Modern Wisdom - #674 - Adam Lane Smith - 17 Ugly Psychology Truths No One Wants To Admit

Episode Date: August 31, 2023

Adam Lane Smith is a psychotherapist and an author. Adam has helped thousands of patients and couples to deal with problems from childhood, their relationships and their sex lives. He also writes amazing Twitter threads filled with insights from his time as a therapist and today we get to go through some of my favourites. Expect to learn why having sex with a man on the first date won't make him fall in love with you, why it shouldn't be a surprise to most men when their partner divorces them, the psychological effect of relying on daycare for newborn babies, why men don't understand how female communication works, whether love or respect is more important in a relationship and much more... Sponsors: Get the Whoop 4.0 for free and get your first month for free at https://join.whoop.com/modernwisdom (discount automatically applied) Get over 37% discount on all products site-wide from MyProtein at https://bit.ly/proteinwisdom (use code: MODERNWISDOM) Get an exclusive discount from Surfshark VPN at https://surfshark.deals/MODERNWISDOM (use code MODERNWISDOM)  Extra Stuff: 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

Hello friends, welcome back to the show. My guest today is Adam Lane Smith. He's a psychotherapist and an author. Adam has helped thousands of patients and couples to deal with problems from childhood, their relationships and their sex lives. He also writes amazing Twitter threads filled with insights from his time as a therapist, and today we get to go through some of my favourites. Expect to learn why having sex with a man on the first date won't make him fall in love with you, why it shouldn't be a surprise to most men when their partner divorces them, the psychological effect of relying on daycare for newborn babies, why men don't understand how female communication works, whether love or respect is more important in a relationship, and much more. These conversations with Adam are some of my favorites. He's like a clinically trained

psychology version of Alex Hormozzi in a way. So yeah, I love these listicles style episodes that are really fast paced and the stuff that you learn is just so applicable. So yeah, get ready for this one. Also, other exciting news, Eric Weinstein is joining me this Monday on Modern Wisdom, one of the most legendary guests in podcast world history. And we went for three and a half hours and partway through, he started playing a ukulele-sized guitar and then picked up a chainsaw. It went everywhere. It was a wide-ranging conversation and I had so much fun. So, yes, make

sure that you are subscribed. Ready for that one. In other news, this episode is brought to you by Woop. Woop is the best fitness tracker that I have ever used. It tracks your sleep, your strain, your recovery, your stress and more to provide personalized insights that help you to reach your goals. So whether you're obsessed with squeezing a little bit more effort out in the gym or getting extra hours of sleep in, whoop will help you to build better habits and make healthier choices. It's got professional grade technology developed by the world's leading human performance

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The first one, which I thought was fascinating, women think that having sex with a man on the first date will bond him to her, but that doesn't work with secure men or avoidant men. It really only works with crushingly insecure men who crave approval and women don't want to bond with those men. Absolutely. Men, we don't get the same kind of hormone release that women do and we don't process it the same.

For us, it's a lot more dopamine. It's not the same level of oxytocin quite that they get. So we are very different women. If they have an orgasm with a man, they're probably going to bond with him. This is why casual sex is so, so difficult for women, and especially maintaining friendships, and just steady platonic or casual friends with benefits, situations for women. This is why they turn friends with benefits into situationships. This is why this happens. They will start off agreeing one thing, then do the other.

You've probably seen this before. I'm sure men don't bond that way. They just don't typically. If there's already a bond happening, yes. Then having sex can be unitive, and it can make him love you and not love you, but make him care for you more. It can increase his affection for you.

It can increase the bonding, but the connection already has to be there. You don't get a guy to fall in love with you doing that. So this whole first date, sleep with them on the first date, so he'll stay around. That's a whole other thing. Yeah, I wonder whether it's women using their theory of mind, I think in the evolutionary psychology literature, it's called cross sex mind reading failures.

So they believe that if it was me, the only way that I would be able to sleep with somebody is if I felt very deeply about them. Therefore, if this happens with the man, then this is how he must feel about me. And it's a failure of using your own theory of mind. You're very right. It's also I've been studying a lot in a mirroring neurons, especially when we're little children. So when we're born, we have the amygdala, and then we have a lot of mirroring neurons. It's two of the only structures that are really fully formed at birth. And our mirroring neurons, we're supposed to have mom.

Mom is supposed to be paying attention to us and looking at us and mirroring our expression to her so that we feel interesting to people just by existing. And then when we make a face, she mirrors it back to us. And we start mirroring each other. And we say other people will respond to me, I am enough. If mom doesn't, she's depressed, she's tired, she's exhausted, she's working three jobs and is never there. We're in daycare all the time.

If we've had Nick Yu trauma, if we've had various issues, our brain says, mom is not mirroring me or I can't get a response, I have to be interesting to get mom's attention. This is where kids start acting out a lot, or they go inward and don't believe they can get any kind of response. The response tries to die as the desire to even connect. So then, people are trying, in dating, to be interesting. They're trying to stimulate others.

Women say, I have to sleep with them on the first date, or he'll lose interest. When you hear that, her mother probably didn't mirror with her correctly. Her father didn't mirror with her correctly. She learned, I have to be interesting in stimulating guys. Same thing. When they try to dance for women's approval, it's that mirroring neurons all the way back. Have you probably met guys like this, right? They try to be interesting instead of be real?

Yeah, I think there's a massive lack of confidence and insecurity around authenticity. There's all manner of rumour and half truth and full truth and no truth about vulnerability and when it's right to open up and when you shouldn't open up as a man. And the more layers of of bro science and half-remembered hearsay that you layer on top of an interaction, the more performative it becomes, the more persona and less person there is in the interaction.

And the more that that happens, the less you actually feel connected with what you're doing. Because you're not connecting from you to a person, you're playing a role. So even if you do get the outcome that you want, the person isn't in love with you, they're in love with this projection

that you've given them. And you know, this is such a, it's such a dangerous catch 22 to fall into. It's the reason I think fundamentally that the actual hardcore pickup world failed for men that were unconfident with women because what it taught them was that the person they had to be and the person that they genuinely were

were so far apart. If I need to go through this massive rigmarole and say, did you see the fight with two midgets outside, isn't that? And then I've got a negar and like twist the lemon and I've got to like, you know, ignore her and chat up her friend and do all this shit. So if I have to go through this complex fucking rain dance to try and get a woman to go to bed with me, and that's not what I would do. What does that say about me? And it's one of the problems of taking your cues from cultures opposed from yourself. And a lot of this could come from parenting problems,

too. It is. Think of this. There's from what I have found, there are two different dating pools, and they don't flag or signal to each other at all. They have almost no crossover. They're not even aware of each other. There's the secure people who want that direct human authentic connection of we are together, we are talking, we're sharing this bond. They don't want stimulation because it feels weird. Too much stimulation up front feels weird to them.

They understand that connection so they want the right bonding experience. Then there's the insecure pool that everybody is trying to be interesting, interesting, interesting. And they're playing that anxious with that avoidant dance over here. Two different pools that never cross. So when you see guys, every woman out there expects you to be eight feet tall and have an 18 inch dick and you have to have 10 billion in the bank and no, no, you don't. And you don't have to dance for her amusement and endlessly play games or have dread game or control her. That's only going to work on those insecure women over here.

It's never going to work on secure women. They will get up and walk away. You're going to look confusing to them or disinterested and they're going to track as confusing or disinterested for you. The two dating pools are segregated out completely according to this model. It is wild to see. Yeah. And, you know and just to kind of round out the women having sex on a first date, thinking that it'll get a man to bond with her, I really, really don't think that many of the girls

that listen to this show will think that, but if there is or if you've got a friend that does think that, like, price is an indicator of quality. And for almost all of human history, Price is an indicator of quality. And for almost all of human history, there was a courting period that needed to occur. Even if the courting period was passive because you lived in the same tribe together and she observed you being competent and reliable and trustworthy and bringing back a big world

of beasts and helping out with the whatever, whatever. So there is a period of value, justification from man to woman and also from woman to man. And if you shortcut that, the presumption from a lot of guys, and I can tell you this from first and secondhand experience, if a woman gives it up too easily, the assumption is, well, she'll do this to any man. Correct. That's the first thing men think of. That was a great hamburger. Everyone is eating this hamburger. I'll come back when I'm hungry,

but it's not the hamburger I'm going to sell for. Fuck yeah. All right, next one. A person obsessing over politics is a good indicator that their personal relationships are a mess, unless they're financially invested in the political sphere that probably compensating for feeling powerless in their life. If you're looking for someone to save you, they're not gonna save you.

Number one, and you need to actually do the work in your own life. Are there things that impact you? Yeah, there are. Should you be completely obsessed with finding the right person who's going to save you and all of society? Nah.

Chris, how many people have you met that are obsessed with politics to a degree that they're not really involved in them? It's their sport. Yeah, quite a few. Twitter, right? I mean, that's a large part of what drives Twitter's business, is arguing over who is going to save us best and who should be the enemy and who we outside and who we exile.

And if they're doing that, that's not done by people who are happy. Let's say it another way. The happiest people are not on social media yelling about politics. They might be on social media posting about their kids, or they're going to be out with their kids, or their family, or their best friends. They're going to be building a life. They have so much more to do than just politics. And they just navigate around the politics that are happening. So you think that it's a compensatory mechanism? Every single time I have seen someone come into my therapy

office or now my coaching and start talking to me endlessly about this is so important, this person and this. I say, okay, let's steer it back to your life. They will steer it away from their life back into politics because they think that they are showing who they are by following the right things and having the right politics. And they think that they are showing who they are by following the right things and having the right politics. And they think that that gives them value and it also makes them feel safe because they

can talk about it. And again, they're trying to be interesting. They're trying to stimulate. They're not even having a real conversation. They're not discussing it. It is just a compensation in every capacity and they will not talk about the gaps in their own life. They want to run away from that. I wonder if a little bit of it is externalizing the locus of control that look.

My life isn't where I want it to be, my relationships aren't where I want them to be, and it's the fault of whatever's going on outside. It's the economy, it's because of social media, it's because of Silicon Valley, it's because of immigration or the war in Ukraine or the price of pharmaceuticals or East Rigeons in the water, like putting the blame outward onto something that you kind of know that you can't impact is actually a really perverse type of victim mentality, because you know that you're not going to stop Eastergins from getting into the water. You know that you're not going to change the warring the Ukraine. This isn't to say that you can't have an issue

with this, you can't be aware of this, you can't campaign for it and make changes for it, but if it is the fundamental driving force in a life where you feel powerless and you point the finger of blame, that feel powerless and you point the finger of blame, that is the equivalent of pointing the finger of power. You say, the Ukraine, that's what has all of the power over my relationships and my mood. The economy, that's what has all of the, and these things were not separate from these things, but absolutely there is, I feel like there is a non-insignificant cohort of people who use politics as an excuse to not engage properly with the challenges that they're facing in their life.

Absolutely. If someone brings, I'm not saying that the political pieces aren't a problem, yeah, the economy sucks, yeah, it does. But here's the real test, is when someone gets complaining about a political thing, ask them, okay, what are you going to do about it? What are you going to do about it? If they have an answer, they are taking control in their personal life. If their answer is, we have to elect so and so, they will save us or we have to shoot the other side in the head, or if that's their answer, no, that's not going to help them in any way, shape or form. They don't actually have any control. Like, you low cuss of control. You nailed it.

I love that. Their low cuss of control is externalized and they are hoping someone will save them. It's very much the same of watching a sports team and say, and when the sports team wins, they say, we won. It's exactly the same thing. Right. Next one, people are more likely to take a pill for years that they don't understand and don't think will actually help them than they are to attempt even one uncomfortable conversation that could save their life. People, number one, will trust on institutions blindly because there's that locus of control. This doctor will save me. This doctor said this medication will save me. It will make me feel better.

Sometimes the placebo effect works for that. And that's scary. People don't wanna do the work though, because the work is exhausting. The work takes willpower, the work takes hope. Taking a pill doesn't take hope. You just have to put it in your mouth and swallow it and you can just see how it works in six weeks.

Doing the work is hard. And when they don't feel that they can affect change, then they don't feel that they can actually make anything happen. So work is pointless, work is scary. Work will just confirm for them that they're helpless. So they don't want to do the work. They don't want to have the conversation.

Pill is easier. How many times have you seen somebody come into your practice that is sort of one difficult conversation away from a radically different life? That is pretty much every person who comes into my office and my coaching session is what conversation are you too terrified to have? How do we build you up to where you can have that?

How do we decrease your anxiety and difficulty to have that? Go have it. And they go have it and it re-orients their whole brain and their whole life starts to change and they start fixing their life Because then they can have the next conversation and the next one and the next one their brain chemistry balances out They are their porn addictions go down even as their brain chemistry balances out. It's incredible to watch but it is almost always one conversation away from fixing their life and that conversation makes them feel like they're going to die if they try to have it. That's, that's everything. Why is that the case? Why do we fear the difficult conversations that we have to have so much? As kids, we learn, this is attachment,

this is what I teach, as kids we learn, that somebody is not going to take our needs seriously. And in fact, if we try to get them to take it seriously, they're going to hurt us, they'll abandon us, they'll tell us we're not worthy of their time, they'll brush us off, they'll yell at us. So trying to get someone to take our feelings or our needs seriously is terrifying. And in fact, when we're little kids, it can get you abandoned. And then abandonment is linked to death when you're a little kid. You feel like you're going to die. So it's an amygdala response that forms the theories theories go that amygdala memories stay with us for life. You remember that opening up and asking for help gets you hurt really bad to an extent that you can't take ever again because it could destroy you. So then one big conversation is the most

terrifying thing on earth. People would rather face physical pain than that emotion or that social pain. What is your advice to somebody who probably knows that they do have an incredibly uncomfortable conversation? They've been putting it off for weeks, months, years, and now they are almost in a relationship with that relationship they have with the conversation. Where do they go? Where are the first steps that they go to to get past that? Figure out what outcome you want for that relationship with that person. What relationship would you rather have with them than the one you have right now? The fake one that you have right now? Then take that relationship, pitch it to the person and say, I want this relationship with you. To get there, we have to overcome this issue.

Here is how I would like this conversation to go. Do you want that conversation? Do you want that relationship also? If so, how can we together handle this issue? Here's what I need, what do you need? And you build a solution-focused approach to solving that problem. That is cooperating during conflict. That is how you build a solution focused approach to solving that problem. That is cooperating during conflict. That is how you build a secure attachment. That's how you build great relationships.

This is also how you prevent the other person from exploding in your face. As long as they are a halfway reasonable human being, they probably want the same vision of relationship you do. And if you give them, hey, this is what we're going to do to get there. They don't have to fight you or defend against you. It's not an accusation. It's, let's solve this to get to that. And that makes it so much easier.

If you can approach it that way, you'll solve most of your relationship woes. What is the other side of the fence here? So that is the pathway for somebody who needs to have a conversation to have it. You mentioned people are likely to take a pill for years. They don't understand in opposition or instead of having a difficult conversation. What happens when somebody continues to tamp down the things that they know that they're supposed to say,

what's going on in the brain in the body with everything else? So those people end up usually really deficient on oxytocin. And oxytocin is crucial for managing your physical pain. So a lot of these people end up with chronic pain issues. Oxytocin also releases GABA, Gamma Amino Bioric Acid. GABA is responsible for a lot of melatonin and helping you sleep at night and relax your body. It helps you use magnesium effectively to manage stress. It's an inhibitory neurotransmitter for crushing down anxiety, depression symptoms, and all of those are missing if you don't have those healthy relationships with good conversations. Your high cortisol will actually block that production of oxytocin, which will block the production of that gaba as well. So have the conversations. Your pain will start to diminish emotionally, mentally, physically, everything will start to diminish

and your satisfaction in life will go up. You have to have those conversations because it's killing you not to. I suppose it's a double-edged sword that people who need to have conversations will often lie awake at night thinking about the conversation that they haven't had, but they've also created this

neurochemical foundation, which is restricting their ability to sleep as well. That's right. That's right. A lot of my clients will take a, they will, what is the word, microdose, a little bit, experiment with microdosing. Sometimes they just need to learn physical body techniques to manage their anxiety.

Whatever it takes to decrease the anxiety enough to go have the conversation. That's the point of pharmaceuticals with mental pharmaceuticals. Most of them is decrease the symptoms to do the work. So get the symptoms down, do the work, and you shouldn't need those pharmaceuticals much after that because you've already solved the problem that was there in the first place. Most cases of depression are a natural response to our broken society. We gain much of our sense of worth, purpose, meaning and joy from our relationships, but those relationships have never been more systematically destroyed than they are today. How have they been systematically destroyed? How do you categorize modern society as being broken? So we look back 200 years ago. It wasn't perfect, but families, we had five safety nets that if a family didn't go

right, a child would connect to one of their five safety nets. You've got your core nuclear family. You've got your extended family network around that, grandmothers, grandfathers, uncles, aunts, cousins. You've got the KIT and KIN network after this. So you've got like way out family members. You've got the surrounding family friends, the friends that you have are going to grow up with. You've got your neighborhood, your tribe, your village, your little town, the people around you outside

of that that you can connect to. And then you've also got your religious connections, your religious identity, the religious network and community you're tapped into. Those five pieces, if your family doesn't connect with you, somebody outside that family will, a grandmother and aunt, somebody will step in. You've got your Kith and Kidd network, people to grow up with peers and other people to connect with. This is where you get married most likely.

You've got your overall village, your connection point with the other people around you, right? Maybe a thousand people. And then you've got your religious connections as well. Jaira Tolkien, he was raised by a priest. That was his safety network. Everything else fell through. He was still raised by a priest and brought us Lord of the Rings. There are so many connection points within these five. And all of those are pretty much gone now, except you've got your nuclear family, which even that is shattered, especially here

in America. Those five networks are crucial. And if you don't have them, kids slip right through the net all the way down to suicide. What would you say to the people who wouldn't predict or don't understand why worth purpose, meaning enjoy come from relationships? A lot of people will find this from their work, from pursuits that they have, from the kind of content that they consume, stuff like that, to think of relationship first, purpose-filled lives, seems, I don't know, it doesn't seem very common. I hear that, I understand that. Part of that is because most people don't have those relationships

so they didn't grow up experiencing what it's like to have an impact on another human being, to feel a connection with another human being. They didn't grow up with much of that, so nobody impacted them in a much of a positive way. They can't understand then and calibrate around trying to have an impact on other people. So an artist, many artists, yes, they're creating because they have that desire to create, but their legacy focus for their art is to impact other people, to drive them to think, to help people to grow, to inspire other artists. An author is not just writing a book for themselves, an author is writing a book for an audience

for human beings. A therapist is not just becoming a therapist because it will be satisfying to them to be a therapist. They are going to make an impact on the world. Your job, your craft, your hobby, all of these create human impacts. And if you've never experienced a human impact yourself, it's very difficult to imagine what kind of human impact you could create that would then be worthwhile to create a legacy. You, Chris, man, watching you has been incredible, but think about your human impact of this show.

You're not doing a podcast because you enjoy talking into a microphone. You are changing the culture. You are uplifting certain voices, right? You are changing the conversation, the macro conversation. Our micro conversation is going to echo through that macro conversation out in society and start making a shift. You are having a tremendous human impact on the human race and you are one person doing that. Your work has tremendous meaning that way because of that human

impact, but if nobody ever listened to your show ever or was ever touched by your show, it wouldn't have that same meaning to you. Yeah, that makes sense. I remember we had a conversation, one of the previous episodes, about pan generational houses and it's the rarity of that now. So I think you had this super viral tweet a couple of years ago that said something like a, don't forget that moving out of home is a sion by the government to make you have two mortgages instead of one. You know, because, and it was, it's so obvious in retrospect, you think, you

know, families would have had three generations, four generations of not just your straight nuclear family, but extended family too, living on some sort of farm, working for a farmer, you know, even if it's not your farm, it's you and your family are within that. Yep. I was seeing some research, I think, it might have been you. I see you so often on Instagram, I can't even, I just attribute everything to you now. But there was some research that shows that by the time your child is 12 years old, you've already spent 75% of the time in your life that you will spend with them now in the modern world.

By the time they are 18, you've spent 90% of the time you're likely to spend with them across the course of your life. You only have about 10% left through the course of their entire adulthood that you're going to touch base with them or see them. And that is a very modern concept, because that is not how humans are meant to function

to go like that and scatter that hard. 20, what are the numbers? About 100 years ago, most people didn't move more than 15 miles from the place of their birth. They wouldn't even travel more than 15 miles from the place of their birth, or they would get lost and never be able to find their way home. Now, what do we do?

I'm just gonna pack up, I'm moved to Dubai, and then maybe I'll move to Australia. I saw my parents four or five years ago. I don't remember, I don't know what dad's doing. Oh, he's dead. Well, that's really sad. Okay, well, I will cry later. But first, I have to fly to France.

This is becoming so much more common. And one of my dearest friends, his, all of the children in his family scattered. And finally, wonderfully, they all came back together to have children to get married. They gathered around their mother who was 57 years old and only maybe five to ten years away from retirement age. And all of her family was there, all of her kids were there, her grandkids were there. And then she got a job offer for an extra $10,000 a year if she moved 12 hours away. So completely, she just did.

It wasn't even a conversation in the family. It wasn't, wow, what all the opportunities will miss. Kids won't even see grandma. No, it was $10,000. That's great. And they simply packed up and moved 12 hours away after this miracle reuniting of her entire family. That, that is modern life.

Yeah, that's terrifying. You've got another one here. Everyone talks about how horrible the dating scene is for men today But the picture is painted as if women love the dating scene. That's because most men look at women and think they're having a great time But most women are miserable in dating as well Man, I just I'm thinking of the way that pornography, if a guy's been watching porn since he was 8, 10, 12 years old here in America, it's 10, 12 is a lot where a lot of guys are introduced to porn. They think women are just, if a woman walks into a dark alley and five men grab her and

have sex with her, she's having the time of her life. This is great because a guy, hey, if I walked into an alley and five women start having sex with me, that would be wonderful. I hope that happens. Like, I would pay money for that. The things men would pay money to experience. Women can wander out and experience any time they want. And guys look at that and say, women must love it. They're lucky. They're so happy. They get to date anyone they want. They can bang everybody on the first date. She could bang 15 guys this week if she wants to. She must be having the time of her life. And then you look at women and you talk to them. And even the ones who have tried hook-up culture, the vast majority of them say it was awful. I was trying to find love. I was sleeping with them hoping they

would love me. I thought it was supposed to be freeing and liberating and it's terrible and I'm miserable. Do some women fall into it and say, well, this is supposed to be fulfilling. So I guess it's fine. Yeah, but those women, many people often eat McDonald's too and they'll say, well, the chicken nuggets are really healthy at McDonald's. That's what I eat. It's, if you are used to only having slop available, then you try to find the healthiest slop you can. And that's where most women are in the dating pool right now. And guys think that women are just only having slop available, then you try to find the healthiest slop you can. That's where most women are in the dating pool right now. Guys think that women are just on cloud nine, and they are just wonderful,

happy princesses who are so choice and ain't true. Not even cloud nine, even close. I think trying to turn down the animosity between men and women is a pretty important counter push at the moment. Look at all of the matches that women are getting on on dating apps. I'm like, yeah, but have you ever asked a normal attraction attractiveness woman to see the sorts of messages that she gets from men on online dating apps? It's fucking catastrophic. Like, it's absolutely, I don't know who these guys are, because they're certainly not the guys that I know,

and they're certainly not the guys that I'm showing it to. They're like, what the fuck is this? Like, why would somebody try and say this? And yeah, it's the lack of understanding from both directions. And I had this conversation a few weeks ago that the challenges of men and women in modern dating for women are often problems of abundance and for men are problems of scarcity.

And the problems of scarcity can seem more noble in a way because you go, well, look, you know, like at least you have options, I don't even have options. But when you fold in the sort of physical vulnerability that women have, and the slutshaming and concern of derogating her value, and I'm gonna go on a date with this guy, and me too has created this echo of kind of ambient anxiety for all women, whether it's justified or truthful or not, it creates an environment in which it's really, really,

really uncomfortable for a lot of women in the dating market. And because they seem to be like just swimming in D, guys presume, oh, well, they're having a great time. I mean, well, I don't know. I don't think that it's the case. I think that you would have a lot more happy men if there were a lot more happy women. I agree. I have so many people coming. Let me ask you this, Chris, conventional

wisdom and any of your own experience. I have a swarm of people coming into my DMs and a coaching, my group, even just talking to me on the internet. And they are overwhelmingly desiring a committed, monogamous relationship. Do you think it's mostly women or mostly men that I get? Yeah, women, women, but I could see it coming from, I could see it coming from both sides. Both. You're right. You got you nailed it. It is both. There are so many men desperate to find a committed monogamous relationship with a woman who will just be loyal and honest to them and just kind loyal and kind. Those are the two things I hear most of all that men are looking for women.

Same thing. I want a honest stable man is what they are usually looking for honest and stable or honorable. There's another one that the others would't say. But here's what happens, as I tell them, okay, are you on the first date being clear that you are looking for a committed relationship? Not asking for one, but being clear, that's what you want. At the end of the first date, you say, just so we're on the same page, I'm looking for a long term committed relationship. What are you looking for? Do you do that? Oh, I can't do that. They get up and run from the table. No one wants to hear that. Men don't want that or women don't want that. You would think men are like women don't want

commitment. They're just having fun. That's the most I've ever heard. It is like dangling commitment is how men get sex from women. That's how much women want it. But men today have got this sia up against them that women don't want commitment. You've got this tweet which relates, look, most men in America are just wanting an honest monogamous relationship with a woman who's not going to betray them or rob them blind. And right now most men under 30 don't believe that sort of relationship is possible. No one wants to acknowledge this disaster. That's right. That's so right.

It's, why are there more angry, scared in cells? Why are more guys running into red pill? Why are guys committing suicide at catastrophic numbers? Right now as we're filming this, there's guys committing suicide that won't even hear this. The need to hear this. It's because they don't believe. They don't believe women want commitment. They don't believe women will ever be loyal to them. They've never experienced kindness usually from other people. I've got other tweets on there that you've seen. I know you've seen of men that haven't had a hug or a compliment in five to ten years. They haven't experienced human kindness. You know, know what that's like. Then they go out into the dating pool hoping to just find a woman that

they can quietly live alongside, hoping she'll stay with him like a magical creature that's just in his presence. It's horrible. It's horrible. And men and women are both miserable, but men unfortunately do things about their misery. 70% of divorces are initiated by women, but it usually follows years and years and years of them begging men to take their relationships seriously. Guys will get online and talk about being blindsided after 20 years of marriage, but usually dismissed every possible sign. I wrote this book right up here above my head, Exhausted Wives, Be Wilder,

husbands for this reason is women, as man as much as crap as women get on the internet about no women are loyal. They're all faithless creatures. Man, they will stay. You've probably seen women stay with some guy for a long time who isn't worthy of her and keep asking how to fix their relationship. Do you get a lot of women asking you like, Hey, Chris, how can I fix my relationship? Do you get a lot of that? I get bombarded by those questions.

Thankfully not. They don't come to me for that kind of advice. I mean, my DM requests are a bit of a cesspool, but yeah, there's all sorts of stuff in there. I definitely think that looking at the cliche of the woman that stays, I mean, women stay with men that beat them. Women stay with men that cheat on them. Women stay with men that do all amount, they've got gambling addictions, they've frittered away the entire family nest egg, all this sort of stuff.

Like, yeah, it's really interesting to think about this, like this insight that guys do get blind sight. I don't know what happened just one day, she up and left. He got wild. I don't know, man, what happened for the two decades before that? Correct, correct.

And that's usually what it is is he really doesn't think that it was a big problem. Most men, they don't track problems unless the woman is clear this is a problem and here's how we're going to fix it. They have no understanding. If the man doesn't believe it's a problem or doesn't believe there's an alternate

or a solution, he's not going to solve the problem. The male brain looks, observes and fixes it and acts upon looks and acts upon. If he says she is whining for no reason, she wants constant euphoria, there is no such thing as real love. I'm giving her everything I can. You know, when I give you my paycheck every time, every time I get one, they map their ability to love onto that and say there's nothing more than this. And they don't take it

seriously until she's ready to leave. Then he freaks out, but she's already given up. She's already given up by the time he says, wait, I'm willing to take it seriously now. Let's go to therapy. Let's go to this. Let's go to that. Then they go into couples to coaching or couples therapy. And she just says, I'm done. I'm tired. I'm miserable. Then he's done this for 20 years and then therapist rips him apart and it's a hellish experience. And that's usually what that is. She's already given up, man. If men could... What do you mean learn to track those questions more carefully, it would work.

What do you mean when you say, take their relationship seriously? Take the ability to give and receive love seriously. Take her feelings seriously. Take his own desire seriously. Learn what love is and what it's supposed to be. Learn what emotional intimacy is and do it. Believe he will be taken seriously and open up to her, right? You point out brilliantly earlier that the conversation online about vulnerability is

if you are ever vulnerable to your wife, she will instantly leave the house and sleep with your best friend on your front lawn as you are inside still with your mouth open having shared something personal with her. And that's just not true. Yes, if you whine and sob uncontrollably on the floor for six months about a problem with ever, out ever getting up and fixing it, she may lose respect for you. And over time, if you just sit there, yes, she may not respect you as a man anymore, but women crave vulnerability. They crave emotional intimacy.

It's how their sex drive works. After the first 12 months, it drops off a cliff if you don't build that. So build the emotional intimacy. She's not going to cheat on you. Related to what you just said, the men are often demonized in the first session of couples therapy. There are two big reasons for this. One, women are usually better at articulating their grievances, two, criticize a woman

too early and she is likely to stomp out of the session. Men will just take it. So this is really interesting because it's showing us both what happens from the client side and also from the practitioner side as well, that there's behind the curtain in front of the curtain are kind of working together here. I remember going through schooling. So it was six years for a master's degree and then three years of focused apprenticeship under other clinicians to become a licensed major family therapist, nine year experience.

And I remember the training they gave us about be careful with female clients in couples therapy because they have come in expecting that their feelings will be validated. Don't smother and stomp on the guy because all of you guys will do that. The woman will be better at crying about her feelings. She will have a list of grievances. The guy is in there treating you like the enemy already. So validate her feelings, try not to stomp on him. And then a lot of therapists would just go in there and do exactly that because she's crying her eyes out. He's never loved me, never cares. I do all these things. And he's like, I'm sorry, you

know, I'm really sorry that you're having these feelings. And then therapists are like, well, this is the right, she guys want to go. Cool. Hey guy, here's the things you must do if you want to be a decent. And then it just turns into this big, fast about let's fix the guy. And meanwhile, the woman's challenges and the things she's contributing go completely under the rug. And the guys are exhausted by this.

There's a point. There's a reason they don't want to go to couples there anymore. What about women are usually better at articulating their grievances? Very, very common for that. This happened, it made me feel this way. I didn't like it. Here's what I need you to do instead. Most guys can't articulate their emotions that way.

Most guys have no idea what did I feel? I don't know, why would I talk about my feelings? This made me mad. Don't ever do it again. And then it sounds like he's just yelling at them and ordering them around. It sounds awful. Women will typically use more of what's called non-violent communication. It makes them sound better. It makes them look better. Women have better PR while they are talking about their feelings. And therapists will say, wow, you're using good therapy language because women have read so many books. They've done therapy themselves. They've watched therapy dramas.

They know how to use the language as a seeped into our culture. Men often don't. So it is. You walk in and a lot of times the woman instantly forms a connection with the therapist. The guy is blindsided and it's just a horrible experience for the men most of the time. Yeah, I suppose this isn't to kind of lay therapy behavior at the feet of manipulative women. It's just that they have an unfair advantage

when it comes to communicating and articulating the problems that they've got. They've probably spoken to their girl friends about this issue. They've had a dry run of this 200 times before already. And also, I think, based on one of our previous conversations, you said that it's almost always the woman that gets the couple to go into counseling in any case. Yeah, almost always, unless it's his hail Mary pass at the very end, because she has been absolutely done with the relationship and he pitches it as a last

ditch effort. And then he's going to walk in and be endlessly apologetic anyway, and she's going to share all her grievances even more, and it's going to get even worse. So I remember as a marriage family therapist, I had to work through that, and they'd come in and I'd have to make sure I did not take a side that I did not stomp all over him, that I didn't validate it overvalidate her. But I remember I'd say, what brings you guys in here? And she would amp some of the women clear their throat and they would open their person and she would pull out a written list, a written list. And the guys' eyes would like widen and he would just, I could see a like brace for impact.

It's amazing. It is amazing what happens inside that therapy room sometimes. And if the therapist isn't guarded, if they're not aware, if they haven't received adequate training, if they haven't taken care of their own problems, if they're all overly indulging of women anyway in those circumstances, right? Think of police, right? Two people punching each other, the police pull up, they arrest the man, and they throw him in handcuffs. One of my very dear friends was in an awful abusive relationship, and the woman was punching him over and over and over in the face, and he was trying to get away,

and she pursued him, continuing to punch him. So he grabbed her wrists to stop her from punching him in the face, because he was so bruised, and the police police pulled up and his face was covered in bruises and he said she's punching me and they said you're holding her wrist so they put him in handcuffs, tossed him on the curb, held him down and then talked to her to see if she wanted to hold press charges as his face is all bruised from her punching him and she even admitted, yeah I punched him and he grabbed my wrist, okay well he could go to jail do you want us to take him right now? That's, you gotta remember that that is brought into therapy too.

And you gotta control for that. How much are couples using therapists as like a mediator or is almost a communication tool rather than as an expert that can help them work through things? It seems to me based on a lot of the stories I've heard from you that it's just an opportunity to vent. They're shouting things into the ether, but they don't actually need to turn and face the partner that's sat next to them because they can tell it to this independent third party and just blast it. But really, they're not saying

it for the therapist. They're finally getting the opportunity to take the stabilizers off and unleash all of this pentabango. You know what, that is almost the better option of what can happen and what they trained us for in therapy and the warnness in school was this, the vast majority of people of couples that come in have one of two outlooks. One, you are going to prove I'm right and change my partner for me or two, I have already given up and I just need to prove it's not going to work by having a professional tell us it's not going to work. Those are the two biggest mindsets that come into their into couples therapy. And they said, you will oversee so many breakups

and so many divorces that you will want to quit your job. So you need to brace yourself for the burnout that is coming as a couples therapist because it is just a meat grinder. They said, you might be able to save 5 to 10% of couples who come into couples therapy because only 5 to 10 percent actually want a better relationship. Dekha has been shown to harm the ability to bond and feel secure, especially for babies. Their mental health outcomes later in life are impacted. Research proves this, saying this out loud can get you fired. Oh man, we've already, people are already mad. Just from hearing that. But yeah, I post this online and I get a flood of DMs

from people demanding answers, telling me I'm a liar. And all I do is pull up one of the longest running studies in human history about daycare conducted by the Canadian government and just send them the link that shows how daycare, especially early in life and especially in large amounts, outcomes 10, 20 years later in that child's life, much worse, more anxiety, more symptoms, more addictions, more broken relationships,

and broken marriages, more problems in their life, strongly correlated with that daycare piece. Now, does it definitively prove it was just the daycare? No. Was it massively correlated in gigantic amounts that it's concerning? Absolutely. So yes, that amount of daycare right there, very, very difficult. What they've shown is that even putting your kids with grandma or an aunt or relative

is even better than putting them into daycare with strangers. That's what the research indicates. What are the age range risks primarily for this? Presumably putting them into daycare once they're four years old, like, you know, they're basically in school then. And I don't think that many people would look at school as being something that would negatively impact health outcomes later in life

because kids are going to be at least a little bit more well adapted by that. Well, American public schools might negatively impact their life outcome. What the research shows is that if you put a kid in public school, there's a 9.3% chance that they're going to be sexually harassed or sexually abused by a staff member. It's almost 10% here in America. So it's one in 10. Just keep that in mind for public school here in America. It's brutal. However, yeah, you're right. It is the lower rates, the lower ages, they're born, and mom puts them in daycare within two weeks.

Here in the United States, maternity leave is really... Is that happening? Even if you can... People put kids in dayscare after two weeks. That's a couple of weeks, yeah. Daycare, if you put maternity here in America, it's a joke. It is a joke. If you can get the time off, cool.

If you have money saved up to be able to pay for it, cool. If your company has good, you know, maternity coverage, good things like that. Great. A lot of moms can't. So a lot of moms, they end up two, three weeks. Maybe they can get six weeks. Maybe that's really like, oh, you got six weeks off. Wow. Good for you here in America. So imagine putting your little baby at six weeks into daycare and you're not going to see them for 12 hours. So in the morning, you're exhausted getting up. You don't see them for 12 hours. Dump them off with strangers who hopefully take care of them, but they're not mom and you're not probably having oxytocin bonding experiences as a baby.

Like they would if they were on you all the time. They even just skin contact and into the day you are exhausted. So we're beginning of this. We talked about those mirroring things. You don't mirror much to them. You don't engage them and talk with them and do endless mirroring with them. They've just kind of sat there all day watching other people and then they'll want to engage with them. And they're afraid because they're alone among strangers.

This is why daycare is so brutal for young kids. Yeah, four or five, six. If you're doing daycare for six hours a day, something like that, maybe a little bit better. But especially those early ages when you're forming the brain, when you're teaching about love, teaching about bonding, teaching about connection. Absolutely not, man. Yeah, I didn't know that. So first I'm hearing about the way that American maternity leave works.

In the UK, mothers get nine months batched together. So they can, my business partner's wife has worked. I think up until pretty much, she was ready to pop each time because she wanted to maximize the amount of time available after that. But yeah, nine months and then she did something else. I feel like she had, I'm pretty sure because she had three kids. I feel like she did something. I'm pretty sure she might actually get sort of 30 months off over the space of like four and a bit years. So, you know, this very, very large chunk of time for all of these different kids. And then when you've had multiple kids, you're overlapping

kids upon kids, right? So yeah, it was, that's wild to hear that the US has. So is there no mandatory, mandated maternity leave at all? Well, there, there are, there are. The pay is often not great. And especially if your employer has to pay, then you get three, four women on staff who will go on maternity at the same time, they can pressure you to come back. There's all kinds of problems that really contribute to this, but there's not much protection for it. There's almost no paternity leave anywhere. All four of my children when they were born, I had to just take unpaid vacation, unpaid

time off or use my vacation time or sick time. I got one week off with each of my children, a single week. And when the first one was born, we were so poor, I could barely even afford one week. It was a giant financial hardship for us to be able to take one week, no pay. It was rough. So, yeah, fathers, almost zero paternity leave and mothers massive, massive pressure to go back to work as soon as possible, especially the financial pieces. There's very little time that moms can really take off here in America at all. We just dump them straight into daycare.

And then daycare is so massively expensive that if you have two kids, you may as well quit your job because you're just paying for daycare at that point. So. Yeah, of course, you're just cycling through, the money comes from me, from the employer to me, directly to the daycare, and I'm just this conduit, I'm just this conduit in the middle.

All right, next one. Most men don't know how female communication works. They provide solutions, which is what they would want, when a woman wants validation. When this is pointed out, most men assume it's untrue because they'd hate to receive only validation instead of a solution. So true. Is this surprising to you? I'm gonna ask you,

because you're about to lose the conversations. After all the conversations that we've had, this one seems pretty aligned with everything that you've taught me. But the validation solution framework, I didn't know how much of it is a cliche, how much of it is just stereotype, you know, that even in sitcoms and stuff,

women will say, like, I don't want you to give me a solution, I just want you to hear me rant. And I didn't know if that was real, but according to my personal opinion, let's make this make sense. So when a woman has a difficult experience during her day and she comes home and she puts down her purse and the husband says, Hi, sweetheart, how was your day? And she draws a deep breath and she's gonna tell him everything that has happened today and about how her work enemy

did this and how she ate this for lunch and her shoe didn't look quite right and she will unload all of these things. Here's what's happening. A couple things are happening. Number one, her logical brain is diminished to fuel an emotional spike over on the emotional agitation side of the brain. That's one thing that's happening. So when you are stressed out, that's what happens. Your logic is diminished. Your emotions go high. What you want to do, what women do is they process this with other women. And as the other woman says, wow, oh, I'm so sorry. Whoa, wow, oh, that's amazing. Oh, and they give them a hug. And they just talk it through the agitation decreases. So those mirror neurons come back in.

She's not upset. She's not scared. It's not a big deal. I don't have to stress about this. And she cares about me. She's listening to me. I'm worthy of her time. And then she gave me a hug.

It releases all kinds of oxytocin. Again, GABA releases after that. It inhibits the anxiety response. I feel so much better. I am loved. I am cared for. Someone gave me their time. And I don't have to feel upset.

I feel so much better after 20 minutes of endless talking, right? Women get this with each other. They do this. Men, the woman comes home. Well, this happened and this happened. He goes, wait, I already have a solution for you because the male brain Observes a problem and then acts upon it. I found the solution that we instantly like you should do this and she goes and she stops

Because her logical brain is diminished. She's not ready for a solution yet She's trying to decrease agitation and bond at the same time. She's saying I'm giving you everything of myself You're gonna know about me. We're gonna bond. We're gonna share. Nope. She's saying, I'm giving you everything myself. You're going to know about me. We're going to bond. We're going to share. Nope. Here's a solution. What he has just done is said, take this. Get out of my face. I don't have time for you. Go over there, please. I'm going to go do this thing. He's accidentally doing that. He's loving it. He's like, I gave you a solution. We found it that fast. We didn't even have to talk for 20 minutes. We talked for three seconds. This is great. Complete disconnect. She feels shut down.

He thinks he's done great. Her demeanor cools down. She gets very standoffish. And he goes, uh-oh. What's wrong, babe? Nothing. Nothing is wrong. And she shuts down.

And they do this over and over and over. That's how it breaks down. So guys, number one thing, please for the love of God. If she starts talking, hey, babe, I really want to hear the story. Do you want me to just share or are you wanting me to find a solution? I just wanna make sure I give you

what you're looking for right here. Okay, you want me to listen? Awesome, I am here for it. And you settle in with a bag of popcorn, you just eat and you just, wow, that's amazing. Like it's the best movie ever. The problem is not whatever the problems you think they are. The problem is she wants to bond with you.

Solve that problem by giving her what she wants. If you do this, you will be the greatest husband on the face of the earth. What is the reverse? What is it that women don't know about how male communication works and what do they get wrong? Men bond by teaching. We bond by teaching and sharing solutions. Man's Blaining, a large portion of man's blaming is men saying, I care

enough about you to give you this information. Look at this podcast. You ask me a question and I start teaching and I start guy, like, this is how men do. And if we hit something where you're like, yeah, I know that part, we skip it through it. Men will say, I know that part, skip ahead, I know that part, skip ahead. And we do that until we catch up. Women don't do this. Women will just sit and listen to you and think, why is he telling me the most basic stupid things

on the face of the earth? Why is he teaching me as if I'm a child? He thinks I'm a child. Because they would only talk to a child that way so that he thinks I'm a child. He's treating me. This is such disrespect. And the man is saying they're going,

man, this is great. I'm teaching her. She's listening. This is wonderful. And he thinks he's bonding. And then later man, this is great. I'm teaching her. She's listening. This is wonderful. And he thinks he's bonding. And then later, he gets a call from HR about man's blaming.

This is one of the biggest things right here. If a man teaches and shares and explains, he is deeming you worthy of passing on knowledge and expertise. If he's being a dick about it, yeah, that's another problem. But most men just want to teach you, they bond with you. They release vast suppressing and oxytocin while they're doing this and they expect you're doing the same. One of the best things a woman can do is ask a man to teach her or train her in something.

They will bond him to you so much better than sex. Men get retroactively jealous of a woman's sexual past because they think about how much hypothetical fun they would have had if they did what she did, but most women would trade their whole past for one loving partner for life. It's a huge difference in perspectives. So let's sort out two things here. Because I post this and I get all kinds of guys angry like, Adam, don't you realize there's a biological reason men would like a woman

who has had low number of partners? Well, yes, I do. I recognize that. 100%. 100%. I married a woman who has had low number of partner. Well, yes, I do. I recognize that 100%. 100%. I married a woman myself who has had no partners previously. So, I totally understand that. There's a good biological reason for a man to want a woman who does not have 300 partners. Totally fine. Totally understand that.

Retroactive jealousy, though, is I think she did XY and Z. So she's going to go do it with someone else. Again, I'm holding her back, or I'm not gonna be good enough, or there's a massive pressure on the guy, especially if she's has experiences he hasn't had, massive expressions on the and pressure on the guy to try to perform, perform, perform. He sees again women and porn. And well, she she wants this they are always happy and porn when they do this no no no no no So most women will tell you that they God involved in in wild sexual experiences to try to get someone's approval to try to be interesting To try to have some stimulation because they were so depressed or so unhappy. I have never never met a woman that said

I love my sexual past because it was so fun and fulfilling. The only women who might say that are excessively avoidant women who have no idea what emotional intimacy feels like. So they rely only on stimulation and these are a tiny minority of the population. Most women will say, I'm glad about my sexual past only because it led me to the man I am with now, and now I am so fulfilled in our sex life because it is so intimate and bonded. That's what they usually focus on. Women aren't really focused on, have the biggest as many penises and as many large ones as possible, and 50,000 men, and okay, now I'm ready to settle down.

That's not really how it goes, like men think. That's how men think, right? Sewing your wild oats. That's a man thing. Women usually are looking for that connection and they have no idea how to get it, and they are so happy when they're in a good relationship with you. What would your advice be to a guy that is struggling to deal with his female partner sexual past? Number one, be realistic if you can handle it, right? If she's your first ever partner and she's had a hundred people and you're like, this is all, if it's overwhelming, you might need to just call it because it might be too much.

It just might. You might not be able to handle it, to be honest with you. And no judgment on you either way. Society may call you all kinds of things, but no, I get it. It may not be, you might not be able to handle it, to be honest with you. And no judgment on you either way. Society may call you all kinds of things, but no, I get it. It may not be, it may not be right. Number two, if there's a religious component to it. And if she's like, no, it was great that I did that in your real, it she's really avoiding. Then maybe it's not going to be for you. But what you need to do is this sit down and talk to her about her sexual desires now, her feelings now, her beliefs about sex now, how seriously does she take

it, how seriously does she take the bond that happens? What does she actually want from you? How fulfilled was she in those experiences, emotionally fulfilled? Talk to her about that. Hey, you did X, Y and Z, what was that like for you? That's the question most men don't have the guts to ask. Hey, you had a threesome with two dudes. What was that mentally and emotionally like for you. That's the question most men don't have the guts to ask. Hey, you had a three sum with two dudes. What was that mentally and emotionally like for you? There was at a great time, guys would imagine the opposite and we think it's going to be

amazing. Was it amazing? Most women will say, no, it was really disappointing. But what about the terror if your, the love of your life looks into your eyes and says, yeah, it was really, really fun when I had two dudes in one bed. That's what's going to be like cause some guys heart to fall out. It could be then you need to know that. Don't shy away from the truth, bro. Ask the truth, get the truth and then say, okay, is that something that I'm holding you back from experiencing in our relationship?

Do you want to go have that experience again? She's probably, if she's with you, most likely to say no, I do not want those experiences again I actually value our connection so much more than any of the fun I've ever had That's it. I'm not saying women have never had fun. I am saying that emotional intimacy is the massive driver for their real real bonding orgasm the female orgasm it's driven by oxytocin. Oxytocin builds through the emotional connection you share, and then it builds more through foreplay. As long as you do it, you don't do it for play for an hour,

it will tank, but you do the emotional bonding all day long through the relationship, and then the foreplay. And then sex, and this is how women often can orgasm through vaginal stimulation without glatoral stimulation. They can do this when their oxytocin is very high, typically the research is cool on this. And then they can have multiple orgasms because it keeps chaining their or their oxytocin higher and higher and higher. A lot of women who can't orgasm, I've worked extensively with a couple where the woman cannot orgasm. Building the relationship and the emotional

intimacy builds incredible orgasm experiences for them. Oxytocin, that emotional intimacy is the bonding point for women. It is female Viagra. So if guys out there, if you're jealous of her past, talk about the fulfillment she experienced and what would be more fulfilling now. Talk about that because you're going to find you are the one who fulfills her more than any of those people ever could have. Most men would rather hear that pothnists say they respect him than hear that they love him,

because respect has an acknowledgement of power he holds and the honorable way he wields it. Let me ask you, Chris, would you rather hear I love you or I respect you? It's pretty close. I don't actually know. I don't actually know. This like I've got a soft side to me. So hearing that someone loves me is really nice, but Respect, respect definitely adds something that love doesn't and I think that love adds something that respect doesn't But I would I would guess that the reverse is not true. That if you to ask a woman, do you want to be respected by your partner or loved by your partner that they're not going to have this same balancing act that I've got to try and do?

Not usually. They will say usually that respect is part of love and that love is the one that's that indicates that respect is there, but not so in the reverse. A woman can love a man, but not respect him. And that's called the friend zone. And you will be friendzoned if you do that. That is the friend zone. I love you, but I just don't see you as a guy. That's the friend zone. Lack of respect, lack of sex drive, lack of desire, lack of trust. So respect for men ultimately more important. Chris, I mean, you are a respectable guy. I respect you. But have you ever had a woman actually think to say, I respect you. Have you ever had that? Most women don't even imagine that it's important.

Yeah, it's not something that I hear many of my friends saying that they've heard from their partners. and saying that they've heard from their partners. I guess, again, the theory of cross-sex mind reading thing, the failure is, well, as a woman, why would I be bothered? I want to be respected, but the fact that someone respects me is, I guess, mandatory en route toward being loved, but it's not something that I actually strive to have. And I think, you know, a big chunk of this is probably explained by the fact that status is such a big determinant of a man's survivability, his reproductive success. It is good to be very difficult for you to accumulate respect without also having status alongside it. So what he hears when somebody says, I respect you, is you are somebody worthy of high status

also and downstream from status a whole host of benefits. Well, honor, right? A woman, if a woman says, I feel safe with you. That is very close to I respect you. I feel safe with you. You are an honorable man. You are a good man. They usually stop shy of saying I respect you. Very few women will actually think to say I respect you to their men. But if you women out there

listening to this, I'm sure there's like a million women out there right now. Learn to say I respect you. Walk up to them, put your hands on his chest, lean in and say I respect you. Like watch his heart melt at that point because it is there's trust, there is honor, there is integrity, there is everything good wrapped up in that. Love is, I feel warmly towards you. For most men, I feel warmly and affectionate towards you and I will do what is best for you. Cool. That's love. You are an honorable, respectable man with integrity and I trust you completely. That's respect. So, guys out there, push for respect, more than love.

Many people reading the above tweets about men needing to feel powerful will view that as a negative. The ability to feed your children and keep a roof over their head no matter what the economy is doing. That's power. The ability to achieve a mission, that's power. Many people today are terrified of the idea of men having power because their only frame of reference

is abuse. Even men feel this way, which is why they shy away from building the sort of power that would save their life. Become an abuser or commit suicide are their only choices. Male power is terrifying in the modern world, but men must have power or they want to kill themselves. I'm a father, I've got four kids, I got number five coming in the way. I think when you and I started, I had like two kids,

they're just popping out everywhere. I don't even know how it's happening. I think my wife is just finding him on the road, I don't even know. So I've got five kids now coming out. And man, groceries are expensive. The US economy is getting so much worse. Our local grocery store had to put cameras in the meat area, not because people are smuggling

it out under their coats, but because families are swapping labels from expensive meat to cheap meat so that they or big packs of meat to small packs of meat so that they can buy the bigger packs of meat for the same prices and not just hooligans. They are stealing meat, not for resale, to feed their kids. Families are stealing meat just to feed their kids. There's a lot of families that have to choose what day of the week they're going to feed their kids meat right now in parts of this country. And it's worse overseas. There's families that you can't even have food overseas, right? What day of the week are we going to eat? Fatherhood is about providing, it's about protecting, it's about caring and doing that. That's why respect is so crucial because it's the ability to do those things. Power is mandatory for men, and not the power to hurt people.

The power to protect and the power to build and create, the positive aspects of masculinity. Like I always tell people, there's no toxic masculinity. There is masculinity or the lack of masculinity. You embrace responsibility or you don't. And to have responsibility, you have to have the power to fulfill it. Yeah, this sort of conversation around toxic masculinity and where it comes from. Had a really interesting framing of it where toxic masculinity isn't too much masculinity, but a lack of it. And more virtuous, integrity-driven, honorable,

respectable, all of this folded together into a conception of masculinity, really, that, to to me seems to be the counter to what is missing. Like to any, most of the modern conceptions put forward by the mainstream media around what an acceptable version of masculinity is supposed to be sounds an awful lot like stereotypical femininity. It is, we want you to be feminine so we feel safe.

That's usually what it is. This would make us feel safe. No, it won't. No, it won't. Because then who's going to protect you? Who's going to make you feel safe in the world? They are scared of men. They are terrified of men.

Women are petrified of men, and right now men are petrified of women. We are also terrified of each other. That men can't be masculine because they're scared people and women have to be masculine to try to protect themselves from the perceived threats. It's a horrible world right now. We need more of masculine men. Yes, indeed. We're talking about many people today are terrified of the idea of men having power because the only frame of reference is abuse. And it's tyranny as well, right? It's that sort of tyrannical,

overbearing, uncairing leader that hasn't got prestige, but has managed to sort of, in a Machiavellian way, get themselves into a position where they can manipulate other people. And I understand that compulsion, I understand that fear, but the alternative is like, this recent Lizzo scandal around where it turns out she wasn't body positive at all, she was it made body shaming the dancers and you know, that to me is the female body positivity equivalent of the sneaky fucker syndrome for men, that you have this person who ostensibly is out there. I'm such a, I care about X and Y and Z, and then you find out secretly

that they're one of the worst perpetrators of this. I think Ellen DeGeneres was the same. It's the senator who is proclaiming anti-gay bills all day before he goes home to watch like gay porn on a VPN from a non-work laptop. It's just what is being pushed out and what is being like pushed back against. Often identify I think where people's desires

actually genuinely lie. If you think about this also is radical feminism, women who have feminist leanings will close their circles except to people who have feminist ideals, which is, I loved how you pointed out, the sneaky fucker syndrome, you have men who engage deeply in radical feminism to try to sneak in and then they are the worst abusers. So then these women say, the men who get it are still horrible. So how much worse must all the other men out there be? And that really radicalizes the evil.

Very interesting. Because you remember 10 years to 10, 15 years ago, there was a UK feminist who came out and said, all men are horrible. We have to put them in concentration camps. Women can go visit them, but the world will never be safe until men are in camps. I was like, what would someone get this idea? Well, if she's only been around male feminists, thinking of the Weinstein scandal, all of Hollywood, all the male feminists in Hollywood, it turns out that they're raping girls and raping people and all kinds of stuff. That's why. The best versions of men they have seen turned out to be sneaky fucker abusers. And this is where we're coming from now.

They are so scared because they think that's the best version of men. Have you seen this trend online of liberal women lamenting the fact that they can't find a man that are attracted to who isn't conservative? Yes, absolutely. I think if it's horrible. Good chunk of this is played into with that. There's a streamer dude, Vouch, Vosh, who he's going viral on the internet at the moment for basically saying that if you are a liberal woman who cares about her politics but decides to sleep with a conservative guy, you're basically like you need to give your head a wobble, what on earth are you doing,

this is kind of a betrayal of so and so and so on. And it's like just the biggest display of intracexual competition and feet stomping and toes going out of the pram that I can imagine. It's like any guy that isn't me that gets sex is unfair. That's what I heard. That's also true. That guys will do anything for sex if they are really insecure. They will do anything for sex if they are really insecure. They will do anything for sex.

I mean, we will build cultures to have sex. It is incredible what men will do to have sex. And the worst their insecurity is the more they're willing to give up or pretend or fake. So I'm curious how many of those women who go out and sleep with conservative men, the men were at least upfront and honest and just straightforward enough to say, hey, I'm curious how many of those women who go out and sleep with conservative men, the men were at least upfront and honest and just straightforward enough to say, hey, I'm conservative, these are my values. And the women probably responded to his honesty,

his confidence and his clarity of what he believes and why. It may not be he's conservative, that turns me on. It might be he is honest, he is straightforward and he's not afraid to tell me how he feels and what he thinks because a lot of guys will use Liberal policies to say I'm not like other guys. I totally understand. Please approve of me Give me a pat on the head. Give me a sympathy screw. You see a lot of what those women see You've seen this data

Showing the skew Liberal versus conservative amongst US school children at the moment. Oh, gosh. It's really, really stark. It's just women. It's incredible. Females are really diverging liberal and males are really diverging toward conservative. So, yeah, you're going to end up with a scenario in which the technical term for it is woke fishing. It's the technical term for it is woke fishing. You're going to have more and more guys portraying their liberal bona fidees

or pretending to have liberal bona fidees putting those out front and saying, yeah, of course I care about the environment and stuff and Nancy Pelosi. I don't actually really think that her trades there's anything wrong with those and all the way down because men will do a lot of things to get laid, including pretending to be a liberal. But this is the thing that I wonder how much of this is skewed.

I know bags and bags of liberal guys, especially ones that live here in Austin, and they easily able to be just as like, upstanding as the conservative guys. What I think you're maybe seeing is a skew here, partly because there is a lot of sneaky focus syndrome going on and people that don't have these views. But another part of it is, I wonder how many conservative dudes have woke fished their way in. And women are like, I had this, like, one night stand with this guy

and he didn't really seem all that truthful, but he said he was a liberal, and he's like, no, he wasn't, he was a conservative in disguise. So yeah, I wonder how much of that is happening as well. Well, I grew up in California as a kid, and not too far from San Francisco. There was a lot, as far,

I've never heard the term woke fishing before, but I have seen it my entire life about guys will do and say anything, have sex and then women have no idea what happened afterward. And they, like, what, where did you go? Oh, he's over there sleeping with other women. He told me he was gay and I was turning him straight. Like I've seen that stuff before.

Like, dudes will do anything. And so, well, women sometimes have a connection with a guy. So that is not shocking to me. I will say this, I've worked with so many couples where they come in very liberal and they get married or they're thinking about a deeply committed relationship and they will shame facedly, especially the women, tell me they find themselves falling into traditional gender

roles and they will ask me if that's okay. I'm like, does it work for you? Well, yeah, but it's supposed to be bad and I feel like I'm betraying feminism. Well, is he beating you with a stick every day and you're wearing, you know, and your barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen? And like, no.

Well, okay, are you guys talking about how it works for you? Yeah. Well, why do you think those traditional roles have formed in most societies on earth? Because they're pretty effective for the way our brains work. Do you feel trapped in those roles? No, he's very considerate when I talk about it. Okay? I say explore it. See how it works for you and embrace it. Don't feel bad. Okay, I'll give it a try. And then they're so happy, so happy after that. They just relax into it.

So I hope that in the future that that may happen with the young men and young women right now who are waiting to pair bond in the wings who are growing into their own. Maybe they will find some methods that work for them regardless of liberal or conservative. I hope that they will. If you're a single parent and refuse to allow your kids to see the other parent just because that parent hurt your feelings, you don't actually love your kids. Love is an action. It is doing what is actually right for the other person regardless of what it costs you. If you strip away a parent from your child, an irreplaceable bond because of your feelings,

not for what the parent does to the other, to the child, but because your feelings are hurt. You don't love your child. You love yourself and your own feelings. Point blank. It's territorial and juvenile and immature and short-sighted and embarrassing and possessive of a child. They are an object in your life designed to give you feelings they are not somebody that you are respecting the dignity of

uh and it's leverage as well it is over your right and it will teach it will teach your children to do the same back to you someday you are a chip to be bartered with. I had this conversation last week talking about parents who struggle to get on board with productivity strategies, or they take offense at people talking about productivity strategies like morning routines and say stuff like, tell me that you don't have kids without telling me that you don't have kids because you talk about some not even that elaborate but slightly elaborate 30 minute morning

routine that you go through. And what they're saying is, I have kids therefore I can't do this. And Alex, the do-do speaking to, was like, well, I hope that the kids never read that. Because if the kids read it, what do they read? They read, wow, mom and dad, did you not get to fulfill your dreams because you had me? Was, do you hate me? Was I not, did I not make your life better? Are you better about the fact that you didn't get to do your morning routine and instead we had to play in bed together?

Those attitudes come through in your interactions. When they fight with you and they push back on you, you don't respond. You don't go online and complain about your kids and how your kids are holding you back from a good life and then be completely loving and compassionate and cooperative and build a great life with your kids. That's just not how that split goes. Your attitude in one place reflects your attitude during stress and when you're going to engage with them. Look, I got four kids, man.

There are times that are stressful when you have many kids, even if one kid, and they throw tantrums, and they pee on the floor, and they throw blocks at your face, and they say, no, I won't eat that. No, I don't want to go to bed. And they will go to bed, and then they will sneak out of bed four times. In a row, you can tell that this has happened. If you despise what you feel they have taken from you, if you despise the sacrifices that you need to make, and if you let those sacrifices be everything in your life, then you will not handle them well during those times of stress because you will unload on them and unload your frustrations on them during those times.

Instead, make sure that you are sacrificing the right things and the right ways and prioritizing. My kids know, I'm looking over there in my office, I've got a wait set over there. My kids don't, hey, I'm a daddy's going to step away, I'm going to lift some weights, daddy's going to go do this. I just hired a personal trainer, I'm getting my fitness on track. I've got to do that. I got to step away and take some meetings for personal trainers. Daddy, why you staying play with me, babe? I have to get my health on track, so daddy can be with you for many, many, many years to come.

And I explain that context to them. Build that and build that into your family, so your kids will do it too. That's what you do. Nice guy issues come from anxious attachment style. He grew up afraid of his mother abandoning him. So all he knows is how to earn good boy points and approval to avoid abandonment.

That's never going to make any woman happy. This is why nice guys finish last. Ooh, and you really liked that other tweet I did with the the werewolf and the happy puppy. Nice guys look really fluffy at first And then really vicious at the end of it when you reject them. It's because they earn good boy points And they are supposed to be rewarded they do nice things for you Expecting to be repaid and you have to figure out what they want

It's usually sex you have to figure out what they want and do it for them or they will be You have to figure out what they want and do it for them or they will be furiously angry that you didn't reciprocate the way the rules say that you have to. This is why nice guys finish classes because they just can't ask and they will come off as a jerk eventually. You've seen this before. I'm sure you have. Absolutely. I mean, there's a really great article by Vincent Harinam about the And there's a really great article by Vincent Harinam about the social economics of simping. And what he's talking about is that a man who is too pliable is kind of the same as a woman who gives up sex too easily.

But the thing, if you presume that the highest value thing that a woman can offer a man, like beyond commitment and love and like all of the actual like fucking important stuff. But like as a front face, resources and chastity, right, it's the trade, largely that is part of one of the main trades that gets made. And a woman who gives up chastity without commitment is, people are skeptical of her. without commitment is people are skeptical of her. And a man who gives up resources without sex in return, people are also skeptical of him. It's why I think there is an awful lot of social stigma

around men who subscribe to only fans. Men who give gifts on Amazon, gifts lists, and stuff like that. Because what those men are doing is they are offering up something which was supposed to be gate kept and walled off for all men to like stand firm. We are all one unit and if the women don't give us sex, then they don't get our resources. And what you have now is a man who is prepared

to give up resources without sex. In the same way as a woman who's prepared to give up sex without commitment, gets criticized by a lot of women. Women who give up resources without sex. In the same way as a woman who's prepared to give up sex without commitment gets criticized by a lot of women. Women who give up sex without commitment drive down the market price or the market value of sex to a level where all other women need to meet it. If you are prepared to give up a blowjob on the first date and I want to wait until the third date, I now need, there's a price differential, I now need to degrade my own price, my own, the value that I see my blowjob's at, down to a price differential. I now need to degrade my own price, the value that

I see my blood jobs at, down to that first date. And the same thing occurs with men. If in order for a man to give up his resources and be able to financially support a woman, the woman needs to jump through a bunch of hoops that keeps the value of resources high, whereas, and this is another one of the reasons I think that there is a particular amount of distaste from both men and women towards only fans creators that they see them as getting a free ride, and they see them as capitalizing off the back of men who are overly pliable. Men aren't happy with either the men or the women because they look at the women and think, well, I'm never going to be able to get her because

what can I offer her that 10,000 men all combined? How can I compete with 10,000 men's worth of resources? And the women aren't happy with her either, because it seems like she's, like, there's a lot of intersexual competition going on there. So yeah, the resources thing, the over-ply ability of men, and it's fundamentally why sipping doesn't work.

Like, you can... Let's, right? The Danes. A thousand years ago, raiding up and down the coast, all over the world, the British, the British, the British, the British, the British, the British, the British, the British, the British, the British, the British, the British, the British, the British, the British, the British, the British, the British, the British, the British, the British, the British, the British, the British, the British, the British, the British, the British, the British, the British, the British, the British, the British, the British, the British, the British, the British, the British, the British, the British, the British, the British, the British, the British, the British, the British, the British, the British, the British, the British, the British, the British, the British, the British, the British, the British, the British, the British, the British, the British, the British, the British, the British, the British, the British, the British, the British, the British, the British, the British, the British, the British, the British, the British, the British, the British, the British, the British, the British, the British, the British, the British, the British, the British, the British, the British, the British, right? The Danes, a thousand years ago, rating up and down the coast, all over you, they've written all over the UK, the Danes, if they sailed in, you don't want to be

married to the guy that when the Danes roll in, they're like, we demand women. He's like, well, okay, here's my wife. Here's my daughter. All right, guys, sorry. Like, you have to go live with the Danes now You don't want that guy you want the guy who plants his flag and says this will never happen I'm going to die first me and all the other guys are going down to the beach to die For you guys so that hopefully we will drive the cost so high that they will leave if I don't see you again I love you Bye-bye and he goes to die to protect his family. That's simps are gonna be like, oh man, like, well, I'm really sorry.

I'm thinking of also another historical example. There was a gentleman during the Holocaust that he sent his own wife and kids on the train knowing, knowing what was going to happen to them. He was sending people on the train. He put his own wife and kids on the train when it was their turn. Didn't say anything. Just load of them on the wife and on the train and he put his own wife and kids on the train when it was their turn Didn't say anything just load of them on the wife and the train and ship them away and after the war when they had the tribunals When they did everything they grabbed they found him they found him much later on in life And they brought him in and they put him up on trial and he said there is nothing you can do to me Then as what is worse than me living with the memory of what I did to

my wife and to my children. But he, that was that right there, was a moment of why you don't marry a Simp. That is why women don't respect Simp's. So they don't respect nice guys. It's the more agreeable you are. It's not just the agreeableness even. It's the weaker you are for approval, for safety. You prioritize your own safety over

actually taking a stand for your morals. That's why Viking raids, the Holocaust, even all the way back to just raiding tribes and hunter gatherer times. It's safety. That's what women understand. That's why they need to respect a man before they'll really sleep with a man long term. Adam Lane Smith, ladies and gentlemen, Adam, I love these episodes. I always love bringing you back on. Where should people go if they want to keep up to date with all the stuff you're doing at the moment?

I am everywhere. So my website's adamlaysmith.com. I've got my video course on there, the attachment bootcamp. I have books, I have coaching, I have a community, everything is on there. I'm also on Twitter as at the brominetheist. I'm also on Instagram, at attachment adam, and on YouTube'm also on Instagram, at Attachment Adam, and on YouTube,

at Adam Lane Smith. I got 400 videos on there about improving your relationships. Oh, yeah. Adam, I appreciate you. Thank you, mate. Thank you, bro. you