Modern Wisdom - #739 - Dr Robert Glover - The Lifetime Problem With Being A “Nice Guy”

Episode Date: February 1, 2024

Dr Robert Glover is a therapist, coach and an author. Being nice is something many of us aspire to become. After all, who doesn't want to be nice? Well Nice Guy Syndrome has been ruining the lives of many men for decades, so perhaps we should aspire to be something else. Expect to learn what is actually wrong with being a nice guy, why men become so afraid of putting their needs first, how to stop people pleasing, why nice guys end up resentful and bitter, whether nice guys attract or repel women and much more... Sponsors: See discounts for all the products I use and recommend: https://chriswillx.com/deals Get a 20% off all Momentous orders and up to 32% off new customer subscriptions at https://livemomentous.com/modernwisdom (automatically applied at checkout) Get a 20% discount & free shipping on your Lawnmower 5.0 at https://manscaped.com/modernwisdom (use code MODERNWISDOM) Get 10% discount on all Gymshark’s products at https://bit.ly/sharkwisdom (use code: MW10) Extra Stuff: Get my free reading list of 100 books to read before you die: https://chriswillx.com/books Try my productivity energy drink Neutonic: https://neutonic.com/modernwisdom Episodes You Might Enjoy: #577 - David Goggins - This Is How To Master Your Life: http://tinyurl.com/43hv6y59 #712 - Dr Jordan Peterson - How To Destroy Your Negative Beliefs: http://tinyurl.com/2rtz7avf #700 - Dr Andrew Huberman - The Secret Tools To Hack Your Brain: http://tinyurl.com/3ccn5vkp - 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 Dr Robert Glover, a therapist, coach, and an author. Being nice is something many of us aspire to become, after all, who doesn't want to be nice. Well, nice guy syndrome has been ruining the lives of many men for decades, so perhaps we should aspire to be something else. Expect to learn what is actually wrong with being a nice guy, why men become so afraid of putting their needs first, how to stop people pleasing, why nice guys end up being bitter and resentful, whether nice guys actually attract or repel women, and much more.

God, I fell in love with this man on this episode. He is so cool and balanced and insightful and supportive and just I really love this vibe. 100% will be coming back on the show. He's a legend. No more Mr. Nice Guy, his book is like an absolutely legendary mens work slash psychology inner exploration tome. psychology, inner exploration, tome, and God, he's just so incisive, really, really cool. The people that this episode is for, and the partners of the people, or the sisters, or the wives of the people as well, it is very, very impressive.

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If you want to see everything that I wear and recommend for guys and girls, head to bit.ly slash shark wisdom that takes you to my super secret product page, and you can use the code MW10 a checkout for a 10% discount plus that 30 day free returns. That's BIT dot L Y slash shark wisdom and MW10 a checkout. But now ladies and gentlemen please welcome Dr. Robert Glover. What's wrong with being a nice guy? What's wrong with being a nice guy? That's a good question. You know what I put out a book called No More Mr. Nice Guy. I'm sure a lot of people picked it up. Wait a minute.

There's already enough not nice guys out there. Why does somebody write a book teaching men how to be not nice? The problem with being a nice guy, just a quick elevator pitch is that a nice guy is a guy who inaccurately internalized the belief system at a very young age. I'm not okay just as I am. So he's trying to do two things, very unconsciously usually. One is become what he thinks everybody else wants him to be so he'll be liked and loved and get his needs met and get laid, hopefully, regularly, and hide anything about himself

that might get a negative reaction from people. Hiding his needs, his wants, his sexuality. So while he's trying to get laid, he's hiding his sexuality. So a core problem with nice guy syndrome is nice guys tend to be unauthentic. There's not a real them there. They're trying to become something, hide something, and that tends to make them share dishonest, untrustworthy, frustrated, resentful, passive aggressive, a whole list of traits that can go along. And mainly it prevents, I'm a recovering nice guy, so I'm not speaking down to anybody. You know, it keeps us from just being ourselves, living up to our full potential,

having what we want in life, having a good time. And so just a lot of baggage comes along with it. What are the component parts of being a nice guy? What are the traits that they embody or project? What you'll recognize most often and what listeners may recognize in themselves. Core tendencies often, people pleasing, seeking external validation and for men usually seeking validation from women.

Even gay guys I find tend to do it even if they don't plan on having sex with the women. We can talk more about this but we've learned from birth to please women. So there's that people pleasing that external validation Failing to live up to one's full potential a basic court is honesty, you know thinking you know, I'm a good guy I'm pretty honest. I always laugh when men tell me they're pretty honest. I say that's actually a contradiction of terms You're honest or you're not and That's actually a contradiction of terms. You're honest or you're not. For most nice guys, there's just a certain dull depression that they live with, just thinking, I should be happy. I should be getting what I want.

I should be getting love. I should, but I'm not and I don't know why not and So there's there's a lot of characteristics, but the core piece you'll see the most often is that people pleasing that seeking of external validation Who is the? Prototypical nice guy avatar like just describe him for me. Oh He's you know, he's just that guy that's, you know, walking through life, trying to make everybody happy, trying not to do anything wrong,

not want to fuck anything up, doesn't want to piss anybody off, goes along to get along. You know, we've heard that, you know, happy wife, happy life. If I just make everybody happy, everything's good. I have a course that I've taught for a number of years called nice guys don't finish last, they rot in middle

management. So he's good at being good, but you know, he doesn't excel, he doesn't stand out, because standing out is actually really scary for nice guys. It's too much attention. It's too much expectation So, you know, I started working with nice guys 30 years ago Most of the men I worked with you know, probably were around my age. I was in my early 30s at that time and So there's a lot of baby Baby boom generation guys, you know, they they were trying to be different than their fathers the World War two, you know, man know, they were trying to be different than their fathers, the World War II, you know, men, they were in that protest generation against Vietnam, growing their hair out, getting in touch with their family inside. And so a lot of the men I worked with, you know, kind of grew up in that era.

But I've been doing this for a while. And so, you know, my son's 38, for example. So, you know, I worked with millennials, millennials, men younger than that. And what's funny is, whereas my generation, a lot of them men kind of attribute part of their nice guy stuff to, well, my dad wasn't there or my parents divorced or, you know, he worked all the time or he's an alcoholic. Nowadays I hear a lot of men say, oh, my dad was a nice guy. And about all he taught me about life was, don't piss off your mother.

And because he was walking around eggshells trying not to piss off my mother. So you know, I've seen that whole range all the way from the guys that were reacting to, you know, the asshole patriarchal father to now the guys that were raised by nice guys and they don't know any other way of being. It's like one generation had the tyrant and the other generation had the compliant. That's a good way to put it. That's nice. The tyrant, the compliant. Yeah, it was. But here's the interesting thing, right? It's so fascinating that you had one generation that was rebelling in their niceness, even if that niceness isn't that nice.

And then another generation that was following in their niceness. So there seems to be a particular stickiness to niceness. If tyrants that are emotionally unavailable and not nice are able to create nice guys and nice Fathers are also big trouble. We're What's why is it so prevalent? What is what is this pole? Are we as men are we inculcating or absorbing something from the world? Is this the way that we were raised by mom and dad is there? What's the gen what's the origin? What's the way that we were raised by mom and dad? What's the origin? What's

the genesis, the seed of this? Well, that's a good question, of course. And of course, every nice guy wants, well, how did I get to be this way? You know, who cursed me with this? Yeah, I quickly learned when I started working with nice guys, again, 30 years ago, that there is no one, you know, one size fit all how you how you got to be a nice guy. I thought there was it first. I thought they're all like me, you know, disconnected from their father in some significant way, you know, significantly raised by their mother trying to please their mom and and and I thought, well, that explains it all, but it didn't. And there's so many pieces that go into it. A lot of men

I work with that identify as being nice guys, I think part of it's their temperament. Part of it's just they're easy going. You know, my mother would often say in adulthood to women I was dating, oh, Bobby never did like conflict. And I'm thinking, oh, thanks, mom. You know, what are you telling these women be nice to my son? Don't be mean to him. But I'm also thinking who does like conflict, you know, I do tend to marry women who like to fight, but I for me it's kind of like, you know, can't can't can't you know instead of us you doing something that starts a fight I say to them can't I just yell at you a little bit? You cry and then I hold you. Isn't that really what this is all about anyway? And my wife always say, no,

it doesn't count unless you're really mad at me. So I don't like conflict in particular. So that's my temperament. So I'm a little bit more. So there's a disposition that many of the nice guys will have, the raw materials of someone that's a little like a verse, yeah. Part of my nature.

But that's just kind of one category, nice guy. The other one that I bumped into, I call off of those, I'm so good, nice guy. He's the guy that just always did everything right no matter what. But the other side I talk about, you know, when Mr. Nice Guy is what I call, I'm so bad, nice guy. This is the one that, you know, maybe started rebelling at an early age, maybe had ADHD, undiagnosed, you know, he's always impulsive, getting in trouble, you know, not following through, getting yelled at, getting punished, starts doing drugs and alcohol at 14, drops out of school.

And then maybe at some point as a come to Jesus moment, religion, military gets married as a kid, death in the family. He goes, I got to quit, you know, self-destructing. I got to be nicer. So there's that kind of nice guy as well. So it's a different temperament than the other. One of the pieces, you know, there's so many pieces that go into this, but to answer your question, what's the stickiness part? Again, I think a real core piece that I see with so many nice guys is this attempt to please women. And I was talking to somebody the other day.

It makes perfect sense because if you think about it, we're all born to a woman. Our earliest caregiver, if it's not mom, it's probably some other woman. So from the time we're born, our very survival, our sustenance, our okayness depends on a woman and probably us getting along with that woman. That's probably a good thing, right? And so that's really normal. That our first experiences are how to negotiate a relationship with a woman to make that big, powerful, holds our life in her hands person person, how to make sure that's okay.

And I don't know about in the UK, but when I was growing up in Seattle, I had one male teacher before I got to junior high. There's four times more female fighter pilots in the US Air Force by percentage than there are male kindergarten teachers. There you go. You've done your research. So I had one teacher, so that means just to learn how to get from second to third grade, not only had to learn my reading, writing, and arithmetic, how to please a woman. Okay. All of that's fine. There's nothing inherently wrong with that. I think that's actually probably the way it's always been. But historically, I mean, if we go back

even two or three generations, but if you go through most of human history, at about age 12, the men came into the boy's life, took him, you know, from the women, took him out, had a masculine initiation, taught him how to get comfortable being uncomfortable, how to face his fear, how to live in the scary world of the masculine, and therefore, and spent most of his time from them on out with men in the masculine. And so he moved through that, what do I have to do to please a woman? So I think that's a really normal thing to try to please women. The survival for every young boy. But what's missing is there's no initiation to teach them how to go face their fears in the scary world, the masculine,

and quit seeking the approval and validation of women. Because there's this really interesting paradox that I've took many years to find out and you know, a lot of men I work with, takes, you know, it's a big surprise, is, oh, pursuing women and trying to please them doesn't make them interested in you. It doesn't make them like you It doesn't make them want to have sex with you. No, it actually doesn't Actually not trying to please women tends to make a guy more interesting to women in general That's a big paradox for a lot of the men I work with and it was for me I mean, I mean all this me listening and talk about their problems me trying to be different than the jerks they complain about me

Repressing my sexuality. So it's not like I just want that one thing from them Oh, you know all that doesn't make them interested in me. No, it doesn't actually But they do seem to be drawn and attracted to the guy who's comfortable in his own skin Living a life, you know on his terms connected with men Putting a big dent in the universe that is really attractive, but there's no note. How do I get this woman's approval involved in that whole mix? What are the covert contracts? Oh, I'm glad yes that that's um, that's my favorite part. I'm no more mr. Nice guy I know many men read it say Robert that is the biggest take away the covert contracts are unspoken often unconscious

agreements that the nice guy has With everything that's not him with the world with God with women, you know, which is how things work and In the book I I'm a little bit general, but I've broken it down to three specific covert contracts that nice guys have. They're all, if then, if I do this, then this will happen. They all are basically manipulative. They all have strings attached. And often the nice guy isn't aware of them and nobody else is either. So covert contract number one. If I'm a good guy, I will be liked and loved and get my and going back to and the women I'm trying to impress will want to be with me and have sex with me. So if I'm good, I'll be liked and loved. Number two, if I meet everybody

else's needs without them having to ask, then they will meet my needs without me having to ask. Now, unfortunately, nobody else knows this contract exists, so they don't know. They're supposed to be reading our minds and figure out what we want like we're trying to do for them. Another core problem with this is that nice guys are actually really terrible receivers. We're not good at letting people do for us. We're not good at giving to ourselves. So that's covert contract number two. Covert contract number three is if I do everything right, then I will have a smooth

problem free world. So it's kind of a Peter Panish kind of thing. You know, I do everything right. I'm a good guy, but unfortunately, we're the player, the referee, the scorekeeper, and we got the big scoreboard. I've done everything right. How come this stuff still isn't going the way it's supposed to go in my life? So nice guys are walking around these covert contracts, and you ask, you know, what are, what, what, what's the core characteristic of a nice guy? One of them is, is that they're often really resentful. You know, they might say, well, I'm kind of bugged or I'm kind of frustrated, but they're really resentful and often rageful because I've been doing this, I'm kind of bugged or I'm kind of frustrating but the really resentful not an arrangement

Because I've been doing this. I've been doing it right. I've been following the rules. I've been, you know being the good guy I've been meeting your needs. I've been you know, following all the rules, you know How come I'm wins at my turn? How come I'm not getting all the all the stuff that I thought I would and that leads to a lot of Resentments and that's one way I can tell I tell nice guys Big why do I know if I'm if I'm using Cobra contracts and I go you'll know because you're walking around resentful and pissed off either because you didn't get back in turn or you didn't get appreciated For for all that that you did I heard somebody share a quote the other day that really like to me is another really nice way of putting covert contracts And this I guess was from Neil Strauss and he says unspoken

Expectations are premeditated resentment is in this isn't that that that is what happens with covert contract phenomenal by him. Yeah that So the frustration and the resentfulness that's coming from offering to the world something that you think should be universally liked. There's no way that anybody could be offended by what I'm doing. I'm following the rules, I'm offering the world lots whilst asking for nothing in return. And the fact that not asking for something in return results in you getting nothing in return, funny how that works. I don't know. But it's, I suppose this as well plays into the dishonesty bit. And it's so I understand I would say that I'm very much in nice guy category, very much a people pleaser. My temperament is to be averse to conflict as well. I've made a dent in many

ways, but it's been done by weaving my way through avoiding much of the conflict that I would maybe need to. So I suppose I can be, at least in some regards, a paragon or like a role model for the successful nice guy in many ways. And me too. Again, I don't like conflict know, I'm doing okay. There's something I always felt. I always felt the fact that I wasn't like my go to isn't typically, uh, aggression. That's not what I lean into. Um, despite the fact I've got a background of fighting and doing other things and

physical training and stuff like that, I always felt like it emasculated me. The fact that there was something more heroic about being someone that was quick to anger. There was something kind of typically masculine about that. And I think I was not strong enough to say ashamed, but it felt, it didn't feel as grand to be someone who would be, I know that there's an ability in being under control, having your emotions under control. But there's also a degree of fragility, I

think, that you can sometimes feel with that also. Well, let me give one way to maybe look at the model and see if it fits what you're saying is that when I was writing No More Mr. Nice Guy, I really focused a lot on shame being a core foundation of a Nice Guy syndrome, that internalized belief, I'm not okay. And inaccurately, internalized belief from our earliest life experience, a few weeks old, a few months old. By the time I finished writing the book and it was, you know, getting ready to be published, I by that time I'd really come to also see that anxiety plays maybe an equally significant role in nice guy's syndrome. So where everything that nice guys are doing is trying to manage that sense of shame. I'm not okay. I'm unlovable. I'm

defective and their anxiety states, you know, I might piss somebody off. I might get rejected. I might get hurt. I might lose. I might get foolish. So, you know, both of those states really play into it. And one of the things I've come to see is that whether we've got just to kind of break it down, whether we've got kind of the asshole jerk over here, that fighter, that quick to fight guy, or the wussy doormat, you know, the nice guy over here that's the avoidant and kind of doesn't like the conflict. I think they're both on the same continuum. I think they're both in a fight-flight-freeze mode of managing their interstates of anxiety. The nice guy is in the flight-freeze-bond, sometimes added to that list.

And what we call the jerk is in the fight mode. Now, they're both still just trying to manipulate people and situations outside of them because they're anxious. The nice guy does it by being nice and avoidant and not upsetting anybody and waiting for it to blow over, you know, all that kind of... Whereas, you know, the guy, the other end of the spectrum is just quick to react with aggression to manage the people and situations around him. So so he doesn't feel afraid and anxious And so men will often, you know, they'll read my book or you know, they'll hear some of my information They'll say Robert, I get that being a nice guy isn't working and I don't want to be that

But I don't want to be the asshole either. You know, where where's that middle ground and I go I actually don't know where the tipping point is between two dysfunctional extremes. It doesn't exist, right? What we're actually talking about is going to a different plane, a different level, where we actually learn to soothe ourselves. We're actually learning to be assertive, where we actually learn to have boundaries, where we actually learn to be differentiated and ask ourselves, what do I want and follow through on it? Where there's a whole different plane of behavior versus just what do I do to not feel anxious here? But again, the nice guy and the jerk, probably neither one is aware that they're trying to

manage their anxiety states. And it isn't until you actually get told that maybe that's what you're doing, you go, oh, wow, I never thought about that before. And then you actually can feel your anxiety rather than trying to just manage it to where it doesn't, you know, make you feel so anxious. Is it a desire to feel safe then to feel reassured? Yeah, I think, you know, safety is at the core because when I took child development 101 back in grad school, I think the very first thing they told us, one of the few things maybe I remembered was that for every child

abandonment equals death So children come into the world inherently vulnerable All right, there's no one to take care of us it takes humans longer to mature into self-sufficiency Than any other animal on the planet, you know our grandfathers maybe that was about 12 or 14 You know my age is more, you know considered 18 21 22 now. It's like 35 for a young man to you know mature to be able to take care of himself That's a joke But it's true. So we're dependent completely dependent and if somebody doesn't take care of us we die

So if we get abandoned neglected We die so I know for me, like when my wife, you know, my wife Lupita and I have been married for seven years now, Mexican woman I met here in Mexico. And she gets a look on her face. And like, I'll go into, you know, this motive, I got to fix it. She's upset. She's angry. I got to make it better. And, you know, I've been working on this stuff for 30 years. So, you know, it's not like I don't know, you know, what's happening. And I'll just watch myself have this anxiety state that I got to talk her down through over, get her back to good, you know, make her happy again. And I'm thinking, why am I worried about with this short little Mexican woman, what look she has on her face? I'd love her, of course. But why is that triggering such depth of anxiety? And really, as a really sat with and worked with it, she's upset. She's angry. I got to make it better. And you know, I've been working on this stuff for 30 years. So, you know, it's not like I don't know what's happening. And I'll just watch myself have this anxiety state that I got to talk her down through over, get her back to good, you know, make her happy again. And I'm thinking, why am I worried about with this short little Mexican woman, what look she has on her face? I I love her, of course. But why is that triggering such depth of anxiety? And really, as I really sat with and worked with it, it triggers a really old emotional state that does feel like I'm going to die. If this doesn't get better right now,

I'm going to die. And I don't actually have that thought in my head, but my reaction to it feels that intense. That's the embodied sensation. That's the embodied, the nervous system, my emotional operating system. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I wonder, stepping outside of relationships for a second, relationships with anybody, including friendships,

one of the patterns that I've noticed, especially among some of my friends that are nice guys, or recovering nice guys, is a desire to do things right. Of course. To like a task in and of itself. I would guess that nice guys are probably more orderly than the normal person. Sources will be stacked in the right way, you know, it doesn't have room. It's because, again, you'd think that you'd think that, okay, I got to do it right. I got to do it orderly. But, you know, I've got my camera angled where you can't see what's over on the sides. All right. It's a mess.

It's not terrible, but it is messier on the sides than it is behind me. Okay. And so, again, a lot of the nice guys I work with, they may have perfectionistic expectations of themselves. And some work really hard to meet them. And they're in a state of anxiety all the time. But others, I know they go, I haven't made my bed in years. You know, I don't pick up after myself. I can't remember the last time I checked my bank account balance. So you'd think there would be that. But ironically, there's not. And here's a piece that, that it makes sound an odd on the surface of it. But when I talk with nice guys about their fears and their anxieties, I think one of the biggest anxiety or fear state that the typical nice

guy might have isn't so much a fear of failure, fear of foolishness, fear of looking foolish, fear of loss, fear of making a mistake. It's fear of success because what happens if I do get it right? What happens if I rise up to a level of success and then, you know, there's things that can happen. All of a sudden, the bar gets raised. The expectations are higher. I'm in a brighter spotlight. I might get attacked. I'm more visible. There's so many things. I lose control over my time. All of these built-in anxieties of what happens if I'm too successful. So again, a lot of times the nice guys will unconsciously, I don't really like the word self-sabotage,

but they'll get in their own way of living up to their full potential and keeping things messy around you is actually a pretty good way to, you know, you know, not live up to your full potential, not checking your bank account every now and then, you know, I'll bite you on the ass sooner or later. Isn't it interesting that the almost universality of high ability of this on, do you need to sort the dog? This is a regular occurrence I can see. She's usually in the room with me and she's a deer. Bring her in, she can chill. Yeah, the problem is she's upset because somebody's out front and I'm the

only one home and I don't want to go deal with whoever might be out. It could just be my wife getting home with my daughter from school. Okay. So yeah, she's just being a good girl. Let me know. Exactly. Poppy, there's somebody out there. There's somebody out there. Let's go. Let's go. And it may have been she just saw a cat. So, you know, I don't know. So be it. Um, She walked away. So She's bored of you now. Yeah.

It's interesting that there is this almost universality of not having healthy boundaries of being dishonest, of being manipulativeulative although you don't think that you are your. Overly pliable in a way that means that you change yourself to get the outcome that you want from people. But it seems at least based on what you've said here that there appears to be a boundary at least typically among the nice guys where this doesn't. guys, where this doesn't outside of relationships, friendships, family, dating, etc. This doesn't spread out into a overbearing desire for orderliness and sort of perfectionism in all areas of life, you know, with regards to an obsession about getting it right about being I just what I'm trying to say is it's not universal. Whereas the other stuff is yeah, but it's what it shows or at least what it says to me is that there's something It it's obvious that ground zero for this stuff is relationships

You know that that would have been my first thought as well because it is for me and it is for many nice guys But you know what I've I've seen guys who are total nice guys in Relationship and they get on the job and they kick ass, you know, they're highly successful at work I've known other people that it showed up You know at work where they're told nice guy and going along to getting along and never really stepping up or never launching, you know, that business and but at home, you know, their wife would say, he's not a nice guy. He's nice to everybody else, but he's not nice to me. So it can be interesting.

And that would again, when I started working with nice guys, I just assume there's a one piece fits all and there's really not. Now there are those certain commonalities, but I think partly because we're also dealing with temperament that, for example, maybe you and I had very different life experiences. Maybe we have some similarities of temperament, some differences, different life experiences. We're not going to turn out just the same. We may still have those tendencies of seeking approval, avoiding conflict, kind of a, oh, I'm so good.

Why doesn't everybody like me and everybody try to be just like me? There might be some similarities, but we might be very different and still relate to this as, yes, I'm a nice guy. Understood. What about hidden behavior? They keep things hidden from themselves. They keep things hidden from the others. Why is that so common? Why is it common?

Because, you know, those two things, when, you know, when we first started, you asked me, you know, what, what is the nice guy? And basically, and, and I said, he's the guy trying to get everybody's approval and validation, you know, holding your finger up, which way is the wind blowing? But the other piece is that hiding things about ourselves, you know, hiding anything, for example, that might get that look on my wife's face, you know, oh, she got that look. I must have done something. I better not do that again.

You know, again, that began at a very, very early age when getting that look from somebody important to us might result in getting slapped, getting smacked, getting neglected, getting yelled at, getting shaken, whatever. So nice guys is part of that. I got to hide whatever there is about me that tends to create these negative reactions around me. But often there's another piece, not again, not universal, but often for nice guys in their family system,

somebody has been defined as the needy person, the most important person. Could be dad, could be mom, could be a sibling, and their needs were more important. All the attention and focus went on, you know, making sure dad never got pissed off, making sure mom didn't go on a tirade, making sure, you know, brother doesn't, you know, whatever, you know, he's sick or he's, he's out of control. So often for nice guys, we try to become this needless, wantless, never rock the boat, never be a moments problem kind of person. So what we interpret is us having needs draws too much attention and, and, you know, my,

their needs are more important than mine and so Nice guys Again trying to avoid that negative reaction the two things we often most hide are our needs and wants and our sexuality The sexuality that's kind of easy to put a finger on you know We live in a culture that we're bombarded with sexual stimuli everywhere you go But still there's still that, you know, that religious message that sex is bad, evil, save it for the one you love. Shame.

Yeah, just a whole shame wrapped around sexuality. You'd think that would have gone away by now, but it's not. It's as strong as ever. So for the very young, nice guy, when kind of back up a little bit back to the child development, 101 stuff again, every child when they experience discomfort of any kind. The hungry, they don't get fed. They wet their diaper, they mess in their diaper, they don't get changed. They're cold, they don't get help. They have a stomach ache, they don't get burped, whatever.

Whenever a child experiences discomfort, their children are narcissistic by nature. Emotionally, they assume this is me. I'm the cause of this. I did something wrong. I'm bad. They don't think it because the thinking brain isn't online at this early age. The emotional brain, fight, flight, free survival brain is. And so a child will try to do two things in a very primitive way, a non-thinking, non-rational, purely emotional way. They will try to medicate the feeling states they're having, suck their thumb, eat, cry, sleep, smile, whatever to try to not feel bad right now.

And again, in a very primitive, pre-verbal kind of way, try to do, try to not do whatever that was that caused the uncomfortable states or do something different. And so that begins at a really early age. And so the child is, these, these, the shame is, is inaccurately internalized at an emotional level. I must have done something wrong. That's why this is happening. So I got to figure out how

to do that different or not do that high. And so all of this comes so early as part of an emotional language and emotional operating system. It's not in words. It's not in picture memory. And it's primitive. So here we are trying to figure out how not to have these uncomfortable experiences and prevent them from happening again. And one of the best things our primitive brain came up with is hide Hide you know, whatever that I have needs all I have needs I get I'm hungry when I've needs I get slapped. Oh, their needs are more important in life so Just hiding is part of that because we think it must be about me.

This causing these painful negative experiences to be happening to us. Does this mean that nice guys often have coping strategies? Maybe they'll overeat. Maybe they'll be compulsive with social media use or porn or video games or substances or whatever. The thing about that model I just gave you, that child development model, every human does that, every human. We all just pick, usually again, based on temperament and maybe just life experiences and birth order, we all pick, what are we going to do?

How are we going to try to manage this? And I sucked my thumbtimes in kindergarten. I think maybe I was trying to deal with some uncomfortable feeling. Self soothing. Self soothing, exactly. Trying to manage some anxiety there. So that's what I did. Now we go through childhood and we hit adolescence and now we really want people's approval and want to fit in and be noticed and have attention. noticed and have attention. All of this really gets fueled with our hormones and need for attention where they really get solidified and we pretty much carry these routines into adulthood. So yeah, trying to be perfect might be one. Trying not to be perfect because my brother was perfect and I couldn't compete with him, so I'll be the opposite. I'll make the mess.

Yeah, when I eat, I sure do feel better. When I spend all my day and night playing video games, I don't feel stressed. When I'm, oh, isn't porn amazing? I didn't know that this existed. Look how I feel. Oh, you know, if I get straight A's, look, I finally get some validation, but I don't know if it's ever enough I better keep you know succeeding performing

You know, I better get into great amazing shape so I can be valuable. Oh, I'll never get in good shape So who cares I'll just keep eating it can take so many different forms and the only real logic to it is that the infant logic That you and I and everybody else had at a few weeks and a few months old. Why are nice guys bad receivers? Because we think it makes us bad. The thing is, as I said, most nice guys internalize this belief.

Well, I, because I have needs, that's why I have these bad things that happen to me. If I don't have needs, bad things won't happen. And often again, they, I could, I could look around in my family, oh, dad's needs are more important. Well, this all makes your dad's okay. Oh, now mom's unhappy. Let's all make sure mom's okay. My little mom's unhappy. Let's all make sure mom's okay My little brother was a general fuck up at pretty much everything. Oh, okay You know, we got to make sure little brother's okay cuz he's gonna fuck up and I kind of like oh

If I don't have needs if I just kind of do everything right. I'll be the golden child I'll get some validation, you know, I won't get noticed too much and get in trouble. And so again, that was my story. It's not every nice guy's story. But there's some fundamental piece in there that if it's visible, if people know I have needs, like that makes me vulnerable, it puts me at risk, it gets people control over me, all old people, something. So in my own personal work, one of the earliest things I had to start doing was making me a priority where I did for me. I'd do for everybody else, but I wouldn't make me a priority. I'd make sure my wife and kids, they all went to the

dentist. I wouldn't go to the dentist. If I saw something on sale, I'd buy it for them. I wouldn't buy it for me. So I had to start taking good care of me the next step that that kind of came with that but came A little bit later for me was actually beginning to surround myself with people who wanted to help me meet my needs And then actually letting them that was really anxiety producing to let people do things for me And I had to consciously just go Okay, I'm a it's as simple as like I'll take the garbage out And you know we got to take the garden from the kitchen to the front gate It's 20 feet got unlock the gate put it out on the street my if I'm taking the garbage at my wife will go you need help

Well, no, I don't I don't need any help to take a bag of garbage from the kitchen to the front and So I my gut response always say no, but then I realize well, I don't need any help But she wants to be with me. She wants to accompany me. She doesn't want to think I'm doing all the work Well, she's not she's very hard worker. I go. Yeah. Yeah come help me. Do I really need the help? No But it was actually it took me a while. I'm still learning that way. You know, she's not really thinking I need help taking the garbage out. She just wants to come take the garbage out with me, just to walk to the street with me and back. You know, that's okay. Well, who might have say no to that?

That's the thing about being a bad receiver. It robs people of the enjoyment of helping you. You've stole my words. When I got divorced in my late 40s after 25 years of marriage to two different women. And again, when I started dating and started meeting nice girls, who wanted to do anything for me, wouldn't ever say what they wanted, wouldn't make it to see. I thought, oh, I'd empathy for my two ex-wives. What I'd put them through What would be an ice cat?

But I remember I was dating one woman and I met her because she sold me shoes at Nordstrom And she so she worked in retail fashion sales and her one time she came over to my apartment And I'd done some laundry left it on my couch She started folding my laundry and I said you you don't have to do that She goes no I like doing it and and she goes, and I'm good at it. And, you know, so she falls on my laundry, puts a little stack on the end of my bed, and she goes, but I won't put it away for you. I said, I'm not putting it away either. I'm leaving it out there. Remind me, somebody loves me, you know, that somebody wanted to do something nice for me.

After that, I started leaving my clean laundry on the couch so she could have the joy of coming over and because it gave her pleasure Now who am I to rob her of that pleasure and I need to work on it because how am I going to receive? Great things in this world if I'm not good at receiving if I can't if I can't let somebody fold my laundry How am I going to receive the blessings of wealth of fame? Opportunity of adventure? So it's it's a very conscious practice. It was for me So how do I let people give and let them have the pleasure of doing it? So the solution is not being a bad guy because a lot of people and you could try

So, you know Nice guys finish last the bad guy gets the girl, you know, women will sleep with the alpha, but marry the beta, you know, pick your meme or cliche of choice. Yeah, they're all out there, sure. I'm going to try and interpret what I think your philosophy is and let me know if I get it right. I think the downsides of being a nice guy, although subtle and often completely opaque to the nice guys themselves, are kind of evident given, can become evident given enough crowd sourcing of sense making so people and community come up with memes and characters in TV shows and stuff like that. Right. The solution that the low resolution solution that then gets proposed is if X X being nice guy is bad and doesn't get what you want, then opposite of X, Y, which is bad guy, must be good. So the prevalence of, you know, treat her like you

don't like her, like why women love chads, like that kind of more letharious approach to attracting women and getting what you want in life and sort of being ruthless and stuff. Is that an erroneous solution to the problem of nice kindness? It's a core problem with what you just proposed is it is equally inauthentic as the other and it's equally attached to some external outcome by trying to figure out how to do it right. How about I just do this right again, then I'll get the women to approve of me. We're still in the same boat.

We're just looking for a different right way of doing it. Now as simple as this sounds, you know, like, when I do like interviews with like a female coach that maybe works with men. And, and I say something that, you know, generalization like the feminine meaning all things feminine, you know, women, but dogs, cats, babies, opportunity, money, whether whatever, I'll say is highly attracted to a man who's comfortable in his own skin knows where he's going and looks like he's having a good time going there and the women you know coaches interviewers podcasters on the call always go oh Yes

Okay, they're reacting kind of their nervous system is reacting to that thing. I didn't say the guy's an asshole. I didn't say he treats women bad. I didn't say he doesn't give a fuck about it. He's centered in his own body. He's differentiated. He's asking himself, what do I want? What's important to me? Following through on that, you know, not leaving the message behind, not trying to be perfect, not seeking anybody's approval. He's on mission. he's on purpose. And in my experience, the feminine is highly attractive to that. You don't have to work at getting the feminine to be attractive. Now are you always going to have feminine approval?

I told someone the other day, this has never come out of my mouth before, but I said, actually there is no standard of feminine approval. The feminine is not about standards. It's just about whatever is moving masculine at standards. You, you go into the masculine world, you know, when you've lived up to the standard, when you've hit the ball out of the park, when you've scored a touchdown, when you made A's, when you, you know, made X amount of money, the masculine doing standards are clear.

We can go into that world and go, I've achieved, I've made it. We have it. We have the status. Rigorous. It's orderly. It requires something of you. There's discipline. There is no such thing as feminine approval. I mean, ask any guy.

Even a woman who approved of them dearly in one moment, I'll ask them, have you ever had experiences where the very next moment she was unapproving of you and nothing about you had changed? You had him in death and guys all go, yeah, isn't that the way it always works? Yeah, you know, one minute, when I was dating, I had women tell me, Robert, you're the most amazing man. I'm so glad I met you. I'm so grateful.

I'm so happy and then never hear from them again or say, Robert, you know, after two weeks, you know, I'm taking a break from dating or I'm giving my ex another try. And I go, what just happened? That's the world of the feminine. It doesn't it isn't nailed down and orderly So we we have to quit seeking feminine approval One of my certified coaches wrote a book that I really like but there's a line in there It said that a man does not mature until he quit seeking the love of a woman.

As long as we're seeking love, that's a feminine trait. As long as we're seeking to get that approval, that love, that validation from a woman, we're in a loop that there's no escape from. But when we can self-validate, when we're on purpose, when we're living life on our terms, all of a sudden that makes us very attractive to the feminine. It will come to us. That's that's my experience. It will come. Now, as soon as you turn and go, Oh, is here, how do I keep it? How do I make no, no, no, we just blew it. And all of a sudden, now they're going to get that look on their face again, like I go, what I do wrong. So if we take the how do I get the women's approval out of the equation, you're more likely to get it. Does that mean you just don't give a fuck, don't care, whatever? That's not what I'm, again, it's not black and white. We men want to make it black and white. It must be this or it must be that. No, it's this. This is another level that we rise to that lets us put a dent in the universe, that lets us live with purpose

and passion, that lets us connect deeply with others, that lets us be vulnerable and courageous, that actually invites the love into our life that we desire rather than seeking it. Well, ultimately, I was watching this video from Alanda Barton from the School of Life. Do you know that guy? British philosopher. Phenomenal insight. You were the second person who mentioned him in the last two or three days. I always pay attention whenever I hear someone's name. Whenever I heard, you need to get on Chris Williamson's show. When I heard that three times in the same week, I thought, wait a minute, that name sounds familiar.

Three foot. We're already booked in. He's on my calendar. What do you know? It's, um, so I use a... I was going to say what you're referring to. He wrote an op-ed article in the New York Times maybe 10 years ago. And the title was Why You Will Marry the Wrong. Wrong person. Yeah. I love that article. I copied it. It's, it's just

class. He's outstanding. I've, he's on my Mount Rushmore of, of, of guests. He was very formative for me. Um, one of the reasons that I'm going to go on a tangent about why I love a lander bot on, one of the reasons that I really love him is he's so softly spoken and he's so embodied in the nuance of being fallible of how our emotions run the show. He's not posture. He's unbelievably smart. You know, he's very, very well versed in Renaissance art and history and poetry and, and sculpture and, and, and all this stuff. But there's no posturing from his left brain. There's none of this sort of over-rationality he accepts with complete face value, the fact that we can be self-contradictory and embarrassing and all the rest of it. But anyway, he has this line in a video that I was

watching recently where he talks about a person whose greatest achievement would be after their death, people would say they never made a fuss. Oh, they didn't make a fuss. They didn't, you know, they didn't cause any ripples. They didn't make any waves. And he's talking about largely an equivalent of the nice guy, this person who's, you know, overly pliable, who's concerned about upsetting others,

who's doing all of this stuff. Anna, I just, it really, it really sort of struck home like, oh my God, like that's the, that's the inheritance and the legacy which is waiting for you. And ultimately, you can make it to the end of your life having either made all of the messes in the world or made zero messes at all, depending on whether you go bad guy mode or nice guy mode. But like your legacy is you look back on your life is going to be one of you playing a persona. You're never going to really be able to connect to any of the things that you do. People, accomplishments, praise, compliments, adoration, money, because it wasn't

you that earned that. You didn't earn your money. The role that you're playing earned the money. The role that you're playing got the marriage. The role that you're playing got the relationship or the job raise or created the family or the billion dollar company It wasn't you wasn't you? That's that kind of messes with your head doesn't it? Scary you know when you were describing and I can't pronounce his name pronounce his name and a bot on oh, yeah That's beautiful when you are describing him, I'm sitting there thinking, I'm a straight guy and that guy sounds sexy as hell the way you were describing him.

He's got the classic philosophers build, but so be it. So be it. Here's something else. So here's something else that I've had in my mind since looking at your work and kind of, I've spent a lot of time over the last three years looking at evolutionary psychology mating dynamics so on and so forth. We don't see especially from women at the moment many conversations online about nice guys about guys being too nice about guys being too pliable. a lot of the conversation skews toward guys being too toxic. Sure. Guys being too immature, but it's immature. It tends to be in a toxic manner. It's sort of the use and discard, the use and abuse,

the very sort of transient, transactional nature. What is the reason, do you think, that there isn't as much popularity? If, and I don't disagree, I think that a huge problem will be the pliability and dishonesty and niceness of men. Is it just less tweetable to have that as the reason that you can't find men? I've got all of these men that keep bending over backward and keep doing things for me. Is it that it's kind of publicly unpopular for women to call that out because it seems like they're being ungrateful? But what do

you think it is? Well, because I'm not in a woman's head. I can't, and because I'm not on social media. I also, but I do know what you're talking about. Of course, there are memes that run. And I do, you know, because I get a Google notice every time Nice Guy, you know, pops up somewhere, I do see when it does pop up. It usually pops up and right wing Republican writing most often. But when women do write their blog articles about Nice Guys, it is most often how Nice Guys aren't nice of how they use basically the covert contracts of, oh, I'm going to listen to you talk about your problems. I'm

going to pay your car payment this month. I'm going to pretend like I care about you. And then when they, you know, ask the woman out or want her to have sex, they go, no, I never thought of you that way. You're a friend, you know. And then the guy, of course, all that resentfulness, that passive aggressive, that rage comes out. a friend, you know? And then the guy, of course, all that resentfulness, that passive aggressive, that rage comes out. And so, you know, that meme does show up, but it still ends up being toxic masculinity. Here is my thought, and it sounds like you've looked a lot at this, and you might even have a better perspective than me. My thought is that, you know, I grew up during whatever the wave of the angry feminism was

in the 60s and 70s. I don't know if that's first wave, second wave. But you know, every man's a rapist and erections a sign of aggression. And you know, that already bothered my mother, you know, my mother's generation with the first, I think true feminists. She raised my sister to not need a man, raised her boys to be different from their father. You know, that was kind of the beginning of that movement. And so from that, I grew up with, I don't know, it would be like those bad men that women are complaining about.

So kind of the toxic masculinity meme has been around for a while. It just didn't have social media. And now mainstream media, mainstream, I can't even listen to like NPR anymore because it's kind of like it's just gone so much to like, let's just run fluff articles, you know, fluff stories and stuff like that. I think there had to be a pendulum swing. You know, most of that is directed at patriarchy. You know, now you just say patriarchy and like we all understand exactly what that means. It's evil, right? But patriarchy was also provided and protect. You know, there was also positives

a part of it. And was there an ownership mentality? Yeah. Did that lead to colonialism and, you know, abuses towards women and children? Yeah. Racism? Yeah. So, yeah, all of that. Well, you know, when we make a social change, we tend to throw the baby out of the bathwater. So, yeah, this was rail against this big idea of patriarchy, toxic masculinity, you know, you masculinity, mansplaining, manspreading, everything that men do is bad kind of stuff. I think maybe it had to go to an extreme, and I think most sociologists that look at big shifts in society say when you have an oppressed people,

it almost has to become like a revolution. It has to be at the extremes. It doesn't have to be a correction Yeah, it's not like a Gandhi that just you know, let's subtly create the shift So I think there has to be that overcorrection And and you know so we went through the hashtag me too where you know men were you know, you know accused tried You know prosecuted and you know in lost jobs, lost status, purely because some woman said, oh, I want to join the Me Too crowd. And yeah, there was a lot of abuses that were being addressed.

Should they have been addressed through social media? I don't know if that was the most democratic way to do it, but it's how it got done. And then yeah, if you publish something that gets a lot of likes and a lot of follows, and yeah, other people are gonna publish it. So yeah, it went to the... The incentives aligned to make it happen. Of course they do.

And social media is all about algorithms. And the more something shows up, the more you see of it. That's why I told, one of the reasons I don't like social media. But I actually think that we're actually making an adjustment. You know, I saw articles, yeah, a couple of years ago, likening anything that had to do with men's work

to like the, oh, there goes the balloons. Jesus Christ. You said it wasn't gonna happen. I didn't think it was gonna work. How have you managed to make balloons come up on the screen? I promise. I promise. I promise. Stop doing it. I wish I, yeah, I can't quit moving my hands out. The thumb will probably go up. Maybe confetti. All right. All right. Okay. So even just a couple years ago, I saw articles about linking the January 6th riots in Washington, DC to anything having to do with men's work, like complaining that that

all came out of the men's movement. And I'm going, and this was in Washington Post, ran an article like that, right? So it's mainstream media. I think actually that I think maybe we've reached that for an afar extreme. And I think maybe it's starting to where all of a sudden that's losing this interest is, it seems to, you know, oh, okay, there's another meme about toxic masculinity. Oh, people get another meme about Andrew Tate.

There's another, you know, blah, blah, blah. And people do get bored. And now maybe in this, because I'm in the middle of Men's work. It's what I've done for years and I'm in you know men's program myself. I built a men's program I believe in it. I Really do think we're moving to a better space that as men become more conscious space that as men become more conscious of the things that I think, you know, that I teach that are valuable, you know, being honest, being transparent, making their needs of priority, surrounding themselves with people on how to get their needs met, living with

purpose, living with passion, you know, being generous, making the world a better place, being open-hearted, being loving, you know, quality, good qualities. That I think is changing the world, is shifting the dynamic. Women I think will begin to go, that's actually really attractive. That's true. That's sexy. That's better. I like that. And I think there'll still be a few ones hanging on to, but let's all still stay mad at men. Let's you know, let's still and after a while You know, one of the things that really was a big shock to me I was probably in my 40s Well, I was talking to you know a feminist and I mentioned somebody who identified as a feminist a woman

maybe on an airplane and and I said well Here's the feminism I grew up with and she said oh you mean that every man's a rapist? You, you, you like believed all that? I go, well, it sure was. It goes, that was just a few angry pissed off women that got a lot of attention. I go, that's all it was. Not all women felt that way. She goes, no, and they still don't. I go, that's actually good to know that maybe all that noise that, you know, gets

a lot of likes and follows. Maybe that doesn't represent the the even the majority of women. There was a really wonderful term that I heard last year called the tyranny of the minority. And- It happens. Yeah, I think that that explains it. So-

Another way of putting it is the slowest dumb shit on the freeway is gonna control how fast everybody can go. Very good, Yes. Yes. We're controlled by the extremes and the idiots. It's interesting to think about why that might be the case. I think that you've probably you're probably not far wrong that. It's still so popular to. Fit men into the oppressive,

tyrannical, patriarchal, overbearing, dominating, controlling role that if a woman was to post online something which is more honest, perhaps, which would be, I keep going out for men who are overly pliable and because they're so pliable, I'm concerned that they're not being honest with me. because they're so pliable, I'm concerned that they're not being honest with me. What does that sound like? Well, it sounds like a call for men to be less pliable, which is not far away from men to be more aggressive, more controlling. That's like writing a book that's called No More Mr. Nice Guy. Why would someone write a book teaching men to be not nice? We do live in a black and white world.

And again, media, social media loves the black and white. It doesn't like nuance, subtlety. That's the dangerous, the real N word of 2024 is nuance. That's the real one that you shouldn't be saying. All right, so getting into relationships, which are obviously, I think ground zero for a lot of this stuff. You can kind of hide things away from yourself when it's on your own own and you're in and out of work and all the rest of it.

Everybody is emotionally connected with the work and everybody's emotionally connected with how organize their source cupboard is relationships real ground zero what do nice guys not understand about how female attraction works. not understand about how female attraction works? Well, most of us are believing what our mothers told us, you know, if they told us anything, which is to be nice to girls. That's what my mother said, be a gentleman. Okay, make sense, you know, be a gentleman. And I am, I'm a gentleman, but a woman taught me this one. I always open the door for women. I tell them, wait for me, I'll open your door.

Now, if you really break it down, that's me being dominant. You know, I tell them what to do. Wait for me, I'm gonna open your door. And of the several hundred women who I've told to do, wait for me, I'll open your door. Only one has pushed back against it and she pushed back for a while, then all of a sudden she quit

and kind of decided she actually really liked actually what she did is she jumped my bones in a public place and I said, we need to take this somewhere else. After a while she'd been pushing back against my dominance. So for there to be attraction, there has to be a polarity. And polarity involves dominance and submission. I know those are evil, terrible words, you know, because we think about dominant men, you know, making women be submissive. You're in a safe space here, Robert. Okay.

I'm not sweating it. But yeah, it is going out on the Internet, which is fine. You know, and what's happened is the polarity is just switched where the females have become Dominant the dominant players and the guys have become the submissive players and then the women go How come I can't find a guy that turns me on and the guys you're going? How come I can't seem to turn women on well? It's reversed a polarity you you can't have polarity That's attraction without dominance and submission

And the more subtle it is the more subtle the attraction is the more Platon it is tends to be the more intensity attraction is we've probably all experienced that in one way or another I tell people you can't have sex without dominance and submission Otherwise, it's two bodies lying next to each other waiting for something to happen. You know you got a fight Yeah, yeah, right you have a top and bottom you have a top and bottom. You got to have a picture and catch it, right? There's got to be a polarity. Now, the beauty is that polarity can, you can flip it around, you know, back and forth. And I think in very conscious relationships that that happens beautifully. My wife's very strong. She grew up eight out of ten kids in poverty in Guadalajara, Mexico alcoholic father got beat on by family members beat on by neighbors, you know abused by family members abused by priests

You know, she's she's been through, you know, she goes to the gym two hours a day. She can out squat me easily She's done my thigh. I don't I don't piss her off You know, she can get shit done. I grew up in a middle class white bread neighborhood of Seattle, Washington, surrounded by Boeing engineer families. You know, just, you know, I never had to fight for anything. Okay. So she's tough, but she doesn't, she's always told me, I love it when you tell me no. She goes, I don't, I don't want to be in charge. I don't want you to always ask me what, what what you know, what do you want to do? She she likes it when I make we're walking to a restaurant and you know though here in Mexico and they'll say no

They'll say should I the last curtain should I get the waiter say should I give him a menu in English? She goes no he lives in Mexico give him one in Spanish And I'll say yeah give give my wife and kids the menu in English and then they hand her a menu and she goes No, he's my boss, he'll order for me. And they always laugh about that. And I say, yeah, I get to be the boss when she says I can't. You know, so we got the whole stick down. But the truth is she is strong, she's powerful,

she can get shit done, she can kick ass, but she doesn't want to be in that mode all the time. She wants to be led, she wants to submit, she wants to open, she wants to be in that mode all the time. She wants to be led. She wants to submit. She wants to open. She wants to be done to in blissful kinds of ways. Well, that's my job. Right? So, and even though I'm kind of more of that, I'm go along to get along. I, you know, I'm, yeah, this or that, either one's okay with me. I'm kind of more that way. She doesn't like it when I'm that way. So for her, she's happy. It's when I will play the default lead, the default decision maker, but she likes it best when I said, here's what I was thinking. What do you think?

You know, I don't just say, what do you think? You know, what do you want? I'll say, you know, I was thinking of white with a little bit of tent of gray in it. What do you think? You know, she wants me to lead that and then she'll feel The polarity and then she'll tell me what she thinks or wants and then you say you decide Okay, let's go. Let's go. Let's go pick out the paint Am I being abusive to her by being dominant? No I've heard so many women tell me when the guy leaves it all up to them to comply it, the women feel burdened by that. Most are in their masculine dominant role all day long in their work, in their career,

raising children, even mothering is a masculine dominant state to be in. You're taking care of kids' needs. That's not feminine. You don't then want to have to take care of your partner after that. Yeah. Then when the guy says, oh, I don't get you want to have sex tonight would you what do you want for it is this is one more thing that they gotta check out there to do is. They don't want that now am i making a generalization yeah is it fluid yeah is it nuanced yeah is it okay the guys always gotta be the dominant the woman's but no that's not what I'm saying But for for men when I start talking about them consciously setting the tone and leading in relationship When I say that to a nice guy The response he usually ill pondering okay, dr. Glover what I hear you say when you say take control I go no no you did not hear me say the word take control. I did not say it.

I don't believe in it. I'm talking about you lead. You set the tone. You state what you want, where you want to go, what you want to eat, and give her a chance to follow like on the dance floor. She can't follow where you don't lead. Give her that and then be open to a discussion. Be open to her taking the, you know, setting the tone and leading. But it's not about, but guys, nice guys will say, well, you know, when you said take control is more nuanced than that. But again, so that, that, that's my job is helping guys apply the nuance that word of 2024. What is the role of emotional tension? Oh, you've done some research. Yeah,

that's a cute little wink of the eye that just is just flirting with you. I'm just trying to flirt with you. Yeah, I know the girls like it. The boys do too. I live in a very gay community. I live in a very gay community, so you know, I know how it is. Okay, so the role of emotional tension, there we go. We just had emotional tension going on right there. Yep. I'm gonna, I'm gonna make a generalization that doesn't apply to everybody, but it does seem to apply to a lot. And that's the generalized statement is is that in general for women to experience attraction, think towards a man, arousal, and to stay attached to that man over time, she has to experience some kind of emotional tension. She's got to feel something, the butterflies, the this, the that, the drama, does he love

me, doesn't love me. And we men can kind of understand that a little bit. We kind of like the tension we feel of go. Oh She looks nice, you know like her boobs whatever, you know That creates attention for us But in general men don't like emotional tension especially in relationship If you even think about you know our sporting events where we to did our tension and clocks on them You know, we know it's going to end at this time. That's why baseball is falling out of favor.

That's why they put a clock on baseball. They put the pitch clock last year. Yeah, you know. It's that problem. How many times you can throw it a first, you know, because, oh, we got to have it on a clock, you know? So men's tension is on the clock. Oh, yeah, I know this you know this this adventure flick

I'm watching in the hero. This is happening. I know he's gonna get out of it It's gonna be done in 35 minutes, you know, it's done. We're done. Shoot go home kick back into nothingness, right? The feminine never gets tired of tension the feminine if it if it isn't feeling tension is bored It will create tension and so that's what's hard for men to understand You know we think to be nice to women will make them be attracted to us But nice creates absolutely no attention no tension really for anybody men or women But we think well that's what mom told me to do go be go be nice to them It's what that's what I in junior high all the women were complaining about those jerks who create attention for them

And so I listened to her complain about the jerk since she kept going back to the jerk even after you know I'm such a nice guy So in general women need that emotional tension watch it they create it within themselves And and we guys if we have any kind of tension between us, we'll just have it out. Maybe we'll punch each other and then we'll be done. We'll go have a beer. It's all good. We don't need to keep going back into that tension state to have a bond, to have a connection. We'll go do something together. We may go compete. We may go bring our A-game and leave it all on the field, but then we walk off arm and arm. So it's just the difference between that masculine and feminine.

So the hardest part for men to understand is that the women need that tension. So even when I say wait for me, I'll open your door and now I create a little bit of dominance and she waits for me. That's tension. All right, it's just a little bit. It's a little subtle. You know, even like, you know, say, hey put the menu down I'll order for us tonight. There's tension in that not being nice It's actually creating some what's he gonna order for is he gonna pick something I like do I trust him? Is it gonna be an adventure? You know, I tell guys and you know, and you know guys will think is game-playing And it kind of can look like that and but the real thing is actually just how do we get more conscious. So I'll tell a guy, for example, you know, if a woman sends you a message, text message, or calls you,

and if you reply right away or you pick up the phone and answer, how much tension will the woman experience through that? Well, none. We've relieved it. As soon as we answered the phone, her tension went away. But what if you didn't answer it? What if you called her back in 30 seconds? 45 seconds? An hour? And she goes, where were you? Why didn't you answer? And what if you didn't give her an answer to that?

And she's going, why didn't he answer? What was he doing? Now, here's the thing. Because us guys, if we do have emotional tension, we like like what I call positive emotional tension, you know It it feels good to us where you're at For the for women. They don't care. Is it positive emotional tension? Is it is it pet or is it net negative emotional tension? They don't care emotional tension is emotional tension and so, you know, it means, you know, them starting a fight You know them doing something knows they know is going to piss us off.

It's kind of like they don't care. They got our attention and that's all that matters. They got our attention and there's tension. And even the thing of guys like listening to women talk about their problems. I tell guys there's an inverse negative relationship between the amount of time a man spends listening to a woman talk about her problems and the likelihood He's gonna get laid what you mean It means that if you say it and listen to talk about her problems You've actually relieved all of her tension tension flow completely out of because you know she talked she talked she talked all the tension

Came away and what I tell guys is then you end up looking like her girlfriend with a penis and odds are she doesn't want to have sex with her girlfriend. So anything we do to relieve their tension actually works against us and robs them kind of like we talked about earlier. Are we gonna rob them of the joy of doing for us? Well, are we gonna rob them of the emotional tension that they have to have to feel to feel something? To want to engage. You had this fantastic example of how emotional tension is enjoyed differently by men and women by the story arcs of romantic comedies and how men and women experience that. Can you explain that?

You mean like, you know, you take your woman to watch Titanic and she's already seen it eight times and she walks away with her panties wet thinking, I can't have that. The guy checking his watch, checking his phone, his sports center on yet. How do I get out of here? I thought what was particularly interesting was you explaining and it really sort of hit home to me that if you're a man who's watching a romantic comedy, you see regulation at the beginning, everything is fine. Then you see dysregulation, something happens and everything goes up

in the air. Then you see regulation again, or more like middle movie regulation, whether the couple first starts to get together and you're like, oh, I mean, that's it. Like, let's go home. The movie's done. Yes, done. Whereas what the woman then wants is this protracted, oh, but the ex-girlfriends back in the picture, but oh my God, he hasn't got his right visa and he's going to be deported.

How are they going to keep the relationship going? And it's just protracted and protracted and protracted and protracted. And then I don't know what it's like to be a woman at the end of a rom-com, but it may be Unsatisfying for there to be a conclusion. It's like what could we just let's roll it for another three hours Let's just continue to extend this and that's maybe we're Bollywood figured it out. Let's just do the wedding scene Everybody's dancing to a real upbeat song. We know it's over, but now they'll do a part two of it And you know Women i've been in relationship with learned don't take me to a romantic comedy

I'm sitting there going that is so fucking unrealistic. That doesn't happen in the real world How come every guy has a job he doesn't actually have to go to how come every woman's a fashion editor in every one of these Yeah, I know he loves dogs, but he lives in this New York loft and makes canoes. That's how he supports himself. Come on That's not real. Yes. Yeah, you don't want to go to a romantic comedy with me because I live in the world of could that really be real Could that really happen do people really do that? No, you know, that's not how the real world works, but it creates emotional tension. And so that's really what it is all about It's not about reality the masculine wants to go resolve all the emotional tension to get us back into reality So yeah, I it's really hard for me to watch romantic comedy

Just twiddle my thumbs and just not not say anything. Oh, it's excruciating. So thinking about this dynamic that we have, this emotional tension, this amount of dominance and direction and suggestion that comes from the man, there will be women listening and out there who enjoy... They're writing a blog article about us right now. That's fine. It's fine. Add it to the list. But there will be women listening who are maybe a little conflicted. Or there will be men who imagine that their woman might be conflicted because you say,

well, she wants, she comes home, she's had a difficult day at the work, because Kelly, that bitch in the cubicle next door has done that thing again, the pisses her off. The woman wants to be able to vent. She also wants her man to listen to her. And it's this odd duality of not knowing what's best for us and of the things that we want, not always being in our best interests. we want not always being in our best interests. Right. And you quoted the best onion article, which is,

woman turns man into a partner she doesn't want to be with. The article, the headline alone is enough. Right? You know, and again, this is the dance of relationship. Wouldn't it be great if we could just say, guys, just do it this way. Every woman's going to like it. No, it doesn't work that way. But what you said was really true is that, yeah, for example, the woman in your life's been in her masculine all day doing it work,

putting up with asshole managers, asshole customers, asshole clients, asshole core workers. And now, you know, she comes home, there's one more asshole in the house putting demands on her. So for example, the woman that folded my clothes that I mentioned, again, I met her at the mall as she sold me shoes. And when after we started dating, one of the things where we really clicked is she liked baseball. I like baseball. I'm a Texas Rangers fan. I could have been part of a thre we really clicked is she liked baseball. I like baseball

Rangers fan, I could have been part of a threesome. It would have been great We go you'll flirting again But but you lost to me as soon as you said Texas Rangers, you know, hey But I know those of us with a world series championship in the last year. Yeah, you're the we you're the Homer Yeah, we we won the world series. Let me see the ring man show show me the ring okay, so She liked baseball so you know she'd get off work four or five o'clock in the afternoon I'd already have a bar stool staked out at the roost chris that was right next to you know where she worked a

Couple of baseball games are already on the screen at the bar They have this great half-rice hamburger during happy hour. She'd come in and she would just start. You know, I'd already had the wine ordered sitting there, you know, the appetizers would come, and she's like this about her day, right, like that. She'd been in her mask in all day.

I would take out my phone, set it at five minutes, and say, you have my undivided attention for five minutes. Put the phone on the bar. I would give her eye contact. I would face her. I would listen. Undivided attention. She would run out of steam before five minutes was up because she's going,

I sit here complaining, but there's a baseball game on. There's a glass of wine sitting here. What do I prefer? Before now if I didn't put her on the clock at five minutes It was a game is me being dominant but in a loving playful if I didn't put her on the clock She might be crabby all night long and she would not enjoy herself because one of the things I found is that for One of the things I found is that for somebody who identifies as feminine to be in their masculine all day are often not good at getting themselves out of that masculine. I got to go home and wash dishes and get the laundry done.

There's things we got to do for I got to get up and go to work tomorrow. I'll sit down, have a glass of wine. Tell me about your day. Let me rub your feet. I'm a big fan of, in a sense, leading her back into her feminine out of that masculine, rigid, get shit done kind of state of mind. And now all of a sudden she begins opening and she'll tell me her attention. I might even say a woman taught me this. I'll say, you know what? I want to hear about your day, but give me the guy version. You know, and I've never had a woman ask me,

what does that mean? I'll say, you want me to be your guy, right? Yeah, yeah, all right Then I need the guy version when you tell me about the day and I was late about Kelly in the cubicle next to her You know, well, and I know why she does it because you just insecure and she's always wanting attention and she always takes it out of me I'm not dear. I love you. Give me the guy version. Kelly pissed me off today. Great Now I understand why you had a bad day. So, you know, you get playful with it. Get playful with it. There's definitely one of the common threads that I'm noticing through a lot of the dynamics is a degree of playfulness and

it's my nature. So it is what I bring and you know, it's helping. it's helping to it's helping to relieve the tension, relieve the tension, it's helping to relieve the seriousness of everything that it gives more play. It gives like, in the engineering term, it gives more room within the system for things to breathe. You make a suggestion, but it's not it's not done in too rigid of a fashion. There's there's there's movement in there and it's done it's evident the reason that you're doing it and it's not in a mocking way. It's not in a passive aggressive way. It's not in a condescending or patronizing way. But the reason that this, I think, works is it shows, Hey, look, like we're here to

enjoy our time together. We're here. You our time together. We're here to enjoy this. And whether it's someone's had something good happen, someone's had something bad happen, someone's sad, someone's mad, someone's whatever, the appropriate amount of playfulness, I can struggle to think of really many situations in which it doesn't make it better. Yeah, and that doesn't mean getting silly and everything's a joke. Because

again, guys will kind of like, oh, you mean make a joke about it? And again, teaching men to be lighthearted, that can be a pretty daunting task. Now, what's funny though, if you get men with men and let them just kind of begin to let their hair down, guys get silly with each other. And you know, and but we're, I think we're afraid of showing that to women. Oh, yeah. I won't, I won't appear manly. I won't be, you know,

There's a degree of, there's a degree of competence, I think. Uh, I certainly noticed this. Do you know who Charlie Hoop it is from Charisma on Command? He's got a very big Charisma channel on YouTube. It's really, really great guy, very embodied, ton of self-work, ton of men's work. And he helps mostly men, but also women, become more charismatic. So he's learned the principles of confidence and charisma. And one of the best tools that he teaches is when people ask a question, the best answer isn't always the right one. And he uses this example of how to overcome your discomfort around trying to be funny.

And he says, if you walk out of the house and you're with people, you walk out of a bar or whatever, and the weather is one extreme of either hot or cold, make a joke about it being the opposite. Yeah. And he was like, it's the shitest joke. It is the worst. It's a pure dad joke. But he said, it'll get a chuckle out of people. If you walk outside and it's freezing hot, and you go, dude, wish I'd brought some shorts today. This is great. Like, people have a little bit of a chuckle about it,

but it really, really showed me and I have a friend, George, who's been on the show a lot. He a lot of the time, if you're playing kind of like a game of tennis, so you're playing a game of tennis, which involves a linear conversation. Here is a question, there is an answer, here is a question, there is an answer, here's another answer, here's another question. And you played this back and forth. He regularly hits the ball sideways. So he'll call back to a thing that happened a couple of weeks ago, or he'll say, Oh, you know, I bet that such and such a famous person from the

media would have done that or whatever, like he'll rip the conversation out like orthogonally from where it is. And there's play in that. He's not answering the question because he has the comfort in himself to not need to get validation by being I am the person that always knows the answer. I am the person that is always able to give the correct conclusion that draws the line, that puts the false stop and dots the eyes and crosses the T's. I don't need to be that person and it's such such a breath of fresh air, because you're having this conversation and you're like, I'm excited. I don't know what's going to, and it engenders that in you as well. But there's definitely like good boy energy. A nice guy energy in, I will answer the question properly. I will ensure that this,

somebody has asked something of me and to deliver it, I shall. And that removes the playfulness. Yeah. You know, and when I work with guys around this, again, when I, when I learned to date in my 40s and 50s, I, you know, I was never good with women. And if I got one, I kept them way too long. And I started getting successful, you know, with dating and getting laid and guys said, Robert, teach us. I'm not a dating guru. But what you're talking about is that, again, for most of them I worked with, they get so afraid I'm going to do something wrong. I'm going to make a mistake.

I'm going to piss her off. I'll blow it and then it's irreparable. And I'd say, you know, just touch her. Don't, you know, if you have them both to touch her, touch her. If you have them both to tease her, tease her. If you have the impulse to tease her, tease her. If you have the impulse to tell her, come on, let's go do this. Don't hold back. It's crazy.

As it sounds, I tell guys, blur and act on impulse. You think that's a recipe for disaster, but the truth is it lets them be themselves because their authentic self comes out. And, you know, I've had so many experiences, you know, around one. If I just blurted, acted on impulse, you know, I remember one woman I dated on the second date, we were going to go for a walk and she said, well, let me go use the restroom or a restaurant. And she went to the restroom, came back and I saw I'm going to use the restroom. I said, by the way, enjoyed watching you walk away from me. And as soon as I said it, I

thought, oh, fuck, I probably blew it. After we broke up, we stayed friends and said, months later, said, you remember when you said that to me? I said, yeah, I thought I blew it. He goes, oh no, I loved it. Well, I just blurted it, right? I didn't hold it back. I remember another woman, early, early first date, we were walking, and she said something about her sister or sister-in-law there they're having a shoe party, you know women get together and Look at shoes lamest thing a tupperware and think of a shoe party lamest party in history, but okay And so I blurted without thinking oh shoe shopping is women's porn She turned and looked at me. She goes,

you get it. You understand. And so guys will say, well, I'm not funny. I'm not, you know, I can't, I'm not talking about telling jokes. I'm talking about whatever that thing that came to the tip of your brain, but you held it back. Yeah. because you're afraid it might be the wrong thing to say, the wrong thing to do. As soon as you held it back, you killed the tension, the putting it out there. And sometimes you crash and burn. You know, there's the sweat flops. You go, oh man, that didn't get one laugh, you know, but you got to take that risk. Every comedian, you know, has had plenty of bombs, but man, that one landed. And it's not about trying to get it right. It's about taking the sensors off and letting that you that maybe just speaks to the obvious out there and people will relate to it or they won't.

It seems a lot like one of the key tactics for rehabilitating a nice guy is learning to kind of get out of your own way. That's a good way to put it. Because what we've been doing is, again, go all the way back to where we began this. They've been trying to manage their shame. I'm bad. I'm not good enough. I'm going to be found out.

I'm going to die. They're anxiety. Oh, no, somebody will react negatively There'll be pain involved and so that is what's driving the buses or shame in their anxiety And so who is really in there? You know, who is the person? One of the things the comments I get from people that work with me or you know Come to my workshops or seminars or do calls with me They'll say Robert. I appreciate how authentic you are and I'll go

Nobody would have accused me of that 30 years ago. Nobody would have said Robert I love how real you are how authentic you are how you just share yourself How you share your mistakes you fuck ups I didn't and and I couldn't attract a woman to save my life, you know back back in those days I kind of could but I didn't know that what I was what I did that might attract a woman But I wasn't real. I wasn't authentic. I was holding my finger up checking the wind I was a chameleon, you know, what's what's gonna give me the most laughs or what's gonna give me, you know Well, well kind of go over well, but not too well that you know now

I'm not on the spot, but I got to follow through. And man, to just take the sensors off and just blur, act on impulse, be you. I think it's such a powerful rehabilitation. And since most nice guys, their sensors are the most prominent with women, that's a great place to go practice. One of my, the same friend I was talking about before, Mr. Orthogonal Tannis game George, he has this idea called only the irrational behavior survives. What he's talking about, what he's talking about is he imagines being at the funeral of somebody that he knows and he thinks about the conversations that the people are having around the room.

And they're not having the conversation. The washing was always folded and he turned up on time and all the rest of it. He uses this example of his mum and he says that his mum hates fighting. Just really does not like physical fighting. Big, big problem with it. And once his brother was in the car, his younger brother was in the car with her, and they were driving somewhere. And she, I don't know, 50s year old woman, the normal British woman, saw two 18 year old boys sort of squaring up to each other and pushing and trying to fight or whatever on the side of the, on the pavement. She stops

the car in the middle of traffic, gets out and runs over and the brother's like, Mom, what the fuck are you doing? Like, the two guys, twice your size and quadruply your testosterone, what the fuck are you doing? She runs over and she gets in between them, physically gets in between them, like, no fighting, no fighting, gets back in the car and the brother's like, Mom, that was insane. You could have been hurt. You could have been hurt. She's like, I don't care. I don't care. I just don't like fighting. No one's fighting. And he said, at her funeral, people will say she was the sort of person that would stop the car in the middle of traffic to stop two boys fighting. And it's like that only the irrational behavior survives is similar to what you're talking about that there are rough edges to our personality and our behavior. personality in our behavior. But ultimately, that is our personality and behavior. Like, if your goal, your goal should not be as a person on this planet to smooth out any of the things that make you anything into this sort of vanilla amorphous blob that kind of like just glides through. It's like, no, you have things that you want to say and actions that you want to take and changes that you want to make and

just the faith to be able to do that unencumbered is That's what life is. Yeah, and and it takes support. It takes practice Yeah, yeah talking no more mr. Nice guy about nice guys being Teflon men No stick, you know, nothing. I don't want anything to stick to me, but we do connect, as you said, around our rough edges. You know, what we remember about people might not even be always a thing. It might even bugged us or got on our nerves when they did it and we're around them.

But it is also the thing we miss. I mean, you know, Nala, the pit bulls back at my door again I've got French glass door so I can see her outside my office. Yeah, you know when she barks during you know I'm on an interview a podcast it really bugs me But you know if I didn't have her and I'd notice oh I miss her bark You know, I love when she'd go crazy and let me know that somebody was out front our handyman the water guys deliver what they call my dog's name because they know she'll bark differently when she's had her name called and then well, and I would miss that if it ever went I go what's wrong with the dollar how come she doesn't bark at people outside anymore.

Yeah, it's it's it's rough edges board you know that smooth get it right no, yeah, it's it's rough edges board. You know, all that smooth get it right. No, yeah, that's boring Why is your first sexual experience so important? You talking about mine Hardware Come on even that's too far for me First sexual experience, why is it very formative? Okay, you know First sexual experience, why is it very formative? Okay. You know, that's a good question, but it's also difficult one to answer because our

first sexual experience is probably conception, you know, I'd say birth. We're born sexual. The essence of who we are is sexuality. Every living thing is built to reproduce after its own. So our sexuality is the essence of who we are is sexuality. Every living thing is built to reproduce after its own. So our sexuality is the essence of who we are. We kind of live culturally thinking, well, you know, children don't become sexual until, you know, that particular age, whatever that might be. But the truth is, you know, little boys, little girls discover their body parts that

are very young age and oh, there's pleasure. Before you, you know, they understand the words of parents, don't stop doing that, you know, they're finding the pleasure in their own body parts. And the essence of our psyche is sexuality. You know, if so many great teachers, you know, all the way from Freud to David Dada, to Osho, to David Snarch, people at least I value, talk about the most profound way into who we are, Jung, is to our sexuality because it is the essence of who we are. So to bring that back to

answering your question, I will often ask people like in a workshop, you know, again, I primarily work with men these days. Well, I hundred percent work with men these days. I'll ask them, what was your earliest sexual memory? And it doesn't matter what it was. First time you notice you had an erection, first kiss, first wet dream. First, I'll show you mine mine you show me yours first whatever And it can vary for you every what but I'll say what is your first memory and Then I'll say get it get clear in your mind. What was it and then I'll ask them Did it occur in the open?

Could you go tell your folks about it? Could it be celebrated? Did your parents say that's amazing low get let's go get pizza. That's a you know, it's a developmental milestone Or was it hidden was it secretive was it guilt-ridden was it shame-based? Even worse did it feel good put you felt bad about it feeling good right so For about 99.9% of the people on the planet, our earliest sexual experience was wrapped in shame and hidden darkness, guilt, I'm bad. I can't let anybody find out. So our sexuality gets crosswired with those features. It's bad.

It's evil. Hide it. Repress it. Don't let it out. It's bad. It's evil. Hide it. Repress it. Don't let it out.

And then that takes, you know, as many different forms as there are people in terms of how that manifests from there. So then we get to be adolescents and adults and can't figure out why sex is so messy, so difficult, so challenging. So, you know, how come it's not easy? Yeah, people who think that they have a low sex drive might actually just be psychologically scarred from the way that they perceived it. That's very possible. And I've often said, you know, I will get personal. I didn't discover, I didn't know I could actually masturb make myself to Ejaculation while I was a freshman in college. That's pretty late compared to most and and you know

I've kind of a late bloomer in a lot of ways around sexuality and I was just well That's just me But yeah, it's very likely be growing up in a fundamental Christian church where I heard messages really early And if you lost after a woman's breast you go to all you go to hell for all eternity You know where you know my mom taught me to be not be like my dad is really early and if you lost after a woman's breast you go to hell for all eternity. You know, where my mom taught me to be not be like my dad, where I listen to the women and he's a jerk. He only wants one thing.

You know, yeah, there might have been some scarring that went into the, you know. I'm trying to work out. You know, it's better to not have a sex drive. Oh, my penis betrayed me again by getting a wreck. You know. What? Stop doing that. Yeah. You know. have a sex drive. Oh, my penis betrayed me again by getting a wreck. What? Stop doing that. You know, you know, I'm trying to work out from a first sexual experience perspective. My first, the first time I had sex, the girl who I worked with at the local hotel where I was the room service boy.

Do you know what a fucking, what was it? A VW loopo is a loopo loopo. It's like the size, it's smaller than a Fiat 500. And it was three door. And it was in a like an industrial estate halfway between you have sectional loopo. I had, if you think that having sex for the first time is difficult, having sex for the first time in a car that's like half the size of a jumper just turns the difficulty level up to 11. But yeah, I maybe, maybe that's, I don't know what that

means. We were next to a, like in Mercedes Benz mechanics, maybe that's why I love F1 so much. I'm not sure. I keep getting an erection whenever I see Lewis Hamilton. I'm not sure. We could really spend. My first attempt was in a Chevy Vega. Probably slightly bigger, slightly bigger. The next time I tried it, it was on a park school bus.

I got smart, right? Yeah, very nice. Very good. Well, I mean, the school bus, yeah. But yeah, it's very interesting to think about how we sort of internalize these stories. And I had a, do you know who Dr. Paul Conti is? Is that with Stanford?

I've heard that name. I couldn't tell you who he is, but I have heard the name. So he did a four-part series with Andrew Huberman last year. I've heard that name, too. Yes. Yes, everybody says that name all the time. He's fantastic. They're both fantastic.

And Paul does evidence-based unconscious work, trauma, and such, from a very medical standpoint. And he was talking to me, he gave me this really lovely frame, very interesting He was talking to me, he gave me this really lovely frame, very interesting, about how formative experiences in our past can reshape the way that we see the entirety of that world, but importantly, they reshape our memory of what it was like before that as well. So for us to say something like, I get in a car accident when I'm 25. And then you get travel anxiety, which causes you to not enjoy driving or to feel anxious when you're driving. And then at 35 you tell yourself, I've never liked driving. You're like, no, until the age of 25, you

loved it. Do you not remember you did that thing? It's like, no, no, no, no, I was anxious the whole time. And this, this ability that like the fallibility and the malleability of our own memory and our sense of self and our understanding of ourselves the fact that for sufficiently formative experiences can Like manipulate those and mold them in a different way. I just thought was so it's fascinating But kind of brutal as well. Well, and maybe this is the same another way of explaining the same thing as well. Well, and maybe this is a the same another way of explaining the same thing.

Every time we recall a memory, we fundamentally change the memory because every time we recall it, we're now in a different emotional state, a different position, different surroundings. We accurate memory does not exist, right? You know, what even, even as we think we're remembering our earliest sexual experience, you know, if there was actually a camera there filming it, we might find out it's completely totally different surrounding-wise than we thought. So every time we recall a memory, we're altering it, so our memories keep changing over a lifetime. So, but what happens at that trauma we're talking about and that what I call the cross-wiring, that's happening at an emotional level. And so it doesn't matter even if our memory is accurate in terms of digitally accurate.

What matters is emotionally how we move forward with it. And so now, if we've been a sexual creature since birth and all of a sudden something happens that sex is hidden, well, I better keep it hidden from here on out. We don't make that as a conscious decision. It's just an emotional roadmap that we start following. It's very, very interesting. So we identified this. People are sitting and listening to you and I talking very openly about sexual experiences,

and they're going, you're not supposed to do that. You're not supposed to talk openly about those things, because they're going on their emotional wiring of how you're supposed to, you know, be about sex. Yeah, well, like the VW Lupo opens all sorts of doors. Three of them exactly. Exactly, correct. Unless you can come right out the back. Honestly, dude, I, and I remember how not far the passenger seat went back as well. I just thought this is. Well, and you got to do it in the passenger seat because of the

steering wheel, but you guys have the steering wheel on the wrong side of the car. Well, speak for yourself. Look, we've gone through this litany of problems, right? This big, big, big, big list. And we don't have enough time to prescribe the panacea for all of the nice guys listening. Given the fact that you've done so many seminars, coaching sessions, working with people, what have you found if you were to give the biggest biggest movers of rehabilitation for nice guys. I don't think I've ever used that exact word for it.

What are the practices, what are the places that they should focus on in order to start to embody themselves more honestly? Okay, yeah, be their authentic selves, exactly. I'll just walk you through what I did. Number one, I tell people, find safe people. Don't try to do this on your own. You didn't become a nice guy in social isolation.

Don't try to get over it in social isolation. We have to have safe people to start releasing our shame. To tell people, I've got this story about myself and people go, well, that's not bad. That's not terrible at all. You're going, that's normal, what you're describing. So we need safe people to support us release our shame perhaps mentor us encourage us Help us face our fears. So I tell nice guys go find a coach therapist men's group. I love men's groups I did a big chunk of my own personal

Rehabilitation in men's groups. I was leading five men's groups a week when I was in private practice up in Seattle. I'm a believer. So, find a men's group. Don't try to do this alone. How do you, so just to interject that, how do you know if it's a good men's group or a bad men's group? That's a good question and it is somewhat subjective because something a group you love might not work for me.

When I started looking for something about all that existed at that time was the Robert Bligh mythopoetic go out in the woods, beat a drum, have the talking stick and say, oh, I did that. I ended up in a 12-step program is where I started. It wasn't by choice. It just where I landed. program is where I started. It wasn't by choice. It just where I landed. I got lucky. I landed. I was in a men's group led by a woman around sexual shame who liked men. And so that was good for me. I tried some other men's groups that I just never connected or resonated with. A core piece I would recommend whether you're looking for a coach, a therapist, a men's group is find somebody who leads it who's actually done their own work. You mentioned embodiment quite a bit. Somebody who's actually gone out worked on their own stuff.

You know, I became a therapist. I got my PhD in marriage and family therapy at 29 years old. Started, you know, a few years later started doing, you know, trying to do real therapy. I'd never been to therapy. And, you know, it wasn't till I got into therapy in men's groups and started working on my own toxic shame and my own anxieties and my own patterns that I could actually really help people. So, you know, it doesn't hurt to check out, you know, ask the person, what's your dirty? You know, where have you worked on yourself? And then just see, do you connect with them?

That's usually a good place to connect. So go find a coach, therapist, men's group, 12 step group, something where you get to go start revealing you releasing toxic shame. Start being honest. Nice guys think they're honest or anything but honest. I remember pretty early in my process I realized almost everything I told my then wife was whatever won't rock the boat. So I told her I'm going to work and be honest.

Whenever I catch myself making up a story to tell you, I'm going to come tell you, I was going to lie to you, here's the lie I was going to tell you, here's the whole truth. So I started doing that and actually I used to tell her her middle name ought to be overreact because that's what she did and every the funny thing was, well I actually just started telling her the truth about shit. She'd go, okay, thanks for telling me that. I'm glad you didn't lie to me and you know, whoa, that's different. You know, when I was trying to get her not to overreact, she did. When I just told her the truth, yeah, okay, don't lie to me. That was it. So work on being honest. And again, we need safe people usually to do that. Work on making your needs

a priority. Start asking yourself, what do I want? What's important to me? Do I need to go to the gym? Do I need to go to the dentist? Do I need to take some time to relax? Do I need to rest my eyes? Do I need to go read a good book? How do I get my needs met and how do I let people help me get my needs met and how do I surround myself with people who want to help me get my needs met? Start working on boundaries. That's a big one for nice guys is well nobody grows into adulthood knowing how to set boundaries because nobody teaches children how to set boundaries because in the real world the big people get to do whatever they want to the little people and because we were all little people, we never learned. You could say, no, stop that. I'm going to remove myself now. Learn about boundaries. I was in my 30s in

my second marriage with a PhD before I had ever even heard of boundaries. A therapist, I went to taught me about them. Start working on boundaries. Then I think the one other piece I'll throw out there that I think is just so fundamental Pressure for guys for nice guys Go connect with men go build a tribe of men I've had to do that a few times in my life about seven years ago when I got married down here in Mexico Not yet fluent Spanish my wife only speaks Spanish and I'm living in here working at home. I I had no guys in my life and I went seeking and found a men's program and joined it and now If you look at my text messaging my calendars my email, I'm on zoom

I'm messaging with buddies all the friggin time and just, it makes everything about my world better. I'm more on point with my work, my relationship improved, I'm in better health, I'm happier. So build a connection with the man. So there's about five things that are a pretty good start. Dr. Robert Glover, ladies and gentlemen, Robert, I I adore your work I think it's very much needed it's so fascinating that it's been around for quite a while. You know that and yet this single thread of guys being overly pliable of resenting despite the fact that they're playing the game correctly they think that they're doing all the rest of it. Is it so fascinating and I've today's been phenomenal. Where should people go? They wanna keep up to date with your work,

you've got the internet. Yeah, drglover.com, good place to start out. We're in the process of rebuilding it, but you can go find good stuff, integration nation.net, my new men's program. My co-author said, be sure and mention the big stick. This, go find the big stick. Tony Endelman is a certified coach. I asked him a few years ago, Tony, what do you think about digging into everything I've ever created and trying to put it in one book? And he goes, yeah, I'm up for

that. Okay. And he did, did a beautiful job. So DrGlover.com integration nation.net big stick. Hell yeah. Robert, I appreciate you. Thank you very much. Chris, this is a blast. Thank you so much fun.