Conversation between John Gray and Vishen Lakhiani about biological/hormonal differences between men and women and relationship behaviors. Key claims in this chunk: listening to a woman produces oxytocin and dopamine for women; oxytocin in men lowers testosterone and can make men sleepy; fathers experience a large drop in testosterone due to bonding with children; men historically replenished testosterone by spending time with other men and relaxing; men need to rebuild testosterone by forgetting problems and relaxing. The piece frames these physiological points as reasons men need time alone.
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Life becomes harder when we don't have this natural stimulation. It's like, it used to be hard for me to listen to my wife. I learned listening to a woman stimulates this hormone. All you have to do is don't fix it. That's what we always want to do. We want to stop. Stop the problem, solve the problem. Because when you're a man, if you can solve a problem, dopamine goes up. That's for a man. When a woman, when she feels someone hears and cares about me and I'm not alone, not only does oxytocin get produced, but. But dopamine gets produced. Women want that.
Wow. And for men, when oxytocin is produced, we get sleepy.
That's right. And we get sleepy because oxytocin tends to lower testosterone. Okay? Like, once you have children, if you're a man, your testosterone levels will take a huge drop.
And why is that?
Because you love them unconditionally. Whenever you're loving unconditionally, oxytocin goes up.
Right? So the fact that. So I've read. I've read that hugs produce oxytocin.
Huge.
Kids produce oxytocin because of how you love them. But what you're saying is testosterone in a man is going to go down when he becomes a father because he has these, like, bundles of joy continuously hugging him and being close to him.
He cares so much about them. And so what a man has to do if he's married, you have to compensate for that. You have to have ways to raise your testosterone. So how do you rebuild testosterone if you're a man? Again, men don't know this. And so what happens is, even before all these new challenges came about, there were rituals and relationships. At the end of the day, men would just sit around with men, Women would be with all the women, and the men would relax and the women would stay busy. Now, today, women are going, well, that's unfair. You should be busy like me and doing all these things. But we've never been that way. And there's a reason we're that way, and nobody understands it. The reason for that is men need to make at least 10 times more testosterone. Most men, 40 times more testosterone than the average woman. Women need at least 10 times more estrogen or 40 times more than men. So you've got this complementary ness. Now, I certainly have estrogen. Certainly a woman has testosterone. But if I'm a man, I'm working hard, I'm facing challenges to keep my stress from building up. I have to use up my testosterone. I'm solving problems. Solving problems is using up testosterone. At the end of the day, I've run out. How do I rebuild my testosterone? The way you rebuild your testosterone is to forget your problems and relax.
