#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want

26:10But if you actually look at what's talked about online, it's, guys, you're broken because your penis doesn't work. And guys, you're broken because you can't get a woman into this situation where she feels comfortable enough to come. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What was men not erect women most affected? Women most affected. That's men not erect women most affected. Yeah, that's, yeah. Yeah, that's an interesting point there that like well men aren't erect, but then it's you know again It's it's the man's fault for being unable to achieve an erection and that yeah, who's who's who's really a vulnerable here Which is yeah, it's an interesting framing there like you mentioned that you know often women do feel unhappy about this that that they see as a reflection on maybe their own attractiveness and you've probably seen some some research going on I saw I saw Ralph Dagan tweet something about this.

26:56There's a study about how women essentially feel like extremely satisfied when their male partner has an orgasm and they feel very dissatisfied when they don't. Like they feel like the sense of accomplishment by bringing their male partner to completion in the bedroom, which I guess like, you know, there's probably an evolutionary story you could tell there that, you know, historically, evolutionarily, male orgasm is required for the continuation of the species, whereas women's orgasm, You know, it's great, but also, you know, not necessarily not necessarily more than all the continuation. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

27:31Yeah, that's an interesting one. I certainly remember looking at some stuff around. Well, if you think about it this way, the bar, men coming is typically quite mechanical, and that can be the case too for some women, but not all women. And if that's the case, the bar for I have been able, I have performed my duties is a woman in the bedroom is lower than it is for a man. You know, you have a full spectrum of happens, the gust of a wind to never gonna happen at all, even on my own for women, whereas for guys, this is, actually this is interesting. This is probably one of the few areas where male variability is reduced.

28:12Mm -hmm. Right, the typical, right. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So in this case, it's kind of the complexity of your sexuality and what would bring you to be aroused and to have an orgasm. It's much more varied for women than for men, which is, yeah, that's at odds with what we usually see. That's fascinating. Novel insight. That's some fucking bro signs for you, bro. That's really, yeah. Dr. Rob Henderson. Well, I remember seeing this study a while ago. And I think it's funny. All of these stories about conflict in the bedroom and how, I've seen articles that we need to achieve orgasm equity that it's unfair, that men always have an orgasm, and women, it's so unlikely for them.

28:57But then when you look at the data as far as in what relational context women actually have orgasms, let me see if I get these numbers right. When women are in a committed relationship with a male partner, so this is heterosexual couples, they orgasm something like 70 % of the time. But then when you look at hookups, like a casual partner that you see on a somewhat regular basis, it drops to something like 25 % and then for one night stand, it's like well into the single digits, it's like 7%. And so, one way that women might increase their odds of having an orgasm is to get into a committed relationship.

29:32There's something cosmically unfair that when a man has a one night stand, casual sex, committed relationship, they usually make it work. Whereas for women, what was that term going around a couple years ago? It was like demisexual or something like I can have an emotional connection. Yeah, I think that was a real house. Yeah, that was demisexual. And then the sapiosexual, which is I'm attracted to your intellect or something else. Yeah, I mean, the demisexual thing was hilarious because I think that was called, I think, just being a woman up until, just being a normal human up until not long ago.

30:02Yeah, I'd be very interested in orgasm equity, orgasm equality act thing. You do have the equivalent of orgasm billionaires out there, which are women who are just able to have orgasm after orgasm after orgasm during sex. And, you know, as a, the guy's side of the fence might decide to fly the flag for that and go, look, I come once and I fall asleep ten minutes later. So, you know, where's the fucking, you're the Jeff Bezos of fucking orgasm, Stalin, past some of those back over our way. But speaking of that, kind of the topic of the internet at the moment, adolescence, I only... I was away traveling basically from when it came out until yesterday.

30:46So I only got to watch, I've seen a few episodes, but give me your take on that and then kind of the subsequent fallout that's happened. Yeah, well, what's really interesting, so I mean, you know, the basic summary of the show, I'm sure a lot of your listeners have seen it about this boy, this 13 year old boy, who's kind of unpopular at school. He goes to the, he's a working class kid. He goes to this rundown chaotic school. You know, one thing a mutual friend of ours pointed out William Costello is that, like, because he's worked in schools in the UK before and he says like that is what a lot of these schools look like.

31:18Just sort of utter chaos, teachers barely able to contain the classroom. And this boy, Jamie, is relatively unpopular. He's sort of at the center of the story. And the show makes references to, you know, how the kid listens to Andrew Tate and how he, you know, there were a couple of times the, you know, he said something about like the 80 -20 rule, about how 80 % of women, like 20 % of men. And so there are a lot of these kind of like red pill manosphere talking points throughout the show, basically suggesting heavily that this boy got like, you know, sucked into this online rabbit hole. And then when this girl on Instagram, this girl had a crush on in his class, calls him an in -sell, he lashes out, gets mad at her, and then he stabs her, and then the boys arrested, and there's this kind of interesting scene of him.

32:06The whole episode, one of the episodes consists of him speaking with this, I think she's just like, hi -attressed or something, and they're going back and forth about this. And yeah, it was interesting as a piece of entertainment, I thought it was beautifully shot, but I don't think, like there are a lot of things about this series, it's being treated as a documentary, but it actually doesn't really reflect what happens in real life. You know, like, if you look at the statistics for who commits knife crimes, it's not really like white 13 year old working class boys. If you look at the statistics for who is most interested in watching Andrew Tate, for example, you know, there was this interesting poll going around that they broke down the respondents by race or ethnicity.

32:46And it was something like 41 % of, so this was in the UK, something like 41 % of black males in the UK said they were fans of Andrew Tate. And then for, what do they call it, like, South Asian or something, Asian men, it was something like 30 % and then for white, it was like by far the lowest. And yet when people talk about his fans, they often say, oh, these white male in cells. And then the other thing was, you know, that's how it just, it was just, you know, the whole in -self thing, he's 13. The kid looks like he's 11 and a half. His voice hasn't changed. Like, it was just hard for me to fully believe that, you know, some, some like pre -pubescent kid is really feeling so stressed out about, you know, being a virgin or whatever.

33:33But William pointed out that actually what's interesting here is that it's not so much So he's upset about not getting laid. It's about being called an in -sell and this term has become a slur and this really embarrassed the kid and so on. But overall it was fine, but very much sort of, it's straight a lot from reality. And yet it's being received in a lot of the mainstream media as like, oh, it's this iconic series that accurately reflects what's going on with toxic masculinity and so on. Very unrealistic. Yeah, art, masquerading is reality. And yeah, that was one of the things that struck me.

34:06I mean, one of the other things that struck me was beautifully shot, adored it, cinematography is fucking amazing. It was shot in a DJI Ronin IV, which is a really cool piece of kit that's been around for a little while. And I thought that was great. I thought the acting was a little underwhelming, actually, especially from some of the kids. And the acting was its most underwhelming when they tried to shoehorn in anything to do with mating psychology, EP, sort of tangential stuff, because it was so ham -fisted how they had to do exposition. The manus fear, the red pill, what? Have you been watching the matrix?

34:45You know, I, oh, fuck you. So just, it felt, you know, the exposition, but I understand, you know, this show is going to be watched by people who aren't terminally online, like me, and you. So maybe it needs that exposition, but that just felt a bit like, one of the interesting things, again, I was away for all of last week and hadn't watched it, but I must have been invited on to five, ten different panel style shows of varying levels, including like mainstream British TV, primetime spots. And it was evident that they were just looking for somebody who could come on and sort of fight the fight for the pro men's side.

35:26And first off, I hadn't seen it. Secondly, that is a fight that you only fucking lose by going on and trying to defend an imaginary child stabbing an imaginary girl about an imaginary slight. So what do we talk about this in an awful lot? What it seems like happened, they invited me on the first night after adolescents hit the news headlines. And then we were able to track, oh, that's the person they got on instead of me because as I said no, and looked at that, and that conversation was very placid and calm, and then they emailed again the next day, and I'm like, hey, yeah, we really wanted a little bit more sort of different insights.

36:08I'm like, what you mean is you wanted to create a firestorm, but who's gonna come on and say, we need more 13 year old boys that it's stabbing, imagine a 13 year old boy, stabbing imagine a 13 year old girl. Like, it's not a position. And then, yeah, this fucking, it's supposed to be shown in the House of Commons. We want to be able to stream this in every school. Why? As a cautionary tale? As a cautionary tale for who? Because by every metric, this fantastically shot, really beautiful, very well put together, but statistically pretty inaccurate. So there's fucking papers out there. How many times have I talked to you about the male sedation hypothesis?

36:50like if you look at how radicalized young men could and should be, how little sex they are having, how isolated and lonely they are, by every metric, how much they're falling behind socioeconomically, the state of their mental health, the online subcultures that help to sort of ossify and make them feel worse about this. Like, this isn't a request. This is not a request, and you're not allowed to cut this to make it into a request, but where are all of the insults tabbings? Like, where are they? Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's interesting. There was that paper last year, I think, with David Bus and William Costello, where they wrote, like, why is there not more in cell violence?

37:25If you look at, you know, like, if you look sort of throughout historically, unstable or unstable countries, communities where growing numbers of young men are not doing well, unable to find partners, falling further and further behind, like usually this leads to increased violence, increased crime, and so on. And we're not really seeing as much as you would predict based on the sort of historical trend and pattern. And yeah, your male sedation hypothesis, I think there's, you know, that makes sense as a sort of an explanation. And yeah, it's weird that it doesn't happen that often. And then there's this fictional portrayal of it.

38:04And then that gets blown up. And that like, you know, like serious people who went to great universities and are supposedly mature, sophisticated adults watch a Netflix show. And I just like, it blows my mind that you think, like, oh, that's how the world is. That's how the world works. This thing, this four episode thing you saw Netflix, that's where you're getting your information about what's happening online. What's happening in the internet? This is an accurate insight into what's going on with young men. How's it common? High -reeking politicians. It's just it's pain. This episode is brought to you by Manscaped.

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39:19In the same way that you would say, you know, this is a caution retail against the problems that 13 -year -old boys are facing, like by that logic Batman should be a caution retail against orphans and people that slip into wells. like you're taking the actual situation that was narrativeized and I have heard that the original story that this was born out of was a different demographic for the perpetrator that it was actually based on a real -life story and that had to be changed, probably for a number of reasons, one that it would be politically inconvenient, but another one being that Stephen Graham fucking in wrote it.

40:05And Stephen Grahams as white as they come. So if you want to be the main dad and have all of episode four be about you, you kind of, unless you're going to, it's a totally normal boy that comes from an interracial marriage. Like that, you know, but it was in, I thought it was interesting that they didn't have him come from a broken home. They didn't have him come from an abusive father. You know, there was a lot of sort of pushback in that way. But I watched episode three last night and that was the one I was particularly interested to get your take on because that was obviously them trying to sort of dig into what is the psychology, what is the ideology, the mentality of these young boys.

40:40And I found that one really dissatisfying. The way it was shot, the fact that they held it together for a full 60 minutes, like a fucking scripted podcast was unbelievable. But they tried to sort of touch on, so what do you think about masculinity? What do you think being a man is? And at no point did they find really any tension in the boy wasn't really able to give a particularly strong answer to that. The broken home thing didn't work. There was some interesting stuff around the power dynamic between him pushing back against the woman and him typically being able to play. But I didn't see that quite so much as some thinly veiled misogyny as it was just young, slightly be shrewd boy, or go knows the limits of a person in power and is able to play with those to make them feel uncomfortable.

41:32You know, he even sort of comments on the like how flat -chested she is and whether she's pretty and stuff like that. So you know, there's always this like, I know that if you do something to me that's not right that I can kind of get you on it. But yeah, what did you make of that? That sort of breakdown and the sort of masculinity, fragile, male ego discussion at large. Yeah. Well, I mean, as I was watching it, you know, I thought about all the research on in cells and how, you know, if you look at the mental health of in cells, a lot of work from our friend, William Costello here about how 67 % of self -identified in cells qualify for clinical diagnosis of anxiety, severe moderate anxiety.

42:12And this is like roughly twice as high among in cells as nonin cells. And so then when you see this kid and he so emotionally fragile and kind of volatile and he probably does, you know, his fictional character, but he probably would qualify for some threshold, a score above a certain threshold for depression or anxiety. And this psychiatrist lady is trying to sus this out and try to pinpoint what exactly went wrong. I did find it interesting that they chose to have of this character, like you said, raised in this intact family. And so, you know, I'm trying to figure out like why that specifically, it could have been a single dad.

42:51That might have been interesting if, what's the guy's name? You mentioned Steven's something. Graham. Graham, yeah. So if this show had been, you know, he was a single father, you know, working overtime and his plumber job to make ends meet. And maybe he wasn't always able to be there for his son the way that he should have, something like that. The fact that he had two parents. And so then I thought, okay, well, maybe the message is, this could happen to anyone. You know, he's a nice boy from a nice family, but he just got sucked into the in cell, red pill rabbit hole and he got brainwashed. But you know, that like, we didn't really get an explanation here.

43:24Maybe that's supposed to be the idea here is that there is no explanation other than the in cell, you know, online world. But then you would expect like you said, you would expect more of this kind of violence because if even boys from good homes could, you know, become a criminal like this, then you should see way more boys doing this and you don't. Yeah, what about the boys from bad homes? What about the boys that don't have that good upbringing? Why are they not doing it at three times the rate, five times the rate, ten times the rate? I've watched a couple of behind the scenes on YouTube that Netflix put up themselves and Stephen Graham's explaining the script.

43:55And he's talking about how he didn't want the excuse, he didn't want there to be an excuse that it was because of abuse from the family, which constrains the sort of explanatory mechanism straight down onto this sort of aggressive subculture. But I've got episode four to watch this evening, unless they actually show how he becomes radicalized, like, you know, he was on Reddit and he was looking at these things and he's doing all of the rest of the sort. It's like, okay, so where did you learn about this? Or is it just, is the point really just the, the male ego and sort of male sexual prowess and your mate value when threatened and specifically humiliated at large by someone is a dangerous object.

44:41If that's the takeaway, I fucking fully agree. I fully fucking agree with that because I think humiliation is unbelievably dangerous to anybody, but specifically to a young boy. And at least, again, only in episode three, if the story continues the way it does, it's like, Guy didn't bring a knife, got it from his friend, just wanted to scare this girl, this girl had bullied him, like up until the point at which he brought a fucking knife to her, she was in the wrong. She'd been mean, she'd been saying this stuff online, she'd derogated his status in a lot of ways, and then this situation gets out of control and fucking tragically, again, fictionally tragically.

45:22Like we must remember at no point, do we need to defend or like try and fucking prosecute anybody because nothing happened. But yeah, if that's the story and that's the takeaway, and maybe that's the reason that it was left so open -ended that you didn't have this sort of concrete explanation around masculinity, around what were the subcultures, you know, that Andrew Tate shite is like a passing comment. But to anybody that has the fucking first idea about what the internet looks like, I would guess that most in cells actually despise Andrew Tate because he represents an awful lot of everything that they don't agree with, that they don't think, Like, he's just going to be a symbol of all of the shit that they can't get.

46:01So, that plus red pill plus manosphere plus insight, it's like, this is a fucking massive world. It's like, I'm sure it's the same when good -meaning feminists hear, oh, she's a feminist. You don't need to, you can disregard her opinion because of, you know, other, friend, like, that includes fucking pink pill and are we dating the same guy and our slash female dating strategy? Like, all of them probably can get lambasted under the rubric of feminist. Right. Yeah, there's that kind of outgroup homogeneity effect of like any man who comments on relationships or talks about women in a stereotypical way, they're all part of that same andryutate red pill atmosphere that's all the same sort of collapsing to the same group.

46:41But yeah, I think that's right that like even sort of politically, you know, those findings about how generally if you measure the political attitudes of insults, they tend to lean center left. They probably don't really have sophisticated politics in general. They're just kind of upset. They're falling behind in terms of status, in terms of income. They don't view themselves as particularly desirable or attractive. And their politics are probably completely orthogonal and related to however they're feeling about themselves in relationships. But it's just easy to vaguely collapse, take, and Trump and everything that you don't like.

47:16They're all just these domineering evil men and also in -cels are in there too somehow, even and though Andrew Tade and Donald Trump are like kind of the literal opposite of in cells and like every kind of way in terms of income in terms of success, in terms of women and everything else. So yeah, it's, you know, the show was, and then like, you know, I think the show honestly, it could have been braver if they had an uglier kid. The kid is like, he was a perfectly nice looking, 12, 13 year old boy or whatever. And if they had had an uglier kid, I think he would have felt like, I think maybe it would have been dangerously close to making him too sympathetic, you know, like, yo, It's like, oh, if he's a good looking kid, what does he have to complain about?

47:53But if you had an ugly kid, you might actually feel like, yeah, it does kind of suck being physically unattractive and then you might leap to, well, you know, he wasn't justified, but like if you're an ugly kid and you're being made fun of and and and then. That's interesting. So I wonder whether we have an additional sense of contempt or disgust or resentment or whatever, for the kid that was called it, but that we know they want. Now, we're going really, the casting directors here, we're giving them an awful lot of fucking respire IQ points. But let's just assume that they made this decision consciously.

48:31You've chosen a kid who, facial symmetry, you know, like a normal looking boy, like fucking middle of the bulk of a kid. That kind of makes it seem like, oh well, you weren't sufficiently robust psychologically to realize that all they were doing was teasing you and that it wasn't actually an accurate assessment of your future. You were almost certainly probably going to be, you had like two friends. You had an expensive pair of trainers, you come from an intact home, you've got an older sister, your parents seem to love you. There's photos of them at this like party where they're all dressed up at the beginning of one of the episodes.

49:09So all of the things laid out there for you to sort of Basically, use your own sense of self to push back against these kids. And this is because you are deficient. And the reason that you're deficient is that your sense of self is being corrupted by these online platforms. Oh, yeah, yeah. Well, there was that scene with him in the psychiatrist where he asked, like, do you think I'm ugly? And I guess that is like an in -sell trope of like, you know, you're all ugly. If you're not in the top 20 % or top 10%, then you're just ugly. You're invisible to women. And he was trying to get this weird sense of validation from this woman, this psychiatrist asking her to give her assessment of him.

49:54And he mentioned something about, oh, you're pretty. And I think it would have meant something to this boy to have a pretty woman say, oh, actually, you're not ugly. But I think she asked him back. Her response was, well, do you think you're ugly? Because she's interested in what he thinks. But yeah, I think, yeah, that would have been an interesting route to go. because there was nothing, he didn't have a list, he wasn't overweight, there could have been something that added a little bit more in his character. Yeah, but you're right, I think maybe spare IQ points for the producers here, but they cast a very normal, very nice looking kid with nothing apparently wrong with him.

50:29And so then, which I guess maybe there is a left wing, social constructionist idea here, where we're all good looking, we're all above average, We're all on the right hand side of the bell curve. Unless somehow you receive this ugly messaging from society, from the internet, from evil peddlers of in -cell ideology or red pill ideology online. And if we could just sort of get rid of those people, maybe silence those people, remove those accounts from the internet, then we would all finally accept that actually we're all beautiful. And we, you know, there's no need to be so upset. Yeah, that's interesting.

51:05I guess as well, there is a question to be asked of, and the amount of bullying you would need to go through to justify murder is essentially an infinite, so it's kind of a moot point. But there is a question of, okay, at what point does online bullying and castigation and ostracization and being disaffected and humiliated by your classmates, at what point does that in and of itself independent of what's happening on the internet and ideology and all the rest of it. Like, let's just say that instead of using this like special coded language of an exploding stick of dynamite and love of hearts and all the rest of it, what if people had just been saying, you're ugly or you're never going to get a girlfriend or nobody likes you?

51:52What if it hadn't been coded from the internet? What you end up with is bullied boy lashes out the like Step of the spear of the people that are bullying him and that makes for a much less X But in terms of dynamic is kind of probably 80 % of the way there like they talked and speaking of 80 % Like the 80 20 rule you know 80 % of women are only tracks 20 % of men. It's like what like what How's that that's got nothing to do and no point does he mention it at no point does it like like Like other than it's this undercurrent of women are choosy, which like shock horror, like that's every fucking rom -com since the beginning of time.

52:33I don't know. It's very, it's very interesting. I've been, and I think what's more interesting is to me than the actual series, it's been the response online. Keir Starmer saying it needs to be played in the House of Commons. We're going to stream this in every, every school up and down the UK. This is a caution retail. Yeah. Very, very interesting. Yeah. Yeah, well, yeah, if you're streaming it in the schools, I mean, yeah, if the, if the portrayal of schools in adolescence looks like that, like, you know, good luck. Like those kids aren't going to be watching it anyway. They're all going to be on their phones and you play a movie in class.

53:06I know those kids are actually going to be watching it. So I mean, who's, who's that for exactly? So yeah, I mean, I guess it makes people feel good about themselves. You know, they're, they're sort of the more, you know, quasi conspiratorial corners of Twitter where they were like, you know, one point of this whole series is to essentially help to create crystallize a consensus that we need to increase the level of censorship online. You know, if the belief among sort of policymakers and taste makers and cultural influencers is, oh, like, you know, with these accounts, this ideology is leading voice to staff girls, then we need to start shutting down accounts, start, you know, patrolling the limits of, you know, acceptable speech online.

53:47And, you know, I don't know if that was, you know, the intent behind like, let's make this show so that we can silence voices or something like that. But I do think that there are people who work in a lot of mainstream media outlets who don't like, you know, certain influencers, certain social media platforms or what have you. And if they can shine a light on this show and get it to become a thing and help to contribute to this consensus, then, you know, they're basically, it's not, It wasn't the original intent, but it's a happy sort of byproduct of the show being around and being in a position to amplify its message and get people to watch it.

54:23It's a useful, popular, political football that people can kick about. Okay, going to the other side of the spectrum now, what can psychology teachers about how to choose a good partner? I read this phenomenal article from you a while ago and then reread it recently. What can it help us? Yeah, well, one of the things that I point out right away in that piece, yeah, how to choose a romantic partner is, you know, study after study finds, you know, you look at research on happiness, on well -being, on life satisfaction, that the two biggest factors are what you do for work and your marriage and family life, you know, your choice of spouse.

55:01And that makes sense. I mean, if nothing else mathematically makes sense because you're going to spend most of your life on the job, whatever job you work your career, and then with your family. and that takes up the bulk of your time. And so one thing that occurred to me as I was writing that piece is just how much information there is out there about, you know, how to become educationally and occupationaly successful. Here are the steps you need to go to college. Here are the steps you need to take to master a job interview. You know, here's the pathway to become a successful doctor, a lawyer, what have you.

55:32And everywhere you turn, there's no shortage of advice. And it's perfectly kind of acceptable in the broader discourse to, you know, like, what are you doing? Oh, I'm watching this YouTube series on how to improve my career. That's fine. But if you were to say, you're watching, and I was like, what are you watching? You're like, oh, I'm watching this YouTube series on how to be a better romantic partner and attract someone. Somehow that is like weirdly stigmatized. We would think of someone like that as like, well, what's wrong with you that you can't just find one. We expect people to just enter the world knowing how to be an attractive partner and to find a compatible partner for yourself.

56:03But we accept that actually it's perfectly fine to sort of seek out information and knowledge and mentors and so on to succeeding career. And so why do you think that is? I mean, I don't know. I mean, I think part of it is, there could be this thing where if you require explicit advice on romance that this in itself is an indicator of low -mate value or that you're unattractive, that if you naturally know what to do and naturally know how to succeed as a person in the romantic sort of dating market, then that in itself is an indicator that you're a worthy romantic partner, but if you need to see got information, and that suggests, oh, actually, maybe you shouldn't even be dating in the first place.

56:48Whereas, yeah, for career less, so, I mean, I still think that we, if someone effortlessly succeeds in their career, we do give them a bit of extra credit, but we're perfectly fine with people who are trying to improve themselves. we are willing to confer special praise to those people too. So yeah, it's an interesting one. And I think it's more so for men specifically. Like I also wonder if, because of the women are wonderful effects and this sort of accompanying effect of we tend to be a bit more suspicious of men, that if you hear that a man is learning how to improve their prospects on the dating market, our mind immediately leads to worst case scenario of oh, you're gonna learn how to manipulate women, and you're gonna learn how to find it.

57:31Tyrone Sisson all over again. Yeah, exactly. And so we don't think, oh, this is just a guy who's really falling behind and wants to learn how to have a good first date and find a girlfriend. We think, oh, he's trying to hook up with as many women as possible and do follow them or something. But this piece was basically about assuming that you want to find a good partner. What are you actually looking for? And earlier we talked about, we touched briefly on a sort of mating And that does seem to be the case that if you look at measures of political orientation, religiosity, socioeconomic status, earnings, educational attainment, that we tend to pair with people who are relatively similar to ourselves, there was an interesting statistic.

58:17So this study was from 2005, which found that if your highest level of education is a high school diploma, then your likelihood of marrying someone with a college degree is 9%. But if your highest level of education is a college degree, then you're likely to have marrying a college graduate is 65%. I'd imagine that's actually higher today. It seems like a sort of mating is sort of tilting even further and further in that direction. But what's interesting there is that the similarity, even though that's sort of descriptively true, that is just the case that we tend to pair with people who are similar to ourselves, when you measure levels of similarity within romantic partners, similarity doesn't seem to predict relationship success.

58:59And I was reading that paper and my interpretation of this is probably that similarity is necessary but not sufficient for a long term committed relationship. Surely though, if most people are mating assortatively, you have a much smaller sample size of people who have made it unassortatively. Yeah, and there's that issue of range restriction where if you're only looking at couples, then by definition, most of them are already pretty similar. and so does that extra similarity help? Probably not. There's probably that threshold that's sort of necessary. You're also not seeing how many couples that were from different educational backgrounds that got together broke up and that shouldn't have gotten together and sort of flooked their way into it.

59:40That's kind of an interesting one. What about personality traits, similarities in... So being extroverted, being introverted, propensity for low moods, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, well, the personality thing is interesting in that. One thing that shocked me when I was looking at the personality research and similarities and couples is that the correlations are remarkably small. They vary around sort of 0 .1, 0 .2, statistically significant that if you're open, your partner that you tend to pair with will be a little bit more open than average, same with these other personality traits. One that's a bit higher than the others that I saw was for neuroticism, which is about point to point to to somewhere in that realm.

1:00:22And this is consistent with other work that, you know, people who are emotionally volatile tend to be attracted to one another or find something interesting about one another, whereas people who are more emotionally stable tend to seek out partners who are stable. There was a really interesting essay a couple of years ago from our mutual friend Scott Barry Kaufman and he wrote about people with with dark triad traits that they seem to find one another interesting and attractive. In fact, they're welcome to each other. You know, everybody that isn't dark triad is just going, please, for the love of God, date each other.

1:00:56That's a great way to kind of quarantine everybody out of the dating pool. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, which I think like, you know, if you're, yeah, so people who are sort of relatively narcissistic find other narcissistic people interesting and attractive and those kinds of things. One thing that was interesting being related to the personality point is authenticity that this really interesting paper found that people who score highly on measures of authenticity within their relationship. And so these were basically the extent to which participants agreed with statements like, I'll usually tell my partner things that are on my mind even if there's a chance he or she may not understand me.

1:01:37And when people are more likely to agree with those statements, they also tend to correlate highly with levels of relationship satisfaction. And interestingly, the reverse was the case, too, that people who are low authenticity also tend to pair with people who are also more deceptive or less authentic. And so there really is that sort of a sort of meeting they're going on, too, which I guess like one went potential inference here is that if you want an authentic partner, if you want someone who tells you the truth, you have to be a bit transparent, you have to be open yourself in order to establish that trust.

1:02:08What's that thing to be worthy of the worthy mate, be a worthy mate. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, yeah, the best, you know, the, the, that's why we call them honest signals, right? Is that, you know, only someone who's truly authentic and truly whatever, that, you know, you're going to be the most likely to attract a partner with those kinds of trace as well. This episode is brought to you by Namedig. Travelling should be about the journey, not the chaos of packing, which is why I've partnered with Namedig. Their backpack and carry -on have genuinely made the travel process almost enjoyable. They've got compartments for everything, your laptop, your shoes, your sunglasses, so well organized that even your toothbrush will feel important.

1:02:46It's like the Marie Kondo of luggage, everything has its place. And if you're still on the fence, their products will last you literally a lifetime with a lifetime guarantee and you can return or exchange anything within 30 days for any reason. So you can buy your new bag, try it for a month, and if you don't like it, I'll just give you your money back. and get a 20 % discount and see everything that I use and recommend by going to the link in the description below or heading to nomatic .com slash modern wisdom. That's nomatic .com slash modern wisdom. If authenticity is a big predictive relationship satisfaction, is that a vote in the box for oversharing, for being quite transparent about sort of what's going on as opposed to keeping some stuff just for your journal and the therapist room.

1:03:35Interesting. Yeah, I think generally, well, it depends on what the conversation is about. You know, if you have your sort of most wild extreme thoughts like, I don't know, maybe those don't always have to be aired. I'm gonna punch a baby and put it into the road. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well, but I think like when it comes to issues around the relationship itself, that maybe there's a way, I think it's better to generally over communicate rather than to let things slide and let resentments build up and then it potentially explodes later into a serious argument that, I mean, there's a way, I think, to over communicate in a kind of diplomatic, respectful way of just like, why do you do that?

1:04:14That upsets me, stop doing that. That's probably not the best way to go about it. But if you see something and you point it out in a gentle way, and I think that is probably a better approach than just like, yeah, letting it all build up over time. What about the role of when we think we can't do any better? Yeah, that's an interesting one. Yeah, these are mutual friend -aided bus on this one was fascinating paper here about how, you know, there's this idea, you know, basically what are people looking for in a partner? Is it someone who just meets their relationship needs? You know, oh, like here are my 10 list of demands for my partner.

1:04:49Oh, you meet nine out of the 10 and this person meets 10 out of the 10 and so I'm going to go with the 10 out of 10, that kind of thing. You know, as if If we're grading on some objective rubric, but that paper suggested that actually, we more so grade potential partners on a curve where we are kind of putting together multiple things in our environment. First, the person that you're with, how do they stack up compared to partners that you could reasonably attract in your social environment? What they found is that if your partner is basically better quality than the alternative, realistic alternatives around you, then people tend to be happy.

1:05:26If the person is kind of less attractive than a potential realistic alternatives around you, people tend to be less satisfied. And that was especially true for people who evaluated themselves as being more attractive than their own partner. And so I think that's that maybe the most sort of dangerous situation here is if you know if you're with someone who've used themselves as much more attractive than you and also thinks oh well I could also do better and I see all these other people around you that this could lead to a potential unstable relationship dynamic. And so for a lot of guys, I think what they, few ask them what they want, especially young guys, like under 25, they just, I want the hottest possible girl, you know, physically perfect, 10 out of 10, I want to dime.

1:06:06But then, you know, if you point out to them, well, you know, if you're a pretty average guy and you do happen to land a date with some supermodel who, you know, maybe in another, or some other day of the week is going out with Leonardo DiCaprio on his yacht, that's probably not gonna work out for you. And that may be another reason why we tend to made a sort of Lee is gradually over time. People kind of figure out where their level is and find someone who's roughly the same level of attractiveness as themselves. But yeah, there is that point there that what predicts relationship dissolution and it does seem to be people thinking to themselves, well, is this really the best I could do?

1:06:43And this I think also has something to do with what we're seeing with the dating apps. Although, I think this is sort of tapering off, but for the last, basically since 2012 with the rise of Tinder, I think that probably contributed to kind of relationship instability is more and more people thinking that they could do better because of the apps and then a lot of people realizing actually that's not the case. Yeah, buses got this line about mates once gained must be retained. So for all that, it sounds fantastic to get into a relationship with some smoke show, So especially when you think about, and this is Seth Stevens -Devidoetz's insight, lots of people are selecting their partners based on the same criteria that everybody uses, but that criteria is not predictive of long -term relationship success.

1:07:30So if you choose somebody that signals very high on a criteria that you know lots of other people are going to be interested in, like, hotness, for instance, but if you take the genuine red pill, which is, hotness has basically zero predictive power in relationships, satisfaction, long term, as long as you're relatively sort of physically matched in terms of attractiveness. What you get to do is tap into a blue ocean as opposed to a red ocean. You get to be able to find people who are going to make you happy over the long term and have the added benefit of other people kind of passing them by a little bit more.

1:08:03or the other approach is I'm going to choose somebody that everybody wants, but all people would fucking hate to be in a relationship with. And I'm aware that there's like a ton of gray in between those two examples. But that is kind of the spectrum. Somebody that signals something everybody is after, but that doesn't, that's not predictive of long -term relationship satisfaction. High competition, low happiness. And then on the other side, you have somebody who signals things that genuinely do predict relationship satisfaction long -term, but that most people don't realize, you see that, you tap into that, and you actually get less insecurity, less make -guarding, needed, less jealousy, less all of that stuff.

1:08:43Yeah, that's a good way to go about it. Yeah, yeah. I think that's, yeah, you can kind of like moneyball your way into a relationship by going for people who are attractive, maybe uniquely to you, but that maybe others are overlooking in some way. That is, yeah, that's interesting. I mean, on the personality point, I mean, it is the case that similarity and personality is relatively low. I mean, statistically significant, but small correlations. But then what does seem to predict satisfaction is regardless of your own level of, say, conscientiousness, your partner's level of conscientiousness does seem to predict longer relationship, duration.

1:09:20Interestingly, it also tends to predict your own level of career success. So, you and many listeners are familiar with the fact that obviously intelligence IQ that predicts career success, but then also conscientiousness of the big five personality traits. Conscientiousness has the strongest predictive power for how successful someone is going to be in their career. But what was interesting is in one paper found that even when you control for the participants own level of conscientiousness, their romantic partner's conscientiousness predicts their own career success, which suggests that if you have a partner who's hardworking, diligent, focused and so on that that also somehow benefits you in your own life even small things like making appointments following up on emails all of those kinds of things you know that that compounds over time having someone who's very switched on like that and then yeah other other traits as well I mean for relationships satisfaction agreeableness is one low levels of neuroticism and and then yet high high intelligence is another there.

1:10:16And so it's interesting that even though the similarities aren't especially high within couples, if you want a relationship to last, it's good to have sort of more rather than less of many of the straights. Yeah. I had a Taito Shiro on the other week and he was talking about openness, openness to experience and saying, you basically want someone that's moderate below because as soon as you get above moderate, you're into sensation seeking and sensation seeking turned into, well, Why don't we make this relationship open? Well, why don't we, the way it is kind of hot? Why don't we add him in this evening?

1:10:50They're more tempted to stray. And I think it will be correlated with a bunch of other stuff. I'd heard you say before that impulsivity, dismissiveness, aggression, and being flighty and unreliable in addition to physical attributes like tattoos or piercings and so on, or all indicators of potential future mistreatment in a relationship. Why those? Why that suite of physical and mental traits? Yeah, I mean all of those, you know, there's sort of volatility clusters around neuroticism or low emotional stability and It's interesting. I'm reading this This person it's called the person a new introduction to personality psychology New textbook sort of covering the latest in in that whole field and one of the things they point out is you know People who are highly neurotic, you know high on neuroticism they'll often, you know complain about bad things happening to them and And there used to be this question of, well, are they basically overstating their own level of suffering?

1:11:52People who are neurotic, are they going through the same thing as everyone else? But because of that personality trait, they are exaggerating the extent of their own mistreatment. But actually, there is a bit of that going on. But additionally, when you look at objectively what happens to people at high neuroticism, they have more interpersonal conflicts, more issues with their friends, more arguments with their romantic partners, just generally more difficulty in their lives. And so, yes, they may overstate what they're going through, what they are objectively going through, worse sort of interpersonal disputes than the average person.

1:12:24And so, if you want to avoid that, you got to kind of avoid sort of the aggression, the flightiness and all those kinds of things. The openness point is interesting. I would imagine there is research indicating that tattoos correlate with openness to experience. I would imagine the same goes for unusual piercings, and those kinds of things. And so yeah, if you, there was this study about this, about promiscuity in tattoos, that basically the more, if you have a tattoo, you tend to be sort of more open, what's the phrase, sociosexual orientation, basically more interested in promiscuous sex, those things correlate together.

1:13:03And then the more tattoos you have, the more open you are to having open sex with unfamiliar people, which lines up with the other research on tattoos as well, that it correlates with low impulse control and those kinds of things. And so, yeah, I mean, it's funny. We, you know, I had this tweet put out a while ago with something like, you know, people put a great deal of effort into designing, no, the phrase is, don't judge a book by its cover. And yet people put a great deal of effort into designing book covers. This tweet is not about book covers. In other words, we spend so much time adorning ourselves, the way we dress, our haircuts, the piercings, the tattoos, everything else, and they are sending signals about who they are.

1:13:48There's a really great paper from a few years ago with something like Personality is revealed on the weekends and the paper covered. Basically, you can cover frequency of going to the movies, going out, how many social nights you have, what your bedroom looks like correlates with your personality. So many things about you reveal this. And so, yeah, all of that, you mentioned aggression, fighting this and everything else. But, yeah, so you want someone with relatively low neuroticism. And then, yeah, with education, with intelligence, those things as well, that what's interesting about the intelligence one is that when you ask people, these are sort of hypothetical scenarios, sort of roughly, what's the ideal level of intelligence for your partner?

1:14:30People tend to choose around 120 IQ, which is roughly the 90th percentile of intelligence. And so people want someone who's obviously smart, visibly intelligent, but they don't want some supergenius, maybe because of stereotypes about geniuses being kind of quirky or personality -wise being a little off. But when you look at the correlation coefficients, sort of how similar spouses are to one another within marriages, there is a similarity in that they're IQs tend to correlate with one another. But there's still about a 10 point IQ difference between spouses on average, which is smaller than it is for say two siblings.

1:15:10So this is all from Robert Plumansworth that two siblings within a family on average tend to have 12 point IQ difference from one another, which is smaller than if you were to choose two random people in the population, the difference there would be about 17 points. And so spouses 10 points, I mean, that's even more similar than two siblings would be. But one thing I've tried to track down is whether it's more likely that the, like, in heterosexual couples, is it the man who's more likely to have the higher IQ or the woman? I think based on what we know about hypergamy and everything else, the prediction would be, probably the male has higher intelligence.

1:15:43I remember I posted this poll on Twitter a couple of years ago where I asked people to imagine that they were a contestant on who wants to be a millionaire and you have to choose who's going to be your lifeline for the phone a friend option. You don't know what the question is going to be And you can either choose who's gonna pick up the phone. You don't know what the question is gonna be, they don't know what the question is gonna be. You can choose your mom or your dad, and something like 80 % of respondents chose their dad. And so I think like, you know, I think that people probably have this intuition that within couples then have a bit more sort of varied knowledge in those kinds of things.

1:16:15Yeah, what about other red flags, managing emotions, guessing game, character assault, silent treatment, stuff like that? Yeah, yeah, well that's, That was one of the most important finding as far as what to avoid for red flag. David Bus says one of the things you want to look for is are they able to, or how quickly do they return to their emotional baseline? All of us, regardless of our personality traits and our temperaments, we're capable of getting angry or upset or irritated, but some of us are able to sort of take a step back, take a couple of breaths and detach and think about the situation rationally and kind of calm ourselves down, but other people, they kind of spiral out, like they get angry, and then they keep, they look for more reasons to get angry, and then suddenly they're off on a different path.

1:17:04And so you want someone who's able to control their own emotions. It doesn't mean not be emotional, but just able to sort of understand that this is what I'm going through, that they're able to identify and label their emotions. This was an interesting finding from, I think the guy's name is Laurencey and Reid. He's a professor at NYU. He talks about how people with borderline personality disorder, which generally afflicts on average women more so than men, one of the hallmarks of borderline personality disorder is the inability to understand and articulate and verbalize what you're feeling. You know, so these people are kind of like, I'm feeling this thing and like very clearly it's negative, but I can't tell the difference between, you know, ordinary anger or rage or irritation or just sort of being mildly or moderately upset that it's sort of all or none.

1:17:55They generally know they're feeling good or bad, but then when it comes to sort of isolating, well, this is what I'm feeling and this is how you're making me feel and here's how it came about. It's difficult for them. It's sort of a spectrum. You gotta be careful, you know, basically finding people who are unable to do that. And then one of the green flags is someone who's stable, someone who's able to control themselves, who's able to communicate. And one point I try to make in that piece is, you know, communication is even more important during a period of emotional tension and dispute and hostility of someone does something that upset someone else.

1:18:33That's when communication becomes even more important than it otherwise would be. Yeah, you know, a Vsikhan Verassamage, you know that guy. He's great. Yeah. Yeah. He's So he's such a fire. And he says, it's the lows not the highs that make or break a relationship. Why do so many people divorce someone they thought was their favorite person? It's not really a mystery. It's mostly because good times are a poor predictor of how you'll handle bad times. And the handling of bad times, it's much more important to the success of a marriage, but there's a species and there's a culture we have not truly internalized this.

1:19:06It's also, it's the lows not the highs, right? The make a relationship. Like, it's really easy in the medium term to get hyped about a person who seems to relate strongly in specific ways. But in the long term, it's really just how you handle misunderstandings and conflict and confusion and disagreement. Because insufficient good times may be a reason for relationship to break up, but I would wager that it's far more too frequent and too poorly handled bad times. Because the highs weren't high enough. It's like, no, no, the lows were too low. Yeah. And the way that you, I think, reveal the other person's personality and learn about that person during those low times is basically to give it some time, give it some space, allow their relationship to develop.

1:19:57Because when you're first dating someone that you like, you're on your best behavior. You know, you're showing the best parts of yourself, the most interesting, witty, dynamic, everything. You're trying to impress this person. You want them to like you. And they're doing the same to you as well. You're showing each other the best versions of yourself. But one thing that this psychologist, Sean T. Smith points out, he wrote a book about commitment is that generally speaking, about a six month more if the rule of thumb is after about six months, you do start to learn about that person and basically reveal their true selves to you and how they're really like and how they handle pressure and what they're like when they're sleep deprived, what they're like when they're jet lag, what they're like when they're having a bad day at work.

1:20:39And you know, for the first couple of months, if you have a bad day at work, you're so excited to see the person you like that the bad day doesn't even bother you. But after six months, after you sort of become accustomed to the relationship, then you are more likely to expose those other sides of yourself. So I think that's important too, is that I think a lot of people, they jump into a relationship it seemed so exciting and then they don't realize that, you know, people are different at different stages of the relationship. You gotta give it time. You gotta allow them to, but have revealed themselves to you.

1:21:07And then I think it also helps. I can't remember who said this. It might have been on your podcast. Someone pointed out that a good way to see what another person is like in a relationship is to go on a trip. With that? That was Rogan. That was Rogan's. Oh, yeah. On my episode, that did with him the other week. Or he's like, you gotta go on a long trip. You gotta go on a long trip and you gotta go, it's somewhat stressful and you gotta go on a long journey. Yeah, yeah, yeah, jet lag, you know, yeah, yeah, maybe travel coach, you know, like put it like put as much sort of like stress test The relief.

1:21:32Maybe feel how weak. Yeah, there we go. And then you'll see, you know, like oh, that's what this person is like under Unpredictable circumstances out of the sort of rosy glow of everyday predictable life. Yeah, you said a clarity and inquisitiveness as well Incusitiveness, I thought was a really interesting one, but those two together that kind of goes back to the authenticity thing right? Like this is how I'm feeling even if it might make you upset or even if it might make me feel vulnerable or whatever. So I can, and I guess that's a counter as well to the person that gets so agitated that that unable to say, I don't know what I'm thinking.

1:22:08I don't know what I'm feeling. I can't talk about this. I guess clarity and inquisitiveness are kind of the opposite of that. Yeah. Yeah. I guess, yeah. If you look at the the opposites who are being unclear and and uninquisitive, uncurious about the other person. But yeah, the green flag is, yeah, to be transparent, to say what you mean, to be clear about, what your intentions are, what you'd like. And then, yeah, inquisitive, if you are uncertain, if there's an ambiguity in the relationship, you don't know what the other person is thinking or feeling that you ask the person about it, and then the other person, ideally, they're not going to be upset with you.

1:22:46That was one of the other red flags is, because I'm basically forcing you to play the guessing game of, well, if you really cared about me, you should know how I'm feeling. And if you really were paying attention, you would already know why I'm upset. But a more healthy relationship style would be, you know, to just say, like, this is what I'm feeling, this is what's upsetting me and go from there. And yeah, it's just, you know, all of these things, like it's interesting. There's like a such a wealth of information about sort of mating, mating psychology, what to look for, what are the predictors of the happy and healthy relationship?

1:23:18And yet there's such little guidance on this point. And then whenever anyone tries to point this out, especially if you try to promote anything resembling sort of conventional, committed relationships, people start to get wary. You know, the slings and arrows come out. There was that story more than 10 years ago now. The Princeton mom letter. Are you familiar with this? No. There was this. So she was a Princeton alumna, who's daughter attended Princeton. I think this was 2013 -2014, but this woman, who I think was in her 40s, Susan Patton, I wanna say, she wrote this op -ed in the Princeton Student newspaper, basically imploring the young women at this college, like, hey, you're surrounded by very smart, ambitious, bright young boys.

1:24:03You should start thinking about marriage, like you should start searching for a husband now, and then in response, she got all of these criticisms from like big name mainstream media outlets, let's calling her anti -feminist and calling her a traitor to the movement and all these kinds of things. And what she said was perfectly reasonable that she had a couple of interesting lines in there. One was, you're never going to be surrounded by so many men who are worthy of you. And then the other line was something like, if you are with a man who's less intelligent than you, you're never really going to be fully satisfied.

1:24:36And she was kind of pointing out, oh, generally, that's true. like women do tend to want men who are bright and ambitious and intelligent and all those kinds of things and you're Meeting prospects changed dramatically after college. I mean, I've had so many conversations now And I'm sure you have to with young people in their early mid -20s And they're like I didn't know how good I had it when I was at college when I was at university And it's like you know, especially if you're a man and 60 % of the campus is women and they're all you know young and bright and ambitious and interesting and whatever and then you enter the workforce and it's like all your co -workers are older than you and they're married and they have their own separate adult lives and it's just um you know the your your meeting prospects transform and become generally less promising and You don't know and no one tells you young people about this Louise Perry told me about that article the other week and she uses this really wonderful example where she says If you Buy a lamp before you move into a house It's quite easy to find a place within that house to fit the lamp.

1:25:39But if you've spent a couple of decades creating the perfect house, finding a lamp that fits all of your priors as in your life is the house and your partner is the lamp. It's way easier to build a house around a lamp than it is to find a lamp that fits the perfect house. And a lot of the time if people have got deeper down into their careers, they're not growing with someone, they're trying to slot somebody into their existing growth. both. And you're more sort of cemented and sort of, I guess in some ways, stagnant, like you think you know what you like, you don't develop what you like in partnership with another person.

1:26:16You're trying to see will they fit this thing? And this thing has become increasingly more complex, increasingly sort of grander and bigger and less capable of being changed. So yeah, I thought that was another interesting twist on that essay. Yeah, I've seen this this kind of framework. I think it was called, you know, two approaches to a marriage one is the startup marriage and the other is the capstone marriage. And so the startup marriage is you're sort of entering together to build this thing, this life together, that you know, if you're in your early mid -20s or something, you're young, you're just starting out, but you find someone that you care about and that you love and you get married and you're sort of building the life together and in the capstone marriage as well.

1:26:56I've succeeded in my education and my career and my income and everything else. Now, the final milestone is now I'm going to get married and bring this person in. I think both of those can work in different ways. I like the analogy from Louise there that you get older, you get set in your ways, you find it harder to introduce someone into your life. If when you're young, you're just more flexible and you're probably more willing to relocate, you're probably more willing to maybe change up careers. There's so many other things you can do when you're young that becomes harder when you're old or older anyway.

1:27:35But on the other hand, I could imagine the argument going the opposite way where, you know, when you look at, there was this interesting thing from the Institute for Family Studies about sort of the optimal age for marriage to reduce likelihood of divorce. that it was the case that if you get married very young, divorce rates are higher than average, maybe because you're immature, because maybe financially strapped those kinds of things. But then at a certain point, it starts to sort of this, what is it sort of a U -shaped curve here, where around 30 or 31, that was kind of the ideal as far as the lowest likelihood of getting divorced.

1:28:11And then once you sort of reach your mid -late 30s, it starts to creep up again. And so I do wonder, Yeah, what's what's it could also be the case though that like for most people if you haven't found a partner by your mid late 30s that you know Maybe there's something going on with you That that makes it difficult to find a partner. Yeah, there's a question of well Why is this restaurant got no people in it? Yeah, if this restaurant was any good it would be it would be sold out Yeah, well, I mean look Flying the flag for both me and you two people who maybe should have been married before we are.

1:28:50I think,

1:28:54retrospectively what you get to look at is, what did I prioritize at what stages of my life? And there's certain people, at least, I've realized this since being in Austin, who if you've got a lot of kind of upward mobility, and if you've got things that you really want to do in the world, you end up, or at least those people seem to be very, very good candidates for massive fucking midlife crises, because what you end up with is this like unrequited, unfulfilled, lack of validation from the world for me. And I had to give up so much of me in order for the world, in order for this relationship to happen.

1:29:36But then on the flip side, you I asked you to send me that free press article earlier on, and I think it's a really, really good synopsis, which is, do not mistake side quests for the main story, and your side quests, things like, you know, brunch with the girls and Vegas with the boys, and the parties and the career and all the rest of the stuff. Like, the main quest is the person that you're going to spend the rest of your life with, because a great career and a shitty marriage results in a pretty shitty life, but an average career and a great marriage results in probably a pretty fucking awesome life.

1:30:12So ensuring that you get the priority of those the right way around. And then on top of that, all of the other stuff that people, I mean, you've seen the stats around why Gen Z say that they don't want to date, like just not ready, one time to work on myself, it's gonna get like why women don't want to have kids, like can't like cute heels, like, you know, there's a lot of reasons. Those are side quests. I think there's a good argument to be made that the place that you live and the job that you do isn't a side quest. It's certainly one of the main storylines, but wearing cute heels or like fucking Vegas with the boys does definitely are side quests.

1:30:47So yeah, ensuring that you stay on the main mission. Yeah, yeah. What is this all for? That kind of thing. Like, you know, eventually you're going to want family, you're going to want kids and grandkids and all those kinds of things. And yeah, I think it's, I wonder if like the reason for that for Gen Z, like where are they looking to as far as sort of role models and guidance and you know, you mentioned sort of you and me. like I think that, you know, this, this sort of path of, you know, prioritizing if you have a kind of an unusual career that requires a lot of time and a lot of commitment and a lot of hours, and you also derive a lot of meaning and satisfaction for it, then that's great.

1:31:18That can work for a lot of people, but that's not going to work for everyone. You know, Jordan Peterson points this out that for most people, living a conventional life is actually your best -shotted happiness, that for most people, you know, getting married, settling down, you know, having kids, having a family, all those kinds of things like that for most people is a good path. Unless there's some extraordinary reason why that isn't the right path, maybe you have some extremely lucrative or unusual ability or talent or skillset or something else. But we get these interesting messages because those people who tend to have the spotlight, who did sort of delay marriage and career and so on, often they will attempt to justify their own lives and say, well, it worked for me.

1:31:57This is a great life, you should prioritize your career. This is how you get to where I am, that kind of thing. And most people aren't like that, though. You know, like by definition, if you do have a platform and you do have an audience and those kinds of things, you're very atypical. You're an unusual, weird person and mostly on that weird. Yes, selecting for the advice of people who are weird. Like most people. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. Because if you're an ordinary person who's a cheap tapiness and success, chances are you don't have this huge megaphone and you don't have a large you're raising your kids and you're raising your family and that's where you're getting your life satisfaction and your meaning from.

1:32:30And I'm not even saying like one way of life is better than the other, but for most people, the type of life that would lead to happiness, those messages aren't as salient because of their effect that those people aren't sort of out in the world the way that peculiar psychologically typical people are. Fuck yeah. Rob Henderson, ladies and gentlemen, Rob, you're also a man. Why should people go? they should read your writing because I read it every single week and then shamelessly repurpose it on my own newsletter a lot. Where should people go? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Rob Henderson's newsletter. It's I'm on substack.

1:33:02Rob Gay Henderson on Twitter. Can buy my book. It's out in paperback, troubled by Rob Henderson. And yeah. Rob Gay Henderson looked that up and I'm everywhere. So. Time right. Rob, until next time. Appreciate you, man. Thanks, Chris.