#991 - Dr John Delony - The Blueprint for Better Relationships & a Peaceful Life

24:23It's like, like, for what, what do you want? And yeah, I think it took me just taking me a long time to get there, but for me, my house, man, want peace? No, go from there. Yeah, I think that a good part of this is explained by this wonderful quote I had to say. Adam Lane Smith on, have you seen him? Oh, yeah, yeah, I know Adam. Yeah, so Adam I think would be another one for the... The attachment guy. Round, round table, fucking super crazy bullshit stuff. He just had this wonderful fucking insight around complexity. So you said that your life is... your issue in life is not that it's too busy, but that it's too complex.

25:04Your system is built for hard work, not for complexity. And his argument is that you can deal with any workload as long as it's sufficiently simple and linear enough. And I kind of get the sense with the piece versus war thing too, that if there is a really, really heavy weight, but there's just one of them or two of You know, probably super easy. That's why you got two hands. Or if there's a purpose for it, right? You'll carry it forever if there's a purpose for it. But complexity, yeah, that's still, Taleb was somebody I told you, I got obsessed with Taleb when it came to complex systems. And instead of dealing with reality, we just makes it more complex, we make it more complex.

25:43And we duct tape and nail another, you know, we jack up this side and shove a brick under it. And it just means that when the thing does fall, which all complex systems do, it will just have higher to fall. Right. I've got a good story about this. So I ruptured my Achilles. Oh no, yeah, yeah, no, I'd start to put you out full 12 months. That was actually five years ago. That's interesting. I did live island 10 years ago and the halfway point between then and now to the day was the day that I ruptured my Achilles. So that's an interesting arc. Playing cricket, rupture my killies, and this weekend, I didn't think, you know, this is during COVID.

26:26It was a brief interlude where the number had come down, and everyone was able to go outside, and I was playing sport. I go into the hospital, they do the diagnosis on it, they say, you need to come back in 13 days, we're going to open you up and stitch it back together. By the way, there's some pain killers, go fuck off. I'd driven my car to the cricket ground. After that, I needed to go and collect a TV that I'd ordered to the super market so that I could put it in the new rental property I just brought. Ready for the Ikea furniture builder guy to come in the next morning, open this stuff up because on the Monday it was the viewing day.

26:59It was the first day of photos and then people were moving in three days later and if I didn't this huge cathedral -sized deck of cards that I'd built. And one thing. You remember when the ever given, you know, that huge Suez max size tanker got stuck in the Suez Canal. Oh yeah, yeah. It was there for six days or something and the entire global supply chain is so finely tuned that one tanker for six days in one canal is able to ruin the entire, it billions and billions of dollars if they're probably still dealing with the repercussions of that in small ways now, four years later. That was what my life was like and that's what my life is always, always like I always think if one thing, if one spanner gets thrown in the works, there is no wiggle room in the system.

27:52And in some ways, that allows you to maximize your time and that's really, it's thrilling. That's it. Fucking squeezing everything out. We're adding. We're adding to thrill. Yes. But when shit comes and like you fuck, I didn't, I left foot, so I had an automatic car. Thankfully, It was my right foot that went I left foot drove home From the fucking Everybody on the road it risk right yeah correct right Yeah, wild there's a there's a I believe there is a Direct link between the rise in anxiousness and margin and a lack of margin financial margin relational margin home margin But we have such an allergy to boredom we have such an allergy to piece.

28:39It's an allergy. What are the most common issues that men call you about? What do you wish more women knew about how men operated?

28:51If I had to summarize the male dilemma, what would I do? and what do people like me? From my elementary school teachers, to my parents, to my doctors, to my schools, to my dating prospects, to my collegiate education, to my employers, to the media at large. What are they? I don't know why everybody doesn't like me. That's probably the most common question I get. Why doesn't my wife like me? What is it about me that's so inherently wrong? And there's a litany of reasons why you don't do this you're to this you fill in the blank but That's the ultimate question is a lot of people like me belonging Now it's worth man.

29:45It's worth it's that question of worth I don't know many men and I don't I don't live in the red pillosphere right are the whatever but like I don't know many men who don't want to be a net positive. I just don't know them. They just get the message at a very early age, hey, quit wiggling in class or something wrong with your brain. Hey, don't say that so loud. Hey, don't be so aggressive. Don't be so running around. Don't be so. Don't be so you. And ultimately that message, it becomes part of your nervous system, which you walk into every situation like, I'm a burden on this room. I'm a burden on this family.

30:25I've burdened on this workplace, I've burdened on this culture. And we're at the tail end of a world where men can say, okay, I'll just, I'll opt out. And then now we're blaming you for opting out, right? And so it's, it's, it's a privilege to be a opt out that it's quickly coming to an end. But yeah, there's this idea that, um, I don't want to cause everybody around me all this pain. I'll just step out and it's not a good solution either. But think about that worth question. I'm not worth going to the gym. I'm not worth going to see a therapist. I'm not worth going back to school to get more education to get a job.

31:07I'm not worth any of these other. The efforts it's going to take to go do something better, to go be something different. I'll just be quiet. No one tried. Why would I try? Not even worth with the effort and every time I think many domesticated men, I don't know if you can say that, their homes are a failure factory, right? I want to help. Well, that's not how you do that. You need to do it like this and you need to do it like that. I remember a conversation with my wife about helping. It occurred to me, oh, here's the underlying problem is, I sleep just fine with a sink full of dishes. like I'll do the dishes when we're all out of dishes.

31:53And so she can count, like I did the dishes five times a week, you did them once, and then she can rightfully say, I'm doing so much more work around here. And I could say, oh, I didn't know that, it didn't occur to me that we're needed to be done. So we have to do the alignment stuff up front, but if I'm walking around all the time, I can feel when I'm a burden in my house, when I'm in the way, right? And then I start to imagine them in the way everywhere. And so if we're looking at masculinity as an illness or if we're looking at men's problems as an illness Then at least be compassionate enough to treat it that way, right?

32:28You and I are talking last night like Men won't share their emotions now. There's a whole new thing like men are too emotional We're the only ones we have to care like at some point man people just say I'm out. I'm out and It's that will be the that would be a not a good result. What would your advice be to? women on how they can make that pannis feel more worthy. Man, it's a trope as old as time, but Spirane Brown says what you go looking for in the world, you're sure to find. And I love the way she says that. Find one thing on a day -to -day basis. Dude, I made an app for that. Just a day -to -day practice.

33:09Find one thing that you can see. Like, I really see how hard you're working last night. Thank you for that. Or you came to bed at 10 instead of 2 a .m. like man, you feel lighter today. Like find one thing, begin to practice admiration. Even if you got a search for a man, but it begins to send a message, I like you. I like you. Sometimes it's his gentleist, just put your hand on somebody's arm, right? When you're driving instead of, hey look, there's a red light. Look out, sobs, slow down, medical left. Why don't you go left, turn the radio down. just a gentle like man or a hand behind your neck man.

33:48Just something that says, I'm glad you're here. I think we overdraw my time. It's so small, it can be so small. Or thinking, that's not how I would have emptied the dishwasher, but he's a good man. You know what I mean? Or I can see, thank you for that. Or that's not where the drying rack goes. Or that's not how you pack those kids lunches. Or at this particular school, that school's not free and this one's not, you put the granola bar in there. Man, I'm so glad he's making lunches. And then when I'm, I've exhale, that can say, quick reminder, just, you know what I mean? But it's just, I don't know, it's just, it's just saying, I appreciate you.

34:32I appreciate you. And then having the courage to say, here's a better way or here's another way. Before we continue, if you haven't been feeling a shop or energised as you'd like. Getting your blood work done is the best place to start, which is why I partnered with function because they run lab tests twice a year that monitor over 100 biomarkers. They've got a team of expert physicians that take the data, put it in a simple dashboard and give you actionable insights and recommendations to improve your health and lifespan. They track everything from your heart health to your hormone levels, your thyroid function and nutrient deficiencies.

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35:39And every time that I end up having a conversation about like relating within a couple, it just comes back to that. Well, I think there's another arc to it. I have to see you. And I can't see you through the lens that is my life. And I think true relationship is I'm taking off the glasses that I see the world and I'm going to see you. And then that's going to allow me to practice knowing you. And if you will see and know that person and then tell the truth, because I think you can weaponize truth also. Like I feel, I feel you are telling the truth is, let's just get there, culture, that'd be awesome.

36:18I have to be honest with each other. But, relationally, I have to see not the wet towels on the floor. I have to see her. And then I have to have know her and know So she did not put those towels there as a stab to the patriarchy. Like what must have her day been like? I'm picking up those towels. You know what I mean? Because if you came and stayed at my house for two weeks and you left towels in the floor, I just picked them up because we're friends. Like I would just pick them up and I'd be like, Chris, do you pick up a towel? But because she's my romantic partner, it has to be this big existential dramatic.

36:51How much of it's compounding as well? This is building up over time. This is the towel. Yeah, you're right. goes back to tell the truth. It's last week, the thing the week before and it's unspoken expectations. And also just pick up the towels man. You know what I mean? Okay, so question on that, this sounds great, but I think a lot of people, especially that are in longer term relationships, will feel like this sounds wonderful when you're setting the tone, three months in, or six months in. But... You're always setting the tone. But how do you have some sort of a break order if you've got a mountain sized amount of unspoken expectations, words that haven't been said, premeditated resentments that you need to somehow get out.

37:40Are you okay? You have this conversation with your wife. This is a breakwater. We need to move forward and build something. This marriage is over. You're building it. Yeah. Yeah. What does that look like? Someone says, I feel like this is the sort of relationship that I want inside of the relationship that I'm in, but it's not the relationship we have. And there is a big backlog of stuff that neither of us have said to each other. How does someone navigate that? I think you start by writing down all the eyes, all the stuff that I brought to that mountain. Because it's really easy to go to that mountain to be like, you've been doing this, you've been doing this, I'm gonna sit down and say, I've become a person that I don't like inside of my own marriage, inside of my own long -term relationship.

38:23And I want to work with you to build something there. And then you have to hope that they're willing to put their stuff on table too, instead of weaponizing what you just put on the table. And that's a tough, scary place to be. But I think the reality is - Is that gonna say, well, you remember what totally - Exactly. That you did this thing, like that's a thing, right? But here's the thing. That marriage is over. That relationship's over. When you get that mountain back, when you have that moment, it has to be different. That thing's got a period at the end of it. You may let it run out of gas until the volcano explodes.

38:59It's going to explode. I can do it now with I and you can weaponize the I and then we're going to end up in a divorce court somewhere or we can just let it do its thing. But it's there now. And so you might as well be a person of integrity while the things happening. What about the opposite? What should men know about how women operate? What are the things that women are calling in and saying to you most frequently?

39:34Some of my women colleagues disagree with me on this. And so I'll caveat this with that, but I think women were sold to Bill of goods also. And the question that pops into my head is, why won't he change? But I think the deeper question is, I did all of these things that they said, and why don't I feel better about me or my world or my life I've constructed for myself? I'm one of the most common things that they have done that have not born. I waited this many years to have kids. I waited till I was financially secure. I waited till I had a career. I waited until I was on my own two feet. I got this level of success.

40:20I Or the opposite. I went all in on this relationship at a very young age. I went fully all in. I think the meta message has been if you will do these things or the tradwife thing or the full CEO thing whichever one it is that somehow you're gonna feel complete on the other end of the steal and that feeling is elusive It just keeps moving and so there's a partner in your life and it's constantly you just need to, you just need to, you just need to. But really the thing is, I'm desperately seeking this feeling that this is going to be okay. This rooted sense of anchored in. And it's a constant, constant, constant.

40:56The other one is honestly, our all -man scumbags is every man out cheating, is every man filling up his life with video games and pornography, is every man. And it's been, it's harder and harder to defend when you look at the data. And it's a it's a it's a it's a recursive problem, right? I don't feel like I have any worth And if my home is a failure factory. He's pulling in video games don't reject me That's it. I'm just gonna yeah, then I am going to take the exit ramp Why don't bother anybody and I'll just burn a hole in my head. Dude that sucks It sucks to hear and it must be rough to The least popular opinion for a guy to give on the internet with the most email audience is it must be tough for a woman to navigate dating at the moment because you guys see all of the ways that it's way easier for women than it is for men.

41:46But the thing that I would say to guys that this is a huge, huge, like, blue ocean for them for is you have somebody that's been in counseling for, like, fucking forever and does a call and show with millions and millions of people to watch it. And this is one of the biggest problems. Look at how low the bar is. Dude, I tell myself that it's how low the bar is. tell them all the time you can have it all. It really is not, I get it. You watch enough content on YouTube and you can think that because you're five, six or because you're not earning six figures or because you're whatever, hey, those are some real things and there's some challenges out there.

42:32But Jesus fuck, like how many women are calling in and saying, you know what the problem is? These guys just don't earn enough. These guys just don't do this and the other. It's like, I don't know if he's going to... I've gotten that question zero times. There's just too many short men out there. I've never got that. To caveat this, how many women do you think are calling in and saying, this guy doesn't commit or isn't romantic enough or isn't whatever, as a way to hide the more base shallow. He's not tall enough. He doesn't earn enough. Maybe. Maybe. And I've been called night -eat before. where I like to just take people at the word, like if you're calling in and we can get to his, not what you're really calling, but, yeah man, I like to just, maybe, maybe.

43:17Yeah, maybe. And I do get like, hey, my husband's gained 150 pounds or less few years, but as you dig into that, it's almost always, I'm watching my husband die in front of me. Right, and that's, that's usually the question. Like, how do I keep my, I'm watching him die and I can't be a part of this anymore. And yes, he's not attractive anymore. or yes, he walks around his body tighties and he's, it's not a pretty sight, but the deeper question is I'm watching. I'm becoming someone I don't wanna be because that guy at work thinks my jokes are hilarious and I'm starting to think up jokes all day so that maybe that guy at work, I'm becoming somebody I don't wanna be because I'm watching the person I love with her away underneath me.

43:56And I don't know how to prop them up. Well.

44:00Yeah, the bar is set so fucking low, dude. It is. But you know what? I think that's an important thing. The dating apps have screwed up every like no question about all that's it's a train rack But personally I've never had somebody call and say there's just too many short men out there. I've not had anybody call and say This person doesn't make this much money I haven't I haven't got that call and maybe it's maybe it's veiled and and people are being whatever But most of the time it's I'm with somebody Why won't they? Can they just stop cheating? Can they just plug back in? How do I let them know that they're worth something?

44:42I do speak to so many people about when or how they should forgive their partner after in a fair. Is that even a question that has an answer? You know, this has come up a ton recently. It's endemic. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love watching your show. But I tell you what, man, the place I always have people start is you've got to forgive yourself. Because almost every time either, they'd created a world where they were so blindsided, that there was a part of them way down that knew, I don't know everything going on in this house, or it's the opposite. I didn't listen to my gut. I knew they were spending too much time with so -and -so.

45:22I knew they were hiding their phone. I knew that these, I had a sense that. And most people that experience infidelity go through a period of I can't trust myself. I can't because I ignored myself or I didn't even see it come in. And so before you start trying to offer, before you're trying to forgive somebody else, you have to forgive yourself. So that's a huge hurdle to get over. It's a massive hurdle because you've got to forgive two people. The sidewalk you walk on no longer exists. There's only two people in this relationship and you have to forgive both of them. Yeah, and you have to forgive yourself first.

45:53You got to start with you first. And it's not as though you did anything wrong. Like that's not what the forgiveness is, but forgiveness is about reestablishing trust. I gotta learn to trust myself again. And then I gotta ask myself, okay, what must be true for me to reestablish trust with you? And that's a tough thing. Because then you have to ask, well, what if, here she says now? And that's a scary proposition to find yourself. But I've also seen people experience infidelity and go on to have build something amazing and new. and it's just, are y 'all willing to put in the work? What do you think's the proportion of that?

46:27I don't know. I honestly don't know, because I don't know.

46:34It's, gosh, this is a horrific example. They just popped into my mind. I remember when my wife and I, when she had our first miscarriage, I found myself part of a secret club that I didn't know existed. People came out of the woodwork to be like, yeah, us two, us two, us two. And so infidelities often work the same way that I don't know how much of it goes unreported That wouldn't fill out a survey or wouldn't you know what is some of the ways that You see infidelity showing up that isn't just about sex You've got a broader definition of infidelity the most people I think I do yeah I It's a place where you go to hide from the life that you've co -created with somebody.

47:21So I think you can cheat on somebody with money. I think you can cheat on somebody with a golf course. Think you can cheat on somebody with work. Who's your mistress? All right. Where are you putting your passion and your time and your efforts and your energy? And if your work isn't a means to an end that supports this thing, you're co -creating with somebody else, as far as I'm concerned, that's infidelity. If I hide from my family or from my romantic partner on a golf course or on a fishing boat, that's if fidelity. I am taking my vitality and I'm channelling it elsewhere to avoid this. And that's different.

47:56I like to go to punk rock shows, dude. I like to, I don't know, I live over in the comedy club by my house. I have passion about those things, but I'm not hiding from my family. They're hobbies. They enrich me so that. Every year where I work they throw a big battle of the bands. It's in Nashville. Everybody goes to Nashville to make it in the music industry, then they'll have to get real jobs at some point. So every year they throw a big battle of the bands. One year I had a book coming out, I was on the road, and so I was going to skip it. And my wife said this. She said, I get a better version of you when you're playing music with your friends.

48:29And so it's not a matter of hiding, not doing hobbies, not that. but if you're hiding from, if you're numbing out with, I think I think if fidelity is easily distilled down into intercourse with somebody else and I think that's too narrow of you. It's just it's escape. What about financial infidelity? Yeah, that's the way people control their partners in a major way or the way they hide money. Yeah, it's devastating. How come it's not extremely common? But it goes back to the thing you asked me at the very beginning, like, uh, with if I won't share your codes, man, the other way I get beat up on the internet all the time, by the, by the internet warriors is saying, dude, if you're married, share a check in account.

49:20Like that just, like, you've seen the difference in divorce rate between couples that do and don't have it savings account. It's mad. It's, I think it's, like, multiples of likelihood difference. And there'll be some selection effect that. It will be some selection effect. Of course, of course. But seriously, again, going back, if I don't, we will share DNA. But we won't share. Bank account or our social media. You make 65 grand and I make 75 grand, we won't share that. And we have to say, one that's mine.

49:55Again, it goes all the way back to trust and safety. And if I feel like I have to say no, no, that's mine. Well, we need to put that on a table and have that conversation. Tell you one of the patterns that I learned from your show, which I now use in my day -to -day life. Uh -oh, I can't wait to hear this. It is. I saw you do this. I think I saw you do this twice separately. And that seems like a pattern. I'm just going to start maybe mentioning this if I see this come up. people partway through a relationship where one partner lightly floats the suggestion of starting to open things up just a little bit.

50:40Open things up with another partner? Yeah, okay. We're still, you know, like we've been together for however long and I just think, you know, like wouldn't it be the number of times that that person has already been in an extra Marital, ex -repartner, and they're now trying to retroactively create conditions to make the thing that they did when you hadn't agreed it agreeable so that they can continue it in future. And I've patented much that. I'm not kidding. I've patented much that incorrectly, like 100 % at the time. And it's come back into land. Someone said, I'm going to tell you something.

51:25that you're really not going to want to hear. And I'm probably wrong inside. I'm like, I'm right. John said I'm right. And it's happened a few times now and each time I've been correct. Can you seek a sense of aliveness with the person you're with? No, we need someone you. And a bit again, if I, if I, if I, if I, if I need to go sleep with somebody else to save this.

52:06It does sound insane. It does sound. I was with someone recently there, there are, a comedian there in Nashville and said, I've accidentally become a Dave Ramsey apologist. Like all these young comedians now are coming up, like how do you do this? And he said, if you're trying to make art and you owe somebody money, you'll never make the art you were meant to make. Because you're always gonna have to ask yourself, will this joke, the one that would be the one right over the line, what will my boss think? Or what will, like, I've got a hedge. And he asked me like my thoughts on the death stuff and I was like, Hey, if we are arguing on or like spend less than you make, I'm probably not the guy to argue with you.

52:50Because the mat, like it's just such a basic, if you think sleeping with her will solve your intimate relationship with the, like it's just that the math doesn't work. And I think we have so many intellectual gymnastics nowadays that we can we can justify anything, but I think going back to simplicity, peace, sulfur, peace, man, is just sulfur peace. And I honestly don't know why we can't do that other than, I mean, there's the psychology of conspiracy theories. There's the psychology of complexity. I just don't think we have psychology for boredom. Or Lane says, we step over a hundred dollar bills to pick up pennies like a man.

53:36Just mostly eat healthy and exercise. And then worry about red number 40 and do that later. You know what I mean? It's just a strange place we found ourselves. And I think it's a luxury. Well, we spoke about this. It's a luxury. We spoke about this over the last night. that there isn't a particularly good matter in the world for re -injecting excitement, and there is one for increasing peace. That you say, we need more commitment, we need more loyalty, we need more downtime, more regulation, you know, you know, you know, the system should be in a line, all this stuff. But it's much scarier to say, I'm bored in this.

54:22This is too mundane because it sounds awful. It's perilously close to, I want more novelty, which is string, eyes lingering on somebody else, extra marital stuff. But that's because we've made every, and we may have talked about this the last time, but we've made every sexual encounter of the Super Bowl. We've made everything has to be this eruption, and it's insane, right? Like, you gotta see the, like in my world, you got to see the relief when I tell a parents who have two kids under the age of three, like, hey, you're going to have 13 minutes to get this done. And they'll look at each other and be like, like, nobody talks about survival sex with a young couple.

55:10Survival sex. Dude, we got 13 minutes between that nap and this feeding. Are you in, right? That's, that's, that's in no movie. That's in no TV show. In fact, I'll tell you if that's what it's reduced to, than your marriage is probably running its course. This relationship is probably over. As opposed to just a practical reality. Yes, just traffic and reality man, traffic abuse. Your air traffic control. And by the way, you can create novelty in this funny little moment. We can create play and laughter and silliness and you wanna give this a shot. All right, we got six minutes left. You in, like you can, while you're on vacation with your family at a cheap hotel, while they're asleep, y 'all can try to figure it out in the hotel bathroom that you can barely turn around it.

55:53Like that is tiny ways that you can inject novelty and fun and play in that next morning when your kids like I want pancakes and you just cut eyes across the hotel room at your spouse and you're like, like that becomes, that becomes good man. It's, that's the good stuff. And if you try to make the fireworks show bigger every time, I just think that's a, that's how you end up overdose in man. We'll get back to talking in just a minute, but first, some things are built for summer. Sunburns, hot girl walks, your ex -posting there, you were roadtrip, and now, lemonade and salt. Huh? Element just dropped their brand new lemonade salt flavor, and it's everything that you want on a hot day.

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57:55The greatest parenting advice I ever heard in my life was from Jack Black, which is when he said this, I was like, that's it. That's all of my graduate school distilled into one sentence. Don't try to make a happy get out of here. like, and the story he went on to tell was, and again, I'm gonna bastardize it, but his son was playing in the mud with a stick or something, and he was like, I'm just not my kid. And you end up six, six hours later, sugared up, exhausted, fried, you spent $300 on a thing, and then you went to this, it's like, man, I should have just gotten a hose out and sat in the mud and got another stick.

58:33And that stuff he's gonna tell his funeral. Remember that time, dad? You rolled me around in the mud versus yet another. So, man, if your kids are happy, get on the floor and have fun. And then the other thing is you have to be intentional about your relationship. And it just shifts, man. And that's okay. It's a season. It's winter, man. It's cold, put on coat. Like, we don't stand out in the out in the street here in December and just... What's the shift? Curse the sky. You got new responsibilities. I had a grad school colleague once that he had four kids and I was in, man, that was maybe two or three years into marriage.

59:07It was rocky, it was tough. And I was like, I don't know how you do this. And he said this, it's just a different kind of awesome. And he goes, you know when you first meet somebody and you're like, cannot sleep and it's amazing, that's awesome. And then you kind of get real serious together and you'll start getting, like, that's awesome. He goes, you get kids for, it's just a different kind of awesome. He's like, you can't just, you know, swipe off the kitchen table and just get after it, like it for in the afternoon, like used to be able to, because you got kids running around. It's a different kind of awesome.

59:32And also you don't know what it's like to see your middle school kid run across the finish line and just feel kind of big, right? Or I watched my daughter, she's nine, out at a lemonade stand on a Saturday. Dude, it was hot and I was like, man, drive by and buy some lip. You know what I mean? I was like rooting for from the, you know what I mean? My neighbor texted him like, dude, go, like I'll reimburse you brother. And he's like, no, we got this, But it's like I want her to succeed. It's like it's a difficult awesome But it's trying to drag that old relationship that old freedom the old excitement into this present thing That's what kills folks man.

1:00:06So that when you have baby one that marriage is over. It's over awesome build a new When my wife got pregnant I was like okay. I got nine months till I get my wife back and then one hand was born I was like all right, so it's maybe it's gonna be nine more after this like in a year then solely it took me 15 years to realize that marriage was over and it was awesome. And now we get to be able to do one with a kid in Paul. Does that suggest that people who are together in intending on becoming parents and aren't yet at the point whether or about to should lean in and make the most of that time? Because you are not...

1:00:40It's that kind of awesome. It's finite. Yeah. And if you were constantly comparing it to this and this, it's like... Like, if I have a, I'm not going to measure from here to the end of that wall and gallons. Those are both valid measurements, just the wrong measure. And so that time we were together, before we had kids and before they took all our money and our time and our bodies and our exhaustion, it was amazing. And now we're going to measure this new time in our life and gallons. And we're going to measure this one in meters. We're going to measure this time in our life and in hours, right?

1:01:13Those are all good measurements. You just got to use the right measurement for the right season. You mentioned before about instinct versus rationality, go to our head or heart. How do you come to think about making decisions in a relationship when it comes to gut versus head? How do you stress tests each of these? I've just come to learn with, this is, in equals one here, I get over emotional about things and I make very emotional decisions and so I've got a few people in my life both professionally and long -term buddies, long -term men in my life that I will sit down with and say, here's what I'm experiencing and here's what I'm seeing, here's what I'm about to do.

1:01:53And I wish I had a better way, a better answer for you, but I outsource that because I'm not a reliable person in the thick of it. And I just learned that about myself. I make up really remarkable stories about why somebody else is, my fundamental attribution errors is brutal, dude. The stories I make up are extraordinary. About the dude in the square key that like cut me off, the story I make up about that guy, dude. It's an abomination. So I outsource it because I'm not a good judge of it. And I think anyone who says, go with all your feelings or go with all facts, both of them are those are pathologies on either side of the book or how do you handle it?

1:02:37I tend to be too head dominant. Yeah, so I need to actually listen to my gut much more. Is that a learned response? Has your gut led you to stray or was listening to you? How you feel about stuff? Not. I tend to. I encourage. Okay. So, everything would be sort of controlled, very important to have a measured response, hyper vigilance, that kind of thing. So, yeah, learning to actually trust instincts and to know how what's an appropriate threshold for something that isn't your rational brain to be screaming to go do this thing or to not do this thing. Yo, that's pretty loud. Is it loud enough?

1:03:23And that's where it comes back to the trust thing, et cetera. It's a very interesting situation to get into. I wonder how much of that is born out. I think a lot of my friends have this too that we're all trying to now listen to the fleeting thoughts that are coming up from our gut as opposed to the really loud, sophisticated ones that are coming down from our head because my adult awakening was built around phantom street blog, mental models, and Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger and Talerb and Robert Green and so much, and Peterson and so much of this is dictating top down, like, wrote learning, the ways to operate that are trying to compensate for the fact that you never actually allowed that to emerge in the first place.

1:04:14But that's just more top down, right? Just more top down now in the right direction. Hopefully it's one that's a little bit more aligned. But it's still not just allowing yourself to sit with, I don't think this is working. More, I think that that's a really fucking good idea. Okay, so let me try out a hypothesis. I think we do not have a cultural psychology. We don't have a roadmap for grief. And grief is a communal experience, and we've extracted all of that. The great David Kessler, I think he's just the grief guru, but says that grief demands a witness. And I don't think we have a witness anymore.

1:04:53And so we, we distill grief into sad and then we go on and try to solve sad. We pathology I said, but I don't think we have a cultural. I don't, I struggle with just like I went all in on this thing and didn't work. And I'm supposed to want to stay under my covers for a few days and not crush and grunt. And I'm supposed to just want to mainline whatever fat or sugary or salty substance is a rack. there's some basic biological mechanisms for dealing with grief. We used to have a parlor in our house. That was the... and we changed it to the living room. But that parlor really held bodies until we outsourced that to funeral professionals, right?

1:05:35Like we have no ability to sit with this ended. And I think that's unhealthy. What do people want to hear? The situation like that, there's been a loss... Nothing. Large or small presence. That's my lived experience sitting with people who have lost children, which I can't think of a worse loss.

1:06:00Makes me wonder how AI is going to take over everything. There's a biology to presence, and it is not found in an answer. It is found in a guy coming to sit and buy you and bringing half a casserole or a bag of Taco Bell and a couple of drinks, like I'll be here. And anybody who tries to come up with a bunch, there's in the grief for all, there's a whole bunch of things to not say. There's a bunch of things to not say. God needed another angel. Everything happens for a reason, like nonsense like that. It's just like a knife in your soul, right? But just I'm coming over. Or the worst text, let me know if you need anything.

1:06:41And well, my kid died. I need a whole lot right? Which I'm gonna put the burden on you to, let me know how I can take care of you, right? It's not just coming over. So just showing, I'm coming over. It's some shit talkative. I'm coming over and I'll sit here. We may throw all those talkos away. I'll be right here. And there's something, it's biology, it's presence. Yeah. Which is like, hey, me and my wife are going through a rough time. I'm coming over to, I don't have any answers for I'll listen to you, right? And that's being comfortable enough. I, in this new job, I've just decided I'm going to stop trying to answer questions I'm not asked.

1:07:20I'll just be here. You know what I mean? Which I've had to wrestle with because my purpose was always like, gov 'n an answer. Nah, nah, nah, my purpose is, I'll show up. I'll come. There's a, kind of a bit of a narcissism in that too. I'm aware that it's a lovely thing to do, you're there for your friend. But there is a little bit of an osterism because it centralizes you as the helper in the person's situation As a presence or as with words when you're coming up with a solution I know that this is your problem, but allow me like I will step down I and allow me to be so well it uses a hurting person it they become a Xanax for you I'm uncomfortable with your loss ask anybody who's who's been diagnosed with cancer They've been most of their energy making sure the people around them are okay Well, that's madness, right?

1:08:07Because now I'm uncomfortable, because I'm staring at... My discomfort is making you uncomfortable. I'm sorry, I'll fix it. That's right. Yeah. Okay, I just got dinosaur cancer. I'll be right over. I'll sit here. I just got diagnosed with cancer. Sorry. Yeah, let me know if I can do anything. So cool. I just gave you a chore. Now that you got this terrible diagnosis, I'll give you a chore to make me feel better. Yeah. Yeah, so one if me if I could tell anybody somebody's hurting to show up or so he says hey, I need to go grab some beat I'll be there right and I just learned that from a group of West Texas like No therapist man, it was just West Texas guys that I saw almost come to blows over who's gonna pick up a check It's like oh, that's what friendship looks like like not like bro.

1:08:53You then moved me for 25 for that. No, dude. I got it I got it. We'll figure it out later. There's just something about that, man. I think even, you know, talk about how the Perkins has written, but like... But again, all that's all for peace, man. It's all for peace. To speak different, between an abundance mindset and the scarcity mindset, I don't think you need to get into Rhonda burn, the secret, woo, energy attraction, territory, to just kind of understand that going through life, assuming that things will go okay, is just a better way to exist. Bill Bursk has this wonderful bit where he says, things are going to be fine.

1:09:37And even if things aren't going to be fine, is it not better to assume that things are going to be fine? And if they're not, you'll deal with it when the time comes. Yeah. That's Amos Tversky's Daniel Connommon's research partner. Had that great line, like, being pessimistic is stupid because if it comes true, you experience it twice. I love that. Let's just assume it's going to work out. I'm going to do the best I possibly can and if it doesn't, if like we get hit by media right, we'll deal with that then. But we're going to plow ahead as though. But I think we're trying to hedge grief because we don't know what to do if it actually comes true.

1:10:09Because it's such an overwhelming emotion. And we have no, we're not designed to handle grief alone and we don't have anybody else to call. which are people that we do call, we feel like we need to manage there. We end up having to take care of them. Sorry that I'm a burden. Right. Yeah. There's a great piece in the Kardashians that Charlie Hooper broke down, which was one of the girls has gone through a breakup, and the mom is there, and they're talking, and the mom says the line, I really need you to get over this. And it's the Charlie explains it perfectly, and he's like, that literally says, your discomfort is making me uncomfortable.

1:10:49I need you to sort yourself so that I can be okay. I don't have time for your discomfort. Oh, that's tough as a kid to feel. That is fucking rough. Yeah. But I think parents, like sometimes, go back to what you said about your buddies having your own kids. Never lie to your kids. A buddy of mine, and here's what I mean by that, not just on big stuff. a buddy of mine, he had a neighbor whose boat fell off the trailer. And so he called all these neighborhood guys to come over and help with the boat back on the trailer. And he had a young son, maybe seven or eight, and he's like, come on over, we're gonna go do something.

1:11:26All these guys helped through too, and they got the boat back on the trailer, and they did all stuff. On the way home, he said, man, we helped that guy out. And he said, daddy, I didn't do anything. And already he knew, like, I just lied to my kid. Like I was using the proverbial we and I kept moving them out of the way hold on back up back up We're gonna pick this thing up and so don't let your kids man if they come in seventh place don't say great job Or don't say man you did so good you got seven place your kid knows your line say man that really stinks You gave it your all and you got seven place well if they didn't give it you're all you can ask them like you feel good about your performance on them But it's telling your kids the truth but it's man.

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1:13:34Because I imagine that there must be some couples that have a child and it just galvanizes in them this, oh, we have a project. Like we need to get really, really serious now. But the question of, do you think you had kids and studied being truthful or you studied being truthful and then had kids, to me it seems more likely that the increased difficulty of having kids around is just going to make that problem. No, I mean, I think there's always a temptation to make the person in front of you feel good.

1:14:08And yeah, I don't know. That's a great question. I don't know. But I know that every stage along the way, at least a market, I have a 15 year old who's a sophomore in high school and I have a, my daughter's nine, she's in fourth grade. Every stage has been a, there's been some sort of GPS pin in my wife's that's gone off. That's, tethered all the way back. High school was not a great time for my wife. I peaked at 18. It's been downhill ever since, man. High school is the greatest time of my life. I was a Texas high school football player. Like it was, it was, it was, I loved all of high school.

1:14:41And so as my son was heading into this freshman year, everything about me was like, this is it, man. And this is good. Yeah, I was gonna live my carelessly. Dude, if you just, I was Uncle Rico. Man, if you just work even harder, and for her, it was just get small, get small, get small. And so I think that happens at every stage along the way. I didn't know what I, I didn't know what I didn't know when I had a kid and it made me feel super inept. And I had I have a script for when I feel inept which is put your head down to go work more which then took me away from my house more Which made me harder to be around because I knew my house was I've done my showed up I didn't do the diaper ride and do the time right so it just started this thing So it's just now we know enough to know it hey We're getting ready for college and this the the Starting already the schools are already circling all right the sharks are circling Well college gonna go to you don't know your major you're gonna you're gonna be a failure all that That was in a good time for me.

1:15:38That was a great time for her, right? And so I now know that. So now we can sit down and have that conversation, like, man, this makes me not comfortable. I can't wait for this, which brings us back to the table. But that's a great question. I don't know. How much healing gets done through raising kids, like revisiting, reparenting yourself, seeing the patterns that you, imagining what you will like at that age, because not that many people have gone and done there in a child work or their narrative therapy or their internal family systems or whatever, and have pieced together the arc of, wow, that's what it was like to be seven and me.

1:16:11And shit, I wonder how many... It's made me wake more compassionate for my parents and at the same time, way... I was just with my sister this morning and I've got an anger too that I didn't know was there. And so... Yeah, I don't know. Did it make you more compassionate for yourself? Yeah. Yeah, for the younger version of you that did the whatever. Like, oh, dad was going through stuff. That wasn't me. I was dying. Yeah. It's made me a lot more compassionate with myself. I was 16, man. I didn't know. You know what I mean? I was being a 16 year old. And I get a lot of compassion for that kid. Yeah.

1:16:49A lot more compassion. And then I think the challenge for me is how do I extend that compassion? Yet also, no, that my son lives in a world now that the world that doesn't have any compassion for that. He can, he can text something that makes him unimpolable forever now, right? I had the privilege of being a 16 year old and he doesn't have that. And so there's a different level of oversight that makes me more nervous. But I'm confident that every generation of parent has some sort of, it wasn't when I was, it wasn't when I'm sure. Yeah, his infinite regressives, it wasn't like that in my day. Right, right.

1:17:25Right. Which is, I mean, at some point I sat down with him the other day and I was like, hey, there's we're at a stage now where there's certain things you can get into that I can't stop. I can't. I mean, I literally can't. And you're going to have to make some decisions at 16 that I didn't have to make until I was older about what I wanted my head, what I want to experience, what I want to see. He's in a world where the wrong adoroll, the wrong party, you'll kill him. Does it? A billboard near the gym that I go to. I saw that the other day. Fentanyl thing with a young boy on this was this is a kind of like a lineup.

1:18:01I guess of There must be 30 people 40 people young old men women and fentanyl kills Yeah on that presumably it's some of them will have been you know Maybe trading the line a little bit more closely than others But definitely in that lineup there will have been someone that just oh, I'll just take a little sniff of this or whatever and That's it, right? Or it was a, it was a, like, it was a Navy SEALS adventure to find a playboy when I was a kid. And he's got, and this on, and even we're pretty, I'm pretty much a Luddite, as born in the wrong century, my wife says, but every human he interacts with has a phone, right?

1:18:44With... You went phone free with your kid, right? We're not phone free, but I'm pretty... He's done pretty dark ages, yeah. We've taken everything off of it. It took a while to get even dumb phone. Oh yeah, yeah. Yeah. His parents are nerds, so my son had to give us a, that's a all this he had, he had to, when he was, when he was 14 over Christmas break in eighth grade, he actually, he had a great point that paused me. He said at least when you were a kid, because we're at, no cell phones at all. And we lived out in the country and he said at least when you were a kid, there was a phone on the wall with one of those little squiggly cords and you got to call your friends and he said, I'm getting left out of everything.

1:19:22No birthdays, nothing. And I said, that's he you're actually right. And so he had to draft the first round of the contract. And then me and my wife, it was basically like sharte tank of me and my wife was so fucking Dave Ramsey code. It was fun. It is unbelievable how Dave Ramsey coded you are. How so? You've drawn, you had to draw up this, did he have to do a presentation? Did you do a Oh, he absolutely did. That's because we're academics. That's where we got it from. Like, you have to, oh, he's both of his parents are nerds. But like, I want to talk through now what happens when this, if the single sideways.

1:19:54But it was good. Like, and, yeah, we've slowly, I mean, he's about to be 16. He's about to be driving. They're done highway national driving, but still not texting. I mean, he can text now, yeah, he can. But it's that like, hey, the wrong text thread. and it's over, man, it's over. And so, and I know that because dude, I spent 20 years with screenshot text messages and snapchats and WhatsApp's getting during sexual assault investigations and during this and all of a sudden, man, like dude, I just, I just experienced it on the other side of that thing, man. It just scares me for me. But I have to sit down and 16 year old and say, man, at some point you have to make some choices.

1:20:38And I'll do the best I can, but to love you through it and I'll always sit here with you. There isn't really a good archetype for the danger of a young person making a digital era. There's not. You know, because full protectionism isn't helpful, because they're going to walk out and just get, it's like showing up to, it's like showing up to, like town square year first time. Like at midnight, it's just so much, right? That will, that will be the day he walked out of the house. So you can't do that to your kid. But also man, the Sean Ryan says a great quote about You're not you're not giving your kid access to the world you're giving the world access to your kid And I think that's there's some there's some truth to that You hand your kid a smartphone tell him walk out the door best elect you make good choices you just Gave the world access to your child and they're better than than all of us There's too much money and experts that now it's now.

1:21:34It's not even real people man. It's an unferfied. It's a way unferfied And if you're an adult fine, take on an unfair fight if you want to. If you're at the bar and you want to fight all four of those dudes, I mean, you get to do the consequences. I can't, you can't put a child in that. It's just not fair. It's not fair.

1:21:53What do you, as you've got to the stage now, Sunday 16 soon will be, as you've gone, some sort of college thing? How does that make you reflect on the upbringing of a a kid in kind of the arc of being a parent, I suppose. Don't remember when I moved out. I was 18 and I went to university and I didn't realize that, you know, the most amount of time I was probably going to spend back in that house in anyone goes five days over Christmas for the rest of my life. And you just, you're just fired up. I just wanted to go. I couldn't be bothered the fact that I didn't have a cloud source so that there wasn't a fucking iron like ready.

1:22:33I don't care. I don't know. I'm not going to iron my clothes in any case. It doesn't matter. I just want to go. I want to go, go, go. It's just so exciting. I'm going to move to a big city. I'm going to go to university. I'm going to make new friends. I'm going to be living on my own. It's going to be so. And that's, yeah, you're not there to regulate your parents feeling like this. Huge deceleration is about to happen in their life. I'm having to work really hard not to not to pre -mort him being gone. My wife had a great recording, the remaining time that you do have with him. Yeah, this is the last one.

1:23:03Yeah, man. Just got to be with it. and I've got to be ready to grieve on the other end of it. There's a shift that happens when a kid's 24, 25, and when you, it's actually much earlier than that, but when a kid leaves your payroll, you can't tell them what to do anymore. You, your parent shifts to an encourager, right? Or, you know, and so what I want to do now is to model a, you need to know this, not intellectually, but you need to know this, you can always come back home. And if you find yourself over your head, you can always come back home. And the fun for me, my wife is, let's make this a place they want to come home.

1:23:42And that when they're thinking, man, let's go to, ah, let's go see mom and dad. And that's, I don't know if it's even possible, but that's a fun thing to try to put out into the universe. And also, man, you gotta go have adventures. And I'll see this. I don't know many kids, in fact, I know very few, if any, that are foaming at the mouth to get their license, like my son is. That's a thing that's gone away. Like when I was a kid, turning 16 was like, give me my car key so I can get out of here. But I have to believe that constricting so much time on social media or video games or just creating a digital bubble in our home, and you can't wait to get out, which means you can't wait to go to college.

1:24:25And he's already done the math. He's like, man, I need to be at least this far from you at university because it'll be too easy to come home And I need to go out and learn and I hate that but I love it right. I don't I don't I wanted to come home every weekend But I don't I want to be gotten to have adventures because I say you learn man That's how you end up in a hole their continent with a hold with a job that didn't exist when you read university, right? Right. That's how that happens. Yeah, dude when I did a two business degrees and neither of them had social media year in. No one talked about nothing.

1:24:54The year that I went to university 2006 was the year that Facebook became available in the UK if you had a university email address. That was, yeah, you had to have a university email address. I remember when my grandpa friend requested me, it was like, bloop, and we're out. Like, I'm off this day. Yeah, I'm out, I'm out. Yeah. Give me back a minute. Let me remember you had to have an EDU, that I eat you at AC .uk for the UK. And yeah, it's five years, university and nothing about social media. So yeah, we still don't have a good way of communicating that to people that are way younger. I mean, you don't know how do you social media?

1:25:31We don't know how to mediate our own use. I use my phone too much. So do you. I have it on a separate phone. Yeah. That's all I can do. Cocaine phone and an alphabets. That's right. George Max solution. I've never heard of that. Yeah, just going back to something that I think was really important that if business is your drug rest will feel like stress. For the people who are like hard charging, type A insecure overachievers, what is your advice for someone learning to sort of let go of that chaos a little bit and deriving a better sense of well -being from somewhere outside of that? How have you done it yourself?

1:26:15Because you're someone that kind of fits for the, lives for the chaos and when faced with a problem, defaults to the same thing I do, which I just grip the bar hard. I'll solve it. I'll just rip this sucker off the floor. Yeah, I'll hit that dude. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's why I did it. An important exercise for me was writing a letter to myself 10 years from now. And it was that for what? So you're here and you got this thing. And that was an important exhale. I mean, can you elaborate on that? So yeah, I had given myself a number that I had to be making in a salary by the age of, I think it was 35, was my big one.

1:26:50And when I blew through that and I felt more insecure than ever and more exposed, it was sitting down and having an honest conversation with my 45 year old self. Like, and it goes back to for what? Like, what is this going to have for us, right? And so I think when you start decoupling yourself from how busy you are as a as an identity You just have to know it's gonna be painful being bored is gonna feel like feel painful and that's okay and Not being productive in every moment. It's gonna feel like you're losing something resting is gonna feel silly Calling a friend just to see what's up is gonna feel awkward and it's letting yourself know That's not what I'll pursue.

1:27:35Why not just keep crushing it You can, but for what? I mean, for what? I mean, how much higher than the hills do you need to move, man?

1:27:50That goes back to solving for peace. If you want to solve for R .Y., you can. You can do that. And my problem is I like working. It's a fun thing for me. And so even the busyness is, I enjoy it. I enjoy finding the next project and always text, I was text my manager earlier. like, hey, what about this in this?" And he's like, okay, man. Like, it's always like, what's the next thing? I like that. I don't think it comes from a pathological place or an insecurity. I just like it. But it's just known if you're red line and you're red line and you're red line. It's like, man, we talk last night. You're like, hey, how's your sleep?

1:28:22And it's like, oh, geez, man. I don't wanna fix it. Don't bring up the ass. I don't wanna fix testosterone with sleep, man. I wanted to be a supplement. It's like, do you sleep? And so, you can. or let me ask you, like write your letter to your 45 year old self. What would you tell them? I don't understand. So with that, I don't understand how that exercise works. I'm now 37, writing it to my 47. I'm doing these things now for the life you're going to have at 45. At 47. That's interesting.

1:28:57I'd say I'm working really hard at letting go of the coping mechanisms that I used to hide a lot of the sensitive insufficiency that I had for a very long time, that if I can make myself sufficiently impressive, or stay this full, or charming, or enigmatic, or a luth, right, in distance, in absence. Yeah. And that's a good one. That's one of my favorites. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm working really, really hard to not appear like I'm working. I'm working really, really hard to not be present. Yeah, it's the bad hair day punks. They work six hours on their hair to make it look like they didn't work on their hair.

1:29:37Yeah, red sneaker effect. Yeah, a lot of it. A lot of it's that. I really hope that I look back in ten years time and go, fuck, like I'm so glad of the work that that guy put in. And this is, you know, I'm chirping on this a lot at the moment. This entire podcast is a thinly veiled autobiography, like the whole thing. It's the whole body of work is just, what am I thinking about the moment? What do I care about? What's important to me? and I'm fortunate that even though I'm a pretty weird guy, but I face questions that a significant cohort of people do as well. And what that means is that if there's something that I'm thinking about struggling with, a non -insignificant number of other people or also thinking about it or struggling with it too, and it means that if I just pursue my own instincts and follow sort of what to me feels like a challenge or something that I'm interested in, in the tailwind behind me are all of these other people that are also like, oh my god, never really, no one's ever asked that thing before.

1:30:37Mel Robbins, a good example, some of my favorite conversations that people have is when another person reveals something in them that you thought was a unique curse that only you have. And it's happened hundreds of times. Slightly less so recently, maybe just because I've listened to a lot of other people talking, so I've picked up a lot of the low -hanging fruit. But one of them was Mel Robbins, and I can't remember who she was speaking to. It was a couple of years ago, I was researching for a guest. And Mel's talking, she says, throughout my entire life, I always had this sense that someone was mad at me.

1:31:16Somebody was, I'd done something wrong, and someone was mad. I always just felt like I had to sort of be on tenterhugs a little bit, and someone was going to find out whatever it was that I'd done that was wrong. I was in the wrong. That was like a bad girl. And a... Paul St. Paul's a talent. It's like, holy fuck. There's just put a word to a thing that I'd never named, identified, even you existed. Didn't know that, even if I'd known those things, didn't know that it wasn't just some weird, you know, a random pathology that only my unique constitution has managed to create. Oh, this is some idiosyncrasy of just me and to hear, oh fuck, somebody else is like that.

1:32:02That's the most, it's the reason that I'm continuing to try and lean into talking about relating, about emotions, talking about how people feel when stuff comes up. because so much of what we're doing is just trying to manage our emotional state and one of the most reassuring things I think that you can hear as a human is. Yeah, man. Yeah, me too. Yeah. Me too. Okay, so think about 10 years from now to 47 -year -old Chris. So 10 years ago you were a contestant on a game show? Dating show. Dating show. I guess it wasn't the prices right, huh? Yeah. So, let's assume podcasting doesn't exist. My wife found letters from her grandfather.

1:32:48Well, he was off fighting Nazis to her grandmother who kept the dairy farm in eastern New Mexico going. Well, he was gone. It's a treasure trove of letters. Romantic letters. Here's what's going on letters. The whole thing. And she's taken to making sure, I remember her saying like, I got to make sure our kids know these letters. Like, no, that. And so no matter what technology exists 10 years from now, what a great, I'm like amazing gift. You'll have be able to give to your kids is a library of this is where I was at then this is the arc of your dad going from this guy to this guy. This is our human experience.

1:33:24I can think of no greater gift. That is that is cool. Yeah. I I would like to think that at least this podcast will become part of that. You know, it's done in the third person a lot of the time. but so many of the things that I'm talking about is, oh fuck, that was a question that the dad, the granddad was asking at that time. Yeah, man. Yeah, that'd be cool. Yeah, it is, it's fun. You always do, we always get to the end of one of these episodes and then you fucking turn it around. Right, okay, we, come on, what else is there? I'm sure that you've got other stuff. No, I'm just fascinating, but it goes like, if 47 -year -old Chris could put his head on the pillow, that to me.

1:33:58Like how fast can I go to sleep? That's my metrics or, it's all for peace. Yeah, and I don't know why that's such a, You have a better grasp of psychology theories than I do. I don't know why that's so hard these days. I don't know why that's such a foreign concept. That's a good question. I wonder as well how many people, for how many people that's a priority. I get the sense for someone like you and for somebody like me. I know that that is something that I need. I know it's something. It's when I feel my happiest is when things are... Yeah, peace, but that can be peace in the midst of chaos.

1:34:39Of course it can't be peace in the midst of war. Mm, right. The difference between lots of things are happening and it's all high pressure. And I have uncertainty and unpredictability and ambivalence and ambiguity. And I really do not know who's got my back and who does it, that's not good. But I have lots of fights on lots of fronts and I'm prepared to go for all of them and this is exciting and infusing and Safety and autonomy man. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. If I manquer day and I can repel off the side and just go be crazy man Yeah, and I get to repel war feels like I'm getting shoved into it. Yeah.

1:35:15Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and it's out with your control Yeah, yeah But I think enoughness is a big part of that You know this like you said before this sense that And you're enough as you are, you don't necessarily need to perform, you don't need to show up in any of the way, you can be as whatever you are to me. And I'll just be here and I'll just sit and I'll just listen. And the hard part of that algorithm is when you establish that, it allows you to go further and more powerfully than you could have ever imagined. And I think that's the hard part of trying to, we've been sold that if you hack around that, then you can get that thing that you want.

1:35:52And it's like, no, man, if you can establish, I'm worth the work that I'm about to put in on this thing. Then you could go if you can go forever. If you're chasing worth, you can't. Your body eventually says I quit. I'm out. Interesting to think people that you see that are very successful and in committed long -term relationships, how much of, in a different universe, if somebody had chose a partner that was worse for them or better than better for them than this one. How divergent would those two worlds have been? How much is the person that you are directly due to the fact that you chose a...

1:36:321 ,000%. Yeah. If you'd chosen somebody who was, let's say that you chose a hundred and you could have chosen a 50, a zero, or a minus, minus 50, minus 100, what did those different worlds look like? like, you know, how resilient are you to this and how much of this is totally contingent on the fact that you had somebody that was a rocket ship that you were able to be refueled off? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think that's the wisest that Mary will and tell the truth and be curious. Like if you can establish this and then just go do the next right thing, man. I had this thought, I'm gonna bring it up with Scott Galloway the next time I sit down with him.

1:37:11He keeps having, he's got super famous for this same The most important decision that you make in your life is not going to be where you work, it's not going to be where you live, it's going to be the person that you marry. Charlie Munger's got the same thing, the most important decision that you make in your life is your spouse, etc. And I understand why that's a talking point that people are pushing because people fall backward into relationships and not intentional about this stuff. They don't try and cultivate a practice of honesty. They don't deal with that unspoken expectations. All of these things.

1:37:43I do wonder though whether it is putting even more undue pressure on people and this is the problem of a one -size -fits -all piece of advice for a very broad audience that some people, it's the same thing with some of the sort of post -me -to messaging around how guys should behave with women. Some of the messaging, lots of the messaging say is basically don't be pushy. The problem is the men who really need to be told don't be pushy won't take that to heart. They're just gonna plow through it. And the guys who really need to be encouraged are gonna really, really embody it. You know? Well, in the other side of it, the number of Texas women who are like, I just want a guy who, right?

1:38:31So it's, I get the one size fits all. Well, I think the challenge to that, to the statement is we take that the most important person is the person you marry, right? Which I believe that, but I think we dump it on a person, not on the thing, not on the marriage. And so I need, I force this other person to carry it all instead of saying, hey, can you and I carry this thing? And I think that's a different, totally different perspective. You know what I'm saying? And otherwise you're gonna give somebody a burden no human can carry. Like, the, you know, Brad's stuff that says, like Wilcox says, like, a good or great marriage, everything in your life are always this way and a not great or bad marriage, everything, like, un -arrowized the other way, right?

1:39:16It's like a D -R -O -I. But if I put that on a human being, man, nobody can carry that. But if I say, hey, you and me, can we pull this thing together? Man, those two horses can pull more together than they can individually. I like that. But it does put a lot of pressure on him. Okay, so if somebody who's 37 and not married, it's easy for me to run my mouth about this. I got married when I was 24, right? I was a child. And so tell me about the nature of that pressure. Yeah, it's certainly palpable, especially if you take it to heart. And if you want, if you think, well, what's the sort of relationship, what's the sort of future that I want to have, what's the sort of marriage and family that I want to have.

1:39:54And I have a bunch of guys. There is no good archetype for this. but I have a bunch of guy friends who are unbelievably eligible. Like some of the most eligible, maybe at least one of the most eligible men in America. Is he over six foot there, that's where it is. Yeah, it's just like it. Yeah, true. And many, many, many figures. Anna, he just wants a family. Like he just can't wait to be a dad. But the fact that he has waited a little while is making the pressure mount. And you see this in women that have built up a career. There's a good example with a lamp that Louise Perry taught me about.

1:40:39If you're moving into a new house and you need to buy a lamp, it's a piece of piss. You've got nothing else in the house. There's a lamp that'll work and you build the house around the lamp. If you've done the opposite, you've built this very elaborate internal decor, you need to find the perfect lamp, right? That comes in at this time. And it's one of the unseen costs that people who wait longer pay both guys and girls. You know, if you wait until you're in your 30s or your late 30s or your 40s or your 50s, before you finally decide to settle down, your life, you have more preferences. is you have a great complexity, you have this sense that you know what you like and what you want and what you deserve and how this should and it's more hard, it's more difficult to find.

1:41:23So that's it. Can I pull that thread for a second? That essentially turns another person into the remaining puzzle piece for your puzzle. Instead of being, I had fewer things to dump out. My puzzle was jaggedy and small and trashy. So when we were like, hey, we have to build a new puzzle together. That was easy. I didn't own anything. I was right. It just means there's more at stake for you to swipe the table off. It feels like there's more at stake because you've spent all of this time building it up. You spent all of this time creating this life that is yours. But it goes back to for a while.

1:42:02Correct. Ultimately, if all of this was basically you in a holding pattern, waiting, and this This is what are you doing? Are you trying to create a life and a partnership and a family that is the thing? Or is it just a side dish to your career? And there is a big cohort of people for whom the family thing is just the thing that they do. Like that's what people do, right? It's not their alchemy. It's not their zenith of their contribution to this world, right? Yeah. And again, the problem occurs when somebody from Group 1 gets into a relationship with somebody from Group 2, that I want this thing to be everything.

1:42:48And we can build our lives around this. But yeah, if you've spent a long time constructing a very elaborate cathedral, this wonderful orchestral life that's got these moving parts and it's all perfectly put together in, it feels like you're giving away more, even if the end goal that you need to get to is the thing that you wanted all along. Even if all you did was be in a holding pattern waiting for this thing to start, you feel the deceleration, you feel the... Imagine this, somebody's got a really big bank account and they need to give away 50 % of their net worth in order to be able to do a thing.

1:43:25If your bank account's got 10 million in, it's way easier than if it's got $10. Of course. Right. Like if you've got $10, sorry, it's way harder than if you've got $10. If you've got $10 and you just give away five bucks Like well, fucking like it's five bucks. What does that matter? Even if it's 50 % of my well But if you've got this huge bank account, you feel The amount that you've got to withdraw more It's a bigger overall number So what would feeling that feeling and then going doing the next right thing look like in real life? commitment, I think, a reprioritization of this is that period of my life's over, right?

1:44:09Is it different kind of awesome? It's a different kind of awesome. I had an awesome where I lived for me, but eventually you just kind of get bored of yourself and it's a choice between a familiar kind of awesome and an unfamiliar kind of awesome. And some people are not prepared to trade the former for the latter because they just don't know, they don't know what it is. People are not good with uncertainty, good with unpredictability. It's fascinating that the things that we evolved to do, to prove worthiness, to a mate, Or the things that didn't end up trapping. Getting in the way of doing the thing.

1:44:52Yeah, the thing that you want. The peacock feathers are now like in front of our face and we can't even see the meat. Yeah, the thing that you want is being sacrificed for the thing which is supposed to get the thing that you want. Yeah. Yeah. I was supposed to be successful so that I could find a mate so that I could start a family and the reason that I can't start a family is because I'm so busy. Well, I'm so successful. Yeah, exactly. To try and find a mate. Yeah. Yeah, the pastels, I mean, that when you see don't sacrifice the thing you want for the thing that's supposed to get it. It is, it is a universal rule.

1:45:22Don't sacrifice happiness in order to achieve success so that when you're finally sufficiently successful, you can allow yourself to be happy. Like so many people do that. People sacrifice freedom in order to be wealthy, right? They think, well, if I turn to a life of crime, I can be wealthy and it's like, why do you want to be wealthy? Well, so I can be free. You go, if you get caught, you're in jail. Yeah. So you're sacrificing the thing you want for the that's supposed to get the thing. And it just appears everywhere. And it's a misunderstanding of means and ends. And you've got them the wrong way around.

1:45:58You keep confusing the, we'll just keep saving. I'll just keep saving. I'll just keep working. I'll just keep building. And you go, for what? That's it. But how much of that is a fear of, man, this is such an abused word. how much of that is a fear of being vulnerable? Because I can control all of these other things, but when it comes to building a life with somebody else, I can only control me in that boat. Oh, 100%. So much of it is about control. Like the reason the people commit to careers over relationships is that a career can't leave them. And another person can. I think that's why you're 95 % in on the relationship.

1:46:45But you can't see my text. Yeah. And I'm not prepared to let go of that bit of the career because if I do that and you leave, I have no hedge, I have no way to hide. I haven't got anything that's just for me, that's just for me, it's my little secret, it's my little thing, it's not for you. it's the side account that you don't know about. And I guess the hard part is you can't know how extraordinary the other side of that is. Without when you're all in on hour, that you can't know until you risk it all. Or you risk getting hurt really badly. Dr. John Deloni, please. I need to fucking awesome. Thanks for being my friend, dude.

1:47:25Yeah, thank you too. And man, can I just kind of plug new tonic? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You don't even pay me. It's a laser, man. man. This has become my, so once a week, we have to do ads. You've done that. I get to do ads, I'll say it that way. And you have to read and read and read and read. Utanic man, it's my laser beam. It takes my chaotic mind and says, you can work for one focused hours. It's awesome. John Deloney, everyone should go and check out your show, your books, everything, you're awesome. Appreciate you, Mayor. And you.