What Women Have Never Known About Men (Until Now): Best Relationship Advice from Alison Armstrong

When you lead with sexuality, you're going to bring out the worst in men. Having no idea that when we do that, we are appealing to the most primitive of primitive instincts. Procreate.

Alison Armstrong is an expert on understanding men and is the best selling author of the Queen's Code.

Why is it that men are wonderful in the beginning and then within a few weeks or a few months they turn into sports? Watching pizza, eating beer, belching couch slugs? What if men are responding to women? One of the most important thing for women to do is we did that. Oh my gosh, could change everything.

Women. What if I told you that there's a secret about men that you have never been told? Not by your mom, not by school, definitely not by your girlfriends. And for the men, what if I told you that you could finally understand the all the parts of yourself that have been so painful that you've grappled with in becoming a king? Would you listen? In this episode, I sit down with the one and only Alison Armstrong. For over 30 years, she's been going the deepest of the deep into male female dynamics. How men and women operate in ways they don't even know that they don't know is there. And also how men and women can come together and love each other. How we can put down the swords and open up curiosity in our hearts so we can make the world a better place, not just for ourselves, but for children. For all the women that want to know the secrets about men that honestly, we don't even really know sometimes about ourselves, this episode will change your life and your relational dynamics. Alison, welcome. Welcome to the podcast.

Thank you. So glad to be here.

So for over 30 years, you've helped women understand both themselves and the men they love, while also guiding men just like me through the unknown stages of becoming a king, which is what I believe women really desire. When we get older and wiser, can you explain on a high level the stages of men, the stages that men go through? I know it was written for women, but yet it's so powerful for men.

When we started our workshops in 1995, it was triage and it was from a recognition that in the war between the sexes, women were on the offense and men were defending themselves. This I could see after I saw it, found out I was a frog farmer, turning princes into frogs, bringing the worst out of men.

And if people didn't listen to the last two, can you just briefly tell them what a frog farmer is?

A frog farmer is a woman who instead of turning frogs into princes as In Bring out the Best in men, turns princes into frogs. Brings out the worst. And my friend, just like Kimberly in the Queen's Code, my friend and colleague was called a frog farmer by a man named Herb Tanzer in the middle of the Landmark advance course. The first landmark advance course I've done.

Landmark.

Yes. So it was. They just created the Landmark advance course. We were in it. It was the evening session. She. Her name is Lisa. She just laid out this attack. Why is it that men are wonderful in the beginning and they take you to romantic places, they give you romantic presents, they listen to you talk about your pets and your family as if they care, and then within a few weeks or a few months, they turn into sports, watching pizza, eating beer, belching couch slugs. Why is that? Now, I don't do a Texas accent, even though I've been in Texas now for a while. But imagine, red hair, frosty pink lipstick chest. She's a vixen. She was short of money. I said, do you want money? She says, no, I'll just date a lot. Seriously. She had a date, breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and completely led with sexuality, having no idea that when we do that, we are appealing to the most primitive of primitive instincts. Procreate. Right. And that's why I tell men, don't try to be with someone who's more than a six to you. Be like, yeah, I'd be happy to do that. But there's something special about her. Not I have to have that. It brings out the worst in you. And I try to teach women, you lead with sexuality, you're gonna bring out the worst in men. I do try to tell men, you lead with your strengths and your looks. You're gonna bring out the worst in women. Like, seriously, whenever we lead with sexuality, we bring out the worst in each other. Now, it's not to say there's anything bad about sexuality. Keep it alive and well, lean in and have a real kiss. I don't care if you've been together for 30 years. Put your consciousness and awareness in your lips, and things will be alive and well.

So the stages are quite profound. And I feel like right now I am in that last uncomfortable crunchy of Prince. I'm not yet a king. And I say that because I don't feel like I've fully established the kingdom. And I'm like, okay, just trust. And I'm doing my embodiment work, and I'm doing some ceremony work, and I'm doing my breath work. I'm doing all the things to just Be okay where I am, yet there's this gnawing at my soul that I know so much more is possible. So can we please go through the stages? And then can you give me the gift, please, of what you might feel like where I really am?

Okay. You're willing for it to not be what you think it may be?

Totally.

Okay. So. Because it's all recorded in the amazing development of men, first edition and second edition, which people can listen to, and it'll go into. And they should listen in that order. So it'll give all the detail, the age, what the focus is, what men need at that stage, the mistakes that women make, the things that have nothing to do with stages of development, which women try to have them be about a stage of development. He's a knight. He won't get married. Knights get married all the time. And so I'll do that. And then I'll talk about this tunnel part, and it may illuminate it. Okay. So very briefly, my little grandson, 15 months, he's a page. We're about to publish a song that was recorded about the stages of development called I Was Just Being a Man. And it teaches the stages of development. Yeah, it was just recorded in studio. Harriet Chalk, PLATINUM WRITER I mean, it's just amazing, but I can't not be reminded of it. So. So moving. A gift from her. So pages are going to pursue whatever seems exciting to them, whatever seems worth doing. So little Leon is obsessed with balance. 15 months old, started walking at 10 months. Obsessed with balance. What did he do with a rocking horse? He got up on its back and figured how to keep his balance, no hands, and have it move. He wasn't even a year old. You can't. Biggest mistake people make women make, especially in dads too, is interfering with what young men are called to do. Because you can't do what you're not called to do. You can't put your heart in it. You can't do it well. You can't care enough. And so the ways that we try to protect our kids by shaping them into what will be good for them. So. And it starts with being born male. So Paige. Paige's worship nights. Because they're the big boys and we want to be like them, right? And it's all about challenge, and it's all about developing the skills that you think are worth developing, not what maybe your dad says that you should do. You know what? School say you should? No. You're gonna put yourself into what you think is worth doing anyhow. So we have pages and nights. And then there's the oh, God, I have nothing moment when the adventures aren't. They're still alluring, but I gotta make something. So as you said before, three stages. Early Prince figuring out where to build his kingdom. Middle Prince, he thinks he's found it. He's working, working, working. It's harder to not work than it is to work. He's got to do what he's got to do, even if it's going to cost him. And he'd rather piss somebody else off than piss him his own self off by failing to do what he knows to do. He's got to do the right thing, no matter how anybody feels, including him. Late Prince. Late Prince is when there's a that's done. There are a lot of points on the board, but the game isn't won yet. So there's a confidence about winning the game, but it's an unwon game. It's not done. But there's so much competency, it seems like it can get done. You may really still be there in what you were saying. And I. If I were coaching you, I'd say what's undone? And I'd have you look and see, is it undone really like you're unwilling to not finish that part or is it something to release? It's an expectation of yourself or an ideal of yourself that is just messing it up. No, the game, the time the game's over and you won. But I supposed to score 100 points. No, you won with 67. Can you own it? Right, like so I don't know where you are, but you might see it in what I'm about to say. So the tunnel is the transition between Prince and King. And I learned a lot about it in the last few years that I never knew before.

Oh, good.

Yeah. Including that women with careers go into the tunnel. We have a tunnel. I had a tunnel. I don't have a career, I have a mission, but I had a tunnel. I just thought it was the worst six months of my life. And I didn't know I was in the tunnel until I said something and I said, I'm not interested in that. No, I'm not going to do it. I have no interest in that. That's King speak. I just spoke like a king. Oh, shit. That's why these last six months have been so hard. That's why I felt so lost. Oh, my gosh. Right. Same thing. After Greg died, I said something. It was like, oh, I seem to be eldering now. I think of it as ways of being rather than a thing. Right. Not I am an elder. No, I'm eldering. No ambition. Zero ambition. Nothing left.

The game has already been won.

Nothing left to prove.

Yes.

Won or lost, there's just nothing left to prove.

So how would a man know that he's right there, though, in the tunnel? Can you speak to the men?

Yeah, I am. I'm going to get right back to it. Okay, so here's the thing. There seem to be three phases. Just like there's three phases in being a prince, there seem to be three phases of the tunnel.

Oh, the tunnel's longer now.

It doesn't necessarily have to be longer. It depends on how you handle the phase.

Got it.

Okay. Now apologize because this might be painful to you or to others listening to have it spoken, to have it outed. Okay. The first part of the tunnel is the recognition of having betrayed oneself. Having adapted, to be approved of, to be respected, to be accepted, to be included. All the ways that princes are able to adapt. And the ones that betrayed who they are, and they're deeply ashamed of having done that. And it seems like a front and a hand in the back of the hand, pissed at the people who seem to have demanded that. That I had to be that way to get my father's respect. That I had to be that to be accepted by the people in my church. That I had to be that way to be that. Like there's this shame deep in the gut, sense of shame for having betrayed oneself and fury at the people that it seemed like they were the ones that were requiring it. And this is what can delay the tunnel. If someone is focused on, they did this to me. It's their fault. I hate them. I'm pissed at them. I'm gonna punish them. They may never come out.

I don't feel like I have any of that.

Yay, you.

Yeah.

Did you identify with the betrayal?

Of course. Of course.

Okay, good. Yay. All right. You have at least begun the tunnel, and you're doing it well. But that's the danger, is if someone doesn't head into the shame.

Yeah.

Now, shame, I think, is one of the three worst feelings a human being can experience.

It's the lowest one on the Hawkins sc.

I don't know the Hawkins scales, but there's three that I would say are terrible. There's shame.

How do you not know the Hawkins Scale?

Because I study men. I don't study thinkers.

Okay. All right.

I don't know most of the things.

I digress.

Yeah. I'M not a. I'm not a learner. Everything I do is in order to express, and I express what I'm supposed to express. Is that my part? No. Okay. Let somebody else take care of it.

Got it.

This is my part. You can't get me to stop talking, as you've noticed.

That's so good.

So powerlessness, dread, and shame. I assert those are the three worst things for a human being to express, to experience, to feel. Powerlessness will create fury. Oh, my gosh. Fear in despair. Bear. Nasty stuff comes out of it. Dread. Dread. Is this fear of something you don't, you're sure you can't handle. You can't prevent it. You can't handle it. You can't. You're doomed. Dread and then shame. Shame. It's interesting. It's one of the feelings that happens in the same part of the body in men and women. Most of our feelings aren't in the same place. But shame, that in that gut, it's right at the self chakra, right that below. Below the diaphragm. It's right there in the sense of self, and it comes from a betrayal of self. Now, one of the things that's important for men to know is most men think when they feel shame that it means they're dishonorable, which is horrific for a man to think that he's dishonorable. And this is my message to all men. Only honorable men feel shame. The shame is the sign that you're honorable. It's the indicator that you're honorable. Dishonorable people, men and women, feel no shame. No matter what harm they've done to anyone, they feel no shame. Shame is a sign of honor, an indicator. Honor, a function of honor. So we have a process called noble forgiveness. We teach it in extreme freedom and in being extraordinary as a man. And noble forgiveness, you can do it for yourself. If you can provide for yourself. Listening to yourself as an honorable person, restoring your honor. Sometimes you need another person who's going to hear you that way. And women complete this exercise when they've seen how they've emasculated men in the Understanding Men course online, when they realize how much they've harmed men and they do a written noble forgiveness. I harmed this person by I harmed this person when 0. Justification 0. If you're justifying, you are not heading into the shame. But my husband was the one that pointed this out. He said the worst thing about shame is it disconnects you from your own spirit. Disconnects you from your own spirit. So I have found one of the greatest privileges of my life is to be on the other side of noble forgiveness. Because when people are saying what they're ashamed of having done, that harmed themselves or another, you see who they really are. The shame comes from failing at what you're profoundly committed to. It's just the opposite. And most women can't listen to men express what they're ashamed of because we feel your hurt and we want to take away your hurt. And unfortunately, how we try to take away your hurt is by saying, but you couldn't have. Like, I didn't protect her. I didn't protect her. I should have been there. But, honey, you couldn't have. You're not Superman. That's one of the biggest insults you can give a man. Like, you think you're so powerful. You could have protected our daughter from thousands of miles away. Yes, I do, and I should have. But we'll try to be logical, just like you guys try to talk us out of her feelings.

This literally just happened yesterday.

Yes, exactly. So we try to hawk you out of feeling bad instead of. When you say, I'm so ashamed of myself for doing that, or, I'm so ashamed of myself for not doing that, the appropriate response is, thank you for owning that. Anything else about that, and you just pull the string. And it might be, oh, and I harmed this person that way, too, and this person that way and this person that way. Or I betrayed myself this way and this other way and this other way. You just pull a string, just. Yep. I harm myself when I gave into this. I harm myself when I tell the truth about that. I harm myself when. Thank you for owning that. Thank you for owning that. Until the answer to the question, do you forgive yourself? Until the answer is yes. Now, I'm ruthless in freeing people. Freedom is my highest value. The power to choose. I'm ruthless about it in being extraordinary as a man. Course I. I pulled out all the stops. Because, see, here's the thing. When a man feels shame, biggest failure. It's the biggest failure that he could possibly confront. Let's say that he did something here in this part of the river, right? And he is deeply ashamed of the way that he failed himself or others. He won't ever go there again. He'll go everywhere but there to protect himself from ever failing like that again. He thinks that's his penance, the pain that he's in to withdraw from his family. The men who. Who leave their children because they're sure their children are better off without Them. But then they realize, oh, but they also are harmed by me not being there, right? Women don't know. Most of the decisions you all make is because you think we'd be better off without you. Men take their lives because they think we'll be better off without you. Men leave their children, they'll be better off without me. I make their mother crazy, they'll be better off without me. I can't handle my temper. They're better off without me, right? But the thing is, you're missing. You're missing from this part of life, whether it's love or being an entrepreneur again, right? And going and kicking some ass with that creativity and productivity, right? Being a father, showing up when they're 35 years old, like, how about we try this now, right? But men stay away from this in order to never feel like that again. And how I have challenged men to forgive themselves. And it's why we call them noble Forgiveness. Noble comes from the word that means generous. To forgive yourself is a generous act because when you forgive yourself and it'll take courage to forgive yourself, life is going to call you back to the place you've been avoiding. It's going to call you back. It's going to. When you say, yes, I forgive myself, it's like, it goes and it opens this space that's just asking for a commitment. And when I work with people on noble forgiveness, it's like, don't decide ahead of time what you're going to commit to because you're still in the paradigm of penance. You'll commit to something in order to make up for when you've truly forgiven yourself. There's no making up for anything. There's just expression as who you are now. Pure expression. And it's bigger than any penance you could pay. And it's so much better. So much better.

Liberating.

It feels so liberating because you're reunited with yourself. That's. That was the thing my husband was speaking to. And so this is why, when there's that shame and the fury at the people that seem to demand the betrayal, if you pay attention to the fury and you're just pissed at people, instead of heading into the scariest part, stick your face in the seam, right? Feel it. How did I fail? And quit justifying it, just acknowledge it then. So that's how you get past the first stage, right? And then being there in the middle of seeing then this sense of, okay, this is who I am. And starting to the middle part is the articulation of I am this and not that. I am for this and not for that. I am for this and I'm against that. I. This I shall do. This I shall never do again. This that I should have done, I'm never going to do. It's just this, Claire. Clarity, clarity, clarity. It's just deeply considering oneself. Then the third part, and I knew a man stuck in the third part for more than two years. The third part is dealing with the willingness to pay the price of no longer betraying yourself. I knew a man who was so terrified of losing the love of his family, his siblings, by what he knew he needed to do that he couldn't do it, couldn't do it, couldn't do it. And I'm like, call me back when you've done it because we couldn't be together because he hadn't done it. I want to hear from you when you have spoken to your sister and not before. And it took him two years to finally tell his sister his truth. And he called me. He said, I should have given her more credit. She always knew who he was. She always knew. She knew he was miserable. She knew why she didn't withhold her love because of what he said he couldn't do anymore. He. No. Nor did his brothers, but he didn't know that. But you can't step into. You don't come out of the tunnel till you're willing to pay the price. Okay, If I lose my sister's love, so be it. If I lose that, those people's respect, so be it. If I lose those opportunities, so be it. That is, when you step out now, what's going to show up in the king's code, they showed me a couple weeks ago, is the difference between a new king, which. There was a man who said this to me, I'm a new king. I'm like, what the heck is that? The difference between a new king but versus a really well established king. There's a. There's a. It's the gravitas, and it's the how much space you're owning, and it's the how little you can be jostled. New kings, you still confronted by the unwillingness to sacrifice yourself. It's still scary later on. It's just like somebody farted. No way am I going to betray myself for that. It says it becomes less and less and less and less. More and more solid, more and more grounded. Okay, I'm going to be quiet.

So the king rests in peace is what it feels like. The peace of knowing who he is.

Yes. And one of the things my husband taught me, because I asked him, said, are you pursuing peace? Are men pursuing peace? Like, duh. So do you feel peaceful when you've accomplished the thing that you've set out to do? And he looked at me that way. He'd look at me. That thing you're focused on when you accomplish it, is that when you. That's when you feel peace. Just all his kind eyes, he looked at me. He said, single focus is peace. Which then illuminated why when a woman interrupts a man doing what he's doing, why you guys are so furious and don't pretend you're not. You try to get a grip on it. Not only have we diminished your ability to be productive by interrupting you, we have disrupted your peace. So I've tried to talk to him. Like, if a man were meditating, you could hear him chanting. Really? Would you walk in on him to say that? Like, imagine that's what he's doing. A man focused. He's in a meditation of fixing the car, repairing the sprinklers, playing a game with his son. He's at peace. Leave him at peace. And if you can't. I am sorry to interrupt. Be respectful of the impact you're having. I'm so sorry to interrupt. The worst that can happen is a man would say, you weren't interrupting. It's fine. Yeah, that's the worst thing.

It's the gesture that the woman gives of. Hey, I'm sorry to interrupt. It's that respectful. It's a very high echelon of treatment.

Yeah. Which means it's not a gesture. A gesture is a token. A gesture if you look it up in the dictionary. Because I had to. I had to look it up. Why? I hate gestures. They're. A gesture is a fraction of what could be given. That's actually real respect. It's not a fraction.

The stage after king that many people don't ever get to is elder. So you. I believe that you've. And I've told this to you three years ago when we podcasted. There's maybe 10 or less elders. I've had 700 plus interviews. Yeah, maybe less than 10 are true elders.

I would believe it because it isn't a stage.

It's not a stage.

It's not a stage.

What is it?

It's a state change. The men who make it through face down the shame and stand up to self sacrifice. For no matter what the prize might be, they become kings and they die as kings. There's a state change and it seems to be only about less than 10% of men. And it's the man who first described it to me, he called it beyond ambition. And then another man that I got to talk to, his name is Marvin. He said, I remember the moment it happened. And he got to describe that as he went from a king to being an elder. He said, I stopped giving advice because I was no longer willing to be accountable for other people's results. Now, I didn't know advice was being accountable for someone's results. So that's a whole trail I went down to find out why men feel so disrespected when we don't take the advice. He just gave you the best that he had and he was being willing to be accountable for the results. And then you acted like it was piffle, like it's terrible. Right. So if you're not going to take the advice, don't ask for it. Say, I'd like to have some input for a decision I have to make. Do not even push it over into his side of the table. This is all on my side of the table. What would you input over here? Give me a question to think about. Right. So elders don't respond with the device. Elders will give you things to think about. It's just. Well, consider this. Check into this. I'm not going to tell you what stage you're at. I'm just going to lay these things out and then you get to pick what you're at. Like what resonates for you. I never tell men what stage they're in. Although there was a man who was sure he was in the tunnel and he was so not in the tunnel. Yeah, it was really fun. Interview in Sandpoint, Idaho. He was a king. He'd actually had passed from king to elder and he was struggling. He'd gone to king. He was now an elder and he was struggling with the lack of ambition. He felt lost by. There was nothing left to be done. There's just being contributing. That thing that is said in one of Richard Bach's book. If you're wondering if your work is done, if you're still here, it's not.

Yeah. Oh, my gosh. You know, so many of the things that have troubled me in my life have been actually my inability to feel lower level emotions like shame and doing the work that I've done to, to get to this point. Yeah. I'm not scared that shame or residue of shame is in there. I actually I'm. I'm all Here for it. I'm here for it.

It's beautiful.

So that's why I know I'm in the tunnel.

And.

Yes. And maybe I've already won. Maybe this podcast studio that I built on the land, and having you here and doing everything I'm doing, I'm living the dream. I literally, my mom yesterday, she's like, how are you? I'm like, I'm living the dream. I'm, like, loving my life. It's so good. But yet there's something in my psyche that's like, there's still more. So maybe I'm already in the king.

Well, is it more to build or is it more to provide?

It's more to be in my own peace and authentically express. Josh, you know that resting in the peace of the king. I don't feel that yet.

Well, I'm just gonna keep poking at the question. Is it more to do? Is it more to establish, or is it more to give? Kings are firmly. If you think of procreate, then protect, then provide. They're firm, firmly improvised. And it's. And provide from overflow.

Yes.

And so they. And so what? They'll pay attention. They can still build as a king, but they'll build in order to overflow more in the things are committed to overflowing as.

Got it. That sunk in. Thank you for that.

You're welcome. You're welcome.

You are. You are such a light. I just love how you bring so much wisdom to the stages of men, and not just for us men to understand, but for the women we love to understand us so much better. So thank you. Now, I've heard many women who have absorbed your work say, wow, I didn't know if I just waited 30 seconds for him to finish speaking, how much it would radically transform our marriage. And I'm like, how could you not know that?

Right?

So can you go over. Let's just start with, like, the interruption piece, because there's so much more that typically I. We as men have to say, but we don't feel like we have the space to say it in because our woman, God love her, she's jumping in and saying, well, let me give you the field report. Let me. Let me tell you all these things, and let me sometimes, unfortunately, tell you how your experience in life is wrong and how you're not saying it the right way. And here's a better way to say it. And that happens in her in a split second.

Right.

Meanwhile, we're piecing together the sentence. We're still finishing. Can you talk about the power of this. I think if there was one tool, one tool that could revolutionize everyone's marriage, everyone's relationship, it would be to let each other finish what we're saying. Not just for women to men, but also men to women. But I think it's really easy because a lot of women, when they talk to each other, they interrupt each other and that's a natural thing. I watch women and I'm like, oh, they're like speaking over each other all the time. Men, we don't do that to each other. When I have, I have a men's group here that we meet twice a month, we let our men finish and we take a breath after he's done talking and then we give him feedback or questions. Women tend to interrupt each other and that's a normal thing. Can you share about this?

Well, if you just take it apart, engineering wise, what people normally think of as listening. I'm listening. There's a question at the top of our heads might occur over here or over here, this question, and I just discovered a few weeks ago I have something different than a question, but it also makes me interrupt. So we'll have a question. And there are default questions like what do I think about that? What do I know about that? What do I want to say about that? Do I agree with that? Is that true for me? Do I feel that way? Right? I, I, they're all I, I and me questions is what's natural for, for men, if someone's fine, the default question is usually what's the point? Because what does it have to do with productivity? Right? What's the point if the person's upset? The default question is what's the problem? And that. So what's the problem? So what's the problem? So what's the problem? The problem isn't becoming clear. So you'll interrupt this unproductive communication to ask a question that you think is going to have the problem become clear. So you can be productive by solving it. And you can save her from her upset, you can save her from her problem. It makes perfect sense. Except for she's vomiting and she just needs you to hold the trash. Right? So Will, you can tell the question that people are have in their head by what they interrupt with. Because they'll, they'll just when, when what they're thinking about what you, what you said provoked. Mostly you're just provoking thought. You're not being heard. If you're speaking, you're provoking thought. And you can tell the question that they're filtering with by. They interrupt with something that their own mind answered that compelled them. And they don't know how dis. People don't know how disrespectful it is. It's not even a willful self centeredness. It's just normal human behavior. But someone I know I hard, I don't want to talk to them because I get a few words out and they interrupt with what I know about that is every time it's guaranteed I will be told what they know about that when I haven't even finished the sentence. So they don't even know what that is yet. Right. So what do I think about that? What do I know about that? Is that women will be like, is that true for me? And we'll get so excited when it is true for me. Oh, me too. We're having a connection, right? When man's expressing a strong opinion and we disagree with it, we just get more and more scared. We call it the cliff.

So women interrupt men because they feel scared or because they were trained by watching their mother or other things.

There's very little training. There's a lot of modeling.

Okay.

I think we learn by what we see. There's things we hear, but we, we learn by what we see. We see what is modeled, which is why I have such an emphasis in my curriculum on implementation. I don't care if you know my work, what do you do with it? What choices are being made in the moment when instinct is compelling you to dominate, for example, which is a normal instinct to flee, another instinct. What do you do instead? Are you aware of the compulsion there? Do you celebrate your brain setting the alarm off? You know you're experiencing tension, you're having instinctual behavior right now. You're probably going to make it worse. Deep breath, Switch nervous systems. Hmm. What am I really committed to? Ah, let's say this instead. I'm so sorry I interrupted you. Please finish what you were talking about. But without the awareness, we don't have the choice. We're just pinball machines going off at each other. And Dan, my boyfriend, is deep in working on this and they're actually inventing a game. He gets to name the game because one of the ways he owns things is by naming them. And there are points. There are going to be periods in which they win. They get a point for noticing an unconscious way of listening. They get another point from shifting to a choice, like what's true for them, what matters to them, what's important to them, what's real for them. Those are all awesome questions to have, right? They get a point for shifting, then they get a point for noticing that they already flipped back, and then they get a point for shifting again. I mean, you could get, like, 20 points in about three minutes.

How do you keep score on this?

I don't know. I'm not playing the game. I just helped them invent it. Because Dan stopped listening to me. He stopped listening to me, and I broke up with him. He stopped taking care of himself, and he stopped listening to him. And it's like, okay, I've never given up the right to walk away. I'm. I won't do this. So God bless him. He came out of the death spiral of not taking care of his health. He said that was an accurate description. And the thing that I need him to implement most is how he's listening to me. And we have become so diligent in the last five weeks of noticing. Interrupting the other person. I'm having to practice even more than ever. Waiting 30 seconds. Because each man has a different tolerance. Like for Greg or Mm. That was encouragement to keep going to Dan. That's running the train off the track.

Just the sound.

Just a little, tiny sound is.

So you have to literally be in silence.

I do. Yeah, I do. If he says, are you still there? I am doing well. When we're talking on the phone and we have these walk and talk since we've been apart, but I have been searching, well, what is the question that I listen with? Because I know I'm interrupting him, so what am I listening with? And I finally figured it out. It's this other kind of listening that I didn't realize. I do so much. I call it picture listening. So Dan says something to me. I'm picturing what he's saying. I have a video of a Hannah. Hannah and her dance recital, right? So I'm picturing his daughter Hannah dancing. She's an adult and dances, Right. I'm picturing it. And I'll interrupt when he doesn't state the obvious. So he'll not say a city or not say which daughter or not. He'll have switched from one thing to another. But they're similar. And now I can't picture it. I'm, like, lost in the woods. Because we have an instinct that says there's no point in stating the obvious. That's a waste of time and energy. So much of the conflict what you wanted me to get to ages ago between men and women is because we assume what's Obvious to ourselves is obvious to the other person. We assume that what's important to me is obviously important. Why should I have to say it? Why should I have to illuminate for you the basis of all my decisions? It's obvious. No, it's not. We have something called your hidden dominant drivers, where we distinguish six different compulsions, things that compel us to spend our time and money and energy. Six different ones, and each one is its own. Obvious. Like, if you said so at the end of your life, you were thinking about how. How what your life was like and. And the joys in your life or the success of your life, what would you attribute it to? What people say after that is they're obvious. Well, obviously, who I shared it with, obviously what I've left behind, obviously how much joy I experienced and brought to others, obviously what I expressed that needed to be expressed, obviously how I grew, obviously everything I learned. Six different ones. Knowing, which is all about learning. It's all about acquisition of knowledge. There are people to them. That is the point of life, how much knowledge they can acquire. And they'll interrupt you with what they know, right? Evolving how much they've grown. Obviously the point of life, who you shared it with. I know a man. Literally, everything is better together. Grief is better together. Loneliness is better together. Despair is better together. Everything is better together. For his introverted partner who really wants to be home alone, right? Building for some people what they built, obviously. What have you built? What did you build? Did you build a family? Did you build a fortune? Did you build a company? Did you build what? Legacy, right? And legacy appeals to men. It's one of the most. It's one of the oldest, right? It's the most ancient building, acquiring knowledge, growing, sharing, expressing, building, enjoying. Enjoying is. Is amazing because it could be anything from total hedonism to can you bring joy in the midst of despair?

Just last week I was working with a coach and he's like, what's your goal? What's your thing? And I said, well, I get to be this embodiment of authentic joy. That's my. That's what I'd want to give to my children.

Yeah.

Legacy and everything else you mentioned is really great.

Yes.

But that's really the best, most juicy, amazing gift yet. The fear that comes up for me, I know that every man has felt it, but the difference is that I have a different level of awareness. And I've been through enough life experiences and I've been connected to God for quite some time now. Specifically in the Past two weeks leading up to our podcast.

Wow.

And what I will say is that at the core of it, it just feels like without embodiment, nothing lives. If I'm not embodying all these things, if they don't live in my body, then it's just mental masturbation. It's just chatter. It's not like anything's ever being felt.

Trinervous systems, right? So fight, flight and freeze is embodied. When you have a perception of a threat or an opportunity, you feel tension in your body if you don't embody your highest values. Like you. And you know you embody it because you feel it in this body, if it's not embodied, it's not a valid path under stress, your brain literally can't choose it because it can't find it. We have a saying from our partnership work. If you can feel it, you can find it. So the whole strain of our work, the being extraordinary level, is about embodying your highest values. We call them your tanks and get that tank filled. And because we're stuck in these frail things, there are needs. We have to have met almost all of them. Well, all of them with a physical component that have to be met to get it in our bodies. Now, one of the things that I see as very different between women as the weaker sex. And so we think we'll survive by being pleasing to those of you of the stronger sex, that if we don't have it in our body, instead of saying so, we pretend. So, for example, we'll pretend compassion. When we're not feeling it, we'll pretend. I think the most popular is to pretend patience. Pretend we like someone. There's so much pretense that goes into this gender because we're afraid. We're afraid we have to be appealing or you won't protect me. In fact, you may do the opposite. But men are so disturbing and disruptive to women because of a lack of pretense when you're not patient.

I love that you said men are so disturbing to women. What do you mean by that?

Well, you're disturbing to us because our safety is through connectivity. So we're, like, always trying to keep things calm and smooth and communication is flowing and it keeps feeling good. And y' all don't care about that. Let's fucking get something done. This isn't getting anything done. Let's cut to the chase. Let's get right to it.

If I'm not conscious, I will do that.

Yes. Yes. It's normal.

Yeah.

So to us, we don't understand why when you're impatient, you act impatient. You're supposed to be more mature than that. You could lack patience, but still do something that might be called gracious. Like tone it down. Say it softer. Exactly.

Pretend.

That's the word I use to pretend. It's not. If we want you to pretend, we're shocked. You don't.

Yeah, yeah. Why aren't you pretending?

You're an ass. How immature are you to not pretend you like them? I'm not gonna pretend I like them. Do you know how many terrible things are gonna happen but you not pretend you like them. We could have a war. Pretend you like them. It's all smooth over. Smooth over, smooth over. It's like when you're angry, we pet you and you go, ah, right. We don't know you have endorphins that make your skin so sensitive, it feels like a burn for us to soothe you. Right, but you guys do the same thing when we're upset. You think, oh, obviously I should leave her alone, because you want to be left alone when you're upset. Leave me alone. Give me space. I'll get a hold of myself. I'll get clear. I'll come back when I'm ready. You abandoned us. We're so upset, and you've left me alone with this monster in my head for the last four hours. I hate you. You hurt my feelings, and you didn't come get me like. But you're doing what you projected onto us. Women project onto men. We project onto other women. We project on. You project on. We are always projecting our needs onto others, which is why we think we don't have to ask, what do you need? And we think we don't have to say, it's obvious what I need. I need to be left alone. Why should I have to tell you again? Just give me some space. Well, we think something terrible will happen by giving you space. I have to come save you. So it all starts with thinking we're a version of each other. We're both human. We must be a version of each other. You're just the hairy, stinky version, and we're this other version that can multitask. No, we can't not multitask. It's not that we can't. It's that we can't not. It's how our brains are built in. Oh, it's. It's survival. We multitask for survival, just like you guys hunt for survival.

You know, so many decades of your work, like, you've impacted Millions of people at this point, which is like when you. What. What goes through your heart and mind when you feel that my voice has reached millions of people.

Okay. All transparency. We wanted to reach a hundred thousand when we started in 1995. And then we decided 1 million American women that would impact the culture of the US and we were counting on what we call the gab factor, that this information about men and women is. So Barry Kubrick of Between the Lines said, this is addictive. Right. He did three interviews with me. And it just. So we counted on the gap factor that women would have to tell other women if they could hear what we were saying, which is the tricky part. If they can hear. But we're completely US centric. It didn't even occur to us any other part of the world. Oh, when we were going to wait two years and then we would leave California, we'd try to expand the workshops out of California. Our third workshop was in Wisconsin. Within a year, we'd been in 10 different states. Within, like, three years, we'd been in 30 different states. Because people would hear about it from a friend. Will you come here? Well, just there's. How many people. We need you to get together, and we'll come. So I was all over the country, and early on, people started coming from elsewhere because they had a sister here in the States who did the workshop and said she had to come. So they came from London. By the time we started our Mastery program in 2006, we had participants from Hong Kong, Australia, Guatemala, Canadian. Just wasn't even exciting anymore. Yeah, from Canada. And when we published the Queen's Code, which we did according to a plan, that was what came out of a bulkhead.

I remember you told me it felt like it looked like Star Wars.

It does. Yes, it does.

Like the letters of Star Wars.

Yep. So when we published it one week at a time, which most people don't know, that Great Expectations was published one month at a time in a magazine that went all over the world. So people got a chapter each month, month of that book. And so it was a week at a time, which, of course, the books are occurring a week at a time. So people got to. They still get to recreate the journey that those folks are on. And within three weeks, it was being purchased in 70 countries. And we didn't even have a country field on our website. We were. So every day, I'd open up the report and be putting in these really weird names and where is, where is? And when I saw There's a town 5,000 year old town in Macedonia. I lost it when I saw South Africa. I lost it when I saw the West Bank. I really. I mean, just like, what? What? I know there's a long answer to your question, but it just. The audiobook, last I checked, 94 countries. The ebook, 124 countries. We haven't cross referenced those yet, so I don't know how many actual countries. But when we first published the Queen's Code, it was as an ebook on the Internet. And we purposely didn't protect it. We did not protect it. People could download it as many times as they wanted to.

You wanted it to get out there.

Print it, as many copies. I wanted it to be unsuppressible. Like it's on the Internet and it's printed all these places. There's no way you're going to gather all the copies and burn this. No matter how, whatever the world or our society's culture may get to, you will never be able to suppress the messages in that book.

Well, it goes back to how you started. I think it was 1991. You said, My personal compulsion to understand men converged with my personal and professional commitment to children. You realize that we have to get to the children first. Do you remember where you were in your life when that light switch flicked? Or was it always bubbling up?

I was a business consultant. I'd participated in transformation since I was 19 years old. I worked for someone who was a leader in transformation, but as a business consultant. And I was miserable. And a friend of mine said, if you could do anything and you didn't have to justify it even to yourself, what. What'd you spend your time doing? And I said, I'd spend all my time ending hunger and homelessness. And then just sitting there, we were across the table at lunch and I said, I have an idea about how to do it. So within a month, I had 35 people contributing as little as $10 a month. The biggest was $300 a month. I made a whole $800 a month. There was a space donated from people who were committed to the end of hunger, paid for telephones, everything. I was set up. And I'm an activist. And I was in New York for the Hunger Projects Award for the End of Hunger ceremony. And I knew to my heartbreak that one of the things being proposed at the International Summit for Children, they were trying to get every country to sign on to a constitution for children for the planet. And one of the things that they wanted people to promise was that every child has the right To a name. To a name. And I found out how many children had actually met one once. Young woman from Asia. Beautiful name. I said, what does it mean? She said, it doesn't mean anything. I said, really? And she. And then she looked at me. 4. She was named 4 because she was the fourth child. She didn't have a name. I'd made a promise when I was 28 called an impossible promise. Did I ever tell you about that? Best thing I ever did. I promised to do something that I couldn't possibly do. Which means at 28 years old, I became a failure for the whole rest of my life. A failure. This goes back to. What's it like to reach millions? Well, I have to do is look up the infant mortality rate and you know, I, I am a failure, even though I've reached tens of millions now and. But it was the best thing I could have ever done. The promise I made was that in my lifetime every man, woman and child would be fed, clothed, housed, loved and respected. I was working on fed, clothed, housed. Then I was teaching teachers. There's a course called Access to Breakthrough Teaching. So it's a transformational program for teachers at a bunch of kindergarten teachers. And we were sitting in a, whatever you call it when you put the tables together in a box. And this one teacher says, but what do you do when they can't learn because they're up all night with their parents fighting? And I've always thought of it as the harmonic convergence. Because just after that there was a cookie break. Literally, teachers bringing cookies. And I overheard a woman complaining about her boyfriend and I unmonitored. I just burst out, well, you know, he just wants to be your hero. And she goes, what? And then the break was over and we had to gather back. And so she's like, hello, Hello. I know this is 10 sessions. Could the 11th session be what you were talking about just now? And that was December of 1994. And so January 1995 is when we had the first Celebrating Men Satisfying Women workshop. And it just became clear. It took a long time for it to become clear. Okay, it's been 30 plus years now that fed, clothed, housed. However it happens, right? The best things provide people opportunity to provide for themselves. Right? It's, I mean, I've been engaged in that forever, but so fed, clothed, housed, loved and respected. That when we love and respect people, fed, clothed and housed is a no brainer.

It seems like the bureaucracy that you were going through with like the who's got more of a pain body and who's going to get more money? It's the same mental construct of confusion that actually blocks children from receiving love from parents that are in harmony. It almost seems like the same mind virus or the same kind of confusion.

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. You just said a huge thing.

Well, in other words, the same thing that these people in the bureaucracy were confused about. Oh, we need more money. It's like, what's the main thing you're trying to do here? Aren't you just trying to keep children happy and healthy and clothed and respected? It's the same thing that happens with us in relationship. It's just a bridge that connects the two of awareness.

Okay, so now I can speak to what you said. A belief in scarcity and fear, which I assert all fear is linked back to the fear of death. So a belief of scarcity and a fear of death, and to what you're talking about with children. We have something on our website called empowered parenting. It really should be called transform your childhood.

That sounds about right.

Well, I had prepared this whole course to lead, and then when it began, like 10 minutes before it began, I realized all the parents are going to come being worried about what they're doing wrong. They're going to be afraid to learn what they're doing wrong, and that'll prevent them from learning. And so it switched itself. And I said, okay, we're going to do this from the point of view of your childhood. So I want everybody to think back to when you were a child and what did you want most from your parents? What did you want most from whatever adults raised you, whether they were biological parents or not? What did you want most? And then I asserted that we all wanted to be adored and adore means, to hold in the highest love, respect, and esteem. And that that's what we wanted. We wanted our parents to look at us the way my daughter looks at her son, my grandson, and the way he looks back at her. They adore each other. We wanted that. And then what I distinguish in empowered parenting are the instincts, the hierarchy of instincts. Procreate. You have two children. Procreate. In the most known way, entrepreneurship is also procreate. Artists art is procreate. There's so much procreate. Procreate, then protect. So if you think of green energy and then lead and then provide, Right? And so empowered parenting distinguishes the protect mode that parents are in that has them eke out the providing part. Protect is in that because it's hierarchical, protect trumps provide. Which is why when women attack Men. Men retract from providing for them into protecting and then even protecting themselves, which a man protecting himself is the worst that we can bring out in you.

Yeah. Yeah.

That's when we see the worst of you. When you're driven back to that place. It's. You know, when. When a woman goes wild with the credit cards, and he's trying to protect the solvency of the family, that's bad enough. But when she attacks him. Right. When he's trying to protect the solvency. Honey, you really got to get a grip on this. You're so selfish. You're such. An. Attacks him for trying to protect whatever he's protecting. I mean, doomed. The. The downward spiral into the sewer. Doomed. So if you think about it. And my daughter noticed, she said, mom, I have been protecting this baby since before he was conceived. Right. Started by taking all the vitamins and everything to get ready to get pregnant, she said, and then ever since, I've become more and more and more and more protected. But then as they grow older, and this is why I think very few human beings escape without the question, what's wrong with me? Because there's a point, and where Leon was born, there was a sign that said it's impossible to spoil a newborn, because that's the point for some. Like, don't pick them up right away. You'll spoil them. Right. So there's a point in which we see the threat from within them. We see the threat in their character, in their behaviors that may indicate habits that would prevent them from succeeding, which ultimately we think our life is in their hands because they're the ones that are going to make sure that we're not left out in the cold to die when we're old and useless. Right. So it's all survival. It's fear of death. Fear of death. From the moment they're born, it's fear of death, theirs and ours. And so, of course, when you are trying to protect your child from something you see as a character flaw within them, Even if it's like, oh, crap, they're just like me. We've got to fix that. Right? With my son, whose father was not helpful during his birth, I held my son in my arms and I promised him I'd make sure he had brilliant relationships with women. And at that time in 1988, that meant I was going to burn the man out of him. Yeah. This is before I found out I was bringing the worst out of men. I thought it was who you all were, that the worst in you is you and the rest is just pretend or fake or act. I didn't. I didn't know. I didn't. I didn't understand the duality. Right. We're so primitive. We have instincts that predate climbing out of the ocean. We share instincts with the trees in your backyard yard with the most primitive, with a virus. We have the same instincts. It's the source of prejudice and it's the source of instant connection. Oh, you're like me. That means I can trust you to do exactly what I expect of you. What? So. So just. We just don't know. We just don't know that. Yes. There's the beauty of what I would think of as human spirit. You could just think of it as spirit, period. There's. There's the beauty of higher consciousness. There's the whole second nervous system of the crown chakra and the whole deal. And then there's the limbic system that's always at least a half second in front of the prefrontal cortex that is going to have a fight, flight or freeze response in some sequence. Fighters are most obvious. But if we share with our mates our secrets. My husband's was freeze, flight, fight.

What do you mean share with our mates our secrets?

Do you mean our sequence?

Oh, our sequence.

We all have a sequence. So if you think of there's the perception of a threat or an opportunity, which. An opportunity is a kind of threat. It might be insufficient to it. It might take all your resources and then you die. It might be a fake. Right. Opportunities create the same internal tension as the perception of a threat. It's important because the word opportunity is used to manipulate people all the time as a sphere. So the perception of a threat or an opportunity, we have a reaction to it. We have a limbic nervous system reaction which might be to fight, it might be to flee, it might be to just go bunny rabbit.

Deer in the headlights.

Yes. And I've seen a lot of those living in the country. But I assert we actually have a sequence. So I fight first. That's my first reaction, is to fight. I've been fighting for women to see men now since 1991. Right before that I was fighting for children. I'm still fighting for children. I'm still fighting for the end of poverty. But if you emasculate the compulsive problem solvers of the species and leave them with the problem of, can I please keep my testicles? They're not going to solve world hunger. But, but you could, you could, if you weren't ever having to protect yourself. Who men are would provide for everyone. It's just natural. Right. It just becomes smaller who you can provide for. The idea of that becomes smaller and smaller and smaller the more threatened you experience being. So then we. We just end up with just nuclear family. Right. Or maybe a bigger family or maybe community or. Or tribe. Everybody who's like me, I will protect. And everybody else I have to protect them from.

One of the things I have to interrupt you because you have this joy. It's so palpable and it's so amazing to feel you in person versus through a screen.

Ah, it's different.

Because it's different. I mean, you're still you.

Yes.

Yet I can feel the joy because it radiates in, like this bubble outside of you. Yes. And you also had to say goodbye to Greg in 2019, I believe, and, well, maybe you never said goodbye, but he left his human form to be able to go from that to Dan and still maintain this joy. There's something in your heart, there's something in you that I'd love to learn about how to go from that type of loss to being able to love again. What is that like for you?

Well, I have to clarify a couple things. You said Greg died suddenly. Like, imagine in the middle of a conversation. And I fought. I mean, I was doing, you know, as learned by watching tv, CPR on him, fighting for him. And. And this odd thing happened. He sat up. I mean, his eyes were blown, his pupils were blown. He was not breathing. And then he sat up and he spoke, and it was hard for him to speak, so I thought he'd had a stroke, which he'd had before. So I ran to get the baby aspirin. Protect your brain. Protect your brain. Protect your brain. And I brought the baby aspirin. I put it in his mouth and he spit it out. And I picked it up from the carpet and put it back, and he spit it out again. And he said, I do. Three times. I do, I do, I do. But I didn't know what he was saying it to. And then he fell back down. I had sat him up, and then I couldn't keep him up. He fell back down and he was gone. It was like there was. I knew that this was it, but I could feel him. I could feel him, and it was like I could hear him. And what I was hearing was. Like, I. His exhilaration. And this is a man who drove cars and motorcycles very fast. His exhilaration of being free of this body that he hated, it was so slow. It was so heavy. It was so clunky. A champion bodybuilder called him the most naturally muscular person he'd ever met. And going, Oh, my goodness gracious. But he was. He. He was so happy to be free of his body. And he didn't leave. He didn't leave. And it was very hard to be a normal widow because he was obviously not in the house. I mean, it was three weeks before our daughter's wedding, and I. There was all this yard work to do, and I was looking around, all this yard work that I needed him for, and I just looked up at the sky and said, is this all so you can get out of yard work? But. But he. I could feel him. The plumbing broke three days before the wedding. He was supposed to have getting fixed two years before. We couldn't get a plumber. We lived in the boonies. I got pissed. I took out my singing bell and I banged on it. We need a plumber. You were supposed to fix this. Half hour later, we finally. We get a call back. They'll be there tomorrow. They'll get it fixed before the wedding. Said, you're gonna have to pay for this. We're paying for this out of your money. That's a funny concept, but we each had play money. We would take a percentage of our income and we split it. We didn't have to be accountable to the other person. It's a good thing for sanity. So, long story short, Greg still hasn't left. It's been almost six years. I still grieve him because I miss him. I miss his hugs, and I miss this way that he looked at me, that if anybody watches our Understanding Women online course, you'll see Greg in the back of the room, big, husky guy, white hair. And he's looking at me the way he always looked at me with was just adoration. He gave to me what we all wish to have from the very beginning. He gave that to me even though he didn't always understand me, even though I was in his father face sometimes fighting for his life. But he's just never been gone.

So you're just so deeply connected to him. And that allows you. Does that connection to him and feeling his presence allow you to love Dan or afford you more capacity to do so?

Well, yes, in so many ways. One is. And I told Dan this the first few minutes I spoke to him. I said, my husband is still very much a part of my life, very much providing for me and our children. And he probably picked you because Greg had Told me since the kids were little. When I die, I want you to get married. When I die, I want you to get married. He's 11 years older than me. He. It made sense when the kids were little, right? But he'd said it just a few months before he died all of a sudden. And I was like, why? I don't need help taking care of the kids. They were all launched, right? So I want you to be. I want you to be touched, and I want you to be taken care of. I don't know about this, because I know what it takes to have a partnership, and I'm not interested in anything less than a partnership.

Yeah.

But I found out very quickly. This might. It's kind of embarrassing, but I found out very quickly when you have had a steady diet of sex for three decades, that the absence of it, the.

Sudden absence of it, there's a certain primal call.

Is brutal. Yeah, brutal. My kids are teasing me because they showed up immediately, which I didn't know they did.

My.

My son got back. Bless him. My son was. Mom. He was 28 at the time. Grief is an aphrodisiac. Like, okay, crazy. So. So initially, I just wanted a lover. And so I made a list because I'm very much in. Tell the universe what you want and make sure it's complete, because anything you leave out, the universe will leave out.

Okay?

And I made a list. I wanted to love her 24 hours, once a month. Bring snacks. I was taught that by a friend, Wendy Newman. She's like, oh, yeah. And then we had sex for eight hours. I said, how do you do that? And she said, bring snacks. Wendy Newman. She's an author and one of my graduates and used to lead our workshops. But anyhow, bring snacks. And so I had a list. I didn't want them to live anywhere. I didn't want to be dropped in on. Because one of the things that's happened as I gotten older and more aware is I found out how introverted I am. And not, as in, shy. I am not shy. I don't have a fear of human beings. You're all mine. But I. And too many people think introversion is shy. No, it just means humans suck the life out of us. We need to go away from humans. So I. I learned. It took me years. It took. I mean, I'm still learning how much I need to be alone. So driving around in the motorhome by myself, pulling into a RV park where I just meet the person who checked me in, and I'm by Myself. It's wonderful. So. So Greg started sending me men immediately. How about this one? And I'd be like, okay, we need some corrections here. But I could tell, and especially when Dan showed up, because. Because we always had to live someplace with a view. Always. Greg demanded we always had to. He grew up on the hillside in Ashland, Oregon. Every house he picked had to have a view. Greg, Dan's house has incredible view. In the beginning, I felt guilty because I took care of Dan in a way I didn't take care of Greg. And I felt terrible about it. And then I had a realization that I did as much for Greg as he would let me. And what's different about Dan is he has an enormous capacity for receiving. Like, truly receiving, being honored. Right. And an enormous capacity for giving. Like, he rattled me in our first conversation and I said, could you just be quiet for a few minutes so I can reset my nervous system? And he said, sure. Got this deep voice. And then it was like 20 seconds later and I was all better. Like, wow, your space is amazing. And. And he said, you're welcome when you all say you're welcome. Like, I did that on purpose. You own what you give us instead of brush it off. You're welcome. Thank you for loving me. You're welcome.

There's so many threads as you're speaking that I can pull back to Claudia in your book and the wisdom her grandma was giving her. So this is, this is at the core of, of this table and our conversation is that there's, there's a pass down wisdom.

Yes.

That you have, much like with Claudia and also in other characters in your book, the same. And that wisdom, it spans the test of time. In other words, it could be a hundred years from now, this moment, or in our past. It's that same wisdom. And it's really, there's a certain way that, that men and women operate. And when we go against that way, even when, like New Age spirituality, FUFU tries to convince us otherwise, when we go against that natural, harmonious way, there's some fucking chaos that happens. What do you believe? Looking back on your beautiful story and thank you so much for sharing, I knew that was a very sensitive subject and so I wanted to give it space because I'm curious.

Yeah.

You know, for all the people out there that have experienced that or may experience that, knock on wood. My prayer is that I die in a bed with Carrie. And that's it. You know, that's. That's the dream, that's the prayer. But we don't know, life is very mysterious. It's a very mysterious thing. There is a lot of New age BS out there about how men need to act to hold space or women need to show up. Can we just brush all that aside? What is the test through time about the beginning stages of how men and women can interrelate to be in harmony?

Okay, I have to say one thing first, just to finish. I know that who we are is eternal. I don't believe it. I know it. And I've always known it since I was a child. And the freedom to love when you know that there really is no actual death. Yes, body death. These things are frail. Body death is inevitable. Even if we can Prolong it to 124 years old, they can't find anybody who is 125. But. But Greg's presence. And before that, my grand. My grandmother. I got messages from my grandmother. Eat more apricots. And I mean, just a few years ago, I could call it channeling. I didn't have a word for these downloads because as you know, I did not write the Queen's Code. I did not write Keys of the Kingdom. I am not writing the King's Code. The sequel. I watch a movie. It's kind of like that light there. It's a screen. I'm hearing the dialogue.

Are you a fast typer?

Yeah, but it's a mess. I have to go back and clean it up.

Get it in there and you clean it later.

I. I just watch and type and watch and type and watch and type and. Until I'm like, just exhausted. And then come back the next day and then I clean it up and then I like swaps like the beginning and the end of the sentence. Often it's better in reverse. So I clean it up. But the four characters that showed up in the Keys to the Kingdom that became the eight characters in the Queen's Code. That in the King's Code. There's another character, but I don't know if we ever hear her voice. She just becomes meaningful. I didn't decide who they were. I don't decide how they are. People think that Mike says shit howdy because I say shit Howdy. No, I got it from him in the middle of Keys the Kingdom. Shit Howdy. Like, oh, that's cool. It just resonated. So I think Claudia's wisdom and what's going to show up in the King's Code, which is wrapping back to the stages of development in Keys of the Kingdom, it's. Oh, it's a thing of beauty. And I've been watching the movie clips. They started in 2018. And I said, oh, I'm not going to write that for a long time. I got no beautiful business writing that. And then last. Last year, it was like, okay, this baby wants to be born. And then I said, okay, August 4th. It was August 7th. August 7th. I'm gonna start typing the King's Code, because I know I don't write it. I type the King's Code. In June, they told me the title, the King's Code, which seems so obvious, but I hadn't ever known.

Nate, what do you mean they? Who's they? The people that have the screen on.

Yeah, they. They. Higher consciousness. They. It's weird. It's weird to be me, but it occurs like the characters in the Queen's Code and carrying forward into the King's Code that they. They exist somewhere. They just are. And my nephew. You look a lot like my nephew said to me, yeah. If I saw the four of them talking on the sidewalk, Karen and Kimberly, and it wasn't Kimberly, Karen and Claudia, and Bert and Mike, if they were talking on the sidewalk, I wouldn't be surprised. They're completely real. That's how they occur. They're these real people. And I really don't decide anything about them. They just show me them. And I get to be in their head, right? Because the point of view keeps changing, which is so important because we're all in our own blind spot. So, yeah, I just am like, hey, what's going on over there? And then they show me. And in 2018, what they showed me, that's when I said, I can't write this for a long time because they showed me one of the characters died. And I was like. And I burst into tears. I'm like, I can't write this. And then within nine months, Greg died. And my reaction, I looked at the ceiling. I said, can I say that for it? Yeah, I just looked to the ceiling, which was like, to me, where Higher consciousness. And I said, you couldn't wait for the fucking sequel. And. And then August, when I said I was going to start writing it, but then I was driving to Wyoming and Idaho to help my daughter, didn't get the memo that I wasn't at my computer and I'm driving and it's just like the full on movies coming at me. Is this the King's Code and the messages and the. That what? Like, what's going to show up in terms of what creates our tolerance or intolerance for Conflict. And even, you know, what has to. What has us to have to have harmonious conversations versus who cares if it's harmonious? It was productive, right? Like, all this stuff was coming at me like, oh, my gosh, just a king's coat. Huh? Okay. All right. I'm gonna count on rewind. And it. It's just proven to be that way. I can re. Access.

I love what you say. We're here in Austin. There's a lot of spiritual people that say, I got a cosmic download. And I'm like, now that seems fake, but when you say it, it actually feels real. So that's like the mark of an elder. You know what's funny is I can't wait to read that book. I think all your books get to be read by every man and woman that ever wants to be in an intimate relationship with themselves or with other people. Because essentially these books came from your heart's experience with yourself and understanding men.

The stages originally came from. I just found out I was a frog farmer. I'd met a man that same evening, a man, and he'd asked me out. Most I told him to. If you asked me out, it's yes. And I was about to have a date with this man, and I was talking to my best friend, and like, I don't. I don't know about this. I don't know about this. This is a man. This is not a guy. This is a man. I don't know. I don't know how this is going to go. And we're like, oh, yeah, they're not all the same, are they? And so we were distinguishing boys, guys, and men. Guys, easy to handle, easy to manipulate. Boys, adventure, adventure, adventure. Play, play, play. They're fun to play with. You know, every newly divorced woman should have a night, all night. Soothe her soul. Just don't get attached. So we. It started out boys, guys, and men. And then as I started listening to the three men who I was committed listener. I was their cheerleader. I supplemented my nonprofit income with them. As I started listening to them and started, I had the question that had popped into my head that night. What if men are responding to women? Then I realized that boys, guys, and men was demeaning. It was inappropriate to who these people are. And so I don't know how to say it, except for that I. I feel my way into things, and it. It's like a mental, spiritual, emotional kind of. I don't know how to say it. And then. And then I verify it with incorporated corporal men with Bodies. So what about this? And so that's when it became what it is in the amazing development of men, the audio program. And there's two parts, right? The second edition. And I can't be redundant, so people really need to listen to both. Because I saw women as the aggressors in the war between the sexes.

They were on the offense.

On the offense, definitely, and men on the defense. So we considered it triage. If we were going to stop the bleeding, we had to remove the knives. We had to disarm the people on the attack. And so after I laid down my sword, after I gave up emasculating men, which was six months into studying men, during which I used everything I'd learned against men, I became more manipulative and more harmful. God bless Ellen Hurst. She was the one who called me on it. So after I gave up emasculating men, I had this project. I called it the Transformation of the Castration Club. And I was speaking to women one on one because it hurt me to see them hurt men. As soon as I saw that as long as I took men's power, I would never know my own. That's what I saw the moment before I said, okay, I'll stop. And then I thought once, when I stopped antagonizing men, that men would become neutral. And I was hoping I would learn something that would bring out the best in men. Shocked. Completely shocked. Y' all did not become neutral. Pretty sure you don't have a neutral. You have reverse and gears going forward.

That sounds about right.

There is no neutral. And. And so when I stopped attacking men, which I really did and had to learn how I had been, men became so proactively caring for me, looking out for me, taking care of me, warning me against. That's a bad man. Being the sheepdog. Showing up as sheepdog so early on, it. It was shocking. It was like.

Why was it so shocking?

Because I didn't know that's who you are. I didn't. I didn't know. Like, one of the most important thing for women to do is stop trying to get men to love you. Stop. They already love you. And, I mean, I recorded a program a couple years ago called Causing those Loving Feelings. And I just realized a week ago that people who buy it probably think it's how to get a man to love you. No, it's how to cause yourself to love others and how to cause yourself to love yourself. And I was trying to think, have I ever tried to get a man to love me? Your weird Shit you're doing is just getting in the way.

It's so good, Allison. Thank you. We're so different, as many women, and it deserves so much respect. The physical, hormonal, emotional differences between men and women. But really something right now that I see woke society attempting to delete is our differences. And it's very sad. What's at the corner of disconnection with men and women, in your opinion?

You have to go way back.

It seems like that's a trend on this podcast.

Yeah, I mean, literally, we have to go back to the beginning, because in the beginning being the 21st day of gestation, when the ex girl chromosomes kick in, or don't, and the effects of the rush of testosterone that comes in on day 21 in utero, or estrogen, the effects of that on the configuration of the brain, the bones, the muscles, it. It's astounding. We. We in that moment become different. And the. The raw material, like the ovaries. Ovaries are undescended testicles. It's all the same material. It either stays or it drops. The most sensitive part of a man's body, same stuff. The most sensitive part of a woman's body is made out of. It's all just formed in these different ways. And the brain, we start out with the same brain material, but testosterone compartmentalizes. Testosterone creates single focus. Testosterone creates track vision, where you can track a moving object so much better than a woman can. But estrogen creates scan vision. That's why you guys ask us, where are my keys? Oh, they're on the piano.

This is the diffuse awareness.

That's the diffuse awareness. And we're scanning for danger. Anything out of place is a potential danger. Who moved it? Did a bear move a tree in the meadow? Is the bear still here? Right, so. And it also creates the muscles that you have and the muscles I don't have and your strength as a man. You have no idea. The weakest man is probably stronger than the strongest woman. It's why. It's why I give men the exercise and the understanding women sample. Right? Like, take your hand, squeeze it as hard as you can, but don't break anything. Make it hurt, but don't break your own bones because you could. Now give your hand to a woman, ladies, squeeze it as hard as you can. And you can see the men waiting for her to start squeezing it as hard as she can. And she's doing it as hard as she can. And the realization, like, when we can't lift something, we're not faking it to make you feel better. We are giving it all we've got. And you guys, right, all your strength, like not all, but the majority of your strength is in this part of your body. That's why when you pick up something heavy, you immediately going to get it above your chest. We pick up something heavy, we snuggle it into our pelvis because that's where all our strength is. So literally, you know, drag us by the hair, knock us down, drag us by the hair. We are that weak. We can be overcome by you so easily. And it's terrifying.

It's honestly something that I don't think about ever. And I really appreciate you reminding me and all of us of this super important fact of brain and body differences that exist in men and women in different cultures.

The regard for women and the intent and the purpose of women can be anything from. You don't deserve a name. You're not smart enough to be taught to type, which is what was thought in the US in the early 1900s when typewriters are invented. No, women aren't smart enough to learn to type right. And then we were not smart enough to be more than secretaries. The actual physical experience and then the cultural view and the thing that happens where for as long as survival depends on physical strength, men are the go to. We go to the strength of men. Culture has changed so much since the 1950s, when now in so many first worlds, the strength is perceived as one's ability to function in relationship, one's ability to connect, one's ability to smooth things over. One's like these things that naturally go with estrogen have become sources of success, right? But the adversarial relationship between men and women, it's the same as adversarial relationship between any two human beings. When you believe in scarcity, it's you or me with temporary alliances, not real partnership. That's the source of all of the nonsense. But one of the things in particular that happens to women is when we perceive your strength. That's the source of chemistry for women is the perception of strength. When we see a strength, whether it's in your size, it's in your way of being. Like confidence is perceived as strength, it's in your integrity. Like when you guys say no to us when we're full of shit, it is so hot. You don't get so sucked into whatever kind of thing we have going on. Yes, it's.

The vortex is real.

It's so hot. We need you to protect ourselves from ourselves. And it just so It's. But what happens, and this is the thing that's becoming clear in the king's code, is that both men and women scan for strength. Most men, most of the time, are filling a team, even if they're not team oriented. They're filling a team. They're filling a hunting tribe. They're filling, you know, the. The defense of the castle, right? And so men are scanning for strength, but you're scanning for complementary strength. You're not scanning to duplicate yourself until you're at that point in your life where you know you have to replace yourself. You're scanning. Do you know, for the Jerry Rice, it's gonna be the receiver that fundamentally changes your game as the quarterback, right? So you're scanning for complimentary strength. And women don't know that the same is true for a mate, that you're scanning for complementary strength. You're not looking for someone like you. So women don't know when a man is boasting because he's attracted to her, that her. Then taking that as competition, game on. And she's boasting back, you didn't win anything. The game is over. Yeah, you're not looking for that. So men are looking for complementary strength, which is why, for many men, qualities like serenity, right? Peace, serenity, calm. Thoughtfulness, right? Connection to the eternal, that attunement that is perceived as. Whoa.

It's what I feel from the ocean. It's like this. Now. The ocean's very unpredictable. It's like this soft holding, not mothering, but just like a soft, feminine holding that's so. It fills my rocket ship with gas. And when I don't get it, I get so upset. That warmth, whatever you call it, that feeding that fuel, it's such an important.

Source of the word nurturing. I think you're nurtured. Maybe.

It's a bit different than nurturing, though. It's like an acknowledgment or a. It's like a woman just being a woman, if I could use that term. It just her doing that is like fuel for my soul.

Yes. We are made for each other.

Yes.

And. And. And I didn't approach this that way. I mean, I approached it like an engineer, Right?

Yeah.

Why does this work the way that it does? What could we do to have it work better? Right? Taking the radio apart, a human being, a man, and then a woman. Okay, if we just didn't. If that wasn't there, that sends us in that direction. This direction would work better if we understood what we were Interacting with that. No, you're not ignoring me. You're in your transition time, which is a kind of single focus. From one focus to another focus. You're just on the road from one to the other. You get home, we greet you like you're a celebrity, you and your two little daughters. This would be Greg's case. Daddy's home. Daddy's home. Daddy. Daddy, Daddy. Okay, let's go back to the kitchen. Fade away. Let the warrior set down his weapons, remove his bloody clothes, change into yet another motorcycle T shirt, and we're just, we'll just do our thing. And when he's ready for us, he'll show up. And how you know is because he'll look us in the eye and he'll smile at us and. And until then, Dad's not really home. Wait till he gets home. Transition time. Well, most women don't know that men are single, focused. So when we perceive this strength in you, our concern, because we think if we're connected, we're safe, period. We seek safety through connection. So when we perceive strength, we are now desperate to connect with you because we think that the feeling of connection means you'll use your strength for me. If I don't feel connected to you, you'll probably use it against me. It's not even might use it against me. It's probably. Of course, if we're not connected, you'll use it against me.

And you mean emotionally connected. Yes. Not just mentally.

People would call it so many different things. They could call it emotional, you could call it resonance, you could call that. That instant recognition, which is one of the most dangerous. Like, oh my gosh, you're part of my soul tribe. That's one of the most dangerous because then we think it means things that it doesn't. It makes us think, oh, I already know you, I don't need to learn you. And then it has. When you behave from a testosterone soaked brain in a completely natural and probably from very good intent, trying to provide for us, right? Like I'm flowing out and emptying my basket and you can see how upset I am. So you're analyzing what the problem is because you want to protect me, me from being upset and you want to provide for me the solution to my problem. And so you interrupt for clarification and I burst into tears. And why can't you listen to me? Right? We don't know the source of those disconnects, but if you look at it, we're both, we both just want to be seen. Yeah, we want to be seen. We want to be heard. We want to be adored. We want to be treated with love and respect. Every single, single one of us.

You're such a light in the world, and I just so appreciate the way you've devoted your whole self since you got that phone call from your friend in 1991 that shocked you into actually understanding men. If there was a blessing or a wish or just something that you could leave men and women with long after you've left your physical form, the legacy of your wish or the legacy of the dream that you know is possible between men and women that then feed the children that experienced so much pain in your early years. You saw that. What is that dream? What's that wish? What's that vision that you'd like to leave?

So the way I've articulated it since I was about 27 is, I call it heaven on earth. And one of my mentors, he said, you know, when we have heaven on earth, nothing's going to be different and everything's going to be different. I'm like, what do you mean? Right? And he said, we'll still have the same problems. We'll still have the same environmental things to pay attention to. We'll still have the same. We'll still have poverty. We'll. We'll still have the same problems, and everything will be different because heaven on earth will happen when the context has shifted. The planetary context has shifted to love. So the context we've had forever is fear and scarcity. And we're all caught up in it. It gets expressed in so many ways, and some of us break free. And it's disturbing to break free because fear and scarcity, so much more exciting. It winds up the nervous system. Those. The emotions we have are completely addictive. It's kind of. I wrote something down once really big. Bliss is never boring because it seems like it's going to be boring to the drama and the. But when enough of us keep choosing love over everything else. And one of the breakthroughs that I had in my own beingness was when I realized I was afraid of evil because I thought evil was outside of God, that it was God and evil at war. No. What if God created evil so that we as human beings would have authentic battle, that it wouldn't just be between good and evil, you know, wouldn't just be between, like, love and being bad? No, there would be real temptation and seduction and complete corruption. When people are corrupted, they don't even think it's wrong anymore. They're tempted, you know, it's wrong. When you're seduced, you know it's wrong and you're doing it. When you're corrupted, you forget that it's wrong and it's. We have real evil. But what if the evil is a real test of growing up? Like, can you choose love over evil? Can you choose love over everything else? And when we do that, and it's why I produce causing those loving feelings, how do we in these little bodies feel something that's infinite and eternal? What is our access to feeling love, which is infinite and eternal, how do we feel it? That's what causing love is all about. So. So that's what I wish for people. Love choosing love, realizing we can choose love, realizing that self recrimination has the word criminal in it. Quit treating ourselves like criminals. What if we're not misbehaving? What if we're just human? What if we're just stuck in human bodies with a human paradigm and they call it the pull of the senses? So Hale Dwaskin calls it one of the Sedona methods. What if our senses that come with human bodies in this paradigm, Earth's paradigm of fear and scarcity, what if they lie? What if they conceal? What if the smartest thing we could do, and if I had. If you'd said, you have 30 seconds, I would say question your perceptions, doubt your perceptions. Clarify and verify. Clarify and verify. Can I tell you back what I heard you say? And could you clarify for me or tell me that I got it right? If we did even 10% more of that, especially as couples and as parents and children, if we did that, oh my gosh, could change everything.

Thank you.

You look good.

I took off my ring. We're not married yet, but on the inside of my ring it says love over fear. I had it etched in because it's the ultimate reminder of which you speak. I've put it on iPads. I've written it down for years. It was something I had heard, but it was a platitude at the time. I was like, oh, yeah, love is all there is, okay? But what it really means is to commit to the surrender of training our nervous systems and our hearts and minds as physical beings to do the opposite of in the moment, what it quote, feels like, what we should be doing.

Oh, yeah.

Did I hear you right?

Oh, yeah. What we're compelled to do is always going to make things worse. Always, 100% of the time. You know the spiral, right? We're either spiraling down into the sewer or spiraling Up. And I call this heaven on Earth. This is. This is the path to heaven on earth spiraling up.

Well, thank you for blessing us with this awareness of the path and walking the path your whole life. I really enjoyed having you here. Thank you. Memorable moments. Memorable moments, y'.

All.

Please go to understandingmen.com alisonarmstrong.com Understanding Men.

Will send them there, but alisonarmstrong.com Especially.

If you yourself, as a man or woman, have been struggling with the illusion of the lies that you've believed, because like you said, question them, therefore they may lie. And please share this podcast with somebody who. Who has been in just suffering because we do not have to suffer so much. One of the things that you mentioned on your website was this commitment to ending not just the war of the sexes, but also giving children a better future than potentially we were gifted. Isn't that what this is all about?

Well, I was talking about this yesterday. Forget to whom the saying children are the future. I mean, obviously, from a biological point of view, yes, they are the future of the species, but literally what we model for them. Because if it's not modeled, it can't be chosen. A child has to see. My only regret about how we raised our kids is when Greg and I got into something, we didn't let them watch us get out.

They didn't see the repair.

They didn't see the repair they saw. I mean, my stand is I am not done. I'm not done with anything until I'm glad it happened. So they got to see their parents be totally and walk back in with the presence of love, in love with each other. But I didn't let them see the in between. I was protecting them from the in between. So they didn't see the way in which we kept, I call it reach. As long as we're reaching, as long as we're reaching, anything can happen. It's when one of us reaches and the other doesn't reach back, or when we're being reached for and we are unwilling to reach back. Okay, what do I need to release what I need to heal in myself, to be willing to reach back. As long as we're reaching, reaching, it's going to be like this when we stop reaching right into the shitter, as they might say in Texas.

Well, let's end it right there, y' all share this podcast. It's on the screen right now. Allison, thank you for being my guest, for traveling out here to Texas and being in the studio with me.

You're welcome. My pleasure. I love you.

Love you, too. Thank you, y'.

All.

You cannot have true peace unless it comes from a place of you actually going through the process to feel the shame and do all the things. So I am wishing you love, wellness, peace, and power. But real peace, because that's where power comes from. Until we see you another podcast. This is Josh and Alison saying goodbye.