Transcript
00:00:00How much does the partner that someone chooses reveal about their level of self-worth, do you think?
00:00:06I like this, starting with a strong one.
00:00:09Well, I want to add a little bit of context to that.
00:00:11How does the partner that someone chooses reveal how much they love themselves, how they see themselves?
00:00:18It can tell a lot, but I think more importantly is the way that they feel about someone's judgment of that.
00:00:23So the way that I frame it is, if someone told you that they could tell how much you love yourself by the partner that you've chosen,
00:00:30how would you feel about that?
00:00:32It's kind of like if I say, oh, is that a new shirt?
00:00:36And you're a little insecure about it.
00:00:38You're like, what does it make me?
00:00:39Do I look a little heavy?
00:00:40Do I look a little, can my muscles look small?
00:00:42There's an insecurity there.
00:00:44Versus, thank you, it is a new shirt.
00:00:46Doesn't it look great?
00:00:47You know, this color, the new cut.
00:00:49You're secure in it.
00:00:50So when someone says, I can tell how much you love yourself by the partner that you've chosen,
00:00:56there's a bit of intuition in that, in your reaction to that.
00:01:00It's an interesting prompt to give somebody.
00:01:02Yes.
00:01:03And the sense of, oh, or.
00:01:06Yes.
00:01:07And I always try, I frame it up that way intentionally because it's not about someone
00:01:11actually passing a judgment on you.
00:01:13It's your interpretation of that judgment.
00:01:16It's like a Rorschach test for your own partner.
00:01:18Yes.
00:01:19It's like, I am not what I think I am.
00:01:21I am not what you think I am.
00:01:22I am what you think.
00:01:23I am what you think.
00:01:24I think I am.
00:01:25We did it.
00:01:27We did it.
00:01:28It's interesting though, right?
00:01:29Like the idea that if you feel like you're being mistreated and you believe that the love
00:01:39that you are prepared to accept is a reflection of your level of self-worth, that probably tells
00:01:46you everything that you need to know about your relationship.
00:01:48Yes.
00:01:48Well, it's, does it feel like a compliment or does it feel like an insult?
00:01:52Does it make you proud of the love that you've accepted and the treatment that you've tolerated?
00:01:57Or does it really hit that sensitive part of you?
00:01:59It's like, I've been treated like shit for years.
00:02:02Like this is not, or simply this has really just never felt right.
00:02:06You know, it feels kind of mediocre.
00:02:08Maybe it's not a reflection that you totally hate yourself.
00:02:10It's more just like, that doesn't really live up to the way that I know love could feel.
00:02:15And someone who really loved themselves probably would have gone and found something that really
00:02:20aligns rather than just settling for what was there.
00:02:24So there's a lot in there, but it requires the introspection to really get into the meat
00:02:29of it, into the context.
00:02:31Where does self-trust come from?
00:02:34Self-trust, self-trust will be my greatest obsession for the foreseeable future.
00:02:41Self-trust is essentially building a relationship with yourself that allows you to know who you
00:02:46are, like who you are, and build a life that actually feels like yours.
00:02:50That's like, if we summarize it, that's the brief synopsis.
00:02:54Self-trust to me is ultimately what you have to build in order to find fulfillment, sustainable
00:03:03fulfillment in this life.
00:03:05The way that I see it, the majority of our issues, emotional anyway, issues come from
00:03:10uncertainty.
00:03:11What's going to happen to me?
00:03:12What are people going to think of me?
00:03:14What am I going to think of myself?
00:03:15What happens if this uncontrollable thing plays out?
00:03:18How am I going to handle it?
00:03:19But more importantly, how am I going to feel if this person breaks up with me?
00:03:23If I don't get this job?
00:03:24If someone that I love dies?
00:03:25Most of it is, how am I going to feel on the other end of that?
00:03:29And there's no way to outrun that uncertainty.
00:03:32There's no means of control or no ability, no strategy that was going to apply to all of
00:03:39those situations, except for trusting that you will be there in every single one of those
00:03:46situations.
00:03:47You'll be on the other end of that, supporting yourself.
00:03:50The way that I kind of break it down, there's four C's of self-trust.
00:03:53Number one is curiosity.
00:03:56So do you know what you're feeling?
00:03:58Do you know why you're feeling that way?
00:03:59Do you know what you want in this situation, in the next situation, in life in general?
00:04:04Do you know what you don't want?
00:04:06How well do you, how much space do you give yourself to really ask yourself the hard questions
00:04:12or the fun questions and learn the answers?
00:04:14The next one is capacity.
00:04:16So how good are you at being emotionally flexible?
00:04:20When discomfort arises, do you trust yourself to stay in the disappointment, in the sadness,
00:04:26to support yourself through that?
00:04:28When things go really well, do you trust yourself to not totally self-sabotage and fuck it all
00:04:33up?
00:04:33Screw it all up.
00:04:35And then you're looking at compassion.
00:04:37That's the fourth one.
00:04:38So do you have compassion for your own, not just yourself, but also an understanding of
00:04:46your intentions?
00:04:47Like, do you trust your heart?
00:04:48Do you have compassion that you're well-intentioned and that still means you're going to screw up
00:04:51sometimes, right?
00:04:52Can you recognize your own humanity?
00:04:54And then the last one, C, last C is commitment, which is, do I know the kind of life that I want
00:05:01to build?
00:05:01Do I know the kind of person that I want to be?
00:05:04And am I committed, devoted to bringing that to fruition?
00:05:09Am I committed to this life?
00:05:11Because that's what's going to move you forward through all of that.
00:05:14So in short, that's what self-trust is.
00:05:18Which one do people struggle with the most?
00:05:22Either capacity or curiosity.
00:05:28Why?
00:05:28Why?
00:05:31I think we like to pretend that we're curious, especially in today's day and age.
00:05:37I have a label for everything.
00:05:39I'll just find the label.
00:05:40I'll explain it all away.
00:05:41Give me the diagnosis and I can stick a Band-Aid on it and we can just keep pushing.
00:05:47You sell yourself short when you do that.
00:05:49You sell yourself short when you don't take the time to maybe question the label or look
00:05:56underneath the label.
00:05:57What are you really feeling?
00:05:59What are you experiencing?
00:06:01What makes up this pattern that you don't like?
00:06:05Are you picking shitty partners because you have daddy issues?
00:06:12Slap the label on it and do away with it.
00:06:14Well, I've explained it.
00:06:14I'm done with the curiosity.
00:06:16What do you mean I don't want to move on to the next one rather than there's an association
00:06:20that I have where love is supposed to feel like abandonment.
00:06:27There's this association that I have that love is supposed to hurt.
00:06:31So I'm supposed to expect these like high highs and then these super low lows.
00:06:37That's the real problem.
00:06:39My association with love.
00:06:41If I just slapped the label on it, I'd miss the whole, all the important stuff, all the
00:06:46context.
00:06:47It's a protection mechanism in some ways.
00:06:49A shallow level of curiosity that's, oh, well, now I've pathologized it or identified
00:06:53it or given a term for it.
00:06:55That's enough.
00:06:55I've done the work.
00:06:56You go, no, that's actually antithetical to doing the work.
00:07:01It's actually pushing you away from it because it's making you feel like you've done something
00:07:04whilst actually stopping you from diving into the thing that would have fixed it.
00:07:08Bingo.
00:07:08Totally.
00:07:09Completely.
00:07:10And the other part is the curiosity continues on.
00:07:13I mean, it's kind of ever changing the way that we feel, the things that we want,
00:07:17change shape, change form.
00:07:19So there's a lot there.
00:07:23And then capacity.
00:07:24We're not really good at sitting in discomfort.
00:07:27We're pretty good at finding every possible way to get out of it, around it, under it,
00:07:33over it, all of the things.
00:07:35And we typically prefer what's familiar over what's unfamiliar.
00:07:42So if we're used to our certain few emotions, we're used to a good bit of disappointment,
00:07:48good bit of sadness, a little bit of anxiety, and then a smidge of joy, we're going to probably
00:07:52stay within that ratio unless we intentionally decide to expand the capacity there.
00:07:59Where it's like, no, no, no, no, no, I'm not going to stay in the disappointment.
00:08:02I'm going to teach myself how to move through it.
00:08:05I'm going to support myself in whatever I need to do to move through this, rather than just
00:08:10staying in it and drowning in it.
00:08:12Whether that be...
00:08:13Or fleeing from it.
00:08:14Or fleeing from it.
00:08:15Yes, exactly.
00:08:16And the positive, quote-unquote, emotions, it's the same thing.
00:08:21We like to think, well, if I can just get rid of my anger and my sadness and my disappointment
00:08:26and all of that, I can just relish in all of these good emotions.
00:08:31And the reality is, 99% of us, if we took a good hard look at it, when the good stuff comes
00:08:36up, we're either waiting for the shoe to drop.
00:08:39Well, it's not going to last long, so what's it going to be?
00:08:41What's going to hurt me?
00:08:42Right?
00:08:42We've already checked out of the happy moment because we're expecting something to come
00:08:45around and kick us over.
00:08:48Or it's self-inflicted and we self-sabotage anyway because we don't trust it.
00:08:53You mentioned there about people feeling unusually familiar with negative patterns in the present
00:09:00related to something that they've become acclimatized to from their past.
00:09:06How much of having a type do you think is just unresolved trauma showing up in adulthood?
00:09:14Oh, this is a good one.
00:09:18Can I open my new tonic for this one?
00:09:20Get that in you.
00:09:21Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:09:21You need it.
00:09:22Watch the nails.
00:09:23Thank you.
00:09:25Yeah, look.
00:09:26I...
00:09:26What do you think?
00:09:29What's your opinion on that?
00:09:31I think an awful lot of the things that feel exciting and activating to people in adulthood are absolutely
00:09:39familiarity masquerading as resonance.
00:09:43It's just something from your past.
00:09:45There's this line from Kathy Overman where she says, "Your nervous system will always choose a familiar hell over an unfamiliar heaven." And Jesus fuck if that's not true, right? Like how many people had the distance and difficult to please father that they had to perform for?
00:10:05Well, and then if love is easily given to them in adulthood, they feel like they should run away. Or it's not worthy of something. There's something wrong with people who show them love too easily. And there's something alluring about people that make them work for it.
00:10:19Even though, by definition, they're probably the people who aren't showing up ready for a relationship and are going to turn your life upside down. Or somebody's mother was unusually fragile or explosive. And they had to walk on eggshells and they get into a relationship with somebody who seems to be slightly unpredictable and explode when you might not anticipate it.
00:10:48And that is felt by the nervous system as I've been here before. There is kind of an iron law, I think, of attachment that if you have something that's unresolved from your childhood, you will continue to repeat that pattern until you finally resolve it in adulthood or never do. And I think a lot of people end up in the never do.
00:11:14Right. It's like a book that you started when you were three years old, never finished, and then you spend the rest of your life trying to find a couple of chapters to finish it off.
00:11:25I like that. You're speaking to the uncertainty that I was mentioning earlier, where it seems like most of the issues come down to uncertainty, where what would happen if I didn't repeat that pattern? What would happen if I sought out love that wasn't similar to what I've always known love to be?
00:11:44That's somehow scarier to our brains, whether it's conscious or unconscious, often unconscious. That's somehow scarier than the shitty, often destructive relationships that this familiar love brings.
00:11:59But there's certainty in it. So if I can rely on the certainty, at least I know, at least I can choose the devil that I know, rather than the potential devil or the potential heaven that I don't know.
00:12:10But I think the only way, the only way that we get around that is by being intentional, by trusting ourselves to go figure out what we really want and lean in to the uncertainty and the lack of familiarity.
00:12:26Why is it the case, do you think, that so many people mistake anxiety for chemistry? Again, it's another iron law. Am I wrong? Am I wrong?
00:12:35Well, I mean, the funny thing about it is you're just talking about a bunch of bodily sensations. They're affective feelings. And so it's kind of funny because you asked that and my first thought is, well, it doesn't have to be anxiety and it doesn't have to be, it could be simply excitement versus to other people, it's the red flag.
00:12:55So it's really just your understanding of those bodily sensations. So if you're talking to someone who grew up with really steady caregivers, really attuned caregivers, pretty much everything you just said, if you're looking at that person and their association with love is going to be calm and steady and consistent versus someone else who's really used to inconsistent caregivers, not feeling like a priority, love being hot and cold or hurtful, then that sense of adrenaline that kicks in.
00:13:25When you meet someone who mimics the same, you're going to say, oh, that's love. That's love because I'm so used to these highs and these lows. And so the adrenaline in the body is essentially either a red flag or you've learned that that sensation is love.
00:13:40Isn't it interesting the way that this stuff gets modeled? So let's say that somebody's grown up in a two-parent household and it's been the same parents from when they were born. You're getting to not only have your relationship with both attachment figures, and you're getting to learn what care and regulation, and this is what happens when I need someone to look after me.
00:14:04And this is what happens when I've got a problem. And this is what happens when I've done something wrong. Like, am I safe in realizing that I'm going to be loved on the other side of this, that I can do something wrong and it doesn't make me worried about abandonment.
00:14:19But you're also getting to model the example, the first romantic relationship example that you've ever seen, which is the two caregivers between themselves.
00:14:27So it's kind of this weird reinforcement loop, right? You've got, it's almost weird to call it environmental because it's so pre-verbal and it's just beyond what your mom did during pregnancy.
00:14:43You know, it's like, it's almost the same as your mom smoking during pregnancy or drinking or doing whatever, or like being real calm and looking after her choline levels and eating loads of eggs, whatever.
00:14:52But I don't know what women do. Um, I need to do research on that. Um, it, it is just outside of that window, but you're so permeable, like kids are so absorbent to this stuff that it's kind of almost there anyway.
00:15:05And then you grow up and you get to have this reinforcement, but you've already got the predisposition. There's already a genetic predisposition for attachment style, right?
00:15:14And then that's got reinforced pre-verbal with the extended pregnancy thing of you naught to three, naught to four years old or whatever.
00:15:22And then you come online at some point as like a conscious being. And then you're seeing a proper environmental, well, that's how mom and dad relate to each other. That's what an argument is.
00:15:34That's what, that's what, um, a slow Sunday looks like. That's what happens when we get stuck in traffic. That's what happens when somebody messes up. That's how long it takes to come back together after someone's become dysregulated, all of these things.
00:15:48And it feels like a real double, triple, quadruple whammy of you had this predisposition genetically. It was reinforced pre-verbally directly to you. And then you got to see it between your parents, uh, um, environmentally, culturally reinforced too. It's, it is really no surprise that sort of people become who they are in those ways.
00:16:15I would love to see how long it would take to, to, to see if there's any change in that predisposition. Like how many, uh, generations would it take to unwind this?
00:16:31Yes, exactly. Um, and obviously genetics, load the gun environment, pulls the trigger, but at the core of all of that, the first question that we have is, am I safe? Am I safe? Do I belong?
00:16:44Does any, or is anyone paying attention to me? Cause if they are, and I'm safe, then I can look at all these other things, you know, how I relate to other people and how, you know, do I get to have creative freedom to be my own individual person?
00:16:58Do it, you know, what do I want to do? Those questions come second to, am I safe? And the question that comes right after that is, and do I belong? Do people love me enough to pay attention?
00:17:07If we don't get those needs satisfied, if we don't, and sometimes it happens later than it should. A lot of the times it happens later than it should. Um, it's really difficult to try and figure out how to have a super healthy, secure relationship on top of that.
00:17:25How to chase your dreams and still have a good balance and feel good about yourself. And that's really difficult. If your fundamental needs of, do I belong enough? Me at my core, do I belong enough for people to care and want me around? Like, am I, am I physically, physically and psychologically, emotionally safe?
00:17:47That's going to follow you around like a ghost. If you don't figure out, if you don't figure out the answer to that question, you know, it's like, do you feel safe? Yes or no. But even more so than the defense mechanisms or coping mechanisms that you have to try and meet that need, because we all have them. So if we're talking about self-actualization, which we kind of are in that whole thing, you have to start at the bottom, which is safety and belonging.
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00:19:17How does somebody build safety as an adult?
00:19:20I think it's, I would start with the question of who do you have to be, to be loved. That's a pretty good place to start. Because ideally, the answer is, well, myself. And it feels, it feels quite easy to say that.
00:19:34Like, well, that's just, you know, I'm me. And my mom loves me because of this. My best friends love me because I'm just myself. Yeah, I don't, I don't feel like I have to be all that much.
00:19:42Versus if that question causes you to really tense and you're thinking, oh my God, well, I have to be the guy with this job title because status. I have to be the guy with this much money because power and importance.
00:19:53I have to be the guy that never shows his emotions. I'm supposed to be strong and sturdy and everyone realizes that there's a problem there. There's a problem there because you belong just for existing.
00:20:05I think it's Brene Brown that says the opposite of belonging is fitting in. Maybe.
00:20:10So to that, the opposite of belonging, the opposite of safety is fitting in because you have to be someone that you fundamentally aren't.
00:20:21Performance.
00:20:22Performing. Yeah. So I would start with that question.
00:20:25Yeah, it's an interesting one. I feel like the sort of hyper vigilance that a lot of people are dealing with at the moment, this need to, it is about uncertainty.
00:20:37I think anxiety is almost exclusively about uncertainty, that if I can imagine every different potential path that the future might take and imagine it, if it happens, I'll be ready.
00:20:52Yep.
00:20:53I'll be ready. I'll be ready to take on whatever catastrophe, because I've imagined catastrophes that the physics of reality couldn't even deliver to me.
00:21:00My grandma's come back from the dead and she's shouting at me because I did that thing wrong.
00:21:06If I can imagine all of the different ways that the future might unfold, especially in horrible ways, I don't need to deal with the uncertainty of not knowing.
00:21:13So I've collapsed down the uncertainty of the world into a, albeit tragic, but certain nightmare.
00:21:21Well, and run that through. Grandma comes back. Grandma's here yelling at you. Why is that bad?
00:21:28Because I don't belong. Because I'm wrong.
00:21:33Well, she would probably say something that would hurt your feelings.
00:21:36Yeah.
00:21:37So you're essentially running away from a bad feeling.
00:21:39By imagining a worse one.
00:21:41Spend days and weeks and months and years trying to avoid a bad feeling.
00:21:48A bad feeling. Like you're letting emotions, a feeling, run your life. And not just run your life, but exhaust you in the process.
00:21:58When, if you, I mean, I'll go extreme here. When, when my mom died and I was in my early twenties, I was relatively young, had younger siblings too.
00:22:08So there was a lot in that. But I remember when my mom died, I was like, well, you, you have a lot of options here, Quinlan.
00:22:15You can throw your hands up and stay in a ball on the living room floor for the next three to five years and pick your head up then and see what's going on.
00:22:24Or you can, you know, pull yourself up by your bootstraps lovingly and just venture out little by little with the grief, with the sadness, with all of the stuff, you know, on my shoulders.
00:22:39Just like venture out little by little every day.
00:22:41And the other, the first option really included like, okay, but what happens if I start crying in public?
00:22:47What happens if I get a call that my brother's having a breakdown?
00:22:51What happens if you X, Y, or Z, what happens if I'm in school and I can't remember?
00:22:55I was in college at the time.
00:22:56What happens if I'm in school and I can't remember anything on the exam that I was just studying for, right?
00:23:00All of these things were essentially, what happens if I get sad?
00:23:04What happens if I have to deal with an emotion that I don't want to deal with?
00:23:10And there's no way to control that other than to prep yourself, support yourself, building the capacity to feel these feelings.
00:23:19And then you aren't so concerned about what the world's going to throw at you because you know that these big uncomfortable feelings, though uncomfortable, you can manage them.
00:23:28You can feel them and it won't kill you.
00:23:31Hmm.
00:23:32How do you think people know when they're choosing a partner versus choosing a wound?
00:23:36Like you have this old ancient script that's running inside of you.
00:23:43These patterns are laid down.
00:23:45This is what love is.
00:23:46This is how people relate.
00:23:48And then someone comes along and the difference between chemistry and chaos are usually kind of hard to discern.
00:23:58I think the question there, I would tailor it a little bit to do you like the way the relationship feels?
00:24:08Because we can, if it's really all conditioning, right?
00:24:12If the wound is essentially bad conditioning, meaning it brings out a destructive relationship versus positive conditioning, if you will, positive associations with love, bring you a happy, healthy, stable, loving relationship.
00:24:24Of course.
00:24:25It could be my patterns from my past make me only choose people who respect me and are there for me and show up for me.
00:24:30We love that.
00:24:31And make me feel like more of myself.
00:24:32I should get rid of those things.
00:24:33No, no, no, no, no, no.
00:24:34Keep those ones.
00:24:35You need those ones.
00:24:36So I think the real question is how do you know if you're choosing from a wounded place?
00:24:39It's, well, do you like the way the relationship feels?
00:24:42And if not, there's probably something in your conditioning that has taught you to associate this subpar behavior with love.
00:24:52Interesting.
00:24:53It's a great answer about how many people are surprised by, well, yeah, my relationship probably should make me feel good all the time.
00:25:04Most of the time.
00:25:05Revolutionary.
00:25:06Show me where.
00:25:07You know what I mean?
00:25:08Show me.
00:25:09Yeah.
00:25:10Like that, that, that is, well, no, cause, cause you know, it's life's hard and life's supposed to be hard.
00:25:18And sometimes they go, yeah.
00:25:19Okay.
00:25:20But up to a point.
00:25:21Yes.
00:25:22And life is hard in a lot of other areas.
00:25:25I don't think that your relationship is supposed to be one of them.
00:25:28I agree.
00:25:29I came across this line.
00:25:30Um, if you're working this hard to make it work, it isn't working.
00:25:34Mm-hmm.
00:25:35You had a conversation with someone.
00:25:38I can't remember who, hopefully you do.
00:25:41Um, basically saying if all of the late night journaling sessions and all of these tough, difficult conversations, like if it's really not quite moving the needle, you probably need to leave.
00:25:52Yeah.
00:25:53Well, that's, I think a pattern that a lot of people that are big into personal growth and working hard on themselves feel, which is I've been rewarded throughout my entire life.
00:26:07If I work harder, things get better.
00:26:11Yeah.
00:26:12Which means that if this isn't working, I just need to work harder.
00:26:15It's a challenge.
00:26:16Mm-hmm.
00:26:17To the people that listen to modern wisdom, challenges are their fucking thing.
00:26:22Yeah.
00:26:23Is it ever?
00:26:24They're the sort of people that eat challenges for breakfast.
00:26:26Mm-hmm.
00:26:27Unfortunately, they are applying a noble mindset to the wrong environment.
00:26:32Well, and you're looking at, I mean, think about like the hedonic treadmill, where things get great and you get the promotion or you get the great new girlfriend, you love her somewhere, you get the great new boyfriend, whatever, whatever.
00:26:45You're naturally going to come back down to baseline.
00:26:48Mm-hmm.
00:26:49And the novelty wears off.
00:26:50So I agree with everything you just said, with the caveat that you shouldn't be looking to your relationship for something that your relationship isn't supposed to supply all the time.
00:27:01Mm-hmm.
00:27:02Peace, most of the time.
00:27:04Absolutely.
00:27:05Love, support, most of the time.
00:27:08Absolutely.
00:27:09But novelty?
00:27:10Excitement?
00:27:11Dread?
00:27:12Disappointment?
00:27:13Mm-hmm.
00:27:14I mean, right?
00:27:15Both sides of the spectrum here is what I'm trying to paint.
00:27:18Activation.
00:27:19Yeah.
00:27:20That's not what your relationship is supposed to bring you.
00:27:23I just think nowadays we aren't comfortable with just being really, really, really not good at just being.
00:27:33Like, feeling content is something I don't hear anyone speak on much these days, as in people our age just in conversation.
00:27:43Like, I'm content.
00:27:44Mm-hmm.
00:27:45It's usually, oh, I'm awful, or oh, I'm so fantastic.
00:27:48Yeah, or I'm grinding, I'm driving very hard.
00:27:51It's unbelievably radical to say that you're satisfied.
00:27:54Yeah.
00:27:55Right?
00:27:56Because it sounds like leaving a lot on the table.
00:27:58If we live, and I'm, you know, big fan, big beneficiary of capitalism.
00:28:02I think it's, what's that line?
00:28:04Capitalism's the worst system apart from all of the others.
00:28:06And, but the problem is, if you've got meritocracy, people from, what, when do people go to preschool?
00:28:15Like, four years old or something?
00:28:16Mm-hmm.
00:28:17There's already this beginning of a ranking that's going on.
00:28:19There's assessments.
00:28:20When's the first homework that you get as a kid?
00:28:22Maybe six years old, seven years old, something like that?
00:28:25You should take this home and bring it back with macaroni drawings or whatever.
00:28:29Your name spelled out.
00:28:30Yeah, exactly.
00:28:31Um, like that is already beginning to create a, if you work hard, then you will get rewarded.
00:28:39If you work hard, then you will get rewarded.
00:28:41And that just continues to spin up.
00:28:44Problem is that creates a situation where you kind of look lazy or like you don't have big dreams for yourself or a lack of self-respect, or you're not maximizing your time on this planet.
00:28:56If you just say, I'm good.
00:29:00I really, I just like, I like what I'm doing.
00:29:02I like what I'm doing.
00:29:03I don't have any desire to 10X it.
00:29:06I don't have any desire to recruit other people to do what I'm doing and coach them to do it better than me.
00:29:12Now, I was in Bali on this live tour thing, and it was so much fun.
00:29:17I'd done the last show and I caught up with a friend.
00:29:20A friend was out there, uh, doing nutrition coaching and they'd started this business and, and had previously worked in London and then moved out there and said, I'm just having the best time.
00:29:32I'm working with, uh, women who want to optimize their hormones and stuff and skin health and lose weight and do this.
00:29:38And I said, how are you working with them?
00:29:40How do you work with your clients?
00:29:42She said, uh, oh, I, I, I work one-on-one over WhatsApp.
00:29:46And I was like, that's stupid.
00:29:48What you should do is you should have a lead magnet on the front end.
00:29:52That's going to capture all of your emails.
00:29:53And then you need a squeeze page that gets them in on it.
00:29:55You need a low end on it.
00:29:56Yeah, exactly.
00:29:57And then you're going to spin them up.
00:29:58You're going to have the low end and that's just to get the credit card information really.
00:30:01And then after that, you've got your mid ticket and that's really where the big bulk of people go, but you want your high ticket.
00:30:05People working with you one-on-one, you can't just give that away.
00:30:07You shouldn't, that shouldn't be your base level.
00:30:09That needs to be, that needs to be the people at the very, very top.
00:30:11Now, obviously you're going to need a sales team because you can't sell anything on the internet over about $2,000 without having a sales call first.
00:30:16And you don't want to be doing all the sales calls.
00:30:17So you're going to have to require a sales team to come in.
00:30:19And, you know, it is going to become a little bit more complex because you might need a sales manager, manage the sales team.
00:30:24And that is going to look a lot like a sales business.
00:30:26But I promise you, I didn't like stop myself part way through.
00:30:30I am going to curse this person with the exact challenge that so many of my friends are now trying to extricate themselves from.
00:30:42I've overcomplicated my business.
00:30:44I wanted more, more, more.
00:30:46I've stopped doing the thing that I wanted to be able to do in the past.
00:30:49I'm not, I'm no longer coaching women on how to improve their health.
00:30:53Mm-hmm.
00:30:54I'm now managing a fucking sales team who sell people on how to.
00:31:00Have you heard the Mexican fisherman?
00:31:03Fisherman story.
00:31:04I was going to, sure.
00:31:05Yeah, I basically did the Balinese nutrition coach was the equivalent of the Mexican fisherman story.
00:31:11She's like, out there living life, balanced, sometimes working.
00:31:16Literally saying, I'm the happiest I've ever been.
00:31:18After the sentence of I'm happiest I've ever been.
00:31:21Like, let me tell you how you can become miserable but richer.
00:31:25And here are the, well, and you're, okay.
00:31:28Now imagine you take that into a romantic relationship.
00:31:31And you're looking at someone who doesn't value ambition or 100xing their income.
00:31:38Yeah.
00:31:39Or even productivity.
00:31:40Like, efficiency doesn't really matter to them.
00:31:42Yep.
00:31:43Is that inherently bad?
00:31:45No.
00:31:46It's just not you or me.
00:31:48I fall in that category more than I'd like to admit.
00:31:52But the reality is we're more than likely to look at that person and try to change them.
00:31:56Try to project onto them what we value rather than looking at them as what they are.
00:32:00Which is a whole other person.
00:32:03That's an interesting pattern.
00:32:05To a degree.
00:32:06I certainly think at least my friends, as we all hit our 30s, we increasingly valued people around us.
00:32:16Friends and partners that encourage us to slow down as opposed to speed up.
00:32:22Yeah.
00:32:23And that's a kind of difficult realization.
00:32:25I think a lot of guys especially, but probably high powered women too, will realize this toward the end of their 20s.
00:32:31They go, I actually don't want to be around that many more me's.
00:32:34Yes.
00:32:35I'm me enough for me.
00:32:37I actually could do with someone who encourages me to take my foot off the accelerator.
00:32:42Maybe not press the brake, but it's like, hey man, let's just coast for a bit.
00:32:45We can just go and hang out.
00:32:46And, um, yeah, it's a strange, a strange realization.
00:32:51Well, you have to be humble enough to take a look at the mirror in that moment.
00:32:56You have to be humble enough to think, oh, I think I'm so big and bad.
00:33:00I'm so important.
00:33:01Yeah.
00:33:02The way that I do it is the best way.
00:33:04Is the best way.
00:33:05Like, who the hell do I sit down, Quinlan?
00:33:07Like, absolutely not.
00:33:08Yeah.
00:33:09And a lot of people would look at that and think, well, they're just not meant for me.
00:33:13They're just not.
00:33:14I'm going to throw away a perfectly fine relationship because I'm so caught up in myself and my own values that I'm judging someone else based on something that is a me problem.
00:33:23I think we end a lot of good relationships.
00:33:26Potentially great relationships for that reason.
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00:34:40Do you think avoidant people seem disproportionately attractive in the dating market?
00:34:51People who have a strong sense of self are attractive, period.
00:34:55Serperell talks a lot about this, where typically we find our partners most attractive when they're in their element.
00:35:03When they're self-sufficient, when there's a level of mastery or agency at play.
00:35:07We find people most attractive when they are doing their own thing.
00:35:11Avoidant people just tend to have that on the surface more readily available to be seen and admired.
00:35:17They have their lives, their jobs, maybe some friends, their hobbies.
00:35:22There's more going on.
00:35:23They're not so obsessed with the validation of everyone else around them, right?
00:35:28Avoidant people just tend to show their more anxious tendencies right off the bat because you can sense it.
00:35:38So on the surface, yes.
00:35:40I think the answer to your question is yes.
00:35:42Avoidance just seemed to have more of that independent sense of self, firm sense of self right off the bat.
00:35:50That's very interesting.
00:35:51I wonder how much as well the intermittent reward of we're on, things are good.
00:35:58And then hang on, where the fuck did you go?
00:36:00And we're on again and things are good.
00:36:02And then you sort of ran away again.
00:36:04I wonder how much that combined with, they're so impressive.
00:36:09They just seem to have, especially if you have the classic sort of anxious and avoidant relationship coming together.
00:36:14One who maybe is a little bit less self-assured.
00:36:17One who does need a little bit more reassurance from the other person.
00:36:20And someone else who seems to have it all together and can then provide the amount of stimulation and reward that you do want and then withdraw it.
00:36:32I think it depends on what you value.
00:36:35And a lot of that often comes with age.
00:36:39I won't say always.
00:36:40But you get to a certain point where that roller coaster is unattractive.
00:36:43You get through those first inconsistent exchanges.
00:36:48You haven't texted back in days or canceled plans again.
00:36:52And part of you just says, I don't know.
00:36:55No, thanks.
00:36:56Not interested.
00:36:57Been here 17 times.
00:36:58I'm not interested in an 18th round.
00:37:00Like, no, thank you.
00:37:01I value communication, transparency.
00:37:03I don't need you available to me all the time, but you absolutely need to let me know rather than canceling last minute.
00:37:08Like your standards are just clearer.
00:37:11When you know what you value in a relationship, it becomes a hell of a lot easier to say, does this feel the way that I want love to feel?
00:37:18And if not, I'm good.
00:37:20I don't need to understand why.
00:37:22I don't need to know why you're avoidant.
00:37:24You know, what was it?
00:37:25Was it your mom or your dad?
00:37:26The late night journaling session.
00:37:28Yes.
00:37:29It just doesn't help at the end of the day if the relationship isn't, for the most part, feeling the way that you want it to feel.
00:37:38That's the important distinction.
00:37:40It's such a basic rubric.
00:37:41Crazy.
00:37:42Of all of the different bits of relationship advice.
00:37:46Yeah.
00:37:47Do you feel good in this relationship?
00:37:48And is it making you feel the way that you want it to feel?
00:37:50Yeah.
00:37:51And that's a good thing to ask if you're already in a relationship, too.
00:37:55If you have a conversation with the person you're with, like, hey, is this feeling the way you want it to feel?
00:37:59Pulse check.
00:38:00What's up?
00:38:01Is there anything that I can do?
00:38:03Is there better ways that I can love you?
00:38:05I mean, again, it's kind of a cliche at this point, but do you know how the person you're with wants to be loved?
00:38:11Or are you coming in so big and bold and self-obsessed that you're only giving what you want to receive?
00:38:17Looking outside of yourself.
00:38:20It's an interesting one around disappointment.
00:38:22You know, it's very easy to show up well when things are going well, but to sit in, I've been disappointed and I now need to try and be my best self, too, even if this person doesn't deserve it.
00:38:38Like, they messed up.
00:38:39Yes.
00:38:40This person messed up.
00:38:41They don't deserve me to be good now.
00:38:43Like, I'm allowed to stamp my feet and be petulant.
00:38:45Yes.
00:38:46So, there's this line from Visakan Varasimi that he calls the "divorce paradox."
00:38:52He says, "Why is it that so many people seem to divorce their supposed best friend?"
00:38:57And it's that the way people handle bad times is a much better indicator of how long the relationship will last than how they handle good times.
00:39:05And the fact being that if you're able to go through a hard time and come out the other side okay, safety.
00:39:13Mm-hmm.
00:39:14That is, that is so much more predictive than, we just didn't have enough peak experiences.
00:39:22Yeah.
00:39:23You know?
00:39:24We didn't go to Six Flags enough.
00:39:25We needed more vacation.
00:39:26We didn't go to Six Flags enough.
00:39:27He wouldn't ride the fast roller coaster with me or whatever it is.
00:39:30It is all about how do you and your partner get on.
00:39:36Obviously, there's other things, but I think way more separations occur because people couldn't deal with bad times.
00:39:44Not because they didn't have enough of the elated ones.
00:39:47Well, I think it's a, I would, I'd venture to guess it's indicative of a bigger issue.
00:39:51Like, the not handling bad times is actually a symptom of a bigger issue, not handling bad times well.
00:39:57Mm-hmm.
00:39:58Where, just take consideration, general consideration for someone else's well-being.
00:40:06If you don't naturally have that, if you aren't actively working on that, if you aren't aware that that's important in this relationship,
00:40:13you're definitely not going to show up with that in bad times.
00:40:18And that would make the good times a hundred times better.
00:40:20Mm-hmm.
00:40:21You see what I mean?
00:40:22Where if you're pretty self-centered, if you're not all that introspective or self-aware,
00:40:29if you're not trying to become more emotionally mature, which I think most of us can almost always progress in that area,
00:40:38of course when bad times come around, your capacity's shot, you're kind of like running on E,
00:40:43and what's left is none of the good stuff.
00:40:47Mm-hmm.
00:40:48None of the stuff that keeps you together, that values connection.
00:40:50Mm-hmm.
00:40:51Nothing that's going to feed this love.
00:40:53But I think if you have it tenfold, if you have all of the love and consideration, all those things,
00:40:59that when you get down to running on E, there's still a little bit of that left.
00:41:04Yeah.
00:41:05Yeah.
00:41:06Yeah.
00:41:07It makes total sense.
00:41:08Do you think empathy can become dangerous, then, in that regard?
00:41:10It overrides self-respect and boundaries.
00:41:14Too much understanding can be a bad thing.
00:41:17Yeah.
00:41:18Absolutely.
00:41:21Empathy without boundaries is self-abandonment.
00:41:24And on the back end of empathy that lacks boundaries is some sense of lack.
00:41:36Like, okay, if I just empathize enough, if I can understand why this person is treating me so badly,
00:41:41then I'll be able to rationalize it and I can keep them around a little bit longer because I still need to be chosen.
00:41:47So the idea of being lonely and not having anyone there, we can't.
00:41:52That's the last thing we ever want to encounter.
00:41:56So let me just try to empathize enough to be okay with the behavior that I don't like because it's meeting a need.
00:42:04Hmm.
00:42:05So rather than having a pretty firm sense of self that says, I'd rather be alone than be treated like shit, I'm gonna say, no, I'd rather be anything but alone, so I'll be okay with being treated like shit.
00:42:19It's so interesting that you're saying empathy is rationalization to help us keep going.
00:42:25Yeah.
00:42:26It's actually empathy becomes very selfish in that way.
00:42:29Yeah.
00:42:30It's both self-abandonment and selfish at the same time, but it's not really about the other person.
00:42:35Well, self-abandonment is almost always self-serving.
00:42:38It's always the abandonment of self to meet some deeper need.
00:42:42Say more.
00:42:43So if you're people-pleasing, right, similar to what we're talking about with empathy.
00:42:48Well, I'm just gonna make nice so everyone around me will be good and appeased because I need people around.
00:42:54I need to be accepted.
00:42:55I need to belong.
00:42:56Right?
00:42:57So I'm gonna abandon so that I can get this fundamental need met.
00:43:00Where the self is really more your self-respect, like your self-concept, the you that is maturing and has a firm sense of this is who I am.
00:43:11This is what I like about myself.
00:43:13This is how I allow people to treat me, et cetera.
00:43:16But self-abandonment always comes with some kind of benefit.
00:43:20We don't just do it for fun.
00:43:22It meets some deeper psychological need that isn't being met overtly.
00:43:26It's so interesting to think about that, that empathizing aggressively allows you to understand the other person's situation, which just extends that fuel.
00:43:37It just pulls a little bit more fuel back into the tank.
00:43:39Yeah.
00:43:40Okay, I can keep on puttering along a little bit more.
00:43:43And then something else.
00:43:44Oh, but their childhood.
00:43:47Exactly.
00:43:48You know, but their relationship to their stepfather.
00:43:51And what about it?
00:43:52And what about it?
00:43:54Is always what you follow it up with.
00:43:56What and what about it?
00:43:57We're all the way that we are because of something.
00:43:59Should we just fall out of the sky like that?
00:44:02There's a reason, there's a why for everything.
00:44:04It doesn't mean that it's reason to tolerate behavior that's disrespectful or harmful.
00:44:09Ultimately, it gets to, is this making you feel the way that you want it to?
00:44:13Yeah.
00:44:14Regardless of the reason for it or against it.
00:44:17Mm-hmm.
00:44:18Yeah, this is a very British thing, actually, I think.
00:44:21The nobility in putting your desires to one side.
00:44:29Sort of, I mustn't rock the boat.
00:44:31I mustn't make a fuss.
00:44:32I mustn't make a fuss.
00:44:33Mm-hmm.
00:44:34Don't make a fuss too much.
00:44:35I certainly, you know, I saw in my last life as a club promoter, like a guerrillion different
00:44:43relationships make up and break up in the space of no time at all.
00:44:47And a lot of the time, neither side felt like they were allowed to say what they wanted.
00:44:53Mm-hmm.
00:44:54And I think that that was, it's a kind of boundary setting.
00:44:56Hey, this is how I would like to be treated or this is the thing that I want.
00:44:59Mm-hmm.
00:45:00They were young, but it's still interesting to see kind of the pluripotent stem cell, like
00:45:05the little proto, you know, the proto relationships that happen when you're sort of 18 to 25.
00:45:10Yes.
00:45:11It was really interesting to see those because I think that is you without all of the learnings
00:45:18and the insight and the things that come with age.
00:45:21Yes.
00:45:22So it's really, it's dating at its most raw in some ways because all you are are your childhood
00:45:27patterns.
00:45:28Yeah.
00:45:29It was really fascinating to see.
00:45:32I can't, I'm sure alcohol really helped with that too.
00:45:35Helped is a complex word.
00:45:38Helped as a viewer.
00:45:40Yeah.
00:45:41Well, yeah, I'm sure it did.
00:45:42What do you wish more people knew about how boundaries worked?
00:45:45I think that this is, I'm aware that a lot of the time pathologization of therapy speak language,
00:45:53but also a really important thing that you're supposed to do inside of a relationship.
00:45:58So what do more people need to know about boundaries?
00:46:01Boundaries are rules for yourself.
00:46:04For yourself.
00:46:05They are rules that I will abide by because I know what I want for myself, for my life, from the relationships that I will have in my life.
00:46:14It's a rule for myself.
00:46:15And people tend to think that it has to come with a means of control, controlling the other people around them, getting what they want out of life.
00:46:24It doesn't.
00:46:25It's, I will do this or I won't do this.
00:46:29This is what I want in life.
00:46:31Are you in or are you out?
00:46:33Kind of a thing.
00:46:34If you're specifically in romantic relationships, there's a creator that I was, I can't remember who it is.
00:46:41I'm sorry.
00:46:42I was watching a video and basically this couple that's married, the guy was saying that he didn't want to marry a woman who was going to bars.
00:46:51It wasn't what he wanted.
00:46:53Bars are typically for single people.
00:46:55Now, whether you agree with that or not, it's a boundary of his.
00:46:59And he didn't even ask her to stop going to the bars, didn't ask her to leave.
00:47:03He just said, I don't want to, you know, I'm looking for a wife and the wife that I have isn't going to be going to bars by herself for whatever reason.
00:47:12It was his boundary.
00:47:13She said, cool, I'm good with that.
00:47:15Don't need it.
00:47:16I'm also looking for the same thing, the same level of respect.
00:47:18So no more bars for me.
00:47:20That's his boundary.
00:47:22And she had the option to say, cool, I'm in or no, sorry, I'm not.
00:47:26Yep.
00:47:27That's an example of a real boundary.
00:47:29Not, hey, you better leave because I told you that I wasn't cool with this.
00:47:33And so if you go to the bar, I'm not going to talk to you and you're going to.
00:47:37No, it was his rule.
00:47:39She got to opt in or opt out.
00:47:41That's a boundary.
00:47:42Interesting.
00:47:43How many disputes that we've seen, you know, some text leak of a couple famous couple or whatever.
00:47:50And one person is saying one thing.
00:47:52This is what I like.
00:47:53This is what I don't like.
00:47:54And yeah, the delivery of it.
00:47:57There's an awful lot to be said about that.
00:48:00But ultimately, how many debates have been had online on podcasts about should you be okay with your partner going to the bar or whatever.
00:48:10And you go, that is a completely personal choice for you with your partner.
00:48:17And it is a completely personal choice for them too.
00:48:19It is absolutely fine for you to want whatever you want.
00:48:22Yes.
00:48:23Up to a limit.
00:48:27Must put a caveat in.
00:48:29Check the laws.
00:48:30Exactly.
00:48:31For the most part, it's completely fine for you to want whatever you want.
00:48:36You want to go to bed at 9:00 PM?
00:48:37That's fine.
00:48:38You want somebody that is quiet in the morning?
00:48:41That's fine.
00:48:42You want somebody that's vegan?
00:48:43That's fine.
00:48:44You want somebody that's conservative?
00:48:45That's fine.
00:48:47You just need to ensure that you make that plane.
00:48:51And the other person is allowed to opt in or opt out.
00:48:53It feels really...
00:48:57Almost all of the relationship problems that I see that happen on the internet are just two people who aren't compatible for each other shouting about the fact that they're trying to make it work.
00:49:05They're trying to like hammer this square peg into a round hole.
00:49:08Mm-hmm.
00:49:09And then everybody else gets to sit on the sidelines and say, I'm more like them or I'm more like the other one.
00:49:16Yes.
00:49:17Just both of you should fuck off and find someone that's like you.
00:49:20Leave each other alone.
00:49:21Yes.
00:49:22In the mouth of this.
00:49:23Leave and find someone that wants to go to bed at 9:00 PM.
00:49:24Yes.
00:49:25Or has never voted Democrat.
00:49:26Or that doesn't want to eat meat.
00:49:28Well, the politics is something that I actually disagree with.
00:49:34A lot of people say you can't be with someone who has a differing political abuse than you.
00:49:39Mm-hmm.
00:49:40And I disagree in most cases.
00:49:43If we understand the why and the values behind...
00:49:47Okay, so we can take any of these situations as an example.
00:49:50We can use the bar.
00:49:51We can use the time you want to go to bed.
00:49:53We can use politics.
00:49:55Do you know why those things are important to you?
00:49:58Why is it important?
00:49:59What's the value behind not going to a bar if you're in a relationship without your spouse?
00:50:04What's the value behind going to sleep at 9:00 versus 2:00 in the morning?
00:50:09What is the value behind having liberal views or having conservative views?
00:50:13What are the values?
00:50:15And from there, it becomes a real conversation rather than this fight of who's right and who's wrong.
00:50:21And I can't believe that you would want to kill these people and you don't care about these rights and da-da-da-da-da-da.
00:50:26It's like, well, at the end of the day, we don't even know what we're fighting about because I haven't asked you why that's important to you.
00:50:31Mm-hmm.
00:50:32Why are your views on this, that, and the other?
00:50:35What does that mean to you?
00:50:36Mm-hmm.
00:50:37I'm actually curious about what that is.
00:50:39And do those things align?
00:50:41You can have similar values and...
00:50:43Oh, God, I should put on this thing.
00:50:45You can...
00:50:46Do it.
00:50:47You can have similar values at the heart of it, and it can look quite different as far as who you're voting for and what you believe.
00:50:54I told myself I would never speak on politics.
00:50:57Jared, you ever considered that you might have a drinking problem?
00:51:00I don't consider it a lot, Chris.
00:51:02Well, you drank an entire case of Athletic Brewing Coke last night.
00:51:06But they're non-alcoholic.
00:51:08And that's not a problem?
00:51:10Sorry, man.
00:51:11I just kept chugging, waiting for the regret to creep in.
00:51:14Never happened.
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00:51:57Bottoms up.
00:52:04What do you make of the differences between the sexes right now?
00:52:07Like, are men and women just becoming less culturally compatible?
00:52:10I think we're all becoming more egocentric.
00:52:13It's almost like...
00:52:16Arrested development.
00:52:19Children, by nature, are egocentric because there's no way that their little brains can conceptualize anything beyond just them and their need to survive fundamentally, right?
00:52:29And so then, ideally, you grow up and you can ascertain the stability of the world and whatever you go on to form an identity and a sense of self.
00:52:37If you get stuck at a more egocentric age or in a more egocentric phase, everything is about you.
00:52:44Everything is a reflection of you.
00:52:45Your needs are the most important thing.
00:52:47People who have different opinions or values or feelings, all the things wrong because it is me and I am I and the center of the world.
00:52:59I'm being hyperbolic, but I think that we have a really difficult time, both men and women, really looking outside of ourselves without losing ourselves.
00:53:10Are you familiar with the term differentiation?
00:53:12No.
00:53:13Are you familiar with the term enmeshment?
00:53:16Kind of, yes.
00:53:17Kind of.
00:53:18Yes.
00:53:19Okay, so they're chips off of the same block.
00:53:20Explain, explain.
00:53:21So differentiation is essentially I can stay connected to me while also being connected to you.
00:53:26So we are not one.
00:53:27And this goes for platonic relationships, familial relationships, all the things.
00:53:32But I can hold my sense of self while still being connected to someone who's different than me.
00:53:37Give me an example of the opposite of that.
00:53:39Enmeshment.
00:53:40Okay.
00:53:41Codependency.
00:53:42Right.
00:53:43Your feelings are my feelings.
00:53:44So if you're not okay, I'm not okay and I have to fix it for both of us.
00:53:47Yeah.
00:53:48That sense of we are just one unit.
00:53:53I think that being able to hold on to who we are, what we want, what we value, and still being able to relate to people that have, that feel differently, that see the world differently, that have their own sense of self.
00:54:07I'm not sure that we have much practice in that, let alone solid examples of what that really looks like.
00:54:14And that's contributing to men and women struggling a little bit in the modern world because of cultural differences, because they're stuck in this childhood ego phase?
00:54:25I think it's, that sounds, that sounds bad, but yeah, I think it is a, it's a socialization issue where we aren't really taught how to relate in a way that says, tell me who you are and I'll tell you who I am.
00:54:39And we can still have a relationship, even if all of these characteristics don't align.
00:54:43As if your self is a threat to myself.
00:54:47Yes.
00:54:48Now that's interesting.
00:54:50And that's certainly something I think that we see on the internet a lot, that somebody stating a view, a girl stating a view about what she thinks to do with child rearing is seen by not only men, but especially women as a threat if they don't agree with that particular view.
00:55:12Like everything becomes tribal, but yeah, I didn't, I didn't realize that we're basically sort of enmeshing ourselves with the entire world.
00:55:19And that because of our lack of a strong sense of who we are, we see somebody else's sense of themselves as a threat to ours.
00:55:28Well, and you're also looking, I mean, to differentiate requires a certain amount of safety, whether that be safety within yourself or safety within the people that are closest to you, right?
00:55:38Like, you know who you are, you trust the people closest to you to reflect that back, and then you get to go venture out into the world and meet people that want to argue with the opposite points or, you know, have differing views.
00:55:50And part of the greater problem at large, I think, is that we're using shame, judgment, and criticism to try and change the other party.
00:56:02I hear a lot of hate towards men.
00:56:04I hear a lot of hate towards women.
00:56:06I hear a lot of hate of, well, it's their fault that we're like this and their fault that we're like this.
00:56:11And it's like, these are conversations that we need to have, but we're having them with the entirely wrong attitude, an entirely wrong attitude.
00:56:18No one wants to change because they're shamed enough. Sustainable change, real conversation, real understanding doesn't come from spewing vitriol at other people. It doesn't come from hatred.
00:56:33So I think that that general atmosphere is already adding fuel to a fire that's raging.
00:56:42What are the most common misunderstandings that you think modern men and women have about each other? If you were able to pull a chip out of one sex and give it to the other?
00:56:54Hmm. This is a really good question.
00:57:04I think I would want women to understand the power and influence and importance that they play in men's lives.
00:57:18I think that gets lost in conversation.
00:57:20You know, a good, loving woman is quite powerful in a man's life if he also loves and respects her.
00:57:29Like, and I think that that gets lost, especially in today's conversation of like submission and being a docile, good woman.
00:57:37And it's like, we just put the rules aside. You're important.
00:57:41You make a really big difference in this man's life.
00:57:45And I think that that should be reiterated. I also think that if, if women know that they're appreciated and that they're valuable and just their, their presence and their love and their attention goes a long way.
00:57:57That's how we get things to change. When you feel valued, when you feel appreciated, it's like, oh, that's great. I want to give more.
00:58:03Yeah.
00:58:04So that needs to be communicated.
00:58:06And I think that I would want men to know. So if I was implanting this, I think I would want men to know, I would want men to know that there's far more value in who you are beyond just what you can offer on a piece of paper, beyond just the things that you can write down.
00:58:27I see that a lot in, in clients that I work with who are dating and clients that I work with who are married. It's, it's still a lot of these norms of you're only really worth anything.
00:58:39If you can, if you're of a certain size stature, if you make a certain amount of money, if you have certain status power, you know, whatever the, the things that you can write on a resume, basically.
00:58:49And just the value in showing up and being present and being loving and being available as a man is also important and necessary to women.
00:59:05So basically less bravado, if I make a long story short.
00:59:08Yeah. Do you think emotional men often get overlooked?
00:59:11I think it's starting to change, but I do think that there is a bit of socializing, um, socialization that has taught us that men aren't supposed to cry. Men aren't supposed to have more feelings. They're definitely not more feelings than the women in their lives. That's like, that'll, that'll scare you away. Like, oh, can't do that.
00:59:34And I don't think that that's true. And I think that that conditioning, I know that's not true. And I think that the conditioning around that is starting to fall away.
00:59:42I think that we're having more conversations about it. We're taking a real honest look at what we were socialized to believe.
00:59:52And then it doesn't really make sense, right? If women are complaining about all of these emotionally unavailable men and I can't get the man to have a conversation with me.
00:59:59And like, he doesn't care about my day. Like here's if you want an emotionally unavailable guy, that's going to mean that his emotions have to come to the table.
01:00:07So, you know, what do you want?
01:00:10I want you to be able to sit in emotions, but only if they're mine.
01:00:13Right.
01:00:14I don't want you to have your own.
01:00:15I see that mostly in the work that I do. It's like giving men the vocabulary and the language to express what it is that they're feeling and like the space to actually communicate that.
01:00:28And then I often see a lot of the work with women is the practice of allowing the men's emotions to take up space and not just theirs.
01:00:39What are the problems that women encounter when giving enough space, giving space to men's emotions?
01:00:47I think there's a fear that if their emotions aren't being recognized, if we're making space for his feelings, his emotions to come into play, then mine are just going to be overlooked.
01:00:58Then mine get put on the back burner and then I'm just appeasing him. And then what am I even here for? I'm just here to validate him and he doesn't do anything. It's like, okay, well, nothing's going to get done with that attitude. Nothing.
01:01:09The real question is, can you build the capacity and the practice of having your feelings and tabling them for a second while we also talk about his?
01:01:20Whereas women tend to feel and express boldly, largely loudly in a lot of ways, which I'm not against at all. I'm very passionate. I'm quite loud myself, but it has to come with an understanding that if you want to be in this relationship with another human who has feelings, sometimes we have to give it a beat.
01:01:43Emotions are not emergencies. Just because you feel a certain way doesn't mean that you have to act on it now. And it doesn't mean that we can't give attention to the other person who's in this dynamic. Does that make sense?
01:01:55It does. It does. I've been thinking for a while. I wonder whether standards have risen or expectations have become unrealistic.
01:02:06Both? Am I allowed to say both? I think it's both.
01:02:17I think that far more people are actually marrying for love. I think that, again, as Sarah Perel talks a lot about this, but we're expecting one relationship to fill the needs that an entire village would have before.
01:02:34And we're on social media that is filled with every single highlight, real magical moment that's all been produced and very meticulously crafted, by the way.
01:02:46And then comparing that to our, you know, normal Tuesday nights, it's like, well, you must not love me because you didn't send me $7,000 worth of flowers on Valentine's Day.
01:02:56And, you know, I can't be with her because, to be honest, I mean, she's not a double D and she's like put on like 10 pounds and like she's kind of a bitch sometimes. It's like, can we just, where's the humanness in all of this?
01:03:08I think we've lost, we've lost the plot when it comes to expectations. And we need to make room for the higher standards that we have while also accounting for people's humanity, for the connection that occurs just between two people who have a little bit of chemistry, similar visions of the future, and decide to build lives together.
01:03:32So I think it's both.
01:03:34Yeah, I see it in common threads all the time about problems with coupling. And I would say, on average, it's more our standards have risen from women, and more the expectations are unrealistic from men.
01:03:52At least from where I see it in comment sections, I would love someone to do some data on this. Regardless of who is saying what, it's not particularly helpful to say either of those things at the other side.
01:04:10Like, you need to be better, women or men.
01:04:14I go, well, do you not fucking think that they're trying? Who's actively trying to not be better?
01:04:20Right? Who is actively trying to not be better? And when was the last time that somebody was like cajoled, like beaten over the head into change en masse as a group?
01:04:32No, it doesn't work. No, no. People think that they can change other people, but they can't. People think that they can't change themselves, but they can.
01:04:42It's one of my biggest pet peeves, this idea, and it's kind of come back into trend recently, that we should be shaming ourselves into change.
01:04:50Bring back public shame, bring back, and it's like, why don't we just bring back like respect and a sense of decency, but not shame.
01:05:00Shame doesn't create any kind of sustainable change that anyone's going to want.
01:05:06The more that you criticize someone, the more that you shame them, the more that your actions are going to be fueled.
01:05:12Shame at its core is this fundamental belief that you are broken or bad. So everything that you do is going to be to some way disprove that you are fundamentally broken or bad if your actions are fueled by shame.
01:05:26At some point, you're going to be exhausted and you're going to run out of energy to do so because you can't outrun it.
01:05:32You can't disprove it. There is no way to do that. Not the actual belief of shame.
01:05:37You're much better off trying to say that's not a person that I want to be, and I believe in who I am.
01:05:45I'm devoted to being a better person, not because I'm fundamentally broken, but because I know what a good person I can be, and that's my commitment is to be that person.
01:05:54Do you see how that differs?
01:05:56So this idea of shaming your way into change, bring back public shaming, it doesn't work.
01:06:03And I think that it perpetuates more negativity, more aggression, and honestly more isolation than it does any kind of beneficial change.
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01:07:16What do you think are the most difficult cycles for people to get out of in relationships?
01:07:21What do you think are the ones that are the ones that are just kind of bad?
01:07:30I'm kind of taking a left on your question, but this is what came to mind first.
01:07:35The cycles that are most difficult to break, I find, are the ones where the relationship is fine, not totally destructive, but kind of bad.
01:07:47Because neither person is really all that committed to making the change in the relationship because it's just kind of bad.
01:07:56So then over time, the cracks grow, and the cracks grow, and the damage continues, and it expands, and you're basically looking at an issue that could have been repaired if it had only been a little bit worse a little bit earlier, because you probably would have taken it more seriously.
01:08:14Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
01:08:15Does that make sense?
01:08:16Yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:08:17That's the...
01:08:18It's a thousand tiny paper cuts.
01:08:19Yes.
01:08:20Yes, exactly.
01:08:21Or there's another option that people, if anyone's listening and is kind of like, "Oh, that's me," you can care.
01:08:25You can just start to care.
01:08:26You just have to intentionally see that this kind of bad thing could get worse if you don't pay attention to it.
01:08:32You mentioned repair there.
01:08:35What's the gold standard for rupture and repair, in your opinion?
01:08:39Well, you have to start with curiosity.
01:08:40You have to make sure that you understand why the rupture happened, how the other person was feeling, share how you were feeling.
01:08:52You know, whoever was kind of on the receiving end of that damage has to be able to say, "This is why this hurt. This is what I was feeling. This is what your actions meant to me." And then the other person has to take accountability.
01:09:08It's really that three-step process: curiosity, accountability, and then actually changing, implementing the change.
01:09:21And I think what often, what becomes difficult in this rupture-repair kind of cycle is the fact that we often don't change it right away.
01:09:31It will more than likely happen again sooner than we'd like.
01:09:36And tolerating that disappointment can feel really difficult.
01:09:40So you rupture, you repair, I won't do that again.
01:09:45And then you do.
01:09:46It happens again.
01:09:47Same thing.
01:09:48Same thing.
01:09:49sensitive issue comes back, comes back. And you're like, hang on a second. I just gave you my trust
01:09:55that you were going to change this thing. You didn't change this thing. It's happened again.
01:09:59It's never going to change. Yeah. I now can't ever trust any more repair.
01:10:04Yep. And the disappointment that you fall into with that. It's, there's a certain tolerance for
01:10:10disappointment that we all need. And I hate, it's such a, it's such a, it sounds like such a negative
01:10:16phrase is such a bad connotation, but there is a certain amount of disappointment that we have to
01:10:20tolerate if we're going to be in relationship with another imperfect human. Now, the second, third,
01:10:26fourth time that that issue comes around, that it was ruptured again and it was ruptured again.
01:10:33I wouldn't say that's a sign. It's not a sign that you're necessarily with the wrong person.
01:10:36If each time it comes around, you can stay in it with the same curiosity, with the same genuine,
01:10:43like, okay, shit, this is why I did. Okay. You're feeling this way. Okay. That's similar to last
01:10:49time, but this time there's a little more anger than there is sadness. Okay. So the reason why I
01:10:53screwed up this time for the fourth time, honestly, I just, it slipped my mind. And so because it just
01:10:59slipped my mind, this is what I'm going to do to try to keep it more top of mind. How does that sound
01:11:03to you? Like you're, you're going to have to keep coming back to the same, to the same issues for at
01:11:09least a little bit, if not for a long bit. You've got this line, life doesn't remove what
01:11:14isn't for you. It just lets it exhaust you over and over and over again until you choose differently.
01:11:19Yeah. Yeah. There's, um, I also, I take issue with pretty much anything that starts with someone
01:11:30who loves you would, or someone who loves you wouldn't. I know it sounds like a kind of a,
01:11:36yeah. Okay. I'll explain. But the, you lose a sense of intuition when you take other people's
01:11:44black and white assumptions without any kind of introspection or feeling into your own sense of
01:11:51right or wrong. So someone who loves you would, it's like, well, uh, someone who loves you would
01:11:58text you every, would text you good morning every day because they love you. And that's just how it
01:12:02is. It's like, well, okay, well, that's a little silly. There's plenty of ways to love people.
01:12:06I want to feel into whether or not this love feels right for me because like that, um,
01:12:14that line is, is highlighting, there's a sense of knowing that you have a sense of knowing whether
01:12:22something is really for you or really not. So the universe doesn't remove what isn't for you. It just
01:12:27lets it exhaust you over and over and over and over and over again. That's going to be a felt sense of
01:12:33shit. This is the 700th time that I've felt this way. Yep. There is no right, wrong rule boundary.
01:12:42Like no one else is going to be able to give me the knowing that I build within myself.
01:12:48And that's, what's going to help you get up and make the change that you need to change.
01:12:53A lot of this is tapping into a sense of self-trust. Like, Hey, my desires are legitimate.
01:12:59I'm allowed to want what I want. And I'm allowed to not like something that doesn't make me feel
01:13:04good and that I don't like. Strange how much acrobatics, Olympic level acrobatics people are
01:13:10prepared to go through in an attempt to hide away from or justify or legislate. Um,
01:13:20I don't like that. Yeah. Is it okay for me to not like that? It's okay for me to not like that thing
01:13:28that I don't like. Hence why you need the 10 rules of if he loved you, he would, or if he does these 10
01:13:34things, he doesn't love you. It's like, where are we? Can we be so for real? Does it feel like the kind
01:13:41of love you want to receive just because he doesn't text you good morning every single day? Okay. Well,
01:13:47he takes out the trash every time that he realizes it's getting kind of full. You didn't ask him to
01:13:51do that. Maybe you don't even live together, but he notices it, right? He opens your car door. You
01:13:56never asked him to do that. He lays there and lets you put his cold feet under his legs at night in
01:14:01bed, even though he hates it. Like there's so many ways to receive and give love. And I think that the
01:14:08real, the love that is for you is going to feel right to you. It's not going to come in a list that
01:14:16someone on the internet gives you or that the, you know, the universe will magically remove what's not
01:14:22for me. It's like, no, no, check in here. It'll just exhaust you enough until you can't bear it
01:14:27anymore. Exactly. Yeah. There was a line very similar to yours. I saw that, uh, um, the universe
01:14:33will continue to shout louder and louder until you finally hear the lesson. And, um, it is, it is.
01:14:39At least as far as I've seen, most of my friends that are smart originally eventually end up at the
01:14:45place that, that they're supposed to, uh, the goal is to try and reduce down the dose that you need.
01:14:54It's like, do I have to wait 700 times? Can I not got there at 350? Can I have not got there at a
01:14:59hundred? Yes. Um, how'd you come to think about, I don't think it's a really nice rubric. You are
01:15:06allowed to like the things you like. You're allowed to not like the things that you don't like and your
01:15:10desires and the way that you feel is legitimate. But also we know that instinct and intuition and gut
01:15:19feeling, uh, can cause us to act rashly. They can cause us to, um, follow our impulses when we
01:15:26should have actually taken a little bit more of a step back and tried to be a bit more equanimous.
01:15:30I know you're a fan of the mindfulness gap in between stimulus and response. Yeah.
01:15:36How do you come to think about balancing those two things? Because I think the
01:15:39curse of the overthinker is somebody who goes, okay, so it's important for me to feel how I feel and
01:15:45how I feel is right. Well, yeah, but there's also impulse in there and a lot of reaction and sometimes
01:15:54activation. Do you understand how these two things could be sort of on opposite sides of the same
01:15:59scales? I think it comes down to knowing your values. The majority of the decisions that we make
01:16:07become a lot clearer when we know what's important to us. So if, um, kindness is important to you,
01:16:14what's the kinder decision here and genuine kindness as in maybe I need to leave this relationship
01:16:20because it's unkind of me to stay in it, knowing that this other person is fully in it and I'm not
01:16:25like it's unkind of me to stay. So then the kind decision would be to leave, right? The,
01:16:30when you're looking at the values that you hold true to you, you basically are left with, okay,
01:16:39yeah, this one's more aligned and this one's not. And if you aren't, then it's pretty much a game of
01:16:44self-trust because you're going to say, I'm going to go left and I'm going to make the most of whatever
01:16:49left is going to bring me. I trust myself to do that. I've looked at the, I have another video where
01:16:54I say, um, actually it's on overthinking and it's, um, basically, um, if things go according to plan,
01:17:03great, keep it moving. If, if they don't great, keep it moving. But the reality is you need to know
01:17:09that you are there to pick yourself up if, or when things don't go according to plan. So make a well
01:17:15intentioned decision, preferably one that aligns with your values and then take it from there. But if
01:17:22you're, I think if you know that you, that this decision isn't going to genuinely harm someone,
01:17:32if that, that's pretty obvious, right? If it's going to harm someone, you probably shouldn't do it.
01:17:36But most other decisions are typically going to come down to what do I genuinely want more of
01:17:44or less of in my life? And it's going to feel really big and really heavy. And it's going to feel
01:17:50like this catastrophic or potentially catastrophic decision. It's like, well,
01:17:54if you really boil it down to this one's going to bring me more of this and this one's going to
01:17:58bring you more of that, which one do you want? And then you decide.
01:18:04So much of it is, again, self-trust. It really does come back to that. I wonder how people are able to
01:18:11operate functionally inside of a relationship if they don't have self-trust.
01:18:16Not well. Not well. I mean, you're looking at, you have to look at, you have to look at who you are in this,
01:18:27I call it like the third entity that you're building is the relationship. And you have to look at your
01:18:31side of the street. And that's really difficult to do without shame spiraling. Like being able to take a
01:18:37look at how you've contributed to the circumstances of your relationship that you dislike, being able to
01:18:42genuinely do that is necessary to move the relationship forward in a healthy way. But it's impossible to do
01:18:49if you don't trust yourself to go there. If you don't trust yourself, you spiral. It's like, oh, I'm so bad
01:18:55and everything's so awful. And you're, you also can't, you can't hear the other person in the relationship
01:19:00without falling into, you know, defense mechanisms and another shame spiral and more judgments and
01:19:08deflection, right? If you, if you bring something to your girlfriend, wife, whoever, if you, you're to
01:19:15say, hey, I'm really bothered by this. You know, I, I really miss you. You know, you've been working a lot.
01:19:20I've been working a lot. And I just, I want more time with you. She could hear that as he doesn't
01:19:26appreciate the work that I do. He just wants me home. He doesn't even understand. He only
01:19:30cares about his job, right? When in reality, you're saying, hey, I miss you. Could you,
01:19:35could we spend more time together? You have to be able, she would have to be able to really trust
01:19:39her ability to handle her own feelings and thus trust you in the relationship to really hear
01:19:46the request there. Does that make sense? Yeah. It's, it's interesting how many people
01:19:51would prefer to default to a shadow sentence or passive aggression. Oh, going out with your
01:19:55friends again tonight, supposed to, I miss you. And I'd really like to see you. And
01:20:00and it would be really great if we could spend some time together this week.
01:20:06Yeah. Like the difference in those two senses. And one of them kind of encourages this ever
01:20:13escalating game of tit for tat of, wow, last time when you did that thing, na, na, na, na, na.
01:20:19As opposed to, I see where you are. You're doing something just exclusively out of love,
01:20:26pretty much. And fuck, like I should nurture that. I'm sorry that I haven't.
01:20:31And you, you said that so nicely there. That was such a beautiful way of suggesting, but sometimes it does
01:20:41come off a little passive aggressive. And even in that opportunity, even in that is an opportunity
01:20:45to actually listen into what's being asked of you, even though the delivery isn't great.
01:20:52That's no, we don't like to talk about that. We don't like to talk about having to be the bigger
01:20:56person in the relationship. And I'm not saying that you should be with someone who talks down
01:21:00to you all the time, you know, but we all have off days where we didn't regulate before we came to
01:21:04the table and we weren't able to say, Hey, I really miss you. Could we please spend some time together?
01:21:08It comes off as, well, oh, about time. Haven't seen you all week. You know, first dinner we've had
01:21:13together in six days, yada, yada. There's an opportunity there to lean in and see, okay,
01:21:19what is being asked of me? What is the request here? You know, I care about this person enough
01:21:27to assume that what they want isn't necessarily to my detriment, right? It's not going to hurt me.
01:21:35They're looking for something that I can supply. So if they're looking for more love,
01:21:41what could the love look like in this passive aggressive comment? That's not fun to do until
01:21:49you get really good at it. Then it's kind of fun. But then after a while, you do risk getting into
01:21:53the late night journaling sessions for a very long time. Well, explain to me again why it is that you
01:22:02decided to call me a fucking bitch. Like, just tell me, is it because of your father that you did this
01:22:08thing? But I get it. And a lot of this is learning to temper your foot on and off the gas. But too
01:22:16much of that, too much of that overthinking of, well, am I, should I be a little bit more
01:22:19understanding or have I, is this really, I should take the five-step Byron Katie journaling protocol
01:22:25so that I can make sure that I understand, go, dude, do you feel good? Yeah. Do you, it just comes
01:22:31back to, do you feel good inside of this relationship? And is there, okay, let's play that situation back
01:22:38to passive aggressive. You're the bigger person. Awesome. You found the, the request. There should
01:22:46also be a comment that's like, Hey, I really love you. Clearly you're really stressed. Can we work on
01:22:51this? Cause like, that wasn't fun to communicate with, you know, I'm really trying to stay in it.
01:22:55And like, I care about you. So like, what, what's, what can we do to make that better?
01:23:00Not just to put up with it endlessly, but it gives the, I mean, think about that. You ever been in a
01:23:05really bad mood and you bump into someone who's in a great mood and you're like, man, I just, I got,
01:23:11I need more of that. I need more of that today. You know? And you, and then you do, you shake some
01:23:15of it off and you go on about your day a little bit lighter, a little bit more upbeat. It's similar
01:23:20in a relationship, only kind of a hundred fold. Like if you come to the table, trying to be more
01:23:26emotionally mature, more secure. And the other person does too. You're going to have days where that
01:23:31doesn't perfectly align. But the fact that you're both committed to it means that you do level up.
01:23:35Yeah. What do you think AI relationships say about people today and their need for connection?
01:23:42I don't know. What do they say?
01:23:44Well, I mean, there's an awful lot, GPT 4.0.
01:23:48Oh, you're saying our relationships with AI.
01:23:50Yeah. So the, the fact that people are having relationships with AI,
01:23:54what do you think that says as a comment about where people's attachments are at the moment?
01:24:02I think we search for the least amount of friction possible. And that's an issue because humans are
01:24:13imperfect, right? Like we're, we're all fallible. And that's a problem when you can log on to a chat bot,
01:24:21who's going to validate your every request, every desire, going to validate your every thought,
01:24:28your every feeling with zero expectations, zero expectation of reciprocity anyway.
01:24:36And you get to scratch that itch. That becomes a problem when you're looking at, you know, real
01:24:43life. And if you're really looking for a husband, a wife, a partner, someone to even just friends,
01:24:48then your friends become annoying because your friends have inconvenienced you, unlike your chat bot does.
01:24:55That worries me a little bit. It does. Do you see Whitney Wolfhud, Bumble CEO, talk about how
01:25:02people's AIs will date other people's AIs and then sort of pass that up to the inverse sales funnel?
01:25:09I mean, I don't see, I would love to actually see what she's talking about because that just sounds
01:25:14insane. That sounds absolutely bonkers. You tell so much about a person by the photos that they choose
01:25:22on their dating app, by the way that they answer certain prompts, by the way that the opening line
01:25:28that you get when you first message, like there's so much that you read into. What does that even mean?
01:25:33Your AI avatars are going to be speaking to each other. I don't think it should be legal. Sorry,
01:25:38I don't. I really, I think that you're crossing into really dangerous territory when it comes to
01:25:44choosing romantic partners based on your AI avatars. It removes the humanness from a
01:25:52fundamentally human necessity. That's concerning to me.
01:25:57Well, the one area that AI sucks most is taste, being able to be tasteful. If you ask it to tell
01:26:04you a joke, like write an interesting joke about this, I'm yet to hear any that even partly understands
01:26:13how human psychology works. And that level of discernment, I think, is essentially non-existent.
01:26:21Now that this may just be a compute problem, right? If you get 10 times the transformers,
01:26:26maybe this will just come along for the ride, but something tells me that, yeah, it's, it's fundamentally
01:26:31a human, a human challenge. And also there is something about the meat, the, uh, what's it called?
01:26:41A meet cute story. Like how did you guys get together? No one wants to say online. No one wants
01:26:47to say online dating. I fucking bet even fewer people want to say, oh, my AI avatar and his AI avatar.
01:26:54They really got on well and we didn't think it was going to work, but the AI avatars, they convinced us.
01:26:58I, do we, do we know how it's going to work? Are you genuinely going to be pulling up a conversation
01:27:03between your avatars and be like, oh, that's going well. I would imagine it will be some kind
01:27:07of pre-screening. So I imagine that you'll do some kind of psychometric evaluation, uh, testing,
01:27:14conversation. What are the sort of things that you're into? What matters to you?
01:27:18And then you do the same as somebody else. They must have some kind of data set of compatibility
01:27:23of people typically who are like this, don't get on or do get on with people who are like that.
01:27:28And then over time you end up filtering these out. Now what's interesting, what's interesting is that
01:27:34maybe if you do get away from swiping and apparently this is, I don't know whether this is true or not,
01:27:39but I heard it, um, sort of the swipe economy is eating shit at the moment. They're really struggling.
01:27:45Uh, user numbers, usage, revenue, all of this stuff going through the floor.
01:27:51So this is a way to try and counteract that. One thing that might be a bit of a white pill,
01:27:56at least a white pill lining on this. If you get around some of the biases and
01:28:07erroneous judgments that people have of others, maybe the AIs will be able to feed
01:28:15GGU partners that you would not have seen as a potential match that may go on to actually be a
01:28:21match for you because it's gotten rid of some of the, you know, there tends to be a zeroing in,
01:28:27like a gravitational pull towards certain people on dating apps. Now that's because everybody's
01:28:33optimizing for the same quite small bucket of traits that are usually available through, through dating apps.
01:28:40Uh, if you have AIs, maybe they're going to be able to find people that you wouldn't have
01:28:47necessarily swiped on, but you would get into a great relationship with. And I don't know,
01:28:53maybe, maybe that broadens the playing field a little bit more, makes it a little bit more.
01:28:58I'm trying, I'm, I'm scraping the barrel here. Okay. I'm really trying.
01:29:04What if we, I was going to say, what if we came up with shows, dating shows where we put everyone on
01:29:08planes and sent them off to go date. And there's like a hundred of those, right? Where we send people
01:29:12off to go. Okay. Yeah, there is. I was on there. Yeah. Yeah. You don't need any more of those.
01:29:19You do not need any more of those, but we do the AIs and the AIs talk to each other and then we watch the
01:29:23conversations and then we have an infinite number of dating. Yeah. That's part, that's such a good
01:29:27idea. And then we don't even need to date. We can just sit there and watch our AI avatars date on
01:29:31screen for us. The dystopia is just, it's too ready, but yeah, I look, I, I, I, I. Can we just all go to
01:29:38coffee shops, singles, coffee shops, Thursdays from 6:00 AM to 9:00 AM, especially someone like
01:29:44somewhere here in Austin. You know, I like, I like this, uh, lectures on tap thing. Have you seen this?
01:29:49Oh, so it's kind of in New York. I think it might be coming to Austin as well.
01:29:53Uh, it's professors and, and academics and, and other people that do interesting research,
01:30:02giving presentations in what looks like bars and maybe sort of small event spaces and, uh,
01:30:10people get to go and it's kind of like going back to school, but like there was one about black holes
01:30:14and there's another, uh, about human evolution. And then there's another about geology and whatever.
01:30:19And, uh, probably not great if you're trying to listen to a lecture to have someone going like,
01:30:25"Hey, Hey, are you single? What's your Instagram?"
01:30:30Shut the fuck up. I'm learning about how gravity works. Yeah. I'm learning about how gravity works.
01:30:35But you come in an hour early, two hours early, all the singles come in at a specific date. Like
01:30:40there are just, I, I, I wish that we could, I wish that we could encourage people to get outside and
01:30:47actually speak to each other more.
01:30:49Uh, and I know this is, everyone says it and I, I don't have an answer for it. I don't know how
01:30:53to solve the issue, but there's a magic that happens just by being in someone's presence.
01:30:59And then your laundry list of to, of, of, of wants and non-negotiables and all of the things,
01:31:05maybe not the non-negotiables, but your, all of your wants is, seems so.
01:31:08Well, your non-negotiables become way more negotiable.
01:31:11That's right.
01:31:12If they're true non-negotiables, they'll stay non-negotiable, but your list tends to, to dissipate
01:31:18quite quickly when you're just in the presence of someone that you enjoy.
01:31:21I had an idea for a dating app, which is all that you're allowed to put up is a one minute
01:31:26selfie video. It's just video because what you're trying to do, basically, as far as I can see,
01:31:32most online dating is just you speed running through this sort of weird, sterile, autistic,
01:31:38back and forth conversation where you try not to be too keen, but also try to make the needs known
01:31:43without seeming too needy to get to the point where you can see and speak to the other person.
01:31:49Problem being, I've not experienced this, not a woman, reliably, I've been told that the DMs of
01:31:57most women on the internet are a fucking cesspool. And if you open up a dating app to just have video,
01:32:05I worry whether that would be a potential.
01:32:08You'd need some AI on there to filter and monitor.
01:32:12So people would be dressing, they'd be dressing their dick pics up with a mustache.
01:32:15They'd be sort of popping this on the top and they'd be like,
01:32:19Hello, my name's Christopher. How lovely to meet you.
01:32:27It's slowly getting lower over time.
01:32:31Sorry, let me put some blood back in.
01:32:32It's like you're speaking from experience.
01:32:34No, I've never done that before.
01:32:36Look, I've never done that before.
01:32:37Quick ideas?
01:32:38No, that's not how it works.
01:32:39Good.
01:32:40Q, let's bring this one home.
01:32:41You're awesome.
01:32:42I love your work.
01:32:42I think you're great.
01:32:43I love the fact that you're trying to help people understand themselves better.
01:32:46Where should everyone go to check out what you're doing?
01:32:47At Quinlan Walther.
01:32:49On all the things, all the places.
01:32:51I'm doing a live tour.
01:32:53Super excited.
01:32:5412 live workshops.
01:32:56Dates to be announced, but it's in the coming months.
01:32:58Got to keep that one a little quiet.
01:33:00I appreciate you.
01:33:01Thank you.
01:33:02Until next time.
01:33:03Thanks, Grace.
01:33:03Bye.
01:33:04All right.
01:33:04See you next time, everyone.
01:33:05Thank you very much for tuning in.
01:33:09If you enjoyed that episode, YouTube knows who you are.
01:33:13Deeply.
01:33:14It thinks you're going to like this one even more.
01:33:17Go on.
01:33:18Press it.
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