Gender Differences in Dating, Stress, Hormones & Emotional Intelligence - Dr. John Gray

Feelings are not facts, okay? If I feel the world is not safe in my neighborhood, that's not a fact.

It's just what I feel. If I feel I'm not good enough, that's not a fact. That's just a feeling. We have to realize we have this turbulent waves of feeling. If you're a woman and you give more to your partner than you feel you're getting yourself, if you give more than you're getting, you will resent him. Well, then stop giving so much so you don't feel so much resentment and start learning how to receive more.

All right, sir, how are you doing today? Welcome to the show.

Doing good. Good to talk to you again.

Yeah, likewise, likewise. It's really good to have you on the show, and I'm excited to just sort of dive in.

The world's changed a lot since you wrote your book, since you wrote Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus. And I'm curious if we can just start off a little bit with contextualizing how you think relationships are different from when you wrote that initially.

Well, I think that men and women are still biologically wired to be very, very different. And when we understand those differences, we can then use that insight to deal with the new challenges that couples have. Since I wrote Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus, the world has changed dramatically in that, on a very practical level, our stress levels have dramatically increased. Therefore, we can look at how men and women relate to stress differently on a biological level and then learn communication skills to help each other cope better with stress. That stress on another level, which one of the things that's causing the stress, One of the things is when women are more on their independent side, they make higher levels of stress than when there's a balance of independence and dependence. And when men are more on their dependent side, which I call feminine side, then their stress levels will be higher as well. And that's borne out with research showing that when men make a lot of estrogen and low testosterone, their stress levels are higher. Vice versa, when women make testosterone tests to much greater degree than estrogen or progesterone, their stress levels will be higher.

So how would you say that? And then I agree entirely. I've had a couple of people on the show that have talked about the decline in testosterone in men and how that can radically impact our energy levels and our ability to feel motivated in any way or get things done or just have any type of energy. But how would you say that men and women deal with stress differently?

Well, again.

When Women are under stress, they tend to go further to their male side. An example of that would be a woman feeling stressed, feels overwhelmed, there's so much to do. And she's thinking about, I still have to do this, have to do this, have to do this, have to do this. And at that time, she's disconnected from her feelings of being at ease, feeling comfortable, feeling safe, feeling trusting, feeling loving. Very hard to feel love when you're feeling stressed. Matter of fact, biologically, it's not possible. We know that when you're experiencing cortisol hormones for a woman, her estrogen levels are significantly lower, which estrogen is what allows us to feel love if you're a woman. Now, for a man, estrogen helps us to feel love if our testosterone levels are very high and our estrogen levels are high. So estrogen is emotion. But when men have low testosterone, which is whenever men are stressed, they're going to have low testosterone. Some of the symptoms of that is procrastination, low energy, low libido for the person they love. They could have a libido for a stranger, but not for the person they love. Because when you love somebody, it raises your estrogen. And when a man is stressed, he already has too much estrogen, always too much estrogen at that time.

And maybe I'm mistaken, but is that because too much cortisol in the body actually reduces the body's ability to produce testosterone? Am I getting that correct?

Well, you know, when we come to biology, cause and effect are tough to say. What we say is what is present in the body. Whenever a man is stressed, he's producing the cortisol hormone, his body is not making a lot of testosterone, his body is making a lot of estrogen. Okay, so now if we identify, which is what I do in my work, which has not yet been done by a lot of people, yet I have it backed up by research studies which aren't directly trying to prove my theories, but they're. They're there to prove my theories, which are from my point of view. I use the research. For example, if a man wins a contest, his testosterone goes up. If a man chops wood, his testosterone goes up. If a man's football team succeeds, his testosterone goes up. If a man gets married, his testosterone goes down. Now, what happens in marriage? Well, marriage is when you. When men get married, there's a drop in testosterone. When men have children, there's another drop in testosterone. When men retire from their work, there's another drop in testosterone. Work is what produces testosterone. It's not that marriage really has to make testosterone drop, but when seen on the averages, on the averages of our country, hundreds of thousands of men, you look at every age category. If you're married, you're going to have lower testosterone levels than the single guys. Now, why would that be so? That can just be a mystery. Except it's very logical when you understand relationships, loving relationships raise estrogen. Okay, so the estrogen is the love hormone.

Hormone's a little tricky. Estrogen is the love hormone. If my testosterone levels are high, if my testosterone levels are low, estrogen is going to be fight or flight. I'm going to be angry or I'm going to be shut down. That's what men do. And there's four basic things of fight or flight is two, others is fake. A lot of couples are just in denial and avoid any issues that are going on until they have no passion. And then there's fake or fold, which is happening a lot to the younger generation with these low testosterone levels is procrastination. A lot of procrastination happens. They lose the motivation. You know, I'm looking at one client, he just. He's a physically fit guy, right? He's a. There's different body types, but one type of body type is called a mesomorph. They're born with more muscle mass, they have wider shoulders, and they need to exercise to feel good. I mean, it's like really, really important for them. Their body's born with more muscle cells. And he just won't do it. He just procrastinates. Procrastinates, procrastinates. Says, I'll get to it next month. Next month. Meanwhile, he's moody, he's irritable, has no libido towards his wife. I say, look.

You'Ve got to have exercise. And the other one is you got to give up porn. Porn is one of the biggest estrogen stimulators there are. You know, there's a people that. Well, that's paradoxical. Well, again, when you understand reactivity, if a man does porn, he could have low testosterone, then it will go up temporarily for eight minutes, it's going to go really high and then it's going to crash. Just like if you were to take a shot of cocaine, you feel really high and then you crash, you go in the other direction. So this is a tragedy. This is really what's going on because there's so many. I think it's one of the major conditions why the younger generation of men have such low testosterone levels is the Abundance of porn. It's not just that. It's like, as RFK is saying, we have all these endocrine disruptors in our food and plastics and all of that. So, you know, you've got that on one hand with the endocrine disruptors, which is throwing both men and women off. And then you've got porn for men and you've got therapy for women. Now, most people don't want to say this, but 90% of the people who go to counselors are.

Women. And almost everybody who gets the divorce goes to a counselor first. And what can happen in counseling? Not that all counseling is bad, but if you don't have an understanding of how men and women are different and you just think we're all the same, then the advice you're going to give is always wrong. You can't give the right advance for, you know, for a person. If I tell a woman what I need to do and tell her that she needs to do that, it's wrong. She has a different biology. An example of that would be a healthy thing for a guy. If you're angry with your partner, stop talking, okay? Stop talking. The most important thing for men, if you're angry, stop talking now. Why would I say that? Because all of psychology Today, all of counselors today say, oh, you need to look in each other's eyes and talk about your feelings. It's the worst thing. There'd be no violence in relationships if men would just not talk when they're starting to get angry. Because why? When you're emotionally upset or let's just say you're emotional and it's positive if you're. If I'm feeling happy and I say, I'm so happy to see you, my happiness will go up. If I love my partner and I say, I love you so much. You've done so much for me, and I just so lucky to be with you. You're my wife. You say those words, your estrogen levels will go up. If you're angry and you speak, your estrogen levels will go up, and so your anger will only become greater. So this is why, you know, in therapy, women will talk about their feelings and feel safe because nobody is going to react to them like, get angry back. So when a woman can talk about her feelings, her estrogen levels will go higher and her stress levels will go down, and then she'll calm down. But the problem, again with therapy, is often therapists will hear a woman's feelings and then confirm the reality of her feelings. Okay. Which is Facts. Feelings are not facts, okay? If I feel the world is not safe in my neighborhood, then that's not a fact.

It's just what I feel. If I feel I'm not good enough, that's not a fact. That's just a feeling. We have to realize we have this turbulent waves of feelings. If I feel I don't want to live anymore, that's just a feeling. It's not a fact. A little therapy and suddenly you want to live again.

So the idea here is that when you talk about your feelings, if you're a woman, your estrogen will go up, your stress levels go down. If you talk about your feelings for a man, your estrogen levels will go up, your stress will go up. You see, you don't want to talk when you're upset. You want to mull it over and think about it and think about. There's a variety of things you can do, but the first thing you should do is not talk. The second thing you can do is do something that will raise your testosterone. That's the answer. Because when, when you're angry, your testosterone is low. So what can I do to raise my testosterone? A lot of different things. One thing would simply be, go play tennis, go play golf, go make jokes. I could watch the news. Now, these are things we can do also. What men do is they go do porn. But unfortunately, that's. That raises their testosterone, but it crashes back down again. Same thing for a woman. If she's talking about her feelings, she'll feel better. But if the therapist says, yes, that's true. Your husband doesn't love you, your husband is a jerk. You'll never get what you want in your relationship. You made a big mistake marrying this guy. I feel like I made a mistake. Therapist. Yes, I think you made a mistake. I validate your feelings. Then that person feels better that somebody agreed with them and. But then they go back out in the world, their estrogen levels crash again. So therapists have to understand, you want to hear somebody talk about their feelings, but then you want to shift from feelings to facts and recognize, okay, what's the other side of the coin? What's good about the relationship? And second thing is, and how are you contributing to the problem so that you don't feel like you're powerless and that you're a victim. You know, when people go to therapists, if they don't understand how to make relationships work, give you advice on how you can change your attitude, on how you're responsible for the problems, just like your partner is responsible for the problems. There's no such thing as one sided problem. Otherwise you're just affirming that you're a victim. Now, sometimes I will affirm as somebody, as a victim, meaning they should leave this relationship only when their partner has a serious addiction, whether it be a man or a woman. A serious addiction you can't do anything about because their brain has been taken over by a serious addiction. And still, I wouldn't recommend breaking up a family over it. I recommend taking a time out and letting that person go to some sort of therapy focused on overcoming their addiction. And when their addiction is done, come back. And that's a serious addiction. That's not two glasses of wine. Okay? I had women think their husbands are alcoholics because he drinks two glasses of wine or two beers. This is like normal behavior in Europe, you know, but somehow in America you're like, addicted. But I do feel that if you want to grow in passion over a lifetime, men should realize that doing porn is really counterproductive. And for a single woman today, I would suggest that you.

Not only do you want to have monogamy before you have sex with a guy, he also has a commitment to not be doing porn. You really can't grow in the connection if, see, sexual potency builds up in men, and if you just release it by doing porn, you never have that strong potency. To desire your partner, commit to your partner, be present for your partner, not get overreactive to your partner. Because porn lowers your testosterone. You need to have successful testosterone.

I said those two words together, but actually you can say them separately, which is if you feel successful in helping other people other than your partner, that's called having a job. That raises testosterone. If you're successful helping your children in your family, that's going to raise some testosterone, but also some estrogen. And that's why, you know, I know you're staying home with your child. It can be exhausting, more exhausting for a man than a woman. This is like, you know, we have this nonsense of having men compete with women in sports. We can't expect men to compete with their wives when it comes to taking care of children. You need more naps, and she needs naps too, which is why it's good that you're home. But women are designed to actually make 20 times more energy than men if they have a partner. If she has a husband who's helping her, she will have 20 times more energy than him. This is a biological reality. Why does she need a partner? Because a partner Says, I'm not doing it alone. I have help. When a woman feels I have help, her estrogen levels go up. She feels safe. I don't have to do it all myself. I have protection and I have help. Safety is the hormone oxytocin that raises her estrogen. And when her estrogen goes up, her stress levels will go down. And when a woman has lower stress levels, then her body will produce 20 times more energy than a man can. That's just a biological fact.

All right, team, this episode is brought to you by Better Help. Now, obviously, I'm a big advocate of good therapy. And if you are like most people that are out there that have gone to therapy, you will know that a good therapist can help you discover new things about yourself. Learn new things about yourself, whether that's in your relationship or just in your life in general. It might be that you're wanting to learn something professionally or learn something about yourself personally and relationally or within your intimate connection. And that's what really good therapy does. And obviously I've talked about how much I've benefited from a great therapist and great therapists in my life that I have supported me through some really challenging times, but also have really supported me in my journey of self discovery and self understanding. So if you are looking to try out some good therapy, then try BetterHelp. You can go to BetterHelp.com Mantalks and get 10% off of your first month. Again, it's BetterHelp.com Mantalks give it a try. Today, you'll get 10% off of your first month. And they make it so, so, so easy. Yeah, it's been interesting as I've been. My wife and I are both off right now taking care. We have a three and a half year old son and our daughter who's 23 days old now, I think. And I mean, I've been working out religiously. I went to Muay Thai this morning for an hour, you know, working out five, six days a week just to kind of keep the energy levels going. But it's been interesting because she's been very much focused on the kids. And I'm like, look at all the projects there are for me to do around the house. And that, that's been super energizing. But I, I definitely have noticed that, you know, the first couple weeks I felt just drained. And it wasn't just because of the lack of sleep. I could feel the shift in my body, the energetic shift in my body. But I'm curious as this is A more like a social question. I want to come back to the other pieces that we're talking about, but why do you feel like testosterone? Or why do you think that testosterone has become demonized within our culture? I mean, you have people like James Cameron, the former director of Titanic, I don't know if you saw that, but saying that if we could just get rid of testosterone, that the world would be okay. And it's just like, what are you talking about? Like, you have testosterone in you. It's what made you probably have some of the motivation to make the movies that you've done. I don't. I don't get that. So any thoughts on that?

Yeah, of course there's an association with testosterone, with aggression. It's been there a long time ago, just for a brief explanation of something science misled us on. Because bulls. Bulls are highly aggressive animals. If you mess with a bull, you don't live. So interesting. They're very peaceful until you. You step in their way, so to speak. They're territorial, all right, so bulls have big balls, and those balls make big amounts of testosterone. And so they associated testosterone with aggression. But actually, when they did that, they did further research on this, and they found out that it wasn't the levels of testosterone that produced the aggression. So what they found is that if they took off, the reason they associate testosterone with aggression is they cut off the balls, and they found that the bulls were not aggressive. All right, so that's take off of all the men's balls. There's no aggression. But then what they did is they gave those bulls a little testosterone and they were just as aggressive. So it wasn't the high testosterone that causes aggression. It was a little. Even a little would cause aggression. So then we have to look at. Okay, so if it's not testosterone, what is it? Well, now we know the case is whenever a man is aggressive, his estrogen levels are super high. That's what causes aggression in men. That's called fight or flight. And it's not always aggression. It could be running away, it can be faking. It could be folding. Folding is. Is basically anybody who is addicted has given up on certain responsibilities. Procrastinating. You know, we take drugs because we don't do what we're supposed to do, because what we're supposed to do is that we don't have enough confidence for it to feel good. Confidence is so important. This is why we have such a drug addiction problem. In America, 60% of males grow up in a home without a father in the Home. Okay, so you can't have confidence as a male unless you have role models. Now some maybe don't have fathers in the home, but somewhere they found the role model, somebody inspired them, who helped them learn what it's important to be a male. For example, part of being a male for me is, is old fashioned wisdom, which is you old, in the old days you would never hit a woman, right? Everybody knows that you don't hit a woman. Well, part of masculinity is you definitely didn't get angry at a woman because if you hit a woman, you're angry with a woman. So the old idea is you don't go to sleep if you're angry. Now that's a nonsensical piece of advice as well. That was from an age where people could easily deny their feelings. Just pretend like you're not angry. I can't deny my feelings because I'm conscious person. I feel my feelings and I don't let them control me. That's the key here is feel your feelings, don't let them control you. And as far as what will help negative feelings go back into positive feelings, come back to the loving part of you. Because you have to realize even when you have negative emotions, that's like I'm feeling my right foot. I also have a left foot over there. I can choose with skill to choose my positive emotions. And so that's called emotional intelligence, which people are not taught. What we have is a culture that has expanded our awareness such that we can feel our male side and our female side. That's a shift that took place very strongly when I was growing up. I saw it happen in my own life, which is went from the 60s. You know, I'm in a family which is slated to.

Go to war, but I demonstrate against Vietnam. That's anti male. Okay, so I'm, I'm offer peace, love as opposed to going to a war, which I didn't believe in as well. If I believed in a war, I would have gone. But the bottom line, there was sex. You know, you didn't have to wait till you're married to have sex. You can do what you like, do what you enjoy doing. In doing that, I was becoming overly dependent on that freedom to indulge myself that produces estrogen. Whenever you just say, I'm going to do what I like to do, I'm going to do what feels good, I'm going to have a bowl of ice cream, just keep eating it even though it would make me fat, I don't care about being fat. I'm going to just eat my ice cream. If that's my mindset. That's estrogen, complete estrogen. I'm going to say what I feel no matter what. That's estrogen. Now, for women, they could also go, I'm going to say what I feel. And. And that would produce estrogen. They'll feel better, but the person listening to them don't want to be with them anymore. So, you know, this is that whole dating thing and relationship thing where everybody's saying, be authentic. Again, big mistake. You can't just go, say what you feel to somebody and expect them to go, oh, thanks for saying all this negativity about me. You say to your husband, I feel like you don't love me when you say that. Is that a fact? It's a fact that that's what you feel. But is there a reality that he doesn't love you? That's nonsense. Of course he loves you. But you can feel afraid that he doesn't love you. And well, yes, I get that you're feeling afraid, and that makes me compassionate and I want to reassure you that you're loved. But we don't have any emotional intelligence to know the difference between feelings and facts, because we. If you. It's a fact that I feel afraid you don't love me, but it's not a fact when you say, I feel you don't love me. That's just nonsense. That. But you can feel that way, but you're feeling a lie. But we have this sense that feelings are facts. It's like, you know, and I've offended you. And something I do now, that's the big thing is I've done wrong. Well, you took offense at what I said. Okay, it's not like I offended you. I said this. You disagree with it. So you, you take offense at it. But I didn't offend you. You took offense at what I said. And if you look at ancient cultures again in China, I've taught in China for 10 years, 15 years now, actually, there's a great saying, which is to take offense is to offend. That's the most offensive thing you can do. And that shift that over to another thing which is hard for me to understand, is that women consistently based upon psychology, it's the go to phrase, which is when you do that, I feel hurt. Now, yes, things do hurt, but it becomes everything is when you do that, I feel hurt. I feel hurt. And hurt is just another variation of I feel offended by. Instead of. It's painful for me when you say that. But hurt is such a potent word. It just says you're a villain. You know, everything about a man is to say, I want to protect you and you've just completely cut off my ball, so to speak. And then the flip side of this is men are being taught now, oh, honey, you know, when you say that, it hurts my feelings. Really? Your feelings are hurt? You're like four year old boy, eight year old boy. You have to realize when you're feeling hurt, the part of your brain that hurts is about six years old, maybe eight at the most. See, we have different emotions that go with different ages. And to feel hurt, oh my gosh, a woman would feel so unsafe in a relationship. Remember, our job is to help women feel safe and to use the language, oh, I feel hurt. She will immediately go into feeling like a mother. And so many women I counsel will say, I have no sex drive for my husband because I feel like I'm his mother. I have to walk on eggshells. Whatever I say will hurt his feelings. I don't want to hurt his feelings. I don't want him to feel bad. Women should not be afraid of that. Men should be strong. We should not be so vulnerable as that. And then you've got all these single women saying, oh, I want a man who's vulnerable who talks about his feelings. That's why you're single. You know, when you talk to me, talk to my clients of women today, what they're all saying to me is, yeah, my husband, he like talks about his feelings all the time and makes me sick. Makes me feel like I'm his mother, makes me feel responsible for him. I want to. And they, they use this phrase, I want a real man. Well, define what a real man is. The guy who doesn't talk about hurt feelings or feeling sad or mopey. This is insecure. If you've got that inside man, that's your right foot, look at your left foot. You know, find your balance. Suck it up and find the part of you have strength and character and help has a goal. You're going to follow through. I just, I heard RFK say something just recently was such an. He's an amazing man. I know him and personally and. But I was listening to an interview and he said, if I can remember the words, I wanted to remember them.

There's nothing stressful or nothing.

So I'm going to give my version of it. Nothing stressful, but a task to do. Okay. If I'm anxious, if I feel Anxious. The thing I should do is not talk about what I'm afraid of, but plan quietly in my mind, what am I going to do about this? What am I going to do about this? And create a strategy in your mind or talk to somebody and basically. And then if it's not your wife, you can share some of your feelings, but with somebody who's a mentor or somebody you think is an expert, because you're trying to solve the problem. You see, whenever a man is solving a problem or attempting to solve a problem, trying to solve a problem and solving that problem, he makes testosterone. If he's just whining, complaining, moping, indulging a negative emotion, he's not solving anything. Is there any productivity in that? Except therapists that all say, oh, you need to talk about your feelings, talk about your feelings. Now there is a place. Now, I don't want to sound so extreme. There's a place for men to explore their feelings and analyze them. See, analysis, by the way, is a very testosterone producing thing. Sharing feelings with your wife is, has an effect on her where she's going to love you and feel like a mother and not be able to depend on you and want to help you. And then men go, I don't want to hear all that. I don't want all that. Help you set yourself up for it by talking about your problems. And they'll give you advice. You know, one of the things men From Mars is known for is men, when women are talking about feelings, don't give advice. Okay, hear them out, hear them out. Well, women are worse, way worse than men in giving advice. The reason I don't say women don't give advice to a man's feelings is I don't want men to talk about their feelings at all. Women, what I want men to do, what I want women to do is stop telling men what to do. That's the man's complaint. You have to hear what people's issues are. You know, I become so annoyed. She's always telling me I should do this, I shouldn't do that. You know, it was like this one guy who's not exercising. His wife was telling him, you know, you should exercise more, you should exercise more. Well, you're not his coach. He has to hire a coach to tell him, you should exercise more. You can't be a mother to a man. He's going to just resent you and you're going to resent him for having to be his mother. So there's a lot of confusion. So, yes, men do not offer unsolicited advice to women on how they should feel. The reason I focus it that way is because that's what we're doing all the time. When she's unhappy, we want to explain to her why she shouldn't be unhappy. Oh, I'm Mr. Positive here. Oh, let's forget about that. That's disastrous. So we want to sort of control their feelings. Women want to control our behavior. But if a man talks about his feelings, she'll go right into telling him what he should do differently. He should be thinking, what am I going to do differently? Not her owning his life. So if you share feelings with a woman, like, I'm really afraid, I don't know what I'm going to do with this financial decision. I got to figure out this. I got to figure out this. She's going to become your expert helper and say, well, have you considered this? And you should probably do that, but why would you do this? And you're going to be pushing it away. You're not wanting that advice. And the more you don't want that advice, the more she keeps wanting to put it in there until you go, oh, that was such great advice. I'm so grateful for that advice. And you're not grateful for that advice. It's just a trap. How do you avoid all of this? When she asks you questions, if you seem to be upset about something, she says, what are you feeling? Say, well, I'm just thinking about something. And she said, well, what are you thinking about? I want to know. I want to know. I want to know. Oh, women just want to jump in there like a guy wanting to have sex. You know, I want to get in there. You're not ready. I'm not ready to talk about it. Why? Why? You should talk. You should talk. Talking makes you feel so good now. I need to think about it. You know, anytime you're stressed, men, you should not be talking about your feelings, but in your own work. And what I teach men is I think one of the most powerful ways of healing our tendencies to overreact is to recognize that if we are getting angry and all men do this, they do get upset about stuff, and more than they need to. They'll call that an overreaction. Women overreact all the time. But I would never say to a woman, you're overreacting, because that would be pushing her emotions down. I want to say the opposite, which is what helped me understand that better. Tell me what's going on. And in my mind, I Know, this is just. She's talking about what's on her right hand, not what's on her left. She'll get back to that. It's like a circle. Women, if they feel safe, they'll go. They'll circle around and realize they're being so negative. And there's another side of it. It's never all negative. The glass is never all empty unless we interrupt.

The flip side for men is they're going to sense that we're not feeling good. Really? What's going on inside of the woman, she wants assurance everything's okay. If it's financial worry, she needs to understand everything's okay financially. If you're. If you could be a little annoyed and irritated by her. I'm annoyed by my wife. She starts making too many demands of me, I get a little annoyed and irritated. I have to process it, and I have to remember I have to analyze my feelings. Okay, you're just overreacting. What's she really asking for? You don't have to do it. You could do it. Whatever. You have to do a little analysis of what's happening. So analysis is a way to suppress, disconnect from emotions. I said suppress. Because if women analyze, they're suppressing. But for men, if you analyze, you're actually just rebuilding your testosterone so your estrogen can go down. That's the healthy process. This is how psychology started, mainly with men. It was Freud analyzing Everything was just. Why do you think that comes from? And the truth is, if a man, a grown man, is upset, there's only two reasons. One is the Chinese version of explanation. A man should never cry. And this is a man, not a little boy. This is the man. A man should never cry unless his heart is broken. I mean, we're talking about broken, devastated. All right, so that. That's a good reason to cry. And then that means his estrogen levels are off the chart and he needs to go to a therapist. Not his wife, but he needs to go to, ideally, another man, but could be a woman, and just process the pain that he's going through and share that pain. All right, so that's A. But B is to realize that anytime a man has these childlike emotions, you know, people talk about your inner child. I'm totally into that. There's an inner child that anytime I'm angry, anytime I'm sad, anytime I'm afraid, anytime I feel bad, anytime I feel anxious, scared, whatever, all of that, 10% of that is about what's happening right now. And 90% of it is something in my first 12 years, generally speaking, it could be teenagers as well, because. But see, when we're little children up to, up to puberty as males, our estrogen levels are the same as little girls. And then suddenly at puberty, our Testosterone goes up 10 times. And now estrogen is no longer the big deal. It's, you know, all this testosterone, it negates the impact of estrogen on us. And people go, oh, that's terrible. No, that's not terrible at all. This is how we're designed. We have a Y chromosome. It produces. We have all the genes a girl has, okay? As a baby, we're little girls. We all start out the same, but we have this Y chromosome. What that Y chromosome does, it releases 23 genes and the function of those 23 genes, and women do not have them. They. They override.

Certain genes of our female side. So this is what gives rise to the differences between men and women, which also makes men way more dependent on women than women are dependent on men. Women have a male and female side. It's just hard for women. I'm not saying it can't be done, but it's hard for women to be balanced with their male side and female side because they've got all the genes for it. But for men, we can't find that balance without a woman. We need a woman to activate our female genes, but through her, we. We have a certain genes that just neutralize, for example, our ability to produce high levels of estrogen. We can't produce high levels of estrogen without having a woman in our life. There's one exception to this, but it still won't go as high. It's little children, okay? If you're helping little children, you're helping someone in need, someone in pain, you can help them and your estrogen will go up. You'll feel compassion. You know, this is, this great thing that helps open a man's heart is compassion. It can also be empathy with a woman, a woman who needs our help. If you don't have a woman who needs your help and she's not aware that she needs your help, her, your help, then you can't feel love. See.

This is how women unknowingly push men away, is they go, I don't need your help. I don't need you.

The modern trope of, of men aren't needed. I think, I mean, I've talked about how it's like one of the most damaging things, I think, for modern dating and relationships and, you know, like, what I usually say to guys around vulnerability is something along the lines of, women want to know what you're experiencing inside, that you can. That you're aware of it, can communicate it, and that you have a plan for it. And it's funny that whenever I have talked about that openly, the con, the comments are always from women like, yes, this is it. That's what you know. And guys are like, what? I thought women are wanting me to talk about my feelings all the time, you know. And so I think there's a bit of a mismatch. And have you ever. This is a little bit of a. Adjacent question, but have you ever heard of standpoint theory? Have you ever heard of standpoint theory feminism? So it was a, it was a, like a second wave feminist ideology. And the premise of it was that the theory of it is that there's no real objective truth or objective reality out there. That everything is every truth and every experience that we have is through our subjective experience. And so I think in some ways it's the foundation that we see playing out in our modern culture and society. That says, your subjective experience is the God of existence. Right?

Feelings are facts.

Feelings are facts. Right. There's no there out there. There's no objective truth. There's no objective reality. And so it's just that there's my truth and there's your truth and there's no external, external truth. And so I think that's caused some of this erosion into things like biology and certain avenues of science being turned into beliefs by some people. You know, some people say, oh, biology is just a belief. It's like, no, that's an observable, objective truth that we can measure, that you can see in nature, that you can see in biology, that you can see outside of yourself and inside yourself, and yes, yada, yada. And so I don't know any thoughts on that. I know, I just sort of. Open your question.

No, that's the, the whole place we're in now. It's a slow erosion of logic. Erosion of, of, of. I said logic. It's, it's when you get people to believe something that's not true, then what happens is they become dependent on you to know what's true. And there are forces in this world that want people to be dependent on others and control them.

I say demonic forces. I can say evil.

And we can also say very psychologically, there's something called psychopaths. So a psychopath is happy controlling people that, you know, I have no interest in controlling anybody. I just I want people to do what they want. Be happy, fulfill your life. But don't tell me you can control me. You know, I'm. I'm the basic American, don't tread on me. I've got my life, okay? And I'll respect you, you respect me. But I'm not gonna believe what's not true. But as soon as you, as soon as you get people to believe something that's not true, then that person's ability to know what's true is disappears. They become more insecure, they become more dependent. And ironically, their testosterone levels, if they're men, goes down. If women, if their estrogen levels, if they believe what's not true, their estrogen levels go down. So when woman walks around, feel like, oh, I feel like my husband doesn't love me at all, it just keeps knocking down her estrogen levels because that's what she feels. And she thinks it's true because it's a feeling, as opposed to. That's just what I'm feeling. But it's not. Feelings aren't facts. It's not an accurate description of reality. There's something called reality. So I can't just decide that I'm a boy today and a girl tomorrow and I can make up my reality like that. No, it's not true. It's interesting how this, this comes into play at a time where, you know, I think it's when I got to my 30s, I'm in my 70s now, but there was a big idea going around, and actually it was coming in around the turn of the century with a lot of the new thought leaders of the ninth of the 20th century. So 1901, there was a whole group that, you science of mind, you create your reality. Okay? So, yes, we create our reality. Our reality has a massive amount to do with our interpretation of reality. So my interpretation of reality is that opportunities exist in front of me everywhere. Well, that's true. Okay? There's always other opportunities exist. But if I can, if I just decide I can fly and step off a building, I'm going to die. Okay? So there's, there's a meeting place there. But there's a truth to our thoughts precede our reality. So I'm creating my reality. In a sense, that's the more esoteric idea that I'm not against that idea. But when it comes to saying, but I'm creating this physical reality right here by what I'm thinking, it's just not true, okay? There's, and there's certain limitations. I can't I can think I can be successful person, and that helps me to have confidence to be a successful person as long as I realize I'm not as successful as I want to be. You know, people often say, and we're moving into another zone of another book, but it's. People are afraid of saying, I want to be successful because if you say, I want to be successful, you're implying that you're not successful. Well, that's foolishness.

I want to be successful. They think, oh, you're affirming that I. That I'm not successful. No, I'm not successful. And I trust that I can be successful. I'm in the process of becoming successful. I'm reaching out to achieve. I'm a magnet. It. To attract opportunities to me. So your affirmations are such that you're not affirming that which is not true, but in the context of that, you can also do a guided meditation where you can go, okay, what do I want now? You can imagine what you want as if it's happening. That's. That's just imagination. And I think the, the skill and practice of applied imagination is so, so important because most of the time we're imagining things to be worse than they are. Okay? We just. And we all know that whenever you're afraid, you're imagining things to be worse than you are. At one point, I was. I had one source of income, and, and I was. I thought, this is a disaster. I could lose it all. And then I just imagined, well, what if I lost it all? I just said, okay, I'm already afraid it's happening. So let me just imagine I lost it all, and I became calm. And then I realized, okay, so this is what I'm going to do. Plan of action. As soon as I have a plan of action, now my testosterone comes up. But if I imagine myself to be powerless, because regarding this thing that's coming at me, to a certain extent, I am powerless. But all that fear goes away once you're in the situation. It finally happens. Now what am I going to do about it? If you're a man, you take action at that point. So a lot of. A lot of our anxiety is just imagination. And then you take that concept into people's feelings, and they think their feelings are reality rather than feelings are a reaction to your imagination. But what is real is your emotions. And so my work in therapy and with couples, in relationship and with women particularly, and with men, is that if you're upset, you're producing stress hormones. That means If a woman is upset, she's making. She's pushing down emotions, so she needs to explore and express her emotions, then analyze them afterwards. What a man needs to do, he's got his testosterone's down, his estrogen's up, so he's very emotional inside. First, don't speak and don't let those emotions control you in any way. This is why you know one of the most important things, which is if you're afraid, act as if you're not afraid as acting as if. Because if your fear holds you back to the extent you're letting your fear hold you back, you're making that fear a greater reality. You're believing it more and more because it's controlling your actions. So never let your negative emotions control your actions and don't even make your positive emotions control your actions. It's let your logic control your actions, your wisdom control your actions. But particularly when you have negative emotions, you're way off track. I'm a spiritual guy from the point of view of one of the ways our soul communicates to us is when you have a negative emotion. My soul is telling me my thinking is wrong, my thinking is limited. And I have friends, you know, other authors, whatever, who debate me on this. And they say, what about. What about afraid of climbing, jumping off the roof? I said, I'm not afraid of jumping off the roof. I don't want to jump off the roof because there's consequences. There's a very logical reason behind what I'm saying. And if I feel anxious about it, then I should basically not jump off the roof. Not because I'm anxious about it, because it would be stupid for me to jump off the roof. So. And yet there are anxieties that come up. I just don't want to act on those anxieties and realize if I have some phobia or some anxiety, something comes up, it's always linked to some wound in our childhood. And that's not all men are here to do therapy, but some are. Particularly if you're a guy with more emotions and you find these emotions controlling your life, then therapy to control those emotions is really good. But even then, I always have a man look at, okay, so what's the fear now? What's your plan of action? What are you going to do about it? And then now let's feel gratitude for the opportunity to do that. That would be a simple way of dealing with it. But if that didn't work, then I would have them go back to a time where the same feeling they're having now they experienced as a child. I really believe in that. I used to have anxiety before giving talks. You can see I have no anxiety for the last 50, 40 years I've been teaching. But the first 10, until I learned emotional processing, I would have anxiety before a talk. And it seems like everybody walks around saying, I'm afraid all the time. I'm not. I have no fears. I healed it, okay. It came from a little six year old who was abandoned, thought he'd never get back to his mother for a week, which seemed like eternity. And that was a big trauma. And at that time I felt I had to do everything myself. I could not depend on anybody. Well, for a little boy, you need to have a mother, you have a father, so you feel I don't have help. That's a real trauma. And so that was creating anxiety all the time in my life before I was about to do something. You know what's interesting, what kept me going, even though I had anxiety around teaching was I read an interview with John Lennon of the Beatles and he, I know most people don't know that the biggest band in the world, they only toured for three years and they stopped touring after three years. This super famous group.

Because he said we had too much anxiety before performances. You know, it was just the more you have, the more there is to lose. Okay? So they just massive anxiety, throwing up dizziness spells and acting out crazy behavior, just trying to throw off all that energy of anxiety. Well, that helped me going, realizing what the Beatles can be anxious. It doesn't mean you're doing the wrong thing. And what I found the opposite to be true is that when people step out of their comfort zone, which means I have greater confidence, I can be more, I can do more, I can achieve more. You step out of that comfort zone, your fears are going to come up, okay? Because the potential of being more of who you are, okay. It's ironic that when you're starting to feel confident, I can do more and you step out of that box, then people go back in because they're afraid. They let the fears hold them back. And sometimes there's no logical reason for the fear because the fear comes from something in your childhood when you were more open hearted, when you're following your soul's journey and so forth. But that got clamped down. People end up being, you know, passionless in their lives. You got to step out, there's going to be fear. And for men, where you process that fear is don't let it control you. But Have a talk with a therapist or do it, you know, you know, I have techniques for that. Journaling, you know, journaling what your fears and what you're feeling now and then see what happened in your past where you felt that way. And then you go back to that time where you felt that way and you process it. And when I say process it again, that's an hour talk on how to process emotions. People just don't know that how to do it. In short, it's in all of my books, every one of my books explains how do you process emotions? I. There's some people in their books, they also describe it and it's. You take an event and you don't just say what you feel about it. You say the emotion that goes with the feeling like I'm angry or I'm sad, I'm afraid. And you take some time with each of those emotions and also I'm sorry or I feel guilty or I feel bad or I feel scared. So I have this little list of emotions. You go down, you just dip into each one. Then you focus on what it is you're wanting, what you're wishing, what you're needing. Then you ship, you just focused on negative. Now let's go over to positive and you go to the positive, which is what I'm grateful for, what I'm happy about, what I understand, what I realize. And your mind makes sense of the situation. Any, any negative upset isn't. Is a irrational. All negativity in my opinion, is irrational. Now when my wife is upset and she's feeling negative, I don't say you're being irrational. There's no reason to say that.

We all know that's not the, that's not the good response.

That's not the communication skill. It's to go there's. Let's just think of it from a point of view, from one perspective. If I'm reacting to you because I. You remind me of somebody from my past, that's irrational. You don't deserve that. But also it's not irrational from the point of view of meeting you. You remind me of someone from my past and those feelings have come up. That makes sense. Okay, so that's not irrational. So it's a double meaning. So I'm not going to throw on to her that she's being irrational. I'm going to throw under her that she's overreacting. And I'm not going to say she's overreacting because women take that personally. They don't have enough Emotional intelligence in our society to realize all negativity is emotional overreacting. My. I tell all my friends, I tell my wife. I'm in a men's group and I have my wife. Anytime you see me upset, help me. Would you just say, john, you're overreacting? I have enough logic inside of me to know, you're right, I'm overreacting. I'm pissed off about this, but it's my illusion. I'm making things worse than they are. What a nice place to be just to realize life is never as bad as you think it is. That's what we have to realize inside. And yet life is really bad. And horrible things are going on in the world. Terrible things are going on in the world. And thank goodness terrible things aren't happening to me that way. So I have to just look at what's going on in my life so I can. If I look at my life, bad things are happening to me and way more good things are happening to me. And that's the glasses. Everybody's life, the glass is half full and half empty. That's just human existence. There's nobody. You know, you look at somebody who's flying their own jet and they've got all this. You think their life is happy and peaceful, but you have no idea what it takes to have your own jet. And all these companies, you know, people brag, I have 144 companies, my God, I got three companies. It takes too much of my time. So, you know, it's an illusion. Every human being has their suffering, and they also have the antidote to that suffering right next to them. Now, some people are not aware of that antidote to their suffering. That's what we try to teach people. The possibility exists for everybody to experience more happiness, more love. And my specialty that I'm famous for is just understanding how men and women are different. Just knowing that can give you so much optimism about, wow, I can look at all my relationships. I realized that I thought it was all my partner's fault. I didn't realize. If I'm a woman, I would say I didn't realize that I was sabotaging my relationship over and over by. By trying to be more loving and trying to be more attentive and offering help and supporting him. Men can say, I thought I was just trying to make her logically understand life and explain to her there's no reason to be upset. Neither of those things work. I mean, logically speaking, step back. Telling your wife she's wrong is going to make her feel good.

And, and telling your husband what he just did is not good enough is going to make him feel good. No, you don't do that. What you do, sophisticated communication skills, you don't disapprove of a man. If you do keep that to yourself and what you want, you definitely want him to not repeat bad behavior. So what you do is you ask, this guy's going to give his life for you. You have to just know how to ask in a way that he won't feel offended by it. And I have to learn to communicate in a way to my wife where she won't feel hurt by it. And without saying, don't feel hurt, don't say don't feel offended. Just have positive communication with positive communication does not mean denying our wishes and needs. So many of the times men will be like shocked. Their wife says, I'm going to leave you, I'm going to leave, I'm ending this relationship. And he's like, where was the warning? Where was the build up to this? What was happening? Well, I tried to tell you, I tried to tell you, but you didn't communicate it in a way that works for him. To understand the severity of this, you know, women will, they don't just end a relationship on the drop of a dime. You know, they're going to consider it and try to fix it and consider it and try to fix it. It's just every time they consider it, they don't understand the situation correctly. They don't realize their attempts to fix it only make it worse. Here's a simple. You know, I got a million examples. But the meta view is anytime you give more to your partner, if you're a woman and you give more to your partner than you feel you're getting yourself, you're going to get less. That's the law of the universe. If you throw a ball against the wall, it's going to bounce back. If you give more than you're getting, you will resent him. Every time a woman resents, what does she say? I do this for him. I do this and I get nothing back. Well then stop giving so much so you don't feel so much resentment and start learning how to receive more. Giving to a man is not an effective strategy to getting more, it's an effective strategy to get less. Women don't know that. They just don't know that it doesn't make sense to them. Because if I give more to a woman, she'll give more to me because she's a Woman. That's how women are. They'll feel terribly guilty if you say, oh, John, just have. Relax, I'm going to cook you dinner. I'm going to do all these things for you. You know, I feel, I feel, oh, good, I can relax and enjoy this food. I worked hard today. She appreciates what I did, and this is her way of showing her appreciation. We're done. There's no, like, I owe her for making me dinner. And this was the relationship of men and women for the longest time. But now when women are busy working all day long and then when they do stuff in the home, they just resent that you're not doing the same stuff. And we have to all make adjustments for this. And men can make adjustments for this. And men do make adjustments for this. Not always to the expectation of her. But I did a study with a company. They hired me to do a study. And the study was, do men help out in the house? And they all said, men don't help out in the house. It turns out that when men make more money than women, they help out less in the house. When men make equal amounts as a woman, they tend to make equal amount of participation in the house. Then I had to write a whole book. Which one of my books is that in? This is the book why, why Mars and Venus Collide. All this stuff on hormones. Is this book Beyond Mars and Venus? How you know everything's changed. Your first question you asked me. But in why Mars and Venus Collide, I list out there in one of the, like three pages of. I think maybe it was 80 or I like to do 108. 108 things I've done in the last three months for my wife that she would not even remember. You know, it would be. And I don't remember them either because they're so natural for me. There's like, there was a dispute with the neighbor. Well, you should go talk to the neighbor. The Comcast TV went down. I spent six hours trying to get Comcast to fix the damn thing, then set up an appointment, had him come to my house on my day off. Six hours to do that. Six. Do I complain about that? No, because I'm the man. Men don't complain. We do stuff. And women, they don't see. They say, well, you're the husband, you should do that. You know, and then there's. We have to do something to do with our accountant. You know, we have to figure out the laws of something. Well, you talk to the accountants. Then I do that. Do I get Any credit for that? No, because you're the guy. You should do that. There was a leak in the roof, okay? You have to stop the leak in the roof through this rain. Do I. Does she go up and do it? No, I do it. Do I do it with a smile on my face? Yes, because I like to do the dirty jobs, the dangerous jobs, the difficult jobs. That's kind of being a man. But women today don't give you credit for it because they don't have enough estrogen to go, isn't that wonderful that I have a man who does these things for me? They're too concerned with not enough, not enough love, not enough affection, not enough time, not enough time for me. Take the man out of the equation completely, and you'll see a host of all these women saying, I have no time for me. Not enough, not enough, not enough what is going on? And not enough world for women, particularly now, when men are on their female side, they also go into not enough, not enough, not enough. As opposed to these guys, they cruise through life, everything's okay, everything's all right. That used to be the way we work, you know? And then women would say, well, we have problems. Here you go. Really? What's the problem? And then he would address it. But we don't live in that world of emotion and anxiety. When we have plenty of testosterone, it's like, ready to do. I've got my job to do. I'm content with that. We can go to a higher level, by the way, which is. I mean, you're a father. You're totally into raising your child. That's opening up your estrogen. My father didn't have that. My father was. He worked, he came home, and the only emotions he had was angry at the government. Okay? He watched the news and he knew the government. So he would yell at the government. I'm angry at the government, but I don't yell. I had to contain myself, otherwise my wife would think I'm a negative person or some big disaster was happening. I just have my opinions inside. But if something's upsetting me, that means I'm stressed. If I'm stressed and I'm a man, let's just get this, guys. That means my estrogen is too high. The last thing I need to do is talk about it when I'm feeling stressed. What I need to do is something that will allow me to raise my testosterone. And by the way, I love watching the news because I'm sitting there analyzing. Anytime a man is detached and analyzing, he rebuilds his testosterone, it's like watching a football game as well for a man. He'll have lots of emotion as well, which is good. He's having emotion. He's not acting on it. He's not trying to change anybody with it. I mean, there are some guys that are praying, thinking they're going to influence the game. Even though.

It'S basically, you're able to watch your team win, you're associating with them and also you're going, don't do that, don't do that. Don't get them. So you're giving advice and whatever and you're feeling in control to some extent. That's, that's a way for men to build their testosterone. The weaker ways is unless you're, unless.

You'Re a New York jets fan and then you're just screwed no matter what.

It's true. They found this is part of the research. When your team wins, your testosterone goes up. When your team loses, your testosterone goes down. And then there's this whole group of people, I read all the research on this, and then they say yes, but they see there's always a yes, but there is an example of when a man's team wins that their testosterone goes so high and then somebody says something to them which is not positive, then they'll fight. Okay, now what's going on there? So they say, oh, well, your team winning doesn't mean you're going to feel really good. Well, there are what's called insecure men. Insecure men walk around with high levels of estrogen. And then when the game goes up and they have testosterone, all it takes is for somebody to say something mean to them and their estrogen levels will soar. And it's always estrogen going high that causes a man to be aggressive. It's never just the testosterone. However, there's a reality. I teach it. I have taught, I don't anymore teach at San Quentin. A lot of, a lot of high testosterone guys. Okay, so. And they created violent crimes. But see, they were low self esteem guys. Low self esteem means I have high testosterone, but my self esteem is low. So very quickly I go into fight or flight, I feel I have to be in control, otherwise I'm not in control. And so they have fear, so their fear goes up. And when their fear goes up and knocks their testosterone down and that creates aggression. So some men, you know, have a greater tendency toward aggression. They tend to be higher testosterone men, but they're men who have higher estrogen levels than a guy like me. My estrogen levels aren't that high compared to my testosterone. So it's a matter of when estrogen soars because you feel insecure. So that's why it's called fight or flight. It's fear. Now, if you see a man who's angry and you say, what are you feeling? I'm pissed off, I'm angry. And you say, no, you're actually afraid. He doesn't know that. So this is unconscious people, they have no emotional intelligence or less. They're not aware that if you're. Anytime you're angry, you're also afraid. You can't get angry unless you're afraid. If you're, if you're, you know, you see, the. The great examples of this are like the kung fu masters who figured out every move and they're cool, calm and collected while they're being attacked. They don't have any fear. No fear. And they don't. They have full attention. You know, it's not that everybody who's successful is afraid all the time. That's neurotic. You know, we're a neurotic society. There's something called fearlessness. There's no fear. I have no fear. This is like. It's like my friend who, not my friend, but he was friendly towards me, is a lion tamer, okay? He get in a big cage. And I interviewed him. I didn't go into that cage. He said, no, you can't go scary to death. These giant tigers, six of them in the cage, you know. And he says, you go in that cage, if you have any fear, they'll attack me. They smell it just like that. You have to be totally fearless. I said, how are you fearless? He says, I go out there, I always have a raw meat in my hand. That's the reward. The animals need to be rewarded. And I also got a stick, which I hit them on the head with a stick. If they growl at me too much or something, I got. This is your reward. Remind them of the reward. And here's the consequence if you don't do what I say. I said, and they'll do that. And he said, they'll do that because when there were babies, I raised them, okay? So that, that's the whole idea. So, you know, you can't just do that with any tiger. It's because when they were babies, they remember that, you know, when. If you take fleas, for example, and you put them in a jar, 10,000 fleas, little tiny fleas, and put them in a jar, they're flying out. Right. But if you put the top on the jar for three days, take the top off, they'll never fly out. And I feel like we're all fleas now. To a certain extent. They did that shutdown on us. I just don't travel as much. I'm still trying to get myself back to where I was before the shutdown, where I felt so comfortable at home, staying at home. Then I on the computer doing my work, and I just don't want to go out into the world. They're training us to stay put. Whoever evil people are making these stupid decisions that we all follow, the shutdown is that so many people just aren't going out. So many people are out of work. So many people are not motivated. We lost a lot of that. It's amazing how easily we are conditioned by deception.

Yeah. It's like testosterone is almost this. This. I heard somebody say that dopamine is the molecule more. And I think that testosterone is almost like the molecule go. And it allows us to go out into the world. But I want to be mindful of your time because we are. We are over.

Oh, oh, I'm late or something.

I'm so sorry. I was like. I was like. You were just going. And I was like, maybe he doesn't need to go.

Testosterone more. And go, go.

Thank you so much, my friend, for joining me. And we'll put the links to your book in the show note, and I hope to have you back on again soon. Thank you so much, everybody. Check out the link in the show notes.