877. Men need consequences: Why modern dating is so broken with Adam Lane Smith

25:05Even emotional challenges, stress. Any stress that goes up and you lock in at his side and you resolve it together and you look at each other and you high five and say, we did it. And he acknowledges, we did this. I'm stronger because you were with me. That right there is vasopressin. It's what makes World War II veterans. They wheel them on stage on the wheelchairs and they stand up crying and they hug. That was vasopressin they built through the unit. It's construction crews. it's it's doing things together that you couldn't do alone and he acknowledges it that's the thing most women get this wrong because they run ahead of him removing stress from his life mothering him and babying him and catering to him or they solve problems and just step they step back and let him solve it all by himself neither of those will bond him and we know the vasopressin bonding molecule for mammals is absolutely key for monogamous desire and monogamous protection it's interesting the i've always thought about um men who play sports or professional sports or men that are like firefighters policemen in the jobs where they have vasopressin where they're doing things where that hormone's being released and they're bonding in a way it's with other men for the most part but it does feel like it gives them this sort of initiatory element where they do understand teamwork, they do understand shared goals, shared mission.

26:28And maybe it's not so much, maybe it's equally the sport or the role, war, whatever, and the job that gives them that. Or maybe it's the hormone where they have experience bonding with someone based on the hormone. What do you feel about that? Earlier, we talked about what's going on with men and why are they so afraid and disconnected? Because men need to be initiated into vasopressin bonding. It should be your father first guiding you and teaching you how to use a fork and facing your fears and overcoming little challenges as a kid, learning how to build blocks. I sit with my sons and we build castles together and I show them, but I make them do it and we do it together.

27:02And that's vasopressin bonding for both of us. And they're learning to trust me. I make them go through things that are frightening to them, not painful and terrifying, but frightening. So then they face it and we celebrate that they did it. Just laughing, thinking about all six. Yeah. You're actually like, guys, we're actually going to build a house today. It is, right? A barn raising. but that's that's initiating them into vasopressin so then they learn oh this is what it means to solve problems with someone men today are wandering around this world saying i don't know what to do i'm all alone i have to fix it by myself that's never how the human race is supposed to function not ever but most men like you said are not they don't they're not initiated they're not joining a firefighting squad being a police officer on a unit they're not in professional sports, they work in accounting, right?

27:48Or tech. Yeah. It is. It's almost like, I guess, what would you, because I think about this a lot and I know that it's been talked about, like Jordan Peterson has talked about it quite a bit and it's like the initiatory process for men is missing and men who used to be initiated through war or through other types of ways, whether in tribal cultures too, like doing vision quests or going away, all of that. What would you think, what would be suggested as a modern way of initiating men into manhood. A rite of passage is what you're talking about. Quite honestly, it's what I do with my sons. It's not waiting for one key moment, exactly.

28:22That's important. But it's training them diligently from the moment they are able to move and blink and walk and talk. It's me holding my kids and helping them walk before they're even ready so I'm physically holding them up. It's training. Fathers bond best through teaching. When a baby comes out, most fathers are overwhelmed because the mom is bonding and the dad loves the child, but there's not a bond there because dads don't flood with oxytocin through birthing and through breastfeeding and all of that. Dads don't. So there's not a bond. The baby looks at you and is like, who are you? You're weird.

28:56That's profound because I think a lot of fathers feel a little left out and feel like a little outsider. Absolutely. I did myself with my first child and I'm the attachment specialist. I know this. So you have to bond through teaching. And once you begin teaching, the world opens up and And that child starts flooding towards you and wanting to learn everything from you. And then you help guide them through challenges and fears that mom is like biting her nails, like trying to rescue. And you say, nope, let them face it. And they do. And you walk them through the fear and they learn to trust you, but they also learn they're not alone anymore.

29:28That's a father's job. And we have to be fulfilling that. And most fathers are so burned out and so disconnected. Their father and their father and their father was either gone or dead or checked out. so he doesn't know how to guide his kids in that. So he's just saying, well, here's money. I will work myself literally to death. Here's your cash. I'll stay out of your way. Tell me when you want something. Yeah. And that's not how you father, but that's all that fathers know today. So if you were to give, you know, men and, because when I think about you saying that, I'm like, there needs to be a basics 101 level for men of like, this is, here's the emotion wheel.

30:05Here, this is an emotion. This is how you feel it. this is how you bond like and it sounds like i'm being patronizing because i also there's also i want to talk about the women's course so if we were to give men a 101 level course that they could learn things it wouldn't work why because that doesn't mean anything learn your feelings makes men nauseous here's what's fascinating though and here's what i found in the men that i work i work that was a woman question no no no you're not wrong you're actually not wrong men need this yes but but if you present it that way every woman on the planet is going to take the course and every man on the planet is going to take their own life in my world they're not allowed only men can take it right right but men would never do that they would hate it because because of the way it's presented they don't understand the value of feelings they don't even understand what the role is when i work with men who have like five billion dollar net worth they've run built and sold five companies incredible high achievers they're on their third marriage and their wife already hates them and their kids won't speak to them at home.

31:09They are, they're destroying everything and they are absolute emperors and in the workplace. And I say, man, what are you doing about your feelings? They go, what? They don't want it. And I say, no, your emotions are sensory data. We call them feelings because you feel you are sensing the world around you, but through emotions, that's a whole, that's another sense. That is the sex sense that we're using. And so I say, I want you to imagine that you get in a car. You get in your car with your buddy, okay? And he has black duct tape across the entire dashboard, blocking out the check engine lights, everything just blocked.

31:45He can't read the dashboard at all. And you say, buddy, what's the story here? And he goes, well, after the last engine fire that I had, the check engine light wouldn't stop blinking at me. So I've just blocked it out so I don't have to see it anymore. You're diving out of that car as fast as you can. And if you aren't aware of your emotions, you don't know what's hurting you. So you won't know when you're going to blow up. You won't know what's making you sad. You won't know how your relationship is doing. You won't know anything. You are blind and you're heading for another fire and explosion and you're going to hurt the people around you.

32:17And then I tell them this, the woman in your life is right to be afraid of you if this is how you manage your emotions. So learn your emotions as sensory data, manage and discipline them, and then work through them with what they mean. If we did that, if we presented using your emotions to conquer the workplace understanding your emotions to help your family feel safer disciplining your emotions with body techniques if we taught that every man's going to flood in because now it makes sense now it has a reason now it's a practical purpose that's the piece that women usually don't articulate totally women get it yeah so they don't articulate it yeah men don't i think actually that could be helpful for a lot of women i don't know if it would be what it would be like a course or something.

33:03But even when you're explaining the CEO, COO, what I've learned with men over the years is like, first of all, communication is everything and ever with every person. But it's like, if you were to talk to me like, hey, these are our roles and responsibilities. This is what I'm responsible for when they can understand something and it makes functional sense and it makes logical sense. Even if it is about something that is related to and has the umbrella of emotions within it, they get it. They're like, oh, this is like this. Or honestly, it's so stupid sports references. Like if you can make it make sense to them, they're on board, they want to do it, they want to support.

33:38So I guess then you would say for men, one of the things that would be essential for them to learn is like how to sense their emotions, feel them. Would you say feel them? Yeah. And then discipline them. And then discipline them. And discipline them means self-regulating. Yes. Self-regulating through body techniques, because when your emotions go up on the right side brain, it actually drops your logical functioning on the left side. So then you're out of regulation and you don't, you're not making calm thoughts logically. Your prefrontal cortex is offline. Your limbic system begins to activate.

34:10So you make short-term decisions until you bring the emotional agitation down. And then you can process those emotions on the logical left brain, but it has to be body techniques to calm that. It's the only thing that works. That's, that's what most men are missing. Most men dive into Marcus Aurelius's meditations, stoicism, which I love, but we have bastardized stoicism instead in America, which is shut your feelings down, don't feel them, and then just focus on sadness and death. And that's not working for us. When a man says he loves that, I'm like... Well, do you love it, or do you love the real version of it?

34:41Like, how do you manage your emotions? What do your emotions mean to you? How do you use your emotions? That's a great question for women to ask men. How do you use your emotions? If he goes, what do you mean? Okay, thanks. Thanks, buddy. This date is over. If he goes, you know, I use them to show me where I'm functioning, where I'm sad, where I'm working, and then I manage them and I bring that to my partner. I bring that to my family and then we can work on something and fix it. There's the answer. What's an example of one of the body-based techniques that they would do to support themselves?

35:09Oh yeah, I can show you a fast one. Usually what I teach men is when you feel your vagus nerve and your chest beginning to tighten like this, your heart will start hammering, your breathing will get short and rapid, your stomach will start churning or lock up, your throat will even close, your mind will begin racing. We know these are many of the symptoms. you'll start sweating, especially for most men. These are symptoms of stress and anxiety in the body, just stress, right? Breathing, pulling in a breath through your nose, and then

35:42five seconds, even letting people see you do that. When you see someone doing that, most men are afraid that if you're regulating your emotions, people lose respect for you. They actually gain respect for you because you're somebody who manages how you feel instead of being governed by it. It's not that you had a response that's the problem. It's that you governed the response or didn't. If you didn't, they can see that too. So you grow, they grow respect for you. And then you come back and you pace your tone slow. Okay. I'd like to understand more about what just happened there. Could you, and then you ask a question.

36:13Could you understand, could you explain to me what your perspective was there? How did that just happen? What was your thinking? I want to understand. Slow, tone, pacing, breathing, tone. I have a lot of my clients, I have an extended version that I teach them that cuts their anxiety from nine out of 10 down to one, but it'd be much longer for that. I think also, too, there's like having a meditation or mindfulness practice to allow you to even identify what's happening. Because even if we're talking about them identifying their vagus nerve or them identifying their heart racing, some people are so disconnected from their bodies.

36:46They don't even know what's happening in their body. And they just go immediately to the response. Yes. It's keeping in mind that when you are seven out of 10 stress, agitation, when most people with attachment issues live there, you already can't use mindfulness practices because you're already gone. You're already into hypervigilance, scanning, fear, stress. So most people, mindfulness doesn't work there. Mindfulness works down at three or four out of 10. Being regular, like, I guess, practicing it so that you don't go to seven because with regular practice, you don't go to seven. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

37:17So that you can have that awareness. And I mean, you can sometimes go, but you're way less likely to be in a state where your prefrontal cortex shuts off. Yep. Body work first, mindfulness practices, and then going into the rest of it. I always tell people regulate, then communicate. Yes. Don't ever communicate. Love that. What would you say the class for women would be? For emotions? Yeah. For emotions. Explaining emotions measurably so they're useful. Most women are, they're so in touch with, and my daughter, my wife, my daughter, my sister, my niece, all the women in my life are so intuitively in touch with their emotions that it's hard for them to explain them because they use an implicit language that makes sense to them.

37:59And when they use that language to another woman, another woman's like, I get it. I feel that too all the time. It's just there. And then they co-regulate and work on it. And then each woman solves her own problems, typically. Or they just love each other. That's a lot of it. Most women solve their own problems, but they need to co-regulate first, which is great. Men don't get that. Number one, they're not initiated into it the way they should be. Number two, they don't have that experience intimately with their mother, their aunts, their grandmothers, their sisters. Most men are even outcasts from that now, from birth, because moms are so dysregulated, stressed, scared, out of the home, everything.

38:34So men don't even have that immersion and healthy femininity anymore in their life. They don't even feel it. number one. And then number two, most men are used to suppressing their own emotions. So they don't even have that. And then number three, most men just think measurably instead of thinking emotionally. So if a woman can say, I need to talk to you. I have a concern. Here's this problem that's going on. It's making me feel this way, which means this. It's a good one. And here's how it's impacting our relationship. And then she says, I want us to fix this. Here's the outcome I'd like us to achieve.

39:08And here's what that would do for our relationship. If she can lay it out in that measurable way, that's usable data. Most women go to their man and they wait six months before they even bring up a problem because they're afraid they're going to make him upset. They have no safety and they don't perceive safety. That's his fault, not hers usually. Then she goes and she waits until a moment when he's rested and safe, which is usually about as his head's about to hit the pillow at night, 11 o 'clock at night. Now it's time for a two-hour conversation about relationships. She jumps into a two hour recitation about everything he's done that has ever made her sad.

39:41She thinks she has to make him care because he's initially resistant. So she starts tracking every bad pattern ever, which is just telling him that this is a breakup conversation. She never says, I want to fix this. And then she just ends abruptly and stares at him like this, waiting for him to respond, hoping he's going to magically make it better and get what she meant. most men are tired at that point they are scared they are convinced that this is the breakup or the divorce conversation because they didn't you didn't state what you want they've been beaten over the head with every problem that's ever happened in the relationship things they for they apologize for or things they didn't even know were happening that you kept secret and now you're staring at them expecting a response when he's going to become defensive instead so his his brain says i need to convince you not to break up with me what's he going to do shut you down, get defensive, dismiss, invalidate everything possible because it looks like you are here blowing up for no reason out of nowhere.

40:42He doesn't understand what you're doing. And if he's avoidant, it gets even worse. Make it measurable and make it trackable. Both sides need to be doing this work together. I think timing is really important. I think not bringing up more than one issue at a time is very important. And I definitely think I love the point about having like a desired outcome that men can work towards. And I also love using security statements of like securing whatever, you know, we're not going to break up. I love you so much. And so that you have that foundation of like creating regulation at the beginning or creating like a opening to within the relationship.

41:20Tell me about women being able to receive safety. A lot of women can't receive safety. Yes. So my work prior to being the attachment specialist was actually working with severe and extreme trauma cases that nobody else could work on. I was the guy at the end of the hall, literally at the end of the hallway at my clinic that when nobody else in the clinic could help you, when every therapist in the city had failed, they would send the most extreme trauma cases to me and I would fix them because that was my favorite thing to do was help people in those regards. So a lot of women have very excessive trauma.

41:50A lot of women have been raised by four generations of women saying, don't trust men. They fail you. They abandon you. They die, have a secret bank account, make sure you have a backup plan. I had that. I remember my, my wife one time about four years after we got married, I took my own grandmother out for lunch and I fed my grandmother. I visited her and very few people were visiting her at all. I tried to care for her and nurture her and help her be a very faithful grandson. And I left my wife with her to go grab us a lunch. And during that time, when we were driving home later, my wife said, your grandmother said someday your husband will betray you and you need to have a plan my grandmother told my wife that and my wife said no he won't don't you know him i that is not i know it's not funny you just like sometimes people it people are just bodies that are existing and there's a tape yeah an unconscious tape of the trauma that just plays no matter who's listening no matter the place, no matter the person.

42:53And it's just like, play the tape. Play that track. He's going to leave you. It's crazy. And that's most women today either have that tape playing or they've been raised by four generations of women who did. Did you say anything? To my grandmother? Yeah. No. No, yeah, you're just like. That's just what are you going to do with that? Totally, I know, I know. I was thankful. I said to my wife, I'm thankful you told me. Of course. And I said, how are you feeling about that? She said, I know who you are. she said you share who you are you have accountability with other men you welcome accountability you are you are a man who lives his ethics every day and it would haunt you if you even thought about betraying our family in some way so she said i can trust you because of how you open yourself to me and because of your accountability process so that was great and i loved that answer but but again that's how men create safety is not just by being nice to the woman, what is his system in his life?

43:49Every man will face temptation and hardship. What's his system, right? My wife, I'm in LA right now traveling. My wife's back home in Wisconsin with all our kids. She can send me to LA without a second thought, knowing that I'm not going to cheat because two of my best friends are priests that I confess to, by the way, regularly. And I can see their disappointed faces. If I do even a small thing, they'll get me like this. So I know. I love the church. And I love it. And I need that. We all do. But my best friends, they love and adore my wife. So they're good married men who would be, they would hate me as a human if I ever betrayed my family, not on her behalf, but on their behalf.

44:29They would say, Adam, we don't want you around us. And I have cultivated those relationships and they know I feel the same. If any of them did something unfaithful to their wife, I'd be the first one at his door with a baseball bat and say, let me see your kneecaps really quick. because that's not the kind of man that you are and I won't let this happen or you're out of my life. We're done. So that's how men need to cultivate each other and the women can then rest. But yes, women need to work on their trauma. They need to work on that messaging. They need to learn how to trust men. They need to.

44:57It has to be both doing it together. Making sense? Yeah, it makes sense. Good. Yeah. Earlier you said timing is everything for a conversation. I agree with that. But I think relationship conversations should not take longer than three minutes or something's wrong. Oh, interesting. right? The five hour conversations are death. Interesting. I think, okay, well, I'm going to say something back. Yeah. I think that they can be three minutes if, if, if you're keeping both sides of the street clean regularly. Here we go. So if you guys are, Hey, you know, this, I didn't really love this, you know, kind of just landed a little funky for me when we were at that dinner and you said that thing.

45:32Oh, okay. What was that? Yeah. It was just like this. Oh, okay. that sounds good i won't do it again that's because but that means that there isn't we're also not having sex you also betray you know there's not a backlog of shit that like we're holding on so i think that i agree with that but a lot of relationships don't they have the backlog yeah they do it wrong yes there's a right way and a wrong yeah this is a weird question but like if you were so for the people that are listening now that would like to desire here's here's what i teach so i have coaching clients come to me all the time i used to be a marriage family therapist and I get to coach people.

46:05And they come to me and say, Adam, you're our last attempt. We've had four couples therapists already. None of it has worked. It's all feelings. Usually the women actually say, the therapist keeps siding with me and I hate it. And I hear that a lot. Oh, I've been there. Oh, yeah, exactly. Where me and the therapist were like this girl. Right. And then it ruins the relationship. 100%. And the women get mad. And they say, why did you do this to our marriage? Oh, I liked it. Well, they made it first. I needed it. I was like, I'm not crazy. Right, sometimes. but in a good way, she ruins it. So when they come in, I say this, number one.

46:38That's because they speak the same similar language that women do. Often, yes, exactly. Completely agree. She complains and the man sits there and goes, well, I guess I'm the bad guy here. Oh. And then everyone just beats him with a stick. So usually when people come in, I have to unify them first around what is the reason you're married? It's not to give each other good feelings till one of you dies. It is building something larger. It's a legacy that you're crafting, whether it's kids, grandkids, a nonprofit, a company, a cause you're supporting. What is it? what are we doing together why are you married why is it better to be married than to be single right number one they have to unify around that number two they have to have non-negotiables about how they function together as a couple so the culture of the thing that they're building i tell people it's non-romantic but i tell people that marriage is is and always has been and always will be a business it is not a romantic relationship first it's a business with romance yeah always do you feel like that's a part of go to church catholic christian i'm catholic do you feel like as part of growing up religious, it kind of instills that sort of mentality?

47:36Ah, now I became Catholic when I was 32. Wow. So maybe not. No, it does not. Not currently. It should. Yeah. Proper, proper theology. Yes, we'll instill that. Yeah. But no, most Christians are just as bad, if not worse, than the average secular person walking around. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's not a buffer, not the way it should be. Interesting. I was wondering, because I do feel like in biblical, in the biblical world, like at the, you know, within Christianity, people believe, I perceive that people see relationships more as like a business and more as like a team partnership than I think people without religion do.

48:13Absolute proper core theology. Yes. The majority of Christians don't have that. Theology. Yes. Expression. Maybe not. A hundred percent. Of that truth. Absolutely. Correct. Absolutely. Most, most, a lot of people walk around with religious abuse from, from teachers that talk a role. Totally. Women are told just love him better and he'll totally stop using porn and he'll absolutely be nicer and he won't be screaming at you or the kids anymore. It's the, it's absolute death. Yeah, you're right. It's absolute death. That does not work. Don't love a man into changing. He needs pain and consequences.

48:41That's the only thing that makes men change. We'll come back to that in a moment. But, um, you asked me, does, does fixing the backlog, is it mandatory? Yes. What I tell people is number one, as the man, it's your job to set meeting times like a business where she's not only allowed, but encouraged to bring you problems. For me and my wife, that's Sunday afternoons. After church, kids come home. We all come home. We relax. We sit down. I take her out for a date. Her mom watches the kids. And I say, okay, what are the problems? What are your challenges? What is your frustration? What's your fear?

49:09What's your sadness? What's going on? How can I take care of you this week? And what's the problem? It's the same in my company. I got about 40 people working with me on behind my brand now. And Monday afternoon, 1.30 is firing squad. Adam, your beard looked terrible. Adam, you did this thing wrong. Adam, this thing's a problem and you made it happen. Adam, why did you do this thing? Tell me all my problems in the company so I can fix them in one big go. It's my job to give them the space to do that so they don't have to wonder when it's safe to bring Adam a problem. My wife should never have to wonder when it's her turn to bring me a problem either.

49:40So every Sunday, big, big batch of issues. Every night from 9 to 9.15, kids are in bed. Hit me. What's the problem for the day? What do you need? Do you need a hug? Do you need love? Do you need care? Was there a system missing? Let me take care of you. I take care of her. 9, 15 to 10 o 'clock, 45 minutes, love, couple, playfulness, enjoy. But we get the work done first. And it's my job to lead her in that. It's not her job to beg me for it. I have to create safe places. So my wife is never guessing when and where to bring me things. And I have to be strong and safe for her so she can bring them without fear.

50:13Number one, man's job. That's why he's the CEO. Number two, if you are repairing a relationship that has been backlogged for a while usually the backlog is not that she's hurt and angry the backlog is that she's confused and guessing and scared she needs to sit and write down every question she's ever wondered and everything that keeps ringing in her brain i see you're you're doing the face they're all the things right like what do you do about this why do you like this what do you mean here what did you say this for why were you thinking this what do you want this all those questions and she needs to be able to sit down with him he needs to make a space and she interviews them almost like a podcast and she writes down the answers as much as she wants clear her backlog of worry and fear and confusion and then yes if there's hurt and sadness in the relationship if there's loss if there's grief if there's feeling rejected or unwanted betrayal betrayal that must be fixed i work with affairs every kind of affair you can imagine my friends are therapists and they're like everyone's cheating a lot of people are unfortunately it's crazy there's ways to come there's one and only one way to come back from it but um building a structured what we call a securely attached relationship relationships have a binary you are either securely attached or you are not securely attached it is one or the other and there's lots of flavors of not securely attached one flavor of securely attached when you are secure everyone is safe they're fulfilled he is masculine she is feminine she is safe she's relaxed.

51:43Her nervous system is so calm and settled all the time. She's totally at peace. She's playful. She's laughing. Her life feels right. That's secure. What is the one thing that can help someone come back from cheating? There's one and only path and it's this. The man has to be so bothered himself morally and ethically by what he has done that he has to fundamentally overhaul his life. I'm assuming the man's the cheater here most of the time that's the case. If it's not to the woman, same. You have to be so bothered by it that you aren't saying I'm changing for you or for us. I have to change for me even if you leave me.

52:22And then you go out and clean your life of relationships and build accountability and welcome accountability and welcome visibility. And you have to have meetings with accountability buddies where you hold each other accountable. And you have to be growing in that life and talking about it and sharing it. And by the way, fixing it with your kids who you cheated on because they are more betrayed and devastated than your wife is because you've ruined their entire world and all of their safety going forward, especially your daughters. And then you fix it with your wife because she has proof that you have actually changed.

52:56And then her brain does this thing called differentiation where it sorts the old person you were from the new person you are. And her brain says, I would never trust that person again, but I trust you because you're somebody different. That's the only pathway back from an affair. And it works almost every time. What is the, you said men learn through pain and consequence. Yeah. So how would a woman exhibit that in a relationship? What would that look like? Most women don't have the guts. No, most women don't have the guts. Interesting. Honestly, to work with a man. Most women are just too petrified and too timid.

53:29I understand consequence. Man's pain is interesting. Yep. There's a difference between harm and hurt. You don't ever want to harm your partner, but hurt sometimes is required. Hurt is what happens when you say something true that makes them sad. Remember that sadness is a hurt, but it can come from truth. If your man does something inappropriate and you see that he's secretly looking at porn, he's following Instagram models, he's doing whatever, And you guys have had an arrangement where you've said, this is not something that we're going to do. And he's agreed. I agree. And he's now doing it secretly and you catch it.

54:05Most women get angry and they focus on their feelings. You made me feel bad. And then his brain starts saying, well, how do I make you feel good again? So how long do I have to wait till the cortisol goes away? And how much dopamine do I give you to make you feel happy again? This is especially what avoidant men do. They only understand two chemicals. Cortisol of bad feelings and dopamine of good feelings. That's all they understand. They don't understand oxytocin, vasopressin, GABA, serotonin. None of those are things they much experience because of their chronic state shift that they're in. So, okay, how long will you feel cortisol and how can I hurry that along with some dopamine to make you feel good again?

54:44No, a woman needs to say, because of the choices you're making, it's very difficult for me to look at you as a man worthy of respect. I don't respect you anymore because of this. Until this changes, I will not be able to respect you. And not nasty, mean, vindictive, brutally honest. I can't respect you. It makes me feel grossed out by your touch. My sex drive is at zero and I'm really not interested, to be honest. Until you fix, and you have to add, until you fix this. If you can fix this, I will respect you for that. You have to give him, women fail at giving the solution. Women never give a pathway back to grace.

55:26They don't. They give the bad and then men give up. Give the pathway back to grace and verbalize that explicitly to them. But you have to be willing to start removing your time, removing your attention, removing your touch, removing your access, removing your respect without becoming nasty, mean, and vindictive. A woman cannot do that. It's not going to work. You don't start heaping agony on him and punishing him. Punishment is not the target. Discipline, consequences. natural consequences that you are doing actually for his good. Your love does not go away. Your love for him is unconditional, but access, time, attention, affection, body, all of that is very conditional.

56:06And you have to be very honest with that man about it if you don't respect him. That will hurt him more than anything else, but it will prevent harm. That's what men understand and respect. When one man looks at another and goes, buddy, I don't think I can look at you the same anymore. I don't respect you. This is who you are. That's the only thing. That's how men hold each other accountable. And most women don't have the guts. Powerful. So most women wait 30 years and then file for divorce without ever saying a word. I really think too. I agree with you. And I really think what I see more is the emotion dumping.

56:38Yeah. You know, you made me feel this way. This is how this is impacting me. And I've done that myself in the past. I've been like over-functioning and over-indexing on how wanting them to understand how I feel. as a way to potentially take away the feeling. Now, why do you think you have to make him understand? What are you trying to achieve by that? And this was previously in my life. What were you trying to do? I was trying to offload the feeling to them. I was trying to, I felt probably codependency. So I felt if they felt or if they felt how I feel, they won't do it again. They will care.

57:16They will care. You were trying to make him care. Yeah. So what's a good one. So the message there was that you didn't have confirmation that he cared. Interesting. You didn't believe he cared. you didn't have level three or level four safety from that man. Interesting. He was failing in his role to provide level three and level four. Yeah. Or you weren't receiving it or both. Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. And that's the process. We have to, as men, we have to help the women in our lives understand that we care. Yeah. Then she doesn't have to make you care. Then she doesn't have to bring up six years of data records that she's written out with spreadsheets.

57:51She doesn't have to do that. she can come to you and have the three-minute conversation and say, babe, there's a problem. Can I flag it to you? Yeah. Tell me. Well, this thing happened, really impacted me, made this thing happen, made me sad. Can we not do that anymore? Can we do this instead? Absolutely. Yes, we can. Thank you for letting me know I'm going to take care of that immediately. Okay. Thank you. I mean, that was less than one minute. That's all it should take. That is a correct relationship. That's a secure relationship. The binary of the other side of that is insecure relationship.

58:23You are connected to each other's patterns. Your relationship is the feelings that exist between you at any moment. It's not what you're actually building together. The feelings cannot be the relationship. My marriage with my wife, we've been married 17 years. We've got baby number six coming in seven weeks. And it is not a series of feelings. The feelings inform what the bond is. Our marriage is a third party entity that exists between us that we both nurture that nurtures us. It's a business. It's a fig tree that feeds us. It's whatever metaphor you want to use, but we care for it. So it cares for us.

58:59So me taking care of my wife is taking care of myself and my legacy. It's not selfless martyrdom, but it's also not who gets to win. And it's not whose feelings are louder and more important today. If I starve my wife emotionally, I'm destroying myself and my legacy. I have to care for her feelings, but I also care for her feelings because I love her with all of my heart. Do you think that people, I think I'm so grateful we're on this part of it, but do you feel like people are so concerned about the feelings between them because of like a dopamine addiction, because of the phone? What is making people so concerned about just the feelings between them and the relationship?

59:37Can we talk about attachment science? Yes. Talk about attachment science versus what attachment theory is. Yeah. So attachment theory is back in the 1950s, John Bowlby created attachment theory, which said children from the ages of one to three, your caregivers give you a blueprint of if you are safe or not. And if they respond to you consistently over and over, you build secure attachment or you know that people will respond to you. Relationships are healthy and balanced. You will seek those out. You will push away people who don't care about you and you will build safe, structured, connective behaviors with people that love you and you will love each other mutually.

1:00:10So you'll cluster off and join secure people. If your caregivers did not respond to you correctly, they were inconsistent, they were harsh, they were distant, they were emotional, they were distraught, they were distracted, whatever. Your brain says, nobody's ever really going to love me or respond consistently. You're left in the crib to cry it out over and over and over and over and over. You're in the Nick you crying for three months or three weeks and no one cares for you because you're locked in a box and you don't understand why. They love you from the outside, but you're not getting the message that I'm safe.

1:00:43If you're hurt, you're scared over and over repeated patterns. You either say it's my fault and I'm not good enough because people won't love me. So I'm going to be abandoned. So I have to please them so they don't leave me anxious attachment or avoid an attachment. Other people are the problem when they get stressed out or dysregulated, they don't have capacity. They turn on me. They hurt me. They betray me. They fail me. They disappoint me. I need a wall between me and them and I will be self-sufficient lone wolf. And then you can, you can, if the trauma is significant enough, one is not enough.

1:01:14So you break another time in your patterns and say, I have to be adaptive and go back and forth. And I have to be able to be avoidant when I need to, or anxious when I need to. So whoever I'm around, I adapt to them so I can survive. In insecure relationships, the feelings are everything. It's safety, it's life, it's everything for you. So your brain structure changes, your biochemistry changes, your serotonin levels change, depression happens, anxiety happens, trauma is easier to get. Your prefrontal cortex underdevelops or overdevelops, so you can't even logically think the same. Your hippocampus, your memory formation shifts and grows differently, so your memory center will change.

1:01:58Your oxytocin and vasopressin levels will be wildly out of flux. Your GABA goes out of flux. You have more, like we talked about issues with chronic pain, fibromyalgia, heart attack, stroke, cancer, fertility issues. Women today can't even conceive because they're so stressed out in their relationships and have been since birth. From birth to 30, she's been stressed out and now she tries to have a baby and her body says, that's not what we do here. That's what the system is saying. So I've taken attachment theory from the fifties and synthesized it with all of these other research pieces to say, this is how relationships are meant to be secure, loving, and intimate.

1:02:37And if it's just the feelings and fear and you're never safe, insecure. That's the binary. Make sense? Yeah. The brain science stuff. How did you think about, was there a moment you had a light bulb moment where you realized that there was brain science with it that really was driving a lot of it? You know, I was a licensed marriage and family therapist for many years and And we don't get to talk about attachment theory because they say that's for babies and it's not covered by insurance. So when I started seeing these people with all these diagnoses, but it didn't cover why they had it. When I asked in seminars and trainings and grad school why people get these and we say we don't know, they just do.

1:03:15And they need meds and lifelong management of symptoms. That's therapy and psychiatry going together. You just keep them in the loop forever because we don't know why this is happening. That was not a satisfactory answer. So when I discovered attachment theory, it made sense why they were getting these disorders, because of course you're going to if your life is pain and fear and loneliness and worry and you can never be safe. Of course, you have all these other disorders to try to compensate. But then I started researching, well, what else are they not telling us? So I started looking at, for example, Dr.

1:03:47Caroline Leaf and her team of brain formation. And in two months, eight weeks, 58 to 63 days, you can remap brain patterns. you can scan them and you can change your relationship patterns one by one in eight week segments, just skill trainings and experiences. We can map out doing relationship work in the brain scans and see that there's people doing that, but they're doing it in isolated pockets and they've never heard of attachment theory. Then I met Dr. Sue Carter and started researching her work on oxytocin vasopressin and the mammals and the structures that they need for oxytocin. In fact, anxiously attached people, their brain grabs onto oxytocin more than any other brain does.

1:04:31And it becomes addictive when it's paired with dopamine for intermittent reinforcement. The same thing that gives you gambling addiction. So they are hyper fixated on oxytocin. So they are susceptible to love bombing. Predatory people that come in and give you overwhelming attention. It actually makes you biochemically addicted because your prefrontal cortex is underdeveloped for self-regulation. you over regulate when other people are paying attention to you oxytocin and GABA goes up so you are chemically addicted to that avoidant man who keeps giving you attention and cycles in every six months for a booty call because he love bombed you and made you feel safe for a moment so you'll be addicted to him for the next 10 years every time he snaps his finger that's attachment science that's what i do i'm a synthesis because you talked about this with the love bombing and i think a lot of the conversation for women now is around avoidant men.

1:05:25Oh yeah. I know you know that. Oh yeah. What, why do you feel like, do you feel like men have always been avoidant? Do you feel like this is a new phenomenon and where do you think it came from? We know that attachment is an adaptation. It's your environment. So if the Vikings came in, the Danes sailed in, burned your village to the ground, all the adults are dead. And now you're a child who has to survive. They grab you, drag you back to Denmark and make you a slave. You are supposed to not be securely attached. Your entire brain is supposed to shift to either please these people to stay alive.

1:05:54Women have that more often to please the people who are hurting you so that you and your children that result from it will grow up and live or men become avoidant and lone wolf survival. No intimacy, no sentimentality, raw, brutal survival to either become an aggressor or find ways to work within the system to survive without ever forming an emotional bond. More men naturally seem to gravitate toward avoidance. More women naturally seem to gravitate toward anxious. Although my mentor, Dr. Robert Glover, he literally wrote the book on nice guy syndrome, men with anxious attachment. He and I have been talking recently.

1:06:30Anecdotally, it seems like there are more anxious men than before and more avoidant women than before because that seems to be switching. Now that more men are being raised by single moms to be compliant and sweet and their safety is tied to female approval growing up now, more men are being anxious trying to get female approval. Interesting. It's a weird switch that seems to be happening. Interesting. Interesting. But that's why people can't have three minute conversations and fix it. They have five minute conversations that make everything worse. You're miserable and you hate your life and you feel like he doesn't love you and he feels like you don't love him.

1:07:03Him. And you're doing these five hour conversations again and again and again, bruising each other and ruining your relationship by trying to fix it. that's where most people are stuck. They can't even have those talks. I know. I felt like most men of our generation are more avoidant because they have over-functioning mothers. Well, over-functioning. And like enmeshed. Highly anxious enmeshed. Enmeshed, yes. Her feelings became his problem. Yes. And he said, if I don't calm this lady down, we are going to die somehow. Something bad will happen. I need to keep her out of my business. I don't want her just flooding me and controlling me.

1:07:41Yes. And most of them then have to call their mom once a week to calm her down. Yeah, like a suffocation. Yeah, he doesn't have time for a girlfriend because he already has one. Yes. And that's the problem. He's monogamous to his mother who's emotionally overwhelming. Yes. So now he doesn't want to go out there because his only model for a woman is she's a mess. She has no real loyalty. She gets in his way when there's problems. She will ruin everything and screw things up. She is unfaithful. Yeah, what do you mean unfaithful and loyalty? Unfaithful and loyalty. So challenge-based loyalty. When a problem comes up, does she get in his way when there's a fire?

1:08:18Does she fall in it and then catch on fire and scream and he has to put her and the fire out? Does she kick him in it and say, how dare you have let this happen? Does she say, does she, what does she do? Does she make it harder? Or does she hand him a fire extinguisher and say, go? That's a COO. That's a woman who's an ally. She grabs the extinguisher and shoves it in your hand and say, this is your job, but here's the tool. Right? That's a loyal woman in challenge. Got it. So he needs a woman who makes his life work so they can join together and make that happen. He doesn't believe that's possible.

1:08:52The problem with avoidant men, I had to split this because they used to call it avoidant. Then they called it dismissive avoidant. I had to split this into two subtypes, ethical avoidant or manipulative avoidant. So ethical, they have hard ethics, morals, principles. They are governed by them and they live by them. Live and let live. They don't think it's possible to build a loving, intimate relationship, but they'll tell you that. Interesting. For them, relationships are just an exchange of dopamine, which inevitably burns out at five to seven months. They're like highly successful men. Highly successful, very ethical, kind men.

1:09:26Yeah. Down the scale, as they get more and more damage in childhood, they learn that other people are bad. And they say, if you're going to, if you got the chance to hurt me, you do it. So I just have to keep you over there. So when I'm stressed out, I get manipulative. But when I'm not stressed, I'm good. I'm actually a good person when I'm a legitimate good person. Like 90 % of the time I'm good. But when we fight, I go hard because I'm afraid you're going to ruin me. They have usually sometimes more contempt for other people, more manipulations. They're more likely to use gaslighting, stonewalling.

1:09:57Off the end of that spectrum, narcissistic personality disorder, antisocial personality disorder, that's off the spectrum. That's a whole different beast. But that's the avoidance spectrum. So you have to know which kind of man you're playing with. If he's ethically avoidant, he's trying to work with you. He just has never seen a woman who can be loyal and strong and disciplined and considerate, who uses her feelings appropriately and who solves problems measurably and repeatably with him. He doesn't know that that exists. For him, it's like the dog chasing the car. You catch the car and you don't know what to do with the car, so then you chase the next car that drives by.

1:10:31He just thinks women are for dopamine and he tries to give you some. He accidentally gives you oxytocin. He accidentally makes you addicted. He doesn't get why you're demanding marriage. He doesn't get why you're so unbonded. He doesn't get why the affair hurts so bad. He doesn't get why you're so fixated on him. He thought it was dopamine. He thought this was exchanging dopamine and that was it. Actual ethical avoidant men, that's how they live. That's how they feel. Dismissive avoidant, ethical avoidant would be the joke. Submissive avoidant is what we've split. I don't go there at all. Ethical and manipulative.

1:11:03Ethical and manipulative. Manipulative doesn't know or they know? Neither one of them knows that good women exist. No, sorry. They don't... Manipulative, do they know that they're avoidant? And then they kind of use it as like their game? Most avoidant men don't acknowledge that they're avoidant right up until the very end of the work with me. Because they say, I'm practical. I am ruthlessly practical. Everything I'm doing is because of what people have done to me. I have never seen love or safety. I've never felt safety in my life. I haven't even had physical safety or resource safety. I didn't even get anything.

1:11:34No one has ever made me feel safe. I will give it to other people if I have to, if I can, but there is nothing. They are ruthlessly practical until they begin to open up. And if they can actually feel at rest with a woman and vasopressin bond with her and understand her and see her character for who she is, suddenly things begin to change. When he experiences a secure bond with a healthy, secure woman, she doesn't have to be perfect, but secure, emotionally disciplined, measurable, and clear. And she speaks to him in a business language that he actually gets. All of a sudden, those men usually start to connect and their oxytocin receptors are blocked from cortisol.

1:12:14They've never felt it. They don't even know what it's like. Their mother didn't even make them feel safe or close. Even a hug feels abrasive to them. Those receptors finally creak open and they're usually shifted away. they have to begin shifting back and they start feeling it. And for the first time ever, they feel connected and loved and they have a sense of belonging. It's the first feeling of being at home they've ever had in their life. And that's what bonds him to her overwhelmingly because you're the only person he's ever felt at home with. That's actually the feeling that avoidant men are obsessed with.

1:12:45That's what makes them keep finding new partners. They're looking for that phantom feeling, but they don't know how to get it. They don't know their receptors are blocked. They don't know it's him that's blocking it. They find good woman after good woman after good woman and blow things up because he throws her away and says this wasn't it. Sorry, is that after the six months he's done with a dopamine exchange with her or he's been able to release the actual bonding hormone, which is dopamine? Five to seven months in, novelty dopamine is dead. Okay. And if he hasn't got oxytocin in the first month or two, it's where it's supposed to happen.

1:13:18If he hasn't got any oxytocin bonding, he has nothing. So he's getting oxytocin bonding and it's helping him bond, but it's not letting him stay? No, he's not getting oxytocin bonding if he's avoidant. You were describing if a avoidant man meets a good woman, his oxytocin receptors will be blocked, but then they will slowly unblock. Yes. And that is if he's found a woman that can regulate his emotions, be diplomatic, be clear. Avoidant man who doesn't bond, then I'll do avoidant man that does bond. Cool. How about that? Cool. Because everyone at home is probably asking the same thing. an average avoidant man who's ethically avoidant finds a woman starts dating talking sharing whatever maybe it's a situation ship maybe it's an actual relationship whatever but at five to seven months the novelty dopamine dies that means the new car smell is gone you're not you you're not new your face isn't new those aren't new that's not new right you've done all the things and now it's no longer dopamine so he's not getting a hit most ethical avoidant men at this point say, well, I've committed and I've been here so many times.

1:14:15You should be good on, they say she's great on paper. She's wonderful. I hear that all the time. She's wonderful on paper, but I feel nothing. These men hyper fixate on nine or 10 out of 10 models. I work with super models whose boyfriends, she comes in because her boyfriend is losing this. The women, every other woman on the planet is jealous of, they come to me and they say, he can't get an erection by looking at me anymore. And it's been one year, right? So that's the novelty dopamine dying. Ethical avoidant men still try to stay, but they have no joy, no pleasure, no anything anymore. And now you're asking more and more of them as their pleasure has died.

1:14:55That's why they start falling apart and saying, I don't think we're the right match. I don't think I can give you what you want. He's being ethical. He's trying to be honest from the way he understands it, but it feels like abandonment. That's him. And then eventually he flames out of the relationship or they get married and he's miserable for 20 years and has an affair. I see that again and again. Now, good women face that too. The difference is women who know how to speak measurably and clearly and directly. Women who have secure attachment with family and friends, so she's bonded appropriately.

1:15:24Women who are not so fixated on oxytocin bonding that they don't sleep with him on the first date and then stop asking compatibility questions because she's afraid of offending him or leaving him or losing him. Women who actually have clear expectations and explain why. Women who are building something like a legacy with him. Women who are very clear that they want commitment and why. The why, the context, all of that. Women who can be transparent and have accountability, loving and kind, but firm and exact. Clear, measurable communication as if you are in business. That's what men need. And when they have that, they're shocked because you explain context the way no one else ever has.

1:16:07Now his fears that you want this much, he sees your expectations are here instead and they're measurable. And then when he does it and you respond warmly and explain, when he makes mistakes, when he pulls away, he gets overwhelmed and overstimulated. So he pulls away and ghosts you for three days and then comes back and you say, hey, I'm glad you're back. We need to talk about this because needing space is okay, but abandonment is not okay. So you need to tell me if you're at a max, tell me how long you need and tell me when you're coming back. I will not deal with abandonment ever again, but I know that you need space.

1:16:42Let's fix that too. Let's work on this. In fact, let's schedule couple time and schedule solo time. So you never have to wonder when that's going to be again. And I never have to wonder either. when you can do this with a man that avoidant man that's when his oxytocin receptors the problem is the cortisol goes away so the receptors open up because they're not blocked anymore he's not guessing avoidant men are guessing just as much as the woman is women don't get that he is the guessing and the fear of your expectations and not knowing how to connect or what you want and thinking he's going to be swallowed by you that's the fear when you remove that you have the most loving, devoted, ruthless protector on the planet who will guard you through every crisis you'll ever have because no one on the planet has made him feel the way you feel and no one has proven their loyalty the way you have.

1:17:35That's how you fix things with an avoidant man. Does that make sense? Yeah, it makes total sense. I have felt like that. I feel like men, when a good man finds a good lady, it is like loyalty to no end. Loyalty is everything. Loyalty to no end. It's interesting because in the masculine feminine space, like of, I'm in the more spiritual world land. And sometimes in the conversation around masculine feminine dynamics, they would say that the way that you're, I agree with how you're speaking, how you speak to men. But they would say that the way that you're speaking to men is in the masculine and you shouldn't have to be in the masculine.

1:18:07What would you say to that? Great. Great. Go marry a woman instead. That's fine. because the same people will demand that that man go to five years of therapy and learn to speak in the feminine constantly for her convenience so true we need to learn to communicate with the people we love in a way that works yeah and yes he should also learn how to speak emotionally what's fascinating is when you do this for an avoidant man the problem is he's never learned an emotional language because he can't say say why because you said one of your quotes was avoidant men can't imagine secure attachment. It's like asking someone who has only seen black and white to describe the color red.

1:18:45That's right. No one has ever made him feel safe enough to feel his emotions. His prefrontal cortex overdevelops to squash his emotions so he can't feel negative or positive ones. So anytime he has any level of stress, it dissociates from his own feelings that fast. It's actually a 10th of a second. His conscious brain runs it a half a second, 500 milliseconds so his his limbic system activates five times faster and removes his feelings from his own mind he can't feel his feelings so he doesn't use an emotional language when you say i need to feel loved he panics because he goes what the hell does that yeah and he thinks well what would make me feel loved well being left alone sex oh my god chocolate all right well well, okay, do you want sex, chocolate, or to be left alone?

1:19:35And that's all he can think of, and none of that sounds like it works. I've been with an avoidant, and them being like, being left alone is so real. It is. Like, leave me alone. Yes. So when you want him to speak emotions, he can't. So when you say, I need to feel loved, he goes, well, what does that mean? Well, if you loved me, you should know what that means. Totally. What do you mean? And now your expectations are up here, and he says, I'm sorry, I don't think I can give you what you're looking for. And he means it. And you go, why did he abandon me? Because you demanded something from him that didn't make sense.

1:20:08You said, give me a pet unicorn. And he goes, well, I don't know how to find one. You say, well, if you loved me, you would know where they graze. Right? And then if he tries to bring you and you say, no, that's the wrong color. It doesn't work that way. Hey, I need to feel loved. So here's two specific observable behaviors that make me feel loved. Here's why they are important to me and why they're important to the relationship. Here's what they do for us. So it's not just me demanding compliance. We both get to win. And here's how often or how much of those I need. If you do those, I will feel loved.

1:20:43And here's how we both get to win because of that. He goes, that's it? That's down here. I can do that. Totally. And then he does it. You go, hey, you're a rock star. Thank you for doing that. I love that. Can I do anything for you in return that would help you feel loved as well? And he goes, and he'll look like his face will go blank and he'll go, and he'll say, I don't know. And he'll say, well, what can I do to help you? Women's favorite question. What can I do to help you? And an avoidant man's brain goes, well, I have to do this at work. I have to do this at work after this. And his brain goes, well, I have the skills for those you don't.

1:21:17So he looks at you and he goes, nothing. You can do nothing to help me. And this is the most devastating answer a woman gets, right? because now you won't get vasopressin bonding with it you intuitively know that now i'm useless to him i would also i mean honestly i would also know that i that would be a question that a level of a certain only a certain level of maturity of men would be able to answer to be able to turn around after a conversation fully focused on her and have to be like you'd have to take a moment to be like i need to really be with that and think about what would make me feel loved so i would never ask a man in that moment that question it doesn't matter when you ask and most men can't answer exactly most men are on the internet saying what what do women bring to the table most men are on the red pill circles and talking they're saying oh i know women bring to the table oh i know because most men don't know how to receive what a woman even gives most men don't know most women don't even know what they give yeah just like really made sense that most men are like well what does a woman bring to the table and they can't receive what she's bringing to the table they have no context for it at all if i had the world's largest diamond And I go, hey, go, you can have this, 10 bucks, world's largest diamond.

1:22:27And if you don't know that diamonds are valuable, you go, a rock for 10 bucks? Adam, get the hell out of here. You're trying to manipulate me. If you don't know something has value, you throw it in the trash. Men have no context for what a woman actually brings to a relationship. They didn't grow up with a mother who made them feel the feminine immersion. So they don't know what a woman even brings. so the question is an honest one it's contemptuous for most men it's rotten but it's also an honest one because most men have no idea what women bring to the table yeah and i don't think porn is helping porn is certainly not helping porn is porn is a symptom though it's not the problem i agree with you would you say this is a random question but porn is a conversation that's very prevalent and pertinent in our society i've never seen porn in my entire life.

1:23:17I don't watch it. I don't participate. It's not for me. And it's also not for the person that I'm with, but there's a part of me that feels like that would be a great, like a big ask in our culture. What do you feel about that? I think that pornography hits at 21 times the level of dopamine that a regular sexual experience does. I think that pornography hits at, well let's say cocaine hits it three times so if you have sex cocaine is three times the amount of dopamine porn is 21 times so it's seven it's seven lines of coke so to view one solid video of pornography is hitting seven lines of cocaine the same level of dopamine that's what the research indicates so i look at that and i say okay in our culture people don't have oxytocin hardly at all which means they have very low GABA, which means they have massively unregulated cortisol.

1:24:10They have almost no vasopressin bonding with anyone around them. So they don't feel safe or loved or cared for. They feel massively stressed out with inflammation and destruction running through their entire body all the time. They're chronically in sympathetic nervous system activation, which prevents the release of most serotonin and the production of it. So they never feel content, fulfilled, or at ease. So they always feel in a state of perpetual fear and loneliness and loss. And the only thing left to them is dopamine. So then I see what do people do? They eat food that binges dopamine. They drink drinks that binge dopamine.

1:24:45They smoke vapes and cigarettes that binge dopamine. They watch pornography that binges dopamine. They dive into Netflix or video games that binge dopamine. They spend money on Amazon to binge dopamine. They go on Tinder and shop for a new sexual partner to get dopamine from them as well. it's this dopamine saturated culture but it's coming from our attachment issues it's because we're not securely attached in any of our relationships so we're biochemically starving so porn comes along and yes it's hyper addictive but then you have nothing else counterbalancing it and your relationships don't even give you what you need either so that woman loses all of her spark and interest to you with dopamine at five to seven months and now you're craving seven lines of coke that you can get from looking at a different naked woman on your phone.

1:25:32That's the balance I think we're playing with right now. There's a lot of dark forces at play in our world. That's why I'm Catholic. I know. Yeah, say preach.

1:25:48Where do we go from here? What is the recommended route for us? Like if you could do Pangea, you could have like the ideal, anything could happen from this place in time. What would you recommend that we do as a culture and society to fix our relationships? Can I talk about myself just for a moment? Yes. Like professionally? Yes. So my business partner, his name's Andre, he's my best friend in the world. My business partner and I are trying to figure that out right now. Yeah. And our answer is we're building a global institute to help humanity remember how to love again. Because humanity has forgotten what love means.

1:26:32So I'm doing my, you know, you've seen my channels. I'm doing that YouTube, Instagram, TikTok. I'm everywhere. But what I'm trying to build for my answer for this is a library of information so that a thousand years from now, humanity has the information about how to love each other. because that's over the last hundred years we have forgotten. We have forgotten through multiple wars and hits and devastations over and over and over. And every time we were about to recover as a species, something else hit us even harder. And we forgot how to love. So fathers died in mass quantities. Brothers, everybody died.

1:27:10Women had to pick up the slack and become men just to try to take care of their children. Women had to suffer and die at massive rates, burning themselves out giving themselves cancer just to try to step into the gaps that men were leaving or dying and leaving and there's so much devastation that we've forgotten how to love all we're doing is surviving the generation going today all the generation gen z right all they're almost 30 right they they are living in the ashes and rubble of a culture that has collapsed of a civilization that's already gone they just don't know it yet because the machines are still running so that's my answer we have to remember how to love we have to remember what humankind is built for we have to remember our biochemistry we have to remember that we are relational beings first the individual is not the smallest unit of the human species when an individual is alone something has gone wrong it's like a lone wolf separated from its pack that's not a good thing that's a bad thing something has gone terribly wrong and that wolf is in search of a new pack that wolf doesn't go, cool, I'm going to go reproduce asexually in the forest.

1:28:17No, that's, that's, it's either going to die and be an evolutionary cul-de-sac, or it is going to connect with another pack and then grow and be stronger and accepted and bonded. That's how humans are too. We need to bond in our clusters and our groups. If that means families, if it means pseudo families, it can't be, you know, man and woman from Tinder and they just get together and that's it for the rest of their lives. Friendship, right? Friendship is so intricate. Communities, children and grandchildren. I have six kids because I want them to have allies and friends. I don't want them to ever be alone in this world.

1:28:52But I also have to cultivate their relationships with each other to try to raise them so that they have each other and they trust each other, right? Kids can split apart if you don't train them properly. I have a healthy marriage, so they see it. And I'm also out there, my goal is to help 1 billion people become securely attached because my kids need people to marry and be friends with and do business with. The more kids I have, the harder I have to work to make a better world for them. So that is my target. So we as a species, it's remembering what love means. It's remembering that we're not individuals.

1:29:26It's remembering how to bond. We have to start there, becoming securely attached, flipping across that binary, insecure world into secure world and then connecting to others to build those relationships it's calling out the man in our life with with love you have to be loyal and loving but you have to be direct and blunt as well it's men building safety for women so that women are finally able to be feminine again and not die of reproductive cancer at 40 it's being able to give her fertility and warmth and kindness so she's able to be the mom she wants to be that is the role of the masculine. It has to start with men, but I think women have just as much a part to play as men do.

1:30:05We can't do this one or the other. Men must build safety first, absolutely, but we have to believe there's anything waiting for us on the other side of that. Most men have given up because they don't believe there's any love waiting for them in womankind. You could speak to the woman that was almost 30 that is thriving in her career, doing a lot of personal work, self-development, wants to have deep, meaningful relationship with someone, is on the apps, doesn't really know where to go, where to find the love. Like, what would you suggest that she do? What do you want her to know? I coach those women every day.

1:30:39I talk to them all the time. They're wonderful. They do seek. They're wonderful. My girls are trying. They're trying so hard. That's one thing. I will tell them this. Number one, men want you to be a lot more direct and blunt than you are. That doesn't mean be mean, right? There's a difference between being a strong, feminine woman and being an angry bitch right those are two very different things yeah very different things be a strong feminine woman who calls people out i really like margarita nazarenko she and i've talked she's cool i consider her a friend she's a very kind person she is good at teaching women the art from eastern europe of how to be a strong feminine woman and lead a man correctly and she has a great story she told about her husband then she was dating him when he said they were dating for a few months he said well i'm thinking about moving to australia and she says oh oh, have a good time.

1:31:29It wasn't, can I come with you? It was, wow, that's not going to work for me. And she was ready to walk because she knew what she wanted in life. But she wasn't mean and nasty about it, right? Women need to be stronger and more courageous about what they want. Most men today don't believe women want marriage or children. I'm going to be blunt about that. And when they hear a woman does, they are shocked. So tell him on the first date, you're looking for marriage and kids. Not today, but that's all you'll accept. Stop accepting situationships. Stop accepting let's see where it goes. Stop accepting endless eight years of dating without a label.

1:32:06I want commitment and kids. Do you? If so, what does that look like for you? What are you doing to get ready to build that? How are you growing in that? Who's supporting you in that? Who are your mentors? All of that. Be nice. Be kind. Use your words. Use your words like a grownup. Use your words. That's number one. And number two, remember that women are not supposed to date strangers. You're supposed to date through your family and friend network. So they come pre-vetted for 10, 20 years. of data. So get really friendly with a lot of married women and then have the matchmake for you because they have husbands, they have brothers, they have cousins, they have husbands who have best friends, husbands who have cousins, husbands who have brothers.

1:32:41They have all this data through networks. And if the women around you have terrible relationships, find women who have good relationships. Start building your female network because women need other women more than they need men right now. And men need men more than they need women right now. Everyone should begin with community first and then let your community match make and let your community filter that's how humans have always been that's that is the only successful pathway really toward mating in the way we need to and pair bonding effectively is that making sense now all the skills to get there of course you have to have secure attachment you have to be able to have good friendships you have to be able to ask bluntly for things you have to be able to be clear about what you want you have to have a nervous system that's settled enough to be able to do that and you have to do that work to get to a place of secure attachment but filtering men correctly doing doing the filtering and compatibility in the first three dates is really key all of those things yeah women are just women are terrified and they don't trust men so they're just nice quiet agreeable they don't ask questions i think they're very anxious anxious i think they're very agreeable on the surface but very anxious internally oh yes and men don't realize that but most men are also very anxious and nervous on the inside.

1:33:55So anxious. Everyone's so anxious. You know why? Because they're not using their words. If everyone would use their freaking words, our world would be so much better. Your nervous system stops you. When you're scared, your language center actually, your logical left brain decreases. Language is in the back left. Broca's area, the speech center is over here on the left. It actually loses blood flow. So you actually lose your linguistic ability and your brain and everything closes up so that you can't speak and can't ask questions. you have to regulate your nervous system enough to be able to use your words and then you have to learn what words men even like to respond to you have to learn what words people even want to hear because you've never had someone ask you those questions before so how do you phrase it biggest thing i work on in coaching is scripting with women here's how to say this that's women just like they frantically write it down because they want to know what to say and how it's good girls they're amazing they're good girls they're amazing they're students good students they're trying yes they're very much trying but they don't know how to be good women yeah i agree Any more than men know how to be good men.

1:34:54Yeah, I agree. Prayers for our future. Where can people connect with you and find more? Oh my gosh. I am everywhere on every platform. I have a free library on YouTube of hundreds of video guides. I have a free attachment styles quiz on my website, adamlanesmith.com. I have a free newsletter with tips multiple times a week on how to fix your relationships. Tons of free content everywhere you could possibly go. Just look for Adam Lane Smith. I also do coaching with me and my certified team. And I have a retreat coming up at the end of April. We're going to be training people in person how to have three-minute conversations instead of three-hour conversations.

1:35:30Oh, I love that. So the whole retreat, that's the goal. Transform in three days. Wow. Have your breakthrough and switch across the binary to become securely attached enough to start asking the questions you've always wanted to. Wow. Make sure to connect with Adam. I was on his incredible podcast. It's been such a pleasure to have you. Um, this has been amazing and we will see you on the next one. We love you. Bye. Thank you so much, Adam. Again, that was Adam Lane Smith. You can go to adamlanesmith.com and you can find him on Instagram at attachment Adam. Thank you for listening to the show. Make sure you subscribe.

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