Dr. John Gray | Wellness In Relationships: Testosterone, Estrogen & Sexual Polarity | Wellness Force

If a woman is stressed, holding the space for her means hearing what she has to say and providing a particular kind of loving support. And that's. I write about this in Men From Mars and it's in Beyond Mars and Venus, but you need more techniques and Beyond Mars and Venus because you see, once women are on their independent side, they tend to always see what's wrong with you, which means they don't trust you, which makes it even harder to go to their female side and share emotions in a more positive way. Vulnerability is scary for them.

Doctor John Gray, welcome back to the podcast. It's been five years, so much has changed. Thank you for your presence. Thanks for being on the show.

Happy to be on the show, Josh.

I remember it's interesting, I was reflecting in research for this conversation. You were one of the very first really big names we had on the show and we didn't have much of a following then. So thank you for your generosity. And also, I don't know if you remember this, after we recorded, you gave me some specific advice which you didn't have to do about my mom and her bipolar state. So just. You're an incredible man. It's a joy to have you back on the show. So much has changed. You've now written Beyond Mars, Venus. Most people know you as the author of Men Are From Mars, Women are From Venus. But this talk about relationships and wellness. I've had a son, he's six month old. He's wonderful. I'm in a loving relationship. But we have our challenges. So today let's dive in, let's get right to it. People know you as an expert in this topic, yet people, people don't know that you spent nine years celibate at one point in your life with the Maharishi.

As a monk, I was Maharishi's personal assistant, taught his teacher training programs, helped develop them, then went on to spend years of isolation and meditation where I used to meditate 16, 18 hours a day. Now I'm semi retired only because my wife has passed and so she's not out there pushing me to work hard so I have more time for myself. And so I now back to being a monk and in a relationship and helping the world and all those things. So I meditate probably four to six hours a day.

When you do these longer meditations, you were sharing this with me and I want to use this as a jumping off point for the stillness that we all have inside of ourselves. Whenever I'm in a conflict with my partner, I tend to Go out of my center, I lose my center. Yet, John, when I'm doing my breath work, when I'm meditating on a regular basis, I find that that goes into my relationship, into my day and into my business. Now most people listening might be like, duh. Of course, when you're doing your practices, everything's healthy.

But.

But you have a specific meditation. You're telling me about three to five hours where you're not breathing at all, which kind of tripped me out.

I'm not telling other people to do that. You can't just do that. It'd be like I'm like a Michael Jordan when it comes to meditation. I go into a breathless state of just a tiny bit of air going up my. Into the top of my nostril to my brain. The rest of the body goes into a state of blissful suspension. And I'm one with the ocean of the universe. It's very pleasant, it's very blissful, it's very happy. And if something's really stressing me in my life, then I have to process those emotions to get back to that place. So it's not like I'm in this fake blissful place all the time. Okay? So I'm in the world. I've got challenges, I've got lawsuits, I've got kids, I've got relationships. I do it all. But the advantage of having been a monk for nine years before that is I have the ability when anything triggers me to take some time away where I do my process of my emotions, which then elevates my consciousness back to love, back to enthusiasm, back to happiness. So that's all self generated within myself now getting involved, marrying my lovely wife Bonnie. We were married for 34 years and she's passed on three years ago. And I went through the whole I want to live anymore and grieving. I did all that. I write books on grieving, so I know how to get through it. I'm in a lovely relationship now. But when you. And rarely triggered.

Okay.

Because it's the beginning of a relationship. You know, in the beginning of relationships you don't get so triggered, but you get triggered. And what I mean by triggered. Some people use the phrase push your buttons. I have a definition of it to point out that when you're upset with your partner, 90% of your upset is completely irrational. It's really, don't sweat the small stuff. And it's almost all small stuff. That was a great book in the past or whatever. Unfortunately, it didn't give people the processes to Realize clearly it's small stuff. You've got to come back to processing and letting go of these emotions inside. And there's a shortcut to doing that. I still do the emotional work. This is why I continue to grow, but have passionate relationships. All this good stuff, but it's. You have to be able to understand yourself as a man or yourself as a woman. You have different personal growth processes. If you're somewhat in balance, all the processes help you. And there's so many. But what I talk about is when men are feeling stressed or pressured or your button gets pushed, 90% of the upset has nothing to do with right now. This is like so clear in my work. And also Freud first talked about it. The simple logic. If 10 bad things happen to you today and you come home, little things will bug you, it'll irritate you, annoy you. And if you just won the lottery and you're feeling really good, little things, no big deal. Who worries about it? Oh, so what, you know, I got a speeding ticket. I don't care. Big deal. If you, if you, if you only have one point on your, if you have no points on your record, you get a speedy ticket. No big deal. Now if you have three points, you lose your license. Now it's a big deal. You see, stress builds up. If you feel pressure, it means you've been pushing it down, pushing it down. Now, ironically, for women it's different and for men it's different. We have different processes when it comes to understanding gender. And it's even more complicated now because it used to be you'd read ideas of men are from Mars, women are from Venus, and couples would immediately relate. Therefore, it became the biggest selling relationship book in history because couples who are in your situation, you've got a baby, you've got a wife. I presume if she's. How many hours does she work a day outside the home?

She's full time mama right now.

All right. That's your traditional relationship.

Yes, yes.

And when our children were young, that was my relationship with Bonnie. So Men are from Mars is the ultimate book to improve that relationship. But see, so many people aren't getting married. Twice as many people aren't married. Twice as many people are failing at marriages. This is like a crazy world right now. And part of the crazy world is that not everybody has the benefit of a traditional relationship where you have easy problems to solve. I can solve, help people so much. We're going to talk about today because that's your situation. Many of your listeners will be in that situation. But there's another dynamic which I write about in Beyond Mars and Venus. And that's the dynamic of woman working eight hours a day outside the home. Man working eight hours a day outside the home. And she's like looking for a wife when she gets home.

Yeah, that breaks my heart too, because I see this shift, John, and it's so profound, where women literally are functioning very in their masculine on a continuous basis.

And the problem with that is not that they're on their masculine side, it's that they're not also on their female side. That's the dynamic. So for those couples, if that's the choice they make, we all have choices in life and they don't want to get married or financially, he can't provide enough for her. So she's out there working. So that's just a reality. There's a solution there. And so that's what I talk about in the Beyond Mars and Venus book and the men are from Mars book is all the fundamentals when you're more of your masculine as a man and she's more of her feminine. Because being with not having to work, whenever you're working, making money, you're producing your male energy. Now let's, let's get out of the world of energies which people go, oh, that's a little airy fairy. Let's go a little bit of science facts, okay? When a man is feeling stressed, his testosterone levels will be dramatically lower than when he's happy and fulfilled. That's proven now, taking testosterone, it's a correlation, it's not a causation. You can't just put testosterone in your body and you suddenly feel happy and fulfilled. You've got to make it. But men who are making testosterone about 10 times more than a woman, those men will not be stressed. But if he's stressed, and this is measurable, not just a psychological thing, although it is psychological, you tell yourself you're no good, you're going to feel stressed. But we're measuring the stress level in the body. You measure by measuring cortisol. It's a stress hormone. Generally speaking, for a man, when his producing stress hormones, his testosterone levels will start going down. For a woman, when she's stressed, her estrogen levels will be going down. A happy woman, not a romantic woman, just a happy woman, no stress, you're feeling relaxed, you're at the beach, whatever, your estrogen levels will be 10 times higher than the man sitting next to you who's happy at the beach or happy doing Something together that is a biological difference between men and women. We just got to get it. And why do women have more estrogen and they need more estrogen because their body's designed to make babies. Whether they choose to make babies or not, they have this whole hormonal system that's changing every day of the month. And then afterwards, they still have that same hormonal system. It's just not as pronounced. Estrogen is necessary for her to make babies. If she can't make enough estrogen, her body thinks something is amiss and actually it will produce stress, but also under stress, what we just see when a woman is stressed by her work, when she, you know, the research points out that when women come home from their jobs, outside the home, at the office, on average, on average, their stress levels will be twice as high as a man's. Now, you can say, oh, that's because women are not treated as well in the workplace. You can say anything. That's not. All I'm saying is when you go to the workplace, women's stress levels are twice as high as a man's, on average. And when she comes home, they double. Now, when men go to the workplace, they have their different stress levels. On average, there's a certain stress level that men have, but when they come home, their stress levels go down. Even if they have a bad relationship, still, they'll just go watch TV or play a video game.

How so? Why is that? It's such a fundamental difference?

Well, that's because you need testosterone to make babies. You also need testosterone to protect a woman when she's making babies. And women need estrogen. There's a whole mechanism of putting on fat on her body so that it will feed the baby when it comes along. To make the baby, she needs more energy, more resources, and you get that from fat. So her body starts putting on fat as the estrogen is going up. Then as she's moving from ovulation to her period, her estrogen levels drop a bit, and progesterone levels have to be higher. Now, progesterone levels have to be higher than estrogen, but still estrogen needs to be about 10 times higher than a man's. Okay? So we have to realize that for her to get pregnant, there has to be a surge of estrogen, generally about 20 times higher than a man's. And what we know to be. And you can measure this when she's ovulating, if she's healthy, it will become 20 times higher than a man's. And when it's 20 times higher than a man. She puts out a smell. There's a research that's shown this puts out a smell that raises a man's testosterone levels, makes her more attractive to him.

I've noticed this. I've definitely noticed the smell aspect.

Well, it's a lot of awareness to do that because actually it's an invisible smell. Pheromones. Normally you can't consciously smell them, although you do feel comfortable with the smell of your partner. The flip side of this is if a man's testosterone levels go high, it will actually put out a smell and it will raise her estrogen levels and make him more attractive. So men who've been working out, men who are out there toiling in the sun, it turns on their wives. And if it doesn't, you know, a woman's just disconnected to other reasons why her estrogen levels are going down as opposed to up. Because there's psychological reasons that control estrogen. And that's why I talk about. There's behaviors you do and there's psychological reasons being your attitudes, the way you think that will regulate your hormones. So you. I could be in front of a. Well, I studied with a guy who tames lions, and when he goes into the cage, his stress level doesn't go up. He says if you have. You have to have ultimate confidence because if you have any fear, you've lost control. They sense fear. Animals sense fear.

I've heard that about dogs and bees and women as well.

Clearly with dogs. I was once in Spain and there was like a wild dog, and I made eye contact with that dog and I was afraid, and he locked onto me visually. You know, I just got out of there fast. But he sensed it because I was afraid.

We live. We live in such a complicated yet simple world where there's all these energy fields around us. I'm sure you're in very deep connection with that, with all your training and all your meditation. And I think about the ways where I get triggered with my woman. And I love the biology of which you're speaking because, yes, like all these chemicals, all these hormones, they have a massive impact on how we show up when you're triggered.

What's happening to your hormones, your estrogen. If you're a man, your estrogen levels just went up to what they were when you were between 2 years old and 13. You see, that's the repressed feelings. See, when your estrogen levels go up, you become like a child. And when you're married and you're having sex, you're naked. You don't get naked in the world. That's more your adult self. But when you get naked with somebody, that activates all the buttons of childhood. That's why couples have so much stuff coming up they're pushing down. Childhood issues start coming up because you're. You know how. You know when couples fall in love? That's how children feel about their parents. You know, I love you, I love you. Some couples even say, baby, you know, this is tender, tender, loving, feeling so happy to be in love. And then anything unresolved from the past starts to come up. It doesn't all just come up at once. It comes up in waves and waves. It comes up as buttons get pushed. Everything's fine for a few days, and a button gets pushed. And what we do is we think, the reason I'm upset is because you said this and you did that, or you didn't do this, or you could have done that, and why don't you love me? Fears. All of that stuff is overreactions. If we can just really own that everything we get upset about, particularly in a marriage, is an overreaction because. But never say to our partner, you're overreacting. Freud brought in the idea that all unhappiness is an overreaction. Okay, we're overreacting all the time. 90% of what's bothering you is not about what happened today. And here's another example of just so couples can relate to this or individuals. One of the things that used to bug Bonnie for many years in our relationship is that I'd walk through our house and I turn on lights and I leave them on. And she's always, like, following me coming through the living room. Why is the light on here? He's in the den, you know. So she said, you left the light on again now. For the first couple of years, he just forgot it. I'll turn it off. But over and over, she kept asking me a few years later when she sees I'm not doing it, when I don't do it, she interprets it differently. The interpretation is, I've asked for something little and he doesn't do it. That must mean he doesn't love me. That must mean I'm not important to him. If he won't do something so little for me, this is logical. If he doesn't do something little for me, then what if I have a big need? See, in her mind, if he can't do something little, he won't do big. But actually, the way men are, anytime A woman is in distress, men will get up and start doing something. Big problems activate testosterone. Testosterone is the energy hormone in men. And little problems activate a little testosterone. No big deal. No big deal. I'm going to watch tv. No big deal. I'm going to relax. No big deal. Let's go have dinner. We don't worry as much as women. And if men do worry, that's beyond Mars and Venus. They're on their female side. When we talk about beyond Mars and Venus, if a woman's on her male side, the majority of the woman who's on her male side, independent, can make money. She can't feel love as much as she potentially could because she doesn't feel I depend on him right now. Your wife has enormous potential to feel her love for you because she needs you. She knows she needs you. There's something very primitive and primal in a pregnant woman. A mother of a baby knows. I can't do this alone. You've got to get out there and kill that tiger. I got to protect myself. See, this is all primitive stuff, and it makes relationships great if you know how to handle her emotions when they come up, because they will come up.

Let's talk about the handling then. Because I think about the old school, the caveman, where all these hormones and everything got created. We're still them, John. We're still ancient. I think if you look at our DNA, it has only changed maybe a percent, a percent and a half. So what are some of the ingredients to how we as men. Let's speak specifically for the men. I consider myself to be a conscious man. But look, I have room for improvement, so we all do. So when I show up, what are a handful of ways of being as a man who identifies as masculine? It doesn't matter. You could be in a hetero or a homosexual relationship. It's fine. But for a man that wants to really show up and hold that space. We've heard this term holding space for a woman. How do you make sense of that? And what are some of the ways the ingredients that we can show up as men?

Okay, hold the space basically means when she's crazy, you don't tell her. When she's overreacting, you don't overreact back. You're steady, you're grounded. You're certain, you're certain that you are the solution to her problem without speaking. You see, we speak to solve their problem. What men do. If there's a fire, I'm a fireman. I'm going to go put out the fire. Right, Put out the fire. So a woman's upset, I want to put out the fire. Explain to her, using our male side is logic. I'm going to use my. And when I say male side is logic, I'm not saying women are not logical. I'm saying when you're on your male side, you're logical. And when you're on your female side, you're emotional. And if you have an integration of both, then you're logical and emotional at the same time. And that's usually when you're feeling very happy. That's what logic and emotion is. Happy. It's love, it's excitement, it's enthusiasm, it's positive feeling is logical and emotional. Negative emotions. You're starting to lose your logic. You're back to a childlike state where you're powerless, you can't reason things through, you don't get what you want, you throw a tantrum. And women have the same estrogen as little boys up to about 12 years old. But after around 12, 13 years old, men's test boys, their testosterone goes five to 10 times higher. That pushes their estrogen down in relation. For women, their estrogen goes up five to 10 times. That means they have more emotion and they need that estrogen, otherwise their body will experience higher levels of stress. Or when things stress her out, it lowers her estrogen. They go hand in hand. So we just have to know if a woman is stressed. Holding the space for her means hearing what she has to say and providing a particular kind of loving support. And that's. I write about this in Mena from Mars, and it's in Beyond Mars and Venus, but you need more techniques. And beyond Mars and Venus. Because you see, once women are on their independent side, they tend to always see what's wrong with you, which means they don't trust you, which makes it even harder to go to their female side and share emotions in a more positive way. Vulnerability is scary for them to avoid being vulnerable because they don't feel safe, they're going to solve all problems and their mind is filled with overwhelmed thoughts. But coming back to holding space, whether it be either side, the solution is the same. Man up. And what it means to be a man. When your wife is upset, if she's in danger, you protect her. If she's upset, here's the thing. If she's upset, she's in danger of looking foolish, she's in danger of critical thoughts, she's in danger of you minimizing her. She's in danger of you chuckling or rolling your eyes because she's like a child at that time. That's whenever you're in your emotions, those emotional, childlike feelings come up and you can't belittle her in any way. So it looks like this. Don't speak. If she's upset, don't speak. Put us sticker on your window. Don't speak. Listen. Don't speak. That's what you do is stop speaking. And then what you also do is listen. You just say to a man, you should listen to her. He'll listen and then give her a solution. He'll listen to her and then tell her, you don't need to feel that way. He'll listen to her and say, well, you're not understanding this correctly. He'll explain, but that's not what I meant. You said this, I said that. Now you're explaining so that she'll feel good. How many times do you explain so she'll feel good? That's what we do. That's what I do for a living. That's why I get paid. I explain everything. That's a good thing unless my partner is upset. So what do you actually do at that point? You need something to go to. What's your go to thing? Well, the basics are you say to her, you don't speak. When she pauses, you say, help me understand that better. Just write that down. You should. You'll forget this. Write down, help me understand that better. And she'll talk more. See, she feels. Oh, he's welcoming me to come out. That allows something to come out. Because, see, women are not experts at emotions, just as men are not experts. They talk about they're good at their feelings. Feelings is just feeling your thinking. They feel their thoughts. Whereas logic is you think your thoughts. Okay? Think what you know, feel what you know. And just because you feel something means it doesn't mean it's right. Just because if I think something doesn't mean it's right. That's part of the craziness of our society, people, oh, I feel this. Well, as if that's true. It's not unless you act. Unless it is true. So you can't just say, just because I feel it means it's right or it's wrong. We have to be careful with feelings. And if your heart is open, usually what you feel is good intuition. And if your heart is open, usually what you think is really smart. Okay, but your heart has to be open.

I have to interrupt you right there. That is a really huge point. Because A lot of people in the spiritual community, they'll say, well, if it was feels good, do it. And I'm following my highest excitement, I'm following my highest joy. But that can actually be a sabotage because as you know and as you teach, relationship is the ultimate conduit for spiritual personal growth. And that's not always going to feel sexy. It's not going to be candy canes.

And puppies when the only way you can grow is to step beyond where you were. Limited and limitation is all of our negative beliefs, all of our negative emotions, all of our stuff, all of our selfishness, all of our greed, all of our hatred, all of our violence, whether we hide it or not, it's in there, all that stuff. Spiritual growth can only occur when you become aware of that and feel it and know it. Feel it and know that it's not you. Feel it and know that it's not you. You have to let it go. There's all these processes to let it go. But that's really what you're doing, is you've got to feel it, your limitation, and then you move beyond it, and then you want to grow some more. You've got to be your button pushed again. That's why relationships are the ultimate place. One of the reasons a relationship is the foundation of growth, because your partner can push your buttons. Because your partner. You're more open and vulnerable with them. The world doesn't push my buttons that much.

Sure. It's easy with friends to not get your buttons pushed because you're not having sex with your friends. Well, hopefully, if you're not getting naked with them. That's right, you're not getting naked. So we, our partner pushes all of our buttons. And the big part of this, like you've talked about before, is all the childhood stuff, issues, things that are unresolved, all that stuck energy, it starts to bubble to the surface. So how do we manage that in a conscious, loving way? Is it simply identifying, hey, partner, I am feeling this from childhood. This isn't you, this is me. And just be honest about naming the sensation or naming the emotion in the present moment. Is that the beginning place?

Those are all good techniques without a question. I didn't finish the practical step. This would change any relationship, particularly with your wife and any, any woman. Okay. Is when she's talking. Help me understand that better. Tell me more. Prepare yourself for a conversation that would normally take a minute to convey. The information will be 10 minutes. So you just sort of, you know, it's like, all right, we're going to be here for a while, 10 minutes. Now, if you say anything, it could be hours. I know men, they say what I'm supposed to just listen. It can go on for hours. That's because you don't just listen. Because you always correct the sticker.

John, we have to have a sticker like you're talking about. Don't speak.

Don't speak. And help me, help me understand that better. Well, tell me more. And what else? Those are your three things. What else, what else is going on inside or she's upset. Now, having said that, that's the one of the things a man can do. It's just one of many things that can raise her estrogen. And as you get good at it, your testosterone will go up. Why does it go up? Because you're actually putting out the fire by allowing her to be in touch with her feelings and letting it go herself. See, she's a grown up. She's capable of looking at things and letting go of them if she has the space to do it. Sometimes they just need the space to do it. Now, if you're actually zoning her out, it will take her longer. So literally, you want to watch what your mind does. You want to keep. That's why you want to continue. There's something that happens to me and to any man if you say, well, help me understand that better. Well, what else about that? Well, give me some details on that. And if it's acceptable in the relationship, you can also. This is fancier because I have to listen to women for 50 minutes. Okay. My job, sometimes an hour. Oh, can be terribly boring unless I say, well, help me understand that. Let's go into that a little bit more. Well, tell me what happened. And I have permission to do that because I'm a therapist, but a husband should. Women would hunger for this if they felt safe. That's why they go to therapists. 90% of the people go to therapists are women and they just talk about their feelings. And so many therapists I know that just. Oh, she just goes on and on and on. I loved it. I don't do it full time now, but I do it part time. I love was one of the hardest things for me to give up. I had no burnout at all, okay. Because I knew how to do it, which is as soon as they start to talk, I said, well, help me understand that better. What else? Tell me more. And what emotion do you feel? Well, what do you. How did that make you feel inside? Then I use a simple Technique, I'm going to let you know, it's a little advanced, but it's a basic technique. There's four emotions that will release negativity very quickly and raise estrogen. Now, what's important is just to experience these emotions will raise estrogen. If a woman's estrogen goes up, then stress goes down. And if stress goes down, her brain all by itself will start being optimistic rather than pessimistic. Whenever a woman's making, or man making stress hormones, you're making stress hormones means blood flow is also going to the right prefrontal cortex, which always sees the negative, always remembers the negative, always anticipates the negative. It's right here on the right. And when stress goes down the left anterior parietal, left prefrontal cortex now starts seeing the good. It starts remembering the good. It starts remembering the support you have in your life. It starts remembering that you are worthy of love, you're good enough, everything's okay. That's the left prefrontal cortex. When women live in a world of low estrogen stimulation, which is making money, by the way, they need to balance it by expressing the truth of what's going on inside. And if they're, if they're making money, what's going on is their estrogen levels are low. They're going to have negative emotions. This part of the brain that sees the worst is activated. So she's going to keep. She can't let go of it. They're called automatic negative thoughts. She's going to keep remembering one little thing you did. It's kind of like the guy's washing the dishes and cleans up the kitchen, and he forgets one sink, now he forgets one glass. And she says, you forgot this glass. Or look at this glass, you didn't clean it right. She'll go right to whatever is possible to be negative about. That's her brain works that way. It's amazing what man's brain will tend to if he's not so much on his estrogen side. He tends to go, no big deal, don't worry about it. And the challenge for him, if he does that too much, he's not motivated, he didn't do anything.

So what is that mechanism? When you said literally, she remembers just the negative thing? And usually in that situation, men would say, and we've talked about this in our Wellness Force groups too, where the man would be like, but I did all these other things. I did 10 great things. But there's that one thing, baby, why do you point out the one thing. You know, how do we get around that? How do we actually integrate that?

You just simply go, help me understand that better or tell you. Are you just on that one? It's another word. You just basically says you're right. You just don't. Don't disagree with it. You see, you want her to be happy, and so therefore you think if she, if she's focusing on that one thing, she won't be happy. No, what will make her happy is being able to talk more about that. So when I did that, how did that make you feel? Yeah, you can't use logic. You cannot use logic when emotions are. When, when she's. When, you know, people can be emotional and if they're pretty much positive emotions, it's all. It's logical and emotional. But if she's just focused on negative. Her estrogen is low. Your only objective is to raise her estrogen. And logic doesn't do it, other than you're being logical by realizing you're dealing with an emotional person whose primary need. And I'll get to this now, and this is right in Mena from Mars mentioned. Read these chapters over and over. They're called the. The love needs. Our different love needs. The first one is they need to get a message that you care. That means you're looking and you're asking questions will help me understand that better. And that must be frustrating. That's the next higher level I was getting to. That must be. So I get it. That's frustrating. Or I can see you're feeling disappointed. And if they say no, that's okay. Then they're not feeling disappointed. Don't argue with them, but just add a little awareness. Well, that must be frustrating.

It seems like it's just a validation.

It's just a validation. And if it's not the right phrase, that's okay. It just. Don't argue with her. But you are frustrated. You're not about being right. You're just about giving her opportunity to talk more about. Well, no, I'm not frustrated. I'm actually kind of angry at you. Oh, okay. Well, tell me about that. Tell me how that, how you relate to that. You want to get her. It's kind of like be a therapist. You have to be a therapist to help women come back to their female side today and. Or to be a husband, even if they're on their female side and these emotions come up. What therapy do is I simplify it. Now, you know, I've trained thousands of coaches. We simplify it down to help me understand it better. Tell me more. What else? There's little triggers where you would want to really go into deeper. If somebody ever uses the phrase, you know, you know, that means they don't know. They can't articulate it. So you go a little deeper there. You go deeper. If they use the phrase always, never, you know, they're about four years old. Those are the triggers.

No.

1, you never. You always. You're not dealing with an adult now. You're dealing with the most precious person in your life who needs extra love and support. That all? That's all it is.

Did you find that this wisdom came more online for you when you became a father? Because it seems like, really, as you watched your children grow, you would see that same behavior in your spouse and your partner. Is there a learning curve with both that are similar?

Well, you should read my book, Children from Heaven to learn about that. How to process your children. One of the big mistakes we make and parents do, when children throw tantrums or they get upset or they cry, we either say, don't cry or we give them ice cream. Both are wrong. I want that toy. Okay, I'm going to go buy that toy and you'll be happy. No. Children need clear, reasonable boundaries, Loving reasonable boundaries. And then they have to rub against them and be upset. You set reasonable boundaries. You have to know what to do when your child cries, when your child gets mad or sulks or whatever. Then you go. And the same technique, all right, but with a child, you say, I understand. Because you're an adult, you supposed to already know this about yourself. So you go, I understand. You're upset, you're bothered. And they go, yeah. It was interesting at that point when you say, I know you're upset about this because you want that ice cream. And I said, we're not going to have ice cream today. And they go, yeah. And they'll be happy for a moment because they think, oh, now you understand me. Because my assumption is, because you understand me, whatever I want, you always want to give to me. Because that's their experience. Whenever they want something, you want to give it to them. So I understand. And then you say, but we're not going to have ice cream today.

What?

Why could I not have ice cream today? And I said, I know you're angry. You're angry. You're not getting what you want, and other kids are getting it, and it's unfair, isn't it? Yes, it's unfair. And then you say, it must be so disappointing. You feel Sad? Yes. I don't get to have my ice cream. I know you understand. You feel sad. There's four basic emotions. Anger, sadness. And then she starts to say, I feel. So I still start to cry at that point. A little bit more. I said, I understand you're sad. I understand you feel left out. Everybody's getting it. That hurts. That hurts our feelings. You're giving them emotional education at that time by helping them understand how they feel. You don't get all upset to teach them about emotions. You're steady. You hold the space. You're there for them with understanding, with caring and respect. Respect is honoring what they're going through rather than suppress it or satisfy whatever unrealistic demand, selfish demand. They have children learn how to be happy. Adults reason, I process that child inside of me so I can want something and not get it and still be happy. That's called delayed gratification. Most people want something and they get upset about it, and then they basically go, well, I don't want it anymore. Either they feel I want it, I can't have it, and they feel victimized, or. Or they feel I want it and it's not going to happen, so I'm not going to bother.

Beyond the delayed gratification as a tool, what are the other ways that we can practice really holding the space? Being patient, Being able to just be in the presence of a woman who's complaining or a child that's crying. What is it about us that makes us be selfish and say, well, this is too much. I'm overwhelmed. I'm going to exit. Especially speaking from my own space.

If I'm hungry, does it. Don't beat yourself up for that.

If I'm hungry, angry or lonely or tired, that's even worse because then that's stacked on top of it.

Yes, yes. You don't get much sleep, you're irritated and she's complaining. You say you do your best. This takes years of. Like I said, I'm a master of meditation. It takes years for me to listen to a woman complain about me. Okay? And I explain. People come to me, they say, why can you listen so good to me? Yeah, my husband can't. I said, because you pay me, because you don't complain about me, and because it's only 50 minutes.

That's right.

You don't have that reality at home. So if I was teaching women, I teach them how not to complain and how to share feelings without complaining. But you asked me for the men listening. So what you do is you practice there's a. There's a. She's complaining. All you have to know. The Greeks talked about this. There was a witch. Her name was Medusa. Are you familiar with that word?

Yes. She had all the snakes coming out.

Those are the complaints.

Yes, the snakes of Medusa.

And if you look her in the eyes, you turn to stone. That's because you listen. You look at her when she's upset with you, disapproving of you. Disapproval is rejection. Boom. Or whether she's doing it or not. That's how it sounds to you. You look her in the eyes. When she's doing that, you'll turn to stone. And that's when you feel like, f. This. I can't stand this. I got to get out of here. I don't give a damn. Every man's got that part of him when his testosterone goes down and his estrogen goes up. It's a mechanism to protect her from killing her. So my wife says to me when she's complaining, and basically, I know if my buttons are getting pushed. And the more you practice this, the less your buttons are going to get pushed because you figure out how to deal with this. And also, if you know, your emotional processing, it becomes really easy. But even knowing what's going on. My friend Warren Farrell wrote a book called why Men Are the Way They Are. And I think you should ask him to be on your show.

He wrote the Boy Crisis, too. Yes.

Yeah, we wrote it together. The Boy Crisis is really good book.

Excellent.

So he helped me with this. Or, I mean, I already do this, but he has a metaphor that's very helpful to me, and he calls it a love guarantee. Just imagine this ribbon, a golden ribbon. First prize. You're going to be rewarded if you suck it up and don't say anything. Okay? But once you say something, you're triggered. Just want you to know that woman complains and they trick you. Not consciously. They'll say, why didn't you do this? How many times do I have to tell you to turn out that light? Why can't you remember that? Why didn't you do this? Why did you call? Why are you upset with me? What are you feeling? I know you're feeling something. What is it? And I say, actually, I'm more interested in how you feel. What's going on inside. Don't answer those questions. And they want those questions, because then as soon as you say anything now, they can be more upset at you. You see, they want to be. Feel. See somebody feels safe being upset. If there's somebody to blame. Okay, if there's nobody to blame, then it's my fault that they're afraid of being seen as an unloving person, as a complaining, unhappy woman. So you have to constantly give reassurance that you're not going to hold it against her. This is normal. Without being her psychology teacher. Because some people don't like to be taught by their partners. That's why I read my books together. You get this information, it's nice hear it from an expert other than your partner. It's easier to take in. But having said that, whether your partner does it or not, you reads it or not. When she's upset and your button gets pushed, then what you do is protect her from the dragon inside of you. Every man's got a dragon. And you tend to shut down and pull away. Some men, because they witness violence while growing up, they actually become violent. You're actually protecting her from the. From the fight or flight. Your flight is protecting her from the fight. So my wife, when I would take time out once she started to understand this I take. Okay, I need some time. You just try to do it as politely as possible, which is. Look, I really need some time to think about what you've just said and we can talk another time.

How much breath does that weave into the conversation? In our Breathe Breath and wellness program, we have some relationship style breathing where before we're practicing what you're teaching us, I'll actually cue someone to breathe three circular breaths and then say what you just said. Because if we're not breathing, John, we're not choosing. We're kind of a victim of our own biology.

Just you're listening and you realize your button is getting pushed. You. If you speak out loud other than a courteous statement to escape to flight. And when you pull away, taking those three breaths is a great technique. Just. And she can already start to see that when he does those breaths, he's trying to hear her. It's an act of love. And then he can say after those three breaths, maybe he can say, well, let's go over this again. I want to hear what you just said. Always when you say to a woman, I want to. Let me. I really want to hear this. Let's try it again. Say that again. What they're going to do is feel he cares. The four kinds of love. Caring. Show caring. Trying to understand or to understand. I get it. I see that little nods that kind of say, I understand. Another one is respect. Honor her. To respect someone as you don't you don't minimize them. You don't express annoyance at them. You don't get mad at them. You don't raise your voice to them. Any of those things. Take a while for her to recover from that. And too much yelling and screaming is really hard to fall in love, to find that love again, it's just not safe for her. Men need to know that when you're angry, what is happening hormonally in your body? Your estrogen levels are going up and your testosterone is going down. Do you want to be a wimp? Do you want to be seen as insecure? Do you want to be seen as a child? You're not seen as a big, powerful hero at that time. When you're cool, calm, and collected and you have space between responses, even in a conversation, mull it over. Consciously say, let me take a little time here so she'll get the message that I'm seeking to understand what she says. And just like you're now nodding your head, like nodding your head, nodding your head. Help me understand that better. What's so interesting with those phrases? You're in control. You're on top. See, this is testosterone goes up when you feel confidence that I know what to do to solve this problem. And that's what I mean by you're in control. You're in control of the situation. You know how to make it better. You're not trying to control her. You're trying to. You're providing the support she needs.

It's really interesting to me because I think about how many men have been knocked on their ass, maybe losing a job, especially what's happened in the past couple years. So does that lack of confidence take away from their skill set to be able to breathe, to validate, to hold the space? Have you seen this in your students, in your work?

The hardest thing for any man is to be out of work. Second hardest is to work and not feel that you're being paid enough. It's the confidence that I, you know, if I'm doing a job and people clap, for example, my job talking to the audience, and they clap, I know I did a good job. You know, they can pay in advance, but I still want to know I did a good job. All right? So there's the acknowledgement that I made a difference. This is what everything about masculinity is, is I solved the problem. I contributed. I did something for someone, and I overcame fear to do. It actually knocks testosterone up. See, fear is estrogen. So taking action in spite of fear raises testosterone so anything you do, where you choose to go out of your comfort zone, a standard personal growth idea. I'm choosing to go out of my comfort zone in terms of action and behavior will raise testosterone. If I choose to go out of my comfort zone in terms of sharing my feelings, sharing my whatever's deep inside of me, what I think, what I wish, what I want, what I feel, and the things that we're most afraid to share, of course, is our negative emotions. So if you share your negative emotions, your estrogen levels soar. So when men share negative emotions, you're just becoming a wimp, a baby, whatever. And negative emotions could be anger, could be sadness, could be despair. And there's. There's a place to feel your negative emotions with your man.

Anger can be sacred at times. What is an example of where anger can be sacred then? Because I don't want to shame anyone from never feeling anger, that it's only a wimp emotion.

We all feel anger. If we actually get in touch with what we feel and we don't get what we want, we really want it, we feel anger. You know, I lose my wife, I'm angry. I don't want to be single. I don't want her to die. I don't want to have to start all over again. You know, I'm angry about that. I'm angry with her, but I'm angry about this. You don't have to be angry at somebody angry about the situation. I'm angry what the doctors did, what they didn't do, and what this happened and that happened. I'm angry this didn't work. I'm angry. They told me this would work, this didn't. I can be angry about that stuff. And you can't actually heal anything unless you process to the extent of your pain. That much anger, that much sadness. And when you lose a wife, it's despair, hopelessness, all powerlessness, aloneness. And then there's fear. The fear that can be so many different things. Fear. This pain will never go away for a lot of people. And even though I know the pain goes away and gets healed, I still have the pain. I'll never be happy again. I just want to die. I don't want to live in this world. I'm afraid I'll never, never be fulfilled again. I'm afraid I didn't do the right things. I could have done the right thing maybe if I'd only tried this, I only tried that. All these irrational fears come up, and then you feel guilty, you know, and what I felt guilty for is basically so many sleepless nights for reflecting on times when I wasn't the perfect husband. You know, everybody has this if they tell the truth of them. So nobody's perfect. And when I say that perfect I wasn't the perfect husband, I mean, I didn't turn out the lights. I'm a great husband, but it's not like I beat her or anything like that. But argue with her much? Only in the beginning. We did have lots of arguments until I figured out that in an argument, I always blame her and she always blames me, so I stopped blaming her. You can't argue if one person stops blaming. And what can a woman do to be vulnerable? And this is what happens now. There's another whole dynamic that's beyond Mars and Venus. When. And it just happens more if you're working outside the home. But it can happen even if she's not working outside the home. Is that many things are bothering us in our lives, okay, there's our health, there's our body image, there's our parents, there's our friends, there's our siblings, there's relatives, there's finances. There's so many issues. There's politics, okay, so all these things stimulate emotion. If it's all support, it stimulates positive emotion. If it's not all support, it's not all optimistic. It's producing negative emotions. But when a woman's on her male side, she doesn't feel those negative emotions. They're all inside. And then she comes home to her partner who is safer than the rest of the world, and it all comes up and overreacts on him. You always get the brunt of it. And so what women have to do and then you can't.

It's so it becomes more work for the man at that point.

It's so unloving. It's such as so unloving. See, for your testosterone to go stay high, you need to feel confident that I am loved, that I'm important, I'm significant, I'm appreciated. Men don't ever say the phrase I want respect. That's just being a tyrant. Women need respect. They need caring, understanding, respect and reassurance. Reassurance is a key factor to keep that estrogen up. One of the key factors in one of the most popular chapters in Men are From Mars is little things make a big difference on Venus. Little things make a big difference. Men don't understand this. They think, okay, I did something big. I should get a lot of points for that. Not that we're all trying to keep score, but the body keeps score. You do something nice for me, if you're a woman, you do something nice. There's a surge of estrogen. That's just reality. Whenever a woman feels you've done something for me, there's a surge of estrogen. But that's unique about women is you get the same surge of estrogen whether what you did is big or small. This is biology.

That's the first time I've ever heard that. Everybody write that down on Venus.

Every act of love, an act of love, big or small, has the same reaction, and it's basically a point. So I give her 50 roses. I think there's like 50 points. That's going to last a long time. Actually, a week later, they're all dead anyway. You give one rose, you get practically the same reaction.

Or it's like a wealthy businessman that buys his wife a Mercedes Benz, but yet he doesn't listen to her when she's crying about something.

That's right. So he cannot make sense of why she's an unhappy woman. This is the wealthy men that come to me, it's such a good concept for them, particularly because they think that you have a house, you have insurance, you have a car, you have all these things. I work so hard. I provide all that stuff for you. You should be happy. Ironically, the more things you have, then suddenly it makes you feel safe, and that brings up your needy child. And so your brain now goes into, do I deserve it and will I lose it? All these fears, you know, in my life, one of my wife's biggest challenges was her fear I would die. And then she would. She wouldn't have all this, you know, I'm a big earner, big supplier. I work hard. It's not like I have so much money. But she's kind of like in her mind is like she was more dependent on me, and she didn't. She had her own job, but it just wasn't enough to support our lifestyle. So the process was when she'd be upset about. Worry about money. I don't say, honey, don't worry about. I make so much money, honey, don't worry about the house is worth this much if I'm gone. You just sell the house. You're reset for life. You know, that's solving problems. Which if she wasn't upset, I. We could have that conversation. You know, she came to me and said, you know, John, you know, we're getting up there and just want to know what your plan would be. If you were to. If you were to die, what do you think would be best for me? If she had that conversation. She never had that conversation. Other times we'd have that with our lawyer and whatever. But when she's in that state, I have to ask, help me understand that better. What are your fears? And you seek to really understand if you were that dependent on somebody, why you would feel that way. That's called relatedness. And that creates chemistry, that creates passion. If you're with somebody who thinks just like you relate to everything, you don't experience passion. It's like there's this great thing of Seinfeld where he said, you know, I found the perfect girlfriend, and he's a comedian. For those who haven't seen Seinfeld, I realize not everybody sees Seinfeld. I found the perfect girlfriend and everybody's, like, really happy for him. And he says, you know, we're both comedians. I tell a joke, she can finish it. She's got. She thinks just like me. She reacts like me. She's just like me. And a week later, he's done with the relationship, said, what happened? Your relationship was so harmonious? She says, yeah, but it's like being with me all the time. I want to be with somebody different. There's differences create polarity and attraction. And so, like, if you're in a gay relationship, there has to be the polarity to sustain the passion, which means both partners at some times. She needs to be more in her masculine. He needs as she the other. She needs to be more in her feminine. So you can experience that polarity of relating to something different from you. So what would be different in a relationship is we have a whole history which is different. And when you can bring forth that difference and your vulnerability, then your partner can then relate to something that they didn't experience. Now, with heterosexual couples, just hearing what she feels is going to create attraction. And not being able to relate to her feelings in some way will kill the attraction. She won't feel safe. So you have to. You have to think a little bit. You know, this is. You have to understand that if I was a woman and I was regulated by hormones of estrogen, then I would. I would have these feelings. Because right now I've been on my male side. Now I'm going to go to my female side. And it's not logical, okay? It's not. It's loving, it's happy, but it's not always going to make sense. But she can make sense of it. If she feels safe to Express what she feels. Then her estrogen goes up, her stress levels go down, and now she's going to be looking at the positive rather than the negative. When we in a state of cortisol, we see 10 times more negative than positive and we get stuck in that with chronic stress. Remember what I said about women who work out in the world, they has twice the stress level in the workplace, they come home and it doubles again. For men, it goes down. Now why does it go down and it's not always happening for men in modern days now? Because many men are on their female side and they feel guilty taking their alone time. Cave time rebuilds your testosterone. You're out there solving problems, it keeps your testosterone up, but you actually use up your supply of testosterone. So you take time alone. Doing something that you're confident at, something you're good at, something you enjoy, but you don't necessarily have to enjoy it so much. It's something you like to do that you're good at. Challenging is better if you think about in your life. Any man listening? If I look back to some of the greatest things I feel best about, it was a challenge. When I did the 200 pound press foot press, I felt like, yes, I did that. I worked hard to get there. I could do that. I felt great. It's when you challenge yourself and overcome that, that's what builds confidence. And you're bringing up the thing about men out of work. It's just you're not doing anything. You've got to do things. You have to behave in a certain way that is of service to others. The ultimate aspect of masculinity. What we need most from our wives that we don't always get. So we have to have delayed gratification. What we have, we need more of it than them, okay? Because they got all this estrogen, which is like a child. We have our, we got our buttons pushed. We need to gracefully take our time out, which is, look, I need to think about this, I want to think about it. And then we'll talk again. And then you have a little ritual you do is that if I was really triggered, I'm not going to just come back and say, let's talk about this again, I'm going to come back and do a lot of little things to build your estrogen up. Because anytime a man says, look, I can't hear you, even if done politely, she's going to feel rejected, she's not going to feel safe. So they rebuild the estrogen. My wife taught me all this stuff 4 hugs a day keeps the estrogen always consistent. Supply 6 second hug, not a sexual hug. It produces non sexual touch, will produce a hormone called oxytocin in a woman. Oxytocin helps her feel safe to once again feel I depend on you and depending on you for something increases her estrogen. Whenever you do something for a woman, so I tell my wife, look, anything you want, just ask me for it. Particularly if it's a little thing and I can do it quickly, I'll jump because it only takes a few minutes. Like, would you bring me a cup of tea? Yes, I'll go make it right now. Would you make me some orange juice? Yes, I'll go do it right now. I even have a technique which you could do for fun. It's a really fun technique do a couple of times a week. It's called genie in a bottle. I'm the genie and you're going to rub the genie the bottle. Which means you're going to, you've got 10 minutes or 20 minutes out. 10 minutes is good. Where you're going to ask me to do things for you, little things. And no matter what I'm going to go, yes, happy to do it right away. And you'll get like 10 points. Now what women don't know about men is that when we make a blunder, if she uses the phrase it's not such a big deal or don't worry about it. I suppose in preference any complaint with hey, you forgot to call me and that look, just say, you know, it's not a really big deal, but today you forgot to call me. And I really love it when you call me. See, it's that way of learning to communicate that little thing about my marriage. See, when a marriage is really good and a woman is stressed, she's got to really look for little things to be upset about. I'm a marriage counselor. So many little things which do erupt into bigger things because then a man sees the complaint as totally rational and then defends himself. Then she goes, you don't hear me, you don't feel me, you don't love me. The argument, it becomes completely nuts. Couples go nuts in their arguments or whatever, just tone it down and you take that time away. And when it, when it came to the complaint, she'd always like for many years, she, you forgot again. And it'd be this disapproving look. And women don't. That's the, that's the, what's it called? The snakes coming out of the head.

Yes, if you cut off one snake, another grows back.

I cut off what? We never got to that part. You cut one off. Now you got three. You look into her eyes at that time. That means go into her when she's criticizing you. You turn the stone. So how did he actually transform? He actually cut off her head. But how did he transform? Is he. He didn't look into her eyes. What he did is he looked into the shield and he saw the reflection of her, and he cut off her head that way because you can't look her in the eye. So the key here is reflection means rather than look at her from my point of view, I'm going to look at her from her point of view. See, that's what we have to do. It's the old saying, I walk a mile in my moccasins. And there'll be no judgmentalness because we judge. There's nothing to be upset about. Why are you complaining? Why can't you appreciate me? And women don't know that what men need most, and I want to throw this in here as men, what we're looking for, and we don't get it, our buttons get pushed, particularly in marriage, because that's when we're most vulnerable. We're like six, eight years old. We don't go, oh, I feel like eight years old. You react like an eight year old because that's when you had high estrogen. And right now, your testosterone is going down, you're triggered, your estrogen is going up. And based upon your personality or temperament, you'll either be angry, irritated, you'll be disappointed and pout. You'll be manipulative because you're afraid. You got to try to control her. Or you just go, I'm sorry, that's who I am. And you melt. You become a people pleaser. You give up on yourself. You just have no sense of self. A lot of different reactions according to temperament. But the bottom line here is when you're upset, you're triggered. You need to take time. It's called cave time. It's where you do things that make you feel good that aren't necessarily what you like to do, but things that challenge you to solve a problem challenge you in some way. It could be a video game, although it's a really bad cave time, but it is possible because you're addicted to it. But video games are designed to make you addicted to it, so you take too long there.

Yeah, I feel like a better cave time is like an ice bath or a sauna or A training session or something?

Absolutely. Yeah. Those are, those are the real, those are the real cave times. They make you feel alive. And even, even the old fashioned father knows best kind of look, he reads the newspaper, he looks at the news. News is really important. And reading news is better than looking at news. But I can't, I still look at news. I like watching the news. So I watch the news. And what that helps me do if I'm stressed is now the same thing with watching a football game. You're constantly saying, oh, you got to do this, you got to do this, you should do this, you should do that. And you're actually processing your feelings while you're doing that. Oh, we missed the flight. Oh, he got this. Oh, why are they doing this? We disagree and we feel some emotional involvement when you're watching a football game. You can do it, you can do it. Oh, we shouldn't have done that. See, it's a very emotional thing for men to see somebody else's problems helps him to forget his own problems. And if it's some challenging thing he's involved with like a game and he's attached to the winning, you know it's going to bring up feelings and he's actually processing it that way. The news is a distraction from your own feelings. Men had need the opposite of what psychology is telling everybody to do. Men need to detach from their feelings. They need to forget it. What's our instinct? We say to women all the time, can't you just forget it? Can't you just forget it? Can't you just let it go? This is what the Buddha taught, which is forget your problems. Life is great. That's what meditation is or can be, which is you can let go of everything, stop worrying about stuff, find a way to let it go. Well, for men, anything that will raise your testosterone will allow you to let it go. Now a lot of men today, because their testosterone is so low, their estrogen is so high that what they feel is they feel restlessness, they feel unhappiness, they feel a bit stressed, they feel pressured, all these kind of despair, hopeless. They just go right online and they do porn. Porn will raise your testosterone, but it is terrible for your health. It is terrible. What it does is people who do porn as a cave time end up after porn. Their estrogen levels go higher and their testosterone goes down. And now we got 21 year olds who are now they're all addicted to porn. These days their Testosterone levels are 20 on average. The American male at 20 years old is 20% lower testosterone than just 20 years ago.

It's so sad. And they've wired their limbic system for fake novelty instead of the real stimulus, which there's so many biological processes that need real skin and need real breath, but yet we've had this shallow replacement of pornography which is essentially just fake.

Yeah, the fake skin newness, then the novelty of fake, not only does it leave cause your testosterone go down and your estrogen go out of balance, but it also inhibits your brain cells from being able to be turned on to something which is familiar to someone familiar. It has to be new and different. And your ability to love that which you're familiar with, meaning those you love, basically, you don't have that ability. It desensitizes your ability. And there's many young men who are impotent with their wives or their girlfriends or whatever simply because they do porn. So if they're doing porn, a man, you just have to say no to it. Just like cocaine. And then there's a recovery time where you will feel low afterwards, basically. But that's cave time. So you need cave time activities and ice bath. You know, if you go. If you listen to Wyn Hof, he was like, he lost his wife. He's so much pain. He didn't have these skills for emotional processing. So he just got into ice water. And that just raises your dopamine and your testosterone, but ironically doesn't have to be such an extreme.

Just keep that in mind as we say goodbye. John, this has been so much wisdom and we're going to link a few resources and a few articles that you have written and also some previous guests on the show for all the women and men out there who are dealing with porn and addiction, because it really separates us from love, really separates us from ourselves. So I appreciate you bringing that up.

It does so much and it makes sense when you start looking at the biology and the brain function.

Oh, yes.

It really inhibits our ability to be turned onto our partners.

When in human evolution have we ever had 24-7-365, anything we want in the palm of our hand? We're an experiment. We're a huge experiment and it's unfolding right now.

We're simply going the wrong direction. Just a few. Couple more things and I know we're completing. But yeah, whatever you're doing, there's in the 60s when men were going over to their female side. I remember one of the phrases in one of the rock and roll songs, do what you like, do what you like. It was like a mantra. Do what you like. Do what you like. That's going to your female side. Just to know that. Do what you have to do, that's going to your male side. Do what you have to do. Now, it could be doing something you like that you're challenged at. That would be like playing tennis with a friend. That would be distracting yourself with the news because you care about the outer world, but then forgetting yourself temporarily. Do what you like. That's what women need to chant. I need to do more of what I like more. What I like, what I could have like to do. Like to have a relationship. How do I create that for men? Do what you have to do. So we focus a lot on some of the things men have to do. I didn't really get to the things women can do that will get them more love. But finish the thing on the love, the different loves. Men, what we're missing is appreciation. The number one testosterone booster through relationship with our family or with the world is appreciation. Basically acceptance. No disapproval, no rejection. And trust. When a woman learns how to trust a man and she can't, and trust is the biggest. When she's trusting him, she's making more estrogen than any other attitude. And when she trusts him, he's going to make more testosterone. And when he shows caring, demonstrates caring to her, she will feel more trust. So if I want my wife to trust and accept me the way I am and appreciate me and admire me for my character, good man I am. That's what we need as men. I need to. I can generate that. I'm powerful. I can show her more caring. She'll trust me more. I can listen to her, understand her. She will accept me more. Just women don't resist you after you accept them. You have to overcome your resistance to understanding them. And then if you respect her, doing things for her, she will appreciate you more. Doing lots of things. So that other thing I didn't finish, which is the now I forget the name of it because I already covered it. But for 10 minutes, she'll ask for little things. And a simple way to start is, would you give me a foot massage?

The Genie in the bottle Genie in the bottle genie exercise.

10 minutes, just. Would you give me a fit massage? Oh, would you carry this box for me? These are little things. They score just as much as big things. She needs to feel. Oh, would you bring me some warm water? Would you look for my phone? You know, would you drive me to the grocery store? These are all like little things. And she. And even for me and my marriage, I used to drive through yellow lights. That's how I drive. You drive yellow light? Zoom. She says, you know, I don't feel comfortable with that. I said, okay, because when I drive alone, I run through yellow lights. But when I'm with you, I'm going to stop. So every time I would stop, I put my hand on her thigh and I said, I did that for you. And. And she says, I know. So this. See, she plays her part. She appreciates the little things and makes sure I know she appreciates those little things. But the problem for everybody today is if you're stressed, if a woman's estrogen levels are low, everything you do doesn't score equal to anything big. Anything big doesn't do anything. You know, like the rich guy brings his unhappy wife a diamond ring, she throws it at him. If your estrogen levels are low, his doing lots of little things can help to gradually build it up. But more importantly, she needs to be responsible for her happiness. He needs to be responsible for his happiness. And then instead of looking to our partners to make us feel good, we look for ourselves and our life to feel good. We look to our partners to feel better. From good to great. I feel good, but when I am in a loving relationship, I feel great. So that is what we depend on, relationship to raise us up more. More than we can do for ourselves.

I don't know what I would do without relationship. It's how I've known myself. And even furthermore, when I look into my child's eyes, remember what that was like when you first had your child, your very first child, when you're a new dad, first baby.

I know, I know. So sweet. So much live now, just so you know, statistically. Statistically doesn't mean you have to be part of statistics. Men who are single have the highest testosterone level they get in a committed relationship, it goes down a notch. This is big. Studies showing this. Millions of men, they've tested because they have these clinics. Man in a committed relationship, it goes down notch. Married man, it goes down a notch. Father of a child, it goes down another notch.

I felt that.

Yeah, so you need more cave time. More cave time. And I told my wife, you know, even during the pregnancy, because that's also a drop. I said, right now, for nine months, I'm your complete slave. It was like that game all the time. Please ask me anything. Everything. And then after. But then we stop after the baby. And then after the baby came, I said, okay. For the next year, I'M your slave. And that will actually help women give themselves permission to ask because women often feel like I'm asking too much. What will I do? He'll be angry with me, he'll resent me. Because that's her world. When, yes, too much of a woman, she really holds onto it. But if you just reward a man, he'll let it go. So these are some of the dynamics. And here I am at 70 years old where 50 year old men have on average half the testosterone levels of what they had when they were young. And I'm at 70 and it's 50% higher. I just want men to know that it doesn't have to go down.

And you're not doing trt or are you doing trt?

No, I don't take hormones.

So this is all natural.

And none of the benefits I'm talking about will come by taking hormones. That's why you don't. Men can't have a heart attack if their testosterone levels are normal. Only you can only have a heart attack. Your testosterone levels are low. If your testosterone levels start lowering and lowering, you lose attraction for your partner. That's another thing. One more word on that, which is the research on men and sex or masturbation? Doesn't matter. Either one. When you have sex or masturbate, you ejaculate. Every ejaculation is a surge of estrogen and a drop in testosterone after having sex on Saturday night. This is all researched in Japanese studies. It's online. After having sex on Saturday night, the next day your testosterone level will be around your normal baseline. Everybody's got a baseline level. Then for the next six days, if you don't have sex and you don't ejaculate, your testosterone levels on the fifth or sixth day will start to rise a little bit. But on the seventh day they will dramatically increase to 50% higher than normal. That needs to be maintained. Otherwise, over time, your testosterone levels go into the average scale that 35 men are just going down. Now it's at 21. They're just going down for men.

Is that a practice of semen retention that you do? You talk about that in your work, semen retention practices?

Yes, I also do that. But this is the first level of semen retention is get rid of your addiction to ejaculation. If you maintain six days without ejaculating, you're starting to free yourself from the addiction to the release that happens and your sex is going to be better. Your testosterone levels will start rising. And I'm not Saying you can only have sex once a week. There's like special times, but you should have sex once a week. That's important in the beginning to free yourself. Because what they said, if you, if on the seventh day you don't ejaculate, it went up. Then it doesn't like double the next Saturday you've got to ejaculate and then wait six days and then ejaculate again. That's the first level of it. Then you have semen retention, which is like on 70 last year, twice I ejaculated. Probably had sex a lot. Because see, when you learn how to have orgasm without ejaculating, that means she's having orgasms, you're having orgasms, but you've learned how to not ejaculate. Then the next day you're in the mood, and next day, if you're stressed or busy, you don't have to do it. There's no have to when it comes to sex and allows a woman's desire to be sustained. So many women lose interest in sex primarily because you're conditioning her every time you ejaculate to not open up. Think about, for a woman, it's a surge of estrogen to the highest level when she orgasms or however high she goes and you orgasm and then you withdraw. There's a natural withdrawal that men experience in sex. You've producing a conditioning in her body that says, if I open up, I lose him, I open up, I lose him, I open up, I lose him. So that's inevitable. It's only a little conditioning, but if it happens over and over and over, it's a big conditioning. But if every Saturday you come back with 50% more testosterone than her body and you get new conditioning, which is that I get more by opening up. And then it goes the other way. So you're constantly rebuilding. It's called counter conditioning. In psychology. You have to you condition something. You can change that by doing counter conditioning. So it's kind of like if you have a kind of a boring time, but then suddenly your partner surprises you with something, you go, oh, I guess everything's wonderful again. And women need that reassurance that they're not going to lose you by opening up. And it's the body talking here the body is, estrogen is going high and then suddenly the testosterone goes away. The estrogen will drop. Men's testosterone raises a woman's estrogen higher. She does part of the job herself by being happy and fulfilled in her life. Doing these things to Raise estrogen. But then he can take her higher. Then he's gone. I don't know if I want to go that higher again. The body says, because he leaves me and I'm left. What does a woman do after having an orgasm? If her husband has ejaculated, she needs to make sure when he withdraws, she understands that's just a normal process in him. And that means if she's starting to feel a little needy, that means she's neglecting other needs that she has for connection. Connection produces estrogen, and actually it's selflessness that produces testosterone. Fixing things, solving things, handling things, overcoming challenges, whatever. And if we have too much estrogen, just simply. The ultimate testosterone producer is independence, detachment. When you detach from your emotions, your testosterone has a chance to come up because estrogen is emotion. So you detach and then you feel good. Now your emotions come up and you express love, affection, warmth, happiness, joy, attentiveness. All the positive things happen when you're integrating your estrogen back into your testosterone. But inevitably it will go too high and then you'll need to pull away. And then this is for all the women listening. When a man pulls away, he's just rebuilding testosterone. Don't pursue him because he needs to pull away a certain amount and his testosterone goes up. He's like a rubber band. He springs back, and then you spend some wonderful time together. He's going to pull away. Focus on his work, Focus on solving problems that don't have anything to do with her. His testosterone goes up, he comes back. And now what women do to sabotage this, this is Men are from Mars stuff in that book. Is that her estrogen? They're together. They're both feeling so much love, so much connection. That's high estrogen in him too. He has to pull away. It would just happen. He doesn't know what he's doing. He doesn't know himself. He's just pulling away. What happened? What happened? She'll go, what's the matter? What did I do wrong? Why aren't you upset with me? And she tries to go into the cave. That will just irritate and annoy him because he doesn't know what's going on. Give him the space. Be happy doing other connection. Don't be dependent on him for all your connection. Then he'll spring back and want to be close to you. So much to learn about that. And I want to mention, for women who are listening, we have a class@MarsVenus.com for women only. It's how to get your me time, which means when he pulls away all the different things in your life to make your estrogen and your progesterone and understand your period and your cycle and so forth. That's for women only. And for men, we have a great class for sex because men don't get all the things women need. Don't understand all the things women need when it comes to sex. So that, that's available at my. At my work, at my website, @MarsVenus.com and keep in mind that we also have a free class for anybody coming. It's marsvenous.com forward/gift. And I guess you'll have a link to that, Josh, but really just push the button. It starts with a 20 minute talk and you'll see, you'll want to do more. It's a three day. We'll send you emails and exercises and things to put everything I've said today into practice.

One of the things I think is really cool too is you run it with your daughter and your daughter helps you run the company. So there is this understanding of masculine and feminine, not just from your work, but also. Is she a millennial or does she have a connection to that group?

Well, she's 35, 36 years old.

Yeah.

I don't know what group that's in.

Yeah, she's a millennial.

Yeah, yeah. All her courses. We've got one coming out in a month or so that's called Understanding Men. We took a year for her to write it, but every word she goes over with me, long discussions and I learned stuff. She battles me. You said you can't say that. You know, our last battle is, you know, one of my themes is what makes us more attracted to each other. Lots of things I could say, but one of them is a man with a plan. That's testosterone. And a woman with a smile, that's estrogen. I love that. It's a catchy phrase.

That's beautiful.

She took big objection that you can't tell women they should smile because women are always being told they have to smile and they're pushing down their feelings and they have to be submissive. I go, okay, okay, I won't say that. I'll just say that when women are truly happy, then they're most attractive to a man.

What a yoga this conversation has been. And really exploring so many things around the yin and the yang of just being so. I really appreciate you, John.

It's been an honor to. Real pleasure to be with you, Josh. Congratulations on your Success too.

Thank you, thank you. And we'll link everything here. So guys, we're talking about this@wellnessforce.com community. All of John's work will be there. Mars, Venus, beyond Mars, Venus. John, as we say goodbye, can you share with us what wisdom you have around wellness? You know, I asked you this question five years ago. What do you define as wellness? How would you define wellness? Especially with what you've learned, what you've been through and how you see the world now, how do you define wellness?

Well, I'll just be very not so enlightened about it. I'll just say wellness is healthy. I'll focus on that part of it. You know, we're talking love, we're talking selfless contribution to the world. We're talking feeling good all the time and when you're not feeling good, having a way to come back to good without having to change the world, without having to change you. If you upset me, I can feel good and come back with love and support. Appropriate love and support. Maybe I never want to talk to you again, but it would be wish you well, you know, it's not a doormat for anybody. So being able to come back to who you are, which is a happy person, a grateful person, an excited and motivated person. So those are all aspects of wellness. But practically speaking, I also have a whole free download, a 500 page booklet on wellness which is 32 different physical symptoms of imbalance. But ultimately what we talked about is today the ultimate to wellness is if you're integrating your masculine and feminine, your cortisol levels will go down. And when your cortisol levels are elevated, your digestion is inhibited, your detoxification is inhibited, your blood sugar levels become unstable, you begin craving sweets and sugars and you gain weight. So all of these problems that we have in the body start with elevation of cortisol. You don't get nutrients to your brain if you're not fully digesting your food. If you're running from a tiger, your body is raising your blood pressure, your body is saying, forget about digesting lunch. I've got to do what it takes to not get digested. So there's all these other stress mechanisms. Cortisol is not a bad thing. We need a surge of it when we need extra energy and then should come right back into balance. But unfortunately today when the cortisol levels go up, women tend to get stuck on their male side, men tend to get stuck on their female side if they don't know how to solve a problem. And you know, if I'm stressed at work, I can solve the problem. My stress goes down. But when I can't understand my wife and I just told her the solution to her problem and now she's even more upset, it doesn't make sense to me, then my stress levels will soar. So ultimately, the greatest key to wellness is loving relationships, is the ultimate. But I also believe in supplements. And one of the key, and I have these 32 different common things, one is depression. Some really easy solutions will do for some people because sometimes if you're actually doing the relationship stuff, but you don't have the right nutrition in your body, it doesn't lock in. So it's kind of like to build a house, you need an architect and workers, but you also need to have the bricks. You know, you've got to have the concrete, you've got to have the wood. You need the stuff. And today we tend to be deficient due to our deficient diets, wrong diets and whatever. So I'm a big believer in supplements. I don't take supplements because when I travel, I always took supplements because I have to eat out at restaurants. Now I only eat healthy foods. I'm at home. Food will give you everything you need if you also have love and no stress. But if you have stress, like with depression, probably I mentioned it to you before. Is that lithium orotate, a real simple solution for women and for men too. If you're feeling chronic stress, do these things I say, but also take lithium orotate. Go watch my video on YouTube, go to my website. There's a lot more to it, but there's like. I noticed my blood pressure is getting a little high. Even though it's supposed to be normal when you get older. I know a quick fix for that. It's serrapeptase. Today I just ordered some serrapeptase and nanokinese. I've recommended that to people so that they would get cheaper insurance, life insurance, in one month. It's way down to what they consider to be normal. There's a lot of easy fixes for things until it gets to the big stuff. But I deal with all the pain, headaches, all these natural solutions are things. Blood pressure, digestion. Anyway, enough said on that. There's a whole book on that call.

Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for the free download, 500 pages. So we'll link the download, we'll link the resources for Mars. Venus, John, thank you for coming on the show.

I appreciate it.

Josh, we'll talk to you soon. Guys, until John and I see you again. Maybe down the road. Definitely, Definitely. Go to wellnessforce.com community. John, thank you for coming on. And until we see you again, we're wishing you love and wellness.

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