00:00:00Norwegian biathlete Stöhler Holme Legerid, have you seen this?
00:00:04Yep, sure did.
00:00:06This 28-year-old guy chose the Olympics as a place to shoot his shot with his ex
00:00:09after he won the bronze in the men's 20 kilometer biathlon in a viral post after his win in the interview.
00:00:19This guy confessed to cheating on the love of his life revealing that she dumped him after he came clean a week ago
00:00:25and said he was committing social suicide in the hopes of winning her back.
00:00:29Seems like his plan backfired since his ex, who has remained anonymous, reportedly told Norwegian tabloid VG
00:00:34that it's hard to forgive even after a declaration of love in front of the whole world.
00:00:40So for the people that haven't seen it, Dean will cut it in now.
00:00:42Six months ago I met the love of my life, the world's most beautiful, wonderful person in the world.
00:00:49And three months ago I made the biggest mistake of my life and cheated on her.
00:00:53As you can see, that guy used probably the crowning moment of his entire career, maybe his entire life, right?
00:01:01You've worked from a child to do this thing.
00:01:03Biathlon's the rifle shooting with the skiing thing, I think.
00:01:07I believe so, yeah.
00:01:10Way more of an expert on relationships than on fucking biathlons.
00:01:13He chose that moment, the crowning moment, as he gets to do the interview.
00:01:17He could have thanked his mum, could have thanked God, could have thanked all the hard work,
00:01:20used it as the opportunity to try and do that.
00:01:23Dissect this from a science-based lens for me, please. What's going on?
00:01:27Well, I mean, the first thing I want to know is, was this planned?
00:01:30You know, did he think this through?
00:01:32Because to me, that is very different.
00:01:34If he's like, okay, I know what I'm going to do.
00:01:36I'm going to try to get her back.
00:01:38And he's rationally, you know, got some reasons.
00:01:40Or if this was just like, hey, I'm in front of the camera, I'm all excited.
00:01:44I don't know what to say. I don't know how to regulate myself.
00:01:47Let me just let this fly.
00:01:48I think the results are going to be the same regardless.
00:01:51But the feedback I would have for him would be very different,
00:01:55depending on whether he did this on the fly.
00:01:58Give me both of your notes.
00:01:59Well, I mean, so if he did this on the fly, I would, you know, going forward,
00:02:04I don't know how you walk this back, first of all.
00:02:06I mean, like you said, he shot his shot here in front of the whole world.
00:02:09This is his crowning achievement.
00:02:10He shot his shot after shooting many shots, actually.
00:02:12That's exactly what, you know, I'm going through my head.
00:02:14It's like, biathlete, like, just stick to your 50 meters or whatever it is.
00:02:17Don't let's not shoot this kind of shot in this situation. Right.
00:02:23So that's and that's what I would tell him.
00:02:25I think in a lot of ways, you've got to you got to use humor there
00:02:28to diffuse the situation with the individual because he just blew up his life.
00:02:33Really, because it's this is not just going to affect his relationship with this woman.
00:02:37Now, every woman on the planet is like, oh, this guy's a cheater.
00:02:41OK, cool. And that's not the message that I don't I don't think you want that out there.
00:02:47And again, that's this is what I would tell him.
00:02:49Just straight off the cuff is like, look, man, we've got two things to do is one is repair the damage.
00:02:56And then the second is what do we do for you to help you regulate and think through what you know,
00:03:02what you're what you're going to do in the future.
00:03:04Now, if he planned this out, I would ask questions instead.
00:03:08And my first question would be like, what were you thinking?
00:03:11What was going through your head here? Because I don't know.
00:03:13Honestly, I think there is this desire probably to tell her and tell the world that, like, no, I'm a good guy.
00:03:21I'm trying to do the right thing.
00:03:23And that would be my hope here is that ultimately he's trying to do the right thing and he feels bad.
00:03:29And that kind of shame and guilt that you would feel after cheating is going to motivate people to great lengths to try to repair and restore.
00:03:39So if we're thinking about is this guy a good guy? He might actually be a really good guy who made a mistake or he might be an idiot.
00:03:46And that and that's why I don't think I think we'd have to ask more questions and find out.
00:03:52And I don't know the guy. And so it's it's fun to think about him being an idiot, but at the same time, it feels so bad for him.
00:04:00Look, I get it, but there is a bit of there's the beginning of a potentially shit romcom going on here.
00:04:09And I think when we look at sort of the cliches in romance, especially romance films and stuff, where there's a clumsy protagonist or a guy on the side and all the rest of it.
00:04:23It's strange how with the right lighting and a slightly better script, this could be the beginning, you know, either crowning achievement of this guy's life.
00:04:31And he sort of lays down this this accomplishment at the feet of this woman.
00:04:36I think one of the things that most people get skeptical around is if if he'd used the opportunity to win her back after he'd broken up with her.
00:04:46And said, I realized I made a mistake. That feels different to.
00:04:52This sort of rumbling of his lack of virtue, this sort of low credibility man, potentially, who was sort of using.
00:05:03I did see one person say that it was emotional manipulation.
00:05:06I think if anybody is being emotionally manipulated, it's him by himself.
00:05:10I think that he is doing he may be.
00:05:14Is it emotional manipulation or is it kind of just holy shit?
00:05:18I fucked up and and maybe I'm a bad guy or maybe I'm not a bad guy, but I'm just like I clambering, clambering to get back into connection with this person.
00:05:28I'm so dysregulated.
00:05:29I just need something. And if she sees me basically dedicating the greatest moment of my life to her, that being said.
00:05:38He was in a relationship for six months. He cheated three months in and told her a week ago.
00:05:44I look, if you're going to be an Olympic athlete, fucking keep it in your pants for six months, dude, you've worked toward this for a long at least four years.
00:05:51Holy shit.
00:05:53Well, and not to mention, I think you're right on point there in terms of he's probably dysregulated.
00:05:59He's probably trying anything and not in his maybe right mind in that way.
00:06:05And that's what happens is often when a relationship fails, people, they'll do anything and they'll try anything.
00:06:11It's like they're allocating their effort to the wrong things.
00:06:14So this is not a situation where you want to try harder.
00:06:17This is a situation where you want to try better.
00:06:19And for him here, rather than being like, you know, on national, international television, hey, I cheated.
00:06:27Hey, I messed up my relationship and I just want to say sorry to Melinda or whatever her name is, you know.
00:06:34And that kind of reallocation is essential because it's not, trying harder is not going to, it's not going to do this.
00:06:41Trying harder, in fact, often chases people away.
00:06:44That's an interesting one.
00:06:45Talk to me about some of the ways that the romantic mind tells people to try and fix breakups,
00:06:53that the sort of status driven, slightly more rational mind has got a bit of an aversion to.
00:06:59Yeah, you know, I think in many ways we have no idea what we're doing in human relations.
00:07:05Nobody does, you know, in human relationships because we are animals and we are very reactionary.
00:07:12And but it doesn't feel like it because we have this higher order cognition that makes a lot of sense.
00:07:18And it tries to convince us that, no, I'm doing this for a very specific reason.
00:07:22And so as a result, people rationalize what they're doing at a level that is always going to feel like it makes sense from the inside and from the outside.
00:07:33Very different.
00:07:35And so let me get let me give let me give you an example.
00:07:39There's this concept out there that nobody's talking about in terms of relationships, but learning theorists know it really well.
00:07:45And it's called approach avoidance.
00:07:47And it's not the kind of avoidance that you would talk about when we're talking about relationships.
00:07:51Like this person doesn't want a relationship with me, therefore they're avoidant.
00:07:54This is all this is to say is that sometimes scary things are also desirable and sometimes desirable things are also scary.
00:08:03So in other words, I want to pursue this relationship, but I know I might get hurt.
00:08:07And what that causes me to do is take some steps forward and then take some steps backward.
00:08:13And same with a breakup.
00:08:14This bad thing has happened and you might have to deal with some hard truths to get this person back or to fix what's going on in yourself to not be a cheater anymore or whatever.
00:08:25And that's hard and that's scary.
00:08:26And so you take a couple of steps forward and a couple of steps back.
00:08:30And this also applies when we're trying to get somebody back.
00:08:34So suppose you broke up with somebody and you'll do anything to get them back.
00:08:38That is a slow process.
00:08:39And people think that grand gestures are the way to go.
00:08:43They're not grand gestures.
00:08:45Like suppose you had a scared cat under a car and it's been living in your neighborhood for a long time.
00:08:50It's getting hungry.
00:08:52It's not doing well.
00:08:53And you want to coax it out from under the car and you decide you're going to dive under the car and grab it by the tail and pull it out.
00:09:01You're never going to see that cat again if you miss the tail.
00:09:05And that's often what we do with breakups.
00:09:07That's often what we do when we really like people is we dive under that car and we make this grand gesture, this big grab.
00:09:13But really what you need to do is very slowly approach that car.
00:09:16Maybe for days you do this and you offer that piece of food or you put out that water.
00:09:23You show that you are a safe person.
00:09:26That's an investment.
00:09:27And that takes a lot of time and it requires delayed gratification.
00:09:31We don't have a lot of ability for delayed gratification in adult society, unfortunately.
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