Make Them DESIRE YOU! - 5 Easy Ways To Become More ATTRACTIVE TODAY | Lewis Howes

Of course you're feeling these things. You're not a screw up. You're not weak. You're not handling it terribly because you're having these thoughts. And what I would say to people is a really manageable step is...

It's not the amount of time. It's the quality of the time and the presence of your quality of time. That I find, which is most powerful, at least in my relationship, where I may only have a half hour to an hour of time day, certain days, maybe right now, but my phone is not anywhere near me. I'm looking in her eyes the whole time. I'm engaged asking questions. How's your mom? How's your family? How's this? What can I do for you? Can we play a game right now? Can we do something fun? Can we dance a little? It's the presence to the quality of time. And I'm sure the more time you have better, but it's got to be quality time from my personal experience. Are you finding that that's what I guess women and men want as well when you're coaching people.

Oh, these issues go both ways. You know, men can have the same insecurities as women can in these situations. And it comes down to which partner might feel busier, which one has got more to do right now. It could be like, it's a tough situation if one person in a relationship right now and they're living under the same roof feels like they've got tons to do and tons of purpose and tons, you know, like, I can lose myself in my mission and what I'm doing right now and their partner is- and be fine.

And your partner has lost a job or lost this or- Right.

Or I haven't figured out what my thing is yet. I don't know what, you know, you have your mission. I don't know what, like, what I'm saying.

What do I do?

I'm waiting for you to come home every day. Yeah.

Right.

Yeah, I'm sitting here picking random hobbies out of thin air because I feel like everyone keeps telling me now's the time to learn a hobby.

So I'm like, Should I learn guitar? Should I learn- Right. Or worse. I'm on social media watching everyone else's perfect relationship and everyone else thriving and I feel less than.

Yeah, exactly. And that, by the way, that's really, we've got to be really careful of that right now. We're used to comparing ourselves to others on social media through the lens of, you know, we're seeing their highlight reel.

Of.

Their life, you know, oh, they're traveling now, look at them sipping a sip in a beach on the cocktail, look at them doing this skydive, look at, we're seeing the highlight reel of their life. I think now we're seeing the highlight reel of people's emotions. So in quarantine, people don't have that life, right? We've not got all of these activities that we could be doing, but we're all of a sudden seeing that moment where someone's just finished their yoga workout and they post and they're like, you know, I'm, you know, I got this quarantine, just did my yoga, blah, blah, blah.

And you're like, On the day.

Exactly.

But exactly. But you're not seeing like Matthew Hussey in the moment where he's like super grumpy and irritable and just like, today is not, this is not my day and I'm not feeling it today and I don't want to make a video today. And I've made a point of saying things like that out loud because I think it's important that people get the full spectrum of what other people are going through. Because guess what? Other people are going to dark places. Other people are having their freakouts. other people are having those moments of depression or deep melancholy.

They're emotionally hurt and they're needing that kind of quick connection again. They might go back to the person because they're feeling weak and they missed that feeling of connection or love or intimacy. But they know it's not the right fit for them long term. They know, but this is in a heightened state of vulnerability for them that they go back. Quicker. What advice do you have to someone like that? Very hard.

I have so much. Firstly, a breakup even under normal circumstances is a tremendously difficult thing. True, true. I shouldn't say a breakup because there are many joyous breakups we go through. But a truly, when you experience true heartbreak, it is one of the most devastating feelings in the way.

Yeah, there's dating.

You're a zombie.

You're dead inside.

And it's worse than you're dead inside. You act dead to everybody else inside. You feel like you're dying. On loop all day.

You can't get out of it, yeah.

Yeah. In a breakup, and this is as true now, Now is no different. People need to recognize that now is just a difficult breakup on steroids. If you're going through heartbreak right now, you're just doing it on steroids. But it's just the same emotions. So don't fret that, oh my God, why did it have to happen now when this was going on? You're giving it a big story. It's still just the same emotions of heartbreak. You're just experiencing them in a heightened.

And you don't have the ability to rebound physically with that person or a new person.

Which we could see as a gift.

Right.

Why is that a gift?

Because there are plenty of things, as my brother Stephen Hussey, a wonderful writer for our website, as he says, in a breakup there are two methods of recovery. There's the athlete recovery method, and there's the hangover recovery method. You're gonna like this, Louis. Tell me, I love it. I haven't heard it before, but you're gonna love it 'cause the analogy is perfect for you. I love it. The hangover recovery method, you think about how do people deal with a hangover? They wake up, they eat greasy foods 'cause they're like, oh, I just need something to make me feel better. They watch crap TV, they lay on.

The sofa, they just- Wake up at 2:00 PM, yeah.

Cut all the blinds, don't let any light in. Eat ice cream. Essentially they do all of these things that are temporary kind of pleasure and comfort but ultimately are not nutritional and are not the things that are needed to get, you know, what's needed. Massive amounts of hydration.

Water.

Go take a walk.

Sunshine. Exercise.

Yeah, get the metabolism moving again. Get that like crap out of your system. Like that's all the stuff that's needed in that moment. But it's, it can feel harder to do the things that are actually going to get you out of it. Now look at the way an athlete recovers in an injury, right? You know better than anybody. You don't, firstly, you still train whatever you can train. You don't ignore everything simply because your shoulder's injured, you do what you can.

Yeah, you do some abs, you do some legs, you do something else.

Right, let me keep a hand- Swimming, yeah. Exactly. You eat well, you get tons of rest, as much rest as you possibly can. You do rehab when necessary, but you don't do so much that it injures what you're doing.

Yeah, you reset your vision, you visualize what you want and start mentally rehearsing the reps, the repetition, the action steps, you mental rehearse, you know, all those things, right?

So now if you apply that to a breakup, The hangover recovery method is let's go and sleep with other people quickly just to get my fix, just to feel connected, just to feel like I'm worth something, just to feel like I'm still sexy. Let me go out and drink, party, let me eat ice cream, bad food, keep going to the fridge.

Get on Tinder and all the apps.

Or just hide away under the covers, don't engage life. It could be either or, but they're all hangover recovery methods because they don't make you feel better long term. They're just short term pleasure. The athlete recovery method in a breakup is you do the same as an athlete. You say, okay, my heart might be injured right now, right? My heart's offline, so to speak. But I still have everything else. So let me make sure the rest of my life is firing on all cylinders right now. Let me do everything. Let me be kind to myself. Let's maybe like put dating aside for the moment or put that, but let me go and make platonic connections. Let me go and build my relationships with my friends and family. Let me eat well, let me sleep well, let me train, let me go and do all of these things that train every other muscle in my life so that when my heart comes back online, every other part of me is ready to go. So you've got one problem right now. You're in pain.

Right?

But if that pain causes you to let every other part of your life go down spiral, now you've got six problems. So that's the part we want to avoid.

And- Only have one problem, not six.

And, you know, look, all of this is easy to say. And when you're heartbroken, you just feel like you feel so bad and so sick in your stomach and so nauseated all the time that you, Even hearing this sounds like a lot of work. And what I would say to people is a really manageable step is, I, you know, there's that quote, Emotions are weather. Let them come and go, right? And that's true. Emotions are weather. I used to think that emotions were really important. A friend of mine, Jameson Jordan, who you know, who shoots my videos, he would always tell me, whenever I would be in a real funk, a bad place, whatever, he, I would talk to him about it. He was one of the closest people to me. And I always remember he used to say to me, like, I just think you, like, think your emotions are more important than I feel like mine are.

You put more emphasis on your-- yeah.

You, like, think they're really important.

You think your emotions are you.

Yeah, he would be like, you just seem to, like, give more weight to your feelings than I do. and I, at the time, I didn't quite hear that. And over time, I've come to understand what that means. And of course, a lot of this is taught in mindfulness, training, meditation, and so on. But that idea that just because you have a thought, just because you have an emotion, it doesn't make it important. And in a heartbreak, just because you miss your partner, that doesn't actually make that feeling that important. Just because you feel hurt and you feel like, oh, my God, I'll never find anyone like that again. That's just a thought and an emotion that's attached to that thought, and it doesn't make make it that important. And so when I was going through terrible times, when I've gone through heartbreak, one of the key lessons I learned was, okay, there's really cloudy skies right now. That's the weather, right? And it feels like that weather will never pass. But what I would begin to pay attention to is I would realize that I would realize, oh, for the last 20 minutes, I didn't think about my breakup.

Small wins.

I'd be like, yeah, and often you only notice it after the fact. Because when you're in it, it could be that you're in a flow state with your work and that's taken you out of it. It could be that you're having a funny moment with a friend. It could be that you lost yourself in a movie. It could be you just had a conversation with your brother, your mother, whoever.

A workout, yeah.

For a few minutes, even if it's just five. For five minutes, you noticed, I felt better. I felt, and maybe I didn't feel amazing, but I just, for five minutes, I didn't feel like I was dying.

I didn't feel suffering.

And when that happens, here's what I would say to myself. I'd be like, well, that's interesting. Notice those things as interesting. And this applies not just to heartbreak, but the depression, to anxiety, to all sorts of different emotions that are undesirable. When you notice that for five minutes of your day, you didn't feel that thing. Because what happened, here's what happens. We have our, like, whatever is our home, whether it's depression, heartbreak, anxiety, sadness, we have our home that we go to 90% of our day. And when we feel that, we focus on it so intensely that It becomes very difficult to get out of it because we are focused on that 90% the whole time. And what we don't acknowledge is this interesting window in the day where we didn't feel that. And that window has some clues, has some, there's some truth often in that window, that 5% of the day where you felt all right. There's some truth there that's waiting to be discovered in large, held under a microscope. And what I would do is when I would feel better for five minutes, I'd go, well, okay, so what did that, if nothing else, what did that prove? It proved that it's possible for me to feel better. I had a reference point for the fact that I could feel better. And then you go, well, if I felt better for five minutes, if I even felt better for a minute, let's make more of those. What how did what was happening? How did I do it? I might not be able to get my day to the point where I even feel good for a quarter of the day right now. Right. That might be an unrealistic goal. But if I had one good minute or one good hour, let me make the new goal not to be great or to be happy or to get over this. Just make more of those.

Yeah. And multiply those moments, multiply those minutes into five and ten and 20 minutes.

It's a manageable task. Suddenly Getting over your heartbreak, you need to get over it, dude, you know, blah, blah, blah. It's not, this isn't, that's not practical advice for someone who's going through hell. But for someone who realizes that just for five minutes, the clouds parted and they go, oh my God.

It's like one of my favorite movies, Swingers, where Mikey is always thinking about his ex and who he left and then now she won't come back to him six months ago or whatever and he's constantly talking about it, obsessing about it. suffering in pain. And then he finally learned to just put his attention somewhere else for a few minutes and then put it for an hour. And then he goes on a date with someone and then he thought about her for a day. And he was like, wow, I didn't talk about her all today, you know?

And here's what's so important about that because what's really interesting about that movie is he begins to do these things that slowly start to create more moments of good weather in his day.

He goes salsa dancing, he does this, he does activities. Yeah.

Right.

But what we have to be aware of, you have to respect whatever is the drug, whether it's your ex, whether it's genuinely a drug or booze or whether it's a situation that makes you feel bad or whatever. Often when we start to create more good weather, we start to take for granted that the bad weather can't appear now. It's like, oh, I'm past it.

Yeah.

It could come back. A storm could come raging through again.

Someone, your. Your ex could text you, and if you text back and start engaging, knowing, knowing what happens that you're. When you start in a conversation with that person again, you're going to spiral. You're not respecting the drug. You got you might have been clean for months or years, but you gotta respect the drug because it's when you when you get cocky and you don't remember that there are rituals and routines and practices daily that got you to this good state. You are liable to fall back into that trap because you're because you're blind. Don't be blind. Don't be afraid. It's not about fit. You're not fearful. you're not worried because, you know, if I got if I didn't die at the height of my breakups pain, if I didn't die on day two, I'm not going to die on day 22 or day 52 or day 1002. If I could deal with this at the height of its pain, I'm not going to die now. So I'm not going to be afraid of this, but I'm also going to respect it and know that there are certain things that make me feel better in my day and I have to consciously put them into my day because the moment I take for granted that I just feel better, that's when that thing starts creeping.

Exactly. I'm laughing so hard because we, we have a mutual friend that we've been helping. I won't say his name, but we've been helping navigate certain things in their, you know, their relationship. And, you know, it just reminded me of that, of replying to people when they text you, when you think you're good. Hey, don't go back into that. Make sure you stay true to what you want, what you're committed to by in the athlete mindset of envisioning something that you want for your future and envisioning the relationship or the better match or, you know, how you want to be feeling and all those things.

And by the way, and just remember, and this is true not just for people going through heartbreak right now, but people going through solitude right now, because there's a lot of people who right now are just in solitude. They're not necessarily heartbroken, but they are experiencing a deep kind of existential loneliness. And when we're on our own for long periods of time, many people, not everyone, but many people and perhaps even most, have more of a tendency to go to dark places with their thoughts.

Yeah.

And there's a lot of people that are there that are listening to us right now that certainly can't. That, you know, the I, you know, some people might be in a hell with someone in the house, but these people in solitude are looking at that going, I'll take that right now over the hell I'm in of being constantly on my own and going out of my mind. I would say to people that, you know, the same weather rule applies that You know, you might feel really kind of dark and lonely at points in your day, but there are other points in your day where you don't notice the good weather and pay attention to the good weather and what made you feel good. Did you just have a conversation with one of your siblings? Did you have a little group chat with a bunch of friends? Did you watch a life affirming movie? Did you read a book that made you feel connected to an author from some period in time? Maybe who was also alone and writing about it. And By reading that author, you go, oh my god, I feel, you know, someone else is having the same experience as me. I think that's really important is if you're in solitude right now on your own, you connect to other people who have experienced that because some of the greatest figures of all time have spent inordinate amounts of time alone, have experienced the darkness that you're experiencing, and you're in good company. you. You may feel you're alone and oh, man, we have this solipsistic attitude that only one who's alone. We know it's not rationally true. We know it's not logically true, but we feel it on an emotional level. Those are moments where you have to remind yourself, I'm in good company, not just today, but throughout time. Key figures, brilliant people, people that are far more brilliant than we will ever be have experienced the deepest darkest existential loneliness. And in a way, there is something slightly romantic about that. I always love when I read an author and I hear that author who's brilliant and who I love. And I was just reading Bertrand Russell and then you hear about something that someone suffers with or something that they've gone through and you go, thank God. This person that I love also suffered. Also, you know, there's that element of it that's really, really powerful. And so I think that you can adopt, yes, accept that it's difficult. It is difficult. Don't look at other people and think they're handling it so well. It is difficult. I'd call my dad at times when business is hard and business was messy and chaotic and I'd screwed up or I'd lost money or I'd done something. I'd call my dad and I'd be like, you know, my dad's one of my big mentors and I'd call him and say, Dad, like, I'm just so stressed. I'm so overwhelmed. This is happening. This is going wrong. I've got 10 people asking me for this, whatever. And he'd say, Matt, part of the problem is you don't think that other people's businesses are just as messy. It's almost like you think that you're struggling with all these things and other people aren't. He said, Matt, I've been in business for, you know, 40 years. Business is messy. That is the nature of it. It is messy. It is chaotic. There are always things going wrong as well as things going right. That's the nature. That's how it is supposed to be. And when he would say that to me, it didn't take my problems away. But what it made me realize is, oh, it's all right. It's not this is normal. I'm on top of my problems. I'm beating myself up and taking it personally. I'm doing a horrible job.

Yeah, it's kind of like your dad and Jameson are saying the same thing. Your feelings are more important, your mess is more important.

It's- yeah, A, don't give it so much power and B, and don't give your feelings and emotions so much power. Not every emotion is a cue to do something.

Yeah.

At the same time, except that this is your view that, you know, in the Road Less Traveled, M. Scott Peck talked about, I think one of the first line of his book is life is hard. and one of the things that makes life more difficult for us is that we expect it to be easy. Well, that's true of relationships, it's true of business, it's true of everything. And when we have someone close to us who says, you're all right, you're at home on your own right now and you feel like it's dark and lonely and you're having these kind of existential thoughts and you're welcome, that's normal. Of course you do. You're living at home on your own in isolation right now. Of course you're feeling these things. You're not a screw up. You're not weak. You're not handling it terribly because you're having these thoughts. That is absolutely normal. And that's what makes it heroic. You're having all these thoughts and you're having all these feelings, but you're in the company of wonderful people throughout history who have experienced this, who have had just as bad a time, who were dealing with it no better than you.

You know, I feel like a lot of people that I've known in the past have entered a relationship through a sexual connection, sexual chemistry, erotic experiences, fun times, things like that. And then they start dating and then they start entering a relationship based on that foundation as opposed to based on what do you see for your life? What are the values, the background, the culture, the religion, the money, all these different things? Do you want kids? Do you not want kids? And I feel like that ends up being a struggle for a lot of people, myself included, in my past, until I started, I tried something differently.

You first had the sex and then you met the person.

Exactly, yeah. And created a story about who the person would be, right? Without actually communicating in a and giving space and time to experience who the person was, right? And same for them with me. Why do you think most people start things that way? You know, in general, as opposed to, hey, let's give it time. Let's ask deeper, more intimate questions like you have in your game. Let's get to know each other. Why do you think that is?

First of all, that only began to happen with the democratization of contraception. This is before the '68. This was not possible. So it's not, it's very recent.

Right.

You know, that we start making love first. And then we find out each other's names.

Is that true all over the world or is that more in the US?

It's true wherever people can experience premarital sex, basically. In the past, you first had to marry in order to be able to have sex. When I say in the past, it's in the past here, and that's when I was a teenager. And in much of the world, it still is the case. We are part of a very sexualized society in which sexual freedom and sexual expression has become a part of our values.

Right?

Sexuality used to be a part of our biology and now it's a part of our condition. Now it's a part of our identity. And so we have changed the meaning of sex in the culture at large and then we have changed it in our relationships. And so we start from a place of attraction. Am I drawn to you? Am I attracted to you? It's the first thing I think when I swipe. What do I do? I look at where do I get a little frisson? Who catches my attention? And it's purely physical. So it is a recent development. It's for most of the people Here, this is not their grandparents' story. So this is still in the family. It's not like you have to go into history books.

Sure. How do you feel like people could set up for a healthier relationship as opposed to what would you recommend or suggest them for people in order to have a healthier foundation? Seeing that it seems so sexualized now, everything seems so like physical swiping, looking at someone's sexual identity, attraction as opposed to, I guess, true intimacy and connection. How would you set up a relationship now?

There's so many different pieces to this. I think the first thing, look, I am right about sexuality. I'm not going to minimize it, but I do understand that, you know, it's very important. It's a beautiful thing to have a powerful erotic connection with someone, but don't confuse the metaphors. you can have a beautiful erotic connection with someone and that does not necessarily translate into a life experience.

A life story.

A life story. That said, the next thing that changed culturally, if you want to really take on the big myths, it's the notion that we are looking for the one and only. The one and only, my soulmate.

It's my everything.

Yes, my everything. Your soulmate used to be God. not a person. You know, the one and only was the divine. And with this one and only today, I want to experience wholeness and ecstasy and meaning and transcendence. And I'm gonna wait 10 more years. We are waiting 10 years longer to settle with someone, to make a commitment to someone, for those of us who choose a someone. And if I'm gonna wait longer and if I'm looking around and if I'm choosing among a thousand people at my fingertips, you bet that the one who's going to capture my attention is going to make me delete my apps. Better be the one and only. So in a period of proliferation of choices, we at the same time have an essential of expectations about our romantic relationship that is unprecedented. We have never expected so much of our romantic relationships as we do today in the West.

It seems like a lot of pressure.

It's an enormous amount of pressure. We crumble under the weight of these expectations because a community cannot become a tribe of two. This is a party of two. And with you and me together, we are going to create best friends, romantic partners, lovers, confidants, parents, intellectual egos, business partners, career coaches. I mean, you name it. And I'm like, Seriously? One person for everything? One person instead of a whole village? So that's the first myth. And the notion of unconditional love that accompanies this is that when I have that one and only, I have what you call clarity, but translated into certainty, peace, and freedom, you know, or safety, which is the other side of the same thing. So that to me is if you want to set yourself up Really, the idea that you're going to find one person for everything is a myth. Keep a community around you. Absolutely. Keep a set of deep friendships, really deep friendships, deep intimacies with friends, with mentors, with family members, with colleagues, you know, that. So that's the first thing for me in having good relationships is is diversify.

Diversify relationships, but not sexually.

No, no.

For some people it will include that, for the vast majority it won't. But the notion that there isn't a one person for everything. And that doesn't mean that there is a problem in your relationship when that happens. The second thing is stop constantly looking at people as a product, where you evaluate them. and you evaluate yourself. You know, in our market economy, everything has become a product we included. And so love seems to have become the moment that the evaluation of the product stops. You have finally been approved when you have been chosen and when you choose. This is Eva Illouz, a sociologist who writes about this very beautifully. It's like love finally becomes the moment you can experience peace. You're no longer looking. selling yourself, proving yourself, trying to capture somebody's attention. It's exhausting. And once you are in that mentality, you also are continuously looking for the best product. You never say, you know, how can I meet a person who? People don't often talk about how can I be a person who?

That's so true.

Okay, so it's what you're looking for in the market economy of romantic love rather than Who are you? How do you show up? What do you bring? What responsibility do you take? How generous are you? Etc. Absolutely. Second thing, for what I think sets you up for a better relationship. And the third thing is understand some of the things that are really important to you. And don't get involved with someone on the hope that some things will change.

Do things ever change with a partner that you want to change?

Yes. Things do change a lot. I mean, many different things can occur in a relationship, but it's different from I'm coming in here to turn things around, you know, because so much of us wants the experience of acceptance. So with acceptance, I would say this, another thing to prepare yourself. You can love a person wholly, W-H-O-L-L, why, without having to love all of them.

What do you mean by that?

It means that the notion of unconditional love is a myth. Adult love lives in the realm of ambivalence, which means that relational ambivalence is part and parcel of all our relationships. We have it with our parents, our siblings, our friends, which means that we continuously have to integrate contradictory feelings and thoughts between love and hate, between excitement and fear, between envy and contempt, between boredom and aliveness. You continuously negotiate these contradictions. That ambivalence and living with that ambivalence is actually a sign of maturity rather than continuously than evaluating. See, in the beginning, you evaluate, is this the right one? Is this the one and only? Is this the... Then it becomes, shall I stay or shall I go? How do I know I have found the one? Is the pre-marital or the pre-commitment relationship? And then afterwards it becomes, is it good enough? We continuously continue with the evaluation. Right? Is it good enough? Or how happy am I? Am I happy enough? So that's the unconditional love. No, we live with ambivalence in our relationship. There are periods where we think, what would life be like elsewhere? And then we come back and then we say, I can't imagine it without it. This is what I've chosen. I'm good here. But it's a conversation. The idea that you will be accepted unconditionally is a dream we have for our parents when we are babies. It's not part of adult love.

Right. So unconditional love is not something that we can expect.

Unconditional love is a myth. So the one and only is a myth? You asked me, how do we set ourselves up for relationships up front? There is no one and only. There is one person that you choose at a certain moment in time, and with that person you try to create the most beautiful relationship you can. But you could have done it with others. Timing is involved, lots of things are involved. So there is no one and only.

There's no soulmate.

Soul mate is God. You can think that you have a soul mate connection with someone, that you have a deep, deep meeting of the minds, of the souls, of the heart, of the bodies, but it's a metaphor. It's not a person. It's the quality of an experience that feels like soul mates. That's number two. Number three, there is no unconditional love. We live with ambivalence in our deepest love relationships. There are things we like and things we don't. And things they like about us and things they don't. And moments they can't be without us and moments where they wish on occasion they could be away from us. And that's normal. Number four, the happiness mandate. Continuously evaluating how happy I am. You know, if you continuously pursue happiness, you're miserable a lot of the time.

What should we pursue instead?

We pursue integrity, depth, joy, aliveness, connection, growth. Those things that ultimately make us say, I feel good. I'm happy about this. But I don't pursue happiness. Happiness is the consequence of a lot of things you put in. You pursue caring for someone, having their back, feeling they have your back, wanting the best for them, what the poly people call compersion, you know, those things you can pursue.

Compersion? What's compersion?

Compersion is feeling joy for the happiness of the other person.

Is this a polyamory relationship? It's a compersion with another sexual partner.

But I think the word is bigger than just, you know, contained within the poly community and culture. It is the notion that you want good for the other person, even when it doesn't have to do with you. You're proud of them, you admire them, you enjoy their growth, their successes.

What about when someone says, I'm with this person, they make me happy. What does that happen when you're looking for someone to make you happy in the relationship?

Well, the day they don't, you will say they make me unhappy, or they don't make me happy, but it's they They do to me, I'm the recipient of what they do. They have the power. They can give, they can withhold. I depend, I crave, I long, I yearn, I respond to them.

And what should we be thinking of instead of this person makes me happy? How should we approach that?

We give each other A good foundation from which we can each launch into our respective worlds.

Ooh, that's cool.

A home is a foundation with wings. Or I like to think a good relationship is a foundation with wings.

I think people have to look at sex not just from the perspective of pleasure, but from the perspective of bonding. I believe it is an an opportunity for two people to grow closer together and when two people know how to truly satisfy each other it creates an amazing bond.

Deeper connection, better balance, more attraction.

Yes, all of that.

Keeps it going.

Exactly, because if you have two unsatisfied people sexually, you're going to have a problem. You can't find a relationship where that exists and they're all happy and everything's great. It it doesn't work that way. People crave intimacy, people crave that level of bonding with each other. And yes, biologically speaking, we can talk about the needs of a man and a woman and all these things. But I think even going deeper spiritually and all that sex is important and we are not taking enough of a mature approach to understanding and learning sex. I think people are very much behind in their understanding of it.

Especially in America. We weren't educated.

Exactly.

It's a very like hush hush type of thing. It's not talked about in schools. Your parents, at least most parents aren't talking about it until it's like the moment and it's like let me say something and just get it out and then let them figure it out.

And not just that, a lot of our parents don't know either.

Right.

Like people just don't take time to get more educated on their bodies, on sex, on true sexual satisfaction. There's a lot of lies going on. I tell people all the time listen, a lot of women aren't being sexually satisfied, all right. But they're lying to their friends, they're lying to their partners. So, there's a perception that everything is all good. No, it's not. There's a huge disconnect between the reality or the perception of women's sexual satisfaction and the reality of women's sexual satisfaction. And that contributes to a disconnected marriages Because again, if the woman is not satisfied she now becomes less willing to be sexually involved with her husband. Now, he starts to gain resentment, he starts to feel neglected.

He starts to wander.

Exactly, snowballs from there. We can't overlook that and act like everything's going to be fine. And we can't say well, you should love them enough to where it doesn't matter. Listen, we're talking about maintaining a committed relationship, that's a part of it plain and simple. And we have to learn how to make it better on both sides and how to be more honest with each other. I think if we can learn to be more honest and transparent then we can work on the things that are lacking. But people again, they feel very uncomfortable speaking about sex, speaking about their needs and constructively criticizing their partners. We have to learn how to... Because.

You don't want to hurt someone, yeah. How often should we be talking about our sexual needs in an intimate relationship? Should it be like once a month we sit down and like schedule an hour? Is it like pillow talk every week? Like what should be, again, everyone's different, but what do you think is an appropriate amount of time?

Yeah, I think it depends. So what jumps in my head, I would say every three months if I had to put a number on it, all right? But I do think it depends on the couple. I think more so, It's when an issue arises, talk about it. The key is we have to create environments where we can have those talks. See again, we're laying the wrong foundations in our relationships to where we can't have these open discussions about sex and other things lacking in our relationship. And we're afraid to push our partners away, we're afraid to ruffle the feathers or rock the boat. But if you can't talk to them.

We resent things, right?

Exactly. and what happens is you hold it in and now the negative energy comes out in other ways. And now, they're confused because they're like, why are they giving me this attitude? And they're thinking like I said earlier, he's thinking it's about the towel. No, it's not about the towel. It's really about something else that you're not telling him. So, we need to be more honest and transparent and we need to create an environment where we can have this talk and you're not going to take it personally to the where you're going to internalize or allow it to now throw our relationship off because you're getting upset and you're allowing it to you know, have a negative impact. No, take it as okay, that's how you feel cool let's work on this. How can we make this better? You know, we have to be serious about tending to the needs of our partner if we're going to have successful relationships.

There's so many divorces happening you know, it's higher than ever, right? I think it's the... We have a divorce attorney on who's talking thinking about how it's higher than ever. There's also even more people who stay married who probably shouldn't be divorced, who aren't happy. And so it sounds like there's a very small percentage of married people who've been together for many years who are actually still thriving in relationship. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe there's more, but it sounds like it, right? There's a very small percentage that are having these incredible long-lasting marriages and relationships that have the attraction and connection and balance and all these things. Why do you think that is and how can we decrease the number of failed relationships? Or is that the wrong question to ask?

No, I think it's a good question. I think, well, one, we have to understand marriage is not the issue. It's marrying the wrong person and marrying for the wrong reasons.

All right.

And then underlie to those things are the lack of healing. Because it's the lack of healing that leads us into these wrong relationships and allows us to entertain situations we should not entertain. Because again, for example, if you're a guy or a woman, if you've been through some things and now you think you don't deserve that great person, that great relationship because your perception of yourself is low. Now, you're going to latch on to whoever comes around who says I want to be with you and willing to give you what what you want at that moment and you're thinking, okay, this is safe, this will work. Let me go ahead and go with it but you're never truly into them like that, it's never going to be the relationship it needs to be, all right. But that all stems from your lack of self-worth because you didn't heal from.

Whatever traumatized you emotionally before. So, how do we heal first?

What's that process look like? So, it's a long process and I do plan on... I have a book I'm working on right now called Finding Love After Heartbreak. and it's going to lay out the entire process. So, I'll give a little bit right now and I'll save the rest for later. So, one thing is first we got to get the hurt out. And so, I have this exercise I do at all my events called the who Hurt Me List. And so, you get a piece of paper write down 100 people like oh, it's not a fight. Ask yourself the question who hurt me? And now, every person who comes to mind write them on that paper paper. Doesn't matter if you think you move past it, doesn't matter if you think it's small and insignificant. If they came to mind when you asked yourself that question, put them on the list.

Anyone in your life, from a childhood.

Friend to your parents to a lover. Anyone, anyone, anything. If they come to mind, put them on that list. Because that's how we start to recognize the pain points in your life. Now, we see, okay, this is where it's coming from. A lot of people have suppressed what has happened to them. And so, you can't address and resolve something that you're not willing to accept existing your life. And the reality is that just because it was 10 years ago, 20 years ago, it's still lingering within you and it's causing a lot of problems and it causes a lot of emotional stress which then turns into physical elements and it just snowballs.

Tension, anxiety, fear, depression, all right.

A lot of these things that we in mental health stems from things that we have not resolved from our past, all right. And it's just all contributing to the issues that we're experiencing in the now. And some of us we may not be experiencing the issues right now but we will. It's coming. It's just festering in you and it's going to come out at some point.

So, write a list and think about those moments and reflect on them or what's... Well, no.

So, at that point once you get the list now we can see the first person and I want go too much further. But let's just say you're going to have to go through a process of getting things off your chest. We have not released these things from our spirit, from our system and we need to essentially emotionally detox. And to do that you've got to get it out. So, whether you speak into a recorder, write a letter, something like I said...

Screaming into a pillow, right?

Yeah, but I do want like a full release. Again, we don't fully release Would you.

Release each person or just everyone at one time?

So, I would say this, you want to start with let's say your top three. Now, I've had clients where they did their top three and that kind of once they got through those they were able to process everyone differently to where it wasn't necessary to do everyone else, all right. Now, if you have 10 significant experiences and 10 significant different people that need to be addressed yes, you may have to release with 10 different people. So, it depends on the person and that's why something like this requires a more in-depth process. We got to talk about things, we got to understand what about it did you internalize, how you're seeing it because some of it is changing your mindset, changing your perception of what happened, understanding that it wasn't about you. Like we said earlier, hurt people hurt people. And so, once you understand that and understand how they behave and why they behave the way they do, it changes how you look at things and how you internalize those situations. So, there's so much more we got to get into but just getting at least that list started. Yes, because now you at least get to see okay, here's where it is. Here's what needs to be addressed. Now, let me get help to address these things and start the process of healing so that I'm not ending up in more bad situations or bad relationships.

Repeating the process. Let's say you've dealt with the hurt and it takes the time that it takes you and you've gone through all that. How do you manifest and attract a partner that you want to be with that has those three keys, the connection, the attraction and the balance that you feel like is the one, could be one of the ones? How do you set yourself up to attract that incredible partner?

So one, you got to be of yourself. So, finding yourself is number one, all right. You can't connect with someone if they're connecting with the fake you, all right. That's a false connection. So, you have to discover who you are, become confident in that, stand strong in it. Now, who is drawn to that person, you know it's real, all right. And so, that's where we begin. Two, you need to exude positive energy, all right. to me and this is... I think this is very important for women, all right. Because the reality is that it's men or the type of men that a lot of women want aren't going to be drawn to a negative woman.

No.

There's millions of good women but that doesn't mean they're positive women, all right. And it's that lack of positive energy that holds them back more than they realize.

Yes, and like... Just like even just saying negative things throughout the day. They might be a good person but they're always complaining or negative.

Exactly, and not even just what they say. Again, it's how they're coming off.

Because... Facial energy, their body language.

Yes, it's like... So, look at it like this. I tell people all the time, it's not what you say it's how you make them feel, all right. So, you can say all the wonderful things you want but if in your presence they don't feel at ease, they.

Don'T feel peace, they don't feel that positivity, that's still going to throw everything off.

If you say nice things but you have a frown, Exactly, what's the point? Exactly, exactly. And what a lot of women aren't realizing is that their energy is off because they have walls up. They're so scared, they're so fixated on.

Protecting themselves because they've been hurt in the past.

Exactly, haven't healed from those things. But I tell people all the time the same walls you have up to protect you are the same walls blocking your blessings, all right. So, you don't realize you're restricting your ability to love and be loved because you're walking in fear, all right. You can't walk in fear and expect all these wonderful things to happen. It doesn't work that way. Even in business, the ones who succeed are the ones who put the fear aside and say, I'm going to have faith and push forward no matter what, no matter how it looks in front of me, no matter how many people tell me you're doing the wrong thing, get a regular job, whatever. No, you believe what you need to do and you push forward past that fear. It's the same thing with relationships, you have to push forward in faith not fear if you want to receive that great relationship. And so, yes, this can happen with men as well. I don't want men thinking they can carry around a bunch of negative energy and they're going to get a great relationship. But I do think it shoots women in the foot more because here's the other thing that people don't talk about a lot and some people may not.

Like this I'm just going to keep it real.

Yeah, for sure. It pulls women away from their feminine and energy.

When they're not positive.

When they're not positive and when they're holding on to these fears and have these walls up and it's the feminine energy that makes the woman so powerful. That is what... That's the tool that is at her disposal that can make the world her oyster, all right. But women have become very detached from their femininity. And the thing is this, if you... A lot of women will say they're not feminine, they're just not that way. I dispute that in situations, no, you become detached from it, you become uncomfortable with it due to again, a lack of healing and due to experiences in your life. Now, if you are more masculine so to speak and you are happy that way, then by all means continue to live your life as you are. But if you're not seeing things work for the way that you want them to and you're in that energy, that more masculine energy or more further away from your feminine, then consider making a switch. Consider at least trying it. See the difference. And what I find with a lot of women is that not only is it beneficial to them as far as relationships wise, it's beneficial in the quality of their life.

For their health.

Their health, their peace, their work, you name it. I have a client she's a doctor at a big hospital and when she came to me she was frustrated with relationships, ready to give up on men, nobody liked her at work, work she was just a hard tough manager. So, we worked on her energy, we worked on healing, we got her energy, we got her to embrace more feminine energy. She will swear by it right now. In one month her whole hospital started to love her. Now, they're all helpful whether they were women or men. Men started coming out the woodworks, all right.

Let me get your number, girl. Let me get at you girl.

Yeah, she ended up meeting her soon to be fiance on the airplane two months after we started doing the coaching.

So, what were the shifts that she made every single day? Like what were the things that she said, okay, I'm gonna not be this way. I'm gonna start trying this.

It was one being more conscious of your energy. I think number one, we have to be mindful of the energy we're giving off. We become so distracted by our issues that we're facing in the world, by our responsibilities, we're not always in tune with what we're giving off. So, to give an example and this is just a small one. Even for me as a man, I work out a lot. When I come out the gym I started to notice I'm very tense. My face is you know, hard.

Exactly.

So, I've learned to when I walk out the gym, take a deep breath, relax the body, relax the muscles and the energy completely changes, all right. Because yes, you can become very intimidating as a man just like you can become very intimidating as a woman. And so, you have to be mindful of are you making yourself more approachable? Are you allowing people to feel more comfortable being around you? And so, that starts with being mindful of it, being conscious of it. And one great way to do that is get an accountability partner, all right. Tell someone who has the ability to be positive because you don't want to pick a negative person to be your accountability partner. It's going to throw everything off. But you pick a positive of person you say hey, listen, whenever I'm being negative, whenever I'm giving that bad energy let me know.

What is the biggest lesson you learned about marriage and relationships being in a committed relationship during an extremely adverse time of the world? What's the biggest lesson for you?

How much time you got? Bro, listen, I've learned so much, right? But here's the number one thing that I've learned. We have been sold a myth.

Ooh, what is that myth?

That love heals all. You know, marriage is the answer. Like, if you're not married, there's something wrong with you. Like, you gotta be in a rela- like, we've been sold a myth. And here's what I mean about the myth. We have held marriage up Like it's the top of the mountain and when you get there, all of your problems are answered and gone.

That's not true.

It's not true. And that, that I, 'cause, you know, from being, you know, from a kid, we're watching movies, we're watching television shows, we're listening to music, it's all about love, it's all about finding it, it's all about getting to that mountain of, oh, when I find the one, Then I can relax.

No.

Marriage is like getting to the beginning of the mountain.

Oh man, base camp. Base camp.

And guess where the summit is? And guess what? That altitude is steep, it's high.

It's hard to breathe up there.

It's hard to breathe up there. It's jagged, it's not a smooth, you know, ride. That's what marriage is. And so, you know, understanding, you know, and coming into the myth of it, it's like, oh, God it, I love my wife, she loves me, the union is great, yet we got work to do. And until we do our work, the union itself can't subsidize it. And so that myth, that marriage is the answer, was one of the myths that I came completely, directly had to confront. And what I realized...

When did you confront it? At what year in the marriage or what day?

You know what it was is that it was gradual, you know, it was gradual for me, you know. And part of that gradual revelation was looking for the marriage to bring me a certain level of fulfillment that I was not actually pursuing on my own. So, don't get me wrong, yes, marriage is great, love is great, it can be fulfilling. However, if we are not actually doing our work and finding out what makes us happy, what makes us fulfilled, and we're relying on the union to do that, we ultimately find ourselves becoming manipulators.

To get what we want.

To get what we want. We trying to like- Because we expect.

That that person or the relationship is supposed to provide us something.

Exactly.

What is the relationship supposed to provide us?

Here's what I believe a great relationship provides, right? One, first and foremost, you know, let's look at it for a minute like a business, right? So if you have a business and you have a partner, what makes a great partnership? When both bring something to it, right? Because you have a partner.

Yeah. If your partner is just taking everything and not adding value to the business, you're like, why is this person making money?

There you go.

Why am I paying back into this person?

There you go. So when you look at it that way, you know, the purpose of a relationship is both people making a contribution so that that contribution enriches the lives of both.

Right?

So I'm bringing something, you're bringing something. now we both you know, our happiness, our joy is enhanced it's not created. This is very important. The myth is that the marriage will create your happiness it's not true. It can enhance it if you already have it. So, if you have a partnership both people are bringing their contributions and then as a result your business thrives. Because you have two people who are committed. Here's the second part, both going in the same direction.

Right?

Is that related to values then or is that related to values?

It's related to values. It's related to purpose. You know, I had one of my friends, we were talking and they kind of gave me this visual, right? And so I think this is, and it was very helpful when it came to marriage and relationships and how to think of them. So they were like, all right, so I want you to look forward, like do a visualization, and I want you to look forward. And when you look forward, I want you to see God. I said, okay. And they said, now start walking to God. I said, great. I'm walking to God. Now they said, now your partner is right next to you, right? So hold their hand. Great. I'm holding their hand and now we're both walking to God. It's beautiful. Now, turn to your partner and then they turn to you and now try to walk to God.

It's challenging.

Exactly.

You got to sidestep it over there, you know? Exactly. You're like a crab or something.

Exactly. Precisely. So when you talk about the, you know, what is the purpose of a union? A purpose of a union is that when you have your right purpose partner and that person is committed to you and you're committed to them and you both are heading in the same direction, you both can walk together.

Right, right.

But when you're trying to get somebody, you know, to a direction that they otherwise may not want to go.

They're turning the opposite way.

They're turning the opposite way or they're turning trying to get you where you may not want to go, you can't get there from there. So I believe that the purpose of a relationship is one, making a contribution to each other's happiness, having that partnership.

Not making the other person happy.

You cannot do it.

Contributing to the other person's happiness.

This is why I wrote the book. This is another myth. This idea, how many times have you seen it in movies? How many times have you heard people say it? oh, this person makes me happy. Oh, they make me so happy. It sounds so good to say. But what happens when you say someone makes you happy? It means you are outsourcing your happiness to that person.

Ooh.

Yeah.

Because that same person that makes you happy can then make you mad. Okay, so then tell me who's in control of how you feel?

The other person.

Exactly.

So why go victim to their...

There you go.

Their way of being, whatever they're doing.

Their way of being, their mood. But here's the reality. No matter how much somebody loves you, it's impossible for someone outside of us to contribute to our happiness in a perfect way 24/7.

So is love enough?

No. No. Is love enough?

No.

You can love somebody and not stand them.

Right.

Right. I love my wife, my wife loves me. We still have to do our work and make the commitment to walk this thing out, right? Like, we still have to communicate. We still have to understand like, oh, okay, that's your issue or that's my issue, right? Like, so love is great but love is not enough. And that's the myth people think like, oh, if I love you that's right. All the line of this love. No.

You make me feel good when I hear that.

Right.

But it's not all you need.

No, you need compatibility. You need compatibility. I need compatibility. Like when you have compatibility, when again, you talk about people going in the same direction, it's like, okay, cool. We're committed to going in the same direction. We're committed to the same type of life. We're committed to allowing each other to be the full self that we were created to be. That to me in addition to love is what can make a great marriage or make a great relationship. But love alone, it's not enough. There's a lot of people you love, you can't stand. There's a lot of people you love that you broke up with. Because you say, you know, I love them, but we're just not compatible. And that love may never go away. But so often we're romanticizing love in a way that it produces so much pain in those who don't have it.

As a movie producer that produces a lot of movies around faith and love and community and connection, I'm sure there are some lines in your movies that you produce. You didn't write the scripts.

No, I didn't write the scripts. You produce the scripts.

You produce the movies that have lines like this that maybe remind people of this way of living. You make me happy or whatever the line is.

Right?

I'm sure there's somewhere in one of your movies. As someone who's producing certain movies for entertainment, knowing that sometimes maybe there's a line in here and there that, mmm, that's not really true for you or where you're at in relationships. How do you navigate that? Not saying it's right or wrong, but just how do you navigate that as a human?

Yeah.

Knowing that's coming out and some of that entertainment.

Right. In the movies that I do, I always try to put put in truth. So this point of view is something, you know, the movie that comes to mind that I worked on when I was an executive was Jumping the Broom. And that was a romantic comedy, you know, an upper class family, working class family, you know, get the son from the working class family marries the woman, the daughter from the upper class family in a weekend wedding in Martha's Vineyard. And Laz Alonso and Paula Patton, you know, were in that film. And my wife, Megan, was, one of the stars of that film. And we started dating at the premiere, you know, from the premiere, about nine months after production, which was very cool. And in that movie, you know, we intentionally put, worked on that to make sure we put real truth on the difficulty, right? Of like, yeah, you can, two people can love each other, but then what do you do with their families? How do you navigate conflict? How do you navigate an overbearing mother? How do you navigate, you know, parents who have a a certain image for what they wanted for their daughter and who their daughter's marrying doesn't align with the image. And so that movie has a lot of truth in it. And ultimately, you know, we didn't cut corners at all. And that's why the movie was so successful. And I'm getting ready to do another romantic comedy, and we're putting more truth in. So for me, I'm always mindful and cognizant of how I feel and think about love. And I try to represent that when I'm doing movies that are on that subject. Because I'm not trying to sell a fantasy, right? I want to sell the reality and that, yes, you can win and yes, when you find that partner that you fall in love with, but then there are challenges. There's gonna be challenges.

There'll be more challenges with different classes and different backgrounds.

Absolutely, absolutely.

I'm a big believer, whether this is true or not, that we talk about, we write, we podcast on the things that we become experts on the things that we need the most.

Yes.

So the School of Greatness, I talk about all subjects, so it means I'm flawed in pretty much every area of life.

I don't believe that.

And I'm constantly looking for more wisdom to improve, right? Yeah. Where do you feel like in the relationship side of things that you, I think I asked you this question last time a couple of years ago, where do you feel like you still need the most improvement in relationships for you?

Yeah, so I need the most improvement in a number of areas.

How long do we have? Yeah, yeah.

Exactly.

This is new piece of paper.

Okay, hey, hey, hey, I have not perfected this thing and I'm working on it every day and anybody that tells you they perfected it, they gonna lie about everything else. So the first area that I'm working on, and you may relate to this because of the work that you do. You know, my father passed away when I was nine years old. You know, he passed away of a heart attack when he was 36. And that was very traumatic, you know, experience for me and my brothers. So my older brother's three and a half years older, my younger brother's three and a half years younger. And so coming out of that, you know, my mother didn't have money for therapy or anything like that. And so, you know, we were in church and we watched movies, right? And so, and then also I was very active in school. And what I began to see is like, oh, okay, if I perform or achieve at a certain level, people would say, oh, Devon, good job. Right, pat me on the back, right? So I said, oh, got it. So the more that I serve at church, or the more I achieve at school, or the more that I do my chores at home, the more approval I would get. So what I began to do was I began to seek that out. And I began to become really good at meeting everybody else's need. And so that persona, right, of like, oh, you need something done? Give it to Devon.

Right?

It's like, oh, yeah, I'm your guy. I can do it, da, da, da, right? 'Cause I was finding my value in all of the achievement and all of the approval that came with it. In middle school, people started calling me Mr. Perfect, you know? And at first I was like, oh, this is great. I love that. Oh, wow, Mr. Perfect, right? But then as I got older, it became a trap. Why? 'Cause I'm not perfect. No one's perfect. But I had this image that I had to live up to. I had this expectation of myself that, oh, I've got to do everything perfectly, right? So getting to your question. A lot of pressure. Oh my goodness, are you kidding me? It's exhausting. It's exhausting. That's why I talk about in the book, I had to kill Mr. Perfect. I said, I gotta let go of this persona because, you know, I'm not that and I need to be who I really am. And so when you talk about what the area I need to improve on, so, you know, bringing that into marriage, right? Like, hey, I'm here to serve and I'm here to be the best husband I can be and I'm here to give and I'm here to sacrifice. All that's beautiful.

But when it crosses boundaries.

But here's the boundary though. The problem is that no matter how altruistic you or I may want to be in our relationships with our women, if we do not first acknowledge that we have needs, our altruism is flawed.

How so?

Because we are serving in order to fill the hole in our soul.

To get approval.

To get approval. There you go.

Get a pat on the back.

There you go.

You know, and then also it's like, oh, well, no, I don't have any needs. No, I'm here to meet your need. No, you're human. I'm human. I got needs.

I think I can relate to this big time for most of my life, up until recently. I would do things in order to receive love in relationships. And I would not do things.

If.

Someone got upset at me, I would not do those things anymore to just try to make them happy so they would continue to love me. Even when it would cross my boundaries or when I didn't agree with something, I would do it to make the other person like me, love me, be happy with me. And then I found myself resenting myself the longer that would go on because I was doing things that I didn't believe in or didn't agree with or there was a boundary of mine that was crossing my line to serve someone else. I think it's learning that balance probably, like navigating and learning how to communicate expectations, which is a lot about in your book, which I love. The whole book's about setting clear expectations.

Right.

And not going into a relationship with the viewpoint of, well, this is the way a relationship supposed to look based on society. Just thinking that the other person knows what you think and they know and you know what they think and having that is not gonna work.

It ain't gonna work. It ain't gonna work.

And after nine years, not to put your marriage on the spot or anything, but after nine years, how important is still communicating expectations nine years into marriage?

Man, it's every day. Right? Oh, oh, you can't autopilot this thing.

You can't say, this is what I expect one day and then it'd be good for the rest of life. Never.

It will not work. It won't work. And here's why, you know, I go back to that, our flaws, right? We're all flawed. Yeah. All of us and all of us have traumas and tragedies and things that we have experienced in our life that we have compartmentalized. And that's why I go back to this earlier thought of like, you know, the myth that marriage is gonna, you know, it's gonna save you and it's everything. The reason why I think that's a myth is because the more you are with somebody and the more that you love them and they love you, the more those flaws.

Fears come out.

The fears come out. The trauma because of vulnerability. And you're actually sharing your life with someone and you're allowing someone to see who you are and there's also certain things you don't know that you've gone through that have impacted you to the level that they have.

It's coming up now.

Exactly. And so, in a great relationship it serves as a great mirror. So, when you talk about setting expectations you know nine years in it doesn't stop because all of us are changing. And also to that point, We have to learn to communicate. We have to get our words out. We have to say, okay, you know, hey, babe, can I expect this? Can you expect that? Let's get to the middle so that we understand, okay, cool. Here's what I can hold you accountable for. Here's what you can hold me accountable for instead of assuming. And that assumption, again, no matter how much they love you, no matter how long you've been together, no one can read our minds.

No one. No one.

And so when you start behaving, and then here's what happens. Dude, we have these unspoken expectations. Unspoken expectations are relationship killers. You have this unspoken expectation. You treat the person as if you have spoken it and they know it.

And you fault them for it.

You judge them. You judge them when they don't meet the expectation they may not have been aware of. of. And then you make a false assumption about their intent for you.

They don't care about me. They don't love me. They don't think about me.

There you go.

And they're selfish, whatever.

There you go. And so in our head, we become the judge and jury over somebody.

Without even telling them.

Without even telling them.

What they were supposed to do.

Exactly. And giving them the opportunity to say yes or no.

That's it.

That'S it. Because too often in relationships we're trying to control. And so just because you have an expectation, it does not mean that person is obligated to meet it. That person has to agree. That person that you're with is free the same way you're free. Okay? And if they want to meet that expectation, great. And if they don't, then you can talk about what that means. Hey, okay, you know, I have a certain expectation. Okay, that's not something you want to meet. All right, let's talk about if we are compatible. Let's talk about if we are going in the same direction. Very important. Instead, we suppress. We allow these feelings to fester. We get mad. We then get bitter. And then someone asks us a question. We turn a cold shoulder. It's like, well, why? Because we haven't actually communicated. We haven't actually asked the question, Hey, can I expect this from you? Is this okay? Is this all right? Is it not? Is it cool?

Right?

So that's why, you know, in the book, I spend so much time talking about communicating expectations, learning to set expectations just because they know, because they love you doesn't mean they know. And, and, and I have seen so many relationships go by the wayside because there was this idea, this myth that, oh, just because they love me, they're supposed to know what I want. No, they don't know. Everybody has a different upbringing.

Exactly.

They were exposed to love and marriage in different ways. and so what may look like love to somebody may look like debt to somebody else. So, you got to communicate and find the happy medium of what works for your relationship.

How do we learn to love ourselves so much that it doesn't matter what our partner does or doesn't do?

Oh, man. Lord have mercy.

Is there a way where you can fall in love with yourself without a sense of ego?

Yes.

Like I'm God.

Yes.

Love yourself so much that it doesn't matter if your partner meets your expectations communicated or uncommunicated, whether they're supporting you in the way that you want or not, whether they're proud of you or not, is there a way that we could do that? Or should we be expecting something out of our relationship in return, you know, either way?

Bro, listen, listen, man. You know, listen. My views on this may be a little contrarian, so I'm just going to speak my truth. Yeah, yeah, yeah. One of, so I'll answer the love question in a minute of self, but I want to hit the piece that you just hit, which is the expectation, right?

Yes.

I personally believe that if you give to get in a relationship, You are on thin ice and the sun is coming out. Because-.

Ah, melting.

Right, right, right. Because again, what happens is you're not free. You're not free. You're not actually giving from your heart because that's what you want to do. You're giving from manipulation to get something in return. To get something in return. So you're treating that relationship like the stock market, right? Well, yeah, if I give a certain amount of money to a certain stock or portfolio, I can expect a certain return.

And hopefully it goes up.

Right, hopefully it goes up, right? But that's the dynamic, you know? But relationship is not stocks, man. That's somebody's heart. That's somebody's life. And so when you're investing in someone with the hope that they'll do something for you, you're messed up.

What if that person never contributes in the way you contribute, let's say, after years. Is it the right relationship still? Should you let go of the expectation? Well, I don't need that in return.

Great.

So here's how I think you answered that and I want to hit the love part. So I believe everyone should give freely from how they feel and want to feel and they give to that person because that's what's in their heart to do. over time, it's not an indictment on that person if that person isn't giving as much. It just may be a revelatory about compatibility, right? It's like, oh, okay, got it. You know, the person that's giving, right? I'm in a relationship, you're in a relationship because you have needs, you want those needs to be met. Oh, okay, I'm seeing there's an imbalance, right? Like, I feel great about everything everything I'm giving, but I also recognize that there are some needs that are not being met. And maybe there's some compatibility issues we need to talk about.

Or you can communicate about it and.

See if that's right. That's exactly right. Like, hey, look, I have needs. I'm in a relationship because I want people to contribute to these needs. I'm gonna be fine no matter what, but I'm in this relationship because I actually love the idea of someone else contributing to my well-being. So, you have to assess it and see if there's compatibility and alignment, not pointing the finger. Because so often we're so ready to point the finger. Oh, this person is not giving as much as me. Oh, it's like, no, no, no. If life is a mirror, what is the mirror reflecting? What is a relationship reflecting? And oftentimes in my experience, relationships are the greatest teachers. Greatest of who we are.

Greatest.

Right?

Who we are and who we aren't. Okay? Like, like, and, and too often people run from difficult relationships. Yeah. I believe that you should. Whatever the lesson is, you got to get about you before you break up within the relationship.

There you go.

First.

There you go.

Because then you take that healing to the next relationship. Yes.

You know, we all have sexual desire. We have physical desires, and often we're attracted to people and there's a sexual component, but the character of that person doesn't mesh with us, right?

Yes.

And so the physical stuff doesn't last that long. It can't go on forever, although we can go on fairly well if you connect on that level. But it kind of dies down at some point and then you're confronted with their psychology, their personality, their character. You have to be able, you have to think Can I talk to this person in five years and carry on an interesting conversation? Can I sit across from the table if you want a long-term relationship and find a stimulating conversation with them? Because that's really what it ends up boiling down to. And so you really want to be able to also judge their character. And if you're able to look inside the other person a little bit, and to see a kind of deeper connection between you, I believe that the sexual part, which is extremely important in any relationship, will actually be intensified and heightened, as opposed to the immediate kind of animal attraction that we have to people. So if you deepen your connection to that person and love is involved, where you actually feel a vulnerability to them in this kind of back and forth electrical charge, I think the physical component, the value of it increases. So, that is the number one mistake people make.

Do people have sex too early?

Well, I do not know what is going on necessarily with young people right now. I know the hookup culture is still pretty strong and guys are watching a lot of porn. That is probably a tendency. And in the traditional, and things have changed. It was the woman who had more to lose by becoming pregnant, who tried to keep the sex at Bay for at least several weeks or months or longer. And that's kind of been lost. But, yeah, I think the fact that the falling in love process generally takes time. Right. I mean, that we do have love at first sight. And it is a real phenomenon. And I've had it myself.

Really?

Yeah.

But.

The idea. So there's a famous French writer named Stendahl who wrote a great book called on love, one of the greatest books written about love. It was in the 19, early 19th century. And he compared to falling in love to what he called crystallization. And it's based on this thing where you would throw a piece of wood. into this mine in Germany somewhere at Salzburg, and then you would pull it out like a week later and it would be filled with all of these brilliant crystals. And he compared that to the process of falling in love. The person is just who they are. They're like a trunk of a tree, but your mind kind of puts all these qualities on them, crystallizes them into some kind of ideal figure, right? And so that mental process takes time, right? It requires also some distance and some fantasizing, you know, sort of basic elements of human psychology.

So, what do you mean by distance? Well, like don't spend all your time with the person in the first month.

And if you're having sex right away, it's too close, it's too intimate, it's too early to be able to go through that process, right? And often, you know, there's usually a letdown after that initial sexual encounter if you have it too early, right? Where as opposed to letting time go by and letting the other person begin to think about you and fantasize about you and in their mind sort of imagine some interesting qualities about you and fascinate them, which is what he calls this crystallization process. I mean, literally think of it that way that you're You're having a, you're, you're in, in their mind, they're kind of forming the sort of ideal, crystallized, image of you, right? And it takes time and it takes some absence. It takes the ability to say, you know, you're not in their face all the time. You, you disappear for a couple of days, a couple weeks or whatever, not a weeks, but a few days. You let them think about you and you let that kind of spell, because seduction and love is kind of a spell that you're casting.

Right?

And there is an art to it. And so the mistake people have is they are in too much of a hurry, right?

Too much in a hurry to want to have sex, to fall in love.

To... Yeah, or to have like a really, you know, intimate relationship or to get married or whatever it is. In general, in our culture, people are too much of a hurry. They are too much for her to get make money, too much of in a hurry to get attention. It also involves, you know, in romantic relationships.

Right.

Right. So, what's the difference between seduction and love?

Well, I maintain that the process of seducing is making the other person fall in love, right?

The process of seducing is getting the other person to fall in love.

Huh. Could you, could you, yeah.

Could someone fall in love without being seduced? Without seducing them?

No.

Even in love at first sight, there could be like a moment of seduction that turns into that or how does that work?

Well, even in love at first sight, which I say I've kind of maybe experienced, it doesn't necessarily lead to something, right? You still have to go through a process where the other person's character that you start idealizing and romanticizing and thinking about them, you know, even that immediate attraction there is still the seduction process that has to go on. Sure, sure. And so, I try in the art of seduction, I make the point that political seduction, marketing seduction, social seductions, because in your office you're continually seducing, it's the same process. And it's getting the other person to think about you and getting them to fall in love with your product, with your idea, with your political platform or whatever it is. And that process of internalizing that other person, of having their presence, their spirit or whatever inside you inhabit you, and you're thinking about them a lot, is a process of falling in love. So it doesn't mean that there aren't seductions where you're seducing the other person and then it's over after a month, right? It doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to lead to a relationship. But I don't, so I separate seduction from just having sex.

Yeah.

So if you go to a bar and you pick up a woman in the bar and that night you go back to your place and you have sex, that's not seduction, right? Because we are psychological creatures, right? We're not animals. and the process of actually having our emotions engaged by the other person is takes a lot deeper process.

Right?

It can happen quickly, can happen overnight. So seduction isn't like, you know, pickup artists don't really like the art of seduction so much.

Why is that?

Because it's not quick enough for them. I'm telling you, you have to go through these steps. I don't want to have to go through all these steps. I don't have to wait. three weeks to sleep with her or a month. I don't have to surprise her and give her gifts or I'm talking about from the male point of view.

Sure.

Do all of these things that Robert talks about. You know, I want a quick, you know, some of them aren't like that, but some of them are. And so there are plenty of books written out there about how to pick up women or guys in a bar, but seduction isn't about that. It's something else. It's something more elemental. And I talk in the art of seduction about how it goes back to our childhood. how we are incredibly vulnerable to the emotions of other people. It begins with our parents, right? And the sense of, you know, we internalize their presence. We're thinking about them. We have this kind of very deep emotional attachment to them. We're seduced by our parents in some ways. It kind of sets a tone from early childhood, this need to feel vulnerable to other people, right? That's the thing as well is, a lot of people mistake seduction, and that's the reason I wrote the book. They have really bad ideas about it.

What do they think it is?

Well, they have an idea that it's this kind of cold process. Typically, it'll be a male seducer, but it can be a woman. And they're really conniving and they're coming up with all kinds of tricks and schemes. to get the woman or man to like fall for them and either they're after money or sex or something else, right? And actually seduction is a matter of vulnerability. It's making yourself vulnerable to the other person.

Really?

Yeah.

And you know, we live in times where people have a hard time being vulnerable. You know, if you're insecure, if filled with a lot of anxiety, you tend to close up inside of yourself. And to let another person in and to let them have some control over your emotions can be kind of a scary process. But if you can't feel that vulnerability, if you can't open yourself up to the power of that other person, there won't be a seduction. It'll be this kind of cold mechanical process, right?

So how do we learn to open ourselves up and be vulnerable? to allow for seduction to happen. If so, we're really interested in someone, we're like, oh, we're really, we want to start dating this person. We're really excited about the potential, but we're also don't want to ruin it and mess up.

Yeah, well, it, you know, each relationship is different.

Yeah.

You know, I I talked to a lot of people on this vulnerability issue. particularly women who've come to me for counseling, they've had a bad experience. They dealt with maybe a man who was a kind of cold calculating seducer type or an abusive relationship. And what happens is they get kind of bitter and hardened by it and they don't want to open themselves up to another relationship. They're not aware of that's happening but unconsciously that's what's going on. And I try to tell them, if you let that happen, that means that that person, that abuser or whoever it was, they've defeated you not only, you know, physically, but mentally. They have conquered you. They have ruined one of the most important aspects of your life. They've made it impossible for you to feel vulnerable and open because you can't trust another person. And it's very difficult. So I My process in there is telling them that, making it clear to them that if that happens, then they have this power over you and you don't want to let them have that power. And so we work on ways first making it clear how important it is in life to feel vulnerable, not just to other people, but to everything in the world. That's sort of the subject of my next book. But to feel vulnerable when you read a book, to open yourself to other people's ideas, to open yourself in general to people and to their spirit, and to let them in, and to let them have some influence over you and some power over you.

-Why is that important?

-Because it allows you then to have a deeper understanding and a deeper connection with people. So, you know, we all kind of live in these castles where we're trying to protect ourselves, right? And we're all kind of defensive, and it's for good reason. We live in a world that's very harsh, a lot of information, a lot of things going on at the same time. So we kind of live in these castles and you're not understanding people unless you can kind of open up to their spirit. I talk about in the Art of Seduction, Enter the Other Person's Spirit is one of the key chapters where you're able to kind of put yourself inside of the other person. and feel what they might be thinking, right? Which is, I think, a problem that a lot of men have in dealing with women that they're interested in. Putting yourself in their position, trying to understand what makes them tick, what their psychology is about. To do that, you have to kind of let go of yourself. You have to be willing to kind of float and let yourself go into them and open yourself up to their spirit, and not assume that you know everything about them or that everything, all of your ideas are correct. So vulnerability is a very important element that we must have in this world in order to be able to have empathy and to be able to understand people.

Is it, you know, you wrote a book about the laws of power, the 48 Laws of Power. Is this, you know, different than the laws of power, the seduction, strategies where you're being more vulnerable as opposed to, you know.

Well, believe it or not, I wrote the Art of Seduction as a kind of, not a sequel, but it kind of played off the 48 Laws. And there were a few chapters in the 48 Laws that dealt with seduction, such as use absence to create honor and respect, you know, or make others come to you or create compelling spectacles. there were at least eight or ten of the 48 laws that were very sort of seduction oriented. And the idea is, we all want power in this world, I maintain. That's sort of my key thesis that drives all of my books. And it's not power just in a political sense. It's the idea that you have some control over your fate, control over destiny, right? And control and the ability to influence the people around you. Well, seduction is the ultimate form of that kind of power. Really? That's what I, yes, I talked about that in the 48 Laws. It's a form of soft power. So people, if you seduce them, they're not even aware that you have gained this kind of power over them. They've opened up to your influence.

It's kind of hypnotizing in a sense, right? It's like this, you're not even aware.

Yeah.

Just being hypnotized by someone's message or their their brand or their product or their political message as well, I guess, right?

Yeah.

Just like, I like this. I don't even know why I like this person.

Right.

Interesting.

Yeah. Because if people sense that you're trying to get power over them, if they sense that you're scheming that you've read Robert's 48 Laws of Power, whatever, they get defensive and they close themselves off to you and you can't move them. get maneuver them in the right way. I know about 16 years ago when the pickup artist thing was really big.

And hot with the game and.

Yeah, the game and everything. Neil's a friend of mine. He's a great guy. Great guy. But, you know, every woman in Los Angeles where I live had been approached by a pickup artist, right? They all knew the strategies, the negging, all that kind. you know, the little.

Putting them down in this.

Yeah, yeah. They knew all of it. And so it didn't work anymore. It lost. It lost all its power because everyone had been exposed to it.

Right.

They could see through the tricks. They could see a pickup artist coming from a mile away, you know, all the little gat, little tricks, like cards or reading their palm or all this stuff. Oh, come on, man. I know you've read that book, so it doesn't work anymore. anymore. So, if people sense that you're trying to manipulate them, they close off. And that's why in advertising and marketing, they know that they have to make it seem like they're not advertising. That it's just kind of word of mouth. That's just average person on the street who's touting their products, et cetera. Because if you're advertising it so clearly how you're manipulating, it doesn't work. So, the trick in seduction is to have such a gentle touch that people don't even understand what's going on. And that's what a kind of a master seducer can do.

And what I'm hearing you say, that's living from more of a vulnerable state. Is that right? Being open to being vulnerable?

Well, you know, there are people who are cold seducers and they seduce women. I don't, you know, there's kind of a limit to it as well. It's not the kind that I'm interested in.

Gotcha.

So I've known a lot of really great seducers. There was a person in Paris who was sort of the, to me, the greatest seducer I ever personally met. He was this Brazilian guy in Paris, very tall, very handsome guy, but he was the most brilliant seducer I've ever seen, right? And I've known others as well.

What did he do?

Well, I say it was this kind of open that he had. And you could call it a vulnerability. It was a kind of a childish, boyish quality. So women felt comfortable in his presence. He might dump them in a week and go after someone else. But in that week, he was completely at their feet. He was inside their brain. He understood them deeply. And he was like a boy you know, who didn't seem threatening at all.

Right.

And I know probably the greatest male seducer who ever lived is probably Errol Flynn, the great American Irish American actor. I think he's Irish, actually. And Errol Flynn supposedly had slept with, I don't know, like 3, 000 women, and he died at the age of 51. I remember when I wrote the art of seduction, I was kind of doing the math.

That's crazy.

And it was like Wilt Chamberlain or something. It had to be like a woman every other day or something.

That's crazy.

And then I wanted to understand what made him so powerful, right? Because he was one of the icons in the art of seduction. And finally I found a book written by a woman, an actress who'd been seduced by him. And she kind of revealed to it all of his secrets. And the key was he made women feel so relaxed.

Right?

She said, Just being next to him was like drinking two martinis. I felt so calm and so relaxed. He had this kind of animal presence where he was very comfortable with himself. And that was the thing about that Brazilian man. He wasn't defensive at all. He was very, very comfortable with himself. He wasn't arrogant or grandiose, but he just felt comfortable in his own body and his physicality. and in who he was. And I think the problem that a lot of people have is they bring their insecurities into the seduction realm, and it's very anti-seductive. It kind of breaks the spell. Because when you're insecure and you're trying to pick up on a man or a woman, the other person can sense it. You're not saying anything, but they read it in your body language. Because we are animals that read a lot from nonverbal communication. And when another person is insecure like that, it means they're thinking about themselves, right? And it's a very off-putting sense. They're more worried about if they say the wrong thing or do the wrong thing and it makes the other person tense and insecure. I don't know if you've ever had this experience, Lewis, but if you've ever been around a very insecure person, it kind of makes you uncomfortable. Super uncomfortable.

Yeah, super uncomfortable.

So probably the most important lesson I tell people in the realm of seduction is to be able to project a degree of confidence and calmness and comfort with yourself, but probably the most important quality.

When I got married, who did I.

Want my husband to be? This bitter, broken down woman who had been through the ringer in all these years and all these relationships, or did I want I want him to meet someone who, because we're always in the process of healing. We're always in the process of growth and our emotional health.