Top Sex Psychologist: The Benefits of Overcoming Sexual Addiction & 3 Sex Tips - Dr. Doug Weiss

I've been working with Sex x for over 35 years. Most guys who own their own business control their own income, double their income or more in the first 12 months of being clean. And so it really does affect you in every area of your life. I'll give you three tips to great sex. Okay? Eyes open, lights on, and nurturing conversation. Look her in the eyes, talk to her. Behold her. You do that, you connect to her during sex. And I've shared this with hundreds of thousands of people. I've never gotten an email that said, doesn't work.

All right, Dr. Weiss, welcome to the Man Talk Show. How you doing today?

Yeah, I'm doing fantastic. Connor, how you doing, man?

I'm doing good. Yeah, I'm doing very good. I got my workout in this morning. Played with my boy.

I got swim, got to work out, got to do treadmill, man. I'm ready to rock and roll.

Awesome, awesome. That's. That's good stuff. I know I normally don't do, like, early morning podcasts for whatever reason. Usually I record in the afternoons, but we're. We're doing like the first thing morning, which is. Which is. It's kind of nice. I've got my coffee.

I know, right?

This is a good way to start the day, you know, having a.

Get it done, man.

Having an in depth conversation. So before we talk about what we're going to talk about, I'm going to start with the big question, which is tell us a story about a defining moment in your life that made you who you are today.

Well, especially, you know, what we're talking about. You know, I grew up. I was conceived in adultery, so. And my mom got divorced, then she married another guy, and then, then they got divorced. And then, you know, I was probably maybe about 12, maybe ish. 12 ish. And now in my house, we. We. I never saw a book. There was not a book in the entire house. Okay. But my mom walks in with a college textbook on human sexuality.

So this is about, you know, 350 pages of academic sexuality, human sexuality book. Now, no idea how she got this book, okay. But she hands it to me, she says, doug, I think you should know this. Well, I don't know what. I don't. I don't remember reading any of it, but the pictures really were helpful and got me into the whole pattern of, you know, medicating myself through sex, through pornography, through masturbation, and, you know, getting into the. Getting into that ritual of doing that. So that was a defining moment. Because I probably wouldn't have, like, come up with that by myself.

That's fair. That is very fair. I agree with that. I mean, it's. It's interesting because one of the things. Over the years, I've been working with men for a decade now, and, you know, guys from all over the world come into our ecosystem, and one of the interesting things, One of the things that we'll often do is we'll. We'll ask a question like, you know, tell another man, you tell the guy that you're, you know, working with the first story of your first sexual experience. Oh, yeah, tell this. Tell the story of how you first learned about sex. And what's been wildly fascinating to me is how many guys, one, learn about sex through friends and friends. Siblings. Right, Older siblings. And two, how many guys in our gener, like my generation and the generations before us, found porn in the woods?

In the woods, on the highway, in some guy's garage, Their friend's garage. Yeah, just random sexual journey. And it's not in the context of relationship. It's in the context of images and objects and stuff like that. And, you know, the kids today, bless their hearts, it's on their phone. I mean, the worst porn store ever in the history of mankind ever is on their phone. And they're eight years old. You know, so it's a. It's a totally different day now.

Yeah, it's a pretty wild thing. And so I'm excited to dive into this topic. You're the president of the American association of sexual addiction therapy. Maybe just tell the listener a little bit more about what got you further down that path and the type of treatments that the association would deploy for people that are coming in. And maybe it'd be helpful for us to actually, you know, bring some definitions in around sexual addiction. Because I think, you know, what I've noticed is that in the last sort of 10 years, it's become a little bit more front and center and mainstream. But before that, sex pornography was not classified as an addictive behavior. And it was something that I think a lot of people had shame around.

So, absolutely, it's been an addictive behavior since mankind. I mean, so it's been around way longer than hundreds of years. Even Freud start to address it in his things. But so we see that, you know, sex addiction is someone who is actively medicating either past pain, current pain, or stress through some kind of sexual behavior, whether it's with themselves, with pornography, with images or objects, other people, other relationships. And they're doing it to medicate Something. And so it's not about how frequently they're having sex, it's the why they're having sex. And I'm the executive director of Heart Tar Counseling center in Colorado Springs and people flying from all over the world. We've been treating sex addicts for over 35 years. Okay. And so. And seeing them get better, you know, one of the things I want to give your audience is there's hope. I've been Sober now for 37 years, tested by a polygraph, okay? No masturbation, no pornography, no sex outside of marriage. And so people can get free. So I know we're going to get into maybe the corners of this thing and the shadows of this thing, but like the beginning, I just want to know, let. Let your audience know that no matter, you know, what they're struggling with, you know, whether it's prostitutes or masturbation or porn or, you know, secret chat rooms or whatever, they're into Facebook, you know, the cruising, you know, all that kind of stuff that you don't have to stay stuck, you know, at all. What we're going to talk about today, you can get free. You can be free. You can have a, you know, you can not feel bad about yourself. You cannot have that anxiety. But if my wife or my mom or my friend finds out that, you know, I'm spending three hours a night looking at porn, you know, you know, you don't have to have that anxiety. And plus, here's a really cool thing, Connor, now go back to your question. Is most guys I work with have done five day intensives for probably over two decades. I've been working with sex. Sex for over 35 years. Most guys who own their own business control their own income, double their income or more in the first 12 months of being clean.

That's exciting for most guys, I'm saying. And so it really does affect you in every area of your life. It's not just like this little secret that you, you know, you do and it has no impact on, on your wife. We can. I wrote a whole book on the impact. Two books on the why how it impacts the. The partners of sex addicts. We can talk about that maybe later. But this is a real deal. And, you know, Bill Clinton actually was the person who kind of moved the needle towards talking about it as an addiction. And ever since it's been, you know, I've been on Oprah, Dr. Phil, all those shows because it's, it's a real issue, you know, for men and, and women, you know, but for Men, I mean, we're plagued with it right now just because the easy access, the anonymity of the Internet, the, you know, the porn industry has gone crazy on the Internet and, and men are getting introduced at an earlier age. I mean, you know, you're slightly younger than me, but in my age, you had to go down and steal it. Okay, you know, 7, 11, distract the guy and steal a magazine. You couldn't even buy it, right. And now we're at, you know, fourth graders or third graders downloading pornography in their classrooms. And so we're, we're at a totally different generation of young men coming up that are being exposed way before their brain is able to handle that data.

I think that's, you're touching on a few really important pieces. I've been pretty open about my journey. Like in my book, I wrote a book called Men's Work, and, and in the book I talk about my story. And part of it is, you know, consistent infidelity and heavy porn usage. Like a pretty severe porn addiction in my late teens and early 20s. And a part of it was, you know, I found it early on. I was like 14 years old, 13, 14 years old. We had dial up at home. And so it was, you know, it was pretty, it was pretty shitty as far as porn goes. It wasn't as readily accessible as it, as it is today, but, you know, it was just unchecked and it was very hard to censor. And it was something that was incredibly easy to access. It was something nobody knew about. And it seemed like a sort of a harmless indiscretion, you know, for a period of time until I got into my 20s, my early 20s, and it was really severe, you know, it was really, really bad and out of control. And so I, I see a lot of men dealing with that where something happens in their life and the, you know, the usage of pornography starts to ramp up or, you know, their, their usage of the, the sex, you know, sex and, and womanizing starts to ramp up. And I think there's something interesting. I can't remember exactly what you said before, but it was something to the tune of. It's not that people are having, it's not that you're having sex, it's why you're having sex.

Absolutely.

Some iteration of that. Can you speak a little bit more to that? Because I think that that's pretty important.

For laying the foundation. Guys ask is like, you know, well, what if I just like sex and have a high sex drive? Am I a sex addict? Well, of course Not. But there's differences. You know.

A person who has a high sex drive is having relational sex. They're actually connecting spiritually and emotionally. And their full being is connecting to the full being of the woman. Right. And we're connecting in the process. And it. There's a level of satiation because my being has connected to your being and who I feel so close to you. Right. Where a sex addict is having sex in an altered state, in a disconnected state. Oftentimes they can't even be present with the real person. They have to go to the fantasy world, imagine images or past sexual encounters downwards. Or imagine things she's saying that she's never said so that they can get to an orgasm because they've conditioned themselves. We'll talk about this later. In the six types. But they condition themselves to object, relationship, sex. And so even though they're using a person's body, they are having object relationship sex. And so. And they're doing it again and again. And they don't get the level of satisfaction. So they always want more and more and more. Not because they want to be more connected, because they want to get a release. Going back to the teenage years when they were hurt or they were. 80% have been sexually abused by men or women. A lot of guys think they got lucky when they were 14 and she was 18. Okay? That's called sexual abuse. It's a criminal act. Okay. And so they don't realize it, but their body realizes it. Okay? They were used as a sex object. So they're having object relationship sex. That's the way they. They masturbate and stuff like that. And so it's a conditioning process. But they're actually having a different type of sex than someone who's having a high libido, who wants to be connected to their woman. And, and, and it's that kind of thing. It's. No, I want to get off.

Maybe just say a little bit more about the object. Relationship, sex. Can you just define that for the listener? Because I think that's. That's also important to just have that parameter set.

Sure. Well, sex with an object is the great thing about an object. So she always worships you. She does what she want. She does exactly what you want her to do. She says exactly what you want her to say. She doesn't exist in real time. Okay. You have to manufacture her. Okay. Now you can put a collage of pornography images and stories together. But. But she exists to serve you totally. Sex is all about you. It's not about Giving and connecting. It's not about sharing. And it costs you nothing emotionally to have object relationship sex. You don't have to give your heart relationship sex, where in relational sex, you're with a woman who has. Has her own needs, her own desires, her own voice. And, you know, and you have to negotiate, you have to work through that and be with her. And so it's a totally different process. So object sex is really about you just getting your needs met. It's not about really being in a mutual situation. I'm unique in this, Connor. I have done at least five to six thousand masturbation porn histories, okay. There's very few people with that, that kind of street cred, okay. When they come to my office, they fly, we do appointments. I've been doing masturbation porn histories with over 5,000 men, okay? And most men train themselves on object relationship sex years before their first sexual encounter with a woman. And so when they go to the woman experience, they bring that with them. And if you're one of those guys who, you know, you're with your wife or your partner and you're still fantasizing during sex, you're still training yourself to object relationship sex, even though it's with the real body.

Okay? Because the neurological reinforcement schedule is going to what you're seeing in your mind. And so if you're looking at something in your mind, instead of looking at. Into her eyes or looking at her, you're gluing to it neurologically, not to her.

Yeah. So there's a natural separation between relational sex. Right. Relational intimacy is what the. Here you could do the distinction of. And then the objective sex, where the other person is an object of your release, your satiation, an object of maybe a fantasy that you're playing out that you saw in porn or that you experienced in the past. And, and their. Their function, I guess you could say, to sort of make it actually more logical. Their function is just to serve that role. And you're not actually in relationship with them, you're in relationship with the fantasy. Is that. That's very, very accurate.

Well said. And so when we. When we develop that way. So that's our sexual development now in the masturbation histories, most guys have done that anywhere from 1 to 10,000 times, right? So neurologically, their skill level is really high in object relationship, and that is usually the foundation of sexual addiction. Okay? That object going to Boo boo mommy. I call it Boo boo mommy. To get your needs met, to be unconditionally loved, to be wanted, to be Vulnerable, to be dirty, to be controlled or controlling, to have power, to be without power. So you go into this place oftentimes to balance yourself psychologically in some way.

Yeah, it's. It's interesting because my. So my mentor has been working in Gestalt for 40 plus years and developmental psychology and, and one of the things that is part of his framework, my framework now, is that all addiction are attachment issues. And I kind of hear you talking about this notion that when we don't feel safe to really attach or connect to somebody else, then in this, in, in our framework, it's like when we can't attach to somebody else relationally, we attach to the object or the substance.

Absolutely right.

That becomes, that becomes our primary attachment. Excuse me. And that's why this, the saying addiction is giving up everything for one thing, right. Is that we're so glued to this one attachment and we don't feel safe or trustworthy to actually attach in these areas. I wonder how deep we should go into this object notion. Maybe we can go into a little bit further in a moment. I want to double back though, and just make sure that we have defined sexual addiction in a very clear way for the listener, because I think that is really important. So what are those parameters based on your work, your institute, and what you've seen? Because I think it's kind of a loose thing out in the clinical world, right?

Well, it's loose in all addictions because one guy using cocaine once a month is necessarily a sex act. Another guy could be a cocaine addict. Right? One drinking three beers might be an alcoholic, and the next guy drinking three beers might not be an alcoholic. Okay? So it is a little. Okay, now in. In my experience, whenever I do a show like this, all guys who are sex acts already know they are, okay? They have tried to stop, they've cried, prayed, promised. Some of them had consequences. They used after those consequences of getting caught, losing their job, or losing a relationship, they went back to it after promises of not to. And so they tend to spend more and more time with it over time. You know, it used to be an hour a week. Now it's an hour a day or two hours. So there's more time consuming. They tend to make the rest of their social life smaller so they can accommodate the addiction. Okay, so those are some of the characteristics of addiction. But addiction is, is. Is medicating yourself in some way. Doesn't. Whether it's alcohol, drugs, sex, food, work, what doesn't matter to avoid either past pain, like sexual abuse, pain, rape, Trauma, abortions, whatever, or current stresses that are overwhelming for you. You don't have the emotional maturity to process your emotions, so you go to it. But there's actually six different types of sex acts. So I'd like to go down that road a little bit because it might help some guys get to get who they are. And I'll go through them really rapidly. Number one is the biological, okay? This is purely biological. This has nothing to do with attachment. This is just biological. When you have a sexual encounter, you get the highest level of endogenous opiates. It's the prefrontal cortex of your brain, and boom, you attach to whatever that is, okay? If you do that thousands of times, you're going to really like whatever that is, okay? And so you can become a sex addict just purely by that process, with no emotional trauma, no sexual abuse, nothing. Just ring the bell, feed the dog. Ring the bell, feed the dog. Ring the bell, feed the dog. Okay? Just like the person who picks up a cigarette and keeps picking up a cigarette, okay? Then there's a psychological. That's the abandonment issues, you know, the emotional physical abuse in the home or by peers, bullying, that kind of stuff. You feel psychologically pain and you move to medicate. Thirdly is sexual abuse. Now, the sexual abuse sex addict is someone who actually duplicates their sexual abuse either as the perpetrator or as the victim. So their profile is very specific to their sexual trauma because a lot of people who are sex X have been sexually abused, but they don't fit that profile. But the ones who do, it's because. Directly because of the trauma. And then there's people who have, you know, spiritually, you know, they have. They're on a spiritual journey and sex is filling the hole, okay? Until that, until they find that spiritual end, that journey. They. They use this to kind of get that unconditional love and support and encouragement and nurturing. And then there is the intimacy anorexic sex addict. Now, this takes a little explaining. Intimacy anorexia is where you actively withhold spiritually, emotionally, and sexually from your spouse or partner. Okay? So literally, a guy could be a sex addict and not have. Not have sex with his wife for weeks, months, or years or decades. Now, that sounds crazy if you're a sexist, but, okay, but you've. You've probably had conversations about the, the sexless marriages, the sexless woman, the sexless guy. We can have. I've written several books on that and, and coined the phrase intimacy anorexia. But so real quickly, the guy's too busy for his wife, blames his wife, withholds love, withholds spiritually, withholds emotionally, withholds sex or is disconnected during sex, like we talked about. Unwilling to talk about his feelings, is critical of her, and she feels like a roommate. They've had that conversation again. I feel alone. We're not really clicking, you know, why are we married? That kind of stuff. And then the last one is someone with a mood disorder, a legit mood disorder, chemical depression, bipolar, manic depression. And they're actually using the sexual endogenous process to balance their brain. Okay. And for that person, so each one, they need a certain level, different kinds of treatment to some degree. But knowing which one you are really helps because you know how you got there. You can now it's like, okay, now how do we get out of here? Okay. Instead of just lumping all sex acts together, we, you know, in the early late 80s, that's how they did it. When we came up with this model, just made a lot more sense for people as to, like, figuring out how. Because the biggest question is, you know, Connor, how did I get here? You know, I'm really a rational guy, and I want to be successful in life, so how did I end up in your office? And when I go through these types, I go, okay, let me do my assessment. And. And it takes me out maybe eight to 12 minutes because I'm pretty good at it. And I can find out in about 12 minutes what type of sex act they are. And we have those on YouTube, and they can call our office. We have lots of counselors who can do this with them. And then once they find that out, then there's a path, a known path to treat them.

Yeah. It is interesting because I think a lot of guys are searching for the why am I this way? And that can be a step in the process. That's pretty important.

It oftentimes is the thing that's like, well, once I figure out why I'm this way, then I won't be this way anymore.

No, no, no, no, no, no. That just tells you the road.

That's right. That's right. Yeah. I just wanted to make sure that that was clear for everybody.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. What roads are going on? And, you know, I know men make men. You have to be in support groups. There's all kinds of processes we can talk about. But, yeah, it's not like you don't. You don't understand addiction and heal. You understand addiction journey.

Yeah. Say. Say a little bit more about the Intimacy anorexia. Because I think that's an interesting one. What would you say contributes to the birth of intimacy anorexia in a man? If that's somebody who's like seeking sexual attention outside, whether it's through porn or through, you know, affairs and whatnot, but is very disconnected within their primary relationship. Is that just maybe say a little bit about what caused, what causes that? A little bit, yeah.

Well, not only. I mean, you know, you're having man talks, but, you know, there's a lot of men married to women who are intimacy anorexics who avoid sex, who are really good guys. They work hard, they provide for their family, and they go home, they're not touched, they're not wanted, they're not talked to, and they feel used and they feel crazy. And some of that pain is what drives them into some of these behaviors because they have. They are in an unloving relationship. I have a book called Married Loan. We have books on intimacy anorexia. But the four causes, Connor. One is sexual addiction, because you have preferred the object for so long that you really don't want to connect to a real person. It's too emotionally, spiritually, and relationally expensive for you. So you just don't. Okay, One is sexual abuse. You've been used as an object at a deep, very core level. You haven't healed that safety mistrust issue. And so you don't really trust and so you don't really want to come out and play. All right, Some is the attachment you were talking about. Attachment to the cross gender parent. So if you're a man, you either couldn't attach to mom because she wasn't safe, she wasn't there, she was abusive or neglectful, and so you couldn't attach to her. And so therefore you don't even know how to attach to a woman in a deeper way. And then the last is a role model neglect where both parents were very emotionally distant. There's all cultures who are like that. And so you didn't learn anything about connecting. You learned about, you know, go to school, work hard, be successful, get a nice car and die. So you didn't really learn about relationship and intimacy. I mean, your dad didn't say, hey, son, how you feeling? It was a rough day.

You mean the goal? The goal isn't to just buy a Porsche or a Ferrari and then kick the bucket? I thought that was why we were all here.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, it's. It's the American dream, you know, But. But it's unsatisfying you know, without relationships and intimacy, you know, both with a. With a partner in a deep way, but also with some men you got to have some, some buddies, you know, hang out with and do stuff with life with. Laugh at each other with. Laugh with each other with, you know, and cry with each other, you know, when things get tough and get. Things get hard.

I agree, I agree. That is the primary function of what we do in a lot of ways with, with man talks. I want to just go in a little bit more in terms of the intimacy anorexia because I think, you know, I was reading some research the other day that was Talking about how 30% of couples within the first two years will be in a quote, unquote, sexless marriage or sexless relationship. Sorry. And I thought that that was in some ways surprisingly high, you know, that 30% of couples are going to find themselves having sex less than, you know, four to six times per year. And that tells me that there's an intimacy issue in a lot of ways that people are struggling to maintain connection. And I think what's interesting is our modern times. It's, you know, there's sort of the choice paradox. You can go online on any social media platform and, and your imagination can run wild about, you know, maybe being in relationship with her or him would be easier and they treat me better and then give me what I want and, you know, or you can go on to dating apps and, you know, sort of see this slew of people and fantasize about how good your life would be with them. Or you can go on to, you know, porn sites and. Or you can go on to OnlyFans, right? And you can go and rent a girlfriend, right, and have everything, you know, that you've imagined sort of come up. And so it really seems like this. I like this concept of intimacy anorexia because it actually seems to me from the outside like what a lot of people are struggling with is building the foundation of healthy intimacy. And so I'm curious to get your perspective on two pieces. One.

What would you say is contributing to this intimacy anorexia, both socially and then within our family systems? And two, what are some of the primary things that we actually require within a relationship to develop that deeper kind of intimacy? And I know that might be dependent on some of the things that you're struggling with. Um, but I want to just explore these two paths.

Well, I think, you know, we, we have a multi addicted culture, so we have a lot of children raising children. Okay. Because if you have an addiction, you don't mature past the point where the addiction starts in your life. And most addiction starts in early adolescence. So if you stay in the attic during the time you're raising your children, you're. It's a child raising a child. So a child doesn't get to see what adulthood looks like, and they go and repeat that. So that's. That's one. You know, talk about a. A film. Familiar cultural problem. That's it. Another problem is easy access and the growth of technology. Okay. Prior to my generation, I mean, they had, like, black and white tv, right? You know, and they might watch I Love Lucy where everyone was married and they slept, you know, separate beds, and now everyone's sleeping in the same bed with different people. And so the culture has moved from kind of a standard of, you know, relationships take commitment and work and do that kind of thing to like, well, just do whatever you want to do. If it feels good, do it. We went through the 60s, you know, love the one you're with, right? And so we moved really away from traditional understanding of relationships in general, that they take time, they take commitment, they take hard work. Okay? So we were more into, hey, let's just go on Facebook. Right? And so when you go to a restaurant, Connor, just look at how many people are on their cell phones versus how many people are talking to each other. I like to leave mine in my pocket or in the car.

Because we're not talking to each other. We're talking to things that are out there in the other world, okay? And so we're getting more dependent on this other Internet world. Whether it's news, stocks, or, you know, Facebooks or fans only, whatever it is, we're getting more familiar and attached to technology. I really feel sad for our next generation of kids who. They grow up with it from almost babies. You see moms handing their kids cell phones at 2 years old to pacify them, okay. Instead of relating to them. And mostly calm. So this. One of the other questions you ask is what skills do we need to have? I wrote a book called Emotional Fitness. Now I have four degrees. Okay? Not bragging. I'm just saying that in all four degrees, they didn't teach me how to be emotionally fit.

Almost like colleges, right? And so they talked about feelings, but they didn't teach you how to do it. And in the emotional Fitness book, I talk teach men and women, in 60 days, they can become emotionally incredible. So we need to have the emotional skill to be able to identify what we feel, because if we can't identify what we feel, we can't communicate what we feel. If we can't communicate it, we can't be heard. If we can't be heard, we don't feel intimate.

Does that make sense? Absolutely. Going to counseling, that's one of the basic skills they learn, is what are you feeling? Share your feelings. Let's do that in group. You know, you learn when you do that in group, you connect to that group. You feel authentic. You've had hundreds of those kind of encounters with men, right, Where a guy just breaks down and starts sharing his heart, right? And then all of a sudden, the whole group likes the guy, right? Because that. That kind of emotional skill to be able to share your heart brings intimacy into your life, okay? And so without that skill, and most men have, I've got four degrees. I was not trained. Okay? All right. So I had to train myself. And the emotional fitness book walks you through how to do that. Because feelings are not in your brain. They're in your fascia system.

And so you have to actually feel the feeling to be able to switch the feeling. You can't switch a feeling in your head, okay. Because thoughts are not stronger than feelings. Talk to any angry person will make sense, right?

And so you actually have to learn how to do that. And so I think there's some cultural things that are keeping us from intimacy. I think there's a lot of role model things that we've learned over many generations that are not help. Helpful. And I'm excited that, you know, like, conversations like this with you, that men can take that journey. And it is a journey and it's. It's skill. Just like if you. If you don't want to learn how to be good at golf, which why would you want to do that? But if you do, you have to spend a lot of time to do that, right? To get good at it. And in emotions, you can. If you spend 20 minutes a day for two months, you can become incredibly good at it. And we have an exercise in several of my books called the Three Dailies, which you share two feelings with your spouse every day. You know, I've done that for decades, okay? And so you. When you share your feelings, you. You're connecting to your spouse and you're getting better at identifying and communicating your feelings. That's a skill you can have.

But if not, you will do. Men tend to do what we're good at. And if you're not good at something, you don't do it well. You don't get good unless you practice. But if you don't practice, you stay not good. And then, so your wife is not hearing your heart, you're not hearing her art. And listen, if you want your woman to talk to you and you want her to open up sexually, you gotta learn how to do feelings. Now, I've been talking about this for 30 plus years, Connors, in all kinds of settings, okay? And the guys who do what I asked that when I tell them to do, they have better sex. I have a whole book called upgrade your sex life. I've written like 35 books, upgrade your sex life, which teaches guys how to, you know, how they're made sexually, the five different sexual expressions, and how their wife is made and how they can capitalize on that. Because your wife wants to hear something different than you want to hear, okay? She wants to be asked differently than you want to be asked. Once you know what that is, you can capitalize that and have better and more sex. But you're as, as a man, if you're not sharing emotionally and you're not connecting with her emotionally, you're actually going to dry her up sexually. She's not going to want to open up her legs because you're not, you're not opening up her heart.

And emotions is how you get to a woman's heart. How do you feel about that? What else do you feel about that? You know, and men don't have that skill, okay? Because in the men's social society, we don't do that. Hey, buddy, how you feeling, man? Like, how you doing is what we do. How you doing? Right. I'm doing fine. Right? So. But in the female culture, you know, you have to learn how to identify their feelings and say, hey, well, how'd you feel when that happened with your mom or your sister or your friend? And what else do you feel? I mean, how do you feel when the kids didn't, you know, call you on mother's Day or let's talk about it, right? And get into that, then that turns her on. Especially if you share your feelings.

Yeah, it's, it's interesting. I heard on a different show, there's a podcast out of the UK called, I think it's called Diary of a CEO. And the gentleman had on this woman who is a sex expert and has written a ton of books around sex and intimacy and, you know, having great sex with your relationship. And she, she said something that I found really interesting. She said, women are the ones to get bored sexually in the relationship, not men. And oftentimes, I think what, what we do as guys is we fall into these patterns, habits, and routines, and that. That's comfortable for us and we're totally fine with it. Right. And I hear guys talk about this all the time. It's like, yeah, like, if we just had sex two or three times a week, but it was. It was the same thing, you know, it was the same position. Like, I'd be fine with that because we'd be having sex. And when you see, I would imagine. I'm curious to sort of poke this into your. Into your, Your. Your background around masturbation and porn habits. I would wager a guess that a good amount of men have very habituated routine masturbation and porn viewing processes. Is that accurate?

Yeah. Oh, yeah, absolutely. And that influences how well they can show up emotionally in the relationship and how well they can show up sexually in the bedroom. And if a woman doesn't feel like she has your heart during sex, she's having negative reinforcement, not positive reinforcement. Okay? And so if you keep negatively reinforcing your wife that you're not going to be present during sex and she's going to have an empty, alone experience. She doesn't want to have an alone experience. Okay. So you're actually conditioning her not to want you as opposed to if you're all in connected looking. I'll give you the three tips because you seem like a nice guy. Connor, I'll give you the three tips to great sex. Okay? Eyes open, lights on, and nurturing conversation. Look her in the eyes, Talk to her. Behold her. You do that, you connect to her during sex. And I've shared this with hundreds of thousands of people. I've never gotten an email that said, doesn't work.

Now, I have gotten emails. It took me a while to do it, okay. To actually look her and be present with her, because I'm not used to being present. Okay? But as they, as they move through that, then the wife is having the better sex, because for her, it's about connecting to your heart. Now, if she's having a better positive reinforcement schedule, then she's going to be more motivated to have that positive reinforcement because that's when you're really with me. That's when you connect me. That's when you open your heart to me. Well, I want to be with you. And so, guys, I mean, the women are not as complicated as we make them to be, but they do need positive reinforcement sexually. And with what this person on the podcast was alluding to only applies to one of the sexual expressions, okay? Because one of the sexual expressions is fun, okay? They want to. They want to have. They want to have sex and fun. But in other sexual expressions is patience. That person wants quality time with sex. They want the long stroking. They want the, you know, the 30, 40 minute warm up before having a sexual encounter, whether they're a man or a woman, okay? So it depends on what their sexual expression is as to why they would get bored quickly. But oftentimes what I find is there's a mismatch, okay? So he thinks she wants sex the way he does, and she thinks he should have sex the way she wants it. Instead of learning, hey, he wants to hear this during sex. He wants to hear, I warn you not I love you. Because guys know their wives love them because they put up with them, okay? But what they don't know is if they're, if they're wanted. Now, if your sexual expression is desire and you're not hearing that you're wanted, you're going to search to be wanted.

Whether it's flirting. I have a whole video on intrigue, addiction, intriguing with women. You're going to find yourself acting in some way to get wanted because you're not being wanted. You're not, you're not being ravaged and, you know, attacked and, you know, hey, let's do it in the car. Like, you're not getting that, okay? And so that mismatch, because maybe he's desire, he wants to be wanted. But over here she is, she's patience. And she's like, hey, I want to make sure the doors are locked, the kids are asleep, and I want you to crest me with oil. And I want you to tell me, you know, how much you enjoy me. Or if she's like, celebration. She wants you to be able to really celebrate who she is, not just as a sex partner, but as a woman, right? And so knowing what she wants is. I cover the whole sexual arc in that book where we talk about the sexual environment you create for your partner, okay? That's how you talk about sex, you know, throughout the day or throughout the week, whatever that kind of environment is to play for now. And then how you invite your spouse. Because if you have a patient, let's suppose you have a patient wife, which a lot of women are patients. You would say, baby, I really want to spend some time with you tonight. I want to. I want to give you a bath, I want to rub your feet, I want to play with you, and then I want to make love to you. Well, see, now that's an Invitation she wants because it invokes her own sexual expression. See what I'm saying? If you're like, hey, let's go have sex, he's so turned off because it doesn't have anything to do with her or quality time. See what I'm saying? And for a man, if he is desire, and she's saying to him.

Something like, hey, you know, it'd be really neat if you'd give me a 30 minute massage. And he's like, do you want me? Is it about me? Like, do you want me at all? Am I just here to service you? Like, he's not feeling it. You see what I'm saying? So a lot of couples, they don't understand the sexual expression of the other person. And so because of that, they presume the other person's like them and they're not. I've, I've, I don't think I've ever seen a couple in counseling where they were the same.

Yeah.

And it takes about, it takes less than probably a half hour to figure it out. They just read the first five chapters of the book and they go, oh my gosh, I'm this. Oh my gosh, I'm this. Then the rest of the book tells them what to say and do and how to work it out, Right? And so once you know, oh, I'm desire. Okay, great. So if you just, if she just says, hey baby, I want you, he is lit. And if she says that during sex, oh my gosh, he's going to have the most incredible orgasm because it's hitting his heart exactly the way he's designed. Okay. It's not trying to guess at how he's designed. It's like, no, this is how he is designed, okay? And you say that during sex you will blow his mind. Okay. And the same thing for the wife, like depending on what she is, if she's celebration, you say, you are the kindest soul. I love being with you. I love making love to you. Oh my gosh, you're talking about who she is during sex.

She's happy, right? And happy wife, happy wolf.

So.

Yeah, I mean, it's, it's interesting because I think in, I'm glad that you brought in both parties because I think sometimes what can happen in these conversations, like, you know, I see, I read a lot of comments online, you know, I go, I do a lot of research on other people, shows that are specifically for men. And one of the things that I've started to see more and more is this notion that the man's fully responsible for sex and that the guy's got to figure out what the woman wants. And there's there's some, not a lot, but there are some, you know, channels.

A lot of content out there that sort of advocates for that. I think that there's some guys, guys that want to make sure it's like, yeah, I have my part in this, but she does too.

Yeah. Especially suppose she's an intimacy anorexic woman. She doesn't even want sex. Right? Okay. So it wouldn't even matter what he did. She would sabotage him.

And now that's painful. Okay? Because usually if you're married to the intimacy anorexic, you're the one reading the marriage books, you're the one reading the sex books. You're the one trying to figure it out. But you don't realize you're in a rigged game that no matter what you try, it's not going to work because they don't really want intimacy at the end of the day. Right. That poor guy, he's listening to all the podcasts and he's getting screwed because when he tries this stuff, he doesn't get the results because she doesn't want the results. So your, your intuition's right. Sexuality is definitely a mutual understanding and a mutual learning and a mutual growing. Okay, but if you don't know what the other person's sexual expression is, you are handicapped. I mean, I can tell you I've had couples get mind blowing sex in the first day after trying this stuff. Like I've had thousands of couples, right? And I'd have them ask sex just in generally. And, and just. This is really funny, Connor, by the way, most couples don't even know how to use their words to ask for sex. I have a whole chapter on that. Right. And so they don't even have to say, I want to make love to you, I want to be sexual with you. I want to take your serious and take your clothes off and enjoy you. Right. They don't even know how to get that out of their mouth. They kind of do the groping, the stroking the hair, the touching the back, the hugging tightly to see if they're going to say yes. Right? So there's this whole caveman kind of approach to even asking about sexuality, which is hysterical. But if, if, if the couple is on a journey to find out what the other person really wants to hear and connect it, then that that journey is going to take them to a place that they can really have the most incredible sex. And the way that we're really designed, because usually.

Not always, but these couples are set up in such a way that it's going to cost him something to meet her need, and it's going to cost her something to meet his. Okay? Because if she's patience, she really wants time, right? And if he's fun and he wants to have it in the tent in the backyard and he wants to go. He wants to try different things, right? And so you can see how those two are not going to necessarily be on the same page, but they have to learn to collaborate and say, hey, this time let's do the fun thing. Let me have my kind of flavor. And next time, let's do the patient thing. Let's have your flavor. And you can go back and forth and really connect with each other in a deep, passionate way with understanding and intelligence. Instead of like, oh, the same sex, same thing, you know, okay, you're done. Because that was good for you, right? That's not fun. And eventually that can create pain and neglect. And if it moves to neglect, then you move and it can move into the intimacy and erection stuff, and it gets really painful. We actually did research on a book called Partner Betrayal Trauma. You'll find this fascinating. 144 women did this survey of pre and post. Okay. We surveyed them over like nine or 12 scales. Three groups of women, those who've experienced infidelity, those who've experienced sexual addiction from their spouse, and those who've experienced intimacy, anorexia. And you would think from a scientific standpoint, those three populations would be all over the map. Statistically, in every scale, they were within 1 or 2% of each other. So the trauma of infidelity and the trauma of neglect are exactly experienced the same way by a woman. And I would tell you, as a man who I've worked with many men in a situation, they experience the same way. The guy who has to beg for sex, beg to be connected, beg to be heard, is in just as much pain as a man who the wife cheats on him.

Yep, I would agree with that entirely.

Yeah, it's. It's a whole. It's a whole topic all by itself.

No, it's. It's really. It's really fascinating. I just wanted to. I wanted to return to this notion of intimacy anorexia when one partner is in that position, because I could hear the listeners like, oh, that's my partner. Oh, that's me.

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

What do I do? So what. What are some of the foundational pieces of moving out of that space. Because I think that there's a lot of couples that are in that. Where one person is, is in that refusal of intimacy or the rejection of it, consciously or unconsciously.

Well, they can get informed. If they Google intimacy anorexia, they're going to find our website, find the YouTube stuff. That's great. But get informed a little bit before you go in there, okay? There's actually one on. You know, my. My spouse thinks I'm an intimacy anorexic, right? So it's me talking to the spouse that, you know, hey, your spouse thinks this, right? But get informed, you know, and you might even need to get support yourself because they're. They may not be happy because you're talking to a drunk. And drunks don't always want to give up their beer. And if you've been married for 5, 10, 15, 20, 30 years, they've gotten away with it.

And now you're saying, no, there's a boundary. You're not drinking anymore. You're not going to withhold love from me. You're not going to withhold sex from me. You're not going to not touch me for weeks at a time. You're not going to pull the silent treatment on me anymore. I'm going to have boundaries. And what happens is, as the worth as you get understanding of what the game you're in, your worth increases and your intelligence increases. Now you can start fighting this battle. So then get the intimacy anorexia book and then get the married and alone book so you know how to start battling your side and healing your side of being married and alone. Because if you feel married and alone, you're probably married to an intimacy anorexic, okay? If you've had that, we're just roommates. I feel alone. You know, they're cold towards you in the bed. They turn their back towards you on a regular basis. Are they sleeping in another room or. There's always a headache, they're always tired. And this sex is great for headaches. And sex is great if you're tired, right? So that's really an excuse. But if you feel like you're always being pushed away, you're probably married to an intimacy anorexic. And that is a whole system of addiction, okay? It's addiction to withholding from you. Like in the food anorexia, you withhold food from yourself. In intimacy anorexia, I withhold the food from you and you starve. Okay?

I'm not in pain because I'm starving.

You Yeah, I think that's. That's interesting because I think in some ways, you know, like you're saying you can't force the other person out of that position. And it's like, you know, with avoidant attachment styles, you hear a lot of, oh, my. My partner is avoidant attachment. Like, what do I do? And it's like, well, they have to choose to lean in. You know that. Like, they actually have to choose to. To be the person that moves towards you. And so it sounds like that's a very similar piece of this puzzle.

Similar in dynamic. But what's interesting about intimacy anorexic is it's only in the marriage or the primary relationship. Everyone else gets the best of them. They can have good male relationships if they're a guy, they can have good girlfriends if they're a girl, they can have good relationships with their kids. But when it comes to you, you are the one who is alone. That's the difference between anorexia and say, like, schizoid personality disorder, attachment disorder and those things. Because, like, if you're a schizoid, you're schizoid with everybody. Okay, leave me alone. I'm going to go to the lake, right? I'm going to. I'm going to go to the. You know, I want to go camping right. By myself. Right. And so that's this. When it's a personality disorder or attachment, this stuff, it's. It's global intimacy interaction only in the primary relationship. And that's why the person feels crazier because, like, hey, you're good with your friends, you're good with your family, but you're not good with me. You come home, you read your book, you're on the computer, you're on your phone. I don't know who you are. Right. But everyone else does. That's the difference between intimacy, anorexia as a relationship disorder, like a relational disorder, versus a psychological disorder where it's with everybody.

Yeah. I think it's also interesting because in a lot of those other relationships, there.

Likely often isn't the same opportunity for depth as there is within the intimate relationship. You know, I think that part of the. Part of the uniqueness of an intimate relationship is the depth of belonging, the depth of understanding, the depth of being seen, the depth of having your. Your needs met. And so I think for a lot of people, that is just brutally confronting.

Absolutely.

Especially what I found interesting in, in working with individual. My wife's also a couple therapists.

Well.

And so we work with couples A lot. And so what I've found interesting in some of these dynamics is it can be amplified when the individual knows that they're with a partner who is open and wants to meet their needs. Like that can be. That can be the most confronting thing. Just the knowledge of like, oh, actually you do care about me and you do want to meet my needs and, you know, you do want to feel close to me. And that can be so foreign. It can create all this sort of polarization with you in the individual who is, you know, in your terminology, the intimacy, anorexic. And so that, that can sort of pressurize the system in itself.

And you have a really good intuition. Connor. This can often happen on the wedding night.

They date. Normally we're having fun, we're having sex, we're playing around on, it's all good. And on the wedding night they won't have sex. Okay. And it starts a whole trajectory of rejection. And it's like something about this covenant, this there's no escape from me thing. Okay, you're right. Can bring fear to the other person that they're going to be known because they have an idea like, if you really knew me, you wouldn't love me. Right. They live in object relationship with self. There's a good box and bad box and they can't be bad. So you have to be bad all the time. Which sucks if you're married to them. Right. Okay. And so. But your intuition's right. It's something about that marriage that, that I do think that can actually activate this thing. And I've heard I actually have a whole YouTube one not having sex on your wedding night. Just because I've heard so many clients tell me it happened on the night of the wedding.

Interesting. Interesting. Well, let's. Let's come back to sex and porn addiction and get into a little bit of the quote unquote solution side of things. Because I can hear some of my listeners being like, hold on, do not end this show without going down.

It looks good.

The rabbit hole of, of like how we deal with some of these things. So it. Do you look at treating sex addiction differently than porn addiction? Because I think in for a lot of guys, they're two different camps.

Yeah. Not really the process of addiction. It depends what type they are. So if they're biological, you're still going to go to support groups, you're going to still do the 101 exercise workbook, you're still going to do your 12 steps, you're still going to make Calls every day. You're going to pray every day to whatever you want to. You're going to read literature, we call them the five Cs. Pray, read, call meetings, pray. Kind of like Alcoholics Anonymous. You're going to do that no matter what type of sex addict you are. Okay? That's your basic program there. Now on the biological. And a lot of the guys, they struggle with, you know, checking out people all the time. So they might put a rubber band on the wrist every time they do that to biologically condition themselves from getting that stimulus response thing going. Takes about 30 days. It shuts. That kind of always checking everybody out thing, like, you know, like I'm a fruit inspector or something, right? Oh, wow, that's a nice apple. That's a nice pear. That pears a little. You know, we don't need to do that. If you have psychological stuff, the mom and dad stuff, the wounds, the abandonment, you're probably going to want to do some counseling around that or at least do some reading or support around the wounds of that. Because if you don't identify those wounds, you're going to keep medicating them and you'll just go from porn addiction to food. Okay? So you'll be a fat, clean guy. All right? So you don't want to do that. If we, if we go down into the, the spiritual, well, that takes care of itself because if you go into a 12 step group, you're going to eventually find a higher power. You're going to figure that piece out. Okay. And so don't really do much about that. The, the sexual abuse piece. Often you do need some work on that. You know, we have them do anger work, you know, some empty chair stuff, like the gestalt stuff. You're talking about the forgiveness and all that kind of stuff. If they've experienced a rape, if they have experienced abortions, whatever. Because men have pain about abortions too. It's a whole nother show, right? So, you know, if they have their own traumas that they, that they've done that are sexually related, then they need to deal with that trauma. And that usually does take some support and counseling. And again, everyone's in the support group. We have like 50 phone groups. Okay. So we, we deal with sex addicts all day long. They call Heart to Heart counseling center at 719-278-3708. They're going to get help. We have, you know, lots of stuff there, there's an app, there's all kinds of stuff. Now the intimacy, anorexic that person almost always needs counseling because they don't always want to get better.

And so it really takes some support to kind of push them through that and accountability. And so that we have intimacy, anorexia, support groups for them. They do the workbooks, they make the calls, they do that, and they work on their sex addiction at the same time. Because intimacy, anorexia and sex addiction are interconnected addiction processes. If you don't work on both at the same time, they both come back. Now, the mood disorder person, they do really well to see a psychiatrist, not. Not a gp, but a psychiatrist, because they really want to find out. They can. They can, you know, find out what their chemical imbalance is and treat that alongside of doing the sex addiction treatment. Because I found early in my career that they don't treat the chemical imbalance. They keep relapsing because that's what they've been doing to balance their brain. And once they do balance the brain, oftentimes they get a lot of sobriety really quickly. So everyone has a little bit of different thing they need to do depending on who they are. But all the counselors on my team can help people figure it out and do that, get them in support groups. You have things probably people can do as well. And so it's important to heal, because you're not the man you could be with any addiction process. If you're an alcoholic, you're not the man you could be at home, at work, and like I told you earlier in the show, your income can double in 12 months. Now, if it's affecting you financially at that level, it's affecting you sexually, it's affecting you spiritually, it's affecting you emotionally, it's affecting you socially, it's affecting all of your manhood. Okay. Because you're robbing it of developing. And so when you have an addiction, you move it out of your life, you become more authentic. You become. Read a little bit of your story and your journey of moving from kind of this unauthentic place to an authentic place. Right. But once you deal with addictions, you can naturally gravitate into that process.

Yeah. And I think. I think what's, you know, maybe not important. I mean, it is important, but also interesting. Just about what you're talking about is this notion of support, I think is a huge part of it, you know, having a community that's in there. But also, I was really curious as you were talking about the sort of, like the mood disorder aspect of it. Where do you see. Because this has become so front and center, especially for a lot of men, where do you see something like ADHD fitting into this equation? Because I hear a lot of guys that are this sort of like, that's all wrapped up in that. And I'm curious to get your thoughts.

Well.

It'S not a cause and effect for sure. There's lots of guys with ADHD that are not sex addicts or alcoholics. Okay. Or drug addicts. Okay. So it's not like if I have this, it's this. Now, if you have that, you want to address that because you want to stay. Because recovery does take some concentration. Okay. You do have to stay on task. You have to make phone calls. There are certain things you need to do to get better, but it's not a limitation. I've seen a lot of guys with ADHD get better, okay? Especially if they make recovery their focus, because then they will shut down. They will buy a porn blocker. They will shut down their devices that are not helpful to them. They will shut down the avenues in which addiction's coming into life, because their adhd, they can really. They can tunnel into that thing and really get aggressive. So it's not a. It's not a reason to relapse. It's not a reason not to get better. It's a variable. Just like if you had mild depression might be a variable, or if you were overweight or if you were a smoker, you know, those are variables because you're continuing to be an addict in some way which might hinder your recovery. But it's not a limitation, and it's not a cause and effect. I've done psychological testing on probably close to a thousand men, and it's not a factor in their recovery.

Yeah, good. I just wanted to clear that up because I agree wholeheartedly with you, and I know that there are some men who. That question sort of lingers in the background. It's like, well, maybe my ADHD is the thing that's stopping me from getting clean or getting.

It's not stopping you at all. It could help you if you use it. Right. But any excuse will do when you're an addict, right?

That's right. That's right. That's fair. Yeah. I just want to. I want to clarify on the biological side, because when it comes to addiction, you know, sometimes there's the epigenetics of, like, you know, biologically, you have a higher predisposition. If you have somebody in your family that has addiction. When you're talking about biological addiction in this framework, you're talking about this sort of Pavlovian response that you've trained yourself over and over and over and over and over again. Is that accurate?

It's self induced. But here's the good news. We are as beings, we are in completely neuroplastic. Spiritually, emotionally, sexually, financially, socially, okay? So even if you have this, this 10,000 hits to the object world and you start having relational sex with your spouse or your partner, right? Eyes open, lights on nature cover, you start learning how to do relational sex, then neurologically, your brain will move into that attachment schedule, okay? And I've been clean for over 37 years, okay? And you can learn to have the powerful relational sex, and then your brain will actually prefer that. So it works both ways, okay? Just like if you're 50 years old and you never looked at pornography, and you go start looking at pornography, you can train your brain to go left sexually, okay? And all of a sudden you find yourself attracted to all kinds of weird things, right? Where you never did before because you didn't have the reinforcement schedule. In the same way, it goes the other way. No matter where you are in the object world, if you shut that down and you move into the relational and you stay there, and you stay there, and you stay there, it tips back into becoming your preferred sexual preferences to have relational sex.

Yeah, I think that's such an important piece of it. Can you maybe just speak a little bit? Something that we haven't touched on, that I see within a lot of men is.

Like almost like a validation addiction, a love addiction, you know, this sort of pursuit of getting women to really validate, you know, and that can, that can be. It's not even like pornographic. It's just like, I want you to love me and tell me I want you.

I want you to want me. I want you to want me. Right? And so we call it intrigue addiction. It's under the radar. It's not about lust. It's not about her, you know, her top or her bottom, because they don't match, okay? It's about the eye contact. The intriguing. Do you like me? Do you think I'm hot? Do you think I'm sexy? Right? And it's going on with the eye contact thing, and it drives women crazy because the guys aren't technically doing anything wrong, but they can feel the energy. They can feel it release, they can feel it going back and forth. And it's an intrigue addiction. And so what they're doing is they're more like the beer drinking alcoholic as opposed to the whiskey drinking alcoholic. Right. And so, but they have their own kind of like map of where they get their hits. They go to the health food store, they go to the gym, they go to the coffee shop, they, well, she's going to be there at 3 o' clock on Tuesday. I need to get back there at 3 o' clock on Tuesday. And they actually map this stuff. Okay. And so they are, we call it Intrigue addiction. And we have a video on that. And it's really, once they watch it, they go, oh my gosh, I do that all the time. Then they can start healing from that and having accountability for that, moving through the same process. But it is Intrigue Addiction and it is the, hey, you know, the eye contact, the looking at things, making sure you're at the gym when she's at the gym, that kind of thing. So that you, you start organizing your life to get these, what these Intrigue hits. And once you find someone who wants to play, you'll play with them up to a certain point. And that can actually lead to an affair in some cases. And you can do it online too, where you banter back and forth or you have a text buddy who you're just kind of special friends with. But, you know, we're not doing anything wrong because they live in California. Right. But we're, hey, how's it going? You're really special, you know, that kind of thing. But the intriguing thing, that's the waitress, that's the barista, that's the, the bartender, that's the, you know, we're just, you know, we're just, we're doing it, but we're not telling anybody we're doing it. And we're not getting caught because there's no words being really expressed. And when they are, it's in code.

Well, and how much of that would you say is driven by that individual's.

Sort of deep insecurity within themselves or lacking of a deeper quality of self worth? Because I'm just curious to get your sense on that.

Well, sometimes it's attached to like they didn't get validation from mom. They didn't get, you're awesome, you're great, I love you. You're, you're my buddy. They didn't get physical affection from mom. Mom might have been of a, of a culture where they didn't touch and their love language was touched. They didn't get touched. And so they're looking for that, you know, so some, some of it's very.

Very family of origin stuff. Some of it is kind of like maybe looking for someone to do what you should be doing for yourself. Like, I'm not successful in life, I'm kind of a loser. So like, I like people to give me a little bit of attention because I'm really not living up to my potential because I know I could do better, but I'm just like too lazy to do it. So, you know, I have low self esteem because what I'm capable of doing and what I'm actually doing is so divergent. So I'm looking for these little hits to get through my day. Right. Just like any addiction would, you know, drink the beer so that you don't feel bad about yourself. So I think your intuition again is right. I mean, it has, it has something to do with that, but, but they do, they have a harem, I call them the emotional harem. And they kind of change them, you know, as they go, go through that. Then you know, the girl, the girl left the coffee shop. I'll find the girl at Kroger's, our grocery store. Right. And so now it's this, you know, 20 year old girl who's not interested in you at all, but she smiles. Right. And there you go.

Yeah. It's interesting. I find that. Well, there's, there's two things that sort of come up around this. I find that a lot of those men oftentimes are lacking an internal system of deeper self gratification, self appreciation, like a real, a real sense of internal.

Affirmation within themselves. And so it becomes this, this, I need it from outside of me.

Yep.

The second piece that I'm curious about is where in all of what we've been talking about, where does the sort of like the dark triad traits fit into this? Because there are also individuals who are.

You know, they're cheating, they're having this, you know, intrigue, addiction, et cetera, as almost purely like a power play. So I'm curious to get your thoughts on, like where did, where does that fit into the equation? And have you come across that at all? Or is it mostly the other, the other pieces?

Well, addictions can escalate. So they can become addicted to, you know, first as pornography, then it becomes affairs, then it becomes prostitutes. Because they want stuff that's dirty or crazy or out of control or they would be tied up or whatever. Right. So they kind of move down the continuum because addictions are never satisfied. All right? Some guys can take the same level of porn for their whole life, but some escalate. Okay, so some of that darkness comes in as the escalation of the addiction grows. Okay. The escalation also comes because of reinforcement. They start off with just the playboy, you know, little stuff, and then it moves into this or group sex or that stuff or, you know, whatever, and they start moving down the continuum neurologically. And then they start seeking out that behavior so they're not aware of the darkness because they practice the darkness in their mind through pornography and fantasy. So for them, it doesn't feel dark or unfamiliar to their brain, so they're able to go through even moral code stuff and do it. All right? Some of it is based. I have a book called Addicted to adultery where, you know, the. The person who is in that process is actually, you know, grooming people for that. And then for them, sometimes it's the whole grooming process that's addictive. You know, it's like, hey, getting them to want me, and then they have sex with them, and then they throw them away, like, so that wasn't about having the sex. It was about keeping them on the line long enough to make them want me. And now they want me. I'm good. Right? So everyone's playing a different game when it comes to adultery. All right? So you have to kind of figure out what the game they're playing. But the darkness comes in, really, as you. As you start shrinking because of the addiction process. You start. You stop growing spiritually, emotionally, socially. Just like we said, addictions rob you of development. And so if you stop developing at 14, you're still kind of looking at the world at 14, which is. There are. You know, there are no absolutes. It's. It's. It's up to me to decide what's right and wrong. And so I decided that, hey, having sex with other women is. Is fine because, you know, I wanna. I want a woman with this color as opposed to the color I got, right? So there you go.

Yeah, it's. I. It's. You know, I think one of the reasons why I bring it in is in. I. I like online. I see a lot of content around narcissists, psychopaths, you know.

Okay. I have a whole DVD called Sex addiction, intimacy, anorexia, and narcissism. Okay. And so I've actually done MMPIs on over about a thousand men. Okay, who are sex addicts or intimacy. And xx are both. Okay. And the results of that study, because I had. I had a counselor, interns, I go through all of my. All of my tests, you know, for seven years, go through them all Put them all together. I want to know what disorders show up. I didn't give them any parameters, just what shows up, okay? Narcissism almost never shows up. Now here's why. Because in the dsm, and you can ask your wife about this, okay? In the dsm, you look up narcissism. Read it. There's two sentences in there that say, if someone has an addiction, do not give them this diagnosis. Because.

When you have an addiction, you, you stop developing, right? So if you stop developing at 14, you're an adolescent. Adolescents are narcissist, okay? Now the reason they're narcissists. Now before I go any further, I want to validate if you, if you're a man or a woman, you're living with an addict who feels like a narcissist, you're feeling the right pain, you're just giving the wrong diagnosis, okay? Feeling the self centeredness, the grandiosity, the lack of empathy. Because empathy is a mature emotion which if you're immature, you can't have. The reason you're experiencing is because of their immaturity, not because of narcissism. So when they Google narcissism, they go, that's my husband.

You're right. Your pain about that is legit. And what you're seeing on the screen does characterize him. He's just not a narcissist. He's an addict who is immature. Who if. Now, see, I've worked with about 5,000 men and couples. I've seen these guys who have all those characteristics, okay, in the beginning, and within months they start disappearing. By the end of the year, they're not there at all. Yeah. So narcissist, you have to work really hard if you're a narcissist to get better. But if you're an addict who has, has, who is immature, you naturally mature. If you're doing group, you're dealing with other men, you're being accountable, you're learning how to socialize, you're being able to process your feelings. And all that self centeredness, the lack of empathy all disappears. Okay? So I'm talking from a scientific perspective, not of like, well, this is my opinion.

Right?

Okay. And so a lot of sex addicts and anorexics are not narcissist, they are immature. And the wife is experiencing them as a narcissist. They are, they're just not.

It's kind of like, I think it's, you can be depressed, but it might be you got low testosterone or you have a low Thyroid. I tell my clients all the time, if they. If they hit the depression thing, go get your thyroid checked first, get your. Get your hormones checked second, and then talk to a doctor, because the symptoms are exactly the same. So the symptoms of narcissism, let's say, are similar to the symptoms of an immature addict. And so the symptom cluster is the same. Now, the reason they're that way is different, and the way they get better is different.

Yeah.

Does that make sense?

No. 100%. And the reason why I brought it up is that I think that distinction is important. And, you know, the. I think what's dangerous. I did a podcast episode about the weaponization of modern psychology in our culture.

I totally agree. Totally.

And just sort of, you know, broke down how these terms that are, you know, clinical diagnoses that are. That are, you know, clinical narcissists are fairly few and far between, you know, very traditional.

I've met a whole career of 35 years, probably this.

And so.

But.

But I love the distinction that you said, because I think that that's arguably one of the most important pieces. I really want to take that clip out and put that out into the world, because I think that a lot of addicts, you know, the experience that people have around them, it can be very easy for those individuals to say, oh, they're a narcissist. And it's like, no, that's not actually it. But it's easy say that. And so I really love and appreciate that distinction.

On your side, if you believe they're a narcissist, get them tested. Yeah. So you don't give them a diagnosis, have a psychologist give them diagnosis. And most women are willing to have their husbands take a psychological test. Now, the way we do it at Heart to our counseling center is we have them both take the test because sometimes her issues are pissing off his issues. Okay, so we need to know what's.

Happening. That or vice versa. Well, but what happens is I can't tell you how many hundreds of women that come in. You know, Dr. Weiss, my husband's a sociopath. He's a narcissist. I go, you can't do that till Thursday, because Thursday we get the test results back, and if it shows up legit, we'll agree. But if it doesn't, you can't do that anymore. And, like, in 95 of the cases, they can't do it anymore. And the same with the guys. My wife's borderline. Probably not. You know, she's. It's Trying to have boundaries with you. Okay. Right.

Well, it's such a. It's such a anomaly, I think, within our modern culture is that this, you know, this knowledge and wisdom that's now readily available online, you know, for the average person within their. Within their household. It's. It's another form of objectification because there's labels that are just getting thrown around within the relationship. And it's like. Well, that doesn't help. You know, it creates more. More. More separation.

So we're really. Your intuition. You really good intuition, Connor. You should do this professionally. But intuition's really into it.

Yeah.

You're into it about that. And we are. People are being objectified and putting in boxes in which when you put someone in a box, you can't relate to them anymore.

Yes.

You know, and then you stay out of a relationship, and that's the danger of what you're talking about. And we need to be in relationship because humans are herd animals. We are not animals that live by themselves. We are herd animals and we need a herd.

Yeah, I agree. Well, I think this is probably a good place for us to pause for all the folks that are out there listening. We will have links in the show notes to your websites, Dr. Weiss, but where would you like them to go just in terms of where the resources are? Maybe just drop that drop.

They can go to drdougweiss.com if it's about intimacy. Anorexia. Intimacy, anorexia.com. any of those. There's tons of resources. We've got a lot of free stuff, newsletters, apps, stuff that can help people. And we really want to see people get well. That's the joy of what I do. I've seen thousands of people get well.

Yeah, I love that. I love that. Well, thank you so much. And I feel like there's probably a second conversation on the horizon at some point. I'm sure I'm going to get tons of questions and follow up from this one. So everybody that's out there, don't forget to man and forward share this conversation with somebody that, you know, needs to hear it. Would enjoy it. This might be one of those episodes where, you know, you send it to your partner and you each individually listen to it and then discuss. So that's all for this week. Thank you so much for tuning in. And until next week, this is Connor Beaton signing off.

Sam.