The Red Flags You Keep Ignoring! (Don’t Let Men Treat You Like This!!)

0:00I'm so excited because this is a first on the school of greatness. Sadia, this is what he brought us here for. What do you think he set this up for? Alright, you guys ready? Mm-hmm. We have the inspiring Sadia Khan in the house, who is an incredible... Psychologist and dating coach. One of the best psychologists in the game, Sadia Khan. And we have Matthew Hussey. Matthew Hussey is New York Times bestselling author, speaker... Dating and relationships expert and coach Matthew Hussey. When someone is playing a game, either texting or on dates, what is that saying about them? They're entering a relationship with a desire to preserve their ego rather than truly connect with that person.

0:36Wow, that's interesting. I can not text you back for three days. And if you're the person who buys into the illusion that that must make me more valuable, then I can raise my value simply by ignoring you for three days. So there is self-preservation, but in the process is self-destruction. Wow, okay. For you, it's that men want connection, but women are so jaded at this point that they're not offering it. Yeah. I have to say, that feels like the vast minority of women. What you're really signaling is, I'm so desperate to be loved that I'll push it away and make you think that I don't want it. I truly believe in my bones.

1:13The more in life you accept yourself and every part of yourself, you see more people as wonderful, not less. Welcome back, everyone in the School of Greatness. Very excited about this special episode. We have two relationship experts and coaches in the house today. We have Sadia Khan and we have Matthew Hussey. Sadia is a psychologist and a relationship coach that works with people all over the world with well over 100 million views on your videos. Matthew Hussey, over a half a billion views on his videos. New York Times bestselling author. And both of them, you both help people navigate relationships, relationship dynamics, social human dynamics, dating scene, people in relationships, going through breakups.

1:58So we're going to talk about a lot of these different things today. And I'm so excited because this is a first on the School of Greatness. So thank you both for being here. I've known you both for a while. I know personal things about both of you, which I'm excited about. I'm not going to say the things, but I know personal things about both of you. Yeah. And I see the work you do professionally as well. And I'm excited to see what unfolds here today. This first conversation is going to be talking about when you're single or dating. And there's a lot of talk about red flags. You see this almost every title of every video right now.

2:31What are the red flags? And what I want to ask you guys first is about the green flags. And why do people tend to sabotage when they actually have green flags in front of them with a person they're dating, experiencing, getting to know? Why do some people tend to sabotage that when they actually have someone who's not toxic in front of them? And I'll start with ladies first, that when you see that or when someone sees that, I don't know if you have girlfriends or like, yeah, he was like just a great guy, but I sabotaged it. Why does that happen for men or women? Is it because they're emotionally unavailable?

3:11Is it because they've never seen someone in a healthy relationship with themselves before? Why would you say? I would say that their barrier to intimacy has become their self-esteem. Unfortunately for them, and it happens to a lot of people, they have developed a cool belief about themselves either through their childhood or through adult relationships where they believe that love should be a struggle, it should be difficult and it shouldn't be smooth sailing and when it is smooth and somebody does show them love and compassion because they don't have love and compassion for themselves they start to question the judgment of the person who is showing them love and they start to think there's something wrong in that person and the smoothness that they acquire in the relationship is something that they're just not used to.

3:50And they have attributed love to being chaotic, difficult, turbulent. When it's not like that, they just think that they haven't got an attachment. They think in order for me to be loved, I should be obsessing over them. I should be wondering what they're doing. I should be checking their social media. I should be anxious. When the anxiety is stripped of love, they think it's deprived of its fundamental ingredient when really it's being infused with peace which they're just not used to wow that's interesting i love that we started with this right now i don't know if that's something that you would relate to or if you agree with or you think there's something else to add there no i i think it comes from different places familiarity is you know it drives us so often in life and familiarity doesn't really care whether something is good or bad just that it's known and i like i never used to i remember in my 20s i never used to understand what people meant when they said like fear of success because i was like why would anyone be afraid of success and then i realized i probably was afraid of success like it anytime things got too hot anytime like i felt like everything was a runaway train i would find myself getting nervous and why was i getting nervous well because it was just unknown It was like I'd never gone that far before.

5:06I'd never been there. And unknown territory is just unknown territory. When things feel unfamiliar, we get afraid of them. They feel disconcerting. They can feel boring, strange. And so our body has a way of searching for what is familiar. I also think it shouldn't be discounted that there are certain feelings that just feel good. what are those feelings well it's like eating pizza like eating pizza does feel good even though it's bad for you yeah there is something it gives there's something that foods that are bad for you or substances that are bad for you give you that is a feeling that is quite addictive and you want to chase it and of course a lot of us pay the price over time for chasing those things and i think sometimes we have to acknowledge that there are certain kinds of people that feel good in the very beginning there is a certain kind of charm there is a certain kind of charisma that feels really good yeah inconsistency is addictive yeah inconsistency and even just like a kind of superficial charm can be exciting yeah someone someone's at a dinner table and they tell you great stories and they captivate you and there There is a kind of like, you don't want to be around that person.

6:30Speaking into that then, what would you say are the most addictive, I guess, emotions that are unhealthy that people get addicted to when they're dating and they're starting a relationship? What are those unhealthy addictions around emotions? In my personal experience of working with clients that come to me, particularly men, when they come to me and they're in this kind of addictive habit, they get addicted to shallow substances like appearance and sex. Usually when they find... Men. When they find themselves in emotionally abusive situations, it's because they've placed all of their satisfaction in her appearance and the sexual gratification they receive.

7:07And it's almost like a shortcut to an ego boost. And they place that on a pedestal. And that becomes their conflict resolution is sex. It becomes their form of status is that she gives them that appearance when they walk around. They don't look for somebody on the same level of them in terms of appearance. They shoot above their shot. They go a bit higher than what they should be going for. And as a result, they become like a slave and submissive to her behavior simply because she possesses that sexual quality that they've been craving for a really long time. Particularly if they're a man who haven't had access to women throughout their childhood and throughout their life.

7:41And so when they do meet a beautiful girl, they allow her beauty to determine their attachment rather than her character. And that becomes very addictive from a male gaze. in my experience and I don't know as two men but does sex have that much of a power over them where they can blur their vision on all other characteristics I hate to say this but I'm guilty of this it happens well I mean it it's it's blinding for a period of time until it isn't right so it and when you think that the character is also there yeah you're like wow this is unbelievable but then you know I personally you know just experiencing my past I was kind of blinded by that the beauty and the sexual attraction and then when i realized that certain values weren't consistent with words yeah they weren't matching over time you get disinterested in the beauty you're like okay well this is exhausting to snap men out of that when they're in that kind of intoxicated pain suffering heartbreak yeah uh sadness depression you know It's like a dis-ease, whether it be an emotional dis-ease or physical dis-ease.

8:48For me, I think it was kind of both. Whereas I had to just feel like, man, I don't feel myself. I feel like I'm giving up who I am to try to please someone else. And they're never happy. No matter what I do, how much I change, who I become, it's not enough. And it was exhausting. yeah and I think that's when I realized oh okay I chose a certain relationship based out of a wound everything you were saying was like speaking to my like wounded child was like okay yeah no girls liked me when I was younger you know I didn't have any attention because you're an athlete no you know when I was in my teens it changed when I was younger it was like you didn't get the attention so when when I had the when I was choosing based out of a wounded me it was like oh okay here's this beautiful opportunity or this experience or whatever it might be and that was captivating in some ways right that was pulling me in drawing me in and it made you forgive other unacceptable behavior in the moment in the moment but then you you know after a period of time I was like okay I you wake up I woke up yeah and I think um those lessons allowed me to have wisdom and being like okay well that's not really everything you know just beauty and sexual connection is not yeah does not necessarily mean long-term happiness in a relationship maybe you know maybe it is but those has to be other values and things that match things like that it shouldn't be the primary filter yeah and you're saying that a lot of men that you're working with that you see get addicted to sexual connection or beauty first and attractiveness first and how it makes them feel yeah they'll come to me believing it's some childhood trauma and they'll think it's that but really it boils down to how much of a priority they've made sex and beauty and I know it's difficult in this day and age with the advent of pornography and social media where beauty is the main kind of component of women that we're seeing but it makes them stuck in a way that they can't explain to themselves and only when I say is the sexual chemistry the best you've had and they're like yes it's the best I've ever had the moment I hear that I'm like that's why it's become your it's become your glue they're addicted to it they're addicted to it so and this is something that I that I think um people should try yeah if they're if they found themselves in kind of addictive patterns in previous relationships try being with someone and not having sex for a period of time wait as long as you can i'm not saying wait forever but you know wait a month two three months for me uh you know with martha we we waited for a long time and allowed me to say do i actually want to spend time with this person if we don't have sex and i would want everyone to ask themselves the question if i did not have sex with the person i'm dating right now yeah would i want to be with them exactly or would it be too much stress and trouble would i be addicted to them yeah exactly i don't know what do what do you see women yeah um in your perspective struggling with in terms of the emotional addictions in dating or in relationship patterns what is that is it sex chemistry or you're seeing it something else with the women you were i was gonna say i feel like you guys are giving women too much credit you're letting them off a little lightly i don't get access as much to the female perspective and it's the same kind of you would imagine i don't think there's i i i'm not seeing a huge difference between men and women in this department at all oh wow interesting women women get attracted sexually they get attracted to someone's looks so you know is it more the sexual or the material or the status that women are attracted to like here's a beautiful handsome man a sexy man or is it more oh he's got status and money and that makes him sexy i think the the myth is that it's just all women are go around looking for status and money and the you know when they see status walk into a room they're like yes please and if that were true then every i agree with that rich dude that walked into a room would be the hottest property around and we just know that's not true a lot of guys who make a lot of money get to that point and realize oh my god i need help in meeting women really because i'm not good at it they struggle the most they struggle the most because they've spent so many men spend their whole lives trying to achieve a certain level of status or money thinking that at some point there's going to be a door they're going to open in the money world or the status world and when they walk through that door all of a sudden women are going to come flocking and then they find that they're the lonely guy at the party who no one's talking to and oh it turns out it still matters to be able to go and talk to someone it still matters to be able to carry yourself in a certain way where there's something about you or there's an ability in conversation so i don't or i keep losing out to the 25 year old dude a hot surfer who's broke who walks into the room and and is the one getting the attention so i just i think there is this myth among men that all our problems will be figured out if we could just make enough money and if we could just get enough status and i think there's this myth among women that uh or about women that they're not interest like they're not driven in by charisma and looks and sexiness and that you know they don't care about those men are superficial they care about those things women don't care about those things not my experience my experience of women is that they're just as uh interested in all of those superficial things that can lure any of us away from deeper values or how someone treats us.

14:29It's not to say that there's not an appeal for some people to someone who's got their life under control. But no, I don't think we should let women off so lightly when it comes to being attracted to the superficial. Interesting. Now, Sadia, you've said that you work mostly with men or more men seem to watch your content and you work one-on-one with more men. Matthew, you've leaned more towards working with women, your content towards women, although both of you guys work with any human being in all genders. But I'm curious, Matthew, with you, when a woman has gone through your workshop or maybe watched your content or been a part of your community for a while, and then they say, okay, I'm ready to go out there and meet a guy.

15:14and there seems like a really healthy, good, kind, compassionate, value-driven, spiritual, healthy, conscious man in front of me. And for whatever reason, she's unable to be excited about that. What is that saying about that woman in your mind if she is unable to lean into the green flags of a healthy potential mate in front of her? Does she still need work to do? Is she just not emotionally available herself? What does she need to start the process of doing? So when she sees someone who's healthy, she can actually be attracted to them and work towards building a relationship. I think it's usually a sign that for anyone, men or women alike, that we're not truly putting our well-being first.

16:03We think the source of our worth is outside of us and we see someone who looks like the kind of equivalent of a vip nightclub or a vip waitlist and we you know it's there is an instinct there is an instinct we all have you walk past 10 restaurants and one of them's super busy and they say we we can see you in three hours

16:31there's an instinct that says that you know this like maybe this is the one i want to eat at you might have passed 10 places already but the one with the three-hour wait list there's something about that that makes us go maybe well maybe we can hang around for three hours maybe it is that good and the problem is that in in love and dating the people who make it feel like there's a three hour wait list or or a six month wait list or that they'd have all the options in the world they give the impression of being the best meal in town interesting but it doesn't necessarily add up there's a there's a lot of ways to create that illusion i could not text you back for three days and and if you're the person who buys into the illusion that if i'm inconsistent with my communication that must make me more valuable then i can raise my value not by being any more valuable in real terms but simply by ignoring you for three days it requires zero calories for me to make myself more valuable in the eyes of someone who's chasing that kind of value and so or someone who might be wounded and needs that or is coming from that place of of their model for love is that it is inconsistent is that it has to be fought for tooth and nail is that scraps is is all you can really expect and and also you know again to to talk about those feelings that we get in certain situations if there's someone whose value we've started to raise in our minds because they've made themselves unavailable which is a very common instinct it's a very bad instinct but it's a very common one that someone's less available so i start to attribute more value to them or if we attribute more valuable more value to them when they become unavailable that we now get anxious because we really want to secure them because they're valuable and we sit there wondering how do i secure them how do i secure them how do i secure them ruminating obsessing even ruminating is a form of investment yeah right because the moment if you're thinking about how to solve a problem non-stop the problem feels like it's really important you're investing in a person even though you're not with them you're investing in them in your mind so at the moment like five days later after all of that work you've been doing and all of that obsession and all of that fear and all of that anxiety when you get a message from them it can be next to nothing it can be what's up and you've got all this adrenaline and you've been trying to figure out how to solve this riddle of getting them back into your life and you get to send a two-word message yeah it feels like the most important thing in the world and of course when you get that rush of blood to the head, how can it not feel kind of euphoric?

19:24How can it not give you an extraordinary feeling? And when you get that extraordinary feeling and those chemicals are released, you go, oh my God, I feel so strongly for this person. But you don't feel strongly for this person. You feel strongly for the dynamic. There's a big difference between those two things. so you know we we it's about what am i chasing here am i chasing a feeling am i chasing an idea of value and what is that value based on is it based on someone i think is just rare and difficult to get or is value based on how great of a person someone is in my life how much they actually invest in me what kind of teammate they are what kind of energy they are you know that if we start valuing that more which deep down derives from us valuing ourselves more because you don't if you if you don't value yourself and you just value a feeling well you may as well do a bunch of drugs all day right because you just that's it's not drugs might hurt me but i'm valuing the feeling not myself if i value myself then i think what do i need to give myself in order to feel better that's a much more conscious and intentional path to take it's harder but it's it it's somewhere that leads somewhere much happier i sometimes i've had situations you know you can take it outside the realm of love life and that situation in situations in business or work where you know let's say someone asks me to do their tv show or their podcast and let's say it's just something I've always wanted to do.

20:59Like I've always wanted to go on this show. There is an instinct when you get that email that says, call them right now, call them immediately. Tell them we're ready. Tell them we could do it this afternoon. Like we could do it now. If they want, I'll get ready. Like I was, you know, I'm halfway across the world, but I'll fly there tomorrow. There's that instinct. And you know, if that opportunity goes away because you didn't do it tomorrow there's a feeling in us that beats ourselves up and says see I blew it but it was never yours yes it was a fly by night like drive by superficial opportunity if it can't wait a day for you to email back and a couple of weeks for you to book it in yeah then you have to decide what your relationship is with opportunities in general yeah like do I want to have that relationship with an opportunity where the moment an opportunity comes through the door I am that opportunity's hostage is that the relationship I want to have with opportunity in my life whether it's opportunity in business whether it's opportunity in love and we have to make that decision and I got to a point in my life and I it's not I never get like activated in that way because something big can come through and I'll go I'll feel myself going to that place but these days i'm like what relationship do i want to have with opportunities in my life well i'm i'm never going to be the hostage to an opportunity so if it comes through and it happens organically through just normal communication a normal cadence in a consistent way and it happens then wonderful if it if it doesn't then frankly i don't i don't want to know yeah interesting what do you say um I wanted to ask a follow-up on emotional availability.

22:51And it seems like women used to be more in society emotionally available in, I guess, life and wanting more relationship and emotionally available and needing more from a man. But I'm curious today from both of your perspectives, who are more emotionally available today? Is it men or women? What do you think? I think it's tricky to answer because the men I work with, the majority of the time, they're actually looking for something stable. And they can't seem to access it with the women in this day and age. And I don't know if what's happened is because hookup culture has made women immune to connection now, they're kind of used to men just coming and leaving and not calling them and not labeling it, that they've always come into dating with that expectation.

23:36and when women lose the kind of driving force of the connection, men don't know how to lead emotional connection. So as a result, we've got endless broken relationships occurring. So I don't know if women are breaking their connection because they want to or because they've been conditioned to because of Tinder and Bumble, which has just created a bunch of people who haven't really got the skills to maintain long lasting connections, all finding each other and then breaking up with each other, finding each other and breaking up with each other. I've had clients say to me, I met this beautiful girl.

24:06And when I met her and we hooked up, she was like, you can go now if you want. I know you want to go home. And he said, no, I want to get to know you. But she was so used to men being in that state with her, that they've taken relationships and seen them as kind of vacations from the real world. And they all get back to the real world once the weekend is over. So I think it's more society has conditioned people to not look for connection. And because men tend to place the acceleration of connection in the women's hands and they're so used to it not being that direction they've lost control of that and it's now kind of fizzling out for both genders.

24:41Interesting do you feel like people actually want to be in a long-term relationship a committed relationship or do they want to just have the feeling of a relationship for a weekend and be able to have it with multiple people but never fully go deep with people? It depends what she values in her life if in this day and age you can be 22 up until 42. So you can still have vacations whenever you want. You can still kind of live an Instagram kind of lifestyle. You can still go out with your friends. There's no kind of shame in being a woman who's a bit older, not married, no kids. You can still enjoy your life.

25:14So if that's something, if she values independence and she values freedom, then she's not going to be looking for connection. She's going to place connection beneath what she values in life. And that's men and women. I would say that applies to both. But if somebody values and recognizes is that their root of happiness is their relationships. And their true happiness comes from when they don't need external stimulation and they don't need vacations and they don't need all of this. They actually want someone that they can stay home and get bored and do nothing with. If that's what they value in life, it will depend on what they value.

25:46And what they value will depend on what they've experienced the most around them. So if they've experienced people showing them investment, they'll probably value connection more. But if they've experienced being somebody short-term thrilling every weekend, they'll start to get immune to connection and invested in stimulation instead. Interesting. What have you noticed or seen around? I don't know. I find it hard to... So for you, it's that men want connection, but women are so jaded at this point that they're not offering it. Yeah. I feel like they now just go into it with a mentality that this man is probably going to be seeing other girls.

26:29He's probably going to be liking a bunch of pictures. He's probably going to be dating loads of girls on Tinder. I'm going to catch his dating profile, still be active. So instead of being the idiot in this situation, I'm going to take control and I'm going to replicate his behavior. And as a result, they're almost like cheat first before being cheated on. And that's become the mentality. And I think social media has had an impact on that as well. But it's almost like women are like, I'm no longer being the girl that cries over a cheating boyfriend. I'd rather be the one that has a backup boyfriend than be on the receiving end of this humiliation.

27:00I have to say that feels like the vast minority of women. Yeah. And here's where I might be on this jaded end. Because I get the jaded men who have experienced those women, I probably lack access to the ones that are actually trying to just build a nice, healthy connection. It also feels like an interesting place to kind of pinpoint the issue because I would say that even if what you said is true for the majority of women, which I think is the majority of women are actually quite the opposite of that. The issue is, I would still circle back to the issue as one of male emotional unavailability.

27:40Okay. Because what we're saying is that there's so many, like I'm not even sure I subscribe to this, but in that theory, there's so many emotionally unavailable men that they've managed to make the entire population of women cynical to the point where they're now going, God, I so don't believe in the idea of a relationship anymore that I'm just going to mirror that behavior. So the issue would still lie with men if that was the case. I would argue it's more that the men, the women want. I would say that the tiny minority of men that most women want are the ones that because of the alternatives and the options, they lack the investment.

28:20And as a result, the women's experience is all men are like this, but there's so many nice men, just like there's so many nice women. But people aren't giving those people as much of a chance. So it's almost like the popular kids in school are making the whole school look bad. But aren't men doing the same thing? Absolutely. I would agree 100%. Because if women are going for the top 1 % of men, men are going for the top 1 % of women. And both are both are going to have a harder time being emotionally available than other people, because that's just a natural kind of when you have choice and a lot of it.

28:53Yeah. Then you're naturally going to be more difficult. And especially if, you know, you have 90 percent of people chasing after you, that's going to be a harder place to be available. So I just don't know. I don't know that I see a difference between the sexes when it comes to that. The only thing I would say is even with men, not only are the top 1 % going for the top 1 % of women, even the lower end, the bottom 1 % are still going for the top 1 % through OnlyFans and pornography. And so this kind of soothing their emotional unavailability through pseudo relationships. So it's almost like the mid range is there, but they're usually spoken for.

29:31So women in the dating pool are either experienced the top 1 % who have loads of options or the real bottom that have very little options but are so not used to human connection that they're a bit more addicted to pornography and video games. The mid-range is more like they're already in committed relationships. They're the hard ones to find. The ones with relationship skills. They're already relationships. They already got kids. They're married. By that rationale, we're talking about 98 % of men are emotionally available. But you would say that's too important. or they might be committed already they might be yes i mean i see good there's if that's true if what you said is true i see nothing but good news there that the majority the vast majority of men are great guys who are emotionally available but they may not be what women want they may not have the skills they may not have the communication abilities they might be lacking other things they may not have maybe the financial i think height is a huge one i honestly like how big is height for women i would say really though are women that superficial to think that height is that important for them?

30:26Depending on her height and her level of beauty. I would just say that sometimes I meet men who are like 5 '4", 5 '3", and they'll say to me, I really, really want a beautiful girl. In my personal experience with beautiful women, what happens with them is they assume every man's super tall because that's all they've ever experienced. They don't know how to compromise on attractiveness because they never really needed to. So they see the world through the lens of, I didn't know, men come in a different size. So they can be very shallow with that. But even, unfortunately, I think height is to women what facial beauty is to men.

31:02So it kind of has that similar impact. It's not definite, but it has a similar impact. I mean, you have a lot of women that come to your retreats. Do they say height is a factor for them? Or are all women there that are just like, I'll take a guy shorter than me and it's fine? I think, I mean, I tend to meet a lot of people who have reached a point in their lives where they're they're bringing a kind of awareness to their love life where they're saying i want to meet someone i'm not 22 years old and yeah showing up with this checklist of superficial things about it but now they're older though and they're like i can't find a guy i'm willing to kind of spread my options well i think i i i would say that we all get to that point where we go are the things that i once chased really do they matter do they make any difference to my actual quality of life in a relationship um and you know height is an interesting thing if you're a very tall woman then it's natural i think for a lot of women to want someone who's of their height or not drastically different in that sense but you know i think a lot of people just get to the point where they go this isn't this isn't the defining factor anymore in the same way that a lot of guys realize chasing the prettiest girl at school is i have to grow out of that because that doesn't make her the best partner it doesn't make her a great person to spend time with it doesn't she might be but it doesn't it's not automatic um and so i think i think it's a common thing for everybody to start to let go of some of those superficial factors But I do want to just touch again on the, you know, talking about who's more emotionally unavailable.

32:52Because I do, my experience of women is that they really, they may, there certainly are a group of people on both sides who think they are emotionally available but are perhaps not. What makes them that if they think they are but they're not? What makes them unavailable? what makes them emotionally unavailable i think it could be any number of things i think you know for some people it's they're terrified of of just getting hurt so the idea of um letting someone close enough to really hurt them is the scariest thing in the world they want love they want to feel seen and acknowledged and connected but they're afraid of it at the same time you well they're afraid of the damage someone could do if they got in and so for that kind of person what they need is like a a level of safety that is actually really hard for anyone to achieve because if I don't let you in and I'm like I'm not going to let you in until you make me feel really safe but you don't you know I haven't really let you in enough for you to even feel that connected to me you know or by the way something happens four weeks into knowing someone where they forget to text you back for a night which is human and happens but for what was a mistake for you for me is like an existential threat like oh no i've been getting attached to this person for the last four weeks they now haven't texted me they don't like me what have i done here and then i say well you know what screw this person i'm not going to text them back for the next three days yeah you know like they can now i'm going to give them that medicine back and it's not that this person's a bad person it's just that they're so afraid yeah that it's like i can't i can't risk you doing the damage you can do that's been done to me in the past whether as a child or whether in a formative relationship i can't risk you getting that close again so that's a desperate desire for love and connection, but it presents as emotional unavailability.

35:02When someone is playing a game, either texting or on dates and they're playing a game, what does that say about them if they're trying to play a game? They're entering a relationship with a desire to preserve their ego rather than truly connect with that person. It's more important that they appear desirable than when they create something that is desirable between the two of them. So if it's a case of somebody hasn't texted me in a couple of days, I'm not going to text them in a couple of days, but I'm going to post a really pretty picture online. Or if a man is like, oh, she didn't answer me back or she didn't compliment me.

35:33No, I'm not going to give her any compliments. What you're really signaling is I'm so desperate to be loved that I'll push it away and make you think that I don't want it. Just so then if you don't, if you reject me first, I can feel like I saved my soul by not investing too much. So there is self-preservation, but in the process of self-destruction, sadly. So I know I've been there. We've all been there. I think we've all been there. We don't want to look like the idiot. We don't want to look needy. But I always just say to people that if in the process of communicating your needs, you lose somebody or they think something less of you, you're just filtering out the wrong people anyway.

36:07The right person will appreciate the communication. They'll reciprocate the communication and you'll build something. The wrong person will, you know, be scared or run away or whatever it is, but you don't want the wrong person anyway. So it's a good filtering process. Effective communication is great for filtering out the wrong people. It's so interesting because, you know, when I was starting to date Martha, my fiance, like just early the first date, I was just like, I'm going to share not all of me, but kind of all of me up front. No games? Yeah, no games. Just like, this is who I am. This is my flaws.

36:37This is my mistakes. This is the things I'm working on. This is, you know, the things I'm good at. All these things. And I kind of was completely unattached to the result. Yeah. Like, if she likes me, cool. If she doesn't like me, at least she knows who I am. Yeah. And it was freeing. It felt freeing to be like, okay, this is me. I'm not playing any games. I was just like, if you like me, cool. If you don't like me, cool. Yeah. And that gave me freedom to be myself. And I think it allowed me to see, does she really like me for kind of all of me of what I'm able to show. You weren't trying to impress her.

37:12You were trying to access a healthy relationship. Absolutely, yeah. And that's what the goal should be. And it was almost like if she didn't want to hang out with me again, I wasn't going to be upset or hurt that she wasn't into me. I'd be like, okay, this just didn't work out. I think that comes from you having done a lot of work on yourself to get to the point where you felt pretty accepting of yourself at that stage. Yeah. I couldn't do that in my 20s. No, because I think the game playing originates from this feeling of I'm starting from behind. I'm starting from not being good enough. so how can i manufacture a dynamic that is going to raise my value um how can i show my best self or how can i create a mirage of a self that doesn't exist interesting you know what what am i trying to do by not texting you back for three days i'm trying to create this idea of myself as this extremely busy high demand person as opposed to the person that i am and and by the way if i was that really busy high high in demand person i probably still wouldn't wait three days to take it right it's like hey i'm running from meeting to meeting but i wanted to say hi and how's your day because you were still even if you were that person and it wasn't where your value was you you didn't put your value in being a busy and important person then you still wouldn't be weaponizing it but the game playing is a way to kind of you know manufacture or engineer a self that doesn't exist a self that you think would be the most attractive you that you're not really whereas you came into your relationship with martha going i'm all right yeah i'm all right i i'm i'm maybe i'm not perfect but i'm all right i you know and i come to think of it i quite like me i don't mind myself and if i find someone who likes me for me, that is far preferable to finding someone who's into me because of this mirage I've created that I now have to sustain.

39:18Here's a question for both of you. Both of you give advice to men and women on relationships, but I'm curious, what is the biggest challenge that you had to overcome in your 20s in your own relationships, one for each of you, that maybe is a pattern looking back now you could say oh this is something I did in relationships or when I was single maybe I played a little bit of the games maybe I did this maybe I was emotionally available but what was the thing that you think held both of you back the most in your 20s from finding love I always had a lot of male friends and it was a blessing and a curse because they were so open with me about everything and men in their 20s you know they're young and they're enjoying life so they would have lots of girls on the go and stuff like that and they would always tell me what they're doing so they'll say one of the tricks we do is we put her as my whatsapp picture but i might text other girls but i she feels calmer in that moment or i text her on a night out but you know i do what i want but she feels calmer when i say that so i know all the soothing techniques might have a malicious background to it so i would go in assuming men's their ways of soothing you and connecting with you has a malicious intent towards it they were still off dating other people or talking to other girls it was just to pacify you it's not true so because maybe it speaks of the men i used to know and hang around with but that would be their kind of play they would kind of know this is how you work with them so what would happen is i would always have this mentality is you can't fool me i'm sadia you can't fool me i know everything so the problem would be is i would go i would meet people with the intention of showing them that i'm more intelligent than they think i am so my process would be to prove how you can't trick me so I'd look for clues connect dots that aren't there but it wouldn't be a genuine like why don't I just try and enjoy this connection and just see what's going on and just trust the intention instead it's like no no no I know this means and you're trying to prove to them how smart I am about human connection whilst not actually creating human connection.

41:13Interesting so it's almost like you could have been with like the nicest best guy who really loved you and wanted to like show you the best of him but you were like there's something behind the scenes that you're doing. So I would try and check what online behavior they've got what last scene on WhatsApp and then connect some dots in my head and then assume the worst and then think oh well at least by assuming the worst i can't get too attached and then i'm so smart but secretly i'm craving the connection that i'm pushing away yeah when did you realize that was a behavior or a pattern of yours that you were able to say okay let me let me separate myself or start to heal or process from this and start shifting it i thought it would be a permanent condition i thought that i've just been grained with it but i do think having a secure partner their level of transparency and their level of security in themselves and that attitude that you demonstrate with marcia was look if you're going to play games you're most welcome to leave i'm not going to beg anybody but if you if you want to have a good human connection you are most welcome to take a seat on my table meeting men with that meeting somebody with that kind of mentality made me realize i don't need to come into relations with all this defense and armor on in my in my back pocket i I can actually put the weapons down and actually enjoy the connection and trust the connection and also having a life I like living with or without the connection.