February 10, 2025 • 45 mins
In this episode of TSFU Interviews, Fallon chats with Erin Riley, author of "A Dark Force: 20 Years with a Covert Narcissist". They talk about recognizing narcissistic abuse and ways to process and deal with it, as well as her adventures in and around the music business"!
Celebrated music maven Erin Riley looked like she had it all: a 1960s Mad Men–style upbringing on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, then an escape to “find herself” in glamorous 1970s Hollywood, where she landed some of the most influential positions of the 1980s music industry. She hung out with rock stars like Keith Richards, Steven Tyler, James Taylor, and Jon Bon Jovi and chose the hit records for America’s #1 rock & roll radio station, WMMR-FM. But her colorful, raucous, rock & roll life hid dark secrets.An emotionally neglected child with a generational legacy of stoicism and hiding painful truths, Erin had no real experience with love and healthy relationships. The marriage she thought would be her happily-ever-after led to 20 years of confusion, heartbreak, anger, and betrayal, all fueled by a malignant covert narcissist.
Erin’s honest, searing memoir recounts her self-discovery journey through a series of life’s traumas and tragedies, her many bad decisions, and two toxic marriages. Her story will bring insight and guidance to survivors of narcissistic abuse and those questioning their relationships, and the hope that they, like Erin, can find a joyous rock & roll redemption." - Amazon
Please check out Erin's website! You can purchase Erin's book on Amazon! Follow her on Instagram and Facebook!
Celebrated music maven Erin Riley looked like she had it all: a 1960s Mad Men–style upbringing on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, then an escape to “find herself” in glamorous 1970s Hollywood, where she landed some of the most influential positions of the 1980s music industry. She hung out with rock stars like Keith Richards, Steven Tyler, James Taylor, and Jon Bon Jovi and chose the hit records for America’s #1 rock & roll radio station, WMMR-FM. But her colorful, raucous, rock & roll life hid dark secrets.An emotionally neglected child with a generational legacy of stoicism and hiding painful truths, Erin had no real experience with love and healthy relationships. The marriage she thought would be her happily-ever-after led to 20 years of confusion, heartbreak, anger, and betrayal, all fueled by a malignant covert narcissist.
Erin’s honest, searing memoir recounts her self-discovery journey through a series of life’s traumas and tragedies, her many bad decisions, and two toxic marriages. Her story will bring insight and guidance to survivors of narcissistic abuse and those questioning their relationships, and the hope that they, like Erin, can find a joyous rock & roll redemption." - Amazon
Please check out Erin's website! You can purchase Erin's book on Amazon! Follow her on Instagram and Facebook!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
There are a lot of people in the world that
don't have your best interests in mind. Right from the
get go. They have their own best interests in mind.
And when they are coming and love bombing you and
giving you this attention and you feel seen and heard
and loved and recognized for all your good qualities, they're
pumping you up. They're just doing that because they want
(00:22):
to capture you for themselves. And once they get you,
that's when the devaluing stage starts.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
That phrase right there just like hits me. That is
so fucked up. It's fucked up, so fucked up, it
is just sucked damn fuck up.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
That's fucked up.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Welcome back to the podcast. This is Fallin Maury. I'm
without Ashley again this week and this is That's So
Fucked Up podcasts about Colt's crime and things that make
you say, ugh, that's so fucked up. I am here
today for another interview and I'm talking to the amazing
Aaron Reiley. Aaron has written a book called A Dark Force,
(01:10):
twenty years with a covert Narcissist. It is a fantastic read.
I did it in one sitting, pretty much like one
or two days, though I don't know. Oh that was
a lot, but I'm really excited to talk to you today,
Erin and hear her thoughts on a number of fun
topics like narcissism and also there's going to be an
(01:31):
amazing amount of rock and roll. So welcome to the podcast, Erin.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
Thank you for having me. Foullan. I want to say
I was so drawn to the your podcast initially for
the title because being an empathetic person, when somebody takes
advantage of you or does you wrong, you want to
hear your friends say to you. Oh my god, that's
so fucked up.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
Perfect and definitely my normal co host. I wouldn't say
my co host. I am her co host, Ashley. She
started the podcast. She came up with the amazing name,
and the name is what drew me as a listener first,
just because I will tell it like it is. So
I also am like, oh, it's so fucked up that
I got to, you know, be in this position. So
is there anything else we should know about you before
(02:15):
we get started?
Speaker 1 (02:16):
Oh? Well, let's see, I'm sixty five years old next month,
so there's a lot to know about somebody's been hell
on the p one and it's so freaking long, I
can't even believe myself. But the quick version, as much
as I can, you know, edit, is that I grew
up in New York City as a child, which was
kind of a unique way to grow up. My parents
were both in the entertainment business to some degree. My
(02:38):
mother was a fashion model and my father was a
small part actor that they worked in entertainment. They weren't
successful in entertainment per se, my mother more so than
my father, but they were both working and busy, which
created an environment that caused my brother and I to
pretty much raise ourselves and be alone all the time.
So allop and say, you know, I would have done
(02:59):
better raised by wolves. I think they would have taught
me something. Well, I'm one of those people had to
learn everything by doing it wrong, and everything the hard,
at least in my personal life and in my relationships.
For some reason, and this was the big mystery to me,
I was very successful in my career life. I still am.
You know, I just got a publishing deal to do
(03:21):
another book. I've written a screenplay, I gave a ten toy,
I owned to children's music school. I worked in the
music business for forty years and met rock stars. You
would think I had everything going on great in my life,
but there was an effect from being ignored as a
child that caused me to look for love in all
(03:42):
the wrong places. And so that was the journey of
my book was to try and figure out how could
somebody that on the outside look so seemingly successful be
so unsuccessful in love? I mean unsuccessful, not just like oh,
work out, I mean we can talk about it at
(04:02):
some point, but it's so funny. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
There was one line at the end of the book
which I actually read to my husband that struck me.
So I'm not jumping all the way through the whole book,
but it said like abusers abuse in private, behind closed
doors basically, and it allows you to from personal experience,
I found it allows you to be outwardly whatever. You
(04:26):
can be outwardly successful because it's not happening in front
of people, but it's like crumbling you up inside because
it's happening in a closed room. I think. So that
was like one of the things that I left with
that I was like, Oh, somebody gets it.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
And it's hard because the other people in your life don't,
you know, don't see that disconnect. They see that outward
picture that you present. Maybe, like in my example, I
was taught to present that positive picture. My parents grew
up in a time where you know, we don't talk
about anything that's wrong in the My dad had problems
(05:01):
with alcohol. My mother was also very narcissistic and selfish
and bit of a gas lighter. It wasn't a happy
home in our childhood, but we don't talk about that
or anything bad in the family. So that created something
in me where you know, there might be some shame
behind it. But I put up a very positive front,
and I guess maybe I believed it myself, and I
(05:23):
became very strong that way, and I was able to
tolerate a lot of really not kind behavior from my
husband and kind is That's the nicest way I can
say it. Man, I'm still trying to be too nice.
He was god awful to me, but anyway, Yeah, so
there's a big discontact. And additionally, you don't get any
support from people because they think that everything is going great,
(05:46):
and then when everything falls apart, because it usually falls
apart pretty fast when it does, they almost don't believe you, Like, really, God,
he seemed so quiet or gosh, she didn't seem like
that kind of a person. You know, he didn't talk
a lot, or he was pretty nice to me or whatever, because,
like you said, they do it behind closed doors or
when you're locked in a car with them when there's
(06:08):
no ears on them.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
Oh yeah. In fact, I was talking to a friend
that I've had for maybe you know, I don't know,
twenty years, or maybe it was a family member, and
I only like maybe three months ago, recounted what I
had gone through in a very high degree, and the
person was like, wait, what when did this happen? Like really?
And I was like, yeah, like I just you don't
(06:29):
just walk around with a sign talking about it. Okay.
So in your book you mentioned a lot about codependency
and it's sort of dynamic in these types of relationships.
So could you just for our audience who might not
know a lot about that term, what you define it
as or what it is defined as, and then how
it affects or creates these types of dynamics and relationships.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
I had a hard time understanding how I was codependent
for a long time because part of the definition I
would read would be that a person with codependency had
low self esteem and perhaps felt maybe not worthy or
less worthy of good treatment. And I didn't feel that way.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
Okay, and you're so strong and so like good at
what you do.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
It's so yet up. But I'll tell you there's another
really strong aspect of codependency that I do identify with,
and that's being a people pleaser. I wasn't so worried
about whether or not people like me or not a
little bit. But for the most part, I just wanted
to make people happy. I wanted to make people laugh,
and I wanted to be nice to people and compliment
(07:37):
people because I wanted that back from them. I wanted
that attention and that connection with people, and I would
continue to do that even though it wasn't being reciprocated.
So that's probably the best and sort of very loose
definition I can give you for how to recognize yourself
if you're suffering from some bit of codependency. Is is
(07:58):
this relationship? One side is your motivation to get something
for yourself that you need, and really so is the narcissist.
They want what they want for themselves, you know, so
they have a codependency for someone like you. Both people
are very unhealthily unhealthily that is a word.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
Right, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
It is now in need of each other. The narcissist
needs you to reflect upon them, you know, all the
things about you that are good that made them come
and collect you for themselves and make them feel better
about themselves. And certainly people like myself, I'm looking for
the love and connection. So I'm going to give the
(08:41):
narcissist that. But it's very very unhealthy both ways, because
neither person is being seen or getting their needs met.
It's just a disaster.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
Right. And so I recognize a lot of what you
just said in myself. I told you that I have
an experience in a relationship with somebody who's very narcissis
stick for years. And I also, like you, I'm very
much a people pleaser, and unlike you, I in that
phase of my life did have very low self esteem
and I was very unsure, and so when somebody came
(09:12):
along to validate me, it was like a high, you know,
like the love bombing you get is like the super high,
like I did good. You know, I need that, So
I that part of the story really resonate with me.
I was curious though, the title of your story. As
we talk about narcissus is with a covert narcissist, And
I don't know that I'd ever really considered covert versus
(09:35):
overt narcissism. Could you kind of break that down for me.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
Yeah, Basically, you can see an overt narcissis coming. They're loud,
they're bombastic, they're braggarts, they're you know, telling you how
great they are and nobody can do it like they can.
And we may have even had some people in our
political arena that suffer from this disorder coming. They're bragging
(10:00):
and they think they're better than everybody else and they're
putting everybody down. You're like, you can see those coming
a mile a minute. But people who are covertly narcissistic
have the same mindset and they think the same way
without empathy towards other people. Right, But they may have
a lot of shame and low self esteem. Also, they
(10:21):
may feel unworthy deeply inside and they kind of turn
it inside out. But they're not going to get away
with that behavior, so they do it kind of underhandedly
in a very sort of tricky way. They rameshift. They're
very sneaky, they're you know, they're cheat, they're all cheaters,
they're on porn, they're cheating on their taxes the government,
(10:42):
they're shoplifting. But it's all very underhanded. Or they're smiling
at you.
Speaker 2 (10:47):
Right.
Speaker 1 (10:47):
My husband used to say to me all the time,
as you wish, which was his special little romantic line
for me from The Princess Bride. But I tell you,
what he was really doing is looking at me and thinking,
can I curse? I can? It's just podcast, right, Yeah,
this is so pupped up. Yes, yeah, No, secretly they're
thinking quite ill of you. You know, they don't want
the best for you. And that's something I had to
(11:08):
come to the realization. There are a lot of people
in the world that don't have your best interests in mind.
Right from the get go. They have their own best
interests in mind. And when they are coming and love
bombing you and giving you this attention and you feel
seen and heard and loved and recognized for all your
good qualities, they're pumping you up. They're just doing that
(11:29):
because they want to capture you for themselves. And once
they get you, that's when the devaluing stage starts.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
That phrase right there just like hits me in a
certain way that they want to capture you. You're like,
you know, something I always used to say to people
I met was like, it's like being a butterfly in
someone's net. They found the one they wanted and they
like put it in the net, and then once you
get home, it's totally different. It's just like that just
hit me, but for a narcissist, and you can totally
(12:03):
correct me if I'm wrong. But it seems very much
like from reading your story and from hearing other people,
I know that you can't fix their need for attention
and what they need you for or what they need
other people for. That's regardless of how good you are,
regardless of how you appeal to them, You're never going
to fix that side.
Speaker 1 (12:23):
Of Well, that's such an important part that I just
skipped right over is that people who are empathetic or
people pleasers and they have all this empathy for people
who are struggling, they do want to fix, you know,
they want to make it better or want to fix it.
So I thought I could make my husband happy or
you know, give him what he wanted, and no, you cannot.
(12:45):
That that hole in a person like that is so very,
very deep, and everybody I don't care whether you have
narcissistic qualities or whatever is going on in your world.
Everybody needs to fix themselves, you know, take care of
their own issue use and look at them themselves and
figure out how to make themselves happy. You know, what
to do to give themselves the things that they want
(13:07):
that are going to make them feel good. Right.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
I think that's such an important point, is don't spend
the time focused necessarily on what the other person's needs are,
because you can't fix it, but you can take care
of your own. And I think so many people I
won't even just say women, I just think people regardless
are so often trained to like subvert their own needs
(13:30):
for the person next to them or the person they're with.
And so if you are inclined to codependency or you're
inclined toward people pleasing you know, in general, like that's
going to be a pretty rocky situation, I guess for you.
Speaker 1 (13:43):
Yeah, and sometimes over and over and over again, until
life hits you so hard that you have to wake
up and take a look in the mirror. Because at
the end of the day, you know, you are the
decider of your own life, and you make your own
choices for yourself. You know, you have to make healthy
choices on behalf of yourself, and you have to recognize
(14:04):
that there's this self here to take care of. You know,
you really have to think about it. Like me, Arin,
you've fallen. We come first, and not in that same
way that a narcissist is, like, I'm the step on everybody.
So I get what I want. I mean, take care
of your own needs and evaluate your own motivations for
(14:25):
why it is that you are doing the things repeatedly
that are not getting you what you want.
Speaker 2 (14:32):
So I noticed you put out the book just a
few years ago, but you've obviously had just years of
different experiences. What was it that really kind of was
your driver this time to write this book and put
it out. There was there any one thing that that
kind of led you to that.
Speaker 1 (14:49):
I needed answers for myself about why I did not
get what I wanted from life. You know, this has
actually really been way heavily on me.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
For a while.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
When I was in tenth grade, I was at high
school and I saw this adorable high school couple some
friends of mine, and the guy being really cute with her,
and I thought, that's what I want. I want a
boyfriend like him, protective, he's trying to make her laugh,
and they just had a great relationship. And I never
could understand why, you know, my career went so well
(15:20):
and all my relationships, you know, with men were not
working out. Everything was bad. So that's why I wrote
the book. But it was a twofold thing. I wanted
to understand more about myself and who I was and
what I was bringing into these either choices of people
or what I was doing within the relationship that was
(15:40):
not giving me what I wanted. But I also realized
if I was suffering this much from you know, my
own life or whatever, other people might be too, and
if I could help provide some education and some answers
for people, a little window inside of a relationship, but
a toxic relationship that looks really good from the outside.
(16:02):
You know, people would say they seem mismatched, but you know,
maybe it's better that she's with that quiet guy. You know,
she's very outgoing and she likes a lot of attention.
She's just supportive of her right. So it didn't totally
look like we had the perfect relationship, but from the
outside it looked enviable. He was helpful, he had a
(16:25):
nice job, he was a handsome fella. He's a smart guy.
You know. People thought we had a pretty decent relationship.
They didn't understand it, but they thought it was good.
And it was anything but good. So I wanted people
to be able to read my book. Here's some of
the interactions that happened between somebody who's gaming you, you know,
and not telling you the truth and avoidant and whatnot,
(16:48):
and then what another person who might be a little
too tolerant of it might say or do. And that
would be the example of my husband and myself, And
I hope people could personalize that and see those interactions
in their own relationships and realize there is something wrong here.
I'm not crazy, you know, I'm not crazy. Somebody is
(17:09):
gaming me and doing this intentionally, and that was the
part I had to come to the realization of. So
I wrote the book to learn about it myself, but
also help other people understand it, right.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
And you know, I think that's so helpful because there's
sort of a real lack of knowledge or willingness to
even complain about the situation you're in. When there's not
some sort of direct physical abuse, you can be suffering
from like narcissistic abuse without being verbally necessarily abused, Like
somebody doesn't have to be calling you bad names in
(17:41):
the background and screaming at you all day for it
to be occurring. And I think what you're writing here
is so important for people to go wait like me,
I've I had those emails, like I've seen these interactions.
This is not normal.
Speaker 1 (17:54):
So I want to say one thing though it speaks
to what you're saying. I've had people who have read
the books say to me, well, my husband does that.
Is he a narcissist? And I want to say probably not.
So maybe no, I want to say probably not, because
narcissism is a pervasive behavior. It's not just that one thing.
It would be most all of them. Right, So if
(18:17):
you recognize lots of these behaviors and characteristics and experiences
in your relationship, then likely you are living with somebody
who has narcissistic tendencies. I would say that my husband
really more likely, and he was. We did go to
many counselors, and we did do psychological testings, so I
(18:37):
have a sort of a peek into how he thinks,
and he's more likely borderline personality disorder, which is somebody
who's very afraid of being abandoned or being left. And
so my husband, very intelligent, with his borderline characteristics, developed
these covertly narcissistic skills to keep himself from being a abandoned.
(19:00):
If he could control me, if he could belittle me,
if he could keep me wanting and not getting or whatever,
he could keep me on the hook, he could keep
himself from being abandoned. So for him it was a
full time job. I have more empathy for him still
even to this day, because I can't imagine how hard
it was for him to develop all that sneaky, tricky
(19:23):
stuff to keep me, to keep me from finding out
what he was really doing the whole time.
Speaker 2 (19:27):
And I applaud you for having so much empathy, because
that's really hard and foolish.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
Well, listen, I'm not going to put myself in a
situation where that's going to hurt me. But you know,
one of the best things that's happened through this process
is that I had to come to the realization that people,
not all people, but there are some people in the
world that don't have your best interest in mind. Pay attention.
People will tell you everything you need to know about
them in the first minute you meet them. Listen right, Well,
(19:56):
I were listening, you know, I would hurt hear a
person and think to myself, it's just like the narcissist
is thinking, how's this person going to fill the empty
hole in me?
Speaker 2 (20:04):
I need love?
Speaker 1 (20:05):
Right right? So both are equally unhealthy. I'm not, I hope,
a danger to anybody other than myself. A narcissist is
a danger to other people, to other people, but both
equally unhealthy and in need of, you know, fixing yourself
and looking at yourself so you can be happy.
Speaker 2 (20:23):
Yeah. I agree everything you're saying. I'm just like hanging
on every word like well, like, yeah, you're so right.
So this book, you said that part of your reason
was to help other people, and in that, are there
ways that you would recommend based on your own experience
or maybe those you've talked to about how to start
healing from these kinds of relationships or situations people have
(20:45):
been in, Like how do you start unpacking and healing?
I doubt that everyone's going to go write a book,
but you know, for those who aren't going to do that,
what are your thoughts on healing.
Speaker 1 (20:55):
Well, thank you so much for saying that. That is
such an important aspect of it, because that's the personal
work that you have to do afterwards, and it's the
most valuable. So my recommendation to people is to slow down,
you know, with all of your interactions that you have
with people, just take a breath and try and think
(21:15):
about how you feel, meaning physically, how is your body feeling.
How does Fallon feel that person said this to me?
Am I feeling good about that? Or am I feeling
like maybe that was a little bit of a diss right?
Or do I feel like that person misunderstood me and
didn't give me the time to explain myself because they
(21:36):
weren't really listening. Whatever interaction you're having with your boss,
your friends, your coworkers, your relationships, slow down and ask
yourself how did that make me feel inside? And then
act accordingly. And when I say accordingly, I mean going
back to that place where who comes first, Aaron comes first,
who comes first? Fallon comes first? Not in a selfish way,
(21:59):
just in that slowing down and learning to recognize your
feelings and if you allow yourself to feel, to try
and feel what you're feeling. Sometimes It's an exercise for
those of us who have been rushing past our feelings
and using our brains and our cognitive dissonance to protect
us and to tell us something that's going to make
us feel safer, feel better about whatever we're doing, or
(22:22):
continue on whatever bad behavior or not self serving, you know,
self destructive behavior we're doing. You know that cognitive dissonance
and all those lies we tell ourselves as well too.
So that's what I asked people to do. Just please
slow down and try to feel your feelings. And the
more you do it, the quicker they'll start to come.
And the better tuned in you will become to yourself,
(22:43):
and the better able you will be able to protect
yourself from predatory people because they're out there. I hate
to tell you that. You know, it's not all just
serial killers, you know, and rape this so the bad people,
there's regular people that just they don't have naturally empathythetic feelings,
and so they can step on you just as easily
(23:04):
as they could step on the pavement to get what
they want. And they just look like regular people. So
just pay close attention.
Speaker 2 (23:11):
They're walking among us like regular folks. I love that
it's not just regular murderers. There's a level in between
that depends how far in between. I like the concept
of slowing down and feeling feelings. I think maybe even
a couple months ago, I was like, you know, I'm
(23:31):
gonna try this whole feelings thing, and my therapist was like,
I'm so proud of you, and I was like, thanks,
I hate it. Like you said, it's really hard to do.
Did you find you had to be completely out of
your marriage before you were able to start doing that,
or did some of that work for you start happening earlier.
Speaker 1 (23:48):
I think that you have to recognize that you're in
a dysfunctional Well, look, I know I was in a
dysfunctional relationship, but I think that you have to become
aware of what the dynamic is to be able to
separate yourself within the relationship. You know, some people are
trapped in a relationship for a million reasons, financial health reasons,
(24:13):
lack of job experience, or whatever other thing. They've been
isolated from family and friends, and they can't just easily
just take off and leave a marriage with no money
and nowhere to go and no family. Like there is
a percentage of the population that is stuck for a
while sometimes in a relationship like that, and you can
learn some skills if you educate yourself as one they
(24:35):
call gray rocking, which is just don't respond. You know,
a narcissist wants your response. They love to be able
to control your emotions and get you worked up and
confuse so they can laugh at you, you know, even silently.
Speaker 2 (24:50):
Spinning words around. Especially when you respond, you give the
ammunition to like pull the meaning out that never was
in those words too.
Speaker 1 (24:58):
All that word sad, word salid ill it right, that's
what they do. So, Yeah, if you're in a relationship
and you can't leave it immediately, which is most people,
but you become aware that you're in a relationship that
has no hope for improving. If you're with somebody who
has either a mental classification or a disorder that they're
(25:21):
struggling with, and it's not your job to fix it,
and you can't fix it for them. You can only
remove yourself from the situation. And if you can't do
it physically, you have to do it emotionally at first.
So do not give them the responses just one word,
two word answers. Yeah, it's so hard to do go hard.
But that's the first step to empowering yourself and basically
(25:44):
shoring up your walls. You know, you need to shore
up yourself so they can't be throwing daggers at you anymore.
Once you can do that, make that decision within yourself
that you are coming first, it gets a little bit
easier to let those knives and arrows just bounce off
you and they don't affect you as much anymore, and
(26:05):
over time you can start to build a little nest
egg or get yourself a little part time job, or
you know, maybe find a confidant that can support you
in some way and get yourself into a healthy situation. Right.
Speaker 2 (26:19):
I love that advice, how especially that it needs to
be sort of a glow, a slow grade. I try
to say, slow and gradual. That's what I got, glow,
a slow and gradual process. Sometimes it can't always just
be whereas you said, on the side of the narcissist,
it can it's literally just you know, you didn't give
me what I needed. I'm done, And on our side,
(26:40):
we're like, let me spend a couple of years recognizing
my feelings and getting my head wrapped around this, and
then do you find that you're able now to spot
because I think in the book you were very I
love your writing style. You were like, here I go again.
I was about to walk right back into it. Do
you feel like you are better able to spot potential
like toxic people or situations now that you've been through
(27:03):
all this?
Speaker 1 (27:04):
Oh, God found I'm gonna tell you. I took that
pendulum and I swung it so far to the other side,
hold on the paranoid side about people. I catch every
little thing that everybody says. You know, Oh, I recognize
when people don't do what they say they're going to do,
or when their stories don't add up. And so I
think I've gone a little too far to the other side.
(27:26):
So honestly, my work now is to find a way
to forgive people for being human and for failing me
as I will them, and understand that if it's not intentional,
it is forgivable. And that's the difference between a narcissist
and a non narcissist, is the intention.
Speaker 2 (27:45):
Intentionality really and that what they're doing. And I think
what you brought up before is really important. People like
to throw around words, especially mental health, where it's like, oh,
I had two different moods. Today, I'm so bipolar or
like you know, that person looks in the mirror a lot.
They're a narcissist. But this isn't a fleeting type of behavior.
It's a you know, in some cases, a personality disorder,
(28:07):
which means it's fixed, it's long, it's through their life
for some reason, and like you said, it's something they're
not outgrowing anytime soon.
Speaker 1 (28:16):
No, it goes very deep. It becomes who the person
actually really is. And you know, I don't want to
confuse the issue or anything, but these diagnoses that we've
all heard about that came up, you know, bipolar, borderline narcissism, autism, aspergers, psychopaths,
sociopath they're all over the place. That all is as
(28:38):
a result of insurance companies and the DSM and being
able to diagnose and medicaid and treat people. Really, mental
health exists on a continuum. There's neuroses to psychoses. Every
single one of us is neurotic in some way or another.
Speaker 2 (28:54):
World in some way.
Speaker 1 (28:56):
Every single person on the planet has some level of
neuros and it's when you hit that center one that's
where they came up. In nineteen eighty with the term borderline.
That's when you start to break with reality and your
life functioning is really not healthy for yourself. You may
have a distorted view of other people and relationships and things.
(29:18):
So you know, the further up you get towards psychoses,
you know, maybe you're ocd over here, and then maybe
you're narcissistic here, and then maybe your schizophrenic up here.
But that's also that you can diagnose and treat people
for these disorders. Honestly, it really has Nobody knows exactly
(29:39):
where it all comes from, but most of the theories
come from it's a combination of potentially a trauma and
maybe ways people are raised, you know, the nature and
the nurture, but there's also very often a trauma that
happens that will make a person somewhat break from reality
and go inward to protect themselves.
Speaker 2 (30:00):
Actually, something else I was going to ask you about
was the sort of nature versus nurture, Like it's a
combo of both or is it mostly one in your
thought process?
Speaker 1 (30:09):
You just nobody knows. I think I can only tell
you about my husband that I lived with for twenty years,
and he worked from home and we owned a business together,
and so I spent a lot of time with him,
a lot of time. He didn't go off to a
job for eight hours a day. We're right next to
each other all the time. So I know a lot
about him, you know, even though he tried to hide
(30:31):
a lot about himself. Right. So from my experience with him,
only I can only speak to him is he was
raised by his parents to believe that he was better
than other people because he came from a well regarded
family in politics, and you know, they had a little
bit more money and a little more status in the community.
So I think they reinforced that with their children. And
(30:53):
then he had a trauma happened to him, which you
know you know about in the book. It's not something
we need to go into, but I had a couple
of traumas. He had a terrible trauma that really affected
his self esteem with women when he was about fifteen
years old. And then his father, who was the big
important guy, he died of pancratic cancer when my husband
(31:13):
was only seventeen years old as the oldest son. So
he had to kind of step in and become the
dad of these four little kids.
Speaker 2 (31:20):
Forced to step in right, someone pulled him aside and said,
this is your job now. Sorry, that's right, childhood's over.
That's right.
Speaker 1 (31:27):
The uncle did. And so my husband, I know, shut
down in that moment and he decided like, I'm not
going to feel anything. I'm never going to be close
to anybody. He's not going to bond with anybody. There
was some consciousness to his decision, but then it really
became who he was as a person. You know. He
couldn't break out of it. Believe me, I gave it
(31:48):
my all.
Speaker 2 (31:49):
You certainly did so really quickly. I want to go
into some kind of fun outside the book stuff, But
did you have anything else that we didn't cover that
you want to talk?
Speaker 1 (32:00):
Oh, you did a great job since I mean, I
hate to say that you cause you've experienced some of
this yourself. You know, you really do understand the patterns
of behavior and what it feels like in a situation
like that, and after having extracted yourself having to unpack
it all, you know, it doesn't just end like a
regular relationship. You can't just end this relationship and go, oh,
(32:21):
well that didn't work out. You have to go over
it in your head every single day of it. Practically
and think, how did that go on for so long?
How did I let that happen? How did I not
see it or recognize it? So it does take longer
to recover. So that's the only thing I want to say.
But now do you want to ask me my favorite
ice cream? Or I want to ask I'm excited? I know.
Speaker 2 (32:42):
Well, so, as we talked about in the beginning, Well,
first of all, I have to say, I'm also a
Pennsylvania gal. I'm from Harrisburg. My mom lives near Lancaster,
and I was living a virtual tour of my home
state through your book, So Kindred Pennsylvania Spirit. I have
to ask you know, you know you have this amazed
As you mentioned, you get to meet all these rock
(33:03):
stars and you're friends with Joan Jet and coolest person ever.
But do you have plans to sort of work that
into some of your future books you mentioned you're still writing.
Do we get like big rock star stories now? Actually, yes,
I know.
Speaker 1 (33:16):
This is the craziest thing. This was nothing I ever
wanted to do. I'll be really honest with you. People
have been telling me I should write a book about
my music business career because I was one of the
earlier women in the music business. I'm not considered of
the first wave of women. There was a first wave
of women in the late sixties that came in, but
not many ten women in the whole country working in
(33:37):
the music business, whether in records. So I came in
the late seventies some sort of the second wave of women,
but I was still outnumbered by men, Like I don't know,
maybe there'd be two women in every ten or maybe
one in every twenty or so. If we're out and about,
I'd be with a lot of men. So there was
certainly a lot to see a lot of bad behavior
(33:57):
out there in the world, in the rock and roll
world of fun, nonetheless, but I didn't want to tell
any of those stories out of turn. You know. I
felt like it was a privilege to be backstage and
to see some of these things, and I thought, these
aren't always my stories, you know, these are stories that
I would be telling about another person, and so I
never wanted to do it. Well, fast forward to I
(34:22):
wrote my book A Dark Force, and a publisher contacted
me and asked me to write a book about my
music business career, but not really from my own perspective.
They wanted me to write a book about It's actually
Temple University. So Temple University Press contacted me and they
asked me to write a book about the radio station
I worked at throughout the eighties. It's called WMMR in Philadelphia,
(34:45):
and that's where I met most of the rock stars
that I had the privilege to work with and whatnot
over those many years. And it's an oral history book
of all of the DJs and programmers and the rockers
and everything. So what I've been doing for the last
two months is I've interviewed sixty people and I'm doing
an oral history book and transcribing all their stuff. And
(35:07):
I'm going to ask the lovely and talented Jon bon
Jovi to write a forward for me, because we really
helped him a lot when he was a baby, and
I mean a baby, he was a teenager.
Speaker 2 (35:17):
Like a baby god.
Speaker 1 (35:20):
Yeah, we hung out a lot and really helped him
get off the ground very early on, and he was
a great friend to the radio station. So yeah, So
I am actually writing a book about rock and roll
right now. And the coolest part of all of this
is I started at this radio station, WMMR in nineteen
eighty three, but I'm also interviewing DJs from the sixties
(35:41):
and seventies, and they're telling me stories about being on
airplanes with Led Zeppelin and smoking hot with Bob Marley
and like all kinds of crazy stories because you know,
by the time the eighties came around, we had the
hair bands a little bit more of a business, and
you know, Auntie and big tours and sponsors. These guys
(36:03):
are hanging out backstage at Woodstock and right. So, yeah,
so I am writing a rock and roll book. But
fortunately it's not me telling the stories out of turn.
I'm letting everybody else tell their stories.
Speaker 2 (36:16):
But like some of them inevitably that you've also kind
of lived with them, so it's a little bit of
your own oral history as well.
Speaker 1 (36:22):
I guess I'll sneak a few of my stories in,
but you know, I've decided that the book should be
very positive, so I want to make sure that you
know there's good in bed in every industry and good
in bed in everybody's life and experience. But it was
a very celebratory and fun time in music, and I
want to definitely have the book reflect that. So it's
going to be called When Radio ruled WMMR in the eighties,
(36:44):
and it'll come out on Temple University Press next year.
It'll be a.
Speaker 2 (36:48):
While putting my notebook. So I thought you did a
great job in your book about being positive, even though
you had some stories that definitely were not positive through
your career. You were great about being like, well, it
didn't work out for us, but we're still great friends,
or you know, the situation didn't work out, but I
(37:08):
was happy for my experience, which is just such an
amazing way to look at it. I have to ask,
do you have a favorite part of your music career?
Because you've been a music related business owner, you've been
on the radio, Like, what was kind of your favorite.
Speaker 1 (37:21):
I have to think about. I don't even know all
of it, my god, all of it, all of it,
all of it, I guess. I mean, the things that
were would happen. We're so crazy and fun. Let me
just give you one story, all right, it's it's a
crazy STRUW give you one night. So I arranged a
promotion with Aerosmith to meet their private airplane at the
(37:42):
Cargo Airport in Philadelphia. So they have a private airport
where the rock stars flying and their own little jets
and the residents and you wouldn't even know it was there.
So they come touchdown. They've got a plane that says
aerow Force one on it, like air Force one. Only
air Force one because a big grin painted on the
(38:04):
nose of the plane like teeth, like Steven Tyler. All right,
So I brought about fifty listeners down there with me
and one of our big DJs. His name was Pierre Robert,
and he had a little Marty system, which is a
little portable unit where he could he could relay back
to the radio station so he could be interviewing Aerosmith
and Limo on the way to the spectrum to the
(38:26):
show live on the radio. Right. So we're all there
and they'd land and they are signing autographs and everybody's cheering,
and they're heading for the limo and Steven Tyler grabs
me by the hand, pulls me in the limo with
the Marty system, closes the door and tells the driver
hit it, and we start going to this spectrum without
the DJ. Right, we're supposed to interview them, and a
(38:50):
boy almost got fired that day. Anyway, I decided to
fan myself to just try to do whatever kind of
interview I could, even though I wasn't a regular name
on the station that people knew, but I figured Stephen
and Jode Perry were so I would get some nice
little comments from them. We arrive at the Spectrum. The
first thing that happens is security guard comes over to
(39:10):
me and says, there's a call for you on a payphone,
you know, in the hallway, you know, parking for my
cell phones. That was my boss getting ready to fire me.
And I'm like, it wasn't my fault. It wasn't my fault. Anyway,
he forgave me. I did not lose my job. The
next thing I know, the road manager asked me to
come down to the stage with the band because I'm
going to announce loving an elevator. So I was brought
(39:32):
onto the stage. I was in a sort of a
secret little room on the top of the stage, and
I got to say on a microphone, third floor, ladies lingerie,
Oh good evening, mister Tyler going down, and then they
start the song. All right, So that was something that
happened in my life. I just I'm mean, I want
to shake my head and go that happened to me
(39:53):
how's in my position, you know, how's nothing to do
with who I am, because I worked at the radio station.
Because the radio station played the bands, hel them sell
records and made them money. We all had a relationship
with each other, you know. It was a mutually beneficial
relationship to sell records and to get people to listen
to the radio station. But damn, it was fun and
(40:13):
I had so many fun, funny experiences as a result
of that. And that's just one night.
Speaker 2 (40:18):
You could fill more than one book, for sure.
Speaker 1 (40:21):
You read in my other book, there's this story about
and this is since I can say anything on this
podcast because of the name of it, smoking marijuana with
Keith Richards in the Caribbean, Yes, and burning all my
hair off. That's a whole other wacky story.
Speaker 2 (40:36):
So I know, and I was like, I'm not going
to spoil your Keith Richards smoking pots story for everybody,
because that one is pretty explosive literally exactly.
Speaker 1 (40:46):
So maybe hopefully people will get the book, and you know,
people who need to read the messages in the book,
and also you know, don't want it to be uh.
They want to learn something, but they don't want to
feel bad, you know, like there's enough stuff going on
in the world, right, you know, that's just trying to
make the best of everything, you know. I'm just here
to educate people and maybe entertain them with some funny,
(41:08):
silly stories of things that happened. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (41:11):
Well, I love I love your outlook, and I love
your willingness to share your experience in your book with
people so that they can be helped. So many people
don't have the strength and have that in them to
share the experience that might help others. And I know,
I think I could have used this book fifteen years
(41:31):
ago when I was like the sad person exiting the situation.
But I'm glad I have it now because it definitely
it's a very special book.
Speaker 1 (41:39):
Cass along to somebody fallon. I'm serious. That's why tell everybody, Oh,
I ask somebody, because there's somebody's going to need to
read messages that are in there.
Speaker 2 (41:49):
I have some friends in mine who might get like
a basket with a bookmark and like a you know,
a highlighter.
Speaker 1 (41:55):
Or hold on, only you can see this.
Speaker 2 (41:57):
A little vood a doll does that too, very cute.
Speaker 1 (42:01):
I sell them on my website because it's funny.
Speaker 2 (42:05):
So before I forget. I always forget to do this.
If people want to find you outside of this podcast,
we'll link all your stuff in our show notes. But
where can we find you?
Speaker 1 (42:13):
I am everywhere. I'm like a little social media maven,
just like you. I have a website and it's You
can get it at two different places, either Aeronreilly dot
com or a darkforce dot com. They both will go
to the same site. That has a lot of pictures
of me and rockstars from the seventies and the eighties,
and a few from the nineties as well too. It
(42:34):
also has information about the book and also about my childhood.
So I have a lot of pictures of you know,
my mother is a model and my father is an actor,
and you know me as a teenager. I had a
lot of trauma as a teenager. Or me over two
hundred pounds as a teenager at some point is on
the website. Yeah, Listen, trauma has an effect, right, Trauma
(42:54):
has an effect on people, And gaining weight was one
that happened to me. But anyway, so people will eat
about that and maybe they'll identify with that. Listen. You know,
life is hard. I also have an Instagram for a
Dark Force. I have a TikTok for a Dark Force,
I have a Facebook page, and I'm on Facebook myself.
Speaker 2 (43:12):
So to be clear, when you said social media made
him like me, I am on not half of those,
so you're you're beating me for sure.
Speaker 1 (43:20):
Oh well, listen, you know I love to connect with people.
I've actually made friends through this book, people who I've
gotten on Zoom with and FaceTime and talked with a
little bit, just to compare notes and feel like you're
not alone in the world. There's other people have written
books as well too, so it's nice to share stories
with other people and just you know, realize that you're
(43:41):
not the crazy one, because if you're with a narcissist,
trust me, you've been called crazy.
Speaker 2 (43:45):
Yes, well, I appreciate you taking this time out of
your fabulous rock and roll life to share with us today.
It's been such a pleasure to meet you and to
meet you especially after reading the book. As always like
an extra special, you know, extra special Cherry on Tap.
Please check out Aaron's book and certainly the one next
(44:07):
year I will be checking out. It's a Dark Force
twenty years with a covert narcissist, and we will link
all the info on this in the show notes. Anything
you'd like to say before we sign off.
Speaker 1 (44:18):
I wanted to say thank you so much. It's been
a real pleasure meeting you and chatting with you, and
thanks for doing this podcast for people. I'm also a
big fan of true crime and you know, all that
kind of crazy stuff, and I just never thought any
of this would happen to me. But I will say
it's a true crime to be victimized by, you know,
somebody whose intention is to actually victimize your thoughts.
Speaker 2 (44:41):
Right.
Speaker 1 (44:41):
I want to be on that That's So Fucked Up podcast.
Speaker 2 (44:44):
You're Salin, Well, you welcome you here with open arms.
It was a total pleasure. That's all we got for
this evening. Check out Aaron's book and we will catch
you soon. Thanks.
Speaker 1 (44:57):
Fucked Up, go up, So fucked Up. You see, it's
just really a fact. That's what them
There are a lot of people in the world that
don't have your best interests in mind. Right from the
get go. They have their own best interests in mind.
And when they are coming and love bombing you and
giving you this attention and you feel seen and heard
and loved and recognized for all your good qualities, they're
pumping you up. They're just doing that because they want
(00:22):
to capture you for themselves. And once they get you,
that's when the devaluing stage starts.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
That phrase right there just like hits me. That is
so fucked up. It's fucked up, so fucked up, it
is just sucked damn fuck up.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
That's fucked up.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Welcome back to the podcast. This is Fallin Maury. I'm
without Ashley again this week and this is That's So
Fucked Up podcasts about Colt's crime and things that make
you say, ugh, that's so fucked up. I am here
today for another interview and I'm talking to the amazing
Aaron Reiley. Aaron has written a book called A Dark Force,
(01:10):
twenty years with a covert Narcissist. It is a fantastic read.
I did it in one sitting, pretty much like one
or two days, though I don't know. Oh that was
a lot, but I'm really excited to talk to you today,
Erin and hear her thoughts on a number of fun
topics like narcissism and also there's going to be an
(01:31):
amazing amount of rock and roll. So welcome to the podcast, Erin.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
Thank you for having me. Foullan. I want to say
I was so drawn to the your podcast initially for
the title because being an empathetic person, when somebody takes
advantage of you or does you wrong, you want to
hear your friends say to you. Oh my god, that's
so fucked up.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
Perfect and definitely my normal co host. I wouldn't say
my co host. I am her co host, Ashley. She
started the podcast. She came up with the amazing name,
and the name is what drew me as a listener first,
just because I will tell it like it is. So
I also am like, oh, it's so fucked up that
I got to, you know, be in this position. So
is there anything else we should know about you before
(02:15):
we get started?
Speaker 1 (02:16):
Oh? Well, let's see, I'm sixty five years old next month,
so there's a lot to know about somebody's been hell
on the p one and it's so freaking long, I
can't even believe myself. But the quick version, as much
as I can, you know, edit, is that I grew
up in New York City as a child, which was
kind of a unique way to grow up. My parents
were both in the entertainment business to some degree. My
(02:38):
mother was a fashion model and my father was a
small part actor that they worked in entertainment. They weren't
successful in entertainment per se, my mother more so than
my father, but they were both working and busy, which
created an environment that caused my brother and I to
pretty much raise ourselves and be alone all the time.
So allop and say, you know, I would have done
(02:59):
better raised by wolves. I think they would have taught
me something. Well, I'm one of those people had to
learn everything by doing it wrong, and everything the hard,
at least in my personal life and in my relationships.
For some reason, and this was the big mystery to me,
I was very successful in my career life. I still am.
You know, I just got a publishing deal to do
(03:21):
another book. I've written a screenplay, I gave a ten toy,
I owned to children's music school. I worked in the
music business for forty years and met rock stars. You
would think I had everything going on great in my life,
but there was an effect from being ignored as a
child that caused me to look for love in all
(03:42):
the wrong places. And so that was the journey of
my book was to try and figure out how could
somebody that on the outside look so seemingly successful be
so unsuccessful in love? I mean unsuccessful, not just like oh,
work out, I mean we can talk about it at
(04:02):
some point, but it's so funny. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
There was one line at the end of the book
which I actually read to my husband that struck me.
So I'm not jumping all the way through the whole book,
but it said like abusers abuse in private, behind closed
doors basically, and it allows you to from personal experience,
I found it allows you to be outwardly whatever. You
(04:26):
can be outwardly successful because it's not happening in front
of people, but it's like crumbling you up inside because
it's happening in a closed room. I think. So that
was like one of the things that I left with
that I was like, Oh, somebody gets it.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
And it's hard because the other people in your life don't,
you know, don't see that disconnect. They see that outward
picture that you present. Maybe, like in my example, I
was taught to present that positive picture. My parents grew
up in a time where you know, we don't talk
about anything that's wrong in the My dad had problems
(05:01):
with alcohol. My mother was also very narcissistic and selfish
and bit of a gas lighter. It wasn't a happy
home in our childhood, but we don't talk about that
or anything bad in the family. So that created something
in me where you know, there might be some shame
behind it. But I put up a very positive front,
and I guess maybe I believed it myself, and I
(05:23):
became very strong that way, and I was able to
tolerate a lot of really not kind behavior from my
husband and kind is That's the nicest way I can
say it. Man, I'm still trying to be too nice.
He was god awful to me, but anyway, Yeah, so
there's a big discontact. And additionally, you don't get any
support from people because they think that everything is going great,
(05:46):
and then when everything falls apart, because it usually falls
apart pretty fast when it does, they almost don't believe you, Like, really, God,
he seemed so quiet or gosh, she didn't seem like
that kind of a person. You know, he didn't talk
a lot, or he was pretty nice to me or whatever, because,
like you said, they do it behind closed doors or
when you're locked in a car with them when there's
(06:08):
no ears on them.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
Oh yeah. In fact, I was talking to a friend
that I've had for maybe you know, I don't know,
twenty years, or maybe it was a family member, and
I only like maybe three months ago, recounted what I
had gone through in a very high degree, and the
person was like, wait, what when did this happen? Like really?
And I was like, yeah, like I just you don't
(06:29):
just walk around with a sign talking about it. Okay.
So in your book you mentioned a lot about codependency
and it's sort of dynamic in these types of relationships.
So could you just for our audience who might not
know a lot about that term, what you define it
as or what it is defined as, and then how
it affects or creates these types of dynamics and relationships.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
I had a hard time understanding how I was codependent
for a long time because part of the definition I
would read would be that a person with codependency had
low self esteem and perhaps felt maybe not worthy or
less worthy of good treatment. And I didn't feel that way.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
Okay, and you're so strong and so like good at
what you do.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
It's so yet up. But I'll tell you there's another
really strong aspect of codependency that I do identify with,
and that's being a people pleaser. I wasn't so worried
about whether or not people like me or not a
little bit. But for the most part, I just wanted
to make people happy. I wanted to make people laugh,
and I wanted to be nice to people and compliment
(07:37):
people because I wanted that back from them. I wanted
that attention and that connection with people, and I would
continue to do that even though it wasn't being reciprocated.
So that's probably the best and sort of very loose
definition I can give you for how to recognize yourself
if you're suffering from some bit of codependency. Is is
(07:58):
this relationship? One side is your motivation to get something
for yourself that you need, and really so is the narcissist.
They want what they want for themselves, you know, so
they have a codependency for someone like you. Both people
are very unhealthily unhealthily that is a word.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
Right, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
It is now in need of each other. The narcissist
needs you to reflect upon them, you know, all the
things about you that are good that made them come
and collect you for themselves and make them feel better
about themselves. And certainly people like myself, I'm looking for
the love and connection. So I'm going to give the
(08:41):
narcissist that. But it's very very unhealthy both ways, because
neither person is being seen or getting their needs met.
It's just a disaster.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
Right. And so I recognize a lot of what you
just said in myself. I told you that I have
an experience in a relationship with somebody who's very narcissis
stick for years. And I also, like you, I'm very
much a people pleaser, and unlike you, I in that
phase of my life did have very low self esteem
and I was very unsure, and so when somebody came
(09:12):
along to validate me, it was like a high, you know,
like the love bombing you get is like the super high,
like I did good. You know, I need that, So
I that part of the story really resonate with me.
I was curious though, the title of your story. As
we talk about narcissus is with a covert narcissist, And
I don't know that I'd ever really considered covert versus
(09:35):
overt narcissism. Could you kind of break that down for me.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
Yeah, Basically, you can see an overt narcissis coming. They're loud,
they're bombastic, they're braggarts, they're you know, telling you how
great they are and nobody can do it like they can.
And we may have even had some people in our
political arena that suffer from this disorder coming. They're bragging
(10:00):
and they think they're better than everybody else and they're
putting everybody down. You're like, you can see those coming
a mile a minute. But people who are covertly narcissistic
have the same mindset and they think the same way
without empathy towards other people. Right, But they may have
a lot of shame and low self esteem. Also, they
(10:21):
may feel unworthy deeply inside and they kind of turn
it inside out. But they're not going to get away
with that behavior, so they do it kind of underhandedly
in a very sort of tricky way. They rameshift. They're
very sneaky, they're you know, they're cheat, they're all cheaters,
they're on porn, they're cheating on their taxes the government,
(10:42):
they're shoplifting. But it's all very underhanded. Or they're smiling
at you.
Speaker 2 (10:47):
Right.
Speaker 1 (10:47):
My husband used to say to me all the time,
as you wish, which was his special little romantic line
for me from The Princess Bride. But I tell you,
what he was really doing is looking at me and thinking,
can I curse? I can? It's just podcast, right, Yeah,
this is so pupped up. Yes, yeah, No, secretly they're
thinking quite ill of you. You know, they don't want
the best for you. And that's something I had to
(11:08):
come to the realization. There are a lot of people
in the world that don't have your best interests in mind.
Right from the get go. They have their own best
interests in mind. And when they are coming and love
bombing you and giving you this attention and you feel
seen and heard and loved and recognized for all your
good qualities, they're pumping you up. They're just doing that
(11:29):
because they want to capture you for themselves. And once
they get you, that's when the devaluing stage starts.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
That phrase right there just like hits me in a
certain way that they want to capture you. You're like,
you know, something I always used to say to people
I met was like, it's like being a butterfly in
someone's net. They found the one they wanted and they
like put it in the net, and then once you
get home, it's totally different. It's just like that just
hit me, but for a narcissist, and you can totally
(12:03):
correct me if I'm wrong. But it seems very much
like from reading your story and from hearing other people,
I know that you can't fix their need for attention
and what they need you for or what they need
other people for. That's regardless of how good you are,
regardless of how you appeal to them, You're never going
to fix that side.
Speaker 1 (12:23):
Of Well, that's such an important part that I just
skipped right over is that people who are empathetic or
people pleasers and they have all this empathy for people
who are struggling, they do want to fix, you know,
they want to make it better or want to fix it.
So I thought I could make my husband happy or
you know, give him what he wanted, and no, you cannot.
(12:45):
That that hole in a person like that is so very,
very deep, and everybody I don't care whether you have
narcissistic qualities or whatever is going on in your world.
Everybody needs to fix themselves, you know, take care of
their own issue use and look at them themselves and
figure out how to make themselves happy. You know, what
to do to give themselves the things that they want
(13:07):
that are going to make them feel good. Right.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
I think that's such an important point, is don't spend
the time focused necessarily on what the other person's needs are,
because you can't fix it, but you can take care
of your own. And I think so many people I
won't even just say women, I just think people regardless
are so often trained to like subvert their own needs
(13:30):
for the person next to them or the person they're with.
And so if you are inclined to codependency or you're
inclined toward people pleasing you know, in general, like that's
going to be a pretty rocky situation, I guess for you.
Speaker 1 (13:43):
Yeah, and sometimes over and over and over again, until
life hits you so hard that you have to wake
up and take a look in the mirror. Because at
the end of the day, you know, you are the
decider of your own life, and you make your own
choices for yourself. You know, you have to make healthy
choices on behalf of yourself, and you have to recognize
(14:04):
that there's this self here to take care of. You know,
you really have to think about it. Like me, Arin,
you've fallen. We come first, and not in that same
way that a narcissist is, like, I'm the step on everybody.
So I get what I want. I mean, take care
of your own needs and evaluate your own motivations for
(14:25):
why it is that you are doing the things repeatedly
that are not getting you what you want.
Speaker 2 (14:32):
So I noticed you put out the book just a
few years ago, but you've obviously had just years of
different experiences. What was it that really kind of was
your driver this time to write this book and put
it out. There was there any one thing that that
kind of led you to that.
Speaker 1 (14:49):
I needed answers for myself about why I did not
get what I wanted from life. You know, this has
actually really been way heavily on me.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
For a while.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
When I was in tenth grade, I was at high
school and I saw this adorable high school couple some
friends of mine, and the guy being really cute with her,
and I thought, that's what I want. I want a
boyfriend like him, protective, he's trying to make her laugh,
and they just had a great relationship. And I never
could understand why, you know, my career went so well
(15:20):
and all my relationships, you know, with men were not
working out. Everything was bad. So that's why I wrote
the book. But it was a twofold thing. I wanted
to understand more about myself and who I was and
what I was bringing into these either choices of people
or what I was doing within the relationship that was
(15:40):
not giving me what I wanted. But I also realized
if I was suffering this much from you know, my
own life or whatever, other people might be too, and
if I could help provide some education and some answers
for people, a little window inside of a relationship, but
a toxic relationship that looks really good from the outside.
(16:02):
You know, people would say they seem mismatched, but you know,
maybe it's better that she's with that quiet guy. You know,
she's very outgoing and she likes a lot of attention.
She's just supportive of her right. So it didn't totally
look like we had the perfect relationship, but from the
outside it looked enviable. He was helpful, he had a
(16:25):
nice job, he was a handsome fella. He's a smart guy.
You know. People thought we had a pretty decent relationship.
They didn't understand it, but they thought it was good.
And it was anything but good. So I wanted people
to be able to read my book. Here's some of
the interactions that happened between somebody who's gaming you, you know,
and not telling you the truth and avoidant and whatnot,
(16:48):
and then what another person who might be a little
too tolerant of it might say or do. And that
would be the example of my husband and myself, And
I hope people could personalize that and see those interactions
in their own relationships and realize there is something wrong here.
I'm not crazy, you know, I'm not crazy. Somebody is
(17:09):
gaming me and doing this intentionally, and that was the
part I had to come to the realization of. So
I wrote the book to learn about it myself, but
also help other people understand it, right.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
And you know, I think that's so helpful because there's
sort of a real lack of knowledge or willingness to
even complain about the situation you're in. When there's not
some sort of direct physical abuse, you can be suffering
from like narcissistic abuse without being verbally necessarily abused, Like
somebody doesn't have to be calling you bad names in
(17:41):
the background and screaming at you all day for it
to be occurring. And I think what you're writing here
is so important for people to go wait like me,
I've I had those emails, like I've seen these interactions.
This is not normal.
Speaker 1 (17:54):
So I want to say one thing though it speaks
to what you're saying. I've had people who have read
the books say to me, well, my husband does that.
Is he a narcissist? And I want to say probably not.
So maybe no, I want to say probably not, because
narcissism is a pervasive behavior. It's not just that one thing.
It would be most all of them. Right, So if
(18:17):
you recognize lots of these behaviors and characteristics and experiences
in your relationship, then likely you are living with somebody
who has narcissistic tendencies. I would say that my husband
really more likely, and he was. We did go to
many counselors, and we did do psychological testings, so I
(18:37):
have a sort of a peek into how he thinks,
and he's more likely borderline personality disorder, which is somebody
who's very afraid of being abandoned or being left. And
so my husband, very intelligent, with his borderline characteristics, developed
these covertly narcissistic skills to keep himself from being a abandoned.
(19:00):
If he could control me, if he could belittle me,
if he could keep me wanting and not getting or whatever,
he could keep me on the hook, he could keep
himself from being abandoned. So for him it was a
full time job. I have more empathy for him still
even to this day, because I can't imagine how hard
it was for him to develop all that sneaky, tricky
(19:23):
stuff to keep me, to keep me from finding out
what he was really doing the whole time.
Speaker 2 (19:27):
And I applaud you for having so much empathy, because
that's really hard and foolish.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
Well, listen, I'm not going to put myself in a
situation where that's going to hurt me. But you know,
one of the best things that's happened through this process
is that I had to come to the realization that people,
not all people, but there are some people in the
world that don't have your best interest in mind. Pay attention.
People will tell you everything you need to know about
them in the first minute you meet them. Listen right, Well,
(19:56):
I were listening, you know, I would hurt hear a
person and think to myself, it's just like the narcissist
is thinking, how's this person going to fill the empty
hole in me?
Speaker 2 (20:04):
I need love?
Speaker 1 (20:05):
Right right? So both are equally unhealthy. I'm not, I hope,
a danger to anybody other than myself. A narcissist is
a danger to other people, to other people, but both
equally unhealthy and in need of, you know, fixing yourself
and looking at yourself so you can be happy.
Speaker 2 (20:23):
Yeah. I agree everything you're saying. I'm just like hanging
on every word like well, like, yeah, you're so right.
So this book, you said that part of your reason
was to help other people, and in that, are there
ways that you would recommend based on your own experience
or maybe those you've talked to about how to start
healing from these kinds of relationships or situations people have
(20:45):
been in, Like how do you start unpacking and healing?
I doubt that everyone's going to go write a book,
but you know, for those who aren't going to do that,
what are your thoughts on healing.
Speaker 1 (20:55):
Well, thank you so much for saying that. That is
such an important aspect of it, because that's the personal
work that you have to do afterwards, and it's the
most valuable. So my recommendation to people is to slow down,
you know, with all of your interactions that you have
with people, just take a breath and try and think
(21:15):
about how you feel, meaning physically, how is your body feeling.
How does Fallon feel that person said this to me?
Am I feeling good about that? Or am I feeling
like maybe that was a little bit of a diss right?
Or do I feel like that person misunderstood me and
didn't give me the time to explain myself because they
(21:36):
weren't really listening. Whatever interaction you're having with your boss,
your friends, your coworkers, your relationships, slow down and ask
yourself how did that make me feel inside? And then
act accordingly. And when I say accordingly, I mean going
back to that place where who comes first, Aaron comes first,
who comes first? Fallon comes first? Not in a selfish way,
(21:59):
just in that slowing down and learning to recognize your
feelings and if you allow yourself to feel, to try
and feel what you're feeling. Sometimes It's an exercise for
those of us who have been rushing past our feelings
and using our brains and our cognitive dissonance to protect
us and to tell us something that's going to make
us feel safer, feel better about whatever we're doing, or
(22:22):
continue on whatever bad behavior or not self serving, you know,
self destructive behavior we're doing. You know that cognitive dissonance
and all those lies we tell ourselves as well too.
So that's what I asked people to do. Just please
slow down and try to feel your feelings. And the
more you do it, the quicker they'll start to come.
And the better tuned in you will become to yourself,
(22:43):
and the better able you will be able to protect
yourself from predatory people because they're out there. I hate
to tell you that. You know, it's not all just
serial killers, you know, and rape this so the bad people,
there's regular people that just they don't have naturally empathythetic feelings,
and so they can step on you just as easily
(23:04):
as they could step on the pavement to get what
they want. And they just look like regular people. So
just pay close attention.
Speaker 2 (23:11):
They're walking among us like regular folks. I love that
it's not just regular murderers. There's a level in between
that depends how far in between. I like the concept
of slowing down and feeling feelings. I think maybe even
a couple months ago, I was like, you know, I'm
(23:31):
gonna try this whole feelings thing, and my therapist was like,
I'm so proud of you, and I was like, thanks,
I hate it. Like you said, it's really hard to do.
Did you find you had to be completely out of
your marriage before you were able to start doing that,
or did some of that work for you start happening earlier.
Speaker 1 (23:48):
I think that you have to recognize that you're in
a dysfunctional Well, look, I know I was in a
dysfunctional relationship, but I think that you have to become
aware of what the dynamic is to be able to
separate yourself within the relationship. You know, some people are
trapped in a relationship for a million reasons, financial health reasons,
(24:13):
lack of job experience, or whatever other thing. They've been
isolated from family and friends, and they can't just easily
just take off and leave a marriage with no money
and nowhere to go and no family. Like there is
a percentage of the population that is stuck for a
while sometimes in a relationship like that, and you can
learn some skills if you educate yourself as one they
(24:35):
call gray rocking, which is just don't respond. You know,
a narcissist wants your response. They love to be able
to control your emotions and get you worked up and
confuse so they can laugh at you, you know, even silently.
Speaker 2 (24:50):
Spinning words around. Especially when you respond, you give the
ammunition to like pull the meaning out that never was
in those words too.
Speaker 1 (24:58):
All that word sad, word salid ill it right, that's
what they do. So, Yeah, if you're in a relationship
and you can't leave it immediately, which is most people,
but you become aware that you're in a relationship that
has no hope for improving. If you're with somebody who
has either a mental classification or a disorder that they're
(25:21):
struggling with, and it's not your job to fix it,
and you can't fix it for them. You can only
remove yourself from the situation. And if you can't do
it physically, you have to do it emotionally at first.
So do not give them the responses just one word,
two word answers. Yeah, it's so hard to do go hard.
But that's the first step to empowering yourself and basically
(25:44):
shoring up your walls. You know, you need to shore
up yourself so they can't be throwing daggers at you anymore.
Once you can do that, make that decision within yourself
that you are coming first, it gets a little bit
easier to let those knives and arrows just bounce off
you and they don't affect you as much anymore, and
(26:05):
over time you can start to build a little nest
egg or get yourself a little part time job, or
you know, maybe find a confidant that can support you
in some way and get yourself into a healthy situation. Right.
Speaker 2 (26:19):
I love that advice, how especially that it needs to
be sort of a glow, a slow grade. I try
to say, slow and gradual. That's what I got, glow,
a slow and gradual process. Sometimes it can't always just
be whereas you said, on the side of the narcissist,
it can it's literally just you know, you didn't give
me what I needed. I'm done, And on our side,
(26:40):
we're like, let me spend a couple of years recognizing
my feelings and getting my head wrapped around this, and
then do you find that you're able now to spot
because I think in the book you were very I
love your writing style. You were like, here I go again.
I was about to walk right back into it. Do
you feel like you are better able to spot potential
like toxic people or situations now that you've been through
(27:03):
all this?
Speaker 1 (27:04):
Oh, God found I'm gonna tell you. I took that
pendulum and I swung it so far to the other side,
hold on the paranoid side about people. I catch every
little thing that everybody says. You know, Oh, I recognize
when people don't do what they say they're going to do,
or when their stories don't add up. And so I
think I've gone a little too far to the other side.
(27:26):
So honestly, my work now is to find a way
to forgive people for being human and for failing me
as I will them, and understand that if it's not intentional,
it is forgivable. And that's the difference between a narcissist
and a non narcissist, is the intention.
Speaker 2 (27:45):
Intentionality really and that what they're doing. And I think
what you brought up before is really important. People like
to throw around words, especially mental health, where it's like, oh,
I had two different moods. Today, I'm so bipolar or
like you know, that person looks in the mirror a lot.
They're a narcissist. But this isn't a fleeting type of behavior.
It's a you know, in some cases, a personality disorder,
(28:07):
which means it's fixed, it's long, it's through their life
for some reason, and like you said, it's something they're
not outgrowing anytime soon.
Speaker 1 (28:16):
No, it goes very deep. It becomes who the person
actually really is. And you know, I don't want to
confuse the issue or anything, but these diagnoses that we've
all heard about that came up, you know, bipolar, borderline narcissism, autism, aspergers, psychopaths,
sociopath they're all over the place. That all is as
(28:38):
a result of insurance companies and the DSM and being
able to diagnose and medicaid and treat people. Really, mental
health exists on a continuum. There's neuroses to psychoses. Every
single one of us is neurotic in some way or another.
Speaker 2 (28:54):
World in some way.
Speaker 1 (28:56):
Every single person on the planet has some level of
neuros and it's when you hit that center one that's
where they came up. In nineteen eighty with the term borderline.
That's when you start to break with reality and your
life functioning is really not healthy for yourself. You may
have a distorted view of other people and relationships and things.
(29:18):
So you know, the further up you get towards psychoses,
you know, maybe you're ocd over here, and then maybe
you're narcissistic here, and then maybe your schizophrenic up here.
But that's also that you can diagnose and treat people
for these disorders. Honestly, it really has Nobody knows exactly
(29:39):
where it all comes from, but most of the theories
come from it's a combination of potentially a trauma and
maybe ways people are raised, you know, the nature and
the nurture, but there's also very often a trauma that
happens that will make a person somewhat break from reality
and go inward to protect themselves.
Speaker 2 (30:00):
Actually, something else I was going to ask you about
was the sort of nature versus nurture, Like it's a
combo of both or is it mostly one in your
thought process?
Speaker 1 (30:09):
You just nobody knows. I think I can only tell
you about my husband that I lived with for twenty years,
and he worked from home and we owned a business together,
and so I spent a lot of time with him,
a lot of time. He didn't go off to a
job for eight hours a day. We're right next to
each other all the time. So I know a lot
about him, you know, even though he tried to hide
(30:31):
a lot about himself. Right. So from my experience with him,
only I can only speak to him is he was
raised by his parents to believe that he was better
than other people because he came from a well regarded
family in politics, and you know, they had a little
bit more money and a little more status in the community.
So I think they reinforced that with their children. And
(30:53):
then he had a trauma happened to him, which you
know you know about in the book. It's not something
we need to go into, but I had a couple
of traumas. He had a terrible trauma that really affected
his self esteem with women when he was about fifteen
years old. And then his father, who was the big
important guy, he died of pancratic cancer when my husband
(31:13):
was only seventeen years old as the oldest son. So
he had to kind of step in and become the
dad of these four little kids.
Speaker 2 (31:20):
Forced to step in right, someone pulled him aside and said,
this is your job now. Sorry, that's right, childhood's over.
That's right.
Speaker 1 (31:27):
The uncle did. And so my husband, I know, shut
down in that moment and he decided like, I'm not
going to feel anything. I'm never going to be close
to anybody. He's not going to bond with anybody. There
was some consciousness to his decision, but then it really
became who he was as a person. You know. He
couldn't break out of it. Believe me, I gave it
(31:48):
my all.
Speaker 2 (31:49):
You certainly did so really quickly. I want to go
into some kind of fun outside the book stuff, But
did you have anything else that we didn't cover that
you want to talk?
Speaker 1 (32:00):
Oh, you did a great job since I mean, I
hate to say that you cause you've experienced some of
this yourself. You know, you really do understand the patterns
of behavior and what it feels like in a situation
like that, and after having extracted yourself having to unpack
it all, you know, it doesn't just end like a
regular relationship. You can't just end this relationship and go, oh,
(32:21):
well that didn't work out. You have to go over
it in your head every single day of it. Practically
and think, how did that go on for so long?
How did I let that happen? How did I not
see it or recognize it? So it does take longer
to recover. So that's the only thing I want to say.
But now do you want to ask me my favorite
ice cream? Or I want to ask I'm excited? I know.
Speaker 2 (32:42):
Well, so, as we talked about in the beginning, Well,
first of all, I have to say, I'm also a
Pennsylvania gal. I'm from Harrisburg. My mom lives near Lancaster,
and I was living a virtual tour of my home
state through your book, So Kindred Pennsylvania Spirit. I have
to ask you know, you know you have this amazed
As you mentioned, you get to meet all these rock
(33:03):
stars and you're friends with Joan Jet and coolest person ever.
But do you have plans to sort of work that
into some of your future books you mentioned you're still writing.
Do we get like big rock star stories now? Actually, yes,
I know.
Speaker 1 (33:16):
This is the craziest thing. This was nothing I ever
wanted to do. I'll be really honest with you. People
have been telling me I should write a book about
my music business career because I was one of the
earlier women in the music business. I'm not considered of
the first wave of women. There was a first wave
of women in the late sixties that came in, but
not many ten women in the whole country working in
(33:37):
the music business, whether in records. So I came in
the late seventies some sort of the second wave of women,
but I was still outnumbered by men, Like I don't know,
maybe there'd be two women in every ten or maybe
one in every twenty or so. If we're out and about,
I'd be with a lot of men. So there was
certainly a lot to see a lot of bad behavior
(33:57):
out there in the world, in the rock and roll
world of fun, nonetheless, but I didn't want to tell
any of those stories out of turn. You know. I
felt like it was a privilege to be backstage and
to see some of these things, and I thought, these
aren't always my stories, you know, these are stories that
I would be telling about another person, and so I
never wanted to do it. Well, fast forward to I
(34:22):
wrote my book A Dark Force, and a publisher contacted
me and asked me to write a book about my
music business career, but not really from my own perspective.
They wanted me to write a book about It's actually
Temple University. So Temple University Press contacted me and they
asked me to write a book about the radio station
I worked at throughout the eighties. It's called WMMR in Philadelphia,
(34:45):
and that's where I met most of the rock stars
that I had the privilege to work with and whatnot
over those many years. And it's an oral history book
of all of the DJs and programmers and the rockers
and everything. So what I've been doing for the last
two months is I've interviewed sixty people and I'm doing
an oral history book and transcribing all their stuff. And
(35:07):
I'm going to ask the lovely and talented Jon bon
Jovi to write a forward for me, because we really
helped him a lot when he was a baby, and
I mean a baby, he was a teenager.
Speaker 2 (35:17):
Like a baby god.
Speaker 1 (35:20):
Yeah, we hung out a lot and really helped him
get off the ground very early on, and he was
a great friend to the radio station. So yeah, So
I am actually writing a book about rock and roll
right now. And the coolest part of all of this
is I started at this radio station, WMMR in nineteen
eighty three, but I'm also interviewing DJs from the sixties
(35:41):
and seventies, and they're telling me stories about being on
airplanes with Led Zeppelin and smoking hot with Bob Marley
and like all kinds of crazy stories because you know,
by the time the eighties came around, we had the
hair bands a little bit more of a business, and
you know, Auntie and big tours and sponsors. These guys
(36:03):
are hanging out backstage at Woodstock and right. So, yeah,
so I am writing a rock and roll book. But
fortunately it's not me telling the stories out of turn.
I'm letting everybody else tell their stories.
Speaker 2 (36:16):
But like some of them inevitably that you've also kind
of lived with them, so it's a little bit of
your own oral history as well.
Speaker 1 (36:22):
I guess I'll sneak a few of my stories in,
but you know, I've decided that the book should be
very positive, so I want to make sure that you
know there's good in bed in every industry and good
in bed in everybody's life and experience. But it was
a very celebratory and fun time in music, and I
want to definitely have the book reflect that. So it's
going to be called When Radio ruled WMMR in the eighties,
(36:44):
and it'll come out on Temple University Press next year.
It'll be a.
Speaker 2 (36:48):
While putting my notebook. So I thought you did a
great job in your book about being positive, even though
you had some stories that definitely were not positive through
your career. You were great about being like, well, it
didn't work out for us, but we're still great friends,
or you know, the situation didn't work out, but I
(37:08):
was happy for my experience, which is just such an
amazing way to look at it. I have to ask,
do you have a favorite part of your music career?
Because you've been a music related business owner, you've been
on the radio, Like, what was kind of your favorite.
Speaker 1 (37:21):
I have to think about. I don't even know all
of it, my god, all of it, all of it,
all of it, I guess. I mean, the things that
were would happen. We're so crazy and fun. Let me
just give you one story, all right, it's it's a
crazy STRUW give you one night. So I arranged a
promotion with Aerosmith to meet their private airplane at the
(37:42):
Cargo Airport in Philadelphia. So they have a private airport
where the rock stars flying and their own little jets
and the residents and you wouldn't even know it was there.
So they come touchdown. They've got a plane that says
aerow Force one on it, like air Force one. Only
air Force one because a big grin painted on the
(38:04):
nose of the plane like teeth, like Steven Tyler. All right,
So I brought about fifty listeners down there with me
and one of our big DJs. His name was Pierre Robert,
and he had a little Marty system, which is a
little portable unit where he could he could relay back
to the radio station so he could be interviewing Aerosmith
and Limo on the way to the spectrum to the
(38:26):
show live on the radio. Right. So we're all there
and they'd land and they are signing autographs and everybody's cheering,
and they're heading for the limo and Steven Tyler grabs
me by the hand, pulls me in the limo with
the Marty system, closes the door and tells the driver
hit it, and we start going to this spectrum without
the DJ. Right, we're supposed to interview them, and a
(38:50):
boy almost got fired that day. Anyway, I decided to
fan myself to just try to do whatever kind of
interview I could, even though I wasn't a regular name
on the station that people knew, but I figured Stephen
and Jode Perry were so I would get some nice
little comments from them. We arrive at the Spectrum. The
first thing that happens is security guard comes over to
(39:10):
me and says, there's a call for you on a payphone,
you know, in the hallway, you know, parking for my
cell phones. That was my boss getting ready to fire me.
And I'm like, it wasn't my fault. It wasn't my fault. Anyway,
he forgave me. I did not lose my job. The
next thing I know, the road manager asked me to
come down to the stage with the band because I'm
going to announce loving an elevator. So I was brought
(39:32):
onto the stage. I was in a sort of a
secret little room on the top of the stage, and
I got to say on a microphone, third floor, ladies lingerie,
Oh good evening, mister Tyler going down, and then they
start the song. All right, So that was something that
happened in my life. I just I'm mean, I want
to shake my head and go that happened to me
(39:53):
how's in my position, you know, how's nothing to do
with who I am, because I worked at the radio station.
Because the radio station played the bands, hel them sell
records and made them money. We all had a relationship
with each other, you know. It was a mutually beneficial
relationship to sell records and to get people to listen
to the radio station. But damn, it was fun and
(40:13):
I had so many fun, funny experiences as a result
of that. And that's just one night.
Speaker 2 (40:18):
You could fill more than one book, for sure.
Speaker 1 (40:21):
You read in my other book, there's this story about
and this is since I can say anything on this
podcast because of the name of it, smoking marijuana with
Keith Richards in the Caribbean, Yes, and burning all my
hair off. That's a whole other wacky story.
Speaker 2 (40:36):
So I know, and I was like, I'm not going
to spoil your Keith Richards smoking pots story for everybody,
because that one is pretty explosive literally exactly.
Speaker 1 (40:46):
So maybe hopefully people will get the book, and you know,
people who need to read the messages in the book,
and also you know, don't want it to be uh.
They want to learn something, but they don't want to
feel bad, you know, like there's enough stuff going on
in the world, right, you know, that's just trying to
make the best of everything, you know. I'm just here
to educate people and maybe entertain them with some funny,
(41:08):
silly stories of things that happened. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (41:11):
Well, I love I love your outlook, and I love
your willingness to share your experience in your book with
people so that they can be helped. So many people
don't have the strength and have that in them to
share the experience that might help others. And I know,
I think I could have used this book fifteen years
(41:31):
ago when I was like the sad person exiting the situation.
But I'm glad I have it now because it definitely
it's a very special book.
Speaker 1 (41:39):
Cass along to somebody fallon. I'm serious. That's why tell everybody, Oh,
I ask somebody, because there's somebody's going to need to
read messages that are in there.
Speaker 2 (41:49):
I have some friends in mine who might get like
a basket with a bookmark and like a you know,
a highlighter.
Speaker 1 (41:55):
Or hold on, only you can see this.
Speaker 2 (41:57):
A little vood a doll does that too, very cute.
Speaker 1 (42:01):
I sell them on my website because it's funny.
Speaker 2 (42:05):
So before I forget. I always forget to do this.
If people want to find you outside of this podcast,
we'll link all your stuff in our show notes. But
where can we find you?
Speaker 1 (42:13):
I am everywhere. I'm like a little social media maven,
just like you. I have a website and it's You
can get it at two different places, either Aeronreilly dot
com or a darkforce dot com. They both will go
to the same site. That has a lot of pictures
of me and rockstars from the seventies and the eighties,
and a few from the nineties as well too. It
(42:34):
also has information about the book and also about my childhood.
So I have a lot of pictures of you know,
my mother is a model and my father is an actor,
and you know me as a teenager. I had a
lot of trauma as a teenager. Or me over two
hundred pounds as a teenager at some point is on
the website. Yeah, Listen, trauma has an effect, right, Trauma
(42:54):
has an effect on people, And gaining weight was one
that happened to me. But anyway, so people will eat
about that and maybe they'll identify with that. Listen. You know,
life is hard. I also have an Instagram for a
Dark Force. I have a TikTok for a Dark Force,
I have a Facebook page, and I'm on Facebook myself.
Speaker 2 (43:12):
So to be clear, when you said social media made
him like me, I am on not half of those,
so you're you're beating me for sure.
Speaker 1 (43:20):
Oh well, listen, you know I love to connect with people.
I've actually made friends through this book, people who I've
gotten on Zoom with and FaceTime and talked with a
little bit, just to compare notes and feel like you're
not alone in the world. There's other people have written
books as well too, so it's nice to share stories
with other people and just you know, realize that you're
(43:41):
not the crazy one, because if you're with a narcissist,
trust me, you've been called crazy.
Speaker 2 (43:45):
Yes, well, I appreciate you taking this time out of
your fabulous rock and roll life to share with us today.
It's been such a pleasure to meet you and to
meet you especially after reading the book. As always like
an extra special, you know, extra special Cherry on Tap.
Please check out Aaron's book and certainly the one next
(44:07):
year I will be checking out. It's a Dark Force
twenty years with a covert narcissist, and we will link
all the info on this in the show notes. Anything
you'd like to say before we sign off.
Speaker 1 (44:18):
I wanted to say thank you so much. It's been
a real pleasure meeting you and chatting with you, and
thanks for doing this podcast for people. I'm also a
big fan of true crime and you know, all that
kind of crazy stuff, and I just never thought any
of this would happen to me. But I will say
it's a true crime to be victimized by, you know,
somebody whose intention is to actually victimize your thoughts.
Speaker 2 (44:41):
Right.
Speaker 1 (44:41):
I want to be on that That's So Fucked Up podcast.
Speaker 2 (44:44):
You're Salin, Well, you welcome you here with open arms.
It was a total pleasure. That's all we got for
this evening. Check out Aaron's book and we will catch
you soon. Thanks.
Speaker 1 (44:57):
Fucked Up, go up, So fucked Up. You see, it's
just really a fact. That's what them
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