Know Thyself - E123 - Alison Armstrong, Relationship Expert: We’ve Been Lied To, Here’s What Men ACTUALLY Want

Episode Date: November 19, 2024

Relationship expert Alison Armstrong explores the profound dynamics of relationships and their role in personal evolution. She delves into key insights about understanding men, addressing common misconceptions that women may have. She unpacks how masculine and feminine energies commonly interact in our society, as well as the influence of hormones on our behaviors and perspectives.Alison highlights the subtle behaviors women exhibit as requests for safety in their relationships, emphasizing how feelings of emasculation can undermine intimacy and connection. And how by harnessing the power of acknowledgement and appreciation, we can strengthen bonds in relationships. She provides powerful insights on how to learn to receive love and recognition, step into their inner king or queen, and embrace the beauty of aging with grace.Sleep Better with the Birch Mattress & Save 25%:https://birchliving.com/knowthyself Try AG1 & Save with their Special Black Friday Salehttps://drinkag1.com/knowthyselfAndré's Book Recommendations: https://www.knowthyself.one/books___________0:00 Intro1:45 Creating Heaven to Earth7:37 The Role That Relationships Play in Our Personal Evolution21:22 What Women Don’t Understand About Men32:58 Hormones & Masculine/ Feminine Energies40:28 How Hormones Shape Our Perspective47:17 Women’s Behaviors as a Subtle Request for Feeling Safe51:25 Emasculation is Undermining Connection54:55 What Video Games Teach Us About Men1:03:37 Where Objectification Comes From1:13:43 Importance of Acknowledgement and Appreciation1:18:42 Learning to Receive in Relationship1:27:56 Stepping Into Our Inner King/Queen1:36:27 Aging with Grace1:47:18 A Higher Perspective On Love & Death1:56:28 Conclusion___________Alison Armstrong, author, educator, and creator of the widely acclaimed "Understanding Men" and "Understanding Women" transformational online series, asks the question: "What if no one is misbehaving -- including you?" She explores the good reasons behind the behavior of men and women such as fundamental differences in the ways we think, act and communicate. She offers simple, partnership-based, solutions to improve our communication and intimacy by honoring ourselves and others. She's known for her insight, sense of humor and ability to articulate the human experience and predicament of gender.Website: https://www.alisonarmstrong.comInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/thealisonarmstrong/___________Know ThyselfInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/knowthyself/Website: https://www.knowthyself.oneClips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJ4wglCWTJeWQC0exBalgKgListen to all episodes on Audio: Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4FSiemtvZrWesGtO2MqTZ4?si=d389c8dee8fa4026Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/know-thyself/id1633725927André DuqumInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/andreduqum/

One man that you know you can count on gives a woman a sense of safety that can change your whole life. I've been unpacking this since 1991. I have to start by saying what women do to men, women do to women, and women do to themselves. Experiencing being trusted and respected is a source of security for a man. And if his wife keeps making sure he knows that she does not respect him, then everything he's poured into what he's building isn't safe. We don't understand the cause of effect. and the cause of effect, and it's part of what has us think men are terrible.

Why is that the case for so many women? So one of the things for women to understand is when we started our workshop, in one day, women seeing what they were doing to men, they were a completely different person with a completely different intent and stunned by the man that showed up instantly. Hey, everyone, welcome back to the know-they-self podcast. our guest today has devoted over 30 years to understanding the mysteries of men and really what is at the core and heart of so much unneeded misunderstanding between men and women in relationship dynamics.

She is an author, educator, and creator of the Queen's Code, which is a powerful framework for, again, understanding and appreciating men, which has transformed countless relationships. And I think this conversation is going to be filled with nuggets and insights that are really going to support anyone. Allison, thank you so much for being here. You're welcome. I am so excited to be here.

Yeah. I have, through studying and getting more into your work, heard you share that since you were a young girl, you felt that your work here on Earth had to do with bringing heaven on Earth. What does that mean to you before we dive deeper into all the relationship things? That is, I think, an important umbrella

in which this all falls under. Wow. You might be the first person that's asked me that question. Thank you. Well, of course, you can imagine being, I think I was seven years old when I asked my mom what was happening across the street. And she said that the neighbor girl was being baptized. And I said, what is. that mean? And I don't know if she actually said this, because it seems like a big word for her to have used or for me to understand, but what I remember, she said, that's when you're consecrated to God. And I thought, oh, I need to do that. And my little brother remembers I was relentless in making my parents, join a church, take me to church, get me baptized. And then that was it. You stopped going to church.

But I was baptized. Okay. Check. Had to have that happen. And so, you know, as it, when I first thought of myself, like, oh, I belong to God. That's what I'm doing here. And as it evolved, it, I remember being a teenager and thinking, I'm God. picture straight now.

Like that was my job. Everything, and that's when heaven, on earth the rose, I was maybe like 15, but anything that wasn't heaven on earth, I was supposed to fix. And that's when the list be in. The queue of all, right, as the awareness happens when we,

you know, as young people become aware of what's really happening in the world and telling my mom, you know, we've got to send this food to China, right? we've got a, we can't, it'll spoil. And then, I mean, I'm old enough to remember when Ziploc baggies were invented. And I got so excited. I thought that was the solution that it wouldn't spoil. We could get it to the children who needed it.

And, you know, so obviously I started with a particular view. And then as it evolved, and I started talking to a dear, dear friend about this whole thing. of what does it mean to be human and what are we doing here? And what about evil? What? Oh, that seems like a really scary thing. And there was something he said to me that it just fit. It just rang so true.

And it made what it needed to do tangible. It made what I was compelled to do tangible. and he said, he said when there's heaven on earth, we'll still have the same problems. Everything will look like it looks now, but the context of earth will have shifted because, I don't think he used this word, but it's the word that lives for me is kind of like consecrated. preponderance when a preponderance of individual human beings choose love over everything else everything else right moment by moment by moment when there's enough who are choosing that the context of the planet will shift and that will be heaven on earth and things will get worked out

very differently in that space. And I think so many of us, at least, I think anybody who's going to watch your podcast would have a sense of that. Like, what does it mean to keep choosing love? And, you know, not little love, not I'm in love, not, oh, but I love him so much. Capital L-O-V, like love. And like Alanis's song. You know, love, there's only one kind of love.

And so when people say unconditional love, like, why do you have to use that word? If you have to use that word, you might be thinking of something else. That's the only kind there is. And, you know, I've made a study of love and what the difference between love, which I would assert is infinite and eternal and never changes and always accessible. versus feeling love, right? And what creates the space here in a physical body to feel love? It's been awesome to get a hold of that. And then versus in love.

And I'm in love with being in love. So I love with all of the loves. And so, yeah, heaven on earth is, we'll still have traffic. Yeah. I don't know about lions and lambs laying down together. But however they do or don't do that, context will be totally different. A big reason why I was really excited to have you on the podcast

is because, you know, there is a plethora of opportunities and individuals whom I could sit down with and have conversations, you know, about relationships, for example. But it's very evident that you being in love with love exudes from you and how much you smile and how much joy you really have and sharing the work that you're really passionate about in this life. And so I really appreciate not just what somebody says, but the place it's coming from. And so I think that's going to, that energy is going to be felt throughout this whole conversation and support a lot of people. So I'm just curious to start

off from like a meta perspective. How do you view relationships as it may be a training ground for us really choosing love. Like the role that relationships play on the path to realizing heaven on earth is a possibility. Can I start with the word relationships? Because it was a pivotal moment in my life. I was an activist. I was an activist for the hungry and the homeless

of that ending hunger thing it lived on. And then I started studying men when I found out I was a frog farmer that I was bringing out the worst in men. So that first chapter of the Queen's Code, that happened to me. My co-worker was the one, and she was even worse than Melissa in the book. She challenged a trainer at Landmark Education and these horrible accusations against men. And maybe because he'd been a veterinarian, I don't know, but he called her a frog farmer. Do you want to explain what that is now for a moment?

Well, the way that Her Tanser put it was, some women turn frogs into princes. You, my dear, turn princes into frogs. And my life flashed before my eyes and all these men who were so wonderful in the beginning and just loved them and I, I, maybe they were the one and you know and and uh and then yuck i mean horrible in so many different ways and it happened so often that i'm laughing like i could make it happen in about 10 days

and and i prided myself on that because i thought the whole wonderfulness was an act that it was a con. And so I wanted to reveal the con before I fell in love again, right? And had my heart broken again. And so who I thought men were was really heartbreaking for me because I needed them, right? When women really admit it, men pay attention. to a woman in a way that no number of women can. There's so much you can cause.

And it's independent, by the way, a sexual orientation. One man that you know you can count on gives a woman a sense of safety that can change your whole life. It can take one man in a room full of 200 women. Someone came to my husband's celebration of life just to say, I never spoke to. to Greg, but I'm here to represent all the women in our course who, because he was there and how he was being, we were safe. Look around, find Greg, and go, okay, everything's going to be good. And so this like need them, love them, want them, hate them, you know, thing. And I didn't know

I hated them until I got deeper into it. So when I found out I was a frog farmer, I was ecstatic because the alternative was that men were who I thought they were. But if I was bringing the worst out in them, which I started to like into kicking a dog and then being shocked that he bites or shocked. that he runs away or shock that he bites and runs away. And which is pretty fun under because some people are like, oh, men are dogs. And I was like, yes, they are.

They're loyal. They're always happy to see you. They're looking for something to do for you. What could they bring you? They just want to be admired and appreciated. And yeah, if you treat you. You did them like dogs. Everything would turn out much better, much much better.

So anyhow, fast forward to, we started our workhouse in 1995 because I wanted, I needed to study more what caused women to treat men the way that we do. And in order to be able to write the book that I didn't write. And I just kept learning and women kept asking more and more from me. And so it was like six years into it when we did our first workshop on relationships. Before that, it was all just interacting with men and then learning as women what to honor about ourselves, which I learned from men. I thought I knew women until I started listening to men, to talk about women, oh my gosh, what you all see is so much kinder than what we see about ourselves

and each other. It's so much more beautiful. And so when I finally get, I'm creating the celebrating men and marriage workshop, and I have all these things spread out that I want to put in it. And I learned a long time ago in my early 20s to go to the dictionary. And then later realized that if a woman ever wants to know what a man means, well, first of all, ask him. What do you mean by that? What a crazy concept? Crazy, crazy concept. No, they don't.

They ask all their friends what he meant by that. And then they come and ask me what he meant by that. I say, did you ask him? No. But of course, you have to be. be safe to answer to, right? What do you mean by that? Yeah.

Nothing. Right? And not because men are ticking, you're just smart. Why dig a deeper hole? That's just silly. Why waste energy? Instinctually, you cannot waste energy, right? And fighting a fight, you can't win.

The whole system shuts down. So I looked up the word relationship in the dictionary, and I expected to find how everybody talked about relationship, right? Like, Andre, you and I are just at the beginning of our relationship, right? And it's this thing that will grow between us and we'll be able to describe our relationship, right, you know, from the very beginning, we're playful with each other, and a lot of respect for who the other person is. And so we, you know, this thing, you know, and, you know, my best friend, more than 30 years,

I could describe our relationship. It gets bigger and bigger and bigger and it starts to have this mass, and people are so worried that they, their marriage, like, it's unrecoverable. Our relationship is so blah, blah, blah, blah, right? And they act like it has character. and how are they ever going to overcome them? Or they act like they're, it's so loving and tender and trusting, and that that'll last forever, right?

It's in a safe deposit box. It'll save us when we need it. And so I expected to find something like that in the dictionary, and it said, an instance of being related. We need to try to find more. That's all it said. Yeah. And there was no thing.

There was an instance of being related. And that changed everything. I mean, it absolutely changed everything. And so to your answer, to your question, yes, this thing that doesn't exist. So, yay, it doesn't, it means we can't suck at it because there's no such thing. Also, ridiculous for women to think they're good at it and that men suck at it, which is common. It doesn't exist. It's just an instance of being related. So is engaging in instances of being related, then what matters?

And most people are worried about what to say. What should I say? How should I say it? I've been asked those questions thousands of times. And yes, words matter. you tell a man we have an issue. Oh, by definition can't be solved. Why should we even talk about it? Right?

I have a problem. Do you have a problem? How can I help you? Right? Like words matter. But being, being is the universal language. Being. So how are you being in that instance of being related?

That's what's going to cause the outcome. And we got to see it when we started our workshops that in one day, women seeing what they were doing to men, how it was antagonizing them and bringing out the worst in them, seeing how they justified doing it, but it still didn't make it work. And it was giving them everything they didn't want. And then most of them, not all, having the courage to give them. it up. Just as I was asked, stop. Allison, stop. And so many women who had the courage to, like, well, this clearly isn't working and I'm never going to get what matters to me most. Okay.

And so we caught laying down the sword, right, giving up justifying, diminishing men. and and they would we'd send them home with some conversations to have with the men in their lives and they'd come back the next day with these stories and tears streaming down their face because in those next instances of being related they were a completely different person with a completely different intent and stunned by the man that showed up instantly which is one of the things that I love about the effects of testosterone. And, I mean, these days the conversation about gender can be hazardous, but I have no attachment. What's real about gender?

There are hormones that go with the gonads. And if we don't understand what they do to the construct of the brain itself, and how they shape perception and interpretation and sight. We don't even have the same vision and hearing. There's so many things that are different. And one of the really cool things about it is y'all don't hang on to as much stuff as we do. So if the person in front of you, how they're being right now is,

is something that has you lean in instead of, right? You lean in. And you might be going, whoa, this is different, but let's see instead of, she's different now, but will she be different tomorrow?

You know, that's much more rare for a man to do that, common for a woman to do that. Yeah, let's see how long this lasts. And then it doesn't. Right? Because in the next instance of being related, you keep being regarded as an enemy or skeptically or what do you look to? Which is, it's normal, it's human, but it's never going to bring out the best. I find it so fascinating the presumptions we have about the other people that we just assume that people are the same as us and have the outlook as us.

and I'm looking forward to unpacking those and estrogen and testosterone being two contributors to the differences between us. I've heard you share that women are kind of often under the assumption of thinking that men are hairy, misbehaving women. That's great. Why do you feel that?

Why is that the case for so many women? Oh, boy. Okay. So I've been unpacking this since 1991, right? Been busy. Yeah. And my brain works while I appear to be sleeping. So I'll wake up in the morning. Oh, my gosh. And so I've been, I've been like digging. If you imagine, you know, starting up here with, okay, I'm bringing out the worst in men. and then, okay, so this question popped into my head, what if men are responding to women?

And okay, what if? Thank goodness it was what if. I didn't set out to prove anything. But, I mean, digging down, right, and distinguishing what these hormones do, and then digging down some more and finding out all the ways were the same. So it doesn't have anything to do with gender

hormones. It doesn't have anything to do with roles or inculturation. There's, oh, these things called human instincts, right? And then digging down further, which is kind of freaky for people, but thank goodness, to what it, they're not even human instincts. We can't say, that's just human instinct. No, we have heard instincts and pack instincts and you'll see them in horses and you'll see them in wolves. We are both predator and prey. We have both of them. Check these out. You know, like, oh, we're like monkeys. Oh, well, you know, chimpanzees, right? Yeah, we are. And those are. And you just keep going down. And the latest part of my work has been the planet. What do we share with everything else on the planet? And we share.

it. So it's, I mean, we're going all the way down to bacteria, right? And what I assert, and it came from a comment someone made about our immune system that we're built to, to discriminate, if you will, to discern, let's use that word, less charged, to discern me, not me. Me, not me. Me, you let in, that immune system, me let in, not me, you don't let in. The best way to see it is a sneeze. A sneeze is a not-mey reaction. It's how we protect ourselves from things that our body's like, oh no, ha-choo! Which, you know, go with the sneeze. Don't try to get, you know, get it out. It's not good for you.

A cough? Another kind of not-mey reaction. So the weird thing is, is that both of those perceptions cause problems. And then it comes all the way back up to the top. Like, men tend to lean in to not me. Ooh, you're not me. Right? And I would assert that most men, whether they know it or not, they're scanning for strength

and specifically scanning for strength and sorting for complementary strength. So I'm not looking for someone like me. I'm looking for someone who's strong not like me. So unconsciously filling a team, unconsciously making a hundred hundred tribe, right? He's fast. He's strong. He's accurate. He or she, we don't even care. Truthfully, it's just competency to produce the result. And it's something huge for a woman to understand that men are looking for in a mate, complementary strength. They're not looking to compete. They're looking for how are you, how are you a genius in a different way that I'm a

is how are you brilliant? How are you? Oh my gosh, she's so strong like that. Right? Complementary strengths. Well, the hormones have most women experience feeling safe. And I would use that word strongly feeling safe, which is different than factually safe. So trying to give a woman the facts that tell her she ought to feel safe. It never works. Honey, I've never run into the back of another car. So women tend more to scan for me. And because me seems like it'll be easier to connect.

So, I mean, just driven, women are so driven searching for connection. Connect, connect, connect, connect. It's on auto redial all the time. Connect, or we connect to now, we're connecting now, we're connected now. And it's something that most men don't understand. You all have no idea how strong you are, how much stronger you are than us physically. I've encouraged men to offer women, would you like to arm muscle? And especially men who are worried about being smaller in stature, just offer to arm wrestle.

And don't put her down. Just hold your arm like that for long enough for her to realize she can't even budge you. You are so much stronger than her. Therefore, you're qualified to protect her. You just got hot. So we're looking for me. And this is what caused all this trouble. So we look for a man who feels like me.

Oh, we have this connection with this instant connection. They're like me. And then we think that me is going to carry all the way through. If you're like me, you're going to think like me, you're going to do like me, you're going to react like me. And then when men generally don't, we make up all kinds of things that you're not. that you're not doing what I would do because you don't love me enough. You don't respect me enough. You don't care about me enough.

If you were, if you really cared about me, you would never do something like that. And you would always do something like this. And that's where the misbehaving comes from. That I think you're like me. You're just like me. And I'm not distinct. We're not distinct for ourselves. So you're like me, but you're not actually.

right and we think one of the ways you're liking me is you know the right thing to do we're sure you know the right thing to do and you're purposefully not doing it that's where misbehaving comes in and therefore at the very least you need to be trained you maybe need to be fixed at what is having you make that choice and the odds are you do you need to be trained you maybe need to be fixed at what is having to make that choice and the odds are you need to be punished. You deserve to be punished. And if I don't punish you for that, I am lax in my duties to protect the rest of the tribe

from your aberrant fill it in, ways of thinking, behavior, etc. I mean, it's just, what I say just now, it's like, oh, we're doomed. We're doomed unless we become aware, as you know, without awareness. All we're going to do is play out these things. And so hairy misbehaving women and a young man said to me, when you heard me say that, he said, oh, so is that like when a man looks at a woman, he sees a scattered, emotionally indulgent man? That's great.

Oh my gosh, just like, oh my gosh, that's how we occur. We diffuse awareness created by estrogen. We occur scattered. And we, you know, women had said, why do women make their feelings the center of everything? And, I mean, it was perfect. It's like, excuse me, something you should probably know is we don't make them the center of everything. They already are the center of it. And recently I was talking to women about how many feelings are like a stack of pancakes right here in the center of our chest. I mean, we've got

grief, we got hurt, grief, sadness, joy, love. I mean, it's a stack of pancakes. And so we didn't make them the center of everything. And then I asked men, where are you? do you feel you don't have a stack of pancakes you have a couple combos right like right here

this part of your body I would say is we're going to find power and anger and happiness those are stacked all right here

and when they're big they race on your arms and out your hands it's either the pow or the high-five or the slap on the butt or the spike the ball. But that same young man who said about scattered and emotionally indulgent, and I was talking about what happens when you heard a woman's feelings. And he's like, I've had indigestion.

It's so fascinating because we have often, whether it's overt or subtle disdain or judgment for other people in relationship, romantic or not. And it simply originates in a lack of understanding that we have fundamental differences in our makeup hormonally, genetically. And so I want to start going through some of these things. You hinted earlier at estrogen and testosterone and how these create fundamentally two different perspectives

out on the world. Right before we get into that, if you'd like to quickly share, I know you mentioned earlier, but there can be sometimes the overgeneralization of this all applies to man or all applies to a woman. And I just want to, I guess, invite the space for the nuance of the gray zone where we are beautifully complex human beings and these masculine and feminine traits also in energies lie on a spectrum. And so it's easy, for ease of use, saying man and woman in this conversation totally makes sense. And any other thoughts you have there before we start to unpack the kind of differences

in energies? Thank you for bringing that up. And you use one of my favorite words, spectrum. And I sort of, we are all on the spectrum. And you could call it masculine and feminine. You could call it the autism spectrum. Extreme single focus known as autism. extreme drive-fuse awareness, attention deficit disorder.

Right? So another way of saying that, which I've started to traffic in more, because I'm just always looking for a way to communicate, this is a committed state of mind. What we talk about as like autism or Asperger's, or would be a little bit less, is absolute committed state of mind. Or on this side, an open state of mind.

And this is where women get wonky especially, and then there's another thing that happens to what I would call descended ovaries. There's undescended testicles and there's descended ovaries. But our hormones vary a lot. when we have menstrual cycles. So, I mean, a lot, they vary. So our hormonally created state of mind being committed or open can vary. And then we also can get switched.

So a woman could be in an open state of mind, and she's very connective and loving and nurturing and arranging crooked pillows, you know, God's picture straightener. And then you say, we've got to leave in five minutes. And when we don't have plenty of time, we just switch over and you'd think we had a different personality. Well, then get out of my way. Who is that?

Right? And then men who, I mean, teenage boys in the level of test, well, they're really men, levels of testosterone are just stunning off the chart. And, you know, mom's the best thing that you do. Hmm, what's he focused on now? What's he focused on now? What's he focused on now? What's he focused on now? But as y'all get older and the hormones fall naturally, it's not a bad thing. The brain reconfigures. And this is where wisdom shows up. because now it can be seen. The verbal centers get hooked up to all these other parts of the brain

that there were no connections before. And then the knowledge that a man has spent a lifetime acquiring, all of a sudden is just flowing out and flowing out and flowing out and flowing out. And then women's estrogen levels have disappeared with the ovum. and so whatever testosterone we have left is taking over. So my youngest daughter, she was really hurt. She thought I was ignoring her. I wasn't ignoring her.

I was approaching menopause and I'd become more focused. So I couldn't hear her. My brain was screening out everything it considered irrelevant and it considered her voice irrelevant. And she was crushed like many. Like many women are, many moments of every day were just crushed that you're ignoring us. We don't know that you're not. That your committed state of mind has screened everything out.

And I had to go through this. First, I heard about it, and then I had to experience as I went from being 30, it was 30 years old when I started studying men. Now I'm 64. I have gone through the whole gamut plus hormone therapy. So I got to OD on testosterone, find out what it was like to be an atomic bomb when somebody really ticked me off. I thought it was going to explode and take out the whole valley. No wonder men are so proud of having a grip on this emotion. I swear men's emotions are so much more intense than ours.

And you just don't trust him. Keep a good bottom. So, yes, there's a, this is, know thyself, know they self, know what switches you involuntarily, know what you're affected by, know where your happy place is, you know, anywhere on this is normal. Anywhere, there's no right or wrong place to be. There's not even a right or wrong state of mind. But it's one of the things we teach in our understanding women course. Like, how do you tell which woman this is? Is this the open, nurturing, loving state of mind woman?

Or is this the kick-ass, take names state of mind? And you can actually tell by how woman reacts when you walk into the room if she looks up and how she looks up. Yes, honey? Where's the milk? Oh, hear that one? You can even tell the way she walks across a room, who she is. Yeah.

When we're committed state of mind, it is all forward energy. And when we're in an open state of mind, all of a sudden, the hips go, it's like, oh, she's in that state of mind. It changes everything. This is whatever way, whatever language people want to. apply here, whether it's line and circle or masculine and feminine or that receptive state or, you know, committed. I think it's really valuable to examine how as we kind of go on our own awakening journey, we behave more in alignment with what love would do in any given moment and

less of an identification with, oh, this is the manly or the womanly thing to do. It's you be that which is needed in any given moment. But I think on the path of arriving, their understanding our physiological makeup, understanding the psychology of being in a man's or a woman's body is very helpful. And so what do you see are the key ways in which estrogen versus testosterone create different makeups and perspectives? Oh, boy. May I? Defused awareness? Well, no. Can we put a pin in the relationship between hormones and

mental state and mental state and hormones because they cause each other. And if we understand them, we get to pick, which is what I'm all about, right? My highest value, freedom. What does it mean? The power to choose. And choose who we are, how we are, when we are, what we are. Free will. Free will to the max is. Great. Yeah. So I would, one way to think of it is also, do we at any given moment seek safety through connectivity

or security through productivity? Which one is it? In any moment. but how are we chasing being safe or secure and then and it's fascinating because down one path we trust feelings this is how they become the center of everything because we think they reveal the truth that my feelings are a reflection of the truth and to ignore my feelings would be to ignore my truth. And if you won't let me tell you about my feelings,

you don't want to know me. So what do I want to have anything to do with you? Right? One thing that's helped is that gut feelings, productive, which men trust that more, security through being productive, but a man will have the same reaction about, I had a gut feeling about that.

and I didn't go with it. My bad. Right? So gut feelings, if you guys can, if men can think about how you trust your gut, that a woman's likely to go with this as the same thing. And, of course, interesting that they've shown that they're more neurotransmitters from the gut to the brain than from the brain to the gut. This is a brain.

So it's more trusting thought than feeling, right? So another way to put that is trust facts, trust facts over feelings. And so the challenge is becoming believable, becoming a trusted source of information. So many women are not regarded as a trusted source of information. about themselves by the men who are interacting with them because we appear in congruent. One of my favorite examples is a woman saying, you know, honey, I'm tired.

I'm so tired. Would you put the kids to bed? Sure. Okay. And he expects her to go lay down and pull asleep. And he doesn't understand. Why is she finishing the dishes? Why is she straightening the pillows on the couch?

Why is she put a load of laundry in the dryer and waiting for it to be dry? Why is she doing all these other things? I guess what I think tired is isn't what tired is. So the next time she asked him to do that, he says, no. I did what you asked and you didn't take the gift and use it. It's another productive way of thinking. Take and use. A man wants you to take and use.

He just opened the door. Just walk through it. Take the moment of ease to be more of whatever you want to be. He tells her she's beautiful. Take it and feel more beautiful. Be more confident. Glow even brighter. Well, estrogen's going to,

create safety, looking for safety through connection, and a big part of that is reciprocity. Precise reciprocity. You say, you look beautiful. Oh, so do you. And look. What the heck, right? Which is better than arguing with you about, oh, no, not me, not this. Did you, and we'll point out the flaws, because we think flaws discount beauty. We don't know. So it's, the cool thing about this, The hard and the cool thing about it, we literally have opposing instincts. The hormones have us pursue safety in ways that interfere with each other. Productivity blocks out connection. Seeking connection will interrupt what productivity.

So, yeah, facts versus feelings, productivity versus connectivity, take and use? How do you know a man appreciated something? He used it. You gave him advice and he used it. That's how you know he valued it. Not because he wrote you a thank you note. Not because he came to me and said, okay, now what kind of advice can I give to you? No, he used it. And men can't use things until they own them. And by the time they own them, it's irrelevant where they came from. So I'm always telling women choose, do you want influence or credit?

Do you want influence or credit? Yeah, you can't have both. If you're always working for credit, you don't get to influence because you can't do anything with it until you let it go. There's so many amazing lines from what you just said,

and I'm excited to pull from a lot of those threads. Okay. As a man, how much of the, I guess, behaviors coming from women are often subtle requests for feeling safe. Because I think you beautifully articulated how we kind of go about deriving a sense of safety in two different ways. And for the guys listening in, and also for the women to understand both themselves and in relation to a man, the subtle request for safety and the innumerable actions and behaviors that one might have, what do you think about that?

How much of it? Oh, golly. Spectrum. Spectrum. So for many women, it could be all of it. For others, there's times we're seeking safety, and other times we're seeking respect. Right?

Trust and respect are in the domain of productivity. and so we'll do something that seems the opposite of seeking safety. I mean, we're, can I say pissed? Okay. You don't draw the line there. Yeah, and we'll abandon safety because of how our anger is bigger than the fear in that moment. and we will come at you for what we see as a lack of respect. And I think it's why it's so important to ask.

And that's the biggest pitfall, I would say, of being human, that we don't ask. What do you need? And it could be, I need you to say, I'm sorry, I hurt your feelings. which is illogical to a man. How could I have hurt your feelings? I didn't punch you. That's an hour-long conversation.

Or I needed to take that back. I said this to a man a couple weeks ago. Take that back. It was an exaggeration and it was an insult. He took it back. I was not seeking safety in that moment. I was demanding. demanding truth, accuracy, and respect.

But that's actually pretty typical in human relationships that will speak up about what we truly need, desperately need, when the anger at not getting it is bigger than the fear of what they'll think of us for needing it. that's like one of the main things is at the root of those instances of being related we wait until we're furious because we're so afraid to reveal a weakness and need is a weakness and the instinct is just to hide it conceal it they should already know it yeah i feel like uh the journey of being able to pay attention, as a human being, pay attention to the subtleties, irrespective of communication is a beautiful skill set. But oftentimes we're in that case where it's just so much of our like struggle and strife

and relation would be solved by just simple communication and checking in and asking of questions and clarifying. One of my favorite words. Yeah. Clarify and verify. There we go. Start with it's. seems like instead of you're this way.

Yeah. There's a lot of very powerful reflections you give on just fundamental things that we presume and misunderstand about each other that really undermine our ability for a connection, right? And so I want to kind of go again for both of these. For women, one of the big things that I've heard you talk about is the tendency for emasculation or castration. And so there's a few of these I want to just like, I want to say and I want to hear you riff on where, why women do this and I suppose the antidote. So what are your thoughts on the ways in which women subtly emasculate men and how it undermines connection?

Oh my gosh. I have to start by saying what women do to men, women do to women and women do to themselves. And men are self-emasculating, and men emasculate other men. It's so normal to try to diminish someone's power to feel safe or to be productive, right? So there's some that are quite overt criticism, for example, outright denigration, just denigrating somebody, castigating them. But there's also what I would call the green, the green emasculation, you know, energy saving, all the ways of withholding. It's what you don't do. Withhold appreciation, withhold admiration, withhold accountability, which is something that women really don't understand.

Men also don't. There are things that are, there would be a privilege to be accountable for. And when the other person won't let us, they're going to tell us, like when man put it, you can tell me what to do or you can tell me how to do it, but not both. And we usually do both.

Honey, would you load the dishwasher? No, like this. and we withhold affection, we withhold sex. I know a woman who said, oh, I just don't feed him. Like literally withholding food. Withholding admiration, appreciation, participation, or sex. Participation is another one, yes. Accountability, affection, attention, withholding attention.

Women think men are ignoring them. Because we're really good at ignoring you. It's a subtle way to almost punish perceived male adaptive behavior or... Almost punish. Yeah, it's the attempt to, right? Or it does also in a relationship, yeah. Yeah. It's why I think if women really want to become masterful and interacting with men,

they should study video games. Yeah, video games are perfectly set up for what the committed, productive mind needs. And probably didn't expect me to say video games. Yeah, I mean, I can do this briefly. You get to be whoever you want to be, right? Pick your avatar. any move you make you get points any effort you get points bigger risks bigger points uh take a big risk fall off a cliff you're you don't have to go without sex for two weeks

you push the reset button try again do better what didn't i see what didn't i notice do better do better and then important for women who want a boyfriend or to get married the video game never makes you go to the next level. You can play the same level for decades. It'll never say, what are you? A commitment phobe? You don't want to go.

Next level of this video game, the Uber challenge. It's always choice, always choice, always choice. Video game doesn't punish you. Video game doesn't tell you an idiot you are. Video game doesn't say you're just like your father.

They're perfect. Video games are perfect. We have so much to learn from them. Interesting. Yeah. Another dynamic, I suppose, I don't know if it's, maybe it is a subtle version of punishing, but it's really just undermining connection is the withholding of quality information. And I know we've spoken to this a couple times throughout and just the how important

communication is fundamentally for a relationship to be well lubricated. But, yeah. Why is that the case? Why do we hold, withhold quality information? Well, one is, like, I got to say something about communication. Yes, most people just flat don't communicate. They think complaining is communication. They think criticism is communication.

Most people will do what they call communicating, which is a way to make sure someone else knows how upset they are. without being exposed, without being vulnerable. So withholding quality information, actionable information, ways to make a difference to have an impact, which women don't know men are always looking for how to have an impact. And many women are too. We all want to have an impact. If I were to give you actionable information, now I'm exposed, you could take me telling you what I need

and use it against me. You could attack it. You now know what to withhold. It's instinctual. It's instinctual to not tell. And part of the instinct, and especially in a productive state of mind, and I learned this from years of listening to men,

which I had to learn how to do, there's this thing that men say there's no point in stating the obvious. I mean, what a waste of time and energy to state the obvious. Obvious to who? Thank you. Yeah. Obvious so.

And even there's obviousness for productivity. There's obviousness for connectivity. So you have two people focused on two different things. What's obvious to do is going to be completely different. like what's obvious to the productivity is, you know, I have a solution to your problem. What's obvious to connectivity is listen to me. I don't want your solution. Why can't you just listen to me, right?

And then even like the productivity, connectivity obviousness is, I did a whole study once and it keeps evolving on there are actually fundamental. I mean, you could call them an Uber value, right? They're not just a value that someone decides. They're driven by, and what people are driven by creates obviousness. So, for example, can I just tell you? Yeah. We identified six.

Okay. We call them building, expressing, sharing, knowing, growing, and enjoying. And they affect everything. And we're all a combination, some percentage of all six of them, including you could have a zero percent of something. And they're why we do what we do. They're even, if you said at the end of your life,

what you're now at the end of your life what would you say was important about your life people will answer the question do you know or even what is the point of a relationship what's the point of relationship they'll answer the question from some combination of those six and each one of those six things creates obviousness obviously And until we're aware of it, we're, we can't become out loud with it and we heard each other's feelings. Like I went shopping with my daughter last weekend and trying to gauge, is this about productivity or connectivity? And is, are we getting something done or are we being together? Are we sharing this time together?

So this was navigating Walmart. So are we trying to get out of here fast? Or is this about being together? It's like if we had rose-colored tinted glasses on, it would appear obvious to us both that the world is rose, right? It looks like that, right? Of course. And it's just that reminder of what's obvious to us

is not always often obvious to others and to invite the curiosity to try to get somebody's reality as it's different. That perception is very different fundamentally from every single person's is from ours. And it's worse, even worse than that. We call it your hidden dominant drivers. Because you can see what a person is doing. What's invisible is why they're doing it. When you asked about heaven on earth, right now hearing the,

the domain of why I do everything I do. And I look like someone who's built a business. This is our 30th year, right? We're a publishing company. Holy moly. I mean, a few days ago, the Queen's Code was in 128 countries. Like, oh, Alison, you're such a builder. How did you build this? right? If you look closer, everything that was built was to serve what I have to express. I have to. Right. So there's all these, we have so many conflicts that are based on we don't know what matters the most to somebody, what they think the point of life and relationship in every moment is, why they spend their money the way that they do. know thyself, start there. You can see what you're doing. Now step back, why?

Why do I do it? And we don't have the same whys for being in relationship. Yeah. Someone who's driven by building, the why is likely to be support. It really seems, and I've heard you speak to this many times, where another issue when it comes to men or just relating in general, is when we become overwhelmed by somebody, we reduce them into a thing, into thingness. There's this objectification.

And I've heard you talk to that as the male equivalent objectification is, as equivalent as emasculation is. What do you think about objectification and how men tend to do it to women when we become overwhelmed is just, you know, we reduce them or others into a thing? Yeah. Well, it is the, it's the whale, and I thought it was men, right? And I used to talk about it the most as how pissed women get when they're objectified. But they are without words until maybe an hour later.

Yeah, that's what it's like to be emasculated. You just, the plug was just pulled out of the wall. No, no power. And, and so I originally saw it from that point of view. And then I dug deeper. And it's fundamental to being human that anything that we feel less than anything that seems bigger than us. It's funny that I picked up my tea cup right before you ask that, because this is a handle, right? This is the objectification. If I can name it, I can get a grip on it, I can make it do what I want. And so anything that we feel power less, like we have less power than we think we need to interact with it,

honestly, we put a label on it, that because that powerlessness has us feel very tense that is a threat and we hate that tension and so we just label it and we think if we can label it we can handle it we can manage it oh what uh right and and we take this complex multidimensional how many more centuries will it take for us to even no 10% of human potential, right? Like, we take all of that and call it this thing. Call it non-committal. Call it emotionally unavailable.

Favorite these days, narcissist. Yeah. Narciss, narcissist, narcissist, narcissist. I did a study on that one. You could lump all of human behavior well-threatened. male or female into that description. I looked it up on the official psychological, la-la-da-da. Like, oh, yeah, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, human, yeah.

Yeah, human, human, human, yeah. Fear, state of fear, how people behave in a state of fear. Some people are afraid all the time. But we just label it, and we, like we talk about in the Queen's Code, whether it's call a kid a brat, typical teenager, calling this human that we would die for that makes it just a little bit easier to interact with what we perceive as a lack of respect. We don't know that it's going both ways.

We deserve it. They don't. I mean, just that kind of label. We feel better. I think all objectification is about feeling better. and just having us think we can handle something that the moment before we couldn't handle it, just call it, call it something. And we do it to ourselves.

I'm such a fill in the blank. Yeah, it really feels like when we're, I guess, overwhelmed or whatever stimulus is beyond our current capacity, we close to it, you know? And it's the journey of becoming a matured human being who wants to take responsibility and grow where you are faced with challenging circumstances and relationship dynamics or whatever in life and to not close your heart to something that's challenging and reduce somebody into an other or a thing, you know, and that is, I think it's an important understanding because then you can start to be relationships as they are with the continual opportunity to grow and to keep your heart open, right? I've heard you share something, which is for women. If you give him a

power to handle you, he will not steal yours through objectification. Yes, yes, yes. What does that mean? What does that mean? Well, so it's in concert with emasculation, which, you know, the dictionary says to deprive of virility or power. And so there's a relationship between amasculation and objectification. And the more we amasculate, the more will be objectified.

And usually when people use the word objectification, they go to sex object object. They go to that kind of objectification instead of all the kinds of objectification. Like I said, like calling a two-year-old a brat. That's an objectification. And one of the things that if I could wave a magic one, and for women to understand, is we are clueless about the way that heterosexual men are affected by our sexuality, our sensual energy, our skin, our curves. I mean, if I could wave a magic wand,

it would be for a woman to walk around in a man's head and see through his eyes. And even to see the distinction between how a man is affected by sexual, sensual energy versus beauty because we collapse those. And the way that men are nurtured by beauty, it's like fumes, it's like being fed. And that because of that, your vision scans for it. It scans for beauty. And it's how the biggest gifts men gave me was to see women through men's eyes and to see the beauty,

to see the radiance, the sparkle, the glow, the love, and how it can be found in any woman. What some people would think of as a crone, right? Like, oh my gosh. And and then the hunger, the hunger that, that the curves and the skin and the central and sexual energy, the opposite. Like, this is all giving and this creates a desire to take it. and like a hunger. And it's become so sad for me that we don't understand the cause of effect. And it's part of what has us think men are terrible.

Terrible, terrible, terrible. And part of what, I don't know, what might help is how that women have the desire to take just as much. we it's just different what we're trying to take i want to take attention right you want to take security we want to take your strength and your resources and make sure they're purposed to provide for me and mine and we'll take it just go into any divorce courtroom and watch the taking going on or any singles bar i don't watch the attention attempts at taking and admiration, appreciation, acknowledgement, accountability, attention, all those things give men power.

Very practical application for all those things, just to give those things and realize how much they'll feed back into you. Yeah, even quality information. You give a man quality information. You've just given him the power to affect the impact that he wants to have. Why are men so affected by admiration or appreciation? I would say because of that productivity versus connectivity. So also link to providership?

Yes, and we should visit that, procreate, then protect, and provide, which is before gender, before human, before all that. But yes, it's linked to being productive, usually in order to provide. But if you think about how a human being is going to be able to be the most productive, if they're trusted and respected. That's how you get to be part of a team. That's how you get to go in the big game hunt. If you're not trusted and respected, you're chasing bunnies by yourself. And it'll never get any better.

So experiencing being trusted and respected is a source of security for a man. And if, for example, a man is married and his wife, wife keeps making sure he knows that she does not admire him, that she does not respect him, that he's not worthy of respect, then everything he's poured into what he's building, has been building with her, isn't safe. It's now in jeopardy. And so no security, no safety, no confidence, which means with faith. So no faith. No faith. So no faith. and this is a good place to keep spending who I am. This isn't a good place to keep providing, to keep giving.

So I interact with admiration, respect, and affinity. And it has to do with my whole research into what causes feeling love. And it admires is to hold up. You're something I'm not. and I think it's amazing what you are that I'm not. And respect is props to you. Respect is about strength. And affinity is about, I like you.

I like how you are. I don't need you to change. Keep being that. Any effort you spend on that is well worth it. And I end up talking to a lot of singles. And for both men and women, in whatever form, heterosexual spectrum, wherever it is, to let someone know what you like about them, I like that about you. Deep breath.

I really like that about you. And especially since we usually do. dislike ways that somebody's different or what's wrong with you that you think that way instead of, whoa, you solved that in a completely different way than I would have. I like that about you. Yeah, that acknowledgement and appreciation of our differences is so fundamental and it's so often where we go wrong, where we started often earlier of, you know, men, women thinking that men are misbehaving women and men often think that women are, what were the words he used?

Scattered, emotionally indulgent men. It was a man who gave me those roots. Yeah, I mean, that makes sense. And one of my first, like, longer-term relationships, that was a big thing that came up with comparing, instead of appreciating the differences like you're speaking to, comparing other to self is almost a standard of perfection, you know, which is funny how we do that. Interesting, right? Very interesting. And really how suffocating it is, not only for herself, but obviously for the bandwidth of what somebody else can be and show up in a relationship.

But yeah, that was one pattern that came up with the comparison of, you know, her not being as dialed in with her spiritual practice and, you know, groundedness and coming up to face with yet another area in which we limit, you know, true connection. And where can we appreciate the differences in our current partnership versus continually comparing and this unreachable for anybody's standard of perfection. Another dynamic here is there is this fundamental need for men and desire to provide with this sometimes in modern living, especially women struggling with the capacity to receive and access and tap into their femininity.

And of course, the dynamic between both affects one another. but for women that want to truly learn how to receive, which is such the beautiful gift of having more feminine energy, what would you say is the main thing that they can do to do so? Or perhaps it's a lack of doing something. Oh, boy. Well, I would say first to become aware of the things that are going to get in the way. and but I need you to know that I have spent a lot of time teaching men how to receive

because we both we suck at it. We all suck at it. One of the things that help so that we can see it when it arises are the things that will prevent receiving. So for example, that reciprocity and precisely, reciprocity, which is part of the connective focus, if you're trying to give to me something that I can't give back to you, by receiving it from you, the belief is that by letting you give me that, by letting you give me that, I am now creating an obligation that I can't afford to pay.

you want to take me where you want to treat me to that no like no so i can take it from you i can convince myself i've already earned it i'm such an important person of course you're going to provide that right so there's deserving which means is related to worthy which is related to worthy which related to equal to, deserving means to be equal to by acts or qualities. So I've either done something like I was born. There's class deserving entitlement or I've done something like I've spent nine months of my precious reproductive life with you. You owe me a marriage. proposal, even if I think I'd be stupid to say yes, you owe it to me. Right? So there's all this stuff about deserving, right? Huge. I'm actually going to do a thing in 2025.

The working title right now is feels like love looks like math. Because it is all math. So deserving, the deserving equation we don't want to take more than we think we deserve because then I'll, oh, I'll have an obligation. So, no, no, I don't deserve that. I don't deserve that. I don't deserve that. I don't deserve that. I tease people about this, that, you know, birthday gifts are not a compensation for having lived

another year. They're called a gift because you don't deserve them. All gifts, deserving is relevant. That's what makes it a gift. And that's why gift exchange. Yeah. I mean, that's what those instances of being related could be as an upward spiral, but everyone's having to practice giving and receiving and giving and receiving and deserving.

And deserving is irrelevant. And so it's the beautiful thing about men and women in all contexts. there are things that are not only the easy for me to give, I have to give them. I have to give them. To be fulfilled, I have to give them to you. So if you won't receive them from me. Yeah. It's almost robbing you of your own needs.

Not almost. Yeah, it is. Not almost. It is if you won't let me give them to you. Not like, okay, you can set it over here. but value it and vice versa and that's what's so interesting because there are things that can be easy for me to give, I can even need to give that are priceless to you and things that you can give to me that the value from your side seems little and I'm honoring you by receiving it

and it's priceless to me. Yeah. I mean these are the stairways to heaven. Otherwise, we're robbing each other the joy of giving to each other, which is so good. And robbing the other person to receive the joy that they're giving. It's that reciprocity. My husband called that the great trick because he was such, he was just providing, providing, providing all the time. And there was something I wanted to provide for him. And he just was a total block. and it happened so much and I was so hurt.

I finally screamed at him. Do you think you're the only person in this relationship that needs to give? And he was like, are you like, what? Huh? Yeah, he called it the great trick. And he was forever grateful for the great trick. And he did improve greatly from that much, much better. But he still, I had to work on the other side as well, which I never got in place.

He died before it got in place of saying when I would say thank you for what he provided for him to say, you're welcome. to own that he did it on purpose, to own that the impact that was happening over here, he meant to cause that. Instead of, it's nothing. He usually wouldn't say anything. Thank you. And he just won her way in.

I mean, I would not be with, there's such lame names for it, boyfriend, sweetheart, lover, playmate. adventure buddy. I wouldn't be with Dan if it were not, that he has a phenomenal ability to receive and a phenomenal ability to own that he gave on purpose. And his, you're welcome.

It heals me again and again and again. Thank you for that. You're welcome. And even when I'm not saying thank you, like the first time I talked to him on the phone and he said something that really rattled me. Oh gosh, I was so rattled. And I finally, I just called it. Okay, I was going to go in one direction. You went in a different direction and my nervous system is whacked right now.

Could you just hold space for a few minutes so I could reset? Sure. And then it took like less than 30 seconds because his space was a staunt. I was like, oh my gosh, your space is amazing. You're welcome. I did that on purpose and said, ah, that's nothing. No, I did it on purpose. I love seeing couples that really take the responsibility.

for the power that our love has to transform one another. And earlier on, you know, as like in our journey, I feel like there can be a lot of competitionary energy, you know, and it's counterintuitive to where you think in a relationship, right? There's these complementary balances and appreciation of differences, but often that's not the case. You know, there's more of a competition. And so what do you see is the role both a man can have with a woman and vice versa,

but the tunnel of prince becoming king, you know, and maybe a princess becoming queen. What is that tunnel and how we can really support each other and the evolution of who are becoming? I'm tackling because I wondered if you're aware of the stages of development. But may I say something about competition first? Sure. Okay.

I do a couple hours on this, so I'm just going to cut to the taste. Remember when I was talking about discerning me and not me? One of the consequences of seeing me, sameness, if you see sameness, if you see sameness, and it's an equation, sameness plus scarcity equals competition. I call it game on. And it's all perception. perception of sameness plus a perception of scarcity game on sibling rivalry whatever's perceived as scarce some families it's food some families it's approval some families it's support or resources or

attention right but the more same a boy and a girl have a better chance than two brothers or two sisters right identical twins I'm sorry. Right? So, I mean, we can disconnect competition in any situation just by looking for how are we unique? How are we complimentary? And is this really scarce? Seriously?

Isn't there enough? Doesn't have to even be abundant? It just has to be enough. And then it's over. But what you're speaking to is one of the reasons why I encourage people to not be afraid of age differences. Because when there's a certain kind of age difference can make it okay, for example, for someone to be more successful than another person. Well, Greg was almost 11 years older than me. He was situated, right?

And he had a lot of space to support me and finding my way. And we didn't compete. At least not in that whole domain. And it doesn't matter who's older, right? As long as there's a respect for where the other person's at. Instead of, well, when I was your age, oh, great. Your younger self is now going to compete with me? Thanks a lot.

I thought we were avoiding that. So it's, yeah, competition can be disconnected just by, you know, stop, drop, look. Yeah. And then a tunnel. Whole body work, almost four hours of recordings in the two different amazing development of men. But I love to update people. The more a woman is focused on productivity, the more she's going to experience stages of development. She will be a night in a prince.

hopefully turn out a queen instead of a king, but that's okay. Either way. I didn't know this until and I had had the worst six months of my life and found myself saying, I'm not interested in that. That's king speak. King say I'm not interested in that and mean it. They're not going to spend a shred of anything on it. Oh, I've been in the tunnel. No wonder that was horrible. So some things I've discovered since all the things I recorded on it is that the tunnel appears to begin with an awareness of everything, I'm just going to say a person, has done or not done, to be acceptable to other people. to be approved of, to be accepted, to win something that looks like respect. So it starts with becoming aware of all the ways that they betrayed themselves in order

to be accepted and approved of. And then foreseeing it and realizing the betrayal and experiencing shame. Not shamed by anybody else. The real private only takes us knowing what we did. Shame. Which good people experience shame. Men and women, good people experience shame. And then there's a being with that shame instead of getting stuck in it. I'm a horrible person. labeling. I am so weak. All those kinds of things.

Or why? It's because my mother was a narcissist. All these tried of escaping. So being able to be with it. And then, and I didn't know this until a few years ago, the coming out of the tunnel besides the clarity. I mean, the most beautiful thing about shame is you find out who you are by what you're ashamed of.

What did I betray? In that answer is your real self, right? That's awesome. Oh, my gosh. Oh, my gosh. So that clarity, by being able to go into the shame instead of trying to escape that horrible feeling, find the gold in it,

this is who I am. And then the last part is, okay, I'm willing to pay the price of being true to myself. even if I'm going to lose that person's approval, that group's respect, that group's acceptance, yes, I will pay the price to be true to myself. And that's the exit of the tunnel. And it's, and in this way, becoming a king and a queen, exactly the same. This is who I am.

and even it seemed to have a relationship to hormones. And I couldn't wait to be 60 years old because in my estimation, women that age, they were just unstoppable. I want to be that. And just a few weeks ago, Dan and I got into this really serious thing. this is deal breaker up with which I will not live ever. And hard, hard conversation, something he's known about since the very beginning. And at the end of it, I said, I love you.

And he said, I love you too. And then I looked at him, I said, but you don't really like me right now. And he said, no. No, I don't. And I checked the system. I had no reaction. I mean, more estrogen, 10 years before, that would, I would have burst into tears. I'm going to die.

He doesn't like me. He's not going to protect me. I'm going to die. No, I checked the whole system. It was fine. It was just fine that he didn't like me right then. Yeah, I'm tempted just to ask you about as you've aged, how has your evolution of seeing men and the dynamics and relationship evolve?

Because there's just so many things that I think we are under the assumption of as younger individuals about what relationships are, about what success and beauty is, for example. I know so many women that fear getting older, you know, and that see as society places the kind of subjective worth of a man in his success in the world and a woman in her beauty, right? Or even appearance more in the objectified sense. And as you age, that's seen to decrease for a woman. But I see you embrace the perspective that life can very much so just keep getting more beautiful, you know? That's, I think, a really important thing to remember for everybody that's listening.

This is true. And I keep looking and I keep looking. There is no amount of money, no amount of money that someone can pay me to go back even to two weeks ago. To a month ago, six months ago, no way. A year ago. I think like the more we let go, the more we release, do you know, and it's one of my spiritual practices, I formally do release work three times a week. And sometimes for more than an hour at a time, my releasing partner just laughs at me.

I tell her what's going on. she just laughs, laughs, laughs, laughs, and it just all floats away. But something as simple, for example, is preferences. About a year and a half ago, I realized how much I was driven by my preferences and my preferences and I just started just letting, just releasing, releasing, releasing, having preferences, having my preferences be catered to, just let it go, let it go. I also, you know, I'm a girl. It's one of the first things I told Dan, I'm an extraordinary woman.

I'm a human girl who makes courageous choices as many times a day as I can. And as one of the things I love about a mom that kept me having a human girl moment. Okay, what does your human girl need? Could you just hold me? Sure. You know, it's the best. which I think is also a part of, I see it in women in their 30s and 40s, and I just want to save them from it. Accepting the whole thing.

And I made a commitment when I was 48 when a woman in a course said, it's my birthday at the microphone in front of 150 women. I was like, happy birthday. And she said, I'm 37. I was like, yay. She's, you're supposed to say I look young for my age. Like, okay. And then I couldn't stop thinking about it. Like, why am I supposed to say that?

Why do we care that somebody says that? And I, and I, and that's when I, it just, like, was dead. obvious, right, that youth equals beauty. And we think we're going to lose our beauty by getting older. But I've been hanging out with men, right? Men talk about radiance. There's a woman from Japan. He said, is there a kind of beauty that every woman can have?

Yeah. It's called radiance. It's the light that can come. come off of our skin and out of our eyes and an honest to goodness smile, a real smile. My son said a real smile fills him up for a whole day. Any woman smiling at him. Like, he'll have a whole day of energy from that, you know, not welcome to Walmart. You're sorry, all right?

And so I just took it on. I've been coloring my hair for like 20 years because I didn't like the color of it. I grew it out about that long and then had it all cut off. You can see pictures of me on some things. I chopped it all off, find out what's under there. And just this, okay, I, no matter what I see in the mirror, I'm going to embrace the beauty of my age. The beauty of my age, the beauty of my age. I wear a tinted sunscreen.

I don't cover it all up, do you know? Then there's no radiance. There's perfection, flawlessness, right? It's one of the things I love about my best friend. She's not cut up. She hasn't done something to not be her age. And she's my role model, right? She is totally my role model for, I can't even call it getting older,

because she just refuses. She just keeps being herself. and it's just stunning, right, in her being, in her wisdom and her everything. So I think it's one of the gifts of getting older if you don't try to hang on. And very wise woman just this last weekend, we were talking about being comfortable in our bodies. Everyone's trying to be comfortable in their bodies and they want to change their gender to be comfortable about all bodies. and there's all this conversation about it. And she said, I just can't help it.

I just think it's a spiritual disconnect. And I said, what did you mean? She said, as if we're supposed to be comfortable in these things, as if any of us is supposed to be comfortable in these. That's silly. We don't believe this isn't us. Why should we feel at home here? It isn't us.

we've misidentified who we are. And one of our courses, we talk about what happens if you call it this body. This body. Instead of my body, this body. Well, now there's two of us, and we can be partners. And you can't be partners until there's two of you. And so many people are at war with my body and what's wrong with me that my body is like this. So more acceptance, more distance, more.

space more everything it's a really spacious just perspective the the acceptance of growing older whatever you want to call it the um it's just more and more time to unlock that radiance and to like discover what your uniqueness is and your creative urges and your gifts and like you just get more time to reveal that and share that and um yeah i love i love that your son said that right about the smile up for a day. That's the genuine, like a genuine sincere smile is so powerful. And I think we, and I have so much compassion for a woman in a society that stuffs down people's throat, the programming of value in solely appearance, you know? And so, so yeah, thank you for sharing that. I think that's important. I think that's going to resonate with a lot of people.

I once did a whole day having men come to the microphone in front of COVID audience. The question was, what's the relationship between beauty and perfection? And man after man after man came to the microphone and says, nothing. They have nothing to do with each other. And they tell about, you know, my wife, her teeth overlap in the front. and she hates that imperfection. And to me, it's part of her beauty. And that day transformed me.

And I was telling a man that was there, that sitting the volunteer meeting at the end and looking at every woman as she spoke and seeing something so beautiful in her, right? And things that we wouldn't think, right? Like, oh, that ought to be different. That would be different. And I'm like, oh.

And when I shared it, he looked at me, he goes, good. Now you see women as we do. But it's something women don't know. You guys, you guys scan for beauty because you're fed by it. We scan for imperfection because we think we have to fix it in order to survive, in order to live, in order for you to save us. We think you'll save the most perfect of us and let the rest of us die. Wow. We do. And if you're mad at me, for sure, you're just going to say, Tiger, take her away.

You want mustard with that? We don't know that you don't, you consider it dishonorable to not do the right thing because of how you feel. You could hate somebody and still risk your life to save them because of who you are. Yeah. Women don't know that. I really like feeling into and just seeing how our view on relationships in general change as we grow as a, you know, and evolve as a being. And there's this one quote I wanted to share that I read from this book called Awareness by Anthony Demello. And it's a very interesting segment that I just wanted to, I want to hear what you think of it.

Okay. Okay. Okay. Where there is love, there are no demands, no expectations, no dependency. I do not demand that you make me happy. My happiness does not lie in you. If you were to leave me, I will not feel sorry for myself. I enjoy your company immensely, but I do not cling.

Can you enjoy the relationship on a non-clinging basis where what you really enjoy is not that person, it's something that's greater than that? than both you and the other person. It's a kind of symphony, a kind of orchestra that plays one melody in one person's presence, but when he or she departs, the orchestra does not stop.

When I meet someone else, it plays another melody, which is also very delightful. And when I'm alone, it continues to play. There's a great repertoire, and it never ceases to play. What do you think about that?

Do you agree? Okay, I would give you two. short responses to that. Contrast. If it hurts, it isn't love, period. It's attachment, its dependency, its expectation, its meaning attached, that's not love. If it hurts, it is not love.

And the other thing I would tell you is when I was in my 30s with three little kids, I was terrified that Greg was going to die. And I was talking to the first bonified psychic I'd ever met. Like, how do you know that kind of thing? and she said, she said, I see you walking down the street and you're old. You're an old woman and you're surrounded by Greg's love. And I was like, and I thought that meant he hadn't died. But when he did die, 2019, I felt his exhilaration at being free. of a body that was always too slow for him.

That's why he rode motorcycles. Very. And I had a hard time grieving like a normal person, especially that people would say, oh, Greg's gone. Look around. Can't you feel him? He was showing up all over the place,

whispering in people's ear, telling them this, giving them this message, tell her this. I mean, completely. completely disruptive. And what she said is true. And I plan on being a really old woman, and I'm still surrounded by his love. An idea that we can lose it, that it goes away, if the person goes away, it's a

misunderstanding of love. It is infinite, is eternal, and how much access we have. have to it is us. It's our access to it. It doesn't change. I love how alive your relationship is still with him to this very day. And I think a lot of people who have the unfortunate experience of a loved one passing away can continue to hang on to what they gave them that is no longer present or the things that are missing from that connection instead of the continual celebration of what that unique connection gave and it had to be in the celebration that you got to spend the time that you did with somebody like that.

Yes, and it's more than that, Andre. He's not gone. And what if nobody is? I mean, I have a, I wasn't afraid of, like, death itself. I'm sorry, I have too many memories of former lifetimes to think this is all there is, and that may sound weird. And then channeling the Queens Code. Like, how do you have this screen open in a movie play and you type as fast as you can?

And I didn't invent the characters. I didn't invent the story. Everything I can validate with research, but have enough of those kind of experiences. And also just someone asked me once, like, what do? we fundamentally need to transform if we're going to have the kind of relationships we really want. And what was right there was our perception of scarcity, the one, a planet of eight billion people, and there is the one. How about ultimate expression of scarcity? So our perception of scarcity and our relationship to death

because when you said that people unfortunately have lost someone autumn in New York there's a line in that movie 100% of relationships and badly

nobody escapes it yeah spoiler alert none of us make it out of this thing alive exactly spoiler alert and and when The way that I think of it, Andre, because I think I'm normal, right? I think I'm normal. And so if anything I experience, anybody can experience.

And I've been fortunate to be with people with all different kinds of sense of perception. And I think of it, they're like channels on a radio. the frequencies. And, you know, if you've ever been in another country or another part of this country and you tune into a radio station and it makes no sense whatsoever, but you can't find another one, right? You're on a road trip, so you just leave it on. And then after a while, you're like, oh, yeah, I get it.

I get it. And then, like, you may not know what that word means, but you get, you feeling it. And I think it's all of life is like that. Like what if love is a set of vibrations it's your choice to tune in? And maybe a beautiful relationship is one that helps you tune in. Well, you don't have to tune out, right? Because they're not there with you. or what if people

Suzanne Geesman calls them people in spirit what of people who aren't incorporated anymore in one of these funny how this is called corporal right what if unincorporated humans uncorporalated humans what if it's a different frequency and we just have to tune in

and listen for a while And, you know, a couple weeks where my dad died, I said, I'm, Dad, if I'm sorry if I don't seem broken up about this, but I know you're going to have this experience, it'll take a while for you to get used to it, and then we'll talk story again. There's nothing that's going to be over. And we can get all about it or, hmm,

what don't I know about that? Who has something powerful they might be able to show, me and who relates to the thing that I'm struggling with in the way that I wish I could relate to it. Okay, how do I get there? Allison, this conversation has been filled with so much insight. I could keep going for hours and hours. And it's just been so lovely getting to connect with you and build this new friendship.

And yeah, I just wanted to open the floor for any last words that you have before we close out, if you have any. Thank you. It's thank you. Thank you for doing what you do. Thank you for all the people and the, I would think of it as access, right? Like, where do you want to go pick a road? And you make so many roads, so many paths available to people in, in, know thyself, like, just tapping.

and where do you light up? Go with the road that lights you up. So I'm grateful. I'm grateful for what you do. Thank you fully received. I received that. And yeah, thank you for what I feel like is a very unique entry point and pathway for people to explore on this platform, but also beyond as you have a whole world that people can tap into, which will leave links

for down in the description below. Is it Alison Armstrong.com? Yep. Okay. And Queen's Code and eventually the King's Code, which I know is in the ethers starting to get downloaded. Movie trailers. Whoa. Yeah.

Phenomenal. Thank you so much. Really appreciate you. And for everybody that's been tuning into this episode of the Know Thyself podcast, please let us know what in particular resonated and was impactful for you in this conversation. And until next time, be well. Thank you.