Are Men and Women Really THAT Different in Relationships?
8 Nov 2022 · 37 min
Podcast conversation (Adam LoDolce and Dr. Gary Lewandowski) exploring similarities and differences between men and women in dating and relationships. They debate common stereotypes (e.g., "Men are from Mars"), discuss observed gendered patterns—men more likely to struggle with approaching/meeting people and to over-perceive sexual interest; women more likely to fear getting hurt, to be pickier, and to think more about relationships—and introduce psychological concepts (sociosexuality, overlapping distributions). The hosts emphasize nuance, personal responsibility in partner choice, dating strategies (date broadly, build confidence), and looking for similarities rather than overemphasizing differences.
Chapters
You don't attract anyone into your life. You choose who you let into your life and the moment, you can just make that shift it. Some people get frustrated by that, that line. And I'm like, I don't understand. It's like, it's so empowering. That's more power. I would, I want to just have this woo idea that oh my God, I'm just attracting through and it's stars and through whatever, yada, yada, yada. And that's why I'm bringing these guys in my life. No, at the end of the day, you choose who you let in your life. So if you're only allowing or choosing certain types of guys and maybe start taking a look at those choices and suddenly now you can be in the driver's seat of your love life.
Welcome to the Love Strategies podcast where we help successful women attract high value men, date with a strategy and improve their relationships. Now, whether you're single or dating or in a new relationship, we're here to help you dive into the male mind and provide raw insights found nowhere else, backed by science, psychology, and our own personal experiences. Your hosts today are myself, Adam lodolce.
Professional dating coach and founder of Love.
Strategies, and, and Dr. Gary Lewandowski, a relationship scientist, professor, and our head relationship coach here at Love Strategies. Please share with a friend and enjoy.
All right, Gary, this week we are going to be talking about men versus women in relationships and in dating. And I'm really excited to get your take on this because I think we might have some disagreements in this. It'll be interesting to explore this a little bit because my experience when I, I first started out as a coach almost 14 years ago now. Geez, getting old. I started out coaching men. That was my background and I did that for about four years. I would have groups of guys that I would work with and I would help them build their confidence. I would help them work on their ability to approach women and not be super creepy when they go up and talk to women. And I would actually go out with these guys. And then about eight years ago or so, I switched over to working with women and I noticed a massive difference between men and women. There's also a lot of similarities, but my experience has definitely shown that they definitely date differently and when their relationships are very different. But what do you think? I know your, your kind of whole shtick is that they're much more similar than they are different. So maybe we could start there.
Yeah, I think, you know, the thing with men and women is I don't know, for some reason, like, we've been brought up our whole entire life just been, you know, putting men in one category and women in another category. And so because we like to think of the world in these, I don't know, kind of simplistic ways where, you know, this group is totally different than this group. We do the same thing with men and women. And, you know, so I'm not saying there aren't any differences. There are certainly absolutely differences. I just think we overdo it. Like, we overdo it so much with like, men are totally this way, Women are totally this way. And a lot of it I blame on. One of the most popular relationship books ever is the Better From Mars. Women Are from Venus.
Yeah, it's a good title. Good title. Oh my God, I wish I thought.
It'S a fantastic title. And actually I read that book and it's. It's great as relationship books go because it just keeps hitting, banging the same drum over and over and over again, which is like, men are like this, women. It's like there's this whole. There's this one quote in there and it's something along the lines of like, men and women think, act, feel, respond, talk everything, love differently. It's like they're from totally different plan. It's like, okay, it's just not true. Yeah, yeah, it's just not that true. Like, it's. It's a great headline. It sells a lot of books and we like extremes and. But it's just not true.
Yeah, well, I think it also. When we are in relationships, it kind of. I don't know, it makes us feel better in something like, let's say we. We get. Someone breaks up with us and we just don't understand why we're so confused. Well, you could be like, well, men are just from Mars, right? And we're from Venus and we'll never understand each other.
And it's.
I don't know, there's something comforting about that idea that we're set so different that there's just no way to bridge that gap.
You know what the problem is with that, though? It's super comforting and that sounds great. It just doesn't solve the problem because, you know, those same creeps that come from Mars that you didn't work it out with in this current relationship, guess what? When you get back on the horse, like, that's who you're going back to date. And so if you're going into that new relationship thinking like, oh, I mean, hope this guy's not like, buddy, he's from Mars, too. So I guess we're just gonna be going through the same kinds of things again. It's counterproductive.
Yeah. So your take on all of this, because we've talked a lot about this off the podcast as well. It's just that men and women are much more similar, and it almost helps you raise your expectations, especially for women, about what they should expect from men. Because if they're dating the wrong types of guys, Right, who are the flaky guys, the players, the guys who only want sex and all that. If you think that they're all from a different planet, then you're more likely to allow that behavior to take place. Right.
Whereas.
Yeah, whereas if you come from it from the perspective, you know what? We're actually really, generally speaking, want the same thing, then it suddenly says, well, you know what? If this guy's like that, he's being a player, he's just using me, then maybe he's just the wrong guy for me.
Yeah. And guess who's to blame? Like, if you keep finding that all men are the same and all men are terrible in all these different ways, and it's not the men that are the problem anymore. Like, there are guys out there who are not like that. You're just not finding them. You're not looking in the right spots. Your approach to dating is wrong. Your strategy for finding love just isn't the best one. Because it.
It's like, oh, sorry, please.
Oh, no, I was just gonna say, you know, it's. It's like you said, you're kind of setting yourself up with. All guys are this way. It's like, you know what we call a tyranny of low expectations. And so, you know, you're. You're setting things up where you just think all guys are going to be terrible. And so you just. You're kind of aiming for this bottom rung and you're accepting less than you deserve. And that's. That's a fatal flaw in relationships.
You know, my favorite saying for women, where I just have to call them out. So we get thousands of applications for our Programs for Love accelerator, for your program, Relationship Synergy. And one thing we hear day in, day out, because we do hundreds of these phone calls, is I just keep attracting the wrong men. All these wrong guys, I just keep attracting them into my life. And I. They learn this very quickly when they're in a program. You're not attracting the wrong men. You're choosing the wrong men. Okay. Because it is a choice And I don't know when you were saying that, it just brought me to that, because you hear that all of the time. And I think a lot of this. These books just reinforce this idea, like the Law of Attraction, all these books. And I think there's some truth to some of these books. Obviously, with man from Mars, we have for Venus. But a lot of it takes away the personal responsibility for your own love life. And I think that's what kind of sets us apart, is that it's all about taking personal responsibility. And the only thing you can control is yourself.
That's it. Yeah, control the controllables. I mean, don't be so passive. I mean, frankly, you know, a lot of people don't like taking responsibility and don't like the idea of being controlled, because then it is their fault. Right. So you can blame all of men as being this monolithic, just guys that just can't do relationships. Then you're kind of absolved of all your problems and, you know, your pickiness issues.
Totally. All right, well, so before this, I went deep and dark into my brain to think back to when I used to coach a man. I actually even looked at some pictures and, oh, my God, my hair. Like, I just. Everything about me, I was a lot thinner back then. But hey, everything else, I had the. The skinny black jeans and thought I was way cooler than I was. Anyways, I was thinking back to that time of my life and trying to create some. Think about the differences that I noticed between coaching men and coaching women. I'd love your thoughts. I know you haven't seen this list. So the first one that came to mind on a fundamental level are the challenges that men face versus women. I think this is important. Most of our audience is, of course, women, but it's really helpful for women to know what challenges men tend to go through when it comes to dating. Typically, when men are dating, I found that their greatest challenges is approaching women or meeting new women. Okay, that's like, just the number one. When you talk to guys, it's like, how do I talk to a woman I'm attracted to or interested in that? One of the biggest fears that all of us face is the face of the fear of rejection or public speaking. We talked about this previously, so huge, huge anxiety when it comes to that. Whereas women. Women never talk about the fear of approaching men. It's just not a thing.
It's not a real.
It's not a problem. It's just societally and just maybe the way we're wired, it's not expected that women are going to go out and approach men, but women tend to have a fear of getting hurt. They let a man into their life that ends up just using them and breaking their heart. And another, I had to put a second challenge just because I've been working with women for so long. The other one is just finding men who meet their expectations. And women do tend to have higher expectations when it comes to love. Do you agree or disagree with some of, with, with this first point? As far as challenges, I'd be curious on your thoughts.
Yeah, I think those challenges map on really nicely to what we know about evolutionary psychology. And, and men are just kind of, you know, they have a lot harder job in a way because they have to do the approaching. Right. And we know when you're doing the approaching, it's a little bit more difficult. And that fear of rejection, we know that that's a, it's a real pain. Like there's a pain that's associated with rejection. It's very much like a physical pain. I mean how your brain handles that stuff, you know. And what you said too about women having higher expectations, they get to be more picky. Right? They have. Men are expected to approach them. They get to kind of sit back and choose among all the people that you know are hitting them up on the, on their dating apps. Right. It's usually several. They have a lot to pick from. Right. Which by the way makes this whole like picking the wrong guy thing really more their fault as well because they are doing picking.
We'll see how that goes over in the comments. Oh my gosh.
It's not like you're getting one guy that's saying yes to you. You get a whole bunch and like you're going through and picking. Yeah. But so like those expect women think a lot more about relationships. They have a lot more time invested in them. Right. Like if things don't go well, you know, they're thinking about a long term orientation a little bit more than men and so their expectation level is going to be higher.
Yeah, a lot of actually that was one of my points is that women think a lot more about relationships than men. I think that is definitely true. Women talk about it, but men definitely talk about girls and women. Right. But it's different. It's kind of about like getting the girl or like, oh, I've been talking to this girl, I'm trying to get out there, meet this girl or whatever and it's kind of navigating the earlier stages of dating. This is My own personal experience and with men, whereas women. Whereas when a guy's in a relationship, I don't. I don't feel like. At least personally, I've never talked to my guy friends about, like, my relationship. Whereas women do that all the time, you know, and they're just kind of open as guys.
Yeah. And as guys, like, we don't have anybody to talk to this stuff about. The only person we have to talk to about our relationship is typically our relationship partner. And so, you know, when we actually look at the data for men and women and how they approach relationships, like, men are much simpler. Like, for men, it's like, as long as we're in love, we're together. That's fine. That's all we really need. Whereas women are like, you know, we. I mean, stereotypically, we think, oh, women are emotional. Of course, love means more to them, and it just doesn't. Like, it's part of the puzzle. But for them, they're like, no, you need other things. And that's. And, you know, that's a fundamental difference.
Right. And I should also say. I was going to say this at the very beginning. We're obviously painting very, very broad strokes here. Right. There's going to be so many examples that don't. Obviously, we're just generalizing men versus women in our experience. So obviously don't take these, any of these as, like, fact. But generally speaking, this had been my experience. Just.
Well, one of the things, you know, kind of going back to what I was saying about similarity versus difference. And this is. I mean, I could go on and on about this for, like, 15, 20 minutes, and I won't do that because this is in my college course.
But yeah, we.
When we talk about differences between men and women, we're talking about things that are like, when I say, oh, men fall in love quicker or care more about love, those are real statistical differences that we find in the research. So a statistical difference just means the difference is real.
Right.
Doesn't always mean, though. And it actually very rarely means that it's really big. So just because men care more about love on average than women, there's lots of overlap. And, you know, they need district. There's a lot of variation. Right. So basically, Adam, you said, which is like, hey, we're. We're painting broad, you know, strokes here. But it's like, there's still. There's plenty of women who fall in love very, very quick. There's plenty of men who fall in love very, very slow. Right. But just on average, There are differences.
Thank you so much for sparing us the statistical data and the different, rough, different points. Statistics was actually one of my favorite classes in college. But oh, man, oh man, I don't.
Want to go back to.
That's why we got you.
You can talk about overlap distributions. I almost did. I want to. Overlapping distributions and effect sizes and P levels and all this.
More, more. Oh, please, dear God. I'll save that for the college classes. Don't be anyone hear that? But it is true. And even on statistics like, oh, men don't want commitment, when you actually look up the data on that, generally speaking, men and women want the same thing. Women, maybe by a little bit, want more committed relationships. But it depends actually on which surveys you look at and the way that they word it. And it's not a huge difference. And sometimes I literally have to pull up this data when I'm talking to women because they've just been told this narrative over and over and over again that men don't want a relationship and, you know, yada, yada, yada.
Well, that's the thing. That's the, that's, that's our upbringing, right? Like, we like to put people in totally separate categories when in reality, like, they're like this different and we, we treat them like they're this different. And it's not the same thing. Like, we're, we're oversimplifying to our detriment, because when we see so much difference between us and our romantic partner, differences create distance. Like, we don't like people that are different from us. And so when we're overemphasizing all these differences, we're taking these small things and making them like they're huge differences. It's counterproductive. Like, it's working against the happiness and the long term healthiness of our relationship.
Hey there, ladies. As you can see, we're just getting this podcast off the ground. And since we don't run any ads, I only have one quick favor to ask in return. Can you just take a quick second right, right now, pause this episode and just leave us a review wherever it is that you're listening to. The podcast really help us out a lot, and it really does spread the love, and I think the world needs a little bit more of that. So I appreciate you. Now let's get back to the show.
Here's an interesting difference that I think is a small difference, but it's notable and a lot of our clients find it interesting when I talk about this. So when we, when I Had the coaching practice for men, one of the first things I would always ask the guys are, you know, what are you looking for? Obviously like, what kind of relationship are you looking for? And the way that 90% of the guys would respond is, I don't know, I'm looking to get out there, meet a lot of women and get more comfortable with doing that. And of course, when the right girl comes around, of course I would be up for a relationship that was like, generally speaking, how men would answer. Whereas you ask our female clients. Again, it's a self selecting group. I get all that stuff. But anytime you ask that, the response is almost always, I'm looking for love. And it's like very much so. Like I'm looking for a committed long term relationship that most of the time is leading to marriage. And I think it's just an interesting difference again that I know that's totally self selecting and this is not like statistically significant, all that stuff. But it does say something about the way that, that the different genders tend to date. And I should say that they want. The huge success of both of our programs is actually or certainly love Accelerator Though the way we teach it is that we say, look, date more like a man, get out there, meet lots of people, see who's right for you. And when the right guy comes around, then of course then we're going to open our heart to that guy. So it's interesting we kind of bring that perspective to women.
Yeah, there's not a lot that guys get right generally compared to women when it comes to dating and the approach to dating. But that approach of dating, a lot of people seeing how it goes, kind of learning as you're working yourself through the process, is actually pretty smart that because the other approach, which is the I'm looking for love leading to marriage, kind of like forces you to try to make everything work right when saying, oh, I need to see if this person, if I fall in love with this person. And you start mapping out the next 10 years of your life very quickly. It's like now can you make it work with lots of different people? You can, but you absolutely shouldn't. Right. You've got to be a little bit more selective. And some of that selection, it's hard to know what you want. Right. And we know from the data that what people say they want in relationships isn't actually what they want. They don't know actually what they want. But the Met, one of the best ways to figure out what you want is get out there, have Some conversations with different types of people. In fact, some people you think you would never want to date.
Right.
Have some, you know, go out with some of those people, too, because you're going to learn a lot about what it is you really value, what you're really looking for and really helping you craft your love vision.
Yeah. So much of my job is kind of pulling our female clients back and just be like, hold it back. You don't know this guy. I always say for. I don't know why I always choose this, but I always say for all we know, every single weekend, he just loves to kick puppies. Like, he just loves. I don't know, just like, he just, like, gets off on kicking little puppies. And like, that's the biggest thing. I don't know why I always have to say that, but it kind of. Because sometimes we'll go on our first date and get so excited, like, oh, my God, there's so much in common. It's. Holy line. It's like, hold your horses, shell out. We don't know anything about this guy. Okay, let's slow it down and. And maintain that so well, because I.
Don'T remember I was gonna say you can be, you know, it's easy to do that.
Right.
Because you can be so creative because you don't know enough about this person. So you fill in all the blanks in all the best ways. Right. And so it's this, like, optimistic way of looking at this person where I don't know if they really do kick puppies or not. I don't know anything about their puppy kicking behavior. So I can't believe you're making me talk about this.
Right. So do you kick puppies? Do you kick puppies?
I have a chocolate Labrador who no one would ever kick. He is.
Oh, my gosh. There's another. Are you going to get murdered in the comments for this one, by the way?
You are. You're the puppy kicker. I am not.
I know I'm a puppy kicker. I don't want any of you beautiful ladies to be dating puppy kickers. Okay. That's. That's what.
But it's something to be aware of because it's really tempting early on to kind of, like I said, fill in all the blanks in this really optimistic kind of way because we don't know. Know anything about them. That's easy to do. Right. And so, yeah, date around a little bit.
Yep.
Learn.
I got another. I have another difference for you that I. And this, I think, relates a lot to evolutionary Psychology as well is that men are much more able to have emotionless sex, sex that does not lead to anything or they have no real long term desires.
Yep.
Whereas women typically, not always obviously, but typically if they're sleeping with a guy, there's a possibility that could, it could turn into something more and they're kind of keeping that open mind. Like there's some guys out there who can sleep with a woman with absolutely no desire whatsoever for any time, type of long term situation. And one can do that as well. Generally speaking men are much better at doing that. Do you agree or disagree?
Yeah. I mean isn't there like an old saying that like, you know, guys have sex to fall in love and women fall in love and then they'll have sex? Right. I mean it's kind of like two different pathways. Right? Yeah. Now so here's the, here's the crazy here, here's the funny thing, right? So we know from relationship science that you know, we talk about this as being male behavior and female behavior, but it's actually just human behavior because there's this term called sociosexuality. Sociosexuality is how much you see love and sex as being the same thing or two separate things. Now people who are high in socio, sexuality tend, are, see them as very separate. Like you can have love without sex and sex without love and they're like they're two different worlds almost. Men tend to have more of that orientation. Women tend to have, you know, the, we see them as, as connected kind of orientations now. So that, that's where we kind of say like oh yeah, look like the sex difference is exactly what we thought it was. But what we do also know from that same research is like there's plenty of women who see them as separate. There's plenty of men that see them as combined. And so if you really want to know how a person's going to treat the distinction between love and sex, you're, you don't want to know if they're a male or a female. You want to know what their socio sexuality is. And so, you know, this is what we talk about all the time is like, you know, think about psychological variables. If you, if you can focus on psychological variables, you're going to learn a lot more about people than if you focus on these like broad social categories like male, female.
Yeah. Now that's interesting and that's an interesting first date question. What do you think? What, what is your social sexual orientation ethical?
I don't know if that's Sexuality high, low. No, but it was like, I think it's, I mean, it wouldn't be a bad early question. Like, you know, love and sex, like, how do, how do those things go together for you?
Definitely sounds like an interesting pickup line that a guy can use our first date to get a woman into bed. Somehow, somehow that's going to work in his favor to get a woman smoking.
Like, they're through, man.
Exactly. God, I'm thinking of my single self. I'm like, I would have used that. But you know, it's not about genders. It's about socio sexuality.
I've never heard that term, socio sexuality.
Yep. Yeah, I love that. All right, interesting. The one that we talked about recently that I want to just dive into because I think this is a big one, is that men tend to over perceive interest from women, whereas women tend to underperceive interest from men. Basically what this means is that men are walking around the streets thinking that they're hot and they think that all these women are attracted to them and interested in them when they're not. Whereas women are kind of walking around thinking the opposite. Oh, no, guys really like me. I'm not really getting that much interest. And actually more men than they think are interested in them. Is this backed by science as well?
Yeah, it's definitely true that men over perceive sexual interest. Right. And so, you know, guys, anytime a girl smiles at them, they're like, yep, she wants.
Yeah, right.
You start thinking like. And then like, it's like, oh, well, she, she smiled at me like, what does that mean? And then you do like, of course she wants me. Like guys just in general are overconfident, right. We think we're smarter, funnier, better looking, more talented, all these things more so than we actually are. Women are the opposite in terms of confidence. Right. They don't give themselves nearly enough credit. And so that, that's, you know, having greater confidence for women is, is really important.
Yeah. That's why it's little love. Step number one is building your confidence. It's such an important part of all this and realizing that you are a high value person. And that's, that's synergy. Step number one is getting yourself relationship ready.
Right.
And realizing that you're a high value person. And it's, it's step one for both of our programs, whether you're single or in a relationship for a reason. Because if you, if you were going to a relationship or dating situation and you don't value yourself, you don't value your energy Then suddenly it's just going to radiate through every conversation you have, every interaction you have with men. And it's something that you can actively work on, which is very cool.
Yeah. You can use your relationships and your relationship partners to learn about yourself. Right. You got to know yourself and be pretty clear about yourself before you're ready to have a high quality relationship. Because if you're still not so sure about who you are, you're not that confident about it. You are going to be more attracted to those guys who are willing to tell you who you are. And that's not what you.
Interesting. Interesting. I like that. Okay, the last one I wanted to get your thoughts on and see if you can debunk this or not. But the idea of men struggling to open up and be more vulnerable compared to women being much more comfortable with opening up. My experience has shown that actually both genders tend to be pretty comfortable with this or not comfortable with this. I haven't found honestly a massive difference between the two gender. I mean, I guess women are, are men tend to be more logical and, and we know that for certain situations, whereas women tend to be more emotionally connected. But when it comes to being vulnerable and opening up in relationships, yeah, women might be a little bit better at that. But I don't know, it just has not been my own personal experience that it's like women are so much better at this and men are so much worse at this. Curious on your thoughts?
Yeah, I mean, I think I, I think they're both going to be fairly decent at it for different reasons. Women are going to be a little bit better at it in terms of. They've just had a lot more practice. Like they, they've had more of these conversations with more different people. They're more comfortable in general just talking about their feelings and things.
Right.
Just because they're more comfortable doesn't necessarily mean they're good at it all the time. Right. I mean, just because you've done it more doesn't mean you're, you're fantastic. Whereas men, on the other hand, I mean, it doesn't surprise me that men would be okay opening up because they don't get much of a chance to do it. Right. So as soon as they're, they're with this partner who's finally interested in them, it's like, you know how great it feels to open up and like talk to somebody about your feelings who actually knows how to have that conversation. Like, you pay good money for that. Like, I mean, that's like Therapy. Right. And so when guys finally get that opportunity to do it, it's like, I mean, I could see them going the other way and just kind of like unloading and just like being really bearing their souls to this one person who they feel like they can talk to.
Yeah, Yeah, I could definitely see that. I mean, yeah, it's just. It's just interesting with the different communities that I've had over the years with the male community versus now we have all women community, both just opened up a lot maybe. And again, women might be just more comfortable with it. So it's just like right in there, you know, wheelhouse. Whereas men, maybe this is the first time in their life they've ever been able to talk openly about their insecurities when it came to dating. So maybe that's why men were so comfortable opening up.
Yeah, and I think it's. It's one of those areas where it's really important for women to realize that men are not all these emotionless robots who can't talk, who don't want to open up and are just like these locked boxes that you can't get into now are. There are definitely some men that are like that. That strong. You know, we kind of romanticize it.
As like a strong, silent type of.
They're terrible for relationships. Like you. That's not a good kind of person to be with. And so again, if you're only finding the strong silent types that don't want to talk and don't want to open up, you're just. You're fishing in the wrong pond. Like, you. You got to look somewhere else. Right? Because it's not like guys can't do that. Right. I mean, I think both of us. I mean, we're both excellent communicators who are very open. Right. And. And so, you know, and we're clearly not the only two on the planet. So, you know, it's like, it's just a matter of where you're looking and. And what you're valuing early on, you know, in your relationships.
I'm gonna cry. I'm gonna do it just for everyone right now. I'm gonna show my emotion. I. It's funny. I've been. I've been like. I saw it Jess the other day. I'm. Can't talk about. I've been like, crying a lot lately outta, like, happiness for things, and I'm like, am I. Am I going through something right now? I'm like. It's happened to me like three times the last month, like, for like, happy moments where I'm like, just overwhelmed with emotion. I don't know. Does that happen as you get older? You're a little bit older than me. Is it actually, no.
I'm not going through my life changes. I'm not going through my life changes. So I don't know if that's, I don't know, the crying from happiness. I, I do it with my, with anything related to my daughter. I'm a huge, huge crybaby, right? So, like, happy stuff like that, like, I'm definitely a crier for that stuff. I, I will, like, when there's just, like, touching things on TV about, like, relationship stuff. Actually, like, I am an easy cry yours. We're such saps.
Oh, my God. We are saps. Maru.
My wife will look at me. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, my wife will totally. We used to watch the show this is us. I cried literally every single episode of that show. She looked over, she's like, really? Are you crying again? Hang on the phone.
I don't know. It felt good, Jesse in front of me, because I was crying the other day about something. I'm not even gonna say it. It was really stupid. I, like, overwhelmed with emotion. She's like, why are you crying? I'm like, why don't you understand my feelings? And then like a minute, like, 10 minutes later, I'm like, what is happening to me? Am I, like, low on testosterone?
Oh, my God, no. You know, I think, honestly, what I think it is is, like, you just start becoming, like, as you're older, you don't have to, like, have like, that artificial, like, tough guy veneer that we all grow up being told we have to have. And you just kind of like, you just start letting it go. Like, I used to only cry when, like, a sports team won something.
And like, that was the only way.
That was the only way. Like, that was the thing. Because I was like, you know, but then it's like, I've evolved.
You've evolved. Now you cry for much more than just forced everybody.
I will cry at a touching commercial.
That is funny. Oh, my gosh. All right, so let's end it with some prescriptive advice, if we can. I feel like we've gone back and forth. Men and women. Are they different? Are they the same? It sounds like there's a lot of nuance wants to this and everything you've said. I, I, I'm very aligned with it. Makes a lot of sense to me. So for those women who feel like they can't understand men, I don't know. What, what do you think? Like, obviously under, maybe even sometimes looking at the data points can be really, really helpful. We can obviously share that. I don't know. Anything coming to mind for those who are like, read all these books, think men are so different than them, what can they get?
Yeah, I think the biggest thing, assuming you're always going to be having relationships with as a woman with a man, like not writing the entire species off all in one fell swoop. Right. And that's kind of saying they're all this way. Right? Because we talked about the low expectations. But here's the thing. You're always going to be able to. If you want to look for differences, you're going to find them. Right. There's something we call confirmation bias. If you think there's going to be differences, you're going to go look for them and you're going to find them. You're going to say, ha, told you different. But it works the other way too, right. So if you say, hey, Adam and Gary say there's lots of similarities, I'm ignoring. I should go look for those. And guess what? You're gonna find a lot of those too. Right. And there's, there's actually more similarities there than there are differences. You just have conveniently been overlooking them and taking the good for granted. And it's something, you know, you want to have a little bit more gratitude and appreciation for all those areas that you're similar with and know, kind of lean into those aspects more and, and don't overemphasize the few spots where you're different.
Yeah, I agree. And I think if you're only attracting men who are emotionally closed off, they're robotic, they are that masculine. What did you say? Silent. What was it? Silent but strong type.
Strong silent type.
Strong silent type. Then it is also time to take a little bit of personal responsibility on that front, which is you don't attract anyone into your life. You choose who you let into your life. And the moment you can just make that shift it. Some people get frustrated by that, that line. And I'm like, I don't understand. It's like, it's so empowering. That's more empower. I what? I want to just have this woo idea that oh my God, I'm just attracting through and it's stars and through whatever, yada, yada, yada. And that's why I'm bringing these guys in my life. No, you can't. But please, the law of attraction stuff, we could talk about law of attraction for a long time. There's, I think, pros and cons to it, but at the end of the day, you choose who you let in your life. So if you're only allowing or choosing certain types of guys, then maybe start taking a look at those choices, and suddenly now you can be in the driver's seat of your love life.
Yeah. Take ownership. Right. I mean, it's your life. And, you know, I think people just haven't spent nearly enough time really thinking about what it is they want and what that actually means and what it looks like. It's like, you know, people want, like, an attractive, strong guy, but it's like, okay, well, what goes with that? And so those attractive guys who are strong and put that out right away. Why are they putting that out right away? Why is that the first thing that they're making sure you know about them? Now, that might be what you think you want. So it seems attractive, but, like, what's their motivation? And are they actually insecure? Is there, like, toxic masculinity going on? Is it, you know, just something that they're, like, so entrenched in being a. A guy? Because, I mean, that has definite downsides that you're not seeing and you're not going to see for a little while. Right. So that strong, strong, manly man guy is, you know, probably going to expect to be the strong person in that relationship the whole time, which means he's going to expect you to be submissive. And, you know, you might be able to pull that off for a couple months, but how about three? Three years or 30 years?
Mm, yeah, it's tough.
Yeah.
I think that's always the conflict. That. Not always. That's a conflict a lot of women have, is that they want to attract a masculine man, which is a lot of what we talk about, leaning into your feminine in a healthy way and. And doing in a way that's empowering. But there's also this conflict. They want to be with a really masculine guy, but also a guy who can open up and be in touch with his feelings. And sometimes those two things may be a little bit conflicting when you're going after a certain archetype. And then. And then the worst part is actually there's some clients that we work with who, when they do meet a guy who offers the emotions that they're looking for, they actually berate him, and they. They're. They find him even less attractive because that's what you've been looking for, that's what you've wanted. And now he's opening up and sharing himself. And you look at him as like being weak. So, you know, God.
Well, I think that's. But that, that's what it boils down to there. And, you know, women have to come to grips with the fact that 99 of a hundred of them, 90 out of 100 at least, actually want a nice guy. They want a guy who knows how to have a conversation, who empowers them, who supports them, who's there for them. They want a guy who's good at relationships. That's not often who they're initially attracted to for whatever reason, because society. And let's blame Disney a little bit, right? Like, there are things out there that have been sending them the wrong message. Like they want the, the knight in shining armor, the prince on the white horse kind of thing. And I don't know, like, that guy is fun for a little while, but it's not, it's not a long term situation that you actually want. So you. That's what you have to, like, do a little self search and realize, like, come to grips with the fact, like, what do you actually really want? And then start really putting that plan in motion. Yeah.
Amen. Well, I love this. I love having these type of nuanced conversations. I. That's what I love about having you as a coach here and working with us, because you are very open to the nuance of these types of things. It's not just cut and dry. And it's important for everyone to really understand this stuff. So I appreciate you, Gary. Anything else you want to add to this or is that it?
No, I think just one. One general point is, you know, anytime you simplify things, you're generally wrong. Right. It's like, you see, men are this way, women are this way. That's a simplification that, that seems easy to understand. And we like simple, but anytime you go too simple, you're going further from the truth.
Yeah. So the end all answer to this is men and women are very similar, except they are also kind of different. What do we think? Agree or defray? Okay. All right, we'll enter that. Gary, thank you so much, man. And we'll talk next week.
All right, take care, man.
All right, so now you've reached the.
End of the show.
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