The Truth Is, Marriage Usually Isn't Worth It | Dr. Orion Taraban

In order to have a relationship in today's day and age, you have to be very attractive, whether you're a man or a woman. People don't need you as much as they did even a generation ago.

Is marriage even a good deal today?

The contract is wild. Marriage is better than a high-paying job if you can get the right one.

You only want to get married for one reason. What is that?

I think the best reason to do that is—

Orion, welcome back.

Thanks for having me, Eric.

I'm gonna hit you hard right now. Is marriage even a good deal today?

Well, it depends on which side of the contract you're on. It can be a fantastic deal if you position yourself appropriately. Like, the contract is wild. The fact that you could potentially enter into an agreement with somebody who is significantly higher net worth than you by orders of magnitude, and after you put in a number of times, for no fault at all, you can pull the ripcord and take half with you is completely absurd to me, especially given the fact that that person could then get married to somebody else the following day. Like there's absolutely no cooldown period. People can get married 2 times, 3 times. You can accumulate a vast fortune. Obviously not very ethical. People will be shameful of that strategy, but it clearly works, and it's clearly happening in today's day and age. So it's probably, a marriage is better than a high-paying job if you can get the right one. Got it.

And that's on the female side?

It's usually the female side. It's not always, but it's generally on the female side.

Got it. And I think you, so you said something on another podcast where I think you said marriage, You only want to get married for one reason. What is that?

Well, if you did want to consider marriage, I think the best reason to do that is if you want to have children, because I think that fundamentally marriage is a construct to support raising children in a secure and loving environment. And if you're not interested in doing that for whatever reason, or you think that's sometime in the future, just be 2 consenting adults who enjoy spending time with each other. There's no reason to enter into that contract. You don't even necessarily have to enter into that contract to have children, and that's becoming Very prevalent in today's day and age as well.

I know in California, at least, if you spend X amount of time, maybe it's X amount of years with somebody, you're living with them, basically, they're considered your partner, and that contract goes into effect. Is that correct?

Yeah, that's called a common-law marriage, and that differs from state to state significantly, depending on the amount of time. Some states don't have it at all. Other states, it's as soon as you move in together. It's not even a period of time after cohabitation. That's why it may be wise to structure cohabitation agreements if you're looking to live with your partner, but not get legally married, because it can be construed in that manner.

It's probably better to just communicate this stuff upfront, right?

Sure, but this is all very businessy and not romantic. We're supposed to get into relationships because of our feelings and not because of any kind of lifestyle or material gain. And talking about the end of a relationship while you're in it sounds like you're planning for it to fail, which is part of the reason why people shy away from that conversation.

Yep, but you did say this on another pod too. I think with gay people, they're straight up with each other. They talk about all the business stuff upfront, right?

They often have to, because for better or for worse, there aren't a lot of models for what gay relationships are supposed to look like, because they were socially unacceptable for so long. And so a lot of queer people, they have to approach each individual relationship from a blank slate where they have to negotiate all the terms. Who knows that we're even gay? Who do we come out to? Are we open? Are we closed? All these different aspects need to be addressed explicitly. Whereas a lot of straight people, they say, okay, you wanna be my girlfriend? Sure. Do you wanna be my boyfriend? Great. And they think that they both understand what they mean by that.

Mm-hmm.

And so that's one of the things that I think that straights can learn from gays and queers is that it's a good idea to kind of discuss some of these attributes of the relationship more explicitly because chances are, The way that you view the relationship isn't going to be identical to how your partner views it.

Got it. But, you know, at the end of the day, though, it's still a contract, right? And it is a business deal. I guess, how should men approach it with women if we're talking heterosexual here? Like, how would you approach it, I guess, if you were to broach the subject?

Well, I just don't see myself getting married in the legal sense. Like, I don't think that it's a very good deal. If I were somehow courted by some sort of heiress who was worth, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars or billions, I might consider the proposition, but in the vast majority of cases, I'm gonna be dealing with women who are going to be significantly lower earning than I am. And so I just see it as a lot of risk with not a lot of upside. Like, I don't see what privileges wait for me on the other side of the marriage contract. I just see a lot of risk and responsibility.

And I think that's fair. There is a quote that sticks with me though. I was with a group of business people talking about it, You know, younger guys, I think it's, you know, we like to go, you know, party, play around, sleep around, right? But then as you get older, you start to realize maybe that true depth is not really messing around. It's maybe committing to one person, going deep. What's your take on that?

Sure. I think that it can be useful to sow your wild oats. And I think that often when guys don't do that, They have midlife crises. I've made episodes about that, where you get a guy who right out of the gate starts to be very responsible, does the right thing, puts a ring on the finger, devotes himself selflessly to his wife and children. All of his time, all of his resources go to them. And then he's now 45. He might be in the prime of his life. He might be very attractive. And he thinks, well, when do I get a slice of my own life? Like, all I've done since I became an adult was to serve and devote myself to other people. What about me? And I think that's a fair question to ask.

Yeah.

And if you've never seen the— if you've never been sufficiently disappointed by just sleeping around, that's going to potentially hold an allure for you as a man. And it's sometimes necessary to allow something to shrink to first allow it to expand. Sometimes you have to do a lot of it So you can kind of get it out of your system. Not always, but I think that's certainly something that a lot of guys do.

I mean, Dan Bilzerian's kind of going on a podcast tour right now where he's talking about, hey, maybe it's good to just commit to one person.

I saw that. I saw him a little bit on Chris Williamson the other day.

Yeah, yeah, that's it.

And there's certainly something to be said about learning that lesson for yourself. It's sort of like a rich person going on TV and saying money isn't everything. To folks who are just trying to get by, they might roll their eyes at that. So Dan has lived a life of sexual hedonism for the last decade. Of course, he's gotten to the point where he can say, this isn't where it's at. But most guys have never even approximated that level of optionality. So they might have to learn that lesson for themselves.

Right, and I think that's completely fair. Yeah, going back to it again, I do think it's a business deal. You know what's been effective? When I do talk, like, let's say I'm dating, the way I bring it up is, you can either have the government create the contract or we can create the contract. Which would you prefer? And then at that point, they're like, oh, okay, yeah, I'd rather create the contract together.

Yeah, that's what I— I've coached a number of men going to go through the prenup process. And one thing I tell them is that everybody already has a prenup. And that prenup is the preexisting marriage agreement that has been drafted by your state government. And the odds that that document that has existed for decades is going to be custom tailored to your specific needs and relationships is functionally zero. So, you already have a prenup. The idea is, is it one that you wrote, or is it one that somebody wrote for you?

Got it. And just to sit on this one a little more, you mentioned a couple of states. I guess, if you're familiar with this, which states would be the most restrictive when it comes to marriage?

Restrictive in what sense?

Restrictive in terms of like, oh, the day you move in, you're considered married.

Oh, geez, I don't know that off the top of my head.

Yeah, that's totally fine. I want to go in a different direction. We can kind of jump around here. I have a couple of anecdotes to share with you. And maybe this is just an LA thing. But so let's say, you know, there are— this is not let's say, this is a real story. So there are 9s and 10s in LA, right? And they're in relationships. And You know, they have dinner with each other. It's a bunch of beautiful women, right? And they're bragging about how they're getting paid by other men for sex, even though they're in relationships.

So they have secret sugar daddies. Is that what you're saying?

Yes. But it seems like it's a prevalent thing here. And I just want to get your take on it because I was shocked when I first heard this.

I'm not particularly surprised. Yeah. I imagine that it would occur more in liberal city centers like LA? I'm sure it's happening in New York as well. And what about this do you find particularly shocking?

The fact that they're keeping it a secret. I think more so the fact that they're bragging about it to their other girlfriends. I think it's one thing to keep it secret, but it's another thing to openly brag. That means it's more prevalent, and I'm kind of going in— I'll go deeper on this, but yeah.

Well, I think it might be kind of a form, a female form of lad culture in the sense of like sometimes guys get together and they brag about their body count and their sexual exploits, except that women are bragging about how much resources they're extracting from their men, which I think highlights the fact that men and women basically go to the sexual marketplace for different reasons.

And so what's the reason for men?

Well, men fundamentally try to exchange resources for sex, and women fundamentally try to exchange sex for resources.

Reversed, yeah.

That's why they brag about the things that they brag about and not the other things.

Got it. And you've talked about before, I mean, you said, or you didn't say this, but I think you implied that men tend to compartmentalize sex better than women.

I think that that's true on the whole. Obviously, there's individual differences. But yeah, I think that for a lot of guys, it's easier for them to have emotionless, commitmentless sexual relationships.

Yeah. If women are doing it, what do you think happens?

Well, they are doing it. Like, there's definitely a lot of women out there today that are acting like men have acted historically, for sure. And some of them can do that. Like, that's not a problem for them. They can compartmentalize just as well as a lot of the guys. I think on the population level, there are those sex differences. And I think that that's fair. I think it'd be very hard if you're continuing to have sex with somebody, which is a very intimate experience, that you don't develop some kind of emotional bond with them. Like, you don't have to fall in love with them. They don't have to be your soulmate, but like, you will start to feel differently about somebody the more that you sleep with them. And that seems to be just sort of natural and organic. And on some level, to resist that, you have to do violence to your own attachment impulses.

Right. So I'm going somewhere with this. I have a couple more anecdotes to share with you. So I had a friend recently. So let's just say she was, you know, an executive assistant to high net worth people. I'll just leave it at that.

Okay.

Um, nothing happens there. But then, so I'm like, you know, I reach out, I'm like, hey, like, so how are things going, right? Um, she's like, well, you know, I put in my 2 weeks. I'm like, so what are you gonna do now? She's like, well, I'm going back into the adult industry. I was like, wait, wait, what? Like, you were in the adult industry before? And then I'm like, wait, what? And so apparently she was in porn before, and then like she's back to escorting. And I'm like, wait, don't you have a boyfriend? And Here we go again. And here's the thing, the boyfriend makes take-home millions of dollars a year, right? Does very well for himself. I'm like, so he's okay with you doing this? And she's like, well, he actually brought up the idea that I quit and go back to doing this.

Wow.

And I'm like, why can't he just pay for your stuff, right? A couple million bucks, like you can afford, right? An allowance. And she's like, well, no, I just, I wanna feel useful. I wanna do stuff, right? And so then I was like, okay, but then how do you compartmentalize it, right? So she's like, well, there's work sex and then there's partner sex. And work sex is compartmentalized. And then I go a little deeper. I'm like, okay, so of all the clients that you have, what percent are actually, are you attracted to? Don't you see yourself maybe falling for any of them? Because if they become a regular or anything. And she's like, maybe 2% are attractive. The rest of them are like, I would never talk to them or see them. And so there's this whole concept of work sex versus partner sex. And where I'm going with this all is like, Are sex workers kind of becoming normalized now? Because I saw, like, a longtime friend the other day, he's like, oh, I'm dating an OnlyFans girl. So it seems like, you know, the institution of marriage is kind of going down, the rise of sex work. Like, what's your take on all this stuff?

Well, it's interesting. I was doing a conversation with James Sexton on Soft White Underbelly a few weeks ago. And I thought I was tossing him a softball. I said, what do we call it when we exchange resources for sex? I was obviously reaching for prostitution, and he responded with marriage. So the idea that traditional marriage is not an exchange of resources, protection, and provision for, let's say, sexual access and/or exclusivity is absurd. Like, that's one of the fundamental components of traditional marriage. It's probably one of the greatest resource allocation programs on the history of the planet. Like, it beats communism by far, because it's existed in far more different parts of the world for far longer.

Yeah.

So, I think that this can be taken to extremes, and it can become, let's say, mercenary, just like some guys, some players can get lost just in the game and the conquest and the sexual pursuit and the building up of numbers. Like, people can get lost on both sides for different reasons.

Yeah. It's interesting, 'cause I'll go on these walks with my mom, and then one time we were just talking—

Talking about this with your mom?

Yeah, yeah, it's hilarious.

What does your mom think?

So I was like, so, Mom, like, you know, body count back in your day, we just started talking about body count. And she's like, it's at least 5x higher for women. And this is a woman in her mid-70s, right? And she's saying that. And I was just like, that's fascinating. But like, the fact that, sex work is seemingly becoming more normalized, seems like maybe the body counts will probably even— the multiple will go even higher.

Well, and also, I mean, sex work really does exist on a spectrum from, let's say, you're an actress in pornography and/or an escort or prostitute, to, let's say, a sugaring-type relationship, or even to a traditional relationship where a young woman marries an established man. I think that what we're really disagreeing about is where to draw the line, not that the line exists.

Right. So I spoke to a guy yesterday, a very successful guy, probably pushing 80 or so. So we're on the phone, it was only supposed to be a 15-minute call, but we went for 40. And towards the end of it, he's like, look, man, at the end of the day, he's like, I've been married to my wife 43 years or so. I have 3 beautiful children. I've stayed loyal, everything. But he's like, at the end of the day, Eric, and we can't say this in public, And he said this to me, I'm not revealing his name, so it's cool. But he's like, yeah, it's all paid for at the end of the day. No matter how you look at it, it's all paid for in some way, shape, or form.

Sure, all men pay. It's one of my more popular videos. And the more she likes you, the greater the discount. So in general, the less a woman authentically desires you, the more you'll have to compensate her in other ways. I mean, just think about this woman you were talking to who's only authentically attracted to 2% of her clients. Like, of course she has to be paid, because what else is she getting?

Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, like, total. I wish you had a chart for this. I bet you that chart would do really well on social.

Sure.

Yeah.

There's also something to keep in mind is that, like, women still wanna be millionaires, right? However, in today's day and age, it might actually be easier for an average woman to get $1 from a million men than from a million dollars from a single man.

Like an OnlyFans.

Exactly. And that's certainly within the reach of even a modestly attractive woman who has an internet connection and a camera.

Yeah. And, you know, so I was at a YouTuber event maybe like a year ago or so, and I met an OnlyFans gal. And I was like, so I'm like, part of my, like, I'm just really direct. I'm just like, so like, how much do you do per month? She's like, $100 grand. And I was like, wow.

Whoa.

I was like, so like, what are you gonna do with that money? And she's like, well, I'm buying— I'm like, She's buying real estate. Super smart. Good for her, right? And I'm like, so what happened? Like, when are you going to stop? Oh, she's like, I'll probably stop when I'm like 30, 31 or so. And yeah, to your point, that is reinforced. Like, in my mind, I'm like, if I were a gal, I would definitely consider it.

Sure.

You know what I mean?

This is why I think so many women find that work empowering, because you can take— I mean, the margins are insane. All you have to do is an internet connection and to take your clothes off on some level. And you could be making millions of dollars. Like, it would be very difficult to resist that option.

Plus, you don't need to depend on a man. That's the other thing.

Of course not. You just have him if you want him and on your terms, which is also part of the girl boss idea.

Yeah. What's your take on the girl boss movement in general? It seems to be waning a little bit.

You think?

So I know that my friend is kind of— she was kind of She actually wrote the book Girlboss.

Oh, okay.

So, um, but it— to me, it seems like, you know, I have another, um, other people that have similar names for their companies, they've changed the names, right? So to me, it feels like maybe it might be waning a little bit, um, because I think there's more people waking up to the fact that maybe that's not such a good idea.

It's possible. Like, I think that the meme is waning, like you don't hear that phrase as much anymore, but I don't know if women are any less interested in going out and being their own captains, to take a metaphor from my book. Like, women are still interested in going out there and having careers and being successful and making a lot of money and being self-sufficient. And I don't see any problem with that, but it does create difficulties in the sexual marketplace, especially around men who, for whatever reason, will not or cannot adapt to that.

Yeah, so can you explain that a little more? Why is that a problem for— I guess they're women dating in general.

Well, there's so many different reasons why. First of all is even though women tend to be very successful, they still tend to desire men who can improve their quality of life, which sounds pretty fair. But the better your life is, the harder it will be to find a man who can significantly do that. And those men are going to be desired by an inordinate amount of women. So the intrasexual competition for those men is going to be absurd, and some of those men are just going to be happy enjoying their optionality with women.

Right.

So those women are unlikely to secure commitment or exclusive commitment from those men. That's one part of it. The second part of it is that really a lot of traditional relationships throughout history have been based on necessity. Men and women have had to get along because life has been very, very hard. And when life is very, very hard, they have to lean more on the complementary skill sets that they've evolved biologically and socially over hundreds of thousands of years.

Right.

And when we're liberated from necessity, people get together not because they need to, but because they want to, which is why in order to have a relationship in today's day and age, you have to be very attractive, whether you're a man or a woman, because people don't need you as much as they did even a generation ago. They have to want you if they're going to enter into a relationship with you, whether it's just for a night or for the rest of your life. And so we've seen an ascendancy in the importance of attractiveness in the last, let's say, 10, 20 years that has just been exponentially exacerbated by social media and like the Instagram optics.

And you're not just talking attractiveness, you're talking power, status, fame, right? That's all wrapped into attractiveness.

Yeah, I don't just mean physical attractiveness, exactly. But what's attractive to men isn't, Usually what's attractive to women.

Correct. Yeah. I mean, we want beauty.

Beauty, youth, small waists, big hips and breasts and all that jazz. I mean, people have different types, but like, that seems to be fairly universal.

And they want resources, protection, right?

It's even more difficult than that. Like, for example, The anecdote that you shared about the woman who was getting back into porn with the high-earning man. So you might think, well, Ryan, how does this work? Why is she going out and having sex with other guys when she already has the provider and the protector and the lifestyle?

Right.

Well, because there might be other things that are missing. Maybe there's excitement to be found in this kind of work. Maybe there's a little danger or risk. Maybe there is like a hint of jealousy that can spice up the primary relationship. Like, we needn't be so concrete when it comes to resources. A lot of the resources that people transact in relationships are emotional.

Right.

And this is why folks like— and people in general want what they don't yet have. That's what want means. It means to desire and to lack, which is why we desire it, because we don't have it yet. And that's why A guy like Dan Bilzerian can spend 10 years having sex with who knows how many women and then say, well, what I really want is one person to devote myself to.

Right.

Whereas a housewife might want some danger and some excitement in her life, and so she steps out of the marriage. So especially in today's day and age, we're lured by the promise that we can have it all. Whereas I think in previous generations, we just sort of made peace with the fact that that's not possible and you sucked it up. And that's just the nature of life.

And you think a big part of that is just worsened by social media in general?

Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean, one thing that social media, Instagram in particular, has done is that it's gotten rid of small ponds in the sense that for a lot of history, it was enough to be a relatively big fish in a fairly small pond. Now there are no ponds anymore. Everyone is swimming in one gigantic ocean, which means that That guy is competing for the girl next door against every other man on the planet.

Just one DM away.

Exactly. And vice versa for women. So it's not just enough to be attractive. You have to be significantly attractive in the ocean that is contemporary dating. Right.

And you still believe, I think we talked about this last time, but you still believe that Instagram is still the best dating app for men? More so than women?

Well, it's definitely for both. I mean, they generally need to contract with each other in heterosexual relationships. It's a great dating app for men if you can get some decent following. Like most guys on Instagram, they have 100 followers and it's like their friends and family. So that's probably not going to be as helpful for them. That guy could DM a woman with a blue check mark with a million followers, and he'll never, ever, ever, ever, ever get a response, right? It's certainly easy for women to attract a lot of attention on Instagram, especially male attention, 'cause so much of our attraction is based on visual cues. The issue is that most women don't wanna date their fans.

Hmm.

They want to look up. They don't want the doting, Followers. That might stoke their ego from time to time, but it might not be very emotionally satisfying. Right.

It's interesting because Instagram culture, there's, let's just say, a very prominent athlete. I'll just leave it at that. So very prominent athlete, and I'll tell you where I'm going with this. There's a couple other anecdotes I wanna share, but he has a handler during games that will actively look at who's kind of just sitting around courtside, and that person will, You know, if they find that person attractive, they'll, like, say, hey, like, so-and-so wants to talk to you, or whatever. And then the conversation just engages on— it happens all on LinkedIn. Or sorry, LinkedIn— Instagram. Instagram, not LinkedIn. LinkedIn's too professional.

I've had women shoot their shot to me on LinkedIn.

Really? How'd that go?

Well, you know, it's a bit of a strange platform.

Yeah.

But, you know, that's where their connection happened. So that's where their opportunity existed, and they took it.

Anything happen?

Uh, not in that case, no.

Okay, so going back, I mean, so prominent athlete has a handler, gets the Instagram, so the athlete starts reaching out to these, these women on, on Instagram. And then what happens is, by the way, this athlete is married, has kids, uh, crystal, like crystal clean, you know, profile. Like you would never guess it's this person, right? Um, I guess where I'm going—

Are you suggesting that his wife doesn't know that he does this?

I feel like she probably does.

I'm almost certain that she probably does, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, okay. Why do we both think that?

Because women aren't nearly as foolish as men would sometimes prefer to think of them as. Like, most women kind of know what's going on with their men. They tend to track their partners much more closely than men do. And a lot of women aren't stupid. In the sense that they know kind of what side of the bread their toast is buttered on some level. What does that mean? That means that, like, the phrase I use in the book is that the vast majority of women would rather occasionally share a Ferrari than have exclusive ownership over a Honda. So no offense to Honda.

I feel like a lot of them are, maybe it's like an unwritten contract, maybe they're not saying it, You know what I mean?

Well, sometimes it's wise to pretend that you don't see certain things. Like, that could be the best move in that relationship.

And the reason I say that is because my mom told me this, but let's just say a family member was prominent in the government, and the rule for him, Taiwanese family, right, was just don't bring back another child, right? He brought back another child, but it's okay. So, and then my other, my other friend, um, you know, he has a— his has a Korean wife, and she's just like, go do your thing, just don't embarrass me, don't tell me. And it feels like that's a trend I see with more— maybe because I have a lot of Asian friends, um, that it's like, it's kind of in the contract, it's agreed upon. But in other cases, maybe other cultures, not so much.

Not so much, but it does seem to be pretty deep in East Asian and Southeast Asian cultures. The best we get that in the West is probably France, where it's sort of like, yeah, everyone kind of has a mistress or another lover. And the idea that your wife or your husband was supposed to provide you with romantic excitement is absurd. Like, that's just too much expectation for your spouse.

Right.

Like, go get your romance from a lover, and you don't marry your lover. That's a terrible idea.

Right.

Because they're actually wildly different skill sets that go into making a good spouse and that go into making a good lover.

Right. And the lovers probably would be, you know, sugar daddy relation or sugar relationships, right?

Can, or it could be whatever is missing in the primary relationship, which doesn't always include sex. Like, I know some men who have had emotional affairs, didn't even sleep with women, but because their primary relationship, their marriage was so conflictual, was so chaotic, was so critical, Like, they would just find a time to stay in a room together and just like hold each other tenderly. Like, that's what he was missing in his marriage.

Or just talk.

Or just talk, for sure. Or, of course, if you have a dead relationship in terms of the passion and the sexual interest, then just the excitement of re-exploring your body and feeling desired could be compensation enough for stepping out of your primary relationship.

It makes all the sense in the world. I remember a long time ago, there's a TED Talk with with the sex worker, and this got a lot of views. She said, look, at the end of the day, when my client hugged me, he started crying. He's like, I haven't had a hug for 3 years. And she's like, at the end of the day, what we're really helping with, like, you pay your therapist or whatever, but like, we are helping with intimacy and companionship.

I definitely buy that. And I think men in particular are starved for non-sexual touch. No, guys don't get touched. And if they do get touched, it's occasionally in a sexual way.

Yeah. And it's tough for guys. It starts to get really lonely, the amount you have to push when it comes to like your work, your business, and all the things. It starts to get really lonely. And yeah, you don't get the things that you might not have had a hug for 3 years.

Yeah. That's rough, man.

Yeah. I gotta take a minute to tell you about the Agency Owners Association. This is a peer group for agency owners. Think YPO or EO, but for agency owners. And I just wanted to read you a couple of testimonials. So this first one comes from Carrie, and we asked her, what do you like most about the group? She said, having a group of people to discuss and bounce ideas. The leads are great too. Yes, we share leads in this group as well. This one from Aliyan, he says, the ability to really post whatever I want and need, and the group responds. Great experienced members. Getting a lot of insights from conversations with other members. Getting a lot of value from sessions from Eric, getting advice from others as well. And so if you want to grow your agency faster, and you want a peer group to do so, just go to marketingschool.io/agency. This is a group that both Neil and I created. And our hope here is to create a vibrant community of agency owners and do a lot more with it in the future. So again, marketingschool.io/agency, and we'll see you inside. Now, you talked about— I think it's good to review a concept here that we talked about last time. But Monogamy is one thing, but you brought up the phrase monogamish, right? Can you redefine what that means?

Yeah, I was just on a podcast this morning, and I was finally reminded where that term came from. It comes from Dan Savage, who is a gay relationship consultant based out of Seattle, I believe. So as far as I know, he's the one who invented that word. So I'm not trying to steal his idea, but I think it's a fantastic idea, which is that it's certainly possible that someone can be 90 or even 95% 95% monogamous and committed to one person, but that extra 5% could just be a bridge too far. And the idea that, well, you're either all in for the rest of your life with one person, or you deserve to be alone because there's something broken or wrong about you because you can't have one single sexual partner for the rest of your life, I think is, well, besides being judgmental and moralistic, is just wrong. It's just absurd.

Right.

That's not how so many people seem to be wired deeply.

And how do people react to you in the YouTube comments when you say that?

The monogamish stuff?

Yeah. And by the way, I agree with you.

On my channel, generally fairly positive. You know, most people aren't going to follow me if they disagree with my content too violently.

Yeah. So I can just imagine all the really romantic people pushing back on it. But it is true. It's like, it does— monogamy kind of seems like an absolute.

Well, it is. As I talk about in the book, the origin of romantic love is transliterated religious impulse, basically. And just like the original religion that became romance was monotheistic, the relationship ideal under romance is monogamy.

Right.

We've taken one god and put them in another human being.

Is it true in the past, you would know better than I would, I think, here, but in the past, so for example, if you're like a Genghis Khan, right, you have, you know, hundreds of wives, right? And like thousands of kids.

Yeah.

But I've also heard that in the past, before religion really kind of took form or became overly popular, that women also had many men as well.

Well, it depends on how far back you want to go. Like, this is talked about in Sex at Dawn. Have you read that book?

No.

It's an excellent book. And it describes what sexuality might have looked like in prehistoric days by examining, let's say, more primitive cultures that still exist on this planet. And in a lot of cultures, there is no monogamy. It's like everyone kind of belongs to everybody else. And I think one of the arguments for the institution of marriage and monogamy was to ensure paternity. And why would we need to do that? Because now I have this private property that I would need to be sure stays in my family's line. But in a lot of these tribal cultures, it was communal living. Like, no one had private property, and no one really needed to know who was biologically related to who, because we were going to raise all the kids as a village anyway.

Hmm.

The idea also that Sex would then lead to a child 9 months later probably took a long time to figure out. Right.

I mean, we only have 5,000 years of recorded history, so not very long.

Yeah, we probably figured it out in the last 5,000 years, but who knows in those first hundreds of thousands of years of human modern evolution, did we just do something because we felt the impulse and then Like, 9 months later, there was a consequence. That's a ways away.

Right.

That's a long temporal distance between cause and effect.

Right.

So, the idea that we're going to regulate sexual relations across that timeline would require, actually, a huge social apparatus to do so.

Got it. I guess while we're talking about the past, I mean, the institution of religion, I mean, to me, I'm not particularly religious. I'm more agnostic. But It seems to me that religion is a great operating system, right? You get a lot of principles, a lot of wisdom for your kids growing up.

Can be.

Can be, correct. And now it feels like maybe less people are religious, more people are kind of like— it feels like things are crumbling. I remember you were on a podcast talking about like, it's kind of a crisis right now, right? So do you think religion was like a net positive before? Do you think like, why is everything kind of crumbling?

Why is everybody— why is everything crumbling? Well, I think there's been a number of crises with respect to becoming disillusioned with authority across the board, whether it's religious authority or political authority or medical authority.

Yeah.

Like, we've since learned very painfully in many, many different ways that our gods have clay feet, which is that the people in positions of power are also human too. And may be no better or worse than we are. And that can be extremely terrifying for people who need a sense of organization and power to kind of like stave off natural anxieties about being alive. And so I think that's also why people tend to flee from too much freedom, and they put themselves in restrictive structures, because too much freedom is just like boundless and vertiginous, and people can't handle it. It's like standing on the precipice of a really tall mountain. Like, you get that flighty feeling in your stomach, and it's kind of exhilarating, but also really scary at the same time. And so people will continue to develop structures in which they can embed themselves more comfortably to stave off that sort of existential terror. Does that make sense?

It kind of makes sense. I mean, it sounds like people would rather put themselves into prison than be free. And take responsibility for themselves. Yeah.

I mean, we tend to do that in lots of ways. Yeah. We're in prisons of our own making the vast majority of the time. But it might be that we're not good without them. It might be that we need that structure that these prisons can provide in order to function successfully as human beings.

So maybe sometimes prisons are a form of safety.

Oh, absolutely. Just like Shawshank Redemption, where after like 30 years, that guy gets released and he can't deal with life on the outside, and he just locks himself up in his room. He eventually commits suicide, but you can get used to that comforting protectiveness of those 4 walls, for sure.

I wanna give you a quote over here. This is actually retweeted by Naval Ravikant.

Who's that?

So he's a very prominent investor, probably a billionaire, invested in a lot of great tech companies. So he retweeted this. It says, the rise of the masculine men and feminine women versus masculine women and feminine men.

The rise of it?

Yes.

So he's like observing that this is happening or is he calling for it?

He's saying this is happening right now. You're seeing masculine men pairing up with feminine women and then they're going against masculine women. and feminine men, right? Because it seems like things are kind of changing in front of us right now, I guess, the dynamics, especially in the United States.

Sure. I think that there certainly is some truth to that. I think that gender expression does exist on a continuum. And generally, the more you swing in one direction, the more likely you're going to be attractive to somebody who is that same distance away from the center. So like super masculine men often tend to end up with super feminine women. And those who are closer to the middle, they're more comfortable with those more egalitarian relationships.

Yep. Maybe I'll come back to that in a second, but I don't want to lose— as you were talking, I'm just like, you know, one thing that sticks out to me from the book, I was reading one of your chapters and you talk about the concept of the captain, right? And also, you know, how in some relationship dynamics, you know, someone wants to have all the power, but maybe they don't want any of the accountability. But that can't happen if you're the captain. So, can you define in your words what a captain is, and maybe we can go a little deeper there?

Sure. So, in chapter 2, I offer this extended metaphor of the sexual marketplace as a kind of pier where a bunch of ships are moored, and captains are standing in front of them trying to attract passengers on board, whereas the passengers are walking up and down trying to find the best captain and ship on which to secure their passage, right? And if they like each other enough, they enter into some sort of negotiation process, and then eventually the passenger gets on the boat and they sail off to God knows where, okay? Now, most people start— we all start as passengers. As children, we can't really do anything under our own power.

Mm-hmm.

Some people never get much more powerful than that. However, some people decide to become captains, and the process of attaining to one's captaincy is a time-consuming, difficult, and often painful experience. It can take at least 10 years in the absolute majority of cases. Hell of a journey, yeah. It is, but I think it's worth doing.

Totally.

You get that sense of self-determination and self-efficacy that comes from like, I can actually make something happen in the world, rather than just relying on other people to do it for me. for me.

Mm-hmm.

And I talk about how to become a captain, a person needs to accomplish 3 challenges. One, this person needs to build a boat, this person needs to learn to sail, and this person needs to plot a course. And I talk about what those 3 challenges mean with respect to the sexual marketplace in greater detail in the book. So once a person does those 3 things, and I'm using person as opposed to man or woman because technically, These roles, captain and passenger, are gender neutral.

Both, yeah.

Women, especially in today's day and age, are encouraged and empowered to rise to their captaincy. And they can also marry and be a traditional mother and housewife if they so prefer. So women actually have more optionality in the modern sexual marketplace than men do because they can be either passengers or captains. On the other hand, men don't really. Men can be captains or they can be left on the dock. They can't really be passengers because the idea that a woman is gonna work for 10, 15 years to ascend to her captaincy so that she can care for an adult male dependent is loathsome to most women. And so those women just aren't going to be contracting with those men in the vast majority of cases, right?

Mm-hmm.

That's what I'm talking about with captains and passengers. Now, with respect to the second point about power and accountability, yeah, this is something that is really important to know. We all consider that any authority that thinks that it's above the law is corrupt. Like any king or politician who thinks that he can't be held accountable for his actions, we think that is disturbed and wrong, like morally.

Mm-hmm.

So one of the privileges of power is that it must divest itself of protection. Like legitimate power must be held accountable to the laws or to those that it serves. Otherwise, we think that it's corrupt. So it has to surrender the protection and be willing to be exposed to the accountability. But the same token is just as much a corruption if you have a protected class of people that suddenly become empowered. Like, a powerful person has to give up that protection, otherwise it's corrupt. But if you're protected and you rise to power, that's also corrupt, because on some level you're saying that I want to retain the privileges of my protected status and my immunities, but I also wanna participate— I wanna have my cake and eat it. Well, clearly, everybody wants to do that, but we don't have as much of a problem saying the powerful can't be protected than the protected can't be powerful.

So what would be— okay, if I think about relationships, right? So in some cases, you might date someone who wants to make all the rules, right? But when it comes to taking accountability, providing and everything, oh, nope, that's That's all on you.

Sure. Well, this is another way of looking at it like this, is that if a man and a woman have nothing and they build a life together at 21, they are like co-founders of a startup.

Yes.

They are equal partners. They deserve equal rights in the profits and the responsibilities and the direction of that relationship. Why wouldn't they? That's one way. On the other hand, if You're a woman, and you're entering into a relationship with a man who's already spent 20 years attaining his success and has built his business, has made his millions, and ascended to his status. You then can't come in and expect to be an equal power broker with that guy.

And yet many do.

They do, but that's absurd in my mind. It's like only founders get equity. If you come after the company has launched and it's successful, you get a salary at best.

'Cause they've taken all the risk up front.

Of course. Of course. And that's why they're there. Like, the reason why a lot of women, in my mind, reasonably don't like the startup idea is that most startups fail. Like, I wouldn't feel comfortable hitching my horse on a lifetime scale to a guy who hasn't even made his first sale yet, you know? Like, that would be too, Scary. That would be too risky. Yeah.

I haven't thought about it in terms of equity terms, because once they meet a man that's, you know, 10, 15 years into it and they're established, they get 50% equity for their— that's a really good deal.

Exactly. If they get married under that contract, it's a great way of basically increasing your net worth overnight. Yeah.

And you can do it multiple times.

Yep.

Yep. Going back to the captain thing, and this goes back into East Asian relationships, I suppose. But my mom was very much the breadwinner, so she was a provider and she was a caretaker. So 2-in-1, right?

Wow.

And I've seen a lot of that in a lot of my friends where the mom has full control and she's running things and she's the breadwinner. But I, you know, had one of these walks with my mom again. I'm like, did you actually like doing that? 44 years of doing it, did you like doing it? She's like, no, it took me out of my feminine. I became the man. I hated doing it. There's nothing more that like And that's not to blame my dad or anything. It's just saying that she felt like she had to take control. And I've seen, like, it's— she loses her, you know, composure is kind of low. And but I've seen that not just with her, but in multiple instances. And I'm just like, in my mind, the patterns are there. It's like, maybe it's not such a good idea for the majority.

Well, yeah. And I imagine I don't need to pry into your family history, but that probably led to some conflict between your mom and your dad.

Oh, all the time.

Well, yeah, okay, there you go. So behind 95% of all relationship dysfunction is a belief, one single belief that exists in the mind of at least one person in that relationship. And that belief is, I'm giving and giving and giving, and I'm not getting enough in return.

Yeah.

That, whether it's formulated in exact language, that's the sense of it, is that I'm giving more than I'm getting, and this is getting old. And that's what leads to arguments. That's what leads to sexual withdrawal, infidelity, all kinds of naggy, nitpicking, critical behavior. It all comes down to the fact that I feel like I'm being cheated because I'm providing more value than I'm receiving. And of course, if relationships weren't transactional, this wouldn't matter.

Totally fair. And this actually goes well into your concept of the adorer and the adored. And it just dawned on me, maybe a couple months ago, I realized, holy crap, I think my mom was the adorer. Like, why else stay in the relationship?

Yeah, that's a tough one. I mean, there might have been very strict cultural censures against divorce.

Especially East Asian.

Yeah. That might be changing today. I wonder if that was happening in 2024 if she would have stuck around.

Probably not. Probably not.

Yeah.

So you have, I believe this is in one of your videos, but you talk about why women are the better adorers. And maybe we need to redefine it again. In your definition, what's the concept of adorer, adored? How does that work?

Sure. Well, I talk about the balance of attraction, which basically starts by positing that it's not possible for 2 people to like each other exactly the same amount, which means that in any relationship, one person likes the other person more and the other person likes the other And it can change. It can change, absolutely. But in general, over time, dynamics tend to become kind of routinized. So it's pretty rare if you're in a 10-year relationship that it's gonna have wild swings from one day to the next.

It's interesting, 'cause I asked one of my good friends, we were FaceTiming today, I was like, so like, which one is, I was using your phrase, like, you know, who adores the other person more? She's like, well, he's like, It changes, it vacillates. I was like, oh, I'm going to bring this up to you today and get your thoughts.

I mean, it can, but again, over time, relationship dynamics become more and more ossified, for better or for worse. That provides consistency, which makes the relationship more efficient, but it can also make it stale, predictable, and rigid. So there's trade-offs to everything. In a long-term relationship, for there to be a wild swing in polarity, There generally has to be some big major event. Like one person has to get caught cheating. The other person has to get a promotion, and now they're earning significantly more and their career is taking off, but the other person's isn't. Like there has to be some big bellwether moment in the relationship to really change that underlying dynamic.

Right. And you just mentioned the word polarity. And one thing that stuck with me with what you wrote is, you know, even if you're tall, rich, high status, You can still fumble a relationship.

Oh, yeah. I mean, being tall doesn't make you better at relationships, man. Like, I don't think there's anything that being tall is good for except reaching the upper shelf. You know what I'm saying? Like, it doesn't make you a better lover. It doesn't make you a better spouse. It doesn't make you a better human. It doesn't make you a bad partner or a bad spouse or a bad human. It's just like, there's no correlation.

That is a bad But rich and high status matters.

Those matter a little bit more. Height does matter to a certain extent because it could be an indicator of good genes and reproductive viability. So let's not put height down too much. But I do think that height in particular is being overemphasized in women's selection process these days.

And what I'm getting at here really is, so even if you're high status, you're rich, you're tall, You can still fumble a relationship because you kill polarity by overinvesting.

Oh, oh, that's certainly true. Like, just because you're competent and competent in, let's say, the professional domain, that doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to be competent and confident with women or with relationships. Those are radically different skill sets.

Right.

Like, you try talking to your woman like you would talk to a business associate, in the vast majority of cases, it's not going to go very well.

Yeah.

The underlying principles might actually be fairly similar, but you have to be able to code switch is what I would call it.

Right. It's a weird thing that humans do, right? Like the kinder you are, sometimes people take it for weakness. They take it for a bunch of other things like, oh, are you hiding something? Right? It's—

Well, it's misguided. Sometimes when people like someone, they feel motivated to do nice things for them. But the idea is that you can't like someone into liking you more.

Right.

That's not possible. And I think we all make that mistake at some point in our lives, hopefully very young, and then we get over it.

Right. I mean, going into dating a little bit, I mean, there has to be a push-pull. If it's just one side pushing the whole time, it's not gonna work out.

Well, let me go back to your question about why women make better adorers, which is something—

Which is what I wanna come back, yes, yeah.

So there's the adored and the adorer, and they're gender neutral, and they both have their pros and cons. There's trade-offs to each. It's not like it's better to be up here. They just have different attributes to their positions. And the most defining attribute to the adorer, the one who likes the other person more, is that that person gets to feel more in the relationship. Whether it's the man or the woman, the one who's adoring the other is the one who waits anxiously by the phone and is disappointed when the call doesn't come, or exhilarated when it finally comes through, and looks forward anxiously to the next encounter and worries that It's not going to— it's like this person feels all kinds of things, both good and bad, far more intensely than the person up here. This is because the adorer gets to be with the one they love, which is pretty much one of the most powerful and exhilarating experiences a human being can have. On the other hand, the adorer just gets to be loved by the one they're with, which is much more muted and temperate with respect to the emotional climate. And this is one of the reasons why I think say that women make better adorers because in general, women are more likely to look for the door for emotional reasons. I don't feel the same way anymore. I feel like I've fallen out of love with you.

Right.

Like those might be very valid reasons for a woman to leave a relationship, whereas men can do that too, but I think they're more likely to stick around, maybe out of a misguided, potentially, sense of duty or obligation, than women are. Right.

All right. Quick note, this is about my company. It's called Single Grain, and Single Grain is an ad agency where we're focused on driving innovation. And so I want to talk about a couple of new strategies. And if you need help with marketing, great. If not, here are a couple of new strategies that you should try out. One is programmatic CRO. So we are doing programmatic conversion rate optimization on our site. We're building products that will automatically optimize your site to increase conversion rates. We're also auto-optimizing, auto-updating From, from an SEO standpoint. And we're constantly thinking about what else we can do in terms of enriching the visitors that are hitting your website, and also tailoring custom messages for them using AI. And so there's a handful of things that we're doing from a marketing standpoint. And our mission is just to drive more innovation. So if you want to learn more, just go to singlegrain.com, grain like rice. So singlegrain.com to learn more. And we'll see you inside. As you're talking, I was just thinking about one of my friends, he's got a fiancée. And He's the best possible option. Like, I don't think she would ever leave him, right?

Great.

And I guess the question is, like, if as long as you're the best possible option for, you know, your partner, she's not going anywhere, or he's not going anywhere.

Perceived best option.

Perceived best option.

That's the important part.

So what do you— how do you define that?

Well, objectively, a person might be a person's best option, but If for whatever reason that person cannot see that, and that person might be deluded as to what he or she could get on the open sexual market, that person might not stick around. It's all based on perception. Right.

And speaking of perception, you mentioned that if the man gets jealous, he is actually training her to figure out, oh, who's actually a better option.

I see what you mean. Yeah, I did an episode on sexual jealousy. And one of the points that I think is important to consider about jealousy is that we only experience jealousy when there's a perceived threat from a perceived superior option. Like, if your girl gets hit on some unemployed, overweight loser of a dude, you're probably not gonna feel jealous.

No.

But if the guy is taller, he's got a better head of hair, he's worth more money, he's got a 6-pack, he drives a, you know, whatever.

Yeah.

You might feel intimidated. And that jealousy is actually an emotional signal to, like, amp up your mate-guarding behavior, which you can do more strategically than just getting upset and trying to control your partner.

Right.

Because in the moment that you reveal your jealousy, you're basically communicating to your partner that whether or not you think that guy is better, I think he's better than me, because that's why I'm getting jealous. If I didn't think he was better than me, I would just be laughing at the fact this guy was hitting on you. I'd be like, go ahead, knock yourself out, shoot your shot. So that's not a good idea. It's not a good idea to communicate to your partner that there are better options for her available to her.

Yeah, you got to keep that poker face on.

You do. It's hard to do, but it's really important.

Yeah, I'm going to come back to some of the adorer concept, but, you know, you're talking about monogamish earlier. You're not saying that men necessarily should just go around sleeping around. You're saying, hey, like, maybe you find someone that you really like, okay, she covers— he or she covers a lot of your needs, but every now and then, okay, maybe you need to go You know, get your fix, right?

That can certainly be the case for a lot of men. Right.

I mean, is that how you kind of think about it?

I mean, it runs the gamut. It's like, I think that when people approach the idea of complete— any exceptions to complete and total monogamy, they think that they're just players plowing through a city. And there are some men who want to do that. But most of them Right. It's actually really hard and exhausting and expensive to do that. You don't get a lot of ROI, actually, because it takes a lot to seduce a woman successfully. And if you do all— make all of that effort and spend all that time and energy and money, and you only do it once, like, if you succeed, you might as well get some return visits on some level. Like, I think most men would rather have a few stable lovers than just a spate of casual, nameless sexual encounters.

Right.

But it's not for me to decide that for the individuals in question.

Got it.

But here's another thing to keep in mind is that people also use the word monogamy and think that communication occurred. So, for example, is flirting cheating?

Depends.

Well, yeah, that's kind of my point. For some people, It's just a harmless pleasantry that makes my day a little bit more exciting. For other people, it can be perceived as a betrayal of their emotional intimacy.

'Cause it's emotional, yes, exactly.

Exactly. So obviously, in this case, there's no physical or sexual dimension to it, but there's like a charge to the interaction that could be out of bounds for some person and could be very much in bounds for another. And so that could be an example of someone who's monogamish, Which is, oh, you're saying that in order to keep you feeling secure, I have to pretend that no other woman exists on the planet and to never joke with them or to compliment them? That sounds pretty tough, but that might be how some people would prefer their relationships to function.

It's interesting, 'cause a lot of this stuff that, I'm in a couple of these entrepreneur groups, and I will tell you that 50-plus percent of people in relationships, both men and women, There's something else going on from what I've seen.

Sure.

And it's, you know, this is stuff that people don't wanna hear in public, right?

Oh, no.

You know what I mean? But it's like, you know, you're talking about this stuff, other people, I think it's coming to light more.

Sure. I think there's also a little bit of hypocrisy or maybe just misunderstanding between men and women on this regard. It's like almost every woman I know has a plan B.

Yes.

If not a plan C, D, E, F, and G. Oh my God, yes. So, these might not be men that they ever slept with or even hint that they would sleep with, but they kind of know they could get them if they wanted to. To their mind, there's nothing wrong about that. That's not cheating at all. There's nothing sexual. I'm not leading them on. And they're right. They're telling the truth. Let's assume that they are. But that's also not quite fair.

It's not 100% honest.

No, it's not. And that kind of optionality, that kind of safety net is definitely gonna impact how she shows up in that relationship. Whereas for better or for worse, most men do not have a plan B because they're not attractive enough to have a plan B, C, D, E, or F. Like that takes a lot of time, energy, and effort. So that means that just passively, most women tend to have more options than most men do. And that definitely impacts the power dynamic in the relationship.

They also get a lot more inbound too. So their pipeline's a lot fuller.

Sure. I mean, women, some women get hit on, I mean, hundreds if they're on social media.

Oh yeah, per day.

Yeah, per day. And women often get hit on in ways that they don't even appreciate as men hitting on them.

You have— I want to talk about the numbers behind it because you've clearly thought about this. I remember there's a couple episodes where you kind of break down the economics of dating and what makes sense and what doesn't. And so you have a quote here. It says, overpaying is the cost of winning for men. Maybe let's start— we'll start there.

Overpaying is the cost of winning, period, like whether you're a man or a woman. One of the things that you can do is think of life like an auction house. So what happens in an auction house? There's a lot, And who decides— how is it decided who the lot goes to? Well, the person who pays the most, right? Which means that if you actually win, no one else in the room thought that what you bought was worth that much, which means almost certainly you overpaid for that.

Wow.

Now, it might have been $1 you overpaid. It might have been $1 million. Who knows? But the likelihood that you paid exactly the amount that— the minimum amount that you could have gotten away with that still beat out of your All your other competition is vanishingly small.

Right.

So you paid more than you needed to, to secure that lot. And that's the cost of winning, is you have to be willing to pay more, to do more than anybody else is willing or able to do to win that lot.

Right.

Now, that could be closing a sale. That could be securing a relationship. It's like the universe lives closed. In terms of the particulars, most things actually are zero-sum games.

Right.

If I wanna marry that woman, you can't marry her too. If I want to hire that employee, you probably can't hire him too, you know? So we're fighting over the particulars in the context of, I think, overarching abundance. So we have to balance the scales there.

Finite resources. And by the way, overpaying is not even just money. It could be emotionally overpaying or paying with your time too. It's a lot of things.

It's generally that. Like, I mean, the example I gave in that episode, I think, is of an Olympian. Olympic athlete, which I think is kind of germane since we just went through the Olympics.

Yeah.

Which is, how long does it take to stand on the winner's podium and to get that gold medal? It could take 10 years of sacrifice and effort and heartbreak and loss and recovery and discipline. And then you stand up there and your heart swells with pride when the national anthem is played and they hand you the flowers and you have a beautiful 3 minutes And then a week later, the feeling is gone.

Yep.

It's like, how the fuck are those 10 years worth those 3 minutes on the podium?

Right.

There's no way it's worth it. Like, the gold medal isn't worth it.

Yep.

So unless you consider the gold medal to be the pretext for that 10 years of self-improvement, like, that's the only way that the gold medal might be worth it. And you see that the real reward is the opportunity to grow and to improve. evolve and to become better, not the prize that is ostensibly handed to the winner on the podium.

More so the journey.

Yes. I know that sounds cliché, but it's actually true.

Got it. And you talked about how traditional dating doesn't make sense for, especially for a high-status man. Okay, your time is very valuable, right? And then you kind of broke down like, okay, you're going to go on these dates, maybe you're paying a couple hundred bucks or so, and it starts to add up. It's like, but then there's no guaranteed anything even after the third or fourth date. So then What happens?

Yeah, I talked about this in a 3-part episode that began with one called Why Successful Men Use Escorts. And I wanted to talk about it from that perspective because I have worked with a number of successful, high-status, emotionally secure men who use escorts.

What percent?

Of my client base?

Yeah, of the super successful ones that use escorts. And can I guess?

Geez, I don't know if I have a number off the top of my head, but you can certainly guess.

Above—

80%. That seems a little high from my perspective, but maybe I have a small sample size.

Okay. How big do you think your sample size would be?

In the super successful cohort?

Yeah.

Maybe 100, couple hundred people that I've worked with directly.

And what would you define as super successful?

You know, worth tens of millions of dollars.

Okay, got it. Right. Continue, please.

I think that it's probably closer to 50%.

Okay.

I still think much higher than most women think or our society accepts. Like, that's a—

50's still high.

50 is half of successful dudes are hiring women to have sex with them. So I talk about this in the context of why really attractive men and really attractive women are just priced out of conventional dating. People don't like the idea of Any men, let alone successful men, paying women for sex. But they do it because it's cheaper than dating conventionally.

Mm-hmm.

Because their bottleneck is generally their time, which is insanely valuable. And the longer that they need to work through the courtship process, the more expensive that is in terms of their time, energy, and money, because they're also probably expected to foot the bill on all this stuff. Dating. And like you said, there's even no reasonable guarantee that it will even lead to a single sexual encounter, let alone a sexual relationship. And now we're talking that a person could spend thousands of actual dollars and tens of thousands of opportunity dollars to go nowhere.

Right. And plus the power dynamics are a little different when the man is paying for escorts. It's, here are my resources, and I just—

Yeah.

I mean, versus the other way, traditional dating, it's reversed.

Um, it's in what sense?

So traditional dating, maybe it's not reversed, but in traditional dating, the woman has more of the power, um, and she's the gatekeeper of sex.

Yes.

Um, now, if it's just a transaction, then the man has more power because they're the gatekeeper of the money.

It's true, but even in conventional relationships, it can flip around because men are the gatekeepers of Commitment. They're the ones who get down on one knee. It's not the women. So women often make men jump through a bunch of hoops in the beginning to get laid, but men can make women jump through a whole bunch of things for many, many years to get that ring or that commitment. Yeah, that's true. That's true. So it does kind of balance out, but on the scheme of things, we tend to prioritize the female gatekeeping because you have to have gone through that gate before you get to the second gate, because in our culture, sex precedes commitment. So a lot of guys just see female gatekeepers with the doors closed because they haven't gotten far enough along in the relationship process to realize that the women are going to want to get in their gate too. And now the turns have tabled, as it were. Right.

And more successful— let's say these men are— let's say they're older, maybe they're in their 60s, 70s. They've probably had their kids already, they've been married, they have no more interest in dating anymore. They just want to go for the transaction.

Oh, yeah. That's a huge part. So, older guys who are generally divorced, sometimes they're widowed, widowered, they have their kids, they just want something that's—

sorry.

That's all right. That's sweet, that's loving, and that's on their terms. And they're actually willing to pay a very high price to be able to have relationships with women more on their terms.

Right. It's interesting because I've had a couple friends, they've had some nice exits, a couple hundred million dollars or so, and they're married. They're like, Eric, you know, highly recommend you get married, have kids, try it, but, uh, I would just never do it again. And so it leaves me jaded, you know what I mean? It's just like, because I, I, you know, some of the philosophies, like, I You know, talking about, hey, it's a tough contract. It's a tough deal, right, to stomach, you know, the basic concept of marriage. But I hear that constantly over and over from a lot of people. And yeah, it's tough.

Well, it's also tough because you can hear that, but if you allow that advice to influence your decision-making, people will think that, oh, you're a coward, or you're an incel, or it's like, The only legitimate reason to not be married in our culture is to have been wounded, which means either you're divorced or you're widowed. Like, that's the only way you get out of fighting. You get your Purple Heart, and then they don't have to send you back to the front.

Right.

But if you just say, hey, how about I don't have to go to the front at all? They're like, no, no, you gotta get shot at.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, I might die. Yeah, that's a risk we all have to take. But like, You gotta man up and do it. So there's an element to that with respect to marriage. Like, if you're 50 and you're unmarried and someone says, why aren't you married? And you say, actually, I watched my wife die of pancreatic cancer, people are gonna say like, oh, I get it, no problem. But if you're 50 and you're unmarried and you say, I just never really saw the point, they look at you like you're from outer space.

Yeah, that's today's society. I mean, I will say though, The— I would want to, because I actually do want to have kids. So, that's the one thing that, like, overrides everything else. But that's a personal thing. You have this interesting quote here. So, Orion, why should people get married after they've been together for 30 years?

I have a quote about this?

You said this. Yeah.

I said this?

Yeah. So, it makes a lot of sense to me. Okay. So, okay.

Enlighten me. What did I say?

Instead of getting married in the beginning, you get married, you celebrate everything after you've lasted 30 years.

Oh, I see. Yes.

You remember this?

Well, yes. Have the wedding as opposed to get married.

Yeah.

To my mind, it's always a little peculiar that we have the big celebration at the beginning. It's like, you guys haven't done anything yet.

It's like people celebrating the fact that they raised money for their startup.

Or that you just founded the startup. Like, you registered the trademark.

Right, right.

It's like, it's gonna be a company!

Yeah, what are you celebrating?

Exactly! Like, maybe after you've grown it, and it's IPO'd, and you have this enormous payout, and you've now provided job opportunities to hundreds of people, and value to millions, yeah, that's worth celebrating. So, maybe we can— it can be a both/and, as opposed to an either/or solution. It's like, what if we had a big party, when a couple's children have all successfully launched, 'cause it's almost like mission fucking accomplished. It's like the two of you came together to start a family, which is a crazy thing to do, but you guys fucking did it. You brought children into the world, you raised them, and now they are functional adults. Let me shake your hand and give you a present. Like, that sounds like a good idea, but we don't do that.

Right, and you've not been married before, right?

No.

Neither have I. And so, like, one of my friends who got married, got divorced, he's like, the one thing I'll tell you, Eric, and he's back with somebody else now, but he's like, the one thing I'll tell you is that the one thing I don't regret is spending money on that wedding. And I was like, wow, interesting person. Like, you and I wouldn't know because we haven't been through it, but it's just like—

Well, James had a good line, which was functionally he wouldn't want the first time that all of his loved ones got together to be his funeral. There's some truth to that. It's like, it's actually pretty rare to bring a lot of people together in a celebratory and loving context.

Yeah. And the argument for it also is we don't celebrate enough and we don't get our friends together enough. So, that's another argument.

Especially guys.

But maybe you do it twice. You know what I mean?

Why not?

I mean, you see people renewing their vows, right? And they have a big celebration for it. Okay. I have to ask you, I mean, you've You're a deep thinker. You've got this book over here, which I might want to go back and talk about your business like we did last time, but maybe I'll save that for a little bit. But what have you changed your mind on in the last 12 months?

Well, here's an example. So, I worked really, really hard for a very long time. There were years where I was working at least 110 hours a week.

Wow.

Without a single week off, year after year after year. And I was very focused and driven to create the life that I'm more or less currently enjoying. But while I was doing that, I often had this fantasy that once I became successful, once I made enough money, then my dream was I wanted to just not work for a month and go to Japan. That was my fantasy. And I wanted to not just go to Japan for a week like a tourist. I wanted to kind of live in Japan as much of a local as I could.

Right.

I don't know why this was my fantasy, but it was my fantasy. And I thought about it for years. And at some point I was like, I kind of owe it to myself to try this. this out.

Hmm.

So I reached a point where this was sort of like my victory lap. And I said, great, I'm gonna take a month off, which I haven't done in 2 decades, and I'm gonna go to Japan and I'm gonna just not work and I'm just gonna be and I'm gonna see what that's like. And I went crazy in like 2 weeks. Like, it was very, very hard for me to just be. And I realized that that is not the goal that I should be striving toward. this idea that, oh, I'll just have this passive income and I'll tool around the world and just live a life of leisure and/or self-motivated inquiry. Like, my life was going off the rails.

Mm-hmm.

To go to that prison metaphor before, it's like, I need my routines. My routines stabilize me emotionally. They keep me healthy physically. My relationships ground me. They give me inspiration. My work gives me purpose and fulfillment. And I thought I was rewarding myself by taking all those things away from me.

Right.

And much to my surprise, I was floundering in a matter of days. Like within 3 weeks, I was just like, this isn't working out at all. So I was really wrong about kind of what the goal of my life was supposed to be, or the reward for my hard work was supposed to be.

I think that's very— it's good perspective. And it's good that you got to realize this sooner than waiting until retirement, because I think what we all wanted when we were younger was, I want to be on the beach. I don't want to be doing anything.

You want the beer commercial.

Yeah, I don't want any responsibilities. And then you realize, like, no, like, it's actually about what you contribute to the world. And also because it's fun.

I love what I do. And it's all self-motivated and self-directed. I've been an entrepreneur for 20 years. I don't do anything on any given day that I don't wanna do. It's wonderful.

It's fun.

It's fun. It's exhilarating. No 2 days are the same. I've learned so much because I've had to wear so many different hats. Like, I've grown. I've contributed a great deal of value to other people, I hope, in the process. It's been so rewarding. I love it. Like, I don't wanna ever stop doing it.

Yeah. You know what? One of my— we talk about this sometimes in, like, in business people circles, and we're like, you know, the greatest scam is saying that You complain about having to work all the time, but the reality is work is actually so fun. But, you know, they tell their wives, oh my God, babe, I'm gonna have to stay in longer, but they're having a blast.

I mean, that's great if that's actually true. I think most people are not in that position.

The vast majority, no.

The vast majority are just grinding.

Yeah.

And they're making the best of their situation, for sure.

But to your point, you know, it takes 10, maybe 20 years To build this up, and nobody wants to do that. Nobody wants to go through the pain. Everybody wants to win. Nobody wants to prepare.

Oh yeah, no one wanted to help me in the process too. Like, when I needed the most help, nobody was interested. Now I'm fairly successful and sufficient, and the help is coming out of the woodworks. It's like, yeah, you're 2 decades too late, my dude.

Now you wanna help me, right? So I have a couple more. I have a lot of good one-liners here from you.

Great.

The cost of being in love is giving up control.

You can't have it both ways. Like, the feeling of limerence, of being in love, is like an exhilarating, out-of-control, topsy-turvy feeling. And it really is. It's like a person who is struck by Cupid's arrow, let's say, like—

It's a drug.

Everything goes out the window. Like, they will quit their job. They'll move. They'll leave their family. They'll change their religion. They'll do all kinds of things that are out character, because it's almost like all the rules no longer apply, and they stepped into a parallel universe that has different laws of physics. If you want to have that kind of emotional exhilaration, you have to surrender control. It's like part of what makes roller coasters thrilling is that you're being taken for a ride. You can't be riding roller coaster while simultaneously dictating how the roller coaster progresses. That doesn't work. You either sit there and you get taken for a ride and you do the loop-de-loops and you wee and all that jazz, or you design the roller coaster.

Yeah, I'll tell you a story here. Um, one of my friends, so he's in Europe and then this beautiful woman walks by and then she kind of judgmentally looks over and it's like, what kind of watch is that, right? And then it's like, he's like, well, he answers her and then he, he, in his mind he's thinking, oh, Is she like a hooker? And so he kind of, he's like, so tell me what you do, right? They're kind of going at each other a little bit. So they end up talking about this book, and this is all connected. Starts talking about this book, and they get to talking, and then, you know, as she's leaving, she gets in this gold-wrapped Lamborghini. You hear the book playing on blast. Audiobook goes off, and then turns out, by the way, she's not a prostitute. The company she runs does a billion a year in revenue, okay?

Nice.

And she's separated from her husband, right? But the whole premise of this book is— it's called Reality Transurfing, and it's all about giving up control. It's all about surfing the wave. And the whole— like, what stuck with me, because when my friend explained— I'm like 11 hours into the book, but like, he's like, yeah, you know what? The more importance you place on things, the more you try to control things, the more it gets away from you, versus letting it go with the flow.

Sure. I made an episode a long time ago that was called Hold People Like Sand. And I think that's the right attitude to have towards your relationships. If you try to really squeeze sand, it forces its way through the cracks in your fingers. If you don't hold it at all, it just spills out every which way. So you kind of want to hold it gently. Too much control and you lose what you try to keep. Too little control and it's never yours to begin with.

I want to come back to the dating thing in a moment, but I just— the way— so You know, I have a friend named Alex Hormozi. He articulates himself very well when he talks about—

I'd love to meet Alex. He is— I've seen him on so many different podcasts, and he has yet to say something that I disagree with.

Yeah, you know, he's great. His wife is amazing too, Leila. Um, but you articulate yourself really well, and I've asked him this before too, I guess, you know, where— what does your learning stack look like? What are you consuming, right? Because it's It's pretty up there.

In terms of like, what am I reading?

Yeah, I just wanna know like the way you think, the way you articulate yourself specifically, like where is that all coming from?

Well, I think I've spent maybe 35 to 40 years preparing to answer all of these questions. Like the vast majority of my life has been spent in study. Study for what? I don't know. I guess preparation for this moment that is unfolding right now, right? Taking off right now, yeah. But like, I was a voracious reader. I don't get a chance to read as much these days because I don't think that we should just consume. There comes a time where we have to create and produce.

Right.

And I think my decades of study and introspection are starting to pay off because I might have some perspective of value for other people. But when I do read, I generally read people who aren't alive anymore. Like, I stay away from current events. I stay away from popular trends.

Yeah.

If a book has remained enshrined in the literary tradition for hundreds of years, it's a pretty good bet that there might be something of value in that book.

Right.

So for example, I also like to do lists. Because if I'm only guided by my own preferences, I tend to just get more of what I already know. That said, if I just randomly choose shit, it's often not very good or satisfying because extraordinary things are rare. So I often find lists that are curated by experts in the field, and I surrender to those lists and just put myself through a course of study, for instance.

Got it. Reminds me, we're talking the Lindy Effect here. If it's been around for 1,000 years, it'll probably be around for another 1,000 years.

Maybe, but there's certainly something in it that many, many people have decided is worth preserving, and we should be reticent to throw that out on a whim.

What would be some of those books, if any come to mind?

Yeah, a great series that I've been working through is the Penguin Great Ideas books. There's 120 of them, and they span from, let's say, ancient China to—

120 books?

There's 120 books, yeah. They're generally pretty small, from 100 to 150 pages, all in the public domain from some of the best cultural, philosophical, and psychological thinkers that humanity has produced, from ancient China to, let's say, contemporary America.

Right.

And I haven't read a bad book. It's exposed me to some ideas and some authors that I never would have chosen to read on my own. What's great, it's allowed me to expand my horizons, and I've yet to read a book that I don't get anything from.

Yeah. What's it called again? I just wanna write it down here.

Oh, Penguin, the imprint, has a line of books called the Great Ideas series. Okay, I'll write it down. They have great design too, so they're very attractive. They look good on the bookshelf. But I'm also very careful about what I consume. Like, I don't consume a lot of political content or social commentary. I really like to go to the primary source. I want to make up my own mind. So I'll read the bill that people are arguing about, or I'll listen to that person's actual words or read their book and make up my own mind. In today's day and age, we often don't know what to think. We don't— we know what we're supposed to think about certain things.

Well, I think it's how whatever channel portrays it, and then they suck you into their way of believing it. And then before you know it, you're no longer thinking for yourself.

Yeah, it happens pretty slowly for a lot of people, and it saves you a lot of time. You know, it's like the CliffsNotes. Oh, this guy good, this guy bad. Great. That's all I need to know.

Yep. We all just want shortcuts at the end of the day.

Most of us do, but that often comes at a high cost. I don't know if there really are shortcuts.

No. Well, like you said, I mean, the quote that always sticks with me from Thomas Sowell is, there are no solutions, only trade-offs.

Yeah, that one is really good. I use it in the book too for relationships in particular. Yeah.

And you— yeah, we did talk about this a little earlier. So, okay. I think Danica talked about— so Danica Patrick is for everyone, successful race car driver, right? And I think she was one of the only female Race car drivers? NASCAR?

I'm sure she's not the only one, but I think she's the only one anybody would ever know.

Okay, that's fair. And so she talked about, um, you guys had a conversation around— it seems that maybe more women today are defaulting back to becoming the traditional women, or is it that men are looking for more traditional women today? It's one or the other.

Uh, so we were talking about Going back to traditional relationships.

Yeah. So, she's— my note here says, Danica Patrick talked about defaulting to a traditional woman, back to being a traditional woman today.

What does that look like? Like, you're not going to go to college and you're going to bake pies and bear children?

I think it's more so, hey, you know, you're going to be the caretaker while the husband is the provider and the protector.

Yeah, you can do that. I think that there's definitely a push in a lot of social commentary to go back to traditional relationships. Now, of course, how far back is an open question. A lot of these folks, like the tradcons, want to go back 70 years, the 1950s.

Yeah.

But if we go back hundreds of years, That model of relationships didn't exist. In fact, that's a very anomalous moment in the history of intersexual relationships.

So related to this, I read a comment on one of your videos, and this guy got a lot of upvotes on it. So he's like, you know, hey, Native American here. He's like, I used to only date Americans before, specifically white people, right? And he's like, total disaster. He's like, but then I went to— I started dating people from Europe, Whether, you know, France or some Eastern European countries. And he's like, everything has been pleasant. I'm now married to a French woman. And he's like, it's because they are traditional. So I think we're seeing a lot. I think we're seeing more content about people just saying, hey, we just want a traditional woman. We want to see a traditional woman. So I just want to see if you had anything to add to that. If not, I'll move on from this.

I mean, I think it's going to be tough because most women in America aren't even thinking about getting married and having kids until their 30s. Like, I have personally known many women in their 20s who think that they're never going to want to be married or to have children.

Right.

That just seems so far away into their future and that they have plenty of time anyway. And that's difficult because why go to college? Why build a career? Why devote most of your adult life to a professional direction only to then surrender it when it starts to pick off?

Yeah.

So that's gonna be a tough sell for a lot of women. Like, that doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

Sunk cost bias.

Sure, sure, but like, I wouldn't want to spend 10 years preparing for a game that I never got to play.

Same here. Yeah.

Yeah.

I will say one thing. There's women I've dated in the past, worked really hard, have a great job, but mid-30s now. We might have talked about this before, but mid-30s now. And they're kind of lamenting the fact that they're not in a relationship, not married, no kids. So again, trade-offs. I don't think there's any right or wrong here. I think it's just—

Well, I think that what's wrong is the idea that women can have it all, because nobody can have it all. Like we've just been saying, everything involves a trade-off.

Right.

And it is possible for women to have the professional identity and to be mothers and wives. They might have difficulty doing both simultaneously, in which case, I think it might make sense for them to prioritize the relationship First, because when they're in their 20s, that's when they're going to be most attractive to the men that they most would want to potentially marry and have children with. And if by the time they're 32, they feel like they've missed out on the opportunity to be an employee, they can go into the job market. But it's much harder the other way around.

I'll go back to my mom again, 'cause again, we have these deep talks. She's so open about these things now. You know, her whole thing was she wishes that she wasn't as loyal in her 20s and that she dated more.

Sure.

Because she would have opened up her pool a lot more. But because she was so loyal and because she turned away all the advances of the other men, she had to— and in Chinese culture, you're called, if you're over 30 and you're not married, you're called a xin niu, which means you're a leftover woman.

It's over 30? I thought it was over like 26. It's— they're raising the age?

Well, I mean, maybe over 26, but by the time you're 30, you're like basically like, you know, you're, you're like dead to me. Versus like if you're a guy and you're, you're over 30, that you're like, um, you're like, um, you're, you're called some, some form of like, um, hidden gold or hidden gem.

Oh, nice.

Yeah.

Yeah, there's definitely some double standards when it comes to men and women in the sexual marketplace.

Unfortunately.

Yeah, they're never going to go away though. We should just sort of accept them. Now, what you were getting at has some truth to it. Like, I don't want to go back to the days where I had no choice. And it was just like the 2 women in my village. And divorce wasn't possible no matter how bad the relationship got. And that's just what you had to do to make do with your lives. Like, that doesn't sound very fun or nice or satisfying to me. Like, I like having options. I like being able to choose what works best for me. I think that is the basis to even make a legitimate decision. If you are constrained in your optionality too much, you're not really choosing. It's being chosen for you.

Right.

Right?

Totally, 100%. You have a— one of the most toxic beliefs is that you get to be yourself.

In a relationship, yeah. I was just talking about this. Yeah, I think that's responsible for a lot of relationship dissatisfaction. The idea that out there, like when I'm at my job, that's where I have to put it all together and be professional. When I'm working with my mom, you know, I have to be a good daughter or a good son. It's like I'm always playing these roles out in the world.

Mm-hmm.

But when I'm at home in my relationship, that's where I get to let it all go.

Right.

I don't have to perform anymore, and I could just be myself, warts and all, and you're supposed to love and accept me no matter what. And I don't think that's true. And unfortunately, I think that that belief can lead to some people treating their spouses or their partners worse than they would treat a random stranger on the bus. Like, in my mind, relationships are roles. You only get to stop playing the role when you're alone. Like having a boyfriend or a husband or a girlfriend or a wife is a privilege, just like having a job is a privilege. If you think you can show up and dispense with professionalism and just expect that everyone should enjoy working with you and you deserve your paycheck, that's absurd and narcissistic.

Entitlement.

It's extremely entitled. But the idea here is that I should be accepted by you And so I can dispense with being attractive, I can dispense with being kind, I can dispense with being respectful, because that's for the other people. I think it's a better idea to treat those closest to you better than you treat people who are further away, and that actually incentivizes people to be the best versions of themselves in relationship to you.

'Cause you're in it for the long term with these people. So why would you not invest more?

A lot of people, though, men and women, they throw all the good stuff in the early stages of the courtship to hook somebody, and then they slowly spend the years pulling it back.

Right.

When really it should be the other way around.

Yeah, it's interesting. You know, with a lot of people that own businesses, you keep working on it. You keep compounding it over a long period of time. But the whole thing is you're continually working on it, whereas in relationships, sometimes we kind of just let it all go.

I talk about that there are 3 distinct phases of any relationship. There's attraction, there's negotiation, and there's maintenance. But it's wrong to suggest that these are discrete episodes. It's not like we deal with attraction at the beginning and then never again, or we've negotiated the arrangement of our relationship and so we never have to renegotiate moving forward.

Right.

In point of fact, all 3 of those phases interact with each each other and can't really be extricated from each other completely. So I just separated them kind of conceptually to highlight the different features that they possess. But the idea is you must always remain attractive to your partner because— I just wrote a script about this called The Lens of Attraction.

Okay.

It's been—

A video script?

Yeah, for a new episode. It's been remarked by, I'm sure, lots of different therapists that often the things that you're most attracted to in the early stages of relationships are exactly the things that drive you fucking nuts, like, 2 years down the road.

Mm-hmm.

Like, what is— what's that about? Like, obviously, the behavior hasn't changed. It's the same behavior today than it was 2 years ago. So why do you have such a radically different attitude towards Your partner. And I think it's because everything that is done is perceived through the lens of attraction. And when the attraction is high, your partner is going to see what you do positively, generously. It's going to give you the benefit of the doubt. It's going to make the most favorable interpretation of your action. And when that attraction is low, that partner is going to be negative and critical and disparaging.

Right.

The same behavior. So let me give you an example. So it can certainly be the case that someone might say, oh, I love how funny you are. You're so easy to get along with. And oh my God, you crack me up. Being with you is just a blast. And then 2 years later, it's like, can't you take anything seriously? Are you just a clown all the time? Who are you performing for?

Contempt.

Well, yes. It's interesting because high and low attraction come with emotional correlates. The emotional correlate to high attraction is desire. For low attraction, it's disgust, which is, I think, a more visceral form of contempt.

Right.

Same thing. Someone might say, I love how driven and ambitious my partner is. He gets focused on something and nothing can stop him. 2 years later, all he does is work. It's like I had Cancel our plans again? It's like he should be married to that company. Oh my God. It's like the exact same fucking behavior. But because that person in my 2 hypothetical examples, for whatever reason, didn't make the effort to maintain the attraction, thought that maybe that was just the initial stages of the courtship, that changed the interpretation of the behavior.

It's interesting. I have some friends that are married for 30, 40 years or so. And they kind of run their marriage like a business because the attraction was going down. And they're like, you know what? I mean, a business is an organization of people, right? So they started organizing like a business where they have like daily walks, and there's a weekly date, there's a quarterly bigger date, and there's a yearly extravaganza, right? How do you think about this stuff?

It sounds very unromantic, which it is. And I think people can be very judgmental about folks who structure their relationships in that way. But I think it can work.

It's a system.

Yeah. Like I said, there are trade-offs. When a dynamic gets established, it can become rigid and stultifying and boring and predictable, but it also can be very efficient.

Right.

Like, I don't want to have to renegotiate the gender roles every weekend. It's like that requires so much communication and energy and time. Let's just do our fucking jobs and move forward with it. We'll get more done this way.

Right.

Right? So I think it's really, really important to always date your partner, even if you're married to them. Like, women, don't ever stop being your man's girlfriend. Girlfriends inspire so much more joy in men than wives do in general.

Yeah.

Like, girlfriends are fun. They're sexy. They're playful. They're spontaneous. They're attractive. You have a good time with your girlfriend. Wives have this connotation of being an obligation, right? The old ball and chain. You don't say that about a girl that you're just dating, right?

Yeah.

So I think that it's important for both partners to remain their boyfriends or girlfriends for each other, and that will help to keep some of the attraction alive.

I like that. You have a quote here that connects well. It says, beautiful women make men want to be better.

They generally do, right? This is kind of important because if a guy is too rational and he looks at the cost-benefit return on a lot of relationships, and especially marriage, he might think, well, this doesn't make a lot of sense. Like, what's in this for me? It just seems like a lot of risk and downside and obligation, et cetera, et cetera. Now, we can make a case, as some people like Jordan Peterson have done, to say that that obligation, that restriction is actually a good thing. You just don't know it yet because it's going to be the crucible through which you transcend and transform yourself.

Yeah.

It's like, there's probably some truth to that for sure. But purely rational Rationally, that relationship arrangement doesn't make sense to a lot of men. So why do men do it? On some level, they have to be so into the woman that they're willing to do something kind of nutty. And the more attractive a woman is, the more likely that guy isn't thinking with his brain. You know what I'm saying?

100,000%.

It's like there— I felt this in my own life. There are certain women that have motivated me to do things that I would You'd move heaven and earth. Well, sure. And it's not entirely based on the physical phenotype, though it's strongly related to that. And that's unfortunate because there's only so much a woman can do to improve, let's say, what she's working with. But almost everybody can be more attractive than they currently are. And attraction is really the ability to command attention. And there's lots of different ways to command and maintain attention. And women who learn how to do that will get more of what they want from men.

Right. Has your— has your— the growth of your YouTube helped a lot with that?

With commanding attention?

Yeah.

Oh, yeah. I get propositioned all the time these days.

Yeah. How often? What does it look like?

Oh, like daily. You know, they show up in my DMs, this, that, or the other. Women often aren't as direct, though they certainly can be. Like, sometimes they just send pictures or videos and it's like, wow, okay, this is nice. But oftentimes they want to like debate an idea or they come with praise or they try to tease me or say that I'm wrong. Like, those are probably the 3 primary ways that women flirt.

Yeah.

So it's all kind of indirect with plausible deniability a lot of the time. But yeah, I get a lot of optionality these days. It's interesting. I made an episode a while back called Being Famous Is Like Being a Woman. Did you watch that one?

I've heard this phrase many times.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

Oh, okay. So maybe I inadvertently plagiarized it. Didn't mean to.

No, it's all good.

So I'm not even that famous. So everything I'm about to say, you can multiply by 100x with somebody who's actually an A-list person.

That's right.

So I remember about a year and a half into Psych Hacks, when it started to take off, I got an email from a man, from a barber in San Francisco, and he knew I was located in the Bay Area, and he was like, oh, Dr. Terraband, love your stuff, man. Every time a new episode comes on, the whole barbershop shuts down, and we all listen to it together. We think that you're the best. We'd love to have— like, come in anytime for a free haircut, man. Our pleasure. Our way of saying thanks.

Yeah.

All the best. And I was like, wow. I didn't take him up on it, but I was moved. I was touched. And it took me a while to figure out that that was the first time I had ever been offered something as an adult man just for being like me.

100%.

You know what I'm saying? Like, wow, somebody wanted to give me a $40 haircut. Like, that was nice of that guy.

It feels good, doesn't it?

It felt great.

'Cause nobody does anything for MedYouth today.

No one fucking gives me anything. It's like, I was so touched by the offer of a haircut. And then I was like, well, wait a minute. How many times have I personally, Like, offered women drinks and meals and travel and time.

The world.

Just to, like, lure them into my presence to potentially initiate a sexual relationship. And I'm just one man. Multiply that by 10x, 100x, 1,000x, depending on how attractive that woman is. And it's like attractive women just live in a different universe. I remember I I was dating a very attractive woman back in the day, and she just thought the world was full of nice people, that people were just going out of their way to help each other all the time. Like, if she needed to move, there was always 3 guys who were willing to help her move. And every time she walked through the door, people would hold the door open for her, and they offered to buy her food, and did she need anything? It's like, dude, they all wanted to fuck you, sweetie.

Yep.

No, no, that's crude. That's crass. They thought I was a good person, and they're just good people. And I was like, oh my gosh, can you be more naive?

Yeah.

But if you've gotten it since the time you were 13, which I'm sure a lot of these precociously attractive girls do— we're not supposed to say that, but like that's what happens— it distorts your view of reality.

Totally. And it's tough when they start to, you know, get a little older and you don't get the same treatment that you used to get.

Yeah. Ages out gets to experience what it's finally like to be a young man.

You know what they say? They say, okay, so here's what the fame thing. So they say it's really fun. The journey, the process of becoming famous is really fun, but being famous sucks. Losing your fame is death.

I bet it would be really tough. Like, once you get a taste of it, it's like, wow, I can't believe I lost it. lived the other way for so long. Like, being famous is definitely life on easy mode, man. Like, people are offering you help all the time. They're extending you invitations. They want to see you. They want to know you. They want to say that they know you to other people.

Yeah.

Dating becomes significantly easier. You can dictate the hows and the whens and the wheres and the whys. It's great.

Yeah. I think the way you've crafted your brand is great. And I have a final part here. The way you've crafted your brand, it's not too in your face, right? It's very calm. You know, it comes from a place of like deep thought. Whereas, you know, other dating shows or whatever, it's a little hardcore. We'll just leave it at that. But how— okay, so, you know, you've gained more of a following, especially on YouTube. How is living in Napa conducive to your dating life?

Oh, it's not. There's nothing going on in Napa in terms of a dating life. I was curious. Yeah. Napa is a beautiful, peaceful place, but it's also a little stodgy. Like, the average age is 50. I was over living in the city. It was a little too extra for me, but Napa does feel like a retirement community from time to time, a very pleasant, beautiful retirement community. But that's why I love that I get to travel these days. So I get to have my peaceful little life, and then I get to experience other cities and excitements from time to time, and that balance really works for me.

Got it. Okay, so it's your home base, but you're hopping around a lot, you're traveling quite a bit.

Yeah, I think I need both.

Okay, got it. And are you getting invited to speak at conferences now, things like that?

I've been invited to talk at a few conferences, and I've attended. They've been a really great experience on the whole. Like, I have yet to have a negative experience with I'm sure that it will happen at a certain point in time, but like, I haven't had an antagonistic interview. When people stop me in the streets, they're very respectful, and like, it's great, man. I mean, it's very moving. I don't take it for granted because it's all a very new thing for me.

You know what's funny? I didn't tell you this, but so I've had some women, female friends watch the last interview that we did, and they're like, this is fantastic. I'm never showing my boyfriend. So it's like, this shit's good, but like, I'm not— we're not giving this knowledge to the boyfriend.

Yeah, I think women often already understand a lot of the things that I talk about. Like, maybe you've heard that men are in love and women are in business kind of a thing. Like, women, for better or for worse, they've cultivated more cunning and indirect means of getting what they want.

I don't know if it's you that mentioned this, but it is— women are very much looking for It's a job to find the right man, right? And if there's another good job out there, then you move on. Do you talk about that?

Yeah, I have an episode about that. I called it Women Treat Men the Way Men Treat Jobs.

Yes, yes, yes.

And it's not personal. So it's like, if you're working a job and you get cold-called by a recruiter and he says, Eric, you know—

Triple the salary.

We'll triple the salary. We'll give you unlimited paid PTO. You can work from home. You're at least going to consider that offer.

And no hard feelings.

Most likely gonna take it. Yeah, exactly. You're gonna be like, hey, I've really loved working here. You guys have been great, but I have to do this for my career. I hope you— and everyone's gonna be like, yeah, we totally understand. They may feel a little envious, but they know they do the same fucking thing.

Right. Last thing over here. So I was choosing between 2, but I'm gonna choose this one. So I'm paraphrasing here. Men who cheat are just as happy as men who don't.

That's what the research says. In terms of their relationship satisfaction, yeah. Like, there's no statistical significant difference between those 2 groups. However, there's an enormous difference in relationship satisfaction between women who cheat and women who don't. And that's part of why I think that men tend to compartmentalize sex better than women.

Mm-hmm.

That for women, sex is more bound up For— with emotional outcomes and reasons than for men.

Right. And I mean, it's something they have to gatekeep. So—

It's something they have to gatekeep. Yeah, they do. And they're more likely to open the door for a man that they feel authentically attracted to.

Yeah.

Which is pretty rare, I think, for a lot of women.

All right, Orion, part 2. This has been fantastic.

This was great, Eric. Thanks for having me on, man.

What's the best way for people to find you online, get the book?

Oh, yeah. So I have a YouTube channel called Psych Hacks. So that's probably the best way to follow my content. My book came out recently, The Value of Others. There is a paperback, an audiobook, and an ebook. The links to everything are on my channel, but you can also find this on Audible, Amazon, you know, all the main marketplaces that people go for things these days. Amazing.

And very well written, too. So congratulations.

Thanks, man. It was a lot of fun to write. It's in the Amazon top 10 in a number of categories.

Awesome.

It's doing really well for a book that has no publicist, agent, marketing team, or advertising.

Fantastic. Well, can't wait for your next book, but, uh, thanks for doing this.

I'm already thinking of what it's gonna be.

Love it.

Can't wait to start it.