HealthyGamerGG - Dr. K Reacts To Horrible Relationship Advice

Episode Date: July 14, 2025

In this episode, Dr. K dives into some truly questionable relationship advice circulating online, reacting in real-time to clips, comments, and memes. He breaks down why some tips are problematic, what makes certain advice toxic, and how to find healthier perspectives. You’ll catch: Moments where Dr. K calls out advice that’s misleading, harmful, or just plain bad Insight into what makes relationship guidance actually helpful Practical alternatives and real tips for setting boundaries, communicating better, and building trust A mix of sharp critique and empathetic coaching If you’ve ever rolled your eyes at cringe relationship tips, this one’s for you. It's entertaining, insightful, and grounded in what really helps relationships thrive. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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when you find the one, you've got a real shot at getting it. Get started at Redfin.com. Own the dream. Hey, chat. Welcome to the Healthy Gamer Gigi. podcast. I'm Dr. Al-O Knoja, but you can call me Dr. K. I'm a psychiatrist gamer and co-founder of Healthy Gamer. On this podcast, we explore mental health and life in the digital age, breaking down big ideas to help you better understand yourself and the world around you. So let's dive right in.

Let's get started. Welcome to our Healthy Gamer Gigi stream. My name is Dr. Al-Ocanoja. Just a reminder that although I'm a medical doctor, nothing we discussed on stream today is intended to be taken as medical advice. Everything is for educational or entertainment purposes only. If you'll have a medical concern or question, please go see a licensed professional. Okay, so today, y'all, we've got something fun. I am going to be apparently debunking bad relationship advice, which we'll get to in a second. So here's what we did. We found some, you know, relationship advice from this place. You'll may have heard of it. It's called the internet. And what I'm going to be doing is basically kind of reacting to it. I've sort of looked at it a little bit before just getting the general sense of

like what topics these people are going to talk about. And the reason that I did that is I wanted to pull up some scientific literature to see like which aspects of this are correct, which aspects of this are not correct. I actually encountered a lot of stuff that was like surprising. Like I'd never heard of this stuff before, but before I just sort of assuming I know it's wild, just because I've never heard of it doesn't mean it isn't true. So I learned a lot by reading into this stuff a little bit and I'd love to share some of that with y'all. The other thing is just a quick disclaimer and heads up, okay? So I've looked at some of these. I haven't looked at them in a lot of detail, but I looked at the topic so that I could find what research is applicable or not applicable.

And so like, like just because we're reacting to something, please don't go troll this person. Okay? Like don't like like brigade their social media and stuff. Like just leave them alone. Like they're just trying to make content and sharing their perspective on the world. Okay, all ready? let him suffer. And people get so angry at me when I say this, but I don't care. Men don't fall in love with women based on all the things that she did for him. She cooked for him, she cleaned for him. She moved across the country for him. No. Women fall in love through oxytocin. Men fall in love through the commitments that they make and then following through through, through overcoming challenges. And when you slightly stress them out. But Alley, I know somebody who knows somebody who knows somebody where they got together on the first night. Now they've been together for 15 years. Well, Merry Christmas and Happy Birthday to you. I also know somebody who is in a devastating car accident, but they miraculously survived, despite not wearing a seatbelt. But every time I get into a car, I wear a seatbelt because I know the vast majority of the time, I am not going to be the exception. I am going to be the rule. Don't believe me, why do men play so many video games? They play those video games because everybody starts at zero. And then they have to overcome these

challenges and they have to work hard and they have to invest their time, their resources to get to that next level, to unlock more perks, more guns, more challenges, more maps. But you want to show just how nice you are. You want to be the convenient carry. If you're going to be a convenient carry, don't be surprised when he becomes your big. Your big mistake. Okay. So this was really interesting. So I thought this one was really interesting for a couple reasons, okay? The first is that this person claims that women fall in love through oxytocin and men fall in love through vasopressin. And that I thought was like really interesting. I was like, what the fuck? So and I haven't, I hadn't heard it at. So I actually like looked it up.

I was like, what is the deal with like vasopressin? Okay, so, you know, I'm familiar with vasopressin as a medical doctor. And generally speaking, what vasopressin does is reabsorbs water through the kidney. That's what it's kind of called. It's called antidiarratic hormone. So it's like prevents diurestis in the kidney. I was like, what the hell does this have to do with mating? And it turns out that it may play a role in social behavior, sexual motivation, and pair bonding in maternal responses to stress.

So I learned something. So here are a couple of things that I discovered about vasopressin. So the first thing that she's actually correct about is that men, there are several studies that show that males of a species are more responsive to vasopressin than women are. And arguably women are more responsive to oxytocin. I don't think that's correct. It's just that oxytocin plays, does a lot more things in women than it does in men. So for example, oxytocin release. oxytocin secretion causes lactation in women.

So when a child suckles, there is that stimulation on a breast that is full of milk will trigger something called milk letdown. So there's a lot of milk stored in the breasts that then gets released, and oxytocin is that trigger. So oxytocin also facilitates emotion bonding, not just between babies and moms, but also between like humans in general, and skin-to-skin contact, generally speaking, releases oxytocin as well. So there's like kind of a

movement right now for like even, like fathers to cuddle their children and do something called skin to skin, which is like when the dad takes off their shirt, the kid is not wearing, you know, a shirt or whatever. And then you put them directly on the skin. It facilitates bonding. Kids also have very thin or infants have very thin skin. So they actually actually, absorb your body heat. So there's like stuff about this kind of thing. Anyway. So first thing that she's right about is that men are more responsive to vasopressin. But here's the thing. This concept of like stressing men out, what is the relationship between that and vasopressin? So it turns out that vasopressin is synergistic with stress. So if you have a high amount

to vasopressin and you have, and you feel stressed out, like you have a high cortisol level, these two work together, okay? So species, sex, and individual differences in the vasatocin, vasopressin system, so a relationship to neurochemical signaling in the social behavioral network, okay? So let me see if I can find a quick way to, okay, so, so individual differences in modulation by gonadal homins and societal, Let me see. Okay.

So here's a cool paper, okay? So are plasma oxytocin in women and plasma vasopressin in men, biomarkers of a distress pair bond relationship? So this is where we get into things that are really interesting, okay? So it turns out that when we're talking about the role of vasopressin and stressing someone out, and I think this is kind of like the key point. So here's what I thought was really. fascinating. The first is like how right she sort of was. Like there was a lot of stuff in there

that I thought was like kind of complete BS. I was like, what the hell are you talking about? You need to stress men out to make them like you more. So here's what I think is really going on. After looking at all the evidence is what I think. First of all, vasopressin is something that men are more responsive to. Vesa preson in men is secreted with things like mate guarding behaviors. So, like, when, you know, a male and a female of a species are mated together and there is a threat to that mating bond, a man will, or a male, so these are not necessarily human studies, by the way. So a male will secrete vasopressin, which will trigger, like, guarding behaviors, okay? But here's the other really interesting thing, is that vasopressin is high in males in something called distress-based bonds. So as human beings, there is a certain kind of relationship that we form, which is out of

like when both of us are kind of stressed out. Okay. So when I'm stressed and you're stressed, when we form a trial by fire kind of situation and we join together as a result, vasopressin does actually mediate that and can form us to bond. So good examples of these kinds of relationships are like when I was like sort of running a rehab or was working at a couple rehabs running them, whatever, medical director. During that time, there's a lot of patients who are going through a lot of trauma, a lot of difficulty,

everyone's fucking withdrawing. And when human beings go through shit together, they form bonds. That stress-induced pair bonding is absolutely a thing and is mediated by vasopressin. So she's not wrong that, like, if there is a stressful situation,

you can induce some kind of vasopressin mediated bond. Now here's where I think that this situation is not actually a good idea, and here's what I think is going on. So the first thing that I've observed, as a psychiatrist who's worked in rehabs where people fall in love because there's distressed pair bonding, I've also seen this as a medical resident, where everyone's working 80-hour weeks, 100-hour weeks, we're all stressed out, and we form bonds together, right? We went through the shit together, and now we're bonded. The problem is that those kinds of relationships oftentimes crumble when we reenter the real world.

So if your relationship was based on overcoming a stress together, that is a bond that forms, but once the circumstances of your situation change, I would say that more than 50% of those relationships basically fall apart. So a distress, parabonded relationship can change drastically. when the distressed period is over. Now, there's a flip side of that argument, I said more than 50% of them fall apart, but also there's a lot of evidence that shows that,

you know, when you go through shit with someone, like you bond a lot and then if you both grow, if you both are capable of successfully transitioning the relationship out of distress, like into a normal, healthy equilibrium, then that can be really good because y'all were there for each other when times were hard. So I think that a lot of this stuff like really, really interesting because I think it's pretty accurate. Now, that being said,

I think the general advice of intentionally stress your partner to make them like you more, I think is terrible. Because even though these mechanisms happen to be there, I think the overall picture is very different. So the first is that this person says, don't be a convenient carry. So here's how I understand that. Okay. So oftentimes in relationships, we will go out of our way to be nice to the other person. We will try to offload their stress. And I want you all to think for a second about who would you want to be in a relationship with? Someone who intentionally stresses you out or someone who reduces your stress and makes your life better.

And one of the three major factors that like, and so now we get to something else. Okay. So hold on a second. I love this book. Okay? The Cambridge Handbook of Personal Relationships. So here's the thing. Like you can come up with advice, which is like fair enough when we'll get to why people

do that. But I think a big part of this is actually that people aren't like really looking at the data, right? So they say like this is how it is. But the cool thing is we actually know how it is. Like you can read this book and you can know what kind of relation. What is the foundation of like a strong. relationship, how do relationships form? So here's a key thing. So any human being who makes another

human being's life less stressful and less easy is one of the three major factors that forms bonds. So if you sort of think about like, who do you like in life, who do you appreciate in life, it's people who make your life easier, not people who make your life more stressful. It's like completely in the opposite direction. So now the question becomes, if that's true, why on earth would someone say something like this? Right? So this is what even though this person is like their general conclusion is completely in the wrong direction based on like multiple studies and meta-analyses of how relationships form.

Like you don't make someone's life worse. Making someone's life worse usually induces them to leave you, stressing them out intentionally. So here's what I think is going on. So there are many people in relationships who will try. really hard to prioritize the other partner. I'm going to try to reduce your stress. I'm going to try to be the convenient carry. I'm going to be there for you whenever you need something. Okay. So I think that this kind of behavior can absolutely be damaging because when you devalue yourself and you place the partner's value above you when you are there for anything

they need anytime at the drop of a hat, then what can happen is people can start taking you for granted. Right? People can start assigning the value to you that you assign to yourself. That, okay, this person is willing to drop everything. They're going to be extra convenient for me. Can you do my laundry? Can you pick me up? Can you do this? Can you do this? And so people can start taking you for granted. And once they start taking you for granted, they start devaluing you. Once they start devaluing you, that will absolutely lead to a decay of the relationship. even if the relationship is maintained in terms of its form, even if y'all are like together for 15 years, if they devalue you and you devalue yourself, it's still not a healthy relationship.

It's like the husk of a relationship. So I think I hear this kind of advice all the time from people who engage in this kind of behavior where they were the convenient carry. They did devalue themselves. And they behaved in a way where when their partner did not assign respect to them, did not value to them, did not appreciate them for being the convenient, Kerry, they just kind of took it. And oftentimes what happens, this is such an important principle in a relationship. When we make a mistake in the relationship, the most common thing for a human being to do is to swing

the pendulum from one side all the way to the other side. So when someone has a set of relationships, and, you know, if I had a chance to ask Allay, what were your relationships like? I think we would absolutely see this pattern. I would predict that we would see a pattern where she went out of her way to be kind and accepting and supportive, but in the process didn't actually, like, set limits around her own value. And then she got taken advantage of. And what she's sort of learned is, like, the way that she sort of counters that, right,

is to be intentionally stressful. But I think this is the mistake. It's not about, I think being intentionally stressful, as we'll see later, will drive people away too. The key thing here is that you want to be queries to each other. So, like at a minimum they value, and ideally in a relationship, there's a fair amount of reciprocity. Okay. So I think it's a really fascinating take. But I wouldn't say that you should intentionally stress your partner out.

I think oftentimes, and this is going to be a theme that we're going to see today, see, a lot of people make mistakes in relationships. But they don't understand really. what the mistake is. They just see one piece. They don't understand the underlying principle. So if I behave like a doormat, if I'm really nice to people, the solution is to not

be nice. But that's not really the problem. The problem is not that you're really nice to people. The problem is that you're a dormant, that you devalue yourself, that you let other people get away with devaluing you. And so then you say like, okay, other people are going to get away with devaluing me, so I'm going to be an asshole.

Right? Then I'm going to make sure that no one devalues. me. That's not actually the right correction. The right correction is to recognize, okay, I am allowing this person to devalue me. It doesn't mean that I have to be an asshole. It just means that there's something in between being a dormant and being an asshole, which is understanding what you're worth, having some degree of self-respect, and then like providing appropriate feedback when people don't treat you with self-respect, right? It's like sometimes, I know this is wild, but sometimes you've got to like let people learn that this is not okay. You don't have to just cut off the relationship.

We have to figure out like when I'm going to answer questions. So you guys can start populating this one. I'll take a look at another video to react to and then we'll go ahead and answer questions. Okay. Does that sound good? We'll do like two at a time. Okay. Intimacy three times a week.

Just do it. Just do it. If the man or woman, they don't really feel like it, just do it. It'll improve the relationship. You've done it a million times. Just do it. You'll feel better afterwards. Both you do it.

Three times a week. The thing is, both you just have to do it. Couples get really stubborn. They just need to shut up and do the fundamentals. That's it. As soon as I do the fundamentals, they go, oh, it's so much better. Yeah, it's because adults sometimes act like little toddlers and get really stubborn and stupid. It's not effective.

Okay. So this is something that I think is hilarious. Okay. So intimacy three times a week. Just do it. Don't act like a toddler. Just do the fundamentals. People can be really stubborn.

So I have a wild question for y'all. Just do it three times a week. No matter what. Does that sound stubborn to you? It's so interesting, right? It's like, oh, yeah, like people are really stubborn. They don't want to do it. And so instead, we're just going to be stubborn in the opposite.

I don't care what you feel. I don't care what you want. I don't care if you've got an undiagnosed cancer that is messing with your hormones. Just do it. Just do it. Stop being a whiny little toddler. And just do it. Just stop.

Like, stop being a winyy toddler. Just fillate me. Just do it. I don't care how you feel. Just sex. Just three times a week. Who cares about my feelings and your feelings? Just do the fundamentals.

So here's my question. When did sex? How do we determine what the fundamentals are? Like, I've got a wild idea. How about the fundamentals? How about one of the fundamentals is instead of just rotely engaging in behavior without understanding what the hell is going on and why people feel the way that we do,

how about one of the fundamentals is that we talk about how we feel about stuff? How about one of the fundamentals is if your partner doesn't want to do something instead of, what was it, not being stubborn and just telling them to do it, I don't care about feelings, just do it. how about we sort of try to understand why they don't want to do it. How about we try to understand if maybe the reason that... I know this is going to be hard to understand. But maybe the reason they don't want to have sex three times a week is because when we have sex three times a week,

there are only three orgasms in a week. Have we ever considered that possibility? That instead of just being stubborn and just do it because we feel like it, maybe there aren't enough orgasms. There should be ideally a minimum of six. Ideally, maybe that's a problem. But here's the thing, and you may say, no, that's not a problem. Well, hold on a second.

How would we ever know if we're just doing it? So there are a couple things about this that I like. So I agree that, like, there are a lot of things that are fundamental to relationships. And the dude is not wrong that if you sort of look at, like, sexual intimacy, that can drastically improve a relationship. even if people don't feel like it. So there's like a good argument to be made there. My favorite example of this is headaches. So like oftentimes there is a stereotype that women will not want to have sex because they have a headache. Where there's studies that show that things like migraines and

other forms of headaches are drastically improved by sexual activity. So if you have a headache, one of the best things you can do is have sex. That's the worst time to not have sex. Now, Why is that? It's because most of the headaches that we have relate to either tension headaches or the vasodilation, vaso-constriction balance. Basically, how dilated or constricted our blood vessels are in our brain and muscular tension. So the cool thing about sex is that it actually rerout the blood flow from parts of your brain to other parts of you.

And then after we finish the sexual act, so we sort of. basically get like a resetting of our vascular. So the reason we get a headache is because our blood vessels are clamping down too much, gives us a headache. We have tension over here. And sexual activity can actually be one of the best forms of relief for muscular tension in the trapezius in the neck, right? Ideally with an orgasm, right? So you have a whole body muscular contraction followed by a whole body muscular relaxation.

you get a release of things like endorphins, like your mu receptors, get a little bit of good endogenous opioid, and you actually get alterations in your cerebro vascular, which then can improve the headache. So having sex when you don't feel like it is not always a bad idea. But I would say that, like, one of the fundamentals is to understand why people feel a particular way. And then I think it's also like, like, you know, someone who's been married. for 14 years. And as someone who has helped a lot of people who are in long-term relationships, maintain healthy sexual relationships, reinvigorated their sexual relationships.

I think wrote sexual activity when you don't feel like it sometimes has a role, but generally speaking, is far inferior to diagnosing what the problem is and then like making an intentional, like fixing it, right? It's kind of like saying, you should just run three times a week, no matter how you feel. Where it's like if you've got like a subluxation of your patella, like your patella and your patella tendon is stressed, then you just keep running three times a week. Like you're going to mess up your legs even more. And oftentimes what I see is that when people engage in sort of like these stubborn sexual relationships, they don't fix the underlying problems. So you all need to understand this, that the desire for sex,

is something that is really like basic for human beings, right? So like you'll have a lot of human beings that can really, like we like to engage in sex. It's procreation, which means that if you don't feel like having sex, there has to be something seriously wrong. So there's something going on with your energy levels, with your mood, with your feeling of connection. There's something in your body and in your brain telling you now is not the time for sex. Whereas generally speaking, when things in your life are good, what tends to happen, we get horny. So like the number one thing that I've said to my patients, if they're heteronormative relationships where the dude is my patient, number one thing I say to them, if their wife doesn't want to have sex with them anymore, is how much sleep is she getting every night? That's number one.

And I would say that in about 70% of situations, when their wife gets three more hours of sleep per week, it's all it takes, three hours per week. It's like one solid nap or one extra hour of sleep three days a week. I'm going to do morning routine with the kids three days a week. Within a week, dude is having more sex. It's natural, right? So sex is such a primal thing that the desire for sex goes away, that the desire for sex goes away, that means that something is not right. And once in a blue moon, we'll discover something else.

There's also all kinds of cool things that happen when you don't have rote sex. So when you don't have wrote sex, here's the really fun one. This is my favorite one. It's like, then we have a conversation about it. And they're like, well, I just don't feel like having sex. So here's what you should say if someone says, I don't feel like having sex. You guys want to know how to fix that problem with one question? What would make you feel like having sex?

What would make you feel that way? what's missing? And this is where people will say like, oh, like, and someone will say, oh, I'm just so tired all the time. Okay, cool. Let's fix that problem. But this is also where I would say 50 plus percent of patients I've worked with, we've talked about this, this is how we get into sexual fantasies.

Right? It's like, okay, like, what would turn you on? What would make it work for you? And then it's like, and if you're just having rote, mechanical, vaginal missionary penetration three times a week, Then what you're actually going to be doing is then the sex drive goes down, the desire to have sex goes down because you're sexually satisfied, and you're not going to have this conversation.

Disatisfaction with your sex life is the first door to opening up a conversation about fantasies, kinks, and fetishes. What would turn you on? And then generally speaking, once you walk down that road, like, at a minimum, hopefully your partner becomes happy, assuming you all can come up with something that everyone's comfortable with and things like that. But then usually like, you know, when your partner has a sexual fantasy and you create a safe space for them to express it because they feel kind of embarrassed about it, and then you're able to satisfy them, like that makes the person who is doing the satisfying feeling feel really good. And then something cool happens.

Once my partner is super satisfied and I feel good for providing for them, then here's the fun part. then there's reciprocation. Hey, I'm so glad that, like, you know, you had like a two-minute-and-30-second orgasm, and that really worked for you. Can I tell you something that I would like to do? And, like, that's how we take married couples that have been married for 25 years and their sex life. They've had dead bedroom syndrome for, like, four years. They have sex once a year on their anniversary, and once a year when they happen to both be drunk and in the mood.

and then we're like back to the teenager phase like three times a week four times a week five times a week and their teenager kids are like you'll need to get a fucking room like i've seen this stuff y'all so i think key thing here is don't just rotly have sex if people don't feel like it but there is absolutely an argument to be made for not always doing that right sometimes you should just go ahead and do it? Like, I don't think that's bad. But I think that, like, this also is, like, an intentional thing that you should do. What's the right strategy in this moment? Should we just go ahead and, like, force ourselves to do it? I don't think you should force yourself to do it three times a week. But, hey, if you haven't had sex in two weeks and, like, hey, let's just, like,

get it done. That's pretty good. Because I think there's absolutely a sentiment of, we should do that more often. We forgot how good this feels. So there's, like, a piece of that that I think is good. Okay? Let's take a look at Slider. Okay, this is such a great question. How to not be a dormant and also not be a dick? How do I avoid taking over the work of emotional regulation while also providing emotional support? What a beautiful question. So, sometimes we get put in this situation where we are thirsty and we're about to answer a question.

So how do you be a dormant and still advocate for yourself? How do you emotionally support someone? Oh, sorry, how to not be a dormant and not be an asshole. And how do you emotionally support someone without being responsible for their emotional regulation? So here's what I would say. So let's start with the second question. So what's the right? How do you be emotionally supportive without being emotionally responsible?

So I'd say this is where I like the 51% rule. So they should do 51% of the emotional regulation. you should do 49% at a maximum. So when someone is feeling bad, what are the things that they can do to improve their emotions, get their shit together, and what are the things that you can do? So oftentimes what happens in relationships is that we become responsible. And the moment that we become responsible, y'all may have noticed this, your partner becomes passive. They're like, yeah, I'm going to just let you do it all the time. So this is where when we talk about like dating and stuff, I've seen especially when you like go to discussion forums where women are talking about their experiences, there are two terms that I see thrown around a lot, which is weaponized incompetence and learned helplessness.

Right? That like the dudes in their life are using weaponized incompetence to dump the burden on the woman. I think there are times where that is fair. But I think it is much more subtle than that most of the time. So I think this is where, like, how do you, if you're dating someone who is, like, incapable and has weaponized incompetence, how do you fix this? You want to shift the responsibility to them. You're playing the support role, not the primary role. And this shift can happen gradually, right?

Because oftentimes if you dump someone into the role of responsibility, their frontal lobes don't have the capability. Okay, so like what I would like very practically do. So if you have like a husband who doesn't help around the house, right? So it's like your first thing is like, I'm going to make you a grocery list. You're going to do the mental workload. This is the way things are right now, right? So it's hard to go from zero to 100. I'm going to do the mental workload.

So I'm going to make you list, go to the thing and pick up things on. Pick up things from the grocery store. That's week one. Next week you're going to do something else. You're going to say, hey, you make the list. check our pantry, check our fridge, check our freezer, check our fruit bowl. You check these four things, and then you decide what we need to get. Once you make the list, let me take a look at it.

I'll add something if I want to. Graduated responsibility. Next week, can you take care of groceries? And if the dude winds and complains, that's when I think you have to be like, you have to set a limit, right? So now we get to the part of how not to be a dormant and how not to be an asshole. where it's like, look, I'm willing to help you with this, but I need you to take responsibility. So the difference between a doormat and an asshole is recognizing your own value, recognizing your own contribution, recognizing the extent of your responsibility, and the limits of your responsibility.

For you to recognize that, okay, this is my contribution, that is your contribution. And there's something in the middle. The problem with dormant and asshole is where we're taking 100% of the responsibility, we're a dormant. And when we take 0% of the responsibility, not my problem, all your problem, we become the asshole. So to really try to find this like 51, 49 kind of thing. So I would literally ask yourself, what does 51% responsibility for this problem look like? What does 49% of this responsibility look like?

And this is also where you can have a conversation where you can talk to your partner and you can say, what do you think your responsibility is in this situation? What do you think my responsibility is in this situation? And I see this all the time with like, you know, relationships where there are two people, both of them work full time, but one of them does the majority, if not all of the household labor, the cognitive labor, the emotional labor, and the other person doesn't. So it's like, what's your responsibility? You work full time. I work full time.

And then do you do groceries? Do you clean the house? Do you take care of the kids? Do you handle it when you're mother? And they're like, I don't know how to do that. That's okay. So oftentimes we as dudes are not taught how to do that because we grow up in households where that is not something we were ever taught how to do.

So now the question becomes, how do we shift this, right? So, okay, fine. You don't know how to do these six things. Which thing do you want to start with? And this is where you all have to be. really careful. Because if you're in one of these dormant relationships, what you will find, and here's the key thing, what you will find is oftentimes they will use certain reasons, I'm not even call them excuses, I'm tired, I don't know how to. Here's the key thing.

When someone makes something like an excuse or provides a reason, that is no longer, this is what defines a dormant. When someone says, I don't know how to, a dormant will say, say, okay, I will do it myself. The right thing to do in that situation is, when someone says, I can't do this because of X, Y, Z reason, I'm tired, I don't know how to, that becomes the first obstacle that they need to solve. It's fine that you're tired. I'm fucking tired, too, right?

The moment that you say that you cross a little bit over into asshole territory, you can, you can play that card a little bit. Then you can say, what's your plan for being less tired? Like, no more playing video games until midnight. Get your ass in bed at 9 p.m. Like, if the problem is tired, what's your plan to fix it? We are now shifting the responsibility, right? And this is where it's so easy to get upset and be like, okay, like, I'm going to stay up until midnight.

You know, like, you can deal with everything. And sometimes you can kind of play that card. But I think generally speaking, like, cutting off your nose to spite your face is like not a good idea. play stupid games, win stupid prizes. So generally speaking, I'm not in favor of like tit for tat. Sometimes you have to. But I think the biggest problem with people in Dormat relationships and people who have like learned helplessness

is excuses become reasons for inaction, not problems to solve. And the moment that you make that shift, everything will change. This episode is brought to you by CarMax. Want to buy a car the easy way? Start a CarMax. Want to browse with confidence? Get pre-qualified with no impact on your credit score and shop within your budget.

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Okay, good, clear, right? So that's what you say. And this is where I'll give you all one last tip. So oftentimes when we're talking about this stuff, you know, what we'll get from our partner is like a lot of whininess. Hi. Okay, thanks for response.

Okay, thank you. So what we get from our partner is like emotional whining. And that's okay. Like this is the key thing. Don't get triggered by the emotional whining, right? Like give people a chance to get a little bit like upset

about the change in things, but hold your boundary. Oftentimes the mistake that we make is when someone gets emotionally upset, we like engage them on the emotional level. You just shut the fuck up. When someone's like, oh my God, it's so hard for me.

Oh my God, I've got to do everything. And you're like, Fuck you. I do everything. You fucking, for one week, you wake up with the kids. I'm going to play games for 12. And now, so now you've made a critical mistake in the game of social chess. Because they're being a little bitch and you're like, bitch, you're a little bitch. I'mma be a little bitch too.

And now you have given them the ammo to not take you seriously because they're like, you're being a little bitch because it's true because you are being a little bitch. So when they start to be a little bitch, you be quiet. And then you say, okay, I'm sorry you feel that way. I'm happy to help you out. Which one of these six things do you want to start with? You fucking hold your boundary. Do not respond to the emotional energy.

Because once you respond to the emotional energy, then you all are in a fight. They're justified in not wanting to listen to you, whatever the fuck. Their mind has a justification. I understand you feel that way. I know it's hard. Believe me, you're, I know it's hard to handle one of these six things. now you know what one-sixth of my difficulties are. Right?

So, like, I have to do all of it. And yes, you're right. I am better at it. And I want you to get better at it. You don't know how to? Okay, I'm willing to help you. Which one of these would you like to start with? And what kind of help do you need?

Meet people where they're at. So an asshole does not meet people where they're at. A dormat does not. meet people where they're at or meets them, yeah, you're on two ends of the spectrum. I don't know how that analogy works with a doormat. An asshole certainly doesn't meet people where you're at. What we want to be is firm, meet people where we're at, but also, so a dormant, here's what it is, an asshole doesn't meet people where they're at.

A dormant never asks anyone to move. So what we need to do is meet people where they're at and ask them to move. I'm going to meet you there, but we're not going to stay there. Hold my hand. Come with me. You all understand? That's it. That's it.

Figured it out, chat. Figured it out. Best dating advice I've ever gotten is treat the girl in the relationship like a princess and treat the man in the relationship like a baby. Works wonders. Women and men. Okay. That one was kind of short. What reaction do I have?

I mean, so look. I think 10 second advice is worth, you know, a little bit, but not very much. So I think that what I sort of like about, I kind of liked that one. And here's what I like about it. What I like about it is that, first of all, there's like a sense of, you know, giving people what they're comfortable with. So sometimes, like, you know, if a woman in a relationship wants to be treated like a princess, like, fair enough. And if a dude in a relationship wants to be treated like a baby, also fair enough. So I think this is actually not bad to like start with.

I think the problem is that in a relationship, that's not sustainable. Right. So like you can't continually treat a woman like a princess. Well, I mean, I guess you can. And you can't continually, well, you can do both of those things. So that those can lead to long-term relationships. I do not think that those relationships will be the happiest relationship possible.

So what I tend to find is that when you get treated like a princess every single day, it leads to entitlement. When you have a partner who you work towards common shared goals in life, that's great. And then when you treat them like a princess, I'm sort of thinking about a heteronorbative perspective, right, and I'm the male in this situation. Then like it's so nice. Like it's very like awesome and loving and caring and whatever. Like, I think oftentimes, like, you still want to offer that energy.

And then as a dude, like, if you, like, you don't want to be a baby all the time, that's just going to lead to, like, incompetence and a lack of independence. And also, to be babyed is a wonderful thing in a relationship. So I think that one's, like, pretty good. And it's pretty short. So it's like, you know, I think it's like not a bad way to start. Okay. Next.

Women and men cannot be friends, okay? If you are somebody who eventually wants to get married, which is most of the population, you cannot have a good friend or a best friend, especially, of the opposite sex. Because here's the thing, okay? Let's say you're a woman and your best friend is a guy. Eventually, one of you is going to catch feelings. It just happens. Let's be real. It never works because one person catches feelings and the other person does not have those same feelings. Or both people catch feelings and they actually end up dating instead of just being friends. The other reality is, is that whoever you marry becomes your best friend. How odd would it

be if as a married woman, somebody asked me who my guy best friend was. And I said another guy's name other than my husband. Like, no, my husband is my husband, but he is also my best friend and my partner for life. So yes, I have guy friends, but they were my husband's friends before they were my friends. And you would never catch me hanging out with them alone. You would never catch me, oh, let's just go grab coffee just as friends. No, I don't even text them individually. If I have to text one of my guy friends, I put my husband in a group chat with him. And that goes into my next point that when you get married, the two become one. The two become one. So your friend groups conjoined. This is just a reality. It's the same thing in dating relationships. If you're dating a

girl or if you're dating a guy and this girl has a guy best friend, no. Immediate red flag. If a guy has a girl best friend, no, like go date her. No. If they didn't unfollow you. Oh, my God. All right. So let's understand this for a second. Women and men cannot be friends. Okay. Okay. So here's one major point that I want to make about relationship advice on the internet. This is generally speaking true of like 90% of the stuff that I see. Okay.

So we're going to talk about something called object relations theory, which is like, what are you talking about, Dr. Kay? I know. I know. It's not just so simple as like, oh my God, this is right or this is wrong. So what I've noticed about people who give relationship advice on the internet is, They say, you can't do this. Men and women can never be friends. Right?

Men and women can never be friends. Your best friend can't be someone of the opposite sex. This says a lot more about you than it does about men and women. So when someone says, you can't be best friends or like, y'all out there, men and women can't be best friends. What that really means is, I do not know or I have not figured out how to have a friend who is a man and it not get romantic. That's really what it means, right? Because how do we form conclusions about the world?

We form conclusions about the world, not by reading this in terms of what works and what doesn't, but by our own personal experience. So this person, and it's so interesting, right? Because if you pay attention to the language, you will never catch me texting a guy without my husband in the group chat. You will never catch me just grabbing coffee. with a man.

So already what we can see is that there is an association in their subconscious mind, which when your subconscious mind has an association, it goes to your linguistic cortex and selects a word. And that word has a connotation which shows you how this person views the world. Right? You will never catch me. And the only time we catch, who do we catch? We catch criminals.

We catch people in the act. You'll never catch me in the act of doing something forbidden. So already there is an implicit bias here that this is not acceptable. Now, let's understand why this is. Now, this person says, eventually you will catch feelings. And this is where, like, I think this is the crux of the problem. Let's say you catch feelings. What happens then?

When you catch feelings, what does that mean? It's just fucking feelings. So I think this is the biggest thing. that determines whether people of opposite genders can be friends or not, which is the way that you handle catching feelings. So are you emotionally mature enough? Are you, does your EQ, is your EQ high enough to recognize that this is just a feeling? Are you able to sit down with your friend and talk about your feelings?

Hey, I've had some like attraction to you recently. I don't know what's going on. Can you manage feelings? If you can manage feelings, then catching feelings is not to be avoided. So you'll see what the structure of this is. You can't hang out because eventually one of y'all will catch feelings. And that means that things are over. Do you see the implicit association with catching feelings means Gigi were finished?

If catching feelings means Gigi were finished with you, then you can't avoid, then you can't have a male best friend if you're a woman or a female best friend if you're a dude. Right? Like, that's the problem. So this is where like, I know it's kind of a weird analogy, but what I've sort of noticed is that if you look at priests and monks, there are some religious sects, so there's a particular sect of Hinduism, where the priests who are supposed to be celibate, okay? And not just celibate, they engage in something called Brahmacharya. And brahmacharya does not technically mean celibate. It means non-lustfulness. So the real, the way that a monk is supposed to be is that they have grappled with their desires and conquered their desires so much

that lust, they're not controlled by lust. And when they're true brahmacharias, it doesn't matter who is in front of them because they can conquer lust. I control lust, lust doesn't control me. But there are many Hindu priests, monks, and other religions as well. If they're male, they will not be in,

the same room with a woman. They will not even look at a woman. Like I remember when I was growing up, one day this Hindu priest came to our house. And they came and sat in our living room and they like, like, I had to bring in all the food and stuff to like host them because it was part of their like religious upbringing that like they could not look at a woman. And I thought that was kind of weird and I thought it was kind of sexist, but whatever. And then later on I realized like, oh yeah, like the only reason that they can't look at women is because they actually aren't Bramacharias. They haven't conquered lust. Once you've actually conquered lust, then you don't have to avoid women at all. Like you can see women, you can see naked women, like whatever, it doesn't matter.

So there's a huge difference between the capability to manage what arises within you. And if you lack that capability, then you have to control your environment. You can't ever expose yourself to a man because heaven forbid you catch feelings or they catch feelings and then everything is over. So the moment that catching feelings means Gigi, then you can't have male friends or female friends. And I absolutely like hard disagree with this. Some of my best friends are women. And it's like not sexual at all. Like here's a cool thing too, right, which makes things really easy, which is like, if you have a female best friend, just make sure she's not your type.

Easy. Just make sure she's not your type. And if she's smart, she's going to make sure you're not her type. And even if you guys end up catching feelings for each other, it's just feelings. Here's the wild thing about catching feelings for someone. If you manage those feelings in the right way, they'll go away. The big problem with catching feelings, oh my God, we fell in love. And three years later, we fell out of love.

That shit happens all the time. And you want to lose your best friend just because some chemicals in your brain are like attracted to this person. Like, that's, you don't have to do that, right? It's like you can improve your self-control. You can learn how to manage relationships. You can learn how to have conversations. And then you can do this. So I think oftentimes what we tend to find is that people give advice like this because

they are not capable. And what I'm hearing from this person is like, if I catch feelings for a dude, that becomes really hard for me to deal with. Or, here's the other crazy thing. If the men I date catch feelings for a woman, they are. are not able to handle it. So the moment that these two statements become true in your life, you will come to this conclusion. And I think it like helps. So there's a couple of other tips. Number one is make sure that the person that you're dating, you're ideally physically attracted to,

and sexually gratified by. Right? Because if you're not thirsty, you're not going to want to drink water somewhere else, like TLDR. And even if you do, like you can manage it. Right? So it's like, I tend to find these problems tend to get way worse when one person is unhappy in a relationship. So you guys may, y'all may have noticed this, that the tendency to restrict your partner from other potential partners gets way worse depending on the unhappiness in the relationship. If I'm not doing right by you, then I'm going to try to restrict you from encountering other people because I'm letting you down and those people may not. so I'm going to start to be very restrictive.

Generally speaking, when people are happy and content, if I go to my favorite burger shop and I have a burger and fries and a soda, and then I go to an all-you-can-eat buffet, I'm not going to eat very much. So the more that you are able to satisfy your partner, the more your partner is satisfied with you, the less threatening other human beings become. And I think it's like having a female best friend as a dude is fucking awesome, because here's the crazy thing.

If I just have male best friends and my wife is doing something I don't understand, hey, bros, I don't understand. My wife is like, we're not fucking anymore. And I go to my best friend bros and they're like, I don't know, man. But if I have a female best friend and I'm like, hey, my wife and I aren't fucking anymore, which may seem really scary, right? Because then there's this idea that, oh my God, my female best friend may try to seduce me in this moment. And if she does fuck her, she's not your best friend.

She doesn't really care about you. She doesn't want your happiness. She wants her own happiness, which by all means, cut her off, whatever. Yet here's the cool thing. You can get insight from women about your wife. And it's like, oh, yeah, like, because she's a woman. She's sort of, she has hormonal cycles. She has maybe she likes particular things that your wife likes.

She knows what works in her relationships. She knows what makes the men that she dates. Like, the way they treat her, she knows kind of what works for her. so it doesn't translate one to one, but like it's such a great source of information and completely reversed too, right? So if you're dating a dude and you don't know what the fuck is going on with him,

it can help to have a friend or even best friend who is a dude. Now there are a couple of things that we got to talk about here, which I think is very reasonable, which is there are certain boundaries around potential romantic partners that are platonic. Right?

So I think this is where like, I like her phrasing of, you won't catch me going to coffee. So a couple of rules of thumb that I use. First of all, if I'm ever hanging out with a female friend, I will, like, let my wife know, right? Especially if it's, like, in the evening or something like that. I will, like, be very clear and open and transparent

about the nature of our interactions. Generally speaking, I mean, this, you know, your mileage may vary, but, like, I don't care if my wife looks through my phone. I don't think she cares if I look through her phone. Like, we just don't care about that. And there's going to be nothing in there that's shady. So if you have to hide something from your partner, that's the red flag, not the existence of the person or hanging out with them. There's a huge difference there.

Right. So being pretty transparent with people. And also, like, there are a couple things that I think are just dumb. And I'm like risk averse. So if I had someone that I could be sexually attracted to, I'm not going to get, like, hammered and spend time with them alone. And this isn't just like friends. there's also like work colleagues, right? So you don't want to like shit where you eat and you just got to be careful about that kind of stuff.

So if I start drinking in a situation like this, could I wind up in a situation where I'm in trouble? And that's also where like, I mean, even with things like mentor-mantee relationships, generally speaking when I like a meeting with a mentee as a dude who is older and more powerful, if they're a woman, like I'll be much more careful about where I meet them, when I meet them, what we're doing when we're meeting. right, you don't want to, in the Venn diagram, here's the key thing, in the Venn diagram of friendship and dating, if there is a potentially sexual partner, you don't want to be in the overlapping part, right? It's like, if I'm going to Vegas with my boys and we get hammered and we end up crashing in the same bed, like that's okay, but I would not do that with a female friend of mine if I could at all, you know, if there were any way to avoid it. So look at the Venn diagram of a relationship.

Look at the Venn diagram of BFF. And if you have a BFF, that's totally fine. Just stay in the portion of the friendship Venn diagram where that doesn't overlap with relationships. That's when things get really shady and be transparent. That's the two things. And then y'all can also, the third thing is like, if you get catch feelings, just like talk it out.

Right? Feelings don't last forever. If they did, marriage would be easy. But it's not because they didn't. don't. Okay, forming real life bonds, romantic or platonic, feels too difficult now. I keep picking the empty calories of online socialization, how to do the tough work. What a great question. I love the analogy of, see, a lot of our social activity is now empty calories. So what's going on in the world and what technology is doing, why do we all love technology? We love technology

because of the effect it has on us, right? That's the fundamental reason why human beings are attracted to anything. Why do we like a particular flour? Because of the effect it has on us. The way it's pleasing to my eye, I appreciate the scent of it. Why do we like a particular food? Because of the effect it has on me. I like the effect on my taste buds.

Why do we like salads or healthy foods? Because the effect on my body, I feel light, I feel energized. I don't feel sluggish after I eat it. So as human beings, we are attracted to things that have positive effects on us. So then what happens is people figure out how to hyperactivate one dimension of that positive effect. When someone developed crystal meth, they realized, oh my God, this causes between 1,000 and 10,000 times a normal release of dopamine. So we take one aspect of it and we shoot it through the roof. and this is how we get addicted to stuff.

So one of the biggest problems right now is we're not forming relationships, either romantic or platonic, and the reason for that is because we get these empty calories from things like social media. So anytime we engage in social media, there are parts of our brain that are primitive, and we feel connected to people on the internet. We form these parasocial relationships.

They're not real social relationships, but they turn on the same parts of your brain that get turned on when you form a social relationship. So I'll give you all a couple of examples of this, right? So why do we form parasocial relationships? Because the people that we talk to, emotionally, we feel the same thing. So when I, like, crack a joke on stream and I laugh and you laugh, the part of our brain that if you hang out with people, IRL and someone cracks a joke and both y'all laugh,

we form a bond. Our brain is like, this is me. You is me. You is me. Me is you. We're at the same. So, emotional bond, shared emotional experiences form bonds between people. And you can do that over the internet.

The problem is that evolutionarily, when we formed bonds with people, there were other things that came with that. Proximity is number one. The ability to touch and hug and hold hands and fist bump. right common cause where generally speaking of i'm laughing with someone there's usually some reason i'm hanging out with them we're either classmates together we're work colleagues maybe it's my boss so there are other aspects of our life that are connected there's emotional connection but then there are other very practical things that overlap in our lives that's what forms a real

friendship the problem with the internet is that it activates just one part of our emotional circuitry, but it hyperactivates it. And here's the really big problem. When you satisfy one part of your brain and you hyper-satisfy it, it decreases the drive to fulfill the need. Right? When I eat 2,000 empty calories, my desire for nutrition goes down. And this has to do with the way that homeostatic mechanisms work and the way that reinforces work. So when there's a deficiency, it increases my motivational drive. When my motivational drive increases, I act in a different way.

When I act in a different way, I fix the deficiency. So the big problem with empty calories from social media is it destroys our drive to actually engage in healthy, not just sexual, healthy human interaction.

And we see that with pornography too, right? So like pornography will mess up my drive to engage in healthy sexual interaction. I may still feel like super horny. I may want to do all kinds of weird things with my partner, like whatever. But it like tampers with things. So it's kind of like saying like,

see, this is our brain is stupid. If I want a car, my brain doesn't understand that like, if you give me 10 sets of tires, that's not a car. The brain is dumb that way. It's got all these mechanisms where things were connected. So all it knows how to measure is like the number of tires. And if I've got 10 tires, that means, or not 10, let's say 12 tires, that means I have three cars.

The brain doesn't understand that 12 tires doesn't mean three cars because, yes, three cars will have 12 tires, but 12 tires doesn't mean that I have three cars. And then what happens is since our brain doesn't know the difference, someone comes along and starts selling us tires. And we're like, oh yeah, 12 tires means three cars. Our brain doesn't understand that 12 tires doesn't necessarily mean three cars. Three cars will always have 12 tires. but 12 tires doesn't mean you have three cars.

So this fake social interaction, I don't know if that analogy was dumb. I'm going to ask you all. Does that make sense? Right? So there are two things. Okay. Yeah.

For me, no. I know. It's dumb. Okay. Kind of an unfactuals and tire max. Yeah, I can tell when I lose it. So key thing here is that, you know, our brain, the moment that we start satisfying ourselves with empty calms,

is the moment that our motivational drive to actually engage in relationships goes down. So the right solution is to spend less time on the internet, right? Go and touch grass. We already know this. We say this all the time. Now the question is, why is this hard? The reason it's hard, so I want you all to understand this. Why is it hard to stop eating empty calories?

Because the moment that you stop eating empty calories, you're faced with hunger. Right? you don't feel satisfied. I don't know if y'all are used to eating burgers and fries and sodas and stuff. And then you start to eat salads, your dissatisfaction will increase. So the reason this is hard is because the way forward runs against what we are designed for. The brain and the body are not designed to lean into dissatisfaction. They're designed to lean away from dissatisfaction.

When I feel thirsty, I don't stop drinking. I drink more water if I feel thirsty. We're trying to move towards equilibrium. The reason we get hooked on social media is because getting unhooked means moving towards disequilibrium, moving towards disharmony. We start to engage in something like withdrawal. And so if you're someone who is lonely, if you're someone who wastes time on social media, spends too much time on Tinder,

looking for relationships and not finding them. The first thing that you need to understand is that the path to satisfaction goes through dissatisfaction. Yet there's going to be a period of time where you will suffer. How long will you suffer until you stop suffering? So it's not going to be a day,

it's not going to be a week, it's not going to be a year, maybe two years, and maybe three years. It will continue until you figure it out. And that's what makes it so hard because there's no guarantee, right? There's no like, this is going to suck for me for six months.

There are many people who have been struggling to form relationships, putting themselves in very suffering situations for years and it still hasn't worked out. And that's where I think the best answer is like just because it hasn't worked out, you got to try. You got to keep trying. You got to learn more. You got to get better at it. And it's not easy.

Things are harder now. That's the other thing. It's like, you know, our brains were designed in a situation where eventually social relationships would form. We had a bunch of third spaces. So the amount of putting yourself out there that you had to do was low because there's a lot out there. Now, the amount of putting yourself out there that you have to do has become astronomically higher. And this is not the way that we're wired. So it requires even more fortitude, perseverance, creativity, innovation, more trial and error to find your place.

The one bright spot is that you are not alone in this, right? The percentage, I think, like 70% of people in the America feel lonely or something like that now. So the good news, the one thing you've got going for you is that this is a shared problem. There are a lot of other people who are fighting uphill battles. And so I think, like, it takes a while. So be patient, be persistent. And, like, something is shifting where I've noticed that there's, like, all kinds of good stuff happening. You just have to kind of stick with it, which is not easy or satisfying.

But, like, that's the truth. Hey, y'all, if you're interested in applying some of the principles that we share to actually create change in your life, check out Dr. K's guide to mental health. And so we start by understanding what literally is meditation. how does experience shape us as human beings? How do we strengthen the mind itself as an organ? And so by understanding our mind, we understand a very, very simple tool, a crucial tool that we have to learn how to use

if we want to build the life that we want to. So check out the link in the bio and start your journey today. If they didn't unfollow you or remove you as a follower, they liked you a little bit, just a little. if they unfollowed you but left you as a follower they kind of liked you you you know they liked you if they unfollowed you and removed you as a follower they really really liked you if they blocked you they're in love ladies if they didn't unfollow you or remove you as a follower they liked you a little bit just a little

Like a little bit. If they unfollowed you but left you as a follower, they kind of liked you, you know? They liked you. If they unfollowed you and removed you as a follower, they really, really liked you. If they blocked you, they're in love. Okay, so let me make sure I understand this. So I'm going to show you all a chart because I don't understand this following, unfollowing business. Okay. Does this look right? So if they didn't unfollow you and they didn't remove you as a follower, they like you a little bit. If they did unfollow you, but they didn't remove you, they kind of liked you. If they unfollow you and removed you as a follower, they liked you a lot. And if they block you, they love you. I get that right, chat? So this is what I would say. So I think this is a really good example of projection. Right? So this is where like when you hear,

advice like this on the internet of if this happened this means this and if this happened this means this and if this happened this means this anytime you see a diviner a soothsayer a fortune teller who's giving you oh these signals mean this that's not what the signals mean that shows you how their mind works this is the number one problem with the most of the dating advice on the internet is its projection. This is not what's true for the rest of the world. This is how my mind works. And all of us as human beings believe that if it works this way in here, it works that way

out there. So this guy, if he doesn't mess with unfollowing people, it means he liked him a little bit. If he unfollow someone but leaves them as a follower, it means that he kind of likes you. This does not give you information about people. This just gives you information about this dude. and if he blocks you, that means he was in love. And this is just how it works.

The amount of projection on dating advice on the internet is astronomical. It's like weird, right? There's all these weird systems that people will come up with that are talking about the truth of the situation. It's not truth. It's just how these people work. Okay. Ladies, the energy that you need to be giving off on your dates

in the early stages of dating, to keep a guy hooked is this. Welcome to the Baddy Academy. It's, I like you right now, but there's a bunch of other guys that are out here that want to take me out, and if you mess up, you're gone. You're not going to say that,

but it's with this sort of like, confident, sexy attitude, like a little sassy, like, guys like a little crazy, a little sassy, just that little sassy playfulness and that confidence, okay, prize mentality, right? If you hold that space and honestly, fake it until you fucking make it. If you don't have that yet, which is fine, it takes time to like develop that sort of internal

thought process about yourself. Pretend you're somebody else and act as if you are. Because it will still work. It will still work. But you have to force yourself to think this way. If you're missed like, oh, easy going, go with the flow. Yeah, let's go for a walk day. Let's go for a Coffee date. Like, no, let's hang out today, tomorrow the next day. No, you're done. You're done. You're on the roster.

He's going to bang town you and dump you. It's that like continuation of like, we'll see. We'll see. Like, we'll see how you end up behaving. We'll see how this goes. We'll see. Because then a guy is going to, a guy who's serious about you, is going to want to prove it. He's going to want to win.

Okay. Men like to pursue. They like to win, like to achieve, right? So you want to keep that guy like, like, you know, like a cat. and you kind of dangle the little toy in front of them and they try to get it. That's what it's like. You don't want him to like get it. You want to keep teasing them, teasing them, teasing them.

And through that process, you're allowing time to go by. And through that time, that is when you start to develop a natural, genuine connection with somebody. If you guys hang out seven times in two weeks and you bang and you bang and you bang, that's an infatuation and he's going to get over you real quick. You want to create that space and that. like, I want to get to know her more. I want to see her more. And through that little teasing game,

that is how you create that, you know, that pursuit out of a man. And if there is a really genuine connection, within a month, you guys are both going to feel it. And then this game can subside a little bit. But like, you need to hold this game and this space for at least a month to really have a guy coming correct and making sure that you're protecting yourself for men who just want casual, quick bank town, and we'll leave you. When a woman is with you, her profiles.

Ladies. All right. So, I think this is a great strategy if you want to attract dudes who are part of the Daddy Academy. Right. So we've said this before, but I think this is like, this is what I see with dating advice on the internet. It's all about projection. This is what this guy is attracted to. So when women don't play games with him, he gets bored.

When he feels like he's got easy access to them, he gets bored. He doesn't stick around. He's banged town. Right? That's what I read into this. Maybe that's my projection. Right? Maybe when I look at this, I'm like, oh my God, this guy's an asshole.

So we're going to take a look at a couple of studies in a second. But I think like this is like really common advice where people will say like, hey, this is the way that you should act. to attract men. So here's the first biggest problem with advice like this. Not all men are the same. So if we look at the data, let's see what scientific studies show us playing hard to get,

understanding an elusive phenomenon. Okay? Okay. So let me just look at this. So here's the key thing. So this is a study that shows that playing hard to get does appear to increase attraction. So like this is cool, right?

So this study sort of shows that playing hard to get can be a good strategy. So this has to do with like in the 70s, we came up with this idea of like scarcity is valuable. So something is not available to you, you will value it more. So if you play hard to get, people will like, you know, why are certain things like, I don't know, like fendi bags or whatever the fuck people, or Hermes bags or whatever. Like, why are they so valuable? Because they're not easy to get. You can't like walk into an Hermes store, as I understand and buy something. They're like, oh yeah, sorry, it's not available. Sorry, fuck you. You can't buy it.

So they'll create this artificial sense of scarcity and sometimes that attracts people. So there's some psychological evidence to support what this guy is saying. Next thing is severity of initiation on liking for a group. This is a study about hazing. The more you haze people, so this is where there's like this kind of sunk cost fallacy, where the harder you make someone work for something, that ascribes the amount of value that they assign to it. So things that are easy to get are worth less than things that are hard to get.

Okay? So these are two psychological points which support what the guys. guy is saying that if you play hard to get, like you're increasing the scarcity, you're increasing the effort, and you will psychologically trick them into wanting you. Here's the big problem with this kind of stuff. If you look at these kinds of studies, they're from places like 1959, 1973. Right? So early on, about 60, 70 years ago, we didn't understand anything about human psychology. So we did these studies that gave us this impression that there are these like general truths, which are generally true. But then what happened is we got sophisticated.

We started asking, does scarcity, how does scarcity apply to human beings in real romantic relationships? Not a general principle about human psychology, but the moment that we apply to two human beings, what starts to happen? So emotional responses to interpersonal rejection. This is a paper that was published in 2022. This is a paper that shows, shockingly, if you play hard to get, if you don't respond to someone's advances, if you emotionally reject them in some way. So playing hard to get can be perceived as an emotional rejection. You make yourself less available to them, things like that, that this will actually result in them not liking you. Right?

So like this is true too. Turns out that like playing hard to get, sometimes just make. makes people annoyed with you, and they're like, I would rather deal with someone who is more reciprocal, who is kinder to me, who responds to my affections. So I'm going to ask y'all, ladies and men out there, how do you all like it? When you message someone 15 times on a dating app and they respond twice, are you like, oh, my God, I'm so into this person. Right? Or if you get the impression that they're playing games with you, how do you feel about it? Okay. Broken Hearts, The Nature of Risks and Romantic Rejection.

So this is another, this is a book that sort of talks about some of these principles as well. And here's the key thing. So here's the other big thing about dating advice on the internet. A lot of the dating advice works really well for a particular kind of attachment style. So remember, there are three. major attachment styles. 95% of the people on the planet have three attachment styles. Secure attachment, anxious attachment, avoidant attachment. And if you play hard to get and you are dating someone who is anxiously attached, they will absolutely be more likely to chase

you. If you play hard to get with someone who is avoidantly attached, that they may still pursue as long as there isn't emotional connection. They may be okay with that. They're like, okay, like this is not a serious thing. This is just playing around. But the moment the connection deepens, they're going to leave. If you are trying to date someone with secure attachment, chances are they're not going to fall for this shit. They're going to recognize your playing games. They're going to recognize your emotionally immature, and they're going to piece out. 50% of people are securely attached, 20% of people are avoidantly attached, 25% of people are anxiously attached.

So I see this a lot where people will say, you should do this to attract men or to attract women. And I think that, like, there's a reason they're saying, right? Like, they're not dumb, right? There's some reason they believe this. It may not be correct, but there is a logical reason why this human being who has a functional brain came to this conclusion. Projection is number one.

And second thing is a lot of this stupid relationship advice works. if you are dating insecure, insecurely attached individuals, either avoidant or anxious. Right? So for like avoidantly attached, that's usually men, by the way. Which is also why sometimes this stuff works. Because like if you're a woman and you play hard to get and there's no emotional connection, dudes will be okay with that. Guys like to win. Yeah, sure.

I mean, we all like to win. But like some of us are also, I would say the more secure you are as a man, the less important. important winning becomes to you. So winning becomes really important if I don't believe in myself, because then I need some external form to rank me against other people. I don't have an intrinsic sense of worth, which means that I need to beat you to feel better about myself. So I think this is great if you want to attract anxiously attached individuals, if you want to attract people who lack self-worth, or you want to attract people who enjoy playing games, right? This doesn't mean that they have to be pathologized.

Oh, my God, this person, I disagree with this person. That means that there must be something pathologically wrong with them. Of course not. Right? That's part of the differential diagnosis. This is what we don't see with dating advice on the internet. No one is like, here are the three reasons why this could be the case, and not all the situations are the same.

This is the benefit of medical training. Sometimes people like to play games. Sometimes people love a game of cat and mouse. Like one of my really good friends in college just loved fucking playing games. And like what he wanted more than anything else and a partner is someone who plays games. He's like when people are just transparent

about their feelings, that's fucking boring. I love the chase, the thrill of the hunt. And that's totally fine temperamentally. If you enjoy that kind of thing, I don't really enjoy it. Right? So like human beings are different. Like, in some cases, I prefer romantic partners or dating or things like that to be like safe, secure, reciprocal, kind.

Like, the rest of the world is chaotic enough. It's hard to figure out how to get promoted, how to be successful, how to become healthy, whatever the fuck. And I'm okay with just having, like, the romantic stuff being simple. So I think this is where, you know, a lot of this advice, like, we got to be careful. It's not, women shouldn't do this. You should do this if you are trying to attract a particular kind of guy. But if you're looking for a dude who is emotionally available, emotionally supportive, confident in themselves, I do not think that this strategy, based on the data, will select for that kind of person. I think women who follow this kind of advice, if you love playing games and you find someone else and you kind of like deal with that energy a little bit and you enjoy it, like, that's great.

worked for you. But I think generally speaking, if what, like you should, I don't know how to say this, you should fish for what you're looking for. So this kind of strategy that you employ in dating will select for a certain kind of person. So another really good example of this is like back in the pickup artist days, right, there was this concept of nagging, which is when you insult your dude and you insult a woman to make her more attracted to you. That only works with girls with low self-esteem. So what's happening is like it's a really effective mating strategy because you're selecting for women who will deal with your bullshit. You're selecting for women who don't believe that they have self, they don't have self-worth. So they like don't believe that they can find

someone better than you. That's why negging works. It does work, by the way. It only works on a certain kind of person. So if you're trying to find like, you know, find the person who has low self-worth, you can use negging, make them feel bad, trigger their trauma. Then you can love bomb them. You can be really nice to them and really mean to them in alternate situations. They're not going to have the self-worth to be able to walk away and they'll feel attracted to you. They'll feel attached to you. They'll want to get the good version of you instead of the mean version of you. And so then they'll be sexually compliant.

There's absolutely a sociopathic psychological mechanism at play that leads to success in that situation. But that doesn't mean it's a healthy relationship. And over time, I don't even think that unless you're a real sociopath, I don't think you're going to be happy with that relationship. Generally speaking, there's studies that show that long-term satisfaction in relationships requires something else. Make sense? Then we'll do questions. There's a couple more.

Or actually, let me just check real quick. We'll talk about breaking up with a partner in a second. Actually, let me just ask y'all, what do you all want to do? Do you want to, like, look at more of these or do you all want to... Okay, well, I'm... Y'all tell me what you all prefer. Finish them. Okay, we're going to do videos.

We'll do questions at the end. Okay. I know everybody, so this is, okay, it's not about one or the other. All right, chat. I know we're at our two hour limit for the day. We'll run for another 30 minutes to an hour, okay? Let's stick with it.

When a woman is with you, her profiles should show that she's with you. If I went on her profile right now, does it look like there's a for sale sign up or does it look like she's not accepting any buyer? And for a lot of men, you guys might sit here and say, you know what, that's not that big of a deal. Who cares?

If there's one thing I know for a fact is that women love to showcase their life and the things they're doing on a day-to-day basis of social media in most cases. So you're telling me she could post that caramel macchiato, but she can't post you? Because let's all be honest for a second. As a man in a relationship, it is good to be reassured that you are still the man. This is such a small act that your woman is able to do to reassure that to you. And this should never be forced. It should just be something that you see that she does without you. asking her. Because another thing, social media, even Instagram, Facebook, these are dating apps. These are

subtle dating apps on a respect level for you and her relationship. It needs to be known that you're in her life. It needs to be known that she is not looking for any buyers. If you're seeing those signs that her profiles look like she's for sale, right? She doesn't make a lot of mentions of you. You need to pay attention to this. Okay. I think this is pretty good. I think there's a little bit of nuance there, but I like this one a lot. So here's my read on this. So I think a lot of people, so question number one, I haven't updated my Facebook page in 11 years. Okay. So question number one is, does this person use social media? What is their engagement with social media? So if the engagement is high, then we move on to question number two. So I think that there are a lot of people who use

social media to just represent their lives. I'm taking pictures of caramel, whatever, coffee drinks. I'm taking pictures of like the food that I'm eating. I'm taking pictures of places I've gone. I'm uploading selfies with like people, whatever. So if someone is just cataloging their life in a general way and you are dating them and this I think is changing now, right? because you can be dating a lot of people. So if you're like in a serious relationship with someone or y'all are exclusive or y'all are dating regularly and there are no pictures of you,

this is when things get interesting. So if this person is just authentically representing their life on social media and you are a big enough part of their life where you should wind up there, does that kind of make sense? it's like, did we hang out all weekend? Did I take you to a nice restaurant where there is food? Did we take a selfie and you chose not to update it? So I think this, I mean, upload it.

So this is where, like, I think that there's a, there's a palpable omission. If you were omitted from her social media through intentionality, like, if you've been on three dates with someone and they don't want to upload a picture of you, like, that's okay. I think that's totally fine. But if you are actually like dating someone seriously and there is a conspicuous absence of your presence on social media, I do think that is a concern. Because if this person is just representing their life authentically and you are a part of their life but you're not there, then there's an intentional omission. So that I think is concerning. It doesn't mean you have to like break up with them. Right.

So I think that this is also where things get a little bit more complicated. where is this person interested in like attracting other people and things like that, that could be it too. But there may be other reasons for that. Right. So then the other interesting thing is like, you know, historically, have they, a couple of other things to look for, have they posted pictures with dudes? Do they post pictures with friends? Do they, have they, did they post pictures with their ex-boyfriends? So I think that there's like, there's something here that's absolutely worth paying attention to.

Right? And what I like about this is he says, like, you need to pay attention to this. Pay attention to this. Don't ignore this. That I think is great. I'm not hearing that there is, I mean, he sort of implies that this is a problem. This is a red flag. But I think the caption at the top is pay attention, which I think is awesome in a relationship. You know, and I think the one thing that we have to be a little bit careful about is this can be reversed as well. Where if you feel insecure in a relationship, the flip side of this is you can be more. more demanding of your partner to post pictures of you. I've seen so many people who are insecure about their relationship with someone. They're like, why aren't you posting pictures? Post more pictures. Because from the dude's perspective, sometimes posting a picture with a girl is your way of claiming your territory. Right? In the way that he's kind of saying, okay, like if a woman doesn't post a picture of you or a dude

doesn't post a picture of a girl, like whatever, you're sort of showing the world that you're open for business. and you're not taken. On the flip side, if I'm insecure, I may want to show the world that you're extra taken. So post pictures of me. Oftentimes this is like when people pressure each other into like relationships going public and you make it official on social media and all this kind of crap. There's all sorts of stuff that goes with that. So there's a flip side of this where like sometimes insecurity can push people to misinterpret this. So I think it's a good idea to pay attention, be thoughtful, maybe have a conversation, right?

And the way that I would open this conversation is, hey, I noticed that we've been dating for a couple of months. I was just looking at your socials, and I realized, like, there's not a single picture of us. What's up with that? And I know this is really scary, but then you've got to ask, how do you view this relationship?

By the way, are you, like, dating other people? Like, what's going on? Because sometimes, I know it's wild. Sometimes people are, like, dating other people, and they won't tell you. So if you sort of see an absence of yourself on their social media presence, I think it's completely reasonable to inquire about it, to notice it, to have a conversation about it. And if the person gets super defensive and they're like, or if they say like, yeah,

I just don't post pictures of dudes on social media. Can you help me understand why? Right? And just listen to what they say. You know, does it seem like a good explanation? Are you satisfied with it? Check your own insecurity. Right? And then my favorite is like, if you stop posting pictures, like how do you feel about me posting pictures? How would you feel if I didn't post pictures? Because oftentimes, like, one of the, this is more of a tit for tat kind of thing, but oftentimes people will do things to you in relationships that they take for granted that you don't do it to them. And if you, one way that we can sort of brute force empathy is to do to someone else what they do to us. Usually that doesn't work.

very well because we don't actually create empathy, we create anger and resentment. And the reason we create anger and resentment is because they do understand what they're doing to us. And then they feel guilty. And then the defense against their own guilt for putting us through this is they get pissed at us instead. Because it's easier to be pissed at you for hurting me than it is for me to recognize and acknowledge my own guilt because I'm hurting in that moment. Right. And then recognize when you get hurt, the instinctive reaction. isn't to think I did something wrong.

It's to think you did something wrong. So that's why y'all got to be very careful with that tit for tat. Sometimes asking people, hey, how would it feel to you if I didn't post pictures of you? How would you feel about that? Right? Another really good one that I see a lot nowadays is like, holy shit, the people that you follow, man, like scrolling through, you know, thirst traps and things like that. What a mess, dude.

This is like, I don't know what the fuck is going on there. does not sound healthy to me. It's become so normalized, but what a mess. I think this guy's like, his advice is not bad. Paying attention is good. Okay. Dan cannot fall in love with you unless he's providing for you. He can be in lust with you. He can be comfortable with you. He can be used to you. He can build with you. He cannot feel deep, conscious, deep, deep, deep, deep love for you if he is not providing for you. It is key. It is key.

He can run his mouth and say all kinds of things about love. It's not something he can feel unless he's providing for you. Okay. I don't even know where to start with that one. Like, I don't understand. I really just don't understand that. So, like, this is the kind of thing where, like, I can't react to that without a conversation. There are just so many assumptions there.

I don't understand how this person thinks this. Like, I literally do not understand. How do they know what a man feels? What is their... So here's like, I guess here's my reaction. What is your system of measurement? Lust, saying things, whatever. Like, how do you know whether they love you or not unless they're providing?

Like, I just, I literally do not understand how human, beings come up with these kinds of conclusions. I'm so confused because what is your like thermometer of a man's internal emotional commitment and connection to you? And I'm not saying this person is wrong, right? Because like either I'm missing something that they may have access to an instrument that I like do not know exists. So this is also where we kind of go back to object relations where a man provides for you, they cannot love you unless they provide for you. Like, how did you come to that conclusion? So this is where, like, I suspect what happened is this person was in certain relationships

where the man said they loved them, were thirsty for them, horny for them, and they didn't provide for them, and then things didn't work out well. And the one thing they never did was provide. for them. And so then this person then forms an association that if you don't provide, it's not true love. But like a man cannot love you? Like I don't think that's correct. I think you can feel whatever love is, whether it's neurobiological, physiological, psychological, psychological, spiritual without paying someone's bills. I think that's possible for men, like scientifically. And so that's why like I just, I get more confused.

than anything else. I'm not saying the person is wrong, right? Because maybe there's like something they know that like, I'm really missing. But chances are people, the reason this shit propagates is because when this person, I don't know, breaks up with you and they never provided for you, maybe what's going on is your ego is looking for a reason to say the relationship failed. And maybe the reason that you say, and this is the other thing about dating advice. I think a huge part is I don't really know this, but I think a huge thing, reason that there's so much bad dating advice out there is because people who have bad experiences in relationships develop egotistical rationalizations for the other person's behavior.

Have you all noticed one very common thread with all of these dating advice pieces, which is they're not talking about themselves. Here's what I learned. Here's how I act. Here's what works for me. Here's what doesn't work for me. everyone is making generalizations about people outside of them. This is how you get men to do.

This is how people will treat you right and treat you wrong and they do all this. And why does that work? Because that's how we think. When something goes wrong in my life, I don't look in the mirror. I look at the person who hurt me. Unless we have very low self-worth. We have hyperactivation of the default mode network. And in that case, we can get the flip of it,

which is that even when people out there are misbehaving, I will blame myself. So it does happen, right? It happens both ways. And part of this could just be the shortcoming of short form content, which is like, how much nuance can you add? I mean, here we are. We've reacted to maybe 10 minutes worth of stuff,

and I've been talking for two hours. Right? So there's just no room for nuance or differential diagnosis. And, but even if there isn't room for it, that doesn't mean that it's like, right, you know? Like, I think it's just kind of, weird. Some of this stuff, I just don't understand how people come up with this. Like, I really want to have a conversation with this person and just ask them. Like, how did you come up

with this? I'm so curious. Anyway, one more and we're done. Look, any girls listening, if a guy says to you ever in any way at any time that they need space and they need time to think about how they feel, dump his ass immediately. That is the least masculine sentence of I've ever heard. Ridiculous. What is that? A masculine man would never say that sentence. Look.

Okay. I need space or time to think. That is not masculine, so dump them. So this is kind of weird. But I would say, like, that's not necessarily bad, presuming that you want this version of masculinity. Masculinity. Right?

So if you're looking for a dude who never stops to think, if you're looking for a dude who doesn't always, like, and I think that human beings, by definition, don't always know what they feel. If you're, like, looking for a guy who is masculine in this way, I don't even know what that means. I guess it means emotionally oblivious, acting without understanding their emotions.

Like, if you're looking for, like, a low, emotional quotient dude who is just reflexive, not contemplative, and just all, like, never question. the way that he feels or even understands the way that he feels or tries to understand the way that he feels. If that's the kind of dude that you're looking for, then go for it.

I think that's not bad. I think the problem is if you select for that kind of dude and then he has an impulse to break up with you, he gets attracted to another woman. Is he going to pause and reflect and explore? No. He's just going to do it. So it's kind of like, you know, if you want to harness your wagon, to a tornado, like, go for it.

And then if it goes this way, it's going to go this way, it goes this way, it's going to go this way. If there's no amount of intentionality, reflection, and if you want to say those things are not masculine, I think that's actually fair enough. I don't think those are masculine. I think those are human.

I don't think intentionality and reflection are masculine or feminine traits. I think they are positive human traits. Right? And we know now through this thing called, I know, confusing science, that there's something, there's a capacity called emotional quotient. There's a capacity called emotional intelligence. And emotional intelligence involves things like awareness of your internal emotional state, the ability to regulate your internal emotional state, the ability to communicate your internal state, the ability to communicate your internal state, the ability to, to understand other people's internal states.

And here's the really cool thing. If you look at the top 0.1% of earners, if you look at the top 10% of earners, compared to the top 0.1% of earners, the difference is not IQ. The difference is EQ. So IQ correlates with income. This is an extrapolation, by the way.

There's not one study that showed this. This is if you look at studies on things like Mensa and income, if you look at studies like EQ and IQ across various income brackets, here's what you find. IQ is correlated with income to a certain degree from moving from like the 50th percentile to the 90th percentile. If you are one standard deviation below the norm in terms of IQ, earning in the top 10 percent of human beings is incredibly difficult and incredibly rare. But moving from 10% to 1%, and 10% to 0.1% is EQ. Now, I haven't seen any great studies that look at EQ from like 50th percentile to 75th percentile. It doesn't mean that they don't exist.

It's just I haven't looked at those. I kind of went down to rabbit hole of like IQ and income. So I would also say, like, if you want a masculine man, that's fine. But if you want a man who earns and is one of the top men in terms of earning one out of a thousand, then you don't want a man like this. You want a man who is emotionally aware because it turns out that at the highest levels of income and performance,

collaborating with other human beings becomes incredibly important. You can be the smartest guy in the room, but if you're a dick and no one cares about your ideas, then that intelligence isn't worth anything. Right? And there's some famous exceptions to that.

But there are other reasons for that, which we can get into one day if you all really want to. So I think it's like this is where you want a masculine man. Like what does that mean? I don't know. Like I'm also curious. Like how do you define masculinity? Where do you get this stuff?

Right? Someone who wants space and wants to take a break and wants to understand they don't know how they feel. Like I think like, I mean like sure, you can say dump that person, fine. But then you're going to be selecting for a certain kind of person, right? Who's like not internally reflective. And maybe I'm making an assumption here that I don't know. Maybe there's some assumption here that this.

internal reflection is happening for the masculine man in a place that they're not communicating to their partner, which is like a possibility, right? Or some others. I'm sure, I mean, I have to be making assumptions too. I just don't understand this stuff. So I think the reason that a lot of this content gets made is not because it's right, but because it resonates. And like, I'm so curious, I don't know who this person is. And the reason we didn't share, maybe we should, I don't know. We just, since some of this stuff is like, I'm responding negatively to them, we didn't want these people to get brigaded. But right, this guy is offering advice for women. I'm really curious what his audience breakdown is.

Right? Like, it's interesting. It's like, do you want to be taking, if you're a woman, do you want to be taking relationship advice from this guy? If you want to, fair enough. Yeah, so I think this is like someone saying, defining these things objectively as a problem. That's the problem, right?

So, like, we toss around these terms, but we don't ever, like, agree. on what they mean. So when I say like, you know, like I think this is a great example is the word love. So this person was saying like, oh, like they can't love you unless they provide for you. Like love means something to them that may mean something different to me or you. So I think it's like that's why it's kind of confusing about this sort of stuff. And now like I don't know. I think it's just a what I would say is I think it's a dumb way to go through life.

Like literally. Like I don't mean that to be rude. What I mean is like the world is a complicated place. with non-black and white kind of things. Human beings are complex. And generally speaking, I think the better you understand something, the more successful you will be at life. To use the power of intellect,

to actually analyze the nature of human beings and the world, to understand what the scientific equations are is how you get to success. We didn't like send people into space because we felt very strongly about something, right? We conducted scientific experiments that brought us closer so that our mental understanding was more congruent with reality. That's the cool thing about science.

Feelings or opinions on masculinity did not determine this. And I know there's a lot of women out there. I've seen all this kind of stuff about if your dude doesn't have an iPhone fucking dump him, which is like fair enough if that's not what you're looking for, but I'm happy with an Android. My wife hates it. And that's how it is. So I think that like if you guys want to get better at relationships,

One of the most important skills that we have today is understanding how to interpret relationship advice and to think critically about the relationship advice that people give, myself included and at the top of the list. You should think critically about everything that I've said today. Just because I cited a couple of papers doesn't mean that I'm right. There could be thousands of papers that I chose not to cite or didn't find or didn't read.

See, one of the biggest problems that I see is when people ask for help, they will oftentimes ask for an answer that gives them an outcome and a feeling. People will say things like, how do I break up with my partner and not regret it? How do I break up with my partner and not feel guilty? How do I set boundaries? How do I tell my friend that I don't appreciate what they did without ruining the friendship? So the reason we feel so paralyzed in life is because we want everything. See, if you're looking for everything,

it's really hard to act because what action can get you everything? How do I find someone who makes a bunch of money and is very physically attractive and emotionally supportive and this and that? The more things that you look for in life, the more perfection you chase, the harder it is to act.

So when I'm working with my patients, one of the key things that I try to figure out with them is what's more important, the feeling or the outcome. What's more important? Avoiding the feeling of guilt or getting out of the relationship. What's more important?

Making your boss happy or having weekends to yourself. So everything in life that we do, Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. And this is what I really hate about efficiency and productivity and optimization. The more that our society has moved in this direction, not that these things are bad, I try to be really efficient and productive and whatever. But I want you all to pay subtle attention to what this does to our expectations about life. So the more efficient I am, the less I have to pay the price of something, right?

It allows me to be greedy. Because efficiency means paying less and getting more. And should we be efficient? Absolutely. But I want you all to pay attention to the subtle effect of your psychology, of the effect of your entitlement, your desires, what you think is out there. Because now I can have my cake and eat it too. So oftentimes if you're struggling to break up with someone and you know you should, the reason we struggle to break up is because there's something that's keeping us in the relationship.

Maybe we feel comfortable. Maybe the person is paying our bills. Maybe we want to avoid feeling guilty. Maybe we want to avoid the person getting mad at us. Maybe we know because they're a little bit unstable. They're going to go to social media and say that we're a piece of shit. There's some reason you're saying in the relationship, right? And the way that you figure that out is break up with them.

And as I say, okay, go break up with them right now. And your mind will automatically populate with reasons not to. That's why you're staying in the relationship. And you can do something like make a pro and con list, whatever. Like I think that stuff can be somewhat helpful. But I think the key thing here if you're struggling to break up with a relationship is you're going to have to eat some kind of bitter pill. You're going to take your medicine. one part of this is not going to be pleasant.

And the way to break up with someone when you should is not to try to make the breakup easier. It is try to accept the price of breaking up. In the moment that you can accept the price of breaking up, then you can break up. Why haven't you broken up with them? Because you haven't accepted the price of the breakup. Then I have to move.

Oh my God, I have to find my own place. I have to defend myself to my friends. I'm going to be horny. I'm going to be lonely. This is the only social connection that I have now. We can stay in relationships because we become dependent on them. And then my life, the reason we stay in relationships is because we're comfortable. Because we're more comfortable in it than we are outside of it.

And we choose comfort over what we should do. So it's more about coming to terms with paying the price. And the cool thing about that is like that will make you a stronger person. Because instead of life dictating, instead of your comfort, narrowing the field of your action potential, right? So like, if I can only do things that are comfortable, that's only this slice of stuff. If I want more options, freedom, autonomy, and power in life, the first thing that I have to do is be willing to sacrifice my comfort. And look at the direction that we've gone in life. Everyone says, I saw this post on our subreddit.

Oh my God, like the world is going to shit. There's climate change and inflation. this and that and like loneliness and everything is going to shit. What is the one thing that has improved over the last 20 years, our comfort? As we become comfortable, as we've leaned into comfort and we've become uncomfortable with discomfort, we've weakened ourselves, we've lost autonomy, we can't do things anymore. Why can't we do things? Because they don't feel good. Because now I can sit at, in my home, I can socialize here, I can work here, I can play games here, I can have food

delivered to me here, I never have to shower, I never have to wear deodorant, I never have to exercise. This is the life that I can live. So this is the dangerous thing. The most dangerous thing about the world today is that you can live the life that you want. You can live the life that some part of you longs for, which is to not work hard, be comfortable, Get food delivered. We can get so many of our wants in a way that our ancestors a thousand years ago couldn't get. I had a conversation with my grandmother. And I was so confused because everyone's like, what's the point of life?

I'm not happy. Back in my grandmother's day, life itself was not guaranteed. You had to fight for survival. Infant mortality was 20%. There's no issue of happiness. because if you didn't farm, you didn't eat. Something has changed. As we moved towards the top of Maslow's hierarchy of needs,

as a society, we've become spiritually weak. We've become uncomfortable. There's a mental health crisis. We've become soft. We've become fragile. And how have we become this way? Because of comfort. Comfort has gone through the roof.

Dopamine, comfort. lack of social anxiety, substances, technology, all of these things are regulating our emotions, shutting off our amygdala, activating our dopamine systems, and we're becoming weak as a result. Literally, weak. But we like it.

It feels good. It's fun. We enjoy it. The problem is that it's a slice of the real thing. It's not the full real thing. And this is what's really scary. Society is not moving in the right direction here. We're trying to make it closer and closer,

to the real thing, which is only going to make our problems worse. As technology advances, unless we figure out some way to balance what comfort does to us, then we're going to get worse and worse and worse. And there are ways to do this, by the way. Like a great example is a gymnasium, a gym. What the fuck is a gym? Why do we go to a gym? Can you imagine if aliens were like not on our planet?

And they're like, what are they doing? The guy is picking up the thing and he's doing this 10 times. And then he puts it down. What is that? What is the purpose of going to the gym? The activity doesn't do anything for us except balance what our life has become. An increasingly sedentary lifestyle requires a lot of energy expectations. that is useless.

We're not building a house. The reason that we have hands that can lift things is to lift bricks and put them into place so that we have shelter. It is purposeless activity, except the purpose is to make us healthy, right? It's like a different kind of purpose. You didn't need fucking, in the feudal middle ages in Europe,

you didn't need to go to the gym because you were doing manual labor. Right? So as we've stopped doing manual labor, we need the gym. And what do we need in today's society? we need the mental equivalent of a gym. We need ways to train ourselves so that we don't become soft mentally.

We don't give in to our impulses. We start to critically think instead of ingesting whatever echo chamber propaganda, BS, indoctrination happens. It's scary, man. I've had so many friends and patients whose marriages have ended in divorce because they went down the social media,

pipeline. Red pill, black pill, pink pill, whatever pill you want. Right? They start watching a bunch of this content. They start believing all of this stuff. You don't love me unless you provide. Therefore, I'm going to quit my job. And it's like, y'all are two human beings in a unique situation. These generalizations can't be applied like that. And I say this to someone who like loves science and loves clinical medicine, practices evidence-based clinical medicine. Here's Here's the crazy thing. Evidence-based clinical medicine still requires someone like a doctor to apply it to an individual person. You can have all of the studies in the world. And when it comes down to a unique pile of genetics, circumstances, experiences, the study doesn't translate one-to-one. Just because SSRI's improved mood doesn't mean that if I give you an SSRI, you're going to be magically better. We have to apply science to an individual situation. It has to be personalized. and we're some of the best trained people on the planet in terms of knowing what is objectively true. We go through literally like a decade of training, eight years, usually more.

We learn so much science, and yet it still requires translation down to a person. So we started this by talking about breaking up. So why is it hard to break up? oftentimes because there's a price that we're unwilling to pay. And if you want to break up with them, you should get comfortable with paying that price. Now, how do you do that? That's why you have to explore what is the price that I have to pay? What makes me unwilling to pay it?

How can I make myself okay with paying it? So oftentimes breaking up means doing a lot of work ahead of time. So if I have to find a new place to live, I have to prepare myself mentally for that. You start doing that work anyway. So when you break up, it's like, hey, I've like found a one-month sub-lease. I'm moving out tomorrow. So remove the obstacles to your breakup. Instead of letting those obstacles prevent you from breaking up,

the world isn't magically going to get better. Well, sometimes we hope it does. And then we'll do things like be passive aggressive and self-sabotage and try to get them to break up with us and all this kind of crap. But it doesn't help you. Like it gets you what you want, but like you don't grow as a human being. Okay.

Great question. Thoughts on being disgusted with a partner's sexual past. If relationship is otherwise good, but the sexual past makes me feel unspecial, what is your take on it? Great question. This happens a lot. So sometimes when we enter relationships, we have different sexual histories. Sometimes we'll date someone who has been very prolific or has had a lot of sexual partners. And even then doesn't necessarily mean objectively a lot.

They could have an average number of partners. But if you're a virgin when you first started dating them and they had sex with five other people before you, it can make you feel unspecial. So this is where we have to be careful. So when I feel a certain way, who is responsible for those feelings? Now, we may jump to say, I am responsible, especially in this community, right?

So this is where I think there's a really key thing, which is what are the partner's actions now? Right. So how do you know whether the way that you feel is something that you need to get over or something that your partner needs to change. And that comes down to something very simple. Can they change it?

What can they do? And is it reasonable for them to do what you want them to do to change the way that you feel? So if my partner has done something in the past and they can't act in any way to make me feel less special or there's nothing they can do about that,

then the only way forward in that relationship is for me to deal with it. Now, they may still need to do something, right? And that's why I think it's important to think about what they can do. So if you feel unspecial, are there ways that they can make you feel special? And that's where you have to have a conversation about the actions that they can take to help you with the way that you feel. And I would once again say this is a 51% rule. We're generally speaking, if you feel a particular way,

you have to really think about where this is coming from. So in a situation where it involves the partner's past, I think that like, you know, it's an important question to ask, what would make you feel special? So there are particular things that your partner has not done with other partners that would make you feel special if they did it with you. I've seen the reverse of this as well, where partners have experimented sexually with people in their past,

And they discovered they don't like something so they don't want to try it with you. They refuse to do it with you. And then you feel really, really hurt because, like, you are willing to do that with someone else, but you're not willing to do that with me. Really common. Really common. So I think there's a certain amount of, like, what can your partner do to make you feel special? To help you feel special is maybe a better way to put it.

Because they certainly can't go back in time and wipe that away. And then the second part of it is, really coming to terms with what makes you feel, like what does specialness mean to you? What, like, you know, what would make you feel special? Where does the feeling of lack of specialness come from? Does it feel like a sense of inadequacy? Do you feel like, you know, you're missing out on something? Do you feel like you're inferior in some way?

Do you feel jealous of your partner's past sexual partners, really common? Why is that so hard to detect? Because it doesn't make sense. They're not in the picture anymore. And yet we feel that way. So in our society, sexuality, territory, ownership, connection are all connected. And so sometimes we feel envious and jealous of our partner's past sexual partners. We feel, and when we feel jealous of them, like, let's think about it, right?

So if I'm jealous of someone, that means they have. something that I don't have. And if they have it and I don't have it, that puts them above me in some way. And so now I feel inferior to them. Now the problem is that normally when I feel inferior, if I can compete with the person in some way, then maybe I can win and then I feel better, right? Like some dude like trash talks to you in a game and you're going to fucking dumpster them, you're going to headshot them like whatever, like in like Valorant or whatever, right? You're going to like, you're going to make sure they lose and then you can feel better. about yourself. The problem is the moment that all of these competition feelings come up with someone

that is not there anymore, how do you fix those feelings? How can you one up them? How can you win? And since that becomes hard to do, we bury it subconsciously. We don't even feel like it's absurd to feel jealous of someone who's like, I've dealt with this before where, you know, someone was a widow and then dated another person. And then you're jealous of this person's prior partner. You're like jealous that, oh, like, this person wouldn't have ever been with me if their partner hadn't died. They still love that person more. They're not really choosing me. I'm second best because they chose this other person. And that's not like that unreasonable, right? Like if, literally, if the person was alive, like, you wouldn't be married. So these are all reasonable things

to feel, even though they're kind of fucked. There's no way to fix that. Like the situation, I mean. So I think first part is what can they do to help you feel special? And second thing is like, understand this stuff about yourself, right? Why do I feel this way? Do I feel inferior? Do I feel jealous? Do I feel like I miss the boat? Do I feel like things are uneven?

And it's okay to feel that way. And then ask yourself, what can I do with these feelings? This is something that I want to move past? Because in a sense, like even though your partner may have done things with prior people and be more experienced with you, they're with you now. They're choosing to be with you now. is the worth of that to you? And that, I think, is ultimately where the salvation lies. Can you accept what you have today? Can you enjoy what you have today? Can you appreciate and be

happy with what you have today? Or do you need to fight phantoms from the past? And if we literally look at this very specifically, right? What this means is like the nature of your unhappiness is thoughts and emotions within you. And if you can control your thoughts and process your emotions, which are absolutely doable, we can meditate, we can do dharanas, we can go to therapy, we can do emotional processing. There are all kinds of techniques that we can use that will change our internal environment. And then those emotions, once they get processed, won't be there anymore. And then you can be happy in the relationship.

I do think, though, that both are necessary. Right? So when you have a problem in a relationship, you have your responsibility. They have their responsibility. And I think oftentimes what can work really, really well is for your partner to understand that you don't feel special because they've done this a lot of times. And then for y'all to figure out, like, how can y'all interact with each other in a way that does make you feel special?

So I think some amount of emotional processing, some amount of meditation, maybe some amount of therapy, and then some amount of talking with your partner. and having them share some of the responsibility, this is where things get tricky. In this situation, I don't know who has 51%, I don't know who has 49%. We're really quick to say, I'm responsible for my own emotions.

I think the moment, that's true until you enter a relationship. Then they become responsible for your emotions. I think the healthiest relationship is where your partner is responsible for your emotions and you are responsible for their emotions. The whole point is interdependence,

not independence. Great question. So common. Fucking messes people up, man. Okay. If not all men and women are the same, what's your stance on evolutionary psychology? So many studies by real academics show men and women don't differ widely in mate preferences. Great question. So a lot of studies show that stuff is generally true for men and women, right? So let me ask y'all a question.

This is going to be hard. Okay? So if men and women, if there are a lot of studies on evolutionary psychology that show that men and women are basically have common preferences or different preferences that we can say that men prefer this and women prefer this, there are all kinds of studies that show that. Then how are they not all the same? So something can be true of a population. That doesn't make it true of an individual. I'll give you all a simple example. I'm going to give you all one easy example and one hard example.

The easy example is, let's say I measured what a population is wearing. Let's say I did a scientific study where I asked each of y'all to submit what you were wearing. And then what I did is, this is what popular studies do, I averaged all of that, and then I would say, human beings wear gray smocks. I took all the colors, all the dresses, all the skirts, and I just averaged. everything together, and then I made a conclusion about what human beings wear, I would be 100% wrong. If I average a lot of individual preferences, a signal can emerge that there is a medium plus size gray smock, and that's what people wear. That is false, even though that's what the scientific method would give us. I'll give you all another example. Does that make sense? Like,

just because I average what people wear, like that's literally how it works. I take your preference, you love thick, and I love thin. And then what does science tell us? That science tells us people prefer average, which is like literally not true. It's not true. They don't prefer average. Some of us prefer thick, some of us prefer thin. There are even kinds of analyses you can do like bimodal distributions, which there are

certain statistical methods that you can use that will show us that actually we prefer thick and there's two groups of people that prefer thick and thin, and it's not really in the middle. Give you all a worse example, but I think it proves the point if you can get it. If I were to do a multivariate regression analysis on sandwiches, if I were to take all of the sandwiches in the world, and I were to ask a scientist, what makes a sandwich? What would they say? said it's a hard question so if you guys need a second to think about it

okay no so if I if I were to plot very good so if I were to plot all of the ingredients of a sandwich right so like let's do this this is good proud of y'all

this is great you guys are statistical geniuses okay so look let's say here's a thing so here are the ingredients of a sandwich bread meat lettuce, mayo, pickles, pickled carrots,

tomato, Sri Racha. I would take all of the ingredients of a sandwich, and I said, okay, here's the one sandwich. It's got two pieces of bread, some of them have meat, some of my lettuce, few of my mayo, few of my pickles, few of my carrots. And then I would ask you, what makes a sandwich?

Science would tell me two pieces of bread is what makes a sandwich. Not even a filling. A filling is not what the statistical data would show you. I want you all to think about science. We don't group all of these variables into one thing. Science would conclude a sandwich is two pieces of bread. Literally. Like, I want you all to think there's no scientific study that I've ever seen.

So there's a version of this that's not true, but being precise with my language here. that takes two variable, one variable, and it's like, yeah, this is one thing, and the second component of this is everything else. Like, what the, that's not true. Like, that's not how, we don't just combine all of the other variables and say this is one thing. Now, we do that in something called factor analysis, right? So there is a way to get to a sandwich. But generally speaking, that degree of sophistication is not done.

Or when it's done, it is done in that way. way and we know that. So even though we have a lot of data about what people prefer in general, that an average doesn't translate to a person. Like, the best example of this is a 2,000 calorie diet. Do you all know how we came up with a 2,000 calorie diet is the daily recommendation? We did a survey, no biochemical analysis. We didn't look at metabolism. We didn't look at like cellular respiration. We didn't look at caloric consumption. We didn't look at basic metabolic rate. We didn't look at anything like that. The way we came up with 2,000 calories, we sent out a survey here in the United States. I think it's called the N. Haines survey. And we asked people,

are you sick? We took all the people that said no. We then asked them, or we asked them, are you sick? Yes or no. And then we asked them, what do you eat? We took all the people who said no, and then we averaged what everything that they ate, and that's how we came up with 2,000 calories. Literally, that's where it comes from. Nothing was done in a lab. Not a single scientific experiment about metabolism or anything like that. It's just we took an average population,

took all the people who said they weren't sick and just asked them how many what they ate, and then we just reduce everything to calories. Right? But just because science tells us that 2,000 calories a day is your recommended daily allowance, doesn't mean that if you eat one 2,000 calorie triple-stack bacon cheeseburger a day, you will be healthy. Even though a doctor will scientifically say 2,000 calories a day is healthy, and that will be a scientifically correct statement, this is the difference.

So we can make generalizations about relationships, which tells us how a population behaves. But then individuals are different. This is why even though men may prefer women who are physically attractive in a particular way, the average person who gets married and mates and has children is average looking. Even though we all prefer above average, most of us end up dating average. Like, that's just how it works. So there's a fundamental discrepancy between, first of all, the nature of research and the translation to an individual person. And secondly, this is a huge problem in mating and like selection research as well.

So there's a huge discrepanion. This is so fascinating. If you ask human beings, if you do a study where you ask people what their preferences are, you will get one answer. And if you do another study where you ask people, who did you end up dating? You will get a different answer. So the most reliable scientific conclusion is probably not. technically true, but it feels right in this moment. I feel pretty confident about it. Is that people end up dating what they don't prefer. But if I ask you what you want and who you

ended up with, oftentimes those two questions are answered by different parts of your brain. If I ask you what kind of job you want and what kind of job you have, there's a gap there. That's what I'm saying is scientifically true. And when we do surveys, right, if you were to survey me about what kind of partner that I would want, it's been heavily influenced by my wife. But the cool thing about human relationships is what's really cool about human relationships is oftentimes what we appreciate and what we enjoy is not what we wanted. Like that's what's cool about life. I didn't think I liked sandwiches until I try to bond me.

So it's a great question, right? It was like if not all men and women are the same, what's your stance on evolutionary psych psychology? So many studies by real academic show men and women don't differ. widely in their mate preferences, yeah. Because that's talking, we're averaging, this is the key thing, we're averaging data. That's not the same as this is what it is, right? It's an average.

Like there's a variation within a population. And when I think it comes to human beings and mating, I think the difference between average and the possibility is pretty wide. If you look at things like beetles, I imagine what the average beetle prefers. to what the beetle actually mates with is way closer than human beings. Right? The variance in human beings is so great

that like, you know, I think like... Anyway, I'm not making this. Terrible example. The world moves fast. Your work day? Even faster. Pitching products, drafting reports, analyzing data.

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How to aspire and struggle with openness, honesty, and a relationship. So I think honesty and openness are very important for the how. happiest relationships. So this is where, like, when we say for a relationship, the first question is, what's your goal? So I have seen a ton of relationships that are neither open nor honest and work. For some people, like this is being from an Indian culture where there was a like, the generation above me had a lot of arranged marriages. And I see this a lot in a range, not just arranged marriages, but I'm just using it as an example,

anchoring it in something that maybe makes sense. So in a lot of arranged marriages, the goal is harmony. And sometimes harmony involves opacity, involves omission. Right? So when I'm like married to someone and I'm not physically attracted to them anymore, and they ask me, do you still find me sexually attractive? I can say yes for the sake of preservation of harmony in the relationship. So the first thing is that I think openness and honesty are really important.

important for the happiest relationships. And a certain amount of omission in opacity can support harmony in a relationship. So I don't know if you all have met people who are like radically honest. Many of them are just assholes. Human beings, our social connections, require some degree. of keeping your mouth shut. If you don't have something nice to say, don't say anything at all.

That will get you very far in life, but it's not open and it's not honest. So I think oftentimes, the reason that we have difficulty with the number one thing that makes it hard to be open and honest in a relationship is the response of the person

that we're talking to. So if we look at this very simply, what makes a communication difficult? The response. So when I share, a criticism with my partner, when I share my unhappiness with the partner, how does the partner respond? Do they respond? They can express some emotion. Do they get mad at me? Do they blame me? Do they start talking about all the shit that I'm doing wrong? Or are they able to handle that criticism? How do they

respond to that criticism? Do they try to address it? So I think oftentimes like, you know, I'll see this all the time where people are like, I can't believe like you didn't, like you broke up with me over a text. It's so immature, it's so dishonest. I didn't get a chance of closure. I just got home and you weren't there. Like, how cruel of you? So my first question, when I have patients come into my office who say this kind of thing, oh yeah, like they just left in the middle of the day and I never saw them again.

My first question to you is if they had broken up with you in person, how would you have responded? Not my first question. My like eighth question. We'll get there. Right? So if you have difficulty being open and. honest with someone. First question is like, how do they respond to your openness and your honesty? And I think just because you are open and honest with them doesn't mean that they need to change.

So second question is what is their response? So first question is what is their response? How would they respond? Second question is why would they respond that way? Now we have to look in the mirror. Is someone not open to your open and honest communication? Because when you are open and honest, They respond in a particular way, and then you don't do anything about it. They try to make an effort to make things better, and the efforts that they make are insufficient for helping you. Like, what is the reason that they respond that way? That's the second question. Doesn't automatically blame them.

Third question is what makes it hard for you? What in your past has made it hard for you to be open and honest? What are your own reactions to being open and honest? Where did you learn that being open and honest is a bad idea? Do you feel guilty for being open and honest? Right? So openness and honesty is something that is natural in human beings until we get socialized. A huge part when we're toddlers is learning how to take our openness and our honesty and hide it.

even if I don't want to share my toy with a playmate, I should. Repression of the self is part of the path of maturity. So I think ultimately where we want to end up, and things like shadow work can be really good at this kind of stuff. Right? So as we grow up, we repress parts of ourselves. And then it can be hard to open up. So I think the right balance is to not repress from yourself.

repressed from the rest of the rest of the world is totally fine. I think that's actually pretty healthy. But don't be dishonest with yourself. And so oftentimes when we struggle with being open and honest, we were punished for it. And then we have to sort of figure out, okay, even though we were punished for it, we learned a particular meta of opacity and obfuscation. And then we have to figure out a new balance. What is the right amount of like, so I think a really really. good rule of thumb about being open and honest in a relationship, which works really well for me

and works really well for my patients and still has problems, is that you should be open and honest, but not necessarily right now. That the best way to be open and honest is calculated. Set up the circumstances for your communication. When you're pissed, you don't have to say something right now. you can calm down, you can wait till like they're not in the middle of something. You can sit them down, you can say, hey, think through what you're going to say. And then you can say, hey, I love you. Sit next to them, by the way. Don't sit across.

Worst thing you're going to sit across from them like at a table. Like don't go to dinner where you're sitting across and then tell them something. It's terrible. Sit next to them, hold their hand and then be open if you're upset about something. That emotional and literally physical, like, I don't know if this makes sense, we keep threats in front of us. If there is a tiger that is hunting me, I'm not going to be like this. I'm going to be like this.

Threats are in front, right? And like, think about the ways, like, if you're cuddling, you don't, like, cuddle face to face, usually, right? Cuddling usually involves big spoon, little spoon. I'm on my back. Someone is, I'm scooping someone in. Even with, like, babies, they're, like, laying over your shoulder. There's not directness.

And you'd be amazed at how much this stuff helps. Like, reduces antagonism by like 30%. Physical contact and being side by side. Makes you all feel side by side. Side by side implies cooperation. Opposed. Like literally, across from, opposed. The opposition.

The person I'm here and they are there. Like, that helps a lot too. Okay, y'all. Thank you so much for coming today. Happy Friday, everybody. And I hope this was helpful. So it was great, like, reading everybody's comments, going through stuff. Great questions.

Let me just check questions. These are great. They're all really good. Okay. So I see there's a couple of questions about, like, Bramacharya, fetishes. So I think we have a video about fetishes. And we have plenty of stuff about Bramacharya. Let me just see real quick.

Hold on. I don't need to hear myself speak. I'll send you all these two links. And this is really like reminding me how important this. Yeah, we need to figure out some way to get this stuff to y'all more easily. So if you all have questions, we can connect y'all with the information that you all need. So thank you all very much for coming today. Happy Friday.

And, you know, let us know if you all liked this. didn't like this. If you want to see it again, don't want to see it again, if y'all have another topic of stuff that you guys want me to like kind of explain, react to,

dig into a little bit of science about, you know, do some literature searches and really understand what's going on. That's not relationship advice. Let us know. So like post on the subreddit. You know, you can just post in chat

and I know there are mods in chat. Like maybe all can just take note and see if there's something good that we want to do. But like we're here for you. Right? We do this to help you all. with how we can help you.

So what we do is determine more about by what you all want and what y'all need than it is about what we think is a good idea. Occasionally, we'll do that too, right? We'll say, like, hey, we're going to do a lecture about this, even though no one cares about it. It's important. Here's why. Thanks for joining us today.

We're here to help you understand your mind and live a better life. If you enjoy the conversation, be sure to subscribe. Until next time, take care of yourselves and each other.