Robbie Kramer - Does Anyone Benefit From Modern Dating Culture?

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Team. Welcome back to the Man Talk Show. I am, as always, Connor Beaton. And joining me today is Mr. Robbie Kramer. He's a men's dating and lifestyle expert, and he's been guiding men to accomplish their goals with women, health, fitness and career since 2008. He founded Inner Confidence to show men exactly how to create the lifestyle of their dreams in a way that actually works. No quick fixes, no magic pills, no bullshit. So that's what we're going to talk about today. Robbie and I are going to dive into relationships and modern dating. So what are some of the things that you can do to spice up your sex life? What are some of the things that you can do in your dating life? You know, what has, what. What's the real impact of something like dating apps? How have they impacted and affected men and women differently? So we kind of go down the rabbit hole in a few different areas, but this is everything dating and relationship based. We even talk about things like Andrew Tate. So enjoy this conversation and without any further delay, please welcome Robbie Kramer. All right, Robbie, welcome to the Man Talk Show. How you doing?

Thanks. I'm good. Good to be here.

Yeah, man. Yeah. It's good to, good to finally drop in with you. And I feel like we're going to have some good conversations today. I feel like there's a good, good couple topics that we're going to dive into. But before we do that, why don't we start with a question that I ask every single guest that I've ever had on the show in the last six years, which is tell us a story about a defining moment in your life that made you who you are today.

Sure. My story came at a pretty young age. I think I was in seventh grade. And I finally decided to muster up the courage to ask out a girl that I was interested in. But I didn't quite have enough courage to ask her out directly. So I asked her friend to ask her if she would, like, go out with me. That was like the lingo back in the day. And turns out, make a long story short, she was friend zoned me. He'd rather just be friends. And I was, you know, totally embarrassed to go to school the next day. I was in a class in, like, a private school, so it was only like 14 kids in my seventh grade class. And I was like, everyone's going to know everyone. See, this is so embarrassing. You know, I was just like a shell of myself for the next week. And then I spoke to my. It was like a PE coach, but he was like a cool guy that I looked up to as a. As a mentor type of figure. And he's like, dude, why would you ever ask a girl out and risk rejection? Let them ask you out. And I didn't put two and two together. That he was a really good looking guy, athletic, confident, and I was just kind of this slightly chubby, dorky kid. So I took that advice to heart, and I didn't ask another girl out until my senior year of high school. And it was just terrible advice for the wrong person. And it just kind of started me on this unfortunate path of feeling like I wasn't good enough for women. And it just created this whole sort of negative spiral in my mind, which later led to me becoming a dating coach and trying to work all these things out and working on my confidence. But I always find it funny because when I ask my clients, why do you struggle? There's always a similar type of story. And then I see guys that do really well, and it's usually the opposite happened. They just kind of had a good first experience, became quote, unquote, naturals, and then built on that experience to become very confident and very successful. So it's just funny what life can give you.

That's good, man. I appreciate you sharing that. It's funny because, like, I remember bringing flowers. There was this girl in elementary school that I had a crush on named Vanessa. And I totally remember, like, bringing flowers and like, a lot of the girls like, oh, my God, that's so cute. And da da, da. My mom thought it was, you know, the. The best thing ever. And I think I got friend zoned pretty quick, too. I mean, I was in, like, grade six, right? So it's not like, you know, it's not like things are gonna go. Go anywhere fast. But I mean, it's interesting because I think, as I heard you tell your story, I think a lot of men, it's interesting how personal we take rejection from women, you know, and it seems to be a very different thing. Like when a man gets rejected by a woman, it seems to be very different than a woman getting rejected by a man or feeling rejected by a man. Maybe I'm wrong in that, but it does seem like we as men, you know, the amount of men that I know who have these stories of, like, pining after this woman and then getting shut down by her and really taking it personally and having that affect him for years to come, you know, or being in love with a woman and then having her betray him, and then that betrayal becomes Something that he isn't able to overcome for, like, you know, years and years. Why do you feel like it is that we as men take these things so close to heart, that they are so meaningful to us when we get rejected by women? Because a lot of guys are afraid of being rejected by women.

Yeah. You know, I read back in the day that men are actually the more romantic, which seems counterintuitive, Right. You always think of women wanting romance, being romantic, but it's, you know, this guy argued there's actually men who are more romantic. And we do these. These large things just to show our. Our love and our interest. And I think just as guys or masculine energy tends to be a little bit more goal oriented, right? We set a goal we want to execute on that goal. And if it has anything to do with dating or attraction, which, well, for attraction, we can't really control. Right. It's very hard to set a goal for something that you're not in control of. So if we don't get that intended result, we beat ourselves up. We say, you know, we're a loser. We're this. The rejection hurts a lot more. And I think it's more of that masculine energy that's. That's kind of playing into that, if that makes sense.

Yeah. Do you feel like part of it is that in, you know, I look at, like, the animal kingdom as an example, and for the most part, I remember watching there's a show, and you see, like, the. The bird, like, making like, the nest, and it's got all this, like, fancy plumage going on, and he's like, doing this dance to try and get the, you know, the female bird to, like, get to select him. And it seems like within our culture, like, even within human beings, we do that shit all the time. Right. Guys are constantly, like, you know, not in the same ways. Right. We're not like, picking up sticks and, you know, making like, little stick nests and showing off our plumage, but in some ways we do the same thing. And it seems like oftentimes women have this sort of selection of men. And I think that in some ways dating apps have been kind of set up in that way as well, where they sort of prioritize women's mating preferences or selection capacity. So it actually prioritizes, you know, women's ability to choose men. And I'm curious to get your take on that, like, because I think that sometimes we as guys are running around trying to get a woman's attention, trying to get her to choose us, trying to get her, know, doing Everything in our power to show her, like, hey, you know, come look at me or come date me. And I'm wondering if that's half the battle and half the problem and to kind of get your take on that.

Yeah, I agree completely. That is probably more than half the battle or half the problem. And as you said, with these online dating apps, that's kind of like the new version of the bird showing its plumage, right? You've got your, your photos on there. Some guys are posting photos with, you know, crazy lions, Lamborghinis, whatever. Guys feel like they have to have this insane sort of lifestyle or this insane. These photos. A ton of guys are photoshopping their pictures and trying to keep up that way. And unfortunately, the selection bias when it comes to online dating is heavily skewed in favor of women and way more so than in real life. Because just, you know, women don't really have a problem having sex. They can, they can walk out the door, pick a random guy up the street, and even if she's unattractive, most of the guys are going to say yes. That's just kind of the nature of the beast, right? Whereas men, that's, that's not the same situation. So there's way. The signal to noise ratio of messages coming in for women on online dating sites is huge. Like the odds that she's going to read your message or open your message are way, way lower than if you would talk to her in a bar or meet her through your friends or something like that. So they're getting bombarded with attention and love, which is making their sort of relative value go sky high and is making our relative value go, go way down to the bottom. So it creates a totally, you know, messed up dating market. And guys are trying to compete in this dating market and they're dating way below, you know, I think what their true value is where women are, you know, they have the illusion maybe that they're dating above it, but they're all, you know, you don't hear a ton of women saying, oh my God, I love online dating. It's the best thing ever. Right? I think they're also victims of this same problem. And in my opinion, the way to solve it as a man is you, you try to avoid online dating. Now, I'm not saying you don't have an Instagram because Instagram's the biggest online dating site there is. This is not an official dating site, of course. Right. But I wouldn't recommend, you know, pursuing women by online means just because, like I said, Your value is so low compared to a. A different means of meeting them.

I think what's been interesting, like, I remember hanging out with a buddy of mine. This is pre pandemic, and I wasn't single at the time, but he was single. And I think he had, like, really figured some shit out, you know, like, we were. I remember we were at a bar, and there was a woman next to him, and he just started chatting with her, and he's like, oh, are you on Instagram? And she was like, yeah. And he's like, cool. Like, here's my handle. Like, why don't you follow me? And he's. And she was like, okay. And he's like, ah, I sent you a message. And she's like, okay. And he's like, that's the new way to get phone numbers. And I was like, huh, Interesting. And he was like, honestly, the conversation happened over the course of, like, two or three minutes. And, you know, within that two or three minutes, he, you know, they exchanged Instagram accounts, and, you know, she was following him, and they had messaged each other, and, like, that was it. Right? Super, super simple. Low barrier to entry. But I want to come back to the. We'll talk, you know, more about that in a second. But I want to come back to this dating app sort of idea, because I've seen a lot of stuff that's sort of saying that the way that something like Tinder is constructed and built sort of puts this selection into women's hands, and that women are overwhelmingly going after very, like, small subset of men. And then there's all these guys that are trying to get attention, and they're just. And they're just not. And I remember I was reading this on, like, a Reddit platform that sort of broke down different Tinder profiles. Because you can, like, get all your data from Tinder, apparently. I don't know. I've never had a profile, but. And it sort of showed, like, an average, you know, an average woman's profile and an average guy's profile, and the amount of attention that she was getting versus the amount of attention that the man was getting is crazy. Like, I mean, you know, he's like, swiping right, like a hundred thousand times over the course of the year and getting very little responses. Messages that are actually leading to any sort of dates or relationships or sexual encounters where the woman is having a very different experience.

Right.

Where she's able to say no to a lot more. And. Yeah. So I'm just wondering if you can comment on that like, what is it about women's selection preferences that maybe is helpful for us as men to know or not helpful for us as men to know or what should we be taking into the equation?

So height matters a ridiculous amount online. It matters more than, you know, how good looking you are, per se. Yeah, right.

I've noticed a lot of the profiles being like, you know, six, six foot or taller, you know, or like, don't message me if you're not six footed. It's like, right, really interested. Like I can't imagine it being okay for dudes to have profiles being like 125 pounds or less. You know, it'd be like.

Like we would just get lit up, you know, we just get roasted for that shit. But, but for whatever reason. Yeah. It seems to be very common that a lot of women are like, how tall are you?

Well, you know, women want to be taller or shorter than their man when they're wearing 4 inch or 5 inch heels. Right. Or at least 3 inch heels. So the average male height's like 5, 8. And you know, if the average woman height is, I don't, I don't know what is 5, 4, 5 5, you know, and they're all saying, I want a guy who's at least 5 10. Now you're already in that top, you know, standard deviation of height and, or at least one standard deviation above normal. And you know, they'll just, they'll, they'll say right in their profile like, I'm going to weed out everyone of this, I'm going to weed out everyone of that. What happens when, you know, because a decision of attraction isn't a logical decision, we're not walking around saying, I'm going to be attracted to that person. Neither are women. Right? But when you're using online dating, you're literally going through filters and saying, I only want someone who's this, this, this and this. But that doesn't happen in real life, right. She, Most women want to feel small in a man's arms. And they can feel small and they can feel protected with a guy who is shorter if he makes them feel that way. But they don't realize that. So online they're just like, no, I'm not going after this. I have no interest in the guy who's 59 because I'm, I'm 5 7. I want to wear heels. And it just creates this unrealistic, very superficial environment that isn't natural. And men are getting weeded out for these height reasons. They're getting weeded out for other silly stuff like maybe they have the wrong hair color, eye color, just preferences, right? Women will have a type just like we have a type. And if he's not in that type, I'm not interested. But in real life, you hear stories all the time of women saying, oh, he totally wasn't my type, but I fell in love with him. He's my soulmate, or whatever they say, right? And this just, you know, with, with online dating, women have the, the luxury of swiping no on almost everyone because they're getting bombarded with messages. You know, you could, as a beautiful woman, you can't even go through all your beautiful messages. You just get, you just don't have time. And as a guy, you can't swipe right on enough of them. And there's also, you know, the algorithms at play. You know, if you swipe right on too many profiles, it'll kill your profile and label you as unattractive. Or if you're not getting enough swipes, it can kill your profile. So I tell a lot of guys if they're not getting luck, they need to cancel their account and start over.

Interesting.

Yeah.

I remember when I was years ago, I worked for Apple. I remember in the break room there'd be this guy who would sit in there on lunch break and he would just swipe right to 90% of the profiles that you saw. And I was like, dude, I don't think that that's going to work well. And he's like, well, it's just law of averages. And I was like, yeah, still, I don't know if that's gonna, you know, it didn't actually work out for him. Like he really struggled on the, on the dating apps. But anyway, so let's just close off the loop on this dating app conversation because I feel like that could be a whole episode in itself if a man is going to use dating apps, right? If he's just like, I'm going to hedge my bets, just like in my financial portfolio, 10% of my time is going to be spent on dating apps. What do you say to a man who has a dating profile and is on dating apps and he's going to spend some of his time and energy there. How does he best set himself up to be successful based on what he's looking for, whether that's short term or long term relationships?

Well, I tell him if he's under 5 8, he shouldn't waste his time. And even I'm 510 and I'm barely. When I was single. I was barely doing okay on online dating and I just stopped using it because it just wasn't effective for me because of my height. So, you know, if you're over six foot, you put that on your profile, you know, 6162, you're going to have some success. Obviously your pictures.

How tall are you?

I'm like 616 2.

Yeah. Nice. So yeah, you're good. But you're married obviously would have been.

Killing it in the, in the dating app game.

Right. So your photos have to be top notch. You know, what you really say on your profile? I don't think matters a whole lot as long as you don't say something incredibly douchey. But it's all about your photos, your height and then not wasting too much time. So my advice to guys is don't swipe on every profile. Cause it'll kill your profile. But also don't actually look at someone's profile because you're just wasting your time. Like the odds of you getting a swipe back are probably pretty low. So make a very first impression. Swipe. If she looks good, swipe right. Don't dig any further until she actually matches with you. And then my advice is if you're trying to craft out like a flirtatious personal message for every woman you match with, you're just totally wasting your time. So I have a Tinder guide that I like, a role play that I tell all my clients to follow, which is like a standard sort of cut and paste sort of thing that you can as the conversation as she responds and it gets more personal, then obviously you spend a little bit more time. But you're not wasting your time trying to, trying to think of new creative things to say because you know, ain't nobody got time for that. It's just ridiculous. If you're trying to do that and have any sort of like career or social life besides using online dating. And then obviously like, you know, from there you have to have a good Instagram because just because you're getting some good matches, like there's a high chance that she looks nothing like her photos anymore. They're old. So you need to have a good filtration process once you get, you know, qualified leads.

It's crazy. It's. I mean, honestly, it's like, it's. I haven't been single in a very long time. I've been, you know, married for a number of years now. I mean, number of years for four years. But I've been with my wife, you know, we've been together for six years and I never did the Tinder thing. And lucky you. I mean.

How'd you meet your wife, by the way?

We met at a. Speaking at a conference together. So we had a mutual best friend. So she. One of my close friends. He's in the sort of same space that we are. My wife's a licensed marriage and family therapist, and so he'd invited her to come and speak at a conference. We met there. The rest is sort of history.

And that's the best way to meet, you know, through your warm market. That's a, that's a warm qualified lead. Right. Like, I speak in terms of kind of like marketing funnels. When I compare your dating life, you know, you have your cold leads, warm leads, you got top of the funnel. And if you approach your dating life like that, it's the most effective and efficient way to, to make yourself, you know, your own best viable product, as they say. And there's no better way than through your, your friends and family to, to meet a woman. And there's no worse way than online dating. Then you've got, you know, meeting women through just randomly, like seeing them during the day or meeting them at some sort of social venue like a nightclub or a bar. Those are still better than online. So.

Yeah, I mean, I'm. I'm very grateful that I don't. I never had to go really through. I mean, I think I did like plenty of fish when it first came out, you know, so long ago. But I'm very grateful that I haven't had to go through the whole shit show that is modern dating, you know, especially online dating right now. So. Okay, let's. Let's shift gears a little bit. And I like that analogy. It feels a little almost like sad and depressing though, right, that, that, you know, because the way you're talking about it is like, yeah, that's pretty accurate. You know, you've got your cold leads, you got your warm leads. It's like. But that's kind of what dating has turned into. It's been commodified. It's been turned into something that's. That truly is like a market. And there's all these different platforms that are, that are treating it like that because it seems to have turned into such a challenging environment of competition. Yeah. So I guess that let's just segue into. One of the things that I wanted to talk about is how if at all, has modern dating changed post pandemic? How does the dating environment look? Maybe differently than it did three. Three years ago. Two. Three years ago, yeah.

So depending on where you are, especially in America, I was living in Ukraine during the pandemic, which was an amazing place to be. I left, obviously, right before the war, but during the pandemic, most things were open. You could call a restaurant ahead of time and just, you know, they'd be open with the lights off in the front. You could go and use the back door. And so my. And I was single during that time. All the nightclubs were closed, so I was throwing events at my house. An amazing place to be. But the US Was quite the opposite. Most of my clients that were out there sort of meeting women in social venues or even just walking up to them in the broad daylight on the sidewalk, they couldn't do that anymore. And the whole, you know, the whole kind of dating world shut down or moved totally online. And that's really what's happened, is everything's just moved more online. You know, before, it was really kind of weird to, like, call a girl or ask her to do a FaceTime before a date, whereas now it's kind of like the new norm. So that's even made it. It's even removed more of the personalization, you know, as we're talking about. It went even more in that direction, which I think is a bad thing. But, you know, the good news is there's so many guys struggling now that if you do a few things to improve your own way of approaching the situation, it's easier to succeed. And also, depending on the lifestyle you want to create, you see guys now that are like Dan Bazerian, for example, or these other sort of influencers, which. There's a small subset of guys dating a huge amount of beautiful women. So you can look at that and say, this is awful. How am I supposed to compete? Or you can look at that as an opportunity. Be like, well, if I want to have that crazy lifestyle, I actually can. I can do that. Or I can live out all these crazy sort of ideas in my head that if I want to, that's how. That's what I tell my clients. If they're really negative, and they're like, oh, this sucks. I can't do anything. I'm like, well, there's a bright side to it as well, if you're willing to put in the hard work.

Yeah, I mean, it's. It's interesting because it doesn't seem like the current dating market is beneficial for anybody, men or women alike. And I just want to make that. Just want to make that clear? Like, you know, even when I was talking before about, I don't want the listeners to get a wrong idea that when I'm saying that dating apps are leaning towards women's selection preferences, I'm not saying that that is benefiting them.

Yeah, it's not.

That's the fucked up thing, right? It's like no one's really benefiting from what's happening right now. It seems to be a bit of a. A bit of a shit show where, like, I've been on a few big women's podcasts and their biggest gripe and complaint is dating apps, you know, is because what ends up happening is a ton of work for them. They have to weed through, you know, just so many messages and then on the other side. So, I mean, this is good context for the guys to have as well, I think that are. That are out there dating and using these, you know, also the guys that they're sometimes chasing are, are having a little bit of a reverse issue, right, where they have a lot of women, right, that are wanting their attention, that are wanting their time. And so for a woman to then lock down that guy, this is, I think, what the Internet right now is referring to as a high value man, right? If she's wanting to lock down that guy, then she's having to do something sort of special. And I think that a lot of men right now are trying to pursue that, like, well, I'll become a high value man. I'll build myself into something that she can't look away from. So can you just touch on what that is for you, what it means? You know, is it. Is there merit in a man working on himself or working on certain areas of himself to become more attractive to women? Are there certain things that we need to focus in on that are going to help make us more attractive to potential partners?

Yeah, for sure. I mean, that's. That was the journey that I went on from the age of about 23, and I'm still on it. I got involved in personal growth when I first learned about these underground pickup artists teaching themselves to be better with women. I was a dork. And I looked at some of the content and I was like, okay, this is weird. These guys are running around in silly hats and this and that and the other, but I'm like, oh, well, at least they're working on themselves and improving. And I was never a fan of pickup or anything like that. I always stayed away from it. But. But it did kind of get me into personal growth and it got Me thinking about how I can be more attractive, how I can present myself better. And that was a really important thing because prior to that, you know, I was just a dude in his early 20s, not really thinking about it. Right. It's not like a normal, you know, like, my whole idea was women are attracted to me based on how I look, and I'm attracted to them based on how they look. But that's not really the case. It's. There's tons of other factors involved, especially as we get a little bit older. And, you know, you. You factor in your career potential, you factor in your confidence. The dating market changes as you. As you get out of high school and college. And I. I tell every guy, like, if they want. Every guy says that, you know, I want a 10, or I want to date, you know, a woman who's amazing. I'm like, well, are you a 10? You know, can you look in the mirror and say, am I at that same relative value as the woman that I want? If the answer is no, then you have, you know, why? Why is it no? What aren't you doing? Right? If you're overweight and you're upset about that, like, get in the gym, you know, lose some weight. That was a big thing for me, is I was always a little bit chubby, and I never really dealt with it head on. And I just figured, oh, a woman who really doesn't care about that, a good woman won't care about that. You know, the cognitive dissonance and that.

Totally.

Like, until I lost weight in my late 20s, I really struggled. And then when I did lose that weight and dropped a story, because you can do well if you're overweight, as long as you don't care about it, right? If you're confident, it doesn't bother you, you can do great. But it really bothered me. So it was something that I needed to change. And I improved my fashion. I worked a lot on my just my conversation skills, my ability to quarterback a date, because I had no idea what I was doing on dates. I'd get a date here and there, but I wouldn't really think about what to actually do. Should I take her to dinner? Should I go to a movie? Should I do these sort of stereotypical things? Should I take her to a nice sporting event? And I didn't know really how any of that process worked, so I was just fumbling around. And then once I kind of got those answers and learned from a lot of people and learned from a lot of mentors who were succeeding in it changed everything. And I felt way more in control. I had power to feel like I could date who I wanted. And it made me more confident in every area of life in my career and how I spoke to other guys. I got into martial arts and learned how to protect myself. So it was a really cool journey of improving myself, which led to more confidence, which obviously spilled over, like I said, into other areas. And I recommend that there's no reason for a guy to not sort of do that. I think women, that's kind of built in for women, I feel like, because at a, you know, at a young age they're talking to each other about these sort of things. But I feel like guys, during high school or college, we're not really talking about our value. We're just like playing sports together or working together, right. We're not having these conversations. So now at least I feel like that conversation is happening a lot more right on the Internet. You're going to see it and you're going to be present. Am I an incel. Am I high value? Right. You see all this other crazy stuff happening and how it relates to two guys, you know, their sexual ability, their ability to like, create a sexual life for themselves. So I'm not sure if that answers your question, but I feel like at least that post pandemic has these conversations, I think move. Move us in the right direction of improving.

Yeah, I think a lot of people had, you know, have had more time on the Internet to see different ideas of what a quote unquote, high value man should be, you know, or what it looks like or why it's important. And so, you know, I think a lot of men have seen different forms of content now all saying sort of a similar thing, which is the more that you, the more that you develop yourself, you're. You develop your body, develop your mind, you develop your skill sets, you develop your capabilities and your competencies in different areas that you give a shit about. The more attraction you will elicit from a woman, you know, the more that she'll. I mean, maybe not all women or even necessarily the right women, but the, the more that you'll actually be attractive to women because there's. There is a natural confidence that comes out of doing some of those things, you know, and it's funny because I kind of. I like fell on the other side. Like I was like the goofball who, you know, was just able to like, attract women with my sort of natural idiocy, I think, as a, as a young man, you know, Riding, Riding a motorcycle. I was like the classic enigma. Like, I think I was very mysterious to women because I like, I did, I did. I did yoga and I sang opera.

And rode a motorcycle.

Of. Yeah, that's. I mean, there was this funny standup bit by a guy saying like, what women want. And you know, he did this whole sort of thing. And then at the end is they want a gay football coach, which is like the opposite polarity of like, you know, you've got this guy who's in touch and he's gay. And then you got a yelling and screaming football coach, which is like the motorcycle riding yogi. So you nailed it.

That's it. I nailed it. I didn't even know I was ahead of the game before, before the game was even developed yet, you know. But yeah, I mean, it's funny because, like, as I look back, my. I've been developing this relationship course for men and I've been sort of like looking back at like what actually made me successful, not just in relationships, but in leading up to relationships. And it's been funny how, you know, some of it was just an accident, you know, just like an accident of like who I was and my sort of relentlessness to be curious about different aspects of my life, but also wanting to develop certain parts of myself, like being, being really dedicated to my body, you know, wanting to be in good shape, wanting to be healthy, wanting to be flexible and like be in tune with my body. That, that's always been something that's been really, really important to me. It doesn't mean that it's always been there 100%, but it's been important to me. And so there's been different vehicles of that and I think that that's, you know, that's stood the test. But anyway, I don't want to get too off topic. I want to come back to. So we've talked about, post pandemic, we've talked about developing high value within yourself as a man. And I think that there's some basic things that you've, you know, you've laid out that guys can, that can, you know, that can kind of tackle. Tell me a little bit about attraction within a relationship, right? So you start dating, maybe you get into a relationship and you know, you're six months in, you're 12 months in, you're a year and a half in. How do you maintain that, that attraction point? Because I've heard so many different things. Like there's just, there's like so many different answers to this question. I feel, and I'm curious to get your thoughts on how do you maintain attraction, a long term relationship?

Well, that's, I just got married and I've been. Congrats, thank you. You know, and I've been with my wife for a little over two years since we, you know, since we first met. And I've had other, you know, three year relationships in the past and luckily I've never been in a situation where I was just like kind of dumped high and dry, where the attraction died and a woman left me because, or she cheated on me because I was just no longer attracted to her. And, and the way that I've kind of always navigated that was I always dated my girlfriend or now I date my wife. Like I, we go on dates, I make sure to do the things that attracted her in the first place and I make sure that I'm the same attractive guy who she met in the beginning. I'm always someone who's growing and pushing myself to be better. And I think some guys, they feel like, oh, I got the girl, now I can relax and just kind of be lazy and I've got the ring on the finger so she can't leave me. And that's, that's when you get in trouble, right? You let your guard down, let yourself slip, you start drinking too many beers, you develop a gut, but you're, you're no longer kind of creating any sort of mystery around who you are. And then she's sitting on Instagram and seeing all these other guys of high value and thinking, did I settle? What am I doing?

You know, eight packs, they have, they have fucking eight packs now. You know, it's just like, it's like, how many abs do you actually have? It's just insane.

Yeah. And everyone's on testosterone replacement therapy. You know, you gotta keep up, right? Like, you don't have the eight pack, you know, the Ferrari. I mean, obviously I'm kidding around, but if you find a toxic woman as well, and you know, there's a lot of, a lot of toxicity conversations going on, right? Or if you get into a relationship with a woman who, you know, you, you don't have some of these, you don't have the dating experience to understand, or you didn't date her long enough to really understand who she is. Cause I feel like you don't really find out who a person really is until at least two, the one or two year mark. Like if you jump in a relationship too soon and she just didn't want the relationship and you Know, she was just kind of playing a game and. And then she got bored. And really, no fault of you, but more so that she wasn't really in tune with what she wanted, then you can get left totally in the dust. And that happened to me a few times. Luckily, I was never married or engaged in those situations. But, you know, sleeping with a woman that I was really attracted to, she had all these red flags. I got way too invested too early and my over investment led to her pulling back a little bit. And then I was left in a situation where she hooked up with a friend at Burning man or this happened or that happened. Then I was feeling devastated and having three months to get over this painful breakup. I see that happening all the time. Guys developing what they kind of call oneitis, or they severely over invest in a woman because she looks really hot or she has this thing that they really like and they don't see the forest for the trees or they just.

Don'T have anything else going on outside of the relationship. I see that happening as well.

Right. That's a huge one. They make her the priority in their life. They make her her purpose or pleasing her, making sure that she's like loving them back. And that's a huge problem as well.

Yeah. And that seems like that's. Oddly enough, that's part of the like, attraction diminishment in the long term relationship is like the more focus, the more weight and gravity that you put on her as being your source of happiness, of joy, of everything that. That seems to reduce attraction as well.

Yes.

Okay. So some of the things that guys can do to elevate attraction within the relationship is just recapping that. I would love for you to dig into this a little more. So part of it is, you know, maintain your own body. Right. Maintain your own mind. Do the things that you ultimately want to be doing so that you're. That you are developing yourself into the type of man that you want to be, that you have respect for yourself. Right. I see a lot of guys that are trying to fix the relationship and get something to happen in the relationship, but they haven't been doing anything for themselves. Right. They're not journaling, they're not going to the gym, they're not, you know, doing yoga or breath work or like any of those things. And they're just like, the relationship should change and she should, she should fix this. And it's like, well, good luck. Yeah, but what are, what are some of the other things I think guys love generally things to do so what are some of the things that a man can do in his relationship if he's noticed that the attraction started to dwindle or maybe it's really dulled over the last couple years?

Yeah. Well, the main thing, like you pointed out, just to reiterate, is make sure she's not your purpose. Make sure you don't get obsessed over making her happy, because it's going to have the opposite effect, Right? And it's important that you have hobbies and that you have things that you like to do. And if you're looking for something that can maybe spark attraction more or. Or help to bring you guys closer, be, like, doing some new cool activity together that you can kind of consistently do can make a big difference. Like, if you just find that you guys just kind of are in this routine, you just go home, you watch tv. Tv. Like, you can try, like, taking dance classes together. Hopefully you don't completely suck, but. Because that might make you look a little bit bad. But you could take a couple of dance classes on your own first and then bring her in because of, like, she didn't know you were this, like, decent salsa dancer. And you take her out for a salsa class, and you're spinning around like, she's gonna be like, oh, I didn't see this part of this guy before. Like, this is cool. One thing I do a lot with my wife is we go golfing a lot. And that's something. Just an awesome couples experience that you could do. Rock climbing is another great one because it gets you in shape. It really tones your body. It's a masculine, sort of athletic thing, and women love it, too. It's super popular. So finding more activities you can kind of do together and just being more playful and flirty in general. Typically, if my wife asks me for something, I usually jokingly say no. I say, can you hand me that piece of paper? No, like, just silly little things like that to spark attraction, like teasing, being playful, making fun of them. And, you know, another thing that I do to just to kind of keep the, I don't know, say, romance alive or whatever. But, like, our anniversary is August 5th. That was like our. Our wedding anniversary, but also our dating anniversary. So I always bring her flowers on that day. And flowers are kind of a weird thing because, like, I tell my clients, never buy a girl flowers until you're, like, actually sleeping with her. But once you are just doing some things over and over that, like flowers or like gifts, you know that people talk about the five love languages and just learning what she needs and being able to provide that, you know, if she's a big, physical touch person. Making sure you're providing that physical touch or that quality time or the words of affirmation. Right. Those things can make a difference. But the biggest thing, like, if you're losing attraction and you get, you know, extremely, like, worried about that, or it kind of leaks over in the bedroom. I've made the mistake before of kind of, like, trying to talk to my girlfriend about it, like, she was my therapist, and that definitely did not work. So talking to her.

Can you say more about that?

Yeah, like, she. I felt like she wasn't as interested in sex. This was a girlfriend back in the day. And I never had that happen before where I was dating a woman and she started, like, kind of pulling away physically. And that really kind of, like, shattered my confidence. I didn't know what to do. And I felt like the more I sought her out for sex, the more she pulled away from sex. And rather than speaking to, you know, I spoke to a buddy about it, and he was just like, oh, if that's happening, like, you're dead. You're screwed. You're. You're done. And he.

Super helpful.

Yeah, he was right. But I think I exacerbated the problem by going about it the wrong way after that. Right. That certainly wasn't the best advice. And I ended up speaking to some therapists about it and some other experts about it later who had much better ways that they could have handled it. But what I did is I just kind of confronted her about it, and that just kind of drew more attention to the problem and made it worse and made it more of, like, a thing. So it gave me more anxiety to, like, try to initiate sex. It got to the point where I just felt like if I initiated sex, I would get rejected. So I was just waiting around, hoping she would initiate sex. But that would only happen, like, once a week or once every 10 days, which wasn't enough for me. And like I said, the more I sort of, like, sought her as my. You know, therapy means to conquer that or to solve it, the worse it got. And, you know, we ended up breaking up. So I tell my clients all the time, if that sort of thing happens, make sure you don't necessarily talk to her about that or you talk to her about it in a way that doesn't create a bigger problem. You know, that's one example. But guys can do it with other things, too. It's like, you know, instead of approaching a problem from a way of how can we solve it. You start pointing fingers and that can just lead to more problems down the road. Of course.

Yeah. I think a lot of guys, I mean a lot of the men that I've worked with over the years, when that starts to happen and their wife or the girlfriend starts to pull away, they can collapse into like a complain or criticize to try and get their way back into like sexual frequency, right? Which is really interesting. It's like what happens in our brains. It's like that, that's a good idea, right? It's complaining about it, you know, it's like, it's like, whoa, we're not having sex. Like we've only had sex once in the last month. And it's like what's, what's going on and how come you don't want to and da da, da, da. And for whatever reason, and it's because I think for a lot of us guys, our ego gets hit, right? Like we take it personally. We feel like there's something wrong with us that, you know, that attraction point is, I think we often feel like there's something that we've done in order to cause this, which might be true, right. There might be something that we've actually done. You know, maybe we've been too needy or been distant or we haven't checked in on what she's going through or who knows, right. I mean this could be any number of things. But I appreciate what you're saying in the sense that, you know, if you're going to bring it to her, there's an effective and a very ineffective way. And most of the ways are probably going to be ineffective. So like go seek outside counsel first I think is what I'm really hearing.

But yeah, because it's very difficult and the way you said it is exactly right. It's very difficult to approach that from a non needy place. And being needy is the attraction killer, right. And, and there's no way to like logic your way into sexual attraction, right? Like it just doesn't work. So approaching that from a place of like confidence and non neediness, when you're feeling needy and you're feeling like it's a big issue is almost impossible. So you got to sort that out on your own first and then find a way to, to fix it.

Yeah. So good. Well, we got a little bit of time left and this is a, an interesting conversation that I've, I've actually been wanting to tackle over the last little while. And you're the, you know, you're the first person on the podcast that I feel like I can have this conversation with.

Cool.

Andrew Tate. His just name has just been, like, everywhere. And I've been getting dms about him on Instagram and messages and like, guys in my membership have been asking me, like, what do you think about this guy and why get banned from Instagram? And why is it that from your perspective? Because I. I was never part of the pickup thing. Like, I just never. I never got into it. I. I didn't need to as. Not in like a. I'm not saying that in like a superior way. Right. Like, by no means. Like I said, my idiocy managed me to, you know, be successful with women in my youth. There was no skill involved. It was just. It was just sort of.

You kind of became like a natural. Like, I. Yeah, like, I like to say, either guys, you know, they. They become a natural based on things that they've done that work or they struggle and then they need to actually work on it.

So, yeah, and so, yeah, I became a natural just by happenstance and then. But it's been interesting being in this space and seeing and not just Andrew Tate, but all of these sort of other voices that are speaking about relationships and about men and women. And a lot of younger guys seem to be tuning in. And I'm curious to get your thoughts on why that is less about what he's saying as gospel or anything like that, but do you think that young men today are lost? Do you think that they don't have proper mentors and guides?

Why do you feel like it is that people like Dan Balzerian and Andrew Tate have just sort of like exploded on the Internet. And, I mean, Dan's been around for a long time, but somebody like Andrew Tate, I mean, he came out of nowhere and then was just everywhere all the time. Right, so I'm curious to get your thoughts because you've also been in this space for quite a while.

Yeah, well, we kind of live in a. In a weird time where attention is currency, you know, creating a lot of noise, whether that's negative or positive, making a huge scene gets eyeballs and gets you paid, right? So there's an incentive to just be as out there insane as you possibly can if you have the courage to do that. You know, most of us have. Have some built in, sort of, you know, moral. Moral compass, shame, you know, embarrassment. We have these, you know, this lack of social freedom, as I call it, right. Like someone who just doesn't give a shit and their ability to you know, just be like, whatever. I know this is crazy, but I'm going to do it and I'm going to get paid to do it. Like, if you can do that, it's going to work. And like, there's a guy who, I think his name is two turnt. Tony is like this big Instagram dude and he, he just goes to golf courses and makes videos of him, like crashing, crashing golf carts, jumping off the cart in the lake, like just doing wild shit. He's carrying around a duck with him all the time and he's, you know, he's got millions and millions of subs on TikTok and golf course are like, you, you're not coming in and we know what you're going to do. Because he's getting paid so much money to go and just vandalize property, right? So as like a young kid, you're like, well, what should I be when I grow up? I guess I should go and be like two turned Andrew or be like Andrew Tate or like, it's got a mess with like a 12 or 13 year old dude. Like, what do you do in that situation? Like, when I grew up, I was looking up to my dad, who's a doctor. I was looking up to other people who were like, in society, someone who's really making a difference, giving back. But now we're just bombarded with, with people who are making a lot of noise and that's gotta fuck with our moral structure, our compass, you know. One thing I do tell my clients is like, if you want to succeed with women, like, you do need to get over a lot of your fears of like, being too nice or, you know, you need to have some courage. So I recommend that guys go out and sort of do some social freedom exercises in public. Do things that are a little bit embarrassing, like lay on a sidewalk in a crowded place for a little too long and just get over some of their social fears so they can get comfortable with rejection. Because if you're so afraid of rejection, if you're so afraid of being judged, then you're never going to have any courage to do anything. You're never going to approach the woman that you see. You're never going to take any risks. But then you can also take it to the other extreme, like Andrew Tate, and just be like a wild example of someone who's, I'm going to say whatever the fuck I want and do whatever I want. Like, and you're, you know, you could make a living from that too. So it's just A weird time.

Yeah, it's a very, very strange, Very, very strange place to be in, in time within our culture and our society. And there's more in that conversation. I'm sure that we could go down. I appreciate your. Your insight though, today in our conversation around dating, around relationships, you know, for, for men in general in terms of how they can approach themselves specifically within the context of relationship. Any final parting words for the men that are. That are listening and where can they follow along with your. Your work and your journey?

Sure. You know, if you're listening to this and you know, there's some things you could do to kind of improve your dating life. I've mapped out all of that and given guys a bunch of tools where they. How to succeed on Tinder without wasting your time. How to navigate a first date, how to understand texting and electronic communication so you're not, know, getting flaked on and, and wasting all of your time and beating your head against the wall.

Just gifts. Non stop gifts, right?

I'd be the worst, Honestly, I'd be the worst. I'd be the worst. I'd be such a shit show if I was in the dating market right now.

People like, what is this guy doing?

Be funny. You should start a TikTok.

Yeah, there you go. Like shit not to do in modern dating.

Right. So, yeah, if guys are struggling with that, I also have a podcast and I'd love for you to come on and speak on my podcast as well, Connor. It's the Leverage podcast. So if you could just go to my site, it's innerconfidence.com. you can find a lot of that content to help with your own dating life. And check out my podcast where I talk about a lot of similar issues and how guys can really, you know, like, like we said, become higher status, but also do that without kind of losing track of what's important. Right. If you're just trying to become like a crazy influencer. Crazy. I mean, I'm not really gonna. Those guys aren't ever gonna listen to me anyway, so it doesn't matter. But you know, how to, how to become the best version of yourself is kind of what I'm about and growing that inner confidence. So, you know, come check me out. Yeah.

Awesome, man. Well, we'll have the links to that in the show notes for everyone that is wanting to go follow along. Don't forget to share this episode. Man it forward with somebody that you know will be interested in this content will get something out of it or that you think could benefit from it. And don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review at some point. And until next week, this is Connor Beaton signing off. Thanks for joining us today.