The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Quit The Game: The Aligned Man Method: 31 Principles for Men Who Are Done Chasing Status and Approval by Ryan Vertucci

Episode Date: October 12, 2026

Quit The Game: The Aligned Man Method: 31 Principles for Men Who Are Done Chasing Status and Approval by Ryan Vertucci https://www.amazon.com/Quit-Game-Aligned-Principles-Approval/dp/1971949728 Alignedmanmethod.com Quitthegame.com The life you are chasing is real, but the game is rigged. You have seen the men with the boats, the cars, the money, the women. You have stopped mid-scroll for them. Maybe for just a second. Maybe longer than you’d admit. And you have told yourself that’s the answer—that if you could just get there, everything would fall into place. The dating problems. The quiet suspicion that you are running the wrong play, that hum inside your chest that never goes quiet no matter what you try. The Tate clips, the Rollo Tomassi posts, the dating-app spreadsheets, the thousands you spent on the programs. You have done everything men are told to do…and the hum is still there. Ryan Vertucci had that life. The 4,300 square foot waterfront home with the boat at the back door. The BMW i8 and the Aston Martin Superleggera in the driveway. A million dollars in personal income working a few hours a week. He was recruited by Dan Bilzerian’s organization to help sell the formula, brought in specifically because he looked like proof it worked. His Instagram was featured by Men of Action as one of the profiles students were told to model themselves after. When the industry needed to show other men what the destination looked like, they pointed at Ryan. Then a woman looked at him and said the ten words that destroyed something: “You’re just another rich guy in Tampa with a boat.” She didn’t say it cruelly. She said it the way you say something obvious. She looked at everything he had built and she didn’t see power. She saw a pattern. A type. A man she had seen a hundred times before, standing in the middle of everything the formula promised, wondering why it felt like nothing. The entire system is built to keep you chasing. This is the book Ryan wishes someone had handed him at twenty-two, before he spent nearly a decade and over a million dollars finding out the hard way. Inside Quit the Game: 31 Principles for Men Who Are Done Chasing Status and Approval, you will find: The Be Do Have inversion — why the sequence every man is following is completely backwards, and what to do instead 31 principles for becoming the man you are waiting to feel like, built on the spiritual and emotional foundation underneath real alignment The hidden architecture behind the lifestyle you are chasing, told by the man who was on the inside of it Why getting the money, the status, and the women will not close the gap… and what the industry never tells you about why A direct, blunt, sometimes funny account of what is actually waiting on the other side of the life you want This is not a pickup book. It is not a Tate book. It is not a Rollo book. This is the book for the man who tried all of those and still feels empty—and for the man who doesn’t want to. Quit the game. Become Aligned. Start here.

You wanted the best... You've got the best podcast. The hottest podcast in the world. In the world. The Chris Voss Show. The preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready.

Get ready. Strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education role. rollercoaster with your brain. Now here's your host, Chris Voss. Folks of Oz here from The Chris Voss Show. Dot. I try to hit the high note like she does, but I just can't pull that off, babies. Anyway, guys, welcome the big show. As always, we certainly appreciate you guys. Thanks for supporting the show. After 18 years, we're going on now and over 3,000 episodes. And we're the only, we're the oldest living podcast that's still

broadcasts one to two new shows today. So we beg, plead, get on our knees for your family, friends and relatives. You'll sleep better at night. I guarantee it. Go to Goodrease.com for chest Christmas, LinkedIn.com, Fortress Christchristvost, YouTube.com, forechestchus and Facebook.com, Fortess Christchusvoss. And the lawyers just started sending me text messages that I can't guarantee that. Screw them. Anyway, we have an amazing young man on the show. We're going to be talking to. And we're going to get into it on some of the uplifting things he has to share with us today. His book is entitled, quit the game, the aligned man method, 31 principles for men who are done chasing status and approval.

We're going to get into with him. Ryan Vertucci joins us on the show. For nearly a decade, he did everything modern self-improvement culture told men would create fulfillment. He spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on dating programs, mastermind, confidence, coaching, luxury, lifestyle, culture, and self-improvement systems. Eventually, his life became so externally convincing that he was recruited by Dan Blaserian's organization to help with all the exact lifestyle he was living.

From the outside, it looked like success. Inside, he was anxious, emotionally exhausted, addicted to validation, and constantly performing and waking up from dreams about being in prison. Quit the game was built from the ruins of that life. Welcome to the show. Ryan, how are you? I'm great. How are you doing today, Chris?

I am excellent. I am excellent. It's wonderful to have you on the show. Give us dot com's websites where we want to plug where people can find you, on the interwebs, sir. Yeah, absolutely. So the best place is quickthegame.com. That's where my book, bio, is sitting.

You can also find the book, Quick to Game, on Amazon. The Alignedmanmethadethod.com is my online course in school community. There's links there and information on all the courses and things that I offer there. Also, it can be found on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook. Search for Align Man Method, and you'll find us there. So give us a 30,000 overview. What's inside this book, sir? So this book is a recollection of how I discovered myself a couple years ago.

Essentially, I thought that I was at the top of the world. I had all the money I could ever want. I was working a few hours a week to run things. I had an amazing social circle or so, I thought. I had a girlfriend who was right or die. And I had spent my whole life trying to get to that point to get the, to prove myself to be to be what I wanted to be. And I got there from 12 years earlier, 10 years earlier, I was working at a Walgreen store.

I was dating somebody I didn't really like. I didn't have the friends or social circle that I wanted. And I just felt lost. So I started the business. I made the money. I moved to Florida. I bought a boat. I took all these different dating programs and social building programs and confidence

programs, all these things to build my out, myself. up who I thought I needed to be and it all burned to the ground and essentially after it burned to the ground I went and I reexamined my life and I was like why am I chasing all these external things why am I spending all this money and all this money on these programs the problem that I discovered through doing deep therapy and deep inner deep inner work was that the problem was in myself from deep childhood wounds so my course and my book are about how I discovered those how how I discovered those wounds, how I healed them in 31 principles that I now live by, that made my life a lot more fulfilling and real.

Wow. Wow. Give us a little bit of the story of the overview of your journey and crashing out. It sounds like you were leading the life. We talk a lot about the sunshould. Of course, childhood trauma affecting most of my lives and creating lack. And then a lot of times people buy into societies kind of. kind of programming, especially for men, do this, do that, do this, do that.

And you'll, they somehow tell you to be happy. I always liken it to the, you ever see the scene in Fight Club where they're in the bathtub with Ed Norton and Ed Norton sitting on the toilet? I probably should make that distinction. And Brad Pitt is in the bathtub. People are like, I don't remember them being together in the bathtub. That was weird. But I don't know if you remember that scene, but he says, we're children raised by children

and something that effect. And I asked my dad, what should I do in life? He said, go to school. And then I graduated school. And I go, what should I do? What should I do, dad? What should I do, dad, go to get married and get a job. And somehow they just fed this thing that somehow there's this automatic American dream that comes if you just do all the things and check all the boxes.

Tell us about your experience. Dan Blaserium, I'm pretty familiar with him. And some of the stuff that he did. He's kind of like the modern day Hugh Heffner. there for a time. Tell us about your journey through that process. And what was the moment you crashed? Give us the rundown on that. Yeah, so essentially, yeah, 12 years ago, I was doing exactly what you just said. I was working at Walgreens. I was swiping on dating apps every day, not really getting what I wanted. I had some friends that we'd go out and drink on the weekends and I'd go work out. And that was pretty

much my life. I'd go visit friends, places and things. And I just just felt unfulfilled. And it's funny, brought up a movie. One day I was watching the movie Wolfel Wall Street came on. And I was like, you know what? That's the type of life that I want. That's what I'm going to use for motivation. So essentially, I was working at Walgreens and I got denied a promotion, or not denied, I got accepted for promotion. But after I worked all these hours to get this promotion, I went into the office and they told us, sorry, Ryan, the position no longer exists. We're restructuring the company. And not only that, we're going to cut the pay of the job you already have. And I was like, you know what, I'm done with this.

So I started looking for other business opportunities. And I did what most men do. You go online, you go on Indeed and start applying for jobs. And wasn't going anywhere. The only jobs that being in retail were other retailers. Like I go from managing a Walgreens to managing a CBS. Like that wasn't going to make me more fulfilled. It was still the same hours and still the same life.

So essentially, I found a business franchise opportunity. I couldn't really afford it. I smoothed all the people, had a totally positive attitude, and somehow got to the last step where you go to in front of the founder of the company. And he makes a decision whether they're going to offer you to franchise. And this franchise is called Real Property Management. The owner at the time was Kirk McGarry. He founded it. I remember walking to his office and him saying, Ryan, we want you to do this.

And I said, okay, but I have a problem. I don't have the money to do this. It costs $40,000. I have $40,000 to my name. What do I do? and for the first time in my life, someone looked me in the eyes and said, look, Ryan, here's what it is.

I believe in you. Go ahead and give me $20,000 now and give me the other $20,000 anytime over the next 10 years interest-free when you're successful. So I said, all right, I signed the deal. I had no customers for the first three months. It sucked.

But once I figured out how to get customers, if anyone starts a business, as soon as you figure out how to get customers and you start getting customers, the up and up. The first one's always the hardest one. Yeah. Anyway, after about a year and a half, two years, I started making triple-wise making it my job. I moved to a place that I like more. I dumped the girlfriend. I did all those things and was on a different path. But I got there and essentially realized I was still the same person. I had money.

I had freedom. I had more material things. But I was essentially still in the same place. I was still hanging out with the same people. I was still doing the same things. And I wasn't living the wolf of Wall Street life. Yeah. And I still felt the world was unfair. I felt these girls are, these girls are bitches, this,

and what's wrong with me? Why am I not, why am I not where I'm at? And I would always go on Instagram. And I would compare myself to other people. I'd be seeing these people on Instagram, people from college, all these things working these corporate jobs and having,

having the great marriage or having the abundance in their dating life, or having the great friend groups or having all the stuff. And I just felt like I wasn't there, like I wasn't good enough. So then I started reaching for different things. So then I started going and browsing online. If you go online and you're a guy, you're going to get all these ads for things like Dan Belzerian's coaching program.

Build your social circle. Have the social circle of your life. Run Instagram ads to get friends, throw events, chase women down the street and run game on them. Get six-pack abs in 14 weeks. Learn how to be the most social person in the world. All this stuff. So I did all these different programs.

I did the 14 week and 14 weeks six-pack abs. And I did that. I did the looks maxing course where I learned how to dress and how to maximize my looks. I did the social game course where we went out and we threw parties and photo shoots and had a bunch of only fans models show up at the house. And that wasn't the intention, but that's the only people who showed up. And then had all of this, got this social circle around me that I thought was good. I took the dating programs and I started to get a little bit better with women.

I started to get more dates. I started to get more people around. And eventually I did all these programs and I was like, I'm optimized. So you create a character in a video game. You have the money. You have the body. You have the you dress well. You present well.

You've got the social circle, the best friends. You've got the girlfriend. You've got it all, right? Optimized, fully optimized to all levels to be able to maximize all of that. I learned all the skills, did all the stuff. And I thought I was on the third. top of the world. I would be on my boat every weekend like Dan Belzerian with 20 college girls. I had a girlfriend who told me she was ride or die and I could just sleep with whoever I wanted.

And because I was so optimized and so cool that that was realistic. And I would go on these forums of these dating programs and I would talk about this and people would be like, I want to be like you. I want to be like you. I want to be like you. So that's why I started selling Sigma Society. I only did that for a week. I never met Dan Millsarian. I did work with this team and I was recruited to be part of this. And I did take sales calls with his potential clients. Okay. And convinced them to buy this and they put me in front of them because of the lifestyle that I had at the time. Everyone's always encouraged me, start a coaching program. You're the one who's making all this work. Some of the programs put me

as the Instagram profiles to watch to show that this works. They put me in their promotional videos. There's a conference course where I was put in the promotional videos that he used to sell the course. But anyway, I did all this stuff and thought I got to the top. There was still one thing missing. I felt like there's one thing missing. My, I felt like my inner confidence just wasn't there. Because I had what they called approach anxiety. I was just afraid to walk up the random women and talk to them still. Really? So I was like, I have some kind of inner problem. So I was out one day in St. Pete Beach here in Florida, working with a pickup coach, a dating coach. We're walking down St. Pete Beach. And we're chasing women, literally

chasing women down the beach and trying to get their phone numbers. He's recording me doing this. live streaming it for people to watch and putting it on his Instagram. But anyway, in one of the breaks, he hands me, he's like, yeah, for your approach anxiety, I recommend that you see a therapist. You do psychedelic therapy. And here's this guy. One of my clients had this great, amazing breakthrough from the psychedelic therapy. And I was like, okay.

So the guy hands me this, hands me this guy's name and number who's in Minnesota on a, on a, like a napkin. And a couple days later, I called the therapist up. And I'm like, yeah, I want to help calm my social anxiety. I had this guy who recommended me, said one of your clients was one of his clients. And therapist told me, I've never heard of this guy. I have no idea what you're talking about. And then he said something to me, I won't forget.

But he didn't say something. He said, why are you really calling me? And without thinking, I said, I want to date someone with integrity. Just out of nowhere, like my subconscious pretty much said that. And so I did three over a year and a half period. I did three MDMA sessions. And a lot of things came up. childhood wounds, the thought that life was nonsense.

And the thing that broke it all open was the last session I did. My subconscious somehow channeled or knew that my girlfriend wasn't faithful. She was sleeping with a guy who was supposedly my best friend. And all these friends and all these people that I had around knew about it. And it wasn't genuine. The whole social apparatus that was giving me dopamine, was not genuine. And I had a rotation of women.

A lot of them were sugar babies, seeking arrangement type of stuff. Yeah. And it made me feel good in the moment. All these college girls that would be around. Yeah. They would come and hang out. They'd want to have fun. But when it was time to get out the boat,

you never heard from them again. Yep. So I had this whole social network that I thought that it was posting it all on Instagram. I was the guy on Instagram that I was jealous of before. And I realized that it was all fake. It was not fulfilling. And I was heading down a dangerous road. If I would have married that girl or some of these other women that I've come across,

there's other examples in the book of some of these toxic women that I dated that were one girl lied about being on birth control. And then we broke up and three weeks later she got pregnant by somebody else. There's all kinds of situations like that that I've been fortunate enough to dodge over time. But I realized that I was looking for things in the wrong place and projecting an image, projecting this, projecting what I was projecting, which was broadcasting the signal that was bringing in all this toxicity. Yeah.

So you're not going to, I realize, I'm not going to find genuine friends at a bar or a strip club or when everyone's out. What? Are you sure? Those strippers sure seem sincere. I took a dating, one of the dating courses I took was run out of the back of the strip club. And the first, the first lesson of, the first lesson of the dating course was, the first lesson that they teach you in the back of the strip club is, instant.

Instagram is fake and that's okay. And then they took us out in Las Vegas, had us bring clothes and we're walking down the Vegas strip. And they have a guy taking photos of us in front of luxury cars and all these things that were rented to post on Instagram. Oh, wow. So they had a rental, they had a whole show set up that you could utilize it.

Yeah, it was pretty much how to fake it. Wow. They don't tell you that if you're actually dating somebody, they're going to find out that you don't actually have the Lamborghini. Yeah. You don't actually have, You don't actually have the money to buy the bottle service at the club. I did, and I did do that.

That's maybe why it worked for me. A lot of these people get some attention, but they're going to realize who you really are. You can't wear the mask forever. And these programs are just selling a mask. They're just selling a version. You're creating a version that's not really you to get attention to draw people in. And what you're drawing in are people who just want to be part of what you can provide,

not of who you actually are. Yeah. Yeah. And so how did you crash out and then rebuild? What did that look like? This is a little crazy. So after that third MDMA session, I found out, I found out about all the things that were going on. So I ghosted the friend group and I got on a plane and I flew to Italy.

Didn't tell anyone but my assistant. And I went to Italy. I got off the plane. As I was on the plane, the supposed best friend, I didn't say anything to me, had no idea where I was. realized I blocked him. So he told everybody I was suicidal. And then he gathered a group of people at three in the morning. They were all doing drugs and drinking.

They didn't want you to leave a cult of italy. Yeah, I get off. I get off the plane in Italy and I look at my ring camera and I see these morons in my front yard, like six people, him and six people breaking into my house at three in the morning. What the fuck? He was upset that I found out that he was sleeping my girlfriend and he wanted to get ahead of the story before I broke it is what I was. I didn't say anything at all.

to him. But I was gone for literally four hours. And he's telling people, I'm suicidal and he's breaking into my house. The cold has a runner. He's running. He's escaping. Yeah. That's what it felt like. It was like, it was like the Truman show. Like they all these people were like running this thing, pretending like everything was okay. And I finally broke out of the damn thing and they're like, yeah, true. Ryan, Ryan, come back into the Matrix. Yeah. I love that Truman show.

I bash Instagram a lot for being fake, but I think I'm going to start calling the Truman Show. I love that analogy. Yes, the Truman Show. Essentially, you're putting on, you're broadcasting, what's great. Everyone on Instagram looks great. You look beautiful. You only post the best of the best. Yeah.

And that's the same thing with dating apps too. Dating apps are becoming more toxic because now you can't, now, before you least you had the message to people. Now you just have AI message to girls. Make me seem funny and interesting. Yeah. Most of the replies men do. do? Are you using chat GPT? Yeah, people, you can actually have apps now that that will put chat chTPT into your,

into your dating app. So essentially, you post a bunch of fake photos of yourself that are AI Photoshop, and then you go in there, and then you use chat cheap, you use AI to respond to all your messages. And then when you go and you sit in front of the person, they're nothing like you expected, because they're not that actual person. You know, I took courses that wrote my bio. I had a guy in Bangladesh running my dating apps for a while. Oh, wow.

I had spreadsheets, I had 140 matches, spreadsheets full of it. And then I had them booking the dates into my calendarly. Well, I, can I ask you something that I'm curious about? Can you discuss the trauma you had from childhood? And let me make, I'm going to make a, I'm just making a theory and jump here. And so I'm asking for clarification if I'm wrong. But it seems like throughout the discussion you've had with me, you've been looking for a lot of validation through women.

Was there some sort of, is that, is that inaccurate? Am I reading it right? You're reading it exactly right. Were you in a mother abandonment child or what, can you get into any of the trauma or it's up to you? I don't want you to share. No, absolutely. So that's in the book as well. So what I discovered in the MDMA session was it all starts with mom.

And the first thing that came out in the MDMA session that was that was the most meaningful was, it all ended, it all started when grandma left. That just came to me. And essentially, it made me think back when I was eight years old, my grandmother died. And my mom was young and my mom couldn't handle it. Was she a single mother or did you have your father? No, I have a dad. I have a great dad.

And he worked a lot, but he was, he was supportive. I was with, especially during that time, my dad was working a lot. He was in his early 30s and he was working really hard to get to, the next level of his career and he did because he needed to support us. It was me and four other four other siblings and he was working real hard. So he was he was he was around but he didn't wasn't there to see all this all the time. My mom was drinking excessively. She was emotionally abusive. We would come home and hide in our rooms. She would be slamming and throwing things around. And all of a sudden all the affection and love that I had as a child all went away instantly.

Did you get more of it? Did you get more of it from your grandmother? As a child, I was more connected my grandparents as parents. I used to call them my mom and dad. Did the, did you have love before that from your mom and she went off the rails with the grandmother passing? Sometimes that's a huge effect. Yeah. When my grandmother passed away, my mom couldn't handle it and she went off the rails. Okay. We became overly anxious, started drinking and the house turned into, it turned into an unsafe place emotionally. And I was getting strong emotional support from my mom before that. And after that, I became what I felt like was a burden. And there's one story that actually came up in therapy.

And this is crazy. It's something I never thought of. And it brings back a memory to my ninth birthday party right after my grandmother died. We were playing games in the yard, had a bunch of kids over from school. And we're playing games. I run to the front of the line in the games. It's my birthday. I get to go first.

And my mom was like, no, you don't get to go first. The other kids were here first. Go to the end of the line. And then she didn't want to have the party at all. She was complaining about the party saying how miserable she was having it. just saying she just wanted to get it over. And after that point, I never asked for a birthday party again. I never really wanted to ask for much from my mom ever again.

And something small like that, I've heard a lot of people through promoting this book. And I tell the story, a lot of guys come up and they're like, I had a similar story. Yeah. There's a lot of father, mother abandonment that's going on in today's world. Usually the alternates work the same with father abandonment, whether the father is disconnected emotionally and intimately from the daughter. and she can't. This is about layering the first set of blueprints you're going to have of relationships

and interactions with people, especially in the other sex. So the mother gives the son a blueprint of what sort of woman to seek and look for and relationship to look for. The father gives a blueprint to the daughter. This is why, and so what happens if that blueprint isn't given or it's distorted or laid wrong or it's just not there. Some people are abandoned by their mothers and fathers. where they disappear, you get what's, you get basically mother abandonment syndrome as a man.

And I used to see this a lot of my male models when I own a modeling agency, and that's kind of how I figured all the stuff out, that and strippers do the same thing. Women will go for women who have father abandonment issues will seek attention and validation from all men, because she doesn't have a blueprint to discern which men are good or bad. Same thing is true of men with mother abandonment issues. they go seeking validation and acceptance from all women. And they're constantly searching for it. And since they have that wound, the people that are usually aware of it will either say,

yeah, you've got some unresolved trauma. You've got to deal with that. Or they'll pray off it if they're predators. So I don't know if that's like your situation. That's absolutely what happened to me. I used sex as validation. And when I was a kid, I was getting rejected by women left and right. because I didn't have any confidence.

I was just so used to being rejected by the first woman who I knew at the time during those developmental years. And so then I spent my whole life chasing validation from women. And all these guys who take these programs, they're all equally wounded. The same kind of, same kind of thing. And one thing I emphasize in the book is you attract what you are. You're broadcasting a signal. You are a mirror. And this girl who went off of my best friend who also had a rotation of women,

me and her were doing the same things because she had a father abandonment. issue. And so I was attracting all these women with these bad father abandonment issues. A lot of your some of their relationships looked okay on the outside, but it was definitely deep. You know, I had a rotation. They had a rotation. They we would, it was always the same pattern I realized. I would meet somebody. They would tell me all the right things. We'd have sex very quickly like the first or second date, usually the first day, usually within hours. And then they and then they would be and then they And then they're texting you nonstop and you're like, this is a woman who actually likes me. This feels good.

This is what I need. But she has a room that she's trying to fill and she's going from bucket to bucket trying to fill it. And the holes empty at the bottom of the bucket. Yeah. It talks a lot about dating culture nowadays. And I kept ending up in these situationships or what we call the talking phase. Right.

So in the dating, in the dating world, there is a point where you're dating somebody. You're hooking up. You're going on date. regularly, you're having sex regularly. It's going on for weeks, months, years, but you don't put a label on it. So both of you are still out actively on the dating market, likely sleeping with other people, likely posting things on Instagram or whatever to get attention from the opposite sex. And the dating industry teaches you for men, it teaches you to do what's called spinning plates. It takes you to have a rotation of people, constantly sleep with people. And it teaches you that if you're

getting sex, then that means the girl actually likes you. If you're not getting sex, she doesn't like you so don't waste your time and then it it it just tells you okay somehow you're going to sleep with all these different people and then you're just going to pick the best one out of abundance and then you're going to you're going to fall in love and it's going to be great and it's also they teach you that it's great to make sure that all these women see you around other women so that they're wondering so that they're so that they're you're doing what's called pre-selection right you have a bunch of women around makes other women want to be around yeah that's good that's real pain in the ass about women's nature but it is what it is it's just what I'm what I

I would say is that I've discovered that when I was doing that on Instagram, it was drawing in women, but it was drawing in toxic women. Yeah. All the women who I actually liked and thought that they're that I thought might be good for me, they all disappeared when they saw that. Oh yeah. So women with self-respect don't play that game. And it may be, it's becoming fewer and far in between these, these dating coaches and people say that. They're not wrong. But if you're looking for one person, you need to have a filter and you need to have a filter and you need to

to filter that out for integrity is what I'm looking for. Oh, yeah. And when you've got those wounds, those bad blueprints from childhood, you end up being a lot of narcissists will predatorize, I don't know, you'll attract predators, narcissistic people that love wounded people because they can, they just play things. Absolutely. So you get that. So I'm trying to say the guy who broke in my house, narcissist all the way. And the girl who I was dating, who went off with him, they're actually dating now. They actually are official lov-y-dovey.

It's perfect. Well, it's probably not perfect, but I'm not. Instagram is perfect. Yeah, on Instagram, it looks perfect. When they show up, it's perfect. But she had some serious problems. But she had, it's like a narcissistic BPD connection. That's why I keep saying you attract what you are.

Like, who would be more perfect for each other? And narcissists. But that's what I was. I was messed up, so I attracted people who were messed up. Sorry, go ahead. Let me lead you into the next part because we want to get more to your book. And this story is a great story. Somewhere in here, you develop these 31 principles.

Let me make sure I'm getting this right. 31 principles for men. When did you start developing these? When you escaped to Italy, you started awakening, getting away from the noise and the programming. And then tell us about some of these 30. ones that your favorites or you think are key that people should tease out for your book to buy it. Yeah. So the 31 principles when I was in Italy, I was in the, I was in a mall fee. And I was at, I had one more day left and I was going to take a, take a bus to the train station to get back to

Rome to fly home. And the lady at the desk said, no, don't take, don't take a car, take the ferry. He'll get the Salerno where I needed to go to the train a lot earlier. So I had a few, a little bit of time. I hopped on the ferry. Take it to Salerno. And I had about four hours. until my train the Rome came. So I googled, what is there to do in Salerno? So I found the Salerno Cathedral. I didn't know much about it. I said, okay, I can walk there. I dropped my bags off at the train station. I walked over there. And I'm walking through it. It's Italy. I went to the Vatican when I was there. I'm walking through and there's beautiful church, staying glass, like really just such so extra, right? Like hundreds of years old. Maybe more than I don't know. It's old.

So I'm going through. And this church had a crypt in the bottom of it. This is interesting. So I go down the stairs, I'm checking out the crypt. And in the crypt below, if you go, there was one more set of stairs that went even deeper. And I looked down those stairs and there was this beautiful altar, this stained glass mural, and one little kneeling bench that was purple for one single person to pray in front of this, all the way at the bottom of this crypt. Everything was in Italian, so I couldn't read what it said or who it was dedicated to or whatever. But I thought to myself, I should go and kneel and say a prayer at this bench.

and I hadn't been in a church up until I went to the Vatican and probably voluntarily probably in 30 years. And so I go down to the, I go down on this bench and I start saying a prayer. And the Lord's prayer to me came to me word for word. Really? Along with the basis for the principles of this book. So I just felt this like the surge of energy through me. It was so weird. And I got the Lord's prayer came to me.

I said that. And I said an idea. I need to go and do something with this. But I get back to the train station. And I Google where was I? And that crept on the bottom of Salerno Cathedral is where St. Matthew, the one of Jesus's 12 disciples remains were placed. And St. Matthew was the person who recorded the Lord's Prayer into the gospel that we recognize.

And I was like, oh, crap. So then I started looking more than Matthew. Matthew was a tax collector, a sinner, someone who turned against his own people. And Jesus recruited him one day. He was just working at a working the tax booth. and he came up and said, follow me, and he left and did. Matthew had a lot of money. He had status.

He had all the nicest clothes, but he felt unfulfilled. And that's when I decided I need to do something. I meant for more. It came up in the sessions. I got home and I became religious again. I started going to church daily. I started going into small groups at church learning things. I started developing a social circle based upon church groups and other things that were healthy,

such as I have a toastmasters group that's pretty good. I did flag football, co-ed. That's a great place to meet people. Whatever interest I had, I started doing more of these activities to create a social circle that wasn't built around drinking and cold DMing people on Instagram. And so I thought to myself, there's some value in this that can help other guys. So one day, I decided I was going to create an online course and I was looking for 10 principles. But I sat down at my computer and I set a prayer.

and pulled out a notepad, and I just wrote what came to mind. And it was these 31 principles that are in this book. And, yeah, I just let it flow. And it was at the time in a church group, we were doing the 31 Proverbs. It was in January of 2026 this year. And that's where I got the 31 principles. And I based my book and my course on those 31 principles. Wow.

So can you tease one or two out? We're running along, but I want to get to some of your coaching and consulting too in here. Can you tease a few out that maybe your favorites, or maybe ones you like to present to people to get them to buy the book. Sure. One of them is about comparison. Don't compare yourself to others. Ah, well, that's the Instagram.

That's what we do of Instagram culture. We're constantly comparing ourselves to others. Yeah. There is another one about lust and pornography. That's another, that's another one. The pornography really messes up your brain, especially if you have mommy issues. That's true. And so there's a, in the book goes into that.

It goes in the don't, don't play the devil's games. essentially is stop chasing everything. Stop chasing that validation, that dopamine. Stop doing what your flesh has you do. And the last one is the aligned man doesn't chase. He attracts. You attract what you are. The question I asked myself at the end of the book,

that's very important is that will tell you where you're at is, would you date yourself? If you looked at your sexual history, you looked at your mental problems, you looked at what your dating outlook is and how you date and how you treat people, who you are inside, would you want somebody who was you? Because that's what you're going to attract. I'm just going to marry myself at this point because I would.

It was good. And you're putting out the right signal. Honestly, two years, two years ago, I couldn't say that. I wouldn't want to date a girl who had a rotation of women or a rotation of men. I wouldn't want to date somebody who treated women the way that I did thinking that it gave me power. I wouldn't want to date somebody who had inner issues that made it hard to express intimacy. And I identified all that and worked on it. And I'm better off now. And when I do find a partner, it's going to be a lot healthier. And I don't go out and just tolerate nonsense now just to get a sexual outcome.

Yeah. Yeah. It's great that you discovered this. There's so many people, I wish they would teach trauma, identification, and treatment in schools. Because just about everybody having the show has childhood trauma. I think everybody in the world has got childhood trauma at this point. Sometimes it's big tea, sometimes as little tea, but still, it's an albatross that carries her on our neck and drags through our life.

When you reach a point sometime in your life of clarification where you're sick and tired of being sick and tired. And for me, I look back after 50 years waking up to my childhood trauma and being in denial of some of it. Not really denial, but kind of coping with it wrong. And sometimes it's hard to admit you were a victim. And maybe I just treat it like I learned something different and whatever. That's great.

But really, you have to take it head on and address it. And until you do, you'll just look back and you'll just see this wreckage of you've been dragging through life. That's what my online course in school community, the Align Man Method is. So there's 31 principals in the book. And the course is the 31 principles. So there is a daily lesson from me that I go over the principal. and then there's a journaling prompt where you answer questions that go deep into your soul about that principle and how how your inner trauma relates to it.

And then there is a guided meditation on an app that does EMDR that helps neutralize and work through that trauma scientifically. And then there is a biblical principle from the Proverbs that shows how King Solomon would have handled that principle. And essentially at the end of the course, at the end of the 31 days, if you do it day by day, there's 31 journal entries. and that is going to give you insight into why you are who you are. It's going to identify your trauma, and it's going to give you the starting point to address it.

You can take that book that you wrote, you'll have a book, you'll have your own version to put the game about you, about your life, about your trauma, about how, where you need, where you need to go and where you're at. So it'll give you, it's going to give you clarity in who you are and begin the process of healing. And you can bring it to a pastor or you can bring it to a psychiatrist, or whoever to help you work through it. And that's the basis of the Aligned Man method. Do you believe that can women learn anything from this book?

Can it help them or some way deal? Trauma's trauma, it doesn't seem to be exclusive to men or women. Is it mostly for men this book? Or do you think women? This book is, this book is intended for men, you know, who are younger between probably the ages of 16 and 40, maybe a little older. But 16 year old, when I was 16, I was clueless and I was, that's when I was starting to discover all this.

The purpose I wrote, purpose for why I wrote this is because I want guys to discover these problems before they become 40 years old. And begin working on them earlier so they can have healthy relationships and end up in a healthy marriage. And now women, that's another thing. Women can learn from this too. We may make an aligned man woman or a line woman method in the future. Because it's a similar thing. But as you said before, it relates to the mommy issues. And if you're a woman and you're watching this and you've dated a guy who was like me, a guy who would go out and

and have a bunch of girls around, string you on for forever, keep you in the talking phase, act nice as pie when you're having sex, and then disappear for days and make you wonder, then this book will give you insights as to why that is. And you realize, women need to realize it's not about them. It's about the guy. And men need to realize a lot of times it's about the woman.

You attract what you are and it goes both ways. So women can definitely get something out of this book. You want to read it from a man's side. Let me run this by you, and I think you're on the same page with me by some of the things you've communicated. But one of the things about what you just said, where we attract who were like, one of the things I've had to learn to do, and I went through the masculine say John Wayne shit, oh, save you, honey, blah, blah, blah, that sort of game. And you can't save people that can't be self-accountable, that won't grow, that won't change,

and just hop from man to man because it's easier than growing and changing and just finding some new sucker. And so one of the things I had to realize when I reach my levels of awareness and success in life and claiming of masculinity was that there are a lot of women who are not going to like me because they aren't at my level. And I have to accept that. I have to let those people go. I was watching recently. I've learned this through my life. I learned this lesson before just with people and success and money. I lived a lot of the same life you did where I throw a huge parties, three to four hundred people at my house.

Everyone loved me as long as I was buying, right? As long as I was buying the drinks, everyone loved me. But as soon as I hit hard times or got depressed or had some issues that were beyond me, everyone would disappear. Everyone was there for the party and the free ride. And I learned very quick. I didn't learn it very quickly, but it took me a while to process it. But the other thing I had to realize was it's not my job to save people. I was seeing who's the guy, Matthew is, he's the Perry guy who directs a lot of

movies. No, sorry. He does those Medea movies and he produced a lot of movies. Anyway, now I can't place him. But he's done a lot of independent movies. He made a lot of money doing it. He's got a big studio in Alabama. But he was talking about how he came from being poor and success and how he realized you can't

save people. That has to be their job. And so as a man, when I date or when I'm seeking. maybe someone I might be interested in and doing a profile on them. I'd like to do little CIA, FBI profiles in my head. And I give them a rundown in a psychological profile. And what I've had to realize is that it's okay if those people aren't interested in me because they're not at my level.

I'm not saying that from, I guess hearing me say that out loud, sounds a little narcissistic, but it's not. You can't save people, especially people that have no accountability. They have to save themselves. They have to go through the journey that you went through. right? And you can't force someone to go through that journey. That's a very personal process, and it's a very self-accounting obligation process. And so one of the important things for me to learn in dating is, and I've heard this all my life from women. It's the most constant, not really

rejection I get, but this is why we can't work, Chris. Chris, you're too intelligent to put up with my bullshit. You're not going to stick around. And I appreciate women's honesty in that moment, because what they're saying is they know I'm not going to stick around and put up with the bullshit. I'm not going to simp for it. I'm not going to do it. And they're telling me, you're going to find out what's in the skeleton closets. And when you find out, you're going to leave. You're not going to put up with my shit.

My reply used to be, maybe you shouldn't share your bullshit with people and you should go to grow up and go to therapy. But that's not really how that department works. I've had to realize that I may find a beautiful woman. I can't succumb to my lust like a lot of men do and just fall over myself and pedestalize the woman. But I also have to realize that some women, they're going to either reject me or I'm going to reject them, because very quickly we're going to find out that... And that's totally healthy. Yeah, they're not at my level.

If you've healed like you and I have gone through, you can't bring trauma into your life. You can't bring that... Because you live, for me, 50 years of trauma for you, 30 or 40. how I remember it was. You don't want that anymore. You realize how dangerous that is your piece. So you're looking for healthy people, which really sucks because good luck finding it.

But that's okay. I think I will find somebody who's healthy. Yeah. And you know what's funny is I got, after when I went through the journey, I got this tattoo on my arm, peace over chaos, right?

That's what we're looking for. It's what we're looking for and it's challenging. But you got to remember, you're looking for one person. Yep. And you're looking for one person. You're not looking for validation. I was looking for validation from every woman.

And I would go to dates and I would be like, this girl's bad shit crazy, but I want to get laid. And I would do it anyway. And you'd get laid. And then you would end up sleeping with them over and over and over again. That's how I ended up with this girl who ended up with the best friend. And the girl who tried to get pregnant.

And all the crazies is because I ended up in the situation where we're having sex right away. It was all about sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, drinking, drugs, drug, drugs. and we just kept having sex over and over and over again. I kept telling myself, I don't like this, I don't want to date this person, something's off with them. But then after a while,

you develop feelings when you end up in that kind of situation. You end up in what's called a trauma bond or a religion they call a soul tie. And that was the toxic cycle I was in for decades. And now, and I was watching pornography. I was so in the sex. Everything was about sex,

sexual fantasies. I was going out trying to reenact them. And I was. And that was the grip that was on me. So for me, that dopamine hit, helped fill in that childhood wound temporarily, but the only thing that kept filling it was more dopamine. Yeah. Yeah. Were you a millennial or Gen Z? Millennial? I was born in 85. I don't know what that is.

I'm 40. I'm 41 years old. My face is. But you grew up in the Instagram age. So you grew up. Yeah. I mean, I'm in the, I'm in the Instagram age. I was in, you know, back when I was in my 20s, things were different. We didn't have Instagram. We Facebook and just came out when I was in college. Yeah. And we had just started texting, like when I was in high school, texting. And it made things a lot a lot easier. Now we're the AI, which is taking things another level. Back in the old days, to date somebody, you used to have to actually meet up with them. You would actually have to call them up and go meet, meet up your friends.

No one could just text everybody. You'd have to know where everyone was meeting and just meet up there. Like it was a different, totally different world. And it was probably easier to make real connections because there was less digital, digital noise in between. Yeah. A lot of men do this. They seek, as men we seek, a form of validation.

as sex as respect. It's earning the woman, earning the right to get access to a woman's privates and a certain amount of respect that she gives in doing that. If a woman does respect you, you're not going to sleep with her, right? Unless, I don't know, she's...

Unless it's transactional. Yeah, unless she doesn't have to respect you. I disagree with that. I'll put you out with that. Yeah, you're right. I give you that one, yeah. She's not, a woman, just because a woman sleeps you does not mean she has respect for you. Some of the most disrespectful women I've ever had, it wasn't respect as that they wanted something else. And they actually had sex with me out of disrespect, just like you as a man can have sex with women and have disrespect.

Yeah. I think as men were fooled by that sometimes where we think that, oh, she gave me sex, so she respects me when she's playing, right? She gave me sex so she likes me. That means that she likes me. She's not giving me sex. She doesn't like me. But women realize that men respond when they have sex with them. If every woman who didn't have sex for me after the first or second date, I just, wouldn't be interested. And that's what kept me coming back. And that's what this girl I was in this toxic thing with.

She had sex with a lot of guys. And that was what kept them coming back. It was the sex. If there wasn't sex involved, if I wasn't having sex with these women, I would have no interest. And I would think that they didn't like me. And that's what the dating industry teaches.

All about sexual outcomes. The more sexual outcomes you have, the more power that it presents. And a lot of times the women are actually the ones with the power because they know that the sex is what keeps you around. Yeah. If you give them that power, yeah. And it's just mating and dating.

But yeah, it's good that you talk about these things. There was some questions. Oh, I wanted to promote something on your website. I see that you have several courses. There's the Align Man Method. There's Align Fitness, Aligned Dating, Aligned Appearance, and Aligned Career. And it sounds like you're giving some courses on how to balance all these things. Some guys say they just go to the gym and they're stupid and dumb because they don't develop their brain.

They don't maybe take care of their appearance, although I think gym guys. probably do, Align career. And so you talk about basically these different levels or compartments of men's life and how to balance in them. Is that a, you tell me more about these. Yeah. So the Aligned Man method,

the main course is the inner work. Those other courses are after you finish the Aligned Man, you should look at those. We all want to, we all need to be balanced. Your body, your appearance, your dating life and your career are what make you who you are.

So if you build yourself from the inside and then you take a holistic inside approach to those things, it works out. And I spent a lot of time. I spent hundreds of thousands of dollars learning how to get the six-pack abs in 14 weeks. I spent probably $10,000 on that. I'll give you that course for $200. The how to basically improve your appearance.

I spent four or $5,000 on a personal stylist. I give it to you for whatever it is, $300. The dating courses, I took hundreds of dating courses, all these different things. I'll show you, I'm not giving those all away. It's not like I am, but I'm teaching the lessons that they taught. why they don't work and what I learned instead.

And so I take all that knowledge that I had after 10 years of reading all these books and doing those things, what actually happened. And then the career course just shows how it shows you how to start and get your mind frame right so you can actually get into something that you actually like, where you build your life, where you build your career around your life. You don't build your life around your career. That's something I teach people. You take control of your destiny and you make it your world.

You're not mooching off everyone else. you're doing your program instead of following all these other bots, if you will. This is all the stuff that I've learned that I spent hundreds of thousands of dollars for. I'll teach you the truth about it. As we wrap up the show, give people a final pitch out to pick up your book and your course, courses, and dot coms, where we want people to learn more about you. Sure, absolutely. So my name is Ryan Vertucci.

My book is called Quit the Game, 31 principles from men who are done chasing status and approval, the Aligned Man Method. The Align Man Method is my course. You can find out about it at AlignmanMethodethodot com. You go to QuittheGame.com to find out more about the book. The book is on Amazon. Just search for Quit the Game by Ryan Vertucci. It is available in audio version on Audible as well.

I read the whole thing word for word in the studio. Oh, wow. And then, yeah, so that's where you can find the basis of all my things. I am on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, Align Man Methods, the brand we're going for. So search for that and you'll find us. Ryan, thanks for being so honest and open about your trauma and your experience in life and sharing with other men. Just a great episode we've cut here.

And more men, hopefully, we'll do this inner work. And they realize they've been living someone else's life for most of life and how to find their own, if you will. Thank you, Ryan. Yeah, we've got to take off the mask hiding and be who we truly authentically are. And the best compliment I get is when someone says, Ryan, you are just truly authentic. And that's what we're building here. I'm not going to hide behind a camera, fill you full of bullshit.

I'm just going to tell you authentically what I did, why, why, how I figured it out. And as you read by the book, there's nothing I'm hiding. There's so many embarrassing things that are in here. So authenticity rules, and I like to end on that. Oh, wonderful. I can totally concur. So thank you, Ryan, for being on the show.

Folks, pick up his book, wherever fine books are sold. Quit the Game, the Aligned Man Method, 31 principles for men who are done chasing status and approval. Thanks for months for tuning in. Go to goodreads.com, Fortress Chris Voss. LinkedIn.com, Fortress, Chris Boss, YouTube.com. Chris Voss and all those crazy places in the internet. Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you next. You've been listening to the most amazing, intelligent podcast ever made to improve your brain and your life.

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