Modern Wisdom - #634 - Sadia Khan - How To Navigate The Dangers Of Modern Dating

Episode Date: May 29, 2023

Sadia Khan is a relationship coach, author, speaker, and psychologist. The divorce rate has been on a steady rise for decades. But are relationships actually getting harder, or is everyone just more f...ragile? The word trauma is thrown around an awful lot, but it covers all manner of sins, many of which are not trauma. Expect to learn what people are getting most wrong about relationship advice, the factors that best predict divorce and a declining relationship, why the word trauma and its true meaning have become perverted, the insidious reason behind why partners incite chaos in some relationship, Sadia’s thoughts on the growing childlessness epidemic, whether Dubai is actually an Islamic haven & much more... Sponsors: Get 10% discount on Marek Health’s comprehensive blood panels at https://marekhealth.com/modernwisdom (use code: MODERNWISDOM) Get £150 discount on Eight Sleep products at https://eightsleep.com/modernwisdom (discount automatically applied) Get over 37% discount on all products site-wide from MyProtein at https://bit.ly/proteinwisdom (use code: MODERNWISDOM)  Extra Stuff: Follow Sadia on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/sadiapsychology/ Get my free Reading List of 100 books to read before you die → https://chriswillx.com/books/ To support me on Patreon (thank you): https://www.patreon.com/modernwisdom - Get in touch. Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/modernwisdompodcast Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact/  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Starting point is 00:00:00 Hello friends, welcome back to the show. My guest today is Sadiya Khan, she's a relationship coach, author, speaker, and a psychologist. The divorce rate has been on a steady rise for decades, but are relationships actually getting harder, or is everyone just more fragile? The word trauma is thrown around an awful lot, but it covers all manner of sins, many of which are not trauma. Expect to learn what people are getting most wrong about relationship advice, the factors that best predict divorce and a declining relationship, why the word trauma and its meaning
Starting point is 00:00:32 have become perverted, the insidious reason behind why partners incite chaos into some relationships, saddie's thoughts on the growing childlessness epidemic, whether Dubai is actually an Islamic haven and much more. on the growing childlessness epidemic, whether Dubai is actually an Islamic haven and much more. Some interesting insights here. I appreciate getting the viewpoint of someone not only who comes from an Islamic background, but also is trained in the therapeutic
Starting point is 00:00:57 and sort of trauma care side of psychology. A lot of interesting bits here, especially the one around much men's advice at the moment tells men that they're supposed to be self-disciplined in every area of life, up until the boundaries around their penis, at which point they're no longer supposed to be disciplined. I think that that is going to be a talking point you're going to see, and awful lot more over the remainder of the year. It is some fairly blatant hypocrisy that I don't think men's advice is managed to square the circle of just yet. Interesting stuff.
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Starting point is 00:04:59 But now ladies and gentlemen, please welcome... Sadia Khan. What's your background for the people that don't know you? My name is Sábia. I am a relationship coach. I used to be a psychology teacher. I studied psychology and then I went on to do my masters in psychotherapy and education. So I was teaching psychology for many, many years in London and Dubai. And then only about a year ago, about a year or so ago, I decided to kind of give a little bit of the relationship advice that I learned in my studies.
Starting point is 00:05:51 I thought let me just post one or two videos and because it seems like there's a gap of understanding in the market, I just saw so many podcasts teaching the wrong things. I thought let me just give a little bit of advice and it kind of went a little bit big on social media. So now I stop teaching and I've gone into full-time relationship coaching. What is it that you see on the internet with regards to relationship advice that was the most egregious? What were people getting most wrong that let a fire under your psychology background? I think what I couldn't understand is why we were pitting men and women against each other. I couldn't understand that battle.
Starting point is 00:06:31 I didn't understand what positive outcomes could ever come from making men think women are users and abusers and they're awful and women thinking men are dangerous and aggressive and cheats. I couldn't understand where this anger and hostility was coming from and more so I didn't understand how it's gonna benefit people by thinking like this. So I just wanted to debunk some of this kind of the zeitgeist to just kind of hate the opposite gender.
Starting point is 00:07:00 Why do you think that has become so prevalent? I think what's happened is, firstly, it's great for clickbait. It's fantastic for like because lonely people are attached to what they see on the internet the most. So when you're saying something that triggers the people that have been hurt, they are going to share, repost, watch, etc. So when we tap into vulnerable people or people who have been broken on her, we're going to get more views.
Starting point is 00:07:25 We're going to blow up quicker and easier. So I think tapping into online success, they want to divide and conquer that's always a best strategy. The other thing is that a lot of people actually haven't had relationship experiences, especially the younger generation. They haven't had that much experience. So they learn a lot of it from watching online and watching memes and so on and so forth. So I think it's become people's template. They use the internet as a template for relationships if
Starting point is 00:07:52 they've been modeled at home. And as a result, that's why they stick to the information that they're getting online. I tweeted literally just before we got started, the cynicism safety blanket, cynicism is a guarded response, you're setting yourself up against disappointment, it's rule within the system is to protect you against experiencing anything bad, it is a preemptive strike against a perceived threat. If I tell myself that all women are bad, then I'm less likely to seek a relationship with women and as a consequence, I'm never going to feel the pain of rejection. If I tell myself that everything is shit or that things will never get better, then I'm excused of ever having to try anything. It's more
Starting point is 00:08:33 comfortable to get fatalistic and call it pragmatism. The cope is framing hope as pathetic and embarrassing and optimism as delusion. It sower grapes at an existential level. If everything sucks and everyone is horrible and reality is disappointing and you know that for a fact, it's the people acting like things can be better that are dumb, delusional and the problem. The upside of never having to feel the pain of failure. That's a very impressive post, Chris.
Starting point is 00:09:01 What can I say? My point being that I think if someone, we have a generalized risk aversion at the moment, young people are getting their driving license later, they're having less casual sex, they're drinking alcohol less, they're taking fewer drugs, they are starting getting jobs later in life, it's slow life strategy, everything is getting pushed out because people don't deal with risk particularly well. And even if you're a Sigma male Jimmy Mo, it's still the same on your side too that you're prepared to do hard things, but only within the bounds of what you consider to
Starting point is 00:09:36 be acceptably hard. And yeah, this adversarial relationship or nature that's being sort of positive is men and women are each other's enemies, something that I've noticed. And the same thing goes for, I guess, people just being concerned about, okay, what does the future hold? I will take all of my cues about this from the internet. Yeah, exactly that. What happens is, especially when we have low self-esteem, when we've got low self-esteem, the ego has to find ways to defend itself. We need to defend our ego because we don't have pure self-love and self-esteem. And the quickest and easiest way to defend your ego is by rejecting what may reject you. If I
Starting point is 00:10:14 quickly say, oh, who wants abs, I don't have to go to the gym. If I quickly say, oh, God, men are trash, I don't have to work on myself to sustain a positive relationship. If I quickly reject what I believe will reject me, I don't have to work on myself to sustain a positive relationship. If I quickly reject what I believe or reject me, I then defend myself against the possibility of any kind of new trauma. So it's usually a trauma response, but really it's stemming from low-sophage team. And that's what it screams to me when I see these people who are trying to divide men and women and almost take pleasure of insulting the opposite gender. I just never understood it. and almost take pleasure out of insulting the opposite gender. I just never understood it.
Starting point is 00:10:45 Shared hatreds are much more cohesive than shared loves and getting people to bind together over the mutual distaste of an out group is significantly easier than the mutual love of an in-group, which is why they're incentives online for creators to do this. Exactly that, because here's the thing, not every creator is trying to change
Starting point is 00:11:06 your life for the better. Most creators are trying to sell you something, they're trying to get popularity, they're designed to polarise, they're designed to kind of make it online. Anybody could say the same for me, they're saying like, oh, you're trying to blow up in all this stuff, which I hope people know that's not really the intention, but the reality is most creators are creating, they're not actually healing. And the problem is they appeal to the young market because there's a gap, the older psychologists who understand all the academic references and all of those things, they don't understand the young market of dating. And because of that huge gap, the young people are thinking, I don't need to go to an expert, I'll just go to this podcast with that guy and this girl. And they'll tell me because they get it. They
Starting point is 00:11:48 don't get it. They just get you. They get what you're going through and want to manipulate your vulnerabilities and it would have for you to become a consumer of this. I've heard you say that current dating is just practicing for divorce. What does that mean? It means you're learning the tools and skills required to recover from a breakup rather than how to maintain a marriage. So you are learning how to make somebody jealous, how to move on quickly, how to meet somebody new, how to play hard to get, how to play games, how to essentially ensure your relationship will not make it through the tough times. You are not learning how to sustain and maintain and how to debunk some of the behaviors in
Starting point is 00:12:29 yourself that are toxic to the relationship. You're just learning how to categorize every ex of yours as an artist, but not about what behaviors or traits in you attract or even are narcissistic. So I think the current dating climate is purely, how do I move on? How do I protect myself? How do I not get to attach? Catch flights, not feelings. That culture is what we're being taught. I guess this is similar to what we said before, the risk of version, the guarded response. Exactly that. That's what it is. I mean, in your opinion, have you noticed that as well? Like from a man's perspective, I mean, I've noticed it as a woman because I remember trying
Starting point is 00:13:07 to share something positive about men. And I couldn't find a meme online. I was looking and scrolling, I was trying to find something to show how lovely it is when you're loved by a man. And I scrolled for hours and hours and I couldn't find anything. But when I try and look for a meme that will say, men are this, men are that. Within a second. And then that was my wake up moment.
Starting point is 00:13:26 Because I was just like, even if I wanted to say something positive about my partner, I can't find anything online. And then I realized that it is a culture of getting you to hate men. Is it the same for men? Do you find that the same kind of culture as being trying to be breathed? Certainly in terms of men having distaste for women,
Starting point is 00:13:48 you know, like don't worry King, you don't need her. She's just a hoe in any case, like Sigmund, Sigmund, Meele, Meele, Meele's abound. Yeah. There's a lot less positivity from men to men generally. I think that there are still pro women, women cohorts, but there are fewer pro men male cohorts. And that's partly just because of the trend.
Starting point is 00:14:14 Everyone says women will give people compliments and not mean them, men will take the piss out of each other and not mean it. It's that kind of balance. But it can mean, think about Jordan Peterson, right? Why he came onto the scene so much and he used to tear up all the time telling the same story, which was,
Starting point is 00:14:33 these men have never had a positive word told to them their entire lives. They've never been encouraged. They've never been told that they are worthy of love or acceptance or praise or validity or any of that. Why did that message resonate? Because so many men felt and still do feel like no one sees them, that life can be hard, that they do have emotions, that they do want to open up, that they do need support, that they do want to be praised in a way,
Starting point is 00:14:58 and because there is nothing deeper, I think, because there is still a challenge in maybe men opening up themselves, some of the boundaries of that have been broken, but the boundaries of men responding to men that have opened up definitely still exist in a massive, massive way. So, okay, what are the ways in which I can get some validation from the world? Well, success, money, cars, education, women, status, prestige, dominance, aggression, you know, all of these, they're like proxies for what a lot of men want. And that's not to say, I want all of those things as well, right? But they're proxies for what
Starting point is 00:15:38 men miss, I think, more spiritually and existentially. Yeah, I absolutely agree. I feel like in my work, when I've worked with men who have turned to prostitution and who have turned to pornography addiction, a lot of the time, especially when they turn to prostitution, or even just a gold digger, they're so hurt when she doesn't like them back. So they're not paying for sex. They're actually paying for intimacy.
Starting point is 00:16:07 And I always tell them, you can't buy intimacy. You can't buy it. This girl, you can buy her a bag and you can have sex with her, but you're craving connection. And that is something you can't buy. And the reason they're craving connection is because, hey, they don't know where to find it. And also, they're being told, if they do look for connection,
Starting point is 00:16:24 they're a simp. That word simp gets thrown around. So we've almost shamed men for wanting and craving connection. And I can say, in honesty, the men that cheat, the men that turn to pornography, the men that turn to escorts, I'm very non-judgmental because I understand behind every self-sabotaging behavior there is a need that has not been met for a real long time. And for that need to be met, they turn to self-destructive behaviour as a coping mechanism. So I definitely think that we've got a crisis of men seeking intimacy, but believing that it's wrong. And the culture and the internet is also teaching them that it's wrong.
Starting point is 00:17:01 So they're secretly craving it and then secretly finding outsourcing it in the wrong ways. Simping for women is wanting emotional connection, but somehow buying her a bag and flying her all over the world is not simping and that's the alpha male way to do stuff. It seems like the vast of it's being turned off. It's been so long, right?
Starting point is 00:17:22 Yeah, okay, so you've said, current dating is just practicing for divorce. There's a lot of talk about the fragility of long-term relationships and divorce rates going up. You've actually done some research looking at what predicts divorce. What did you find? Well, I have to give credit where credit is true, but the most longstanding research into a marriage and relationships was by the Gottmann institution. And they did the most scientific and objective
Starting point is 00:17:55 analysis of relationships. And they studied 10,000 couples in a lab over a couple of days. And they were able to predict with 80% accuracy which couples would stay together and which couples would stay together and which ones would get divorced within a year. And it was so simple, what they were able to find. And it was simple thing as responding to each other's bids for connection. What I mean by this is when we have a partnership
Starting point is 00:18:19 where one person comes home and expresses an emotion, the other one picks up on it, that partnership has the base levels to last a really long time. So it could be a simple thing like you come home from work and say, oh, I'm so tired. And your partner says, why, what's wrong? Simple connection. From that connection, they've trust each other and then they start to lean into each other. But if you come home and you're like, I'm so tired and your partner either says nothing or says, why are you tired? I'm the one that's been with the kids all day or what have you done all day?
Starting point is 00:18:47 I've been at work all day. That turning away from each other's emotional needs is the training ground for divorce. They are now setting themselves up for divorce and it might not happen today, it might not happen tomorrow, it might last another 10, 15 years, but we get emotionally exhausted by having partners who reject our kind of advances for connection and eventually the relationship ends. Why is it the case then that divorce rates are rising? If that's the biggest predictor, if that's 80% accuracy of being able to predict, why
Starting point is 00:19:21 has that specific trait changed so much over the last 50 years? Distractions. Distractions, distractions, distractions, there are alternatives to everything. Even if you want to meal, you'll have 50 alternatives on Uber Eats. You want to go out to eat those 50 places that you could go. You want to watch something, there's 50 alternatives, or what to watch. There are so many alternatives to every single aspect of life that it makes it almost impossible to invest in one. Everybody and everything becomes disposable.
Starting point is 00:19:53 So what's happening is when your partner comes home a bit tired or stressed, it may be in the past you'd pick up on it, but now you're on your phone. Or maybe when your partner wanted to watch a series that you didn't care about, in the past you may have been like, okay, it's fine, I'll just get on with it, there's nothing else on. Now, like you watch this, I'm going to watch that. There's so many alternatives to everybody, and every person is now becoming so disposable, that we can no longer have the patience to invest in people's emotional needs.
Starting point is 00:20:22 And we're becoming so hedonistic that our emotional needs come first. And we're being taught this in society more and more. We've always talked about put you first, self-esteem, self-assurance, self-actualization. The word self is kind of programmed in our psyche and the collectivism that we used to have as a site is gone. So we're no longer getting happiness from somebody else's happiness. It's a selfish pursuit now, unfortunately. Isn't it strange that the trait of focusing not on somebody else's desire for connection is causing you to turn inward. That is causing divorces to increase down the line, which means that people respond to that by being more defensive, by being more guarded and more cynical, which makes them turn further inward,
Starting point is 00:21:09 which makes them less of an eligible partner to the next relationship, which then just creates a cycle. That then gets broadcast onto the internet. People who haven't had much experience in relationships because they're young or because they fail out or because they're concerned or nervous or a version to risk. Use that as their proxy and say, right, well, I'd better enter into this relationship guarding myself so that I don't get hurt, which makes it more likely that it's going to break up and the cycle just continues. It's exactly that what happens is we're actually entering relationships with our armor up.
Starting point is 00:21:40 But in the process of playing those games like not texting back, not getting too close, not attaching, not telling them that you missed them, not telling them that you love them, you are training somebody to love you in the wrong way. If I'm somebody who's needy and I actually need lots of love and reassurance, but I don't want to text first and I don't want to be looking needy and I don't want to say I miss you because I'm going to wait for him. I am then teaching him that I'm cool, calm and collect and I don't care when I hear from him. If I see you, I see you. But then he's under he's not getting the training ground of what I truly want. He's not getting access to my true needs. So I am now no longer communicating effectively. I'm actually teaching him how to love in a very avoidant and dismissive manner because I'm pretending to be cool. When really if I say, look, I need to speak to my partner on a daily basis. I like to see you regularly. I love you. I miss you.
Starting point is 00:22:29 What is this? I like labels. When I start communicating my needs, he will actually learn how to love me, but we're teaching people to do the opposite. We're teaching people to pretend that they're somebody else and especially pretend that they're avoidant, pretend that they're independent, pretend that they don't have these needs. So essentially we're going to attract the wrong partner. What else have you found that is a predictor of a toxic or a negative or a declining relationship?
Starting point is 00:22:58 Criticism over praise. Again, with the research, one of the things that they find is partners that last are ones that praise a substantial amount compared to criticism. So they scan the environment to kind of praise their partner. They'll look for excuses to praise their partner. Like, even if it's as simple as like, you make the bed so good. Every time I come home, the house is clean. These tiny things, any opportunity to praise their partner, but what happens in relationships
Starting point is 00:23:25 that end is they can't remember the last time they complimented each other. They think it should be a given. They think, well, you know I think you're pretty because I'm with you, aren't I? Or you know I'm grateful that you pay the bills. You're a guy, why do you need compliments? Men are craving this. I've noticed a lot in my practice The men that often have affairs. They're not actually seeking sex. They're seeking a woman that compliments them They say they can't remember the last time a woman told them that he looks great. Where is the women? We Are partners is it but also our friends will tell us people will tell us. Yeah, we're always being told We're beautiful or whatever it is
Starting point is 00:24:04 But for men if their partner doesn't tell them nobody does. So when they meet somebody who simply tells them they look good, they're intelligent, something to validate them, they immediately become attracted to that because they're starved of it. So praise is something that I think couples forget how important it is. I suppose that the game playing and the rivalry that sometimes happens in relationships with this start to go downhill, that makes the situation worse because you're not going to praise somebody that you think is your rival or that you're trying to play games with or that you're unsure about the level of trust that you should put in them.
Starting point is 00:24:40 Well, whoever you don't feel safe with, thing is all of these things that I'm saying, they only come when you feel safe. Now simple things like liking other girls' pictures or following people, now makes people feel super unsafe. Super super unsafe, so they and guards go up. I know people that the moment they add somebody on Instagram and they see who they're following, they might have had a really great date with them. Everything was great, but then they look on their following that straight away insecurities,
Starting point is 00:25:04 guards, everything. So we're now, unfortunately, in an environment where you're thrown into the deep end, all your insecurities can now come alive through the use of social media. So people are going into relationships ready for it to fall apart. You've done a ton of work on trauma. You've mentioned that words maybe a couple of times already. I live in Austin, Texas. Austin, Texas is the sort of place where when I walk into a sauna, someone is talking about their trauma work that they've just done at an MDMA ketamine therapy assisted sound bath in South America. And it's got me a little turned off from the word and the trawler is a big deal. I've had guys on that run psychedelic
Starting point is 00:25:46 assisted therapy for PTSD for veterans. But what is bollocks and what is not bollocks in the world of trauma? Where are people getting out over their skis? Where is it truthful? Well, here's the thing, there's trauma in the stress. Stress is situational. Yeah, it happens you have a response to the stress to what's going on and you're stressed about it. How you know something is trauma is their response is disproportionate to the scenario. That suggests that there is a pre-existing wound. Something's happened before you came along that made them hypersensitive about the situation and their response is disproportionate. So whenever somebody's response is disproportionate to the scenario, there's
Starting point is 00:26:30 potentially a wound. Now I am personally of the opinion that for me personally, all the holistic kind of things don't necessarily work on me. I wouldn't really go to IOSæ„Ÿ. I wouldn't really be able to just do a bunch of affirmations. For me personally that doesn't work. I, from my experience and personally, and I would love to hear what you think as well, for me the only way to outdo trauma is to make better decisions in life. Your trauma is kind of going to be always leading you to self-destructive paths. It's always going to lead you towards self-sabotage.
Starting point is 00:27:04 Your trauma is going to teach you to live for today and not worry about tomorrow. It's going to tell you to spend the money in the casino. It's going to tell you to pay for that escort. It's going to tell you to just indulge. But when you stop and you think, start valuing yourself and making good effective decisions, you're going to beat that trauma. That trauma's like a devil inside of you, telling you to almost kill yourself through vices. But when you stop and you take control, you say, I am going to make good decisions, I'm going to take self-control, you defeat the trauma. All the other types of therapies, for me personally, I really don't like to knock anything because everybody's different.
Starting point is 00:27:43 It doesn't work for me sitting in the mirror, telling myself, I'm amazing. It doesn't work. I can sit there and say, you're gorgeous, you're beautiful. I'm never gonna believe that. But if I say, get to the gym, don't eat carbs for today. Don't eat sugars after this time.
Starting point is 00:27:57 I don't care what my trauma's telling me. I'll start to feel more beautiful. But telling myself, affirmation, it doesn't work for me. What about for you? What works well for you? Um, so I don't know whether it regards to the trauma thing, but certainly in terms of what makes me feel better, I have to change my mind with the body. So if I don't train, if I don't get sunlight, if I don't move, if I get cold and hot within a day, I feel phenomenal.
Starting point is 00:28:19 I went to a sauna and cold plunge place that I love here in Austin, called Kuhia and took a bunch of friends from the UK that yesterday, and we did maybe two rounds of heat and cold, and you get out of the cold tub after wanting your life to end for quite a while. And one of the guys said, dude, I challenge anybody that's having a bad day to do that and not feel amazing after you've finished. So for me, changing the mind with the body is a good place to start. Trying to think your way out of overthinking is like trying to sniff your way out of a cocaine addiction.
Starting point is 00:28:49 It's just not going to make the choice. It's not going to work. You're not going to find the solution there. And there's lots of research to suggest that as well. People think they get an anxious thought. They start thinking their way out of it and now they're trapped with their thoughts and traumas. The reality is, most research shows that it's actually in your body, the anxiety exists in your
Starting point is 00:29:07 body, so by changing your bodily state rather than your mental state will actually help. So like you said, the plungers and so you take like cold bars and stuff like that with that work and it works. Yeah, yeah, it's incredible. It's the most, it's the most reliable way to increase dopamine and then to keep it at a relatively good level before it tapers off. So most of the time there's sort of this dopamine-nergic seesaw. So you will get some, but on the other side you're going to pay for it, kind of like going out and drinking and then you have a hangover. That's kind of how the dopamine-nergic system works.
Starting point is 00:29:39 But cold exposure is one of the few things that allows you to get that increase. And then it will slowly tap it back down to baseline without you having to pay this overdraft in a way. So it's a very reliable way to improve dopamine. So going back to the trauma thing, what are some of the common trauma patterns that show up in people's behavior? Or there's a mindset that many people may hold, is there a common relationship between something that somebody believes and a common trauma that has gone
Starting point is 00:30:11 through in that past? Yeah, and I think one of the things, people always believe they're far more unique than they are, especially in relationships. They always say to me, they get to a session and they're like, oh, you're never going to hear anybody like this, I have to tell you this. And I ask two questions and I can answer them. They predict their exact behavior. And what trauma basically is, it's not necessarily that you're abuse or you're attacked
Starting point is 00:30:35 or anything like that. Essentially, you had needs that were not met as a child in some way, shape or form. And children, we're not designed to detach from our parents because we can't survive by being detached from our parents. So we won't ever stop loving our parents who don't meet our needs, but we do stop loving ourselves. We stop investing in ourselves because we're thinking we're not worthy of investment and it's all unconscious. So what happens in relationships is they go into the relationships with the preparation that this person is going to hurt me So I have two choices. I either cling on to them for dear life and hold on to them
Starting point is 00:31:10 And I can almost live in their skin and monitor their behavior and try and control everything they do and Become preoccupied with them and watch when they're lost online and just think think think about them all day every day Just so they don't leave me but in that desperate attempt to kind of keep them We end up suffocating them desperate attempt to kind of keep them, we end up suffocating them and fighting with them to keep them and the relationship ends. Or you can go down the other route, which is to become completely independent,
Starting point is 00:31:33 completely avoid and emotionally detached, emotionally guarded, and almost have a partner there, but act as if they don't exist. Have a separate room, don't invest too much, maybe have alternative partners here partner there, but actors if they don't exist, have a separate room, don't get to invest too much, maybe have alternative partners here and have the avoidant route, which I'm sure you've come across before. So we either go extreme anxiety or extreme dismissal and avoidance, and that is really the two trauma responses when it comes to relationships. When you're looking at trying to fix somebody's attachment, what are the places that you start
Starting point is 00:32:04 up? The first thing I always ask them to remember is your anxiety or your defense mechanism is not symbolic of love. What happens is people seem to think if they're preoccupied with someone and they're thinking about them all day every day and they're trying to control their behavior and they're watching them, I must be in love. I can't stop thinking about this person. I know he's toxic, I know he's not good for me, but I can't stop thinking I'm watching when he's online. They mistake that preoccupation as love. They think I must
Starting point is 00:32:33 be in love with that person when really it's a signal. It's a signal to show that your trauma alarm has been activated. This person is not soothing you or you are finding the problems in this relationship. But either way, it's not a symbol of love. It's a symbol that something's wrong. It's a signal that you haven't been able to soothe yourself or this relationship is not soothing. So we have to dissect which one it is. Is it the person or is it your own anxieties?
Starting point is 00:33:00 So we start with the response, or it could be a man that says, she's really great. I love her She's done nothing wrong. She's perfect But I don't really care about her. I don't really like her. I don't know. I need space She feels suffocated, but when she leaves, I really miss her and I always get her back But when she's with me, I always end up texting other girls That's still a trauma response. There's a part of you that's craving distance but intimacy at the same time
Starting point is 00:33:22 So we look at it and we try and that's craving distance but intimacy at the same time. So we look at it and we try and relabel the behavior because the avoidant will think I don't care and the anxious will think I'm obsessed and I care too much. Both of them are defense mechanisms. That dynamic of the guy with the girl when he gets the girl it's too suffocating and when yeah, he's away from the girl, he's wistful and wishes that he could get it back. Is a dynamic that I have seen so so many times. Why is that so common? What is it that's going on inside of the male brain that's causing that? Well, it would be, a lot of men think it's just the chase. They like the chase and once they've
Starting point is 00:33:58 got conquered, they no longer like the girl. There's an element of that and that does happen, but majority of the time, it's when the man had emotionally distant parents. When the parents didn't take the time to truly get to know them and be truly there for them in terms of their emotional needs, what happens is they assume nobody's going to be there for their emotional needs. And the best way the ego defends itself is saying, I don't need anybody to be there for my emotional needs. I don't need to talk about my feelings. I don't need to connect. I don't need someone in my space all
Starting point is 00:34:28 the time. So they replace what they didn't get with what they don't want. And so when they meet somebody who's trying to emotionally connect with them, they label it as, I don't need this, go away, leave me alone, and they'll distance themselves, distance, distance. But when she leaves, they're in pieces. So they obviously do need it. They just don't know how to navigate this need alongside their trauma. So they end up pushing away the very people that they love and are trying to love them. And they attract clingy partners. What happens is the avoidant person always attracts the clingy, because if a distant independent person met another distant independent woman, they
Starting point is 00:35:04 don't have the glue to keep them distant independent woman, they don't have the glue to keep them together. So they also don't feel validated by somebody who doesn't care to see them. But when they meet that clingy partner, they get the validation that I'm loud, but then they don't have to put in the work because they know they'll show love you and cling on to you regardless. So the clingy and the distant are always together. One of the other common archetypes, I think that I'm seeing at the moment are
Starting point is 00:35:26 people who continue to crave validation even once they're in a relationship. This is facilitated by social media, obviously, the fact that you can get, let's say that you have an argument with your partner and then you decide to post a first-trap photo or you decide to start following a bunch of different girls. Is it cheating? Well, we don't really have any rules around relationships to say, you know, if you want to have sex with somebody, that's definitely cheating. But this is more kind of passive aggressive, global, I'm just going to do it, I've got an excuse if they do bring it up, it's because of their insecurity, they almost deserve it because we just had this argument and it's kind of, there's a lot more degrees of freedom between
Starting point is 00:36:03 in a relationship and out of a relationship and everyone can fuck about in the middle section there. What is it? Why do certain people crave this chaos within relationships and this sort of validation outside of them? Because they've lost touch with themselves. And what I mean by this is, if I've had a fight with my partner and my instinct is to go message another man, am I doing it because I want like this other man and I want to speak to this other man or am I just trying to even out the playing field of this fight?
Starting point is 00:36:35 Am I just trying to even out the score? Now when you're so in touch with yourself and you love yourself and what happens when you love and trust yourself is you go by what you truly desire. You're not trying to win a game. What you truly desire. You don't post a picture online to get comments because you're not in the mood. You're just sort of fight with your partner.
Starting point is 00:36:54 But when you're playing a game, it's game on. Every time you've annoyed me, game on. So when I speak to people and clients especially, they'll say, oh, you know, he's just been liking it another girl. He hasn't called me in a couple of days. I'm going to go see my ex. I'm like, just up. Do you want to see your ex?
Starting point is 00:37:10 Are you doing this because you're upset? He hasn't called you. Because if you want to see your ex, go ahead and do it. But if you're doing it because he hasn't called you, you are not connected to yourself. You don't respect or love yourself. You don't know yourself. You are going by what he's making you feel But take back the control go by what you want to do and if you want to see that
Starting point is 00:37:31 It's because you would do that even if this partner didn't annoy you then listen to yourself But if you if it's purely to even out the score I promise you're gonna leave with shaman guilt and shaman guilt are the two worst emotions a human being can feel because You direct that anger at yourself and it's a chips away at a self-respect. So that's why I think people turn to autonomous. They've lost touch with their authenticity. Are you from a Muslim background? I am, yeah. I'm Pakistani. Pakistani, so we grew up Muslim.
Starting point is 00:37:59 Yep, and grew up in the UK and now live in Dubai. Yes. Okay. Given that very traditional in some regards of bringing in terms of the values that you've been raised with. Absolutely. Yeah. What are your thoughts and what are your insights
Starting point is 00:38:15 around this current trend of applauding childlessness and demonization of motherhood that we're seeing coming from certain corners of women's advice at the moment. It's, you know, I have to say it's so alien to me because when you are from my culture, our parents live for their kids. This is all we see. So what will happen, I remember when I used to go to school with my friends who were English, and they'd say, oh, my mom and dad are going on holiday, oh, my mom and dad are going to restaurants. And I'm like, my mom and dad don't go and do anything without us.
Starting point is 00:38:47 They just literally, they just live for the kids. And their money is saved for the kids wedding days. And everything is just like the kids, the kids are kids. They center around, probably too much around the children. So my culture was always like, life starts when you have kids. What are you gonna do other than that? That's what life is about. And then going up in an English world where it's slightly more, do what makes you happy,
Starting point is 00:39:09 do what makes you happy. Now, I think the balance is, do what gives you a purpose. Now, nothing gives you more of a purpose in life than when you have children because their soul, existence, psychological and physical depends on you. And I'm not saying do it because you want to feel loved or anything, but it's the only thing that will exist when you die. So when you don't have children, it's very difficult to see how all this loving memories and intelligence and experiences you've had and not be able to pass that on to somebody. Wouldn't you if you've had a fulfilling life want to then pass that on to somebody. Wouldn't you, if you've had a fulfilling life, want to, then pass that legacy and keep yourself alive throughout the generations? And I think what's
Starting point is 00:39:50 happened is we're so pleasure seeking that we, the only thing that is guaranteed is death. And the only thing me and you both know is that we're going to have a funeral. Now, if on that funeral, there are still remnants of you, that's a life that's a beautiful life and it's going to continue forever. You don't truly die when you have kids. But when on your funeral, there's nobody but you've got to travel 100 countries and you've got to sleep with every man you wanted, that day is going to come for all of us. And that's the only day we're guaranteed. We prepare for it by leaving a legacy because that's what we're designed to do.
Starting point is 00:40:25 So when we reject that, there must be some kind of trauma somewhere. And you know me, I think my answer to everything is always some kind of trauma, but I do think there's some kind of rejection to your true needs because we're designed to survive and reproduce. So if those things we're rejecting, there's some disconnect with your true needs. I think what it shows is just how powerful culture can be. The fact that you write two things, survival and reproduction. Culture, as of yet, hasn't been able to step in and encourage people to throw themselves
Starting point is 00:40:52 in front of open traffic. But it has been able to step in and, how do you say, like, perturb someone's natural inclination toward having kids? I think my current sort of viewpoint on it is that there's a lot of alternative things that people can do. There is this slow life strategy and the costs of having children are immediate and obvious. It's going to stop you from traveling to Bali whenever you want. It means that you're not be able to wear those cute heels that you intended on wearing. It means that you're going to get stretch marks and maybe you're going to have to, your body's going to get in weight and maybe blah blah blah.
Starting point is 00:41:27 So all of the costs are up front and all of the benefits are kind of down the line. And even mothers in the moment, their moment to moment experience of the life, isn't that pleasurable, but it's very meaningful. And in a society and a culture that optimizes pleasure of everything else, individualistic, atomized, compartmentalized, hedonic maximization, every single second. Trying to say, here is a reason that you should sacrifice all of the things right now that you love in society says that you should enjoy for something which is in the moment going to be very difficult and may pay off some dividends down the line.
Starting point is 00:42:04 And none of your mates are doing it at the moment. So there's no mimetic sense of, oh well, you know, I've got this culture of young women that are having kids. For every person that doesn't decide to have kids, that's another person that isn't influencing the people around them to have kids. And you get this sort of runaway effect like the R-Nort number in from COVID. So I see that, I really do see that at the moment. There's been a lot of talking, that's why I flew to next to your country of residence debate about this sort of crisis of masculinity that we're facing at the moment. Do you think there's a crisis of femininity at the moment? Do you think that women are struggling for good role models right now? I do think so. And
Starting point is 00:42:41 you know, I know from my personal experience experience I don't have a role model online. I don't have a role model and if I do have any kind of role models it will just be like some of the men in the field that I've done really great work in psychology but I can't tell you there's a single woman that I've ever watched growing up and thought I want to be like her and that that's not because there's anything wrong with the women out there. Maybe it's my values don't connect with current environment. But what I would love to see is how we can embrace every part of being a woman. I just loved being different to a man. I have no desire for complete equality with a man. It just doesn't make me feel good knowing that I can do everything a man can do because I'd rather, what's the point of view if we do everything the same?
Starting point is 00:43:26 I'd rather you complete the errors of my life where I'm deficient and I complete errors of your life where you're deficient. And when I was living in England and working around English environment and stuff, there was such a dessert, what I found with feminists and particularly in the English environment, there's no specimen of human being that is more privileged than the English white woman. In my experience, there's no human on this planet that is more privileged than the English white woman. And when I used to see how much they would complain about the oppression they experienced and I just thought to myself, you definitely
Starting point is 00:44:03 still have more rights than somebody like my father who's got a bit of an accent and he's definitely Muslim and stuff like that. You definitely have more of a privilege than him and you definitely have more of a privilege than you know this the Caribbean guys or the Nigerian guys or the Muslim guys when you go to the airport you definitely have a privilege But because people are so almost dying to be a victim, they would complain about such small things. I remember they're like being in schools and the teachers would complain like, oh God, the music here is too many male artists,
Starting point is 00:44:36 that's inequality. And I just thought, you don't know what suffering is. You haven't experienced it, but you want to, because it gives you meaning and purpose. And so I felt, and this is probably going to sound bad, but I felt like it was the most privileged members of society complaining about being oppressed when they haven't seen true oppression. And I always say to feminists that, you know, from that back I'm like, do you want the
Starting point is 00:45:01 privileges of men or do you want the privileges of men? Or do you want the privileges of white men? Because I promise you, if you're a white woman, you don't want to have the same treatment as a black man when you're pulled over by the police or by the airport staff as a Muslim man with a beard. Are you sure you want to be treated like a man or you just want to be treated like a certain type of man? Because I promise you you're very privileged.
Starting point is 00:45:22 And I felt it, even as a woman with what, like I have pretty much white skin you you're very privileged. And I felt it even as a woman with what, like, I have pretty much white skin. I feel incredibly privileged. So I felt like it's not a gender thing. It's a class thing. You have more privileges to your class and your skin tone and your appearance than you do have gender. So I just didn't understand the battle.
Starting point is 00:45:38 And that's what led to my disassociation. One of the other problems I think is that a lot of the women that espouse this sort of victim had narrative and say things like we need to smash the patriarchy and shivalry is dead because we don't need men. They are luxury beliefs that are held by women who are sufficiently financially stable and live in a society that is fine for them. Now, yeah, I'm totally open to believing that a high-powered female psychologist or lawyer or attorney or whatever, maybe doesn't need to have the man pay for the first date or hold the door open for her or make sure that she gets home safe or whatever because that's, she is absolutely fine. Consider for a second the woman that is on benefits,
Starting point is 00:46:27 living in some rundown council estate in the northwest of the UK, who maybe the partner that she's with didn't even complete secondary school. Maybe he has no GCSEs, he had an absent father home, no one ever taught him how to be a man. Perhaps those codes of shivalry
Starting point is 00:46:44 weren't constraining to him, they were assisting. Like things, it is one, as far as I can see, it is one continuum from you should make sure that your date gets home safe to you shouldn't hit your wife. Like it is a single continuum all the way down that there is an asymmetry in the safety that men and women have. And as soon as you start to open that door, this isn't me saying that you're like, if women want to walk home safe, this isn't me saying that, you know, if women want to walk home safe, they're like in 20 years' time, they're gonna be hit. But my point is that as soon as you accept the fact
Starting point is 00:47:12 that there are certain things that men can offer that women can't, as soon as you take those away, men start to ask the question, well, why should I bother doing this and this and this and this and this. And it's start, the dominoes begin to tumble. So a lot of these opinions are held by women
Starting point is 00:47:27 for whom they are never going to be affected by the bad externalities of doing it. It's the luxury belief of all of the people that live in gated communities with private security saying, defund the police. Each shit, like each shit, it's got fuck all to do with you. This has got nothing to do with your life. This is you being able to proselytize
Starting point is 00:47:44 about how much you uphold the underclass and the working class that are being persecuted by police that come through their neighborhood. You don't live that. You don't do anything proper. Yeah, and it's exactly that. Here's what it is. Here's what it's like. You know, when you're watching a great football match and you're so engrossed in it, you almost want to wish you supported a team. I don't watch football, but when I watched the World Cup final, I was wishing I was whichever team. I was like, whoever scored, I was on their team. I wanted to be part of that glory,
Starting point is 00:48:14 because at least you feel alive. Now, when you're not involved in any kind of oppression, any kind of cause, anything, you start to lose purpose. When you're watching a boring football match, you start noticing how cold it is, how shit the food is. But when you're watching something so exciting, you forget all of that and you feel alive. What I see when I see these incredibly, incredibly privileged women fighting for women's rights,
Starting point is 00:48:40 it's like they've watched the trauma of other people and they so want to feel alive because human nature is designed for survival. When you've got it so easy, you still crave meaning and purpose, you still crave kind of some kind of hostility. So they jump in the fight that they actually, they don't need and be there ready so privileged. And when I see these kind of feminists who are arguing about men's rights and putting men down when while they live this most amazing life, what it screams to me is you're dreaming to have a meaning and purpose. You want to be on that football match, you want to be in that boxing ring and because you don't have it, you're going to identify with the people that do and almost have a pseudo
Starting point is 00:49:21 oppression. And that's what it looks like to me. You are so grateful to be a woman, especially growing up in the West. Speaking English, do you think I would be here speaking to you if my English accent wasn't like this? What a privilege I have. So to see those people have this,
Starting point is 00:49:35 complain that they're oppressed, it's laughable because I'm from a different world when I go back to Kashmir. It's laughable to me because women gender rights don't matter when you haven't got food on the table. Given the fact that there is a challenge perhaps, even the women who are performatively doing this victimhood by proxy thing, they would probably like to have better role models and better values to focus on.
Starting point is 00:50:05 to have better role models and better values to focus on. In your opinion, what are the things that can predict a healthy psychology for a woman? Where are the places that affirm that she could stand that would make her life better and would also make the lives of the people around her better? I know I talk a lot about how everybody's similar, but in the sense that everybody's also different, is authenticity. Here's a trick for mental health as a woman. You remain completely and utterly authentic, and you can't know that if you jump on other people's bandwagon, if you imitate the culture around you, if you imitate the other people's experiences, if you adopt values that you have an actually experience. So a lot of feminists will say, oh, oppressed men, men, workplace, and then I'll say to them,
Starting point is 00:50:47 who oppressed you at the workplace? Oh, my boss, she was a bit. I'm like, she was a bit, yeah. The guy was great. The manager was great. He was lovely, but the woman, so I'm asking them, what is your lived experience? Is it really that men have ever been oppressing you? No, they've never actually treated me that badly. Right, the moment you lose touch with your authenticity, you start living in a delusion. And when we live in a delusion, we are almost, we're just, it's a predictable slow and steady suicide emotionally
Starting point is 00:51:14 and psychologically. So start to live according to your authenticity. What do you truly want? Well, do you truly want to sleep with this guy to look cool and act like a bad bitch? No, you don't. How do you feel afterwards? I feel shit. So why are you doing it? Do you really want to sleep with this guy to look cool and act like a bad bitch? No, you don't. How do you feel afterwards? I feel shit. So why are you doing it? Do you really want to text your ex after a fight with your boyfriend? No, but I just want to get even why are you doing it?
Starting point is 00:51:32 Do you truly want to post that picture of you out there and just have to deal with the answer order and do truly feel good when you post on that only fans know, but I just want to bag. What do you want to do with that bag? I don't know. I don't even use them. Stay in touch with your authentic self. I promise you it's secured to any psychological or mental health issue Do the equivalent but for men I'm sorry do the equivalent that you've just run through there but for men the authenticity side I would say it's similar to the I would say it's same thing for men I think if you want strong psychological health slightly different, I would say for men.
Starting point is 00:52:07 The key for a man is self-control. For women it's authenticity. You have to say authentic as possible because our body tells us so much. Our body will tell you when you're craving a child, when you're getting angry, when you're getting hostile because our hormones are all over the place. For a man, your body sometimes speaks against you. It will crave pleasure all the time. Your key to successful mental health is complete and utter self-control in terms of your mind, body and soul. You control what you consume. You don't watch everything. You don't go into every desire. You control
Starting point is 00:52:42 who you put yourself into. You don't go and sleep with every single one, everyone, anyway, you actually gain far more self-esteem when you reject women than when you accept women. There is that man that has a women that he's rejecting feels far greater than that man who can't say no to anybody because he's jumping at the opportunities. Self-control, even with what you eat,
Starting point is 00:53:03 when I have clients that come to me and they've got a bit of depression, I don't, I say to them, until you go to the gym, until you lose weight, there's no conversation that me and you can have that will change your self-esteem. It won't do it. Because me and you can have a great conversation, but when you go and take a shower or when you go and get undressed in front of a woman, everything I've said to you won't mean anything. So self-control with what you eat, go work out, don't have to have a suspect but self-control. Now, when a man practices self-control, he becomes such an unshakable being because none of his friends can make him drink alcohol if he doesn't want it. No woman can make him spend
Starting point is 00:53:40 money on her if she doesn't want to. No gambling machine can make him waste money if he doesn't want to. He becomes indispensable as a man. So self-control, I really believe, is a root of a man's self-esteem. I think one of the interesting circles that's difficult to square in some of the corners of men's advice at the moment is that self-control and self-mastery are a big deal, that you should train hard, you should be disciplined, you should get up on time, do your cold plunge and your sauna and your gym workout and work on your business and read and be able to quote Marcus Aurelius,
Starting point is 00:54:14 but as soon as you have a plethora of women that are in front of you, you should sleep with as many as you want. So self-control and self-mastery stop at the boundaries of the penis, which is at the boundaries of the penis which is a odd Sensitivity the most dangerous place to stop because children Keyword most dangerous place to stop yourself control is dating is your penis because your penis is responsible for life
Starting point is 00:54:39 Now if you don't master self control when it comes to who you're having sex with you are now In a we're living in a times where pregnancy is everything favors women If you don't master self control when it comes to who you're having sex with, you are now, we're living in a times where pregnancy is everything favors women. You get the wrong woman pregnant for the rest of your life. You are tied to this woman and you can go to jail for not paying child support for a woman who might even be lying, who might not even, you might not even be the father of a child. That's what a risk having sex with low quality or low quality people means. You risk the rest of your life. It's a death sentence if you get the wrong person pregnant. And
Starting point is 00:55:09 even if you don't, I always say it lowers your standards. You can't be doing that. So this is what I don't understand a lot about the masculine kind of frame, especially on mind dating for the younger generation. They teach men to just have no discipline when it comes to sexual behaviors. What do you think about that? I think it is. You're a man, I'm asking you, because maybe it's something I'll never understand. I'm not sure. I think that there is so much status assigned to being attractive and being chosen by women. And, you know, everything else that you do is a proxy for that in any case.
Starting point is 00:55:45 Maybe some of it is to do with survival, but the nice car and the fancy watch and the red bottom lebutons and the follow account on Instagram and the blue take and all of that stuff, they are all proxies for look at my mate value go up, right? And the most direct way that you can prove to yourself that your mate value is high and you can prove to everybody around you that your mate value is high is to sleep with women. And I worked in the nightlife industry for 15 years. So I saw this first time, I was in the trenches of all of this stuff that was going on. This is the currency that everybody is using. So I understand, I understand why it's there.
Starting point is 00:56:23 None of these conversations were happening 15 years ago. Nobody was saying, guys, maybe you should try and keep it in your pants. Maybe the height of masculine essence isn't going and sleeping with as many women as possible because these conversations simply weren't around. I'm sure if you'd read enough books, you would have probably been able to reverse engineer them,
Starting point is 00:56:43 but they weren't happening as excessively as they do now. So I think that that's the reason that it happens, but I would agree. I think that if you are taking your sense of self-worth from your body count as a guy, it's a very fragile place to take it from. They're just has to be something deeper than that. Yeah, well, what I always say is men that sleep around with a lot of women or chase women, especially if she's like a quarter of their age and stuff like that, it's no different to a man with new money. When a man grew up with money, you don't see him posting his Lamborghini, his watches and stuff like that. It's just what his dad had a Rolls-Royce. He used to get
Starting point is 00:57:23 dropped in a limousine to school. He'd never post about this stuff because he gets on a private jet to go to places. That guy doesn't post about money because it was never a deprivation. Now, when you're sleeping with so many women, especially when it's just a shortcut for status, what that signals is there was a deprivation in self-esteem. At some point in your life, there was some rejection from women and you're compensating by having no frugality when it comes to selecting a woman now. So for me when I see a man sleeping with lots of women I don't actually see it as a status symbol because my brain is psychologically like programmed. I see as
Starting point is 00:57:57 compensation resaturgy for low self-esteem as child. Just like the man that's posting is brand new watch and is brand new car, perhaps he didn't grow up with wealth. So it's the same thing when you showed that you're sleeping with a lot of women, to me, it signals you couldn't have got a lot of women when you're growing up and perhaps it's now time to make up for lost time. It's a selection mechanism as well, right? Because there is a large cohort of guys that can't get laid and what you're doing is you're advertising to the world, I'm not one of them. I don't, you don't need to worry about me. I'm not part of that particular group of pathologically broken, alone, terminally, it's in solitude men. One of the other things that happened is a, how do you say, reverence for the Middle East and for the values that have been coming out of that. What is unique about the dating scene in Dubai? Let's say that the
Starting point is 00:58:51 someone listening who's never been or that they know about Dubai is what they've seen on a couple of TikTok videos, what's interesting and all different about the dating scene. Dubai is not very representative of the Middle East and it's got completely different culture to like Muslim values and culture in general. The reason being is it is a playground for the rich and beautiful. The entire city is Beverly Hills. So what happens is the richest men in the world flock to Dubai, it's got amazing perks
Starting point is 00:59:20 if you want to make a lot of money, it's just, it's where it is. And any city where there's rich men, there are beautiful women. It's just always the case wherever there's rich men, there's beautiful women. So the playground is completely different. It really separates the men from the boys, both for men and women. So what happens is the woman has to really feel like everybody is a competition. So if she has a work on anything besides her looks, she's going to find it's a difficult place to meet people because if you think you're the prettiest girl in the room, there'll be another pretty girl. There'll be another pretty
Starting point is 00:59:53 girl there. So it's hard for her to stand up. And for the rich guy, if he leads with money, he will learn that's not enough for the women out here because she knows 100 million is. So what happens is both these people who brought their trophies to come to Dubai, the beautiful guy on the rich man, realize that here it's a dime a dozen. So you have to bring something else to the table, but the problem is the culture and the environment is so distracting, it's difficult for partnerships to connect and last a week, long time, even though everybody's craving it. Most people here are experts. They haven't got their mom
Starting point is 01:00:29 and dad and cousins and family, so they're craving a sense of home, but because it feels like it's so far, like far-fetched, like the ego defenses come in and they just think, well, I might as well just play in the mud while I'm here. So it's slightly different to the rest of the Middle East, I would say. Do more options mean more happiness? It's the exact opposite. More options means less happiness. They've done so many studies where they looked at people's
Starting point is 01:00:54 reactions to food in a food court compared to a home cooked meal or even paintings with lots of choices or just given one. There's always higher satisfaction when there is no alternatives because your brain then doesn't imagine alternatives. But our brain has this ability where it can literally experience what we imagine. If I say to you, imagine, catch up on ice cream, you can almost taste that. You can almost taste that. If you think about it enough, you can taste it. When you have alternatives, imagining the alternative is enough for you to start a desire there. And when. When you have alternatives, imagining the alternative is enough for you to start a desire there. And when you don't have alternatives, you kind of stay focused.
Starting point is 01:01:30 But when you do have alternatives, it means the satisfaction is reversed. So in a place like Dubai that is swimming with lots of people, with lots of money, and lots of women filled with lots of silicon, there are a lot of distractions. Analyst distractions, even if it's not the women, it's the environment. Restaurants are fantastic, the bars and clubs and stuff to do, the beaches are amazing, the water will dance for you, and have dinner and the water found as well go up.
Starting point is 01:01:58 There is just such a... so much pleasure everywhere. I mean, it really suits me well because I'm quite extra- and I would never say in a bad way for me, it works suits me well because I'm quite extra and I would never say in a bad way for me, it works well, but for anybody who craves more of a calm, peaceful environment, I don't know how conducive a city like this would be.
Starting point is 01:02:17 I think that you're right. I wonder about what the Muslim community thinks of the recent trend of white western guys saying that they're going to convert, that they're now going to follow. Has this been a conversation that you've had with your dad or anybody from your... Yeah, do you know what? It's becoming common. I do think Andrew has a part to play in that. I think Andrew has had a part to play in that. I think Andrew has had a part to play in it.
Starting point is 01:02:45 And I think in general, it's, I think what's happened is the left has become so loud that people are seeking conservatism again. And I think that because Dubai has become popular and the idea of the whole gender debate and women becoming so promiscuous, now people are thinking, I need a solution. I need a fix. If you're looking for not promiscuous, now people are thinking I need a solution, I need a fix. If you're looking for not promiscuous women, Dubai is not necessarily the place to go.
Starting point is 01:03:10 And if you're looking for a real representation of Islam, Dubai is also not the place to go. The last place to go, I would say. If you're looking for a non-primiscuous woman, there's nowhere worse than Dubai because the promiscuity in Dubai amongst men and women, but like I always say, it's the only city in the world where the women are far more promiscuous than the men. Far more because what's happened to the women, I don't want to say too much, but what's happened to the women that come to rich cities is they come emotionally detached. They come with the idea that I want to meet a rich man. Now that woman is completely different to the woman that comes to a city and says, I want to fall in love and have kids.
Starting point is 01:03:49 Now that emotionally detached woman who comes, I want a good life, is never emotionally invested. And here's the mistake a lot of rich men make. They seem to think that if they can support a girl and give her a good life, loyalty is a given. But what they're forgetting is a woman that craves a good life doesn't seek emotional intimacy. She seeks financial intimacy. Any woman who doesn't seek emotional intimacy is far more likely to stray. So they're the most likely to be cheated on is these men that spoil their women. Because loyal women want to be spoiled by time. They don't want to be spoiled by possessions. And a lot of these successful men don't have time. So they naturally filter out loyal women and get the ones that are okay with a financial investment.
Starting point is 01:04:35 That's again another difficult sort of hypocrisy or tough circle to square from men's advice around the, you know, looking for emotional intimacy is sipping for women, but paying them in gifts and flying them all over the world is somehow being high value. The problem, the problem with that is that you are making an incredibly fragile foundation upon which to build that relationship. Now, the cope from that going one order down is, what doesn't matter? I'm not bothered about building a relationship because you use them and like you discard them, we'll just get on to the next one. And you go, okay, well, in that case, we're not really talking about the same thing. One person is having a discussion about how to sleep with lots of women and use their air miles as much as they can.
Starting point is 01:05:18 And another person is looking for a relationship. And I think that one of the concerns is much of the advice that gets put out on the internet is given by men that are optimizing for short-term relationships, but taken by men who actually want to be optimizing for long-term relationships. Yeah. You know, if you're super high in sex drive, super high in sociosexuality, super low inagreableness, super low in commitment, very commitment of a very avoidant attachment, you are going to construct
Starting point is 01:05:45 a world in which your philosophy meets those desires for yourself. But if that's the most popular creed that's put out on the internet, and all of these guys who don't have that same baseline of personality, do begin to think, well, maybe this is what I should be doing, maybe this is what should fulfill me. You end up using a philosophy that was designed for a different machine than the one that you are. Yeah, exactly that. And here's the thing, here's what being a simp is.
Starting point is 01:06:15 Let me just summarize what it is. There's not about loving and investing in your partner, which is often the case. There they seem to think that anybody who loves or invests a once-a-long lasting or who is loyal loyal is a sim. Here's what being a sim is. A woman crosses your boundaries and you still accept and not only accept you try and get her back. That's what simping is. Everybody's got different boundaries, but if you've seen a woman cross your boundaries many times, you've seen unacceptable behaviour and instead of them
Starting point is 01:06:42 withdrawing your love, you then shower her with more love to get her back That I can understand is a simp but somebody who vets a woman correctly and then puts Explains their boundaries and here's what a boundary is. It's very simple the moment you feel something is not great You communicate it you don't test your partner to see if they break it again And so you just say look I don't like it when you don't call me after a night out. I just want to make sure you got home okay. It's, or I don't like it. I think that outfits a little bit too revealing on a night out. Can you just be a little bit more mindful? You say your boundaries. Now,
Starting point is 01:07:17 if you don't say your boundaries and you allow a woman to completely disrespect them, even though you're feeling it, you know in your soul she's disrespecting your boundaries, but you're still begging her to be with you. And she's doing unacceptable behavior, and you're still begging her, then you fall into the category of a sim. But that can happen with women, men, anyone can do that. But strong boundaries create good neighbors.
Starting point is 01:07:37 The moment we put our boundaries up, people then know how to behave around us, and we become simple free. We've become immune to being a sim. But if you have no boundaries, but you're learning the tricks of how to get women, oh, I pay for a woman here, but you've got no boundaries and she's cheating on you
Starting point is 01:07:51 and you're still paying for her, then you're not learning what actually is creating the circumstances for a healthy connection. What are you looking forward to working on over the next couple of months? What's the impact that you want to have? I think what I would love to focus a little bit more on forward to working on over the next couple of months, what's the impact that you want to have? I think what I would love to focus a little bit more on is the impact of pornography on men. I think pornography has had a huge impact on men and women. And I would love to kind of focus,
Starting point is 01:08:18 if I could have one mission in this whole kind of social media space, it would be to draw light to the impact of pornography on mens mental health because what pornography does is it teaches men, women are wild and are promiscuous. So in the real world, they look for wild and promiscuous women without realizing that wild and promiscuous women then breaks their boundaries and hurts them and they end up in a slow suicide in the form of depression and they don't realise that it's all connected. Whereas if they stop sexualising women so much through the use of pornography, they would have higher standards of what they accept and want in a woman and then they could maintain a relationship better and then that depression would slowly disappear. But I think pornography is kind
Starting point is 01:09:02 of where I would love to focus on and also just kind of undoing some of the damage from the red pill conversation. How'd you mean? I feel like it's done the exact terrible impact that feminism had at women's belief about men. Red pill kind of did the exact same for men. It gave them a home for the men that hate women, it gave them a home, but it's in the wrong hands. It's okay when it's in the hands of psychologists and people who understand human nature, but when it's in the hands of a 27 year old boy who just wants to make it in a social media or somebody whose life experience is just making tiktoks and he's the one teaching men how to view women, it's dangerous, it's super, super dangerous. So I would love to
Starting point is 01:09:48 undo the damage of some of that. Where should people go if they want to check out more of the stuff that they do? What they do, what you do? Oh, what have I do? Sorry, I saw the psychology on Instagram, YouTube and TikTok, saw the psychology, I tend to put everything up on using the same handles. I'm a Saudi-Islamist, Saudi-Islamist, Saudi-Islamist, Saudi-Islamist, Saudi-Islamist, Saudi-Islamist, Saudi-Islamist, Saudi-Islamist, Saudi-Islamist, Saudi-Islamist, Saudi-Islamist, Saudi-Islamist, Saudi-Islamist, Saudi-Islamist, Saudi-Islamist, Saudi-Islamist, Saudi-Islamist, Saudi-Islamist, Saudi-Islamist, Saudi-Islamist, Saudi-Islamist, Saudi-Islamist, Saudi-Islamist, Saudi-Islamist, Saudi-Islamist, Saudi-Islamist, Saudi-Islamist, Saudi-Islamist, Saudi-Islamist, Saudi-Islamist, Saudi-Islamist, Saudi-Islamist, Saudi-Islamist, Saudi-Islamist, Saudi-Islamist, Saudi-Islamist, Saudi-Islamist, Saudi-Islamist, Saudi-Islamist, Saudi-Islamist, Saudi-Islamist, Saudi-Islamist, Saudi-Islamist, Saudi-Islamist, Saudi-Islamist, Saudi-Islamist, Saudi-Islamist, Saudi-Islamist, Saudi-Islamist, Saudi-Islamist, Saudi-Islamist, Saudi-Islamist, Saudi-Islamist, Saudi-Islamist, Saudi-Islamist, Saudi-Islamist, Saudi-Islamist, Saudi-Islamist, Saudi-Islamist, Saudi-Islamist, Saudi-Islamist, Saudi-Islamist, Saudi-Islamist, Saudi-Islamist, Saudi-Islamist, Saudi-Islamist, Saudi-Islamist, Saudi-Islamist, Saudi-Islamist, Saudi-Islamist, Saudi-Islamist, Saudi-Islamist, Saudi-Is, yeah, oh, yeah

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