to be. You don't have to continue in proximity to those who cannot hold you. Give them space. They're probably actually asking you for the space to continue to do what they're doing.

SPEAKER_00 21:47

Stay in your lane.

SPEAKER_01 22:00

All my friends and family members who've helped me tune this framework so that it addresses more than just the few for whom it resonated immediately. I'm so grateful for that education and for the love. This material, it's not easy to listen to, much less read. Some of you have done both. I'm honored to be with you as we navigate life together. One more episode will be coming up on what strengthens and what erodes capacities. Final thought, and also a teaser. Having listened to all twelve of these episodes and stayed to the end of the half hour they took of your time definitely builds the capacity of tolerating discomfort. So did writing them.

SPEAKER_00 23:02

Thank you.