World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin

21:56And it's where it's. It's. And that's the thing that if you're not feeling confident, has that monologue in the back of your head going, OK, you're just not very good at this. You're going to walk across the bar. You're going to say hello. And they're going to humiliate you. So it quarts in that area. We see less activity there. So you've got more confidence. Also, oxytocin makes you feel quite chilled. It's quite nice. And then dopamine is also released because dopamine is your hormone of motivation. And if you just had oxytocin, you might be so chilled. You sat on the bar so when you did not move.

22:25Because you're having a lovely time. So dopamine is there to go, no, you actually have to go across the bar and you have to say hello. And so they work really, really well together. And they also work together to make your brain more plastic. So I have to ask you then, if I'm a single person, yes. And with what you've just told me about the brain, I'm trying to increase the probability that someone will be attracted to me and form a relationship to me. What kind of behavior do I need to be embodying? To, because I want to, I want to reduce the fear part of their brain so that they're more comfortable.

22:55And I want that oxytocin in dose mean to be firing. Yes, absolutely. So quite often, people say to me, how can I hack my first date? So the way you can hack your first date is you can do an activity, which releases betaendorphin in dopamine and oxytocin. The best way I have found, which I appreciate is a niche interest, is some form of dancing in couples. Ballroom dancing, tango, whatever it is. Because, first of all, you're touching. So you get released oxytocin and betaendorphin. They're both released by touch. You're moving around, as any gym bunny knows, exercise produces betaendorphin. Hopefully, you're not that great at this.

23:32So you're going to laugh a lot, because you're actually a little bit rubbish. Okay. So you're releasing lots and lots of probably oxytocin dopamine and betaendorphin doing that. Then afterwards, you need to go and have a curry. Okay. Because betaendorphin evolved initially as your body's painkiller, that stellar role it has, over time it's been quaked into our social sphere. But we know you have pain receptors in your gut. So if you have a curry, your gut gets a little bit irritated because it's a little bit spicy, so don't have a calmer. And it produces betaendorphin. And we know that that will also help you, help you feel more euphoric, help you feel more relaxed and help that person be more attracted to you, because they will also get a hit of it.

24:13So that's your ideal data. I appreciate it's very niche and not everyone wants to do that. But there are ways. And then I'm going to say, I heard to the comedy store. Yeah. I'd have a really good belly laugh, a proper laugh produces betaendorphin. Okay. Yeah. Had we finished with that? Well, so what you're doing, your biological market value comes out. As I say, you hit dopamine oxytocin, your amygdala quattons, you feel much more confident, you feel much more chilled. Dopamine motivates you to walk across the bar and off you go and you strike up compensation. And that is the way attraction works in all mammals.

24:43It's completely unconscious. So you don't know any of this is happening. What's different in humans is very quickly after that, particularly once they've opened their mouth, it all starts kicking off in the outer air of the brain. So your neocortex. So the major social air of the brain is here. This is your prefrontal cortex. And your prefrontal cortex is where all those social abilities sit, so trust, reciprocity, ability to maintain, ability to abstract about your relationship, or ability to daydream about what it's going to be. And that's where all that sits. So we start seeing firing off here.

25:18And what's really important for human love is there is a connection between this air of the brain, which is known as the striatum, which is unconscious, and this air of the brain, the prefrontal cortex. So your unconscious brain and your conscious brain can work together in attraction. And also this air of the brain at the back, which is known as the mentalising empathising air of the brain. So we need to have empathy in relationships. It's the basis of love. So understanding someone's emotional state and being able to respond to it appropriately. And also mentalising. So mentalising is mind -reading.

25:49What's their intention? What are they going to do next? You need it for conversation. You also need it just ought to cheat, because you need to check someone's intention. So the mentalising air of the brain is important. The sad bit, and I'll explain this in a minute, is unfortunately that bit shuts down a little bit, which isn't very helpful or talk about that. So then as soon as they open their mouth, you start to contemplate them consciously. And what you contemplate consciously in terms of your attraction can actually override the unconscious bit. So you might have had this amazing feeling of, you know, lust and chemistry as you walk across the bar thinking, wow, this person's amazing.

26:23And feeling astonishing. They open them out and they say something to you, which is just, you know, unconscionable or awful, or they've got no sense of humour, or they're really uncalling, or whatever it might be. And suddenly that bit will step in and go, nope, this person is not for me. And that can override the biology. But that's why what we say, and I always say the brain is the sexiest organ in the body, because ultimately it's what you express with your brain that is going to really determine whether or not this love is going to go anywhere. And that's what you say. Because ultimately as humans, the thing that makes us the most successful species on the planet is our brain, not your shoulder waist ratio, not your waist tip ratio, it's actually your brain, because you want your kid to have the most creative, flexible, funny, intelligent, emotionally intelligent brain they can have.

27:08And that's what you're looking for in a partner in the long term. So based on what you know about attraction and falling in love and all those things, what is like the worst thing one could say? In terms of the themes, the types of things, someone could say that would just completely put you off. So I think probably the absolutely worst thing you can say, and this comes from a lot of data saying, what's the most important? It's to say something unkind. So we know, regardless of everything else, the one thing that people want in a long term relationship is somebody kind. So something critical of somebody else in the room, particularly something, I mean, you don't know what that person's interests are, but something critical about something that's very important to them.

27:45Don't be angry. Waiter waitress. Yeah, exactly. That's why how people treat, I mean personally, I find people who treat waiters in raging, you know, badly in raging. That's why. Because it's a rare representation of who you are at your core. Or they express a value which goes and get completely against a value that you have. Because we know in terms of long, long term compatibility, it's things to do with personality, it's thing to do long term values or beliefs that are the most important things. So let's say somebody said something horrendously homophobic or something like that, or something racist, that's an immediate right.

28:19No, this person is not for me. What about X? Because X seemed to have emerged just like her. It's so it's got a friend of mine who's, she's never been in a relationship. She's just 37 years old, 38 years old. And I remember one day she was like, Steve, what am I doing wrong? And I'm not listening. I was never really a data. So I have no right to tell someone what they're doing right or wrong. But she showed me her dating profile. And then a dating profile. She said to me, I said no to this guy. And I looked at this guy, I'm like, oh, he's like a stud. He's a beautifully good looking, was really, really kind in the messages he'd say.

28:52She goes, but if you look in the background of his photo, there's boxes on top of his wardrobe. And she was like, so I said no. Right. Now, from an evolutionary perspective, you go, OK, maybe he's living it. It's Mum's house, maybe he's just moved in, maybe whatever. Maybe he's not a settled person. But really, there is become a culture of women and men excluding each other, based on extremely surface level things. Now, I'm like, does that, is that the prefrontal cortex doing its job, or is that something else? It is the prefrontal cortex doing its job. I would say it's not doing its job terribly well.

29:24The Ick is a really recent thing that was generated by social media. And this idea of narrowing in closer and closer and closer on what people like to call red flags. And you don't get a lot of information from online dating because you don't get a lot of sensory information to help you make a decision. So people become more and more obsessed of what's in the image. What's in the image? What can I get about this person? And they start to become obsessed with tiny, tiny things. What ultimately people find attractive is very, very complicated. It's, there are so many different things that feed into attraction.

29:54Whether or not somebody has boxes on top of their wardrobe is very unlikely to be even vaguely important in terms of compatibility. I don't think it's super cool dating apps. I think they should be called introduction apps. And that's actually what the great Helen Fisher said. She said, they're introduction apps. They broaden your pool. They make more people available to you. That's it. You're not having a date on that app. You're not learning about that person on that app. You're literally seeing them for the first time and as soon as you can get in the room with them. And you can let your brain do what it's really good at.

30:21Half a million years of evolution. That's what you should do. Because they hand cap your brain. They give you very little information to go into that algorithm. You said something really interesting, which kind of does tell us into what I was saying about my friend who's never dated, but is struggling in dating. I know a growing number of people that are going on like 100 dates a year and having no luck. And just like mathematically, I go surely. There must have been someone suitable in that pool of 100 people a year that you've met. What is going on here? It's two things, I think. First of all, as I've said, it's the low cost of dating apps.

30:54So in the old days, when I was dating, going on a date was a real investment of time and energy. So you would probably meet someone at work, you'd meet someone at a bar, you'd meet someone through a friend, which was a real blind date. And you'd spend your time thinking, what am I going to wear? And I've got to go somewhere with this person and spend some time with this person. Probably some financial investment as well. Get myself already, spend an evening with them. And that was how you were going to meet somebody. So you invested time and you weren't going to do that. Unless you were serious, to be honest.

31:23Because otherwise, I'll stay at home, I'll do something else. I'll go to the pub with my friends. Whereas now, because we can do it, we can literally go on a dating app anywhere on the tube while we're cooking dinner, while we're watching Netflix, anytime you want. It's low cost, low investment. I wrote a study that showed, it was in a different context, but it essentially showed that the amount you invest in something correlates to the amount that you appreciate the thing. Absolutely. They did this study where they let people into a boring forum without having to pass any entry test. And then they asked them how much they appreciated the boring forum.

31:56And people said it's boring. Yes. And then they got another group of people. They made them go through this sort of rigorous test to get into this boring forum. And they asked them how much you appreciate the forum. They said it's great. I'm obviously paraphrasing them, but it just showed this link between the amount you invest in a process is the more you appreciate it. And I think back to being, I know, 14 years old, going on my first date, and the whole process of getting ready to go to the cinema. And thinking about my outfit for three days, and then going there and being nervous. And I didn't have much money.

32:24So this was like a big thing. And then how much, you know, almost felt like I fell in love with the person in a respect. Just because of the effort I put in, I feel like I fell in love with them. So, yeah, so that's, so it's partly the low cost thing. It's partly because all those people that, if you were doing it in person, your brain would filter out, let's say there were a hundred people in the room, your brain would quite quickly filter out most of them. As, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, maybe one or two might do it because you can't filter in that way on an app. You can't take the punt on all these dates, because you're like, otherwise, how else am I gonna actually meet this person?

32:58You can't just have a casual chat by the coffee machine or work or, you know, meet them through some friends in the pub, where you would do that assessment without really making that much effort. Whereas, because on the dating app, the only way you can meet that person is to actually go on a date with them and do all that. You will end up going on a hundred to do that filtering process. So it's partly that as well. And the last thing is the paradox of choice. So we are really, really bad at making choices when there's a lot of options. And the paradox of choice is very powerful in relation to dating apps, because literally, particularly if you're good looking and you get a lot of matches, there's like a smorgasbord of people out there that you can carry on flipping or you can make a choice.

33:39And it's our brains are not set up for that, you know, a hundred years ago when we were trying to find a partner, you would maybe have the people in your village who you grew up with to choose from. If you had a horse, you could maybe have the people in the next village or even a town. Wow. And that was who you chose from. And it was a very small pool. Now you can go anywhere in the world, turn on your dating app and possibly have, you know, hundreds of people to meet. And your brain can't do that. I mean, we can all think about it as well in the context of restaurants. If you go to Thailand, they give you like a catalogue.

34:09Yes. The menu is a catalogue. We will make anything. Yeah. And you say, I feel like, yeah, 45 minutes thinking, do I want fish, chicken, eggs, but then you go to like a London fancy restaurant. And there's like, we do this. This is it. So that's why you end up with people who, yes, go on a hundred dates and don't actually end up with anybody because they haven't had that opportunity to filter. Monogamy and polyamory. Yes. So can you define both of those words? And the thing that I found really striking is, I think I heard you say that satisfaction in either dynamic there, polyamory or monogamy is roughly the same.

34:47Because I thought people in monogamous relationships were supposed to be when we're happy than people that are in polyamorous relationships. No. Not at all. So monogamy is a relationship state where there are two people who are, we have to find two sorts of monogamy. There's section monogamy. That is you are exclusive to that other person. Actually, you have sex with nobody else. And there is social monogamy. And that is you live with that person exclusively. So within the UK, most people, let's say, if they have children are socially monogamous, they live in a house or with their children with two people in it.

35:20Whereas section monogamy, you can be socially monogamous and not sexually monogamous. So there are two different things. But monogamy, if we talk about it in sort of late terms, is two people who are exclusive to each other in terms of love, in terms of sex, and in terms of possibly living together. Monogamy itself is a social construct, mostly. We are not a monogamous species. There are very few monogamous species in the world. Maybe I think I read a book the other day, it says something like 0 .002 % of the animals on this planet, are monogamous. Because what you will see in the wild and what you see mostly with humans is social monogamy.

35:56They live together. But we know that the infidelity rate sits generally at around 50%. So 50 % of those households are not sexually monogamous. And in fact, from an evolutionary point of view, being sexually monogamous is a really quite bad idea. Because you are limiting yourself to a very narrow gene pool. And that's why there are very few creatures in the world that are truly sexually monogamous. I, when I was doing my masters, my professor studied Gibbons. Gibbons at the time were known to be the monogamous ape. And he studied, he did a really longitudinal study, and he was the first to realise that they weren't.

36:29They were all sneaking off and doing it behind the rock with somebody else. But they were living together. But the female was going to find some better genes somewhere else. This guy, brilliant parent, not great genes. I'm going to go behind the rock and make with this really good looking given over here. Because I'm going to eat some good genes. And then he's going to raise the kid. And the guy is like, well, you know, I obviously going to have offspring here. But actually, you know, mating with another female is not particularly costly to me. So I'll just go and do that over there. And let's hope she can raise them on her own.

36:55Or maybe her partner will raise them for me. So there are very few. So we have monogamy in mainly in the west. Because it's a socially prescribed form of organisation. And it was imposed because it is a form of control. It mainly sits in terms of rules, particularly in religion. But also the ready legal rules. For example, in Britain, you can't be, you can't have two marriages, you can't be a big amist. And it's about making everybody control. Because if we all just gave in constantly to precisely what our drives were saying, they'd be kind of chaos. And those in power wouldn't be able to predict what anybody is going to do.

37:32Because actually, I'm just going to go, I feel sexually attracted to whoever that is over there. I'm going to go, maybe then, but I'm going to come back and live here. But then I've got to kid over there. And it's all really, really confusing. So over time, when civilisation first arose, the more complex we got. And as we started to live together in cities, those in control were like, OK, I really needed to be able to predict what these lesser beings are going to do. So I'm going to impose monogamy. You can only live with one person and a person we have sex with one person. Nobody actually ever only had sex with one person, but we're going to look like we do.

38:01And those are the rules. And that's why we have legitimate, legitimate seer rules about children and inheritance and all that kind of thing, because it maintains control. So monogamy is, yeah, simply a social construct. It's not something that we've biologically evolved to do. And we know that part, you know, there are many countries in the world where monogamy isn't what is prescribed. How are those cultures getting on the ones that aren't monogamous? Fine. What cultures are those? So you tend to get so, for example, in certain religions, so in certain forms of Islam, for example, men can have many wives.

38:33There are certain tribes which exist within sort of South American and certain areas of Africa where you can have many wives. For example, there are some groups in Nepal in the Himalayas where we have what's known as polyandry. So one woman has many husbands. Usually, the reason why these different groupings evolved, like monogamy, is it's something to do with economics generally. So, for example, in Nepal, in these areas, because they still have male inheritance of land, if, let's say, we've got a family farm and there's five brothers, if all of those five brothers split in inheritance, then that farm would become un -economic.

39:11You wouldn't be able to farm it and make money. So over time, what's evolved is one woman will marry all the brothers, so that when they inherit the farm, they will all get, it will carry on passing down, essentially. So if it goes against our evolutionary design to be in monogamous relationships, doesn't that mean that there's a lot of people who are struggling against their... Yeah, absolutely. And that's why we have a reasonably high rate of people who have extra -marital affairs. It's also why people who are polyamorous or, indeed, have open relationships say, actually, it's the more truthful way of being human.

39:46Because all they're doing is following their drives, and they actually believe that it's more moral. Because if you put forward a monogamous front and you have an affair, you are lying to people. You are keeping a secret from people you profess to love. Whereas if you're polyamorous or you're in an open relationship, you're actually openly saying, this is my drive, this is the reality, I'm being truthful with everybody about it, so you can enter a relationship with me or not on the basis of truth. And that's what a lot of polyamorous people particularly will argue. Is that they're really representing what is, for most people in an ancestral state.

40:19Polyamory is difficult because, unlike open relationships, open relationships, such as swinging or being open, we call them consensual nonmenogamy, that's just based on sex. So you're not spreading your love relationship, that emotional investment, that emotional intimacy amongst more than one person. Polyamory is being open and having several sexual partners, and also having several emotionally intimate relationships at the same time. And I think people struggle more with that because of the issues of jealousy, and the fact that that goes quite strongly against even our social ideas about monogamy, where we all live in pairs.

40:53I've got a friend of mine that's secretly in an open polyamorous relationship, basically where there's two couples, and they are together. Yeah. So there's four of them basically, but they don't talk about it publicly because of the judgment. And I think maybe part of the issue is that judgment that there's... For the polyamorous people, I've interviewed, particularly for my book, that was the major thing. Is that they were very happy in the relationship. The relationships were going really, really well, but what was difficult was being open about it, particularly with, for example, and talking to one woman who was like, like older members of the family.

41:29So she was going to a family wedding. And when she went to these occasions with this family, she could only ever take one of her partners. She always had to be the same partner because they had no idea the other partner existed. Because that would be very difficult for them to take. Also, we know from studies that have been done looking at people's attitudes to polyamorous people. They are seen as immoral. They are seen as unloving. They're seen as cold because they have this ability to love lots of money. So they can't truly love any body because they're splitting their heart between all these different people.

42:01Polyamorous people look at it the other way. As I've said, they actually think it's very moral because they're being truthful. Polyamorous relationships tend to be based on very open communication. That's one of the rules. Is that? Is everybody still happy? Is everybody still happy with where the boundaries are? Has anybody upset anybody else? So it's very, very open. And they also believe that, and in some ways the support from this, we are able to love many friends that want to be able to love many children at once. They say, actually, they don't split their heart. It's not a zero -sum game that you get 50 percent and you get 50 percent.

42:31Actually, at each time they take somebody into their lives, their heart just gets bigger. Do you think we're somewhat pretending to be monogamous? I think some people are happier with monogamy. We know that partly from a genetic point of view. So there are some people know I don't think struggle with it. But I do think a reasonably significant number of people probably do. Who do you think struggles with it more men or women? It really depends. Do you know something that one of the major misnomas in love research is that there is much difference, that there's this major difference between men and women.

43:03There really isn't. There really isn't. It's more about who you are at your core, more about attachment -style personality, your life experience, your genetics, all these sorts of things are much more of a factor in whether or not you will be comfortable with the nougamy or any of those aspects than whether or not you're male or female. And again, you said that there's not a difference between well -being in satisfaction levels versus monogamous and polyamorous relationships. No, absolutely not. How do you know this? But as we've done studies on it, we've asked, we've done, we use the same satisfaction scales about, you know, how satisfied are you in your relationship with various aspects of that relationship and they come out as being absolutely no different.

43:40For what it's worth, Babe, I'm happy with our relationship. I'm more than happy being monogamous. I find it to be a much easier life. Well, the only thing polyamorous people say is you have to have a cracking Google calendar. Yeah, at the time. Yeah. Let's talk about the first thousand days. So you really believe that the first thousand days of a child's life are the most critical. Yes. And linked to this is the role of both the mother and the father. It's long been assumed that the father is surplus to requirements, that they're not really that important. As long as they're, you know, in the stereotypical context, as long as they're providing for the family, then it really need to be around.

44:19Is that true? And what do we need to know about how formative those first thousand days are for a child? Okay. First of all, no, it's not true. It's absolutely fundamental, I think, for a child to get some input from a father. I'm going to define father. In the West, we're a bit obsessed with the term biological father. And we always describe that as the real father, even if he's not around, even if that child has been bought up by a stepfather and adopted father, what we call a social father, which is a grandfather and uncle, a best friend and older brother. When I say father, people assume I'm in biological father, I don't.

44:52I mean, the man or men who have stepped in and done the job, that is the father. So I want to make that very clear, first of all. We know that young people who grow up without that input, the risks of having negative outcomes is much higher without having a male role model or some male role models in your life. We know that they are much more likely to display anti -social behaviour. They are much more likely to turn to crime. They are much more likely to have addiction issues. They're much more likely to have mental health issues. And their outcomes in terms of relationships going through their life in other aspects of their lives are much more negative.

45:30And there is a reason for that. So men have a very specific role in child development. And I wasn't expecting to find this when I first started, but I've looked at fathering around the world in many, many different cultures. And how men arrive at that role is very different. The fathering role is much more diverse than the mothering role. It's partly because the mother's role is very tied by biology, by pregnancy, childbirth, etc. Whereas men, we call it a facultative role. And what that means is it's much more flexible. It's much more open to responding to changes in the environment and adapting to them to help the family survive.

46:03And we see that all the way around the world. So dads do it in lots of different ways. It really depends in your environment what the major risk is. So in our environment, we don't really have survival risks in our environment, not to the extent that they're doing some cultures. So as a dad in societies where survival, day -to -day survival is a problem, whether it's a war zone or whether there are major, major disease issues, then a dad's role there is to keep that kid alive. If we look at other environments where survival is reasonably secure but economic survival is very on edge, then in those environments we tend to see fads again, not particularly hands -on in terms of caretaking or nurturing.

46:38They are the person in that kid's life who's going to teach them the skills they need to go forward and be economically successful. So if you live in a pastoral environment, then they will be taken into the fields and they will be taught how to do that role. And then they will be taken to the markets and they will be taught how to negotiate and build the social networks they need. And then in our environment where economics is reasonably secure comparatively, survival is reasonably secure comparatively, then we are social survival is important. In our world it really is who you know. But what I found, regardless of how you were doing it, was all fathers have one major, major role and it's a bit of a technical term and I'll explain what it is, they scaffold the child's entry into the world beyond the family.

47:18And what that means is they are the parent when it comes to developing the skills, the neural connections, the biology, the physiology that enables you to leave your family and go out into the world and be successful to thrive and survive. And it starts when a baby is born. So the attachments that a dad and a mum build to that baby are just as powerful as each other but they are different. So a mum's attachment is based upon nurture. And what we tend to say with a mum and child attachment is it's quite exclusive. So if you imagine a mum, her major role with that child is to nurture and protect.

47:56And so when she's with that child, she will hold that child to her. It's very inward looking. With dads, they do nurture, absolutely they nurture, they do all that kind of thing. But they use that nurturing to build confidence in that child as a secure base, which is what attachments about. And what they actually do is they turn the child to the world and they go, okay, you're safe with me. I am always here, but I'm going to give you a push and you're going to go out into the world and you're going to see what the world is like. And I'm going to be the person who gives you the resilience and gives you the social skills and gives you what you need to be able to do that.

48:28And you can always come back to me when it goes wrong. So what we say with a father's attachment is it's based on nurture and challenge. Mum is very nurturing, dad is stimulation. I'm going to stimulate you and you're going to go and do something amazing. And that is why you need fathers because those outcomes we have for kids who don't have an input from a father figure. The reason why they struggle with anti -social behaviour is it's because dads are the ones that underpin social behaviour, pro -social behaviour like helping, sharing, caring, emotional, regulation and inhibition. You need to learn to regulate your emotions and inhibit them appropriately to get on in this world.

49:01You can't go into the school and you cannot go into the workplace screaming your head off when you get angry. That's not how it works. We know that fathers when it comes to education, both mums and dads have a pretty equal input in terms of academic success, but fathers have a greater role in instilling appropriate learning behaviour. Being in the classroom, taking in what's going on, cooperating with other people, cooperating with the teacher, not disturbing everybody else, that kind of thing. They are the ones that underpin that. How do they do that? Is it chemically or is it? It's several things.

49:30It's partly chemical. So we know that one of the earliest behaviours you will see a father do with a child from about six months on is a thing called rough and tumble play. Rough and tumble play. Okay. And men seem to be drawn to it. Not all men do it and we'll talk about the people who don't find it comfortable. Most men, when we just tell them to go and do something with their kid, they're not going to do some colouring. They're going to take the kid outside. They're going to throw it in the air. They're going to chase it around the garden. They're going to aeroplane it over their head. They're going to come in.

49:56They're going to bounce on the sofa. They're going to do a little wrestling. There's lots of shrieking. There's lots of energy. And we see pretty much all Western fathers do that. And the reason for it is twofold. First of all, it's a very quick way of bonding with your child. dads have to bond through interaction. They don't have the head start of the child's birth, which is a whole tsunami of bonding that all mates. So they do it through interaction. And Reffentomal players are a really time efficient way to do it. You get a massive tidal wave of bonding hormones. Because it's so physical, so you get B2 and orphan.

50:26Because there's lots of touch, there's lots of giggling. So all of these things really stop me in B2 and orphan oxytocin. They bond you tightly to the child you're playing with and the child gets them as well. But also it's starting to underpin some teaching about social skills. Because the basis of all social behaviour is reciprocity. It's give and take. And when we play with someone, it only remains fun if that reciprocity is reasonably balanced. You learn empathy because you've got to work out, is this stealth fun for the other person? Or are they no longer enjoying it? Have I gone too far?

50:54You learn to deal with challenges. Reffentomal play can be pretty extreme. It can be a little bit painful. It can be a little bit risky. And so you're saying to the kid, assess the risk. Assess the risk. Here's the challenge. Can you deal with the challenge? And all of that underpins that child's neural development, first of all. But also you're showing, by example, social skills. I'm saying reciprocity. But what's really interesting, and I love this piece of research. And this came out from a group in Israel headed by Ruth Feldman, who is a pioneer of neuroscience in terms of children and their parents.

51:22She found that dads and children have co -evolved to prefer to play with each other. Okay. So when you're a parent, you will get a peaking oxytocin from certain behaviours you do with your child. You'll always get a bit of oxytocin, because, and if you do, then it's probably very nice apart from maybe the tantrums. But if you're a dad, that peaking oxytocin comes from playing with your kid. And then when we look at kids, when the peaking oxytocin release, they get when they're playing with their dads. Again, isn't when daddy gives me a cuddle, which is nice, but, you know, I don't get a big release.

51:55It's when I play with daddy. So is that different to women? Yes. So women get their peaking activate of oxytocin release from nurturing that you're particularly from hugging them. And kids get their peaking oxytocin when they interact with mom from mom's cuddles, not from playing with mom. So naturally, kids kind of gravitate towards dads when they want to have fun. And dad, that's the kind of thing he will choose to do with his child. Something that's physical, something that's stimulatory. And that's what's really interesting. And that's in a way why dads kind of got the monochrome, oh, you're the fun parent, you do all the fun stuff.

52:27But actually, play is fundamental to a child's development. Absolutely fundamental to their social development. And also building that really critical bond with dad. If I was to have a baby now, how would my body, my brain, my body, how would it change? Okay. It would change in two ways. There was the biological changes you were done to go. So this is something that we didn't know about 20 years ago and I and other colleagues around the world have looked into this. And the reason why we looked into it is because, as I said, very rare to have human fathering, really rare, 5 % of mammals. And the way evolution works is it generally doesn't cause a whole new behavior to evolve without giving you some sort of head start in being able to do it.

53:09And so over time in the last half a million years, as fatherhood evolved, men's brains change, their psychology changes, their hormones change when they become fathers to give you that prep to be a parent. So first of all, we see hormonal changes. The most studied and I think probably the most significant is the drop in testosterone that occurs when you become a father. So you will have already experienced a drop in testosterone because you're in a long -term relationship. Not in your oven. Yes, you have. So when a man enters a long -term relationship for the first time, he will experience a drop in testosterone.

53:43Because testosterone is a really great chemical if you're dating because it makes you more competitive and it makes you more attractive if you're in a heterosexual relationship. So it makes you more attractive. But when you start living with someone or being in a long -term relationship, we kind of need you to shift your focus from the horizon and looking for another date. And we need you to focus on that one person. Because from an evolutionary point of view, that person is going to be person you have kids with. And we'd quite like you to stick around and look after those kids. So that happens.

54:11When you become a father for the first time, it drops again. And it can be up to 30%. So you lose a third of your testosterone. And the reason for that again is we need you to focus in on the family. We can't have you looking to the horizon for another mate. We need to focus it because we know that children need input from more than just mom to survive. This sounds all very monogamous. I'll talk about it in a minute. OK. So you focus in on that child. Testosterone is also, when it's very high, it blocks the bonding hormones. So dopamine and oxytocin in particular have less of an effect. So the testosterone drops also to enable you to start bonding with that child.

54:50Because you are behind in terms of bonding with that child, because mom's gone through pregnancy in most cases and given birth. So she's had a head start. She's had a load of oxytocin dopamine and beach around often during the birth process. You haven't. So we need to release those hormones as soon as we can. One of the ways we do that is testosterone drops. So the oxytocin dopamine is more effective. Which explains why some fathers say that they don't feel bonded to their child in the early stages or before. Yeah, I'll explain why that is as well in a minute. So that's oxytocin dopamine. We also know just generally from studies where the men or fathers or not, men with lower testosterone tend to be more motivated to care for children.

55:25So even if you're not a father, if we present you with a crying baby, men with very high testosterone, the reaction to that is maybe aversive like, okay, just take it away from me. And also they get quite frustrated. They find it quite difficult to deal with as a noise. Men with low testosterone tend to be more motivated to pick the baby up, try and soothe the baby and deal with it. And whilst it's a difficult noise to hear, they tend not to experience negative emotions in relation to it. So that dropping testosterone is really, really important. Over evolutionary time, we think that people were probably socially monogamous for a period of time, which matched the period of time they needed to ensure that our child's going to survive.

56:05So whilst in our culture, it's like, no, you will marry, tell you, you will be monogamous to tell you, die. In evolutionary history, that probably wasn't the case. Fathers might have stuck around for probably at least until childhood, which is between about five and 10. They might have stayed along into the teenagers, depending upon how difficult the environment was. And also, this doesn't mean they weren't having sex somewhere else. So this is social monogamy. We also see changes in oxytocin rises. If you live with your pregnant partner, it will start to rise in pregnancy as well as your partners.

56:39And that's there to make sure, first of all, that you're bond to your partner titans, because you're about to introduce somebody new into your relationship, and it's not going to be easy. So we need that to be tight, but it's also to start preparing you for afterbirth. We know that vasopressin also rises, vasopressin is a sort of form of oxytocin, but in non -human mammals, it's associated with defense of the nest. And we think in male humans, it's to do with protection and motivation to protect that child. And finally, we see an increase in a parenting hormone known as prolactin. And prolactin is only seen in males in species that have investing farmers.

57:14And prolactin, again, is a parenting hormone that motivates you to care. So you go through this massive change in hormones. A lot of men say they don't notice the drop in testosterone in terms of things like strength. So I get a contact with a lot of men saying, but I love weight training. It's just going to ruin my... No, it's not. It doesn't do anything like that. I think of the number of Olympic athletes who have kids, you're fine. What it does do is it increases your emotional vulnerability. So quite often with fathers, you will hear they're more empathetic after birth. And also, they find it harder to deal with emotionally difficult things, particularly like on the news.

57:45Suddenly, things on the news will make them cry when they never cried before. Will they ever get their testosterone levels back? Only if you don't have contact with your child. So if you don't have contact with your child, and you don't have to co -reside with your child, these studies have been done across cultures, including cultures where co -residents doesn't occur. As long as you are in contact with your child, no, they won't. Because you are still maintained in looking after that child. If you lose contact with your child, yes, they will go back up. Because the evolutionary drive is to then reproduce again.

58:14So if I have a kid and then I stick around and raise the kid, assuming I stick around, my testosterone levels will never get back to the level it was before I had the kid. No, never. I mean, that's slightly. I mean, I love my future kid. I'm sure. I will say to dies because they do worry about it. I understand why they worry about it because they believe very much the testosterone is the male hormone. It isn't it isn't. Women have testosterone and it's one of the sex hormones. It's not, it really isn't associated with things like stress. You might find things like your, if you have a tendency to aggression, you might find that drops a little bit.

58:50And as I say, you become more empathetic and you become more emotionally vulnerable. But it's really, it's not going to impact a huge amount physiologically in you. So really don't worry about it. And also you get the most amazing rewarding bond with your kid in return. So you drop the testosterone, but you get this astonishing bond. So it swings around about. You said earlier that if the father's not around, there's implications for teenage mental health? Yes. So because father's underpin resilience through starting with reference on more play, but carrying on through that child's life and doing stimulatory activities with that kid, they're the ones that underpin mental resilience.

59:22And obviously mental resilience is particularly key for mental health. Also because they underpin scaffolding the child's ability to operate in the social world. A lot of the disorders we see in teenage young people are associated with the social situation, social anxiety, eating disorders, self -harm, depression, loneliness. They tend to all exist within the social sphere. And because of that, that's why it's actually the relationship you have with your dad, particularly the attachment relationship you have. So if it's a nice secure attachment relationship, you are much less likely to suffer from those disorders.

59:55And also particularly how much time your dad spends with you and inputs into it's important. So kids are really interesting. They measure their importance to their parents in different ways. If you say to them, had you know your importance to your mum? They'll say, well, my mum does stuff for me. She makes sure I've got my favourite serial. She makes sure that I get picked up from school and I can have my play dates. And she makes sure my sports kit is washed. It's all terribly gender -specific. I do apologise, but this is the data. If you say to the kid, how do you know your importance to your dad?

1:00:24He spends time with me. And we think it's probably cultural, because in our culture, dads are still more likely to be out at work. So the precious thing you have as a man is your time. And if I give my time to you as a child, particularly if I do something you're interested in, and I accept you as an individual and say, yeah, let's be enthusiastic about what you want to do. Then that is what underpins how you feel, how important that child feels, and that underpins their self -esteem. Because I talked about ketosis on this podcast in ketones, a brand called Ketown IQ sent me their little product here.

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1:02:38And sign up for a $1 per month trial. That's Shopify .com slash Bartlett. We talked to the top of this conversation about how gender roles have shifted and how women are college -educated and more women are in work and they're climbing the economic ladder. This also means that mothers are more likely to be around less and such a world, especially when we consider the way that the offices have been designed and the working we can spend designed. Have you thought much about the implications of an absent mother? Because we talked a lot about the absent father. But an absent mother or a mother who puts their child into daycare or is working five days a week.

1:03:14I must admit I haven't because I don't study mothers. Mother's is a massive amount of work done on. And I'm kind of filling the gaps in terms of fathers. To be absolutely honest, the roles of a mum and a dad in a heterosexual relationship have evolved to kind of complement each other. So they don't mirror each other. They don't do the same thing. They complement each other. So what happens when we take one of those away for that child? There are two things to say to that. First of all, in most children's lives, we talk about single parent families and what we're talking about is a single parent raising that child.

1:03:44But actually, if we look outside that particular diet, that particular couple and we look at who else is inputting into that child's life. So quite often I study it, obviously in relation to absent fathers. What we tend to find is that child has other people in their life who are men, who input. Even if the mum hasn't recognised it, one of the most powerful studies I read wasn't saying to a mum where the father figures in your child's life. It was saying to the kid, who are the important men in your life? And the kid would go, oh, my football coach or my maths teacher or my mate John's dad. Or they often recognise father figures, they don't call them that, but they recognise men in their lives who they look up to, who support them, who the parents, or the mum doesn't even think about.

1:04:25So that's the first thing to say. Secondly, we know with gay fathers where a mum isn't in a caretaking role, the brain adapts. Okay, so what happens if we put a hexerasexel couple in a scanner and we say, look at this video of your child. We see different peaks in activation in the brain. So in mum, we see a peak in activation at the core of the brain here. Very ancient, it's partly there because the mothering is as old as time, because in the ancient unconscious part of the brain. This is where nurture is, attachment, risk detection, all those things you need to be able to do. And then we get that peak there.

1:05:03However, if we look at dad's activation, he does have some activation here. Obviously he does. He's very capable of nurturing and protecting. But actually the peak in activation is in the neocortex. This is this bit of the brain. This is the conscious brain. It's much younger. And that shows you that fathering is younger. It's about half a million years old. And we see activation here in the social part of the brain. Okay, so this is the prefrontal cortex, which is here and the orbital frontal cortex, which is above your eyes. And that's where all your social skills sit. Your ability to do everything socially.

1:05:33And then at the back of the brain, we have two areas at the back of the brain, which are linked to empathy, which is the basis of relationships and mentalising. So that's that a bit of, you know, someone's intention. You need it just to have a conversation. But you also need it to spot somebody who's going to maybe do you bad in some way cheat, lie, whatever, those sorts of things. Again, important in the social world. And his peak in activations are there. Again, mum does have some peaks in activation here, but it's not as intense. And that underpins those two different roles. So dad's attachment is new.

1:06:03Mum's attachment is very ancient and nurturing. If you have a gay primal caretaking father without a mother involved, what you see is you see both bits light up at the same intensity. So he gets the dad activation, obviously being a man, but he also gets the mum's activation. And what's really absolutely fascinating is if we look at that brain, there is a new, a brand new neural connection between this bit of the brain here and this bit of the brain here. So they can communicate. So is a woman not playing a unique role at all in raising... Well, I don't mean there is a man, because if we look in, if we were to look in probably a gay woman's brain, we'd see the same thing.

1:06:45And it's not saying that they're not paying unique roles in a heterosexual relationship, they absolutely do. But what it's showing you, human children are incredibly difficult to raise. They are pretty much apart from maybe dolphins and a bit of an ape, the most intense kid to raise, because they're born so helpless. And the only way a human baby can survive is if it gets enough input. So the human brain, the human parenting brain, is astonishingly plastic. And it will adapt to make sure that that child gets what it needs. And so where we've got one of the adults missing, mum or dad, it will adapt to say, okay, the remaining adult, or even if there's two dads or two mums, that primary caretaking one, their brain will also to make sure that kid's done, it gets one of the things.

1:07:31It's quite good to talk about what we were saying about, do you need dads then? Because if you talked about the role that dads play and play, but also I've read your research around the impact that a father has on a kid's ability to speak. Yes. Is better in children who had a father present. But if you could just have two women doing it, does that mean that we don't necessarily need the father? It's not that you don't necessarily need the father. I mean, the same argument we say, you don't necessarily need a mother in a gay parenting relationship with the fathers. What it's saying is, in a heterosexual relationship, we get this complementarity, we can't get that in a gay relationship.

1:08:08So what we've got instead is this slice of adaptation. Unfortunately, the studies haven't been done sufficiently on gay parenting, which is a massive omission. I'm afraid science always starts with heterosexual and narrows it down. That we don't know exactly whether, for example, a gay parent, two male parents, maybe there's a little bit missing because of a lack of female input or whether with two female parents there's a lack of, because there's no direct male input. The other thing to say is, around these families, you know, I can't, there are very few gay parenting families where there are no women involved at all.

1:08:43And there are very few lesbian couples who have no male involvement at all. So it's a very complex mess, really, in terms of what the inputs are. But I think the study that discovered this were just astonished at the amazing plasticity of the brain, that a man who did not go through pregnancy and childbirth and does not have this evolutionary ancient instinct in terms of motherhood could actually adopt this role and we would see this activation. That's in a way the biggest take home from it is that it will adapt in such a powerful way to make sure that child gets what it needs. So do we need fathers?

1:09:19Yes. Why? What is it that fathers bring that can't be done by some other means, though? Because we don't yet know, first of all, whether these adaptations in the female brain, for example, are enough, because that research hasn't been done. And secondly, there are very few children who don't have a father, actually, if you look at their social grouping. Now, it might not be a father who co -resides, it might not be a father who they see that frequently. But it could be, you know, and when we remember we're talking about grandfathers, uncles, teachers, coaches, whoever it might be, it might be a whole team of men who's stepping in at the different times.

1:09:54It's very rare that a child doesn't have any male input in their life. And that is what a father is. It's not your biological father. So is it that we need a father figure around, but we don't necessarily need a father in the home? You do not have to co -reside. One of the things that drives me slightly around the bend is when people talk about absent fathers. Sometimes the father is truly absent, absolutely. But in some cases, he's not, he just doesn't live there. And that's what we've got to be very clear about. You do not have to co -reside. And there are cultures in the world where co -residences are not the norm.

1:10:32And so it's about being in your child's life. You do not have to live with them. Are we getting more fatherless? As a Western society? It would seem so at the moment in terms of biological fathers, yes, unfortunately. And that's one of the things that we really need to focus on. I've recently become a trustee of a new policy unit, which is the centre for research into men and boys. And my role there is to look at the role of fathers, how we support fathers, how we support boys in having male figures in their lives. Because we are seeing, because divorces become more culturally acceptable, possibly because of longer life spans and relationships aren't lasting as long.

1:11:10There's lots of reasons why we are getting more children who do not have fathers in their lives. It's also a major issue in the US. Like, you know, I know Richard Reeves, and I work with Richard Reeves on it. And that is issue. And that's why we have to start looking in a creative way about what a father is. Because those kids don't necessarily have their biological father in their life. But they need somebody. And that might be encouraging links within the community. It might be helping single mothers identify those male figures within their environment and supporting those male figures and coming forward.

1:11:42It might be that we need more organisations like Lattany Dads, which is an organisation in the UK, that provides male father figures mentors to boys who don't have a father in their life. Is there anything better than a biological father? Yes, a father. There is. So even if it's sort of a stepfather or a fits, just because you don't get to become a father. Indeed, you don't get to become a mother just because you happen to conceive a child. So from a development perspective, it doesn't matter if there's no difference in biological fathers versus, you know, they've who took care of me. Because the changes we spoke about happen whether you're biologically related to that child or not because they happen through interaction.

1:12:20So any man who steps in and does the job well see the hormone changes, well see the brain changes, which we haven't spoken about, well see the psychological changes. They will see them all because they happen through interaction. So you don't, you're not as biological father. The moment you conceive that child's son, you get this mysterious ability to be a father. You don't. It happens because you happen to be interacting and and and and inputting into that child's life. So no, there is no hierarchy. It's, are you doing the job? Yes, I am. Are you doing it in a good and healthy and positive way?

1:12:51Yes, I am. Okay, you get to be dad. So you really are making the case for father figures? Yeah. In a child's life versus and a child growing up without a father figure at all, is going to have worse outcomes. There is a risk. They won't necessarily, but the statistics are quite powerful in terms of those outcomes. There was a study done recently in the UK by the Centre for Justice called Lost Boys. And that was looking at and one aspect of that was looking at boys and their outcomes if they don't have a father figure. And it is quite powerful in terms of their increased risk of having negative outcomes.

1:13:26So if you're in a lesbian relationship and you're so two women, are you saying that you really should make sure that the child is exposed to a father figure? Yeah, I would say that. I would say that. I mean, some people I get attacked for saying things like that. And I'm not trying to say there are gender roles or any of those sorts of things. But we have children have evolved. The reason why the human fatherhood evolved is because children evolved to be brought up by a group of people and part of that group of people was a father figure. Now, as we see from cultures around the world, it does not have to be the biological father, but they have a father figure or a team of father figures.

1:14:07It doesn't have to be one person. It could be several people. And does that go the other way if you're in two men? Yeah, I would always advise that that's how children have to have those two inputs. So find those women in your life and ask them to step in and do that. And another normally that we hear a lot is that it's particularly important for boys. Actually, it is critical for boys, but it's kind of touching goes to whether it's more critical for girls. The data coming out about daughters and the impact that fathers have on daughters is pretty powerful stuff. And so it's not just that we need these father figures.

1:14:44So boys know how to grow up to be positive masculine figures, to be men, whatever it might be. It's also really critical for girls that they have a father figure around. What's the data coming out regarding the dad daughter bond? So what we're finding is daughters who grow up with a secure attachment to their father, they have increased abilities into own increased success in terms of academics, in terms of education, they have increased career success. They tend to have much better mental health. They tend to be much better relationships. They tend to have less risky, particularly sexual relationships.

1:15:25And they have just better wellbeing scores. And they are much more likely, as I said, to have stable good relationships in their older life. In that adult life. When you think about society and how we're forming our relationships, especially around child rearing, what are we increasingly getting wrong here? I spoke to Erica Komisir, and she's very passionate about the detrimental impact of daycare. Because she feels that the mother's plays a critical role in those first two years, and then the father plays a critical role beyond, from about two years onwards, when the kid starts to get into that play phase.

1:16:01I would argue with her on that point, but okay. Which point would you argue on? The second point. Yeah, that is critical from the moment that child is born. And I get quite upset when I get father's side. I met a father, the other day, at an event. I think his baby was six months old. And he was a dad worker this guy. He worked with dads. He was a community worker who worked with dads with older kids. I said, I've had an upset. I was like, congratulations. He went, yeah. But I know I'm not particularly important until babies like at least 80 months to years. So I'm just changing nappies, but I know that I'm not really doing much.

1:16:33And I was just like, oh my god, I literally cannot believe this man is saying this. Bearing in my way, he does for a living. I was like, you are absolutely critical from the moment that baby is born. You are critical. Why? Because the baby's brain is growing. So human babies are born months before they should be. And the reason for that is because two anatomical anomalies, we are bipedal and we have an enormous brain. At full size, our brain is six times bigger than it should be from mammal of our body weight. It's highly encephalized. So encephalization is all this. It's folded and folded. So it's folded like this because we've got a ram it into our skull.

1:17:05If you look at the brain of a mouse, it's smooth. So when we became bipedal, about fully bipedal, about sort of 1 .8 million years ago. By pedal meaning. Two legs. If you look at something that walks on four legs, like an ape, a chimp, who's our close, their legs are quite wide apart. So their birth canals are really broad. ours is really narrow because we've had to come in like this to maintain being able to stand upright. So if we tried to birth our babies when their brains were nearly fully grown, like happens in other apes, mom would die baby would die on our species would have died out a very long time ago.

1:17:35So about 1 .8 million years ago, we reached the threshold where the brain had to do some growing after we were born. And the way that we dealt with that was we birthed our babies early. We selected to birth our babies early. And that's why they're so completely helpless. Because if you look at a chimp baby, a chimp baby is pretty mobile just off its born. It's got pretty good motor function. It can hold on to stuff. It can do various things. It can't feed itself, but it can. Whereas human babies, they can't do anything for themselves. They literally can't. They can't focus. They can't hold their head up.

1:18:06They can't move. They can't coordinate their limbs. They can't clean themselves. They can't do anything. And that's because they're born far too early. They should be a month longer, essentially. So we have this period of rapid brain growth after we're born. And because the main bit of the brain that's growing at this point is this massive prefrontal cortex, which is the social bit, the environment in which you grow up is critical. And who is really important in the social bit? The dad. So from the moment your baby is born and this is growing, dad needs to be having an input because this is where it's growing.

1:18:40Mum is also obviously vital, but we have to have both parents involved or you have to have that input at that point. So these dads who believe or people who believe that dad's only important after two years, I'm sorry, you have a fundamental misunderstanding of how the brain develops and of child development because you need to start teaching that child by inputting into their child, by giving that sensory input in particular. Human babies need a lot of touch, they need a lot of smell, they need a lot of all that kind of thing. You need to be doing that as early as possible because this is growing from the moment it comes out.

1:19:09Is it fair to say that in that zero to two phase, mothers are more important? No, because they do different things. They do different things. Mothers tend to be more involved partly because of the fact that from a barological point of view, women give birth. If you're breastfeeding, they're the only ones who can do that. So we are tied in terms of having to do that. The other thing we'd say is also giving birth is a really, really tricky thing to do. And it's physically and emotionally utterly draining. So you need a period of recovery and therefore you are the one who's basically at home, you know, in the Western context.

1:19:48In non -Western context, a baby from the moment it's born generally in some scotch will be careful by both my mom and dad. It's only because we have this capitalist system where someone's going to go and earn some money. So I wouldn't necessarily argue moms are more important. They are in a position from a barological point of view that they're going to be there. They are just going to be there. And in our system that means somebody else, it doesn't have to be there. And that's dad and he'll go and earn the money to support the family. But they need the input from both. Is it fair to say then that the primary caregiver is the most important?

1:20:17And what I mean by that is the baby is going to form a strongest attachment to the person taking most care of it. And therefore its attachment style will be shaped by the relationship to that primary caregiver. It's really tricky to say because yes, primary caregivers are really important in terms of being most of the environment of development in those early days, particularly if this is what we call I don't really know, I like crawling some secondary care, but the other parent is out and about and therefore not present. The environment in which a baby grows isn't just about who's caretaking them and who's giving them a hug.

1:20:46One of the things I really always talked to parents to be about is your relationship builds that environment as well. So parents are actually, babies are also actually taking on board the dynamics between their parents. And one of the things that I always try to get into, and to note of course, is preparing the parenting relationship. Because actually you need to build an environment which is as calm and as reciprocal and as safe as you can do for that child. And that means for example, before you have a baby learning good conflict management style, you're going to have an argument. So not about having an argument, it's about the reconciliation of that argument, it's about the resolution of that argument.

1:21:24So it's about understanding difference, you're going to pair into different ways. That can be really challenging to some couples, they find it very difficult, so you prepare them for that. So the environment is not just the primary care taker, and that's what's fascinating about humans. Human babies is a nap saying, it's a true saying, I'll raise by village. So the environment development isn't just the primary care taker parent, it's everybody who's around that child as well. And in our world that might be family, that might be friends, where we live at great distances from our families, so sometimes that's more professionals that have an input into that child's life.

1:21:56I guess I'm trying to figure out what's optimal in my relationship, because I'm probably about 10 to parenthood. And I'm trying to understand how I should configure my situation in those early years. With my partner and me, we both work, my job is requires me to fly a little bit more than hers, but just because that's the way that I've chosen my career to be. She spends more time at home, but still very busy, still flying around the world doing her own thing. So I'm thinking, when that baby arrives, what should we, based on everything you know about humans and human history and the human brain, and everything that's interconnected?

1:22:33What's the optimal scenario for me and my partner? Do you know something that's really hard? Because what I always say to parents, because parents are really good at beating themselves up, is happy parents make happy babies. So first of all, you have to do what works for you, and everybody's circumstances are different, and there are needs that everybody's going to have. So yes, your baby has needs in terms of nurturance, in terms of support, in terms of building attachments, but your baby also needs a roof over the head, and they need food on the table, and they need all that, and they need whoever's coming for them to be healthy.

1:23:02So it really depends upon what works for you. In an ideal world, somebody asked me the other day, because at the moment in the UK, we're having a lot of campaigns about paternity leave. In the UK at the moment, you can have two weeks, which is frankly laughable. And the dad can have two weeks. So the dad can have two weeks, not if you're self -employed, but if you're employed. If you're self -employed, you're kind of on your own. We're trying to push the government to take it to six weeks, which isn't our ideal, but it's how far we think we might be able to push them. Somebody asked me the other day, what would be the ideal for a dad?

1:23:32I'm afraid I started at six months. Please, that would be lovely. In places like Sweden, the dad gets a year. Because babies develop with different inputs from different people. I know you're in a heterosexual couple. So your baby will need your dad's input and mom's input. And they will need those in every configuration works for you. So it might be that, at some period, particularly after child birth and stuff, your partner is going to have to have time off. She is not going to, you know, it's very hard to race back to work after you've had a baby. Some women manage it. I think they're astonishing.

1:24:05I certainly couldn't have done it. So that's fine. You go do that. But she's going to need a period of time. But then, are you in a situation where you can work a little bit flexibly? So is there a point where you can say, okay, you go and do some work and I'll take the baby for a bit. And you switch that way. Now, obviously, if the mom is breastfeeding it's harder, because she is tied more to the baby. You can express Merkel as much as you like, but it's quite difficult as a breastfeeding mother to go off on a work trip for a week. So the first point there is really that she's probably going to need to take some time?

1:24:32She is going to need to take some time unless she is in a position where she really thinks that she is going to be capable of physically and psychologically going back to work. I've met women who do it, but it's really hard. Now, particularly when, in those first early weeks, actually, she's going to need you. Or she's going to need someone to help her. My husband is self -employed. My husband actually only managed to have two days of paternity leave before he had to go back to work. So my wonderful mom stepped in, but she's going to need somebody there. In an ideal world, as long as you are happy to do that, that would be you, because your baby would really benefit from that.

1:25:06And then from there, you have to take it the way it works for you in terms of your career, because whoever looks after that baby, it doesn't have to be mom or all dad, it can be a mixture of both. But I'm able to make concessions. I mean, I'm in a privileged position where I can make, I can kind of design my life a little bit. Well, from an ideal point of view, then, you well, at that point, try and be with your baby as much as you can. And do that and do as many of the tasks with your baby's can. Because actually, from your point of view as a man, men, the psychological changes that a man goes through when he becomes a father, it's an interest of the transition to parenthood.

1:25:38In most men who work, it takes two years. And one of the reasons it takes two years, whereas in her mother, it takes about nine months, is because one of the factors in how quickly you transition to adopting that identity, and how comfortable you feel with that identity is down to competency. How competent do you feel as a parent? Now, many Western dads, they don't get the opportunity to reach competency very quickly, because they have to go to work. So they don't get to care for their baby. And that's one of the things. We know that men who get that chance transition to parenthood much quicker, because they reach competency quicker, they absorb the identity of being a dad quicker.

1:26:11And that is better for them. This transition to parenthood, is that biological thing? It's underpinned by the biology, by the brain changes and hallmain changes, you're going to undergo, but it's a psychological state. So it's about configuring your identity, and absorbing that particular new aspect of your identity into your sense of being, and also feeling comfortable with that. We know men who struggle with that transition are much more likely to suffer from postnatal depression, for example. A postnatal depression has a fundamental impact, not only on your partner, but also on your child. So we want to be protective against that.

1:26:48So she needs some time. She's going to need me to support every person. And then the more time I can spend with my child, the more I'm going to psychologically adjust to... And the quick, you're going to build your bond. Because as I said earlier, you build your bond through interaction. And your partner is going to have a head start. She just is because of pregnancy and child. And if she's breastfeeding as well, breastfeeding is really good for releasing oxygen. You have to do it through interaction. And in those early weeks with a baby, they're very dependent, and particularly if your partner is breastfeeding, they're very mum -focused, because she is the source of food.

1:27:19And newborn babies feed for ages. So a lot of men say to me, I want to build a relationship, but I literally cannot find an end. So what we say is make something special. So make something that's yours. It could be bath time. It could be reading your baby a book. It's never too early to begin reading your baby a book. Or a really good one is baby massage. Baby massage is great, because touch is the biggest release of bonding hormones there are. If you massage your baby, your baby is getting all those lovely hormones. And so are you. So you're building that bond between you. You're close enough so your baby's getting sensory input, particularly sense of smell.

1:27:52So baby's vision is not great when they're born, but their sense of smell is brilliant, because they're little mammals. So they're starting to really get your smell, and that's going to help them attach to you. We also know baby massages, one of the only really good interventions that prevents postnatal depression in men. So that's what's... I left that. I just had this little flash in my head of all the babies that just got a massage, because you said that. Yeah, and they're all blissed out. I mean, there's some brilliant videos on YouTube. Or if you want to learn, you don't have to go to a class.

1:28:19Watch this wonderful videos of baby massage and whole classes of men massaging babies. I mean, it's brilliant. So you also want to be there, because you need to build that bond. And the only way you're going to do that is interaction. And so, and as your baby develops, that interaction becomes easier, because the baby will stop babbling. They'll start smiling. About six to eight weeks, they'll start smiling, and they'll start smiling at you. And that's just, you know, that's... You can forgive them anything when they do that. And then they'll start, you know, really reacting when you come in being pleased to see you.

1:28:45Then they'll start giggling. And then about six months, if you are a rough and tumble dad, you can start doing very gentle rough and tumble play with them. And you can just take it from there. The interaction grows more and more and more. One of the things we have to prepare men for, which I do a lot when I work with men during pregnancy, is the delay in bonding. So we have this idea that baby's going to come out, and we're going to feel a flood of love. And it's going to be... It's going to be like, you know, shining, amazing, wonderful. That doesn't happen for women a lot of the time. But men find it very difficult because...

1:29:17Because they grow their bones through interaction. When the baby comes out, they tend to have a recognition of connection. It's like, yes, that's my baby. That's my genetic baby. It's genetically related to me. I am a father. I will look after it. But it's very conscious. When I talk to my dad, it's quite often when I visit them at two weeks, a lot of them are worrying about the bond. Because they're not feeling how they thought they would feel. They're looking at their partner, who's had a head start, and thinking, well, she's the gold standard of bonding. She's amazing at it. I'm failing. My baby doesn't like me.

1:29:44I'm rubbish at this. And that's not good for their mental health. And what they tend to do is withdraw from the baby, which is the worst thing you can do. But then when I speak to them six months with the baby, they all say, I love my baby deeply. And it's categorically different to how I felt at the start. And that's because they've had to interact for that time to build that bond. Is it fair to say that the woman's bond comes more hormonally? And the father's reaction comes more from interaction? Yeah, because you will get your hormones from your interaction, whereas she has got her hormones mostly at the start from being pregnant and giving birth.

1:30:18And breastfeeding. And breastfeeding. So she's getting lots of physiologically -based hormones. And she will also get hormones from interaction, obviously she will, but she's ahead of you. You can have to massage that baby to get... You are really going to have to massage that baby. We'll play with them, I guess. Let's see the thing you said. You mentioned something before we start recording, which was curious to me, and I've never heard of before, which is you mentioned love drugs. Yes. I've never heard of that before. OK. I mean, what's that like, MDMA or something? Yes. So we kind of probably know just about enough about the neuroscience of love now, particularly neurochemicals, which underpin it, that should we wish to, we could finally produce the elixir of love.

1:30:54So since we've written things down, we have been fascinated by finding the elixir of love. There's loads of ancient texts about potions that will make you fall in love. But it's something that as humans, we've always wanted. And it's partly because love is unpredictable and uncontrollable. And humans really can't deal with that. We like to know what is going to happen and we like to be able to control it as far as we can. So wouldn't it be great if you could pop a pill or drink something, which meant that when you went out on a Friday night, you were really good at either being like the bell of a ball and attracting people, or you could somehow get to be more attractive to people, or if you were in, or you could make someone fall in love with you, or if you're in a long -term relationship with a struggling, there was some pill that would help that long -term relationship.

1:31:38And we're kind of at that stage now with the neuroscience where that would potentially be possible. And there are certainly research groups who are looking into what chemicals are already out there, which kind of mimic that neurochemistry. Now, there are two big ones that we already have. The first is oxytocin. Of course, oxytocin is synthesised. We use it in childbirth, in juices childbirth. And in studies where we wanted to work out the impact of oxytocin on social behaviour and humans in labs, we squirt it up people's noses. You can squirt it up people's noses and see what oxytocin and what it does if you want to know.

1:32:13Most people, is it makes them more empathetic, it makes them more open to chatting to people, it makes them more sociable, it makes them more positive about the people around them from the social context. So brilliant. So one of the possibilities is you produce synthetic oxytocin and you sell it to people. And in fact, a few years ago, and I think they've taken it down now, there was a drug on Amazon and eBay called Oxylove. It's a little thing, like an eye drop thing. What it would do, if you squirted up your nose, is hopefully, it would do what oxytocin does in the normal biological context.

1:32:45It would quen your amygdala, it would make you more confident, it would make you feel more open to starting relationships, you'd be better at chatting to people. So it's like, kind of like, you know, a couple of glasses of wine before you go out, it makes you feel a little bit more confident, it would be a little bit like that. And that's one of the things they're looking into. The issue with it is that you cannot guarantee the outcome of using it. So what has been found is in the vast majority of people, it does what it should. But there is a significant minority of people where it does exactly the opposite.

1:33:17And it actually increases basically what we call ethnocentrism, racism, bigotry. Because what happens is they become more tightly bonded to people they think are in their in -group. But if they perceive you to be in their out -group, they become more racist. So it makes you identify more with what you perceive to be your in -group. Now, until you can iron that out, that is not a drug you can release onto the market. Because that is not something you want to happen. Investigations seem to have shown that it's something to do with genetics, that some people's oxytocin receptor gene is slightly different.

1:33:48And it's those people who will get the ethnocentrism result, rather than the socially confident result. So that's the problem. And you can't go any further with oxytocin and tell you are now about that particular problem. The second one, which is more encouraging from a from a scientific point of view is MDMA, ecstasy. And for many years, people are anecdotally reported who use ecstasy recreationally, that it makes you feel overwhelming sensations of love. It makes you feel very bonded to everybody you're with. We know from lab studies that people who take ecstasy on a regular basis actually become more empathetic over time.

1:34:21It actually seems to permanently alter something. So it seems to be possibly something a bit like bitter endorphin, which it underpins long term love. Great. So they're engineering MDMA at the moment to try and find out what the dosage is to be and how we could give it to people. And it's been used in marriage therapy in the US at the moment as a trial to see if it can assist in marriage therapy. Because a lot of people who go to marriage therapy are very entrenched in their position. They've lost empathy. They've lost the ability to see the other point of view. And so if you micro -dose ecstasy, which I don't suggest anybody does with our clinical support, do you go into this session, it opens up your empathy and you make progress because of it.

1:34:56And there's been reasonably good results from marriage therapy in a clinical setting. The issue with MDMA isn't that it has different outcomes for people. To be honest, some people it works on, some people it just doesn't. So you could take it for that reason and it just wouldn't do what it's supposed to. Fine. The issue with MDMA is more around ethics. Because MDMA is a powerful drug. And we don't know yet what its long term consequences would be, for example, if you did take it for many, many years. The second thing we don't really know is what happens if you stop. So let's say you started a relationship taking MDMA.

1:35:30First, ethical question, should you tell the person you're in the relationship with? Secondly, what happens if you stop? You get to the point where, for whatever reason, you decide to stop, is that love going to go away? And again, if you haven't told the person, you're kind of, if it does go away, mocking around with their life without them actually realizing that that relationship was based upon an artificial stimulant, essentially. We have anecdotal, we don't actually know whether it would stop because we haven't done long -term enough studies. And anecdotally, from the recreational community, there have been stories about people who have started relationships whilst clubbing, taking ecstasy, particularly one guy who used to go back to his hometown every weekend, take ecstasy go clubbing metagirl, but used to go away to work during the week.

1:36:14So every time he saw his girlfriend in the first few months, it was at the weekend, he was not ecstasy, she wasn't, and he fell in love with her. And this was wonderful. And they carried on, and eventually, they decided that actually, no, we need to stop this long -distance thing. She needs to move and come with me, we think this has got a future. She does that, trouble is during the week, he's not on ecstasy. And quite quickly, he realises he doesn't love her. Now, he has uplifted, you know, he will have her whole life. Now, he didn't do that on purpose, he did not know that that was what the impact would be, but if that's the impact of a love jog, we have a problem.

1:36:47What do you do in relationships with parent balances? What if you're in an abusive relationship? And somebody gives it you without you knowing and keeps you in that relationship because of it? So there are lots of ethical questions. I think the issue with love drugs is, they will probably come up because they will be hugely commercially successful, if they get a commercial licence. When I do talks and I get to this bit, before I've even mentioned what, I ask people to raise their hand and say, if a drug could do this, would you take it? 50 % of the audience raised their hand and say, yes, I would.

1:37:20So then you tell them what all the problems are and you tell them what the ethics might be. And at the end I say again, would you take it at least style 20 % of the audience would? Now, because love and dating is such a multi -billion dollar industry, if we get to the point where this can be commercially produced, someone is going to make a lot of money. And that's why I think it's probably on the horizon, unless the rules are so strict that it's only in clinical settings and even then people get around rules. So that's the issue with love drugs. The other one is the SSRIs, which are for depression.

1:37:55People who are on SSRIs realize that they reduce your emotional abilities, they reduce your libido, they reduce sensations of love. And so it has been suggested again that SSRIs are engineered in some way to help people deal with love trauma. So people who have experienced very bad relationships and not that you can forget it. Do you remember the film The Eternal Sunshine? It's about a guy who wants to wipe his brain in terms of a really bad relationship. And that's kind of what suggested this could do. SSRIs can't do that. You cannot wipe a memory, but they could maybe take away some of the salience, some of the negative salience.

1:38:28The issue again with that is that there are 72 countries in the world where homosexuality is still illegal. And we know there are certain, this was a brilliant book called Love Drugs, talked about a very extreme religious community, which was giving young men who had shown homosexual tendencies, SSRIs, to reduce their homosexual tendencies. And that in itself is, I believe, ethically unacceptable. And therefore again, we've got to be aware that if we produce drugs, what could they possibly be used for, which is actually unacceptable? And how are we going to deal with that as a population? So I think anything which comes into our intimate relationships, like Love Drugs or AI or whatever, we have to have that conversation now.

1:39:14Because getting it wrong has profound impacts on our futures and on our health. Let's talk about attachment styles and monogamy and the neurodiversity components of this. So if we start with attachment styles, there's been so much said about attachment styles. Can you sort of give my viewers a overview of what attachment styles are and what we need to know about attachment styles, that's what it's to fully in holding on to love? I think the first thing you need to know is what is an attachment relationship. Attachment relationships are very rare in your life. You will have had them with whoever bought you up, whoever cared for you, particularly in the first two years of life.

1:39:53That's particularly significant. You will have them with romantic partners, and they're not all romantic partners. And you might have one with a best friend. They're very emotionally intense. We recognize them for several criteria. First of all, they're developmentally significant. So attachment relationships have the ability to change your psychology. Now, as a child, they actually have the ability to change your actual brain architecture as well, particularly in those first two years, because babies are born without their brains fully developed. That's why they're so helpless. And in the first two years, your brain is growing very rapidly, and the environment to which you are raised is going to fundamentally underpin the architecture of your brain.

1:40:32So that's developmentally very significant, that first attachment relationship you have. With your parents. Parents, carers, whoever's bringing you up, babies will attach to literally anybody who's meeting their needs, to be honest. And that will fundamentally alter your brain in either in a good way or, unfortunately, in a less good way, depending on how you're brought up. When you have a romantic relationship, what they can do is they can alter your psychology, particularly how anxious you are about being abandoned in that relationship, and how comfortable you are with emotional and physical intimacy.

1:41:01Because I will tell you a story when I met my husband, I was very worried about him leaving me, him abandoning me. And I dealt with that by being monumentally clinging. And over time we've been married for nearly 25 years, I became secure. Because he disapproved my fear that he was going to leave, and I am now secure. So he fundamentally changed my psychology. So they can do that. And in romantic relationships, there are four types of attachment relationship. And we place you in one of those sectors based upon two different factors. The first is how anxious you are about abandonment. That's the first one.

1:41:39We ask you lots of questions to work out how anxious you are about that. The second one is how much you want to maintain proximity. So again, we'll ask you questions about how close you like to be to the person, whether you maintain closeness because you're anxious, or whether you maintain closeness because you love intimacy, or whether you run away from intimacy at a rate of knots. And depending on how you are, so we put you in one or four categories. So if you are not anxious in relationships about abandonment, but you are very comfortable with proximity, emotional, physical intimacy, then you're secure.

1:42:08And it's what it sounds like. You are very comfortable in your individuality. You gain huge benefits from being in that relationship, but you don't need that relationship to exist to define you. The next one is people who are highly anxious about abandonment and crave proximity. And that was me preoccupied. So they are very anxious about being left, and the way they deal with it like I did was to cling to maintain, because if I keep an eye on you, it's going to be okay. Then we have the two avoidant attachment styles. So first of all, we have people who are very anxious about being abandoned, but don't maintain proximity.

1:42:44They find intimacy very uncomfortable. And the reason for that, they're known as fearful of avoidant people. And the reason they do that is the way they cope with this stress of possibly being left, is they just don't have relationships, because then I can't be hurt if you do that. And finally, we have dismissing avoidant. Dismissing avoidant people are the smallest part of the population generally, and they aren't worried about abandonment, but they also don't like proximity. To be honest, they're islands. They're not that bothered about being in a relationship. And one of the drivers for that might be that they're not very comfortable with intimacy, but some people literally just not bothered.

1:43:19Can you be shades? So could you, could you, is, you know, the avoidant category, does that exist on a spectrum and the... Yes, it does. The reason, I mean, all attachments are a spectrum. The reason why we categorise them is typical scientists. We like a category, because when we've got a category, we can do data analysis. And we can decide the sorts of behaviors, for example, that these four quarters perform, or we can put somebody in one and help them change to another, for example. Do you think the way that modern society is is breeding a certain group of attachment styles? Do you understand the question I'm trying to...

1:43:51I do. I think... Yes. We are getting less comfortable with intimacy. And I think that's partly because we are not as practice that it is we used to be, because we are not as... We're not forced to be in close contact with a lot of people as much as we used to be. You can pretty much do everything from your sofa. You can work from your sofa, you can order food from your sofa, you can try and maintain your relationships with your friends from your sofa. You don't actually have to be in a room with anyone. After COVID, there's a lot of data showing that people found it. People are much less interested now in meeting up.

1:44:24They kind of got used to being a little bubble. And even though they had the yearning of I don't have anyone with me, they become much more anxious about going out and actually seeing anybody. And it wasn't just because they were worried about COVID. We got out of the habit. And if you get out of the habit, you don't get any of the chemicals which encourage you to go out. You certainly don't get any of the addictive chemicals like Beater and Dorfin. So you kind of go a bit colder, so you just don't have that raw to go and see people anymore from a biological point of view. And from a psychological point of view, it becomes a little bit scary.

1:44:57So you just stay where you are. So I think we are seeing more avoidant behaviors in people than we used to. You talked about the role of dopamine in getting us to like, you know, get up and put our shoes on and get out of the house. And obviously there's lots of things now at home that are giving us dopamine, whether it's social media or it's pornography or if it's, I guess, you know, there's other substances that give us dopamine. And I wondered if that's, you thought that maybe that's playing a role in... I think that is playing a role because we get that hit on dopamine. And I think it gives you a reward.

1:45:27The problem it has is on its own. It has no bearing on social relationships or social behaviour. You need to have the full cocktail. So that's what I say to people about social media when they say, you know, but I'm getting a dopamine hit. It's like, yeah, you are. That's great. But dopamine is very short lasting. On its own, it doesn't underpin your immune system or your health in any way. You need the full lot. You need the full four social chemicals to get any advantage out of it. So that is the problem. And I think people, because we've heard a lot about dopamine, think that dopamine alone is going to make you happy and it's not.

1:46:02You know, Ely, we talked about these people that go on 100 dates and maybe they don't have the true intention to actually form a relationship. Speaking sort of broadly, what attachment style do you think those kind of people fit into? Those people are avoidant. So they're either dismissing avoidant, which means they don't have any of the anxiety associated with relationships or they're fearful avoidants. So they avoid them because they're scared of being hurt. So when people talk about daddy issues or I guess you could say mummy issues, where the father has abandoned that child at an early age, do you think generally those people have a high probability of being fearful avoidant?

1:46:43They certainly have a higher probability of having an insecure attachment style. Because as I mentioned in the first two years of life, when your brain is growing, the environment in which you've been careful is going to shape that brain. Particularly for example, apparently, it's during that time or even later on when it's still quite a sensitive brain, that's going to impact how your brain grows, particularly in that prefrontal cortex, so the bit right at the front here, okay, where all your social cognition is. And it's going to have less gray and white matter in that area. It's going to have less density of neurons, unless of a high level of neurochemistry, which underpins social behavior.

1:47:20And because of that, when you're an adult, you're just not as equipped to be good at relationships. Because you don't actually have the brain architecture to underpin it. So that's one of the reasons why we see people who grow up in that environment being more insecure. Because they don't have the brain architecture or indeed the neurochemical, the baseline neurochemical levels circulating in their body, which is going to motivate and reward them for starting relationships. So they just don't have the equipment that people who maybe grow up in a secure environment do. So that's one of the problems.

1:47:50So when people say daddy issues, partly what they're talking about is attachment style. It's the fact that I have this attachment style and I've identified I have this attachment style because my father left whenever I was, however old. Now whether that's the entire reason, there are other reasons why people behave the way they do and might not want relationships. There are genetic reasons. So there are lots of reasons why attachment styles can change. Oh, completely. And the way that they change is is it accurate to say someone gives you evidence that counteratt� is one of the ways and in one sense that's the easiest way.

1:48:23Because in a way, I didn't know what was happening. I this happened long before I studied attachment styles. I think I was still chasing monkeys at this point. But so that's the easiest way is literally you end up with some who's secure and over time they just get into your brain and they show you. You are wrong. Other ways are being conscious about what your attachment style is and being conscious about how it doesn't work for you. There is no wrong attachment style. That's what I want to say. If you feel comfortable in your attachment style, brilliant. That's great. It's when it doesn't work for you that there's a problem.

1:48:55And so there, I always think everyone should kind of keep an eye on what their attachment style is. I think it's quite an important thing to realize. If you see yourself repeating the same things over and over again in relationships. So it gets to a certain point and you leg it. For example, it's all getting a bit intense. I'm now going to run away or you always end up pushing people away. For example, maybe because you're too preoccupied or whatever. And it's good if you see that pattern, if you are conscious enough to recognize that pattern, then you can do work on yourself. Or you can ask your friends to help you.

1:49:23If you see me do this, you need to flag it. You need to tell me you're doing it again. You need to step beyond that. It will need support. You'll need emotional support. Either just from friends and family. Or you might need professional help. There are attachment counselors who will help you understand where your attachment style came from. And they will help you do the work to shift. So you can do it that way. And then obviously at the very extreme end, there's attachment disorders and they always need it input from a professional. One of the things that I've found to be particularly useful is vocalising my attachment style to my partner and her doing the same back so that we can both kind of hold understand the other person.

1:49:58Even though it might not be us and we don't understand that clingy behaviour of that avoidant behaviour, vocalising it in the way that you've said. Not just becoming self -aware but mutually aware, has really helped us because I can now understand her behaviour. She's much more on the, I don't want to say clingy, but she needs that sort of reassurance of my presence. And now behaviour that I might have thought in the past was a bit rational, I now understand more contextually. And therefore I'm able to be more empathetic and more. And that's really important, it's really important to do that because you know we all attach in different ways.

1:50:34And by understanding that, it helps you, as you say, if someone's really clingy it can feel quite claustrophobic. But if you understand actually that's... Especially if you're a widen. It's like triggering. Well it's really triggering and that's what we know. We know there are certain attachment styles that work better together than others. So we know particularly a dissimisting avoidant person with a preoccupied person. Yeah. That's really tricky to keep going. That is a long -term relationship, which is if it can carry on, is going to be very hard work. And probably quite rollercoastery I would say.

1:51:04Whereas, you know, if any of the... Of the insecure... So I'm doing this because it's a grid. The any of the insecure attachment styles, if you can find yourself somewhere secure, brilliant, secure people are amazing because they will absorb all that stuff. Because they're so secure in themselves, whether you're clingy, whether you're pushing them away, they absorb it, and they're good at it. Preoccupied and fearful avoidant. That works quite well in one sense because the preoccupied person wants to stick with the fearful avoidant person. And the thing that's really, really troubling the fearful avoidant person is you're going to leave.

1:51:33So if you literally sit on top of them, which is what you're doing if you're preoccupied, then that's great in one sense. Because they will think, oh, okay, they're literally not going any more because they're ver... Oh, yeah. ...for time. So there are partnerships that work better. And I do agree with you. I think it's good to be aware of what each of within a partnership is. Because then you can understand some of the quirks and behaviour. You can understand some of your reactions to that behaviour. Neurodiversity. In the last couple of weeks, I was thinking, it might be my attachment style, but it also might be the fact that I was diagnosed with ADHD, which I'm not sure if I have, but I was diagnosed with it.

1:52:06I was thinking about how a neurodiverse person might struggle in love and holding onto relationships because of their neurodiversity. Before we started talking, you said that roughly, I think 25 % of the population are classified as neurodiverse in some context. If I have ADHD or autism, how am I likely or more likely to struggle in love? Firstly, because the big, the biggie is that the neuroscience and genetics of love are very likely neurodiverse, the neuroscience and genetics of neurodiversity. So the chemistry that underpins love is also implicated in neurodiversity. Some of the areas of the brain, which are activated in love, are also involved in neurodiversity.

1:52:47And that is why, particularly with autism, but also with ADHD, the issues that people who are autistic or ADHD have expressed themselves on lot in the social sphere because it's the same neurochemistry and genetics, essentially. So for example, the autism receptor gene, which has 26 point mutations on it, which impact your social behavior and individual differences in social behavior, a lot of those are implicated also in autism. Dopamine is implicated obviously in ADHD. Serotonin is implicated in ADHD. Those are both chemicals which are involved in love, one of the neurochemicals of love. So there is some major cross -overs between the two.

1:53:26There are several reasons why neurodiversity is difficult. For example, the way the neurodiverse brain works, things like executive function is different in people with neurodiverse brains. What does that mean? Executive function is things like attention, emotional inhibition and working memory. It's kind of the set of skills that allow you to operate within the world. That's impacted in ADHD and in autism. The processing speeds and also the way that you process those particular three elements is different. For example, people with ADHD, their working memory generally isn't great. They find it difficult to recall things or hold onto things.

1:54:06Emotional regulation is difficult. So for example, people with ADHD might build to anger quicker than people who don't have it. People with autism tend to have quite extreme extremes of emotional experience. All of that is very difficult in a relationship. Because if you live with someone who has extreme emotional reactions or gets very angry and conflicts very quickly, that's tricky to deal with. We also know things like sensory processing, particularly in autism is affected. So that has two implications. First of all, when we're using all that sensory information in the attraction stage, all that sensory information that's going into your limbic area, the sensory processing speeds and people with autism tend to be slower.

1:54:44But they also tend to be either hypersensory, which means they feel all the senses very intensely or they tend to have different experiences, sensors, or they tend to have very low sensory experience. And all of that will impact, first of all, however algorithm -operating your brain. It will also impact just simply things like the environment in which you might go on a date. So maybe you want to go on a date to a restaurant or a pub or a comedy club or wherever for autistic people. That's really hard to deal with. We also know, unfortunately, the people who are neurodiverse are more likely to be in abusive relationships.

1:55:19And there are reasons for that. If we look at ADHD, ADHD is a dysfunction of the dopamine system in the brain. So what happens is you release dopamine, but it's taken back up into the brain before it has enough of an effect. So what people with ADHD tend to do is they dopamine seek. They do activities which give them a hit of dopamine. So I have my daughter, I hope she does my daughter's ADHD autistic. Her dopamine seeking is shopping. She dopamine seeks by shopping because she's a lovely dopamine hit when you do it. But unfortunately, start relationships as a dopamine C. You get lots of lovely dopamine and start relationships.

1:55:55So what you're trying to find with ADHD people is they will go into relationships really quickly. Without really considering, is this person right for me? So there's that impulsivity that comes with ADHD as well. Because they're getting that hit of dopamine at the start. We also know that, for example, if you are neurodiverse, you tend to mask a lot. You've got used to do in life masking to fit in with the neuro -typical world. What's masking? Masking is knowing the rules of the neuro -typical world. So for example, autistic girls, the reason my autistic girls tend to be diagnosed later is they become very good at learning the social rules.

1:56:27So all those things that they would naturally want to do in a social situation, you know, be mute or not reciprocate properly or, you know, not say the right thing. They learn what the rules are. It's why they burn out generally is because they've spent the whole childhood studying it and going, okay, so in that circumstance, I do this and in that sense, I do this and they hide the autism. So not only is that incredibly stressful, but if you've got used to in life, denying who you are, if you go into a relationship with someone, particularly if they're particularly dominant or they're abusive, you carry on denying who you are, denying that you have a right, for example, to be with someone who's kind.

1:57:01Do I, you know, deny the fact that you have needs? And so we know that people who mask find it much, much harder to express what they want in a relationship. So it is, it is really incredibly tricky, I think. And, you know, we also have issues with empathy, for example. There's a myth, particularly autistic people don't empathise. That's not true. It's unfortunately studying the diagnostic criteria and it shouldn't be. The issue is, is that they empathise in a different way. And so either they are actually hyper -empaths, which means that they feel the other person's emotions so strongly that they shut down.

1:57:39And so they don't actually respond to the person because they can't cope with the extreme emotional overload they've had. Or the other reason is they do empathise, but they empathise with a neurodiverse brain. And there's been a recent study looking at this and saying, actually, if you put two new neurodiverse people together and ask them to empathise with each other, they're brilliant. Between neuro -typical people together, they're asking neurodiverse person and neuro -typical person to empathise. It's hard because the brain operates in a different way. So empathy is the basis of relationships.

1:58:07So if you are in a mixed relationship, neurodiverse, that can be tricky, because it can be very hard to empathise with the other person and know what their emotional needs are. On this point, then, if we accept that people with ADHD, I've been diagnosed with ADHD, so everything I say is within that context, have higher impulsivity and they have higher novelty seeking behaviour, novelty seeking behaviour. And they have struggles with emotional regulation and they have some executive function, which is going to impair their ability to think about the stakes and foresight in all these things. Does that mean that people with ADHD are more likely to cheat on you?

1:58:50There's actually a study which looked at this in 2015, and it's suggested that adults with ADHD were more likely to report infidelity than non -ADHD peers. However, the effect size was not overwhelming. Yes, I'm always wary of studies like that, because first of all, if the effect size is not overwhelming, I think we have to be very careful of labelling neurodiverse people as the problem in a relationship. And I'm very aware of that. I do a lot of training on this, particularly for therapists, and I think we need to be aware that all relationships are an interaction between two people, and they will each bring their issues.

1:59:26And I think the labelling of people with neurodiversity as the problem is not on. We all, whether we're neurodiverse or not, have to learn to adapt to the other person. And we have to educate ourselves about how their brain works, attachment, whatever it might be, and therefore I need to think we need to be careful. I think with ADHD, what we do know is people with ADHD are more likely to have many more short -term relationships, because they get bored quite easily. They are also much more likely to undertake risky sexual behavior. Cheating. Maybe. Because they are because of the impulsivity. So it might be, I would want to see that study replicated many times before I think we say that's a fundamental issue.

2:00:03And I would also question, if it's got a very small effect size, there's many other reasons why people cheat. Do you know what I think in part the reason why I ask that question is because, again, one of my very good friends has struggled in this regard for many, many years. He's approaching his 40s now. And he's, what part of the relationship is he's not necessarily what he struggled with. It's what he loves. He loves, as he says to me, the chase. He says, I love the chase. And when you really just love the chase and maybe don't love the part after it as much, you're not going to have a great relationship.

2:00:34And he got to, I think about 35, 36 years old, and he was diagnosed with ADHD. And it put the rest of his life in context. And it was, I mean, of all the people that I know that have ADHD most certainly, he fits the criteria. And he looked back through his old report cards and he looked mapped the behavior that he had had in relationships. It was very impulsive. It was very, very short term. He loves, he goes on more dates than anyone have ever met in my entire life because he loves the, as he says, the chase. And I thought, you know, maybe there is a link there with his neurodiversity. I would say the problem is, I mean, he's dopamine seeking.

2:01:06Yeah. Essentially that's what he's doing because the early stages, you know, when you get further into a relationship, dopamine takes more of a backseat and beta endorphin comes in. So beta endorphin is the chemical of long term love. Dopamine is much more in the background at that point. So we get the major part of our dopamine hits in relationships at the start. And that's probably why he gets to a point where the dopamine starts tailing off. The oxytocin starts to tail off and beta endorphin starts kicking in. And it becomes less exciting. That's where we move from passionate love to companionate love.

2:01:39And it's just not as exhilarating maybe. So if you have a brain like that, that's highly dopamine seeking. You're going to theoretically struggle to have long term relationships. Yeah. And we know that we know that I recently did a conference which was on women in ADHD and we had a workshop. And most of the women in that room said, I either don't have relationships or I struggle or I'm in a long term relationship, but it is a daily struggle to maintain it because it's so hard to keep your attention on that relationship, to not look for the novelty elsewhere. And also for the other person, particularly a senior, a typical to deal with.

2:02:16I mean, one woman said to me, I'm always told I'm too much. I'm too much to go out with because of the impulsivity and the rushing around and the lack of attention and the lack of calmness. And they need to respond to an 80 -year -old. Yeah. What can one do about it? I don't like pushing drugs on anybody. And I think whether you take medication for ADHD is a very personal decision. But I think if the mantra I have is if your ADHD is fundamentally upsetting your life and you feel that, then it's something you maybe need to consider. It's very difficult to do just off your own. It's not a therapy issue.

2:02:53It's not an attachment issue. It's very likely to be a neurochemical issue. And that's the different thing. I would also say, it's also about the people who you go out with. I've spoken to lots of couples which are mixed in terms of neurodiversity and neuro -typical. And it's about the person who's neuro -typical, really educating themselves about how the neurodiversity brain works. So they have an understanding also about why is that person reacting like that? Why are they doing that? And that's also really, really important. I don't think we want to put the burden always on neurodiverse people to change because I don't think that's really an acceptable thing to us and to do.

2:03:24I don't think it's really any different from any relationship. The best relationships are ones where we take the time to really understand who our partner is. That's the way it works. Best, are you saying you and your partner talk about your attachment styles? That's really important. You're fundamentally making it clear that that's important to you and that your partner has an understanding and your explaining your behaviour. I think that's important. I wonder how this stuff tells into the subject of sex and novelty and spontaneity as it relates to sex. If you're a neurodivergent person or you just have a higher impulse desire, I guess, or impulsivity, need for novelty, you probably get bored of sex pretty quick.

2:04:04Possibly, yeah. I mean, it's not an area I study particularly, but I think yes, you probably do. And we know that some humans are genetically neurodivergent or not. Some humans are genetically predisposed to novelty more than others. It's part of one of the dopamine genes. And so some people, yes, they are more likely to seek out novelty and want, for example, yes, a very varied sex life. But that's something you can have with one individual. You don't necessarily have to go out and if that individual is willing to go down that route with you, it's not something you necessarily have to seek elsewhere.

2:04:33As it relates to all the work that you do and the future work that you're going to go on to do, what is the most important thing we haven't talked about that maybe we should have talked about? Two things. I really, really want to emphasize the body of work which shows that your relationships are the biggest factor in your health, your longevity and your wellbeing. And the reason why I want to emphasize that is because in a world of digital communication, we have become much less good at nurturing our relationships, much less good at inputting into our relationships, maintaining our relationships in the way they should be maintained, which is in person.

2:05:06And that has consequences for our health. A wonderful study. The first study of its kind in 2010, there have been many sense by Julie Holk -Lonstered. She did a massive meta analysis, which is lots and lots of studies coming together, looking at the impact of your social network, your relationships, all those sorts of things on outcomes, health outcomes, things like the likelihood that you would have poor mental health, the likelihood that you would suffer from certain chronic diseases, the likelihood that you would recover from certain illnesses or how long it would take you to come back round after having an operation in terms of getting better.

2:05:36And she found, and it's been even more impressive since then, that your relationships are the biggest factor in your health wellbeing and longevity. Above all else, from don't smoke, make tone a good weight, do your exercise, eat your vegetables, all those sorts of things, above all of that, sit your relationships. So when we in this very health conscious world, where we have lots of health influences and all that kind of thing, we're still missing that point. And we're still trying to do our relationships efficiently in this busy, busy world. And I understand why. And the tools we've been given to do it are attractive.

2:06:11You know, they're attractive. We love a new shiny thing humans and they're great. But what's happened is we've forgotten who we are and how we need to do it. And our brains did not evolve with the shiny screen. Our brains evolved in a world where we all lived very, very close together. And we need to kind of in a way go back to that if you want to have that fulfilling life. So I think that's my first point. I think the second one is the role for AI. And you've probably talked about AI and so many different contexts. But AI and our intimate relationships, and I don't mean just sexually intimate, I mean, emotionally intimate.

2:06:41So any relationship you have based on love is something we need to talk about. Because there is work towards, for example, we know about AI chatbots already. And we know that there's going to be a work towards having AI caretakers, for example, people who care for people, robots who care for people, or even you know, you could even possibly have a relationship. I'm not talking about sexboards, but I'm talking about a full relationship with the robot. Again, all of these things we need to understand the implications. And we need to have a conversation now. Because when you unleash these things, if you haven't had that conversation, it's very hard to put them back in the box.

2:07:14And we know already things like chatbots are out there. And I'm not the sort to say something as entirely negative. So chatbots have their place. They've been shown to be really, really good, particularly with people who have social anxiety, or people who are, for example, autistic, and want to practice being social. They're really good. You're not going to get any criticism from this chatbot. You're not going to get a funny face pulled or make them feel uncomfortable. It's great. You can have a good old friend. And that's brilliant. It's when you replace real human contacts. Absolutely. It makes the conversation feel a lot more comfortable and natural.

2:07:47And you can really focus on the chat itself. It definitely helps keep the vibe positive. Isn't it crazy how much that's progressed? Yeah, it is. But what scares me about it, is that person talking to you there? Your brain at the moment, because we haven't advanced enough in AI, and maybe well, knows that's not human. And because it knows it's not human, it's not releasing any of the positive chemicals that come with social interaction in your brain. And it's those chemicals that underpin your health, your mental health, and your physical health. Be sure and often underpins your immune system. So that's the problem.

2:08:22Your prefrontal cortex at the moment is not recognizing that as human. So it's not going to kick off anything. And that is the problem. Now, maybe I wrote both, you know, an AI guy would say to me, oh, we'll get there. Okay. If you can get there, great. But at the moment, we're not. And we have people who are starting to build really strong attachments to these things. You can build an attachment to a chatbot. It's a pair of social relationship. Same as building a relationship to a celebrity you've never met. But you're not getting any of the positive benefits. So have them in their life. Have them as part of your social network if you want to spend time, but do not replace humans with them, or even dogs with them.

2:08:58Care robots scare me because, again, it's about replacing humans in a context which is very, very complicated from a neuroscientific point of view. Care requires empathy. It requires a thing called which occurs in very close human relationships. Again, underpins our immune system and our health known as bio -behavioral synchrony. So by behavioral synchrony, we won't have it now. I'm really sorry. We're not close enough. But you will have it with your partner. So when you're with your partner, if I were to observe you, your body language and maybe the gestures you use and your vocal tone or maybe the language you use would start kind of matching each other.

2:09:35We all know this from management training. You know, you match people to make them feel close to you. Fine. It's what humans do. It makes us feel close to each other. But if we were to look into your body, you and your partner would have entered that room at different baseline levels of physiological measures such as your blood pressure, your heart rate, your body temperature. Okay. If you sat together and had a chat for five minutes, those would all come into synchrony. So your heart rates would synchronize your body temperature and your blood pressure. And then if we were to look into your brain, two things would have happened.

2:10:00First of all, having come into the room again with different activation patterns in your brain, we would look in your brain and your activation patterns would be the same. So you would be perceiving the world in the same way. And finally, if we looked at your neurochemical levels, so we generally look at oxytocin because it's easiest to access. Again, we all have baseline levels of oxytocin. They're different from each other. You would have walked in with different levels after five minutes. They would have synchronized. They would be the same. So what actually happens when you're with someone you're close to to develop that bond is you become one organism.

2:10:32You are literally operating as one being. And we think that's that in a way is the absolute fundamental basis of human close love. And it's the fundamental. And you don't get that at the moment with an AI robot. And I can't imagine it being easy because you need a wet brain and you need a circulatory system. This picture I have here just talks about the brain and love. What is that showing? That showing that we can... I'll throw it up on the screen, but it's showing that we can't get the same depth of love as it relates to neuroscience that then we can from a human versus like a pet. Yes, so what's happening here?

2:11:05So we've got the different sorts of love. So we've got romantic love and parental love. Now these two arguably are the most intense forms of love. Okay. That's why you see such amazingly complex areas of the brain. I think you've got a lot happening in the core of the brain here. This is the limbic system and you've got happening near courtically as well in relation to areas related to social behaviour, but also things like empathising, okay, and maintenance and trust and all those sorts of things. Love for a friend is from a neuroscientific point of view nearly as complicated as romantic love.

2:11:36But what it doesn't actually have, which is really interesting, is in romantic love, the difference is we actually get some activations which mirror the activations you get if you're on an opiate. That's sort of romantic love. You don't get it in friendship love. You also don't generally get by behavioural synchrony in friendship unless it's a really close friend. So friendship love is just less intense. It's a love, but it's not as intense. I wouldn't describe this as love for a stranger. What you can see the reason why I say that is can you see how little unconscious activation there is? This is the limbic area.

2:12:12We're just the same with the pet. So we're not getting any unconscious nurturing attachment behaviours, which you wouldn't expect to get with the stranger. With a pet, I'm surprised to look at this and I don't know where this came from because other studies have shown that pet love is very like parental love. Oh really? Yeah. So I don't know which study this is and I don't know what they looked at, how many people they looked at. So that's interesting, but what I would expect to see more, more actually here in the nurturing area of that, because we do know that you can build an attachment relationship with a pet.

2:12:45So it's very surprising. There is nothing there. The research you have there looked at the differences between friends, love, pet strangers. It's from Renee at our cerebral cortex of 2024 study. Okay. Okay. That's interesting. I mean, with science, you sometimes get different answers because you've done different methodology. We've got different populations. We tend to like to see things replicated for them to be confirmed. So I'm a bit surprised by this. Also in my book, I talk about some really good studies that have been done looking at dog human love. So I'm surprised by that. I'm not surprised that it's got quite a bit of cortical action.

2:13:20I'm really surprised it has nothing in the limbic area because that's where attachment is. And love for nature. Again, this is really interesting because again, this is this is the striatum and the amygdala and this is where human love like to another sentient being would be. And again, we've got nothing. So love for nature is a much more, it's not a conscious thing, but it's a much less emotional thing. It's different. And we only really see patterns like this if you're interacting with another sentient being. And this is what kind of worries me about AI because if you did this with AI, you would probably get something like this.

2:13:56If you really loved your AI robot at the moment or your chatbot, you would get this. But you I would be very surprised if you got anything in the limbic area and the study so far show that we don't because you don't develop that loving relationship and you certainly don't get anything in the prefrontal cortex. And that's the problem. Now AI might go on in leaps and bounds, but I at the moment when they talk about programming empathy, empathy is so complicated. And particularly the empathy we have, we have cognitive empathy. Most animals have emotional empathy. So cognitive empathy is much more complex.

2:14:27It's very hard to do. And the fact you can't get by behavioural synchrony unless you have a wet system. And robots so far don't have wet systems. So that's what worries me, but it's going to come and we have to have that conversation. We have a closing tradition where the last guest leaves the question for the next guest. Okay. Not knowing who they're leaving it for. Okay. And the question that's been left for you, was there a moment in your career when you said to yourself, I have made it? I think I'm not good at doing that. Actually, I said to my husband the other day, I'm not good at celebrating when I do something.

2:15:09So I tend to go, what's next? I suppose one of the times I thought I probably had made it was when I started the University of Oxford and I was working with Robin Dumber. And then I thought from an academic point of view, this is like the pinnacle of where you can work with the team of people who are at the forefront of what they're doing. So I think that was probably a moment, but I'm really good in retrospect at kind of rewriting that and going, yeah, but that wasn't good enough. So that's going to do the next thing. So if we look forward then, sat here now, what do you think the moment will be in your future where you think you've made it?

2:15:44Although you probably when you arrive there, you'll think there's another girl. I think it's partly to do with the spreading of education. I think if my next book reaches a lot of people and reaches enough people, I will think I've made it and I've done my mission to share what we know about dads because there's so much written and it stays in Fusty Old Journals and nobody reads it. And I want to share that because it fundamentally changes who does think they are and how they do it. I get so many emails from people saying, you know, wow, I've read your book and it like legitimizes so much for me.

2:16:23It makes me understand what I'm going through or makes me realize that I am needed. And I think if I can get a book that has a really diverse readership, then that will be the moment where I think, yes, I've done what I want to do. And what is the unheard plight of dads? Because you'll be on the receiving end of so many messages and emails and stuff. What if you could summarise how dads are feeling at the moment and why your work is resonating? How would you summarise, if you were speaking as a dad, a dad who represents the average of the dads that contact you, what would those sentences be? It would be, I made to feel unimportant.

2:16:58I made to feel like a secondary parent, like a bad carrier, all the person who makes the tea, that's particularly in relation to birth and antinatal stuff. So it's all about them not feeling like they are important or that they're needed and they are so wrong. Is the law slightly biased towards? Do you know how, why I was like, question, I was in a cab the other day and I got in this taxi in London and the cab driver spent about 30 minutes telling me that he'd been at a march in London for dads and that he had his child taken off him, I believe. And he was proceeded to tell me for the next 20 minutes that the laws are unfair as it relates to dads right to see and take care of their kids.

2:17:43You probably know the laws better than I do, but it is and I've spent a long time and I'm still not there yet wanting to go into the family court sin Britain and inform them about this because at the moment they're operating on out and they've moored understandings that the primary person a child needs is their mum and therefore if there's any possible reason why dad, they don't think dad is appropriate, whatever it might be, might be that dad's living too far away or dad's job doesn't allow for it. They will not stick to the presumption of 50 -50 custody and they will swing it all over in terms in favour of mum for example and that is because they do not fundamentally understand how important that father is to that child and that's because they've not kept up, they're literally they're operating on very outmoded completely culturally based not evidence based at all assumptions about who a father is.

2:18:33So he's right, he's absolutely right and there are many men who are in that position, I get emailed all the time from men doing and all the time from people saying you know well you come and be my expert witness except I can't I can't do it I don't have time to do it but yeah there's a fundamental misunderstanding of how important fathers are but that's just reflecting a wider cultural problem. Thank you thank you so much for doing the work you're doing because you're certainly millions and millions of people's eyes you've opened my eyes in a bunch of profound ways both on the subject of love but also on the importance of fatherhood and it is very easy to to believe this sort of broad social narrative that as a father you are surplus to requirements or you're some I don't know you're there to pay for things or you're less important in some way but you know I've got a brother who's a year older than me and he's got three kids under the age of six and he's really managed to design his life around being there for those kids and I've seen both the impact that that's had on those kids in their development but also the impact it's had on him and the the meaning he has of his life and he's one of those fathers that walked away from the corporate world and made a decision to prioritize the three little children that he's brought into this world and it's really like kind of blue open my own I guess stereotypes and presumptions that I had about the role that I have when I become a dad and now much of the reason I have these conversations and enjoy your work so much is because it's a further reminder that the narrative I've believed around father's being this you know kind of distant being that floats in and out and provides you blow it open and you blow it open from an anthropological perspective and evolution perspective and a neuroscience and biological perspective which I think is really critical and I think because of that there's going to be so many kids that have better development outcomes and so please do keep doing the work you're doing and I'm very excited for your upcoming book.

2:20:22Thank you so much. Thank you for being here. I really appreciate you. Thank you.

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2:21:29Net Suite helps you spot bottlenecks manage your margins and stay agile. So if your business is generating seven figures or more download the free ebook which is called Navigating Global Trade 3 Insights for Leaders at NetSuite .com slash Bartlett. That's NetSuite .com slash Bartlett.