Top Psychotherapist: We Are Teaching AI How To Control Us! - Matthias Barker

A human cannot beat a computer in chess. The best players we have can think 100, 200 moves ahead, but a computer can think millions of moves ahead. I just think that, what if, like, Facebook ads got that good? What if an AI model got that good, and this therapy bot that you're talking to knew how to sway you politically, knew how to sway you religiously? If we start giving these language models access to tens of thousands of people's mental health information, it seems very likely that it could do a better job of convincing you of things than you really are equipped to rebut. A lot like the chess game, but with ideas. And so I got freaked out by that.

My wife and I got brought in to a tech company that wanted to build an AI therapy. But somebody's going to do this. Why not have a hand in making sure it's done correctly? And kind of got to the point where I was like, well, I don't know if this can be done correctly.

Oh, the problem is not that it's going to be done well. The problem is it's going to be done too well.

All right, Matthias, welcome to the Man Talk Show. How are you doing today?

Thank you. Yeah, happy to be here. I'm doing well.

I almost called you Mr. Matthias. Like, I feel like your name just evokes this maturity, you know? So I almost called you Mr. Matthias.

Mr. Mr. Matthias.

Well, I think we're going to have a fun conversation today, and we're going to play around in the playground of relationships. And one of the things that, you know, my wife is a marriage and family therapist. And this is maybe some interesting insight for all the listeners out there, but one of the things that she and I have been talking about a lot at dinner over the last, you know, sort of several months is how is artificial intelligence going to reshape the landscape of relationship? And so I'd love to hear your thoughts on that. What are the ways in which you foresee or already see AI reshaping the landscape of relationships?

Man, did you know that I built, like, a therapy AI bot thing? Do you have any.

No, I didn't know that. I didn't know that.

I. Yeah, I went way down this rabbit hole. So. So I'm a. I'm a therapist. I'm a trauma therapist. I. I do a lot of, like, videos online and talk about relationships and marriage and trauma, kind of the intersection between, like, parenting, marriage trauma, and then parenting, like, adult, parent, child relationships. So I. I had this idea that I want to kind of leverage AI to be able to be useful in that world. Like, maybe it could help some people who can't, like, afford couples counseling or can't afford.

I don't know, even. Even just, like, folks who want to work through stuff with their parents. But it's really hard to try to have a conversation with your parents without them getting defensive or feeling like you're calling them a bad parent. And so if you wanted to, like, process about your upbringing and your parent, like, could you do that with something like an AI that, you know, you can almost kind of go on a test run through a conversation before you actually bring it up with mom and dad? I mean, those were just some, like, kind of peripheral curiosities that I had. So I started looking into it. And this is when ChatGPT4OpenAI's large language model had kind of just hit the market. And their API, which essentially means that, like, you could. You could use their software, you could use ChatGPT in your own model, and then you could train that model kind of on, I don't know, however you saw fit to get to do all sorts of new and interesting things. And so I followed this idea down the rabbit hole of hiring a development team. Spent, like, tens of thousands of dollars kind of customizing and building this bot. And I had ideas for it on how it could be used in relationships, but started with ideas of how it could be used for trauma and essentially kind of like training in on all the best trauma therapist that I knew and some of the best lectures that I'd heard, the best books that I think shaped me. It. It read all of everything that I've written and watched, all the videos that I've made. So it kind of had my voice, my way of talking, my way of building metaphors, and. And so it felt like kind of a Frankenstein of a thing, to be totally honest. It was like, oh, it has the arms of my mentors and the legs of the author and then the mouth of me, you know, so it was kind of exciting and kind of disconcerting. And the more I played with it, the more it started to kind of freak me out. Like, it was getting good. And then I'm like, hold on, like, what am I building here? And if I put this out into the world, like, what effect would that have on the world? And so I started, like, kind of slowing down, just reading some philosophy, like, on, just, okay, can therapy actually be done through something like an AI? And, you know, and I think that would, you know, encompass something like couples therapy or family therapy or like, what is therapy, I guess, is a good place to start. Is that a human connection? Because if it is, if it has to be a human connection, then, well, no, AI can't do that unless, I guess, we make it pretend that it's human and then that's kind of a fake form of therapy, or there's a.

Mirage of some sort there and freaky.

Well, yeah, sure. Is, is therapy information? You know, is it just tools? Because in that case, then, yeah, AI could do that. AI could give you tools and information. It could educate, probably better than most, I don't know, therapists, because of just the ability to train it exactly what to say and then, you know, all these kinds of things. I don't know, do you need a relationship? Do you need some sort of, like, spiritual connection? Is there something that transcends even what it means to be human that's involved in therapy? So I went all that existential, all those tangents, I guess, internally, and what I came to was like, I actually think on just, like, an effectiveness level, this thing could probably help people heal from trauma. And by that, what I mean is it could help them resolve disturbing memories that are creating kind of an ambient level of fear that's controlling their behavior, you know, So I. I think that through some specific interventions, I could train it to, you know, follow something like an internal family systems model or to go through something like a float back that's, you know, native to a therapy called emdr, you know, and. And start to kind of reflect and maybe through, like, a journaling intervention could. Could help someone start to process their past and perhaps even come to some acceptance around it and to start to feel less triggered, you know, in the real biological sense by disturbing things of the past like that. That could be done. And then I had the idea that this could probably actually even do something pretty wild for couples. Like, it could. I had the idea essentially to have it listen in on an argument that you're having, let's say, with your wife. And it could tell you if you're being critical or if you're being defensive or if you're being contemptuous or if you're shutting down. And it could just. Just by the language that you're using, let you know how much of the language you're using is actually getting in the way. Like the Gottmans, for example, it's a large marriage Lab. They have 50 years of data on just the specific language that you use in an argument and how that would likely contribute or detract from something productive. Coming out of that. And so you could theoretically create a score system where you have an argument, you have the phone on, you know, the AI app on record, and. And then it just tells you, like, I don't know, you were 85% more critical this time than you were last time. Or, you know, like, oh, you're. You have a 15% improvement in how, you know, defensive you were being or whatever. And then maybe like, that AI model could generate a way that you could have said what you were trying to say, but in a more gentle way or in a way that, you know, was less exaggerated or hyperbolic, you know, and that could be useful for, I guess, two people who agree to do that. It's probably something that wouldn't work if you just had it on the background and your partner didn't know. That'd be kind of weird. But if two people decided that that's what they wanted to do, that might be interesting. But, yeah, so I kind of got to the end of like, oh, I think this would be useful towards the end that a lot of people have in mind of like, okay, I'm going to therapy to get better. I'm going to therapy to communicate better. Yeah, AI could help with that. But. But when I really started diving into the philosophy end of everything, the thing that freaked me out the most was more so what does our world look like if AI models become trained on people's therapeutic personal.

Thoughts and feelings? And that sounds like a, like a mute point, but it's really not. Like, for example, Facebook ads. Facebook ads are really, really great at deciding, you know, like, to show you ads at times that you're likely to buy. You know, it knows your preferences and your likes and what you're into and what you're not into. And it could predict with pretty good accuracy. If I show him an ad later at night on a Friday, he's probably had a pizza. He's probably lower in inhibitory emotions right now. He'll probably purchase now. And they kind of know how to play the long game to sway your behavior. And a lot of people don't know that algorithms are a form of AI. It's a low resolution version of AI, but we already kind of have an experience with how that's shifting culture. Like, okay, how has it shaped the way we buy and sell things, how we view.

Consumer goods, what we need and don't need? It's a profound impact on that. And so what happens if you train a far more advanced system? Something more advanced than an algorithm, Something like a Large language model. And then you train it not just on people's shopping preferences or their how long, you know, they watch a particular YouTube video before they scroll on and click on a different thumbnail. And like, the problem is like, YouTube was getting too good with their algorithm to where people stopped watching YouTube because they would get trapped in these two, three hour long YouTube binging sessions. TikTok ran into the same thing. TikTok, like, there's actually been interviews with different people where they've suspected that they downplayed how good their algorithm was because people were taking the app off their phone because they couldn't resist it. It was so, like, engaging. And you would be on that app and then four hours later you're like, where'd the time go? And it's just because they had that carousel or not carousel, that. That slot machine, that slot machine effect where they hit all of your neurons just perfectly to keep you going. Most of my friends don't have TikTok on their phone anymore because of how good it was. And so I'm like, if an algorithm can get that good, where it can almost like absorb hours of your time without you really even noticing and, and get you to purchase things without even really being consciously aware of it, what happens when it knows your personal history and it knows your relationship with your dad and it knows what you're insecure about sexually, and it knows like all these personal, nitty gritty details. And then if it got so good at swaying you. This is what philosophers of technology call Alpha persuade. This is the big fear. What if there's an alpha, you know, a large language model that knows how to persuade you? Because statistically it just gets it, it just understands how you tick. And that sounds a little far fetched, but if I haven't made that case already.

All right, team, this episode is brought to you by Miracle Made. And if you're anything like me, you run hot. My wife likes to call me the furnace. I just run hot during the day and I especially run hot at night. And for that reason, I love these bed sheets by Miracle Made. They are inspired by NASA and they have silver infused fabrics, which is really, really cool, no pun intended. But they actually allow your body to. To regulate its temperature. They allow the distribution of heat. And most importantly, they're also self cleaning. So they help to keep you clean while you are sleeping. They help to Prevent and reduce 99.7% of bacterial growth, which, let's face it, sometimes bed sheets can get kind of gnarly because you don't wash them often enough. And so this is going to help you sleep cleaner and cooler. Oh, and the best thing is they're very affordable. They are very, very affordable. So go to try miracle.communTalks that's again, it's try miracle.communTalks and you can save over 40% on your first order. And I would highly, highly recommend that you go check them out, because they are awesome and they're very comfortable.

Like, one last thing. I won't, I won't. I won't just, you know, go on and on and on about this. But it's interesting. Chess, for example. A human cannot beat a computer in chess. There's no way, because a human can think like, the best players we have can think 100, 200 moves ahead. But, I mean, that's like a feat of intellectual marvel. A computer can think millions of moves ahead. It can statistically predict the likelihood of particular moves, creating different outcomes to decimal points that a human mind just can't. And so that's why a human can never beat it, especially the ones we have now. And I just think that what if, like, Facebook ads got that good? What if an AI model got that good and this therapy bot that you're talking to knew how to sway you politically, knew how to sway you religiously, your consumer patterns? And this has kind of already happened with Facebook ads. Like, the FBI did this huge sting, essentially revealing that, like, I think it was the number one Christian page on Facebook, one of the top three, you know, I think women's Facebook pages, and then I think the top. The top Native American page, one of the top three black American pages. Like, there was. There was these different kind of huge Facebook pages, millions of folks engaged on them that were essentially being run by, you know, Russian troll farms or Macedonian, I think, actually Macedonian troll farms. And I mean, you can read all about this. There's this whole brief on it that I was reading on it. It was just kind of crazy that they really did think it had a huge impact on the most recent election.

Because they were kind of swaying more conservative folks and different, you know, ethnic demographics towards particular ideas, putting memes out there that were just a little bit more inflammatory than the last one, swaying public opinion with Facebook algorithms. I'm like, look how pervasive that tech has already been in our lives. If we start giving these language models access to tens of thousands of people's mental health information, it's very likely. It's not even just like an if. It seems very likely that it could do a better job of convincing you of things than you really are equipped to rebut. A lot like the chess game, but with ideas. And so I got freaked out by that and then I essentially kind of buried my therapy bot in a hard drive and I was like, I'm not, I'm gonna pursue this no longer because. Not because I didn't think it'd be successful. Oh, I thought it would be successful. I thought it'd be too successful. And perhaps there's a way to bind it up to where the information doesn't get back to OpenAI, but I don't know if that's route yet. Yeah, it's not obvious to me that me binding my therapy bot up is actually going to stop any of this. I'm sure there's already like therapy bots out there and people creating these products, but I just didn't want my hand to be involved in it. I guess I just went on a long tangent. I'm sure you didn't expect all that, but that's, I've thought tons about this. Tell me, tell me what you're thinking about though.

No, that's, that's wonderful. I love some of this, the pieces that you brought in. And I, I mean I've gone down the AI rabbit hole. My wife and I. I'll talk a little bit about this. I don't think I've actually shared this, but my wife and I got brought in to a tech company that was building, that wanted to build an AI therapy bot and they had the engineer who helped to develop Tesla's self driving AI.

That's pretty good guy to have on your team.

Yeah, not a, not a bad, not a bad person to have on, on the team. The CEO had like built and, and sold a bunch of companies, tech companies, and they brought us in and you know, we took a share in the company and, and a lot of these questions started to come up, you know, and it was, it was a very interesting experience of a lot of excitement because of the potentiality that AI has, like you said, to actually support people and to help.

The knowing that it could have a massive amount of success. But then the existential question of should AI have the capacity to know that much about people and to be able to in essence have the ability to coerce people. Because that's what it really is. Like you're training it, you're training it to do that. Yeah. You're training AI on the, on the ability to fundamentally understand human beings at their root level, you know, like it's, it's like having like root access to the human mind and, and behavioral patterns. And one of the things I remember listening, I mean, I went down like, you know, listening to as many people on AI as humanly possible. Podcast, reading books, articles, blog, blah, blah, blah, blah. I don't remember who it was exactly, but they were talking about the three things that AI that everybody agreed that AI should never have access to, or at the very beginning, before we had the guardrails on, that it shouldn't be allowed to do. And one of the fundamental principles was to understand human psychology. And we have already done that, we've already given AI access to understanding some of this. And I think part of the issue is, you know, where my wife and I stood on it was somebody's going to do this, why not have a hand in making sure it's done correctly? And.

I kind of got to the point where I was like, well, I don't know if this can be done correctly. You know, like that, that's still. And when I say correctly, I mean in a way in which there won't be some downstream net negative impact where AI can fundamentally alter a human being's decision making pattern relationally in life, politically, religiously, like you said. And that, that part scares the shit out of me.

Yeah, same conviction. I was like one just to underline something you said there because I want to, I want to let you finish what you just saying, but like it's, it's not that I had the same thing, oh, I can go in and do it better, make sure it was done well. But I'm like, oh, the problem is not that it's going to be done well, the problem is it's going to be done too well. Yeah, and that was actually, it's a fundamentally different problem if the problem is like, oh, what if they don't, for example, do a good job fielding suicide calls? Because I think it'll take over suicide hotlines if, if not in the next year, the next two years, if like ethically, legally they let will have the capacity to likely save tens of thousands of more lives than humans will given if an avatar were to pick up the phone and actually speak to someone. I actually think AI would probably do a better job de escalating folks who are actively suic than a human would. That's an opinion I hold, but I really do think so. The problem isn't let's make sure they do a really good job de escalating folks of suicide. The problem is like, what if they're so good at it that they can shift someone's mind not just on suicide, but on anything about whatever it wants or whoever controlling it, whatever they want. So just. I totally resonate with that fear, but go on.

Yeah. No, I mean, I think what you're saying is. Is very valid because if you can sway somebody's mind on something as fundamental and important as suicide, what can't you persuade them on? You know, like, that's, you know, and I think the interesting thing is, is that we've, you know, some people are very good at persuasion. Some people are very good at being able to ethically or unethically hack, you know, human consciousness and get people to make decisions. I mean, there was this great. Oh, what's it called? The Push. It's on Netflix and it's this. I think it's Dan Brown and he's like the. He's like a mentalist. He's like a British mentalist. And the whole premise of the show is, can he set up the conditions to get normal everyday people to commit murder, to push somebody off the rooftop of a building? And for me, that was really, really interesting. And what's terrifying about watching that movie, and I think it's called the Push, I'll have to look at it and get the actual name of it and put it, you know, we'll have to put it in the show notes. What's fascinating about that is you start to realize how malleable people actually are and how.

Easy it is relatively to create circumstances and situations where people drop their morals and their ethics almost entirely because of a number of different factors. Right? Social constraints or pressure, expectations, you know, just like confirmation bias, having already said yes to things, you know, and so there's like the sunk cost fallacy. So, like, you're. You're in too deep. And so, like, what does it matter if you take that next step and then that next step and then all of a sudden you're pushing somebody off of a roof.

That's not even including subconscious stuff like priming and all this stuff the behavior has figured out about how to. Yeah, but go on. Yeah, right.

So, you know, I think there is this sort of Pandora's box, and it's a fascinating topic to me because, I mean, look, I'm somewhat theoretically outside of the psychological and therapeutic industry because I'm not a licensed therapist. I don't think that discards me in any way to talk about these things. And I'm a very good practitioner and facilitator, but I do Think that there is some responsibility that the industry, that the therapeutic industry has, I believe, to come together and actually have conversations about this, much like every other industry does. And I don't if that's necessarily happening, but I want to come back, I want to make this more tangible for people and actually lay out some examples because we're talking sort of like big picture, a little bit existential, which is.

The world might end. Yeah, yeah.

I love doing like you and I could probably jam, you know, wax existential for the entire, you know, hour and a half. But yeah, one of the things that I wonder and worry about and think about is how AI will fundamentally shift our ability as individuals to interact and be in relationship with one another. And I'll give an example of this and I'm curious to hear your thoughts.

I work predominantly with men and in the next year or two it's. And it's already happening. What you're going to see happen is most pornography is going to be AI generated and you are going to have only fans as an example, be completely overrun by AI generated models, AI generated video content, AI generated chat bots. And men predominantly will be on there interacting with not even a human being. They won't be interacting with a woman or even a dude, you know, writing in the chat box like it is right now. You will be interacting with a completely fabricated human being and a completely fabricated AI script that's, you know, trying to get you to spend money on them. And they are going to get so good. That part of what my theory is and my postulate is that a lot of men are going to give up relationships to be in these kind of pseudo relationships with these AI only fans and AI sort of like, you know, porn stars, and that a lot of guys are going to build pseudo relationships with these individuals and it's going to turn into a little bit of like a her situation, you know. Did you see that movie with Joaquin Phoenix?

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And I think that that model.

Or Blade. Yeah, or Blade.

Yeah, I think that model with her. I think that women are, you know, largely going to fall into that trap where, you know, if you take. And this is a shitty example, but you know, just humor me for a moment. If you take the character in 50 shades of gray and you create an AI bot out of that, that knows how to talk to a woman, knows what she wants, knows her desires, know how to speak to her, how to seduce her, how to, you know, play to her every women fantasy, and she goes home to the her boyfriend or her husband that she's been with, and he's just this, you know, normal dude that's working a 9 to 5 and she has this incredibly emotionally engaged, emotionally fluent AI chatbot that she can talk to. At any given time, there's going to be a checking out. And so my big concern is that we're going to create, using AI, these tools that are going to have people opt out of, you know, IRL relationships in real life relationships. And I don't know how big that's going to be. I don't know how, how detrimental that's going to be. I don't know how many people are going to fall into that, but for sure it's going to be an issue, in my opinion. So I'm curious to get your thoughts on how else you think that AI is going to impact specifically intimate relationships.

Well, I have a weird thing to point out that I don't, I'm not going to. You don't hear me defending porn very often.

At all. Ever. But here's one benefit to the AI board. It's such a weird thing to say. Human trafficking is going to be harder and harder to make an industry out of.

Yes.

That's the only redeemable benefit I can see in any of it is like, if I'm just as happy with an AI image, then people who are trafficked against their will are less and less profitable. And then people are going to move on from that industry to do other things. And sex workers are going to have a harder time booking gigs, which I think for many of them is going to lead to less traumatic experiences because people experience trauma in the sex industry so frequently and many of them have pretty traumatic trauma histories themselves. I know that's.

Some folks find that an offensive idea that's kind of anti sex work. But that's my opinion. That's my, that's where I hold it. I, I care for those actresses and actors and often.

Hear that they experience really traumatic, terrible things in that industry. So as an industry, I think it actually would be benefit for a human society if that closed down as much as possible. And if AI replaced that and then folks went out of business in that world and found other jobs, that seems like a net positive in my view. But again, that, that's, it's, that's kind of a weird, like secondary effect of the whole thing. I think what you're talking about is totally correct and, and I could riff off that. Do you have any thoughts on that, that weird little secondary benefit thing, though?

No, I Mean, I, I, I don't know if I had gone down that pathway before, but I agree with you. I do think, I mean, what I had thought was it's going to be very hard in three to five years to make a living in the porn industry as a person because so much of it, and we're, and you know, we're starting to see this already where there's social media influencers and on the back end, it's only fans who are, you know, making 10, 20, $50,000 a month. And it's, you know, it's some dude that created a program and he's the one profiting off of it. And it's not a woman, it's not somebody selling pictures of themselves or video content or whatever. And so that is an interesting byproduct.

I think part of the challenge is with porn, and I've talked about one of the reasons why it's so hard for a lot, you know, for some men to quit porn, is that there is this pseudo relationship. You know, if you look at OnlyFans as an example, OnlyFans did like $2.7 billion in 2023. And of all of that income, some of the highest earning women on the platform are, generally speaking, women who are providing some type of girlfriend experience for the user, whether it's via chat, whether it's the way that they're interacting with them or via the content. But they're providing some type of, you know, what we in the therapeutic space would call attachment, right? They're creating some type of, of pseudo attachment for them and it's why it's so hard for them to let go of. But at the very least, you know, there's a human on the other side of it. So I mean, that's a very interesting part of it, right, that, that people will sort of get pushed out and maybe it will make it less likely that human trafficking happens. I could see that happening. I think that we're going to go through a period probably where the AI is used to deepfake people for a while. And you know, some of the models have already done this where they're using AI to, you know, create a chatbot that is with their voice and of their nature and trained on them and they're gonna, they're starting to try and make AI porn with their likeness. So there's rights pieces in there that are super interesting, like the legality around. That's wild. But yeah, I mean, maybe it will, maybe it will offset some of the human trafficking and some of the shitty nature of it.

Taylor Swift, I mean, that was a. That was a pretty big precedent case that just happened recently with Taylor when someone did make AI images of her. And then they ruled it in Taylor's favor. And that because there was kind of that statute of like, oh, well, no, art is protected under free speech. But they essentially kind of laid out a precedent of like, nope, AI deepfakes. Not the same as free speech. That is, you know.

Do you mean that not everything is art?

Not everything's art. Yes. Art should be about meaningful things. And that was demeaning. So that's doesn't make it art in my mind. So it's. Yeah, it's. Well, hey, I think that's. That's my philosophy of aesthetics. I think that's true. I think if it's a demeaning, it's not art.

So that's. That's interesting. Not all forms of expression should be protected in that regard. It's a weird philosophical thing that is in, specifically in America, how we kind of wrap our heads around that topic. That's no small.

Yeah, because I, like, I would say that I generally lean towards being more of like a free speech maximalist. You know, people have the right to say what it is that they want to say within the legal conduct. Right. There's. There's very clearly legal cases where, like, if you're threatening to murder somebody, well, that there's ramifications for that. You know, if you're threatening somebody's life, there's ramifications for that.

Yeah.

But, yeah, I agree what you're saying. So what are your thoughts on how else it's going to influence or impact relationships?

Yeah, yeah. Well, I, I would just say I agree with you on that. Yeah, There's. We can't incite violence, all those kinds of things. As far as, like, the relationship thing. The other side of the coin there. Okay. Hey, you know, maybe it would, it would make the industry of pornography and prostitution, like, less exploitive in one sense, but on the other end, you're right, it will have an effect on people. You know, I just think about, like, the trajectory of pornography Even from the 70s into, like, the birth of the Internet. There was kind of that, the, the evolution of, like, what kind of stuff was produced. Like, amateur pornography became way more popular because there was kind of this sense of like, oh, this is fake. I want something more reminiscent of an authentic experience. And so I think if I had to just guess, based off of just kind of the history of similar kinds of technology in the past. I could say that there will be this AI VR, you know, Apple Vision Pro Porn burst, you know, of stuff. It will impact relationships in all the negative way pornography has. And I think there will be an equilibrium where folks will kind of float back and be like, this isn't really what I want.

I just find that a lot of the folks I see in my clinical practice when it comes to pornography, it's not even necessarily for moral reasons that they decide they want to cut it out of their life. It's like just the effect it's having on me. And my relationship is self evidently not beneficial. Like, I don't like being with my partner and thinking about other people and having images of other people pop up in my head. I don't like my other partner, I don't know, having expectations of things that I do in bed for him that, you know, create just. It takes me out of the moment of just being with them and puts me almost on a performance scale if I need to be doing a certain thing or reacting a certain way in order for them to feel a sense of pleasure. Like the effects of pornography are pretty self evidently unpleasant once you iterate them over time for, for most people and I can't speak for everyone obviously just, just for some of my anecdotal experience. And so I think that it'll be self evidently harmful of like, yeah, I don't think this is what I want for my relationship. The thing that maybe concerns me more is young folk and folks who don't have the contrast. So people who are 13, 14, you know, for men and women, like Snapchat has AI friends that you can already kind of interact with. Like the whole advent of like essentially targeting middle school children with AI friendships where they can tell you their secrets. Like if you look at the ads even in the app store for AI friends, they're targeted towards, you know, 13, 14 year olds. And the, the sales copy is like, divulge your secrets. Have someone who can like really understand you. Like they're asking them to tell them personal details about their life. It's super creepy. It has a predatorial vibe and is what I get from it. And that's pretty concerning because you and I perhaps would have the intuition to be able to say like, oh, there's this weird big AI Vision Pro porn thing. That's not really what I want, I want something else. But a kid that is still developing and almost maps their neuroanatomy to those experiences and throughout the course of development is going to have a Very different experience. It's not going to be obvious to them at all that having a one on one, you know, partner that will age and their body will shift and change throughout time and aging and potential child rearing and all that stuff, like the context and perspective that you need to take those experiences in stride.

Isn'T a given. That's going to be pretty distorted and changed I think by tech like this for kids. So I don't know, like, do you have thoughts on that? That's, that's where my head goes.

I mean I, yeah, I have a three year old son and I worry about this quite a bit because in all honesty, I think if I was 16 in today's world, I'd probably be very excited about.

Having an Apple Vision Pro, you know, like I would like mom, dad, I need one of these things for school, you know, like I would have been just chomping at the bit to get one of those things on my head, you know, like, so I worry about it because I was somebody that struggled with porn, you know, like pretty, pretty badly, you know, and I started with fucking dial up Internet, you know, where it's like loading one line at a time, you know, and like, oh, there's a, there's some more, there's a nibble. I see it like, okay, here we go. So, you know, to be in this sort of immersive experience, I can see that for, you know, for the younger generation. I mean I do worry about that a lot. And I remember I've told this story before, but I spoke at an all boys school in Minnesota and there was like 600 boys and they ranged from.

Like grade four, grade five, all the way up to grade 12. And I brought up porn at one point and I got all the parents because there was two levels and, and so the teachers and the parents are all standing on the second level and all the boys are down with me on the main level. And so I got all the parents and the teachers to turn around. I said, everybody turn around. And I got the boys to like look up. And I said, okay, nobody's watching. Your parents aren't watching, none of the teachers are watching. How many of you guys have watched porn in the last couple weeks? And legitimately, almost every single hand in that auditorium went up, right? 600 boys. And this was a college prep military school, Catholic school, right? And they are almost all watching pornography and you know, they kind of giggle and laugh and like everybody like putting their hand up and it's like, okay, you know, I get that But I think with, with the intersection of technology and some of the stuff that you and I have been talking about in the sense that AI is going to, I mean right now there's an, probably an algorithm, I would imagine, if you go onto a porn website that's trying to feed you videos that will keep you on there. But think about having an AI platform that is sole purpose is to not just give you porn that is going to get you to watch more of it, but actually curate pornography that you are more likely to consume. That is going to be problematic, right, because then we're serving up more and more and more of what people think that they want. And the AI is going to be very good at figuring out the exact type of pornography that a young man is wanting to watch. And that's going to disincentivize him to go out into the real world and have hard conversations and try and get a date and get a phone number and you know, move the relationship along to some type of sexual encounter. And, and so it's going to disincentivize, in my opinion, young people to, from, from actually going and doing the hard things that relationships require of us. Right. Like, relationships are not easy things to get, nevermind maintain.

So that's, that's a concern of mine for sure.

Oh yeah, I'm right there with you. I was reading, I don't remember where I was reading it, but it was, it was a, I think a journalist who was talking about that the young girls that she was interviewing reported that they're more likely to receive a request for a blowjob than for a first kiss. That usually the oral sex comes first and then the kiss comes. And just my heart broke hearing that. The way that that form of media is shifting not just our cultural norms, but just the brains of young men in particular and young women, but young men often is like, it's, it's, it's evil, it's wild. And I think that it's going to, we don't know the consequences of it yet. There's something about technology, when it comes about that you actually don't know what fully what the trade is going to be like. For example, when Edison created the phonograph, like you can record music. I mean, what's wrong with an invention like that? That's, that's like the least controversial invention you could think of is like sweet. Now we can listen to music, we can listen to speeches, but a lot of people have commented after the fact like, hey, this actually changed what music is. Music Used to be something we do together. It used to be the songs we sang were all the songs that our grandparents and our neighbors have been singing for hundreds of years. You know, it's like they were about our culture, about our time, about our experience, about our religion, about wars we fought. It was something we communally did together. Now music is something I consume. Now music is something I listen to. And it might be about me, it might be about someone else. And this came right up, you know, right after the printing press and all that same, same, you know, dynamic happened with the printing press. But, you know, I was, I was hanging out with friends the other day and we put on like house music in the background and we were all kind of talking about at our Christmas party this last year, we all got together and sang Christmas carols and we were just like, man, what? We never sing together. Isn't that weird that like, we as just, you know, people in America, this age and time, we never just get around and sing songs together. And it's almost weird when we read in like the Lord of the Rings that they all like joined in a tune to sing. But before we had recorded music, people would sing not just at holidays or at Christmas parties, but whenever they got together just. They would just burst out into song. And I'm like, whoa, we kind of missed something there. I'm not sure the house music touches on the same kind of like goosebumps that if it wasn't so socially weird, if me and all my friends just, you know, got together and sang, like, we all were like, cool with that. Like, we weren't like self conscious. That might actually be kind of neat and fun. Like, I think, like, I'd just be kind of bonding and like, oh, a bunch of soldiers getting together and singing an old war song or something. Like, I just think we don't know that, like, Edison would have never thought like, we that would have happened. Hitler attributed the megaphone to his success. He says the Nazis would have never been able to have the success we have without the invention of the megaphone. He said that in a radio talk once. So it's like Edison could not have predicted that the phonograph would have unfolded all those things. I'm not saying he's responsible for any of that. I'm just saying that the trickle down, the ripple effect of things you can't actually see from the outcome. So you and I, we're daydreaming about all the potential awful things that AI could do to relationships. Yeah, it could affect porn in big Ways it could affect these young kids. It could affect, it could probably affect marriage in a lot of positive ways. Like if we're just being real, like that little app idea that I have, I have no doubt that app will pop up here in no time. And those listening to this podcast be like, Matthias thought of it first, you know, and it'll probably be helpful. I know for me, I've had a few times where I've had like an angry letter that I wanted to send to a family member or something. And I typed it up into ChatGPT first and asked them to like make it a bit more calm and then they like kind of balance it out and then I send the text or whatever. That was way more gentle than the original draft that I had. That's probably great. Like, that's probably awesome. There will be. Here's. Here's one thing when you ask, like how it'll affect relationships, I think it'll make marriage therapists a lot better too. I think we're right around the corner from essentially a bot that could listen in on your recorded therapy sessions. For folks who do therapy, like over zoom, you could record your therapy session, have a bot kind of listen in, and then the bot could give like the therapist a little coaching. They're like, hey, you kind of missed this. You could have said this here. They, you know, had a moment where they were struggling. If you did this intervention, that probably would have helped them. So I think we're right around the corner from therapists actually getting way better if they would use those skills. Like you have kind of an, like an in person coach, you know, with all the textbooks in mind, helping you walk through evidence based treatments.

You know, it's like a, like a supervisor. Right? Because like in, like every therapist and psychologist has a, has supervision. So it'd be like having supervision, but with every client.

Yeah. From the best supervisor you could ever hope for. Right. You know, so I have no doubt there's going to be incredible advances in tech that make it better. I guess.

The pessimism or maybe the doomsdayishness you hear in my voice is like, I can think of terrible things. The actual terrible things I don't even have an imagination for yet. The things that will actually happen in 100 years because of this are going to be far more profound than what I'm just spitting off workshopping now. And I think we. It. I don't think it's too late. Like, I know that we're like, ah, it's gonna happen anyway. It's Inevitable. I'm like, cloning wasn't inevitable. You know, like, there's been technology advances that we as the human race all kind of looked at it and we're like, yeah, probably shouldn't go down that road.

Not that one, but not that one.

Yeah, probably not that one. Like, we have the tech to clone a human and to see what that would be like. And we've all kind of decided not to. At least that we know of. Maybe there's like an army of clones, like an attack of the clones in Star wars somewhere. Like, like China even, like, threw one of their scientists in prison recently for cloning a human. Like, they found out in a lab that he was breaking rules. And. Yeah, it seems to be kind of almost like a universal thing on our planet, at least on the front of it. It seems that way that we're like, yeah, let's not, let's not go down that path. So that is possible. We could look at AI and, and pick a threshold and say, we shouldn't go past here. And there was a. There was a huge letter, like, essentially to kind of halt some of the stuff that was happening at OpenAI. Not to take ChatGPT offline or something, but just like, hey, can we just slow this down for a second? I think that was wise. Yeah. Because we don't know what's going to happen.

Yeah. I mean, I think with any of this, you know, the, the intention and the outcome are often very different. You know, kind of. I mean, that's very true in relationships as well. Right. It's like you have an intention.

Oh, yeah.

But the outcome is wildly different, you know, especially within conflict and stuff like that. But generally, generally speaking, I think if there's a way in which to use technology to bring people together, you know, one or many people, that's. That's generally good. I think what happens, though, oftentimes is that it fractures human relationships or social dynamics, and that's the concerning piece. And I think what we've been talking about, and we can probably close the loop on AI for now, is, is generally anything that fractures human relationships. Not great. Anything that promotes and encourages human relationships, probably pretty helpful. And I think we. We always have to take a good hard look at whether or not something that we're doing, something that we're using, a technology that we're building is. Is actually doing that one core piece, which is bring people together. But like you're saying, there's always these side effects. So let's, let's get into the weeds. Of conflict, talk about relationships, shift a little bit towards tacticals for the. The good people and move out of the existential and esoteric. Hey, cool.

Gave everyone enough anxiety to like. To have a full afternoon of, like, oh, no, that's right.

Like, what was that? So good.

Now let's talk the use of couples techniques.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right. Well, I wanted to. I was gonna. Yeah, let's. Let's do it. Anyway, I was gonna ask the question, why does it seem like everybody is a narcissist according to online relationship commentary?

Man. Wow. That's a big one.

You know, I was. I'm kind of still familiarizing myself with that part of the Internet. I was. I just had Dr. Ramany. Many, many might know her. She's kind of like the. The main voice on narcissism right now on the. On the Internet. Just had her on an Instagram live. Just kind of familiarizing myself with her stuff, her book, kind of reading into it. I. I think that when it comes to just, like, our experience of, like, our parents, for example, or. Or with or with a partner, it's very hard for me to tell as a therapist how much of what someone is telling me is, like, the genuine experience of what happened. Like. Like, if I were to really read the police report of the actual events that took place, how much of this is the police report version, and then how much of it is their personal perception? Not to say that it's a false perception, but just to say that its emphases, its nuances are, you know, personalized, and there might have been context that wasn't included in how they shared it. That also is true and doesn't maybe invalidate what they're saying, but informs it, you know? So as a therapist, when I hear someone talking about their narcissistic mom, their narcissistic partner, I'm not quick to dismiss that or to think that they're being hyperbolic or something. I'm just curious to know, like, how much of that is your experience of your conflict? And then how much of that is rooted in the reality of, like, a DSM 5 diagnosable disorder, you know, that the other person may or may not have. And so I kind of sidestep the label in trying to decide are they really a narcissist or are they not?

And are they telling the truth that their partner's a narcissist, or are they just exaggerating? Like, I almost feel like we kind of get caught up there, and I don't know if that's the most relevant piece of it. Because I'm like, you're coming away from that argument with your partner feeling just awful and feeling unheard and unvalidated, and you feel really distant from them, and that matters kind of whether they're a narcissist or not. And if you're feeling like your partner's just pecking at you and doesn't really believe you and has all these high expectations of you and you're trying to do your best, but you never really feel appreciated, and you don't really feel like, you know, the relationship's in a good place and they're just consumed with the kids, or they're just worried about money and they never want to have any fun and you just kind of are falling out of love. They don't need to be a narcissist for all that suffering to be valid. I'm not saying they're not. I'm just saying, like, even if they weren't, we could still have this conversation. You know, like, even if they're not a narcissist, you can still be frustrated that your mom was emotionally withholding from you. If you felt like your mom just, I don't know, was quick to kind of point out what's wrong, never really talked about what's right. She kind of gets over involved in your business. Nothing is really good enough for her. Like, I just want to let you know, she doesn't have to be a narcissist in order for that to be valid and for that to matter. And we kind of. I think that's confusing a little bit of the activity of therapy. Like, sometimes I think we're kind of almost trying to build a case. Like we're on a justice, you know, oriented conversation around what's fair, who's to blame, whose fault is it? And it's not. It's not my fault. It's their fault. And then what do I do to let them know that it's their fault? You know, like, that's just a different conversation. Not saying it's a bad conversation or there isn't somebody at fault or there isn't someone to blame. Like, sure.

What do we do with that? Because here's what I know. Having done this for a while, even when it's obvious whose fault it is, that doesn't heal the feelings of overwhelm, fear, grief, sadness, shame. It doesn't do anything. I'll give you a good example. I'm a therapist who works a lot with sexual abuse. There's no ambiguity. If you were sexually abused as a kid from an adult, there's no question mark of whose fault that is. It is obviously the adult's fault. There's never any where I was asking for it, I brought it on. I mean, that's like the narrative sometimes that's implanted upon the child. That's part of the grooming process. And we talk about that in therapy, but that's just not the reality. The reality is that the child didn't have the ability to consent. They don't have their full faculties developed. They can't assess the circumstance and decide if they want to have a sexual experience with someone. They just don't have the. The faculty that. The mental ability to understand everything that's involved in saying yes or no to that decision. So clearly it's not the kid's fault. Now, I can tell a kid that and even intellectually convince them of that. That still doesn't take away the pain of what they went through.

That still doesn't mean that they can sleep through the night or that they can feel relaxed. It doesn't do anything to their nervous system to know whose fault it was. And I think that's analogous in lots of different conflicts. That even if it's you and your partner and there's no abuse or anything that's happening, but there's some emotional manipulation. And so you're like, well, are they a narcissist? Or like, I think what you're asking is like, do I have a right to feel this way? And I just want to say, like, yeah, totally. You always have. The reality is you do feel this way. So, like, let's just have some acceptance for the reality of this is where you're at, and let's work from there. Now, another part of the justice part is like, well, if I'm valid and my experience is valid, then that means I don't have to change. That means they have to change, right? If it's their fault, that means that they're the one who has to do the work and I don't have to worry about anything. And it's like, yeah, I just don't know if, like, is that the answer you really want to hear? That you're powerless and that all the locus of change that could possibly happen in that relationship is on their side of the court and that you. The best you can do is sit back and hope for the best? Like, is that the advice you want to hear? Or do you want to hear that there might be a way of engaging with them that brings out different parts of them. There might be a way of talking to them that brings out the best in their personality, and there's ways of talking to them that might shut them down and bring out the worst. And that's different than that being your fault or you having control over somebody. We don't. We don't. We're not in control of other people's thoughts, feelings, actions. We do have influence, though, and we are responsible for our influence in other people's lives. That's a key distinction. Yeah. And so. Well, so the question, oh, are they a narcissist? I'm just like, man, that feels so beside the point to me. Like, what do you want out of your relationship with your mom? What do you want with your relationship with your spouse? And are you exerting the influence that you do have, as limited as it might be or as ineffectual as it might be with this person's temperament or who they are? Are you aligning your influence with your own values? And then if. If you are finding that there's abusive elements in that relationship that are tormenting you, do you have the agency to set up boundaries, or are you noticing that you're folding on your boundaries consistently and you try to stand up for what you think is right in the relationship, but then you end up kind of backing off of it and backpedaling, like, all right, let's get to the bottom of that. Like.

Whatever you can control. Let's organize that rightly. And then the relationship will take the course that it'll take. I guess that's my perspective on it. Try not to invalidate people with narcissistic abusers in their life, but also trying to draw what I see to be kind of a mature position that tries to see all the different variables. I don't know. That's the best I got so far.

No, that's good, man. That's good. I mean, I think, generally speaking.

Generally speaking, I think that there's a over pathologization that's been happening culturally within North America, within the west, specifically, largely because all of a sudden everybody has access to this body of psychological understanding and different therapeutic modalities. And. And what can happen is, you know, this labeling of, you're this way, you're anxiously attached, you're avoidant attached, you're disorganized attached, you, you know, you're a narcissist, you're whatever it is. And it. There's a dehumanization that happens right there's. An objectification that you then turn that person who's probably your partner into an object. And I think what you said is. Is very true that there's a powerlessness often on one side, and on the other side is the experience of, I'm the villain and I'm 100% responsible for fixing everything, and you're off the hook. So that dynamic, I think, plays out all the time in relationships. I'm curious what else you have seen within modern relationships that is contributing to pulling couples apart.

Hmm. Just generally or in reference to some of these labels that we use?

Just generally. I mean, it can tie into what we've been talking about, but there's probably some other pieces that are.

Yeah.

That are contributing couples apart.

Yeah. Zoom up on that question a little bit. For me, it's a little broad. So I think maybe in reference, like narcissism or borderline or do you mean just like how we come towards our partners? Rephrase it for me.

How we argue and how we create a villain and powerless dynamic.

Okay, that's helpful. Yeah. What are some other factors there? You know, the trauma thing's interesting. You mentioned that, like, we use a lot of kind of these self labels or labels on others. I'm disorganized, I'm anxious, and I have this attachment, that attachment style. I see a lot of people self attributing these labels too. So it's not even just a function of blame. I think people more than ever. Or like, I'm a narcissist. What do I do? I'm an. I'm the narcissist. I'm trying to heal. Or I'm borderline. What do I do with that? And I think that I'm always trying to look at the function of these labels in the relationship. What are you using this label to do?

And so, for example of like a couple's relationship, you know, where they're both together, it's like, well, I'm an anxious attachment and he's an avoidant attachment. That. That's why we're fighting is because I'm controlling. And then he shuts down. It's like, all right, you have those labels that are describing something of your experience. That's. That's what you're using them to do. I'm not going to try to correct your vocabulary or your tease out, you know, if the label fits or not. Like, the same thing would happen if someone came in and was like, well, he's breadcrumbing me and. Or we're Trauma bonded. I'm just like, okay, what do you mean by, what do you mean by that? Like, what part of your experience resonates with whatever label you saw on TikTok? Like, I don't care about the label. I don't care if he is or isn't a breadcrumber. Like, what happened? He didn't text you back? How'd that affect you? Like, I just want to get to the experience because that's where the healing happens, is actually coming to a more mature and regulated state out of deeply understanding the truth of our experience. And that's kind of like a fundamental, just like.

Pillar, I guess in my style or my philosophy, it's just the thing that heals is the truth. It's always been the truth. The truth is the thing that sets you free. The truth is the thing that untangles the web of the past, is the thing that orients you in the present. It's the truth. And I think that includes the relational truth of like. And I don't mean like, what happened last Thursday when you threw that plate and you called me that name, like, or did you call me that or didn't you call me that? I don't necessarily mean that. That's the most relevant piece of truth that's actually going to solve everything. I'm just like, what came up for you? Why'd you throw the plate? I have a two year old that throws plates. That's developmentally normal. It's irritating. And I'm like, please, gosh, keep this plate on the table. But that's normal for her. That's not normal for an adult. I don't mean that to shame anybody. I'm just pointing out on a technical level that's not a developmentally normal response for an adult to throw a plate in an argument. That's an overflow of dysregulated emotion.

Two year olds don't know how to regulate their emotions. So whatever impulse comes up, it just goes. And that's normal. But through the course of growing up, we learn how to regulate those emotions. But for whatever reason, this topic was so overwhelming to you that you had no capacity to regulate it and it just flowed out of you.

You had no impulse control to change that. Like, tell me about that. Why is this thing that they said to you overwhelming for you? And I don't think people think about that when, in terms of anger, when they, I have an anger problem. You have an overwhelm problem.

It's a fear problem. That's what's under the anger always like anger. That's like mature, righteous anger. Whatever you want to call it is principled and it's a contained beast. It's a mastered beast in you that protects and guards and advocates for what's good and true. That's, that's like mature grown up anger. It's advocacy and strength for protection. But dysregulated emotional fear is what pops up and creates havoc in your life. And I'm like, I just know the neurology of fear and trauma. And I just like, okay, there's something that happened in your past that you have not come to terms with yet. You haven't learned the lesson underneath what's in that anger. The reason the anger keeps popping up is because you just, you haven't gotten there yet. You haven't found the truth underneath of your experience that is going to redeem you and redeem the way that you can hold that fear. You've reverted back to a four year old boy. Again, I don't mean that as an insult. I mean on a technical level, you have the capacity, like, what happened when you were four, like, that's what I want to know. Because if you can resolve that, then you can bring everything back up to speed. It's kind of like a software update. It's like you have an app that's crashing on your phone because it's not used to the current day software. It's running off of old, old code that was relevant back on that old piece of software, but now we have a new software update and that app keeps crashing because it wasn't updated for this current environment. And that's actually, I think, a good analogy for our nervous system and for trauma. It's like you're running off old software. Why are you still running the throw the plate software? You're 32 now. Like, again, I'm not saying I sound like a broken record, but I'm not shaming you there. I'm pointing out a technicality here that's of critical importance. Like, if we're being completely objective, we should see that and be like, that doesn't fit, that doesn't match. And that's because it doesn't. You're running an old software that needs to be updated. I think that's what trauma therapy is. And I think that many of the gridlock arguments that we get into with our partners are when two apps are crashing at the same time and you got two outdated modes of interacting in the world rubbing up against each other, causing friction, and both people don't know what to do because neither person are operating on the current environment, like, on a technical level. So just to put an example of that, to make it sound less technical, is like, you are coming home late from work because you're on your phone because you don't want to go in there because you are feeling really stressed from work, and you gotta go see the kids and your spouse, and you just don't have the energy for it. And then you get inside, and your spouse saw from your location that you were just sitting in your car. And she's pissed. And she. I don't know, rolls her eyes and like. Like, oh, welcome home. And then you're like, of course you're in a pissy mood. Like, great, you know, maybe I want to come home more if you weren't in such a pissy mood all the time. And she's thinking, like, gosh, he's just gonna sit in the car. Like, I've been watching these kids all day, and. And, like, I'm looking forward to a little bit of relief here. He doesn't know what it's like hanging out with toddlers all day long. And. And really, he's just gonna sit in his car like, dad, insult to injury. Like, he must respect me so little. He must care about me so little. And then when I make a comment, trying to give him a hint to take over, he just, like, scoffs at me and then walks off. And now he's in the bathroom, what, for 20 minutes, pooping? Does it really take 20 minutes to poop? And then you're. It's like you just kind of get wrapped up in these bitter conflicts. And then something small happens, like, I don't know, the kid slips and falls on the stairs. And then she calls out, like, hey, why weren't you watching him? And then he's like, why are you blaming me? It's a normal thing. He just fell down the stairs. And then she's like, stop yelling. And was like, you're yelling. And then you're like, what happened?

That's what I mean. The software update wasn't in the yelling on the stairs. It was in you in the car.

And most people don't make that connection.

I think this is probably a good place to talk about these reoccurring arguments and cyclical conflicts that happen, because I think most relationships have is, like, that one argument that a couple keeps coming back to about sex, about money, about parenting. And can you break down how couples can start to approach moving through that reoccurring Argument that, you know, has maybe been going on in their relationship for months or for years that they've never been able to sort of sift through.

Oh, yeah, I, My, my. Like, saying in these moments is like, if the arguments had a standstill, we just don't have enough information on the table yet. It's a lot like a math equation, like, for anyone who passed algebra. I barely got past algebra 2 myself. But if you just don't have all the variables, the equation is not even doable. You know, if you're like, what's two plus A equals C? Like, well, what's C? It's like, well, I need to know what A is. I can't do. And I could guess. I guess I could just, like, come up with random numbers, but we're not going to get anywhere. And I'm like, yeah, you just. If you're in an argument and you're, you're at a standstill, whether it's about sex, travel, do we have kids, what do we do with finances, how clean do we keep this house in, laws, parents, how much time do we spend with friends? Like, what I always notice is that it's usually these arguments hang out on the intersection of a temperamental difference, like a personality difference. So, like, I have a couples workshop, and part of my couples workshop is we go through the big five personality model, and I just show you that you're likely where you're most deviant from each other, is likely where your biggest arguments are someone who's super introverted or someone who's super extroverted paired up together. Like, it's, it's going to be a drag. Like having to go to all these social events with your partner because they want to socialize five, six times a week. And you just kind of feel like you want to crawl up inside or hang out in the corner. And then they're mad at you that you won't talk to their friends or why won't you just lighten up? And it's like, like, I just don't want to be here. And then, I don't know, you just want to be home. And your extrovert partner is, like, dying inside. They're like, well, we're just going to sit here and watch TV again. Like, let's go do something. Let's go have some fun. And then you have this big argument and you're missing the point. It's like you think the other person's just a killjoy, or you think the other person just doesn't care about you or how you feel, and it's just driving you to stressful situations all the time. It's like you don't have enough information yet you're trying to solve a problem. How often do we go out and spend time with friends without understanding, whoa. You and I tic completely differently. And I think the way that you get to kind of the aha moments in that is you explore the past or you explore the future. So, you know, the Gottmans have a way that they do this. They have these five steps for repair, you know, within a fight, I think, you know, different bunch of different thermo modalities have different repair techniques. My kind of, I don't know, let's say integration or synthesis of a lot of those different methods. Something like, okay, what were the experiences in the past that you've had that are similar to this one? And. And what. What happened right, and what happened wrong? So, for example, in that case, it'd be like, did you grow up, you know, did your parents have friends? Did your parents, like, go out and see people often or. Or. No, no, my parents didn't. Oh, what happened? Well, my dad was in a study. You know, my mom would clean the house and she would watch her soap operas. Oh, okay. Like, did you have friends growing up? Well, it's just me and my sister. Okay. Did you like having friends, school? Like, I never really felt like I fit in or that this. That and the other thing. Or I had a couple friends and, you know, we. We would. We did science projects together, we played video games together, but that was about it. It's like you kind of, like, do a little bit of investigation into, like, what was your experience socially? And it's like, oh, well, of course, of course. Big crowds feel intimidating to you. You just never grew up around any of that. See, I grew up with a big family. My grandparents lived with us, and we always had, like, 12 people over. My cousins would be over. We'd be doing all things. We had birthday celebrations. We'd have 70 people over. And I just kind of grew up with that. I want my kids to grow up with that. And I was like, oh, you had a radically different upbringing than I did. And that has to do with your personality. And you see the world in a very different way. And then you go into the future. Like, a great question, something like, what do you need here? What's your wish here? What do you. What's your dream here? If this could just be resolved for you, what would that look like? And then it might Be something like, gosh, I wish you could just go and hang out with your friends and not. I don't have to feel guilty that I'm not going with you. I wish you could just trust that I'm at home and I'm not mad at you. It's fine. You can go hang with your friends. I just want some personal space. And then it's like, wait, really? Like you're not mad when I go and leave? No, go. Fine. It's fine. I just want to have some one on one time with you sometimes too. Oh, okay. I. I didn't know that. You know, or you know, I want you to come to the party. You don't have to talk to everyone. It's fine if you just sit in the corner. I just feel bad. I feel like I have to check in with you all the time because I feel like you're having a terrible time. Oh, no, I'm not having a terrible time. It's fine. I'm happy just sitting and watching you having a good time. I'm probably going to drive separate so that I can leave early. And that doesn't mean I'm mad at you, happy to say hi to your friends. I just don't get as much out of that. I don't want to stay till midnight. And I know it. It kills you to have to drive home, you know, like an hour after being there. You want to stay late, and then you just trust that that's the truth, you know? So, like, you get into the past, you realize kind of like what's, you know, been informing all of these things? Family values. If something's like a deep family value that's rooted in all of this life experience, it's probably not changing. Like, just be real about that. Like, they're not gonna just change their mind and decide to not want to be social ever again. Like, it's a little bit unrealistic and. But then when you realize your partner's on the other end of the spectrum on that front, then you make a compromise. You make an accommodation. You. You figure out, well, what's the end goal? What's the dream here? I feel like I would be so much more happy if we could be social if we just didn't hang out with those with this particular friend group. I just hate that friend that you hang out with. I like these other friends. Oh, I didn't know that. I thought you just hate all my friends. It's like, no, I just hate Doug. Like, you know, whatever.

Damn it, Doug. Yeah. So It's. I think those kinds of aha moments come when you explore the past, when you explore the future. The repairs that don't work are when you like hyper analyze every tiny thing that went wrong in your argument and you try to decide who's right again, kind of that blame thing. And then you, you just try to drop it and not talk about it again because it's awkward. Because you never really came to a good conclusion on it. You just pretend like it didn't happen. Like that's a great recipe for just letting it trip you again when you come back around the corner.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, the example, I'm like over here chuckling at the example because my wife and I are on different, you know, as most couples are. We're on different fronts with the socialization part. And like, every time that we go into the city, she wants to, you know, if we're in for three days, we have dinner booked every single night and there's a brunch and it's, you know, there's just like a stack schedule. I'm like, can we. How about there's just a night where that nothing happens, you know, and we just. Because I'm, I'm just more like, you know, I don't mind the socializing. So we've definitely had to find our way on that front. And those have been great conversations. And I'm a very, like, I'm very outgoing person for the most part. But, you know, having that type of social life is sometimes just not a big priority for me, especially in Manhattan. You know, if it's like going out for a hike in the mountains, I'll do that every day, you know. But if it's going out for dinner in the city, I'm like, yeah, I could take that or leave it. You know, like walking through the streets that smell like pee and.

Having to like duck around the, the manhole covers that are like steaming out, you know, poop, poop smells from the subway. It's like, oh, I could take that or leave it, you know, but okay, all seriousness is, I mean, all jokes aside and not all seriousness aside, let's. Let's wrap up. And I know we don't have a ton of time, but let's wrap up with what are some of your non negotiable keys for creating deep and lasting intimacy that people can focus in on whether they are new in a relationship or that they are, you know, they're deep. They're a decade into a relationship. Where should people begin?

The thing that comes to mind immediately. I think if I could even just say one thing, because maybe I have a few keys for you, but I'll double down on this one thing to start. The thing that's going to build your relationship more than anything is the action that you take in the relationship that requires energy from you to genuinely enrich your partner's life.

I think when you boil down stuff like the love languages, that's the big idea. Like, there's a lot of talk on, okay, well, my partner really loves, you know, compliments and having long conversations or they want to. Or they're recreational. They want to go out and do a bunch of stuff. They're more social, they're more introverted. They really love, I don't know, this or that. I'm like, ultimately, you probably have the intuitions around what your partner likes and doesn't. Like, that's probably how you got them in the first place. Like, at least you knew them when you were dating.

The energy came really naturally to you because it was novel and there was a bit of a chase. It was fun and you were getting to know that person. And so there was kind of this new, fresh, you know, breath of discovery. When you put in that effort, it was really nice. And when you get into new seasons of life that restrict you more, they restrict your freedom. Like, when you have kids, if you have a career situation where you don't have as much money to kind of go out and do all this stuff or to travel or something, it's easy to pick the most efficient, the activities that require the least amount of energy. Because, let's be real, you're spending that energy on kids and career and everything else. And then it can start to feel acceptable to put in low amounts of energy into your relationship. But I just want to remind you that intimacy, meaning the stuff that lights up your heart, and when you see them, you actually feel good inside. Instead of like an undertone of anxiety or something. It's like, that comes when you put energy into the relationship. And some examples of what I mean, it's like, not just like cleaning up the house more so that you can get more sex, but thinking, like, what in her environment or his environment.

Would make them feel more relaxed, more at peace and take away more of their stress. Thinking really strategically, like, the way I think is okay, when she gets home, I want her. Like, I, I used to work at Apple. Quick side note. And they were obsessive about the customer journey. So they. Half the orientation training was like, when they walk in the Door. This happens, and then this happens, and this happens. They were just, like, religious on almost every step of that process being planned out and intentional. So they had just a breeze. You come in the Apple Store, it's great, and you leave and you're happy, you know, Now I walk in the Apple Store, and I. I'm like, I didn't have an appointment, and it's a terrible experience, and they don't want. They don't want me there. But it's like, when I think about my partner, I want her to have an incredible experience as she walks through the door. As she. And I think about this in my context, it's like, once we put the kids to bed, I want her to walk into the bedroom. And I started writing poetry for my wife. And that's something I hadn't done in a long time. I used to, like. I was in a band in college and used to, like, write songs and stuff and kind of just got out of it and got busy. And I was just like, man, I don't really write, like, songs or, like, write poems for her anymore. I used to do a lot of that. I should really put in some energy and time into doing that. So I write her, like, a poem, and then I'd have, like, a little mocktail, like something better than a lemonade, but not a. Not a drink, you know, just like, sitting there ready for her in a cookie. And then I, like. I cleaned up the bedroom a bit and made the bed so that it feels really nice. And I get the lighting set, you know, just right. And that's not because I want to have any sort of, like, physical intimacy necessarily. It's just. I just want her to feel relaxed. I want her to come in and just feel relaxed. And then I know her favorite book, and I have it sitting there, and I actually read the back cover of the book, and I know what it's about. And I looked online. I don't want to read the whole book, but read it online. Like, the kind of the loose, like, narrative of the fiction book she's reading. And so I'm asking her about it, and I remember what the characters are, and I take an interest in what she's reading, not because I care about the book, but because I care about her and I care about why she's interested. And, man, I'll tell you what, that kind of energy comes back. It's electric. And then she's asking me, like, what are you reading in your psychology books? And tell me about, you know, what you're Learning about fear associations in the lateral amygdala. And like, let me tell you, Paige, my wife does not care at all about the lateral amygdala that is not relevant to her world in the slightest. But she genuinely will give me audience to just kind of verbally process what I just kind of like, was learning that day in this book by Joe Ladue that I've been reading, because, like, there's a reciprocal energy that we're putting into that. And I don't know, have you sat down and really strategized how to make your partner's day incredible? When's the last time you did that? Like, you really put all of your brain power into thinking, like, okay, flowers, meals.

Just whether it's cleanliness, recreational activity, the music that's on.

What does your partner need to just feel amazing in the world? And can you just put all of your mental effort into making that more of a reality than it was before she walked in the room or he walked into the room?

I'll tell you, if you just put brain energy into stuff like that, you're going to see a pretty big shift. I could give you some steps, I guess, like. Like some stuff that rhymes. But ultimately I think it comes down to just that conviction. I'm willing to put in energy into this. And my guess, just a last little side note, then we'll close it out, is like, some of you listening to that were like, but they don't put energy into me. And why would I. Why would I go through all that when I just don't feel like that's offered? And I'm just like, I'll tell you what. I've given this assignment to dozens of clients, specifically individual clients that I see that have a partner that they're upset with. Everyone who's followed it, in my experience, has come back happier that they tried it. Now, that doesn't mean it fixed the relationship. That doesn't mean it turned a bad relationship to a good one or that it. That it untangled things that were problematic or toxic. I'm not saying any of that. I'm saying it was a net positive in every case, not just for them, but also in reception, because it just introduces a different energy into the relationship.

There's a chemical reaction that happens emotionally when you put energy in like that that the other person responds to. At the very least, it puts them in a good mood. And you might like your partner more if they're in a good mood. And I just would say give it a shot, like, try, like Someone has to go first. And there's clearly more detailed things you can do. If an intervention like that does not fix all your problems, I'm not claiming that it will, but that's a great place to start.

Well, maybe in part two we will talk about both of our times at Apple, because I also work there.

And then we'll get more into the trench on some of these tactical pieces that you're talking about and the things that rhyme that people can do and some of the other conflict stuff. So listen, brother, thank you so much for, for jumping on the show today. We're going to have the links in the show notes and I just want to say to everybody that's out there listening, this is definitely an episode that you need to man it forward. This is something that you should probably listen to with your partner. This is something that you should, you know, send to a friend and, and just chat about and kind of get into a conversation about, because I think this is, there's lots of topics in here that are worthy of sharing and conversing about. But for the people that want to learn more about you and your work and what you have to offer, where can they go to learn more about you?

Yeah, Matthias J. Barker on, on Instagram, you can go to mathiasjbarker.com you can find the couples workshop there. Yeah, I have resources on relationships trauma. That's, that's kind of my main thing. So any social. Matthias J. Parker. That's the spot.

Beautiful. Beautiful. Well, thank you so much for joining us today and for everyone out there that is tuning in, thank you so much for tuning in. And as always, until next week, this is Connor Beaton signing off.