Attract Your IDEAL Partner and Find LOVE in 2024

A lot of men are attracted to the more the wounded masculine within a feminine tied up in within a female. Why do you think that is?

Well, especially for high performers, it usually stems from a subconscious attraction to unavailability. Right. So if a woman is in her wounded masculine or any of us wounded energy, we have a level of unavailability to ourselves and to the other person. And a lot of the times when a woman is in her wounded masculine, men can misconceive the feeling of attraction with actually just her level of unavailability.

Yes.

That makes them feel like, okay, I have to work harder, I have to do more in order to achieve this. Which also ties into a subconscious belief that love is an achievement. So when she shut down, when she's guarded, when she's not receptive, instead of going, okay, this energy doesn't feel very good to me. Instead it's how do I try harder? How do I continue to overcome her barriers in order to be the man that she wants me to be so that way I can receive the love that I always wanted to receive from me. And it's also really important to note, though, that that's one end of it. The other side is a lot of men show up in their wounded feminine.

Yeah.

And as a reflection of that, women are in their wounded masculine. So when a woman, I always say wounded energy attracts wounded energy. So in the same way that healthy energy attracts healthy energy and there's polarity there, wounded energy does the same. So if you as a man are in your wounded feminine, meaning you're people pleasing, you're trying to impress, you are feeling insecure, you're searching for affirmation, well, that is going to start to feel guarded. She is going to start to shut down because she doesn't feel safe with that energy.

Yeah.

And with that energy, she then sees that you don't feel confident in your ability to lead.

Yeah.

Not just in dating, but within yourself and your own emotional regulation.

Yeah.

And so she will clench up and she can't relax into her feminine.

Yeah.

Now, when we talk about wounded masculine energy, though, I just want to be clear that like, if a woman is being critical or berating you in any way or putting you down, I don't care if you're in whatever energy. Right. That's not right. And vice versa. So I always reiterate, it is not your job to heal a woman. Right. It's your job to heal yourself, to show up to be the best match for a woman, also taking ownership and responsibility for her Healing.

Yeah, well, that's what that six months is for me, for us, or mission to code. This is my process. I call it grow, gain perspectives, remove roadblocks, organize, orchestrate a plan and then work the plan. So in the last one, it was gain perspective. Okay, how did I show up in this relationship? How did the other person show up in the relationship? Was it healthy? Yes or no? Did it serve us both, yes or no? Did it allow for me to feel respected and loyal and stuff like that? It allowed for her to feel safe and kind of in a, in a great place, you know, and then I, then I, you know, look at it from that perspective. You know, what, what is it that I, that I kind of portray out, I guess the best way to say it, you know, because, you know, how did I show up basically? And if it's, if it was, if I was showing up in a non healthy way, then I went to work on it, you know, went to work on trying. Okay, where does this come from? Right. Okay. I didn't have a dad growing up. I had a grandmother growing up. Right, okay, well, like, all right, my mom was away. Okay, what does that mean? Like, where did the, where did some of the victim, you know, pattern come? Like, all that? And I would dissect it that way. And then part of organizing my plan wasn't like, okay, I have to have something to achieve. It was like, I just want to be able to learn more and grow more. So I would, you know, follow your work or read a book or listen to a podcast or anything like that. Began to kind of like open my heart and my mind up to a better way of perceiving kind of what the environment, what the overall environment is. Um, and then they'll work. The plan was kind of the same thing. So I kind of look at it this, this in the six month time frame, the first three months is assessment.

Okay.

And then the last three months is, okay, integration. Okay, what did I learn? What do I need to integrate or pull? And I say integrate, remove and, or integrate into.

And that has led me into a place of when I do show up. And this is, this is why I think I've, I've, I've met somebody pretty wonderful recently, which is exceptional. Like in the last, like, we're talking 11 days, we're not talking like a year away from that, which we're obviously very fresh in it. But the, it's exciting. Yeah, it is, it is very exciting because it's, this is the first time where I'm not trying to be anything other than me. And as a result, she's told me on numerous, numerous occasions she goes, you make me feel safe. I'm safe with you.

Oh, that's lovely.

And as. As she, you know, as she's kind of illustrated what safety looks like, I've kind of watched her blossom like a flower. So now I'm trying to be super, not super protective, but I'm being aware of holding that space of safety. But not. You know, when I say safety, it's, it's coming out of the questions. Aren't our question. You know, questions and conversations are uber deep.

Sure.

Like there's. I wanna, I'm asking because I want to understand, not because I'm waiting for something. Oh, I can. Okay, that's cool. I can maneuver there. Right. And I find that it took a long time to get there. It really did. And, and I'm someone who is passionate about personal growth, personal professional growth. You know, we're in this, in this genre, this lane, if you will. But I underestimated the power of safety. So I'd like to hear your thoughts on why a female.

Is so excited when they find safety in a partner.

Yeah, I love that question. And I, I love your process too. I think that's wonderful. I have more questions about it.

So safety is so important to a woman because the feminine is the. Is vulnerable. Right. So one aspect of feminine energy is vulnerability. So for a woman to be able to explore that side of herself, to be able to be playful, she has to feel safe. I mean, think about it like if you're in survival mode, if you're in fight or flight or freeze, there is no play, there is no flirtatiousness there. There is no openness, there is no reflection of self. And when a woman has core feminine energy. Right. So she feels like her best self, her. Like she's most aligned with herself in her feminine energy. If she can't activate or reach that space because there isn't a level of safety, then she can't enjoy the relationship and likely the man's not going to enjoy it much. Yeah, I think a lot of the times too, it's like women have experienced relationships and men also where they don't feel safe. So I would say, yes, safety is definitely important for the feminine, but it's also important for the masculine.

Yeah. Especially if we're being vulnerable. Like, it takes, it takes. It took a lot for me to get vulnerable and be transparent with another partner.

Yeah. And you challenged yourself to do that. It's so. It Feels so good once you do it, right?

Oh, absolutely.

Like I feel more authentic, feel like alleviated.

Yeah.

The only thing is you do want to make sure that you're not rushing to that level of vulnerability. I see this happen too with men in partnerships is they start to want more and more of that release and that feeling of connection. And so the conversations go deeper, deeper, deeper, deeper. And it's just like that's the only thing that the relationship focuses on. And then you come up against two things. One is polarity can actually.

Dwindle simply because it just is too much intensity. And so someone shuts down. Because we haven't talked about this yet, but when it comes to attachment theory, right. Someone can get activated in that dynamic. And the second piece is we don't want any trauma bonding, right. We don't want to bond over what scares us to an extent where our entire relationship or something that's hurt us, right. Or hurting each other to a place where were in that sort of bond. Because then there's no stability, there's no actual foundation. So yes, vulnerability is really important, but I always say it's really, it's necessary to also make sure that the level of intimacy is in alignment with the level of.

Investment, right. So how invested you are in each other at that point in time. Because that's what creates safety. And it's not enough to just say, okay, we're both invested in each other and it's you and me, and here we go right off the bat, right. That can create some artificial sense of, of safety and, and investment. But you still need to have that layer, that foundation underneath that for, especially if the woman or the man has had history of being betrayed or having infidelity in their relationships or just having someone leave them out of nowhere, just being, being hurt. You need to make sure there's that underlying foundation because otherwise you're on shaky ground and no one knows if it's real or not.

Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Curious on that. Even with the kind of leaning into attachment theory a little bit, what is authentic healthy communication? Because you know, obviously if, let's assume you're, you're a, you're a high performing male or high performing female, you've had, you've had relationships that didn't work out, which is most people at some point in time they had a relationship didn't work out. If not multiple, you're trying to, you have the healthy mindset of going into a situation where, all right, I've been, I've been doing, I'm I'm. I'm doing the work on me. I'm continuing to do the work on me. I plan on continuing to do the work on me kind of scenario to kind of make sure that, you know, that person stays in a healthy place. But you don't want to go down the. The. The track record of being overly, like, overly vulnerable too soon, too quick. You want to have authentic communication, authentic connection. How do you know which is real and which isn't real?

So I always tell the men I work with that whenever, before you do anything, any lead, any sort of communication, or initiate any sort of communication, you want to understand your motivation for it. So two good questions or a question to ask yourself is, am I doing this out of a need for affirmation? Right. Of wanting more, of wanting to get some sort of safety out of it. Right. Whether it be real or artificial.

Yeah.

Because when we look for affirmation, we don't usually, even if we think we get it, we don't feel satisfied with it because we gotta find that safety first. So are we looking for safety outside of ourselves when we really should be looking for it within us? Or is this a desire for connection? Does this feel like a natural progression of leading the dating process forward and continuing to build in an appropriate way on the level of communication? And you usually can know this from a lens of just checking in with your gut. And this is something that a lot of men have a harder time with. Right. Because we get stuck.

Unless you're naturally intuitive or empathetic.

I'm not quite sure if I am feeling like this is affirmation or connection. It kind of feels like both. So. Right. And that's how you get stuck in your head and start overthinking. So it really comes down to a gut check. And I like to have my men start intuition journals. So this gut check is write it down. Right. Do you think that this is an appropriate escalation of intimacy? Does it feel like it's what you really want to do? Write it down, make whatever decision you want to make from there, and then you can start to look back and go, okay, was that intuition or was that just anxiety? Was that a sense of urgency? Right. This was something my coach taught me a long, long time ago, and I'm so grateful for it. I love intuition journals. You can also do this from the lens of masculine, which is like my take on the intuition journal, which is a decisiveness journal. So you can look at. Okay, here's a decision I want to make. Let me the first instinct of what decision feels good to me in this moment? Write it down, take the decision or lead with the decision that you decide to be able to look back and go, okay, was that first decision that I wanted to make, was that accurate or not? And if it was, but you went back on it, you were second guessing. Well, you need to build more trust within yourself. If it's not accurate, then you need to tap more into your intuition and that's actually honoring your feminine energy. That's healing feminine to be able to your intuition into your body. So anyways, I digress. Back when you are leading the dating process and you feel like you want to continue to escalate communication and conversation forward, if you're feeling a lot of intensity in the beginning, right. Where it's like you guys want to talk to each other all the time, you're trying to see each other as much as possible, you want to do a little gut check here because as I brought up around attachment theory.

If two people have insecure attachment styles, whether it be anxious avoidant, fearful avoidant, also called anxious avoidant, it's important to pace the dating process in order to stay regulated on both sides.

Yeah.

Otherwise, what can happen is one person can start to over invest and come on really strong and start kind of obsessing about the relationship getting really invested too soon, and the other person will feel that and want to pull away because it doesn't feel like there's been enough time for that person to get to know them. And. Or there might be an underlying fear of intimacy. Right. Where, um, it feels really triggering to have someone want to get that close. And usually when there is an insecure attachment style, whether it be a fear of abandonment, intimacy, or rejection, there's also usually a level of inherent worth that's lacking. Now, I'm not saying confidence in your career, confidence in your appearance, confidence in your athletic abilities, those are all external pieces of confidence. I'm talking about your worthiness as a human being regardless of all those external things. So our mind immediately goes to, oh, if it was that easy to get that person, if they're leaning in this much, what's wrong with them?

Hmm, interesting, right?

What's wrong with them? Because why would they just choose me without me having to actually achieve this?

Yeah.

Because in our minds we feel like we need to be achieved and we also need to be achieving.

Yeah.

So a lot of nuances and intricacies to your question, but that gut check is really, really important in asking yourself, is this a need for affirmation Am I coming to try to make sure that person's still there, that they're not going anywhere, that that connection is still there? Am I avoiding some feeling that's uncomfortable within myself and hoping that having a deeper connection with them is going to solve that? Or am I in a really secure, stable, amazing place and want to share this with myself?

Yeah.

No, that's awesome. I was thinking too, as you're kind of going through some of these different processes, I don't know that most of us know what a healthy feminine energy is or healthy masculine energy is. I think most of us are walking around with a certain level of wounding, or at least, you know that. At least at some level. So therefore, you know, it's. I think a lot of it's being driven by the subconscious. It's not something you're consciously aware of until you actually work on it long enough to try to say, okay, well, I feel okay. What is this?

All right.

Yes.

You know, kind of thing. So talk to me about what, What a healthy masculine. Healthy masculinity is. Healthy femininity is how. How we kind of look at that to. To regulate it. Because I find that things are beautiful when polarity is achieved.

Yeah.

So.

So healthy masculine energy is assertive. It's grounded, present.

It's decisive. Right. So it trusts itself and it's confident in itself.

So wounded masculine energy would be aggressive, overly competitive, critical shutdown, emotionally unavailable.

Masculine. Healthy masculine energy is protected. Right. Wounded masculine energy is possessive. Healthy feminine energy is open. It's nurturing, it's receptive. Right. So the masculine is the giving. The feminine is the receiving. It is playful and flirtatious. It's creative. So think of the masculine as building and the feminine as the creative piece of it. Right. So the head and the heart, ultimately, and wounded feminine energy would be people pleasing and pressing, being overly reliant on someone else, overly emotional. Right. So that vulnerability becomes wounded feminine when it becomes unregulated and when the ownership is taken out of it. And it's just here. All my emotions solve them for me.

Which is a lot.

Yes. My fiance calls it ocean energy.

Ocean energy.

This is like the wave. He's like, okay, here we go. We got a lot of it over here. So. Yeah. So does that. Does that answer the question?

Yeah, I think it does. I just want to give some perspective to. Again, I had never heard the term masculine or feminine. Never really thought much about it. You know, you just. You just, you know, kind of go into a relationship. You think, okay, well, we're compatible or not compatible, you know, or. I know. Like in, I would say that in whether it's masculine or feminine. I don't, I couldn't say 100. But when you go with, at the end of a relationship, the fact that you can review it as, oh my gosh, this was so, this broke me. I'm so hurt, I'm so wounded or I'm so thankful that that relationship occurred. I learned all these things. Right. So to me, that's like the, that's the biggest transition. That's one of the. Been, been one of the largest transitions in my life the last couple years is like I, I stopped looking at the relationships and started getting gratitude for what I did learn.

Like the Ariana Grande song, right?

Yeah, exactly, exactly, exactly.

Yes. No, I, I think that's a wonderful way to look at it. And in general. Right. When you recognize that life is happening for you.

And you apply that to your relationships.

Yep.

It's huge. And it's, it's true. Because relationships are our mirrors. And so we get into every single relationship for a reason.

Yeah.

There is something meant to be revealed, meant to be experienced and meant to be healed. And you know, the relationships that, what I have experienced, what I've seen that work the best, are the ones where both people recognize there's going to be more healing and make that commitment to continue healing.

Yes, yes.

Right. Nobody is going to be a finished product. Nobody wants that. Especially a high achiever. You guys would be so bored.

Right.

Like.

You know, like, that's not going to, that's not going to happen. So realize that it's about finding that person who's also willing to take ownership and wants to take that journey together without needing perfection. And if you're expecting perfection from someone else and you tend to be that person that finds little flaws in the other person and has a reason to, like, I don't know about this.

Yeah.

And lies. Right.

So I'm forgetting what your exact question was here.

Well, we just, I think we're just continuing the journey, trying to walk through the masculine and feminine as far as what's, you know, what is properly regulated, what's not properly regulated, like, you know, kind of thing like that. And I know one of the things that you spoke on many times before is a high value man and high value woman. Like, I don't know that people have ever thought of relational relationships or partners as being high value or low value or they're like, they're even aware of it.

Right.

So talk to us a Little about what a high value man could be and also high value woman could be.

So there's two components to being a high value man or high value woman in the lens of relationships. Right. The first is will you be a good partner generally. Right. So this includes traits of emotional availability, communication skills, ownership of self, emotional regulation.

Having your own purpose and passions in life. You know, the things that. The ability to fulfill yourself and to feel good within yourself, to bring that into the relationship versus somebody who is looking to fill a void through a relationship. Right. And then the second component of a high value partner is what makes them high value to you. Right?

Yeah.

One man, a high value woman might be a woman who is really driven and independent in her career and is building this amazing thing. And that to him is really amazing. And to another man it might be like, oh, I want a woman who has been traveling the world and is really open to adventures and wants to experience things and has a different perspective in that sense. Sense.

Yeah.

Right. So high value is not just one perspective. Right. Because like you said, there is a level of compatibility to it. But you're absolutely right. A lot of people look at compatibility through the lens of qualities and traits, maybe values. Right. Want to get to the value piece. The why? Why do they have those qualities? Why do they have those traits? Why are they prioritizing those things in their lives? That's what creates compatibility. But also compatibility through the lens of attachment theory, through the lens of your subconscious programming because someone else is not emotionally available and that's what you're looking for in relationship. Then it doesn't matter if you both go to the gym at the same time every day. It doesn't matter if you both like to. If that person decides to leave out of nowhere because they can't handle a certain level of intimacy that you are looking for. You're not.

Yeah. And I think, I think that's. I think it's wise to be okay. Like, be okay with it. Like the relationship ran its course. There's a lot to be learned. There's a lot of beauty in it. You know, it's a, I mentioned a couple times that the young lady, I've been seeing you now for a little while.

It's kind of like we're, the, the, the agreement is let's, it's beautiful now, let's, let's see if it continues kind of thing. It's like we're enjoying it. We're in the enjoyment phase. Rather than saying, okay, by this time next year we're going to be buying a house together, getting a dog, like all that kind of stuff, like the expectation. And I find that gives you freedom, at least from, at least as a male. I can't, I can't speak for her necessarily, but I find a little, I find security in that. The fact that someone's just willing to go on a journey with me and right now we're enjoying the journey, if that makes any sense.

I think that's wonderful.

I see a lot of men and people who have been hurt in the past and I went through this myself before. I.

And I'm sure I have to.

You want to button up everything and be like, is this person going to hurt me or be my forever person. And I think we also get against, you know, clocks and what's expected of us and what we want. And we're in a world of instant gratification. And with dating apps.

Yeah.

Big fan of dating apps. Met my fiance on an app. But with the apps, what I noticed is people get frustrated with it because they think if I have an app for something and it's supposed to make my life easier, that means it should be instant. So I should meet somebody, go on a date, and that's it.

That's a little too quick.

We get frustrated by it. Right. And whether it be conscious or subconscious, that is what we think when we think, okay, I'm on my phone, I order Amazon, it's here in a day, maybe less.

Yeah.

The same should be true for my dating life.

It's the spouse.

Yeah.

So, you know, I think that there's, there's that level of expectation too that people then go into it who feel like, okay, because we both want the same thing, because we're both attracted to each other, this is going to move forward.

Yeah.

But they don't take polarity into account. They don't take emotional connection into account. They don't take emotional availability into account. And they get confused why they have these short lived dating experiences that it seems perfect, like, oh, I've met this other perfect person. And then they grasp on and they get ahead of themselves. And one person gets triggered around that or notices that that doesn't feel safe. Right. Because they're looking for a sense of feeling through the relationship. They're actually chasing a feeling. Not know the person well enough to know this yet. Right. As you're experiencing now, you're like, okay, spend what, 11 days?

Yeah, great. I love it. The best has been. I can remember. But I also protect my energy a little bit. Yeah.

Yeah. So I Always tell the men. And I talked about this in a webinar that I did last week as a little tidbit and I'll give it to you guys here too. Three questions to ask yourself before moving the dating process forward. Whether it be deciding to be exclusive or committed. Right. We could talk about that too. It's the idea of exclusivity before commitment and it not, you know, being together.

To ask for exclusivity and, or commitment to say I love you, to decide to move in with each other, to decide to get engaged, to get married, exclusive. Etc. What do I need to know about this person? What do I need to feel for this person? And what do I need to experience with this person to know I want to move forward? And that last one is huge.

You know, I had a, briefly, a quick chance to catch up with you briefly offline before we hop on and I, I told you that I had just come out of a long relationship that unfortunately had some narcissism, I think, kind of played into it and, and whatnot. And part of one of my selfish goals right now is to make sure that I am a healthy person getting ready to go into another relationship. So maybe if it's cool, maybe give me some insight on maybe some of the things that I should be focused on within me as it relates to, you know, having a, having a, a deeply narcissistic relationship ahead of time.

Well, I, I, you know, usually tell people, I wrote this in Wired for Dating, that people should look for the relationship they want, not the person. So if, you know, making a list of what the perfect relationship would be with person X is probably the best thing to do. Most of us look for the, you know, the person. Right. Describe a person, but not, not their morals, their ethics, whether they agree with what we want in a relationship, whether they are on the same page with us.

Before you get connected, before you get attached to somebody. So that's my best recommendation.

Yeah. Now do you, I was gonna say, do you recommend like a season of reflection and just kind of like really digging in deep as you're making that list? I mean, like, you know, you don't make the list on a Saturday and start dating on a Monday kind of thing.

I, I, that would be, that would be a rush list. Like, you know, what do you call it? One of those fast delivery. I think the list really quick and they deliver what you want? No, because I think, I think it's a meditation when you visualize the relationship, when you, when you put down what we would do in a partnership what we would never do in the partnership. You're, you're basically defining a sense of purpose to the relationship other than love. Because love is not a great purpose.

Yeah.

Purpose is something that is devoid of feeling. We decide a purpose centered principle, like we'll have each other, each other's backs at all times because it serves a function for both of us, even though it could be a hard thing to do, but we decided that's the best thing we could do. Right. So. So thinking about what we would do, not what I would do. And in a period of contemplation about yourself, individual psychotherapy, whatever floats your boat is always a good idea. But we learn the most about ourselves in a relationship.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, it tends to bring the, in many cases that we'll call it the best out of this, but it can also bring out the most challenging side of us for sure. I know one of the things that I've been really kind of like not hesitant on, but really just kind of cognizant of is triggers. So triggers from prior relationships that basically lay dormant until they're triggered, so to speak. And I've been looking, trying to find a good way to, I don't know, I don't say pre trigger them, but deal with the triggers prior to them showing up in a negative way. Because I don't. Obviously the last thing you want to do in a, in a new relationship is wound the other person by accident, especially when they had nothing to do with it to begin with. And you know, when I was making, I actually, my grandfather told me to make a list, but he told me to start, you know, character qualities and stuff like that a number of years ago. And my list is probably closer to two pages now, where before it used to be like maybe 12 items to your point of spending some, some quality time reflecting, you know. But as someone who considers themselves. I feel like I'm in a pretty healthy space. I feel like I'm in a pretty healed space. Overall. It, you know, obviously it sucks to go through any kind of ending of a relationship period. And it's never fun for anybody.

No.

But maybe are there some strategies or techniques to deal with triggers in a healthy way? You know what I've been, what I've been doing is the person I just started seeing recently is I've just, I was up front ahead of time. Hey, I've been through this type of experience. This is something that triggers me if I'm aware of it. If I'm not, then I'm you know, I'm trying to just work on it ahead of time.

The first thing I thought of is like somebody blowing, blowing up all their buried minds before they get into a relationship. If only that were possible.

Yeah, right.

I'm afraid it's whack a mole, you know, because it's not just your last relationship or we're memory animals. Everything we do is by memory. Most of our day is actually memory driven. We're not thinking most of the day, so it's too energy expending. So your memory when you meet somebody goes all the way back to childhood, goes all the way back. So that's not true when you meet a friend or you have a business partner, but when you meet somebody who is potentially a love interest and then they become one and what's called a primary attachment object or a primary attachment figure. And the only relationship that's like that one is our earliest ones with the originals, which is why these relationships are so very difficult. So there's a lot of triggers that you don't even know about, just waiting for somebody that you meet. Probably you've met them through recognition and familiarity, which means I'm going to trigger you and you're going to trigger them.

Sadly, no way around it. But there is a way to predict them after you get to know each other. And the way I see it, my way of thinking is that being in each other's care, I'm supposed to, if I were your partner, I'm supposed to be an expert on you. I'm supposed to know you, get to know you and where your triggers are. And I'm supposed to be, you know, a protector of you, not a provocateur. You're supposed to do the same for me because we can't really do that ourselves. If we could, we would, but we never can. So it's done this way. I have to know the animal I'm with. I have to know everything about you. How to approach you, how to talk to you. And I'll learn by blowing myself up.

Which is never fun, especially when the thing is fresh.

It's. It's trial and error. It's. It's learning through mistakes and then hopefully fixing them as soon as we make the mistake and then putting something in place for the next time to prevent repetition between us. Yeah, that's the key. But there is, there is, there's no way that that's ever going to happen because everything we do is through pattern recognition. You know, why did you look at me that way? Why did you Nod your head that way. Why'd you say that word, that phrase?

Yeah.

You know, so that's how we roll or animals.

Yeah.

Well, it also seems like it also triggers like a physiological nervous system response. And the times that I've been triggered in years past, I had one that crept up on me probably a week ago and I hadn't experienced it in 20 years. And one of the things that I realized in the moment was my body went into a physiological response that I didn't feel like I had any control over. It wasn't, you know, it wasn't. I wasn't blowing up a dam per se, but I wasn't necessarily being my best self. And as I was kind of going through that, that triggering event, I was wondering, I was trying to tie it back to an earlier event to see if I could uproot the trigger altogether, you know, so it almost made me pause before I entered, you know, deeply into a potential new love interest or relationship or spending time with somebody on a regular basis. It almost called me, said, well, okay, maybe I'm not ready yet. This, this one trigger happened. It had, you know, again, it hadn't been there for 20 plus years at least I hadn't been. I haven't had it trigger in 20 plus years, you know, so is there a point in time to know that you were in a healthy enough place to, to start to date, start to enter into your relationships or started looking at that, or is it really kind of a roll of the dice?

Is a practice really? It really is. You know, I, it's not, you know, working on relationships isn't like anything else we do. We can't learn it alone in the cave. You know, that's why people go to therapists is because it involves another person.

Right.

Or hurt by people, and we're healed by people. So if we could do it alone, that would be great. But nobody seems to be able to, so. So it's, you know, it's done in a relationship. And the trigger. Are you talking about a trauma response? Is this an unresolved.

Well, you know, it's funny, after, after it happened, I spent quite a bit of time trying to. So what had happened was.

Somebody I was interested in had a. We were just, we were away. I literally, I literally had a. We. We currently live on opposite coast, so I live on the east coast. I currently live on the west coast, you know, and long distance is allowing for a lot of in depth conversation, which has been great. It's, it was one of the ways we were Able to work through it, through this trigger of mine really, really quickly is because of all the, all the groundworker conversations we had had earlier, which was good. But for some reason I had a dream, you know, because. Because the time difference was there. I fell asleep, not at all for whatever, and I had a dream. And I responded to her out of the dream when in my waking state. So I woke up the next morning. It was almost. The dream was almost so real, but even now I can't remember the dream. But it affected me in such a way that I presupposed something that occurred that didn't occur at all, not even remotely close. The person had never given me any evidence whatsoever that that dream was even remotely close to reality. But it triggered me in such a way that I responded as if it was true. That's what it boil down to.

Now, this person, though, you weren't seeing face to face?

No, no, no. In the, in the dream, it was more of a. Almost like a movie play kind of thing in the waking state because we're on opposite ends of the. The coast. There's a lot of FaceTime right now, kind of, you know, FaceTime and calls and travel back and forth is kind of what's going on right now.

Did you do that morning, though, when you talked to that person?

Did you do FaceTime, though, in that morning? What had happened was we actually having a text exchange. And in the text exchange, I was trying to articulate that I had been triggered. I wasn't assessing or, or placing blame. However, I'm. In my wording of my response, it asserted blame or asserted like as almost. It just, it was just poorly, really, really poorly worded, to be honest. That then triggered a FaceTime conversation where the person very clearly said, this is not okay. This is not a healthy boundary, which I appreciated kind of thing, which I appreciate a great deal. But that's kind of how it got. We worked through it really quickly, but that's. That's what occurred.

So here's what I recommend to everybody.

No, no. Dealing with anything that's complex, that's emotional, that's anything ever without being face to face, whether it's on FaceTime, FaceTime or, you know, whatever. But you want to see the face because voice is not a good co. Regulator. We're visual animals.

We.

We correct error, correct our errors through the visual field, not the auditory, and definitely not through text. Text is the absolute worst, absolute worst.

Absolute worst way to handle a tricky situation. I got you.

Because, because we, we can't regulate Each other through, through this. We can't regulate each other through the phone very well because we're still visualizing the person according to our state of mind. Yeah, you were in a particular state of mind.

Yeah.

And.

And your state of mind wasn't altered by seeing the face as you talked. That's what I think got. Got you into trouble.

Yeah, it got me in trouble for certain. Crazy part was, is when we did FaceTime, literally a few moments later, as soon as I saw her, I realized I was an heir.

Yes.

Like, I mean, it was instantaneous. Like, oh, dude.

Yeah.

You know, and I know better. Like I, I'm in the, I'm in the personal development space. I, you know, and so I was. I've been kicking myself all weekend, so don't worry.

Well, I'm just saying this to your audience. Never get into arguments or talk about anything emotional while you're in the car driving. Because we're legally blind on the sides and, and because we're so visual, when we see a face at a glance, our. The threat center of the brain actually fires rapidly. So we're set up for a fight. So you always want to be dead on, you know, straight ahead in order to be safe with each other.

Otherwise stupid stuff happens.

Yeah, yeah.

Because. Because we, we make all these errors.

Yeah.

In appraisal, without the visual field. Even with the visual field, we makers less though. Yeah.

Yeah. What's interesting that you said that because literally as soon as, as soon as we had the FaceTime, that's. I was, it was instantaneous. It wasn't even a split second. I was like, oh, yeah, I got this, I got this wrong.

Text is shitty, you know, email, terrible. But FaceTime or anything that involves, you know, direct connection face to face is a good invention for us.

Okay. That's awesome. That's good to know. Fortunately, she's. She's a very strong character driven woman and had a lot of grace and, and actually proceeded to help me work through it over the next two days, essentially, which was good. I think that it made me feel like, okay, I'm. I'm actually a little bit safer with her, you know, so if, if something stupid occurs, I could tell her ahead of time now face to face.

Right. It's so funny. I blame this on the answering machine. I, you know, I'm an old guy. So for me, when the answering machine came out, it was the first. It was the beginning of caring when, if people called or how many people called right before, if you were home, you'd answer the phone when I got an answering machine. We were first adopters when I was a kid. Suddenly I started being aware of when people called and if people called and then you had to call them back. Right. Well now if somebody texts you, you have to text them back and you have to do it really fast. Text gets people into a lot of trouble and so does he. Because we don't think before we write and we don't, we don't have time to settle in and we, you know, it begs impulsivity. So I wish we could all do away with that when it comes to relationships. Except, you know, hi, bye, smiling Moji and everything. And I'll be home at 5:30. But nothing complicated, Nothing relational.

Yeah, no, I love that. In fact it, this has been, this has already been therapeutic already. So this is good. I was just thinking back to a conversation I have with one of my life coaches. You know, I'm sure I'm like everybody else that, that is seeking, you know, personal, professional improvement on a consistent basis. We have coaches, right. So we were talking about the difference between a companion and the difference between an emotional entanglement. And he was almost. Because he's helped me try to understand because you know, again, I had, I had years of toxic relationships for a number of years and I couldn't for life. I was like, why am I attracting these people to my life? I'm looking for my Proverbs 31. That's what I want. Like, you know, like help me get there kind of thing. And he, he broke it down. And that I, that I thought was pretty, pretty interesting in that an emotional entanglement is where when you're trying to solve someone else's needs or you're only seeking that person to solve a need within you.

Wow.

Rather than the companionship is two healthy and whole people who are already doing the work independently. You mentioned having six evolutions of you and your wife. That means you and your wife were growing independently together. If we use the old triangle approach towards God. Right. You're coming closer and closer, which is, I think is profound. But the companion model allows for the other person to operate in their strengths. You become their cheerleader, but yet you don't get emotionally entangled in trying to solve a need that wasn't yours to begin with. And I know you kind of follow that same philosophy. How did you discover that along the way? Because, you know, in, in studying some of your work, you and your wife's work, you guys really have done a lot of work, especially with helping the, the Future brides to be, or current brides, if you will, women specifically.

How did you guys find your. Find your direction with that theology and then helping that. That particular tribe?

Well, it really came out of.

Me understanding the depth of the pain that my wife's history produced within her. And I was kind of fumbling the ball early on in our marriage because I was trying to fix those things in her. I was trying as her husband. I was trying to do what only God could do in her. You know what I'm saying? This was a work that she and God had to work out together. And all I needed to do was just assist. I didn't need to go up for the dunk. I didn't need to score. I just needed to assist. I needed to be in place to support my wife through her journey. I didn't need to push her. I didn't need to pull her. I didn't need to do anything. So I fumbled the ball in that I was trying to be. Be for my wife what only God could be. And it was misunderstood by her as control. She felt like I was trying to control her. She felt like my trying to push her into a state of healing, you know, was. Was trying to manage her. And so I soon realized that this is a personal work that has to happen in her. And then I also simultaneously realized that I had to readdress my.

Views and even my definition of manhood and what a husband is. And so it was there that we started getting this understanding of the two holes. It's the illustration we use is like a marriage or union is like a pair of shoes. You can't. If you go to the store right now and you buy what you think is a pair of shoes, and you open the box and one shoe is whole, but the other is just a sole. It's not a pair. Yeah, that was an illegal transaction. They did not share. Did that. They did not sell you a pair of shoes. It's only a pair when there's a whole and distinct right shoe versus left shoe. Whole and distinct. And then somebody has the brilliant idea of putting these two whole individual entities together into a box and to sell them as a pair to perform a mission that's greater than either individual purpose. And so we have to do the work to make certain that I'm a whole right shoe, I'm a whole man. She has to do the work to make certain that she's a whole left shoe. She's a whole woman. And then we live in the context of this. This boxing called Marriage or union. But it does not work if we don't continue to do our individual work, to show up as whole individuals for each other.

Yeah, yeah, man, that's powerful. I was actually thinking too, that occasionally you have a whole shoe. Who falls for a shoe with tax on the inside of the foot?

Right.

Call it, call it the, call it the. The toxic mass masculinity or the toxic feminine energy. Because it'd be both.

Correct? Correct. I think.

It seems to me that people find themselves in that situation. I was one of these people. So I get, I get to, I get to call myself out.

So was I that you.

It's because you rush into the next relationship. You never really take time. I call it. I call it minimum. Now, even with my daughter a long time ago when she wanted to date this young man, I said, just give yourself six months of solitude. Yeah, six months of solitude. Six months of you praying, you fasting, you reading, you, you know, listening to podcasts. Like, go figure out who you are before you try to force fit yourself into somebody else's mold.

Correct.

Do you find that as being kind of the same? Thing is that's what leads us towards toxic energy of other people, is that we're rushing into it.

I absolutely believe it. And I'll share some personal.

Experience of my own.

My wife is the first woman in my life that I've ever been faithful to.

Never intended on being faithful, never felt like I could be faithful, never really saw faithfulness modeled a lot. But for my father, who had a real spiritual experience in his life and transformed. But even after I saw his transformation, I was committed to living the life I wanted to live. And so God really got a hold of me at a very young age and I realized the purpose on my life. But my lifestyle was not aligning with that purpose.

And so I, you know, I met Lisa.

My wife, and we were dating for some years. And I said to her, because I had gotten to this point where I knew my purpose and Holy Spirit had really done some things in me that all of those things in my flesh, those vices were really subjected to the power of the Holy Spirit. So I said to Lisa, I don't think that I'm going to ever get married. I actually had the idea that I would just do ministry as a celibate preacher for the rest of my life. Here I am, this 20 some year old guy thinking I'm going to be celibate for the rest of my life. So I told her, I said, hey.

I said, hey, I'm Glad it worked out for you because that have been tough.

That would have been probably impossible. Might be the word.

And.

And so I said, I know your wife. I said, so you should move on. She said, okay, cool. I'll. I'll move on and I'll let you have your journey.

Can I tell you that it was during that time of solitude, because I let. I released Lisa with no intent of ever having another. I didn't have another girl. None of that. It was just me and God in ministry. And I was doing exactly what you just got through talking about. I was studying the word of God. I was digging into. I was worshiping. I was digging into God's purpose for me. And then it's like at the appointed time, I go by my mother's house and my mom says to me, she says, where's Lisa? I haven't seen Lisa for a while. It had been a year since she had seen Lisa. I said, well, you know, I told Lisa to go on. I'm just going to commit myself to ministry. And my mom says to me, like only moms could do, say, boy, you're not going to be able to be faithful. You're going to have to. You're going to be sleeping around. You're going to be doing things you're not supposed to do. You need a wife. She said, go and find Lisa. And I. I said, now, Holy Spirit. Is she right? Holy Spirit said, yeah, Lisa is your wife. But my point is this. It was like God had to send me through that. That season of isolation. Watch this. Where I knew and I felt in my heart that God was enough for me, that I didn't need Lisa to help me to circumvent my vices or to bring a sense of fulfillment to me. And it was then that God made it clear to me and approved of me and Lisa's marital covenant. So many people don't have that personal time to connect with the Creator, to connect with God and to discover themselves.

Yeah.

And so we enter into these relationships with expectation that Lisa's going to give me what only God could have given me in that time of isolation and consecration. Or Robert RC Is going to give me what only God could give to her. As Lisa, I try my best to talk people into taking that time between relationships. Most don't listen to me, and they fumble. One relationship after another after another after another. The greatest way to have a great relationship is to discover the one you have with yourself and your creator. And that sounds like a whole lot of, you know, hyperbole. Coming from a faithfully and happily married man. But it was the greatest season of self discovery and connection to God in my life. Yeah, it was. When I had no relationship.

Yeah. I was just thinking about some of God's generals, looking at King David. He learned to be a king while in a cave.

Come on, man.

You know what I'm saying? And I was thinking through that. You know, one of the things I think there's a big difference between solitude and isolation. Isolation is solitude with disconnection. And solitude is like real truth. It's. It's you with God. It's you reading, it's you watching. It's you going, you know, And a lot of people will think, well, if I don't jump into another relationship, what I'm gonna do with all this energy and all this time, Right? It's like. It's like, you know, I'm reading John Gordon's new book, the One Truth. He's a good friend of mine. Right now I've, you know, I've probably read probably 10 or 15 books in the last, you know, three or four weeks, as I'm now walking out this journey of, like, okay, I want to make sure Stephen is good. And this is the first time in my life that I haven't felt the need to be on a dating app, that I haven't felt the need because. And now. Because now it's like, if I'm meant to be single, I'll be single. If I'm not meant to be single, that's okay, too. But God will bring whoever this. This person is in. In the future to me if from in that direction. You know what I'm saying? But again, to me, solitude and isolation are very, very different things.

I love that.

So break that down for me because I want to trigger some thoughts in your mind.

Well, you know, I'm listening to you, and that's very powerful. I've never thought about it like that because most people view it as isolation when it truly is solitude. It's where it's where we really get clarity. And the thing that I recently said on some platform, I forget where I was speaking. The only person that really qualifies to make a great marital mate is the one that's already married to his or her purpose. So when I hear you say, you know, hey, I'm cool. I'm doing what God has called me to do. I'm following purpose, and I'm trusting that God will bring whoever she is into my life.

Solitude is where we really get an opportunity. To boil our lives down. I forget the author's name. And I'm reading this book now. I'm sure you've probably read it as voracious of a reader as you are essentialism. It's a powerful book if you've not read it. And in this book, this author talks about how, oh, man, I wish I had it with me, but I'm right.

I'm actually writing it down as we speak.

You should write it down. But he gives this. This visual illustration. This is what I'm just trying to highlight. The power of. Of solitude and really spending time with God in yourself. He, he, he. He highlights. He makes this circle, and he has two circles, One here, one here. These circles depict the totality of a person's life. The first circle is a person that never found what is or what was essential to them because they never had that solitude. They always view solitude as isolation. And so with this circle, he has little arrows that just extend just so far, minimal progress going all the way around the circle that depicts a person's life, what a person's life looks like when they don't find what is essential. They find themselves accomplishing very little of a lot. A lot of very little. Then he shifts the illustration to a person who has found the thing that is essential to them, Their reason for being, their purpose. The thing they have to individually be married to before they can really qualify to be someone's mate. And there's one arrow stemming from this circle, and it extends the length of the page. Same amount of energy in both lives, but the direction and the intention made all of the difference in the world. Well, when I spent that time in solitude, not defining it as isolation, it was there that God made clear to me the things that were essential for my life. Watch this. This is how I also confirmed further that Lisa was not just a woman I was attracted to. She was not just a woman that was a friend. She was not just a woman that I liked, but she was a woman that was a purpose partner. But so many of us, because we. And I love it, man, because we define.

You know, that time alone as isolation. We miss the value that that season is to bring into our lives.

What does it mean to you to really follow love's lead?

Yeah, that's such a good question. I think the idea of following love's lead would be, for me, at a couple different vantage points. One thing is there's some people that love God a lot, but they don't. Don't seem to like the people he Made. And what he made is difficult people. And he can't say that you love God if you don't like the people they say, bear his image. And granted, we screw it up and we're difficult and cranky and start wars and. But we also do beautiful things as well. And so following love's lead when it comes to expression of your faith is to realize that God is doing different things in other people's lives than he's doing in my life right now. So I just assume that God is up to the same things in your life as he is in mine. And the fact is, I don't know. You having a grandkid this week?

I haven't had one this week, but I did have one about two months ago.

Yeah. So some of the things that we have in common, we'd say like, oh, wow, grandparents. And then you could just say, I don't know. Do you have any fainting goats?

I don't have any fainting goats, but I do have a sleeping dog.

There you go. It's like the dog fainted without clapping your hands. But can you see how this is Acts 2 and 4, it said they broke bread together, they pounded the carbs, and then they had things in common. Yeah. At the Philippians 2.

20.

It's a. You don't need a Bible verse or everything, but I'm actually kind of a Bible verse guy. And Paul is talking about Timothy. He says, I don't have anybody like him. He's a guy that takes a genuine interest in the Bible, the people around him.

Yeah.

I just like that idea. Whether faith is a big deal for you or none of the above. Did you say, what if we took a genuine interest in one another? Like, I just delighted in knowing you're a grandpa. A couple months. Freshly minted. Yeah.

And beautiful thing. Yeah.

Yeah.

And so we can just say, what do we have in common? And this isn't going light on doctrine. It's going big on Jesus. That's how you follow love's lead.

Yeah. No, it's so good. You know, I'm.

I'm.

You know, one of the things that I love you say, and I've heard you said a thousand times, is, you know, this. This concept of focusing across the street versus across the ocean.

Yeah. Bingo.

Yeah. I love that.

I started maybe four years ago, we started doing some stuff in Afghanistan with these young girls that the Taliban let learn how to read and write. And within a couple weeks of the takeover, we had that girls school back open again. Is that crazy? That is amazing. We just asked them, said, can we open our school? And they said yes. And so we did. I don't want to make a headline. I want to make a difference. That's why you haven't seen it in any of the headlines. Yeah. So I think of the things that we can do across an ocean, which are wonderful and terrific, and if God gives an opportunity, do it. But then 10,000 Afghan refugees fleeing the country all landed in San Diego. And so we bought a truck that's refrigerated, and we just get a ton of food. And we really take this thing in Matthew 25 seriously about loving your neighbor. I don't think it's a metaphor for something else. I think, because if it ain't happening at the end of the street, don't talk about going to the ends of the earth. And you can do both. It doesn't need to be binary. Both of them are terrific in each in their own way. And so I'm not trying to point a bony finger in anybody's direction. I'm just saying, like, do something really kind. You might have a mail carrier that comes to your house every day. Give them a glass of water. It's right out of Matthew 13. Even if they deliver like mine does the mail to the wrong place, I get my neighbor's bills. You want to do something awesome? Pay your neighbor's bills, Just blow them away. I guess it's a federal offense to open the mail, but just guess how much they owe.

But if they paid their bill, they may not turn you in. Right? So there's that.

Yeah, exactly.

But that's getting really practical because I met people with great doctrine and lousy theology again, and I want to have great theology and loving people. Following love's lead is great theology.

Yeah. You know, it's funny.

I'm.

As an entrepreneur and a business owner and someone who's been through a tremendous amount of adversity growing up, one of the things that I've learned about myself is actually following love's lead is nothing more than what Christ told us to be in with, which is treat people how you want to be treated. Love your neighbor as yourself. Right.

So, bingo. It's a good.

You want dignity? Go. Effort.

Yeah.

It's a good starting point to just say, hey, how would I feel about that? And so what'll happen? It's easy when you have easy neighbors. I mean, some of my neighbors are just delightful, and others. There's a guy that parked his car in the grass strip I just planted on the Lawn. And he planted like, you missed the curb, buddy. We went right up on the turf. And so what are you going to do when somebody gets in your grill or gets in your lawn? And that's the practical stuff. Yeah. And we leave these incredibly conflicted lives. I was, I teach at Pepperdine Law School, which still cracks me up. They would let me go there, but they let me teach that.

And.

And the. On my way there, I was behind this car, this red convertible, whatever it was, and the license plate said Amish.

He lives just as conflicted of a life as I do. I think he was just a guy in a hurry. He wanted a convertible. And he's like, I'm still in on the Amish thing, but I got to get there in style.

So I. What I did is I just took note of it. I took a little picture. I'm like, oh, I totally want to remember this. And not to make fun of him, but to inform me to just remember this Romans 7 thing that Paul's like, I keep doing what I don't want to do, and I don't do what I do want to do. And that's just Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday and Friday and Saturday for me.

And it's really happening for us all on a continual basis. You know, I think all of us are, you know, at some level, we're. We're struggling with this, that or the other thing. You know, I had a good friend of mine that was on an airplane, it was a pretty well known speaker and traveling the country. And, you know, he'd had a long day. And then a lady came in to basically get in the, you know, kind of sit. She wanted him to move out of the seat that he actually had, you know, a ticket for. And, you know, after a lot of back and forth, he finally just moved as a kind of like an act of grace. And he found out the lady had just lost her husband, her house, and all this kind of stuff all at the same time. And he said it was a great reminder to him about. Oftentimes people are living, you know, kind of from that emotional inside, and not every time does it come out appropriately on the outside.

Yeah, like the idea that there's more to the story. Yeah, the. If people see me wearing a Red Sox hat, which is always. And they don't know that this is the Red Sox hat that my neighbor who went to heaven.

Left, and I told her, I'll represent the socks here on earth for the rest of my life. And you got to mention my name to Jesus.

That's right.

Every time you see him. But to just know that there's more to the story. And I really like. It says Psalm 107, it's let the redeemed of the Lord tell their story. Some people say. It says say so, and it's all of that, but it actually says, tell their story. So tell your story, let people know what it is, and then take a genuine interest in other people's stories.

Yeah, no, I think that's. I think that's a beautiful thing. I've always, always had this saying, and it's something that I dealt with when I was kind of growing up and stuff like that. I would notice that when people would talk at me, I would shut down. But when people were naturally curious or inquisitive, I would open up. So I always said that, you know, questions open hearts and statements close them.

Oh, wow, that's really well said. I like that. If you're listening to the podcast, I want you to take notes on things like the things are going to be said that you're going to want to loop back to. You're going to want to remember. And so people that have changed the world the most were people that took notes. Yeah, they just took note of what was going on. And so. Yeah, good words.

Yeah, no, it's great. Well, you know, that. And the other thing that I. I like that you shed light on in this. In this attitude of service, this attitude of community is, number one. We can all do it. But specifically after Matthew 25, you know, you kind of break it down in simpler terms about who we can serve if we would just let ourselves serve them. Would you mind breaking those. Those different people groups down? Because I feel like it might resonate with folks and they might actually start to activate, essentially serving those folks.

Yeah. Like, the folks that come to mind are the people that pick your lettuce, the people that bag your lettuce, the people that, you know, work as clerks and that check you out and that. And even though you got in the wrong line and they're really difficult, just so slow. Your clothes are going out of style. Yeah, but I just want to interact with the people that are in front of us. That idea of love your neighbor, just think of love the people that are adjacent to you. Yeah, and some people are adjacent to us. For our friends in Ukraine, and they're going through a really difficult time, but there's probably some people in Russia that are going through a really difficult time, too. Instead of trying to figure out who's the villain. Who's the victim? And I'm crystal clear on who's the victim in this. Yeah, it's Ukraine, period. But that said, there's a lot of friends on both sides of a border that are really going through a difficult time. One of them is just acting in an untoward way. And you can't say you love God if you don't love these people. I want to. I want to love the nice people. I want to love, you know, the lop eared rabbit. I want to love the people that are kind and humble and I don't love jerks because you want to kind of bring them down. In Australia and the uk they talk about a tall poppy. Like if somebody's been kind of like, thinks more highly of themselves than they should, they say, that guy's a tall poppy.

Yeah.

And the thing about tall poppies, they get cut down and put in bases. That was just the first thing that came to mind. Yeah, the saying that there's two types of people in the world, people who are humble and people who are about to be.

Yeah, that is absolutely true. For sure.

Yeah. I'm in category number two. I want us to make it work in the middle of all this crazy going on. And that was really. I was trying to find a book that would help me get less distracted by everything going on and I just, I couldn't. So I just wrote my own. I called it Undistracted. And the crazy thing is, even though I wrote a book called Undistracted, I'm still distracted. I actually went out in the morning to watch this beautiful sunrise. And I don't have a fancy boat, but it's kind of unique. And. And so I got out to. We've got a little pier behind the house. And I went out and watched this epic sunrise. I was like, that was awesome. And I still went back in to start my day. And I'm sitting by the fire and. And I look out the window and I see another boat had pulled into the bay, just like mine, way on the other side. And I got the binoculars out because it's just. I hadn't seen one like mine in a decade. And I looked. It's my boat.

It's funny.

And driven back to the dock. I got out of the boat and I was so delighted by the sunrise, I walked away. I never tied it to the dock.

That's best being the same.

Oh, you gotta pull that book off the shelves. Um, so even though we have this big ambition, I'm going to be more Loving. And then we miss the opportunity to. Because there's somebody who's a tall poppy that we run into, and we just go like, ah, it's me again. But I just want us to know that we're just remind us that we're just in desperate need of a savior. We're just, like, in desperately in need of a God that would care and help us out. When we passed a January 19th, I kind of giggled to myself because that's the year they did a. The date. Each year they do a survey of sports clubs and health clubs and fitness centers. And out of 32 million people that sign up for fitness centers, that is the average of the date they all quit. January 19th.

They're like, nah, I'm good. Give me the burger.

Yeah, I just do. I just do one or two pushups every year, whether I need it or not.

Yeah.

But to just say, maybe we have the freedom to. Even though we have a long history of creating some strife in people's lives, the injustices, the biases that we carry in. But we could just quit. You could just say, you know what? That's old me. New, new day, New Bob. And New Bob is here. New Bob's going to be a little bit less prickly. New Bob is going to be a little bit. Because easy to write a book called Love does, or everybody always. Until you might meet somebody you don't.

Yeah.

And he's like, well, everybody always except that guy.

So what do you think has changed in our social environment that's caused the vast majority of us to move away from more of the traditional practices that we're working consistently for? Happy, healthy marriages? I mean, one of the things I've seen in the book is obviously people are saying, too busy, too tired, you know, get home, I'm burnout. I don't want to. That kind of thing. I also would. And maybe this is an area that I haven't heard you dig into yet, but I know for a man, if he has a bad performance, so to speak, it haunts him where the woman, it seems like, will be. Just. Will grow increasingly more frustrated, even though she might be nurturing on the front end, you know, so I'm curious, like, at what point does the mind play a role, I guess, in kind of.

How hormones affect mind, but mind affects hormones. Okay, so my hormones are low biologically. I'm going to produce cortisol. Cortisol inhibits my ability to think rationally. That's what's happening in the world when everybody's afraid they can't think rationally. What happens is blood flow stops to the prefrontal cortex and you go into a non logical state where you're dependent on authority to tell you what's right. You know, blindly believing in authority is a thing. It's a child part of the brain. It's our basic programming, which is do what mom and dad say, do what the government says, do what the police say, you know, just so all you have to do is create fear in somebody and they will become mindlessly obedient. What's happened is, is when women are doing their jobs that are producing testosterone, if they don't have marriage to support them in producing the estrogen, where they feel, I'm taken care of, I don't have to do it all alone. I have a partner in life. I've got back up here and I have a new kind of emotional support which we'll talk about, which my father didn't have to do, which is listening to women's feelings and women learning how to go deeper into their emotions and share them.

While we say women are more emotional, they not really good at sharing emotions. Okay, I'm a therapist. I sit in here, I'm paid lots of money, actually feel what they're feeling. You know, for example, if somebody's angry, they're really afraid. And if somebody's afraid, they're also angry. You gotta look at the depth of feelings. So women haven't been trained that way. They don't have to be trained that way to connect with another woman, which is why you'll see so many gay couples today. A woman can just say, I was stuck on the bridge today. And the other woman goes, yeah, I understand how you feel, but if the man's gonna understand how it feels, he's not gonna understand. I've been stuck on the bridge. I just put on a good song.

Knock on an audiobook.

So. So I'm not going to instinctively relate to what a woman emotionally feels when she says, I was stuck on the bridge. But what happens is if women can become emotionally intelligent, which is, I was stuck on the bridge. I was so frustrated because I was late and I wanted to get there on time and I felt disappointed. This happens again and again. Ever since we moved here. I can't get seen to get places on time. You know, I'm afraid this is going to keep up and I might be judged for being late. I feel really bad, or I'm so embarrassed because I was late. You see, that's emotions. That's, that's What I call emotional intelligence.

Yeah.

If you want to be able to communicate to a man and he will penetrate you, he will experience your feeling. Because we can relate to any emotion. It's just what makes you feel the emotion. We may not relate to and we may not even agree with or validate. You know, if. If a woman says to her husband, you know, I feel like you don't love me anymore, how's it going to validate that statement? How can I say.

Yeah, you're wrong?

Yeah. Yeah. I've unfortunately been in those circumstances before and there is. There is no right thing to say. And at least.

He says, I feel like you don't. I feel like you don't love me. You can't say, right, you're right. I don't love you.

But women are seeking. The word now is affirmation. Before, it was validation. I need to affirm that I'm with you here. I can understand where you're coming from. So I can say to her, I understand that must make you sad. See, now I can. I can validate that you feel sad. I can't validate that you feel I don't love you. I can understand you're having a bad day. You feel ignored. But even when you feel ignored, I'm not ignoring you. And I, in my world, I'm not ignoring you. I'm working all day to make money to support this family. I can for you see, we'll see it through our eyes. But to actually connect with her so she doesn't feel like she's just being completely ignored, I can validate the emotion, which is, and you are right in saying, you don't immediately say something. You say, help me understand that better. Tell me more. What happened? What were you expecting? You know, you can ask questions, but at a certain point they need affirmation, and the affirmation comes. I understand that must make you so sad. I understand you know, that must be scary. See, this is validation of emotion. But women are not good at identifying the emotion that goes with the feeling. That's a confusing statement for most people. I feel you don't love me is not an emotion. I feel betrayed by your action. I feel you cheated me. Okay, those are just thoughts that you feel. Yeah, that's the worst thing to do. Ideally, we're suited to ocean feel emotion. When you feel a thought, you actually give a hundred percent belief into feeling it. As opposed to, well, I think today you don't love me anymore. I think our relationship's going down the tubes. And Amanda Will tell me more. Why do you think that? So you can be in a logical conversation. He'll link in there. But if you have a feeling, what women have to learn is when you're going to feel something. If you're feeling a thought and you're not happy, the thought is wrong accepting. When you feel something and it's negative, your thinking is off. So when you feel I feel unheard, I feel important, it could be true because it's a positive feeling. I feel happy. You see, when it's positive, we're aligned with our soul. When it's negative or off track in some way. And so when you feel something and it makes you feel bad, you're not connected with true, but what you are have the access to feel, which would be true, is when I feel bad, I actually feel afraid nobody's going to like me. What. Whatever it is, bring the emotion. And here's what happens when women learn to do this.

Is they're suddenly connecting to half the world. See, women feel, men don't understand. So that means you're disconnected from the whole world. You get one man who actually can understand your emotions. And now you're connected to the world. You know, women will understand you. But can men? Again, it's another dynamic of am I alone in this world? You know, I'm.

I'm alone.

If I'm with, I'm. I. I'm safe being alone, away from men if I have women. But double that if you've got men. And when a woman says to me, you know, these women take my classes, I just, thank you so much. You know, my husband, we're so happy together. We're so connected because they feel seen, they feel heard, because they learn how to communicate in a way. And for us guys, we can learn how to listen in a way that makes it safe for her to eventually get back to her emotions. But I'll tell you, that's the long route. Yes, if, you know, sometimes couples will say, we've got young kids, we can't come to your workshops. Who should come, the man or the woman? Always the woman should come. Women are all embedded in. They feel the need for relationship 10 times more than men. Hormonally, the relationship is what stimulates estrogen, you and me. Whereas for men, it's not so much relationship, it's the relationship of me with my work, with my outcome, with what I can do. You know, this is. So as a little tip for the men, don't even think about being in a relationship with woman until you can be happy achieving your goals. See, if you don't feel good about chasing your goals, you'll find some woman and you'll become like a child, depending on her to make you happy. Now, I do depend on my wife to become happier.

Yeah.

You know, intimacy and family life takes me to another level. But I first have a foundation of, you know, if she's in a bad mood and can't give me anything, I feel good about myself. Yeah, I'm not depending on her happiness for me to feel happy. Although it's still true, when she's happy, I will take credit for it and feel good.

Well, it seems to me that in some cases, people are searching for their own validation and affirmation in the wrong places. One of the things that I kind.

Of dawned on me a profound thought. Just look at that. I just want to acknowledge that for men looking for your affirmations through what you've accomplished, through what you. Through what you're capable of, what you. What sacrifice you made, I mean, all I have to do is fast for two days and I feel a huge surge of testosterone, you know, so, yeah, that made people can do that. You know, I did. You know, this is the dynamic of an accomplishment or a sacrifice that you make in order to achieve a noble goal is noble. And that's masculinity. When women do that, they don't feel better.

Well, that's the other thing too, is I've been. And this is. I'm just being vulnerable here. I've had relationships in times past where we have that duality, the polarity that seems like it's all in vibes. Almost like you have the soulmate connection and things are firing all cylinders, everything's great. And then obviously, you're in the relationship for a period of time. Your racer goes through various stresses that can affect, you know, outside world, you know, going through a business reversal or any number of things. And one of the things that I've seen that's not as attractive to me is when was when my former female partner would go into a super masculine kind of posture. Because I'm very comfortable in masculinity. I'm still learning my feminine side to kind of be that empathetic listener and kind of stood like in. And you know, tell me more. Getting into that questioning scenario. In fact, it was actually that lesson that taught me. One of the things that I've shared from stage before is that questions open hearts and statements close them. Because I learned for a long time ago, it was like, you know, I Would make comments, trying to understand, but I wasn't asking questions and therefore I never really got any track record. The moment I just. I'll tell you where. I tell you where the idea came from asking questions. There's a. There's a video on YouTube that's called It's not about the Nail. Have you ever seen it before?

Yeah, it's so funny. It's based on.

I love that video.

It's always. It's women will. Regardless of the practical solution, women need to talk about the problem and they don't want to have. They don't want solutions. And then they. That's in Mena from Mars. And then they took that and made the funniest video in the universe.

I love that video.

Tell everybody the name of a single.

Watch it. Yeah. I mean, when I searched, it was called It's not about the Nail.

So and so basically, I don't want to give the punchline, let everybody go. Watch it. Funny. But basically a woman could be upset about something and there's a solution. Like, you can find it in a minute. Logically, there's a solution which in most situations, men do this. Women will be talking about something and they'll say, don't worry about it. It's not a big deal. Like that's going to tell her not to be upset.

Do this. Or who cares about that person anyway? I learned this right away in my marriage because my wife was working her job, I was working my job, and I'm making more money than her. And she was complaining about her job. She's so exhausted. Oh, I did this and had to do this. Nobody's supporting me. And I honey, just quit that job. I can support you.

She.

I don't need you to tell me to quit my job. I know I could quit my job. I love my job, but some days I just need to talk about my job. All you have to do is listen and give me a hug. And I'll give a few more phrases for guys to use when you give that hug. When you have all these solutions that you would apply so you wouldn't be upset. She just needs to talk about it out loud. And that will raise her estrogen. That will take away the stress feeling. She can look at the situation very logically at that point. And then what you say to her, is this a good phrase men can use again and again and again. It's just like a phrase saying I love you. It's honey, you do so much for so many people. Let me hug. See that just like there's no solution.

Just like Greek sex occurs.

No, it's. It's funny. I was just thinking, too. One of the things that I discovered by accident that worked was as a man, I was not great at listening because I'm. I'm used to fixing and solving problems all day long. It's what I do. So I literally got to the place where I would say, yeah, exactly. So I got to the place where I would say, okay, is this. Is this one of those times you want me to listen and nurture, like, be part. Be present with you? Or is this one of those times you won't. You are open for advice.

That's nice. Absolutely. Another phrase we would use is a Mars talk or Venus talk. A Mars talk. One of my brothers said it was the favorite part of my book because it's very emotional for them to learn. Are we doing a Venus talk? Are we doing a Mars talk? And in Venus talk, I'm just going to listen and validate and seek to understand, not try to solve anything. And then we want to do a Mars talk. We're going to leave feelings out of it. Okay. You can't talk about feelings that get hurt because, see, if somebody shares a feeling, and then you basically, well, that's. You don't need to feel that.

Boom.

That person just felt attacked.

Okay.

You don't need to feel that way, particularly if you're a woman. Now, I have a men's group, and in my men's group, I rarely get upset about anything, but one of the guys was listening too much to the authorities, and I was upset with him.

Yeah.

And. And I was just really annoyed that he would think that. And. And I got angry at him. And as soon as I got angry, all my group member men, they started laughing and they said, oh, John, I think you're overreacting. I said, okay, you're right. I am overreacting. Okay. To say to a man, you're overreacting.

Oh, we are.

Logically, anytime you're my belief system, anytime you're upset, you're overreacting.

Yeah.

Yeah, dude, you're right. Yeah, you're right. No worries.

Yeah, Warrior. You know, I mean, this is grounded in masculinity. And, you know, there's all these pansy university professors who say, oh, poor men. They're expected to be so tough, and they're expected to have no emotions. That's right. Men, you got to suck it up. If you're upset, you need to know what's going on. Your estrogen levels are Soaring. And your masculinity, your testosterone is going. See, this is that people don't know this. This is like a revelation that we want to be masculine, right? We want to be cool, calm and collected. We want a heart open. We want to be loving guys. So in order to have your heart be open, your testosterone levels have to be really high. And then your estrogen goes up. See, feeling is estrogen. But if your emotion's going up and it's a negative emotion, your testosterone is going down. It's like, I don't shame a man, you know, being, having, being his emotions. But if it's just guys around with guys who understand this stuff, we make a joke about it. See, guys joke. You know, I saw the validation of this concept because I'm not an emergency worker, but a fireman is. And I had a fireman in one of my classes. And he says, you know, John, when you talk about. Men have to make jokes to lighten things up as a part of processing their stress.

Some firemen that he said, as a fireman, when we're driving away, you know, we make jokes about, you know, that charred body just dissolved right. Right away, you know, that. Light it up. Well, you should. That lady sure would have been better if she does. You know, they. I don't know, but they have to lighten it up. And then they sort of find their, their equanimity, equilibrium. And if they need to explore feelings, they can. It's not that men can't explore feelings. There's an old Chinese, which I subscribe to. It's an old Chinese phrase which is a man, not a child. A boy can cry. A man doesn't cry unless his heart is broken. That basically means when there's a big problem.

Then a big loss. Of course, tears are part of the grieving process. But generally speaking, biologically, now I'm not just going to talk logically, I'm going to talk biologically. If a man's experiencing adrenaline, this is moderate stress.

There's two.

There's motivation, which is dopamine. And then when there's danger and motivation, like you're driving, if you have speed limit 60, you're now going 80. So you need to look in your rear view mirror, make sure there's no police.

Okay, so there's moderate danger, but you feel confident that everything's going to be fine. So notice what happens in your body when you go from 60 to 80. That's called adrenaline. Adrenaline pumping. And then when you go from 80 to. Well, for fun, let's just say 110.

Ah, like that. Okay.

I like my sports cars. It's good.

Well, you know, I want to go. For me, it was 150, but I couldn't do corners on 150. But just to do that.

That'S producing cortisol. Okay. So there's different wiring in our body. When a man experiences adrenaline different from a woman. When a man experiences adrenaline, that's moderate stress, different levels, his emotions turn off, actually become cool, calm and collected. That's why these people climb mountains and whatever. They're addicted to freedom from negative emotions. I mean, they're just endorphins in their brain and they're basically. And because they're so confident, you have to have huge amounts of confidence. They're just producing dopamine. But then when there's danger and they're. They're still confident, then there's going to be adrenaline. And when the adrenaline kicks in, he's free from negative emotions. You become free from fear. You basically detach. You can measure adrenaline in a man's body, blood flow stops to the emotional part of the brain.

Stops. Yeah.

Now, woman, adrenaline, moderate stress. Right. Adrenaline that they live in a sea of moderate stress. Okay. Adrenaline amplifies the flow of. Of blood flow to the emotional part of the brain by eight times. Eight times more emotion in a woman, that would be eight times more anger. Or if she's more declined to be, feel disappointed and sad like a victim or fear. Or it could be feeling bad. And then those emotions give rise to judgmental ness and feeling overwhelmed and a whole bunch of things from there. But that, that negative emotion, the blood flow going to her emotional part of the brain goes up. When she's having moderate stress for men, it goes down. That's why when women are upset, we will always think they're overreacting. Because for us in that same situation, we would have less emotion.

Yeah.

And so a woman could actually get emotional with us, which then produces a bit of adrenaline in us, and then we detach.

Yeah.

Okay. True disconnect. And we're thinking what she's saying here. You know, that's the first stage. Then what happens for men if you're an adrenaline state and now you're feeling I'm not confident. Okay. You lose your confidence. Then adrenaline turns into cortisol. Cortisol happens. There's a process of. Now his estrogen levels will continue to rise and his testosterone will start going down. Wow. Then we become emotional when we think problems are big. Women become emotional when they think problems Are little. Wow. They're saying problems are big.

Yeah.

You know, always saying, why are you upset about that? It's no big deal. She goes, I know it's no big deal, but why disconnect?

Why aren't you upset?

So we don't enhance unless we have a higher intelligence that realizes she's reacting with emotional upset, and we think she's saying it's a big thing when actually it's a little thing. It's upsetting her when it becomes a big thing. When a woman is in the cortisol state. When women are cortisol, their testosterone levels are rising, rising, rising, and their emotions are going down, down, down. When the woman is saying, I want to. I want to leave my husband. And, well, how does that feel? I feel nothing. And the guy thinks when she says, I'm ready to leave, he thinks, I just need to work out the problem. No, she. She's in the cortisol, chronic cortisol state, where she no longer has any emotions or feelings about you. He stops caring. Okay. Whereas a man, when he's in that cortisol state, his emotions start to get the better of him. For her and the cortisol state, her testosterone gets the better of her. And testosterone, as a virtue is detachment. Now, people don't understand how powerful wonderful detachment is for men. When a man is detached, it means his testosterone is up and he can be empathetic without being reactive.

Yeah, it's true.

Detachment doesn't mean.

Disinterest.

Okay?

It doesn't mean. Or uncaring detachment just means I'm not reacting defensively to what you're saying. I can actually be present. Which we're trying to do is let me put my motions to the side, my reactivity, like, what does that mean to me? You know, she. If she's saying, you forgot to leave the toilet seat up, you know, well, that's about me. So I have to be able to not react as if it's about me. But it has. My reaction needs to be empathy, which is about. Well, tell me what happened. Did you fall in the toilet seat? Oh, my gosh, that's terrible. Okay, I'll try to remember next time. All right? So. So. So that's an empathetic response, which is in responding about her, not right away going into defensiveness, which is hard for men to do because we're defenders. You know, we're the policeman. We're geared. If somebody's threatened, I gotta defend. So it's a.

It's.

We need to shift that. I need to defend her against any judgmentalness that I might. And to know what that judgmentalness sounds like to her when we interrupt her with solutions. Or here's first, we laugh about what? That's ridiculous. Honey, why would you be upset about that? Oh, you know, this is just your stuff. This, your childhood coming back. Oh, you probably had a bad day. You don't want to dismiss. See, what we're doing as men, which is what we need to do in order to get out of cortisol, is get back into the adrenaline state, which is basically minimize. Minimize emotional reactions. That's what mammals tend to do, is that's not such a big deal. I can do it. That's very important to do. Yeah, testosterone. But if a woman is needing to express, we don't want to minimize. We want to amplify. We'll give her more permission to be upset without it affecting us. Now, women can learn from that. If you have something critical of your partner or you want to complain to your partner, you're just knocking down his testosterone. This is. You're killing the polarity when you complain to a man. If women could just learn not to complain. A complaint is really just a request.

Okay.

It's.

It's just phrase. Not great.

Well, it's actually. It's a manipulative statement, which is when it's a complaint, it's saying, unless you change, I won't be happy. As opposed to, I'm not going to ask is, would you do that? Well, no, I don't want to do that. Okay. There, see, there's no emotional demand at the end. Yeah, we know that. They control us. And some of them act like they don't know. So maybe they don't know. They don't have that awareness. Women.

One of my friends teaches seminars. I'll give him credit for Warren Farrell. He'd be a wonderful person to interview as well. He wrote with me the Boy Crisis, but he's written a book called why Men Are the Way They Are. Great. Great. In depth exploration of men and workshops. He asks the audiences, he says, now who. Who feels like they criticize too much? And when. All the women will raise their hands.

Okay.

And many men don't. Because they don't. Okay.

Yeah.

We don't want to be criticized, so we don't criticize. And how many people feel like they complain too much? And the women will raise their hands. And how many people feel like they're too controlling? And the women don't raise their hand? Every man will say, what are My three complaints, she's critical, she complains and she's too controlling. So, so he has to help women understand why a man experiences feeling controlled by a woman. It's because our testosterone, our well being will go up if she's happy and if she's unhappy, our testosterone will go down. So if she phrases her request, I'm really unhappy and I'll be even more unhappy. If you don't change, what is he going to feel?

He's going to feel like he has to quote, unquote, change or concede, right.

And that's, that's caught feeling controlled. So when women use criticism or complaints from a place of you're not making me happy and if you do this, then you'll make me happy, otherwise I won't be happy. You're just controlling this man. And no woman wants to feel controlled by her husband. No man wants to feel controlled by his wife. So if women understand that more, they can realize these emotion packed complaints are unproductive. But a request is productive. So here's an example of my wife being upset with me for not turning on the light for 10 years. Turning off the light in the living room, you know, I'll go through turn it off sometimes, but lots of times it'd be left on. All she knows is the times I leave it on, right? And so she's walking through all the lights on again, John hasn't turned on. I'll have to turn off the light. In the beginning she would ask and ask and then I would do my best. But sometimes, right, there's a little things that actually build into the big stuff in marriages. So this is an example of what she did to solve it. First of all, you know, I didn't change, I just kept, maybe I changed a little, who knows? But she would, every time I leave the light on, she'd give me disapproval. You left the light on again. And I'm looking at why she making a big deal out of this, right? The light switch, what's the big deal? We'd have conversations about it. She say it's the electric bill. So I solved that problem with free energy. So if you have free energy, who cares if the lights are on? Well, there's light bulbs, evidently.

But whatever. Yeah, but she, she went conversation. She even said, look, we have to be an example of energy conservation for ecology.

Okay? So.

And what I had to do was not laugh. I said, well that's true. We should have good, good values. Okay? So, and of course, if I did last, it would, it would Minimize her. Her values. So we have to be careful how we respond to women. But why was she getting so upset as the years passed? Because in her mind, again, her not understanding men in her mind. I've asked him 10 times and he still hasn't done it. It's such an easy thing for her to do. It must be an easy thing for him to do. I've asked for 10 years and he hasn't done it perfectly.

That must mean if I ask for something little and he won't do it, he must not love me. What if I ask for something big? See, the reality is you ask for little stuff. Men forget it all the time because we're just. We're designed to think of the big stuff.

Yeah.

Get paid for the big stuff. We save lives doing the big stuff. We get statues to us for the big stuff. We get promotions for the big stuff. And we make our happy, our whole, our family happy by the big stuff. So how the little stuff's not that important. It doesn't. There's not a lot of motivation inside of that man. But that same man who says, gee, if you won't do little stuff for me, how can I trust him to do big stuff for me? How can I depend? Of course you can depend on him for the big stuff. This is little stuff. But her mind isn't wired that way. See, in her mind, if doing little stuff is a way of showing love, which now we can flip that around and for men to realize the logic here, if you do lots of little things, women feel really loved. Yeah, big thing. They feel loved.

But you know the principle, they notice the consistency.

That's right. The conscious is consistency. It's give her 50 roses once a year, you'll get one point. Give her one rose 50 times, you get 50 points. This is biological. See, it's a biological thing, which is. And we do still need to do a few big things. You got to do like birthdays, anniversaries, special occasion that then sort of affirms that I'm special. But then you've got to do these little things, which is. Has the big result, which is consistency. And so many men say, you know, I make money, I do this, I do that. How can she feel not loved by me? Because she needs a lot of little things like affection. And you know, one of my coaches, one of my coach trainer, he was talking to me the other day and we have over like thousands of coaches around the world that I train 30 years, only a few hundred really active ones now, they've all gone on. They're doing other things, too. You know, they. Another course. Another course. But sure, that means I work with them and those coaches, what they'll do is a guy in a relationship. You say, okay, now it's a little things that make a difference. So list out to me five things you're going to do this week. One of the little things and say, okay, I'm going to write a little note on the. On the mirror, a little sticky, I love you, honey, and then take it away. Gone. Now you're going to do another one.

Which is.

Going to empty the dishwasher without being asked.

Exactly. Nice one. Empty the dishwasher without being asked. Plan it. Plan a little date. Something new and different coming up in three or four days.

Make sure to notice what she's wearing and compliment her. When you give her a hug, whisper in her ear on Friday, I love you so much. You're so beautiful. You see, just right out and see, men don't do this stuff. Even in the middle of this conversation, it's hard for me to remember those things. But if you write them out, I'm going to do that this week. Then it's a goal. Already your brain is going to anticipate getting. Getting successful doing that. That will produce the testosterone that will motivate you to do that. If you just think, oh, yeah, I'll do little things for me, what I do, I just have formulas, okay? They keep my testosterone up. I get four hugs a day. I wake up, get a hug. I say goodbye to work, where are you? I'm going to give you a hug. I come home, I find her before the kids give her a hug. Or bed. Oh, you're going to bed. Oh, first let me give you a hug. See, those hugs is such a. And hugs are eight seconds. And I don't rub my penis at her.

That's called bumping and grinding, actually.

So those are the little things. I always want to go into the room. I stroke her hair. She. I said. She said, you know, I need to feel seen and heard. What would. What would make you feel seen and heard? She said, well, if you came in, when you come into the kitchen, just come over by me and stroke my hair just a little like a. Like Betty petting a cat. Oh, just a little pet. And she likes that. You know, find out little things that your partner would like, acknowledge them. And 80% of women will tell you. 20% of women don't know what they would like. You have to just real. It might even be a Higher number. Now, it's not. You don't have to do that because, see, they're more on their male side. If my wife comes into the den, I don't need her to come over and touch me or whatever. I prefer.

Yeah, but like in high school, one of the things you would do is you go to her best friend. I'm like, hey, what is so and so?

Like, yeah, yeah.

You know, so maybe that's a. You know, I'm just trying to think of strategies to kind of do that.

The three things that make up trust.

Trust.

Here's what we know. It's three things that make up trust. And people think it's I trust or I don't. And it's not. The first is integrity. That's the honesty. Do I believe what you say?

Do you?

Do you say it? The second is competence. If you say you're going to meet me for at a restaurant at 7, do you show up or do you tell me you forgot your wallet and you forgot there late and Right. You're not competent. And the third is goodwill. Do you have my best interests at heart? Do I believe you have them at heart? And those three, that's the triad. So what happens is sometimes you're good in one of them. You know, your partner's very honest, but you don't feel like they have your back. Yeah, like. So it's good because you can kind of work on each piece, which I like. You know, you can kind of separate it out. Instead of like, I don't trust you. And you're thinking, what do you mean you don't trust me? I'm the most faithful guy there is. Yeah, that's the reactions I get. And when I break down trust, men especially, can they love that? Sort of like, oh, it's that part. Let me work on that. So I would say to everybody, any man listening for sure. And woman, ask your partner these three things.

Where. Where are we?

Scale one to six.

Where are we here?

Where are we here?

Where are we here?

And then you can work on that thing. But that's the. That's why this competition is the real devil of relationship. When you are a team, everything's a we. You don't. It's not your turn. I always say it's not your turn to put away the dish. That's such craziness to me. I can't even go there. This turn thing, we're taking turns like we're in a game. It's insane. So you, you and. And, oh, I'm So worried they'll take advantage of me if I'm always putting away the dishes. Like, really, you're building a life with this person you're worried about taking advantage of. Like, there's something very off here. And we know that when you're focusing on that, that's what you'll see more and more. You'll see the problems, you'll see the negative. So you gotta, like, train the brain to where what you wanna see and to ask for that. So your boundaries are your responsibility, not the other person's. And it's the victim mentality that's part of the problem, that I blame you for trampling my boundaries. But I'm not holding my boundary. So that's number one, right? So if I say that something's important to me and, you know, please don't, you know, like for women, sometimes it's something like, please don't comment on my weight or my exercise or my food, like, that's off limits, right? But then you're out to eat and maybe he says, like, are you sure you need a second serving? Or why don't we go to this place that has like locale food or you know what I mean? Like, there's clearly some stuff there.

Yeah.

The problem becomes, not that he did that. I mean, yeah, that's not great, but it's not what people think are boundaries are actually just wants. People just want. They have like a thing they want and they. The boundary part is when there's teeth on the other side. And by teeth, I never say consequences. It's not supposed to be punishing. It's a response I'm gonna have when I've said I need something and you come over it. Or if I haven't said it yet, then now I have to say it. And I always say a boundary should never be said more than once. So you should go right to the thing. If I tell my kids, you know, don't. Don't eat before dinner, and they eat before dinner. Do you know what I mean? Like, I shouldn't have to nag them to not eat before dinner. I just have a response when they do it. Maybe they don't have an allowance that week. Maybe they don't have electronics. Maybe they take their phone away. You just do it. So I talk about boundaries on a continuum of thick to thin. A thick boundary is like if you called your dad sir, right? There's a lot of disconnection. There's a lot of separate lives living a very thin boundary. A too thin boundary is when families are really enmeshed.

Right.

If you knew what your parents mortgage was growing up or something like information that's not, maybe your parent could confide in you about the other parent or something like. That's very thin boundaries. What you want is for your, you to have your boundaries somewhere in the middle. They're not an exact middle but somewhere in there. And you want to never change based on how someone else acts. Because here's what happens. I'll say I have a boundary around. I did this with my son not long ago about a curfew and I have a boundary. But then he's being really good in keeping his curfew all the time, right. So he's being good. So I go, I, then he asks can I stay out later? And I go sure. Because he's been so good. I collapse my boundary. And then what would any self respecting teenager do when they now can be out later? Yeah, really later.

And then. Right.

And then the kid instead of coming home at 2 as they promised, comes home at 4 and maybe even smell in a pot.

Right.

And then what is, what do I do? I slam the door. I go all I got. So I got too thin with my boundary. This is what's most common for people. Then they go all the way to the other side. You're grounded forever. You know, in another relationship I'm blocking you, I'm unfollowing you on social media. I'm never speaking to you again. We, we put up a wall instead of a boundary and it's all fear based and we, we try to cut them off which of course we don't really stick to generally.

Yeah.

And it's because again. But my boundary just needs to be the same. Doesn't matter if you're mean to me, if you're kind to me, if it doesn. My boundary is my boundary. Yeah, that's it. But that's where people fail the most. They change their boundary because they want to.

People please.

They don't want people not to like them.

They.

And it's so interesting to me or someone else is telling you that you're being selfish by holding your boundary. Which is the craziest thing because so they're saying that they're bound, that what they want is more important. So they're being selfish and so. But you're going, yeah, okay, that's selfish of me to do this. And in my book I talk a lot about healthy selfishness. There's lots of research on it and how good it is for us. But it's not. I don't even like using that word. Selfish, really, because it's sort of crazy. It's just what we need to feel safe and okay. And so what. What my book does is just help people really get clear on what a boundary really is. How to make it, how to decide what's your standards there from your standards, what's the most important things to you? So it's not a boundary that my husband puts the cap on the toothpaste. That's just something I like. Do you know what I mean? But my boundary might be that I'm shown respect or appreciation, right? And. But you can't think to yourself, oh, leaving the cap off the toothpaste means he thinks I'm his maid and he doesn't respect me. And he. No, no, no, no.

I hope you liked that video. And if you did, make sure you check out this next video right here.

Whenever couples come to me, you know, or anybody, individuals, and they say, oh, I'm struggling. And they always say it's communication. Every time, they're like, oh, we're not communicating. We need to work on communication.