why do you think you've become so popular the reason why I was able to believe so strongly in my content is because I was like on some level I would only be able to trust somebody who had been through the hell that addiction can be and found a way out should a man get married the legal marriage especially in America not a great deal for guyss I can't find a better alternative personally now I do have an alternative though the solution that I discuss in the book is I think where we need to start is having an honest conversation around more Americans than ever don't even report having a single friend loneliness not just with friendships but also with romantic Partners as well no one person can be everything to anyone and I remember talking to a lot of women and asking them what do you want and a husband and I don't think a single one of them mentioned an attractive man the guy's ability to say no to a woman is like his greatest power that's awful being those other things without being attractive to the women doesn't work the attraction always comes first a lot of guys think that all women just want relationships and that's not true um yeah I'm excited to have you here um I I think a lot of my audience should know who you are um especially because you've been getting you've been blowing up recently and doing a lot of podcasts and it's been awesome and I actually found your content when you were at like 20,000 subscribers actually um this guy named nille he has a channel called Captain simbad he actually showed me your channel he's like this guy has like really good stuff you should watch it and I was like I binged the videos and kind of kind of lead them to the first question as which is maybe a hard question to answer but why do you think you've become so popular and uh you know why people are really listening to what you have to say uh it's a good question it's one that I was just spending this morning thinking about because I'm coming up on the end of my commitment to myself when I started this channel when I started this channel I wanted to give myself enough time to succeed which according to my research could take up to two years so I decided to give myself three years so that if I couldn't make something happen at 1.5x the predicted timeline then I really needed to re-evaluate and we're coming up on three years now and so um I believed in my content a lot of the reason why I was able to believe so strongly in my content is because I was and am a clinical psychologist and I had been working with a full private practice for many many years and I could personally see how some of these ins or interventions were helping my clients the the downside to that was I was only helping 20 to 30 people a year in secrecy which is no small thing I mean if you can save or change one person's life that's kind of a big deal actually um but I didn't think that those 20 or 30 people were unique or special and that if it these things helped these folks then there's a high likelihood that it would help thousands or millions of other folks so I just started where I was at and I didn't have a microphone or a camera or a script or lighting and I just started putting some ideas out there and I I sucked and I learned through experience and through trial and error and it I I learned a lot about social media and the YouTube platform I think that these ideas are very relevant to a lot of men in particular um I don't think that there is a lot of good content that's catered specifically to a male audience uh I think that there's you kind of get two extremes which kind of makes sense given social media having now been on the CH you know the platform for a few years there is a tendency to polarize your content in order to get more views and likes and subscribers Etc and so generally what that kind of means is that you end up going really far to one side and you become kind of um Sensational with your cont ENT which I think pulls people further and further away from the truth or you end up just telling your audience what they want to hear which may not particularly help them either so I try to um speak the truth as best I can without enraging men or alienating women I don't always succeed but that's my particular goal um I never recommend anything on the Channel that I haven't already tried myself and have seen that it works and usually have suggested it to at least several other people and seen that it it's worked for them so this is not just like an opinion um this is something that I feel has helped me to suffer less as a human being and might be of value to other people does that make sense it does make sense you have that sample size personally in your PR practice you're like I'm just going to apply this to a wider audience because it's worked right and um you know it's it's funny because I think what I don't know who said this but this content that I found personally myself that works the most in doing this for like eight years myself is those personal stories like this worked for me doesn't mean it's always going to work for you but I found this to work for me so I have confidence behind that and people they feel that authenticity and you're not trying to like I don't know I think that we have this like higher level of understanding maybe I'm giving us too much credit but like I think we do have a higher level of understanding when someone's saying something and we believe that they actually experienced it right versus like and I'm referring to like you know all those 17-year old kids who say hey here's how to have a 10 million agency right like when they haven't done it themselves you get a lot of that but some of them might actually have made 10 million bucks I mean it's a crazy world out there right now but you're absolutely right I remember my first two years of clinical training were at a drug and alcohol Outpatient Treatment Center and we worked very closely in tandem with the 12-step community and of course part of that is you work with a sponsor and the sponsor is someone who has gone through that process themselves like if I had a problem with drugs or alcohol and I was assigned a counselor who had never even had a drink and just like read some interventions that were supposed to work based on the empirical evidence from a textbook I would feel insulted like on some level I would only be able to trust somebody who had been through the hell that addiction can be and found a way out the greatest gifts that I've received in my life I only realized were gifts many many years in the future when I was a teenager and in my 20s I thought I was just sort of a lightning rod for suffering and I had I was able to go through all kinds of really painful and difficult experiences some because I I don't know just bad luck others because I brought them on myself um but I was able to find a way through almost all of them so now I feel like I can guide people from where they're at in the depths of all different flavors of suffering to something that doesn't look as painful yeah so there's uh it's interesting because I'm wondering what you think about this because I don't know if you know did much research on what we do here but um I help men save their marriages I'm a licensed marriage family therapist myself and I found in the traditional um therapy model that uh I found difficulty and uh what really I found that works helping these guys the most is helping them focus on themselves become the best versions by themselves by proxy that the best opportunity to save their marriage but you know someone like yourself I imagine based off what you were saying you probably wouldn't come to someone like me because I'm not married yet right and I haven't gone through that divorce which is interesting because it's like I guess my counter to that would be you know when you go to a doctor are you gonna ask the doctor if they've had cancer if they're trying to treat your cancer and I see the validity in what you're saying that you want someone to have gone through what you've gone through and I guess what I lean into is the content I share with my our audience is that like I've been cheated on multiple times I've had the woman I love leave me for another guy and like so I lean into that part of it but you're right i' never been married so there is some difference that I don't have kids so I can understand logically why a guy would kind of like say well he's not the person that's going to help me because he hasn't gone through what I've gone through but I also see the other side of it as well I could see that um I shy away from commenting on parenting that looks really really difficult and I don't have any direct experience with that and I often don't talk about marriage um except from the perspective of somebody who has to decide whether they want it or not which is definitely something that I have a lot of experience with the oncologist analogy is interesting though because according to a research study that I read upwards of 90% of oncologists would not undergo the treatments they prescrib their patients if they were diagnosed with cancer interesting and I think that's because they have seen up close in personal year after year how painful how expensive how awful some of those treatments might be and how it degrades their quality of life and doesn't often extend their life much past the end of treatment and I've seen this over and over again because I spent two years at a cancer uh Clinic doing Health psychology yeah I remember I was listening to your podcast with Chris and you were talking about that experience and how just hard that was to come home to see that like be that close to death um so you don't necessarily have to have had cancer to help people but you have to see cancer up close in thousands of people you have to study it you have to know it inside and out otherwise please get out of the operating room for sure that makes sense speaking of marriage um yeah I haven't I didn't find much content I'm sure you've have um opinions out there online about it but what is your general stance on um marriage in terms of like if it's something that was you know this is big conversation right now should a man get married is it like the juice the juice isn't worth the squeeze in terms of that what is your opinion on all of that well I think that this is something that I'm I'm talking about to some extent in my coming book which will come out in um in July very cool and we clearly are facing a relationship crisis not only are marriage rates at historic lows but I mean div the divorce rate has actually gone down from the I think the 80s but it's still the highest in the United States than in any other country in the world the second place is still like 50% lower than the United States which was South Korea so we have a problem with divorce in the west we have falling birth rates we have falling falling marriage rates people are getting into relationships less frequently they're even hooking up less frequently than they ever have it's it's a really strange time to be alive and I think there's a number of reasons for that but that wasn't the question that you asked it's okay um part of why I think we're facing this crisis is because this is my personal opinion we want marriage to be too many things and I think fundamentally marriage is a very humble institution but today's day and age we want marriage to be at the very least like a legal contract a solemn oath before God co-habitation and roommates co-parenting and family romantic lover and exclusive monogamous sex dealer best friend cheerleader maid chauffeur personal chef etc etc etc it's very very hard to find somebody who's even decent at all of those things and I think three generations ago our grandparents were I think that I wasn't there but I think the general mood was sort of like you get one or two of those things Max and then you suck it up buttercup because life is hard and this is just what is done this is what people do and nowadays for better for worse and I think it's actually in large part for the better I think we're going through a period of Crisis and transition right now that doesn't mean we won't come out of it um people have way more optionality they're living longer they don't just have to choose between the two dudes in their Village you know they have all kinds of freedoms that they didn't enjoy a few Generations ago and people want to explore what's possible and the issue I think is that we're still not really capable of having a mature and honest conversation about this hyper conflation of needs and wants that go into the modern marriage and I think that possibly the future here I mean there's always going to be some folks for whom traditional marriage will be what what they want certainly more politically conservative folks and and religious people in particular like you can make an argument for religious marriage for men the legal marriage especially in America not a great deal for guys to my mind having read the contract it just seems like a lot of risk for no real reward like guys I don't see get anything that they don't already have without marriage but they put their neck in the news MH and I don't really see how that benefits men I think that if we were to change some of the structures in place that we wouldn't have to convince men that marriage is a good deal they would see that it was a good deal and they'd be able to move enthusiastically in that direction but I think more and more like every guy knows a man who's been divorced and taken through the cleaners every man has seen up close the the way that a a family has been fractured maybe they've heard stories of guys who've had their children taken away from them or they've uh they've been sleeping in cars for a while um it's divorce isn't pretty yeah I I deal that every single day to see that in my face right um I get yeah I totally understand where you're coming from um I guess there's a couple responses to that I'm not going to quote him forb him because I don't remember but I remember Dr Peterson talking about that and yeah marriage is a it's more of a it's it's a really hard bargain for us to go toward but I guess what's the alternative is a thing he says um which seems worse which could be debated absolutely um and I'm really curious on this thought so my my thought is I posit that a lot of what a man does in his life to I guess be a good man is self-sacrifice it's part of the masculine core and I think no matter what you choose you're always deciding or you're cutting off other things and I think no matter what you do there's always a risk with it and I think a man does have to play out the risk between his decisions he makes and choosing your part lifelong partner is one of the biggest decisions that impacts your life obviously more than anything else um but I guess like I can't find a better alternative personally yeah um and I think what Peterson would say is that marriage is kind of a cross that you take take up and you sacrifice certain aspects of yourself and certain freedoms and certain opportunities because it gives you meaning it gives your life structure it gives you bounds so that you can persist through time um and you're correct generally the dialogue is well what's the alternative we can't just tear down marriage if we don't have something better to replace it with and right now we don't and what we have right now is this really strange set of Alternatives which is marriage with all of these 10 things and you can't pick and CH like you have to assume them all and that's your cross versus nothing at all yeah and frankly more and more people are looking at this and saying I'd rather have nothing and that sucks and that does everybody a disservice and that's not going to stabilize society and that's not going to create good things for for people down the road now I do have an alternative though because I don't want to just create a problem and without to offer a solution and the solution that I uh discuss in the book is going to not be for everybody and so what I'm saying is that I'm not trying to get rid of marriage marriage is always going to exist for certain people as a viable option but we need other sane alternatives to marriage or nothing and um the analogy I give to this is to the workplace because I think that there's a lot of good analogies between relationships and um career and professionalism when I was a boy I remember hearing a lot in the mainstream media about how the business world had just gone mad and companies didn't offer their employees pensions anymore because and the employees were just bouncing around from company to company nobody had any kind of loyalty anymore the companies weren't taking care of their employees the employees were just chasing a paycheck they didn't believe in the missions anymore it was totally greedy and mercenary and completely chaotic nowadays 30 years later it's the idea that one a person has one job at one company for his or her whole career is very quaint it's very very like it's hard to believe that we even did that for as long as we did right um nowadays on average I think according to the most recent statistics a person has 13 or 14 jobs throughout his or her professional career and of course in recent years we have the gig economy which has pros and cons for for sure but one thing it's done is it has like created opportunities and freedoms that also come with costs and liabilities the idea here is that things are starting to kind of crumble and fall apart we don't necessarily have to let them fall apart entirely but we also don't have to build them up just as they were because that could be part of the problem of why they're crumbling now and so there are these fractures and we might be able finally with maturity and emotional uh honesty say I don't think that one person can give me all of these things and that it's hard and harder for me to surrender these things when they've become so available uh to achieve uh you know again our grandparents generation they might have to have contend with hopelessness in some real way because you were just tied to that Village you might have been your your spouse chosen for you by your parents there was no way to leave there was no work you had to do the job that your parents gave you it's like I don't want to go back to those times I don't I don't think I think we romanticize those relationships sometimes to our Collective detriment and I think that we can there's the opportunity here where we can kind of pick and choose what kind of relationships we're going to have with certain people so an example I give is that maybe we can have and I I've been contacted by some folks who are exploring this space they call them I think alt marriages which are other kinds of formalizing relationship Arrangements that aren't quite the the whole package of what we traditionally associate with marriage so for example potentially a man and a woman can come together and make an agreement for like 20 years to raise children it's not till death to us part it's that we're deciding to be co-parents because that's potentially something that they both value and they want to do together but whether or not they live together maybe they live together maybe they don't maybe they're sexually exclusive with each other maybe they're not maybe they are best friends maybe they're not maybe they are romantically in love with each other maybe they're not maybe we can get more of what we want but we might have to be willing to get it from other places versus I'm going to create I'm going to get rid of the extended family I'm going to get rid of the village and I want you this one person to be my everything and and everything and I don't think that's sustainable and generally what happens is like any chain is as strong as its weakest link that fails along some point and often people throw out the baby with the bath water and they get rid of the entire relationship instead of just saying oh this is the weakest component do we really need this or can I get this elsewhere so again that's not going to be for everybody but I think that is potentially an opportunity here you know it's uh I don't know the exact statistics on this but I do know that having Mistresses 50 60 years ago when we romanticized these past marriages was such a common thing and I don't know that also the statistics on like how many couples do swinging right with other partners and stuff but what you're saying essentially is that we have these inherent parts of us that stem from evolutionary psychology and why not just be more honest with these actual desires instead of like trying to adhere to these socially conditioned things and just lying to yourself and then going out and hurting people and you know doing under the surface just be more forthright with what you want and kind of create a structure around that that actually works in alignment with how you actually feel what you want I think that's very well summarized yeah that's that's what I'm getting at and and it would be controversial because we're just so immersed into this idea that like marriage is good right and it's best for the community and I do believe that to a large extent studies will show that right um but we haven't explored those other Alternatives that could be more preferential to our society but I think you're right I think where we need to start is having an honest conversation around um that we have this expectation that that person is going to be everything I think aiz and sori wrote a book called modern romance years ago where he talked about that with his like um social researcher um psychologist researcher and said that we want that person to be everything and it's like is that possible it's I mean probably not right no I don't think you can get any everything you want from one person but it is potentially possible to get everything you want from many people yeah and many things are more appropriate and easier to get outside of a sexual or romantic relationship but frankly we're also getting rid of those relationships too there's a loneliness epidemic I think more Americans than ever don't even report having a single friend loneliness not just with friendships but also with romantic Partners as well um and they are the silent you know hurting majority that you know because even if they do speak out which a lot of them don't it's like they kind of Falls in deatha ears a lot of times are like oh you know suck it up right and and I hate that Trope but it is true I've seen it so many times in my practice and speaking with these guys and you I made videos and I I get a lot of those like people like those inel blackpill communities commenting and it wasn't until I actually interviewed a lot of them and spoke to them myself that I understand the the true scope of what was really going on in their life and the reality of it all right and yeah it it is it is pretty scary and we don't know what this is going to all lead to because it's not getting better right at least from what I've seen no it's getting worse we haven't even start the pendulum hasn't started to even slow in its sweep away from the center but it will come back it's I don't think it's going to be the collapse of humanity as we know it yeah I think I think AI robots will virtual girlfriends will help with that VR and stuff I mean be's kind of s sardonic a little bit but at the same time I'm kind of being serious it might be supportive I'm I don't know man I think that that's going to accelerate the sweep in the opposite direction and it's it's coming oh yeah yeah what do you think uh I mean you can only summarize I mean I mean postulate but like what do you think is going to happen some of the symptoms of all that well I think it's going to become more and more commonplace that men are going to have virtual or artificial girlfriends yeah yeah is that but is that a good or a bad thing I think it's probably a bad thing I'm sure it's not entirely bad few things are but on the whole I don't see how that's going to create and motivate men and women to try to figure out how they can work together to fix the problem yeah I think it's a it's a comp it's a more advanced form of pornography I think so yeah I think so I was just playing Devil's Advocate to see what you said sure I mean I I think that's gonna happen in the next five years we're going to start to see some of that and it's going to be very stigmatized it's gonna people are going to come down on that Tech and the people who use it really hard they're going to try every shame based tactic in the book to get PE men to not move in that direction and the men are going to say well who are the women who want to be in relationship with me exactly I'm seeing flavors of that already you know um so yeah I do see it becoming more stigmatized and it's interesting time we're living in right um oh yeah it's fascinating yeah I uh I wanted to talk a little about some of the most popular Concepts you talk about on your channel and just kind of explore those a little bit more in depth that's cool with you um sure one of them being uh why woman why it's hard for wom to because a lot of I know a lot of my um the clients that we work with the guys they they run across this in their relationships with their wives that why it's so hard for women to apologize and take responsibility for things in Conflict oftentimes you had a whole video on that that I wanted to kind of have you elaborate on yeah uh I've noticed this in my own personal life I can count the number of sincere apologies I've seen from women on women on a single hand like it's very unusual and I don't think that this is unique to my experience and I thought about that for quite some time and the best I could come up with is I think that men and women in general perceive the injury in different ways a lot of men think the problem is the wrong Behavior the wrongdoing and for them an apology is nice but the true apology is changed behavior is and a commitment to not do that again I think a lot of women on the other hand see the problem at to be that men are upset about whatever it could be about their behavior it could be about something else but the problem is the man is angry the man is um disequil and so they're trying to use emotional coping strategies to smooth over his feeling because it's kind of only a problem because he thinks it's a problem and if he were to feel or think it's not a problem anymore the problem on some level would go away and there's actually some truth to that I remember oh I had a very frustrating experience with Air China a long time ago one of the worst travel experiences in my life and years later I was reading an article in The Economist and it turns out that millions of Chinese citizens were complaining their government about Air China which is a government-owned airline and the airline finally released a statement to respond to all these complaints and the response was basically like if you guys stopped complaining there wouldn't be a problem and I mean I couldn't think of a more communist Chinese response to you know millions of people complaining to gasl Gaslight their whole entire client base you know it's only a problem because you you insist that there is one and if you stop insisting the problem would go away and so the idea here is is that rather than fix the behavior which the women may not see as problem within her own subjectivity she's going to try to mfy the man's hurt feelings uh to to eliminate the perception of a problem and I think that's often how I've seen this in a lot of the folks that I've cancelled men can get into these Cycles in dysfunctional relationships where something happens the man's at his Wit's End he's like I can't take this anymore I can't deal with this and and the woman like sees the intensity of the problem in his willingness to walk and so she's able to kind of like be on her best behavior for several weeks or even several months and then once the guy feels like oh okay we've turned over a new Leaf she's different now the problem has been solved the woman now thinks okay yeah he's not angry he's gonna stay he's not going to leave therefore we can go back to the way things were before this was a problem and then rinse wash repeat because I think a lot of times it's the the real issue in the woman's subjectivity is that the man has a problem with it not the problem herself not the problem itself yeah it's the way he views it and it's funny because I work with a lot of um kind of like high powered people CEOs whatever politicians and a lot of guys who are have a high sense of self right High ego which is not a good or a bad thing it just is and what I'll see is that when they are with their wives a lot of times it's hard for them to apologize too because they they say to themselves if she just perceived this the way I perceived this she the injury wouldn't be there because my intention was not to hurt her so if she saw it the way I saw it then she wouldn't be hurt and so I kind of see on the um the opposite end of that as well with guys sometimes I certainly it can be tough for guys to apologize as well I kind of see that in a slightly different way I think that with these um High ego men as you describ them it can be difficult for them to apologize because rationally they see the apology as a precedent and they think if I acknowledge that this is a wrongdoing then like then I'm going to have to change some aspect of the relationship because I'm admitting that I'm at fault which is going to expose me to liabil like I think they tend to have a very rational almost legalistic um explanation for why they don't want to apologize yeah that makes sense I I do agree with that so one of the most fascinating Concepts in videos I think my favorite video of yours that I was watching is the idea of consumptive love can you explain what that is to uh the audience well uh consumptive love you know one of the simple examples of this that we can all kind of laugh at and think is cute is when usually a woman sees a cute little baby and she's like oh you're so adorable I could just eat you up um it's the story of Hansel and gredle from the brothers Grim I think Peterson talks about this as well and it's a particular darkness that tends to reside in the feminine expression of love the darkness in masculinity can be more tyrannical the darkness in femininity is more consumptive which in many which can take on several different aspects one of them is to encourage inappropriate dependence which is sort of like I If as long as you keep needing me you can never leave me so I need to ensure that you can never really stand or walk on your own because once you're able to do that you will walk away from me so I am going to do things for you inappropriately to keep you from learning how to do those things for yourself so that you can continue to need me and I won't be left alone that's one form of consumptive love um but in general the the behavioral impulse in love is to approach you know and what I found in my own personal life is that when a woman is in love she just wants more she wants more of my time she wants more of my attention she wants to do everything with me and that can be difficult because it's mostly coming from a very good place we it can it can have some Darkness to it but let's assume that it's mostly loving and sincere um it can be hard to say no it can be hard to disappoint it can be hard to maintain appropriate boundaries because if you just say yes to a woman wanting more then before you know it all you can see is the woman she's everywhere she's she's almost like crawled inside of your mind which might be one of her goals like there are certainly some women who would be more comfortable if I were made out of glass and they could see every thought and feeling in my mind and so they could know whether I was telling the truth how I really felt um so that that would help them to be reassured and feel secure in the relationship and there are some men who also good-naturedly go along with this they think oh uh well I don't want to disappoint my woman but also it's a good thing to to I'm being generous I'm I'm being supportive I'm being honest and transparent and that kind of demand for attention and connection and transparency can actually become somewhat tyrannical in its ultimate aspect yeah I guess the maladaptive form of that as far as a mental diagnosis is like munchow and syndrome right with her child or something yeah like making them dependent on them but yeah I almost see like in the feminine archetype it's like she wants a union right with with the man right and in the masculine it's like we want I guess am mment and differentiation but that definitely that freedom is a component of what we want right and what I found the guys we work with is they really fall under that like I interviewed Dr Glover last week and like they they're they're the nice guy right so they think if I just make her happy make her happy say yes and they're sacrificing giving Pieces away of themsel over the years until there's nothing left for her to love right that original guy that she fell in love with and I think this is really important for a lot of guys to know is that I think you have a video on this so elaborate if you do but like the guy's ability to say no to a woman is like his greatest power right it's really important to learn how to say no and to disappoint women they'll get over it like I I've seen so many women cry at this stage of my life it doesn't affect me anymore for better for worse um that feeling is going to change it'll be gone in an hour or two and then we're just going to continue on with our lives um there's no point in making a very permanent change to your lifestyle a very permanent decision just to avoid the discomfort of an hour or two of an emotional experience that is a bad idea for guys yeah um it is really important because not everything but many things are zero sum if I'm giving my time and attention to her I'm not giving my time and attention to literally anyone or anything else in the universe and the more she gets the less I have not only for myself but for all the things that make me confident and successful and happy and fulfilled one of which is my relationship but we were just talking about it no one person can be everything to anyone and guys who will do not say no and do not disappoint are complicit in thinking that this person can be everything to me and then they are surprised when it doesn't work out yeah I think that pays homage to what David daa says in his book um the way the superior man about like a man putting his purpose above his woman right and knowing that absolutely and it's like speaking to that emotional storm she has too like I like the analogy that I always tell guys of like like you're the shore right and she's the ocean right and sometimes the ocean can caress and be gentle but then sometimes the winds get blowing and she'll Smash Into You But as the guy you're unmoving you're like cool like her like you talk about frame Theory like a lot of ways it's like you have your strong frame and she doesn't affect you and I mean we can probably get deep into it but whole podcast just about this but like a lot of that does come from like their attachments with their mom and you know F diet and everything and but uh as long as a guy knows like from a strategic intervention is like okay my emotions are not hers I'm going to remain solid I'm going to let her go through those storms and I'm not going to be reactive to those and reactive a lot of times too guys don't know this reactive sometimes is completely shutting down and shutting off right stonewalling as Dr Gman says right like a lot of guys think okay don't yell at her fine don't don't get all angry and emotional but no like even if you like shut down and like close off she feels that and that is still reacting in a way it's hard to keep your heart open but you know she feels when you do close off stonewalling is a tactic of Last Resort because if you were to hook guys up to uh you know heart rate monitors and galvanic skin conducting instruments you can see that they are really activated their heart is racing they might be perspiring they're shutting down because they've lost the battle internally and they're trying just not to act on that loss of control to say things or to do things that will make the situation even worse unfortunately stonewalling and shutting down like that usually makes women incredibly nervous it's like they can't feel the men at the time and so they unfortunately poke and they pry and they pressure to get the man to open up which is not theing moment for them to open up guys need time sometimes to re-equilibrate that's why they kind of Retreat into the Batcave a lot of guys when they're out of sorts they don't want to talk women when they're out of sorts they often do want to talk they want to talk through whatever they're feeling guys kind of want to figure it out and then reemerge and a lot of bad things can happen when women try to force conversations before men are ready exactly some I mean that's something that all women should learn they should be taught that from a young age 100% And it's like they're almost intermittantly reinforced that when they escalate they'll get a response so like they learned over time just to keep on escalating keep on a l of women this issi they probe but think a lot of women would rather have a guy yell and scream like nothing right yeah I made a video about that how women train men to be angry I mean men and women train each other to do all kinds of things the issue is that they generally train each other unintentionally and unconsciously which is how they end up in dysfunctional relationship patterns that neither one consciously want and yet here they are yeah you know I was before I got help in with her marriages um I was doing dating coaching for a long time and that was an interesting journey to do myself but one of the things you talked about is something that a lot of guys don't logically understand which is when you ask a woman what she wants in a guy she'll say even studies will show this like she wants nice sincerity like giving all these like I guess provider maale traits but she never mentions The Protector traits or the things that are like you know that gate of like attraction has to come first can you kind of tell us more about that yeah one of my more popular videos is called the part that women always leave out and this was something that it took me a suspicious amount of time to figure out like I remember when I was in my teens and 20s I had a lot of uncomfortable experiences with women but I was also open to changing and figuring I was like what am I doing wrong I I need to get better feedback I'm willing to to to do what I need to do in order to become a better man and a better partner and I remember talking to a lot of women and asking them what do you want in a husband what do you want in a boyfriend and I don't think a single one of them mentioned an attractive man they said things like well I want somebody who's kind and somebody who's honest and somebody who is caring and I'm like I'm fing all three of those things you know so why am I having such a hard time over here and the issue is that it's not that women are lying they're just giving a socially acceptable response in many respects and saying that I want uh tall dark and handsome might come off as superficial even though it is probably true and so women do want all of those things that they say they want provision they want kindness they want safety but they want them from the men that they're already attracted to and the part that men need to hear and they don't always know is that being those other things without being attractive to the women doesn't work like the attraction always comes first it always comes first with women um the attraction may not be enough to keep them in the long run but almost every woman has been in a relationship with a man that she found attractive who wasn't honest who wasn't loyal who wasn't ambitious who wasn't safe and yet she was in a relationship with that man anyway so like the attraction has to come first and in fact I think personally a lot of those responses from women are an attempt to kind of create a Franken ideal boyfriend where they're thinking about maybe that that that guy who was super hot and she would do all kinds of things for him and really wanted to be in a relationship but treated her badly it's like if he if I could just have him but with kindness that would be a perfect yeah a perfect man and so having been out of that relationship when she's asked that question she's like oh yeah kindness that's the thing that I want because that's the thing that was missing from this relationship that would have made it ideal for me yeah I wonder how much of those an I think social conditioning plays a large role in like women wanting to be acceptable especially because they you know have that and like the big five they want that kind of like acceptance more right and being um conforming a lot more but I wonder how much of it is with the idea of like the Dual mating strategy right and how like when they say what do you want in a partner they're thinking of the provider the long-term Guy where they're willing to sacrifice these short-term traits because and this has been argued a little bit but like like I still see it personally myself where women do want these two types of guys like the whole you know this whole thing it's like they'll when they're younger they'll go after this guy right the guy who's the bartender or whatever and then eventually once they hit the wall they'll go with this guy and so I think when women are asked that question I think the question like shifts their perspective on this longer term guy too as well probably yeah because I mean women get all kinds of conflicting messages about their sexuality in our culture and I have some sympathy for them about that that seems very difficult to na [Music] um I there's something else I was going to say about this yes because of that a lot of guys think that all women just want relationships and that's not true some women just want a smash just like any other guy and the the Dual mating strategy sometimes refers to like them changing their sexual strategy with respect to where they are in their ovulatory cycle and there is some evidence that in the sense that women do seem to find to report that they're more attracted to certain types of men at different stages of their ovulation whether or not they act on it is harder to evaluate yeah yeah I I remember a couple studies back in grad school my first book was on this um I think they might have been debunked it was I think the author was GGA stad I'm not sure if he said his last name correctly but he basically I don't remember the validity of the study too much it was over decade ago but he took the guys who typically were in that beta male provider category psychometrically speaking and then the guys who are more in that like Alpha and if a woman was in the relationship with the guy who was considered the provider she would have more conflict with the guy during her obory cycle so that that could pay you know some respect to that idea but you know it's it's hard but uh one thing you talked about with going back to the idea of loneliness is um one of the solutions you know is like women doing the propositioning more nowadays do you think that is yeah a viable potential solution I think that women are not nearly as passive in this process as they might currently think I have an episode that's coming out in a few weeks called how to drop a handkerchief and it's designed to remind women that for many many years women were the ones who initiated interactions with men and they would do it indirectly with plausible deniability and the stere typical example of that in Victoria England and she'd be walking in the park in front of a handsome bow and she'd drop her handkerchief and keep on walking and he'd be like Excuse Me Miss I believe you Dro this and boom now she's in a conversation that she orchestrated with plausible deniability because the guy turns out to be an idiot she can just say oh thank you so much for the handkerchief I need to be running now so women can initiate and they do kind of have to initiate indirectly too much of a direct uh offer from a woman is probably going to be offputting to a lot of men men do like the chase a little bit and if the woman just serves herself up on a silver platter it's probably not going to be in her best interests but she can lead from behind the entire interaction um but if she's just sitting there waiting passively that's not going to work if it ever works it's going to be when she's in her early 20s and she positions herself in front of a lot of men but as women are getting married and starting families later and later they have to ad adapt their strategy given where they are in their reproductive window and a woman in her 30s who's just sitting and waiting that's not going to work and so she does need to take more of an initiative and she doesn't have to just depend on the apps she can put herself around the men that she would like to mate and date that's the huge thing so many of the women who complain where are all the good men do not make an effort to put themselves in their Ambit I wonder I don't work with women so I mean I have in my private practice before I left that and I did come across some women that were struggling in this domain I'm just wondering how it would feel for a woman to take initiative if it just feels in congruent with maybe even like her spiritual makeup it's hard to prove but like just like in her feminine archetype right to like be the pursuer even if it is indirectly I think when speaking with woman that I know like they want the guys to pursue them completely and that could be socially conditioned but I would argue that it is something inherent in who we are too it's like a man is like a hunter right we we want to go after so it's it's hard to know I mean well I've done a number of consultations with women on this and I've never got an answer that even remotely touches on like it's this is in congruous with my feminine nature it's more like I'm afraid of rejection and I'm like yeah no [ __ ] so are guys and so why not make it obvious that they're not going to be rejected like that's enough of an initiation that's enough of a signal to potentially motivate a man if he's at all attracted to you to initiate a conversation and that's all I'm asking and in the video I talk about how to do that with eye contact all you have it doesn't cost you anything it's pretty low risk and you can basically control who comes to you when by just looking at somebody in the eyes and I talked about how to do that more in that forthcoming episode yeah I feel like I feel like women are super aware of their eye contact right they know when they're looking at a guy long enough it's initiating for the guy to come in right especially if they smile that's like even bonus but then there's a lot of Clueless guys out there too like oh she's just being nice you know what I mean like I remember uh when I was I was clueless as a kid right like um this girl had a huge crush on in high school like biggest crush I I would love that she liked me and um one day in school she sat on my lap in front of everyone in the cafeteria and I froze like a statue you know what I thought R I thought I didn't think oh she likes me I thought oh her friends dared her to come sit on my lap because it's there and she's yeah that's how a that's how like how low I thought actually woman wanted me but so like but like there's like small degrees of that I think with some guys out there like why would a woman ever initiate with me and so there that's just like another obstacle that that could be presented in all this potentially yeah um but uh I I you know one of the things that I was also curious about was um I wanted to get your opinion on this like um with the guys that we work with so if let's say a wife is wanting a divorce right a lot of time I don't know if you knew this but I think 45% of the time when a woman initiates a divorce um I think it's I got to find the actual study to put it down below to prove this but I think 45% of the time the woman said that it was more of a test than actual um serious request it was like hey he needs to wake up oh right I know isn't that playing with fire that's awful I know like the DW is the nuclear option I mean would would would we all feel more or less safe and comfortable if the presidents of Russia and the United States just start talking about nuclear war right like is that any is anyone G to feel better about that I don't I don't think so you you should not Bluff about something like that it's because if it is a bluff well all you've done is create an enormous amount of uncertainty and pain in the other person for no apparent reason because apparently you weren't willing to follow through on it so God forbid things actually come to a point where divorce might make sense they're not even going to believe that this is something that you're going to follow through on because you've cried wolf already but once that word gets said it's very hard to you can't ever unsay it and something can be said in the heat of an argument once and somebody could still be thinking about it 10 years later like this is a very asymmetrical situation we have to be very very careful about that word um I think that any woman who is going to threaten divorce as a test should I mean what's that guy doing there like how does that woman not already know this man's commitment and integrity and and loyalty and he's clearly already married her he's clearly already stepped up in front of all of his friends and family and before God and said I will do this and it's still not enough for her and she needs another loyalty test like she's actually already signed the time for testing is before you buy the car you if you can't continue to test drive the car after you've signed the contract it's your car now yeah you know it's so funny I see I see your I see your perspective completely um and how that crying W it just causes the guy to feel like less safe in the relationship and I also see on the other side where a lot of guys they don't recognize that a relationship is an iterative process and that I think a lot of men have the idea that okay once I married her she says that death to us part they they do become complacent a lot of times whether it's they gain weight they stop you know buying our flowers have taking our dates and they kind of become relaxed and over the years the wife feels more and more distant as well so I do see the other side of that coin as well I think it's on both on both people to take responsibility for it what I think is that I I I don't think that we should get rid of divorce I think that any kind of contract or agreement that you can't get out of for any reason is prone to abuses and nastiness so I think that divorce should exist I think it's clearly overused yeah but we don't want to get rid of it entirely the issue here is that if you actually want to get divorced you should not say I'm thinking of getting a divorce you shouldn't think unless we do this I'm going to get a divorce you should try everything that you possibly can and then if none of that works and you still feel like you can't save the relationship you just present the papers and you say this is what we're doing you don't open it up because what that does is it say it creates so much instability that the person might then do whatever he or she needs to do in order to keep the person there and then once the pressure comes off it's like I was saying earlier does that does the woman have to keep that pressure on that man indefinitely for her to get the kind of behavior out of him that she would prefer like that's a toxic relationship for both parties who wants to be married to their Jailer right or their Warden right you know so uh don't bring it up try everything that you can and that's also really important because that's how people get sucked back in to their exes is they don't try everything that they can before they end the relationship and so the thing that creates Obsession in folks is unfinished business and maybe six months even six years later someone's like oh we you know we never did try counseling or we never did you know have kids and that was something maybe that's something it's like try whatever you think you need to do first so that you can walk away and you can honestly say to yourself I did everything that I could yeah well said you don't ever have to look back I wish I had another hour with you this has been a great conversation so far um yeah no kidding yeah I I I do want to end with one more question I I have a group with the guys next U my my man of the program but I wanted to ask you kind of making this full circle for you which is what does success look like to you um for your life moving forward oh success I mean I I feel very lucky uh I feel like my life is is humming along fairly nicely these days um I feel very fulfilled and dialed in like I'm definitely on my purpose I I work like all the time but I work on projects that are important and significant and fulfilling for me uh I am coming into contact with all kinds of interesting people from around the world both in terms of my consultations and folks like you I get to have these really interesting conversations I don't talk about this very much but I started psycha during the the shutdowns and I was living in San Francisco it was a very lonely time for me um the government said I couldn't teach my classes anymore I had to close my offices my family wouldn't see me some of my friends wouldn't see me um I was just alone for the vast majority of the time and kind of against my will and on some level I started psyx to kind of throw out a life you throw out a line just out into the world to see if there was anybody else out there who was interested in this that I could connect with and it succeeded beyond my wildest expectations at this point like I thought maybe if I got a thousand people who would listen to what I had to say I would be I mean that Ian that's a huge turnout actually at a at a real life event a thousand people to come and sit and listen to what you have to say I mean wow what an honor now you're getting on average like 100,000 people listening to you every week that's that's that's so cool to see and yeah millions millions every week it's it's enormous oh yeah I mean in the large Channel I mean I mean every video gets like 100,000 views but yeah I mean over oh sure absolutely it's so cool because like our brains can't even like I think when we think of the number a million we don't even truly know what that looks like in our mind so that's amazing it's been such a great uh pleasure to talk with you we got to do this again but uh yeah I'll let you know when this episode comes out and thank you so much for uh spending time with me and talking to me oh yeah Josh this was a great conversation you seem really grounded and kind and I enjoyed this conversation happy to do it again sometime awesome all right have a great weekend we'll talk soon