You're NOT a Rehabilitation Center for Broken Men

You are a successful single woman who knows how to fix things. You're killing it at work. You know how to problem solve, you know how to streamline processes. But when it comes to relationships, you are not a rehabilitation center for broken men. And that's what today's podcast is all about. 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 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 Dr. Gary Lewandowski, a relationship scientist, professor, and our head relationship coach here at Love Strategies. Please share with a friend and enjoy.

Yeah, I mean, you're successful. Here's the thing. You're also pretty good at relationships. You're definitely better than most guys, and so you're good at relationships. He isn't. I mean, he's not terrible, but he definitely needs some help. Here's the thing, it just seems so obvious you can help him. You're kind, you're a helper, you're patient. It's perfect in a way, right, Adam?

Oh, yeah, it's perfect. And I think the challenge is for these types of archetypes. And I'm the same way. Like, I'm a fixer. And I went through that path of like, like dating women that needed a lot of rehabilitation, let's say. And there's nothing that got my juices flowing more than someone who needed a lot of work, because I'm like, oh, I got it, I got it. And the thing is, I think that that's a pretty common thing with, like, the successful clients that we have, because opposites attract. You know, there's the yin and the yang. Right. And you kind of complete each other, or so you think, though. And I had to learn this lesson the hard way myself. But the problem is it's going to backfire big time, and it's just a matter of when. And today we want to really reconfigure your mindset when it comes to the types of guys to get involved with. So you don't open up that auto body shop and have a bunch of men coming in that you got to repair. Don't want to have the auto body shop of love. Definitely not.

Yeah, I mean, this. I love this topic because this is something I feel like I say at least once a Week on our Mastermind sessions with clients is, you know, they'll go down this path. And, like, he does this and he does this, but, but, but, but, but, like, wait a second. You're not a rehabilitation center for broken men. Like, this is not your job in life. And it's tough because that is the pattern a lot of women have been brought up with. It's a pattern they see a lot. It feels. Because you see it so often, it feels natural, and it's a problem. It's just. It's a problem. And I think it's one of those things, because you've seen a lot. You think that this is what you've always wanted and what you've been missing. And so it can be so compelling to find a guy who tells you he needs help. He's not hiding it. He's open enough. He's being a little vulnerable, and he's like, you know, I just. I have a hard time with this. Or I know I struggle with this, or I. You know, he's comfortable talking about the broken parts.

Yeah.

This is like. Honey, it, like, attracts you. Because how often do you get a guy who actually knows these things? You know, like, this is great. He's in touch with his feelings. He's willing to lean on each other, on somebody else for help. He's being vulnerable. Maybe he even doubles down on it. And he lets you feel special by saying, like, I don't really open up to people very much, but I'm opening up to you. Right. He says he doesn't normally do this. And, like, now who doesn't want to be the person who has this unique ability to get others to open up and then to help them? It's like the perfect combination of, like, just hitting on every possible pressure point for you to feel like, this is a guy I can help. I can fix him.

Right, Right. And, I mean, I've seen clients who have started dating guys who have. Let's just take one example, alcohol problems. Guys who will even admit on a first date that they really struggle with alcohol, but they continue to drink, and they just struggle with that. And to a successful person who doesn't have a drinking problem, that is very alluring because it almost feels like you're saving this person's life. Oh, my God. And you're attracted to that person. What an incredible thing. And if you do save this person, guess what? You get to live an incredible life together. But it's a big if. I mean, because who doesn't love a project like, a good project is amazing, especially when they're coming to you for help. And it could be a myriad of things. It doesn't have to be alcohol. It could be familial problems that he's going through. It could be his weight or his health. It could be work. Work is a complete nightmare. He's bouncing from one job to the next. I mean, the list goes on and on and on. But that's the thing, is if you are coming to the dating scene in the dating marketplace and you have kind of your ducks in a row, so to speak, not every. Not every duck, but you got your ducks in a row, there's going to be a tendency to want to help those people that come into your life that you're attracted to, to change them and try to improve upon them. But I should warn you, these apps, the dating apps, they are full of these types of guys, these near misses. Like, they're perfect in every way. Perfect on paper. They're funny, they're charming, they check all the boxes, but they're still missing a few things. They're still struggling with that drinking problem. Just bringing it back to that. And you might think to yourself, well, just with like, a little bit of work, just a little bit of work, he'll be perfect.

Yeah. And the reality check with this is you don't want a project. That's not what dating is about. That's not, you know, if you were picking a best friend, that's not who you'd pick. You don't pick the one who's got anger issues and trouble with alcohol and think like, oh, I'll fix them and then we'll be great best friends. Like, that's just not how you approach anything else in your life. But for some reason with relationships, we somehow think that this is part of the deal. Like, things are going to come to us broken. We'll fix them up. And I think this comes down to this sense, this false sense of responsibility. Just because you think you can doesn't mean you should. Right? It's not your job to fix other people. Even if in your regular career, that is your job. Right. And I've seen this with several of our clients who are in mental health or even like health care kinds of fields. They're helpers, they're fixers. And so they just start bringing that home and thinking like, that's what they need to do in their relationship too. And it's not. That's not your job. In a relationship, a relationship, your job is to be someone else's equal you're not there to fix all of their problems. You're not in charge of their emotions. You're not there to be the catalyst for their progress. Partners there to support each other, help each other grow. But you're not there to fix them, to make them whole.

We also are kind of starting this podcast with a little bit of a premise that he wants to change. And I would, I would venture to say that in the majority of situations, guys aren't even coming to you wanting to change. Right, Right. Like they might have an anger issue and you notice it and you're like, oh, I can work on that. But he doesn't even want to change. And let me tell you, the fastest road to insanity, trying to change a person that doesn't want to be changed. Good luck. Good luck. Good luck. And I've seen that because we have a lot of clients who are therapists, and I found that really interesting. When I first started coaching 15 years ago, I was working with a lot of psychologists, a lot of therapists who do this all day long. And I'm like, why do they need me? And then I see the people that they date and it's because they get sucked into that. That whole mindset of, like, I have helped other people in similar situations, I can help this person. The only caveat is that those people are seeking therapy and they want to change. If you're dating a guy who doesn't want to change, it ain't happening. Good luck. And the problem with all of this is that it comes from a really good place. Like, you are wanting to change a person because you want to change their life. It's not coming from a place of selfishness. In most cases, at least in my experience, working with clients, like, they legitimately care about this new guy that they're dating and they just want to help. And they know that if he could just work on this one area, if he could just read this one book, if he could just meditate in the anger management issue, just meditate, 10 minutes a day. It'll help. I know for a fact it'll help you. He doesn't want to meditate. He doesn't want to meditate. It ain't happening. So it's a really tricky one. Are you ready to dive deep into the male mind and understand why it is we do what we actually do? Well, if so, I have a free training that's going to really help you understand men. Get out there and attract a high value guy that meets your needs. If you're ready for that head on over to the lovesteps.com we have a virtual training there. It's going to walk you through this exact process that's worked for over 10,000 women worldwide. Again, head on over to TheLovesSteps.com and, yeah, check it out. We'll get back to the podcast now.

Yeah, and I think that is such an important piece of this, what you said is that it does come from a good place. It comes from being kindness. It comes from wanting to be a helper. It comes from genuinely feeling distraught for seeing someone else in pain or not living up to their full potential, and you want to help fill in what's missing. It's such an amazing sense of responsibility towards somebody else. It's just not what relationships are for. Primarily. I recently, with one of my students, largely inspired by the work that we do, we did a research study on this idea of the savior complex in relationships. And so this just got accepted. It should be published and publications take forever, but in the next couple of months. But it's this idea. Idea of like, you know, do some people just have this savior complex when it comes to their relationships? And so savior complex, we define this as having two different aspects. One is helping I do what I can to help my partner when needed. But then there's this other piece which is the fixing part, which is I treat my partner in a way that is close to the person I would ideally like them to be. And so one's just kind of helping them along. Fixing is there's a problem. And I, I've got a pretty good sense of an ideal of how I want that to go, and I'm going to get them there. And again, coming from a good place. And so we looked at, like, what would coming from a good place look like in terms of psychological characteristics? And so many of our listeners, you're familiar with the dark triad. There is a counterpart to the dark triad known as the light triad. And the light triad talks about things like faith in humanity, just thinking people in general are good, right? Like, you just have a faith that people are generally okay people. Kantianism, which is you don't treat people as a means to an end. Like, they're not like pawns, they're not pieces in a puzzle. It's the opposite of Machiavellianism from the dark triad. And the last piece is humanism is just the sense of, like, you, like people, you, you, you just think humans are great, right? And so it's this very kind, very positive framework of how to approach the world. And so we thought was people that have more of this light triad orientation about the world, they're so darn nice that they are going to be very prone to this savior complex of just spreading their niceness around and trying to fix people. And we wouldn't be talking about this unless it was true. And that's exactly what we found. Right. People who had more of these light triad traits were more likely to want to try to save people. And largely because they were very responsive to their partner, they noticed when their partner had problems, they rallied to help them out. And so this all sounds really good in a way. But again, it goes back to your point, Adam. Sometimes the people that you think you're saving didn't want to be saved, don't need saving. And that can be an issue.

That's a big one, too. Sometimes they don't want to change, and they don't need to change. They don't need to. Maybe there's just a different person than you and they want to live a different life than you. And, you know, I might be jumping the gun here, but I've always found that in a relationship, if you want to foster a great relationship where you're both are coming together, focus on yourself and the values that are important to you. If, like, let's say you want to get your partner into fitness or something, you go work out more, it'll rub off on them. You know, if you, you know, name it for any type of quality, like start with you and be the role model at the end of the day, and your partner will maybe get on board. But it's not about fixing your partner. It's not even focused on your partner. It's focused on you. And if you get to a point where you and your partner, you and your partner are so different because you're growing so much and they're not growing at all. Well, that's a real problem. The relationship might not work out. But I'll tell you what, you can't fix your partner or help your partner in any of these areas. They have to want to help themselves. That's the key part of all this. And I love that study, Gary, and hopefully you send it to me once it's accepted.

Yeah, And I think, you know, one other piece of this, with this coming from a good place is I think, you know, we said people who are kinder are more likely to try to have this savior complex thing. I also think it's much more likely for people who have secure attachment. Secure attachment is universally Amazing. Like, it's the best thing for relationships. But I do think that there is. This is the one potential area where being secure can be somewhat of a downside. Just in the sense that because you are secure, you have a basic trust in other people, you're comfortable getting close, you're good at relationships, essentially, it can encourage you to think that you can help other people be good at relationships, too. And maybe you can. Like you. You probably can just by being a good role model. But again, like, that's not. You're not a rehabilitation center for broken men. Like. Like, that's not your role in relationships to be the one to help all the insecure guys get more secure. Like, that's. You really want to do that kind of work. You know, be a relationship coach. Like, go. There's other things you can do. Like, it's not by being someone's girlfriend or wife.

Yeah, that's a key point that's really important. And at the end of the day, none of this is as easy as you might think. I mean, Gary, we're both relationship coaches. We help people in their dating life. We help them get out there and attract love, and they want help. Many of our clients, they follow the little love steps. They're ready to roll. They're good. Other clients, it's hard. It requires a lot of effort on our part to reconfigure a lot of their belief systems and walk them through the process because they have many years of baggage and challenges that they need to overcome in order to make it happen. Now, luckily, we're the best in the business. I could say that very confidently at doing that. We'll take some really tough cases. People who haven't ever been in a relationship in 40 years, and suddenly they're in a relationship in six months. Very proud of that work. But it's not easy. It's. There's a lot that goes into that. And so. And these people want the help. So for the guys that don't want it, again, good luck.

Yeah, And I just. I do think that there is some overconfidence, right. In the sense that, you know, if you've been good at relationships, how hard could it possibly be to help other people be good at relationships, too? And so I actually. I don't know. How did this happen? This one, this podcast ends up being a little bit research heavy, but I found a research study that I think is fascinating about this, where they looked at people trying to help their partners, and what they find is that these people are like, oh, it'll be easy for me to help them out. What they find is that most of the time, people use bad strategies. In other words, to try to get your partner to change in the ways you want them or think they need to change, most of the time, people use strategies like yelling, cursing, being irritated, frustrated, angry. They belittle, criticize, ridicule, insult, or tease their partner. Like we. Just because it's tough, we tend to default to guilt tripping and things like that.

Passive aggressive, oh, you're having another drink.

Yeah. Nagging, like, come on. Bribing them, threatening, if you don't do this, I'm gonna do this. It's just we. Behavior change is hard if you're not a trained professional. It's really hard. It's emotionally taxing work, and people just aren't prepared for it. So people generally use bad strategies. Here's the other piece of this that I think is in some ways even more fascinating. Even when people do the right thing in terms of trying to enact behavior change, which is to use positive reinforcement, which is essentially when your partner does something good, you say, that was amazing. Like, you just basically encourage their good behavior. That's the way to do it. If you're going to do it, that's infinitely better. By the way, it still falls short because your partner isn't dumb and starts to catch on to like, oh my gosh, you're not drinking tonight. That's amazing. And they're like, okay. And so even if you're doing it the right thing, it can feel to your partner as like, it's manipulative. It's, they love me, but with strings attached. I mean, and it. That's fair, right? Because basically you're saying, you know, if you love me, you would change and I would love you more if you changed. And that's not okay.

Yeah. And that's the thing is, even if you're amazing at this positive reinforcement stuff, you're still fighting this rip current. You know, you're fighting years and years and decades of bad behaviors. And it's very important for those of you who are in relationships where you are falling into that savior complex complex, and you are trying to help him and make him change. Don't expect for him to suddenly be right once they change. Right. It's unfair to them. And you wouldn't like this if someone felt this way about you. It's like, it's a very conditional way to love someone. It's like, oh, if they change, I'll finally be happy with them. It's like, that's not fair. It's not fair to them.

That's not what anybody's signing up for. It's like, wait a second. I thought you were supposed to like me for me, right? You only like me if conditions X, Y and Z are fulfilled in the way you want them fulfilled. Imagine someone doing that or imposing that upon you. You're not having it. No one would. It's not.

Okay, no, no, Go ahead. Please continue.

All right, so this last piece, I think is really important is I think fixing, we said, comes from a good place. And I think most of the time it does. And every once in a while it still comes from a good place, but you're not realizing where and why. And I think sometimes this fixing other people can actually be more about you in the sense that when you fix somebody, it gives you a sense of control, it gives you a sense of superiority, it can give you a sense of reciprocity or obligation and they owe you. And I think the most common one though, is it gives you a sense of distraction. Because if you're focusing on your partner and their problems, guess whose problems you don't have to worry about yourself, right? You get to not, like, focus on the things that you need to fix about yourself. And now I know because I've had this conversation with folks before. Some of you just said to yourself, but I don't need fixing. To which I would say, here's just a little tough love. Reality check. You sure about that? You sure you don't need fixing? Because if you're perfectly healthy, would you find a broken guy who needs all this help that you think he needs? Attractive, right? Would you actually be falling for this kind of guy? Like, what about you makes you fall for the guy who needs all this help?

Mic drop, mic drop.

Think about.

So I mean, at the end of the day, this was a little bit of a rant and hopefully a wake up call for some of you who do fall into the savior complex with men. But just remember that at the end of the day, trying to fix someone else really could break you. Don't lose yourself in the pursuit of helping him find himself. And it's like kind of an. It's not a romantic way of looking at love in some ways because like, I feel like we're raised to think like, oh my God, when you're in a relationship, you just want to help and fix and do everything you can to make your part partner amazing. And yeah, you want to support your partner and enable them to grow by you growing and you growing together and, you know, enjoying a life together. But if there are some fundamental flaws with this human being and he doesn't want to change, this is the. It's just a road to disaster in your relationships. And it's time for a real wake up call for those of you who get sucked into these situations. And so when we're dating, we do want to find guys who really do, who really are on the same level as you, who have done the work. And there are men who have done the work. Are they as exciting as a guy who might be a little bit chaotic? You know, the crazy thing about all this is like the type of people we're talking about right now, these savior, the people with savior complex, they're excited by the project. Like a guy who comes in and he's like ready to go. It's like he's got it all together. He's in full working order. It's like, that's kind of boring to them because like, now what am I gonna do? I don't have a project anymore, you know, but we gotta take a hard look at that. If you find that you're always drawn to those types of people because ultimately being in a healthy relationship means both of you have your lives together and that thus you get to build an even more. More incredible life from that point forward.

It comes down to balance, comes on the balance. And you want a balanced relationship. You also want to be your own person and you want your partner to be their own person. You want to be your own person. You don't want to have your self definition turn into. Instead of being yourself, you're someone else's support system. Right. That's not what a quality relationship looks like. And so each person contributed have balance. We talk about a lot that synergistic complementarity ness. Right. One plus one equals three or more. And that comes from two full, complete people. Yeah.

Gary, I have some feedback for you I want to, you know, give you. I want to start going to fixing mode a little bit. No, I'm just kidding. You're amazing, dude. You're amazing. I've loved this podcast. Nothing I would fix about this one. This is fantastic. This is for those of you. Gary, what do you want to fix about me?

Absolutely nothing. I accept you for who you are, fully and completely.

All my flaws and everything.

Every single one.

Thanks, thanks. Thanks for today. That was really fun. I appreciate it, buddy.

All right, take care, Adam.

So now you've reached the end of the podcast. Thank you so much. For being here and because you have proven that you are serious about attracting love. You wouldn't be listening to this podcast if you didn't feel that way. What I'd love for you to do is go to loveapply.com where you can apply for a complimentary love strategy session where a professional love strategist on my team is going to speak with you directly and be able to see whether or not our executive love coaching programs can be transformational for you and your love life. There's absolutely no fee whatsoever. All you gotta do is head on over to loveapply.com schedule that session, and you could be speaking with someone on my team over the next couple days. All right, thanks so much. Talk to you soon. Bye. Bye.