Transcript for:
Exploring Pickup Artists and Relationships

oh [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] m [Music] oh [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] oh oh [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Laughter] [Applause] [Applause] oh o [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] oh [Music] d [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] d [Music] all righty chat oh does that work okay all righty chat let's get started welcome to another healthy gamer GG stream um my name is Dr Al kenoi just a reminder that although I'm a doctor nothing we discuss on stream today is intended to be taken as medical advice everything is for educational or entertainment purposes only if yall have a medical concern or question please go see a licensed professional um yeah so we are going to be doing a fun stream today um in honor of our oh in honor of it being a Friday which is often times when we we allow dating and relationship uh kind of stuff on our Reddit things like that so we're going to be talking a little bit about dating and relationships today um gruy may be joining us after about an hour to hour and a half so today what we're going to be doing is talking a little bit about pickup artist uh red pill kind of ideas let's say so we're going to be looking at a couple of like um posts and things like that and we're going to be sort of commenting them on them from like sort of a a psychiatric or psychological perspective so uh I'm super excited about doing this because um you know I I dipped my toes in the pickup artist community in the early 2000s I had a friend who was like hey bro like so this was back when I was like a freshman in college and you know we were we were as any good freshman at the University of Texas party school doing we were trying trying to pick up chicks and get laid bro and so you know I think like in the early 2000s there was this kind of this this pickup artist community and so he was like hey this is like this is the the whole the gril you should really check it out um and then so I I sort of explored some of those ideas and then this kind of evolved pickup artist turned into like red pill turned into manosphere turned into whatever and then um you know I actually learned a lot of Science and psychology and Psychiatry and worked with a lot of men and worked with a lot of women men who identify as Alphas red pillars in cels the whole spectrum and so I have a lot of thoughts on the subject um and I think some of my thoughts are opinions and some of them I think are informed by science pretty fairly and so today we're going to talk about that stuff so a couple of quick disclaimers um the first is that there's a lot of variability Within These communities right so like if you look at pickup artist red pill kind of communities female dating strategy whatever there's this idea that they're they're like all monolithic right so they're all the same way but as we'll see today there are a lot of different perspectives Within These communities and these are heterogeneous so sometimes what'll even happen what's quite common actually is sometimes we'll talk to someone from these communities right so someone who self-identifies as a red pillar as an alpha as an incel and then one of the most common pieces of feedback that we get on those streams is like hey like that person wasn't a real incel or wasn't a real red pillar I'm a real red pillar I'm a real incel you should talk to me and so I I think there's a lot of heterogeneity which we kind of need to acknowledge and at the same time there are certain common ideas and beliefs which which kind of develop in different ways and so we're going to be addressing some of those core ideas today um and so just keep that in mind right so so everything that we discuss today may not be a representation of what you think real pickup artists do or whatever and like that's fair enough I think there's just variability within it um so that's kind of a disclaimer the other disclaimer is that we are going to be talking about a lot of stuff that like people find um you know so we're going to be like looking directly at some of this how what's the word to use we're going to be looking directly at some of these like ideas and and from the horse's mouth and so some of that stuff like can be kind of like toxic to read so just kind of a disclaimer about that I think we're going to try to you know keep things somewhat civil and to Friendly and things like that but just to let y'all know um so yeah right so so the the last thing is like I'm going to do my best to keep this how can I say like organized but we're going to kind of bounce back and forth a little bit between different posts and perspectives we're going to share some um you know different like I'm going to try to like comment somewhat on posts but also what I'm going to try my best to do is from like a more start to finish way explain certain Concepts which I think are really important to understand and I think one of the biggest things about these communities is that I I think um there's like I know this sounds kind of weird but there's a lot of good in them so I think what people have figured out so I think you have Comm communities of predominantly men um who have struggled with certain problems and as they come together and they try to solve their problems they will stumble upon particular discoveries and as they stumble upon particular discoveries they'll share those discoveries these will then become things like Canon and stuff like that and I think there's a lot of good in them and I think also we're actually seeing in my opinion the most healthy version of a lot of this stuff like nowadays and hopefully that'll become clear when we look at some of these posts because like right now when I you know if I'm if I interact with people who are like red pillars and stuff like half of them are like go to therapy bro like you got to you know sort this stuff out they're also very positive in the sense of like take control of your life like start uh moving towards Financial Independence like focus on your appearance like focus on your health like don't you know start to live a life and build a life that is like independent and worth living there's actually a lot of like positivity in them that I think is quite healthy um the challenge is that as we'll see it it tends to get intermixed with a lot of negativity so we have a whole spectrum of like you know on the positive end of of the stuff and then the negative which is like very toxic make sense um so let's dive in so what we're going to do I'm going to do this in a couple of different ways okay so some of these the other thing is that like oh I I have something to react to real quick actually so I'm supposed to react to this um so we're going to do this so let me just do this real quick be careful chat this could be loud I'm going to go on mute so that's interesting so I'm guessing that most people are going to expect me to say this is insane but I think the really insane thing is that there may really be some Merit to this okay so let's understand this person is saying Pat the eight voids which are like here I guess here maybe your ephemeral regions um when you're feeling sad or angry or whatever and and I think the wildest thing about this is that there's actually some evidence that this is pretty effective so I don't know that this is going to be a cure for all of your ailments uh but we do actually know a couple of things the first is that if we look at any kind of like emotional regulation technique a grounding technique that is used when you are feeling a negative emotion is generally speaking very effective so it doesn't matter like you can do breathing you can do box breathing you can do like pushups you can do ice diving so one of the interesting things that we know from like emotional regulation techniques is that if you like do something that anchors yourself in the body that that will help you get out of your own head and your own emotions right so I think that there's like this could just be a very and what I see in this is a very um physically engaging technique right so there there's a sequence to it right so you do it for a certain amount of time it sounds like you can't just do it in 3 seconds you have to Pat the eight voids uh then there is also like it's quite physically grounding so it's not like observing your breath so if you just observe your breath it's easy to get lost in your thought but if you're patting yourself like a a monk Andor crazy person who knows um it's quite grounding like it seems very grounding to me so that's so I think there's some validity to it there second thing is that I I know this sounds kind of weird but there's like some evidence for something called the emotional Freedom technique now so I first ran across this like in the early 2000s and basically thought it was a bunch of BS but there's this hypothesis that trauma is stored within the body and that by literally tapping on certain parts of the body that we can release stored traumas now I didn't think that this had a whole lot of like physiological basis and at the same time there are now like some studies and we actually have metaanalyses of tapping or EFT which have shown that this can be an effective treatment for trauma so that's like really interesting so then the question kind of becomes okay are they effective for trauma because you really emotions are stored in the body or is it more of a common factors kind of thing which means that it's not that this particular intervention is helpful it's the fact that you go to this person week after week after week who is compassionate who is caring who kind of calms you down decreases your cortisol level and just that amount of like human connection can be sufficient for Change and if we look at the research on psychotherapy what we basically figured out is that like having someone who cares about you who can provide space for you who can provide stability for you and what they say the content of what they say isn't actually that important so whether they're doing like psychoanalysis of your dreams or they're doing thought logs in CBT the effect size is pretty comparable that being said it is possible that some of the mechanis the hypothesized mechanisms of EFT are valid or or something like tapping on the eight voids is valid right so we just don't know that yet so there are some studies of things like acupuncture and things like that that show um actually quite good outcomes that are independent of our understanding of physiology right so there's like some things that acupuncture can do that don't correlate with nerves and things like that so and then if we also look at like meditation techniques and stuff like that like that for a long time meditation was effective before science understood the benefits of meditation before science understood the science of meditation and so there could be some underlying physiology that we're not really aware of um back in my monk days which I wasn't really a monk but training to become a monk I encountered something called marash shastra so marash shastra is the knowledge of like pressure points in the body and there's even like a text that I was like learning from that talked about like these I think or 9 or 12 um like kill points in the body right so like these are areas that if you like hit someone there it'll the wound will be fatal some of those map on to physiology and some of them don't so like when they talk about the eight voids and they're using the femoral region so we have two major arteries where if you you know you get a cut to your femoral artery on either side that can be lethal so there's a lot of like stuff in some of these areas like physiologically and other places where we're not not sure so I I don't know you know my guess is that your mileage may vary if you try this kind of stuff and at the same time there's like some amount of scientific plausibility that this kind of stuff could help um you know so I I think it's like it's not as crazy as it seems is my take now speaking of things that are not as crazy as they seem let's talk about um yeah I made my friend with reflex uh poop with reflexology pressure that's actually pretty common so um so there's like a particular set of stuff especially on the bottom of the foot so if you look at like the region of the foot that is right I'm not going to show you my feet on stream L we get banned but there are certain regions of the foot like if you kind of trace the outer part of your foot that is supposedly stimulates the colon and in some cases can cause um bowel movements so there there's enough validity to reflexology to where there's actually like a um ACOG the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology actually has a warning for reflexology for uh women who are pregnant because there are there are enough cases of reflexology inducing labor which is like wild right now the really interesting thing if we really want to go off of the the crazy crazy stuff so there could be a correlation between why let me see if I can find the ACOG bulletin because you know I said there's an ACOG reflexology warning let's see if we can find it oh God this looks like American College of Obstetrics and gynecologists reflexology let me see if I can find this real quick chat no I want ACOG the actual ACOG [Music] um there was this damn it I can't find it there used to be a bulletin for this I can't find it now um okay um so I I couldn't find the bulletin that I was looking for but there was a safety bulletin I mean I maybe I I can do a better literature search for it but we I mean so this is interesting I found something else right so a randomized controlled study of premenstrual symptoms treated with ear hand and foot reflexology so uh the these clinical findings support the use of ear hand and foot reflexology for the treatment of PMS that's kind of interesting um a NOA for repeated measures demonstrated significantly greater decrease in premenstrual symptoms for the women given true reflexology treatment rather than the women in the placebo group what's the placebo though let's understand oh receive Placebo reflexology that's really interesting now this is an interesting trial only 35 women um so often times when we're looking at some of these studies on things like reflexology or Cam oriented stuff we have to be careful because their Placebo is like weight list so it's like we're going to do reflexology on one group and then the other PR people are going to sit by their phone waiting to get reflexology and so I think that there's that's not a sufficient control but if there's Placebo reflexology whatever that means so if we're like doing reflexology on one person where we're focusing on the theoretical reflexology points and the other person we're still doing some form of reflexology but we're not focusing on the points and there's a statistical difference both of them are getting some form of touch on these parts of the body and there's a difference that's so I've seen studies like this and that's what makes me think that there's like more to the the story right so there are some good studies here now they also used analysis of variance which is good but the SI the size is pretty small 35 people right it's not a very big trial um the really interesting thing is that this the the stuff about reflexology inducing pregnan I mean inducing labor could have something to do with why women have foot fetishes or why women can not women have men can have foot fetishes too but we know that uh feet can be an aerogenous zone for some women and the best hypothesis that I learned about that we don't know how true this is is that if you look at where the nerves from the leg in the foot enter into the spinal cord they enter into a very similar area in the sacral region lumbar lumbo sacral region um where some of the nerves from the genitals enter and for some reason we're not quite sure because we don't even know if this is really true something about the location of the nerves from the genitals of women and feet of women is different for men but that doesn't really make sense from an embryological stance so from an embryological standpoint you know we have tissue differentiation and the stuff in the spinal cord should be exactly the same so there's like some this is what could be going on but there's like plenty of counter evidence but anyway someone saying Dr K spitting facts maybe that's right right so like I I think that one of the things that I've learned when you study the science is that the science is rarely black or white like it's usually like this could be what's going on we have some data to support this and we have some data that like we have counterarguments against it as well and that's what like science is so if we look at something like oh should you prescribe anti-depressants to pregnant women and then there's some science that suggests that okay anti depressants for pregnant women can increase the risk of autism which is true and also there's plenty of evidence that shows that having undertreated depression during pregnancy and after birth does more damage to the child than the SSRI would the anti-depressant would so like often times like we don't look at things in a fair way right so we're like oh anti-depressants increase risk but what's the alternative the alternative is having a mom who's depressed and if we have a mom who's depressed what are the health costs of that so like things get complicated um so uh if Mrs K is going to be pissed I'll just give her a foot massage and we'll be good Chad all right so um speaking of nuanced science and the lack of understanding of nuanced science let's talk about pickup artist and dating advice really want to find that ACOG bulletin actually I know where I can find it hold on hold on chat hold on I'm not willing to give up yet sorry one second one second one second one second I know where I can find it no ah damn it fail okay GG chat I'm the shitty that was wrecked okay so let's talk about pickup artists red pill Etc so the first thing that we're going to talk about is the art of the ne now one of the challenges of like doing this kind of stuff is that I don't know if you guys know this but often times the you know the posts on pickup artists red pill or whatever or like some real walls of text and that's not like a bad thing it's just I'm you know we don't have time to read all that so what I've taken the liberty of doing is trying to summarize I think the important parts of the post um but once again like let's just be fair so let's keep in mind that anytime you have someone on the inter internet who is reviewing something they're going to be selective in what they choose to include and what they choose to respond to right so like often times we don't offer a complete picture so I just want to say that from the get-go is that like I'm leaving some stuff out now I don't think I'm leaving out a lot of the sub substantive stuff like most of what I tried to trim were like the examples as opposed to the key points so I did my best to kind of pull out the the key thesis so let's talk about this concept of negging right so summary some people think this is directly copy pasted okay some people think negging is vocal rape maybe this will clear up that misconception to clarify negging is simply a form of teasing SL FLIR flirting they're also unfortunately why the red pill and seduction Community have reputation for being full of manipulative douchebags guys going around insulting women and lowering their self-esteem hoping it'll get them to drop their pennies faster than she'd drop a heavy bowling ball this conception relies on a misunderstanding of what neing actually is a NE isn't an insult a NE rather is merely the kind of comment that someone who is interested in her wouldn't make based on the ever so rampant women or wonderful effect NE don't even have to be negative what they're really doing is negating your own interest for example another classic you and I would not get along we're two alike you're not saying anything bad about her merely that you're not interested in dating her the reality is that most other women even most o other very attractive women are constantly being made to feel inadequate about their appearance not only therefore are these women not standing on pedestals which they need to be knocked off of before you can talk to them um so they're not standing on pedestals which you so therefore you don't need to knock them off but in fact most of the time they'll respond much more positively towards the flattery inherent in your attention Okay so I think like this in a lot of ways is really solid so let's talk a little bit about neing so neing is this concept that if you're interested in someone you should on the one hand because there are other posts about neing that say that like you should say something negative to them like that's literally I think what negging means so sometimes you should be insulting to the person that you're attracted to and on the other side this person makes the argument that negging is a way to demonstrate a lack of Interest so let's understand like both of these perspectives so it's my firm belief that one of the most solid foundations of success in the pickup artist Community is creating a sample size that is so large that eventually you find a psychologically damaged Andor traumatized woman for whom some of these techniques will work so if we look at like because a big part of this is like you have to approach thousands of women right and use these techniques on thousands of women and when you use these techniques on thousands of women you will get better at it and it will work and I think that there's some there's a lot of validity to that right there's but let's understand what's the mechanism for that so if I like if I walk down the street and I try to break into a thousand houses eventually I'm going to find someone who did not lock their door right like I'm just going to go down the street and try to open doors and like eventually it'll work and the sad truth is that there are a lot of people out there including women that have been traumatized and as they are traumatized as they struggle with things like low self-esteem what happens is that being mean to them being insulting to them can actually get them to trigger some kind of like sexual engagement with you and that can work like so just to give you all an example of that right so we know for example that some people have something called an anxious attachment Style we know that some PE people who have an anxious attachment style will utilize sexual activity as a form of creating intimacy we know there are some people out there who will use sexual activity as a form of emotional regulation so if you happen to find if you keep on checking with various women and you find someone who has been abused growing up which by the way is like not that uncommon right so somewhere around 30 to 37% of women will have some experience of sexual assault in their life so the odds are kind of in your favor if you're doing this with hundreds or thousands of women like one out of three you'll find these people and then eventually you'll win right like win in the sense of you will succeed in having sexual relationship with someone but I don't think that's because your Technique is like a great technique I think it's just exploiting a vulnerability in a population that has been traumatized and is vulnerable so once you kind of do this then it you know it can work now I think like that's like on the unfortunate end of things right so I I don't think that these techniques are like really valuable I mean they're valuable if that's what your goal is but I don't think it's like you figured out some great Holy Grail kind of thing I think it's just taking it's a methodology for taking advantage of people who have been traumatized and or abused and the reason that that I think one of the reasons that all a lot of these techniques are founded on doing it with a bunch of people is that if you encounter one of the 50% of women who have a secure attachment style they'll be like you're crazy bro and they'll cover their drink and they'll never talk to you again so a big part of this kind of pickup artist and red pill success is actually hinged on the fact that we're going to like we're we're going to use a scattershot method right we're going to use a shotgun shell instead of a sniper rifle I'm not talking about literally I mean like metaphorically right and we're going to cover a lot of ground and eventually we'll find someone who this will work for I don't think that means that the method is is that good of a method because there are far better methods which we'll get to but I think that's kind of why it works so that's on the severe end of negging so I think another reason that people really like negging is because it makes them feel better about themselves so if you're a dude who has been hurt by women and this is something I feel like super confident about I would say 100% of pickup artists red pills and incels that I have worked with have had at least one traumatic if not multiple traumatic experiences with women so I think a lot of this stuff is born out of like traumatic experiences and one of the things that starts to happen anytime you get traumatized by someone there's a power Dynamic right this person hurt you and if you look at like red pill and pickup artist kind of stuff they'll talk a lot we'll see this today they talk a lot about power and power dynamics and power is everything power power power power power and so why why are people so obsessed with power usually because they have traumatic experiences in their own life where they were made to feel weak right you loved this girl you did everything for this girl and she ended up taking advantage of your kindness friend zoning you and then going and [ __ ] a different dude and so you feel incredibly powerless and then you try to create this power Dynamic so one of the things that we know is if you look at the psychology of people who were abused why are they more likely to be abusive right so if you think about someone like a child who's growing up and is abused it's wild because on the one hand and I've met plenty of people who are like this right they say to themselves if I have kids one day I will never do this to my children because it is so harmful that's what some people do right they're like I'm going to correct the mistakes of my parents I will never do to someone else what has been done to me but what is also true is that some people are like I am weak in this situation the right way to solve this situation is to not be in this position but to be in the other position there is a position of power and there is a position of weakness and we go through this thing where we like psychologically try to flip ourselves to the other side because then we feel better about ourselves right there's the victim there's the predator and there's the prey I hate being the prey so I'm going to become the Predator because the Predator is never the prey so we see both of those things and I think we see this as well in this kind of red pill pickup artist Community where I was hurt therefore I'm going to put someone else down to make me feel better now there's a lot of good stuff in here which I think is like um what's kind of really interesting about a lot of the red pill stuff is I I I think that they get a lot of this stuff right so what I think is really valuable about this is this conception relies on a misunderstanding of what an egg is an egg isn't an insult a egg rather is merely the kind of comment that someone who was interested in her wouldn't make okay so I think that this is what's really really interesting about a lot of this like pickup artist and red pill mentality is that they do things to someone else but the primary area of action is actually internally so they'll do all this stuff to women but what they're really doing is trying to change something internally so if my problem as a dude is that I get way too interested in women and then I don't say no I don't set boundaries I let them take advantage of me instead of like working on that in here what I can do is engage in certain techniques to try to change my view of them so if my problem is that I value women too much I can engage in a technique that changes my value towards them so this is what's really wild and I think there's not a whole lot of insight into in the community a lot of these techniques are outward facing but the actual mechanism of action is internally so when I'm I'm super into a person and I'm like oh my God they have the nicest hair and they're the kindest and the prettiest and they're the most compassionate and I love the way they smell and all this kind of [ __ ] that those kinds of thoughts lead us down a path that turns us into a beta so what we need to do to avoid that path is to start to devalue them and if I devalue them then I can behave in a more balanced way so I think this is actually like not bad at all right so if like but I think the the the key thing is that you don't have to insult someone to do that right you don't have to put someone down to do that which is I think what this person really like stumbled into is that the real source of nagging is not you know a traumatic reenactment where you are now in a powerful position which is what some people do in the pickup artist community and then we're going to hunt for thousands of people and eventually find someone who's psychologically damaged enough to where this [ __ ] will work right works it's actually like recognizing that when I negate my own interest in someone I become more balanced and that I think is like really really good so when we get overly invested in things this person kind of calls this negging or this it's about decreasing your own interest and once your own interest gets more balanced you will behave in a better way I think there's a lot of validity to that make sense yeah fear of rejection is so bad so this is really good right so let's understand this someone's saying oh whoops someone saying fear of rejection is really bad yeah so like what are the ways that you can reduce your fear of rejection fear of rejection only hurts when you care the more you care the more the rejection hurts so what people have sort of darwinian evolutionary kind of figured out is if I can reduce my caring towards someone else I can make the fear of rejection I can make the rejection hurt less which is a fantastic segue into our next post the most important part of the game is not being emotionally invested now this is a real Mammoth okay so I can't do justice right so I have to clip this sum because otherwise what we can do is we can start a book club where we can read this post so I'm going to try to reduce it down so emotional investment emotional investment is occupying one's thoughts and emotions you can't control how you feel you can control what you do where your actions go your feelings will follow where your feelings go your thoughts will follow if you do loser things you will eventually feel like a loser even if you consciously tell yourself you don't give a [ __ ] why is emotional investment unattractive emotional investment is an immediate turnoff it doesn't matter why but I can guess some reasons first emotional investment is unattractive because people are attracted to lives that are more interesting exciting higher and better than our own if a woman knows she occupies your thoughts and emotions she will assume your life sucks second emotional investment is unattractive because simply put emotions are bad and scary our society acts like love is an emotion and our true selves are our emotions but that's BS our value lies in what we can do when we are rational what we've learned in our life what we know how to do and what we strive to achieve and be when we are clearheaded so I'm going to pause here because I think like we got to respond to this so I think that this is a great place to start emotional investment is is when emotions occupy your thoughts and feelings now I think this is completely correct so I wouldn't use that term so I would use the term attachment um in CBT we use the phrase thought Fusion to kind of describe this quality but there is absolutely a situation where our emotions dominate our experience so when I'm working with a patient who's suicidal their emotion of hopelessness is so profound that it occupies their their the entirety of their mind their thinking THU Suicidal Thoughts their actions are completely passive they become doormats they don't get out of bed it's all kinds of stuff is going on their actions are shaped by it it's it's like an overwhelming emotional experience and in my experience of working with people who are pickup artists red pillars Etc many of them start this way right because a lot of this is about moving from an incel to a red pillar moving from an incel to an an alpha moving from a beta to an alpha and if you look at the beta a beta is someone who has emotions right but emotions are bad we want to be rational we don't want emotions and so I think that being overly emotionally invested is absolutely a bad thing I think not being able to temper your emotional investment is absolutely a bad thing I would call it attachment I also agree with this fundamental premise that if your emotions are running the show they will drive your actions they will drive your thoughts and rationally trying to tell yourself that this is not true doesn't work so I think that there's a lot of POS POS here because they're saying okay irrespective of how how you feel or what you think you should focus on your actions because eventually your actions will create emotions and will create thoughts that I agree with 100% okay so let's just use this where your actions go your feelings will follow and where your feelings go your thoughts will follow if and this is the premise that they have right actions lead to emotions emotions lead to thoughts and if you feel like a loser and you do loser things you will eventually feel like a loser I completely agree this is why even if you're hopeless I think you should go to therapy right so here's the challenge of going to therapy when I work with people who are reluctant to go into therapy the most common thing that they say is like I don't know how this will help I can't imagine this helping I don't understand what the value of just talking about my problems is I have a recessed chin I'm 5 foot for you know I have no prospects I'm a virgin what I don't understand how going to therapy will fix my problems because these are the problems and ultimately what we see is it's the actions that matter not the circumstances when you go to therapy your action things improve right you start to feel better and then your thoughts will start to change as well so if we're talking about something that's like clinically oriented right then therapy is the right move but as we see a lot of times like so so gruy works with a coach I work with a coach for various things and and we have a coaching program that's like quite successful and works really really well at this kind of stuff taking the action to engage with someone who will help you like with your emotions and help you with your thoughts and stuff like that is very very helpful so taking the right action is fantastic and people who come to me for therapy and if they keep showing up like their emotions start to feel better and their thoughts follow after that okay so that's absolutely true now here's here's the bulk of the problem that I see with a lot of this like pickup artist and manosphere and red pill kind of thinking is that they'll start on really solid foundations and I think there's a lot of good experiential learning but then they extrapolate out and they kind of leave science behind right so there's this big idea in these communities that these are scientifically based but they're not really like some of it is but the majority of it isn't and let's understand a little bit about why so why is emotional investment unattractive emotional in investment is an immediate turnoff it doesn't matter why but I can guess some of the reasons so the first thing is that this is not correct emotional investment is not an immediate turnoff in fact the science suggests very clearly that what makes investment unattractive is a discrepancy in emotional investment when you're madly in love with someone and they don't know who you are that is unattractive but when you are madly in love with someone and they are madly in love with you that is the most attractive right so I want yall to just think about this for a second think about the times when you've been madly head over heels in love with you if the other person was madly head I mean mad head over heels in love with you too would you be turned off from that absolutely not in fact that's what you want and for those of y'all that are in healthy happy relationships you'll sometimes find that yall fall in love like way too quickly but both of y'all fell in love so it's totally fine emotional investment is not attrative a discrepancy in emotional investment is unattractive this is what we call creepy or cringe and think about other times in your life where like there may be someone who's deeply in love with you but you didn't feel the same way that's what makes it unattractive so here's my first problem with this kind of thinking they make statements that are absolute that don't depend on the other person there's no relationship right like there's no like understanding of this other person as part of the equation see a relationship is not about you are all this way and they are all this way and this is the truth of the matter human beings are not animals I mean we are in some way but the whole point of a human being is that human beings may have a certain kind of nature right so they'll make these kinds of statements and we'll see these women are naturally like they're like nesters and they do this and they do this the whole [ __ ] point of being human is that it is in our nature to sit around all day eat twinkies and jerk off but the majority of the human beings don't do that right so the whole point to being human is that we can run against some of our impulses the other thing to keep in mind when they make these kinds of generalizations that emotional investment is unattractive is that there is variation within the population so if you look at like statistics about genders ethnicities things like that what we find is that there's far more variation within a population than there is between populations now I know that sounds kind of confusing so let me explain so if you look at like let's say ethnicities so a lot of people say like oh Indians make good doctors right okay fair enough but if you look at like good doctors and bad doctors there is a greater difference between the best Indian doctor and the worst Indian doctor then there is between the average Indian doctor and the average pick whatever ethnicity of doctor you want so even though for example the majority of violent crimes are conducted by men we know that the most there's a bigger gap between the most violent man and the least violent Man compared to the most violent man and the most violent woman or the least violent man and the least violent woman this Gap is smaller than the Gap within a population so when people say like oh women like this no like there's a variability right we know there's five factor analysis your psychology your genetics your experiences the traumas that you had that creates so much individual variability that these generalizations are generally speaking not useful and if it weren't if it were if what they said was true you would not need psychotherapists you could just have a set protocol where all of the psychotherapy would be the same for every single human being or the men Psychotherapy would be different from female Psychotherapy right there's a lot of individual variation so it's not that emotional investment is unattractive it's that emotional investment is very attractive if if it is matched by the other person and that's like a fact so this is also why what we see in a lot of the pickup artist Community is that these people will adopt these kinds of ideas and since they never want to get emotionally invested very few of them will actually enter healthy long-term relationships right because they're actually severing themsel themselves from one of the most important requirements for long-term relationships what they basically optimize for is the shortterm gain of a relationship like getting laid and in optimizing that shortterm they kind of like shoot themselves in the foot for like the long game so it's kind of like if I'm you know if I'm playing a video game I can like spend all of my money and all of my points for like to optimize my level 1 to 10 grind but I don't save anything for like a long-term late game kind of thing this is what I see a lot okay so it's not that emotional investment is immediate turnoff emotional investment is an immediate turnoff if the person doesn't match what you have um first emotional investment is unattractive because people are attracted to lives that are more interesting exciting higher and better than their own so now now we get to some of the fun stuff this is what we call projection so another big big problem in the pickup artist Community is that they don't understand when you make statements like it's unattractive because people are attracted to more exciting lives than their own that says more about your psychology than it does about women's psychology this is the big thing that they I think really make a mistake about they should really turn the lens on themselves so often times so I I like put it to you very simply right so like when we think about gift giving what we know from human beings there are tons of studies on this I gift giving is just a good example is that when someone gives you a gift what is the meaning of that gift the meaning of that gift isn't what's in the other person's head it's what's in your head right so the way that you interpret a gift depends on what is in your mind when you give a gift why do you give a gift what's in your mind and then that's the way that you interpret gifts from other people so this matters a lot in relationships because for some people right like let's just talk about women for example because I see this a lot getting a valuable gift the more money you spend on the gift correlates with how much you value me but that's not what's in the dude's head when they give a gift right so the I have a certain like I don't know how to say this I have a certain interpretation of gifts and someone else can have a certain interpretation of gifts and someone can say okay if you don't give me a very expensive engagement ring that means you don't love me but the person who's giving the gift can love you plenty and give you a less valuable engagement ring they may be able they may have a different internal Compass so we see this a lot where they say okay people are attracted to people whose lives are more exciting and I think that that like that's true especially if you're working with people who don't have good lives but I've worked with tons of women right like well over a hundred in terms of like a long-term like Psychotherapy kind of relationship where they don't need you to have a more exciting life they're actually fully capable of building exciting lives by themselves I've worked with women who make hundreds of thousands of dollars if not millions of dollars I've worked with women who have House Husbands and mutually made that decision or and completely happy and they're not out there having Affairs I'm pretty sure right because I'm their psychiatrist and they usually tell me when they feel like having an affair and then we work through it so this is more about what you think is attractive so what I tend to find when I read a lot these like pickup artists and I work with people who are red pillars and cells whatever is that they long for this lifestyle right and we see that in the manosphere influencers so what we have is like all of these people that like I'm going to drive these fancy cars and I'm going to have this fancy place and I'm going to hire all these women and pay them a ton of money to come to my mansion and pretend like they're super into me so the Envy is is in you it's not in women and all you have to do to figure out what women want is talk to them right or you can look at research that's fair enough too and here's the other crazy thing is that sometimes I know it sounds insane women don't want the same thing it's wild sometimes women are individual human beings who want different things some of them want stability some of them want excitement some of them want a companion someone some of them want trust some of them want cats right like so this is the thing like you got to be super careful about this and I think if you live an exciting life is that attractive to the average person absolutely so we're not saying don't live an exciting life if that's what you want to live it's just different people may be attracted to that in different ways so be very careful about these kinds of assumptions um so I would say that the way I would modify this is emotional investment is unattractive because people are attracted to lives that are more interesting excited and better than than our own so I think this depends a lot on your contentment so the more content you are the less you care about better higher whatever right so that that's like pretty simple and I think there's plenty of scientific evidence to support that as well when we're missing something in our lives we long for something more but when we have something in our lives like we don't long for better more interesting more exciting and I'll give you all just such a simple example which maybe doesn't apply at all but I think it really illustrates the point I met very few parents most parents are pretty content with their kids right they don't need their kid to be more exciting better smarter like some of them do some of them wish their kid was more but I would say the majority of parents that I know and have worked with are not wishing that their child was better but that their child was living their life in their best way they don't wish for a better child and you could say that that's apples and oranges because we're talking about human beings and dating and relationships fair enough right so that that's a nuance and argument against it I'm sure there are others if a woman knows she occupies your thoughts and emotions she will assume your life sucks so this one I think is like no no just no so there's a there's a great book by Eric Maria raar who wrote All Quiet on the Western Front and he wrote another book in which he has a great quote in which he says anything that a man does for a woman it doesn't matter how stupid it is but if you do it for the sake of a woman she will like it right so he's generalizing about women too but I think in this story what happens is there's a dude who goes outside of a a woman's window and then he sings her some kind of song in the middle of the night and we see this in all of the romcoms and the dude doesn't even have to be a good singer it's not like they're on stage with hundreds of thousands of fans cheering on their song it's that a man is usually debasing himself for the sake of a woman and sometimes women are super into that how do we know they're super into that or how do we know they're super into that because well this is what sells romcoms right this is what's in all the romcoms so when you do something for the sake of someone when you really think about someone when you really focus on someone when you put them first in your mind I don't think that's unattractive I think usually it's the opposite now if that's the case right so when someone is like hey I really care about you I want you to have an amazing birthday I baked your favorite cake I I got tickets to your favorite concert and I'm trying to make your life awesome today I don't think the instinctive response is ew oh my God I hate that get out of my life I much prefer someone who treats me like crap and devalues me at every opportunity now there are people who think that way those are the people who are traumatized those are the people who when they were growing up and their parents abused them hit them things like that they said I'm doing this because I love you and then they get confused about what the nature of love is and then they freak out when someone does something nice to them because their associations of something nice means that something bad is coming afterward or the reason that mom or dad is being so nice to me and getting me all my dolls is because they feel guilty for doing something bad to me earlier so those people exist okay now if this person believes this I disagree with the general I the general absolutism of it but let's also understand that this person is coming from a valid place so if I am so right about this and they are so wrong about it they are stupid n no they're coming from a very valid place and this is what we have to understand see the people who believe this it's true for them the people who believe this are the ones who emotionally invested in a relationship that wasn't reciprocated the people who believe this are actually when they were good of heart and they cared about another human being and they put that other human being ahead of them they unfortunately ran into one of the human beings on the planet who was more than happy to take advantage of their kindness they did everything for this person I'll pick you up from the airport you can cry on my shoulder when you when you're boyfriend is mean to you I'm going to do everything that I can to make your life better and somehow that means that you're not interested in a sexual relationship with me so they've had this experience right there are many reasons for that the first is that sometimes women do take advantage of men sometimes men take advantage of women sometimes human beings take advantage of each other sometimes human beings very often I think far too often will take another human being's kindness for granted but I don't think that means that the whole race is bad or that you should stop being kind it just means you need to be more careful about who you get emotionally invested in I think there's a lot of right stuff in here because when we get so attached to this person and our rational mind is telling us that hey this person is not reciprocating but we love them so much we have so much hope that we keep on investing in the relationship we keep on hoping one day they'll see how beautiful I am how much I love them and then we'll be together the way we were always meant to be I don't blame someone for doing that and then someone takes advantage of them because think about it right there are a lot of people out there probably me and you included who would love it if someone existed solely for our benefit who put us first and who we didn't have to reciprocate in any way and this [ __ ] poor guy he's so caught up in me that like I don't have to do [ __ ] for him he's going to keep on doing nice stuff for me there are human beings on the planet and each and every one of us is probably one of those human beings where our natural inclination is to take advantage of people who don't ask for anything in return it's sad but I think so many pickup artists red pillars betas incels Alphas whatever were born because they honestly offered the best of what they have to give and someone just took it and took it for granted um okay now we get on to more stuff second emotional investment is unattractive because simply put emotions are bad and scary our society acts like love is an emotion and our true selves are our emotions but that's [ __ ] our value lies in what we can do when we are rational what we've learned in our life and what we know how to do and what we strive to achieve and be when we are clear-headed so I think that once again there's like elements of truth to this but I think that this is generally speaking I would say this is wrong so emotions once again aren't unattractive it's just inappropriate emotions unmatched emotions unregulated emotions are absolutely attractive I mean sorry unattractive um emotions aren't bad and scary right so emotions are a part of human beings they're not bad and scary if they were bad and scary all of none of the movies we would watch would have music what does music add to a movie it adds emotion watch a movie on mute without subtit you can add subtitles if you if you want to your emotional experience of the movie will be way less so emotions aren't bad or scary unregulated emotion untempered emotion excessive emotion under amounts of emotion those can be bad or scary the second thing is this idea that we the only thing that we're like good for is what we can do when we're rational that's incorrect too so let's understand this if we look at the science of Optimal Performance the science of Optimal Performance does not include an absence of emotion in fact the opposite right so we know that a flow State involves a uniformity or a a a combining of emotion and rational thinking if you talk to people who are exceptionally successful all of them have some positive relationship with their emotions so you can look at creativity why is music successful not because it's devoid of emotion because it captures emotion because it transits emotion why are authors successful because they capture and transmit emotion they're cool ideas too even if we look at things like sports performance what makes a good coach a good coach is someone who comes into the locker room at halime when your team is getting crushed 28 to3 and tells you we can win this gives a good speech activates your emotions your best work is actually when you're emotional when do we have the most breakthroughs in Psychotherapy not when things are devoid of emotion but when there's active emotion emotions are not bad or scary the only thing that makes them bad or scary is we don't know how to deal with them so if we look at what makes something bad it is an inability to utilize it properly that makes it bad is fire good or bad well that depends do you know how to use fire can fire be bad absolutely can it be scary absolutely doesn't mean that it is bad or scary that depends on your capability and this is once again the common theme that I see in a lot of this pickup artist kind of stuff is that they say that this thing is bad but they label the thing is bad as opposed to my inability to understand the thing right this is like saying all fire is bad because I don't know how to use it no no no my dude if you look at you know research on emotions if you look at outcomes of people who are very successful there is an integration of emotion into rational thinking and the reason it's bad or scary for you which I don't dispute if this person says it's bad or scary I even think that they have a valid perspective because it's bad or scary for them because they don't know how to use them and why is why do so many men think that emotions are bad or scary because we are actually we are actually deprived opportunities to learn learn how to understand and harness emotion we are actively discouraged from emotional competence from emotional Mastery right so we're taught to discourage our emotions we are taught that emotions are bad or scary if you're a dude I'm assuming this is written by a man but could be written by a woman who knows right so I think that there's like a valid reason to feel this way but there's another thing that I think is super sad about this is that a lot of men are also taught that our value doesn't lie in anything except for what we provide so this is a very common experience of men right and I I'll see like posts about this on our subreddit where it's like people will talk about okay I don't understand how someone can have intrinsic value and the reason that people find that hard to understand and the reason that so many men feel this way is because that's the way we're treated we are treated as a paycheck we are treated as a body we are treated as a sack of meat right so like soldiers aren't the only humans that sacrifice their bodies for the sake of their work construction workers roofers PL plers being [ __ ] hunched over all the time right so we are very very very commonly taught as men that our value depends on what we can provide and what makes me sad to see this is that this may seem like a form of empowerment right when we sort of say like hey like we're only as valuable as what but that makes me sad no I think that like you don't accept the premise and then run with it to the the maximum recognize that the premise is wrong recognize that if you're surrounded by people who only see you as a meal ticket the solution is not to become the best meal ticket possible the solution is to find different people because they absolutely exist and I'd say they're 50% of the world that's just my gut check but this is such a sad conditioning that I see so much and everyone's all really quick to judge you can even say myself included the manosphere oh the manosphere is toxic tox masculinity how did we get this way who made the manosphere toxic and people will say the patriarchy and like mothers helped build the patriarchy right Society is not all created by men the biggest influence in a man's life is probably their mom I don't think it's their dad I think it's their mom so I think we've got to be like really really like careful about this stuff we've got to be nuanced about this stuff we have to admit that even any of the statements that I made like are they open to criticism absolutely if you all disagree enlighten me but don't fall into this trap and it's not I mean it's an easy trap to fall into because that's been your experience the only people who care about you are people who are like who didn't believe in your intrinsic value and how can I stand here saying this it's because I actually dated someone who did see my intrinsic value so I'm one of the lucky ones who saw that oh my goodness a different world is possible right where people can respect me even though I haven't accomplished much and the really cool thing is that when I met that person and they did that for me it said I didn't want to disappoint them I was like they believe I'm capable of something like I am capable of something they see something within me and my life is surrounded by failure and they see something within me that is like worth it so like okay let's like let's give that a shot let's try to be something and if someone has these kinds of ideas and these kinds of beliefs like we as a society we [ __ ] blame them for it but youall have to understand that if you look at society and the way people act it's much more about what people did to them than what they do that's how we learn monkey see monkey do why do we have dialects because our brain is designed to absorb the things around us and the main question that we need to be asking when it comes to toic masculinity is not what is wrong with this person but how did they get this way how did this person form and this is what I'm telling youall I've worked with a ton of these people trauma trauma trauma is at the top of the list sometimes by a woman sometimes by parents sometimes by Society so I think it's a wrong belief that emotions are bad and scary but I think it's completely understandable that there's a vast majority of men or vast population of men who believe that most of our emotions are selfish irrational unrealistic uncontrollable and often times downright evil emotions are fundamentally needy they always want something even if the want is to help someone if you see a beautiful woman and think I like her I want to make her happy and do nice things for her you're lying to yourself you want things from her so I think this once again is like 50% true and 50% false or what I would say is 50% of it is 100% true and some of the conclusions are false so emotions are selfish irrational I think this is true so emotions in some way are irrational right because emotions are not the product of rationality and at the same time emotions can be incredibly rational so remember that emotions are rapid analyses that are not critically done that are like but can be very very accurate so I'll give you all like a simple example I don't know if you all have ever been in a situation where you feel like you're being scammed and if you look at it rationally if you look at the actual data that you see there's someone smiling being nice to you there's no rational reason to think that this person is trying to take advantage of you but your emotions are able to detect and process information that your analytical mind does not have access to and that can be incredibly rational then once you explore the emotion you will discover there's a ton of rationality to it so I see this a lot like in relationships where like someone feels like really guilty and angry at someone you you feel angry at someone for being sick and then you're like this is incredibly irrational but the more that you tunnel down into it the reason that you realize you're angry for them for being sick is because they are using their sickness to take advantage of you they're only really 50% sick but they're pretending to be 100% sick to make sure you do all their work for you they're sickness is a vehicle for their laziness in this case your anger is completely Justified and this is the reality of what things commonly are your emotions are much more rational than we give them credit for usually the irrationality of emotions is in their incompleteness not the fact that they're irrational so emotions are just very rapid ways of processing subconscious information and that information can be wrong so it's type one reasoning by Daniel Conan using his model right so like yeah I think that they're sort irrational but also like sort of rational unrealistic uncontrollable absolutely incorrect in both cases right so emotions can absolutely be controlled to some extent I don't know what you mean by controllable can you flip a switch and feel angry like sort of I don't I don't know exactly what this means but generally speaking I think emotions can be controlled I think there are processes to evoke and um not there are processes to suppress emotions there are processes to emoke evoke emotions there are processes to process emotions so I think that we can control them quite a bit like we know that like so we know that our frontales are capable of sending inhibitory signals to our amydala and that is like this most scientific simple proof that you can have that emotions are controllable we can control them now if you're saying can you turn on emotions off and on like a switch I don't think it's quite like a switch but I think if you talk to a lot of people who are creative what you discover is they have processes to activate certain emotions and then we have processes to deactivate other emotions this is also true in Psychiatry we control our emotions all the [ __ ] time we teach all of our patients to control their emotions like that's the job now selfish I think is a really really good um really really good observation emotions are fundamentally needy so the way that I would say and I think this is a good Insight that I like her you're lying to yourself you want things from her I I think there's a lot of good good good Insight in there so let's understand something and we did a whole you know we have a whole Deep dive into emotions we on our you know our fifth or sixth lecture on the membership side if y'all are interested so emotions are sources of information and they're sources of motivation and in the sense that they're sources of motivation that's what makes them needy I think that's a good word so our emotions are a way for our brain and body to signal to us to move in a particular direction and fulfill a need so shame is a motivation for us to retract from society anger is a motivation to protect our territory so it does signal to us needs I think that's fair I think it's good but I don't think that that's bad I think it's like we're really like losing a lot when we start thinking negatively about emotions and I think this is good too that you want things from her so I think this is a really good Insight that often times when we feel charitable we are actually fulfilling our own needs half of human kindness is selfish in the most severe cases of this we see something called factitious disorder by proxy so occasionally we'll have caregivers who in order to feel good about myself I feel the best about myself when I taking care of my sick child and so what do I do to make myself feel good every day oh I'm such the I'm the best father or mother on the planet I'm the best brother or sister on the planet I can't oh I have to drop out of college because oh my brother is sick I can't date because my brother is sick and so what do they do they make their brother sick they inject fecal matter into the IV line in the hospital and the problem when you inject fecal matter into the IV line in the hospital is that there's a lot of bacteria in there and these bacteria are totally fine if they're in your GI tract the problem is that these bacteria then travel to the heart and they start to infect the heart muscle and this creates a very serious infection but when that serious infection happens sorry Professor I can't turn in my paper I've seen it real clinical case [ __ ] scary being a psychiatrist in a general hospital is one of the scariest jobs on the planet dude you see some really bad stuff just weird things and like you know the the ICU calls you and they're like this person has like a terrible infection they're in sepsis we cultured the blood and we found feal bacteria how does feal bacteria get into the heart muscle it gets injected factitious disorder by proxy super scary stuff so once again I think there's a lot of Brilliance in this community because they make these observations they begin to realize that even kindness as an emotion can be selfish amazing amazing work amazing Insight because we think of kindness as selfless not always but what I think is unhealthy about this is that just because emotions are needy doesn't mean that they're bad um you know and there's also this Association that emotions are weakness I don't think so I mean I think emotions can be weakness and emotions can be our greatest source of strength right so if we look at people like revolutionaries and and things like that like a lot of their strength a lot of the indomitability of the human spirit is emotional some of it's rational but a lot of it is emotional women also take longer to get emotionally invested in men than men take to get emotionally invested in women um so like this is I think there's some scientific data to support this conclusion I think this is actually a pretty fair statement on average but I'd encourage y all to remember that there's greater inex variability then there is interx variability so I think if you look at like how long it takes the average woman to get emotionally invested into a man and how long it takes the average man to get emotionally invested into a woman there may be a difference on average but there are plenty of men who take a lot of time like in fact about I would say there's statistical evidence that 20 to 25% of the population men and women but probably more men take more time to get emotionally invested than a woman does and you can say Dr K hold on a second how can you make that claim what's that based on it's because if you do studies of avoidant attachment which is all about the lack of emotional investment we know that the prevalence of avoidant attachment in the general population is somewhere about around 20 to 25% % and we know that emotional avoidant attachment is more common in men than it is in women second statement could be false I'm pretty sure it's correct but there are studies that I've seen that suggest that it's actually a general prevalence and isn't that different but I think it's true right so and then men evolve to seek whatever yeah but like there's also variability and so like I don't know how to say this but you know what do you find attractive like what do you find attractive in a woman for some people it's like big tits and big ass sure but generally speaking I know plenty of men and plenty of women who think that any breast size can be attractive that any butt size can be attractive that any hip size can be attractive some people are more attracted to a particular body shape but I think there's a lot of inter intra gender variability about what we find attractive I mean even though men have evolved I know this is going to blow like I know this is going to sound crazy I know it's going to sound crazy even though men as this person says there probably some scientific evidence of this men evolved to seek fertile women you guys are going to be blown away it turns out that about 10% of men probably also have evolved to be attracted to other men they actually not tits don't do anything for them they're all about the D right so that's true too and I think just goes to show you that there is internal variability within a population right and people are saying like what's the evolutionary advantage of that evolved absolutely so this is kind of why but people are like I don't understand man how can you evolve to be homosexual because those people don't reproduce great question now we don't have definitive answers to this okay but there's like this really great hypothesis called the gay Uncle hypothesis and that's not even like I'm not even like that's not a meme so if you look at human beings they are tribal in nature it takes a village to raise a child and so let's assume assume that you've got two scenarios one in which you have 10 men who are heterosexual and one in which you have nine men who are heterosexual and one man who is homosexual so what this means is that the 10 men each have children of their own what is the survival rate of those children versus the survival rate of the nine men who have children and have one extra dude who does not have his own kids and is able to help raise the Next Generation and that's probably why it's 10% because if it was one out of four that would be a survival disadvantage if it was one out of 20 that would be a survival disadvantage and this is how Evolution works so chances are that you having an extra working adult who does not have their own children to take care of is probably a net positive for the survival of the Next Generation so do we have great scientific evidence of this no could this be wrong absolutely is there a possibility that there's not an evolutionary Advantage sure is there a possibility that homosexuality is a moral fa failing sure it's possible but I don't think that's what the evidence suggests and so like these kinds of things it's like this like they're weird scientific takes third emotional investment makes you stupid and saps you of Your vitality and awesomeness so I think this is when we're talking about overly invested in a particular person who doesn't reciprocate totally agree but I think being emotionally invested in stuff is often times what gives you vitality and awesomeness right so I'm going to ask youall a question chat are are y'all having fun also gay women absolutely it doesn't matter it's an adult are we having fun today how are yall feeling is this fun okay so like are we having fun because there is a lack of emotional investment or is our fun and our awesomeness and IDE our engagement and our vitality is it because we are emotionally invested right so I could talk like this hey today we're going to talk a little bit about blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah right so emotional investment is what makes us awesome I I don't think like you know I I I don't know how to say this but like when you look at all these memes on the internet like like look at this guy let's look at this guy oh no no no okay here we go okay hold on we're gonna look at this dude again and then I want to ask youall a question is he awesome yes or no and is and is he emotionally invested yes or no you know so like emotional investment isn't bad but I agree that if you're too emotionally invested in a woman who doesn't reciprocate then you will become a husk right so like once again like these observations are correct the conclusions I don't agree with so like think about right like if y'all have been a nice guy I've been a nice guy before right I've had relationships where I thought we were dating and the person that I was dating didn't think we were dating they just thought that we were friends and you pour your whole heart and soul into this person and does it sap you of Your vitality and awesomeness yes absolutely right like that's fair but it doesn't have to be that way and I think that when we're emotionally invested that can I mean bro like I had a great honeymoon it was awesome there was a lot of emotional investment there was a lot of Vitality there was a lot of Awesomeness right so like just because it can sap you doesn't mean that it is all bad how do I know if I'm dissociated I'm cut off from emotions so we have a deep dive into dissociation I think that's like on our channel so yall can check that out you can also check out the trauma guide which is like really great I think people have really good feedback about it okay how to make her emotionally invest in you for a woman to emotionally invest in you certain stuff must happen must like you must feel an emotional connection with you must feel accepted by you must watch you be confident and resilient needs to spend time with you I think that's pretty good it's kind of weird like you can't feel an emotional connection to someone who's empty unless you to are empty so like this is where things get really confusing for me but I think this is good I think that it's useful for women to find you Pleasant friendly good-looking compatible they have to have an emotional connection nection to you I think that's really important for a lot of women must feel accepted by you this is correct right and I think that if you're confident and resilient that matters a lot and they want to spend time with you I think there's more stuff in the post um how to not be emotionally invested realize you don't need to emotionally invest have an interesting and awesome life that occupies the thoughts and emotions I think this great have an abundance mentality I think that's good too I don't know EX what it means I'm sure there's a toxic version of it but I think understanding that this person doesn't have to be the beginning and end of all of your relationships have boundaries and be unperturbable I think that's awesome focus on your own fun first I think that's true up to a point right so I think this is a really good adaptation if you let other people take advantage of you so I think there's a lot of good stuff here and I think there's a lot of bad stuff here all right let's move on so the reason girls don't sleep with you and what to change to spark intense sexual attraction instantly oh my God are we going to get an invitation to follow this person's Instagram for more information how to spark intense sexual attraction instantly first of all don't use the enter button so much did you guys know that the number one hobby that women find attractive in men I think is reading I saw some data to support that recently which is interesting grammar punctuation oh my God so hot um I don't even know like see I I don't know what this is stop being so nice there's tell her to go screw herself tell her she reminds you of screwing Grandpa who's dead tell her she needs to stop hitting on you or you will have to call security PS don't be a psychopath yeah so I see this kind of stuff um I think a lot of this stuff is like more cathartic and therapeutic for the person who's writing it then it is like useful advice and I think the reason that this stuff propagates is because all of these feelings of anger that we have like they resonate deeply right so like what gets upvoted is stuff that people resonate with it's not what's correct and I I I'm I mean like I I kind of read the post so and this is what's kind of interesting right so they don't elicit emotion from the girl I don't know why you need that there like I don't know about illicit emotion you got to make her feel actual Deep Emotions happiness sadness real fear of losing you validation real lack of validation anger surprise so I think this can work really well if you're dating someone with borderline personality disorder where you're making them feel validated one day and invalidated another day but as a psychiatrist who's helped a lot of people break up with a lot of people here's one thing I can tell you one of the most damaging qualities that helps you get into a relationship and also Doom your relationship to fail is being 100% awesome 50% of the time so one of the things that helps a lot of people get into relationships is to be the perfect partner half the time so we run into this like random reinforcement schedule kind of thing where like people can get addicted to that but usually if these people develop confidence themselves or become secure in themselves or just get tired of it it's a very fast way to engage someone in a relationship in a very prophetic way to Doom a relationship give them validation and lack of validation the more unstable a person is the more attractive that will feel to them and I don't mean attractive like they think it's hot I mean the more gravitational pull you will have towards someone so if you're in a relationship that you feel like you should leave and you can't get out of there's a really good chance that what's going on is the person behaves perfectly 50% of the time and the other 50% of the time can be pretty awful and so what happens is we fall into this we lull ourselves into hope hoping one day that this person will cuz you can see all the good you can see them be so perfect and you get so attached to that and you hold off hope waiting that one day this person will grow and the bad 50% will disappear very well said I can fix her I can fix him oh engage es so much of our goodness our kindness our compassion and sometimes once in a blue moon it does work and for a lot of people they stay in this relationship because they don't realize this is what's going on but generally speaking the healthier you are the more confident you are the more you will stop putting up with this [ __ ] and often times if you're if you're the person who's 100% perfect 50% of the time time the main thing that you need to focus on is you can't make up for mistakes one of the most bizarrely toxic things that we learn to believe is that I can make up for my mistakes you may think to yourself but Dr K what do you mean isn't it good to make up for your mistakes no because if you can make up for your mistakes what are you allowed to do make mistakes I can make it up see I once had a professor who said that you can use your grade on the final exam as your grade in the course so we've got three major tests and then we've got a final the final covers all the material over the whole whole course right so if you know everything for the final exam that means you've learned everything that the course should have if you get an A+ on the final and you have FS on everything else I don't give a [ __ ] I'll give you an A+ it's interesting thing I looked at uh you know a website aggregator that rates professors this professor tended to have low give lower grades than others who taught the same course because when we as human beings learn that we can make up for our mistakes there's no incentive to not make a mistake M what really gets people to change and I say this is someone who's practiced a fair amount of addiction Psychiatry is not making up for mistakes what propagates addictive behavior oh I'm so sorry I did it I was drunk I'll never drink again I'm going to go and let's go to Cabo let's do this I'm going to make it up to you I promise I'll make it up to you you make it up to them and then all as well and hey if you can make it up to them you can [ __ ] him over again really weird really weird now if you do something wrong I'm not suggesting that you shouldn't try to compensate in some way I'm not suggesting that you shouldn't make it right but be very careful because there's a very Insidious belief that if I can fix it tomorrow I can screw it up today it's basically like procrastination applied to relationships right oh I have to I have to make it up to them and like I think you should but be very careful because if you start to believe that that works you'll continue your bad behavior the right way to think about it is I hate I don't know if this kind of makes sense but you can't make up anything once time is gone it's gone you can't truly undo anything you've done to another person you can try to compensate but you can't really reverse it any words that leave my mouth have left my mouth and they have the impact two things you can't take back in life the time that has passed and the words that come out of your mouth can't and now something cool happens once you believe that you can't really make up for your past mistakes then you start to live in a much more vital and important way now this doesn't mean so some people will listen to this and they'll say does that mean I'm doomed by my past mistakes no so I say this is someone who graduated from college with a 2.5 GPA that's rounding up it was technically 2.46 ended up getting to medical school I did fine so you can recover but you can't make it up no amount of A's in classes will ever remove an f and that's how life is so it doesn't mean that just because you failed for a few years doesn't mean you have to continue to fail you can alter your trajectory and the best way to alter your trajectory is to recognize that you can never undo the past so if you you have to be very subtle and careful about this because if you have a negative cast to your mind you'll say that I'll say giving up you can't ever fix your mistakes therefore stop trying no it's the opposite since you can never correct your mistake or since you can never make up or undo your mistakes that's why it's important that you start to live every single day in the best way that you can cuz you never get a chance to go back and undo that right so like yesterday I lost 100 MMR when I was playing DOTA I can't undo that loss of 100 MMR I can gain 100 MMR today but what that means is that I'm at zero MMR and I gained 100 MMR today if I had not lost that 100 MMR yesterday then I would be up 100 MMR that effect from the past always lingers into the present does that kind of make sense I know it's kind of bizarre to think about one of the scariest things okay 10 harsh truths you need to know about relationships okay we're not going to use this word she already has one genital organ doesn't want another so like this I think is like you know like I this is the overgeneralization right so like so here here's the thing 10 harsh truths you need to know about relationships on a primal level women are generally attracted to B strong and mainly men get your [ __ ] handled and don't act like a whiny [ __ ] ever so I think this is like my challenge with a lot of these kinds of attitudes is I don't doubt that this person believes this for a good reason because this is their experience the problem is that you can convey your emotions without being a big manly man so if you look at the majority people people who are having kids today they're not manly men they're not these swole buff Instagram influencer manly men the majority people who are having children today are average dudes they're average one of the biggest challenges that I have with this community is that they don't differentiate between their personal incapability at something and saying that that that thing is good or bad if you don't know how to convey your emotions if you don't know how to articulate your feelings if you don't know how to be emotionally connected then in all you can do is be a big manly man then you will select for the women who are only attracted to Big manly men and this is all couched with you know approach a thousand women that doesn't mean that your formula works that just means that the other 990 that don't like it they want something else right so you got to be careful with this stuff y'all women have a dual mating strategy so like this once like same thing right so this is why women cheat so this is like assuming that all women cheat for the same reasons now is it common or I don't know if common is the right word I'm not saying it's over 50% are there cases of people who you know have a steady provider and will have a one night stand with an alpha sure like that's possible um you know like I I think like this is all like a a strategy that can succeed depending on what you're good at and what someone else is good at so I I think it's like i' I've worked with women who have affairs and the number one reason that I've heard in my office and this could be a selection bias too right so we got to remember that I could have a selection bias is not that this person oh like my husband I had sex with this other person because they were more of a Chad it's it's usually a feeling of emotional disconnection and neglect that's the number one reason now the interesting thing since we're talking about projection the majority of men who cheat